KOSEN 한인과학기술자네트워크

Basic and Applied Medical Research in Warfighter Protection Primary Sponsor: Office of Naval Research Deadline: 3/30/2001 KEYWORDS COMMERCE BUSINESS DAILY ISSUE OF FEBRUARY 22,2001 PSA#2793 SOL 01-010 DUE 033001 POC Thrust Manager Technical Causality Care POC: CDR S. Ahlers, (703) 696-0367 (1) General Statement of Research Need: The Office of Naval Research (ONR) is soliciting preproposals directed at basic and applied medical research focusing on Warfighter Protection, which addresses adverse health and performance effects from conditions encountered in operational environments from peacetime to warfighting. Of specific interest are topics that support Casualty Prevention and a Healthy and Fit Force. The following topics are of interest in supporting Casualty Prevention (Thrust Manager technical POC: CDR S. Ahlers, 703-696-0367. A) Development of a smart uniform for shipboard damage control and firefighting with embedded physiological sensors, individual firefighting and control computer, data capture, storage, interpretation, and telemetry. System will allow determination of operator status and location and incorporate individual warning systems. Key to this development is the identification and incorporation of sensor systems that are non-invasive, and can be incorporated into the firefighting or damage control ensembles. Ambient condition sensors include inner surface, mid-wall, and outer surface garment temperatures, and garment wetness. Physiological sensors can include heart rate, metabolic rate (when the self-contained breathing apparatus, SCBA, is worn), general or specific movement, and perhaps, brain activity. These signals can be used to determine the well being of the firefighter or damage control personnel. Models will be developed to relate environmental and physiological variables into status and risk models to include modeling of body heat content changes during firefighting operations. Telemetry systems will be adapted for shipboard use to allow remote monitoring of personnel on firefighting or damage control operations. B) Enhanced maintenance of situational awareness: 1) Increase situational awareness and demonstrable increases in objective measures of the quality of flight performance by 25% under operationally challenging (low visibility) conditions. Goal is to apply a human-centered, iconic flight display technology that will enhance situational awareness, particularly during tiltrotor operations. 2) develop enhanced, intuitively simple approaches to flight control for operators of unmanned aerial vehicles which will result in increased survivability of remotely piloted vehicles (RPV) by 30% and a 30% decrease in manpower requirements. Technology will enable a single operator to simultaneously monitor several RPVs. Technology will enable an RPV pilot to coordinate action with other vehicles, manned and unmanned. C) Develop personal lightweight, man-mounted (<5kg) environmental control system to permit extended operations in extreme thermal environments using Zeolite-based technology. System should have the following characteristics: a) incorporates design that can be tailored for the whole body or torso only, b) provides 350 W cooling or heating for a duration of four to six hours, c) is resistant to the standard battery of chemical agents, d). can be integrated in a system that completely encapsulates the individual in a full-body suit with integral hood, boots, and gloves. D) Develop an environmentally-controlled system for the transportation and management of combat casualties from remote environments. Heating and/or cooling will be provided independent of external conditions and any vehicle mounted source. The system should provide 250 W of cooling or heating and be resistant to the standard battery of chemical agents. System should provide an interface for a suite of physiological monitoring devices including, but not limited to, heart rate, metabolic rate, tissue oxygenation, and, perhaps, brain activity. E) Develop systems to prevent injury from combat/tactical agile wavelength lasers. The agile protection effort will culminate in a wearable device, suitable for field and laboratory testing. The device will: 1) protect against radiation (400 to 1400 nm), nanosecond up to continuous wave exposure, 2) provide an unactivated state transmittance of >50%, 3) limit incident radiation to the maximum permissible exposure level (MPE -- ANSI Z136.1), and 4) be compatible with life support equipment, visual displays, night vision and CB systems. The second thrust is to develop a laser event recorder capable of detecting and quantifying laser exposures. The goal of this project is to develop a prototype laser event recorder using miniaturized imaging optics and electronics for demonstration in rotary wing aircraft (adaptable to other platforms including ground vehicles and the individual warfighter). Incorporating fast photodiode technology and GPS capability facilitates the determination of wavelength, duration, PRF, time and location of a laser exposure in the visible to near infrared for sources operating in continuous to pulsed modes. The laser event recorder will be capable of capturing laser exposures from sources in the visible to near infrared (300nm to 1.2 microns) portion of the spectrum. The device should also to pulsed (down to 25ns pulse duration) and must be able to extract the pertinent exposure parameters along with GPS time and location information. F) Understand the mechanisms involved in the body's response to extreme environmental exposure and exotic physical forces on aircrew (heat and cold stress, hypergravity, extreme noise levels and jet engine emissions. Develop personal environmental control systems that reduce the deleterious effects of thermal, hypobaric, and gravitational stress on aircrew. Develop aircrew-based systems that extend g-tolerance and the aviator's functional tactical envelope. G) Explore new approaches/materials/systems for protecting individuals from battlefield munitions. Efforts should be directed toward development of a standard armor assessment protocol providing a standard methodology for measuring the thorax response to behind armor blunt trauma (BABT). Non-penetrating ballistic impact on personal protective armor can result in causing localized crushing injury to musculoskeletal tissue and organs directly beneath the point of impact and injury to internal organs remote from the impact site. Initial efforts will focus on development of a robust and durable instrumentation package for measuring the forces generated during impact. Measure of impact load to the chest wall beneath the armor, measure of impact energy propagation into the thorax, determine chest wall deformation beneath the impact point, determine power spectral density of impact loading, and determine frequency dependence of the response of critical tissue structures. Efforts should focus on acquisition of data for mathematical modeling of thoracic and abdominal tissue responses to BABT. Subsequent work will focus on injury threshold determination for developing standards for novel protection systems and materials. H) Develop rapid diagnostic tests for disease, toxin, allergen, and immunization status with 95% sensitivity and specificity, particularly aimed at rapid diagnosis using salivary secretions where possible. Identify and investigate potential antigens for rapid lateral-flow and fluorescence polarization tests. Initial focus will be detecting exposure to TB (Mycobacteria), Dengue fever, and anthrax vaccine, including immunogens associated with hepatitis A, B and C and latex sensitivity. Develop hand-held fluorescence polarimeters for field use. Efforts should include the identification of possible industrial partners and include clinical trials in support of FDA submissions. I) Perform basic studies that elucidate the physiological and biochemical mechanisms that underlie the effects of stressors experienced by Navy and Marine Corps divers and submarine personnel.  elucidating the pathophysiology of decompression sickness (DCS), understanding how the immune system influences DCS risk, improved prediction of DCS risk and detection of DCS using non-invasive imaging techniques and predictive biochemical markers, improved therapeutic (non-recompressive) interventions to mitigate DCS, and greater understanding of how exposure to thermal stress can influence DCS risk  understanding physiological adaptive mechanisms to heat and cold stress for improving divers ability to operate in thermal extremes as well as strategies to accelerate acclimatization to hot, warm, and cold water diving environments  identify the effects of sound exposure on diver physiology and performance. Improvement of divers in sound pressure fields through active and passive noise protection, sound pressure level measurement, and improved understanding of auditory and non-auditory effects of frequency sound;  increasing the safety of divers and submariners working in closed hyperbaric spaces through establishment of acceptable levels of trace contaminants and development of equipment and techniques to measure trace contaminant levels  the identification and mitigation of operational stressors experienced by submariners; technologies to improve operator performance in submarines in the littoral battlespace  develop multipurpose diving system to provide protection against multiple hazards (thermal, chemical, and biological) for Navy and Marine Corps Divers. The closed-circuit ventilation system will utilize a man-mounted air conditioning system to provide on demand heating and cooling independent of external conditions. The following aspects of a Healthy and Fit Force are of particular interest (Thrust Manager technical POC: LCDR D. Street, 703-696-4502. A) Injury risk identification: Explore improvements to our understanding of how the properties of toxic chemicals result in adverse physiological or biochemical events, with a goal of modeling interactions and their consequences to predict toxic effects from first principles. B) Injury risk reduction: Develop improved methods and/or systems for identifying and preventing or mitigating the risk of injury associated with shipboard, terrestrial and aviation operations exposure. Of particular interest is the application of head and neck injury reduction methods for aircrew. C) Noise induced hearing loss (NIHL) associated with military operations:  Understand the physiological mechanisms associated with NIHL,  develop and validate treatment approaches to NIHL,  develop environmental and/or individual protection systems, materials and/or strategies to mitigate the effects of extreme noise levels in military operations. It is not the intent of this solicitation to establish new facilities; investigators should be able to demonstrate the required research capability and the necessary facilities. Preproposals/proposals whose main objectives are to conduct analyses, literature reviews, or program evaluations are not encouraged. (2) Instructions for Preparation of Preproposals and Proposals Offerors are invited to submit five (5) copies of a preproposal formatted as described on the Internet. The preproposal (technical only) should not exceed three pages of text. In addition, an estimate of overall costs (including indirect) for a three year effort and a curriculum vitae of the principal investigator(s) (PI) should be appended together with the three-page technical preproposal along with any supporting information, such as reprints or preprints, that will assist in the evaluation of the preproposal. Offerors submitting the most promising preproposals will be invited to submit a full technical and cost proposal on all or part of their preproposal submission. However, any such invitation does not assure a subsequent award. Any offeror may submit a full proposal even if its preproposal was not identified as promising or if no preproposal is submitted; however any full proposal submission would be made without the benefit of feedback prior to full proposal submission. The initial deadline for preproposals will be 16:00 EST (4:00 PM), 30 March 2001 for the next funding cycle that begins 1 October 2001. Formal proposals prepared in accordance with the Research Proposal Format Instructions at the above Web site will be required by 16:00 EST (4:00 PM), 01 June 2001. When animals are to be employed, a completed DoD Animal Use Protocol with supporting documentation (copies of AAALAC approval, IACUC approval, research literature database searches, and the two most recent USDA inspection reports) must be submitted with the proposal. Similarly, any proposal that involves the experimental use of human subjects must include approval by the organization's committee for protection of human subjects (Institutional Review Board, IRB), and documentation of a Multiple Project Assurance that covers the proposed human subjects study or a DoD Single Project Assurance for that work. Please see section "N" of the Research Proposal Format Instructions for further details and forms. Offerors must state in their preproposals and full proposals that the submission is in response to this BAA. Preproposals received after 16:00 EST (4:00 PM), 30 March 2001, or proposals received after 16:00 EST (4:00 PM), 01 June 2001, may still be considered for the next funding cycle if funds are available. This BAA provides no funding for preproposals or subsequent proposal development purposes. All preproposals will be acknowledged. Preproposals will not be returned after evaluation. (3) Criteria for Selecting Proposals, their Relative Importance, and the Method of Evaluation Preproposal and full proposal submissions will be evaluated on the 1) overall basis of innovation and scientific merit; 2) programmatic relevance of the proposal; 3) the qualifications and experience of the proposed principal investigator and key personnel; 4) the offeror's capabilities, related experience, facilities, techniques or unique combinations of these that are integral factors for achieving the proposal objectives; 5) socio-economic merits of the proposal and 6) realism of the proposed cost and availability of funds. Awards may take the form of a contract, cooperative agreement, grant, or other agreement. For awards made as contracts, the socio-economic merits of each proposal will be evaluated based on the extent of commitment in providing meaningful subcontracting opportunities for small business, HUB zone small business, small disadvantaged business, woman-owned small business concerns, veteran-owned small business, and historically black colleges and universities and minority institutions (HBCU/MI). The North American Industry Classification System (NAICS) code is 54171 with the small business size standard of 500 employees. In addition, contract proposals that exceed $500,000 submitted by all but small businesses must be accompanied by a Small Business Subcontracting Plan in accordance with FAR 52.219-9. HBCU/MI's, as determined by the Secretary of Education to meet requirements of 34 CFR Section 608.2 and 10 U.S.C. Paragraph 2323(a)(1)(C), are particularly encouraged to participate, though no portion of this BAA has been set aside. Preproposals and proposals should be submitted by the due dates cited in the BAA to Ms. Catherine Bagaglio at the Office of Naval Research, Attention 341, Room 823, 800 N. Quincy St., Arlington, VA 22217-5660. Ms. Bagaglio's phone number, 703-696-0369, should be used for express mail purposes. Questions regarding contractual matters relating to this BAA should be directed to: Office of Naval Research, Attention Bona Tilahun (Code 252), Room 720, Ballston Towers One, 800 N. Quincy St., Arlington, VA 22217-5660, by telephone (703) 696-2591, or by e-mail to tilahub@onr.navy.mil. E-mail: ahlerss@onr.navy.mil, Thrust Manager Technical Healthy and Fit Force POC: LCDR D. Street, (703) 696-4502, E-mail streetd@onr.navy.mil. Posted 02/20/01 (W-SN50E0G9). (0051) KEYWORDS: