Whether you’ve planned a trip or you’re making a pit stop on a long drive, a new city has a lot to offer. Between museums, city landmarks and national parks, each U.S. state has its own culture and history tourists can learn from.

That’s why MONEY worked with TripAdvisor to identify the most popular tourist activity in every state. Their data revealed that while landmarks and museums remains most popular attraction for newcomers, tours and trips that reveal something about a particular region’s culture—whether it be a living history museum or a brewery bus tour—often outdraw the cultural landmarks.

Author and college lecturer Diane Mulcahy stood on the stage of the Whitman Theater at Virginia Western Community College earlier this month and delivered some harsh thoughts about the current economy.

Hiring in new jobs has slowed, she said. Pensions are becoming a thing of the past. The days of having just one job with benefits and a two-week vacation package until retirement are nearly over.

Houston risks being shut out of America’s future innovation economy if it can’t attract more growth venture capital.

That’s the warning coming out of a report by Rice University’s Baker Institute.

It says that venture capital in Houston went down by at least 13 percent from 2006 to 2016, while it went up nationwide.

Ed Egan, director of the school’s McNair Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation, co-authored the analysis.

He joins us for the Bauer Business Focus.

Image: Florian Martin - Ed Egan directs the McNair Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation at Rice University

I hate meetings. They sit subconsciously in my brain, taking up space. I prepare for them in my notebooks. I travel to them, and then back again, in the middle of my work days. And what do most meetings usually result in? You guessed it — more meetings.

When I worked as Director of Leadership Development at Walmart, my days were full of meetings. Everybody’s were! And when I quit two years ago to strike out on my own as an author and keynote speaker, I thought my days full of meetings were behind me.

After nine years of building a robust cloud services business with thousands of customers, Geeman Yip was ready to raise venture capital. But when the BitTitan founder began knocking on doors in Seattle, options were few and far between.

“No investors in this area were going to write us a $15 million check,” Yip said.

BitTitan ultimately landed cash in 2016 from a San Diego-based growth equity firm. The Bellevue-based company plans to raise another round in the next few years.

What are the chances Yip looks for that in Seattle?

Image: Image via the Greater Seattle Technology Ecosystem report.

There's a lot we still don't know about black holes, but these light-gobbling behemoths would be even more mysterious if Stephen Hawking hadn't plumbed their inky depths.

For starters, the famed cosmologist, who died yesterday (March 14) at the age of 76, helped give more solid mathematical backing to the concept of black holes, the existence of which was predicted by Albert Einstein's 1915 theory of general relativity.

Image: An artist’s illustration of a supermassive black hole ever discovered. Credit: Robin Dienel, courtesy of the Carnegie Institution for Science

Any ad executive will tell you that sex sells. But why? Do sexy images stimulate our biological urges, somehow motivating us to buy products? Or do marketers merely exploit and perpetuate our cultural obsession with sexual imagery? Do people want the beauty, wealth and power celebrities have, and use the products they endorse in the hope of achieving these same qualities?

I have recently finished reading what may be the most important book of the decade on the contemporary economy. It is not Thomas Piketty’s controversial “Capital in the Twenty-First Century” or Robert Gordon’s magisterial “Rise and Fall of American Growth.” It is Berkeley economist Enrico Moretti’s short, lucid, nontechnical volume, “The New Geography of Jobs,” published in 2012.

Venture capitalists spend their time finding, investing in and supporting high-growth and often high-risk companies. As the Harvard Business Review put it, "venture capitalists get paid well to lose money."

But how does one become one of these powerful investors?

According to a recent report from Crunchbase, the secret may lie in where you go to school. Crunchbase analyzed data from over 4,500 investors and found that 12 schools produced over 42 percent of all venture capitalists.

In the last year, Birmingham has been abuzz around startups. Between the sale of Shipt, the Velocity Accelerator’s success, and Alabama Launchpad’s ongoing support of startups, there’s a lot to talk about. According to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, high-growth startups account for over 70 percent of net new job growth.

However, with only half as many startups per capita as Chattanooga and Atlanta, and a third as many as Nashville, Birmingham is challenged. While our overall economy is strong, when compared to peer cities, Birmingham’s technology-based ecosystem could and should be much stronger.

Image: Bob Crutchfield is the executive director of Innovate Birmingham. CHRISTINE PRICHARD

Darryl Nowak of New Jersey has been a marine construction consultant for over 33 years.

On Tuesday, Nowak licensed from the U.S. Navy a new tool for measuring the fatigue of metal structures.

Invented by the Naval Air Warfare Center's Aircraft Division (NAWCAD) at Patuxent River, Maryland, the patented technology will allow his customers to gauge the growth of invisible micro-cracks, which slowly grow to cripple metal structures.

Image: IMAGE: ANGELEEN RIVERA PERFORMS MAINTENANCE ON THE FUSELAGE OF AN F/A-18F SUPER HORNET IN THE HANGAR BAY OF THE AIRCRAFT CARRIER USS THEODORE ROOSEVELT. - CREDIT: ALEX PERLMAN/NAVY

As we celebrate more women becoming medtech leaders and paving the way for innovation, it’s important to remember the many accomplishments women have already made when it comes to the advancement of health and medicine.

X-rays on the battlefield, the American Red Cross, leprosy treatment and more — these advances happened because of women. As we mark Women’s History Month this March, here are eight women who have made their mark on health and medicine.

Image: https://www.medicaldesignandoutsourcing.com

Cryptocurrency fundraising is off to a record-breaking start this year, according to new data from the crypto watcher Autonomous Next.

But the rest of 2018 could see the market for initial coin offerings fizzle out, according to numerous cryptocurrency experts who spoke with Business Insider on Tuesday at "Battle of the Cryptos," an industry conference in New York.

Autonomous NEXT Autonomous Next found that $2.6 billion was raised via ICOs in January and February.

Image: http://www.businessinsider.com

Authorities in Biscay in Spain's Basque Country will allow its citizens to invest in state handpicked start-ups, the first local government to do so on the planet.

If you’re thinking of setting up a business in the Basque Country or looking for an alternative way to invest, this brand-new take on crowdfunding may be of interest to you.  

From March 15th 2018, the government of Biscay (Vizcaya in Spanish or Bizkaia in Basque) is calling on any business-savvy members of the public to invest in Basque start-ups they’ve cherry-picked for their potential for success. 

Many of today's well-known entrepreneurs, like Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg and other tech visionaries, share one thing in common: no college degree. That should be of no surprise, because there are now more independent business owners without a four-year degree than those with a bachelor’s degree or higher, according to a survey conducted by CNBC and SurveyMonkey.

The underpinning of the American dream is upward mobility. It happens through a combination of education, grit and a dose of luck. But education is the operative: the defining feature of access to a good life both personally and professionally.

The business world might appear buttoned-down from the outside - but in reality, it's a lot more interesting than you might realize. Many entrepreneurs are known for being colorful characters, both at work and in their personal lives. After all, following rules and staying inside the lines doesn't often make for business success! From winning seed money in a poker game to attempting to clone dinosaurs, here are eight unexpected things that entrepreneurs have done.

Imagine a person who had been highly successful at her job, working her way up the corporate ladder. One day, this person decides it's time to start her own business.

From the beginning, she had extremely high standards for herself and the business. She had to do all the work, even if it meant working 18 hours a day. Her self-confidence became tied to her accomplishments as an entrepreneur, and she obsessed over every little mistake.

In the modern age, we're arguably more obsessed with wealth than ever before. This probably has much to do with the fact that it's becoming increasingly difficult to save in the current climate. After all, inflation in the UK continues to grow at a faster rate than earnings, and this is creating a preoccupation with financial wealth that would probably not exist in a more stable and positive economic climate. So, not only are people determined to cultivate their own wealth in the near-term, but they’re also increasingly interested in how the world’s richest business-owners and individuals made their own fortunes.

The dispute is already underway. In August, the Trump administration initiated a sweeping investigation into Chinese trade practices, including whether Chinese firms are investing in U.S. companies to steal their technology and whether they are forcing joint ventures, pressuring American companies that invest in China to transfer technology to a Chinese partner, or hacking U.S. companies’ software.