After collaborating on two books showcasing extinct and endangered birds, legendary cartoonist Ralph Steadman and filmmaker Ceri Levy have paired up again to create this eccentric, wildly imaginative collection of illustrations of other critically endangered animals.

A study of people who reduced the calories they consumed has found the strongest evidence yet that such restrictions can slow down human metabolism. The results raise hopes that a low-calorie lifestyle — or treatments that mimic the biological effects of restricted eating — could prolong health in old age and even extend life.

Past work in many short-lived animals, including worms, flies and mice, has shown that calorie restrictions reduce metabolism and extend lifespan. But experiments in longer-living humans and other primates are more difficult to conduct and have not yet drawn clear conclusions.

Jenny Lefcourt is general partner at Freestyle Capital, a venture capital firm that specializes in seed and early-stage investments. She knows what it takes to be an entrepreneur because she’s been there. Lefcourt co-founded  two companies — WeddingChannel.com and Bella Pictures — after dropping out of Stanford Business School. Meetings with investors to pitch the business and raise capital left her with a deeper understanding of the process, and she took that experience with her to Freestyle, which mentors the 12 companies it invests in each year. Its current portfolio includes Wag, the dog-sitting website, Digit, an automatic savings startup and Patreon, which lets fans become patrons of artists, musicians, writers and other creative people.

Work-life balance is something that we are all seeking, and sometimes it can feel like how you actually achieve it is one of the biggest mysteries the world has to offer.

There is no perfect formula to figure out how to allocate equal time to your career, your friends and family.

For the 35 entrepreneurs we spoke with, that isn't always the goal -- in fact, some readily admit it's impossible. That's okay.

Hanna, a finance director at an international home care retailer, works long hours. She’s usually in the office from 9am to 5pm, but at home, when her three children go to sleep, she’ll work another four hours, not closing her laptop until midnight. She sometimes also works on weekends. But even though she works 60 to 65 hours per week, she told us that she can “switch off” when she needs to, and that she still feels energetic every day. She hasn’t had to worry about her health.

Image: HAYON THAPALIYA FOR HBR - https://hbr.org

Hundreds of startup founders and CEOs, from companies including prominent Bay Area firms 23andMe, Airbnb, Dropbox, Stitch Fix and Lyft, have formed a new group pledging that diversity at VC firms will be an “important consideration” when deciding whether or not to take their money.

The launch of Founders for Change by more than 400 budding and established tech companies is a sign of just how top of mind diversity has become in an industry riven by the #MeToo movement and a series of allegations and admissions of sexual misconduct by workers, managers and venture capitalists.

Image: Adrian Cockcroft of BatteryVentures, right, coaches sisters, Jennifer John, 15, left, and Allison John, 13, center, as they work on the presentation for their app, Loc8Don8, in Menlo Park, Calif., on Friday, July 8, 2016. The pair will compete in the annual Technovation World Pitch Summit in San Francisco. (Photo by Gary Reyes/Bay Area News Group)

Let’s talk war chests.

Sequoia Capital is raising as much as $12 billion between its global growth fund and other venture capital and growth funds in the United States and China. The investment firm has set a $250 million minimum check size required for limited partners to participate in its global growth fund.

OKLAHOMA CITY - Thanks to Google, $250,000 will soon be in the hands of some of Oklahoma City's greatest economic innovators.

Through the 'Google Impact Challenge,' a panel of judges that included Sam Presti of the Thunder and Mayor-Elect David Holt selected four local non-profits who will receive $50,000 each to continue their work in the community.

This is only the second time Google has ever held a challenge of this sort. When News 4 asked "Why Oklahoma City?" they said "Why not?"

Image: http://kfor.com

The Great Pacific Garbage Patch (GPGP), a massive area of floating plastic debris that is more than twice the size of Texas, contains about 1.8 trillion pieces of plastic. This is between 4 and 16 times the mass of plastic that scientists previously estimated. 

What's worse is that the amount of plastic within this area is growing "exponentially," according to a comprehensive three-year-long study using 30 vessels and a high-tech reconnaissance aircraft. 

Image: Plastic samples collected during the expedition in 2015 - IMAGE: THE OCEAN CLEANUP FOUNDATION.

The $1.3 trillion fiscal 2018 funding package sent to President Trump early Friday includes big boosts for almost all of the major federal agencies, thanks to a broader two-year budget deal increasing spending caps that President Trump signed last month. 

Some of the biggest winners in the omnibus include the Commerce, Defense, Energy, Health and Human Services, Homeland Security and Transportation departments, which all had increases of more than 10 percent compared to fiscal 2017 enacted spending levels. The State Department was the only agency to see a decrease (when other international activities and overseas contingency operations funding are included), and the Environmental Protection Agency's budget is either flat or has a slight increase, depending which summary of the omnibus is used (a House Democratic summary shows an increase of $763 million or 9.5 percent over enacted fiscal 2017 levels while other congressional summaries show flat funding). 

Entrepreneurship often seems distinctly "American. After all, it encapsulates the American Dream of unlimited upward social mobility and the belief that as long as you have a good idea and good work ethic, you can start your own company and make plenty of money.

Then there's the whole thing about entrepreneurs as modern-day folk heroes: We tend to celebrate the billionaire college dropouts (Think: Mark Zuckerberg) who deviated from the norm, and the renegades (Elon Musk), who pushed for an idea that their contemporaries didn’t think would work.

The American Midwest has a long history of making stuff. During the 20th Century, it was the manufacturing center for the nation, and indeed much of the world. It’s still where a surpassing majority of agricultural commodities are grown and processed. But is it also a major producer of technology startups? Maybe not as much as the coasts, but the Midwest’s bustling metropoli and vast expanses of rural land prove to be fertile ground for quite a bit of startup activity.

Image: https://news.crunchbase.com

Joining a pitch competition or innovation award can translate into a lot of benefits for early-stage startups. For example: Increased visibility, valuable feedback, media exposure, prize money/value, and good networking opportunities. Of course, bringing home the trophy is a bonus. If your startup is looking for a stage to kickstart its debut, here are 10 startup competitions in Europe worth checking out.

Image: http://www.eu-startups.com

Whether we praise its genius or dispute its validity, it’s hard to deny the influence of Clayton Christensen’s theory of disruptive innovation. In explaining the kinds of technological breakthroughs that enable upstarts to challenge industry incumbents, the Harvard Business School professor’s theory changed the way many organizations develop new products and services.

Image: Photograph courtesy of IMD

Most entrepreneurs are so convinced that they are the disruptive element, they fail to anticipate that unknown facts or events can and will occur to disrupt their own well-laid plans. While it’s true that there is no way of know specifically what might happen, you need to anticipate the worst, and actually build a Plan B. People who haven’t thought about a Plan B often don’t survive the shock.

Image: https://blog.startupprofessionals.com

Crowdfunding is an intriguing opportunity for individual investors. If you are interested in this type of investment, it is helpful to research the various platforms in order to make a good choice. For the most part, you should be considering the same criteria that you would for any investment opportunity, including costs, returns and potential risks.

Image: https://e27.co

Australians in creative industries have grown from 3.7% of the workforce in 1986 to 5.5% in the latest census.

Creative services, a subset of the creative economy that includes software and digital content (including web design and games) and social media management and marketing, are growing as much as three times the rate of the overall workforce.

Image: http://theconversation.com

On a recent day at a hospital in western Beijing, a cancer radiologist named Chongchong Wu loaded a suspicious-looking lung scan into a computer program resembling Photoshop. A neural network trained on thousands of example scans highlighted nodules in red squares, which she examined carefully. She corrected two false positives where the network mistakenly identified blood vessels as potential malignancies. But she also found a nodule that she’d previously overlooked, perhaps indicating an early sign of disease.

Image: COURTESY OF PEREDOC

A cold, grey January day was offset by a hall full of bright lights and energetic minds, all committed to nurturing the sparks of innovation. The afternoon forum began with a welcome address by Stephen Phillips of InvestHK, who enthusiastically kicked off a “week of insightful, thought-provoking forums…showcasing an array of industries where Hong Kong is leading the way”.

Image: http://www.scmp.com

The world's largest collection of ocean garbage is growing.

The Great Pacific Garbage Patch, a collection of plastic, floating trash located halfway between Hawaii and California, has grown to more than 600,000 square miles, a study published Thursday finds. That's twice the size of Texas.