US08365046B2
A method for correcting at least one error in a data transmission over a packet-based communication network includes the steps of: generating a sequence of data packets for transmission over the packet-based communication network, the sequence of data packets being arranged into a plurality of packet frames, each of at least a subset of the packet frames including at least a primary data packet and a number of redundant data packets which is a function of a prescribed redundancy pattern, the subset of packet frames having a non-uniform distribution of redundant data packets therein; transmitting the sequence of data packets over the communication network; and recovering at least one missing data packet in the sequence of data packets using at least one corresponding redundant data packet in at least one subsequently received packet frame when the missing data packet is identified in a receiver of the sequence of data packets.
US08365041B2
A two-dimensional self-RAID method of protecting page-based storage data in a MLC multiple-level-cell flash memory device. The protection scheme includes reserving one parity sector across each data page, reserving one parity page as the column parity, selecting a specific number of pages to form a parity group, writing into the parity page a group parity value for data stored in the pages of the parity group. The parity sector represents applying a RAID technique in a first dimension. The group parity represents applying a RAID technique in a second dimension. Data protection is achieved because a corrupted data sector can likely be recovered by the two dimensional RAID data.
US08365040B2
A flash memory system comprising temporary memory, writing apparatus for writing first logical data from the temporary memory into flash memory cells having at least two levels, thereby to generate a physical representation of the first logical data including known errors, reading apparatus for reading the physical representation from the cells, thereby to generate, and store in the temporary memory, second logical data which if read immediately is identical to the first logical data other than the known errors; and controlling apparatus controlling the writing apparatus and the reading apparatus and including known error ID apparatus operative to identify the known errors by comparing the first logical data to second logical data read immediately after the physical representation is generated, to store information characterizing the known errors and to use the information, when the second logical data is next read, to correct the known errors.
US08365037B2
A method and apparatus is provided for improving integrity in data representing a plurality of condition states of a variable, including the steps of determining which condition states are operationally incompatible with one another, and generating an array of transformed integer values including a separate integer value for each condition state. The transformed integer value for each condition state in binary form is at least two bit errors removed from any transformed integer value for an identified incompatible condition state in binary form.
US08365030B1
A method for correcting read data error of a nonvolatile memory device, the error correction method including performing a first read operation of applying a first non-selection read voltage to a plurality of unselected memory cells to read a plurality of selected memory cells, performing a second read operation of applying a second non-selection read voltage less than the first non-selection read voltage to the unselected memory cells to read the selected memory cells, and comparing data sensed in the first and second read operations to detect error locations of read data.
US08365026B2
Methods for performing a fail test, block management, erase operations and program operations are used in a nonvolatile memory device having a block switch devoid of a fuse and a PMOS transistor. A method for performing a fail test in a nonvolatile memory device includes performing a fail test for a memory cell block; storing good block information in a block information store associated with the corresponding block when the memory cell block is a good block; and repeating the performing and storing steps for all memory cell blocks.
US08365023B2
For runtime dynamic performance skew elimination in a computer environment, an exemplary computer environment is configured for calculating a rank heats by utilizing a plurality of fine-grained statistics collected at an extent granularity, including considering bandwidth (BW) and input/outputs per second (IOPS) metrics. An adaptive data placement plan is generated to relocate the data. The data is placed among data storage ranks. The data storage ranks are balanced according to the adaptive data placement plan.
US08365022B2
A computer system includes server computers, application program storage modules, a communication network, client computers, a database storage module, and a test data presentation module. The database storage module stores event data. The event data logs events that occur in the server computers during performance test runs. The test runs are performed in connection with a plurality of projects. The projects are defined for performance testing the application programs. The test data presentation module generates a test data screen display for rendering by one of the client computers. The test data screen display includes a data table. The data table presents event data relating to events that occurred during test runs for two or more of the projects.
US08365021B2
The information processing device which recovers a domain developing a fault caused by added application and device driver while maintaining security and reliability includes a plurality of processors, wherein the plurality of processors form a plurality of domains according to processing contents to be executed, and the processors in different domains communicate with each other through a communication unit, and which further includes a recovery unit for executing, for a domain developing a fault, failure recovery processing based on a failure recovery request notified by the domain and a recovery condition set in advance for each domain.
US08365019B2
A system and method of problem determination and resolution utilizes enhanced problem classification, and effectively categorizes any problem a user experiences by leveraging all available data to recognize the specific problem. Historical problem data is labeled with the cause of that problem and is analyzed to learn problem patterns. The historical problem data is classified into a predefined hierarchical structure of taxonomies by using an incremental online learning algorithm. The hierarchical structure and learned patterns are utilized to recognize problems and generate the root cause of the problem when given a new set of monitoring data and log data.
US08365013B2
In a storage device incorporating a plurality of kinds of disk drives with different interfaces, the controller performs sparing on a disk drive, whose errors that occur during accesses exceed a predetermined number, by swapping it with a spare disk drive that is prepared beforehand.
US08365008B2
A mechanism is provided in a storage control unit in a data processing system for providing unsolicited global disconnect requests to users. The mechanism stores lock control data in the storage control unit. The storage control unit allocates its resources into a plurality of clusters. Responsive to a given user connecting to a given partition that is for a logical subsystem resident on a first cluster within the plurality of clusters, the mechanism sends reflected partition information from the first cluster to a second cluster within the plurality of clusters. Responsive to the first cluster experiencing a failure condition, the mechanism moves control data from one or more logical subsystems from the first cluster to the second cluster and for each logical subsystem that moved from the first logical subsystem to the second logical subsystem and that has reflected partition information, presents unsolicited status to one or more users.
US08365005B2
Methods of registering events in a wind power system comprising at least two data processors. The data processors of said wind power system are mutually time synchronized. Events are registered in said at least two data processors. The timing of said events registered in different of said at least two data processors is established according to said time synchronization. Events may be registered and preferably analyzed according to a common timing. The event analysis makes it possible to establish an analysis where events of different wind turbines are basically interrelated and where information regarding such interrelation may be important or crucial for establishment of control or fault detection based on correctly timed events from different wind turbines.
US08365001B2
A method and apparatus are disclosed for performing adaptive memory power management in a system employing a CPU and a memory subsystem. A CPU throttle control (THR) module generates a CPU throttle control signal indicating when the CPU is idle. A memory controller (MC) module generates memory power management signals based on at least one of the CPU throttle control signal, memory read/write signals, memory access break events, and bus master access requests. Certain portions of the memory subsystem are powered down in response to the memory power management signals. Memory power management is performed on a time segment by time segment basis to achieve efficient power management of the memory subsystem during CPU run time.
US08364995B2
Managing delivery of power to one or more hardware memory devices in a computer system. The computer system is configured with a processor and at least two hardware memory devices. A temperature monitor tool is employed to monitor the hardware memory devices. Management of an addressable subset of the hardware memory devices is employed in response to the monitored temperature reading.
US08364994B2
An image forming apparatus includes a volatile memory and an SoC part. The SoC part includes an internal memory, a CPU for accessing the volatile memory in the normal mode; an interface part for receiving a external signal, and a control part for, when the interface part has no input during a first preset time, copying information stored to the volatile memory to the internal memory and converting to a first power saving mode to lower an operating frequency of the volatile memory and an operating frequency of the CPU, and when a normal mode switch signal is not input during a second preset time in the first power saving mode, controlling the CPU to access the information copied to the internal memory and converting to a second power saving mode to change the volatile memory to a self-refresh mode.
US08364993B2
A voltage regulating circuit converts a first voltage and provides the converted first voltage to a first voltage pin of a north bridge chip after receiving a control signal from a south bridge chip. A second voltage pin of the north bridge chip is connected to a voltage converting circuit for receiving a second voltage. The logic control circuit receives a control signal from the super I/O chip and outputs a first control signal to turn on the switch to connect the first and the second voltage pins together. The logic control circuit also outputs a second control signal to the voltage regulating circuit to control the voltage regulating circuit to stop providing the converted first voltage to the first voltage pin of the north bridge chip. The voltage converting circuit provides the second voltage to the first voltage pin of the north bridge chip via the switch.
US08364988B2
The feature of the present invention consists in: a processor main circuit for executing program instruction strings on a processor chip; a substrate bias switching unit for switching voltages of substrate biases applied to a substrate of the processor main circuit; and an operation mode control unit for controlling, in response to the execution of an instruction to proceed to a stand-by mode in the processor main circuit, the substrate bias switching unit in such a way that the biases are switched over to voltages for the stand-by mode, and for controlling, in response to an interruption of the stand-by release from the outside, the substrate bias switching unit in such a way that the biases are switched over to voltages for a normal mode, and also for releasing, after the bias voltages switched thereto have been stabilized, the stand-by of the processor main circuit to restart the operation.
US08364987B2
One embodiment of the present invention provides a system for implementing a sleep proxy. The system starts by receiving a request at the sleep proxy for information pertaining to a service provided by a device. In response to this request, the system determines if the device is a member of a list of devices for which the sleep proxy takes action. If so, the system determines if the sleep proxy can answer the request. If so, the sleep proxy sends a response to the request on behalf of the device. In a variation on this embodiment, if the system cannot answer the request on behalf of the device, the system sends a wakeup packet to the device, wherein the wakeup packet causes the device to exit a power-saving mode so that the device can respond to the request directly.
US08364978B2
A system for and method of registering devices an applications with cryptographic modules is presented. The system and method prevent devices and applications from operating in conjunction with cryptographic modules unless such devices and applications have previously been registered with the module.
US08364973B2
A measurement engine generates an integrity manifest for a software program and uses it to perform active platform observation. The integrity manifest indicates an integrity check value for a section of the program's code. The measurement engine computes a comparison value on the program's image in memory and determines if the comparison value matches the expected integrity check value. If the values do not match, the program's image is determined to be modified, and appropriate remedial action may be triggered.
US08364969B2
Methods and apparatus are described to protect personal information by decoupling it from user identity. According to specific embodiments, this is accomplished by associating each user with an anonymous token that is decoupled from the user's identity. Personal information (e.g., a user's physical or geographic location) is stored in association with this anonymous token, with no apparent connection to the user. Those allowed to access the personal information—including the owner himself—are granted the ability through a variety of mechanisms to connect the anonymous token back to the owner. The personal information can then be retrieved by locating the data stored in association with the anonymous token in the data store.
US08364966B2
A digital watermark is added to audio or visual content. An illustrative embodiment permutes the content, alters the permuted content to encode a watermark, and inverse-permutes the content to return same to substantially its original form. Related watermark decoding methods are also detailed, as are ancillary features and techniques.
US08364965B2
Some embodiments of the invention provide a method of verifying the integrity of digital content. At a source of the digital content, the method generates a signature for the digital content by applying a hashing function to a particular portion of the digital content, where the particular portion is less than the entire digital content. The method supplies the signature and the digital content to a device. At the device, the method applies the hashing function to the particular portion of the digital content in order to verify the supplied signature, and thereby verifies the integrity of the supplied digital content.
US08364964B2
In a method of registering a plurality of client devices with a device registration server for secure data communications, a unique symmetric key is generated for each of the client devices using a cryptographic function on a private key of the device registration server and a respective public key of each of the client devices, and a broadcast message containing the public key of the device registration server is sent to the client devices, in which the client devices are configured to generate a respective unique symmetric key from the public key of the device registration server and its own private key using a cryptographic function, and in which the unique symmetric key generated by each client device matches the respective unique symmetric key generated by the device registration server for the respective client device.
US08364957B2
A method and system is provided to provide single sign on (SSO) functionality in a network that avoids storing a user's credentials in persistent storage. A session may be initiated with a portal which sends a session ID derivative as a credential string instead of a user's password to a target application. When the target application attempts to authenticate the user, by sending a request to a LDAP directory, the request is intercepted by a LDAP proxy that instead validates the UserID with the LDAP directory and the password is validated by a credential validator component which verifies with the portal that the credential string presented as the user password has been produced from the active session ID. In an embodiment, the credential string validator validates each short-living credential only once and upon detecting a second validation request for the same string, initiates a security breech process. A target application proxy may also be employed to terminate all sessions with the UserID when duplicate session requests occur.
US08364951B2
A digital rights management system (DRM) for restricting and permitting content access in a digital content distribution network such as a network used to deliver television programming. The DRM uses distributed authentication and provisioning so that the potentially many different entities involved in the content distribution network can have localized management and control. Distributed authentication can use single or multiple instances of authentication services. A ticket granting service (TGS) is used to allow clients to request services. In one approach, multiple authentication services use a common key that is known to the TGS. In another approach, unique keys are provided to each authentication service and these keys are communicated to the TGS. Distributed provisioning allows different entities to grant access rights or other resources. Provisioning service (PS) processes can execute at multiple different physical locations. Synchronization among the different PSs is provided by a managing entity or in a peer-to-peer transfer to help ensure the uniqueness of user IDs. New clients can make an initialization request from a key management system via an appropriate protocol. The requests can be made from a single, dedicated authentication service, from an authentication service associated with a specific provisioning service, or from multiple authentication services in the network.
US08364948B2
Cluster aliasing is implemented for a cluster of a plurality of computer-based members. The aliased cluster supports secured communication with a non-member node. The cluster aliasing provides an appearance to the non-member node of a common network address for the plurality of members. In supporting the secured communication, a first of the plurality of members is assigned to process secure inbound data directed to the common network address from the non-member node, and a second, different of the plurality of members is assigned to send secure outbound data from the common network address to the non-member node.
US08364947B2
A method for securing encryption keys includes providing two device, each including secure and insecure hardware, generating in each secure hardware at least two period keys stored in the secure hardware, generating in each secure hardware a plurality of session keys stored in either secure or insecure hardware on the generating device, for each secure hardware, encrypting at least one of the generated plurality of session keys according to a first of the two period keys included in each secure hardware, encrypting at least one of the plurality of session keys generated in each device according to a second of the two period keys included in each secure hardware, when a session is established between the two devices, decrypting one encrypted session key in each device, and establishing an encrypted session between both devices, where the period keys included in both devices are periodically regenerated.
US08364945B2
A method of provisioning an unknown computer system is disclosed. The method includes detecting a computer system to be provisioned, determining that the computer system is unknown to a configuration management system, and identifying a global identifier and a digital certificate to be used to provision the computer system. The method further includes communicating the global identifier and the digital certificate from a network based boot strap server or from boot strap media to the computer system prior to loading an operating system onto the computer system.
US08364939B2
Disclosed is a system including: a calibration executing unit that performs a calibration on hardware during the system startup so as to allow the system to properly operate; and a correction data retaining unit that retains a piece of correction information in association with an environmental condition during the calibration, the correction information indicating a setting for the hardware calibrated by the calibration executing unit. If the correction data retaining unit retains the correction information associated with an environmental condition equivalent to the environmental condition at a time when the system is started up, the calibration executing unit performs the hardware setting on the basis of the retained correction information instead of calibrating the hardware.
US08364915B2
Techniques for generating access information indicating a least recently used (LRU) memory region in a set of memory regions. In an embodiment, data is stored in an entry of an LRU tracking list (LTL) based on a touch message indicating when a memory group has been touched—e.g. read from, written to and/or associated with a memory region. The data stored in an LTL entry may include an identifier of a memory group and/or validity data specifying whether that LTL entry stores a set of default data. In another embodiment, access information may be generated based on the memory group identifier and the validity data.
US08364911B2
A method and apparatus for providing optimized strong atomicity operations for non-transactional writes is herein described. Locks are acquired upon initial non-transactional writes to memory locations. The locks are maintained until an event is detected resulting in the release of the locks. As a result, in the intermediary period between acquiring and releasing the locks, any subsequent writes to memory locations that are locked are accelerated through non-execution of lock acquire operations.
US08364903B2
A method includes executing a multi-threaded, object-oriented application (OOA) on a device; receiving, by multiple threads of the OOA, an object from an out-of-process cache memory; mutating one or more fields of the object, wherein the one or more fields correspond to one or more attributes of the object; and applying an update of the one or more fields that have been mutated to the out-of-process cache memory, wherein the applying the update updates the one or more fields mutated at a field level and not at an object level.
US08364901B2
Systems and methods are disclosed herein, including those that operate to prefetch a programmable number of data words from a selected memory vault in a stacked-die memory system when a pipeline associated with the selected memory vault is empty.
US08364898B2
A method and a system for utilizing less recently used (LRU) bits and presence bits in selecting cache-lines for eviction from a lower level cache in a processor-memory sub-system. A cache back invalidation (CBI) logic utilizes LRU bits to evict only cache-lines within a LRU group, following a cache miss in the lower level cache. In addition, the CBI logic uses presence bits to (a) indicate whether a cache-line in a lower level cache is also present in a higher level cache and (b) evict only cache-lines in the lower level cache that are not present in a corresponding higher level cache. However, when the lower level cache-line selected for eviction is also present in any higher level cache, CBI logic invalidates the cache-line in the higher level cache. The CBI logic appropriately updates the values of presence bits and LRU bits, following evictions and invalidations.
US08364896B2
A method of configuring a unified cache includes identifying unified cache way assignment combinations for an application unit. Each combination has an associated error rate. A combination is selected based at least in part on the associated error rate. The unified cache is configured in accordance with the selected combination for execution of the application-unit.
US08364887B2
A single segment data structure and method for storing data objects employing a single segment data object having a header and a data record. The header includes a segment length field describing the length of memory reserved for the data record and the data record contains at least one data instance object. Each of the data instance objects has a data instance header and data field. The header includes a data instance state field and a data instance length field. The data instance length field contains data representing the length of the data instance data field allowing for variable length “in place” updating. The data instance state field contains data representing an object state of the instance data. Only one of the data instance objects of the data record of the single segment data object has a valid object state. The state field facilitates a power loss recovery process.
US08364884B2
To provide a memory system that can store data smaller than a block size and data larger than the block size without deteriorating writing efficiency, and can dynamically change a parallelism according to the data. The memory system according to an embodiment of the present invention comprises a DRAM 11, a NAND memory 12, and a controller having a NAND-controller control register 150 that specifies parallel-operating element specifying information indicating parallel operating elements 120A to 120D in the NAND memory 12 to be used at the time of data access and an address of data with respect to a NAND interface 140, the NAND interface 140 connected in parallel to the respective parallel operating elements 120A to 120D for accessing the address of one or a plurality of parallel operating elements 120A to 120D selected based on the specified parallel-operating element specifying information and the address, and a CPU 131 that sets the parallel-operating element specifying information in the NAND-controller control register 150 according to the type of data to be accessed.
US08364883B2
A re-programmable non-volatile memory system, such as a flash EEPROM system, having its memory cells grouped into blocks of cells that are simultaneously erasable is operated to perform memory system housekeeping operations in the foreground during execution of a host command, wherein the housekeeping operations are unrelated to execution of the host command. Both one or more such housekeeping operations and execution of the host command are performed within a time budget established for executing that particular command. One such command is to write data being received to the memory. One such housekeeping operation is to level out the wear of the individual blocks that accumulates through repetitive erasing and re-programming.
US08364881B2
A system including a plurality of NAND flash memory devices each having a NAND flash interface, where the NAND flash interface of each NAND flash memory device includes an 8-bit data bus, and a memory controller configured to exchange data with the plurality of NAND flash memory devices via the 8-bit data bus. The memory controller is further configured to select a first NAND flash memory device of the plurality of NAND flash memory devices, without using a Chip Enable signal of the NAND flash interface, by transmitting, on the 8-bit data bus, an identification byte identifying the first NAND flash memory device. The memory controller is further configured to transmit, on the 8-bit data bus, a command byte to the first NAND flash memory device. The first NAND flash memory device is configured to perform an operation indicated by the command byte.
US08364880B2
An integrated transmission circuit and method for transmitting output data to a chipset via a transmission interface are provided. The integrated transmission circuit includes a first application circuit, a second application circuit, a media access control (MAC) circuit, and a physical layer (PHY) circuit. The first application circuit is used for receiving and processing first data to output first processed data. The second application circuit is used for receiving and processing second data to output second processed data. The MAC circuit is coupled to the first application circuit and the second application circuit, and used for encoding the first processed data and the second processed data so as to output encoded data. The PHY circuit is coupled to the MAC circuit to receive the encoded data so as to output the output data to the transmission interface.
US08364879B2
In an embodiment, a translation of a hierarchical MMIO address range to a physical MMIO address range and an identifier of a bridge in a south chip are written to a north chip. A transaction is received that comprises a hierarchical MMIO address. The hierarchical MMIO address that is within the hierarchical MMIO address range is replaced in the transaction with the identifier of the bridge and with a physical MMIO address that is within the physical MMIO address range in the south chip. The transaction is sent to the device that is connected to the bridge in the south chip. The physical MMIO address range specifies a range of physical MMIO addresses in memory in the device.
US08364876B2
A computer system is provided that can realize polling without increasing the processing burden on the processor. Data is read by a polling unit during a prescribed period from a prescribed address in the address space. Then, if the read data satisfies a prescribed condition, an interrupt signal is generated in the polling unit. Since processor can receive the interrupt from hardware instead of performing polling with firmware, the processing burden on processor 10 can be significantly reduced.
US08364866B2
One or more physical characteristics are selected to be associated with a device attached to a device hub depending on which connector of the device hub the device is electrically coupled to, depending on the orientation of the casing of the device hub relative to a pull of gravity, and/or depending on the position of the device relative to a the connector of the device hub to which the device is electrically coupled. Further, where more than one device are capable of forming an assembly that is capable of performing a function, still another device is falsely presented by the device hub with an indication of the presence of a single device capable of performing the function to induce the still another device to convey data to the device hub as if the device hub were that single device.
US08364862B2
In one embodiment, the present invention includes a method for handling a registration message received from a host processor, where the registration message delegates a poll operation with respect to a device from the host processor to another component. Information from the message may be stored in a poll table, and the component may send a read request to poll the device and report a result of the poll to the host processor based on a state of the device. Other embodiments are described and claimed.
US08364859B2
A storage device, a board, a liquid container, a system and the like are disclosed, which are capable of efficiently detecting a connection to a host device without an increase in the number of existing terminals. A storage device 100 includes: a storage section 130; a storage controller 120 that controls access to the storage section 130; a controller 110 that performs a communication process with the host device; a data terminal SDA; a reset terminal XRST; and a clock terminal SCK. The controller 110 determines that an operational mode is a normal communication/connection detection mode when a voltage level change of the reset terminal XRST indicates a change in a reset/reset-disabled state during a time period for the clock terminal SCK has specific voltage level(s).
US08364856B2
A memory module is coupled to a number of controllers. The memory module is configured to configure each of a number of data input/output ports thereof as at least one of an input and an output in response to a first command from a particular controller of the controllers. The memory module is configured to partition itself into memory partitions in response to a second command from the particular controller so that each memory partition corresponds to a respective one of the controllers. Each of a number of data input/output ports of the controllers is configurable as at least one of an input and an output to correspond to a respective one of the input/output ports of the memory module. The first and second commands may originate from the particular controller, or the controllers may be coupled in parallel to the memory module.
US08364849B2
In a multinode data processing system in which the nodes communicate with one another via communication adapters over a network or switch, the adapters are provided with a dual register mechanism for tracking microcode task status. Upon the issuance of a disruptive command that requires attention from one of the nodes, the task status maintained in one register is copied to the snapshot register. As tasks within the adapter are completed, both registers are updated, thus providing a mechanism for the nodes to determine that all tasks active at the time of the disruptive command have completed. This means that the nodes now have a mechanism for determining, as soon as possible, that all tasks that are active when a disruptive command occurs have completed, thus allowing the data processing node to perform such operations as releasing system memory that is associated with the disruptive command, thus eliminating temporal overhead that can affect performance.
US08364840B2
Various implementations are disclosed for routing messages according to a routing order, where sequences (e.g., sub-sections or subsets) of the routing order are progressively and/or iteratively resolved during a run-time of the message routing operation(s). The resolution of a sequence may involve determining identity information of recipients that were previously only described within the sequence in relation to one another, in relation to the group, or in relation to a type of routing order. Further, the resolution(s) of the sequences may depend at least in part on responses received from recipients of the message during execution of earlier (resolved) sequences of the message routing operations. In this way, message routing may occur dynamically, so that, for example, new recipients may be added, or a (new) message order may otherwise be realized or implemented, during the run-time of the routing operation.
US08364836B2
Systems and methods for providing accelerated data storage and retrieval utilizing lossless data compression and decompression. A data storage accelerator includes one or a plurality of high speed data compression encoders that are configured to simultaneously or sequentially losslessly compress data at a rate equivalent to or faster than the transmission rate of an input data stream. The compressed data is subsequently stored in a target memory or other storage device whose input data storage bandwidth is lower than the original input data stream bandwidth. Similarly, a data retrieval accelerator includes one or a plurality of high speed data decompression decoders that are configured to simultaneously or sequentially losslessly decompress data at a rate equivalent to or faster than the input data stream from the target memory or storage device. The decompressed data is then output at rate data that is greater than the output rate from the target memory or data storage device. The data storage and retrieval accelerator method and system may employed: in a disk storage adapter to reduce the time required to store and retrieve data from computer to disk; in conjunction with random access memory to reduce the time required to store and retrieve data from random access memory; in a display controller to reduce the time required to send display data to the display controller or processor; and/or in an input/output controller to reduce the time required to store, retrieve, or transmit data.
US08364828B2
A method and SIP-based Call Session Server for routing SIP messages. A Network and Transport layer receives an incoming SIP message and forwards it to one of a plurality of SIP message routing process instances in a SIP Message Routing Framework. The receiving SIP message routing process instance determines a Routing-Key based upon at least one header field in the incoming message, and based upon the Routing-Key, forwards the incoming message to a selected one of a plurality of Back-to-Back User Agent (B2BUA) instances in a Call Session Control Framework. The selected B2BUA instance creates an outgoing SIP message utilizing the Routing-Key to generate a From-Tag in an outgoing request message, or to generate a To-Tag in an outgoing response message, and then forwards the outgoing message to the Network and Transport layer, which transmits the outgoing message.
US08364827B2
A cooperating system includes a web server and a communication service control server, where information of an error in a communication network is not notified until the web server makes an inquiry to the communication service control server. To solve this problem, a communication system is configured to include a session control server for controlling communication sessions from/to a plurality of terminals, an application server for communicating with the session control server, a web server for communicating with the application server, and a network for coupling the session control server, the application server and the web server. The application server is configured to transmit status related information including information on each communication session status of the plurality of terminals to the web server. The web server is configured to detect each communication session status of the plurality of terminals based on the received status related information.
US08364822B2
A plurality of pieces of information about a link (hereinafter referred to as “link information”), which are stored in a common DB, are categorized in accordance with the VPN related to each piece of link information. VPNID, which is information for identifying each VPN, is added to each piece of link information which has been categorized. The link information for the same VPNID is extracted from the link information to which the VPNID for the common DB is added so as to be contained in the corresponding VPNDB. By doing this, it is possible to realize a path design for the customer easily by providing the network information in the VPN provider and the network information of the customer network while realizing a high scalability.
US08364817B1
A method for managing a data item includes a hub receiving a first access request from a first engine executing on a computing device operated by a first host and sending the first access request to a second engine executing on a first computing device of a second host. The second host owns the data item. The hub receives, from the second engine, the data item and an access rule set by the second host for the first host, and sends the first access rule and the data item to the first engine for storage. The first engine grants the first host access to the data item according to the first access rule.
US08364815B2
A system of network proxies distributes data to multiple servers. Each network proxy is associated with a server. A network proxy intercepts a client request for data. If the network proxy determines that the request can be served using a copy of data stored on the local server, rather than the data stored on a remote server, it diverts the request to the local server. If the network proxy determines that the request cannot be served using a data from the local server, the network proxy diverts the request to a remote server storing the primary copy of the data. A server map specifies the locations of the primary copies of data. When a primary copy of data is updated on one of the servers, the associated network proxy propagates the updated data to the other servers. The servers can provide data from files, e-mail services, databases, or multimedia services.
US08364812B2
A network data flow management device including: a working packet module configured to store data related to a data flow; at least one network interface connected to the working packet module for receiving and sending data related to data flows; and a processor configured to: receive data from the working packet module and determine if the data flow matches a predetermined protocol; and if the data flow matches the predetermined protocol, send predictive acknowledgments based on the data flow via the network interface. A method for network data flow management including: monitoring a data flow for a predetermined protocol; if the data flow matches the predetermined protocol, saving data relating to the data flow; and creating and sending a predictive acknowledgement packet related to the data flow.
US08364811B1
Disclosed are various embodiments for determining a source of malware. At least one embodiment of a method includes receiving browsing data from a plurality of client devices, the data being sent by the plurality of client devices, in response to a determination of malware on the plurality of client devices and determining, from the browsing data, a source for the malware. Further, some embodiments include determining whether the source for the malware is associated with a predetermined network site and in response to determining that the source of the malware is associated with a predetermined network site, preventing download of at least a portion of the predetermined network site.
US08364810B2
A method, system and apparatus for management of push content when changing computing devices is provided. In an example embodiment, a computing device is configured to maintain an absolute identifier of the device that remains unchangeable, and a relative identifier that can be changed. The processor of the device is configured to ascertain if the relative identifier has been changed, and accordingly notify any network infrastructure that is configure to send push content to the device to cease delivery of such push content.
US08364805B2
A method and apparatus of monitoring computer devices operating on a network is disclosed. Computer devices are all different and require monitoring settings that are tailored to their specific requirements. One example method of assigning a sample set to a network device operating on a network may include identifying the at least one network device, and identifying at least one object identifier associated with the at least one identified network device. The method may also include transmitting the at least one object identified to a memory location, and comparing the at least one object identifier to a plurality of sample sets and assigning relevancy scores to the plurality of sample sets based on the comparison. The method may also include assigning at least one sample set having a greater relevancy score than the other sample sets to the at least one network device. The sample sets may be SNMP sample sets.
US08364804B2
Method, system and computer program product for communicating information regarding a managed resource in a network data processing system. A method, in a network data processing system, for communicating information regarding a managed resource includes receiving management information regarding at least one managed resource. The received management information is converted into a specified format, and the converted management information is then sent to at least one management application in conjunction with the sending of presence information to the at least one management application. The converted management information may then be extracted from the presence information for use in any desired manner. The invention provides a convenient mechanism for communicating status information and other appropriate information regarding a managed resource to interested parties connected to the network data processing system.
US08364801B2
A method for managing a network element inventory for a video and data network is provided. The method includes self-discovering a physical network inventory of the video and data network. Additionally, a logical network inventory of the video and data network is self-discovered. Further, a planned network inventory of the video and data network is provided. Once the planned, logical, and physical network inventories are collected, the physical network inventory, logical network inventory, and planned network inventory are loaded into the network element inventory. After loading, synchronization of the physical network inventory, logical network inventory, and planned network inventory in the network element inventory is performed. A view is then provided using the synchronized physical network inventory, logical network inventory, and planned network inventory when a request for the view of the network element inventory is received.
US08364795B2
The embodiments described herein generally relate to a method and system for enabling a client to configure and control the crawling function available through a crawl configuration Web service. A client is able to configure and control the crawling function by defining the URL space of the crawl. Such space may be defined by configuring the starting point(s) and other properties of the crawl. The client further configures the crawling function by creating and configuring a content source and/or a crawl rule. Further, a client defines authentication information applicable to the crawl to enable the discovery and retrieval of electronic documents requiring authentication and/or authorization information for access thereof. A protocol governs the format, structure and syntax (using a Web Services Description Language schema) of messages for communicating to and from the Web crawler through an application programming interface on a server hosting the crawler application.
US08364792B2
Techniques for distributing restricted media to consumers are disclosed. According to one aspect of the present invention, personalized settings (e.g., parameters or table) are managed in a primary client device associated with a user. A copy of the personalized settings is maintained in a server. When the primary box is replaced, a copy of the personalized settings is uploaded to a different client device that is configured to respond to the personalized settings. Data pertaining to titles in a personal vault is preloaded. When there is an order for a release that is restricted for distribution over an open network, data pertaining to such a release is also loaded. As a result, the subscriber sees the familiar settings on the different client device and would not miss any release while the primary box is being replaced or repaired.
US08364791B2
A method for adapting a user interface on a display device of a protocol tester having a visual network plan which is used for the configuration of a telecommunication measurement task by a user includes modifying the visual network plan in comparison to a basic network plan according to hardware and/or software existing in the protocol tester.
US08364781B2
The present invention provides a system and method for targeting content to audiences. The audience is defined by rules that may be based on properties as well as organizational structure associated with the users. Each of the rules is compiled to determine the group of members belonging to the rule. Logical operators are then applied to the groups to determine the audience membership. Compiling the rules enhances performance as the rules do not have to be run each time. Instead, a simple check against the rules results is performed. The rules making up the audience may be compiled at predetermined times in order to keep the audience up-to-date. Audiences are then selected and tagged to content so that the content may be viewed by the selected audiences.
US08364774B2
In an embodiment, techniques for sustaining session connections are provided. The techniques send heartbeat messages when not sending a message may cause the session connection to close because of a timeout condition. Heartbeat messages are valid transport layer messages that will be ignored by protocols at higher levels of a data communications stack. As an example, the techniques may send a TCP message containing only a carriage return and line feed (“CRLF”) in its payload. Because the TCP layer considers a message containing only a CRLF to be a valid TCP message, intermediary computing devices such as proxy servers may not interpret heartbeat messages as “keep alive” messages, and may sustain session connections.
US08364767B2
A method of processing a message in a messaging service client device that has a user interface device includes with the messaging service client device, ascertaining a proposed recipient for a message entered by a user with the user interface device; determining a set of potential recipients for the message with the messaging service client device, the set of potential recipients including the proposed recipient; determining whether, among the set of potential recipients, the proposed recipient is a most likely recipient of the message; and responsive to a determination that the proposed recipient is not the most likely recipient, providing a notification to the user through the user interface device that the proposed recipient is not the most likely recipient.
US08364764B2
A method, system, and apparatus for providing a self-destructing e-mail messages are described. An e-mail client application provides a user interface through which the sender of an e-mail message can enter the message and a time period for destruction of the message. Once the sender has provided this information, the e-mail client application sends a request to an e-mail server application to transmit the self-destructing e-mail message. The e-mail client application may also receive self-destructing e-mail messages. When a self-destructing e-mail message is received, the destruction date associated with the e-mail message is identified and the message is destroyed at the specified time. The e-mail client application can also limit the number and type of operations that may be performed on a self-destructing e-mail. An e-mail server application is also provided that receives requests from the e-mail client application to transmit self-destructing e-mail messages and perform other functions.
US08364762B2
The invention relates to a method for presenting information contained in messages in a terminal (MS). In the method, the message comprises at least one component. The message is transmitted to a terminal (MS) in a system for transmitting multimedia messages. In the method, a presentation model (SMIL) is formed to contain information related to the presentation of each component attached in the message. Said presentation model (SMIL) is supplemented with a reference about the location of each component in the message, and said presentation model (SMIL) is attached to said message.
US08364754B1
A multi-homed web server is disclosed including a plurality of virtual hosts operable in a web server. The multi-web server is configured to serve animations to clients over the web. The multi-web server may determine whether the specified time to send a subsequent graphic in a series of graphics has passed, and if the specified time has passed, then send a next graphic the next appropriate time. The web server software may be compiled as part of the native web server code.
US08364752B2
An embodiment of the invention provides a system and method for displaying the scheduling availability of a user. The system includes an occupancy module for analyzing the schedule of the user to determine the occupancy for a time period in the schedule. The time period includes an available time slot and/or an occupied time slot. A processor connected to the occupancy module determines whether the occupancy for the time period is above a threshold level of occupancy. The threshold level of occupancy includes a maximum number of occupied time slots, a maximum percentage of occupied time slots, a maximum amount of occupied time, and/or a maximum percentage of occupied time. A scheduling module connected to the processor automatically displays the scheduling availability of the user as unavailable for the time slot when the occupancy for the time period is above the threshold level of occupancy.
US08364750B2
The utilization of data services (such as web services) may involve the invocation of services, which may reduce performance and overburden the server. In some scenarios, the invocation may be specified in a language that does not support batch invocation, but it may not be feasible to re-code the invocations in a language that supports batching. Instead, the service invocations may be automatically translated into a batch logic specified in a batch-capable language and sent to the service as a batch. For example, a local proxy may receive a language-integrated query having two or more service invocations, compile the query into an expression tree including the two or more invocations, and send the expression tree to the service host to achieve the batch processing of the service invocations.
US08364748B2
A method, system and apparatus for an environment aware business delegate. A method for delegating an invoked action in an enterprise application can include determining an environment from which the action has been invoked and selecting a behavior for use which corresponds to the environment. Subsequently, the action can be delegated to the selected behavior for processing in the enterprise application. In a specific aspect of the invention, the determining step can include determining whether the action has been invoked in a server, in an online client or in an offline client.
US08364744B2
A distributed computing system comprising networking infrastructure and methods of executing an application on the distributed computing system is presented. Interconnected networking nodes offering available computing resources form a network fabric. The computing resources can be allocated from the networking nodes, including available processing cores or memory elements located on the networking nodes. A software application can be stored in a system memory comprising memory elements allocated from the nodes. The software application can be disaggregated into a plurality of executable portions that are striped across the allocated processing cores by assigning each core a portion to execute. When the cores are authenticated with respect to their portions, the cores are allowed to execute the portions by accessing the system memory over the fabric. While executing the software application, the networking nodes having the allocated cores concurrently forward packets through the fabric.
US08364734B2
A system and method for converting from decimal floating point (DFP) into scaled binary coded decimal (SBCD). The system includes a mechanism for receiving a DFP number. The system also includes at least one of a mechanism for performing coefficient expansion on the DFP number to create a binary coded decimal (BCD) coefficient part of a SBCD number and a mechanism for performing exponent extraction on the DFP number to create an exponent part of the SBCD number.
US08364733B2
A method and a system is presented for pruning a peer-to-peer network such that a peer-to-peer search within the peer-to-peer network is initiated beginning with those nodes on which relevant content has previously been found for particular search keywords. For each completed search, a peer node gathers client rating results and then forwards the rating information to a rating server; these results reflect the degree to which searches successfully located content for keywords in a search using particular peer nodes. A rating server maintains a database of results received from nodes. Prior to initiating a new search at a peer node, the peer node consults one or more rating databases to retrieve a set of initial nodes to which the node should initiate the new search in order to maximize the speed and success of finding relevant content. The node then performs the new search using the set of initial nodes.
US08364731B2
A file management apparatus that displays a plurality of pieces of first file management information each being a unit for managing files and associated with second file management information on a display unit based on setting content indicated by associated second file management information. When a first symbol image corresponding to one piece of the first file management information is selected, the file management apparatus displays files associated with the piece of the first file management information corresponding to the first symbol image, on the display unit.
US08364724B2
A method for forming a visual plot using a hierarchical structure of a dataset. The dataset comprises a measure and a dimension. The dimension consists of a plurality of levels. The plurality of levels form a dimension hierarchy. The visual plot is constructed based on a specification. A first level from the plurality of levels is represented by a first component of the visual plot. A second level from the plurality of levels is represented by a second component of the visual plot. The dataset is queried to retrieve data in accordance with the specification. The data includes all or a portion of the dimension and all or a portion of the measure. The visual plot is populated with the retrieved data in accordance with the specification.
US08364714B2
A system and associated method for improving efficiency and data security of a relational database management system (RDBMS). Access path security is configured for respective users of the RDBMS, having either access-by-key or access-by-scan value. The access-by-key access path security requires an end user to specify a search key in a query as configured for the end user to service the query. Only few users with administrative capacity are configured with the access-by-scan access path security, which permits servicing queries in conventional ways without screening queries by scanning database. The RDBMS calculates the most efficient access path for the query received from the end user, and retrieves data requested by the query only when the calculated access path is permitted by the access path security for the end user.
US08364713B2
Methods and systems for facilitating the propagation of personal data include a Personal Data Propagation Environment (“PDP environment”) that facilitates the propagation of personal data items between secure personal data stores and various consumers of the personal data items. One PDP environment includes a personal data manager and a personal data subscriber. The personal data manager manages personal data items on a secure data store associated with a user computing device. The personal data manager provides access to personal data items stored on the secure data store in accordance with a personal data subscription associated with the personal data subscriber.
US08364712B2
Users may be presented with different viewing interfaces for a document based on a combination of factors relating to display rights possessed for the document and user specific information. In one implementation, the user's location is used to determine portions of the document that can be displayed to the user. More particularly, access privileges to a document for a user are determined based on geographical location information of the user and based on access rights possessed for the document. Portions of the document may then be formatted for display to the user based on the determined access privileges.
US08364709B1
Methods, systems, and apparatus, including computer programs encoded on a computer storage medium, for determining word boundary likelihoods in potentially incomplete text. In one aspect, a method includes selecting query sequences from the query, each query sequence being at least a portion of a word n-gram, the word n-gram being a subsequence of up to n words selected from the second sequence of words of the query, and for each query sequence: determining one or more query sequence keys for the query sequence; determining at least one of a word boundary count and a non-word boundary count for each query sequence key, each word-boundary count and non-word boundary count being dependent on the context of the query sequence; and associating, in a data storage device, the at least one word boundary count and non-word boundary counts with each query sequence key.
US08364698B2
Apparatus and software system for and method of performing a visual-relevance-rank subsequent search
A method analyzes the visual content of media such as videos for collecting together visually-similar appearances in their constituent images (e.g. same scenes, same objects, faces of the same people.) As a result, the most relevant and salient (of clearest and largest presence) visual appearances depicted in the videos are presented to the user, both for the sake of summarizing the video content for the users to “see before they watch” (that is, judge by the depicted video content in a filmstrip-like summary whether they want to mouse-click on the video and actually spend time watching it), as well as for allowing to users to further refine their video search result set according to the most relevant and salient video content returned (e.g. largest screen-time faces).
US08364693B2
A documents database has a plurality of documents, including but not limited to text files, video clips and sound files. Each document is associated with at least one category of a plurality of categories in a categories database, and each category has at least one keyword. A search request having at least one search term is received from a user, and a categories database is searched for categories having a keyword corresponding to the user search term to identify first level categories. The other keywords from the identified first level categories are retrieved and the documents database is searched for documents having a user search term or a retrieved keyword. The identified documents are then ranked and presented to the user. Other search expansion techniques, and display techniques, are also discussed.
US08364692B1
Non-distinct names are identified in a set of names. The set of names is obtained for a first entity. In response to comparing a first name and a second name in the set of names, it is determined that the first name is similar to the second name. Initials in the first name and the second name are searched for. In response to the search indicating that there is at least one initial in at least one of the first name and the second name, it is determined that the at least one initial matches a corresponding initial in another one of the first name and the second name and one of the first name and the second name are marked as a non-distinct name. A cross-entity scoring technique using distinct names in the set of names for the first entity and names in another set of names for a second entity is applied.
US08364685B2
The present invention is directed towards methods and computer readable media for annotating and ranking user reviews on social review systems with inferred analytics. A reference framework is provided by creating context according to previous activity, bias, or background information of a given reviewer. The method of the present invention comprises receiving a first query identifying a given content item, generating a collection of content items based on one or more identical objective attributes associated with the given content item, identifying one or more subjective attributes associated with a given item in the collection of items, and providing a reference framework to interpret the subjective attributes associated with each item in the collection.
US08364680B2
Systems and methods may provide collection of data and association of searchable tags with the collected data. In an embodiment, a system may include at least one sensor configured to collect a primary data, and a processor configured to date and/or time stamp the primary data, to generate at least one searchable tag based on content of the primary data, and to associate the at least one searchable tag with the date and/or time-stamped primary data. Additionally, systems and methods may provide retrieval of primary data from a database based at least in part on tags that match at least part of a query. In an embodiment, the retrieved data may include at least one matching tag.
US08364679B2
A method, system, and article are provided for efficiently and effectively searching an electronic document collection. Each of the documents in the collection is pre-divided into sub-sections. One or more profiles are created, each including a selection of at least one of the sections of the documents in the collection. In addition, a weight is assigned to each of the selected sections in the profile. Based upon the parameters of a query and selection of a profile, select sub-sections of each document are employed to compare query data to the underlying document collection. A compilation of documents is created with data matching the query data, and a relevancy score is computed for each document in the compilation. The relevancy score is then leveraged to sort the documents in a manner to convey relevancy to the query submission.
US08364677B2
A method and apparatus for generating partition keys in an information handling system having a partitioned database. Partition keys are generated by concatenating a partition subrange identifier specifying a subrange of key values and a sequence number specifying a particular key value within a subrange. Partition keys are assigned with the aid of a partition key control table that stores subrange and available key block information and is updated whenever key blocks are reserved or the database is repartitioned. An activity indicator maintained for each partition indicates recent activity in the partition. In response to a request for a partition key, a partition is selected for key assignment having the least recent activity as indicated by its activity indicator. Specific activity indicators disclosed include a timestamp for each partition in the control table, as well as a count of the threads in a particular application instance concurrently accessing a partition.
US08364676B2
A system for extending a Time Intelligence language to provide support for period-to-date functions and for generating member sets in response to data queries is provided. The system may apply member aggregation functions and queries across a plurality of heterogeneous data sources. Each data source is aligned to a reference dimension and is said to organize data according to at least one level of granularity. In some embodiments, a member aggregation function specifies a period (e.g., year, quarter, month) and retrieves data from a data source starting with the current specified period and ending with the most recently completed period equal to the granularity of the data source. The system may allow a user to further customize a member aggregation function by specifying a granularity, a period offset, or a granularity end offset. Additionally, the system may generate a caption to display in association with the retrieved data.
US08364671B1
Technology described in this application relates to responding to queries for aggregated video and/or audio content that is found embedded in web pages. In particular, this technology relates to ranking of search results and compiling an index against which to search.
US08364670B2
The present invention provides a system, method and apparatus for electronically searching for an item by receiving a search request comprising a requested category and one or more requested attributes of the item and storing the search request in a search index based on the requested category and the requested attribute(s). The search index includes one or more categories and each category is defined by a taxonomy of attributes. The search index is then searched for any previously stored search requests that match the requested category and the requested attribute(s), a result of the search is determined and a search response that includes the result of the search is sent.
US08364659B2
An Internet infrastructure that supports searching of web links wherein a user profile is used to reorder search results in a search result list for improved searching. The Internet infrastructure consists of a plurality client devices with web browsers that are incorporated with user-profiling modules and a search engine server. The process of searching and reordering includes the search engine server receiving a search string along with a user profile from the user-profiling module (or retrieving the user profile from a database). Then, the search engine server stores the user profile in a database that is associated with the search engine server and delivers search results based upon the search string, and reorders the search results based upon stored data in the database.
US08364657B2
There is presented a system for providing a content stored on a medium, the system comprising a media presentation module including a processor. The processor is configured to retrieve a content payload including a digital content from a data structure residing on the medium, and to retrieve a content-describing metadata stored separately from the digital content, from the data structure. The content-describing metadata provide content information including media encoding information for the digital content and a media profile information for the digital content. The content-describing metadata are configured to provide the content information to the media presentation module prior to rendering the digital content. In one embodiment, the processor is further configured to configure the media presentation module based on the media encoding information and the media profile information, and to present the content on a display.
US08364654B2
A procedure and system is provided for automating storage of records on a records management server. The procedure includes storing the record on a records management server responsive to identifying an identifier in the record. The procedure also includes associating the record with a file on the server, wherein the file corresponds to the identifier.
US08364648B1
A data management method wherein a real-time history of a database system is stored as a logical representation and the logical representation is then used for any point-in-time recovery of the database system. More specifically, a method for capturing transaction data, binary data changes, metadata, and events, and for tracking a real-time history of a database system according to the events. The method enables tracking and storing of consistent checkpoint images of the database system, and also enables tracking of transaction activities between checkpoints. The database system may be recovered to any consistent checkpoint or to any point between two checkpoints.
US08364638B2
Various techniques are disclosed for facilitating manipulation of virtualized storage volumes and/or file systems of one or more different types of operating systems (OSs) implemented on distributed computer systems. According to embodiments, various aspects may be directed to different embodiments of virtualized filer appliances and/or filer applications which may be used for facilitating manipulation of virtualized storage volumes and/or file systems of one or more different types of operating systems (OSs) implemented on distributed computer systems. In at least one embodiment, a filer appliance may be implemented as a virtual appliance that includes functionality for performing automated file-level and/or volume-level operations for a selected set of file systems. In one embodiment, a filer appliance may be implemented as a virtual machine which is configured or designed to handle managing of one or more volumes. In one embodiment, the filer appliance may include one or more other virtual interfaces for interfacing with one or more virtual volumes and/or one or more other virtual appliances, virtual applications, etc. Various other techniques are disclosed herein for facilitating dynamic and automated configuration of virtual appliances implemented at distributed computing systems.
US08364632B2
An operation arrangement work is accelerated by improving efficiency of not only process of generating an operation arrangement proposal but also process of confirming whether the operation arrangement proposal is good or not by a user. An operation support system has an operation arrangement proposal generation part (1110) which executes automatic generation of an operation arrangement proposal, a diagram prediction part which executes simulation of train operation in the future, a diagram display part (1120) which displays an operation schedule and the operation arrangement proposal as a diagram, and a user input part which receives input of a parameter from the user. The system has a snapshot restoration part (1130) which restores snapshots of the operation arrangement proposal in an automatic generation process on the basis of a diagram change history outputted by the operation arrangement proposal generation part (1110), and a snapshot display input part (1140) which displays to the user a snapshot according to input from the user.
US08364620B2
A method and apparatus for the creation, selection, ordering, shipping and constructing of personalized living environments with customized configurations through the use of an architectural process, unitized assemblies, and assembly joineries. The architectural process allows for the initial creation, design and selection of the unitized assembly collections based upon human factors behavioral based criteria. The unitized assemblies are fixed and/or flexible, trade-integrated modules in unitized, shippable configurations designed and incorporated with high touch finished crafts, allowing for dimensional flexibility. The unitized assembly and human factors behavioral analysis combine for an experience blueprint of a homeowner's lifestyle portrait. The assembly joineries, based upon the desired collections selection, provide finishing touches to the unitized assembly, efficient strength to weight ratios, and expressed, stylized configurations in hybrid materials. The combination of the physical constructs with the behavioral process allows for “mass customization” in the design, production, manufacturing and delivering of personalized living environments.
US08364613B1
Methods include the actions of storing a first predictive model in computer-readable memory, the first predictive model having been defined based on a first training dataset provided by an owner of the first predictive model and being operable to generate an output based on a query, enabling access to the first predictive model based on permissions defined by the owner, while inhibiting access to the first training dataset, receiving a second training dataset from a user, the second training dataset being distinct from the first training dataset, modifying the first predictive model based on the second training dataset to provide a second predictive model, storing the second predictive model in computer-readable memory, and enabling access to the second predictive model.
US08364611B2
A system and method for precaching information on a mobile device. A precaching strategy is built for a mobile device The strategy defines a forecast of data types a user is predicted to request after the occurrence of one or more data refresh conditions. The precaching strategy is built by recognizing data usage patterns in data requested by the user or a group of users over a time period. The data usage pattern comprises data types and events that are correlated to the usage of the data. The events are used to define at least one refresh condition within the precaching strategy. The precaching strategy is executed. When the occurrence of the data refresh condition is detected, data is then retrieved from a data source, wherein the data is retrieved according to the precaching strategy. The retrieved data is transmitted to a user device cache.
US08364610B2
A method is provided for model optimization. The method may include obtaining respective distribution descriptions of a plurality of input parameters to a model indicative of interrelationships between the input parameters and one or more output parameters. The method may also include specifying respective search ranges for the plurality of input parameters and simulating the model to determine a desired set of input parameters based on a zeta statistic of the model. Further, the method may include determining respective desired distributions of the input parameters based on the desired set of input parameters; determining significance levels of the input parameters in interacting with the output parameter based on the simulation and the desired distributions of the input parameters; and presenting the significance levels.
US08364599B2
A method and apparatus effectuates bilateral commerce in ideas. An originator and user-driven on-line commercial network system is designed to facilitate idea submission, purchase, and licensing, and is easily adapted to business-to-business transfers of innovation as well as consumer-to-business transfers of innovation. The invention allows originators of ideas to communicate nondisclosing synopses of ideas globally to potential users, for users conveniently to search for relevant ideas and for users potentially to bind an originator to a limited duration license granting user the exclusive right to access and consider confidentially the originator's fully disclosed idea. The invention also allows users to communicate confidentially or nonconfidentially unsolved problems or needs globally to potential originators, for originators conveniently to search for relevant unsolved problems or needs, and for originators to submit and communicate confidentially proposed solutions to the soliciting user.
US08364597B2
A recording device records one or more subcontents constituting one content recorded on a first recording medium, onto a second recording medium, wherein the first recording medium has further recorded thereon digest values of the subcontents, and a medium signature generated based on the digest values of the subcontents. The recording device includes a subcontent acquisition unit that selects and acquires one or more subcontents permitted to be copied; an excluded digest value acquisition unit that acquires excluded digest values from the first recording medium, wherein the excluded digest values are digest values of nonselected subcontents; a signature acquisition unit that acquires the medium signature from the first recording medium; and a write unit that writes, onto the second recording medium, (i) the one or more selected subcontents, (ii) the excluded digest values and (iii) the medium signature.
US08364595B1
An electronic marketplace for used digital objects is disclosed. Digital objects including e-books, audio, video, computer applications, etc., purchased from an original vendor by a user are stored in a user's personalized data store. Content in a personalized data store may be accessible to the user via transfer such as moving, streaming, or download. When the user no longer desires to retain the right to access the now-used digital content, the user may move the used digital content to another user's personalized data store when permissible and the used digital content is deleted from the originating user's personalized data store. When a digital object exceeds a threshold number of moves or downloads, the ability to move may be deemed impermissible and suspended or terminated. Additionally or alternatively, a collection of objects may be assembled from individual digital objects stored in the personalized data stores of different users, and moved to a user's personalized data store.
US08364593B2
Systems and methods for intelligently authenticating payment transactions are disclosed. A user initiates a payment transaction to purchases goods or services from a merchant. The merchant sends a payment initiation request to a server computer in communication with a payment processing network and an issuer. The server computer queries various databases to determine one or more available communication channels that may be used as authentication channels by the issuer. The server computer also determines one or more communication channels, available for use by a mobile device of the user, that may be used as authentication channels to authenticate the payment transaction. The user is provided with a list of available/eligible authentication channels. User selects one of the authentication channels and the issuer is notified of the selection. The issuer uses the selected authentication channel to communicate with the user and authenticate the payment transaction.
US08364590B1
Methods and devices for confirming payment transactions are provided. In one embodiment, an electronic device may include a graphical user interface (GUI) with one or more graphical elements that may be moved by a user to confirm or decline a payment transaction using a selected payment instrument. For example, a user may drag the graphical element to a confirmation position via a touch screen of the electronic device. In another example, a motion sensing device, such as an accelerometer, may sense movement of the electronic device and move the graphical element in response to the motion. Upon confirmation, payment information for the payment transaction may be transmitted to a merchant or payment recipient. Various additional methods, machine-readable media, and devices for confirming payment transactions are provided.
US08364588B2
Data filters, models, and/or profiles for identifying and/or predicting the never-pay population (for example, those customers that make a request for credit and obtain the credit instrument but over the life of the account, never make a payment) can be useful to various commercial entities, such as those issuing mortgages, home equity lines of credit, consumer or business lines of credit, automobile loans, credit card accounts, or those entities providing services, such as utility services, phone services, and the like.
US08364578B1
A computer-implemented decision management process for evaluating a customer having more than one account. An iterative function, such as an iterative decision tree, is provided to evaluate the customer and each of the accounts interactively and interchangeably in a single pass. The iterative function has virtual attributes for accessing customer data and/or account data. The process iterates through the iterative function in accordance with the number of accounts of the customer.
US08364570B1
A method of consolidating certificate of deposits includes providing a consolidation button for the certificate of deposits to a user on a computing device and receiving a user selection of the consolidation button. The method also includes scheduling one or more of the certificate of deposits for consolidation responsive to the user selection of the consolidation button.
US08364563B2
According to one aspect, the system for standardizing accounting of consumables provides material lists of consumables used in particular repairs. The development of the material lists takes place through tracking of consumables used during the repair of various parts of different types of automotive vehicles. The size, shape, time, and material for repair may vary by make and model of vehicle, as well as the characteristics associated with each make and model. Once a materials list for a reasonable repair is assembled, the process is repeated for each vehicle make, model, and part to be repaired. The end result is a material list template for each part that a body shop repairs. In one embodiment, a wholesaler maintains and provides access to a system for standardizing accounting to body shops. The interface is customized for each body shop, so that specific materials will be provided on the material list for a repair. In another embodiment, user selectable options provide brand selection for the materials used in a particular repair. Providing brand selections and/or restricting selection of brand may provide an incentive for material purchases into specific brands. According to another aspect, maintaining material lists for each any every part of each model and make of vehicle represents significant overhead for any service provider. Creating standardized automobile objects for use in conjunction with a system for standardizing accounting of consumables provides for easier maintenance and greater flexibility to updates.
US08364561B2
A garment digitization system configured to determine physical attributes for any given garment including dimensional and spatial properties, mechanical attributes, optical attributes, and assembly information; a mechanism configured to take those properties and attributes and generating a digital three-dimensional model thereof; a mechanism to make such digital three-dimensional garment models available to others; and a mechanism operatively coupled with a local or remote display providing views of said digital garment.
US08364559B1
A shared “universal” virtual shopping cart (“the cart”) may be provided by a host to enable information sharing between multiple disparate electronic marketplaces provided by various merchants. The host may obtain user information via the cart to improve interactions with a user. The host may recommend an item to the user that is offered at a lower price and related to an item retained in the user's cart. The host may also recommend items based on a user's purchase history, such as complementary items (e.g., up-sell items) and items other users may recommend. In some aspects, the host may compile best selling lists based on data from multiple electronic marketplaces. The host may also perform user specific operations such as indicate an item in a cart is a duplicate of a previous purchase and monitor a price and/or available quantities of an item in the cart.
US08364557B2
A method of facilitating a project bid process includes generating a buyer-associated bid request utilizing at least a portion of bid item selections of a stored bid item list, transmitting the buyer-associated bid request to at least one supplier for solicitation of a supplier bid response to be generated with the bid item selections utilized in the buyer-associated bid request, generating a supplier-associated bid request utilizing at least a portion of the bid item selections utilized in the buyer-associated bid request, and transmitting the supplier-associated bid request to at least one subcontracting entity for solicitation of a subcontracting-entity bid response to be generated with the bid item selections utilized in the supplier-associated bid request.
US08364553B2
Freshness inventory control problem may be formulated as a stochastic dynamic program. In one aspect, a stochastic dynamic programming formulation takes as input inventory status, stochastic demand forecast and cost information associated with on-hand inventory. The stochastic dynamic programming formulation is maximized to determine order quantity and depletion quantity of the product per period.
US08364548B2
In one embodiment, a method comprises receiving a request for access to a media content asset from a first user of a web-based service, the request specifying a second user that has provided access to the media content asset; retrieving, from a user database, a user entry describing attributes associated with the second user; determining whether the user entry includes digital rights metadata for determining whether the second user is licensed to share at least a portion of the media content asset; and selectively providing the first user with access to at least the portion of the media content asset based on determining from the digital rights metadata that the media content asset is licensed to the second user, and determining that the first user is authorized by the second user to access the media content asset.
US08364545B2
A system for pairing food from a food menu with wine from a wine menu includes a host machine and computing device(s). A method uses the host machine and computing device (s) to conduct the pairing. The host machine has first and second databases describing, via objectively scored categories, each food item in the food menu and each wine in the wine menu. Each device is in communication with the host machine. The computing device receives a food selection signal corresponding to a food item(s) in the food menu, and calculates, for each wine, solutions to comparison functions which compare different numerically-scored categories for the food and wine. A numeric Pairing Compatibility Score (PCS) value is calculated for each wine as a function of the solutions, and rank-ordering is conducted on the PCS values. Wines with a threshold PCS value(s), e.g., lowest value(s), are displayed as recommended pairings.
US08364544B2
A comprehensive online bidding and sales management system and method for merchant processing services of global credit card transactions. Merchants using the system can obtain multiple bid proposals for merchant processing services from sales representatives that are automatically ranked by the system based on the best overall price (estimated monthly expense to merchant) and feedback provided by merchants using the system. The merchant is thus provided with an estimated monthly expense and bid ranking associated with each bid proposal. The system provides the sales representative with its estimated revenues and processing expenses, and provides various merchant processing pricing models to the sales representative to analyze its bid proposals and merchant sales opportunities.
US08364541B2
A method implemented in a computer system for determining an advertisement in response to an advertising opportunity, wherein the advertising opportunity is an opportunity to place the advertisement on a web page subsequent to a request for the web page by a browser. The computer system receives an indication of the advertising opportunity, and in response to receiving the indication, the computer system determines bids, wherein each bid is associated with an advertisement, selects one of the bids and places the advertisement associated with the selected bid on the web page.
US08364529B1
A way to promote a web site is via search engine optimization (SEO). Traditionally, SEO practitioners have charged a fixed fee for performing SEO services. An analyzer can determine a first probability that a search query for a campaign term will result in a referral from a search engine, determine second probabilities that are associated with a plurality of particular positions in a search engine results page, combine the search query volume information, the first probability, and the second probability for the position with a monetary value to generate an organic price, combine the organic prices for the plurality of positions to value the SEO services for the campaign term. The analyzer evaluates the effectiveness of SEO activities and can generate a volume-based value for SEO services. In addition, disclosed techniques can also be used to identify candidate terms for future SEO activities.
US08364515B1
Systems and methods for optimization of facility locations are disclosed, for example, wireless telecommunications facility locations. Among a plurality of cluster points, corresponding to wireless customers, optimal locations are determined for a predetermined number of cluster centers, each cluster center having a predetermined cluster radius that defines a cluster area. Among a plurality of cluster points, optimal facility locations are determined for a variable number of cluster centers, each cluster center having a minimum acceptable economic value.
US08364509B1
Systems, methods, and computer readable media for reporting on at least one aspect of respective performance of a plurality of agents. The methods can include receiving data representing respective performance parameters that pertain to the agents, storing the data for subsequent query and retrieval, receiving at least one query, retrieving at least some of the data in response to the query, and presenting at least one result of the query to the at least one user. Other aspects of the method enable management or supervisors to access data pertaining to teams or groups of agents, and drill-down to access data specific to the agents that comprise the various teams or groups. Systems and computer readable media are provided for practicing various aspects of the method.
US08364507B2
A system and method for providing reservation capabilities to a reservation or property management system via a plurality of Internet web sites. Each booking party is directed to a web site containing common content and content specific to the type of booking party, such as a travel agent, wholesaler, or traveler. The system ensures the complete and accurate collection of data regarding a customer and the customer's reservation request through the use of distributed software components and association with customer profiles. Each booking party may create or modify customer profile information to be associated with reservations. The product or service provider may establish and maintain its own set of commission rates, fee amounts and discount values for each type of booking party, thereby allowing the provider to control accuracy and completeness of reservations, as well as revenue flow to the booking parties.
US08364506B2
Risk characteristic information is received concerning a property that is to be insured by an insurance company. The risk characteristic indicates sensitivities of the property to commodity prices. Commodity futures information is also received. The commodity futures information indicates futures contract prices for at least one commodity. An insurance pricing model is stored. The insurance pricing model operates to base pricing of insurance policies at least in part on the commodity futures information. A premium quotation for insuring the property is generated based at least in part on the insurance pricing model and the commodity futures information.
US08364505B1
Systems and methods implement a rules-based decision engine that identifies vehicles with a high total loss potential based on vehicle details and damage information. This can be done by applying weights to the various criteria and comparing a sum of the applied weights to a threshold. An update mode allows for the subsequent update of the determination of whether the vehicle is a likely total loss based on additionally acquired information.
US08364504B1
A system for accessing pharmacy data and ordering prescriptions via a network includes a network server; an application server connected to the network server; a database connected to the application server, the database containing information concerning drugs and personal information concerning one or more of the customers, wherein the personal information includes a prescription drug history of each respective one of the one or more customers; and an intranet server that is connected to the application server, one or more member pharmacies and one or more shipping facilities; wherein the application server is configured to: cause a browser to display to the customer the information concerning drugs and personal information concerning that customer and display an option for the drug associated with the prescription order to be picked up at one of the one or more member pharmacies or shipped to a postal address.
US08364490B2
A voice browser configured to process voice markup language documents can include a voice processing application and an integrated communications interface for interacting with a voice processing system. The voice browser can be configured to load the voice processing application independently of a received telephone call. The integrated communications interface can include at least one of an integrated transaction capabilities application part component for receiving a transaction capabilities application part query and an integrated ISUP component for receiving a telephony control signal.
US08364484B2
An input voice detect is detected after starting a voice input waiting state; the detected voice is recognized; an elapsed time from the start of the voice input waiting state is counted; an informative sound which urges a user to input the voice is outputted when the elapsed time reaches a preset output set time; and the output of the informative sound is stopped when the elapsed time at the time of inputting the voice is shorter than the output set timedetect.
US08364482B2
A system and method is provided for obtaining a message type identifier embedded in a vocoder packet via a speech codec (in-band) such as found in a wireless communication network. The vocoder packet is received and decoded. The decoded vocoder packet is filtered until a synchronization signal is detected, with the filtering comprising correlating the decoded vocoder packet with a predetermined sequence to generate the synchronization signal. The polarity of the synchronization signal is determined, and the message type identifier is derived based on the polarity of the detected synchronization signal. A first polarity identifies a first message type, and a second polarity identifies a second message type.
US08364481B2
The subject matter of this specification can be embodied in, among other things, a method that includes receiving an audio signal and initiating speech recognition tasks by a plurality of speech recognition systems (SRS's). Each SRS is configured to generate a recognition result specifying possible speech included in the audio signal and a confidence value indicating a confidence in a correctness of the speech result. The method also includes completing a portion of the speech recognition tasks including generating one or more recognition results and one or more confidence values for the one or more recognition results, determining whether the one or more confidence values meets a confidence threshold, aborting a remaining portion of the speech recognition tasks for SRS's that have not completed generating a recognition result, and outputting a final recognition result based on at least one of the generated one or more speech results.
US08364477B2
A method (400, 500) and apparatus (220) seeks to improve the intelligibility of speech emitted into a noisy environment. Formants are identified (426) and perceptual frequency scale band is selected (502) that includes at least one of the identified formants. The SNR in each band is compared (504) to a threshold and, if the SNR for that band is less than the threshold, the method increases a formant enhancement gain for that band. A set of high pass filter gains (338) is combined (516) with the formant enhancement gains yielding combined gains that are then clipped (518), scaled (520) according to a total SNR, normalized (526), smoothed across time (530) and frequency (532), and used to reconstruct (532, 534) an audio signal.
US08364467B1
A classifier may include logic to parse incoming content and to compare a key term in the content to stored content related to multiple prior messages, where the stored content is classified with respect to one or more categories. The logic may produce a score for the content based on the comparing, relate the score to one of the one or more categories, and produce a result based on the comparing, producing, or relating.
US08364461B2
Native code corresponding to an invalidated trace is re-used in a system emulator. A first trace is identified. A dropped second trace is identified. The dropped second trace is associated with a first native code for emulating the second trace. If the identified first trace corresponds to the dropped second trace, the first native code is associated to the first trace, and the first native code is executed. If the identified first trace does not correspond to the dropped second trace, a second native code for emulating the first trace is created, the second native code is associated with the first trace, and the second native code is executed.
US08364459B2
A method is disclosed for estimating states of a power electronic system, the system having a converter circuit. An exemplary method includes varying a system state vector x(k) and a system state vector x(k+1) for each of sampling times k=−N+1 to k=0 in such a manner that a sum formed by an addition of a first vector norm obtained by subtracting a first system model function f(x(k), u(k)) from the system state vector x(k+1), and another vector norm obtained by subtracting a second system model function g(x(k), u(k)) from the output variable vector y(k), becomes minimal over the sampling times k=−N+1 to k=0. A desired system state vector x(k) at the sampling time k=0 can then be selected.
US08364454B2
A system and method for dynamically checking clearance within a geometric mesh model includes a user computer system having a remotely located computer system, and a data storage device. The method periodically updates a digital model of assembled component parts stored on the data storage device, interactively selects a predetermined clearance rule applicable to the digital model and interactively selects a predetermined clearance condition applicable to the selected clearance rule for the digital model that modifies the predetermined clearance rule. The method periodically calculates clearance within the assembled digital model using the selected clearance rule and the selected clearance condition and summarizing the clearance check. The clearance check summary identifies a clearance issue using a predetermined clearance checking criteria and submits the identified clearance issue to an issue manager software program for tracking clearance issues.
US08364452B2
A method and system for lithography simulation and measurement of critical dimensions with improved CD marker generation and placement is disclosed. The method and system specify a position for measuring a difference between a lithography image and a target pattern, generate one or more CD marker candidates, and select at least one CD marker from the one or more CD marker candidates.
US08364444B2
A method for designing a distributing frame and a computer readable medium having computer instructions thereon for causing a computer to perform the method. The distributing frame may include a first distribution portion having a first series of verticals, and a first series of horizontal shelves; a second distribution portion having a second series of verticals, and a second series of horizontal shelves, the second distribution portion being disposed generally parallel to and spaced apart from the first distribution portion; and at least one horizontal bridge between the first distribution portion and the second distribution portion to support interconnections between a shelf of the first distribution portion and a shelf of the second distribution portion. A portion of a first face of a portion of the shelves can be used for terminal blocks for connecting outside connector cables to the interconnections.
US08364442B2
Embodiments of automated structural interpretation are described. In some embodiments, a method includes identifying one or more object points belonging to an object to be tracked; tracking a trajectory of the one or more object points, including: calculating a plurality of etalons around at least one of the one or more object points using one or more different angular parameters; selecting one or more candidate points for evaluation; extracting one or more samples from around the one or more candidate points; and evaluating a next trajectory location of the one or more object points based at least partially on the one or more samples and one or more of the plurality of etalons.
US08364441B2
Surface texture measuring device includes: first pseudo measurement point sequence obtaining means which drives contact piece to trace a surface of reference workpiece having reference shape and obtains locus of certain position of the contact piece as first pseudo measurement point sequence; contact piece model calculating means which calculates, based on first pseudo measurement point sequence and design surface specifying the reference workpiece surface, a contact piece model representing surface shape of the contact piece and placed in pseudo space; second pseudo measurement point sequence obtaining means which places contact piece model such that its surface contacts a reference surface specifying a workpiece surface and it takes the same posture as contact piece in measurement, and calculates reference position of the contact piece model as second pseudo measurement point sequence; and replacement determination means which determines whether to replace contact piece based on second pseudo measurement point sequence.
US08364435B2
A method and a device are provided for testing the design of a seat comprising a seat area, a backrest, and a headrest. The method includes positioning a body simulating element with a reference measuring point on the seat by means of a robot kinematics; passive switching of the robot kinematics; measuring a distance between the reference measuring point and the headrest; and comparing the measured distance with a reference value.
US08364434B2
To include a first replica buffer that has substantially the same circuit configuration as a pull-up circuit which constitutes an output buffer and a second replica buffer that has substantially the same circuit configuration as a pull-down circuit which constitutes the output buffer. When a first calibration command ZQCS is issued, either a control signal ACT1 or ACT2 is activated, and a calibration operation is performed for either the first replica buffer or the second replica buffer. When a second calibration command ZQCL is issued, both of the control signals ACT1, ACT2 are activated and the calibration operation is performed for both the first replica buffer and the second replica buffer.
US08364433B1
A calibration system employed for use with a resistance capacitance (RC) filter having resistors and capacitors with parasitic capacitance associated therewith. The calibration system has a digital calibration circuit receiving a time constant signal and generating, based thereon, a control word of N digital bits. The calibration system includes an analog monitor circuit having monitor capacitance assembly having a particular equivalent resistor and capacitor configuration. The analog monitor circuit generates the time constant signal and includes N switches, where each switch is controlled by one of the N bits of the control word, each switch is configured to connect or disconnect one or more capacitors of the monitor capacitor assembly thereby generating a time constant signal that represents the time constant of the RC integrated filter.
US08364431B2
A calibrator for field devices is provided. In one aspect, the calibrator has the ability to communicate in accordance with at least two process communication protocols, and tests an attached process connection before engaging communication. In another aspect, the calibrator includes isolation circuitry to facilitate compliance with at least one intrinsic safety requirement, while communicating with field devices using an all-digital process communication protocol. In another aspect, a method of calibrating field devices is provided which accesses device descriptions of the field devices to generate calibration tasks.
US08364429B2
Systems and methods for metering and analyzing energy consumption of events within a portable device
System and methods to determine the energy consumption per event type from usage data of portable devices are described. An example method to determine the energy consumption of events on a portable device includes receiving data associated with events occurring using at least a portion of the portable device during a time period, the data including a time at which each event type occurred and a total power consumed by the at least the portion of the portable device during the time period, analyzing, via a processor, the received data to determine an energy consumption per an event type of the at least a portion of the portable device based on the times at which each of the event types occurred and the total power consumed, and reporting the energy consumption per the event type for the at least the portion of portable device.
US08364417B2
An embodiment of a method for correcting an error associated with phasic synchrony of sequence data generated from a population of template molecules is described that comprises the steps of detecting signals generated in response to nucleotide species introduced during a sequencing reaction; generating an observed value for the signal detected from each of the nucleotide species; defining positive incorporation values and negative incorporation values from the observed values using a carry forward value and an incomplete extension value; and revising the carry forward value and the incomplete extension value using a noise value that is derived from observed values associated with the negative incorporation values.
US08364408B2
To determine optimal alignment of two molecules, an alignment space of two strings representing element sequences of the molecules is conceived as a grid of cells, where each cell represents alignments between substrings of the two strings. The cells are tested against conditions that are framed, in the context of the (wh)-density global alignment problem. Two such conditions do not require an examination of the actual characters of the strings, and are hence computed with relative speed. A third condition, which involves examination of the characters in the string further prunes the cells that are to be considered.
US08364407B2
Chemical compositions may be characterized by scores comprising a series of at least four energy inputs, where the score is selected to resonate resonant structures of the chemical composition to produce a selective effect.
US08364399B2
Generally described, aspects of the disclosed subject matter are directed to managing the configuration of a vehicle. In accordance with one embodiment, a method of modifying the configuration of a vehicle based on the vehicle's location is provided. The method includes receiving, from a remote Satellite Positioning System (“SPS”) device, positioning data that identifies the location of the vehicle. Then, the positioning data is used to identify one or more regulations that are applicable, given the location of the vehicle. Based on collected vehicle readings, a determination is made regarding whether the configuration of the vehicle should be modified. In turn, the method may cause the configuration of the vehicle to be modified to comply with the one or more regulations.
US08364397B2
Methods, systems and program products provide pictorial information relevant to a geographic location, through selecting characteristics relevant to geographic locations, searching pictorial image databases for images having an embedded tags associated with the characteristics, retrieving image files from databases having embedded tags correlated to characteristics and visually depicting a physical appearance or an attribute of a location, analyzing characteristics image files and responsively selecting preferred image data, formatting preferred image data for presentation to a user, associating formatted preferred data with geographic locations, and presenting associated formatted data to a user in association with geographic locations. Characteristic include global positioning satellite coordinates. Image data may be selected having preferred image resolutions or perspectives. Formatting pictorial information may comprise synthesizing photographs into a constructs. Associated image data may indicate a distance and direction from a geographic location. Routing system applications are enabled to present pictorial information with each navigation route points.
US08364389B2
Systems and methods are providing for interfacing an electronic device with a bicycle system. The electronic device can receive the output from sensors coupled to the bicycle and generate riding characteristics for display to the user. The electronic device can in addition receive communications from other electronic devices and provide the communications to the user. In some embodiments, the electronic device can be paired with the devices of one or more other cyclists so that the cyclists can share riding characteristics and other information. This can allow the cyclists to ride as a team and better assist each other.
US08364388B2
A travel guidance system for a vehicle having a plurality of on-board batteries includes: a travel start location obtaining unit; a destination obtaining unit; a charging facility candidate location obtaining unit for obtaining location information for charging facility candidates; a remaining amount calculating unit for calculating, for each charging facility candidate, the amount of energy which will remain in the on-board batteries upon arrival at the charging facility candidate; a charging facility selecting unit for selecting a charging facility suitable for leaving the on-board batteries based on the travel start location, the destination, the location information for charging facility candidates, and the amounts of the remaining energy in the on-board batteries calculated for each charging facility candidate; and a charging facility notification unit for communicating the location information for the selected charging facility.
US08364385B2
A system for a vehicle includes a cylinder pressure sensor and a control module. The cylinder pressure sensor measures pressure within a cylinder of an engine, generates increases in a cylinder pressure signal based on the pressure, selectively generates a predetermined profile in the cylinder pressure signal, and selectively resets the cylinder pressure signal to a predetermined reset level after generating the predetermined profile in the cylinder pressure signal. The control module receives the cylinder pressure signal, detects the predetermined profile of the cylinder pressure signal, and detects the resetting of the cylinder pressure signal to the predetermined reset level when the predetermined profile is detected.
US08364376B2
A control system for an engine having a catalytic converter includes an energy calculation module that calculates a calculated mass air flow (MAF) of intake air of the engine based on a requested torque and a requested spark timing that correspond to a desired thermal energy of exhaust of the engine, and that determines an expected thermal energy of the exhaust based on the calculated MAF, and an energy residual module that determines a thermal energy residual of the exhaust based on the expected thermal energy and an estimated thermal energy of the exhaust, wherein the estimated thermal energy is based on a measured MAF of the intake air. The control system includes an energy evaluation module that determines a diagnostic result that indicates whether the catalytic converter is operating within a target temperature range based on the thermal energy residual. Related control methods are also provided.
US08364368B2
A reliability for a power-train feed-forward torque may be decreased when a degree of reliability for an estimated braking torque is decreased due to disturbance factors. A power-train feedback torque is corrected based on a degree of reliability for a power-train torque, for which a reliability for a braking condition is taken into account. In a similar manner, a brake feedback torque is corrected based on a degree of reliability for a braking torque, for which a reliability for a power-train condition is taken into account. Accordingly, it is possible to compensate the decrease of reliability for the power-train feed-forward torque or brake feed-forward torque by the correction for the power-train feedback torque or the brake feedback torque.
US08364366B2
A sensing system collects position data associated with one or more obstacles within a certain range of a vehicle. A former establishes an occupancy grid based on the collected position data. A motion monitoring module determines a reaction distance and a deceleration distance associated with a vehicle at a regular time interval during an operational state. A safety guidance module establishes a safety zone (e.g., safety zone grid) for the regular time interval based on the occupancy grid, the determined reaction distance, and the deceleration distance.
US08364363B2
A power take-off (PTO) control system for a work vehicle equipped with an implement, comprising a hydraulic multi-plate PTO clutch (6) whereby power from the work vehicle is interruptibly transmitted to the implement; a control valve (15) for adjusting an actuating pressure of the PTO clutch; a manually operable clutch operation tool (17, 21) for sending an operation instruction to the control unit; and a control unit (19) for switching the PTO clutch from a disengaged state to an engaged state by controlling the control valve on the basis of the target control characteristics in response to the operation instruction of the clutch operation tool (17, 21). The target control characteristics are generated and set on the basis of the operational behavior of the clutch operation tool (17, 21).
US08364361B2
A method for controlling a clutch assembly includes controlling an actual clutch fill pressure using open-loop pressure controls when an active fill phase is detected, and using closed-loop pressure controls when the active fill phase is complete or when an overfill condition is detected. The method supplies the actual clutch pressure according to a second set of open-loop pressure controls when a step in commanded clutch pressure is detected. The method monitors a fill pressure and time during the step, and applies the clutch pressure according to the closed-loop pressure controls when either value equals a corresponding threshold value. A clutch assembly has a piston for compressing clutch disks to initiate a shift event, an algorithm for controlling the shift event, and a sensor for determining an actual clutch pressure during the shift phases. The algorithm switches between closed-loop and open-loop pressure controls in response to different shift phases.
US08364356B2
A method of altering a drive parameter of a machine having a drive system that is configured to operate a left side of the machine independently of the right side of the machine. The method includes entering, by a user, a drive parameter alteration mode by actuating a first input, and actuating a second input to alter one or more parameters associated with a controller of the machine.
US08364353B2
The present invention relates to a system for the automatic movement of material in a working area comprising at least one movable piece of equipment, wherein the system has a control for the automatic movement of the piece of equipment with an automatic recognition of obstacles. In accordance with the invention, the control has a first obstacle processing function which moves an obstacle in the working area automatically using the movable piece of equipment; and/or in that the control has a second obstacle processing function which automatically removes an obstacle from the working area using the movable piece of equipment.
US08364348B2
A method for determining a steering angle offset (LWO) in a vehicle having a steering unit and a steering angle sensor. A first frequency distribution (HV1) of the steering angle (LW) is determined over a number of steering angles according to at least one dynamic vehicle parameter (Q, G, V), and the average value (MW1) of the steering angle (LW) is determined from the first frequency distribution (HV1). The next step tests whether the steering angle (LW) in the first frequency distribution (HV1) is distributed symmetrically around the average value (MW1) and, when there is symmetry of the first frequency distribution (HV1) around the average value (MW1), the first frequency distribution (HV1) is carried over into a second frequency distribution (HV2). When the overall number of steering angles (LW1) in the second frequency distribution (HV2) exceeds a prespecified threshold value (S), the steering angle offset (LWO) is determined from the average value (MW2) of the second frequency distribution (HV2). A device for determining a steering angle offset (LWO) in a vehicle by way of such a method is also described.
US08364347B2
A small-size, highly-reliable left-right independent steering device is provided without having to make significant modifications to existing vehicles or to develop dedicated vehicles. The device includes tie rods linked to left and right front wheels and axially expandable and contractible by means of small-size telescopic mechanism portions defined by ball-screw-type linear actuators. Each telescopic mechanism portion mainly includes a main body to which a tie-rod end of the corresponding tie rod is fixed, and an electric motor serving as an actuator attached substantially perpendicularly to the main body. The other end of the tie rod is coupled to a steering rod and functions as a piston rod that can advance or recede in the axial direction by means of the telescopic mechanism portion. Thus, the telescopic mechanism portions are mountable within tire wheels at positions free of, for example, suspension arms and stabilizers located near the tie rods.
US08364345B2
A vehicle driving operation support apparatus for a vehicle, includes a sensing section to sense a traveling condition of the vehicle including a surrounding condition inclusive of an obstacle around the vehicle; and a control section to calculate a risk potential for the vehicle in accordance with the traveling condition. The control section performs a support control to support the driver in accordance with the risk potential, performs a first assist control to restrain disturbance (such as vibration from a road) transmitted to the driver in accordance with the risk potential, and performs a second assist control to produce inducement simulating a condition change (such as a vehicle behavior) attributable to an increase of the risk potential, in accordance with the risk potential. The control section further performs a cooperation control to coordinate the first assist control and the second assist control.
US08364342B2
A control wheel for controlling at least one function of a system by a user includes a moveable engagement wheel for engagement by the user and an actuator coupled to the engagement wheel for providing force or haptic feedback to the engagement wheel in response to movement of the engagement wheel. A sensor for sensing movement of the engagement wheel is provided and a control system is coupled to the sensor for receiving information about positioning and movement of the engagement wheel, and is also coupled to the actuator for controlling force to the engagement wheel. The control system also provides control of the at least one function of the system.
US08364340B2
A method and systems for engine control of a vehicle propulsion system are provided. The system includes a plurality of engine model modules executing independently and programmed to receive engine operating condition values from a plurality of sensors positioned on an engine wherein each of the plurality of engine model modules is programmed to determine an estimate of a process parameter of a location in the engine where a sensor is not available, not present at the location, has failed, or is determined to be inaccurate. The system also includes an estimate source selector configured to determine model blending factors and a model blending module configured to determine an estimated virtual sensor value using the determined estimates from at least two of the plurality of engine model modules and the model blending factors.
US08364335B1
A multiprocessor system used in a car, home, or office environment includes multiple processors that run different real-time applications. A dynamic configuration system runs on the multiple processors and includes a device manager, configuration manager, and data manager. The device manager automatically detects and adds new devices to the multiprocessor system, and the configuration manager automatically reconfigures which processors run the real-time applications. The data manager identifies the type of data generated by the new devices and identifies which devices in the multiprocessor system are able to process the data.
US08364314B2
A robotic system includes a humanoid robot having a plurality of joints adapted for force control with respect to an object acted upon by the robot, a graphical user interface (GUI) for receiving an input signal from a user, and a controller. The GUI provides the user with intuitive programming access to the controller. The controller controls the joints using an impedance-based control framework, which provides object level, end-effector level, and/or joint space-level control of the robot in response to the input signal. A method for controlling the robotic system includes receiving the input signal via the GUI, e.g., a desired force, and then processing the input signal using a host machine to control the joints via an impedance-based control framework. The framework provides object level, end-effector level, and/or joint space-level control of the robot, and allows for functional-based GUI to simplify implementation of a myriad of operating modes.
US08364313B2
The safety of an operator which may be endangered by an erroneous instruction by the operator or a robot control system is ensured by making more stringent a condition regarding the separation of the operator from the vicinity of a robot when an operation program of the robot is activated. An interlock to which a condition regarding activation of the operation program of the robot is added is provided in a feeding unit which is connected to a robot controlling unit by wireless connection for charging a teaching unit, so as to provide a robot system which improves the safety of the operator.
US08364312B2
An intelligent modular rotary multi-sensor sensor ring platform for such uses as in mobile robotics allows a few sensors to scan the local area and environment, provides a cost saving, volume and a power savings as well as reducing calibration and maintenance costs. The sensor ring platform has a large internal diameter allowing a maximum area for the chassis structural elements as well as other equipment located in the chassis. Local sensor signal processing is combined with time, rotation speed and position data stamps to allow processed data to be used locally as well as to be transferred to other systems or subsystems or for data logging purposes.
US08364307B2
A conveying system may include a frame that supports a plurality of rollers which carry articles thereon. At least one of the rollers may be a motorized roller with first and second motors adapted to rotate an outer cylindrical shell of the motorized roller. A controller external to the motorized roller may send speed control commands to the motorized roller to control both the first and second motors in a manner that increases torque of the motorized roller. The motors may be controlled in four quadrant mode, or two quadrant mode, or a combination thereof. The motorized roller may be used in a right angle transfer mechanism, or in other components of a conveying system.
US08364305B2
An apparatus and a method for tuning control parameters are disclosed. The apparatus includes a parameter database, a user interface, a processing unit and a control unit. The parameter database stores several control parameter sets, which are classified into several data groups respectively corresponding to several total machining points. The user interface is for selecting one of the total machining points, and distributing the selected total machining point to at least one machining item to generate distribution data of points. The user interface is further for inputting embryo data. The processing unit selects one of the control parameter sets corresponding to the distribution data of points and the embryo data from the parameter database. The control unit controls a machine tool according to the corresponding one of the control parameter sets.
US08364304B2
A method for singulating dies from a wafer includes laser scribing a continuous line on each side of the die, and laser ablating an area adjacent the laser scribed continuous line on each side of the die. The laser ablations in the area adjacent the laser scribed continuous line on each side of the die being spaced from one another. The method also includes sawing the laser abated area adjacent the continuous line. A method for singulating dies from a wafer includes laser scribing a first continuous line, laser scribing a second continuous line spaced apart from the first continuous line, and laser scribing a third continuous line. The third continuous line positioned between the first continuous line and the second continuous line. The third continuous line overlaps the second continuous line and the third continuous line.
US08364298B2
A system, method, and program product are provided for filtering sound from a selected application on a computer without interrupting voice communications on the computer. The method comprises: monitoring a selected program for an outgoing digital audio signal from a selected application; detecting said digital audio signal; and filtering an analog microphone input with the digital audio signal.
US08364297B2
The disclosure relates to an audio playing method adapted for an electronic device. The audio playing method includes (a) providing the electronic device, the electronic device comprising a processor, an audio playing program executed by the processor, and a storage system comprising a playlist comprising a plurality of audio files; (b) invoking and running the audio playing program; (c) accessing the playlist and selecting an audio file; (d) determining if the audio file selected has been previously selected as a prompt signal of the electronic device; (e) accessing another audio file in the playlist if the audio file has been previously selected as a prompt signal; and (f) playing the audio file if the audio file has not been previously selected as a prompt signal.
US08364291B2
An industrial control system implementing a multi-tasking operating system employs a primary and secondary controller each having a processor and an I/O data table. The processors are configured to execute one or more priority ranked programs. A tracking of changes in the I/O data table of the primary processor is used to independently track changes to controller specific data that has been changed and program specific data that has been changed and to transmit controller specific data that has been changed by any program and program specific data that has been changed only for completed programs to the secondary processor.
US08364290B2
A method of machine control can include providing at least a system master signal, selectively synchronizing at least sub-system master signal to the system master signal based on the value of the system master signal, and carrying out at least one operation based on the value of the other master signal. For example, a machine controller may provide a system virtual master signal and synchronize one or more module virtual master signals to the system virtual master based on the system virtual master count value. One or more components of the module may operate based on the count value of the module virtual master signal. The use of an asynchronous control method may advantageously increase the flexibility of the machine. Because the operation of the components of the machine may depend on respective virtual master signals, a machine using asynchronous control methods may advantageously continue operating one component or module in the event of a fault involving other components. Additionally, component operation can be redefined while other components of the machine continue to run.
US08364285B2
The present invention provides a method of affecting physiological disorders by stimulating a specific location along the sympathetic nerve chain. Preferably, the present invention provides a method of affecting a variety of physiological disorders or pathological conditions by placing an electrode adjacent to or in communication with at least one ganglion along the sympathetic nerve chain and stimulating the at least one ganglion until the physiological disorder or pathological condition has been affected.
US08364281B2
A highly flexible implantable lead that offers improved flexibility, fatigue life and fatigue and abrasion resistance improved reliability, effective electrode tissue contact with a small diameter and low risk of tissue damage during extraction. In one embodiment the lead is provided with both defibrillation electrodes and pacing/sensing electrodes. For defibrillation/pacing leads, the lead diameter may be as small as six French or smaller. The construction utilizes helically wound conductors. For leads incorporating multiple separate conductors, many of the helically wound conductors are arranged in a multi-filar relationship. Preferably, each conductor is a length of wire that is uninsulated at about the middle of its length to create an electrode, wherein the conductor is folded in half at about the middle of the length to create first and second length segments that constitute parallel conductors.
US08364277B2
An apparatus includes an implant delivery device configured to deliver an implant into a body. The implant delivery device includes a target member, an insertion member and an electronic circuit system. The target member has a distal end portion configured to be disposed within the body adjacent a target location. The insertion member is movably coupled to the target member. A distal end portion of the insertion member is configured to be disposed within the body and selectively coupled to the implant. The electronic circuit system is configured to produce an electronic signal in proportion to a distance between the distal end portion of the target member and the distal end portion of the insertion member when the target member and the insertion member are disposed within the body.
US08364276B2
A controller-transmitter transmits acoustic energy through the body to an implanted acoustic receiver-stimulator. The receiver-stimulator converts the acoustic energy into electrical energy and delivers the electrical energy to tissue using an electrode assembly. The receiver-stimulator limits the output voltage delivered to the tissue to a predetermined maximum output voltage. In the presence of interfering acoustic energy sources output voltages are thereby limited prior to being delivered to the tissue.Furthermore, the controller-transmitter estimates the output voltage that is delivered to the tissue by the implanted receiver-stimulator. The controller-transmitter measures a query spike voltage resulting from the electrical energy delivered to the tissue by the receiver-stimulator, and computes a ratio of the predetermined maximum output voltage and a maximum query spike voltage. The maximum query spike voltage is computed by detecting a query spike voltage plateau. Based on this ratio, the controller-transmitter uses a measured query spike voltage to estimate the output voltage delivered by the receiver-stimulator to tissue.
US08364274B1
Systems for detecting one or more central auditory potentials include an implantable cochlear stimulator configured to be implanted within a patient and to generate a stimulation current in accordance with one or more stimulation parameters, a signal processing unit configured to be located external to the patient and to be communicatively coupled to the implantable cochlear stimulator, and one or more electrodes configured to be removably coupled to the signal processing unit. The electrodes are configured to detect the one or more central auditory potentials and the signal processing unit is configured to process the detected central auditory potentials.
US08364268B2
An implantable signal generator including electronic circuitry, a computer readable medium, and a connector block with a lumen which receives at least one lead. The at least one lead has at least one electrode connector while the lumen of the connector block has a plurality of contacts operably coupled to the electronic circuitry. The computer readable medium contains instructions for carrying out a process to determine at least one piece of information regarding the at least one lead within the lumen based on an electrode connector being electrically connected with the at least one of the plurality of contacts, and an electrode connector not being electrically connected with the at least one of the plurality of contacts.
US08364267B2
Systems and techniques for improving the fixation of implantable pulse generators. In one aspect, a device includes an implantable pulse generator that comprises electrical circuitry configured to generate an electrical pulse and a biocompatible casing that houses the electrical circuitry and on which a collection of electrodes and a collection of fixation elements are mounted. The electrodes are in electrical contact with the electrical circuitry and the fixation elements increase the surface area of the biocompatible casing to reduce the likelihood that the biocompatible casing shifts after implantation.
US08364263B2
A system and method provide for systolic interval analysis. In an example, an implantable device measures a cardiac impedance signal. A transformation of the cardiac impedance interval is generated. The device also measures a heart sound signal. A time interval between a point on the transformed signal of the cardiac impedance signal and a point on the heart sound signal is calculated.
US08364254B2
A method and apparatus for providing objective assessment of the brain state of a subject using a field portable device. The method includes placing an electrode set coupled to a handheld base unit on the subject's head, acquiring electrical brain signals from the subject through the electrode set, processing the acquired electrical brain signals using a feature extraction algorithm, classifying the extracted features into brain states, computing brain abnormality indices reflecting the probability of correct classification of brain state, and graphically displaying the classification result and the abnormality indices on the handheld base unit.
US08364244B2
Methods and systems for generating computed tomographic (CT) images from image data acquired during different biological cycles are provided. A computer is programmed to receive a plurality of scan data acquired during a gated acquisition window of each of a plurality of biological cycles, blend the scan data acquired during a first of the plurality of biological cycles with the scan data acquired during a second of the plurality of biological cycles, and construct a final image from the blended data.
US08364240B2
At least one example embodiment relates to a method and/or a device for automatically differentiating types of kidney stones using computed tomography. The method provides two image data records of two computed tomography pictures of an object area including the kidney stones that have been recorded in the context of a different spectral distribution of the X-radiation. For each voxel of a slice of the object area that has X-ray attenuation values typical of kidney stones there is calculated from the two image data records a ratio r that is yielded from X-ray attenuation values of the voxel and prescribed X-ray attenuation values of pure urine in the context of the different spectral distributions of the X-radiation. The respective voxel is assigned to one of at least two types of kidney stones as a function of the variable r.
US08364234B2
A system a system for sensing multiple local electric voltages from endocardial surface of a heart, includes: a first elongate tubular member; a basket assembly including: a plurality of flexible splines for guiding a plurality of exposed electrodes, the splines having proximal portions, distal portions and medial portions therein between; a proximal anchor for securably affixing the proximal portions of the splines; the proximal anchor being secured at the distal end of the first elongate tubular member; a distal tip for securably affixing the distal portions of the splines wherein at least some of the splines in the radially expanded non-spherical shape contain a distal excurvate outward bend disposed at the distal portion of the spline at a location near to the distal tip of the basket assembly to bend the splines back towards the proximal anchor.
US08364233B2
A biodevice is in an elongated form and has a conductive layer and an insulating layer stacked on a side surface of a shaft member at the center. A cylindrical hollow section is formed through the device, being connected to the exterior at a front end and extending from this front end axially. An electrode section is formed on an inner surface. A sensing substance such as enzyme may be placed at the electrode section to detect a current value corresponding to the concentration or quantity of an object under test placed between a counter electrode and the biodevice.
US08364229B2
Systems and methods of use involving sensors having a signal-to-noise ratio that is substantially unaffected by non-constant noise are provided for continuous analyte measurement in a host. In some embodiments, a continuous analyte measurement system is configured to be wholly, transcutaneously, intravascularly or extracorporeally implanted.
US08364226B2
The present invention involves a method and an apparatus for analyzing measured signals, including the determination of a measurement of oxygen saturation and respiration rate in the measured signals during a calculation of a physiological parameter of a monitored patient. Use of this invention is described in particular detail with respect to oximetry-based measurements.
US08364223B2
A patient monitor has multiple sensors adapted to attach to tissue sites of a living subject. The sensors generate sensor signals that are responsive to at least two wavelengths of optical radiation after attenuation by pulsatile blood within the tissue sites.
US08364217B2
There are many inventions described and illustrated herein. In one aspect, the present invention is a system, a device and a method for sensing the concentration of an analyte in a fluid (for example, a fluid sample) or matrix. The analyte may be glucose or other chemical of interest. The fluid or matrix may be, for example, the fluid or matrix in the body of an animal (for example, human), or any other suitable fluid or matrix in which it is desired to know the concentration of an analyte. In one embodiment, the invention is a system and/or device that includes one or more layers having a plurality of analyte-equivalents and mobile or fixed receptor molecules with specific binding sites for the analyte-equivalents and analytes under analysis (for example, glucose). The receptor molecules, when exposed to or in the presence of analyte (that resides, for example, in a fluid in an animal), bind with the analyte (or vice versa). As such, some or all (or substantially all) of the receptor molecules within a given layer may bind with the analyte, which results in a change in the optical properties of one or more of the layers. These layer(s) may be examined or interrogated, via optical techniques, whereby the optical response of the layers and/or, in particular, the substance within the layer(s), may be measured, evaluated and/or analyzed.
US08364211B2
A method executes a speed detector and a timer to answer a phone call while a user is driving. The user can set a predetermined velocity of a mobile phone and a predetermined time period to determine whether to answer the phone call while the user is driving. When the mobile phone receives the phone call, if a velocity detected from the speed detector is greater that the predetermined velocity, the timer starts to count a time. If the counted time is greater than the predetermined time period, the mobile phone answers the phone call automatically.
US08364203B2
A contact allocation method for a subscriber smart card (300) in a mobile terminal (100) fitted with said card, the mobile terminal including at least first and second electronic modules (130, 140) suitable for communicating with the subscriber smart card (300) using respective first and second communications protocols. To enable the way in which the contacts of the subscriber smart card (300) are allocated to be managed dynamically, the card is connected to the first and to the second electronic modules (130, 140) in alternation by selectively connecting at least one contact (C4) of said card to the first or to the second electronic module (130, 140).
US08364200B2
A system and method providing concurrent multimode communication through multimode signal multiplexing. Various aspects of the present invention may comprise, during a first time period, transmitting a first portion of a first communication in a first communication mode in a serial wireless transmission stream. During a second time period after the first time period, a first portion of a second communication may be transmitted in a second communication mode in the serial wireless transmission stream. Also, during a third time period after the second time period, a second portion of the first communication may be transmitted in the first communication mode in the serial wireless transmission stream. In an exemplary scenario, prior to communicating various communications, transmission time may be allocated between the first and second communication modes. In another exemplary scenario, transmission may be switched between a plurality of communication modes in response to detected communication conditions.
US08364196B2
The invention relates to methods pertaining to cell reselection in a cellular telecommunication system. According to the invention, a connection setup rejection message is used to direct a mobile communication means to attempt a new connection with certain parameter values such as a certain carrier frequency. A plurality of parameter values may as well be indicated in the message, which allows the network to direct the mobile communication means to make a connection setup request to a specific cell, for example. The connection setup rejection message can be for example the CONNECTION SETUP REJECT message of the RRC protocol.
US08364192B2
Methods and systems for reducing the latency of instant communication session establishment are presented. According to various preferred embodiments, a RAN, may receive a setup request message via a packet-switched network. The RAN may determine, from a quality of service (QOS) indication contained in the setup request message, that the setup request message is requesting establishment of a instant communication session. The RAN may further determine an intended destination wireless communication device (WCD) for the setup request message. Based on the QOS indication and/or a profile indicating the destination WCD's capabilities, the RAN may pre-allocate resources for the instant communication session in parallel to paging the destination WCD. In this way, the latencies associated with these procedures are overlapped, thus reducing the overall latency of instant communication session establishment.
US08364191B2
A method of managing a group call involving a number of mobile communications devices include a network node identifying a radio access node adjacent a first radio access node. The method also includes a serving node creating the Group Call Area on basis of the first and adjacent radio access nodes. The method also includes establishing a signalling channel within a cell corresponding to the adjacent radio access node. The signalling channel includes an identifier corresponding to the Group Call area. The radio access nodes, or base stations, that have established a data communications channel with the mobile communications device have traffic and signalling channels established therein and are marked as an active cell of the Group Call Area.
US08364181B2
Systems and methods for dynamic electronic-mail filtering for mobile devices are provided. Incoming e-mail messages are received and provided to an e-mail inbox associated with the intended recipient. Those e-mail messages are evaluated to determine whether they may be desirable to the recipient. Desirability of an e-mail may be determined by such factors as the e-mail address of origin or key words in subject line. E-mail messages determined to be desirable are provided to a mobile device associated with the recipient. The recipient may then be notified concerning the desirable messages.
US08364174B2
An apparatus and method for efficiently updating location information of a mobile device in a wireless communication network, such as a cellular network, is disclosed. The mobile device sends a location message over an access channel. The wireless communication device continually transmits a location message at periodic intervals without regards to the status of the base station in communication with the wireless communication device. The base station determines a timeslot in which to receive a location message transmitted by the wireless communication device. If more than one wireless communication device is transmitting a location message, the base station prioritizes the order in which to receive the location message, opening the first available timeslot to the higher priority wireless communication device. A high priority device may be a wireless communication device used by emergency services personnel, such as firefighters or the police.
US08364173B2
A method and system for marking a location with a mobile device, uploading location information from the marked location to a location based service, creating a web page for the location information, and adding descriptive content to the web page pertaining to the location.
US08364172B2
Techniques are described for obtaining high-resolution physical locations for a wireless device by leveraging the high-resolution physical location capabilities of wireless peers of the wireless device to provide a peer-to-peer location service and facilitate location targeting. Wireless devices provide location updates to a computing cloud, which stores records associating wireless device identifiers with received location information for the corresponding wireless devices. A wireless device issues a peer discovery request to dynamically identify nearby wireless peers in its network. The wireless device then sends wireless device identifiers for the nearby wireless peers in a location request to the computing cloud, which estimates a location for the wireless device using the previously recorded location information for the nearby wireless peers. The computing cloud returns the estimated location to the requesting wireless device.
US08364169B2
Systems and methods applicable, for instance, in proximity networking activity. For example, nodes and/or other computers may record, receive, and/or provide information regarding proximity networking activity. As another example, nodes and/or other computers may act to inform their users of proximity networking activity instances.
US08364159B2
A method according to one embodiment of the invention monitors a paging channel from one wireless network during an active communications session with another wireless network.
US08364154B1
Communications over a network are selectively routed to one of multiple mobile devices identified by the same mobile device number. In one example, a method includes identifying a first mobile phone associated with a first activation priority by a phone number and identifying a second mobile phone associated with a second activation priority by the same phone number. The activation priority indicates a priority with which the first and the second mobile phones are activated for communications on a network. Communications associated with the phone number are selectively routed to one of the first mobile phone or the second mobile phone having a highest activation priority. The phone number defines an address at which the communications are routed to the one of the first mobile phone or the second mobile phone having the highest activation priority without being routed to an intervening address defined by another device number.
US08364148B2
Embodiments describe registration in a wireless communication system. A method includes wirelessly transmitting over a WWAN a first registration message from a mobile device, wirelessly transmitting through the WWAN a second registration message to a WLAN access point and receiving at the mobile device access through the WLAN access point. According to another embodiment is a method for constructing a self-configuring ad-hoc network. The method can include receiving a GPS coordinate from a WWAN channel node at a management system and creating an initial topography based at least in part on the GPS coordinate to achieve a network connectivity with diverse routes between a plurality of nodes.
US08364140B2
A method of determining a signal quality parameter in a radio communications device includes: measuring a signal error parameter of a received signal (104); comparing said measured signal error parameter to a threshold level (106), and determining the signal quality parameter on the basis of a reference signal error parameter value (114) in the event that the measured signal error parameter value is less than the threshold level (112).
US08364139B2
Systems and methods are provided for interfacing wireless communications between two devices such that a device devoid of a relatively long-range communications protocol can access that protocol. This may be accomplished by providing a host device having relatively short-range communications circuitry integrated therein, which circuitry may be operative to communicate with relatively short-range communications circuitry of a multi-protocol or long-range communications device that also includes relatively long-range communications circuitry.
US08364138B2
The invention broadly contemplates locking methods and arrangements for electronic devices, including laptop personal computing (PC) devices. The invention provides methods and arrangements for authorizing remote devices, such as cellular phones, to control the locking of electronic devices, such as laptop PCs. After receipt of a lock message from an authorized device at a guaranteed buffer, the laptop PC becomes locked such that only an authorized user may enable the functionality of the device.
US08364135B2
A portable terminal is capable of managing data. The portable terminal includes a controller, a display, a memory and a data management unit. The data management unit can sort pre-stored data in the memory as keyword-related data. The data management unit also can sort the pre-stored data depending on frequency of user's use, and outputting, to the display, the sorted data by layer.
US08364134B2
A method of controlling a keypad input mode for a text message entered on an electronic equipment for wireless communication (1) is provided that comprises steps for determining a language setting for the text message (S1) and for setting the keypad input mode to a dictionary-based disambiguation mode related to the determined language setting (S2). The language setting used at the beginning of the text message is hereby determined as the language setting used for the last text message entered on the electronic equipment for wireless communication (1) or as the language determined for a received text message to be replied by the text message, and the language setting used is subject to be changed if a match for a predetermined number of text elements entered for the text message is present in a further dictionary-based disambiguation mode related to a different language setting.
US08364124B2
Methods, systems, and computer readable media for processing multimedia messages are disclosed. One method includes receiving a first multimedia messaging service (MMS) message containing a first payload. The method further includes extracting and caching the first payload. The method further includes associating a token with the first payload and replacing, in the MMS message, the first payload with a second payload containing the token thereby establishing a modified MMS message. The method further includes forwarding the modified MMS message to the message recipient.
US08364111B2
Systems and methods for implementing a down-conversion mixer with signal processing are disclosed.
US08364110B2
A RF front end circuit includes a processor, a main receiving (Rx) path and an adjustment path connected between the processor and an external antenna array in parallel, and a coupling module coupled with the main Rx path. The adjustment path includes an adjustment transmitting (Tx) path, an adjustment Rx path, and a DSP. The adjustment Tx path includes a coupling switch. When the circuit operates in an adjustment mode, the switch is connected to the coupling module, the adjustment Rx path receives and demodulates a first analog signal, the DSP converts the first analog signal to a digital signal, clipping a peak of the digital signal, and converts the digital signal to a second analog signal, the adjustment Tx path modulates and reverses the phase of the second analog signal, and the coupling module couples the second analog signal to the main Rx path to counteract noise received thereby.
US08364106B2
A multiple band direct conversion radio frequency (RF) transceiver integrated circuit (IC) includes a multiple band direct conversion transmitter section, a multiple band direct conversion receiver section, and a local oscillation module. The multiple band direct conversion transmitter section includes a transmit baseband module and a multiple frequency band transmission module. The multiple band direct conversion receiver section includes a multiple frequency band reception module and a receiver baseband module. The local oscillation generation module is coupled to generate a first frequency band local oscillation when the multiple band direct conversion RF transceiver IC is in the first mode and coupled to generate a second frequency band local oscillation when the multiple band direct conversion RF transceiver IC is in the second mode.
US08364099B2
A radio frequency power amplifier (RF PA) apparatus includes an RF PA and a waveform converter. The waveform converter is configured to receive a sinusoidal RF signal and generate a nonsinusoidal RF signal, which is used to drive an active device (e.g., a field effect transistor (FET) or bipolar junction transistor (BJT)) of the RF PA. The nonsinusoidal RF signal, which may comprise a square wave or a substantially-square wave signal, has signal characteristics that result in less leakage through the active device's input-output parasitic capacitance, compared to the leakage that would result if the sinusoidal RF signal was used to drive the active device. The leakage control methods and apparatus of the present invention may be advantageously employed in a variety of applications including, for example, RF polar transmitters.
US08364097B2
A device for selecting a transmission path in a wireless network includes a radio frequency (RF) module, a base band (BB) module, and a control module. The RF module is coupled to a plurality of antennas, for processing a packet of a wireless signal respectively received by the antennas. The BB module generates signal strengths (SSs) corresponding respectively to the antennas according to the packet received by each antenna. The control module is coupled to the BB module, for receiving the SSs and respectively controlling the antennas so that they may be enabled or disabled according to a difference between the SSs.
US08364094B2
Disclosed are antenna assemblies suitable for establishing wireless communication with entities that have variable or indeterminate antenna orientation, especially entities having a limited power supply, the antenna assemblies comprising two linearly polarized reception antennae (18, 20) positioned so that the orientation of the antennae define a plane. Disclosed are also service station provided with such an antenna assembly. Disclosed are also methods of establishing wireless communication in a service station between a service station controller and entities that have variable or indeterminate antenna orientation, especially entities having a limited power supply.
US08364092B2
An active cancellation unit is disclosed for improving the noise cancellation between a transmitter and a receiver which are connected to an antenna using a duplexer, the unit comprising a coupler sampling a signal to transmit provided by the transmitter, a cancellation duplexer having characteristics similar to the duplexer and receiving the sampled signal to provide a simulated signal and an active component receiving the simulated signal and providing an amplified signal having a phase 180 degree shifted with respect to the simulated signal; and a coupler for injecting the simulated signal at the receiver.
US08364082B2
An improved handheld electronic device and an associated method provide a simplified mechanism for enabling and disabling a short-range wireless communications element used to create a connection to a short-range wireless network, such as a Bluetooth™ network. The method, implemented by the handheld electronic device, includes enabling the short-range wireless communications element, pairing the handheld electronic device with a second electronic device using the short-range wireless communications element, and providing a first icon on the handheld electronic device after pairing the handheld electronic device with the second electronic device. Thereafter, the method includes disabling the short-range wireless communications element and providing a second icon on the handheld electronic device whenever the first icon is activated, and enabling the short-range wireless communications element and providing the first icon on the handheld electronic device whenever the second icon is activated.
US08364081B1
A system, method and computer program product are provided. Included is a cellular phone capable of communicating via a long-range cellular network protocol and a short-range protocol. Further included is a computer system capable of communicating via a long-range hard-line network protocol and the short-range protocol. Thus, when the cellular phone is in the proximity of the computer system, the cellular phone communicates with the computer system utilizing the short-range protocol, so that the cellular phone is used to communicate via the long-range hard-line communication network protocol.
US08364078B2
An underwater communications system is provided that transmits electromagnetic and/or magnetic signals to a remote receiver. The transmitter includes a data input. A digital data compressor compresses data to be transmitted. A modulator modulates compressed data onto a carrier signal. An electrically insulated, magnetic coupled antenna transmits the compressed, modulated signals. The receiver that has an electrically insulated, magnetic coupled antenna for receiving a compressed, modulated signal. A demodulator is provided for demodulating the signal to reveal compressed data. A de-compressor de-compresses the data. An appropriate human interface is provided to present transmitted data into text/audio/visible form. Similarly, the transmit system comprises appropriate audio/visual/text entry mechanisms.
US08364073B2
A radio receiver receives a broadcast signal and generates an RF signal, generates an IF signal from the RF signal, detects the electric field intensity and the frequency of the IF signal, detects the IF signal and generates a detected signal, detects the intensity of a noise signal that is a harmonic component of a digital signal that exists in a certain specific frequency band from among the detected signals, determines that the broadcast signal includes a desired analog broadcast signal when the electric field intensity of the IF signal is equal to or larger than a predetermined electric field intensity, the frequency is within a predetermined frequency range, and also the signal intensity detected by the noise signal detection unit is equal to or smaller than a predetermined value, and then performs a control to stop a search.
US08364069B2
A cleaning device includes a scraping member that scrapes foreign materials from a member to be cleaned while being in contact with the member to be cleaned, and a lubricant supply unit that supplies a lubricant upstream of a contact position between the member to be cleaned and the scraping member in a moving direction of the member to be cleaned. The lubricant supply unit supplies a powder of a solid lubricant containing a fatty acid metal salt and a fluorocarbon resin.
US08364065B2
An image forming apparatus is disclosed, including: a toner image forming unit which forms a toner image on a surface of a transfer material, the toner image being an image formed of toner, the toner containing wax; a fixing device which fixes the toner image using a fixing member on which a mold release agent including oil is applied; and a surface processing device which processes the fixed surface of the transfer material, on which surface the toner image is fixed using the fixing member on which the mold release agent including the oil is applied, wherein the surface processing device further includes a discharging unit which generates a discharge on or near the fixed surface of the transfer material, on which surface the fixed toner image is formed.
US08364063B2
There are provided an image forming apparatus, an image forming method for the image forming apparatus, and a program that can reduce misalignment among images in all colors. Rotation of at least one of a transfer-sheet conveying belt 8 and an intermediate transfer belt 6 is controlled so as to match the phases of fluctuation of the surface speed of the intermediate transfer belt 6 and fluctuation of the surface speed of the transfer-sheet conveying belt 8, whereby it is possible to keep the periodical speed fluctuations of both the intermediate transfer belt 6 and the transfer-sheet conveying belt 8 to the minimum and reduce misalignment among images in all colors.
US08364059B2
An image forming device capable of providing precise positional relationship between an exposure unit and a photosensitive body. The exposure unit having an exposure head elongated in a longitudinal direction and having light emitting sections arrayed in the longitudinal direction. The light elements emit light in an optical axis direction. A frame supports the photosensitive body. A positioning protrusion protrudes in the optical axis direction from one of the frame and the exposure unit. A remaining one of the frame and the exposure unit is formed with a positioning part engageable with the positioning protrusion. A biasing unit provides a biasing force that ensures engagement between the positioning protrusion and the positioning part.
US08364053B2
Disclosed are an image forming apparatus server connected to an image forming apparatus and a print charging method thereof. A print charging method for at least one image forming apparatus, the method including: setting charging standards for a print usage volume of the at least one image forming apparatus; collecting usage volume information of the at least one image forming apparatus according to the set charging standards; and changing the charging standards by using the collected usage volume information and calculating charges by using the changed charging standards. With this, the image forming apparatus server uses the changed CPP reflecting the change to thereby reduce errors in the initial charging standards, actively respond to the changed user environment and win confidence from both a supplier and a user.
US08364043B2
A method and apparatus for controlling a reflective semiconductor optical amplifier (RSOA) are provided. The RSOA control apparatus sets a threshold current at which a light source starts to oscillate to be constant regardless of a wavelength of seed light by controlling a driving temperature for driving a RSOA, and adjusts an optical characteristic which is differently output for each wavelength of seed light to be constant by controlling a driving current.
US08364033B2
Changes in a signal are detected. The signal is repeatedly sampled in a synchronous manner during a predetermined interval to generate a captured eye diagram. At least one of a positive differential eye diagram or a negative differential eye diagram is generated from the captured eye diagram and a baseline eye diagram. The at least one positive or negative differential eye diagram is analyzed to determine whether a change in signal conditions is present.
US08364032B2
A portable device has a rear facing camera assembly and a front facing display assembly that includes at least a protective cover layer, a display stack that includes a plurality of display components arranged in a plurality of interconnected layers, the display stack providing an imaging service, and a flat support chassis arranged to provide support for the display stack. In the described embodiment, a protective cover can wrap around and protect at least the rear portion of the portable device without adversely affecting an image capture process carried out by the rear facing camera assembly.
US08364031B2
The invention relates to a lighting assembly for an image capturing system. The lighting assembly includes at least one lighting element for generating light and a control system arranged to control the at least one lighting element and to interface with at least one camera of the image capturing system. The control system is arranged for controlling an intensity and a spectrum of the at least one lighting element. The control system is arranged to provide a control for emitting a constant light or a pulsed light with the at least one lighting element. The at least one lighting element includes at least one LED being at least one high CRI white LED.
US08364023B2
Automated personal video recording for multi-user personal video recorders having a multiplicity of registered users, each user having allocated storage space on the PVR which allocated storage space for each user includes storage space upon which shows are recorded and storage space upon which shows have not been recorded (free space), including recording for a borrower a show owned by the borrower, the show having a storage space requirement exceeding the borrower's free space by a deficit amount; selecting, in dependence upon the deficit amount, one or more lenders, wherein the lenders are users, registered on the PVR, having free space; and borrowing, in dependence upon the deficit amount, from the lenders for the borrower, at least one loan amount of storage space. Embodiments include returning from the borrower to the lender the deficit amount after displaying the show to the borrower or upon repossession by a lender.
US08364022B2
A system useful for managing digital video recording of alternative event data during a blackout of primary event data at a client device, the system including but not limited to a processor in data communication with a computer readable medium; and a computer program comprising instructions embedded in the computer readable medium, the computer program further comprising instructions to receive input data scheduling a digital video recording for the primary event data; instructions to receive at the client device, notification data indicating blackout of the primary event data; and instructions to present alternative event data for recording on the client device.
US08364018B2
Selecting options on a media disc containing data is provided. An option identifier associated with an external surface of the media disc is detected by a sensor unit coupled to a media player. The external surface is an outer surface of the media disc. A presentation option corresponding to the option identifier is identified. Media content associated with the media disc is presented in a format corresponding to the presentation option.
US08364017B2
An image processing apparatus controls display of a plurality of pieces of image data containing both moving image data and still image data, and includes: a moving image/still image determining unit that determines whether or not image data to be displayed is the moving image data or the still image data, when in a continuous display mode that displays the plurality of pieces of image data continuously in a predetermined sequence; and a display control unit that starts display control of the next image in response to finishing of display of all of the moving image data when the image data to be displayed is the moving image data, and starts display control of the next image data in response to finishing of display of the still image data for a predetermined time when the image data to be displayed is the still image data.
US08364008B2
An information playback apparatus includes a storage memory removably attached to a main unit and in which compressed moving image file data are electrically stored; an MPEG decoder in the main unit for reading the data and decompressing it; an NTSC encoder in the main unit for converting playback image data obtained by decompressing the moving image file data into image data in a predetermined output format; an LCD on the main unit or outside of the main unit for displaying the image data in a predetermined display area; an a microcomputer for repeatedly playing back the image data in predetermined units of the compressed moving image file data. An electronic point of purchase (POP) advertising apparatus includes a sensor for detecting a person and also includes an electronic advertising unit presenting a predetermined POP advertisement in response to detection by the sensor. The electronic advertising unit includes a section for storing POP advertisements, a section for selecting a particular POP advertisement of the POP advertisements stored, and a section for outputting the particular POP advertisement in response to a detection signal output from the sensor.
US08364005B2
A method for play synchronization and a device using the same are provided. A first device stores time-based content play information. The first device plays content according to the time-based content play information. The first device transmits the time-based content play information to a second device so that the second device plays the content according to the time-based content play information. Accordingly, the content played by one device can be played by another device concurrently.
US08363990B1
An optical set-reset (SR) latch is formed from a first electroabsorption modulator (EAM), a second EAM and a waveguide photodetector (PD) which are arranged in an optical and electrical feedback loop which controls the transmission of light through the first EAM to latch the first EAM in a light-transmissive state in response to a Set light input. A second waveguide PD controls the transmission of light through the second EAM and is used to switch the first EAM to a light-absorptive state in response to a Reset light input provided to the second waveguide PD. The optical SR latch, which may be formed on a III-V compound semiconductor substrate (e.g. an InP or a GaAs substrate) as a photonic integrated circuit (PIC), stores a bit of optical information and has an optical output for the logic state of that bit of information.
US08363985B2
Image generation method and apparatus, program therefor, and storage medium which stores the program
An image generation method for generating image information of an image C by using an image A and an image B having a resolution higher than that of image A. Image C having the same resolution as image B is generated by enlarging image A; presence or absence of a point in image B corresponding to each pixel position of image C and the position of the relevant corresponding point are estimated; and to each pixel position in image C for which it is estimated that there is a corresponding point, image information of the corresponding position in image B is assigned. It is possible to generate image information at each pixel position in image C for which it is estimated in the corresponding point estimation that there is no corresponding point, by using the image information assigned according to an estimation result that there is a corresponding point.
US08363984B1
The present invention relates to methods and systems for automatic image cropping. An automatic image cropping system includes a downsampling system configured to downsample an image to a threshold number of pixels, a saliency analyzer configured to compute a saliency value for each pixel based on one or more detected color clusters and a spatial scatter of the one or more color clusters, and a face detector configured to detecting one or more faces within the image. However, the saliency value of each pixel not associated with the one or more detected faces within the image is adjusted if one or more faces within the image are detected. Further, a search system is configured to define a saliency region based on a total value of saliency values within the saliency region and on a parameter, where the parameter value is based on a relative importance of a false positive pixel to a false negative pixel. The search system also defines a crop region using an aspect ratio that includes the saliency region and determines a position of the crop region based the saliency values within the crop region by performing a one dimensional search. A cropping system is configured to crop the image based on the one dimensional search. A method for automatic image cropping is also presented.
US08363978B2
Embodiments include systems and methods of determining block edge location in video. In one embodiment, a system includes a block edge map generator configured to generate a binary block map, the block map having indicators representing the locations of block edges in a first direction, a histogram generator configured to accumulate the indicators to form a block edge histogram, the peaks of the histogram corresponding to block edge locations in the image, a low-pass filter to low-pass filter the block edge histogram and form a filtered histogram, a peak locator configured to identify the peaks of the filtered histogram, and a peak refiner configured to refine locations of peaks located in the filtered block edge histogram based on the identified peaks and peaks in the block edge histogram, the refined peak locations indicative of block edge locations, and further configured to provide block locations.
US08363974B2
A block artifact reduction system is provided. An apparatus for reducing block artifact in an image sequence according to some embodiments of the present invention includes a motion detection unit that detects a motion signal from a first frame of an image signal and a second frame of the image signal; a block border offset and motion-based correction determination (BOMCS) unit that determines block border locations based on the second frame and a correction strength based on the second frame and the motion signal; and an intensity filter that filters the second frame based on the block border locations and the correction strength to output a corrected image signal.
US08363970B2
An image processing apparatus for converting a first image into a second image having higher image quality than the first image. The image processing apparatus including first pixel value extracting means for extracting plural pixel values within the first image and estimate noise amount arithmetically operating means for obtaining estimate noise amounts for the plural pixel values. The image processing apparatus also including processing coefficient generating means for generating second processing coefficients in accordance with an arithmetic operation for first processing coefficients and the estimate noise amounts, second pixel value extracting means for extracting a plurality of pixel values, and predicting means for generating a pixel value of the pixel of interest.
US08363963B2
An image processing apparatus includes: a character recognition section for performing a character recognition process and a formatting process section for generating an image file in which text data obtained by the character recognition process are associated with the image data, the character recognition section generating the text data corresponding respectively to a plurality of possible character recognition results. This makes it possible to prevent omission in search in a case where a keyword search based on the text data is carried out, in the image processing apparatus that generates an image file in which image data obtained by reading a document is associated with text data obtained by a character recognition process on the image data.
US08363957B2
An image classification system configured to classify a target and method thereof is provided, wherein the system includes at least one light source configured to emit light with at least one line pattern towards the target, wherein at least a portion of the emitted light and line pattern is reflected by the target. The system further includes an imager configured to receive at least a portion of the reflected light and line pattern, such that an obtained 2-D line pattern is produced that is representative of at least a portion of the emitted light and line pattern reflected by the target, and a controller configured to compare the 2-D line pattern to at least one previously obtained 2-D line pattern stored in a database, such that the controller classifies the 2-D line pattern as a function of the comparison.
US08363954B1
A technique that improves image analysis efficiency by reducing the number of computations needed to detect constant regions. Constant region detection according to the present techniques includes determining whether an image analysis window at a current position contains a constant region by analyzing a new line of pixels in the image analysis window if a pixel at a predetermined location in the image analysis window in the current position has a value equal to a pixel at the predetermined location from a previous position of the image analysis window. Analyzing only the new line of pixels saves the computational time that would otherwise go into analyzing all of the pixels in the image analysis window.
US08363945B2
The present invention performs a process of integrating plural pixel evaluation values corresponding to plural evaluation pixels on a circular arc overlapping a circle using a predetermined pixel in interest as its center and calculating an integrated evaluation value to evaluate whether the circular arc is a circular arc corresponding to a similar semicircular shape, for each of plural circular arcs that overlap the circle in overlapping phases which are different from each other, compares plural integrated evaluation values corresponding to the plural circular arcs, and extracts the circular arc with which the integrated evaluation value indicating the most approximation to the similar semicircular shape is associated, from the plural circular arcs.
US08363938B2
This invention relates to alignment of signals, particularly for use in a quality assessment system. The invention provides a method and apparatus for aligning a first signal comprising a sequence of frames with a second signal comprising a sequence of frames, the method comprising the steps of: determining a similarity measure between each of a plurality of frames of the first signal and each of a plurality of frames of the second signal; assigning a matching value to each frame of the first signal wherein the matching value indicates a relative position of a matching frame in the second signal, by repeating the sub-steps of: generating a relative delay histogram the histogram comprising a set of values corresponding to each of a set of relative delays by: selecting a subset of frames of the first signal and for each frame of said subset identifying the frame of the second signal having the greatest similarity with said frame; determining the relative delay between the identified frame of the second signal and said frame of the first signal; and incrementing the value of the histogram corresponding to said relative delay; identifying one or more peaks in the relative delay histogram; and assigning the matching value to each frame contributing to a peak in dependence upon said identified peaks.
US08363924B2
An electronic device testing apparatus for conveying electronic devices to be tested to sockets of a contact portion and bringing the electronic devices to be tested electrically contact with the sockets to conduct a test of electric characteristics of the electronic devices to be tested, comprising an image pickup portion that takes an image of the sockets; a memory portion that stores reference image data of the sockets in a state of not being attached with any electronic devices to be tested obtained by taking images by the image pickup portion; and a mislay determination portion that obtains check image data of the sockets from the image pickup portion, reads the reference image data from the memory portion, compares the check image data with the reference image data and determines whether any of the electronic devices to be tested remain on the sockets.
US08363922B2
A system and method for restricting the number of layout patterns by pattern identification, matching and classification, includes decomposing the pattern windows into a low frequency component and a high frequency component using a wavelet analysis for an integrated circuit layout having a plurality of pattern windows. Using the low frequency component as an approximation, a plurality of moments is computed for each pattern window. The pattern windows are classified using a distance computation for respective moments of the pattern windows by comparing the distance computation to an error value to determine similarities between the pattern windows.
US08363920B2
A cheque recognition device includes a magnetic ink character recognition unit disposed on a cheque moving path along which an introduced cheque is transferred such that it can recognize a magnetic ink character printed on the cheque headed for one side of the cheque moving path; and a control unit for analyzing the magnetic ink character recognized in the magnetic ink character recognition unit to verify whether or not the cheque is normal.
US08363898B2
A system and method are provided for remotely monitoring images from an image capturing device. Image data from an image capturing component is received where image data represents images of a scene in a field of view of the image capturing component. The image data may be analyzed to determine that the scene has changed. A determination may be made that the scene has changed. In response to this determination being made, a communication may be transmitted to a designated device, recipient or network location. The communication may be informative that a scene change or event occurred. The communication may be in the form of a notification or an actual image or series of images of the scene after the change or event.
US08363887B2
Systems and methods are disclosed to automatically detect the presence of a substance on a test swipe by capturing a background image of the test swipe; applying one or more test chemicals to a test swipe; adjusting the temperature of the test swipe to a predetermined temperature range; controlling a variable speed fan to avoid fogging the camera's lens; capturing an in-situ image of the test swipe after the application of chemical at the predetermined temperature range; subtracting the background image from the in-situ image; generating a difference value from the two images; and searching a known database to identify the substance.
US08363883B2
In image processing for embedding additional information in an image, degradation of image quality due to consecution of the same code is suppressed. Hence, determination whether or not the same code consecutively appears in additional information is performed, an embedding condition for embedding a code in an image controlled based on the code consecution, and the additional information is embedded in the image in accordance with the embedding condition.
US08363868B2
A hearing aid (100) fits in an ear of a user and amplifies a sound and outputs the amplified sound. Specifically, the hearing aid includes: a microphone (110) as a pick-up unit which picks up the sound; a wireless communicating unit (130) which receives, from an external apparatus connected via wireless, an instruction for outputting a searching sound, the instruction for outputting a searching sound which is used for outputting a searching sound; an amplifier (140) which amplifies the outputted sound; an earphone (150) as an outputting unit which outputs the sound amplified by the amplifier (140); and an operation switching unit (120) which switches between a hearing mode and a searched mode, the hearing mode causing the amplifier (140) to amplify a hearing sound which is a sound picked up by the microphone (110) with a use of a first amplification factor, and the searched mode causing the amplifier (140) to amplify the searching sound, in response to the reception of the instruction for outputting a searching sound, with a use of a second amplification factor greater than the first amplification factor.
US08363867B2
A low-power implant system. The system includes an implant for implantation into a person, such as a cochlear implant or a middle ear implant. The implant is capable of communicating with a device via transmission of ultra wideband pulses. The device may be adapted to be worn external to the person, or may be a second implant. So as to conserve battery power, the transmitted ultra wideband pulses may have a low duty cycle of approximately 1/1000 or less. Power savings may also be realized by using time-gating amplifiers in the implant and/or device receiver.
US08363859B2
A microelectromechanical system microphone package structure includes a base plate and a plurality of chips is provided. The plurality of chips are disposed on the base plate, wherein an active area of each of the chips is disposed with a microelectromechanical system microphone structure, each of the active areas comprises a normal line, and the normal lines of the chips are unparallel and nonorthogonal to each other.
US08363858B2
The adsorption stability with respect to a fixed pole is increased while the low frequency response of a diaphragm is improved especially in an electret condenser microphone. In a diaphragm 11 for a condenser microphone, which is formed of a thermoplastic resin film having a metal film on one surface thereof, a first irregularity pattern 12 consisting of rough irregularities 12a having a long period and a second irregularity pattern 13 consisting of fine irregularities 13a having a short period are formed over the whole region of the diaphragm 11.
US08363840B2
A method and apparatus for providing a broadcast service in a communication system is provided. The method includes creating a seed key pair including a first key and a second key, transmitting the seed key pair to a terminal to which the broadcast service is to be provided, creating a certain number of encryption keys using the seed key pair, the certain number corresponding to a lifetime of the seed key pair, encrypting broadcast service data for the lifetime using the encryption keys, and broadcasting the encrypted broadcast service data.
US08363835B2
Confidential data such as license data is encrypted using the symmetric key encryption algorithm alone which requires smaller computation amount, and is readily realized by hardware elements, as compared with the public key encryption algorithm. A license-data transmitter (y) encrypts license data LIC using two keys Kscy and Kssx supplied from a license-data receiver (x). The license data is provided to the license-data receiver in the form of encrypted license data E(Kscy, E(Kssx, LIC)). This enables high-speed processing without deterioration in security even if data access such as recording/readout of data is repeated.
US08363827B2
A generic multi-stage nested hash unit that provides support for generic, multi-stage nested hashes accelerates a wide range of security algorithms and protocols. The supported security algorithms and protocols include SSL v3 MAC, TLS PRF, and SSL v3 Key Material Generation. The hash unit allows the same code to be used to generate the MAC even when the MAC algorithms are different, for example, for SSL and TLS protocols.
US08363811B2
The invention relates to a method for controlling a multi party call between three or more communication entities within a communications network. The communications network comprise a service control entity and a service switching entity. The service control entity performs: a) receiving a notification of a multi party event associated with the multi party call from the service switching entity, b) determining a procedure for handling the multi party event, c) transmitting instructions to the service switching entity in accordance with the procedure for handling the multi parry event.
US08363807B2
The present invention provides a system, method and software application for associating one or more phone numbers with an action on a phone and performing an action on the phone in response to the user initiating a call to one of such phone numbers. Certain phone numbers are associated with an action. The user's phone, or a server with which the user's phone communicates, maintains a table of the phone numbers associated with an action, and each phone number in the table is related to an action. Software on the user's phone listens for call initiated by a user. When the user initiates a call, software on the phone “intercepts” the call, and the phone (or a server with which the phone communicates) determines whether the call is to a phone number that is in the table. If the phone number is in the table, then it is associated with an action, and the user's phone performs that action at a time specified by instructions for such action. The action may be performed before, during, or after the call depending on the instructions associated with the call. Whether a call is placed to the original phone number ultimately depends on the action and the user's response to the action.
US08363806B2
A method and system for alphanumeric identifier indexing for advertising with cloud computing. Alphanumeric identifiers (e.g., telephone number, voice-over-Internet Protocol (VoIP) identifier, Internet Protocol (IP) identifier, a text message identifier, an instant message (IM) identifier, an e-mail address identifier, a social network identifier, a social networking hash code, etc.) are used to categorize and associate pre-determined advertising with the alphanumeric identifiers. When the alphanumeric identifier is received anywhere on a cloud computing network, the pre-determined advertising associated with the alphanumeric identifier is sent to a target device.
US08363803B2
A system and method for reducing unwanted telemarketing calls may include storing a contact list for users of a telephone assigned to an associated telephone number. An incoming telephone call from a caller may be intercepted and a determination may be made as to whether the caller is in the contact list. In response to determining that the caller is in the contact list, the incoming call may be connected to the telephone assigned to the called telephone number. Otherwise, in response to determining that the caller is not in the contact list, the caller may be prompted with an audible message, and, in response to the caller responding to the audible message by entering a first response, the incoming call may be blocked from connecting to the called telephone. Otherwise, in response to a second response, the incoming call may be connected.
US08363802B2
A method and system for providing a caller-controlled demarcation service is described. An embodiment of the present invention is advantageously implemented as an advanced service in an intelligent telecommunications network. An embodiment of the present invention allows the user to specify an interval for a telephone communication. A telecommunication switch times the communication and when the interval expires, the switch either plays a tone to signal the expiration or disconnects the call. The switch may enforce the interval for calls originating or terminating at the subscriber's phone.
US08363796B2
Methods, devices and systems for selecting IVR script and initiating that IVR script are provided. More specifically, playback of an IVR script to a user of a client endpoint can be initiated by an agent at a content sharing endpoint selecting, dragging, and dropping a representation of that IVR script onto a representation of the voice communication session. After initiation of the IVR script, the agent can drop off of the call, leaving the IVR system to interact with the client endpoint without requiring further agent involvement.
US08363792B2
A system for determining the status of an answered telephone during the course of an outbound telephone call includes an automated telephone calling device for placing a telephone call to a location having a telephone number at which a target person is listed, upon the telephone call being answered, initiating a prerecorded greeting which asks for the target person and receiving a spoken response from an answering person and a speech recognition device for performing a speech recognition analysis on the spoken response to determine a status of the spoken response. If the speech recognition device determines that the answering person is the target person, the speech recognition device initiates a speech recognition application with the target person.
US08363784B2
A dose calculation tool operable to generate a variance map that represents a dose uncertainty. The variance map illustrates on a point-by-point basis where high uncertainty in the dose may exist and where low uncertainty in the dose may exist. The dose uncertainty is a result of an error in one or more data parameters related to a delivery parameter or a computational parameter.
US08363778B2
An object of the present invention is to provide a driver circuit including a normally-on thin film transistor, which driver circuit ensures a small malfunction and highly reliable operation. The driver circuit includes a static shift register including an inverter circuit having a first transistor and a second transistor, and a switch including a third transistor. The first to third transistors each include a semiconductor layer of an oxide semiconductor and are depletion-mode transistors. An amplitude voltage of clock signals for driving the third transistor is higher than a power supply voltage for driving the inverter circuit.
US08363777B2
A shift register circuit includes plural shift register stages for providing plural gate signals. Each shift register stage includes a pull-up unit, a pull-up control unit, an input unit, a first pull-down unit, a second pull-down unit, and a pull-down control unit. The pull-up control unit generates a first control signal according to a driving control voltage and a first clock. The pull-up unit pulls up a corresponding gate signal according to the first control signal. The input unit is utilized for inputting the gate signal of a preceding shift register stage to become the driving control voltage according to a second clock having a phase opposite to the first clock. The pull-down control unit generates a second control signal according to the driving control voltage. The first and second pull-down units pull down the corresponding gate signal and the first control signal respectively according to the second control signal.
US08363774B2
A representative method of serial link transceiver without external reference clock is disclosed. The method includes: receiving an incoming signal; generating a local timing under control of a control code; generating a temperature sensor code by sensing a local temperature; generating a logical signal by detecting a presence of the incoming signal; adjusting the control code in a closed loop manner to make the local timing match that of the incoming signal and recording the control code and a value of the temperature sensor code as part of a template when the logical signal is asserted; and synthesizing the control code in accordance with the template when the logical signal is not asserted.
US08363757B1
The present invention aims at eliminating the effects of frequency offsets between two transceivers by adjusting frequencies used during transmission. In this invention, methods for correcting the carrier frequency and the sampling frequency during transmission are provided, including both digital and analog implementations of such methods. The receiver determines the relative frequency offset between the transmitter and the receiver, and uses this information to correct this offset when the receiver transmits its data to the original transmitter in the return path, so that the signal received by the original transmitter is in sampling and carrier frequency lock with the original transmitter's local frequency reference.
US08363752B2
A communications transmitter configured to reduce the average-to-minimum magnitude ratio (AMR) of a communications signal includes a symbol mapper, a pulse-shaping filter, an AMR reduction circuit, and a modulator. The symbol mapper operates to generate a sequence of symbols from a binary-source data stream containing a message to be transmitted, and the pulse-shaping filter generates a baseband signal based on the sequence of symbols. The AMR reduction circuit is configured to compare magnitudes of samples of the baseband signal to a time-varying low-magnitude threshold, and modify the baseband signal to produce a modified baseband signal having a reduced AMR if a sample of the baseband signal is determined to have a magnitude less than the time-varying low-magnitude threshold. Finally, the modulator operates to modulate a carrier signal based on the modulation information contained in the modified baseband signal.
US08363744B2
Using at least one MIMO-capable transceiver allows weighting calculations for signals transmitted and received, and enables individual packets to adapt, in a scalable, flexible, and responsive fashion to the real-world dynamics of a continuously varying communications network environment. The method and system of this invention use adaptively-derived diversity means to rapidly and efficiently distinguish the desired signal from noise, network interference, and external interference impinging on the network's transceivers and can transmit with lessened overhead. ADC operations and signal transformations continuously update combiner weights to match dynamically-varying environmental and traffic conditions, thereby continuously matching necessitated signal and waveform transformations with environmental and signal effects and sources. Successive iterations of the adaptation algorithm let each node's multiport combiner and distribution weights approach the MIMO channel's Shannon capacity in high-rate networks, or to minimize power needed to close links at a specified rate in low-rate networks, e.g. Voice-Over-IP networks.
US08363743B2
The present invention relates to receiving control information in an orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) system of a mobile communication system. The present invention includes receiving information related to a number of OFDM symbols in a subframe for receiving first control information, receiving information related to a number of OFDM symbols in the subframe for receiving second control information, decoding the first control information according to the received information related to the number of OFDM symbols in the subframe for receiving the first control information, and decoding the second control information according to the received information related to the number of OFDM symbols in the subframe for receiving the second control information, wherein the number of OFDM symbols for receiving the first control information is less than or equal to the number of OFDM symbols for receiving the second control information.
US08363740B2
The present invention relates to a transmitting apparatus (62) for transmitting signals in a multi carrier system, in which pilot signals and data mapped on frequency carriers are transmitted in a transmission bandwidth, wherein a part of said transmission bandwidth is not used to transmit signals, comprisingpilot signal mapping means (63) for mapping pilot signals onto selected frequency carriers according to a pilot pattern which is adapted for a channel estimation in a corresponding receiving apparatus, said pilot pattern enabling a channel estimation for frequency carriers next to said part of said transmission bandwidth which is not used to transmit signals. The present invention further relates to a corresponding method as well as a pilot pattern.
US08363731B2
Methods and systems enable uncompressed source data, corresponding to previously-compressed data, to be manipulated or otherwise modified, prior to being rendered by a rendering application. For example, audio data can be modified to include additional audio content, and/or video data can be modified to include additional video content. Accordingly, when the modified or manipulated source data is rendered by the rendering application, it can contain additional information that was not part of the previously-compressed data.
US08363727B2
Techniques to perform fast motion estimation are described. An apparatus may comprise a motion estimator operative to receive as input a current frame and a reference frame from a digital video sequence. The motion estimator may generate and output a motion vector. The motion vector may represent a change in position between a current block of the current frame and a matching reference block of the reference frame. The motion estimator may utilize an enhanced block matching technique to perform block matching based on stationary and spatially proximate blocks. Other embodiments are described and claimed.
US08363722B2
Method and apparatus for hierarchical bi-directional intra-prediction in a video encoder is described. In some examples, initial reference blocks are selected in an image. Sets of blocks in the image are predicted successively over a plurality of stages based on a respectively plurality of templates, each of the plurality of templates including reference blocks selected from at least one of: the initial reference blocks; or previously encoded and reconstructed blocks of the image. The image is encoded in the video encoder using the initial reference blocks and the sets of blocks as predicted.
US08363707B2
Methods and apparatus are disclosed, such as those involving mixed-mode signaling that includes transmitting a differential signal and a common mode signals over the same pair of interconnect traces. One such apparatus includes a first transmitter configured to transmit a differential signal through a pair of electrically conductive lines in a first direction. The differential signal has a first frequency and carries electronic data. The apparatus further includes a second transmitter configured to transmit a common mode signal through the pair of electrically conductive lines in the first direction. The common mode signal is superimposed onto each of the differential signal. The common mode signal has a second frequency that is lower than the first frequency and carries a control signal. This configuration reduces the number of lines and pins on electronic circuits, thereby saving space thereon.
US08363702B2
A technique for receiving spread spectrum GMSK signals that demodulates Gaussian Minimum Shift Keying transmissions involving a sequence of data symbols, a spread spectrum code comprising a sequence of spread spectrum chips, a sequence of pre-modulation chips combining the sequence of data symbols with the spread spectrum chips, wherein for each data symbol, at least one of the pre-modulation chips is generated by taking into account at least the data symbol and at least one of the spread spectrum chips.
US08363701B2
A mobile terminal includes a channel estimation module that is maintained in an active state. A controller determines an activation time point of an equalizer weight calculation module for calculating a tap coefficient. The activation time point is earlier than an activation time point of a main equalizer module, and activates the equalizer weight calculation module at the activation time point so as to calculate the tap coefficient. When the equalizer weight calculation module's operation is completed, the controller activates the main equalizer module, detects a mobile terminal ID, activates an interference cancellation module, and controls the main equalizer module to provide a data signal demodulator with the data signal compensated for by the tap coefficient. A demodulator demodulates the compensated data signal.
US08363695B2
Disclosed is a receiver of a direct conversion receiving scheme in which a packet is transmitted or received while performing frequency hopping for each symbol and demodulation is started by carrier sensing at the beginning of the packet, which performs demodulation without hopping frequencies of LOs of receiving systems to reliably execute fast carrier sensing and hopping synchronization at the beginning of the packet and remove the DC offset jump. At a time of demodulation of a payload part, the frequencies of LOs of the receiving system are hopped to allow a transition of MIMO. Further, by concurrently using complex bandpass filters while fixing all the LOs at a center LO frequency, complete removal of the DC offset jump over the entire length of the packet and MIMO can be simultaneously implemented.
US08363692B2
A method for generating a set of at least two sequences is provided. This method selects at least one sequence from each of at least two sequences based on different lengths, including first and second types of sequences, and generates a set of at least two sequences using the selected sequences. Another method selects at least one sequence from a first type of sequences and at least one sequence from a second type of sequences generated by modulating the first type of sequences using a different type of sequences, and generates the set of at least two sequences using the selected sequences. To generate sequences based on a length corresponding to available subcarriers excluding a DC subcarrier, another method generates sequences such that the sequences are continuously arranged in a region excluding the DC subcarrier using frequency-domain cyclic shift while none of the sequences is allocated to the DC subcarrier.
US08363689B2
A method of manufacturing a laser diode array capable of inhibiting electric cross talk is provided. The method of manufacturing a laser diode array includes a processing step of forming a peel layer containing an oxidizable material and a vertical resonator structure over a first substrate sequentially from the first substrate side by crystal growth, and then selectively etching the peel layer and the vertical resonator structure to the first substrate, thereby processing into a columnar shape, a peeling step of oxidizing the peel layer from a side face, and then peeling the vertical resonator structure of columnar shape from the first substrate, and a rearrangement step of jointing a plurality of vertical resonator structures of columnar shape obtained by the peeling step to a surface of a metal layer of a second substrate formed with the metal layer on the surface.
US08363688B2
An edge emitting semiconductor laser includes a semiconductor body having a wave guide area. The wave guide area comprises a lower cover layer, a lower wave guide layer, an active layer for generating laser radiation, an upper wave guide layer and an upper cover layer. The wave guide area also includes at least one structured laser radiation scattering area in which a lateral base laser radiation mode experiences less scattering losses than the radiation of higher laser modes.
US08363679B2
An architecture for providing high-speed access over frequency-division multiplexed (FDM) channels allows transmission of Ethernet frames and/or other data across a cable transmission network or other form of FDM transport. The architecture involves downstream and upstream FDM multiplexing techniques to allow contemporaneous, parallel communications across a plurality of frequency channels. Furthermore, the architecture allows a central concentrator to support a plurality of remote devices that each has guaranteed bandwidth through connection-oriented allocations of bi-directional data flows. The upstream and downstream bandwidth allocation can support symmetrical bandwidth as well as asymmetrical bandwidth in either direction. As a local network, the architecture supports guaranteed bandwidth for delivery of data flows to a plurality of host devices.
US08363677B2
It is possible to provide an SC-FDMA transmission device and an SC-FDMA transmission signal formation method which improve the transmission efficiency of the SC-FDMA transmission signal. The SC-FDMA transmission device (100) performs the discrete Fourier transform process on a primary modulation signal sequence formed by N primary modulation symbols to obtain a plurality of frequency components, which are respectively mapped onto different subcarriers. The obtained SC-FDMA symbol is subjected to the inverse Fourier transform process before being transmitted. A propagation path information decoding unit (155) acquires frequency selection characteristic in a propagation path to/from a reception side. A cyclic shift unit (110) and a correlation characteristic judgment unit (115) adjust the frequency response of the SC-FDMA symbol according to the frequency selection characteristic. The adjustment is performed by a result of correlation obtained by performing a correlation calculation between the propagation path frequency selection characteristic and the SC-FDMA symbol.
US08363670B2
A networking device and a method provide switching of framed signals using a packet switch fabric. Framed input signals, which may be OTN signals, are received and converted to packets. The conversion includes striping the received signal into virtual lanes and segmenting the lanes into packets. The packets are switched through the packet switch fabric, which may be an Ethernet switch, and then converted to framed output signals. The conversion includes reassembly of the packets into virtual lanes. The reassembled virtual lanes are frame aligned, deskewed, and combined to produce the framed output signals.
US08363669B2
A method includes receiving a plurality of packets at an integrated processor block of a network on a chip device. The plurality of packets includes a first packet that includes an indication of a start of data associated with a pixel shader application. The method includes recovering the data from the plurality of packets. The method also includes storing the recovered data in a dedicated packet collection memory within the network on the chip device. The method further includes retaining the data stored in the dedicated packet collection memory during an interruption event. Upon completion of the interruption event, the method includes copying packets stored in the dedicated packet collection memory prior to the interruption event to an inbox of the network on the chip device for processing.
US08363668B2
A network device includes multiple queues to store packets to be scheduled, and a weighted round-robin (WRR) scheduler. The WRR scheduler performs a first WRR scheduling iteration including processing of at least one packet from a particular queue of the multiple queues, identifies the particular queue as an empty queue during the performing of the first WRR scheduling iteration, identifies the particular queue as a non-empty queue after the identifying the particular queue as the empty queue, and performs a second WRR scheduling iteration including processing of only one packet of a group of packets from the particular queue of the multiple queues.
US08363658B1
A system is provided comprising a computer system, a configuration database, and a dynamic network interfaces application that receives a message from a network access component containing a request to authenticate a client device accessing a network service, determines that a policy requires the client device to be associated with a virtual local area network to access the network service, and authenticates the client device for association with the virtual local area network. The dynamic network interfaces application also searches the configuration database for configuration information to provision the virtual local area network, assigns the configuration information to the client device, the network access component, and a firewall component, and sends a reply containing the configuration information to the network access component and the firewall component in response to the request, wherein the configuration information comprises settings to provision the virtual local area network.
US08363653B2
A packet forwarding mechanism using a packet map is disclosed. The method includes the packet map storing a packet forwarding information of each packet, where the packet map uses a single bit to indicate whether a packet is forwarding through a specific output port. In this way, the packet forwarding information can be stored in a very simple form such that less memory space is required for storing the packet forwarding information.
US08363650B2
A method for routing packets from a gateway to an endpoint includes the step of associating a private internet protocol (IP) address with an endpoint having a public IP address. A packet addressed to the private IP address of the endpoint is captured. A policy is applied to the packet. The packet is transmitted to the public IP address of the endpoint, responsive to the application of the policy to the packet.
US08363646B2
An application server is provided for dispatching physiological signals in a hospital, in real time. Suitably, the hospital includes a local area network infrastructure with a virtual local area network supporting a voice over IP telephony application. The server comprises: means for receiving packets containing samples of a physiological signal via a first terminal connected to the virtual local area network, means for de-encapsulating a received packet containing samples of the physiological signal, at the real time transport protocol level, means for creating a second packet containing samples of the physiological signal, and forwarding the second packet back at least to the first terminal.
US08363638B2
A voice packet forwarding apparatus and method is provided in a digital communication system including a switched vocoder module to directly pass a voice packet received from a packet terminal to a digital communication network or a PCM signal decoded from the voice packet to the digital communication network. The switched vocoder module is also provided to directly pass a voice packet received from the digital communication network to the packet terminal or transmit a voice packet coded from a PCM signal received from the digital communication network. In the presence of additional data to be transmitted to the packet terminal, a data inserter is provided to insert the additional data in the voice packet received from the switched vocoder module and transmit the voice packet with the additional data to the packet terminal. A controller is provided to control the switched vocoder module and the data inserter.
US08363637B2
A telephone system architecture enabling various components of a telephone system to be distributed geographically yet operates as a seamlessly integrated system. A signaling gateway interfaces to the PSTN and through an SS7 interface. The signaling gateway includes a telephony protocol server. At least one other component of the telephone system includes a telephony protocol client. The telephony protocol client and telephony protocol server communicate over an Internet Protocol (IP) network. The telephony protocol server provides access to the PSTN to the component having the telephony protocol client. Any functions in the various components that require an SS7 interface to the PSTN are simply handled through the signaling gateway by the telephony protocol server.
US08363621B2
Femto cells that extend mobile network coverage into customer premises operate in a frequency band typically assigned to a macro network. To facilitate system discovery and registrations of mobile stations with femto cells, a carrier designates one the channels within the band as a primary channel for its femto cells. For example, neighbor list messages transmitted by macro network base stations can provide frequency and PN code information directing mobile stations to search the primary channel for a PN code of the femto cells. The mobile station preferred roaming list (PRL) may identify femto cells by SID/NID. The SID is that of the carrier's macro network, whereas the NID may be a NID of the macro network or one specifically assigned to femto cell operations. The PRL uses frequency acquisition information for the femto cells that is the same as or similar to that for one of the macro networks.
US08363614B2
A method and apparatus for transmitting and receiving downlink control information in a mobile communication system supporting an uplink packet data service are provided. To transmit packet data in an HARQ mobile communication system, a second transceiver receives an RG as rate control information from a first transceiver. The second transceiver sets the allowed maximum data rate of an HARQ process to which the RG is applied to the allowed maximum data rate of an HARQ process previous to the HARQ process, if the RG indicates hold. The second transceiver transmits packet data within the set allowed maximum data rate to the first transceiver.
US08363613B2
Feedback indicates low signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) conditions for a wireless communications link between a transmitter device and a receiver device. After attempting to achieve a target packet error rate (PER) by increasing transmission power for the wireless communications link, the transmitter device receives feedback that indicates a current PER, for data transmitted using an initial automatic repeat request (ARQ) block size, is above the target PER for the receiver device, and changes, based on the feedback, the current ARQ block size to a different ARQ block size for the wireless communications link. The different ARQ block size may be adaptively selected to provide a maximum PDU size that achieves the target PER at the receiver device under the low SNR conditions.
US08363608B2
A sequence allocating method and a sequence allocating apparatus wherein in a system where a plurality of different Zadoff-Chu sequences or GCL sequences are allocated to a single cell, the arithmetic amount and circuit scale of a correlating circuit at a receiving end can be reduced. According to these method and apparatus, in ST201, a counter (a) and a number (p) of current sequence allocations are initialized, and in ST202, it is determined whether the number (p) of current sequence allocations is coincident with a number (K) of allocations to one cell. In ST203, it is determined whether the number (K) of allocations to the one cell is odd or even. If K is even, in ST204-ST206, sequence numbers (r=a and r=N−a), which are not currently allocated, are combined and then allocated. If K is odd, in ST207-ST212, for sequences that cannot be paired, one of sequence numbers (r=a and r=N−a), which are not currently allocated, is allocated.
US08363592B2
A transmitter apparatus at a base station transmits program information using a plurality of carriers with at least some of the carriers having different transmit power levels. The carrier associated with the highest transmit power level conveys broadcast information carrying basic program information. A carrier associated with a lower power level conveys broadcast information including enhancement information and/or additional content. The enhancement information and/or additional content may include a higher level of video and/or audio resolution, additional video and/or audio content, support for additional languages, a text stream, and/or advertisements. A wireless terminal tunes, receives and processes the broadcast information. A wireless terminal can recover different levels of resolution of a broadcast program, e.g., a digital video broadcast program, and/or different amounts of additional content, depending upon which carriers are being used.
US08363588B2
In a cell-specific pilot signal transmitting method for use in a mobile communication system that comprises a base station and a wireless mobile station in the cell of a wireless communication area formed by the base station and that can mix and then transmit unicast data and broadcast/multicast data as downstream data from the base station to the mobile station, the difference between the start phase of a cell-specific pilot signal transmitted in a subframe in which the base station transmits the unicast data and the start phase of a cell-specific pilot signal transmitted in the next subframe is equal to the difference between the start phase of a cell-specific pilot signal transmitted in a subframe in which the base station transmits the broadcast/multicast data and the start phase of a cell-specific pilot signal transmitted in the next subframe.
US08363587B2
Different methods of signaling between an access point and user terminals in a multiuser wireless system for performing a minimum mean square error (MMSE) precoding at the access point preceded with eigenmode selection are provided. For one embodiment of the present disclosure, a compact feedback may be utilized between a plurality of user terminals and the access point. For another embodiment of the present disclosure, a hybrid feedback may be utilized between the plurality of user terminals and the access point. For yet another embodiment of the present disclosure, a full feedback may be utilized between the plurality of user terminals and the access point.
US08363580B2
A wireless mesh network that makes use of strategically placed nodes with radios having superior communication range through the use of high gain antennas, MIMO technology, high power transmitters, high sensitivity receivers, a combination thereof, etc. Besides the obvious effect of extending the physical coverage area of a network, the effect of the longer distance links formed by the nodes with superior range is a flattening of the wireless mesh network by reducing hop count, thereby improving performance, latency, reliability, cost, and power consumption among other factors.
US08363579B2
A wireless communication device and a method of communication in a wireless personal area network (WPAN) are provided. The method includes assigning a shared channel time allocation across one or more neighbored networks, announcing the shared channel time allocation to the one or more neighbored networks enabling the neighbored network use the shared channel time allocation and communicating using a directional network access protocol on the shared channel time allocation which is towered directed to a communicated device.
US08363570B2
Embodiments of the invention provide systems, methods, apparatuses and program products providing methods to define and find relationships in network environments. Embodiments of the invention utilize relationship definitions for defining network environment relationships as star structures within the network of interest and automatically discover these star structures in networks.
US08363565B2
A routing protocol unit (11) of each node (1) in a delay tolerant network calculates the probability of distribution to the destination node based on the log of end-to-end paths to the destination node from the past to the present registered in a routing table (12). A DTN forward unit (13) of a source node determines a next hop node to be used to forward forwarding data, based on the calculated distribution probability of each node with respect to the destination node.
US08363563B2
An apparatus and method for delay time computation and delay compensation between a Base Station (BS) and a remote Radio Frequency (RF) unit in a broadband wireless access system are provided. In a method of operating an apparatus for determining a delay time to compensate for delay between a BS modem card and a remote RF unit in a wireless access system, the method includes determining a process delay time required when traffic data is output from the BS modem card to an antenna of the remote RF unit in a state where a reference cable having a length short enough to neglect a cable delay time is connected between the BS modem card and the remote RF unit, determining a cable delay time required when a sync pulse signal is transmitted through a cable used in actual system operation between the BS modem card and the remote RF unit, and determining a time for outputting traffic data at an earlier time from a modem included in the BS modem card by using the determined process delay time and cable delay time.
US08363562B2
The present disclosure relates to systems and methods for providing bandwidth-on-demand telecommunications services over next-generation optical transport networks (NG-OTN). One embodiment of a system providing bandwidth-on-demand services includes a next-generation optical transport network (NG-OTN) having an intelligent control plane (ICP) and new-generation synchronous optical network (NG-SONET) capabilities. A next-generation operation support subsystem (NG-OSS) is communicatively coupled to the NG-OTN. The NG-OTN and the NG-OSS are configured to provide the bandwidth-on-demand services.
US08363561B2
Provided is, a wireless network that conducts wireless communications having superior latency and power-saving performance, while avoiding interference wave influences by using multiple channels. Besides conducting communications with wireless communication terminals 102 to 104 by switching a channel in each beacon period and transmitting a beacon frame, a control device 101: measures communication conditions of the channel and interference wave influences; determines availability of the channel; and stores available channel information. The control device 101 delivers the available channel information in the beacon frame to the terminal devices 102 to 104. The terminal devices 102 to 104: select an optimum channel by switching the channel in each beacon period depending on the available channel information in the received beacon frame and on transmission conditions of the channel used by oneself; and conduct the wireless communications. With this, it is possible to switch usage channels rapidly while avoiding interference wave influences.
US08363556B2
Systems, methods and other embodiments associated with dynamic probe generation are described. In one embodiment, an apparatus includes generation logic to dynamically generate a probe configured to identify a status associated with an event occurring in a network device, a path between network devices, and/or a location in an encapsulation stack. Additionally, the apparatus comprises reception logic to receive the status.
US08363553B2
A routing method for a network including a first type of nodes and a second type of nodes, in particular an optical telecommunication network including transparent codes and regenerating nodes, includes: constructing a simplified network topology including the given node, the second nodes, first paths between the given node and the second nodes and second paths between each couple of second nodes, wherein the first and second paths pass only through first nodes and have an acceptable run-through cost, and, if the given node receives a routing request specifying a destination node that is reachable only through a second node, constructing an enhanced network topology by adding to the simplified network topology the destination node and third paths between the destination node and the second nodes that pass only through first nodes and have an acceptable run-through cost; and searching for a path having the lowest run-through cost from the given node to the destination node in the enhanced network topology.
US08363541B2
Provided is a method and an apparatus for formatting a data set for transmission on a communication channel. The formatted data frame comprises a header and the data set to be transmitted. The header has a plurality of header fields comprising a redundancy field having a checksum calculated on data in part of the header fields and on the data set.
US08363538B2
An orthogonal data link is provided by a first digital device, a second digital device, and a bus coupling the first digital device to the second digital device. The first digital device has a first transmitter that encodes data of the first device with a first code (e.g., [1,1]), for transmission on the bus. The second device has a second transmitter that encodes data of the second device with a second code (e.g., [0,1] or [1,0]), for transmission on the bus. The first device has a first receiver that renders the second data by (a) multiplying signals of the bus with the second code and (b) integrating over a periodicity of the codes. The second device has a second receiver that renders the first data by (a) multiplying signals of the bus with the first code and (b) integrating over a periodicity of the codes.
US08363536B2
A receiver for receiving an orthogonal frequency division multiplexed (OFDM) digital video broadcast (DVB) signal including OFDM symbol sets including data symbols and pilot symbols transmitted using a plurality of sub-carriers, the OFDM DVB signal being transmitted toward the receiver via a transmission channel, the receiver including an input module configured to receive the OFDM DVB signal via the transmission channel, and a channel estimation module coupled to the input module and configured to calculate channel estimates of the transmission channel by performing Fourier transforms on the OFDM symbol sets to produce transformed symbol sets in the frequency domain and by performing minimum mean square error (MMSE) equalization on the transformed symbol sets using a sub-set of the pilot symbols in the OFDM DVB signal.
US08363533B2
An optical pickup apparatus includes an objective lens having a numeric aperture and an incident face. An antireflection coating is formed on the incident face. A collimating lens converts laser light from a laser diode into parallel light, and causes the parallel light to be made incident on the incident face through the antireflection coating. The thickness of the antireflection coating causes a transmittance of laser light that enters the objective lens to be: set at a first predetermined transmittance value, when the numeric aperture is between zero and a first predetermined numeric aperture value; set to correlate linearly with the numeric aperture when the numeric aperture is between the first predetermined numeric aperture value and a second predetermined numeric aperture value; and set at a second predetermined transmittance value, when the numeric aperture is between the second predetermined numeric aperture value and a third predetermined numeric aperture value.
US08363531B2
The present invention is to realize a proper inner zone layout in an optical disk having at least three layers. A test area is provided in the inner zone (inner circumference side area) in each of recording layers. The test areas of each layer are so disposed as to be prevented from overlapping with each other in the layer direction. Furthermore, the number of management information recording/reproduction areas overlapping with the test area in the layer direction at a position closer to the laser-incident surface than this test area is set equal to or smaller than one in each test area of each recording layer. The management information recording/reproduction areas are each so disposed as to be prevented from overlapping with the test areas in the respective recording layers in the layer direction on the disk substrate side of the test areas.
US08363524B2
According to the present invention, even if tracking fails during reproduction of information from an optical disk and a movement is made to an adjoining track, the reliability of data to be transferred is improved and a countermeasure can be taken immediately. An unrecorded area decision unit decides based on the amplitude of a reproduction signal whether a block concerned is a recorded area or an unrecorded area. A track-off detection unit monitors a tracking servo signal, detects occurrence of a tracking failure, and registers a block, which is recognized as an area where the tracking failure has occurred. If the block is an unrecorded area and recognized as an area where a tracking failure has occurred, reproduction is ceased but data signifying that the block is an unrecorded area is not transferred to an upper-level system and retry is performed to achieve reproduction.
US08363523B2
Example embodiments provide various techniques for playing data from an optical media drive. The optical media drive may detect certain media access information for use in accessing optical media. This media access information is stored a non-volatile memory. The optical media drive then retrieves the media access information from the non-volatile memory once the optical media drive is reactivated after deactivation. The optical media drive may then read from the optical media using the provided media access information.
US08363518B2
A disk drive determines, from eccentric amounts of individual prescribed rotation phases for one round of an optical disk 1, a rotation phase range in which a lens shift amount after tracking pulling-in of an object lens constituting an optical pickup 3 does not exceed a movable range of the object lens in a preset tracking direction, sets the rotation phase range as a tracking pulling-in range, and carries out tracking pulling-in of the optical pickup 3 while the rotation phase of the optical disk 1 is placed within the tracking pulling-in range.
US08363514B2
A cMUT and a cMUT operation method use an input signal that has two components with different frequency characteristics. The first component has primarily acoustic frequencies within a frequency response band of the cMUT, while the second component has primarily frequencies out of the frequency response band. The bias signal and the second component of the input signal together apply an operation voltage on the cMUT. The operation voltage is variable between operation modes, such as transmission and reception modes. The cMUT allows variable operation voltage by requiring only one AC component. This allows the bias signal to be commonly shared by multiple cMUT elements, and simplifies fabrication. The implementations of the cMUT and the operation method are particularly suitable for ultrasonic harmonic imaging in which the reception mode receives higher harmonic frequencies.
US08363511B2
In a method and a device for detecting the surroundings, carrier waves in the form of transmission pulses are transmitted by at least one transducer, and reflections of the pulses are detected by the pulse-echo method. In this manner, the successive transmission pulses of one transducer or various transducers operated at the same time are differentiable by individual signal modulation.
US08363509B2
A method for quantitatively evaluating and using multiple geophysical datasets and external constraints for performing velocity model building through simultaneous Joint Inversion and finalized at the improvement of seismic depth images in particularly difficult geology and hydrocarbon high-risk exploration areas is disclosed, which involved the development of techniques: to derive an iterative depth-domain seismic imaging workflow which allows for the simultaneous use of seismic post-migration Common Image Gather residuals together with first arrival (First Break) residuals in conjunction with gravity data and magnetotelluric data; to include in the iterative Joint Inversion workflow the setup of external a-priori constraints as well as of external constraints weighted by probability functions; to include in the iterative Joint Inversion workflow the probabilistic evaluation of the relationships among geophysical parameters that are distinguished into analytical, empirical and structural (i.e. pattern semblance) parameters; to allow the user for defining variable amounts of probabilistic weights to the parameters participating to the Joint Inversion.
US08363508B2
To include an AL counter that outputs a second ODT signal after counting a clock signal by an additive latency after receiving a first ODT signal, and a counter control circuit that controls the AL counter such that the second ODT signal having the same logic value as a logic value of the first ODT signal at a time of shifting from an asynchronous mode to a synchronous mode is output during a period until when at least the clock signal is input by an additive latency after the shifting. With this configuration, an interruption of an CDT operation can be prevented without separately providing a CKE counter. Therefore, the circuit scale can be reduced and the power consumption can be also reduced.
US08363490B2
An integrated circuit bit line driver system includes a plurality of bit line drivers coupled to respective bit lines of an array of non-volatile memory cells. Each of the bit line drivers includes a bias transistor through which an input signal is coupled to the respective bit line. The bit line driver system includes a bias voltage circuit that generates a bias voltage that is coupled to the respective gates of the bias transistors. The bias voltage circuit initially accelerates the charging of the transistor gates, and subsequently completes charging the gates at a slower rate. The bias voltage is generated using a diode-coupled transistor having electrical characteristics the match those of the bias transistors so that the bias voltage varies with process or temperature variations of the integrated circuit in the same manner as the threshold voltage of the bias transistors vary with process or temperature variations.
US08363483B2
A circuit for supplying well voltages in a nonvolatile memory device includes an erase voltage supply unit for supplying an erase voltage to a well in response to an erase enable signal, a discharge unit for discharging the erase voltage, supplied to the well, in response to a discharge control signal, and a negative voltage supply unit for supplying a negative voltage to the well in response to a negative voltage output enable signal.
US08363473B2
A memory array in a memory device is coupled to an analog I/O data interface that enables analog voltage levels to be written to the memory array. The I/O interface comprises a plurality of analog data paths that each includes a capacitor for storing charge corresponding to a target voltage to which a selected memory cell, coupled to its respective data path, is to be programmed. A plurality of comparators can be included in the I/O interface, with each such comparator coupled to a respective bit line. Such a comparator can compare a threshold voltage of a selected memory cell to its target voltage and inhibits further programming when the threshold voltage equals or exceeds the target voltage.
US08363472B2
A non-volatile semiconductor memory device includes: a cell array including a plurality of first wirings, a plurality of second wirings that intersects the plurality of first wirings, and memory cells that are formed at intersections of the first wirings and the second wirings and are connected between the first and second wirings; a first contact plug that comes into contact with a side portion of the first wiring provided at a first position and extends to the first wiring provided at a second position higher than the first position in a laminated direction; and a second contact plug that comes into contact with a side portion of the second wiring provided at a third position between the first position and the second position and extends to the second wiring provided at a fourth position higher than the second position in the laminated direction.
US08363462B2
A magnetoresistive element which records information by supplying spin-polarized electrons to a magnetic material, includes a first pinned layer which is made of a magnetic material and has a first magnetization directed in a direction perpendicular to a film surface, a free layer which is made of a magnetic material and has a second magnetization directed in the direction perpendicular to the film surface, the direction of the second magnetization reversing by the spin-polarized electrons, and a first nonmagnetic layer which is provided between the first pinned layer and the free layer. A saturation magnetization Ms of the free layer satisfies a relationship 0≦Ms<√{square root over ( )}{Jw/(6πAt)}. Jw is a write current density, t is a thickness of the free layer, A is a constant.
US08363461B2
A magnetic memory includes a magnetization recording layer, a first terminal, a second terminal, a magnetization pinned layer and a non-magnetic layer. The magnetization recording layer has a vertical magnetic anisotropy and includes a ferromagnetic layer. The first terminal is connected to one end of a first region in the magnetization recording layer. The second terminal is connected to the other end of the first region. The non-magnetic layer is arranged on the first region. The magnetization pinned layer is arranged on the non-magnetic layer and is located on the side opposite to the first region. The magnetization recording layer includes: a first extension portion located outside the first terminal in the magnetization recording layer; and a property changing structure that is arranged in the first extension portion and substantially changes a magnetization switching property of the magnetization recording layer.
US08363459B2
A magnetic tunneling junction (MTJ) device and fabrication method is disclosed. In a particular embodiment, an apparatus is disclosed that includes an MTJ device. The MTJ device includes a free layer and a spin torque enhancing layer. The spin torque enhancing layer includes a nano-oxide layer.
US08363456B2
To improve reliability of a semiconductor device having an SRAM.The semiconductor device has a memory cell including six n-channel type transistors and two p-channel type transistors formed over a silicon substrate. Over the silicon substrate, a first p well, a first n well, a second p well, a second n well, and a third p well are arranged in this order when viewed in a row direction. First and second positive-phase access transistors are disposed in the first p well, first and second driver transistors are disposed in the second p well, and first and second negative-phase access transistors are arranged in the third p well.
US08363455B2
A storage cell is provided with improved robustness to soft errors. The storage cell comprises complementary core storage nodes and complementary outer storage nodes. The outer storage nodes act to limit feedback between the core storage nodes and are capable of restoring the logical state of the core storage nodes in the event of a soft error. Similarly the core storage nodes act to limit feedback between the outer storage nodes with the same effect. This cell has advantages compared with other robust storage cells in that there are only two paths between the supply voltage and ground which limits the leakage power. An SRAM cell utilizing the proposed storage cell can be realized with two access transistors configured to selectively couple complementary storage nodes to a corresponding bitline. A flip-flop can be realized with a variety of transfer gates which selectively couple data into the proposed storage cell.
US08363454B2
A semiconductor memory bit cell includes an inverter latch including a pair of cross-coupled inverters. A first transistor has a gate coupled to a first control line and a source coupled to the inverter latch, and a second transistor has a gate coupled to a second control line and a drain coupled to the drain of the first transistor at a first node. A third transistor has a source coupled to the first node and a gate coupled to a word line, and a fourth transistor has a gate coupled to a source of the second transistor and to the inverter latch. A fifth transistor has a gate coupled to the word line and a drain coupled to a read bit line.
US08363449B2
A method and apparatus for writing data to a non-volatile memory cell, such as an STRAM memory cell or an RRAM memory cell. In some embodiments, a plurality of N non-volatile memory cells, where N is a greater than two, are connected to a common floating source line. A write circuit is adapted to program a selected memory cell of the plurality to a selected data state by passing a write current of selected magnitude through the selected memory cell and concurrently passing a portion of the write current in parallel through each of the remaining N−1 memory cells of the plurality via the common floating source line.
US08363448B2
According to one embodiment, a semiconductor memory device includes a memory cell, a power supply circuit, an interconnection and a discharging circuit. The memory cell includes a variable resistance element whose resistance varies by application of a voltage. The power supply circuit outputs the voltage to be applied to the memory cell. The interconnection is formed between the power supply circuit and the memory cell and supplies the voltage output from the power supply circuit to the memory cell. The discharging circuit is connected to the interconnection. The discharging circuit discharges electric charge accumulated in the interconnection after a first operation of applying the voltage to the memory cell is ended and before a second operation of applying the voltage to the memory cell next is started.
US08363441B2
To realize power supply to each gate drive circuit without using an individual dedicated power supply for each gate drive circuit. A power conversion apparatus includes an individual drive unit that does not require a dedicated power supply, and includes gate drivers connected to switches and interface circuits and a power converter gate drive configured with a common power supply for supplying power to the gate drive unit. Power is supplied from main circuits or a number of common power supplies fewer than that of the number of the switches through one or more power supply terminals included in the interface circuit. Also, the signal can be transmitted by isolation from a signal source to the gate drivers.
US08363440B2
In a power conversion circuit operating with high frequency, an off-voltage control circuit 101u of a lower-arm gate drive circuit 24u controls the output voltage of a gate drive power supply 103u to change the output voltage to a voltage lower than a predetermined off voltage during a time period from termination of turn-off operation of a lower arm 22u until start of turn-on operation of an upper arm 21u, and thereafter return the output voltage to the predetermined off voltage immediately after termination of the turn-on operation of the upper arm 21u. With this control, short-circuiting through the upper and lower arms occurring due to a high voltage change dv/dt can be avoided, and the life of a switching element constituting the power conversion circuit improves, increasing the reliability of the power conversion circuit.
US08363435B2
A digital device generates a fixed duty cycle signal with an internal oscillator after a Power-On-Reset (POR). This fixed duty cycle signal is output on a signal pin that normally is used for a PWM control signal. The fixed duty cycle signal is used to stimulate the voltage generation circuits so as to power up the digital device for initialization thereof. Once the digital device has powered-up and initialized, the digital device switches over to normal operation for control of the power system.
US08363434B2
In an interleaved bridgeless power factor corrector and a controlling method thereof, the interleaved bridgeless power factor corrector includes an AC input power supply, two input inductors, four active components, two passive components, an output capacitor, and an output resistor, wherein the four active components are cascaded in a full bridge form to act as control switches and rectifying switches having different phases; besides, the interleaved bridgeless power factor corrector is connected to a control signal processor and a control circuit, which can output complementary switch signals to control the interleaved bridgeless power factor corrector, thereby achieving output/input ripple cancellation and frequency multiplication.
US08363433B2
A hybrid conditioner for filtering harmonics in a power system that includes a non-linear load. The hybrid conditioner includes an active filter structured and controlled to filter one or more high-order harmonic currents of the fundamental frequency, and a passive filter structured to filter one or more low-order harmonic currents of the fundamental frequency. The active filter and the passive filter are electrically connected in parallel with one another. The hybrid conditioner may also be for providing reactive power compensation for the power system, wherein the active filter is further controlled to provide a compensatory reactive power for compensating for the reactive power that is consumed by the load. The hybrid conditioner may also provide oscillation dampening for the power system, wherein the active filter is further controlled to damp oscillating currents that exist between the passive filter and the AC source.
US08363431B2
An oscillator with time-variant frequency deviation for a power supply includes a signal generator for generating a first signal according to a clock signal and a comparing unit for adding an offset to at least one of the first signal and a threshold voltage corresponding to the first signal and for comparing the first signal and the threshold voltage after completion of the offset adding, to generate the clock signal whose frequency deviates with variation of the added offset.
US08363430B2
A flyback DC-DC converter is disclosed herein. The flyback DC-DC converter includes a transformer, a voltage divider and a controller. The transformer receives a DC input voltage and converts the DC input voltage to a DC output voltage. The voltage divider is coupled to a first secondary winding of the transformer, and generates a feedback signal indicative of the DC output voltage. The controller is coupled to the transformer via an input switching circuit and controls the input switching circuit to regulate the DC output voltage according to the feedback signal. A skip operation is triggered if the voltage of the feedback signal is higher than a preset reference voltage at the end of a turn-off period of the input switching circuit, and the voltage of the feedback signal is changed to zero during the skip operation.
US08363429B2
A digital dynamic delay modulator and the method thereof are applied to a flyback converter. A first input voltage signal from the flyback converter is received and compared with a threshold voltage to determine whether a counting condition is matched. When the counting condition is matched, an integer predetermined count number is counted to determine a delay time. After finishing the counting, a first output signal is generated to turn on a switching device for the flyback converter. The slope of the first input voltage signal is detected when the switching device is turned on, and the slope is used to adjust the count number with integer increment/decrement. Therefore, the delay time for switching the flyback converter can be precisely controlled in digital and dynamic manner.
US08363428B2
The present invention relates to an adapter power supply, which includes a switching unit for switching a DC voltage; a transformer which has a primary winding connected to the switching unit, a secondary winding electromagnetically coupled to the primary winding, and an auxiliary winding electromagnetically coupled to the primary winding; a rectifier for rectifying a voltage outputted from the transformer; and a controller for controlling the switching unit to operate according to the PWM scheme in a normal operation mode, and to operate according to a quasi-resonant scheme in a standby mode, by detecting information of a load connected to the rectifier.
US08363408B2
The present invention provides an electronic device, comprising: a circuit board having at least one first heat-generating element and at least one second heat-generating element mounted thereon; a heat sink connected to said at least one first heat-generating element; a fan facing said heat sink; and an airflow guiding member placed between said fan and said heat sink for guiding the cooling air from said fan to said heat sink and said at least one second heat-generating element respectively. Said electronic device may further comprise a separating member for separating a main body of said at least one second heat-generating element from said circuit board, so as to prevent the cooling air guided to said at least one second heat-generating element from flowing to said circuit board; a bracket for separating said at least one first heat-generating element from other elements on said circuit board, so as to thermally insulate between them; and a flow-guiding gate guiding the airflow from said fan, and dispensing more airflow flow through the region on the heat sink corresponding to at least one first heat-generating element.
US08363389B2
A switchboard including at least four conductors of horizontal configuration, the conductors secured to the switchboard to maintain the horizontal configuration, wherein at least one of the four conductors of horizontal configuration is an AC PEN (23) and at least one of the four conductors of horizontal configuration is a DC ground; at least one uninterrupted power supply and battery mounted in the switchboard and operatively connected to the DC ground (23); and at least one uninterrupted power supply and battery mounted in the switchboard and operatively connected to the AC ground (23).
US08363382B2
A multilayer ceramic device comprises a laminated ceramic body having opposite end surfaces, a pair of conductive electrodes each respectively attached to one end surface of the laminated ceramic body and a plurality of alternately staggered internal electrodes within the laminated ceramic body configured in an alternating manner and each electrically connected to the corresponding conductive electrodes respectively; each conductive electrodes of the multilayer ceramic device is further covered with a solder paste layer so that the multilayer ceramic device is thus made without any plating step and no need of treating waste liquid nickel or waste liquid tin as well as no problem of environmental pollution caused by plating solution, thereby lowering manufacturing costs and reducing processing time.
US08363379B2
Embodiments of a method include forming a metal-insulator-metal (MIM) capacitor including a first electrode and a second electrode and an insulator layer between the first and second electrodes, the MIM capacitor also including a reactive layer; and altering the reactive layer to change a capacitive value of the MIM capacitor.
US08363373B2
One embodiment is an enclosure that has a plurality of server computers connected to an e-fuse. A circuit in the enclosure provides a 400V output to the e-fuse.
US08363369B2
A boost converter includes a load disconnect switch connected between a voltage input terminal and an inductor, a power switch connected to the inductor by a switching node, a diode connected between the switching node and a voltage output terminal, and an output capacitor connected to the voltage output terminal to provide an output voltage. A protection apparatus is connected to the load disconnect switch, switching node and power switch to monitor the voltage at the switching node and the output voltage to provide open circuit and short circuit protection for the boost converter.
US08363364B2
A branch wire L5 from the voltage detection circuit 14 is inserted in the zero-phase-sequence current transformer ZCT in the direction from the load side to the external power supply side. For this configuration, the zero-phase-sequence current transformer ZCT is to detect unbalance of the sum of current flowing in the first and second conductive wires L1, L2 and the current flowing in the branch wire L5. Therefore, the present invention can accurately detect occurrence of electrical leakage.
US08363362B2
According to one embodiment, a magnetoresistive element includes a first ferromagnetic layer a magnetization direction of which is pinned, a second ferromagnetic layer a magnetization direction of which is changed depending on an external magnetic field, an intermediate layer arranged between the first ferromagnetic layer and the second ferromagnetic layer and including an insulating layer and a magnetic conductive column, an alloy layer formed between the magnetic conductive column in the intermediate layer and the second ferromagnetic layer and including at least one of FeCoAl and FeCoAlCu, and a pair of electrodes configured to supply a current perpendicularly to a film plane of a stacked film including the first ferromagnetic layer, the intermediate layer, the alloy layer and the second ferromagnetic layer.
US08363354B2
A bulk eraser for erasing recorded information on a magnetic-recording disk. The bulk eraser includes a plurality of magnets and a structure magnetically coupled with the plurality of magnets to produce magnetic-flux density in a gap. The gap has a first portion, a second portion and a third portion. Two magnets are disposed with opposing polarity across the first portion of the gap. The plurality of magnets and the structure are configured to produce a magnetic-flux density in the second portion of the gap sufficient to erase recorded information from a portion of at least one magnetic-recording disk in a disk-stack of the hard-disk drive when the hard-disk drive is inserted into the second portion of the gap. The plurality of magnets and the structure are configured to direct the magnetic-flux density in a substantially radial direction of the portion of the magnetic-recording disk.
US08363350B2
According to one embodiment, a servo controller of a magnetic disk drive includes a microactuator (MA) estimator, VCM actuator (VCMA) controller, a filter and an adder. The MA estimator estimates a first displacement of an MA from a control input to be provided to the MA. The VCMA controller controls a VCMA based on a positioning error between a target track and a first position of the VCMA. The first position is estimated from a position of a head and the first displacement. The filter estimates a second position of the VCMA corresponding to a delay in a displacement of the MA caused by hysteresis of the MA, from a state of the VCMA in a seek operation, and estimates a second displacement that is the delayed displacement of the MA, from the second position. The adder adds the second displacement to an input to the MA controller.
US08363348B2
Patterned magnetic media are described in which the servo sectors include at least two PES offset segments that can be used for the position error signal (PES) and identification of local track position. The two PES offset segments deviate from the track centerline in opposite directions. The lengths of the offset PES offset segments are systematically varied in a repeating pattern to provide a unique servo signal pattern for each track in a local group of adjacent tracks. The locally unique servo sector pattern allows the servo system to use the pattern of the signals generated from the offset and non-offset segments to determine the local track position, which is similar to information provided by the low order Gray code bits in prior art designs. Therefore, the number of bits in the track ID code can be reduced.
US08363342B2
A piezoelectric actuator with low susceptibility to friction and rubbing is provided. A piezoelectric actuator of the present invention is provided with protruding portions, first piezoelectric actuators and second piezoelectric actuators. The protruding portions protrude from a first face of a base member toward a moving member, and are capable of supporting the moving member. The first piezoelectric actuators are provided along members other than the protruding portions and are capable of expanding and contracting in an orthogonal direction that is orthogonal to the first face. The second piezoelectric actuators are provided along the members other than the protruding portions and are capable of expanding and contracting in a direction other than the orthogonal direction.
US08363340B2
An optical element holding apparatus includes an annular vibration attenuation plate, which covers a peripheral portion of a lens, and a connection member, which is formed of a damping alloy and which fixes the vibration attenuation plate to a frame body in a state of non-contact with the surface of the lens. The vibration attenuation plate and nitrogen gas in a clearance between the vibration attenuation plate and the surface of the lens form a squeeze film damper.
US08363337B2
This invention provides an imaging lens assembly including five lens elements with refractive power, in order from an object side toward an image side: a first lens with positive refractive power having a convex object-side surface, a second lens with negative refractive power, a third lens having a concave object-side surface, a fourth lens with positive refractive power having an object-side surface and a convex image-side surface, and at least one of both surfaces thereof being aspheric, a fifth lens with negative refractive power having a concave image-side surface with at least one inflection point formed thereon. An aperture stop is positioned between an imaged object and the second lens. The imaging lens assembly further comprises an electronic sensor on which an object is imaged. With such arrangement, the size and the optical sensitivity of the lens assembly can be reduced. A high image resolution is also obtained.
US08363326B2
A method of producing an AlxGa(1-x)N (0
US08363314B2
Provided are a reflective semiconductor optical amplifier (R-SOA) and a superluminescent diode (SLD). The R-SOA includes: a substrate; an optical waveguide including a lower clad layer, an active layer independent of the polarization of light, and an upper clad layer sequentially stacked on the substrate, the optical waveguide comprising linear, curved, and tapered waveguide areas; and a current blocking layer formed around the optical waveguide to block a flow of current out of the active layer, wherein the linear and curved waveguide areas have a single buried hetero (BH) structure, and the tapered waveguide area has a dual BH structure.
US08363312B1
In some embodiments, the present invention provides an apparatus and process wherein excess stored optical energy is removed from one or more stages in a fiber-amplifier, in order to stabilize the gain and obtain a constant level of energy per pulse. In some embodiments, a method of the invention includes providing a gain fiber, optically pumping the gain fiber using pump light, amplifying seed-signal pulses having a signal wavelength using the gain fiber to obtain amplified output pulses, and automatically limiting a gain of the gain fiber. In some embodiments, an apparatus of the invention includes a gain fiber, a source of pump light coupled to the gain fiber, a source of seed-signal pulses having a signal wavelength coupled to the gain fiber, wherein the gain fiber outputs amplified signal pulses, and an automatic-gain-control mechanism configured to limit gain of the gain fiber.
US08363303B2
Photonic structures and photonic devices are provided. A photonic structure includes a three-dimensional photonic crystal and an actuator. The three-dimensional photonic crystal comprises an elastomeric, auxetic material and configured to provide a predetermined optical bandgap. The actuator is coupled to the three-dimensional photonic crystal and is configured to compress the three-dimensional photonic crystal. When the actuator compresses the three-dimensional photonic crystal, the three-dimensional photonic crystal shifts from reflecting light in a first wavelength range to light in a second wavelength range.
US08363299B2
A first apparatus for displaying a color image comprises an electro-optic display (1002) having a plurality of pixels, each of which can be independently set to a light-transmissive optical state or a substantially opaque optical state, and lighting means (1006) arranged to flash separate pulses of light of at least two differing colors on to one surface of the electro-optic display (1002). A second apparatus for generating pulses of light of differing colors comprising a light source and a filter assembly comprising first (1100) and second (1106) electro-optic layers each having a light-transmissive state and a colored state, the two colored states being different, and electrodes to switch these layers between these states.
US08363297B2
An optical scanning device is disclosed that includes a light source unit, a light source drive unit, a deflection unit, a scanning image optical system, and a light beam detection unit. In the optical scanning device, the light source drive unit controls an amount of light emission of the light source unit, and a light emission amount control period in which the light source unit is forcibly turned OFF is set to the light source drive unit during a period from when the deflection unit deflects to an edge of a scanning angle for scanning the main scanning area to when the deflection unit deflects to a maximum deflection angle of the deflection unit within a non-image forming period.
US08363293B2
An image forming apparatus performs image formation using colorants of various colors. In relation to a target image, when a first region, formed using colorants of a black color and not using colorants of remaining colors is adjacent to a second region formed using the colorants of the remaining colors and not using the colorants of the black color, the first region is generated using the colorants including the remaining colors based on conversion information generated according to the remaining colors of the second region.
US08363287B2
An image reading apparatus having a memory to store therein image data acquired by reading an original is provided. In a regular reading mode, the memory is divided into a first buffer that stores therein first image data of an image of a first side of the original and a second buffer that stores therein second image data of an image of a second side of the original. In a ring buffer mode, only the first image data is stored in the first buffer and the second buffer in a seamless manner, and the first image data stored in the buffers is output from the buffers to an image processing unit through an output path in a parallel manner. When a size of an original to be read is larger than a predetermined size, reading is performed in the ring buffer mode.
US08363283B2
A printing setting apparatus is disclosed that includes a first part to establish a connection to a printing apparatus; a second part to make a setting with respect to printing of printing data; a third part to add a first ground pattern to the printing data in response to the second part making a first setting for adding the first ground pattern; a fourth part to obtain information indicating whether a second setting for adding a second ground pattern is made in the printing apparatus; and a fifth part to disable the second part from accepting the first setting in response to the fourth part obtaining the information indicating that the second setting is made in the printing apparatus, and enable the second part to accept the first setting in response to the fourth part obtaining the information indicating that the second setting is not made in the printing apparatus.
US08363282B2
A method of processing a continuous tone image includes using a halftone screen to generate a bi-level bitmap; partitioning the contone image into an array of image blocks; halftoning the image blocks; using the bi-level bitmap to select some of the halftone image blocks; and modifying the selected halftone image blocks using code words, such that information contained in the code words is embedded in a halftone image. A method of extracting embedded information in a halftone image includes accessing a bi-level bit map; partitioning the halftone image into a plurality of image blocks; using the bitmap to select at least some of the blocks; identifying a code word sequence in the selected blocks; and extracting the information from the code word sequence.
US08363266B2
An image processing apparatus includes: a display and a display controller that controls the display to display thereon a page. When a first processing is currently performed on the page, the page includes: a first part, on which the first processing has not yet been performed; and a second part, on which the first processing has already been performed. When a second processing is currently performed on the page, the page includes: a third part, on which the second processing has not yet been performed; and a fourth part, on which the second processing has already been performed. The display controller controls the display to display the first part and the second part in different display modes. The display controller controls the display to display the third part and the fourth part in different display modes.
US08363265B2
The invention provides a method of printing at a POS of register receipts and marketing information in which the required network bandwidth and quantity of ink are both reduced. SVG files are used to specify communications, associated modified image objects are stored locally to the POS, and associated modified image objects are modified version of original objects in which color values are replaced with other color values that result in the same print image, but with printing of less ink.
US08363260B2
An image processing apparatus causes a composite image to be printed, on a recording sheet, as an entry area to be written in by a user. The composite image is formed by superimposing a fixed image on a reference image. The image processing apparatus extracts an image of an area having luminance lower than a predetermined threshold value from an image corresponding to the entry area contained in an image obtained by reading the recording sheet having the entry area that is written in, and the image processing apparatus uses mask data for extracting an image of an area corresponding to the fixed image to perform image extraction.
US08363248B2
An image forming apparatus includes a setting-information storage unit that stores plural pieces of print setting information each indicating a list of settings on printing, in association with logical printer names, a data receiving unit that receives PJL data, print drawing data, and a logical printer name from a client terminal, a parameter setting unit that compares settings included in the received PJL data and the settings in the print setting information that is stored in the setting-information storage unit and corresponds to the received logical printer name, to specify the settings included in the PJL data as print parameters, and a printing unit that prints the print drawing data using the specified print parameters.
US08363247B2
A method for controlling a printer to carry out a printing operation. The method comprises, at a controller device, receiving first input data comprising data for identifying said printer and establishing a connection between said controller device and said printer in response to said first input data. Data for use in said printing operation is assembled and said assembled data is provided to said printer via said established connection.
US08363246B2
Address information is requested of a data processing apparatus upon receiving, from the data processing apparatus, data to be transmitted to a network in order to confirm whether an external apparatus is using a specific address. The address information transmitted from the data processing apparatus in response to the request is registered in a communication control apparatus.
US08363245B2
A printing system that adopts an SBC system in which a load at a server is alleviated when executing printing to enable printing to be performed smoothly. In the printing system, a client terminal, a server, and an image forming apparatus are connected to each other through a network. The client terminal specifies data among stored data in the server and sends a print execution request to the server. The server receives the print execution request, creates print-related information relating to the specified data, and sends it to the client terminal. The client terminal judges whether or not print data generation processing with respect to the specified data is possible at the client terminal based on the print-related information, and send the judgment result to the server. The server allocates the print data generation processing to either the server or the client terminal based on the judgment result.
US08363239B2
This invention allows a user to immediately grasp the print status of a job only by inputting a print instruction of a job stored and held in an image forming apparatus. This invention also provides a user-friendly apparatus that notifies the user of a predicted time until completion of printing. For this purpose, the image forming apparatus of this invention has a touch panel formed on the display screen of the operation unit. A list of jobs registered in a Hold job list is displayed on the display screen. When the user selects at least one job and touches a “Test print” or “Print” button, the print job is registered in the print execution queue. Simultaneously, a list of unprinted print jobs registered in the print execution queue is automatically displayed.
US08363237B1
A system and method for printing an image on a medium whose dimensions are determined based on the size of the image are disclosed herein. A system includes a processor and a printing software system including an—Active Printing System (“APS”) configured to execute on the processor. The APS receives from an application program invoking the APS a size of an image to be printed and returns to the application program a set of dimensions within which the image is to be printed on a selected print media. The set of dimensions is determined based, at least in part, on the size of the image.
US08363235B2
A document processing apparatus includes an acquisition unit, a detection unit, a specifying unit and an output unit. The acquisition unit acquires document data containing pieces of page image data corresponding to pages of documents. Each document is formed by stacking and half-folding sheets. The detection unit detects pieces of page image data corresponding to pages to be printed on a same side of a same sheet in the documents, from the page image data contained in the document data. The specifying unit specifies pieces of page image data corresponding to respective pages of each document, from the page image data contained in the document data based on a detection result. The output unit outputs data, which is based on pieces of page image data corresponding to respective pages of at least one of the documents, based on a specifying result.
US08363231B2
A printing system in which a font manger monitors print jobs for execution by a printer having a memory operable to store font data. The font manger is arranged to identify fonts in a print job to be executed by the printer for which font data is not already stored in the memory of the printer; and cause font data corresponding to the identified fonts to be downloaded and stored in the printer memory for use in executing subsequent print jobs. By only including font data which is not already present in the memory of a printer, the size of print jobs can be reduced thereby increasing the speed at which print jobs can be generated and transmitted. The font manger may be provided on the printer, within the computer or as part of a printer server connected to the printer and the computer via a communications network.
US08363220B2
A method of determining an overlay error in which asymmetry of a first order of a diffraction pattern is modeled as being a weighted sum of harmonics. Both the first order harmonic and higher order harmonics are non-negligible and weights for both are calculated. The weights are calculated using three or more of sets of superimposed patterns using a least mean square method.
US08363218B2
An overlay error between two successive layers produced by a lithographic process on a substrate is determined by using the lithographic process to form at least one periodic structure of a same pitch on each of the layers. One or more overlaid pairs of the periodic structures are formed in parallel, but offset relative to each other. A spectrum, produced by directing a beam of radiation onto the one or more pairs of periodic structures is measured. One or more portions of the spectrum are determined in which the relationship between the offset between the one or more pairs of periodic structures and the resultant variation in measured intensity of the spectrum at the one or more portions is more linear than the relationship outside the one or more portions. The offset between the one or more pairs of periodic structures on the basis of intensity measurements of the spectrum in the one or more portions of the spectrum is determined and used to determine the overlay error.
US08363210B2
A combination of location measurement apparatuses to measure in three dimensions the location of an excavator with respect to a job site, and to further measure the location of an excavated or a topographical feature with respect to the excavator by range finding from the excavator in proximity of the feature and contemporaneously recording measurement data on a computer.
US08363208B2
A lithographic apparatus and device manufacturing method makes use of a liquid confined in a reservoir between the projection system and the substrate. Bubbles forming in the liquid from dissolved atmospheric gases or from out-gassing from apparatus elements exposed to the liquid are detected and/or removed so that they do not interfere with exposure and lead to printing defects on the substrate. Detection may be carried out by measuring the frequency dependence of ultrasonic attenuation in the liquid and bubble removal may be implemented by degassing and pressurizing the liquid, isolating the liquid from the atmosphere, using liquids of low surface tension, providing a continuous flow of liquid through the imaging field, and/or phase shifting ultrasonic standing-wave node patterns.
US08363206B2
An optical imaging device, in particular for use in microlithography, includes a mask device for receiving a mask having a projection pattern, a projection device with an optical element group, a substrate device for receiving a substrate and an immersion zone. The optical element group is adapted to project the projection pattern onto the substrate and includes a plurality of optical elements with an immersion element to which the substrate is at least temporarily located adjacent to during operation. During operation, the immersion zone is located between the immersion element and the substrate and is at least temporarily filled with an immersion medium. A thermal attenuation device is provided, the thermal attenuation device being adapted to reduce fluctuations within the temperature distribution of the immersion element induced by the immersion medium.
US08363205B2
An exposure apparatus (1) configured to expose a pattern of a reticle (20) via a liquid (LW) filled between a final lens of a projection optical system (30) and a substrate (40) includes a stage (45) configured to drive the substrate, a shield (81) configured to enclose the stage so as to form a shield space (SS) around the stage, the shield having an opening for an import or an export of the substrate, and a unit, such as a load lock chamber (83), configured to prevent a vapor of the liquid to going out of the shield space and to reduce an outflow amount of the vapor.
US08363201B2
A flexible, transparent electrode structure and a method of fabrication thereof are provided comprising a transparent electrode which may maintain electrical connectivity across a surface of a flexible substrate so that the substrate may flex without affecting the integrity of an electrical contact. The transparent electrode includes conductive nanowires that are coupled to the substrate through a conducting oxide layer. The conducting oxide layer effectively provides a template onto which the nanowires are deposited and serves to anchor the nanowires to the substrate surface.
US08363189B2
A display assembly comprises an electronic display element, a layer of material, and an alkali silicate glass material at least partially covering at least one of the electronic display element and the layer of material.
US08363185B2
Example embodiments relate to a photonic crystal optical filter, a transmissive color filter, a transflective color filter, and a display apparatus using the photonic crystal optical filter. The transmissive color filter may include a transparent substrate; a barrier layer formed on the transparent substrate and having a plurality of pixel areas; and a plurality of photonic crystal units formed on the plurality of pixel areas. Each of the plurality of photonic crystal units may have a structure such that a first material having a relatively high refractive index and a second material having a relatively low refractive index are periodically arranged so as to transmit light having a wavelength band corresponding to a photonic band gap. An optical cut-off layer may be formed on the first material.
US08363184B2
In an LCD device, a circular polarizer is provided to each of two substrates that hold a liquid crystal layer. The circular polarizer on the display surface side includes a polarizer, λ/2 plate in which Rth>0, and a λ/4 plate in which Rth<0; and the circular polarizer on the backlight side includes a polarizer, a λ/2 plate in which Rth<0, and a λ/4 plate in which Rth>0. Rth is a retardation in the thickness direction of a λ/2 plate or a λ/4 plate. The absolute value of the sum of the Rth between the λ/2 plate for which Rth>0 and the λ/2 plate for which Rth<0 is reduced, and in the absolute value of the sum of the Rth between the λ/4 plate for which Rth<0 and the λ/4 plate for which Rth>0.
US08363178B2
Provided is a display device that does not require a backlight unit coupled to a display panel. The display device displays an image using natural light by disposing a display panel on the window. An auxiliary light source can be disposed to complement a change of the natural light. The display device can further include a sensor for sensing a change of the natural light, and a controller for controlling the auxiliary light source in response to a signal sensed by the sensor to obtain constant brightness set to the display panel. Therefore, since the display device does not require a backlight unit and a driving circuit unit for driving the backlight unit, the display device has reduced power consumption, a slim and lightweight profile, and a simple structure. Also, the display device complements a change of the natural light using the auxiliary light source to obtain constant light intensity, so that image quality of the display panel can be enhanced.
US08363173B2
An optical touch screen device includes a light output panel, a first polarizer, a first light-pervious plate, a liquid crystal layer and an image capture module. The light output panel includes a first surface for outputting light rays. The first polarizer is stacked on the first surface. The first light-pervious plate is arranged facing the first polarizer. The liquid crystal layer is arranged between the first polarizer and the first light-pervious plate. The liquid crystal layer includes a plurality of liquid crystal molecules aligned in predetermined orientations. The image capture module has a viewing field covering an entire surface of the first light-pervious plate. The image capture module includes a second polarizer. The second polarizer has a polarization axis associated thereof. The liquid crystal layer is configured for causing light transmitting therethrough to have a polarization direction perpendicular to the second polarization axis.
US08363171B2
A monitor mounting assembly (1) has a first hinge (2) arranged in a recess (3) of a housing (4). A monitor (6) is arranged flush with the housing (4) inside the recess (3) in a first position. The monitor (6) can be arranged in a second position by rotating the monitor (6) around the axis of rotation (7) of the first hinge (2). The angle of rotation of the first hinge (2) lies essentially between 0° and 90° degrees. A second hinge (11) is provided that has an axis of rotation (12) in a plane essentially parallel to the axis of rotation (7) of the first hinge (2). The second hinge (11) is arranged outside the recess (3) of the housing (4) when the first hinge (2) is substantially fully opened. A swivel joint (31) may be provided for rotating the monitor (6) around an axis of rotation (32) orthogonal to the axes of rotation of the first and the second hinge (7, 12).
US08363170B2
A vehicle includes left-hand and right-hand video monitors. Each of the video monitors includes opposing top and bottom edges and opposing left-hand and right-hand lateral edges extending between the top and bottom edges. A translation mechanism couples the video monitors to a vehicle body. The video monitors are movable between a first position wherein the right-hand lateral edge of the left-hand video monitor is spaced apart from the left-hand lateral edge of the right-hand video monitor, and a second position wherein the right-hand lateral edge of the left-hand video monitor is adjacent to the left-hand lateral edge of the right-hand video monitor.
US08363167B2
An information processing apparatus includes: a processing system performing processing on an original image; and a gradation conversion section having a gradation conversion function of receiving image data from the processing system, converting a number of bits of the image data, and expressing pseudo grayscales before the gradation conversion in a grayscale converted image, the gradation conversion section being capable of changing the gradation conversion function and performing conversion processing on the image, wherein the gradation conversion section adds and outputs a determination flag indicating whether the gradation conversion processing has been performed at the time of outputting the image data.
US08363140B2
A digital vision sensor includes a pixel array (10) for receiving a light beam representing a visual scene. The sensor includes: a reference voltage Vref generator; in each pixel, an element for generating, during an integration phase, a voltage Vp that is proportional to the received lighting and a comparator (30) for determining the moment when the voltage Vp thereof reaches the reference voltage; a logarithmic period generator for generating a clock having a period that increases proportionally to the time elapsed from the beginning of the integration; a device for counting the number of clock periods elapsed from the beginning of the integration and providing a result in the form of a binary code; a static RAM memory word (50) per pixel; and, in each pixel, an element (40) for writing the code present at the moment into the memory.
US08363135B2
A method for reconstructing a color image from a sensor which comprises a plurality of pixels arranged in a matrix of rows and columns is provided. The sensor is provided with a color filter array such that each pixel corresponds to one of three basic colors. The three basic colors are provided on the sensor in a predetermined pattern. The sensor outputs a detected value for each of the plurality of pixels. The method comprises the steps: for each of the plurality of pixels: accepting a detected value obtained for the corresponding one of the three basic colors and, for each of the respective two other basic colors, calculating a vertical interpolation value and a horizontal interpolation value and selecting either the vertical interpolation value or the horizontal interpolation value; outputting the accepted detected value and the selected interpolation values. The vertical interpolation and the horizontal interpolation are calculated based on the detected values for pixels in a 5×5 pixel environment around the respective pixel.
US08363132B2
An apparatus and method for demosaicing colors in an image sensor can accurately locate edge directionality by detecting a successive 1-line edge precisely. The embodiments may include an image sensor containing information on a color signal detected from each pixel, a first line memory receiving and storing output data from the image sensor, a missing green information extractor extracting missing green pixel information from the data of the first line memory, a delayer receiving the data of the first line memory, the delayer delaying the received data for a prescribed duration, the delayer outputting the delayed data, a second line memory temporarily storing the data outputted from the missing green information extractor and the data provided via the delayer, and a missing red/blue information outputter extracting missing red/blue information from the data of the second line memory.
US08363126B2
In a digital camera, when the shutter is half-depressed, a controlling section 20 sequentially acquires current through-images imaged by an image acquiring section 10 which are wide-angle images imaged before zooming. Then, when a zoom operation is performed, the controlling section 20 holds a wide-angle image acquired at that point as a guidance image. Next, when the zoom magnification exceeds a predetermined magnification (for example, 3×), the controlling section 20 displays in a display section 25 the guidance image (wide-angle: low magnification) imaged before the zoom operation with a telephoto image imaged after the zoom operation. At the same time, a position corresponding to the current telephoto image is displayed to be identifiable within the guidance image. As a result, an imaging subject is easily confirmed when zooming is performed from wide-angle imaging to telephoto imaging.
US08363122B2
An image taking apparatus includes an image taking system, and a display system, and has a CPU implementing a process to detect subject faces from image frames produced by the image taking system, a process to acquire coordinates of detected subject faces, a process to determine a face detected state or a face undetected state, whichever is concluded in accordance with results of face detection, a process to have, for a determination for the face detected state, a detected-face indicator displayed on the display system in accordance with the coordinates of the acquired subject faces, a process to have, for a determination for the face undetected state, a detected-face indicator having been displayed in a last face detected state till the last displayed on, and a process to execute a shooting control in accordance with a detected-face indicator displayed on the display system.
US08363119B2
System and method for controlling an image collecting device to carry out a target location are provided, which includes: an acoustic sound source locating unit, configured to carry out target location based on a received acoustical signal and transmit the located position to an application layer strategy unit; a voice recognition unit, configured to carry out a recognition and matching process with a stored acoustical signal based on the received acoustical signal, and transmit the recognition result to the application layer strategy unit; and the application layer strategy unit, configured to decide an expected PTZ position of the image collecting device based on the position and the recognition result. The system controls the image collecting device to automatically carry out a target location based on the results of the acoustic sound source location and voice recognition, which thus improves an operating maintainability of the image collecting device.
US08363118B2
An image processing device calculates a coordinate transformation coefficient for each of a plurality of regions, and, for at least one point of interest in a local region, calculates a correction amount that is used when blur in a target image is corrected using a coordinate transformation coefficient for the local region and a correction amount that is used when the blur in the target image is corrected using a coordinate transformation coefficient for a region neighboring the local region. In this case, if the correction amount difference does not fall within a predetermined limit value, a coordinate transformation coefficient is newly obtained for each of the plurality of regions including the local region so that the correction amount difference falls within the predetermined limit value, and the target image is corrected for each region using the newly obtained coordinate transformation coefficient.
US08363116B2
An image processing device includes: a motion vector receiving unit configured to receive, from frame image data made up of frame images, motion vectors representing motion of the frame images; a modeling unit configured to model the motion vector, received from the motion vector receiving unit, to a component separation expression in which a camera motion component and a focal plane distortion component are separated, using component parameters respectively representing camera motion which is motion of a camera, and the amount in change in focal plane distortion; and a component calculation unit configured to calculate the component parameters used in the component separation expression, thereby calculating the focal plane distortion component in the motion vector.
US08363114B2
A shake correction device includes a shake detection unit detecting shake so as to generate a shake detection signal, a driving unit displacing a relative positional relationship between a lens unit and an imaging device with respect to an optical axis so as to displace the position on the imaging surface of an optical image formed on an imaging surface of the imaging device, a displacement detection unit detecting a displacement state of the correction lens unit or the imaging device, a filter processing unit performing a filter process of the shake detection signal, and a correction control unit displacing the relative positional relationship between the lens unit and the imaging device according to the filter-processed shake detection signal so as to correct the shake of the optical image on the imaging surface generated by the shake detected by the shake detection unit.
US08363109B2
A video processing system may include a display and a video processor coupled to the display. The video processor may be configured to display a georeferenced video feed on the display defining a viewable area, determine actual geospatial location data for a selected moving object within the viewable area, and generate estimated geospatial location data along a predicted path for the moving object when the moving object is no longer within the viewable area and based upon the actual geospatial location data. The video processor may be further configured to define a successively expanding search area for the moving object when the moving object is no longer within the viewable window and based upon the estimated geospatial location data, and search within the successively expanding search area for the moving object when the successively expanding search area is within the viewable area.
US08363097B2
An endoscopic imaging system includes an endoscope, a light source assembly coupled to the endoscope that transmits light to the endoscope for illuminating a region of interest, an imaging unit coupled to the light source assembly that receives light through the endoscope reflected from the region of interest, a first power module coupled to the light source assembly that provides electrical power to the light source assembly, and a second and different power module coupled to the imaging unit that provides electrical power to the imaging unit. Other imaging systems and a method are also disclosed.
US08363094B2
An electronic display device includes a display unit including a plurality of scan lines, a plurality of data lines, and a plurality of pixels, and a barrier unit covering the display unit, including a plurality of first areas and a plurality of second areas alternately arranged along a length direction of the data lines, a first electrode group respectively provided in each of the first areas, each of the electrode groups including a plurality of first sub-electrodes and a plurality of second sub-electrodes alternately arranged along a length direction of the scan lines, a second electrode group provided in each of the second areas on a layer that is different from a layer on which the first electrode group is provided, each of the second electrode groups including a plurality of third sub-electrodes and a plurality of fourth sub-electrodes alternately arranged along the length direction of the scan line, and an insulation layer between the first and second electrode groups.
US08363092B2
To prevent information required for reproducing of a 3D/multi-viewpoint image being lost even in a case in which editing or the like of the 3D/multi-viewpoint image is performed using a device or application software that does not support 3D/multi-viewpoint images, a compound-eye digital camera can switch between a multi-viewpoint image taking mode that images a subject image viewed from a plurality of viewpoints and a single viewpoint image taking mode that takes a subject image viewed from a single viewpoint. When taking an image in the multi-viewpoint image taking mode, the compound-eye digital camera sets a protect flag for multi-viewpoint images acquired with an image pickup device and records the multi-viewpoint images. As a result, the taken multi-viewpoint images are protected, and erasure or editing of the images cannot be performed without permission.
US08363070B2
Correction data tables or look up tables (LUTs) are stored in a table memory. When an overshoot calculation section switches an active LUT, the overshoot calculation section obtains the new active LUT not out of an external memory but out of the table memory. A table managing section deletes, from the internal memory, LUTs to which the new active LUT does not switch over directly, for example non-adjacent LUTs, meanwhile the table managing section obtains a new adjacent LUT from the external memory so as to store the new adjacent LUT in the table memory. With the arrangement, it becomes possible for a drive circuit to (i) operate at the same processing speed as a drive circuit in which all tables are stored in the internal memory, and simultaneously, (ii) reduce the amount of memory.
US08363068B1
A method for providing map data to a client device includes receiving, at a server from the client device over a network, a request for parameters related to map data for a region of interest, where each region of interest is a separate geographic area. The method also includes providing, for use by the client device, a local zoom table indicating each zoom level for which new map data is available and usable by the client to determine whether or not to request new map data in response to a zoom command. Providing the local zoom table includes generating the local zoom table by analyzing tile data from multiple zoom levels to determine a progression order of map tile zooms to be requested by the client.
US08363063B2
According to one example embodiment described herein is a method of notating a color that includes determining, using predetermined mathematical equations and in dependence on numerical color attributes that identify a color, a plurality of numerical color emotion values each representative of a different human emotional response to the color; and assigning an identifying notation to the color, the identifying notation comprising a color emotion notation that includes the color emotion values.
US08363062B2
An embodiment of the invention relates to a method for generating a radiance map in High Dynamic Range (HDR) image creation by calculating mean difference curves for a sequence of images taken with different exposures and a transformation curve from the mean difference curve by an algorithm approximated to the Debevec function, by the means of which a radiance map can be calculated from the taken images. A further embodiment of the invention relates to a unit for performing this method.
US08363061B2
A method with quick response time applied to the electronic apparatus is provided. The method includes: providing a storage configured for storing a plurality of images; providing a cache memory configured for temporarily storing decoded images; invoking the images that are previously to and next to the currently displayed image from the storage, decoding the invoked images, and storing the decoded images in the cache memory; receiving an instruction from user input; determining whether the instruction is for displaying a previous image or a next image; and invoking the decoded image of the image from the cache memory and displaying the selected image. A related electronic apparatus is also provided.
US08363058B2
Systems and methods of producing video data and/or audio-photos from a static digital image are disclosed. One such method, among others, comprises receiving input from a user indicating sequentially, in real time, a plurality of regions of the static digital image. The method also includes processing the user input to determine the visual content of each of a sequence of video frames and generating output data representative of the sequence of video frames. The sequence and composition of the video frames are determined such that the visual content of the video frames is taken from the static digital image. For each region of the static image indicated by the user, a video frame is composed such that the said region occupies a substantial part of the video frame. The sequence of video frames shows the regions indicated by the user in sequential correspondence with the sequence in which the user indicated the regions and substantially in pace with the time in which the user indicated the regions.
US08363055B1
Multiple time scales enable animations over multiple shots. Time-dependent data is specified with reference to time references. Data expressed in different time references may be combined to form animations, shots, and sequences of shots. Time transformations specifying mappings between time references are used to combine data expressed in different time references. Data can be viewed in arbitrary time references. Editing data specifying a sequence of shots may be used as a time reference for viewing data expressed in other time references. Data expressed in one time reference may be rearranged according to another time reference to indicate time reference relationships. Data authored in one time reference may be viewed and modified in another time reference. Modifications are converted from the viewing time reference to the data's original time reference for updating data. Time-dependent data may be expressed in layer data structures. Layer relationships may include time transformations.
US08363043B2
A driving circuit for a liquid crystal display and the liquid crystal display are disclosed. The liquid crystal display includes a display panel for displaying an image and a driving voltage generating circuit connected to the display panel, wherein the driving circuit includes a DC-DC converter for converting an input voltage level of a power input terminal to drive the display panel and outputting it as a driving voltage, a power line for connecting the power input terminal and the DC-DC converter, a first diode connected to a first node of the power line, a driving voltage terminal connected to an output terminal of the DC-DC converter, and a second diode connected to the first diode and the driving voltage terminal, wherein the power line includes a second node connected to a ground electrode between the first diode and the second diode.
US08363030B2
A touch panel includes a transparent base board, a mesh-shaped sensor portion formed on the base board and made of piezoelectric materials, a mesh-shaped black matrix formed on the sensor portion; and a pixel portion formed on portions of the base board exposed from the sensor portion and the black matrix for displaying images. When the base board is touched, the sensor portion transforms the pressure on the base board into piezoelectric signals for inputting operating instruction.
US08363024B2
A handwriting board with a liquid crystal display (LCD) includes a wireless Universal Serial Bus (USB) unit, a USB hub unit, a USB/Video Graphic Array (VGA) conversion unit, a LCD driver unit, a LCD unit, a touch pad controller unit and a touch pad unit. When a user writes on the touch pad unit, the content written by the user is transmitted from the touch pad controller unit and the USB hub unit 204 to the wireless USB unit, which transmits the written content to a computer for processing. The processed written content is then transmitted to a projector and the wireless USB unit. Thereby, the written content can be displayed on the LCD unit.
US08363021B2
Compensating for the frequency dependence of sense signal preprocessing in preprocessing channel circuitry is provided. The frequency dependence of the preprocessing channels can be modified to change a frequency dependent channel into a frequency independent channel, to change a frequency independent channel into a frequency dependent channel, or to change the frequency dependency characteristics of a frequency dependent channel. Modification of frequency dependency may be accomplished, for example, by modifying certain parameters of a preprocessing channel's components, which can include components for amplifying, filtering, phase adjusting, demodulating, decrypting, for example. A pipelined process may be used to modify the frequency dependency of multiple channels. Compensating for frequency dependencies can have multiple advantages, such as reduction of memory requirements and DIE size.
US08363019B2
A mobile terminal including a touch screen and a proximity sensor and a method of controlling the mobile terminal are provided. The method includes displaying an image on the touch screen; if a touch signal for the image is received, displaying an image-editing menu; choosing one of a plurality of image-editing functions from the image-editing menu; and selecting a ‘detailed settings’ mode for the chosen image-editing function in response to a proximity signal output by the proximity sensor and performing the chosen image-editing function on the image. Accordingly, it is possible to perform various image-editing control operations using the proximity sensor.
US08363014B2
A wireless keyboard base includes a base, a wireless keyboard and a plurality of magnets. The base has a groove to accommodate an edge of an electronic device. The wireless keyboard is disposed on the base and has a wireless communication module to exchange information data with the electronic device. The plurality of magnets are disposed within the groove to magnetically attract the edge of the electronic device.
US08363009B1
Provided are methods and systems for enhanced input using a touch screen, as well as computer programs encoded on computer storage devices and configured to perform the actions of the methods. One or more applications executing on a mobile device receive a user input through the touch screen of the mobile device, without displaying information identifying a command associated with the user input on the touch screen. The one or more applications then determine the command associated with the received user input and display a result of applying the command on an external display that is connected to the mobile device.
US08363008B2
Disclosed is an event control method of a mobile terminal, in which when a touch input is detected, a shape and size of a lock screen is changed according to the detected touch input value (e.g., touch time, the number of touch times or touch area) and simultaneously a threshold value necessary for unlocking the lock screen 50 is displayed, and then the lock screen is unlocked and switched to a menu screen when the touch input value reaches the threshold value, resulting in providing a user with more enjoyable and exciting user interface (UI).
US08363007B2
A touchpad interface device includes a sensing board, a light guide plate, a control panel, and a plurality of lighting elements. The control panel includes a plurality of transparent areas and a plurality of covering areas to form a plurality of patterns. Users can understand the operating functionality of the control panel according to the plurality of patterns. The plurality of patterns includes a plurality of scale patterns, and the plurality of scale patterns have a volume adjusting area. The plurality of light members is located under the control panel and corresponding to the volume adjusting area. When the plurality of lighting elements illuminate, the scale patterns at the corresponding position are illuminated.
US08363002B2
According to one embodiment, an information processing apparatus includes a displaying unit including a display panel, a drive circuit for driving a white pixel, an illumination unit, and an inverter supplying a boosted driving power to the illumination unit, a power supply which supplies the inverter the driving power corresponding to a second control signal, a selecting unit which selects one item of setting data from a setting table including a plurality of items of setting data including luminance setting of the white pixel and luminance setting of the illumination unit, a first control signal outputting unit which supplies to the drive circuit the first control signal corresponding to luminance of the white pixel included in the selected item, and a second control signal outputting unit which supplies to the power supply the second control signal corresponding to luminance of the illumination unit included in the selected item.
US08363001B2
The present invention provides a liquid crystal display device capable of shortening the time required for stabilizing the brightness and the chromaticity to the temperature change. The input of an LED driver is connected to the output of a PWM controller, so that the electric power supplied to the respective LED groups of red, green and blue are controlled with a PWM method. A feedback control means for controlling the PWM controller includes a brightness setting means, a color setting means, a multiplication means for receiving the outputs from the brightness setting means and the color setting means, a comparison means fed with the output of the multiplication means at one of the inputs thereof, a light sensor temperature compensation means for compensating for fluctuations of the output of the light detection means due to temperature changes, a liquid crystal display panel temperature compensation means for compensating for fluctuations of the spectral transmittance of the liquid crystal display panel due to temperature changes, an addition means for summing the result of detection by the light detection means and the output of the light sensor temperature compensation means, and a multiplication means for multiplying the output of the addition means by the output of the liquid crystal display panel temperature compensation means.
US08362999B2
In a method for driving a liquid crystal display, a plurality of first enabling pulses are transmitted to a first group of scan lines in a first period of a predetermined time, respectively. A plurality of second enabling pulses are transmitted to a second group of scan lines in a second period of the predetermined time, respectively. The pixel voltages of pixel units, which are connected to the scan lines of the first and second group, are different in their polarities. During the predetermined time, a common voltage signal, which has different levels in the first and second period, is transmitted to the common line. A liquid crystal display applying the above driving method is also disclosed.
US08362997B2
One aspect of the present invention relates to a display for displaying data. In one embodiment, the display includes a timing controller (TCON) configured to provide a plurality of data signals to be displayed, at least one clock signal and a data training code corresponding to at least one clock signal; a plurality of source drivers, each source driver configured to receive one or more corresponding data signals, the at least one clock signal and the data training code from the TCON, generate a plurality of data phase signals according to the one or more corresponding data signals, select one data signal from the plurality of data phase signals as an optimal data signal according to the data training code, and latch the one or more corresponding data signals according to the optimal data signal; and a display panel configured to display the plurality of latched data received from the plurality of source drivers.
US08362990B2
A video signal processing circuit is disclosed. The video signal processing circuit includes a difference detection section, first calculation section, and correction amount addition section. The difference detection section detects a difference between a drive voltage for each of pixels of a matrix drive type display panel as a pixel under consideration and a drive voltage of each of pixels adjacent to the pixel under consideration from an input video signal. The first calculation section calculates a correction amount of a drive voltage for a pixel under correction that has a luminance change due to an electric field caused by a difference of the drive voltages for the two pixels detected by the difference detection section. The correction amount addition section corrects a value of the drive voltage for a pixel under correction that has the luminance change based on the correction amount calculated by the first calculation section.
US08362989B2
An exemplary liquid crystal display device (20) includes a plurality of pixel electrode (26), a common electrode (22), a data driving circuit (33) configured for providing data voltages to each pixel electrode, and a common voltage generating circuit (34) configured for providing a common voltage to the common electrode. The common voltage generating circuit includes a hysteresis comparator circuit (341) and a direct current voltage adjusting circuit (343). The hysteresis comparator circuit is configured for providing an alternating current voltage, and the direct current voltage adjusting circuit is configured for providing a direct current voltage with periodic change. The direct current voltage is configured for superimposing on the alternating current voltage to form a common voltage, and an absolute value of the common voltage changes only slightly within a predetermined range from each frame to the next adjacent frame. A method for driving the liquid crystal display device is also provided.
US08362982B2
In a display apparatus including a switching transistor, a correction voltage for eliminating an effect of a variation in a characteristic of a driving transistor is stored in a storage capacitor. The switching transistor is disposed between one current terminal of the driving transistor and a light emitting element. The switching transistor turns off during the non-light emission period thereby to electrically disconnect the light emitting element from the one current terminal of the driving transistor thereby preventing a leakage current from flowing through the light emitting element during the period in which the correction unit operates, and thus preventing the correction voltage from having an error due to the leakage current.
US08362976B2
A plasma display device that can utilize an energy recovery voltage regardless of whether pixels are selected. An energy recovery circuit of the plasma display device includes first and second switches serially coupled between a first voltage source and a second voltage source, a third switch coupled to a connection point between the first and second switches, a voltage recovery capacitor coupled between the third switch and a base voltage source, and a precharger for charging the voltage recovery capacitor.
US08362965B2
An electronically scanned array (ESA) antenna includes a main line along which an electromagnetic traveling wave may propagate and a plurality of array elements distributed along the main line. Each of the plurality of array elements includes a branch line; an antenna radiator at one end of the branch line; an electronically controllable reflection phase shifter at the opposite end of the branch line; a directional coupler which couples energy between the main line and the branch line.
US08362959B2
A field device includes a housing having at least an antenna receiving bore. Field device electronics are disposed within the housing and include wireless communication circuitry configured to communicate wireless process information. An antenna assembly includes an antenna base engaged within the antenna receiving bore of the housing. The antenna assembly including an antenna operably coupled to the wireless communication circuitry. The antenna assembly is rotatable within the bore by an amount less than one full rotation, and rotation of the antenna assembly varies orientation of the antenna.
US08362950B2
A method and device for predicting satellite trajectory extension data in a mobile apparatus. The device in accordance with the present invention comprises an I/O interface and a microprocessor. The input/output (I/O) interface is used for obtaining at least one satellite navigation message for at least one satellite. The microprocessor is used for determining a satellite trajectory prediction model according to the satellite navigation message, and propagating at least one set of satellite trajectory extension data by using the satellite trajectory prediction model.
US08362943B2
A method for registering a radar system. The method includes obtaining first values for a location of a target relative to the radar system using radar system initiated signals, obtaining geo-referenced location data for and from the target, obtaining second values for the location of the target relative to the radar system using the geo-referenced location data, computing location registration bias errors for the radar system using the first and second values, and registering the radar system using the computed location registration bias errors.
US08362942B2
A system and method for detecting entities based on movement can involve transmission circuitry configured to enable transmission of a stepped-frequency radar signal, an antenna, and receiving circuitry configured to generate data including information associated with frequency and phase shifts between the transmitted signal and the reflections of the transmitted signal. The system also can involve a processor configured to analyze the generated data to determine information associated with a moving object located at a side of a wall different than a side of the wall of which the system is located. The analyzing can involve compensating for the effect of motion of the system on the phase shifts between the transmitted signal and the reflections of the transmitted signal.
US08362932B2
Calibration data for calibrating time to digital conversion is obtained by switching a feed circuit of a time to digital converter between a normal operating mode or a calibration mode. A delay circuit with a delay circuit input and a plurality of taps outputs. A sampling register samples data from the data inputs. The feed circuit provides for selection of transitions of the oscillator signal that control timing of a first active transition at the clock circuit after a transition at the delay circuit input. A control circuit switches the feed circuit between normal operating mode and calibration mode, and controls the feed circuit successively to select a plurality of different transitions to control timing of the first active transition in the calibration mode. The control circuit reads out resulting data from the sampling register for each selection and determines calibration data for the oscillator signal from said data.
US08362929B2
A keypad is described herein in which the keypad can have a base surface and a plurality of keys positioned on the base surface. The plurality of keys can be made up of a first group that that is an arrangement of number keys for initiating a voice-based communication and a second group that is an arrangement of letter keys. In addition, the number keys of the first group and the letter keys of the second group are independent of one another. As an example, the number keys of the first group can be positioned on the base surface in a number of columns, and the letter keys of the second group can be positioned in areas between the number keys.
US08362922B2
When a vehicle attempts to enter a priority road from a non-priority road, a visibility determination processing section compares moving object information on the priority road obtained from a first infrastructure facility installed near a stop position with moving object information on the priority road detected by an autonomous sensor mounted on the vehicle, and determines that the visibility is poor if the former does not match the latter or determines that the visibility is good if the former matches the latter. Then, when the former does not match the latter, the driver is informed of intersection support information. When the former matches the latter, the driver is not informed since it is determined that the driver has already recognized the information by visual observation.
US08362919B2
A system for sensing and communicating in a pipeline that contains a fluid. An acoustic signal containing information about a property of the fluid is produced in the pipeline. The signal is transmitted through the pipeline. The signal is received with the information and used by a control.
US08362913B2
A power saving circuit for a computer. When the computer is powered on, an LED is lit. When the computer if off but power is still being supplied from the commercial power source to the power supply of the computer, the LED blinks. A counter chip determines the time to start blinking or the frequency of blinking.
US08362906B1
A remote control device includes a memory having a library of commands for commanding functional operations of an appliance and a user interface having activatable keys for causing a transmission of one or more commands to thereby command functional operations of the appliance. An illumination device is provided which causes an appearance of the remote control device to change as a function of at least one of a timing operation and temperature related functional operation of the appliance.
US08362889B2
In a road condition detecting system consisting of a transmitter provided in a sending-side object on a road and adapted to transmit information about road conditions and a receiver provided in a receiving-side object on the road and adapted to receive information about road conditions, the transmitter includes sending-side vicinity information obtaining means for obtaining information about the vicinity of the sending-side object, transmitted information determining means for determining information to be transmitted, from the obtained vicinity information, and transmitting means for transmitting the determined vicinity information, and the receiver includes receiving means for receiving the vicinity information transmitted from the transmitting means of the transmitter.
US08362885B2
A vehicular rearview mirror system includes an interior rearview mirror assembly having an interior electrochromic reflective element. The interior rearview mirror assembly includes a control that has circuitry operable to provide a drive signal to the reflective element to vary the reflectance level of the interior electrochromic reflective element. The control includes a bus interface that interfaces with a vehicle bus of the equipped vehicle. The interior rearview mirror system includes a forward-facing camera. The control may control at least one of (a) operation of a video display, (b) operation of the forward-facing camera and (c) operation of a headlight control for controlling a headlight of the equipped vehicle. The interior rearview mirror assembly may include a video display operable to display video information for viewing by a driver of the vehicle.
US08362880B2
A method and apparatus for loading and executing program code at a micro-processor are disclosed. In this method, a monitoring procedure is performed to monitor whether the micro-processor receives a loading request corresponding to a target program code. If the loading request is received, the target program code is loaded from an external memory into an internal memory of the micro-processor. The micro-processor is then rebooted to enter a first mode in which the target program code in the internal memory is to be executed.
US08362873B2
An example display unit for facilitating operation of equipment includes a housing, an electronic display supported by the housing, and an electronic circuit located within the housing. The display unit may include one or more data receivers, such as a wireless receiver and/or an electrical interface. A biometric scanner, including a biometric sensor and proving an authorization signal when an authorized biometric input is detected by the biometric sensor, may be configured to electrically (and optionally mechanically) interconnect to the display unit. The example display unit receives an authorization status for operation of the equipment from the biometric scanner, and displays the authorization status and operational parameters relating to equipment use on the electronic display.
US08362864B2
A magnet assembly (200) is provided according to the invention. The magnet assembly (200) includes at least one magnet (210), a magnet keeper (220) including a substantially planar magnet receiving face (222) for receiving the at least one magnet (210), and brazing (230) that affixes the at least one magnet (210) to the magnet receiving face (222) of the magnet keeper (220).
US08362856B2
A radio frequency (RF) transition for a three dimensional molded RF structure is provided. In one embodiment, the invention relates to a radio frequency (RF) transition for an RF structure, the RF transition includes an assembly having a first flexible layer, a second flexible layer, and a third flexible layer, wherein a first section of the assembly includes a microstrip transmission line, wherein a second section of the assembly includes a dielectric stripline transmission line, and wherein a third section of the assembly includes a suspended substrate stripline transmission line.
US08362855B2
An RF cavity filter is disclosed. The disclosed filter includes: a housing having at least one cavity defined; a cover coupled to an upper portion of the housing; at least one resonator contained within the at least one cavity; at least one hole formed in the cover; at least one grounding bolt configured to be inserted into the hole, having a screw thread formed on a part of an outer perimeter, and having a center hole in a center portion; and at least one tuning bolt inserted into the housing through the center hole along a screw thread formed on an inner perimeter of the center hole, where the grounding bolt has a flange part formed on a lower portion that is in contact with the tuning bolt and a lower portion of the cover.
US08362853B2
Tunable MEMS resonators having adjustable resonance frequency and capable of handling large signals are described. In one exemplary design, a tunable MEMS resonator includes (i) a first part having a cavity and a post and (ii) a second part mated to the first part and including a movable plate located under the post. Each part may be covered with a metal layer on the surface facing the other part. The movable plate may be mechanically moved by a DC voltage to vary the resonance frequency of the MEMS resonator. The cavity may have a rectangular or circular shape and may be empty or filled with a dielectric material. The post may be positioned in the middle of the cavity. The movable plate may be attached to the second part (i) via an anchor and operated as a cantilever or (ii) via two anchors and operated as a bridge.
US08362852B2
A branching filter includes an antenna terminal, a transmission signal terminal, a reception signal terminal, a transmission filter element, and a reception filter element. At least one of the transmission filter element and the reception filter element includes a longitudinally coupled resonator filter element having first and second IDT electrodes arranged along a direction of propagation of an elastic wave. The first IDT electrode includes a first end connected to the antenna terminal. The second IDT electrode includes a first end connected to one of the transmission signal terminal and the reception signal terminal. The longitudinally coupled resonator filter element further includes an inductor connected in series between a second end of the first IDT electrode and a ground potential.
US08362842B1
Provided herein are a circuit and method for dynamically controlling operational amplifier (op-amp) offset for photodetector applications using a variable trimming circuit coupled to a test node and an op-amp.
US08362833B2
Amplifier circuitry comprising a class-D amplifier for amplifying an audio input signal. The amplifier circuitry comprises sigma-delta modulation logic arranged to receive the audio input signal and to generate a modulated signal representative of the audio input signal, and an output stage arranged to generate an output signal for the amplifier circuitry. The amplifier circuitry further comprises finite impulse response, filter logic operably coupled between the modulation logic and the output stage, and having at least one zero in its transfer function arranged to substantially pass signal components within the modulated signal occurring at frequencies less than the at least one zero and to attenuate signal components within the modulated signal at frequencies greater than the at least one zero.
US08362831B2
An apparatus comprises: an OTA (operational trans-conductance amplifier) with a positive input terminal coupled to a reference voltage, a negative input terminal coupled to a feedback node, and an output terminal shunt to a ground node via a shunt capacitor; a resistor coupling the output terminal of the OTA to the feedback node; and a load circuit coupled to the feedback node via a switch controlled by a logical signal, wherein: an impedance of the shunt capacitor is substantially smaller than an input impedance of the load circuit. In an embodiment, the load circuit is a switch capacitor circuit. A corresponding method using an OTA is also provided.
US08362828B2
Methods and devices for forming a series of samples of a filtered version of an input signal. Multiple tap current cells each generate a tap current from the signal. Multiple distribution means couple the tap current cells with multiple integrating means. The distribution means is controlled by a first clock signal. The multiple integrating means integrate tap currents that they receive and these integrating means form the samples. The tap currents generated are each sent to each integrating means in a predetermined sequence according to the first clock signal. The integrating means each use integrating and sampling phases controlled by a second clock signal. During the integrating phase an integrating means receives tap currents in sequence, while during the rest phase, no tap currents are received and the contents of the circuit are sampled and the integrator means is reset.
US08362827B2
A semiconductor device includes two functional circuits, PMOS transistors and NMOS transistors. The PMOS transistors control whether or not a power supply potential is to be delivered to functional circuits, and the NMOS transistors control whether or not a power supply potential GND is to be delivered to the functional circuits. An external terminal supplied with a third power supply potential and another external terminal is supplied with a fourth power supply potential higher than the third power supply potential. A power supply control circuit delivers a control signal, having the fourth power supply potential as amplitude, to transistors to control the electrically conducting state or the electrically non-conducting state of transistors. The power supply control circuit also delivers a control signal, having the third power supply potential as amplitude, to transistors to control the electrically conducting or non-conducting state of the NMOS transistors.
US08362826B1
An amplifier biasing circuit that reduces gain variation in short channel amplifiers, an amplifier biasing circuit that produces a constant Gm biasing signal for short channel amplifiers, and a multistage amplifier that advantageously incorporates embodiment of both types of amplifier biasing circuits are described. Both amplifier biasing circuit approaches use an operational amplifier to equalize internal bias circuit voltages. The constant Gm biasing circuit produces a Gm of 1/R, where R is the value of a trim resistor value. The biasing circuit that reduces gain variation produces a Gm of approximately 1/R, where R is the value of a trim resistor value, however, the biasing circuit is configurable to adjust the bias circuit Gm to mitigate the impact of a wide range of circuit specific characteristics and a wide range of changes in the operational environment in which the circuit can used, such as changes in temperature.
US08362823B2
A charge pump regulator has a charge pump to establish a charge path and a discharge path alternately, so as to produce a regulated voltage on an output terminal. The charge pump has at least a current control element on the charge path or the discharge path to control the current flowing therethrough according to an output-dependent feedback signal.
US08362811B2
A resonant clock distribution network architecture is proposed that is capable of single-step operation through the use of selective control in the resonant clock drivers and the deployment of flip-flops that require the clock to remain stable for a sufficiently long time between any two consecutive state updates. Such a network is generally applicable to semiconductor devices with various clock frequencies, and high-performance and low-power clocking requirements such as microprocessors, ASICs, and SOCs.
US08362799B2
Semiconductor device, and failure detection system and failure detection method of data hold circuit
A semiconductor device according to a first aspect of the present invention includes: a first circuit that outputs a first output value having a majority of output values received from N (N is three or more odd numbers) pieces of data hold circuits receiving a same input value; and a second circuit that outputs a second output value which is less than the majority of output values received from the N pieces of the data hold circuits.
US08362796B2
A method of testing integrated circuits, including: establishing at least a first physical communication channel between a test equipment and an integrated circuit under test by having at least a first probe of the test equipment contacting a corresponding physical contact terminal of the integrated circuit under test; having the test equipment and the integrated circuit under test exchange, over said first physical communication channel, at least two signals selected from the group including at least two test stimuli and at least two test response signals, wherein said at least two signals are exchanged by means of at least one modulated carrier wave modulated by the at least two signals.
US08362793B2
Circuit boards are provided that include a functional portion and at least one removable test point portion. The removable test point portion may include test points which are accessed to verify whether the functional portion is operating properly or whether installed electronic components are electrically coupled to the board. If multiple boards are manufactured together on a single panel (in which the individual boards are broken off), the test points can be placed on bridges (e.g., removable portions) that connect the individual boards together during manufacturing and testing. Configurable test boards are also provided that can be adjusted to accommodate circuit boards of different size and electrical testing requirements. Methods and systems for testing these circuit boards are also provided.
US08362790B2
There is provided an alternating current (AC) detection circuit for a power supply, the circuit including: a rectifying part rectifying an AC voltage; a voltage division part dividing the voltage rectified by the rectifying part according to a preset division ratio; a voltage stabilization circuit part stabilizing the voltage divided by the voltage division part; a comparing part comparing the voltage stabilized by the voltage stabilization circuit part with an internal reference voltage and generating an input detection signal when the stabilized voltage is higher than the internal reference voltage; and an output part outputting an AC detection signal when the input detection signal is inputted from the comparing part.
US08362787B1
A harmonic rejection tuner, used for reflecting RF power at the harmonic frequencies in a load pull measurement setup, uses adjustable capacitive grounding of half wavelength long resonator stubs in order to vary the electrical length and thus the resonant frequency of the resonators. Since the resonators themselves are by nature narrowband, this frequency adjustability allows for a higher frequency bandwidth and better coverage of operational frequency range of the test setup. Since load pull measurements are carried out mostly at fixed frequencies, adjustment of the capacitive shorts can be either manual or by remote control. Capacitive shorting the resonator stubs allows DC bias to be applicable to the device under test through the tuner.
US08362781B2
An instrument for measuring a property of a subsurface material, the instrument including: a magnetic material surrounding a volume in at least two dimensions; and a receiver adapted for receiving energy related to the property of the subsurface material; wherein the receiver is disposed at an exterior surface of the magnetic material.
US08362768B2
A magnetic sensor for measuring a magnetic field using an optical pumping method includes a first gas in which a valence electron is composed of an odd number of atoms or ions, a probe light incidence device which causes first probe light including straight polarized light to be incident on the first gas, a second gas in which a valence electron arranged on an optical path of second probe light that is the first probe light transmitted through the first gas is composed of an odd number of atoms or ions, a pumping light incidence device which causes first pumping light including first circular polarized light to be incident on the first gas and second pumping light including second circular polarized light to be incident on the second gas, and a detector which detects a rotation angle of a polarization plane of the first probe light and a polarization plane of third probe light that is the second probe light transmitted through the second gas.
US08362764B2
A measuring device for determining the strength of magnet fields using a Hall probe and a method for evaluating the function of a Hall sensor. The measuring device comprises a sensor having a Hall probe and an electric diagnosis conductor which is galvanically isolated from the Hall probe. The measuring device being able to continually monitor the sensor. In particular, the sensor can not only be checked qualitatively in regard to function or failure, but also quantitatively in regard to correct calibration such that, if necessary, an immediate correction or re-calibration of the sensor can be performed. In particular, measuring errors for instance, due to a temperature drift or because of mechanical stress of the sensor, can easily be eliminated.
US08362760B2
Disclosed are various embodiments of methods and systems related to stimulus responsive nanoparticles. In one embodiment includes a stimulus responsive nanoparticle system, the system includes a first electrode, a second electrode, and a plurality of elongated electro-responsive nanoparticles dispersed between the first and second electrodes, the plurality of electro-responsive nanorods configured to respond to an electric field established between the first and second electrodes.
US08362751B2
Systems for harnessing power through electromagnetic induction utilizing printed coils are provided. A system can include one or more moveable magnets adjacent to printed coils on a circuit. For example, a system can include one or more magnets that are operative to move alongside a circuit board that includes printed coils. The one or more magnets may move, for example, when a user shakes the system or when the user walks or runs while holding the device. The movement of the one or more magnets may create an electromotive force (e.g., a voltage) across the printed coils, and this force may be used to generate electric power.
US08362750B2
An apparatus for controlling a charging circuit is provided. The apparatus includes a first detector, a second detector, and a controller. The first detector detects a voltage level at a first time and generates a first indication value corresponding to the voltage level at the first time, where the voltage level corresponds to an output voltage of the charging circuit. The second detector detects the voltage level at a second time after the first time and generates a second indication value corresponding to the voltage level at the second time. The controller receives the first and second indication values, and generates a control signal according to the first and second indication values for turning the charging circuit on and off.
US08362749B2
A rechargeable battery exchanging method which exchanges rechargeable batteries of an assembled battery to rebuild new assembled battery. The method includes discharging a rechargeable battery derived from an assembled battery until the rechargeable battery becomes a fully discharged state and storing the rechargeable battery in a storage region for a predetermined period of time or longer from when the rechargeable battery becomes the fully discharged state to prepare a reusable rechargeable battery. The method further includes rebuilding a regenerated assembled battery by combining the stored reusable rechargeable battery with a stored reusable rechargeable battery derived from other assembled batteries or combining the stored reusable rechargeable battery with a fresh rechargeable battery.
US08362746B2
A battery control system controls an external charging unit in a vehicle including a vehicle body, engine, motors, secondary battery, and the external charging unit, and includes a degradation detecting unit that detects degradation of the secondary battery, during charging of the second battery by the external charging unit.
US08362738B2
A frequency converter and a method for determining the position of the rotor of an electric machine are provided. The frequency converter includes a load bridge and a control of the load bridge, for supplying electricity between the load bridge and an electric machine connected to the load bridge. The frequency converter includes a determination for at least one electrical parameter of the electric machine, and includes a determination for the position of the rotor of the electric machine. The load bridge is fitted to supply a first alternating electricity excitation signal, which is formed in relation to the electrical angle of the electric machine, to the electric machine. The frequency converter is further fitted to determine the first alternating electricity response signal corresponding to the first alternating electricity excitation signal, and the position of the rotor is determined on the basis of the first alternating electricity response signal.
US08362731B2
In one embodiment, an apparatus includes a first member that supports a magnetic flux carrying member and a second member that supports a magnetic flux generating member disposed for movement relative to the first member. An air gap control system is coupled to at least one of the first member or the second member and includes an air gap control device that is separate from a primary magnetic flux circuit formed between the first member and the second member. The air gap control device is configured to exert a force on one of the first and second members in response to movement of the other of the first and second members in a direction that reduces a distance between the first and second members to maintain a minimum distance between the first and second members and/or substantially center the one of the first and second members within the other.
US08362724B2
A blower motor assembly having a variable speed motor that is suitable for direct, drop-in replacement in a residential HVAC (heating, ventilation, and air conditioning) system that employs a PSC motor. The blower motor assembly includes at least a neutral input and two hot AC line connections, one for connection to the heating power source and the other to the cooling power source. A sensing circuit senses which of the inputs is energized by sensing either voltage or current on the inputs. The sensing circuit delivers a corresponding signal to a motor controller to control the speed of the variable speed motor. The blower motor assembly may also be equipped with additional hot AC inputs, more than one neutral line, and several sensing circuits for sensing current or voltage in the hot inputs and/or the neutral lines for controlling various aspects of the variable speed motor.
US08362723B2
The motor drive circuit 100 supplies a drive current to the motor 2 to drive the motor. Each of the first Hall amplifier HAMP1 to the third Hall amplifier HAMP3 is provided for each phase of the motor 2 and receives a pair of Hall signals from a corresponding phase Hall element to generate each phase sine wave voltage SIN_U, SIN_V and SIN_W by amplifying a difference between the pair of Hall signals. Each of the first PWM comparator PCMP1 to the third PWM comparator PCMP3 is provided for each phase of the motor 2 and compares the corresponding phase sine wave voltage SIN_U, SIN_V and SIN_W, with the periodic voltage Vosc to generate each phase PWM signal PWM_U, PWM_V and PWM_W. The drive unit 10 subjects a phase coil, a target to be driven, to pulse drive by using the pulse modulated signal from the corresponding PWM comparator.
US08362720B2
A position detection system includes a linear motor having a rod in which magnetic poles of N pole and S pole are arranged alternately in an axial direction and a plurality of coils surrounding the rod a magnetic sensor for detecting change in the direction of the magnetic field of the rod caused by linear movement of the rod relative to the coils to output a sine wave signal and a cosine wave signal which are 90° phase shifted with respect to one another, and a position detecting circuit for detecting a position of the rod relative to the coils. As the magnetic sensor detects the change in the direction of the magnetic field of the rod, the sine wave signal and the cosine wave signal output from the magnetic sensor hardly vary even when the distance between the rod and the magnetic sensor is changed.
US08362711B2
An alternating-current (AC) light-emitting diode (LED) apparatus is disclosed. A rectifier rectifies a power AC voltage to generate a rectified voltage, which is monitored by a controller. A number of LEDs are electrically coupled between the rectified voltage and a ground. A number of switches correspondingly control at least a portion of the LEDs respectively, wherein one terminal of each switch is electrically coupled to one electrode of the corresponding LED or LEDs. The switches are controlled by the controller according to the rectified voltage.
US08362706B1
Disclosed herein is an apparatus and method to control a current through one or more Light Emitting Diode (LED) circuits, wherein a control command compensation unit generates a compensation function to offset errors in the LED circuit by modifying a temporal density modulation function.
US08362698B2
An organic EL panel includes a light-emitting part including one or a plurality of organic EL elements on a substrate and having a sealing structure sealing the light-emitting part. The organic EL element includes a light-emitting layer, an organic layer formed on a first electrode formed directly, or via another layer, on the substrate, and a second electrode formed on the organic layer. The organic EL panel includes a coating film formed on the substrate, directly at least on the second electrode, so as to coat the light-emitting part. The coating film is made of an amorphous organic material and has a thickness absorbing a surface irregularity of the contact object contacted by the surface of the coating film.
US08362696B2
A LED display screen includes a case, a main board, and a plurality of LED display modules. The case has a front surface, a rear surface, and an opening provided between the front surface and the rear surface. The front surface has a window. The main board is inserted into the case via the opening, and has a front surface for displaying via the window. Each of the LED display module includes a LED display unit, a PCB driving board, and a supporting base. The LED display unit is connected electrically with the PCB driving board. The LED display unit mounts on the supporting base. The PCB driving board mounts on the supporting base. The PCB driving board is held between the LED display unit and the supporting base. The LED display modules mounts in formation on the front surface of the main board to form a united display screen.
US08362695B2
In a lighting package, a printed circuit board supports at least one light emitting die. A light transmissive cover is disposed over the at least one light emitting die. A phosphor is disposed on or inside of the light transmissive dome-shaped cover. The phosphor outputs converted light responsive to irradiation by the at least one light emitting die. An encapsulant substantially fills an interior volume defined by the light-transmissive cover and the printed circuit board.
US08362687B2
An organic electro-luminance display device includes a first substrate including a plurality of sub-pixels, a first electrode on the first substrate, a buffer layer on the first electrode of a region that partitions each of the sub-pixels, a spacer on the buffer layer, the buffer layer and the spacer being integrally formed, an organic light-emitting layer on the first electrode that corresponds to each of the sub-pixels and the spacer, and a second electrode on the organic light-emitting layer.
US08362684B2
A light-emitting device comprising a population of quantum dots (QDs) embedded in a host matrix and a primary light source which causes the QDs to emit secondary light and a method of making such a device. The size distribution of the QDs is chosen to allow light of a particular color to be emitted therefrom. The light emitted from the device may be of either a pure (monochromatic) color, or a mixed (polychromatic) color, and may consist solely of light emitted from the QDs themselves, or of a mixture of light emitted from the QDs and light emitted from the primary source. The QDs desirably are composed of an undoped semiconductor such as CdSe, and may optionally be overcoated to increase photoluminescence.
US08362682B2
The present invention relates to a white light emitting diode (LED) package that includes a blue LED chip to emit blue light; a yellow phosphor excited by the blue light and emit yellow light, the yellow light to produce a primary white light in combination with the blue light; a red LED chip to emit red light, the red light to adjust the primary white light into secondary white light of an incandescent color; and a package member comprising at least a partial transmissive part covering the blue LED chip, the red LED chip, and the yellow phosphor. The primary white light falls in a region of (0.413, 0.502), (0.335, 0.376), (0.37, 0.371), and (0.439, 0.48) based on a CIE color coordinate standard.
US08362680B2
In a plasma display panel, in which an area percentage of the display electrodes in an area of an image display region of the front panel is expressed by a longitudinal axis, and a difference between a coefficient of expansion of the front substrate from room temperature to 300° C. and a coefficient of expansion of the dielectric layer from room temperature to 300° C. is expressed by a lateral axis, the difference between the coefficients of expansion and the area percentage stay within a region formed by connecting coordinates (35×10−7/° C., 60%), coordinates (8×10−7/° C., 60%), coordinates (5×10−7/° C., 40%), and coordinates (23×10−7/° C., 40%) in the mentioned order with a straight line where the straight line is included.
US08362677B1
A high efficiency thermal management system for solid state lighting devices includes an LED heat sink housing formed by a flat bottom wall and a sidewall mounted about its periphery that extends radially outwardly so that the heat sink housing has a frusto-conical shape. Heat-dissipating pin-shaped fins of differing lengths depend from the exterior of the angled wall and from the bottom of the flat bottom wall. The radially inward side of the angled wall has a highly light-reflective surface for collimating light. The base of the device provides a housing for driver electronics. The heat sink housing, the pin-shaped fins, and the base are collectively contoured so that the system has the overall size and shape of a type A light bulb.
US08362673B2
A micro-image acquisition and transmission system is provided. In a preferred embodiment, the system is comprised of an image acquisition chip comprising an electronic imager, control electronics and a micro powered rotary stage comprising a transceiver array that acts as a hub to optically link a group of distributed image acquisition chips. A preferred embodiment is further comprised of a transceiver array chip comprising one or more micro-powered rotary stages having a transceiver array assembly disposed thereon. The micro-powered rotary stage is supported by a micro-brush bearing.
US08362666B2
A stator for an electric machine includes a stator winding located at a stator core. The stator winding has one or more phases, each phase including a single unitary conductor having at least two conductor segments arranged in an electrically parallel relationship. A connection portion is formed in the single unitary conductor between a first conductor segment and a second conductor segment of the at least two conductor segments to connect the conductor to an electrical component.
US08362664B2
The disclosure relates to a rotating electrical machine (1), in particular an alternator or an alternator-starter for a motor vehicle. At least one bearing mount (48) is provided with at least one opening (49) opening onto the exterior of the bearing mount. A stator (16) comprising an electric coil (18) is provided. This coil includes a plurality of electric conductors, at least one of which includes an end forming an electrical neutral point of the coil. The machine further includes an electrical insulation member (70) configured to prevent any contact between the bearing mount (48) and said neutral point-forming conductor end. The insulation member extends at least partially through the opening of the bearing mount and is at least partially outside the bearing mount. The electrical insulation member being furthermore configured to rest at least partially on an outer surface (71) of the bearing mount.
US08362662B2
An electric machine comprises an outer casing (2), a rotor and a stator (3) having at least one polar expansion (5) and at least one winding (8) having an annular shape and placed around the polar expansion (5). The casing (2) has a plurality of protrusions (13) each of which holds, by supporting, a corresponding portion (12) of a stator winding (8) to enable heat exchange between the winding (8) and the protrusion (13). Each portion (12) of the winding (8) is electrically insulated from the respective protrusion (13).
US08362656B2
A power adapter includes a power converter circuit, a direct current (DC) plug and a magnetic switch. The power converter circuit converts power signals of a power source into DC power signals. The DC plug is engageable with a jack of a powered device, and transmits the DC power signals to the powered device. The DC plug includes a magnetic force conducting wire to conduct magnetic force of a magnetic element when the powered device is powered. The magnetic switch, connected between the power source and the power converter circuit, is turned on or off according to if the magnetic force conducting wire conducts the magnetic force or not so as to control the power source to provide power to the power converter circuit.
US08362655B2
An apparatus for reducing the energy consumption of a machine has a deactivation device and a monitoring device. The deactivation device is embodied for providing a deactivation signal in response to a pre-defined deactivation event. The monitoring device is embodied for switching the machine to an energy-saving mode in response to the deactivation signal in accordance with a pre-defined deactivation rule.
US08362654B2
Disclosed herein is an apparatus. The apparatus includes a first connector and a switching system. The first connector is configured to receive a second connector having a first contact area and a second different contact area. The switching system is connected to the first connector. The switching system is configured to alternatively connect a ground of the apparatus to the first or the second contact area.
US08362631B2
A marine energy hybrid includes a support structure locatable at or near the surface of a body of water and at least two of (a) a hubless upper carriage movable along an upper track of the support structure with at least one wind vane mounted at the upper carriage to induce motion of the upper carriage relative to the support structure by reaction with the wind stream, (b) a hubless lower carriage movable along a lower track of the support structure with at least one water vane mounted at the lower carriage to induce motion of the lower carriage relative to the support structure by reaction with the water current, and (c) at least one wave energy conversion device integral with the support structure and operable to generate electrical or mechanical power in response to wave motion of the body of water.
