If you hear your coworkers muttering about Houston and mission control this week, there’s a reason.

With just days to go ahead of the 40th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing, AOL and the John F. Kennedy presidential library have launched a brilliant website that simulates the voyage from beginning to end.

We choose the moon — named for Kennedy’s famous 1962 speech in Houston –  recreates the moon landing mission with animations, real-time transcripts and audio between the cockpit and Mission control,and a wealth of other multimedia background information.

The site is full of social media widgets and gizmos, so you can embed a countdown timer on your computer or Facebook page and follow the mission chatter on Twitter.

At the time this blog post was written, Apollo 11 is in Earth orbit, prepared to commence stage 4 of the mission. The crew reports: “Our insertion checklist is complete and we have no abnormalities.”

CIT’s bailout talks with the government have fallen apart, setting the stage for a possible bankruptcy filing.The lender provides crucial funding to small and mid-sized U.S. businesses, from clothing manufacturers to Dunkin Donuts franchises.Founded in St. Louis in 1908, CIT boasts on its website that 1 million business customers depend on it for financing. Many may now have to depend on someone else, at a time credit markets remain tight, reducing business activity as the government tries to lift the economy out of recession.Is your business affected by CIT’s struggles? Have you found it difficult to obtain financing since the financial meltdown? We want to hear your stories in the comments section.

peHUB’s Erin Griffith reports:

Buyouts Senior Editor Ari Nathanson and I compiled a list of buyout-backed companies which have used CIT as a lead arranger on its credit facility over the last three years, courtesy of Thomson Reuters data.We came up with 38 companies.* Of those 38, CIT provided a revolver loan to all but two. For companies that haven’t drawn down their revolver (including this week’s run, which has only added to the company’s demise), the sudden disappearance of CIT could mean the sudden disappearance of all liquidity.The interesting part is the amount of repeat business on the list. It brings new meaning to the “strong lender relationships” often touted by buyout pros. The one thing they don’t brag about is how a “strong relationship” with a failing lender could wind up being worse than no relationships!For example, Wind Point Partners used CIT for four of its portfolio companies. Thoma Cressey Equity Partners (before Carl Thoma and Brian Cressy split up) also has four CIT-led credit facilities in its portfolio. Sentinel Capital Partners and Baird Capital Partners each have two companies with CIT facilities.View the entire list below.

*We eliminated a few that have since been sold, but haven’t checked that each of the 38 are still owned by their listed PE backer.

Today marks the launch of Reuters Small Business, designed to provide entrepreneurs with the knowledge they need to innovate and grow their businesses.

We’ve got a dedicated editorial team looking at the stories that matter most to the small business sector, and content from partners like Entrepreneur, BNET, IDG, GreenBiz.com, and Wired. Editor Jon Cook will also be reporting live from the Small Business Week conference in Washington, DC.

Here’s some of what is available this week:

• A look at start-up funding in the bailout era
• A multimedia feature on budding handbag maven Jane Saidenberg
• A FindLaw resource center with dozens of guides to navigating the legal waters as a small business
• A blog post on finding the right people for your business, by The Big Money‘s  Jonathan Weber

Are you a small business owner or a multimedia entrepreneur? We are looking to build a community of small business owners, and we want to hear from you!

What are conditions like for small businesses in today’s economy? What help is needed from local, state and federal government? And are you seeing any of the vaunted “green shoots” of recovery?

Leave your answers in comments.

Northwestern professor Dirk Brockmann thinks he can track the spread of H1N1 flu and other future epidemics, thanks in part to the humble $1 bill.

“We’re looking at how people travel in the United States and Europe and trying to find a theory behind human traffic,” Brockmann said. “Then we can unravel the structures within these networks and explain them.”

Modern-day flu epidemics are fueled in part by the ubiquity of global air travel. Local commuting and mobility patterns can be equally important, but more difficult to analyze.

In 2006 Brockmann turned to WheresGeorge.com, a website that tracks dollar bills embossed with unique serial numbers, using money as a proxy for human travel. By calculating the odds that a given dollar bill will stay within a 10 kilometer radius, he created an epidemiological model that can be used to predict the course of the flu outbreak.

Brockmann explains his work on the current H1N1 outbreak in the following video

From Northwestern News on Vimeo.

Below you can see Brockmann’s worst-case projection for spread of the H1N1 flu virus in the United States, on a county-by-county basis. The model predicts up to 1,700 cases of swine flu for the entire United States four weeks from now, though Brockmann notes on his website: “The actual case numbers are expected to be smaller as mitigation strategies and containment efforts become effective.”

John McConnell, an editor at The Lancet and founding Editor of The Lancet Infectious Diseases, is answering questions about the swine flu:

What is the science behind how new flu strains arise – this one has pig, human and bird components (mainly pig). How has it got this way and how is it able to gain each of these components?

The basic science is explained on Wikipedia’s pandemic page in the epidemic and pandemic spread section.  Quite how the current swine H1N1 acquired its genetic elements might take a while to work out and may never fully be understood

Is there anyone who can talk about the discrepancy in the numbers – why is the testing taking so long? Are they re-testing samples? Someone who could give us a perspective on where we are up to with this

Testing isn’t taking a long time. There are only a limited number of laboratories around the world that have the expertise to do virological typing. In the long term, if the epidemic spread and cases become more numerous, it is likely that only a limited number of suspected cases will be confirmed by typing.

We are interested in how long it will take to come up with a viable vaccine for this particular strain of flu, and how long after that it could be massed produced.

As part of Reuters new Green Business section, we have chosen a diverse group of companies to serve as a proxy for the emerging green technology sector. Over the coming months we’ll be discussing each of them at length, and rebalancing our portfolio to reflect trends in the industry.

Click here to see our portfolio in action. You can track our performance against benchmarks, comment on our choices, and create a portfolio of your own.

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Comverge, Inc is one of the leading demand-response companies, known for their role in limiting electricity use during peak demand, employing technology to manage large companies’ power usage and control their costs. Their software can automatically adjust an air conditioner’s temperature or turn off a swimming pool pump when power supplies are tight, reducing prices for suppliers and end users by lowering end user demand at peak times.

Cree Inc manufactures light emitting diode (LED) fixtures, which consume less energy and last longer than incandescent and fluorescent lights. LED’s are experiencing increased demand as costs for power generation and concerns about greenhouse gas emissions rise, and Cree recently reported a third-quarter profit that topped Wall Street estimates on increased demand for ultra-efficient lighting,

LG Chem Ltd looks at first glance is an old-line industrial company with a petrochemical segment provides basic chemicals like polyvinyl chloride products, plasticizers, octanol, and butanol. But the company’s Compact Power unit is producing the lithium-ion battery for General Motors Volt plug-in, and the company is expected to play a central role as more hybrid autos roll out.

First Solar, Inc designs and manufactures solar modules using a thin film semiconductor technology. Its solar modules employ a thin layer of cadmium telluride semiconductor material to convert sunlight into electricity. The company has benefited from cost-conscious utilities’ efforts to buy more clean, renewable power through deals with Sempra and Edison International’s (EIX.N) Southern California Edison, and expanded its presence in the U.S. utility market in April with the acquisition of rival OptiSolar’s project pipeline.

New Zealand and Israel confirmed cases of swine flu on Tuesday, the latest countries hit by a new strain that has killed up to 149 people in Mexico and threatens to become a pandemic.

The World Health Organisation has raised its alert level to phase 4, indicating a significantly increased risk of pandemic. Global markets tumbled for a second day on Tuesday on fears the outbreak could snuff out fragile signs of economic recovery.

Here are details of the latest number of cases, as confirmed by Reuters, the Centers for Disease Control, and the World Health Organization.

UPDATE: A new, up-to-date map can be found on the Reuters Swine Flu page.

[Click here to read more about Jes Staley's appointment as head of JPMorgan Chase investment banking, putting him in line to succeed CEO Jamie Dimon]JP Morgan head of global asset management talks about operating alongside investment banking during a period of turbulent markets.[flv:http://archivecdn.reuters.com/reuters42/mojo/2008/01/24012007005.flv 480 360]