Cathey Daniels, (865) 576-9539
September 7, 2011
You Provide the Search Term, Green Energy Portal Provides the Concepts
New Semantic Search Technology plus Auto-complete Gets You a More Direct Line to Rich Scientific Content
When you type “solar power” into a search box, are you looking for information on solar farms, solar radiation, or solar electric power plants? The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Green Energy portal can now map your keyword query to scientific concepts. This semantic technique, called “keyword to concept mapping,” is applied to your search behind the scenes and helps hone your search for more efficient knowledge access and discovery.
At DOE Green Energy, you will now receive results that allow you to explore more narrow concepts, related concepts, or even broader concepts. DOE Green Energy affords you the use of the familiar and simple search box – yet still provides the benefits of an advanced search technology to help get to the information you need.
In addition, the DOE Green Energy site recently deployed an auto-complete feature. This means that as you type your query, such as “ethanol,” into the search box, you will immediately see a list of associated concepts, i.e., ethanol fuel, cellulosic ethanol, direct methanol fuel cell, etc. from which to choose. Here again, this functionality affords you the use of a simple search box while delivering sophisticated advanced search functionality.
DOE Green Energy results come from valuable sources of DOE research and development (R&D) information. These sources include DOE databases of technical reports and patents, filtered for green energy related subjects such as solar, hydro, geothermal, and wind energy, energy storage, tidal and wave power, direct energy conversion, nuclear fuel cycle, biomass and synthetic fuels, and much more.
The DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI), within the Office of Science, provides these green energy results from R&D conducted throughout the Department and by DOE-funded awards at universities. The content consists of over 34,500 technical reports and approximately 1,300 patents from R&D projects representing an investment of several billion dollars. The DOE Green Energy site organizes this green energy R&D and makes it freely accessible to researchers, scientists, educators, students and the public. DOE Green Energy contains both current research and historical research.
OSTI is the DOE office that collects, preserves, and disseminates DOE-sponsored R&D results from projects or other funded activities at DOE labs and facilities nationwide and grantees at universities and other institutions.