Award Data

Opportunity: Guayule, a US native plant, is the only alternate rubber crop with an established, mechanized, agronomic system. Problem: Low rubber yields and lack of effective resin and bagasse coproduct valorization, have prevented widespread adoption by American farmers and processors. Rubber is only made when the cytoplasmic monomer pool (isopentenyl-pyrophosphate; IPP) is larger than that requi ...

The US Navy, industry and the scientific community is using and developing a variety of AUVs, underwater sensors, and other systems that can be easily deployed and operated with minimal maintenance or recurring costs. A primary hindrance to the long-term implementation of these systems is the availability of in situ energy. The concepts presented herein focus on the harvesting of methane from seep ...

Methods for interconversion between cell types (cellular reprogramming) are currently discovered through resource intensive trial and error. Experiments may test a multitude of transcription factors to identify correct combinations that influence cell fate. In addition, reprogramming approaches commonly use stem cell intermediates such as induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs), which are generated ...

New pathogens, both naturally occurring and adversary-engineered, are increasingly likely to emerge and represent a significant and growing risk to global health and security. These new threats often have limited genetic similarity to prior known pathogens and cannot be identified through standard genetic tests. The application of machine learning algorithms to phenotypic tests to predict pathogen ...

The objective of this proposal is to examine the feasibility of defining and measuring key dimensions of an urban system to include its essential functions and networks, and whether they can be modelled in a computational framework for assessing robustness and resilience of DUTs (and their tipping points) under conditions of volatility and stress. This proposal will conduct a comprehensive review ...

Traumatic injuries account for 30% of all life years lost in the US and is the leading cause of death for people under 46 years of age. Uncontrolled bleeding or hemorrhage constitute 30-40% of trauma related deaths and are considered to be a major cause o

This proposal is in response to the Defense Health Agency 2017 Phase I SBIR topic 17B-005.The approach is the use of a membrane oxygen pump using newly developed nano-thickness membranes with all the layers less than 1 micron total.Nanometer thickness membranes enable more oxygen output per surface area at temperatures of 300-600 C than current state-of-the -art 600-800 C membranes that are 50-300 ...

Ultrasonic vocalizations (USVs) provide an excellent behavioral measure that can be used to understand the effects of traumatic stressors on behavior and can be used to screen and identify therapeutic treatments. This provides a strong justification for the use of rodent USVs as a model for emotional processing in PTSD. Since there are no commercially available USV assessment software programs tha ...

Dose response relationships are fundamental to pharmacology and many other fields. Increasingly, scientists are encountering polytonic dose response relationships. These relationships are not well-characterized by linear and s-shaped models. Our team has extended the traditional 4 parameter logistic model by replacing the dose parameter with the quadratic function as an effective dose function. Th ...

Cornerstone Research Group (CRG) and the University of Texas (UT) will team to develop a fast and accurate automated analysis program for USV scoring. This automated tool will enable greater research efficiency and throughput allowing greater strides in developing treatments for post-traumatic stress disorder through rodent-based research. Building off prior work by UT on a first generation auto-s ...