Abstract: Diagnostic strips of the kind which are exposed to biological fluids such as blood or urine to detect or monitor medical conditions are cut sequentially from elongated cards by a reciprocating shear blade. The cards may be ones which exhibit defective areas that should not be included in the finished strips. Blade motion seats each newly cut strip on a movable strip carrier which abuts the blade during the cutting operation. The carrier then travels a nondefective strip to a pickup location where it is precisely positioned and picked off of the carrier for emplacement in a housing. A strip with a defective area is carried further to a discharge location where it is released into a waste receptacle. This enables more economical manufacture of diagnostic strips by efficiently making use of nondefective areas of cards that have defective areas.

Abstract: A bilge drainage system for a boat having a through-transom drainage passageway has a through-transom pipe connected to an externally-mounted flange and connected internally to a manually or electronically operated stopcock located near the bottom of the bilge such that the stopcock may be opened, and bilge water drained to the sea, when the boat is traveling through the water on a plane.