Award Data

In this program, Busek Co. Inc and Stanford University will develop and demonstrate a multi-mode high power plasma gun that can be used for both space propulsion and as a counter-measure against space debris or potentially hostile spacecraft. Investigations of this Coaxial High Energy (CHENG) thruster in the 1980's showed that it can damage a target. Because it is efficient over a wide range of ...

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Over half of laryngectomy patients use an electrolarynx (EL) to communicate, but current EL devices produce speech that has poor quality ("non-human sounding") and reduced intelligibility. The acoustic deficits in EL speech inhibit the ability of laryngectomy patients to communicate, thus reducing their functional capability and quality of life. The long-term g ...

Effective task management is a critical component of mission success. As warfighters are given more information to monitor, however, their ability to detect and attend to critical information and tasks is stressed. An automatic task manager is needed to help ensure that responses to events occur in a timely manner. The foundation of such a tool is an accurate model of human dynamic attention. Many ...

ABSTRACT: Modern gas-turbine engines designs for the next-generation warfighter need to reduce exhaust gas temperatures to reduce effective thermal footprint thereby improving the mission capability. In such situations, high-altitude engine operation is often limited by the overall combustion efficiency, lean flame blow out (LBO) limit, and combustion instabilities that results in narrower opera ...

DESCRIPTION provided by applicant Cancer is the second leading cause of death after heart disease in the US Chemotherapy is a mainstay of treatment after surgical removal of tumors but the balance of clinical benefit versus disabling or life threatening side effects is often uncertain Genotyping of cancers to identify mutated oncogenes has enabled an era of targeted therapy Drugs targeting ...

This Small Business Technology Transfer Phase II project will develop computational support tools for specifying, analyzing, and verifying designs for complex distributed systems, such as communication systems and transportation control systems. The tools will support a modeling language, called TIOA (Timed Input/Output Automata), developed before and during our Phase I project. The overall modeli ...

High current density carbon nanotube-based field emission arrays with uniform emission will be developed under this program. Working in conjunction with MIT, microfabrication techniques will be used to produce high density arrays of CNT emitters on substrates which incorporate feedback to ensure uniformity of emission between emitters. The feedback techniques employed will minimize thermal effec ...

The coupling of GPS and INS is often characterized as loose, tight, or ultra-tight depending on the nature of the GPS input to the navigation filter. Thus, considering the challenge of precision navigation without GPS, this project will test and validate the coupling of sensor (EO, IR) information such as ego-motion and position updates similar to the coupling of a GPS and INS system. This proje ...

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The current need for routine measurement CD4+ cell counts of HIV-infected individual's is immense. Currently, the cost of CD4+ counting is a major issue (especially) in resource-poor environments, where the infection rates are highest. Cost of obtaining an accurate CD4+ count is not the only barrier to routine CD4+ monitoring in resource poor settings. Personn ...

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Prostate cancer is the most prevalent cancer among men; and the second leading cause of cancer death among men in the US. There are currently no approved therapies for hormone-refractory prostate cancer. Epidemiological studies have demonstrated a strong relationship between incidence of and mortality from various cancers including prostate cancer, exposure to ...