Two startup accelerators in the U.S. state of Ohio are reportedly to invest more than $100 million into blockchain firms.

According to a report from Cleveland.com on Monday, JumpStart, an Ohio-based nonprofit that supports and funds startups, is to invest $100 million in early stage blockchain firms focused on business or government use cases alongside six other funds in the state.

Another business accelerator FlashStarts, from Ohio’s Cleveland city, is reportedly also making $6 million available to enable startups to raise pre-seed funding rounds.

Collier County's accelerator program has partnered with four colleges and universities to expand its services to new and emerging businesses.

Under the three-year agreement, experts from the University of Florida, Florida Gulf Coast University, Florida Southwestern State College and Hodges University will provide assistance to help grow businesses at the Naples Accelerator and the Florida Culinary Accelerator @ Immokalee.

Oils from garlic and other common herbs and medicinal plants are showing promise in the lab for treating the bacteria that causes Lyme disease, and may prove especially useful in treating the those who continue to have symptoms after antibiotic treatment, Johns Hopkins University researchers have found.

The findings, still in the early stages, come just after the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released data showing that tick-borne diseases such as Lyme are on the rise nationwide. Last year, state and local health departments reported 59,349 cases, up from 48,610 the years before. The case numbers have been rising for years to last year’s record, though the reasons are unknown.

The technology sector bubbles with activity. Scarcely a week goes by without a clutch of takeovers being announced. Start-ups are gobbled up by their larger peers. Companies that have already proved their worth merge or are acquired.

The high-profile, big ticket examples are well known: in a handful of cases, seriously large sums are paid for tech companies that the largest players want to dovetail with their existing operations. Think of YouTube, launched in 2005 and bought the following year by Google for $1.65bn; Instagram, launched in 2010 and swept up by Facebook for $1bn in 2012; WhatsApp, launched in 2009 and bought by Facebook in 2014 for $19.3bn.

Image: https://www.london.edu

How do entrepreneurs overcome fear? It's a question I get a lot. The answer is this: They never really do -- but they learn to manage it, and come to appreciate the rewards of pushing past it.

That's why I've created the list below. I hope each gets you thinking about new ways and reasons to act boldly. Fear is powerful, sure, but it doesn't have to be paralyzing. 

Here we go.

Image: Jason Feifer

New Jersey’s Economic Development Authority has established a dedicated small business unit, the agency announced in a press release. This follows years of focusing economic development efforts on luring large businesses like Amazon—NJ’s $7 billion incentive bid for HQ2 was the second largest bid made publicly available.

Image: The New Jersey State House is seen in Trenton, N.J., Tuesday, June 27, 2017. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)

Until you’ve reached the mid-point of your career, or unless you’re in a unique industry like academia or medicine, your resume should always be one-page long, right?

Maybe not.

Despite the long-held convention, a recent study has found that two-page resumes are actually preferred by recruiters, no matter the candidate’s experience level.

Today’s technology is rushing into one of the last traditional industries: agriculture. A field largely still unaffected by the technological revolution, farming is ripe for change as need couples with opportunity.

“We’ve seen a wave of technology impact our information industries,” says Stanford Graduate School of Business professor Haim Mendelson. “Now we see another big wave of technology reshaping our traditional industries, and certainly agriculture is one of the most basic ones.”

The recent shocking reports about a human genome editing experiment have led to increased murmurings about the potential pitfalls of improved access to molecular technologies. Sharing speeds science. That’s been the driving concept behind Addgene since its founding. Nowhere has this proved more prescient than in the acceleration of basic research using CRISPR-Cas9 genome editing tools. It would be a tremendous loss of efficiency and funding if this rogue experiment resulted in a reduction in repository deposits and the sharing of research materials.

Image: Part of a typical daily Addgene shipment: one of three carts (plus two pallets for dry ice) carrying more than 750 orders. “The UPS guy just laughed when he saw it.” - Thomas DeNatale, Addgene

“The competition series is a platform that brings together innovative businesses with potential investors, partners and expert advisors,” said Fish 2.0 executive director, Monica Jain. “We’re trying to create a community and network that can work together to grow the sustainable seafood and ocean sectors more quickly.”

Image: Fish 2.0's Innovation Forum in San Francisco attracted entrepreneurs, investors and regulators © Fish 2.0

Curtis Carlson, the entrepreneur who helped revive SRI and turn it into the company that created the iPhone’s voice assistant Siri, often asks groups of would-be innovators to write their definition of “innovation” on Post-it notes. The definitions never agree. In fact, he told me, “sometimes they don’t even make sense”.

The moral is obvious: if a company’s people cannot communicate the how, why and what of innovation to each other, the chances of progress are low.

Image: Pieter Bruegel the Elder's 'The Tower of Babel' (Vienna version)

It’s no secret that the American holiday calendar is thoroughly color-coded. The Fourth of July is red, white and blue, for obvious reasons. Halloween has pumpkin orange, and the Thanksgiving table tends to be festooned in the brown and red colors of the harvest season. And as those autumnal hues begin to fade, the red and green of Christmas take their place.

Image: http://time.com

What cofounder structures, locations and entrepreneurial traits can best help today’s startups accelerate their way to success?

I just had the great privilege of interviewing the cofounder of AngelPad, Thomas Korte on the DealMakers Podcast. He brought a ton of value to listeners with his insights on disruptive technology, how to split company ownership, and the important factors that separate the big successes from the rest in the startup race (listen to the full episode here).

Image: Courtesy of AngelPadCOURTESY OF ANGELPAD

We know...

It’s like, really important to start your day off right.

There are exactly 12 bazillion articles, videos and books that pontificate this point to us each day. Geeesh -- we get it! Now can we talk about finishing the day right when your whole morning has gone wrong?

Because no matter how hard you try to perfect a morning routine, life’s still going to happen.

In the wild uproar around an experiment in China that claimed to have created twin girls whose genes were altered to protect them from HIV, there’s something worth knowing—research to improve the next generation of humans is happening in the US, too.

In fact, it’s about to happen at Harvard University.

At the school’s Stem Cell Institute, IVF doctor and scientist Werner Neuhausser says he plans to begin using CRISPR, the gene-editing tool, to change the DNA code inside sperm cells. The objective: to show whether it is possible to create IVF babies with a greatly reduced risk of Alzheimer’s disease later in life.

It’s a weekday and Jeff, the director of technology at Economical Insurance, kisses his daughter and waves goodbye as she enters the doors of her public school. Then, he either turns the car around and returns home for a day of remote work, or he continues on to his office, where his hours are flexible — he just needs to keep his boss in the loop.

At Johnson & Johnson, we believe a good idea can come from anywhere. Our aim is to identify, empower and enable the best ideas to get to patients and consumers around the globe. In an effort to unearth the unseen and brightest innovations in healthcare, Johnson & Johnson Innovation is launching a Quick Pitch event where innovators can apply to present to Johnson & Johnson Innovation's leadership during the week of the 37th Annual JP Morgan Healthcare Conference in San Francisco, CA.   If you are selected, you will have an opportunity to present for 5 minutes followed by a 5 minute Q&A session with Johnson & Johnson Innovation's leadership. 

If you haven’t heard, Nashville landed quite the consolation prize from Amazon’s search for a new headquarters location. When you look past the “smaller operations center” spin, what Amazon will locate in Nashville is hardly a consolation. Nashville came out the winner even over D.C.’s and New York’s Solomon like victories. What Nashville won plays to its strengths and, equally importantly, shapes its future. The incentives required by Nashville pale in comparison to the checks the winners will write. The Amazon package arriving in Nashville will allow the city to manage its growth with minimal impact on other employers, neighborhoods, and Nashville’s increasingly eclectic vibe. And the workforce that Amazon will build only enhances that of two vibrant industry clusters that Nashville has been working hard to grow. Simply put, Nashville skunked the rest of us.

Singapore’s publicly funded National University of Singapore (NUS) and Nanyang Technological University (NTU) have rapidly ascended the world university rankings. According to international journals, the two now rank among the best in Asia, and are in the top 20 to 50 in the world.

This has been achieved in part by the aggressive hiring of international faculty members with the desired publication credentials, part of an increasingly intense global arms race for scarce research talent.

But critics argue that the opportunity costs of this approach include the marginalisation of teaching in favour of research, and of local faculty and local scholarship, in a way that adds little benefit to Singaporean students, the national economy or society, and is unlikely to be sustainable.

Image: https://amp.scmp.com

Why measure global biotechnology?

The scope of biotechnology is broad and impacts economies, policies, and people globally.

Applications range from advanced medicines to and improvements in agriculture to feedstocks and biofuels, and further to exotic industrial materials and processes.

Image: http://www.thinkbiotech.com