Patent application number | Description | Published |
20140236088 | EXPANDABLE SHEATH AND SYSTEM FOR INTRAVASCULAR INSERTION OF A MEDICAL IMPLEMENT USING THE SAME - The expandable sheath and system for intravascular insertion of a medical implement includes a cannula for entering a lumen of a vascular vessel of a patient, a guide wire insertable into the lumen, an introducer and dilator adapted to follow the guide wire into the lumen, an expandable sheath positioned on the introducer and dilator, with the expandable sheath being adapted to be positioned in the vessel, and an extension collar. The medical implement is received within the vessel by passing through the sheath upon separating the introducer and dilator therefrom. In one embodiment, a linear array of perforations formed through the expandable sheath allow for expansion. Alternatively, an external slit may be provided for selective expansion of the sheath. | 08-21-2014 |
20140261407 | ASPIRATION CATHETERS, SYSTEMS, AND METHODS - The aspiration catheters, systems and methods include a catheter having an elongated body with a cross-section having a flat side and a curve near the distal end. The first side of the cross-section can contact a first side of a delivery lumen in a first orientation, and a second side of the cross-section contacts the first side of the delivery lumen in a second orientation rotated 180° from the first orientation. The curve can be directed 90° relative to a normal of the flat side. The systems and methods can utilize two catheters, and a key joint formed with the two catheters which can rotationally fix the catheters with respect to each other, and the first and second catheters each include at least one pre-formed curve near the distal end. The two catheters can be moved proximally and distally for positioning in the right and left bronchi. | 09-18-2014 |
20140350458 | ASPIRATION CATHETERS, SYSTEMS, AND METHODS - The aspiration catheters, systems and methods include a catheter having an elongated body with a cross-section having a flat side and a curve near the distal end. The first side of the cross-section can contact a first side of a delivery lumen in a first orientation, and a second side of the cross-section contacts the first side of the delivery lumen in a second orientation rotated 180° from the first orientation. The curve can be directed 90° relative to a normal of the flat side. The systems and methods can utilize two catheters, and a key joint formed with the two catheters which can rotationally fix the catheters with respect to each other, and the first and second catheters each include at least one pre-formed curve near the distal end. The two catheters can be moved proximally and distally for positioning in the right and left bronchi. | 11-27-2014 |
Patent application number | Description | Published |
20130191167 | INSURANCE PRODUCT - A method of determining an insurance coverage amount for an insurance plan holder having a health insurance plan using a tangible computer processor, as well as a related system and a non-transitory tangible computer readable storage medium, are provided. The method may include receiving a contribution payment amount from the insurance plan holder, the contribution payment amount including at least an investment payment portion and a premium payment portion, distributing, using the tangible computer processor, the investment payment portion and the premium payment portion between an investment account and a premium account, respectively, and determining, after the distributing, the insurance coverage amount based on an amount of funds present in the investment account and a coverage factor for a predetermined time period. | 07-25-2013 |
20140278560 | HEALTH INSURANCE PRODUCT - A health insurance product is provided for an insurance plan holder having a health insurance plan. For a first period, a periodic contribution payment for the health insurance plan is collected and aggregated as an insurance savings allocation balance of collected periodic contribution payments from the first period and at least a period immediately previous to the first period. A new periodic multiplier contribution for the first period is obtained by multiplying the periodic contribution payment for the first period by a variable multiplier that is variable for each period. A new cumulative multiplier contribution balance for the first period is determined, using a tangible computer processor, by adding the new periodic multiplier contribution obtained to a previous cumulative multiplier contribution balance determined for the period immediately previous to the first period. | 09-18-2014 |
Patent application number | Description | Published |
20080225460 | Prevention of emitter contamination with electronic waveforms - An apparatus and method for minimizing contamination buildup on corona emitters that are employed in an ionizer. Contamination buildup control is accomplished with solely electronic means. High voltage is applied to the emitters with waveforms that serve to push contaminants away from the emitter, rather than attracting contaminants toward the emitters. The results are fewer cleaning cycles, more time between cleaning cycles, and more stable ionizer operation. | 09-18-2008 |
20080232021 | Low Maintenance AC Gas Flow Driven Static Neutralizer and Method - A low maintenance AC gas-flow driven static neutralizer, comprising at least one emitter and at least one reference electrode; a power supply having an output electrically coupled to the emitter(s) and a reference terminal electrically coupled to the reference electrode(s) with the power supply disposed to produce an output waveform that creates ions by corona discharge and to produce an electrical field when this output waveform is applied to the emitter(s); a gas flow source disposed to produce a gas flow across a first region that includes these generated ions and the emitter(s), the gas flow including a flow velocity; and wherein, during a first time duration, the output waveform decreases an electrical force created by the electrical field, enabling the gas flow to carry away from the emitter(s) a contamination particle that may be located within a second region surrounding the emitter(s), and to minimize a likelihood of the contamination particle from accumulating on the emitter(s). The first region may include the second region. | 09-25-2008 |
20110299214 | Low Maintenance AC Gas Flow Driven Static Neutralizer and Method - A low maintenance AC gas-flow driven static neutralizer, comprising at least one emitter and at least one reference electrode; a power supply having an output electrically coupled to the emitter(s) and a reference terminal electrically coupled to the reference electrode(s) with the power supply disposed to produce an output waveform that creates ions by corona discharge and to produce an electrical field when this output waveform is applied to the emitter(s); a gas flow source disposed to produce a gas flow across a first region that includes these generated ions and the emitter(s), the gas flow including a flow velocity; and wherein, during a first time duration, the output waveform decreases an electrical force created by the electrical field, enabling the gas flow to carry away from the emitter(s) a contamination particle that may be located within a second region surrounding the emitter(s), and to minimize a likelihood of the contamination particle from accumulating on the emitter(s). The first region may include the second region. | 12-08-2011 |
Patent application number | Description | Published |
20120109652 | Leveraging Interaction Context to Improve Recognition Confidence Scores - On a computing device a speech utterance is received from a user. The speech utterance is a section of a speech dialog that includes a plurality of speech utterances. One or more features from the speech utterance are identified. Each identified feature from the speech utterance is a specific characteristic of the speech utterance. One or more features from the speech dialog are identified. Each identified feature from the speech dialog is associated with one or more events in the speech dialog. The one or more events occur prior to the speech utterance. One or more identified features from the speech utterance and one or more identified features from the speech dialog are used to calculate a confidence score for the speech utterance. | 05-03-2012 |
20130080150 | Automatic Semantic Evaluation of Speech Recognition Results - A semantic error rate calculation may be provided. After receiving a spoken query from a user, the spoken query may be converted to text according to a first speech recognition hypothesis. A plurality of results associated with the converted query may be received and compared to a second plurality of results associated with the converted query. | 03-28-2013 |
20130080162 | User Query History Expansion for Improving Language Model Adaptation - Query history expansion may be provided. Upon receiving a spoken query from a user, an adapted language model may be applied to convert the spoken query to text. The adapted language model may comprise a plurality of queries interpolated from the user's previous queries and queries associated with other users. The spoken query may be executed and the results of the spoken query may be provided to the user. | 03-28-2013 |
20140350931 | LANGUAGE MODEL TRAINED USING PREDICTED QUERIES FROM STATISTICAL MACHINE TRANSLATION - A Statistical Machine Translation (SMT) model is trained using pairs of sentences that include content obtained from one or more content sources (e.g. feed(s)) with corresponding queries that have been used to access the content. A query click graph may be used to assist in determining candidate pairs for the SMT training data. All/portion of the candidate pairs may be used to train the SMT model. After training the SMT model using the SMT training data, the SMT model is applied to content to determine predicted queries that may be used to search for the content. The predicted queries are used to train a language model, such as a query language model. The query language model may be interpolated other language models, such as a background language model, as well as a feed language model trained using the content used in determining the predicted queries. | 11-27-2014 |
20140365218 | LANGUAGE MODEL ADAPTATION USING RESULT SELECTION - A received utterance is recognized using different language models. For example, recognition of the utterance is independently performed using a baseline language model (BLM) and using an adapted language model (ALM). A determination is made as to what results from the different language model are more likely to be accurate. Different features may be used to assist in making the determination (e.g. language model scores, recognition confidences, acoustic model scores, quality measurements, . . . ) may be used. A classifier may be trained and then used in determining whether to select the results using the BLM or to select the results using the ALM. A language model may be automatically trained or re-trained that adjusts a weight of the training data used in training the model in response to differences between the two results obtained from applying the different language models. | 12-11-2014 |
20150046163 | LEVERAGING INTERACTION CONTEXT TO IMPROVE RECOGNITION CONFIDENCE SCORES - On a computing device a speech utterance is received from a user. The speech utterance is a section of a speech dialog that includes a plurality of speech utterances. One or more features from the speech utterance are identified. Each identified feature from the speech utterance is a specific characteristic of the speech utterance. One or more features from the speech dialog are identified. Each identified feature from the speech dialog is associated with one or more events in the speech dialog. The one or more events occur prior to the speech utterance. One or more identified features from the speech utterance and one or more identified features from the speech dialog are used to calculate a confidence score for the speech utterance. | 02-12-2015 |
Patent application number | Description | Published |
20090113843 | BROADBAND PASSIVE DISTRIBUTED TUNED VIBRATION AND ACOUSTIC ABSORBER FOR MODALLY DENSE STRUCTURES - A passive distributed vibration absorber that utilizes multiple discrete mass elements and a viscoelastic layer and that effectively attenuates vibration in modally dense structures excited by a broadband input noise excitation and is tunable to multiple natural frequencies in such modally dense vibrating structures including low frequencies | 05-07-2009 |
20090173569 | ACOUSTIC ABSORBER WITH BARRIER FACING - An acoustic absorber includes a core of acoustically absorbing material having two major surfaces, and a facing for covering the core on at least one major surface. The facing comprises a porous flash spun plexifilamentary film-fibril sheet having a coherent surface and comprising a plurality of pores having a pore diameter between about 100 nm and about 20,000 nm and a mean pore diameter of less than about 20,000 nm. The use of the facing improves the acoustic absorption of ambient sound at a frequency below about | 07-09-2009 |
20090173570 | ACOUSTICALLY ABSORBENT CEILING TILE HAVING BARRIER FACING WITH DIFFUSE REFLECTANCE - An acoustically absorbent ceiling tile includes a core of acoustically absorbing material having two major surfaces, and a facing for covering the core on at least one major surface. The facing comprises a porous flash spun plexifilamentary film-fibril sheet having a coherent surface and comprising a plurality of pores having a pore diameter between about 100 nm and about 20,000 nm and a mean pore diameter of less than about 20,000 nm. The facing has highly diffuse reflectance of light, and a reflectance of greater than about 86%. The use of the facing improves the acoustic absorption of ambient sound at frequencies below about 1200 Hz. The facing provides a barrier to moisture and particles including microorganisms so that the ceiling tile is suitable for use in environments in which cleanliness is critical. | 07-09-2009 |
20130005940 | POLYIMIDE NANOWEB - A nanoweb that contains a plurality of nanofibers wherein the nanofibers contain a fully aromatic polyimide that is characterized by having a crystallinity index (CI) and a degree of imidization (DOI). The product of the DOI and the CI is between 0.08 and 0.25 or above a lower limit to obtain a desired tensile strength and/or toughness. The nanoweb may for example have a tensile strength per unit basis weight of greater than 15 kg/cm | 01-03-2013 |
20130017431 | LITHIUM BATTERY SEPARATOR WITH SHUTDOWN FUNCTION - This invention relates to separators for batteries and other electrochemical cells, especially lithium-ion batteries, having a shutdown mechanism. The separator comprises a nonwoven nanoweb comprising a coating composed of a plurality of thermoplastic particles having particle size larger than the mean flow pore size of the nanoweb. The coating flows at a desired temperature, and restricts the ion flow path, resulting in a substantial decrease in ionic conductivity of the separator at the desired shutdown temperature, while leaving the separator intact. | 01-17-2013 |
20130022858 | LITHIUM BATTERY SEPARATOR WITH SHUTDOWN FUNCTION - This invention relates to separators for batteries and other electrochemical cells, especially lithium-ion batteries, having a shutdown mechanism. The separator is a laminate that contains a nonwoven nanoweb and a porous layer composed of a plurality of thermoplastic particles having particle size smaller than the mean flow pore size of the nanoweb. The shutdown layer melts and starts to flow at a desired temperature, and restricts the ion flow path, resulting in a substantial decrease in ionic conductivity of the separator at the desired shutdown temperature, while leaving the separator intact. | 01-24-2013 |