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Innovative Design (innovative + design)

Distribution by Scientific Domains

Medical Sciences	28%
Engineering	28%

Selected Abstracts

Managing Design for Market Advantage: Protecting Both Form and Function of Innovative Designs

DESIGN MANAGEMENT REVIEW, Issue 1 2004
Joshua Cohen
To reap the rewards of creative designs, it is critical to maintain ownership and control of those designs. Joshua Cohen summarizes the spectrum of legal options for protecting products, packaging, and related intellectual property. He highlights potential conflicts among these options, suggests how they can be used to complement one another, and proposes strategies to make design protection an integral aspect of designing and marketing. [source]

Extended Mechanical Circulatory Support With a Continuous-Flow Rotary Left Ventricular Assist Device

CONGESTIVE HEART FAILURE, Issue 2 2010
Scott Harris DO
Background LVAD therapy is an established treatment modality for patients with advanced heart failure. Pulsatile LVADs have limitations in design precluding their use for extended support. Continuous-flow rotary LVADs represent an innovative design with potential for small size and greater reliability by simplification of the pumping mechanism. Methods In a prospective multicenter study, 281 patients urgently listed (United Network for Organ Sharing status 1A or 1B) for heart transplant underwent implant of a continuous-flow LVAD. Survival and transplant rates were assessed at 18 months. Patients were assessed for adverse events throughout the study and for quality of life, functional status, and organ function for 6 months. Results Of 281 patients, 222 (79%) underwent transplant or LVAD removal for cardiac recovery or had ongoing LVAD support at 18-month follow-up. Actuarial survival on support was 72% (95% confidence interval, 65%,79%) at 18 months. At 6 months, there were significant improvements in functional status and 6-minute walk test results (from 0% to 83% of patients in New York Heart Association functional class I or II and from 13% to 89% of patients completing a 6-minute walk test) and in quality of life (mean values improved 41% with Minnesota Living With Heart Failure and 75% with Kansas City Cardiomyopathy questionnaires). Major adverse events included bleeding, stroke, right heart failure, and percutaneous lead infection. Pump thrombosis occurred in 4 patients. Conclusions A continuous-flow LVAD provides effective hemodynamic support for at least 18 months in patients awaiting transplant, with improved functional status and quality of life. [source]

Development of an extrusion system for producing fine-celled HDPE/wood-fiber composite foams using CO2 as a blowing agent

ADVANCES IN POLYMER TECHNOLOGY, Issue 4 2004
H. Zhang
Abstract This paper presents an innovative design of a tandem extrusion system for fine-celled foaming of plastic/wood-fiber composites using a physical blowing agent (PBA). The plastic/wood-fiber composites utilize wood-fibers (WF) as a reinforcing filler in the plastic matrix and are known to be advantageous over the neat plastics in terms of the materials cost and some improved mechanical properties such as stiffness and strength. However, these improvements are usually accompanied by sacrifices in the ductility and impact resistance. These shortcomings can be reduced by inducing fine-celled or microcellular foaming in these composites, thereby creating a new class of materials with unique properties. An innovative tandem extrusion system with continuous on-line moisture removal and PBA injection was successfully developed. The foamed composites, produced on the tandem extrusion system, were compared with those produced on a single extruder system, and demonstrated significant improvement in cell morphology, resulting from uniform mixing and effective moisture removal. The effects of WF and coupling agent (CA) on the cell morphology were studied. An increase in the WF content had an adverse affect. The cell morphology and foam structures were improved when an appropriate CA was added. © 2004 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Adv Polym Techn 23: 263,276, 2004; Published online in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com). DOI 10.1002/adv.20016 [source]

Broadband circularly polarized inverted-L patch antenna

MICROWAVE AND OPTICAL TECHNOLOGY LETTERS, Issue 2 2003
Che-Wei Su
Abstract An innovative design of a corner-truncated inverted-L patch antenna for achieving circular polarization (CP) operation over a wide bandwidth is presented. The antenna has a thick air-layer substrate; however, it can be easily excited using a probe feed with a short probe pin. CP operation is obtained by selecting an optimal size of the truncated corners, and good impedance matching over a wide bandwidth is obtained by using a beveling technique on the vertical portion of the inverted-L patch. For a prototype constructed for wireless local area network (WLAN) operation in the 2.4-GHz band (2.4,2.484 GHz), the obtained CP bandwidth (3-dB axial ratio) reaches about 7%, and the measured antenna gain is about 8.0 dBi across the CP bandwidth. Details of the antenna design and the experimental results are presented. © 2003 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Microwave Opt Technol Lett 38: 134,136, 2003; Published online in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com). DOI 10.1002/mop.10995 [source]

The chemistry behind redox regulation with a focus on sulphur redox systems

PHYSIOLOGIA PLANTARUM, Issue 3 2008
Claus Jacob
Sulphur metabolism in plants provides a wealth of natural products, including several chemically unusual substances, such as thiosulphinates, polysulphides and isothiocyanates. Many of these reactive sulphur species (RSS) exhibit a distinct redox behaviour in vitro, which translates into a rather interesting biological activity in vivo, such as antibiotic, fungicidal, pesticidal or anticancer activity. While the molecular basis for such activity has long remained obscure, research into sulphur-based redox systems during the past 5,10 years has achieved a better knowledge of the in vitro properties of RSS and has led to an improved understanding of their impact on intracellular redox signalling and control pathways in living cells. It has become apparent that the redox chameleon sulphur occurs in biological systems in about 10 different oxidation states, which give rise to an extensive and complicated network of sulphur-based redox events. Together, natural sulphur products from plants and their intracellular targets provide the basis for innovative design of novel antibiotics, fungicides, pesticides and anticancer agents. [source]

Working with Wiki, by Design

ARCHITECTURAL DESIGN, Issue 5 2006
Andrew Burrow
Abstract Andrew Burrow and Jane Burry explain the use of online platforms, such as wiki, employed by the Spatial Information Architecture Laboratory (SIAL) at RMIT University in Melbourne. As they demonstrate, these platforms enable projects whose participants span the globe, in turn situating SIAL within an internationally distributed design research network incorporating diverse forms of expertise. This includes the academic research under way at SIAL, much of which is done collaboratively with various other design and research entities, as well as the international work of SIAL's director Mark Burry, who has been developing innovative design and fabrication methods for the completion of Gaudí's complex proposal for the Sagrada Família church. SIAL's wiki platform collapses geographic and temporal distance to allow geographically dispersed agents to collaborate in unprecedented ways, integrating widely diverse sets of knowledge into the design process. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source]

Design of an Artificial Left Ventricular Muscle: An Innovative Way to Actuate Blood Pumps?

ARTIFICIAL ORGANS, Issue 6 2009
Benjamin Van Der Smissen
Abstract Blood pumps assist or take over the pump function of a failing heart. They are essentially activated by a pusher plate, a pneumatic compression of collapsible sacs, or they are driven by centrifugal pumps. Blood pumps relying upon one of these actuator mechanisms do not account for realistic wall deformation. In this study, we propose an innovative design of a blood pump actuator device which should be able to mimic fairly well global left ventricular (LV) wall deformation patterns in terms of circumferential and longitudinal contraction, as well as torsion. In order to reproduce these basic wall deformation patterns in our actuator device, we designed a novel kind of artificial LV "muscle" composed of multiple actively contracting cells. Its contraction is based on a mechanism by which pressurized air, inside such a cell, causes contraction in one direction and expansion perpendicular to this direction. The organization and geometry of the contractile cells within one artificial LV muscle, the applied pressure in the cells, and the governing LV loading conditions (preload and afterload) together determine the global deformation of the LV wall. Starting from a simple plastic bag, an experimental model based on the abovementioned principle was built and connected to a lumped hydraulic model of the vascular system (including compliance and resistance). The wall deformation pattern of this device was validated visually and its pump performance was studied in terms of LV volume and pressure and heart rate. Our experimental results revealed (i) a global LV motion resembling a real LV, and (ii) a close correlation between our model and a real LV in terms of end-systolic volume and pressure, end-diastolic volume and pressure, stroke volume, ejection fraction and pressure-volume relationship. Our proposed model appears promising and it can be considered as a step forward when compared to currently applied actuator mechanisms, as it will likely result in more physiological intracavity blood flow patterns. [source]