US08267128B2
Gas container and method for filling a container with gas. The method includes inserting an electrically conducting stretched material into the container before inserting gas into the container, electrically connecting to an electrical ground and at least one of the electrically conducting stretched material and an area in a vicinity of an outlet opening of a filling pipe for inserting the gas into the container, and inserting gas into the container under compression.
US08267117B2
A fuel shutoff valve system including a body, a first fluid flow path extending through the body, a second fluid flow path extending through the body, the second fluid flow path separate from the first fluid flow path, and a single shaft that extends through at least a portion said the fluid flow path and through at least a portion of the second fluid flow path, the shaft adapted for movement between a first position and a second position, wherein in the first position the first and second fluid flow paths are open, and wherein in the second position the first and second fluid flow paths are closed.
US08267114B1
An integrated positioning mechanism of hydrant shell plate, of which the hydrant has an upper shell plate, a lower shell plate and an integrated positioning mechanism; the upper shell plate has a pedestal, an upper base plate, screw holes and a mating side; the lower shell plate is assembled beneath the upper base plate of the upper shell plate, and provided with two threading seats and an assembly side; moreover, the integrated positioning mechanism comprises a locking portion with a flange and a concave coupled together, as well as two bolts, thus enabling limited assembly of the upper and lower shell plates; with this unique design, the present invention allows two bolts and the locking portion to position the hydrant more stably and firmly by a three-point fixation way, thus improving substantially the quality of the hydrant with innovative applicability.
US08267111B2
A temperature controlling valve includes a housing and a valve core installed in the valve core, the housing including a fist end wall having a first limiting elements and a second end wall having a second limiting element, and the first and the second limiting elements being fixed to fourth openings on two ends of the valve core to decrease cross sectional areas of the fourth openings for flowing the cold and the hot waters to be less than cross sectional areas of first and second inlets to flow the cold and the hot waters of the housing, such that a pressure in the valve core is gathered well to sense a pressure difference between the cold and the hot waters precisely and balance the pressure difference.
US08267105B1
The portable magnetic awning apparatus is easily attached to and removed from a chosen metallic vehicle or surface. Soft magnets negate potential scarring. In the collapsed state, the apparatus is importantly relatively small. The scissor frame supporting the awning easily collapses to allow the vertical members to be collapsed inwardly to a side-by-side position, with the pivoting members pivoting upwardly for further compact state. The pliable awning and bib further enable lightweight collapsibility. The pivoting members which are pivotally and positionally lockable, along with the telescopic rods, provide a wide variety of selectively established positioning and extendability. Lock knobs manually lock the pivoting members as chosen relative to the vertical members. The bib is hingedly attached to the awning to further provide selective positioning in relation thereto.
US08267104B2
A controller unit for electrically controlling an outdoor shading device having an awning frame and a supporting frame, includes a operation housing mounted on the supporting frame of the outdoor shading device, wherein the operation housing has a surrounding wall; a control panel being supported on the surrounding wall of the operation housing at a predetermined location for controlling one or more electronic appliances of the outdoor shading device; and an electronic appliance holder assembly for holding at least an electronic appliance thereat and electrically linking with the control panel, wherein the holder assembly is located on the surrounding wall of the operation housing and being arranged that the electronic appliance holder assembly is located at an opposed side of the surrounding wall with respective to the control panel.
US08267101B2
An automated process for cleaning fruit bins, and particularly grape bins, deploys a conveyer system in which bins are simultaneously rinsed on the inside and outside in an inverted position. Two rinse cycles are rapidly completed with the conveyance of the inverted bins through a wash station. The wash station deploys a pivoting V-shaped spray rod inside the bin, below the conveyor track, while the outside is rinsed by a second surrounding inverted V-shaped spray bar that moves transverse to conveyor direction will the bin is stationary inside the wash station. A pivoting L-shaped arm with an integrated conveyor track move the bins on or off the central conveyor, while flipping them 90 degrees. Two such conveyors return the bins to an upright position for use and stacking. The water from a first rinse is optionally screened and treated before its use to rinse subsequent bins.
US08267097B2
A packaging and applicator kit may comprise a receptacle containing a substance for application to nails that has a viscosity of at least approximately 0.3 Pa·s. The kit may also comprise at least one applicator configured to be loaded with the substance contained in the receptacle and to apply the substance to nails. The at least one applicator may comprise at least one flexible blade defining an application face.
US08267090B2
A therapeutic device for improving the respiration of a patient, with a curved or bent pipe section and a mouthpiece inserted in a first end of the mouthpiece and adapted to provide an easy-to-handle medicinal device by means of which diseases of the airway can be treated, or the pulmonary volume, as well as the pulmonary inhalation performance, of a patient can be improved. This is achieved in that a holding peg connected to the pipe section can be pushed into a second end of the pipe section, and a passage channel disposed in the holding peg which penetrates into the inside of the pipe section, completely or in part, and the holding peg has a flexible hose is attached to it which runs inside the pipe section, the free end of which can move freely in the area of the mouthpiece between inner walls of the pipe section.
US08267089B2
A patient interface device that includes a mask shell and a cushion assembly. The cushion assembly includes a seal cushion and a support cushion. The seal cushion contacts a first area of a patient's face to form a seal therewith. The support cushion defines a second area over a face of such a patient when the patient interface device is being worn. The second area overlaps at least a portion of the first area.
US08267072B2
An engine with an efficient selectively operable vacuum source is disclosed. In one example, an electric vacuum pump with oil wetted seals provides vacuum to a vehicle. The approach may provide for improved efficiency when generating vacuum.
US08267069B2
An EGR control method to prevent condensation within the EGR system uses a temperature sensor signal from an EGR cooler exhaust gas outlet to model or estimate exhaust manifold gas temperature upstream of the cooler. If the estimated exhaust manifold gas temperature falls below a predetermined level, the engine control system closes or partially closes the EGR control valve to stop EGR flow through the cooler and the EGR valve.
US08267066B2
Methods and systems are provided for improving fluid usage while addressing knock by adjusting the use of spark retard and direct injection of a fluid based on engine operating conditions and the composition of the injected fluid. One or more engine parameters, such as EGR, VCT, boost, throttle position, are coordinated with the direct injection to reduce torque and EGR transients.
US08267060B2
The lubricant-return holes are provided in the intermediate portion of the ring gear. Thus, the lubricant stagnating above the first oil sealing member can be easily discharged to the oil pan side via the lubricant-return holes even when the ring gear has stopped rotating in response to the starter motor being turned off after completion of the start of the internal combustion engine. As such, the level of the surface of lubricant stagnating between the ring gear and the outer race member does not rise, and therefore the lubricant surface virtually does not reach the outer race and the one-way clutch that are rotating while the internal combustion engine is running. Thus, bubbling of lubricant and production of sludge, which may otherwise be caused by agitation of the lubricant surface, can be prevented.
US08267056B2
A split-cycle internal combustion engine is disclosed. The engine includes a cylinder block, and a plurality of cooperating power pistons and cylinders mounted in the cylinder block. The power pistons are configured to be energized by forces of combustion. The engine also includes a compressor piston and cylinder configured to compress a volume of air and transfer the compressed air to the power pistons, and an expander piston and cylinder configured to receive exhaust gases from the power pistons. The engine additionally includes a first crankshaft operatively connected to and rotatably driven by the power pistons, a second crankshaft operatively connected to the compressor piston and configured to rotatably drive the compressor piston, and a third crankshaft operatively connected to the expander piston and configured to be rotatably driven by the expander piston. The first, second, and third crankshafts are operatively connected to each other for coordinated rotation.
US08267044B2
An aquatic mammal rescue device and method includes an array of suction cup lifters that adapt to contact and adhere to the body of an aquatic mammal on land or at the surface of water. The array is lifted to raise the aquatic mammal from the ground or water for transport. The rescue device may be part of a vehicle capable of land, sea, and/or air travel or it may be movable by attachment to a separate vehicle of other lifting mechanism (e.g., crane). The device may be used to transport a beached mammal (e.g., a whale) back to the water or to a treatment facility. It may also be used to take an injured animal from the wild or a tank to a treatment facility.
US08267040B2
In a plasma processing apparatus that processes a wafer in a process vessel by plasma generated by the supply of a microwave, a transmissive window has, in a center area of its lower surface, a hanging portion made of the same material as a material of the transmissive window. Between an outer peripheral surface of the hanging portion and a sidewall inner surface continuing from a support part, a gap is formed, the gap having a gap length of 0.5 to 10 mm, more preferably 0.5 to 5 mm. The generation of a strong electric field and plasma at a contact point is inhibited and an amount of sputtered particles, radicals, or the like reaching the wafer is also reduced.
US08267034B2
A method and apparatus for retaining accessories to a vehicle.
US08267031B2
A method for towing a sensor streamer array in a body of water includes towing a plurality of sensor streamers behind a vessel in the water, measuring tension at a plurality of positions along the array and determining at least one of an optimum operating speed for the vessel, when the streamers and associated towing equipment have become affected by marine debris so as to require cleaning, and an optimum angle of attack of at least one paravane in the towing equipment.
US08267029B2
A hatch mechanism for releasably securing a hatch to a deck of a vessel may include a latching mechanism comprising a housing extending generally outwardly from a bottom surface of the hatch. The latching mechanism may also comprise a strong back disposed within a opening in the housing and extending generally parallel to the bottom surface of the hatch. Upon application of a pressurized fluid, an actuator may be configured to bias a wedge against the opening in the housing and the strong back such that the wedge urges the strong back towards the bottom surface of the hatch. A method of releasably securing the hatch to deck may comprise providing a source of a pressurized fluid and applying the pressurized fluid to a latching mechanism to releasably secure the hatch to the deck.
US08267027B2
The invention is a sailboat rigging system and method for forming same. It is formed from a plurality of resin prepreg high strength fiber strands, tows or roving. The fiber are laid out in a preferred rigging configuration with the fiber strands, tows or roving being placed under generally equal tension. The resin in the prepreg fibers bonds the fiber strands, tows or roving to consolidate them together substantially without open spaces therebetween. If desired, the fiber strands, tows or roving can be branched out at branching points to provide for continuous rigging, and selective fibers can be dropped at various sections of the rigging for weight savings.
US08267026B2
A passenger ship includes at least one superstructure having several superposed decks. At least some of the decks include contiguous passenger cabins having an outer longitudinal passageway, which extends between the latter and the hull. Each outer passageway is at least partly closed along its longitudinal side opposite to the cabins. At least one of the opposite ends of each outer passageway is open. The floor which separates outer passageways of two superposed decks is at least partly slatted. The ship includes air-conditioning for the cabins, with discharge of the treated air from the cabins towards the outside world, via said outer passageways. The passenger ship ensures ventilation of the passageways along both longitudinal and vertical directions, respectively, and with the air-conditioning.
US08267023B2
A tufting machine comprising a yarn applicator adapted to receive feed yarn and penetrate a surface covering backing and a cutting means adapted to cut the feed yarn to produce a stitch. The tufting machine also comprises a yarn control module that includes a yarn feed wheel adapted to guide the feed yarn, an actuator adapted to move the yarn feed wheel between an engaged position and a disengaged position, and a yarn feed gear adapted to engage the feed yarn when the actuator moves the yarn feed wheel into the engaged position. The tufting machine further comprises a power source adapted to move the yarn feed gear and a remote process control computer system adapted to send a first signal and a second signal to the yarn control module. The tufting machine produces a patterned surface covering having a plurality of yarn colors and a plurality of pile heights.
US08267020B2
An outer shroud for a solid fuel nozzle tip includes: an top shell portion and a bottom shell portion, each portion fabricated from a preform produced from a single sheet of flat stock and each shell portion including a forward area and a backward area and outlet sidewalls, wherein a right outlet sidewall and a left outlet sidewall are each separated from the forward area by a rounded corner; and a left inlet sidewall and a right inlet sidewall coupled to the top shell portion and the bottom shell portion.
US08267016B2
An open/close control system for an inspection lid adapted not to open while a vehicle travels. An emergency release device is provided behind the inspection lid, where the emergency release device disables power transmission of a driver which opens and closes a side entrance/exit door of a railway vehicle. The emergency release device is installed in a space inside a wall surface inside the vehicle, and the space can be opened and closed by the inspection lid. The open/close control system has a locking device provided in the space inside the wall surface in order to restrict rotation of the inspection lid, and also has an open/close controller which detects traveling of the railway vehicle to actuate the locking device.
US08267011B2
A method for transferring a pattern from an elastic stamp to a substrate in the presence of a third medium is described. A proximity contact is achieved between the stamp and the substrate. A layer of the third medium between the stamp and the substrate is controlled to a predetermined thickness. Stamps for carrying out this method are also described.
US08267005B2
The present invention relates to a multi-part piston (10) for an internal combustion engine, having an upper piston part (11) having a piston crown (13), and a lower piston part (12), whereby the lower piston part (12) has pin boss supports (32) and pin bosses (18) connected with them, whereby the upper piston part (11) and the lower piston part (12) each have an inner (21, 25) and an outer (22, 26) support element, which elements delimit an outer circumferential cooling channel (29). According to the invention, it is provided that the inner support elements (21, 25) delimit a cavity (31) that is open toward the pin bosses (18), and that the cavity (31) is provided with a separate cooling oil collector (35) that has at least one cooling oil opening (37, 38).
US08267003B1
Methods and apparatus are provided for attaching a rigid armor plate to the exterior of a vehicle hull. The exemplary system includes an armor attachment point on the vehicle hull, a hole through the armor plate in alignment with the armor attachment point, and a fastener extending through the hole connecting the armor plate to the vehicle hull. The hole through the armor plate may be larger than the fastener, defining a circumferential gap between the fastener and armor plate. The fastener may comprise a material with an energy absorption capability in excess of 2,000 ksi, and more preferably in excess of 5,000 ksi.
US08267002B1
A ceramic armor tile for attaching internally behind a wall of a structure and for cooperation in conjunction therewith, such that the wall acts as an external protective layer of the armor.
US08266999B1
A mobile terrestrial vertical missile launch system is provided for relocatable ballistic missile deployment. The system is connectable to a transport truck and includes a trailer, a pivotable canister, a plurality of stabilizing legs, and an equipment module. The trailer has a hitch for connecting to the truck, a base for supporting wheels for road travel, and a flatbed platform having a transverse hinge. The canister contains launcher for at least one missile and is configurable by rotation at the hinge for disposal in either a longitudinal position for stowage or an erected position for deployment. The stabilizing legs are disposed along a periphery of the trailer. The legs can be disposed in one of an elevated position for stowage and a retarded position for ground engagement. The equipment container supplies electrical power, environmental conditioning, tracking, communication and control for the missile.
US08266996B2
Embodiments of the invention comprise an adjustable fence assembly for use with a power tool, that further comprise an elongated lower fence for attachment to the power tool, the lower fence having a base with an upper support and locking surface configuration extending along a substantial portion of the length of the base and a vertical front face for positioning a work piece, an elongated upper fence having a bottom surface configuration for engaging the surface configuration of the lower fence, the upper fence being releasably attached to the lower fence and adjustable relative to the lower fence along its lengthwise direction, and a locking mechanism carried by the lower fence and operatively connected to the upper fence for selectively applying at least a downward force and a face biasing force for securing the upper fence to the lower fence.
US08266994B2
Embodiments of a power miter saw of the type which has an upper fixed blade guard for encasing upper reaches of an installed saw blade without encasing the blade arbor, and a lower swinging blade guard for covering the lower reaches of an installed blade when saw is in its rest position and for exposing the saw blade when moved to its operational position, the saw comprising an elongated linkage mechanism having opposite end portions interconnecting a frame support and the lower blade guard for moving the lower blade guard in response to movement of the saw between the rest and operational positions, such that the lower blade guard covers the lower reaches of the blade when the saw is in its rest position and uncovers the lower reaches of the blade when the saw is moved to its operational position, the linkage mechanism being configured to be selectively detachable from the frame support, thereby enabling the lower blade guard to be placed in at least first and second positions wherein the first position enables normal movement of the saw between its rest and operational positions, and the second position wherein the lower blade guard is raised to expose a blade arbor to facilitate changing of the blade.
US08266988B2
A speed wrench is disclosed having at least one recessive portion inside a speed wrench head of the speed wrench, and at least one engaging portion inside the speed wrench head. The speed wrench also has at least one angled portion providing an angled offset measured from a planar surface that the speed wrench is resting on to the center axis of the speed wrench head. The speed wrench may further be double-sided and may be an open-ended wrench.
US08266983B2
A damper spring device is provided with a first spring and a second spring retained by a stopper in such a manner that the second spring is compressed by a preload. The preload on the second spring is greater than a preload on the first spring. The first spring and the second spring have load-deflection characteristics such that the first spring deforms when an axial load acting in the direction of compression of the first spring is not greater than a load at which a strand of the first spring is at least partially compacted and that the first spring and the second spring deform when the axial load is greater than the load at which the strand of the first spring is at least partially compacted.
US08266981B2
A motion transmitting cable assembly includes a cable having a conduit and a core longitudinally movable within the conduit, a core attachment secured to an end of the core, and a conduit abutment fitting having a main body secured to an end of the conduit and a guide tube extending from the main body and slidably receiving the core attachment therein. The conduit abutment fitting is formed of plastic and the guide tube is unitary with the main body so that the conduit abutment fitting is a molded plastic one-piece component. The guide tube is bendable so that the core attachment can pivot relative to the main body to account for rotational motion of the control member. The guide tube is preferably bendable at least 7 degrees in all directions with a bending force of no more than 4.5 N.
US08266980B2
A steering apparatus includes a first shaft coupled to a steering wheel, a second shaft arranged to be eccentric relative to the first shaft, and a joint mechanism for coupling the first shaft and the second shaft to each other. The joint mechanism includes a cam having a cam groove that extends in a direction perpendicular to the first shaft, a cam follower that can slide in the cam groove, an eccentric pin for coupling the second shaft and the cam follower to each other at a position eccentric relative to the second shaft. An outer cylinder serving as a protective member is arranged concentrically with the eccentric pin, so as to surround the outer circumference of the eccentric pin. At least part of the eccentric pin and the outer cylinder is arranged in the cam groove.
US08266979B2
A vertical articulated robot includes a base; a turning base provided on the base so as to be pivotable about a first rotation axis; a first upper arm provided on the turning base so as to be turnable about a second rotation axis that is in a plane perpendicular to the first rotation axis; a second upper arm provided on a distal end portion of the first upper arm so as to be pivotable about a third rotation axis that is perpendicular to the second rotation axis; a front arm provided on a distal end portion of the second upper arm so as to be turnable about a fourth rotation axis that is in a plane perpendicular to the third rotation axis; and a wrist assembly mounted on a distal end portion of the front arm. A motor that rotates the second upper arm is mounted on a frame of the second upper arm.
US08266971B1
One embodiment of a surface force distribution sensor includes an elastic dielectric (108) sandwiched by a first plurality of compliant, conductive carrier elements (110) and a second plurality of conductive pickup elements (106), as well as a system for frequency-domain demultiplexing including at least a microprocessor (209). A plurality of signals is generated, each of which has a different fundamental frequency and is connected to a different carrier element. The pickup and carrier elements are arranged so that each pickup element overlaps one or more carrier elements. When forces are applied to a nonconductive compliant layer (112), the distance between one or more carrier elements and one or more pickup elements decreases at their points of overlap, increasing the amplitude of carrier signals capacitively transmitted to the pickup elements. The microprocessor demultiplexes the signals received from the pickup elements to determine the amplitude of each carrier signal received, and thereby the applied force, at each point of overlap on the surface of the compliant layer. Other embodiments are described and shown.
US08266957B2
An apparatus for determining and/or monitoring mass flow of a fluid medium through a pipeline, or through a measuring tube. The apparatus includes two temperature sensors and a control/evaluation unit. The two temperature sensors are arranged in a region of a housing facing the medium and in thermal contact with the medium flowing through the pipeline, or through the measuring tube. A first of the temperature sensors is heatably embodied. A second of the temperature sensors provides information concerning the present temperature of the medium. The control/evaluation unit, on the basis of primary measured variables, such as temperature difference between the two temperature sensors and/or heating power fed to the first temperature sensor, ascertains the mass flow of the medium through the pipeline. The control/evaluation unit, in ascertaining the mass flow, provides a correction value for the mass flow and/or for the primary measured variable and/or for a measured value derived from the primary measured variable. And, the control/evaluation unit, in ascertaining the correction value, takes into consideration heat exchange by forced convection and heat exchange by free convection between the temperature sensors and the medium.
US08266948B2
A knocking sensor which includes: a piezoelectric element; a support member having a support body portion, the support body portion including a support surface directly or indirectly supporting the piezoelectric element; and a resin coating covering the piezoelectric element and at least a part of the support member, the resin coating having an outside portion covering an outer circumference of the piezoelectric element and an outer circumference of the support body portion. The support body portion of the support member has a first engagement portion on the base end side thereof. The resin coating has a curved portion which extends from the outside portion toward the interfacial direction inner side, and curves toward the base end side of the support body portion. Further, the curved portion includes a second engagement portion which engages the first engagement portion.
US08266945B2
A device for removing liquid or solid contaminants such as oil or dust dispersed in air in which an air flow is directed through a space formed by a spiral wall in a cyclonic chamber condenses the particles or droplet which drops down into a collection chamber below the cyclonic chamber while the cleaned air passes out through an outlet extending back up through the cyclonic chamber. A baffle plate array is located at the bottom of the collection chamber composed of spaced apart shallowly inclined partially overlapping plates which captures any cyclonic air flow at the bottom of the collection chamber. This removes contaminants which would otherwise accumulate at the center of the bottom of the collection chamber and be entrained in the air exiting the device.
US08266944B2
Disclosed herein is a method for evaluating scratch resistance of a plastic resin comprising scratching a surface of a test sample of plastic resin using a scratch apparatus to form a scratch of the surface having a scratch profile; scanning the scratched test sample with a surface profile analysis apparatus to measure the scratch profile; and creating a scratch resistance evaluation index based on the measured scratch profile to evaluate the scratch resistance of the test sample. The method has good reliability and reproducibility, reduces measurement time and errors caused by measurers and measuring conditions, provides easy measurement and can be widely applied to all plastic resins.
US08266938B2
Electromagnetic forming methods suitable for creating surface features on a shape memory alloy are described. Features may be created over a range of scales, including those suitable for the generation of holographic images. Features, images, or patterns may be made capable of reversibly appearing and disappearing as a result of changes in temperature and may include temperature sensitive displays for automotive and other applications.
US08266934B2
A keyed cylinder assembly (10) includes a keyed cylinder (3) mounted in a door lock (1) and including a hollow body (31) and a cylinder plug (32) rotatably received in the hollow body (31). The cylinder plug (32) includes an annular groove (327) formed in an outer periphery (320) thereof. The keyed cylinder (3) further includes an arresting member (37) received in the hollow body (31) and having an inner end (371) received in the annular groove (327). The keyed cylinder assembly further includes a first key (4) insertable into a keyway (323) of the cylinder plug (32) to operate both a latch bolt (12) and a deadbolt (13) of the door lock (1). The keyed cylinder assembly (10) further includes a second key (5) insertable into the keyway (323) of the cylinder plug (32) to operate the latch bolt (12) only.
US08266929B2
The pedestal isolator according to the present invention isolates a vibration source such as a front-loading washing machine from its surroundings. The vibration source is supported on elongated members that in turn are each supported on a pair of knife-edge supports. Ends of the elongated members are restrained from longitudinal movement. The distance between the pair of knife edge supports may be fixed or adjustable based on the expected vibration frequency.
US08266927B2
A known method for producing a cylinder of quartz glass comprises a soot depositing process, in which SiO2 particles are deposited on an elongate carrier rotating about an axis of rotation with formation of a porous, hollow-cylindrical soot body, and a sintering process in which the soot body comprising an inner bore with inner wall, a longitudinal axis, an upper end and a lower end is held suspended in vertical orientation in a furnace, a holding element being provided for holding purposes, which projects from the upper end into the inner bore of the soot body and acts on a bearing provided in the inner bore. Starting from this, to indicate a method by means of which even heavy bodies of porous SiO2 with a small inner diameter can be safely held during sintering, it is suggested according to the invention that the bearing should be provided as an expanding bearing having at least one spreading element which is movable against the inner wall of the inner bore and which under the action of the holding element performs a movement with a movement component in a direction perpendicular to the longitudinal axis of the soot body and is pressed against the inner wall.
US08266916B2
Embodiments of the present invention provide a cover for a Packaged Terminal Air Conditioning (PTAC) unit. Embodiments of the cover include a gasket on an interior portion of the cover sealing against a portion of the PTAC unit to prevent air recirculation. Other embodiments of the cover include a screen configured to capture large debris. Other embodiments of the cover include solid wood panels with stain and lacquer on both sides of the panels.
US08266911B2
A premixing device is provided. The premixing device includes an air inlet configured to introduce compressed air into a mixing chamber of the premixing device and a fuel plenum configured to provide a fuel to the mixing chamber via a circumferential slot and over a pre-determined profile adjacent the fuel plenum, wherein the pre-determined profile facilitates attachment of the fuel to the profile to form a fuel boundary layer and to entrain incoming air through the fuel boundary layer to facilitate mixing of fuel and air in the mixing chamber.
US08266907B2
A bucket is filled with water from a water tray that has been filled with water from a water tank. The water tray signals the water tank when it needs water. When a bucket reaches a certain position, the unit bar tips the water tray and the bucket receives the tray's water. The weight of the filled bucket causes it to drop to the water sewer below. The bucket dumps the water into the sewer. The water is pumped from the sewer to the water tank. The two units are attached by a sprocket cable at the unit bar, and the cable travels over three pulley wheels. The units are separated by a rack. The units have a generator mounted on a unit bar. The movement of the bar and the motor along rack generates energy.
US08266903B2
An engine lag down control system for construction machinery has a machinery body controller having first, second and third torque control units and a solenoid valve. The first torque control unit controls a torque control valve to a minimum pump torque corresponding to a target number of engine revolutions when a non-operated state of a control device has continued beyond a monitoring time. The second torque control unit controls the torque control valve such that the above-described minimum pump torque is held for a predetermined holding time subsequent to the operation of the control device from the non-operated state. The third torque control unit controls the torque control valve such that from a time point of a lapse of the predetermined holding time, the pump torque is gradually increased on a basis of a predetermined torque increment rate.
US08266896B2
A technique is provided that enables reducer concentrations in exhaust gas flowing into an exhaust purification device on the upstream side and an exhaust purification device on the downstream side provided to an exhaust pipe in series to be controlled separately with a simple configuration. Included are the two exhaust purification devices provided to an exhaust passage in series, a bypass passage that bypasses the exhaust purification device on the upstream side, an exhaust control valve provided to the bypass passage, and reducer supply means provided on the upstream side of a branch portion. A reducer is supplied intermittently from the reducer supply means to periodically change the reducer concentration in the exhaust gas, and the exhaust control valve is opened or closed periodically at a predetermined timing with respect to the change in the reducer concentration. Accordingly, the supplied reducer is distributed to be introduced to the exhaust purification device on the upstream side or to be introduced to the exhaust purification device on the downstream side via the bypass passage.
US08266894B2
An engine control system includes a temperature determination module, a reducing agent control module, and a control module. The temperature determination module determines a temperature of a reducing agent injector heated by an exhaust gas. The reducing agent control module actuates the reducing agent injector to inject an amount of reducing agent into the exhaust gas when the temperature is greater than or equal to a temperature threshold. The control module controls a concentration of nitrogen oxides in the exhaust gas based on the amount of reducing agent injected into the exhaust gas.
US08266892B2
The invention relates to a volume quantity dispensing unit, in particular as a unit for metering an aqueous solution such as a urea/water solution, which can be used in an exhaust gas aftertreatment unit (17), comprising a pressure transducer (1), in particular comprising an electric pressure sensor, the volume quantity dispensing of the volume quantity dispensing unit following an electric signal (2) and the volume quantity dispensing unit being calibrated. There is provided at least one means (3) for changing a pressure value (4), which means changes the pressure value (4) in such a way that the pressure value (4), which is intended to correspond to the pressure in the volume quantity dispensing unit, is an input signal for a volume quantity (5) to be dispensed.
US08266887B2
The rocket engine nozzle system comprises a set of individual nozzles distributed in a ring around a central core of axially symmetrical shape that presents a central axis. Each individual nozzle placed at the periphery of the central core comprises a circular section throat for receiving gas from a combustion chamber, and a diverging portion that is tangential to the central core. The diverging portion has an outlet section that presents first and second lateral sides that converge radially towards the central axis of the central core, a curved outer side having its convex side facing outwards, and an inner side situated in the vicinity of the central core.
US08266884B1
A device and method that converts the high temperature produced by combustion into a fluid volume of high pressure gas without requiring a boiler or heat exchanger. By injecting a fluid directly into a combustion system, heat energy that may otherwise be wasted is converted directly into high pressure gas.
US08266878B2
A method for verifying a multiple prescription order having a plurality of different medications is described. The method comprises receiving a prescription order that includes a first medication that is different from a second medication. Additionally, the prescription order indicates that the first medication and second medication are to be taken at regular intervals. After entering the prescription order into a graphical user interface, the method verifies the entered prescription order by comparing the entered prescription order to the multiple prescription order. Multiple prescription packages are generated that combines the first medication and second medication in the same package that are intended to be taken at the prescribed interval. Each multiple prescription package is then inspected, and a verification process is initiated that confirms that the first medication and second medication are within each multiple prescription package. The multiple prescription packages are then placed into a container that is sealed.
US08266874B2
The invention relates to a weighing device for a packaging machine. Empty capsules that are still closed are removed from a capsule holder, weighed on a gravimetric scale, placed back into an empty capsule holder, and then taken apart. The device makes it possible to remove empty capsules and replace them at full machine speed, without a loss of any consequence in output. It is possible to use a gravimetric measurement method to carry out a tare weighing of the capsules. An additional weighing device for filled capsules is integrated into a capsule transport device to determine the net weight based on the tare weight and the weight of the full capsules. Such a combination of a gravimetric tare weighing and a gross weighing to statistically determine the net weight is particularly well-suited to an intermediate capsule filling device.
US08266873B2
The present invention is directed to vacuum skin packaging laminates. The laminates include a first film, a second film, an adhesive bonding the first film to the second film, and an adhesive-free interfacial section between the first and second films. The laminate is adapted to provide substantially horizontal first film-surface above the product for displaying product markings and a thermoformable second film-surface for conforming to the shape of the product. The present invention also is directed to vacuum skin packages formed from such laminates, and methods of packaging a product.
US08266842B2
A stadium and arena seating system is provided which utilizes concrete tread surfaces and metallic or other non-concrete vertical risers therebetween. The concrete treads have front and rear embeds embedded within the front and rear ends of the treads respectively. The embeds comprise a metallic or other non-concrete material similar to the vertical risers. The vertical risers are arranged in a shingled or other self-sealing fashion between the embeds of the treads to provide water and debris shedding. In certain embodiments, an overlapping vertical riser may be used which provides water shedding without the need for embeds within the concrete tread surfaces.
US08266837B2
A strike indicator has a hollow plastic spherical body with an opening through which water can flow into the body to weight the body for spin cast fishing and out of which water can be removed from the body for fly cast fishing. An easily manipulable thumbscrew can engage the opening to selectively block the opening while trapping a fishing line between a grommet on the thumbscrew and the spherical body to hold the strike indicator onto the fishing line.
US08266828B2
A clothing article for a foot including a sole including a sealed collapsible air cavity having disposed therein a return support for expanding a collapsed air cavity wherein the air cavity includes an outlet permitting a quantity of air to exit when the air cavity is collapsed; an upper, coupled to the sole, for covering a portion of the foot; an air-actuated active element coupled to the upper, the active element including a first mode and a second mode, the active element biased to the first mode and responsive to the quantity of air to transition from the first mode to the second mode; and a communication channel, coupled to the outlet and to the active element, for transferring the quantity of air from the air cavity to the active element.
US08266825B2
A shoe having an outsole and an insole. The outsole has an upper surface in contact with the lower surface of the insole. The upper surface of the outsole has at least two depressions being complementary with embossments provided on the lower surface of the insole, allowing a pivoting movement of the front and/or back portion of the insole against the lower outsole surface of the shoe in, at least, an essentially transverse direction to the longitudinal axis of the shoe, when the foot wearing the shoe is pivoted against the ground. To support this movement the insole is more rigid than the outsole and is attached to the outsole.
US08266818B2
A macro pixel is provided. The macro pixel includes at least two color pixel elements. Each color pixel element includes a photoreceptor that in response to receiving light, generates an output signal that is indicative of the quantity of light photons of a color are received. Each of the color pixel elements are configured to receive a corresponding color. The photoreceptor of each color pixel element has a geometry and a responsivity to light that is a function of the geometry of the photoreceptor such that the responsivity of the output signal of the photoreceptor to the corresponding color is controllable by changing the geometry. The geometries of the photoreceptors are selected so that a predetermined relative sensitivity to each color is obtained.
US08266802B2
A cooling apparatus and method of fabrication are provided for facilitating removal of heat from a heat-generating electronic device. The method of fabrication includes: bonding a plurality of thermally conductive pin fins to a surface to be cooled, each pin fin including a stem with a bulb structure on its distal end; depositing material onto the plurality of thermally conductive pin fins to integrally form a jet impingement structure with the pin fins, wherein the distal ends of the plurality of thermally conductive pin fins form part of the jet impingement structure; and controlling the depositing of material onto the distal ends of the pin fins to form a plurality of jet orifices in the jet impingement structure, with the depositing resulting in the plurality of jet orifices automatically self-aligning between the plurality of thermally conductive pin fins.
US08266799B2
A method for crimping terminals of an electric wire includes conveying an electric wire from one side of a plurality of electric wire crimping units to another side allocated in a row in a conveying direction of the electric wire, without the electric wire being grip-substituted. The method also includes crimping the terminal by stopping conveyance of the electric wire at a discretional one of the plurality of electric wire crimping units. The method also includes the following steps carried out in this order: measuring the electric wire and cutting the electric wire in a predetermined length; stripping a jacket at both ends of the electric wire; crimping the terminal to an end of the electric wire; regulating a position of the terminal of the terminal-attached electric wire; and inserting the terminal-attached electric wire to a connector housing.
US08266797B2
Disclosed are a multi-layer substrate and a manufacturing method of the multi-layer substrate. By employing a carrier to alternately form dielectric layers and metal structure layers thereon. Each dielectric layer adheres with the adjacent dielectric layer to embed the metal structure layers in the dielectric layers corresponding thereto. Comparing with prior arts, which have to use prepregs when hot pressing and adhering different layers of different materials, the present invention takes fewer processes, thus, fewer kinds of materials without using prepregs. Therefore, the present invention can promote the entire quality and yield of manufacturing the multi-layer substrate to satisfy mechanical characteristic matching of the multi-layer substrate and to reduce cost of the whole manufacturing process. Significantly, the multi-layer substrate having thin dielectric layers according to the present invention can satisfy the concern of impedance matching therefore, and can reduce crosstalk influence to keep good signal integrity therein.
US08266794B2
A wired circuit board has a metal supporting board, a metal foil formed on the metal supporting board to have a thickness of less than 2.0 μm, a first insulating layer formed on the metal supporting board to cover the metal foil, and a conductive pattern formed on the first insulating layer.
US08266789B2
There is disclosed a device for a production of cable harnesses, said device having a stand, a rotor, at least two rotor arms and at least two mounting boards, said rotor rotatably mounted on said stand and said rotor having said at least two rotor arms on which said at least two mounting boards are mounted, wherein each mounting board of said at least two mounting boards is configured to allow producing at least one cable harness. In a preferred embodiment each mounting board of said at least two mounting boards is mounted on two rotor arms of said at least two rotor arms in a vertically adjustable manner, and said rotor has a rotor post which extends upward from said stand and to which said at least two rotor arms are mounted. In a further preferred embodiment at least one electrical stand contact is mounted to said stand and is configured to be connected to an electrical test device, and an electrical mating contact is associated with each mounting board and is adapted to be connected to a cable harness which is arranged on said mounting board, wherein said mating contact of each mounting board comes into electrical contact with said stand contact in a specific rotation position of said rotor, in order to connect said cable harness to said test device.
US08266781B2
Axially expandable spacers (51, 53) are insertable between a nut (20), on a bolt (19) to be tensioned, and a face (F) on a component (C) and have ramp faces (52, 54) to take up the space as the bolt (19) is tensioned by an hydraulic tensioner (25), where the puller bar (35) is engaged with an extension (121) on the nut (120). A segmented collar (60) has radially movable segments (61) to allow quick engagement/release between the puller bar (35) and the end of the bolt (19) on the nut (120).
US08266772B2
Embodiments disclosed herein provide a connector and a method of using a connector. A connector for joining a cable with an anchor comprises a first end, a second end and a spacer extending between the first end and the second end. An opening is disposed at the first end. The opening has a configuration that mirrors a configuration of the anchor. A guying portion for joining the cable to the connector is disposed at the second end. An extension is disposed adjacent the spacer for facilitating juncture of the cable and the connector. In a method, the anchor is applied to a support surface and the first end and the anchor are joined. A tool that moves the cable in proximity to the guying portion is connected with the extension. The tool is activated to bring the cable closer to the guying portion. A portion of the cable is inserted into the guying portion for joining the cable to the connector. A further connector comprises a first end and a second end. A guying portion for joining a cable to the connector is disposed at the second end. An extension is disposed substantially between the first end and the second end for facilitating juncture of the cable and the connector. In each embodiments the connector is a single, unitary piece.
US08266770B2
A badge holder for attachment to a garment includes a planar clip body having an opening therein forming a periphery structure in the clip body. A planar flexible spring member appends from a top portion of the periphery structure, with the free end terminating within the opening near a bottom portion of the structure and is coplanar therewith. The gap between the edge surface of the spring member and the interior wall of the periphery structure decreases in width from the bottom portion of the peripheral structure to the top portion of the peripheral structure. A plurality of projecting elements project from the surrounding edge surfaces of the spring member and from the front surface to assist in firmly holding the fabric in the clip. A badge mounting member projects from the front surface of the periphery structure upon which a badge can be mounted.
US08266769B2
A clip is adapted to be secured to an item fitted using a closure device. The item is typically a shoe that is laced wherein the closure device is a shoelace. The clip includes a base extending between a back end and a forward end. The base defines a bottom surface. A loop extends over the base to receive a portion of the shoelace therethrough. The clip also includes a fastener fixedly secured to the forward end for selectively securing an ornament thereto to display the ornament on top of the shoe over the tongue thereof.
US08266764B2
A hinge for a packaging or cargo box or the like, having a first and a second hinge leaf, the second hinge leaf has a first bushing and a second bushing located at a distance therefrom, between which a bushing of the first hinge leaf can be rotated about a mutual hinge axis. An axial tube is rotationally fixed to the bushing of the first hinge leaf and is pivot-supported in the bushings of the second hinge leaf. A torsion spring is disposed in the axial tube and attached to one end of the axial tube. A torque support connects the other end of the torsion spring to the second hinge leaf in a rotationally fixed manner. A damper for the hinge movement is connected to the second hinge leaf and the axial tube. In a cylindrical hollow space of an outer opening, formed by the three bushings (65a, 65b, 65c), the damper (56), the axial tube (53) containing the torsion spring (58), and the torque support (54a) are inserted successively starting at the second bushing (65b) of the second hinge leaf (52), and the torque support (54a) is prevented from rotating and from being axially displaced in the second bushing (65b) by a safety device (54d, 68a, 70, 72).
US08266757B2
The invention relates to a cleaning apparatus, in particular to a portable hand cleaner, having a plurality of cleaning members which are in particular of brush type and which are arranged at a common carrier and can be set into rotation by means of a fluid, in particular water, supplied to the cleaning apparatus.
US08266748B2
An automatic treatment machine includes a treatment chamber, a bulk treatment aid dispenser fluidly coupled with the treatment chamber, and optionally a water supply fluidly coupled with at least one of the dispenser and the treatment chamber. A method for dispensing a treatment aid from the bulk treatment aid dispenser into the automatic treatment machine in accordance with a selected treatment cycle includes selecting a treatment cycle, determining a concentration of the treatment aid, determining a volume of the treatment aid to be dispensed based upon the determined concentration, dispensing the determined volume of the treatment aid from the bulk treatment aid dispenser, and initiating the selected treatment cycle.
US08266743B2
An examination table includes a support surface movable with respect to a base. The support surface includes a seat portion and a backrest portion. A first motor drives the support surface with respect to the base, and a second motor drives the backrest portion pivotally with respect to the seat portion. A control system includes a control panel and first and second Hall-effect sensors for detecting rotations of the respective first and second motors to determine the current positions of the support surface and the backrest portion. The control system executes a movement algorithm for moving the support surface and the backrest portion to a desired position from the current position. The control system also executes a calibration algorithm for calibrating position tracking of the support surface and the backrest portion.
US08266742B2
A bed has one or more electronically-controllable features. Input-output devices are used by persons to control the electronically-controllable features. A biometric input-output device obtains biometric data from persons who desire to control one or more of the electronically-controllable features. The bed may restrict access to or modify one or more of the electronically-controllable features based on the biometric data.
US08266737B1
A swimming pool water leveler system. Implementations may include a water leveler comprising one or more of the following aspects: separate fill and sensing chambers within the water leveler housing; logical water level adjustment features that provide a tactile indicator of water level change; a continuous balance line and overflow line; a water supply line seal valve with a cup seal; a reducer plug in an outlet between the sensing chamber and the balance line to assist in junk removal; and the ability to pressure test the balance line and overflow line at the same time.
US08266734B2
A bidet usable with a water source and mountable to a toilet. The toilet includes a toilet bowl, the toilet bowl defining a bowl inner surface and a waterline defined on the bowl inner surface at an operational level of water in the toilet bowl, the toilet bowl also defining a bowl aperture extending therethrough below the waterline. The bidet includes a piston defining a piston passageway extending therethrough, the piston passageway being couplable to the water source for receiving water therefrom, the piston defining a nozzle for releasing water from the piston passageway. The bidet is operatively mountable to the toilet with the piston extending through the bowl aperture and protruding in the toilet bowl. With the bidet operatively mounted to the toilet bowl, the piston is movable through the bowl aperture between a retracted position and an extended position, the nozzle being substantially adjacent to the bowl inner surface and below the waterline when the piston is in the retracted position and the nozzle being spaced apart from the bowl inner surface and above the waterline when the piston is in the extended position.
US08266733B2
Flush valve assemblies are provided that include a valve body which may have a radiused inlet portion, an upper inlet end having an inlet opening, a lower outlet end having an outlet opening, and a wall extending between the upper inlet end and the lower outlet end and having an interior surface defining a flow path that extends generally longitudinally through the valve body from the inlet opening to the outlet opening and that has a generally circular transverse cross-section. A height measured longitudinally through the valve body is greater than a largest diameter of the transverse cross-section of the flow path so as to enable the valve bodies herein to have an elevated wall and head from a toilet tank floor. The assemblies may include a flapper valve cover detachably connected to the flush valve assembly and having a transverse cross-sectional diameter sufficiently large to cover the inlet opening of the valve body, a pivot mechanism and a flapper bulb. The flapper valve cover is sufficiently buoyant so as to be capable of resisting the force of flowing water and remain open so as to allow flush water to pass through the valve body when the valve body is installed on a toilet having a flush volume of about 1.6 gallons per flush or less before closing the valve cover so as to be useful in high performance, and also in high-efficiency toilets.
US08266730B2
A novel attachment on a toilet system for a male user to raise a toilet seat (100), by depressing a pedal (30) with a foot and then releasing it, while standing well balanced on his second foot, so that he can urinate comfortably with both feet on the floor; and then to lower same seat (100) by depressing same pedal (30) and releasing it; with all these actions done with no startling noise against the water tank (104) or the toilet bowl rim. The dual operation of the same pedal (30) can provide a timely flushing of the toilet automatically when seat (100) is lowered, without hand touching any part of the toilet system. The attachment can add, with a secondary pedal (140), a hands-free flushing system that can be operated without moving toilet seat (100) when it is already in the lowered position. All manual toilet-system operations are preserved.
US08266727B2
A padding device for sports includes an outer armor having two main pads and a front guard board. Two linings are mounted in the outer armor. Reinforced portions, reinforcing blocks, and reinforced sections are formed on an outer surface of the outer armor and include apertures and perforations. Vents are formed in areas of each lining corresponding to the reinforced portions, reinforcing blocks, and reinforced sections. The vents provide rapid dissipation of heat generated by the wearer during sporting, providing comfort wearing. The reinforced portions, reinforcing blocks, and reinforced sections reinforce the areas where the vents are formed.
US08266725B2
Swimming goggles include a left frame, a right frame, a connecting member connecting the left frame and the right frame, a strap mechanism assembled on outward sides of the left frame and the right frame, and control members. The strap mechanism includes a head strap defining a plurality of stop grooves therein. Each control member has an engaging portion for engaging with the left frame/the right frame, an operating portion formed opposite to the engaging portion, a pivot portion provided between the engaging portion and the operating portion, and a bias portion near a side of the operating portion for abutting against stop grooves of the head strap. The pivot portion abuts against the bases of the strap mechanism and drives the operating portion upward. When the operating portion is pushed inward, the bias portion displaces inward correspondingly and disengages from the stop grooves.
US08266724B2
A helmet for a firefighter or for an industrial, chemical, or emergency rescue worker has a crown and a brim projecting forwardly from the crown. The helmet is equipped with a pair of eye shields, each of which is mounted to the helmet, each of which is adapted to be manually moved between a storage position and a usage position, and each of which in the usage position, but not in the storage position, projects downwardly so as to shield an associated one of the eyes of a wearer. The helmet is equipped with a pair of face-conformable gaskets, each of which is disposed along an outer edge of an associated one of the pair of eye shields and which is adapted to conform to the face of a wearer when the associated one of the pair of eye shields is moved into the usage position. Each face-conformable gasket is made from an elastomeric material, such as neoprene, and has a bladder, which is adapted to conform to the face of the wearer, and a grooved channel, to which the bladder is attached and into which the outer edge of the associated one of the pair of eye shields fits tightly but removably.
US08272060B2
A system (200) detects transmission of potentially malicious packets. The system (200) receives, or otherwise observes, packets and generates hash values based on variable-sized blocks of the packets. The system (200) then compares the generated hash values to hash values associated with prior packets. The system (200) determines that one of the received packets is a potentially malicious packet when one or more of the generated hash values associated with the received packet match one or more of the hash values associated with the prior packets.
US08272054B2
A method and system for identifying an attacker device attempting an intrusion into a TCP/IP protocol based network that includes a managed device and a security event log. The managed device detects an incoming TCP/IP connection by the attacker device to the network. TCP/IP information relating to the attacker device is extracted from a TCP/IP stack of the managed device. It is ascertained that a port number of the incoming TCP/IP connection is identical to a predefined port number. A performed process includes determining that the incoming TCP/IP connection is a Net BIOS connection that has created an invalid logon by the attacker device. Event log information, which is associated with the detected incoming TCP/IP connection, is retrieved from the security event log. A generated report is generated and stored in a database of the network. The report includes the extracted TCP/IP information and the retrieved event log information.
US08272051B1
A process of information leakage prevention for sensitive information in a database table. Content to be inspected is extracted at a deployment point. The content is processed by a first fingerprinting module to determine if the content matches fingerprint signatures generated from database cells between a first threshold size and a second threshold size which is larger than the first threshold size. The content is also processed by a second fingerprinting module to determine if the content matches fingerprint signatures generated from database cells larger than the second threshold size. The content may also be filtered, and the filtered content processed with an exact match module to determine if the filtered content exactly matches data from cells smaller than the first threshold size. Other embodiments, aspects and features are also disclosed.
US08272049B2
A computer system has first and second password-protectable domains. The first domain has a multi-domain password manager for determining whether a password candidate is valid for both the first domain and the second domain. If so, the password manager submits the password candidate to the second domain.
US08272044B2
A technique to mitigate low rate Denial-of-Service (DoS) attacks at routers in the Internet is described. In phase 1, necessary flow information from the packets traversing through the router is stored in fast memory; and in phase 2, stored flow information is periodically moved to slow memory from the fast memory for further analysis. The system detects a sudden increase in the traffic load of expired flows within a short period. In a network without low rate DoS attacks, the traffic load of all the expired flows is less than certain thresholds which are derived from real Internet traffic analysis. The system can also include a filtering solution to drop attack packets. The filtering scheme treats the long-lived flows in the Internet preferentially, and drops the attack traffic by monitoring the queue length if the queue length exceeds a threshold percent of the queue limit.
US08272038B2
A method for authorizing access to a first computing device is provided. The method comprises the first computing device forming a challenge, encoding the challenge into a symbol, and displaying the symbol. The first computing device receives a request for access from a user. Access to the first computing device is allowed in response to provision of an access code to the first computing device by the user. The access code is formed by a server in response to capturing the symbol, decoding the symbol into the challenge, forming a request from the challenge, and providing the request to the server. The server forms a decision to allow access by the user to the first computing device.
US08272034B2
A communication device has memory for storing a client application module, a server application module, and an operating system module which are executable by one or more processors. The client application module submits a request and, in response, the server application module causes the request to be processed with use of the operating system module. An interface module causes one or more client process handles of a client stack of the client application module to be provided in a current process base of the operating system module. Thus, for the request, the operating system module checks one or more permission settings associated with the one or more client process handles as well as one or more permission settings associated with the one or more server process handles.
US08272032B2
A method is provided for controlling multiple access to a network service to prevent fraudulent use of the network service. The method includes identifying an account access counter for an account using identification information received from a user at a first device using a network, wherein the user is requesting access to a service provided at a second device, and further wherein the account access counter is the number of service access sessions active for the account; comparing the account access counter to a maximum account access number, wherein the maximum account access number defines a maximum number of service access sessions allowed for the account; and providing the user at the first device access to the service at the second device if the account access counter is less than the maximum account access number.
US08272025B1
Disclosed are exemplary policy deconfliction methods and software for identifying conflicts in policy. The policy deconfliction methods and software may be embodied as an implementation of a subset of RuleML (informal/semi-formal) and Attribute Based Semantic Lattice (formal). The policy deconfliction methods and software act on a semantic representation of policy compiled from specific rule languages (e.g. XACML, RuleML). To detect and correct conflicts, the policy deconfliction methods and software perform a path analysis over the semantic representation of the policy to distinguish between equivalent, new, and overlapping policy (potential conflicts), regardless of policy language.
US08272019B2
An interactive television program guide system is provided. An interactive television program guide provides users with an opportunity to select programs for recording on a remote media server. Programs may also be recorded on a local media server. The program guide provides users with VCR-like control over programs that are played back from the media servers and over real-time cached copies of the programs. The program guide also provides users with an opportunity to designate gift recipients for whom programs may be recorded.
US08271999B2
A computer implemented method, apparatus, and computer program code for profiling an application. Execution of an application is monitored. A set of metrics relating to execution of the application occurring during monitoring execution of the application are collected to form a set of observed metrics. An execution environment overhead occurring with respect to the set of observed events is identified to form an identified execution environment overhead. The set of observed metrics is adjusted using the identified execution environment overhead to form a set of calibrated metrics.
US08271990B2
Techniques for eradicating operating system jitter-induced slowdown are provided. The techniques include allocating one or more computing resources to one or more logical partitions of one or more parallel programs in proportion of one or more cycles consumed by one or more sources of operating system jitter in each compute phase in each of the one or more logical partitions.
US08271985B2
A scheduling apparatus includes a state information acquisition unit that acquires, from a decoding unit, state information that serves as an indicator for computing a processing time actually required for a decoding unit to perform a decoding process on first processing target data, and a schedule generating unit that determines a second scheduled processing time for which the decoding unit is able to perform the decoding process on second processing target data, based on the processing time computed based on the state information. The schedule generating unit further generates a second schedule for the decoding unit to perform the decoding process on the second processing target data, by allocating the second scheduled processing time to the decoding unit.
US08271983B2
A workload scheduler supporting the definition of a cumulative weighting index maintains a profile for each job. The profile defines an estimated usage of different resources of the system by the job. A tuning module imports the attributes of the jobs from the profile. The attributes of each job are rated according to an estimated duration of the job. The rated attributes so obtained are then combined, in order to define a single cumulative index for each job and a single cumulative index for each application.
US08271969B2
According to embodiments described in the specification, a method and apparatus, for determining the state of a computing device is described, by first determining at least one unique code associated with at least one file resident on the computing device, the at least one unique code representative of a state of the at least one file. Then at least one unique reference code associated with at least one update file is determined, the at least one update file for updating said at least one file resident on the computing device, and the at least one unique reference code representative of an expected state of the at least one file resident on the computing device. Finally, the state of the computing device is determined to be in an expected state if the at least one unique code matches the at least one unique reference code, and in an unexpected state if the at least one unique code does not match the at least one unique reference code.
US08271963B2
Various technologies and techniques are disclosed for mimicking functionality of an application platform. At runtime, an analysis is performed of an application platform to identify how a desired functionality is implemented by the application platform. When the analysis reveals that the application platform is using a known function that can be mimicked, a handshake with the application platform is bypassed and the desired functionality is mimicked. To mimic the functionality, the known function is started for the application platform that uses the desired functionality. An entry point of the known function is detected. Machine instructions are decoded in the known function. Code that mimics an effect of the machine instructions is generated. The code that mimics the effect of the machine instructions is then executed.
US08271946B2
A set-up for operating a process installation. The set-up includes a control station and at least one field device, which determines or monitors at least one process variable. Each field device has a program memory, in which a boot-loader software is persistently implemented. The boot-loader software enables communication of the field device with the control station. A transmission link is provided, via which the control station and the field device, or field devices, communicate with one another during operation. Each field device transmits to the control station upon booting of the field device, via the transmission link, device-specific information. The control station transmits to the field device, after receipt of the device-specific information, application- and/or device-specific, measurement/control/evaluation software, which is matched to a particular application of the field device and which the field device stores in a data memory associated with it. The field device, based on application- and/or device-specific, measurement/control/evaluation software available to it during operation, makes available information concerning the process variable.
US08271940B2
A method for customizing an application template for an executable application in a mobile device is described. An application template is assembled based on a plurality of interface element definitions. The application template comprises at least one of a message template, a data template, a presentation template, and a workflow template. The interface element definitions are generated from a parsed schema definition of a web service, and include a message definition, a data definition, a presentation definition; and a workflow element. The workflow element specifies a behavior of the message definition, the data definition, and the presentation definition.
US08271932B2
A computer-implemented method for verifying a RAIM/ECC design using a hierarchical injection scheme that includes selecting marks for generating an error mask, selecting a fixed bit mask based on the selected marks, determining whether to inject errors into at least one of a marked channel and at least one marked chip of a channel; and randomly injecting errors into the at least one of the marked channel and the at least one marked chip when determined.
US08271927B2
A method can include allowing a user to place a first wiring harness design component within a wiring harness topology in a wiring harness design workspace, allowing the user to place a first plurality of ground devices within the first wiring harness design component placed in the wiring harness topology, allowing the user to request an automatic ground combination, and, in response to the user requesting an automatic ground combination, automatically applying at least one electronically stored ground combination rule to a first set of ground devices comprising a plurality of the first plurality of ground devices and automatically combining at least two of the first set of ground devices into a first combined ground device based at least in part on the applied at least one electronically stored ground combination rule.
US08271926B2
A semiconductor integrated circuit includes a first wiring formed on a first wiring layer and prolonged in a first direction, a second wiring formed on a second wiring layer and prolonged in a second direction, a third wiring formed on the first wiring layer and prolonged in the first direction, a fourth wiring formed on the second wiring layer and prolonged in the second direction, a multi-cut via formed to connect the first wiring to the second wiring, the multi-cut via including a first via and a second via formed in the first direction, and a single-cut via formed to connect the third wiring to the fourth wiring. A first overhang is provided in a direction opposite to the first direction, the first overhang being larger than a second overhang, the second overhang being smaller than a third overhang.
US08271921B2
A set of pareto optimal solutions that are non-dominated solutions in a solution specification space for respective items in requirement specification is extracted with a combination of a circuit configuration including a specific function and a process constraint condition. Furthermore, pareto optimal solutions are extracted for all combinations of the circuit configuration and the process constraint condition, and pareto optimal solutions are extracted for the respective process constraint conditions. When such extracted data is distributed to designers, it is possible to reduce time to generate the pareto optimal solutions, and the designers can design the optimum circuit having a desired function by using such extracted data.
US08271904B2
An image forming apparatus which executes jobs to form images, including: a job memory section which stores job information indicating setting contents of the jobs; a display section having a first region and a second region that never overlap; and a control section which controls contents to be displayed, wherein the control section controls to display a job list in the first region based on the job information, and also display a setting content of a job selected from the job list in the second region, while a function of an operation button is given to the setting content, wherein when the operation button is selected, by utilizing the setting content corresponding to the selected operation button as a search key, a job is extracted from the job list and displayed such that the extracted job and the other job can be distinguished.
US08271902B1
A method for communicating emotions with data is provided. Here, a selection of a graphic image configured to convey an emotion is received. The graphic image is selected with a rotatable dial interface. After receipt, the graphic image is associated with a plurality of data and the graphic image is displayed with the plurality of data.
US08271901B2
Embodiments of the invention are directed to enabling a user to navigate to a web page or other resource in a taxonomy of resources using a crumb provided in a user interface. The crumb is associated with a category of web pages in the taxonomy. When a user indicates the crumb, such as hovering over the crumb, additional crumbs are displayed, so that the user may directly navigate to another web page in the taxonomy. The additional crumbs may be in the same, or a different category. The user can select a crumb from any category to navigate forward and backward in the taxonomy. The taxonomy may be independent of a storage structure for the web pages. The crumbs may be in a toolbar, script, or other module that interfaces with a local or remote taxonomy processor to access and dynamically manage the taxonomy of web pages.
US08271897B2
A dialog is configured to display first and second pages of attribute fields to prompt an input of attribute values for use in accomplishing the task. Each page is separately displayable in the dialog. According to exemplary embodiments, a dynamically alterable summary of the attribute fields and values is included on a portion of the first page of the dialog. The attribute fields and values included in the summary are arranged into groups. A first group includes the attribute fields and values displayable on the first page of the dialog, and a second group includes the attribute fields and values displayable on the second page of the dialog. A first software link is provided between the second group and the second page of the dialog to provide automated access to the second page via the second group.
US08271888B2
A method, a system, and a computer program product for providing a virtual probe, associated with an avatar, which enables blind or sightless navigation of an avatar through a virtual world. The system outputs tactile information and/or audible information that depict the presence of an object in the virtual world, in association with the avatar. When the virtual probe encounters an object in the virtual world the distance between the object and the avatar, a velocity of the object, and the dimensions of the object are determined. The tactile information, such as one or more vibrations, is output proportional to the distance between the object and the avatar and/or the dimension of the object. Audible information is also output in response to the detection of the object. Audible information, such as an audible voice, outputs one or more of the distance between the object and the avatar, the velocity of the object, and the dimensions of the object.
US08271885B2
A customized user interface is configured to include one or more user interface gadgets provided by one or more user interface gadget providers. Multiple possible user interface gadgets are identified for inclusion in the user interface by comparing a set of required attributes for the user interface to stored attribute data for a plurality of registered user interface gadgets. One or more of the possible user interface gadgets is selected for inclusion in the user interface using stored evaluation data for the possible user interface gadgets. Data related to the selected user interface gadget(s) is provided for use in generating the customized user interface on a computer system.
US08271882B2
A method provides a user with access to resources associated with a life or work event by enabling the user to perform certain operations, including specifying a list of one or more tasks corresponding to the event, specifying one or more resources associated with each task, indicating a task order (including an indication of whether two or more tasks in the task list are to be performed in an order-dependent or in an order-independent manner), and formatting the task list into a presentation format. A system with user interface controls enables a user to perform certain operations, including designating an event, generating a list of tasks associated with the event, and specifying an order for performance of the tasks in the task list that may be followed in processing an instance of the event.
US08271875B2
A computer-implemented method for providing content includes extracting preconfigured content from an application; selecting, from second content associated with the application, a plurality of portions of the second content using the extracted preconfigured content; ranking the plurality of portions based at least in part on the preconfigured content; and associating a reference with the preconfigured content in the application such that the reference is displayed with the application, the reference providing user navigation to at least one of the plurality of portions selected based on the ranking.
US08271873B2
Automatically detecting the layout of a bidirectional (BIDI) text. In one embodiment, this comprises: determining a shaping attribute of the text based on scanning the text to detect at least one character of a specific shape, while preferably ignoring initial, final, and stand-alone shaped characters; determining a text type attribute of the text from the shaping attribute; and determining an orientation attribute of the text from the determined text type. A numeric shaping attribute and a symmetric swapping attribute may also be determined. Embodiments of the invention may be used, by way of illustration but not of limitation, for bidirectional layout transformation to allow conversion of a BIDI text received from a source computer system in a source BIDI layout format into a layout format of a target computer system.
US08271871B2
An apparatus and automated method are disclosed for alignment of objects in a document which allows saliency within one or both objects to be a factor in the alignment. The method includes, for an input electronic document, identifying first and second objects to be aligned on a page of the document. A one dimensional guideline profile is generated for at least the first object based on a detection of saliency for the first object. The first and second objects are aligned based on the guideline profile to form a modified document and the modified document is output.
US08271862B2
A decoding device which performs error correction decoding of encoded data formed from a combination of an outer code for first error correction and an inner code for second error correction is disclosed. The decoding device has: a demodulator for creating a data series of likelihood information values; a second error correction decoder for creating a hard decision value series by executing repetitive decoding for the second error correction based on the likelihood information values; and a first error correction decoder for detecting a lost bit in the hard decision value series and creating an erasure flag indicating the position of the detected lost bit. The second error correction decoder, according to the erasure flag, executes the repetitive decoding based on a likelihood information value not corresponding to the position of the lost bit among the data series of the likelihood information values and a predetermined value that invalidates the likelihood information value corresponding to the position of the lost bit.
US08271859B2
Embodiments of the present invention provide techniques for efficient generation of CRC values in a network environment. Specific embodiments of the present invention enable CRC processing circuits that can generate CRC values at high data throughput rates (e.g., 100 Gbps or greater), while being capable of being implemented on currently available FPGAs. Accordingly, embodiments of the present invention may be used in network devices such as routers, switches, hubs, host network interfaces and the like to support high speed data transmission standards such as 100G Ethernet and beyond.
US08271855B2
A method for memory scrubbing is provided. In this method, a first resistance of a reference memory element is read. A second resistance of a memory element also is read. A difference between the first resistance and the second resistance is sensed and a programming error associated with the second resistance is detected based on the difference. Each memory element is non-volatile and re-writeable, and can be positioned in a two-terminal memory cell that is one of a plurality of memory cells positioned in a two-terminal cross-point memory array. Active circuitry for performing the memory scrubbing can be fabricated FEOL in a logic layer and one or more layers of the two-terminal cross-point memory arrays can be fabricated BEOL over the logic layer. Each memory cell can optionally include non-ohmic device (NOD) electrically in series with the memory element and the two terminals of the memory cell.
US08271851B2
The invention relates to correcting codes for encoding and decoding a data signal. A signal including data variables is coded into a signal including the data variables and parity variables. The encoding and decoding operations are based on a parity check matrix comprised of a systematic matrix and a parity matrix and having rows corresponding coefficients of parity equations and distributed into decoding windows of same size. In order to increase convergence of the iterative decoding, the elements of at least one column of the systematic matrix associated with a decoding window are “0s”, except for a single element which is a “1”. A data variable is only involved in one equation of the window and not involved in solving the equations of other windows as long as the solving of equations of the window is not achieved.
US08271848B2
In a multiple access environment, to improve decoding efficiency for small code blocks by a constituent decoder, multiple code blocks may be concatenated to form a single larger code block. Example embodiments of the present invention concatenate code blocks for turbo codes I and II. Example embodiments of the present invention may also concatenate code blocks for convolutional code. Example embodiments of the present invention also disclose a system to concatenate the code blocks.
US08271845B2
Evaluating the operating safety of a complex software and or hardware system such as a system for displaying flight information on an instrument panel of an aircraft. The evaluation method includes construction of a first architecture of the system, divided into several blocks each comprising data inputs/outputs, the inputs of a block being connected to the outputs of other blocks in the first architecture; identification of failures of the outputs of the blocks of the architecture; construction of first boolean expressions expressing the states of the outputs of the blocks of the first architecture as a function of the states of the identified failures, of the states of the inputs of the blocks; definition of a first feared event to be examined by a second boolean expression constructed based on the first boolean expressions; and reduction of the second boolean expression in a sum of monomials.
US08271844B2
A medium access control-high speed (MAC-hs) comprises a hybrid automatic repeat request (H-ARQ) device configured to receive data blocks over a wideband-code division multiple access (W-CDMA) high speed-downlink shared channel (HS-DSCH). The H-ARQ device generates an acknowledgement (ACK) or negative acknowledgement (NACK) for each said data block received. Each received data block having a transmission sequence number. The H-ARQ device receives a new transmission instead of a pending retransmission at any time. At least one reordering device has an input configured to receive an output of the H-ARQ device and the at least one reordering device configured to reorder the received data blocks based on each received data block's transmission sequence number (TSN). Received data blocks are immediately forwarded for processing for higher layers when the received data blocks are received in sequence.
US08271843B2
A method of improving Hybrid Automatic Repeat Request operation for a user equipment operating in HS-SCCH less operation in a wireless communications system includes receiving a retransmission data in an HARQ procedure, determining a decoding result of data stored in a first soft buffer, combining the retransmission data with the data stored in the first soft buffer for generating a combined data when the UE determines that the data stored in the first soft buffer has not been successfully decoded, and performing a decoding process on the combined data and a store process corresponding to a second soft buffer. The first soft buffer is obtained by a first rule and the second soft buffer is obtained by a second rule.
US08271839B2
A test architecture accesses IP core test wrappers within an IC using a Link Instruction Register (LIR). An IEEE P1500 standard is in development for providing test access to these individual cores via a test structure called a wrapper. The wrapper resides at the boundary of the core and provides a way to test the core and the interconnections between cores. The test architecture enables each of the plural wrappers in the IC, including wrappers in cores embedded within other cores, with separate enable signals.
US08271836B2
The present invention extends to methods, systems, and computer program products for capturing diagnostics for Web browser applications. Embodiments of the present invention can capture errors in client-side code for a Web application and automatically report them a Web Service. Diagnostics code can be automatically injected into client code to capture client-side diagnostic information, including but not limited to errors in Web application code (script code, managed code, etc) that runs in a Web browser. The client-side diagnostic information can be automatically forwarded to a Web service under the control of the Web application. The Web application operator can use this information to improve the quality and hence customer satisfaction of their Web application.
US08271830B2
Performing data management operations on replicated data in a computer network. Log entries are generated for data management operations of an application executing on a source system. Consistency point entries are used to indicate a time of a known good, or recoverable, state of the application. A destination system is configured to process a copy of the log and consistency point entries to replicate data in a replication volume, the replicated data being a copy of the application data on the source system. When the replicated data represents a known good state of the application, as determined by the consistency point entries, the destination system(s) may perform a storage operation (e.g., snapshot, backup) to copy the replicated data and to logically associate the copied data with a time information (e.g., time stamp) indicative of the source system time when the application was in the known good state.
US08271827B2
A system including a central processing unit, a first memory channel being configured to couple the central processing unit to a first semiconductor memory unit, wherein the first memory channel is configured to be clocked with a first clock frequency, and a second memory channel being configured to couple the central processing unit to a second semiconductor memory unit, wherein the second memory channel is configured or configurable to be clocked with a second clock frequency smaller than the first clock frequency.
US08271826B2
Write pointer generation units successively switch and indicate storage locations of data transmitted from a transmitter end LSI from plural buffers constituting FIFO circuits. A clock-step ring buffer delays a gated step signal to instruct an operation stop. When receiving the gated stop signal delayed by the clock-step ring buffer, the write pointer generation units stop switching instructions of the storage locations.
US08271824B2
A memory interface circuit includes a clock signal supply buffer configured to send a system clock signal which is supplied through a reference node, to a memory through a transmission line; a data strobe buffer configured to receive a data strobe signal supplied from the memory; a system clock synchronizing circuit configured to supply a data read from the memory to a logic circuit in synchronization with the system clock signal; and a delay detecting circuit provided at a front stage to the system clock synchronizing circuit and configured to detect a transmission delay from the clock signal supply buffer to the data strobe buffer. The delay detecting circuit generates a phase difference data indicating the transmission delay based on a difference between a phase of the system clock signal and a phase of the data strobe signal outputted from the data strobe buffer, and supplies the phase difference data to the system clock synchronizing circuit. The system clock synchronizing circuit generates a read clock signal by shifting the system clock signal based on the phase difference data, and controls a supply timing at which the data is supplied to the logic circuit, based on the read clock signal.
US08271818B2
A method, and a corresponding system, for managing under-utilized resources in a computer system includes the steps of monitoring performance of workloads executing on the computer system, where the workloads consume resources, determining resource demand and utilization by the workloads, comparing the workload performance to user-defined performance targets and resource utilization by the workloads to user-defined utilization targets, using the comparison results, determining if one or more resources may be assigned to a free resource pool, and assigning the determined resources to the free resource pool.
US08271816B2
A system and method for statistics recording of power devices is disclosed. A power circuit includes a power device to provide a specified electrical power to a load and a host controller coupled to the power device. The host controller is configured to provide issue instructions to and retrieve status information from the power device. A communications and control interface (CCI) is coupled between the power device and the host controller. The CCI is configured to operate as a communications interface between the power device and the host controller and to retrieve and store status information from the power device. The CCI may be capable of performing statistical analysis on the status information to help reduce the amount of information exchanged between the host controller and the power device, thereby reducing bandwidth requirements.
US08271805B2
The present invention provides a secure buffer for use in data storage and encryption processing. Blocks or packets of data are passed to a secure buffer within a processor. The processor may be one of many coprocessors, and the secure buffer may be inaccessible to some or all of the coprocessors. Data may be partially or fully encrypted and stored within the secure buffer. Encryption may occur before or after storage in the buffer, or it may take place within the buffer itself. Optionally, the encrypted data may be sent to and retrieved from a shared memory that is accessible by other coprocessors.
US08271802B2
A secure data parser is provided that may be integrated into any suitable system for securely storing and communicating data. The secure data parser parses data and then splits the data into multiple portions that are stored or communicated distinctly. Encryption of the original data, the portions of data, or both may be employed for additional security. The secure data parser may be used to protect data in motion by splitting original data into portions of data, that may be communicated using multiple communications paths.
US08271801B2
A method, apparatus and a data storage device are provided for implementing data confidentiality and integrity of data stored in overlapping, shingled data tracks on a recordable surface of a storage device. A unique write counter is stored for each zone written to the recordable surface of the storage device. An encryption key is used together with the write counter information and a logical block address to encrypt each sector being written, and to decrypt all sectors being read. An individual sector is decrypted, obtaining the write counter information and reading the data sector. A message authentication code is stored for each zone. All sectors of the zone are read to perform integrity check on a sector.
US08271793B2
A dynamic multimedia fingerprinting system is provided. A user requests multimedia content from a Web cache server that verifies that the user is authorized to download the content. A custom fingerprint specific to the user is generated and dynamically inserted into the content as the content is delivered to the user. The custom fingerprint can be generated on the Web cache server or at the content provider's server. The system allows a content provider to specify where the custom fingerprint is inserted into the content or where the fingerprint is to replace a placeholder within the content.
US08271792B2
An image processing apparatus is disclosed that includes an installation unit that installs an authentication package providing a function related to authentication; a signature confirmation unit that confirms whether an issuance source of the authentication package is an authenticated issuance source based on an electronic signature attached to the authentication package; and an authentication package confirmation unit that confirms the authentication package based on attribute information of the authentication package confirmed to be the authenticated issuance source by the signature confirmation unit. In the image processing apparatus, the installation unit installs the authentication package confirmed by the authentication package confirmation unit.
US08271788B2
There is described a computer network system in which a computer is in network communication with a server. In order to install a software package on the computer, installation software forming part of the software package is executed which requests entry of an email address for the user of the software package on the computer. The entered email address is then transmitted to the server, which in response sends an email to the email address including a Uniform Resource Locator (URL) addressing a local web server forming part of the software package, with installation information being appended to the URL. When the user of the computer accesses the URL using a web browser, the local web server automatically sends the installation information to the installation software. In this way, it is established that the user of the software package has access to the entered email address.
US08271785B1
Users provide their standard username and password and are authenticated to the system. The system then determines from an object set, such as a container hierarchy, whether the user should have special administrative privileges for any of the resources on the machine to which they are logging in. These administrative privileges can be determined from configurable sets of pre-existing relationships between the user and resources on the system, stored within the object set. If the user is an administrator, then the system sets the UID number for that user to the UID number for administrator users. The system can even be configured to set the administrative UID to be the UID for the super-user “root” (typically, zero). If the user has no administrative privileges, the system sets the UID number for that user to the user's standard UID number.
US08271782B2
Methods and systems for handling on an electronic device a secure message to be sent to a recipient. Data is accessed about a security key associated with the recipient. The received data is used to perform a validity check related to sending a secure message to the recipient. The validity check may uncover an issue that exists with sending a secure message to the recipient. A reason is determined for the validity check issue and is provided to the mobile device's user.
US08271781B2
A method for authentication. A computer obtains a random number R generated by a hardware token. The computer forms and returns to the hardware token a signature Ck′(R) formed using the random number R with a computer secret key Ck′. The computer receiving from the hardware token authentication of the signature Ck′(R) that is performed by the hardware token using a computer public key Ck stored in the hardware token.
US08271768B2
Various technologies and techniques are disclosed for providing concurrent exception handling. When one or more exceptions are received from concurrent workers, one or more exception handler functions are supplied. For each respective exception in the exception results, determine if the respective exception is one of a kind of exceptions handled by the one or more exception handler functions. If the respective exception is one of a kind handled by the exception handler functions, then run a particular handler of the exception handler functions and mark the respective exception as handled. Any unhandled exceptions are then processed appropriately. In one implementation, a collection of input data is processed to produce a collection of output results, with the exceptions being interleaved with other output results. In another implementation, a particular exception is selected that represents the multiple exceptions. The selected one particular exception is then thrown.
US08271764B2
A method for storing and retrieving blocks of data having different dimensions is disclosed. The method can include receiving a first data segment to be stored in a block storage device where the first data segment has an address. The method can also include determining if the first data segment conforms to a standard dimension and sorting the first data segment according to the destination address if it does not have a standard dimension. The method can further include placing a non-standard data segment into a unfilled block allocation and placing a second non-standard data segment into the unfilled block allocation when the second data segment has the destination identifier. Other embodiments are also disclosed.
US08271761B2
A storage system having at least two storage apparatuses capable of partitioning an internal resource into logical partitions and managing the logical partitions, and which replicates data written into a primary volume of a primary storage apparatus as the replication source storage apparatus to a secondary volume of a secondary storage apparatus as the replication destination storage apparatus, including: a configuration information sending unit for sending configuration information of the logical partition, to which the primary volume belongs, to the secondary storage apparatus; and a logical partition setting unit for setting the configuration of the logical partition to which the secondary volume belongs based on the configuration information of the logical partition to which the primary volume belongs sent from the configuration information sending unit.
US08271749B2
A storage subsystem capable of processing time-critical control commands while suppressing deterioration of the system performance to a minimum. When various commands are received in a multiplex manner via the same port from plural host devices, the channel adapter of the storage subsystem extracts commands of a first kind from the received commands. Then, the adapter executes the extracted commands of the first kind with high priority within a given unit time until a given number of guaranteed activations is reached. At the same time, commands of a second kind are enqueued in a queue of commands. After the commands of the first kind are executed as many as the number of guaranteed activations, the commands of the second kind are executed in the unit time.
US08271748B2
In an embodiment, an apparatus is provided that may include circuitry to generate, at least in part, and/or receive, at least in part, at least one request to access at least one portion of data. The at least one request may indicate, at least in part, at least one subset of the at least one portion of the data that is of relatively higher importance than one or more other subsets of the at least one portion of the data that are of relatively lower importance. The at least one request may be to request, at least in part, that the at least one subset be accessed prior to the one or more other subsets are accessed. The at least one request may be comprised, at least in part, in at least one packet in accordance with a protocol that permits variable packet size.
US08271747B2
An improved data system permits power efficient mask key write operations. A mask key selector implements criteria-based selection of mask keys for mask key write operations on blocks data. In one embodiment, a first set of mask keys is compared to data bytes of a data block that will be written to memory. The comparison culls keys from the list of candidates that match unmasked data bytes, that is, values that will be written to memory as “changed” data. A mask key is selected from the resulting set of candidates so a memory write operation consumes less power (relative to selection of other keys), or so that the operation minimizes switching noise. The selected mask key is then substituted by a controller into masked data values, and a modified data block is transmitted to memory, with the memory detecting masked data by identifying mask keys in the modified data block.
US08271735B2
A new “held” (“H”) cache-coherency state is introduced for directory-based multiprocessor systems. Using the held state enables embodiments of the present invention to track sharers that have a shared copy of a cache line after a directory runs out of space for holding information that identifies processors that have received shared copies of the cache line (e.g., pointers to sharers of the cache line). In these embodiments, when a directory entry is full, the system provides subsequent shared copies of the cache line to sharers in the held state and tracks the identity of the held-copy owners in a data field in the entry for the cache line in a home node.
US08271728B2
A spiral cache memory provides low access latency for frequently-accessed values by self-organizing to always move a requested value to a front-most storage tile of the spiral. If the spiral cache needs to eject a value to make space for a value moved to the front-most tile, space is made by ejecting a value from the cache to a backing store. A buffer along with flow control logic is used to prevent overflow of writes of ejected values to the generally slow backing store. The tiles in the spiral cache may be single storage locations or be organized as some form of cache memory such as direct-mapped or set-associative caches. Power consumption of the spiral cache can be reduced by dividing the cache into an active and inactive partition, which can be adjusted on a per-tile basis. Tile-generated or global power-down decisions can set the size of the partitions.
US08271716B2
Methods and apparatus are provided for simultaneously supporting multiple hosts with a single communication port; each host may host multiple functions. The input/output device comprises multiple buffers; each buffer stores packets for one host, but can be dynamically reallocated to a different host. Multiple buffers may simultaneously support the same host and all of its functions. After a packet is received and classified, it is distributed to buffer ingress managers. Within a set of ingress managers serving one buffer, each manager corresponds to one function of the buffer's corresponding host, and is programmed with criteria for identifying packets desired by that function. One copy of the packet is stored in a buffer if at least one of the buffer's ingress managers accepts it, along with control information for processing the packet upon egress from the buffer. Egress managers for each buffer extract packets and transfer them to destination host/functions.
US08271711B2
A method for a computer including a processor that is capable of counting invalidation of translation lookaside buffers and generating an interrupt at the occurrence of the invalidation, the invalidation being performed by an operating system upon switching between application programs, includes acquiring identification information of application programs from the operating system and storing the identification information as a first list; detecting an interrupt generated from the processor at the occurrence of switching from a first application program to a second application program; and when the interrupt is detected, acquiring the identification information of the first and second application programs from the operating system or the mechanism and comparing the acquired identification information with the first list to determine whether either of the first and second application programs is a program that has been created or disappeared.
US08271708B2
Method and device in which a data set that is relevant for a safety-critical process is processed by at least two redundant processing channels according to identical laws for each safe protocol and the redundant safe protocols are assembled into a common safe protocol, in that each processing channels accesses a common buffer register. For each register location, a write authorization is allocated only once such that the common safe protocol is assembled proportionally by writing different portions of the corresponding safe protocols. The contents of each register location of the buffer register is read before the transfer of the common safe protocol from the buffer register for verification of the safe protocol formed in common from each of the redundant processing channels. The safe protocol formed in common is released only as a reaction to a release for transmission by each redundant processing channel.
US08271705B2
A connector interface system for a communication device is disclosed. The interface includes a docking connector. The docking connector includes first make/last break contacts that minimize internal damage to the internal electronics. The docking connector also includes specific keying arrangement to prevent noncompliant connectors from being plugged in, and thereby minimizes potential damage to the multi-communication device. The connector interface system also includes a remote connector which provides for the ability to output audio, input audio, provides I/O serial protocol, and to provide an output video. Embodiments of the present invention allow for a standard headphone cable to be plugged in but also for special remote control cables, microphone cables, video cables could be utilized in such a system. The connector interface system also includes a serial protocol to control device features. These controls help a user sort and search for data more efficiently within the device.
US08271703B2
In an embodiment, a computer-implemented process comprises, in a computer peripheral device that is configured to be coupled to a computer system, creating and storing one or more user interface modifiers that are defined by the device and configured to be used by the computer system to modify rendering of a user interface in the computer system; and providing the device defined user interface modifiers to the computer system. In an embodiment, the device defined user interface modifiers comprise one or more priority values for one or more features of the device; each of the one or more priority values is associated with an identifier of one of the features; and each of the priority values indicates a relative importance of the associated feature in comparison to other features.
US08271689B2
The present invention provides a system and method for data transfer. The system may include a client having software adapted to display data; a storage; and client data. Further, the system may include a server having compressor data and information regarding data file types that have been partially compressed by the compressor data. In the system, the client may be operably coupled to the server for data and file transfer purposes.
US08271681B2
A communications system may include at least one destination server for hosting email message boxes, and communications devices for generating email messages each associated with a respective message box. A delivery server may have a plurality of queues and a controller. The controller may store the email messages in a first queue, and attempt to send the stored email messages to the destination server at a first sending rate. The controller may also move email messages stored in the first queue to a second queue based upon a delivery failure. Email messages may be sent from the second queue at a second sending rate less than the first sending rate. The controller may also move email messages from the second queue to the first queue having a common characteristic with a successfully delivered email message.
US08271675B2
A remote control apparatus and method are provided. The remote control apparatus includes a user interface (UI) server which transmits a UI having a multimedia data format, and a UI client which displays the UI, receives a user command and controls the UI server according to the received user command. The remote control method includes enabling a UI server to transmit a UI having a multimedia data format to a UI client, enabling the UI client to display the UI, and enabling the UI client to control the UI server by transmitting a user command received through the UI to the UI server.
US08271674B2
To achieve sophisticated adaptation mechanisms in a packet switched communication environment for service delivery, there is generated descriptor information on an application level. The descriptor information describes media stream control options and is provided to the packet switched communication environment prior to media streaming. Also, there is provided a method of controlling media streaming in a network apparatus operated in the communication environment using the descriptor information.
US08271671B1
A system and method are disclosed for implementing a modified form of User Datagram Protocol (UDP) multicast notification system in a client-server architecture that otherwise allows only client initiated messages. The method includes: receiving a registration message at a server from a client with a client IP address in the registration message, wherein the registration message includes types of notifications desired to be received by the client, and wherein the server is a Download and Configuration Management (DCM) engine; adding the client IP address to a list in a registration message database; receiving a request for a port number by the client; and responding with the port number to the client.
US08271668B2
A method and system for using XML for both a protocol layer and application data are described. The method comprises the steps of initiating a connection by a client to a server to form a session, responding by said server to said client indicating that said connection has been successfully completed, submitting a request by said client to said server for service, responding by said server to said client by providing said service and terminating the connection by said client. A session is maintained and a plurality of requests for service by a client and a server responds to those requests by providing the requested service or an error message. The session is maintained until all requests made by a client have been serviced and the requests made by a client may be either synchronous or asynchronous. The system comprises a client and a server coupled to said client by a communication link.
US08271663B2
A method for registering multiple addresses of record comprises receiving a session initiation protocol register request, the session initiation protocol register request comprising a unique identifier of a session initiation protocol endpoint and a contact address for the session initiation protocol endpoint. The method proceeds by retrieving one or more addresses of record associated with the unique identifier of the session initiation protocol endpoint. The method further comprises associating each of the one or more addresses of record with the contact address for the session initiation protocol endpoint.
US08271659B2
This disclosure describes, generally, methods and systems for managing connections within a connection pool. The method includes initializing a plurality of connections. The plurality of connections are configured to pierce a firewall. The method further includes placing the plurality of connections in a connection pool, and storing creation times for each of the plurality of connections. The method then determines the firewall's connection teardown time period and, based at least in part on the firewall's connection teardown time period, setting the connection pool's connection teardown time period to be at least less than the firewall's connection teardown time period.
US08271653B2
To manage and communicate with virtual machines in an external cloud regardless of the cloud management scheme of clouds, the cloud management system can utilize an abstraction library. The abstraction library can be configured to abstract out the differences between different cloud management schemes utilized by the cloud management systems and an independent cloud management system of the external cloud.
US08271650B2
Aspects relate to categorizing requests for online resources as originating from spiders or not. Such resources are associated with respective contacts, and if a non-spider requests a resource, then a contact associated with that resource can be notified. One example method for determining whether to notify a user associated with a network resource includes identifying, via a processor, an entity making a request for a resource associated with a network address, wherein the entity has extracted the network address from a machine-readable code. The method then includes serving the resource to the entity in response to the request. The method then includes determining if request is not abusive, and only if the request is not abusive sending a notification to a user associated with the resource that the resource has been accessed.
US08271647B2
A method and system of an embodiment may include identifying a power source used by a network element, determining a carbon footprint of a unit of power usage from the power source, identifying one or more components associated with the network element used for a network operation performed by the network element, determining the power usage of the one or more identified components during the process, and calculating the carbon footprint of the process performed by the network element.
US08271643B2
The invention provides a method for preparing a discrete event simulation model of a production network including a client and a plurality of servers on a plurality of network tiers connected by a network comprising the steps of executing a business function from the client on the production network, gathering resource data from the plurality of servers, normalizing the resource data, calculating a consumption of resources used by the plurality of servers, estimating a transaction cost associated with the consumption of resources and building a discrete event simulation model from the transaction cost.
US08271639B2
The present invention includes a computing system for discovering a physical location of a physical server device in a datacenter. The computing system obtains at least one physical property of the physical server device pertaining to the physical location of the physical server device. The computing system acquires at least one logical property of the physical server device pertaining to a logical server name of the physical server device. The computing system correlates the at least one physical property and the at least one logical property. Thereby, the computing system matches the logical server name to the physical location.
US08271637B2
The invention facilitates remote management of a computer via a network. Remote computer management in which communication between a managed computer and a remote computer management server is initiated by the managed computer is implemented so that the presence of a proxy server at the site at which the managed computer is located can be detected, and communication from the managed computer to the remote computer management server is routed to a communication port assigned for communication with the proxy server, with instructions to then send the communication to the remote computer management server.
US08271635B2
A correlation data structure that correlates each address of a set of addresses to a corresponding state of multiple possible states. The correlation is maintained by correlating entire groups of addresses to a corresponding group-level state. If all of the addresses in a corresponding group of addresses have the same address-level state, then the group-level state at the root-tier state reflects that. Thus, if an address is accessed that is within that group, no further inquiry is needed. The system concludes the address-level state of the address from the group-level state of the group in which the address resides. If there is a mix in the address-level states amongst the addresses in the corresponding group, then the group level-state at the root-tier correlation may indicate that as well. Thus, further inquiry may be made to identify the address-level state of the address.
US08271630B2
Methods and systems are provided for remotely deploying computer programs. Remote deployment is implemented by acquiring available resource information and related network resource information of a client in response to a request for remotely deploying a plurality of computer programs for the client; determining a deployment policy based on the available resource information and the related network resource information of the client; and remotely deploying transmission and installation of the plurality of computer programs based on the deployment policy.
US08271624B2
A method for configuring a network device including an optical sensor includes activating the optical sensor of the network device to generate data representing an image in view thereof, and analyzing the data from the optical sensor to determine image information represented by the image. A network address is automatically assigned to the network device based on the image information represented by the image in view of the optical sensor. Related methods, systems, and apparatus are also discussed.
US08271612B2
A system, method, and computer program product for providing on-demand storage capacity on a remote storage server to a customer is provided. A virtual array site code is received. The remote storage server is virtually connected to a local storage server of the customer in response to receiving the virtual array site code. A virtual array site object is created on the local storage server corresponding to an array site object on the remote storage server.
US08271609B2
Techniques for dynamic service invocation and dynamic service adaptation in the context of a service oriented application. In one set of embodiments, a plurality of mediator services are introduced between the application and a plurality of actual services accessed by the application. The plurality of mediator services are configured to expose a common, abstract operation. At application runtime, the application determines, via a rules engine, a selection of a mediator service, and invokes the abstract operation by sending an invocation message to the selected mediator service. The selected mediator service transforms (i.e., adapts) the message into a format appropriate for invoking an actual operation exposed by an actual service associated with the selected mediator service. The selected mediator service then invokes the actual operation by sending the transformed message to the actual service.
US08271606B2
A network-based storage system comprises one or more block-level storage servers that connect to, and provide disk storage for, one or more host computers. In one embodiment, the system is capable of subdividing the storage space of an array of disk drives into multiple storage partitions, and allocating the partitions to host computers on a network. A storage partition allocated to a particular host computer may appear as local disk drive storage to user-level processes running on the host computer.
US08271605B2
An architecture and method for managing at least two distinct machines (or objects) in which resources are shared as a single entity (or object) in an agent-based system. The agent-based system comprising a controller, a local agent coupled to the controller, and at least one clustered machine. The at least one clustered machine includes at least two individual agents, the at least two individual agents sharing at least one shared resource/service. The system also includes a virtual non-persistent connection for coupling the at least two individual agents to the local agent. The at least one shared resource/service is accessed by the local agent through the virtual non-persistent connection using a virtual IP address to enable the at least two individual agents of the at least one clustered machine to be represented as a single object.
US08271604B2
A mechanism for initializing shared memories for sharing endpoints across a plurality of root complexes is provided. A multi-root PCIe manager (MR-PCIM) initializes the shared memory between root complexes and endpoints by discovering the PCIe switch fabric by traversing all the links accessible through the interconnected switches of the PCIe switch fabric. As the links are traversed, the MR-PCIM compares information obtained for each of the root complexes and endpoints to determine which endpoints and root complexes reside on the same blade. A virtual PCIe tree data structure is then generated that ties the endpoints available on the PCIe switch fabric to each root complex. The MR-PCIM, or a single-root PCIe manager (SR-PCIM), may then assign each endpoint and root complex a base and limit within the PCIe memory address space the endpoint belongs to.
US08271600B2
An automated agent, such as an instant message robot, is be used to facilitate introduction of a chat participant to a small group of other chat participants in a chat room. To do so, for example, a BOT may present a chat participant who desires to be introduced to a small group of chat participants in a chat room with a series of multiple-choice questions, identify a subset of chat participants based on responses to the multiple-choice questions, and provide introductions among the chat participants in the subset to facilitate conversation therebetween. For example, the introductions provided by the BOT may indicate areas of mutual interest among chat participants in the subset, similar responses to one or more multiple-choice questions, and/or diverse responses to one or more multiple-choice questions.
US08271596B1
The invention provides systems, mechanisms and techniques for controlling transmission of outbound messages, such as e-mail or other types of messages, onto a computer network from an originator computer system. Connection equipment can authenticate and authorize the connection for the computer user and can capture and map originator network address information assigned to the originator computer system. A quota server can then determine if the message count exceeds the message limit for the originator identity associated with the outbound message Embodiments of the invention control message transmission from a sending or origination point prior to the messages being transmitted on the computer network, resources of a computer network are conserved and these embodiments prevent computer users from transmitting large amounts of outbound messages in excess of the message limits.
US08271595B2
Sharing data within an instant messaging session is described. A user participating in an instant messaging session may request a data access key. The key, which provides access to data associated with the user, may then be transmitted via the instant messaging session to one or more other participants in the instant messaging session. The other instant messaging session participants can then use the key to access, via the instant messaging session, the data associated with the user. Users may be granted various levels of access to another user's data.
US08271585B2
A contact identification system provides a network of members with each member of a network having a relationship with one or more other members of the network. The contact identification system identifies relationship paths between a first member of a first network and a second member of a second network by traversing relationships to identify relationship paths that include a common member that is common to both the first network and the second network. The contact identification system generates an intermediary score for each identified relationship path to indicate whether the identified relationship path includes an intermediary who can effect a successful introduction between the first member and the second member. The contact identification system then identifies as potential intermediaries the common members based on generated intermediary scores.
US08271583B2
Content is inserted into conversations hosted on a takeoff site using creatives that provide lures and links to other material that users engaged in the conversation might find helpful and relevant. Such insertions are made in a contextually meaningful fashion through the use of a matching and decision process that determines best candidate creatives and an appropriate time and place for their insertion into the conversation.
US08271581B2
A system and method is provided for enabling wireless access to a computer network via communication between a remote (client) wireless device and a wireless device physically linked to the computer network. A bank of one or more wireless gateway devices may be cradled and connected to a network server. The wireless gateway devices may then act as a node on the wireless network, and remote wireless devices may send and receive messages to and from the wireless gateway devices using PIN-to-PIN messaging. The wireless gateway devices, when cradled, may communicate with any attached server or other network equipment, and may therefore act as a wireless gateway to the server or other network equipment.
US08271580B2
A mobile communication network system and server apparatus enabling the time for a mobile terminal apparatus to acquire content to be sufficiently reduced. In a mobile communication network system provided with a cellular telephone 10 having the browser function, and a mobile communication center 11 that manages mobile communication in the cellular telephone 10 via a mobile communication network 13, upon receiving a request for Web access from the cellular telephone 10, the mobile communication center 11 determines whether the request meets a predetermined condition, and when the request meets the predetermined condition, executes pipeline processing for enabling HTTP requests from the cellular telephone 10 to be continuously received.
US08271574B1
A content sharing and collaborative computing environment is provided. In an illustrative implementation, the content sharing and collaboration environment comprises a computing environment capable of cooperating with at least one computing application operating on a cooperating computing environment, and a content sharing computing application residing on the computing environment alone to provide access to one or more cooperating computing environments to content for sharing.
US08271572B2
A method for generating partial sums from at least four multiple-digit sequences in a computing device includes partitioning the multiple-digit sequences into at least a first set of multiple-digit sequences and a second set of multiple-digit sequences. The method also includes generating at least one auxiliary set of multiple-digit sequences. The auxiliary set includes digits copied from respective digit positions of multiple-digit sequences in the first and second sets. The method further includes replacing the copied digits in the first and second sets by zeros to obtain a first altered set and a second altered set, respectively, of multiple-digit sequences each comprising multiple segments separated by the replaced zeros. The method also includes generating at least a first partial sum by adding the multiple-digit sequences in at least one auxiliary set and generating at least a second and third partial sums by adding the multiple-digit sequences in the first altered set and second altered set, respectively.
US08271567B2
A method and system for compressing coefficients of a digital filter is provided. In one approach, the method comprises providing a digital filter having a plurality of consecutive filter coefficients including a first filter coefficient, determining consecutive difference values between each of the consecutive filter coefficients, and storing the first filter coefficient and the consecutive difference values in a memory. The consecutive filter coefficients are generated by retrieving the first filter coefficient, and adding a first difference value to the first filter coefficient to generate a consecutive second filter coefficient. The first difference value corresponds to a difference between the first filter coefficient and the second filter coefficient. A consecutive next difference value is then added to the second filter coefficient to generate a consecutive next filter coefficient. The consecutive next difference value corresponds to a difference between the second filter coefficient and the consecutive next filter coefficient.
US08271562B2
A method to allocate memory, in response to application requests, for a compact data structure having location data and a trailer section is provided. The trailer section of the compact data structure is checked to determine an offset for listings and indices representing the location data. Upon determining the offset, the listings and indices are loaded into memory and responses to the application requests are generated by utilizing the listings and indices stored in the memory.
US08271559B2
Data migration is efficiently executed with optional timing. A file server outputs an instruction to a CPU of a storage apparatus to migrate a file belonging to Tier 1 to Tier 2 when, based on policy information, a condition for migrating the file belonging to Tier 1 to Tier 2 is fulfilled. Based on the instruction from the file server, the CPU copies the data of migration target files in Tier 1 from a page to a Tier 1 virtual page, copies the data which has been copied to the Tier 1 virtual page 114 to a Tier 2 virtual page, copies the data which has been copied to the Tier 2 virtual page to any page in Tier 2, and then overwrites and releases the Tier 1 and Tier 2 virtual pages, and migrates files belonging to Tier 1 to Tier 2.
US08271552B2
The present invention relates to a multimedia data encoding/decoding method and apparatus. The encoding method includes generating a data area comprising a plurality of media data areas; generating a plurality of track areas corresponding to the plurality of media data areas, respectively; and generating a meta area comprising a first area comprising identification information on media data and a second area comprising position information on the media data. According to the present invention, the multimedia data encoding/decoding method and apparatus has an effect of being capable of constructing a slide show by only a small amount of multimedia data. Thus, a time taken to process and transmit the multimedia data can reduce.
US08271547B2
A method for proofing a prototype dynamic webpage version referencing first configuration data is disclosed. The prototype dynamic webpage can be derived from a live version referencing second configuration data and accessible via a live link. The method includes storing first configuration data in a configuration database also containing second configuration data, providing a prototype link to the prototype dynamic webpage version dissimilar from the live link; and returning, upon a prototype link request, the prototype dynamic webpage version, involving rendering the prototype dynamic webpage version based on the first configuration data without altering the live dynamic webpage version. Also disclosed is a dynamic webpage versioning system working off a configuration database and distinct versions of configuration data.
US08271542B1
The present invention provides an automated metadata producer, or “markup manager.” According to one aspect, the markup manager allows disparate resources to be made into useful objects by producing appropriate metadata and associating it with the original resources. In one example, a markup manager according to the invention first analyzes the original resources and outputs appropriate, descriptive metadata; then it creates a new document which includes both the metadata and an indicator to the original resource. The resource analysis and metadata production is accomplished by an algorithm in which first a “metadata schema” and a “perspective” (or facet) is selected (by the user or requesting program); then an automatic categorization step is taken where the appropriate metadata are found with respect to the selected perspective; then a transformation step is taken in which the autocategorized analyses are translated into the target metadata schema.
US08271541B2
The claimed subject matter provides a system and/or a method that facilitates creating a composite application. A model architecture component can model a business rule utilizing at least one node in a novel hierarchical structure. A run-time engine can automatically create a complex, long-running composite application based at least in part upon the hierarchical node structure such that representative process segments of the application are invoked by the business rule which, in turn, is invoked by internal, externally generated, asynchronous events.
US08271538B2
A database of data can be leveraged to automatically generate profiles for use in modeling. The data may be specific to one or more domains and/or general to multiple domains. A mapping scheme is established to map structure of the database to a structure of a profile. The mapping scheme is read and the database is read in accordance with the mapping scheme to automatically generate one or more profiles.
US08271531B2
An employee tracking system is disclosed, in which processing, accessing or both within the system is determined according to the hierarchical structure of the underlying organization. Each employee is associated with a node in the organization, and access to employee-related data is based upon the node associated with the requester and the node of the employee being checked, as well as the type of data being requested. Employees may clock into and out of work using mobile devices that interface with the employee tracking system host computer.
US08271529B2
An information group is disclosed for enabling user to retrieve and modify information and interact with other user. An information group is defined by three attributes as location, time span and topic. User has to meet requirement on an information group's location and time span attributes in order to interact with information stored inside information group and communicate with other users inside the same information group. Information group dynamically adjusts its location and life span attributes based on its interaction with user. When multiple information groups are available to a user, they are ranked based on their location attribute and user information and presented to user in the ranked order. Several applications enabled by our invention are disclosed, including but not limited to transportation sharing, connecting users that share a common interests, event signing up, or service or product promotion.
US08271524B2
A computationally implemented method includes, but is not limited to: identifying, in response to reception of one or more solicitations, one or more relevant reported aspects associated with one or more source users that are relevant to achieving one or more target outcomes, the identification of the one or more relevant reported aspects being based, at least in part, on relevancy of the one or more relevant reported aspects with respect to achieving the one or more target outcomes; and providing the one or more relevant reported aspects. In addition to the foregoing, other method aspects are described in the claims, drawings, and text forming a part of the present disclosure.
US08271521B2
Methods and systems for searching through databases of items are described. In some cases, the system presents a display of searched items. The system may present a customizable interface of displayed search results, where a range of values displayed may be customizable. Further, the displayed attributes of searched items may be customizable. Other search and display functions are also disclosed.
US08271512B2
In an embodiment, a computer system comprises one or more content file servers having recorded thereon a plurality of digital content material items, and a plurality of digital graphical image files comprising graphical images associated with the content material items; wherein each of content material items comprises one or more data files of digitized electronic printed, audio, or video content material; one or more navigation page servers each comprising: one or more storage devices having recorded thereon a plurality of navigation page templates; a database comprising stored descriptive information about the content material items, including hierarchical and other relationships both between different content material items and between different subcomponents of content material items; logic encoded on the one or more storage devices and when executed operable to perform: receiving a request to view a particular navigation page, comprising a dynamically-generated electronic document; selecting one of the navigation page templates based on the request; creating and sending to the database, one or more queries for the descriptive information relating to the particular navigation page; receiving one or more results to the queries; generating, based on the one or more results, a particular navigation page comprising descriptive information about one or more of the content material items, portions thereof, or abstract collections thereof; a plurality of links to other such navigation pages; and zero or more links to particular content material items or portions thereof; sending only the particular navigation page to a client computer.
US08271509B2
Embodiments of the invention provide systems, methods, and computer program products for providing improved customer service by presenting a customer with an invitation to chat with a customer service associate that is skilled in a subject matter of interest to the customer and is currently available to chat with the customer. For example, in one embodiment, a system is provided having a communication interface configured to receive a search query from a consumer, such as an Internet search query entered into a search field of a web page. The system further comprises a processor operatively coupled to the communication interface and configured to compare information about the search query to one or more rules stored in a memory to determine whether a customer service associate skilled in an area related to the subject matter of the search query is currently available to chat with the consumer over, for example, the Internet.
US08271503B2
Methods and apparatus, including computer program products, for identifying matches between disparate schemas calculates a degree of similarity between elements of two schemas using each of multiple matching processes. The calculated degrees of similarity are combined using a first weighting vector to produce first combined degrees of similarity. The first weighting vector includes multiple weighting coefficients and each weighting coefficient corresponds to one of the matching processes. The weighting coefficients are tuned using information relating to a predicted degree of matching accuracy associated with the first weighting vector.
US08271500B2
Technologies are described herein for constructing a minimal perfect hash function. According to embodiments, a hash table is constructed by double hashing each of the strings in a set of strings. A computed double hash value is utilized to identify an empty location in the hash table for each string. A signature for each string is stored in the empty location of the hash table identified for the string. In order to obtain a minimal perfect hash value for an input string, the input string is iteratively double hashed until a location is identified in the hash table that contains a signature corresponding to the input string. The minimal perfect hash value is an integer value identifying the location in the hash table that contains the signature corresponding to the input string.
US08271495B1
A plurality of content items are retrieved from multiple network sites. Content from each content item is programmatically analyzed in order to associate that content item with one or more categories. The one or more categories may be part of a larger set of predefined categories. A network page is assigned to one or more corresponding categories in the set of predefined categories. At least some content is provided on the network page using one or more content items that were associated with the one or more categories assigned to that network page.
US08271494B2
Methods and devices for splitting instructions into clusters based on significant offset gaps in top-down processing steps are provided. The methods and devices allow that comments on instruction clusters can be generated automatically or can be edited manually. The comments can be shared among users for the achievement of portability. Significant clusters can be recognized as hotspots based on predetermined metrics.
US08271492B2
To reduce the burden of processing for completing event cause information, which is carried out when a management target node apparatus is added, removed or changed.A management computer determines whether or not partial change to add, delete or change part of information related to an event related to an added, removed or changed node apparatus can be performed or not on the event cause information. The management computer adds, deletes or changes the part of information with respect to the event cause information, when the result of the determination is affirmative.
US08271486B2
A method comprises receiving a search request to search a bookmark package database storing bookmarks and tag information, e.g., user-generated keywords; using the search request to search the tag information in the bookmark package database to locate relevant bookmarks and to generate search results; and presenting the search results to a user. The search results may identify user-specific relevant bookmarks, and/or relevant bookmarks regardless of the creator. The method may include determining related terms and enabling selection of the related terms to initiate additional searching. The method may include generating a relevance value based on keyword order, meta-information type, number of bookmarks to a given content item, number of hits on a given bookmark, time of last bookmarking to a given content item, and/or content analysis. Search result organization may be based on the relevance values. The bookmark package database may further store automatically generated and user-generated meta-information.
US08271481B2
A system and method are provided for enabling a user to search for documents that the user has previously viewed on its local machine. The system includes three main components: the desktop integration module, the index module, and the graphical user interface module. The desktop integration module is an application which monitors documents with which the user interacts for predetermined events, and obtains content data and metadata from the monitored documents. The index module indexes the content data and metadata received from the desktop integration module. The graphical user interface module then permits a user to utilize the desktop integration module and index module by allowing a user to search for a document.
US08271471B1
A search system monitors the input of a search query by a user. Before the user finishes entering the search query, the search system identifies and sends a portion of the query as a partial query to the search engine. Based on the partial query, the search engine creates a set of predicted queries. This process may take into account prior queries submitted by a community of users, and may take into account a user profile. The predicted queries are to be sent back to the user for possible selection. The search system may also cache search results corresponding to one or more of the predicted queries in anticipation of the user selecting one of the predicted queries. The search engine may also return at least a portion of the search results corresponding to one or more of the predicted queries.
US08271470B2
A method and an apparatus that search for font data associated with an electronic document in a system in response to a font request are described. A font search is automatically activated when a requested font is determined not yet registered in a system. As a result of the font search, a requested font may be registered into a system. If a font search cannot locate a requested font in local storages and remote systems, a replacement for the requested font is selected from registered fonts. A replacement font may be one of the registered fonts most similar to the requested font according to a similarity measurement based on font attributes.
US08271468B1
A method and system is provided for maintaining customer data in a data store system utilizing a scalable partitioning framework. More specifically, the data store of a customer service system is partitioned (divided) into multiple partitions by a partitionable key of customer data so that each partition owns a subset of the customer data. By maintaining several partitions that store a subset of the customer data exclusive to each other, blackout or brownout problems can be local to one partition and, thus, the availability for the entire system will be increased. Moreover, a set of partitionable keys, a minimal unit to be moved between partitions, is grouped and associated with a partition. By eliminating direct dependencies between the partitions and the partitionable keys, the system can have great flexibility with regard to migrating customer data between partitions and adding a new partition.
US08271462B2
An method for creating a index of the data blocks is applicable in data de-duplication procedure, includes loading an index file, the index file includes a plurality of location blocks, each location block includes a plurality of storage fields, and each storage field records a primary Hash value corresponding to the data block; performing a first Hash procedure on a primary Hash value of the data block and calculating a block number; performing a second Hash procedure on the primary Hash value in the same data block and calculating a field number; loading a location conflict list; comparing the field number with the field number in the location conflict list to search whether the same field number is stored in the location conflict list; writing the primary Hash value into the corresponding block number and the field number if the field number does not exist in the location conflict list.
US08271455B2
A system and method for storing replication requests for objects in a distributed storage system is provided. A plurality of replication requests for objects stored on storage devices in a distributed storage system is received. Respective row keys are generated for respective replication requests in the plurality of replication requests based on parameters of the respective replication requests. The respective row keys include respective globally-determined priorities for the respective replication requests that facilitate sorting of the respective replication requests by priority. The respective replication requests are stored in respective records of a distributed database using the respective row keys, wherein the respective records of the distributed database are distributed across a plurality of nodes of the distributed database.
US08271454B2
The setting up of a circular log implementation to be able to detect amnesia in a circular log, and to the determination of whether or not amnesia has occurred in such a circular log. Upon detecting a checkpoint trigger, information is preserved sufficient to detect whether or not the removed records ever existed in the circular log. If a request for information from a record were subsequently to be received by the circular log implementation, and if the record was not actually in the circular log, the preserved information could then be consulted to see if it indicates that the record had once existed in the circular log. If the information indicates that the record had once existed in the circular log, then amnesia has not occurred. If the information does not indicate that the record had once existed in the circular log, then amnesia has occurred. Accordingly, amnesia detection is made possible even in a complicated circular log implementation.
US08271452B2
A database archiving method includes storing a plurality of record fields, wherein each of the plurality of record fields is a field of a record of the database, and storing in a first database archive an index that includes at least one record entry, wherein each of the at least one record entry references at least one record field of the database. The plurality of record fields is stored independently of the first database archive, and each field included in more than one record of any single table of the database is stored for the more than one record as a single record field referenced by a plurality of record entries, each of the plurality of record entries corresponding to a different one of the more than one record.
US08271449B2
Methods, devices, and systems that aggregate and retrieve network sensor data. In one approach, an exemplary method includes receiving a plurality of instances of correlated sensor data from a plurality of remote data storages, each instance of sensor data respectively correlating to an occurrence. In another approach, an exemplary method includes receiving from an input-selector an input selection corresponding to a target-occurrence having at least one representative feature, and searching stored sensor data for sensor data correlating to the target-occurrence.
US08271447B1
In one aspect, a method includes providing data protection to data in a first volume at a first data protection appliance by storing a copy of the data in a second volume using a second data protection appliance, tracking changes between data locations in the first volume and the second volume using a delta marking stream (DMS) and receiving, at the first data protection appliance, metadata. The metadata is intended to be committed to the DMS. The method further includes mirroring the metadata at a third data protection appliance.
US08271446B2
The present invention relates to a system to implement a method of importing exporting data originating from a database by way of an XML file. The export method includes the steps of: selecting data from the database; requesting an export of the selected data; verifying that the selected data are not reserved in the database; constructing an export set comprising the selected data that are not reserved; reserving the selected data not reserved in the database; generating a data exchange file comprising the data of the export set, the data exchange file being constructed according to a data exchange file model, the file model describing types of data, links between the types of data, existing in the database; and transferring the exchange file generated to the second computer.
US08271445B2
Methods and apparatuses for storing, organizing and searching files stored in a storage device. Backup files may be stored in snapshot-dependent and/or snapshot-independent paths. The backup files may be stored with additional attributes that can be used for searching and/or indexing purposes.
US08271441B1
A method, system, and program product for use in a data replication environment, the data replication environment comprising a plurality of data protection appliances, each data protection appliance of the plurality of data protection appliances comprising a journal, the method comprising creating a virtual consistency group comprising a virtual journal; wherein the virtual consistency group is configured to replicate a production volume, dividing the virtual consistency group into segments; wherein each segment corresponds to a portion of the production volume and a portion of the virtual journal, and assigning each data protection appliance of the plurality of data protection appliances a segment of the virtual consistency group.
US08271438B2
Before starting asynchronous remote copy in the multihop method (asynchronous remote copy from the first to the second storage apparatus to the third storage apparatus), a first and a second initial copy are performed. The first initial copy is a copy for making the contents of the first data volume in the first storage apparatus and the contents of the second data volume in the second storage apparatus consistent and the second initial copy is a copy for making the contents of the second data volume and the contents of the third data volume in the third storage apparatus consistent. In the second initial copy, the second storage apparatus creates a journal including the update number and the data in the second data volume, and the journal is transferred from the second storage apparatus to the third storage apparatus. The created update number is acquired from the first storage apparatus.
US08271433B2
An approach is provided for automatic controlled value expansion of information. A value expansion controller detects a request at a device to perform an information operation on a set of data elements of an information space, wherein the request identifies the set by a name and the information operation applies to each data element within the set. The value expansion controller intercepts the request based on the detection and determines the location of the data elements within a communication network based on the name. The value expansion controller retrieves the data elements from the location and populates an expansion table with the retrieved data elements, wherein the expansion table is correlated to the set. The value expansion controller performs the information operation on each data element in the expansion table and causes transmission of one or more results of the information operation to the device.
US08271431B1
Described is a method and system for retrieving and serving the regulatory history of a property. An identification of data sources for permits and approvals is stored in a computer system. Property identifiers from the data sources are stored in the computer system. The system identifies the types of permit and approval data available from each of the data sources for each of the property identifiers. A determination can be made of the completeness of the regulatory history available for each property associated with each of said property identifiers. The system receives a request for the regulatory history of at least one of the properties associated with the property identifiers. A web page is populated with a list of the regulatory history for the property.
US08271430B2
A system is described that includes a data warehouse and a platform independent data warehouse load application operable to run on the system. The load application includes a sequencing unit configured to utilize timestamp data from incoming data to be stored in the data warehouse and a relational algebra of set operators to identify and sequence net changes between the incoming data and data previously stored within the data warehouse. The load application is configured to non-intrusively load the identified and sequenced net changes into the data warehouse.
US08271429B2
A system and method for collecting and processing data over a communications network. A data mining marshaller module associates each plugin to a particular data source and manages the plugin to periodically retrieve unstructured data from the data source based on a plurality of data items to be monitored on behalf of a plurality of users. The plugins convert unstructured data received from the data sources to structured data and the data marshaller module stores the structured data in a database. This enables the system and method to aggregate and display the structured data in multiple graphical representations according to the user's preference.
US08271424B2
A method of preserving privacy and confidentiality in a system where information is associated with an existing web page having an address. The method includes receiving a store command from a first user system, the store command including at least a database key and information to be associated with the web page, wherein the database key was created by performing a cryptographic hash function on the address of the web page; storing the information at a location in a storage database; associating the location with the database key; receiving a retrieve command from a second user system, the retrieve command including the database key calculated by the second user system; retrieving stored information from one or more locations in the database associated with the database key; and transmitting the stored information to the second user system.
US08271414B2
Methods, systems and apparatus for characterizing networks are presented. For example, a method of characterizing a network represented by a plurality of nodes and a plurality of edges is provided. The method may be implemented on a processor device and includes calculating, for example, by the processor device, a passthrough count of at least a portion of the network. The passthrough count includes a count of a number of passthroughs in the at least a portion of the network. A passthrough includes one of the plurality of nodes, a directed edge of the plurality of edges coupled to the one of the plurality of nodes, and another edge of the plurality of edges coupled to the one of the plurality of nodes. At most one of the directed edge and the other edge is directed towards the one of the plurality of nodes. At most one of the directed edge and the other edge is directed away from the one of the plurality of nodes.
US08271400B2
A hardware pay-per-use system and corresponding method allow computer system operators to tailor their hardware utilization to more closely match changing customer demands. The hardware pay-per-use system includes one or more hardware products and a metering mechanism coupled to at least one of the hardware products. The metering mechanism includes a hardware device separate from the hardware products. The metering mechanism acquires metrics data from the hardware products, the metrics data related to an operation at the hardware products. The metering mechanism determines data to report on the operation of the hardware products. A usage repository coupled to the metering mechanism receives the determined data and generates usage reports related to the operation of the hardware products.
US08271394B1
Exemplary embodiment of the present invention would provide systems, including Internet-based systems, and computer-implemented methods, for providing online Buyers and Sellers who physically transact an exchange of an item at a local meeting place, indicia of confirmation of the exchange on which to base a background online payment. In particular, exemplary embodiments of the present invention would provide a way for Buyers and/or Sellers to input an identifier for online authentication to confirm that a physical exchange of an item sold had been transacted and that would accordingly provide an online system with a basis to charge the relevant Buyer's account for a sale amount and pay the Seller for the item sold.
US08271390B2
A method, device, and system including a digital rights management (DRM) license manager to protect software applications from unauthorized use. The DRM license manager system binds essential application data to a software license. This binding is achieved by adding an encryption key to a software license and encrypting the application data with that key. The essential application data is any kind of data which is required for proper operation of the program, such as media files, game levels or state tables. The DRM license manager system performs a check and decrypt operation of the essential application data during program run time. It requires that the license is available on the system. It also ensures that the decryption operation can only take place if the conditions defined in the license are met.
US08271388B2
An image commercial transactions system and method, an image transfersystem and method, an image distribution system and method, and a display device and method are disclosed. A reception dealer accepts the transfer of an image recorded on a recording medium in a predetermined format with a handling condition intrinsic to the image, and transfers the image with the handling condition, and an advertisement, in digital data format, and a charge accounting dealer effects an electronic charge accounting transaction for the transfer of data of the image with the handling condition and the advertisement. Accordingly, a forwarding request user is helpful in making public the advertisement by having the data of the advertisement along with the data of the image forwarded, instead of the reception dealer, whereby a transfer fee for the data of image can be made lower. Consequently, it is possible to enhance the usability for the transfer significantly.
US08271383B2
A service soft disconnection may be provided. First, a first user interface screen may be provided: i) in response to determining that a payment has not been received for a service after a date for which an account holder responsible for the service has been sent a disconnection notice; and ii) in response to receiving a user initiated request for the service. Next, identification data may be received in response to the provided first user interface screen. Then the identification data may be determined to be valid. In response to determining that the identification data is valid, a second user interface screen may be provided. Payment data may then be received in response to the provided second user interface screen. Consequently, the payment data may be determined to be valid and the service may be reinstated in response to determining that the payment data is valid.
US08271379B1
The present invention allows an applicant to apply for an account based service via a network connection. When an applicant applies for the account based service, he or she is supplied with features that enhance the value of the account based service. The applicant may select from the features provided, determine how this selection may affect the value of the account based service in relation to its cost and determine if he or she wishes to receive the account based service with the added features. Examples of account based services include credit cards, insurance accounts and telecommunications accounts.
US08271370B2
A process for the analysis and selection of financial investments based on a comparative analysis of performance and diversification. Large data sets can be manipulated in a manner that is simple to understand and convenient to use. Historical performance data for investments can be analyzed in respect of every possible investment period using any pre-existing or personally defined quantitative measurement algorithm. The user can apply his or her personal weightings to the various performance measurements based on a combination of attribute and time period to construct a customized scoring process, based on which a comparative ranking of the investments can be created. Further, a complete universe of investments can be segmented into peer groups based on one of a number of similarity/dissimilarity criteria from which the user may choose.
US08271369B2
An approach for forecasting and modeling is provided. A software system (i.e., the Forecast and Modeling system) supports enterprise data collection to build large scale simulation models, which can be linked into a single up-to-date model of planned corporate activity and options. The Forecast and Modeling system advantageously provides re-usable financial components, and enables auditing and analysis of historical plans and beliefs.
US08271368B2
A method and system for electronically clearing financial instruments through a clearing system in which a per item cost of clearing instruments varies with the time of day. Files of items containing data scanned from financial instruments including an amount of each instrument may be received by a control system that may apply a rule to sort the items by determining whether the item be stored or forwarded for clearing. The rule may include a step of determining whether an amount of the instrument exceeds a predetermined value or meets a certain criteria, and if so, forwarding the instrument for clearing without storage. If the amount of the instrument does not exceed the first predetermined value or meet the criteria, the system may store the item for forwarding at a later time when the per item fee for clearing is lower.
US08271365B2
A method and system provides arrangements creating a relationship between a real-world entity and a virtual world environment. A virtual world patron can participate in various virtual world activities and transactions. Feedback may be provided and records kept regarding the virtual world activities and transactions. The virtual world patron may be a possible recipient of a real-world consequence or benefit based on a virtual world occurrence. In some instances confirmation of an awarded real-world benefit may be provided via a communication interconnection. Real-world profile data may be used in connection with promotional activities in a virtual world environment.
US08271362B2
A method of operating a centralized web services computer system includes providing a standard interface for financial institutions (FIs) and for funds transfer service providers that participate in a remittance system. The centralized web services computer system may also provide services such as integrating its operations into online banking or customer service representative web environments provided by the FIs. The centralized web services computer system may also provide services related to routing messages, looking up territory-related information, checking user information against blacklists, issuing instructions to FIs to debit or credit user accounts, and/or generating reports.
US08271361B2
Particular embodiments provide for a user configurable purchase order template. A list of attributes for a purchase order template may be created and output to a user. The user may then select which attributes in the list are internal attributes or external attributes. After the purchase order document has been approved by the supplier and the purchaser, changes may be necessary. When a change is desired, the system determines if the changed attribute is an external attribute or an internal attribute. If the changed attribute is an external attribute, the external entity may be contacted for approving the change. After the external entity has approved the change, the purchase order may be amended. If the changed attribute is an internal attribute, the attribute may be changed without contacting the external entity. If the change is an internal change, then the purchase order may not be amended, but an internal change relating to the purchase order may be made.
US08271360B1
A system and method for automatic approval of direct deposit payroll limit increases includes a computing system implemented process for automatic approval of direct deposit payroll limit increases whereby a payroll management system provider establishes qualification criteria for automatic approval of direct deposit payroll increases. Once the qualification criteria are defined, the qualification criteria are stored. Then, when a customer business requests a direct deposit payroll that exceeds at least one of the customer's current direct deposit payroll limits, the process for automatic approval of direct deposit payroll limit increases analyzes the requested direct deposit payroll data and/or customer history data and compares this data with the qualification criteria. If the present direct deposit payroll funds request meets the qualification criteria, the direct deposit payroll limit for the customer business is automatically increased and the direct deposit payroll funds request is approved without further action/input from the customer business.
US08271344B1
The method for conducting a purchase involves obtaining a target item specification for purchasing a target item, wherein the target item specification comprises a target item description, a target purchase date, and a target price, obtaining, using a central processing unit (CPU), candidate item information related to a candidate item found on a merchant site consistent with the target item specification, wherein the candidate item information comprises a candidate item description and a candidate item price, populating a categorized entry in a user budget using the candidate item price and the target purchase date, wherein the candidate item price is no more than the target price, updating, using the CPU, the budget based on user transactions, generating a result by analyzing, using the CPU, the user budget with respect to the categorized entry, and submitting the result to a user for formulating a decision regarding whether to purchase the candidate item.
US08271332B2
A system and method facilitating the management of current and prospective customers and customer information is provided. The invention includes an aggregation system adapted to provide management and generation of current and prospective customers. The invention further provides management of current and prospective customer information. Additionally, the aggregation system provides for generating advertisements based at least in part upon market information. Finally, the present invention also includes a printstream aggregation method facilitating the printing of print orders.
US08271327B2
A method by which potential buyers are identified includes receiving a description of an item a potential buyer intends to purchase within a particular time, determining a reward for the potential buyer based on intent data, providing the reward to the potential buyer and applying a penalty to a financial account of the potential buyer if the potential buyer does not purchase the item within the particular time period. The system includes a controller coupled to at least one input device with the controller operable to compute a reward offer. The controller includes circuitry, or software, configured to compute and apply a penalty if the potential buyer does not purchase the item within the particular time period.
US08271325B2
A predicted performance metric of a candidate advertisement in an advertising slot can be received and compared to a baseline predicted performance metric for the candidate advertisement. A target bid associated with the candidate advertisement can be adjusted based upon the comparison, and the adjusted bid can be submitted to an auction for the advertising slot.
US08271323B2
Planning a publication includes receiving information about an event, accessing a database of profiles that relate in general to content usage, and using a search engine to match the profiles with the event information to estimate parameters for using content for the event. The publication is planned according to the estimated usage parameters.
US08271314B2
The invention consists of a method of real-time tracking of production schedules and timetables for one or more homebuilding developments, comprising: a) assigning one or more mobile devices to one or more users associated with projects and lots, the mobile devices providing access to project and lot information, including: lots for completion for each project, tasks for completion for each lot, assignment of suppliers and material to specific tasks, projected and actual times for completion of tasks, contact information for suppliers and invoicing information for payment of purchase orders upon task completion; and each mobile device capable of operating independently without a continuous connection to a central system; b) tracking performance of production tasks for each project via real-time monitoring by the users; c) reporting task performance data to a central ERP system and comparing real-time performance of the production tasks to scheduled timetables for the production tasks; d) enabling modification and updating of scheduled timetables for production tasks based on performance data for the production tasks and additional real-time input from the individuals; e) coordinating compensation for production activities with the performance data, including enabling payment for completed tasks from the mobile devices via purchase orders; f) synchronizing, on a sequential basis, updates to scheduled timetables and other information between the mobile devices and the ERP system.
US08271310B2
The claimed subject matter relates to an architecture that can characterize an item involved in a consumer transaction and/or a behavior of a consumer as a virtual financial instrument. The architecture can monitor the future performance of the virtual instrument in order to identify trendspotters as well as trend followers in a particular market domain.
US08271306B2
A method for marketing, underwriting, and providing coverage for damages that are associated with insured loss events but that are not covered by traditional insurance policies. This method permits the marketing of loss expense coverage, underwriting, and claim adjustment processes of insurance to be performed by reference to the loss payments that are made by a specified insurance policy. By referencing insured loss payments, which both a buyer and a seller understand, this method provides an easy way to communicate and transact something that is otherwise difficult or impossible to define or measure.
US08271302B2
Computer systems that, in various embodiments, are configured for: (A) storing policy information within the system's memory, the policy information indicating that a particular individual holds a policy that provides the individual with the option to, upon the occurrence of a qualifying event, receive a loan at a below-market rate (e.g., 0%); (B) receiving data indicating that the qualifying event has occurred; and (C) at least partially in response to receiving the data indicating that the qualifying event has occurred, facilitating the provision of the loan to the particular individual at the below-market rate. The qualifying event may be, for example: (A) the death of a specified individual (e.g., the policy holder); (B) the disability of the specified individual; (C) the involuntary unemployment of the specified individual; (D) the birth of the specified individual's child; or (E) the adoption of a child by the specified individual.
US08271299B2
An insurance method comprising a return-of-premium (ROP) benefit is disclosed. The ROP benefit is applied to property and casualty insurance and related insurance forms. The ROP benefit provides a return of all premiums after a set period of insurance, less the amount of any claims made by the insured. The policy may then be rolled over to again provide a ROP benefit to the policyholder. Fractional ROP benefit returns may be made on the policy after a minimum set period less than the full term of the policy. The ROP benefit may be provided by means of a rider to a standard property or casualty policy.
US08271281B2
Techniques for assessing pronunciation abilities of a user are provided. The techniques include recording a sentence spoken by a user, performing a classification of the spoken sentence, wherein the classification is performed with respect to at least one N-ordered class, and wherein the spoken sentence is represented by a set of at least one acoustic feature extracted from the spoken sentence, and determining a score based on the classification, wherein the score is used to determine an optimal set of at least one question to assess pronunciation ability of the user without human intervention.
US08271267B2
Provided are a scalable wide-band speech coding/decoding apparatus, method, and medium. An input wide-band speech input signal is first divided into a low-band signal and a high-band signal. The divided low-band signal is then coded using a code excited linear prediction (CELP) method. The divided high-band signal is coded using a harmonic method. A signal representing a difference between a synthetic signal obtained from the low-band and the high band, and a signal input to the low-band and the high-band is then coded using a modified discrete cosine transform (MDCT) method. The coded signal is then multiplexed. The multiplexed signal is then output. Accordingly, high quality speech can be achieved for all layers.
US08271261B1
One embodiment of the present invention relates to electronic voting methods and systems that help simplify the management of institutional proxies. In one example, the methods and systems manage the process of meeting notifications, voting, tracking, mailing, reporting, record maintenance and/or vote disclosure rules enacted by the SEC. In one specific example, this may be done for thousands of publicly traded securities custodied at various banks, brokers and global custodians. In another example, a system (and corresponding method) may be provided for integrating, organizing and displaying (e.g., via a website) information in a language of preference for each user of the system. The information may comprise meeting, agenda and/or ballot information and the users of the system/method may be voting entities empowered to cast votes via the system.
US08271249B2
The present invention performs numerical simulation of surfactant flooding during enhanced oil recovery of a given hydrocarbon reservoir. The present invention utilizes an improved method for determining relative permeability while maintaining physical consistency when the phase behavior varies between different phase Types. This new relative permeability model maintains the physical consistency in the transition from Type II(−) to Type III to Type II(+) systems and vice versa.
US08271243B2
The invention provides a system and method for integrating petroleum system and geomechanical computer models for use in oil and gas exploration. In one embodiment, the invention provides a petroleum system model capable of analyzing data relating to a subterranean formation and calculating the geometry and geochemistry of each layer of the formation through geologic time. The present invention also provides a geomechanical model in communication with the petroleum system model such that information concerning each layer of the subterranean formation may be shared and cross-referenced as an iterative operation prior to the analysis of subsequent layers. At each step of the iterative operation, results are calculated, validated, and cross-referenced in order to produce improved reliability estimates of petroleum charge and mechanical seal integrity for the subterranean formation.
US08271239B2
Methods for generating realistic waveforms with controllable voltage noise and timing jitter in a computer-based simulation environment and the simulation of a subset of those waveforms with system elements along the signal path is disclosed. By deriving a generic, re-useable, parameterized Fourier series, time-domain clock and pseudo-random data signals are generated from a subset of their true harmonic components. Time-domain signal parameters including high, low, and common-mode voltage levels, transition slew-rates, transition timing, period and/or frequency, may be designated by the user, and the computer calculates the harmonic components that will combine through the inverse Fourier transform to provide the required time-domain characteristics. By computing the frequency content of the signal directly it is possible to simulate the interaction of the signal with various system blocks while remaining in the frequency domain, thereby reducing simulation time and memory requirements. By allowing the parameters of the signal model to vary on a cycle-to-cycle basis, signal characteristics such as voltage noise and timing jitter may be modeled with flexibility and precision down to the numerical limitations of the simulator.
US08271238B2
The present invention is directed to simulating evaporation of a droplet of a fluid, and may be embodied in a system, method or a computer-readable medium encoded with instructions for a processor to carry out such simulation. The present invention solves equations, which may represent an approximation of evaporation of the droplet on a domain whose size is varying over time. The boundaries of saturation regions are tracked and updated over time, and the equations are iteratively solved with the new boundaries of the saturation regions.
US08271231B2
A configuration method for a computer device comprises generating a load condition on at least one serial bus link using a plurality of differential voltage levels, determining a minimum voltage differential value for producing an eye compliance diagram at a receiver of the at least one serial bus link, and configuring a driver associated with the at least one serial bus link to drive an operational differential voltage level on the at least one serial bus link within a predetermined range of the minimum voltage differential.
US08271214B2
A differential protection system has a differential protection device at each end of a line section of an electrical power transmission line, such that it can selectively identify and safely disconnect even high-impedance faults on the monitored line section. The sensitivity of the system is improved by: detection of current vector measured values which indicate the current flowing in the line section by way of the differential protection devices at the ends of the line section during a learning phase; determination of a correction function from the current vector measured values, the correction function indicating a correction factor which is dependent on the amplitude of the current vector measured values of a selected differential protection device, the correction factor compensating for any amplitude difference and any phase difference between the current vector measured values of the differential protection devices; and adjustment of the differential protection system such that the current vector measured values detected after the learning phase by at least one of the differential protection devices are corrected using the correction function.
US08271212B2
A method includes transmitting wireless signals towards a material in a tank and receiving wireless signals reflected off the material. The method also includes calculating a phase velocity of the wireless signals reflected off the material and identifying a level of the material in the tank using the phase velocity. Calculating the phase velocity of the wireless signals could include identifying a plurality of linearly-spaced frequencies and performing linear interpolation using the data identifying the wireless signals to identify data points at the linearly-spaced frequencies. The identification of the data points at the linearly-spaced frequencies could represent the only interpolation operation performed during the calculation of the phase velocity and the identification of the level of the material. Moreover, a mismatch could exist between an inner diameter of a stillpipe through which the wireless signals are transmitted and a diameter of an antenna used to receive the wireless signals.
US08271210B2
An in-situ gas flow measurement controller measures the temperature and rate of pressure drop upstream from a flow control device (FCD). The controller samples the pressure and temperature data and applies the equivalent of a decimating filter to the data to produce filtered data at a slower sampling rate. The controller derives timestamps by counting ticks from the sampling clock of the A/D converter that is sampling the pressure at regular intervals to ensure the timestamps associated with the pressure samples are accurate and do not contain jitter that is associated with software clocks. The controller additionally normalizes the temperature reading to account for power supply fluctuations, filters out noise from the pressure and temperature readings, and excludes data during periods of instability. It calculates the gas flow rate accounting for possible non-linearities in the pressure measurements, and provides the computed gas flow measurement via one of many possible interfaces.
US08271201B2
The present invention provides at least three methods of predicting whether an unknown biological specimen originates from a member of a particular family. These methods compare DNA profiles from unknown biological specimens to DNA profiles of more than one family member, which significantly increases the methods' identification ability. In particular, the invention describes combining at least a ranked first family member list and a ranked second family member list to create a combined ranked list and identifying the unknown biological specimen as one contained among a list of specimens having the highest combined rankings representing the candidates that are most likely related to the family. A second method encompasses comparing test DNA profiles from unknown biological specimens to a family pedigree comprising target DNA profiles obtained from multiple biological specimens of family members. This method also embodies using a modified Elston Stewart algorithm to determine a pedigree likelihood ratio to rank and identify the test profile of the unknown biological specimen most likely to be the missing person sought after by the corresponding family represented by the family pedigree. A third method encompasses construction of a database or directed graph of discovered or known relationships between biological specimens and comparison to a graph representing a family pedigree to identify portions of the database or directed graph that correspond to portions of the family pedigree, in order to rank or identify one or more unknown biological specimens as most likely related to one or more family pedigrees.
US08271198B2
A moisture sensor is provided that simultaneously achieves ruggedness, sensitivity, wide dynamic range, versatility of application, and low cost. The outer, top service of the sensor is a lens having a predetermined geometric shape which preferably makes the rain sensor resistant to the build up of debris on the outer surface as well as being effectively self-cleaning. Within a housing of the rain sensor, at least one light emitter and at least one light detector are each deployed on a substantially planar circuit board facing such outer lens surface. So arranged, light rays from the at least one emitter strike the outer lens surface and is reflected about 90°, whereupon it strikes the outer lens surface once more and is again reflected therefrom about 90° to focus back onto the at least one detector. Raindrops present on the outside surface of the sensor affect the intensity of the light rays reflected and signals from the at least one light detector are sent to control circuitry within the rain sensor. A microprocessor in the sensor processes the resulting data to detect rain intensity over a wide range so as to be capable of being effectively deployed for applications such as to emulate a tipping bucket style rain detector, providing condensation sensing, and automatically adjusting the strength of the light rays emitted by the at least one light emitter to provide improved consistency of operation of the sensor over time.
US08271192B2
A method of controlling a navigation apparatus, and which includes measuring, via a sensor, an environmental characteristic including at least one of an altitude of the navigation apparatus and an atmospheric pressure of an atmosphere the navigation apparatus is operating in; extracting, via a controller, a hearing characteristic including a degree of hearing impairment for a user operating the navigation apparatus from a memory based on the measured environmental characteristic; and compensating, via the controller, audio output by the navigation apparatus using the extracted degree of hearing impairment for the user operating the navigation apparatus.
US08271190B2
Methods and systems for generating, deriving, and enhancing drivable road databases are provided. A baseline road in a road network is defined and position and/or trajectory data collected by vehicles traveling the baseline road are compiled and compared to a representation of the baseline road in an existing database. Identity and/or other property information about the road are assigned form the existing database to the new database.
US08271185B2
The disclosed vehicle has posture control of an inverted pendulum which provides good riding comfort.A balancer target position λ* (calculated value) is determined according to target acceleration α* indicated by an occupant. Driving thrust SB of a balancer 134 is determined by state feedback control so that a current balance position λ (measured value) becomes closer to the determined balancer target position λ*, and the balancer 134 is driven. An output τW of a driving wheel actuator 52 is determined from the current balancer position λ (measured value) resulting from driving of the balancer 134. Since a driving torque is determined from an actual position of the balancer 134, stable upright posture control can be implemented even in a transient state which lasts until the balancer 134 reaches the target position.
US08271180B2
An intake control system for an internal combustion engine, which is capable of suppressing a change in an intake pressure caused by a change in a target intake air amount even in a transient operating condition in which the target intake air amount is varied, thereby making it possible to control the intake pressure stably and accurately. The intake control system controls an intake air amount by an intake valve lift, and controls intake negative pressure by a throttle valve. The system limits a target intake air amount based on upper and lower limit values set according to the intake valve lift and an intake cam phase, and corrects the target intake air amount by averaging the same using averaging calculation such that the change therein is delayed. A throttle valve opening is set according to the corrected target intake air amount.
US08271177B2
A control device for a vehicular differential limiting apparatus is provided, for applying differential limiting torques to a left drive wheel and a right drive wheel of a vehicle during startup and running thereof with favorably suppressing occurrence of deflection of the vehicle. The control device for the vehicular differential limiting apparatus comprises differential limiting torque calculating portion 60 that calculates the differential limiting torques based on a state quantity of the vehicle; differential limiting torque upper-limit guard value calculating portion 62 that calculates differential limiting torque upper-limit guard values based on a preset deflection permit yaw rate and a real yaw rate of the vehicle; and upper limit guard value processing portion 72 that limits the differential limiting torques ΔT calculated by the differential limiting torque calculating portion 60, using the differential limiting torque upper-limit guard values ΔTL calculated by the differential limiting torque upper-limit guard value calculating portion 62, for obtaining differential limiting torques to be applied to the left and right drive wheels. Thus, the most suitable differential limiting torque upper-limit guard values ΔTL can be obtained depending on the differential state, so that the differential limiting torques ΔT are applied to the left and right drive wheels depending on the road surface condition, favorably suppressing deflection of the vehicle.
US08271174B2
An accuracy error for measuring the position of an own vehicle is calculated based on the information of an execution history of map matching and the information of an update history of a map database. In addition, a predetermined map is referred to based on the calculated accuracy error, and an accuracy error level for performing positioning is specified from among plural stepwise levels. Then, the control level of assist control executed according to the position of the own vehicle is changed so as to correspond to the specified accuracy error level.
US08271146B2
An uninterruptible power supply (UPS) includes a plurality of UPS modules. Each of the UPS modules has a battery that provides power to a protected load in the event of a utility power failure. A plurality of controllers control how much power each of the batteries deliver to the protected load, and a communication bus allows the controllers to exchange information about the battery voltages. One of the controllers calculates the average battery voltage of the plurality of batteries and adjusts the amount of energy provided by an individual battery such that the battery voltage is about equal to the average battery voltage.
US08271131B2
A robot with a learning control function is disclosed. The robot includes a robot mechanism unit, a learning control unit for obtaining data on positional deviation of the robot mechanism unit upon execution of a task program and executing a learning control for calculating a learning correction amount in order to decrease the positional deviation of the robot mechanism unit below a certain value, a normal control unit for executing a learning operation of the robot mechanism unit in order to obtain the data during the learning control and executing an actual operation of the robot mechanism unit based on the learning correction amount calculated by the learning control unit after executing the learning control, and an anti-exception processing unit for executing an anti-exception process in the case where an exception process occurs during the learning operation or the actual operation.
US08271119B2
To provide a substrate processing system which can cause different display portions to output different displays, and cause different operations to be carried out from different operation screens. A substrate processing system, on login information of a user being input from a main display device, refers to the login information, a user group parameter, with which is set a group to which the user belongs, and an authority parameter, which sets an authority of the group, and causes the main display device to display a main operation screen corresponding to the user, while it, on login information of a user being input from an external operating apparatus, causes an external display device to display an external parameter setting screen for setting an authority parameter of a group to which the user belongs, or to display an external operation screen corresponding to the group to which the user belongs.
US08271117B2
A manufacturing system which can restrain the margin of a semiconductor integrated circuit. The integrated circuit including a fixed circuit unit and a reconfigurable circuit unit outputs, to a configuration determining server, an operation time which was calculated by a detecting unit and a calculating unit. The configuration determining server, by using the operation time obtained from the integrated circuit, calculates performance data which indicates the characteristics of the fixed circuit unit, selects, based on the performance data, a piece of configuration information indicating a circuit configuration that is optimum for the processing of the reconfigurable circuit unit, and outputs the selected piece of configuration information. The integrated circuit builds a circuit in the reconfigurable circuit unit in accordance with the output piece of configuration information.
US08271116B2
A household appliances control system includes an information server comprising a main database, a line detection module, and a wireless module; device servers comprising a device database, a device detection module, a control module, and a wireless module and connected to the information server wirelessly or by wire; a control setting device connected to each of the device servers wirelessly or by wire; a wall mounted control connected to each of the device servers wirelessly or by wire; a voice control connected to each of the device servers wirelessly or by wire; a remote control connected to each of the device servers wirelessly; sensors connected to each of the device servers wirelessly or by wire; and household appliances connected to each of the device servers wirelessly or by wire. A household appliances control method is also provided.
US08271114B2
Remote user interfaces for portable media devices provided improved access by accessories to media assets and metadata stored in a database of a portable media device, enhancing a user's ability to control operation of the portable media device using a remote user interface provided by the accessory. In one example, an accessory can determine whether the database of the portable media device was updated while the portable media device was disconnected from the accessory. In a second example, an accessory can create and manage a playlist for the portable media device and can incorporate into the playlist tracks already queued for playback when the accessory connects to the portable media device. In a third example, an accessory can obtain database navigation history and initialize a database navigation interface to match the database navigation history.
US08271111B2
When a main category change command is received, a main category change section refers to a category information storage section to change setting from a main category under current setting to another main category according to a predetermined order. After completing the main category change processing, a sub category change section refers to the category information storage section to select one sub category from among sub categories belonging to the newly set main category by use of random numbers. An image data generation section reads displayed information corresponding to the set main category and corresponding to the set sub category from a main-category expression-information storage section and a sub-category expression-information storage section, and generates image data according to the read displayed information.
US08271105B2
A method of debugging software used to communicate with a motion control system comprising the following steps. Debug information containing diagnostic information associated with a hardware motion control attribute is generated. At least one selected software driver is capable of sending the debug information to a debug target. A software application is caused to call a motion component function to exchange a common motion control attribute with a selected software driver. The called motion component function is used to cause a motion component to exchange a common motion control attribute with the selected driver by calling a driver function. A called driver function is used to cause the selected software driver to convert a common motion control attribute to a hardware motion control attribute, exchange a hardware motion control attribute with the motion control device, and send debug information to the debug target.
US08271104B2
Enables minimization of steady-state objective function P(z∞), subject to a set of constraints zmin≦z∞≦zmax, and under the assumption that the values of the state vector, z, at different points in time related via a model expressed in dynamic open equation format Q(z∞, zk, zk-1, zk-2, . . . , zk-n)=0, where z∞ is predicted final value of state vector, z, and zk, zk-1, zk-2, . . . , zk-n are current and previous values of state vector, z. Determines optimum operation of an industrial process having steady-state objective function P(z∞), including: receiving outputs from the process; minimizing steady-state objective function P(z∞) subject to set of constraints zmin≦z∞≦zmax; wherein values of state vector at different times are related via model of form Q(z∞, zk, zk-1, zk-2, . . . , zk-n)=0; to minimize objective function P(z∞). Industrial process to be optimised may include measured and unmeasured process variables.
US08271102B2
There is provided a method, apparatus and computer program product for controlling parameters of objects in a building control system, the method comprising receiving input from at least one of the objects, wherein the at least one object is associated with a first subset of objects; selecting at least one parameter, wherein the at least one parameter depends on the input; selecting a second subset of objects from the objects, wherein the objects of the second subset are selected based on the at least one selected parameter; and performing a first action on objects in the second subset of objects.
US08271094B1
A device for brain stimulation includes a cannula configured and arranged for insertion into a brain of a patient; at least one cannula electrode disposed on the cannula; and an electrode lead for insertion into the cannula, the electrode lead comprising at least one stimulating electrode.
US08271091B2
Methods and devices for fitting a visual prosthesis are described. In one of the methods, threshold levels and maximum levels for the electrodes of the prosthesis are determined and a map of brightness to electrode stimulation levels is later formed. A fitting system for a visual prosthesis is also discussed, together with a computer-operated system having a graphical user interface showing visual prosthesis diagnostic screens and visual prosthesis configuration screens.
US08271089B2
A charging system is disclosed. In one embodiment, the system includes a charging unit having a primary coil, and an implantable medical device comprising a secondary coil to receive charge from the primary coil. The implantable medical device further includes a half-wave voltage-doubling rectifier coupled to the secondary coil, a full-wave rectifier coupled to the secondary coil, and a rechargeable power source. Control logic is provided to periodically configure the rechargeable power source to receive charge from a selected one of the voltage-doubling circuit and the full-wave rectifier in a manner that increases rate at which charge is transferred from the secondary coil to the rechargeable power source. The control logic may configure the rechargeable power source to receive charge based on one or more monitored conditions which may include, for example, an indication of a current, a voltage, a coupling coefficient, back-scatter, and temperature.
US08271087B2
Methods and systems are directed to selecting from a variety of capture verification modes. A plurality of capture verification modes, including a beat by beat capture detection mode and a capture threshold testing mode without intervening beat by beat capture detection is provided. An efficacy of at least one of the capture verification modes is evaluated and, based on the evaluation, a capture verification mode is selected.
US08271082B2
A medical device is disclosed that includes one or more treatment electrodes, one or more sensors, and one or more controllers connected to the one or more treatment electrodes and one or more sensors. The medical device also includes one or more response mechanisms connected to the one or more controllers. The one or more controllers are configured to receive input from the one or more response mechanism and are also configured to determine whether a patient wearing the medical device actuated the one or more response mechanisms based, at least in part, on the input received from the one or more response mechanisms. In some disclosed embodiments, the medical device is a wearable defibrillator.
US08271077B1
A system includes a sensor to detect a neuro-physiological state of a student, and a controller to provide a communication if the student is outside a desired neuro-physiological state consistent with a desired learning zone and to provide a lesson intensity control signal as a function of the provided communication and sensed neuro-physiological state.
US08271075B2
An audio headset with bio-signal sensors is provided. In some embodiments, an audio headset that includes one or more electroencephalography (EEG) sensors is provided.
US08271072B2
A method comprises monitoring a heart rate, a respiration rate and an activity level of a patient, comparing the monitored heart rate, respiration rate and activity level to a predetermined threshold zone which is a function of heart rate, respiration rate and activity level, determining the patient is experiencing worsening heart failure when the monitored heart rate, respiration rate and activity level are outside the predetermined threshold zone; and after determining the patient is experiencing worsening heart failure when the monitored heart rate, respiration rate and activity level are outside the predetermined threshold zone, issuing an alert to indicate that the patient is experiencing worsening heart failure.
US08271065B1
Embodiments relate to methods and systems for monitoring bioelectric potentials. In some instances, an electrode is applied to a patient's skin. The electrode may be at least partly inserted into the patient's skin, such as by inserting at least part of one or more teeth underneath the skin.
US08271064B2
A transdermal test sensor assembly adapted to determine an analyte concentration of a fluid sample is disclosed. The assembly comprises a sensor support including at least one reservoir adapted to hold a liquid. The assembly further comprises a test sensor being coupled to the sensor support. The test sensor forms at least one aperture therein. At least a portion of the at least one aperture is adjacent to the at least one reservoir. The assembly further comprises a hydrogel composition positioned on the test sensor. The hydrogel composition is linked to the at least one reservoir via the at least one aperture.
US08271059B2
According to one embodiment, a communication device includes a receiver, a transmitter and an interruption module. The receiver receives an allocation signal indicating a first period usable by the communication device and a second period usable by a plurality of communication devices including the communication device. The transmitter transmits a transmission signal in the first period. If the transmission of the transmission signal is completed within the first period, the interruption module interrupts at least a part of power supply to the receiver in the second period. If the transmission of the transmission signal is not completed within the first period and directivity of radio waves used by a second communication device includes a direction of the communication device in a communication period allocated before the second period, the transmitter transmits the transmission signal in the second period.
US08271048B2
A mobile terminal and an operation mode switching method for a mobile terminal communication system are provided, the mobile terminal comprising at least a communication processor, wherein an operation mode in which the communication processor performs only a communication function is defined as a communication mode and an operation mode in which the communication processor performs both the communication function and an application function is defined as an application mode, the method comprising the following steps of acquiring, in the application mode, switching trigger information; and controlling the communication processor to switch from the application mode to the communication mode based on the switching trigger information. Also, in the communication mode, the system can also acquire switching information and switch from the communication mode to the application mode. The switching approach according to the present invention enables the communication processor to operate in the communication mode for performing the communication function only. Thus, the application function of the communication processor is not required to be started at all times, such that the occupation for the system resources as well as the system power consumption can be reduced.
US08271046B2
A mobile terminal and a method of controlling the operation of the mobile terminal are provided. The method includes displaying an idle screen; if a communication event occurs, displaying an avatar image corresponding to a party of the communication event on the idle screen, the communication event including making or receiving a call and sending or receiving a call; and modifying the avatar image according to the amount of occurrence of the communication event. Therefore, it is possible for a user to easily recognize the occurrence of a communication event and the amount of occurrence of the communication event from an avatar image displayed on an idle screen.
US08271045B2
Methods and apparatus that relate to the display of network availability and quality of service (QoS) to a user of a multiple mode communication device are disclosed. An example method, obtains a quality of service QoS metric for a call routed through a first communication provider to a second communication provider, wherein the QoS metric represents a service quality provided by the first communication provider. Further, the representation of the QoS metric for the first communication provider is provided to a user. Additionally, the user can select a mode of communication for a communication device once the QoS metric has been established.
US08271036B2
A handheld wireless communication device configured to be hand cradleable by an operator during text entry. A display, key field and trackball navigation tool are located on a front face of the device. At least some keys of the key field are arranged in key-columns and each of the key-columns is vertically offset from adjacent key-columns. Alphanumeric input keys include several alphabetic keys with letters arranged in a traditional (QWERTY), but non-ITU Standard E.161 telephone letter layout. A microprocessor is provided that receives operator commands from the keys and the trackball navigation tool and which affects corresponding changes to the display based on user input. The elongate body is longer than wide and the display 322, key field 650 and the trackball navigational tool 328 are located in consecutive series along the length of the elongate body.
US08271023B2
A quantized multi-rank beamforming scheme for multiple-antenna systems such as a multiple-input-multiple-output (MIMO) wireless downlink User equipment (UE) estimates downlink channel and transmit power and determines rank and power allocations. A quantized beamforming matrix is then determined by the UE using successive beamforming. The UE also determines channel quality indices (CQI) which it feeds-back to the wireless downlink base station along with the index of the quantized beamforming matrix. The base station uses the CQI information to select a UE for scheduling of downlink transmission and the quantized beamforming matrix index received from the selected UE to beamform the downlink transmission to the UE. Base station overhead and is minimized while providing near-optimal performance given the constraints of a limited feed-back channel and computational complexity of the UE.
US08271020B2
A user enters a numeric string on a standby screen of a cellular telephone (1), and then presses a predetermined function key, the numeric string being obtained by numerical conversion of a keyword related to a piece of registration information, e.g. a destination e-mail address, in accordance with an assignment relationship between characters and numerical keys. In the cellular telephone having recognized the entry of the numeric string and the pressing of the predetermined function key, a database is searched by using as a key the entered numeric string or a character string obtained by character conversion of the entered numeric string in accordance with the above-mentioned assignment relationship, and e-mail destination candidates associated with the numeric string or the character string are extracted and displayed on a display. The user selects a desired destination from among the candidates, whereby an e-mail destination address is selected and called up.
US08271014B2
A small base node such as a Home Base Node (HNB), or femto cell, may reduce its transmit power in order to prevent co-channel or adjacent channel interference, or to limit its coverage area. Once the power is set, the HNB signal to a served Home User Equipment (HUE) its transmit Common Pilot Channel (CPICH) transmit power for accurate path loss estimation. When this power is outside of the permissible range, the HNB adjusts other parameters (such as Random Access Channel (RACH) constant value) to compensate for the error in signaled CPICH power, and thus compensate in that process the error in determining path loss. Similarly, if the uplink sensitivity is adjusted, to prevent interference, parameters would also be adjusted and signaled to the HUE to reflect the link imbalance.
US08271012B2
In a radio communication system including a plurality of subscriber stations and at least one radio access device, useful information of a group of subscriber stations is transmitted by radio. A number of subscriber stations of the group is located in the radio coverage area of the at least one radio access device. The at least one radio access device notifies the subscriber stations of the number of subscriber stations of the group before the useful information is transmitted, using a radio resource. The notification contains information relating to at least one signal in the transmission of the useful information transmitted via another radio resource.
US08271008B1
A method for blocking unwanted messages sent to a mobile device is provided. In one embodiment, messages received when the MDN is deactivated are responded to with a message asking the sender to delete the MDN from the sender's distribution list. In another embodiment, messages are received with a subscription date. The subscription date is compared to the most recent provisioning date of the MDN. If the provisioning date is after the subscription date, then the message is blocked and a reply message may be generated indicating to the sender that the MDN should be removed from the sender's distribution list.
US08271002B2
A method and device capable of automating registration of a transmission mail address allowed for reception in a white list and reducing a user burden without an input error is provided. From a mobile unit, in respect of registration of a transmission address allowed for reception in a white list of an e-mail server, it becomes possible to eliminate a work of making an operation of inputting list data for updating the white list by utilizing information electronically stored in an address directory, and further, it becomes possible to reliably register the latest data free of an input error as a white list. In addition, the data stored in the white list of the e-mail server is transferred to a mobile terminal device, thereby making it easy to update an address directory due to a device model change.
US08270998B2
Systems and methods for determining a location based on historical data are disclosed. Generally, a location determination component receives a request for information from a wireless device, where the request is associated with at least two network access points (NAPs). The location determination component determines which of the at least two NAPs has a greater precedence and estimates a current location of the wireless device based on a known location of the current NAP and a known location of a previously-current NAP associated with the wireless device.
US08270996B2
A receiving system comprises a first module configured to receive location information identifying current location of the receiver, a second module configured to receive a broadcasting signal including cell information which includes first information defining a location of each cell and second information defining a transport channel of each cell, extract the cell information, select a cell according to the extracted cell information, tune to a transport channel of the selected cell, and processing a broadcast transported from the tuned transport channel, a storage medium, and a controller configured to control to extract the cell information which is matched with the received location information, select the cell, tune to the transport channel of the selected cell, and process the broadcast transported from the tuned transport channel.
US08270994B2
A method and apparatus for using at least one signal quality parameter in an application. A target device makes observations of at least one signal quality parameter in a wireless communication environment. Because there are gross differences between different target devices' observations, there are one or more device models that compensate for the differences. A selection logic selects an optimal device model for each target device. The observations made by the target device are processed with the selected device model and applied to an application, such as a positioning application or network planning.
US08270992B2
A system and method for providing quality-of-service based network resource allocation and utilization in a dynamic network environment. For example, a wireless communication network may comprise a first system and a second system. The first system may provide a current service to a user at a current quality level. The first system and second system may establish a wireless communication link. At least one of the first and second systems may determine whether utilizing one or more resources of the second system will provide the current service to the user at a higher level of quality than the current quality level. One or more resources of the second system may be allocated for providing the current service to a user at a higher quality level. The allocated resources may be utilized to provide the current service to the user at a higher quality level than the current quality level.
US08270976B2
The present invention relates to a method for use in a user equipment (10), and relates to a user equipment (10) for enabling a serving base station (40) to estimate interference contribution in a network when scheduling resources for the use equipment. According to the method, the user equipment determines an amount of resources required to send data and the user equipment sends a report to it serving base station when the required amount of resources is greater than a threshold value. In the report, measurements performed by the user equipment are included. The report will assist the serving base station with its estimation of the degree of interference user equipments generates in the network, and hence the power and resources to assign.
US08270967B1
Methods and systems are provided for overriding a most-recently-used (MRU) table for system acquisition. In an embodiment, a mobile station maintains an MRU table populated with data identifying one or more networks to which the mobile station was most recently connected, and the mobile station is arranged to conduct system acquisition by referencing the MRU table prior to referencing a preferred roaming list (PRL). The mobile station receives an MRU-override instruction from a wireless network, and modifies its MRU table according to the instruction, producing a modified MRU table, and conducts at least one subsequent system acquisition with reference to the modified MRU table.
US08270958B2
An apparatus is provided for forwarding communications automatically. The apparatus includes a processing element that receives data from a local connection point or a network element regarding the presence of a device at or near the local connection point or other location. The device is associated with a first communications terminal and transmits a signal that can be detected by the local connection point or the network element. Upon receiving the data, including an indication of the presence of the device, the apparatus may automatically forward communications from one or more communications terminals to a particular communications terminal, as specified by forwarding instructions. The forwarding instructions may be provided by a user ahead of time or included in the data received by the apparatus, and the instructions may be stored in a storage element of the apparatus. Systems, methods, and computer program products for forwarding communications automatically are also provided.
US08270957B2
A method of managing, in a telephone network, a conference call among a first terminal and a plurality of terminals, includes: setting up at least one voice channel for activating the conference call among the first terminal and the plurality of terminals; and causing deactivation of a microphone of at least one terminal of the plurality of terminals.
US08270953B2
There is disclosed a system and method for automatically drafting blog entries. In an embodiment, the method comprises: defining a triggering event for generating a draft blog entry; detecting the triggering event; and upon detection of the triggering event, automatically generating a draft a blog entry in a predetermined format. The triggering event may comprise, for example, capturing an image, video clip, sound clip, or a browsing a webpage having a URL on the wireless mobile device, and the method may further comprise automatically inserting the captured image, video clip, sound clip, or URL into the draft blog entry in the predetermined format together with automatically generated text. Some of the text may be generated in dependence upon the triggering event.
US08270949B2
Systems and methods use mobile telephones as input devices for recording audio messages on a server. A user inputs a first feature code into the mobile telephone and the feature code is sent to a mobile switching center (MSC). The MSC maps the feature code to a server and forwards the feature code and a user identification to the server. Once the mobile telephone is connected to the server, the user can record his audio message. The user can later retrieve the recorded audio message by inputting a second feature code into the mobile telephone. The second feature code is also assigned to the server. The recorded message is played after the mobile telephone is connected to the server.
US08270945B2
A monitoring apparatus and method in a mobile communication system are provided. A WGW receives information relating to a monitored subscriber from a WSS, establishes a monitoring path between the monitored subscriber and a monitoring server, upon request from the WSS, begins to monitor the monitored subscriber upon receipt of a monitoring start request from the WSS, and transmits monitored data to the monitoring server.
US08270935B2
Some embodiments of the present invention provide a system that processes a phone call. During operation, the system connects the phone call from a mobile phone and determines whether the phone call is an emergency call. If the phone call is an emergency call, the system activates an emergency mode of the mobile phone to handle the phone call, which prolongs the length of the phone call.
US08270934B2
A system, apparatus, method, and computer-readable media are provided for configuring a power line networking device. According to one method, wireless network settings are converted into equivalent power line network settings compatible with a power line network. The converted settings are then utilized to configure the power line networking device for operation on the power line network. The power line network may be compatible with the HOMEPLUG networking standard by the HOMEPLUG POWER ALLIANCE. The wireless network settings may include a SSID and a wireless network key. The conversion process may be performed by a power line networking device or by a computer in communication with the power line networking device. The conversion and configuration may be performed in response to detecting that the power line networking device has not been configured for operation with the power line network.
US08270926B2
A radio front end includes a transformer and an adjustable load. The transformer includes a first winding and a second winding, wherein the first winding is operably coupled to an antenna and the second winding coupled to at least one of a power amplifier and a low noise amplifier. The adjustable load is operably coupled to the second winding, wherein the adjustable load provides a first impedance based on a first impedance selection signal when the radio front end is in a transmit mode and provides a second impedance based on a second impedance selection signal when the radio front end is in a receive module such that impedance at the first winding is substantially similar in the transmit mode and in the receive mode.
US08270917B2
An adaptive current control circuit for reduced power consumption and minimized gain shift in a variable gain amplifier. An automatic gain control circuit provides gain control voltages in response to a gain control signal. The gain control voltages are used by the variable gain amplifier to set the gain of the output signal for wireless transmit operations. The adaptive current control circuit receives the same gain control voltages for reducing current to the variable gain amplifier during low gain operation, while providing higher currents during high gain operation. The current that is provided is a hybrid mix of proportional to absolute temperature (PTAT) current and complementary to absolute temperature (CTAT) current for minimizing temperature effects on the gain. The ratio of PTAT current and CTAT current is adjustable for specific temperature ranges to further minimize temperature effects on the gain.
US08270915B2
An antenna and button assembly is provided for a compact portable wireless device such as a wireless headset for a handheld electronic device. An antenna structure is mounted within a button structure. The button structure includes a switch actuation member that extends past the antenna structure and into engagement with a switch. The switch actuation member may reciprocate within the button structure. A user may press upon an exposed end of the switch actuation member to operate the switch. The switch may be used to control the application of power to the compact portable wireless device or to perform other suitable functions. The button structure may be formed using dielectric materials such as plastic. By forming the button structure from dielectric, clearance is provided between the antenna structure and conductive portions of the compact portable wireless device so that the antenna of the compact wireless device operates properly.
US08270901B2
The present invention relates to media broadcast in which memory is used to reduce annoying signal dropouts. A receiver records dropout-free program material and, when a subscriber requests a particular program channel, the radio uses recorded dropout-free program material from the requested channel, only switching to the real-time broadcast, which is subject to dropouts, if the recorded dropout-free program material for the requested channel is exhausted.
US08270900B2
Implementations are described that use a control center to maintain a list of registered mobile platforms that are pre-authorized to make use of the satellite-based transponder to transmit and receive data content to and from the base transceiver. The control center may cause the base transceiver to transmit at least one polling message, the polling message carries information addressed to a specific aggregate group of the registered mobile platforms and includes a return channel which may be used by a mobile platform to communicate with the base transceiver. In one implementation, the control center protects the system from exceeding power spectral density (PSD) statistical limits by using the mobile platform in the group that has a greatest power spectral density signal as the PSD that the aggregate group will generate.
US08270898B2
A first and/or a second communications system may provide communications service over a geographic area. A method of operating the first and/or the second communications systems may include generating a measure of aggregate interference reaching a satellite of the second communications system substantially from devices of the first communications system. The measure of aggregate interference reaching the satellite of the second communications system may be transmitted to an element of the first communications system.
US08270897B2
A communication control method, for a radio communication system including a radio base station, a radio terminal, and a relay station that receives a radio signal transmitted from the radio base station and relays the radio signal to the radio terminal at a transmission frequency different from a reception frequency, includes broadcasting information on one or more transmission frequencies of radio base stations or relay stations from the radio base station; and determining, by the radio terminal, whether transmission-source identification information included in the radio signals that are received before and after switching the reception frequency match, the switching being conducted based on the information broadcasted from one of the radio base station directly and via the relay station, wherein if the radio terminal determines that the transmission-source identification information matches, the radio terminal omits a terminal registering procedure after frame-synchronization with the radio communication system.
US08270896B2
A satellite signal demodulator is configured to use frequency-based channel scanning to sense the presence of a channel and to obtain the frequency profile of the channel. Once the channel is identified and the profile is obtained, channel extraction is used to identify the frequency parameters for a given channel. A coarse parameter estimation is performed to obtain a coarse estimate of the symbol rate (SR) and the center frequency (fc) of the channel. The coarse estimation can then be followed by a fine estimation of the symbol rate and center frequency (fc), using a bit tracking loop (BTL) lock indicator.
US08270895B2
A system, method and/or one or more servers, include a memory (or memories) capable of storing venue-based data comprising video captured from more than one camera located in one or more venues, and one or more processors capable of authenticating one or more remote hand held devices to provide one or more users of the remote hand held device(s) access to the venue-based data. One or more ports is capable of transmitting the venue-based data from the server(s) so that the venue-based data may be received by one or more remote hand held device authorized to receive the venue-based data through one or more wireless data communications networks, in order to permit the venue-based data to be accessible via the remote hand held device(s) by the user(s) of the remote hand held device(s) at locations within or remote from the venue(s).
US08270887B2
The fixing device includes: a fixing member that includes a conductive layer capable of heating by electromagnetic induction; a magnetic field generating member that generates an alternate-current magnetic field intersecting with the conductive layer of the fixing member; plural magnetic path forming members that form a magnetic path of the alternate-current magnetic field generated by the magnetic field generating member; a support member that supports the magnetic field generating member; an elastic support member that is arranged between the magnetic field generating member and the plural magnetic path forming members so as to be in contact with the plural magnetic path forming members; and a pressing member that presses the plural magnetic path forming members toward the magnetic field generating member.
US08270885B2
An image forming apparatus, including: plural image bearers bearing toner images including a black toner image, which are developed with a two-component developer including a carrier and a toner comprising a binder resin and an additive; a receptor receiving the toner images; plural pressers each pressing the receptor to each of the plural image bearers at a predetermined pressure, wherein the additive has a burial rate X indicated by the following formula not less than 40%: X=(A−B)/A×100 wherein A represents a BET specific surface area (cm2/g) of the toner; and B represents a BET specific surface area (cm2/g) of the toner after buried, and wherein one of the pressers pressing the receptor to the image bearer bearing the black toner image presses the receptor thereto at a pressure lower than those of the other pressers.
US08270883B2
A powder carrying apparatus includes: a drive gear to which the drive is carried from a drive source; a rolling gear capable of rotating around a rolling shaft; a first middle transmission system having at least one or more gears; a first powder carrying member to which the rotation is carried from the first middle transmission system to carry the powder; a first regulating gear capable of rotating around a first regulation shaft; a second middle transmission system having at least one or more gears including a second middle gear engaged with the rolling gear; a second powder carrying member to which the rotation is carried from the second middle transmission system to carry the powder; and a second regulating gear capable of rotating around a second regulation shaft.
US08270881B2
An image forming apparatus and a control method thereof provides that when circulation of developer in a housing of a developing unit is deteriorated due to concentration of the developer, thus applying increased load to an agitator, the agitator is appropriately rotated forwardly and backwardly under the control of a controller. This may prevent overloading of the agitator and release the concentrated developer.
US08270874B2
An image forming apparatus includes a main assembly, a first openable member openably and closably provided in the main assembly, a second openable member openably and closably provided in the main assembly, and a fixing unit for fixing a toner image formed on a recording material in the main assembly, with the fixing unit including a pressure applying mechanism for applying a pressure to a fixing nip of the fixing unit. In addition, a first arm transmits a first operation force, generated when the first openable member is opened by the operator, to the pressure applying mechanism to release the pressure applied to the fixing nip, and a second arm transmits a second operation force, generated when the second openable member is opened by the operator, to the pressure applying mechanism to release the pressure applied to the fixing nip. The fixing unit is detachably mountable relative to the main assembly and includes a pressure switching member, engaged to the pressure applying mechanism, to receive the first operation force via the first arm when the first openable member is opened and to move the pressure applying mechanism, and the second operation force generated when the second openable member is opened is transmitted to the pressure switching member.
US08270873B2
A tandem type photosensitive unit detachably mounted in a main body of an image forming apparatus is provided. The tandem type photosensitive unit includes: a plurality of parallelly arranged photosensitive drums; a first end-side shaft receiving member engaged with a first end portion of each photosensitive drum in the axial direction; a second end-side shaft receiving member engaged with a second end portion, opposite to the first end portion, of each photosensitive drum in the axial direction; a first side plate collectively retaining each first end-side shaft member; and a second side plate collectively retaining each second end-side shaft receiving member.
US08270868B2
According to one embodiment, a method for cleaning including, scraping off, agitating, or capturing, in non-contact with a belt surface, a visualizing material present on the belt surface and fiber or powder different from the visualizing material, coming into contact with the belt surface and scraping off, agitating, or capturing the visualizing material present on the belt surface and the fiber or the powder different from the visualizing material, and being located in contact with the belt surface at predetermined pressure and scraping off the visualizing material present on the belt surface and the fiber or powder different from the visualizing material.
US08270867B2
An image forming apparatus has plural process cartridges. Each process cartridge includes a photosensitive element; an electrification unit including a discharging unit and an electrification frame which contains the discharging unit and which has a first opening formed between the photosensitive element and the discharging unit and a second opening formed at a position opposite the first opening across the discharging unit; and a process frame including an exposure opening opposing the photosensitive element. The process cartridges are arranged such that one process cartridge of a pair of adjacent process cartridges opposes the second opening and the exposure aperture of the electrification unit of the other process cartridge. Also a regulation member configured to regulate airflow is provided between the pair of process cartridges. The regulation member has elasticity and is disposed in a position between the second opening and the exposure aperture of the electrification unit.
US08270856B2
Apparatus including a re-transfer unit to re-transfer a recording medium and method of image forming
An image forming apparatus is provided, which forms a releasing agent absorption toner image on an in-between printed sides area of a moving surface of an image carrier in the duplex printing mode. When the in-between printed sides area of the moving surface enters a transfer position at which a toner image is transferred from the image carrier to a recording medium, the transferring operation of transferring the toner image from the image carrier to a recording medium is interrupted to keep the releasing agent absorption toner image on the in-between printed sides area of the moving surface of the image carrier.
US08270855B2
An image forming apparatus is provided that includes a detection unit to detect a measure of consumption of a second cartridge. A difference between toner amounts is acquired by subtracting a toner amount per unit area of a toner image corresponding to a maximum density image formed on a first image bearing member from a toner amount per unit area of a toner image corresponding to a maximum density image formed on a second image bearing member. When the detection unit detects a second measure of consumption that is in a consumed state more than a first measure of consumption, a control unit controls a first toner forming unit and a second toner forming unit so that a difference between toner amounts is greater than when the detection unit detects the first measure of consumption.
US08270854B2
An apparatus in which a plurality of consumable items are loadable to the apparatus. The apparatus includes a consumption status detecting unit to detect a respective consumption status of each of the consumable items, a consumption information output setting unit to set whether an exchange message for each of the consumable items is to be output, and a consumable item information output unit to output the exchange message, which is indicative of an exchange time of the respective consumable item, based on the respective consumption statuses detected by the consumption status detecting unit and the setting of the consumption information output setting unit.
US08270853B2
An image forming apparatus includes a consumable supply remaining amount detection unit for detecting a remaining amount of a consumable supply; a printable length detection unit for determining a printable length of a medium printable with the remaining amount; a printable length determining processing unit for determining whether the printable length is smaller than a requested print length of the medium requested with print data; and a printing processing unit for performing a partial printing operation when the printable length determining processing unit determines that the printable length is smaller than the requested print length.
US08270847B2
Polarization multiplexing with different differential phase shift keying (DPSK) schemes generally uses DPSK modulated signals modulated using different DPSK modulation schemes and combined with orthogonal polarizations relative to each other. The different DPSK modulation schemes may use different DPSK phase shifts to represent data, such as a regular DPSK modulation scheme and a π/2 DPSK modulation scheme. By using different DPSK modulation schemes to represent data on the orthogonally polarized signals, the DPSK demodulators may effectively separate the orthogonally polarized signals using the property of the DPSK receivers. To optimize performance, the DPSK modulated signals may also be bit-interleaved when combined with orthogonal polarization.
US08270844B2
A timing signal distribution system includes an optical frequency stabilized laser signal amplitude modulated at an rf frequency. A transmitter box transmits a first portion of the laser signal and receive a modified optical signal, and outputs a second portion of the laser signal and a portion of the modified optical signal. A first optical fiber carries the first laser signal portion and the modified optical signal, and a second optical fiber carries the second portion of the laser signal and the returned modified optical signal. A receiver box receives the first laser signal portion, shifts the frequency of the first laser signal portion outputs the modified optical signal, and outputs an electrical signal on the basis of the laser signal. A detector at the end of the second optical fiber outputs a signal based on the modified optical signal. An optical delay sensing circuit outputs a data signal based on the detected modified optical signal. An rf phase detect and correct signal circuit outputs a signal corresponding to a phase stabilized rf signal based on the data signal and the frequency received from the receiver box.
US08270832B2
A method, apparatus and system for aligning frames in which an Optical Network Unit (ONU) receives a frame comprising frame delimitation information and synchronization-related information; performs a first verification based on a comparison of the frame delimitation information and a fixed pattern; performs a second verification based on a comparison of the synchronization-related information and a value associated with synchronization-related information in a previously received frame; proceeds to a synchronization state if both the first verification and the second verification are successful; and returns to a hunt state if either the first verification or the second verification fails.
US08270825B2
A photographic apparatus infers a user's photographic intent and accordingly switches between a manual shoot mode and an automatic shoot mode. In the manual shoot mode, processing to save photographic image data is timed in accordance with the user operating a user-operable shutter element, while in the automatic shoot mode, such processing is conducted independently of shutter element operations. A photographic unit photographs a scene, acquires photographic image data of a subject, and then executes processing for saving the photographic image data. An intention judgment information detector detects intention judgment information used to judge the photographic intent of the user. A controller makes an intention judgment using the intention judgment information from the intention judgment information detector, and according to the intention judgment result, causes the photographic unit to selectively execute the operations for one of the modes.
US08270824B2
The attachment lens device AL, 12 can be mounted between a master lens ML, 12 having a focusing lens group that moves in an optical axis direction for focusing purposes and a camera body 11 having an imaging device. The attachment lens device AL, 12 comprises a communication portion 35, 135 communicatable with the master lens ML, 12 and the camera body 11, a wobbling lens group LW capable of reciprocally wobbling in the optical axis direction for detecting a direction of moving the wobbling lens group, and a wobbling drive portion 125 for driving the wobbling lens group Lw.
US08270820B2
Multimedia content is stored onto a relatively permanent, portable storage medium in accordance with at least two standards that allow the content to be recovered on a playback device with the highest possible resolution and fidelity. Linking between the various types of content stored according to the at least two standards allows the presentation of content at the highest quality possible.
US08270813B2
An information processing apparatus for recording data in a file by first unit on a recording medium in accordance with a predetermined file system, which may include a recording control unit performing a recording control operation to record a predetermined file on the recording medium, the recording control operation including data recording control for recording successively the data on the recording medium by first unit and management information updating control for updating management information of the predetermined file system on the recording medium, a generating unit successively generating difference information of the management information by second unit during the recording control operation of the recording control unit, the second unit being an integer multiple of the least common multiple of the first unit and a minimum unit of the predetermined file system, and a backup storage unit storing as backup information the difference information generated by the generating unit.
US08270803B2
A reproducing operation of still image content and a reproducing operation of moving image content are carried out by similar inputs by a user. A video recording and reproducing processing unit reproduces video content, and a Web content processing unit automatically selects instructions, such as information for instructing another Web page to be displayed next, from data of a reproduced Web page, and reproduces the another Web page. As a result, a plurality of Web pages are continuously reproduced and output at predetermined time intervals. A main control unit controls the reproduction of video content by the video recording and reproducing processing unit and the continuous reproduction of Web content by the Web content processing unit based on signals input by operations to a single group of operating keys as interpreted by an input conversion table.
US08270789B2
There is provided an optical waveguide element comprises: a core of an optical waveguide; and a Bragg grating pattern that is provided on the core, wherein a pitch of the Bragg grating pattern takes a value from among three or more predetermined discrete values; the pitches that take the respective discrete values are present in a plurality of locations over an entire length of the optical waveguide respectively; and if a value from among all of the discrete values which has the highest distribution frequency is taken as M, and if the closest value to the M which is larger than the M is taken as A, and if the closest value to the M which is smaller than the M is taken as B, then a difference expressed as A−M is equal to a difference expressed as M−B.
US08270785B2
A method for cross connecting optical signals includes using a common beam steerer to direct a set of optical signals from a set of input ports to a set of output ports. The method further includes adjusting a curvature of the common beam steerer so that paths of the optical signals have substantially the same effective path length.
US08270783B2
The present invention is directed towards systems and methods for adjusting intensity, wavelength and higher and lower frequency components of an optical signal. Photonic apparatus receives a first and a second optical signal. A waveguide provides an anomalous group velocity dispersion the first optical signal or the second optical signal and adjusts intensity or wavelength of the first optical signal or the second optical signal, in response to the anomalous group velocity dispersion. In some embodiments photonic apparatus receives an optical signal comprising a lower frequency component received an amount of time prior to a higher frequency component of the optical signal. A waveguide provides an anomalous group velocity dispersion for the optical signal and adjusts the amount of time between the higher frequency component and the lower frequency component in response to the anomalous group velocity dispersion.
US08270781B2
A number of fluidic-photonic devices for allowing optical detection, systems employing such devices, and related methods of operation and fabrication of such devices are disclosed herein. In at least some embodiments, the devices can serve as flow cytometry devices and/or employ microfluidic channels. Also, in at least some embodiments, the devices are fluidic-photonic integrated circuit (FPIC) devices that employ both fluidic channels and one or more waveguides capable of receiving and/or delivering light, and that can be fabricated using polymeric materials. The fluidic-photonic devices in at least some embodiments are capable of functionality such as on-chip excitation, time-of-flight measurement, and can experience enhanced fluorescence detection sensitivity. In at least some embodiments, the devices employ detection waveguides that are joined by way of a waveguide demultiplexer. In additional embodiments, a variety of techniques can be used to process information received via the waveguides, including an iterative cross-correlation process.
US08270776B2
An optical waveguide device includes: a substrate having an electro-optical effect; an optical waveguide formed on the substrate; and a control electrode for applying an electric field to the optical waveguide. The optical waveguide device has the following characteristics. A thickness of the substrate is 30 μm or less. The control electrode has a signal electrode and a ground electrode. A low-permittivity layer is formed at least on a surface portion of the signal electrode in contact with the substrate.
US08270764B1
An indication of a base image is received. An indication of an acceptable portion of a source image is received. A boundary area in the base image is determined based at least in part on the acceptable portion of the source image. A composite image is generated at least in part by replacing one or more pixels in the base image. Pixel replacements are constrained to within the boundary area. The composite image is displayed.
US08270760B2
A system and method for creating a three dimensional cross sectional image of an object by the reconstruction of its projections that have been iteratively refined through modification in object space and Fourier space is disclosed. The invention provides systems and methods for use with any tomographic imaging system that reconstructs an object from its projections. In one embodiment, the invention presents a method to eliminate interpolations present in conventional tomography. The method has been experimentally shown to provide higher resolution and improved image quality parameters over existing approaches. A primary benefit of the method is radiation dose reduction since the invention can produce an image of a desired quality with a fewer number projections than seen with conventional methods.
US08270756B2
An image noise detection method is disclosed. The image noise detection method includes the following steps: obtaining a spatial information of an image; obtaining a temporal information of the image; and determining a spatial noise or a temporal noise of the image according to both the spatial information, and the temporal information.
US08270754B2
A method is disclosed that includes receiving image data and calculating brightness information of the image data. The method includes correcting at least one lens roll-off value to be used in a lens roll-off correction operation based on the brightness information. The method also includes performing the lens roll-off correction operation on the image data using the at least one corrected lens roll-off value.
US08270752B2
A method filters a depth image, wherein each depth image includes an array of pixels at locations (x, y), and wherein each pixel has a depth. A moving window is applied to the pixels in the depth image, wherein a size of the window covers a set of pixels centered at each pixel. A single representative depth from the set of pixel in the window is assigned to the pixel to produce a processed depth image. Then, each pixel in the processed depth image is filtered to correct outlier depths without blurring depth discontinuities to produce a filtered depth image.
US08270735B2
The method, system, and apparatus of a shared error resiliency path through coefficient reordering is disclosed. In on embodiment, determining that an input data is data-partitioned, performing a discrete cosine transform and a quantization of the input data to form a quantized data, separating a first coefficient representing a DC coefficient of the quantized data for each block of the input data, rearranging other coefficients representing AC coefficients of the quantized data for each block of the input data in a fashion produces a zig-zag scan output similar to that of a non-data-partitioned data, bypassing a DC encoding module, determining whether any of the rearranged AC coefficients of the quantized data need to be encoded, performing a zig-zag scan on the rearranged AC coefficients of the quantized data when they need to be encoded, and encoding the rearranged AC coefficients of the quantized data based on the zig-zag scan.
US08270733B2
Techniques are disclosed for identifying anomaly object types during classification of foreground objects extracted from image data. A self-organizing map and adaptive resonance theory (SOM-ART) network is used to discover object type clusters and classify objects depicted in the image data based on pixel-level micro-features that are extracted from the image data. Importantly, the discovery of the object type clusters is unsupervised, i.e., performed independent of any training data that defines particular objects, allowing a behavior-recognition system to forgo a training phase and for object classification to proceed without being constrained by specific object definitions. The SOM-ART network is adaptive and able to learn while discovering the object type clusters and classifying objects and identifying anomaly object types.
US08270719B2
A method and gem pattern matching technique to analyze a target gemstone by analyzing a pattern created by transmitting a light source such as a laser beam through the gemstone to create a visual optical pattern and comparing the pattern to a database of known gemstone patterns to determine the percentage likelihood that the target gemstone will match a gemstone in the database. The matching is based on the weight of the heaviest spot in the pattern and its location in the gemstone image and comparing it to the weight and location of the heaviest spots in each gemstone image in the database to determine a percentage matching.
US08270713B2
A method and apparatus for determining missing color pixel values in image data (i.e., for demosaicing image data) using a small number of lines in a buffer memory. Pixel values are interpolated in a horizontal or a vertical direction based on gradient scores. Interpolation direction selection can be refined based on a chroma scores or morphological operations. A chroma blurring technique to reduce false color artifacts is also disclosed. A disclosed embodiment can be implemented in an imager having as few as three buffer lines.
US08270710B2
Digital image data are coded in a color coordinate system bef where b=0.3·ln B and B, e, and f are Bef coordinates. This coding has high perceptual uniformity with respect to coding errors. A color difference formula is provided, with the color difference defined as 100√{square root over (Δb2+Δe2+Δf2)}. The high perceptual uniformity of this color difference formula is shown using a non-uniformity coefficient developed by the inventor(s). Other features are also provided.
US08270699B2
The present invention is directed to a method for obtaining appearance characteristics of a target coating containing effect pigments. The present invention is also directed to a method for comparing appearances of two or more coatings by comparing the appearance characteristics. The present invention is further directed to a system for obtaining appearance characteristics of one or more coatings and comparing said coating appearances.
US08270698B2
A computer-implemented system and method of determining anterior commissure (AC) and posterior commissure (PC) points in a volumetric neuroradiological image. The method includes determining, by a computer, a mid-sagittal plane estimate to extract a mid-sagittal plane image from the volumetric neuroradiological image, and AC and PC point estimates in the mid-sagittal plane image. The method further includes determining, by the computer, a refined mid-sagittal plane estimate from the AC and PC point estimates to extract a refined mid-sagittal plane image, the AC point from the refined mid-sagittal plane image, and the PC point from the refined mid-sagittal plane image and the AC point.
US08270691B2
A method for fusing a plurality of images. The method includes: acquiring the plurality of images from a plurality of different modalities, each one of the images having a different reference space; and fusing the plurality of images into a common reference space, such common reference space being different from the reference space of each one of the plurality of acquired images. Thus, with such method, a unified process is provided for handling fusion across multiple clinical interventional and/or surgery (i.e., intra-operative) procedures.
US08270688B2
The present invention describes a method and system for intelligent diagnostic relevant information processing and analysis. Information associated with a patient is processed via an image reading platform. Based on such processed information, a matrix of diagnosis decisions containing diagnostic related information is generated via a matrix of diagnosis decision platform. A diagnostic decision is made based on the diagnostic relevant information. The image reading platform and/or the matrix of diagnosis decision platform encapsulate information and toolkits to be used to manipulate the information.
US08270686B2
A fingerprint identification apparatus includes at least three light sources, a light guide, a camera module and a processor. The light guide has a top and a bottom surfaces and at least three side surfaces. The top surface serves as a fingerprint contacting surface, each of the side surfaces has a first curved portion, the bottom surface has a second curved portion. Each of the first curved portions is opposite to the respective light sources and configured for converging the light beams emitted from thereof onto the top surface for illuminating a fingerprint thereon. The camera module aligns and cooperates with the second curved portion for capturing and converting an optical image of the fingerprint into electronic image associated with the fingerprint. The processor is configured for receiving and comparing the electronic image associated with the fingerprint with pre-stored electronic images of fingerprints to verify the fingerprint.
US08270673B2
A motion detecting includes a fetcher which repeatedly fetches an object scene image having a designated resolution. An assigner assigns a plurality of areas each of which has a representative point to the object scene image in a manner to have an overlapping amount different depending on a size of the designated resolution. A divider divides each of a plurality of images respectively corresponding to the plurality of areas assigned by the assigner, into a plurality of partial images, by using the representative points as a base point. A detector detects a difference in brightness between a pixel corresponding to the representative point and surrounding pixels, from each of the plurality of partial images divided by the divider. A creator creates motion information indicating a motion of the object scene image fetched by the fetcher, based on a detection result of the detector.
US08270669B2
An operating object extraction apparatus uses a camera, a light, a memory, an operation panel, a hand detector, a capture controller, and an image controller for displaying an operating object such as an operating finger of an operator's hand, when the operating object extraction apparatus is used in combination with a navigation apparatus in a vehicle for remotely controlling the navigation apparatus by an input from the operation panel that that is disposed separately from the navigation apparatus. The operating finger of the operator's hand is displayed as a finger image on the display unit under control of the capture controller and the image controller in a manner that a finger tip of the operating finger occupies only a small portion relative to the size of the operation panel.
US08270667B2
A system and method for inspecting a wind turbine for indications is disclosed. The method includes providing an inspection system spaced from the wind turbine, appraise a rotor blade of the wind turbine, and inspecting the rotor blade for indications. The inspection system includes an observation system and an inspection device, the observation system including an appraisal device and an automated scanning device, the appraisal device configured to provide an image of at least a portion of the rotor blade, the automated scanning device configured to rotate about at least one axis, shifting the image.
US08270655B2
A headphone device includes a pair of headphone units composed of a left headphone unit and a right headphone unit, a band section that is attached to the left headphone unit and the right headphone unit, and arranged so as to be positioned at the back of a head, a headphone cord attached to the left headphone unit or the right headphone unit, and a headphone cord attaching section that freely changes a branch point of the band section and the headphone cord by moving along the band section in a freely sliding manner in order to place the headphone cord along the band section to integrate the headphone cord and the band section with each other.
US08270654B2
A customizable audio earpiece includes an ear bud body with an ear bud size of which is adjustable along with some control over its orientation. The ear bud body comprises a ball point with teeth that couples to a mating cavity with teethed groves to movably lock or snap with each other on an ear bud stick. The flexibility of one or more petal shaped fingers provides an adequate level of stiffness for the ear bud when resting therein. The teeth on the ends of these petal shaped fingers releasably couple to teeth on a speaker body. In this way, users have varying size of ears with different size of ear canal cavities and conchal bowls can comfortably use the customizable audio earpiece.
US08270643B2
This invention relates to a system (200) for determining directionality of a sound. The system (200) comprises a first audio device (202) placed on one side of a user's head (100) and having a first microphone unit (110, 112) for converting said sound to a first electric signal, a second audio device (204) placed on the other side of the user's head (100) and having a second microphone unit (114, 116) for converting said sound to a second electric signal, and comprises a transceiver unit (220, 238) for interconnecting the first and second audio device and communicating the second electric signal to the first audio device (202). The first audio device (202) further comprises a first comparator (222) for comparing the first and second electric signals and generating a first directionality signal from the comparison.
US08270633B2
According to an aspect of the invention, there is provided a noise suppressing apparatus comprising: a fifth unit configured to calculate a gain for noise suppression, based on the first signal-to-noise ratio for each frequency band and the second signal-to-noise ratio for an entire frequency band; an eighth unit configured to calculate an upper limit value of a noise suppression amount for each frequency band, based on the second signal-to-noise ratio; a ninth unit configured to calculate the noise suppression amount for each frequency band, based on the first signal-to-noise ratio; and a tenth unit configured to limit, based on the upper limit value, the noise suppression amount so as to calculate the gain.
US08270631B2
There is provided a multichannel audio amplification apparatus including a speaker detection circuit for detecting whether or not a speaker is connected to an arbitrary speaker terminal of speaker terminal groups TA and TB, and an operating circuit and a display circuit connected to a control circuit. Even in a case where one of two speaker groups of A and B types connected to the multichannel audio amplification apparatus cannot be connected with a surround speaker for reproducing only a surround sound, a listener is prevented, by indication, from carrying out on the operating circuit an erroneous operation or setting which otherwise might be liable to occur both in a case where the B-type speaker group including no surround speaker is connected to the multichannel audio amplification apparatus and in a case where the B-type speaker group is not connected thereto.
US08270630B2
An audio host device has a headset electrical interface in which a reference contact is shared by a microphone and a speaker. A variable or programmable gain amplifier, PGA, has a signal input coupled to a sense point for the reference contact. A first difference amplifier has its inputs coupled to a microphone contact and the PGA through a first gain stage; a second difference amplifier has its inputs coupled to the microphone contact and to the output of the PGA, through a second gain stage having a different gain than the first gain stage; a third difference amplifier has its inputs coupled to the microphone contact and the output of the PGA through a third gain stage having a gain in between that of the first and second gain stages. A controller monitors outputs of the first and second difference amplifiers and changes a gain setting of the PGA. Other embodiments are also described and claimed.
US08270628B2
Method for influencing noise, wherein a noise source (16), in particular an engine in a motor vehicle, generates the noise with a substantially periodically variable excitation, and wherein a reference variable which is characteristic of the noise source, in particular an engine speed, is present at predetermined successive supply instants (ti), comprising the method steps; reading out at least a first value (Ni−1) of the reference variable at a first supply instant (ti−1) and a second predetermined value at a second supply instant (ti); generating the reference signal (12) at at least one instant (t) between the second supply instant (ti) and a third supply instant (ti+1) as a function of the first and second values that were read out; and sending the reference signal (12) to a device for actively influencing noise (11), which generates activation signals (13) for at least one actuator (14) as a function of the reference signal (12), wherein the at least one actuator (14) emits compensation sound, which interferes with the noise.
US08270622B2
A headset includes a housing having an inner side thereof engageable at least with a human ear and a curved member for attaching the housing behind the ear. An audible sound emitting speaker is mounted within the housing and a microphone capable of receiving sound wave and for converting the sound wave into an electrical signal is connected to one end of a boom. The other end of the boom is attached to the housing. An amplifier is disposed within the housing and is operatively connected to the speaker and the microphone for amplifying the electrical signal. A manually operable variable volume control resistive switch is operatively disposed between the amplifier and the microphone for controlling amplification of the electrical signal. A battery is contained within the housing and supplies a predetermined voltage to the amplifier and microphone. A manually operable switch controls voltage supply from the battery.
US08270615B2
In a key-insulated cryptosystem according to the present invention, a plurality of external devices are associated with a number of updates of a terminal secret key which has already been updated, and a different piece of secret information is stored in each of the external devices. In addition, a key-updating method in the key-insulated cryptosystem according to the present invention includes steps of: selecting one of the external devices depending on the number of updates of the terminal secret key; and causing the selected external device to generate key-updating information used for updating the terminal secret key based on the number of updates and the stored secret information.
US08270613B2
A system for disabling an unauthorized person includes an encryption device (400) and a decryption device (500). The encryption device (400) stores distribution member set data, a random number, and a public key, the distribution member set data being information on members who are permitted to decrypt a cyphertext, and generates and distributes, when a shared key is input, an error-containing cyphertext which is a cyphertext containing the shared key, the distribution member set data, and error information different for each of the members, and an error correction cyphertext which is a cyphertext of the error information. The decryption device (500) is connected to the encryption device, stores the public key and a secret key corresponding to the own device, determines, upon reception of the error-containing cyphertext and the error correction cyphertext from the encryption device, whether the own device is included in the distribution member set data, decrypts, if the own device is included in the distribution member set data, the error-containing cyphertext and the error correction cyphertext with the public key and the secret key, and removes the error information from the decrypted error-containing cyphertext to output the shared key.
US08270598B2
A process for distributing audiovisual sequences may involve generating a modified main stream from an audiovisual sequence as well as complementary information that may enable equipment receiving the modified main stream and the complementary information to synthesize the audiovisual sequence. The modified main stream and the complementary information may be separately transmitted to the equipment.
US08270593B2
In an example embodiment, a system that appropriately routes calls to an agent at a contact center based on the agent's voice and/or hearing characteristics. The agent is selected by matching speech and hearing characteristics of a caller with the speech and hearing characteristics of an agent. In order to find the best match for the caller, the contact center determines if the caller is hearing impaired, and if so determines a suitable frequency range for the caller. If a match cannot be found, the agent's and/or caller's voice may be shifted in real time and adjusted to a frequency range that is best suited for the caller.
US08270592B2
An approach for over the phone interpretation call management is provided herein. Calls from customers of a client are received at an interactive voice recognition (IVR) system, which determines a language of the caller by detecting the language or language selection by keypad entry. The IVR system forwards the call along with a modified ANI number to a Call Management Center (CMC), which determines an appropriate agent to handle the call based on the client information and the modified ANI number. The call is then forwarded to the agent and a screen corresponding to the call is activated in a call service application for the agent. Additional applications such as quality monitoring are concurrently executed with the call processing.
US08270590B2
In one embodiment, a call setup message for a call from a calling party device to a called party device is received. At least one calling party parameter for the calling party device is determined. A user message is selected based on the at least one calling party parameter. Delivery of the user message to the calling party device is initiated in parallel with a call setup for the call from the calling party device to the called party device.
US08270588B2
A method and system for automatic incoming call management uses function test results to build call signatures that are stored for later use in incoming call analysis. The function test results are used to compute a suspect score and confidence level associated with each incoming call, and are also used for making incoming call management decisions. A call treatment is selected based on the function test results and/or the computed suspect score and confidence level.
US08270576B2
An arrangement includes an input to receive DTMF tones, logic to convert the DTMF tones to SMPP protocol, and an output to provide the SMPP protocol.
US08270566B2
An object within a region is exposed to a first beam of penetrating radiation. The first beam of penetrating radiation is sensed on a side opposite the region from a source of the first beam. An attenuation of the first beam caused by passing the first beam through the object is determined, the attenuation is compared to a threshold attenuation. If the attenuation exceeds the threshold attenuation, a parameter of a second of beam of penetrating radiation is adjusted based on the determined attenuation.
US08270563B2
An apparatus includes an annular rotor that rotates about a rotational axis. A magnetic bearing system influences the position of the annular rotor in three-dimensional space and includes at least three actuators, wherein at least one actuator generates a force for lifting the annular rotor in a vertical direction, at least one actuator influences the position of the annular rotor in the radial direction of the annular rotor and at least assists in maintaining an annular gap between at least one non-magnetic bearing and the annular rotor during operation and at least one actuator influences the position of the annular rotor in an axial direction of the annular rotor. At least one radiation source may be fixedly mounted on the annular rotor.
US08270561B2
Embodiments and processes of computer tomography perform tasks associated with weighting projection data based upon at least one motion index such as electrocardiogram gated reconstruction, view-based motion map and ray-based motion map. Other embodiments and processes of computer tomography perform tasks associated with weighting projection data based upon at least one motion index and another index that is associated with certain geometric characteristics of a cone beam.
US08270559B2
A method of reconstructing a volume image of an object includes receiving circle projection data collected by a detector along a circular path with respect to the object; receiving line projection data collected by the detector along a linear path with respect to the object; producing a reconstructed circle path volume image of the object from the pre-processed circle projection data using a reconstruction algorithm that includes a ramp filter; producing a reconstructed line path volume image of the object from pre-processed line projection data using a reconstruction algorithm that includes a Hubert filter; and combining the reconstructed circle path volume image and the reconstructed line path volume image to produce the volume image of the object. An apparatus and computer program product are also described.
US08270558B2
An electronic device is provided which comprises a barrel shifter unit (BS) for performing a rotation of an input. The barrel shifter unit comprises a first and second barrel shifter (BS1, BS2). The electronic device furthermore comprises a selection unit for selecting a first set of elements (a) for the second barrel shifter (BS2) and a second set of elements for the first barrel shifter (BS1). The electronic device furthermore comprises a plurality of second multiplexers (M1 M8) for receiving the input of the second barrel shifter as first input and the output of the first barrel shifter as second input.
US08270549B2
The teachings of the present disclosure relate to a method for receiving “N” data streams (wherein “N” is a number greater than one) from “N” endpoints. Each of the data streams are received from a different respective endpoint. The method also includes decoding the “N” data streams by generating a decoding signal input comprising the “N” data streams and then iteratively repeating the following steps “N”−1 times: determine a most reliable stream; decode the most reliable stream using linear multiple-input and multiple-output (MIMO) decoding; output the decoded most reliable stream; estimate a signal estimate based on the most reliable stream and modulation information associated with the most reliable stream; and generate a residual signal that comprises the remaining data streams less the signal estimate. Upon the residual signal comprising two data streams, the method includes updating the decoding signal input to be the residual signal. Upon the residual signal comprising a single received stream, the method includes decoding the residual signal using a maximum likelihood decoder.
US08270536B2
A method for adapting a threshold value of a detection device comprising the following steps: Transmission of a signal burst having a predefined pulse-repetition interval, a predefined burst length and a defined signal frequency; receiving and processing of a receive signal, in particular by means of amplification, filtering and demodulation, so as to obtain the envelope; determining a receive-signal magnitude as interference-level sample from the receive signal following a first predefined time duration (Δt1) starting with a signal burst within a predefined second time duration (Δt2), preferably at the end of the pulse repetition interval; and adapting the threshold value of the detection device as a function of the interference level sample. Also provided is a device for adapting a threshold value of a detection device.
US08270535B2
An electronic device satisfies: fLO=N×fclk . . . (1); and (N−1)×fclk
US08270531B2
The invention relates to methods for transmitting and receiving a data bit stream in a communication system using 16-QAM constellations. Further, an apparatus for performing the methods is provided. To improve the bit-error rate performance of the communication using the 16-QAM constellations the invention suggests the use 16-QAM constellations with specially selected mapping rules together with a special constellation rearrangement for creating different versions of the 16-QAM constellations. Further, the data stream is transmitted according to a diversity scheme employing different versions of the 16-QAM constellations obtained adhering the mapping rules and rearrangement rules defined by the invention.
US08270522B2
A receiver comprises a demodulator to estimate channel impulse response and timing synchronization information for the received signal and to select a modulation technique for demodulating the received signal; and a channel decoder to produce a binary sequence from the received signal demodulated according to the selected modulation technique; wherein the demodulator: demodulates the received signal according to a first modulation technique and a second modulation technique to produce a first demodulated signal and a second demodulated signal, respectively; calculates a minimum distance between a first reconstructed signal including the training sequence and the first demodulated signal to estimate the channel impulse response and timing synchronization information; calculates a minimum distance between a second reconstructed signal including the training sequence and the second demodulated signal to estimate the channel impulse response and timing synchronization information; compares the minimum distance corresponding to the first demodulated signal with the minimum distance corresponding to the second demodulated signal; and selects the modulation technique, from among the first and second modulation techniques, that corresponds to the smaller minimum distance.
US08270517B2
Methods and apparatus for orthogonal pilot tone mapping in Multiple-In and Multiple-Out (MIMO) and Spatial Division Multiple Access (SDMA) systems are disclosed. An aspect of the method includes identifying a plurality of symbol periods within which symbols representing encoded data are to be transmitted in a plurality of spatial streams over a communication channel; identifying a plurality of pilot tone values for a plurality of pilot tones in the plurality of symbol periods to create a pilot tone mapping, wherein the identified pilot tone values are such that a receiver, when receiving at least some of the plurality of pilot tones, is provided with signals enabling the receiver to characterize and mitigate any communication impairments, and potentially obtain transmit spatial stream diversity benefits, wherein at least two of the pilot tone values in the pilot tone mapping are orthogonal when the symbols are combined over at least one dimension; and transmitting the symbols and the plurality of pilot tones over the plurality of spatial streams for the plurality of symbol periods.
US08270515B2
There is provided a system and method of operating a multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) receiver with N antennas in a wireless communication system. The method includes measuring N vectors, each vector defining channel transfer coefficients between M antennas of a transmitter and a corresponding antenna of the receiver. Additionally, a vector in a linear space generated by the N measured vectors is selected and quantized values of less than M components of the selected vector are fed back to the transmitter.
US08270509B2
A frequency error of received signals in an OFDM receiver of a wireless communications system is determined. Symbols of a given duration are transmitted as cells on sub-carrier frequencies; and some of the cells are pilot cells modulated with reference information. The method comprises the steps of selecting at least three pilot cells (p0, p1, p2) from different symbols and different sub-carriers; determining the symbol and the sub-carrier on which each pilot cell is transmitted; determining for each pilot cell a phase difference between received and generated signals; calculating therefrom a change in phase difference (Φx) caused by the frequency error; and calculating the frequency error from the calculated change in phase difference (Φx). In this way a receiver capable of determining a frequency error also in situations where only a short data burst, such as a single resource block, is available for the estimation is provided.
US08270506B2
A method and apparatus for Multiple-Input Multiple-Output (MIMO) signal decoding using complex Lattice Reduction (LR) in a multiple antenna system is provided. The method provides MIMO signal decoding with increased operating speed using a transformation of reducing the lattice basis directly to a complex channel matrix that has a smaller size in comparison with a conventional matrix, which decreases the computational complexity of the LR transformation, as well as using a procedure of permutating columns of the channel matrix only twice without binding to the procedure of reducing off-diagonal elements of the matrix R, namely prior and after the procedure of reducing. Moreover, the new method for MIMO signal decoding has its output soft decisions.
US08270501B2
Clocking systems and methods are provided below that accurately clock per-pin data transfers of input/output (IO) circuits of integrated circuit devices. These multiplexer-based clock selection systems use a dedicated multiplexer to receive clock signals from multiple mixer circuits and in turn to provide a selected reference clock signal for use by an interface circuit in transferring data to other integrated circuit devices. The timing of the selected reference clock signal is synchronized with the data signals to provide optimal sampling of the data signals. The multiplexer-based clock selection system is for use in memory interfaces of high-speed signaling systems for example.
US08270499B2
A receiver with a balanced I/Q transformer is described. In an exemplary design, the receiver includes an LNA that amplifies a received RF signal and provides a single-ended RF signal to the balanced I/Q transformer. The balanced I/Q transformer includes at least one primary coil and first and second secondary coils. The first secondary coil is magnetically coupled to the at least one primary coil and provides a first differential RF signal to a first mixer. The second secondary coil is magnetically coupled to the at least one primary coil and provides a second differential RF signal to a second mixer. The first and second mixers downconvert the first and second differential RF signals with I and Q LO signals, respectively, and provide differential I and Q downconverted signals. The primary and secondary coils may be fabricated on two conductive layers of an integrated circuit.
US08270498B2
A method and device for dithering video from a decoder. The method and device provide: selecting a segment of video frames from the video; computing a noise map for the segment of the video, the noise map computed from differences among pixels selected from spatially-distributed sampling patterns in the segment; determining contours of quantization artifacts within the video frame based on the noise map and a histogram of pixel values in the video frame; computing a gradient measurement of pixel values along the contours; identifying regions along the contours of quantization artifacts to apply dithering based on the noise map and the gradient measurement; determining a dithering strength based on the noise map and the gradient measurement; and applying dithering noise to the identified regions at the determined dithering strength.
US08270493B2
An image sequence captured at a first image rate is encoded as an encoded image sequence at a second image rate with information in the encoded image sequence indicative of images that are repeated when decoded. To assist in editing a video program using the encoded image sequence, the information in the encoded image sequence indicative of images that are repeated when decoded may be cleared. Further, image index information for the encoded image sequence may be generated. This image index information is used to map a temporal position of an image in a decoded image sequence to a position of corresponding data in the encoded image sequence. Temporal positions used with the image index information correspond to the first image rate.
US08270492B2
Provided is a moving picture decoding device (100) including a direct mode availability judging unit (109), when a decoding target block should be decoded in a temporal direct mode, judging whether or not a reference picture for a decoded picture, which is in a vicinity of the decoding target block in terms of display time, is usable as a forward reference picture for the decoding target block. Further, the moving picture decoding device (100) includes a substitute process performing unit (110) decoding the decoding target block in the temporal direct mode using a picture other than the reference picture, or decoding the decoding target block in other encoding mode.
US08270488B2
In one embodiment, a network device analyzes an encoded video stream using black detection before splicing video into the encoded video stream. When black data is detected, the network device determines whether insertion of a black intra frame with the spliced video will improve viewing upon decoding. The network device may also determine whether a splicing boundary indication included in the encoded video stream is accurate based on an observed transition between the detected black data and other data, and compensate the video splice accordingly.
US08270471B2
Encoders and scheduling methods for macroblock-based adaptive frame/filed (MBAFF) coding are provided. The encoder comprises a first processing engine and a second processing engine. The first processing engine executes a first encoding stage of the frame coding and field coding processes. The second processing engine obtains a processed macroblock (MB) pair or a processed frame and field of a MB pair from the first processing engine, and executes a second encoding stage of the frame coding and field coding processes on the obtained MB pair or obtained frame and field while the first processing engine executes the first encoding stage of the frame coding and field coding processes on a subsequent MB pair or subsequent frame and field.
US08270469B2
A method and related system of encoding or re-encoding video is disclosed. In the method, video data comprising a sequence of frames is received. For a respective frame in the sequence of frames, a multi-level frame is generated comprising the respective frame and a plurality of copies of the respective frame. Each copy has an associated video resolution level that is a member of a predefined range of video resolution levels, ranging from a highest video resolution level to a lowest video resolution level. The multi-level frame is encoded.
US08270461B2
The present invention provides a signal processing device and a signal processing method utilized in a communication system, wherein the communication system includes at least a channel. The signal processing device includes an analog-to-digital converter (ADC), a first adding unit, a feed forward equalizing unit, a data slicing unit, a second adding unit, an infinite impulse response (IIR) compensating unit, and an interference eliminating unit. The signal processing device and the signal processing method thereof disclosed in the present invention can utilize the IIR compensating unit to solve an error distortion problem in the communication system so as to improve the whole efficiency.
US08270453B2
A parallel interference cancellation (PIC) receiver incrementally removes interference from signals in parallel modules in successive stages. For each desired signal, as interfering signals are removed, corresponding updates to a data covariance matrix are modeled as computationally tractable rank-one updates to a root matrix of the covariance matrix. Processing of signals and/or covariance information may be initiated, continued, and/or halted at various stages, e.g., in response to signal or data quality. The PIC receiver using root matrix updates is applicable to a variety of demodulation techniques.
US08270452B2
A method and device for transmitting information over a first medium include allocating for signal transmission, each of a plurality of frequency sub-bands of an ultra-wide band spectrum and sending over the first medium an ultra-wide band transmission including the information. The ultra-wide band transmission is performed by sending a signal over each of the plurality of frequency sub-bands. Each signal may be encoded, modulated and/or multiplexed. The information which is transmitted may be obtained from a second signal transmission received over a second medium.
US08270442B2
An optical fiber laser including: a master oscillator; and a power amplifier, the power amplifier including: a plurality of excitation light sources; excitation ports each of which is connected to the excitation light sources and which an excitation light emitted from each of the excitation light source enters; a signal port which a laser beam emitted from the master oscillator enters; an optical coupler with an exit port that outputs the excitation lights from the excitation ports together with the laser beam from the signal port; and an optical fiber connected to the exit port, in which the optical fiber is a photonic bandgap fiber, and the optical fiber has a loss wavelength characteristic in that a photonic bandgap region is narrower than a gain wavelength band in a graph with an axis of abscissa representing a wavelength and an axis of ordinate representing a loss amount.
US08270439B2
A method and related system of encoding audio is disclosed. In the method, data representing a plurality of independent audio signals is accessed. The data representing each respective audio signal comprises a sequence of source frames. Each frame in the sequence of sources frames comprises a plurality of audio data copies. Each audio data copy has an associated quality level that is a member of a predefined range of quality levels, ranging from a highest quality level to a lowest quality level. The plurality of source frame sequences is merged into a sequence of target frames that comprise a plurality of target channels. Merging corresponding source frames into a respective target frame includes selecting a quality level and assigning the audio data copy at the selected quality level of each corresponding source frame to at least one respective target channel.
US08270425B2
A system and method for multicast video streaming over a wireless local area network (WLAN) improves scalability and reliability. The method includes configuring the WLAN access point with a reserved video bandwidth (step 1005). A multicast video stream including data packets marked with differentiated services code points (DSCPs) is then received (step 1010). The multicast video stream is then converted to a plurality of “n” unicast streams (step 1015). Data packets in the unicast streams are then streamed from the WLAN access point to a plurality of “n” mobile units using a selective packet discard algorithm that employs the DSCPs (step 1020).
US08270423B2
Systems and methods for utilizing transaction boundary detection methods in queuing and retransmission decisions relating to network traffic are described. By detecting transaction boundaries and sizes, a client, server, or intermediary device may prioritize based on transaction sizes in queuing decisions, giving precedence to smaller transactions which may represent interactive and/or latency-sensitive traffic. Further, after detecting a transaction boundary, a device may retransmit one or more additional packets prompting acknowledgements, in order to ensure timely notification if the last packet of the transaction has been dropped. Systems and methods for potentially improving network latency, including retransmitting a dropped packet twice or more in order to avoid incurring additional delays due to a retransmitted packet being lost are also described.
US08270422B2
An active/standby switchover device and an active/standby switchover method of an asynchronous backplane in a transport network are provided. A local oscillator clock is adopted to obtain a clock of a working path, so as to replace the clock of the working path tracked in a phase-locked loop mode. An active/standby switchover operation is realized by using the local oscillator clock, so that the implementation cost is greatly reduced, and the hysteresis problem of the phase-locked loop tracking clock during the active/standby clock switchover is eliminated, thereby effectively achieving the lossless switchover of services.
US08270403B2
Systems and methods for gathering distributed information to improve routing that uses Anycast for assigning deliveries between a number of geographically-distant points of presence (POPs) are disclosed. The POPs share the same Internet protocol (IP) address. According to Anycast resolution, the Internet aids in assigning a content request initially to a POP. Delivery statistics are gathered from deliveries a the number of POPs and possibly other sources. Where it is determined that Anycast found the wrong POP, the content request is reassigned to another POP.
US08270396B2
The Fiber Channel standard was created by the American National Standard for Information Systems (ANSI) X3T11 task group to define a serial I/O channel for interconnecting a number of heterogeneous peripheral devices to computer systems as well as interconnecting the computer systems themselves through optical fiber and copper media at gigabit speeds (i.e., one billion bits per second). Multiple protocols such as SCSI (Small Computer Serial Interface), IP (Internet Protocol), HIPPI, ATM (Asynchronous Transfer Mode) among others can concurrently utilize the same media when mapped over Fiber Channel. A Fiber Channel Fabric is an entity which transmits Fiber Channel frames between connected Node Ports. The Fiber Channel fabric routes the frames based on the destination address as well as other information embedded in the Fiber Channel frame header. Node Ports are attached to the Fiber Channel Fabric through links.
US08270392B2
A method includes receiving, at a session controller, session data from a session-detail record. The session data is associated with at least a portion of a call over a Session over Internet Protocol (SoIP) network. A priority indicator associated with an Internet Protocol (IP) packet transmitted over the call is modified at the session controller based on the session data. The priority indicator indicates a priority to transmit the IP packet.
US08270390B2
In a wireless communication system, a central control unit 31 comprises a synchronizing means for synchronizing a frame for an base station-mobile station communication with that for an inter-mobile station direct communication based on control information used for the base station-mobile station communication, when a second frequency is used for the inter-mobile station direct communication which is different from a first frequency used for the base station-mobile station communication. The central control unit 31 also comprises an allocation means for allocating a band and a frequency for the inter-mobile station direct communication in accordance with an allocation request from a base station 30 or a mobile station 40. Frames for the base station-mobile station communication and the inter-mobile station direct communication are synchronized by utilizing control information 55 for the base station-mobile station communication instead of the conventional control information provided by the mobile station. The system allows a base station-mobile station communication to take place even when an inter-mobile station direct communication is conducted at a frequency other than that of the base station. As the base station controls the inter-mobile station direct communication, the burden on the mobile stations can be reduced, and a single base station can use multiple frequencies simultaneously.
US08270375B2
An apparatus of a multi-antenna telecommunication system includes a beam forming unit configured to form at least two antenna beams, and a signal feeding unit connected to the beam forming unit and configured to feed beam-specific data streams to the beam forming unit. The beam-specific data streams are allocated to one and the same transceiver of the wireless telecommunication system, and each data stream includes independently and separately encoded data signals.
US08270374B2
A device configured to calculate a cell quality ranking criterion for a measured cell, wherein calculating is performed by taking into account at least a signal quality of a backhaul link between a relay node (RN) and an access node. The device may be one of a user equipment (UE), RN, an access node, and a component in a network.
US08270368B2
A technology is disclosed for achieving fast and reliable handover. According to this technology, in the network composition where a network coverage area of the cellular base station 105 and network coverage areas of plural WLAN AP (Wireless LAN access point) 110, 115, 120 and 130 overlaps, the roaming mobile node (mobile terminal) 100 stores the listened beacon information from each WLAN AP. The mobile node can promptly perform the handover procedures without waiting for listening to the next beacon by acquiring the beacon information of WLAN AP which is a handover target from the stored information at the instant of determining to do handover to a new WLAN AP. Furthermore, the mobile node can store information on stability of the network connection if it would be connected to each WLAN AP, and determine which WLAN AP is suitable for a handover target by considering the stability.
US08270366B2
A method and a communication terminal for emitting a data flow during the changeover between a first transmission path and a second transmission path are provided. A receiving pause for the data flow occurs in a receiver during the changeover between a receiving end of a first partial data flow of the first transmission path and a receiving beginning of a second partial data flow of the second transmission path, and the data flow is emitted on the receiver side. When the data flow is emitted, the receiving pause is filled with additional data, the additional data being produced previously from the first partial data flow received by means of the transmission path.
US08270364B1
An apparatus and method for wireless communication uses carrier aggregation (LTE, HSPA) having an improved feedback operation that optimises the radio interface for the uplink direction (LTE).
US08270359B2
A method in a wireless communication User Equipment (UE) includes receiving a Physical Downlink Control Channel (PDCCH) message assigning a data transmission on a Physical Downlink Shared CHannel (PDSCH), wherein the PDCCH message includes scheduling information with a first New Data Indicator (NDI) bit field for a first transport block and a second New Data Indicator (NDI) bit field for a second transport block. The UE determines one or more antenna ports for the data transmission based on the NDI bit fields of the transport blocks, before receiving the assigned data transmission on the PDSCH.
US08270357B1
Methods and systems are provided for EV-DO femtocells to use proximity to prioritize service to access terminals. In an embodiment, a femtocell assigns a first range of MAC IDs to a first group of access terminals, where the first group is those access terminals that are less than a threshold distance from the femtocell. The femtocell assigns a second range of MAC IDs to a second group of access terminals, where the second group is those access terminals that are more than the threshold distance from the femtocell. The femtocell repeatedly transmits (1) a first reverse activity bit (RAB) to the first group and (2) a second RAB to the second group, and measures reverse noise rise (RNR) on a femtocell carrier. If the measured RNR is greater than the threshold, the femtocell responsively (1) clears the first RAB and (2) sets the second RAB.
US08270351B2
The present invention is related to a method and system for transferring wireless transmit/receive unit (WTRU)-specific information to support enhanced uplink (EU) operation in a wireless communication system. A radio network controller (RNC) obtains WTRU-specific information, and transfers the WTRU-specific information to the Node-Bs. Each Node-B is configured to schedule uplink transmissions from a WTRU and utilizes the WTRU-specific information in operation of EU transmissions.
US08270342B2
In a multi-radio platform that operates in two networks, both the announced beacon intervals and the actual beacon intervals in one network may be periodically increased and decreased in defined amounts so that the beacons will not overlap scheduled communications with the other network. The determination of how much and how often to adjust these beacon intervals may be based, at least partially, on the minimum increments in which the beacons intervals are permitted to be adjusted, and on the scheduled communications intervals of the other network.
US08270336B2
Methods and systems for filtering and enhancing the uplink reception sensitivity of OFDMA hybrid point to multipoint communication systems, including the steps of: determining transmission synchronization and bandwidth allocation for a plurality of wireless clients; communicating with the wireless clients via a plurality of hybrid converters connected to a shared signal distribution line, by using a wireless point to multi point centralized synchronizing communication controller and an OFDMA modulation; receiving wireless upload transmission by using the hybrid converters; and blocking non-information carrying sub-carriers, received by at least one of the hybrid converters, before superpositioning the received wireless upload transmissions on the shared signal distribution line.
US08270332B2
Provided are a wireless communication base station device and a wireless communication method by which overhead is reduced in MBMS of LTE. An MBMS SIB creating section (106) creates an MCCH as an MBMS SIB of notification information, and an MBMS SB creating section (104) creates an MBMS SB, including scheduling information of the MBMS SIB. An MIB creating section (103) creates an MIB, including scheduling information of the MBMS SB, and a transmitting section (107) transmits the created MBMS SIB, MBMS SB AND MIB to a terminal by following the scheduling made by a scheduling section (101).
US08270310B2
Various embodiments are disclosed for a services policy communication system and method. In some embodiments, a communications device implements a service policy for assisting control of the communications device use of a service on a network; and monitors use of the service based on the service policy, in which the implementation of the service policy is verified.
US08270308B2
A switch fabric for a modular router may be tested without connecting the switch fabric portion of the router to the other modular portions of the router. The switch fabric may generate test data units and insert the test data units into one or more elements of the switch fabric. The switch fabric may operate with the inserted test data units. A control component may receive data units from the switch fabric after operation of the switch fabric and analyze the received data units to determine whether the received data units correspond to the inserted test data units.
US08270302B2
A system and method is disclosed for providing an adaptive value of a TTL (Time to Live) count for broadcast/multicast messages in a wireless mesh network using a hybrid wireless mesh protocol. A mesh point controller is provided that adaptively selects the value of the TTL count and routes the broadcast/multicast message through the wireless mesh network based on the adaptively selected value of the TTL count. The adaptive selection of the TTL count in accordance with the principles of the invention significantly reduces the number of broadcast/multicast messages that must be transmitted (flooded) through the mesh network.
US08270300B2
A method is described for checking support of a function at network elements of a telecommunication network, like an operation and management function. The telecommunication network includes a source, a destination and intermediate control plane elements interconnected through a signalling protocol for controlling a source, a destination and intermediate network elements respectively for configuration of a connection from the source to the destination network element crossing the intermediate network elements. The method includes the step, in case the connection is not configured, of transmitting a first message from the source to the destination control plane element crossing the intermediate control plane elements for indicating a request of the configuration of the connection and including a first field for indicating a request of the check of support of the function at each network element of the connection and the step of receiving at the source control plane element a second message transmitted from the destination control plane element for indicating an answer to the request and including the first field for indicating if the function is supported at each network element of the connection.
US08270298B2
A network includes a first node and a second node and data frames are transmitted from the first node to the second node. Each of the data frames carry information belonging to one of a plurality of data flows. A determining unit (911) determines at periodically repeated times, for each of the data flows, whether there are more data frames in the first node waiting to be transmitted. A capacity allocating unit (919) allocates for each of those data flows for which no data frames have been waiting to be transmitted for a predetermined time period, only a small amount of the totally available bitrate or bandwidth for transmission from the first node to the second node. It also allocates for each of the remaining data flows, for transmission from the first node to the second node, a share of the rest of the totally available bitrate or bandwidth, so that the sum of the shares for all said remaining data flows is equal to the rest. The first node can be a radio network controller and the second node a radio base station, the data frames forwarded in an HS-DSCH over an Iub interface.
US08270293B2
A system for managing communications with a provider is disclosed. A provider includes a provider binding. A requestor requests a requested binding. An intervening access node is in electronic communication with the provider and the requestor. The intervening access node includes program instructions stored in memory and implementing a method for managing communications with a provider. The provider binding is received from the provider. The provider binding is stored. A request signal sent from the requestor specifies the requested binding. It is determined whether the requested binding is provided by the provider. The request signal is sent to the provider only if it is determined that the requested binding is provided by the provider.
US08270288B2
A data communication method includes providing a sender node having a data packet of information. The data packet is sent to each of a plurality of heterogeneous transmitter devices. The data packet is wirelessly transmitted from each of the transmitter devices to a receiver node.
US08270279B2
An objective lens for an optical information recording/reproducing apparatus, at least one of optical surfaces of the objective lens comprising a diffraction surface having a diffraction structure defined by an optical path difference function, and wherein: the diffraction surface has a first region contributing to converging first and second light beams and having a diffraction structure configured such that diffraction orders at which the diffraction efficiencies are maximized for the first and second light beams are 1st order; the diffraction surface has a second region located outside the first region, and the second region is configured to contribute to converging the first light beam and not to contribute to convergence of the second light beam; and the objective lens satisfies a condition: 35
US08270278B2
An optical recording apparatus comprises: a focusing section that focuses to a transmission type recording medium a recording light beam including a signal light beam and a reference light beam which are radiated from a same direction with a common optical axis; and a focused-position moving section that moves with respect to a direction of the optical axis a focused position where the recording light beam is focused to the transmission type recording medium by the focusing section, wherein an interference fringe formed by the recording light beam is recorded in the transmission type recording medium at each position which is moved by the focused-position moving section.
US08270268B2
A recording medium comprising a recording area, the recording area includes a first area and a second area, the first area includes a frame area, the frame area includes an area in which a second synchronization code sequence and at least a portion of data are to be recorded, and the second area includes an area of linking frames in which a third synchronization code sequence and a fourth synchronization code sequence are to be recorded.
US08270252B2
Disclosed is an active sonar system capable of estimating a direction and a range of a target by using a sound pulse. A target range error can be estimated by the active sonar system, by applying a principle that a sound pulse used to detect an underwater target with consideration of a vertical structure of a sound velocity in water is reflected and refracted through a multipath not a linear path.
US08270251B2
An acoustic isolator for use with tubular assemblies such as drillpipe or production tubing comprising an acoustic wave transmitter, the acoustic isolator comprising, in series connection, an odd integer λ/4 multiple tuning bar of first acoustic impedance adjacent the acoustic wave transmitter, an odd integer λ/4 multiple reflector tube of second acoustic impedance, and a snubber of third acoustic impedance, wherein there is an acoustic impedance mismatch between the odd integer λ/4 multiple tuning bar and the odd integer λ/4 multiple reflector tube and an acoustic impedance mismatch between the odd integer λ/4 multiple reflector tube and snubber, such that a ‘down’ wave propagated toward the isolator is reflected back substantially in phase with an ‘up’ wave propagated from the acoustic wave source away from the isolator. Furthermore, the acoustic isolator is similarly effective in reflecting ‘up’ propagating waves originating from below the isolator, hence further protecting the acoustic wave source from possible deleterious interference.
US08270248B2
A method for initializing the input of each of m receiver channels of a receiving transducer in a well logging tool comprising the steps of selecting a logging tool having a multi-element receiving transducer wherein each element of the multi-element receiving transducer operates in an anti-resonant mode below its resonant frequency, and executing a routine in an initialization mode wherein a predetermined number of run cycles are operated and receiver input responses are measured and averaged for each of the m channels while transmitter firing signals are disabled.
US08270246B2
A method includes accepting a definition of a type of multi-unit memory device (28) including a set of memory units (24), each having a respective nominal storage capacity, the definition specifying a target memory size of the memory device such that a sum of nominal storage capacities of the memory units in the set is equal to the target memory size. A plurality of the memory units is accepted. The memory units have respective actual storage capacities, at least some of which differ from the respective nominal storage capacity. Multi-unit memory devices including respective sets of the memory units are assembled, such that at least one of the sets includes at least a first memory unit having a first actual capacity that is less than the respective nominal capacity and at least a second memory unit having a second actual capacity that is greater than the nominal capacity.
US08270241B2
An embodiment of the invention is related to a memory that includes a memory array having a plurality of memory banks, each of which includes a plurality of rows and a plurality of columns of memory cells. Each memory column includes a switch circuit providing a first voltage and a second voltage to memory cells in the column and to the pre-charge circuit associated with the column. In an application, at one particular point in time (e.g., an accessed cycle), only one column in a memory bank uses the operating voltage Ovoltage while the other N−1 columns in the same memory bank use the retention voltage Rvoltage. Other embodiments are also disclosed.
US08270240B2
An OTP memory array includes a bit line coupled to a plurality of memory banks. Each memory bank includes a plurality of memory cells, a footer, and a bias device, and is associated with a current mirror. When a memory cell is activated (e.g., for reading) the memory bank including the activated memory cell is referred to as an activated memory bank and other banks are referred to as deactivated memory banks. A current tracking device serves to compensate for bit line leakage current in deactivated memory cells in the activated memory bank. Further, footers and bias devices in deactivated memory banks and associated current mirrors are configured to reduce/eliminate bit line current leakage through deactivated memory cells in deactivated memory banks.
US08270233B2
A semiconductor memory device includes a first sense amplifier which senses data on a first line pair and generates a first output signal; and a test unit which senses the data on a first line pair and transfers a second output signal to a second line in response to a test mode signal.
US08270226B2
A memory module comprises a plurality of main memories; a buffer RAM configured to temporarily store data being provided to or read from the main memories and to perform a buffer function between an external device and the main memories; and a NAND flash memory configured to store data of the buffer RAM during an interruption of power being supplied to the buffer RAM.
US08270214B2
A semiconductor memory device, in which a multi-bit region including multi-bit memory cells that store data of two or more bits and a region including memory cells that store data of bits that are less than the bits of the data stored in the multi-bit memory cells are installed, is provided, which can perform a high-speed writing and lengthen the life span of the product without increasing the storage capacity of the region of the memory cells storing the data of bits that are less than the bits of the data in the multi-bit memory cells. The semiconductor memory device includes a plurality of memory cells which store n-bit (where n is a natural number that is equal to or larger than 2) data for one cell. Among the plurality of memory cells, h-bit (h≦n) data is stored in a memory MLC of a first region MLB, and i-bit (i
US08270206B2
A spin high-frequency mixer includes a spin current generator generating a spin current upon input of a local oscillator signal, a TMR device which inputs a high-frequency signal and the spin current and generates a mixed signal, and an output device outputting the generated mixed signal from the TMR device.
US08270202B2
Control circuitry provides control signals to a common X line and a set of Y lines to change a first data storage element of the multiple data storage elements from a first state to a second state by passing a current into the first data storage element from a different Y line through a different storage element. The control circuitry provides control signals to the common X line and the set of Y lines to sequentially change additional data storage elements of the multiple data storage elements from the first state to the second state by passing currents into the additional data storage elements from data storage elements of the multiple data storage elements that were previously changed to the second state and their associated different Y lines.
US08270197B2
A method of operating an information storage device using a magnetic domain wall movement in a magnetic nanowire is provided. The magnetic nanowire includes a plurality of magnetic domains and pinning sites formed in regions between the magnetic domains. The method includes depinning the magnetic domain wall from a first pinning site by applying a first pulse current having a first pulse current density to the magnetic nanowire and moving the magnetic domain wall to a second pinning site by applying a second pulse current having a second pulse current density to the magnetic nanowire. The first pulse current density is greater than the second pulse current density.
US08270194B2
A flash memory storage system may include several modules of flash memory storage manager circuitry, each having some associated flash memory. The modules may be interconnected via the flash memory storage manager circuitry of the modules. The system may be able to write data to and/or read data from the flash memory associated with various ones of the modules by routing the data through the flash memory storage circuitry of the modules. The system may also be able to relocate data for various reasons using such read and write operations. The flash memory storage circuitry of the modules keeps track of where data actually is in the flash memory.
US08270189B2
A charge circuit for providing a gate driver supply voltage for a gate driver of a switching power supply in accordance with an embodiment of the present application includes a first voltage source providing a first voltage and a charge pump circuit connected to the first voltage source and operable to be turned ON and OFF to improve efficiency such that an increased output voltage of the charge circuit is provided when the charge pump circuit is ON, and wherein the output voltage is the gate driver supply voltage.
US08270187B2
An electric power supply circuit includes a switching element (S) for causing a short-circuit for output power of a diode bridge circuit (12), a zero-cross detector section (5a) for detecting a point at which an input voltage reaches a level equal to or lower than a reference level, a timer section (5d) for starting a count upon the detection by the zero-cross detector section (5a), and a PAM waveform output section (5c) for causing the switching element (S) to perform switching with a predetermined output timing so that a waveform of the input current is caused to approximate to a sine wave. The circuit further includes a correction section (5e) for correcting, when a difference between a detection interval from detection to detection by the zero-cross detector section (5a), and an average value for detection intervals up to current detection occurs, an initial value of the count of the timer section (5d) according to the difference.
US08270177B2
An electronic device is provided with an improved reliability and a reduced contamination in a functional unit of an exposed element, and a method for manufacturing thereof is also provided. An electronic device includes a light receiving element, a frame member composed of a first resin provided so as to surround a photo acceptor unit of the light receiving element, and an encapsulating resin layer composed of a second resin and filling a periphery of the frame member. The photo acceptor unit of the light receiving element is exposed in a space surrounded by the frame member. The upper surface of the frame member and the upper surface of the encapsulating resin layer form a common plane, or the upper surface of the frame member is higher than the upper surface of the encapsulating resin layer.
US08270176B2
An integrated circuit package system includes: providing a substrate; mounting an integrated circuit above the substrate; connecting an interposer to the integrated circuit with a wire-in-film adhesive; connecting an exposed interconnect having an upper surface to the substrate; and encapsulating the integrated circuit with an encapsulation.
US08270169B2
A translating hinge includes a translation element which provides translational movement between two objects coupled by the translating hinge and a rotating assembly coupled to the translation element.
US08270168B2
A heat sink having auto switching function, a heat sink system and a heat sinking method are disclosed. The heat sink receives a control command sent by an external device. An internal heat sink device is controlled according to content of the control command to control power ON or power OFF of a thermoelectric cooler of the heat sink device or to control power ON, power OFF, or change rotation speed setting of a heat sink fan in the heat sink device. Thus, the heat sink auto switches operations of the heat sink device correspondingly according to temperature changes of the external device.
US08270166B2
An electronic apparatus includes a circuit board, a first and a second electronic components installed on the circuit board, and a heat dissipation device. The heat dissipation device includes a centrifugal fan defining a first air outlet and a second air outlet, a first fin assembly disposed at the first outlet of the centrifugal fan, a second fin assembly disposed at the second outlet of the centrifugal fan and thermally contacting the second electronic component, and a heat pipe. The heat pipe includes an evaporating section, a first condensing section and a second condensing section located at two ends of the evaporating section. The evaporating section thermally contacts the first electronic component. The first condensing section is thermally attached to the second fin assembly, and the second condensing section is thermally attached to the first fin assembly.
US08270164B2
A liquid cooling system includes a heat conductive member, a liquid tank, and plural conduits connecting the heat conductive member with the liquid tank. The heat conductive member is configured for thermally connecting to a heat-generating electronic component. The liquid tank defines a liquid injection hole therein. A clip assembly is connected to the liquid tank. When pressed against the clip assembly by a user, the liquid tank is fastened by the clip assembly and thus retained in position. When pressed again toward the clip assembly, the liquid tank is released from the clip assembly and ejected in a direction away from the heat-generating electronic component. An electronic device using the liquid cooling system is also provided.
US08270155B2
The present invention provides for repeatedly pulsing coolant through a first channel exposed to heat-generating computer components. The pulsing involves a relatively low baseline coolant flow rate with repeated excursions to a relatively high expulsion coolant flow rate.
US08270149B2
A cover for an opening in the housing of a portable electronic device that provides a function in addition to that of protecting the opening from dirt. The cover can be coupled to the housing so that it can move between a closed position within the housing's surface recess and an open position that allows access to the opening in the housing. In the closed position, the cover becomes part of the housing and the of the device is generally unchanged. The cover can function as an antenna for wireless communication between the device and a network or access point, and it can contain circuitry for devices such as transmitter/receivers. The cover can also function as a display device, a speaker, or an alarm. Thus an existing cover that occupies space within the volume of a handheld device can be utilized for expanding the functionality of the device while generally retaining the current form factor of the device.
US08270147B2
An extensible base pad module and an electrical device with the same are disclosed. The electrical device has a base and an extensible base pad module. The base has an opening. The extensible base pad module has a push bar, a flange and a pad. The push bar is able to be levelly moved in the opening, and has a through hole thereon. The flange is disposed in the base, and has an arc-shaped rail of which two ends are respectively close and remote from the opening. One end of the pad is moveably provided in the arc-shaped rail, the other end is extensible in the through hole.
US08270134B2
An electrical circuit comprising a power supply, a load, a first pair of parallel positive cables between the power supply and the load, a first pair of parallel negative cables between the load and the power supply, and incendive arc prevention means, in which the incendive arc prevention means comprises monitoring means adapted to monitor the first pair of positive cables and the first pair of negative cables, and to detect if the current and/or voltage in one of the first pair of positive cables deviates from the other, and if the current and/or voltage in one of the first pair of negative cables deviates from the other, and in which the incendive arc prevention means comprises a control means adapted to fully or partially isolate the power supply from the first pair of positive cables and the first pair of negative cables if the monitoring means detects that the current and/or voltage of one of the first pair of positive cables has deviated from the other, or if the current and/or voltage of one of the first pair of negative cables has deviated from the other.
US08270132B2
A protection circuit that includes a first power supply system including a first power supply and a first ground, a second power supply system including a second power supply and a second ground, the second power supply system being connected to the first power supply system via a signal line through which signal transfer is performed between a circuit in the first power supply system and a circuit in the second power supply system, and a control circuit that, when coupled to an electro-static discharge (ESD) stress being applied to the first power supply system controls a switch, the switch being provided between the signal line and the first power supply.
US08270128B2
A commutation type DC breaker comprising a main switch inserted in series into a main circuit for connecting a DC source and a load, a commutation capacitor, a reactor, and a commutation switch for supplying charges stored in the commutation capacitor to the main switch in an opposite direction to a main circuit current, producing a current zero point, thereby breaking the main switch, characterized in that the commutation capacitor, the reactor, and the commutation switch which are composed a commutation circuit and a control circuit for controlling the turning on or off of the main switch and the commutation switch are loaded on a frame with the main switch loaded.
US08270121B1
The present invention provides a magnetic head suspension, wherein a supporting portion such as an arm or base plate includes a pair of supporting pieces extending from its opposite sides in the widthwise direction to a tip-end side of the suspension, and a concave portion which is defined by the pair of supporting pieces and is opened toward the tip-end side of the suspension, there is provided an elastically-deformable elastic plate which is connected to the pair of supporting pieces at a first end and a second end in the widthwise direction of the magnetic head suspension, the member forming the load beam portion is connected to the elastic plate, and the elastic plate forms the load bending portion.
US08270118B1
According to one aspect of the present disclosure, a head stack assembly cartridge is provided. The head stack assembly cartridge includes a base plate having a pivot shaft for pivotally mounting a head stack assembly and a base voice coil motor magnet attached to an inner surface of the base plate. The base voice coil motor magnet is arranged on the inner surface of the base plate to be adjacent to a coil of the head stack assembly pivotally mounted on the pivot shaft. The head stack assembly cartridge further includes a cover removably attached to the base plate and a pivot clamp removably attached to the cover and configured to secure the head stack assembly pivotally mounted on the pivot shaft.
US08270116B2
A magnetic disk drive includes a magnetic recording medium and a magnetic head slider adapted to fly over a surface of a magnetic recording medium and read or write information. The magnetic head slider includes a slider air bearing surface and a magnetic transducer. The slider air bearing surface includes a front pad having front rail surfaces and front step bearing surfaces, a rear pad having a rear rail surface and a rear step bearing surface, and a negative-pressure groove interposed between the front pad and the rear pad. A vibration suppressing groove is formed in the rear rail surface so as to be deeper than the rear rail surface and to be closed at its periphery. The vibration suppressing groove quickly damps out translational and pitching vibrations in the flying height direction of the magnetic head slider while stabilizing its flying.
US08270114B2
In one embodiment, a tape movement constraint for a tape drive system, comprises a tiltable tape roller bearing having a roller barrel biased in a first position on a pivot axis, using magnetic attraction between a movable magnet and a return path structure of magnetically permeable material. The roller barrel is pivoted on the pivot axis by conducting current through a fixed coil to generate a magnetic field which is conducted by the return path structure to interact with the magnetic field of the magnet. At least a portion of any air bearing between the moving tape and the barrel surface is quenched using grooves formed in the barrel surface. Other embodiments are described and claimed.
US08270113B2
In a magnetic head cleaning mechanism applicable to a magnetic tape apparatus using a threading system, a cleaning member is placed at a cleaning position with high precision without excessively pushing the cleaning member. For this purpose, an arm to move a cleaning bristle to clean a magnetic head is disposed at a position on a side of the magnetic head relative to a threader track. The bristle moves through a moving path guided by a cam groove. The bristle first moves toward the threader track and then toward the cleaning position in front of the magnetic head. During the movement to approach the magnetic head through the moving path, the bristle does not exceed the cleaning position.
US08270110B2
A magnetic head includes a side shield layer and an encasing layer. The side shield layer has a first end face located in the medium facing surface, a second end face opposite to the first end face, and a first groove accommodating a portion of a pole layer. The first end face includes two portions located on both sides of an end face of the pole layer that are opposite to each other in a track width direction. The encasing layer is formed of a nonmagnetic material and disposed on a side of the side shield layer opposite to a medium facing surface. The encasing layer has a front end face touching the second end face of the side shield layer, and a second groove accommodating another portion of the pole layer. The distance from the medium facing surface to an arbitrary point on the second end face of the side shield layer decreases with decreasing distance from the arbitrary point to the top surface of a substrate.
US08270108B2
A method, system and computer-usable medium are disclosed for performing data write and data read operations on a tape storage medium. A dual head/tape actuator assembly, comprising two head/tape actuator assemblies, is implemented to perform data write and data read operations on a tape medium. Each of the head/tape actuator assemblies comprises a set of data writer elements and a set of data reader elements. During data write operations, the data writer elements on one head/tape actuator assembly are used to write data to a tape medium and the data reader elements on the other head/tape actuator assembly are used to read the data from the tape medium. During read operations, half of the data readers on one head/tape actuator assembly are used to read data from half of the written data tracks on the tape medium and half of the data readers on the other head/tape actuator assembly are used to read the other half of the written tracks.
US08270101B2
A lens includes a central optically active part, and a peripheral optically inactive part surrounding the optically active part. The optically inactive part includes a first surface, an opposite second surface, and a side surface connected between the first surface and the second surface. The side surface includes a first support area, a glue guide area, and a second support area in the order written. The glue guide area has a first groove defined therein. The first groove extends from a first side of the glue guide area adjacent to the first support area to an opposite second side of the glue guide area next to the second support area.
US08270098B2
Disclosed is an image pickup lens (LN) including at least three lens blocks (BK) each equipped with a lens substrate (LS) being a parallel flat plate, and a lens or lenses (L) having a positive or negative power and being connected to at least one of an object-side surface and an image-side surface of the lens substrate (LS). In the image pickup lens (LN), a first lens block (BK1) arranged at a closest position to an object side has a positive powder, a second lens block (BK2) arranged at an image side of the first lens block (BK1) has s negative power, and predetermined conditional expressions are satisfied, whereby the image pickup lens capable of being easily produced at a low cost and having a high performance and a compact size can be provided.
US08270094B2
A zoom lens system of the present invention has a plurality of lens units each composed of at least one lens element and, in order from the object side to the image side, comprises: a first lens unit having negative optical power and composed of two lens elements; a second lens unit having positive optical power; and a third lens unit having positive optical power, wherein in zooming, the lens units are moved such that an interval between the first lens unit and the second lens unit should decrease and that an interval between the second lens unit and the third lens unit should increase, so that magnification change is achieved, and wherein the condition is satisfied: 1.5
US08270077B2
An optical arrangement includes a polarization-modulating optical element and a compensation plate is disclosed. The polarization-modulating optical element includes a first optically active material having a first specific rotation with a sign, the polarization-modulating optical element having a first optical axis. The polarization-modulating element has a first thickness profile that, as measured in the direction of the first optical axis, that is variable. The compensation plate includes a second optically active material having a second specific rotation with a sign opposite the sign of the first specific rotation. The compensation plate has a second thickness profile configured so that, when radiation passes through the optical arrangement, the compensation plate substantially compensates for angle deviations of the radiation that are caused by the polarization-modulating optical element.
US08270069B2
A UV light generator for receiving a baseband light beam from a baseband light source is provided. The UV light generator includes a first lens unit, a second lens unit, a first frequency doubling crystal and a second frequency doubling crystal. The baseband light beam from the baseband light source passes through the first lens unit. The first lens unit and the second lens unit control a minimum of baseband light spot position and a minimum of second harmonic light spot position. The first frequency doubling crystal is disposed between the first lens unit and the second lens unit, and located on the minimum of baseband light spot position. The second frequency doubling crystal is disposed between the first lens unit and the second lens unit, and located on the minimum of second harmonic light spot position.
US08270067B1
A DPSK demodulator is implemented in Sagnac interferometer configuration with a delay line element introduced in one or both of the optical paths of the transmitted and reflected beams. Because the two reflected and transmitted beams travel on the same optical path (though in opposite directions), the Sagnac interferometer provides all the advantages of a common-path interferometer, is thermally and mechanically stable, and the phase requirements are greatly reduced. In its simplest form, the Sagnac DPSK demodulator. In the preferred embodiment, the beam-splitting surface and one of the mirrors are combined into a rhomb beam-splitter structure and the other two mirrors into a right-angle prism. In a DQPSK embodiment, the input beam is split by an upfront beam splitter into two parallel beams that are then directed toward the rhomb-beam-splitter/right-angle-prism combination of the invention.
US08270059B2
Window units, for example insulating glass units (IGU's), that have at least two panes, each pane having an electrochromic device thereon, are described. Two optical state devices on each pane of a dual-pane window unit provide window units having four optical states. Window units described allow the end user a greater choice of how much light is transmitted through the electrochromic window. Also, by using two or more window panes, each with its own electrochromic device, registered in a window unit, visual defects in any of the individual devices are negated by virtue of the extremely small likelihood that any of the visual defects will align perfectly and thus be observable to the user.
US08270050B2
A security device comprises a zero order diffractive microstructure buried within a substrate. One or more further optical structures, such as microlenses, may be formed on a surface of the substrate. The further optical structures modify the optical characteristics of the zero order diffractive microstructure such as by enhancing or reducing the color effect produced by the zero-order diffractive microstructure upon tilting the security device.
US08270041B2
An image processing apparatus includes a reading unit configured to read an open document. The open document includes a first page including a first image and a second page including a second image. The apparatus also includes a storing unit configured to store the first page read by the reading unit as first page image data including the first image, and to store the second page read by the reading unit as second page image data including the second image. The apparatus further includes a designating unit configured to identify whether the open document is a first type of open document or a second type of open document which is different than the first type of open document, a rotation unit configured to rotate the first page image data 180 degrees when the open document is the first type of open document and to rotate the second page image data 180 degrees when the open document is the second type of open document, and an output unit configured to record a portion of the first image data and a portion of the second image data on a single recording medium. Moreover, the portion of the first image data includes the first image and the portion of the second image data includes the second image, and an orientation of the first image data on the single recording medium is the same as an orientation of the second image data on the single recording medium.
US08270033B2
It is possible to provide an image processing device, an image processing method, and its program which generate a positioning pattern of an information pattern in accordance with block information. This eliminates the problem that a block number cannot be identified although an information block position can be identified, i.e., the problem that information for identifying an information block cannot be sufficiently extracted. If an information pattern is identified, the extracted information can be used effectively. Moreover, it is possible to enhance the information embedding efficiency.
US08270028B2
The invention deals with a method for replacing the colorant values of a raster image by a new set of colorant values that is for example optimized for a standardized printing process. According to the invention, a forward look up table is identified that transforms the colorant values in the raster image into color values. The color values in this look up table are separated into new colorant values to obtain a colorant to colorant interpolation look up table. This is done by using an inverse transformation that is based on the forward look up table using appropriate separation parameters for the standardized printing process. The method has the advantage that it enables to map pure colorant values in the original image back onto pure colorant values in the transformed image.
US08270018B2
In a document processing system, whether processing of a workflow specified by a cancellation instruction is in execution is determined based on whether identification information of the workflow specified by the cancellation instruction coincides with that of a workflow associated with document data. When the processing of the workflow corresponding to the cancellation instruction is in execution, the processing of the workflow is canceled. When the processing of the workflow is not in execution and the contents of processing to be executed by another image forming apparatus are designated in a selected workflow, the cancellation instruction is transmitted to the other image forming apparatus specified based on the log information.
US08270010B2
Disclosed is an image forming apparatus including a communication section connected to a data processing apparatus through a communication line to perform image formation on the basis of data transmitted from the data processing apparatus through the communication section, the apparatus including: a plurality of storage sections each of which has a different free storage capacity and a different access speed; and a control section to obtain data size information of an XPS file from the XPS file including the data size information thereof in a head of a file data frame, the XPS file being received from the data processing apparatus through the communication section, to select a storage section to store the XPS file from the plurality of storage sections on the basis of the data size information, and to allow the selected storage section to store the XPS file.
US08270008B2
The subject application is directed to a system and method for on-demand generation of a selectable input for enacting a previous document processing device control sequence. User identification data is received, and a document processing session is opened. A sequence of instructions is then received, and data associated with the sequence is logged according to identification data. After the session opening, logged data is stored in associated memory. Data of a request to generate a selectable input corresponding to the logged data is then received, and testing is performed to determine whether data has been logged in a current session. Data logged during the session is associated with the selectable input, and stored data is retrieved and associated with the selectable input when no data has been logged during the current session. The sequence of selected instructions is then commenced upon the selection of the selectable input by the user.
US08270006B2
When a facsimile transmission is carried over a packet network such as the Internet that disallows the use of non-standard facilities with which the facsimile terminals may be provided, a communication apparatus that mediates the transmission blocks signals requesting the use of non-standard facilities, but replaces the blocked signals with modified data not requesting the use of such facilities. Consequently, even if a facsimile terminal sends a lengthy non-standard facilities signal, the facsimile terminal with which it is communicating will not time out due to non-reception of data, and the facsimile transmission can be completed using standard facilities.
US08269999B2
The present invention can provide an efficient cancellation of a restriction on a stamp print process without the need for the user to request the manager for a temporary cancellation of the restriction on the stamp print process by phone or orally. The information processing apparatus makes a request for a temporary cancellation of the stamp print process specified in the first policy, and thereby acquires a second policy created outside based on the request. Then, the information processing apparatus temporarily cancels the stamp print process specified in the first policy, based on the second policy.
US08269998B2
The image forming device of this invention includes a control unit and a storage unit. The control unit determines whether or not data for printing which has been inputted while the power save mode is being executed is data for printing to which a control command is appended that commands the reduction of electrical power consumption. If it is data for printing to which a control command is appended, then the control unit does not execute any image forming operation, but instead stores this data for printing with control command appended in the storage unit. However, if data for printing to which no control command is appended is inputted, then the control unit changes over to the operating mode and, after having performed image forming operation for this data for printing to which no control command is appended, performs image forming operation for that data for printing with control command appended within the storage unit, which has the same identification information as the data for printing to which no control command is appended.
US08269995B2
Disclosed is an image forming apparatus that prints a confidential image on a recording medium. The apparatus includes a display, a printer for printing images in a queue, an input for receiving identification information for a user, and a processor. The processor determines whether identification information from the input corresponds to reference identification information in a storage and enables the printer to print a confidential image if the identification information from the input corresponds to the reference identification information in the storage.
US08269994B2
An information processing apparatus that customizes a printer driver includes a reading unit configured to read a printer driver set for installing the printer driver, a setting unit configured to set limitation information that imposes a limit on setting information which is set when the printer driver included in the printer driver set read by the reading unit is installed into a computer, and a storage unit configured to store the limitation information in the printer driver set so that the limitation information can be registered in the computer in a state where the printer driver can be identified to be a customized printer driver having a setting of the limitation information when the printer driver included in the printer driver set is installed in the computer.
US08269993B2
In an apparatus having a document reading portion for reading an image of a document on a document platen, by reading an image of a document on a display screen using an area sensor, it's not necessary to set a document for reading on the platen so that the document is prevented from being left behind, and even when a document on the platen and the document sticks out of the platen to extend over the screen, it is possible to prevent the document on the screen is erroneously read. When detecting a document on the platen and detecting that an object on the screen does not have a standard size by the area sensor, a control portion of the apparatus controls so that the document reading portion reads the image of the document on the platen and the area sensor is prohibited from reading the image.
US08269986B2
An image processing apparatus. The apparatus includes an image processing unit to process printing data into image data capable of being outputted; and a controller to control the image processing unit to perform an edge emphasis processing of the font if a size of the font included in the printing data is greater than a predetermined minimum font size.
US08269984B2
The invention relates to a device (1) projecting a reference line, having an electro-optical distance measurement unit that guides an optical reference beam (RS) along a defined reference path (RP), wherein at least one part of the reference path (RP) may be detected upon passing through by the human eye and/or detectors as a reference line. In conjunction with passing through the reference path (RP), a distance measurement occurs to at least one point (Pi) on the reference path (RP), particularly to a plurality of points (Pi), by transmitting a measurement beam that is parallel or coaxial to the reference beam (RS) or using the reference beam (RS) as a measurement beam. After receipt of portions of the reflected measurement beam, a signal is derived from said portions and a distance (Di) from at least one point (Pi) is determined from the signal, wherein the guidance along the reference path (RP) is repeated at least once more and, upon each instance of passing through the reference path (RP), a distance (Di) or distance-related variable is determined for each point (Pi).
US08269981B1
A method of measuring a deviation of an optical test surface from a target shape is provided. The method includes directing an incoming beam of electromagnetic radiation onto the test surface to generate a measuring beam that has interacted with the test surface, causing the ray that has interacted with the test surface to pass through an interferometer on a deviated path, performing an interferometric measurement by superimposing a reference beam with the measuring beam to determine a wave front deviation of the measuring beam from the reference beam, determining a retrace error in the wave front deviation, and correcting the measured wave front deviation by eliminating the retrace error therefrom. The differences in aberrations accumulated by the ray having traveled on the deviated path from fictitious aberrations that would have been accumulated by a ray that had traveled on an undeviated path cause the retrace error.
US08269978B2
An object that might be at least partially obscured is imaged. Frequency-entangled photons are generated. The frequency-entangled photons include photons having first and second frequencies. Those photons having the first frequency can pass through the obscuration and illuminate the object. Photons scattered by the object and those photons having the second frequency are used to form an image by considering coincidences in time of arrival.
US08269975B1
A device for calibrating a wavefront measuring system (WMS) includes a computer generated hologram (CGH) disposed in an axial path of light traveling to or from the WMS, and an imaging lens disposed in the axial path between the WMS and the CGH. An entrance port of the WMS is configured to form a pupil image of a device under test, where a center of curvature (CoC) of the device under test is located along the axial path between the pupil image and the device under test. The CGH is located along the axial path at the CoC, when the imaging lens is inserted between the CoC and the WMS.
US08269974B2
The device is a gas/vapor/aerosol/particulate sensor with a receiver/transmitter option. This optical MEMS device is designed to be a self-contained optical bench, integrating of an entire interferometer into a MOEMS ‘optical bench’ system-on-a-chip, and includes multiplexed optical path sensors. The sensing structures consist of laser sources, semiconductor photo detectors, refractive/reflective optical elements, and specialized optical transmission paths. Each individual laser source and photodiode is an optical path sensor with a particular ‘functionalization.’ These sensing arm functionalizations are sensitive to unique chemical signatures and as a result can recognize and report various chemical agents present in the ambient environment.
US08269959B2
The present invention provides an inspection apparatus and inspection method. The inspection apparatus includes a stage mechanism for supporting an object under inspection. A spatial filter is provided in the detection optical system to inspect the object. A printer is used to print the results of the spatial filter. The spatial filter can be provided in the form of a Fourier transformed image.
US08269954B2
A method for analyzing a blood sample residing within an analysis chamber, which sample has one or more first and second constituents, which constituents are different from one another. The method includes the steps of: a) imaging the sample containing the first and second constituents, which sample is mixed with a colorant that causes the first and second constituents to fluoresce upon exposure to light, and which colorant is also operative to absorb light, the imaging produces image signals representative of fluorescent emissions from the sample and optical density of the sample; b) determining one or more values representative of fluorescent emission from the first and second constituents; c) determining one or more values representative of optical density for the first and second constituents; and d) distinguishing the first constituents from the second constituents using the fluorescent emission representative values and the optical density representative values.
US08269947B2
An optical system for semiconductor lithography including a plurality of optical components, as well as related components and methods, are disclosed. The apparatus can include an optical component that can be moved by a distance along a straight line within a time of between 5 ms and 500 ms. The straight line can have a polar and azimuth angle of between 0° and 90°, and a distance between the straight line and an optical axis of the apparatus being less than a cross-sectional dimension of a projection exposure beam bundle of the projection exposure apparatus. The apparatus can also include a guide unit configured to guide the optical component. The apparatus can further include a drive unit configured to drive the optical component via drive forces so that torques generated by inertial forces of the optical component and of optional components concomitantly moved with the optical component, and the torques generated by the drive forces, which act on the guide unit, compensate for one another to less than 10%.
US08269940B2
A sensing structure is provided. The sensing structure includes a first substrate, a second substrate, a sensing unit, and a flexible printed circuit (FPC). The sensing unit is disposed on the first substrate and adapted to generate a signal when the sensing unit is touched. The FPC has a first end and a second end. The first end includes a first connecting portion and a second connecting portion. The first connecting portion is disposed on the first substrate and electrically connected to the sensing unit, and the second connecting portion connects to the second substrate.
US08269939B2
An active device array substrate at least including a substrate, a plurality of pixel units, a plurality of first signal lines, a first connecting wire, a plurality of first switching devices, and a plurality of second signal lines is provided. The pixel units are disposed within an active area. One ends of two neighboring first signal lines are respectively connected to a first test line and a second test line. The other ends of the two neighboring first signal lines are both connected to the first switching devices. Moreover, the first connecting wire is electrically connected to the first switching devices. One ends of two neighboring second signal lines are respectively connected to a third test line and a fourth test line.
US08269938B2
An FFS mode LCD and a fabrication method thereof are provided. The fabrication method comprises: etching a common electrode material and a gate metal on a board at the same time through a first mask process; forming a gate insulating layer, an active layer and a source/drain metal on the board; forming a channel in a TFT part, forming an opening in the pixel area part by diffraction exposure and exposing a gate pad part through a second mask process; forming a passivation layer substantially on board, and forming a contact hole in TFT part, etching regions in pixel area part and exposing a gate pad and a data pad part through a third mask process; and forming a pixel electrode on regions of the TFT, pixel area part and opened regions of the gate pad and data pad part through a fourth mask process.
