Award Data

Opportunity: Guayule, a US native plant, is the only alternate rubber crop with an established, mechanized, agronomic system. Problem: Low rubber yields and lack of effective resin and bagasse coproduct valorization, have prevented widespread adoption by American farmers and processors. Rubber is only made when the cytoplasmic monomer pool (isopentenyl-pyrophosphate; IPP) is larger than that requi ...

Glucose abnormalities significantly affect patient morbidity and mortality. Currently, glycemic control is achieved via medications and exogenous insulin regimens that are costly both in terms of qualified personnel and consumables. Furthermore, none of these approaches are curative. Strategies under development such artificial pancreases do not necessarily address these limitations because they w ...

Traumatic injuries account for 30% of all life years lost in the US and is the leading cause of death for people under 46 years of age. Uncontrolled bleeding or hemorrhage constitute 30-40% of trauma related deaths and are considered to be a major cause o

The prolific nature of Advanced Battlefield and Ground surveillance radar (BSR/GSR) in military markets is driving the need to develop new methods of reducing infantry forces’ radar cross section (RCS) in effort to avoid detection and more freely move throughout the battlespace. One approach to combat the growing threat of BSR/GSR surveillance is through the development of advanced textiles that ...

ABSTRACT: In this Phase I STTR project, we propose to demonstrate the feasibility of developing a low cost, compact, time-domain terahertz (TD-THz) spectrometer specifically for the characterization of semiconductor materials over a range of temperatures, electric fields, and magnetic fields. In phase I, we will configure fiber optic coupled TD-THz instrumentation to make measurements on a sampl ...

Legacy satellite command and control capabilities and their related telemetry operate in a largely stove piped framework. Satellites are still commanded, controlled, and communicated with their ground station in a specific constellation structure. Each ground station is unique to a given constellation and the communications and telemetry are aligned to the specific constellation, underscoring an o ...

NDI of composite Pi/T-Joints presents significant challenges to existing inspection technologies resulting in a barrier to implementation in production. We will investigate feasibility of developing an active thermography NDI solution for real-world inspection of composite structures with T / Pi- joints during the manufacturing process (both green and cured states). Based on the extensive experien ...

The research objective of the proposed work is to increase the efficiency of the laser return of a Sodium Guide Star Laser (SGSL) reflected off the sodium layer for increased reliability and applicability of the artificial guide star technique. During Phase I, we will demonstrate the concept of maximizing the SGSL signal returns using numerical simulations that account for the effects of atmospher ...

Palm-sized unmanned aerial systems (nano UAS) weighing tens of grams have evolved to the point where they are becoming useful to the warfighter. However, their small mass, fragility, and limited batteries still necessitate the use of emerging, low mass/power technologies to meet the full range of potential missions, including new autonomous flight control and collision avoidance strategies, struct ...

The research objective is to develop a tunable spatially-varying photonic crystal (SVPC) to achieve the optical propagation properties (reflection and transmission) of the light through the designed structure for the visible and near IR-bands. The light from this SVPC will be able to focus and bend as a function of the spatial variation of the refractive index, input angle, and state of polarizati ...