Award Data

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 ...

Aquaculture is the fastest growing food-producing sector in the world and accounts forapproximately 50% of the seafood consumed throughout the world. However, the demand for farmraisedfish has pushed fish production densities to new limits and this has increased the incidenceand spread of disease. There have been very few drugs developed for treating and preventingdiseases in fish. We have discove ...

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.

Central Iowa-based small business, Agren, in collaboration with the ARS Sedimentation Laboratory and the University of Tennessee, has developed two GIS-based soil loss modeling tools. Each tool combines remotely-sensed, high-resolution digital elevation models (LiDAR) and newly developed hydrologic algorithms with long standing soil-loss modeling principles. The results to date are two-dimensional ...

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 ...

Currently available vaccines for infectious bovine keratoconjunctivitis (IBK), also known as "pinkeye", have poor efficacy and low cross-protection between strains. This may be partly due to the lack of mucosal antibody responses, which are not induced by traditional inactivated bacterin vaccines. The use of alphavirus replicon particle (RP) vaccines has been shown to induce muscosal immune respon ...

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