NEW YORK, June 29, 2016 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Mid-Atlantic Bio Angels (MABA) announces today that, for the first time in the three year history of its 1st Pitch Life Science competition, two companies tied in the voting for “Best in Show”: RiverTown Therapeutics, a clinical stage company developing a topical treatment for androgenic alopecia (a common form of hair loss in both men and women) and 6Degrees, developers of a device which enables amputees and others whose use of their hands is compromised to use computers and mobile devices via Bluetooth technology.  The 1st Pitch Life Science competition was held on June 14, 2016 at Medidata in New York City.

Once upon a time, if you had a killer business idea, the only way it was going to come to life was if you were lucky enough to find a bank to back you, and this often involved having deep pockets of your own. Those who didn’t have collateral and a financial institution to support them usually had to wave goodbye to their dreams.

Thankfully, that mold has been broken. Now, entrepreneurs and brilliant enterprising minds have more resources for getting their ideas to take flight. Crowdfunding has opened doors to amazing opportunities for many individuals and small businesses.

I have spent decades as a health-care executive and pediatric surgeon. I am often asked to reflect on the biggest advancements that have been developed to save children’s lives. 

While I can acknowledge that there are many technologies available to surgeons today that did not exist when I first began operating, I can’t ignore the fact that innovation in medical devices and technology for children continues to occur much more slowly than it does for adults. 

Your commute isn't just costing you a subway fare or the price of gas — commuting costs time, and time is money. 

Online loan marketplace Lending Tree published a report on the most expensive commutes in the 100 largest cities in the US in October. Lending Tree posits that the cost of a commute can be calculated by assuming time commuting has the same worth as time spent working.

When you’re starting, scaling, or simply running a business, it seldom feels like there are enough hours in a day. As a result, entrepreneurs quickly learn to adapt by sacrificing parts of their lives… and their social lives are often the first to go. 

But, what are the costs of consistently abandoning a Friday night out with friends in favor of your work? It may seem like a smart time investment at the moment, but it may be harmful to your mental well being. A study from DePaul University found that the happiest people are those with strong social ties who engage in social events frequently. 

The United States has emerged as the best country globally to be a woman entrepreneur, according to a new report from Mastercard.

The North American nation narrowly surpassed last year’s leader, New Zealand, to rank as the global powerhouse for female founders in Mastercard’s Index of Women Entrepreneurs 2019, which was released Wednesday.

The Netherlands has officially delivered the new Amsterdam headquarters to the European Medicines Agency (EMA). The new office, located in the Zuidas area of Amsterdam, will enable EMA to continue carrying out their activities by assessing medicines without any interruption. Minister Bruno Bruins (Health, Care and Sports) complimented all parties involved with this special achievement, as the new build was completed within a very short time frame: “It is a beautiful and important achievement that EMA will be able to move in this new building in time as promised. Built at a high pace and in a very short time frame.

Image: https://investinholland.com

A long-awaited experimental result has found the proton to be about 5% smaller than the previously accepted value. The finding has helped to prompt a redefinition of the particle’s official size and seems to spell the end of the ‘proton radius puzzle’, which has enthralled physicists since 2010.

Image: The CEBAF accelerator at the Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility in Newport News, Virginia, was used to measure the radius of the proton. Credit: DOE's Jefferson Lab

ROCKVILLE, MD – The National Foundation for Cancer Research (NFCR) last Thursday, November 14, conducted its latest Salisbury Award Competition for Entrepreneurial Translational Research. This event featured 16 individual cancer research projects from 15 institutions, selected from among a total of 36 applications. It concluded with an evening ceremony at which finalists were recognized, the winner and runners-up were named and the founding Salisbury family of NFCR was honored.

Image: Salisbury Award Competition judging panel chair Raju Kucherlapati, awardees Manijeh Goldberg, Jacqueline Douglass, Emily Han-Chung Hsiue and Igor Garkavstev, and NFCR President and CEO Sujuan Ba.

About 2.4 billion people worldwide lack access to adequate toilet facilities, and hundreds of children die every day from preventable, sanitation-related diarrheal diseases. But water scarcity—a worsening problem in many low-resource environments—is one factor that makes it difficult to meet the need for clean, functioning toilets. “Many parts of the world don’t have flushing toilets because they just don’t have the water required to operate them,” says Peter Lillehoj, an engineer at Michigan State University. Like a number of other researchers, he believes that minimizing the amount of water necessary for cleaning each toilet would increase access to sanitation.

As a business and entrepreneur advisor, I have no trouble getting owners and managers to agree that change is happening faster and faster in the consumer and technology world, requiring them to keep their business more agile, just to keep up. The challenge is that too many are confused on what that means for them, and what it takes to make their business competitively agile.

Image: https://blog.startupprofessionals.com

The new book Making Sense of Incentives. Taming Business Incentives to Promote Prosperity from Tim Bartik at the W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research is a recommended read for policy leaders and economic development practitioners. A free PDF version of the book is available to download from the Upjohn website. 

Don’t expect electric cars and trucks to get as cheap as their gas-powered rivals anytime soon.

A new report from the MIT Energy Initiative warns that EVs may never reach the same sticker price so long as they rely on lithium-ion batteries, the energy storage technology that powers most of today’s consumer electronics. In fact, it’s likely to take another decade just to eliminate the difference in the lifetime costs between the vehicle categories, which factors in the higher fuel and maintenance expenses of standard cars and trucks.

As companies continue to grapple with the skills gap and a tight talent market, many have turned to apprenticeships to create a pipeline of workers who have the training they need.

Alongside IBM, Accenture is one the many companies using apprenticeships to build alternative career paths for trainees. Accenture reportedly converts most of its college-sourced apprenticeships into full-time positions, creating a new talent pipeline in the process.

One of the most common questions that pops up in startup circles is, "Why did they turn me down?" There are myriad reasons why a venture capitalist might turn down pitches and decline funding. Here, I'll present the three most common.

They don't understand your business Einstein once said, "If you cannot explain it to a six-year old, you don't understand it yourself."

A degree from a small New York pharmacy college is more likely to give you a better bang for your buck than a pricey Ivy League school, according to a new report.

The Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce (CEW) published a study titled "A First Try at ROI: Ranking 4,500 colleges" on Thursday that lists US colleges by their return-on-investment measures (ROI) in 10, 15, 20, 30, and 40 years after enrollment.

According to the Stanford engineering professor Bernard Roth, the way you speak affects more than how people perceive you: It affects how you act. A simple switch, like saying "and" instead of "but," could improve how you view a situation. These tweaks make up a problem-solving strategy called design thinking.

On the surface, universities are a nice idea. You go in, pick a subject you like, learn from the experts, and leave being job- and future-ready. This is why so many people (around 40% in rich countries) decide to go to college, even if it means making big financial and personal sacrifices. Yet just because so many people are doing it doesn’t mean it’s necessarily a good thing to do. In fact, while there is generally a cost – in terms of employment prospect – of not having a college degree, there are not always clear competitive advantages in having one, particularly if almost half of the population has one.

It seems like we’re constantly told to pursue work that we’re passionate about. At least in the United States, this advice follows people from school and into their careers. As billionaire investor Ray Dalio advises in his book Principles, “make your passion and your work the same thing.” Doing so is said to be the path to success.

SSTI received an Appreciation Award as part of the Association of University Research Parks (AURP) Awards of Excellence at their 2019 International Conference earlier this month. SSTI President &CEO Dan Berglund accepted the award and has led SSTI since its launch in 1996. The award recognized the organization for having “helped develop a nationwide network of practitioners and policymakers dedicated to improving the economy through science, technology and innovation. With SSTI’s focus on improving initiatives that support prosperity through science, technology, innovation and entrepreneurship, Berglund and his team continue to deliver the most comprehensive resource available for those involved in technology-based economic development.”