Award Data

People with disabilities, the elderly, and those who are non-disabled desire the development of bathroom vanity and sink designs that incorporate universal design. Developers of federally subsidized housing (HUD) and assisted living facilities have similar design needs for affordably meeting the needs of residents and accessibility laws. Phase I research found that conventional bathroom sink and v ...

Advanced Protection Products, Inc. (APPI) will use advanced materials and processes to develop and certify Very Light Body Armor (VLBA) plates that are capable of defeating a variety of ballistic threats. The VLBA plates will be designed using a titanium allow based metallic-composite armor system to provide cost-effective, lightweight protection. Composite facing and backing materials will be u ...

Advanced Thermal and Environmental Concepts, Inc. proposes to utilize electrohydrodynamic (EHD) technology to reduce the amount of frost that forms on cold plates in food freezers. The defrost cycle consumes about 5-15% of the energy to operate an industrial food freezer. During Phase I of our project, we used EHD technology to reduce frost mass by 35% and frost height by as mush as 65% under cert ...

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In the summer of 1998 over 2.8 million acres of farmland in the Southern U.S. was planted in genetically engineered cotton expressing a gene derived from the bacterium, Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt). This Bt gene codes for production of a protein that is toxic to some of the most important lepidopteran pests of U.S. cotton. The future expansion of this new technology on more cotton acreage and in ot ...

Unique challenges face agriculture diagnostics, dictated by the small profit margins in crop production and the need for rapid, reliable assay information under highly variable environmental conditions. The need to identify genetically modified organisms (GMOs) has recently become acute due to new legislation, public demands, global transport of plants, and commercial processing of food and fiber. ...

Agriculture needs biorational pesticides to serve as replacements in an industry dominated by outdated synthetic chemicals. Residues in the food supply, environmental impact, and worker safety issues underscore the need for novel pesticides. Without a range of products with unique modes of action, the overuse of limited chemicals and biorational approaches (Bacillus thuringiensis-based transgenic ...

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Variation in growth performance and health of feedlot cattle leads to large differences in weigh or degree of finish at the point of harvest. Carcass quality losses alone cost the industry $3.5 billion annually. Traditional management practices of sorting cattle by weight and physical characteristics to minimize variation fail to take into consideration individual feed intake and metabolic rate as ...

A novel fermentation process and extraction system are proposed to produce a biodegradable, non- corrosive deicer from biomass wastes and crops containing sugars and starches. Sodium and calcium chlorides now extensively used in road deicing cause corrosion damage to automobiles, bridges, and highway infrastructure. Further, significant environmental damage occurs from accumulation of these salts ...