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The U.S. economy rapidly has been becoming more export intensive over the last couple of years, according to a new report from the Brookings Institute — Export Nation 2012: How U.S. Metropolitan Areas Are Driving National Growth. According to the report, U.S.

Save the date! Hosted by the Georgia Research Alliance and the Georgia Institute of Technology, SSTI's 16th Annual Conference will be held at the Georgia Tech Hotel & Conference Center in Atlanta, Georgia on October 29-30, 2012. Atlanta provides an excellent backdrop for SSTI's 16th Annual Conference. Georgia has a vibrant technology community that is using innovative approaches to bring together state and local partnerships to positively impact the economy. The Georgia Tech Hotel and Conference Center is offering SSTI conference participants the exceptional room rate of $159 plus tax.

"In the 2000s, U.S. manufacturing suffered its worst performance in American history in terms of jobs. Not only did America lose 5.7 million manufacturing jobs, but the decline as a share of total manufacturing jobs (33 percent) exceeded the rate of loss in the Great Depression," according to a new report from the Information Technology & Innovation Foundation (ITIF). In Worse Than the Great Depression: What the Experts Are Missing About American Manufacturing Decline, ITIF contends that there is a fundamental flaw in the conventional wisdom regarding U.S. manufacturing job loss.

SSTI's 2012 awards program kicks off May 15 with an open call for applications. The awards showcase initiatives that greatly impact state and regional economies through successful and innovative efforts to: Commercialize and Expand Research Capacity; Increase Access to Capital; Build a Culture of Entrepreneurship; and Improve the Competitiveness of Existing Industries. Entry fees are $75 for SSTI members and $95 for non-members. Applications are due July 17. Learn more about the program and our past recipients: http://www.sstiawards.org/.

Only 42 percent of Americans believe that the U.S. will maintain its dominance in science and technology through 2020, according to a recent survey by Research America. Americans also appear to expect that this change will have dire consequences. Sixty-four percent believe that it is important that the U.S. lead in R&D, and 78 percent believe that S&T leadership is important to U.S. competitiveness. Science, innovation and health ranked above "the environment" and "faith and values" in importance for future presidential debates, according to survey respondents. Read the report...

The U.S. economic crisis spurred more Americans to become entrepreneurs than at any point in the last 16 years, according to the 2011 edition of the Kauffman Foundation's Index of Entrepreneurial Activity. The study found that 320 out of every 100,000 (0.32 percent) adults (individuals between the ages of 20 and 64) in the U.S. started a new business each month in 2011, a 5.9 percent decline from 2010 (0.34 percent), but an increase over the pre-recession period. Many of these new entrepreneurs, however, are not creating new jobs through their startups.

The House approved the Senate amended version of the Jumpstart Our Business Start-ups, or JOBS, Act 380 to 41. Although, the House overwhelmingly approved the bill earlier this month, the House had to accept the Senate's amendments to the crowd funding provision. Crowd funding allows small business and startups to sale small amounts of stock to many individuals through the internet or other means without registering the shares for public trading with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

The U.S. Advanced Manufacturing National Program Office will hold its first workshop to help design a national network of regional manufacturing innovation hubs on April 25 at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, NY. The event will be the first in a series of meetings to gather ideas from industry, academia and government participants on how to best structure the proposed National Network for Manufacturing Innovation.

Despite the attention given to emerging metropolises in the developing world, large U.S. cities will continue to power the global economy over the next 15 years, according to a new report. McKinsey and Company examined the economic performance of the 259 "large" U.S. cities, cities with populations of 150,000 or more. In 2010, these cities generated almost 85 percent of U.S. gross domestic product (GDP), making large cities more important to the U.S. economy than in Asia, Latin America or Western Europe.