The House of Representatives on Friday approved its version of the FY04 Energy and Water Appropriations bill, which provides funding for Department of Energy programs. In the bill, the Office of Science would receive $3.2 billion, a boost of 4.3 percent. The House would add funds for high performance computing research, domestic fusion, and increased extramural user time at DOE's large-scale scientific facilities. The Senate is currently considering a similar bill, which they may vote on this week. For an analysis of the House action by the American Association for the Advancement of Science, go here.

DOE’s Orbach Cites
Excellence of NERSC

Last Thursday’s edition of Today at Berkeley Lab reported on the House Science Committee’s hearing last week on the nation’s future computing capabilities. Ray Orbach, the director of DOE's Office of Science, testified that day about "our need for advanced supercomputing capability." Orbach specifically referred to scientific achievements by users of the National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center (NERSC) at Berkeley Lab. He also described a new program, called INCITE, for Innovative and Novel Computational Impact on Theory and Experiment, which will allocate 4.5 million processor hours at NERSC to advance research on "four or five scientific problems of major importance." Read his full testimony here.

Sun's Microflares
Heating Corona?

The sun's big, bright, explosive flares are the attention grabbers, but tiny, more numerous microflares may have nearly as much influence on the solar atmosphere, according to new data from UC Berkeley's RHESSI satellite. Since solar flares play a major role in space weather, RHESSI's discoveries about flares and microflares could eventually help predict the big storms that interfere with radio communications on Earth. The RHESSI scientific payload is a collaborative effort among UC Berkeley, NASA Goddard Spaceflight Center, the Paul Scherrer Institut in Switzerland and Berkeley Lab. Full story.

DVD’s For Buying
Not Keeping
By Eric A. Taub

When tapes and DVD's are returned after the due date, late fees often double the cost of a rental. Walt Disney Company plans to test market a new type of DVD that will be priced about the same as a rental but never needs to be returned — because it stops working after a fixed period of time. Even if the discs are not recycled, single-use disposable DVD's will result in net energy savings, according to a study conducted by Jonathan Koomey, staff scientist at Berkeley Lab. "The solid waste impacts may be more than completely offset by the gasoline saved from avoided trips to the video store. Gasoline savings could be 7.5 to 20 times larger than the increase in solid waste," Mr. Koomey said. Full story.