Award Data

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The goal of this proposal is to produce a fully characterized polyurethane heart valve prosthesis that will be ready for clinical evaluation. Existing replacement valves suffer from several shortcomings. Specifically, biological tissue fixation and methods used to mount the tissue to the supporting stent of bioprostheses cause time dependent structural changes ...

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This Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I research research project aims to develop a polymer system for drug eluting coronary stents (DES). The material is expected to provide higher drug loading with a controlled drug release profile, as well as tunable mechanical properties over the lifetime of the stent. This will be accomplished using block terpolymers of specific composition to ...

Realizing the promise of nuclear fusion depends in part on effective plasma facing components (PFCs) that can withstand the intense heat loads, forces, and neutron bombardment of long-pulse high-power reactor operation. A single reactor such as ITER will require thousands of PFCs. Because imperfections in the joints of just one PFC could have disastrous consequences for reactor operation, joint ...

Many military missions involve the use of equipment that requires small batteries for power where AC grid power is unavailable. Also, there is a need for a high quality power output device that conditions a power input to make it suitable to power sensitive communications equipment. The weight of this equipment is also a factor which affects Its usefullness in quick moving military situations. M ...

Solid oxide fuel cells (SOFCs) are one of the most efficient and cleanest power generating systems being developed. A key component is the cathode air heat exchanger, or recuperator, which ensures that the cathode air, and thereby the cells, are at sufficient temperature to permit ion mobility ¿ and thereby improve overall SOFC system efficiency. At present, commercially available metallic recu ...

Modern turbine engines undergo extensive ground testing in test cells during development. These engines are instrumented with numerous strain gages for high-frequency dynamic strain measurements. Currently, analog signals from these gages are routed out of the test cell to remote data acquisition equipment over hundreds of feet of wire. With up to 200 gages to be installed, the task of patching ...

Political, economic, and environmental considerations require that the national dependence on petroleum-based transportation fuels, especially imported oil, be reduced by accelerating the development of domestic renewable alternatives. The United States has the potential to generate, sustainably, about 1.3 billion dry tons of biomass per year, and bio-oil derived from this renewable feedstock cou ...

There is a troubling decline in the number of US citizens training to become scientists and engineers. There are insufficient numbers of qualified science teachers in the middle schools, where interest in science must be kindled. Technology enhanced learning environments (TELEs), which could improve science education, are not being widely deployed. This Phase I project will customize a TELE to a) ...

The release of volatile organic compounds from industrial processes can have negative impacts on the environment while also posing significant health and safety concerns. In the environment, many of these chemical are considered precursors to ground-level ozone, which is the primary component of smog. In addition, many volatile organic compounds are cancer-causing in humans while others pose dan ...