WHAT IT TAKES TO BE AN ENTREPRENEUR

The college always seems like the next step after high school graduation. However, there may be better steps for your aspirations. If you are looking to go into business, you may do better focusing in right away on your unique ideas! Read more here!

Entrepreneur educates…

In the startup universe, college can be a distraction. Just ask Peter Thiel, co-founder and former CEO of PayPal and an early investor in Facebook.

At the end of May, Thiel announced the first “20 Under 20″ Thiel Fellows: Out of more than 400 applicants, he picked two dozen of the best (accepting four more than originally planned) to receive a $100,000 grant, access to a network of about a hundred high-profile mentors and two full years to begin turning their business hopes into reality.

There’s just one condition: You can’t be enrolled in college at the same time.

The best part? There’s no pressure to pay it all back. “We’re not taking equity in any business,” says Thiel. “Most of the time people are constrained by money and social expectations to do things very quickly. … But buying people a few years encourages them to tackle bigger problems.”

College is a distraction?

It’s become something of one, because young people coming out of college are saddled with student loans, which start tracking them into careers that pay well but are ultimately not going to help our country and our civilization.

So you don’t think entrepreneurship can be taught?

You can’t teach people a specific way to change things for the better. I don’t believe people can become entrepreneurs as an aspirational thing. It’s like saying you want to be rich and famous when you grow up–it’s too abstract. The motivation is what’s important. There should be a problem you want to solve, and in the process of solving it, you might have to become an entrepreneur.

Really, no specific goals?

My hope is that all of these ventures will succeed, but in the long term, creating friendships and relationships is how you build something of lasting value. I have been involved in hundreds of businesses as an investor or advisor over the years, and I’m very optimistic that this is where we should focus.

Officially–does age matter?

My view is that there’s no time that’s the right time to be an entrepreneur. You don’t have to be young or old, or have experience or be fresh. People can become an entrepreneur at any point in their lives. What matters is you have an idea or potential business that has the possibility to change the world.

HOW THIS CELL PHONE APP STAYS NO. 1

Do you play Angry Birds? Have you at least heard of the application? If you have not, you are missing out. It is a worldwide cell phone gaming phenomenon. Find out how the creators have kept their game in the Number 1 selling spot!

INC breaks the story…

Niklas Hed is co-founder of Rovio Mobile, the Finnish company behind the hit smartphone app Angry Birds. The game, released in December 2009, has been downloaded more than 200 million times.

In May of last year, Angry Birds finally became the best-selling app in the United States. Slash from Guns N’ Roses later tweeted, “Angry Birds is like a drug, only cheaper.” I listened to their music a lot as a kid, so I thought, If he says that, now I actually believe it.

When we released Angry Birds, we started getting fan mail saying, “I love the game, but please, please, please, make more levels.” So one of the first objectives was to make more levels. And they started complaining again to make more levels. We kept getting the same message. We had about 60 levels when we first released it. Now we have, like, 300.

If you like something, and it’s all the same all the time, you will get bored. We try to keep coming up with fresh new content in different forms. It might be a different game, or it might be a movie. If there is an update coming out, we think about what kind of toys we should have to include with that. We have loads of ideas for other characters, but the existing ones want to be in the spotlight. Angry Birds is going to be on every platform out there.

I’m not getting comfortable. I know how fragile the gaming business is. On one day, you can be No. 1, and the second day, you’re gone. There were a few times that we lost the No. 1 position, and I have to admit, I don’t like that. At all.

Seat Belts - Compulsory

As you are aware every person travelling in the driving seat or the front passenger seat of every Motor Vehicle specified

in the Gazette attached hereto shall be required to wear a seat belt with effect from 1st October 2011.
The provisions of these regulations shall not apply to–

(a) Persons whose height does not exceed of 1.5 meters;
(b) Persons who are exempted from wearing a body restraining seat belt on the recommendation of a Registered Medical Practitioner.
(c) The drivers of vehicles, while performing manoeuvres which include reversing;
(d) Any person holding a valid Medical Certificate substantially in the form specified in Schedule II to these regulations,
signed by a registered medical practitioner stating that it is medically inadvisable for such person to wear a seat belt.

This medical certificate shall be first registered at the RMV.

Any person who contravenes these provisions of these regulations shall be guilty of an offense and shall on
conviction be liable to the penalty specified in section 224 of the Motor Traffic Act,

Penalty would be        1st conviction        fine not less that 1,000/ and not more than 2,000/
                       2nd conviction        fine not less that 2,000/ and not more than 3,000/
                       3rd conviction        fine not less that 3,500/ and cancellation of the driving license

'Invisible' World Discovered: Planet Alternately Runs Late and Early in Its Orbit, Tugged by Second Hidden World

The "invisible" world Kepler-19c, seen in the foreground of this artist's conception, was discovered solely through its gravitational influence on the companion world Kepler-19b - the dot crossing the star's face. Kepler-19b is slightly more than twice the diameter of Earth, and is probably a "mini-Neptune." Nothing is known about Kepler-19c, other than that it exists. (Credit: David A. Aguilar (CfA))

Science Daily  — Usually, running five minutes late is a bad thing since you might lose your dinner reservation or miss out on tickets to the latest show. But when a planet runs five minutes late, astronomers get excited because it suggests that another world is nearby.

"This invisible planet makes itself known by its influence on the planet we can see," said astronomer Sarah Ballard of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA). Ballard is lead author on the study, which has been accepted for publication in The Astrophysical Journal.

NASA's Kepler spacecraft has spotted a planet that alternately runs late and early in its orbit because a second, "invisible" world is tugging on it. This is the first definite detection of a previously unknown planet using this method. No other technique could have found the unseen companion.

"It's like having someone play a prank on you by ringing your doorbell and running away. You know someone was there, even if you don't see them when you get outside," she added.

Both the seen and unseen worlds orbit the Sun-like star Kepler-19, which is located 650 light-years from Earth in the constellation Lyra. The 12th-magnitude star is well placed for viewing by backyard telescopes on September evenings.

Kepler locates planets by looking for a star that dims slightly as a planet transits the star, passing across the star's face from our point of view. Transits give one crucial piece of information -- the planet's physical size. The greater the dip in light, the larger the planet relative to its star. However, the planet and star must line up exactly for us to see a transit.

The first planet, Kepler-19b, transits its star every 9 days and 7 hours. It orbits the star at a distance of 8.4 million miles, where it is heated to a temperature of about 900 degrees Fahrenheit. Kepler-19b has a diameter of 18,000 miles, making it slightly more than twice the size of Earth. It may resemble a "mini-Neptune," however its mass and composition remain unknown.

If Kepler-19b were alone, each transit would follow the next like clockwork. Instead, the transits come up to five minutes early or five minutes late. Such transit timing variations show that another world's gravity is pulling on Kepler-19b, alternately speeding it up or slowing it down.

Historically, the planet Neptune was discovered similarly. Astronomers tracking Uranus noticed that its orbit didn't match predictions. They realized that a more distant planet might be nudging Uranus and calculated the expected location of the unseen world. Telescopes soon observed Neptune near its predicted position.

"This method holds great promise for finding planets that can't be found otherwise," stated Harvard astronomer and co-author David Charbonneau.

So far, astronomers don't know anything about the invisible world Kepler-19c, other than that it exists. It weighs too little to gravitationally tug the star enough for them to measure its mass. And Kepler hasn't detected it transiting the star, suggesting that its orbit is tilted relative to Kepler-19b.

"Kepler-19c has multiple personalities consistent with our data. For instance, it could be a rocky planet on a circular 5-day orbit, or a gas-giant planet on an oblong 100-day orbit," said co-author Daniel Fabrycky of the University of California, Santa Cruz (UCSC).

The Kepler spacecraft will continue to monitor Kepler-19 throughout its mission. Those additional data will help nail down the orbit of Kepler-19c. Future ground-based instruments like HARPS-North will attempt to measure the mass of Kepler-19c. Only then will we have a clue to the nature of this invisible world.

New Material Shows Promise for Trapping Pollutants

Graduate student Honghan Fei holds a sample of SLUG-26, a new material developed by Fei and chemist Scott Oliver. (Credit: Photos by T. Stephens.)

Science Daily  — Water softening techniques are very effective for removing minerals such as calcium and magnesium, which occur as positively-charged ions in "hard" water. But many heavy metals and other inorganic pollutants form negatively-charged ions in water, and existing water treatment processes to remove them are inefficient and expensive.

---

Chemists at the University of California, Santa Cruz, have now developed a new type of material that can soak up negatively-charged pollutants from water. The new material, which they call SLUG-26, could be used to treat polluted water through an ion exchange process similar to water softening. In a water softener, sodium ions weakly attached to a negatively-charged resin are exchanged for the hard-water minerals, which are held more tightly by the resin. SLUG-26 provides a positively-charged substrate that can exchange a nontoxic negative ion for the negatively-charged pollutants.

"Our goal for the past 12 years has been to make materials that can trap pollutants, and we finally got what we wanted. The data show that the exchange process works," said Scott Oliver, associate professor of chemistry at UC Santa Cruz.

The chemical name for SLUG-26 is copper hydroxide ethanedisulfonate. It has a layered structure of positively-charged two-dimensional sheets with a high capacity for holding onto negative ions. Oliver and UCSC graduate student Honghan Fei described the compound in a paper that will be published in the journal Angewandte Chemie and is currently available online.

The researchers are currently focusing on the use of SLUG-26 to trap the radioactive metal technetium, which is a major concern for long-term disposal of radioactive waste. Technetium is produced in nuclear reactors and has a long half-life of 212,000 years. It forms the negative ion pertechnetate in water and can leach out of solid waste, making groundwater contamination a serious concern.

"It's a problem because of its environmental mobility, so they need new ways to trap it," Oliver said.

In their initial studies, the researchers used manganese, which forms the negative ion permanganate, as a non-radioactive analog for technetium and pertechnetate. The next step will be to work with technetium and see if SLUG-26 performs as effectively as it did in the initial studies.

"Whether or not it can be used in the real world is still to be seen, but so far it looks very promising," Oliver said.

This research was supported by the National Science Foundation.

New Cellular Surprise May Help Scientists Better Understand Human Mitochondrial Diseases

A new study involving CU-Boulder and UC-Davis may help scientists better understand mitochondrial diseases and conditions. (Credit: NIH)

Science Daily  — A surprising new discovery by the University of Colorado Boulder and the University of California, Davis regarding the division of tiny "power plants" within cells known as mitochondria has implications for better understanding a wide variety of human diseases and conditions due to mitochondrial defects.

Voeltz and her colleagues showed that the division of the mitochondria within cells is tied to the point or points where they are physically touching the endoplasmic reticulum in both yeast and mammalian cells. "This is the first time one cell organelle has been shown to shape another," said Voeltz of CU's molecular, cellular and developmental biology department.Led by CU-Boulder Assistant Professor Gia Voeltz and her team in collaboration with the UC-Davis team led by Professor Jodi Nunnari, the researchers analyzed factors that regulate the behavior of mitochondria, sausage-shaped organelles within cells that contain their own DNA and provide cells with the energy to move and divide. The dynamics of mitochondrion were intimately tied to another cell organelle known as the endoplasmic reticulum, which is a complex network of sacs and tubules that makes proteins and fats.A paper on the study was published in the Sept. 2 issue of the journal Science. Co-authors on the study included CU-Boulder graduate student Jonathan Friedman, researcher Matthew West and senior Jared DiBenedetto and UC-Davis postdoctoral researcher Laura Lackner.

Enclosed by membranes, mitochondria vary vastly in numbers per individual cells depending on the organism and tissue type, according to the researchers. While some single-cell organisms contain only a single mitochondrion, a human liver cell can contain up to 2,000 mitochondria and take up nearly one-quarter of the cell space.

Since numerous human diseases are associated with mitochondrial dysfunction, it is important to understand how the division process is regulated, said Voeltz.

Mitochondrial defects have been linked to a wide range of degenerative conditions and diseases, including diabetes, cardiovascular disease and stroke. "Our studies suggest the possibility that human mitochondrial diseases could result from disruption or excessive contact between the endoplasmic reticulum and the mitochondria."

Previous work, including research in Nunnari's lab at UC-Davis, has shown that mitochondrial division is regulated by a protein known as "dynamine-related protein-1" that assembles into a noose-like ligature that tightens around individual mitochondrion, causing it to divide. The team found that several additional proteins linked to mitochondrial division also were found where the endoplasmic reticulum and mitochondria touched.

"The new function for the endoplasmic reticulum expands and transforms our view of cell organization," said Nunnari, a professor and chair of molecular cell biology at UC-Davis. "It's a paradigm shift in cell biology."

The study was funded by the National Institutes of Health, the Searle Scholar Program and CU-Boulder. CU-Boulder's Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program and Bioscience Undergraduate Research Skills and Training program funded the research by DiBenedetto.

Nanosensors Made from DNA May Light Path to New Cancer Tests and Drugs

A structure-switching nanosensor made from DNA (blue and purple) detects a specific transcription factor (green). Using these nanosensors, a team of researchers from UCSB has demonstrated the detection of transcription factors directly in cellular extracts. The researchers believe that their strategies will allow biologists to monitor the activity of thousands of transcription factors, leading to a better understanding of the mechanisms underlying cell division and development. (Credit: Peter Allen)

Science Daily  — Sensors made from custom DNA molecules could be used to personalize cancer treatments and monitor the quality of stem cells, according to an international team of researchers led by scientists at UC Santa Barbara and the University of Rome Tor Vergata.

The new nanosensors can quickly detect a broad class of proteins called transcription factors, which serve as the master control switches of life. The research is described in an article published in Journal of the American Chemical Society.

"The fate of our cells is controlled by thousands of different proteins, called transcription factors," said Alexis Vallée-Bélisle, a postdoctoral researcher in UCSB's Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, who led the study. "The role of these proteins is to read the genome and translate it into instructions for the synthesis of the various molecules that compose and control the cell. Transcription factors act a little bit like the 'settings' of our cells, just like the settings on our phones or computers. What our sensors do is read those settings."

When scientists take stem cells and turn them into specialized cells, they do so by changing the levels of a few transcription factors, he explained. This process is called cell reprogramming. "Our sensors monitor transcription factor activities, and could be used to make sure that stem cells have been properly reprogrammed," said Vallée-Bélisle. "They could also be used to determine which transcription factors are activated or repressed in a patient's cancer cells, thus enabling physicians to use the right combination of drugs for each patient."

Andrew Bonham, a postdoctoral scholar at UCSB and co-first author of the study, explained that many labs have invented ways to read transcription factors; however, this team's approach is very quick and convenient. "In most labs, researchers spend hours extracting the proteins from cells before analyzing them," said Bonham. "With the new sensors, we just mash the cells up, put the sensors in, and measure the level of fluorescence of the sample."

This international research effort -- organized by senior authors Kevin Plaxco, professor in UCSB's Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, and Francesco Ricci, professor at the University of Rome, Tor Vergata -- started when Ricci realized that all of the information necessary to detect transcription factor activities is already encrypted in the human genome, and could be used to build sensors. "Upon activation, these thousands of different transcription factors bind to their own specific target DNA sequence," said Ricci. "We use these sequences as a starting point to build our new nanosensors."

The key breakthrough underlying this new technology came from studies of the natural biosensors inside cells. "All creatures, from bacteria to humans, monitor their environments using 'biomolecular switches' -- shape-changing molecules made from RNA or proteins," said Plaxco. "For example, in our sinuses, there are millions of receptor proteins that detect different odor molecules by switching from an 'off state' to an 'on state.' The beauty of these switches is that they are small enough to operate inside a cell, and specific enough to work in the very complex environments found there."

Inspired by the efficiency of these natural nanosensors, the research group teamed with Norbert Reich, also a professor in UCSB's Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, to build synthetic switching nanosensors using DNA, rather than proteins or RNA.

Specifically, the team re-engineered three naturally occurring DNA sequences, each recognizing a different transcription factor, into molecular switches that become fluorescent when they bind to their intended targets. Using these nanometer-scale sensors, the researchers could determine transcription factor activity directly in cellular extracts by simply measuring their fluorescence level.

The researchers believe that this strategy will ultimately allow biologists to monitor the activation of thousands of transcription factors, leading to a better understanding of the mechanisms underlying cell division and development. "Alternatively, since these nanosensors work directly in biological samples, we also believe that they could be used to screen and test new drugs that could, for example, inhibit transcription-factor binding activity responsible for the growth of tumor cells," said Plaxco.

This work was funded by the National Institute of Health, the Fond Québécois de la Recherche sur la Nature et les Technologies, the Italian Ministry of University and Research (MIUR) project "Futuro in Ricerca," and the Tri-County Blood Bank Santa Barbara Foundation

Australopithecine Stakes a Claim as Humanity's Earliest Ancestor

By Clay Dillow

Au. sediba Skull Reconstruction Dr Kristian Carlson, courtesy of the University of the Witwatersrand

Not so fast, Homo habilis. The australopithecine currently viewed as one of the earliest human ancestors may have just been pushed to the evolutionary backseat. A new analysis of another australopithecine, Australopithecus sediba, has revealed that sediba is not only the most human-like australopithecine found to date, but that it’s so similar it might just be the ancestorfrom which early humans evolved.

Australopithecus sediba fossils were first located in 2008 in South Africa, but they were identified as having come too late in the fossil record to have pre-dated the Homo line from whence modern humans came. But a series of five papers appearing in tomorrow’s edition of the journal Science reveal loads of new analysis on sediba, including the fact that it did in fact predate Homo erectus and also that important elements of its anatomy are remarkably similar to those of modern humans.

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TAGS

Science, Clay Dillow, australopithecines, early humans, EVOLUTION, human ancestors, human ancestry

Sediba lived nearly 2 million years ago, predatingHomo erectus by roughly 77,000 years. And the new analysis shows the brain, pelvis, hands, and feet of sediba resemble modern humans far moreso than Homo habilis and other candidate ancestors.

Particularly telling is the brain: by mapping the contours of the skull’s interior, researchers can rebuild a model of sediba’s grey matter, and what they found is that even though the brain had not yet expanded as it later would, the frontal lobes--the source of abstract reasoning and cognitive function--were already more human-like. That finding suggest the neurological changes that paved the way for the modern human brain may have begun before the brain enlarged.

The hands and feet indicate that sediba both climbed trees and walked upright, and its hands are capable of tool use (though it seems unclear at this point if sediba was a toolmaker). And the pelvis is seriously human-like as well--which says a lot about the similarities between howsediba walked and how we walk (and give birth, for that matter).

All of that means that sediba is more similar to us than even Homo habilis, the species that up until now was the front-runner for “earliest human ancestor” status. Sediba could be the bridge between the many australopithecines and Homo erectus. Bad news for Homo habilis, but good news for the human family tree.

[Science Express via Economist]

New Social Network Connects People Based on Gastrointestinal Bacteria

By Dan Nosowitz

MyMicrobes MyMicrobes

A German nonprofit, called MyMicrobes, is hoping you'll want to get your gut bacteria's genomes sequenced. It's expensive, but you'll get access to one of the most exclusive social networks around, where people worldwide can, um, talk about their gastrointestinal difficulties with like-minded people. Two grand seems cheap when we put it like that!

Actually, MyMicrobes does sound like an interesting project, even if we have a visceral reaction to any new social network or even the phrase social network or really anything relating to social networks that doesn't star Justin Timberlake. Peer Bork, a biochemist at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory in Heidelberg, Germany, is behind MyMicrobes. It's expensive to start--it'll cost about $2,100 to get your gut bacteria sequenced, which involves mailing a fecal sample to Germany (seriously). That's expensive compared to, say, 23andMe, which is inclined to host crazy sales even despite the cheap entry fee. But apparently the gut bacteria is a much trickier genome to sequence than the human, with a few billion more lines of DNA to decipher.

In any case, MyMicrobes is hoping to create a social network so as to gather as much data as possible from folks actually suffering from gastrointestinal disorders. They estimate they'll need about 5,000 applicants before they can really glean meaningful data out of the social network, which may be difficult due to the cost. Still, it's definitely a one-of-a-kind project, and if you love talking about the intricacies of your gut, there aren't a ton of places to do it.

[Nature]

Google Releases its Energy Consumption Numbers, Revealing a 260 Million Watt Continuous Suck

By Clay Dillow

Just Look at All Those Cables There must be like a billion watts in there. sugree via Flickr

After years of playing such numbers extremely close to the vest, Google today released figures spelling out exactly how much electricity the company’s massive computing resources consume. Its data centers continuously draw 260 million watts--roughly a quarter the output of a nuclear power plant, says the NYT--to keep services like Gmail, search, Google Ads, and YouTube up and running around the clock and around the globe.

How does that translate? Google also estimated that its total carbon emissions for 2010 were just below 1.5 million metric tons. Not all of Google’s electricity comes from carbon resources--a quarter comes from renewable fuels like wind, thanks to some deals the company has made with utilities--but that’s still some decent tonnage.

Still, Google argues that its consumption really isn’t so bad. Its data centers carry out billions of operations--a billion searches per day alone--and many of those save fuel. Google searches save trips to the library or the travel agent, for instance, offsetting the power consumed by its processing farms. And when you break it down it’s not so bad, considering the vast numbers of people using Google’s services. The company said an average user consumes just 180-watt hours per month, which roughly equates to running a 60-watt light bulb for three hours.

And how does that power usage break down? Google apparently didn’t detail every last watt, but it did say that search queries only burn 12.5 million of those 260 million watts. As for the other quarter billion, it’s probably a pretty even split between Gchat and Rebecca Black.

[NYT]