Award Data

Open-Ocean Aquaculture businesses are proving commercially successful. There are several technical refinements the industry must undergo in order to maximize productivity and future expansion. We address a problem common to all off-shore open-ocean aquaculture cage systems, marine biofouling of the net mesh used for the enclosure. Significant amounts of biofoulding leads to increased pollutant ...

The Phase 2 objective is to provide NIST with a modular gauge head unit equipped with InsituTec's standing wave probe technology. The complete gauge head unit will be retrofitted to the NIST M48 which is one of the most precise measuring machines in the world. This unit will enable NIST to achieve the agency's program goal in dimensional metrology which is to provide microscale measurement capacit ...

Williams-Pyro, Inc. (WPI) has designed and successfully demonstrated a proof-of-concept of the Distributed Automatic Reconfigurable Transponder (DART) that will be capable of achieving distributed multi-nodal voice/data communication for fire fighters. In Phase 2 we will focus on developing a fully functional system that reduces communication failure while maintaining a robust and flexible system. ...

THE MONITORING OF DIVER PHYSIOLOGICAL VARIABLE, SUCH AS HEART AND RESPIRATORY RATES, MUSCLE FATIGUE AND BODY CORE TEMPERATURE, IS OF GREAT IMPORTANCE BECAUSE DIVERS OCCASIONALLY EXCEED SAFE PHYSIOLOGICAL LIMITS. DIVERS ARE CALLED ONTO PERFORM TASKS WHICH REQUIRE A HIGH LEVEL OF EXERTION, OFTEN UNDER UNFAVORABLE ENVIRONMENTAL CONDITIONS. UNDER THESE CIRCUMSTANCES, AN INDIVIDUAL CAN EXPERIENCE FATIG ...

During a successful Phase I feasibility study, Nanohmics¿ scientists were able to incorporate environmentally-friendly algaecides into hard, optical quality polymers for use as coverglass materials. These transparent coverglass materials stopped all marine algae growth on the glass for well over a month. The Phase II development will further this research by incorporating natural product and/or ...

This project provides a preliminary design and specifications for a Data Collection Platform with Interrogate (DCPI) capability using DS-CDMA RF transmission techniques. Sutron shall develop a sample link budget for the DCPI link and model its performance. A protocol will then be designed that will allow maximum flexibility in the communications with the DCP. A prototype will be developed to ex ...

This project provides an improved design for the dual-orifice bubble gauge for water level observations in cold regions. The improvements consist of using optimized true-differential sensors and specialized processing to improve the accuracy, particularly in the presence of water waves. The prototype will be designed based on a numerical model of the dual-orifice gauge that includes the time-dep ...

Harmful algal blooms (HABs) are a serious threat to coastal resources, causing impacts ranging from the contamination of seafood products with potent toxins to mortalities of wild and farmed fish and other marine animals. HABs cost the U.S. economy over $50 million annually due to the closure of fisheries and beaches and the treatment of human illness from toxin exposures. NOAA is interested in ...

There is an increasing demand for systems with more autonomous operations interacting with other autonomous and human-based systems. What is needed is an architecture bundled with developer tools for the creation of intelligent real-time control systems that marry the talents of modern control theory, software technology, sensory processing, and semantic knowledge representations. It would be a st ...

THE DEVELOPMENT OF AN EXPERT SYSTEM FOR LABELING MAPS RE QUIRES THE PRECISE MODELING OF CARTOGRAPHER'S COMPETENCE WITHIN THE COMPUTER. THIS MODEL CAN BE LARGELY SUBDIVIDED INTO THREE PARTS: GENERALLY ACCEPTED CARTOGRAPHIC RULES, PROJECT SPECIFIC PROCEDURES AND REQUIREMENTS, AND A SYSTEM OF HEURISTICS BASED ON "RULES OF THUMB." RELATIVELY SIMPLE PROGRAMS YIELD ACCEPTABLE RESULTS FOR SIMPLE CASES. H ...