(DOE/US Department of Energy) Secretary of Energy Steven Chu announced today plans to launch a new Energy Innovation Hub for advanced research on batteries and energy storage with an investment of up to $120 million over five years. The hub, which will be funded at up to $20 million in fiscal year 2012, will focus on accelerating research and development of electrochemical energy storage for transportation and the electric grid.

(Scripps Research Institute) Scientists at The Scripps Research Institute in California and the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology have developed a "biological computer" made entirely from biomolecules that is capable of deciphering images encrypted on DNA chips.

(Massachusetts Institute of Technology) An online tool called "Impurities to Efficiency" (known as I2E) allows companies or researchers exploring alternative manufacturing strategies to plug in descriptions of their planned materials and processing steps. After about one minute of simulation, I2E gives an indication of exactly how efficient the resulting solar cell would be in converting sunlight to electricity.

(Stanford School of Engineering) Engineers at Stanford have created photovoltaic nanoshells that harness a peculiar physical phenomenon to better trap light in the solar materials. The results could dramatically improve the efficiency of thin-film solar cells while reducing their weight and cost.

(Centre hospitalier de l'Université de Montréal) In a study published last week in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, a team led by Dr. Vincent Poitout of the University of Montreal Hospital Research Centre has made an important step forward in understanding how insulin secretion is regulated in the body. This discovery has important implications for drugs currently in development to treat Type 2 diabetes, a disease which is diagnosed every 10 seconds somewhere throughout the world.