Temple advertising major Brittany Cozzens has more than 3 million followers on Pinterest, the pinboard-style social medium, placing her among the site’s most-followed pinners. Her following attracted the attention of a relatively new company that works to connect influential pinners with companies for what Cozzens called an “untraditional form of advertising.” Now, the company offers Cozzens campaigns for brands they think would match her “quirky” style. In some cases she's helping people build a business. “That’s one thing I really like about my job,” she said.

Serious academic research in the nascent field of crowdfunding is limited, but Sunil Wattal of the Department of Management Information Systems in Temple’s Fox School of Business recently co-authored a study of crowdfunding contribution patterns. The team’s research highlights three conclusions: Altruism is a key motivator of donations; the longer a campaign runs, the better the post-campaign results; and as more money is raised, the size of donations declines. Wattal and his colleagues joined forbes.com for a Google+ hangout to discuss their study’s results.

By sequencing human DNA, scientists were able to glean new information about genes and how they are expressed. Yet there were hints that something else might be controlling which genes are turned on and off, said Jean-Pierre Issa, director of Temple’s Fels Institute for Cancer Research. “When the human genome was sequenced, some scientists were saying, ‘That's the end. We're going to understand every disease. We're going to understand every behavior.’” Issa said. “And it turns out, we didn't, because the sequence of the DNA isn't enough to explain behavior.