Award Data

Greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions to the atmosphere are primary drivers of global climate change and hence there is a crucial need to quantify their sources and sinks. A general technique to constrain source and sink strengths is the analysis of the relative proportions of isotopic variants of GHG's. These measurements must be performed with extremely high precision. The gold standard technique, i ...

There are currently no inexpensive observing systems that detect temperature, salinity and currents under the ocean's surface - all important factors in predicting the intensity of hurricanes. Boston Engineering proposes to develop the Multi-Purpose Above Surface/Below Surface Expendable Dropsondes (MASED). Our design builds on the highly successful air dropsondes already in use, combined with a ...

The mechanics of single photons can be used to entangle information carry quantum states, allowing for quantum computation or random number generation. Quantum communication utilizes the quantum nature of single-photons to retain information, particularly in the form of quantum key distribution protocols. High-efficiency, low-noise single photon detection at high efficiency is critical for the app ...

During the Phase I program, Aurora conducted a comprehensive survey of potential platforms that included government owned and furnished UAVs and manned aircraft as well as Aurora’s Centaur Optionally Piloted Aircraft (OPA). The survey concluded, in part, that UAVs offer a significant improvement in data collection capability when compared to manned aircraft that are currently fielded by NOAA. ...

Alphacore will develop an Intermediate Frequency (IF) Conversion System for High-Bandwidth Multiplexed Sensors Arrays for NIST’s 2018 solicitation for Exploratory Measurement Science Topic 9.04.02.68. The proposing team has already successfully developed and evaluated a similar printed-circuit board (PCB)-based system for NIST (ROACH2 BLAST-TNG, refer section 1.2). The goal in Phase I is therefo ...

Our innovation is a low cost, sensitive, quantitative biosensor that can detect many biomarkers on the same chip. Our sensor consists of vertically aligned silicon nanowires. The silicon nanowires’ high surface area to volume ratio makes them sensitive to the environment around them and can thus lead to high sensitivity detection. Each of the nanowires can be functionalized to be sensitive to ei ...

TECHNICAL ABSTRACT: Buoyancy driven oceanographic gliders, although reasonably cost effective, have challenges operating in the zones due to high gradients in water density. Under this topic, Riptide will provide a cost-effective autonomous undersea vehicle (AUV) design leveraged from Riptide's family of man-portable AUVs that can more effectively map the hypoxic areas. The stated goals of this to ...

TECHNICAL ABSTRACT: Triton Systems, Inc. proposes development of the Open-Source Oceanographic Asset Recovery Beacon (OpenORB) that will allow the deployment of coastal instrumentation moorings with affordable protection against loss. This open-source kit would significantly reduce the purchase price of a commercial location beacon by allowing the end-user to assemble a customized system with mini ...

TECHNICAL ABSTRACT: Poor air quality represents a major public health risk, contributing to an estimated one of every eight deaths worldwide. Low-cost air quality sensors have developed rapidly over the last few years and offer the opportunity to make air quality monitoring inexpensive and widespread. However, low-cost sensors are currently unable to deliver accurate, reliable data due to a lack o ...

TECHNICAL ABSTRACT: Recent advances in gas chromatographic (GC) and mass spectrometric (MS) techniques for atmospheric measurements have led to highly complex data sets that have overwhelmed the capabilities of current data analysis software. We propose a new method for the automated reduction of chromatographic data using peak-fitting algorithms. By relying upon constrained peak-fit parameterizat ...