Any idiot can be a blue chip investor. But it takes audacity to double down on alcohol, tobacco and marijuana, as Dan Ahrens has.

Getting ahold of AdvisorShares’ Chief Operating Officer Dan Ahrens was a bitch. Not Beyoncé hard, but the dude is busy and for good reason. On April 16, just in time for 4/20, Ahrens had done what seemed like a pothead’s fever dream: He announced the public trading of AdvisorShares Pure Cannabis ETF with its totally genius ticker symbol: YOLO.

The YOLO ETF, or exchange-traded fund, is the first listed, actively managed American fund expressly focused on making your money grow via investing in cannabis equity securities. Which means it went through a full, regular approval process with the Securities and Exchange Commission and was preapproved by its custodian bank, the Bank of New York Mellon. Something that can’t exactly be said about its nearest competing fund, ETFMG Alternative Harvest ETF, an index fund that must blindly follow the index.

Graduation rates at universities in the U.S. have been plummeting for half a century. But artificial intelligence and data crunching are helping turn the tide.

Austin Birchel needed financial aid to afford Georgia State University. But even after winning a scholarship that covered 90 percent of his tuition, he was in for a shock when he checked his GSU account the summer before his freshman year. The scholarship wasn’t showing up. Within minutes, though, Birchell found that his Social Security number had been written incorrectly on one of the forms. The error was corrected, and his scholarship was applied. Thanks to artificial intelligence, he didn’t have to spend hours on the phone with the admissions office to figure out what went wrong. Birchell is just one of thousands of university students at GSU and across the country who’ve benefited from AI and predictive analytics tools that are helping American higher education institutions fight — and slowly fix — what previously seemed intractable problems.

This fresh approach to water filtration removes bacteria and germs without electricity or chemicals.

The Indian state of Kerala was hit by once-in-a-century floods last August that claimed 450 lives and displaced well over a million people. Crowded into makeshift camps — with water everywhere but none to drink — conditions were ripe for the spread of deadly diseases like cholera and typhoid. As governments, individuals and nongovernmental organizations scrambled to assist, one organization was able to rely on a new tool.

A few weeks after the floods, the Rotary Club of Greater Cochin installed three Intewa AQUALOOP Taps: at a hospital kitchen that services 1,500 patients a day, a school for special needs children and an orphanage. The taps went a long way toward “keeping the affected populated safe and eliminating the spread of infectious diseases,” explains Vijay Nair, the club’s service projects chair who stepped in to help with disaster efforts.