Award Data

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): We propose to develop compact magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) systems for imaging lungs as well as other soft tissue in live laboratory animals based on permanent magnets that are reasonably priced and easy to maintain. Such imagers will benefit public health by improving laboratory animal research. Unlike other soft tissues, lungs are difficult to image with ...

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The Health and Retirement Study is one of the world's most important data resources for the study of aging. The basic longitudinal survey instrument has been supplemented with data from a variety of other sources including Social Security Administration records containing the detailed earnings history of the respondent. Under current HRS protocols, the use of t ...

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Newborn screening is currently performed by collecting dried bloodspots from infants and then sending them to a lab for analysis. There is an increasing necessity to screen for a number of disease conditions for which therapies are becoming available. Lysosomal storage diseases alone number greater than 40. There is a need to minimize the blood collecte ...

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Many human diseases can theoretically be treated by injection of healthy or engineered cells into damaged tissue, where ideally they will engraft and remodel the damaged tissue into healthy tissue. However, numerous obstacles stand in the way of this regenerative technology becoming reality. Perhaps the greatest obstacle is that cells injected into many tissues ...

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Infection surrounding metal implants is a common and sometimes devastating cause of implant failure in a number of fields including oral, craniomaxillofacial (CMF), orthopedic, and cardiovascular surgery. These infections, which arise from the establishment of biofilms on device surfaces, not only necessitate new surgeries but in themselves present a significan ...

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): According to the National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research, 86% of adults over 70 years have at least moderate periodontitis and over a quarter have lost their teeth, which has serious repercussion on health and quality of life. Because of bone loss caused by this disease, bone grafting is routinely necessary prior to the placement of dental implan ...

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Approximately 500,000 bone-grafting procedures are performed each year in the United States (Boden, 2002). Autologous iliac crest bone graft continues to be the gold standard because it provides the three essential elements for bone formation: osteoprogenitor cells, an osteoconductive matrix, and osteoinductive molecules. Iliac crest harvest is however associat ...

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Highly-integrated and complex tissue and organ culture-based assays, such as organotypic brain slices and dissociated cortical cultures, have great potential to contribute to the understanding of basic CNS processes, disease states, pharmacological and toxicological properties of drugs. The information-dense analyses of these cultures using multiunit extra cell ...

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The "Big Idea" driving this project is that human memory is small, the body of scientific knowledge is vast and that breakthroughs are possible if software can do a better job of connecting researchers with knowledge in text and databases. The first step is to stop looking for words (as a search engine does) in data but instead try to find facts in data. A fact ...

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Acute liver failure (ALF) constitutes a challenge to clinicians and scientists alike. Commonly associated with the alcohol-acetaminophen syndrome, its clinical course is unpredictable and polarizing, with death as the outcome in a large percentage of cases. Given the lack of specific therapy, organ transplantation is the only clinically effective strategy. Cons ...