Award Data

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The shortage of nurses and medical technologists is accelerating. Shortages can be reduced by scheduling staff to precisely meet the hour-by-hour demand for medical service. Think of bank teller scheduling, where more staff are scheduled at peak demand. Current attempts to schedule to demand are relatively primitive: a small number of quantized fixed shifts, fo ...

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Cerebral edema (and its counterpart in the spinal cord) is a major contributor to the damage caused by stroke, traumatic brain injury, traumatic spinal-cord injury, and bacterial meningitis. Stroke alone is the third leading cause of death in the USA and the leading cause of disability. Unfortunately, few treatment options are available for cerebral and spinal- ...

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Critical Limb Ischemia (CLI) is a common problem that often results in major limb amputation. Circulating endothelial progenitor cells likely play a role in the pathogenesis of CLI; the number and function of these cells that are mobilized from the bone marrow are reduced in the elderly and diabetics, groups at high risk for CLI. Allogenic Umbilical Cord Blood ...

For applications in DoD satellite systems, devices based on novel nanomaterials offer significant advantages over traditional technologies in terms of light-weight and efficiency. Examples of such novel devices include quantum dot (QD) based solar cells, photodetectors, radars and sensors. However, the response of these devices to radiation effects is not well understood, and radiation effects mod ...

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The long-term objective of the proposed effort is to develop an autonomous clinical diagnostics system for monitoring normal and diseased immune function that occurs in the context of rheumatoid arthritis, infection, inflammation, asthma, autoimmune disease, and neoplasia. This system will be a microarray-based bioassay platform that specifically captures d ...

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Sleep apnea is a major public health problem but traditional treatments have focused mostly on resolving obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) as demonstrated by the plethora of obstruction-motivated therapies like positive airway pressure, oral appliances, and others. However, more troubling forms of sleep apnea exist like those that are mediated by chemoreflex instab ...

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Current practice is to set up trial crystallization screens and periodically review the results to see if a crystal or promising crystal-like precipitate has appeared a process that often takes weeks or months. Most outcomes are precipitated protein or clear drops, and the conditions that led to those results are removed from further consideration. We are deve ...

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Each year, there are over 10,000 newborns diagnosed with hydrocephalus in the United States. Hydrocephalus, an excessive accumulation of cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) within the head, is a lifelong disease with no known cure. Fortunately, hydrocephalus can be managed with CSF shunts which redirect excessive CSF elsewhere in the body. Unfortunately, 30-40% o ...

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Oligodendrocytes (OLs) are the myelinating cells of the central nervous system and play a critical role in white matter formation. Serious clinical disorders affect central nervous system white matter during early development. These conditions include periventricular white matter injury (PWMI), which affects up to 20% of very low birth weight premature infants. ...

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Fragile X Syndrome (FRAX) is the most common genetic cause of mental retardation in males. FRAX is caused by the expansion of a CGG trinucleotide repeat of the 5' untranslated region (UTR) of the FMR1 gene. In normal individuals, the 5' UTR of the FMR1 gene contains 5 to 45 CGG repeats; however, individuals with FRAX have over 200 repeats. Presently, Southe ...