Award Data

There is a growing need to accurately characterize nuclear materials not only for nuclear safeguards and nonproliferation treaty verification but also for forensics and provenance. At present, nuclear material identification requires samples to be collected and sent to laboratories for analysis using large and expensive equipment, such as inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometers (ICP-MS) or s ...

Childhood obesity is a complex, multi-faceted problem which has been traced to many preventable risk factors, not the least of which includes; food access, outdoor ads, crime/safety, racial and income disparities, as well as increasing sedentary behaviors caused by excessive screen time. The economic impact of obesity related disease has proven quite significant. The direct cost of childhood obesi ...

We propose developing new instrumentation based on swept-wavelength external cavity quantum cascade lasers (swept-ECQCLs), to acquire physical/chemical data on chemical weapon agent (CWA) and simulant properties in laboratory-scale explosive testing, and to improve/validate computational fluid dynamics (CFD) codes. In Phase I, we demonstrated laboratory measurements of CWA simulant combustion usin ...

Cooling and drying of feed pellets are the most important operations in the feed manufacturing industry. These operations are carried out simultaneously, in a single machine, by passing ambient air through a moving bed of pellets. However, simultaneous control of both these processes is very difficult. Overdrying of pellets is a common problem that costs several million dollars to feed processi ...

THERE IS AN ESTABLISHED NEED FOR A SIMPLE ROBUST TRANSDUCER TO MEASURE PARTICLE VELOCITY IN SEVERE BLAST AND SHOCK ENVIRONMENTS SUCH AS NUCLEAR AND HIGH EXPLOSIVE TESTS. A GAGE CONCEPT IS PROPOSED FOR DEVELOPMENT, BASED ON THE PROVEN MEASUREMENT PRINCIPLES USED IN THE HIGHLY SUCCESSFUL DX GAGE, BUT RECONFIGURED MECHANICALLY AND ELECTRICALLY TO WITHSTAND THE HARSH SHOCK ENVIRONMENTS. THE CONCEPT RE ...

Climate change is increasing the frequency and severity of western wildfires.The threat to peopleand infrastructure is growing with more population living in the wildland-urban interface.Advances in technology provide the opportunity to improve wildfire mapping accuracy timelinessand dissemination. An un-stabilized airborne fire mapping sensor is proposed utilizing an array ofminiature thermal inf ...

Despite its clean and green nature when utilized in fuel cells and other devices, most hydrogen is currently produced primarily from non-renewable sources, such as natural gas, oil, and coal. Anaerobic digestion provides a potentially improved alternative to manufacturing hydrogen from petroleum and natural gas. Anaerobic digesters can produce hydrogen from inexpensive and renewable energy sources ...

THE TESTING FOR SALMONELLA CURRENTLY INVOLVES METHODOLOGY THAT REQUIRES 3-8 DAYS TO COMPLETE AND A FAIRLY SOPHISTICAT ED SKILL LEVEL TO PERFORM. THIS PROJECT IS DESIGNED TO D DEVELOP BOTH MANUAL AND BIOSENSOR-BASED HOMOGENEOUS ASSAYS THAT WILL REDUCE THE DETECTION TIME OF SALMONELLA TO WITHIN 24 HOURS AND BE TECHNICALLY SIMPLER TO PERFORM. THE NOVEL ASPECT IS THE USE OF A LIMPSOME-ENCAPSULATED ENZ ...

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CURRENT ATTEMPTS TO USE THE PLASMA OPENING SWITCH (POS) FOR DECADE HAVE NOT YET BEEN ENTIRELY SUCCESSFUL DUE TO THE APPARENT INABILITY OF THE SWITCH TO OPEN EFFICIENTLY TO A HIGH-IMPEDENCE LOAD. RESEARCH DIRECTED TOWARD IMPROVING THE PERFORMANCE OF THE POS IN THE LONG-CONDUCTION TIME REGIME HAS BEEN FRUSTRATED BY THE INABILITY OF COMPUTATIONAL TOOLS TO OPERATE IN THE PARAMETER REGIMES OF INTEREST ...