Award Data

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 ...

Shelter enclosures for military working dogs in the event of a CB attack is a technology gap identified by the Joint Requirements Office. Important parameters to consider in the design of protective enclosures include low weight and size to minimize transport requirements; rapid setup; and accommodation of canine physiological and psychological comfort needs while providing protection against CB ...

Forest insect pests cause significant economic and ecological damage every year. Dramatically increased pest activity in recent years suggests that changing climate conditions will inflate the uncertainty associated with pest risk assessments. Advances in forest pest risk analysis methodology are needed to allow managers to better explore the consequences and value of alternative management scenar ...

The safety of the public food supply is an emerging and important public health issue in the United States. Recent, widely-reported food and feed contaminations by pathogens and banned substances such as melamine have fueled an increased demand for improved assays to screen and protect the food supply. The antibody-based ELISA assay is a powerful, cost-effective method to detect trace analytes, su ...

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 ...

Materials Innovation Technologies LLC is developing a method for making polymer matrix composites fiber preforms that has the potential to revolutionize the industry. The Three Dimensional Engineered Preform (3-DEP) process represents the state-of-the art in chopped fiber preform manufacture. 3-DEP produces a homogeneous fiber distribution within parts and consistent part weight and dimensions f ...

Ceramics materials have great potential in a wide variety of applications but their use is often limited by the associated high cost of machining. Developing laser assisted machining (LAM) for a commercial environment will greatly mitigate these costs. Nanohmics and Dr. Y. C. Shin of Purdue University have teamed with Progressive

RT Solutions, LLC (RTS) has built a unique process-controlled "state-of-the-art" earthworm composting facility that process and transforms large volumes of dairy manures into a user friendly and unique plant production product with established horticultural consumers. This environmentally friendly technology known as vermicomposting uses earthworms in an engineered system to consistently produce a ...

We propose to build in Phase II a compact, rugged laser photoacoustic spectrometric (L-PAS) prototype sensor system (at technology readiness level TRL-6) for continuous, real-time broadband analysis of multiple chemicals. It will incorporate a tunable infrared quantum cascade laser (QCL), photoacoustic cell and air sampler system in a sealed decontamination-capable module and an efficient algorith ...

Well over 50 % of US land area constitutes low wind-speed sites, yet wind turbines are either not effective or only marginally effective in such low winds. To extract significantly more energy from such DOE Class 1 or Class 2 winds requires substantially increasing turbine blade rotor diameter (wind power is proportional to the square of the blade diameter). However, due to limitations on turbine ...