If there's too much "cross-talk" between theright and left sides of your brain, your motor skills are likely to decrease. Seems counterintuitive, but here's how it works.

"Tobacco smoke contains a complex mixture of cancer causing agents. Therefore, a mixture of protective agents is needed to have any beneficial effect in reducing one's chance of lung cancer," says researcher.

In my last blog post, I questioned the financial rationale for a process that extracts oil from waste plastic.

There's another process that sure seems to be the equivalent of "using every part of the pig except the squeal."

I'm all for use of "appropriate" technology in developing countries -- and in developed as well, for that matter.

For example, low-cost nets or tarps are used to collect dew in arid regions (see http://www.treehugger.com/files/2005/04/clean_water_fro.php and http://www.inhabitat.com/2008/06/26/harvest-water-from-the-air-with-fog-dew-collectors/).

While creativity may not apply to accounting or most interpretations of the law, most of us are far more innovative than we give ourselves credit for. So when your own business or personal situation calls for innovation, just call up your creative spirits. Here's how to find them and how to apply them.

1) Have you recently discovered you lacked an ingredient for a cooking recipe or couldn't find a tool to do something, such as prop up a sagging tomato plant or loosen a screw? What did you do?

Three health centers in Massachusetts recently started a pilot program in which families receive coupons redeemable at local farmers' markets. Trying to combat obesity in children of low-income families, the doctors give coupons amounting to $1 a day for each member of a patient's family.

Now consider this quote I found: "America is the only country in the world where the poor people are overweight."

Ok, what's wrong with both these pictures?
What's the solution to making both of them right?

Nikkei Business, May 10, 2010 (page 26)

Lesson: Focus on Service to Customers, Employees and Community instead of Bottom Line and Profits Will Come

(Background) A former auto engineer was called back home to a small town of Kyushu. His family home center store was in a sales crisis and needed help. Right away he decided that the business would be operated based on the community’s needs, and the store became a 24-hour business in 1997. The main store is 18,000 m2 (194,000 ft2), super-sized by Japanese standards.

Here's a fun way to engage your child in reading and thinking creatively about a story's content.

We're inviting all children twelve years old or YOUNGER to share their drawings or other artwork that shows a scene from any of our BioFables stories. There are lots of possibilities, as each of the 50 episodes written so far offers a number of scenes (and lessons) that lend themselves to pictures. Introduction to the series and links to Book 1 (episodes 1-18) at:

http://www.techmanage.net/BioFables/Book1/Intro

The child creator of each artwork that is selected by our panel of judges to be displayed on the related BioFables story page will receive a Beanie Baby as a prize. Win more than once? More Beanie Babies! Each winning art earns a new Beanie Baby.

Nikkei Business, May 10, 2010 (page 24)

Lesson: Data Reveals Waste, Ways to Turn Around a Decline

A bit of background: Mr. Tanijima worked at a small local travel agent owned by his father. He wanted to enter into the lucrative bus transportation business, but that seemed to be an impossible dream because the major bus-rail transportation conglomerates dominated all the bus routes. His first bus business was a school bus for handicapped students in 1980, and then expanded into the tour bus business in 1990. However there were more than 280 tour bus companies in the same prefecture, spurring fierce price wars.

A lot of great material on effective business practices is unavailable in English, going unnoticed by our most of our readers.

Today we're launching a new category to bring you brief summaries or "case studies" that apply directly or indirectly to life sciences. The first story comes from the May 10 issue of Nikkei Business, available only in Japanese.