The Health and Human Services Department has tapped a group of corporations and entrepreneurs to help build new systems required by the Affordable Care Act.

HHS announced the first round of "external innovation fellows" Tuesday. The fellows, a mix of businesses and individuals, will help HHS build computer systems and other infrastructure, including systems to help implement President Obama's healthcare reform law.

Text messaging and text messaging revenue has fallen for the first time in the U.S., according to mobile analyst Chetan Sharma's latest report. He tells us, "the dip in volume coincided with revenue dip as well which didn't happen previously. Typically, when this happens, it is an indication that the peak might have been reached and the curves will decline from here on out."

A small study of device makers has found that most companies are dissatisfied with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s 510(k) process.

Out of 128 survey respondents who answered a question about their experiences with the FDA’s 510(k) pathway, 64 percent said they were either “extremely dissatisfied” or “somewhat dissatisfied.” The survey was commissioned by the MedTech Resource Alliance based in Minnetonka, Minnesota.

The groups that report the highest dissatisfaction are ophthalmic, neurological and ENT device companies, while those with the highest satisfaction make cardiovascular devices, infection-control and dental devices as well as devices for anesthesiology and hospitals.

Today more nations – from China and India to Singapore, Brazil and South Korea – are taking their place at the high table of research alongside the traditional science superpowers. At the same time national boundaries are being transcended through collaboration networks and 'brain circulation'. In this special issue Nature examines how the movement of people and ideas will change how science is done, how it is funded and the questions that it addresses.

Does this happen to you?

A new lead contacts you out of the blue inquiring about your services.  And at first, there’s euphoria.  You know, it’s the kind of thrill that only an entrepreneur knows.

You spend a couple of days or weeks conversing through email and finally you manage to set up a meeting with the lead.

During the meeting, you do a bang up job on your sales presentation.  You hit every note, cover every point, and blow it out of the water.

Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg (seen here), a seminal figure, recently inspired a group of female investors with an impromptu speech. Her message underscores that while a contracting venture-capital industry has stymied recent gains by some women in the male-dominated industry, news is encouraging for early start-ups and angel investing.  

The air was thick with optimism. More than a dozen female investors huddled around a table recently, listening raptly to Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg, a seminal figure in the tech world. They had gathered at Facebook's headquarters (in Menlo Park, Calif.) to discuss gender issues in venture capital. Sandberg, a major influence for many of them, unexpectedly dropped by to share some inspiring words. Her new book, Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead, is due in March.

Adobe has released Creativity and Education: Why it Matters, a new study that sheds light on the role of creativity in career success and the growing belief that creativity is not just a personality trait, but a learned skill.

Based on the study, 85% percent of respondents agree creative thinking is critical for problem solving in their career, and 68% of respondents believe creativity is a skill that can be learned. Nearly three-quarters (71%) say creative thinking should be "taught as a class - like math or science."

That's when we find out how well you make decisions.

When you don't have the resources to do it the usual way, that's when you show us how resourceful you are.

Qualcomm Labs Inc., the incubator subsidiary of Qualcomm Technologies Inc., announced its first round of investments into three startup businesses totaling $550,000.

The three companies receiving funding are Arynga, which got $250,000; FatSkunk, $250,000; and Breadcrumbs, $50,000.

In addition to the seed funding, each of the firms receive free rent up to two years, business services and mentoring through the EvoNexus incubator offices in either Downtown San Diego or University Towne Center. EvoNexus is part of CommNexus, the nonprofit high technology trade organization.

Despite concern over adverse impacts, deep marine mineral exploration is set to become a global industry, says geologist Chris Yeats.

Global demand for metals continues to grow, fuelled largely by increasing populations and the industrialisation and urbanisation of China and India. To meet this demand, the international minerals industry has had to search new areas of the globe for additional resources.

As Africa — the last underexplored continent — becomes more developed, it is inevitable that the oceans, which cover three-quarters of our planet, will be explored and exploited for their mineral wealth. It is a question of when and how, not if.

It's incredibly hard to start a company. Fortunately, a lot of smart people have done it before, and they have sound advice to share with budding entrepreneurs. We pulled the best quotes from recent blog posts, conferences, and interviews that can help startups at every phase, whether they're still deciding what to launch or figuring out how to scale.

Michael J. Saylor was early to the free online-education market. In 2000, Mr. Saylor, then a dot-com billionaire as chief executive of a business-intelligence company called MicroStrategy, promised to give $100-million to open a new Web portal that would provide quality education for the masses at no charge.

That plan got derailed, though, when he lost $6-billion of his fortune in a single day of stock trading during a U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission investigation. The online-university project was sidelined.

These days, Mr. Saylor is back. Not only has he rebuilt Micro­Strategy, but in the past few years he has also channeled his still-prodigious wealth into changing higher education.

PLYMOUTH MEETING, PA – Health IT may promise a new paradigm of patient care, but it's also fraught with complexity and the potential for error. A new report from ECRI Institute, which researches best practices to improve care delivery, outlines the top 10 health technology hazards for 2013, and health IT systems are disconcertingly close to the top.

ECRI's 6th annual “Top 10 Health Technology Hazards list” is designed to raise awareness of the potential dangers associated with the use of medical devices and systems. A popular roadmap for healthcare providers to prioritize their technology safety initiatives, the list features key topics that warrant particular attention for the coming year with actionable recommendations on addressing them.  

Throughout my career in small companies and large, I’ve always been appalled by the number of people who seem to complain all of the time. These people don’t seem to realize that they are hurting themselves, as well as other people’s productivity, and the company they are working for.

I’ve always thought that I might be overly sensitive, until I saw an old survey done by badbossoloy.com, which claims that a majority of employees spend 10 hours or more a month complaining or listening to others complain, and nearly one third spend 20 or more hours. No startup can afford that huge cost in emotional capital, as well as productivity!

Smart people are thinking up innovative technology-based concepts every day. That’s the easy part. Securing funding to develop an idea is where it gets hard. Luckily for Utah small businesses, there’s help to make your idea more competitive.

The Federal Government’s Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) and Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) grant programs are specifically designed for small entrepreneurial technology-driven enterprises. The grants are a source of non-equity funding for emerging business to provide research and development. In total the SBIR/STTR programs offer more than $2.6 billion annually to support the development of technology by small businesses across the United States.

Not that long ago, biotech executives weren’t sure who to call on Wall Street, or whether anyone would answer the phone. In late 2008 and early 2009, nobody could say for sure who would still be around in a couple years to supply capital to aspiring drugmakers.

Partly inspired by all the recent election-year reflection, I decided to look back at what biotech executives were saying about the financial crisis during some of the darker moments in January 2009. It was a scary time for the industry. Check this comment from an interview with Richard Pops, the CEO of Alkermes (NASDAQ: ALKS) at the JP Morgan Healthcare Conference that year:

Which city in Europe is working the hardest to be the most advanced urban landscape? 0 Comments

In January 2012, Co.Exist published my smart city rankings. This year, I sought to more accurately rank cities based on a holistic model of smart cities around the globe. This year, we are going to release two separate rankings. This first ranking represents the top 10 smart cities in Europe, and the follow-up will be the top 10 smart cities in North America.

Smart Cities Wheel. In an attempt to improve the rankings, I developed a metric which I call the Smart Cities Wheel, which contains six key components of smart cities and three key drivers for each component. For each of the six components of the Smart Cities Wheel, I sought to obtain more than one data source to rank each city in its respective region, except in cases where the singular data source was sufficiently rigorous (e.g. Mercer’s Quality of Life rankings). As you might expect, not every city had data available from every source, so the more data points, the better. You can see the full list of data sets a little farther down this post.

When it comes to funding startups, Y Combinator is an incubation machine. And behind it all are founder Paul Graham's unique insights about what constitutes true innovation.

In the summer of 1995, Paul Graham heard a story on the radio promoting the endless possibilities of online commerce, which at the time hardly existed. The promotion came from Netscape, which was trying to drum up interest in its business on the eve of its IPO. The story sounded so promising, yet so vague. At the time, Graham was at a bit of a crossroads. After graduating from Harvard with a PhD in computer engineering, he had fallen into a pattern: he would find some part-time consulting job in the software business; then, with enough money saved, he would quit the job and devote his time to his real love--art and painting--until the money ran out, and then he would scramble for another job. Now thirty-one-years old, he was getting tired of the pattern, and he hated consulting. The prospect of making a lot of money quickly by developing something for the Internet suddenly seemed very appealing.