The Energy Department plans to award up to $90 million in funds to support the construction of biorefineries as part of the White House’s carbon emission reduction efforts.

DOE said Friday it will make the award under the Project Development for Pilot and Demonstration Scale Manufacturing of Biofuels, Bioproducts, and Biopower program.

The program aims to support the establishment of bioenergy facilities that will work to turn domestic biomass feedstocks into diesel, gasoline, plastics and chemicals through the integration of pretreatment processes and convergence platforms.

“The domestic bio-industry could play an important part in the growing clean energy economy and in reducing American dependence on imported oil,” said Lynn Orr, DOE undersecretary for science and energy.

“This funding opportunity will support companies that are working to advance current technologies and help them overcome existing challenges in bioenergy so the industry can meet its full potential,” Orr added.

DOE said it aims to set up more than three commercial plants in the next 12 years through the funding opportunity.

NASA has selected the astronauts to join two missions scheduled for 2017 that will head to the orbiting laboratory in the International Space Station.

NASA said Friday U.S. Navy Capt. Scott Tingle will participate in his first space flight for the Expedition 53 to launch in September 2017 with fellow U.S. astronaut Jack Fischer; Russia’s Ivan Vagner, Alexander Skvortsov, Fyodor Yurchikhin; and the European Space Agency’s Paolo Nespoli.

“There’s so much going on aboard the space station at this point, so many science experiments and technology demonstrations,” said Chris Cassidy, chief of the astronaut office at NASA’s Johnson Space Center.

Also selected for a trip to the ISS is retired U.S. Marine Corps Col. Randy Bresnik and he will join Tingle, Vagner and Skvortsov on the station for Expedition 54 in November 2017 along with Russia’s Sergey Ryazansky and Japan’s Norishige Kanai.

U.S. Naval Research Laboratory scientists have assessed ice thickness, strength and other parameters in Alaska’s North Slope in order to determine the evolution and physical structure of ice in the Arctic Ocean as part of the Navy’s five-week research effort.

The team of scientists performed the study on an ice floe in the Beaufort Sea in March as part of the service branch’s ICe Exercise designed to assess how naval and commercial assets can operate in the Arctic, NRL said Thursday.

The military branch’s Arctic Submarine Laboratory identified the ice floe to establish ICEX’s temporary camp through satellite imagery data provided by the National Ice Center.

“Until now, characterization of sea-ice has been primarily at very small, local scales from in-situ core measurements and some ground-based scatterometry,” said Joan Gardner, geologist at NRL.

“Our proposal executes a combined program of airborne measurements and coincident on-ice measurements used to characterize surface and volumetric scattering from the bottom of the sea-ice to the top of the snow surface.”

Researchers used a snow radar, synthetic aperture radar and a Light Detection and Ranging system as tools to collect aerial data for the study.

The White House has published a report that describes how organizations should use big data and algorithmic systems to detect human bias and avoid discrimination.

According to a White House blog entry posted Wednesday, the report also seeks to illustrate how the use of big data to expand opportunity may also introduce inadvertent bias through case studies on credit lending, higher education, criminal justice and employment.

Cecilia Munoz, director of the White House Domestic Policy Council, produced the report with U.S. Chief Technology Officer Megan Smith and Chief Data Scientist DJ Patil.

“The purpose of the report is not to offer remedies to the issues it raises, but rather to identify these issues and prompt conversation, research — and action — among technologists, academics, policy makers and citizens,” Munoz, Smith and Patil noted.

They recommend that government agencies and companies invest in research, technical leadership, cross-training and literacy programs that will focus on addressing data discrimination and accountability issues.

Munoz, Smith and Patil also urged computer and data science professionals to help promote ethical use of data to foster equal opportunity and fairness.