173884 results about "Building construction" patented technology

A valve prosthesis device is disclosed suitable for implantation in body ducts. The device comprises support stent, comprised of a deployable construction adapted to be initially crimped in a narrow configuration suitable for catheterization through the body duct to a target location and adapted to be deployed by exerting substantially radial forces from within by means of a deployment device to a deployed state in the target location, the support stent provided with a plurality of longitudinally rigid support beams of fixed length; valve assembly comprising a flexible conduit having an inlet end and an outlet, made of pliant material attached to the support beams providing collapsible slack portions of the conduit at the outlet. When flow is allowed to pass through the valve prosthesis device from the inlet to the outlet the valve assembly is kept in an open position, whereas a reverse flow is prevented as the collapsible slack portions of the valve assembly collapse inwardly providing blockage to the reverse flow.

The present invention is a more durable expanded material that enables thinner wall thicknesses and a more flexible reinforcement suitable for stenting. The present invention is especially useful in the construction of grafts, stents, and stent-grafts which are used, for example, in repairing or replacing blood vessels that are narrowed or occluded by disease, aneurismal blood vessels, or other medical treatments. The inventive material and configurations allow expansion or contraction in size or adjustment in size in an incremental manner so that the optimum size, shape, and fit with other objects can be obtained. The present invention is also optionally capable of more accurately delivering one or more active ingredients such as drugs over longer periods of time. The present invention optionally includes surface modifications and additives that increase the surface adhesion of active ingredients, coatings, or combinations thereof. Finally, the present invention optionally includes growing cells on the inventive material so that the expanded material, reinforcement, or combinations thereof are useful, for example, in producing lab-grown blood vessels or organs.

A medical device having a laminate elongate hollow member is disclosed. The laminate member provides torsional stiffness for controlling positioning of the distal end of the device, and provides bending flexibility for assisting in insertion of the device in the patient's esophagus or other body lumen.

This invention relates to improvements in prosthetic cardiac and venous valves and implantable medical devices having moveable septa. The inventive prosthetic cardiac and venous valves have metallic or pseudometallic valves coupled to metallic or pseudometallic stents that permit percutaneous delivery of the devices.

The present invention relates to an apparatus for conducting a variety of assays for the determination of analytes in liquid samples, and relates to the methods for such assays. In particular, the invention relates to a single-use cartridge designed to be adaptable to a variety of real-time assay protocols, preferably assays for the determination of analytes in biological samples using immunosensors or other ligand/ligand receptor-based biosensor embodiments. The cartridge provides novel features for processing a metered portion of a sample, for precise and flexible control of the movement of a sample or second fluid within the cartridge, for the amending of solutions with additional compounds during an assay, and for the construction of immunosensors capable of adaptation to diverse analyte measurements. The disclosed device and methods of use enjoy substantial benefits over the prior art, including simplicity of use by an operator, rapid in situ determinations of one or more analytes, and single-use methodology that minimizes the risk of contamination of both operator and patient. The disclosed invention is adaptable to the point-of-care clinical diagnostic field, including use in accident sites, emergency rooms, surgery, nursing homes, intensive care units, and non-medical environments.

A laminated negative pressure wound dressing system and method is described. The wound dressing is disposed in the wound in layers including at least one bioabsorbable layer that contacts the wound bed, a bioabsorbable fluid communicating layer, an atmospheric barrier layer, and a tube for applying a negative pressure to the wound bed. Ingrowth of granulation tissue into the bioabsorbable wound bed layer does not need to be inhibited as the bioabsorbable material need not be removed during dressing changes. A kit containing the components of the wound dressing system is also disclosed as well as a method for applying the dressing.

The present invention is an artificial cornea designed to restore vision in patients who are not candidates to receive a natural cornea transplant (allograft). The present device construction involves the use of a biocompatible, non-porous optic disk intimately bonded to one or more anchoring layers of porous polymeric material, and a unique sealing region which enhances sealing of the artificial cornea in the recipient's eye.

This invention relates generally to footwear and methods for making the same, more particularly to a seamless upper for footwear and methods for making a seamless upper. In one aspect of the invention, the upper is seamless and/or is of unitary construction that defines an interior void for comfortably receiving a foot.

An article of footwear and a method of manufacturing the article of footwear are disclosed. The footwear may include an upper and a sole structure. The upper incorporates a textile element with edges that are joined together to define at least a portion of a void for receiving a foot. The textile element may also have a first area and a second area with a unitary construction. The first area is formed of a first stitch configuration, and the second area is formed of a second stitch configuration that is different from the first stitch configuration to impart varying textures to a surface of the textile element. Various warp knitting or weft knitting processes may be utilized to form the textile element.

A sensor system for use in a vehicle that integrates sensor data from more than one sensor in an effort to facilitate collision avoidance and other types of sensor-related processing. The system include external sensors for capturing sensor data external to the vehicle. External sensors can include sensors of a wide variety of different sensor types, including radar, image processing, ultrasonic, infrared, and other sensor types. Each external sensor can be configured to focus on a particular sensor zone external to the vehicle. Each external sensor can also be configured to focus primarily on particular types of potential obstacles and obstructions based on the particular characteristics of the sensor zone and sensor type. All sensor data can be integrated in a comprehensive manner by a threat assessment subsystem within the sensor system. The system is not limited to sensor data from external sensors. Internal sensors can be used to capture internal sensor data, such a vehicle characteristics, user attributes, and other types of interior information. Moreover, the sensor system can also include an information sharing subsystem of exchanging information with other vehicle sensor systems or for exchanging information with non-vehicle systems such as a non-movable highway sensor system configured to transmit and receive information relating to traffic, weather, construction, and other conditions. The sensor system can potentially integrate data from all different sources in a comprehensive and integrated manner. The system can integrate information by assigning particular weights to particular determinations by particular sensors.

A Flogrid Simulation Gridding Program includes a Flogrid structured gridder. The structured gridder includes a structured areal gridder and a block gridder. The structured areal gridder will build an areal grid on an uppermost horizon of an earth formation by performing the following steps: (1) building a boundary enclosing one or more fault intersection lines on the horizon, and building a triangulation that absorbs the boundary and the faults; (2) building a vector field on the triangulation; (3) building a web of control lines and additional lines inside the boundary which have a direction that corresponds to the direction of the vector field on the triangulation, thereby producing an areal grid; and (4) post-processing the areal grid so that the control lines and additional lines are equi-spaced or smoothly distributed. The block gridder of the structured gridder will drop coordinate lines down from the nodes of the areal grid to complete the construction of a three dimensional structured grid. A reservoir simulator will receive the structured grid and generate a set of simulation results which are displayed on a 3D Viewer for observation by a workstation operator.

A valve prosthesis device is disclosed suitable for implantation in body ducts. The device comprises a support stent, comprised of a deployable construction adapted to be initially crimped in a narrow configuration suitable for catheterization through the body duct to a target location and adapted to be deployed by exerting substantially radial forces from within by means of a deployment device to a deployed state in the target location, and a valve assembly comprising a flexible conduit having an inlet end and an outlet, made of pliant material attached to the support beams providing collapsible slack portions of the conduit at the outlet. The support stent is provided with a plurality of longitudinally rigid support beams of fixed length. When flow is allowed to pass through the valve prosthesis device from the inlet to the outlet, the valve assembly is kept in an open position, whereas a reverse flow is prevented as the collapsible slack portions of the valve assembly collapse inwardly providing blockage to the reverse flow. The device is configured so that retrograde flow will be altered from laminar flow and directed towards the leaflets to effect closing.

First, second and third lighting devices each comprise a thermal conduction element, solid state light emitters and a reflective element. In the second device, the conduction element defines an opening; and the emitters and reflective element are mounted on a first side of the conduction element. In the third device, the conduction element defines an opening; a first portion of a first side of the conduction element is in contact with a contact region of a construction surface; and the emitters and reflective element are mounted on the first side. A fourth device comprises a conduction element and emitters; a first portion of a first side of the conduction element is in contact with a contact region of a construction surface; the emitters are mounted on a second portion of the first side of the conduction element; and a second side of the conduction element is exposed to ambient air.

A combined-rib cavity member for space-structure flooring includes cavity form and structure bottom plate, which are connected into one integral whole. It is characterized by that there are at least two cavity forms arranged alternate with each other on the structure bottom plate, its side forms with the structure bottle plate at least one subrit form cavity of casti-in-situ structure, and other other sides of the cavity form forms the side fromboard of main rib or beam or wall for cast-in-situ structure. By this, the subrib of cast-in-situ structure can be formed in the sub-rib form cavity on the structure battom plate, the sub-rib participates in load bearing of structural bottom slat, cast-in-situ main rib, cast-in-sita upper slab so to a load-bearing space structure, improved mechanical property, raise integrity and anti-shock property, decrease structural wt. lower cost and make construction be convenient.

Prosthetic intervertebral discs, systems including such prosthetic intervertebral discs, and methods for using the same are described. The subject prosthetic discs include upper and lower endplates separated by a compressible core member. The subject prosthetic discs exhibit stiffness in the vertical direction, torsional stiffness, bending stiffness in the saggital plane, and bending stiffness in the front plane, where the degree of these features can be controlled independently by adjusting the components, construction, and other features of the discs.

The invention relates to a medical or dental-medical treatment instrument (1) having a grip sleeve (11), an oscillatory rod (13) which extends longitudinally in the grip sleeve (11) and is mounted therein in a radially or also axially elastically yielding manner, and an oscillation generator (31) for transmitting oscillations to the oscillatory rod (13). In order to attain a compact construction, the oscillatory rod (13) is of a base part and an attachment part which is fixed on the base part.

A computer-implemented automated building design and modeling and construction project cost estimating and scheduling system (“DMES system”) is described. The DMES system provides a central source for all of the design and construction information for a construction project in a coordinated two-dimensional and three-dimensional spatial database that is freely accessible by all of the members of an interdisciplinary construction project team as a means to produce automatically coordinated design development and construction document information. The DMES system acquires and stores all of the appropriate design, engineering, and construction expertise and information available for any building type for use in automatically assembling and coordinating the design, cost-estimating, and scheduling for a construction project. In one embodiment, the DMES system consists of a plurality of objects, comprising elements and massing elements arranged in an assembly hierarchy. Each of the objects includes programming code that defines an interface and discrete internal functions that define its behavior. When instantiated in the database, the objects automatically create further instances of other objects in the hierarchy, which in turn do the same, thus assembling a complete building model automatically from the initial manually-placed instance. The building model enables automatic generation of drawings and cost and scheduling information. By running automatic iterations of the building model, multiple designs may be evaluated to determine the optimum design.