Award Data

Commercial producers of nursery crops, plant seed, and food crops all require assurance of healthy planting stock. To address this need, laboratories, institutions and agencies, worldwide, use a variety of methods to examine plant materials and demonstrate that seeds, cuttings, and plants test free of pathogens. Such tests provide crops a passport to travel and give the grower confidence that a he ...

Shading vegetables and fruits can reduce temperatures resulting in improved fruit set, increase fruit size and quality, and reduce water consumption. Shading materials for reducing light intensity or transmission have been used extensively in the nursery industry as well as with large commercial growers of high value fruits and vegetables for many years. The physiological processes of plants have ...

The Illinois Soybean Association and the USDA initiated and supported the original research project that produced the prototype Global Food in 3?D and underlies the proposed new product, Global Feed in 3?D. The expected user groups were small and mid?sized farmer leaders and allied analysts and stakeholders as a result of the research's original design and goals. The research outcome of this ...

In order to provide the required simulation frame rates we propose to decouple the incident flux calculations from a simple thermal response model. We propose to develop a table-lookup methodology based on high fidelity precomputed environmental and eventually aerothermal fluxes which can be draw in real time to drive the thermal response model. A simple 1-D thermal calculation based on an analyt ...

Current state-of-the-art infrared focal plane arrays are based on HgCdTe grown on bulk CdZnTe substrates. The use of Si-based substrates would eliminate a number of drawbacks related to the HgCdTe/CdZnTe system and permit larger formats. We have developed growth protocols that produce material with good crystal quality for such a highly mismatched heteroepitaxial system. Double crystal rocking c ...

Hydrogen isotopes have been shown to reduce the electrical effects of various semiconductor defects. Specifically, monoatomic hydrogen and deuterium passivate the electrical activity of defects such as dislocations in long-wavelength HgCdTe grown on Si. We propose a novel method of controlling the intake of hydrogen in HgCdTe IRFPAs by using the H2/He plasma afterglow formed by flowing plasma-gene ...

Current state-of-the-art infrared focal plane arrays (IRFPAs) are based on HgCdTe material epitaxially grown on bulk CdZnTe substrates. The size of the IRFPAs is limited by the size of the available CdZnTe substrates and the thermal mismatch between CdZnTe and the Si readout circuit, which misaligns the photodiode array with respect to the circuit during heating and cooling cycles. Having HgCdTe ...

Sheep ranching and wool production have been a part of our country & #8223;s rural heritage for more than a hundred years, with small and mid-sized ranches serving as the backbone of our country & #8223;s sheep operations. Presently, small operators account for more total ewes than larger operations. This means that small ranches offer the best potential for growth of sheep operations in the futur ...

The primary objectives of this Phase II project are to 1) validate performance of the prototype resequencing pathogen microarray application for detection and identification of selected food-borne pathogens, including varieties of viruses, bacteria and eukaryotic agents; 2) iterate and port the prototype application to a more practical, "market-friendly" product form factor that requires less expe ...

The national demand for energy and need for economic development has been driving efforts to create a domestic biofuels industry. Significant investment by both the public and private sectors have resulted in progress but recent government rule making has set ambitious requirements for renewable fuel supplies that can not be met with existing technologies or feedstocks. This significant unmet mark ...