By ERICH SCHWARTZEL, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Paul Gianakas saw a business opportunity in the cars of the future. To finance it, he had to part with cars of the past.

His 1965 Chevrolet El Camino left the garage and never came back. His 1968 Ford Mustang moved on to greener driveways.

The butterfly effect suggests the flapping of a tiny insect's wings in Africa can lead to a tornado in Kansas.

Call this the bat effect: A bat killed by a wind turbine in Somerset, Pa., can lead to higher tomato prices at the Wichita, Kan., farmers market.

With more foreign-born students now returning to booming economies in countries such as China and India, technical communities hope a proposed bill will stop the brain drain they've suffering.

The bill, soon to be reintroduced in Congress, pitches a let's-make-a-deal plan for immigrant entrepreneurs: Want a green card? Start a company.

Dawn-Michelle Baude is a poet and an e-mail expert -- and she's not sure which one requires better attention to words.

Robert Frost wisely closes his account of "The Road Not Taken" by saying it "made all the difference," and the ending of an e-mail can make all the difference as well, says Baude.

Zoom in on an office in Carnegie Mellon University's Newell Simon Hall. A tech entrepreneur reads a spreadsheet on his laptop. Wait. Is that number in cell E5 correct?

As he leans forward to get a closer look, the image magnifies and zooms in -- suddenly, the cell fills the screen.

The wild-eyed parents circling the mall parking lots today aren't the only shoppers facing a fast-approaching deadline.

Office managers across the country have seven business days to get the invoices in before annual budgets kick over to a new year. At many major firms, the "use it or lose it" budget model prevails, and any cash left over goes the way of wasted vacation days.

The Facebook page seeking justice for Lauren Deis, a 14-year-old Pennsylvania girl who police say was raped and killed by a 35-year-old convicted sex offender, features links to AdultFriendFinder, "The World's Largest Sex & Swinger Personals Community."

Not everyone is all :-) when it comes to that famous e-mail shorthand: the emoticon.

The transformation of punctuation marks into crude mini-faces has always helped readers know when you're being sarcastic in instant-message conversations and text messages.

But you wouldn't wink at your boss in person, so can you ;-) in an e-mail to him?

Recruiting new employees always presents certain challenges: There are too few. Some are too proud.

But as the recession begins to wane and companies start poaching recent college graduates, two authors say employers might want to consider stealing practices and priorities for the hiring process from the few, the proud -- the Marines.

Even if your team plays like the Pittsburgh Pirates and sets a franchise record with a 20-0 loss, the movie "A League of Their Own" still maintains there's no crying in baseball.

Can the same be said for business?

Yes, says Lois Frankel, a Pasadena, Calif., career coach and author of "Nice Girls Don't Get the Corner Office."