- Number 349 |
- October 31, 2011
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A Berkeley Lab biofuel that may be better than diesel
Bisabolane is an organic compound that has all the properties of D2 diesel fuel and then some: it has a much lower freezing point and is less likely to clog machinery at low temperatures. Now, by altering E. coli bacteria and Saccharomyces cerevisiae yeast, scientists in the Physical Sciences Division (PBD) of DOE’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and their colleagues in DOE’s Joint BioEnergy Institute (JBEI) have forged a path to replacing petroleum-derived diesel with a renewable biofuel, by coaxing these microbes to overproduce bisabolene, the precursor of bisabolane.
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Nationwide utility rates now on Open EI
Utility rates from cities all across the United States are now available in one place —the Open Energy Information platform, or OpenEI.org, developed by the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory.
Am I paying too much for electricity? Does it make sense for me to put solar panels on my roof? Should I lease my land to wind-farm developers?
Consumers and businesses are asking, and OpenEI provides the answers. OpenEI is where energy officials and consumers alike can go to boost their energy IQs and make better decisions.
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Python snakes into Global Arrays Toolkit
While many of us fear large reptiles, materials scientists and other researchers embrace Python—the easy-to-use programming language, not the snake. At DOE’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, computer programmers have included full support for Python in the Global Arrays Toolkit. The toolkit makes programming on distributed memory computers as easy as using shared memory on a desktop and scales to today’s top supercomputers. This allows for the simulation of larger, complex systems such as in computational chemistry, materials science, and computational fluid dynamics which impact national energy use.
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New technologies bolster function of prosthetic limbs
A team of scientists from DOE's National Energy Technology Laboratory and the University of Pittsburgh’s Bioengineering Department are using new forms of nanotechnology to improve neural-controlled prosthetic implants. These technologies are of particular interest to the U.S. military for treating soldiers and veterans who have suffered loss of a limb during service.
Neural-controlled prosthetics allow recipients to manipulate their artificial limbs by means of microelectrode implants placed in the brain or in other neural tissue.