Award Data

Current designs of Light Water Reactors (LWR) are equipped with control and shutdown rods that are inserted and withdrawn from the reactor core for reactivity control. In particular, the Control Element Drive Mechanism (CEDM) system is widely used for regulating plant power levels and core power distribution in the existing and next generation of Pressurized Water Reactors (PWRs). This system incl ...

Marous, James R. An Eye Bank Endothelial Cell Counter Abstract Procurement of donor corneal tissue for transplant use is an important social service undertaken by largely underfunded eye banks. Tissue is not only harvested, but must be screened for a myriad of issues that may make the tissue unsuitable for transplant or pose a health risk to the tissue recipient. Donor tissue may be rejected for ...

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Deep brain stimulation has risen as a neurosurgical procedure of choice for patients with disabling neurological or psychiatric disorders for its abiliy to modulate improvement in the activity of certain circuits. The procedure is currently approved for treatment of Parkinson's disease (PD), essential tremor (ET), dystonia, and obsessive-compulsive disorde ...

Electronic waste (e-waste) is one of the most rapidly growing waste problems worldwide. Improper handling of e-waste results in vast amounts of toxic waste being sent to landfill and leaching into the water supply. Due to these concerns, e-waste recycling is a rapidly growing industry. Unfortunately, most current e-waste recycling processes rely on either manual hand sorting or differential densit ...

Large area neutron detectors with high efficiency, high resolution, high count-rate capability, and fast timing capabilities are required to meet the specific neutron diffraction and imaging needs of the Spallation Neutron Source (SNS) at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory. Due to the current shortage of helium-3, recently developed and existing commercial gas detectors using helium-3 as a neutron ...

As the current fleet of operating nuclear power plants ages, equipment degrades and causes increased incidences of failures which lead to plant shutdowns. This proposal offers to develop testing technology for fault detection in live electrical circuits to identify and resolve problems as they occur.

This STTR Phase I proposal proposes to design and develop reactive filter media using nanofiber technology to capture corrosion inducing particulate matter present in coastal region air. The fibrous filter media will be functionalized using ion exchange chemistry which is known to react with salt ions. The media will be characterized for its filtration performance, resistance to airflow, and dus ...

As nuclear power plants extend their operating life beyond 40 years, attention is being focused on the health of the insulation material of important cables. Faced with the prospect of an extremely expensive, wholesale replacement of thousands of miles of cables, nuclear facilities need a cost-effective, non-destructive, remote, and in-situ method to determine whether or not cables are healthy o ...

? DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The goal of this Phase I STTR project is to establish the feasibility of developing a small-molecule therapeutic agent designed to prevent rhabdomyolysis-induced renal failure. Rhabdomyolysis accounts for 7% to 10% of cases of renal failure in the US. Rhabdomyolysis results from muscle injury that leads to the release of myoglobin, which is then deposited ...

The variation between peak and off-peak electricity demand fluctuates up to 70 percent over the course of a 24 hour cycle. This degree of variability is a driver for costly inefficiencies within the power gridto prevent blackouts and meet customer demandas well as power sell offs to consume excess generation available during off-peak hours. Projections estimate the power demand to double by 2050 r ...