EnergizeTN News

(RD Magazine) Oak Ridge National Laboratory has announced plans to conduct a series of deep energy retrofit research projects with the potential to improve the energy efficiency in selected homes by as much as 30 to 50 percent…Deep energy retrofits are renovations to existing structures that use the latest in energy-efficient materials and technologies and result in significant energy reductions. Jeff Christian, the ORNL buildings technologies researcher heading the project, said at least 10 homes across the region will be sought to participate…11/26

(Knoxville News Sentinel) Oak Ridge National Laboratory is planning a series of research projects involving deep retrofits, which are renovations to existing structures to install the latest energy-efficiency technologies and efficient materials. The idea is to cut energy use and energy cost. According to info released by the lab, the projects have the potential to improve energy efficiency up to 50 percent in some homes, essentially cutting energy bills in half. The work is being done with $1.4 million from the Department of Energy’s Building America Program, including some Recovery Act funds. ORNL’s Jeff Christian is heading the effort and is seeking at least 10 homes in the region to participate in the program…11/27

(Newsobserver) Yekaterina Shpanskaya has always been precocious, pushing the academic limits for a person of her age. Yekaterina, who goes by Katie, started taking college classes at age 13. Now 15, the aspiring doctor tutors college students in math. So it’s not surprising that she’s competing against students two and three years older in the national finals of the Siemens Competition in Math, Science Technology…Fusion has such a great future, Katie said. The project emerged over the summer, while Neil was working as a research assistant for Katie’s mother, Nagiza Samatova, an associate professor of computer science at N.C. State and a senior scientist at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee. Katie’s father is also a scientist at Oak Ridge…The Siemens competition has been a part of Katie’s life for many years. Her mother was a mentor for two Tennessee teams that made the national finals, including one that won the top prize…11/30

(Knoxville News Sentinel) On the day before Thanksgiving, the Dept. of Energy’s Oak Ridge office announced that the federal agency and its prime contractors had awarded a record amount of work — $787 million — to small businesses during fiscal 2009. That included $230 million in direct federal contracts to small businesses to support DOE’s Oak Ridge missions, which include science research, environmental cleanup, nuclear fuel supply and national security. The highest-ever contracting amount with small businesses was made possible, in part, because of the influx of Recovery Act money to Oak Ridge, although DOE didn’t immediately have a breakdown on how much of the $787 million was stimulus spending…11/25

(Popular Science) Talk about a Eureka moment. Scientists at Sandia National Labs, seeking a means to create cheap and abundant hydrogen to power a hydrogen economy, realized they could use the same technology to reverse-combust CO2 back into fuel…11/23

(Wall Street Journal) While corporate America works itself into a lather over the climate change bill, a far more insidious invasion is already under way: the regulation of greenhouse gas emissions by the Environmental Protection Agency…11/26

(Reuters) The Big Bang experiment at CERN near Geneva scored a world record on Monday by accelerating beams to the highest energy ever achieved in a particle collider, the research center announced…11/30

(NY Times) Iran angrily refused Sunday to comply with a demand by the United Nations nuclear agency to cease work on a once-secret nuclear fuel enrichment plant, and escalated the confrontation by declaring it would construct 10 more such plants…12/1

(NY Times) President Obama plans to lay out a time frame for winding down the American involvement in the war in Afghanistan when he announces his decision this week to send more forces, senior administration officials said Sunday…11/30