SCIENCE

The House approved two bills aimed at bringing the United States back to the forefront of international supercomputer research. One measure would require the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy prepare a long-term plan for developing high-performance computers, while a second bill requires the U.S. Department of Energy to build computer labs for government and academic research. The bills are part of the House Republican leadership's research and development agenda, but they face an uncertain future in the Senate. "These bills will help the U.S. maintain its status as the world leader in supercomputing," said Rep. Sherwood Boehlert (R-N.Y.), chairman of the science panel. After years of dominance by U.S. computer developers, the Japanese now hold the record for the world's fastest computation machine -- an NEC-built device called the Earth Simulator. That computer has nearly twice the performance power of the top machine in the United States, Intel's Thunder, located at California's Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.