Award Data

Purpose: Prior research indicates that reading difficulties in childhood become more problematic as students move to middle and high school where increasingly challenging material must be learned. Although some older students still struggle with decoding, many more have difficulty constructing meaning from text. Despite research that has identified strategies for teaching students to comprehend wh ...

Purpose: The need for all students to be well prepared in science has been well documented. The purpose of this project is to develop a solar learning lab platform to apply learning in the area of energy science. Project Activities: The researchers will design curricula materials, multi-media video clips, lesson plans, student activities, assessments, and a back-end system to house data generated ...

Purpose: In education research, the standardized mean difference (symbolized by d) is the predominant effect size index. It is calculated as the difference between the treatment-group and control-group means, divided by the pooled standard deviation. Using d allows the impacts of education interventions to be compared even when they have been evaluated using different measures or study designs. Ca ...

This project develops a small mobile personal cooling system that can be worn conveniently by individuals with heat-related disabilities. The successful development of this mobile technology: (1) supports access, promotes integration, and facilitates the independence of individuals with disabilities in the workplace and educational settings, and during recreational activities; (2) provides increas ...

Aerodyne Research Inc. (ARI) and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) plan to develop an efficient catalytic system to convert biomass into olefins for the production of hydrocarbons in the gasoline, diesel, and/or jet fuel range by way of catalytic fast pyrolysis. Conversion of lignocellulosic feedstocks from resources as varied as corn stover, grasses, wood, and sugar cane bagasse is ...

One effective way to lower the weight, thus decreasing the carbon fiber usage and lowering the cost, of a CFRP tank is to improve the mechanical properties of the CFRP composite resin matrix using nano-reinforcement. Using the resin matrix itself as a source of composite strength, along with the carbon fiber reinforcement, results in a tank that requires less carbon fiber material. This solution d ...

Airlines and ground handling companies are facing ever increasing pressure to reduce the level of emissions and fuel consumption from their operations because of the environmental impacts and costs. An efficient battery electric power system that has an extended range through integration with a fuel cell that operates on renewable liquid hydrocarbon fuel will meet the needs of airlines and ground ...

Current efforts of DOE to create future lightweight systems in order to attain significant energy saving, cost reduction and improved efficiency requires development of advanced nanostructured lightweight composite materials with improved ductility and high tensile strength. Magnesium (Mg) with a density of approximately two-thirds of aluminum is the lightest structural material. Despite this adva ...

III-V semiconductors based solar cells display the highest sunlight conversion efficiency. Nevertheless, the material cost of current III-Vs and their fabrication process is very high which impedes their use for flat panel, large market applications. This project aims to explore, evaluate and implement defect tolerant high efficiency tandem solar cells based on more earth abundant III-V materials ...

Large-scale wind turbine designs are significantly constrained by transportation limits. As utility scale wind turbines have developed, they have steadily increased in size and have seen a steady decrease in cost of energy. However, further increases in on-shore turbine size beyond 3MW are prohibited by hard limits in the size of components that can be economically transported to the wind farm sit ...