US08286842B2
An expandable travel hanger includes an adjustable triangular shaped frame, which can go from a compacted state for storage in a suitcase to an extended state to hang clothes therefrom. A hooked movable suspension component is located at an apex of the adjustable triangular frame, which can go from a compacted state for storage in the suitcase to an extended state for use to engage with a pole in a clothes closet. A pair of release buttons, wherein each the release button is located on each said curved tubular end support, so that when the release buttons are manually pressed, said adjustable triangular shaped frame will automatically go from the compacted state to the extended state.
US08286837B1
A power assembly for dispensing product from a container includes a pump mechanism and an energy storage mechanism. The pump mechanism includes a rotatable actuating collar connected through an escapement mechanism with a drive screw with an externally threaded shaft engaged with internal threads in a piston. Rotation of the collar reciprocates the piston to store energy in the energy storage mechanism and to draw product into a pump chamber from which the product is dispensed. An actuator is connected with a stem valve to open it when the actuator is depressed, enabling the energy storage mechanism to push the piston back to its at-rest position to force product from the pump chamber and ready it for another dispensing cycle. Disengagement of the escapement mechanism when the actuator is depressed prevents rotation of the actuating collar. Different energy storage mechanisms can be interchangeably attached to the pump mechanism.
US08286835B2
A product dispenser assembly including a product dispenser, a mounting member, and a connector. The connector includes a first portion and a second portion. The first portion includes a receiving member configured and arranged to operatively connect the product dispenser thereto. The second portion includes a connecting member configured and arranged to operatively connect the mounting member thereto. The first and second portions are rotatably operatively connected to position the receiving member and the connecting member in different positions relative to one another.
US08286833B2
Systems for dispensing heated liquids, such as hot melt adhesives. The dispensing system may include a hot air manifold and a liquid manifold with a surface confronting surfaces of the air manifold to define an air plenum. A dispensing module is coupled in fluid communication with the liquid manifold and in fluid communication with an air outlet of the hot air manifold. The dispensing module is capable of dispensing the heated liquid and is capable of receiving and dispensing the process air to impinge upon the heated liquid. A heating element is operative for heating the process air flowing through said air plenum.
US08286828B2
A storage/transport container has a plurality of walls defining an upwardly open vessel having an upper rim and a generally flat cover panel hinged on one of the walls and having an inner edge. The rim has opposite to one of the walls structure forming another inner edge. The cover panel is pivotal into a closed position with the inner edges juxtaposed, retaining formations projecting generally perpendicularly from the inner edge of the cover panel and oppositely from the other inner edge that fit together in the closed position. Hooks are formed on the edges and positioned so as to be opened directly at each other in the closed position. The hooks normally are spaced apart but, on deformation of the cover panel, hook together and preventing separation of the edges.
US08286827B2
A removable sippy cup lid configured to be placed securely onto an opened beverage can. The removable sippy cup lid includes a drinking spout shaped to correspond to the cavity opening in the beverage can lid. Furthermore, the sippy cup lid includes a groove about its edge sized to receive and snap over a circular outer rim of the beverage can lid to form a seal. The groove includes an arc shaped channel cross section that bends inward leaving an opening at a distal end, where the opening covers the beverage can rim. A width of the opening is less than a thickness of the beverage can rim in a resting position. The groove is made out of flexible material such that the width of the opening widens to the thickness of the beverage can rim as pressure is applied to the sippy cup lid to snap over the rim.
US08286820B2
A protective device for a wall region to be protected, includes a collar which has recesses penetrating the collar and is disposed around the wall region to be protected in an intended configuration of the protective device. A protective cap includes a base and a casing, which extends from the base substantially perpendicularly up to a casing edge and has recesses penetrating the casing. The casing recesses extend from the casing edge in the direction of the base of the protective cap. Casing sections are formed between the recesses. In the intended configuration of the protective device, the casing is disposed between the collar and the wall region to be protected, and one of the casing sections is disposed between each collar recess and the wall region to be protected so that a free linear connection is prevented between the respective collar recess and the wall region to be protected.
US08286815B2
A package includes a container having a closed bottom, an open top having an outwardly extending flange, and a body having an enclosed generally cylindrical perimeter surrounding a longitudinal axis between the bottom and the top. The body can include an opposed pair of longitudinally extending inward protrusions forming a graspable handle dividing the body into a front label surface occupying at least 180° of the body and a back label surface smaller than the front label surface. Each inward protrusion can include a plurality of longitudinal ridges on a forwardly facing surface to facilitate single handed grasping of the package. A plurality of circumferential ribs can be situated between an upper end of the inward protrusions and the outwardly extending flange to preserve the package shape during storage on commercial food storage racks.
US08286810B2
A laundry rack is provides having a plurality of scissor linkages formed by pairs of inner and outer legs with each leg having an upper and lower end, with each pair of legs having aligned bores through which each pair of legs are rotationally connected. Each scissor linkage having aligned bores through which cross-members can be connected to join two scissor linkages to form at least a first end frame having at least an upper and lower linkage, and at least two scissor linkages being joinable to form a second end frame having at least an upper and lower linkage. Each end frame having respective first and second elongated latch members. The latch member each having first and second opposing ends that are laterally offset from each other. The first end being rotatably connected to an upper end of the inner leg on the upper scissor linkage and located on an outer side of that upper end. The second end being placed adjacent an inner side of the upper end of the outer leg in the same scissor linkage as the first end during use. The second end of each latch member adapted to releasably connect to a cross member during use.
US08286792B2
A router bit kit includes a plurality of router bits, a plurality of router bit holders and a container. Each of the plurality of router bits has a cutting surface configured to produce a cut having a three dimensional kerf profile. Each of the plurality of bit holders corresponds to at least one of the plurality of f router bits. Each of the plurality of bit holders has a three dimensional kerf profile portion that matches the three dimensional kerf profile which the corresponding router bit is configured to produce. The container is configured to retain the plurality of router bits and the plurality of holders.
US08286790B1
The paint brush cleaning and carrying device provides the advantage of a vented transparent pail with brush viewing from the exterior. The sealable removable lid provides tubular brush handle holders, each handle holder twistable and having varied height multiple pairs of orifices. Removable pins pass through the orifices and through existing holes in existing paint brush handles to dangle the brushes downwardly into selectively disposed brush solvents. The lipped removable lid can be inverted and returned atop the pail for brush drainage without solvent loss.
US08286784B2
A conveyor assembly includes a mounting assembly for moving a material to be conveyed. The mounting assembly is movable in a first direction and in a second direction opposite the first direction. At least one resiliently deformable spring member is provided for storing energy therein responsive to a motion of the mounting assembly in the second direction. Energy stored in the spring member is usable to urge the mounting assembly and the associated material in the first direction.
US08286764B2
A rotational damper having a stator and a rotor that is rotatably supported in the stator, the rotor having a first friction element (31, 31 A . . . 31 F), wherein the volume between the stator and the rotor is filled with a viscous fluid. According to the invention, the rotor has a second friction element (32, 32A . . . 32F), which is supported coaxially in relation to the first friction element and rotationally coupled thereto, and which can be axially displaced relative to the first friction element. Due to the two-piece design of the friction element and the ability for axial displacement of the two friction elements, the entire effective surface of the friction element in the viscous fluid, and thus the frictional resistance and the damping characteristics of the rotational damper, can be varied. For this purpose, the second friction element preferably has a plurality of segments (5, 5A . . . 5F), which immerse into the first friction element and can be displaced by an actuator (4, 4A . . . 4G). These segments bring about the rotational coupling of the two friction elements. In this manner, continuous adjustment of the damping torque can occur across a broad range using a simple mechanism, in order to meet the diverse requirements in terms of size and type of rotational damping in various applications, using only one model.
US08286756B2
An elevator group control system is obtained which is improved in the operating efficiency of entire cars by determining an assigned car with the use of an evaluation value calculated from an increment of the number of floors to be stopped by each car when a hall destination call newly generated by a hall control panel is temporarily assigned to each car. The system includes a hall input unit which is installed in a hall and by which the registration of a destination floor call is able to be made, and an assignment evaluation value calculation unit which includes a plurality of evaluation value calculation units for calculating the respective evaluation values of a plurality of cars in an individual manner, determines a final evaluation value from the respective evaluation values, and selects an optimal assigned car. The assignment evaluation value calculation unit includes a stop number increment evaluation value calculation unit, and the stop number increment evaluation value calculation unit sets an increment variable from an increment of the number of floors to be stopped at the time when a new hall call newly generated and a new hall destination call representing a destination floor of the new hall call are temporarily assigned to each of the plurality of cars, and calculates a stop number increment evaluation value based on the increment variable thus set.
US08286750B1
An energy capture and control device is disclosed and described. The device can include a central chamber oriented along a central axis within an outer shell, said central chamber having an inlet configured to receive a high energy material from a high energy outlet. An off axis chamber can be oriented within the outer shell in fluid communication with the central chamber. The off axis chamber can have a fluid outlet and multiple internal walls to produce a serpentine fluid pathway which dissipates energy transferred from the high energy material.
US08286737B2
A ball drive assembly for a vertical takeoff and land aircraft of the type having a plurality of supports extending outwardly from a central aircraft body. The ball drive assembly for one of the supports has a ball wheel housing containing a spherical, rigid ball, a drive shaft extending into the ball, a first driver for initiating rotating movement of the ball with respect to the ball wheel housing, and a second driver for initiating swiveling left and right movement of the ball so that it twists laterally of the ball wheel housing. Two motors are connected to the drivers, for operating them to rotate the ball with respect to the ball wheel housing, and effect both straight line movement and turning movement of the assembly.
US08286732B2
This invention relates to a steering component, to a steering assembly, and to a method of steering a drill bit in a borehole. The steering component is adapted for connection to a drill string, the drill string carrying a drill bit and a motor for rotating the drill bit. The steering component comprises: a rotatable driveshaft adapted for connection between the drill bit and the motor; a drive mechanism; and an offsetting component; the drive mechanism providing a rotatable connection between the drill string and the offsetting component whereby the drill string can rotate relative to the offsetting component. The drive mechanism is adapted to drive the offsetting component to rotate in an opposed direction to the driveshaft, so as to counter the rotation of the offsetting component which is induced by friction within the componentry as the driveshaft rotates. The steering component and method are likely to have their greatest utility in steering a drill bit during drilling for oil and gas.
US08286728B2
A system and method for communicating with a drill string is provided. The system includes an apparatus having a first coupler, a second coupler, a frame and an actuator. The first coupler may be operatively connectable to the drill string and the second coupler may be operatively connectable to a top drive of a handling system thereby allowing communication between a surface system and a downhole system. The frame may support the first coupler and the second coupler. The frame may be operatively connectable to the handling system. The actuator may be for moving the frame with the first and second couplers between an engaged position operatively connected to the top drive and an uppermost drill pipe, and a disengaged position a distance from the uppermost drill pipe whereby the first and second couplers selectively establish a communication link between the surface system and the downhole system.
US08286725B2
A drive mechanism for a hammer drill comprises a hollow piston 558 having a cylindrical bearing that is adapted to receive a crank pin in order to cause the hollow piston 558 to reciprocate inside a spindle 548. A plurality of longitudinal ridges 559 are formed on the outer surface of the hollow piston 558 to reduce the surface area of contact between the hollow piston 558 and the spindle 548, and a plurality of grooves 561 are formed in the gaps between the ridges. The grooves 561 are adapted to retain lubricant 563 in order to reduce frictional contact between the hollow piston 558 and the spindle 548.
US08286722B2
A portable linear fastener driving tool is provided that drive staples, nails, or other linearly driven fasteners. The tool uses a gas spring principle, in which a cylinder filled with compressed gas is used to quickly force a piston through a driving stroke movement, while a driver also drives a fastener into a workpiece. The piston/driver is then moved back to its starting position by use of a rotary-to-linear lifter, and the piston again compresses the gas above the piston, thereby preparing the tool for another driving stroke. The driver has protrusions along its edges that contact the lifter, which lifts the driver during a return stroke. A pivotable latch is controlled to move into either an interfering position or a non-interfering position with respect to the driver protrusions, and acts as a safety device, by preventing the driver from making a full driving stroke at an improper time.
US08286719B2
An apparatus for protecting a structure from fire includes a foam generation system by mixing compressed air, water from a pump and a foaming agent from a metered supply together with a series of motor driven nozzles and a control device which is programable to provide a program of operation to control the motors of the nozzles so as to pre-determine a pattern by which a building is repeatedly covered by a layer of the foam. The control device can include plurality of different programs of operation of the nozzles with different times for different fire conditions. A remote control allows the apparatus to be activated from a safe remote location. An arrangement is provided to automatically start the foam generation system including an internal combustion engine.
US08286714B2
A surface assembly that communicates with subsea structures and includes a working deck on a floating structure. The working deck has an aperture extending axially therethrough. A riser extends from a subsea location to the working deck and through the aperture. The surface assembly includes a frame extending circumferentially around the riser so that the frame moves axially with the riser. The assembly also includes a tensioner assembly connected between the working deck and the frame. The tensioner assembly includes a piston slidably carried in a piston chamber, a piston rod extending from the piston and away from the piston chamber, and a shroud enclosing the piston rod. The shroud has a plurality of segments with at least one of the shroud segments being movable in unison with the piston rod.
US08286711B2
A running tool sets a casing hanger packoff and ensures that the packoff is not pressure tested unless the proper setting stroke was made by the running tool. The running tool has a stem, an inner body, and a piston. The inner body is connected to the stem so that rotation of the stem relative to the inner body will cause the stem to move longitudinally. The piston is connected to the stem so that the stem and piston rotate and move longitudinally in unison. A test slot is located in the outer surface of the inner body. A limit pin is connected to the piston and is adapted to engage the test slot when the piston moves longitudinally relative to the inner body. The stem has a raised profile on a portion of its exterior surface.
US08286708B2
Methods and apparatuses for installing lateral wells in an underground. The methods and apparatuses allow for efficiency in a milling and installation process for the lateral well. More specifically, tools and techniques are detailed which allow for controllably guided installation of a whipstock and/or subsequent production deflector hardware at locations adjacent lateral legs of a well to allow for such enhanced milling, installation and production efficiencies.
US08286701B2
A device has a first elongate tubular body and a second elongate tubular body coupled to the first tubular body, both adapted to reside in the wellbore. The device is changeable between the first tubular body axially fixed against movement in a first direction relative to the second tubular body and axially moveable in the first direction relative to the second elongate tubular body in response to temperature.
US08286699B2
A production tubing assembly for accessing multiple boreholes. The assembly includes an outer shroud having an axial throughbore, a deflector disposed in the axial throughbore and releasably coupled to the outer shroud. At least two tubular members are releasably coupled to the deflector by extendable latch assemblies, wherein the deflector with the coupled tubular members is extendable from within the outer shroud to a position beyond the outer shroud. Additionally, in the extended position, the latch assemblies extend to release the tubular members and latch the deflector to the outer shroud.
US08286692B2
The method for reducing interstitial elements in alloy castings which comprises the following steps: pouring the alloy for the formation of a casting; and allowing said alloy to cool. According to the method, at least a peripheral region of the casting is heated, so that the flux of interstitial elements is caused towards the at least one peripheral region. The method is achieved where most of the interstitial elements concentrate in at least one region in the surface region of the casting. At later stages these elements can be easily eliminated from the respective regions by means of a thermal surface treatment or surface machining of the casting.
US08286688B2
A vehicle cover is provided for covering a driver side window, central windshield, and passenger side window. The cover includes a central windshield panel, a right wing panel, and a left wing panel. The right wing panel forms a pocket with three closed sides, and an open bottom edge for covering a driver side window and frame of a vehicle. The left wing panel is a pocket formed by three closed sides and an open bottom edge so as to enclose a passenger side window and frame of the vehicle. The vehicle cover prevents ice build up on the covered windshield and side windows so as to eliminate the need to scrape ice from the windshield and side windows. The cover also blocks harmful environmental conditions that may damage both the interior and exterior of a vehicle during all times of the year.
US08286686B2
In a window treatment with a cover for covering a window or other architectural opening, a cord assembly includes an elongated housing arranged to be installed next to the cover. The housing includes a channel around most of its periphery receiving the cord. Operating elements are provided on the housing to move the cord with respect to the housing to operate the window treatment and its cover.
US08286668B2
A three-dimensional distance woven fabric including two outer fabrics and a plurality of inter-yarns connected with the outer fabrics, wherein a gap distance between the outer fabrics is greater than 20 centimeters A method for weaving the aforesaid three-dimensional distance woven fabric is also provided.
US08286666B2
A mixing pipe for a gas heater includes an intake port through which gas and air are flowed in; a discharge port through which the gas and the air flowed in through the intake port are mixed and discharged; and an acceleration part disposed between the intake port and the discharge port and having a diameter smaller than the a diameter of the intake port, wherein a distance between the intake port and the acceleration part is greater than 0.5 times of the diameter of the acceleration part and smaller than 1.5 times of the diameter of the acceleration part.
US08286660B2
A gas regulator includes an actuator, a regulator valve, and a secondary device. Downstream pressure feedback is provided to the actuator and the secondary device via a Pitot tube disposed within an outlet of the regulator valve. The Pitot tube has a first branch having an end connected to the actuator to place the actuator control cavity and diaphragm in fluid communication with downstream pressure within the outlet for maintaining the outlet pressure at an actuator setpoint pressure. The Pitot tube also has a second branch having an end connected to the secondary device to place the interior of the secondary device in fluid communication with downstream pressure within the outlet for responding to changes in the downstream pressure when the outlet pressure diverges from a predetermined normal operating pressure range.
US08286655B2
A line stop adapter includes a body having a tapping flange mounting surface, adapted for mounting to a tapping sleeve flange, and an opposing valve mounting surface, adapted for mounting to a temporary valve. An interior wall forms a body aperture fluidly connecting the mounting surfaces. A portion of the interior wall is adapted to receive and selectively engage a completion plug, allowing the completion plug to fluidly seal the body aperture. Multiple engagement portions are arranged around the body aperture for securing the tapping flange mounting surface to the tapping sleeve.
US08286654B2
A gas turbine engine comprising a fan section, a compressor, a combustor and a turbine, includes a nacelle having an inner nacelle surface defining an inlet duct designed to reduce an inlet duct area of the inlet duct to increase acoustic attenuation. The gas turbine engine also includes a spinner, disposed forward of the fan section, that includes features to increase acoustic attenuation. In one embodiment of the present invention, the nacelle includes a nacelle contoured surface protruding radially inward from the inner nacelle surface to reduce the inlet duct area. In a further embodiment of the present invention, the spinner includes a spinner contoured surface for reducing the inlet duct area. In other embodiments, the nacelle and/or the spinner include an inflatable bladder, a SMA actuator, a fluidic actuator, or a combination thereof, selectively activated to increase acoustic attenuation during certain conditions of an aircraft.
US08286652B2
A method of limiting jerk in a hydraulic system of a machine includes defining a maximum pressure rate. An output pressure of a hydraulic fluid is continuously measured over time from a work port of a hydraulic valve to determine an output pressure rate. The measured output pressure rate is compared to the maximum pressure rate. A requested flow rate is adjusted when the measured output pressure rate is greater than the maximum pressure rate to decrease the pressure differential generated in response to changing the flow rate of the hydraulic fluid through the valve, which thereby limits a change in acceleration or deceleration of the hydraulic system to limit felt jerk in the machine.
US08286647B2
A cosmetics receptacle includes: a container part having a container opening, a container cap combined with the container part, a guide tube part including a pair of guide grooves dotted-formed from an upper end along a length-wise direction, a brush holder having a tube-shaped brush seating tube with a closed upper side, a sliding tube disposed in such a manner that the sliding tube surrounds the brush seating tube and a pair of guide projections extending from an outer surface of the brush seating tube, a brush mounted in the brush seating tube in such a manner that the brush is exposed by passing the lower end of the guide tube part when the brush holder moves along the length-wise direction of the guide tube part, and a separation preventing cap combined with the upper end of the guide tube part.
US08286629B2
A nebulizer includes a nebulizer body a relay pipe. The nebulizer body includes a connection portion that has an aerosol lead-out port to lead out aerosol, and the relay pipe includes a connection portion that has an aerosol introduction port to introduce the aerosol. The nebulizer body the relay pipe can take a first connection state in which the relay pipe detachably connected to the nebulizer body and a second connection state in which the relay pipe is connected to the nebulizer body so as to be not able to be detached from the nebulizer body. In the first connection state, the aerosol introduction port and the aerosol lead-out port are communicated with each other. In the second connection state, the aerosol lead-out port is blocked by a blocking portion provided in the relay pipe. Therefore, the nebulizer in which reuse of the nebulizer body or relay pipe is simply prohibited after the usage can be provided by the configuration.
US08286618B2
A device and a method for controlling an internal combustion engine are provided, in which the fuel quantity to be injected is controlled as a function of a Lambda signal. A setpoint value for the Lambda signal is specified on the basis of at least one maximally permitted exhaust-gas temperature value.
US08286606B2
A piston for an internal combustion engine is provided that comprises a piston head, onto which a piston hub and a piston skirt are formed, as well as reinforcing ribs, which extend between piston hub and piston skirt and which each comprise two portions that are curved in opposite directions.
US08286602B2
A phase variable device for use with a car engine, capable of preventing the phase angle of the camshaft from varying relative to the first circular rotational body. The device includes: a first rotational body, an intermediate rotational bode integral with the camshaft of an engine, a second rotational body, all rotatably arranged on the same camshaft, the device adapted to control phase angle of the second rotational body, thereby varying the phase angle of the intermediate rotational body. The second rotational body is placed in substantial contact with the inside of the hollow cylindrical section of the intermediate rotational body. A circular eccentric cam, integral with the second rotational body and adapted to rotate about an eccentric center thereof, causes a cam guide plate to reciprocate in the direction perpendicular to the rotational axis.
US08286599B2
A rocker arm may include a first arm defining a first longitudinal bore and a second arm defining a second longitudinal bore. The rocker arm may house a locking assembly including a first lock pin located within the first longitudinal bore, an actuation pin extending through a radial passage in the rocker arm and engaged with the first lock pin, and a first biasing member engaged with the first lock pin and urging the first lock pin toward the actuation pin and biasing the actuation pin radially inward. An actuation assembly may be engaged with the actuation pin and linearly displaceable between first and second actuation positions. The first and second arms may be rotatable relative to one another when the actuation member is in the first actuation position and may be fixed for rotation with one another when the actuation member is in the second actuation position.
US08286598B2
An engine has a rotatable crankshaft. A compression piston is received within a compression cylinder and operatively connected to the crankshaft such that the compression piston reciprocates through an intake stroke and a compression stroke during a single rotation of the crankshaft. An expansion piston is received within an expansion cylinder and operatively connected to the crankshaft such that the expansion piston reciprocates through an expansion stroke and an exhaust stroke during a single rotation of the crankshaft. A crossover passage interconnects the compression and expansion cylinders. The crossover passage includes a crossover compression valve and a crossover expansion valve defining a pressure chamber therebetween. A fuel injector is disposed in the pressure chamber of the crossover passage. Fuel injection from the fuel injector into the crossover passage is timed to occur entirely during the compression stroke of the compression piston.
US08286597B2
An engine has an auxiliary cylinder 2 and a valve body 6 slidable in this cylinder. The valve body 6 has a gas space 7 formed in it. The engine further has an actuator for shifting the valve body 6 to switch the communication between the main combustion chamber and the gas space 7 and the isolation of the chamber and cavity from each other. The slidable valve may function as a compression ratio changer, which switches the communication and the isolation according to the load on the piston. In this case, the engine has a third compression ring 18. The slidable valve may also function as a suction or exhaust valve, which switches the communication between the combustion chamber and auxiliary passage and the isolation of the chamber and passage from each other during the suction or exhaust strokes. This improves the suction or exhaust efficiency of the engine.
US08286594B2
A water heating apparatus uses a low range blower assembly and a high range blower assembly, each providing a variable flow of premixed fuel and air to a burner assembly. Appropriate choice of the operating ranges of the blower assemblies can provide a high turndown ratio approximately equal to the product of the turndown ratios of each of the individual blower assemblies. Turndown ratios as high as 25:1 are achievable.
US08286592B2
Portable apparatus and systems for pet bathing. According to one embodiment, a fully contained portable pet washing system includes one or more collapsible fluid bladders, one or more fluid tubes, a variable flow control valve, a bladder holder pack and a detachable fabric-based wash glove. The fluid tubes interface with the collapsible fluid bladders. The variable flow control valve is operable to control the dispensing of wash or rinsing fluid from the collapsible fluid bladders. The bladder holder pack is configured to be fastened as an adjustable waist belt and configured to enclose some portion of the collapsible fluid bladders. The detachable fabric-based wash glove includes at least a portion of an attachment mechanism for engaging the fluid tubes and maintaining the positioning thereof to dispense the wash or rinsing fluid at a location near a palm or finger portion of the detachable fabric-based wash glove.
US08286588B2
An pet food dispensing device includes a dispenser, an outer case, a pet food container, a slant guide, a driving device, and dispensing spouts. The dispenser includes a shaft, a dispensing disc, a rectangular push-out plate, a semi-circular plate and a stirrer. The dispensing disc includes top and bottom layers, which are positioned adjacently. The top layer of the dispensing disc includes one or more bumps on the top surface. The rectangular foam push out plate turns counter-clockwise dispensing pet food from the upper portion of semi-circular plate towards slant guide. The stirrer of the pet food dispenser includes a first flap extended from the first edge of the bottom layer of the dispensing disc, and the first flap is bent downwardly below the horizontal plane.
US08286577B2
A dosing device for the application of a coating mix (6) onto a running web, in particular a paper or paperboard web (1), which device comprises a rod (8) that is supported revolvingly over its entire length in a rod cradle (12), and a pressing device (13) acting on the rod cradle and producing a pressure of the rod onto the web (1) and onto the holding-on device (2, 17, 15) of the web, the rod (8) being provided with a wear resistant surface coating (15) with a hardness of about 10 to about 100 according to Shore A. The invention also relates to methods of using said rod, and to said revolving rod.
US08286567B2
A seed planting device. The seed planting device includes an elongated member defining a plurality of shallow depressions regularly spaced along one or more of the member's faces. Each depression defines a volume capable of receiving a seed. A practitioner uses one face or edge of the device to create an indentation in the soil. The practitioner then lifts the device and tilts it so that the seeds fall out of the shallow depressions into the indentation. The practitioner then covers the seeds with soil by filling in the indentation with loose earth or potting soil.
US08286559B2
Disclosed is a trolley assembly that is adapted to be used with a passenger restraint, such as a locking reel. The trolley assembly allows the reel lock to be securely positioned at any of a number of discrete locations along the length of an associated track. A mechanism is included for permitting the user to selectively lock and unlock the trolley as needed.
US08286556B2
The present invention discloses an integral-type combined firework, in which several tubular holes whose central longitudinal axes are parallel to each other are uniformly distributed on a body, the tubular holes have openings upward and bottom ends closed, the closed end of the bottom of each tubular hole is provided with one small through hole that penetrates through the bottom of the body and is provided with a spreading fuse, the body, the tubular holes and the small through holes thereof are an integrally molded structure; the bottom in each tubular holes is provided with propellant powder and connected with the spreading fuse, the propellant powder is provided with an inner cylinder or an effect powder on it. The integral-type combined firework using the above solution has standard specification, firm structure and results in high production efficiency; moreover, the original fuse connection at the side of the cylinder body is changed into the fuse connection at the bottom, and the fuse connecting holes are mechanically molded with a consistent size of the hole and precisely controlled distance between holes, therefore, the launching time is accurate and safety is good.
US08286555B2
A detonator assembly is provided. The detonator assembly comprises a deflagration to detonation transition body, a first thermally stable secondary explosive contained by the body, and a bulkhead coupled to the deflagration to detonation transition body. The bulkhead contains pressure within the body associated with firing the detonator assembly at least until a transition from a deflagration operation mode of the detonator assembly to a detonation operation mode of the detonator assembly has occurred. A second thermally stable secondary explosive may alternatively be included in the deflagration to detonation transition body, either separated from the first thermally stable secondary explosive or mixed with the first thermally stable secondary explosive. The detonator assembly comprises effectively no primary explosive.
US08286554B2
A method for electrically initiating an inertial igniter for a munition. The method including: generating a voltage over a duration of an acceleration of the munition; powering a circuit from the generated voltage for determining when the acceleration experienced by the munition is an all-fire condition; electrically activating a reserve battery by the generated voltage when the circuit determines that the acceleration experienced by the munition is the all-fire condition; and electrically initiating pyrotechnic materials at a specified time into a flight of the munition using the reserve battery.
US08286546B2
A fuel system may include a fuel pump and a drive shaft. The fuel pump may include a reciprocating member and the drive shaft may include a lobe member engaged with the reciprocating member. The lobe member may linearly displace the reciprocating member and drive the fuel pump. The lobe member may include a first lobe having a first opening flank driving a first compression stroke of the fuel pump through engagement with the reciprocating member. The first lobe may have a profile providing a constant velocity for the linear displacement of the reciprocating member for a portion of the first compression stroke.
US08286545B2
A piston-cylinder unit for pivoting a flap with respect to a motor vehicle body includes a cylinder having an open end with a seal, a closed end, and an interior space between the ends; a piston unit axially movable in the cylinder, the piston unit dividing the interior space into a first working space and a second working space; a piston rod connected to the piston unit and extending through the first working space and the seal; and flow connections connecting the first working space to the second working space. A switch element arranged outside the cylinder is switched in response to movement of the piston with respect to the cylinder.
US08286541B2
A firearm having reduced recoil including a front slide connected to a rear slide by way of a slide link. Firing the firearm causes the rear slide to recoil and transfer energy, by means of the slide link, to the front slide. The front slide moving in the direction opposite the rear slide thereby reducing the recoil of the firearm. After reaching full recoil, the front and rear slides return to their resting positions.
US08286534B2
An assembled transmission device with bi-rotating directional input and constant rotating directional output can be directly installed in pipe holes of a basic through hole pipe of a vehicle, so that a vehicle to be driven that is installed with the basic through hole pipe is easy to assemble and maintain.
US08286530B2
A bicycle handle assembly, of which the position of the handle grip can be freely adjusted according to the need of the rider, enabling the rider to ride the bicycle in a comfortable posture. The bicycle handle assembly includes: a stem prepared on a front-wheel fork of a bicycle; a handlebar installed on the stem; a handle grip coupled to either end of the handlebar; a ball joint prepared between the handlebar and the handle grip to enable the handle grip to rotate; and a securing element installed on the ball joint to secure the handle grip in a particular position. The bicycle handle assembly makes it possible to freely adjust the positions of the handle grips according to the need of the rider, thereby distributing the load that may otherwise be concentrated on the wrists and preventing pain and injury.
US08286524B2
A motor assembly includes a motor, a force transmission structure comprising a drive plate and a shaft, and a gear train connecting the motor to the drive plate for transmitting rotation of the motor to the drive plate. The drive plate has a mounting hole with at least three sections interconnected with one another at a common area, the shaft has a toothed portion with at least three teeth fittingly received in the sections of the mounting hole of the drive plate such that the shaft is rotated with the drive plate.
US08286518B2
A drive device for a lid of a motor vehicle includes a first fastening element connectable to a stationary component or to a movable component, and a housing tube located at the end of the drive device opposite the first fastening element and is free to move axially relative thereto. The housing tube includes, at the end opposite the first fastening element, a second fastening element connectable to the movable component or to the stationary component. A spindle drive including a threaded spindle and a spindle nut mounted on the threaded spindle is actuatable by a rotary device to move the first fastening element and the housing tube axially relative to each other. A stroke position of the first fastening element can be detected by a magnetic field sensor which senses longitudinal movements of a permanent magnet of the spindle along a sensitivity area of the stationary magnetic field sensor.
US08286516B2
A method and a device for measuring the movement of a subsea pipeline. The measuring device has an accommodating mount anchored in the sea bed to accept the subsea pipeline. The subsea pipeline is liable to be made to move over a determined travel with respect to the accommodating support as the pipelines deforms. The movement has an amplitude that varies according to the deformation of the subsea pipeline. A plurality of frangible elements secured to one of either the deformable subsea pipeline and the accommodating mount. The frangible elements are intended to be broken in succession by the other of either the deformable subsea pipeline and the accommodating mount when the pipeline is caused to move.
US08286514B2
Embodiments of the invention include a proppant testing apparatus with a portable piston extractor and related methods. In one embodiment, a testing apparatus includes a test cell body in which an upper piston is constrained to vertically reciprocate within a test cavity. A laterally-extending width bar is coupled to the piston above the test cell body. A portable piston extractor is provided for freeing the stuck piston following testing. The piston extractor includes an extractor base removably supported on the test cell body and an extractor arm movably coupled to the extractor base. A drive mechanism is configured for driving the extractor arm into vertical engagement with the width bar, to raise the piston for extraction. In another embodiment, a set of gear boxes interconnected by shafts may be used to apply a uniform separation force between the piston and test cell body.
US08286510B2
A force sensor for detecting at least a force acting in a longitudinal direction of a catheter or guide wire, the force sensor comprising a force pick-up for detecting the force, wherein the force pick-up comprises: a base body with an end face, wherein the base body includes at least one cutout, wherein the cutout causes an asymmetry of the base body relative to the longitudinal direction of the catheter or guide wire upon flexing of the base body upon force Fz loading thereon from an axial direction, wherein the end face includes a surface area that is substantially greater than the cross-sectional area of the base body in the region of the cutout, but not substantially smaller than the cross-section of the rest of the base body. A method for using this force sensor is also disclosed.
US08286504B2
An arrangement for improving an accuracy of a pressure measurement made of a breathing gas including drops of water or humidity flowing along a flow channel is disclosed herein. The arrangement includes at least one pressure measuring channel to transmit a pressure of the breathing gas flowing along the flow channel to a measuring device to make the pressure measurement. The pressure measuring channel is equipped with a capillary material enabling capillary suctioning of water. Also a flow sensor for a flow rate measurement of a breathing gas including drops of water or humidity is provided.
US08286503B2
An electromagnetic flowmeter for mass flow measurement of a flowing medium having a measuring tube (1), a magnetic field generator for generating a magnetic field that at least partially passes through the measuring tube (1), two magnetic coils (2), and two electrodes for tapping into a measurement voltage induced in the flowing medium. The measuring tube (1) is designed as an integrally molded metal pipe or as a metal pipe produced integrally by hydroforming. Preferably, the measuring tube has a wall thickness that is smaller at a mid-section than at its ends, and reinforcing ribs in the mid-section.
US08286494B2
One or more bolt gauges each with a built-in load cell are positioned on a blade bolt or a bearing bolt between a pitch bearing and a tightening means and tensioned by the securing means at the inside or the outside of a hub of a wind turbine. The bolt gauge then outputs a signal descending both from the tension from the bolt/securing means connection and the tension from the blade when the blade is vibrated due to wind forces and the rotation of the blade when the hub of the wind turbine is rotating.
US08286491B2
Disclosed is an improved ultrasonic probe for Internal Rotating Inspection System (called IRIS) for inspecting tube-like structures from the inside of the tubes. The improved design deploys a rotor with rotor blades and a slotted stator located close to the emitting face of the transducer, to direct the flow of water such that air bubbles are carried away from a zone immediately in front of the transducer emitting face. Inspection accuracy and efficiency is significantly improved when air bubbles are effectively removed.
US08286481B2
A mount and housing for fluid meter components, including transducers, is directly coupled to fixation points on a pipe exterior circumference without external straps. The mount may be selectively coupled and decoupled from the pipe fixation points. One or more mounts and housings may be arrayed on a pipe exterior in modular fashion, for different metering applications. Similarly, the mount and housing interior optionally may be reconfigurable in modular fashion for orientation and alignment of one or a plurality of transducers or other components for different user applications, without the need for auxiliary alignment tools, templates, measuring instruments or other devices.
US08286480B2
A positive displacement fluid flow meter comprises a chamber having a fluid inlet and a fluid outlet. A rotor is displaceable within the chamber, rotation of the rotor being related to the volume of fluid passing through the chamber. The chamber has a surface proximate which an end surface of the rotor passes, the chamber surface and/or the rotor end surface having at least one recess to retain at least a portion of debris carried by the metered fluid. The recess is preferably formed so as not to provide fluid, communication, from the inlet to the outlet across the rotor end surface. A lid closes an end of the chamber which in use is subject to the pressure of fluid within the chamber. The lid is engaged at its periphery to a wall of the chamber, and is preferably flexible adjacent its periphery to reduce the transmission of bending stresses between the periphery of the lid and the remainder thereof.
US08286474B2
An electronic module for measuring operating parameters of a vehicle wheel, includes an electronic unit (1), an inflation valve (2) of the “snap-in” type made up of a valve body (3) made of an elastomeric material pierced with an axial bore housing a hollow tubular core (15), and elements for securing the electronic unit (1) and the inflation valve (2) together. The elements for securing the electronic unit (1) and the inflation valve (2) to one another include, a ring (20) secured to the electronic unit (1) and designed to be slidably mounted around the portion of the tubular core (15) that extends in the continuation of the valve body (3), in a position of the electronic unit (1) in which the latter extends in the direct continuation of the inflation valve (2), and elements (13, 25, 26) for assembling the ring (20) of the electronic unit on the valve body.
US08286463B2
A system for correcting angular velocity measurements from a gyroscope and using the corrected angular velocity measurements to position an antenna used with a vehicle. The system determines an approximate null point voltage of a gyroscope of the type that produces a voltage related to an angular velocity to be measured by the gyroscope. The approximate null point is determined by sampling the output voltage to obtain a plurality of sampled voltages and choosing an approximate mode of the plurality of sampled voltages as the approximate null point voltage.
US08286457B2
A method for controlling variations of Al—Ti—B alloy crystal grain refinement ability through controlling a compression ratio of sectional area of Al—Ti—B alloy including: A. establishing a relationship between variations of refinement ability of Al—Ti—B alloy crystal grain and parameters of press process of the Al—Ti—B alloy; setting the parameters of press process and controlling the variation of the refinement ability of the Al—Ti—B alloy crystal grain through controlling a value of the compression ratio.
US08286453B2
A washing machine having a ball balancer coupled to the drum to compensate for a dynamic imbalance during rotation of the drum, the ball balancer including a ring-shaped racer having a closed internal space in which a plurality of balls and viscous oil are accommodated, the ring-shaped racer including a first injection molded member and a second injection molded member joined to each other to form the closed internal space, the first injection molded member including a first side wall, a second side wall and a connecting wall between the first side wall and the second side wall, the first injection molded member having an open side opposite to the connecting wall, and the second injection molded member is adapted to cover the open side of the first injection molded member.
US08286452B2
A modular laundry system comprises at least two horizontally arranged laundry appliances, and a worksurface formed by multiple interconnected pieces laterally connected to each other, wherein the worksurface is mountable to the laundry appliances to span a gap between the laundry appliances and form a continuation surface above the discontinuous upper surface collectively defined by the laundry appliances.
US08286438B2
A system for controlling a desuperheater includes a first temperature sensor coupled to a refrigerant discharge gas line of a compressor; and a controller operatively coupled to at least the first temperature sensor, the compressor, and the desuperheater. The controller controls the desuperheater based at least in part on temperature data received from the first temperature sensor.
US08286434B2
A supersonic inlet employs relaxed isentropic compression to improve net propulsive force by shaping the compression surface of the inlet. Relaxed isentropic compression shaping of the inlet compression surface functions to reduce cowl lip surface angles, thereby improving inlet drag characteristics and interference drag characteristics. Supersonic inlets in accordance with the invention also demonstrate reductions in peak sonic boom overpressure while maintaining performance.
US08286433B2
A fuel injector for a gas turbine engine is disclosed. The fuel injector includes an injector housing having a longitudinal axis. The injector housing includes one or more fuel galleries annularly disposed about the longitudinal axis, and a compressed air inlet. The fuel injector also includes a premix barrel having a proximal end and a distal end circumferentially disposed about the longitudinal axis. The premix barrel is fluidly coupled to the fuel galleries and the compressed air inlet at the proximal end and is configured to couple to a combustor of the gas turbine engine at the distal end. The fuel injector also includes a substantially cylindrical pilot assembly disposed radially inwards of the premix barrel having a first end and a second end. The second end is coupled to the injector housing and the first end is located proximate the distal end of the premix barrel. The fuel injector further includes a pilot liquid tube having a third end and a fourth end disposed radially inwards of the pilot assembly. The fourth end is removably coupled to the injector housing and the third end is located proximate the first end of the pilot assembly.
US08286431B2
A method and system for augmenting the output of a combined cycle power plant having a gas turbine driving a generator, a heat recovery steam generator that recovers exhaust heat from the gas turbine to drive a steam turbine also driving a generator, and a refrigeration element that is powered by available energy in steam exhausted from the steam turbine to cool water. The refrigeration element employs a substantially closed cycle refrigeration system that is either an absorption chilling system or a thermal compression chilling system. The refrigeration element provides cool water to an inlet chiller arranged to chill inlet to the gas turbine to augment the power output of the gas turbine and the water is recirculated to be chilled and used again. Since the refrigeration cycle is substantially closed, little or no additional plant water consumption is imposed on the power plant.
US08286426B2
A control system for a work machine having a hydraulic energy source, a hydraulic accumulator, a digital hydraulic system having a digital hydraulic transformer, a hydraulic actuator and a movable element. The hydraulic accumulator being fluidically couplable with the hydraulic energy source. The digital hydraulic system including a digital hydraulic transformer fluidically couplable with the hydraulic accumulator. The hydraulic actuator being fluidically couplable with the digital hydraulic transformer. The movable element being movable by the hydraulic actuator. The control system including means to estimate at least one of potential energy and kinetic energy in the movable element; means to measure a fill level of hydraulic fluid in the hydraulic accumulator; and means to vary the amount of hydraulic energy added to the hydraulic accumulator by the hydraulic energy source responsive to the potential energy, the kinetic energy and/or the fill level of the hydraulic accumulator.
US08286419B2
An exhaust diagnostic system includes a selective catalyst reduction (SCR) efficiency testing module that determines an efficiency of a SCR catalyst. An exhaust gas temperature management module selectively adjusts a temperature of the SCR catalyst to a predetermined temperature range using intrusive exhaust gas temperature management. A test enabling module initiates an SCR efficiency test using the SCR efficiency module after failing a prior SCR efficiency test and while the temperature of the SCR catalyst is within the predetermined temperature range.
US08286418B2
An exhaust gas control apparatus applied to an internal combustion engine including plural cylinders and a turbocharger, wherein an exhaust passage includes first and second branch passages. The first branch passage connects exhaust sides of cylinders #1, #4 and a turbine, and includes a starter catalyst; the second branch passage connects exhaust sides of cylinders #2, #3 and the turbine, and communicates with the first branch passage upstream of the starter catalyst. The exhaust gas control apparatus includes an exhaust gas switching valve disposed at a communication part, through which the first and second branch passages are in communication, and is switchable between an introducing position at which exhaust gas is introduced into the starter catalyst from the cylinders #2, #3 and a block position at which introduction thereof is blocked. An ECU switches the exhaust gas switching valve position based on the operating condition of the internal combustion engine.
US08286413B2
A nanofiber yarn assembly including a longitudinally extending core for the yarn assembly and, twisted about the core, at least one ribbon of multiple nanofibers. The yarn assembly can be formed by drawing a longitudinally extending core for the yarn assembly through a concentric core-spinning zone, and, as the core travels through the core-spinning zone, twisting at least one ribbon of multiple nanofibers about the travelling core. Apparatus is also disclosed.
US08286407B2
The present invention relates to a single-layer polymer film, intended to be used for packaging articles having an extended shelf life, said film being composed of a cast polyamide sheet, covered, on one of its faces, with a heat-sealable coating, comprising polyvinyl chloride (PVC) and/or polyvinylidene chloride (PVDC), so that said film has an average permeability between 35 g/m2/24 hours and 110 g/m2/24 hours. It also relates to a process for producing said film. It additionally relates to a pouch obtained from said film, said pouch being particularly suitable for packaging articles having an extended shelf life, especially microorganism culture media in dishes.
US08286403B2
Finishing set for a floor covering, whereby this finishing set at least consists of, on the one hand, a finishing profile and, on the other hand, a holder with at least an attachment portion for attaching said finishing profile at the holder, characterized in that the holder comprises an underlay portion, which at choice can or cannot be provided underneath the remaining portion of the holder, as well as a stop-forming positioning portion.
US08286402B2
A system of interlocking building blocks includes one or more building blocks having a generally right triangular planform, a generally rectangular elevation form, and a periphery generally defined by respective generally rectangular side panels. Each building block has alternating male and female fastener elements arrayed generally around the periphery. The male fastener elements on opposed edges of the same generally rectangular side panel are offset generally diagonally from one another. Each male fastener element is aligned generally normally with a female fastener element on an opposed edge of the same generally rectangular side panel. The building blocks may be formed by folding single flat sheets, and may be made from cardboard, plastic, metal or other conventional materials. Each building block may be coated or filled with structurally reinforcing or insulative material. Two interlocked building blocks may be geometrically distinctive in a manner which optimizes the system for simplified and efficient construction of walled and roofed structures.
US08286401B2
A demountable and remountable wall assembly for partitioning room space between an overhead and a floor, the major elements of which are reusable. The assembly provides one or two walls, at lease one of which has an outer fastener-free surface. Additionally, the fastener-free surface may be made substantially smooth and seamless. The walls are arranged in planar congruence, separated by internal spacers or studs, and vertically positioned between the overhead and floor of the room space to be partitioned. Removable tracks or spacers at the top and bottom of the wall assembly serves to interface the wall assembly with the floor and ceiling of the space. The walls are constructed of either finished or unfinished wall panels (e.g., fabric covered or sheet rock panels) which are incorporated into the assembly using a combination of removable fasteners and releasable adhesives. The finished or exposed area of a wall surface includes no fasteners. Any fasteners used to fix a wall panel in place is covered by a removable trim or other removable feature, which make the fasteners readily exposable and easy to remove.
US08286386B2
A Christmas tree stand, a method for affixing a Christmas tree to a Christmas tree stand, and a drill bit for forming a groove in the bottom of a Christmas tree are provided. The Christmas tree stand includes a base having a male member extending upwardly therefrom with at least a portion of the male member received in the groove in the bottom of the Christmas tree. Preferably an insert in the form of a cylinder is received within the groove. Upon the receipt of the male member in the groove, the Christmas tree is stabilized on the base.
US08286383B2
A rifle scope includes an ocular (6), an objective (4), a reticle (10) and an aligning device (20) that is displaced axially from the reticle and includes one or more markings (22a, 22b) that are visible in use to a shooter. The aligning device (20) is constructed and arranged such that with correct eye alignment the markings (22a, 22b) appear to be aligned with the reticle (10), and with incorrect eye alignment the markings appear to be misaligned with the reticle.
US08286377B2
The present invention relates to a dynamic display signage system comprising a supporting means, a substantially pliable display panel being secured in a substantially vertical manner on said supporting means, and a primary drive means to allow the upward and downward vertical displacement of said display panel along said supporting means, characterized in that said display panel being provided with a secondary drive means operatively connected at the lower portion thereof, said secondary drive means having an independent motion with respect to said primary drive means to allow a consequent independent motion of said display panel at a pre-selected tension in order to maintain the consistent viewable surface integrity of the said display panel as it is vertically displaced.
US08286375B2
A drag head of a trailing suction hopper dredger. The drag head comprises a rotatable visor connected to a suction pipe for discharging soil via the suction opening of the visor, wherein the visor is provided with a catching construction for undesirable objects. The catching construction closes the suction opening except for passage openings, wherein at least a number of passage openings have a variable passage area. A method for breaking up and/or dredging at least partially hard grounds under water using a trailing suction hopper dredger equipped with a drag head.
US08286373B2
The banding device for application to a segment of footwear, whether it be to the heel, sole, around the vamp portion of the shoe, in any combination thereof, which due to its elasticity allows for its stretching into position to be secured either as an endless or continuous loop, for application to these components of the shoe to vary the coloration, design, indicia, trademark, or other aesthetics for the footwear.
US08286367B2
A system for continuous (re-)drying of wood pieces. A conveyor arrangement receives and carries the wood pieces in file following a course. A moisture content of each wood piece travelling on the conveyor arrangement is measured during the course. The wood pieces whose measured moisture content are above a target content are diverted towards a drying equipment, in particular by high-frequency, whereas the other wood pieces continue their course on the conveyor arrangement. The drying equipment removes a moisture portion from the diverted wood pieces. The moisture contents of the processed wood pieces are again measured. The pieces whose moisture content dropped below the target content are routed towards the conveyor arrangement whereas the other pieces are routed in the drying equipment for a re-drying.
US08286366B2
PET drying apparatus for a machine used to produce PET bottles, comprising a unit in which the raw plastic is dried, before the plastic melting process, in which the PET is heated by using microwave energy and the PET is dehumidified by the outflow of the vented air that is recovered after the blowing process.
US08286364B2
Disclosed are a liquid storage container and a clothes dryer having the same. The liquid storage container comprises: a reservoir installed at a clothes dryer, and configured to store liquid therein; a floating member floating on the liquid, and disposed on the reservoir with a rotation angle variable according to level change of the liquid inside the reservoir; and display means configured to display information corresponding to the rotation angle of the floating member. The rotation angle of the floating member may vary according to a remaining amount of the liquid. And, the remaining amount of the liquid may be informed to a user through the display means. Accordingly, the user may easily check the remaining amount of the liquid without checking the inside of the liquid storage container.
US08286351B2
There is disclosed a manufacturing method of a liquid discharge head including a substrate in which a first energy generating element and a second energy generating element that generate energy used for discharging liquid are provided, a discharge port member in which a first discharge port discharging the liquid is provided corresponding to the first energy generating element and a second discharge port discharging the liquid is provided corresponding to the second energy generating element, and a flow path wall member having a portion of the liquid flow path wall that communicates with the first discharge port and the second discharge port, in which a distance between the second energy generating element and the second discharge port is larger than that between the first energy generating element and the first discharge port.
US08286347B2
A method for reducing vibration levels in a turbomachine including at least a first and a second bladed wheel, due to aerodynamic perturbations that are produced by the second bladed wheel or an obstacle on the first bladed wheel is disclosed. The method includes: defining an initial configuration of the blades; calculating the synchronous forced response on the first bladed wheel as a function of the harmonic excitation force produced by the second bladed wheel expressed in the form of a linear function of the generalized aerodynamic force for the mode considered; determining a geometric tangential shift value θ for the stacked cross sections of one of the two wheels to reduce the corresponding term to the generalized aerodynamic force. The set of cross sections with the tangential shifts thus defines a new configuration of the blades of one of the two wheels.
US08286345B2
Techniques for producing a flexible structure attached to a device. One embodiment includes the steps of providing a first substrate, providing a second substrate with a releasably attached flexible structure, providing a bonding layer on at least one of the first substrate and the flexible structure, adjoining the first and second substrate such that the flexible structure is attached at the first substrate by means of the bonding layer, and detaching the second substrate in such a way that the flexible structure remains on the first substrate.
US08286343B2
A method of manufacturing a wiring substrate includes forming a conducting layer on a first insulating layer including a first glass cloth; forming a photosensitive resist layer on the conducting layer; recognizing a first origin position on the first insulating layer; forming a mask on the resist layer by positioning the mask with respect to the first origin position, the mask being formed so as to position wiring patterns only on positions overlapping the first glass cloth in a planar view; and exposing the resist layer via the mask and forming the wiring patterns only on the positions overlapping the first glass cloth in the planar view.
US08286339B2
A method of manufacturing an electrosurgical tool includes the initial step of coupling a proximal end of a substantially malleable elongate tube-like shaft to a distal end of a housing. A tub-like dielectric sheath is disposed on the tube-like shaft. The method also includes the steps of coupling a tube-like electrode having a first thermal conductivity K1 coaxially through the tube-like dielectric sheath and coupling a proximal end of the tube-like electrode to a source of suction to provide fluid communication between the tube-like electrode and the source of suction. The method also includes the steps of electrically connecting the tube-like electrode to a source of energy and coupling a thermally conductive member to the tube-like shaft. The thermally conductive member has a second thermal conductivity K2 that is less than K1 and is configured to impede the propagation of thermal energy proximally.
US08286338B2
A process for manufacturing an electrical lead having one or more electrodes includes providing an elongate member having at least one polymeric region and further having at least one electrical conductor that extends along at least a part of a length of the elongate member and that is contained in a wall of the elongate member. A length of the at least one electrical conductor is accessed at the at least one polymeric region. An electrically conductive adhesive is applied to the length of the at least one electrical conductor that has been accessed.
US08286331B2
A method for manufacturing a laminated core includes (1) blanking a rotor core sheet 15 and a stator core sheet 14 from a thin strip material 27 and (2) laminating the stator core sheet 14 inside a die. The stator core sheet 14 includes a ring-shaped yoke piece 18 and plural magnetic pole pieces 19 integrally connecting to a radially inside of the yoke piece 18. Each of the magnetic pole pieces 19 includes a magnetic pole shaft piece 20 and a magnetic pole tooth piece 21. The magnetic pole pieces 19 are formed by blanking preparatory slots 29; coining a part or a whole of the magnetic pole shaft pieces 20 to elongate the same in a radially inward direction; and thereafter, blanking the finishing slots 30 and shaping the magnetic pole tooth pieces 21.
US08286315B2
Disclosed is a mass-productive automatic rhinestone attachment apparatus. More particularly, disclosed is a mass-productive automatic rhinestone attachment apparatus capable of performing mass-productive processes for the attachment of symmetrical or asymmetrical rhinestone using a predetermined pattern. The mass-productive automatic rhinestone attachment apparatus includes a rhinestone feeding device including a plurality of feeding modules constituting a plurality of sets, each feeding module being configured to retain rhinestone sorted based on the size and color thereof, a drive device to operate the rhinestone feeding device in a longitudinal direction thereof, so as to move the respective feeding modules to associated rhinestone attachment devices, a multihead-type rhinestone attachment device provided per each feeding module of the rhinestone feeding device and used to attach the same rhinestone fed from the feeding module to the same position of respective rhinestone attachment materials, a working table provided close to the bottom of the rhinestone attachment device and adapted to be moved in X-axis, Y-axis, and Z-axis directions so as to allow the rhinestone to be attached at correct coordinates depending on a desired design, and a controller to control operations of the rhinestone feeding device, drive device, rhinestone attachment device, and working table.
US08286312B2
A buckle has plug and socket members which are detachably coupled to each other. The plug member having a base part, a pair of lock arms which project from the base part to be elastically coupled to the socket member, a guide rod which projects from the base part between the pair of lock arms, and bridges which extend from the base part inside the pair of lock arms and are connected to distal ends or middle portions of inner surfaces of the lock arms. The socket member have a chamber which is defined by an upper plate, a lower plate and sidewalls connecting the upper and lower plates and is open at a distal end thereof to receive the pair of lock arms and the guide rod, and engagement parts which are formed outside the chamber to allow distal end portions of the lock arms to be engaged therewith.
US08286310B1
An elevator pad securing system that is suited for residential and commercial building use; respectfully including a plastic disk with a channeled groove, rivet hole and the hook portion of Velcro, an offset coupling attached to plastic disk with a rivet then a small length of ball chain with one end attached onto the offset coupling on the plastic disk with the opposite end of the ball chain attached to the offset coupling attached to the top edge of the elevator pad and a defined dimension of the loop portion of Velcro attached to the upper back portion of the elevator pad.
US08286309B2
In one form, the cable termination has a tubular body with an opening into which an end of the median barrier cable is inserted. A wedge gripper includes three sections for gripping the end of the median barrier cable within the tubular body. The wedge gripper has a tapering outer surface that mates with a tapered inner surface of the tubular body and has a toothed inner diameter. A threaded cap is screwed to an end of the tubular body opposite from the cable opening, such that the threaded cap forces the tapering outer surface of the wedge gripper axially against the tapered inner surface of the tubular body to force the toothed inner diameter of the wedge gripper to contract against three lobes of the median barrier cable to grip the median barrier cable.
US08286307B2
A multi-staged hinge assembly and a portable electrical device comprising the multi-staged hinge assembly are provided. The multi-staged hinge assembly utilizes a spindle with a non-circular cross-section and the relative movement resulting from the movable components disposed on the spindle, such that one of the body portions of the portable electrical device automatically tilts in an angle after the body portions slides with each other. The user could further adjust the angle to meet various use conditions.
US08286306B2
Described is a hinge for wings or doors, in particular for electrical household appliances, comprising a first body (5), a second body (6) and a connecting lever (7) between the first and the second body (5, 6).
US08286302B2
An upright vacuum cleaner for cleaning a surface includes a base unit, a carriage configured to move the base unit on the surface, and an upper body having a dust collection container disposed therein. The upper body is supported so as to be tiltable relative to the base unit and is lockable in a parked position in which the vacuum cleaner has a substantially upright position when standing on the surface. A motor-fan unit is configured to provide a partial vacuum at the surface. An air conduit connecting the base unit and the dust collection container includes an interface and a section formed by a hose or an assembly of the hose and a wand. The section is connected downstream of the interface and is disposed at least partially externally on the upper body. The section is configured to enable a vacuuming mode of operation that is independent of the base unit. A tubular member forming at least part of a transition between the hose and the upper body. The tubular member is swivelably disposed on the upper body.
US08286299B2
A handheld canister vacuum cleaner device includes a canister assembly with a canister having a hollow interior and a suction-producing subassembly mounted on the canister that sucks air from the hollow interior. An attachment-coupling component is provided on the canister that serves to hold a vacuuming attachment on the canister while coupling the vacuuming attachment in fluid communication with the hollow interior of the canister. The attachment-coupling component holds the vacuuming attachment pivotally so that a user can pivot the vacuuming attachment relative to the canister to multiple user-selected angles for operating convenience. Preferably, the attachment-coupling component includes a ball-and-socket arrangement that includes a ball-shaped portion of the attachment-coupling component held pivotally by a socket-shaped component on the canister so that the user can pivot the attachment-coupling component to and lock it in place at a desired one of multiple pivotal positions.
US08286293B2
A cleaning processing unit includes a spin chuck for horizontally holding a substrate and rotating the substrate around the vertical axis passing through the center of the substrate. A bevel cleaner is disposed outside the spin chuck. The bevel cleaner includes a cleaning brush. The cleaning brush has a shape that is symmetric about its vertical axis, and has an upper bevel cleaning surface, an end surface cleaning surface, and a lower bevel cleaning surface. The end surface cleaning surface is a cylindrical surface having its axis in the vertical direction. The upper bevel cleaning surface extends out from and is inclined upward from the upper end of the end surface cleaning surface, and the lower bevel cleaning surface extends out from and is inclined downward from the lower end of the end surface cleaning surface.
US08286289B2
The present invention refers to the use of an adsorbent comprising particles comprising an amorphous phase and a crystalline phase for the purification of dry cleaning solvents. The present invention furthermore relates to a filter unit containing such an adsorbent. It also refers to a dry cleaner containing a filter according to the invention. Additionally, the present invention refers to a process for dry cleaning textiles, wherein an adsorbent according to the invention is used.
US08286281B1
The personal lifting and suspension system includes four adjustable legs that attach at a top end to a cap, which supports a lifting means and harness there under. The personal lifting and suspension system is used to lift and suspend a person or invalid. The legs can be secured to a working supporting position via a locking means. The legs extend diagonally down and outwardly from the cap, and are adjustable in length. A hoist rod rests upon a groove located in a top surface of the cap to support a hoist hook thereon. The personal lifting and suspension system is collapsible when not in use.
US08286274B1
A restroom aid is disclosed for providing comfortable support for disabled, handicapped, elderly, or ill persons who require assistance using the restroom facilities. The restroom aid creates a sturdy frame around the toilet with aids for sitting, standing, and supporting the user's arms and head. The restroom aid can assemble and disassemble quickly using a quick-release mechanism. Furthermore, the restroom aid is easily adjustable to fit users and restroom facilities of different sizes.
US08286273B1
The toilet foot flushing apparatus quickly converts a hand-flushed toilet to a foot-flushed toilet, without the need of tools. The included lever of the apparatus replaces the existing toilet lever, by hand. The pedal is about 1 foot in length, thereby providing sufficient leverage to the lever via the cable. The lever is attached to flush mechanism on the exterior of an existing toilet reservoir. The spring-loaded pedal returns to a position slightly above the base when released, thereby releasing lever pressure. The geared pedal to base action provides sturdy long-lived flush function. The apparatus does not require any form of floor invasion, as the base need not be mounted to the floor. The cable retainer provides length adjustment for the cable so that a plurality of toilet reservoirs and flush mechanisms can be successfully converted to foot flush.
US08286268B2
A freely cuttable garment is provided. The freely cuttable garment is capable of being cut by a consumer into any design shape for use. The garment is formed of a fray-preventing knitted fabric woven with heat-welding elastic yarn. Sizes of opening parts of the neck, side, and bottom of the garment are smaller than those of a standard product; a total length and sleeve length of the garment are larger than those of the standard product; and a body width, cuff, waist, and lower bottom edge of the garment are equal to those of the standard product. The garment can be cut into any design shape and can be used with the opening parts left cut-off.
US08286263B2
A hospital gown having front and rear openings for convenient access while providing sufficient coverage of the patient's body is provided. In one embodiment, the hospital gown comprises a first segment and a second segment. When one segment is put on a patient by inserting one arm through an arm hole and the other segment is put on in the same manner but on the opposite side of the body, the front and back portions of the segments overlap at the front and back. The segments may be releasably connected to one another by fasteners located on the first and second segments at the front and back overlapping portions. The first segment then wraps around the patient's body and over a part of the second segment, and the front and back portions of the first segment are releasably connected at or near the side of the patient's body.
US08291503B2
Described is a technology for preloading modules, such as modules that show clinical/medical data maintained at a service, so as to reduce a user's wait time to use a module. The modules for which a user is authenticated are preloaded according to a loading order that is based upon the user's historical usage data. If a user interacts to use a selected module that is not yet loaded, the selected module may be loaded immediately, independent of the order. A background thread preloads the modules according to the order. A normal thread loads the selected module, unless already being preloaded by the background thread; in either situation the loading thread's priority may be temporarily increased to expedite loading. The historical data may be in the form of weight values associated with the modules, with the weight values adjusted based upon module usage.
US08291493B2
A method and system is provided by which unauthorized changes to the registry may be detected and that provides the capability to verify whether registry, or other system configuration data, changes that occur on a computer system are undesirable or related to possible malware attack before the changes become effective or are saved on the system. A method for verifying changes to system configuration data in a computer system includes generating an identifier representing an entry in the system configuration data, packaging the identifier, and sending the packaged identifier to a client for verification. The identifier may be generated by hashing the first portion of the entry and the second portion of the entry to generate the identifier, or by filtering the first portion of the entry and hashing the filtered first portion of the entry and the second portion of the entry to generate the identifier.
US08291488B2
Upon an intermediary device on a network being turned on, controlling system software at the intermediary device is booted such that no public network address is ever assigned to the intermediary device. The intermediary device sends a boot message over the network to central authority software running on one or more first computing devices on the network. The central authority software in response sends messages over the network to the intermediary device and to a second computing device on the network to establish a private tunnel with one another. The intermediary device and the second computing device establish the private tunnel with one another over the network. The intermediary device then opens a remote connection to the second computing device through the private tunnel so that peripherals connected to the intermediary device as if they were directly connected to the second computing device.
US08291485B2
A personal computer or microchip comprising at least one Faraday Cage, two or more microprocessors or processing units, one or more network communication components, and an internal hardware firewall. The internal hardware firewall is configured to separate a protected side of the computer or microchip from an unprotected side of the computer or microchip, the unprotected side being configured to connect to a network including the Internet. The protected hardware side of the computer or microchip includes at least one microprocessor or processing unit. The unprotected network side of the computer or microchip is located between the internal hardware firewall and the network and includes the unprotected microprocessors or processing units and network communications components. The unprotected microprocessors or processing units and network communications components are separate components and both are separate from the internal hardware firewall. The computer or microchip can include two, four, or more internal hardware compartments.
US08291482B2
UIMID of a UIM 50 owned by the owner of a portable phone 40 is stored in an owner information registration area 410b of phone 40. A CPU 405 of portable phone 40, upon receiving content, compares a UIMID of a UIM 50 inserted in phone 40 to the UIMID registered in owner information registration area 410b. The storing of the content in a nonvolatile memory 410 is permitted only when the two UIMIDs agree with each other.
US08291472B2
Embodiments of the invention provide for adjusting authentication conditions in real-time. A graph-theoretic data structure is dynamically constructing, having nodes corresponding to received valid and invalid authentication credentials used in attempts to access a system. Based on the graph-theoretic data structure, embodiments compute a probability of an invalid credential being an authentication attempt by a particular type of user. If the probability is beyond a threshold probability, embodiments trigger a security event is to adjust an authentication condition of the system, e.g., to increase or decrease a maximum permissible number of failed login attempts within a certain period of time.
US08291469B1
A communication access provider receives an access request from a separate service provider who provides a communication service to a customer. The communication access provider generates an authentication code that corresponds to an authorized action. The communication access provider receives an action request from the service provider indicating the authentication code and a requested action. The communication access provider determines if the action request is authentic based on the authentication code and if the requested action is authorized based on the corresponding authorized action. The communication access provider performs the requested action if the action request is authentic and if the requested action is authorized.
US08291462B2
A broadcast receiver, broadcast data transmitting method and broadcast data receiving method are disclosed, by which information on a service provided by a service provider can be provided, by which a preview can be provided, and by which a time taken for a channel switching can be reduced. The present invention includes transmitting service provider discovery information including information on a service provider, transmitting service discovery information including information on a service provided to the service provider, and transmitting a stream for the service to a connected receiver.
US08291461B2
Systems and methods for managing the distribution of on-demand media in an interactive television application are provided. An interactive television application may receive a request for on-demand media from a user. The interactive television application may provide an option to the user for the transmission of the on-demand media. Such options may include, for example, an option to request a reduced-bandwidth version of the on-demand media, an option to schedule a future time for presentation of the on-demand media, an option to download the on-demand media to a recording device, and an option to check the availability of the on-demand media. A reduced price for transmission of the on-demand media may be provided to the user.
US08291460B1
Methods, systems, and apparatus, including computer programs encoded on a computer storage medium, can dynamically monitor the performance of media content rendering and adjust the rate as needed. This can involve obtaining media data, where a first type of dynamic data has a lower priority than a second type; identifying a target frame rate; monitoring a first amount of time used to process the first type of data and a second amount of time used to process the second type of data, including combining multiple first time measurements into the first amount of time and combining multiple second time measurements into the second amount of time; comparing a combination of the first amount of time and the second amount of time to the target frame rate; and modifying an allocation for processing the first type of dynamic data, if the combination fails to satisfy the target frame rate.
US08291459B2
A verbal request for an action to be performed in connection with a user's set-top box may be received by a Program Content Manager (PCM) from a voice-enabled input/output device such as a VoIP-enabled device or a mobile communication device. Alternatively, the user may request an action via email, text message, and the like. The PCM receiving the action request may execute, or schedule the request for later execution, depending on whether the request is for a real-time or future action. The user may also request to send an alert or a program recording request to others. Recipients may be able to request further alerts or confirm a program recording invitation if certain criteria are met.
US08291448B2
Methods and systems for providing zapping data for one or more programs transmitted using timeslicing are disclosed herein. Zapping data may be provided by a zapping data provider or server, or may be created at the mobile terminal based on received program information. Zapping data may be provided to mobile terminals via a wireless multicast network, such as a DVB-H network, using a variety of timeslicing techniques, including providing a separate zapping data stream, providing zapping data as part of the source stream, or allowing mobile terminals to derive zapping data from the source content's broadcast stream. Zapping images may be selected from I-frames of video transmissions. An IP encapsulator may synchronize broadcast streams such that I-frames are transmitted concurrently, and at the beginning of timeslice bursts.
US08291439B2
A system and method for implementing functions customized for a branded company are disclosed. A data platform includes a function database which initially receives, and stores, a standardized interface module, such as an application programming interface (API). The standardized interface module includes a plurality of elements, a subset of the elements required for function implementation and a second subset of the elements which can optionally be used to implement a function. A creation module communicates with the function database and modifies the standardized interface module, such as by selecting or removing optional elements from the standardized interface module to create a brand-specific interface. As the brand-specific interface includes the required elements and optional elements, a single system designed to process the required elements and the optional elements in the standardized interface can be used to implement multiple brand-specific interfaces which include different optional components.
US08291438B2
Procedures for printing virtualized applications are discussed. In implementations, a spooler is associated with an established virtual environment including a virtualized application. The spooler may be associated by making a native spooler, installed on a computing system aware of the virtual environment. In other implementations, the spooler may be virtualized such as by including an instance of a spooler in the virtual environment. A printer driver may be virtualized for use in print virtual application output. Virtualizing printer drivers may allow virtual applications to access and use printer and/or software resources without installing the resource on the device.
US08291426B2
A memory allocator is provided for each processor resource in a process of a computer system. Each memory allocator includes a set of pages, a locally freed list of objects, and a remotely freed list of objects. Each memory allocator requests the pages from an operating system and allocates objects to all execution contexts executing on a corresponding processing resource. Each memory allocator attempts to allocate an object from the locally freed list before allocating an object from the remotely freed list or an allocated page.
US08291420B2
A method of task assignment in a distributed processing system including a plurality of processors is proposed. The method of task assignment includes calculating utilities of tasks to be processed in execution units included in each processor and arranging the calculated results in descending order; calculating utility difference values between the execution units included in each processor and outputting a highest difference value; comparing a utility of the task with the output highest difference value; designating the task to be assigned to the execution unit having the lowest utility in a processor in which the highest difference value is generated when the utility of the task is less than or equal to the output highest difference value; repeating the calculating, comparing, and designating in the order of the arranged tasks; and assigning the tasks to the designated targets.
US08291405B2
Techniques for automatic dependency resolution are provided. A source machine and a previously successful modification for a given resource, which was modified on the source machine, are identified. Dependencies associated with the modification are identified on the source machine. One or more target machines are selected in response to having a similar profile to that of the source machine. A profile is deemed to be similar based on geographic location, category or role of a machine, and based on operating system of a machine. A profile is also deemed to be similar based on a fuzzy match between profile information. The dependencies are automatically resolved on the target machines and the modification is automatically processed on the target machines to modify the given resource.
US08291402B2
A computer system can be updated and/or reconfigured quickly by preparing a list of attributes of the system and computing a fingerprint based on the list. The fingerprint serves as a key to a database of precomputed upgrade plans. If a matching plan is found, it can be executed to update the computer system without performing a time-consuming dependency resolution operation. If no applicable precomputed plan is found, a plan must then be computed, but the computed plan may be saved in the database to speed up future system updates.
US08291397B2
A mechanism and functionality are provided for generating and using compiler optimized function variants. These variants may be used, for example, in situations where return values of functions called by code are not thereafter used by the code calling the functions. In particular, for a function called by computer code, at least two variants for the function may be generated. A function call, for calling the function, within original computer code may be analyzed to determine which variant of the at least two variants to use for the function call. The function call may be modified in the original computer code, to generate modified computer code, based on results of the analysis identifying which variant of the at least two variants to use for the function call.
US08291391B2
Provided is a Java bytecode translating method which includes: a bytecode fetch step (S1 10) that fetches a Java bytecode from a Java class file; a static field address detection and data processing step (S140) which gains access to a field (130) according to a first field address (FA1) and processes data; a static field address storage step (S 150) that stores a first upper field address (FAU1) including upper bits among bits of the first field address (FA1) in a first storage portion (110), and which stores a first lower field address (FAD1) including remainder lower bits excluding the first upper field address (FAU1) among the bits of the first field address (FA1) in an operand field (120b); a static operation code translating step (S 160) that translates an operation code stored in an operation code field (120a) into a new static field accessing operation code (NOPA); a first field address creation step (S240) that creates a second field address (FA2); and a first data processing step (S250) that gains access to the field (130) according to a second field address (F A2) and processes data.
US08291389B2
A code profiler can be digitally encoded in a storage medium that is configured to automatically detect an existence of non-modifying transforms within monitored programmatic code using hash codes of arguments of the monitored programmatic code.
US08291377B2
Script is accessed and interpreted to identify an executable component. Processing context configuration files may then be used to identify an appropriate processing context for the identified executable component. Examples of processing context include, but are not limited to, a process in which the identified executable component is to run, one or more adaptations to perform on the component prior to running, and/or a security context in which to run the component. Processing context thus need not be specified in the actual script itself. The identified components may then be executed in the identified processing context.
US08291376B2
According to a second aspect there is provided a method and system to automatically regenerate software for an object to relational mapping system. The system automatically regenerates a first set of classes. For each class, the system reads class information; reads meta-data based on the class information; and automatically regenerates the class based on the meta-data without overwriting associated custom code. The first set of classes includes base code that is associated with the custom code. The first set of classes and the base code are utilized by the object to relational mapping system to enable access to data that is persistently stored in a database.
US08291365B2
An innovative routing method for an integrated circuit design layout. The layout can include design netlists and library cells. A multiple-level global routing can generate topological wire for each net. An area oriented graph-based detail routing on the design can be performed. A post route optimization after the detail routing can be performed to further improve the routing quality. Some methods can be single threaded all or some of the time, and/or multi-threaded some or all of the time.
US08291361B2
In a layout design method of a semiconductor integrated circuit, an IR drop data is calculated to indicate a voltage drop for every local area, and a virtual arrangement library is generated which stores data of a circuit cell to be arranged based on the IR drop data for every circuit module. A virtual arrangement net list is generated by converting the circuit cell contained in a net list into a virtual arrangement cell which is registered on the virtual arrangement library. The circuit module is automatically arranged based on the virtual arrangement net list; and the virtual arrangement cell contained in the automatically arranged circuit module is replaced with the circuit cell contained in the net list.
US08291355B2
Providing ASIC equivalents of FPGAs is facilitated and made more efficient and economical by using an ASIC architecture including a plurality of so-called hybrid logic elements (“HLEs”), each of which can provide a portion of the full functionality of an FPGA logic element (“LE”). The functionality of each FPGA LE implementing a user's logic design can be mapped to one or more HLEs without re-synthesis of the user's logic. Only as many HLEs as are necessary are used to perform the functions of each LE. The one-for-one equivalence between each LE and either (1) one HLE or (2) a group of HLEs facilitates mapping (without re-synthesis) in either direction between FPGA and ASIC designs.
US08291353B2
A system includes a conversion module that preserves the shape of a contour when converting an image to a different resolution. The conversion module receives a first image and divides the first image into regions of pixel values. For each region, a contribution of the region to the pixel values in the second image is determined. The contribution is selected from a set of pre-determined contributions that are a nonlinear function of the values in the region, and the selection is made based at least in part on the values in the region. The contributions are accumulated together to generate a second image. The conversion module may be, for example, part of a design flow for an integrated circuit that connects a mask simulation stage with an optical simulation stage.
US08291348B2
A computing device includes a display surface, a human interface feature, and processing resources. The human interface features enables a user of the computing device to enter a non-discrete directional input action. The processing resources execute to: (i) provide content on the display surface; (ii) detect the user performing the input action; (ii) determine a vector from the input action; and (iv) select a region of the display surface based on the vector.
US08291340B1
Embodiments of the instant invention are directed to a method and apparatus for presenting unsolicited data to users without interrupting the user's activities, wherein the presentation of the unsolicited data is monitored and is available for review by the user at the user's convenience. Embodiments of the invention comprise a content and display manager, wherein the content and display manager include a display monitor, a content delivery system and a content controller. The display monitor selects the display of content to the users, in part, by reviewing a marker which defines the last time that content was displayed to the user and the type of content displayed. The content delivery system transmits a content window to a user computer via the controller. The controller controls the downloading of the content and initially displays the content window in front of a first browser window position and then displays the content window behind the first browser window.
US08291335B2
The electronic bulletin apparatus includes a connection I/F for communicatively connecting the mobile terminal, a display portion for posting the data on a screen, a touch panel for receiving from the screen an operation input for the data posted on the screen, and a control portion for transferring the data on the screen to the mobile terminal based on the operation input received by the touch panel. When the data posted on the screen is moved to a vicinity of a screen outer edge by a drag operation to be subject to a drop operation in the vicinity of the screen outer edge, the control portion transfers the data to the mobile terminal.
US08291329B2
System and method for merging differences between graphical programs. Information is received regarding matches and differences, e.g., in hardware, software, configuration, and/or connectivity, between first and second graphical programs, each comprising respective pluralities of interconnected nodes. The information is analyzed to merge differences between the first and second graphical programs, e.g., for each difference: removing all non-common nodes and connections thereto in the second sub-graph from the second graphical program, adding all common nodes and connections thereto in the first sub-graph to the second graphical program, determining all edges in the first sub-graph that connect common nodes to non-common nodes; and for each determined edge, adding to the second graphical program an edge that connects a corresponding common node in the second sub-graph with a corresponding non-common node added from the first sub-graph. A merged graphical program is displayed on a display, e.g., graphically indicating the merged matches and/or differences.
US08291328B2
There is presented a system for recording a performance by a real-time performer interacting with a virtual object. The disclosed system comprises a projection module including a polarizing filter, the projection module configured to generate a polarized visible image corresponding to the virtual object. The system includes a surface for displaying the polarized visible image, the surface viewable by the real-time performer. The system also includes a recording module including a reverse-polarizing filter, the reverse-polarizing filter configured to reverse-polarize images of the performance by the real-time performer and the surface displaying the polarized visible image to produce reverse-polarized images. The recording module is configured to record the reverse-polarized images. In one embodiment, the system further comprises a rendering module configured to render the virtual object into the recorded performance.
US08291326B2
An information-processing apparatus including a reproducer for synchronously reproducing content data common to another information-processing apparatus, a user information input for inputting first user condition information including a voice and image of a user, a user information receiver for receiving second user condition information including a voice and image of an other user from the other information-processing apparatus, a synthesizer for synthesizing a voice and image of the content data synchronously reproduced by the reproducer with the voice and image of the second user condition information received by the user-information receiver; an information analysis unit for analyzing at least either the first user condition information input or the second user condition information; and a parameter-setting unit for setting a control parameter used for controlling a process on the basis of an analysis result produced by the information analysis unit.
US08291324B2
A network management system allows a network administrator to intuitively manage all components of a heterogeneous networked computer system using views of any component or any set of components. These views are generated in a multi-dimensional, virtual reality environment. Navigation tools are provided that allow an operator to travel through the network hierarchy's representation in the virtual environment using an automatic flight mode. Automatic flight mode determines a reasonable trajectory to a network component that avoids collisions with intervening objects in the virtual environment. Since the system is capable of managing a world-wide network, city, building, subnet, segment, and computer, a view may also display internal hardware, firmware, and software of any network component. Views of network components may be filtered so only components pertaining to a specific business or other interest are displayed.
US08291316B2
A system and method for gathering CRM information in a variable imaging application utilize keywords which are associated with each image of a number of digital images. A variable imaging job stream is generated containing one or more of the digital images. Keyword metadata may also be inserted into the variable imaging job stream, and the variable imaging job stream is received by a VI production system. The variable imaging job stream is processed by the VI production system, thereby identifying the keywords previously associated with the contained images, and also extracting the inserted keyword metadata. A CRM output is generated containing the identified keywords and the extracted keyword metadata.
US08291298B2
An iterative decoder comprising a transconductance amplifier, a sampler, a Min-Sum decoder, and an early determination module is provided. The transconductance amplifier outputs a current proportional to the voltage of the coded bit stream. The sampler converts the amplified current into a plurality of currents and stores the sampled currents in a plurality of buffers. The Min-Sum decoder receives parallel currents, wherein currents represent the message of each variable node. The Min-Sum decoder exchanges the message of variable nodes and check nodes iteratively and outputs a set of decode codewords according to the possibilities. The early terminating module stops the iterative decoding when the decoded codeword converged.
US08291296B2
An information recording medium, a recording and/or reproducing apparatus, and a recording and/or reproducing method in which an access time and a frequency of seek operations can be reduced in the information recording medium implementing logical overwrite, thereby allowing noise and power consumption to be reduced. The information recording medium includes: a first area in which user data is recorded and replacement data for replacing defect data among the user data by logical overwrite is recorded; and a second area in which the user data recorded in the first area is copied and recorded, wherein when the user data recorded in the first area is copied and recorded in the second area, the replacement data for replacing the defect data is copied and recorded in a location where the detect data would have been recorded.
US08291294B2
Methods and devices are provided for intersymbol interference encoding in a solid state drive. In an illustrative embodiment, an nth data signal is received as input to a processing component. An intersymbol interference signal applicable to the nth data signal is provided, based on a set of prior-written data in a data storage array and a set of intersymbol interference behavior of the set of prior-written data in the data storage array, the data storage array being communicatively connected to the processing component. The nth data signal and the intersymbol interference signal applicable to the nth data signal are combined into an intersymbol-interference-corrected encoding of the nth data signal. The intersymbol-interference-corrected encoding of the nth data signal is provided as output from the processing component.
US08291279B2
To decode a representation of a codeword that encodes K information bits as N>K codeword bits, messages are exchanged between N bit nodes and N−K check nodes of a graph in which E edges connect the bit nodes and the check nodes. While messages are exchanged, fewer than E of the messages are stored, and/or fewer than N soft estimates of the codeword bits are stored. In some embodiments, the messages are exchanged only within sub-graphs and between the sub-graphs and one or more external check nodes. While messages are exchanged, the largest number of stored messages is the number of edges in the sub-graph with the most edges plus the number of edges that connect the sub-graphs to the external check node(s), and/or the largest number of stored soft estimates is the number of bit nodes in the sub-graph with the most bit nodes.
US08291270B2
A request processing device includes a request sender that sends a write request or a read request to a storage device, a response processor that receives a response to a request which the request sender has sent, and a test request processor that converts a read response which is a response to a read request, into a test write request, and converts a write response which is a response to a write request into a test read request, from among responses that the response processor has received or from among responses that have been input from a device which is provided outside the request processing device.
US08291269B1
Embodiments of the invention relate to memory management methods and systems for object-oriented databases (OODB). In an embodiment, a database includes a plurality of memory-mapped file segments stored on at least one nonvolatile memory medium and not in main memory. An application program connects to the database with a plurality of writing processes to simultaneously write to an in-memory database, each writing process updating its own disk-based logfile, such that the effective disk writing speed is substantially increased and lock conflicts reduced.
US08291264B2
A system, a computer program product and a method for failure prediction are implemented on an agent. The agent is installed on a machine to be monitored. The method includes detecting service data on the machine. A reference database is accessed, and a failure pattern is provided. The detected service data are analyzed in view of the provided failure pattern by applying a correlation mechanism, such that a prediction for future failures is generated and depicted as a result.
US08291263B2
A method and apparatus are provided for performing cross-host root cause diagnosis within a complex multi-host environment. In a multi-host environment, sometimes system failures on one host may cause problems at another host within the same environment. A probabilistic model is used to represent failures that can occur within each host in the environment. The cause and effect relationships among these failures together with measurement values are used to generate a probability that each potential failure occurred in each host. When a problem is observed on one host without detecting a corresponding root cause within the same host, a cross-host failure diagnosis is performed. The probabilistic models for other hosts in the environment are used to determine the most likely cause of the failure.
US08291256B2
A digital VLSI circuit is provided with functions in which the number of switching operations to supply electric power to each arithmetic operation unit is reduced in a restricted period of time while electric power supply is controlled for each arithmetic operation unit, so that low power consumption can be achieved in real pipe-line arithmetic operation. The VLSI circuit that performs each stage of the pipe-line arithmetic operation is comprised of a plurality of arithmetic operation units for carrying out arithmetic operations in synchronization with a clock signal, a detecting means for detecting completion of the stage in the arithmetic operation assigned to the arithmetic operation unit, and a clock signal supply control means for controlling supply/stop operation of the clock signal to each arithmetic operation unit, wherein the clock signal supply control means stops supplying the clock signal to a certain arithmetic operation unit when the detecting means detects the completion of the arithmetic operation assigned to the same, and restarts supplying the clock signal to all the arithmetic operation units for a next pipe-line arithmetic operation when the detecting means detects the completion of the arithmetic operations assigned to them.
US08291253B2
An interface device allows data communication between a controller and a plurality of circuit units. The interface device has a first interface for a connection to the controller, a second interface for a connection to a second circuit unit, and a third interface for a connection to a second circuit unit. An interface calibrating unit is coupled to the second and third interfaces and a non-volatile calibrating parameter memory is arranged in the interface calibrating unit or coupled to the calibrating unit. The memory is adapted to store calibrating parameters for the second and third interfaces.
US08291238B2
The present invention provides systems and methods for electronic commerce including secure transaction management and electronic rights protection. Electronic appliances such as computers employed in accordance with the present invention help to ensure that information is accessed and used only in authorized ways, and maintain the integrity, availability, and/or confidentiality of the information. Secure subsystems used with such electronic appliances provide a distributed virtual distribution environment (VDE) that may enforce a secure chain of handling and control, for example, to control and/or meter or otherwise monitor use of electronically stored or disseminated information. Such a virtual distribution environment may be used to protect rights of various participants in electronic commerce and other electronic or electronic-facilitated transactions. Secure distributed and other operating system environments and architectures, employing, for example, secure semiconductor processing arrangements that may establish secure, protected environments at each node. These techniques may be used to support an end-to-end electronic information distribution capability that may be used, for example, utilizing the “electronic highway.”
US08291224B2
An administrator installs a key management agent on a previously approved client machine. The agent is started on the client machine, which posts requests for keys to a central key management service. The central key management service logs requests posted to it by clients, and checks for existing pre-approval records. If none are found, a message is typically sent to an approver for the requesting client machine. When a request is verified as approved, the request is flagged for further processing. The supported systems continuously or periodically look for records flagged for processing, use requests to generate keys and other appropriate elements for the requesting client machine, and post keys and other elements to the key management database. The key management agent polls the central key management service periodically until finding the expected key file, which it downloads and installs into a protected file location on the client machine. The key management agent periodically sends status messages to the central key management service, which tracks expected behavior of the client machine and/or key management agent.
US08291218B2
A system and method provides secure channels for communication in a virtual universe by employing a packet interception layer for incoming and outgoing data packets. A data path is defined and is sequentially encrypted with the public keys of servers in the path. Decryption and identification of the next server occurs in a sequential manner in which the path is known only to the sender.
US08291203B2
An active management technology device may be provisioned using a live operating system stored on a disk, in one embodiment. After disk insertion, no further operator involvement may be needed in some cases.
US08291200B2
A comparison circuit can reduce the amount of power consumed when searching a load queue or a store queue of a microprocessor. Some embodiments of the comparison circuit use a comparison unit that performs an initial comparison of addresses using a subset of the address bits. If the initial comparison results in a match, a second comparison unit can be enabled to compare another subset of the address bits.
US08291192B2
This memory management system has: (a) a logical partition management unit that manages allocation and release of a virtual memory used by an application in a logical address space; (b) a physical partition management unit that manages allocation and release of small size parts into which a physical memory is divided in a physical address space; and (c) a converter unit that converts an address between the logical address space and the physical address space.
US08291186B2
A method, apparatus, and computer program product for optimizing the organization of volume records stored in a volume record data set is disclosed herein. In certain embodiments, a method may include monitoring a volume comprising multiple data sets. Each data set may have associated therewith a volume record stored in a volume record data set. The method may further include tracking read and write operations to each of the data sets over a period of time. A count value may be stored in the volume record of each data set. The count value may be increased each time a read operation is performed to the associated data set. The count value may be decreased each time a write operation is performed to the associated data set. The volume records in the volume record data set may then be reorganized according to the size of the count values.
US08291183B2
Data de-duplication (“de-dupe”) allows IT organizations to replace aging tape systems with disk-based backup solutions and minimize the storage allocated to backup and data protection. The effectiveness of de-dupe technology is dependent on the data being protected. Data streams with little data repetitiveness provide disappointing results when processed through a block-level de-dupe engine. To avoid this problem, Assisted Mainframe De-Dupe (AMDD) technology can insure that filesystem block-level de-dupe products efficiently de-dupe tape backup streams received from IBM™and/or compatible mainframes. By pre-processing backup tape volumes before sending the data to storage, AMDD insures that large amounts of unchanged data lines up on de-dupe block boundaries each time the data is sent to the de-dupe process engine. By providing “well-behaved” data to the de-dupe process, AMDD can improve the effectiveness of de-dupe processing and substantially reduce the storage used to backup critical mainframe DASD resources.
US08291174B2
A memory device includes an address protection system that facilitates the ability of the memory device to interface with a plurality of processors operating in a parallel processing manner. The protection system is used to prevent at least some of a plurality of processors in a system from accessing addresses designated by one of the processors as a protected memory address. Until the processor releases the protection, only the designating processor can access the memory device at the protected address. If the memory device contains a cache memory, the protection system can alternatively or additionally be used to protect cache memory addresses.
US08291169B2
A method of providing history based done logic includes receiving a cache line in a L2 cache; determining if the cache line has a history of access at least three times on a previous call into the L2 cache; providing the cache line directly to a processor if the history of access was less then the at least three times; and loading the cache line into an L1 cache if the history of access was the at least three times.
US08291168B2
Methods and apparatus relating to disabling one or more cache portions during low voltage operations are described. In some embodiments, one or more extra bits may be used for a portion of a cache that indicate whether the portion of the cache is capable at operating at or below Vccmin levels. Other embodiments are also described and claimed.
US08291165B2
System and methods for assembling electronic devices (110) using removable programmable active processing modules (120) are provided. An active processing module includes a first input/output (I/O) interface (202) and a second I/O interface (204). The active processing module also includes a controller (206) communicatively coupled to the first and the second I/O interfaces, where the controller is configured for selectively operating the active processing module in a programming mode or at least one component mode. In the programming mode, the active processing module is enabled to receive a plurality of operating parameters from a first electronic device via the first I/O interface to configure the active processing module to provide a functionality of a component for a second electronic device via at least one of the first and the second I/O interfaces. In the component mode, the active processing module is configured to operate according to the plurality of operating parameters.
US08291163B2
This storage apparatus has a plurality of physical devices for storing data sent from a host system, and includes a physical device group setting unit for setting a physical device group from the plurality of physical devices based on a policy file which lists matters to be operated and set by an administrator as parameters in advance, and information on the physical devices, a first logical device setting unit for setting a first logical device from the physical device group based on information on the physical device group and the policy file set with the physical device group setting unit, and a second logical device setting unit for setting a second logical device from the first logical device based the information on the first logical device and the policy file set with the first logical device setting unit.
US08291157B2
Concurrent refresh in a cache memory includes calculating a refresh time interval at a centralized refresh controller, the centralized refresh controller being common to all cache memory banks of the cache memory, transmitting a starting time of the refresh time interval to a bank controller, the bank controller being local to, and associated with, only one cache memory bank of the cache memory, sampling a continuous refresh status indicative of a number of refreshes necessary to maintain data within the cache memory bank associated with the bank controller, requesting a gap in a processing pipeline of the cache memory to facilitate the number of refreshes necessary, receiving a refresh grant in response to the requesting, and transmitting an encoded refresh command to the bank controller, the encoded refresh command indicating a number of refresh operations granted to the cache memory bank associated with the bank controller.
US08291137B2
A system for universal serial bus (USB) image capturing with two isochronous transfers includes a USB image capturing device and a host. The USB image capturing device has two endpoints for transferring a video stream through a USB. The host has a driver for receiving the video stream through the USB. The driver receives the video stream, and creates a read extension data structure for the endpoints. The driver manages and dispatches the packets of the endpoints, and copies data of the packets into a first buffer and a second buffer, respectively. When a first end frame flag in a packet of the first endpoint is set and a second end frame flag in a packet of the second endpoint is set, the driver combines data of the first and the second buffers into a frame and sends the frame to the host.
US08291123B2
A system for sharing a human-computer interface between a legacy device and an expansion unit for supplementing operation of the legacy device includes a logic device configured to selectively route input and output signals between the human-computer interface and the legacy device or the expansion unit. The expansion unit monitors input signals from the human-computer interface for control codes designating usage of the human-computer interface by either the expansion unit or the legacy device. The logic device includes a switching device that selectively decouples inputs from the human-computer interface from the legacy device during usage of the interface by the expansion unit to isolate the legacy device from input signals not intended for the legacy device.
US08291121B2
A control system includes an Internet web interface to a network of at least one programmable logic control system running an application program for controlling output devices in response to status of input devices. The Web interface runs Web pages from an Ethernet board coupled directly to the PLC back plane and includes an HTTP protocol interpreter, a PLC back plane driver, a TCP/IP stack, and an Ethernet board kernel. The Web interface provides access to the PLC back plane by a user at a remote location through the Internet. The interface translates the industry standard Ethernet, TCP/IP and HTTP protocols used on the Internet into data recognizable to the PLC. Using this interface, the user can retrieve all pertinent data regarding the operation of the programmable logic controller system.
US08291113B2
When opposed communication transmitting apparatuses A and C are connected in a physical configuration thorough a communication transmitting apparatus B, if an interface configuration changing command is input to the communication transmitting apparatus B, the interface configuration is changed in the communication transmitting apparatus B and virtual connection is achieved such that the opposed communication transmitting apparatuses A and C pass through the communication transmitting apparatus B to directly connect an interface A1 and an interface C1. In this situation, since the GMPLS operation target apparatuses are only the communication transmitting apparatus A and the communication transmitting apparatus C and the communication transmitting apparatus B is a non-target apparatus of the GMPLS operation, the GMPLS scalability problem is solved and optical signals may be transferred at higher speed.
US08291112B2
In one embodiment, a more capable device (MCD) in a computer network may determine one or more a critical destinations (CDs), and may transmit an unsolicited reactive routing route request (RREQ) message to each CD. The MCD may then receive a route reply (RREP) message from the CDs having a route from the MCD to the CD, and may store the route at the MCD. Subsequently, the MCD may transmit a RREP message of its own to one or more less capable devices (LCDs) to provide the route from each respective LCD to the CD via the MCD.
US08291111B1
A technique is performed in a first device of a set of devices. The technique involves receiving a query message from a network node, the query message requesting data regarding a network resource. The technique further involves accessing an identifier which indicates whether the first device is in charge of the network resource, and providing a response message to the network node in response to the query message. The response message is provided after waiting a predefined amount of time when the identifier indicates that the first device is not in charge of the network resource and there is reason to believe another device of the set is operating. The response message is provided without waiting the predefined amount of time when the identifier indicates that the first device is in charge of the network resource. Moreover in some situations, the first device may choose to not respond.
US08291104B2
The currently existing ISO/AVC file format is modified by providing extensions to store and access video content currently being defined by the SVC standard. Specifically, extensions to the AVC file format are made to provide a new SVC file format that enables the storage and access of scalable video data. The scalable video data is stored as a single track within a media data section of the SVC file format. New extensions are defined for description entries and boxes within a metadata section of the SVC file format. These extensions provide means for extracting sub-streams or layers from the single track of scalable video data stored in the media data section.
US08291100B2
A service providing system is provided which enables the users of an information transmission service in which information is sent and received in real time over a network to recognize their respective environment and conditions for provision of their own information. The service providing system (1) includes a service provider (2) including a communication server (11), a Web server (12) and a DB server (13) and a plurality of communication terminals (4) connected to the service provider (2) via the network, and it provides an information transmission service in which information is provided from one of communication devices to the other, or vice versa, in real time. The communication terminal (4) at the information provider first registers explanatory information, such as content, offering price, etc. of offered information to be provided into the DB server (13), and updates the information registered in the DB server (13) to a log-in status when the information provider has become able to provide the information in real time; and the Web server (12) updates the Web page at each time so that the explanatory information having thus been in the log-in status will be included in choices.
US08291091B2
A method for managing data between a plurality of electronic devices in a Near Field Communication (NFC) network in which a first electronic device initially establishes a communication link with at least one of the plurality of electronic devices. The desktop configuration information is then exchanged with at least another electronic device. Thereafter, desktop data of the first electronic device can be shared with the at least one of the plurality of electronic devices.
US08291082B2
A method and system for providing enhanced intelligent agents that are moveable by a user from a browser application to a desktop. In specific embodiments, agents provide advanced interactive graphics and communications back to a server.
US08291077B2
One embodiment of a system for providing services to subscribers of a network supports the provision of a plurality of different services to multiple subscribers. A processor arrangement is provided for hosting the different services. A data structure is provided for storing data associated with subscribers of the system, wherein data associated with subscribers of the system comprises a plurality of sets of data, each set of data relating to a respective level of authentication. A trust model comprises a set of relationships between the sets of data, and the trust model determines the access rights of subscribers to different services in dependence on the data set which has been used to authenticate the subscriber in a given subscriber session. The use of this trust model enables services and other access rights to be provided to a subscribed which match the level of authentication which has been applied to the subscriber during any particular session.
US08291071B2
A management server receives identification information including an IP address, MAC address, and product number of an image forming apparatus together with operation information thereof such as counter information via a network. Then, the management server determines whether the received identification information coincides with registration information. When the management server determines that the received identification information coincides with the registration information, the management server stores the operation information in association with a registered image forming apparatus.
US08291070B2
Methods for monitoring operating statuses of hosts are described herein. Operating statuses for one or more hosts are monitored by a management server over a network using a network management protocol. In response to a failure to obtain an operating status of a first host over the network using the network management protocol, the management server instructs a second host to access a predetermined storage location to obtain the operating status of the first host. The predetermined storage location is specifically allocated for the first host from a storage space shared by all the hosts. Thereafter, the management server is configured to determine an operating condition of the first host based on the operating status obtained via the second host.
US08291069B1
A method for managing sample selection bias is disclosed. Embodiments of the method can include automatically determining an unbiased estimate of a distribution from occurrence data via a special purpose processor. The occurrence data that is utilized in determining the estimate may have an occurrence data sample selection bias that is substantially equivalent to a background data sample selection bias associated with background data. Additionally, the occurrence data may be related to the background data, and the background data may be chosen with the background data sample selection bias. Furthermore, the occurrence data may represent a physically-measurable variable associated with one or more physical and tangible objects or substances.
US08291061B2
A method and system are disclosed for monitoring the performance of web-based services. The method comprises receiving a transaction from a client and routing the transaction to an appropriate web service for execution of the transaction. During execution of the transaction, performance data relating to the execution of the transaction is monitored and logged. The collected performance data is then queried based on pre-defined performance metrics and web service performance reports are generated. A system for the foregoing method is also disclosed.
US08291059B2
A method of scheduling availability for a computing infrastructure in a shared computing environment is disclosed. The method comprises assigning a new schedule of service to a software application in the computing environment, propagating the new schedule of service assigned to the software application to a plurality of computing components that support the software application, where the computing infrastructure is comprised of the plurality of computing components having a hierarchical relationship with each other, and determining a schedule of service for a given computing component in the computing infrastructure by aggregating schedules of service propagated to the given computing component.
US08291055B1
A method and apparatus for monitoring message activity comprising processing message activity from a message generator, recording the message activity and coupling the message activity with message information stored within a message distributor and store is described.
US08291051B2
A system and method for collaboratively providing configurations for a media environment are provided. In general, configuration events from a number of media environments are collected and provided to a Collaborative Configuration System (CCS) server. Based on the configuration events, the CCS server generates and provides recommended configurations to a media environment. The recommended configurations may be generated prior to or after receiving a request for recommended configurations from the media environment. In one embodiment, the recommended configurations are provided as a recommended configuration profile providing a set of configurations to be applied at the media environment. In another embodiment, the recommended configurations are provided as a CCS track associated with a particular media presentation. The CCS track includes configuration changes to be applied to the media environment for a number of time slices of the media presentation during playback of the media presentation.
US08291048B2
A method, system, and computer-readable medium are described for registering and using multilingual domain names that include characters outside the ASCII character subset supported by the DNS system. Such multilingual domain names can in some situations be registered by first being converted into appropriate ASCII-Compatible Encodings (ACEs) that represent the corresponding multilingual domain names and that use only characters within the ASCII character subset. In addition, a variety of binary variants may be generated at registration for each multilingual domain name and then used as equivalents for the multilingual domain name, such as by storing the variants in the registry as alternative domain names or by otherwise reserving the binary variants. When requests to resolve such a registered multilingual domain name into a corresponding IP address or URL are received, the stored binary variants and/or ACE information can then be used to respond in an appropriate manner.
US08291046B2
A method of processing requests for resources in a system in which a plurality of content providers provide multiple resources. Content providers offload the serving of some of their resources to a shared content delivery network (CDN) formed by a plurality of servers. The CDN is shared among the content providers. Some of a content provider's content may be served from an origin server associated with that content provider, while requests for other content from that content provider are served from the shared CDN. Requests for content are directed to servers in the CDN based on load conditions on the CDN servers and network conditions.
US08291043B2
In accordance with one or more embodiments, systems and methods for exchanging data over a network include communicating with a user via a portable communication device over the network, interacting with the user via an interactive software application, receiving a request for service bulletin data related to at least one aircraft from the user via the portable communication device, accessing service bulletin data related to the at least one aircraft from a database component based on a registry number associated with the at least one aircraft passed with the request from the user, and transferring service bulletin data related to the at least one aircraft from the database component to the portable communication device via the network for viewing by the user on the portable communication device.
US08291041B1
Certain embodiments of the invention may include systems and methods for disseminating content to remote devices. According to an exemplary embodiment of the invention, a method is provided that can include receiving, at a computer system, registration information for one or more remote devices; registering the one or more remote devices; selecting content to associate with a selected subset of the one or more registered remote devices for presentation; generating a message comprising a primary uniform resource identifier (URI) corresponding to a source for the content; selecting at least one of the one or more registered remote devices for presenting the content; and sending the generated message to the at least one selected registered remote device, wherein the at least one selected registered remote device is configured to automatically retrieve and present the retrieved content from the source identified by the primary URI in the message.
US08291036B2
A datacenter infrastructure comprising a plurality of datacenters is configured to provide services to users. Data (e.g., application data) provided to respective datacenters from a user is synchronized between different datacenters comprised within “a cloud” according to a multilevel synchronization scheme. Respective levels of the multilevel synchronization operate to transfer different priority (user) data between the plurality of datacenters, wherein respective priorities are determined based upon the importance of the data in providing a service. For example, data used to perform a service is synchronized by a synchronization component facilitating a higher level of synchronization between datacenters, while data not routinely used to perform a service is synchronized by a lower priority synchronization component. Synchronization between datacenters allows a network address routing system to provide substantially uninterrupted routing of a user to an available or otherwise appropriate datacenter within the datacenter infrastructure, thereby providing increased service reliability and performance.
US08291033B2
Techniques are disclosed for performing a collective operation on a parallel computing system that includes multiple compute nodes and multiple networks connecting the compute nodes. Each of the networks may have different characteristics. A source node may broadcast a DMA descriptor over a first network to a target node, to initialize the collective operation. The target node may perform the collective operation over a second network and using the broadcast DMA descriptor.
US08291028B2
A communication system comprises a communication device configured to receive a data message, such as a text message, and to generate and send a voice reply to the data message using a simple transmit action. The data message comprises an identifier that can be used to determine a reply path related to the data message. Thus, when a user receives the data message, they can read the message initiate the simple transmit action, and reply to the data message by speaking an appropriate reply into the communication device. The spoken response is stored as a voice message and attached to a data message that is sent using the reply path identified by the identifier.
US08291027B2
The invention relates to a method and network node for uploading media content from a user device to at least one network entity. The method comprises the step of associating a code with the at least one network entity, in a network node. The method further comprises the step of sending an address book object from the network node to the user device, said address book object comprising the code and said address book object being usable for sending a multimedia message to the network node from the user device. The method further comprise the step of receiving, in the network node, the multimedia message from the user device, said multimedia message containing the code and the media content. The method further comprise the step of updating, from the network node, the at least one network entity associated with the code with the media content.
US08291025B2
A method of controlling the retention of publications in a publish/subscribe system, the method comprising receiving, at a message broker, a first publication from a publisher on a topic; receiving, at the message broker, a second publication from the publisher on the topic; identifying, at the message broker, whether the first publication should be overwritten with the second publication and, if not, retaining at least payload data from both the first and second publications on the topic; and storing, for the second publication, if retained, data indicating when the second publication was published to the broker. Other methods, apparatus, and computer readable media are also provided.
US08291010B2
Apparatus and associated methods are provided which allow a remote user to maintain a virtual session with a server. A virtual session allows a remote and possibly mobile user to maintain a virtual presence in an office environment without actually being present. Using the present invention, a remote user can access a central application program such as an Internet service provider, a database system, an inventory system or billing system. Likewise, the remote user can receive calls and other forms of communications as though he or she were present in an office environment. A virtual session does not require a physical connection to be continuously present in order to provide a virtual connectivity. This is especially important for mobile applications where the remote user may incur long distance and/or wireless toll charges. Also, methods are presented to allow a remote unit to rapidly reconnect in a transparent and seamless way without burdening the user with the need to connect and reconnect or to upload and download information. Related methods are provided to allow the virtual session to be established, operated and maintained.
US08291001B2
A method for identifying a type of recording medium using a time-varying output signal from a photosensor includes amplifying the time-varying output signal of the photosensor; converting the amplified time-varying output signal of the photosensor to digitized data points using an analog to digital converter thereby creating a first set of digitized data; filtering the first set of digitized data to provide a low pass data set; filtering the first set of digitized data to provide a high pass data set; computing the standard deviation of the low pass data set; computing the standard deviation of the high pass data set; and identifying the recording medium type using values from both the standard deviation of the low pass data set and the standard deviation of the high pass data set.
US08290999B2
Systems and methods maintain at least one point of interest data file within a computer-readable storage medium and automatically identify a current user location of a user based on a geographic positioning feature of a portable electronic device that is maintained within a first predetermined distance from the user. The systems and methods automatically compare the current user location with the point of interest data file to identify whether the user is located within a second predetermined distance of a point of interest maintained within the point of interest data file. If the user is within the second predetermined distance of a point of interest, the systems and methods automatically create a user status data file. The user status data comprises data identifying that the user is currently at the point of interest. The user status data file is comprised of, but is not limited to, video, still pictures, and audio captured at the current user location as well as textual description of the user's participation at the point of interest. The systems and methods automatically upload the user status data file to a social networking web site associated with the user as an activity post associated with the user.
US08290995B1
A method for increasing the QoS in a data center. The method can be employed in first and second components of the data center. In one embodiment, the method includes a first component of the data center receiving first and second requests. The first component generates first and second priority values corresponding to the first and second requests, respectively. The first component processes the first and second requests to generate third and fourth requests, respectively, wherein the first request is processed before the second request if the first priority value is numerically greater than the second priority value, or the first request is processed after the second request if the first priority value is numerically less than the second priority value. A second component of the data center receives the third and fourth requests. The second component generates third and fourth priority values corresponding to the third and fourth requests, respectively. The second component processes the third and fourth requests wherein the third request is processed before the fourth request if the third priority value is numerically greater than the fourth priority value, or the third request is processed after the fourth request if the third priority value is numerically less than the fourth priority value. In one preferred embodiment, if the first priority value is numerically greater than the second priority value, then the third priority value generated by the second component should not be numerically less than the fourth priority value generated by the second component.
US08290991B2
A device may maintain, in a database, a plurality of data items, each data item of the plurality of data items being associated with a respective category and supplemental information relating to deletion of the data item. The device may associate a group of counters with at least one of the categories and receive a deletion request corresponding to one of the group of categories, the deletion request including the supplemental information. The device may identify a counter associated with the category corresponding to the deletion request based on the supplemental information. The device may then increment the identified counters and selectively delete the data items based on values of the counters.
US08290990B2
Systems and methods are disclosed for managing and exchanging data relating to an automation project. The automation project has a data-processing system with a conversion device that converts data from at least one proprietary data format into a standardized data format, and vice versa. The conversion device uses at least one data assignment to assign at least one first piece of information, given in the standardized data format, to a second piece of information, given in the proprietary format, and/or vice versa. In addition, the conversion device is configured to locate at least one first piece of information, given in the proprietary data format, the corresponding data assignment assigned to it from among the data assignments that are present, and based on the located data assignment, transform the proprietary first piece of information into a standardized second piece of information specified in the data assignment, or vice versa.
US08290985B2
Techniques for reconstructing a target hierarchy tree structure from profiling data of a computer system according to a predefined relational model, so as to obtain profiling information of a certain selected node. The predefined relational model is defined in advance according to a hierarchy tree structure of the profiling data, and is stored in an external storage system. The hierarchy tree structures can be constructed dynamically as required, thus the occupied amount of a memory can be seduced and users can view the profiling data freely.
US08290982B2
Computer-implemented methods for defining access to brand related assets are provided. One method includes generating a website that relates to a specific brand, where the specific brand is associated with a plurality of assets that are integrated with the website, and the plurality of assets are obtained from a number of disparate sources. The method also includes assigning each asset an identifier, where the identifier defines a relation of each asset to the specific brand and defining a dashboard access to the specific brand. The dashboard access is configured to identify a user privilege for accessing specific ones of the plurality of assets of the specific brand, the user privilege enabling one or more of viewing details of an existing asset, adding a new asset, and modifying an existing asset. The user privilege for accessing specific assets enables management of plurality of assets that are integrated with the website, and the management of the plurality of assets overriding control of the plurality of assets provided by the number of disparate sources.
US08290981B2
A social network searching system includes a user profile storage, a profile search engine and a linkage construction engine. The user profile storage stores user profiles. The profile search engine obtains a target member by searching the user profile storage based on a profile query from a query user. The linkage construction engine constructs a relationship linkage and extracting an optimal path from at least two paths from the query user to the target member according to a relationship linkage. A member searching and analyzing method of social network is also disclosed.
US08290976B2
Systems and methods consistent with the invention may include receiving a navigation query including input text, determining, via a processor, whether the input text is satisfies a predetermined criteria, generating a response including data representing a screen associated with the input text when the input text satisfies the predetermined criteria, selecting a language preference when the input text fails to satisfy the predetermined criteria, performing a fuzzy search based on the input text, the language preference, and usage history, and generating a response to the navigation query based on a result of the fuzzy search.
US08290975B2
A keyword may be expanded into related words, such as for use in information retrieval. The terms comprising words and/or phrases of a large number of documents (e.g., web pages) are processed into a graph data structure, in which the terms are represented as nodes and edges represent the relationships between the nodes, with weights for each edge representing the relevance of the relationship. The graph may be built by selecting each term of a document and considering the terms within a certain number of words to be associated with the selected term; for each such association the weight indicative of the relevance is increased. When the graph is accessed with a keyword, the edges from that keyword's node and their respective weights indicate which other nodes are most relevant to the keyword, thereby providing the corresponding expanded terms.
US08290969B2
Embodiments relate to systems and methods for validating interpolation results using Monte Carlo simulations on interpolated data inputs. A database can store sets of operational data, such as financial, medical, climate or other information. For given data, a portion of the input data can be known or predetermined, while for a second portion can be unknown and subject to interpolation. The interpolation engine can generate a conformal interpolation function and interpolated input sets that map to a set of target output data. In aspects, in order to test the interpolated input data, the operator can initiate a Monte Carlo or other variational analysis using access a validation dialog. The Monte Carlo process can apply randomized perturbations to the values of the interpolated input variables, and track the results of that perturbation on the other interpolated inputs. A set of validation rules can be applied to those randomized results, to determine whether the remaining interpolated variables remain in conformance with expected ranges or values or demonstrate anomalous responses.
US08290967B2
A method for processing a search query according to one embodiment includes receiving a search query containing terms; looking up at least some of the terms in a search index for identifying sections of documents containing the at least some of the terms; generating a content score for each of the documents based at least in part on a number of keywords found in the sections of each document; looking up at least some of the terms in the search index for attempting to match one or more of the terms to context information in the search index, the context information being associated with at least one of the documents; generating a context score based at least in part on the matching of terms to the context information; generating a document score for each of the documents based at least in part on the content score and the context score; and outputting an indicator of at least one of the documents, or portion thereof, for the at least one of the documents having a higher document score relative to other of the documents.
US08290961B2
A technique for information retrieval includes parsing a corpus to identify a number of wordform instances within each document of the corpus. A weighted morpheme-by-document matrix is generated based at least in part on the number of wordform instances within each document of the corpus and based at least in part on a weighting function. The weighted morpheme-by-document matrix separately enumerates instances of stems and affixes. Additionally or alternatively, a term-by-term alignment matrix may be generated based at least in part on the number of wordform instances within each document of the corpus. At least one lower rank approximation matrix is generated by factorizing the weighted morpheme-by-document matrix and/or the term-by-term alignment matrix.
US08290957B2
Information processing in which a position metadata piece is acquired from a target data piece, the position metadata piece indicating a position. Position metadata pieces are acquired from a plurality of other data pieces different from the target data piece. Target metadata pieces other than the position metadata pieces from the other data pieces are acquired, a distribution of the target metadata pieces is analyzed based on positions indicated by the position metadata pieces acquired from the other data pieces, and a target metadata piece that has a value related to the target data piece is assigned to the target data piece, the target metadata piece being selected from among the analyzed target metadata pieces, based on the distribution and the position indicated by the position metadata piece acquired from the target data piece.
US08290954B2
A Configuration Management DataBase (CMDB) is utilized to reconcile names of enterprise computer resources in a Configuration Management Database (CMDB). Steps taken include creating a resource that belongs to a class that has multiple naming rules; in response to determining that more than one set of naming attributes is provided by the multiple naming rules, generating a set of valid names, in a priority order, for the resource; and correlating different names for the resource by, in accordance with the priority order, assigning one name for the resource to be a master name and assigning all other names for the resource to be alias names.
US08290948B2
A method for filtering content makes use of local filtering agents for end users, and a portal to a network of human reviewing resources. Local filtering agents request content classification for unclassified content. The portal routes requests from local agents to available human reviewing resources. A content classification is provided by the reviewing resources, and may be saved in association with a content identifier for future use. The method permits human review of content within a short period after review is requested. In an embodiment of the invention, a centrally-located switch is provided for controlling filtering levels at one or more user terminals.
US08290936B2
In an embodiment, a FIRSTIO execution plan is selected that has a lowest estimated execution time for finding a number of records that satisfy the query and are simultaneously viewable. An ALLIO execution plan is selected that has a lowest estimated execution time for finding all records that satisfy the query. The FIRSTIO execution plan is executed for a first time period to create a FIRSTIO result set. The ALLIO execution plan is executed for a second time period to create an ALLIO result set. The FIRSTIO result set is displayed if the FIRSTIO result set comprises more records than the ALLIO result set. The ALLIO result set is displayed if the ALLIO result set comprises more records than the FIRSTIO result set. In an embodiment, the first and second time periods expire in response to the expiration of a maximum time specified by the query.
US08290932B2
A system for receiving a plurality of search criteria from a plurality of users is disclosed. The plurality of search criteria is for application to a common information repository. The plurality of search criteria includes a first search criterion that is received from at least two of the plurality of users. The system further associates the plurality of search criteria with source information. The source information includes a plurality of sources via which the plurality of search criteria are received and communicated. Further, the system maintains a count of instances of the first search criterion received from the at least two of the plurality of users for each of the plurality of sources including the first source.
US08290931B2
Methods, systems, and apparatus, including computer programs encoded on a computer storage medium, for a database designer and a database storage designer. In one aspect, a method includes creating a set of candidate projections and progressively narrowing the set of candidate projections and a set of queries by eliminating candidate projections that do not satisfy a performance improvement criterion for remaining queries based on the properties associated with the candidate projections.
US08290927B2
Generally, a method and apparatus provides for rating user generated content (UGC) with respect to search engine results. The method and apparatus includes recognizing a UGC data field collected from a web document located at a web location. The method and apparatus calculates: a document goodness factor for the web document; an author rank for an author of the UGC data field; and a location rank for web location. The method and apparatus thereby generates a rating factor for the UGC field based on the document goodness factor, the author rank and the location rank. The method and apparatus also outputs a search result that includes the UGC data field positioned in the search results based on the rating factor.
US08290920B2
In one embodiment, accessing, using a computing device, a batch file comprising a plurality of events generated by a remote game client application executing an instance of a computer-implemented game; accessing, in response to the batch file, a game state data object associated with the instance of the computer-implemented game, wherein the game state data object includes one or more game state parameters formatted as serialized unstructured data; parsing the game state data object to identify the one or more game state parameters; processing the plurality of events in the batch file against game logic to update one or more of the game state parameters; re-serializing the one or more game state parameters into an updated game state data object; and storing the game state data object in a memory cache.
US08290916B2
According to one embodiment of the present invention, a method for automatic record declaration is provided. The method includes providing a plurality of record profiles including information that uniquely defines how a new record is to be declared. A plurality of mapping definitions are provided including a set of rules to select a particular record profile, each mapping definition being associated with only one document class. A new document is received and the set of rules applied to the new document until a matching record profile is found. The matching record profile is used to declare a new record for the new document.
US08290913B2
Techniques for multi-variable analysis at an aggregate level are provided. Two or more datasets having different statistical data distributions and which are not capable of being aggregated are acquired. The values for variables in the two or more datasets are normalized to produce a single integrated dataset of normalized values. The normalized values are then used to produce a demand model that represents and integrates multiple disparate products or services from the two or more datasets into a single demand model.
US08290910B2
Replicating data in a distributed database having a plurality of nodes is disclosed. Replicating includes receiving a semantic command at a local version of the database at a node, interpreting the semantic command, and applying the semantic command to the local version of the database.
US08290909B2
The present invention provides methods and systems for database replication. In general, a source database management system is configured with an access manager. The access manager implements a replication schedule for replicating data to one or more client systems. Replication is performed for a particular client when the access manager determines that one or more threshold criteria have been satisfied.
US08290898B2
A database system usable in a high user concentration environment includes a central database containing content relating to associated users. Software is configured for loading onto associated portable computers carried by the users. The software when executed on one of the associated portable computers performs a method including: (i) downloading from the central database a selected sub-set of the content before the associated portable computer enters the high user concentration environment; (ii) generating modifications or additions to the downloaded sub-set of the content; and (iii) at least while the associated portable computer is within the high user concentration environment, occasionally wirelessly connecting with the central database to upload at least some of the generated modifications or additions to the central database and to download other modifications or additions to the selected sub-set of content.
US08290889B2
A system and method for performing event analysis includes a plurality of logical components (102, 106, 110, 114, 118), each communicatively coupled to at least one other of the plurality of components. A transformer (114) receives from one or more of the logical components, one or more status messages describing a system state to form received status messages and transforms the received status messages into at least one transformed message such that the transformed message has at least one new substring which is not common with the received status messages. A processor (204) is coupled to the transformer (114) that receives one or more rules (104, 108, 112, 116, 120) and applies the one or more rules (104, 108, 112, 116, 120) to the one or more transformed status messages and an output (224) outputs at least one of a new rule and a new event.
US08290887B2
A device for implementing a pattern learning model, the device including a plurality of learning modules, each of which performs update learning to update a plurality of model parameters of the pattern learning model that learns a pattern using input data. The device further including a model parameter sharing means for causing two or more learning modules from among the plurality of learning modules to share the model parameters; and a classification means for classifying the plurality of learning modules on the basis of the plurality of model parameters of each of the learning modules after the update learning.
US08290885B2
An information processing apparatus includes: model learning means for self-organizing, on the basis of a state transition model having a state and state transition to be learned by using time series data as data in time series, an internal state from an observation signal obtained by a sensor; and controller learning means for performing learning for allocating a controller, which outputs an action, to each of transitions of a state or each of transition destination states in the state transition model indicating the internal state self-organized by the model learning means.
US08290884B2
Embodiments of the present invention provide a system for automatically creating a task representation associated with a user task. The system calculates usage footprints of a document based on other applications, documents, and people that have been accessed by the user within a predetermined time frame before and after the user accesses the document. After obtaining usage footprints of a number of documents, the system applies a clustering technique, such as spectral clustering, to create task representations, each including a collection (cluster) of documents and/or applications that are used for accomplishing a particular task. The system also filters the documents based on their average dwell times, and uses user feedback to merge or split different task clusters in order to provide accurate task representations.
US08290877B2
Techniques for temporary access to enterprise networks are provided. Devices of customers are detected and authenticated for temporary enterprise network access to a facility of an enterprise when the customers are in a configurable geographic distance to that facility. Temporary access credentials for accessing select resources of the facility or enterprise network are pushed to the processing device upon successful authentication. When one or more terminating actions are detected, the temporary access credentials are revoked and access to the enterprise network ceases.
US08290873B2
A system and method are provided for synchronizing playback of media content on multiple playback devices utilizing Digital Rights Management (DRM) encoding. In general, multiple playback devices or users of those playback devices are associated to form a virtual group. A virtual group (VG) control function operates to synchronize advertisement (ad) slots within media content provided to the playback devices in the virtual group utilizing DRM encoding.
US08290870B2
A method and a portable electronic device enables a debitor to transfer a monetary or other amount to a creditor, in particular via a near-field wireless communication module. After receiving information for authenticating the debitor via the communication module and after receiving data linked to the monetary or other amount, a transaction request including the data is created and sent. The transaction request is advantageously sent via a mobile telephone network or via a data communication network.
US08290866B1
Strategies, tools and techniques for establishing family purchase cards for customers of a financial institution are disclosed. The family purchase card may be established for a principal owner of a family in association with a household account held at the financial institution. The family purchase card may include a total purchase limit that can be allocated among one or more secondary purchase cards associated with various cardholders within the family. Different parameters may be configured for the secondary purchase cards, such as purchase limits, billing arrangements, activation or deactivation rules, and financial development milestone rules. The family purchase card may promote development of financial management skills and fiscal responsibility for various members of the family.
US08290858B1
A method for issuing and managing debit gift cards and facilitating the processing of gift card payments through a debit process. The method involves associating a gift card with a purchaser and transferring any unused residual balance to the purchaser following card expiration or other triggering event.
US08290857B1
A method for one of approving and denying a credit offering to a borrower is disclosed. The method includes calculating a probability of default rating of the borrower and calculating a loss given default rating for the borrower. The method also includes integrating the probability of default rating and the loss given default rating with other information relating to the credit offering to produce a credit memorandum and automatically outputting the credit memorandum to a user so that the user can recommend one of approval and denial of the credit offering.
US08290849B2
A method and system for administering the hedging of an employee deferred compensation plan, e.g., which employs hedging of NQDC plan liabilities using total return swaps and/or put and call options and/or forwards, for tax purposes. A plan coordinator coordinates a transfer of information between an employer/plan sponsor, a plan administrator that communicates with the employees/plan participants, and a balance sheet provider. The plan coordinator receives and reconciles data and then calculates and modifies relevant information for tax purposes and use in reports that are provided to the plan sponsor and balance sheet provider. Calculations and modifications for tax purposes allow the plan sponsor to reap tax benefits from the NQDC plan swap hedge. The reports include an upcoming transactions report, which indicates new compensation deferrals, reallocations of previously deferred compensation among specified indices, and withdrawals.
US08290847B2
An apparatus, computer product, and a method for use in association with a joint venture are disclosed. The method including receiving information associated with a joint venture; determining an amount of a distribution based at least in part on an agreement; determining financial information for the joint venture based at least in part on the amount of the distribution; storing the financial information in a database; retrieving the financial information from the database using a processing system; providing a graphical user interface to allow a user to define a hurdle set; defining one or more hurdle sets in response to input to the graphical user interface; and determining, in the processing system, an amount of a distribution based at least in part on the financial information and one or more hurdle set.
US08290846B2
A catastrophic hazard protection (CHP) mortgage may be provided on real property or structure(s) on the real property of a owner. The CHP mortgage may be structured to include financial protection in the event that one or more structures of the real property is damaged by a catastrophe such as a hurricane or earthquake. The owner may pay an increased interest rate on the CHP mortgage. If catastrophe damage occurs, the principal amount of the CHP mortgage may be reduced by the lesser of the value of the damage or the principal balance. Alternatively, the owner may receive a payment equivalent to the lesser of the value of the damage or the principal balance. A CHP mortgage may be implemented electronically. Additionally, catastrophic hazard protection may be added onto an existing mortgage.
US08290844B2
A method and computing system that receives a payment for each participant in a group of participants, and associates the payments with a time period to create a fund for the time period. The method identifies deceased participants in the group of participants who died during the time period, calculates a portion of the fund to disburse to each deceased participant; and disburses the portion of the fund to each deceased participant. When the participant is one of the deceased participants, the portion of the fund to disburse to the participant is a death benefit for the participant.
US08290842B2
Systems and methods provide a tabular interface for validating and analyzing a benefits plan. The tabular interface illustrates how various parts of a benefits plan may be configured or must be configured, and shows the relationships between those elements. One embodiment allows benefits plan administrators to easily and quickly understand the different elements that need to be created, which elements are mandatory, and where these elements should be linked together. Thus, a starting point is provided to users to analyze what elements should be created to meet plan requirements, and how these elements should be configured.
US08290834B2
Systems, methods, and other embodiments associated with handling a change to a transaction at an application level are described. One exemplary method includes receiving, in a sub-ledger accounting (SLA) logic, from a sub-ledger logic, data that characterizes a transaction(s) receivable from a sub-ledger. The data includes a field of interest identifier and a downstream column impact identifier that identifies a column that is affected by a change to the field of interest. The method includes storing the data and processing transactions from the sub-ledger in light of the stored data. The method includes selectively storing a difference between a value associated with a previously processed version of a transaction and a value provided in a changed transaction. The value may be stored in a new transaction to reconcile the difference between the stored value and the changed transaction value.
US08290833B2
A global supply chain management system in an environment of multiple suppliers forming supply chains for one or more buyers connected over the Internet. The system includes a global processor with logic that maps “local” supply information for each buyer and each supplier, represented in one or more property tables having master information correlated to local information for each buyer and each supplier. The system manages processes from an input of lots to an output through supplier stages where clients each use fragmented different local information. A correlation means uses base lot indicators, one for each of the lots in common for all of said stages and executes supply chain management functions for tracking lots through the supplier stages and for dynamic creation of sets of purchase orders among groups of suppliers for processing the same lot through the supply chain.
US08290829B1
Providing offers of an item constituting a good or a service to users of a system, utilizing an electronic communications device, comprises at least the following: establishing a communication via the electronic communications device between a given user and the system for purpose of a primary transaction for a first good or service, obtaining primary transaction data with respect to the primary transaction, including the purpose of the primary transaction, obtaining the identity of the given user, utilizing at least in part the primary transaction data including the purpose of the primary transaction and the identity of the user, and determining at least one item for offer to the given user, and offering the item to the given user.
US08290828B2
A system gathers user behavior data from a group of web retailers and/or non-web retailers, analyzes the user behavior data to identify product recommendations for products offered by the web retailers, and provides one of the identified product recommendations in connection with a product page associated with one of the web retailers.
US08290826B2
The illustrative embodiments described herein provide a computer implemented method, apparatus, and computer program product for delivering a selected gender specific baby registry gift. A baby registry profile is created in response to receiving registration information from a registrant. The baby registry profile is populated with a set of baby registry gifts selected by the registrant. The set of baby registry gifts includes one or more pairs of gender specific baby registry gifts. In response to receiving a gender notification from a gender notification entity, a selected gender specific baby registry gift is identified from the one or more pairs of gender specific baby registry gifts. The selected gender specific registry gift is delivered for the registrant.
US08290819B2
A system, method, apparatus, and computer-readable medium are provided for completing e-commerce transactions over a P2P communications channel. According to one method, a secure P2P communications channel is established between a buyer node and a seller node. A request to perform an e-commerce transaction is transmitted from the buyer node to the seller node. In response to the request, a third-party clearinghouse is added to the P2P communications channel. Once the clearinghouse has been added to the P2P communications channel, a request is transmitted to the clearinghouse over the P2P communications channel to charge an account associated with the buyer node. The clearinghouse charges an account associated with the buyer node for the purchase. The clearinghouse also transmits a confirmation over the P2P communications channel indicating that the charge has been completed. When the seller node receives the confirmation, the seller node delivers the purchased good to the buyer node over the P2P communications channel.
US08290795B2
Managing risks of crop production can be performed by understanding the relative performance of different agricultural inputs under the same or similar environmental conditions. In addition, managing of crop production risks can be performed by understanding variations in the performance of the same agricultural inputs over a range of environmental conditions. By being able to describe and understand these variations in performance, decisions can be made which are consistent with overall business and/or production objectives and limit risk associated with variations in environmental conditions. In addition to producers there are other stakeholders in the crop production process, such as financial institutions, insurance providers, users of crops produced, and input suppliers. These and other stakeholders can provide financial incentives to producers for managing crop production risks through use of environmental classification and/or genotype-by-environment information.
US08290794B2
A single-stage or multi-stage damage coverage method and system for transport devices, including a central unit that includes a user factor and a central unit factor, the central unit storing backing amount parameters assigned to accumulable damage risks, the backing amount parameters being divisible by a split module with money amount values of a specified damage risk on the basis of the user factor and the central unit factor into backing amount parameters of the accumulable damage risks. The system includes one or more decentralized risk devices, the backing amount parameters being transmitted bidirectionally for one of the damage risks and corresponding compensation parameters between the one central unit and the one or more decentralized risk devices, and also includes an extrapolation module configured to specify one of the backing amount parameters and the compensation parameters of the specifiable damage risk for a future time interval.
US08290788B2
A method and system for interaction with a community of individuals, relating to compliance with and effectiveness of treatment regimens, including supply and use of pharmaceuticals, using a protocol or other intelligent message which acts in place of a service provider and which is capable of collecting or imparting information to patients in place thereof. Individuals interact with the protocol or intelligent message to provide assistance in all aspects of treatment regimen compliance, data collection, supply or delivery, review and modification.
US08290785B2
A system is provided for facilitating the distribution of premium tickets to spectator events. The system includes a central distribution processor to which patrons are provided access for determining the availability of premium tickets and purchasing available premium tickets at a premium price. The system also includes a plurality of remote show box offices of distinct spectator events linked to the central distribution processor, the remote show box offices including interface software compatible with the central distribution processor for facilitating the uploading of relevant ticket information to the central distribution processor. The interface software further provides a user interface through which the plurality of remote show box offices selectively enter available premium ticket information which is subsequently uploaded to the central distribution processor for access and purchase by patrons.
US08290779B2
An approach is disclosed for providing a managed language translation service. A request, from a source station, is received, at a switch, to establish a voice call with a destination station. A determination is made whether the request includes an indicator specifying invocation of a translation service managed by a service provider. If the request includes the indicator, the voice call is directed to a gateway that transmits the voice call over a data network to a translation application. The translation application translates, in real-time, speech associated with the voice call from a first language to a second language. The translated speech is transmitted to the destination station.
US08290777B1
The techniques disclosed herein allow a user to synchronize the playing and displaying of digital content on an electronic device. The device may render a first portion of digital content so it may be displayed. The device may also play a segment of the digital content as audio using text to speech software. The device may also render a second portion of digital content for display depending on whether the position of the last word read is greater than the last position in the first portion of digital content.
US08290775B2
Pronunciation correction for text-to-speech (TTS) systems and speech recognition (SR) systems between different languages is provided. If a word requiring pronunciation by a target language TTS or SR is from a same language as the target language, but is not found in a lexicon of words from the target language, a letter-to-speech (LTS) rules set of the target language is used to generate a letter-to-speech output for the word for use by the TTS or SR configured according to the target language. If the word is from a different language as the target language, phonemes comprising the word according to its native language are mapped to phonemes of the target language. The phoneme mapping is used by the TTS or SR configured according to the target language for generating or recognizing an audible form of the word according to the target language.
US08290769B2
Systems, methods, and computer program products are provided for producing audio and/or visual effects according to a correlation between reference data and estimated note data derived from an input acoustic audio waveform. Some embodiments calculate a pitch score as a function of a pitch estimate derived from the input waveform, a reference pitch, and a real-time-adjustable pitch gating window. Other embodiments calculate the pitch score as a function of pitch and timing estimates derived from the input waveform, reference pitch and note timing data, an adjustable rhythm gating window, and an adjustable pitch gating window. The audio and/or visual effects are produced according to the pitch score, and may be used to generate outputs (e.g., in real time) for affecting a live performance, an audio mix, a video gaming environment, an educational feedback environment, etc.
US08290763B1
An emulation system, method, and computer program product are provided for passing system calls to an operating system for direct execution. In operation, a file is loaded into memory and instructions associated with the loaded file are emulated. Furthermore, system calls resulting from the emulation are identified. Still yet, at least a portion of the system calls are passed to an operating system for direct execution thereof. In addition, application programming interfaces are provided for external components to access, to monitor and to control the aforementioned system.
US08290762B2
A system and method for creating and using configuration diagrams for configuring distributed systems. The methods described herein may be used for various types of operations in configuring distributed systems, including creating programs, managing programs in the distributed system, deploying programs to various distributed devices, configuring remote execution or inter-operation of distributed programs, and executing distributed applications. Embodiments of the invention utilize graphical iconic-based techniques for performing the above operations. The configuration diagram may include device icons which represent devices and program icons which represent programs. Device icons and program icons may be associated with each other to accomplish various program creation and deployment operations. Device icons and program icons may also interact with graphical program nodes or icons. Context sensitive device connections and/or program connections are displayed. An asynchronous data flow node may be used to facilitate asynchronous data flow between two graphical programs. The distributed system may also support distributed graphical debugging.
US08290755B2
The present invention relates to a test device for testing a control system and an associated method for operating the test device. The test device includes an addressable memory. The test device is configured to calculate at least one environment model and to execute at least one test model. The environment model is described by environment model variables whose values are filed at fixed physical addresses in memory locations of the memory. The test device further comprises an allocation unit, in which the allocation of all or a part of the environment model variable to the allocated physical addresses of the memory is filed such that the test model can read the allocation of the environment model variables to their specific memory addresses so as to modify the environment model variable values in the environment model during its execution.
US08290752B2
The present invention relates to a method for designing an automotive vehicle, wherein an automotive module is an automotive vehicle part (1, 2) or a group of automotive vehicle parts, comprising: the step of modeling the automotive modules; the step of mapping the automotive module models; the step of integrating, in a modeling assembly, the links (3) between the automotive modules, which is realized directly between the modules and neither between their models nor between their mappings.
US08290734B2
A semiconductor integrated circuit including: a data input circuit inputting a data input signal from outside and outputting the signal; a comparison value register memorizing an expectation value of the output signal varying in accordance with an input to the data input circuit; and a comparing circuit comparing a value in accordance with a switching number of the output signal of the data input circuit and the expectation value, is provided.
US08290733B2
A modular calibration method for a CMM, comprising preliminary calibration steps of several components prior to its mounting. The preliminary calibration steps yield specific mapping information for each calibrated component, which are then stored into map files generated and associated to the calibrated components. A final alignment takes place after once the CMM is mounted, which processes mapping information gathered during the preliminary calibration steps.
US08290729B2
In a low voltage differential signal (LVDS) timing test system and method, a clock signal waveform and a data signal waveform are obtained. Clock cycles are selected from the clock signal waveform. Data bits transmitted within the selected clock cycles are identified from the data signal waveform. Accordingly, bit positions of the data bits are determined.
US08290728B2
A method includes generating a first, second and third voltage output from a temperature sensing element of an integrated circuit using a respective, corresponding first, second and third, switched current source, for sequentially switching a respective first, second and third excitation current through the temperature sensing element. The third switched current source generates the corresponding third voltage output as a reference voltage between the first voltage and the second voltage. An error corrected difference is calculated between the first voltage and the second voltage using the reference voltage. In the method, the second excitation current is proportional to the first excitation current by a value n, and the third excitation current is proportional to the first excitation current by the square root of n.
US08290725B2
Configuring at least one radio frequency (RF) instrument according to a plurality of RF measurement configurations for performing a plurality of tests on a device under test (DUT). A list of RF measurement configurations may be stored in a computer memory. The list of RF measurement configurations comprises a plurality of parameters for configuring operation of the at least one instrument. Information regarding the list of RF measurement configurations (e.g., a data stream) may be provided to the at least one RF instrument. The at least one RF instrument may perform the plurality of tests on the DUT, including the at least one RF instrument configuring itself according to the RF measurement configurations based on processing of the information. Configuring enables the at least one RF instrument to perform the plurality of tests on the DUT in a deterministic manner.
US08290724B2
A method for calibrating a synthetic jet ejector is provided. The method includes (a) taking a first measurement DCR0 of the DC resistance of the coil; (b) adjusting the actuator drive voltage Vd to achieve a desired maximum displacement dmax1 at a frequency f1; (c) measuring the input current Iin and input voltage Vin; (d) calculating the back electromagnetic frequency BEMF, wherein BEMF=Vin−Iin*DCR; and (e) storing the calculated value of BEMF in a memory device associated with the synthetic jet actuator.
US08290723B2
The apparatus for monitoring appliances and machines having rotating components, particularly for monitoring compressors, vacuum pumps and other pumps, has a sensor, an evaluation electronics unit and an interface for the output of signals. The evaluation electronics unit has a microprocessor having three inputs for performing measurements in three different frequency ranges at different frequency resolutions, with the respective vibration intensities being averaged at a plurality of frequencies in line with the third-octave spectrum. The interface is a two-wire interface which is used to report different operating states using different DC values.
US08290716B2
Methods and systems of extracting extensible motifs from a sequence include assigning a significance to extensible motifs within the sequence based upon a syntactic and statistical analysis, and identifying extensible motifs having a significance that exceeds a predetermined threshold.
US08290714B2
The use of nanostructures to monitor or modulate changes in cellular membrane potentials is disclosed. Nanoparticles having phospholipid coatings were found to display improved responses relative to nanoparticles having other coatings that do not promote localization or attraction to membranes.
US08290712B2
A system may include utensil means for portioning a foodstuff into a first portion and a second portion, a means for detecting a first portion size for the first portion with the utensil means, a means for detecting a second portion size for the second portion with the utensil means, and a means for determining a cumulative amount of portioned foodstuff based upon the first portion size and the second portion size.
US08290700B2
A planning apparatus for use in a hybrid vehicle specifies a plan section for the purpose of creating a travel plan, and stores the plan section in a durable storage medium. The medium-stored plan section is then presented for an occupant of the vehicle, for the purpose of confirmation. The stored plan section may be modified according to an intention of the occupant, thereby enabling the occupant's intention to be reflected to the plan section. Then, the plan section reflecting the occupant's intention is used to create a travel plan of the hybrid vehicle.
US08290688B2
An internal combustion engine includes an exhaust system, an oxygen sensor in the exhaust system and a sensor malfunction monitor. In order to maintain operation during a fuel cut-off situation, the sensor malfunction monitor is arranged to control the fuel cut-off sequencing.
US08290683B2
A method and apparatus for improving fuel efficiency in an aircraft having a digital avionics system and at least first and second engines. The avionics system includes first and second full-authority digital engine control (FADEC) systems and corresponding first and second engines. At least one processor is provided that is programmed with a differential specific fuel consumption (DSFC) algorithm and first and second engine optimization algorithms. The DSFC algorithm adjusts the throttle of the first and second engines to substantially equalize the differential specific fuel consumption of the engines and thereby improve the fuel efficiency of the aircraft. The first and second engine optimization algorithms adjust at least one operating parameter of the first and second engines respectively to improve the fuel efficiency of the first and second engines.
US08290662B2
A tire cornering power estimation and monitoring system, comprising a steering torque sensor, a steering wheel angle sensor, a yaw rate sensor, a lateral acceleration sensor, a speed sensor, and at least one controller configured to receive signals from the sensors and send a notification if the signals indicate that one or more of the vehicle's tires need to be checked or serviced. The system also comprises a notification system configured to indicate that one or more of the vehicle's tires need to be checked or serviced.
US08290661B2
Disclosed is a simulation test system and method for testing a vehicle electronic component capable of easily testing performance of the electronic component anytime regardless of location without repeating the same driving test.
US08290658B2
The main calculation section (37a) of a toe angle alteration control ECU (37) in a vehicle control system receives target toe angles αTL and αTR. from a steering control ECU (130) and controls a motor (31L) for changing the toe angles of a left rear wheel and a motor (31R) for changing the toe angle of a right rear wheel independently. Stroke sensors (38L, 38R) detect actual toe angles αL and αR and inputs to the judging portion (85) of actuations of the sub calculation section (37c). In accordance with a pre-stored judgment table (85a), the judging portion (85) of actuations calculates an allowable actuation range, which is a combination of the toe angles αL and αR of the left-and-right rear wheels depending on vehicle speed VS, and judges whether the actuation of the motor (31L, 31R) is suitable for the turning of a vehicle or not depending on whether the actual toe angles αL and αR. is within the allowable actuation range or not.
US08290655B2
A control system for controlling a vehicle with a hybrid drive comprising an internal combustion engine and an electric motor and a plurality of functional components each divided into strategy, control and actuator sub-components. The functional components include engine, transmission and hybrid functional components. The strategy sub-component of the hybrid functional component comprises an operating status prescription module which determines a recommended value for the operating status of the hybrid drive and transmits the recommended value to the control sub-component. The possible recommended value that can be determined by the operating status prescription module is a preselected hybrid driving condition, and if the operating status prescription module of the strategy sub-component transmits the preselected hybrid driving condition, as the recommended value, to the control sub-component, then the strategy sub-component prescribes a change from electric to hybrid driving, while the control sub-component determines when change occurs.
US08290650B2
A temperature sensor detects a temperature of a fuel pipe for supplying fuel from a fuel tank to an engine. A HV-ECU controls switching of a traveling mode including an EV mode for traveling while stopping engine and a HV mode for traveling while operating engine. HV-ECU receives a detected value of temperature from an engine ECU and switches the traveling mode from the EV mode to the HV mode when temperature of fuel pipe is increased to not less than a prescribed threshold value at the time of traveling in the EV mode.
US08290639B2
A method and apparatus for managing a number of control surfaces for an aircraft. A current configuration for the number of control surfaces for the aircraft is identified during flight of the aircraft. A selected point in time at which the current configuration for the number of control surfaces is to be changed to a new configuration for the number of control surfaces is identified. A portion of time relative to the selected point in time during which the current configuration for the number of control surfaces is to be changed to the new configuration is identified based on a difference between a current amount of energy for the aircraft and an expected amount of energy for the aircraft.
US08290629B1
A method and system are provided for airflow management in a data center. The data center includes network elements, sensors, and heating, cooling and ventilation (HVAC) equipment. The sensors measure climate conditions in the data center and provide an airflow management system with measurements that are utilized to determine which areas in the data center violate data center temperature thresholds and require more air capacity. The airflow management system increases the airflow to areas that contribute to the violation by controlling HVAC equipment to increase air movement or by selecting other areas in the data center or external to the data center that have excess capacity and routing the excess capacity to the areas that contribute to the violation.
US08290620B2
Disclosed is a route creation method capable of creating a travel route which reduces the travel quantity of a robot and achieves the efficient travel of the robot. The route creation method and route creation device creates a plurality of candidate routes by using an intermediate point generated between the initial position and the final position set in advance, and thereafter evaluates the travel quantity of a traveling part of a robot with respect to each candidate route to select a candidate route, which achieves the most efficient travel, as a travel route.
US08290617B2
In a robot system, and a method for operating a robot system, for loading general cargo units, a gripper unit of the robot is operated to stack the general cargo units in a stack, by movements controlled by a computerized control unit. In order to avoid unstable loading patterns, the computerized control unit automatically determines the loading pattern of the stack of general cargo units, and also automatically determines at least one characteristic that represents the stability of the loading pattern.
US08290614B2
A targeted product distribution system is described herein with respect to an exemplary management of product flow through a distribution center. Specifically, the system and method described herein is directed to the management and display of direct and easily-understood instructions, such that average individuals, as well as those with mental disabilities, will be able to contribute equally to the overall process.
US08290605B2
In an acoustic design support apparatus, a speaker selection supporter selects a desired speaker as a candidate for use in a given space based on shape information representing a shape of the space. A speaker mounting angle optimizer calculates an optimal mounting direction of the selected speaker by selecting a mounting direction pattern which minimizes a degree of variation among sound pressure levels at a plurality of positions on a sound receiving surface defined in the space. An acoustic parameter calculator calculates a variety of acoustic parameters at sound receiving points within the space based on both of the shape information of the space and the optimal mounting direction of the speaker.
US08290599B2
A lead has a paddle body with a non-conductive material and multiple electrodes disposed within the non-conductive material. At least one of the electrodes includes one or more anchoring arrangement, such as opening(s) through the electrode through which the non-conductive material can pass; anchors that extend away from the electrode and into the non-conductive material of the paddle body; or flow-through anchors attached to the electrode with an opening through which the non-conductive material may pass.
US08290598B2
An intra-body ultrasonic signal can be converted into a first electrical signal, a local oscillator signal can be generated in an implantable system. The first electrical signal and the local oscillator signal can be mixed in an implantable system, such as to generate a demodulated signal, processed, such as using a filter. The filtered, demodulated signal can be further processed, such as implantably determining a peak amplitude of the first portion of the demodulated signal received from the filter over a time interval, implantably generating a dynamic tracking threshold that starts at an amplitude proportional the first portion of the demodulated signal and exponentially decays over a time interval, and determining a noise floor in the absence of a received intra-body ultrasonic signal and implantably comparing the peak amplitude and the tracking threshold and generate the digital output based on the difference.
US08290593B2
An implantable medical device (IMD) may include at least two separate lead connection assemblies, each with electrical connectors for connecting implantable leads to the IMD. In some examples, a IMD may include a first therapy module configured to generate a first electrical stimulation therapy and a second therapy module configured to generate a second electrical stimulation therapy for delivery to the patient. The IMD may include a first lead connection assembly including a first electrical connector electrically coupled to the first therapy module and a second lead connection assembly including a second electrical connector electrically coupled to the second therapy module. In some examples, the first and second lead connection assemblies are distributed around the outer perimeter of the IMD housing.
US08290590B2
Methods and systems for performing capture threshold tests are described. During an initialization procedure a capture detection interval and capture detection threshold are determined based on peak values of cardiac signals sensed following the supracapture threshold initialization pulses. Following initialization, a plurality of pacing pulses to the atrium are delivered and the peak values of the cardiac signals sensed following each of the plurality of pacing pulses are determined. The peak values are compared to the pacing artifact threshold and the capture detection threshold. A timing of each of the peak values is compared to the capture detection interval. For each pacing pulse, discrimination between a captured response, a noncaptured response, and a fusion response is based on the peak value and timing comparisons.
US08290581B2
The present invention is directed to an apparatus that includes a microcurrent delivery device portion and at least one independent sensory cue delivery means. The independent sensory cue delivery means can provide an independent sensory cue selected from the group consisting of vibration, heat, cool, skin irritation, tingling, fragrance or auditory.
US08290575B2
A way of quantifying the shape of an ECG waveform is disclosed by detecting the JT segment using two Hidden Markov Models and calculating the analytic signal of the JT segment. Parameters calculated from the analytic signal are used as shape descriptors for the JT segment. The shape descriptors may be displayed in a dimensionality-reduced mapping. Templates representing characteristic shapes can be produced by finding cluster centers in the shape descriptor space, and the novelty of new waveforms can be quantified by comparing the position in shape descriptor space of new shape descriptors to a predefined normal training set or to previously encountered waveforms. Novel shape descriptors can be used to retrieve the corresponding waveforms, and templates of such novel shapes can be created by averaging such waveforms, using dynamic time warping to allow for variations in heart rate. The templates can be manually segmented and the manual segmentation propagated back into other waveforms having similar shape descriptors.
US08290569B2
A patient support structure for positioning a selected anatomy of interest for imaging in a magnetic resonance imaging scanner is disclosed. The structure includes a receptacle for receiving a removable tray that includes connectors for connecting local RF coils housed in the array to the MRI scanner, and connectors for positioning the local RF coils adjacent an area of interest to be imaged. A structure for elevating the patient support is also disclosed.
US08290550B2
An electromagnetic field strength reducing device includes a high-frequency wave eliminator that eliminates a high frequency component from an electrical signal input from a signal source. An electrical signal line is disposed between the high-frequency wave eliminator and the electrical member so as to convey the electrical signal with the high frequency component eliminated to an electrical member. The device also includes a resonant-frequency regulator connected between the electrical signal line and ground to cause the electrical signal line to be resonant at a frequency used for radio communication. The electromagnetic field strength reducing device may be employed in a portable electronic device with a HAC standard radio frequency communication compliance requirement, and use a corresponding method to eliminate the high frequency component.
US08290536B2
A radio transceiver comprising at least two individual receive paths and at least two individual transmit paths is disclosed. The radio transceiver includes a first filter arrangement for separating individual ones of the at least two individual transmit paths from a combined one of the at least two individual receive paths, a splitter for splitting the combined one of the at least two receive paths into the individual receive paths; and a second filter arrangement for separating combined receive bands on the combined one of the at least two receive paths into individual receive bands on the individual receive paths. A method for the reception of combined receive signals in at least two receive frequency bands is also disclosed.
US08290535B2
An apparatus for generating a pilot beacon of a Base Station (BS) supporting a first communication system and a second communication system is provided. The apparatus includes a first system unit for converting a first signal for the first communication system into a first high-frequency signal, a second system unit for converting a second signal for the second communication system into a second high-frequency signal, and a beacon system unit for alternately generating beacon signals for the first and second communication systems by using the first and second signals.
US08290531B2
There is provided a power transmitting apparatus including a power transmission side communication unit for communicating with one or more power receiving apparatus for receiving transmitted power; a power transmission unit for transmitting power to the one or more power receiving apparatus in a non-contact manner; an allocating unit for dividing transmission of power from the power transmission unit to the power receiving apparatus to a plurality of dividing periods for every predetermined period, and allocating the one or more power receiving apparatus to one of the dividing periods; and a power transmission control unit for selectively transmitting power to the one or more power receiving apparatus for every dividing period based on the allocation result in the allocating unit.
US08290528B2
A base station includes: means that derives a transmission power of a mobile station based on receive quality of an uplink pilot channel; means that reports the derived transmission power to the mobile station; and means that receives a control channel transmitted by the mobile station according to the reported information. Accordingly, irrespective of transmission power history over a past continuous time, the mobile station receives an instruction on the transmission power from the base station each time when transmitting a packet so as to be able to adjust the transmission power.
US08290525B2
Methods and systems are described wherein an initiating device sends a communication requesting a voice call session with a recipient device. In response, the initiating device receives a communication indicating that the initiating device can provide a text message instead of establishing the voice call session. In some cases, the communication may refuse the request voice call session, while in other cases the communication may simply indicate that the recipient device supports text messaging as an alternative to voice mail. As a result of the received communication, the initiating device outputs a text input prompt. After receiving text input in response to the prompt, the initiating device sends a text message containing the received text input.
US08290524B2
A method for maintaining a transmission during a channel fade is described. Data is transmitted on a first traffic channel associated with a first signal. A second signal with a signal strength that is greater than the signal strength of the first signal is detected. A transmitter is disabled if N2m is triggered. The triggering of N2m indicates the presence of a channel fade for a predetermined first time period. The second signal is monitored for a predetermined second time period. Data is transmitted on a second traffic channel associated with the second signal at the expiration of the second time period.
US08290510B2
A system and method for enhancing a SUPL session where a SET with a HELD client discovers an LIS of an access network and provides information received from the LIS or plurality of LISs to the SLP. The SLP determines the trustworthiness of the location information and estimates a location. The degree to which the SLP uses the location information is a function of the trustworthiness of the LIS and restraints on the location request. The location information may include a URI or domain name or other indication of location.
US08290508B2
A method and apparatus of estimating a location of a subscriber are disclosed. One method includes receiving a request for the location of the subscriber. The subscriber's serving base station, and a plurality of neighboring base stations sensed by the subscriber, are identified. The subscriber obtains a time delay from the serving base. The subscriber estimates a distance between the subscriber and the serving base station. The subscriber receives frames and estimates a delta time for each of the selected neighboring base stations for the subscriber to synchronize to each of the selected neighboring base stations. The subscriber estimates distances between the subscriber and each of the selected neighboring base. The subscriber location is estimated by trilateration of the distance between the subscriber and the serving base station, and the distances between the subscriber and each of the selected neighboring base stations.
US08290505B2
The number of messages required in networks where location services are deployed may be reduced, by providing updated location information regarding particular subscribers, or even all subscribers, to subscribed or otherwise logged applications or services upon obtaining and providing location information for a different application or service. Consequential watch services in accordance with the principles of the present invention provide location information to one or more services OTHER than or in ADDITION to the service currently requesting location information, based on subscription to a suitable service.
US08290501B2
A method may include receiving, by a user equipment incapable of transmitting and receiving simultaneously, a schedule to transmit data on an uplink, detecting, by the user equipment, whether there is data to be transmitted on the uplink, and receiving, by the user equipment, during a time corresponding to the schedule, data associated with a downlink, when it is determined that there is no data to be transmitted.
US08290488B2
Scanning methods and systems for wireless networks are provided. In response to an operation, at least a waiting time corresponding to a wireless network scanning procedure is changed from a default time length to a predefined time length, and the wireless network scanning procedure is accordingly performed. When the wireless network scanning procedure is terminated, the waiting time is changed from the predefined time length back to the default time length. If a specific wireless access point detected in a second scanning operation is not detected in a first scanning operation, which is performed subsequent to the second scanning operation, an alive count corresponding to the specific wireless access point is subtracted by a predefined value. If the alive count does not equal to a specific value, the specific wireless access point and at least one wireless access point detected in the first scanning operation are displayed.
US08290477B2
A method is provided for managing multimedia data in a mobile communication terminal. The method includes sending a multimedia message upon a request for sending a multimedia message; deleting multimedia data attached to the multimedia message, and reconfiguring a multimedia message that includes information about a path where the attached multimedia data is stored; and storing the reconfigured multimedia message in a Sent box.
US08290474B2
An apparatus for providing smart card security may include a processor. The processor may be configured to determine, for a mobile terminal locked to a smart card, whether a temporary subscriber identifier is being read from the smart card or whether the mobile terminal is receiving a new temporary subscriber identifier from a network in communication with the mobile terminal, compare a network identifier associated with the temporary subscriber identifier to a network identifier included in a permanent subscriber identifier associated with the smart card in response to a determination that the temporary subscriber identifier is being read from the smart card, compare a network identifier associated with the new temporary subscriber identifier to a network identifier associated with a previous temporary subscriber identifier in response to a determination that the new temporary subscriber identifier is received from the network, and determine whether to invalidate the temporary subscriber identifier or the new temporary subscriber identifier based on a result of a respective one of the comparing operations.
US08290473B2
Methods and corresponding systems in a mobile device for remotely modifying data stored in the mobile device include receiving a message in the mobile device. The message can be a short message service (SMS) message. The message is compared to a secret message, wherein the secret message is a hash value output by a hash function, wherein inputs to the hash function include a text string and a secret text string. The text string can be an e-mail address, and the secret text string can be a password of the mobile device. In response to the message matching the secret message, data stored in memory in the mobile device is modified to prevent unauthorized access. A secret message cancellation can be received in the mobile device to cancel a scheduled memory modification. Memory modification can include erasing data, replacing data, or encrypting data.
US08290471B1
Disclosed herein are methods and systems for initiating record-keeping processes for usage of communication services by subscribers. An exemplary method may be implemented in an access network wherein two or more types of subscription plans are available to the subscribers, including an unlimited-use subscription plan. An exemplary method involves (a) receiving a connection request from a subscriber to engage in a communication session via an access network; (b) before providing the requested connection, making a determination as to whether or not the subscriber is enrolled in an unlimited-use subscription plan; (c) if the determination is that the subscriber is not enrolled in the unlimited-use subscription plan, then initiating a process to generate enhanced usage records for the communication session; and (d) if the determination is that the subscriber is enrolled in the unlimited-use subscription plan, then refraining from initiating a process to generate enhanced usage records for the communication session.
US08290465B2
Disclosed is a sleep mode in a broadband wireless access system, more particularly a method of transmitting and receiving a message associated with a sleep mode in a broadband wireless access system. The method of transmitting a message associated with a sleep mode in a broadband wireless access system includes transmitting a first message which includes a flag if a receiving side receives the first message associated with the sleep mode, the flag indicating that the receiving side transmits an acknowledgement signal to a transmitting side, and receiving the acknowledgement signal from the receiving side which has received the first message.
US08290464B2
A receiver (a) translates a frequency spectrum of a received wideband signal such that a narrowband region of the wideband signal is applied to a filter for use in removing narrowband interference; and (b) tracks the narrowband interference by adjusting the frequency translation as a function of signal levels in narrowband regions adjacent to the narrowband interference region.
US08290458B2
Systems and methods for estimating IQ imbalance in a communication system are provided. In various embodiments, a device is configured to perform a self-characterization. The self-characterization is performed over an RF loopback circuit. In some embodiments, a probe is transmitted over the RF loopback circuit. The probe uses a frequency offset such that an image related to one IQ imbalance is separated from an image related to another IQ imbalance. An imbalance estimate is calculated based on processing of the probe.
US08290457B2
One aspect of the present invention is directed to an apparatus to perform impulse blanking of a received signal at multiple locations of a signal processing path. To effect such impulse blanking, multiple impulse detectors and blankets may be present, in addition to other circuitry. The impulse detectors may operate at different bandwidths, and the impulse blankers may be located at different locations of the signal processing path and may be differently configured.
US08290447B2
Methods and apparatus for reducing transmit emissions are described herein. The transmit out of band emissions in an adjacent band can be reduced while complying with existing wireless communication standards through utilization of one or more of reduced transmit bandwidth, transmit operating band offset, and channel index remapping. The transceiver can support a receive operating band that is substantially adjacent to a band edge. The transmit operating band can be offset from an adjacent frequency band, and can use a narrower operating band than is supported by the receiver. The transmit baseband signal can have a reduced bandwidth to reduce the amount of noise. The frequency offset can introduce a larger transition band between the transmit operating band edges and the adjacent frequency band of interest. The transceiver can remap channel assignments to compensate for the frequency offset such that the frequency offset introduced in the transmitter is transparent to channel allocation.
US08290445B2
An electronic device includes a transmitter circuit, a receiver circuit, a first conductor, and a second conductor of a return path being a grounded line. The first conductor is surrounded by a dielectric. A plurality of resistive elements are connected in parallel between the first conductor and the second conductor. The first conductor transfers therethrough a transmission signal from the transmitter circuit. The length of the line of the first conductor is set to be greater than or equal to one half of the product between the inverse of the signal transfer rate of the first conductor and the velocity of light traveling through the dielectric. The resistive elements are provided along the line of the first conductor for every unit distance being equal to one half of the product between the signal transfer rate of the first conductor and the velocity of light traveling through the dielectric. Thus, it is possible to reduce the signal waveform distortion along the transmission line.
US08290440B2
A high performance wireless mesh architecture which has been optimized for mobile end points is described. The mesh architecture is intended for Navy applications, where the wireless mesh network extends between mobile ships and includes ship-to-shore links, but it is equally applicable to other mobile elements on, in, or under land, air, sea, or space.
US08290436B2
A system for the audio lead through of a visually impaired user of a self-service terminal employs near field communication techniques to transfer connection data required for the establishment of a Bluetooth connection between the self-service terminal and a remote audio output device. Once a Bluetooth connection is established audio files containing instructions on how to execute a transaction on the self-service terminal are transferred from the self-service terminal to the audio output device such that the user can hear audio files when played.
US08290428B2
A method includes sending to a receiving device from a transmitting device a Radio Link Control (RLC) re-transmission scheme selected from a plurality of RLC re-transmission schemes, and using the selected and sent scheme at least at one of the receiving device and the transmitting device. In another exemplary non-limiting embodiment the method includes detecting, at the receiver, a gap in RLC Protocol Data Unit (PDU) sequence numbers, associating a timer with the gap, and starting the timer when the gap is detected. In still another exemplary non-limiting embodiment, the method includes detecting a gap in a RLC PDU sequence, monitoring a HARQ channel for a period of time to determine if a predetermined bit has changed, and determining if a transmission is lost.
US08290421B2
A powder recovery container includes a reservoir chamber that stores a recovered powder; a recovery port that faces the reservoir chamber, a powder conveying unit that conveys and recovers the powder through the recovery port being removably inserted into the recovery port; a pair of door panels having rotating shafts arranged at two positions with the recovery port arranged therebetween, the door panels being rotated toward the reservoir chamber around the rotating shafts to open and close the recovery port; sealing members attached to the door panels, the sealing members overlapping one another between distal ends of the door panels to seal a gap between the distal ends of the door panels when the door panels are located at positions, at which the recovery port is closed; and urging members that urge the door panels in a direction, in which the recovery port is closed.
US08290414B2
An image forming apparatus includes a pair of regulating members, for regulating movement of a recording material conveyed from a secondary transfer portion toward an intermediary transfer belt side, configured to be contactable to the recording material at both end portions with respect to a width direction perpendicular to a conveyance direction of the recording material; a moving mechanism capable of moving a position of the pair of regulating members with respect to the width direction; a recording material size detecting portion for obtaining width information of the recording material with respect to the width direction perpendicular to the conveyance direction; and a width control portion for controlling the moving mechanism so that the pair of regulating members to a position correspondingly to the width information obtained by the recording material size detecting portion.
US08290405B2
An image forming agent storage container includes a container body formed with a discharge hole, a rotary shaft, a stirring part, and a conveying member. The conveying member includes a first end portion, a second end portion and a slit. The first end portion comes into contact with a lower inner face of the container body. The second end portion comes into contact with an inner face of the container body which intersects the lower inner face. The slit is formed between the first end portion and the second end portion. A corner of the conveying member located between the first and second end portions is removed. The slit extends from a portion from which the corner is removed toward an inside of the conveying member.
US08290399B2
A belt device for an image forming apparatus includes an endless belt member supported at roller members, side frames disposed along sides of the belt member being respectively slidably supported at slide rails disposed at a body of the image forming apparatus, a rear frame constructed across the side frames, rotatably supporting shafts of the roller members at the rear side, a front frame rotatably supporting shafts of the roller members at the front side, and having a projecting surface smaller than an inner periphery of the belt member, and a support frame cantilever-supporting the front frame with respect to the rear frame. The rear frame includes a freely detachable holding member supporting rear side bearings supporting the rear side shafts of support rollers supporting the belt and a sub-bearing which is more to the center side in an axial direction of the support rollers than the rear side bearing.
US08290395B2
An image forming apparatus for forming an image on a recording material in a state in which a drum cartridge including a photosensitive drum is detachably mountable to a main assembly of the apparatus and in a state in which a developing cartridge including a developing roller for developing with a developer an electrostatic latent image formed on the photosensitive drum and including a developer accommodating portion for accommodating the developer is detachably mountably to the main assembly, is constituted by a cartridge supporting member movable, in a state of detachably supporting the drum and developing cartridges, between an inside position in which the cartridge supporting member is located inside the main assembly and from which the drum and developing cartridges are movable to an image forming position in which the drum and developing cartridges effect image formation and an outside position in which the cartridge supporting member is located outside the main assembly and in which the drum and developing cartridges are mountable and demountable; and a preventing member, provided to the developing cartridge, for preventing demounting of the drum cartridge from the cartridge supporting member in a state in which the developing cartridge is supported by the cartridge supporting member.
US08290392B2
An image forming apparatus includes an image bearing member; a rotatable transfer roller; a contact separation unit; a driving force transmission portion; a cleaning member; and a control portion. The cleaning member is for removing toner adhering to the transfer roller by contacting with the transfer roller when the transfer roller is in contact with and separated from the image bearing member. The cleaning member cleans the transfer roller in: (i) a first mode in which the cleaning member cleans the transfer roller while the transfer roller in contact with the image bearing member rotates at a first peripheral velocity, and (ii) a second mode in which the cleaning member cleans the transfer roller while the transfer roller separated from the image bearing member rotates at a second peripheral velocity. The control portion controls a voltage applied to the cleaning member according to the peripheral velocity of the transfer roller.
US08290389B2
A main body of an image forming apparatus includes a switching circuit provided for switching between a normal current which should be applied at a time of normal operation and a contact-corrosion preventing current which is set larger than the normal current. Each of the currents is to be applied to an imaging unit through the contacts between the main body and the imaging unit. A control section controls the switching circuit so as to temporarily switch from the normal current to the contact-corrosion preventing current at specified timing.
US08290386B2
An image forming apparatus includes: a first image forming unit which forms a first image on a first recording medium with a first material which is not thermally decolorized; a second image forming unit which forms a second image on a second recording medium with a second material which is thermally decolorized; a fixing unit which is on a common carrying path shared by the first recording medium and the second recording medium and fixes the first image to the first recording medium; and a control unit which controls the fixing unit so that the temperature of the second recording medium passing through the fixing unit becomes lower than a decolorizing temperature of the second material.
US08290385B2
A charge member charges secondary transfer remaining toner on an intermediate transfer member to a polarity opposite to a normal charge polarity. The remaining toner is moved by a transfer bias, from the intermediate transfer member onto an image bearing member. A BK station is arranged on the downstream of other stations. In a continuous BK monochromatic mode, by applying a reverse bias to transfer portions of the other stations and applying the transfer bias only to the BK station, remaining toner can be collected into the BK station (simultaneously with the transfer). In a full-color mode, remaining toner is collected into the station on the uppermost stream. Thus, the image bearing member for collecting remaining toner on the intermediate transfer member differs according to the mode, thereby suppressing the collection of remaining toner being concentrated on one image bearing member.
US08290382B2
An image forming apparatus includes an image carrier, a transfer member provided at a position at which the transfer member can be pressed against the image carrier, a detection device for detecting a toner attachment amount of the toner image formed on the image carrier, an avoidance judging section for judging whether or not avoidance of a pressed region should be performed when a toner image for image formation is formed on the image carrier, the pressed region serving as a region located on the image carrier and being pressed against the transfer member from the end of a previous image forming operation to the start of a present image forming operation, and an avoidance continuation judging section for judging the necessity for continuation of the avoidance by being operated when it is judged as avoidance by the avoidance judging section.
US08290376B2
An optical receiver with a simplified arrangement able to compensate the optical loss of the transmission medium is disclosed. The optical receiver of the invention includes an SOA in the front end thereof, an optical de-multiplexer, and a plurality of receiver modules that receives de-multiplexed light. The optical gain of the SOA is adjusted based on the electrical signals output from respective optical modules. When the receiver modules show the output thereof in a preset range, the bias current is kept unchanged, while, one receiver module shows the output out of the range, the bias current is incremented or decremented. When one receiver module shows the output out of the absolute maximum/minimum, the bias current is forced to the initial value.
US08290369B2
An optical access system capable of avoiding cutoffs or interruption in the periodically transmitted signals that occur during the ranging time is provided. A first method to avoid signal cutoffs is to stop periodic transmit signals at the transmitter during the ranging period, and transmit all the periodic transmit signals together when the ranging ends, and buffer the signals at the receiver to prepare for ranging. A second method is to fix definite periods ahead of time for performing ranging, then cluster the multiple periodic transmit signals together in sets at the transmitter and send them, and then disassemble those sets back into signals at the receiver. The transmitting and receiving is then controlled so that the transmit periods do not overlap with the ranging periods. In this way an optical access system is provided that can send and receive signals requiring periodic transmissions without interruption even during ranging operation.
US08290367B2
The OSS provides unique and automated provisioning, activation, fallout management and monitoring of SONET and WDM networks comprising control plane mesh and traditional SONET/WDM Rings/Chains. Resource discovery and dynamic provisioning provides for increased use of network bandwidth. It is possible both all control plane networks and mixed control plane and traditional networks. Network connections or the network topology may be accomplished in a hop-by-hop manner.
US08290366B2
A network component comprising at least one processor configured to implement a method comprising transmitting a request to compute a routing assignment, a wavelength assignment, or both for a signal in a wavelength switched optical network, wherein the request comprises a lightpath constraint and wherein the request is transmitted using a path computation element protocol. Also disclosed is a network comprising a first path computation element (PCE) and a path computation client (PCC) in communication with the PCE, wherein the PCC is configured to send a request to and receive a reply from the PCE using a PCE protocol, wherein the request comprises a lightpath constraint. Included is a method comprising sending a discovery advertisement to the at least one PCE that calculates a wavelength assignment, receiving a response comprising a PCE capability information from the PCE, wherein the request and the reply are communicated via a PCE protocol.
US08290358B1
Methods and apparatus for light-field imaging. Light-field camera designs are described that produce higher spatial resolution than conventional plenoptic camera designs, while trading-off the light-field's angular sampling density. This lower angular resolution may be compensated for by a light-field image processing method that inserts data synthesized by view interpolation of the measured light-field. In one embodiment, a light-field image processing method that performs three-view morphing may be used to interpolate the missing angular samples of radiance. The light-field camera designs may be implemented in hand-held light-field cameras that may capture a light-field with a single exposure. Some of the light-field camera designs are internal to the camera, while others are external to the camera. One light-field camera design includes a single, relatively large lens and an array of negative lenses that are placed in front of (external to) the main lens of a conventional camera.
US08290340B2
An apparatus and a method for quickly starting recording seamless-playable data are provided. At the end of recording a preceding record content, identification information of a clip information file for a subsequent record content to be recorded next is recorded in an attribute information storage file set for the preceding record content. More specifically, a clip information file for a subsequent chapter is reserved at the end of recording of a preceding chapter, and an identifier of the clip information file is recorded in the clip information file for the preceding record chapter. Through the prior reservation process of the clip information file, an updating process for updating the clip information file at the start of recording of the subsequent chapter becomes unnecessary. Data recording, such as a photographing operation of a video camera is thus quickly started.
US08290334B2
A system and method for automated editing of content is disclosed. The system includes a biasable editing engine. A user is provided with content. The user rates the content according to user preferences. The system receives the ratings implements the editor engine, which edits the content and which is biased in its decision making by user ratings.
US08290322B2
Various embodiments include large cores fibers that can propagate few modes or a single mode while introducing loss to higher order modes. Some of these fibers are holey fibers that comprising cladding features such as air-holes. Additional embodiments described herein include holey rods. The rods and fibers may be used in many optical systems including optical amplification systems, lasers, short pulse generators, Q-switched lasers, etc. and may be used for example for micromachining.
US08290318B2
A light trapping optical cover employing an optically transparent layer with a plurality of light deflecting elements. The transparent layer is configured for an unimpeded light passage through its body and has a broad light input surface and an opposing broad light output surface. The light deflecting elements deflect light incident into the transparent layer at a sufficiently high bend angle with respect to a surface normal and direct the deflected light toward a light harvesting device adjacent to the light output surface. The deflected light is retained by means of at least TIR in the system formed by the optical cover and the light harvesting device which allows for longer light propagation paths through the photoabsorptive layer of the device and for an improved light absorption. The optical cover may further employ a focusing array of light collectors being pairwise associated with the respective light deflecting elements.
US08290315B2
A temperature sensor array comprises an optical fiber (16) on which are a plurality of Bragg gratings (18) on respective spaced apart portions of the fiber. Each portion is in a housing (14) which freely houses the said portion substantially without axial strain on the fiber within the housing and which also isolates the grating from strain imposed on the fiber outside the housing. Thus substantially only changes in temperature affect the Bragg grating of that portion. The array may be used to detect and control the temperature of a tool (12) for forming a composite component amongst other uses.
US08290313B2
Embodiments include an apparatus, device, method, and computer program product. In an embodiment, a device includes a handheld writing device that includes a writing element, and a writing detector module operable to generate information indicative of a handwriting movement of the writing element. The device also includes a context detector module operable to generate information indicative of a content portion of a document proximate to the handwriting movement of the writing element.
US08290301B2
Radiation is received from a scene impinging on at least one focal plane. A first spectral band is sampled to obtain a first band mean signal level, and either a first band image frame is collected when the first band mean signal level is at or below a first threshold, or a first image frame is collected in a first sub-band when the first band mean signal level is above the first threshold. A second sub-band is sampled to obtain a second sub-band mean signal level and a second image frame is collected in the second sub-band when the second sub-band mean signal level is at or below a second threshold. An image to be displayed is generated by combining at least two collected frames.
US08290297B2
A method edits editing an input image to produce an output image by first partitioning pixels of the input image into sets of adjacent pixels. Then, for each set, a trellis of nodes connected by directed links is defined. Each node corresponds to one of the pixels in the set of pixels, and an action and location of the pixel in the output image. Costs are assigned to the nodes and the links. A least cost path through the trellis is determined, and pixels corresponding to the nodes on the least cost path are edited according to the action and location to form the output image.
US08290292B2
At least one approximation image is created of the image at one or multiple scales. Translation difference images are created by pixel-wise subtracting the values of an approximation image at scale s and the values of a translated version of the approximation image. A non-linear modification is applied to the values of the translation difference image (s) and at least one enhanced center difference image at a specific scale is computed by combining the modified translation difference images at that scale or a smaller scale with weights wi,,j. An enhanced image is computed by applying a reconstruction algorithm to the enhanced center difference images. The non-linear modification of the values of the translation difference images is steered by (a) characteristic (s) computed out of the approximation image (s) at least one scale.
US08290289B2
An image encoding method includes determining a corresponding point on a target image for encoding, which corresponds to each pixel on a reference image, based on the distance from a camera used for obtaining the reference image to an imaged object, and a positional relationship between cameras; computing a parallax vector from the position of the pixel to the corresponding point in the pixel space; computing a target predictive vector having the same starting point as the parallax vector and components obtained by rounding off the components of the parallax vector; computing a target reference vector having the same starting point as the parallax vector and the same size and direction as a differential vector between the target predictive vector and the parallax vector; and setting a predicted pixel value of a pixel on the target encoding image, which is indicated by the target predictive vector, to a value of a pixel on the reference image, which is indicated by the target reference vector.
US08290278B2
There is provided an image processing apparatus that specifies a position of a predetermined characteristic portion of a target face image.
US08290276B2
An image display device that includes an extraction component, a calculation component, an image processing component and a display component is provided. The extraction component extracts from photographic images a photographic image in which a face has been photographed. The calculation component calculates a position of an eye in the photographic image extracted by the extraction component. The image processing component performs image processing on the photographic image such that the position of the eye calculated by the calculation component will be at a predetermined position. The display component displays the photographic image which has been processed by the image processing component.
US08290274B2
A method is provided that includes capturing an input handwritten character with parameter representation for each stroke and applying a polygonal approximation thereto; assuming each polygonal line segment approximated to be vector that reaches an end point from a start point, and obtaining an angle between an axis that becomes a reference and each line segment as a polygonal line segment angle sequence; obtaining an exterior angle sequence of vertices of the line segments; making a sum of exterior angles of the same sign, where the same sign of plus or minus in the exterior angle sequence continues, to be a winding angle sequence; extracting a global feature according to each obtained sequence and a localized or quasi-localized feature in each curved portion divided corresponding to the winding angle sequence, hierarchically and divisionally; and performing character recognition by comparing the extracted result with a template of an object character.
US08290256B2
A mesh generation unit divides an object area into respective meshes and obtains position information, gradient information, and color information of each vertex, which forms the meshes. An encoding unit obtains the color of each of the meshes using the color information and gradient information of each vertex. The encoding unit obtains the difference between each obtained color, and a color in a region in the object area that corresponds to each of the meshes. The encoding unit determines whether the sum of obtained differences is not smaller than a threshold. When the sum is smaller than the threshold, the encoding unit encodes the position information, gradient information, and color information of each vertex. When the sum is not smaller than the threshold, the encoding unit subdivides each mesh into submeshes, and encodes color information at a position in the object area that corresponds to each vertex of the submesh.
US08290253B1
A method, system, and computer-readable storage medium for applying Gaussian Mixture Models (GMMs) to local image patches using an adaptive color lookup table. Per-channel color quantization may be performed to find representative colors for a local image patch. Each combination of the representative values corresponds to a representative color. The probabilities of the representative colors may be computed using a local GMM color model and stored to corresponding entries in an adaptive color lookup table. For every pixel in an image patch, the closest representative color may be found, and the corresponding probability may be retrieved from the lookup table and used for the pixel. The method may, for example, be applied to each local window in a method for automatically determining segmentation in a digital video image sequence to calculate the foreground probabilities for the pixels in a propagated classifier via a GMM.
US08290250B2
An image-based pattern recognizer and a method and apparatus for making such a pattern recognizer are disclosed. By employing positional coding, the meaning of any feature present in an image can be defined implicitly in space. The pattern recognizer can be a neural network including a plurality of stages of observers. The observers are configured to cooperate to identify the presence of features in the input image and to recognize a pattern in the input image based on the features. Each of the observers includes a plurality of neurons. The input image includes a plurality of units, and each of the observers is configured to generate a separate output set that includes zero or more coordinates of such units.
US08290241B2
In order to allow to easily specify inspection recipe with which defects desired to be detected can be detected efficiently, a defect inspection apparatus performs defect inspection of a substrate in accordance with a plurality of inspection recipes and produces defect information associated with position of defect in the substrate and attribute data of the defect for each of the inspection recipes and a defect review apparatus produces review result information specifying a kind of defect selected from defects contained in the defect information. An analyzing apparatus obtains defect information and review result information and totalizes the number of defects having attribute data similar to attribute data possessed in defects corresponding to kind of defects to be analyzed for each inspection recipe.
US08290240B2
A system, apparatus, method, and computer program product for evaluating an object disposed on an upper surface of an object holder. At least one first frame representing a captured portion of the object is acquired, while the object holder is positioned at each of multiple locations. At least one second frame representing a captured portion of at least one other surface of the object holder is acquired, while the object holder is positioned at each of the locations. At least one spatial characteristic associated with the captured portion of the object is determined based on at least one of the acquired frames. Values of multiple optical markers captured in each second frame are determined, where at least two of the optical markers have different characteristics. At least one of coordinates associated with the values and an orientation of the captured portion of the at least one other surface are determined.
US08290237B1
To deposit a negotiable instrument electronically, a digital image may be used. Systems and methods are described herein that facilitate the use of a digital camera to provide the digital image. A user may capture an image of a negotiable instrument to create a digital image. The digital image may be compressed and saved as a digital image file. The user may then transmit the digital image file to a financial institution, such as a bank, to deposit funds drawn from the account of the negotiable instrument into the user's account. A financial institution may receive digital image files created by a digital camera from account holders and process a deposit request using the digital image file.
US08290226B2
Disclosed is a method for determining and displaying at least one piece of information on a target volume, especially in a human body, the information being obtained from an image record. At least one embodiment of the method includes: a first and at least one second image record of a target zone encompassing the target volume are recorded, the first image record having a higher contrast regarding the boundaries of the target volume, and the first and the second image record being registered together; the target volume is segmented in the first image record; target volume image data.
US08290224B2
A method and a device are disclosed for imaging cyclically moving objects using a first and a second imaging method which differ at least with regard to the spatial resolution or the sensitivity. In at least one embodiment of the process, images of the object are continuously recorded by the first imaging method. Temporally different phases of a movement cycle of the object are extracted from the images recorded by the first imaging method. Images of the object are recorded by the second imaging method. The image data recorded in each case in a same, repeating phase of the of the movement cycle by the second imaging method are summed and temporally assigned to the different phases of the movement cycle.
US08290221B2
Provided is a method for polynomial reconstruction in a fuzzy vault system, which includes receiving a set of matching minutiae to select a minutiae combination to be used for the polynomial reconstruction; generating simultaneous equations using the selected minutiae combination; determining whether a root of the simultaneous equations exists; and reconstructing the polynomial using the selected minutiae combination when the root of the simultaneous equations exists. The high-speed processing polynomial reconstruction method may perform polynomial reconstruction in real time, without using a separate key of a user, and thus may be applicable to various types of fuzzy vault systems.
US08290215B2
Methods and apparatus for facilitating detection of a presence or an absence of at least one underground facility within a dig area. Data representing an aerial image of a geographic area including the dig area is electronically received, the data including geo-coding or geographical identification metadata associated with the aerial image. At least a portion of the aerial image is displayed on a display device, including at least one map symbol, street name, region, and/or landmark description superimposed upon or displayed separately from the geographic area. The dig area is delimited on the displayed image, via a user input device associated with the display device, so as to generate a marked-up digital image including a delimited dig area. Information relating to the marked-up digital image is electronically transmitted and/or electronically stored so as to facilitate the detection of the presence or the absence of the at least one underground facility within the dig area.
US08290213B2
While locating a license plate of a moving vehicle on consecutive images, motion detection is first performed on the consecutive images to detect a moving vehicle image, which is segmented using edge detection, and the segmented moving vehicle image is analyzed to retrieve characteristics for locating a license plate image and determining characters on the located license plate image. As a result, a precise location of the license plate is thus precisely located for further recognition no matter what weathers in which the consecutive images are recorded. The above-mentioned technique requires merely few calculations, is easily implemented, and may be applied on an intelligent digital video recording (DVR) system including many computer-vision functions.
US08290207B2
A solar power device includes a solar panel, a rotating assembly, an image sensor, a image recognition system, and a control system. The rotating assembly is connected to the solar panel. The image sensor is positioned on the solar panel to generate an image signal. The image recognition system is connected to the image sensors to transfer the image signal to a recognition signal. The control system is connected to the image recognition system and the rotating assembly. The control system receives the recognition signal and directs the rotating assembly to re-position the solar panel according to the recognition signal. A method for controlling the solar power device is also provided.
US08290203B1
A method is described that includes comparing a characteristic of an image to stored characteristics of spam images. The method also includes generating a signature of the present image. The method further includes comparing the signature of the present image to stored signatures of spam images. The method also includes determining the spam features corresponding to the stored signatures of spam images that match the signature of the present image.
US08290202B2
The present invention relates generally to steganography, digital watermarking and data hiding. In one embodiment a method is provided including: processing data representing content; analyzing the data to determine whether a plural-bit identifier is steganographically encoded therein, the plural-bit identifier encoded in the data through modifications to the data, the modifications steganographically hiding the presence of the plural-bit identifier; and upon detection of the plural-bit identifier, redundantly carrying out an action while attempting to conceal the action from one or more users of the content. Of course, other embodiments are described and claimed as well.
US08290190B2
A method for processing and controlling sound signals in a hearing aid is provided. The method comprises estimating a first (102) and a second (104) signal level of an electric input signal (101) based on a first (103) and a second (105) signal level estimator adapted for responding according to a first and a second speed respectively, where the second speed is lower than the first speed and where the estimated second signal level is subtracted from the estimated first signal level, thereby forming a third signal level (106). Subsequently a first and a second compressor gain control output are determined in a first (107) and second (109) compressor based on said third and second signal level respectively. Then the first and second compressor gain control outputs are summed and hereby a net gain control signal (111) is created. Finally the electric input signal is amplified in accordance with the net gain control signal and thereby creating an electric output signal (112). The invention also relates to a hearing aid operating according to said method.
US08290184B2
A MEMS microphone has a cover, a base and a MEMS chip. The cover has a contact voice receiving unit which is disposed on the base, and a space is formed between the cover and the base. The MEMS chip is disposed in the space and electrically connected to the base and the contact voice receiving unit. The MEMS microphone enhances the quality of voice transmission by reducing interferences from ambient noises.
US08290176B1
A novelty system for attaching to a vehicle featuring a first housing designed to resemble a front or a head of a mascot and a second housing designed to resemble a back portion or a tail of the mascot; means of attaching the housings to the front and rear of the vehicle, respectively; a speaker disposed in the first housing for emitting sounds such as animal sounds or fight songs; a motor disposed in the second housing for moving or rotating the second housing; and a remote control for controlling the first and second housings.
US08290169B1
An electrical signal derived from an audio source is passed through an amplifier and is then divided into two discrete signal paths. The signal traveling along the first path travels through a high pass filter and is then split so that a portion is delayed and a portion passes through a harmonics generator so that the harmonics are advanced ahead of the delayed portion from the high pass filter. The split circuit is then combined in a summing amplifier. The second portion of the signal is also delayed before it also travels to the mixer. The combined signal is passed through an amplifier and then fed into an output transducer. The use of a delay both on the input signal and the portion of the signal which passed through the high pass filter output just before the summing amplifier enables the harmonics to not be masked by the lower frequencies, making the effect more apparent.
US08290166B2
A system and method for sending encrypted messages to a distribution list that facilitates the sending of such messages only to individuals or other entities associated with the distribution list that will be able to read the message. In one embodiment, the method comprises the steps of: identifying a distribution list address in a message; determining one or more member addresses associated with the distribution list address; for each member address, determining if a public key for a member identified by the respective member address is available on the computing device; encrypting the message to each member identified by the one or more member addresses for which a public key for the respective member is available on the computing device; sending the encrypted message to the distribution list address if each of the one or more member addresses associated with the distribution list identifies a member for which a public key is available on the computing device; and sending the message to each of the one or more member addresses that identifies a member for which a public key is available on the computing device otherwise.
US08290162B2
Another feature provides an efficient encryption method that safeguards the security of encrypted symbols. Each plaintext symbol is encrypted by using a separate pseudorandomly selected translation table. Rather than pre-storing every possible permutation of symbols as translation tables, the translation tables may be efficiently generated on-the-fly based on a pseudorandom number and a symbol shuffling algorithm. A receiving device may similarly generate reverse translation tables on-the-fly to decrypt received encrypted symbols.
US08290161B2
A method of distributed cryptography for high consequence security systems which employs shared randomness between operating parties. Shared randomness is accomplished by sharing cryptographic keys stored in secure hardware tokens by potentially less secure software or general purpose computing units that perform distributed cryptography. The shared randomness is based on shared keys (at the tokens) and unique context. Shared random values are incorporated into the computation of partial results used in the distributed cryptographic calculation. The incorporation of shared randomness provides a hand-shake among the hardware tokens. When the operation is successful, a result is computed with assurance that the correct parties have taken part in forming the result. The hand-shake assures binding of operating parties and added system security.
US08290154B2
Methods and apparatuses for key generation, encryption and decryption in broadcast encryption. A public parameter and a primary key based on a first random number are generated. For each of leaf nodes in a binary tree, a right key set of the leaf node is calculated, the right key set including a right key of the leaf node and right keys of right brother nodes for all the nodes on a path from a root node to the leaf node. A left key set of the leaf node is calculated, the left key set including a left key of the leaf node and left keys of left brother nodes for all the nodes on the path. The sum of the second and third random numbers equals to the first random number. The second random number is different for different subscribers.
US08290150B2
The invention is directed to a system for securing an integrated circuit chip used in an electronic device by utilizing a circuit or other entity to produce physically unclonable functions (PUF) circuit to generate encryption keys, such as an RSA public or private key. A PUF circuit, according to its name and configuration, performs functions that are substantially difficult to be duplicated or cloned. This allows the invention to provide a unique and extremely secure system for authentication. In operation, the stored parameters can be used to more efficiently and quickly authenticate the device without the need to run the usual more burdensome encryption key generation processes without compromising the level of security in the device. Such a system can be used to substantially eliminate the time to produce encryption keys when a user needs to authenticate the device at power up or other access point.
US08290148B2
An encryption processing apparatus for performing common-key blockcipher processing, the encryption processing apparatus includes an encryption processing part that performs data transformation in which a round function is iterated for a plurality of rounds; and a key scheduling part that generates round keys used to execute the round function. The key scheduling part is configured to repeatedly apply an xs times multiplication over an extension field GF(2m), generated by an m-th order irreducible polynomial f(x) defined over GF(2), to an m-bit intermediate key generated by transformation of a secret key to generate a plurality of different round intermediate keys serving as data for generating a plurality of different round keys.
US08290147B2
Systems and methods efficiently process digests, hashes or other results by performing multiplicative functions in parallel with each other. In various embodiments, successive processing stages are provided, with each stage performing parallel multiplicative functions and also combining input terms to reduce the total number of terms that remain to be processed. By progressively combining the active terms into a smaller number of terms for subsequent processing, the time needed to process a result can be significantly reduced.
US08290145B2
In a method for the transition from a first masked representation of a value to be kept secret to a second masked representation of the value, according to a first aspect of the invention at least one previously calculated table with a plurality of entries is used, and the calculation is carried out depending on at least one veiling parameter, in order to prevent the value to be kept secret from being spied out. According to a second aspect of the invention, at least one comparison table is used, which, for each table index, provides the result of a comparison between a value dependent on the table index and a value dependent on at least one masking value. A computer program product and a device have corresponding features. The invention provides a technique for protecting the transition between masked representations of a value from being spied out, wherein the masked representations are based on different masking rules.
US08290140B2
Apparatus, methods, and machine-readable articles of manufacture enable a telephone system to distinguish between actual events and echoes. Events may include conferees' voice and DTMF commands. In selected embodiments, the system categorizes an event received on one channel as a real event if the energy of the event's waveform is greater than concurrent energy of every other channel of the same conference. Otherwise, the event is stored. When the system receives a new event of the same type on a channel of the same conference during a predetermined period, it compares the energies of the new and stored events. If the energy of the new event exceeds that of the stored event, the new event becomes the stored event, and the old stored event is ignored. At the end of the period, the stored event is categorized as a real event and forwarded to appropriate application code.
US08290136B2
A method comprising establishing, with a telecommunications management system, a first conference call comprising a first caller at a first telecommunications terminal, a second caller at a second telecommunications terminal, and a third caller at a third telecommunications terminal. Once the first conference call is established, the telecommunications management system appraises the first caller's contribution, the second caller's contribution, and the third caller's contribution to the first conference call. The telecommunications management system receives a request to set-up a second conference call and establishes the second conference call, wherein the telecommunications management system decides whether to include the first caller, the second caller, and the third caller in the second conference call based, at least in part, on the telecommunications management system's appraisal of the first caller's contribution, the second caller's contribution, and the third caller's contribution to the first conference call.
US08290131B2
A “customized” caller ID service platform is utilized within a telecommunications network (which may be the PSTN, an IP network, or any other network for supporting voice communication) to allow for the caller ID information transmitted to a called party to be tailored to the specific called party. A database within the platform is configured to store a listing of registered subscribers and a set of “pre-defined called numbers” associated with each subscriber. For each listed number, the subscriber provides the specific customized information (for example, an account number) that is to be transmitted to that specific called number as the caller ID information. A registered subscriber is able to gain access to the platform and modify the entries as need be.
US08290130B2
A caller authentication system that may enable a called party to be provided with identification information of a caller may be provided. The caller authentication system, including: a communication system to transmit, when a call request signal is received from a calling terminal of a caller, network information and a telephone number of the calling terminal to a certificate authority server, and to request identification of the caller, the network information and the telephone number being included in the call request signal, to transmit, when identification information of the caller is received from the certificate authority server in response to the identification request, the identification information to a called terminal of a called party, and to enable the identification information to be displayed on the called terminal.
US08290122B2
A method and device for estimating one or more transmission properties of a telecommunication transmission line. At least one signal is sent on the line, the at least one signal including at least two frequencies for which the absolute value of the line propagation constant times the line length is less than π, and a resulting signal is received. An estimate of at least one transmission line property is then determined by examining the relationship between the sent and resulting signal or signals. The process may be repeated, if necessary. The estimate determination may also be repeated one or more times, with each successive estimate preferably using for the determination only those frequencies for which, as previously estimated, the absolute value of the line propagation constant times the line length is less than π.
US08290119B2
For dental and facial imaging, a source of x-rays (14) or other penetrating radiation and a detector (20) are mounted opposite one another on a rotatable gantry (28), so that the head of the patient can be positioned between the source (14) and the detector (20), with the axis of rotation (36) of the gantry passing through the patient's head. The detector is longer in one direction than in the perpendicular direction, generally rectangular, and is rotatable between a position in which the long axis is transverse to the axis of rotation of the gantry and a position in which the long axis is generally parallel to the axis of rotation of the gantry. The length of the detector along the long axis is sufficient for fully detailed computed CT when the long axis is transverse, and for full-face CT when the long axis is parallel.
US08290117B2
A method is disclosed for scanning a moving examination object using a CT-System, with which data is captured during a circular movement of a transmitter/receiver pair through 360 degrees about the examination object, the data being assigned to the respective angular position. The 360 degrees are divided into n subsegments of equal size, where n is greater than 2, an even number and not divisible by 4. In at least one embodiment, the data assigned to the odd number subsegments forms a first data record and the data assigned to the even number subsegments forms a second data record. Differential information is determined between the first data record and the second data record. Motion information relating to the movement of the examination object is determined using the differential information.
US08290112B2
A boiling water nuclear reactor (BWR) multi-stage jet pump mixer assembly according to a non-limiting embodiment of the present invention may include at least one nozzle disposed above a first throat structure which is arranged within a second throat structure. The multi-stage jet pump mixer assembly is configured such that when a drive flow is discharged from the nozzle into the first throat structure, a first suction stage occurs in that a first entrained flow is drawn into the first entrainment entrance and forms a mixed flow. The mixed flow exiting the first throat structure then induces a second entrained flow into the second entrainment entrance during a second suction stage. By employing a multi-stage approach, jet pump efficiency may be improved.
US08290108B2
A method for controlling a modulation signal for modulating a phase locked loop. A scaling control signal for scaling the modulation signal is generated using the error signal of the phase locked loop. The scaling control signal is adjusted when the modulation signal and the phase of the modulation signal have the same sign.
US08290103B2
The present invention discloses a method for transmitting parallelization signals of uninterruptible power supplies, which firstly performs a serialization process on parallelization signals by a logic processing unit and then performs synchronous transmission of the parallelization signals of respective node units over a bus. The method for serial transmission of parallelization signals of uninterruptible power supplies according to the invention can be implemented with easy wiring and can achieve a strong anti-interference ability, ensure real time signal transmission over a guaranteed transmission distance and identify conveniently the failure of a parallelization line while satisfying fundamental transmission demands.
US08290102B2
A method is provided. The method comprises calibrating noise prediction parameters by adapting one or more biases, adapting one or more filter coefficients using the adapted one or more biases, and adapting one or more prediction error variances using the adapted one or more biases and the adapted one or more filter coefficients.
US08290085B2
A power management system and method for a wireless communication device generates an average desired transmit power signal based on at least one of a received signal strength indicator signal and a power control instruction signal from a base station. A power supply level adjustment signal is generated based on the data parameters of an outgoing data stream and at least one environmental information signal. A combination of the power supply level adjustment signal and the average desired transmit power or a gain control signal and an altered version of the power supply level adjustment signal is used to generate a variable power supply signal that is provided to an output amplifier block for sufficiently generating outgoing wireless device radio signals while reducing power loss in the output amplifier block.
US08290083B2
A system and method are provided for transmitting an unbiased communications training sequence. The method generates an unbiased training sequence in a quadrature modulation transmitter. The unbiased training sequence represents a uniform accumulated power evenly distributed in the complex plane. As a result, training information in the time domain is sent via an in-phase (I) modulation path having an accumulated power. Training information in the time domain is sent via a quadrature (Q) modulation path having an accumulated power equal to the I modulation path power. Also provided are system and method for calculating an unbiased channel estimate from a received unbiased training sequence.
US08290082B2
An apparatus and method for signal transmission-reception in a multi-user multiple transmit and multiple receive antenna radio communication system are provided. An aspect of the present invention is to enhance reception performance and increase the communication channel throughput. This is achieved by applying a new sequence of operations including a vector perturbation procedure along with an efficient perturbation vector searching technique based on single-dimensional optimization of a decision function. In addition, the method ensures simple implementation of a subscriber station receiver. The SS receiver is implemented as independent channels for processing signals of different receive antennas. The receiver can be implemented even if each subscriber station has only one receive antenna. Accordingly, the method proves highly efficient in virtually any propagation environment.
US08290075B2
Methods and Systems for tracking symbol timing of an OFDM signal are disclosed. In one embodiment, a wireless receiver includes signal tracking and timing logic to facilitate the timing of a demodulation operation such that the demodulation operation occurs on the proper symbol boundary, particularly when the OFDM signal has multipath components and the second component has greater power than the first.
US08290073B2
Some demonstrative embodiments include devices, systems and/or methods of communicating data over wireless communication symbols with check-code. For example, a wireless communication unit may transmit a sequence of wireless communication symbols representing transmitted data bits, wherein a symbol of the symbols includes at least one data block, which includes a set of data bits and a set of repetition bits, the set of data bits including a first number of the transmitted data bits, and the set of repetition bits including a second number of bits, which are identical to at least a subset of the set of data bits, wherein the symbol includes at least one plurality of check-code bits corresponding to the at least one data block, respectively, and wherein the first and second numbers are based on a number of the transmitted data bits, a symbol bit-size of the symbol, at least one value related to at least one of a data-block bit-size of the data block and a number of the plurality of check-code bits. Other embodiments are described and claimed.
US08290062B1
A computer implemented method of manipulating and displaying an MPEG stream is described. In one embodiment of the invention, a computer implemented method comprises defining a spatial location across a series of pictures of an MPEG stream; and for each picture of the series of pictures in the MPEG stream, partially decoding the picture to determine an area of the picture falling within the spatial location.
US08290054B2
A method of compressing video data having at least one frame having at least one block and each block having an array of pixels is provided. The method transforms the pixels of each block into coefficients and creates an optimal transmission order of the coefficients. The method also optimizes the speed of processing compressed video data by partitioning the data bitstream and coding each partition independently. The method also predicts fractional pixel motion by selecting an interpolation method for each given plurality or block of pixels depending upon at least one metric related to each given block and varies the method from block to block. The method also enhances error recovery for a current frame using a frame prior to the frame immediately before the current frame as the only reference frame for lessening quality loss during data transmission. Enhanced motion vector coding is also provided.
US08290039B2
Provided are a filtering method and apparatus for removing blocking artifacts and ringing noise. The filtering method includes transforming video data on a block-by-block basis, and detecting the presence of an edge region in the video data by checking the distribution of values obtained by the transformation. Accordingly, it is possible to completely remove blocking artifacts and/or ringing noise by more effectively detecting the presence of an edge region in video data.
US08290034B2
Methods, medium, and handheld, wireless devices which compress, enhance, encode, transmit, decompress and display digital video images in real time. Real time wireless videoconferences connect multiple handheld video devices. Real time compression is achieved by sub-sampling each frame of a video signal, filtering the pixel values, and encoding. Real time transmission is achieved due to high levels of effective compression. Real time decompression is achieved by decoding and decompressing the encoded data to display high quality images. A receiver can alter various setting including but not limited to the format for the compression, image size, frame rate, brightness and contrast. A zoom control can be used select a portion of interest of video being transmitted or being played back.
US08290031B1
For use in or as part of a communications system benefiting from compensation for one or more non-idealities of components in the communications system, aspects of the invention are directed to providing compensation for such non-idealities. An example method which is applicable in a system that receives a pilot signal having an expected amplitude, includes determining a received amplitude for the received pilot signal using at least one of the components of the communications system, and using feedback indicative of a comparison of the determined received amplitude and the expected amplitude, compensating for a non-ideality of the component.
US08290030B2
A micro-controller to perform the FSK (HART) modem functions as well as communications and control functions in an isolated channel implementation is described. In one embodiment, the micro-controller comprises: a processor, an analog-to-digital converter configured to transform received analog signals into digital values at a predetermined digital sample rate; and a memory unit containing a set of computer-executable instructions that, when executed on the processor, provide a built-in FSK bi-directional modem function that converts the received digital values into binary signals. The FSK (HART) demodulation function is performed by the micro-controller with the built-in FSK modem function in three sequential phases implemented in computer code: (1) zero crossing and amplitude detection; (2) bit stream and timing generation, and (3) character generation and bit synchronization.
US08290026B2
There is provided a digital repeater module and method for relaying digital data. The digital repeater module comprises a data reception unit configured to receive digital data from several broadcast devices concurrently, a data transmission unit configured to transmit digital data using a multiple transmission protocols concurrently, and a routing application. The routing application can receive digital data through the data reception unit, identify available data paths for relaying the digital data to desired destinations, and determine transmission metrics for each of the available data paths for relaying the digital data to the desired destinations. The routing application can also select data paths for transmission based on the determined transmission metrics, and transmit the digital data using the selected data paths through the data transmission unit. There is also provided a method for resolving assignment of limited broadcast frequencies using the digital repeater module.
US08290012B2
A method and structure for producing lasers having good optical wavefront characteristics, such as are needed for optical storage includes providing a laser wherein an output beam emerging from the laser front facet is essentially unobstructed by the edges of the semiconductor chip in order to prevent detrimental beam distortions. The semiconductor laser structure is epitaxially grown on a substrate with at least a lower cladding layer, an active layer, an upper cladding layer, and a contact layer. Dry etching through a lithographically defined mask produces a laser mesa of length lc and width bm. Another sequence of lithography and etching is used to form a ridge structure with width w on top of the mesa. The etching step also forming mirrors, or facets, on the ends of the laser waveguide structures. The length ls and width bs of the chip can be selected as convenient values equal to or longer than the waveguide length lc and mesa width bm, respectively. The waveguide length and width are selected so that for a given defect density D, the yield YD is larger than 50%.
US08290010B2
A surface plasmon-generating apparatus includes an active layer including an n-type region formed on one side and a p-type region formed on the other side, the n-type region and the p-type region being in contact with each other to form a pn junction therebetween; a first barrier layer in contact with a first surface of the active layer; a second barrier layer in contact with a second surface of the active layer, the second surface being opposite the first surface; and a metal body disposed above the pn junction of the active layer with the second barrier layer and an insulating layer therebetween.
US08289996B2
A method of reducing overhead for datagrams that are transmitted to or received from a serial link that reduces overhead to no more than four bytes. The datagram includes at least a Protocol Data Unit (PDU) field, a Start-of-PDU Header (SPH) field, and a SPH Control (SCH) field. The SPH and SCH fields consist of two bytes. The datagram may additionally include End-of-PDU Header (EPH) and EPH Control (ECH) fields. A method may also involve substitution of flags for subsequent headers that are identical to previous headers.
US08289993B2
A system for generating and sending a Logical Node identification signal as part of a data stream is disclosed. The system also includes subscriber stations capable of receiving and extracting Logical Node identification information from a data stream. The subscriber stations create new messages including the Logical Node identification signal and send the message to the transmission network system control, such that switching of data streams to an appropriate channel over the information transmission network is done consistent with the network topology.
US08289991B2
A network (60) within a residence or other building, including both wired (5) and non-wired segments (53). The wired segments are based on new or existing wires (5a, 5b, 5c, 5d, 5e) in the building, wherein access to the wires is provided by means of outlets (61a, 61d), such as a telephone system, electrical power distribution system, or cable television wiring system. The non-wired segments are based on communication using propagated waves such as radio, sound, or light (e.g. infrared). The wired and non-wired segments interface in the outlet, using a module (50) that serves as mediator between the segments. The module can be integrated into the outlet, partially housed in the outlet, or attached externally to the outlet. Such a network allows for integrated communication of data units (24b) connected by wires and data units (24a, 24d) connected without wires.
US08289988B2
The present invention provides wireless communication methods utilizing a single antenna with multiple channels and the devices thereof. The method includes providing a plurality of communication channels within the single antenna. The plurality of communication channels may include a probe channel and a data channel. The single antenna may selectively switch between the probe channel and the data channel based on a probe signal transmitted in the probe channel so as to facilitate data transmission.
US08289987B2
A wireless communication system includes first and second wireless terminals capable of performing transmission by at least one of a first transmission scheme and a second transmission scheme. The first wireless terminal performs transmission of a first frame to the second wireless terminal by using the second transmission scheme. The second wireless terminal communicates with the first wireless terminal to notify the first wireless terminal of information associated with a status of the reception of the first frame transmitted from the first wireless terminal by using the first transmission scheme.
US08289984B2
In various embodiments, the present invention provides virtual disk formatting by intermediate devices including: (1) a storage shelf router and the storage shelf in which the storage-shelf is included, to external computing entities, such as disk-array controllers and host computers; (2) an I/O controller; and (3) a storage-bridge device. The virtual-formatting methods of the present invention are based on allocation units, each allocation unit comprising a consecutive sequence of logical blocks and an additional pad region that together map to, and exactly align with, a corresponding consecutive sequence of device blocks.
US08289982B2
The present invention provides an efficient system and method for routing information through a dynamic network. The system includes at least one ingress point and one egress point. The ingress and egress point cooperate to form a virtual circuit for routing packets to destination subnets directly reachable by the egress point. The egress point automatically discovers which subnets are directly accessible via its local ports and summarizes this information for the ingress point. The ingress point receives this information, compiles it into a routing table, and verifies that those subnets are best accessed by the egress point. Verification is accomplished by sending probe packets to select addresses on the subnet. Additionally, the egress point may continue to monitor the local topology and incrementally update the information to the ingress to allow the ingress to adjust its compiled routing table.
US08289981B1
One embodiment relates to a network gateway apparatus configured for high-performance network content processing. The apparatus includes data storage configured to store computer-readable code and data, and a processor configured to execute computer-readable code and to access said data storage. Computer-readable code implements a plurality of packet processors, each packet processor being configured with different processing logic. Computer-readable code further implements a packet handler which is configured to send incoming packets in parallel to the plurality of packet processors. Another embodiment relates to a method for high-performance network content processing. Other embodiments, aspects and features are also disclosed.
US08289980B2
A method and IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) gateway for establishing a unicast media session between a media receiver and a media source in an IMS network via a Network Address Translation (NAT) function acting on behalf of the media receiver. A media source controller in the IMS sends a Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) INVITE message to the media receiver to identify the media source. The media receiver obtains NAT bindings for the unicast media session, and the session is established between the media receiver and the media source.
US08289973B2
System and method for providing a layer 2 switch in the access network that switches based upon one or more carrier tags identifying customer traffic. Customer traffic conforming to any variety of different layer 1 or layer 2 protocols may be encapsulated and identified according to carrier tag values. The layer 2 switch may determine how to handle the traffic by interpreting and manipulating the carrier tag values. The layer 2 switch may be capable of switching TDM input traffic to either TDM or packet output traffic, and switching packetized input traffic to either TDM or packet output traffic. Handling classification values may also be processed by the layer 2 switch to affect prioritization of handling of encapsulated traffic.
US08289968B1
In general, techniques are described for performing distributed network address translation (NAT) with a network device. The network device includes an interface card and a control unit. The interface card receives a packet including a source address. The control unit includes NAT modules. each of which stores a local pool of unallocated NAT resources that have not yet been allocated for use in performing network address translation. The NAT resources each include a network address and a network port number. One of the NAT modules receives the packet, determines whether any of the NAT resources from the local pool of NAT resources are available, in response to the determination that none of the NAT resources from the local pool of NAT resources are available, requests additional NAT resources, and performs NAT to obscure the source address of the packet using one of the additional NAT resources to generate a modified packet. The interface card forwards the modified packet.
US08289965B2
A method for establishing a communications session includes receiving a request to initiate a communications session. The request is associated with an end-user and the end-user is associated with at least two identifiers. The method also includes selecting one of the at least two identifiers in response to performance information associated with the selected one of the at least two identifiers. The method also includes establishing a communications session with the end-user in response to selecting the one of the at least two identifiers.
US08289963B2
Process and system for calculating distances between wireless nodes. The process includes, in order to determine the RTT between a node to be positioned and a reference node: providing a time-stamping software layer above the physical layer, and using it to assign and register timestamps to the inputs and outputs of data frames received and to be sent by the node to be positioned; processing, by means of a link software layer, the data frames received and to be sent by the latter; and providing a binding software layer, above said link software layer, and using it to access the timestamps registered and the data frames received and to be sent, and binding them to one another. The system includes a wireless node to be positioned configured to implement the process proposed by the process.
US08289961B2
Methods and apparatus for a network element to handle LSID collisions to prevent different LSAs associated with different routes from sharing the same LSID. According to one embodiment, responsive to determining that a tentative LSID that is generated for a first route that is being added collides with an LSID that is assigned to an LSA for a second route, and that one of the first and second routes is a host route, the host route is suppressed. If the first route is the host route, suppressing includes not originating an LSA for the first route. If the second route is the host route, suppressing includes purging the LSA for the second route and not originating an LSA for the second route. Although the host route is suppressed, network reachability of the range subsuming the host route is provided through the route that is not the host route.
US08289959B2
In a system and a method for real time transmission between modules that are serially connected to one another, each module embeds its useful data in a data packet received by a preconnected module, which has a data packet number, if a comparison value formed as a function of the data packet number agrees with an identification number (frameID) that is provided in the module.
US08289955B2
A robot control system has a connection module for a data network and includes a filter module configured to read data out of a data flow of a data network. The filter module identifies real-time data in the data network and extracts the real-time data as required. In addition, a method for directing data traffic in real time between a data system based on real-time and a network includes the steps of monitoring a data flow in the network for defined data using a filter module in the data system, extracting the defined data from the network, identifying real-time data in the defined data using an identification characteristic, and relaying the real-time data to a first receiving module.
US08289943B2
A signal encoding method and device and a method for encoding a joint feedback signal are provided. The signal encoding method includes the following steps. When two carriers are configured with multiple-input and multiple-output (MIMO), Hybrid Automatic Repeat Request-Acknowledgement (HARQ-ACK) signals of the two carriers are combined into a joint feedback signal. The joint feedback signal is mapped into a codeword according to a predetermined mapping relationship between signals and codewords. Therefore, through the method for combining and encoding feedback signals of two carriers for transmission on a code channel in a dual cell (DC)-MIMO mode, bit error ratio (BER) and detection error cost are decreased, power overhead is saved, and a cubic metric (CM) value of the system is not affected, thereby enhancing the performance of the system.
US08289939B2
An exemplary access station for wireless communications includes: a wireless input/output unit that is configured to establish multiple access points; and signal transmission/reception coordination logic that is capable of ascertaining that an access point of the multiple access points is receiving a signal and that is adapted to restrain at least one other access point of the multiple access points from transmitting another signal responsive to the ascertaining that the access point is receiving the signal. An exemplary method includes: monitoring multiple respective indicators acquired from multiple respective baseband units; detecting whether at least one respective indicator of the multiple respective indicators is affirmatively indicating that a signal is being received; and if so, providing at least one instruction to at least two medium access controllers of multiple respective medium access controllers, the at least one instruction restraining the at least two medium access controllers from causing a transmission.
US08289935B2
From the network perspective, an uplink resource allocation (PDCCH) is sent that grants an uplink resource to a plurality of user equipments UEs, and the allocation has an indication of a cyclic shift CS for each of the plurality of UEs. The granted uplink resource is mapped to a downlink resource (PHICH) in dependence on the indicated CS for each of the plurality of UEs. The mapping is such that for a predetermined number of UEs being allocated a same uplink resource in a single MU-MIMO uplink resource allocation grant, each pair of said predetermined number of UEs which map to an adjacent downlink resource exhibit an optimized CS relative to one another. The network sends to each of the respective plurality of UEs on the respective mapped downlink resource an indication (ACK/NACK) about data received (on a PUSCH).
US08289931B2
A disclosed transmitting device includes a random access channel generating unit configured to generate a random access channel including a preamble that includes at least a part of control information; and a transmission control unit configured to allocate a continuous frequency band or a discontinuous comb-like frequency band set to a user and to transmit the random access channel in a system that flexibly supports multiple bandwidths.
US08289930B2
A wireless communication terminal, a wireless communication terminal communication control method, and wireless communication system for efficiently acquiring a communication system when a call occurs even when the terminal is judged out of service area. When a communication system selecting section (185) receives a request of a acquisition instruction function executing section (186) to acquire a communication system due to an out-of-service-area call, the communication system selecting section (185) allows a protocol executing section (EVDO protocol executing section (183) or a “1x” protocol executing section (184)) to try acquire of one of a communication systems in response to the request until acquisition of a communication system succeeds according to predetermined procedures. If receiving another acquisition instruction during the acquire, the communication system selecting section (185) allows the protocol executing section to try to acquire the next communication system of the communication system which the protocol executing section has lastly failed to acquire a communication system in the previous acquire processing.
US08289926B2
A method of setting radio access capability for a mobile device capable of a plurality of radio access technologies includes utilizing a first one of the radio access technologies to send subscribing information of the mobile device to a network, receiving a reject message corresponding to the subscribing information from the network, selecting a second radio access technology from the plurality of radio access technologies, and sending the subscribing information according to the second radio access technology.
US08289925B2
An apparatus includes an analyzer configured to collect measurements and statistics from a cell of a plurality of cells, a key generator configured to generate a key indicator based on the measurements and statistics collected from the cell against predetermined conditions or thresholds to identify at least one other cell failing to meet the predetermined conditions or thresholds, and a forbidden neighbor cell list generator configured to automatically generate a forbidden neighbor cell list identifying the at least one other cell failing to meet the predetermined conditions or thresholds and notifying the at least one other cell.
US08289923B2
An apparatus and method for reduction of a handover interruption time using an estimated handover time negotiation in a broadband wireless communication system are provided. A method for supporting a handover of a mobile station in a serving base station includes receiving a handover pre-notification response message including a residual estimated handover time from a target base station, determining a current residual estimated handover time using the residual estimated handover time, and exchanging the determined residual estimated handover time with the target base station.
US08289910B2
An improved device for receiving and transmitting mobile telephony signals comprises at least 4 channels. Each of the at least 4 channels (K1, K2, K3, K4) can be controlled with a transmission signal, that is different from the other channels, which can be generated with a separate channel module (KM1, KM2, KM3, KM4) from various data streams. A controller device is provided for, via which several or all of the power amplifiers, which are connected in several or all channels (K; K1, K2, K3, K4), can be operated in-phase or phase-locked with each other, in such a way that the transmission signals (TX) amplified in the channels concerned (K; K1, K2, K3, K4) can be synchronized and interconnected. As a result, a transmission signal can be radiated with a higher transmission power.
US08289907B2
Communicating between a plurality of nodes includes scanning a set of frequencies to determine spectrum awareness data for one or more frequencies; determining a maximum transmit power for one or more of the frequencies based at least in part on the spectrum awareness data for the frequencies; determining one or more channels, each channel occupying at least a portion of the set of frequencies; and selecting one or more of the one or more channels as a bearer.
US08289905B2
A mobile communications system includes a control station that identifies a base station zone serving as a communications area of a base station and performs position registration of first mobile stations which belongs to the base station; and a relay terminal station that relays radio communications between the base station and a second mobile station, the second mobile station being located outside the base station zone and inside a relay terminal zone. Further, the second mobile station sends a position registration request signal to the base station via the relay terminal station; the base station receives the position registration request signal and transfers the received position registration request signal to the control station; and, after completing the position registration, the control station sends a position registration acknowledgement signal to the second mobile station via the base station and the relay terminal station.
US08289901B2
Techniques are provided to determine channel assignments for wireless access point (AP) devices in a wireless local area network (WLAN). From each of a plurality of AP devices operating at least one of a plurality of channels in the WLAN, wireless activity data is received that represents activity in each channel associated with signals of devices operating in the WLAN and associated with signals and energy from devices that are not operating in the WLAN as detected by the AP devices by receiving radio frequency energy in each of the plurality of channels. During a channel plan evaluation session, the wireless activity data is evaluated for multiple ones of the plurality of access point devices to determine whether the channel on which an access point device operates should be changed such that a decision to change the channel for at least one access point is limited to a localized region of the wireless network and does not necessarily affect a channel change decision for access points outside of the localized region of the wireless network. The channel on which the at least one access point device operates is changed or assigned based on the evaluation. In one form, the wireless activity data is a single metric that is derived from multiple pieces of data, each representing a different component of wireless activity determined by an AP device to be occurring in a channel.
US08289898B2
Systems and methods for an integrated antenna and satellite dish. Exemplary embodiments include an apparatus, including a satellite dish, a wireless antenna coupled to the satellite dish and a coupling box communicatively coupled to the satellite dish and the wireless antenna. Additional exemplary embodiments include a content communication method, including receiving a satellite signal, receiving a first wireless signal, performing coupling box processing on the satellite signal and the wireless signal, transmitting the satellite signal and the wireless signal to a set top box and performing set top box processing on the satellite signal and wireless signal. Further exemplary embodiments include a content communication system, including a satellite dish for receiving content from a satellite, a wireless antenna for receiving content from a wireless network and a coupling box for processing the content from the satellite and the content from the wireless network.
US08289897B2
A method and apparatus for processing Open state is provided, the method comprising receiving a Control Channel and a Forward Traffic Channel, requesting a MultipleInputMultipleOutput(MIMO) mode on the Forward Traffic Channel by sending a MIMORequest message, monitoring overhead messages and determining if the access terminal receives a ConnectionClose messages.
US08289894B2
A method for inter relay interference coordination (IRIC) by a first relay node in a wireless communications system is described. A second relay node is communicated with over a relay interface. A first set of user equipment (UE) communication settings is received over the relay interface that correspond to the second relay node. A second set of UE communication settings is determined that correspond to the first relay node. The second set of UE communication settings are based on the first set of UE communication settings.
US08289884B1
A method and system for identifying unknown illicit networks uses node data, link data, and network data in a recursive analysis that computes node probabilities by combining patterns based on nodes, links and the topology of the network structure present simultaneously in the data. An iterative balancing algorithm is used to make the probability values self-consistent.
US08289877B2
There is disclosed a method, and a corresponding apparatus, for maintaining the settings of a user equipment, comprising: monitoring at least one stored setting in the terminal; responsive to a change in said at least one stored setting notifying a controller; and responsive to said notification selectively resetting said at least one stored setting.
US08289875B2
The present invention proposes a proportional fairness scheduler used in a base station, which is applicable to a high mobility environment, the scheduler comprising: a correction factor estimator which, for each user equipment in a serving cell of the base station, estimates a correction factor for an instantaneous transmission rate for a next frame according to a statistical result on changes in a channel quality in a current frame; a metric calculator which, for each user equipment in the serving cell of the base station, calculates a metric based on the instantaneous transmission rate for the user equipment, the estimated correction factor and a history throughput recorded for the user equipment; and a transmission opportunity granter which grants a transmission opportunity in the next frame to a user equipment having the optimal metric out of all the user equipments. Also, the present invention proposes a proportional fairness is scheduling method used in a base station.
US08289864B2
Based on application information received from a Deep Packet Inspection (DPI) device, a Radio Network Controller (RNC) or similar device may select a dormancy timer value to optimize the use of network resources. In particular, the RNC may set an additional dormancy timer based on a default value or a rough determination of the application by examining port numbers. After the DPI device has received a sufficient number of packets to identify the underlying application, the DPI device may then propagate the application information to the RNC. Based on this application information, the RNC may determine the most efficient dormancy timer and modify the value of the default timer based on this determination.
US08289860B2
An application monitor apparatus is provided that enables feedback to be sent to a transmitting terminal without relay processing of application data in the application layer. A packet transmission decision unit outputs to an application monitor unit and a packet transmitting unit only packets for which transmission is authorized by both the application monitor unit and the packet transmitting unit. When monitoring processing of the application monitor unit is slower than the rate of receiving packets at a packet receiving unit, the packet transmission decision unit sends feedback to the packet receiving unit to delay the transmission of packets.
US08289859B2
Link delay is determined in a network comprising a plurality of nodes by identifying pairs of nodes associated with a given link, and, for each of the identified pairs, setting up a virtually-concatenated group (VCG) between the nodes of that pair. The VCGs are utilized to make delay measurements, and the delay measurements are processed to determine delay of the given link. In an illustrative embodiment, the VCGs comprise two-member VCGs with the members being routed on opposite sides of a logical ring. For a given one of these two-member VCGs, a differential delay measurement is made at a particular one of the associated nodes by comparing frame indicator fields for concurrently arriving frames. A system of equations is generated based on the differential delay measurements made utilizing the VCGs, and the system of equations is solved to obtain information utilizable to determine delay of the given link.
US08289857B2
The invention concerns the technical field of a so-called Path MTU (Maximum Transmission Unit) Discovery process between two computing nodes over packet switched networks. On the path between two hosts (H1, H2, H3) in the network may exist various hops, e.g. routers (R1, R2), a packet needs to pass. Each link between two hops has its own MTU which may differ on each link. Some path MTU discovery algorithms are based on sending probe packets with the DF (don't fragment) bit set in the IP header. However, security devices, e.g. firewalls, often block ICMP messages, including the ICMP error messages that are needed for these path MTU discovery algorithms to work.In order to deal with connections, on which ICMP messages are blocked within the network nodes, the invention relies on acknowledgements of probe packets with MTU sizes of common network technology based MTU values sent back by the destination host. In addition, these common values increased by one byte are sent as well, to identify that the effective path MTU is a common MTU or in between of two common MTUs.
US08289850B2
An interconnect bandwidth throttler is disclosed. The interconnect bandwidth throttler turns off the interconnect, based on whether a maximum number of transactions has taken place within a predetermined throttle window. Both the maximum number of transactions and the throttle window are adjustable. Characteristics such as performance, thermal considerations, and average power are adjustable using the interconnect bandwidth throttler.
US08289843B2
A method and system for recovering from service failure, and the method includes: sending, by a failure detecting node of a cross-domain connection service, a CALL_ID (Call Identifier) that identifies the cross-domain connection service and information on a disabled link in the cross-domain connection service to a first node of the cross-domain connection service, and performing, by the first node of the cross-domain connection service, an end-to-end connection recovery on a corresponding cross-domain connection service according to the CALL_ID and the information on the disabled link. According to the invention the end-to-end connection recovery of the cross-domain connection service can be implemented and the viability of the cross-domain connection service can be improved.
US08289841B2
First and second gateway devices perform TDM conversion on data from multiple packets supplied from the packet networks to generate TDM signals. A TDM exchange unit switches to the first gateway device from the second gateway device to supply the TDM network with only the TDM signal generated by the first gateway device. When the TDM exchange unit switches to the first gateway device from the second gateway device, a jitter buffer controller of the second gateway device notifies the first gateway device of the packet read order determined by the jitter buffer controller of the second gateway device, and the first gateway device determines a packet read order as the packet read order determined by the jitter buffer controller of the second gateway device.
US08289840B2
Communication network including a source and a switch for receiving and forwarding data packets originating from the source, wherein the network includes at least two mutually different routing paths between the source and the switch, wherein the switch includes at least two incoming ports for receiving the data packets originating from the source, wherein the switch is arranged to discard for a period of time any data packet originating from the source at the first one of the at least two incoming ports upon receiving a data packet originating from the source at the second one of the at least two incoming ports after receiving a data packet originating from the source at the first one of the at least two incoming ports.
US08289831B2
An optical head includes a blue-violet laser light source for emitting a blue-violet laser beam, a mirror with a diffraction grating for transmitting and reflecting the blue-violet laser beam at a predetermined ratio, and a front monitor sensor for receiving transmitted light or reflected light from the mirror with a diffraction grating and creating an APC signal for controlling an output of the blue-violet laser light source. The mirror with a diffraction grating includes a first surface which the blue-violet laser beam enters, and a second surface facing the first surface. The first surface and the second surface are mutually parallel. A reflecting coat for transmitting and reflecting the blue-violet laser beam at a predetermined ratio is formed on the first surface, and a diffraction grating is formed on the second surface.
US08289829B2
An information recording medium according to the present invention includes a track on which a data sequence including a plurality of recording marks and a plurality of spaces provided between the plurality of recording marks is recordable; and a recording condition recording area in which a recording condition for recording the data sequence on the track is recordable. Where a recording mark which is included in the data sequence and is to be formed on the track based on the recording condition is a first recording mark, when a length of the first recording mark is longer than a prescribed length, the recording condition is classified using a combination of the length of the first recording mark and a length of a first space located adjacently previous or subsequent to the first recording mark, and when the length of the first recording mark is equal to or shorter than the prescribed length, the recording condition is classified using a combination of the length of the first recording mark, the length of the first space, and a length of a second space not located adjacent to the first space and located adjacent to the first recoding mark.
US08289824B2
An optical pickup apparatus comprises a laser beam source to generate laser beam, and a laser driving circuit to drive the laser beam source. The laser driving circuit is connected to a flexible substrate and arranged in a groove or hole provided in the vicinity of that portion of an optical pickup housing, to which the laser beam source is fixed. The laser driving circuit is connected through a heat conduction member to an upper cover among upper and lower covers, the upper cover being close to the laser driving circuit. Thereby, heat generated from the laser driving circuit is conducted through the heat conduction member to the upper cover to be transferred outside the optical pickup apparatus while being scattered in an inplane direction of the upper cover.
US08289823B2
The present invention relates to a recording/reproducing method, a recording/reproducing apparatus and a recording medium. In the conventional art, there is no method of distinguishing a program recorded on an RE layer by an application on a ROM layer, from a program recorded on the RE layer by a user, on a hybrid disc. The present invention solves a problem as described above by separating a playlist for recording performed by the application on the ROM layer, from a playlist for recording performed by the user, and retaining information indicating a subject which has performed the recording.
US08289814B2
A timepiece with LED lights uses a simple light-medium body with a very rough finish to allow light from LED(s) to pass though input-end(s) of the light-medium body and travel within the body and obtain a very even brightness on all surfaces of the light medium that are seen by a viewer. Combined with a milky/frosted front sheet overlay, the light-medium surface can get perfect area illumination effects. The movement for the time display can include analog indicators with a guilt-in light-medium on the top cover to achieve a super slim LED illumination for the time piece. For night light application, the sealed-unit may consist of prong-means and an LED related circuit sealed within a safety standard plastic material and assembled with the night light body to save a lot of cost enable use of all kinds of materials. The invention may also be adapted to an LCD display timepiece.
US08289794B2
An integrated circuit includes a global I/O line (GIO) for transmitting read data and write data between a peripheral region and a core region when a read/write operation is activated, and a test circuit for transmitting/receiving test data through the global I/O line to test the integrated circuit, when a test operation is activated.
US08289787B2
A semiconductor memory device, including a temperature detector configured to output a temperature detection signal in response to a temperature detected in a core region which includes a plurality of memory cells, and a programming voltage generator configured to generate a programming voltage in response to the temperature detection signal and output a generated programming voltage to the core region.
US08289784B2
Systems and methods to set a voltage value associated with a memory controller coupled to a memory device are disclosed. A particular method includes comparing test data of a test path to functional data of a functional path. The functional data may be generated based on device data received at a memory controller from a memory device. The test data may be affected by a voltage value applied to a resistor arrangement in electronic communication with the test path. The voltage value may be applied to the resistor arrangement based on the comparison.
US08289769B2
A nonvolatile memory device has memory cells coupled to bit lines and word lines and page buffers each coupled to one or more of the bit lines. Program and verification operations are performed on a first logical page from among first and second logical pages included in memory cells selected for a program operation. Data are loaded which will be programmed into the second logical page into first to third latches of a selected page buffer, coupled to the selected memory cells, from among the page buffers. A data setting operation is performed. The second logical page is programmed so that a distribution of threshold voltages of the selected memory cells has one of first to fourth threshold voltage distributions according to states of the data of the first to third latches and performing verification operations for the first to fourth threshold voltage distributions.
US08289768B2
Various embodiments of the present invention provide for extended life operation of multi-bit memory cells. As an example, some embodiments of the present invention provide electronic systems that include a plurality of multi-bit memory cells, an encoding circuit and a decoding circuit. Each of the plurality of multi-bit memory cells is operable to hold at least two bits. The encoding circuit is operable to receive a data input including at least two data bits, and to encode the two data bits as an encoded output to the plurality of multi-bit memory cells. The encoded output may be selected to be either a single two bit output representing the two bits, or a series of two two bit outputs representing the two bits. The decoding circuit is operable to reverse the encoding applied by the encoding circuit.
US08289765B2
A magnetic random access memory (MRAM) cell with a thermally assisted writing procedure comprising a magnetic tunnel junction formed from a magnetic storage layer, a reference layer, and an insulating layer inserted between the reference layer and the storage layer; and a first strap portion laterally connecting one end of the magnetic tunnel junction to a first selection transistor; wherein the cell further comprises a second strap portion extending opposite to the first strap portion and connecting laterally said one end of the magnetic tunnel junction to a second selection transistor, and in that said first and second strap portions being adapted for passing a portion of current via the first and second selection transistors. The disclosed cell has lower power consumption than conventional MRAM cells.
US08289759B2
A method and apparatus for writing data to a non-volatile memory cell, such as a spin-torque transfer random access memory (STRAM) memory cell. In some embodiments, a selected resistive state is written to a magnetic tunneling structure by applying a succession of indeterminate write pulses thereto until the selected resistive state is verified.
US08289750B2
A semiconductor device including: a first memory cell including a non-volatile first variable resistance element that stores data by varying a resistance value and a selection transistor that selects the first variable resistance element; a first memory layer provided with more than one such first memory cell arranged in a plane; a second memory cell including a non-volatile second variable resistance element that stores data by varying a resistance value and a selection diode that selects the second variable resistance element; and a second memory layer provided with more than one such second memory cell arranged in a plane; wherein more than one such second memory layer is stacked over the first memory layer.
US08289744B2
In an image forming apparatus, a monitoring unit monitors whether a returning factor required to switch an operational state of the apparatus from a power-saving mode to an operating mode is generated, an antenna unit receives external electrical wave, a power generation unit generates electricity from the received electrical wave and supplies the electricity to the monitoring unit, and a controlling unit switches the operational state of the apparatus from the power-saving mode to the operating mode when the monitoring unit detects generation of a returning factor.
US08289739B2
A system and method for providing acceptable output power from a wide range of received power, comprising: outputting a received voltage as an output voltage if the received voltage does not exceed a threshold; and limiting the output voltage to the threshold if the received voltage exceeds the threshold. Limiting the output voltage may comprise dropping an excess voltage across a switching element, wherein the excess voltage is the received voltage minus the threshold.
US08289738B2
A switching power supply has a full-wave AC rectifier circuit; a chopper circuit including an inductor, a capacitor smoothing current from the inductor, and a switching device for on-off control of the current fed to the capacitor. The rectifier circuit further has an input voltage detector circuit detecting chopper circuit input voltage; an output voltage error detector circuit detecting an error between an output voltage from the chopper circuit and a set voltage; a current control signal generator circuit generating a current control signal in-phase with an input voltage detection signal having a waveform similar to the input voltage detection signal and an amplitude proportional to an output voltage error signal; a current detector circuit detecting inductor current flow; a frequency setting circuit; an oscillator circuit; and a switching control circuit switching the switching device based on oscillation circuit signal, the current control signal, and the current detection signal.
US08289734B2
An output apparatus includes a first source of a first signal having a first state or a different second state; a second source of a second signal having a first state or a different second state; and a circuit structured to output a vital output including a first state when the first state of the first signal corresponds to the first state of the second signal and, otherwise, including a different second state. At least one of the first signal and the second signal is a static signal. The other one of the first signal having the first state and the second signal having the first state is a dynamic signal. When at least one of the first signal has the different second state of the first signal and the second signal has the different second state of the second signal, the vital output includes the different second state.
US08289730B2
Systems, methods and devices for power generation systems are described. In particular, embodiments of the invention relate to the architecture of power conditioning systems for use with fuel cells and methods used therein. More particularly, embodiments of the present invention relate to methods and systems usable to reduce ripple currents in fuel cells.
US08289725B2
A package substrate having embedded capacitor is provided. The package substrate includes a core circuit board, at least one dielectric layer, at least one embedded capacitor, and at least one metal layer. The core circuit board has at least one wiring layer, and the core circuit board has at least one conductive through hole connected to the wiring layer. At least one dielectric layer covers the wiring layer, and the dielectric layer has at least one conductive through hole. At least one embedded capacitor is embedded in the dielectric layer. At least one metal layer covers the dielectric layer and connected to the embedded capacitor, wherein the metal layer is connected to the wiring layer through the conductive through hole.
US08289721B2
An electronic unit according to the present invention, the first support member has a first base body, and a first contact member extending from the first base body and making contact with the first main surface of the substrate. The second support member includes a second base body, and a second contact member extending from the second base body and making contact with the second main surface of the substrate. At least part of the area on the first main surface that corresponds to the region at which the second contact member is in contact with the substrate overlaps with the region at which the first contact member is in contact with the substrate. This electronic unit is capable of suppressing distortion in the substrate even when an impact is applied from the exterior. The electrical connection between the electronic component and the substrate can therefore be prevented from being disrupted.
US08289718B2
A connector for electrical and mechanical interconnection of first and second mechanically adjacent modules with one another. The first module includes a first electrical connector and an alignment pin and the second module includes a printed circuit board floatingly and displacably mounted on the second module with at least one alignment hole aligned for alignment with the alignment pin of the first module and a second electrical connector aligned for engagement with a corresponding first electrical connector of the first module. During assembly, the alignment pin of the first module engages the alignment hole of the second module and displaces the printed circuit board to align the second electrical connector with the first electrical connector.
US08289716B2
An electrical control device comprising a housing configured to be at least partially mountable within a single-gang electrical box; and including at least first and second switches disposed at least partially within the housing, each the at least first and second switches configured as providing a respective first and second input to the electrical control device and, the electrical control device being configured to be wired to a respective first and a second electrical load. A communications device disposed at least partially within the housing is configured to wirelessly transmit a control signal to control at least one additional electrical load.
US08289712B2
A thermal flow material-free thermally conductive interface between a mounted integrated circuit device and a heat sink that comprises a mounted integrated circuit device, a heat sink vertically disposed over the device, a vertically compressible thermally conductive member unattachably disposed between the device and the heat sink, and an unattached frame member horizontally enclosing the compressible member.
US08289708B2
An electric device includes: first opening 7 provided on rear panel 4 to exhaust internal air out of casing 1; first partition 12 covering second opening 8 provided on left side panel 2 and having fourth opening 10; second partition 13 covering third opening 9 provided on right side panel 3 and having fifth opening 11; and radiator 14 disposed so as for opening 14C at one end to faceopening 7. The configuration can prevent weld spatters or the like from coming into casing 1 directly.
US08289699B2
A heat dissipation module includes a centrifugal fan, a fin group, a first heat pipe and a second heat pipe. The centrifugal fan includes a housing and an impeller rotatably mounted in the housing. The housing defines an air inlet and an air outlet therein. The fin group is disposed at the air outlet of the centrifugal fan. The fin group includes a plurality of spaced fins. The first heat pipe includes a condensing section thermally contacting the fin group and an evaporating section for thermally contacting a heat source. The second heat pipe includes a condensing section thermally contacting the condensing section of the first heat pipe and an evaporating section for thermally contacting another heat source.
US08289696B2
A mounting apparatus is provided to hold a number of data storage devices each including opposite sidewalls. The mounting apparatus includes a bracket, a number of fasteners, and a number of fixing members. The fasteners are fixed to the sidewalls of the data storage devices, respectively, and each fastener includes a head portion abutting the corresponding sidewall. Each fixing member includes a main body fixed to the bracket, and guiding rails fixed to opposite sides of the main body. Each guiding rail defines a sliding groove. A receiving space is formed between two adjacent fixing members to accommodate the data storage devices. Every sliding groove facing a receiving space is paired with an opposite sliding groove facing the same receiving. When the data storage devices are moved into the receiving spaces along the fixing members, respectively, the head portions are slid into the corresponding paired sliding grooves.
US08289693B2
A disk drive assembly includes a drive bracket, a disk drive, a transfer connector, and a connecting cable. The drive bracket includes a rear panel and two parallel side panels perpendicular to the rear panel. The disk drive is received in the drive bracket between the two side panels. The disk drive has a connecting port defined therein. The transfer connector is secured to the drive bracket. The transfer connector includes a first connector and a second connector capable of connecting to an electronic device. The connecting cable is connected between the connecting port and the first connector and capable of absorbing a vibration between the disk drive and the transfer connector.
US08289692B2
A blade server for increasing the amount of processing capacity per rack bay is disclosed. The blade server includes a housing having a top portion and a bottom portion, a first printed circuit assembly adjacent to the top portion of the housing, a second printed circuit assembly positioned in the bottom portion of the housing opposite the first printed circuit assembly, and a connector attaching the first and second printed circuit assembly to one another.
US08289685B2
An electronic device includes a main body, a fixing member rotatably mounted on the main body, and a liquid crystal display rotatably mounted on the fixing member. The liquid crystal display can rotate from a first position facing the main body to a second position facing away from the main body.
US08289679B2
A decoupling device includes a lead frame, a capacitor unit, a metal layer, and a high dielectric organic-inorganic composite material layer. The lead frame includes a cathode terminal portion and an anode terminal portion. The capacitor unit is disposed on the lead frame. The capacitor unit includes a cathode portion, an anode portion, and an insulation portion located between the cathode portion and the anode portion. The cathode portion is electrically connected to the cathode terminal portion, and the anode portion is electrically connected to the anode terminal portion. The high dielectric organic-inorganic composite material layer is connected to the capacitor unit in parallel via the metal layer.
US08289676B2
A multilayer composite getter, a method for its manufacturing and electrochemical devices for energy storage employing said multilayer composite getters are described.
US08289668B2
Current differential protection with charging current compensation is provided for a power apparatus, such as a power transmission line. Individual terminals dynamically determine their respective contributions, if any, to the charging current compensation value as availability of one or more voltage sources dynamically changes within the power apparatus. Respective terminals calculate local contributions to a charging current compensation value based on local voltage measurements. A loss of a voltage source is handled by adjusting multipliers for the remaining compensation points to reflect the total charging current. A local contribution is suppressed when the local voltage source is no longer available. After applying the local contributions, an alpha plane analysis may be used to determine when to trip the power apparatus.
US08289663B2
A high performance TMR sensor with a spacer including at least one metal layer such as Cu and one or more MgO layers is disclosed. In addition, there may be a metal dopant in the MgO layer. In an alternative embodiment, the MgO layer may be replaced by other low band gap insulating or semiconductor materials. An ultra-low RA of <0.4 μohm-cm2 in combination with a MR of 14%, low magnetostriction, and a low Hin value of about 20 Oe is achieved with a composite spacer of the present invention. The Cu layer thickness is from 0.1 to 10 Angstroms and the MgO thickness is from 5 to 20 Angstroms in spacer configurations including Cu/MgO/Cu, and MgO/Cu/MgO.
US08289654B2
A head assembly includes a slider having a head element, a load beam, a fulcrum formed at a top end section of the load beam, a slider support plate for supporting the slider to freely turn around the fulcrum, at least one drive element for applying a turning force to the slider support plate in a plane thereof, a first linear link part having at both ends a first top end joint part mechanically connected to the slider support plate, and a first base end joint part mechanically connected to the load beam, and a second linear link part having at both ends a second top end joint part mechanically connected to the slider support plate, and a second base end joint part mechanically connected to the load beam. Both of an extended line of the first linear link part and an extended line of the second linear link part travel toward a position of the fulcrum and intersect with each other.
US08289652B2
Method and apparatus for a head gimbal assembly (HGA) which incorporates a microactuator. In accordance with various embodiments, a gimbal assembly has a gimbal island disposed within an aperture of a gimbal plate, which is mechanically decoupled from the gimbal island. At least one microactuator element is attached between the gimbal island and the gimbal plate to allow rotation of the gimbal island independent of the gimbal plate. The gimbal assembly is suspended from a dimple which extends from the gimbal island.
US08289650B2
An apparatus includes a waveguide having an end adjacent to an air bearing surface, first and second poles positioned on opposite sides of the waveguide, and wherein the first pole includes a first portion spaced from the waveguide and a second portion extending from the first portion to the air bearing surface, with the second portion being structured such that an end of the second portion is closer to the waveguide than the first portion.
US08289638B2
A lens driving device may include a movable lens body which holds a lens, and a driving mechanism for moving the movable lens body in an optical axis direction. The driving mechanism includes coils attached to the movable lens body, and a magnet opposed to the coils. When a gap between the coils and the magnet is expressed as A, and the width of the coil is expressed as B, a conditional expression of 0.3B≦A≦B is satisfied.
US08289635B2
In a method for fabricating an integrated optical device by creating a wafer stack by stacking at least a top wafer carrying as functional elements a plurality of lenses on at least one further wafer including further functional elements, and separating the wafer stack into a plurality of integrated optical devices, wherein corresponding functional elements of the top and further wafer are aligned with each other and define a plurality of main optical axes, a method for providing a sunshade plate as part of an integrated optical device (10), including the steps of: providing a sunshade plate having a plurality of through holes, the through holes being arranged to correspond to the arrangement of the functional elements on the top wafer; and stacking the sunshade plate on the top wafer, with the through holes being aligned with said main optical axes.
US08289631B2
The invention provides a superwide-angle imaging or projecting optical system provided that, albeit being a wide-angle optical system having an angle of view exceeding 180°, is of small size and reduced F-number and fast, and has improved f-θ performance. The optical system consists only of transmitting surfaces, and has an angle of view of 180° or more. The optical system comprises a front group (Gf) comprising at least one meniscus lens (L1) having a negative focal length, an aperture (S), and a rear group (Gb) comprising at least two lenses having a positive focal length. At least one transmitting surface in the front group is made up of an extended rotation free-form surface.
US08289628B2
An imaging lens includes negative first lens, negative second lens having a concave surface facing the image side, positive third lens, aperture stop, positive fourth lens, and fifth lens having a concave surface facing the object side, which are arranged sequentially from the object side. At least one of second lens, fourth lens and fifth lens has at least an aspheric surface. The Abbe number of third lens and the Abbe number of fifth lens are less than or equal to 30, and the Abbe number of fourth lens is greater than or equal to 40. Further, the following formula (1) is satisfied: 1.0<(R3−R4)/(R3+R4) (1), where R3: the paraxial curvature radius of an object-side surface of second lens, and R4: the paraxial curvature radius of an image-side surface of second lens.
US08289622B2
The invention relates to a structured illumination system (8) for the three-dimensional microscopy of a sample (14), that comprises: beam generation means (9, 10) adapted for generating coherent light beams (IN, I−N, I0); a lens (12) having a rear focal plane (PFA), and arranged so that the sample (14) can be placed in the focalisation plane (PMP) of the lens; focalisation means (19) arranged for focusing the light beams in the rear focal plane (PFA) so that the beams interfere in a collimated manner in the focalisation plane (PMP) of the lens (12); characterised in that the beam generation means (9, 10) includes a light space modulator (10) programmed for diffracting a light signal (22) in order to generate at least two different diffracted beams ((IN, I0), (I−N, I0)) that are not symmetrical relative to the lens optical axis, wherein the light space modulator includes a calculator adapted for applying a constant phase term to each of said at least two coherent beams.
US08289621B2
A reflected dark field structure includes a bottom plate, a support tube, a light unit, a diffuser structure, and a reflector unit that provides reflected dark field illumination, such that a gem held by the support tube and surrounded by the diffuser structure is illuminated and viewable through an aperture in the reflector unit. A method for imaging and analyzing a gem includes placing the gem onto a support tube where it is illuminated with dark field and reflected dark field illumination, and viewing the gem via an aperture located on a top reflector unit, which provides a top cover for the gem. Furthermore, a method and apparatus for obtaining images of a gem includes a dark field stage, a reflector unit, and an image-acquiring device, such that a gem placed in the dark field stage is illuminated, and such that the reflector unit covers the dark field stage and provides reflected dark field illumination, and such that the image-acquiring device is directed towards an aperture in the reflector unit.
US08289617B2
An optical low-pass filter is disposed on a light-receiving surface of an imaging device. The filter has a light-transmitting substrate including at least one birefringent plate and an infrared-cut plate , a dust-proofing layer provided on a light-input surface of the light-transmitting substrate, and an infrared-cut coat layer provided between the dust-proofing layer and the light-transmitting substrate or on a light-output surface of the light-transmitting substrate. A surface of the dust-proofing layer contains fine roughness.
US08289612B2
Disclosed are a micro mirror and a micro mirror array using the same. The micro mirror includes: an insulation substrate; an address electrode formed on the insulation substrate; a charging unit electrically insulated from the address electrode; and a reflecting body rotatably provided on the insulation to reflect incident light and spaced apart from the address electrode and the charging unit.
US08289607B2
An electrochromic device, with controlled transparency, for example of electrically controllable type, including between a transparent carrier substrate and a counter-substrate, at least one stack of functional layers, the outermost layers of which include electroconductive layers, the conductivity of at least one electroconductive layer not in contact with the carrier substrate being reinforced by a network of conductive elements in contact with this layer. The network includes a mesh, for which the area of the intermesh free space is substantially between 0.04 mm2 and 0.16 mm2 or in a vicinity of 0.09 mm2.
US08289594B2
The present invention provides for a data protection device comprising an optically variable diffractive scratch-layered structure overlying data to be protected, wherein the device includes at least first and second opaque metallic layers separated by a flexible light-absorbing separation layer.
US08289593B2
A multifunction printer includes a scanner; a memory which stores a plurality of still image data; a printing head which prints, on a first printing medium, thumbnail images corresponding to the plurality of the still image data; an image data-extracting section which extracts a base image data and a correction image data when the first printing medium is read by the scanner after a predetermined base image selection mark has been marked by a user to one of the plurality of thumbnail images printed on the first printing medium and a predetermined correction position mark has been marked to a partial area of the thumbnail image and which cuts out, from the correction image data, correction data corresponding to the area marked with the correction position mark, and an image-combining section which combines the base image data with the correction data to generate combined image data.
US08289578B2
An apparatus and method for compensating an output image are provided. The apparatus includes an output image estimation module which estimates an output image for an original image using a lookup table (LUT) that maps one color space to another color space, an error detection module which detects an erroneous patch from the estimated output image, and an LUT compensation module which compensates the LUT based on the detected patch.
US08289574B2
A method and system for controlling the darkness level of image data to assist in output matching between dissimilar rendering devices. Image source information from a source file can be interpreted by a rendering decomposer in order to generate halftone source image data. The decomposition of the image can be repeated in response to a request by an operator for an additional darkening level via a user input file. The additional layers can be shifted in an opposing direction and then a clockwise direction from the original position until the additional darkening level is attained. The required darkening level can be stored in a storage unit or memory so that the required darkening level can be later triggered by a source document name to employ the same darkening approach. The darkening level can be selected from an array of darkening levels to assist in output matching without major modifications to the utilized rendering device(s).
US08289573B2
A method and system modify a rasterized digital image to reduce registration artifacts, the image having a black plane and a color plane by determining if a pixel is part of a connected black region and if the pixel is part of a connected color region. It is determined if the pixel is part of a connected black region and a connected color region that are contiguous. A dilation operation is performed on the color plane value of the pixel if the pixel is part of a connected black region and a connected color region that are contiguous.
US08289570B2
A method relating to ascertaining and adjusting friction between media pages in a document feeder. The method includes: detecting slipping of a media page when traversing from a stack of media pages to passing through a path defined by the document feeder; and sending a signal to a fluid-containing cartridge to spray small drops of fluid onto the slipping media page soon after the slipping is detected while the media page passes through the document feeder. A system and apparatus are also associated with the above method.
US08289569B2
An encoder signal processor which processes a pulsed encoder signal output from an encoder in accordance with a travel distance of an object to be detected, including: an increasing and decreasing wave generating unit that generates an increasing and decreasing wave based on the encoder signal output from the encoder; an intermediate pulse signal generating unit that generates a binarized intermediate pulse signal based on the increasing and decreasing wave; and a multiplied pulse signal generating unit that generates a multiplied pulse signal, which is a signal obtained by multiplying the encoder signal by 2, by performing exclusive-OR operation between the encoder signal output from the encoder and the intermediate pulse signal.
US08289562B2
When a print area is filled with an initial number α of thumbnails (reference images) and a margin β is left in a print area, a total number γ of thumbnails are added from each video image so that the margin in the print area is fully filled with the thumbnails and a waste of a paper is prevented. As the number of thumbnails of frames in a video image, it becomes easier to recognize content of the video image.
US08289552B2
A determining unit calculates an estimated time until drawing data is transmitted to an engine, and transmits the drawing data, a print instruction, and the estimated time to the engine. An activating/terminating unit activates or terminates each unit of the engine. A confirming unit inquires the controller of presence of drawing data of a next page, and acquires an estimated time. An activation/termination controlling unit controls the activating/terminating unit when it is judged that the estimated time is longer than a sum of a time required for activating units of the engine and a time required for terminating the units.
US08289539B2
An MFP which holds resources stores resource information about the held resources. Whether or not a resource holding request has been added to a resource downloading request from an SFP is discriminated. If a resource holding request has been added, a holding priority to decide a holding state of the held resources is set. The holding state of the held resources is controlled based on the holding priority.
US08289537B2
Using techniques described herein, separate “job ticket” data and printable data may be generated automatically from a PDL-compliant print stream. According to one technique, an automated mechanism receives a PDL-compliant print stream as input. The PDL-compliant print stream describes both printable content and control data, as described above. The automated mechanism separates the printable content data from the control data. The automated mechanism may translate the printable content data from a printer definition language into a format that is designed to be understood by human beings. The automated mechanism generates two separate “packages” of data; one “package” describes the printable content, and the other “package,” the “job ticket,” describes the control data. Thus, in one embodiment of the invention, the automated mechanism separates the PDL-compliant print stream into a “job ticket” and printable content data. The “job ticket” may be stored separately from the printable content data.
US08289533B2
A printing system comprises a host device like a personal computer (PC) which creates print data (GDI data) based on an application, and selects through which a conversion process either a first conversion process of converting the data into PDL data or a second conversion process of converting the data into image data should be executed based on the performance of the host device connected to a printing device, the kind of the application, and the like when performing the conversion process on the print data and transmitting the converted data to a printing device, and further selects the conversion process based on a command in GDI data, a data size, and the like, thereby automatically selecting the most efficient printing scheme, and the printing device which prints out the print data transmitted from the host device.
US08289532B2
A printer controlling device capable of operating in a collate mode includes a transmitting unit configured to transmit print data representing the entire document to be printed on printing sheets and a copy command representing only one copy of the entire document is made, and adjudging unit configured to judge whether the number of sheets necessary for printing one copy of the entire document is one or more than one after the transmitting unit transmits the print data representing the entire document to be printed and the copy command representing only one copy of the entire document. The transmitting unit further transmits the print data and the copy command in different manners depending on whether the judging unit judges that the number of sheets necessary for printing one copy of the document is one or more than one.
US08289531B2
A method used in first and second information processing apparatuses in communication with an image forming apparatus. The method includes a transfer step of transferring print setting information for controlling the image forming apparatus from the image forming apparatus to the second information processing apparatus, an acquisition step of acquiring the print setting information transferred in the transfer step from the second information processing apparatus, an input step of inputting the print setting information acquired in the acquisition step into a printer driver in a form that can be identified by the printer driver; and a print control step of controlling a printing operation by using the print setting information inputted in the input step.
US08289529B2
An analyzing device 1 includes position detection marks 18, each having one of a reflective surface, a refractive surface, and a light shielding surface that block output light incident on a sensor 113 from a light source 12 when the output light reaches a rotation detection position just before or behind measurement spots 17a, 17b, and 17c of the analyzing device 1. Output signals from the sensor 113 for reading the measurement spots 17a, 17b, and 17c are stored in a memory 28, the positions of the measurement spots 17a, 17b, and 17c are determined based on light receiving data stored in the memory 28, and only a desired analyzing signal is extracted. Thus even when the number of measurement spots increases, it is possible to read the measurement spots without adding any components.
US08289524B2
An interferometer includes a light source, adapted to generate a coherent light beam, a detector adapted to analyze the phase difference of optical light beams, a location unit for locating an object to be measured, a first optical path from the light source to the object and a second optical path from the object to the detector. The first and the second optical path have a common section adjacent to the object. An optical polarization modulator has been arranged in the first path.
US08289523B2
In a method for generating a synthetic wavelength, particularly for an interferometric distance measuring setup, with a primary laser source defining a primary frequency υ0 and at least a first sideband frequency υ1 of the primary frequency υ0, laser radiation with the first sideband frequency υ1 and a corresponding first wavelength is provided wherein the first sideband frequency υ1 is continuously shifted, particularly by modulating the primary laser source. The synthetic wavelength is generated by combining the first wavelength and a second wavelength which is defined by the primary laser source, particularly by superposition.
