US07690590B2
An electronically controlled journal loading system 20 for controlling and adjusting the amplitude of the load applied to a journal assembly 19 of a pulverizing mill 10. The journal loading system 20 includes a servomotor 44, resolver 134, vertical gearbox 42, coil spring assembly 40, controller 46 and a user interface 48. The journal loading system 20 provides electronic control and adjustment of the force applied to the journal assembly 19 to thereby increase or decrease the load that a grinding roll 18 imposes on the material being pulverized. In the mode of operation of the servo journal loading system 20, a desired load set point is selected via the user/operator interface 48. The servomotor 44 rotates a preload stud (or servo screw) 50 within the coiled spring assembly 40 in the appropriate direction via the gearbox 42. As the preload stud 50 turns, a bronze nut 100 and bushing 94 move axially along the stud to compress or decompress the spring 86. Based upon the linear movement of the preload stud 50 and the precalculated spring force of the spring 86, the load applied to the journal assembly 19 is displayed on the operator interface 48. Once the journal loading level is achieved the servomotor 44 can be turned off since the spring assembly 40 maintains the selected loading to the journal assembly 19.
US07690589B2
A method of separating at least one cluster of a plurality of clustered particles of a specified material. The method includes: initiating the wetting of at least a portion of the plurality of cluster particles; disaggregating at least a portion of the wetted plurality of cluster particles into a disaggregated material including a plurality of smaller clusters, discrete particles or any combination thereof; and stabilizing at least a portion of the disaggregated material by reducing, eliminating or replacing specified controlling attractive forces. A system and apparatus for separating at least one cluster of a plurality of clustered particles of a specified material are also disclosed.
US07690581B2
The present invention is a system and method for generating a barcode with a human readable interpretation (HRI), herein the barcode includes an application identifier. The characters are input as an input data set that is equivalent to the complete (HRI) with a special character immediately after the application identifier. Generating a barcode encoding data set for encoding the barcode is based on the input data set. Generating the barcode encoding data set includes interpreting the special character as a field separator between the application identifier and a data portion. Generating a data set for the human readable interpretation is based on the input data set and includes converting the special character to a symbol. Generating the barcode with the human readable interpretation includes combining the barcode encoding data set and the data set for the human readable interpretation.
US07690579B2
A wireless-enabled smart card reader receives an Answer to Reset (ATR) from a smart card and transmits the ATR using a wireless communication link to a computing device without waiting for an ATR request from the computing device. The computing device may cache the ATR and use it for subsequent communication sessions with the smart card.
US07690576B2
Handheld mobile communication devices according to the disclosure have a closed position, in which the display member of the device covers at least a portion of the keys of on the keypad member of the device, and an open position, in which the keys are accessible and the device is operated. When the display member is in the open position, it forms an ergonomically desirable angle (e.g., on the order of about 155°) relative to the keypad member. However, unlike clamshell-type cellular phones, the display member does not simply flip open about a conventional pivot joint. Rather, it moves from the closed position, where it is parallel and adjacent to the keypad member, to the open, angled position through a sliding/sweeping motion; through an eccentric, “up-and-over” rotational motion; or through a combination sliding/“up-and-over” motion.
US07690572B2
The invention relates to a microprocessor-based decoder board for an optical reader having in one embodiment a plurality of imaging modules that provide frames of image data having a plurality of formats. In one method for operating the decoder board of the invention, and a multiple imaging module reader comprising the decoder board, a frame of image data captured by a selected imaging module is decoded. The decoder board determines the format of the frame of image data from information about which of the plurality of imaging modules provided the frame of image data or from information about the frame of image data, activates as necessary a command to prepare the decoder board to decode the frame of image data according to the format provided by the imaging module, and performs the decoding.
US07690565B2
A method for locating a machine includes collecting machine data from a first machine over a communications network. The machine data for the first machine includes data reflecting at least one operational parameter associated with the first machine. The method also includes determining that the first machine is missing based on the collected machine data and receiving, from the first machine, over the communications network, a location message including location data reflecting a geographic location of the first machine. The method further includes sending a notification message to a first entity including data reflecting a status of the first machine and the location data, and sending a command to the first machine to control at least one operation of the first machine based on determining that the first machine is missing.
US07690559B2
An integrity checking system includes a tag programming device that generates a plurality of identifiers. Each identifier is associated with either a storage item or an item to be stored by the storage item. The programming device stores each of the identifiers in a plurality of readable tags, each readable tag being adapted to be attached to a corresponding item. A tag reading device reads the identifiers stored in the readable tags and, using only information from the read tags, provides information indicating whether any item supposed to be stored on the storage item is missing from the storage item. Also, methods for storing and reading the identifiers are disclosed along with storing additional information about the items in the tags, such as physical information like weight and/or volume of the items, and then using this information to determine whether any items have been altered.
US07690554B2
An anti-sifting polygonal carton stores granulated and powdered products. The carton starts as a single blank with four sections: a side, a front, a side, and a rear. The sides have a side panel with two flanking miter panels and two minor flaps. Each miter panel has two opposite miter flaps. The front has a front panel with a second major flap having a tear strip and an opposite second major lower flap having a crease. Separated from the front by a side, the rear has a rear panel having a miter tab opposite the side and a first major flap and an opposite first major lower flap. The fold lines continuous with the miter flaps and the miter tab are reinforced with tape or patches. The tear strip and top of the carton have a pattern of cuts to open and to reclose the carton.
US07690553B2
Residual tensile stresses can be mitigated through methods and systems provided by the present invention. Such a method can include securing a metal member (10) to a substrate and at least partially surrounding a portion of the metal member (10) with a cooling fluid (18). As a result, the cooled portion of the metal member (10) contracts a predetermined amount. Once cooled, the metal member may be fixed, preferably welded, to another metal member in a constrained relationship. As the portion of the metal member is returned to its original temperature, expansion of the metal member acts to mitigate residual tensile stresses in the metal assembly. Tensile stress in restrained members, cambering, and structural deformation can be readily controlled in an assembled structure.
US07690549B1
A purge arrangement for welding backup of a seam between two surfaces selected for welding together along respective runs which define the seam includes a ventilated tubeform and an adhesive tape attached for forming a seal across the back of the seam and sealing in the ventilated tubeform. The ventilated tubeform adapted for flooding with a purge gas by a source thereof. The adhesive tape's seal across the back of the seam traps the flood of the purge gas in the interspace between the tape and seam and ultimately flushes the as-yet un-welded portions of the seam with the purge gas.
US07690547B2
A surgical stapling device including an independently rotatable tool assembly is disclosed. The tool assembly includes an anvil and a cartridge assembly which are movable in relation to each other between spaced and approximated positions.
US07690542B1
Provided is a carrying case that utilizes two straps, e.g., for looping over the top of a cellular telephone or similarly sized item. Attachment devices are located on the body of the carrying case, and in certain implementations often can provide flexibility in how the carrying case is configured and used.
US07690533B2
A container for dispensing liquids or gels, where the container includes a light module, a sound module, or both. When the contents of the container are dispensed by the user, light is automatically dispersed inside the container and into the contents to provide a desired visual effect for attraction of consumers to the product.
US07690524B2
A bottle includes a container and a closure device. The closure device includes a threaded cap for closing up the container, a slidable spout for opening and closing the fluid flow path from the container by means of two sealing elements on the spout, a vent check valve for permitting air to rapidly enter the container without passing through the spout and a multi-fold protective cover and, more particularly, to a two-fold protective cover for achieving the leak-proof by forcing the spout to a close position and closing up the vent check valve by a projection extended from the protective cover.
US07690515B2
The present invention is a container rack that locks down the containers to prevent shock and vibration damage to the containers. The device consists of a rack structure, a trombone means which is used to pull the containers forward, a lock down means to hold the containers in place and a closing means which is used to close the lock down means in place.
US07690513B1
Gravel log washer with groups of offset paddles wherein paddles within each group are further offset
A log washer apparatus having two longitudinal shafts. The shaft includes paddles arranged into groups. Some of the groups are aligned about the circumference of the shaft such that each of the paddles in the group extend outward from the shaft at the same circumferential location about the shaft. Some of the groups are offset such that paddles within the offset groups are offset with respect to the adjacent paddles so as to increase fluid flow in the log washer.
US07690488B2
A roller freewheel comprises an outer ring which is configured as a sheet metal part shaped without cutting and has a cylindrical outer surface and an inner surface which is provided with clamping ramps, a plurality of clamping rollers which are sprung against the clamping ramps, and a cage which is arranged fixedly in terms of rotation in the outer ring, is configured as a sheet metal part shaped without cutting and to which springs are fastened which are provided for suspending the clamping rollers.
US07690486B2
A drive mechanism includes an electric motor, a rotor driven by the electric motor, and a worm screw driven by the rotor. The drive mechanism further includes a wheel driven by the worm screw, the wheel transmitting movement of the electric motor to a vehicle closure, and a clutch on the rotor connecting the worm screw to the electric motor or disconnecting the worm screw from the electric motor.
US07690484B2
A braking band with a remarkable capacity for improved cooling, for use in disk-brake disks, comprises two plates coaxial with an axis, facing one another, and spaced apart to form a space in which an air-flow takes place from the axis towards the outer side of the band, the plates having facing surfaces from which pillar-like elements extend, transversely, to connect the plates, the pillar-like elements being distributed in circular rings or rows concentric with the plates so as to be distributed uniformly in the space, those pillar-like elements which are disposed in inside rows of the braking band having rhombic cross-sections. The rhombic cross-sections of the pillar-like elements which are in inside rows of the band are symmetrical with respect to an axis transverse the direction of flow and each element for connection between the plates extends from one plate to the other whilst remaining within the space.
US07690482B2
A screw compressor (20) has a housing having first and second ports along a flow path. A male-lobed rotor has a first rotational axis. A female-lobed rotor has a second rotational axis and is enmeshed with the male-lobed rotor to define a compression path between suction and discharge locations along the flow path. The compressor has a compressor lubrication network having a lubricant outlet port (242) along a low pressure cusp (244). An unloading slide valve element (102) may be along a high pressure cusp (105).
US07690477B2
A vehicular steering system can suppress, even upon a change in a neutral position of a steering wheel, a right and left difference in the behavior of a vehicle by keeping neutral positions of steerable road wheels from the start of control. The system includes a steering mechanism that steers the steerable road wheels of the vehicle through the steering wheel and an auxiliary steering angle superposition mechanism. A steered angle of the steerable road wheels is detected as an absolute angle. The auxiliary steering angle superposition mechanism is controlled by a target auxiliary steering angle. An activation angle setting section sets, at the start of control, the initial values of a steering wheel angle and an auxiliary steering angle as an activation steering wheel angle and an activation auxiliary steering angle by the steered angle and a transmission characteristic between the steering wheel angle and the steered angle.
US07690454B2
A hybrid drive, in particular, for a motor vehicle, includes: an internal combustion engine and a transmission disposed on the output side of the internal combustion engine, which transmission is drivable by the internal combustion engine; and an electric motor associated with the transmission having an electrically driven rotor through which the transmission is additionally drivable. The transmission includes an input shaft that is driven by the internal combustion engine and runs in the longitudinal direction of the transmission, an output shaft to drive a machine disposed on the output side of the transmission, or drive wheels in the case of a vehicle, and a plurality of manually or automatically shiftable gear stages to set the various gear ratios between the input shaft and the output shaft. The electric motor at its longitudinal axis and/or rotational axis of its rotor is attached to the output shaft in parallel or essentially parallel fashion laterally externally to the transmission.
US07690449B2
A drive axle assembly is provided with a reduced part count and improved alignment. The assembly includes a drive axle housing with input and output shafts and an inter-axle differential that is driven by the input shaft. The inter-axle differential is drivingly coupled to the output shaft and divides power between first and second axles. The output shaft is a unitary member and defines a yoke at one end disposed outside of the drive axle housing and restrained against axial movement within the drive axle housing. A bearing set is disposed between the output shaft and the drive axle housing and includes first and second bearing cones and a unitary bearing cup. The bearing cup includes threads that engage corresponding threads in the drive axle housing.
US07690443B2
The present application is directed to an apparatus for forming one or more holes in a wellbore casing, the apparatus comprising a deflector assembly and a drive assembly to drive said deflector assembly, wherein the deflector assembly may be optionally assembled at a surface of the wellbore prior to casing hole formation, and to methods employing the apparatus.
US07690437B2
A method of constructing a well comprising a borehole drilled through underground formations, comprises: positioning at least one device on the outside of the tubular string (e.g. a drill string or casing string), the device being operable to move between first and second configurations; positioning a tubular string in the borehole with the device positioned in the annular space between the tubular string and the borehole wall in its first configuration so as to interact with the tubular string and the borehole while allowing borehole fluid to flow along the annular space and around the device; and operating the device so as to move it from its first configuration to expand into its second configuration in which it substantially fills at least part of the annular space so as to inhibit flow of fluids along the borehole in the space. Apparatus comprises: a string of tubular members; at least one device positioned on the outside of the string, the device being operable to expand between: (i) a first configuration in which, when the tubular string is positioned in the borehole with the device located in the annular space between the tubular string and the borehole wall, interacts with the tubular string and the borehole while allowing borehole fluid to flow along the annular space and around the device; and (ii) a second configuration in which it substantially fills at least part of the annular space so as to prevent flow of fluids along the borehole in the space.
US07690435B2
An apparatus (100) and method for removably mounting a lubricator assembly (106) to a component of the wellhead stack. The component of the wellhead stack is an annular blowout preventer (BOP) (50). Tool and communication conduit lubrication and access to the wellbore without requiring activation of the packing element of the BOP (50).
US07690434B2
There is disclosed an offshore vessel mooring and riser inboarding system (12) for a vessel (10) such as an FPSO or FSO. In one embodiment, the system comprises a first mooring element (16) adapted to be located in an offshore environment (18); a riser (20) adapted to be coupled to the first mooring element; a connector assembly (22) 11 adapted to be mounted on the vessel, the connector assembly comprising a second mooring element (28); and a transfer line (32) adapted to be coupled to the riser; wherein the first and second mooring elements are adapted to be connected to facilitate coupling of the riser and the transfer line; and wherein the connector assembly is adapted to permit relative rotation between the vessel and the first mooring element about three mutually perpendicular axes of rotation. This facilitates weathervaning of the vessel relative to the first mooring element, as well as pitch, roll, heave and surge, under applied wind, wave and/or tidal forces.
US07690433B2
A distributed function control module adapted for use in a modular blowout preventer (BOP) stack for use subsea comprises a housing, adapted to be manipulated by a remotely operated vehicle (ROV) with a stab portion adapted to be received into a BOP stack control module receiver. Control electronics, adapted to control a predetermined function with respect to the BOP stack, are disposed within the housing and connected to one or more controllable devices by a wet mateable connector interface.
US07690424B2
A formation engaging member for use in an open hole anchor (10) is described. The formation engaging member has at least one first open hole surface engaging element (20) for penetrating a surface of an open hole, and at least one second open hole surface engaging element (22) for fractionally interacting with a surface of the open hole to form an interference engagement. A method of anchoring to a formation surface of an open hole and an anchor are also described.
US07690415B2
A window covering lifting control apparatus includes a holding unit, a locating set and a pushbutton. The holding unit has a first spacer and a second spacer formed thereon that are spaced from each other. The spacers have two slots inclining downwards. The first spacer has a strut on one side to be coupled with a spring on an outer side. The locating set includes two gears, two locating rods, two locating heads and a spring assembly to hold the two gears between the spacers. The pushbutton is movably coupled on the strut of the holding unit to control movement of the two gears in the slots. The window lifting control apparatus can be installed in a lower elongated member to control retraction upward or extension downward of the window covering. The two gears of the locating set can engage with and latch a lift cord assembly to provide improved locating effect.
US07690414B2
A window assembly that includes a motorized window shade mechanism. The window assembly includes two reversible motors that are disposed in, and at the top of, the window assembly. The window assembly further includes an opaque shade and a translucent shade. Each shade is independently raised and lowered with the motors by a separate gear and belt system positioned at the sidewalls of the window assembly, which are coupled to each other by rotatable shafts journalled into the bottom of the window. Each gear and belt system is driven by one of the reversible motors.
US07690412B1
A drive axle assembly includes a non-rotating spindle having a cylindrical body defining an internal cavity and an axle shaft assembly mounted within the internal cavity for rotation about an axis. A seal assembly is positioned within the internal cavity to provide a sealed chamber between the axle shaft assembly and the non-rotating spindle. A first air passage is formed within the cylindrical body and includes an air inlet to be in fluid communication with an air supply and an air outlet in fluid communication with the sealed chamber. A second air passage is formed within the axle shaft assembly and receives air input from the sealed chamber and includes an air output to be associated with at least one tire.
US07690407B2
Method and safety device for a breaking saw chain. The safety device includes a protective wall positioned in the vicinity of the drive gear drawing the saw chain that is capable of receiving the movement of the tail of the broken saw chain and guiding the broken saw chain and the tail into the desired direction. The protective wall is moved in phase with a guide bar to hold the protective wall in the correct location during sawing in relation to the saw chain.
US07690402B2
For tying wire material around a bale, a pair of end portions of the loop is held in a substantially mutually parallel orientation. An engaged section of at least one of the end portions is moved about a longitudinal axis of the other end portion of that pair, such that the pair of end portions is twisted into a wire twist between an engagement area and a portion of the loop extending about the bale. During twisting, wire material of at least one of the end portions slips through the engagement area towards the portion of the loop extending about the bale. An implement and twisters for use in such a method are also described.
US07690396B2
A flow control valve for medical liquid is disclosed. The valve has a housing including an inlet, an outlet, and a flow path therebetween. A plurality of flow restrictors are located in the flow path to define a plurality of flow streams of differing flow rates. A flow control member is disposed in the flow path, and has a plurality of discrete apertures in a first region or plane and at least one aperture in a second region or plane spaced apart from the first plane. The flow control member is rotationally movable and defines an annular gap and radial groove which provide fluid communication between the different planes and the outlet regardless of the orientation of the flow control member. The flow control member may be rotated between a first position in which one of the plurality of apertures in the first plane is in communication with one of the flow streams to define a first flow rate through the valve, and a second position in which one of the at least one aperture in the second plane is in communication with a different one of the flow streams to define a second flow rate through the valve different from the first flow rate.
US07690388B2
Novel hair holding devices having first and second pivotally connected body members including hair gripping portions, and methods for improving existing such hair holding devices, in which the improvement involves providing the first and second body members with at least one elastomeric member for biasing the first and second body members into a closed position and for conforming to gathered strands of a user's hair when the hair gripping portions come into contact with gathered strands of a user's hair.
US07690387B2
A tobacco smoking mixture and/or a cigarette wrapper with high-temperature ammonia-release agents therein are provided, wherein the high-temperature ammonia-release agents are present in an amount effective to reduce the cytotoxicity of gas phase or particulate matter formed during smoking of the cigarette. The high-temperature ammonia-release agents are capable of reducing the cyotoxicity of gas phase or particulate matter by evolving ammonia at temperatures greater than about 200° C., wherein the ammonia can interact with the particulate matter. Additionally, the high-temperature ammonia-release agents can be formed by heating an aqueous mixture of an iron precursor compound, an ammonia source compound and an acid.
US07690386B2
A tobacco product is formed by perforated cigar or shell, the shell comprising a sheet of material with an intermediate sheet, the sheet comprising tobacco leaves and/or homogenized tobacco paper. The cigar or shell is packaged for shipment to an end user or consumer. The cigar or shell remains in the rolled, shaped tube form inside the package. After the cigar or shell is removed from the package, a consumer can fill the cigar or shell with crushed tobacco leaves or other tobacco filler material of a favorite blend, thereby eliminating some steps in the making of a “roll-your-own” tobacco product. A liquid can be added to the cigar or shell to moisturize same. The liquid can include flavoring.
US07690384B2
A cigarette making apparatus comprises an application nozzle for applying a flavoring material to a wrapping-paper web supplied continuously to a wrapping machine, a pump for supplying the flavoring material to the application nozzle, and a pump control device for controlling the pump driving speed depending on the wrapping machine operating speed. The pump control device divides the wrapping machine operating speed into a plurality of speed regions and determines an approximation pump characteristic which approximates a relationship between the pump driving speed and the rate of discharge of the flavoring material from the pump in each of the speed regions, in advance, and determines the speed at which the pump should be driven, depending on the wrapping machine operating speed, according to the approximation pump characteristic. Consequently, the flavoring material is applied to the wrapping-paper web in an appropriate amount depending on the wrapping machine operating speed.
US07690379B2
A pressure indicator for positive pressure protection masks, including powered air purifying respirators (PAPRs) that monitors and determines relative air pressure between the internal space of a protection mask and the ambient environment to alert users of negative or threshold level air pressure, and in turn, to ensure safe operation of the protection masks. The pressure indicator, which is incorporated in the mask, alerts users when the air pressure in the mask reaches a critical level by transmitting optical signals, auditory signals, vibrational signals or a combination thereof that are detectable by the user. The optical signals are projected into the user's line of vision either directly or through a head-up display. The pressure indicator may cause the signal to indicate a safe and danger mode, or may cause the signal to indicate only during a danger mode.
US07690374B2
A gas radiation oven range including an outer case (10) which is formed with an upper side opened, having an internal space, a ceramic glass (20) which is covered and combined with an upper end of the outer case (10), a plurality of burner housings (300) which are combined to be contacted with a lower surface of the ceramic glass (20), forms an exhaust passage (F) with the lower surface of the ceramic glass (20), and is integrally combined with a plurality of ports with different sizes, a radiant burner (40) which is combined with a side surface of the respective burner housings (300), for generating a radiant wave, combusting mixed gas and a shared discharge unit which is positioned among the burner housings (300) and combined to be connected to respective exhaust passages (F) which are formed at a side portion of the burner housings (300).
US07690369B2
A fuel pressure controlling device for an engine is provided including a fuel injection device, an ignition device, a catalyst for removing pollutants from engine exhaust. A controller selects a combustion mode from at least a homogeneous combustion mode fuel is injected the intake stroke and the fuel is ignited before compression top dead center. The fuel injection device injects the fuel based on a target fuel pressure according to the selected combustion mode. The controller detects whether or not a request is present for raising the temperature of the catalyst. In the homogenous combustion mode, when a request is present, the target fuel pressure is set to a first target fuel pressure, and when a request is not present, the target fuel pressure is set to a second target fuel pressure, the second target fuel pressure being lower than the first target fuel pressure.
US07690363B2
A vapor fuel recovery system for fuel tanks is provided. The vapor recovery system comprises: a canister that captures vapor fuel expelled from the fuel tank; a vent valve that controls ventilation of vapor fuel from the fuel tank to the canister; and a vent bypass disposed between the canister and the vent valve that controls the flow of vapor fuel from the fuel tank to the on-board recovery canister when a fuel level in the fuel tank is full. The bypass includes a bypass valve and at least one orifice.
US07690350B2
A method for controlling an internal combustion engine with variable valve lift has the following steps: Determining the pressure in the intake manifold; predetermining the pressure in the intake manifold following a changeover of the valve lift; determining a selection criterion for a valve lift to be set; and setting that valve lift at which the higher pressure is reached in the intake manifold, unless the selection criterion requires the use of the valve lift at which the lower pressure is reached in the intake manifold.
US07690344B2
A vehicle includes a direct-start engine and a fuel rail with a threshold fuel pressure, a transmission having a threshold fluid pressure, and a fuel delivery system. The system has a controller, a motor having a shaft, and an integrated pump assembly including a high-pressure (HP) fuel pump and a low-pressure (LP) fluid pump each connected to the shaft. Threshold pressures are maintained during the predetermined engine state, which includes an engine idling and an engine cranking state. A method for providing stop-and-go functionality in a vehicle having a direct-start engine includes detecting a current engine state, rotating a motor shaft to energize a secondary HP fuel pump at a first threshold pressure during engine cranking, and rotating the shaft to energize an LP fluid pump at a second threshold pressure during engine idling and engine cranking. The secondary pumps can also be used when primary pumps are temporarily inoperable.
US07690341B2
An engine intake valve timing control apparatus includes a fuel injection control section, a valve open timing control section, and a valve timing change rate setting section. The fuel injection control section is configured to control a fuel injection quantity of fuel injected from a fuel injector into an intake port of an engine in accordance with an operating condition of the engine. The valve open timing control section is configured to control an open timing of an intake valve to a target open timing. The valve timing change rate setting section sets a change rate at which the open timing of the intake valve is changed from a current open timing to the target open timing when the target open timing is updated, the change rate being set using a parameter relating to a vaporization rate of the fuel adhered to the intake port.
US07690338B2
There is provided a method of starting an internal combustion engine having a combustion chamber and an intake valve which opens during an intake stroke of an engine cycle to allow air to be inducted into the combustion chamber. The method comprises cranking the internal combustion engine with advanced closing timing and a reduced lift of the intake valve without combustion of air and fuel in the combustion chamber from a stroke of the engine cycle prior to a first intake stroke of the combustion chamber since an engine start request, starting combustion of air and fuel in the combustion chamber after the first intake stroke, and retarding closing timing of said intake valve from the advanced closing timing and increasing the valve lift after the combustion is started. Accordingly, air charge in the combustion chamber may increase properly conforming to the engine speed increase caused by the combustion. Therefore, the torque derived from the combustion of the charged and fuel may increase the engine speed moderately after the beginning of the combustion.
US07690333B2
A system is provided that draws heat from an open-loop engine cycle into a closed-loop working fluid circulatory system that utilizes computer-aided feedback mechanisms. The closed-loop working fluid draws engine heat from multiple sources: exhaust stack gases, the engine block, the engine transmission, and the engine headers and exhaust manifold near the valves. Heat exchangers are arranged in an ascending pattern according to the temperature of the heat at each heat generating location of the open-loop engine cycle. A wankel or similar type engine receives the heated working fluid and rotates a shaft connected to a generator to generate electricity. An electrolysis unit is powered by the generated electricity and separates water into hydrogen and oxygen. A reformation unit receives fuel such as diesel and the generated hydrogen to reform the fuel prior to injection into the engine for combustion. Oxygen from hydrolysis is combined with ambient air to increase combustion efficiency and reduce harmful emissions.
US07690332B1
A humane weaning muzzle includes a snout cover, a snout strap and at least two halter straps. The snout cover preferably includes a matrix of straps and cross straps attached to each other. The adjustment strap is attached to snout cover. Each halter strap includes a strap material. One of a loop and hook fastener are formed on one end of the strap material. One of a hook and loop fastener are formed on substantially a middle of the strap material. The strap material is secured to the snout cover. One end of each halter strap is inserted under a halter and secured to substantially a middle of each halter strap. Each end of the adjustment strap is wrapped under the snout of the foal and secured to each other and tightened. The humane weaning muzzle allows the foal to eat hay, graze off the ground and drink water.
US07690327B2
A method of milking an animal involves admitting the animal into a milking box and expelling the animal from the milking box, the milking box comprising a connecting device, such as a robot arm, for automatically connecting a teat cup to a teat of the animal. The step of expelling the animal from the milking box is carried out using the robot arm. An installation for milking an animal is also described, the installation being provided with a milking box for the animal; a robot arm for automatically connecting a teat cup to a teat of the animal; and a device for expelling the animal from the milking box. The device for expelling the animal from the milking box comprises part of the robot arm.
US07690326B2
A system for controlling the coating width of an electrode plate, The system includes: a coating device which ejects a paste at a predetermined width from each of a plurality of slit nozzles toward a fed core substrate to form a coating layer on the surface of the core substrate; a gap controlling device which controls the gap between the slit nozzles of the coating device and the core substrate; a coating width measuring device which measures the width of the coating layer on the surface of the core substrate; and a controlling unit which controls the gap controlling device based on the results obtained by comparing the measured coating width with a predetermined coating width. In this system, the stripe-shaped coating layer is formed without using a masking tape, and the width of the coating layer is controlled with high accuracy.
US07690325B2
Some embodiments of the present invention provide an apparatus and method in which material is deposited upon a surface from an elongated beam having an aperture defined therein through which the material is moved by passive adsorption. The elongated beam can be substantially planar along substantially its entire length, can be oriented at an acute angle with respect to the surface during deposition processes, and can have a length no greater than about 2 mm. In some embodiments, the aperture can be elongated, can extend from a material reservoir to a location short of the terminal end of the elongated beam or through the terminal end of the elongated beam, and can have a portion extending through the thickness of the elongated beam.
US07690311B1
A non-lethal projectile consisting of a solid capsule filled with a flowable payload. The solid capsule comprises a weakened area that ruptures upon impact with a target. The solid capsule also comprises an internal hydrodynamic structure. At the moment of impact, the internal hydrodynamic structure forces the radial movement of the flowable payload, from the center to the periphery, against the weakened area of the solid capsule, facilitating the rupture and reducing the pressure of projectile's point over target's surface.
US07690307B2
An apparatus to mechanically stem (plug) a borehole or blast hole to contain or confine the gases generated by explosives is provided, thus preventing the energy generated by explosives to be released to the atmosphere. An assembly of the mechanical stemming apparatus for mining blasting operations according to the present invention comprises 2 pieces, placed one over the other: a base piece (1) and a central piece (6), and additionally includes two lateral wedge pieces (8) and four supporting pivots (11). The mechanical stemming apparatus according to the present invention and the entire apparatus set form a cylindrical body with a diameter lower than the borehole diameter and a length directly proportional to the diameter and depth of the boreholes or blast holes.
US07690296B2
A method and associated apparatus designed to effectively twist and cut baling wire during the baling process. The apparatus includes a twister assembly that has a plurality of gear-driven twister heads. During the baling process the twister assembly extends from a slide housing so that the twister heads engage and twist adjacent strands of baling wire. The twister assembly then retracts back into the slide housing so that the twisted portion of the baling wire is cut by a cutting assembly attached to the slide housing.
US07690294B2
An improved system and methods useful for the cooking of one or more food items by the application of a non-ambient temperature developed within a temperature retentive element. The temperature retentive element can be sized and shaped to form a cooking box in which cooking at a temperature relative to the non-ambient temperature may proceed and from which the food item, when fully cooked, may be served.
US07690288B2
An electric pulse generator includes a driver having an outer surface, a receiver, and one or more piezoelectric elements disposed between and in electrical contact with the driver and the receiver. The electric pulse generator further includes an explosive material disposed on the outer surface of the driver. A method of making an electrical pulse generator includes providing one or more piezoelectric elements, a driver, a receiver, and an explosive material and operably associating the explosive material with an outer surface of the driver. The method further includes electrically coupling the one or more piezoelectric elements between the driver and the receiver.
US07690283B1
A motor mount assembly for a milling tool, in particular a clamshell lathe, wherein the motor mount assembly has a housing that is secured to a stationary ring of the lathe and a drive gear rotatably journaled in the housing and in operative contact with gearing on a rotatable ring of the lathe that carries a cutting tool. The drive gear is operatively axially supported internally by both the drive shaft of the motor as well as by a portion of the motor mount assembly housing in order to provide a durable, long wearing motor mount assembly.
US07690278B2
A step variable transmission for a motor vehicle has a plurality of forward gear stages and at least one reverse gear stage. The transmission comprising: a drive input shaft arrangement, a drive output shaft arrangement, and a plurality of wheel sets which have loose wheels and shift wheels, wherein the shift wheels are rotatably mounted on a shaft arrangement and can be rotationally fixedly connected to the associated shaft arrangement by means of respective shift clutches.
US07690270B1
Load-measuring transducers utilizing induced-voltage measurement techniques are described. The wiring patterns of such transducers can be configured with a plurality of moveable gauge portions to reduce errors encountered with eccentricities between the transducer gauges, and are preferably configured to reduce interference errors due to wiring patterns thereof.
US07690269B2
There is described a mass flow meter which operates on the Coriolis principle. A measuring tube is mounted in a chamber, which is provided with at least two openings for directing the medium to and from the respective end of the measuring tube. The mounting of the measuring tube is arranged between the two tube ends at an axial distance from them. It is preferably at an oscillation node of the first bending mode. The mounting arranged at an axial distance from the tube ends has the advantage that thermal expansions have virtually no influence on the internal mechanical stress conditions of the measuring tube, and consequently scarcely influence the measurement result. The mass flow meter can be used with particular advantage for gaseous media.
US07690264B2
Apparatus for applying bending load to an axle of an aircraft landing gear. The apparatus comprises a dummy wheel having a dummy wheel bearing; and a load tool having a convex outer surface which is configured to engage the dummy wheel when in use so as to bend the axle via the dummy wheel bearing. The dummy wheel is shaped to enable it to roll over the convex outer surface of the load tool as the axle bends. The load tool has a load tool bearing which permits the load tool to move as it bends the axle. One or more sensors are provided to sense the load applied to the axle; and one or more sensors are provided to sense the response of the axle to the applied load.
US07690259B2
Integrated ultrasonic inspection probes, systems, and methods for inspection of composite assemblies
Apparatus, systems, and methods for inspecting a structure are provided which permit inspection of uniquely shaped structures such as fuselage frames and shear ties. Probes may be constructed from rapid prototyping. Inspection may be performed manually and may use a portable function support system for delivering fluid couplant, controlling transmit and receive functions of the inspection sensors, and delivering immediate visual analysis for an operator. Integrated ultrasonic inspection apparatus, systems, and methods facilitate fast and efficient custom inspection devices and inspecting otherwise difficult-to-inspect structures.
US07690257B2
In a method and a device for testing a weld seam (8), located on the inner surface of a reactor pressure vessel (2), by which the outer circumference of an instrumentation nozzle (4) leading into the interior of this reactor pressure vessel (2) is welded onto the reactor pressure vessel (2), an ultrasound test probe (20) with a linear ultrasound transducer array (30) is inserted into the instrumentation nozzle (4), which ultrasound transducer array (30) is parallel to the central axis (12) of the instrumentation nozzle (4) in terms of its longitudinal direction, and is used to couple a transmitted ultrasound signal (S) into the instrumentation nozzle (4) in the region of the weld seam (8) and to receive a reflected ultrasound signal (R).
US07690250B2
A method for measuring ocean surface currents using a long-range single station high frequency ground wave radar system includes the steps of forming a rectilinear grid based region, dividing the rectilinear grid into a plurality of sub-regions each having a uniform surface current flow therewithin, spanning each sub-region with a predetermined plurality of radial beam lines from the single radar station, dividing each radial beam line into a pre-selected plurality of radial sub-nodes, measuring radial surface current vector projection at each radial sub-node, inputting each radial surface current vector projection into a multiple regression model having two regressors, determining, with the multiple regression model, surface vector components along each of x and y axis, storing the surface vector components determined in step (g) to a database, and editing, with equation of continuity based algorithm, plurality of surface vector components stored in the database.
US07690243B2
The invention relates to a method and an apparatus for measurement of the thickness of thin layers by means of a measurement probe (11) which has a housing (14) which holds at least one sensor element (17) whose longitudinal axis lies in particular on a longitudinal axis (16) of the housing (14), in which at least during the measurement process, a gaseous medium is supplied to a supply opening (21) of the measurement probe (11) on a measurement surface (28), and is supplied via at least one connection channel (24), which is connected to the supply opening (21), to one or more outlet openings (26) which are provided on an end face (29), pointing towards the measurement surface (28), of the measurement probe (11), and in which at least one mass flow, which flows out of one or more outlet openings (26), of the gaseous medium is directed at the measurement surface (28), and in which the measurement probe (11) is held in a non-contacting manner with respect to the measurement surface (28) during the measurement process.
US07690242B2
A lighter device having a flow restrictor and associated methods for manufacturing and testing such lighter device and flow restrictor are described. The flow restrictor may be formed of a porous member to achieve a substantially fixed or varying flame height. The flow restrictor may be tested before or after assembly into a lighter housing by receiving a non-combustible fluid therethrough. The flow rate of the non-combustible fluid may be correlated to the flow rate of a combustible fluid through the flow restrictor to approximate the resultant flame height of a lighter incorporating the tested flow restrictor. The flow restrictor may also be tested by receiving a combustible fluid therethrough prior to assembling the flow restrictor into the lighter housing. In this manner, flow restrictors and corresponding lighter devices may be tested without introducing combustible fluids into such lighter devices prior to shipment. Also, a vacuum may be drawn on a fuel tank of the lighter prior to shipment.
US07690235B2
In a method of cooling and/or lubricating of rolls and/or rolling stock according to which a cooling medium is applied to the rolls from a plurality of nozzles/nozzle rows, on one hand, and for lubrication, on the other hand, base oil is applied to the rolling stock in front of a roll gap, wherein the nozzles/nozzle rows are adjusted separately and independent from each other the cooling medium is applied to the rolls separately from the base oil, and finally, the base oil without water as a base medium is applied directly to the rolling stock over an entire width thereof in a very small amount in comparison with a conventional amount.To this end, media separating means is arranged between the nozzles/nozzle rows for applying cooling medium to the rolls and the nozzles/nozzle rows for applying base oil to the rolling stock.
US07690228B2
A method, a system and a pelt board for the drying of the leather side of pelts from furred animals, in which the pelt board is a hollow distension element, the surface of which has an open structure. The leather side is dried by changing the air within the distension element. The distension element is lockable in a position in which it has a first circumference, and can also assume a position or be force controlled to a position in which it has a circumference which is smaller than the first, which results in a considerably easier removal of the pelt from the pelt board. A quicker, more uniform and more effective drying of the pelts is achieved, so that “black spots” on the leather side are avoided, and the pelt is fixed in its stretched position on the pelt board without the use of clips/staples.
US07690222B2
A glass gob distributor for delivering gobs of molten glass to sections of a glassware forming machine, in accordance with exemplary embodiments of the present disclosure, includes at least one electric motor, a ball screw coupled to the electric motor and a carriage slidable on a carriage shaft and coupled to the ball screw. At least one gear rack is coupled to the carriage and at least one scoop is coupled to the gear rack for rotation around a scoop axis as a function of linear motion of the gear rack and the carriage. A pair of slides are slidably disposed on opposite sides of the carriage and are disconnected from the carriage. A pair of fluid cylinders are disposed adjacent to the slides. The fluid cylinders are responsive to an absence of power at the electric motor for pushing the centering slides toward each other to abut and slidably position the carriage on the carriage shaft, the gear rack and the at least one scoop at a home position. In exemplary embodiments of the disclosure, a plurality of scoops are coupled either to individual associated electric motors through associated gear racks, carriages and ball screws, or are coupled to a single electric motor through one or more gear racks, a single carriage and a single ball screw.
US07690216B2
Disclosed herein is an oil separator for air conditioners that is capable of separating oil from refrigerant. The oil separator comprises a shell having a cylindrical space defined therein, a refrigerant introduction pipe for introducing refrigerant into the shell, a refrigerant discharge pipe for discharging the refrigerant out of the shell, and oil-drop growth accelerating member for accelerating growth of oil drops contained in the refrigerant flowing in the shell.
US07690214B2
A micro-spray cooling system for a plurality of heat sources includes an evaporator contacting the heat sources and comprising a plurality of actuators corresponding to the heat sources, a condenser connected to the evaporator, and at least one driving circuit connected to the actuators to drive some or all of the actuators sequentially according to a predetermined timing to cool the heat sources. The refrigerant in the evaporator is sprayed by the actuators to thermally contact the heat sources, evaporated by heat from the heat sources, condensed in the condenser and re-enters the evaporator.
US07690210B2
In an air-conditioner control unit, when pollen mode control is set by a vehicle occupant to perform the pollen mode control that can provide a defogging effect while maintaining the pollen removal effect, the opening of an air inlet door is forcibly set to an inside-air introduction mode (S330) when the following two conditions hold: ambient temperature Tam is higher than a threshold (5 to 6° C.) set in a low-temperature region (S320), and a compressor system is able to operate normally without causing an abnormal pressure (S330). If even one of these conditions does not hold, the opening of the air inlet door is not forcibly set to the inside-air introduction mode, and the air inlet door is operated as in normal control. In this way, in the pollen mode control, since the pollen removal effect in the inside-air introduction mode is enabled only when the ambient air is relatively high, the occurrence of windshield fogging can be suppressed.
US07690207B2
A crack-resistant floating collar mounting arrangement is provided comprising a collar mounted between spaced-apart mounting flanges, the flange being fixed to a dome from an outer surface unexposed to the hot combustor temperatures.
US07690206B2
A system for fastening the end of a gas turbine engine shaft engaged inside a sleeve supported by a bearing is disclosed. The system includes a nut that is screwed at one end inside the sleeve, and is connected by a split annular ring with the shaft at the other end.
US07690203B2
A gas turbine engine fuel nozzle assemblage (10) comprises a nozzle outer body (25) comprising a premixing section (23) and an interiorly disposed first fuel passageway (22) to supply fuel to the premixing section (23), and more interiorly a central channel (33) comprising an inlet (30) from an air supply, an aperture (19) at an upstream end to receive a lance (18), and a downstream-disposed annular bearing surface (21) adapted to slidingly engage the lance, the fuel nozzle assemblage adapted so that the lance may be alternatably selected as any interchangeable one of a gas lance, an oil lance, and a non-fueling dummy lance. Between the lance and the central channel (33) is formed a cooling fluid passageway (24) that is in fluid communication with the inlet (30) and one or more cooling fluid passageway exits (60). The interchangeability of the lances (18) is effective to provide a desired flexible functionality to said fuel nozzle assemblage. The architecture of the fuel nozzle assemblage (10) may be utilized for higher level architectures of benefit to gas turbine engine facilities.
US07690198B2
A drivetrain for use in a mobile vehicle is disclosed. The drivetrain may have a housing, a first hydraulic pump connected to the housing, and a second hydraulic pump connected to the housing. The second hydraulic pump may be in axial alignment with the first hydraulic pump. The drivetrain may also have a first motor fluidly connected to the first hydraulic pump, and a second motor fluidly connected to the second hydraulic pump. The first and second motors may have an axial direction substantially perpendicular to the axial alignment of the first and second hydraulic pumps.
US07690197B2
A hydraulic drive apparatus comprises a main pump for pumping hydraulic fluid through a hydraulic load, a charge pump for continuously pumping pressurized hydraulic fluid to the main pump, and a hydraulic fluid cooler. At least a portion to the hydraulic fluid pumped through the hydraulic load is returned under pressure to the charge pump and the charge pump pumps the pressurized hydraulic fluid through the hydraulic fluid cooler to the main pump.
US07690188B2
An engine combination for generating forces with a gas turbine engine generating force, and an internal combustion engine provided in the combination as an intermittent combustion engine generating force having an air intake, there being an air transfer duct connected from a compressor in the gas turbine engine to the air intake to transfer compressed air thereto.
US07690181B2
A method for operating a spinning machine with plural spinning stations (1), each case having a take-off roller device (6, 10, 14) for drawing a yarn (9) from a spinning device (2) and a sensor mechanism (26) for checking piecings. When starting a piecing, the theoretical conveying length of the yarn is determined based on the surface speed of the rollers (10, 14), until the piecing reaches the sensor mechanism (26). The deviation of the theoretical conveying length from a desired yarn length, corresponding to the spacing between the spinning device (2) and the sensor mechanism (26), is detected. The deviation is compared with a preadjustable limit value of the permissible deviation. If the limit value is passed, this indicates intolerable wear of the pressure roller (14) and produces a signal.
US07690180B2
A sewing thread comprising a first yarn that is a filament yarn made or a fire resistant polymer and a second yarn that is a synthetic and/or natural yarn. The sewing thread may also contain a third yarn that is a synthetic and/or natural yarn. The first, second, and third yarns each have a first twist in the same direction. The first, second, and third yarns are then combined to form the sewing thread using a second twist which is in the opposite direction of the first twist. No bonding agent is used in the sewable, fire resistant thread.
US07690168B2
A clip for attaching the end of a grid tee to a wall angle. The clip, in various forms, is arranged to frictionally lock between the hem of the horizontal leg of the wall angle and the vertical leg. The clip, typically, has a pair of opposed open hems forming channels in which the flange of the tee end is received to join the tee to the clip. The clip can be elongated horizontally to accommodate movement of the grid during seismic activity. The clip can be used to trim the edges of a ceiling island and can be made to accommodate angular intersections of the grid with a wall or island edge.
US07690159B1
Relocatable personal and/or pet safety shelters for protecting occupants from dangerous conditions such as those from hurricanes and tornadoes. The shelters can include metal wall and ceiling panels of approximately 10 gage to approximately 12 gage thick and be able to withstand winds of up to approximately 250 miles per hour or greater, and be able to withstand a projectile such as 2 inch by 4 inch wood member shot at approximately 100 miles per hour from penetrating inside. The shelter can have a length of approximately 60 inches, a width of approximately 30 inches, a height of approximately 55 inches, with a total weight of up to approximately 940 pounds. The shelter can have fixed bench seats along opposite sides of the door from each other, and be attached in a fixed horizontal orientation above the floor by elongated L-shaped brackets that are attached to the walls be removable fasteners. The bench seats can also be attached by hinges so that the bench seats can have folded up positions adjacent to side walls and can fold down to horizontal positions to allow occupants to sit thereon. A fold down table can be included to fold down between the two bench seats when being used. A safety window such as plexiglass, can be formed in the door to allow the occupants to see outside environmental conditions. The shelter can be fastened to a concrete pad base, or driveway or concrete floor and the like, both inside and outside of a garage, a home, a trailer, and the like.
US07690153B2
An emergency door opening apparatus for use on an aerospace vehicle for moving a door of the vehicle from a closed position to an open position. The apparatus includes a fluid cylinder (16) and piston (18) operatively connected to the door and to the vehicle and a supply or gas generating chemicals (24) which, when ignited, are operable to rapidly generate and supply to the fluid cylinder (16) a sufficient amount of gas to move the fluid cylinder (16) and piston (18) to effect opening of the door.
US07690152B2
An opening and closing member control system includes a rotation sensing device, which outputs a pulse signal synchronously to a movement of a window glass, and a controller, which senses pinching of an object by an opening and closing member based on the pulse signal. The controller has leaning stored data Δωm based on the pulse signal. The controller computes a rotational speed difference Δω at a current position of the window glass based on the pulse signal while the window glass is driven in a closing direction. The controller computes a difference between the rotational speed difference Δω and leaning stored data Δωm in such a manner that the controller determines whether the pinching of the object based on a comparison between the difference and a pinching determining threshold value β.
US07690141B2
An animal tag comprising, a penetrating component (3) having two ear penetrating members (9) joined by a strip of intermediate material (13), a complementary component (15) having a locking portion (17) for each penetrating member, and ramp means (21) for each locking portion, wherein the arrangement is such that the ear penetrating members are designed to be passed through the ear (33) of an animal and to lock onto the locking portions to sandwich the ear in a gap (28) between the penetrating component and complementary component and the ramp means are arranged to co-operate with the skin penetrating members to vary the size of the gap whereby to provide a range of gap sizes to accommodate varying ear thicknesses and/or growth of the animal.
US07690138B2
In one aspect of the invention a trenching machine for degrading natural and man-made formations, comprising a plurality of roller assemblies exteriorly mounted to a trenching boom or wheel. The rollers comprising a plurality of pointed inserts radially arranged along the wheel's outer diameter. The inserts are adapted to degrade the formation when the boom or wheel is activated.
US07690137B2
A device for connecting a wear part to a support thereof on materials handling equipment for public works machines, comprises a key placed in an axial alignment with regard to an elastically deformable sleeve placed in part of an adapter. The key has a key foot and a key head on either side and opposite ends of a body. The key head is arranged with a part forming an off-centered seat. The key foot comprises an anchoring element for temporarily penetrating into the elastically deformable sleeve. Rotation of the key causes its misalignment with regard to its initial axis and the tight securing of the key, either in the sleeve by anchoring, or against metal parts of the tooth and of the adapter on differentiated support zones.
US07690136B2
A tooth system for use in an earthmoving device, includes a tooth and an adapter onto which the tooth is mounted in a detachable fashion, the tooth including a longitudinally extending tooth web, a longitudinally extending tooth base and a longitudinally extending tooth head at a distance from the tooth base, the tooth base and tooth head also extending transversely with respect to the web. The adapter includes an adapter base intended to be fixed onto an earthmoving device, such as onto the teeth bars of a draghead, and an adapter head, a longitudinally extending undercut cavity being defined between the adapter base and the adapter head, wherein the tooth base is slidably fitted within the undercut cavity and wherein the adapter head is slidably fitted between the tooth base and the tooth head for mounting or dismounting the tooth with respect; to the front end of the adapter.
US07690126B2
A measuring tool for use particularly in carpentry combines the features of a square, a level and a bevel tool into a single device. The measuring tool includes a handle which supports a slide rule at one end and a pitch slide which can be adjustably positioned within the handle through the advancement and retraction of a thumb bolt into the handle. The thumb bolt may be advanced by either turning the thumb bolt and/or advancing the thumb bolt against a spring biased ratcheting mechanism. The thumb bolt may be retracted either by turning and/or by disengagement of the spring biased ratcheting mechanism.
US07690125B2
A construction layout device comprising a body having a front face, rear face and two side faces; at least one base plate fastened to the underside of said body and providing support therefor atop a worksurface; a handle fastened atop said body, said handle having one termination proximate to said front face and a second termination proximate to said rear face; a first protrusion fastened to either said front face or one of said side faces, said protrusion having a through bore, said through bore normal to said worksurface; and at least one adjustable pin inserted in said through bore for holding a chalk line or other layout means.
US07690118B2
A bar steel cutting tool in which a fixed blade body and a rotary blade body that is capable of rotating around a first shaft, by operating a handle, are provided at the front end of a tool base for shearing bar steel with concave blades formed on outer peripheries of the fixed blade body and the rotary blade body. The handle is so constructed that the front end of a proximal portion of the handle thereof is supported by a second shaft at a position above the tool base and equipped with an elongated hole extending obliquely backwards from the second shaft. The rotary blade body has an arm portion extending backwards, and forms branch portions which nip both the right and left sides of the proximal portion of the handle at the rear end thereof.
US07690117B2
In a shaving apparatus (1) with a housing (2) and with a short-hair cutting device (30) projecting out of housing (2) and with a long-hair cutting device (36, 37) projecting out of housing (2), a common carrying device (45) is provided for the cutting devices (30, 36, 37), wherein the carrying device (45) is adjustable for height relative to the housing (2), so that all the cutting devices (30, 36, 37) can be adjusted for height together, and wherein there is a drive connection to a motor (16) of the shaving apparatus (1) in each operating position of the cutting devices (30, 36, 37) and consequently all the cutting devices (30, 36, 37) are drivable in each operating position of the cutting devices (30, 36, 37).
US07690115B2
A method is provided for making a multi-fluid cartridge for holding multiple fluids in segregated containment localities. The cartridge body contains fluid supply paths in fluid flow communication with the containment localities. A nozzle plate is attached to a device side of each of a plurality of defined ejection head substrates on a semiconductor wafer. Each of the ejection head substrates has a fluid supply side and two or more fluid flow paths therein for supplying fluid from the supply side to the device side thereof. The fluid flow paths in the ejection head substrates have a flow path density of greater than about 1.0 flow paths per millimeter. The wafer is diced to provide a plurality of micro-fluid ejection device structures. A circuit device is attached to the device side of each of the substrates. An adhesive is stencil printed with a bond line density of at least about 1.2 mm−1 on the micro-fluid ejection device structures or on the cartridge body. At least one of the micro-fluid ejection device structures and attached circuit is adhesively bonded to the cartridge body for flow of fluid from the containment localities to the device side thereof.
US07690114B2
Disclosed is a tube made of a profile rolled metal product, in particular for use in heat exchangers, a rolled metal product and a method of producing the same. The tube includes a first wall and a second wall forming two opposing sides of the tube, and a plurality of reinforcing structures connecting the first and second walls and forming longitudinal passages between them. Each reinforcing structure is formed by a longitudinal ridge on the first wall projecting towards the second wall and a longitudinal ridge on the second wall protecting towards the first wall. The ridges are joined to each other at their sides.
US07690105B2
A method for conserving space in a circuit or on a printed circuit board by integrating a plurality of electronic components so that the plurality of electronic components collectively take up a smaller amount of space on a substrate than the plurality of electronic components would if the plurality of electronic components were not integrated.
US07690089B2
The reverse opening type slide fastener has a separable bottom end stop including upper and lower sliders, wherein a stopper for preventing the lower slider from slipping off is provided at the bottom end of a box pin. A first engaging portion is formed on an opposite side edge opposite to an insert pin of the box pin and a second engaging portion is formed on an opposite side edge opposite to the box pin of the insert pin to position the insert pin in a downward direction when the second engaging portion engages the first engaging portion. A projecting portion which makes contact with the inner face of the blade of the upper slider to suppress a free sliding of the upper slider, is formed on at least any one of front and rear side faces opposite to the inner face of the blade of the upper slider of the box pin.
US07690083B2
The description is directed to a snap fastening for fast mounting of fittings such as socket wrench latches, swivel lever latches, hinge parts in openings in a thin wall, comprising a head part which is to be arranged on one, outer side of the thin wall and which overlaps the outer rim of the opening, and a body part which proceeds from the head part and projects through the opening in the mounted position, and holding elements which project from the body part and are flexible in direction of its outer surface, the free end of these holding elements being provided with a first inclined surface (run-in bevel) such that the holding element is pushed back in a spring-loaded manner by the opening edge and with a second inclined surface (stop bevel) for supporting the body part without play on the rim or edge of the opening of the other, inner side of the thin wall, which second inclined surface is substantially perpendicular to the first inclined surface. According to the invention, the body part and holding element and spring are separate parts.
US07690080B1
An apparatus is disclosed having a first wedge having a first side and a second side oriented at some angle relative to the first side, and a second wedge glidably connected to the first wedge, having a first side and a second side oriented at some angle relative to the first side. The first wedge glides relative to the second wedge to stop the door before the door stop reaches a maximum length of travel.
US07690079B2
A head (10) for a suction cleaner is described. The head (10) including: a lower housing portion (12); an upper housing portion (14); and a rotatably mounted brush bar (26) mounted within the housing portions (12, 14). The upper housing portion (14) is pivotable relative to the lower housing portion (12) between a closed position for use and an open position in which the brush bar (26) is exposed from above and the front.
US07690075B2
A central vacuum cleaning system 3 has a central vacuum unit 17 with a motor 10, a motor compartment 19, and a vacuum chamber 25. The system 3 also has a control circuit 1 for controlling power to the motor 10, and one or more airborne contaminant sensors 15 for sensing contaminants within the system 3. The sensors 15 may be located in pipes 31 motor compartment 19, vacuum chamber 25 and hose handle 34. Vacuum air may be drawn through aperture 37 in wall valve 38.
US07690071B1
A plate for a brush apparatus for a street sweeper has an alignment hole which is used to align a brush segment for securing the brush segment to the plate. A clamp assembly moves downwardly to allow a used brush segment to be removed and moves upwardly to secure a brush segment to the plate. Rotation of a bolt, the head of which is on the top of the plate, moves the clamp assembly upwardly and downwardly. An alignment hole in the brush segment is aligned with the alignment hole in the plate. A pin on the clamp assembly extends into the alignment hole in the brush segment. Shelf elements on the bottom of the plate help hold brush segments.
US07690063B2
Methods and apparatuses consistent with the present invention provide for improved cleaning while minimizing mechanical damage to clothes in automatic washer cycles using time-varying wash chamber oscillations. An automatic washer has a wash chamber with a central axis and is rotatable about the central axis. Items are loaded into the wash chamber. Wash liquid is supplied into the wash chamber. The wash chamber is oscillated about the central axis by time-varying oscillations.
US07690061B2
A method for controlling a laundering process includes determining a concentration of a detergent within a wash fluid during at least one cycle of an article laundering process, and dynamically adjusting at least one characteristic of the laundering process based at least in part upon the determined concentration of the detergent. An apparatus for controlling a laundering process includes a fluid chamber to contain a wash fluid, a sensor coupled to the fluid chamber to determine a detergent concentration within the wash fluid, and a controller coupled to the sensor and configured to dynamically adjust at least one characteristic of the laundering process based at least in part upon the determined detergent concentration.
US07690051B2
A harness type safety belt absorbs dropping shocks to a user who accidentally falls from an elevated position. If the user fails to apply a rope hook to a life line and falls from the elevated position, an air bag in a mounting body inflates to absorb the dropping shock to reduce the dropping impact applied to the user. If the user falls with the rope hook connected to the life line, the rope suspends the user. The body of the user is supported by a waist belt, shoulder belts and thigh belts. Therefore a tension applied by the rope to the body of the user is dispersed to each of the belts so the body of the user is stably supported.
US07690050B2
An apparatus to reduce the effect of coughing or sneezing is disclosed. The apparatus includes a pad having a configuration that conforms to a general outline of a person's nose and mouth region. The pad includes a bottom having a first side and an opposing second side, an absorbent material disposed on the first side of the bottom to receive byproducts of a cough or a sneeze, and a peripheral wall extending from the bottom substantially upward and around the periphery of the bottom. The peripheral wall is configured to prevent escape of the byproducts from the pad.
US07694341B2
A digital rights management system permits an application owner to cause code to be injected into the application's run-time instruction stream so as to restrict execution of that application to specific hardware platforms. In a first phase, an authorizing entity (e.g., an application owner or platform manufacturer) authorizes one or more applications to execute on a given hardware platform. Later, during application run-time, code is injected that performs periodic checks are made to determine if the application continues to run on the previously authorized hardware platform. If a periodic check fails, at least part of the application's execution string is terminated—effectively rendering the application non-usable. The periodic check is transparent to the user and difficult to circumvent.
US07694334B2
A digital “baton” is provided from a firewall or other gateway, or other network device, to a device B outside the firewall, when a device A, which is inside the firewall, requests information from the device B. The device B may pass the digital baton to subsequent electronic devices that may respond to the request using the digital baton to send messages or information through the firewall to the device A. The firewall authenticates and filters the messages based on authentication of the batons contained within the messages.
US07694330B2
The present invention provides a flexible, tamper-resistant authentication system, or personal authentication device (PAD), which can support applications in authentication, authorization and accounting. The PAD stores at least one public key associated with a certificate authority (CA) and receives one or more digital certificates, which may be authenticated based on the stored CA public keys. The PAD outputs a service key that, depending on the application, may be used to gain access to a controlled space, obtain permission for taking a certain action, or receive some service. The operation of the PAD and the nature of the service key may be determined by digital certificates that it receives during operation. Using a stored PAD private key that is kept secret, the PAD may perform a variety of security-related tasks, including authenticating itself to a user, signing service keys that it generates, and decrypting content on received digital certificates.
US07694324B2
The present invention provides for rendering graphics/image data at an electronic device that typically has limited resources. A video data steam is received at an electronic device, the video data stream including either user interface information or slideshow presentation data coded in a video codec format. A video processor of the electronic device is used to decode at least a portion of the video data stream into video frame data. A portion of the user interface or slideshow presentation is then displayed as video from data on a display of the electronic device.
US07694321B1
A system and method for providing two modes of operation for a program guide and a video display depending on the position of a highlight or cursor. When the cursor or highlight is moved to a channel name/number grid, the video display will display program content of the program currently being received by the highlighted channel. On the other hand, when the cursor or highlight is moved to a program grid, the content of the video window does not change.
US07694312B2
A method and system for interconnecting peripherals, processor nodes, and hardware devices to a data network to produce a network bus providing OS functionality for managing hardware devices connected to the network bus involves defining a network bus driver at each of the processor nodes that couples hardware device drivers to a network hardware abstraction layer of the processor node. The network bus can be constructed to account for the hot-swappable nature of the hardware devices using a device monitoring function, and plug and play functionality for adding and, removing device driver instances. The network bus can be used to provide a distributed processing system by defining a shared memory space at each processor node. Distributed memory pages are provided with bus-network-wide unique memory addresses, and a distributed memory manager is added to ensure consistency of the distributed memory pages, and to provide a library of functions for user mode applications.
US07694306B2
Computational load is balanced across a plurality of processors. Source code subtasks are compiled into byte code subtasks whereby the byte code subtasks are translated into processor-specific object code subtasks at runtime. The processor-type selection is based upon one of three approaches which are 1) a brute force approach, 2) higher-level approach, or 3) processor availability approach. Each object code subtask is loaded in a corresponding processor type for execution. In one embodiment, a compiler stores a pointer in a byte code file that references the location of a byte code subtask. In this embodiment, the byte code subtask is stored in a shared library and, at runtime, a runtime loader uses the pointer to identify the location of the byte code subtask in order to translate the byte code subtask.
US07694305B2
An embodiment of a method of controlling access to a computing resource within a shared computing environment begins with a first step of measuring performance parameters for workloads accessing the computing resource to determine a performance parameter vector for the workloads. The method continues with a second step of estimating a controller function for the computing resource by analysis of recent performance parameters and recent throughputs. The controller function comprises a mathematical operation which takes an input and provides an output. In a third step, the method compares the performance parameter vector to a reference performance parameter vector to determine an error parameter. In a fourth step, the method applies the controller function to the error parameter to determine a target throughput for each of the workloads. The method concludes with a fifth step of adjusting access to the computing resource for each work load having a throughput limit different from about the target throughput by reducing or increasing the throughput limit for the workload to about the target throughput.
US07694301B1
A method for supporting input/output for a virtual machine. The method includes the step of executing virtual machine application instructions, wherein the application instructions are executed using micro architecture code of a processor architecture. An I/O access is received from the virtual machine application. Virtual memory protection is used to generate an exception, wherein the exception is caused by the I/O access. A single step mode is entered to perform the I/O access using a host operating system. State data for the virtual machine application is updated in accordance with the I/O access. Subsequently, execution of the virtual machine application is resumed.
US07694294B2
The usefulness of task templates can be maintained in a number of ways. Task templates can be updated on a client server from a remote task update server by initiating communication with the remote task update server, selecting a task template from a list of available task templates presented by the remote task update server, and downloading the selected task template to the client server in a format defined by a schema. Task templates can be updated on a client server by receiving a request from the client server, presenting a task template based on the request, receiving a selection of the task template, and transmitting the task template to the client server in a format defined by a schema. Task templates can also be managed by downloading task templates, assigning group names, and storing the downloaded task templates in a database.
US07694293B2
Update package catalog for update package transfer between generator and content server in a network
A network wherein a generator is communicatively coupled to an update store or repository employs an update package container or catalog (UPC) that may be used to save information, using an XML format. The UPC may comprise update packages for one or more devices, and one or more transitions of versions for each device. The UPC may also comprise metadata information and security information associated with each the update packages. The complete update packages and associated metadata may be incorporated into an UPC, or external references to the update packages may be provided.
US07694286B2
An apparatus for detecting base-register usage conflicts in computer code includes a parsing module configured to parse source code, an identification module configured to identify statements in the source code that reference a base register for address resolution according to base-displacement form, and a determination module configured to determine whether a base register referenced by one statement matches the base register referenced by another. If two statements do reference the same register, an apparatus and method in accordance with the invention may notify a user such that corrective action may be taken.
US07694277B2
A client or Web application assembly or group of assemblies is bound to a version of shared assemblies associated with a particular targeted execution environment. The targeted execution environment (and thus the version of shared assemblies associated with it) may be selected or detected. A file such as a configuration file is automatically modified. The selected or detected execution environment may be the same as or different than the local version. The client or Web assembly is automatically bound to the targeted shared assemblies. A user interface enables the selection of a particular execution environment. Alternatively, a user interface informs of the detected targeted execution environment and enables the reconfiguration of the Web assembly. This invention provides a mechanism and process for maintaining legacy software after a new software development tool is installed, without deploying a new version of shared assemblies.
US07694258B1
Some embodiments of the invention provide a method for inserting several fills in an integrated circuit (“IC”) layout. The method identifies a set of potential fills in a region of an IC layout, where the set of potential fills has a first fill size, wherein the first fill size is from a set of fill sizes. The method specifies a halo around each potential fill in the set of potential fills. For each potential fill, the method determines whether the specified halo overlaps with a foreign object in the region of the layout. For each potential fill, the method specifies a legal fill in the region of the IC layout if the specified halo does not overlap with a foreign object in the region of the IC layout. The method inserts at least one legal fill in the region of the IC layout. In some embodiments, the halo is a spacing halo.
US07694253B2
One embodiment of the present invention provides a system that automatically generates an input sequence for a circuit design using mutant-based verification. During operation, the system receives a description of the circuit design. Next, the system determines a target value for a control signal in the description and a mutant value for the control signal. The system then determines if an input sequence exists for the circuit design that stimulates the control signal to the target value and causes the effects of the target value and the effects of the mutant value to reach an observation point in the circuit such that the effects of the target value and the effects of the mutant value differ at the observation point. If such an input sequence exists, the system then simulates operation of the circuit design using the input sequence. During simulation, the system generates two sets of signal outputs for the circuit design. The first set of signal outputs is affected by the target value for the control signal, while the second set of signal outputs is affected by the mutant value for the control signal.
US07694247B2
A program-controlled arrangement for the identification of ESD and/or latch-up weak points in the design or in the concept of an integrated circuit comprises a pre-processor, which processes first data about the description of the integrated circuit, second data about already ESD-characterized circuit parts of the integrated circuit, and third data which contain information about ESD test standards. A simulator device is connected downstream of the pre-processor which has a simulator which, by using the fourth and fifth data generated by the pre-processor, performs an ESD simulation of the integrated circuit, which has a monitoring controller for controlling the ESD simulation sequence in the simulator. An analysis device is connected downstream of the simulator device, which performs an evaluation of the sixth data generated in the simulator device with regard to their physical validity and meaningfulness, and marks the simulation runs having physically relevant ESD failure events.
US07694244B2
A method and apparatus for modeling and cross correlation of design predicted criticalities include a feedback loop where information from the manufacturing process is provided to cross correlation engine for optimization of semiconductor manufacturing. The information may include parametric information, functional information, and hot spots determination. The sharing of information allows for design intent to be reflected in manufacturing metrology space; thus, allowing for more intelligent metrology and reduces cycle time.
US07694241B1
Automated design process and method with set of syntactic elements compensates for inability to represent voltage island connection of multi-rail cells in RTL source files in traditional design process which inhibits development of design automation methods and causes hardship and risk of failure to simulate, synthesize, perform physical design or formally verify a semiconductor chip design implemented with multi-rail.
US07694240B2
Certain embodiments of the present invention provide methods and systems for hanging protocol generation using gesture recognition. Certain embodiments provide a method for creating a hanging protocol based on gesture input in a clinical environment. The method includes specifying a hanging protocol specification using gesture-based input. The method also includes translating the gesture-based input into a hanging protocol. The method further includes facilitating display of clinical information based on the hanging protocol. Certain embodiments provide a gesture detection system. The system includes a sensor surface configured to detect gesture-based input made on the sensor surface. The gesture-based input specifies a hanging protocol layout. The system also includes a processor configured to identify the gesture-based input and translate the gesture to a corresponding hanging protocol definition for display of image and clinical data.
US07694237B2
A method and an apparatus for using menu functions of an electronic device are presented. The electronic device provides the menu functions in a menu layer structure that comprises a top menu layer and at least one lower menu layer. One of the lower menu layers is a bottom menu layer. The top menu layer overlaps at least partially the lower menu layers. A user of the electronic device selects a menu layer to be provided as a top menu layer from the lower menu layers by giving a first command and the user selects a function to be performed from the top menu layer by giving a second command.
US07694235B2
A integrated content guide for multiple sources is provided with hyper-text type links to allow for the selection of various programs. The hyper-text links are provided for a transmitted and then stored digital bit stream. This allows for the embedding within the content guide what could be additional commercial information. The embedding may also be as to additional information for other related television or radio shows or the like. Information can be additional television shows, related information or activities on on-line services or automatic telephone ordering of products or services being displayed.
US07694232B2
A method and apparatus are provided for a user of a mobile wireless communications device to have the option of viewing security status messages in a large or small format depending upon the user's preferences, form factor of the mobile communications device, or the like. In accordance with an exemplary aspect of the invention, a user may opt to display status icons on one row of a display and include an abbreviated text associated with each icon that is displayed when a particular icon is highlighted by the user. If no icon is highlighted by the user, the most important status text (determined based on predetermined criteria) is displayed. The user has the option of switching to a large status display to view additional information relating to the status icons.
US07694219B2
A tree is used for representing relationships between various entities and, in an embodiment, may be used for conducting transactions. In an embodiment, the tree may be dynamically updated at run time and/or each time an agent accesses the tree by, for example, conducting a transaction or requesting new information. An application running on a server may be used for accessing a database and generating a display language tree (which may be a tree written in a display language such as Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) or Extensible Markup Language (XML)). The application sends the display language tree to the agent's appliance where the display language tree is displayed. In an embodiment, nodes having different interrelationships, such as aggregation relationships and association relationships, may be handled differently from one another even if the same type of parent/child relationship is displayed in an image of the tree to the agent.
US07694215B2
A method for providing sponsorship for a directory comprises permitting a search of the directory. The method further comprising displaying a search result on a page and incorporating a designated web page of a sponsor on the same page as the search result.
US07694205B2
A method and apparatus for providing a read channel having combined parity and non-parity post processing is disclosed. A post-processor combines parity and non-parity post processing to make both parity and non-parity corrections so that error events that cannot be detected by parity may be corrected. Non-parity detectable error events are only kept for consideration if their likelihood is above a set threshold.
US07694203B2
Embodiments of an integrated circuit that includes a debug circuit are described. This debug circuit is configured to test an asynchronous circuit by performing analog measurements on asynchronous signals associated with the asynchronous circuit, and includes a triggering module configured to gate the debug circuit based on one or more of the asynchronous signals. This triggering module has a continuous mode of operation and a single-shot mode of operation. A timing module within the debug circuit has a timing range exceeding a pre-determined value, and is configured to provide signals corresponding to a first time base or signals corresponding to a second time base. Furthermore, control logic within the debug circuit is configured to select a mode of operation and a given time base for the debug circuit, which is either the first time base or the second time base.
US07694199B2
A process initializes the state of an output memory circuit of a scan cell located at the boundary of a logic circuit within an integrated circuit. Data is scanned into an input memory circuit of the cell while maintaining the cell in a mode providing normal operation of the logic circuit. The cell is placed in a test mode that disables normal operation of the logic circuit. The data scanned into the input memory circuit is transferred into the output memory circuit simultaneous with the placing the cell in the test mode. A transmission gate between the logic circuit and the output memory circuit and a transmission gate between the input memory circuit and the output memory circuit effect the changes between normal operation and test modes.
US07694194B2
A highly reliable semiconductor device includes, for example, a memory circuit MEM such as a multiport RAM and a BIST circuit (BIST[A] and BIST[B]) for carrying out a test for each of the ports PO[A] and PO[B] of the MEM, as well as pointers PNT0[A] to PNT3[A] and PNT0[B] to PNT3[B] corresponding to the PO[A] and PO[B], respectively. Each of the BIST[A] and BIST[B] manages plural respective segments SEG0 to SEG3 obtained by dividing the MEM and the PNT0[A] to PNT3[A] are provided for those SEG0 to SEG3, respectively. For example, the BIST[A], upon accessing SEG0, writes ‘1’ in PNT0[A] while the BIST[B] refers to the value in this PNT0[A], thereby its access to SEG0 can be avoided. Consequently, each port can execute a complicated test pattern asynchronously.
US07694190B2
An administrator node (130) adjusts a trustworthy-measure associated with nodes (110) that are suspected of unauthorized modifications of content material. The original provider of the content material to a network binds an identifying code to it. Upon receiving the material from a source node (110), a target node (120) computes an associated code for the received material. If the computed code and the identifying code differ, the material is determined to be modified, and a discrepancy report is submitted to the administrator node (130). The administrator node (130) effects a penalty against the root source if the modification is confirmed; or against the target node (120) if the discrepancy report is unfounded. The penalties include downgrading of the trustworthiness-measure associated with each node, and these trustworthiness-measures are available for use by potential target nodes in their selection of preferred source nodes.
US07694187B2
A method of implementing a circumvention and recovery system comprising conveying peripheral identifiers to a controller, and determining a level of susceptibility of a peripheral to select events based on the peripheral identifier. The method further includes controlling each peripheral based on the level of susceptibility of the peripheral during detection of a select event.
US07694183B2
User input defines transmission filter rules to be met when sending an error report to a support provider. User input also defines collection filter rules to be met when including failure data within an error report. Error reports corresponding to crash failures at clients are filtered with the transmission filter rules to determine which of the error reports to send to the support provider, and each error report to be sent to the support provider is further filtered to remove any failure data that fails to satisfy the collection filter rules. Each error report that satisfies the transmission filter rules, along with the failure data satisfying the collection filter rules, is sent to the support provider for analysis. Standard and or custom failure responses corresponding to the failures at the clients may be retrieved and sent to the clients in accordance with the collection filter rules.
US07694173B1
A technique manages the addition of disks to a volume of a storage system. A disk addition procedure is encapsulated into a DISKADD object conforming to a configuration management framework used to implement a RAID subsystem of the storage system. The DISKADD object is responsible for determining a set of available disks required to satisfy a disk addition request issued by an operator through a user interface of a storage operating system executing on the storage system. Furthermore, the DISKADD object is responsible for monitoring the state of the disks, including preparation/initialization of the disks (e.g., disk zeroing) and possible disk failures, as well as placing those disks into RAID groups of the volume once preparation completes. Persistent storage of the state of a pending disk addition is then accomplished using an implementation of the configuration management framework.
US07694172B2
A data backup device according to the present invention comprises a first table, a second table, an update management part configured to perform recording in the second table an identifier of updated portion of a first memory, a table rewriting part configured to perform rewriting the first table such that the first table identifies the portion of the first memory identified by the second table, and a data copy control part configured to perform output of first data from the portion of the first memory identified by the first table.
US07694163B1
A system for generating and monitoring voltages on a variety of different components on a common printed circuit board. The system includes a programmable controller, a plurality of DC/DC converters for producing voltages for the devices and a plurality of voltage regulators for produced voltages for a plurality of CPUs on the board, such CPU voltages being produced in accordance with VIDs provided to the regulator by the CPU. The programmable controller: establishes a set point voltage for such one of the DC/DC converters; sequentially monitors the produced voltages produced, monitors voltages produced by the regulators for the CPUs by comparing the VIDs to the voltages produced by the regulators, and if during the sequencing any one of the converters is determined by the programmable controller as producing an improper voltage or if the any one of the regulators fails top produce the voltage indicated by the VIDs, disables the board.
US07694161B2
A method is described that involves controlling the traffic levels through an uncore to provide thermal management for the uncore. The method including determining if an uncore's temperature in a first uncore state is above a first threshold value and changing the first uncore state to a second uncore state if the uncore temperature is above the first threshold value.
US07694156B2
A cryptographic unit includes a first processing unit for determining an output signal on the basis of the AES algorithm and for determining a first comparison signal, a second processing unit for determining a second comparison signal, and a release unit for providing the output signal, wherein the release unit is designed to perform a defense measure against an external tapping of the output signal when the first comparison signal is not related to the second comparison signal in a predetermined relationship. The first comparison signal is determined in a different way as compared to the second comparison signal, so that, in the case of the injection of faults into the cryptographic unit, these faults may be detected very easily.
US07694145B1
Methods and apparatus, including computer program products, for presenting status of digital signatures. A digital document is received that defines a presentation structure and includes a digital signature. The digital document specifies a representation of the digital signature and a location in the presentation structure for the representation of the digital signature. A status is determined for the digital signature. A status representation is associated with the digital signature, where the status representation identifies the status determined for the digital signature. Without altering the representation of the digital signature, at least a portion of the digital document and the status representation of the digital signature are presented in a user interface, where the status representation is presented in the presentation structure at a location that depends upon the location of the digital signature.
US07694140B1
A computing device may access a description of a Web service. The computing device may generate a Web service proxy based, at least in part, on the accessed description of the Web service. The computing device may provide a client protocol implementation to extend the functionality of the generated Web service client proxy. A feature of the client protocol implementation may be set to define a behavior of the Web service client without regenerating the Web service client proxy.
US07694139B2
A software development system (SDS) (228) digitally signs software (230) developed on the system. The SDS (228) executes on a computer system (112) having a trusted computing platform. The platform includes protected areas (220, 226) that store data and cannot be accessed by unauthorized modules. A code signing module (232) executing in a protected area (226) obtains a private/public key pair and a corresponding digital certificate. The SDS (228) is configured to automatically and transparently utilize the code signing module (232) to sign software (230) produced by the system. End-user systems (114) receive the certificate with the software and can use it to verify the signature. This verification will fail if a parasitic virus or other malicious code has altered the software (230). Accordingly, the SDS (228) greatly reduces the risk of malicious code executing on the end-user computer system (114).
US07694137B2
When a host computer connected to a network is to remotely control information in an image processing apparatus, authentication to the image processing apparatus is performed by using a password, and, on the basis of an encryption code of an encryption chip stored in the host computer, an authentication process for an operation with respect to the information in the image processing apparatus is performed by using a dictionary in an authentication server.
US07694136B2
A method to distribute and authenticate public encryption keys. A client concatenates its ID, its public key, and a secret password known to the client and a server, and hashes the result. The client forms an extended concatenation including the ID, the public key, and the hashed value, and sends the extended concatenation to the server. The server reads the ID and public key, and re-computes the hashed value based on its own knowledge of the password. If the received and the computed hashed values are the same, the server concludes that the client's public key is authentic. An analogous process enables the server to distribute its public key, and enables the client to authenticate the server's distributed public key.
US07694134B2
Systems and methods are provided for encrypting data without regard to applications writing the data to, or reading the data from, encrypted data storage devices. An operating system intercept detects information indicating that a file will be encrypted and, in respond, sets device-level flags indicating encryption and also establishes one or more encryption keys to be used in the encryption process. A second intercept detects an input/output event and, in response, calls an encryption application to encrypt (or decrypt) the data before it is written to (or read from) the data storage device.
US07694133B2
A technique for integrating message authentication with encryption and decryption is disclosed. Intermediate internal states of the decryption operation are used to generate a validation code that can be used to detect manipulation of the encrypted data. The technique is optimized with respect to processing time, execution space for code and runtime data, and buffer usage. The technique is generally applicable to a variety of block ciphers, including TEA, Rijndael, DES, RC5, and RC6.
US07694131B2
Providing reference tokens. A method includes receiving a request for a token. In response to the request for a token and in place of a token, one or more rich pointers are sent referencing one or more tokens. The rich pointers point to locations where one or more actual tokens can be retrieved. When only a single pointer is sent, the pointer is a reference other than an HTTP URL.
US07694130B1
A system and method to authenticate a user utilizing a time-varying auxiliary code. The code may be appended to a fixed password, but that is not required. The code is generated by a central electronic authentication system. The user retrieves it manually using a fungible communications device such as a telephone or a computer connected to the Internet. The user must learn the code because he inputs it manually, thereby authenticating himself. The present invention performs the same function as inventions with tokens, that is, it provides an extension to the PIN or password, but it eliminates the token and the synchronization required with such a token.
US07694118B2
A function addition apparatus allows an added function to be started-up immediately after a computer has been powered on or reset. A function expansion program stored in a program storage section is called, before a start-up program starts-up an operating system, by the start-up program and is executed by the CPU. The functional expansion program controls a functional section. Under a first condition, the CPU is prevented from returning to execution of the start-up program after the function expansion program has been completed by the CPU. Under a second condition, the CPU is returned to execution of a start-up program after the function expansion program has been completed by the CPU so that the operating system is started-up. When the operating system is started-up after the CPU has returned to execution of the start-up program, the operating system or the like controls the functional section.
US07694113B1
A method for use by a host microprocessor which translates sequences of instructions from a target instruction set for a target processor to sequences of instructions for the host microprocessor including the steps of beginning execution of a speculative sequence of target instructions by committing state of the target processor and storing memory stores previously generated by execution at a point in the execution of instructions at which state of the target processor is known, executing the speculative sequence of host instructions until another point in the execution of target instructions at which state of the target processor is known, rolling back to last committed state of the target processor and discarding the memory stores generated by the speculative sequence of host instructions if execution fails, and beginning execution of a next sequence of target instructions if execution succeeds.
US07694110B1
Various embodiments of methods and systems for implementing a set of microcode operations corresponding to a microcoded instruction as a microcode subroutine are disclosed. In one embodiment, a microprocessor includes a dispatch unit configured to dispatch operations and a scheduler coupled to the dispatch unit and configured to schedule dispatched operations for execution. In response to receiving a microcoded instruction, the dispatch unit is configured to dispatch a microcode subroutine call operation that specifies a tag identifying a microcode subroutine.
US07694108B2
An arithmetic unit capable of reconfiguring circuitry in accordance with configuration data supplied includes a data processing unit performing a processing using input data; an output data maintenance unit maintaining the result of the processing to output it as an output data; and an output valid signal control unit outputting an output valid signal indicating whether or not the output data is valid, in which an output timing of a valid data to outside the arithmetic unit can be controlled optionally by controlling the output timing of the output valid signal.
US07694106B2
A multiprocessor system includes a judging unit judging whether a read command inputted to a global address crossbar is a read command to a memory on an own system board, an executing unit speculatively executing, when the judging unit judges that the read command is a read command to the memory on the own system board, the read command before global access based on an address notified from the global address crossbar, a setting unit setting for queuing data read from the memory in a data queue provided on a CPU without queuing the data in a data queue provided on the memory, and an instructing unit instructing, based on notification from the global address crossbar, the data queue provided on the CPU to discard the data or transmit the data to the CPU.
US07694102B2
There are disclosed systems, computer program products, and methods for self-tuning memory. In an embodiment, a method for self-tuning memory comprises setting a tuning interval and a target range for free memory for a memory pool. If memory consumption falls outside of the set target range for free memory during a tuning interval, a new target size for the memory pool is set based on the target range for free memory. Memory allocation for the memory pool is increased or decreased for the next tuning interval, such that the new target size for the memory pool is reached. A decrement rate may be used to provide a controlled decrease of the memory pool over a plurality of tuning intervals if necessary, until the new target size for the memory pool is reached.
US07694099B2
A memory controller with an interface for providing a connection to a plurality of memory devices at least one of said plurality of memory devices supporting burst mode data transfers comprises data interface circuitry for connecting to a plurality of separate data buses for communicating data signals between said memory controller and a respective one of said memory devices, each of said data buses providing a dedicated data signal path to a different one of said memory devices, address interface circuitry for connecting to a common address bus for communicating address signals to each of said memory devices on a shared address signal path, address signals which are directed to different ones of said memory devices being time division multiplexed together on said common address bus, and device selecting circuitry for generating one or more device selecting signals synchronised with said time division multiplexing of said common address bus to select that memory device to which address signals currently asserted on said common address bus are directed. In this way, an increased bandwidth memory controller can be provided which is efficient for both short, narrow and long and wide burst lengths and which has interface circuitry with a relatively low pin count.
US07694095B2
A method and apparatus for managing snapshots of a file system using messages. A snapshot is a restorable version of a file system created at a predetermined point in time. A message is a persistent data structure supported by a file server. A message may include one or more snapshots, attributes for the message, and/or access control information for the message. The attributes and access control information are applied to all snapshots in the message. The attributes in the message enable users to perform automatic event-based management of the snapshots in the message. The access control information in the message provides granular access control to the snapshots in the message.
US07694092B2
One or more random access-type storage devices comprise a volume group and a journal volume. The volume group contains a volume pair configured from a primary volume and a secondary volume. Whenever data is received from a host device, this received data is written in the primary volume, a journal containing the write sequence of the data and the data is produced, and the journal is written in a journal volume. A plurality of journals accumulated in a journal volume are written in a sequential access-type storage device. Based on the write sequence recorded in each of the plurality of journals recorded in the sequential access-type storage device, the data of the journals is restored to the primary volume for storing the data and to a secondary volume from which the volume pair is configured.
US07694084B2
A microcomputer architecture comprises a microprocessor unit and a first memory unit, the microprocessor unit comprising a functional unit and at least one data register, the functional unit and the at least one data register being linked to a data bus internal to the microprocessor unit. The data register is a wide register comprising a plurality of second memory units which are capable to each contain one word. The wide register is adapted so that the second memory units are simultaneously accessible by the first memory unit, and so that at least part of the second memory units are separately accessible by the functional unit.
US07694082B2
A resource management system uses a virtual resource pool distributed across a set of storage devices to manage resources in a distributed storage system. The storage devices dedicate a resource in an allocation pool available to the virtual resource pool. The virtual resource pool is a virtual storage server in which an application receives at least a predetermined amount of storage capacity, a predetermined level of performance, or a predetermined reliability, represented by tokens. A virtual resource pool manager gives the tokens to an application. The application transmits the tokens along with the commands to the storage device. The token represents a right to consume up to some limit of resources on a specific storage device in a computing session. The storage device locally tracks resource consumption through the token.
US07694079B2
In some embodiments, a storage device, comprises a processor, a memory module communicatively connected to the processor, and logic instructions in the memory module which, when executed by the processor, configure the processor to receive a read input/output operation, and configure a prefetch disk data into cache memory in response to a prefetch tag embedded in the read input/output operation.
US07694076B2
A method and system for dynamic distributed data caching is presented. The method includes providing a cache community comprising at least one peer. Each peer has an associated first content portion indicating content to be cached by the respective peer. A client may be allowed to join the cache community. A peer list associated with the cache community is updated to include the client. The peer list indicates the peers in the cache community. A respective second content portion is associated with each peer based on the addition of the client.
US07694068B1
A processing system includes a network processor and a CAM device having a re-entrant processor coupled to a CAM array. The re-entrant processor is configured to selectively modify an initial search key provided by the network processor by replacing portions of the initial search key with portions of one or more previous search keys and/or one or more previous results. The re-entrant processor is also configured to initiate a series of subsequent compare operations between new search keys and data stored in the CAM array without receiving additional instructions or search keys from the network processor.
US07694062B1
Systems and apparatus for capacitively coupling signals with an integrated circuit (IC) are described. Capacitive elements disposed within a transmitting IC effectively function as AC coupling capacitors for a PCIe, DisplayPort™ or other interconnect linking the transmitting IC with a receiver disposed remote there from. Integrating the coupling capacitors allows for a smaller and more economical design for the circuits that utilize the interconnect.
US07694056B2
A computer system is provided which includes a computer configured to detect for the occurrence of an event. The computer is also configured to determine whether content related to the event should be generated by a device coupled to the computer and to provide a signal to the device if it determines that the device should generate the content related to the event. The device includes a first module which is configured to generate the content related to the event.
US07694051B2
A method of detecting master/slave response time-out under continuous packet format communications protocol, which calculates the time required for the slave device to respond to a Modbus request subject to Modbus TCP/UDP protocol. The method is to continuously send Modbus requests to a slave device through a detection device and to record each Modbus request sent time, and to have the slave device provide to the detection device a response for each Modbus request. By means of calculating the precise response time-out from the response time-outs which are gotten from the slave device responds to a predetermined number of Modbus requests, the user or manager can determine the response time-out required for the slave device precisely so as to give an EXECUTE instruction or command at the accurate time point.
US07694047B1
A PCI-Express module that is coupled to plural host systems and to at least an input/output (I/O) device is provided. The PCI-Express module includes an upstream port module and a downstream port module that use a mapping table to facilitate the plural host systems sharing the I/O device by modifying a transaction layer packet (TLP) field. For upstream ID based traffic, a source identifier is replaced based on the mapping table and a destination identifier is replaced with a value that is captured during upstream port module initialization. For upstream address based traffic, the mapping table routes TLPs by using a downstream port number and a function number in a source identification field. For downstream ID based traffic, a destination identifier is replaced by using the mapping table for routing TLPs. For downstream address based traffic, the PCI-Express module uses an address map to route TLPs.
US07694031B2
A memory controller including a dual-mode memory interconnect includes an input/output (I/O) circuit including a plurality of input buffers and a plurality of output drivers. The I/O circuit may be configured to operate in one of a first mode and a second mode dependent upon a state of a mode selection signal. During operation in the first mode, the I/O circuit may be configured to provide a parallel interconnect for connection to one or more memory modules. During operation in the second mode, the I/O circuit may be configured to provide a respective serial interconnect for connection to each of one or more buffer units, each configured to buffer memory data that is being read from or written to the one or more memory modules.
US07694030B2
Automatic protocol migration when upgrading operating systems includes checking, after upgrading at least a portion of an operating system of a host device, whether a new driver supporting enhanced functionality for a portable device is now available, where a driver supporting base functionality would have been previously used for communicating with the portable device. If such a new driver supporting enhanced functionality for the portable device is now available, then the host device installs the new driver supporting enhanced functionality for the portable device.
US07694029B2
A mechanism is provided for unique identification of each endpoint in a storage area network interconnect that is bridged by a specialized cable. Each endpoint is capable of querying peer endpoints for a unique identification. Once a unique identifier is obtained for all peer connections to a given endpoint, the endpoint may perform a comparison to validate that the cable connection terminations are connected to valid endpoints. If all endpoints are valid, then the mechanism enables the ports connected to the cable.
US07694027B2
Videoconferencing through an information handling system is supported with a display, camera and microphone that communicate with the information handling system through a single cable, such as a DisplayPort cable. Visual information is communicated from the information handling system to the display through a unidirectional main link and display control information is communicated between the information handling system and the display through a bidirectional auxiliary link. Peripheral information, such as digitized audio signals captured by the microphone and packetized video information capture by the camera, are communicated to the information handling system through the auxiliary link. Peripheral commands generated at the information handling system, such as camera control commands, are communicated from the information handling system to the peripheral through the auxiliary link.
US07694024B2
A network interface device has a fast-path ACK generating and transmitting mechanism. ACKs are generated using a finite state machine (FSM). The FSM retrieves a template header and fills in TCP and IP fields in the template. The FSM is not a stack, but rather fills in the TCP and IP fields without performing transport layer processing and network layer processing sequentially as separate tasks. The filled-in template is placed into a buffer and a pointer to the buffer is pushed onto a high-priority transmit queue. Pointers for ordinary data packets are pushed onto a low-priority transmit queue. A transmit sequencer outputs a packet by popping a transmit queue, obtaining a pointer, and causing information pointed to by the pointer to be output from the network interface device as a packet. The sequencer pops the high-priority queue in preference to the low-priority queue, thereby accelerating ACK generation and transmission.
US07694019B2
A system, method, and program product are provided that gather a plurality of IP addresses that each correspond to a common domain name. A list of domain names is provided for gathering corresponding IP addresses. For each of the received domain names, IP addresses are retrieved from a number of DNS tables. The unique IP addresses are identified from the gathered IP addresses retrieved for each of the domain names. The domain names and their associated IP addresses are stored in a domain name repository.
US07694009B2
A method and system is provided for balancing work load for a plurality of computer processors in a multiple processor computer system. In such a system, there are a plurality of packets to be processed. First, a plurality of hash buckets are generated and each packet is assigned to a bucket by performing a predetermined hash function. The different hash buckets are then assigned to the processors based on the workload of all the processors. In connection with processing connections with a timer thread, a plurality of connections are processed with a plurality of timer threads. A plurality of hash buckets are provided, and each connection is mapped to one of the hash buckets. Further, each hash bucket is assigned to a processor timer thread based on a workload thereof.
US07694007B1
A management control center communicates with multiple agents in a storage area network. On behalf of the management control center, the agents communicate with a switch resource management entity that maintains configuration information about resources such as a group or groups of switches in the storage area network. Based on a chain of communications from the management control center through the agents to the remote management entity, the management control center can indirectly learn about a configuration of switch resources in the storage area network. The agent utilizes a calculated current load value (e.g., a value indicating a relative burden placed on the remote management entity to service the forwarded set of requests) to selectively forwards requests to the switch resource management entity. This technique ensures that the switch resource management entity is not overwhelmed by a task of servicing too many requests at the same time.
US07693994B2
An intermediary apparatus for intermediating communications between a first communications apparatus and multiple second communications apparatuses is disclosed. The intermediary apparatus includes first receiving means for receiving from the first communications apparatus at least an operational request, first transmitting means for transmitting to a second communications apparatus to be a forwarding destination each operational request received by the receiving means according to a type of the operational request, second receiving means for receiving from one of the second communications apparatuses at least an operational response to the operational request transferred from the first communications apparatus, and second transmitting means for transmitting to the first communications apparatus each operational response received by the second receiving means.
US07693974B2
A system and method for providing a graphical user interface (GUI) for network development, management, and monitoring includes a GUI front end that provides a graphical representation of a telecommunication network comprised of communication devices represented by GUI network elements. A network proxy provides a communication layer between the GUI and a network server and allows the GUI to connect to multiple instances of a network server without having to hard code the connections to the network servers. The network proxy transmits commands and messages between the network server and the GUI. The network server determines how to handle traffic in the network model, such as how to provide call setup, call routine, and call tear down. The network server transmits call routing commands and messages to the network proxy which dispatches them to the GUI. An external systems interface provides the mechanism for which the network server communicates with communication devices in an external system.
US07693968B2
A printing system which allow an administrator to change the settings of client apparatuses concerning the apparatus configuration of a printer, on his/her own initiative. Apparatus configuration information on the printer is acquired from the printer by a server apparatus via the network. The acquired apparatus configuration information on the printer is coupled to driver data, and the driver data having the apparatus configuration information on the printer coupled thereto is installed in the client apparatuses in response to an installation instruction from a user without waiting for an installation request to be received from any of the client apparatuses via the network.
US07693966B2
The invention relates to a method and a device for monitoring and controlling the configuration of terminals and/or network components within an electronic network. A configuration unit is provided in the network, the configuration unit monitors the configuration and can automatically configure the terminals connected to the network, and/or the network components.
US07693959B2
The present invention is a network architecture or framework that supports hosting and content distribution on a truly global scale. The inventive framework allows a Content Provider to replicate and serve its most popular content at an unlimited number of points throughout the world. The inventive framework comprises a set of servers operating in a distributed manner. The actual content to be served is preferably supported on a set of hosting servers (sometimes referred to as ghost servers). This content comprises HTML page objects that, conventionally, are served from a Content Provider site. In accordance with the invention, however, a base HTML document portion of a Web page is served from the Content Provider's site while one or more embedded objects for the page are served from the hosting servers, preferably, those hosting servers near the client machine. By serving the base HTML document from the Content Provider's site, the Content Provider maintains control over the content.
US07693950B2
A method and system for generating and tracking an email campaign is described. An email campaign generator generates an email campaign template from an email target database. The email target database comprises at least one email target. An email campaign engine generates a custom email corresponding to each of the at least one email target. The custom email is formed from the email campaign template. The email campaign engine sends to each of the at least one email target the corresponding custom email. A campaign tracker receives at least one response corresponding to the sent custom email. The campaign tracker creates a campaign tracking list that includes the received at least one response.
US07693934B2
A network device having a message receiving module for receiving notify messages transmitted from controlled devices connected in a network, a device list management module for collecting information regarding the controlled devices connected in the network and creating and managing a list of service information of all the controlled devices connected in the network, and a control module for searching for service information of a specific controlled device, which has been requested by a control point, in the device list management module and transmitting the searched information. Since a controlled device has a list of other controlled devices connected thereto in a network, when a message searching for a specific controlled device has been received from a control point, another controlled device can transmit a response message to the control point on behalf of the specific controlled device even though the specific controlled device cannot receive the message from the control point.
US07693924B2
A 2N-point and N-point FFT/IFFT dual mode processor is provided. The processor includes a butterfly operator, the first and second MUXs, and the first and second N-point FFT processors. The butterfly operator receives 2N data and butterfly-operates on the received 2N data when receiving a control signal ‘0’ from the controller. The first and second MUXs respectively receive results from the butterfly operator to output the results in an increment of N when receiving a control signal ‘0’ from the controller, and respectively outputs different N data when receiving a control signal ‘1’ from the controller. The first and second N-point FFT processors N-point FFT operate on the results from the first and second MUXs and respectively output the same under control of the controller. Since the N-point FFT operation can be simultaneously performed two times at a receiver, the performance of the receiver can be enhanced.
US07693921B2
An aspect of the present invention takes advantage of the fact that the coordinates of fixed points do not change, and thus the energy (sum of squares of the coordinates defining the vector) of each fixed point is computed and stored. The energy of each variable input point may also be computed. The distance between each pair of fixed and input points is computed based on the respective energies and the dot product.
US07693917B2
A method for managing a back-end information storage infrastructure and a flexible development environment for data storage using a computer system. The method includes managing system resources including a relational database. Meta data models are created to model processes and to define meta data elements and their relationships by using trees and graphs. The method manages access to the data by authenticating users through several levels of authentication describing user rights, while providing management of multi-user access and concurrency. The method includes running the processes that generate instance data, storing the instance data following the meta data model, and transforming the instance data into physical views.
US07693914B2
Systems and methods are for production, management, syndication and distribution of digital assets through a network such as the Internet or wireless network. Digital media assets are distributed to consumers through a syndicated network of Outlets under control of a central platform. Distribution is format agnostic.
US07693913B2
A compiler, which makes a computer carry out a process for generating a program used for a remote access to a virtual database comprising a first computer 11 including an application program and a second computer 12 being connected to the first computer 11 by way of a network and including one or more databases, replaces (1c) a description part relating to a DML execution process for the virtual database from a source code 7 of the application program with a description relating to an RPC process and generates a program for executing the DML execution process for the native databases based on the RPC process. The use of the program enables a high performance remote database access while applying a virtual database function aiming at facilitating a business logic buildup.
US07693901B2
A vertical search engine may rank items based on both the quality of data associated with each item and the popularity of each item. The vertical search engine may access data associated with items from a variety of different sources, including feed sources and crawl sources. Data quality inputs are determined for each item based on the quality of the data associated with each respective item. In addition, popularity inputs are determined for each item based on user interest in each respective item. A global rankings score is then calculated for each item based on the data quality inputs and popularity inputs for each respective item. The global ranking score may be used to order search results for search queries in such a way that items from feed data and items from crawl data may be displayed in a unified manner, rather than being segregated by data source.
US07693897B2
Embodiments of systems, program products, and methods to enhance and more effectively manage media content are provided. An embodiment of a system, for example, can include a first preselected network framework defining a first network stage and a second preselected network framework responsive to the first network stage and defining a second network stage. The system can also include a code generator responsive to the second network stage to generate program code, a framework stage responsive to the code generator to establish a content management framework and defining a content search engine, a media content services core responsive to the content search engine to enhance digital file management and allow a plurality of media content management services to be performed, and a set of media content service modules each responsive to the media content services core to perform content management services to media.
US07693895B2
A network device comprises a Web service provider unit. In order to provide a client in a network with a service to display a list of multiple images stored in a predetermined storage area, the client having a function as a Web browser, the Web service provider unit sends the client in response to a request from the client a markup language file described in a predetermined markup language. The Web service provider unit includes a layer configuration unit and a Web program generator. The layer configuration unit configures as an element included in the markup language file at least one layer having a visibility attribute that defines whether or not the layer will be displayed on the client and assigns each of the multiple images to one of the layer. The Web program generator generates a Web program that operates on the client and sends the Web program to the client. The Web program is a program that causes the client to implement a first function to set the visibility attribute of the layer and a second function to issue a request to obtain each of the multiple images such that each of the multiple images is respectively placed on the layer to which the image is assigned.
US07693894B1
A system and method operable to cache and retrieve flight availability data. System components are a cache database for storing flight availability data, an airline cache control for configuring the cache database for a plurality of airlines, a subscriber cache control for configuring the cache database for a plurality of subscribers, and a cache query utility for interacting with the cache database. Additional system components are a data display utility for displaying flight availability data stored in the cache database, a success rate utility for tracking statistics associated with use of the cache database, and a dual mode processing utility that allows access to flight availability data from either the cache database or a real-time response. The system is provided as an intermediary between the subscribers and a plurality of airline servers.
US07693892B2
An NFS server, an NFS server control program and an NFS control method can reduce the extended lock reacquisition period. The NFS server comprises a prior-to-restart lock acquiring client information recording section for recording the identifiers of the NFS clients that have acquired locks before a restart of the NFS server and the number of the first files that is the number of files for which locks have been acquired, a lock acquiring client information recording section for recording the identifiers of the NFS clients that have reacquired locks after the restart of the NFS server and the number of the second files that is the number of files for which lock have been reacquired and an NSM that ends the reception of any lock reacquisition request from any of the NFS clients when the number of the second files of all the NFS clients acquired by the prior-to-restart lock acquiring client information recording section becomes equal to the number of the first files.
US07693890B2
A method comprising selecting a data object from a first storage location; assigning an identifier (ID) to the data object; storing the ID in a transactional type lock object; determining whether the ID is stored successfully in the transactional type lock object, and upon a successful storage, storing the ID in a permanent type lock object; determining whether the ID is stored successfully in the permanent type lock object, and upon a successful storage, deleting the ID from the transactional type lock object; storing the data object at the second storage location; assigning the second storage location to the ID in the permanent type lock object; deleting the data object from the first storage location; and deleting the ID from the permanent type lock object after the respective data object assigned to that ID has been deleted from the first storage location.
US07693883B2
A system to delete a data volume may include storage of a plurality of data pages of the data volume of a data area into a cache, prevention of writing of data pages to the data volume, and designation of each of the plurality of data pages in the cache as modified. The system may also include writing of all data pages in the cache that are designated as modified to a respective location in one or more other data volumes of the data area, and updating, for each of the written data pages, a converter page of the cache to associate the written data page with its respective location in the one or more other data volumes.
US07693880B1
A file system includes a plurality of entries, wherein each entry is configured to store an indication of data block locations corresponding to a specified file, and wherein each entry is further configured to store an indication of mirrored data block locations corresponding to the specified file. Each entry may include one or more dirty indicators to identify out-of-sync data blocks. In yet another embodiment, the system may be configured to resynchronize a plurality of instances of data blocks depending upon dirty indicators corresponding to the plurality of instances of data blocks.
US07693877B1
An automated information lifecycle management (ILM) system for network storage automatically searches a network storage system to identify data items stored therein. The network storage system includes multiple data storage facilities of different types coupled to a network. The ILM system automatically classifies each of the data items into a category of multiple data categories, and automatically optimizes each of the data items to a particular data storage facility of the multiple data storage facilities, according to the category into which the data item was classified. The ILM system may also automatically discover and detect storage devices added to the network and assign them to the proper storage class, for storing data of the corresponding category. The ILM system further may automatically determine or predict when additional storage capacity is needed for any particular class of storage and may alert a user accordingly and/or free up additional storage capacity.
US07693875B2
A method of searching a data page in a table space of a database for inserting a data record to a first table, wherein the table space comprises space map pages and sets of data pages, wherein each space map page comprises information about the available storage space of one set of data pages, wherein each space map page and the corresponding set of data pages is further assigned to a table range for each table to which at least one data page in the set of data pages belongs to, wherein the database further comprises a clustering index for the first table in the database management system, wherein the database management system comprises a space usage information database, and wherein the space usage information database holds space usage information for each table range.
US07693871B2
Storing, by an owner of a digital media product, the product in a distributed media library, the library including information describing the modifiable part of the digital media product and a digital grant of rights to modify and distribute the product; producing, from users' digital expressions of preferences, information describing a user community preference for replacing the modifiable part of the digital media product with a replacement part; retrieving the digital media product and the digital grant of rights to modify and distribute the digital media product; receiving at least one replacement part, a digital grant of rights to use the replacement part to modify the digital media product, and a digital grant of rights to distribute the replacement part with the digital media product; and replacing, in accordance with the information describing the user community preference and the digital grants of rights, the modifiable part with the replacement part.
US07693870B2
Systems and methods are disclosed for processing information. In one implementation, an image processing apparatus includes an acquisition unit that acquires two or more images to be grouped together. The images include time information as attribute information. The image processing apparatus groups the images based on whether the intervals among times represented by the time information are greater than at least one threshold value. The images are managed in the form of a binary tree structure and handled in single or different groups based on comparing a threshold value with the standard deviations of intervals among the times so as to match a user's subjective intention.
US07693868B2
The subject mater herein relates to human resources data processing and, more particularly, to separation of employee data for different applications, such as personnel administration applications. Various embodiments provide systems, software, and methods that maintain a first set of employee data in an employee object, wherein the first set of employee data is valid across one or more other objects, and executing a process of a business object requiring at least a portion of the first set of employee data. In some embodiments, the business object obtains the portion of the first set of employee data from the employee object and maintains a second set of employee data that is not valid across all other objects.
US07693866B1
A system and method stores electronic legal documents, such as email messages, in a database system such that electronic characteristics associated a native format of the electronic legal documents are substantially preserved. The electronic characteristics that are preserved include metadata and conversational threading information, directory path information, attachments, and other electronic document information. Once in the database system, the stored electronic legal documents are indexed and can be searched by users at terminals. The users at the terminals are provided with access to the database system via a server. The terminals have user interfaces to provide the users with a variety of searching, processing, and saving capabilities, including the ability to follow conversation threads, view attachments, and index and retrieve selected electronic legal documents in a manner that allows use of the stored electronic characteristics.
US07693861B2
Establishing relationships between one or more entities of a first application and one or more entities of a second application using metadata. At least one entity of the second application is identified for establishing a relationship with at least one entity of the first application. Metadata from the second application is received at the first application. The metadata includes information associated with the identified entity of the second application. An expression is generated, based on the metadata, specifying a relationship between the entity of the first application with the identified entity of the second application.
US07693852B2
Data records contain identification data and user data and are either contained in a highest grouping level or are directly subordinate to precisely one data record group. Each data record group is either contained in the highest grouping level or is directly subordinate to precisely one data record group. Each data record group is in this way either empty or contains at least one directly subordinate element, which is either a data record group or a data record. A selection criterion is specified to a computer by a user, whereupon the computer displays to the user via a display device a list of at least the elements contained in the highest grouping level. The list is sorted according to an ordering criterion independent of the selection criterion. The identification data of each data record fulfilling the selection criterion and contained in the highest grouping level is displayed, and each data record group contained in the highest grouping level and to which at least one data record which fulfils the selection criterion is in turn directly or indirectly subordinate, is displayed. All other elements contained in the highest grouping level are not displayed. With regard to each displayed element, which is not contained in the highest grouping level, the data record group directly superordinate to the displayed element is displayed as well.
US07693842B2
A system and method that facilitates and effectuates in situ search for active note taking. The system and method includes receiving gestures from a stylus and a tablet associated with the system. Upon recognizing the gesture as belonging to a set of known and recognized gestures, the system creates an embeddable object, initiates a search with terms indicated by the gesture, associates the search results with the created object and inserts the object in close proximity with the terms that instigated the search.
US07693840B1
A system for updating web page common elements is provided. The system includes a distribution component that is operable on a first server. The distribution component transfers new common elements provided on the first server to a plurality of other servers that may be geographically dispersed. The plurality of other servers are each provided with a distribution agent that is operable to receive the common element and to store the common element in a directory on each of the plurality of other servers. The common code elements may be common elements, for example, on one or more enterprise web pages. A method for updating common elements for enterprise web pages is also provided.
US07693832B2
A unique system and method that facilitates synchronizing data across multiple accounts at about the same time is provided. The system and method involve configuring an intelligent set of synchronization rules that can apply to various data types from one or more user accounts or storage locations. In addition, the system or method can leverage off of existing search folders or search queries to configure the synchronization rules.
US07693827B2
A system and method for using a user profile to order placed content in search results returned by a search engine. The user profile is based on search queries submitted by a user, the user's specific interaction with the documents identified by the search engine and personal information provided by the user. Placed content is ranked by a score based at least in part on a similarity of a particular placed content to the user's profile. User profiles can be created and/or stored on the client side or server side of a client-server network environment.
US07693820B2
Methods and systems for integrating use of materialized transient views into generation of an optimized query execution plan. Features and aspects hereof provide rapid identification of common expressions in a query as transient view candidates and then rapidly select among the transient view candidates for those transient views that most benefit the cost of execution of the query. The selected transient views are incorporated into a generated final, optimized query execution plan including operator to materialize the selected transient views for re-use in execution of the query.
US07693814B2
In general, the invention features methods by which more than one client program connected to a network stores the same data item on a storage device of a data repository connected to the network. In one aspect, the method comprises encrypting the data item using a key derived from the content of the data item, determining a digital fingerprint of the data item, and storing the data item on the storage device at a location or locations associated with the digital fingerprint. In a second aspect, the method comprises determining a digital fingerprint of the data item, testing for whether the data item is already stored in the repository by comparing the digital fingerprint of the data item to the digital fingerprints of data items already in storage in the repository, and challenging a client that is attempting to deposit a data item already stored in the repository, to ascertain that the client has the full data item.
US07693807B2
The present invention extends to methods, systems, and computer program products for mapping between anonymous modules in an event environment. Through the use of one or more event type to executable module bindings, a binding/dispatch manager maps events, for example, peer-to-peer, grid, or parallel processing computing events, to appropriate methods for processing the events. When an event is received from an event infrastructure, the binding/dispatch manager refers to annotations (e.g., based on the shape of the parameters) to identify an appropriate method for processing the event. Parameters are transferred to the appropriate method, which processes the parameters and returns any results to the binding/dispatch manager. In some embodiments, the binding/dispatch manager then forwards a response to the event infrastructure.
US07693805B2
A system and method to facilitate automatic identification of event classification errors in a network are described. Session data containing events logged by a user entity over a network in a predetermined period of time is retrieved from one or more event logs. Each event is further parsed to generate one or more event units. A frequency parameter of co-occurrence of the event units within each event of the session data is further determined and at least one session distance is determined among the events based on the frequency parameter. At least one classification distance is further retrieved from a data storage module, such as, for example, a database or a datastore, the one or more classification distances representing a relation between the events and corresponding classification categories within the database or datastore. Each session distance is further compared to each retrieved classification distance to ascertain event classification errors within the database or datastore. A predetermined error code is then assigned to each event if the corresponding session and classification distances are different. Finally, a list of classification errors containing the identified events and their corresponding error codes is output for further review and analysis, either through manual editing or, in the alternative, through automatic editing.
US07693797B2
A mobile terminal is equipped for SMS payment and service authentication with a remote transaction provider. The remote provider uses common secrets & a seed in a keyed Hash Machine Address Code (HMAC) executing a Message Digest Algorithm to generate a list of authentication token (username-password) for the purchase of services an/or goods. The common secrets and seed are shared with local redemption devices which also generate the list of authentication token. A subscriber conducts payment with the remote transaction provider and receives an authentication token corresponding to the purchased service. The subscriber provides the authentication token to the redemption device which compares the authentication token with sets of valid authentication tokens generated by the redemption terminal. If the comparison indicates a match, the redemption device provides the service to the subscriber.
US07693787B2
An account reconciliation system having a particular usefulness in the reconciliation of centrally billed accounts and more specifically, in the reconciliation of centrally billed accounts in the travel industry is provided. The system and methods of the present invention expand on the traditional match/non-match techniques and provide complete transaction management for every item on a client's account. In another sense, reconciliation is redefined to include each and every transaction on an account regardless of its reconciliation status, i.e., matched, unresolved, pending, etc. Consequently, the present invention reconciles the client's account to the account balance.
US07693785B1
A method of performing a card transaction includes accessing a web server using a point of service terminal having a web browser and a card reader, wherein the web server includes commands for obtaining authorization of the transaction; entering a transaction card into the card reader in order to enter an account number associated with the card into the web server; responding to prompts generated by the web server using the terminal; and obtaining authorization for the transaction through the web server.
US07693780B2
A system and method for the electronic trading of investment vehicles, such as stocks, bonds, options, commodities, stock and futures index contracts, and the like, is disclosed. The system and method provide a graphical user interface having a versatile and efficient market depth tool with a dynamic price axis for executing trades. The tool facilitates the display of and the rapid placement of trade orders within the market. The system provides for user initiated functionality to control, among other things, the manner in which the dynamic price axis moves in response to market conditions.
US07693771B1
A method and apparatus for identifying recurring payments analyzes historical transactions from a predefined time period to identify potential recurring payments and payees, based on one or more potential recurring payment identification parameters. Once potential recurring payments are identified by analyzing the historical transaction data, the user is presented with potential recurring payments report including a list of the potential recurring payments. In one embodiment, the user is given the opportunity to designate a given potential recurring payment as a confirmed recurring payment. Once a potential recurring payment is confirmed as a recurring payment, the data associated with that recurring payment, such as payee, account number, routing/address, payment amount, and date of payment is saved and the user has the opportunity to set up automatic payment of the recurring payment at a selected interval or to have the recurring payment appear as a payment option at a time selected interval.
US07693769B1
The present invention is a computerized tax savings tool for adjusting a taxpayer's taxable income to identify tax savings opportunities. The tax savings tool may be implemented as a component of a proprietary tax preparation software system that is used to prepare tax returns for taxpayer clients of a tax preparation firm. The tool automates the calculations of legal steps that a taxpayer may take to reduce his or her AGI on a current or a future tax return, which in turn enables the taxpayer to take advantage of additional adjustments, deductions, exemptions, credits, etc. provided by the tax code of the taxing authority. The tax savings opportunities are presented in one or more onscreen reports that may be reviewed by a tax return preparer and taxpayer. The onscreen report identifies specific actions that the taxpayer may take to reduce his or her taxable income, and therefore, related tax liability.
US07693767B2
A method for solving a business problem includes pooling transaction data received from a plurality of subscribers over a network, the transaction data including samples of fraudulent transactions. A data mining algorithm is then applied to the pooled transaction data, resulting in a predictive model that detects a fraudulent transaction. The predictive model is then provided to the subscribers in exchange for a subscription fee. It is emphasized that this abstract is provided to comply with the rules requiring an abstract that will allow a searcher or other reader to quickly ascertain the subject matter of the technical disclosure. It is submitted with the understanding that it will not be used to interpret or limit the scope or meaning of the claims. 37 CFR 1.72(b).
US07693765B2
A system for providing a registered land asset includes a property transaction database in communication with a computer network the property transaction database provides information related to transactions associated with each registered land asset parcel, each land parcel having a registered land asset identifier representing global coordinates particular to the parcel. The system also includes a location characteristic database in communication with the computer network. The location characteristic database provides socioeconomic data regarding the location wherein the land parcel associated with the registered land asset is situated. A registered land asset contract may give a leaseholder an option to purchase the land by the end of a given term. A computer receives data from the property transaction database and the location characteristic database via the computer network and calculates prices and values associated with a registered land asset contract associated with the land parcel and a registered land asset contract is recorded in association with the land asset identifier corresponding to the land parcel in an electronic land title registry in communication with the computer network.
US07693761B1
A Value Analyzer system is a data-driven computer-facilitated financial model that provides accurate and consistent profitability calculations using account and event data stored in a relational database managed by a relational database management system (RDBMS), wherein the account data comprises attributes of the accounts being measured and the event data comprises attributes of account-related transactions. A selector function uses selection criteria to select accounts and events from the relational database in order to generate a number of inputs for profitability calculations.
US07693755B2
The computerized auction couples with bidder computers and an auction clearinghouse computer displaying data for the auction goods. The clearinghouse computer accepts bids, sorts bids by value, creates a bid paddle display showing the then highest bid and a bidder identifier. Bidders can incrementally increase bids substantially in real time and clearinghouse displays these further bids. The clearinghouse also accepts high value override bids. The system processes all bids until a maximum bid is accepted and displayed for a predetermined period of time. An auctioneer character figure executes a closing sale routine, first, second and third and final call, for additional bids. In the absence of a higher bid, the auctioneer closes the auction with a sold item routine. The sold item display routine visually and audibly identifies that the auction item is sold. If an additional bid is received during close sale, the system restarts the routine.
US07693750B2
A system for comparing terms to describe a transaction. The system receives, for a plurality of sellers of a time sensitive fixed capacity non-physical goods, a plurality of purchase information describing a transaction associated with each of the plurality of sellers, the purchase information comprising list price, taxes, and purchase terms. The system aggregates the plurality of purchase information in a database and standardizes a first purchase information and a second purchase information in response to a query for the first purchase information for a seller of non-physical goods. In addition, the system displays for substantially simultaneous viewing the standardized first purchase information with the second purchase information.
US07693749B2
A method of managing purchasing orders for a plurality of items to be purchased is shown. The method includes receiving a personal variant including search criteria associated with retail items to be used in populating an order list, populating a purchase order list based upon the personal variant, displaying the purchase order list including order list items satisfying criteria in the personal variant, receiving a selection of purchase order list items and providing a list of functions associated with the selected purchase order list items, and performing the selected functions on the order list item.
US07693747B2
A system and method of initiating an online auction. The system receives a request to acquire at least one line item using the online auction from a buyer and presents a data collection template to the buyer, where the data collection template is being used to collect data having a plurality of attributes relating to the line item being auctioned in the online auction. The system also generates, in response to at least one of the attributes of the data collected from the buyer, a report showing the data including at least one of the attributes relating to the line item and transmits the report to at least one supplier.
US07693738B2
Method and apparatus for computer-aided assessment of organizational process or system. Method and apparatus are adapted to display questions on a computer to an assessor, who then inputs numerical and/or textual inputs relative to the assessor's perception of the process or system. Filtering techniques inhibit entry of unsupported numerical and/or textual inputs which may be untrue and/or exaggerated. Questions used in combination with additional questions provide more accurate assessment of the system or process, where the question combinations already exist in a database. Questions asked may be directed to one or more recognized standards, and duplicative questions from different standards may be omitted. Evaluations of collected information are performed and additional corrective action questions are asked to identify degrees of risk and areas of weakness of the process or system.
US07693737B2
The invention is directed to a budget planning system that improves the accuracy and predictability of budget planning within large organizations by enabling organizations to reconcile corporate financial models and organizational targets with detailed spending forecasts. The budgeting system includes a database that is configured to store data defining a budgeting model for the organization. The model has a plurality of hierarchically arranged nodes, each node corresponding to a “contributor” that either provides forecast data or review data provided by contributors associated with lower level nodes. The system is configured to capture target data from a set of financial analysts, capture forecast data from the contributors and reconcile the target data and the forecast data according to the model.
US07693736B1
The present invention provides methods and systems for scheduling recurring calendar items. More specifically, a recurring meeting may be scheduled between participants where the recurring meeting includes at least two different meetings that are set to occur at two different times with a determined periodicity. Allowable dates and times for the recurring meeting can be scheduled based on a number of criteria defined such as the availability of the participants for all meeting times and the availability of participants for certain meeting times.
US07693734B2
A method for scheduling conference resources is provided, that includes receiving a request for a conference reservation. The request may include the identities of a plurality of proposed participants, a proposed start time, and at least one fixed resource criterion. In accordance with a particular embodiment of the present invention, a projected location of at least one of the proposed participants is automatically calculated. The projected location may be a location at which the at least one of the proposed participants is expected to be at approximately the proposed start time. The method may also include automatically calculating a projected location of at least one invitee of the conference. In accordance with this embodiment, the projected location of the at least one invitee may be used to select an optimal one of a plurality of fixed resources, that match the at least one fixed resource criterion.
US07693727B2
Interactive methods and systems for directing, integrating, documenting, and tracking steps taken by medical providers during the process of care for a patient's given condition. Doctors' actions are directed by a prescriptive protocol—a checklist of discrete steps designed for efficient or optimal care of an individual patient's specific condition. The step-by-step checklist is abstracted from decision tree guidelines for the optimal work up and treatment for the condition using probability-based methodology. The care protocols can be derived from widely available and non-proprietary guidelines and decision trees based on public medical research literature.In one embodiment, the invention can be employed by a primary care clinician at the point of referral into the specialist sector, and at the specialist level when proposing a risky or expensive or otherwise problematic medical or surgical diagnostic or treatment intervention. At these two critical transaction points in care, the checklist functions like a lock, based on a hidden clinical decision algorithm (an explanation of which can be displayed upon request). The system asks the clinician for data and then generates the patient's optimal checklist, displaying it as a point and click form keyed to the stage of care being undertaken by each doctor. As the clinician enters data into the checklist, a decision engine determines whether the checklist data satisfies predetermined criteria for authorization of the proposed action. The system can also document each transaction taken in the process of care to create an electronic record that can be made accessible to all clinicians involved in the process of care.
US07693722B2
An audio decoding apparatus for decoding and reproducing a plurality of compressed audio streams simultaneously without sound interruption, even when the number of samples per frame is different. The audio decoding apparatus includes: a first and second audio decoder which decode two inputted compressed audio streams, and output audio data; a first and second intermediate buffer which temporarily hold the outputted audio data; a first and second audio output unit which convert the audio data into audio signals and output such audio signals; an output control unit which reads the audio data from the first and second intermediate buffer, and transmits the audio data to the first and second audio output unit. The output control unit repeats the reading and transmission of either the same number of samples of audio data or the number of samples of audio data for the same amount of transmission time.
US07693719B2
A method for synthesizing speech from text includes receiving one or more waveforms characteristic of a voice of a person selected by a user, generating a personalized voice font based on the one or more waveforms, and delivering the personalized voice font to the user's computer, whereby speech can be synthesized from text, the speech being in the voice of the selected person, the speech being synthesized using the personalized voice font. A system includes a text-to-speech (TTS) application operable to generate a voice font based on speech waveforms transmitted from a client computer remotely accessing the TTS application.
US07693717B2
An apparatus comprising a session file, session file editor, annotation window, concatenation software and training software. The session file includes one or more audio files and text associated with each audio file segment. The session file editor displays text and provides text selection capability and plays back audio. The annotation window operably associated with the session file editor supports user modification of the selected text, the annotation window saves modified text corresponding to the selected text from the session file editor and audio associated with the modified text. The concatenation software concatenates modified text and audio associated therewith for two or more instances of the selected text. The training software trains a speech user profile using a concatenated file formed by the concatenating software. The session file may have original audio associated with the selected text, wherein the apparatus further comprises software for substituting the modified text for the selected text. In some embodiments, the concatenation software concatenates modified text and audio associated therewith for two or more instances of the selected text. In some embodiments, the training software trains a speech user profile using a concatenated file formed by the concatenating software.
US07693716B1
Disclosed herein are various aspects of a toolkit used for generating a TTS voice for use in a spoken dialog system. The embodiments in each case may be in the form of the system, a computer-readable medium or a method for generating the TTS voice. An embodiment of the invention relates to a method of tracking progress in developing a text-to-speech (TTS) voice. The method comprises insuring that a corpus of recorded speech contains reading errors and matches an associated written text, creating a tuple for each utterance in the corpus and tracking progress for each utterance utilizing the tuple. Various parameters may be tracked using the tuple but the tuple provides a means for enabling multiple workers to efficiently process a database of utterance in preparation of a TTS voice.
US07693712B2
A pre-processing system of a signal of interest in an automatic speech recognition system in a vehicle, includes an acoustic sensor to sense the signal of interest, a non acoustic sensor to sense a non acoustic noise signal, a pre-processing unit of the signal of interest, comprising a processing section of coherent frequency bands signals for suppressing the noise from the received signal, a processing section of non coherent frequency bands signals, comprising transfer function estimation device of a signal through the vehicle cabin, and a methods selection section for determining the coherence properties of the received signal, and for selecting the processing section of coherent frequency bands signals or the processing section of non coherent frequency bands signals depending on the result of the properties of the received signal.
US07693710B2
The present invention relates to a method and device for improving concealment of frame erasure caused by frames of an encoded sound signal erased during transmission from an encoder (106) to a decoder (110), and for accelerating recovery of the decoder after non erased frames of the encoded sound signal have been received. For that purpose, concealment/recovery parameters are determined in the encoder or decoder. When determined in the encoder (106), the concealment/recovery parameters are transmitted to the decoder (110). In the decoder, erasure frame concealment and decoder recovery is conducted in response to the concealment/recovery parameters. The concealment/recovery parameters may be selected from the group consisting of: a signal classification parameter, an energy information parameter and a phase information parameter. The determination of the concealment/recovery parameters comprises classifying the successive frames of the encoded sound signal as unvoiced, unvoiced transition, voiced transition, voiced, or onset, and this classification is determined on the basis of at least a part of the following parameters: a normalized correlation parameter, a spectral tilt parameter, a signal-to-noise ratio parameter, a pitch stability parameter, a relative frame energy parameter, and a zero crossing parameter.
US07693705B1
The present invention provides a new method for returning context specific questions during the process of authoring a document or report. The questions alert an author of possible omissions and vague or general statements. The method employs techniques in semantic analysis including corpus linguistics and sentential logic. The method takes as input sentences created by the document author, and looks up semantic propositions connected to these sentences, which are in the document's knowledge domain, and questions linked to these propositions or other related propositions. The questions are sorted based on priority determined by a knowledge engineer. Additional methods are used to suppress redundant or nonspecific questions to increase their usefulness to the document author. The resulting question list aids the author in creating a high quality document.
US07693702B1
A visualization system for a computer system includes a modeling portion configured to specify the virtual geographic location in response to a three-dimensional model of the virtual geographic location and in response to the position of the viewer with respect to the virtual geographic location, a satellite data portion configured to specify a representation of satellite status data in response to the position of the viewer with respect to the virtual geographic location and in response to the satellite status data, and a three-dimensional output portion configured to provide at least two images of the virtual geographic location and the representation of the satellite status data to the viewer.
US07693695B2
In one aspect, the invention provides a method for modeling the performance of a fixed cutter bit drilling an earth formation. In one embodiment, the method includes selecting a drill bit and an earth formation to be represented as drilled, simulating the bit drilling the earth formation, displaying the simulating, and adjusting at least one parameter affecting the performance. The method of design is used to make a fixed cutter drill bit. In another embodiment the method includes numerically rotating the bit, calculating bit interaction with the earth formation during the rotating, and determining the forces on the cutters during the rotation based on the calculated interaction with earth formation and empirical data.
US07693688B2
A field bus distribution unit (VE) designed for use in process automation technology involving several field devices. The unit is equipped with a microcontroller μC, which is connected to the field bus (FB) and transmits device-specific information of the field devices that are connected to a field bus distribution unit (VE).
US07693683B2
An information classifying device calculates, for a plurality of populations containing pieces of sample information, evaluation distance between a center of gravity of the pieces of sample information belonging to each population and a piece of sample information as an object of classification (object sample), calculates statistical information such as mean, variance and standard deviation of the evaluation distance for each population, evaluates the evaluation distance of the sample information to the population based on the evaluation distance and the statistical information and evaluates degree of assignment relevancy of the object sample to the population, determines to which population the object sample is to be assigned in accordance with the degree of assignment relevancy, and assigns the object sample to the population. Evaluation distance between the center of gravity of each updated population and the object sample belonging to each population is calculated. If the degree of assignment relevancy to every population is out of a prescribed range, a new population is formed, and the object sample is assigned to the new population. Thus, autonomous and stable classification of object sample to a population becomes possible.
US07693682B2
A method for measuring critical dimensions of a pattern using an overlay measuring apparatus is provided. The method includes setting a first scan range, inputting a step pitch for the overlay measuring apparatus, inputting X and Y coordinates of a point on a reticle, and inputting a size of the reference pattern. The method further includes inputting a position of the reference pattern, inputting a second scan range, measuring the size of the reference pattern, and inputting an ideal pattern size. The method still further includes measuring a size and a first Z-axial focus position of a top region of the reference pattern, storing the first Z-axial focus position, measuring a size of the selected pattern of the first wafer using stored reference information, and determining whether the size of the selected pattern is suitable relative to the ideal pattern size.
US07693681B2
A method for determining a three-dimensional position of an RFID tag includes moving a mobile object carrying an RFID antenna in a workplace to a first position where the RFID antenna receives a radio signal from the RFID tag. A horizontal angle and a vertical angle are determined from the RFID antenna to the RFID tag based on the feasibility of communication between the RFID antenna and the RFID tag as the RFID antenna is turned or moved in a horizontal direction and a vertical direction, respectively, at the first position. A distance from the RFID antenna to the RFID tag is determined based on the power of the signal received from the RFID tag. A three-dimensional position of the RFID tag is determined by vector calculation using the horizontal angle, the vertical angle, and the distance.
US07693670B2
An electric power meter includes an embedded decomposition module that is configured to decompose a power meter signal into constituent loads to segregate and identify energy consumption associated with each individual energy consumption device within a plurality of energy consumption devices coupled to the power meter.
US07693669B2
A brown out detection circuit includes a sense amplifier for sensing a current level exhibited by a flash cell. Combinatorial logic is coupled to the sense amplifier for identifying a program condition of the flash cell based on the sensed current level, including a brown out condition, in order to provide a warning to avoid potential malfunction from a brown out condition.
US07693667B2
A method and system for determining a predicted flash endurance Vt of a flash cell after N program/erase cycles. The method includes measuring a Vtp value and a Vte value of the flash cell after a cycle number in a range from 2000 to less than N/2 program/erase cycles; calculating a Vtp slope of a line starting from the measured Vtp value in a half logarithmic graph representation based on historical test data from flash cells of wafers having substantially the same process steps compared to the flash cell under investigation; calculating a Vte slope of a line starting from the measured Vte value in a half logarithmic graph representation based on the historical test data; and determining the Vtp and Vte values at 2 million program/erase cycles by extrapolating from the measured Vte and Vtp values.
US07693662B2
A drive recorder stores information regarding a dangerous location where a vehicle collision or a dangerous driving situation occurred in the past. When it is determined that the vehicle approaches the dangerous location based on a position signal from a GPS receiver for detecting the present position of the vehicle, a warning is provided to the vehicle driver. According to the warning, the vehicle driver can recognize that the vehicle is approaching the dangerous location where the vehicle collision or the dangerous driving situation occurred in the past.
US07693660B2
A method and apparatus for determining long term orbit (LTO) models using variable time-horizons to improve the orbit and clock model accuracy. The method and apparatus use either historic ephemeris or historic measurements for at least one satellite to produce an orbit parameter prediction model (an LTO model). The parameter predicted by the model is compared to an orbit parameter of a current broadcast ephemeris. The result of the comparison (an indicia of accuracy for the model) is used to establish a time-horizon for the orbit parameter prediction model for that particular satellite. Such a time-horizon may be established in this manner for each satellite within a satellite constellation.
US07693655B2
In a navigation system, a current position is designated as a center of a start-point area. A category of a spot, e.g., a point of interest, is designated. Feature information of a spot within the start-point area then appears on a display device as initially provided information to a user with respect to the spot. This feature information allows the user to easily perceive the feature of the spot. The user only needs operation up to designating the category and can easily determine whether the spot is an intended one by perceiving its feature.
US07693651B2
A method for monitoring fuel status of a vehicle having a fuel tank includes the steps of determining an amount of fuel in the fuel tank, obtaining a geographic location of the vehicle, calculating a fuel threshold based at least in part on the geographic location, and providing a low fuel indication if the amount of fuel is less than the fuel threshold.
US07693648B2
A method of detecting an assembly condition, such as, for example, a misassembly, of an exhaust aftertreatment system of a machine includes a step of executing an aftertreatment assembly diagnostic algorithm. The executing step includes detecting an electronic identification feature of an aftertreatment component of the exhaust aftertreatment system, and comparing the electronic identification feature to an expected value.
US07693643B2
A system and method is provided that facilitates improved fault detection. The fault detection system provides the ability to detect symptoms of fault in the fuel system of a turbine engine. The fault detection system captures selected data from the turbine engines that is used to characterize the performance of the fuel system. The fault detection system includes a feature extractor that extracts salient features from the selected sensor data. The extracted salient features are passed to a classifier that analyzes the extracted salient features to determine if a fault is occurring or has occurred in the turbine engine fuel system. Detected faults can then be passed to a diagnostic system where they can be passed as appropriate to maintenance personnel.
US07693641B2
A vehicle speed control system for controlling a vehicle on a chassis dynamometer is comprised of a controller which is arranged to receive a vehicle speed command, to obtain an anticipated vehicle speed command from the vehicle speed command taking account of a delay factor of a control system of the vehicle, to calculate a driving force a driving force command from the anticipated vehicle speed command, to obtain an accelerator opening command from a previously stored driving force characteristic map based on the driving force command and a detected vehicle speed, and to control an accelerator opening of the vehicle according to the accelerator opening command so as to adjust the detected vehicle at the vehicle speed command.
US07693635B2
The present invention provides a method for approximating the flow rate of hydraulic fluid in an automatic transmission. The method includes estimating a flow rate value for each of a plurality of temperatures. Thereafter, the current transmission temperature is measured. The flow rate corresponding to the current transmission temperature is then learned in the following manner. The process of learning the flow rate initially includes identifying the presence of a predefined shift aberration. If the predefined shift aberration was not identified, the flow rate estimation corresponding to the current transmission temperature is iteratively adjusted. If the predefined shift aberration was identified, the flow rate estimation corresponding to the current transmission temperature is reversed by one iterative step thereby providing the learned flow rate value for the current transmission temperature.
US07693631B2
An integrated control interface is provided for the driver of the vehicle. The control interface employs a plurality of multi-functional switches located proximate to the driver in combination with a display that provides an indicia of the vehicle function controlled by each switch. A control module receives control signals from the switches and initiates control of the applicable vehicle subsystem function in response thereto.
US07693620B2
An approach guidance method for an airborne mobile platform, for example an aircraft, and associated system. The method includes determining a radius of a capture arc tangential to a glide slope, determining an altitude for tangentially intercepting the capture arc, and guiding the mobile platform to an intercept point on the capture arc. The glide slope is associated with a waypoint, and the radius of the capture arc depends on variable mobile platform speed. The altitude for intercepting the capture arc depends on the radius of the capture arc and on variable flight angle.
US07693619B2
A control system of a spacecraft for controlling two or more sets of collinear control moment gyroscopes (CMGs) comprises an attitude control system. The attitude control system is configured to receive a command to adjust an orientation of the spacecraft, determine an offset for a momentum disk for each of the two or more sets of CMGs that maximizes torque, determine a momentum needed from the two or more sets of CMGs to adjust the orientation of the spacecraft, and calculate a total torque needed by taking the derivative of the momentum. The control system further comprises a momentum actuator control processor coupled to the attitude control system, the momentum actuator control processor configured to calculate a required gimbal movement for each of the CMGs in each of the two or more sets of collinear CMGs from total torque.
US07693611B2
A variable power supply is controlled to supply power at approximately a first supply level for an electronic device. The variable power supply is controlled to control a transition of the power from approximately the first supply level toward a second supply level prior to controlling the variable power supply to supply power at approximately the second supply level for the electronic device. One or more power supply controller parameters are dynamically controlled.
US07693609B2
A system and method for recharging a plug-in hybrid vehicle. The system includes a controller that schedules the recharging of the vehicles on local electrical distribution networks. The system arranges the schedule to minimize the demand loading on the local distribution network to more efficiently operate power plants providing electrical power to the distribution networks. A system for collecting charges associated with the recharging of plug-in hybrid vehicles is also disclosed providing for prepaid utility accounts.
US07693608B2
A system for filtering and interpreting real-time sensory data from an electrical system is disclosed. The system includes a data acquisition component, a power analytics server and a client terminal. The data acquisition component acquires real-time data output from the electrical system. The power analytics sewer is comprised of a virtual system modeling engine, an analytics engine, and a decision engine.The virtual system modeling engine generates predicted data output for the electrical system. The analytics engine monitors real-lime data output and predicted data output of the electrical system. The decision engine compares the real-time data output against the predicted data output to filter out and interpret indicia of electrical system health and performance.The client terminal is communicatively connected to the power analytics server and configured to display the filtered and interpreted indicia.
US07693607B2
A system for protection, control, metering, and monitoring of the delivery of electrical power is disclosed. Embodiments of the system provide input/output devices called bricks to receive analog and binary field data from primary equipment located in a power substation switchyard. The bricks are linked via fiber-optic patch cables and patch panels with one or more intelligent electronic devices (“IEDs”). In operation, the bricks convert the received binary and/or analog field data into digital signals, and transmit the digital signals synchronously to their associated IEDs using clock signals provided by each IED to the individual bricks. The bricks may accept a computer software code download from each of its master IED(s). Multiple code implementations, each tailored to the requirements of its master IED(s) can therefore co-exist on a single brick.
US07693601B2
A method comprising providing printed products to form a first mail stream on a printing line, providing printed products to form a second mail stream on a printing line, and placing printed product from the second mail stream onto a printed product of the first mail stream to create the combined mail stream in the sequence of a master mailing list.
US07693598B2
To provide an embroidery data creation apparatus, an embroidery data creation program, and a recording medium that records the embroidery data creation program, which create embroidery data for embroidery that is clear and sharp even when the tint or output size of an image is changed. The number of pixels necessary to create embroidery data is determined from thread density, size of the embroidery, and copied color data. Initial angle information is created from angle data and the angle information having necessary pixel configuration is re-computed from the initial angle information. Then, line segment data is created from the re-computed angle information, color data is created from the size adjusted color data and the line segment data, and the embroidery data is created from the line segment data and the color data.
US07693597B2
A substrate processing method for removing a resist film from a substrate having the resist film formed thereon comprises maintaining the inner region of the chamber at a prescribed temperature by putting a substrate in a chamber, denaturing the resist film by supplying ozone and a water vapor in such a manner that ozone is supplied into the chamber while a water vapor is supplied into the chamber at a prescribed flow rate, the amount of ozone relative to the amount of the water vapor being adjusted such that the dew formation within the chamber is prevented, and processing the substrate with a prescribed liquid material so as to remove the denatured resist film from the substrate.
US07693593B2
Embodiments of the present invention provide a production planning method and system. Where a manufacturing apparatus is shared by a plurality of products in a production line, if a manufacturing (production) availability number is changed, a cause parameter is automatically investigated so that a production plan with high precision can be prepared in a short time. With respect to a production plan as the previous/current comparison objects, a production process used in the production plan in which a change occurs, is extracted. From the production process, a parameter item to be used in the production capacity evaluation is extracted for all products, a difference comparison is made between the value of the previous parameter and the value of the current parameter, so that the parameter item as the cause is specified. The combination of the cause parameter items is calculated, and a cause parameter list is prepared. Next, from the specified parameter list, the parameter item is sequentially changed, and the manufacturing (production) availability number is recalculated. An influence index given to the manufacturing (production) unavailability number by the cause parameter, is calculated.
US07693592B2
A method of integrating a machine or installation into an engineering/control system within the facility, such as an automation system, comprises the steps of receiving a definition or specification for applicable standards for communication between the engineering/control system within the facility and the machines or installations; manufacturing or providing a communication interface unit comprising enhanced interfaces to fulfill the definition or specification and adapting the communication interface unit to the definition or specification; providing the communication interface unit to a machine or installation manufacturer for manufacturing the machine or installation; delivering the machine or installation and the communication interface unit to the facility; and integrating the machine or installation equipped with the communication interface unit within the facility.
US07693586B2
A process model specified using, for example, UML activity diagrams can be translated into an event-based model that can be executed on top of a coordination middleware. For example, a process model may be encoded as a collection of coordinating objects that interact with each other through a coordination middleware including a shared memory space. This approach is suitable for undertaking post-deployment adaptation of process-oriented composite applications. In particular, new control dependencies can be encoded by dropping new (or enabling existing) coordinating objects into the space and/or disabling existing ones.
US07693584B2
Disclosed are methods and apparatus for motivating persons to undertake exercise, employing camera based computer monitoring of persons and/or exercise apparatus, and displays of video data, which may be derived from such monitored information.
US07693580B2
A radiant therapeutic wrist heating pad, which is not hot to the touch, provides substantial infrared radiation to a user's wrist to alleviate symptoms of carpal tunnel syndrome. It can be used for extended periods without feeling uncomfortable to the skin, while imparting deep therapeutic heat to the user's wrist. The heating pad is comprised of a radiant heat generating layer having a plane surface comprising means for radiating heat evenly from its surface, a pair of flexible electrically insulating and radiation permeable layers located adjacent and covering opposite sides of the layer, a thermal insulation layer disposed against and covering one of the electrically insulating layers, and a sealed radiation permeable envelope enclosing the entire heater. Preferably the flexible heat generating layer is comprised of a fiberglass material impregnated with a resistive material, which material provides a surface temperature, when current is conducted therethrough, which is no greater than about 54 degrees Celsius. Current limiting thermostats are provided to prevent energy and temperature spikes in the event that any of the electrical components are creased or bent. A stiffening element helps protect the electrical components, and also orients the user's hand with respect to the forearm so as to place the wrist in a therapeutic position.
US07693577B2
At least one of a plurality of disorders of a patient characterized at least in part by vagal activity innervating at least one of a plurality of organs of the patient is treated by a method that includes positioning a neurostimulator carrier around a body organ of the patient where the organ is innervated by at least a vagal trunk. An electrode is disposed on the carrier and positioned at the vagal trunk. An electrical signal is applied to the electrode to modulate vagal activity by an amount selected to treat the disorder. The signal may be a blocking or a stimulation signal.
US07693568B2
A medical device includes a sensor for sensing for an MRI gradient magnetic field and a microprocessor for responding to the detected gradient magnetic field by switching from a first electrical signal processing mode to a second electrical signal processing mode, such that electrical signals induced by the gradient magnetic field and an associated RF burst are not counted as cardiac events.
US07693567B2
A localization mechanism, or fixture, is used in conjunction with a breast coil for breast compression and for guiding a core biopsy instrument during prone biopsy procedures in both open and closed Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) machines. The localization fixture includes a three-dimensional Cartesian positionable guide for supporting and orienting an MRI-compatible biopsy instrument, and in particular a sleeve, to a biopsy site of suspicious tissues or lesions. A depth stop enhances accurate insertion, and prevents over-insertion or inadvertent retraction of the sleeve. The sleeve receives a probe of the MRI-compatible biopsy instrument and may contain various features to enhance its imagability, to enhance vacuum and pressure assist therethrough, and marker deployment etc.
US07693560B2
Disclosed herein are systems and methods for a continuous analyte sensor, such as a continuous glucose sensor. One such system utilizes first and second working electrodes to measure analyte or non-analyte related signal, both of which electrode include an interference domain.
US07693558B2
A wireless communication terminal transmitting/receiving data with a folder closed and a method thereof are disclosed. The wireless communication terminal includes: a wireless transceiver for transmitting and receiving data through a wireless communication network; a storage for storing the transmitted data and the received data; a detector for detecting a state of the folder of the wireless communication terminal in order to determine whether the folder is opened or closed; an outputting unit for indicating a result of the data transmission/reception; and a controller for analyzing the transmitted/received data to detect the last packet of the data, and continuing to perform the data transmission/reception without regard to the detected state of the folder until the last packet of the data has been detected.
US07693551B2
A method for determining beamforming coefficients begins by obtaining channel information for a multiple tone communication. The method then continues by deriving the beamforming coefficients based on the channel information and a smoothness criteria.
US07693549B2
An electronic device for a mobile device and a mobile device comprising the electronic device are provided. The electronic device comprises: a battery including: a housing having a top surface, a bottom surface, and two or more side surfaces; one or more battery cells within the housing; and a battery interface positioned on a surface of the housing; and a smart card having a smart card interface positioned on a surface of the housing.
US07693548B2
A mobile telephone device, comprising, an enclosure; a plurality of hardware components that provide the functionality of a cellular telephone or a satellite telephone, at least some of said components being inside or on said enclosure; a solid state non-volatile storage system inside of said enclosure; and a directly accessible connection for said storage system, adapted to connect to an external host system.
US07693545B2
Disclosed are a system and a method for controlling functions of a mobile communication terminal when in a predetermined zone. The system includes a function control apparatus for requesting a function list stored in the mobile communication terminal when detecting that the mobile communication terminal has entered a predetermined zone, indicating functions to be deactivated and generating a first function control list when the function list is received from the mobile communication terminal, and transmitting the first function control list to the mobile communication terminal; and the mobile communication terminal for transmitting the function list to the function control apparatus in response to the request for the function list received from the function control apparatus, and updating the stored function list in accordance with the first function control list when the first function control list is received from the function control apparatus.
US07693540B2
A mobile terminal which includes a terminal body, a main printed circuit board (PCB) embedded in the terminal body, and a support member fixed to the main PCB and having a camera and a sub-PCB mounted thereto.
US07693535B2
Methods for providing a group play list for a plurality of multimedia content records include associating respective ones of a plurality of users associated with a user network with corresponding ones of the multimedia content records on the group play list. A presence status of the respective ones of the users associated with the user network is detected. Rendering of the multimedia content records on the group play list to the users associated with the network is automatically adjusted based on the detected presence status. The user network may be, for example, a computer based social network.
US07693534B1
A method and apparatus are disclosed for dynamically selecting a complete or referenced group indication when initiating a group communication session in a communication system. A client device may include logic through which the device will decide, at the time of group session initiation, whether to initiate the session by reference to a complete group listing or rather whether to initiate the session by reference to a group identifier (e.g., group-ID). The client device may be capable of maintaining group data in order to indicate whether the client device and a communication server have agreed on a group-ID to correspond with a particular group. When a user directs the client device to initiate a session with a particular group, the client device will initiate the session by reference to the group-ID if the client device and communication server have agreed on a group-ID to correspond to the particular group. On the other hand, if not, the client device will initiate the session by reference to the complete group listing for the particular group.
US07693533B2
A method for performing session merging between PoC sessions under the environment of multiple PoC sessions is provided. A merging PoC client sends a request for the session merging with a merged session to a PoC server managing a merging session to which the PoC client belongs. The PoC server managing the merging session sends a session merge request to a PoC server managing the merged session. Negotiation of a CF (Controlling PoC Function) for managing a session to be merged is performed between the PoC server of the merging session and the PoC server of the merged session. When an entire CF of the session to be merged is selected as the negotiation between the PoC servers is completed, the PoC server of the merged session sends an UPDATE message of modified media parameters to a PoC client of the merged session. The PoC server of the merging session sends, to a PoC client of the merging session, a NOTIFY message of a merge request notifying that the PoC server of the merging session is selected as the entire CF.
US07693532B2
The present invention relates to a method for providing interactive audience participation at live entertainment events. The method includes providing audience members with an interactive device that presents a promotional message and includes a user interface, broadcasting audio programming to the audience member through the interactive device, querying the audience members, wherein answers to the querying may be entered by the audience member via the user interface of the interactive device, transmitting the answers to a central processor, storing the answers as audience data, processing the audience data into results, storing the results of the processing of the audience data and broadcasting the results of the processing of the audience data.
US07693526B2
In one embodiment, a method includes monitoring utilization of an access medium relative to one or more access classes, receiving a QoS request. The QoS request identifies an access class. The method further includes computing a first allocation of an access medium for the QoS request and approving the QoS request if the computed first allocation is less than an amount of the access medium available to the access class identified in the QoS request.
US07693521B1
A mobile station is associated with a first wireless coverage area that has a first pilot signal. A second wireless coverage area that has a second pilot signal is in the mobile station's neighbor list. The mobile station measures E1, the energy per chip of the first pilot signal, and I1, the total received power at the first pilot's frequency. The mobile station also measures E2, the energy per chip of the second pilot signal, and I2, the total received power at the second pilot's frequency. If E2 exceeds E1 by at least a first predetermined amount and E2/I2 exceeds E1/I1 by at least a second predetermined amount, then a handoff of the mobile station from the first wireless coverage area to the second wireless coverage area is effected.
US07693518B2
First, the strength A of a first pilot signal currently transmitted by a base station and strength B of a second pilot signal transmitted by a base station other than the foregoing base station are measured, the correction value D of a handoff threshold value according to the multicast service availability and radio configuration information of the multicast content is obtained, and handoff threshold value C is obtained, as well. Next, if the difference between the strength B of the second pilot signal and the strength A of the first pilot signal is greater than the sum of the handoff threshold value C and the correction value D, the idle handoff is started. Through this, idle handoff to neighbor base stations delivering the same multicast content is facilitated and idle handoff to other base stations is made difficult.
US07693511B2
Methods and apparatus support communication between a communication device and a compatible communication device over a telecommunications network. The communication devices have unique identities. The methods and apparatus are configured to detect the presence of the compatible communication device using a low power radio frequency technology; to determine the identity of the detected compatible communication device; and, in response to detection of the presence of the compatible communication device, to redirect incoming calls intended for the detected compatible communication device having the determined identity to the communication device, wherein the controller sends control signals to the compatible communication device, such that the compatible communication device can control the redirection of the incoming calls at the network.
US07693505B2
The present invention relates to a signal detector, which discerns the presence of signals in a circumscribed area, and a warning is given if a signal is detected. The signal detector adjusts its conditions for the background noise elimination depending on the detected environments in order to discern the presence of signals more efficiently and correctly. Moreover, the present invention shows on a display device the protocol of the detected signal, and enables the user to know the type of the detected signal. Besides, the user can also choose to control the signal detector in a wired or wireless way through the signal connection port, and the user can manually adjust detecting conditions to its environment.
US07693498B2
A power amplifier module includes a transmit power probability module and a power amplifier circuit. The transmit power probability module is coupled to determine a transmit power level probability. The power amplifier circuit is coupled to amplify an outbound radio frequency (RF) signal at a power level in accordance with the transmit power level probability and a desired transmit power level.
US07693495B2
A transmitting arrangement includes a matching circuit, a reference circuit and a comparator. The output of the matching circuit can be coupled to an antenna and comprises an adjustable impedance. The reference circuit is connected to an input of the matching circuit and comprises a reference impedance. Inputs of the comparator are coupled to the matching circuit and the reference circuit and its output is coupled to the adjustable impedance via a control input of the matching circuit.
US07693477B2
An image forming member includes: an electrostatic latent image holding member that holds an electrostatic latent image; a developing unit that develops a toner image formed by a toner on a surface of the electrostatic latent image holding member; a toner removing member that removes a residual toner remaining on a surface of the electrostatic latent image holding member; a conveying path including a conveying member that is internally provided in the conveying path and that returns the residual toner removed from the surface of the electrostatic latent image holding member to the developing unit; and a trapping portion that traps a foreign matter conveyed by the conveying member, the electrostatic latent image holding member, the developing unit, the toner removing member, the conveying path, and the trapping portion of the image forming member being integrally and detachably attached to an image forming apparatus body.
US07693473B2
A fuser assembly configured to fix a toner image to a sheet of print media includes a fuser belt having a first side edge and a second side edge. A plurality of end cap assemblies is positioned to locate the fuser belt. The plurality of end cap assemblies include a first end cap assembly having a first compliant stopping flange positioned to engage the first side edge of the fuser belt, and a second end cap assembly having a second compliant flange positioned to engage the second side edge of the fuser belt.
US07693464B2
A user-removable stabilizer for a toner cartridge assembly comprises of at least one member that becomes inserted in the toner cartridge assembly for capturing a first movable section of the toiler cartridge assembly and interconnecting at least the first movable section with a second movable section of the toner cartridge assembly, and a stopping member protruding upwardly from the at least one member for limiting insertion of the stabilizer into the toner cartridge assembly. A method of stabilizing movable sections of a toner cartridge assembly is also provided.
US07693463B2
A developing device has a bearing member that can bear a toner, a storing chamber for storing the toner, a waiting chamber disposed below the storing chamber for receiving the bearing member that can be filled with the toner and a buffer chamber positioned between the storing chamber and the waiting chamber for storing the developer material. A first horizontal connecting path connects upper portions of the storing and buffer chambers, and two second connecting paths connect lower portions of the buffer chamber and the waiting chamber. A feed member feeds toner from the storing chamber through the first connecting path into the buffer chamber. A first conveying member in the buffer chamber conveys the toner from one of the connecting paths to the other of the connecting paths, and a second conveying member in the waiting chamber conveys the toner within the waiting chamber in the opposite direction.
US07693461B2
A development unit for a printing device is described. An equalizing element is provided to minimize residual charges which cause ghosting. The equalizing element can, for example, be a roller or a blade positioned downstream of a cleaning nip between the cleaning roller and the development roller and charged to an electric potential which is substantially the same as an electric potential of the development roller. The equalizing element can alternatively, or in addition to being charged to perform equalization, operate to aid in charge residual charge dissipation on the development roller by blocking developer from reaching the development roller downstream of the cleaning roller.
US07693459B2
A charging device and an image forming apparatus using the charging device. The charging device includes a charging member to uniformly charge a surface of a latent image bearing member in contact therewith, a charge bias application unit to apply a charge bias to the charging member, a conductive member to contact a surface of the charging member, and a different-valued bias application unit to apply a different-valued bias different from the charge bias to the conductive member. The image forming apparatus includes a latent image bearing member to bear a latent image, a latent image forming unit to form the latent image on the latent image bearing member, a development unit to develop the latent image with toner, and the charging device.
US07693457B2
A charging member has a surface layer. The surface layer contains a polysiloxane having a first unit, a second unit and a third unit each of which is represented by a specific formula. The ratio of the sum of the mole numbers of the first and second units to the sum of the mole numbers of the first to third units is in a specific range.
US07693456B2
A conductive member including a conductive supporting body (1), an electric resistance adjusting layer (2) formed on the conductive supporting body (1), and space holding members (3, 3) provided on opposite ends of the electric resistance adjusting layer (2), at least one engaging projection (50, 60,70, 80) being provided on one of the electric resistance adjusting layer (2) and each of the space holding members (3, 3), and an engaging opening (51, 61, 71, 81) in which the engaging projection is inserted being provided in the other of the electric resistance adjusting layer (2) and each of the space holding members (3, 3).
US07693455B2
A conductive member to be disposed so as to abut on an image carrier is provided. The conductive member includes an elongate conductive supporter, an electrical resistance adjusting layer formed on a circumferential surface of the supporter, and a pair of gap maintaining members provided respectively to the two ends of the adjusting layer. A gap with a certain clearance between an outer circumferential surface of the adjusting layer and an outer circumferential surface of the image carrier provided in parallel to the adjusting layer is formed. A stepped portion is formed in a joint section between the adjusting layer and each of the gap maintaining members with the joint section. An inclination is formed so as to be continuously inclined from the outer circumferential surface of each of the gap maintaining members to the outer circumferential surface of the adjusting layer in the stepped portion.
US07693444B2
An image reading and recording apparatus has a scanner unit for effecting exposure conforming to an image signal on a photosensitive drum, a heat roller pair for fixing a toner image formed on a recording sheet, and a reading unit for reading an original. The heat roller pair is disposed above a process cartridge, and a cartridge dismounting space for permitting dismounting of the process cartridge therethrough is disposed between the heat roller pair and the scanner unit.
US07693443B2
In a developing cartridge, the contact plate of the electrode member is disposed to contact the developing bias terminal within a plane of projection when a driven coupling part is projected in a first direction. A first axis line, which is an axis of the developing roller shaft, and a second axis line, which is an axis of the input gear, are disposed in parallel and equidistant in the front-rear direction. A part of the contact plate is disposed on the second axis line. A first line connecting an axis about which the input gear rotates and the developing roller shaft and a second line connecting the contact plate and the developing roller shaft are disposed parallel to each other. The distance between the first axis line and the second axis line equals the distance between the first axis line and the contact plate.
US07693440B2
An image forming apparatus for forming an image with a fixing member, which fixing member includes a first heating member and a plurality of second heating members is disclosed. The image forming apparatus includes a capacitor, a charging part for charging the capacitor, a first drive part for lighting on/off the first heating member by controlling a first power supply to the first heating member, a second drive part for lighting on/off at least one of the plurality of second heating members by controlling a second power supply to the plurality of second heating members, and a control part for dividing the plurality of second heating members into groups and permitting at least one of the groups to receive the second power supply during a waiting period of the image forming apparatus.
US07693435B2
A fixing device has a heating roller with a heat source therein. A power supply operates the heat source for heating a transfer material and fixing a toner image thereon. A pressure roller is spaced from the heating roller and a facing member faces the heating roller. An endless fixing belt is mounted on the facing member and the heating roller and contacts the pressure roller to form a nip. A temperature detector faces the outer surface of the fixing belt for detecting the surface temperature thereof. An excessive temperature preventer faces part of the outer surface of the heating roller where the fixing belt is not mounted for detecting the surface temperature of the heating roller and cutting off the power supply to the heat source when the surface temperature rises above a preset temperature.
US07693427B2
An object of this invention is to provide a modulator, an optical transmitter and an optical transfer device which can modulate a channel signal while suppressing residual AM signals regardless of the frequency of a channel signal and suppressing deterioration of the channel signal due to impossibility of giving a sufficient FM demodulation amplitude. A modulator 2 according to this invention is a modulator 2 for modulating an input signal, comprising: a branching circuit 21 for producing an inverted signal with an inverted phase of the phase of a first input signal transferred within a first frequency bandwidth; a first semiconductor laser 22a for FM-modulating the first input signal to produce a first FM-modulated light beam; a second semiconductor laser 22b for FM-modulating the inverted signal to produce a second FM-modulated light beam; an optical phase-modulating unit 23 for changing the phase of one of the first FM-modulated light beam and the second FM-modulated light beam on the basis of a second input signal transferred within a second frequency bandwidth, thereby producing a phase-modulated light beam; an optical merging unit 24 for merging the other of the first FM-modulated light beam and the second FM-modulated light beam and the phase-modulated light beam thereby to produce a modulated light beam; and a photoelectric converting unit 25 for converting the modulated light beam in a modulated signal through optical heterodyne detection.
US07693420B2
A system and method for detecting and compensating for thermal drift in an optical network in a manner that enables an increased number of optical channels to be used on a given optical medium, such as on a single optical fiber. A pair of narrow band, closely spaced optical signals from an optical transmitter function as a “temperature probe” signal. The two narrow band signals are centered within one passband of a filter of an optical device, such as an optical router. When the two narrow band signals are transmitted back to an optical receiver via the router, the magnitudes of the two signals are compared and a determination can be made as to the magnitude and direction of thermal drift of the passbands of the filter of the optical router. A control subsystem is then used to control a heating/cooling subsystem to either heat or cool the transmitter to induce a shift in the optical signals being generated by the transmitter that causes the transmitted optical signals to effectively track the centers of the passbands of the optical router.
US07693418B2
This invention discloses a system to attach various photographic accessories to a camera by using an apparatus that attaches to the existing shoulder strap loop of a camera. The apparatus has a body, a strong hook to attach to the shoulder strap loop, and a thumbscrew that tightens the apparatus to the camera. The apparatus also incorporates an additional shoulder strap loop to replace the one covered when this system is used. Various mounting plates then attach to the body of the apparatus to which the various accessories are mounted.
US07693412B2
An aureolegraph includes a reflective screen with an aperture therein, a lens for focusing an image onto the screen, an imager for imaging the image on the screen, and a light trap for preventing light passing through the aperture in the screen from passing back out through the aperture.
US07693402B2
A thermal storage unit having at least one conduit around which a cast is made is provided. The thermal storage unit uses conventional piping or tubing to create conduits that economically maximize the surface area of flow in contact with the thermal mass by proving multiple passes for the fluid through the cast. This enables the thermal storage unit to economically provide heat storage as well as effective heat delivery and pressure containment for a fluid flowing through the conduit.
US07693398B2
High audibility output is realized when audio output is provided in special playback. In special playback with audio output, skip/repeat control is done so that decoding and outputting of the audio data is periodically repeated/skipped during part of one frame. The output level may be corrected so as to emphasize appropriate frequency components. This realizes good audio output. In addition, the skip/repeat control and output level correcting methods are changed according to characteristics of the audio data to be reproduced. Also, this realizes good audio output.
US07693397B2
A watching support apparatus and a program recording system recording a currently broadcasted program or a program to be broadcasted by an in-home recording apparatus set in a user's residential area even in the case where the user goes to a different location from the user's residential area. A watching support apparatus includes: a recording apparatus position obtainment unit which obtains information indicating a location where the recording apparatus is positioned; a recordable-program guide obtainment unit which obtains a program guide including broadcast content of the recording apparatus setting position; a watching possible program guide obtainment unit which obtains a program guide including broadcast content in the current location; a same program judgment unit which compares a program included in the watching possible program guide with a program included in the recordable-program guide, and judges sameness of the respective programs; and a display unit which displays whether or not the currently watched program can be recorded by the recording apparatus based on the sameness judged by the sameness judgment unit.
US07693390B2
An apparatus for controlling inclined angle of an AV front panel for automobile is disclosed. Rotating force from a motor is transmitted to a rack attached to a slide plate through a power transmission system, and the slide plate is thus extended outward. The outer end of the slide plate pushes a lower part of the front panel, and the upper part of the front panel is lowered along a trajectory guide. Thereafter, rotating force from a second motor is transmitted to a sector gear through a second power transmission system. The rotation of the sector gear causes an end of an arm link to be lowered, thereby allowing the upper part to exit from an opening of the trajectory guide. As the upper part of the front panel is lowered, the front panel is laid down to be accessed therein.
US07693386B2
A parallel path cable routing system that incorporates parallel paths into a single system. The parallel path cable routing system includes a first cable trough having a cable pathway and a second cable trough having a cable pathway. The first cable trough is parallel to the second cable trough. The parallel path cable routing system also includes a single component having a cable pathway that is coupled to both the first and second cable troughs. The single component connects the first cable trough pathway to the second cable trough pathway to allow the cables to run from the first cable trough to the second cable trough thereby transitioning the cables in the parallel path cable routing system.
US07693371B1
A chirp optical waveguide includes a chirp grating formed in a ferroelectric substrate, and a waveguide part orthogonal to the chirp grating. The chirp grating has a plurality of grating segments and has a normalized grating period Λx/Λ0 that increases exponentially in each grating segment and decreases stepwise from each grating segment to a following one of the grating segments, where Λ0 is an initial grating period at the wave propagation distance of zero, and Λx is a grating period at the wave propagation distance of x. The chirp grating provides high wave conversion efficiency for short pulse widths and effectively compensates for a reduction in conversion efficiency due to chromatic dispersion.
US07693361B2
Provided is a hybrid laser diode. The hybrid laser diode includes: a silicon layer constituting a slab waveguide; and a compound semiconductor layer disposed on the silicon layer to constitute a channel waveguide.
US07693357B2
The present invention provides methods and systems for mitigating polarization changes associated with an optical communication signal caused by mechanical disturbances to an optical fiber dispersion compensation module of an optical communication network. The methods include disposing a first damping material between an optical fiber and a housing associated with the optical fiber dispersion compensation module; wherein the first damping material is selected and positioned such that it mitigates relatively fast polarization changes. Optionally, the methods also include disposing a second damping material between the optical fiber and the housing associated with the optical fiber dispersion compensation module; wherein the second damping material is selected and positioned such that it mitigates relatively slow polarization changes. Thus, frequency range specific optical fiber dispersion compensation module mechanical perturbation isolation methods and systems are provided.
US07693354B2
A salicide heater structure for use in thermo-optic and other heat-influenced semiconductor devices is disclosed. In one example embodiment, a system is provided that includes a silicon substrate, and a salicide heating element formed on the substrate, for delivering heat radiation to a heat-influenced semiconductor device. Another example embodiment is a salicide semiconductor system that includes a silicon substrate and a salicide structure formed on the substrate, wherein the salicide structure is for delivering heat radiation to a heat-influenced semiconductor device.
US07693353B2
An image processing apparatus includes a storage unit configured to store sightseeing information in a storing unit, a detection unit configured to detect sightseeing information corresponding to a predetermined sightseeing site stored in the storing device, a display unit configured to display the sightseeing information detected by the detection means on a display unit, and an image-capturing unit configured to capture an image of an object. The storage unit links an image obtained as a result of capturing an image using the image-capturing unit to the sightseeing information detected by the detecting unit and stores the image.
US07693349B2
System and method for incorporating user input on the fly during an otherwise automatic registration process. During rigid registration, user input adjusts the current computed pose or transformation that relates the two images being aligned. During warping, user input adjusts the flow field locally, and is gradually smoothed into the surrounding flow field. During multi-scale registration where images are first aligned at a course resolution, and subsequently at progressively finer resolutions, user input is applied at the current scale. User input is detected during the automated process either by interrupts or polling. Between user inputs the registration results are re-rendered.
US07693340B2
The method includes the following units: a coefficient number detecting unit (109) for detecting the number of coefficients which has a value other than 0 for each block according to the generated coefficient, a coefficient number storing unit (110) for storing the number of coefficients detected, a coefficient number coding unit (111) for selecting a table for variable length coding based on the numbers of coefficients in the coded blocks located on the periphery of a current block to be coded with reference to the selected table for variable length coding so as to perform variable length coding for the number of coefficients.
US07693331B2
A method tracks an object. A sequence of visible images and a sequence of infrared images are acquired concurrently of a scene. A visible background image is maintained from each current visible image, while an infrared background image is maintained from each current infrared image. Each current visible image and the visible background image, and each current infrared image and the infrared background image are compared to generate corresponding changed pixels. Shadow pixels and reflectance pixels are discarded from the changed pixels to identify foreground pixels associated with an object in the scene.
US07693330B2
Image display methods and systems are provided wherein only portions of a still image of a motion picture, generated for display during an image time interval, are displayed during respective sub-intervals of the image time interval. A still image is thereby separated into portions and displayed separately during corresponding sub-intervals. Preferably, no single portion of the image includes all of the content of the entire image. However, the sum of all of the portions preferably includes all of the content of the image, and all of the portions are displayed within the image time interval. Although an image displayed in this manner can be correctly perceived by a viewer, recording of such an image may capture fewer than all of the portions of the image to thereby degrade the quality of recorded copies of the image and thus the motion picture. Intensity compensation is performed such that a consistent brightness is perceived by a user notwithstanding the fact that some portions are displayed for less time.
US07693326B1
An image processing method and system using a low-complexity scheme is provided. According to one aspect of the method, input components from a RGB model are used directly to calculate the down-sampled components of a YCbCr model. In an exemplary instance where average down-sampling and a down-sampling rate of “4:2:0” are used, the following equations are used to derive the down-sampled components of the YCbCr model: Y l ″ = 0.29900 R i + 0.58700 G l + 0.11400 B l Cb ″ = - 0.04219 ∑ i = 0 3 R l - 0.082815 ∑ i = 0 3 G l + 0.12500 ∑ i = 0 3 B l + 2 SP / 2 Cr ″ = 0.12500 ∑ i = 0 3 R i - 0.10467 ∑ i = 0 3 G i - 0.02033 ∑ i = 0 3 B i + 2 SP / 2 where Ri, Gi and Bi are three input components of the color conversion for the pixel i and “SP” represents a specified sample precision under the RGB model. The foregoing method reduces computational complexity and cost thereby allowing an image color conversion process to be performed in a more efficient manner.
US07693306B2
A system and method of tracking a patron in a gaming environment uses a database that stores known images and known text descriptions of existing patrons. An image of a patron is captured by an image capture device, and a text description of the patron is obtained. The image and the text description are transmitted to the database. A comparator compares the image or the text description to those on the database. The image is stored in a patron folder if the image or the text description is found to match an existing patron. The image is stored in a temporary folder if the image or the text description fails to match one of the existing patrons, and once the patron has been identified, the image is transferred from the temporary folder to the patron folder.
US07693305B2
A document processing system and method for using image quality to sort documents. The document processing system comprises: a document sorting system that designates a destination pocket for each document based on data gathered from each document; a document imaging system that captures an image of each document; and an image quality analysis system that analyzes each image and causes any document having an unacceptable image to be redirected to an unacceptable destination pocket.
US07693304B2
An exemplary method for determining quality of an image, includes segmenting the image into sections, generating quality measures for each section, and combining the quality measures of the sections to form a quality measure for the image. An exemplary system for determining quality of an image includes a memory for storing the image, and a processor for segmenting the image into sections, generating quality measures for each section, and combining the quality measures of the sections to form a quality measure for the image, and for storing the quality measure for the image in the memory.
US07693300B2
The presently claimed invention relates generally to color signal processing. One claim recites a method including: obtaining a measure or value associated with one or more color characteristics of data representing video or imagery; based at least in part on the measure or value, determining for the data those samples that should receiving steganographic encoding; transforming at least some of the data into a transform domain; and utilizing a programmed electronic processor, altering transform domain coefficients of the at least some data that has been transformed to steganographically encode the data. Of course, other claims and combinations are provided.
US07693286B2
Delivering a Direct Proof private key in a signed group of keys to a device installed in a client computer system in the field may be accomplished in a secure manner without requiring significant non-volatile storage in the device. A unique pseudo-random value is generated and stored along with a group number in the device at manufacturing time. The pseudo-random value is used to generate a symmetric key for encrypting a data structure holding a Direct Proof private key and a private key digest associated with the device. The resulting encrypted data structure is stored in a signed group of keys (e.g., a signed group record) on a removable storage medium (such as a CD or DVD), and distributed to the owner of the client computer system. When the device is initialized on the client computer system, the system checks if a localized encrypted data structure is present in the system. If not, the system obtains the associated signed group record of encrypted data structures from the removable storage medium, and verifies the signed group record. The device decrypts the encrypted data structure using a symmetric key regenerated from its stored pseudo-random value to obtain the Direct Proof private key, when the group record is valid. If the private key is valid, it may be used for subsequent authentication processing by the device in the client computer system.
US07693277B2
Generating a digital signature utilizing a cryptograph key includes: receiving into a computer system input data from a user (UID); generating within the computer system a cryptographic key as a deterministic function of the UID; clearing from the computer system the UID; generating within the computer system a digital signature as a function of the generated cryptographic key; and clearing the generated cryptographic key from the computer system following generation of the digital signature. The digital signature further may be generated as a function of whether a digital signature has yet been generated using the generated cryptographic key following receipt of the UID. Neither the received UID nor the generated cryptographic key is exported from the computer system.
US07693275B2
The present invention discloses an online service system capable of predicting waiting time. The service system serves the users through a queuing mode and an electronic whiteboard mode. The queuing mode comprises a queuing-user counting unit for counting number of the user entering the queuing mode, a service channel counting unit for counting number of the service channels providing service, and a waiting-time prediction unit for predicting and showing the waiting time to the queuing users. Alternatively, the queuing users can search for related information from the database through a search engine. Once the service channel is available, the queuing user can exit from the queuing mode and request for service through the electronic whiteboard mode by transmitting audio/video, picture and character data. The present invention may further provide a performance evaluation mode for the system manager's reference.
US07693267B2
Improved systems and methods are provided for transcribing audio files of voice mails sent over a unified messaging system. Customized grammars specific to a voice mail recipient are created and utilized to transcribe a received voice mail by comparing the audio file to commonly utilized words, names, acronyms, and phrases used by the recipient. Key elements are identified from the resulting text transcription to aid the recipient in processing received voice mails based on the significant content contained in the voice mail.
US07693266B1
A method, system, and medium are provided for testing a network communications component. A model of a substantially ideal communications network is provided and a test signal is generated at an input of the network model. An output signal from the model is transmitted to the network component. The signal is suitable for analyzing acoustic parameters of the network component. The acoustic parameters are analyzed based upon a response of the network component to the output signal.
US07693264B2
A system for controlling a gas load imposed upon a high vacuum chamber includes a first chamber enclosing a high vacuum and positioned within an ambient environment, a second chamber enclosing a gas and positioned within the ambient environment adjacent to the first chamber, and a rotatable shaft having a first portion extending into the first chamber and a second portion extending into the second chamber. A ferrofluid seal is positioned about the rotatable shaft and positioned between the first portion and the second portion and the ferrofluid seal fluidically separates the first chamber from the second chamber. A control unit is attached to the second chamber and configured to control the gas enclosed in the second chamber such that a gas load in the first chamber is reduced.
US07693261B2
A method and apparatus for obtaining radiation transmission data including providing a radiation source, e.g., x-ray or gamma-ray source, and a radiation detector system, e.g., x-ray or gamma-ray detection system, spaced therefrom to define a scanning zone therebetween, the detector system capable of detecting and collecting spectroscopically resolvable information about incident radiation. Collecting a dataset of information about radiation incident including transmissivity of an object in the scanning zone at at least one scanning position from radiation transmitted through the object and received at the detector system. Resolving each dataset spectroscopically across a plurality of frequency bands within the spectrum of the source; at least one of the frequency bands corresponding to a characteristically scattered wavelength of a target species to be identified. The absence of or substantial reduction in a transmitted signal intensity at the frequency band is interpreted as the presence of the said target species.
US07693260B2
A radiosurgery system is described that delivers a therapeutic dose of radiation to a target structure in a patient. In some embodiments, inflammatory ocular disorders are treated, specifically macular degeneration. In some embodiments, ocular structures are placed in a global coordinate system, based on ocular imaging, which leads to direction of an automated positioning system. In some embodiments, the position of an ocular structure is tracked and related to a radiosurgery system. In some embodiments, a treatment plan is utilized for a specific disease to be treated and/or structures to be avoided. In some embodiments, a fiducial aids in positioning the system. In some embodiments, a reflection off the eye is used to aid in positioning. In some embodiments, radiodynamic therapy is described in which radiosurgery is used in combination with other treatments and can be delivered concomitant with, prior to, or following other treatments.
US07693256B2
A stereoscopic phase-contrast X-ray imaging system (1) comprises a stereoscopic radiation head (20) having at least one X-ray source (30, 31) providing a first (32) and second (33) X-ray beam in stereoscopic configuration onto an object (110). At least one detector (40, 41) detects the beams (32, 33) having passed through the object (110) and generates detection data. This data is processed by a phase-contrast stereoscopic reconstruction processor (60) to generate two 2D phase-contrast images (80, 82) of the object (110) collectively forming a stereoscopic image pair or stereo image providing high resolution 3D representation of the object (110).
US07693255B2
Compression pad for a mammography apparatus comprising a compression plate made of a material transparent to X-rays, and a support by which said pad is configured to be mounted onto a mammography apparatus. The support has an arch shape configured to go over the edge of a compression plate, and said compression plate and said support comprise complementary mechanical means capable of enabling manual locking/unlocking of the support on said plate, in particular for cleaning said plate and said support.
US07693254B2
An x-ray device comprises means for the production of at least one standard projection image of the object in which presumed suspect zones corresponding to radiological signs are represented by markers. The device comprises means for the production of a digital volume of markers in which 3D markers are created in order to represent presumed suspect zones of the object. It also comprises means of re-projection of the 3D markers in the standard projection image in order to confirm the presence of the markers or eliminate or add the markers of the projection image is necessary.
US07693250B2
A fast reactor 1 controlled with a reflector comprises: a reactor vessel 7 accommodating therein a coolant 5; a reactor core 2 disposed in the reactor vessel 7 and immersed in the coolant 5; and a reflector 4 that vertically moves for adjusting leakage of neutrons generated from the reactor core 2 to control a reactivity of the reactor core 2, the reflector 4 including a neutron reflecting part 4a disposed on an outside of the reactor core 2 in a vertically movable manner, the neutron reflecting part 4a having a neutron reflecting ability higher than that of the coolant 5, and a cavity part 4b positioned above the neutron reflecting part 4a, the cavity part 4b having a neutron reflecting ability lower than that of the coolant 5. The neutron reflecting part 4a is formed of a plurality of metal plates 37 that are stacked on each other. Each of the metal plates 37 has a plurality of coolant channels 36 through which the coolant 5 flows.
US07693247B2
A phase locked loop having reduced inherent noise is provided. The phase locked loop comprises a controlled oscillator for outputting a periodic output signal as a result of a control signal; a feedback unit for providing at least two periodic feedback signals having a constant phase shift to each other and each depending on the output signal; a phase/frequency detector for providing difference signals each depending on a periodic input signal and at least one of the feedback signals; and a control circuit for providing the control signal to the controlled oscillator depending on the difference signals.
US07693231B2
The claimed subject matter relates to estimating noise variance associated with a transmitter. For example, the noise variance can be estimated in connection with determining performance parameters associated with a transmitter. Determining noise variance can include the acts of estimating phase alteration of a received signal through utilization of a least squares-based phase estimation algorithm. Determining noise variance can also include the act of determining an unbiased estimation of noise variance as a function of the estimated phase alteration.
US07693229B2
A system and method for processing a received Global Positioning System (GPS) signal into a processed position finding GPS signal and for processing a first and a second input signal jointly with the GPS signal. A modulator and transmitter for modulation and transmission of processed signals in cellular systems and in mobile network, wherein cellular system and mobile network are distinct. A modulator and transmitter for transmission of processed signals in a satellite system and in a cellular system. Multiple Input Multiple Output (MIMO) transmitter and receiver having a transmit filter and a receiver filter wherein the transmit and receiver filter are mismatched. A modulator and transmitter which comprise cascaded hybrid systems, including a cascaded GSM or EDGE, of cascaded infrared (IR) or GSM or CDMA or TDMA or UMTS systems and contain Radio Frequency identification (RFID) signals.
US07693226B1
An aggregation channel for providing data communication for M data streams to N data streams comprises a first first-in, first-out (FIFO) buffer module that receives the M data streams and realigns them with each other based on respective alignment symbols. A lane mapping module receives the realigned M data streams from the first FIFO buffer module and routes predetermined ones of the M data streams to predetermined ones of the N data streams, wherein each of the N data streams receives at least one of the alignment characters. M is greater than N, N is greater than 1, and each of the M data streams includes an alignment symbol.
US07693225B2
A MCM (multi-carrier modulation) receiver that utilizes a plurality tones to transmit information. Identify a first subset of tones that have negligible ISI (inter-symbol interference) and ICI (inter-carrier interference), and a second subset of tones that ISI/ICI cancellation is needed to improve the performance. For tones in the first subset, conventional FEQ (frequency-domain equalization) is performed to obtained soft decisions from the raw decisions. For those tones in the second subset, perform FEQ along with ICI/ISI cancellation. For tones in the second subset, identify a third subset (one for each of the tones in the second subset) to perform ICI cancellation and a series of fourth subsets (one for each of the tones in the second subset) to perform ISI cancellation. The selection of the first subset, the second subset, the third subset (for each of the tone in the second subset), and the fourth subset (for each of the tone in the second subset) are based on examining the frequency response of the communication channel.
US07693221B2
A system is provided for processing a compressed image stream of a stereoscopic image stream, the compressed image stream having a plurality of frames in a first format, each frame consisting of a merged image comprising pixels sampled from a left image and pixels sampled from a right image. A receiver receives the compressed image stream and a decompressing module in communication with the receiver decompresses the compressed image stream. The left and right images of the decompressed image stream are stored in a frame buffer. A serializing unit reads pixels of the frames stored in the frame buffer and outputs a pixel stream comprising pixels of a left frame and pixels of a right frame. A stereoscopic image processor receives the pixel stream, buffers the pixels, performs interpolation in order to reconstruct pixels of the left and right images and outputs a reconstructed left pixel stream and a reconstructed right pixel stream, the reconstructed streams having a format different from the first format. A display signal generator receives the stereoscopic pixel stream to provide an output display signal.
US07693207B2
In a CO2 laser a pre-ionizer is assembled in a flange configured to be attached to a laser-gas enclosure of the laser over an aperture in a wall of the enclosure. An aperture in the base of the flange is aligned over the aperture in the enclosure wall. The aperture in the pre-ionizer flange is covered by a ceramic membrane. A disc electrode is in contact with the ceramic membrane on a side of the membrane outside of the laser-gas enclosure. An RF potential applied to the disc electrode creates a corona discharge on the side of the ceramic membrane inside the enclosure. The corona discharge ionizes laser gas in the enclosure before RF power is applied to electrodes of the slab laser. A cylindrical ceramic sleeve extends from the membrane for containing the discharge.
US07693193B2
A laser light source device includes: a laser light source that emits a laser light; and an optical wavelength conversion section that includes a ferroelectric material carrying therein a plurality of polarization inversion rows in which a polarization inversion area and a polarization non-inversion area are alternately formed in a predetermined direction, and converts the laser light directed in the predetermined direction into a second harmonic. In the laser light source device, the laser light source is disposed at a fixed position to allow any one of the polarization inversion rows to be positioned on an optical path of the laser light.
US07693192B2
A mode-locked laser device includes a Fabry-Perot resonator, a mode-locking element disposed within the resonator, a solid-state laser medium disposed within the resonator, and exciting means for applying excitation light to the solid-state laser medium. The opposite ends of the resonator, the mode-locking element and the solid-state laser medium are disposed to provide an average beam diameter of lasing light of not more than 150 μm on the mode-locking element and an average beam diameter of the lasing light of not more than 200 μm within the solid-state laser medium.
US07693188B2
A method and system are provided for remultiplexing program bearing data. The remultiplexing method and system are applicable to MPEG-2 compliant transport streams carrying video programs. Remultiplexing functions may be distributed across a network. The remultiplexer can furthermore optimize the bandwidth of transport streams by replacing null transport packets with transport packet data to be inserted into the output transport stream. Remultiplexing and program specific information can be seamlessly dynamically varied without stopping, or introducing a discontinuity in, the flow-of outputted transport packets.
US07693187B2
The integrated information communication system is comprised of an access control apparatus for connecting a plurality of computer communication networks or information communication equipment to each, and a relay device for networking the aforementioned access control apparatus. The system has functions for performing routing by transferring information by a unified address system and by changing address at the access control apparatus, and is configured such that the aforementioned plurality of computer communication networks or information communication equipment can perform communications in an interactive manner. The integrated information communication system ensures communication speed, communication quality, communication trouble countermeasures in a unified manner, without using dedicated lines or the Internet, wherein security and reliability in communication is ensured without change of a private address system.
US07693178B2
The present invention provides a small form factor, pluggable ONU, which includes a bi-directional optical transceiver configured to transmit optical signals to and receive optical signals from an OLT. The ONU further includes an ONU chip coupled to the optical transceiver and configured to communicate with the OLT. Also included is a pluggable interface configured to electrically interface between the ONU chip and a piece of subscriber premise equipment (SPE). The ONU includes a power management module to provide power to the ONU chip and the optical transceiver, using power delivered from the SPE through the pluggable interface. The ONU is enclosed a small form factor enclosure, thereby allowing the pluggable ONU to be directly plugged into the SPE and providing an Ethernet Passive Optical Network (EPON) uplink to the SPE without requiring an separate power supply.
US07693170B2
A transmission rate control method, includes: transmitting, at a radio base station, a relative rate grant channel which includes a command for controlling a transmission rate in uplink to a mobile station; and determining, at the mobile station, that the relative rate grant channel which includes a HOLD command for instructing to maintain the transmission rate is received at the mobile station, when data to be transmitted becomes empty in a transmission buffer and a receive signal in the relative rate grant channel is detected as “0” or “+1”, and maintaining the transmission rate.
US07693168B2
Apparatus for providing connectivity at a hub having a plurality of subscriber lines and a plurality of feeder lines. The apparatus includes a first switch module for coupling to N of the plurality of subscriber lines, where N is an integer. The first switch module is also for coupling to a digital subscriber line access modem (DSLAM) at the hub. A second switch module is coupled to the first switch module and the DSLAM. The second switch module is also adapted for coupling to M of the plurality of feeder lines at the hub, where M is an integer.
US07693164B1
Packet tunnel network configuration methods, management system operation methods, and management systems receive a request to enable layer-two Ethernet communication between service virtual local area networks via edge bridges fully connected by packet tunnels. The packet tunnel network configuration methods, management system operation methods, and management systems direct the edge bridges to establish the packet tunnels and modify Ethernet packets received from the service virtual local area networks by adding an instance service identifier and a tunnel identifier to the received Ethernet packets.
US07693161B2
A control device by which a priority for service is assigned based on quality of service (QoS) for each control point residing on a network and services are provided according to the assigned priority. The control device includes communication S/W module which receives control messages transmitted from the control points or transmits reply messages to the control points, a priority management module which determines the priority for service based on a QoS level for each control point, a UPnP S/W module which analyzes the control messages received from the communication S/W module and controls service operations corresponding to the analyzed control messages, and a service S/W module which performs the service operations under the control of the UPnP S/W module. Consistent with the present invention, the priority for service is assigned according to the QoS for the control point and the services are provided according to the assigned priority.
US07693157B2
An access control mechanism in a network connecting one or more sink devices to a server providing audio/visual data (A/V) in streams. As a sink device requests access, the server measures available bandwidth to the sink device. If the measurement of available bandwidth is completed before the sink device requests a stream of audio/visual data, the measured available bandwidth is used to set transmission parameters of the data stream in accordance with a Quality of Service (QoS) policy. If the measurement is not completed when the data stream is requested, the data stream is nonetheless transmitted. In this scenario, the data stream may be transmitted using parameters computed using a cached measurement of the available bandwidth to the sink device. If no cached measurement is available, the data stream is transmitted with a low priority until a measurement can be made. Once the measurement is available, the transmission parameters of the data stream are re-set. With this access control mechanism, A/V streams may be provided with low latency but with transmission parameters accurately set in accordance with the QoS policy.
US07693154B2
A transmitter equipped with a plurality of transmission path ports and a relay section. The relay section has a routing table and a router. In the routing table, information about the relay of the received packet to one of the transmission path ports connected to a relay transmission path is stored, correlated with both a port identifier of each the transmission path port and the source address of the transmitter that transmitted the packet. The router extracts the port identifier of the transmission path port that received the packet and the source address contained in the received packet, and routes the received packet to the transmission path port connected to the relay transmission path by referring to the routing table for the extracted port identifier and the extracted source address.
US07693153B2
In a telecommunications network, a method of controlling a media gateway to handle a multiplex session, using a media gateway controller, the media gateway and the media gateway controller communicating using a standardised interface protocol, e.g. H.248, providing for a set of command messages each of which contains: a context field for identifying a context of the media gateway; a termination field for identifying one or more terminations of the media gateway; at least one descriptor for defining properties of the context; and optionally a package identity and at least one associated property. The method comprises, at the media gateway controller, generating a command message said structure and containing a multiplex descriptor including a package identifier, the package identifier identifying a package implemented at the media gateway for handling a multiplex session, sending the generated command message from the media gateway controller to the media gateway, and, at the media gateway, establishing the context identified in the message according to the specified package. Preferably, the multiplex descriptor includes at least one property which is one of a circuit assignment map and a contiguous or non-contiguous service type.
US07693150B2
In one embodiment, a signaling message is received from an endpoint. It is determined from the signaling message whether, prior to sending the signaling message, the endpoint performed network address translation on the body of the signaling message. If it is determined from the signaling message that, prior to sending the signaling message, the endpoint did not perform network address translation on the body of the signaling message, application layer gateway functionality is applied to the body of the signaling message such that a modified signaling message is generated.
US07693128B2
Methods (400, 500) and corresponding systems (100, 200, 300) for managing a packet (318) for transmission include obtaining a quality of service (QoS) parameter value for a data stream (404), and determining one or more QoS statistics for previously transmitted data (406). Thereafter, a packet is selected from the data stream (408), and scheduling information is estimated for the packet (410) based upon the QoS statistics and the QoS parameter value. The scheduling information is assigned (414) to the packet. A transmission time window of a transmission buffer is determined (506). If the scheduling information assigned to the packet falls within the transmission time window (508), the packet is queued for transmission in the transmission buffer. The labeled packet can be arranged among one or more queued packets in response to comparing scheduling information of the labeled packet and the queued packets.
US07693121B2
Methods and apparatus for implementing a home network including a wireless module. In one implementation, a home network includes: two or more host devices, where at least one host device includes a wireless module port, and where the host devices are connected in a local network; and a wireless module connected to the wireless module port of a host device, where the wireless module provides a wireless connection to an external network; where at least one host device is a consumer appliance.
US07693117B2
A novel method for coordinating the delivery of frames to and the receipt of frames from a power-saving station in a wireless local-area network (LAN) is disclosed. The illustrative embodiment establishes a wake-up schedule for a power-saving station based on a temporal period and temporal offset that reduces the frequency with which multiple stations in a network wake up simultaneously, thereby reducing traffic delays and power consumption. The illustrative embodiment is particularly well-suited to networks with traffic that has delay/jitter quality-of-service (QoS) requirements (i.e., voice calls, videophone calls, etc.).
US07693116B2
A processing unit performs adaptive array signal processing. A modem unit performs modulation and demodulation processing. A derivation unit derives signal strength as radio communication qualities among a plurality of terminal apparatuses of half rate format. A control unit assigns time slots in a plurality of terminal apparatuses of half rate format to be communicated with a base station apparatus. The control unit selects two terminal apparatuses whose difference between signal strengths is smaller, from among the plurality of terminal apparatuses of half rate, and then assigns time slots, having predetermined relationships, in these selected terminal apparatuses.
US07693111B2
Each of a plurality of multicarrier wireless communication devices generate a carrier frequency offset (CFO) estimate from a downlink polling frame (302) and apply the CFO estimate to signals prior to transmission to a receiving station over a multi-user uplink.
US07693100B2
In an adaptive feedback method for a cellular communication system having plural terminals feeding back channel information to an access point, the system selects one of an opportunistic mode and a polling mode as a feedback mode between an access point and the terminals on the basis of system and traffic parameters, sets up the access point and the terminals for the selected feedback mode, and feeds back the channel information from the terminals to the access point in the selected feedback mode. The adaptive feedback method changes the feedback mechanism adaptively to the system and traffic environment, making it possible to increase the system throughput as well as to decrease the MAC overhead regardless of the variation of the number of MSs.
US07693098B2
A method for controlling the communication with mobile stations in a network, preferably in a WLAN (Wireless Local Area Network) according to the IEEE 802.11 standard, wherein the network comprises access points through which the mobile stations are associated with the network and wherein the mobile stations can be set to power save mode is—with respect to an especially energy-efficient operation of the mobile station-designed in such a way that paging signaling is performed in order to locate a mobile station.
US07693095B2
A method and apparatus is provided for processing a received orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) signal at a receiver, wherein said signal has been distorted by one or more transmission bursts from a transmitter. The method and apparatus generate a phase compensated OFDM signal based upon a pre-fast fourier transform (pre-FFT) phase progression estimate and information regarding timing of the one or more transmission bursts.
US07693091B2
Methods and systems for communicating between Teredo clients behind UPnP-enabled symmetric or restricted Network Address Translators.
US07693090B1
The present disclosure generally pertains to systems and methods for discovering PME bonding groups. In one exemplary embodiment, a plurality of communication links are terminated by physical medium entities (PMEs). In this regard, each link is terminated at one end via a network PME and at another end via a remote PME at a customer premises. Each of the PMEs has a transceiver that is allowed to train during a training phase that precedes a data phase. After training, discovery of PME bonding groups is performed via data communicated over data phase control channels, which are operational while links are operational in the data phase, transmitting data using the Ethernet in the First Mile (EFM) encapsulation. For example, the control channel data may be communicated over a link-level embedded operations channel (EOC). In another example, the control channel data may be communicated using 64/65 Byte (B) code words. In another example, the control channel data may be communicated via an Ethernet operations, administration and maintenance (OAM) channel. In yet another example, the control channel data may be communicated via EFM fragment messaging.
US07693087B1
A method, system, and medium are provided for selecting one or more hub aggregation points from a number of candidates on a network. The method begins by obtaining selection criteria for each of the candidates. Using the obtained criteria a score for each candidate is determined. This determination involves assigning intermediate scores for each criteria and applying a weighted multiplier to the intermediate score. The total of the intermediate scores is the overall score for any candidate. The method continues by selecting potential hub aggregation points for further consideration based upon the determined score of each candidate. The method then calculates a least cost route for each point on the network under consideration to each of the selected hub aggregation points. Different combinations of selected hub aggregation points can then be used to iterate through the least cost routing analysis to arrive at a final selection of hub aggregation points.
US07693083B2
An audio network system allows any two nodes among a plurality of nodes to transmit and receive audio data to and from each other. The plurality of the nodes are connected in loop so as to allow transmission of the audio data in loop manner through the plurality of the nodes, and the transmission of the audio data is performed in one direction from an upstream node to a downstream node. One of the plurality of the nodes is set as a master node and the other nodes are set as slave nodes. The master node periodically transmits a packet of frame data containing the audio data every sampling period, such that the packet transmitted from the master node circulates through the plurality of the nodes to return to the master node within one or more sampling period. The packet has a specific data length and includes an audio data storage region divided into a plurality of blocks corresponding to a plurality of channels, such that each of the blocks stores audio data of the corresponding channel.
US07693080B2
A network loop monitor (10) is disclosed which comprises an RS485 port (16) for connection to a host which receives and transmits data. The port (16) comprises termination jumpers (14), a transmitter/receiver (34) and an isolator (36). The monitor (10) includes two further RS485 ports (18, 20) each of which has a termination (26, 28), a transmitter/receiver (42, 44) and an isolator (38, 40). A relay (22) controls contacts (24) in the line pair (12). Router logic (32) controlled by a microprocessor (30) determines the status of the loop monitor.
US07693076B2
Methods and apparatus for determining that all conductors of an Ethernet connection are connected to the same powered device (PD). In one disclosed embodiment, it is first determined that a signal conductor pair of the Ethernet connection is coupled to a valid PD according to a discovery process, and the unused conductor pair of the Ethernet connection is also coupled to a valid PD. However, it is not yet determined whether they are both coupled to the same PD. This disclosure provides for injecting a polluting signal into one of the conductor pairs, and performing the discovery process on the other conductor pair. If the discovery process fails on the other conductor pair as a result of the polluting signal, then it is determined that both of the conductor pairs are indeed coupled to same PD.
US07693064B2
Each network node having at least one destination-oriented link toward a directed acyclic graph (DAG) destination can receive a corresponding set of path performance metrics via the destination-oriented link. The set of path performance metrics, initiated by the DAG destination outputting initial link metrics on each of its source-connecting links, identifies aggregate link metrics for a corresponding path to the DAG destination via the corresponding destination-oriented link. The network node outputs a corresponding updated set of path performance metrics on each of its source-connecting links based on the received set of path performance metrics and the corresponding link metric for the corresponding source-connecting link. Hence, each network node in the DAG can assess the performance of each connected path to the DAG destination, and forward a data packet via a selected destination-oriented link based on the corresponding path performance metrics and forwarding policies for the forwarded data packet.
US07693060B2
A method and corresponding apparatus establish a reservation in a segment of an end-to-end path between a data sender and a data receiver, up to a point in the end-to-end path; attempt to establish another reservation in an adjacent segment of the end-to-end path, beyond the point in the end-to-end path; and in an event that the other reservation is established in the adjacent segment of the end-to-end path, bind the other reservation to the reservation established in the segment of an end-to-end path up to the point in the end-to-end path.
US07693058B2
A method for enhancing transmission quality of streaming media. A first bandwidth for a first communication link and a second bandwidth for a second communication link of a network are determined. Provided the first bandwidth is greater than the second bandwidth, a first excess bandwidth is utilized to improve transmission quality in the first communication link, wherein said the excess bandwidth is related to a difference of the first bandwidth minus the second bandwidth. Provided the second bandwidth is greater than the first bandwidth, a second excess bandwidth is utilized to improve transmission quality in the second communication link, wherein the second excess bandwidth is related to a difference of the second bandwidth minus the first bandwidth.
US07693053B2
Methods and apparatus provide for: receiving tokens from a plurality of resources, where the tokens are exchange media for permitting a plurality of requesters to access an associated one of the resources for a period of time; allocating the tokens to respective requester groups into which the plurality of requesters have been assigned; receiving requests for one or more of the tokens from one or more of the requesters and granting, from the allocated tokens, one or more of the tokens to the requesters based on token granting criteria; and re-distributing unused tokens from one or more requester groups to one or more other requester groups based on priorities assigned to the requester groups; and dynamically altering the priorities assigned to the requester groups when a number of unused tokens of one or more of the requester groups has fallen below a threshold.
US07693046B2
A method or corresponding apparatus in an exemplary embodiment of the present invention monitors an operational status of network links and retrieves or receives the operational status. The operational status is stored (e.g., within 50 msec) on an ongoing basis. The operational status corresponds to an operational LSP from among a primary LSP and secondary LSP(s) used to service traffic via the network links to maintain network connectivity via the LSPs. The secondary LSP(s) may be either a bypass LSP or a backup LSP, where each LSP is Fast Re-route (FRR) enabled. Further, correspondence between the primary LSP, secondary LSP(s), and the network links may be tracked. In order to deliver network traffic via the operational LSP known to service traffic between the source and destination, a link identifier may be used. The link identifier is determined from the source and destination information within the network traffic.
US07693043B2
A method of advertising repair capability in a network repair scheme using network repair addresses for repairing around a repairable network component in a data communications network having, as components, nodes and links therebetween, comprises establishing whether an alternate repair path is available around a repairable component. If such a repair path is available, the method further comprises issuing a corresponding notification to nodes in the network.
US07693041B2
A mobile communication system for modulating input data with a specific size into an OFDM (Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing) symbol and transmitting the OFDM symbol through at least two different antennas. A replica generator generates replica data by cyclically-circulating the input data. An encoder generates a first antenna signal and a second antenna signal by encoding the input data and the replica data. A first IFFT (Inverse Fast Fourier Transform) block generates a first OFDM symbol by performing IFFT on the first antenna signal, and a second IFFT block generates a second OFDM symbol by performing IFFT on the second antenna signal. A first antenna transmits the first OFDM symbol, and a second antenna transmits the second OFDM symbol.
US07693032B2
An arrangement is disclosed where in a multi-carrier communication system, the modulation scheme, coding attributes, training pilots, and signal power may be adjusted to adapt to channel conditions in order to maximize the overall system capacity and spectral efficiency without wasting radio resources or compromising error probability performance.
US07693025B2
An optical pickup includes a detector, a plurality of light guiding units, and a switching controller. The detector detects, using a plurality of detection areas, a reflected light beam that is emitted from a predetermined light source and is reflected off an optical recording medium. Each of the light guiding units has a specific light guide pattern and inputs a predetermined part of the reflected light beam to a predetermined detection area in accordance with the light guide pattern. The switching controller switches and selects the light guiding unit that acts on the reflected light beam from among the plurality of light guiding units according to a predetermined switching condition.
US07693019B2
An information recording device having a recording head for recording information on a recording medium includes: an inherent ID generator that generates an inherent ID for the recording medium; an inherent ID recording unit that records the generated inherent ID on the recording medium with the recording head; an encryption key generator that generates an encryption key, based on the inherent ID; an encrypting unit that encrypts contents information, using the generated encryption key; and a contents recording unit that records the encrypted contents information on the recording medium with the recording head.
US07693015B2
It is an object of the present invention to improve a margin to meet good recording quality by conducting a realtime correction of a recording condition of a medium with different recording characteristics for inner and outer circumferences. To accomplish the object, control factors for power and a pulse width are independently detected and corrected using an mT pulse having a length of m′T as a pulse for power control and an nT pulse having a length of n′T as a pulse for pulse width control; more specifically, power correction for mT pulse and pulse width correction for nT pulse are conducted in realtime, wherein a recording pulse stream including the mT pulse and nT pulse is irradiated onto a medium by a recording laser beam as well as pits and spaces formed by irradiation of the recording pulse stream are reproduced by a reproducing laser beam to detect the effects of power and pulse width variations independently.
US07693011B2
The invention provides a wobble detection circuit. An exemplary embodiment of the wobble detection circuit comprises an automatic gain control module, an analog to digital converter, a digital band pass filter, and a digital band pass filter. The automatic gain control module amplifies a first input signal and a second input signal detected by a pickup head to the same magnitude to obtain a first amplified signal and a second amplified signal. The adder then subtracts the second amplified signal from the first amplified signal to obtain an analog wobble signal. The analog to digital converter then converts the analog wobble signal to a first digital wobble signal. Finally, the digital band pass filter accepts frequency components of the first digital wobble signal within a pass band and rejects frequency components of the first digital wobble signal outside the pass band to obtain a second digital wobble signal.
US07693010B2
An optical beam control device that can suppress deterioration of a laser diode and a photosensitive member is disclosed. Control is performed in such a manner that the luminous energy of emitted light is increased gradually in an initial period from the activation of a laser diode until the first generation of a BD detection signal. The initial period includes an extinction period in which the laser beam is extinguished. Therefore, deterioration of the light-emitting portion of the laser diode and the photosensitive member can be suppressed.
US07693006B2
1st order free-surface multiples recorded in VSP data or reverse VSP data are processed using a 3-C 3-D vector migration method to produce an image of the subsurface. This image produces a larger coverage than that obtained in 3-C 3-D processing of reflection data acquired in the VSP.
US07693004B2
This invention discloses a semiconductor memory device having a voltage supply circuit for generating a driver power supply voltage. The voltage supply circuit is provided with a first voltage supply circuit for precharging the driver power supply voltage to a power supply voltage level of a memory cell, and a second voltage supply circuit for supplying a voltage lower than the power supply voltage level of the memory cell as the driver power supply voltage.
US07692993B2
A semiconductor memory device includes a plurality of memory blocks, a plurality of refresh block counters, a refresh word line counter, and an arbitration circuit. The plurality of refresh block counters generate block addresses of at least two memory blocks to select at least two memory blocks to be refreshed from the plurality of memory blocks. The refresh word line counter generates a common word line address that is common to the at least two memory blocks. The arbitration circuit generates at least one first word line address based on the at least two block addresses and the common word line address and arbitrate so that each word line indicated by the at least one first word line address is refreshed during a period in which a word line indicated by an externally applied second word line address is accessed.
US07692984B2
A system and method for disabling access to individually addressable regions of an array of non-volatile memory. In response to receiving an initial valid command, a process for disabling access to the defective portions of the array of non-volatile memory is initiated in addition to executing the initial valid command. One implementation provides receiving a memory command and determining whether an indicator has been set. In response to the indicator not being set, access to defective regions of the array of non-volatile memory is disabled in addition to executing the memory command. The indicator is also set to prevent the disabling process from being performed in response to receipt of subsequent memory commands.
US07692980B2
Provided are an apparatus and a method of capturing data by using a data transition of a data signal. The method includes detecting a data transition of a data signal input from an external source, generating a pulse signal corresponding to the detected data transition, and capturing the data signal by using the generated pulse signal as a trigger. Accordingly, stable capturing of data can be performed without changes in margins even when data bits of the read data enter a controller at different times due to skews.
US07692979B2
In a memory readout circuit for use in a phase-change memory device comprising phase-change elements as memory cells, a sense amplifier sets readout voltage, which is applied to a selected phase-change element selected among the phase-change elements by a column selecting switch, to voltage equal to or higher than hold voltage of the selected phase-change element but lower than transition voltage of the selected phase-change element in a readout cycle. The selected phase-change element is read out as a dynamic state in the case where the selected phase-change element is in a set state.
US07692975B2
The present disclosure includes devices, methods, and systems for programming memory, such as resistance variable memory. One embodiment can include an array of resistance variable memory cells, wherein the resistance variable memory cells are coupled to one or more data lines, a row decoder connected to a first side of the array, a column decoder connected to a second side of the array, wherein the second side is adjacent to the first side, a gap located adjacent to the row decoder and the column decoder, and clamp circuitry configured to control a reverse bias voltage associated with one or more unselected memory cells during a programming operation, wherein the clamp circuitry is located in the gap and is selectively coupled to the one or more data lines.
US07692974B2
Implementations are presented herein that relate to a memory cell, a memory device, a device and a method of accessing a memory cell.
US07692970B2
Disclosed is a method of verifying a programmed condition of a flash memory device, being comprised of: determining a level of an additional verifying voltage in response to the number of programming/erasing cycles of memory cells; conducting a verifying operation to programmed memory cells with an initial verifying voltage lower than the additional verifying voltage; and selectively conducting an additional verifying operation with the additional verifying voltage to the program-verified memory cells in response to the number of programming/erasing cycles.
US07692967B2
A method of programming a nonvolatile memory device using hybrid local boosting which includes a plurality of cell strings each having a plurality of electrically erasable and programmable memory cells connected in series and a plurality of wordlines respectively connected to control gates of the plurality of memory cells. The address of a selected cell that is to be programmed is received. A determination is made as to whether a selected wordline connected to the selected cell is located above or under a reference wordline based on the received address. The selected cell is programmed using local boosting when the selected wordline corresponds to the reference wordline or is located above the reference wordline. The selected cell is programmed using self-boosting when the selected wordline is located under the reference wordline. The programming method reduces circuit size of a nonvolatile memory device employing the programming method and efficiently prevents program disturbance due to charge sharing.
US07692966B2
In this AG-AND type flash memory, a layered bit line configuration where a memory array is divided into a plurality of sub blocks, new main bit lines are allocated so as to correspond to each sub block, and a main bit line is selectively connected to a global bit line in an upper layer via a switch is adopted, so that charge sharing write-in is carried out between two main bit lines. Accordingly, write-in of data into the flash memory can be carried out with low power consumption, and the threshold voltage can be controlled with precision.
US07692964B1
A Static Random Access Memory (SRAM) cell having a source-biasing mechanism for leakage reduction. In standby mode, the cell's wordline is deselected and a source-biasing potential is provided to the cell. In read mode, the wordline is selected and responsive thereto, the source-biasing potential provided to the cell is deactivated. Upon completion of reading, the source-biasing potential is re-activated.
US07692956B2
An MRAM is provided with a memory main body (2) having at least one cell array, and a magnetic field detecting section (4) which detects a magnetic field in the vicinity of the memory main body (2) and outputs the detection signal to the memory main body (2). In the cell array, a memory main body (2), which has a plurality of magnetic memory cells including a multilayer ferri-structure as a free layer, stops a prescribed operation of the memory main body (2), based on the detection signal.
US07692950B2
There is provided a semiconductor memory device including; first and second active areas formed to extend in a first direction on a semiconductor substrate, first and second split word lines formed in a second direction on the semiconductor substrate, a common source line extending between the first and second active areas in the first direction and coupled to the first and second active areas, a first variable resistance element formed on the first active area between the first and second split word lines, a second variable resistance element formed on the second active area between the first and second split word lines, first and second bit lines extending in the first direction and respectively coupled to the first and second variable resistance elements.
US07692948B2
The sense amp circuit includes a first node given a first, positive constant voltage larger than a fixed potential before reading, a second node given a second, negative constant voltage smaller than the fixed potential before reading, and a third node to be connected to the first and second nodes on reading. A first transistor is connected between the first node and the bit line and operative to turn on when the potential on the bit line becomes smaller than the fixed potential. A second transistor is connected between the second node and the bit line and operative to turn on when the potential on the bit line becomes larger than the fixed potential. A first capacitor is connected between the first node and the fixed potential. A second capacitor is connected between the second node and the fixed potential.
US07692945B2
A memory system and memory module includes a plurality of memory devices, each having a plurality, e.g. four, ports for transmitting and receiving command signals, write data signals and read data signals. One of the memory devices is connected to a host or controller, and the remaining memories are connected together, typically by point-to-point links. When the memory system configuration is such that at least one of the ports in at least one of the memory devices is not used, one or more other ports can use the pins that may otherwise have been used by the unused ports. As a result, a set of reconfigurable, shared pins is defined in which two ports share the pins. The port that is not being used in a particular application for the memory device is not connected to the shared pins, and another port that is being used in the application is connected to the shared pins. This allows for the used of fewer package pins and, consequently, reduced package size.
US07692943B2
A semiconductor device includes a plurality of memory cells, and an error-correction circuit. Its write operation is performed by a late-write method, and ECC processing is executed in parallel with writing to shorten a cycle time. Moreover, when a memory cell is power-supplied through a well tap, the same address is not assigned while the memory cell is power-supplied through the well tap.
US07692931B2
Microelectronic packages with leadframes, including leadframes configured for stacked die packages, and associated systems and methods are disclosed. A system in accordance with one embodiment includes a support member having first package bond sites electrically coupled to leadframe bond sites. A microelectronic die can be carried by the support member and electrically coupled to the first packaged bond sites. A leadframe can be attached to the leadframe bond sites so as to extend adjacent to the microelectronic die, with the die positioned between the leadframe and the support member. The leadframe can include second package bond sites facing away from the first package bond sites. An encapsulant can at least partially surround the leadframe and the microelectronic die, with the first and second package bond sites accessible from outside the encapsulant.
US07692926B2
The present invention is a MEMS-based two-phase LHP (loop heat pipe) and CPL (capillary pumped loop) using semiconductor grade silicon and microlithographic/anisotropic etching techniques to achieve a planar configuration. The principal working material is silicon (and compatible borosilicate glass where necessary), particularly compatible with the cooling needs for electronic and computer chips and package cooling. The microloop heat pipes (μLHP™) utilize cutting edge microfabrication techniques. The device has no pump or moving parts, and is capable of moving heat at high power densities, using revolutionary coherent porous silicon (CPS) wicks. The CPS wicks minimize packaging thermal mismatch stress and improves strength-to-weight ratio. Also burst-through pressures can be controlled as the diameter of the coherent pores can be controlled on a sub-micron scale. The two phase planar operation provides extremely low specific thermal resistance (20-60 w/cm2). The operation is dependent upon a unique micropatterened CPS wick which contains up to millions per square centimeter of stacked uniform micro-through-capillaries in semiconductor-grade silicon, which serve as the capillary “engine,” as opposed to the stochastic distribution of pores in the typical heat pipe wick. As with all heat pipes, cooling occurs by virtue of the extraction of heat by the latent heat of phase change of the operating fluid into vapor.
US07692924B2
The present invention provides a rack suitable for housing a liquid-cooled electric unit. A rack 2 comprises an electric connector 12 for supplying electricity to the housed electric unit 50, and a fluid connector 14 for supplying cooling liquid to the housed electric unit 50. The fluid connector 14 and the electric connector 12 are arranged at different positions in a horizontal cross section (plane) of the rack 2. More preferably, the electric connector 12 is mounted on a back panel 6 of the rack 2, while the fluid connector 14 is mounted on the foreside of the rack 2. Such a configuration makes it less likely that the cooling liquid leaking from the fluid connector 14 drips onto the electric connector 12.
US07692919B2
A notebook computer with detachable display unit is disclosed. The notebook computer includes a main body, a hinge, and a display unit. The hinge includes an electrical connector, an elastic element, a post, and a pivot shaft. The electrical connector is connected with the elastic element. The post is combined with the pivot shaft. The pivot shaft is assembled on the main body. The display unit defines an opening therein. The display unit includes an electrical connector, an opening, and a locking mechanism. The opening is configured for receiving the post. The electrical connectors of the hinge and the display unit are configured for engaging with each other. The locking mechanism is configured for locking or detaching the connection between the display unit and the main body. The elastic element can reduce the shock that the electrical connectors suffered when the display unit is connected or disconnected to the main unit.
US07692912B2
A current limiting MOSFET monitors power applied to a direct current boost regulator that powers an LED backlight to automatically shut off power to the boost regulator if the current exceeds a predetermined amount. An embedded controller interfaces with the current limiting MOSFET for normal control of operation of the boost regulator by turning the MOSFET on and off. An overcurrent alert is communicated from the MOSFET to the embedded controller if the current exceeds the predetermined amount so that the embedded controller shuts off power to the boost regulator and indicates the failure to an end user.
US07692905B2
An electrostatic discharge protection circuit for an electronic device includes an output buffer including a transistor having a gate configured to receive a control signal, a source connected to a voltage supply terminal, and a drain connected to a pad; and an ESD trigger circuit configured to produce a first electronic signal in response to an electrostatic voltage between the pad or the voltage supply terminal. The first electronic signal can isolate the control signal from the gate of the transistor and to turn on the transistor to discharge the electrostatic voltage between the pad and the voltage supply terminal.
US07692901B2
A thin-film magnetic head includes a lower electrode layer, an MR multi-layered structure, through which a current passes in a direction perpendicular to a lamination plane, stacked on the lower electrode layer, soft magnetic layers for magnetic domain control formed on both sides in a track width direction of the MR multi-layered structure, an anti-ferromagnetic layer for magnetic domain control continuously stacked on the MR multi-layered structure and the soft magnetic layers for magnetic domain control, the anti-ferromagnetic layer mutually exchanged-coupled to the soft magnetic layers for magnetic domain control, and an upper electrode layer stacked on the anti-ferromagnetic layer for magnetic domain control.
US07692897B2
A transducing head includes a substrate, a writer positioned upon the substrate, and a reader positioned adjacent the writer. The writer is in electrical contact with the substrate.
US07692891B2
A sealed head disk assembly has a cover for enclosing major components of the head disk assembly. The cover has a hermetic seal encompassing an outer perimeter of the cover and a semi-hermetic seal inside a perimeter of the hermetic seal. The hermetic seal and semi-hermetic seal are juxtaposed to at least one complementary surface on the base casting. The base casting, which provides attachment points for the major components of the head disk assembly has at least one complementary surface.
US07692881B2
A structure for mounting an assembly of optical elements disposed within a housing, in particular of a projection lens assembly of a projection exposure system for manufacturing semiconductor elements includes a plurality of supporting elements, each respective one of which forms part of a respective one of a plurality of connections though which the housing of the assembly is connected to said supporting structure through which the weight of the assembly is transferred to the supporting structure in such a way that supporting forces generated by said supporting structure are taken up by pressure forces and shear forces which act on at least one of the supporting elements.
US07692867B2
Devices and methods that reduce or eliminate chromatic or comatic variations in the location of the excitation or emission in an optical system such as a confocal microscope, by enhancing parfocality are provided. Such devices include an optical collimator comprising a parabolic reflector and a convex aspheric reflector, wherein the aspheric reflector and the parabolic reflector are positioned such that light is incident at an off-axis angle relative to the axis of symmetry of the reflectors to extend the useable field of view.
US07692858B2
A sight includes a housing with first and second openings, and includes an optics section that is disposed within the housing, that has image erecting optics and eyepiece optics, and that optically influences radiation received through the first opening from a scene, so as to deliver through the second opening a viewable image that is a function of the radiation. An adjusting section facilitates adjustment of the position of the image erecting optics and the eyepiece optics within the housing.
US07692856B2
A focus error detecting optical system has an optical parameter which makes a focus lock-in range by a focus error signal be a value capable of detecting focus on a front surface of a cover glass and focus on a back surface thereof separately. A control section, based on the focus error signal obtained by the focus error detecting optical system, brings a focal point of an observational optical system to a focus position. Further, focus error detecting optical systems include optical units each having an optical parameter corresponding to a numerical aperture of respective objective lenses. A control section selects the optical unit of the focus error detecting optical system corresponding to the objective lens in use. The control section, using a focus error signal obtained by the selected focus error detecting optical system, brings a focal point of an observational optical system to a focus position.
US07692853B2
A pulse reshaper for reshaping and re-amplifying optical signals in a communications network by adjusting threshold and amplification characteristics of a semiconductor optical amplifier (SOA) having first and second reflective regions optically cooperating at each of an input signal wavelength (λs) and an offset wavelength (λC) proximate the input signal wavelength (λs). In one embodiment, a vertical cavity semiconductor optical amplifier (VCSOA) device, comprising dual mode reflectors optically cooperating at each of an input signal wavelength (λs) and an offset wavelength (λC) proximate the input signal wavelength (λs) to provide thereby non-linear amplification of input signal (λs).
US07692852B2
A Raman amplifier according to the present invention comprises a plurality of pumping means using semiconductor lasers of Fabry-Perot, DFB, or DBR type or MOPAs, and pumping lights outputted from the pumping means have different central wavelengths, and interval between the adjacent central wavelength is greater than 6 nm and smaller than 35 nm. An optical repeater according to the present invention comprises the above-mentioned Raman amplifier and adapted to compensate loss in an optical fiber transmission line by the Raman amplifier. In a Raman amplification method according to the present invention, the shorter the central wavelength of the pumping light the higher light power of said pumping light. In the Raman amplifier according to the present invention, when a certain pumping wavelength is defined as a first channel, and second to n-th channels are defined to be arranged with an interval of about 1 THz toward a longer wavelength side, the pumping lights having wavelengths corresponding to the first to n-th channels are multiplexed, and an pumping light having a wavelength spaced apart from the n-th channel by 2 THz or more toward the longer wavelength side is combined with the multiplexed light, thereby forming the pumping light source. The pumping lights having wavelengths corresponding to the channels other than (n-1)-th and (n-2)-th channels may be multiplexed, thereby forming the pumping light source. The pumping lights having wavelengths corresponding to the channels other than (n-2)-th and (n-3)-th channels may be multiplexed, thereby forming the pumping light source.
US07692841B2
A system and method for regulating micromirror position in a digital micromirror device. The system and method adjusts micromirror operating temperature and/or a reset sequence of the micromirror by determining a desired tilt angle, adjusting voltage potentials of signals in a reference reset sequence, and saving the adjusted reset sequence. The adjustments are used to alter a voltage potential difference between micromirrors of the digital micromirror device and respective address lines, thereby allowing for a precise regulation of a tilt angle of the micromirrors. Additionally, the operating temperature of the digital micromirror device may also be controlled to regulate micromirror position. The precise control of the tilt angle of the micromirrors permits the use of digital micromirror devices in systems requiring fine focus and increased focus depth, such as photolithography and holography.
US07692837B2
A deflection device includes a tabular object for transmitting or reflecting an electromagnetic wave, a drive unit for driving the tabular object so as to rotate or perform a translation motion, and an electromagnetic wave irradiation unit for irradiating the tabular object with an electromagnetic wave so that an irradiation area extending in a direction intersecting a direction of the rotation or translation motion of the tabular object is formed. The deflection device is characterized in that, in order to change a direction of transmission or reflection of an electromagnetic wave radiated on the irradiation area by the rotation or translation motion of the tabular object, a plurality of grooves extending in an in-plane direction of the tabular object is provided in a section of the tabular object along a longitudinal direction of the irradiation area, and the plurality of grooves is formed so that intervals of the plurality of grooves which passes through the irradiation area are changed by the rotation or translation motion of the tabular object.
US07692832B2
A method for identifying and correcting for spatial variation within scanning bars includes performing diagnostic scans of at least one sheet, in which a sheet(s) is scanned in various orientations and translations, with each of the orientations identified. The diagnostic scans are registered with one of the individual diagnostic scans to produce registered scans. The registered scans are averaged to create a master scan corresponding to the sheet, such that the master scan is indicative of the spatial variation within the sheet.
US07692830B2
A luminance nonuniformity adjustment module for eliminating luminance nonuniformities in light emitting elements determines a luminance correction coefficient for each light-emitting element through a test print. The luminance nonuniformity adjustment module comprises a provisional luminance correction coefficient calculation unit, an improper coloring degree calculation unit and a luminance correction coefficient determination unit. The provisional luminance correction coefficient calculation unit calculates a provisional luminance correction coefficient by comparing a measured density value for a grayscale chart and a predetermined target density value. The improper coloring degree calculation unit calculates an improper coloring degree, which is the degree of improper coloring that occurs when other colors are expressed when developing a specific color, from the measured density values for the grayscale chart and an unbalanced chart in which the gray balance has been altered. The luminance correction coefficient determination unit corrects the provisional luminance correction coefficient using the improper coloring degree.
US07692827B2
An image reading apparatus including a light source for illuminating an original, a plurality of mirrors for reflecting a light beam from the original illuminated by the light source, a reading device, an imaging optical system for imaging a light beam reflected by the mirrors, upon the reading device, and a scanning optical system unit which integrally accommodates theses components therein and moves in a sub-scan direction to read imagewise information of the original, wherein, in a sub-scan section, one mirror optically closest to the surface of the original is disposed in an end portion of the scanning optical system unit in the sub-scan direction, as compared with the other mirrors, and wherein the central portion of the reflection surface of one mirror optically closest to the original is disposed in a space between the central portion of the reflection surface of a mirror optically closest to the light entrance surface of the imaging optical system and central portions reflection surfaces of other mirrors.
US07692818B2
An image reading apparatus for reading an image on an original document by irradiating it with light and photoelectrically converting reflected light from it by an image pickup unit, including: an original document guide member positionable opposite to the image pickup unit, with a conveyance position of the original document therebetween; a white reference member that is positionable, the same as the original document guide member, and has a reference white color; an achromatic constant-density reference member that is positionable, the same as the original document guide member, and has a reference achromatic constant-density; a drive unit that moves one of the three members so as to be positioned opposite to the image pickup unit; and a control unit that controls execution of detection processings for dust detection from data obtained by moving, as described above, the achromatic constant-density reference member and the white reference member by reading them.
US07692817B2
Image processing is carried out by transforming image data to image data having spatial frequency components, by judging whether the absolute values of the coefficients of the predetermined frequency components of the transformed image data are equal to or more than a predetermined value, by modifying the coefficients of the AC components of the image data depending on the result of the judgment, by inversely transforming the image data having the modified coefficients to image data having spatial coordinate components, by comparing the gray levels of the inversely transformed image data with predetermined values, and by transforming the gray levels to quantized levels corresponding to the result of the comparison. By carrying out proper image processing corresponding to the characteristics of the image, the number of gray levels of the image can be decreased while the characteristic portions of the original image are maintained properly.
US07692813B2
Upon synthesizing objects, information bits indicating the types of objects are lost. To solve this problem, this invention provides an image processing apparatus having discrimination means for discriminating a type of object to be rendered, determination means for determining the presence/absence of synthesis of the discriminated object, synthesis means for synthesizing an object and information of the type of object in accordance with the determination result, and processing means for appending information indicating the type of synthesized object to a rendering result obtained by rendering the object to be rendered in units of pixels.
US07692805B2
To provide a technology for, if a first distribution destination printing device cannot continue printing according to a print job, causing a second distribution destination printing device to execute an unexecuted print job without using a server. The first distribution destination printing device, used for a printing system, includes a print job processing module that acquires a distributed print job supplied from a distribution source device and gives the distributed print job to a printing execution module. The print job processing module acquires, from the distribution source device, device identification information for identifying the second distribution destination printing device among a plurality of distribution destination printing devices, the second distribution destination printing device belonging to the same group as the first distribution destination printing device. The print job processing module, if the first distribution printing device cannot continue printing according to the distributed print job, generates the unexecuted print job, and supplies the unexecuted print job to the second distribution destination printing device.
US07692800B2
Systems and methods for detecting an obstruction in a detector surface fields are provided. In one respect, a set of lines may be projected over substantially a half of the detection area and may subsequently imaged and evaluated. Other embodiments may include a second set of lines that may be projected over substantially a second half of the detection area and may subsequently imaged and evaluated. The images may be evaluated to determine if there are breaks (e.g., an obstruction) in the projected set of lines. Based on the evaluation, the detector may provide dynamic feedback signals to a processor, which may adjust the position of the detector or provide a signal indicating an obstruction.
US07692798B2
A method of sensing at least one target on a receptor having a substrate and a translucent coating includes minimizing interference fringe patterns in an image of the target. The method also includes passing the image of the target through an imaging system intermediate the receptor and a detector.
US07692790B2
The present invention is directed to a grating spectrometer system for polychromator spectrometer arrangements and monochromator spectrometer arrangements. The grating spectrometer system, according to the invention, comprises a light source for illuminating the sample to be analyzed, a diffraction grating, imaging optical elements, a detector arranged in the image plane, and a controlling and regulating unit. Individual light sources, preferably LEDs having different spectral characteristics, whose spectral range covers a plurality of diffraction orders in the image plane are used as light source. Only those LEDs which do not illuminate the same location of the individual detectors arranged in the image plane in any diffraction order are switched on individually or in groups by the controlling and regulating unit. The proposed solution is suitable for polychromator spectrometer arrangements and for monochromator spectrometer arrangements. The field of application is determined by the spectral sensitivity of the detector that is employed. By using a plurality of diffraction orders, the resolution can be increased with the detector size remaining the same, or the detector surface can be reduced while retaining the same imaging quality.
US07692775B2
A system and method for standoff detection of explosives and explosive residue. A laser light source illuminates a target area having an unknown sample producing luminescence emitted photons, scattered photons and plasma emitted photons. A first optical system directs light to the target area. A video capture device outputs a dynamic image of the target area. A second optical system collects photons, and directs collected photons to a first two-dimensional array of detection elements and/or to a fiber array spectral translator device which device includes a two-dimensional array of optical fibers drawn into a one-dimensional fiber stack. A spectrograph is coupled to the one-dimensional fiber stack of the fiber array spectral translator device, wherein the entrance slit of the spectrograph is coupled to the one dimensional fiber stack.
US07692765B2
A method of removing liquid from a substrate supported on a substrate table and from a gap between the substrate and the substrate table includes: providing a liquid removal device with at least one outlet connected to an under pressure source, the outlet forming an elongated extractor of a predetermined geometry; relatively moving the substrate table and the liquid removal device such that the extractor is adapted to pass over all of the substrate and gap and such that substantially at any given time any local part of the extractor at the edge of a non-dried portion of the gap has, in a plane, its local tangent orientated at an angle of between about 35° and 90° to the local tangent of the gap.
US07692764B2
An exposure apparatus is equipped with a main controller that decides an operation of the exposure apparatus based on information on maintenance from a C/D. Therefore, the main controller can decide to perform a specific operation, which is necessary for maintaining performance of the exposure apparatus and requires stop of the primary operation of the exposure apparatus, during maintenance of the C/D, that is, when the primary operation of the exposure apparatus has to be stopped by necessity, in parallel with the maintenance of the C/D. As a consequence, downtime of the exposure apparatus necessary for performing the specific operation can be decreased as a whole, which makes it possible to improve the operating rate without lowering apparatus performance of the exposure apparatus that is inline connected to a substrate processing apparatus.
US07692744B2
The present invention provides a transflective liquid crystal display device which includes diffusion reflective electrodes suitable for a display of high definition. Into an organic resin film material PET which is formed by mixing NQD as a photosensitive agent in an acrylic resin having a specific gravity of 1.05 and a refractive index of 1.50, spherical particles PTC made of acrylic modified polystyrene which has a specific gravity of 1.00, a refractive index of 1.50 and a particle size of 1.6 μm are mixed at a rate of 3:1 so as to form an organic insulation film material in which a total solid content is adjusted to 30% and viscosity is adjusted 20 mPa·s. The organic insulation film material is applied and is dried to form an organic insulation film. A portion of the organic insulation film which is to be arranged below a diffusion reflective electrode is exposed using an exposure mask having half exposure apertures which are formed of a large number of slits and the organic insulation film is hardened. Aluminum is sputtered to the organic insulation film and is subject to photolithography etching treatment thus forming the diffusion reflective electrodes MT in a reflective region. A reflective region of the diffusion reflective electrode MT has an uneven surface shape which traces uneven surface shapes of the spherical particles PTC mixed into the organic insulation film PF arranged below the diffusion reflective electrodes MT.
US07692734B2
Provided is a liquid crystal device including: a liquid crystal panel which includes first and second substrates supporting a liquid crystal layer in a sandwich manner and a sealing material disposed between the first and second substrate to seal the liquid crystal layer, and on which illumination light is irradiated from the rear side thereof; an optical plate disposed in the front side of the liquid crystal panel; and a control element that controls a display status of an image displayed on the liquid crystal panel, wherein: the liquid crystal panel includes a light receiving element that receives ambient light; and the light receiving element is disposed in a position where at least a portion of a light receiving surface thereof does not overlap the optical plate when seen from a plan view.
US07692733B2
A liquid crystal display apparatus comprises first and second light emitting sections for emitting light with respective spreading angles that are different from each other and a liquid crystal display device arranged at the viewing side of the apparatus. The first light emitting section includes a first light guide plate for receiving light from a light incident end surface and diffusing it within a first angular range of spreading angle centered at the normal direction of a light emitting surface before emitting it from the light emitting surface and first light emitting elements. The second light emitting section includes a second light guide plate for receiving light from a light incident end surface and emitting it in directions within a second angular range of spreading angle smaller than the first angular range while transmitting light emitted from the first light guide plate and second light emitting elements.
US07692726B1
An embodiment may include a method to convert a video signal with an analog to digital converter in a video decoder, convert an audio signal with the analog to digital converter, demodulate the audio signal with an audio demodulator and amplify the audio signal with a programmable gain amplifier before it is converted in the analog to digital converter. In an embodiment the programmable gain amplifier may receive a control signal from the audio demodulator to adjust the audio signal level. Another embodiment may provide a video decoder comprising a programmable gain controller, an analog to digital converter coupled with the programmable gain controller, the converter to digitize audio and video information, and an audio demodulator coupled with the analog to digital converter, the audio demodulator to control the programmable gain controller for an audio signal.
US07692713B2
A solid-state image pickup device wherein, in order to obtain an output of large amplitude from a low-contrast object without using a bottom detecting circuit to thereby increase a capturing rate, an accumulation end is determined when a maximum value signal in a photosensor array reaches a predetermined accumulation end level, and an amplifier circuit unit is provided for amplifying a signal, which is outputted from each of the pixels of the photosensor array, with reference to the maximum value signal of the photosensor array and for outputting the signal.
US07692707B2
In a solid-state image sensor according to this invention, an image signal temperature variation suppressing unit changes a voltage value of a driver voltage applied to multiplying registers in response to variations in sensor temperature of a CCD image sensor. Thus, a charge multiplication gain of a charge multiplying unit is electrically controlled to suppress variations in signal strength of image signals due to the variations in the sensor temperature of the CCD image sensor. As a result, without relying on thermal control with which it is very difficult to realize high precision control, variations in the signal strength of the image signals due to the variations in the sensor temperature of the CCD image sensor are suppressed easily by controlling the charge multiplication gain of the charge multiplying unit based on the electric control, with which it is very easy to realize high precision control, performed by the image signal temperature variation suppressing unit in response to the variations in the sensor temperature of the CCD image sensor.
US07692705B2
An imaging device formed as a CMOS semiconductor integrated circuit having two adjacent pixels in a row connected to a common column line. By having adjacent pixels of a row share column lines, the CMOS imager circuit eliminates half the column lines of a traditional imager allowing the fabrication of a smaller imager. The imaging device also may be fabricated to have a diagonal active area to facilitate contact of two adjacent pixels with the single column line and allow linear row select lines, reset lines and column lines.
US07692703B2
An image pick-up apparatus includes an image pick-up device and a filter circuit. The image pick-up device includes a pixel portion for converting a subject image into an electric signal, a scanning circuit for dividing the pixel portion into a plurality of areas, for non-linearly dividing the boundary of the areas of at least one side of the adjacent areas based on the unit of pixel, and a plurality of output circuits for individually outputting video signals. The filter circuit performs filter processing of the video signals outputted from the plurality of output circuits for the pixels near the boundary of the areas. Thus, the image quality can be improved in the multi-channel output system.
US07692701B2
An image sensing apparatus has an image sensing device. The image sensing device includes a photoelectric conversion element that photoelectrically converts an optical image to acquire image data, and a readout control unit that reads out, in accordance with a supplied readout rule, the image data acquired by the photoelectric conversion element. The image sensing device also includes an image scaling ratio selection unit that selects the scaling ratio of the image to be output, a readout scheme selection unit that selects, in accordance with the selected image scaling ratio, the readout scheme of the image data to be read out from the photoelectric conversion element by the readout control unit, and a readout rule supply unit that supplies, to the readout control unit, a readout rule corresponding to the readout scheme selected by the readout scheme selection unit.
US07692698B2
An apparatus includes a solid-state image pickup element that outputs video signals obtained from pixels arranged in a column direction. The apparatus also includes an amendment unit that amends an error value corresponding to a column position of the video signals according to a temperature to supply an amended error value to a subtraction unit that subtracts the amended error value for each column from the video signals. The apparatus further includes an error computing section that shields the pickup element from light or irradiates light to the pickup element at a constant rate, computes a respective average value of each of a plurality of pixel signals obtained from the pixels in a predetermined region of the pickup element, subtracts the respective average value from a respective of the plurality of pixel signals obtained from the pixels of the pickup element, and accumulates values obtained by subtractions for respective columns.
US07692691B2
An image processor which forms a composite image of at least two images includes a storage unit which stores first and second image data, and a display unit which reads and displays the stored first and second image data in modes adapted to display forms of the first and second image data. The image processor also includes an image-signal forming unit which forms image signals representing a composite image of the stored first and second image data for display on a television monitor and a liquid crystal display panel.
US07692688B2
A method for correcting distortion of a captured image is provided. The method includes receiving a detection output from a sensor; optically correcting distortion of a captured image in image data from the element due to the positional change of the imaging element by controlling a control mechanism depending on the detection output in the receiving step, the mechanism being configured to control a position at which incident light from a target object enters the imaging element; receiving image data resulting from the optical correction of a captured image in the correcting step from the element, and detecting a motion vector per one screen of a captured image from the image data; and further correcting distortion of a captured image due to the positional change of the imaging element for the image data from the imaging element based on the motion vector detected in the motion vector detecting step.
US07692685B2
A system and method facilitating object tracking is provided. The invention includes an audio model that receives at least two audio input signals and a video model that receives a video input. The audio model and the video model employ probabilistic generative models which are combined to facilitate object tracking. Expectation maximization can be employed to modify trainable parameters of the audio model and the video model.
US07692683B2
In various embodiments, multiple participants (at endpoints) may connect through a video conferencing system. A screen may display other participants in the conference call. For example, multiple participants may be displayed in respective portions of the screen. In some embodiments, each of the participants may use video conferencing systems that support different resolutions. In some embodiments, a transcoder may resolution transcode signals to allow the conference call participants to be displayed on each participant's respective screen at up to the highest possible resolution supported by the respective screen. For example, low resolution video conferencing systems may be displayed on a high definition screen of a high resolution system at the low resolution of the low resolution video conferencing system while another image on the same high definition screen from a different, higher resolution video conferencing system, may be displayed at the higher resolution.
US07692676B1
The present invention provides a thermal head capable of reliably preventing occurrence of connection failure or insulation failure in each of the layers in a multilayered wiring structure, enabling easy manufacture even in the real edging constitution, capable of maintaining reliability and, further, with no trouble in the terminal connection of a common electrode even if three or more thermal head. There is provided a thermal head comprising a thermal radiating substrate, a temperature keeping layer formed on the thermal radiating substrate, a conductive layer formed on the thermal radiating substrate and an upper surface of the temperature keeping layer comprised of a fused material of nitride and metal or a fused material of oxide and metal, a first interlayer insulation layer formed by oxidization of the conductive layer except a portion of the conductive layer corresponding to a common electrode and a portion of the common electrode corresponding to an external connecting common electrode terminal, a second interlayer insulation layer comprised of insulating ceramics formed on the upper surface of the first interlayer insulation layer, a heat generating resistor member formed above the second interlayer insulation layer and the conductive layer, a common electrode and individual electrodes formed at a part of the upper surface of the heat generating resistor member, and a protecting layer covering the heat generating resistor member, common electrode, individual electrodes and second interlayer insulation layer.
US07692672B2
This invention relates to a liquid crystal device with grey scale. The invention uses dither, either spatial or temporal. For spatial dither the invention arranges so that at least one bit of dither is not a multiple of the size of a smaller bit of dither—in other words there is a fractional weighting. The two bits of dither have the same number of addressable transmission levels and the weighting sacrifices some linearity in exchange for reduction of manufacturing tolerances for the smaller bit. For temporal dither the invention relates to fractional weighting of the duration of the sub-frames.
US07692669B2
If there is any unprocessed character area, and if there is any character area sharing a common character color with the unprocessed character area, the image processing apparatus calculates, as a first number, the total number of the pixels included in these two character areas. The image processing apparatus also calculates, as a second number, the number of pixels included in an area formed by integrating the two character areas. Then, the image processing apparatus judges whether the ratio of the first number to the second number is less than a predetermined threshold value. In other words, the image processing apparatus judges whether the following is satisfied: Second Number/First Number
US07692665B2
Embodiments of the present invention comprise methods and systems for adaptive dither pattern array generation and application.
US07692656B2
Data tables that are required for the proper processing of font glyphs are automatically synthesized if they do not form part of an original font definition. The synthesized tables are stored in an annex file that is associated with the font, rather than being incorporated into the font definition. As a result, the integrity of the original font data is maintained, and does not adversely affect font protection systems that are based upon font data.
US07692649B2
A computer implemented method of visualizing an infrastructure comprising: acquiring a cross section definition, the definition comprising points defining a link and link information, each of the points exhibiting a type; creating at least one three dimensional face linking points of a same type; assigning a face rendering for each of the created at least one three dimensional faces with a material definitional associated with the link information; and displaying the faces with the rendering. The invention also provides for a computing system operable to: acquire a cross section definition, the definition comprising points defining a link and link information, each of the points exhibiting a type; create at least one three dimensional face linking points of a same type; and assign a face rendering for each of the created at least one three dimensional faces with a material definitional associated with the link information.
US07692633B2
An improved handheld electronic device includes an input apparatus, an output apparatus, and a processor apparatus. The input apparatus includes a reduced keyboard and a roller ball input. The roller ball input includes a movable portion that is substantially continuously rotatable with respect to a housing of the device and is rotatable about more than one axis to provide input. The processor apparatus includes a disambiguation routine that can output various proposed interpretations of inputs from the reduced keyboard. The roller ball input advantageously provides various inputs to the handheld electronic device without requiring significant user attention, which enables a user to direct a greater amount of attention to the output from the disambiguation routine and to other aspects of the device. The roller ball input potentially can be configured to additionally be translatable to provide an input, and additionally and/or alternatively the roller ball input can provide a tactile or other feedback to a user.
US07692631B2
It is possible to enable a pointer to execute a shifting operation input and a clicking operation input by use of a common type pressure-sensitive pointing device provided with an x-axis strain sensor and a y-axis strain sensor. A pressure-sensitive pointing device (11) is provided with strain sensors (11a), (11b), (11c) and (11d). A voltage corresponding to the strain along the x-axis direction, and a voltage corresponding to the strain along the y-axis direction are outputted from nodes (11e), (11f) and (11g), respectively. The voltage corresponding to the strain along the x-axis direction, and the voltage corresponding to the strain along the y-axis direction are inputted alternately to an operational amplifier (4) by switches (SW1) and (SW2) when a switch (SW3) is in an ON-condition. The voltage corresponding to the strain along the z-axis direction is inputted to an operational amplifier (3) when the switch (SW3) is in an OFF-condition. Respective outputs of the operational amplifiers (3), (4) are alternately inputted to an ADC (5) by switches (SW4) and (SW5) and processed in a digital processing circuit.
US07692629B2
Techniques and technologies are provided which can allow for touch input with a touch screen device. In response to an attempt to select a target displayed on a screen, a callout can be rendered in a non-occluded area of the screen. The callout includes a representation of the area of the screen that is occluded by a selection entity when the attempt to select the target is made.
US07692625B2
A camera-based touch system (50) includes a passive touch surface (60) and at least two cameras (63) associated with the touch surface. The at least two cameras (63) have overlapping fields of view (FOV) encompassing the touch surface. The at least two cameras (63) acquire images of the touch surface from different locations and generate image data. A processor (54) receives and processes image data generated by the at least two cameras to determine the location of the pointer relative to the touch surface when the pointer is captured in images acquired by the at least two cameras. Actual pointer contact with the touch surface and pointer hover above the touch surface can be determined.
US07692605B2
This invention describes methods and systems for correcting frame position error on one category of volumetric 3D displays that generates volumetric 3D images by using a rotary mechanism to move a screen to sweep a volume and projecting 2D profile images on the screen. The screen motion is in general rotating or reciprocating and a mechanism of rotational nature is generally applied to drive the motion. The method has three major steps. The first step provides a measure of the frame position error with respect to the theoretical position. The error is a periodical function of the angular position of the moving screen, due to the nature of the mechanisms. The second step constructs a correction function that shifts the position of frame image of each frame with respect to the frame center to compensate the error. The error measurement and the construction of the correction function can be performed statically or dynamically. The third step shifts the image frames to be displayed according to the correction function and projects them in the volumetric 3D display. This invention also includes preferred driving mechanisms that match the periodical nature of the error function.
US07692602B2
The present invention provides a control apparatus of an antenna array. The control apparatus of an antenna array comprises a control circuit including a serial interface circuit connected to the first switch and the second switch by a first control line and a second control line separately, and an antenna coupled between the first switch and the second switch. The serial interface circuit controls On/Off status of the first switch and the second switch separately through the first control line and the second control line. Furthermore, the control circuit and the others can be connected serially through the included serial interface circuits to increase the number of antennas.
US07692596B1
A VAR TSA For Extended Low Frequency Response Method (NC#098855). The method includes providing a first antenna element of a tapered slot antenna pair, providing a second antenna element of the tapered slot antenna pair and operatively coupling the first antenna element and the second antenna element to form the tapered slot antenna pair having an aspect ratio less than or equal to 1 to 2.16.
US07692594B2
A marker fixture for attachment to a utility conduit such as a telecommunications cable. The fixture has an extension member with an electronic marker at one end, and is secured at the other end to the cable. The extension member is movable between a retracted position wherein the marker is adjacent an access point and an extended position wherein the marker is distant from the access point. The extension member is preferably biased toward the extended position and releasably secured at the marker end proximate the utility structure. The marker fixtures may be pre-installed on a utility infrastructure. The extension member is loosely secured so that the fixture may be moved around the cable after it has been installed in a trench to lie atop the access point. The low profile and conforming shape of the fixture make it particularly advantageous for pre-installation on flexible cables wound on large reels.
US07692578B2
Three new methods are presented to improve floating solutions and ambiguity resolution for multiple global satellite navigation systems (GNSS), one of which may be an FDMA-based GNSS such as GLONASS: (1) modeling of the hardware-related differential clock error between two (or more) different GNSS, (2) modeling the frequency-dependent biases present in frequency-division multiple access (FDMA) GNSS, and (3) an ambiguity resolution method called Scoreboard Partial Fixing (SPF). The methods presented are independent of the number of carrier frequencies tracked for each satellite navigation system. Their application results in quicker and more reliable ambiguity resolution. The benefits of combining observations of multiple GNSS are exploited in a very efficient way, in contrast to known algorithms which often result in degraded performance with multiple GNSS. The frequency-dependent bias method has been found effective with GNSS observations from a combination of substantially dissimilar hardware, e.g., for processing signals from GNSS receivers of different manufacturers.
US07692572B2
A detecting and ranging apparatus and a program product obtain a correct relative velocity vector by a simple calculation based on a relative distance etc. obtained by a plurality of detectors such as a radar etc. by including: two relative distance measurement units receiving a reflected wave of a transmitted electromagnetic wave by an object to be detected, and thereby measuring a relative distance to the object to be detected, arranged at with each other different position; and an actual velocity vector calculation unit calculating an actual velocity vector of the object to be detected moving with an angle made in a direction from either relative distance measurement unit to the object to be detected based on the relative distances measured by the relative distance measurement units.
US07692557B2
An apparatus for providing instructions to an operator of a single motor vehicle or a vehicle having a trailer attached during backing up procedures, said apparatus comprising: a transmitter unit for wirelessly transmitting data, wherein the transmitter unit includes a plurality of predefined directives and a plurality of activation means wherein each of the plurality of activation means is capable of transmitting one of the plurality of predefined directives; and a receiver unit for wirelessly receiving data from the transmitter, wherein the receiver unit includes a plurality of indicator means wherein each of the plurality of indicators means is capable of indicating one of the plurality of predefined directives; wherein the predefined directives include at least a backdown directive, a stop directive, a left directive, a right directive, and a forward directive, and wherein in trailer operations mode, the activation means corresponding to the right directive results in the indicator means corresponding to the left directive being activated in the receiver unit and the activation means corresponding to the left directive results in the indicator means corresponding to the right directive being activated in the receiver unit.
US07692543B2
A security device detaches a combination electronic article surveillance (EAS) and radio frequency identification (RFID) tag (EAS/RFID tag), and includes a detacher (magnet) to selectively disengage a clutch release disposed in a first portion of the combination EAS/RFID tag, a near field antenna configured to electronically read information stored in a second portion of the combination EAS/RFID tag. The antenna encircles the detacher and reads information from the second portion of the combination EAS/RFID tag at a position relative to the detacher when the second portion of the tag is disposed at any angle relative to the detacher and only when the detacher is positioned to disengage the clutch release. As long as the portion of the EAS/RFID tag containing the clutch end mechanism is located over the detaching magnet, the RFID label is in a valid detection zone regardless of its orientation relative to the antenna.
US07692537B2
A method and an alarm processing system for deciding what alarm, out of a number of alarms generated in an industrial plant or process, to present to a system operator. The method includes creating hiding rules, associating each hiding rule with a real-world object, storing these rules in a storage means, receiving an alarm related to a real-world object, determining if a hiding rule is associated with the real-world object evaluating the hiding rule, deciding from the hiding rule whether to present or hide the alarm, selectively and actively hide such alarms that are decided to be hidden and not presenting the alarm to the system operator. The invention also includes an alarm processing system and a computer program for carrying out the method.
US07692534B2
In deviation prevention support ECU 10 in driving operation support system 1, an applied torque by steering torque applier 17 is set based on a vehicle speed of a vehicle. The applied torque is set to increase with increase of the vehicle speed. An upper limit according to the vehicle speed is set for this applied torque. Furthermore, in a Start interval in application of the applied torque, a rate of increasing to reach a maximum is determined according to the maximum of the applied torque. In a close interval, the applied torque is decreased at a rate different from that in the Start interval, and the absolute rate of increasing the torque in the Start interval is set to be larger than the absolute rate of decreasing the torque in the close interval.
US07692531B2
The present invention teaches a remote starting control system having a simple construction and being low in cost, that can be mounted on a vehicle having an immobilizing function. The system, which is mounted on a vehicle equipped with an immobilizer for capturing a code output in response to an insertion of an ignition key into a key cylinder and permitting an engine start when judging the captured code to be a unique code of the vehicle so as to control engine starting according to an instruction from a portable transmitter, comprises a device for storing a code in an EEPROM each time the code is supplied to a signal line, and a device for supplying the code stored in the EEPROM to the immobilizer when receiving a start instruction of the engine from the portable transmitter.
US07692524B2
Inductors are described for motor drives or other power converters having an inductor connected in a switching circuit, with one or more conductive shields positioned between an inductor coil winding and a flux-carrying inductor core leg to redirect flux away from the coil winding so as to inhibit heating of the coil.
US07692518B2
A transmission line junction for a coaxial conductor line has mating ends of interfitting cores, sleeves, and dielectrics for communicating broadband signals through the junction that blocks DC currents and voltages, the junction maintaining a quarter wavelength junction length for high frequency coupling while providing improved low frequency coupling across the junction.
US07692517B2
An oscillator or a sensor comprising a unit including two frequency determining elements each of which comprises at least one interdigital converter for acoustic surface waves and a back-coupling circuit comprising an amplifier, wherein the frequency determining elements are distinguished by a temperature dependence of a synchronous frequency. The frequency determining elements are embodied in the form of acoustic surface wave resonators, and the temperature coefficients of n-th order of the synchronous frequency of the two acoustic surface wave resonators have different sings if they are not equal to zero and the temperature coefficients of (n+1st) order of the synchronous frequency of the two acoustic surface wave resonators have the same sign and the temperature coefficients from the first order to (n-1st) order of the synchronous frequency of the two acoustic surface wave resonators are equal to zero if n is greater than 1, wherein n being equal to or greater than 1, c) the ratio between the converter openings and the ratio between the lengths in the direction perpendicular to the edge teeth of the converter and to strips of the object reflectors having different frequency determining elements which are assembled in one unit are selected in such a way that the oscillator frequency variation is minimum within the range of given temperatures.
US07692509B2
Conductor segments are positioned within a transmission line structure in order to generate microwave pulses. The conductor segments are switchably coupled to one or the other of the transmission lines or to each other, in parallel with the transmission line structure. Microwave pulses will be induced in the transmission line by closing the switches in a controlled manner to discharge successive segments or successive groups of segments into the transmission lines. The induced waves travel uninterrupted along the transmission lines in a desired direction.
US07692503B2
Embodiments of the invention are generally directed to systems, methods, and apparatuses for a random number generator (RNG) based on oscillator noise. In some embodiments, the RNG buffers effects of thermal noise from two independent oscillators impacted by effects of pseudo-stochastic processes and separates thermal noise from other effects. The RNG may then convert the thermal noise to a stochastic binary sequence based, at least in part, on a digital signal processing algorithm.
US07692499B2
A system and method for generating a highly stable holdover clock utilizing an integrated circuit and an external OCXO is presented. The integrated circuit comprises an input reference clock receiver, a phase and frequency detector that generates an error signal between the input reference clock signal and a feedback clock signal, a data storage block that stores model parameters to predict frequency variations of the OCXO, an adaptive filtering module that includes a digital loop filter and algorithms for updating the model parameters and predicting frequency variations based on the model, a switch that enables the system to operate in normal or holdover mode, a digitally controlled oscillator, and a feedback divider.
US07692498B2
A phase locked loop has a controlled oscillator for outputting an oscillator signal depending on a control signal. A comparator generates a comparison result from a comparison between a reference frequency signal and a feedback signal derived from the oscillator signal. The phase locked loop also has a filter block for filtering the comparison result and for deriving the control signal from the comparison result, where the filter block has a loop filter and a rejection filter for the frequency-selective attenuation of at least one first interference frequency in the comparison result.
US07692494B2
A variable frequency amplifier suffering less deterioration of strain characteristic and capable of operating at plural frequencies is disclosed. In one aspect, a changeable amplifier comprises an amplifying element, a changeable matching circuit disposed at an input side of the amplifying element and including a first variable capacity element connected in series with a signal conductor and a second variable capacity element connected in parallel with the signal conductor, and a control circuit for controlling the changeable matching circuit. Based on a feedback signal, the control circuit applies DC bias voltages to the first variable capacity element and the second variable capacity element of the changeable matching circuit and also applies thereto a correction signal.
US07692493B1
A high-efficiency single-to-differential amplifier has a first transistor acting as a first amplification stage. A second transistor, a third transistor, a first choke, a second choke, and a first capacitor form a second single-to-differential amplification stage. The first amplification stage receives and amplifies an input signal, outputs the amplified signal to the second single-to-differential amplification stage through a coupling module, and concurrently provides DC bias current to the second single-to-differential amplification stage through a tank. The second single-to-differential amplification stage reuses DC current of the first amplification stage, amplifies the output signal of the first amplification stage, and transfers it to a differential output.
US07692492B2
An operational amplifier includes a differential amplifier circuit provided at an input stage and an amplifier circuit at a post stage. In the differential amplifier circuit, first and third bipolar transistors are PNP-type bipolar transistors and Darlington-connected. An inverting input terminal is connected to the base terminal of the first bipolar transistor. The first and third bipolar transistors and second and fourth bipolar transistors construct an input differential pair. First and second protection diodes are connected between the base terminals of the first and second bipolar transistors constructing the input differential pair and the ground potential, respectively. Each of the protection diodes is connected so that the cathode terminal is positioned on the base terminal side of the bipolar transistor, and the cathode terminal is positioned on the ground potential side.
US07692489B2
A differential two-stage Miller compensated amplifier system with capacitive level shifting includes a first stage differential transconductance amplifier including first and second output nodes and an output common mode voltage, a second stage differential transconductance amplifier including non-inverting and inverting inputs and outputs and an input common mode voltage, and a level shifting capacitor circuit coupled between the first and second output nodes and the non-inverting and inverting inputs for level shifting between the output common mode voltage of the first stage and the input common mode voltage of the second stage.
US07692483B2
A method for preventing snap-back in a circuit including at least one MOS transistor having a parasitic bipolar transistor associated with it includes coupling a circuit node including at least one source/drain node of the at least one MOS transistor to a bias-voltage circuit and enabling the bias-voltage circuit to supply a potential to the at least one source/drain node of the at least on MOS transistor, the potential having a magnitude selected to prevent the parasitic bipolar transistor from turning on.
US07692478B2
A booster circuit includes a first transistor performing a first on-off operation based on a first control signal and a second transistor performing a second on-off operation based on the first control signal. The first on-off operation and the second on-off operation are reversed. A third transistor performs the first on-off operation based on a second control signal. The second control signal has a phase opposite the first control signal. A fourth transistor is included in a metal oxide semiconductor capacitor.
US07692474B2
A high-side semiconductor switch control circuit for switching a positive supply voltage is provided, having a circuit to provide a drive voltage for the high-side semiconductor switch, a driver circuit for driving the high-side semiconductor switch based on the control circuit, wherein both the circuit for providing the drive voltage as well as the driver circuit operate in relation to a floating switching point, an input circuit portion that receives a control signal related to ground, and a level shift circuit portion that is connected between the input circuit portion and the driver circuit portion and set up so as to transform the control signal related to ground into a floating voltage level for the driver circuit portion.
US07692469B2
In one embodiment, a voltage sense circuit receives an ac input signal and forms a rectified output voltage that is representative of the ac input signal.
US07692468B1
An active over-voltage clamp system includes at least one over-voltage detector that is responsive to an input voltage and provides a first current. The system also includes a replica over-voltage circuit that provides a second current, and circuitry subtracting the second current from the first current to produce a difference current. The system further includes a differential clamp activated in response to the difference current. The differential clamp prevents the input voltage from increasing beyond a target voltage.
US07692466B2
A circuit includes an input stage, an output stage, and a delay stage. The input stage is operative to receive a clock signal and a first and second input signal. The output stage is operative to receive the clock signal. The output stage is also operative to generate a first and second output signal based on the clock signal and the first and second input signals. The delay stage is operatively coupled to the input and output stages. The delay stage includes a first and second branch. The second branch includes at least one more delay element than the first branch.
US07692461B2
A charge pump for use in a Phase Locked Loop/Delay Locked Loop minimizes static phase error through the use of an operational amplifier. The charge pump further includes a pull-up circuit and a pull-down circuit coupled to the operational amplifier. The operational amplifier also mitigates the effects of low power supply voltage.
US07692457B2
A method and device are disclosed. In one embodiment the method includes driving a first clock domain reference signal on a first clock tree and driving a second clock domain reference signal on a second clock tree. The first tree routes the first signal from a PLL to a first clock domain drop off circuit and the second tree routes the second signal from the PLL to a second clock domain drop off circuit. A jitter produced from the second tree is less than a jitter produced from the first tree. The method continues by detecting any phase misalignment between the first signal and the second signal. The method also causes the first signal to be delayed so that it aligns with the second signal.
US07692452B2
A semiconductor chip may include an internal circuit, at least one power gating transistor, a system manager, and/or at least one current regulator. The at least one power gating transistor may be configured to switch a supply of at least one drive voltage into the internal circuit. The system manager may be configured to generate a control signal corresponding to an activation state of the internal circuit. At least one current regulator may be configured to control an amount of a current flowing through the at least one power gating transistor in response to the control signal.
US07692437B2
Systems and methods for testing packaged microelectronic devices are disclosed herein. One such system for testing a packaged microelectronic device includes a test socket configured to receive the device for testing and a tester interface including a plurality of test contacts aligned with external contacts of the device when the device is received within the test socket. The system further includes a mask proximate to the test socket and the test contacts. The mask includes a plurality of apertures arranged in a pattern corresponding to the plurality of test contacts and corresponding at least in part to the array of external contacts when the device is received within the test socket. The apertures include (a) first apertures sized to allow the corresponding test contacts to extend completely through the mask, and (b) one or more second apertures sized to allow the corresponding test contacts to extend only partially through the mask.
US07692432B2
A liquid property sensor for detecting property of liquid includes a semiconductor board, a first electrode and a second electrode, and a protection film. The first and second electrodes are disposed on the semiconductor board to be spaced from each other at a predetermined distance. The protection film has resistance relative to the liquid, and is exposed to the liquid. The first and second electrodes detect a capacitance therebetween as the property of the liquid in accordance with a relative permittivity of the liquid. A capacitance-voltage conversion circuit of the semiconductor board converts the capacitance into a voltage value.
US07692430B2
A power control apparatus for controlling charging and discharging of a plurality of storage devices, including a voltage measuring device for measuring voltages of the storage devices, a current measuring device for measuring currents flowing through the storage devices, a status detecting device for detecting the operating status of each of the storage devices from values measured by the voltage measuring device and the current measuring device, and a charging/discharging controlling device for controlling currents, voltages, or power according to the operating status of each storage device detected by the status detecting device to charge or discharge the storage devices.
US07692426B2
In an arrangement with a basic field magnet and with a gradient coil of a magnetic resonance apparatus, the basic field magnet includes superconducting coils that are arranged in a reservoir with liquid helium for cooling. The helium reservoir is surrounded by a further reservoir, designated as an outer vacuum chamber. A vacuum exists between the outer vacuum chamber and the helium reservoir. A cryoshield is arranged between the outer vacuum chamber and the helium reservoir. The gradient coil is arranged in the inner chamber of the basic field magnet. The outer vacuum chamber has an additional coating with a high electrical conductivity.
US07692424B2
A method comprises digitally representing a volume of space as a plurality of voxels and assigning real and imaginary values derived from magnetic resonance imaging data of the space to each of the voxels. Furthermore, the method comprises a steps of calculating a first complex summation of the real and imaginary values of a first set of the voxels, and calculating a second complex summation of the real and imaginary values of a second set of the voxels. Each set of voxels represents a different region of the volume of space. The regions are concentric. The method also comprises steps of using the first and second summations, along with another value quantitatively calculated from the magnetic resonance imaging data, to calculate a value that is dependent upon the approximate magnetic moment of an object within the volume of space, and digitally representing and storing said value.
US07692404B2
A charging system for a vehicle rearranges the bank of battery cells between a series connection for delivering voltage to a load, e.g. a motor; and a parallel connection for being charged. The battery bank can thus be charged by a 12 volt battery charger. The charger can be a plug in charger, or can be a solar cell. For example, the solar cell can be moved to cover a windshield or other surface of the vehicle whenever the vehicle is shut down.
US07692403B2
A power control apparatus and method for an electronic device is provided, which utilizes a charge current control module and a feedback signal control module to transfer the power control signal to a remote-controlled adapter through a feedback circuit, to control the output voltage of the remote-controlled adapter so as to adjust the charge current until the total input current supplied by the remote-controlled adapter is equal to the highest total input current. Therefore, the system of the electronic device can be provided with sufficient power to process needed procedures in a safe condition. Besides, according to the power required by the system of the electronic device, the controller can distribute the power for both the system and the battery in order to improve the efficiency of power use.
US07692400B2
A battery and a DC-to-DC converter are contained in a battery pack. When the battery pack is connected to a load by means of a connector and an output voltage reference value, corresponding to the power supply voltage of the load, the output voltage of the battery is converted according to the output voltage reference value by the DC-to-DC converter. The output voltage reference value is set by an output voltage reference value output means in the connector. Furthermore, the converted voltage is supplied to the load via an output voltage line.
US07692395B2
A controller is provided for operating a DC motor through a commutation circuit and for synchronizing the commutation circuit to motor position and speed by measuring back EMF voltages along commutation cycle steps during which the measured phase is not being driven. In connection with each such step, the back EMF voltage is measured at two points offset from the center of the step. The controller uses the measured voltages and their corresponding locations to locate the center point of the step through extrapolation. The motor can be analyzed for determining suitable locations for the measuring points.
US07692393B2
Preferred embodiments of the invention comprise an automatic reel capable assisting a user when attempting to unspool a linear material, such as a water hose. The automatic reel includes a control system having a motor controller capable of sensing a pulling of, or increased tension of, the linear material and capable of causing a motor to rotate to unspool the linear material. In certain embodiments, the motor controller tracks the length of the unspooled portion of the linear material and/or reduces the spooling speed of the motor when retracting a terminal portion of the linear material.
US07692386B2
In a plasma display panel first and second substrates are located apart and substantially parallel to each other. A barrier rib layer is located between the first substrate and the second substrate. Discharge cells having various cross-sectional areas are formed within the barrier rib layer. Phosphor layers are formed within the discharge cells. Ring shaped first and second electrodes, conforming to the cross-sectional area of the discharge cells, surround the discharge cells adjacent to one or the other of the first and second substrates. The first electrodes are coupled together along a first direction and the second electrodes are coupled together along the same first direction. Address electrodes extend in a direction crossing the first direction and include protruding portions conforming to inner contours of the discharge cells.
