The release of the USDA’s 2014 Technology Transfer Report highlights the groundbreaking discoveries made by USDA researchers, who continue to push the envelope and come up with new and exciting innovations. The scientific advancements in knowledge and the creation of new technologies directly impact Americans in that they create safer environments and provide efficient solutions for a wide range of issues. Here are just four of the transformative innovations that can be found in the USDA Tech Transfer Report:

In recent years, the applications for 3D printing in healthcare have been expanding into the limitless. Once reserved primarily for prototyping, the technology has quickly proliferated in the life sciences – with applications that range from personalized surgical implants, scaffolding and tissue generation.

The 3D printing market in healthcare will reach $4 billion by 2018, according to a report from British market research firm Visiongain. The most well-known use of 3D printing may be Organovo, the publicly traded San Diego company that likens cells to ink in a 3D printing process that builds live human tissue.

Image: http://medcitynews.com

Production in the Innovation Economy emerges from several years of interdisciplinary research at MIT on the links between manufacturing and innovation in the United States and the world economy. Authors from political science, economics, business, employment and operations research, aeronautics and astronautics, and nuclear engineering come together to explore the extent to which manufacturing is key to an innovative and vibrant economy.

Image: https://mitpress.mit.edu

While federal, state and local policies aim to support entrepreneurs through grants and tax breaks that make capital more easily attainable, the latest Entrepreneurship Policy Digest released by the Kauffman Foundation, America's leading entrepreneurship think-tank, says entrepreneurs most often turn to two forms of private external financing: debt and equity.

The Policy Digest says debt is the most common source of financing for new businesses, with about 40% of a business’ initial startup capital coming from bank-financed debt. Equity is a less common form of initial funding, according to the Digest, with less than 3% of new firms funded by angel investors and less than 1% funded by venture capitalists.

Image: http://www.finfacts.ie

A quarter century after Roger & Me became the calling-card documentary of the “Rust Belt” era and region, a new dialogue took center stage earlier this month in Columbus, Ohio.

Nearly 300 executives from every corner of America’s Factory Belt showed up to take part in a discussion of the ongoing economic transformation of the Greater Midwest Region of the country.

Image: http://www.trustbelt.com

A record 446 technology and life sciences startups were founded in San Diego in 2014, according to the latest innovation report released by Connect, the nonprofit group that supports regional innovation and entrepreneurship.

The number was slightly higher than the 426 companies that Connect counted in 2013, and represents a new high in the number of new San Diego startups since Connect began tracking the formation of new companies 10 years ago. It is one of many signs of a continuing expansion in San Diego’s innovation sector, Connect CEO Greg McKee said during a press briefing yesterday.

Aspiring entrepreneurs who rely only on traditional learning vehicles (teachers, classrooms, and risk-free practice) are doomed to failure in founding a startup today. Either they are never really ready to start, study an opportunity until it has passed, or fail with tools and techniques from a bygone business era. The Internet and the current information wave have changed everything.

Running your own business has its perks — more control, no boss, and choice of working hours.

In the UK and the US, entrepreneurs are associated with startups. But in some countries, becoming self-employed is a necessity rather than a dream. You have to make your own opportunities when there are not many jobs available.

HHS announces and celebrates innovation award winners across the department Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia M. Burwell today announced the seven winners of the 2015 HHS Innovates Awards. This annual award program, in its eighth round, recognizes creative solutions developed by HHS employees in response to some of the nation’s most challenging problems in health, health care and government. Winners this year reflected a number of collaborative innovation projects representing seven different operating divisions (winners listed below).

The Bureau of Labor Statistics recently released the results of the 2014 American Time Use Survey, an annual survey of around 11,000 Americans who are asked to give a detailed description of what they did on a particular day. Using that data, the BLS can estimate how much time people spent on various activities on average.

The averages are among all survey respondents, regardless of whether or not they participated in a given activity on their survey day. So, for example, people who are unemployed would have been considered to have participated in "work and work-related activities" for zero hours, and are incorporated into the average as such.

Image: http://www.businessinsider.com

You might have noticed that the Benari tagline starts with “Pay Attention”. For many this means focusing on the task at hand to the exclusion of all else, wearing blinders to ensure that nothing intrudes.

It means the exact opposite for those in positions of leadership, those charged with ensuring their enterprise keeps moving forward successfully. For them, paying attention means having a 360 degree view, observing as widely as possible. Yet they too often find themselves focused narrowly, oblivious to good ideas and opinions of others surrounding them.

Image: http://www.benariltd.com

The Internet of Things—sensors and actuators connected by networks to computing systems—has received enormous attention over the past five years. A new McKinsey Global Institute report, The Internet of Things: Mapping the value beyond the hype, attempts to determine exactly how IoT technology can create real economic value. Our central finding is that the hype may actually understate the full potential—but that capturing it will require an understanding of where real value can be created and a successful effort to address a set of systems issues, including interoperability.

Image: http://www.mckinsey.com

June 3rd, 2015 by Rebecca Norman

I recently had the privilege of interviewing Dr. Lenka Fedorkova, assistant manager of the National Institutes of Health Small Business Innovation Research and Small Business Technology Transfer programs. Through NIH’s Office of Extramural Programs, Dr. Fedorkova provides guidance and access to critical information for U.S. small businesses seeking NIH funding, among other responsibilities. Learn more about her role and the NIH SBIR/STTR programs below.

Question: What is your current role within the National Institutes of Health SBIR and STTR programs, and how do you typically work with program awardees?

Dr. Fedorkova: At the NIH, the administration for the SBIR and STTR programs is centralized within the Office of Extramural Programs, which is part of the Extramural Research Office within the Office of the NIH Director. Our office fulfills the role of the coordinator of the programs across the 24 institutes and centers (ICs) that have the funding authority and make the actual awards.

Sometimes we hear that technology companies have lost their ambition. Too many great minds are pouring their energy into the next app for the affluent, the argument goes. Where is the daring?

Right here. This year, when the editors of MIT Technology Review began our annual search for the smartest companies, we did not have trouble finding big ideas.

Image: http://www.technologyreview.com

The global population is aging as life expectancy increases. That means not only is demand for healthcare rising, but the very nature of that care is changing. In this interview, the CEO of Swiss pharmaceutical company Novartis, Joseph Jimenez, discusses with McKinsey’s Rik Kirkland issues including the emerging need for regenerative medicine, how digitization is driving innovation, and why Novartis is shifting to an outcomes-based approach for patient treatments. An extended and edited transcript of Jimenez’s remarks follows.

Image: http://www.mckinsey.com

An advanced manufacturing approach for lithium-ion batteries, developed by researchers at MIT and at a spinoff company called 24M, promises to significantly slash the cost of the most widely used type of rechargeable batteries while also improving their performance and making them easier to recycle.

“We’ve reinvented the process,” says Yet-Ming Chiang, the Kyocera Professor of Ceramics at MIT and a co-founder of 24M (and previously a co-founder of battery company A123). The existing process for manufacturing lithium-ion batteries, he says, has hardly changed in the two decades since the technology was invented, and is inefficient, with more steps and components than are really needed.

Tech start-up valuations are looking frothy. Pre-IPO high flyers such as Uber, Airbnb and Snapchat are seeing their valuations soar to the skies to as much as $50 billion, $24 billion and $16 billion, respectively. Meanwhile, smaller and lesser-known start-ups with names like Zomato (a restaurant finder app), Kabam (which develops multi-player social games) and SimpliVity (purveyor of IT infrastructure platform OmniCube) are reaching the once rarefied level of $1 billion as well.

For many sea creatures, regrowing a lost limb is routine. But when a young jellyfish loses a tentacle or two to the jaws of a sea turtle, for example, it rearranges its remaining limbs to ensure it can still eat and swim properly, according to a new study published June 15 in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The discovery should excite marine enthusiasts and roboteers alike, the authors say, because the jellyfish’s strategy for self-repair may teach investigators how to build robots that can heal themselves. “It’s another example of nature having solved a problem that we engineers have been trying to figure out for a long time,” says John Dabiri, a biophysicist at Stanford University who had discussed the project with the study investigators but was not involved with the research.

Image: To restore their ability to survive in the ocean, the amputated jellyfish larvae simply rearranged their remaining arms instead of growing new ones. Courtesy of Michael Abrams/Ty Basinger

Blowback against the urban legend of the millennials has begun. We’re still seeing 10 stories a day about how they’re reviving city neighborhoods, but traditionalist pundits such as Joel Kotkin suggest that we have reached “peak urban millennial.” Millennials, he argues, will soon start getting married, having kids and moving to the suburbs just like they’re supposed to. So are millennials actually different?

Do you have a business-focused brain or an empathetic one?

In other words, do you typically work with a task-oriented focus, meaning you’re comfortable solving problems, focusing attention, making decisions, and controlling your actions? Or are you more relationship-oriented, meaning you’re comfortable connecting with others and making ethical decisions, and have a good handle on self-awareness?