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Societal concerns about the impacts of climate change and variability are growing. Also, uses of climate data and services in the business sector and by the public are expanding. Citizens in public and private sectors require easy access to credible climate science information and climate services to help them make informed decisions affecting their lives and livelihoods. Climate influences almost every sector of society and affects up to 40 percent of the United States $10 trillion annual economy.

A logical place to begin to address the public climate literacy problem is through the national network of local TV meteorologists’ daily weather reports and forecasts. Research shows that the majority of Americans’ largest single daily source of exposure to scientific information of any kind is through local TV weather reports.3 Thus, a goal for this year’s SBIR call should be to innovative new tools and techniques for incorporating timely climate data and climate information services into TV meteorologists’ nightly weather reports.

The objective of this subtopic is to develop an inexpensive, potentially disposable sensor for measuring Black Carbon (BC) aerosols in the atmosphere. The sensor will have sufficient analytical performance to yield useful data when carried on a balloon or dropped as a sonde from an aircraft. The sensor will report position coordinates and BC concentration in a format compatible with radiosonde telemetry.

The assimilation of sea wave heights and related winds into ocean models and verification of the NWS wave forecast model improves their accuracy. To map ocean surface topography and wave heights, satellite and airborne radars are currently used. However, those instruments are expensive and are not suitable for installation on board small platforms such as the Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS). Recent research has been performed using reflected signals of the U.S. Global Positioning System (GPS).

Passive Microwave Sensors have existed for several decades, as ground-based, airborne or space-borne. They provide a wealth of information about the atmosphere, the surface, the hydrometeors (rain, ice, etc) and are invaluable for weather prediction. Modern passive microwave space-borne sensors and even planned sensors have only a limited number of channels available, totaling anywhere between 5 and 30 channels. This limited number of channels has been shown to be insufficient to solve for the illposed nature of the inversion of the geophysical state from space-borne measurements.

Department of Defense Air Force DOD/USAF STTR AF-2011-3 ...

The primary mission of Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) of Department of Transportation (DOT) is to reduce crashes, injuries and fatalities involving large truck and buses. One of the strategies employed to accomplish this goal is to foster innovative research in new or augmenting safety enhancing technologies and to facilitate faster deployment of proven systems ...

Human factors play a large role in crash causation, and are aggravated due to limited visibility under night driving conditions. Statistics show a large portion of crashes occurring during nighttime conditions, when limited visibility can aggravate the influence of other high risk factors (fatigue, distraction, age, impairment) [1]. Nighttime illumination conditions include head li ...

Portable tanks are used in various transportation systems throughout the entire world. They are used interchangeably for the transportation of hazardous materials. These types of hazardous materials packages are placed on cargo ships, trains and trucks to ensure the hazardous materials products are delivered in an efficient manner. The portable tanks are held in a carriage system t ...

The NIA SBIR-STTR Programs support biomedical, behavioral, and social research and research training on the aging process as well as on the diseases and other special problems and needs of older people. It supports SBIR and STTR grant research under four established divisions: Behavioral and Social Research, Aging Biology, Geriatrics and Clinical Gerontology, and Neuroscience. Examples of research ...