Method and Software to Improve Radar

UAF Inventors Bill Bristow and Tim Theurer have developed a method to improve the resolution of radar systems by as much as a factor of 10. 

The inventors came up with the improvement while working on the Super Dual Auroral Radar Network, known as SuperDARN.  SuperDarn is a collection of high-frequency (HF) phased array radars used primarily to measure space weather.  SuperDARN maps the flow of charged particles in the upper atmosphere, but the radar also observes targets such as planes that are thousands of kilometers away from the radar and beyond the visible horizon.

The radar system is able to observe vehicles that are thousands of kilometers away, but the signals received from these over-the-horizon (OTH) targets propagate through the upper atmosphere under far from ideal conditions.  In the case of these targets, the achieved resolution of the radar is greatly reduced by environmental effects on the signals as they propagate through the upper atmosphere.

The method improves the resolution of radar by independently correcting for the environmental effects on the signals received at each antenna.  The method approximates the signals that would exist under ideal conditions and updates them over time to track the random fluctuations observed.  Through experiments with SuperDARN, The team observed a reduction of the uncertainty in determining the direction of a target by as much as a factor of 10. 

While the inventors have developed the environmental distortion correction software with HF OTH systems such as SuperDARN in mind, the techniques and algorithm could be used with any system that suffers from an equivalent type of wavefront distortion.

A New method to detect pathogens faster and cheaper

Next generation sequencing (NGS) technology is the future of clinical molecular diagnostics.  However, looking for a pathogen in a clinical specimen is like searching for a needle in a haystack.Dr. Jack Chen at UAF has developed a new method, named “Preferential Amplification of Pathogenic Sequences” that can be used to greatly enrich pathogenic sequences in clinical samples.The technology significantly reduces the cost per clinical sample to less than 10% of current commercial kits, while providing detection and identification of multiple viral genotyping and viral loads.  The technology is covered by pending US patent (Application No. PCT/US14/68644).

Pharmaceutical Adjunct and Method

Approximately 795,000 people suffer a stroke each year, leading to insufficient blood flow to the brain to meet metabolic demand.  This situation is known as cerebral ischemia, and if blood demand is not restored in short period of time, it could ultimately lead to the death of brain tissue.

Therapeutic hibernation is a medical treatment that lowers a patient's body temperature in order to help reduce the risk of tissue injury from lack of blood flow.  It is the only neuroprotective treatment found in clinical trials  to improve outcomes following cerebral ischemia.  Even though therapeutic hibernation is becoming the standard of care for comatose patients after cardiac arrest.  It has proven difficult to implement in stroke patients due to thermoregulatory defenses & shivering in conscious patients.

Based on their work with hibernating mammals, UAF inventors have invented a method and pharmaceutical adjunct to eliminate these side effects.  

Software to digitally process a variety of signals.

UAF Patent # 8,554,816 describes a filter which cleans digital signals and resolves the cocktail party effect. This technology focuses a listener’s attention on a single sound among a mixture of background noises, while ignoring other conversations.

Tracking a moving signal by passive methods has been difficult due to the Doppler shift that is introduced into the observations of each sensor. The system and method described in patent #7,710,827 overcomes the complications of Doppler shifting in signal source tracking.  

Using a passive sensor array to determine the position of a signal source has proven difficult, and many techniques are only designed for application with sensor arrays of specific, symmetrical geometries. Patent #7,746,225 protects a fast method of determining the location of a signal source. 

Software for Universities Using Blackboard Learn

Our CourseStacker allows instructors and administrators to combine course sections in Blackboard Learn.  This tool reduces the number of course sections that an instructor needs to manage within Blackboard and saves hours of instructor time over the course of a semester.

The tool may be purchased on the web.  Please click below to find out more.

Software for modeling how particles interact

COUPi is is Software that can simulate systems with a large number of complex particles without making large sacrifices to computational efficiency. Our software also allows spheres, capsules, and dilated triangles to be combined with polyhedra making a variety of particles available for simulation. 

Software for University Supervisors to Plan Employee Time and Forecast Expenditures

University faculty and staff spend hours each week tracking their time spent working on individual funding.  UAF inventors have developed lean, web-based software that makes time tracking and financial planning easy.

The tool is interoperable with Ellucian’s Banner system and Microsoft Excel, which means it can work with many university and private-sector billing systems. 

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Dr. Cathy Cahill has invented an integrated system for warning an aircraft of potentially hazardous conentrations of volcanic ash or other large ambient aersols.  

The system is designed to function on-board the aircraft and warn the crew of increasing concentrations of volcanic ash so they can exit the encountered volcanic ash plume prior to the aircraft encountering the high concentrations of ash in the heart of the plume.

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Dr. Milton Wiltse and his colleagues at University of Alaska have developed software tools that are useful in guiding mineral exploration efforts.

The  tools automate the process of extracting various measures of the spatial association between mineral occurrences and geologic features, measures of geologic complexity, and obscure alignment trends among known deposits in areas of interest.