The University of Texas is starting a program called Texas Venture Labs to help students and faculty entrepreneurs speed up the process of starting businesses.

Nevada is dead last in per-capita federal funding for state programs such as health, education and transportation, according to a new report from the Brookings Institution. Nevada received $742 per person during fiscal year 2008 from the federal government for these programs, compared with $1,469 for the rest of the nation.

Two years ago, this gritty mining city hosted a brief 21st-century gold rush. Long famous for coal, Puertollano discovered another energy source it had overlooked: the relentless, scorching sun. But as low-quality, poorly designed solar plants sprang up on Spain’s plateaus, Spanish officials came to realize that they would have to subsidize many of them indefinitely.

Part Two

A long-awaited initiative to raise Baton Rouge’s business profile in the research and technology arena is scheduled to be unveiled today.

The last in a series of articles over the past year in which the Mercury News has chronicled the lives of three laid-off Silicon Valley workers.