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 ...

Electrical circuit designers at Tier 2-4 suppliers to the Department of Defense (DoD) are currently using desktop computing to design their products. To improve the circuit design in the DoD supply chain, designers will need to be able to analyze their circuits with High Performance Computing resources. Designers seeking to innovate their circuits must have access to HPC facilities that maintain c ...

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): It is estimated that 2 million health-care associated infections are acquired each year by hospitalized patients resulting in 90,000 deaths and about 4.5 billion in excess health care costs. A large and growing percentage of these infections can be attributed to Staphylococcus aureus and, in particular, to methicillin-resistant S. aureus (MRSA). Rapid PCR-base ...

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The demand for renewable energy is motivating R&D efforts toward the development of novel photovoltaic (PV) technology. Efficient and low cost solar cells will have an important role in defense applications particularly powering portable electronic devices. Current solar cells based on single crystal silicon are still not at a level to be cost effective when compared to other forms of electrical g ...

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): Over 700,000 surgical hernia repairs are performed each year in the United States and despite recent advances, a significant rate of recurrence persists. The incorporation of biocompatible mesh to strengthen the abdominal fascia has largely replaced high-tension suturing techniques in hernia repair. Currently, the preferred biomaterials include durable syntheti ...

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) are an adult stem cell population, typically isolated from bone marrow aspirates, and are capable of self-renewal, expansion in culture, and differentiation into adipocytes, chondrocytes, and osteoblasts. These cells are being explored for use in tissue engineering applications, such as spinal fusions, bone defect repairs, and cart ...

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The emergence of biological therapeutics, including cells, peptides, and proteins, has allowed medical science to address a number of unmet clinical needs. Often these agents are extremely potent, specifically activating endogenous signaling cascades to promote well-characterized biochemical and physiological responses. For example, bone morphogenetic protein-2 ...

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 ...