Award Data

Organophosphorus chemical warfare nerve agents (OP-CWA) are attractive to terrorist groups and rogue states as an inexpensive and accessible technology for chemical warfare. OP-CWA and organophosphate pesticides cause severe neurological symptoms and death by inhibiting the enzyme acetylcholinesterase (AChE); the resulting excess acetylcholine accumulates and overstimulates the human or animal bo ...

Organophosphorus chemical warfare nerve agents (OP-CWA) are attractive to terrorist groups and rogue states as an inexpensive and accessible technology for chemical warfare. OP-CWA and organophosphate pesticides cause severe neurological symptoms and death by inhibiting the enzyme acetylcholinesterase (AChE); the resulting excess acetylcholine accumulates and overstimulates the human or animal bo ...

This Phase 2 project targets the completion of the development of an improved system for the broadcasting of the WWVB signal, as a direct continuation of the Phase 1 project, which successfully validated the proposed approach through a feasibility study and analyses. Objectives of this project include the design of the new modulation scheme and protocol, the development of a new time-code generato ...

The development of a greatly enhanced receiver for the WWVB signal is targeted, as well as possible modifications in the transmitted signal, which would both offer significant improvements in its effective coverage. This is to be achieved while allowing the replacement of the bulky, expensive, ferrite-based antenna, commonly used in the receiver, with a novel lower-cost antenna. Furthermore, the p ...

Perform a feasibility study on developing a face recognition application in a cloud computing environment utilizing MBARK as the middleware. The application will have a client piece that will run on a mobile device and a server piece that will run on a higher-performance computing cluster. The specific objectives of the feasibility can be enumerated as follows: 1. Split/distribute the MBARK middle ...

Nanometrology International, Inc. (NMI) proposes to demonstrate the feasibility of 3-dimensional (3D) characterization of nanoscale objects using scanning probe microscopy (SPM) with a measurement uncertainty of less than 0.7 nm. To accomplish this task, we propose a novel method of 3D tip characterization and use of an innovative surface reconstruction algorithm recently introduced by NIST and th ...

Organophosphorus (OP) compounds have been extensively used as pesticides and chemical warfare agents . Potential OPs exposure exists both on the battlefield and in the civilian sector. OPs exposure inhibits enzyme activity, allowing excess acetylcholine to accumulate. Screening of multiple enzymes is highly desirable because it may provide a comprehensive description of the warrior’s capacity fo ...

This proposal describes a project to develop a pre-concentrator inlet system for a mass spectrometer. The pre-concentrator utilizes a heated mesh design that is coated with a variety of sorbent materials to provide high pre-concentration with adversely affecting the analysis time. An innovative method of evacuating the pre-concentrator chamber provides an additional gain in pre-concentration of 2 ...

Storm surge poses a grave threat to both life and property as hurricanes make landfall. The ability to monitor surge in real-time using a densely-space network of sensors with integrated data recording and telemetry would provide NOAA with a unique capability. Our approach is to offer a system which incorporates a flexible multi-modal data acquisition platform with integrated telemetry for real-ti ...

Currently, the accepted standard experimental model for measuring protective efficacy against botulism is the Mouse Lethality Neutralization (MLN) assay. Botulism poisoning is a life threatening condition that is not only a public health concern, but could also be a potential biological weapon. With seven serotypes of botulinum neurotoxins, there is need for an alternative to the MLN assay due t ...