Award Data

he proposal addresses development of an innovative one-pass drying technology that uses 915MHz microwave heating characteristics to maximize head rice yield (HRY) recovery. Head rice-- which is the mass of milled rice kernels that are at least three-fourths of the original kernel lengthafter milling of brown rice--is the high-value portion of processed/dried rice. National revenuelosses related to ...

he contamination of shellfish with marine toxins produced during Harmful Algal Blooms (HAB)have become an increasingly common occurrence near U.S. shores. Consumption of contaminatedshellfish causes serious nervous and intestinal system illnesses which often require hospitalizationand fishing closures. The only way to minimize the risk to the consumer is to ensure that theshellfish product does no ...

Distributed wind turbines present an opportunity for rural end-users to significantly reduce theirexposure to high and volatile electricity prices while increasing their electric security. The criticalproblems that limit the deployment of distributed wind turbines particularly small-scale systemsless than 100kW are fundamental inabilities to compete on cost with other sources of generationand achi ...

Nitrogen fertilizer is one of the greatest input costs to cereal crop production but the averageefficiency of nitrogen fertilizer use is low. Only 30-60% of nitrogen fertilizer is taken up by crops.Large amounts of nitrogen fertilizer are lost to the surrounding environment representing aneconomic loss to farmers and diminishing air and water quality. These challenges apply to cerealcropping syste ...

Nitrate is currently the most prevalent groundwater pollutant in Northern America primarily fromagricultural activities and changing nitrogen input to the land surface.State-of-the-art treatmenttechnologies such as reverse osmosis ion exchange and electrodialysis suffer from brinemanagement cost associated with nitrate removal. The core technology developed through thisSBIR project will be a hybri ...

BUILDERS Classroom represents a revolutionary and transformative advance for teachingK12 students crucial skills for Computer Aided Design (CAD) spatial cognition modeling andComputational Thinking (CT).BlocksCAD Inc. will leverage the widely popular BlocksCADsoftware to create BUILDERS Classroom. BUILDERS Classroom supports Topic Area 8.6 -Rural and Community Development - with a focus on improvi ...

High-quality schools positively impact rural economics by producing theeducated labor force needed to attract business/industry to the areas. The greatest source of ahighly educated population in rural areas is native individuals who attended college locally orwho return home after completing their education elsewhere.To guarantee that students haveopportunities to enter STEM careers in rural comm ...

The east coast of the United States has a prospering and growing shellfish aquaculture industry withover 1000 small farms producing $45 million annually in dockside revenue. However there arecurrently no marine finfish aquaculture operations outside of limited salmon operations in the stateof Maine. This is partially due to difficulty in securing permits for finfish operations and partiallydue to ...

Problem: U.S. swine herd reproductive performance is limited more by sire subfertility than dam. Today’s boar semen processing and handling techniques have been largely unchanged since the 1980s. The newly identified, but long-­‐time existing technical problem is that current techniques promote non-­‐desired biological events during storage that shorten the in vivo lifespan, deem a conside ...

Despite an extensive system of inspections and regulatory requirements for good sanitarypractices food poisoning due to bacterial contamination remains a significant issue. Manydifferent disease-causing microbes or pathogens can contaminate foods and lead to foodborneillnesses. Every year as many as one in six Americans experiences a foodborne illness. There isan ongoing need in the food industry ...