Award Data

This Phase II SBIR project will continue the development of an optical sorter that will be used to estimate drop sizes in sprays. The optical sorter will determine the size of drops in the 0.1 to 10 microns range. Drops in this size range are prevalent in the automobile industry, where the fuel injection pressures have increased tremendously over the past two decades. These newer injectors provide ...

New Generation Access Control (NGAC)—because of its “neutrality by design”—represents the most effective and scalable approach for deploying “smart” access control and consent solutions in large dynamic scenarios. NGAC however presents with its own problems: (1) it has miniscule recognition and uptake in the workplace, (2) it is unusable by non-technical policy officers and (3) its doc ...

TECHNICAL ABSTRACT: Animal-borne electronic instruments (tags) are critical tools for monitoring the behavior and ecology of cetaceans, providing data needed for managing their populations and mitigating the threats they face. Although remote-deployment of tags onto cetaceans that cannot be captured has provided valuable data, attachment durations have been frustratingly short and variable. Our Ph ...

Viral diseases are a major impediment to the development and expansion of environmentally safe and sustainable aquaculture systems (NMFS 2007). Despite control measures, pathogenic viruses kill millions of fish and shellfish every year (ICES Mariculture Committee 2004). To date, vaccines against fish viruses have generally provided extremely poor protection or are too expensive (e.g. DNA vaccines) ...

In the United States, several high profile outbreaks of waterborne illness during the past 15 years have highlighted the need for a solution to drinking water contamination. Several recent studies suggest that approximately 20 percent of surface and ground source waters in the United States are contaminated with viruses. There are very few data on virus occurrence in drinking water, however, which ...

A back-illuminated planar InGaAs photodiode tested to have 95% quantum effiiency (QE) at 1550 nm, area greater than 1 mm2, low capacitance (125 MHz) will be improved. Although the existing Phase I device exhibited bulk material dark current generation better than commercially available devices, the sidewall-generated dark current was found to dominate the noise equiva ...

Interior wood composite panels are widely used for furniture, bookshelves, kitchen cabinets, and flooring, and are predominately made with carcinogenic urea-formaldehyde (UF) resin. A new formaldehyde-free, environmentally friendly wood adhesive that mainly consists of abundant, renewable and readily available soybean flour and a novel curing agent have been developed in a laboratory. The novel cu ...

Ecosystem-based marine research would benefit from an improved ability to investigate the ecology of marine animal populations on both large and small spatial scales. Acoustic tag monitoring systems are a preferred technology for monitoring animal movement and behavior in the marine environment. However, the marine acoustic tagging systems currently available generally lack precise positioning cap ...

Interior wood composite panels are widely used for furniture, bookshelves, kitchen cabinets, and flooring, and are predominately made with carcinogenic urea-formaldehyde (UF) resin. A new formaldehyde-free, environmentally friendly wood adhesive that mainly consists of abundant, renewable and readily available soybean flour and a novel curing agent have been developed in a laboratory. The nov ...

There is a need for technologies that protect the health and welfare of the American people in a terrorist emergency by detecting acts of biological contamination. Of the chemical, biological, and explosive (CBE) agents, anthrax, smallpox, plague, ricin, botulinum toxin, toxic commercial pesticides, and chemical warfare agents present the most threats. Although there are a variety of techniqu ...