Award Data

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Increasing evidence indicates that systemic inflammation and the blood-brain barrier (BBB), which becomes the target of overreacting or misguided immune cells that determine BBB failure and immune extravasations into the brain parenchyma, are involved in the pathogenesis of neurological diseases such as meningitis, inflammation, Alzheimer's disease, and multipl ...

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Over 1,437,180 patients were diagnosed with cancer in 2008; over half were solid tumors. Cancer patients experience a number of life-altering symptoms during chemotherapy. Treatments have become more aggressive, are administered in outpatient settings, and in patients' homes. Despite pretreatment supportive care regimens for anemia, neutropenia, nausea and vomi ...

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Nonlinear optical microscopy techniques (such as two-photon florescence) are being used to acquire volumetric (i.e. three dimensional) images that probe several hundred microns into scattering tissue. These techniques are being combined with fast acquisition schemes to allow imaging of live, moving specimens at high NA. This combination allows for high-resoluti ...

Project Summary Incubators have been in use since the 19th century and have significantly improved survival for premature infants. However, incubator lighting systems still can still be improved. Proposed is a project to develop and test the feasibility and acceptability of a solid state lighting (SSL) system for use with neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) incubators. The system would 1) promote ...

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Groundwater and soil contamination has been associated with higher incidence of birth defects and cancer. Monitored natural attenuation of contaminants via biodegradation has proven effective in lowering contaminant levels, but these processes depend critically on dissolved oxygen levels. This project proposes to develop a robust oxygen sensor compound with che ...

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Osteoarthritis (OA) is the leading cause of chronic disability in the United States. A clinical goal in the treatment and prevention of OA is to develop replacement cartilage using tissue engineering (TE) technologies. Although TE cartilage presently lacks the mechanical stability of native cartilage, studies have demonstrated that mechanical stability can be e ...

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The overall goal of this study is to develop a head tracking procedure for the automated assessment of hearing in infants using Visual Reinforcement Audiometry (VRA). The head tracking procedure will be incorporated into the Intelligent Visual Reinforcement Audiometry (IVRA) system from Intelligent Hearing Systems Corp. The IVRA system currently provides automa ...

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Evidence and theory indicate that laboratory measures of impairment and function do not predict how older adults actually function in daily life. Thomas Glass (1998), for example, reports marked differences between functional activities that community residents can do and do do in survey data from the MacArthur Studies of Successful Aging. Therefore, subst ...

Abstract Atrial fibrillationAFprevalence is estimated toof the general population in the United StatesA shockingtoaccording to studiesof patients with AF are unaware of their diagnosissilent AFMost AF patients will suffer from congestive heart failure or and develop thromboembolic events leading to a dramatic reduction of patientsquality of lifeand a significant consumption of health care resource ...

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): According to the American Cancer Society, half of all men and one-third of all women in the United States will develop cancer in their lifetime. While chemotherapy has dramatically improved the survival rate of cancer patients, it comes at the cost of severe toxicities and in some cases poor response rates. In order to address these shortcomings, equal investme ...