Seeking Autism’s Biochemical Roots

Seeking Autism’s Biochemical Roots

MARCH 24, 2014

Claudia Dreifus

The biochemist Ricardo E. Dolmetsch has pioneered a major shift in autism research, largely putting aside behavioral questions to focus on cell biology and biochemistry. Read more of this post

Ripples From the Big Bang: The telescopic discovery of gravitational waves believed to have been left from the origin of the universe will reverberate for years to come

Ripples From the Big Bang

MARCH 24, 2014

Dennis Overbye

CAMBRIDGE, MASS. — When scientists jubilantly announced last week that a telescope at the South Pole had detected ripples in space from the very beginning of time, the reverberations went far beyond the potential validation of astronomers’ most cherished model of the Big Bang. Read more of this post

Is the World More Depressed?

Is the World More Depressed?

MARCH 24, 2014

T. M. Luhrmann

I’VE been in and out of India for years, but on a recent visit to Chennai, in the state of Tamil Nadu, it seemed that suicide and depression had become part of the social conversation in a way that was once taboo. Read more of this post

The first law of website design is that the owners of a company usually hate their new site within 24 months

MARCH 24, 2014, 7:00 AM  2 Comments

Why I Redesigned My Website

By JOSH PATRICK

Are you getting the most out of your business?

As soon as you finish your new website’s design, it’s time to start figuring out how to change it. At least, that’s how it has always been for me. But this time around I actually had a good reason. Read more of this post

What the Wolves of Wall Street can teach us about risk; Simplifying the financial system is the only durable way to minimise risk

What the Wolves of Wall Street can teach us about risk

Simplifying the financial system is the only durable way to minimise risk

“What a commentary on the state of twentieth-century capitalism,” mused “motivational speaker” Jordan Belfort as he looked back on his life of fraud, sex, and drugs. As head of the brokerage firm Stratton Oakmont, he fleeced investors of hundreds of millions of dollars in the early 1990’s. I saw Martin Scorsese’s film The Wolf of Wall Street and was sufficiently intrigued to read Belfort’s memoir, on which the screenplay is based. I learned quite a lot. Read more of this post

The real story behind smarter working in a small business; Hannah Godfrey interviews Simon Duffy, the co-founder of men’s skincare brand Bulldog, to see how a small business can effectively implement a smarter working strategy

The real story behind smarter working in a small business

Hannah Godfrey interviews Simon Duffy, the co-founder of men’s skincare brand Bulldog, to see how a small business can effectively implement a smarter working strategy.

Hannah Godfrey

theguardian.com, Monday 24 March 2014 10.19 GMT

There is a real art to making a small business work, according to Simon Duffy, co-founder of the men’s skincare brand Bulldog. All entrepreneurs have heard about the importance of the great idea, they know that a successful entrepreneur must have an unshakable confidence is his or her project and value hard grind. All these things are important, but, Duffy believes, if you don’t also have the humility to see that you are not the best person to do everything, then your project is likely to flounder. Read more of this post

The Heretic’s Guide to Getting More Done: Daydream as often as you want; Spend less time on key decisions; Be more “mindful” than focused

The Heretic’s Guide to Getting More Done

by David Brendel  |   1:00 PM March 24, 2014

Are you working endlessly but not accomplishing all you want? Mystified that continuous attention to work is not resulting in satisfactory progress toward your goals? So focused on work that you’re not thinking about or doing much else? If so, you may not be giving your brain the benefit of adequate downtime. A recent article in Scientific American, Why Your Brain Needs More Downtime, summarizes the evidence that “mental breaks increase productivity, replenish attention, solidify memories, and encourage creativity.” Read more of this post

What do you think are the ideas that have had the biggest, positive impact on people’s lives over the last 30 or 40 years? Author of “The Upside of Down,” Charles Kenny, talks to Ezra Klein about how the world is getting much, much better

Author of “The Upside of Down,” Charles Kenny, talks to Ezra Klein about how the world is getting much, much better.

Ezra Klein: What have we made progress in that people don’t always recognize? Give me the optimistic view of the world over the last 50 years.

Charles: It’s almost easier to tell you what isn’t getting better. Life expectancy has gone up worldwide. Child mortality has shot down. The number of kids who die before the age of five has halved worldwide in the last 20 years. The number of people dying of violence — either on the battlefield or from domestic violence or from murder — is dropping pretty much worldwide. Last year there wasn’t a single declared interstate war. The number of countries that are democratic has been increasing. The number of countries that really respect their civil political rights more generally going up. If you look at beer consumption it’s been going up worldwide. Read more of this post

How A 34-Year-Old With No Experience In Food Science Convinced Investors To Give Him $30 Million To Make Eggs Obsolete

How A 34-Year-Old With No Experience In Food Science Convinced Investors To Give Him $30 Million To Make Eggs Obsolete

JAY YAROW TECH  MAR. 25, 2014, 8:35 AM

Hampton Creek, a startup that’s creating plant-based alternatives to eggs, announced $23 million in funding last month.

That brings the total funding to $30 million from investors. Asia’s richest man, Li-Ka Shing, is an investor. As is the world’s richest man, Bill Gates. It also has investment from Yahoo founder Jerry Yang, Khosla Ventures, and the Founders Fund.  Read more of this post

7 Books Every Leader Should Read, According To A Harvard Business School Professor

7 Books Every Leader Should Read, According To A Harvard Business School Professor

FARNAM STREET STRATEGY  MAR. 24, 2014, 10:40 PM

Max Bazerman, a business psychology professor at Harvard Business School and the author of the best book on general decision making that I’ve ever read, “Judgment in Managerial Decision Making,” came out with 7 book recommendations.

I hadn’t heard of two of these, which I picked up. Read more of this post

The Art and Science of Negotiation; Raiffa provides insight into how to think systematically in a world where you cannot count on the other side to do so

The Art and Science of Negotiation [Paperback]

Howard Raiffa (Author)

Book Description

Release date: April 14, 1985 | ISBN-10: 067404813X | ISBN-13: 978-0674048133 | Edition: Reprint

Whether you are selling a house, closing a business deal, settling a divorce, arbitrating a labor dispute, or trying to hammer out an international treaty, Howard Raiffa’s new book will measurably improve your negotiating skills. Read more of this post

Moral Tribes: Emotion, Reason, and the Gap Between Us and Them“

Moral Tribes: Emotion, Reason, and the Gap Between Us and Them [Hardcover]

Joshua Greene (Author)

Book Description

Release date: October 31, 2013 | ISBN-10: 1594202605 | ISBN-13: 978-1594202605

The Boston Globe
“Surprising and remarkable… Toggling between big ideas, technical details, and his personal intellectual journey, Greene writes a thesis suitable to both airplane reading and PhD seminars.” Read more of this post

Eyewitness To Power: The Essence of Leadership Nixon to Clinton

Eyewitness To Power: The Essence of Leadership Nixon to Clinton Paperback

by David Gergen (Author)

Leadership: The Ultimate Guide
Few Americans have observed the ups and downs of presidential leadership more closely over the past thirty years — from Nixon to Clinton and Watergate to Whitewater — than David Gergen. A White House adviser to four presidents, both Republican and Democrat, he offers a vivid, behind-the-scenes account of their struggles to exercise power and draws from them key lessons for leaders of the future. Taking us inside the administrations of Nixon, Ford, Reagan, and Clinton, Gergen reflects on everything from why Nixon was the best global strategist among recent presidents to how the Bill-and-Hillary seesaw rocked the White House during Clinton’s tenure as president.  Read more of this post