Amaizing: Corn Genome Decoded

In recent years, scientists have decoded the DNA of humans and a menagerie of creatures but none with genes as complex as a stalk of corn, the latest genome to be unraveled. A team of scientists led by The Genome Center at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis published the completed corn genome in the Nov. 20 journal Science, an accomplishment that will speed efforts to develop better crop varieties to meet the world’s growing demands for food, livestock feed and fuel.

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New $10-Million Department of Energy Center to Focus on Plasma Research

A new center at the University of Michigan College of Engineering will enable fundamental research on low-temperature plasmas---ionized gases with vast potential for practical technological advancements in fields such as energy, lighting, microelectronics and medicine.

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EMBARGOED

A reporter's PressPass is required to access this story until the embargo expires on 11/23/2009 6:00 PM EST

TMS Names First Winner of Vittorio de Nora Prize

Zeljka Pokrajcic, an engineer for WorleyParsons – Mineral and Metals Division, in Melbourne and doctoral candidate was selected by The Minerals, Metals & Materials Society (TMS) as the first recipient of the Vittorio de Nora Prize for Environmental Improvements in Metallurgical Industries.

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Campus Leaders Showing the Way to a Sustainable, Clean Energy Future

New report highlights campus leaders and their amazing projects to reduce energy consumption and forge the way to more sustainable future.

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First Director of ARPA-E to Keynote at New York's Premiere Energy Conference

Energy Secretary Steven Chu’s recently appointed advisor, Arun Majumdar, will make his first major appearance as the keynote speaker at the 2009 New York Advanced Energy Conference. Majumdar will deliver his remarks at the Hyatt Wind Watch in Hauppauge, New York, on Wednesday, November 18 at 11:30 am.

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UAB, Partners Seek Safe Carbon Dioxide Storage for “Greener” Power Generation

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) has announced plans to fund research at the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) School of Engineering on technologies that would help reduce greenhouse gas emissions through the capture and permanent safe storage, or sequestration, of carbon dioxide (CO2). The project is in collaboration with Southern Company, the parent company of Alabama Power.

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Toward Home-brewed Electricity with “Personalized Solar Energy”

New scientific discoveries are moving society toward the era of “personalized solar energy,” in which the focus of electricity production shifts from huge central generating stations to individuals in their own homes and communities. That's the topic of a report by an international expert on solar energy scheduled for the November 2 issue of ACS’ Inorganic Chemistry...

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New Evidence Supports 19th Century Idea on Formation of Oil and Gas

Scientists in Washington, D.C. are reporting laboratory evidence supporting the possibility that some of Earth’s oil and natural gas may have formed in a way much different than the traditional process described in science textbooks. Their study is scheduled for Nov./Dec. issue of ACS’ Energy & Fuels, a bi-monthly publication. Anurag Sharma and colleagues note that the traditional process…

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Story Tips From the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory November 2009

1) Fuel economy ratings for the new 2010 model year automobiles are posted at www.fueleconomy.gov, which ORNL maintains for the U.S. DOE and the U.S. EPA; 2) A team led by ORNL’s Nina Balke has moved closer to developing more rugged memory and logic devices; 3) Heavy trucks are less heavy but just as safe and rugged because of steel rail frames; 4) A new approach to crunching massive volumes of data uses neural networks like an artificial brain.

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