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To accelerate the scientific breakthroughs needed to build a new 21st-century energy economy, Energy Secretary Steven Chu announced the delivery of $377 million in funding for 46 new multimillion-dollar Energy Frontier Research Centers located at universities, national laboratories, nonprofit organizations and private firms. The centers will help lay the scientific groundwork for fundamental advances in solar energy, biofuels, transportation, energy efficiency, electricity storage and transmission, clean coal and carbon capture and sequestration, and nuclear energy.

US Department of Energy Secretary Steven Chu announced today that more than $327 million in new funding from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act will go toward scientific research, instrumentation and laboratory infrastructure projects. Ten of DOE's national laboratories in six states will be receiving funds, along with researchers at institutions of higher learning across the nation.

Energy Department-funded researchers have won 46 of the 100 awards given out this year by R&D Magazine for the most outstanding technology developments with promising commercial potential. These awards highlight some of the technology transfer successes made by the DOE national laboratories. This year, researchers from 12 of the 17 DOE National Laboratories as well as the Nevada Test Site received awards in areas such as energy, national security and basic scientific applications.

The US Departments of Energy and Agriculture announced today the joint selection of awards of $6.3 million towards fundamental genomics-enabled research leading to the improved use of plant feedstocks for biofuel production. The research in biomass genomics will help provide the scientific foundation to facilitate use of lignocellulosic materials for bioenergy and biofuels.

The United States signed an agreement with Portugal today to launch the installation of a portable climate observatory on Graciosa Island in the Azores. The mobile observatory will obtain measurements of cloud and aerosol properties from the island's marine environment for 20 months, beginning in May. The measurements are expected to greatly enhance scientific understanding of the microscopic processes that occur in low-level marine clouds, and will be used to test and improve climate models.

Energy Secretary Steven Chu announced $1.2 billion in new science funding under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act for major construction, laboratory infrastructure, and research efforts sponsored by DOE's Office of Science. Many of the projects are focused on large scale scientific facilities at DOE National Laboratories. The package also provides substantial support for both university -- and National Laboratory-based researchers, working on problems in fields ranging from particle physics to biofuels.

The latest upgrade to the Jaguar supercomputer at the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory has increased the system's computing power to a peak 1.64 "petaflops," or quadrillion mathematical calculations per second, making Jaguar the world's first petaflop system dedicated to open research. The new petaflop machine will make it possible to address some of the most challenging scientific problems in areas such as climate modeling, renewable energy, materials science, fusion and combustion.

The Department of Energy's Office of Science has selected four proposals to conduct climate research field studies in 2010. Together, these field studies in the Azores, Alaska, Colorado and Oklahoma will obtain data from various cloud types -- cirrus, marine and mixed-phase -- to help improve the computer models that simulate climate change. Researchers will gather crucial data on the complex interplay between radiation, clouds and aerosols -- currently one of the main challenges in climate modeling.

An international collaboration of scientists today sent the first beam of protons zooming at nearly the speed of light around the world's most powerful particle accelerator -- the Large Hadron Collider. Beyond revealing a new world of unknown particles, LHC experiments could explain why those particles exist and behave as they do. They could reveal the origins of mass, shed light on dark matter, uncover symmetries of the universe and possibly find extra dimensions of space.