It would be unimaginable to create 10 million test tubes per hour. That’s not the case with micro-droplets.

Usually, chemical, biological, and other kinds of experiments are performed in test tubes. This gets very cumbersome when you’re trying to perform thousands of tests while researching disease cures, since each test has to be performed in a separate container.

RainDance Technologies is a startup company that’s changing this. Instead of performing these reactions in test tubes, it allows laboratories to perform them in micro-droplets. This saves space, time, cleanup effort, and eventually costs. It also accelerates the process of finding cures, since a larger number of tests can be done in a smaller amount of time.

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By Anton Pavlov

The other week I wrote about Solixir, an all natural botanical beverage. This weekend, I actually had the chance to try it so I figure I’d share my thoughts with you guys.

First off, there were only two cans of Solixir left when I went to Whole Foods. Both of them were the same flavor – orange mate, which is Solixir’s version of the energy drink. So I grabbed it.

Now, I don’t really drink energy drinks. I don’t feel like I need it, so I wasn’t sure what kind of effect this was going to have on me.

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Written by Anton Pavlov

Today I had a chance to catch up with Jonathan O’Shaughnessy. He’s a serial entrepreneur that has quite a bit of experience with venture capital and angel investing.

Jon is also the founder of Candid Hub, which is a unique wedding service. I learned about Jon’s idea a little while ago and thought it was clever, so I wanted to share it with you guys. Here’s how our conversation went.

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Written by Anton Pavlov

I had a chance to connect with Scott Lerner on Twitter this week. He is the founder of Solixir, a company which created a new all-natural drink for folks that are keeping a healthy lifestyle. I’m a fan of nutrition and healthy products, so this caught my attention.

Scott’s goal was to create a drink that tastes good and does not contain sugar or artificial ingredients. He felt like there was no such product out there, so he decided to create it. I tend to agree with Scott. I’m not a big fan of soda (because of sugar) and diet soda (because of aspartame). So it’s tough to find something refreshing.

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To make a regular clay brick, you have to fire it at a temperature of 2000 degrees Fahrenheit for 1-4 days. That’s an immense amount of energy, which is usually generated by burning fossil fuels. While it releases a lot of CO2, it’s also a very inefficient process.

Calstar Products has developed a new process for manufacturing bricks. They do not use clay and they don’t fire bricks. This allows them to reduce energy usage by up to 90% during the production process. Read the rest of this entry »