Award Data

Maintaining the expected quality and safety of food products is often difficult due to potential chemical and biological contamination. Of particular concern is the threat of food poisoning. Over 40 different foodborne microbial pathogens cause an estimated 30 million cases of human illness each year costing >$12 billion annually. Over the last 20 years, food-borne diseases caused by microbes have ...

The development of an inexpensive, field pesticide sensor would serve a large market for researchers, municipalities and regulatory agencies to minimize the risks involved in pesticide use. The long-term vision is for this technology to become a key environmental science tool to support water quality monitoring efforts. The proposed device will solve two of the most important shortcomings of prese ...

Fog harvesting from fog nets has been intensively investigated to utilize untapped fresh water resources. Atmospheric water like fog constitutes approximately 0.04% of the earth's fresh water. If fog is harnessed appropriately, it has a huge potential to alleviate fresh water shortages due to depleting watershed and groundwater resources NBD Nanotechnologies, Inc. is proposing a research progr ...

Conversion of biomass into useful fungible chemicals and fuels is a long standing challenge. A key requirement of such processes is high efficiency of conversion for economic viability. Biomass derived sugars are highly oxygenated and need processing to remove to be converted into useful hydrocarbons.We propose an integrated bio-thermochemical platform for production of a hydrocarbon which can be ...

As drought persists in certain areas of the western U.S., precision farming techniques are being developed to control irrigation as well as pesticide and fertilizer application in order to ensure crop health and conserve resources by preventing over-application. Water stress as well as disease and nutrient stresses of crops can be estimated by measuring optical spectral reflectance off canopies. R ...

This research effort seeks to develop a non-toxic and biobased solution to the biofouling problem through the development of novel soy-based polymers that release biofouling when exposed to visible light.Biofouling, the unwanted growth of biological organisms on underwater surfaces, has long been recognized as a major problem for commercial aquaculture. Biofouling dramatically increases labor cost ...

Many different disease-causing microbes, or pathogens, can contaminate foods and lead to foodborne illnesses. Every year, as many as one in six Americans experiences a foodborne illness, meaning they get sick by consuming contaminated foods or beverages. Pathogen decontamination of meat carcasses to control meat contamination at the start of the meat processing is one of the methods to eliminate d ...

Strong, sustainable rural communities are essential to creating an economy "built to last that rewards hard work and responsibility."1 These communities supply our food, fiber, and energy, safeguard our natural resources, and are essential in the development of science and innovation. What do communities need to stay economically healthy in order to provide these goods and services? According to a ...

Sheep ranching and wool production have been a part of our country & #8223;s rural heritage for more than a hundred years, with small and mid-sized ranches serving as the backbone of our country & #8223;s sheep operations. Presently, small operators account for more total ewes than larger operations. This means that small ranches offer the best potential for growth of sheep operations in the futur ...

Agiltron Development Corp. will develop the world"s first affordable, reliable and accurate Helicopter Hostile Fire Indicator Sensor capable of detecting small arms through rocket propelled grenade threats using Agiltron"s unique photomechanical, uncooled infrared sensor. In phase one, Agiltron will construct a test sensor system and conduct field tests to determine detection range, accuracy and f ...