Award Data

Purpose: Braille is the primary medium of written communication for persons who are blind. Prior research shows that Braille literacy strongly correlates with stronger reading habits and the pursuit of higher education, whereas Braille illiteracy negatively impacts students' academic performance and ability to navigate the everyday world. A recent report found that there has been a dramatic declin ...

Purpose: American Sign Language (ASL) is a visual and gestural language that is distinct from English, has its own grammar, syntax, vocabulary, and no text representation. Despite the differences between the languages, students who use ASL are typically assessed with protocols for English-speaking students, as few exist specifically for students who use ASL. Not surprisingly, prior research shows ...

Purpose: To be qualified to teach their future students in math, preservice students need to gain specialized mathematics content and pedagogical knowledge. The purpose of this project is to develop a web-based game to strengthen preservice teachers' knowledge of mathematics and provide college instructors with accurate assessments of their students' mathematical understanding. Project Activities ...

"Given the exigency to rein in our nation’s energy consumption and carbon emissions, a nationwide deployment of Geothermal Heat Pumps (GHPs) would help mitigate our demands on the earth’s resources by reducing energy requirements for heating and cooling. Geothermal Heat Pump systems are a proven renewable energy resource that provides significant energy savings as compared to typical heating ...

"At 2.7 million miles of paved roads, the United States has the largest network of roads in the world. The mainstream approach to pavement rehabilitation has been to mill the deteriorated asphalt and replace with new asphalt mix. The hot in-place pavement recycling process has the potential of replacing the milling and resurfacing process with substantial financial and environmental savings. Ho ...

"Since March 2006, Boulder, Colorado based Cool Energy, Inc. (CEI) has prototyped three generations of a novel low-temperature Stirling engine to generate electricity for low-to-medium temperature (100°C to 250°C) heat sources including solar thermal, geothermal and waste heat. With a marketing name for the SolarHeart® Engine, in its most recent operation in April, 2010, over 1800 watts of out ...

"Faraday Technology, Inc., with the guidance of our commercialization partner the Boeing Company, propose a drop-in-replacement chrome plating process that can coat complex, hard to access surfaces such as the interior of landing gear, using an environmentally benign trivalent chromium bath. The proposed green manufacturing process meets the stated EPA need by improving existing processes while u ...

"Before entering the national pipeline distribution system, all natural gas must be dried, which is currently achieved using glycol dehydrators. However, the glycol dehydrators extract hazardous volatile organic compounds (VOCs) from the raw natural gas streams, In the U.S. alone the VOC emissions from dehydrators total an estimated 44,000 tons per year, half of which are benzene, toluene, ethyl ...

"The large-scale production of nanoparticles of the highest purity will be accomplished by the Eltron Solvent-free Powder Synthesis (ESPS) system described in this proposal. Since conventional particle size reduction methods are unable to reduce particles to the nano-scale and tend to reduce the purity of the powders, the ESPS system has been designed for direct yield of high purity and nano-size ...

"As part of its mission to protect human health and the environment, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is dedicated to developing and promoting innovative cleanup strategies that restore contaminated sites to productive use, reduce associated costs, and promote environmental stewardship. However, in adopting this strategy there will be an increasing need to implement a more cost effective, ...