People often find robots baffling and even frightening. Leila Takayama, a social scientist, has found ways to smooth out their rough edges. Through numerous studies and experiments that look at how people react to every aspect of robots, from their height to their posture, Takayama has come up with key insights into how robots should look and act to gain acceptance and become more useful to people.

Takayama has had an especially big influence on the design of an advanced robot from Willow Garage, the startup she works for in Menlo Park, California. Called PR2 (see “Robots That Learn from People”), it’s an early prototype of a new generation of robots that promise to be indispensable to the elderly, people with physical challenges, or anyone who simply needs a little help around the home or office.

Daily life at a startup is inherently exciting. Since capital is limited, teams are small, allowing each employee to wear multiple hats and fulfill fluid job descriptions, all to reach unprecedented goals. Brainstorming sessions are intimate, voices are heard, creativity is appreciated and innovation is implemented. It’s quite the contrast to corporate America, where endless cubicles often keep an employee’s task list monotonous.

Restricting the amount of time spent seated every day to less than 3 hours might boost the life expectancy of US adults by an extra 2 years, indicates an analysis of published research in the online journal BMJ Open.

And cutting down TV viewing to less than 2 hours every day might extend life by almost 1.4 years, the findings show.

Several previous studies have linked extended periods spent sitting down and/or watching TV to poor health such as diabetes and death from heart disease/stroke.

This is the dramatic story (yeah, yeah, just go with it) of how former lawyer Dayna Lorentz found her true calling in the emotionally turbulent realm of the YA novel.

Modern business is pure chaos. This series is about the people who are adapting to disruption, and succeeding. READ MORE Dayna Lorentz was an up-and-coming young lawyer in New York City when she realized her passion lay elsewhere. Unlike most people, she did something about it, going back to school--yet again--for an MFA in creative writing. Just a few years after starting on this new path, Lorentz’s trilogy for young readers called No Safety in Numbers, about a bioterror attack in a suburban shopping mall, which Kirkus Reviews called an “engrossing thriller.” Now living with her family and dogs in Vermont, Lorentz spoke with Fast Company about her learning process, the necessity of extending stories beyond the page, and how the YA category is saving the book.

An innovation specialist declared Thursday that the Quad-City area has the potential to become a global manufacturing hub.

“There’s no reason this region can’t compete globally to be a truly innovative cluster,” Richard Bendis, president and CEO of Innovation America, told several hundred people who attended the Quad-Cities Chamber of Commerce annual meeting at the Davenport RiverCenter.

Innovation America is a national not-for-profit, private-public partnership that promotes the growth of the entrepreneurial innovation economy.

Light bathes our planet, splashing off the mountaintops, flooding the deserts, tundra, savanna and forests, and seeping as deep as 1,000 meters into the ocean. Bacteria, plants, animals and all kinds of living things have evolved different ways to detect and respond to light. Despite their familiarity and prevalence, eyes are not essential.

Biologists have known for several decades that some eyeless animals perceive light. Likewise, some animals with eyes—even rather sophisticated eyes—rely on other body parts to see. Exactly how organisms sense light without eyes has, in many cases, remained mysterious. In recent years, with the help of new tools like genome sequencing, scientists have discovered light-sensitive cells and proteins in unexpected places, and have established that creatures once thought to be blind can in fact see. Light-reactive proteins cover the ends of a sea urchin's feet, for example, possibly turning the spiky animal's whole body into a compound eye. Similarly, tiny jellyfish-like hydras can sense light with their stinging tentacles. And although nematodes live in darkness underground, some of their neurons respond to light, helping them wriggle away from danger.

Newsflash: Cleveland is no longer “the mistake on the lake.” We’re moving up, ready to resume our title as one of the top cities in the U.S. Why you may ask? Thanks to the strong entrepreneurial hub located right here in Cleveland, OH. You heard us, OH-IO!

While entrepreneurship may not be the first thought that comes to mind when you think of Cleveland, we’re starting to make quite an impact. Here are a few reasons why you should rethink Cleveland and come to us for your startup expansion.

WHEN Myles Berkowitz first met Steven Kates through a mutual friend in 2006, Mr. Berkowitz had serious doubts about him. Enlarge This Image

First, there were the tattoos. Mr. Kates, a personal trainer in Los Angeles, is covered in them, including one, on his neck, of a dead mouse. Mr. Berkowitz, an indie filmmaker known for the mock documentary “20 Dates,” favors khakis and button-down shirts. Second, what Mr. Kates was saying seemed too good to be true. At the time, Mr. Berkowitz was the heaviest he’d ever been, 219 pounds, and asked Mr. Kates for advice on how to lose weight. Mr. Kates told him to eat all his favorite foods — ribs, hamburgers, pizza — but to eat less of them.

In my time as an undergraduate, I have discovered that Penn has an extremely active entrepreneurial ecosystem. Students and faculty members have a real passion for innovation, and programs like the Wharton Business Plan Competition, the Weiss Tech House and PennVention help to cultivate that spirit. Students and recent graduates have sold their businesses to large companies like Amazon, eBay and Google for tens, even hundreds, of millions of dollars.

The entrepreneurial attitude is so widespread that it even touched two of my friends, who started their own companies this past year. In short, entrepreneurship has become an integral part of campus life.

Every entrepreneur tries to maximize his startup growth by building and selling more product and services for the widest geographic area that he can support. This strategy is called “organic growth,” yet it alone may yield only a fraction of the potential you could achieve, unless you add the additional strategies of partnerships and M&A (mergers and acquisitions).

Many entrepreneurs are paranoid about the partnership approach, and think that M&A is only an alternative for large companies who are flush with cash. Both of these qualms are wrong and shortsighted. Laurence Capron and Will Mitchell explain why in their new book, “Build, Borrow, or Buy: Solving the Growth Dilemma.” They outline the following framework for emerging firms, as well as large multinationals, to help build an optimal growth strategy for your company:

Any leader is faced with navigating the expectations of others - as well as identifying and managing their own. Most leaders have teams to inspire, goals to accomplish and results to drive. For these reasons, it’s assumed that when a leader makes a mistake - others notice. It’s hard for leaders and managers to conceal their oversights and shortcomings - and not only that, but it may not be in their best interest to attempt a cover-up. Depending on how a leader addresses and approaches his/her mistakes, the experience can be humbling, humiliating or rewarding.

Michelle and I attended a Silicon Cape event this week where Sarah Rice shared her experiences as a public relations consultant for rock-star companies like personal finance management site 22seven and African instant messaging giant Mxit. Rice sowed valuable advice on relationships between startups and the media onto a hotbed of Cape Town’s bright up-and-coming startups and a lot of what was said resonated with me, especially the part that affects my job the most, communication with startups. The communication usually starts in the form of a press release.

Every investor expects to see some business traction, both before and after a funding event. If you have been working 20 hours a day, and spent your last dollar, but have no results to show, investors will be sympathetic, but will probably tell you that your dream doesn’t have wheels. Traction means forward progress.

I hear a lot of entrepreneurs contemplating their great “idea” for several years with little discernable progress, and looking for money to start. Talk and time are cheap, but they need to understand that investors judge past results as a good indicator of future expectations. Here are some tips which will signal traction and fundability to investors, as well as to your team

Disappointing news came out of the SEC meeting yesterday designed to open the way for crowdfunding in the U.S.

Rather than lifting the ban on general solicitation (we’ll explain that in a minute) in order to make it possible for more people to invest in American startups, the SEC proposed rules that would establish various different classes of investors, each perhaps with its own regulations. Needless to say, this move could make it more rather than less complicated for people to invest in startups, erecting new roadblocks rather than clearing away old ones.

Teddy Roosevelt's assertion in a Labor Day speech 109 years ago still rings true this holiday; worthwhile labor can greatly enrich human life. Our research found that people's everyday work lives are greatly enriched when they make progress at work that they find meaningful. But what makes work worth doing?

Sometimes it's obvious. No one would question whether trying to cure disease is worth doing. The same goes for inventing and making products that enhance people's lives. But is all work worthwhile? Our own research focused on knowledge workers — highly educated people doing creative work and solving complex problems. As a result, readers often ask whether our findings apply to workers in the service industries or manual laborers. We believe they do apply, but only when workers feel that they are making a contribution to something or someone they value.

It’s become a staple in the software industry. The telecommunications industry has done it. The automobile industry is doing it. And now, the healthcare industry as a whole has adopted the practice of open innovation — and it’s doing it with vigor.

Is open innovation here to stay in healthcare? Measuring its success so far is tricky, but in looking merely at the level of interest, there’s an undeniable trend in the creation of long-term strategies based on open data and ideas from sources outside of individual companies and institutions. The healthcare world is looking beyond temporary partnerships, essentially innovating innovation by building creative, long-term programs to discover compelling new ideas with the potential to improve care and lower costs.

NIH announces the availability of a Niche Assessment Program for its SBIR/STTR Phase I awardees funded in fiscal years (FY) 2012 and 2013. All active NIH SBIR/STTR Phase I awardees (by grant or contract) as well as those small businesses selected to receive a Phase I award in the first three months of the upcoming fiscal year will be eligible to participate. This program can help “jump-start” a company’s commercialization efforts by providing the market insight and data that can be used to strategically position its technology in the marketplace, by assisting companies with their development of commercialization plans for Phase II applications, and by introducing small businesses to potential partners.

A third party, unbiased assessment of appropriate market niches for products/services that are being developed by NIH’s SBIR/STTR Phase I awardees will be performed by Foresight Science & Technology. Using its Technology Niche Analysis® (TNA®), Foresight will perform the due diligence on markets appropriate for each SBIR technology and develop an in-depth report for each SBIR/STTR awardee that addresses

With just a 2 percent acceptance rate, it’s statistically harder to get your startup into Y Combinator than it is to get accepted into MIT or Stanford undergrad. The hot incubator/accelerator has spawned some of the biggest startups including Reddit, Dropbox and Airbnb. For those on the outside, looking (to get) in — what’s it like being a “YC” company?

Is this episode of See Founders Run, MemSQL founder and CEO, Eric Frenkiel (YC Class winter 2011) talks about how to make a strong application to YC, how YC works and what those dinners are really like.

In this weekend edition of the 2013 Unigo College Rankings we're showcasing the colleges across the country that, according to students, have built exemplary entrepreneurship programs and made resources for aspiring founders readily available.

Fundraising is one of the key components in getting a business started, but it can also be one of the most challenging, especially if you’re a first-timer. I raised a $3 million seed round from August Capital in August 2011 and learned a few things along the way:

1) The Investor Deck

Put together a concise investor deck that is no longer than 15 slides. Don’t overstuff slides with small details. Just make sure to get the high-level point across and support it with a few pieces of data. Get a LOT of feedback on your investor deck from friends, advisors, and investors. Make sure it’s perfectly formatted and that you know backup details for every single number in your presentation. If you are pre-launch, make sure you conduct experiments so you have some data to back up your hypothesis. Investors will be impressed that you found cheap, clever ways to test the concept.