Award Data

Cultures differ in cognition. These cognitive differences naturally result in expectancy violations and perceptual mismatches between people of different cultures. And while they are, by nature, difficult to observe, a culture’s cognitive attributes significantly influence individual perceptions and overt behaviors. A training program that addresses general cross-cultural perspective taking s ...

Contemporary operational environments are often characterized by ambiguous, multi-cultural contexts, where Army Soldiers must rapidly adapt without extensive prior knowledge of a region or its people. Ongoing training development efforts are addressing the need for general cultural competence, but this broad competence must be clearly defined and assessed in order to determine if our Soldiers are ...

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The goals for this Phase I proposal are: 1) construction and bench testing of a novel device to dissociate tissue from donor pancreas using ultrasound for the recovery of pancreatic islet cells for transplantation, and 2) marked improvement in yields and viability of islets recovered using this approach as compared to the existing, standard method. Pancreatic i ...

In its SBIR Phase I, Agile Systems Inc. developed concepts for new shipboard automated material handling technologies that address important opportunities to reduce crew size and generally increase logistics efficiency on Navy surface combatants—present and future—as well as on aircraft carriers and the CLF supply vessels that serve Carrier Battle Groups. NAVPAK is a system that automates the ...

The development of proton exchange membrane (PEM)(also known as polymer electrolyte membrane) fuel cells has been limited by the availability of suitable membrane materials. In order to achieve acceptable performance at low cost, such fuel cells are required to work at elevated temperature and low (near 0) relative humidity (RH) for extended periods of time. For example, the U.S. Department of Ene ...

The proposed project consists of developing a prototype exciter/igniter unit that can operate to a subset of expected flight performance requirements. The main focus of this development effort will be the physical integration of a small, compact exciter with a "flight like" igniter or spark plug. This exciter/igniter prototype will represent the exciter/igniter units used to generate sparks that ...

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The importance of brain-derived G protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs) in mental function and health can hardly be overstated. However, our knowledge of the molecular biophysical basis for how GPCRs bind to their cognate agonists and antagonists to elicit function is limited by the lack of high resolution 3-D structural information for these proteins. In this p ...

Applied Optimization, Inc., in working with Boeing-LTS and Space Dynamics Laboratory, proposes to demonstrate that full-feature characterization of small and faint unknown RSO in real-time is feasible by using the spectral-temporal features of its signature. Time-resolved spectrometer data in the visible or infrared will be considered as the input. In addition to enhancing existing methods for RSO ...

Applied Optimization, Inc., in working with EWI, Inc. and Boeing Phantom Works, proposes to demonstrate application of friction stir welding [FSW] for the manufacturing of a large aluminum 7050-T7451 component that is representative of a canted bulkhead. The FSW-based redesign is lighter, makes use of commercial off-the-shelf product forms, and is expected to reduce the lead time and the costs of ...

Applied Optimization, Inc., in working with EWI, Inc., Ohio State University, and Boeing Phantom Works, proposes to demonstrate feasibility of using microstructural models to predict the required processing conditions that can produce nanostructured grain sizes in the thermo-mechanical affected zone in friction stir processing [FSP] of 7075-T6 aluminum. First step will be an FSP trial using the p ...