Award Data

Air quality and stormwater runoff are two of the primary environmental challenges facing our cities. Creation and maintenance of a healthy urban forest is an important factor reducing water runoff and improving air qualityl The reduction in stormwater runoff and energy consumption facilitated by street trees not only provides quality of life benefits for urban citizens, but financial benefits as w ...

The number of women farmers in the U.S. has been rising over the past several decades, with the rate of growth accelerating between the 2002 and 2007 Censuses of Agriculture, to nearly 1 million female farm operators in 2007. Between 1980 and 2002, the number of women-operated farms had increased by 86%, a rate far surpassing growth in U.S. farms overall. These data underscore the need for agricul ...

Improved production yield is a constant objective of increasingly sophisticated agricultural practices. As Earth's population grows, higher yield is a critical mechanism for insuring adequate food supply. An effective way to increase yield is by reducing waste. Crops begin to ripen when encountering ethylene at low levels and sustain the ripening process by self-generation of ethylene. Because eth ...

Although baseline methods for growing high-value marine finfish in low salinity recirculating aquaculture systems (RAS) have been developed, the technologies for effective treatment of wastewater from RAS facilities operating at low salinity levels have not been explored to any great extent, creating a bottleneck for industry development. Researchers, including those with the USDA-ARS Sustainable ...

Perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) is a synthetic chemical which does not occur naturally in the environment,it has been used in many commercial applications. A number of scientific findings since the late 1990's have elevated PFOAs to the category of great environmental concern beacuse of its persistence, and the potential for bioaccumulation and biomagnification. Effective environmental and health pr ...

Small businesses are the bedrock of the American economy. To bring economic development to rural America, these regions must have more effective tools for attracting and retaining the businesses that will provide the jobs and investment these communities need to thrive. The proposal seeks to apply an existing technology, Geographic Information Systems, on a proven platform, DecisionTree, in an inn ...

Recreation trails are a key component of the social, economic and health of rural communities. People with mobility impairments are often excluded from trails, shared-use paths, parks and other public areas where barriers are erected to prevent access by motorized trail vehicles (MTVs), to control livestock or wildlife, as an access point in a fenced area, or for a variety of other reasons. Many p ...

The waste of unprocessed vegetable matter from normal harvesting can be used to create feeds for livestock and the pulp can be used to produce methanol for fuel. We feel that we should use all resources to their fullest potential. To create a refined machine that will allow the field processing of current waste products into viable feed and fuel products.

Extensive worldwide reservoirs of rabies virus (RV) in wildlife and stray dogs continue to pose a serious risk of lethal infection of humans and cause a high economic burden. Immunization of wildlife and stray dogs with live vaccines is the only effective method to control and eventually eliminate rabies in carnivore species worldwide. In this application we propose to select canine adenovirus typ ...

Special Operations forces (SOF) operate in all weather conditions. It has identified a need for a micro-cooling system that can be vehicle mounted and man-portable, as well as provide a capability to cool vehicle mounted communications and electronics equipment. To meet the needs of SOF the system must be small, lightweight, quiet, low power, and gasless. We propose a compact micro-cooling system ...