Human performance is defined as physical performance, cognitive performance, and social/organizational performance. This project specifically focused on physical performance. The research team spent a great deal of time with practitioners within the tactical athlete (i.e., U.S.

Background — Vaccination is one of the most effective tools for mitigating the impact of influenza epidemics and pandemics. However, commercially available flu vaccines are in general directed toward the specific strain(s) contained in the vaccine.

BACKGROUND

While great advances have been made into understanding the biomechanical environment within human joints, large gaps in our knowledge of the basic mechanics still exist. These gaps are a direct result of limitations in our ability to experimentally characterize detailed internal joint mechanics during in vivo human motion. This lack of fundamental knowledge underlies a multitude of basic and applied research areas in musculoskeletal biomechanics.

SwRI has tapped into mobile communications technology to turbocharge its custom Rhodium Drug Development System. Rhodium, SwRI’s proprietary docking simulation program for biostructure-based drug design, has improved its processing capabilities up to four times faster thanks to a new SwRI-designed and optimized “super computer” that uses the same technology found in mobile communications to enable faster streaming.

BACKGROUND

The objective of this project was to develop a new, computationally efficient, multiscale numerical model to simulate the directional and tumble motions of self-propelled chemotactic particles (live bacteria, or bacterial or chemical robots) in spatially and temporarily varying chemoattractant (e.g., nutrients) gradients in geometrically complex domains by accommodating cells scale adaptation dynamics and signal processing, and particle-scale fluid-particle hydrodynamics.

Musculoskeletal injury is a significant problem in the U.S. Military and civilian populations. As such, there is a critical need to develop methods and systems to accurately assess the risk of injury during military operational activities, vehicular accidents, and other potentially injurious environments in order to develop countermeasures and systems to mitigate this risk. However, advances in developing injury countermeasures have been severely restricted by the limitations of available tools to determine the biomedical basis of human injury.

Chlamydia trachomatis (CT) is the world's leading cause of sexually transmitted diseases (STD) and the most commonly reported STD in the U.S. and Texas. Chlamydia infection may result in pelvic inflammatory disease, complications such as ectopic pregnancy and infertility in women, in addition to epididymitis in men, pneumonia in infants, and even blindness. A peptide, or protein-based, vaccine candidate has been demonstrated to have a high degree of efficacy in two animal models of genital chlamydial infection.

Disorders of the temporomandibular joint (TMJ) are widespread, afflicting between 5 and 40 percent of the adult population. TMJ disorder (TMJD) encompasses several conditions including orofacial pain, restricted mandibular movement, clicking and popping sounds from the jaw joint, and locked jaws. About 10 to 15 percent of TMJD patients have osteoarthritis, characterized by a degenerative joint which results from erosion of articular cartilage and degeneration of subchondral cortical and trabecular bone. Symptoms can become chronic and difficult to manage, severely reducing quality of life.