Award Data

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Neuropathic pain is a common complication of cancer, diabetes mellitus, viral infections, and other causes. Although physicians currently employ a variety of treatments to manage moderate to severe neuropathic pain, including non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, opioids, tricyclic antidepressants, anti- seizure medications, serotonin-norepinephrine reupta ...

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The long-term goal of the proposed research is to develop a novel quantitative flow through cell counting method for enumeration of CD4+ T lymphocytes in human blood. CD4 cell counts are needed to stage and monitor HIV-infected patients. In adults, the absolute number of CD4+ T cells per microlitre of blood has critical prognostic and therapeutic implications, ...

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Each year, at least 10,000 critically sick babies in respiratory failure are intubated for ventilator support. For these babies, intubation bears major health risks such as airway emergencies, cardiopulmonary arrest, pneumothoraces. Neonates, however young, can be quite active, leading to undesirable tube movement and unplanned extubations. To date, there exist ...

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Human serum albumin is capable of binding bilirubin with high affinity, thus sequestering it and mitigat- ing its harmful neurological effects in jaundiced newborns. Despite considerable work indicating that the level of bilirubin in the blood relative to the level of albumin binding sites is a key factor in assessing risk for bilirubin associated brain damage, ...

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Meta-analysis is the statistical procedure employed to synthesize data from a series of studies. As such, it falls at the core of evidence-based policy in such fields as alcohol and substance abuse, medicine, social science, ecology, education, gerontology, among many others. The current generation of meta-analysis software is designed for the situation where e ...

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Longitudinal trials are trials in which researchers track outcomes over a period of time. These trials play a prominent role in many fields including drug abuse, aging, medicine, social science, and education. Longitudinal studies, by their nature, often address issues that have important implications for long-term health and development. Also, because these st ...

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Increased routine use of state-of-the-art imaging techniques has resulted in a higher incidence of small incidentally discovered renal masses, benign and malignant. A large proportion of patients with such masses, are within an older, more frail population and for renal cell carcinoma (RCC), 60-70% of patients now present asymptomatically. Treatment recommendat ...

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The number of archived biological samples is very large and ever growing. Maintaining large collections of these samples is fraught with difficulties arising from inadequate labeling technologies, the inability to automatically locate the samples and a lack of robust connection between the physical sample and archiving software. We propose to develop a system t ...

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Advances in computational hardware and molecular modeling techniques have revolutionized our ability to simulate electrostatic interactions, which play a fundamental role in the conformational stability, structure, folding and function of biomolecules. One important near-term application of these developments drawing both theoretical and commercial interests is ...

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): This research is to develop a minimally invasive, percutaneously-placed system that will measure blood flow in the body. Blood flow keeps tissue alive. Sophisticated instruments, such as duplex Doppler, MRI or CT angiography, can measure blood flow noninvasively, but provide only a snapshot of the flow. Our goal is to develop minimally invasive percutaneously ...