Award Data

Currently, the United States Army encounters many scenarios where soldiers must enter hazardous areas, yet still maintain isolation from contaminants such as chemical and biological agents as well as hazardous material exposure. This requires that the soldiers respiratory tract be isolated to prevent exposure to these contaminants. In order to accomplish this, the soldiers wear protective suits an ...

Many believe the greatest threat to our troops and homeland security are attacks using biological weapons. Recent developments of biological warfare agents parallel advances in microbiology, viruses and bacteria can be rendered more lethal through genetic engineering, and many toxins can be mass-produced. However, detecting biological agents is difficult and time consuming because there are thousa ...

The primary goals of this Phase II application are to successfully manufacture pilot-scale quantities of neutralizing anti-botulinum toxin antibodies in plants, and to complete preclinical studies with these antibodies. Our collaborator, Dr. James D. Mar

Spotted wing drosophila (SWD), Drosophila suzukii, is an aggressive, prolific, and polyphagous pest species of many crops, because they lay their eggs in healthy, unripened soft-skinned fruit,rendering them unmarketable. In August 2008, the first detection of SWD in the US caused great concern, as the fly was found infesting a variety of commercial fruits on the coast of California. The following ...

ISCA Technologies proposes to further develop and optimize SPLAT® TK, an attract and kill(A&K) formulation designed to target all active stages of the deer tick, Ixodes scapularis Say, aspecies of major medical and veterinary significance in the U.S., due to its capacity to transmit Lyme disease and several other zoonotic pathogens. ISCA's sprayable, long-lasting SPLAT TK formulation will att ...

Approximately 47.8 million episodes of foodborne illnesses (to one in six Americans), occur each year and result in roughly 128,000 hospitalizations and 3,000 deaths in the U.S. Approximately half of the reported foodborne illnesses occur in children, with the majority occurring in children under 15 years of age. The development of reliable and effective methods to detect foodborne hazards (pathog ...

Conversion of biomass into useful fungible chemicals and fuels is a long-standing challenge. A key requirement of such processes is high efficiency of conversion for economic viability. Biomass derived sugars are highly oxygenated and need processing to remove to be converted into useful hydrocarbons.We propose an integrated bio-thermochemical platform for production of a specialty chemical, which ...

1-Hexanol has a global market size of ~200,000 MT/yr, wherein this alcohol is used as an endproduct or as an intermediate in producing other industrial chemicals with applications in the plastics, textile, perfume, and chemicals industries. 1-Hexanol is commercially produced from petrochemicalsvia processes the require substantial energy inputs, use toxic gases, and waste that is difficult to disp ...

With global aquaculture production poised to double in the next 20 years the need for sustainable, cost effective feed inputs will be greater than ever - and soybean-based feeds can be part of the solution. Unfortunately, soy feeds use remains limited due to the presence of anti-nutritional factors including undigested oligosaccharides raffinose and stachyose, lectins that damage the intestinal li ...

Project SummaryWe propose to continue the research and development of a four-wheeled autonomous agricultural robot that, while light-weight and affordable, can assist in harvesting by transporting produce from a human picker in the field to a collection station at the edge of the field thus increasing picker productivity by 50%.Our primary focus for this effort will be on the harvesting of strawbe ...