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): 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): Development of radiological/nuclear medical countermeasures to treat Acute Radiation Syndrome (ARS) is a high priority research area for NIAID. Bone marrow is one of the most sensitive tissues to radiation damage and impaired hematopoiesis is one of the first clinical signs of excessive radiation exposure, often resulting in death. Interleukin-11 (IL-11) is a ...

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The primary objective proposed is to utilize Boulder Nonlinear System's (BNS) spatial light modulator (SLM) technology to automate the Cogswell group's recently-developed quantitative DIC microscope (Q-DIC) and make it accessible to biologists in the marketplace. Q-DIC is a full-field (non-scanning) phase imaging technique which provides optical path length mea ...

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Tandem repeat sequences (STR) are distributed widely in the human genome. These sites exhibit high levels of length polymorphism as a result of their relative instability during DNA replication, i.e., the tendency for slippage to occur between the template and newly synthesized strands causing deletion or addition of repeat units. Changes in STR repeat numb ...

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Prostate cancer (PCa) is the second leading cause of male cancer deaths in the U.S., and although the disease can be managed or treated in many ways, clinicians lack suitable scanning tools for diagnosing and tracking PCa. Conventional magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) at 1.5 tesla and above is used increasingly for the detection, diagnosis, and staging of cance ...

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Since the introduction of liver transplantation, patient and graft outcomes have incrementally improved. Whole liver or segmental liver transplantation have been performed in patients suffering from different endstage liver diseases. The infusion of isolated hepatocytes has been investigated as an alternative to solid organ grafting. Transplantations of allogen ...

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Numerous diseases are caused by gene defects. The goal of gene therapy is the effective treatment or cure of these diseases by the introduction of the normal gene or repair of the gene defect. A large research effort has been mounted to optimize gene transfer vectors mostly based on adenoviruses and retroviruses. Yet, the initial promise of gene therapy has bee ...