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Have you founded a tech company?

Chances are, if you're a U.S. entrepreneur, you're about 39 years old and hold a bachelor's degree, and there's a good chance your company was started in the same state where you received your education, according to a study released Thursday by the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation and researchers from Duke and Harvard universities.

Based on a study of U.S. entrepreneurs who started their companies between 1995 and 2005, the findings show the median age of U.S.-born founders was 39 years old, with only 1 percent launching their company as teenagers. For those in their 50s, there's still hope--twice as many folks in this age group founded a tech company than those in their early 20s, according to the study.

The report also noted that 92 percent of U.S. entrepreneurs surveyed received a bachelor's degree, 31 percent a master's degree, and 10 percent a Ph.D. And then, you have folks like Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, who dropped out of Harvard in his junior year and, nonetheless, built a tech empire.

"Because entrepreneurship is an indicator of economic vitality in regions and across the country, this study raises important policy questions about how to foster greater tech entrepreneurship to boost economic growth," Robert Litan, the Kauffman Foundation's research and policy vice president, said in a statement.

Graduates with an MBA degree founded tech companies within 13 years after getting their certificate, compared with folks with Ph.D.s, who generally waited 21 years to venture out as a tech entrepreneur. Maybe those with Ph.D.s wanted more time to research the notion of becoming an entrepreneur, before sticking their neck out.

The study also found that 45 percent of tech entrepreneurs started their venture in the same state where they received their education.

And here's a little bit of quick math to consider when selecting a university to get a higher-education degree: Start-ups in 2005 averaged sales revenue of $5.7 million and employed an average of 42 workers. Tech founders with advanced Ivy League degrees had companies that averaged sales of $6.7 million with 55 workers.

So, if you're going to attend college with the idea of starting a tech company later, consider an Ivy League school in a state where the cost of living is low because chances are good you'll remain in the area upon graduating, and employees often are the greatest expense to operations. That'll help with the profit margins, since going to an Ivy League school may mean your revenue will be higher.

There's nothing like nerd humor to keep the world's problems in perspective.

Harvard University once again played host to the Ig Nobel awards given out by the "Annals of Improbable Research," a parody of the Nobel prizes awarding people for scientific inventions that "first make people laugh, and then make them think."

This year's Ig Nobel peace prize brought new meaning to the phrase "make love, not war."

It went to the Air Force Research Laboratory in Dayton, Ohio. The group invented a chemical weapon, nicknamed the "gay bomb," that when dropped causes heterosexual men to become attracted to one another instead of aggressive.

Meanwhile, the Ig Nobel prize for medicine went to Dan Meyer and Brian Witcombe for studying the side effects of sword swallowing.

There also seemed to be an animal metaphor theme running through the winning entries.

Prizes included an aviation Ig Nobel to Patricia Agostino, who discovered that hamsters who take Viagra recover faster from jet lag, and an Ig Nobel in biology to Johanna E.M.H. van Bronswijk for determining the population of dust mites and other insects in beds.

Part of the ceremonial events also included a speech in which the word "chicken" was repeated in different ways for two minutes.

One winner was treated to a double honor.

Toscanini's Ice Cream named a flavor after Mayu Yamamoto of the International Medical Center of Japan called "Yum-A-Moto Vanilla Twist." Yamamoto won the Ig Nobel prize in chemistry for "developing a way to extract vanillin--vanilla fragrance and flavoring--from cow dung."

Last year the Ig Nobel Peace Prize went to Howard Stapleton for his "electromechanical teenager repellant," a high-pitch ringtone (MP3) that's usually only audible to people under 30.

BOSTON--A federal judge in a Massachusetts district court gave the founders of college-based social networking site ConnectU two weeks to revise the complaint that they have filed against Facebook, its CEO Mark Zuckerberg, and four other early employees of the fast-growing social network. The ConnectU founders, twins Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss and their fellow 2004 Harvard graduating classmate Divya Narendra, have accused Zuckerberg and his company of stealing their code and business plan when Zuckerberg was casually employed as a programmer for ConnectU in the 2003-2004 academic year.

Judge Douglas P. Woodlock, during the case's dismissal hearing on Wednesday afternoon, requested that the plaintiffs revise their complaint and refile it by August 8, after which point Facebook has an additional two weeks to file for a dismissal. The reason, the judge said, was that there simply was not a factual basis to the majority of the ten claims listed by ConnectU in its original complaint.

"You're really going to have to do this with particularity," Woodlock said to ConnectU's counsel, "because this is a most evanescent of explanations."

UPDATE: Facebook has released an official statement on the matter to the press: "We are pleased with the outcome of the hearing today. We continue to disagree with the allegations that Mark Zuckerberg stole any ideas or code to build Facebook. We intend to honor the judge's request not to comment further in the media and will continue to vigorously defend this case in court."

Electronic records hold the potential to improve medical care by flagging problems such as drugs that shouldn't be combined, but a study by Stanford and Harvard medical school researchers has concluded that so far they haven't improved the quality of outpatient health care.

The researchers studied a database of 1.8 billion doctor visits in 2003 and 2004 and examined performance on 17 indicators of quality. The results were mediocre, according to Stanford.

"In essence, we found little difference in the quality of care being provided by physicians with electronic health record systems, compared to those without these systems," Dr. Randall Stafford, a Stanford associate professor of medicine and senior author of the research, said in a statement. The research is scheduled for publication Monday in the Archives of Internal Medicine.

The issue isn't necessarily that electronic records don't help make better decisions. For one thing, many systems just transferred previously paper records into electronic form without adding extra abilities such as checking for negative drug interactions. For another, doctors often don't necessarily take advice from an electronic system.

Electronic records didn't make a difference in 14 areas, such as avoiding drugs that could be inappropriate for older patients and prescribing appropriate antibiotics. In two areas, doctors with electronic records systems did better than otherwise, and in one, they did worse, Stanford said.

Update:This posting has been changed to correct the results in the three tests where doctors with the electronic records system did better or worse than those without.