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 ...

There are currently no vaccines or therapeutics available for Marburg Virus Disease (MVD). Given the specter of weaponization and the terriblemorbidity and high mortality rate of MVD, this represents a critical threat to the operational readiness of the Warfighter. While traditionalvaccines have proven to be a huge contribution to public health, they do have some limitations especially in the cont ...

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 ...

LongWave Photonics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Virginia Diodes are proposing the use of the Terahertz Quantum-Cascade Lasers (QCL) combined with a Schottky diode detector for high dynamic range heterodyne imaging. Two single-mode, distributed feedback (DFB) QCLs with milliwatt power levels will be used as local oscillator and illumination for imaging. The QCLs will be downconverte ...

Near-Field Scanning Microwave Microscopy (SMM) is a technique relying on a raster scan of a microwave probe across a sample surface, while measuring its reflected microwave signal. The existing technologies are limited to the surface analysis, and are not compatible with liquid environment. These limitations are addressed by the proposed wideband 3D tomography SMM with sub-surface analysis capabil ...

Waste generation at forward bases creates significant challenges; its disposal presents an economic cost with no direct benefit and its accumulation or burning is a health hazard. The bioconversion of waste into useful compounds could save thousands annually for every soldier and tens of millions in capital expenditure. However, widespread adoption is impeded by low conversion efficiency. We propo ...

The proposed strategy in this STTR proposal for bioconversion of food waste to butanol uses the well-described Clostridium acetobutylicum organism to convert the carbohydrate to the fuel molecule butanol. Based on our teams many years of work with butanol formation and genetic studies of the organism and the advancement of recently developed genetic methods, the team will develop a set of genetic ...

Recently, fiber/yarn-based energy-storage systems have attracted enormous attention due to their remarkable promises in smart textiles and high-tech sportswear etc., mainly as more pliable energy-storage units being truly wearable. Storagenergy Technologies Inc. proposes to develop graphite fibers (GFs), which are fabricated by a scalable and cost effective wet spinning approach, and later chemica ...

Recreational drug use by military personnel can impact soldier preparedness and performance especially in difficult and demanding environments. One challenge for monitoring illicit drug use is that current tests rely on the identification of specific chemical structures. Small variants in the chemistry of a drug can evade detection. In this Phase I SBIR, we will develop a lateral flow test that ...

Achieving strong and durable polymer adhesion to inorganic substrates under various environmental conditions is challenging. The required long-term durability tests are over long time- and length-scales, beyond the capability of current modeling, and extensive experimental testing is needed. Currently, no commercially available method exists for monitoring how a polymer/substrate system evolves du ...