Anu Snacks produces snack bars from spent beer grain, mixed with dried fruit and nuts with various coatings. The idea was a hit, winning $17,500 in prizes this year at the UC Davis Big Bang! competition for entrepreneurship.

With Rhombus Systems cameras, customers can view and share livestreams, manage unlimited locations from one console and set up other features.

Full of electrolytes, this drink supports light to strenuous activity levels, repleting and rehydrating the body without excess sugars and calories.

With the deployment of Verizon’s 5G wireless network on the horizon in 2018, some say Sacramento has the potential to become a lightning rod for tech. Is there truth to the hype?

She’s a four-time breast cancer survivor who has been through nine surgeries. But for Cinde Dolphin, the post-surgery process has always been a pain, specifically the drain bulbs.

In 2018, Golden Pacific Bank is an anomaly, one of the few remaining community banks in the Capital Region to emerge in the past 10 years and not be acquired by a larger entity.

Even though 76 percent of Americans think fast food is “not too good” or “not good at all for you,” almost half say they eat fast food at least weekly, according to a 2013 Gallup poll.

Clean carpets, proper ventilation and special filters may help keep allergens out of the workplace. Another strategy entails sealing cracks in a building to make sure unwanted particles can’t sneak in.

Allergies are the sixth-leading cause of chronic illness in the U.S and result in nearly 4 million missed or lost workdays each year and over $700 million in lost productivity. We talk to local experts about ways to keep them at bay, both medical and holistic.

You might say Dr. Charles Lee created a synthetic bone graft substitute by accident.

Mike Malinowski, president of the Streamline Institute, had a plan.

With 26 industry professionals, he set out to create a program that streamlines permitting for construction in the Sacramento region. The idea was that with clear standards for building document content and organization plus a checklist used by all participating jurisdictions, plan examiners, building officials and design professionals could be on the same page.

In the early 2000s, Mariah Lichtenstern was an undergrad studying the rhetoric of narrative and image at UC Berkeley and starting a boutique production company in the Bay Area. That was when Napster was disrupting the music industry in a way that would leave it forever changed.

In 2014, the City of Sacramento’s construction valuation (which tracks the dollar amount of issued permits) was $390 million, but by June 2018, that valuation will be about $1.5 billion (adjusted for inflation), according to Ryan DeVore, Sacramento’s community development director.

Permitting can be a logistical mess for developers, while the future of economic development depends on this process. Efforts to improve the process find that enhanced communication trumps speed in terms of efficiency.

Around the world, 2.1 billion people lack safe drinking water at home. This Sacramento startup aims to make a difference. 

If you have any stake in Stockton’s economy, you know the pain of watching residents (a.k.a. super commuters) leave the city to work in the Bay Area every day of the week.

For almost a decade, David Sypnieski has been working in the ag-tech space, focusing on the production and processing levels of California’s food system. Six years ago, he noticed a major hole in the supply chain: Food companies and growers didn’t have solid, easy-to-access data to help them evolve with the times.

The most common reason people visit their doctor might surprise you. It’s not back problems, high blood pressure or diabetes. According to a 2013 survey by the Mayo Clinic, the No. 1 reason is skin disorders.

The Capital Region has a couple of homegrown video game success stories, but most growth is taking place in its community of indie developers. As the region seeks to brand itself more as a tech hub, these gamers want to ensure their industry is part of the push.

Should a school district struggling to fill vacant teaching positions recruit from overseas? With that question looming overhead, Sacramento City Unified School District develops a new credential program with Sacramento State to address its teacher shortage over the long-term.

The opioid crisis was born in the late 1990s. Pharmaceutical companies said opioids — a class of drugs that produce pleasurable effects and relieve pain — weren’t addicting. Healthcare providers prescribed more of them. Twenty years later, we’re in the throes of an epidemic.

The big idea was garbage.

Frederick Janson was in the garage, taking the trash out of his first house in North Natomas. That was when he noticed how full the blue recycle bin was with plastic containers. He realized these recyclables he was paying somebody to take away could be used as building materials.

From a robot’s perspective, humans probably look like deeply flawed creatures: imprecise, accident-prone, injury-ridden, hazardous — walking glitches waiting to happen.

This view isn’t exactly wrong.

Inflatable Pubs can be rented for corporate events, weddings, birthday parties or any other type of festivity. Prices range from $400 to $600 per day with additional shipping fees for deliveries outside the region. Right now, Shenanigans has two inflatable pubs, imported straight from Ireland.

For sports fans, it’s not about wins and losses, but how you experience that game that counts. Brian Dombrowski learned this shooting videos for youth and high school sports events in the Bay Area. He was filming original content for coaches, but they weren’t the only ones interested in his footage.

In a virtual world, everybody who helped Oculus Rift raise $2.5 million on Kickstarter would own a piece of the company. But in reality, the VR pioneer was bought by Facebook in 2014 for $2 billion, and the backers received high-tech goggles and other goodies, but no stock.

The Sacramento Area Council of Governments reported that between 2013 and 2021, the region needs to build about 105,000 housing units to meet demand. Dividing that number by the nine years means almost 12,000 units per year.

Typically, fruit goes through many hands — farmer, packer, shipper, broker — before reaching the supermarket. Based in Lodi, Branch to Box focuses on cutting out the middlemen (hence the name) to provide the freshest possible fruit to offices.

Plumas Lake Elementary School District in Yuba County partnered with SmartWatt, a New York-based solar firm with an office in Rocklin, to optimize its energy system, including the installation of a solar photovoltaic system. It wasn’t the first solar panel project for SmartWatt, but it is the company’s largest to date.

This year marks the deadline for California’s 10-year bet on solar roofs. In 2006, the state launched the “Million Solar Roofs” vision, pumping $3.2 billion into incentive programs. The plan was to build one million solar roofs, or the equivalent thereof, generating 3,000 megawatts of renewable energy by 2017.

If you’re a basketball player, you’re not one to just sit around and spectate. You want to prove you got skills too. Problem is, finding people to hoop with is no walk in the park.

In 2014, Darling launched Free Form Factory, making after-market decks and hulls out of durable polymer material. Two years later, the company relocated from Rochester, New York to Rancho Cordova. Free Form Factory has unveiled a stand-up watercraft prototype that is 100-percent recyclable and electric-powered.

If you’re texting and driving, Sarah Morell might be recording you. She’s usually riding shotgun, as her husband drives, with her camera phone, ready to catch traffic safety violators on video. Her 6-year-old daughter’s in on the action too.

The push to integrate VR into the media has surged in recent years. The Guardian last summer unveiled its first VR project, 6×9, putting viewers into a solitary confinement prison cell. Last fall, The New York Times introduced The Daily 360. These immersive videos, made with Samsung technology, give readers rare glimpses into scenes worldwide.

If you’re going to live in a 3D environment, you need to see a 3D environment.”

These are the words of Stephen Phillips, co-founder and chief technology officer at Theia Interactive, a design firm based in Chico. His company creates VR tours for people looking to build or buy homes, cars and yachts. It was one of the four startups to come out of the Green Screen Institute’s first accelerator program.

From police shootings to incidents like the Fort Lauderdale airport shooting, gun violence has been dominating news cycles in recent years. Additional virtual training could help civilians know how to respond in a hostile encounter.

By linking with loyalty cards and tracking purchases (by scanning receipts), Foodfully knows what food you buy and gives an estimate about how long it may last, then sends notifications before that estimated date. These alerts help consumers avoid wasting forgotten food

It wasn’t taken as a joke or a typo or an anonymous quote from some trolling conspiracy theorist. It was a real-live tweet from a billionaire with mystery hair: “The concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive.”

Sievent is a social experience app that helps event organizers and attendees stay connected with information before, during and after an event. The app is an end-to-end platform that handles all facets of an event such as promotion, ticketing, payment, event analytics and social media management.

This is the new age of advertising, a digital world dominated by big data, controlled by those who know how to handle it. New technology, such as mobile devices and smart speakers, has opened the door for advertisers to track everything from customer locations to spending habits.

The start of the year is resolution time, the season when gyms push special deals to lure new customers or pull in old ones. Jeff Rizzo isn’t trying to sell you a gym membership, but if you’re into technology and fitness, he does want to equip you with the latest gear for the lowest price.

“It’s like Uber for X.” In recent years, this line has become the go-to marketing pitch, where “X” can stand for practically any mobile-based service, from shipping to laundry to valet services to primary care. It’s not hard to see why.

Technically, Atocera Inc. is the result of a shaving accident.

Back in 2012, Saif Islam, a UC Davis professor of electrical and computer engineering, was in the campus labs building silicon micro-walls for solar panels. During the process of cutting semiconductor material into small slices, something unexpected happened.

But Anpac Bio’s major innovation is not about where, but when. Catching cancer in the earliest stages has been Yu’s goal since the company launched in 2010. With so much medical research focused on treatment and imaging, he set his sights on early detection as the key to prevention. His ideas were unconventional.

In the first few days after a baby is born, the mother produces colostrum — a yellowish, thick and sticky substance packed with fat, micronutrients and antibodies. In breastfeeding circles, this special milk is called “liquid gold,” which is essentially a supercharged immunity boost to equip newborns for their new world.

A healthy human body is a fortress with guards at the ready to seize intruders. When under attack, these guards (antibodies) secrete chemicals that recruit and grow immune cells. The cells then seek and destroy the intruders (antigens) to protect the fortress.

Moore believes UC Davis could be the first institution in the country to have an approved clinical trial using banked stem cells in a young, athletic population.

For many residential landlords, choosing a tenant is a gamble — like shopping for a used car without a full history report. Vitaliy Merkulov learned this the hard way.

Is 14 too young to get into coffee? It wasn’t for Randall Echevarria. He grew up in Crescent City on the California/Oregon border, and the small town’s first coffee shop gave him his very first job. He started as a barista and moved up in the ranks over four years, his favorite part being the beverage development. Turns out, this high school gig was just warm-up.

On New Mohawk Road in Nevada City, the 27,000-square-foot facility has three components: a training academy, business accelerator and coworking lab for established companies. The academy will include classes that can last from a weekend to up to six months. The Green Screen Institute will hire industry experts on a contract basis to teach the classes. The idea is to develop the workforce needed for the influx of virtual reality and augmented reality companies.