Award Data

For rural farmers and ranchers with small and mid-sized operations who suffer losses in efficiency due to unproductive pastures and damage and property loss due to wild fires, the envisioned tree saw is an auxiliary tractor attachment with the potential to rapidly and safely remove large trees, brush, and undergrowth. Unlike current heavy and expensive attachments that require non-traditional farm ...

Hydrogen sulfide (H2S) and methane (CH4) are two of the major pollutants associated with animal waste and sewage. Their release to the atmosphere has consequences both locally, where H2S can be present at toxic levels that influence human health and quality of life, and globally, where CH4 acts as a greenhouse gas to influence climate change. Southwest Sciences proposes to develop a compact, inexp ...

Luna will design, manufacture, and test of first generation spacer textiles to prevent plant infestation using the tomato plant as a model system and insect pests on tomato. The proposed research will utilize inexpensive, commercially available materials which will make the process cost effective and scalable.

"Shipping Fever" is the main cause of illness/death in beef cattle in North America, resulting in & gt;$500 million/year of losses due to treatment costs, poor weight gain, reduced carcass value and death. Mannheimia haemolyticabacteria causes the most serious form of shipping fever, causing severe, often fatal pneumonia. Because currently availableM. haemolytica vaccines are not effective enough, ...

Strawberries are the 2nd largest non-citrus fruit crop in the U.S., trailing grapes and surpassing apples (USDA 2012). With strawberries harvested for processing (as a value-added food ingredient), the calyx (the stem cap with green crown leaves) must be removed to avoid having inedible leaves in the food product. The current in-field labor intensive de-capping process using cutting tools risks fi ...

The discovery that many fruit juices and brown rice syrup contain significant concentrations of arsenic or heavy metals such as lead and cadmium has raised concern amongst the public, government regulators, and food and juice producers. This contamination occurs both from natural and anthropogenic sources such as industrial pollution, arsenical herbicides and pesticides etc. While the levels of th ...

Large areas of the Chesapeake Bay watershed support intense agricultural operations includingcrop farming, large poultry production facilities (LPPFs), and confined animal feedingoperations (CAFOs). Increasingly, these agricultural operations add significant amounts ofpollutants, from water run off into the watersheds, and infiltrate the groundwater. For example,the Shenandoah Valley has suffered ...

The use of sub-therapeutic concentrations of anti-microbial agents in animal feed has contributed to theproductivity of the U.S. meat and dairy industries by preventing infectious diseases, by decreasing theamount of feed required and by increasing the rate of animal weight gain. However, failure to observerecommended practices of drug withdrawal can result in concentrations of antibiotic residue ...

The ready-to-assemble (RTA) construction system is a new method for assembling wood structuresbuilt from the following engineered wood products: parallel strand lumber (PSL), laminated strandlumber (LSL), and laminated veneer lumber (LVL). The RTA system is designed for rapid assemblyby small crews of unskilled labor using common hand tools. The design of the RTA systemincorporates engineered w ...

Equine infectious anemia virus (EIAV) is a retrovirus that causes a chronic infection in horses. In theabsence of a vaccine, the control of this disease depends on the diagnosis and elimination of infectedhorses. Currently approved diagnostic procedures utilize agar gel diffusion (AGID), or enzyme-linkedimmunosorbant (ELISA) methodologies to detect antibodies against the virus in horse sera as e ...