Award Data

Commercial-scale marine aquaculture has the potential to balance the increasing demand for high-quality seafood products with the limited harvest capacity of our nations oceans. However, water reuse in recirculating aquaculture systems (RAS) is limited by the accumulation of nitrate, which can be toxic to many species, especially marine species. Thus, nitrate removal by denitrification presents a ...

"The United States floriculture industry reached a total of $5.6 billion in domestic consumption in 2002 with an additional $111 million in exports. As the industry continues to move towards mechanized harvesting in order to increase production, the potential for bulb injury and resulting fungal infection has increased, as well. Current chemical methods to reduce fungal infection are often costly, ...

Consumers and an ever growing segment of the pork industry know that more optimal levels of marbling must be put back into the high-value pork cuts. Biotronics, Inc. is developing technology to solve this problem by using real-time ultrasound to measure the percent of intramuscular (% IMF) fat in live pigs and hot carcasses. The premise of the project is that swine breeders can be rewarded financi ...

Production of ethanol derived from starch crops and biomass is forecast to grow considerably in the next decade. There exist opportunities for significant reductions in ethanol production costs and associated energy usage via employment of innovative process operations. Many of these processes involve membranes, which provide cost savings due primarily to reduced energy consumption. Recently, new ...

"Honey bee pollination is estimated to contribute over $14 billion annually to agricultural production. Honey bee pollination services in the larger ecosystem are also of vital importance. However, apiculture in the United States is threatened, especially by infestations of exotic parasitic mites. Varroa destructor, in particular, is lethal to many colonies, decimating both feral and managed honey ...

"This proposal, lead by Frontline BioEnergy, teams with the Iowa State University (ISU), Center for Sustainable Energy Technologies (CSET) to develop high quality, time-stable and storable fast pyrolysis oils in phase-I that are useful for production of fungible liquid fuels such as diesel, gasoline and jet fuel. Our approach uses novel filtration techniques to reduce total alkali contamination in ...

"Milk supply by the small dairy farms to the local markets not only reduces transportation costs but also provides cultural and economic benefits to the communities. However, the majority of the milk processing operations are carried out in large plants at the wholesale level. Such capacities and the large capital requirement act as a barrier to entry for small farmers and prohibit them to get a b ...

There is a clear and immediate need for improved PRRSV vaccines. PRRS is estimated to cost pork producers in the U.S. nearly $600 million annually and with a national eradication effort being proposed, the need for a second generation vaccine tool that is effective and safe is crucial. The use of a vector such as replicon particles (RP) merges subunit and modified live technologies to safely induc ...

"In 2005 8.8 billion broiler chickens were produced in the United States. Improvements in vaccination uniformity and reductions in labor necessary for vaccination would greatly benefit the broiler industry. Current methods of field vaccination of broiler chickens in the field include administration via drinking water and spray application. The effectiveness of both methods is limited by non-unifor ...

"The goal of this project is to implement the industrial use of layer-by-layer polyelectrolyte nanocoated pulp fibers, thereby to bring new technology to paper making. The proposed work is based on our pioneering in the layer-by-layer nanoassembly techniques and on our results on modification of lignocellulose fibers, which made stronger paper and improved paper recycling. Layer-by-layer (LbL) ass ...