Award Data

Nitrate is an important nutrient for crop production. Soils with excess nitrate amounts and shallow groundwater tables pose a high risk to nitrate leaching into drinking water supplies. A shortage of nitrate decreases agricultural productivity. Measurement of soil nitrate content is a tedious, time consuming, and expensive process. Currently, there are no commercial sensors for in-situ nitrate det ...

Low visibility flares offer significant advantages for nighttime protection of rotary wing vehicles. Aerodyne Research Inc (ARI) and its teaming partner ATK propose flares having nearly same intensity in IR bands of interest while having greatly reduced visibility. The Phase I program will build on previous work performed by ARI on low visibility flares to identify candidate flare compositions h ...

With the United States dependence on foreign oil imports, new renewable sources of fuel compatible with combustion engines must be found. A source of this new biofuel could be the jojoba plant which is native to the desert Southwest. This is a plant which grows on non-arable desert lands which do not presently support food production in the United States. The use of this feedstock as a fuel would ...

Most commercial motor controllers (MC’s) operate at relatively low switching frequency that produces a detectable acoustic signature and therefore drives the Navy to procure MC’s operating at higher frequencies in order to reduce acoustic signature. These custom MC’s, however, still generate significant noise, are not sufficiently reliable, and have obsolete components. APS will develop an i ...

The “see first, understand first, act first, finish decisively” principle requires that military commanders and analysts be provided a complete, up-to-the-second view of the battlefield. Currently deployed full motion video (FMV) sensors provide crucial real-time situational awareness, but suffer from limited field of view and lack of geographical context. Augmenting current FMV displays with ...

So many Americans are overweight that the condition has been declared a serious public health problem and is burdening our health care systems. Obesity increases the risk of diabetes, heart attack, stroke, cancer, arthritis, sleep apnea and other diseases. Researchers are making progress to find and control the behavioral and biochemical factors that drive weight gain and their progress points to ...

The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) has identified the need for a practical analytical instrument for the detection of air emissions resulting from animal manure management systems. Based on this very important need, Giner, Inc. proposes to study and evaluate the feasibility of designing and fabricating a simple-to-operate, selective and solid-polymer electrolyte-based, thick-film electro?ch ...

Waste oils, coolants and other hazardous liquids dripped or spilled on the floor of machine shops, manufacturing facilities, auto repair and service shops have been a recognized environmental liability for decades. Far and away the most common medium used to clean up these spills has been clay based sorbents, commonly called "floor dry". Clay as an absorbent medium presents its own problems. It is ...

Cogongrass is recognized as one of the most significant invasive species in the U.S. Cogongrass is a growing threat as it continues its rapid spread across the Southeast, reducing forest and pasture productivity, destroying wildlife habitat, impacting rights of ways and presenting an extreme fire hazard. Throughout the World it has gained notoriety as the "Worst Invasive Plant of Non-crop Lands". ...

The growth of agricultural productivity in the past century can be partly attributed to an intense focus on pest management, including the development of fungicides and bactericides. Agricultural history contains many examples of fungi or bacteria causing complete crop loss. The use of fungicides and bactericides can prevent such catastrophic losses and maximize yield, however, these benefits come ...