Award Data

Greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions are primary drivers of global climate change. Hence there is a crucial need to quantify their sources and sinks. A powerful method to constrain source and sink strengths is the analysis of the relative proportions of isotopic variants of GHG’s in atmospheric samples like those collected globally by NOAA’s Cooperative Air Sampling Network. Measurements that are ca ...

There are currently no inexpensive, expendable air-deployed monitoring systems (Dropsondes) that measure atmospheric data and oceanographic as a function of depth. These are important data in predicting the intensity and path of hurricanes. Boston Engineering proposes to provide NOAA with a solution to this challenge with the Multi-Purpose Above Surface/Below Surface Expendable Dropsonde (MASED) p ...

During the harmful algal blooms (HAB), marine algal toxins reach concentrations high enough to cause various neurological and gastrointestinal disorders through inhalation of the toxin or consumption of contaminated shellfish. Brevetoxins, produced by dinoflagellate Karenia brevis, are known to disrupt neurological processes to cause an illness called neurotoxic shellfish poisoning. The timely rec ...

A central part of NOAA’s mission is to develop and distribute scientific data, including large-scale climate, weather, marine, and coastal information for regional and national analysis. NOAA has also developed local data gathering tools on an as-needed basis. While these approaches demonstrate the power of local data collection, no existing tool meets the broad needs of environmental community ...

The underlying framework for modern-day weather forecasting is numerical weather prediction (NWP). Even the current and planned weather observing platforms leave gaps that are insufficient to meet the requirements of NWP. Mano Nanotechnologies, Inc. proposes a new environmental sensing system, known as “GlobalSense”, which will enable transformational forecast improvements by filing these crit ...

Air management solutions capable of reducing heat and moisture burden are not suitable for integration in wearable respiratory protection systems due to excessive weight, volume, and power requirements of existing technologies. Vibrant Composites proposes applying its unique uMECS manufacturing technology towards development of an ultra-lightweight and power efficient miniature blower. Fundamental ...

Modern metagenomics studies on diverse microbiomes revealed immense repertoires of potential natural products/antibiotics to be tapped into.However, identifying such secondary metabolites (SMs) directly from a complex microbiome remains rarely successful due to two major technicalchallenges: i) difficulty in dissecting complex microbiome samples and massive metagenomics data, and ii) difficulty in ...

Physical Sciences Inc. (PSI) proposes to utilize an innovative LWIR hyperspectral technology coupled with advanced data processing algorithms for non-contact, standoff detection of liquid/solid contaminants on surfaces. The technology will address the US Army"s need for fast, on-the-move, non-contact detection of ground contamination during reconnaissance missions. The Phase I effort demonstrated ...

Many protein-based drugs have limited efficacy due to a short half-life or require intravenous delivery because of low bioavailability. Extend Biosciences is developing proprietary carrier molecules that allow proteins to access an intrinsic transport pathway for efficient delivery to the vascular space and then maintain a sustained presence in circulation. This novel technology would be of partic ...

Greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions to the atmosphere are primary drivers of global climate change and hence there is a crucial need to quantify their sources and sinks. A general technique to constrain source and sink strengths is the analysis of the relative proportions of isotopic variants of GHG's. These measurements must be performed with extremely high precision. The gold standard technique, i ...