Whales are remarkably diverse, with 84 living species of dramatically different sizes and more than 400 other species that have gone extinct, including some that lived partly on land. Why are there so many whale species, with so much diversity in body size?

To answer that, UCLA evolutionary biologists and a colleague used molecular and computational techniques to look back 35 million years, when the ancestor of all living whales appeared, to analyze the evolutionary tempo of modern whale species and probe how fast whales changed their shape and body size. They have provided the first test of an old idea about why whales show such rich diversity.

Yesterday, the Air Force announced that its Waverider aircraft set the rec rd for hypersonic flight -- it reached Mach 6. Which is impressive.

But some other world records were also broken yesterday: Fastest Time to Name All James Bond Movies in Chronological Order (9.9 seconds). And Most Beer Bottles Balanced on Chi (12 bottles).

These records were featured on one of my favorite websites, the Universal Record Database . If you're not familiar, it's a Youtube-like version of world records, where anyone can upload their feats of human achievement -- no matter whether they're inspiring or absurd, athletic or intellectual.

As part of a broad effort to spur innovation and achieve clean energy breakthroughs, U.S. Deputy Secretary of Energy Daniel Poneman today announced the selection of a team led by Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) for an award of up to $122 million over five years to establish and operate a new Nuclear Energy Modeling and Simulation Energy Innovation Hub.

The Hub, which includes partners from universities, industry and other national labs, will use advanced capabilities of the world’s most powerful computers to make significant leaps forward in nuclear reactor design and engineering.

As more and more college students look for internships, hoping to gain valuable work experience prior to graduation, startups would be wise to create strong internship programs. That was the message of Richard Bottner, founder of the college recruiting firm Intern Bridge and Mark Babbit, founder of the internship matching service YouTern, in a talk yesterday on "Building Successful Internship Programs for Startups."

Almost 70% of college students plan to pursue an internship while in school, a smart move considering that recent figures show that 90% of direct-from-college jobs will go to students who've had internship experience.

Either you lead or follow and Chinese manufacturing houses have been chasing Apple’s designs for years. The iPad is just their latest victim. You can’t blame them, really. It’s the hottest device since the rotary phone.

We’ve seen a steady stream of clones flowing onto the web for months. Here’s the seven best starting with the just-found iPed.

Entrepreneurs’ quest for capital is never ending. Capturing this capital is part of the challenge of building a sustainably profitable company. So even after you pitched your business plan and outlined all the reasons why angel investors should invest in your company, obtaining angel financing isn't easy. So then, what is the best way to secure angel investment?

Start by networking. Seek out the right connections to potential investors by attending investment forums, small-business education programs, business-plan competitions, social gatherings and other events where individuals interested in inventing congregate. Most of these activities and events are in your backyard, so you’ll find them by staying local. It is appealing to go elsewhere where the grass (i.e., “money”) is perceived to be greener and more plentiful. With some exceptions, angel investors tend to invest close to home. They do so because they want to provide guidance, provide help when and where they can, and keep tabs on their investment.

ON Friday consumers across Europe will finally be able to get their hands on Apple's long awaited iPad. The 9.7-inch touch-screen device allows users to play games, listen to music, check emails and even read newspapers. Gadgets such as the iPod and iPhone have helped Apple post record earnings and the next chapter in its redefinition of the multimedia landscape promises to be as lucrative as the last. Sales of iPads are forecast to add around $1 billion of revenue to the company's next quarter.

Apple has already secured a reputation for extraordinary innovation but in reality much of its success lay not in traditional Research and Development (R&D) but in fields such as complex system integration, design, marketing and integrating the hardware it created with the software it assembled. In the case of the iPod Apple was hugely successful in persuading the music industry, in particular the big record labels, to allow them to put their songs in the iTunes music store.

Even if you don’t have a job title that has the word green or sustainable in it, there are countless ways to bring sustainability into your job.

This is one reason why I wrote the book, “The Sustainable MBA: The Manager’s Guide to Green Business” — to give individual employees the tools to bring sustainability into their workplace and to change business from the inside out.

We often don’t realize the positive impact that we can have through the decisions we make every day as employees and as consumers — decisions that effect both the companies we work for and the planet.

The passengers at a station embarks onto to a connector cabin way before the train even arrives at the station. When the train arrives, it will not stop at all. It just slows down to pick up the connector cabin which will move with the train on the roof of the train.

While the train is still moving away from the station, those passengers will board the train from the connector cabin mounted on the train's roof. After fully unloading all its passengers, the cabin connector cabin will be moved to the back of the train so that the next batch of outgoing passengers who want to alight at the next station will board the connector cabin at the rear of the train roof.

What's the biggest problem facing battery startups?

It might be ambition.

To break into the battery business, startups have focused on designing, manufacturing and selling their own lithium-ion or rechargeable zinc batteries. Unfortunately, it's a high-risk, capital-intensive endeavor that requires scientific creativity and engineering breakthroughs. Most companies fail in the early stages.

And the ones that succeed face even a more daunting task: competing against giants like LG and Toshiba that have extensive R&D teams, worldwide sales channels, strong links with government officials, friends at car companies (they sell chips to automakers already), and factory capacity that could cover several football fields. Plus, they've got the financial resources to allow them to lose billions during temporary downturns.

Have you ever heard of "Penny Auctions"? If you haven't, but you're the type always looking for bargains and amazing deals, then you're in luck! Penny auctions are a new auction model that are rapidly becoming very popular in the US and Europe. Penny auctions allow individuals to do just what it implies, win popular products for pennies on the dollar. Leading the way in this new auction model is QuiBids.com, an Oklahoma based company. QuiBids auctions off brand new popular products such as iPads, Macbooks, HDTVs, Digital Cameras, Gaming Consoles, and more for steep discounts of 75%, 80%, or even 85% off retail price.

It is without doubt that we live in an increasingly consumer-driven society. This, coupled with a tech-savvy, product-aware and fickle public, means that advertisers are having to conjure ever more inventive and innovative ways to sell their products.

The internet has enabled ever greater possibilities for creative viral marketing, which encourage potential customers to jump on the meme bandwagon and fuel the dissemination of commercial messages with their own enthusiasm. However, as with most things on the internet, the lifespan of this approach is generally short lived.