Customer service, tech support…these days we outsource everything to India.

Surrogate motherhood once was limited in India to helping close relatives who couldn’t complete a pregnancy due to medical difficulties. But now, poor Indian women are renting out their wombs to foreigners. Leading gynecologist Dr. Kamla Selvaraj says it’s now becoming a regular “profession” in India, with more and more women willing to carry babies for others, for a fee. India has for years been providing foreigners with in-vitro fertilization (IVF) treatment at a cheaper rate than the equivalent services in Western countries. While a couple in the U.S. will generally pay tens of thousands of dollars to a surrogate mother and affiliated agencies, in India the cost could be around $5,000, plus medical and attendant costs. If you haven’t seen the episode on Oprah, here you go.

Turn That Sick Frown Into A Healthy Smile

With the long hours most of us put in at the office these days, spending more time at your desk means a greater chance of germ build-up–and illness. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the cold season typically lasts anywhere from late December through March, but peaks in February. We’ve heard plenty of antibacterial products promising to keep our homes and offices cleaner. But do they really work? Just how effective are these products in preventing the spread of germs, and ultimately, illness?

Entrepreneur Magazine consulted with Dr. Charles P. Gerba from the University of Arizona at Tucson to get the truth about germs in the workplace. Gerba has learned that many factors go into creating a germy office–from office location to gender to occupation. From his studies, Gerba has discovered that in most work environments, offices and cubicles have higher bacteria levels than surfaces in common areas. What spot in your office space is friendliest to germs? Telephones topped the charts in most offices across the United States, followed by desks and computer keyboards.

Here’s the average number of bacteria per surface:

Phone: 25,127

Desk: 20,961

Keyboard:  3,295

Mouse:  1,676

Fax Machine:  301

Copy Machine:  69

Men’s Toilet Seat: 49

According to Gerba, East Coast offices win the germiest title, hands-down. “The dirtiest offices are on the East Coast since people are in larger buildings and tend to bring food to their desks more often,” Gerba says. “East Coasters also tend to spend more time indoors due to the bad weather.” Which Eastern city tops the charts as being the best environment for bacteria to grow? Gerba says that New York is Germ City, with Chicago coming in a close second. On the other hand, the cleanest offices can be found in San Francisco and Tucson, Arizona.

Interesting Facts:

• Women’s offices were nearly three times higher than in men’s offices. 
• Men’s wallets were the single germiest item in any office

 How To Keep Yourself From Catching Anything

• Wipe down your desk and surrounding items with a disinfecting wipe once a week.
• Keep a hand sanitizer at your desk and use it throughout the day.
• If you tend to eat at your desk on a regular basis, think again–this behavior is inviting bacteria to grow at your fingertips.
• Wash coffee mugs and glasses on a regular basis.
• If you’re sick, don’t go to work.

I’ll just land my space craft on the dark side of the moon.

Having conquered cyberspace, Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin have set their sights on the moon. They have arranged for their Mountain View company to fund the Lunar X Prize, a competition that will award $20 million to the first team that lands a private unmanned spacecraft on the moon - and broadcasts high-definition video back to earth. In a video statement prepared for Thursday’s announcement, Brin said he had been interested in space exploration as a kid and began following it more recently as his peers - technology geeks who had grown rich off the Internet - turned their attention to space. 

With space travel in the not-so-far future, this places space education as a high priority. The team at the Lunar X Prize has prepared free learning guides, videos and other resources to help stimulate student interest not only in space but in math, science and technology as well.  The X Prize Foundation, founded by Peter Diamandis, a medical doctor with a degree in genetics from MIT, completed its first competition in 2004, awarding $10 million to Burt Rutan, an aircraft designer, and Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, after they successfully built an aircraft that flew 100 kilometers into space twice in two weeks.

A good night’s sleep just takes too long.

Scientists may soon be able to cut those eight wasted hours down to three or four. The technique, transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS), involves an electromagnetic coil that emits pulses of skull-penetrating, neuron-activating magnetic energy. Depending on where the wand is and how fast it pulses, TMS can play all kinds of tricks. It can make a thumb twitch, create the illusion of a flash of light, or even treat depression. Hmm…. could it make you rob a bank?

Neuroscientist Giulio Tononi of the University of Wisconsin set out to see if TMS could switch on certain sleep phases. Working with 16 sleeping men, Tononi and his team located a spot on the skull that they could zap to induce the brain waves characteristic of deep, non-REM sleep. Although Tononi’s volunteers got only a few minutes of artificial sleep—not enough for the volunteers to draw meaningful subjective conclusions about sleep quality—previous studies have indicated that TMS applied at certain frequencies during sleep can improve memory. Imagine 15 hour workdays if this became the norm.

“You will be able to browse into the sky like never before”

After turning millions of Internet users into virtual explorers of the world with Google Earth, the Internet search giant is now hoping to turn many of them into virtual stargazers. Google is unveiling within Google Earth today a new service called Sky that will allow users to fly around and zoom in, exposing increasingly detailed imagery of some 100 million stars and 200 million galaxies. The Sky imagery was stitched together from more than one million photographs from scientific and academic sources, including the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, the Palomar Observatory at the California Institute of Technology and the NASA-financed Hubble. Google said that it developed the project strictly because some of its engineers were interested in it, and that it had no plans to make money from it for now.Microsoft has a research project called the World Wide Telescope that offers similar capabilities to Sky. The project was once headed by Jim Gray, the veteran Microsoft researcher who disappeared this year after a sailing trip off San Francisco Bay.

Pass This On To Your Spouse, Friends, Whoever Makes Household Decisions

• Switch your incandescent bulbs for compact florescent light bulbs. It can save you 50% a year on your lighting bill. If every household in the country did this, it would cut the same amount of greenhouse gas as removing 8 million cars a year from the road.
• Buy local produce. Shipping produce can drive up prices. Buying foods in season from local farmer’s markets and roadside stands not only improves quality, but cuts cost. Go to LocalHarvest.org to find a market in your area. Helps keep gas-guzzling trucks off the road.
• Install a programmable thermostat. Homeowners can save more than $100 a year on their energy bills by installing a programmable thermostat. If 1 out of every 10 U.S. households used programmable thermostats, it would eliminate 17 billion pounds of greenhouse gases.
• Choose Energy Star appliances. Energy Star appliances use up to 50% less energy compared with other home appliances. Using them saved American consumers $14 billion on their utility bills last year. Last year the use of energy-efficient appliances cut greenhouse gas emissions as much as removing 25 million cars from the road.
• Pay bills online. Other than those $0.41 cent stamps adding up, some companies are starting to charge additional fees for processing paper bills ranging from $0.99 to $2. Paying online allows you to bypass these fees and minimizes the chance of identity theft. Not only does it eliminate clutter, you can also save trees!

Start making a stand to protect your earth and wallet.

Three to Five Years Old: The Most Powerful Age To Manipulate Future Fast Food Junkies

A new study is reporting that very young children are highly susceptible to the daily onslaught of branded fast food advertising: “most 3- and 5-year-olds who taste-tested a variety of foods said they preferred the ones in the McDonald’s wrapper — even though the foods were exactly the same.” It didn’t matter whether the food was a chicken nugget from Mickey D’s or carrots and milk from the supermarket–when they were presented in branded McDonald’s packaging, the kids thought they tasted better.The study also mentions that more than half the children in the study have TVs in their bedrooms, more than three-quarters have McDonald’s toys at home, and one-third ate at McDonald’s more than once a week. Dr. Thomas Robinson, who led the study, says, “It’s really an unfair marketplace out there for young children. It’s very clear they cannot understand the persuasive nature of advertising.” Do your kids a favor. Don’t be lazy and feed your kids home-cooked meals.

Tech Competitions, Start Ups, The Usual

Silicon Valley’s green energy start-ups have many worries. Homework usually isn’t one of them, but for Calsunergy, in the valley’s fast-growing green energy industry, homework will be part of the new business equation. The chief executive hopes to launch the company before beginning eighth grade in the fall. The chief technical officer is getting ready to start sixth grade. And the company’s chief financial officer and vice president of marketing are readying themselves for fifth grade.

How They Got Started. It all started when 10-year-old Aryan Taheri attended a California Clean Tech Open event with his dad, Sam. The older Taheri planned to enter the competition, geared to help entrepreneurs who dream of starting their own environmentally friendly company. Aryan went back to his friends, teammates from other competitions, and together they researched ideas for new renewable energy products. About a month ago, they informally launched Santa Clara-based Calsunergy with hopes of selling low-cost, high-efficiency solar panels. Aryan became the company’s top marketing executive and the group plans to incorporate the company if the product wins the competition. The group meets about once a week to review prototypes and work on a business plan, said Bao Tran, father of the company’s chief financial officer, Alan Tran, 10. All the parents have chipped in to lend expertise when needed, he said. Tran is helping with a patent application while others offer technical advice.Launched last year, this year’s competition has attracted more than 100 business plans for prizes in six categories: energy efficiency, smart power, transportation, water management, renewable energy and green building. Judges included venture capitalists, academics and consultants. The finalist will be announced at the end of July; winners will be announced in October.

The Job Hunt Just Got Harder

The salaries of new college graduates jumped across the board this year as demand increased, according to a new survey. Nearly 9 out of 10 employers reported that they’re seeing more competition for new college graduates than in past years, according to a study by the National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE). The results suggest that the increased hiring is translating directly into higher average starting salary offers.What does your major pay?

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