LONDON, Nov 13 (Reuters) - Billionaire Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates is to invest $50 million in the Dementia Discovery Fund, a venture capital fund that brings together industry and government to seek treatments for the brain-wasting disease.

The investment - a personal one and not part of Gates’ philanthropic Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation - will be followed by another $50 million in start-up ventures working in Alzheimer’s research, Gates said.

With rapidly rising numbers of people suffering from Alzheimer’s and other forms of dementia, the disease is taking a growing emotional and financial toll as people live longer, Gates told Reuters in an interview.

From independent films to entire start-ups, crowdfunding has backed countless projects across the world. In 2015, projects around the world raised a total of $34 billion via crowfunding platforms, and this trend is only projected to grow. But what makes a successful crowdfunding campaign? What grabs attention and lures investors to open their wallets?

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Too many customers have long felt distanced from many successful brands, seeing them as closed and mysterious environments, focused only on profits and killing competitors. They may not have noticed the wave of “open businesses,” spawned by the Internet and social media. These are responding to the demands of this new world for collaboration, trust, and transparency.

In a thought-provoking book by David Cushman with Jamie Burke, “The 10 Principles of Open Business,” the authors contend that many recent success stories in business, including Apple and Whole Foods, were built on at least one open business principle. In fact, according to McKinsey, open businesses are 50 percent more likely to outperform their rivals today and grow sustainable profits.

Investing in America’s digital future is no longer optional. It is an economic imperative. 5G, AI and IoT are more than just letters and numbers – they will fundamentally change our modern experience. Our world will be connected, automated and intuitive.

I witnessed industry leaders from IBM, Visa, Cisco, Honda convene last week in the nation’s capital for the Bloomberg Next conference. The discussion proved that these companies understand and are anticipating what’s next. There are also select policy makers who “get it.” Chairman John Thune (R-South Dakota) and Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii) on the Commerce Committee are drafting legislation that will support the proliferation of wireless networks that will be crucial to supporting future technology.

Technology blogs are all of the buzz lately on the internet. After all, without technology, there would be no internet. Not only are technology blogs talking about computers and the internet, they are also heavily focused on the world of online business and how social media continues to change the way we connect with people around the world.

Some of the most popular technology and news media sites on the internet today generate a lot of traffic and money in the process. Sites like Technorati, Mashable, and TechCrunch have completely changed the way information is created and shared with the rest of the world.

Once your patent has been awarded you may still need additional capital to turn that patent into a business. Fortunately it is not as difficult to find investors as you may think. Equity crowdfunding is on the path to surpass venture capital as the preferred way for start-ups and small businesses to raise capital.

In a nutshell, equity crowdfunding is the sale of equity (or debt) in your business directly to investors using an online platform instead of a stock brokerage firm.  It is also less expensive than hiring one. Although direct to investor funding over the internet has been around since the late 1990s, it came of age with the JOBS Act in 2012.

United Therapeutics is set to take a big step forward in its plans to pursue advances in the field of organ transplantation thanks to a new partnership with the University of Maryland. The company has announced a $24 million research partnership that will help the school establish a center specializing in cardiac xenotransplantation research, the first of its kind in the US.

You may find yourself sipping some surprising beverages in 2018, if Whole Foods’ predictions for the hottest food trends next year come true. Floral influences, such as elderflower and lavender, will increasingly come to teas and sodas, while a growing number of people will incorporate wellness powders — and even ground-up mushrooms — into smoothies and other drinks, according to the grocery chain. In the solid food world, creative veggie options will be the highlight. Here are five of Whole Foods’ predicted food trends for 2018:

It is hard for most us to imagine what life in the shadow of the Berlin Wall was like for citizens of Soviet-controlled East Berlin and NATO-aligned West Berlin. It divided not just a city, but families, communities, and, indeed, a whole nation. Although the wall completely encircled the democratic and free city of West Berlin, for the unlucky citizens of East Berlin it was a prison – complete with guard towers, anti-vehicle trenches and fakir beds lining its notorious “death strip.”

The Berlin Wall’s dismantling, both symbolically and physically, began on November 9, 1989 as cheering crowds from the east and west hammered at its face with whatever implements they could find, a moment that heralded the eventual reunification of Germany a year later. Pieces of the wall can be found the world over, but in the US, the largest collection is held by the Newseum, a museum in Washington D.C. dedicated to promoting free expression the world over.

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3M is an iconic innovative company. Although mostly known for “sticky and scratchy things” (post-its and sandpaper), 3M have over 55,000 products, releasing 25 new products per week and had over 3700 global patents granted in 2016. Over 90,000 employees, 200 manufacturing plants and 86 labs are all focused on progressing 3M’s innovation agenda, but how do 3M maintain and sustain this engine of innovation?

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Planet, the American satellite company, is now snapping a picture of every part of earth’s landmass every single day. Analyzing the imagery over time promises to unlock critical information about the economy and the environment for Planet’s customers, which range from investors to activists. It’s also a milestone in humanity’s ongoing efforts to understand the planet it calls home.

Image: Planet’s founding team in a Cupertino garage. (Planet)

Partners HealthCare System has raised has raised $171 million for a second innovation fund targeting seed stage investments in life science startups, according to a news release.  The Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Massachusetts General Hospital each committed $50 million for the fund.

Several pharma companies have backed Partners Innovation Fund II such as Astellas Pharma, Eli Lilly, Shang Pharma Corp., and Simcere Pharmaceutical Group. The fund will invest in 15-20 companies, said Roger Kitterman, Vice President of Partners Innovation, in an email.

It's been a wild year for tech in San Francisco.

Some of the city's tech stalwarts, like Twitter and Uber, have been rocked by controversy and competition, while buzzy startups like Jawbone, Luxe and Juicero shut down their services. 

Yet even amidst the turmoil, tech continues to reach new heights, with Salesforce tower now dominating the San Francisco skyline. 

The U.K.'s biggest online grocer hit a milestone this year: Ocado Group Plc put together an order of 50 items, including produce, meat and dairy, in five minutes. Fulfilling a similar order at one of the company’s older facilities takes an average of about two hours. The secret: a fleet of 1,000 robots that scurry about a warehouse snatching up products and delivering them to human packers. 

The breakthrough and ones like it could help propel the grocery business into the modern era. The industry wants to make buying food online as simple and commonplace as purchasing clothes or consumer electronics. But fulfilling fresh food orders quickly, reliably and profitably is devilishly hard. Even Amazon.com Inc., which recently acquired Whole Foods Market, hasn’t cracked the code and recently halted its Amazon Fresh service in several U.S. states. 

Technological disruption is shattering all those truisms we've held on to for so long: Social media has cast new meaning on the phrase, “A stranger is just a friend you’ve never met.”

Related: How Crowdsourcing Can Help You With Ideas, Content and Labor

The explosion in cryptocurrencies has made expressions like “Another day, another dollar” somewhat antiquated.

And if you've been holding any Bitcoin of late, the last few weeks have been a deluge of cyber wealth.

For 17 years, Cyndie Spiegel worked for some of fashion’s biggest brands, including Coach and Narciso Rodriguez. She also worked to help mold the minds of young fashion students as an adjunct professor at Parsons School of Design and her alma mater, Fashion Institute of Technology. But one day she realized that as much as she loved the world of fashion, it wasn’t the work that she was most excited about.

Reid Hoffman likes to say, “With great power comes great responsibility.” Usually, he’s referring to tech companies like the ones he has founded (LinkedIn), helped lead (PayPal), or advised (Microsoft) during his storied career. But he could also be talking about his own clout in the business world and his efforts to finance initiatives that aim to improve the world through civic action, education, and technology.

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Having a side hustle can be a great way to pursue a passion and make some extra money, but if you’re already short on time it can feel like an overwhelming proposition. Luckily it doesn’t take a lot of time to launch and run a side business. In fact, Chris Guillebeau, author of Side Hustle: From Idea to Income in 27 Days, says it takes less than a month to get going.

At age 41, I am where I want to be in my career: running my own sales-training business, with enough clients lined up that I can probably live comfortably for the next several years. But I’m in trouble. Every Gen Xer is.

Younger generations are quickly taking over the workforce. They’re also becoming the decision makers and the most hotly pursued consumers. And they grew up with their own set of expectations, their own view of the world.

With entrance fees potentially doubling to some of the most popular national parks soon, you may want to take advantage of this offer.

All parks in the National Park system will be free to visitors this weekend in honor of Veterans Day — the last time the National Park Service will offer this kind of deal this year.

That means any parks with an entrance fee will not charge visitors on Nov. 11 and Nov. 12. While not all national parks incur a cost, many of the most popular sites, including Yellowstone, the Grand Canyon and Yosemite, among others, do. Here is a list of all the locations that will be free of charge this weekend.

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