While science often moves forward in awkward leaps and bounds, Peter Atkins compiled a list of 10 concepts that are considered "so rock solid, that it is difficult to imagine them ever being replaced with something better." So our friends at RealClearScience's Newton blog write about Atkins's 2003 book, Galileo's Finger: The Ten Great Ideas of Science. While Atkins's picks might be incredibly worthy ones, many are also a bit hard to comprehend, so a guide to these concepts can be found on the Newton blog here, and are summarized briefly below. 

The Iowa Innovation Council is working to build a new funding vehicle to help startup companies in the state to grow. 

With recent legislative changes in the proposed Iowa Innovation Fund, the council is now in the process of interviewing prospective fund managers, said Cara Heiden, a member of the council’s board of directors. The fund, which will be marketed to sophisticated, high-net-worth investors, will be used to support high-potential companies in the state’s targeted industries of advanced manufacturing, biosciences and information technology.

Immigration is pure entrepreneurship. You leave behind everything familiar to start somewhere new. To succeed, you need to develop alliances. You must acquire skills. You will have to improvise on occasion. It’s a bold proposition.

Immigration is also fundamental to the U.S. national identity — as the Senate just acknowledged with passage of the most significant reform bill in decades. Our nation’s founders, determined to live in new ways, left behind old philosophies, old laws and old customs. The United States was conceived as a crucible for new beginnings.

Do your company's executives give rah-rah speeches about innovation and how they're ready for digital disruption? How often? At the annual company offsite? At monthly state-of-the-business meetings? C-level leaders could talk about innovation every day, but do you believe them? Do you feel confident that your company has the agility, energy, skills and organizational structure to turn the digital forces that threaten your business into breakthrough, high-growth opportunities that could transform your business?

The University of Maryland has named Brian Darmody associate vice president for corporate and foundation relations. In this newly-created role, Darmody is charged with leading essential university-wide efforts to develop strategic partnerships between the University of Maryland and the corporate and foundation community.

"Throughout Brian's 30-year career with the university, he has proven to be the perfect candidate to lead this new charge," says UMD Vice President for University Relations Peter Weiler. "His unparalleled ability to develop and nurture mutually beneficial relationships for the university has been integral over the years, and we look forward to the leadership he will bring to this new role."

Helpers do what you say, while good help does what you need, without you saying anything. People who can help you the most are actually smarter than you, at least in their domain. Top entrepreneurs spend more time putting the right team in place to accomplish their objectives than they spend on any other components of their job.

Some entrepreneurs are so in love with themselves (narcissistic) that they insist on answering every question, and making every decision. That’s not only impossible, but also counterproductive. Effective entrepreneurs team with or employ people who can provide the answers directly, pertinent to their particular area of expertise.

I’ve always wondered who started the urban myth that the best way to start a company is to come up with a great idea, and then find some professional investors to give you a pot of money to build a company. In my experience, that’s actually the worst way to start, for reasons I will outline here, and also the least common way, according to a recent survey of new startups.

Based on the latest Startup Environment Index from the Kauffman Foundation and LegalZoom, personal money, or bootstrapping, continued to be the primary startup funding in 2012. Eighty percent of new entrepreneurs used this approach, with only six percent using investor funding. The remaining entrepreneurs borrowed from family and friends, or acquired a loan.

Sitting on your sofa to work while your cat rubs its face all over you is great, but missing out on important talks and getting all your information secondhand can be a frustration. Deb Ng writes a blog post about what telecommuters can do to stay fully informed. Set up regular meetings so that everyone is aware of the latest news. Take lots of notes so that if all else fails, you have something to fall back on to make a list of pertinent end-of-day updates for people. Keep a running nag list as well of things you are waiting on from people and have not received yet, because it is ultimately your responsibility to get what you need, even if that means sending the same passive aggressive email four times. Pretend you are a client and use a person’s assistant to help schedule appointments if that makes reaching a person easier. Lastly, take the initiative and start conversations on your own. Do not wait for solutions to come to you.

Sometimes, what you think you mean is not what somebody else thinks you mean. If it sounds confusing to you, just imagine how confused the other person is. Ron Ashkenas writes for Harvard Business Review about communicating more clearly, whether face to face or electronically, by avoiding three pitfalls. The first is lack of context, by which apparently critical information is sent but it is not understood why the info is so vital. Next is lack of questions and dialogue, in that even if you believe you have absorbed the incoming information, you may have trouble internalizing it if no dialogue takes place to reinforce it. Last comes lack of connection, in which many people connect to the same news in different ways, and you should try to account for that. You need to know your audience to communicate most effectively.

When you look at the environmental and social challenges we face, it's often tough to stay optimistic. The worst predictions of climate science are coming true. Resource scarcity – especially water – is a major threat to business and the economy. Worker conditions around the world, like those that lead to the unfathomable tragedies in Bangladesh, can seem like intractable problems. And the political system that we need to tackle big issues is mostly broken.

The age of the accelerator is officially upon us.

Here is but a glimpse into the proliferation of start-up programs in the U.S. and Europe as reported by U.K. research firm NESTA:

Since 2005 there has been year-on-year growth in the number of companies taking this route through their early-stages. Y Combinator has taken on more and more companies each year, but the main driver of growth has been that new programs have been created. Techstars now operates in four U.S. cities and is growing a global network of peers. In Europe, the number of programmes has risen from just one in 2007 to over 10 in 2011.

The Rollins School of Public Health at Emory University launched its annual update of AIDSVu on National HIV Testing Day yesterday, including new interactive online maps that show the latest HIV prevalence data for 20 U.S. cities by ZIP code or census tract. AIDSVu also includes new city snapshots displaying HIV prevalence alongside various social determinants of health – such as poverty, lack of health insurance and educational attainment.

AIDSVu — the most detailed publicly available view of HIV prevalence in the United States — is a compilation of interactive online maps that display HIV prevalence data at the national, state and local levels and by different demographics, including age, race and sex. The maps pinpoint areas of the country where the rates of people living with an HIV diagnosis are the highest.  These areas include urban centers in the Northeast and the South, and visualize where the needs for prevention, testing, and treatment services are the most urgent.

No matter how long you’ve been out of school, June calls up memories of the first glorious days of summer vacation. For me, that meant lazing in the sun reading a great book.

As I’ve grown older, summer still feels like the season of reading. And that doesn’t necessarily mean a straw bag full of “beach reads,” like suspense novels and fashion magazines (although there’s nothing wrong with enjoying a few of those). Summer can be a great time to fill your brain with business, particularly if you’re involved in a job hunt.

Fish oil has been touted as useful for everything from growing hair to treating clinical depression. Now drug makers are stepping up their promotion of its benefits for treating heart disease.

AstraZeneca Plc (AZN), Amarin Corp. (AMRN) and GlaxoSmithKline Plc (GSK) (GSK) are betting the market for prescription fish-oil pills will follow the success of cholesterol-lowering drugs including Lipitor, once the world’s best-selling medicine with revenue of $13 billion a year.

The key to unlocking the next wave of economic growth may be as simple as enabling more people to try more stuff.  The industrial era was all about scale and squeezing out the possibility of mistakes. As a result we are too afraid to fail. Companies only take on projects with highly predictable results. Employees fall in line for fear of making career-limiting moves. How will we get better if the fear of failure prevents us from trying anything new? How will we make progress on the big system challenges of our time, if every time someone tries something transformational and fails, we vilify them? What if we reframed failure as intentional iteration?

First, let’s start with what is the innovation economy. It sounds an awful lot like a buzzword. Well, maybe, but as buzzy as it may sound, innovation economics is a real thing. Scouts honor. This relatively new theory of economics is based upon the idea that knowledge, entrepreneurship, innovation, technology and collaboration fuel economic growth.

Look no further than the We are Made in New York campaign, which seeks to connect the city’s tech startups with its jobs seekers. Government is now supporting the idea that technology and innovation spurs economic growth. Mayor Bloomberg stated in Mashable, “The growth of the tech industry in New York City has been a critical part of weathering the nation’s economic downturn, far better than the rest of the country.”

A study commissioned by the National Venture Capital Association has found that venture-backed companies with at least one foreign-born founder are now responsible for more initial public offerings and job creation than before the economic downturn.

The full report, due out next month, comes as the Senate appears poised to pass legislation that would overhaul the nation’s immigration laws. Whether a similar bill can make its way through the House of Representatives remains to be seen.

Looking to innovate just like the entrepreneurs they back, more than 300 investors gathered at 500 Startups’ Premoney Conference in San Francisco to debate how to unleash the buttoned-down industry.

“The biggest change in venture capital has been increasing the carry from 20% to 30%,” First Round Capital Managing Director Josh Kopelman told the audience, eliciting titters of uncomfortable laughter.

Venture capitalists are getting all warm and fuzzy on us.

Today, First Round Capital announced a new project called the First Round Review — a publishing platform that presents “actionable knowledge” for entrepreneurs. Partner Josh Kopelman described it as a “Harvard Business Review for startups.” While there are plenty of publications out there talking about what startups are doing (present company included), Kopelman said there are fewer stories explaining the how, which is ultimately more valuable for entrepreneurs.

For the July/August issue of Fast Company magazine, our back-page columnist, How To Be Black author, and comedian Baratunde Thurston pulled the plug on his digital life and shared what he discovered. For a primer on that story and what the idea of #Unplug means for the thought leaders who read Fast Company, read editor-in-chief Robert Safian's editor's letter here. Then read all about how Baratunde unplugged for 25 days and why you should, too. Take our quiz to find out just how bad you've got it. Then come back here to load up your tool belt for an unplugging experience of your own.

You could go cold turkey, but you don't have to.