Getting seven to eight solid hours of sleep each night might seem an almost impossible luxury to many people. But not getting enough sleep is known to impair mental function and increase the risk for heart disease, among other ill effects. Accumulating evidence also suggests that even short-term, partial sleep deprivation could pave the way for weight gain and other negative metabolic consequences.

More than 28 percent of adults in the U.S. report that they get less than six hours of sleep a night, with this cumulative deprivation becoming more common in the past three decades. And now that more than 35 percent of U.S. adults are currently obese, researchers have been searching for potential links between the two conditions, in hopes of reducing the increasing health and economic burden of obesity. Establishing lack of sleep as a risk factor for weight gain could have important clinical and public health effects, possibly allowing people to make simple lifestyle changes to improve their metabolic health.

You can find plenty of people who disregard bigger enterprises, stating they are not the future. Plenty of people — including here on Harvard's blog — espouse the theory that big companies can't innovate.

This argument is both old and wrong. Joseph Schumpeter, the noted economist, said — in 1909 — that small companies were more inventive than large ones. But then, in 1942, Schumpeter reversed himself and argued that big companies had more ability and incentive to invest in new products. Today, there's a similar bias; people assume that small companies are creative and big firms are slow and bureaucratic. A look at any performance measure shows that innovation can come from either size, and that both arguments are oversimplifications.

Who would have thought that the NSA would be on the list of the top 10 places college students want to work? Or, for that matter, AT&T?

AfterCollege, which bills itself as the largest career network for college students and recent grads, helps hundreds of thousands of college students all over the country find the best career opportunities. As part of the career exploration process, students select companies they most want to apply to, and AfterCollege shared some of that data with VentureBeat.

Seven early-stage tech startups have received loans from the Michigan Microloan Fund Program, the state announced earlier this month. The funding, dispersed quarterly, this time amounted to a total of $232,000. To date, the microloan fund program has lent $2.8 million to Michigan companies that are on the brink of being revenue-ready.

“The criteria is tech-based companies with some kind of associated (intellectual property) that are definitely pre-revenue,” says Skip Simms, senior vice president of Ann Arbor SPARK and manager of the Michigan Microloan Fund Program. “Maybe they’ve gotten money from friends or family, but they need to achieve one or two things, like finishing a beta prototype, to get private investment.”

One of the major supporters of DEMO Africa and LIONS@frica with me in Nairobi last week was Nokia. As I took a look at just how much innovation Nokia has created, I was curious to look further into the current startup culture in its home country of Finland and see just how important high-growth entrepreneurship is to its economy.

It turns out very important. Long gone are the days where the country´s giant forest and metal companies determined the collective fate of the economy. Not only was Nokia the flagship for Finland’s IT startup boom of the late nineties but by 2000 it produced 21 percent of Finnish exports, and today serves as the core of a renewed momentum for startups in Finland.

A new Kentucky initiative was previewed on Friday that will allow some districts to gain flexibility from certain laws and regulations regarding curriculum, instruction, structure, scheduling, and funding. The initiative is an effort to increase innovation efforts in education.

These "Districts of Innovation" will operate much like charters, said State Education Commissioner Terry Holliday, according to a story by WHAS 11. The state does not currently allow charter schools.

The initiative was developed under House Bill 37, and was modeled partly on charter laws in other states. It will be funded in part by a recently developed nonprofit educational "venture capital" fund for innovation, The Courier-Journal reports.

NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- As they struggle to save for retirement, a growing number of middle-class Americans plan to postpone their golden years until they are in their 80's.

Nearly one-third, or 30%, now plan to work until they are 80 or older -- up from 25% a year ago, according to a Wells Fargo survey of 1,000 adults with income less than $100,000.

A few weeks back I wrote about how risk shouldn’t stop crowdfunding from becoming available in the United States. Any responsible investor should consider risk before participating in any investment. Investment without pragmatism is just gambling, after all.

What are the legitimate risks involved with crowdfunding as defined by Title III of the JOBS Act? For one, this type of crowdfunding in the US marketplace is a complete unknown. We can learn lessons from other countries that have implemented some form of crowdfunding, but every country and every market is different. The United States is also the largest market to date that will legalize crowdfunding in this way, so it is undoubtedly a unique situation.

Frequently, brainstorms, idea campaigns and similar idea extravaganzas end with a vague notion of choosing the best idea. The problem here is that a truly creative idea, the kind of idea that has the potential to become a breakthrough innovation is seldom the best solution to the problem or the best path to achieving a goal - for the very simple reason that highly creative ideas are original. They cannot directly be compared to existing notions.

If you come up with a technology for a hyper-space drive, you cannot compare it to other hyper-space drives. You have invented the only one. Rather, you can compare it to similar existing technology, such as rocket engines or ion thrusters. But these are very different things and so the comparison is difficult and may focus on the wrong criteria. Let's look at several concrete examples

WASHINGTON – The outcome of the 2012 presidential elections isn’t expected to have much of an impact on U.S. innovation policy. Still advocates see a post-election window for bringing together entrepreneurs, investors and lawmakers to renew a dialogue that seeks to leverage U.S. entrepreneurial strength to create an innovation ecosystem.

Innovation advocates said they are looking for ways to “bolt together” the U.S. entrepreneurial system with federal policies in areas like health care, cyber security and renewable energy to create value, drive innovation and reinvigorate the economy. While there is no shortage of new ideas, hurdles like access to capital and political gridlock remain obstacles to progress at least until after the Nov. 6 presidential election, experts said.

Everybody has a mouthpiece now and social media is facilitating this. News is everywhere and breaking news on the front page has becomes obsolete, because the news is already out on social media like Twitter, Facebook and blogs. Is this also the end of journalism as we know it?

Tweeps, bloggers and Facebookers are taking over the role of journalists, but is it quality reporting and professional journalism? Print media at least in the West, is in a bad way: newspapers are closing or merging and journalists are being laid off. The public finds the news on the social media, and physical subscriptions are at an all time low. On the other hand, the demand for quality reporting, background, news analysis and investigations is rising. Data journalism is one possible way we can bring some life back into journalism.

ATLANTA, GA--(Marketwire - Oct 29, 2012) - Six organizations were named winners of SSTI's 2012 Excellence in TBED award, serving as national models for states and regions investing in science, technology and innovation to grow their economies and create high-paying jobs. Among the winners, a newer program was selected as the Most Promising TBED Initiative, recognized for a transferable technology commercialization model and a creative funding approach.

"These organizations are helping to lead our nation's economic recovery and their successes further substantiate the value of tech-based initiatives for regional economic growth," said Dan Berglund, SSTI President and CEO.

Accelerators seem to be the golden ticket for many startup founders. Especially the best-known ones get massive numbers of applicants. Y Combinator is again accepting admissions for its twice-a-year program and is likely to break records again, at least judging by the popularity of the Startup School it ran at Stanford recently.

But do startups really know what they’re in for when they join an accelerator?

Last month, I surveyed 151 accelerator applicants in order to answer that question for my just-released book Speed Up Your Startup. The folks I interviewed had applied to 22 different accelerator programs around the world, including Y Cominator, TechStars, 500 Startups, and Seedcamp. 108 of them had completed or were currently in an accelerator program; the others had not applied or had not yet been accepted to a program.

A new $6.5 million startup accelerator program in Philadelphia, Pa., was announced by the Mayor's office on Oct. 26. Called “Startup PHL,” the program will provide funding for innovative new ideas and new businesses in the early stages of formation in order to promote economic growth in the city.

“Philadelphia is increasingly home to a dynamic, innovative startup and entrepreneurial community who are putting this city on the map as the place to be if you’re an entrepreneur,” said Mayor Michael A. Nutter. “The goal of Startup PHL is to build upon and support so much of the good work that is already being done, building more businesses, creating more jobs, and expanding entrepreneurial opportunities to even more Philadelphians.”

A new paper, published today and supported by names from across Europe’s crowdfunding scene, calls on the European Union to provide more support to this burgeoning movement.

A Framework for European Crowdfunding lays out a plan for how new regulation, education programs and research could strengthen crowdfunding’s place in the EU economy, helping SMEs to raise capital and create jobs.

Although European crowdfunding sites like Seedrs, BloomVC and Eppela – not to mention US sites like Kickstarter – are an increasingly popular way for new and existing companies to raise money for new projects, the authors of today’s paper argue that the EU could be taking action to aid this process.

Last week I wrote a tongue-in-cheek ten point plan to get rich quick.  David K. Williams, one of my Forbes colleagues, asked that I answer my sarcasm with an authentic ten point plan.  Here it is:

Save every penny.  Social entrepreneurs as a general rule can make a bigger difference with less money than entrepreneurs without a social mission.  Scrimp, save and devote your own resources to your cause.  Whether your venture is for profit or not, start with putting your own money to work with you.

Maintaining a healthy body weight may be difficult for many people, but it’s reassuring to know that our brains and bodies are wired to work together to do just that—in essence, to achieve a phenomenon known as energy balance, a tight matching between the number of calories consumed versus those expended. This careful balance results from a complex interchange of neurobiological crosstalk within regions of the brain’s hypothalamus, and when this “conversation” goes awry, obesity or anorexia can result.

Given the seriousness of these conditions, it’s unfortunate that little is known about the details of this complex interchange. Now research led by investigators at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) provides new insights that help bring order to this complexity. Described in the October 26 issue of the journal Cell, the findings demonstrate how the GABA neurotransmitter selectively drives energy expenditure, and importantly, also help explain the neurocircuitry underlying the fat-burning properties of brown fat.

A regular exercise routine can make you fitter than ever – mentally fit.

In a new study, previously sedentary adults were put through four months of high-intensity interval training. At the end, their cognitive functions – the ability to think, recall and make quick decisions – had improved significantly, says Dr. Martin Juneau, director of prevention at the Montreal Heart Institute.

“If you talk to people who exercise, they say they feel sharper. Now we’ve found a way to measure that,” says Dr. Juneau.

The University Entrepreneurship is the first-ever effort to track and measure the entrepreneurship activity of top universities. Specifically, this report tracks six universities and the companies founded by or led by their alumni and the venture capital or angel financing they have raised. In total, CB Insights data revealed that these alumni have raised $12.6 billion of financing across 559 financing transactions.

The entire 60 page University Entrepreneurship Report with detailed stats for each of the six universities analyzed is available on CB Insights. Just login here and visit the research tab. Or set up your free account here.

The universities analyzed are detailed below. All of the underlying company & investor data can be found on CB Insights.

• Stanford University 
• Harvard University 
• University of California, Berkeley 
• New York University 
• University of Pennsylvania 
• Massachusetts Institute of Technology

STUCK INSIDE AWAITING SANDY? CHECK OUT THESE BEAUTIFUL, USEFUL MAPS AND IMAGES OF THE STORM THAT’S CURRENTLY BEARING DOWN ON THE EAST COAST.

With Hurricane Sandy hastening its stroll up the East Coast, media coverage of the impending FRANKENSTORM has reached fever pitch. Some meteorologists are calling it “an unprecedented and bizarre” storm of the century. Others say that’s “shameless fear mongering.” The rest of us are reacting like this.

Whichever school of hurricane prep you ascribe to, all eyes (human and machine alike) are on the East Coast today, which has made for some interesting visualizations of the storm. It used to be that meteorologists made a “best guess” using data culled from weather balloons, which gleaned broad, imprecise insights into storm paths. In turn, evacuations were far broader than they are today. Thanks to satellite data, advanced modeling software, and broadcasting platforms that update in real time, today’s network news coverage unfolds in the moment, at times feeling more like a football game than an emergency broadcast.