Award Data

he Storable Clean Ethane-ethylene Nitrous Engine (SCENE) is a proposed technology designed to provide upper stages and spacecraft with non-toxic, liquid, non-cryogenic, high-performance propulsion with an Isp on the order of 300 seconds. The propellant components are stored as liquids under their saturated vapor pressures. With the SCENE, nitrous oxide is used as an autogenously pressurized oxidiz ...

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Bacterial Vaginosis (BV) is an exceptionally common vaginal condition in which robust lactobacillus microflora in the vagina is replaced by a dense polymicrobial overgrowth. At any given time, about 1 in 3 women in the U.S. have BV; half are asymptomatic, and most women with symptomatic BV have only mild symptoms (increased discharge with a fishy smell). Despit ...

This Phase I STTR proposal will demonstrate nanostructured “metal-black” coatings to enhance absorption by thin film solar cells. The problem is that silicon has low absorption due to its indirect gap. The opportunity is that nano-scale metallic scattering centers increase the effective optical path length and enhance the solar electric-field strength in thin-film solar cells, leading to more ...

An emerging consensus in engineering holds that aleatory uncertainty should be propagated by traditional methods of probability theory but that epistemic uncertainty may require methods that do not confuse incertitude with variability by requiring every possibility be associated with a probability that it occurs. Therefore, although Monte Carlo shells that re-run calculations many times while var ...

We propose to develop a computational model of leadership designed to capture complex variables including cultural differences in leadership requirements along with task differences, primarily ill-defined goals, which pose leadership challenges. Rather than avoiding these kinds of complexity and developing a computational model that is unlikely to scale up, we believe there is more to be gained b ...

This Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) Phase 1 project will lead to the development of a simple, cost effective technology which can recover helium from gas reservoirs containing helium concentrations too low to permit economic recovery at present. This will enable helium recovery from fields currently producing natural gas but considered uneconomical for the recovery of the contained heli ...

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 ...

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 ...

Currently, computation of the geopotential acceleration and its partial derivatives consumes a large portion of numerical integration time in special perturbations (SP) applications. The standard geopotential formulation is expressed as a spherical harmonic expansion in geocentric latitude, geocentric longitude, and radial distance. Recent research by Dr. Beylkin of the University of Colorado ha ...

The objective of the work described in this proposal is to aid in the advancement of Mo-Si-B alloys for use in high temperature applications such as hot gas stream components in turbine engines. Such alloys are being characterized for their monotonic tensile properties in tension and compression as well for their creep resistance. Likewise, multiphase Mo-Si-B alloys have been studied in terms of m ...