Award Data

Recent research has suggested that the commonly used assumption of dry air having no net flux is erroneous and can lead to significant errors in reported observations for eddy correlation flux measurements. If the density of nitrogen was measured directly, the accuracy of these measurements would be improved greatly. Southwest Sciences, Inc. proposes to develop a portable analyzer that would be us ...

The underlying framework for modern-day weather forecasting is numerical weather prediction (NWP). Even the current and planned weather observing platforms leave gaps that are insufficient to meet the requirements of NWP. Mano Nanotechnologies, Inc. proposes to commercialize a new environmental sensing system, known as “GlobalSense”, which will enable transformational forecast improvements by ...

The wide spread use of NOAA developed products including future climate scenarios, weather products, and infrastructure impacts are not used as widely by public decision makers or the public as possible because it is difficult to explore the data without expensive help manipulating the data or expressing their queries. The technical objective is to establish a prototype service and platform for we ...

Methane is the third most prevalent greenhouse gas, whose atmospheric concentration is currently over 1.7 ppm and is about 21 times more potent when compared to CO2. Thus, while the quantitative monitoring of methane levels is necessary, it is also critically important to directly identify the sources of the methane emissions, for example, in ice floes, leaks in pipelines, and also from drilling/f ...

The trend toward replacement of highly toxic chemicals with less hazardous alternatives has created the demand for replacement of chromate conversion coatings for corrosion protection of aluminum alloys. Aluminum alloys are the predominate structural material used in aircraft because of their high strength-to-weight ratios, affordability and processability. Aluminum is subject to catastrophic fail ...

This SBIR program would develop practical methods for the interconnection, addressing and control of large numbers of distributed MEMS-based sensing and actuation elements using optical fiber multiplexing techniques. Such interconnected sensor/actuator arrays have immediate and long-term applications in the instrumentation and control of adaptive aircraft, spacecraft and hydrocraft structures, fl ...

Southwest Sciences will develop a novel fire detection technology based on optical spectroscopy, using diode lasers and fiber optics. Rapid, quantitative detection of part per million concentrations (or better) of multiple gases, including carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, hydrogen cyanide, hydrogen chloride, and a fiber optical distribution network permits one laser to be used for at least 800 di ...

Converted from advanced automatic target recognition (ATR) processors, this new feature extraction/GIS system (a) uses raster data as input, and thus eliminates manual digitization; (b) uses expert systems to extract features automatically, and thus eliminates time-consuming and error-prone manual object tracing; and (c) vectorizes the extracted objects and converts them into GIS layers automatica ...

Current battlefield situation displays either lack resolution ir restrict the user's perception to a small segment of the battlefield. Additionally, the plotting of data on these displays is extremely manpower-intensive, consuming valuable personnel resources that could be applied to situation analysis and other important tasks. Trident proposes to design and produce an innovative situation awar ...

The project will research a new generation of optic for focusing cold neutrons using tapered capillary optics. The success of the program will result in neutron beam probes with unprecedented spatial resolution and detection limits for small sample volumes. The individuals involved are the world leaders in neutron focusing capillary optics, having achieved better than an order-of-magnitude impro ...