Check out the definition for the Investor class in http://trailblazer.demo.jboss.com/EJB3Trail/persistence/orm/index.html .
The class properties are startAge and endAge, but the database fields are start and end. There are no annotations mapping the difference. Also in the constructor, the line "this.start = startAge" would blow as well, since there is no this.start.
In the full code listing at http://trailblazer.demo.jboss.com/EJB3Trail/persistence/orm/code/Investor.java.html, the constructor is fixed but the mapping problem persists (no pun intended).