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Media Advisory 08-011

The National Science Board Task Force on Sustainable Energy to Assemble Roundtable Discussion on Feb. 8 at NSF Headquarters

"America is on the verge of technological breakthroughs that will enable us to live our lives less dependent on oil. And these technologies will help us be better stewards of the environment, and they will help us to confront the serious challenge of global climate change." President George W. Bush, 2007 State of the Union Address

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Simulation showing the conversion of biomass into ethanol by researchers from the NREL.

Improving Biomass Conversion to Ethanol for Renewable Energy. To improve the conversion of biomass into ethanol, researchers from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) simulated the action of the enzyme cellulase on cellulose using the CHARMM (Chemistry at HARvard Molecular Mechanics) community code. The binding domain (blue) is on the left, the glycosylated linker is green, and the catalyst domain, on the left, in orange and yellow. This work was carried out at the San Diego Supercomputer Center, which is supported in part by the National Science Foundation. (Date of Image: Sept. 9, 2004)

Credit: James Matthews, Linghao Zhong and John Brady, Cornell University; Mike Himmel and Mark Nimlos, National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL); Tauna Rignall, Colorado School of Mines; Mike Crowley, The Scripps Research Institute. Work was funded by an NREL subcontract funded by the Department of Energy.


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