US08819855B2

A handheld security system comprises a set of handheld devices positioned at a group of access points to a secure area. The handheld device comprises a set of input/output devices including a text and graphics display, a camera, a local security database and a set of security devices including an RFID reader, a bar code reader, a magnetic stripe card reader and a biometric scanner. The set of handheld devices are communicatively connected through wireless signaling and protocol to one another and to a server operating a global a global security database. The local security database is synchronized to the global security database. A location stack table is continuously updated with security events and monitored for violation of a set of anti-passback rules. An association table associates a set of assets and a set of personnel, allowing for visitor tracking and asset tracking on a schedule.
US08819842B2

A method and circuit for implementing conductive microcapsule rupture to generate a tamper event for data theft prevention, and a design structure on which the subject circuit resides are provided. A polymeric resin containing microcapsules surrounds a security card and a tamper sensor device provided with the securing card. Each microcapsule contains a conductive material. The conductive material of the microcapsule disperses onto the tamper sensor device on the security card responsive to the microcapsule being ruptured to create a change in resistance, reducing the resistance of a security mesh of the tamper sensor device. The microcapsules are more sensitive to pressure than a tamper mesh of the tamper sensor device and therefore rupture first, creating the change in resistance when dispersed onto the tamper sensor device. The resistance change is detected by the tamper sensor device and the security card is disabled to prevent data theft.
US08819840B2

A method and apparatus for provisioning a subscription product is disclosed. The method comprises receiving a request for a subscription product; retrieving a profile and at least one subscription associated with the profile, wherein the at least one subscription comprises a plurality of subscription details; validating the plurality of subscription details; retrieving product data for the subscription product based on the validated subscription details; determining a dominant subscription product when there are at least two subscriptions associated with the profile; and sending the product data for the dominant subscription product, wherein the product data enables activation of a product license.
US08819836B2

Approaches for limiting exploitable or potentially exploitable sub-components in software components are disclosed. In certain implementations, a first software component in the component creation environment may be identified. The first software component may include a first sub-component that provides a function that is exploitable or potentially exploitable to compromise the first software component. The first sub-component may be disabled such that the function provided by the first sub-component is not available via the first software component when the first software component is executed. The first software component may be placed in the component repository after the first sub-component is disabled such that the first software component is placed in the component repository without availability of the function provided by the first sub-component. In some implementations, disabling the first sub-component may comprise removing the first sub-component from the first software component.
US08819835B2

Method and computer program product for signature testing used in anti-malware processing. Silent signatures, after being tested, are not updated into a white list and are sent directly to users instead. If the silent signature coincides with malware signature, a user is not informed. A checksum (e.g., hash value) of a suspected file is sent to a server, where statistics are kept and analyzed. Based on collected false positive statistics of the silent-signature, the silent-signature is either valid or invalid. Use of the silent signatures provides for effective signature testing and reduces response time to new malware-related threats. The silent signature method is used for turning off a signature upon first false positive occurrence. Use of silent signatures allows improving heuristic algorithms for detection of unknown malware.
US08819834B2

Methods, systems, and computer readable media for automatically generating a fuzzer for testing a network device using the fuzzer are disclosed. According to one method, a functional description of a network communications protocol finite state machine is received as input. Operation of the protocol is simulated using the functional description of the network communications protocol finite state machine to generate a set of valid conversations in the protocol. A fuzzer is generated from the set of valid conversations. The fuzzer is used to send messages to test a device under test. Responses to the device under test to the messages generated by the fuzzer are analyzed.
US08819823B1

A method and apparatus for notifying a recipient of a threat within previously communicated data is described. In one embodiment, network activity amongst at least two computer is analyzed to determine a threat communicated to a computer of the at least two computers. Furthermore, the computer is notified as to the previous communication of the threat.
US08819821B2

A low rate DoS attack detection algorithm is used, which relies on a characteristic of the low rate DoS attack in introducing high rate traffic for short periods, and then uses a proactive test based differentiation technique to filter the attack packets. The proactive test defends against DDoS attacks and low rate DoS attacks which tend to ignore the normal operation of network protocols, but it also differentiates legitimate traffic from low rate DoS attack traffic instigated by botnets. It leverages on the conformity of legitimate flows, which obey the network protocols. It also differentiates legitimate connections by checking their responses to the proactive tests which include puzzles for distinguishing botnets from human users.
US08819817B2

Methods and apparatuses that maintain one or more data stores capable of storing local data in a device for loading a resource of a domain are described. The resource may be loaded to cause one or more data access operations on the data stores. Access to usage tracking data of the device from the domain may depend on at least one of the data access operations. The data access operations may be configured to block the usage tracking data of the device from the domain. The data access operations may be performed on the data stores for the loading of the resource. A web page may be presented to a user when the resource is successfully loaded.
US08819803B1

A method is used in validating association of client devices with authenticated clients. An authentication request for authenticating a client is received from a client device used by a client for establishing a session with a server. The client is authenticated by an authentication device. A token is created and provided to the client device. Identification information of the client device is gathered. The identification information identifies the client device. The identification information gathered from the client device is evaluated. Based on the evaluation, it is validated that the identification information corresponds to a client device associated with the authenticated client.
US08819799B2

An image forming apparatus includes: an internal authentication information storage unit that stores user authentication information relating to authentication for the image forming apparatus; an internal user authentication unit; an external authentication information storage unit that stores the user authentication information for external authentication, and a private IP address in association with one another for a plurality of URLs for external authentication; and a pseudo single sign-on unit that when it is determined that a redirection destination URL included in a response message transferred from a cloud server matches one of the stored plurality of URLs for external authentication, reads the user identification information for external authentication relating to the private IP address corresponding to a destination IP address included in a packet of the response message from the external authentication information storage unit, transmits the information for external authentication to the redirection destination URL, and performs the sign-on process.
US08819793B2

A method includes receiving data related to an individual, the data comprising a plurality of elements of personally-identifying information (PII). The method further includes building, via the plurality of elements of the PII, a compositional key for the individual. In addition, the method includes storing the compositional key and a biometric print for the individual as a biometric record in a biometric repository. The method also includes, via the compositional key, providing a plurality of federated entity (FE) computer systems with access to the biometric repository.
US08819792B2

A server storing a pool of unassigned access credentials selects an access credential from the pool, assigns it to an individual, identifies a mobile communication device associated with the individual, and pushes the access credential to the mobile communication device over a secure and authenticated channel such that the access credential is receivable by the mobile communication device. If the mobile communication device supports a proximity technology and is proximate to an access node that supports the proximity technology, the mobile communication device employs the proximity technology to present the access credential to the access node.
US08819789B2

Login credentials for at least one website, such as a social networking website, are received from a user purporting to act on behalf of an entity, for example, in the context of registering the entity with a system for electronic bill payment. Social data relating to the entity is retrieved from the websites using the login credentials. The social data comprises a plurality of social connections, each reflecting a respective relationship between the entity and a respective third party. A plurality of relevant social connections comprising at least a subset of the plurality of social connections is determined, each social connection of the plurality of relevant social connections reflecting a relationship to a respective third party that is deemed to be reliable. A reliability rating of the entity is then determined based on the plurality of relevant social connections.
US08819773B2

A system for security self-assessment for a computer platform. The system comprises a memory, a processor, and an application stored in the memory. When executed by the processor, the application in association with a call to action transmits security self-assessment logic and at least one security self-assessment policy to a computer platform, wherein the security self-assessment policy defines at least one scan tool to be used by the security self-assessment logic when executed on the computer platform to perform a security self-assessment of the computer platform. The system further comprises a plurality of scan tools stored in the memory and accessible for downloading by the computer platform. The security self-assessment logic is configured to cause a processor of the computer platform to download at least one scan tool defined by the security self-assessment policy and to perform a security self-assessment.
US08819772B2

Techniques for in-line filtering of insecure or unwanted mobile components or communications (e.g., insecure or unwanted behaviors associated with applications for mobile devices (“apps”), updates for apps, communications to/from apps, operating system components/updates for mobile devices, etc.) for mobile devices are disclosed. In some embodiments, in-line filtering of apps for mobile devices includes intercepting a request for downloading an application to a mobile device; and modifying a response to the request for downloading the application to the mobile device. In some embodiments, the response includes a notification that the application cannot be downloaded due to an application risk policy violation.
US08819763B1

A technique for securely granting access to a target system to a user includes requesting a plurality of security policies from a plurality of distributed policy systems. It further includes obtaining a plurality of security policies from the plurality of distributed policy systems. It further includes granting a temporary grant of access that is an aggregate of the plurality of security policies. It further includes implementing the temporary access grant for the user.
US08819755B2

A data communication architecture delivers a wide variety of content, including audio and video content, to consumers. The architecture employs channel bonding to deliver more bandwidth than any single communication channel can carry. The architecture includes intermediate network devices that may receive content and send content using different groups of communication channels. The network device may process content received across a first set of communication channels for transmission across a second set of communication channels different from the first set. Such processing may preserve a program order of the content during delivery to a destination device.
US08819754B2

The present disclosure relates to playback of video/audio streaming media data. The media stream is available from the network at multiple bit rates. When a seek operation is performed, a playback device requests a lower bit rate media stream in order to quickly fill a playback buffer so that playback can commence more readily. After a seek start-up period is complete, the playback device can return to downloading the media stream associated with higher bit rates in order to increase the quality of the playback.
US08819747B2

A contents receiving system uses a digital broadcast wave or a broadband network to enable a user to suitably view main content, and provide a user with subsidiary content information desired by the user. Each of subsidiary content control receivers A (101), B (102) transmits ID information specific to each of the subsidiary content control receivers A (101), B (102), and a request for acquiring subsidiary content, from a communication control unit (405) to a main content receiving display unit 100. The main content receiving display unit 100 uses a content separation control unit (310) to separate a stream into subsidiary content corresponding to the request. Then, a request information input/transmission control unit (313) transmits the separated subsidiary content and the received ID information to the subsidiary content control receiver in question. The subsidiary content control receiver judges from the ID information that the subsidiary content should be acquired.
US08819745B2

An information system suitable for use in cooperation with portable media devices, such as an Apple iPod® digital electronic media device, and methods for manufacturing and using same. The information system supports a simple manner for seamlessly integrating the personal media device with the information system, immersing a user in a rich and intuitive media environment. When the personal media device and the information system are coupled, viewing content from the personal media device can be integrated “on the fly” into the information system via an interactive user interface system. The personal media device likewise can receive control commands and/or operating power from the information system. Thereby, the user can advantageously enjoy his own personal viewing content from the personal media device via the larger video presentation system and/or the enhanced audio presentation system of the information system, while recharging an internal battery system of the personal media device.
US08819740B2

A system for providing one or more interactive applications to one or more users via a wireless communications network, the system including: one or more servers cooperating with the network to substantially deliver one or more interactive applications to one or more wireless access devices each corresponding to at least one of the users; wherein, after the one or more wireless access devices receive the substantially delivered one or more applications, upon request of one of the users the one or more corresponding wireless access devices receives communication from the server to facilitate the one of the users accessing the one or more interactive applications using the corresponding wireless access device.
US08819734B2

A contextual navigational control for digital television is described. An apparatus, comprises a contextual navigation control interface (CNCI). The CNCI includes a first area that represents a plurality of cable television programs having a first level of relevance. A second area represents a first group of the plurality of programs having a second level of relevance. A third area represents a first subgroup of the first group having a third level of relevance. A fourth area represents a second subgroup of the first group having a fourth level of relevance. There may be additional areas representing additional sub-groups of relevance to the current viewing context.
US08819733B2

An assistance method for selecting a program using a display device (112) is disclosed. The method (1200) selects one or more attributes associated with a first program, the one or more attributes being selected dynamically by a processor associated with the display device (112) according to one or more predetermined criteria. The method searches for a second program associated with one or more of the selected attributes. The second program and the one or more attributes associated therewith are displayed on the display device, according to the search for the second program.
US08819728B2

An identification server correlates the web browsing behavior of individuals with their use of social media systems. Based on these behaviors, web identifiers (referred to as identities or IDs) may be matched to social media identifiers; these matches being determined, stored, and output as a confidences that the web identity of the user corresponds to a social media identity. Each web identity may be associated with one or more social media identities. The identity correlations between web identities and social media identities may be used along with other alignments to provide information regarding the time-based media (e.g., advertisements) a user may have likely been exposed to, topics the user is interested in, and to provide targeted advertisements.
US08819727B2

A digital video program is obtained. The program includes: (i) at least one broadcast segmentation message specifying at least one location for at least one broadcast advertisement, and (ii) at least one time-shifted segmentation message specifying at least one location for at least one time-shifted advertisement. The program is broadcast with at least one broadcast advertisement in accordance with the at least one broadcast segmentation message, and is made available to a subscriber at a time after the broadcasting, with at least one time-shifted advertisement in accordance with the at least one time-shifted segmentation message.
US08819726B2

Methods and apparatus for providing advertising information on a second user viewing device relating to a media program viewed on a first user viewing device. Upon determining that the media program is being presented via the first user viewing device, an ad programming signal is transmitted to the second user viewing device so as to present on the second user viewing device at least one first advertisement relating to content of the media program.
US08819724B2

Systems, methods and apparatus for producing, distributing and presenting media presentations include identifying, providing and generating a sequence of media segments from a plurality of media presentations, optionally in combination with associated interactive services, so as to define a media channel.
US08819723B1

A method and apparatus for brokering data embedding services. The method comprises the steps of receiving a request in an embedded data brokering system to embed the auxiliary data in the media program, determining if the auxiliary data may be embedded into the media program, negotiating a schedule for broadcasting the media program with embedded auxiliary data with the media program provider, transmitting the negotiated schedule for broadcasting the media program with the embedded auxiliary data to the media program provider, steganographically embedding the auxiliary data in the media program while collecting billing information regarding the embedded data, and providing the media program and the embedded auxiliary data to the media program services subscriber for broadcast according to the broadcast schedule.
US08819720B2

Tools are provided for distributing access-restricted content in an internet protocol television (“IPTV”) environment based on portable entitlement keys. Such tools can include a decoder, an encoder, and a network entitlement handler. The decoder may be configured to receive a key associated with entitlement information, and transmit the entitlement information over a network. The encoder may be configured to receive content from content providers, and to encode the content to create IP-compatible content, with access restrictions based on entitlement. The network entitlement handler may be configured to receive a request for requested content from the decoder; receive the access-restricted content including (including the requested content) from the encoder; and transmit the requested content over the network to the decoder using IP, when the decoder is entitled to receive the requested content.
US08819718B2

Methods and apparatus for collecting program viewership information are described. A viewership monitoring module is provided access to decrypted program content allowing program information to be recovered without having to capture output program content using a microphone or camera. The monitoring module is loaded onto a secure device, e.g., a home network device, such as a router used to deliver content to a secure playback device. Alternatively the secure device which performs the monitoring maybe the secure playback device. Since a user of the secure device or a company implementing the viewership monitoring process loads the monitoring module onto the secure device, the network used to deliver the secure content need not be informed of which network customers are contributing to the viewership information which is being collected.
US08819717B2

Methods and apparatus for detecting a channel change event are disclosed. An example method identifying at least one of a first muted audio condition or a first transient audio condition in a second portion of a media signal having first, second, and third portions, the first portion occurring earlier in time than the second portion and the second portion occurring earlier in time than the third portion, and identifying, using a processor, a channel change event in response to: 1) identifying the at least one of the first muted audio condition or the first transient audio condition; 2) failing to identify a second muted audio condition or a second transient audio condition in the first and third portions of the media signal; and 3) determining that a time domain length of the second portion of the media signal is greater than a first threshold and less than a second threshold.
US08819714B2

In one system embodiment, a first receive-and-process (RP) system and a second RP system, the first and second RP systems each configured to receive a first broadcast stream corresponding to a service, the broadcast stream comprising either a raw Internet protocol (IP) stream or a non-IP stream, and each further configured to derive a first Real-time Transport Protocol (RTP) stream and a second RTP stream, respectively, based on the first broadcast stream, the first and second RTP streams having stream parameters in common, the first and second RP systems each further configured to provide respective first and second RTP Control Protocol (RTCP) reports, the first and second RTCP reports based on the derived first and second RTP streams, the first and second RTCP reports each comprising information associated with a viewer experience, the respective information having a common benchmark as a basis for comparison.
US08819711B2

A wireless communication method for modifying a subscription that includes, receiving subscription information, demodulating the subscription information according to a wireless scheme, displaying a set of available program packages for subscription using the demodulated subscription information and allowing a selection of one or more displayed packages, wherein the subscription is modified as a result of the selection.
US08819710B2

An optical pickup device is provided, a cover of which covering a housing is prevented from deforming. A principal surface of an optical pickup device of the present invention is covered with a cover 13. The cover 13 includes: a cover portion 13G; a hole portion 13 provided at an end in the longitudinal direction and is screwed; an engagement portion 13A provided at the other end in the longitudinal direction and is engaged with the housing; and an engagement portion 13D engaged with the opening portion of the housing in the middle part. The engagement portion 13D placed in the middle part of the cover portion 13G is engaged with the housing to prevent the cover portion 13G from bulging outward.
US08819701B2

A cloud computing monitoring system has an alert capturing system and a message transfer system that provides performance tracking and alert management to a local monitoring system. The alert capturing system may operate as part of a managed code framework and may capture and route alerts that may be transmitted to an operating system, as well as application exceptions and debugging information. A message queuing system may transmit the alerts to a local monitoring system, which may have a connector that subscribes to the cloud system's message queuing system.
US08819685B2

A method and an apparatus for adjusting an input/output (I/O) channel on a virtual platform, and the method for adjusting an I/O channel includes: counting, by a host, current average I/O throughput of multiple virtual machines (VMs) operating on the host; increasing or decreasing, by the host, working threads for processing the VMs between front devices and back devices of the multiple VMs according to the current average I/O throughput; and adjusting, by the host, a mapping relationship between queues in the front device, queues in the back devices of the multiple VMs, and working threads for processing the VMs. According to the present invention, when the I/O throughput decreases, idle I/O channel resources are released, thereby avoiding a waste of the I/O channel resources; when the I/O throughput increases, the I/O channel resources are increased, resulting in an improved data transmission capability of the I/O channels.
US08819680B2

A computer system enables two virtual machines with use of two virtual CPUs. The computer system includes a CPU that is allocated to the virtual CPU when the virtual CPU performs computer processing of the virtual machine other than timer processing; a tick CPU that is dedicated to timer processing and is allocated to the virtual CPU upon receiving an interrupt request (tick interrupt) for causing the virtual CPU to perform timer processing of the virtual machine; and interrupt controller that issues the tick interrupt to the tick CPU.
US08819679B2

Methods and arrangements for on-boarding an application to a cloud. An application for hosting in a cloud environment is provided. Metadata related to the application is provided, and metadata related to the cloud is obtained. The application metadata and cloud metadata are compared, and the compatibility of the application with existing offerings of the cloud is ascertained. The application is on-boarded to the cloud.
US08819676B2

A virtual-machine-based system provides a mechanism to implement application file I/O operations of protected data by implementing the I/O operations semantics in a shim layer with memory-mapped regions. The semantics of these I/O operations are emulated in a shim layer with memory-mapped regions by using a mapping between a process' address space and a file or shared memory object. Data that is protected from viewing by a guest OS running in a virtual machine may nonetheless be accessed by the process.
US08819674B2

One embodiment of the present invention is a method for a virtual machine to access data from a virtual device, the method including: (a) attaching the virtual device to the virtual machine with a backing store that is a virtual image of a file system conforming to a predetermined file system format, wherein: (i) file system data is stored in one or more files, (ii) the virtual image includes metadata stored apart from the file system data, which metadata corresponds to the predetermined file system format, (iii) the metadata includes one or more directory records, and (iv) the one or more directory records include information that points directly or indirectly to the file system data; (b) issuing a read request for a block of data from the file system as if stored in the predetermined file system format; (c) accessing the metadata and determining the location of the requested block of data in the file system data; and (d) retrieving the requested block of data from the file system data.
US08819668B2

A catalog for maintaining a store of public and private limited distribution release software changes in a single location. A method for distributing limited distribution release software changes to clients via a network comprises receiving a search request, authenticating the client, querying a database of limited distribution release software changes, filtering the returned data according to a screening criteria, and providing the returned data to the client. A further method receives a request from a client to develop a limited distribution release software change, develops the limited distribution release software change, adds the developed limited distribution release software change to a catalog, notifies the client, and provides an interface to the client for accessing. A system further links knowledge base entries with related limited distribution release software changes.
US08819660B2

Techniques are described to allow substation of blocks into a virtual machine image of an executing virtual machine. A patch may be applied to a first virtual machine image. One or more blocks modified by the patch are identified and copied to a host having a virtual machine executing from a virtual machine image that is based on the first virtual machine image (prior to the patch). While the virtual machine is executing, the substitution blocks are applied (supersede) corresponding original blocks in the virtual machine image. A guest operating system in the virtual machine may either begin using an executable file in a substitution block. In addition, the guest operating system may be forced to flush from memory and cache executable code replaced by the substitution block.
US08819647B2

Nested virtual machines cooperate with one another to improve system performance. In particular, an outer virtual machine performs tasks on behalf of an inner virtual machine to improve system performance. One such task includes translation of instructions for the inner virtual machine.
US08819646B2

A software unit arrangement method includes developing a standardized software-hardware abstraction software layer in a software unit. The standardized abstraction software layer includes a library of primitives that interface with the source codes of the software unit and with a real or virtual computer hardware unit. The method includes developing a real-hardware or virtual-hardware software layer in the associated computer hardware unit. The real-hardware or virtual-hardware software layer forming the portion of the computer hardware unit that interfaces with the standardized abstraction software layer and that presents real and/or virtual input/output cards performing at least the same functions as the real standard input/output cards of the real computer hardware unit.
US08819643B1

A device receives information generated by execution of a parallel program, aggregates the received information, generates one or more performance indicators for the parallel program on one of a line or function basis and based on the aggregated information, and provides the one or more performance indicators to a user.
US08819641B1

A method of analyzing program execution status for use with a computer software debugger that includes identifying one or more non-deterministic execution steps in the program in one or more threads and recording a state of program properties at non-deterministic execution steps to enable determination of prior program execution status.
US08819624B2

Device simulators and methods for using the same are disclosed. In some embodiments, the device simulators are capable of permitting accurate pixel to pixel and inch to inch mapping between a simulated display and a display of a target device. Web application development tools utilizing such simulators are also disclosed. In some embodiment, such web application development tools provide a convenient method to convert electronic document source files to interactive document web applications for multiple operating systems and form factors.
US08819623B2

A method of populating object property values includes receiving an instruction on behalf of a user. The instruction represents an input indicating selection of the object. The method includes presenting, in response to the input, a list of property names and corresponding default values associated with the selected object, and presenting, for each of one or more default values, a user input field. The method includes presenting, for each of the one or more default values, an enumeration of alternative property values when the enumeration is compatible with the corresponding property. The method includes receiving from the user, for zero or more of the property names, an updated property value that is a selection from a value entered in the user input field or the enumeration of alternative property values, and generating code operative to instantiate the object. The updated property values are associated with the properties of the object.
US08819622B2

Disclosed are methods, apparatus, and computer-readable media for generating output computer code that adds a 64-bit integer to a smaller-length integer having a length of less than 64 bits. Input computer code includes a loop that includes adding a 64-bit integer and a smaller-length integer. Output code is generated that represents the input code in a format such as assembly language or machine code. The output code includes instructions to convert the smaller-length integer to a 64-bit integer, such that the conversion is not performed during each loop execution. The smaller-length integer is converted by subtracting an offset from the 64-bit integer, adding the offset to the smaller-length integer, and zero-extending the smaller-length integer. The offset is determined based on the length of the smaller-length integer. The output code preserves the integer semantics of the smaller-length integer as required by the input code.
US08819605B1

Systems and methods are described for simultaneously deriving an effective x-sigma corner for multiple, different circuit and/or process metrics for a semiconductor device. The result is an effective sigma that is representative of design intent. Some implementations account for covariance, and use joint probability as the criteria for the effective x-sigma corner (e.g., as opposed to a unique sigma level of each individual metric). Analysis results for each metric can be transformed to metric distributions in a common distribution framework, and a correlation matrix can be calculated. The transformed metric distributions can be input to a joint probability distribution set to achieve a target joint sigma level. The joint probability distribution and correlation matrix values can be used to back-calculate scaled x-sigma corners for each metric distribution. Simulation of the device can be performed at one or more of the scaled x-sigma corners.
US08819598B1

Systems, methods, and computer-readable media for improving user navigation of a multi-page article on a small screen user device. In embodiments, as a user progresses through the multi-page article, pages and/or lines of text of the multi-page article are cached. In response to a user request to view the multi-page article in a full-page format, the cached content is compared against text of the full-page document and used to determine a presentation of the text that displays nonduplicative content to the user.
US08819592B2

Systems and methods for use in enabling a user to select one or more data objects from a plurality of data nodes. The method includes determining a data set of interest from one or more data sets. The data set of interest is depicted as a primary node in an available data node area, and one or more data nodes within the data set of interest are depicted as available data nodes within the available data node area. A selection of an available data node is received. When the selected available data node is a data object, the selected available data node is depicted as a selected data node in a selected data node area. When the selected available data node is a data set, the selected available data node is depicted in the available data node area as a secondary data node subordinate to the primary data node.
US08819589B2

While a user interacts with a networked host application such as creating or editing documents, the user is enabled to invoke (or otherwise act on) a partner-selection user interface presentation to explore available partner services for carrying out a desired partner function that is complementary to the host application functionality. The user is further enabled to select one of the partner services listed in the partner-selection user interface presentation, in response which, the host application automatically instructs the partner service to perform the desired partner function complementing the host functions performed by the host application in an integrated and seamless manner.
US08819587B1

A method includes transmitting, from a storage system to a user system, information that, when processed by the user system, causes the user system to display a current view representing the one or more items. The method also includes selecting, at the storage system in response to a first user input signal that identifies at least one item from one or more items that are stored at the storage system, a removal operation based on one or more predetermined criteria, wherein the one or more predetermined criteria include a view type of the current view. The method also includes performing, at the storage system, the removal operation with respect to the at least one item.
US08819586B2

A file access request is received from an application. One or more file types for the file access request are identified, and one or more file hosts supporting files of the identified one or more file types are also identified. A user interface is displayed, the user interface including a hosted area. Within the hosted area, at least one of the one or more file hosts displays a portion of the user interface identifying one or more files of at least one file host that can be selected for retrieval, or one or more locations that can be selected to which the one or more files are saved.
US08819585B2

Tabs or other display elements that do not comply with traditional “window” requirements can be individually presented to a user when the window containing such tabs or other display elements is hidden or obscured. The user can be enabled to perform tab-specific actions, such as closing a particular tab, or viewing a specific tab without interacting with the containing window. Executing processes utilizing such tabs can register them and provide order and display information. Subsequent tab-specific actions can be received and directed to such executing processes. Additional requests, such as for thumbnails and bitmaps, can be directed to such executing processes in order to implement the tab presentation mechanisms and to provide for the tab-specific actions.
US08819582B2

Methods and systems for processing and displaying content are disclosed. An example method of operation may include initializing two or more windows on a mobile device, and displaying a first window of the two or more windows on the mobile device. The method may also include receiving an on-screen switcher indication causing a display view change from the first window being displayed to a combination of the first window and at least one more additional windows being displayed. The method may also include determining a space amount for each of the two or more windows, adjusting a size of each of the two or more windows based on the space amount. The method may further include displaying a frame around each of the two or more windows with the respective adjusted size, and displaying each frame overlaid on top of one another.
US08819576B2

Systems and methods for facilitating an input to an electronic device are described herein. An example method for facilitating an input field of an electronic device includes presenting a menu item for selection while the electronic device is in a first physical state and identifying the menu item selected when the electronic device is in the first physical state. The method includes detecting whether the electronic device is in a second physical state after selection of the menu item and presenting an input field associated with the menu item selected.
US08819571B2

Methods, machine media, and systems that can manipulate preview panels are disclosed. In one embodiment, a preview panel can be transformed, in response to user interaction with the preview panel, into an icon representing the file containing the content displayed in the preview panel. The preview panel can, in one embodiment, be opened from a user interaction with a first icon and the preview panel can be transformed into a second icon that represents the file and can be manipulated as if it were the first icon.
US08819570B2

A computer program product having a computer readable medium having computer program logic recorded thereon comprises code for generating a canvas upon a display space, the canvas being larger than the display space and including an interactive element, code for navigating within the canvas upon the display space code for changing a status of the interactive element in response to navigation moving the interactive element within the display space.
US08819568B1

A windowing system for an electronic device that uses an electronic paper display may include a compositor, a frame buffer, and a display controller manager. One or more applications running on the electronic device may request multiple changes to windows. The compositor may determine multiple update areas, where an update area indicates the smallest area of the electronic paper display that should be updated as a result of changes being made to a window. The update areas may be stored in the frame buffer. The display controller manager may create a cumulative update area based on the update areas that are determined between a begin update instruction and an end update instruction. The display controller manager may instruct a display controller to update only the portion of the display corresponding to the cumulative update area.
US08819565B2

Embodiments of the invention may be used to enhance the presentation of a virtual environment for certain users, e.g., a visually impaired user. Because users may visit, and revisit, locations within the virtual environment, the state of elements in the virtual environment may change. Accordingly, audible descriptions of an object, person or environment, may be adjusted to prevent redundant or unnecessary descriptions. For example, when the user encounters a given element a second time, rather than describe each characteristic of the element, only changes to the characteristics of the element are described.
US08819558B2

An edited section information acquisition unit generates edited section information and edited section association information based on edit history information. Pre-edit content/post-edit content correspondence relationship acquisition unit groups consecutive edited groups based on the edited section information of the edited section information acquisition unit and generates group information. An edited section information display screen generation unit generates screen information based on the edited section information and the edited section association information of the edited section information acquisition unit, the group information, inter-group association information, section/group association information of the pre-edit content/post-edit content correspondence relationship acquisition unit, and input information of an input unit. A provision unit displays the screen information obtained by the edited section information display screen generation unit.
US08819554B2

A system, computer-implemented method, and tangible computer-readable media for media playback. The method includes receiving a request from a user to play a media asset, detecting capabilities of the playback device, detecting playback environment acoustic characteristics, optimizing media playback settings for the playback device and the playback environment characteristics, preparing the media asset for playback on the playback device, and transferring the prepared media asset to the playback device for playback. The method can further transfer optimized playback settings to the playback device. Media asset preparation can be based at least in part on the optimized playback settings. A playback profile can store environment characteristics and playback device capabilities. The method continuously detects changes in the playback environment characteristics, and optimizes media playback settings when detected changes exceed a threshold.
US08819550B2

In one embodiment, an apparatus includes a touch-screen display. The apparatus includes first logic for generating a virtual assistant for presentation to a user via the touch-screen display. The virtual assistant has one or more anthropomorphic characteristics and interacts with the user via at least the touch-screen display to facilitate user access to one or more vehicle features. The apparatus includes second logic for automatically receiving data from a radio-frequency identification (RFID) tag in a personal item of the user to identify the user, automatically accessing a profile associated with the RFID tag, and automatically initiating implementation of one or more of preferences of the user indicated by a profile associated with the RFID tag. The apparatus includes a vehicle interface for coupling the apparatus to any one of multiple vehicles and communicating data between the first or second logic and the vehicle.
US08819547B2

Upon adding a visible electronic signature to an electronic file, deterioration in visibility of characters is prevented by arranging a character image data of a portion overlapping with a region of the visible electronic signature in an upper position layer above the visible electronic signature. There are included a step for extracting a character image data from an image data, a step for generating a character image layer data in which only the character image data is described on a transparent background if a region where the visible electronic signature is arranged and the region of the character image data overlap with each other, and a step for generating an electronic file with a layered structure having the character image layer data, the visible electronic signature and the image data in that order from an upper position of the layered structure.
US08819546B2

A method for mapping viewpoints and model levels of a first framework to a second framework includes receiving data related to viewpoints and model levels in a first format related to the first framework, mapping the received data in the first format to data related to viewpoints and model levels in a second format related to the second framework. The mapping is performed by organizing the viewpoints and the models in both the first and second formats across at least two orthogonal dimensions.
US08819543B2

An object including at least one element is moved on a document in which the object is arranged in response to an instruction from a user.In addition, if the object is moved to a boundary between two pages, at least one element that is included in the object and that corresponds to a break position of the two pages is detected.Then, a position where the at least one detected element is arranged in the document is determined so that the element is arranged in either of the documents of the two pages and an image corresponding to the document is output.In the above manner, it is possible to appropriately arranging elements in a document to output an image corresponding to the document having the elements appropriately arranged therein.
US08819533B2

An interactive multimedia diary system is presented. The system can include one or more interfaces for media content devices (e.g., communications devices, still or video cameras, audio devices, or any other suitable media content storing or generating devices). An interactive multimedia diary can be composed by collecting and arranging a plurality of media types (e.g., images, video, audio, text, etc.). Alternatively, other suitable data collections such as a journal, a scrapbook, an album, a log, a notebook, or a memoir can be composed. The system can prompt a user for input based on input previously entered. The system can scan input text for keywords, such as verbs associated with common activities, previously used or new names, locations, or any other suitable concepts and prompt the user for more information.
US08819522B2

A disk array apparatus, if a rebuild error occurs, stores information indicating an error occurrence place in a sector holding unit, and then stops rebuild processing. A host computer, if a rebuild error occurs in the disk array apparatus, acquires the information indicating the error occurrence place from the disk array apparatus. The host computer determines whether the rebuild error does not obstruct continuation of the rebuild processing based on the acquired information indicating the error occurrence place. If it is determined that the rebuild error does not obstruct continuation of the rebuild processing, the host computer instructs the disk array apparatus to resume the rebuild processing while skipping the error occurrence place. In response to the instruction from the host computer, the disk array apparatus resumes the rebuild processing while skipping the error occurrence place.
US08819516B2

A storage integrity system in a dispersed storage network scans an address range of data slices to identify errors in one of a plurality of encoded data slices, wherein the plurality of encoded data slices are generated from a data segment using an error encoding dispersal function. When the storage integrity system detects an error, it identifies one of the encoded data slices for rebuilding. The identified data slice is rebuilt in response to the type of error. For example, when the type of the error includes a temporary error, the storage integrity system waits a predetermined time period to determine whether the error still exists prior to rebuilding the identified data slice.
US08819511B2

Provided is an apparatus configured for testing a logic device. The apparatus includes a testing mechanism configured to output test patterns representative of logical structures within the logic device and a testable logic device having (i) input ports coupled to output ports of the automated testing mechanism and (ii) output ports coupled to input ports of the automated testing mechanism. The apparatus also includes a fusing mechanism configured to compensate for defects within the logic device responsive to a segregation of the type of defects identified.
US08819504B2

A nonvolatile memory device includes a first storage unit configured to store a plurality of first fault address information provided in a first test operation, a second storage unit configured to store a plurality of second fault address information provided in a second test operation which is performed later than the first test operation; a redundancy operation unit configured to, in performing a redundancy operation, determine the number of operation circuits corresponding to the first fault address information and the number of operation circuits corresponding to the second fault address information among a plurality of redundancy operation circuits based on address number information; and an address providing unit configured to read the plurality of first fault address information and the plurality of second fault address information, and sequentially provide the read information to the redundancy operation unit, wherein the address providing unit is further configured to detect the number of the first fault address information and generate the address number information.
US08819485B2

Embodiments relate to systems and methods for error containment in a system comprising detecting an error by processing an input signal by multiple processing units, and delaying at least one output signal of a processing unit to enable, in case an error has been detected, modifying at least one output signal of the processing unit that would cause propagation of the error through the system.
US08819471B2

Methods and apparatus that receive, at a wireless device, power through wire or inductive pad are described. The received power is monitored to back up data from the device to a server in a network through an OTA (over the air) wireless interface. The data is transmitted to the server to back up the data on the device. While backing up the data, whether the power has been removed from the device is determined. The backing up of the data in the device can be terminated automatically and without user request, in response to the determination that the power has been removed.
US08819470B2

A switching device is comprising connectors and switching part, which is connected via the connectors to a working power supply unit, a redundant power supply unit, a battery unit and a power supply output terminal, and, in an initial state, connects the power supply output terminal and the working power supply unit, and connects the battery unit and the redundant power supply unit is connected, and in a spare state, cuts a connection between the battery unit and the redundant power supply unit, and connects the power supply output terminal and the redundant power supply unit.
US08819451B2

A method and system for cryptographically indexing, searching for, and retrieving documents is provided. In some embodiments, an encryption system is provided that generates a document index that allows users to retrieve documents by performing encrypted queries for keywords associated with the documents. In some embodiments, each keyword maps to the same number of encrypted document identifiers. In some embodiments, an extractor graph is employed to map an indication of each keyword to a number of buckets storing encrypted document identifiers. In some embodiments, an order-preserving encryption system is provided. The encryption system uses an ordered index that maps encrypted instances of ordered attribute values to documents that are associated with those values. The ordered index enables queries containing query operators that rely on order, such as less than (“<”) or greater than (“>”), to be successfully performed on encrypted attribute values.
US08819448B2

A system and method for protecting information on a mobile device. The method and apparatus obtain a predetermined portion of asymmetric information upon an input of the asymmetric information in the mobile device; generate an identifier by using a first generating algorithm that uses the predetermined portion of the asymmetric information as an algorithm input; generate an encryption key by using a second generating algorithm that uses the predetermined portion of the asymmetric information as an algorithm input; generate ciphered information by using an encryption algorithm that uses the encryption key and the information as algorithm inputs; associate the identifier with the ciphered information; and store the ciphered information as associated with the identifier.
US08819447B2

A wireless communication device comprises first processing circuitry configured to execute an RF operating system and second processing circuitry configured to execute an open operating system, wherein the first processing circuitry is linked to a secure memory device inaccessible to the second processing circuitry. The RF operating system is configured to receive protected data and store the protected data in the secure memory device. The open operating system is configured to receive a request for the protected data from one of a plurality of user applications and transfer the request to the RF operating system. In response to the request for the protected data, the RF operating system is configured to retrieve the protected data from the secure memory device, encrypt the protected data, and transfer the encrypted protected data to the open operating system for delivery to the one of the user applications associated with the request.
US08819445B2

Authentication data is received, from a first computing device, based on data received by the first computing device from a wireless token device, the authentication data used to authenticate a first user to a particular computing session hosted remote from the first computing device. The first computing device is authenticated to the particular computing session based on the received authentication data. The first computing device is permitted to consume resources of the particular computing session. In some instances, the data received by the first computing device from the wireless token device includes the authentication data.
US08819440B2

Techniques relating to directed signature workflow of a document are described. In one instance, a process enables a publishing user to populate a body portion of a document with content. The process also allows the publishing user to populate an associated digital signature definitions portion of the document with at least one requested consuming user's name and at least one condition associated with a digital signature of the requested consuming user.
US08819424B2

An intermediary system that facilitates a connection request from a client to a server. The intermediary system may participate in either or both of a token creation phase and a server connection phase. If participating in the token creation phase, the intermediary system generates a token that may later be used by the client during a server connection phase. The token includes a session identifier and is returned to the client. If participating in the server connection phase, the intermediary receives the token, extracts the session identifier from the token, and compares against the session identifier for the session in which the token was created. If the session identifiers match, then the intermediary connects to the server to complete the connection request.
US08819419B2

The present invention provides a dynamic, easily configurable system, which can be used to encrypt or otherwise hide the internal structure of a network. The present invention protects access to computing systems via a URL by encrypting all or a portion of the URL during the transmission of information over a network. Prior to the actual transmission of the information, fields in the URL can be encrypted using conventional encryption techniques. The encryption will occur after the destination has been determined such that the encryption will not cause the information to be misdirected to a wrong destination. At the destination location, there is first a determination that this URL is an encrypted URL. At this point, a decryption technique is employed based on the predetermined encryption scheme to decrypt the URL. The full URL is now accessed only by the destination location and is not accessible during travel over the network between the originating and destination locations.
US08819418B2

A communication system includes a certificate authority for performing authentication, a roadside device, a vehicle-mounted terminal, a first server, and a second server. The vehicle-mounted terminal transmits position information to the first server. The certificate authority acquires information about a vehicle-mounted terminal likely to appear according to place and time from the first server. The certificate authority allows the second server to verify validity of a certificate for a vehicle-mounted terminal acquired from the first server. The certificate authority generates a first list of vehicle-mounted terminals having valid certificates and a second list of vehicle-mounted terminals having invalid certificates according to place and time based on a verification result. The certificate authority transmits the first and second lists to the roadside device and the vehicle-mounted terminal. The roadside device and the vehicle-mounted terminal verify a certificate using the received first and second lists thereby reducing the certificate verification time.
US08819417B2

A validation server using HSM, which reduces required process time from receiving a validation request to responding with a validation result, and comprises a first software cryptographic module 142 and a second software cryptographic module 143 on a validation server 130 whose HSM is coupled with an I/F part 148. According to the validation server, load states of HSM, the first software cryptographic module 142 and the second software cryptographic module 143 are monitored by a cryptographic module monitor unit 141, and when cryptographic calculations in a validation process of certificates are conducted, the cryptographic calculations are executed by using the least loaded cryptographic module selected at a cryptographic module selector unit 140.
US08819416B2

Modular authentication and session management involves the use of discrete modules to perform specific tasks in a networked computing environment. There may be a separate authentication server that verifies the identity of the user and an authorization client that grants various levels of access to users. There may also be an authentication client that receives an initial request from a requesting application and forwards the request to the authentication server to verify the identity of the use. The authorization client may then be invoked to provide the necessary level of access. The use of discrete modules allows multiple business applications to use the same modules to perform user authentication tasks, thus alleviating the unnecessary multiplication of code.
US08819411B2

An information processing apparatus connected to a network via a network interface device and capable of performing encrypted communication with an external apparatus on the network. When the information processing apparatus is operating in a normal power mode, a sleep control module thereof detects whether a condition under which the apparatus shifts to an energy saving mode in which power consumption is smaller than in the normal power mode is satisfied. When the condition is detected to be satisfied, a proxy response registration module of the apparatus instructs an IPSec module of the same to request the external apparatus not to perform encrypted communication.
US08819406B2

An information processing device including: a data processing unit that generates content for transmitting to a client; and a communication unit that transmits the generated content of the data processing unit, wherein the data processing unit generates, based on basic encrypted content having a plurality of units that each includes a SEED that is data for encryption key generation and a block that is encrypted data that is encrypted by an encryption key generated using the SEED, each data of (a) converted encrypted content on which conversion processing to replace the SEED with dummy data or to delete the SEED is performed, and (b) encrypted SEED that is the SEED encrypted by content transmission processing or by individual keys that are different by units of users at a transmission destination, and transmits the generated converted encrypted content and encrypted SEED as data provided to the client via the communication unit.
US08819404B2

A method of disseminating advertisements includes the step of transmitting to a media device (110) an embedded media player page for playing a media file. The embedded media player page allows a user of the media device (110) to create a bookmark for a browser. The bookmark points to the embedded media player page. The bookmark includes an address of the media file as a parameter. When the bookmark is used in the browser to play the media file, the embedded media player page instructs the media device (110) to request an advertisement from an advertisement server (104) for display in the embedded media player page.
US08819399B1

Some embodiments provide a system that executes a native code module. During operation, the system obtains the native code module. Next, the system loads the native code module into a secure runtime environment. Finally, the system safely executes the native code module in the secure runtime environment by using a set of software fault isolation (SFI) mechanisms that use predicated store instructions and predicated control flow instructions, wherein each predicated instruction from the predicated store instructions and the predicated control flow instructions is executed if a mask condition associated with the predicated instruction is met.
US08819397B2

Methods and apparatuses are provided for increased efficiency in a processor via control word prediction. The apparatus comprises an operational unit capable of determining whether an instruction will change a first control word to a second control word for processing dependent instructions. Execution units process the dependent instructions using a predicted control word and compare the second control word to the predicted control word. A scheduling unit causes the execution units to reprocess the dependent instructions when the predicted control word does not match the second control word. The method comprises determining that an instruction will change a first control word to a second control word and processing the dependent instructions using a predicted control word. The second control word is compared to the predicted control word and the dependent instructions are reprocessed using the second control word when the predicted control word does not match the second control word.
US08819394B2

Methods, apparatus, and instructions for performing string comparison operations. In one embodiment, an apparatus includes execution resources to execute a first instruction. In response to the first instruction, said execution resources store a result of a comparison between each data element of a first and second operand corresponding to a first and second text string, respectively.
US08819393B2

Host page management assist functions are employed to manage storage of a pageable mode virtual environment. These functions enable storage to be managed by a processor of the environment absent intervention of a host of the environment. The functions include a resolve host page function; a pin function; and unpin functions.
US08819387B2

A memory storage device, a memory controller, and a method for identifying a valid data are provided. A rewritable non-volatile memory chip of the memory storage device includes physical blocks. Each of the physical blocks has physical pages. In the present method, logical blocks are configured and mapped to a portion of the physical blocks, wherein each of the logical blocks has logical pages. When a data to be written by a host system into a specific logical page is received, a substitute physical block is selected, the data is written into a specific physical page in the substitute physical block, and the address of a physical page in which a previous data corresponding to the specific logic page is written is recorded into the specific physical page. Thereby, a physical page containing the latest valid data can be identified among several physical pages corresponding to a same logical page.
US08819384B1

Aspects of the disclosure provide a virtual memory management method that can reduce memory requirement and improve system performance. The method can include detecting a scenario, matching the detected scenario with a predefined scenario that includes a pre-set mapping relationship of a first module to a dynamic memory address within a first portion of a dynamic memory, and writing the first module from a static memory to the first portion of the dynamic memory at the dynamic memory address. Further, the method can include executing the first module from the dynamic memory. In addition, the method can include storing a second module at a second portion of the dynamic memory independent of the detected scenario.
US08819379B2

A method for optimizing memory bandwidth using bank-based memory allocation is described. The method includes receiving a request for an allocation of memory. In response to receiving the request, memory is allocated to the request based on a performance ranking of memory banks in a plurality of memory banks. A performance ranking of a particular memory bank may be based at least in part on both a busyness and a row hit ratio of the particular memory bank. Apparatus and computer readable media are also described.
US08819378B2

A data processing apparatus has processing circuitry for executing a memory access instruction in order to generate a memory transaction comprising at least one address transfer specifying a memory address, and at least one associated data transfer specifying data to be accessed at the specified memory address. The apparatus is arranged to route each address transfer and associated data transfer via a first interface when the specified memory address is within a first memory address range, or to route each address transfer and associated data transfer via a second interface when the specified memory address is within a second memory address range and is further configured, when using the first interface, to execute the memory access instruction so as to cause each address transfer and associated data transfer to be presented at the first interface with a first relative timing.
US08819364B2

An acquisition unit of an information processing apparatus acquires access information indicating the state of access to a volume of a disk device at least for data read. A determination unit detects a volume in which a sequential read was performed, on the basis of the acquired access information, and determines the volume as a backup source for a backup.
US08819357B2

Metadata of a shared file in a clustered file system is changed in a way that ensures cache coherence amongst servers that can simultaneously access the shared file. Before a server changes the metadata of the shared file, it waits until no other server is attempting to access the shared file, and all I/O operations to the shared file are blocked. After writing the metadata changes to the shared file, local caches of the other servers are updated, as needed, and I/O operations to the shared file are unblocked.
US08819356B2

An interface circuit that is configured to receive a first read command from a memory controller to read first data stored in a first memory circuit and a second read command to read second data that is stored in a second memory circuit, and transmit the first data and the second data to the memory controller across a data bus without a delay on the data bus between the first data and the second data.
US08819352B2

Embodiments related to a hardware transactional memory (HTM). An aspect includes setting a mode register of a processor core of a computer to indicate a HTM mode. Another aspect includes executing a plurality of transactions by the processor core in the HTM mode based on the mode register. Another aspect includes determining whether a first transaction of the plurality of transactions exceeds a failure limit of the processor core in the HTM mode. Yet another aspect includes, based on determining that the first transaction exceeds the failure limit of the processor core in the HTM mode, transitioning the processor to an assisted transaction mode by setting the mode register of the processor core to indicate the assisted transaction mode.
US08819350B2

A memory system includes a plurality of storage groups, each of which includes a nonvolatile first storing unit and a second storing unit as a buffer memory of the first storing unit and is capable of performing data transfer between the first storing unit and the second storing unit, and a plurality of MPUs. A first control for data transfer between the host device and the first storing unit via the second storing unit for one of the storage groups and a second control including a control for maintenance of the first storing unit for other storage groups are allocated to the MPUs to be performed independently by the MPUs.
US08819346B2

A computer implemented method analyzes shared memory accesses during execution of an application program. The method includes instrumenting events of shared memory accesses in the application program, where the application program is to be executed on a target configuration having p nodes; executing the application program using p1 processing nodes, where p1 is less than p and satisfies a constraint. For accesses made by the executing application program, the method determines a target thread and maps determined target threads to either a remote node or a local node corresponding to a remote memory access and to a local memory access, respectively. Also disclosed is a computer-readable storage medium that stores a program of executable instructions that implements the method, and a data processing system. The invention can be implemented using a language such as Unified Parallel C (UPC) directed to a partitioned global address space (PGAS) paradigm.
US08819342B2

An instruction in an instruction cache line having a first portion that is cacheable, a second portion that is from a page that is non-cacheable, and crosses a cache line is prevented from executing from the instruction cache. An attribute associated with the non-cacheable second portion is tracked separately from the attributes of the rest of the instructions in the cache line. If the page crossing instruction is reached for execution, the page crossing instruction and instructions following are flushed and a non-cacheable request is made to memory for at least the second portion. Once the second portion is received, the whole page crossing instruction is reconstructed from the first portion saved in the previous fetch group. The page crossing instruction or portion thereof is returned with the proper attribute for a non-cached fetched instruction and the reconstructed instruction can be executed without being cached.
US08819339B2

A technique is disclosed for non-disruptive migration of data between storage on hosts that do not share storage with each other. Aggregate relocation is enabled to operate between the hosts in the absence of shared storage connectivity. The technique includes mirroring an aggregate from storage of a first host to storage of a second host by using a sub-RAID level proxy in each of the first and second hosts to proxy data communications between the hosts. The proxy is used in lieu of the mirroring application in the first host having direct access to the storage devices of the second host. The technique further includes relocating the aggregate from the first host to the second host.
US08819337B1

A storage module and method are disclosed for determining whether to back-up a previously-written lower page of data before writing an upper page of data. In one embodiment, a storage module receives a command to write an upper page of data to memory cells that have already been programmed with a lower page of data. The storage module determines whether a command to protect the lower page of data was previously received. The storage module backs-up the lower page of data in another area of the memory before writing the upper page of data to the memory cells only if it is determined that the command to protect the lower page of data was previously received. The storage module then writes the upper page of data to the memory cells.
US08819336B2

A nonvolatile memory system comprises a temporary power supply that supplies power in the event of an unexpected power interruption. The temporary power supply provides power while metadata stored in one or more buffers is compressed and transferred to a nonvolatile memory device.
US08819334B2

The present disclosure relates to a data storage system and method that includes at least two solid state devices that can be classified in at least two different efficiency levels, wherein data progression is used to allocate data to the most cost-appropriate device according to the nature of the data.
US08819332B2

Upon copying data stored on a page in a copy source block of a nonvolatile memory to a page of a copy destination block, an access control unit of a memory controller copies data stored on a page associated with a first copy method to a page of the copy destination block after error correction by an error correction control unit copies data stored on a page associated with a second copy method to a page of the copy destination block without performing the error correction by the error correction control unit according to a copy mode stored in a copy mode storage area, and changes the copy mode associated with the copy destination block to a copy mode that is different from the copy mode of the copy source block.
US08819328B2

The embodiments described herein provide a controller and method for performing a background commands or operations. In one embodiment, a controller is provided with interfaces through which to communicate with a host and a plurality of flash memory devices. The controller contains a processor operative to perform a foreground command received from the host, wherein the processor performs the foreground command to completion without interruption. The processor is also operative to perform a background commands or operations stored in the controller's memory, wherein the processor performs the background command until completed or preempted by a foreground command. If the background command is preempted, the processor can resume performing the background command at a later time until completed.
US08819327B2

A communication system having one CAN bus and at least two devices interconnected by the CAN bus is described, at least one of the devices including: i) a CAN controller, which is suitable for transmitting CAN data frames over the CAN bus using a first physical protocol in a first operating mode; ii) an asynchronous serial communication interface unit, which is suitable for transmitting ASC data frames over the CAN bus using a second physical protocol in a second operating mode; iii) a first switching means, which is suitable for switching the first operating mode and the second operating mode depending on at least one agreement in effect between the device and at least one of the other devices; and iv) another switching means, which is suitable for switching the device to a third (restricted) operating mode, which differs from the first operating mode and the second operating mode, for powering up the device.
US08819320B2

In a logically partitioned host computer system comprising host processors (host CPUs) partitioned into a plurality of guest processors (guest CPUs) of a guest configuration, a perform topology function instruction is executed by a guest processor specifying a topology change of the guest configuration. The topology change preferably changes the polarization of guest CPUs, the polarization related to the amount of a host CPU resource is provided to a guest CPU.
US08819318B2

A baseboard management controller (BMC) of a server includes a general purpose input output (GPIO) pin. An voltage level of the GPIO level determines if a BIOS of the server or the BMC uses a serial port of the server. If the BMC wants to use the serial port and the voltage level of the GPIO pin is at a high level, the serial port can be used by the BMC. If the BMC wants to use the serial port but the voltage level of the GPIO pin is not at the high level, the serial port is be used by the BIOS. If the BIOS has been initialized, the voltage level of the GPIO pin is pulled up.
US08819303B2

In one embodiment, a method includes determining a request for a transfer of content where the request is associated with a user device. It is determined if a deferred transfer should be performed. The deferred transfer defers the transfer of the content with a completion by a completion time. The request is stored in a queue where the request is associated with the completion time. The method processes the request from the queue to transfer the content at a start time. The content is transferred by the completion time. The method then adjusts, for a user associated with the user device, a charging parameter for the transfer due to the transfer being deferred.
US08819302B2

An apparatus comprising a first circuit and a second circuit. The first circuit may be configured to generate a plurality of intermediate signals in response to a plurality of input/output requests. The second circuit may be configured to generate a plurality of processed input/output requests in response to the plurality of input/output requests. The processed input/output requests may be configured to be processed by a drive controller to access a drive array in accordance with a protocol used to process the input/output requests.
US08819301B2

An apparatus is provided for charging a Universal Serial Bus (USB) device according to an optimal charging mode. The apparatus includes a charging module that is configured to obtain a descriptor from the USB device upon detection of the USB device on a USB bus. The charging module includes one or more descriptor entries disposed in a memory and a controller. The one or more descriptor entries include descriptor data, for matching the descriptor to a specific descriptor entry, and charging data, that specifies the optimal charging mode for the USB device. The controller is coupled to the memory, and is configured to match the descriptor to the specific descriptor entry, and is configured to initiate the optimal charging mode on the USB bus according to the charging data.
US08819299B1

A method and apparatus may be configured to create setup information, and perform the initialization and performance of an installation of a peripheral device of an electronic device. One example method may include storing a device identification (ID) of the peripheral device, extracting data and creating a data structure from existent setup information. The method may also include replacing a device ID in the data structure with the device ID of the peripheral device, and creating and storing a setup information file from content of the data structure. The method may also include creating and passing a request to at least one of a device driver of an interface of the peripheral device and a bus that initiates the installation of the peripheral device. The peripheral device may not be connected to the electronic device.
US08819291B2

A set of logical extents, each having compressed logical tracks of data, is mapped to a head physical extent and, if the head physical extent is determined to have been filled, to at least one overflow extent having spatial proximity to the head physical extent. Pursuant to at least one subsequent write operation and destage operation, the at least one subsequent write operation and destage operation determined to be associated with the head physical extent, the write operation is mapped to one of the head physical extent, the at least one overflow extent, and an additional extent having spatial proximity to the at least one overflow extent.
US08819289B2

A satellite orbit data compressing method includes: determining a compression method of a parameter value on the basis of a variation tendency of the parameter value in an orbit model approximating a satellite orbit; and calculating a compressed parameter value by reducing a bit sequence representing the parameter value using the determined compression method.
US08819286B2

In one embodiment, a plurality of data conversion modules are bound to a processing engine and a first messaging data set is provided to a conversion module from the plurality of conversion modules. The messaging data set conforms to a messaging format. A structured data set based on a first data portion and a second data portion of the first messaging data set are received and value different from the value of the first data portion is stored within a first element of the structured data set. The value of the second data portion is stored within a second data element of the structured data set. A second messaging data set is then generated based on the structured data set.
US08819278B2

A technique is provided for delivering an alert to a user. The technique includes identifying which single device of a user's multiple devices should receive the alert. A server is configured to collect device statistics about the user's devices and determine which device should receive the alert. Example device statistics include locations of the devices, last use time of the devices, statistics received from other applications that the user is accessing (e.g., email, search engine, applications, mobile apps, etc.), statistics from other users in the same location as the user, statistics from cameras, motion detectors, or proximity sensors associated with the devices, history/pattern of the user consuming previous alerts, what type of message is associated with the alert (e.g., email, SMS, picture, video, etc.), and/or whether a particular device is ON/OFF or locked/unavailable, among others.
US08819274B2

Selecting a network connection for data communications with a networked device, including: identifying a plurality of networks available for data communications with the networked device, each network having network connection attributes; and selecting one of the plurality of networks in dependence upon the network connection attributes and the direction of data transfer.
US08819270B2

An information processing apparatus for generating a plurality of images to be displayed on a display unit of a terminal device connected via a network and transmitting the plurality of images to the terminal device. The apparatus includes an image memory for storing the plurality of images; a first transmission unit for transmitting the plurality of images to the terminal device, an area determination unit for determining an area in which change between frames of the plurality of images exceeds a threshold value, a second transmission unit for compressing the determined area at a frame rate higher than that of the first transmission unit and transmitting the area to the terminal device, and a management unit for managing synchronization between an image transmitted by the first transmission unit and an image transmitted by the second transmission unit, generating drawing timing of each image.
US08819262B2

According to one embodiment, when receiving a reproduction instruction, a reproduction apparatus performs image display based on second image information acquired through a network. When the reproduction apparatus receives a stop instruction while performing the image display based on the second image information, the reproduction apparatus performs the image display based on received first image information after performing the image display for a predetermined time based on third image information.
US08819258B2

A streaming engine and method includes a plurality of input types configured to pass one of samples and frames from an input stream. A processing block is configured to process the samples and frames independently of input and output types and produce any kind of output samples and frames in accordance with processing elements employed in the processing block. A plurality of output types is configured to initiate a session which determines connections between inputs and outputs so that the samples and the frames are received from the processing block in accordance with the session to appropriately direct the stream.
US08819257B2

The invention refers to a method for performing communication on a bus structured network between master device and slave devices using a bi-directional data stream DSA for secure communication and a unidirectional data stream DSI for real-time communication. According to the invention the unidirectional data stream DSI is used for a certain type of secure communication between a master device and at least one slave device.
US08819256B2

One or more vendor extensions that may be communicated to and/or from a device that may communicate via media transfer protocol (MTP) may be specified within an extension of the MTP. The vendor extension may comprise vendor specific information such as proprietary supported features. Vendor extensions may be indicated as a device property and may be communicated to another device during initiation of communication. Supported vendor extensions may be specified in an MTP DevicePropDesc dataset as a response to a request such as a MTP GetDevicePropDesc operation. Alternatively, data from a current value field of an MTP DevicePropDesc dataset may be returned in response to a GetDevicePropValue operation. An MTP SetDevicePropValue operation may be utilized for selecting a vendor extension. However, the selection may be accepted or rejected by a device. An event may be issued to other devices when a change of vendor extension has occurred.
US08819255B1

A method, apparatus, and system related to relevancy improvement through targeting of information based on data gathered from a networked device associated with a security sandbox of a client device are disclosed. In one embodiment, a system may comprise a networked device, a relevancy-matching server, and a client device. The networked device may be configured to generate a preliminary data and/or a primary data associated with a user and automatically announce a sandbox-reachable service of the networked device to a discovery module. The relevancy-matching server may be configured to match a targeted data with the primary data based on a relevancy factor associated with the user. The client device may be configured to automatically process an identification data of the networked device and/or the sandbox-reachable service of the networked device from the discovery module and to automatically associate with the networked device based on the identification data.
US08819252B1

Transaction rate limiting is provided to monitor new connections. If the number of new connections requested by a particular client exceeds a predetermined threshold value, then the client may be frozen out for a configured period of time. By denying access for the configured period of time, the client is prevented from monopolizing a particular client. Additionally, if the client does have malicious intent, a denial of service attack may be thwarted. The denial of service may be accomplished without alerting the client. This prevents a malicious client from regrouping and attempting an assault via a different mechanism.
US08819250B2

A method for the computer-aided determination of a control variable using context information from one or more units to be controlled is described. This method involves a controller using simulation to ascertain a piece of simulated context information which is used as a control variable, wherein the simulated context information comprises a first variable which represents a presumed state of the one or more units at a given time. The controller compares a received piece of context information, which comprises a second variable which represents the actual state of the unit to be controlled at a time which is before the given time, with the simulated context information and checks whether the simulated context information matches the context information within prescribed limits. In addition, the controller requests a piece of updated context information from one or more units to be controlled if the simulated context information matches the context information at the given time outside the present limits.
US08819243B1

A delivery system, media, and method for communicating content to devices are provided. The delivery system includes a services aggregator and content aggregator for processing requests from the devices. The services aggregator processes the request to identify credentials for the devices that generate the request and to identify providers of content specified in the request. The content aggregator receives the content from the identified providers and formats the content based on limits imposed by the device. Because the devices are configured to allow the services aggregator and content aggregator to perform computational-intensive tasks associated with requesting and transmitting the content, the complexity and cost of the devices are minimized.
US08819239B2

Distributed resource management systems and methods thereof are provided. Distributed resource management system at least includes resource managers (RMs) and resource consumers (RCs). RMs obtain current usage information of the resources of the distributed resource management system and generate first distributed resource graphs according to the current usage information of the resources. RMs obtain identification information of the RMs and generate second distributed resource graphs according to the identification information. RCs obtain a resource expense information regarding resource expense required by a plurality of jobs and generates third distributed resource graphs according to the resource expense information. A compound distributed resource graph (CDRG) is obtained by combining the first, second, and third distributed resource graphs and then the jobs to be performed by a corresponding amount of the resources within the distributed resource management system are determined according to the CDRG.
US08819233B2

A communications system includes a mobile computing device having a dynamic address and mobile web server software. A network web proxy-server has a portal web page at which a web client can reliably and consistently establish an internet connection. In response to receiving a request from the web client to access the mobile computing device, the network web proxy-server forwards the request to the mobile computing device by opening an indirect or virtual communications link between the web client, the network web proxy-server and the assigned address of the mobile computing device. The mobile computing device repeatedly registers the current version of its address with the proxy-server. The mobile computing device, network web proxy-server and web client are commercially available, off-the-shelf components that require only targeted configuration changes to perform the disclosed intermediary forwarding operations.
US08819224B2

Methods, systems and computer program products for monitoring and analysis of network servers and web analytics programs are disclosed. A monitoring program, for example, is configured to monitor the status of web analytics program(s) associated with one or more network servers. The monitoring program may monitor server-specific metrics such as server free disk space, server available memory, server on-line/off-line status, report processing time, difference between system time and log file time, table size details, etc. The program may be configured to present status indicators to the user that are indicative of the health of the web analytics program and/or server. A user may receive an alert generated by the monitoring program regarding a change in web analytics program status. Additionally, the monitoring program may be configured to automatically take corrective action to remedy or prevent a critical event that may cause loss of data or delay web analytics reporting.
US08819220B2

To provide a fault analysis result classification function capable of reducing the time required to eliminate a fault in a monitoring target apparatus. The fault analysis results (fault cause candidates) obtained during the fault analysis processing are classified for the influence range of each of the fault cause candidates by analyzing which of the other fault cause candidates relate to the fault events of the apparatus abnormal state, which are used as the basis to derive the each of the fault cause candidates. Further, the classification results are displayed on a GUI.
US08819205B2

Provided are a content transfer system, a content transfer method, and a home server capable of backing up all backup target contents without having to transfer all backup target contents. This content transfer system includes a home storage and an online storage. The home storage transfers identifying information of a backup target content to the online storage and requests the online storage to determine the existence of a content that is identical to the backup target content upon requesting the online storage to back up the backup target content, transfers metadata to the online storage when an identical content exists in the online storage, and transfers the backup target content to the online storage in all other cases.
US08819198B2

Systems and methods for migrating a hosted account and IP address among shared hosting resources using static routing by migrating a hosted account and an associated IP address from a first network resource to a second network resource.
US08819196B2

The invention provides a mechanism for convenient management for configuring and selecting servers for running modules. The invention provides a method for managing a plurality of servers including receiving a request to configure a suitable server being suitable for running a module, locating an identifier of the suitable server from a table comprising identifiers of suitable servers, configuring the suitable server to run the module.
US08819193B2

A method of setting a network quickly includes: storing network setting information corresponding to a network connection device included in an individual household in a database of a predetermined server apparatus; transmitting unique device information of the network connection device to the predetermined server apparatus; detecting the network setting information corresponding to the unique device information from the database and transmitting the detected network setting information to the network connection device; and performing network setting needed to form a network in the individual household by using the network setting information.
US08819185B2

A computer-implemented method for the creation of composite internet videos from streaming video feeds serving as an intermediary between an internet video user and a plurality of separate internet video sources. A user may invoke the service from a web page and fashion a composite video from a plurality of sources without copying or otherwise disturbing the source videos. The user's composite video is defined by an edit decision list (EDL) which specifies the location of the plurality of separate videos, the “cut in” and “cut out” locations within the separate videos where the composite video will transition between the separate videos, and an audio volume value associated with each video.
US08819171B2

A system, method, and computer product for monitoring and benchmarking client devices from a server. A server, data center, and/or cloud computing environment may monitor certain aspects of a remote desktop session. The rendering, capture, and compression of a desktop may be monitored. The time between the sending of frames to a thin client can be monitored, the network bandwidth available can be monitored and the time between sending a frame and receiving a response from the thin client can be monitored. Based on these values, a benchmark for the remote desktop experience can be determined.
US08819168B2

Various embodiments enable an application to obtain information associated with a link to content without navigating to the link. The application can be configured to identify a link, receive input to attain information associated with the link, and send a request to a service for the information. In one or more embodiments, a service can be configured to receive a request for information associated with a link, ascertain one or more sources from which to gather the information, determine appropriate mechanisms by which to obtain the information, and acquire the information. Alternately or additionally, the service can further assemble the information into a consumable format, and return the consumable format to a requesting application or device.
US08819164B2

Versioning management provides for efficient and effective handling of varying policy versions, client versions and client platform versions in one system. Software version negotiation provides for simplified, secure policy management in an environment supporting varying versions of the same software product. In conjunction with parameter stripping, which resolves differences among varying minor versions of a software policy, software version negotiation allows for management tools of one version to manage client software, clients and/or client platforms of another version. Policy schema translation, in conjunction with parameter stripping as needed, provides a mechanism for converting policies that normally would be impossible to interpret on varying clients and/or client platforms to policy versions that can be understood by these clients and/or client platforms. Version targeting allows an administrator to push a policy to specific clients and/or client platforms to, among other things, address identified security issues or to provide version specific application enablement or enhancement. Together, these various versioning management methodologies simplify administration of a system consisting of varying policy versions, client versions and/or client platform versions while enhancing the flexibility of the system to apply policy throughout the system or any portion thereof.
US08819162B2

A system and method for low-cost, fault tolerant, EMI robust data communications, particularly for an EV environment.
US08819157B2

A point-to-point chat system and method are provided. The system comprises a USSD (Unstructured Supplementary Service Data) signaling interface unit and a chat control unit. The USSD signaling interface unit is configured to receive a USSD chat request message of an inviting party and a USSD chat joining message of an invited party via a core network, and to forward the USSD chat request message and the USSD chat joining message to the chat control unit. The chat control unit is configured to send a chat inviting message to the invited party after receiving the USSD chat request message, to start the chat after receiving the USSD chat joining message, and to receive chat information of the inviting party or the invited party to forward to the other party of the inviting party or the invited party.
US08819154B2

Techniques for use in messaging from a portable communication device having a camera module are described. In an instant communication session, the portable device displays a message thread involving two or more participants and a text input field for entering text. In response to an input to capture an image, the portable device automatically captures a photographic image via the camera module, attaches the photographic image to a message, and sends the message to at least one of the two or more participants.
US08819147B2

In an e-mail receiving apparatus, a user management table arranged to include each combination of a user ID that is used for identifying a plurality of users and a unique ID that is newly set each time a new user is registered in an S/MIME gateway apparatus. A received e-mail management table is arranged to include a plurality of records each indicating an association relation between each e-mail received from an e-mail server apparatus, and the user ID and the unique ID of a destination user of the corresponding e-mail. A main control unit is arranged to read out each record of the received e-mail management table, determine whether or not the unique ID related to the read-out record is in the user management table, and delete the read-out record from the received e-mail management table when the unique ID is not in the user management table. Accordingly, a system is provided in which, when a registration of a user of a distribution destination is deleted, received e-mails are properly processed.
US08819146B2

In a monitoring system for networked devices, a system, method, and computer program product for transferring monitoring information from a remote monitor to a central monitor responsible for monitoring devices on multiple networks. A communications link is established between a remote monitor and a message transfer server. Monitoring information is formatted into a standard format, encrypted, encoded, and sent from the remote monitor to the central monitor as an attachment to an e-mail sent via the communication link to the message transfer server.
US08819137B2

This disclosure discloses a system and a method for sharing mobile internet service. The system comprises: a mobile client node configured to send a message for requesting a shared service; and a mobile agent peer-to-peer network including multiple mobile agent peer-to-peer nodes which are configured to receive the message from the mobile client node and provide for the mobile client node the shared service requested by the message. This disclosure uses the mobile agent peer-to-peer node to receive from the mobile client node the message for requesting the shared service and provide the shared service according to message, to solve the problem that transmission and sharing of large files among mobile terminals can not be implemented in the related art, and thus to implement the sharing of resources among mobile terminals.
US08819135B2

A data mediation method involves receiving an incoming data stream from a data communication network; analyzing the incoming data stream to determine an inbound second-format message for transport in the network; processing a part of the inbound second-format message by parsing a selected subset of the message parameters; generating a run-time data structure to represent the parsed message parameters in the selected subset; processing the generated run-time data structure by applying a data mediation logic which defines actions to be taken upon incoming data messages, the actions including adaptation of the generated data structure by modifying any of the message parameters in the selected subset and/or adding new message parameters based on the parsed message parameters; building an outbound second-format message from the inbound second-format message and the generated data structure; and sending the outbound second-format message in an outgoing data stream on the network.
US08819134B2

A notifier sends out notifications to potential viewers or listeners of a broadcast stream via social networking systems or other communication channels. The notifier stores information about a user's preferences and identity on the social networking systems. After the notifier receives a notification request from a broadcaster, the notifier commands broadcaster agents deployed in the social networking systems or in the notifier to send notification messages to users of the social networking systems registered to receive notification. The broadcaster agents function as a proxy that establishes relationships with users of the social networking systems and then sends out the notification messages to the users with established relationships.
US08819133B2

The present invention discloses a method, a system, and a device for controlling a token for an auxiliary stream in a multi-point double-stream conference. In the multi-point double-stream conference, a Multipoint Control Unit (MCU) receives a token depriving request message, judges whether to execute the token depriving according to the identifier carried in the token depriving request message, and deprives the token when deciding to execute the token depriving. The solution of the present invention effectively solves the problem that the auxiliary stream token is held by a certain conference terminal for a long time and the sending of an emergent and important auxiliary stream is disturbed and provides for the control of the auxiliary stream token in a multi-point double-stream conference to facilitate the need of a user.
US08819129B1

The present invention provides methods and systems for automatically managing conference calls. More specifically, a user may join a conference call by calling a universal conference call number. The user is identified and connected with a specific conference call number without requiring the user to remember the specific conference call number.
US08819123B1

Methods and systems for enabling transfer of web documents to a user device for subsequent viewing on the user device are described. A server computing system receives a request from a client computing system to transfer a web document to a user device for subsequent viewing on the user device. The server computing system converts a first format type of the web document into a format that is compatible with the user device, and sends the converted web document to the user device without additional interaction at the client computing system.
US08819122B2

A website hosting service provides a plurality of services, from a common service architecture, to each of a plurality of unrelated websites, each of the plurality of services being adapted to contribute to a distinct service package for at least a plurality of unaffiliated websites, wherein the web hosting service is marketed through a plurality of websites, each one of the plurality of websites offering a different market specific offering, wherein service representatives supporting a plurality of different market specific offerings are provided with information that facilitates providing the appropriate service for a particular market specific offering.
US08819116B1

Systems and method provide logic for providing a service. In one implementation, a computer-implemented method provides a service to a device based on a capability of the device. The method includes identifying a device type of a device based on information associated with the device. The method determines whether the device supports the service, based on at least the identified device type, and provides the service to the device, when the device supports the service.
US08819111B2

Requests for communications and for establishing communication sessions with an intended addressee are detected and notifications regarding the pending communication request are provided to the intended addressee. If the addressee is operating on-line in an IP environment, the messages are delivered to the addressee via a real-time mechanism. However, if the addressee is not operating on-line in an IP environment, a message is sent via an alternate means, such as SMS, email etc. For on-line addressees, if the addressee is presently running an application program, the type of application program can be ascertained and the notification message can be compatible with the rendering functions of the application program.
US08819106B1

Techniques are described for managing distributed execution of programs. In some situations, the techniques include determining configuration information to be used for executing a particular program in a distributed manner on multiple computing nodes and/or include providing information and associated controls to a user regarding ongoing distributed execution of one or more programs to enable the user to modify the ongoing distributed execution in various manners. Determined configuration information may include, for example, configuration parameters such as a quantity of computing nodes and/or other measures of computing resources to be used for the executing, and may be determined in various manners, including by interactively gathering values for at least some types of configuration information from an associated user (e.g., via a GUI that is displayed to the user) and/or by automatically determining values for at least some types of configuration information (e.g., for use as recommendations to a user).
US08819105B2

A system includes a data store and a server in communication with the data store. The server includes formatting modules having a plurality of formatters, validation modules having a plurality of validators, and a streaming module. The server is configured to receive messages containing financial transaction data from one or more electronic communication networks or one or more client devices. The formatters are configured for each of the electronic communication networks or client devices and convert the messages into an internal format of the streaming system. The validation modules are configured to perform a validation check on the one or more formatted messages.
US08819103B2

Controllers communicate commands in terms of goals and constraints. A goal is an objective. A constraint is information regarding how the goal is to be achieved. For example, a constraint may specify when, or how much of, a resource may be used to achieve a goal. Additionally, or alternatively, a constraint may specify an acceptable or expected accuracy or tolerance regarding how the goal is achieved. Each controller is expected to achieve assigned goals in accord with associated constraints. Thereby, system communication may be reduced. If controllers achieve goals according to specified constraints, the controllers do not need to provide updates or be updated regarding the status of activities of other controllers or regarding other operational context information. In some embodiments, commands are generally not acknowledged. Instead, serving controllers respond to a command with an error message if a goal cannot be met in accord with an associated constraint.
US08819099B2

A digital signal processor is provided in a wireless communication device, wherein the processor comprises a vector unit, first and second registers coupled to and accessible by the vector unit; and an instruction set configured to perform matrix inversion of a matrix of channel values by coordinate rotation digital computer instructions using the vector unit and the first and second registers.
US08819097B2

An apparatus for performing a Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) is provided. The apparatus comprises a reorder matrix, symmetrical butterflies, and a memory. The reorder matrix is configured to have a constant geometry, and the butterflies are coupled in parallel to the reorder matrix. The memory is also coupled to the reorder matrix and each butterfly. The reorder matrix, the butterflies, and the memory can then execute a split radix algorithm.
US08819092B2

Disaggregated resources distributed among resource nodes provide access to resource consumers by offering resource node information to the resource consumers. Resource node information supplied by each individual resource node comprises incomplete information with respect to the complete disaggregated resource. Resource consumers collect resource node information to create maps of the disaggregated resource, ensure coherency, or manage the disaggregated resource.
US08819087B2

Systems and methods for assisting one or more users in the production of a media work from a plurality of recordings are disclosed. In an exemplary embodiment, digital versions of the recordings are stored on a file-storage server accessible over a communications network. A media-library server provides an organized way for users to access and view the digital versions, and to associate various data files with the digital versions, such as transcription files, logging files, and storyboard documents. The exemplary media library generates web pages that enable users to search and access the digital versions from an internet browser running on a conventional personal computer. The browser also enables users to view the digital versions with a browser-compatible media viewer.
US08819086B2

Methods and systems are disclosed for naming methodologies for a hierarchical system. In one embodiment, a computer implemented method of organizing instance names in a hierarchical system includes receiving a description of a hierarchical system that includes plurality of instances arranged in different branches in a plurality of hierarchical levels in a physical data structure, creating an instance name data structure configured to describe the corresponding instances in the hierarchical system, where the instance name data structure comprises a map of indexes and a corresponding array of offsets configured to access naming information in a subsequent level, and associating names of instances in the hierarchical system to a corresponding set of unique integers which are arranged in a sequential manner.
US08819080B2

A system may include a data collector to collect data from at least one data source and to tag each group of collected data with a metadata tag. The metadata tag may include information about the collected data. The system may also include a metadata catalogue for containing a plurality of metadata tags and to allow a search for existence and a location on a network of any data corresponding to the search.
US08819074B2

A system includes creation of a first resource queue indicating an order of resources stored in a memory, the order based on respective timestamps associated with the stored resources, association of the first resource queue with a first queue timestamp, reception of a first command to deallocate a first amount of stored resources from the memory, determination that a first stored resource indicated by the first resource queue is associated with a timestamp earlier than the first queue timestamp, deallocation of the first stored resource from the memory, reception of a second command to deallocate a second amount of stored resources from the memory, determination that the first resource queue indicates no stored resources which are associated with a timestamp earlier than the first queue timestamp, and, in response to the determination that the first resource queue indicates no stored resources which are associated with a timestamp earlier than the first queue timestamp, creation of a second resource queue indicating a second order of second resources stored in the memory, the second order based on respective second timestamps associated with the stored second resources.
US08819072B1

A system and method that enables promotion of data from within a structured data file to a library is described. This system and method can also enable demotion of data from a library to within a structured data file. Further, this system and method can copy data from a structured data file, perform a function on the copied data, and promote a result of the performed function to a library.
US08819071B2

A personalized service system and method based on an ontology is provided, in which if a user selects a personalized service while a subject or an object in a user profile ontology of user's personal information is associated with a subject or an object of a personalized service ontology through a relationship name, the system and method searches for a personalized service ontology corresponding to the selected personalized service, acquires personal information of an instance form in the user profile ontology associated with the personalized service ontology, executes the personalized service by applying the acquired personal information, and provides the user with a result of the execution.
US08819061B2

A method executed at least in part in a computing device for providing cloud based skip tracing is provided. The method includes providing a cloud based service enabling data interchange with a plurality of vendors providing skip tracing services and receiving at the cloud based service and from a user a file of records for skip tracing. The method further includes applying a waterfall process to the records using the computing device wherein the waterfall process includes at least a subset of the plurality of vendors and returning to the user a results file containing skip tracing results corresponding to the records. The method may further include generating a waterfall score card and sending the waterfall score card to the user, the waterfall score card summarizing performance of the subset of the plurality of vendors.
US08819059B2

In one exemplary embodiment, a DSM is used to store the data structures in a cluster shared memory, such that updates, deletions and insertions are applied to both the persistent data set and the DSM, and search, list and retrieval operations are processed directly from the DSM. A data structure in the persistent data set is stored in two separate DSM pages: a first page includes an identifying search key of the data structure, the search key also pointing to a location of the data structure in the storage. A second page includes the updatable properties of the data structure. A DSM storing the data structures' pages is organized as a two-row matrix.
US08819047B2

The described implementations relate to processing of electronic data. One implementation is manifested as a technique that can include receiving an input statement that includes a plurality of terms. The technique can also include providing, in response to the input statement, ranked supporting documents that support the input statement or ranked contradicting results that contradict the input statement.
US08819042B2

Systems and methods are illustrated for transitioning data from one data store to another data store. The transition may occur according to comparison information received through a graphical user interface. For example, the comparison information may map data or columns in a source data store to data or columns in a target data store. A score may also be generated based on a comparison of the source and target. A report may indicate a successful or failed data transition based on the score.
US08819038B1

Techniques are provided for improving the speed and accuracy of analytics on big data using theta sketches, by converting fixed-size sketches to theta sketches, and by performing set operations on sketches. In a technique for performing a set operation, two sketches are analyzed to identify the maximum value of each sketch. The maximum values of the two sketches are compared. Based the comparison, one or more values are removed from the sketch whose maximum value is greater. After the removal, a set operation (e.g., union, intersection, or difference) is performed based on the modified sketch and the unmodified sketch. A result of the set operation is a third sketch, which may be used to estimate a cardinality of the larger data sets that are represented by the two input sketches.
US08819026B2

Systems and methods are disclosed for tracking an object as it traverses a sequential chain. The relationships between the object, its movement through space and time, and the entities associated with the object at a discreet point of time are captured by a sequential chain. A unique identifier may be created that is continuously modified as the object traverses the sequential chain. The unique identifier may be used to capture relationship information between the object and its related entities and movements.
US08819024B1

A classifier training system learns classifiers for categories by combining data from a category-instance repository comprising relationships between categories and more specific instances of those categories with a set of video classifiers for different concepts. The category-instance repository is derived from the domain of textual documents, such as web pages, and the concept classifiers are derived from the domain of video. Taken together, the category-instance repository and the concept classifiers provide sufficient data for obtaining accurate classifiers for categories that encompass other lower-level concepts, where the categories and their classifiers may not be obtainable solely from the video domain.
US08819014B2

Some embodiments provide a method performed by a digital slate. The method receives input of a first set of metadata for a particular video clip from a user. The method receives a second set of metadata for the particular video clip from a camera as the camera films the particular video clip. The method embeds the first and second sets of metadata in a data storage structure. The method transmits the data structure for later use in matching the first and second sets of metadata with the particular video clip. Some embodiments display at least a portion of the stored metadata about the particular video clip in front of a camera at the start of the particular video clip.
US08819012B2

A method, an apparatus and an article of manufacture for accessing a specific location in voice site audio content. The method includes indexing, in a voice site index, a specific location in the voice site that contains the audio content, mapping the audio content with information regarding the location and adding the mapped content to the index of the voice site, using the index to determine content and location of an input query in the voice site, automatically marking the specific location in the voice site that contains the determined content and location of the input query, and automatically transferring to the marked location in the voice site.
US08819002B2

An approach is provided that visually distinguishes between entity types in a communication system. A Data store with entities is queried, with entities connected to one another as senders and receivers, resulting in a query result. A node data structure corresponding to each of the entities is created and an edge data structure corresponding to each of the connections between the entities is also created. Nodes corresponding to the node data structures are displayed, along with edges (e.g., connection lines) corresponding to the edge data structures. A user selects one of the nodes that is displayed, and the selected node is visually highlighted. Different types of non-selected nodes are identified based on the selected node. Types of nodes may include sender type nodes, receiver type nodes, and sender/receiver type nodes. The types of identified nodes are highlighted in a manner that visually distinguishes each type from the other types.
US08818994B2

According to one general aspect, a method may include requesting, from a database and by a program executing on a mobile computing device, at least a portion of a business service context regarding a business service. The method may also include receiving, from the database, an aggregated database result regarding the business service. The aggregated database result may include the requested business service context and wherein the business service context includes information from a plurality of applications. The method may also include displaying, via the mobile computing device, at least a portion of the information included by the business service context.
US08818992B2

Content search involves receiving a user-formulated search query via a user device. The search query is submitted to two or more search domains. The search domains represent separate data repositories accessible via the user device. Results objects are received from the two or more search domains in response to the search query. The results objects are ranked using different ranking criterion by the respective search domains from which the search results were received. A rank value for each of the results objects is determined based on a single ranking criterion. The results objects are ordered based at least in part on the rank values determined using the single ranking criterion and sent for display in a user interface of the user device.
US08818990B2

A data item is retrieved from a data store in a data processing system. The data processing system comprises an index, which at least partially indexes the data store, and also a partiality definition store. The partiality definition store indicates a part of the data store which is referenced by the partial index. A request is received for a data item from the data store and responsive to determining that the requested data item is not referenced by the partial index, the data store is searched by using the partiality definition store to avoid searching a part of the data store which is known to be indexed.
US08818985B2

A method of prioritizing feed items based on rules is provided. User input establishes one or more rules to prioritize a feed item, wherein at least one of the one or more rules incorporates the input data. Such user input may include user-created data or feed metrics. The one or more rules may be weighted. Additional user input configures one or more message cues. A plurality of feed items are prioritized based on the one or more rules. The plurality of feed items are associated with a plurality of feeds, wherein each feed is associated with an object stored in a database system. The plurality of feed items are then displayed in combination with the one or more message cues to a plurality of users of the database system.
US08818981B2

Selecting and providing context information relevant to a user at a particular time and location. Input parameters such as a location and time are selected. Context information is obtained for the selected location and time based on the input parameters. Exemplary input parameters include a user activity history, user content such as calendar appointments, social networking data, and a state of a computing device of the user (e.g., as collected by sensors of the computing device). The computing device of the user presents the obtained context information to the user at the selected location and time.
US08818980B2

A method and system for identifying a group of objects or content that have a plurality of group-wise connections, and for revealing the evolution of the state of those connections over time. A network of symbols are generated to create a symbol backbone, and raw object or content descriptions are mapped to the generated symbols. To identify the objects or content most closely and most interconnectedly related to a query object or content, the query object or content is mapped onto the symbol backbone. The raw object or content description expression set of the related symbols are retrieved, forming the group of interconnected objects or content. The retrieved object or content descriptions can be further refined.
US08818977B1

Methods, systems, and apparatus, including computer program products, in which context can be used to rank search results. Context associated with a user session can be identified. A search query received during the user session can be used to identify a contextual click model based upon the context associated with the user session.
US08818974B2

A method for maintaining a hierarchy bridge table consistent with a corresponding hierarchy table includes listening for a transaction, having a start boundary and an end boundary, on the hierarchy table; and upon detecting and identifying the transaction, directing execution of an update method on the bridge table, where the update method is completed within the boundaries of the transaction using the identity of the transaction and a state of the bridge table at the start boundary of the transaction.
US08818973B1

Techniques for generating and vending of unique sequence values are described. Each master of a ring of masters is configured to create and vend the unique sequence values downstream to filling pools for eventual client consumption. When a ring of masters is employed, each master communicates with one another to agree on a current range of values that should next be vended. A master may then vend these values to a layer of one or more filling pools, at least of which includes or has access to persistent and non-persistent storage memories.
US08818967B2

The invention relates to a method for compressing identifiers of program code elements in a portable data carrier, to a method for calling compressed identifiers, to a portable data carrier, and to a semiconductor chip having a memory area for storing the compressed identifiers.
US08818963B2

Mitigating problems related to the Halloween problem including where update operations potentially allow the record to be visited more than once during the operation. A method includes accessing an instance of a data store operation statement. The instance of the data store operation statement is executed causing an update or delete to an old version of data store record or creation of a data store record resulting in a new version of the data store record in the case of an update or creation of a data store record and a deleted version of the data store record in the case of a delete in the data store. The instance of the data store operation statement is correlated with the new version of the data store record or the deleted version of the data store record.
US08818949B2

In one general aspect, a computer-implemented method for migrating data from a source database to a target database includes a computer-implemented method that includes executing, using at least one processor, instructions recorded on a non-transitory computer-readable storage medium. The method includes ensuring that the source database has correct version information, creating an image copy of the data in the source database, and collecting metadata describing the source database. The metadata may include information used to verify that the target database is compatible with the source database, to automatically translate object identifiers, and to avert the migration if no data has changed in the source and the target databases (e.g., table and index spaces) since a previous migration. The method may further include refreshing the data in the target database using the image copy after determining that the source database and the target database are compatible.
US08818948B2

Methods and systems are disclosed to perform dynamic disk data redistribution in a database environment. The methods and systems disclosed herein provide for the transparent redistribution of data across multiple physical disks of a database while maintaining accessibility to the database. Methods and systems are also disclosed for handling requests to perform database operations on data that is in the process of being redistributed.
US08818947B2

Methods and apparatus, including computer program products, are provided for data replication. In one aspect, there is provided a computer-implemented method. The method may include providing an initial load of a data item from a source system to a target system, wherein the data item is associated with a trigger maintained at the source system; recording a change in a log, when a change to the data item at the source system causes the trigger to prompt the recording; extracting the change from the log to enable at least a confirmation of a consistency of the change; and providing the extracted change to a replication server configured to write the change to the target system. Related apparatus, systems, methods, and articles are also described.
US08818944B2

The described implementations relate to updating views in a database system. One implementation can identify an active view that retrieves records from a database and determine one or more physical tables in the database that are referenced by the active view. The implementation can track one or more columns in the physical tables that are used by the active view and identify a change to the physical tables in a transaction log of the database. If the change does not affect the one or more columns, the change can be treated as an ignorable change for the active view.
US08818935B2

A collaborative data management system for engineering, design, and construction (EDC) projects is presented. The system includes a storage medium, a processor, executable code, a display, and an input device. The storage medium stores a plurality of EDC data objects and a plurality of relationship objects. The EDC data objects represent parameters relevant to EDC projects. The relationship objects represent relationships between EDC data objects. The processor and executable code are communicatively coupled with the storage medium and are configured to (i) display the relationship objects on the display and (ii) allow a user to manage synchronization of the EDC objects with the input device.
US08818929B2

A method for merging information of high semantic level representing complex situations including several objects originating from several sensors ci, said information possibly being heterogeneous, said method including acquiring the various items of information arising from said sensors in raw form and transforming them so as to cast them into the form of conceptual graphs, a conceptual graph representing several concepts and the relations which exist between them, and being composed of entity nodes and relation nodes, with E the set of concept nodes defined on a support S, G1 and G2 two conceptual graphs defined on S, wherein the method determines a merging strategy denoted strategymerge as follows: strategymerge=fmerge◯fcomp:E×E→E∪{E×E} and said merging strategy is applied to the various items of information taking the form of graphs.
US08818927B2

A method is disclosed for generating a set of optimal rules and parameters for use by an evaluation engine on a volume of information extracted from a stream of IP packets associated with a web browsing session conducted over a network in order to filter user-initiated traffic flowing across the network from non-user-initiated traffic. Deep packet inspection is performed to extract the volume of information from the stream that conforms to at least one discrimination criteria. An initial iteration of application of the evaluation engine to the volume is performed by selecting initial discrimination criteria and rules for generating the filtered results and a distance between the filtered results and known actual user-initiated traffic is measured. Subsequent iterations of application of the evaluation engine to the volume are performed by changing the discrimination criteria and/or rules until there is no significant improvement in the measured distance.
US08818917B2

A multi-social network discovery system and method enables users to select multiple social networks comprising activity streams and to receive recommendations sourced from the selected multiple social networks. The multi-social network discovery system and method generates affinity values based on inferred affinity levels between topics, which may be associated with tags, and objects that are associated with the activity streams. The inferred affinity values may be derived from usage behaviors such as tagging and/or based on an automatic analysis of the content of the objects. The affinity values inform the selection of the objects to be recommended to a user, and the selection may be further informed by inferred affinity levels between the user and the topics. The recommendations may be tuned by the user through application of a recommendation tuning control.
US08818907B2

The present invention provides a system and method for facilitating a RF transaction using a secondary transaction number that is associated with a user's primary transponder account. The user provides the secondary transaction number, often with limited-use conditions associated therewith, to a merchant to facilitate a more secure and confident transaction.
US08818903B2

System and methods for facilitating electronic commerce by securely providing certificate-related and other services, including certificate validation and warranty services. The system services include a certificate status check service and a warranty service. The certificate status check service allows a relying customer to validate a subscribing customer's digital certificate. The warranty service allows the relying customer to receive a collateral-backed warranty that the subscribing customer's digital certificate is valid, and also confirms the ability of the subscribing customer to pay. All participants and a root entity are provided with a transaction coordinator for combining services and operations into a single transaction having the qualities of atomicity, consistency, isolation, and durability. The transaction coordinator provides a single consistent interface for certificate-status messages and requests, as well as messages and requests relating to other services.
US08818897B1

A system and method for validation and enforcement of application security, wherein the user credentials and the integrity of a target application are verified before the target application is permitted to execute.
US08818894B2

Processing payment through a mobile device includes: receiving a command; using an upper layer application program executing on the mobile device to generate a payment request based on the command and send the payment request to be processed by a lower layer payment program, using the lower layer payment program executing on the mobile device to monitor the payment request sent from the localhost address of the mobile device via the predetermined port; in response to the payment request, using the lower layer payment program to provide an input interface for payment information in and receive the input payment information; using the lower layer payment program to connect with a payment server and pass the payment information over a network to the payment server; and using the lower layer payment program to transfer a payment processing result received from the payment server, to the upper layer application program.
US08818891B1

An electronic negotiation auction platform derives final market pricing for and assembles the investor pool to fund a borrower's loan request or to sell an existing debt instrument. The platform conducts the auction in two phases. The first phase involves junior lienholders, whereas the second phase involves senior lien holders. Phase I comprises establishment of a purchase price by junior lienholders (B) tranche given minimum return information. Phase II comprises subscription of the (A) tranche which, now has a defined value and full range of information to consider the safest of the investment vehicles for this asset. Competition among investors desiring to participate in the (A) tranche results in a lower yield for the (A) tranche and a higher yield for the junior lienholders if the (A) tranche is oversubscribed. This extra yield is passed on to junior lienholders, serving as incentive to participate in the junior tranche.
US08818887B2

Embodiments of the present invention include methods, program product and systems for card and bank product management. An embodiment of a method of advancing funds to a banking customer, for example, includes establishing a line of credit with a bank through an on-line access interface with the bank, determining whether access to funds through the line of credit should occur for a customer transaction and providing one or more preselected increments of funds for the customer transaction. A cumulative amount of the one or more preselected increments, for example, can be less than a total available line of credit for a customer having an established line of credit with the bank. The method further includes decrementing the total available line of credit by the cumulative amount of the one or more preselected increments provided for the customer transaction and a predetermined fee amount for each preselected increment of funds.
US08818886B1

A system, method, and computer readable medium for usage billing of one or more hosted applications serving one or more clients. The hosted applications are contained within one or more isolated environments or run without isolated environments. The system may include usage billing based on one or more of resources open, amount of data flowing through resources, number of open files, number of transactions, number of concurrent users, number of processes, CPU utilization and memory usage, The system may further include a management interface where administrators may add, remove and configure isolated environments, configure client policies and credentials, and force upgrades. If using isolated environments, the isolated environments may be isolated from other applications and the host operating system on the clients and applications within the isolated environments may run without performing an application-installation on the client.
US08818884B2

Methods, systems, and apparatus, including computer program products, for implementing a software architecture design for a software application implementing customer returns handling. The application is structured as multiple process components interacting with each other through service interfaces, and multiple service operations, each being implemented for a respective process component. The process components include an Accounting process component, a Customer Return Processing process component, a Sales Order Processing process component, a Customer Invoice Processing process component, a Due Item Processing process component, a Balance of Foreign Payment Management process component, a Payment Processing process component, a Supply and Demand Matching process component, an Inventory Processing process component, a Site Logistics Processing process component, and an Inbound Delivery Processing process component.
US08818882B2

Methods and system for determining reputation information are provided. The method includes analyzing transactional and non-transactional information for an alias associated with an entity and determining reputation information for that alias. The reputation information is transferable across multiple domains. A user can request the reputation information about an entity prior to doing business with that entity. The reputation information is generated for merchants as well as users. The system can generate transaction risk score for every transaction to be conducted between two or more aliases. The system includes an alias identity and reputation validation server computer that receives inputs from various external systems and generated reputation information based on the inputs. Additionally, every individual user/merchant can manage his profile within the reputation database and enter some information manually.
US08818881B2

Disclosed is a method and system for integrating a plurality of isolated components to automatically provide real-time support to a participant in an online auction, particularly for live online auctions that may require quick decision making. An embodiment may automatically display information from the plurality of isolated components for the current item being auctioned in the online auction in a single user interface window. An embodiment may further update any information from any of the plurality of isolated components in real-time as the online auction is occurring. Examples of various isolated components that may be integrated into the single user interface window include: item history reports, third party valuation reports on the item, and the interface into the online auction. Various embodiments may have additional user interface windows concurrently monitoring/automatically integrating with different online auction locations that are concurrently auctioning different items. An embodiment may also include automatic non-decision support actions such as: requesting placing purchased items into an electronic inventory system, requesting delivery/shipping of purchased items, and/or requesting financing for a purchase.
US08818880B1

A source identification service is described that identifies sources for items of interest that are provided by a network-based service and may benefit from additional sources. The source identification service may identify sources for an item of interest in response to receipt a request. In one aspect, the source identification service may conduct a search of a network-based information resource using keywords pertaining to the item of interest to obtain a listing of sources capable of providing the item of interest. A source score may be generated for respective sources and compared to a selected value to identify potential sources for further consideration. The potential sources may also be filtered based upon selected criteria to refine the list of potential sources. An offer may be provided by the source identification service inviting the source to provide the item of interest on the network-based service.
US08818874B2

A system and method to authenticate products. The method includes storing identity data corresponding to products to be sold into a database, accessing the database at a point-of-sale of a product, and determining the authenticity of the product at the point-of-sale by comparing the product's identity data with the identity data stored in the database.
US08818866B2

An advertisement inserted in contents of, for example, a game does not serve its purpose after a while. An advertisement-information reception unit (112) receives an advertisement-space definition file (32). The advertisement-space definition file (32) is a file that defines an advertisement space for an advertisement to be inserted when contents are displayed and an advertising agency is assigned to the advertisement space. An assignment changing unit (116) cancels the assignment of an advertising agency, whose license has expired, to the advertisement space even when the advertising agency is assigned to the advertising space in the advertisement-space definition file (32). An advertisement downloading unit (118) downloads advertisement data to be inserted in the advertisement space from the server of the advertising agency validly assigned to the advertisement space. A rendering engine (130) inserts, when displaying the contents on a screen, the downloaded advertisement in the advertisement space and displays accordingly.
US08818863B2

An online sales/automatic rebate and coupon redemption system provides online customers automatic retrieval and redemption of all applicable rebates and coupons during purchase. Purchase orders from customers are selectively fulfilled and products are shipped to the customers either by the system for online sales with automatic rebate and coupon redemption or by other merchant or manufacturer environments. The system purchases from merchants using applicable coupons and rebates and then sells the products to the customers, passing the savings to them. The system makes it possible to automatically retrieve coupons and rebates for items in a shopping cart during the activity of an online purchase at an electronic mall or an online merchant site. The system provides coupons to potential customers via email, based on customer profile, geographical information, etc. Manufacturers and merchants can update coupon value and content based on ongoing sales and volume of customer activity.
US08818858B1

The present disclosure involves ensuring that items sold by a merchant appear in certain network pages. A network page is automatically accessed in a computing device. The network page is generated by a referral network site that displays at least one offering of an item by at least one competitor merchant. A unique identifier associated with the item is identified from the network page in the computing device. The unique identifier is stored in association with the item in a data store accessible to the computing device. The item and the unique identifier are included in a feed sent from the computing device of a merchant to the referral network site. The feed includes a listing of the item and a plurality of other items, wherein the item and the other items are offered for sale by the merchant.
US08818853B2

An online sales/automatic rebate and coupon redemption system provides online customers automatic retrieval and redemption of all applicable rebates and coupons during purchase. Purchase orders from customers are selectively fulfilled and products are shipped to the customers either by the system for online sales with automatic rebate and coupon redemption or by other merchant or manufacturer environments. The system purchases from merchants using applicable coupons and rebates and then sells the products to the customers, passing the savings to them. The system makes it possible to automatically retrieve coupons and rebates for items in a shopping cart during the activity of an online purchase at an electronic mall or an online merchant site. The system provides coupons to potential customers via email, based on customer profile, geographical information, etc. Manufacturers and merchants can update coupon value and content based on ongoing sales and volume of customer activity.
US08818852B2

An online sales/automatic rebate and coupon redemption system provides online customers automatic retrieval and redemption of all applicable rebates and coupons during purchase. Purchase orders from customers are selectively fulfilled and products are shipped to the customers either by the system for online sales with automatic rebate and coupon redemption or by other merchant or manufacturer environments. The system purchases from merchants using applicable coupons and rebates and then sells the products to the customers, passing the savings to them. The system makes it possible to automatically retrieve coupons and rebates for items in a shopping cart during the activity of an online purchase at an electronic mall or an online merchant site. The system provides coupons to potential customers via email, based on customer profile, geographical information, etc. Manufacturers and merchants can update coupon value and content based on ongoing sales and volume of customer activity.
US08818849B2

Methods and apparatus to provide incentives to deflect callers to websites are disclosed. Example methods disclosed herein to deflect a caller to a webpage include receiving a call from the caller, offering an incentive to the caller to terminate the call and access the webpage, and providing an address of the webpage to the caller after the caller consents to terminate the call.
US08818846B2

A gaming system includes at least one gaming server having at least one processor and at least one memory device storing instructions. The instructions, when executed by the at least one processor, cause the at least one gaming server to assign one or more unique identifiers to a registrant, monitor for web activity associated with the one or more unique identifiers and initiated by the registrant, measure an effect of the web activity, and convert the measured effect into a gaming incentive.
US08818839B2

Systems and methods of online marketing, monitoring and control for merchants are disclosed. Third party providers are crawled to obtain information about a plurality of merchants and correlate the merchant information to create a merchant database. Third party providers are monitored for merchant information, and information about the merchants is stored. Alerts are provided to subscribing merchants when an alert trigger is identified within the system or at a third party provider. The method allows the subscribing merchant to view and respond to reviews, view and maintain online listings, prepare and send consumer offers, and prepare and send communications to consumers, all directly from the system. The method allows the subscribing merchant to view information and analysis for competing merchants. An overall marketing score for merchants is prepared and displayed. The method may be performed on a server and accessed via an Internet browser and mobile device applications.
US08818838B1

A method in a computer system for efficiently modeling a market corresponding to a set of competing products includes receiving product attribute selection data associated with the set of competing products from an interactive user interface, automatically generating a hierarchical market structure based on the received product attribute selection data, so that the hierarchical market structure is descriptive of hypothesized competitive relations within the set of competing products, and displaying a graphical representation of the hierarchical market structure on the interactive user interface.
US08818831B2

The present invention enables SLOs and their values to be determined in a system established for the purpose of providing services to users by accepting requirement values from a user with respect to desired SLOs, and presenting, as candidates which can be selected by a user, SLO groups satisfying those requirement values and SLO groups satisfying those requirement values as nearly as possible, and prompting the user to select a candidate. With this service level objective management system, an administrator inputs SLO names, SLO group names, the SLO names and target values for SLOs belonging to the SLO groups, a hierarchical relationships of the SLO groups, and the like. In addition, user-specified SLO names and requirement values with respect to those SLOs are received from user terminals. A combination specification means 94 calculates the degree to which the target values satisfy the requirement values for each combination of SLO groups, from the highest-ranked SLO group to the lowest-ranked SLO group.
US08818830B2

A computer implemented method of computing optimal product usage comprising storing corporate information as a floor plan containing a plurality of hierarchical levels of a corporate organization; storing benchmark data describing a current product usage for at least one application within the corporate organization; performing an analysis based on the corporate information and the benchmark data to determine an optimum usage of a plurality of products for the at least one application; and generating a product usage recommendation based on the determined optimum usage.
US08818824B2

An inventory management system manages information regarding medical items dispensed in conjunction with medical treatment of a patient at a medical facility. The system includes a first computer, an inventory access control system, inventory sensors, and inventory applications in communication with the first computer. The inventory access control system receives credential information from a user seeking access to a physical inventory space in the medical facility and controls access to the space. The inventory sensors sense the removal of medical items to be dispensed to the patient, and generate item usage information indicating the identity and quantity of the items removed. The inventory applications associate the item usage information with patient information that identifies the patient to which the medical items are dispensed, thereby generating a record indicating that the items removed from the storage structure have been dispensed to the patient identified by the patient information.
US08818821B2

Digital assistant appliance for assisting an operator in the manual preparation of a liquid pharmaceutical composition comprising: a memory device containing, for each active principle of the liquid pharmaceutical composition: one or more first sample images of vials containing the active principle, and one or more second sample images of syringes that can be used for transferring the active principle from the vials to the medical instrument; an artificial viewing system designed to acquire: a vial image of a vial chosen by the operator and/or a syringe image of a syringe chosen by the operator; and an electronic processing system configured in such a way as to compare the vial image with each of the first sample images for determining whether the vial chosen by the operator is incorrect, and/or compare the syringe image with each of the second sample images for determining whether the syringe chosen by the operator is incorrect, and warn the operator of an error condition in the preparation step when the vial or the syringe chosen by the operator is incorrect.
US08818820B1

A computer system to monitor and authenticate the creation of a medicinal herb including information on where seeds used to grow a plant containing a medicinal herb buds were obtained from, information on how and where the seeds were grown to cultivate the plant, information on when the buds were harvested from the plant and converted into a medicinal herb full chain a custody of all personnel involved from obtaining the seeds, cultivating the seeds into a plant, harvesting growth from the plant and converting it into a medicinal herb and transportation of the medicinal herb to a dispensing facility and how the medicinal herb was dispensed to a patient.
US08818812B2

The present invention relates to a text display method and a text input method. The text display method creates a syllable by combining one or more consonants and vowels based on a combination rule of initial, medial and final phonemes, wherein the initial phonemes are assigned with respective consonants based upon the length and direction of the hour hand, the medial phonemes are assigned with respective vowels based upon the length and direction of the minute hand, and the final phonemes are shaped by the length of the second hand and assigned with consonants similar to the initial phonemes but with a shorter length. As such, not only can people quickly learn how to read and write, they can also input text easily.
US08818803B2

Methods, devices, systems and tools are presented that allow the summarization of text, audio, and audiovisual presentations, such as movies, into less lengthy forms. High-content media files are shortened in a manner that preserves important details, by splitting the files into segments, rating the segments, and reassembling preferred segments into a final abridged piece. Summarization of media can be customized by user selection of criteria, and opens new possibilities for delivering entertainment, news, and information in the form of dense, information-rich content that can be viewed by means of broadcast or cable distribution, “on-demand” distribution, internet and cell phone digital video streaming, or can be downloaded onto an iPod™ and other portable video playback devices.
US08818802B2

A method for real-time data-pattern analysis. The method includes receiving and queuing at least one data-pattern analysis request by a data-pattern analysis unit controller. At least one data stream portion is also received and stored by the data-pattern analysis unit controller, each data stream portion corresponding to a received data-pattern analysis request. Next, a received data-pattern analysis request is selected by the data-pattern analysis unit controller along with a corresponding data stream portion. A data-pattern analysis is performed based on the selected data-pattern analysis request and the corresponding data stream portion, wherein the data-pattern analysis is performed by one of a plurality of data-pattern analysis units.
US08818800B2

The suppression of off-axis audio in an audio environment is provided. Off-axis audio may be considered audio that does not originate from a region of interest. The off-axis audio is suppressed by comparing a phase difference between signals from two microphones to a target slope of the phase difference between signals originating from the region of interest. The target slope can be adapted to allow the region of interest to move with the location of a human speaker such as a driver.
US08818797B2

This document describes various techniques for dual-band speech encoding. In some embodiments, a first type of speech feature is received from a remote entity, an estimate of a second type of speech feature is determined based on the first type of speech feature, the estimate of the second type of speech feature is provided to a speech recognizer, speech-recognition results based on the estimate of the second type of speech feature are received from the speech recognizer, and the speech-recognition results are transmitted to the remote entity.
US08818771B2

According to the preferred embodiments, a system or method is provided that involves the programming of a computer or other processing device with a software, hardware or firmware configured to create a processing tool (i.e., referred to herein as a tool box) that can be configured to provide one or more operational function based on new mathematical principles described herein for the purposes of, e.g., synthesizing or analyzing shapes and the like.
US08818770B2

User interface systems and methods for roof estimation are described. Example embodiments include a roof estimation system that provides a user interface configured to facilitate roof model generation based on one or more aerial images of a building roof. In one embodiment, roof model generation includes image registration, image lean correction, roof section pitch determination, wire frame model construction, and/or roof model review. The described user interface provides user interface controls that may be manipulated by an operator to perform at least some of the functions of roof model generation. In one embodiment, the user interface provides user interface controls that facilitate the determination of pitch of one or more sections of a building roof. This abstract is provided to comply with rules requiring an abstract, and it is submitted with the intention that it will not be used to interpret or limit the scope or meaning of the claims.
US08818767B2

A method for assisting the construction and validation of an avionics platform uses, on the one hand, a functional description of the platform using avionics functions, software modules suitable for executing these functions, and functional link occurrences between these modules and, on the other hand, a material description of this platform using calculation or communication items of equipment and physical links between these equipment. The method according to the invention enables to generate paths between the various items of equipment by using direct physical links and/or physical links belonging to one or more network(s), and subsequently to associate at least one such path to be each functional link occurrence. It also enables to associate to each software module an item of equipment adapted to host it.
US08818758B1

Techniques disclosed herein include systems and methods for tracking, visualizing and understanding energy or utilities usage of one or many buildings. The system links building characteristics with energy or utilities use thereby enabling users to view energy or utilities usage and cost information at the portfolio, development, building, or meter levels. This technique allows for easy comparison among and between buildings in a portfolio, group, or common ownership. The system provides for quick creation of custom reports to compare buildings across portfolios. These custom reports further enable users to compare energy/utilities use of buildings within a given account relative to energy/utilities use of similar buildings in a larger database, thus providing meaningful performance benchmarking based on real data.
US08818751B2

The invention relates to method and a system of interpreting angular orientation data. It is determined, whether the angular deviation of a current angular orientation (C) of a sensor device (12) from a last extreme angular orientation (L) currently decreases after having increased before up to a provisional new extreme angular orientation (P), thereby determining that the provisional new extreme angular orientation (P) is a new extreme angular orientation. Information relating to a new extreme angular orientation, such as an angular range of motion, may be output to a user.
US08818747B2

A method for calibrating a triaxial magnetic field sensor includes steps for determining an offset of recorded measured values of the magnetic field sensor using a superposed signal and for determining the sensitivity of the magnetic field sensor along the first measuring axes. The determination of the sensitivity includes steps for determining the sensitivity of the magnetic field sensor along a first measuring axis and for determining the sensitivity of the magnetic field sensor along the other measuring axes based on the sensitivity of the first measuring axis and the determined offset.
US08818739B2

A system and method for monitoring loads applied to aircraft landing gear structure. The method includes the step of interrogating at least one sensor positioned proximate the landing gear structure by way of data acquisition circuitry to yield strain data. The method further includes the step of instructing the data acquisition circuitry with respect to a sampling rate and data resolution for interrogation.
US08818736B2

Example embodiments include one or more of a method, computing device, computer-readable medium and system for allocating oil production from geochemical fingerprints. In an example embodiment, a method may include providing a known mixture comprising known proportions of a plurality of end-members; providing an unknown mixture comprising unknown proportions of the end-members; performing a chromatographic analysis of each of the known mixture, the end-members, and the unknown mixture; determining a plurality of peak ratios, and prior peak ratio qualities related to the peak ratios, using the chromatographic analysis; and estimating an estimate of the unknown proportions of the end-members using the peak ratios, the prior peak ratio qualities, and the known proportion of the end-members.
US08818733B2

A photodynamic therapy system and methods determine the amount (concentration) of a photosensitizer agent present in the target tissue. The system may also determine the tissue oxygenation. The system may also determine light dosimetry parameters based on the amount of photosensitizer in the tissue and/or the tissue oxygenation.
US08818731B2

An improved apparatus and method for interfacing a time variant waveform between two hardware environments. In one aspect, the invention comprises a circuit for accurately simulating the output of one or more types of sensing device (e.g., passive bridge pressure transducer) for use with a plurality of different monitoring and/or analysis devices, thereby obviating the need for specialized interface circuitry adapted to each different monitor/analyzer. In one exemplary embodiment, the sensing device comprises a non-invasive blood pressure monitor (NIBPM), which universally interfaces with prior art patient monitors via the interface circuit of the invention. In a second aspect of the invention, an improved NIBPM device incorporating the interface circuit is disclosed. An improved disconnect circuit adapted to sense the status of the electrical connection between the sensing device and monitor is also described.
US08818726B1

Systems, methods, computer programs, and user interfaces are provided to identify a route extending from a route start location to a route end location and including a plurality of route segments, determine a route type for each the plurality of route segments, and provide for display of a trip progress bar for the route. The trip progress bar including one more bar segments corresponding to one or more of the route segments, and each of the bar segments of the trip progress bar having a display characteristic indicative of the route type for the corresponding route segment such that a user can graphically identify a route segment type corresponding to each of the displayed bar segments of the trip progress bar.
US08818718B2

An apparatus and method for a personal navigation apparatus comprising a personal navigation device (PND) for providing navigational guidance information. The PND may include a single-dimensional magnetic detector for sensing magnetic flux amplitudes of a magnetic field generated by a magnet. Alternatively, the PND may include a three-dimensional magnetic detector and a magnetic calibration module for determining an ambient magnetic field calibration value representing immediate surroundings of the PND.
US08818716B1

A user, such as the driver of a vehicle, to retrieve information related to a point of interest (POI) near the vehicle by pointing at the POI or performing some other gesture to identify the POI. Gesture recognition is performed on the gesture to generate a target region that includes the POI that the user identified. After generating the target region, information about the POI can be retrieved by querying a server-based POI service with the target region or by searching in a micromap that is stored locally. The retrieved POI information can then be provided to the user via a display and/or speaker in the vehicle. This process beneficially allows a user to rapidly identify and retrieve information about a POI near the vehicle without having to navigate a user interface by manipulating a touchscreen or physical buttons.
US08818713B2

A method and apparatus for detecting hazardous gases. The method includes the steps of providing a central station and a plurality of environmental detectors within a protected area, each of the plurality of environmental detectors detecting environmental events within the protected area and reporting detected events to the central station, one of the plurality of environmental detectors detecting an environmental event within the protected area and reporting that event to the central station, the central station determining a location of the detected event and of each of the plurality of environmental detectors within the protected area, the central station dynamically computing a route from the determined location of each of the plurality of environmental detectors to the closest and safest exit based upon the determined location of the detected environmental event and the central station generating and sending a respective map showing the computed route to the closest and safest exit for that environmental detector to each of the plurality of environmental detectors.
US08818711B2

Techniques for constructing a path analysis in an area are provided. Data are received from a mobile device in an area. The data is based on a path that is traversed by the mobile device. A traversable path is then determined from the data received from the mobile device. The traversable path is superimposed on a map and the map, including the traversable path, is packaged for delivery or display to requesting devices.
US08818708B2

A method to display a registered driving path image upon a transparent windscreen head-up display in a source vehicle includes monitoring an operating environment of the source vehicle, monitoring a driver registration input, determining a registered driving path image based upon the operating environment of the source vehicle and the driver registration input, and displaying the registered driving path image upon the head-up display.
US08818706B1

An indoor area may be localized to provide end users with a mobile-accessible map to guide the end user in navigating the indoor area. A preliminary version of a map of the indoor area to be localized is processed to identify different navigable routes within the indoor area. A user may access the processed map and collect sensory data using the mobile device while moving along any of the navigable routes. The different sensory data that is collected at the same moment in time may be associated based on the location of the mobile device when the data is collected. The localized map is then generated with visual indications of the locations of the corresponding sensory data. The end user may then access the localized map on a mobile device to navigate the indoor area and to locate specific points of interest corresponding to the sensory data.
US08818703B2

Provided is an object recognition device and an object recognition method that can estimate the size of an object detected by a radar, through a simple configuration. The object recognition device includes: a detection section for radiating an electromagnetic wave to an object in a forward direction of the vehicle and for detecting the object by receiving a reflected wave reflected by the object; a target information calculation section for calculating information containing a moving direction of the detected object as target information, by using a signal received by the detection section; a vehicle information calculation section for calculating information containing a moving direction of the vehicle as vehicle information, by using information obtained from the vehicle; and a processing section for estimating, based on the information indicating the moving direction of the object contained in the target information and the information indicating the moving direction of the vehicle contained in the vehicle information, from which portion of the object detected by the detection section the electromagnetic wave was reflected, and for calculating a presence area in which the object is present relative to the vehicle, in accordance with a result of the estimation.
US08818702B2

A method for tracking an object, by generating kinematic models corresponding to the object using a computerized object-tracking system, is disclosed. The method includes receiving, by a data collection module, scan data associated with an object, and generating by the module, using the scan data, a new frame F, associated with a new time t+dt and including new points X. A clustering module identifies a new group G of new points Xi of the new frame F. A data association module associates the new group G with the object based on previous information associated with the object. A tracking module determines a new kinematic model M corresponding to the object based on the new group G.
US08818700B2

The motor vehicle of the invention is provided with at least three wheels and includes a driving cab capable of accommodating a single person in the width direction. The motor vehicle comprises a bend-balancing means that acts by the inclination of at least the portion of the chassis that bears the driving cab. According to the invention, the vehicle is also provided with speed, acceleration and/or inclination sensors, and the balancing means are automatically controlled when the information supplied by the sensors is lower than a main predetermined threshold. The invention also provides that the automatic control of the balancing means is deactivated when the information provided by the sensors is higher than said main threshold.
US08818698B2

Exemplary embodiments are directed to systems and methods for tracking data during operation of a power transfer device. A system may include an electrical relay and a switch. The switch may be coupled to each of the electrical relay and a power transfer device and may be configured to couple the electrical relay to a reference voltage upon engagement of the power transfer device. The system may further include a processing unit configured to receive a signal from the electrical relay while the power transfer device is engaged.
US08818697B2

A vehicle having a driver statistic system for interfacing with a network includes a wheel speed sensor, an engine control unit, network interface hardware for communicating with a network, and an electronic control unit communicatively coupled therebetween. The electronic control unit includes a processor and memory storing a computer readable and executable instruction set. When the instruction set is executed by the processor, the electronic control unit processes sensor signals received from the wheel speed sensor and the engine control unit to determine fuel consumption of the vehicle. The electronic control unit transmits a vehicle status signal to the network interface hardware, where the vehicle status signal is indicative of the fuel consumption of the vehicle. The network interface hardware transmits the vehicle status signal to the network. The network interface hardware further receives a vehicle performance signal from the network indicative of a driver performance ranking.
US08818688B2

A method for operating an internal combustion engine (100), particularly of a motor vehicle, operated with a gas as fuel, a lambda value of an air/fuel mixture being regulated by means of lambda control as a function of a signal from a lambda probe (130), and, when a lean/rich jump is detected by the lambda probe (130), a mixture control factor (GRF) which controls the mixture composition being varied at least for a predeterminable time such that a shift of the lambda air ratio toward rich is caused, is characterized in that the mixture control factor (GRF) is varied in such a way that an additional defined shift of the lambda air ratio toward rich is caused.
US08818680B2

A vehicle behavior control device for controlling acceleration/deceleration includes: a velocity acquisition device; a current position acquisition device; a preceding vehicle determination device; a following distance detection device; a preceding vehicle information acquisition device; a relative velocity calculation device of a preceding vehicle; a first evaluation index calculation device of a first evaluation index indicating an approaching/separating state to the preceding vehicle in view of the preceding vehicle velocity; a first deceleration target determination device for determining whether the first evaluation index exceeds a first deceleration threshold; and a following deceleration calculation device for calculating a first required deceleration when the first evaluation index exceeds the first deceleration threshold. The first required deceleration provides to match an actual relative velocity with a first target relative velocity, which is determined based on the first evaluation index and the following distance.
US08818679B2

A vehicle control device for controlling the driving force and braking force that is applies to a vehicle to maintain a target wheel speed includes: a plurality of determination parts each of which determines the wheel speed of a corresponding one of a plurality of wheels of the vehicle; a calculation part that calculates the wheel speed validity threshold for each wheel based on the determined wheel speeds; a decision part that decides whether the wheel speed validity threshold calculated for each wheel is below a specific threshold speed; a setting part that resets the target wheel speed depending on the result of the decision by the decision part; and an estimation part that estimates the vehicle speed based on the determined wheel speeds.
US08818676B2

An engine control system includes a torque request control module to determine a first engine torque request. An artificial neural network (ANN) torque request module determines a second engine torque request using an ANN model. A torque security check module that selectively generates a malfunction signal based on the difference between the first engine torque request and the second engine torque request.
US08818674B2

Provided is a vehicle behavior controller capable of stabilizing a behavior of a vehicle with a high response when an unstable state of the vehicle is judged. The vehicle behavior controller includes: a running state detecting unit for detecting a running state of the vehicle; an unstable state judging unit for judging the unstable state of the vehicle based on the running state; a motor generator connected to an engine of the vehicle, the motor generator operating as a power generator for using an output of a prime mover to generate power and an electric motor for assisting the output of the prime mover; and a control unit for controlling an operation of the motor generator based on r.p.m. of the motor generator, in which the control unit controls the operation of the motor generator to generate braking torque when the unstable state is judged.
US08818673B1

When detecting unacceptably large airgaps between wheel speed sensors and their exciter rings on wheel ends of a vehicle, wheel speed sensor output is filtered and monitored to detect signal amplitudes that correspond to the airgaps. When signal peak amplitude below a predetermined threshold is detected, the airgap is too large. Wheel ends having unacceptably large air gaps are indicated to the driver or technician via blink sequences (e.g., on an electronic stability program (ESP) indicator light or other suitable indicator), wherein each wheel end is associated with a unique blink sequence.
US08818662B2

This invention relates to a drive train (1) of a mobile vehicle with an internal combustion engine (2) and a load device (3) driven by the internal combustion engine (2). The internal combustion engine (2) is controlled by an electronic engine control unit (4) and the load device (3) is controlled by an electronic control unit (5). A low idle speed (nuL) for the operation of the internal combustion engine at no load is stored in the engine control unit (4). The electronic control unit (5) detects a pause in the operation of the load device (3) and transmits a speed setpoint (nStandby) for standby operation of the internal combustion engine to the engine control unit (4) to operate the internal combustion engine (2) at idle during a pause in operation at the speed setpoint (nStandby), which is below the low idle speed (nuL) for standby operation.
US08818660B2

A hybrid powertrain system includes a transmission device operative to transfer power between an input member, a torque machine and an output member, the output member coupled to a driveline coupled to a wheel to transfer tractive torque therebetween. A method for controlling the hybrid powertrain system includes monitoring an operator torque request, determining an operating range state of the transmission device, determining a net output torque to the output member based upon the operator torque request, determining a lash state of the driveline, and determining a command for transferring output torque to the output member based upon the operating range state of the transmission device, the net output torque, and the lash state of the driveline.
US08818659B2

This disclosure provides a thermal management system and method that can recommend operational behavior to an operator of an engine system to optimize fuel economy over a period of time in which a components of the engine system is in a warm up and/or regeneration state. In one representative embodiment, the expected temperature change of the engine component at a later time is determined based on inefficient operation of the engine, such as a transmission down shift resulting in higher engine speed and lower engine torque, and the expected temperature change of the engine component resulting from operating the engine under current conditions or expected conditions at that later time is determined. A determination is made as to whether the inefficient engine operation is the optimal operation in view of fuel economy and a recommendation is generated for the operator based if optimal operation is determined.
US08818652B2

An assembly for facilitating steering of an agricultural implement linkable to a work vehicle is disclosed. The assembly comprises at least a first ground-engaging wheel to engage a ground surface below a frame of the agricultural implement to support the frame above the ground surface. The assembly further comprises a positioning system for receiving a positioning signal from a positioning source. The positioning system determines a current position of the agricultural implement from at least the positioning signal, and the positioning system generates a control signal derived from the current position of the agricultural implement. The assembly further comprises a steering cylinder connected to the first ground-engaging wheel. The steering cylinder operatively connects to the positioning system to steer the first ground-engaging wheel based on the control signal.
US08818650B2

An operational parameter determination system is disclosed. The operational parameter determination system may include an operational parameter predictor configured to calculate an a priori estimated operational parameter of the machine based on a previously estimated operational parameter. The operational parameter determination system may also include a gear shifting compensator configured to determine whether a gear shifting is in progress, and when the gear shifting is in progress, to output the a priori estimated operational parameter as a determined operational parameter. The operational parameter determination system may further include an operational parameter updater configured to, when the gear shifting is not in progress, receive a measured operational parameter of the machine, determine an a posteriori estimated operational parameter of the machine based on the a priori estimated operational parameter and the measured operational parameter, and output the a posteriori estimated operational parameter as the determined operational parameter.
US08818639B2

A control unit and a method for activating passenger protection arrangement, as well as a sensor for outputting a crash-relevant signal, are proposed. A digital signal, which is relevant for activating the passenger protection arrangement, is output with the aid of an interface. The interface has a plurality of power sources for influencing the signal edges of the digital signal.
US08818635B2

An electric power assisted steering apparatus for a vehicle, comprising:a steering mechanism, which operatively connects a steering wheel to road wheels of the vehicle;an electric motor operatively connected to the steering mechanism;a torque sensing means adapted to produce a first output signal indicative of the torque carried by a portion of the steering mechanism;a vehicle speed sensing means for producing a second output signal indicative of the speed of the vehicle;a signal processing means adapted to receive the first and second signals and to produce a torque demand signal representative of the torque to be applied to the steering mechanism by the motor; anda motor drive stage adapted to provide a drive current to the motor responsive to the torque demand signal;wherein the apparatus include at least one of the torque limiter arranged to limit the torque and the maximum rate of increase of the torque following a restart of the apparatus, the limit and rate being determined at least in part by information indicative of a state of the system prior to the restart.
US08818632B2

In a machine having a differential steering control system, uncommanded motion may be determined by comparing an actual speed of a steering motor to a commanded turn direction signal from an operator. Where uncommanded motion is occurring, the steering motor speed and time-rate-of-change of the steering motor speed may be used to determine a weighted steering motor speed that is accumulated over a series of sample cycles and compared to an integration limit to determine whether the operator should be warned of the occurrence of uncommanded motion. The integration limit may be based on a factor indicative of the responsiveness of the machine, such as the oil temperature.
US08818631B2

A vehicle steering control unit which can implement various type of self-tuning in accordance with various properties of an objective vehicle is realized. ECU includes a control information acquiring part 501 which acquires control information which is information relating to the controlling of steering of the vehicle, a parameter value calculation part 502 which calculates after-change values for parameters whose values need to be changed in various steering control parameters based on the control information acquired by the control information acquiring part 501, and a parameter value rewrite part 503 which rewrites the values of steering control parameters. The control information includes information representing system properties of an objective vehicle, information retained by the chassis control system, and information on elements which make up a steering system which is installed on the objective vehicle.
US08818628B2

The present invention relates to a system and method for controlling an integrated network of a vehicle, and more particularly, to a system and method, which separately identifies a malfunction of a plurality of communication networks applied to a vehicle and integrally controls power off and power on of the communication networks using a communication gateway. The integrated network system includes: a gateway configured to connect a plurality of networks; a plurality of vehicle networks connected to the gateway and connectable to each other by the gateway; and an Ethernet configured to transmit a signal processed in the gateway to the exterior of the gateway to analyze communication states of the plurality of vehicle networks connected to the gateway.
US08818625B2

A damping apparatus for an automobile is provided, capable of ensuring a high level of reliability while obtaining excellent damping effect with simple configuration. The damping apparatus for an automobile that reduces vibrations of an automobile body may include an actuator that is attached to the automobile body and drives an auxiliary mass; a current detector that detects a current flowing through an armature of the actuator; a section that detects a terminal voltage applied to the actuator; a calculation circuit that calculates an induced voltage of the actuator, and further calculates at least one of the relative velocity, relative displacement, and relative acceleration of the actuator, based on a current detected by the current detector and the terminal voltage; and a control circuit that drive-controls the actuator based on at least one of the relative velocity, relative displacement, and relative acceleration of the actuator calculated by the calculation circuit.
US08818624B2

A system and a method are provided for configuring the touch-sensitive area and/or the tap duration associated with a plurality of touch-sensitive soft buttons of a vehicle user interface in response to varying vehicle conditions. In particular, as a monitored vehicle condition deteriorates, the system controller coupled to the vehicle user interface expands the touch-sensitive region and/or increases the tap duration of the touch-sensitive soft buttons, thereby improving the user's ability to successfully interact with the interface. Vehicle conditions that may be monitored and used to configure the touch-sensitive area and/or tap duration include passenger cabin vibration levels, vehicle speed, turn radius, lateral force levels, precipitation levels and external ambient temperature.
US08818622B2

The vehicle system, controlled by control inputs, provides functionalities in the motor vehicle (1) and has an interface (9) for acquiring the control inputs and outputting data as well as a control device (5) for controlling the functionalities in accordance with the acquired control inputs. A storage medium (7) on which instructions explaining the functionalities and/or operation are stored is linked to the control device (5). The control device (5) is designed to retrieve instructions from the storage medium (7) and output the same as part of the instructions via the interface (9). The vehicle system (3, 3′) can be operated in an assistance mode in which the user inputs are interpreted and evaluated as control inputs for the functionalities while instructions explaining the respective activated functionality and/or other operational options are additionally output at the same time.
US08818599B2

The control apparatus is for an electric rotating machine which is mounted as an engine on a vehicle together with a power conversion circuit to be connected to the electric rotating machine, and a cooling apparatus for circulating coolant to the electric rotating machine and the power conversion circuit through a circulation channel, including. The control apparatus includes a limiting means for performing a limiting operation to limit an amount of electric power supply from the inverter to the electric rotating machine each time a circulation starting timing of the coolant comes, and a terminating means for terminating the limiting operation after a lapse of a predefined period from start of the limiting operation.
US08818595B2

There is provided a controller for a hybrid vehicle which can improve fuel consumption performance and driveability. A controller for a hybrid vehicle which can run in an EV drive mode in which an electric motor 101 is driven by electric power of a battery 113 only and a series drive mode in which the electric motor 101 is driven by electric power generated by a generator 107 using power of an engine 109 includes a demanded driving force calculation unit, a demanded electric power calculation unit, an available uppermost outputting value setting unit, and an engine starting determination unit. The engine starting determination unit starts the engine 109 so that the vehicle runs in the series drive mode when the demanded electric power demanded of the electric motor 101 exceeds the available uppermost outputting value.
US08818593B2

A system and method for automatically guiding an off-highway truck having a pantograph over a route having at least one trolley-powered section. While the off-highway truck is operated over the route by a human operator, its position and the state of the pantograph at each position are recorded to produce a recorded sequence. The recorded sequence is retrieved and the off-highway truck is automatically controlled to sequentially match each position and each pantograph state at the associated position.
US08818592B2

A method of controlling a supercapacitor energy storage unit (12), included in a motor vehicle micro-hybrid system, is disclosed. The storage unit is suitable for performing the functions of an alternator, starter and automatic stop-restart of the vehicle heat engine, regenerative braking and torque assistance. The energy storage unit (12) is a plurality of supercapacitor elementary cells connected in series (C1 to C10) and capable of delivering information (Vmax, Temp and DeltaV) on its internal status. The method includes various stages of: comparing a temperature (Temp) with at least one temperature threshold (ST1=55° C., ST2=65° C. and ST3=70° C.); and, deciding on limitations of the availability of functions of the unit when the (Temp) information reaches the temperature threshold (ST1=55° C., ST2=65° C. and ST3=70° C.).
US08818588B2

A parallel hybrid vehicle system utilizing the Power Take Off connection on an automatic transmission as a transfer port for a secondary device is described for both driving modes and stationary operation. The secondary device is a battery powered electric motor providing motive power or regenerative braking in driving mode or providing power to accessories typically mounted to a conventional PTO while stationary.
US08818586B2

Protection system for ship loading provided with a cover device comprising a universal adaptable cover, a coupling and operation device comprising a ring structure that houses the elements necessary for operation of the protection system, such as the fixing device, tractor assembly responsible for handling, lowering and collapsing the protection cover and its system of monitoring of the load, which, together, allow a new approach in the protection of loading of ships.
US08818582B2

A method for guiding an aircraft during its final approach to a landing runway, whereby the aircraft is guided during its approach by aircraft position information obtained from an GNSS satellite navigation system, wherein: prior to the start of the final approach a first time tFAF is determined corresponding with the start of said final approach and a second time tTD corresponding with the landing of the aircraft on said runway, then a set of satellites is determined of the satellite navigation system for excluding from the calculation of said aircraft position information during at least a part of the time interval comprised between said first and second times; and during the final approach, the aircraft position information is determined while excluding the information corresponding with all the satellites of said set of satellites and the aircraft is guided along its final approach path by said position information.
US08818578B2

An electric motor can assist an engine at high conversion efficiency. A lower limit is set for the torque shared with an engine by the electric motor when the engine and the electric motor are operated together for traveling, and a hybrid ECU has an assistance control unit that implements control to a traveling mode in which the engine and the electric motor operate together, only when it is estimated that the torque shared with the engine by the electric motor is equal to or greater than the torque lower limit when the electric motor and the engine are operated together for traveling.
US08818574B2

A plurality of control channels each include a power supply, an interface that receives a manipulation signal, an arithmetic processing portion that calculates and generates an operation command signal for actuators based on the manipulation signal, and a signal determination unit that determines a control signal for finally controlling the operation of the actuators and outputs the control signal. The arithmetic processing portions respectively provided in the plurality of control channels have designs different from one another. Each of the signal determination units determines the control signal by receiving a first operation command signal generated by the arithmetic processing portion of the control channel in which that signal determination unit is provided, and a second operation command signal generated in the arithmetic processing portion of another of the control channels, and comparing the first operation command signal and the second operation command signal, and outputs the control signal.
US08818573B2

A detection device determines whether an uncontrolled movement of a control surface of an aircraft is occurring. The device includes means for calculating the difference between a theoretical command and an actual command in order to form a residual value, and means for detecting an uncontrolled movement of the control surface, if a comparison value depending on this residual value is greater than a threshold value If the comparison value is greater than the threshold value during a confirmation time, then the uncontrolled movement of the control surface of the aircraft is confirmed.
US08818571B1

A steering control system for a RC vehicle is provided. The steering control system comprises an angular speed sensor and a processing unit. The processing unit is configured to receive a first steering signal from a receiver of the radio controlled vehicle which indicates a position of a control stick or a control wheel of a controller for the radio controlled vehicle and to receive a signal from the angular speed sensor. The first steering signal is adjusted based on the signal from the angular speed sensor and the position of a control stick or a control wheel of a controller to improve stability of the vehicle without deteriorating a maneuverability of the vehicle.
US08818565B2

Systems and methods for performing islanding operations are usable to monitor and collect plant loads and turbine loads of a power plant. Such monitoring and collecting can be used to preemptively determine islanding configurations. According to one embodiment of the invention, a system can be provided. The system can be operable to receive power generation unit information, receive power plant information of the power plant, determine an islanding configuration for the power plant, transmit the islanding configuration to the at least one power generation unit of the power plant, receive breaker status information of at least one breaker coupled to the at least one power generation unit of the power plant and for all breakers connecting power plant to an external grid, and control at least one power generation unit of the power plant.
US08818562B2

A method of modeling a fermentation process comprises providing a first principles model of a fermentation process; determining the concentration of at least one substrate in a fermentation composition at a first time; and predicting the concentration of at least one component of the fermentation composition at a second time using the first principles model, wherein the second time is after the first time.
US08818561B2

Method and system for monitoring slump flow of hydratable cementitious material such as wet concrete in a rotating mixing drum. Whereas prior art methods use a single value of the hydraulic pressure for turning the drum (such as the average value) and correlating with slump values using the vertical drop measurements of the standard slump test (e.g. ASTM C 143-05), the present invention involves analysis of values corresponding to slump flow of concrete samples, preferably having slump flow values of 16-36 inches when measured using standard slump flow tests (e.g., ASTM C1611-05).
US08818549B2

A controller including a detecting member detecting a machining position where a pivoting axis is reversed in machining by the machine tool based on the control data, an allowable position error setting member setting an allowable position error between a commanded machining position and an actual machining position, an allowable acceleration deciding member deciding the allowable acceleration about the pivoting axis based on a distance from the machining position of the reversed axis to a center of the pivoting axis and based on the allowable position error being set, and a controlling member controlling a velocity about the driving axis based on the allowable acceleration.
US08818544B2

A method for calculating a support material volume, the method comprising generating a grid of cells for a tree data structure of a digital part, where the cells define a plurality of cell arrays, and pinging the cells of one of the cell arrays until a cell containing a subset of the tree data structure is reached or until each cell in the cell array is pinged, where if a cell containing the subset of the tree data structure is reached, then designating the reached cell and all remaining unpinged cells in the cell array as filled. The method also includes repeating the pinging step for each remaining cell array to determine a total filled volume, and subtracting a volume of the digital part from the total filled volume to determine a support material volume.
US08818530B2

Embodiments of the disclosure provide a system for selecting a color show generated by LED landscape, pool, and/or spa lights. The system can include a faceplate indicating the color shows available to select from. The faceplate includes a selector positioned to select one of the color shows. The system includes a microcontroller in communication with the selector and a triac circuit in communication with the microcontroller. The microcontroller controls the LED landscape, pool, and/or spa lights using the triac circuit in response to the position of the selector.
US08818526B2

An implantable lead includes a lead body and at least one safety element. The lead body has a distal end and a proximal end. The lead body defines at least one lumen extending along at least a portion of the lead body. The lead body includes a plurality of electrodes disposed on the distal end of the lead body, a plurality of terminals disposed on the proximal end of the lead body, and a plurality of conductors disposed in the lead body, each conductor electrically coupling at least one of the electrodes to at least one of the terminals. The at least one safety element is disposed along at least a portion of the lead body and is configured and arranged to reduce damage to patient tissue adjacent to the plurality of electrodes due to heating, induced electrical signals, or both when the lead is exposed to radio frequency irradiation.
US08818523B2

Techniques are disclosed for controlling the transcutaneously transfer of energy to an implantable medical device (IMD) that is in proximity to a conductive object that conducts current in the presence of an electromagnetic field. Various techniques are disclosed for estimating or determining the levels of heat dissipation associated with the object during the transfer of energy. If too much heat is being dissipated, the transfer of energy may be adjusted so that heating remains below acceptable levels.
US08818522B2

A portable housing supports a processor coupled to memory for storing medical firmware and wireless radio firmware, first and second radios, a processor, and a power source. Communications are effected between an implantable medical device and the first radio in accordance with program instructions of the medical firmware, and between the second radio and the wireless network in accordance with program instructions of the wireless radio firmware. The first and second radios are configured to operate cooperatively in a first testing configuration, by which the first radio operates as a transmitter and the second radio operates as a receiver, and cooperatively in a second testing configuration, by which the second radio operates as a transmitter and the first radio operates as a receiver. Functional testing of the first and second radios is implemented using one or both of the first and second testing configurations.
US08818496B2

A system and method providing outpatient ECG monitoring and safe home based cardiac tele-rehabilitation. The system includes a recordation module for recording ECG signals using at least one lead, a tele-rehabilitation module for home based exercise management for a patient's recovery from a heart disease, the tele-rehabilitation module including a processing module for recognizing erroneous data from the ECG signals and an analysis module for calculating beat-to-beat annotations and determining if an ECG event and/or if a QT interval duration change has occurred. The system can include an exercise module for guiding the patient during an exercise session, a visual display that informs the patient to start and/or to stop the tele-rehabilitation exercise, a visual display and/or audible signal that informs the patient of an incoming or a missed tele-rehabilitation exercise session, and/or a communication module for transmitting/receiving data between the a cardiac tele-rehabilitation module and a physician/monitoring center.
US08818489B2

A medical device includes a sensor for sensing for an MRI gradient magnetic field and a microprocessor configured to operate in a signal processing mode in which electrical signals induced by the gradient magnetic field are not counted as cardiac events.
US08818483B2

A method of making an electrical stimulation lead includes coupling electrodes to a carrier. The carrier defines at least one set of perforations. The method further includes coupling the electrodes to conductors; forming a flexible paddle sheath over the carrier leaving a stimulation surface of each of the plurality of electrodes exposed; and, after forming the flexible paddle sheath, breaking the carrier along at least one of the at least one set of perforations.
US08818482B2

An electrode patch monitoring device that enables fast and accurate application is described. According to some embodiments, the electrode patch monitoring device comprises an array of electrodes for monitoring bioelectrical data that are formed on a flexible substrate. The electrode patch monitoring device may be available in a plurality of sizes, and various methods are provided for selecting an appropriate size according to the physiology of a patient. Methods for applying the electrode patch monitoring device to the patient's body are also provided.
US08818471B2

It is desired to perform assemble, disassemble, maintenance and the like, especially of a large site superconducting coil device, in a short time. The superconducting coil device includes a plurality of coil units arranged in a circle circumference to form a toroidal shape. Each of the plurality of coil units includes a cryostat and a superconducting coil stored in the cryostat, and has a first surface parallel with a radius of the circle circumference and a second surface parallel with the radius of the circle circumference and arranged in a first direction side of the circle circumference to the first surface. The first surface contacts with the second surface of a coil unit adjacent in one direction among the plurality of coil units. The second surface contacts with the first surface of a coil unit adjacent in other direction among the plurality of coil units.
US08818461B2

A compact lightweight communication device 100 comprising a wireless headset 102 or wireless earset 104 can be provided for wireless communication, to a mobile phone or other wireless electronic communication device 106. The user friendly communication device 100 can have a pivotable boom 146 providing an arm with one and preferably multiple microphones 166 and 168, as well as one or mobile tactile buttons 156. The multifunction communication device can have acoustic audio transducer 134, such as a speaker 136 and/or an earbud 138 or earphone 140. The audio transducer can pivot on a pivot tube 142 comprising a pivotable stem to accommodate the left ear or right ear of the user. The boom and stem can pivot clockwise and/or counterclockwise, manually and independently or can be coupled to automatically pivot together.
US08818456B2

Methods and apparatus, including computer program products, are provided for time sharing subscriber identity modules. In some example embodiments, there is provided a method. The method may include detecting, during a first call associated with a first subscriber identity module included in a user equipment, a page representative of a second call associated with a second subscriber identity module; receiving, during the first call associated with the first subscriber identity module included in the user equipment, an indication representative of the second call being detected for the second subscriber identity module; and initiating, based on at least the received indication at the user equipment, the second call by at least switching a subscriber identity module being used by the user equipment from the first subscriber identity module to the second subscriber identity module. Related apparatus, systems, methods, and articles are also described.
US08818452B2

The present invention is a mobile phone having a non-telephone function (e.g. a radio function) that is different from a telephone function, and comprising: a timer operable to count time; a camera unit operable to execute the camera function; a camera function stop unit operable, during execution of the camera function to automatically stop the execution of the camera function when the timer indicates an elapse of a predetermined time period; a telephone unit operable to execute the telephone function; and a reset unit operable, if the timer is being operated in response to the execution of the camera function, to reset the timer to an initial state when a predetermined operation relating to the telephone function is executed, wherein when the timer is reset to the initial state, the timer starts to measure the predetermined time period, and the camera function stop unit stops the execution of the camera function at the elapse of the predetermined time period from the execution of the predetermined operation relating to the telephone function. The present invention successfully reduces occurrences of unwanted auto power off during the time when the non-telephone function is in execution—for example, the auto power off of the radio function during the time when the user is listening to the radio.
US08818450B2

An electronic device such as a portable electronic device may have an antenna and associated wireless communications circuitry. A sensor such as a proximity sensor may be used to detect when the electronic device is in close proximity to a user's head. Control circuitry within the electronic device may be used to adjust radio-frequency signal transmit power levels. When it is determined that the electronic device is within a given distance from the user's head, the radio-frequency signal transmit power level may be reduced. When it is determined that the electronic device is not within the given distance from the user's head, proximity-based limits on the radio-frequency signal transmit power level may be removed. Data may be gathered from a touch sensor, accelerometer, ambient light sensor and other sources for use in determining how to adjust the transmit power level.
US08818448B2

An apparatus for enabling user control of a fallback capability for circuit switched domain support may include a processor and a memory. The memory may store executable instructions that in response to execution by the processor cause the apparatus to receive a service indication for a service related to a radio access technology not supported by a current serving domain, determine, based on previously stored user defined input, a response to the service indication with respect to conducting a fallback procedure to a radio access technology that supports the service, and execute the response based on a result of the determining.
US08818446B2

Method and apparatus for dynamically optimizing the transmission level of each remote terminal in a satellite-based communication network. Each remote terminal maintains quasi-error-free communication at the highest efficiency level available under changing link conditions and network configurations, without requiring the reservation of substantial power margins, which results in a much more efficient satellite network.
US08818445B2

A power control method for interference alignment in wireless network having K transmitters and K receivers is provided. The method includes: receiving, performed by receiver n (n is an integer, 1≦n≦K−1), a power indication signal of transmitter n+1 from the transmitter n+1; determining, performed by the receiver n, power of transmitter n; and transmitting, performed by the receiver n, a power indication signal of transmitter n to the transmitter n, wherein the power of transmitter n is determined based on a residual interference of the receiver n, and the power indication signal of transmitter n indicates a minimum transmission power or a maximum transmission power of transmitter n.
US08818438B2

A user equipment (UE) is disclosed. The UE includes a processor configured to transmit a rank indicator (RI) using one of an assigned periodic RI reporting resource that precisely aligns with the start on an on-duration of a discontinuous reception (DRX) operation mode of the UE and a first assigned periodic RI reporting resource after the start of the on-duration.
US08818434B1

A method and system for testing a SMS text messaging network is disclosed herein. The method and system allows for real-time testing of the mobile terminated (“MT”) and mobile originated (“MO”) delivery delays across the major American mobile phone carriers, and accurately measures the progress on SMS broadcasts and records when a broadcast has been completed.
US08818428B2

Apparatus and methods are disclosed to provide for a multi-SIM wireless user equipment configured for discontinuous reception (DRX) utilizing two or more subscriptions, which may be in different radio access technologies. The user equipment is configured to originate a call using one subscription, to the same user equipment over another subscription. During the duration of a blanking window, statistics corresponding to repetitions of incoming page messages are recorded and analyzed to determine repetition behavior by the network of page messages. In this way, monitoring of the paging channel can be done during fewer than all DRX cycles, combating possible collisions between DRX cycles on different radio access technologies, and enabling reduced power consumption. Other aspects, embodiments, and features are also claimed and described.
US08818424B2

Techniques are provided for utilizing one or more mobile devices to estimate distances between wireless access points (APs). Embodiments can, for example, enable mobile devices, wireless APs, and/or other systems to estimate a distance between two wireless APs using Round-Trip Time (RTT) measurements obtained by one or more mobile devices. The RTT measurements can be utilized based on whether one or more related Received Signal Strength Indication (RSSI) measurements exceed a threshold value. Embodiments can also utilize crowdsourcing to obtain distance estimation data (e.g., distance estimates, RTT and/or RSSI measurements, etc.) from one or more mobile devices and/or propagate a determined distance, based on the distance estimation data, to multiple devices.
US08818414B2

A mobile station, a communication system, and a communication method that are capable of efficiently collecting location information of any user. A communicating module receives a positioning request including attribute specifying information from a management center, a determining module determines whether measurements of the location are necessary or not based on the attribute specifying information in the received positioning request and the attribute information stored in advance. Then, when the determining module determines that measurements of the location are necessary, a positioning module performs measurements of the location and sends location information thus measured to the management center. Accordingly, it is possible to collect the location information of the mobile station that agrees with an attribute that the management center desires and therefore, it is possible to provide an attentive service and the like based on the location information.
US08818413B2

A method and system for targeting content (e.g., a service or an advertisement) according to location-based information derived from a mobile wireless transceiver device. Position information as a function of time is used to calculate a rate of travel and a direction of travel. This information can be used to identify a likely mode of transportation. Geographical information can be used to further refine the mode of transportation. Thus, in addition to the position of the wireless transceiver devices, factors such as the rate of travel, the direction of travel and the likely mode of transportation are also considered to more precisely identify the appropriate service. Moreover, a potential destination can be predicted, allowing further refinement of the targeted service.
US08818396B2

Apparatus and methods for estimating a geographical position corresponding to an event associated with operation of a wireless device communicating in a wireless communications network. The time and distance between the occurrence of the event and the related time and speed of the wireless device of at least one of a first and second location fix, respectively measured before and after the event, are analyzed. The first and second location fixes having Quality of Service (QoS) adjusted such that the resulting fixes are based at least partly on terrestrial wireless communication measurements. These analyses include comparing those metrics to predetermined time thresholds to validate a geographic position and, in some instances, determine a preferred geographic position to associate with the event.
US08818395B2

Systems and methodologies are described that facilitate camping load balancing utilizing a frequency attribute. In a tracking area update procedure, each tracking area confirmed to user equipment can include an attribute of preferred, non-preferred, or forbidden. Based on such attribute, the user equipment can camp or idle on a particular cell for a specific frequency or network. The user equipment can camp on a cell from a preferred tracking area unless the quality of cells from the preferred frequency or network drops under a minimum threshold. The systems and methodologies provide a unified framework for camping load balancing across different Radio Access Technologies (RATs) and an optimization for the relevant signaling.
US08818387B1

Disclosed are a method, apparatus, and system for managing connections in a wireless communication network. When a user equipment device (UE) transitions between an idle state and an active state, a radio link is established between a base station and the UE and a core network link is established between the base station and a core network entity. In response to detecting that no data packets are exchanged between the UE and the base station, a timer is initiated. Further, in response to detecting that data packets are being exchanged between the UE and the base station, the timer is reset. The radio link is released in response to the timer reaching a first predetermined value associated with a first inactivity period and the core network link is released in response to the timer reaching a second predetermined value associated with a second inactivity period.
US08818382B2

A method and system provide a plurality of femto cells that are deployed within a macro cell of cellular network. The femto cells improve cellular service inside structures, such as residential and commercial structures. Femto base stations convert signals between an airlink-interface and core network to enable data communication between the mobile terminal and an access network to occur through the Internet and a public switched telephone network. The femto base stations are independent of each other and the macro cell. The method and system provide the femto base stations with interference awareness and mitigation techniques to minimize interference with the cellular network.
US08818374B2

The invention relates to a method of inter base station communication comprising: —receiving a first message (118) being indicative of a neighboring second base station (2) by a first base station (1), —sending a second message (120) to the second base station, —in response to the second message, receiving a third message (124) comprising information being indicative of at least a third base station (3), the third base station being a neighbor of the second base station, using the information received with the third message for enabling communication (128) between the first base station and the third base station, independently of any user equipment detection of the third base station.
US08818373B2

A radio communication method in a radio communication system including a base station apparatus and a terminal apparatus, the method including: generating a public information message including identification information of a surround base station apparatus of the base station apparatus, and instruction information for receiving communication parameter information used to communicate with the terminal and the surround base station apparatus from the surround base station apparatus, by the base station apparatus; transmitting the generated public information message, by the base station apparatus; receiving the public information message, by the terminal apparatus; and receiving the communication parameter information transmitted by the surround base station apparatus based on the instruction information included in the public information message, by the terminal apparatus.
US08818370B2

A user equipment (UE) comprising a display and a processor configured to determine whether the UE supports each indicium of a string of one or more indicia according to a first feature, the string of one or more indicia identifying a network, the processor further configured to display on the display of the UE only the indicia in the string that are supported by the UE. A method implemented on a UE comprising determining whether the UE supports one or more indicium of a string of one or more indicia according to a first feature, the string of one or more indicia identifying a network, and displaying on the display of the UE only the indicia in the string that are supported by the UE.
US08818367B2

A mobile communication device with a wireless module and a controller module is provided. The wireless module performs wireless transceiving to and from a first service network and a second service network. The controller module transmits a first request message for a Mobility Management (MM) procedure to the first service network, and receives a first rejection message with an MM back-off timer corresponding to the first request message from the first service network via the wireless module. Also, the controller module starts the MM back-off timer for the first service network in response to the first rejection message, and transmits a second request message for the MM procedure to the second service network via the wireless module.
US08818366B2

A method for a base station to obtain radio capability information of a User Equipment (UE) in long term evolution system comprises that: a mobility management entity sends an initial context setup request message to the base station, and the base station determines whether the received initial context setup request message contains an Information Element (IE) of forbidden inter radio access technologies; when contains, the base station writes the radio access technology types which are not included in the IE of forbidden inter radio access technologies into a query message, and sends the query message to the UE; otherwise, the base station writes all radio access technologies supported by protocol into a query message and sends the query message to the UE; after receiving the query message, the UE sends the UE radio capability information of radio access technologies supported by the UE itself to the base station. The above method avoids the blindness of writing query message for the base station, which reduces the overhead of the air interface, thereby shortens the connection delay of the UE in the long term evolution system.
US08818363B2

Methods and apparatus for signal scanning and acquisition for multiple-air-interface devices are discussed. In particular, scanning of a location for signals from one or more local service providers is carried out, wherein scanning is operable to detect signals based on at least a first air interface and a second air interface, such as CDMA and UMTS, respectively. A list of local service providers detected from the scanning is assembled to allow a user to select a connection to at a local service provider from the list. Thus, a user is afforded the ability to see all service provider signals in the location, for all bands and air-interfaces supported by the modem on a user's multiple-air-interface device. The user may therefore acquire connection more easily without having any prior knowledge about the area or its service providers, and regardless of the type of air interface originating the local signals.
US08818362B2

The invention relates to a method of determining a location of a mobile device for use in a first communication network and a second communication network. The mobile device is camped on a cellular base station in the second communication network. According to the method, a list of records of communication units within the first and/or second communication network that are located within a predetermined geographical area is obtained. A communication unit record contains information representative of the identity of the respective communication unit, information representative of a position of the respective communication unit, and a reliability indication of the respective communication unit. Additionally, with the mobile device, communication units within the first and second communication network are detected. Finally, the location of the mobile device is detected based on the information representative of the position, the reliability indication, and an accuracy indication of the detected communication units.
US08818360B2

Methods, systems, and computer program products for integrating roaming control in a signaling message routing node are disclosed. In one exemplary implementation, a method for providing roaming control at a signaling message routing node is provided. The method includes receiving a signaling message at a signaling message routing node in a network of a home service provider of a mobile subscriber, the signaling message being generated in response to the mobile subscriber registering in a foreign carrier's network. It is determined whether the mobile subscriber is allowed, by the home service provider, to roam in the foreign carrier's network. In response to determining that mobile subscriber is not allowed to roam in the foreign carrier's network, a response to the signaling message is generated and sent, where the response indicates that mobile subscriber is not allowed to roam in a foreign carrier's network. The steps of the method are performed at a signaling message routing node.
US08818345B1

Systems, methods, and computer-readable media are provided for reducing the use of network resources during a conference call with mobile communications devices. An active conference call is detected between a conference bridge service, including a conference bridge leader, and participants who are ace sing the conference call by way of a mobile communications device in a wireless communications network. An indication is received that the conference bridge leader has muted the lines of the participants. As a result, each of these mobile communications devices are notified to stop transmitting data over a reverse link other than data used for signaling purposes until the devices are no longer muted.
US08818340B2

In a method data are collected about users of mobile telephones which are present within a plurality of defined cells between two specified points in time. For this purpose a list of telephone numbers of mobile telephones is retrieved from a data base, which mobile telephones were located in the defined cells between the two specified points in time. The list of telephone numbers is converted into unique numbers to avoid violation of privacy. Subsequently, the cells are defined in which the housing locations of the users of these mobile telephones are situated. This is effected by sending non-noticeable text messages to mobile telephones on various days at a number of different points in time at which most people are expected to be at home. Based on these text messages the locations of the mobile telephones are established.Furthermore, the postal code areas are determined in which the cells of the housing locations are situated and, subsequently, the statistical data associated with these postal codes are retrieved from a further data base. These statistical data are then coupled to the unique numbers of the mobile telephones that were present in defined cells between the specified points in time.
US08818337B2

A method of organizing mobile content in a network environment is provided that includes providing pieces of mobile content on a database, selecting one of the pieces of mobile content, receiving a descriptor to be associated with the selected piece of mobile content from user activity, and associating the descriptor to the selected piece of mobile content.
US08818335B2

A functional device includes a local wireless transceiver for communicating with a remote wireless transceiver through a protocol according to which the local transceiver maintains a record of its connection state with selected devices that are within range of it. The device includes a memory for storing the identity of a selected device; and a controller configured to inhibit one or more functions of the functional device if the connection state maintained by the transceiver is indicative of the selected device being out of range. The performance of the functions of the device is independent of the local wireless transceiver.
US08818327B2

A system may be provided that includes one or more servers to: set an availability status setting on an account, associated with a subscriber; receive a quota usage signal via a dedicated direct signaling interface, the quota usage signal indicating that a voice call minutes quota or a data usage quota is exhausted; and change the availability status setting on the account to unavailable for voice calls if the voice call minutes quota is exhausted; and/or change the availability status setting on the account to unavailable for data communications if the data usage quota is exhausted.
US08818324B1

A provisioning system for processing data structures to determine if location capabilities indicated in records are correct for each of the different ranges indicated in each of the records, transferring the data structure to a location determination system if each of the location capabilities are correct, and generating an error response if each of the location capabilities are not correct.
US08818312B2

A method for a communication device includes determining whether a first radio frequency (RF) signal at a level of at least a first predetermined field threshold is detected. The method also includes generating a second RF signal at a level of at least a second predetermined field threshold greater than the first predetermined field threshold, when the communication device receives an instruction to generate the second RF signal and the determining determines that the first RF signal at the level of at least the first predetermined field threshold is not detected. The method further includes receiving a load modulated RF signal in response to the second RF signal.
US08818277B2

The disclosure discloses a method, an apparatus and a system for transmitting multimedia data by bluetooth and real-time playing, wherein the method includes: a bluetooth apparatus at a transmitting terminal encodes multimedia files to be transmitted, and converts them into stream media files; the bluetooth apparatus at the transmitting terminal transmits the stream media files to a bluetooth apparatus at a receiving terminal through an Object Push Profile (OPP); the bluetooth apparatus at the receiving terminal plays the received stream media files. It is because the bluetooth apparatus at the transmitting terminal transmits the stream media files through the OPP and the bluetooth apparatus at the receiving terminal receives and plays them, and then the waiting time for playing is reduced. It is solved the problem in the prior art that audio or video playing can be carried out only after the completion of the transmission by bluetooth and the waiting time is longer.
US08818276B2

Example method, apparatus, and computer program product embodiments are disclosed to enable granting access rights to guest devices. Example embodiments include a method comprising receiving, by a first device, an input from a user of the first device to grant access rights to a wireless short-range communication network to a user of a second device when the first device is present within coverage of the wireless short-range communication network; and transmitting, by the first device, an access grant message to a control node managing the wireless short-range communication network, wherein the access grant message comprises one or more rules indicating that access rights for a second device are to be granted only when the first device is present within coverage of the wireless short-range communication network.
US08818271B2

Offset voltages developed on floating nodes on inputs to high-performance amplifiers that are DC isolated from the data signals input to amplifiers are cancelled by connecting a highly resistive element between the input node and a predetermined potential, particularly useful in proximity communication systems in which two chips are connected through capacitive or inductive coupling circuits formed jointly in the two chips. The resistive element may be an off MOS transistor connected between the node and a desired bias voltage or a MOS transistor with its gate and drain connected to the potential. Multiple bias voltages may be distributed to all receivers and locally selected by a multiplexer for application to one or two input nodes of the receiver. The receiver output can also serve as a predetermined potential when the resistive element has a long time constant compared to the data rate or the resistive element is non-linear.
US08818262B2

An evanescent wireless network system for space equipment items integrated, or intended to be integrated, in a satellite, and including a set of smart couplers, integrated or not with said space equipment items, said smart couplers including wireless communication means, forming an embedded wireless network; and a computer configured for wireless communication, which can be connected to said embedded wireless network, and including software enabling access to the embedded wireless network, in order to at least collect information relating to the operation of said space equipment items in a non-intrusive manner.
US08818255B2

An image forming apparatus including a fixing liquid applicator to apply a fixing liquid to a recording medium, a transfer device to transfer a toner image from a toner image bearing member onto the recording medium to which the fixing liquid is applied while the toner image is in contact with the fixing liquid, and a fixing device to fix the toner image on the recording medium by heating the toner image and the fixing liquid. The fixing liquid comprises a plasticizer having a function to swell and soften a toner.
US08818248B2

An image formation control section sets a secondary transfer section in the pressed state in the case of execution of a main scanning correction processing as color registration correction, and sets the secondary transfer section in the separated state in the case of execution of a sub-scanning correction processing, an entire lateral magnification correction processing, a partial lateral magnification correction processing, or a skew correction processing, which is the correction of the image position for components other than the main scanning direction as color registration correction so as to prevent the situation where the correction accuracy of the image position with respect to the main scanning direction decreases and to prevent a decrease in print quality due to a residual image of a registration correction processing.
US08818244B2

A developing device for developing an electrostatic latent image on an image bearing member including a developer bearing member opposed to the image bearing member to bear thereon a developer including a toner and a magnetic carrier; a developer containing part to contain the developer to supply the developer to the developer bearing member; an agitating or feeding member to agitate or feed the developer in the developer containing part; a magnetic permeability sensor to measure magnetic permeability of the developer to determine toner concentration of the developer; a developer feeder; a feeding member to feed the developer to the developer containing part through the developer feeder; and a driver to drive the feeding member independently of the agitating or feeding member. The magnetic permeability sensor is arranged on the developer feeder.
US08818241B2

A universal OPC drum that allows a remanufacturer to stock a minimum number of OPC drum sleeves of various sizes and then add the appropriate gear for the desired cartridge at the time of cartridge remanufacture. A universal OPC drum may also include a universal hub and an electrical contact on each end to maintain universality without regard to whether the OEM contact is mounted on the drive or non-drive side of the OPC drum.
US08818238B2

An image forming apparatus includes a main body portion including an image carrier, an image-carrier driving unit, a latent-image forming unit, a developing-unit attachment section, and a transfer-unit attachment section. The developing-unit attachment section receives a first developing unit having plural developing members or a second developing unit having a single developing member. The transfer-unit attachment section receives a first transfer unit, which includes a first transfer member capable of retaining a recording medium and a first transfer driving unit that rotates the first transfer member, and a second transfer unit, which includes a second transfer member that cannot retain the recording medium. When the first developing unit and the first transfer unit are attached to the developing-unit attachment section and the transfer-unit attachment section, respectively, the first transfer driving unit is mechanically connected to the first developing unit.
US08818227B2

A fixing rotational body is rotated immediately before shifting from a standby mode to a power saving mode in which not only power supply to a heater and the rotation of the fixing rotational body are stopped but also a timer is stopped so that the reliability of the thermistor detection temperature when returning from the power saving mode is improved, and fixing defect is prevented while power consumption in the power saving mode is reduced.
US08818225B2

A temperature control method of calculating a temperature of a recording medium after fixing and used in a thermal fixing device includes separating calculations of calculating the temperature of the recording medium after fixing into first-stage calculations to be performed before start of printing and second-stage calculations to be performed in real time during the printing, performing the first-stage calculations, and performing the second-stage calculations to calculate a result of the temperature of the recording medium after fixing. Further, the result of the temperature of the recording medium after fixing is used to control obtaining a desired temperature of the recording medium after fixing, and the temperature of the recording medium after fixing is calculated without directly measuring the temperature of the recording medium after fixing.
US08818197B2

Methods and systems are provided for extending the range that a laser can transmit data, particularly in environments with high attenuation or turbidity. Particularly, an energy storing laser that is capable of continuously converting electrical energy to optical energy and storing the optical energy or the electrical energy in the energy storing laser until the energy storing laser is instructed to transmit a laser transmission. In some embodiments, the energy storing laser uses a pulse train with a low duty cycle to increase the peak power of each laser pulse. Also, a pointing and tracking system is used to provide a communication link between stationary platforms or moving vehicles.
US08818192B1

An optical communication system includes a plurality of Customer Premises Equipment (CPE) each having a reverse power supply and configured to transmit and receive data and provide power over a wire pair connected thereto. An optical network unit is formed as a plurality of communication ports. A respective communication port is configured to provide communications data service with a respective CPE by transmitting and receiving data therewith. A power management circuit is connected to the communication ports and configured to receive power provided by each reverse power supply at a respective CPE and manage power consumption in the ONU. A processor is configured to receive alarms generated by at least one of a CPE and ONU indicative of a power fault condition and process the alarms and discriminate between different power fault conditions.
US08818190B2

An embodiment of the invention is an optical node configured to transmit/receive a wavelength-division-multiplexed signal. An optical monitoring unit monitors power levels of the wavelength-division-multiplexed signal on a wavelength-by-wavelength basis to acquire wavelength-by-wavelength power level values of the optical signals. A comparison arithmetic unit performs a comparison between each of the acquired wavelength-by-wavelength power level values of the optical signals, and a predetermined upper limit value and a predetermined lower limit value. A target value calculation unit determines target values of power levels at wavelengths whose acquired power level values exceed the upper limit value to be values between a center value and the upper limit value, and determines target values of power levels at wavelengths whose acquired power level values fall below the lower limit value to be values between the center value and the lower limit value.
US08818189B2

A transmission-path-type specifying apparatus includes an optical filter that extracts a plurality of different wavelength components from light including wavelength components occurring at the time of communication; an optical switch that simultaneously transmits same pulse signals superposed on light of the extracted wavelength components. The apparatus also includes an ASE modulation controlling unit that obtains a delay-time difference among the transmitted pulse signals when arriving at a destination via a transmission path; a characteristic-value calculating unit that calculates a characteristic value of the transmission path corresponding to a reference time varied depending on the obtained delay-time difference and a type of the transmission path; and a fiber-type determining unit that specifies the type of the transmission path based on the calculated characteristic value.
US08818186B2

A long-range optical device with at least one replaceable electrical energy storage device for supplying power to the long-range optical device, which energy storage device is disposed in a closable compartment of the device incorporating electrical contacts, wherein an adapter is provided which can be inserted in the compartment instead of the energy storage device, which is configured to run a data exchange with at least one other component, in particular a memory, of the long-range optical device. The long-range optical device can optionally be supplied with power by the adapter.
US08818184B2

When a exposure controlling unit changes an aperture value of a diaphragm in a predetermined range, the exposure controlling unit also changes a transmittance of a variable ND filter so as to perform an exposure control and, after obtaining a proper exposure by changing both the aperture value and the transmittance, sets the aperture value after exposure control to Fa, and in a case where the aperture value at which a maximum resolving power is obtained is set to Fb, when a condition, Fa≠Fb, is satisfied and the transmittance is neither the minimum nor the maximum, the exposure controlling unit brings the aperture value close to Fb and changes the transmittance so as to maintain the proper exposure after the exposure control.
US08818177B2

A method for creating a custom track is described. A selection of at least one artist, venue, and track of a live musical performance having at least one complete song for selection by the user is provided. A selection by the first user of the at least one artist, venue, and track is received. At least one clip associated with the at least one selected artist, venue, and track is displayed. The first user is allowed to create a first custom track from the at least one clip by selecting at least a portion of the at least one clip to be included in the first custom track and a start time and an end time of the at least a portion of the at least one clip within the first custom track.
US08818173B2

A media editing system provides an editor with full visibility and editing capability for synchronous data that is adjunct to audio and video. The data tracks include one or more streams of data packets, each stream being of a particular data type. Synchronous data tracks are displayed on the timeline, facilitating data track editing independent of the associated media tracks. The UI also enables selective playback and export of the data tracks along with the corresponding video and audio. The system also enables data streams to be filtered and combined. Data from the data tracks can be extracted and imported into a media asset management system, enabling the data to be searched.
US08818172B2

Methods and systems for remote video editing include a source media file on a storage device and an input for receiving video editing commands, over a low-bandwidth network, pertaining to the source media file. A virtual representation of the source media file includes the editing commands and a link to the source media file. A media delivery engine reads the source media file over a high-bandwidth link, applies the editing commands thereto, and produces a proxy representation of the edited source media file, and an output transmits the proxy representation over the low-bandwidth network. Requested individual frames of the edited media may also be output.
US08818158B2

A housing including a plurality of openings for receiving fiber optic connectors and protecting the polished end face of the connectors from damage while the connectors are stored within a telecommunications connection cabinet. A module with a plurality of optical fiber cables connected to a first optical fiber cable and terminated by a fiber optic connector. Each of the connectors are inserted within openings in a connector holder for storage and protection until the cables need to be connected to a customer equipment cable.
US08818154B2

Frequency standards based on mode-locked fiber lasers, fiber amplifiers and fiber-based ultra-broad bandwidth light sources, and applications of the same.
US08818152B2

An optical microresonator is configured as an optical microbubble formed along a section of an optical microcapillary. The curvature of the outer surface of the microbubble creates an optical resonator with a geometry that encourages the circulating WGMs to remain confined in the central region of the bubble, creating a high Q optical resonator. The resonator may be tuned by modifying the physical properties of the microbubble, allowing the resonator to be used as an optical filter. The resonator may also be used as a sensor or laser by introducing the material to be sensed (or the active laser material) into the microcapillary along which the microbubble is formed.
US08818151B1

An novel fiber pump signal combiner is disclosed in which a fiber bundle array is coupled to a double-clad fiber with a taper section that is formed by etching a tapered outer surface into the cladding of a fiber rod to produce a high quality tapered outer surface free of defects with an inner core that has a constant diameter.
US08818150B2

Method and apparatus for modulation of both the intensity and the polarization of radiation in silicon waveguides by applying a biasing voltage to the waveguide.
US08818147B2

According to a manufacturing method of an optical waveguide substrate including a core (12) and clads (11) (13) and provided with an optical axis conversion mirror (14) in the core and an alignment recess for the optical axis conversion mirror with respect to a light receiving and emitting element, the recess is obtained by obtaining an outline of the core by synthesizing at least an image captured by focusing a microscope (20) to a highest position (14a) of the core in an optical axis conversion mirror portion and an image captured by focusing the microscope to a lowest position (14d), and by determining a position of the alignment recess in reference to a center of gravity of the outline, and according to an optical waveguide substrate obtained by this manufacturing method, it becomes possible to provide an optical waveguide substrate in which the optical axis conversion mirror in the optical waveguide substrate and the light receiving and emitting element are aligned with respect to each other at an extremely high degree of accuracy and a manufacturing method thereof.
US08818134B2

System and method for determining the tile size for a particular virtualized map view.
US08818132B2

A “Camera Calibrator” provides various techniques for recovering intrinsic camera parameters and distortion characteristics by processing a set of one or more input images. These techniques are based on extracting “Transform Invariant Low-Rank Textures” (TILT) from input images using high-dimensional convex optimization tools for matrix rank minimization and sparse signal recovery. The Camera Calibrator provides a simple, accurate, and flexible method to calibrate intrinsic parameters of a camera even with significant lens distortion, noise, errors, partial occlusions, illumination and viewpoint change, etc. Distortions caused by the camera can then be automatically corrected or removed from images. Calibration is achieved under a wide range of practical scenarios, including using multiple images of a known pattern, multiple images of an unknown pattern, single or multiple images of multiple patterns, etc. Significantly, calibration is achieved without extracting or manually identifying low-level features such as corners or edges from the calibration images.
US08818122B2

An image coding method includes: (i) determining, for each of one or more associated blocks, whether to add a motion vector of the associated block to a list, and (ii) adding the motion vector of the associated block to the list when determining that the motion vector of the associated block is to be added to the list; selecting, from the list, a motion vector which is to be merged to a current block; and (i) merging the selected motion vector to the current block, and (ii) coding the current block using the merged motion vector as a motion vector of the current block, and in the determining, it is determined that the motion vector of the associated block is not to be added to the list when an associated picture and an associated reference picture match temporally or when a current picture and a current reference picture match temporally.
US08818108B2

An image processing device includes an in-plane pattern detector that selects a pixel of interest in a frame image of interest, calculates in-plane correlation index values representing correlations between the pixel of interest and in-plane pixel patterns including the pixel of interest, and selects a most highly correlated pattern as an in-plane addition pattern. A reference pattern detector calculates inter-plane correlation index values representing correlations between the in-plane pixel addition pattern and reference pixel patterns in a reference frame image temporally adjoining the frame of interest, and selects a most highly correlated reference pixel pattern. A pixel adder adds the values of the pixels in the selected in-plane pixel pattern and the selected reference pixel addition pattern to generate a corrected pixel value, thereby achieving high sensitivity and a high signal-to-noise ratio under low illumination, with little loss of resolution.
US08818102B2

A method of spectral-spatial-temporal image detection is disclosed. In one embodiment, a spectrally differenced image is obtained by computing a difference of at least two intensity values in at least two spectral bands of an image. Further, a spatially filtered spectral image is obtained by applying a spatial median filter to the obtained spectrally differenced image. Furthermore, a temporal image is obtained by determining a temporal pixel value difference using a computed predictive frame difference. In addition, a spectral-spatial-temporal filtered image for detection is obtained by using the obtained spatially filtered spectral image and the temporal image.
US08818100B2

Systems and methods analyze the physical structure of text rows in a document image, including the positions of one or more alignments of one or more character blocks in one or more text rows of the document image. The systems and methods determine one or more groups of text rows that are placed into a class based on the structures of the text rows, such as the positions of the one or more alignments of the one or more character blocks in each text row.
US08818095B2

There are provided an image processing apparatus, image processing method and a computer-readable, non-transitory medium that can binarize the input image so that the characters can be differentiated with high accuracy from the background area. The image processing apparatus includes an edge pixel extractor for extracting edge pixels from an input image, a first histogram generator for generating a first histogram based on a luminance value of each of the edge pixels, a second histogram generator for generating a second histogram based on a minimum luminance value among the luminance values of pixels neighboring each of the edge pixels, a static threshold calculator for obtaining a static threshold based on the first histogram and the second histogram, and a binarization unit for binarizing the input image by using the static threshold.
US08818093B2

In a method for analyzing an image of an image recording device for a vehicle, a piece of brightness information of the image is determined, taking an exposure characteristic of the image recording device into account, and a threshold value is set as a function of the piece of brightness information. An image structure of the image is furthermore determined, and a blindness value for the image is determined on the basis of the image structure, using the threshold value.
US08818083B2

The present invention relates to a system (1) of remotely controlled drones (10, 12) fitted with respective cameras (14) enabling a virtual shot from an assailant drone (12) at a target drone (10) to be validated by recognizing the target drone (10) in a video image (17) supplied by the camera (14) of the assailant drone (12) while firing a virtual shot. The recognition means comprise a beacon (15, 16) arranged on the target drone (10) and covered in two first strips (18) of a first color reflecting light at a first wavelength lying in the range 590 nm to 745 nm, situated on either side of at least one second strip (19, 20) of a second color reflecting light at a second wavelength, lying in a range 445 nm to 565 nm. It is thus possible to identify very reliably drones flying in an open space whether outdoors or indoors, in spite of the very great variety of interfering details present in the background images that are likely to be picked up by the camera.
US08818082B2

A blur classification module may compute the probability that a given pixel in a digital image was blurred using a given two-dimensional blur kernel, and may store the computed probability in a blur classification probability matrix that stores probability values for all combinations of image pixels and the blur kernels in a set of likely blur kernels. Computing these probabilities may include computing a frequency power spectrum for windows into the digital image and/or for the likely blur kernels. The blur classification module may generate a coherent mapping between pixels of the digital image and respective blur states, and/or may perform a segmentation of the image into blurry and sharp regions, dependent on values stored in the matrix. Input image data may be pre-processed. Blur classification results may be employed in image editing operations to automatically target image subjects or background regions, or to estimate the depth of image elements.
US08818079B2

Methods and a computer program product for deriving temperature information with respect to surfaces within a scene that is imaged radiometrically. A time sequence of radiometric data is acquired in frames viewed from distinct angles. A three-dimensional structure of the scene is derived, allowing viewing angles and distances to the imaged surfaces to be inferred. Normalized surface areas of the imaged surfaces are calculated based on the inferred viewing angles and emissivities of the imaged surfaces are corrected accordingly. Corrections also account for background radiation impinging on the imaged surfaces. The radiometric data are converted to a perceptible temperature map of the imaged surfaces.
US08818075B2

The invention relates to a device and method for estimating defects potentially present in an object comprising an outer surface, wherein the method comprises the steps of: a) illuminating the outer surface of the object with an inductive wave field at a predetermined frequency; b) measuring an induced wave field ({right arrow over (H)}) at the outer surface of the object; c) developing from the properties of the object's material a coupling matrix T associated with a depth Z of the object from the outer surface; d) solving the matrix system ( [ H → 0 → 0 → ] = T · J → ) to determine a vector ({right arrow over (J)}) at depth Z; e) extracting a sub-vector ({right arrow over (J)}S) from the vector ({right arrow over (J)}) corresponding to a potential defect on the object at depth Z; and f) quantitatively estimating the potential defect from the sub-vector ({right arrow over (J)}S) at depth Z, wherein the method is performed using a computer or processor.
US08818073B2

A display panel test apparatus includes: an image pickup part which picks up an image from a target display panel; a jig including a receiving part which receives the target display panel, a fixing part which fixes the image pickup part, and an adjusting part which adjusts an image pickup angle of the image pickup part; a pattern generating part which provides the target display panel with a test pattern; a defect extracting part which analyzes test image data provided from the image pickup part using a defect extracting algorithm and extracts display defect information, where the defect extracting algorithm includes different settings corresponding to different types of display defects; and a control part which generates evaluated data corresponding to a viewing angle of the target display panel using the image pickup angle of the image pickup part and the display defect information.
US08818072B2

The present disclosure provides a method of inspecting a photolithographic mask wherein a design database is received, and a feature of the design database is adjusted by a bias factor to produce a biased database. Image rendering is performed on the biased database to produce a biased image. A mask is also created using the design database, and the mask is imaged to produce a mask image. The biased image is compared to the mask image, and a new value for the bias factor may be determined based on the comparison.
US08818066B2

A grid computing system and method is provided for medical data processing. The grid computing system comprises a software infrastructure, and an imaging device capable of interfacing with the software infrastructure over a distributed electronic network. Also included is a plurality of CPUs capable of interfacing with the software infrastructure over the network. The performance of the plurality of CPUs is dependent on balancing load. A large medical dataset is split onto several processing nodes of the plurality of CPUs, respectively, such that performance and power is increased. In the grid computing method, a grid is limited to a nuclear medicine or radiology network. A tight and easy configuration management of computing nodes, and a tight load balancing between standardized nodes are provided. An existing network of CPUs is utilized, such that the greatest benefit is provided at the lowest cost.
US08818057B2

In methods and an apparatus for registering two medical images of a subject, a first image is compared with a first anatomical atlas and a second image with a second anatomical atlas, to generate labels for anatomical features in each image. The first anatomical atlas has at least two anatomical features in common with the second, and each label includes a suggested location of the anatomical feature to which it relates. A number of labels are identified for each image, and a value of a similarity function between labels of the respective images is calculated. The two images are registered based on the value of the similarity function.
US08818056B2

A method and device for acquiring latent fingerprint orientation. The method includes: extracting a valid area in a latent fingerprint image; acquiring an orientation field of the valid area and a confidence of coordinate points in the valid area; dividing the orientation field into a first area with a high confidence and a second area with a low confidence; collecting control points in the first area, performing triangulation on control points in the first area and determining differences between control points to determine a set of control points; manually marking control points in the second area, adding control points marked to the set, performing triangulation on control points in the set and determining whether a new manually marked control point is to be added in the set according to a difference determination; and establishing a model for control points in the set to obtain an orientation field of the image.
US08818052B2

A method and system for authenticating financial transactions is disclosed wherein biometric data is acquired from a person and the probability of liveness of the person and probability of a match between the person or token and known biometric or token information are calculated, preferably according to a formula D=P(p)*(K+P(m)) , wherein K is a number between 0.1 and 100, and authenticating if the value of D exceeds a predetermined value.
US08818045B2

Display 105 is capable of rendering, or otherwise displaying, one or more of a standard definition (SD) image, a two-dimensional (2D), a three-dimensional image (3D) and a high definition (HD) image 110.
US08818044B2

A method of determining an azimuth and elevation of a point in an image is provided. The method comprises positioning an imaging device at a first position and acquiring a first image. The method also comprises rotating the imaging device and acquiring a second image at the first position. The first image includes the point, and a portion of the first image overlaps a portion of the second image. The method also includes determining correspondences between features in overlapping portions of the images, determining a first transformation between coordinates of the first image and coordinates of the second image based on the correspondences, and determining a second transformation between the coordinates of the second image and a local coordinate frame. The method also includes computing the azimuth and elevation of the point based on the first transformation and the second transformation.
US08818040B2

Enhanced input using flashing electromagnetic radiation, in which first and second images of an object are accessed. The first image being captured while the object is illuminated with projected electromagnetic radiation, and the second image being captured while the projected electromagnetic radiation is extinguished. A position of the object relative to the screen based on comparing the first and second images is determined. An application is controlled based on the determined position.
US08818037B2

Systems and related methods for detecting a scene in video content are provided. In one example, a scene detection program identifies a plurality of shots in the video content and selects a target shot. The program builds a forward window including the target shot and having shots that are temporally ahead of the target shot, and a rearward window having shots that are temporally behind the target shot. For each of the shots in the forward window the program determines a dissimilarity between a selected shot in forward window and each of the other shots in the rearward window. If one or more of the dissimilarities is less than a scene boundary threshold, the program determines that the scene does not begin at the target shot. If none of the dissimilarities is less than the scene boundary threshold, the program determines that the scene begins at the target shot.
US08818028B2

A color image and a depth image of a live video are received. Each of the color image and the depth image are processed to identify a foreground, background, and an unknown region band of the live video. The unknown region band may comprise pixels between the foreground and the background. Further processing is performed to segment the pixels of the unknown region band between the foreground and the background. As such, processing is performed on the unknown region band in order to provide an improved user foreground video.
US08818021B2

Techniques and mechanisms for watermarking of digital video are described herein. According to various embodiments, a request to transmit to a client machine video content based on a video content distribution item may be received. The video content distribution item may be divided into a plurality of video content segments. Designated ones of the video content segments may have a respective plurality of alternate video content segment encodings. Each of the alternate video content segment encodings may include a respective digital watermark. Different digital watermarks may encode different information within the alternate video content segment encodings. One of the respective alternate video content segment encodings may be selected for each of the designated video content segments to create a digital watermarking message to include in the video content. The video content including the selected video content segment encodings may be transmitted to the client machine.
US08818020B2

A method of preparing a digital medical image for secure transmission, the method comprising embedding data into the digital medical image using a reversible watermarking process, generating a code for tamper detection and localization from the digital medical image using a computational function, and embedding the code for tamper detection and localization into the digital medical image using the reversible watermarking process; and a method of reviewing a digital medical image prepared by the method of preparing, the method of reviewing comprising retrieving the code for tamper detection and localization from the digital medical image; reversing the watermarking processes to obtain a restored image; generating a code from the restored image using the computational function; and comparing the retrieved code for tamper detection and localization with the code generated from the restored image to detect and locate tampering.
US08818015B2

A marker placement device includes, a marker placement method decision section that decides, for every predetermined pitch from a starting edge of a side to an end edge of the side, a placement position of a marker for detecting a position within a rectangular image region, the placement position being along the side of the image region within an image. A marker adding section that adds the marker to the image according to the placement position decided is provided, where, when a gap shorter than the pitch remains between the end edge and the decided placement position closest to the end edge of the side, the marker placement method decision section decides a first marker placement position closest to the starting edge, and decides a subsequent marker placement position.
US08818012B2

An adjustable, dual speaker element earphone. One of the speaker elements is sized to fit into the cavum concha of the listeners ear and the other element is not. A hinged joint may allow the larger speaker element may be rotated about a vertical axis of the hinged joint so that the larger speaker element can be rotated towards or away from the listener's ear. The speaker elements may be connected such that sounds produced by both speaker elements emanate from different respective sound openings defined in a surface of the smaller speaker element. Also, one or both of the speaker elements may be operably connected to a hanger bar that is sized and configured to rest on an upper portion of the listener's ear.
US08818008B2

A display apparatus includes a display part to display an image thereon, a speaker to output sound, an audio input part to receive an audio signal, an audio signal processor to process the audio signal input from the audio input part through the speaker and to output the audio signal, a control signal output part to output a predetermined control signal, a detector to detect whether the audio signal is input through the audio input part, and a controller to control the audio signal processor to control the audio signal according to the control signal from the control signal output part if the audio signal is input by the detector, and to control display conditions of the image displayed on the display part according to the control signal from the control signal output part if the control signal is not input by the detector.
US08818002B2

A novel adaptive beamforming technique with enhanced noise suppression capability. The technique incorporates the sound-source presence probability into an adaptive blocking matrix. In one embodiment the sound-source presence probability is estimated based on the instantaneous direction of arrival of the input signals and voice activity detection. The technique guarantees robustness to steering vector errors without imposing ad hoc constraints on the adaptive filter coefficients. It can provide good suppression performance for both directional interference signals as well as isotropic ambient noise.
US08818001B2

A signal processing apparatus includes: a separation processing unit that generates observed signals in the time frequency domain by performing the short-time Fourier transform on mixed signals as outputs, which are acquired from a plurality of sound sources by a plurality of sensors, and generates sound source separation results corresponding to the sound sources by a linear filtering process on the observed signals. The separation processing unit has a linear filtering process section that performs the linear filtering process on the observed signals so as to generate separated signals corresponding to the respective sound sources, an all-null spatial filtering section that applies an all-null spatial filter to generate signals filtered with the all-null spatial filter (spatially filtered signals) in which the acquired sounds in null directions are removed, and a frequency filtering section that performs a filtering process by inputting the separated signals and the spatially filtered signals.
US08817996B2

An audio signal processing system for use in assisting listening devices is disposed in a digital signal processor. The audio signal processing system comprises an input signal conversion unit, a signal compression unit, a hearing curve adjusting unit and an output signal conversion unit. An external audio signal can be converted from an analog format into a digital format by the input signal conversion unit, it is then compressed by the signal compression unit to be output to the hearing curve adjusting unit for adjusting parameters of the audio signal based on a hearing curve preset value, then it is output to the output signal conversion unit for the hearing signal to be amplified and converted from the digital format into the analog format for output, the audio signal is finally converted into music or voice by speakers of an assisting listening device to be output into a user's ears.
US08817991B2

A method is provided for coding a multi-channel audio signal representing a sound scene comprising a plurality of sound sources. The method comprises decomposing the multi-channel signal into frequency bands and the following performed per frequency band: obtaining data representative of the direction of the sound sources of the sound scene, selecting a set of sound sources constituting principal sources, adapting the data representative of the direction of the selected principal sources, as a function of restitution characteristics of the multi-channel signal, determining a matrix for mixing the principal sources as a function of the adapted data, matrixing the principal sources by the matrix determined so as to obtain a sum signal with a reduced number of channels and coding the data representative of the direction of the sound sources and forming a binary stream comprising the coded data, the binary stream being transmittable in parallel with the sum signal.
US08817990B2

A media-independent handover key management architecture is disclosed that uses Kerberos for secure key distribution among a server, an authenticator, and a mobile node. In the preferred embodiments, signaling for key distribution is based on re-keying and is decoupled from re-authentication that requires EAP (Extensible Authentication Protocol) and AAA (Authentication, Authorization and Accounting) signaling similar to initial network access authentication. In this framework, the mobile node is able to obtain master session keys required for dynamically establishing the security associations with a set of authenticators without communicating with them before handover. By separating re-key operation from re-authentication, the proposed architecture is more optimized for a proactive mode of operation. It can also be optimized for reactive mode of operation by reversing the key distribution roles between the mobile node and the target access node.
US08817985B2

The encryption key distribution system includes a node A, a node B, and an authentication server S. Upon receiving a first nonce created by the node A and a second nonce created by the node B, the authentication server S creates a session key. The authentication server S sends a first message authentication code value and a first encryption message to the node A. The first encryption message is created by encrypting the first nonce, the session key, and first additional information with a first secret key. The authentication server S sends a second message authentication code value and a second encryption message to the node B. The second encryption message is created by encrypting the second nonce, the session key, and second additional information with a second secret key. The node A decrypts the first encryption message with the first secret key, thereby obtaining the session key and the first additional information. Further, the node A authenticates the session key by use of the first message authentication code value. The node B decrypts the second encryption message with the second secret key, thereby obtaining the session key and the second additional information. Further, the node B authenticates the session key by use of the second message authentication code value.
US08817984B2

Dynamic key cryptography validates mobile device users to cloud services by uniquely identifying the user's electronic device using a very wide range of hardware, firmware, and software minutiae, user secrets, and user biometric values found in or collected by the device. Processes for uniquely identifying and validating the device include: selecting a subset of minutia from a plurality of minutia types; computing a challenge from which the user device can form a response based on the selected combination of minutia; computing a set of pre-processed responses that covers a range of all actual responses possible to be received from the device if the combination of the particular device with the device's collected actual values of minutia is valid; receiving an actual response to the challenge from the device; determining whether the actual response matches any of the pre-processed responses; and providing validation, enabling authentication, data protection, and digital signatures.
US08817983B2

A method, system, and computer program product for deploying data to a web server for streaming video to a mobile device. The method can include receiving a request for streaming video from a mobile device upon the resolving of the request by a DNS. The method can further include simultaneously sending both a request to a database for the video requested and a playlist for the video to the mobile device. The method can then include receiving the video from the database. The video received is sent as a sequence of blocks, where each block can further be comprised of a sequence of chunks. The method can even further include decompressing each block and storing each chunk on a web server. The method can further include an exchange of a security credential.
US08817980B2

In power residue calculation in the primality determination, in addition to the conventional randomization of an exponent, a modulus is also randomized. A random number generated by a random number generator is set to a randomizing number, and is input to a modulus generator and an exponent generator. The modulus generator and the exponent generator randomize a prime number candidate P using the randomizing number to generate a randomized modulus R1 and exponent R2. Using the randomized modulus R1 and exponent R2, the power residue calculation for primality determination is executed, and based on the result, the primality of the prime number candidate P is determined. The power consumption during the primality determination of a semiconductor device becomes noncorrelated with a value of a prime number candidate to be determined, and the leakage of a prime number due to side channel attacks can be prevented.
US08817979B2

Systems and methods for accelerating AES encryption and decryption operations are provided. Aspects of the method may include time multiplexing a plurality of substitution boxes (S-boxes) for instantaneous key generation and byte substitution operations. Bytes may be substituted in at least a portion of a current security key information and at least a portion of a subsequent security key information within said plurality of S-boxes. The current security key may comprise 128 bits, 192 bits or 256 bits and the portion of the current security key may comprise 32 bits. The substituted portion of the security key information may be communicated to a key generator. The subsequent security key information may be generated utilizing the substituted portion of the current security key information. The current security key information may then be stored.
US08817967B1

A base station of a cordless telephone includes a transceiver, a control module, a connection handler, and a media handler. The transceiver wirelessly communicates with a handset. While the handset is operating in a standby mode, the transceiver transmits a signal to instruct the handset to exit the standby mode. The control module establishes a permanent virtual circuit with the handset that includes a predetermined user datagram protocol (UDP) port or a negotiated UDP port. The control module negotiates, with the handset to determine a feature subset of the handset and transmits packets to the handset via the permanent virtual circuit. The packets are selected based on the feature subset of the handset. The connection handler is configured to establish a switched virtual circuit with an endpoint device via a communications channel. The media handler is configured to convert media packets into first and second digital audio compression formats.
US08817963B2

Systems, methods, and computer program products for providing cross-platform presence are described. In some implementations, a cross-platform presence server can be provided that allows a caller to accurately assess the availability and other similar status of a callee by evaluating a device status of a plurality of communication devices associated with the callee. The cross-platform presence server can then determine, based on these device statuses, whether a callee is available. The availability of the callee can subsequently be displayed to the caller (e.g., on the caller's phone), or any other individuals who have been granted permission by the callee to be notified of the callee's availability.
US08817948B2

A radiographic imaging apparatus is provided with a generation unit, a radiation source, a moving unit, and an imaging control unit. The generation unit captures radiographic images based on beams of radiation that have been transmitted through an imaging target site and with which an imaging surface has been individually irradiated and generates sets of image information representing the captured radiographic images. The moving unit moves the radiation source such that irradiation with the beams of radiation is possible from different directions including a front direction. The imaging control unit controls the moving unit such that, in a case where the radiographic imaging apparatus performs stereo imaging, the imaging surface is irradiated with the beams of radiation from the front direction and from a direction of a predetermined angle.
US08817946B2

There are provided an X-ray detector, which can reduce the deformation of a collimator plate and can be easily processed and installed, and an X-ray CT apparatus using it. The X-ray detector includes a collimator plate, and a scintillator array, a photoelectric conversion element array and a substrate that are bonded in order from the X-ray incidence direction. The collimator plate is disposed such that one of a pair of opposite sides of the collimator plate is bonded to a lower support plate bonded on the scintillator array and the other side is bonded to an upper support plate and directions of the opposite sides are the same as a rotation axis direction of an X-ray CT apparatus in which the X-ray detector is provided.
US08817942B2

The present invention relates to a nuclear reactor, in particular a pool-type nuclear reactor cooled with liquid metal (for example, a heavy metal such as lead or lead-bismuth eutectic) or with sodium or molten salts, having a core formed by a bundle of fuel elements and immersed in a primary fluid circulating between the core and at least one heat exchanger; the fuel elements extend along respective parallel longitudinal axes and have respective bottom active parts immersed in the primary fluid to constitute the core, and respective service parts that extend at the top from the active parts and emerge from the primary fluid; the fuel elements are mechanically supported via respective top end heads anchored to supporting structures and can be operated via handling machines.
US08817917B2

A method for detecting the digital quality of a radio signal includes: receiving a radio signal including a digital portion modulated by a series of symbols each including a plurality of samples; computing correlation points between endpoint samples in cyclic prefix regions of adjacent symbols; and using the correlation points to produce a digital signal quality metric. Receivers that implement the method are also provided.
US08817911B2

Wireless communication wherein channel estimation accuracy is improved while keeping the position of each bit in a frame, even when a modulation system having a large modulation multiple value is used for a data symbol. An encoding operation encodes and outputs transmitting data (bit string) and a bit converting operation converts at least one bit of a plurality of bits constituting a data symbol to be used for channel estimation, among the encoded bit strings, into ‘1’ or ‘0’. A modulating operation modulates the bit string inputted from the bit converting operation by using a single modulation mapper and a plurality of data symbols are generated.
US08817905B2

In a closed-loop wireless communication system (200), a codeword retransmission scheme is provided which allows retransmission of a single codeword using a higher order transmission rank, which may or may not be the same as the higher order transmission rank used to originally transmit the codeword. When one of a plurality of codewords (CW1, CW2) being transmitted over two codeword pipes to a receiver (201.i) fails the transmission, codeword retransmission is enabled by duplicating the failed codeword at the base station (210) and then retransmitting the duplicated codewords over both codeword pipes using the same transmission layers or “rank” as the original transmission.
US08817900B2

A system and method are provided for frequency domain peak power reduction on a plurality of orthogonal frequency divisional multiplexing (OFDM) signals in a communications system, wherein frequency domain processing of at least one OFDM signal carrier is iteratively performed to reduce peak power transmissions. OFDM signal carriers can include both in-band sub-carrier signals, and guard-band sub-carrier signals. Each iteration of peak power reduction takes as an input the frequency domain representation of the signal from the previous iteration that has been altered with respect to an error signal also represented in the frequency domain, determines an error signal (in the frequency domain), and subtracts this from the input to produce a further peak power reduced frequency domain signal. If there are no peaks above the configured peak power reduction threshold, then the signal passes through the FPPR iterations with no change.
US08817899B2

Aspects of a method and system for an alternating delta quantizer for limited feedback MIMO pre-coders may comprise quantizing a change in channel state information in a MIMO pre-coding system onto at least a first and a second codebook, each of which comprises one or more unitary matrices, using a cost function; feeding back, in an alternating manner, an index to an element of at least the first codebook or the second codebook, associated with the quantizing, from a receiver to a transmitter in said MIMO pre-coding system, and generating the at least first and second codebook based on at least the channel state information. The channel state information may be a matrix V and the cost function may be defined by the following relationship: f ⁡ ( A ) = ( 1 N ⁢ ∑ j = 1 N ⁢  a jj  2 ) where A is a matrix of size N by N and aij is element (i,j) of matrix A.
US08817898B2

A method and apparatus for filtering a received Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexed (ODFM) signal to reduce noise. The ODFM signal includes a plurality of symbols n in the time direction, each symbol including a plurality of sub-carriers k in the frequency direction, each a-th sub-carrier of each symbol being transmitted as a pilot sub-carrier with known amplitude and phase, and each symbol having its pilot sub-carriers spaced by b sub-carriers relative to the adjacent symbol. An m-tap filter is utilized for producing a filtered version of a selected pilot sub-carrier to be used in subsequent interpolation, by inputting into respective taps of the m-tap filter, m pilot sub-carriers surrounding the selected pilot sub-carrier. The m pilot sub-carriers each satisfy a relationship between n and k, wherein the relationship defines a diagonal line in the n-k plane.
US08817890B2

The present invention comprises a system and method for controlling the rate a data encoder generates compressed data. The system and method are preferably implemented as program code stored and executed by a processor or computer that is interfaced to standard variable or constant bit rate encoders known in the art. The system preferably encodes and compresses video signals received from a camera, and controls the rate at which the compressed data is generated by the encoder so that storage capacity reserved for the compressed data will not be exceeded. The device preferably takes advantage of periods when the data generation rate is low to increase the quality of video data generated during periods of high activity.
US08817875B2

Methods and systems to compress and decompress sequences of images, such as video frames, including compression techniques to estimate pixel values, to determine differences between the estimated pixel values and actual pixel values, to arithmetically encode a corresponding sequence of difference values or symbols as a code value, and to output the code value and associated reference information in a data stream. Decompression techniques include techniques to read the code value and associated reference information from the data stream, to arithmetically decode the symbols from the code value, and to reconstruct the sequence of video frames from the decoded symbols and the associated reference information. Also disclosed are techniques to reduce or preclude overflow of registers or buffers used to hold code range values, and to order tables of code range values to improve efficiency of table look-up operations.
US08817872B2

A method and apparatus effectively encode multiple layers using interlayer information in a multi-layered video codec. The method includes reading information concerning the low layer picture, calculating weighting factors using the information concerning the low layer picture, calculating a weighted sum of reference pictures for the current picture using the weighting factors and generating a predicted picture for the current picture, and encoding a difference between the current picture and the predicted picture.
US08817866B2

A data equalizing circuit includes an equalizer configured to output data according to a control code; and a detection unit configured to divide the data into N number of calculation periods, count data transition frequencies for the N calculation periods, calculate dispersion values of the data transition frequencies for the N calculation periods, and output the control code corresponding to a largest dispersion value, in response to a counting interruption signal and a counting completion signal, wherein n is equal to or greater than 2, N is greater than n, and the data is divided to n number of unit intervals (UI), andwherein a phase shift of each of the calculation periods with respect to its corresponding UI is different from a phase shift of any of the other calculation periods with respect to its corresponding UI.
US08817864B2

A communication device includes multiple paths that are provided in the device and transmit signals; an adjuster that adjusts transmission characteristics to be a favorable state by adjustment of the waveform of the signals on the paths; and a controller that controls the adjustment of the transmission characteristics of the paths by the adjuster, identifies other path(s) that affects a path to be adjusted, and controls suppression of crosstalk due to the other path(s).
US08817861B2

A complex condition determination unit is provided, having an error-pulse switching determination unit which outputs, as error-pulse determination information, information indicating whether an accumulated value of the number of error pulses is equal to or greater than a predetermined error-pulse threshold value; a CNR (carrier to noise ratio) modulation scheme determination unit which outputs, as CNR determination information, a modulation scheme determined in accordance with CNR information indicating the CNR of the received signal; an RSL (receive signal level) modulation scheme determination unit which outputs, as RSL determination information, a modulation scheme determined in accordance with RSL information indicating the RSL of the received signal; and a complex modulation scheme determination unit which determines the modulation scheme for the transmission source, in accordance with the error-pulse determination information, the CNR determination information, the RSL determination information, and the modulation scheme of the received signal.
US08817853B2

An RF receiver system operating on a broader frequency range and wide input dynamic power range is described. Received RF signal is downconverted to baseband signal using multiple quadrature demodulators. A microcontroller system controls the RF receiver by selecting frequency range to be produced by the frequency synthesizer, selecting appropriate amplification path for producing the required output power, controlling the power module for checking for automatic power gain and automatic gain control.
US08817849B2

A signaling system supports main and auxiliary communication channels between integrated circuits in the same direction over a single link. An equalizing transmitter applies appropriate filter coefficients to minimize the impact of intersymbol interference when transmitting the main data over a communication channel. The transmitter modulates at least one of the filter coefficients with the auxiliary data to induce apparent ISI in the transmitted signal. A main receiver ignores the apparent ISI to recover the main data, while an auxiliary receiver detects and demodulates the apparent ISI to recover the auxiliary data. The auxiliary data may be encoded using spread-spectrum techniques to reduce the impact of the auxiliary data on the main data.
US08817843B2

A method for receiving a chirp signal at a receiver, the chirp signal communicated over a link from a transmitter, the chirp signal comprising at least one symbol, each symbol comprising a plurality of identical chirps, each chirp encoding a symbol value, the method comprising: determining a measure indicative of error in the received chirp signal; determining the number of coherent integrations and non-coherent integrations to apply per symbol in dependence on the indicated error; for each symbol, coherently and non-coherently integrating the plurality of chirps in accordance with the determined numbers so as to form an integrated symbol; and for each symbol, decoding the symbol value from the integrated symbol.
US08817835B2

A quantum cascade laser includes a plurality of active layers, each of active layers including a first barrier layer, a first quantum well layer, a second barrier layer, a second quantum well layer, a third barrier layer, a third quantum well layer, and a fourth bather layer provided in this order along a predetermined direction; a plurality of injection layers; and a core layer having the active layers and the injection layers, the active layers and the injection layers being alternately provided along the predetermined direction to form a cascade structure. The first quantum well layer has a film thickness larger than a film thickness of the second quantum well layer. The second quantum well layer has the film thickness larger than a film thickness of the third quantum well layer. In addition, the second barrier layer has a film thickness smaller than a film thickness of the third bather layer.
US08817832B2

A multi-wavelength laser array of a plurality of emitters in a diode bar or stack where each beam is deflected by a different angle to be incident upon a uniform volume holographic grating with a portion of the beam being deflected as a feedback portion while a further portion provides a wavelength tuned output unique to each emitter. The arrangement of a uniform volume holographic grating with deflectors such as phaseplates eliminates the need to use expensive wavelength chirped gratings.
US08817831B1

A method and apparatus for spatially separating beams with different wavelengths is presented. The system includes: a light source (i.e. a laser with multiple harmonic output beams) with multiple wavelengths emitted along a single beam path or very nearly collinear beam paths, a path which connects the light source to a wavelength dependent beam separator, and a second path for blocking unwanted output wavelengths which connects the beam separation region to the laser output.
US08817828B2

There are provided: a core section provided so as to extend in a light-guiding direction in which incident light propagates; a photosensitive layer provided so as to extend in the light-guiding direction and peripherally enclose the core section, the photosensitive layer including a grating formed therein by irradiation of ultraviolet light having a predetermined wavelength; and a first cladding section provided between the core section and the photosensitive layer, the first cladding section having a lower refractive index than the core section and a lower photosensitivity than the photosensitive layer, the photosensitivity being a property in which a refractive index changes in response to irradiation with the ultraviolet light.
US08817826B2

A spread spectrum generator module is configured to provide data for spreading frequency spectra of at least first and second lower bandwidth asynchronously clocked communication links. A packet scheduling module aggregates the two (or more) lower bandwidth links into a higher bandwidth link or interface. The frequency spectra of the lower bandwidth links are spread in accordance with the data for spreading the frequency spectra. A downstream disaggregation element filters high frequency noise resulting from the spreading of the spectra.
US08817825B2

Methods and systems for processing signals in a receiver are disclosed herein and may comprise receiving spatially multiplexed signals via M receive antennas. A plurality of multiple data streams may be separated in the received spatially multiplexed signals to detect MIMO data streams. Each of the MIMO data streams may correspond to a spatially multiplexed input signal. Complex phase and/or amplitude may be estimated for each detected MIMO data streams utilizing (M-1) phase shifters. Complex waveforms, comprising in-phase (I) and quadrature (Q) components for the MIMO data streams within the received spatially multiplexed signals may be processed and the processed complex waveforms may be filtered to generate baseband bandwidth limited signals. Phase and/or amplitude for one or more received spatially multiplexed signals may be adjusted utilizing the estimated complex phase and amplitude. Phase and/or amplitude may be adjusted continuously and/or at discrete intervals.
US08817824B2

An Optical Transport Network (OTN) mode management system includes a controller communicatively coupled to at least one OTN port. The controller is configured to operate an OTN line Optical channel Data Unit level k (ODUk) mode management system for the at least one OTN port, and the OTN line ODUk mode management system is configured to support different multiplexing scenarios on the OTN port with no loss of control plane packets on aggregated links. A network element includes at least one port with a plurality of lines associated therewith, a controller communicatively coupled to the at least one port, and an OTN line ODUk mode management system executed on the controller for managing the plurality of lines on the at least one port. A method includes configuring and dynamically managing modes of a plurality of OTN lines in a link.
US08817820B2

A fragmentation repetition detection apparatus (410) for detecting an IP fragmentation repetition which may occur in a multicast or unicast environment is provided. The fragmentation repetition detection apparatus (410) includes a packet capturing unit (411) which captures a received packet, a fragmentation repetition detector which detects whether or not the captured packet is a packet which is repetitively fragmented, and a path maximum transmission unit (PMTU) transmitter (414) which transmits PMTU information acquired by the fragmentation repetition detector (412) to a server which transmits the packet when the captured packet is a packet which is repetitively fragmented. Since a packet is transmitted by readjusting a PMTU, a fragmentation of an IP packet can be prevented.
US08817817B2

This invention provides the ability to significantly lower the power consumed by a group of Ethernet links when organized in a Link Aggregation Group. When the server or switch senses low bandwidth utilization across multiple links in the group, it will negotiate the transition of un-necessary links to a lower power state. When the bandwidth requirements increases, the algorithm will quickly re-establish links and distribute the Ethernet traffic across the multiple links when necessary.
US08817814B2

A transmission device (4a) characterized by having a setting unit (corresponding to a LAN mapping circuit (100a)) for setting each one of radio lines (1, 2) as a radio line for transmitting a frame having a specific frame structure and a radio line for transmitting a packet, and a transmission unit (corresponding to a LAN packet dividing circuit (200a), an E1 framing circuit (300a), a LAN packet reconstruction circuit (400a), a buffer circuit (500a), a selector circuit (600a), and a multiplexing-demultiplexing circuit (700a)) for transmitting the frame and the packet using the radio lines (1, 2) in accordance with information (LAN mapping information (101a)) set by the setting unit (100a).
US08817810B2

Data communications are effected over one or more network branches to ensure appropriate receipt of data at different devices on the network. In accordance with an example embodiment, time-based communications are effected for a plurality of different network devices, at least two of which are connected to a common wired network link, with each network device being assigned to communicate during different time slots within a communication cycle. Each communication received on the common wired network link is assessed as being error-indicative or not error-indicative. In response to a received communication on the common wired network link being assessed as being error-indicative, the common wired network link is operated to corrupt data received on the branch, such as by driving the branch during a time slot in which the error-indicative communication is received, therein ensuring that other network devices disregard the data received during that time slot.
US08817796B2

Techniques are provided for cached routing table management in a distributed network switch. A frame having a source address and a destination address is received. If no routing entry for the source address is found in a routing table of a switch module in the distributed network switch, then routing information is determined for the source address and a routing entry is generated. The routing table is modified to include the routing entry, based on a set of hash functions. Upon accessing the generated routing entry in the modified routing table responsive to a subsequent lookup request for the source address, the set of caches is modified to include the generated routing entry.
US08817790B2

A mechanism is disclosed for identifying, classifying, and controlling flows in a network. In one implementation, a separate set of behavioral statistics is maintained for each flow. These behavioral statistics are updated as packets belonging to a flow are processed. Whenever a packet belonging to a flow is processed, a set of policies that the flow's behavioral statistics satisfy is determined. For each policy that the flow's behavioral statistics satisfy, actions that are associated with that policy are applied relative to the packet. The actions may be designed to cause a router to handle, in a user-specified manner, packets that are likely to represent a particular kind of traffic. Thus, different flows, such as VOIP, gaming, streaming, and P2P flows, which are associated with different behavioral statistics, may be handled in ways applicable for the specific application traffic type.
US08817785B2

A communication apparatus which is capable of performing multicasting or broadcasting using a user-desired network interface. An MFP implementing the communication apparatus includes a plurality of network interfaces and performs multicasting or broadcasting via at least one of the network interfaces. A controller unit provides an application programming interface to an application that operates on the MFP. An operator of the MFP operates an operation unit to set a transmission condition for transmitting a multicast packet and a broadcast packet via a predetermined network interface. When a plurality of active network interfaces are detected, one of the plurality of detected active network interfaces which satisfies the set transmission condition is selected and multicasting or broadcasting is performed via the selected network interface.
US08817780B2

Received data packets are groomed to improve performance of MPEG-2 transport stream packet in a digital video broadcasting system. Multitude of crosschecking techniques are applied to ensure that crucial pieces of information such as the packet identifier (PID) field, the continuity counter (CC) field, table ID, section length, IP header checksum, table and frame boundaries, application data table size are corrected if necessary.
US08817778B2

Embodiments of the present invention disclose a session processing method, device, and communication system. The session processing method includes: when a first User Equipment (UE) is to set up an IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) session with a second UE, triggering setup of an unstructured supplementary service data (USSD) transaction between a Circuit Switched (CS) network and the first UE; and sending, by using the USSD transaction, an I1 protocol message used to bear IMS session control signaling. With the technical solutions of the present invention, when a UE is to set up an IMS session, a USSD transaction is set up between the UE and the CS network; I1 protocol messages exchanged between the UE and the Service Centralization and Continuity (SCC) Application Server (AS) (SCC-AS) are sent reliably by using the USSD transaction, which facilitates reliable control over IMS services.
US08817775B2

An access gateway containing IP telephone service functions for subscribers under an integrated access device (IAD), forming a PSTN network side speech path or IP network side speech path selectively for each subscriber, and, further automatically switching, when trouble occurs at the IP network side, the IP network side speech path to the PSTN network side speech path.
US08817769B2

Techniques for transmitting power decision pilots are described. A transmitter (e.g., a base station or a UE) may transmit a power decision pilot to indicate a transmit power level that it will use on subsequent time-frequency resources. In one design, the transmitter may determine a set of time-frequency resources to use for transmitting the power decision pilot, determine the transmit power level for the power decision pilot based on the transmit power level to use for data transmission, and transmit the power decision pilot on the set of time-frequency resources to indicate the transmit power level to use for data transmission on the subsequent time-frequency resources. A receiver (e.g., a UE or a base station) may receive power decision pilots from a set of transmitters and may estimate channel quality that the receiver can expect on the subsequent time-frequency resources based on the power decision pilots.
US08817763B2

A mobile router network, comprises: a plurality of wireless mobile routers, each comprising a wide area network wireless interface to access a cellular network provided by a predetermined cellular carrier. Each mobile router is operable to upload data and to download data via the cellular network. Each mobile router is monitors the uploaded and downloaded data to generate statistical usage. The network further comprises a server coupleable to the plurality of wireless mobile routers via the cellular network. The server is operable to access billing data from the predetermined carrier for each of the mobile routers. Each of the mobile routers automatically operates to upload the statistical data to the server. The server operates to compare the statistical data for each mobile router to corresponding billing data for each mobile router to determine if there is a billing discrepancy.
US08817761B2

Systems and methods of controlling features of a wireless mobile device are provided. The method includes receiving a signal, the signal including a MAC OUI and serial number carried therein, determining if the features of the wireless mobile device are in a correct state in accordance with the MAC OUI and serial number, and when the features of the wireless mobile device are not in the correct state, modifying at least one feature of the wireless mobile device in accordance with the MAC OUI and serial number.
US08817756B1

Allocation schemes are provided for one or more portions of time during a data transmission time interval for contention by personal coordination points, access points and client devices to perform transmit sector sweep operations. In addition, a personal coordination point determines whether the set of channels universally agreed to be free by nearby synchronization access points is empty and selects any channel in the frequency band to initiate a Basic Service Set or continue operation of an existing Basic Service Set if it is determined that no channel in the frequency band is free among the channels that are universally agreed to be free.
US08817750B2

Access to a femtocell can be controlled as part of handover of a mobile device from macrocell to femtocell. Macro network platform issues a handover (HO) request towards femto network platform and a single virtual femto node, which represents a plurality of femto access points (APs). Location estimate(s) for the mobile device drives selection of a target femto AP. Selection of the target AP results in acceptance of the HO request. The mobile device also can request macro-to-femto (MTF) handover. HO neighbor list(s) is generated by decoding a network-issued identifier for each femto APs in a set of femtocells, and selectively ranking each femto AP based at least on channel quality; access privileges of the mobile device to each of the identified femto APs determines selectivity. Validation of mobile device's access right(s) drives acceptance of the MTF HO request to a top ranked femto AP.
US08817749B2

Establishing a circuit-switched fallback (CSFB) call. A request to establish a CSFB call may be received. A first wireless link with a first cell may be released. The first cell may provide packet-switched services but not circuit-switched services. A second wireless link may be established with a second cell. The second cell may provide packet-switched services and circuit-switched services. The CSFB call may be established via the connection to the second cell. Packet-switched registration with the second cell may be performed after the CSFB call is established.
US08817745B2

An access node, comprising at least one component configured to support forwarding of data packets to a user agent connected to a relay node, wherein the relay node is a termination point for a first tunneling path from a core network, and wherein the relay node is connected to the access node and the access node is on the first tunneling path.
US08817744B2

In accordance with an example embodiment of the present invention, a method comprises receiving at a first network node an inter-radio access technology (RAT) signaling message from a source node, a handover signaling message including inter-RAT handover information including a START packet switched (START PS) value; determining whether the START PS value is reliable prior to handing over to a second network node at least based in part on the source node from which the START PS value is received and inter-RAT handover information reliability indicator; building an inter-RAT handover information reliability indicator to indicate whether the START PS value is reliable and including the inter-RAT handover info reliability indicator in a second signaling message; and forwarding the second signaling message to the second network node.
US08817743B2

Systems and methods of informing a serving cell of a target cell handover capability are provided. In some cases, a mobile station determines whether inbound handover is possible and communicates this to the serving cell. The mobile station may make this determination based on broadcast information from the target cell. Alternatively, the mobile station may make this determination based on a message generated by a target cell controller that is sent to the mobile station through the serving cell. In another example, the mobile station construes the absence of a response to a cell change notification as an indication that inbound handover to the target cell is not possible.
US08817735B1

Disclosed herein are systems and methods for allocating fully-orthogonal and quasi-orthogonal spreading codes to access terminals in radio access networks based on a tolerance level for additional interference on a per-access-terminal basis. An embodiment takes the form of a method that includes receiving a request for allocation of a spreading code to an access terminal, and responsively comparing an additional-capacity number to an available-codes number. The additional-capacity number represents, based on an average contribution per access terminal to the current reverse noise, how many additional fully-orthogonal spreading codes could be allocated to access terminals without exceeding a maximum-allowed reverse noise. The available-codes number represents how many fully-orthogonal spreading codes are currently available for allocation. The method further involves allocating a fully-orthogonal spreading code to the access terminal when the additional-capacity number is greater than or equal to the available-codes number, and otherwise allocating a quasi-orthogonal spreading code.
US08817731B2

A mobile station apparatus includes a radio communication unit and a radio resource request unit. The radio communication unit is configured to be able to perform radio communication with a first base station and a second base station. The radio resource request unit requests the second base station to temporarily allocate a radio resource of at least one of an uplink and a downlink when the radio communication unit performs transmission of an uplink signal and reception of a downlink signal with the first base station. Further, the radio resource request unit makes the radio resource allocated by the second base station available for transmission of the uplink signal or reception of the downlink signal with the first base station performed by the radio communication unit.
US08817728B2

Techniques are provided for third-party assisted peer-to-peer (P2P) communication. For example, there is provided a method, operable by a network entity, that may involve receiving first information from a first mobile entity, the first information comprising a first message for a second mobile entity. The method may involve receiving second information from the second mobile entity, the second information comprising a second message for the first mobile entity. The method may further involve coding third information based at least in part on the first information and the second information, and sending the third information to the first and second mobile entities. The method may also involve transmitting a control signal that includes processing information for decoding the coded third information to extract the first message or the second message.
US08817717B2

A Bluetooth detection unit can be implemented to minimize the time required for executing the inquiry and paging scan procedures on a Bluetooth device associated with a collocated WLAN device. The Bluetooth detection unit can execute concurrent background spectral scanning to detect Bluetooth control packets while the WLAN device is receiving WLAN packets. The Bluetooth detection unit can analyze, for each Bluetooth control channel, the Bluetooth device can determine energy measurements associated with each Bluetooth control channel and can determine whether each Bluetooth control channel comprises a narrowband signal based, at least in part, on frequency domain samples associated with an RF signal received at the WLAN device. The Bluetooth detection unit can determine which of the Bluetooth control channels comprise a Bluetooth control packet.
US08817712B2

A mobile terminal for providing a location based service includes a short-distance communication module to detect a signal from an access point, to receive server connection information from the access point, to connect to a server belonging to a service area serviced by the access point based on the server connection information, and to automatically receive contents associated with the service area from the server; a display unit to display the received contents; and a control unit to control the short-distance communication module and the display unit.
US08817697B2

A system and method for minimizing call setup latency in a group communication among wireless communication devices by ensuring the requisite amount of communication bandwidth for group member devices that utilize separate communication systems to control communication channels established with each of the wireless communication devices. A group communication server that sets up group communications for wireless communication device members of a communication group communicates with a resource manager resident on a communication system to reserve a predetermined amount of resources, such as bandwidth, for wireless communication devices utilizing that communication system that are members of a communication group. The resource manager communicates the availability to the group communication server of the wireless communication devices utilizing that communication system for group communications only if the predetermined resources are available for a group communication to the wireless communication device.
US08817691B2

A transmission protocol is provided for wireless communications in an OFDMA system that uses a rateless code and techniques are provided for dynamically adjusting the subcarrier resources allocated to an OFDMA relay node so that the relay is used at the right time according to the instantaneous channel state information (CSI). As a result, a higher throughput is achieved between source and destination nodes based on a low complexity algorithm for determining when relay assistance is helpful for completing a transmission between the source and destination nodes.
US08817690B2

Methods and apparatuses are provided that include scheduling best effort (BE) traffic for devices communicating with a relay. A donor evolved Node B (eNB) schedules BE traffic for various devices based on a historical throughput. The donor eNB can determine a number of devices served by the relay for discounting the historical throughput, and accordingly assigning resources based on the number of devices instead of the single relay. In this regard, the donor eNB can maintain proportional fairness of the BE scheduling. Alternatively, the relay can request a guaranteed bit rate (GBR) bearer to handle the BE traffic, where the requested data rate of the GBR bearer allows for communicating the BE traffic for the number of devices. Resource allocation for BE traffic can also be bound by a maximum throughput at the relay and/or one or more access link data rates.
US08817688B2

A radio relay device (100) is applied to a radio communication system wherein a period in which downlink data are transmitted and a period in which uplink data are transmitted are provided in time division in communication time frames that are segmented on a time axis. The radio relay device (100) is provided with a donor transceiver (120D) that exchanges data with a radio base station, a remote transceiver (120R) that exchanges data with a radio terminal, and controllers (130D, 130R) that alternately execute control to operate the donor transceiver (120D) and stop the remote transceiver (120R) in at least one communication time frame, and control to stop the donor transceiver (120D) and operate the remote transceiver (120R) in at least one communication time frame.
US08817687B2

A system and method for channel estimation in wireless communications systems are provided. A method for operations at a first communications device includes computing an estimate of a channel between the first communications device and a second communications device based on pilot signals transmitted from the second communications device, removing self-interference from a composite transmission relayed from a relay node, and detecting information contained in the transmissions from the second communications device from the composite transmission based on the estimate of the channel. The composite transmission includes transmissions from the first communications device and transmissions from the second communications device.
US08817686B2

A network comprising a relay node configured to transmit a first common reference signal (CRS) to a plurality of user agents (UAs) using a first plurality of physical antennas and/or virtual antennas, and an access node configured to transmit a second CRS to the UAs using a second plurality of physical antennas and/or virtual antennas, wherein the first CRS and the second CRS are combined for the same number of first and second physical antennas and/or virtual antennas. Also included is a network comprising a relay node configured to transmit a dedicated reference signal (DRS) to a UA using a first plurality of physical antennas and/or virtual antennas, and an access node configured to transmit a second DRS to the UA using a second plurality of physical antennas and/or virtual antennas, wherein the first DRS and the second DRS are transmitted at about the same time.
US08817679B2

A base station includes a receiver configured to receive data wirelessly transmitted from plural mobile stations which repeatedly transmit the data until a reception acknowledgement signal representing that the data has been received by the base station is received, a transmitter configured to wirelessly transmit data to the plural mobile stations, and a controller configured to assign a radio resource for data transmission to a mobile station of the plural mobile stations in accordance with a data transmission request received from the mobile station, make the receiver receive data from the mobile station in the assigned radio resource, when the receiver has received the data from the mobile station make the transmitter transmit the reception acknowledgement signal to the mobile station, and when the radio resource is reassigned in association with the wireless transmission of the reception acknowledgement signal make the transmitter retransmit the reception acknowledgement signal.
US08817678B2

A master application device comprises a plurality of distributed transceivers, a central baseband processor, and a network management engine that manages operation of the master application device and end-user application devices. The master application device communicates data streams to the end-user devices utilizing one or more distributed transceivers selected from the plurality of distributed transceivers. The selected distributed transceivers and the end-user devices are concurrently configured by the network management engine based on corresponding link quality and propagation environment. The network management engine allocates resources to the selected distributed transceivers and the end-user devices during the data communication. The network management engine continuously monitors communication environment information to configure beamforming settings and/or antenna arrangement for the selected distributed transceivers. Beam patterns are selected for the selected distributed transceivers so as to minimize power consumption and/or based on the location and orientation information of the end-user application devices.
US08817677B2

An energy controller, as a communication device, transmits and receives data by transmitting a signal for establishing transmission and reception of the data to network-connected home appliances. The energy controller includes a power saving control unit that determines a transmission period such that the transmission period during which the signal is transmitted is increased as a power value difference increases, which is a value obtained by subtracting the total power consumption value of a power consumption appliance from available power supply value to the power consumption appliance including the network-connected home appliances; and a wireless communication IF for transmitting the signal containing the information indicating the transmission period to the network-connected home appliances in order to set the network-connected home appliances in an active state with a period according to the transmission period.
US08817676B2

Method and system for directional wireless communication, is provided. One implementation involves directionally transmitting a request for access to a shared wireless communication medium, for directional communication between two wireless stations, and receiving a broadcast response indicating a time period during which the wireless stations may perform directional communication therebetween via the wireless communication medium by setting their antenna directions to each other.
US08817674B2

An apparatus and method for performing Uplink (UL) communication by a Relay Station (RS) in a wireless communication system are provided. The RS receives a Transmit/receive Transition Gap (TTG) and a Receive/transmit Transition Gap (RTG) of a Base Station (BS) during a network entry process of the RS, receives, from the BS, an idle time R_IdleTime between frames used in the RS, and determines a structure of a UL frame. In the alternative, the RS determines a time interval Tad or an idle time R_IdleTime according to a predetermined scheme, and transmits the Tad or the R_IdleTime to the BS. The proposed apparatus and method reduce an overhead of a frame structure when the RS transitions from a transmission mode to a reception mode or from a reception mode to a transmission mode, the frame structure being for frames of the BS and it adjacent RS, thereby reducing interference.
US08817670B2

Duplex communications are facilitated. In connection with various example embodiments, current sources are used to drive transistor-based circuits coupled across a first resistive circuit, to send signals on a communications medium. While driving the transistor-based circuits, the current sources are used to drive reference transistor-based circuits coupled across a second resistive circuit. A differential output signal based upon a power-related value across the first resistive circuit, less a power-related value across the second resistive circuit. This differential output signal characterizes a power-related value corresponding to a received signal on the communications medium, as gleaned from a total signal corresponding to both transmitted and received signals, less a signal corresponding to the transmitted signal.
US08817652B1

A method and system for providing call routing analytics. A virtual session initiation protocol switch is provided and hosted in an Internet cloud-based environment. The switch streams live call detail records to a computer system having a processor configured to process all of the subscriber's call records to monitor route performance for the subscriber. Real-time route performance data is transmitted to the subscriber for display at a subscriber computer. The subscriber can then alter a routing of at least a portion of the call utilizing the switch in response to the real-time route performance data to increase quality of signaling and business performance.
US08817631B2

A contention-based uplink data transmission method, apparatus and system are provided. The method may include that: a main control node in a communication system receives data transmitted via uplink contention transmission resources, and decodes the data, wherein the uplink contention transmission resources are uplink transmission resources which the main control node allocates to a plurality of terminal nodes in the communication system and via which the plurality of terminal nodes transmits data in a contention-based way; and the main control node sends reception status information to each terminal node transmitting the data via the uplink contention transmission resources, wherein the reception status information reflects whether the data transmitted from each terminal node has been decoded successfully.
US08817626B2

In a digital broadband broadcast transmitter, digital data is time interleaved for transmission, and the time interleaved digital data is transmitted in a digital broadband broadcast transmission towards a plurality of receivers. A cellular transmitter is operated in an apparatus. In the same apparatus, the digital broadband broadcast transmission transmitted by the digital broadband broadcast transmitter is received, and the received digital broadband broadcast transmission is time deinterleaved.
US08817624B2

Methods and devices for reducing traffic over a wireless link through the compression or suppression of high layer packets carrying predictable background data prior to transportation over a wireless link. The methods include intercepting application layer protocol packets carrying the predictable background data. In embodiments where the background data is periodic in nature, the high layer packets may be compressed into low-layer signaling indicators for communication over a low-layer control channel (e.g., an on off keying (OOK) channel). Alternatively, the high layer packets may be suppressed entirely (not transported over the wireless link) when a receiver side daemon is configured to autonomously replicate the periodic background nature according to a projected interval. In other embodiments, compression techniques may be used to reduce overhead attributable to non-periodic background data that is predictable in context.
US08817622B1

Each switch of the data network includes a number of switch ingress ports for receiving arrival data flow. An aggregate flow monitor is operatively associated with each ingress port for monitoring the aggregate arrival data flow in defined traffic constraint envelopes containing frames. An eligibility time computation mechanism computes an eligibility time at which arriving frames to an ingress port will be conformant to the defined traffic envelope to the ingress port given past frame arrivals. A holding mechanism holds the arriving frames to the ingress port until the eligibility time is reached. A release mechanism releases the arriving frames for forwarding at the eligibility time. The aggregate flow monitor, the eligibility time computation mechanism, the holding mechanism, and the release mechanism cooperate to provide an aggregate traffic shaping function, thus allowing the switch to enforce the traffic constraint envelope for each ingress port.
US08817618B2

Systems and methods for providing trigger based dynamic changes to a packet flow in a communication network are described. The trigger based dynamic changes can include upgrading and downgrading quality of service (QoS), processing the packet flow, and providing services to the packet flow. These changes can be provided by inspecting packets at a gateway for trigger conditions and setting up a proxy instance for the packet flows. The proxy can coordinate QoS changes and management of packet flows. The triggers can be based on the destination of the packet, for example, the uniform resource locator (URL) and/or by the services (e.g., email, video, messaging) that the subscriber is accessing. The triggers can also be based on the identity of the user or agreements a provider might have with an operator of network equipment for users accessing the provider's website.
US08817616B2

In a node device 1 in a communication network, an FID management table 5 stores an FID for unique identification of a frame and the information about a destination node of the frame, and a weighting table 7 stores weighting information about another node as a destination for relay of the frame for each final destination node of the frame. When a frame transmitted to a local node is received, and if the FID of the received frame is stored in the FID management table 5, the data about the destination node associated with the FID is updated. If the FID of the frame received from the frame reception device is not stored in the FID management table 5, the FID management table 5 corresponding to the destination node of the frame is referred to, and another node as a destination for relay of the frame is determined.
US08817610B2

A method is described for associating a data packet (DP) with a packet bearer (PB) in a user equipment (UE1) of a communication network. The data packet is sent in a data flow from an application function of the user equipment, the packet bearer (PB) is established with the user equipment to transmit the data packet (DP) over the communication network towards a further entity, and the user equipment is adapted to establish different packet bearers. The method comprises the steps of identifying the flow with the data packet in a control entity of the communication network, determining the packet bearer for association with said flow from the different packet bearers in a policy function of the control entity, determining a routing level identification of the further entity, instructing the user equipment to install a packet filter based on the routing level identification, wherein the packet filter associates data packets comprising the routing level identification of the further entity with the determined packet bearer, providing the routing level identification to the application function, including the routing level identification into the data packet, and forwarding the data packet (DP) on the determined packet bearer (PB). A corresponding network, control entity, monitoring entity and computer program are also described.
US08817609B2

A communications system comprising a target node and at least one source node arranged for communication of messages there between; in which the target node comprises means for processing at least some of the messages received from the at least one source node and means for detecting the processing load of the target node; in which the target node comprises means for notifying the at least one source node when a specific processing load level has been reached or exceeded; and in which each source node comprises means for reducing, responsive to the notification, the rate at which messages are sent to the target node.
US08817599B2

A mobile router having a session proxy module is disclosed. The session proxy module may act as a proxy (such as a TCP proxy) for all sessions (e.g., TCP sessions) going through the mobile router. That is, for example, when a local end-user seeks to establish a TCP session from their local end-user device (such as laptop) with a destination (such as a third party server), the session proxy module may (1) terminate the TCP session coming from the local end-user device and (2) establish a TCP (or some other protocol) session on the backhaul interface with the destination. That way, all end-user traffic between the end-user and the destination may be transparently routed through the mobile router.
US08817595B2

An overlay network node is arranged to provide robust reply routing for requests and replies travelling over the network. Each node comprises first means which forwards each request originating in a source node and destined for destination node. The node comprises second means which redirect replies if the node from which the corresponding requests were received is no long accessible. The reply is, for example, turned into a request containing the reply as its payload and is returned towards the source node according to the rules used for forwarding the requests.
US08817582B2

Provided is a method of controlling an optical disc drive, and an optical disc drive using the method. Data that is to be transmitted from a host to the optical disc drive may be encoded. The encoded data may be transmitted to the optical disc drive, and the optical disc drive may decode the encoded data.
US08817579B2

An improved electronic device and method provide an improved clock feature that includes an improved world clock function.
US08817573B2

A semiconductor memory device and method for operating the same includes a controller configured to generate a data buffer control signal in a mode register set (MRS) mode, a data buffer configured to buffer and output a plurality of MRS codes inputted through a data pad in response to the data buffer control signal, and a plurality of MRS command generators configured to receive the MRS codes outputted from the data buffer through a data line and generate a plurality of MRS commands based on the received MRS codes.
US08817571B2

A semiconductor memory device comprises a memory cell array comprising a plurality of memory cells, and a filling command determiner that receives a command signal and an address signal and determines whether the command signal corresponds to a filling command. Upon determining that the command signal corresponds to a filling command, the filling command determiner connects a first source voltage to a bitline and connects a second source voltage to a complementary bitline corresponding to the bitline. The bitline is connected to a selected memory cell corresponding to the address signal.
US08817568B2

A memory array comprises a plurality of memory cells arranged in a plurality of rows and a plurality of columns. A column of the plurality of columns includes a first voltage circuit coupled to internal first nodes of memory cells in the one of the plurality of columns and a second voltage circuit coupled to internal second nodes of the memory cells in the one of the plurality of columns. The first voltage circuit is configured to provide one of a first supply voltage and a second supply voltage lower than the first supply voltage to the internal first nodes. The second voltage circuit is configured to provide one of a first reference voltage and a second reference voltage higher than the first reference voltage to the internal second nodes.
US08817558B2

Disclosed herein is a semiconductor device having a self-refresh mode in which a refresh operation of the storage data is performed. The semiconductor device activates an input buffer circuit that receives an impedance control command to control an impedance of the data terminal even in the self-refresh mode so that the semiconductor device can change an impedance of the data terminal during the self-refresh mode.
US08817530B2

An analog read circuit measures the resistance of each of a plurality of bits in an array of resistive memory elements. Data stored within a latch determines whether to selectively enable the analog read circuit. In an alternate embodiment, a sense amplifier is coupled to the latch and the array, and the data stored in the latch determines whether to selectively enable the sense amplifier.
US08817527B2

When a CPU provided with a latch memory is operated, a constant storage method or an end storage method is selected depending on what is processed by the CPU; thus, the CPU provided with a latch memory has low power consumption. When the CPU provided with a latch memory is operated, in the case where the number of times of turning on and off the power source is high, a constant storage method is employed and in the case where the number of times of turning on and off the power source is low, an end storage method is employed. Whether a constant storage method or an end storage method is selected is determined based on the threshold value set depending on power consumption.
US08817518B2

A program method for an e-fuse array circuit includes receiving an address and a multi-bit program data, programming the multi-bit program data in e-fuses designated by the address, reading a multi-bit read data from the e-fuses, and comparing bits of the multi-bit program data with bits of the multi-bit read data, wherein if the bits of the multi-bit program data are identical to the bits of the multi-bit read data, a program operation is terminated; and if the bits of the multi-bit read data are not identical to the bits of the multi-bit program data, then the programming of the multi-bit program data, the reading of the multi-bit read data, and the comparing of the bits are performed again.
US08817511B2

A semiconductor package is disclosed having a single CE signal during electrical test and a plurality of CE signals during normal operation thereafter. After electrical testing of the memory die during fabrication, the electrical traces carrying the single CE signal from the memory test pad matrix to each of the memory die may be severed. Severing the electrical traces from the memory test pad matrix electrically isolates the multiple electrical traces between the controller die and memory die, and allows separate and individual CE signals between the controller die and memory die during normal usage of the memory die.
US08817501B1

An apparatus for converting a first voltage into a second voltage includes a reconfigurable switched capacitor power converter having a selectable conversion gain. converter includes a cascade multiplier switched capacitor network having capacitors, each of which electrically connects to a stack node and to a phase node. A controller causes the network to transition between first and second operation modes. In the first mode, at least one capacitor is isolated from a charge transfer path of the reconfigurable switched capacitor power converter. Consequently, in the first mode of operation, the power converter operates with a first gain. In the second mode, the power converter operates with a second conversion gain. Meanwhile, a third voltage across the at least one capacitor is free to assume any value.
US08817499B2

The invention relates to a control method and system intended to reduce the common-mode current in a power converter which comprises a rectifier stage (1, 1′) connected to a number of input phases (R, S, T) and an inverter stage (2, 2′) connected to a number of output phases (U, V, W). On each switching period, the rectifier stage (1, 1′) and the inverter stage (2, 2′) are controlled in a synchronized manner so that a variation of potential applied to an input phase (R, S, T) always corresponds to a variation of potential of the same sign applied to an output phase (U, V, W).
US08817497B2

A switching power converter (200, 300, 400, 500) comprises a transformer (211) with a parasitic capacitance (212), a first switch (207) coupled to the transformer (211) and configured to couple or decouple a load (219) to or from a power source via the transformer (211), a switch controller (205) coupled to the first switch (207) and configured to generate a switch drive signal (206) for turning on or off the first switch (207) according to switching cycles, and a bypass circuit configured to provide a bypass path for the parasitic elements such as the parasitic capacitance (212). The bypass circuit may be coupled in parallel with the auxiliary winding (220), the primary winding (213), or the secondary winding (214) of the transformer (211). High frequency ringing and EMI/RFI is reduced when the bypass circuit is enabled.
US08817492B2

A DC/DC converter includes two input terminals for a DC input voltage, two output terminals for a DC output voltage, an inverter converting a DC voltage into an AC voltage, and a rectifier converting an AC voltage from the inverter into a DC voltage between a first one of the input terminals and a first one of the output terminals. At least one galvanically isolating element is arranged between the output of the inverter and the input of the rectifier, and a capacitance is coupled between the output terminals. The inverter converts a partial DC voltage, being smaller than the full DC input voltage, across a capacitance between the second one of the input terminals and the second one of the output terminals.
US08817480B2

In order to provide excellent waterproofness at a low manufacturing cost to a seal structure comprising a housing to which a flexible wiring board (1) is inserted and a seal member (3) integrally formed on said flexible wiring board (1) for hermetically sealing a gap between said housing and said flexible wiring board (1), a whole surface of a sensor member (31) arranged on at least one side of said flexible wiring board (1) is coated by same material as is used in said seal member (3), at a time of integrally forming the seal member (3) on the flexible wiring board (1).
US08817477B2

The assembly comprises: a car radio with a housing and a removable half front plate; a mounting sheath; means for securing the housing in the sheath; and means for unlocking the housing, said means comprising a tool suitable for being inserted in at least two orifices formed in the front face of the housing. These two orifices are formed in a central zone of the housing that is hidden by the front plate when it is mounted on the housing, and that is visible when the front plate is separated from the housing. The assembly has essentially no peripheral cover fitted thereto. The U-shaped tool makes it easy to extract the car radio using one hand in a single movement.
US08817474B2

A multi-rack assembly is provided which includes first and second electronics racks. The first electronics rack includes one or more cooling units disposed within the first electronics rack, which are coupled in fluid communication with a primary coolant loop of the first electronics rack to, at least in part, provide cooled coolant to the primary coolant loop and facilitate cooling one or more first rack electronic components. The second electronics rack includes a secondary coolant loop coupled in fluid communication with the cooling unit(s) disposed within the first electronics rack. The multi-rack assembly further includes a controller to automatically provide cooled coolant to the secondary coolant loop, and wherein the controller controls flow of cooled coolant from the cooling unit(s) to the secondary coolant loop depending, at least in part, on cooling requirements of the first electronics rack.
US08817470B2

DIMMs to be cooled are mounted in DIMM areas of a printed circuit board of a system board. An air intake port that introduces cooling air is arranged on a side plate of the system board, whereas an air discharge port that discharges the cooling air is arranged on another side plate. The cooling air flows in a direction that is oblique with respect to the side plate. The air intake port is arranged at a position that is offset in the direction in which the cooling air is supplied. Accordingly, cooling is possible by efficiently bringing the cooling air into contact with the DIMMs.
US08817455B2

A sealed electrical enclosure used in hazardous locations for enclosing electrical components having a bottom housing and a top housing with a serrated joint formed therebetween, the bottom housing adapted to receive one or more electrical components, a first metal bus extending from a point internal to the bottom housing through a first end wall to a point external thereto, and a second metal bus extending from a point internal to the bottom housing through a second end wall to a point external to thereto, where the first and second metal buses are adapted to contact first and second electrical terminals of an electrical component when placed within the bottom housing, wherein the top housing is removably secured to the bottom housing to allow for removal and replacement of an electrical component within the housing.
US08817453B2

Provided is an electrical energy storage device including an electrode winding body, which includes a positive electrode generating electrons by oxidation and reduction, a negative electrode for absorbing the generated electrons, and separation layers for physically separating the negative electrode from the positive electrode, which are sequentially wound around a winding core, and an electrolyte provided between the positive electrode and the negative electrode, the electrical energy storage device including: a terminal plate for externally connecting the electrode winding body to an external electrode connecting member such as an external resistor; a cylindrical can for accommodating the electrode winding body connected to the terminal plate; and a conductive interconnecting member for connection between the terminal plate and polarity-leads on one side of the electrode winding body by a method selected from the group consisting of plasma-spraying, welding, soldering and adhesion using a conductive adhesive material. According to the present invention, in which an interconnecting member for reducing a difference in thickness between objects to be welded is employed, it is possible to prevent welding failure between the polarity-leads of the electrode winding body and the terminal plate, thereby improving high-rate discharge (large current discharge) efficiency.
US08817448B1

A static dissipating assembly dissipates static from a vehicle to prevent accidental ignition of flammable fumes while replenishing a fuel supply for a vehicle. The assembly includes a conductive strap having a first end and a second end. A first connector is coupled to the first end of the strap. The first connector is configured for coupling to a fuel dispensing nozzle. A second connector is coupled to the second end of the strap. The second connector is configured for coupling to a vehicle proximate a fuel port of the vehicle.
US08817439B2

According to one disclosed embodiment, a power delivery circuit includes a switch for protection of a load in a reverse battery condition. The load is coupled in cascade with the protection switch, where the protection switch disconnects the load from the battery in the reverse battery condition. The protection switch does not include p-n junction diodes present in conventional protection switches using FETs. The protection switch utilizes, for example, a GaN HEMT, that does not include a p-n junction diode. Thus, the threat of internal conduction in the protection switch during a reverse battery condition is eliminated. The power delivery circuit also protects the load in a load dump condition.
US08817436B2

An electrostatic discharge protection device is provided. The electrostatic discharge protection device includes a clamp unit and a control circuit. The clamp unit provides a discharging path from a first power line to a first ground line. The control circuit receives a first power voltage from the first power line and a second power voltage from a second power line. Wherein, when the first power voltage and the second power voltage are applied, the control circuit generates an isolation signal to disconnect the discharging path. When the first power voltage and the second power voltage are not applied, the control circuit generates a trigger signal according to an electrostatic signal from the first power line to turn on the discharging path.
US08817430B2

An AC voltage controller has two transistors which can be positioned between two AC voltage terminals in series with a load. The two transistors are connected in series in such a way that their respective source terminals are connected to one another. The AC voltage controller also contains a signal generator for generating a switching signal for actuating the two transistors, a buffer which is connected downstream of the signal generator and which is set by the signal generator in order to actuate the two transistors. An actuation circuit or driver circuit is connected downstream of the buffer, for the purpose of actuating the two transistors in accordance with the set state of the buffer. A current-limiting circuit is provided for limiting or switching off the current through the two transistors in the case of an excessively large current through the load.
US08817427B2

A current-limitation system for limiting a current through an DC connection in case of a fault occurring in a DC grid of which the DC connection forms a part is provided, as well as a method of operating a current-limitation system for limiting a current through an DC connection in case of a fault occurring in a DC grid of which the DC connection forms a part.
US08817411B1

A tape performance optimization method may include accumulating data in a memory, monitoring the accumulation of data, determining whether a certain amount of data has been accumulated in the memory, and causing the accumulated data to be migrated to a tape in a tape library. In one embodiment, the amount of data to be accumulated is set to be two wraps or a multiple thereof. Using embodiments, it can take zero or near zero time to rewind the tape when unloading occurs, eliminating wasted tape movement time and significantly increasing tape performance. In one embodiment, the accumulation of data may be terminated even if the desired amount of data has not been accumulated. In one embodiment, the termination might be triggered by a timeout condition.
US08817407B2

An apparatus that includes a write pole, the write pole including a magnetic material; a near field transducer-heat sink (NFT-HS), the NFT-HS including a noble metal; and a power source configured to electrically bias the write pole with respect to a second structure.
US08817394B2

A method of manufacturing a lens module including following is provided. A first lens plate having a plurality of first lens sections, a second lens plate having a plurality of second lens sections and a third lens plate having a plurality of third lens sections are provided. The first lens sections of the first lens plate are separated to form a plurality of first lens units. The second and third lens plates are connected. A relative position between each of the first lens units and one of the second lens sections corresponding to the first lens unit is adjusted. Each of the first lens units and the second lens section corresponding to the first lens unit are connected. The second and third lens sections are separated to form a plurality of second lens units and a plurality of third lens units connected to the second lens units.
US08817389B2

An optical lens assembly for image taking includes a first lens element, a second lens element, a third lens element and a fourth lens element. The first lens element with positive refractive power includes a convex object-side surface at a paraxial region. The second lens element with negative refractive power includes a concave object-side surface at a paraxial region. The third lens element with refractive power includes a concave object-side surface at a paraxial region and a convex image-side surface at a paraxial region. The fourth lens element made of plastic with negative refractive power includes a concave object-side surface at a paraxial region and an image-side surface. At least one of the object-side surface and the image-side surface of the fourth lens element is aspheric, and the image-side surface of the fourth lens element is concave at a paraxial region and convex at a peripheral region.
US08817386B2

This invention provides an image capturing lens system in order from an object side to an image side comprising four non-cemented lens elements with refractive power: a first lens element with positive refractive power having a convex object-side surface; a second lens element with negative refractive power having a concave image-side surface; a plastic third lens element having a concave object-side surface and a convex image-side surface, both the object-side and image-side surfaces thereof being aspheric; and a plastic fourth lens element with negative refractive power having a concave image-side surface, both the object-side and image-side surfaces thereof being aspheric, and at least one inflection point is formed on at least one of the object-side and image-side surfaces thereof; wherein the image capturing lens system comprises a stop positioned between the first lens element and the second lens element.
US08817385B2

A photographing optical lens system includes, in order from an object side to an image side, a first lens element, a second lens element, a third lens element, a fourth lens element and a fifth lens element. The first lens element with positive refractive power has a convex object-side surface. The second lens element has negative refractive power. The third lens element has refractive power. The fourth lens element with negative refractive power is made of plastic material, and has a concave object-side surface and a convex image-side surface. The fifth lens element with negative refractive power is made of plastic material, and has a concave object-side surface and a concave image-side surface. At least one surface of the fourth through fifth lens elements is aspheric, and the image-side surface of the fifth lens element changes from concave at the paraxial region to convex at the peripheral region.
US08817381B2

An optical and mechanical design of a sealed, non-round fluid-filled lens capable of providing variation of optical power. The fluid lens includes at least three optical components: at least one mostly rigid optical disc, at least one mostly flexible optical membrane and a layer of a transparent fluid that is in communication via a fluid channel with a reservoir of excess fluid contained in a reservoir that can be accessed to augment the fluid volume inside the fluid lens to change the power of the fluid lens. The fluid lens is capable of providing correction of spherical and astigmatic errors, and utilizes contoured membranes to provide for a substantially constant desired spherical power over a substantially full field of view of a user.
US08817374B2

A birefringent diffuser includes a first optical material and a first birefringent material. The first optical material and the first birefringent material are combined to form a planar layer. The planar layer has an internal pattern of the materials presenting a substantially uniform index of refraction for incident light which is substantially normal to the planar layer and exhibiting a varying index of refraction for at least a portion of light which is trapped in guided modes.
US08817370B2

A magnetic circuit for a Faraday rotator capable of suppressing generation of irreversible demagnetization is provided. This magnetic circuit (100, 200, 300, 400, 500, 600, 700, 800, 900) for a Faraday rotator includes a first magnet (2, 202, 302, 702, 802), a second magnet (3, 203, 303, 703, 803) and a third magnet (4, 304, 604, 704, 804, 904), and a first high coercive force region (4b, 304b, 604b, 704b, 904b) is provided in the vicinity of at least the inner peripheral surface of a third through-hole (4a, 304a, 604a, 704a, 804a, 904a) of the third magnet.