The Australian economy continues to grind out growth, registering a modest expansion in economic activity in the first three months of 2017.

It took Australia’s run without experiencing a technical recession — loosely defined as two consecutive quarters of negative GDP growth — to 103 quarters, equaling the record, held by the Netherlands, for a developed nation that has not suffered an economic downturn.

Venture capital is the lifeblood of new business development. Venture capital investors provide the start-up funds that young businesses need in order to grow, hoping to identify tomorrow's leaders early in their histories and therefore maximize the long-term return on their investment. However, financing new businesses is risky, and so the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission imposes some limitations on ordinary investors participating in venture capital funds. Therefore, if you want to invest in venture capital, you'll need to consider the following:

Even the most diligent investors are often surprised by apparently solid business startups that fail, while others succeed, despite the odds. In my own experience as an investor, I have concluded that success is more about the people than the product. The best founders operate with a key set of internal principles that allow them to break through all but the toughest business obstacles.

When I create custom cartoons for clients, I always give them three or four jokes from which to choose. I used to play this little game with myself, predicting which joke they’d pick. But I’ve been proven wrong so many times that now I just wait and see what happens. That doesn’t mean I still don’t have favorites. And sometimes I’m hoping certain ideas don’t get picked because I’d like to keep them for myself.

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When it comes to your fitness levels—or the amount of work your heart, lungs, and limbs can perform—there’s no doubt that a good, hard sweat is great for you. Vigorous exercise like running, swimming or playing tennis leads to greater improvements than easy or moderate workouts, like brisk walking, ballroom dancing and slow bike-riding.

Recent weeks have brought controversy over electronic billboards in restaurants and shopping precincts that utilize advanced facial recognition techniques to not only provide personalized advertisements but also measure and record the consumer and their response, ostensibly to enable retailers to provide more targeted marketing and services.

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In the fall of 2014, in the midst of controversy about Facebook’s real-name policy and selling of user data, a new social media platform called Ello caught fire. Ello vowed to forever be free of advertising, and its company manifesto boldly concluded with a promise to would-be users that “You are not a product.” The timing couldn’t have been more perfect. The media dubbed Ello the “Anti-Facebook” and, at its peak, the social network was getting membership requests from more than 30,000 new users per hour.

Some startup concepts are easy to understand.

OrderUp wants to deliver food right to your door. Lyft will make sure you can call a ride to anywhere you need to go.

For Nick Hammond, he's dealing with startups that don't fit as easily into mainstream business and culture. As the associate vice president for innovation and economic development at the Institute for Marine and Environmental Technology, he's working with companies that want to turn algae into biofuel. Or companies that study molecular biology.

The FDA's Center for Devices and Radiological Health is ramping up medical app and device offerings with a recently announced digital health unit. The aim of this development is to centralize and coordinate digital health information so that there is consistency in applying policies. According to the associate director of digital health for the FDA, Bakul Patel, the primary responsibilities of those on the project will be to develop software and digital health tech to assist with premarket submissions or devices, utilize experts, and incorporate metrics that will aid review times and submissions.

Physicians, nurses, and others who work on the front lines of patient care are an important potential source for innovations that could improve patients’ health and reduce the cost of care. But turning clinicians into entrepreneurs is anything but easy. Given their day jobs — which at academic medical centers often include research, writing grant proposals, and tending to patients — they have little time. And they often lack much of the expertise needed to transform an idea into a viable product.

Jack O’Neill, who popularized the neoprene wetsuits that defied the cold, the calendar and the continents to create an endless summer for surfers around the world, died on Friday at his home in Santa Cruz, Calif. He was 94.

His death was announced by his company, O’Neill Inc., which he started in 1952 in a converted garage in that city. He coined and trademarked the name Surf Shop and transformed it into the most successful maker of surfing wetsuits. It still sells them through an O’Neill Surf Shop in Santa Cruz and globally under the O’Neill name.

Image: Jack O’Neill before windsurfing off Santa Cruz, Calif., in 1982. He revolutionized the surfing industry through the sale of wetsuits. Credit Dan Coyro/The Santa Cruz Sentinel, via Associated Press

Jeff Heepke knows where to plant corn on his 4,500-acre farm in Illinois because of artificial intelligence (AI). He uses a smartphone app called Climate Basic, which divides Heepke’s farmland (and, in fact, the entire continental U.S.) into plots that are 10 meters square. The app draws on local temperature and erosion records, expected precipitation, soil quality, and other agricultural data to determine how to maximize yields for each plot. If a rainy cold front is expected to pass by, Heepke knows which areas to avoid watering or irrigating that afternoon. As the U.S. Department of Agriculture noted, this use of artificial intelligence across the industry has produced the largest crops in the country’s history.

Occasionally, inventions that strike us as seemingly silly and unnecessary end up turning out to address a real need—such as Doggles, the goggle-style sunglasses for dogs. These canine shades do more than protect your pet from the sun's glare: They also keep out dust, debris and wind, block UV rays and assist in relieving ocular medical conditions, such as a rare autoimmune disorder that prevents dogs' eyes from producing tears.

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The brain has an amazing capacity for recognizing faces. It can identify a face in a few thousandths of a second, form a first impression of its owner and retain the memory for decades.

Central to these abilities is a longstanding puzzle: how the image of a face is encoded by the brain. Two Caltech biologists, Le Chang and Doris Y. Tsao, reported in Thursday’s issue of Cell that they have deciphered the code of how faces are recognized.

Image: https://www.nytimes.com

Are you paying your kid to work for your business? You’re not? You should.

No, I’m not saying you should put your four-year-old behind the receptionist desk to take calls. Or ask your middle-schooler to assist you in surgery. But if you have a teenager, you should strongly consider putting him or her to work. The benefits are enormous. Here are six.

IOWA CITY — As internationally esteemed research institutions, University of Iowa and Iowa State University pride themselves on investigating, discovering and innovating at a quickening clip — springboarding new technologies, medical advancements, industrial improvements and economic entrepreneurship.

But UI President Bruce Harreld and some administrative colleagues want to go further — possibly seeking legislative help to tear down barriers in state law limiting engagement with the private sector.

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Climate change is warming the Arctic more than twice as fast as anywhere else on the planet. One of the most serious consequences is sea level rise, which threatens nations from Bangladesh to the U.S. But exactly how does melting Arctic ice contribute to sea level rise? Scientific American asked Eric Rignot, professor of earth system science at the University of California, Irvine, and Andrea Dutton, assistant professor of geology at the University of Florida, how changes in this particular northern region are driving the oceans to dangerous heights.

Over the past several years, we've seen a rise in private companies valued at more than a billion dollars — the so-called "unicorns."

But when too many startups became unicorns, a new class of startups emerged: "decacorns," companies valued at over $10 billion.

Four out of 10 Americans regularly worry about not having enough money for the future. And one in three fear the U.S. will be involved in another world war–just as many report concern over global warming and climate change. And more Americans (25.9%) are afraid of public speaking than are afraid of heights, devastating natural disasters, police brutality, and even dying?