Award Data

Screening is a repetitive and often monotonous task, involving long periods of vigilance despite low occurrences of threat. Because of the nature of this task and the high consequence if a threat is missed, a screener`s vigilance and avoidance of operation during fatigue are critical to their job effectiveness. This proposal describes an integrated solution to monitoring vigilance levels in airpor ...

As processor clock speeds top out, software developers increasingly rely on concurrency, multicore, and distributed computing for performance goals -- and on platforms ranging from industrial controls to multicore desktops and scalable clouds. It is safe to speculate that errors in concurrent software will be the next buffer overflow, only more difficult to detect and debug. The non-determinism i ...

The Department of Homeland Security's charter has a fundamental requirement to collaborate with other government agencies. Secure collaboration on this scale requires strong identity management which can "vouch for" DHS personnel working with other agencies, and makes it possible to provide DHS resources to individuals in other agencies whose work requires it. We propose the development of a reu ...

Low visibility rotary aircraft decoys are needed to protect vehicles against heat seeking missile attacks without illuminating the target which exposes the aircraft to small arms fire and potentially compromising the mission. The novel approach to this challenge is to produce a decoy which emits only in the bands of interest utilizing techniques such as containment and composition selection to op ...

With the range and variety of radiation detectors that exist and the continuing threat of a radiological disaster in the future, the need for training of first responders and personnel in the front lines of interdiction is extraordinary and daunting. It is daunting because of the number of people across the nation that must be trained initially and who must continually maintain their training to b ...

This SBIR Phase I will model and physically demonstrate wearable, small factor, and lightweight thermoelectric generator prototypes powered by human body heat. The project will make use of Perpetua`s novel Flexible Thermoelectric Film technology to yield higher voltages and power from small active areas. End devices will be in wearable form factors, including a flexible button array that can be in ...

An existing low-cost FPGA-based processing platform will be demonstrated with fiber-coupling to single-photon detectors, to perform photon-arrival time stamping with

A stable, well characterized InGaAs materials growth and photodetector fabrication process will be used to fabricate matched photodiodes optimized for balanced homodyne detection. The 1-mm-diameter p-i-n photodetectors will be manufactured back-illuminated with a 5-micron absorber, allowing residual light to reflect off the front-side metal to make a double pass through the active layer. Ultra-hig ...

Voxtel has demonstrated efficient high-speed photon counting with thresholded linear-mode avalanche photodiode (APD) receivers using multi-gain-stage InGaAs/InAIAs APDs. In contrast to Geiger APDs, thresholded photon-counting linear APD receivers are thought not to suffer afterpulsing, and can support maximum count rates (MCR) up to 2 or 3 orders of magnitude faster than Geiger APDs. However, the ...

The goal of this project is to develop a platform biosensor technology for rapid, multianalyte detection of proteins, peptides, nucleic acids, and other molecules of interest with sensitivity at the level of single molecule detection. We propose to build a hand-held, robust apparatus, similar to a palm computer, equipped with a sensor cartridge designed for simultaneous detection of multiple analy ...