Award Data

While bacteria cause fewer plant diseases than fungi and viruses, they do cause serious economic damages to both US and worldwide agriculture. Citrus canker caused by Xanthomonas axonopodis has resulted in the destruction of over 20 million trees in Florida, while fire blight caused by Erwinia amylovora costs exceed $100 million per year in the United States alone, and recent epidemics have cost o ...

Hundreds of existing wind power projects have transformed communities by creating jobs, improving economic development, and reducing environmental pollution. However, 85 percent of rural communities cannot utilize wind power today due to community concerns or poor wind resources at ground level that make projects uneconomical. Altaeros Energies is developing an airborne wind turbine that adapts pr ...

The "KickinKitchen.TV" project combines: technology, education and research strategies to address the USDA challenge area of improving nutritional health and reducing childhood obesity. This study involves the following partners: racially diverse, urban public schools, KidsCOOK Productions, an independent production company committed to addressing childhood obesity risk through its digital educati ...

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 ...

Based upon the PSI InstantEye sUAV platform, PSI will develop a high performance, low cost tactically employed, small UAV that willprovide on-demand overhead aerial video surveillance to firefighters actively engaged in containing wildfires.

Larger, taller wind turbines could significantly reduce the cost of wind energy and enable much broader deployment. For example, a recent study from the National Renewable Energy Lab [NREL/TP-5000-61063] showed that increasing tower heights from 96m to 140m would nearly double the available wind resource in the US (adding 1,800 GW) and bring wind development to many areas where it is not currently ...

The objective of the proposed research effort is to develop low-cost, non-toxic, soy-based polymers as vehicles for ePaint photoactive antifouling technology. Phase I research investigates the feasibility of synthesizing soy polymers as water-based emulsions and assessing their utility as photoactive biofouling release coatings. This approach, if successful, will result in an affordable, non-toxic ...

Thisprogramwill develop and demonstrate a modular mixed-oxidant water treatment system that can operate with agricultural enterprises to deactivate contaminants present in drinking water sources. The system will be designed to oxidize contaminants that include pharmaceutical compounds, pesticides, fertilizers, and manure present in farming water sources.

Large areas across the United States and around the world are afflicted by drought, a condition that inflicts damage to local economies and particularly to agriculture. While some communities are turning to expensive energy-intensive processes such as desalination and long distance transport to address water shortages, NBD Nanotechnologies, Inc. is working to reduce stress on watershed resources b ...

Ammonia (NH3) is an extremely important feedstockfor producing nitrogen fertilizers, such as that provide essential nutrition for crop vitality. The worldwide production of ammonia is more than 100 million tons per year. The conventional Haber-Bosch ammonia production process requires high pressure and temperature (up to 300 atm and 500 & deg;C) and is, as such, extremely energy-intensive. This pr ...