There's no denying it: Science is cool, and 2014 was no exception.

This year, we discovered that one of Saturn's moons, Enceladus, was shooting geysers out of cracks in its surface. We also found a way to make a teeny, tiny radio that requires no battery. The human race is pushing forward into the final frontier — and also the tiniest frontier.

SYDNEY — The curious thing about sharks is that the people who have the most to fear from them — surfers, swimmers, paddlers — fear them least.

I was emerging from the subway at West 72nd Street, a couple of years ago, when my father called to tell me that an eight-foot shark had glided under him as he was catching waves at Manly Beach in Sydney. The adrenaline thinned his voice; it took days for the shock to wear off, but he was back in the water the next day. My older brother has had a great white try to knock him off his board with its tail while surfing on a remote beach in New South Wales. (While terrified at the time, he says he remains “convinced of their majesty” and remains an avid surfer.) The Sydney bay where I swim is often crowded with dozens of timid young sharks that leave when fully grown. They do not bother us.

If you are a new entrepreneur, or entering a new business area, it’s always worth your time to assemble an Advisory Board of two or three executives who have travelled that road before. You need them before you need funding, and if you select the wrong people, or use them incorrectly, no amount of money will likely save your startup. Even top executives rely on their advisors.

For perspective, you need to remember that boards of advisors, unlike directors, have no formal power or fiduciary duties, but rather serve at the pleasure of you the business owner. But they are not likely to stroke your ego, or be cheerleaders. They need to tell you the truth about you and your business, good or bad.

Sweat, ick. It betrays our nervousness, leaves unsightly blotches on our clothes, drips down our faces, and makes us stink. Sure, it cools us when we overheat, but most of the time we think of it purely as an inconvenience.

We may soon, however, learn to like our sweat a lot more—or at least what it can reveal about our health. We’d certainly prefer giving a doctor a little sweat to being punctured for a blood test—or even providing a urine sample—as long as we didn’t have to run a mile or sit in a sauna to do it. And if sweat could provide constant updates about our bodies’ reactions to a medication, or track head trauma in athletes, we might just start to appreciate it.

Most people think brainstorming sessions are all about ideas -- much in the same way Wall Street bankers think life is all about money.

While ideas are certainly a big part of brainstorming, they are only a part.

People who rush into a brainstorming session starving for new ideas will miss the boat (and the train, car, and unicycle) completely unless they tune into the some other important dynamics that are also at play:

Image: Free Digital Photos

I hear from staff employees all the time who say: “I’d love to go freelance/start a company, but my job has the health insurance for the family.”

Or: “If anything happened to my job my family would be screwed. My company provides our medical coverage.”

On the surface that sounds like a noble stance. After all, you’ve been warned for decades not to go without health insurance lest you be one of 1.7 million households NerdWallet estimates will file for bankruptcy because they can’t pay their medical bills, or worse: One of the estimated 45,000 people who die because of lack of health insurance.

The European Commission on Friday (28 November) presented a new proposal for the 2015 EU budget, after member states rejected it on 17 November. However, the new proposal is almost identical to the former one, and there is little chance that the institutions will come to an agreement. The Commission adopted a new draft budget for 2015. It foresees €145.2 billion in commitments (+1.8% on 2014) and €141.3 billion in payments (+0.7% on 2014. The formal proposals, which were rejected by member states, was of 145.6 in commitments and 142.1 in payments. But member states asked for the proposal to be slashed, even at the expense of key policy areas.

Image: Free Digital Photos

A 3-D printer can already make a prototype or spare part out of metal or polymer. Researchers at Princeton University have now taken an important step toward expanding the technology’s potential by developing a way to print functioning electronic circuitry out of semiconductors and other materials. They are also refining ways to combine electronics with biocompatible materials and even living tissue, which could pave the way for exotic new implants.

Image: An illustration of the LED printed by McAlpine’s group.  

Athens (AFP) - A taxi-tracking tool, a head-hunting engine and a vertical gardening company -- all business startups that have paradoxically emerged from a Greek economy long in the doldrums.

Faced with the worst unemployment wave in living memory, Greece's youth are turning away from the traditional pursuit of civil service or family-centered jobs, and towards innovation and foreign funding. 

Image: Petros Boskos, 35, co-founder of Verdical Planting Systems poses in front of one of his creations in Athens on November 12, 2014

This morning (November 26th, 2014) I participated in the DotComplicated show hosted by Randi Zuckerberg with fellow guests Leila Janah from Samasource, Rachel Sklar from theli.st, David Hewitt from Heed Your Call and Danae Ringlemann from Indiegogo to talk about crowdfunding for charities. It made me reflect on how philanthropy and fundraising have evolved over the last few years.

Image: Craig Newmark's Crowdfunding Infographic

The latest two speakers of the 12th annual Academic Entrepreneurship Conference and Awards are not the least: His Highness Prince Maurits of Orange-Nassau and Jonathan Rechental, Chief Information Officer of Palo Alto. There are three days left for registration!

For more information and the full program see our website.

Most people know the Tin Man as a fictional character from The Wizard of Oz. Not many people know the Tin Man as a model for aspiring entrepreneurs to learn from. It may sound whacky, but here’s why any ambitious professional could benefit from taking a leaf out of the Tin Man’s book:

The Tin Man is industry personified, but he doesn’t forget the importance of having a heart.

In the public eye, entrepreneurs are often perceived as ruthless in their hunger for making money. A quick Google search will pull up article after article outlining why entrepreneurs have to be heartless to survive. Whilst this is merely conjecture, the image prevails.

This week I wrote about obsessive and competitive founders and how this forms the basis of what I look for when I invest. I had been thinking a lot about this recently because I’m often asked the question of “what I look for in an entrepreneur when I want to invest?” I look for a lot of things, actually: Persistence (above all else), resiliency, leadership, humility, attention-to-detail, street smarts, transparency and both obsession with one’s company and a burning desire to win.

Every once and a while we get a clear example of the gulf between those battling over important public policy issues and can understand why the public and policy makers are confused by resulting charges and counter charges. Last week was a good illustration.

The Washington Post reviewed a study by the Tufts Center for the Study of Drug Development in its story titled Does it really cost $2.6 billion to develop a new drug? As the title implies the claims of huge costs and risks undertaken by drug developers are summarily dismissed by their critics. The story fairly presents both sides of a debate with vastly different worldviews.

For the past 25 years, as a journalist and author interested in the cutting edge of science and culture, I’ve had the chance to interview thousands of incredibly successful contributors—those innovators who have found ways to significantly alter reality. After decades of this, I’ve started to see a few consistent patterns. Three in particular.

First, these folks all have vision. They all see farther faster (this is an idea Peter Diamandis and I explore in our soon-to-be released book Bold). Another consistency among great innovators, copiously covered in previous blogs, is their ability to reliably and consistently find flow. These are, of course, the obvious choices for telltale traits. But there’s another force at work, a third commonality between all the successful innovators: they are all be running away from something just as fast as they’re running towards something.

Jessica Mah, the founder and CEO of Indinero, was only 11 years old when she started her first business. Having learned how to code in fifth grade, Mah built websites for people and got paid a few thousand dollars a month.

That experience led her to do something more serious for her next business. She leased servers out of a few data centers and created a fully managed hosting service for small businesses, which she describes as a “cheaper version of Rackspace.” She had about four part time employees and generated six-figure revenues from it.

Image: http://venturebeat.com/ 

Software’s always been the sexy sell of Silicon Valley. With low startup costs, margins on par with the most illicit drugs and the boom or bust mentality of the Internet era, it’s been the sweetheart of startups for nearly three decades.

But business is dynamic and times are changing. Hardware, the one-time ugly duckling of the entrepreneurial world, has been rapidly evolving, thanks in large part to the advent of crowdfunding. Startups, founders, and ideas that would have once taken tens if not hundreds of thousands of dollars in upfront costs and needed serious angel or VC rounds are cropping up each and every day.

We all know that culture is vital to any business. As you grow, culture becomes part of your DNA.

“Culture deeply influences the people you attract and retain,” writes Adam Berrey at Startup Blender. “At the same time it shapes how people work together in your company and what they ultimately achieve.”

Image: http://venturebeat.com/ 

It’s the economy, stupid!’ This well-known phrase in American politics was born during Bill Clinton’s successful presidential campaign of 1992. 

Clinton was known for being a political nerd who knew every nitty-gritty detail of numerous policy areas. He wanted to get this across to voters and make them understand what he did. But they didn’t get it.

image: http://www.freedigitalphotos.net 

Australians take pride in being a competitive nation. We relish our world-leading position in many fields of endeavour, but we are far from the podium in one important area.

The Office of the Chief Scientist has released a report, Benchmarking Australian Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM), which measures Australia's performance in key areas of science and innovation. It compares us against 11 western European nations, the United States, Britain and Canada, and key Asian neighbours. 

image: http://www.freedigitalphotos.net