Award Data

Current designs for rural safety mailboxes combined with a lack of safety design regulations, produce a hazardous situation for errant rural motorists. When impacted, rural mailboxes have been shown to dislodge from their posts and penetrate automobile windshields. In addition, rural residents are faced with a constant maintenance problem from winter snow plows, vandals, and vehicle impacts. A ...

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This research proposes development of a low-cost, Wide Area Differential GPS (WADGPS) capability utilizing a dense network of multiple reference receivers (RR). The research will focus on determination of possible resolution with the dense network of reference receivers as applied to precision farming applications. "Resolution" is defined as repeatability vs. accuracy at a location once a Differ ...

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AT MULTI-UNIT NUCLEAR GENRATING STATIONS, CONTROL ROOM OPERATORS ARE GENERALLY LICENSED TO OPERATE ALL SIMILAR UNITS. SIMULATOR TRAINING CONDUCTED AT THE LICENSEE TRAINING FACILITY OCCURS ON ONE SIMULATOR WHICH MAY NOT EXACTLY MIMIC ANY UNIT. INADEQUATE TRAINING ON UNIT-TO-UNIT AND UNIT-TO-SIMULATOR DIFFERENCES, IN CONJUNCTION WITH LIMITED PER-PERSON SIMULATOR TRAINING HOURS, CAN RESULT IN INCREAS ...

Simulation models that replicate the dynamics of rural growth and decline would provide aninvaluable analytical tool for rural leaders, program administrators, educators and communityprofessionals. A Rural Community Modeler (RCM) was developed in a previous Phase I effortusing the system dynamics methodology to interrelate social, educational, economic,demographic, environmental and agricultural ...

Simulation models that replicate the dynamics of rural growth and decline would provide an invaluable analytical tool for rural leaders, program administrators and community professionals. The system dynamics methodology offers a structured approach to collecting and organizing the knowledge needed to develop models that capture the essential feedback relationships that describe the elements of t ...

Insect pests are annually responsible for multi-million dollar grain losses. A promising detectionsystem is the ARS-developed Acoustic Location Fingerprinting Insect Detector (ALFID) which countsinsects in a grain sample by pinpointing sounds from individual adult and larval (potentially the mostdestructive in wheat) stages. The low-cost piezo-electric microphones currently used are sufficiently ...

Phase I research proved the feasibility of EnerTech's Slurry Carbonization technology for economically producing clean and marketable fuels from high-moisture agricultural residues and wastes, especially animal manures. The Slury Carbonization technology effectively transformed low-grade animal residues, through a moderate temperature and pressure carbonization process, into a uniform and especial ...

WHEN ROTATING MACHINERY DETERIORATES, VIBRTION PATTERSN CHANGE. WHEN BEARING FREQUENCIES APPEAR, THEN INCREASE IN AMPLITUDE, BEARING FAILURE LOOMS. THE SAME WITH VALVES; WHEN THEY LEAK, THEY VIBRATE. AS LEAKAGE INCREASES, THE VIBRATION PATTERN CHANGES. THERE ARE MANY OTHERS. THE KEY IS KNOWING WHERE AND HOW DEEPLY TO LOOK. THE KEY IN OLDER REACTOR PLANTS IS TO UNOBTRUSIVELY, ECONOMICALLY BACKFIT S ...