Award Data

A personal air ventilation system (PAVS) can dramatically improve the environment inside chemical/biological protective clothing, protecting the health and safety of soldiers and enabling peak physical/mental performance for long periods. However, existing air blowers that can produce the flow rate and pressure drop needed for a PAVS are too heavy, inefficient, and noisy for a man-portable system ...

Identification of organophosphates (OPs) based nerve agents, is vital to the protection of U.S. armed forces personnel. Existing detection methods use bulky and expensive laboratory equipment, negating their battlefield use. Colorimetric indicators such as the currently deployed M8 and M9 detection papers are the fastest, cheapest, and easiest type of detector to use; however, these cannot detect ...

Nerve agents (NA) such as sarin, soman, tabun or VX are organophosphate compounds similar to those used as pesticides but with much higher toxicity that can cause death within minutes. Use of NA weapons of mass destruction has become a real threat since the Iraq–Iran war in the 1980s and the sarin attacks against civilians in Japan in 1994 and 1995. Nerve agents are relatively simple and inexpen ...

The physiological health of soldiers is at risk due to potential biological agent exposure. Many of these agents are protein-based and can cause alterations in cellular proteins. The ability to rapidly monitor, detect, and analyze proteins will enable earlier identification of exposure and result in quicker intervention potentially saving many lives. A key step in analysis of protein mixtures is p ...