Space elevators to ferry passengers and cargo to and from orbit could be built using existing materials, if the technology takes inspiration from biology to fix itself when needed, a new study finds.

In theory, a space elevator consists of a cable or bundle of cables that extend thousands of miles to a counterweight in space. The rotation of the Earth would keep the cable taut, and climber vehicles would zip up and down the cable at the speed of a train. 

Image: An artist's illustration of a massive space elevator transportation system. Future versions of the technology could one day fix themselves. Credit: Japan Space Elevator Association

A room full of congressional staff, industry and academic reps and policy experts joined Eagle Forum Education & Legal Defense Fund Oct. 18 to learn about technology transfer.

The event, titled “Benefiting from Federal Research Funding: Technology Transfer, the Bayh-Dole Act, Patent Rights, and Society,” discussed how the bipartisan Bayh-Dole Act of 1980 has opened up commercialization of inventions from federal funded basic research, thanks to the law’s letting universities own the patents to their inventions. 

Image: Joe Allen (at podium) with Jim Edwards (seated) looking on. Allen, featured columnist on IPWatchdog, was Senator Bayh’s Staffer assigned to work Bayh-Dole and help usher it across the finish line in 1980. - https://www.ipwatchdog.com

With their eyes trained on a gilded frame containing a smeared, half-formed image of a distinguished gentleman, a small group of potential bidders gathered Friday night over cocktails at Christie’s New York and heard the pitch: here was the first portrait generated by an algorithm to come up for auction. The portrait, produced by artificial intelligence, hung on the wall opposite an Andy Warhol print and just to the right of a bronze work by Roy Lichtenstein.

Image: “Edmond de Belamy, from La Famille de Belamy,” a print on canvas produced by the French collective Obvious, working with artificial intelligence, will be auctioned Thursday at Christie’s.CreditCreditChristie's

The federal funding agency for research is committing $558 million this year for discovery research, an additional $70 million compared to last year.

Minister of Science and Sport Kirsty Duncan was at the University of Windsor for the announcement. The funding is from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC).

Image: Minister of Science and Sport Kirsty Duncan visited the science fair at the University of Windsor Tuesday before announcing the discovery grant funding for 2018. (Katerina Georgieva/CBC)

Kendall Square in Cambridge, Massachusetts, represents a near-perfect marriage of technology, science, and capitalism. Butting right up against MIT and down the street from Harvard, the square boasts gleaming high-rises built by Pfizer, Biogen, and Akamai, offices with outposts for Google, Facebook, and Twitter, and thriving incubators and accelerators including Cogo Labs and MIT’s the Engine. In 2009, the Boston Consulting Group called it “the most innovative square mile on earth.”

Image: The first phase of a redevelopment plan around a new T station in Somerville. “I saw it happen once with Kendall Square, and I’ll see it again in Union Square,” says real estate agent David Lilley. (Rendering by US2)

After almost two years, Switzerland’s first dedicated science crowdfunding platform has seen nearly 80% of projects meet their targets. But for its organisers and participants, success isn’t just measured in Swiss francs.

In January 2017, the Science Boosterexternal link channel was launched on the online crowdfunding platform, wemakeitexternal link. Since then, the channel has hosted 40 science crowdfunding projects, which have collectively raised CHF500,000 ($503,000). Of the 40 projects, 31 met their funding goals – a success rate of 78%.

Image: Prospective science crowdfunders put their heads together during a workshop at the Crowdfunding Science Festival in Zurich on October 12. (CC-BY 4.0 Martin Boyer)

"To be, or not to be" a startup accelerator alumni. This is a question that often co-founders end up discussing, during the early days of the startup journey. There are some co-founders who believe that the founding team is too good to be baby sited by mentors at an accelerator program. Particularly founders who themselves have been senior executives at larger corporations, and/or have run a successful lifestyle business might find it particularly challenging to go back to school.

Trick-or-treating, pumpkin carving and dressing up in costumes are activities nearly all Americans think of when the Halloween season rolls around, but the celebration had a different start. 

Halloween was originally a Celtic festival called Samhain, which started more than 2,000 years ago in what is now Ireland, the United Kingdom and northern France. The festival, which was held Nov. 1, was a way to mark the new year and the end of summer and the harvest. The Celts believed that on Oct. 31, the boundary between the living and the dead was the thinnest and ghosts could return to earth. 

The debate about superstar firms and superstar effects has been intensifying, partly in response to the rapid growth of global US tech companies. However, scratch the surface and the superstar phenomenon may not be quite what it seems. Wider dynamics may be at play.

How has technology changed which deals venture capitalists (VCs) fund and how they fund them?

Venture capitalists essentially invest in startup ‘experiments’, and subsequently provide more funding to the experiments that work, so that they can run more experiments. This leads to many failures (roughly 55% of startups) and a few successes (6% return > 5x the total amount invested).  So an innovation that changes the cost of experiments changes the landscape for venture funding.

Workplace automation is set to surge over the next few years, with developments in AI, robotics and machine learning transforming how we get things done in the professional world. While this represents a huge opportunity for economic growth – with PwC reporting that 7.2 million new jobs could be created by automation in the UK alone – many employers are also fearing that some jobs are at risk of being replaced by bots that are more skilled, and don’t tire as easily as humans.

Image: http://hrnews.co.uk/

Merriam-Webster shared its website's new "Time Traveler" feature on Thursday, and it's honestly super fun.

The Time Traveler section of the site allows users to see which words first appeared in print the year they were born. 

As I was growing up, it was almost an unwritten rule that in order to attain professional success, one should focus on a niche and become an expert. After all, that made a lot of sense. By gaining experience and knowledge in the same field, I would be able to take on additional responsibility and assume more senior roles, right? Following this rule of thumb, I majored in Economics as an undergraduate student, with the goal of pursuing a career in finance. But after working for a couple of years as an investment banking analyst after graduating from college, my well-laid out plans went out the window. I stopped thinking about the best finance jobs and instead, started doing what felt more authentic to me.

“While working remotely and employee volunteer programs are both on the rise, there are still many companies and leaders that haven’t realized the value of letting your employees commute less and travel more, especially for social good,” says Caroline Pinal, the cofounder of Giveback Homes. The social good real estate company has built hundreds of homes for people in need across the U.S., in Puerto Rico, Nicaragua and Mexico.

To have any chance of limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius–the threshold if the world wants to avoid the worst impacts of climate change–a recent report says that we’re going to need not just to cut emissions, but capture CO2 that’s already in the atmosphere. Some of that technology already exists, like machines that suck carbon dioxide directly out of the air.

Image: Elevate/Unsplash

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved a new antiviral influenza treatment.

The agency on Wednesday approved Genentech’s drug Xofluza, which can be taken via a single oral dose to help patients recover more quickly from the flu. It’s the “first new antiviral flu treatment with a novel mechanism of action approved by the FDA in nearly 20 years,” FDA Commissioner Dr. Scott Gottlieb said in a statement.

What every aspiring entrepreneurial business owner craves is a way to start or grow a business without having any money. People may see entrepreneurs like Mark Zuckerberg or Jeff Bezos and believe the way to become successful is to raise money from investors. Both of their companies were able to raise significant funding before they were even profitable. But most entrepreneurs won't be able to raise that type of money to start a business.

In San Jose, California–recently ranked as the least affordable place in the country to buy a home, where a typical rental goes for $3441, around 50% more than it did six years ago–the local school district now wants to turn some schools into hundreds of housing units for teachers.

“Right now, we’re losing about one in seven classroom teachers every school year, and the No. 1 cited reason for leaving the district is the cost of living,” says Stephen McMahon, deputy superintendent for the San Jose Unified School District.

Italian company Arper had a great idea: Create a line of elegant cubicles to divide the hell that is the open office. They look really cool–but wait, haven’t we seen this before?

Ah, yes. It seems Arper got a plutonium-powered Fiat 600 time machine and went back to the past for inspiration–a reedition of the cubicles that were used in the ’60s to end with the open plan offices and bullpens of the ’50s, demonstrating once again that we live in a cycle of creation and destruction. We will never learn.

There’s an old story about a tourist who asks a New Yorker how to get to the storied concert venue Carnegie Hall and is told, “Practice, practice, practice.”  Obviously, this is good advice if you want to become a world-class performer — but it’s also good advice if you want to become a top-notch leader.

Over the past year we have been writing the HBR Leader’s Handbook — a primer for aspiring leaders who want to take their careers to the next level.