The current practice of training canines for explosives detection utilizing actual explosives requires qualified personnel that are trained to handle explosive materials making the training both manpower-intensive and costly. The expense is further exacerbated by the need to handle and dispose of the explosive material according to local, state, and federal explosives regulations. Finally, the nature of explosives creates a risk of injury to the canine and its handler. This is especially problematic for the highly sensitive peroxide-based improvised explosives such as hexamethylene triperoxide diamine (HMTD). These peroxides are unstable compounds that are sensitive to shock, friction, and heat. HMTD even reacts with most common metals in a process that can lead to detonation. Clearly, working with these explosives in pure form is extremely risky. To solve this problem the proposed research will utilize porous ceramic materials in which HMTD is housed in a fashion that will inhibit or prevent explosive hazards while ensuring the maintenance of a normal vapor pressure of HMTD without any confounding extraneous volatile materials that could interfere with canine training.

The proposed research and development activities will determine the scientific, technical, and commercial feasibility of the use of solvent-free liquid polymer-grafted surface wipes as novel materials that more efficiently removes low volatility chemical agent contamination from porous and absorptive surfaces than current materials.. The polymers will be able to extend into pores and dissolve the chemical weapons into the polymer matrix so that when the wipe is pulled away from the surface they are removed efficiently and can subsequently be separated from the wipe by a solvent. A marked increase in the effectiveness and reproducibility of sampling and analysis of chemical agents on porous, absorptive materials is expected. The elimination of volatile organic solvents will reduce the environmental and potential health effects of using wipes to sample surfaces. In Phase I, the following tasks will be performed in order to demonstrate the utility of this novel approach for a wipe system for sampling chemical weapons on surfaces: (1) Fabrication of wipes (cloth, paper, and glass microfiber) with a variety of polymer chain derivatives (2) Confirmation that contaminants are not present in the wipes that will interfere with chemical analyses (3) Testing of the release of chemical weapon surrogates from wipes spiked with the surrogates (4) Testing of the wipes that pass Tasks 2 and 3 for overall efficiency of removal of chemical weapon surrogates from surfaces (uncoated and coated concrete, painted wallboard, unglazed ceramic tile, and brick) (5) Determination of sampling and analytical reproducibility (6) Determining the effects of storage

Antibody-based receptor scaffolds used in chemical and biological sensors suffer from certain inherent shortfalls. We propose an approach based on the use of computationally designed proteins as receptor scaffolds. Such receptor scaffolds overcome many of the problems encountered with antibodies. This approach offers the significant advantage of being a general method that provides a path to rapid development of specific receptors. We propose to transition fluorescent reagentless biosensor technologies from the academic laboratory in which they were originally developed into fieldable products. Specifically, we intend to develop biosensors that incorporate engineered periplasmic binding proteins (PBPs) that recognize and report organophosphate mimics and hydrolysis products of well-known nerve agents such as Soman (organophosphate<br>surrogate is pinacolyl methylphosphonic acid, or PMPA) and Sarin (organophosphate<br>surrogate isopropyl methyl phosphonic acid, or IMPA). This work will initially proceed as a collaboration between Nomadics and the laboratory of Dr. H.W. Hellinga at Duke University Medical Center. Dr. Hellinga has developed PMPA-binding PBPs and is finishing development of IMPA-binding PBPs. <br>

High chemical activity of chlorine and severe health effects after even short-term exposure to it make facilities that use chlorine are subject for potential terrorist attacks. The magnitude of such attacks on U.S. chemical facilities could easily exceed the loss of life suffered on September 11th. Despite the fact, there were no terrorist attack on chlorine-using facilities, a government study has shown that approximately 60,000 commercial chemical accidents occur every year, killing more than 250 people annually.We propose to use photocatalytic formation of chlorine and active oxygen for water treatment systems by using titanium dioxide (TiO2) as catalyst and sodium chloride (NaCl - table salt) as chlorine source. While oxygen and chlorine will oxidize and disinfect water supplies, chlorine will also insure residual effect of the treatment and prevent re-growth of organisms. Removal of the some of the organic contaminants with water will reduce amount of chlorinated byproducts and thus reduce of chlorine consumption for water purification