California Passes "Dream Act"

California Governor Jerry Brown signed into law on Monday a bill allowing illegal immigrants to receive privately funded scholarships to attend the state's public colleges and universities. The bill, dubbed the California Dream Act, passed the state Legislature earlier this month and aims at helping illegal immigrants who earned a diploma after attending at least three years of high school in the state.

"At the end of the day, if we're going to continue as a powerful, equal-opportunity society, we're going to have to invest in our people," Brown, a Democrat, said at the signing ceremony in the library of a Los Angeles community college.

Continue »

Coworking's Latest Backer: City Government

It's no surprise that the mayor of Santa Cruz, California--just a short ride over the mountains to Silicon Valley--is also a budding entrepreneur. But his first project is more curious. The mayor and the city's former economic development manager have launched a successful coworking startup as a way to attract jobs to Santa Cruz. It's another major feather in the cap of the growing co-working movement.

The startup, dubbed NextSpace, just opened its fourth location in California and recently closed a $700,000 investment round. Why is a mayor getting involved in coworking? "We're an expensive area that doesn't have an airport, and that makes it hard to attract companies," says Ryan Coonerty, co-founder of NextSpace and mayor of Santa Cruz. "We realized after chasing a lot of companies that instead of attracting one 200 person business, we should attract 200 one-person businesses. The economic impact is bigger,  and some of those businesses will grow."

Continue »

The Next Generation Of Turbines Go Underwater, And They're Coming Soon

Every day, enough water flows down America's rivers and streams to power tens of millions of homes. With the era of big dams effectively over in the U.S., halted by the lack of suitable sites as much as environmental concerns, the time for hydrokinetic energy may just be dawning.  

The ideas of using turbines, or other mechanical devices, to capture the energy of moving water is not a new one. Yet the technology for such hydrokinetic energy has met serious resistance from conditions below the surface. As water is 832 times denser than air, it poses tough engineering challenges for power generators who must contend with corrosion, stray electromagnetic fields, and rules to safeguard sealife.  

Continue »