WASHINGTON - The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) has launched a new, improved version of Science.gov, the federal government's portal to information about science and technology.

According to the DOE, Science.gov is a gateway to reliable information about science and technology from across federal government organizations. The Web site is a collaboration of 12 major science agencies, and searches not only 1,700 Web sites, but also 30 large databases that are not accessible to popular search engines. Science.gov will search 47 million pages of government R&D results and present these results in relevancy-ranked order, says DOE.

Hosted by DOE's Office of Scientific and Technical Information, Science.gov is made possible through a collaboration of the U.S. Departments of Agriculture, Commerce, Defense, Education, Energy, Health and Human Services, and Interior, as well as the Environmental Protection Agency, the Government Printing Office, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, and the National Science Foundation, with support from the National Archives and Records Administration.