Award Data

Burn injuries to theface present a number of functional and psychological challenges that arisefrom scarring and contracture. Thus, amajor goal of burn and trauma surgeons is to prevent scarring and improvegraftingtechnologies that are used on thecomplextopography of the face. The proposed project builds on previous PhaseII SBIR workthat demonstrated thefeasibility of using a keratin-collagen matr ...

Realistic surgical simulation requires a combination of representative tissue geometry, accurate tissue material properties and lifelike tool-tissue interaction forces. Recent advances in computational power and imaging modalities have provided the capability to represent the anatomical details required for surgical training; however, the mathematical models which govern the underlying tissue pro ...

Blast-induced Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) is a major threat to the health of military personnel serving in modern theaters. As such, the biomechanical injury pathways of TBI are and have been the focus of many animal studies. However, differences in the experimental setups across laboratories make it difficult to draw definitive conclusions from the resulting data. A tool that can accurately e ...

Water expansion during freeze-thaw cycles can cause deterioration in concrete, leading to scaling, cracking, and crumbling over a period of years. Resistance to this damage is achieved with a system of voids formed by adding surfactants to the fresh concrete to stabilize air bubbles naturally entrained during mixing. The volume fraction, size, and spacing of these voids are critical. It is importa ...

Broken rails are a common cause of mainline derailments and a particular concern given the increasing use of our rail system for passenger traffic and petroleum products. The progressive nature of the defects provides an opportunity for early detection of cracks before they become significant enough to cause a derailment. Unfortunately, current inspection technology does not allow these inspection ...

Vadum will develop Chemical, Heterogeneous sensor fusion Incident awareness Module (CHIME)asoftware module that will ingest data from a large number of asynchronous, heterogeneous and multi-tiered sensors to automate the process of estimating the source attributes of a chemical or biological release. CHIME generates estimates from a continuous stream of raw sensor data with successive estimates al ...

Use of motorcycles helmets significantly reduces the risk of fatality or serious brain injury to riders in the event of a crash, but riders often do not wear helmets in warm weather because of thermal discomfort. We propose to develop an innovative ventilation and cooling system that will maintain a cool, dry environment inside the helmet while also meeting applicable safety standards. The key the ...

The skin is the first line of defense against chemical warfare agents including nerve agents and toxic industrial chemicals, providing a possible barrier or delay to systemic distribution. Some chemicals also can act directly on the skin including the vesicants sulfur mustard and lewisite. Early and rapid skin decontamination is extremely important following exposure to CWAs and TICs because it de ...

This proposal presents a Phase I SBIR project to develop a high precision, low disperse rate powder disseminator for the US Army. In the development of the sensitive detecting agent, we need to release a precise amount of C&B agents in the controlled detection experiments. However, such a technology does not exist at the present time. After examining existing technologies, we believe that the r ...

DNA microarray technology, in combination with statistical and predictive modeling tools, could be used to evaluate thousands of genes against distinct gene expression patterns induced by chemical/biological agents to provide early identification and speed therapeutic intervention. The overall objective of this Phase II effort is to leverage existing public domain resources and commercial tools t ...