Saturday is almost always a sunny day in Boston. Wake up early, put some running shoes and go running along the Charles. You will not feel alone on the 17-mile path that borders the river from the Science museum to Watertown. There is a mileage chart if you want to calculate how far you ran. Now, if you want a more extreme scenery for your run, why not try the Marathon of the "End of the World" ? This year, for its firs edition, 160 persons competed in Ushuaia!

Boston s 8 research universities provide $7B annual boost to the regional economy

A study, mentions in the News section of the MIT web site, explains what the universities provided in year 2000:
- a $7.4 billion boost to the regional economy;
- work for 48,750 university employees and 37,000 other workers in the region, who pay millions of dollars in federal, state and local taxes;
- a talent pool of more than 31,900 graduates, many of whom stay in Boston;
- innovative research that resulted in 264 patents, 280 commercial licenses of technology, and 41 start-up companies

There is currently an increase in funding in the fields of homeland defense security and biomedical research. MIT for example received a large grant to start an Institute for Soldier Nanotechnologies.

Well, what's in the news today? Not much... but for once good news from Switzerland... VC funding is stabilized!