Award Data

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): In this proposal we respond to the call by the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) in the PHS 2009-2 Omnibus Solicitation, Exposure Biology Program, Section 1, Technologies for Generating Precise Measures of Environmental Exposures for new products/devices, tools, assays to improve our ability to precisely measure environmental exposure ...

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): As the well known baby boomer generation surges toward retirement age, the issue becomes more significant each day of how this generation of 78 million seniors will be able to remain as independent as possible while increasingly burdened by the onset of multiple, chronic, medical conditions and a decline in cognitive abilities. Concurrent with the dramatic incr ...

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): Remarkable advances in signal processing techniques, materials sciences, battery technologies, and computer-aided design and computer-aided manufacturing (CAD/CAM) processes have led to significant developments in assistive technologies. Coordinated research and commercialization have dramatically increased prosthetic function, utility, personalization, comfort ...

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Perchlorate, ClO4-, is a small highly water soluble anion created by both geogenic and anthropogenic sources. Anthropogenic sources include solid rocket fuel, matches, dyes, paints, airbag inflators, pyrotechnics, flares, and fertilizers. Human exposure to perchlorate is of concern because of the potential for impaired thyroid function, leading to a number of d ...

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): In chronic wounds, numerous factors contribute to the diminished healing. Wound healing constituents, including heparan sulfate proteoglycans and numerous growth factors, are essential to normal skin wound healing. Several key growth factors such as FGF, VEGF, and PDGF require heparan sulfate-like polymers as co- receptors or co-activators for growth factor act ...

Accurate blast simulations based on first-principles, 3-D hydro-codes require hours on notebook PCs. Graphical processing units (GPUs) offer the potential of drastic reductions in run-times. Typical computational fluid dynamics codes perform of the order of 10-100 operations per memory fetch and store. In order to harness the potential of graphical processing units (GPUs), near-perfect streaming ( ...

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 ...

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Arteriocyte's long-term objective is to develop a platform for ex vivo expansion of leukemic stem cell (LSC) based on cytokine-enriched medium and the company's proprietary nanofiber culture scaffold (NANEX). Cancer stem cell research is of significant importance because, this approach has the potential to create an effective therapy that overcomes challenges o ...