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The Advanced Research Projects Agency for Energy (ARPA–E) works on a three-year cycle: Funded projects have three years to prove worthy--or not. Program directors who help fund projects such as Plants Engineered to Replace Petroleum ( PETRO ) or Batteries for Electrical Energy Storage in Transportation ( BEEST ) have three years to steer the research. And, after three years at the helm as the founding director of ARPA–E, mechanical engineer Arun Majumdar has announced that he will be stepping down in June.

By Scott DiSavino (Reuters) - Regulators on Friday told the owners of the nation's nuclear reactors to implement new safety rules based on the lessons learned from the earthquake and tsunami that crippled Japan's Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant a year ago. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) said it authorized its staff to issue three immediately effective orders implementing some of the more urgent recommendations. The NRC gave the plants until December 31, 2016, to complete modifications and requirements for the three orders.

The fantasy world of Skyrim is notable for its scale and level of realism. Game director Todd Howard explains how his team at Bethesda Game Studios approaches the creation of a world. [click to enlarge images] Some video games take place in military bases, or even whole cities

Key concepts Plants [More]

Honest Tea CEO Seth Goldman explains how he made the mistake of selling what he wanted to drink, instead of what his customers wanted.

Plants need water to live, but exactly how much? Scientists have built a simulator to figure out how to far we can push crops before they die of thirst, in preparation for a hotter climate. It's a research project that seems particularly fitting for this year, when Texas has suffered (and continues to suffer) through the worst drought year on record.

By Deborah Zabarenko, Environment Correspondent WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Plants and animals are responding up to three times faster to climate change than previously estimated, as wildlife shifts to cooler altitudes and latitudes, researchers said on Thursday. Scientists have reported this decade on individual species that moved toward the poles or uphill as their traditional habitats shifted due to global warming, but this study analyzed data on over 2,000 species to get a more comprehensive picture

Gone are the days when you had no idea where your pot--we mean, your friend's pot--came from or how it was grown. Now the organically conscious smoker can get the cleanest, greenest weed

The local food movement in America is gaining steam. The question is whether can it attract sufficient capital from the private sector to build large, profitable businesses.

The gang behind Plants vs. Zombies just found a broad new audience. It's a clever move--reminiscent of the way bigger gaming houses launch titles--but it carries the whiff of Android fragmentation.

Mmmm, blueberries. It’s the height of the season, and I’ve been tossing a handful onto cereal, into pancakes or just straight into my mouth.

Dear EarthTalk : Is it true that only a handful of outdated coal-burning power plants emit a sizable amount of the mercury pollution generated in the U.S.? If so, is anything being done to clean these sites up or shut them down? --Frank Pearson, Wichita, Kans

Illustration by Bryan Christie Design As we all have seen, nuclear power is a dangerous business. Even tearing down a plant is no easy feat

Japan's Fukushima disaster did more than just ravage the surrounding area with radiation; it also freaked out every other country that relies on nuclear power. Germany's reaction was perhaps the strongest--the country is now working without three quarters (16 GW) of its nuclear power while plants undergo safety reviews (some plants are offline for maintenance outages). How is the country faring

Very early this morning, Space Shuttle Endeavour docked with the International Space Station for the final time, marking another milestone at the end of the Shuttle program. 1. Long noted for its absence, Intel is now promising to have its silicon inside smartphones in early 2012, five years after the iPhone reinvented the genre and took ARM chips to new levels as the de facto standard CPU