Award Data

In the setting of altitude-induced hypoxia, operator cognitive capacity degrades and can compromise both individual and team performance. This degradation is linked to falling brain energy (ATP) levels and an increased reliance on anaerobic energy production from glucose. Ketone bodies are the evolutionary alternative substrate to glucose for brain metabolic requirements; previous studies have sho ...

Flow Pharma, Inc. is a biotechnology company in the San Francisco Bay Area developing fully synthetic cytotoxic T lymphocyte (CTL)stimulating peptide vaccines for Marburg virus. The FlowVax vaccine platform allows us to create dry powder formulations of biodegradablemicrospheres and TLR adjuvants incorporating class I and class II T cell epitopes. FlowVax vaccines can be designed for delivery by i ...

On this effort Toyon Research Corp. and The Pennsylvania State University are developing deep learning-based algorithms for object recognition and new class discovery in look-down infrared (IR) imagery. Our approach involves the development of a hybrid classifier that exploits both transfer learning and semi-supervised paradigms in order to maintain good generalization accuracy, especially when li ...

We propose to investigate, in collaboration with MGH Voice Center and Altec, Inc., application of surface electromyography (sEMG) to assessing cognitive workload, strain, and overload. Specifically, sEMG sensors placed on the face and neck will detect emotional/motor responses to workload strain. The proposed effort will build on the substantial sEMG experience of our partner, MGH (including resea ...

Carbon-carbon (C-C) composites are used in the fabrication of aeroshells and thermal protection systems (TPS) in hypersonic and atmospheric reentry applications because they maintain their strength at elevated temperatures and have desirable thermal conductivity properties. Although these materials have been used in mission-critical components for decades, the effects of variations in processing m ...

Traditional approaches to accelerated fatigue testing rely on heuristic methods with thresholds based mostly on experience and engineering judgment. These methods generally do not apply to the multiaxial dynamic loading situations characteristic of most aerospace applications and often result in uncharacteristic fatigue damage and failure modes during testing. To overcome the limitations of tradit ...

The Department of the Navy has a need for the development of an additive manufacturing (AM) process for key vacuum electronic device components to meet on-demand, flexible, and affordable manufacturing requirements. The goal of this Phase II effort is to develop and validate Electron Beam Melting (EBM) additive manufacturing (AM) technology for the production of vacuum electronic devices meeting t ...

We propose a compact, monolithic, power scalable, hollow core fiber-gas laser emitting in the atmospheric transmission region in the mid-IR. The proposed optically pumped fiber-gas laser system is efficient, has a small footprint as well has a broad spectral coverage in the mid-IR. Due to the unique approach employed, the proposed technology allows generation of mid-IR output with varying pulse re ...

Adaptive Optics allow ground-based astronomical observatories to overcome atmospheric distortion limited observation by using natural and artificial guide stars to measure the distortion. Sodium-layer guide stars provide near all-sky coverage for high resolution astronomy. Over the last 20 years, Optically Pumped Semiconductor Laser (OPSL), also referred to as Vertically Extended Cavity Surface Em ...

Approximately 70% of sentinel events in medical care are related to communication mishaps, and despite regular and frequent occurrence, an even higher percentage (80%) of severe medical errors are related to miscommunication during handoffs (i.e., the transferring of information, responsibility, and authority for patient care from one provider to another). The TiER1 team proposes to address challe ...