Award Data

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The goal of this project is to develop a compact inexpensive alternative to the bulky expensive touchpads now required by blind people for audio/touch access to graphical information. Audio/touch is known to provide ex cellent access to computer-literate blind people as well as people with dyslexia or other severe print disabilities. Preparing Audio/touch mate ...

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The long range goal of this project is to create technologies that permit authors and publishers of professional journals to make their content available in the DAISY (Digital Accessible Information System) XML (eXtensible Markup Language) format that is fully usable by all people, in particular by people who are blind or have other severe print disabilities. T ...

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The specific aim of this project is to develop a prototype color embosser capable of making tactile graphics readable with a digital pen. The digital pen from partner company, Livescribe, reads patterns of tiny, nearly invisible dots printed (along with a color image if desired) on a page. It speaks information corresponding to text or graphical elements at t ...

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The specific aim of this proposal is to determine if it is feasible to use a polymer-coated shaft in placed of a precision-machined roller die for the purposes of producing braille and tactile graphics. If successful, this project will result in the selection or development of an acceptable polymer to be used in commercial braille embossers. Using a polyme ...

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The specific aim of this proposal is to develop and implement a new type of technology for production of braille and tactile graphics that uses a system in which metal punch pins fire into a smooth polymer-coated shaftrather than into a machined metal die as with most current embossing technologies. The successful completion of this project will yield a new bra ...

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): This Phase I proposal is to develop audio-tactile reading technologies. These should greatly improve access by blind people to typical graphs, charts, and diagrams in modern news, business, or scientific literature. Such access could dramatically improve their educational and professional opportunities. Quality of life for blind people is a mission of the Nat ...

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Proteolytic antibodies are a novel therapeutic modality potentially impacting current antibody- based therapy. The ultimate goal of this project is to develop potent proteolytic human monoclonal antibodies (mAb) against beta Amyloids (Ab) for treatment of Alzheimer's disease. To achieve the objective, a novel approach was developed to produce a yeast i ...

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Lyme disease (LD) is the most commonly reported tick-borne illness in the United States. According to the recent Center for Disease Control and Prevention report, approximately 300,000 Lyme cases are diagnosed each year. If left untreated, the infection spreads to joints, the heart and the nervous system. In most cases, infections and associated symptoms are el ...

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Adenosine to inosine or A-to-I RNA editing executed by ADAR family proteins is abundant in the central nervous system (CNS). The availability of tools to monitor and manipulate both ADAR enzymes and A-to-I RNA modifications will facilitate investigation of the relationships between specific A-to-I conversions and their function in CNS development. The goal of t ...

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Monoclonal antibodies are used for treatment of a wide range of diseases from cancer to infectious diseases. However, development of antibodies with high affinity and specificity is still time-consuming, labor-intensiveand unpredictable. Abzyme Therapeutics LLC is actively developing animal-free antibody discovery platforms to accelerate generation of therapeut ...