Fans of "The Sound of Music" will remember the scene in which Liesl, the eldest Von Trapp daughter, radiantly sings "I am 16, going on 17." But in real life, actress Charmian Carr, who played the teenager in the 1965 movie, hasn't felt radiant for the past two decades. Now a grandmother, Carr has long suffered from severe clinical depression. Medications not only failed to help but also produced debilitating side effects.Read more

In 1824, English stone mason Joseph Aspdin invented Portland Cement in his kitchen and patented what has remained the primary material used in concrete ever since. Trouble is, global demand for cement;a $130 billion annual business;is skyrocketing but the process used to make it already produces an estimated 5 percent of the world's man-made carbon dioxide emissions. It took 184 years, but now another English company, Novacem, has come up with a different formula;one that actually absorbs more carbon than it releases.
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Water scarcity is one of the biggest problems on the planet. There isn't enough clean drinking water to go around, yet an estimated 25% to 30% of treated water is lost through leaks in aging distribution networks. Such losses cost water utilities an estimated $14 billion annually, according to the World Bank. Enter TaKaDu, an Israeli start-up.Read more

Israeli start-up Time To Know is out to revolutionize education by building a common operating system and digital core curriculum for schools, radically changing the way teachers and students interact. The company, which has so far won contracts with schools in Israel, Texas and New York, has raised $60 million in funding thanks to one of its backers, Shmuel Meitar, a co-founder of Amdocs, a global customer care and billing software company.
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