The mission of the Minority Business Development Agency (MBDA) is to foster the growth and global competitiveness of U.S. businesses that are minority-owned. MBDA serves as the only Federal agency dedicated to the establishment, growth and competitiveness of U.S. businesses that are minority-owned.

As a first step in making it easier for minority business owners to access our services, we are providing the information on our centers.

Audits conducted of Economic Development Administration

An apparatus and method for measuring low or trace concentrations of compounds and mixture of gases. A method and apparatus of the invention permits separating ions of different mobilities by passing them through an abrupt change or step in electric field magnitude. By using the separation method, the compounds of interest may be measured with less interference from other compounds of the gas mixture, which reduces or eliminates the need for prior separation of the components of the gas mixture. Several embodiments of the invention are described including the use of current amplifiers on one, or more, parts of the apparatus. While a single screen can provide a chamber which is divided into two regions of different electric fields, it is within the scope of the invention to include multiple screens to provide several steps in the electric field permitting it to be possible to trap and measure ions with successively higher mobilities. The gases used include halogenated compounds, including fluorocarbons, and most preferable SF.sub.6.

An N-way RF/microwave power divider/combiner utilizes one input and N outputs, or conversely N inputs and one output to divide (or combine) RF/microwave power while simultaneously and non-invasively measuring reflected power present due to mismatched loads or other failed components. The Gysel divider/combiner technique is used with the addition of N temperature measuring devices placed directly on the N isolation loads separated from the main divider/combiner lines. Because of high isolation between the N channels of the divider/combiner, the temperature above ambient of each isolation load is strongly correlated to the amount of power reflected back to an output port. The temperature is sensed external to the RF circuit whereby a measure of reflected power can be made without the use of invasive directional-coupler techniques. This is highly advantageous since directional-coupler techniques would increase the insertion-loss, cost, and complexity of the divider/combiner.

Links to Audits of NTIS

A polarimetric Doppler weather radar system which allows measurement of linear orthogonal polarimetric variables without a switch by using simultaneous transmission of horizontally and vertically polarized waves. This is accomplished by splitting the transmitted power into two waveguides and combining them with an orthomode coupler at the antenna feed. Thus, in general the transmitted polarization is elliptical but with equal amount of power in horizontal and vertical polarization. On reception, the power is divided, at the orthomode coupler, into linear horizontal and vertical components. These components are processed and combined to yield Doppler and polarimetric information about storm structure.

Descriptions of the various organizations within the Office of Inspector General, Commerce

This is a json file containing the redacted version of the Enterprise Data Inventory for the Department of Commerce.

Finalized Correspondence sent to the Department of Commerce Office of the Secretary