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A big breakthrough in the race for better biofuels was announced this week from the U.S. Department of Energy, where the department's BioEnergy Science Center figured out how to produce isobutanol, a gasoline-like fuel, directly from cellulose (i.e. corn stalks and switchgrass).

Researchers from the Stanford Institute for Materials and Energy Science, a joint SLAC-Stanford institute, have seen strong indications of a relationship between the superconductive and magnetic properties of high-temperature superconductors -- a relationship long suspected but difficult to investigate experimentally. Any step toward a real understanding of high temperature superconductors is a big step right now. Today's superconductors need extreme cold to keep conducting electricity with 100 percent efficiency, but extreme cold is not cheap