US09343730B2
The present disclosure provides a lithium-ion battery and a deformable safety valve as an overcharge protection device thereof. The deformable safety valve as the overcharge protection device of the lithium-ion battery comprises a short-circuit conductive plate and a deformable plate made from aluminum, a facing surface of the deformable plate being coated with a metal layer to reduce contact resistance between the deformable plate and the short-circuit conductive plate. The lithium-ion battery comprises a first electrode post; a cap plate electrically connected to the first electrode post; an electrolyte-injection hole provided in the cap plate; a vent provided in the cap plate; a deformable safety valve provided to the cap plate; and a second electrode post assembled to the cap plate in an insulating manner; wherein the deformable safety valve is the above deformable safety valve as the overcharge protection device of the lithium-ion battery.
US09343727B2
An electricity storage device includes an electrode assembly such that positive and negative electrodes are alternately stacked in which the positive and negative electrodes are insulated from one another. Tab groups each including positive or negative electrode tabs bundled in the stacking direction of the electrode assembly are provided on an edge portion of the electrode assembly. The tab groups each include a first bent portion and an extending portion, which extends from the first bent portion in the stacking direction of the electrode assembly. The tab groups also each include a second bent portion at which the tab group is curved or bent such that the distal end in the extending direction of the tab that is located at an outermost position of the first bent portion is positioned between the electrode assembly and the tab that is located at an innermost position of the first bent portion.
US09343723B2
A battery pack having a battery cell and a case accommodating the battery cell and including a terminal portion that is electrically connected to the battery cell. The terminal portion includes a first groove portion for attaching a temperature sensor for obtaining temperature information of the battery cell.
US09343722B2
A battery pack is provided that may include a first battery cell, a second battery cell and a first spring. The first spring to couple to the first battery cell and to the second battery cell.
US09343715B2
A battery for use in an electronic device having a user-accessible battery compartment, including a connection module accommodatable in the battery compartment, and an extension module attached to and in electrical connection with the connection module. The extension module is larger than the battery compartment, such that, when the battery in installed, the connection module is disposed in the battery compartment, and the extension module covers the battery compartment and a portion of the electronic device other than the battery compartment.
US09343705B2
According to one embodiment, a light emitting element includes a first electrode, a second electrode, a light emitting layer, and a conductive section. The second electrode is provided opposite to the first electrode. The light emitting layer is provided between the first electrode and the second electrode. The second electrode includes a plurality of layers, and the plurality of layers include a first layer. The conductive section pierces the first layer in thickness direction. The conductive section includes a conductive material. Each of the plurality of layers includes at least one of Al, Al alloy, Ag, Ag alloy, alkali metals, and alkaline-earth metals and being different from one another.
US09343704B2
An organic light-emitting device includes a substrate, on which a transparent electrode and a further electrode are applied. An organic light-emitting layer is arranged between the electrodes. At least one optical scattering layer is arranged on a side of the transparent electrode facing away from the organic light-emitting layer.
US09343702B2
The present invention relates to an adhesive film, to an encapsulated product of an organic electronic device using same and to a method for encapsulating an organic electronic device using same. More particularly, an adhesive film for encapsulating an organic electronic device comprises: a protective film layer, a first adhesive layer, a second adhesive layer and a release film layer sequentially arranged. The peel strength (A) between the first adhesive layer and the protective film layer is lower than the peel strength (B) between the second adhesive layer and the release film layer, and the peel strength (B) between the second adhesive layer and the release film layer is lower than the peel strength (C) between the first adhesive layer and an encapsulation substrate, thus improving faults during a peeling process.
US09343688B2
Disclosed is a semiconductor polymer having the following structure:
US09343678B2
Apparatus and techniques for use in manufacturing a light emitting device, such as an organic light emitting diode (OLED) device can include using one or more modules having a controlled environment. The controlled environment can be maintained at a pressure at about atmospheric pressure or above atmospheric pressure. The modules can be arranged to provide various processing regions and to facilitate printing or otherwise depositing one or more patterned organic layers of an OLED device, such as an organic encapsulation layer (OEL) of an OLED device. In an example, uniform support for a substrate can be provided at least in part using a gas cushion, such as during one or more of a printing, holding, or curing operation comprising an OEL fabrication process. In another example, uniform support for the substrate can be provided using a distributed vacuum region, such as provided by a porous medium.
US09343671B2
Memory cells having heaters with angled sidewalls and methods of forming the same are described herein. As an example, a method of forming an array of resistive memory cells can include forming a first resistive memory cell having a first heater element angled with respect to a vertical plane, forming a second resistive memory cell adjacent to the first resistive memory cell and having a second heater element angled with respect to the vertical plane and toward the first heater, and forming a third resistive memory cell adjacent to the first resistive memory cell and having a third heater element angled with respect to the vertical plane and away from the first heater element.
US09343670B2
Memory arrays and methods of forming the same are provided. One example method of forming a memory array can include forming a first conductive material having a looped feature using a self-aligning multiple patterning technique, and forming a first sealing material over the looped feature. A first chop mask material is formed over the first sealing material. The looped feature and the first sealing material are removed outside the first chop mask material.
US09343664B2
A method and apparatus for forming a magnetic layer having a pattern of magnetic properties on a substrate is described. The method includes using a metal nitride hardmask layer to pattern the magnetic layer by plasma exposure. The metal nitride layer is patterned using a nanoimprint patterning process with a silicon oxide pattern negative material. The pattern is developed in the metal nitride using a halogen and oxygen containing remote plasma, and is removed after plasma exposure using a caustic wet strip process. All processing is done at low temperatures to avoid thermal damage to magnetic materials.
US09343661B2
In forming a top electrode for a magnetoresistive device, photoresist used in patterning the electrode is stripped using a non-reactive stripping process. Such a non-reactive stripping process uses water vapor or some other non-oxidizing gas that also passivates exposed portions the magnetoresistive device. In such magnetoresistive devices, a non-reactive spacer layer is included that helps prevent diffusion between layers in the magnetoresistive device, where the non-reactive nature of the spacer layer prevents sidewall roughness that can interfere with accurate formation of the lower portions of the magnetoresistive device.
US09343655B2
To manufacture a switching apparatus that includes a piezoelectric actuator with increased lifespan, provided is a method for manufacturing a bimorph actuator, comprising first piezoelectric element layer formation of forming a first piezoelectric element layer on a substrate; support layer formation of forming a support layer made of an insulator on the first piezoelectric element layer; second piezoelectric element layer formation of forming a second piezoelectric element layer on the support layer; and removal of removing a portion of the substrate to form an actuator that includes the first piezoelectric element layer, the support layer, and the second piezoelectric element layer.
US09343642B2
An optoelectronic semiconductor chip includes a carrier including a carrier element having a mounting side; one electrically conductive n-type wiring layer arranged at the mounting side; a structured, electrically conductive contact layer having a p-side and n-side contact region and arranged at a side of the n-type wiring layer facing away from the carrier element; at least one insulation region electrically insulating the p-side contact region from the n-side contact region; at least one electrically insulating spacer layer arranged at a side of the n-type wiring layer facing away from the carrier element in a vertical direction between the p-side contact region and the n-type wiring layer, wherein the n-side contact region and the n-type wiring layer electrically conductively connect to one another, and the p-side contact region and the spacer layer border the n-side contact region in a lateral direction; an optoelectronic structure connected to the carrier.
US09343641B2
A eutectic metal layer (e.g., gold/tin) bonds a carrier wafer structure to a device wafer structure. In one example, the device wafer structure includes a silicon substrate upon which an epitaxial LED structure is disposed. A layer of silver is disposed on the epitaxial LED structure. The carrier wafer structure includes a conductive silicon substrate covered with an adhesion layer. A layer of non-reactive barrier metal (e.g., titanium) is provided between the silver layer and the eutectic metal to prevent metal from the eutectic layer (e.g., tin) from diffusing into the silver during wafer bonding. During wafer bonding, the wafer structures are pressed together and maintained at more than 280° C. for more than one minute. Use of the non-reactive barrier metal layer allows the total amount of expensive platinum used in the manufacture of a vertical blue LED manufactured on silicon to be reduced, thereby reducing LED manufacturing cost.
US09343636B2
A wavelength conversion element including at least two ceramic conversion segments each including a ceramic wavelength conversion substance and connected together in a matrix by a non-transparent connecting material, wherein each conversion segment emits light by absorbing primary radiation and re-emitting secondary radiation different from the primary radiation, and the light comprises the secondary radiation and a proportion of the primary radiation is less than or equal to 5%.
US09343630B2
A semiconductor light emitting element includes a semiconductor laminated body comprising a first conductivity type layer, a light emitting layer and a second conductivity type layer in this order from a lower side, a first electrode formed on the first conductivity type layer, and a second electrode comprising a transparent electrode formed on the second conductivity type layer and an auxiliary electrode formed on the transparent electrode, the transparent electrode comprising an oxide and having sheet resistance smaller than that of the second conductivity type layer and the auxiliary electrode comprising metal and having sheet resistance smaller than that of the transparent electrode, wherein the auxiliary electrode has, in a planar view, a linear surrounding portion surrounding the first electrode and a pad portion formed outside the surrounding portion for connecting a wire and the surrounding portion has a plurality of shortest-distance portions, in which a plan view distance from the first electrode is minimum, in a circumferential direction.
US09343626B2
Semiconductor structures include an active region between a plurality of layers of InGaN. The active region may be at least substantially comprised by InGaN. The plurality of layers of InGaN include at least one well layer comprising InwGa1-wN, and at least one barrier layer comprising InbGa1-bN proximate the at least one well layer. In some embodiments, the value of w in the InwGa1-wN of the well layer may be greater than or equal to about 0.10 and less than or equal to about 0.40 in some embodiments, and the value of b in the InbGa1-bN of the at least one barrier layer may be greater than or equal to about 0.01 and less than or equal to about 0.10. Methods of forming semiconductor structures include growing such layers of InGaN to form an active region of a light emitting device, such as an LED. Luminary devices include such LEDs.
US09343621B2
A liquid crystal display panel includes a substrate, a thin film transistor array, a circuit, and a dummy circuit. One surface of the substrate is divided into a display region and a wiring region. The thin film transistor array is formed on the display region. The circuit and the dummy circuit are formed on the wiring region, the dummy circuit is adjacent to the circuit, and the circuit and the dummy circuit protrude from the substrate.
US09343619B2
The present invention provides a Group III nitride semiconductor light-emitting device exhibiting high light efficiency achieved by relaxing a piezoelectric field generated in a light-emitting layer without deteriorating the crystal quality of the light-emitting layer, and a method for producing the same. The light-emitting device has a light-emitting layer in which layer units are repeatedly deposited. Each layer unit comprises an AlGaN layer, an n-type InGaN layer, an InGaN layer, a GaN layer, and an AlGaN layer which are deposited in this order on the n-side superlattice layer. The n-type InGaN layer is doped with Si at a Si concentration of 1×1017/cm3 to 3×1018/cm3.
US09343613B2
A method for fabricating an LED/phosphor structure is described where an array of blue light emitting diode (LED) dies are mounted on a submount wafer. A phosphor powder is mixed with an organic polymer binder, such as an acrylate or nitrocellulose. The liquid or paste mixture is then deposited over the LED dies or other substrate as a substantially uniform layer. The organic binder is then removed by being burned away in air, or being subject to an O2 plasma process, or dissolved, leaving a porous layer of phosphor grains sintered together. The porous phosphor layer is impregnated with a sol-gel (e.g., a sol-gel of TEOS or MTMS) or liquid glass (e.g., sodium silicate or potassium silicate), also known as water glass, which saturates the porous structure. The structure is then heated to cure the inorganic glass binder, leaving a robust glass binder that resists yellowing, among other desirable properties.
US09343604B2
A method for manufacturing two series-connected photovoltaic cells includes: forming an insulating substrate; forming a stack including; a first conductive layer formed on the substrate; a semiconductor layer comprising a first absorption layer and a second semiconductor layer forming a junction with the first absorption layer; and a second transparent conductive layer, formed on the absorption layer; forming an area dividing the stack into two cells series-connected by an electric path. The forming of said path comprises: forming a first trench all the way to the substrate; forming a second trench all the way to the first conductive layer; and depositing a conductive solution on the first trench and at last a portion of the second trench, so that the solution does not penetrate into the first trench all the way to the first conductive layer and penetrates into the second trench all the way to the first conductive layer.
US09343595B2
One embodiment of the present invention provides a solar cell. The solar cell includes a photovoltaic structure and a front-side metal grid situated above the photovoltaic structure. The front-side metal grid also includes one or more electroplated metal layers. The front-side metal grid includes one or more finger lines, and each end of a respective finger line is coupled to a corresponding end of an adjacent finger line via an additional metal line, thus ensuring that the respective finger line has no open end.
US09343577B2
A thin film transistor includes: a substrate, a semiconductor layer disposed on the substrate, a first gate electrode and a second gate electrode disposed on the semiconductor layer, a gate insulating layer disposed between the semiconductor layer and the first and second gate electrodes and having a first through hole between the first and second gate electrodes and a capping layer covering the first gate electrode and contacting the semiconductor layer via the first through hole. The capping layer includes a conductive material.
US09343574B2
Non-planar semiconductor devices having group III-V material active regions with multi-dielectric gate stacks are described. For example, a semiconductor device includes a hetero-structure disposed above a substrate. The hetero-structure includes a three-dimensional group III-V material body with a channel region. A source and drain material region is disposed above the three-dimensional group III-V material body. A trench is disposed in the source and drain material region separating a source region from a drain region, and exposing at least a portion of the channel region. A gate stack is disposed in the trench and on the exposed portion of the channel region. The gate stack includes first and second dielectric layers and a gate electrode.
US09343573B2
A method of fabrication a transistor device with a non-uniform stress layer including the following processes. First, a semiconductor substrate having a first transistor region is provided. A low temperature deposition process is carried out to form a first tensile stress layer on a transistor within the first transistor region, wherein a temperature of the low temperature deposition process is lower than 300 degree Celsius (° C.). Then, a high temperature annealing process is performed, wherein a temperature of the high temperature annealing process is at least 150° C. higher than a temperature of the low temperature deposition process. Finally, a second tensile stress layer is formed on the first tensile stress layer, wherein the first tensile stress layer has a tensile stress lower than a tensile stress of the second tensile stress layer.
US09343567B2
A semiconductor device is includes a substrate, a gate positioned on the substrate, and a drain region and a source region formed at two respective sides of the gate in the substrate. The drain region includes a first doped region having a first conductivity type, a second doped region having a second conductivity type, and a third doped region. The first conductivity type and the second conductivity type are complementary to each other. The semiconductor device further includes a first well region formed under the first doped region, a second well region formed under the second doped region, and a third well region formed under the third doped region. The first well region, the second well region, and the third well region all include the first conductivity type. A concentration of the second well region is different from a concentration of the third well region.
US09343558B1
A silicon controlled rectifier includes a substrate, a well, a deep doped region, a first doped region, a second doped region, a third doped region, and a fourth doped region. The well is disposed on the substrate and underneath a cell region. The deep doped region is disposed in the well. The first doped region has a first conductivity type, and is disposed in the well. The second doped region and third doped region have the first conductivity type and are disposed on the deep doped region. The fourth doped region has a second conductivity type, and is disposed between the second doped region and the third doped region. The fourth doped region is disposed on the deep doped region, and is electrically isolated from the well through the deep doped region, the second doped region, and the third doped region.
US09343555B2
Methods and apparatus are disclosed for ESD protection circuits. An ESD protection circuit may comprise a first region of an n type material, a second region of a p type material adjacent to the first region, a third region of an n type material within the second region and separated from the first region, and a fourth region of a p type material within the third region. There may be multiple parts within the first region and the second region, made of different n type or p type materials. An ESD protection circuit may further comprise a fifth region of a p type material, contained within the first region.
US09343549B2
A method for fabricating a semiconductor device includes forming a first mask on a substrate, forming a first side wall of a fin by performing a first etching of the substrate using the first mask, forming a second mask on the substrate, the second mask being different from the first mask, and forming a second side wall of the fin by performing a second etching of the substrate using the second mask.
US09343547B2
A trench extends from a main surface of a semiconductor substrate to a predetermined depth. A gate oxide layer is formed in the trench. A buried gate electrode is formed at a lower portion of the trench. The buried gate electrode is capped with a dielectric layer. A pad layer and hard mask layer are formed on the semiconductor substrate. A recess through the pad layer and hard mask layer and into the semiconductor substrate is formed on one side of the trench. A portion of the dielectric layer is revealed within the recess. The hard mask layer is then removed. An ion implantation process is performed to implant dopants on both sides of the trench, thereby forming a source doping region and a drain doping region. The source doping region has a junction depth that is deeper than that of the drain doping region.
US09343538B2
A high voltage device includes: a substrate having a first isolation structure to define a device region; a source and a drain in the device region; a gate on the substrate and between the source and the drain; and a second isolation structure. The second isolation structure includes a first isolation region and a second isolation region. The first isolation region is on the substrate and between the source and the drain, and is partially or totally covered by the gate. The second isolation region is in the substrate and below the gate, and has a depth in the substrate which is deeper than the depth of the first isolation region in the substrate, and the length of the second isolation region in a direction along an imaginary line connecting the source and the drain does not exceed one-third length of the first isolation region.
US09343525B2
A substrate includes aluminum nitride, wherein the aluminum nitride substrate has on at least a surface thereof an aluminum nitride single-crystal layer having as a principal plane a plane that is inclined 0.05° to 0.40° in the m-axis direction from the (0001) plane of a wurzite structure.
US09343521B2
Provided is an organic light-emitting display apparatus including a thin-film transistor (TFT) that includes an active layer, a gate electrode, and source/drain electrodes; an organic light-emitting device that includes a pixel electrode which is connected to the TFT, an intermediate layer which includes a light-emitting layer, and an opposite electrode; and an opposite electrode contact unit in which the opposite electrode is electrically connected to a power wiring, wherein, with regard to the power wiring, a surface that contacts the opposite electrode is formed to have an embossed structure.
US09343520B2
An organic light-emitting diode display can include an improved aperture ratio by configuring a circuit pattern between neighboring subpixels in a symmetrical fashion such that the subpixels share signal lines. Each pixel of the organic light-emitting diode display is formed in a symmetrical fashion with respect to one contact area, the number of reference connecting patterns can be reduced and therefore the area occupied by an opening area for each pixel can be made wider, thus leading to an improved aperture ratio.
US09343515B2
A display device that includes a reflective electrode; a transparent electrode; a partition; an EL layer formed over the partition and the transparent electrode; a semi-transmissive electrode formed over the EL layer; and a coloring layer over the semi-transmissive electrode. A light-emitting region is formed to overlap with the transparent electrode, the EL layer, the semi-transmissive electrode, and the coloring layer. A non-light-emitting region is formed to overlap with the transparent electrode, the partition, the EL layer, and the coloring layer. The non-light-emitting region is formed to surround the light-emitting region. The sum of the optical length of the transparent electrode and the optical length of the EL layer is adjusted to fulfill a condition of a microcavity intensifying light of the color of the coloring layer. The optical length of the partition in the non-light-emitting region is adjusted to weaken external light incident through the coloring layer.
US09343511B1
A pixel arrangement structure for an organic light-emitting diode includes a plurality of red subpixel groups, a plurality of green subpixel groups, and a plurality of blue subpixel groups. Each red subpixel group is comprised of a plurality of red subpixels. Each green subpixel group is comprised of a plurality of green subpixels. Each blue subpixel group is comprised of a plurality of blue subpixels. The red subpixel groups, the green subpixel groups, and the blue subpixel groups are spaced from each other. One of the red subpixels of the red subpixel groups, one of the green subpixels of the green subpixel groups, and one of the blue subpixels of the blue subpixel groups, which are adjacent to each other, together form a pixel. The subpixels of the same color are gathered to form a subpixel group to increase the aperture ratio of metal masks.
US09343510B2
An OLED device according to one example includes a substrate defined into a plurality of sub-pixel regions which includes red, green and blue sub-pixel regions; a first electrode formed on the substrate; an organic emission layer formed on the first electrode; a second electrode formed on the organic emission layer; and a capping layer formed on the second electrode. The capping layer is formed to contain an optical adjustment material which rises in proportion to a wavelength of incident light.
US09343507B2
A device is disclosed including one or more field effect transistors, each field effect transistor including: an elongated drain contact line including an electrically conductive material extending along a first horizontal direction; a drain including a first conductivity type semiconductor region overlaying the drain contact line; a source including a the first conductivity type semiconductor region located above the drain; and a gate extending vertically between the drain and the source. Each field effect transistor may include a first channel and a second channel, each including a second conductivity type
US09343500B2
A solid-state imaging device including a pixel region in which a plurality of pixels are arranged. The pixels each includes a photoelectric conversion section, a transfer transistor, a plurality of floating diffusion sections that receive a charge from the photoelectric conversion section through the transfer transistor, a reset transistor that resets the floating diffusion sections, a separating transistor that performs on-off control of a connection between the plurality of floating diffusion sections, and an amplifying transistor that outputs a signal corresponding to a potential of the floating diffusion sections.
US09343498B2
A semiconductor device manufacturing method includes a wafer stack manufacturing process and a dicing process. The wafer stack manufacturing process includes: a first wafer manufacturing process of manufacturing a resin film covering circuits and heated to a temperature higher than a glass transition point of the resin film, manufacturing first holes extending from a surface of the resin film to wirings of the circuits, and providing electrodes electrically connected to the wirings in the first holes to form a first wafer; a second wafer manufacturing process of manufacturing a resin film covering circuits and heated to a temperature lower than a glass transition point of the resin film, manufacturing second holes extending from a surface of the resin film to wirings of the circuits, and providing the electrodes electrically connected to the wirings in the second holes to form a second wafer; and a wafer bonding process.
US09343494B2
A light guided pixel having a guide layer and a light detector layer. The guide layer has a light guide. The light detector layer has a light detecting element that receives light channeled by the light guide. The light guide may include a filter for channeling emissions to the light detecting element.
US09343493B1
An image sensor is provided. The image sensor includes a semiconductor substrate having a sensing region and a non-sensing region; a passivation layer formed on the semiconductor substrate; a first planar layer formed on the passivation layer; a color filter layer formed on the first planar layer with respect to the sensing region and a shielding layer formed on the first planar layer with respect to the non-sensing region; a plurality of micro-lens layers formed on the color filter layer and on the shielding layer; and a plurality of cap oxide layers formed on the micro-lens layer.
US09343489B2
An endoscopic device having embodiments of a hybrid imaging sensor that optimizes a pixel array area on a substrate using a stacking scheme for placement of related circuitry with minimal vertical interconnects between stacked substrates and associated features are disclosed. Embodiments of maximized pixel array size/die size (area optimization) are disclosed, and an optimized imaging sensor providing improved image quality, improved functionality, and improved form factors for specific applications common to the industry of digital imaging are also disclosed. Embodiments of the above may include systems, methods and processes for staggering ADC or column circuit bumps in a column or sub-column hybrid image sensor using vertical interconnects are also disclosed.
US09343480B2
It is an object to give excellent data retention characteristics to a semiconductor device in which stored data is judged in accordance with the potential of a gate of a specified transistor, by achieving both reduction in variation of the threshold voltage of the transistor and data retention for a long time. Charge is held (data is stored) in a node electrically connected only to a source or a drain of a transistor whose channel region is formed using an oxide semiconductor. There may be a plurality of transistors whose sources or drains are electrically connected to the node. The oxide semiconductor has a wider band gap and a lower intrinsic carrier density than silicon. By using such an oxide semiconductor for the channel region of the transistor, the transistor with an extremely low off-state current (leakage current) can be realized.
US09343477B2
Provided is a semiconductor device including a substrate and a stack layer. The substrate includes a first region, a second region, and a third region. The third region is disposed between the first region and the second region. Since a top surface of the substrate in the first region is lower than the top surface of the substrate in the second region, the substrate in the third region has a first step height. The stack layer is disposed on the substrate in the first and third regions. The top surface of the stack layer in the first region and the third region and the top surface of the substrate in the second region are substantially coplanar.
US09343475B2
In a method of a vertical memory device, insulation layers and sacrificial layers are alternately and repeatedly formed on a substrate. A hole is formed through the insulation layers and the sacrificial layers that expose a top surface of the substrate. Then, an interior portion of the hole may be enlarged. A semiconductor pattern is formed to partially fill the enlarged portion of the hole. A blocking layer, a charge storage layer and a tunnel insulation layer may be formed on a sidewall of the hole and the semiconductor pattern. Then, the tunnel insulation layer, the charge storage layer and the blocking layer are partially removed to expose a top surface of the semiconductor pattern. A channel is formed on the exposed top surface of the semiconductor pattern and the tunnel insulation layer. The sacrificial layers are replaced with gate electrodes.
US09343473B2
Described herein is a structure and method of manufacturing for a memory device with a thin silicon body. The memory device may be a semiconductor comprising: a first dielectric of a first width; a second dielectric of a second width, the second width less than the first width; and a thin film polycrystalline silicon (poly-Si) on sidewalls of the second dielectric.
US09343471B2
An embedded flash memory cell and a corresponding method for fabricating the embedded flash memory cell are disclosed. In some embodiments, the flash memory cell comprises a floating gate that has been formed using a metal gate and local interconnect metal. For some embodiments, the embedded flash memory can be fabricated with little-to-no additional processes than what one would normally employ in fabricating a metal-oxide semiconductor field-effect transistor (MOSFET).
US09343469B2
An integrated circuit may include a pillar of semiconductor material, a field effect transistor having a channel that is formed in the pillar of semiconductor material, and two or more memory cells, stacked vertically on top of the field effect transistor, and having channels that are formed in the pillar semiconductor of material.
US09343463B2
The structure and method of formation of an integrated CMOS level and active device level that can be a memory device level. The integration includes the formation of a “super-flat” interface between the two levels formed by the patterning of a full complement of active and dummy interconnecting vias using two separate patterning and etch processes. The active vias connect memory devices in the upper device level to connecting pads in the lower CMOS level. The dummy vias may extend up to an etch stop layer formed over the CMOS layer or may be stopped at an intermediate etch stop layer formed within the device level. The dummy vias thereby contact memory devices but do not connect them to active elements in the CMOS level.
US09343452B2
A semiconductor device includes a substrate having a cell region and a connection region. A plurality of gate electrodes is stacked in a vertical direction in the cell region of the substrate. Conductive pads that are electrically connected to a peripheral circuit extend horizontally from the gate electrodes to the connection region. The conductive pads form a cascade structure in the connection region. Contact plugs that have different vertical lengths are electrically connected to respective ones of the conductive pads. The conductive pads have contact portions that are thicker in the vertical direction than the gate electrodes.
US09343448B2
A display panel and a method of forming a display panel are described. The display panel may include a thin film transistor substrate including a pixel area and a non-pixel area. The pixel area includes an array of bank openings and an array of bottom electrodes within the array of bank openings. An array of micro LED devices are bonded to the corresponding array of bottom electrodes within the array of bank openings. An array of top electrode layers are formed electrically connecting the array of micro LED devices to a ground line in the non-pixel area.
US09343446B2
The invention describes a diode lighting arrangement (1A,1B,1C) comprising a light-emitting diode arrangement (1,2) comprising at least two exposed serially connected light-emitting diodes (1) connected in parallel with an electrostatic discharge protection diode arrangement (2); and an electrostatic discharge diverting arrangement (4,50) extending in physical proximity to an interconnect (10) between adjacent light-emitting diodes (1), which diverting arrangement (4,50) is realized to divert electrostatic discharge (S2) from the interconnect (10) to a region of low potential (21,22, GND). The invention further describes an automotive lighting assembly (3A,3B) comprising such a diode lighting arrangement (1A,1B,1C). The invention also describes a method of manufacturing a diode lighting arrangement (1A,1B,1C) which method comprises the steps of serially connecting a light-emitting diode arrangement (1,2) comprising at least two exposed serially connected light-emitting diodes (1) in parallel with an electrostatic discharge protection diode arrangement (2); and arranging an electrostatic discharge diverting arrangement (4,50,60) to extend in physical proximity to at least one interconnect (10) between adjacent light-emitting diodes (1), which diverting arrangement (4,50) is realized to divert electrostatic discharge (S2) from the interconnect (10) to a region of low potential (21,22, GND).
US09343444B2
In accordance with certain embodiments, electronic devices feature a polymeric binder, a frame defining an aperture therethrough, and a semiconductor die (e.g., a light-emitting or a light-detecting element) suspended in the binder and within the aperture of the frame.
US09343439B2
A stack package includes a substrate having connection terminals and a first chip on the substrate. The first chip has first connectors on edges thereof. A second chip is stacked on the first chip to expose outer portions of the first connectors. The second chip has second connectors on edges thereof. Connection members to connect the exposed outer portions of the first connectors to the connection terminals. Sidewall interconnectors to connect the exposed outer portions of the first connectors to the second connectors. The sidewall interconnectors extend from the exposed outer portions of the first connectors along sidewalls of the second chip to cover the second connectors.
US09343434B2
A package includes a device die, a first plurality of redistribution lines underlying the device die, a second plurality of redistribution lines overlying the device die, and a metal pad in a same metal layer as the second plurality of redistribution lines. A laser mark is in a dielectric layer that is overlying the metal pad. The laser mark overlaps the metal pad.
US09343432B2
A stack of semiconductor chips, a semiconductor device, and a method of manufacturing are disclosed. The stack of semiconductor chips may comprise a first chip of the stack, a second chip of the stack over the first chip, conductive bumps, a homogeneous integral underfill material, and a molding material. The conductive bumps may extend between an upper surface of the first chip and a lower surface of the second chip. The homogeneous integral underfill material may be interposed between the first chip and the second chip, encapsulate the conductive bumps, and extend along sidewalls of the second chip. The homogeneous integral underfill material may have an upper surface extending in a direction parallel to an upper surface of the second chip and located adjacent the upper surface of the second chip. The molding material may be on outer side surfaces of the homogeneous integral underfill material above the upper surface of the first chip, wherein, in view of a first cross sectional profile, the molding material is separated from sidewalls of the second chip by the homogeneous integral underfill material such that the molding material does not contact sidewalls of the second chip.
US09343429B2
A semiconductor device is made by creating a gap between semiconductor die on a wafer. An insulating material is deposited in the gap. A first portion of the insulating material is removed from a first side of the semiconductor wafer to form a first notch. The first notch is less than a thickness of the semiconductor die. A conductive material is deposited into the first notch to form a first portion of the conductive via within the gap. A second portion of the insulating material is removed from a second side of the semiconductor wafer to form a second notch. The second notch extends through the insulating material to the first notch. A conductive material is deposited into the second notch to form a second portion of the conductive via within the gap. The semiconductor wafer is singulated through the gap to separate the semiconductor die.
US09343428B2
A semiconductor device includes a semiconductor construct including a semiconductor substrate and an external connection electrode provided to protrude on a surface of the semiconductor substrate, a base plate on which the semiconductor construct is installed, and a sealing layer stacked on the semiconductor substrate except for the external connection electrode and on the base plate including a side surface of the semiconductor substrate.
US09343422B2
A semiconductor structure is disclosed, wherein for a certain percentage of a plurality of bonding pads, the bonding pad metal may include a plurality of grains, wherein the plurality of grains may include a bonding grain. The bonding grain may have a width substantially the same as the width of the wire bonded to the bonding pad such that no grain boundaries are present below the wire bond.
US09343419B2
A package structure includes a first substrate bonded to a second substrate by connecting metal pillars on the first substrate to connectors on the second substrate. A first metal pillar is formed overlying and electrically connected to a metal pad on a first region of the first substrate, and a second metal pillar is formed overlying a passivation layer in a second region of the first substrate. A first solder joint region is formed between metal pillar and the first connector, and a second solder joint region is formed between the second metal pillar and the second connector. The lateral dimension of the first metal pillar is greater than the lateral dimension of the second metal pillar.
US09343415B2
In a method for forming a packaging structure, a metal pad is formed on a semiconductor substrate, and a first polymer insulating layer is formed over the semiconductor substrate. An opening passing through the first polymer insulating layer is formed to expose a portion of the metal pad. A copper-containing material is deposited in the opening and over the first polymer insulating layer, thereby forming a copper-containing layer having a first thickness and a first width over the first polymer insulating layer. A conductive bump having a second width is formed over the copper-containing layer, in which the second width is smaller than the first width. An exposed portion of the copper-containing layer is etched using the conductive bump as a mask until the exposed portion is reduced to a second thickness, thereby forming a monolithic copper-containing structure.
US09343409B2
A semiconductor device includes a substrate, a plurality of first conductive patterns disposed on the substrate and a plurality of second conductive patterns disposed on the first conductive patterns. Respective air gaps are disposed between adjacent ones of the first conductive patterns overlying a first region of the substrate, while adjacent ones of the first conductive patterns overlying a second region of the substrate do not have air gaps disposed therebetween. The air gaps may include first air gaps, and the device may further include second air gaps disposed between adjacent ones of the second conductive patterns in the second region. Adjacent ones of the second conductive patterns overlying a second region of the substrate may not have air gaps disposed therebetween.
US09343406B2
A method of forming a doped TaN Cu barrier adjacent to a Ru layer of a Cu interconnect structure and the resulting device are provided. Embodiments include forming a cavity in a SiO-based ILD; conformally forming a doped TaN layer in the cavity and over the ILD; conformally forming a Ru layer on the doped TaN layer; depositing Cu over the Ru layer and filling the cavity; planarizing the Cu, Ru layer, and doped TaN layer down to an upper surface of the ILD; forming a dielectric cap over the Cu, Ru layer, and doped TaN layer; and filling spaces formed between the dielectric cap and the doped TaN layer.
US09343403B2
An integrated circuit device includes a substrate. The integrated circuit device also includes a first conductive stack including a back-end-of-line (BEOL) conductive layer at a first elevation with reference to the substrate. The integrated circuit device also includes a second conductive stack including the BEOL conductive layer at a second elevation with reference to the substrate. The second elevation differs from the first elevation.
US09343402B2
A manufacturing method of a semiconductor device comprises releasing an oxidation source included in an interlayer dielectric film having an opening portion formed on a surface thereof and being present on the surface of the interlayer dielectric film at a first substrate temperature, forming a first layer containing Ti and N to contact with at least a part of the interlayer dielectric film at a second substrate temperature lower than the first substrate temperature, wherein a Ti content in the first layer is more than 50 at % in all components, provided that oxygen and precious metals are excluded from the all components, and forming a Cu metal layer above the first layer.
US09343398B2
A microelectronic package can include a substrate and a microelectronic element. The substrate can include terminals comprising at least first power terminals and other terminals in an area array at a surface of the substrate. The substrate can also include a power plane element electrically coupled to the first power terminals. The area array can have a peripheral edge and a continuous gap between the terminals extending inwardly from the peripheral edge in a direction parallel to the surface. The terminals on opposite sides of the gap can be spaced from one another by at least 1.5 times a minimum pitch of the terminals. The power plane element can extend within the gap from at least the peripheral edge at least to the first power terminals. Each first power terminal can be separated from the peripheral edge by two or more of the other terminals.
US09343397B2
A method of connecting a semiconductor package to a board includes providing a board having a plurality of contact regions, providing a semiconductor package having a plurality of contact areas, selecting a specific contact area out of the plurality of contact areas, applying solder balls to the contact areas and therein applying two or more specific solder balls to the specific contact area, and connecting the semiconductor package to the board in such a way that the two or more specific solder balls are connected with each other and with a contact region of the plurality of contact regions of the board.
US09343395B2
To provide a semiconductor device having improved reliability by improving a coupling property between a semiconductor chip and a bonding wire. A redistribution layer is comprised of a Cu film, an Ni film, and a Pd film which have been formed successively from the side of a semiconductor substrate. The Pd film on the uppermost surface is used as an electrode pad and a bonding wire made of Cu is coupled to the upper surface of the Pd film. The thickness of the Pd film is made smaller than that of the Ni film and the thickness of the Ni film is made smaller than that of the Cu film. The Cu film, the Ni film, and the Pd film have the same pattern shape in a plan view.
US09343393B2
A semiconductor substrate assembly includes a semiconductor material layer, a first isolation layer, a second isolation layer, a first conductive pillar, and a second conductive pillar. The semiconductor material layer has a first surface and a second surface opposite to the first surface. The first isolation layer is located on the first surface of the semiconductor material layer. The second isolation layer is located on the second surface of the semiconductor material layer. The first conductive pillar, supplied with a first voltage, penetrates the semiconductor material layer, the first isolation layer, and the second isolation layer. The second conductive pillar is supplied with to a second voltage, and a part of the second conductive pillar is formed in the second isolation layer, the second conductive pillar penetrates the second isolation layer and touches the second surface of the semiconductor material layer.
US09343386B2
A method includes aligning a top package to a bottom package using an alignment mark in the bottom package, and placing the top package over the bottom package, wherein the top package is aligned to the bottom package after the placing the top package over the bottom package. A reflow is then performed to bond the top package to the bottom package.
US09343381B2
A first embodiment relates to a semiconductor component. The semiconductor component has a semiconductor body with a bottom side and a top side spaced distant from the bottom side in a vertical direction. In the vertical direction, the semiconductor body has a certain thickness. The semiconductor component further has a crack sensor configured to detect a crack in the semiconductor body. The crack sensor extends into the semiconductor body. A distance between the crack sensor and the bottom side is less than the thickness of the semiconductor body.
US09343375B2
Method of manufacturing a transistor on a layer made of a first crystalline semiconducting material to make a channel, deposited on a dielectric layer, the method including the following steps: epitaxial growth of zones made of a second semiconducting material on the layer made of a first crystalline semiconducting material, so as to form source and drain blocks with the layer made of a first crystalline semiconducting material on each side of the channel, the second semiconducting material having a lattice parameter different from that of the first semiconducting material, in-depth amorphization of part of zones made of a second semiconducting material so as to keep only one layer of second crystalline semiconducting material on the surface of the source and drain blocks, and amorphization of zones of the layer made of a first semiconducting material located under zones made of a second semiconducting material, recrystallization of the source and drain blocks such that the second semiconducting material imposes its lattice parameter on the source and drain zones.
US09343374B1
Forming a poly-Si device including pulling back spacers prior to silicidation and the resulting device are provided. Embodiments include forming two poly-Si gate stacks on an upper surface of a substrate; forming a hardmask over the second poly-Si gate stack; forming eSiGe with a silicon cap at opposite sides of the first poly-Si gate stack; removing the hardmask; forming nitride spacers at opposite sides of each of the poly-Si gate stacks; forming deep source/drain regions at opposite sides of the second poly-Si gate stack; forming a wet gap fill layer around each of the poly-Si gate stacks to a thickness less than the poly-Si gate stack height from the substrate's upper surface; removing an upper portion of the nitride spacers down to the height of the wet gap fill layer followed by removing the wet gap fill layer; and performing silicidation of the deep source/drain regions and the silicon cap.
US09343368B2
Pass-through 3D interconnects and microelectronic dies and systems of stacked dies that include such interconnects to disable electrical connections are disclosed herein. In one embodiment, a system of stacked dies includes a first microelectronic die having a backside, an interconnect extending through the first die to the backside, an integrated circuit electrically coupled to the interconnect, and a first electrostatic discharge (ESD) device electrically isolated from the interconnect. A second microelectronic die has a front side coupled to the backside of the first die, a metal contact at the front side electrically coupled to the interconnect, and a second ESD device electrically coupled to the metal contact. In another embodiment, the first die further includes a substrate carrying the integrated circuit and the first ESD device, and the interconnect is positioned in the substrate to disable an electrical connection between the first ESD device and the interconnect.
US09343362B2
Microelectronic devices with through-silicon vias and associated methods of manufacturing such devices. One embodiment of a method for forming tungsten through-silicon vias comprising forming an opening having a sidewall such that the opening extends through at least a portion of a substrate on which microelectronic structures have been formed. The method can further include lining the sidewall with a dielectric material, depositing tungsten on the dielectric material such that a cavity extends through at least a portion of the tungsten, and filling the cavity with a polysilicon material.
US09343360B2
A bump-equipped electronic component includes a circuit substrate and first and second bumps which are disposed on a principal surface of the circuit substrate and have different cross-sectional areas in a direction parallel or substantially parallel to the principal surface. One of the first and second bumps having a smaller cross-sectional area includes a height adjustment layer disposed in a direction perpendicular or substantially perpendicular to the principal surface.
US09343357B2
A semiconductor device includes a die having a via coupling a first interconnect layer to a trench. The semiconductor device also includes a barrier layer on sidewalls and adjacent surfaces of the trench, and on sidewalls of the via. The semiconductor device has a doped conductive layer on a surface of the first interconnect layer. The doped conductive layer extends between the sidewalls of the via. The semiconductor device further includes a conductive material on the barrier layer in both the via and the trench. The conductive material is on the doped conductive layer disposed on the surface of the first interconnect layer.
US09343356B2
The present disclosure relates to a method of forming a back-end-of-the-line metal interconnect layer. The method is performed by depositing one or more self-assembled monolayers on a semiconductor substrate to define a metal interconnect layer area. A metal interconnect layer having a plurality of metal structures is formed on the semiconductor substrate within the metal interconnect layer area. An inter-level dielectric layer is then formed onto the surface of the semiconductor substrate in areas between the plurality of metal structures.
US09343351B2
This transfer process comprises the following steps: (a) providing a donor substrate and a support substrate; (b) forming an embrittlement region in the donor substrate; (c) forming what is called a bonding layer between the first part of the donor substrate and the support substrate; and (d) assembling the donor substrate to the support substrate, and is noteworthy in that it comprises the following step: (e) exposing, in succession, portions of the embrittlement region to electromagnetic irradiations for an exposure time at a given power density, the exposure time being chosen depending on the thickness of the bonding layer so that the support substrate is thermally decoupled from the first part of the donor substrate, the exposure time being chosen depending on the power density in order to activate kinetics that weaken the embrittlement region.
US09343347B2
Embodiments of a portable electrostatic chuck for use in a substrate process chamber to support an ultra-thin substrate when disposed thereon are provided herein. In some embodiments, a portable electrostatic chuck may include a carrier comprising a dielectric material; an electrically conductive layer disposed on a top surface of the carrier; a dielectric layer disposed over the electrically conductive layer, such that the electrically conductive layer is disposed between the carrier and the dielectric layer; and at least one conductor coupled to the electrically conductive layer, wherein the portable electrostatic chuck is configured to electrostatically retain the ultra-thin substrate to the portable electrostatic chuck, wherein the portable electrostatic chuck is further configured to be handled and moved by substrate processing equipment outside of the substrate process chamber, and wherein the portable electrostatic chuck is sized to support large ultra-thin substrates.
US09343329B2
A process for creating a contact on a Ge-containing contact region of a semiconductor structure, said process comprising the steps of: providing said semiconductor structure comprising: (i) a Ge-containing contact region, (ii) optionally, a SiO2 layer coating said Ge-containing contact region, (iii) a Si3N4 layer coating said SiO2 layer if present or said Ge-containing contact region; etching selectively the Si3N4 layer by means of an inductively coupled plasma, thereby exposing the underlying SiO2 layer if present or the Ge-containing contact region; etching selectively the SiO2 layer if present, thereby exposing the SiGe:B contact region; and creating said contact on said Ge-containing contact region.
US09343328B2
A semiconductor structure having a substrate; an active device formed in an active semiconductor region of the substrate, the active device having a control electrode for controlling a flow of carriers through the active semiconductor region between a pair of electrical contacts; and a photolithographic, thickness non-uniformity, compensation feature, disposed on the surface substrate off of the active semiconductor region. In one embodiment the feature comprises pads on the surface of the substrate and off of the active semiconductor region.
US09343327B2
A method of selectively etching silicon nitride from a substrate comprising a silicon nitride layer and a silicon oxide layer includes flowing a fluorine-containing gas into a plasma generation region of a substrate processing chamber and applying energy to the fluorine-containing gas to generate a plasma in the plasma generation region. The plasma comprises fluorine radicals and fluorine ions. The method also includes filtering the plasma to provide a reactive gas having a higher concentration of fluorine radicals than fluorine ions and flowing the reactive gas into a gas reaction region of the substrate processing chamber. The method also includes exposing the substrate to the reactive gas in the gas reaction region of the substrate processing chamber. The reactive gas etches the silicon nitride layer at a higher etch rate than the reactive gas etches the silicon oxide layer.
US09343326B2
A chemical mechanical polishing (CMP) slurry composition for polishing an organic layer and a method of forming a semiconductor device using the same are disclosed. The CMP slurry composition may include from 0.001% to 5% by weight of oxide-polishing particles; from 0.1% to 5% by weight of an oxidant; from 0% to 5% by weight of a polishing regulator; from 0% to 3% by weight of a surfactant; from 0% to 3% by weight of a pH regulator; and from 79% to 99.889% by weight of deionized water. The use of the CMP slurry composition makes it possible to allow a silicon-free organic layer to be polished with a selectivity higher than 6:1 with respect to an oxide layer.
US09343324B2
There is provided a resist underlayer film used in lithography process that has a high n value and a low k value, and can effectively reduce reflection of light having a wavelength of 193 nm from the substrate in a three-layer process in which the resist underlayer film is used in combination with a silicon-containing intermediate layer. A resist underlayer film-forming composition used in lithography process including: a polymer containing a unit structure including a product obtained by reaction of a condensed heterocyclic compound and a bicyclo ring compound. The condensed heterocyclic compound is a carbazole compound or a substituted carbazole compound. The bicyclo ring compound is dicyclopentadiene, substituted dicyclopentadiene, tetracyclo[4.4.0.12,5.17,10]dodeca-3,8-diene, or substituted tetracyclo[4.4.0.12,5.17,10]dodeca-3,8-diene.
US09343320B2
Dummy deep trenches can be formed within a logic device region in which logic devices are to be formed while deep trench capacitors are formed within a memory device region. Semiconductor fins are formed over a top surface prior to forming trenches, and disposable material is filled around said semiconductor fins. A top surface of said disposable filler material layer can be coplanar with a top surface of said semiconductor fins, which eases deep trench formation. Conductive material portions of the dummy deep trenches can be recessed to avoid electrical contact with semiconductor fins within the logic device region, while an inner electrode of each deep trench can contact a semiconductor fin within the memory device region. A dielectric material portion can be formed above each conductive material portion of a dummy deep trench.
US09343309B1
Methods of laterally oxidizing features of a patterned substrate are described. A capping layer may be disposed above lateral features to laterally confine the oxidation. The oxidizable features may be material patterned near the optical resolution of a photolithography system using a high-resolution photomask. The oxidizable features may be wider than the spaces between the oxidizable features and may be about three times the width of the spaces. Oxidized portions may be formed on either side of repeated oxidizable features. The unoxidized portions may then be removed as part of a self-aligned double patterning (SADP) process. A gapfill layer deposited thereon may be etched or polished back to form alternating fill and non-sacrificial features.
US09343308B2
A method for trimming a carbon-containing film includes: (i) providing a substrate having a carbon-containing film formed thereon; (ii) supplying a trimming gas and a rare gas to the reaction space, which trimming gas includes an oxygen-containing gas; and (iii) applying RF power between the electrodes to generate a plasma using the trimming gas and the rare gas and to thereby trim the carbon-containing film while controlling a trimming rate at 55 nm/min or less as a function of at least one parameter selected from the group consisting of a flow rate of an oxygen-containing gas, a flow rate of nitrogen-containing gas to be added to the oxygen-containing gas, pressure in the reaction space, RF power, a duty cycle of RF power, a distance between the electrodes, and a temperature of a susceptor on which the substrate is placed.
US09343290B2
A method of manufacturing a semiconductor device includes forming an oxide film on a substrate by performing a cycle a predetermined number of times. The cycle includes supplying a precursor gas to the substrate; and supplying an ozone gas to the substrate. In the act of supplying the precursor gas, the precursor gas is supplied to the substrate in a state where a catalytic gas is not supplied to the substrate, and in the act of supplying the ozone gas, the ozone gas is supplied to the substrate in a state where an amine-based catalytic gas is supplied to the substrate.
US09343286B2
A lamp (10) is described comprising a burner (14) fixed to a lamp base (12). The lamp base (12) includes a top wall oriented towards the burner (14). Within the top wall, an opening (28) is provided. The lamp base (12) further comprises an insulation chamber (42) where an electrical component, e. g. a transformer (54), is embedded within an insulation compound (43). In order to prevent possibly spilled insulation compound from leaking through the opening (28), a raised retention wall (46) is provided around the opening.
US09343285B2
An annular ion guide is disclosed comprising inner and outer electrodes. Ions are confined within an annular ion guiding region by RF or pseudo-potential barriers in both an outward and inward radial direction.
US09343284B2
An electrostatic mass spectrometer and a method of mass spectrometric analysis utilizing novel traps are disclosed. The mass spectrometer includes an ion source, an ion pulse injector, an ion detector, a set of analyzer electrodes connected to a set of power supplies, and a vacuum chamber enclosing the set of analyzer electrodes. The analyzer electrodes have multiple sets of elongated slits forming an array of elongated volumes. Each elongated volume is formed by a single set of slits aligned between the electrodes, and each volume forms a two-dimensional electrostatic field in an X-Y plane and is extended in a locally orthogonal Z-direction. Each two-dimensional field is arranged to trap moving ions in the X-Y plane and to enable isochronous ion motion along a mean ion trajectory within the X-Y plane.
US09343276B2
A scan of a separating sample is received by a mass spectrometer at each interval of a plurality of intervals. The spectrometer performs at each interval one or more mass spectrometry scans. The scans have one or more sequential mass window widths in order to span an entire mass range at each interval and produce a collection of spectra for the entire mass range for the plurality of intervals. One or more peaks at one or more different intervals in the collection of spectra are identified for a fragment ion. A mass spectrum of the entire mass range is retrieved for each interval of each peak. Values for one or more ion characteristics of a mass-to-charge ratio peak in the mass spectrum corresponding to each peak are compared to one or more known values for the fragment ion. Each peak is scored based on the comparison.
US09343275B1
A method for characterizing a carbon overcoat is provided. The method includes performing electron energy loss spectroscopy (EELS) spectrum imaging for an area of a preselected carbon-based material and an area of the carbon overcoat to generate a reference EELS dataset and a carbon overcoat EELS dataset, respectively, and determining a carbon bonding content of the carbon overcoat based on the reference EELS dataset and the carbon overcoat EELS dataset.
US09343271B2
The invention relates to an apparatus for generating a thermodynamically cold plasma under standard atmospheric conditions by injecting microwave radiation at a frequency of >3 GHz into a plasma chamber (6) and subsequent superposition of a plurality of waves with constructive interference. The microwave radiation, which is generated in specifically geometrically arranged, preferably cylindrical resonant cavities in an evacuated anode block, is coupled out via hollow waveguides (5) and fed to a separated plasma chamber (6). Using the combination of a plurality of microwave generators (7) it is possible to inject a multiplicity of microwaves into the plasma chamber (6). A material stream, for example a process gas, can be fed in through an inlet (9) at the upper side of the plasma chamber and be discharged through an outlet for example in nozzle form at the lower side of the plasma chamber (6) and be fed to the surface that is to be processed.
US09343268B2
In accordance with one aspect of this invention, a multi charged particle beam writing apparatus includes an aperture member, in which a plurality of openings are formed, configured to form multi-beams by making portions of the charged particle beam pass through the plurality of openings; a plurality of blankers configured to perform blanking-deflect regarding beams corresponding to the multi-beams; a writing processing control unit configured to control writing processing with a plurality of beams having passed through different openings among the plurality of openings being irradiated on the target object at a predetermined control grid interval; and a dose controlling unit configured to variably control a dose of a beam associated with deviation according to a deviation amount when an interval between the plurality of beams irradiated is deviated from the control grid interval.
US09343265B2
The purpose of the present invention is to provide a charged particle beam irradiation apparatus of a relatively simple structure which performs cooling on a sample or a sample stage. An aspect of the present invention comprises: a charged particle source; a sample stage; and a driving mechanism that comprises a transmission mechanism which transmits a driving force to move the sample stage. The charged particle beam irradiation apparatus comprises a container capable of accommodating an ionic liquid (12), wherein the container is disposed in a vacuum chamber. When the ionic liquid (12) is accommodated in the container, at least a portion of the transmission mechanism is provided at a position submerged in the ionic liquid (12).
US09343259B2
A nozzle assembly used for performing gas cluster ion beam (GCIB) etch processing of various materials is described. In particular, the nozzle assembly includes two or more conical nozzles that are aligned such that they are both used to generate the same GCIB. The first conical nozzle may include the throat that initially forms the GCIB and the second nozzle may form a larger conical cavity that may be appended to the first conical nozzle. A transition region may be disposed between the two conical nozzles that may substantially cylindrical and slightly larger than the largest diameter of the first conical nozzle.
US09343257B2
The present invention provides a magnet fixing means having a circuit breaker including a heater generating heat due to a conduction current induced to a moving contact of the circuit breaker; a bimetal deformed due to heat generated by the heater to separate a contact point of the moving contact; a magnet generating a magnetic force to move an armature bar when a current above a previously set reference current is induced; a trip case accommodating the bimetal and magnet, at least part of which is made of a synthetic resin material; a magnet fixing portion integrally formed in the trip case, and made of a synthetic resin material; a magnet fixing means fastening the magnet to the magnet fixing portion; and a bimetal fixing means fixing the bimetal to the heater, where a magnet-side separating gap exists between the magnet and the heater such that the heater does not contact the magnet.
US09343250B2
A contact bus bar assembly for supplying power to a load, and further pertains to a switching device which can be connected to such a compact bus bar assembly, and to a power distribution system. The bus bar assembly includes at least two electrically conductive tracks which are at least partly covered by an electrically insulating cover. An outer surface of said insulating cover is provided with a plurality of ribs arranged in a region connecting pin terminals. The switching device may additionally comprise a separating element provided with a plurality of second ribs.
US09343248B2
Systems and methods are disclosed that enable spring loaded mechanical key switch assemblies having variable displacement sensing capabilities. In one example, the disclosed key switch assemblies may be implemented in a keyboard system and used for providing variable displacement output signals that may be processed by a controller for input to a host processing device of an information handling system, such as a desktop or notebook computer. In another example, the disclosed key switch assemblies may be configured to provide both a digital “make” connection signal and separate variable displacement output signal/s that may be processed for input to a host processing device of an information handling system.
US09343246B2
Disclosed a trigger switch including: a case having a switch chamber in which a switch mechanism is arranged in a sealed state; a plunger inserted slidably into a shaft hole formed on one end side of the case, coupled to the switch mechanism, and biased forward; and a trigger provided on a distal end of the plunger for operating the switch, wherein the switch mechanism includes an air pressure stabilizing mechanism configured to cancel an air compressing action in the interior of the switch chamber caused by the switch mechanism moving in the interior of the switch chamber. The air pressure stabilizing mechanism includes a communication hole extending from a rear end opening facing the switch chamber to a distal end opening on the plunger, and a plunger-engaging portion of the trigger includes a discharge port communicating with the communication hole and configured to release air from the communicating hole.
US09343224B2
An external transmitter inductive coil can be provided in, on, or with a belt designed to be placed externally around a part of a body of a patient. An implantable device (such as a VAD or other medical device) that is implanted within the patient's body has associated with a receiver inductive coil that gets implanted within that part of the patient's body along with the device. The externally-located transmitter inductive coil inductively transfers electromagnetic power into that part of the body and thus to the receiver inductive coil. The implanted receiver inductive coil thus wirelessly receives the inductively-transferred electromagnetic power, and operates the implant.
US09343220B2
Disclosed is a planar transformer including a first planar core which is formed of a magnetic substance, a lower secondary winding which is disposed to enclose a first left sill of the first planar core between a first rear sill and a first front sill of the first planar core; a primary winding which is disposed on the lower secondary winding so as to enclose first left and right sills of the first planar core; an upper secondary winding which is disposed on the primary winding to enclose the first left sill of the first planar core; and a second planar core disposed on the upper secondary winding.
US09343209B2
An open-cell porous shaped body for heat exchangers, and process for making same, comprising a thermomagnetic material selected from, for example, a compound of the general formula (I): (AyB1−y)2+δCwDxEz (I) where A is Mn or Co; B is Fe, Cr or Ni; at least two of C, D and E are different, have a non-vanishing concentration and are selected from P, B, Se, Ge, Ga, Si, Sn, N, As and Sb, where at least one of C, D and E is Ge or Si; δ is a number from −0.1 to 0.1; and w, x, y, z are each a number from 0 to 1, where w+x+z=1.
US09343198B2
This application relates to a polyolefin composition comprising a polyolefin and an aromatic compound. The polyolefin composition can be used in producing medium and high voltage cables with improved electrical breakdown strength.
US09343192B2
Materials and methods of making densified waste forms for temperature sensitive waste material, such as nuclear waste, formed with low temperature processing using metallic powder that forms the matrix that encapsulates the temperature sensitive waste material. The densified waste form includes a temperature sensitive waste material in a physically densified matrix, the matrix is a compacted metallic powder. The method for forming the densified waste form includes mixing a metallic powder and a temperature sensitive waste material to form a waste form precursor. The waste form precursor is compacted with sufficient pressure to densify the waste precursor and encapsulate the temperature sensitive waste material in a physically densified matrix.
US09343182B2
A novel and useful direct memory based ring oscillator (DMRO) circuit and related method for on-chip evaluation of SRAM delay and stability. The DMRO circuit uses an un-modified SRAM cell in each delay stage of the oscillator. A small amount of external circuitry is added to allow the ring to oscillate and detect read instability errors. An external frequency counter is the only equipment that is required, as there is no need to obtain an exact delay measurement and use a precise waveform generator. The DMRO circuit monitors the delay and stability of an SRAM cell within its real on-chip operating neighborhood. The advantage provided by the circuit is derived from the fact that measuring the frequency of a ring oscillator is easier than measuring the phase difference of signals or generating signals with precise phase, and delivering such signals to/from the chip. In addition, the DMRO enables monitoring of read stability failures.
US09343180B2
Systems and methods disclosed herein include those that may receive a memory request including a requested memory address and may send the memory request directly to an address decoder associated with a stacked-die memory vault without knowing whether a repair address is required. If a subsequent analysis of the memory request shows that a repair address is required, an in-process decode of the requested memory address can be halted and decoding of the repair address initiated.
US09343178B2
A gate driver has a plurality of shift registers. Each of the shift registers has at least three input terminals, two signal input terminals, a pull-up circuit, a driving circuit, a stability pull-down control circuit, and a stability pull-down circuit. The three input terminals of each shift register receive three different clock signals. Accordingly, the driving circuit and the stability pull-down control circuit of each shift register are controlled according to the three clock signals, such that a glitch causing by the coupling effect of the parasitic capacitor of the driving circuit is avoided and the stability of the gate driver is improved.
US09343170B2
Read signals are obtained from memory cells, and a first read signal and a second read signal are identified, from among the plurality of read signals. The first read signal is associated with a first memory cell in a first word line and the second read signal is associated with a second memory cell in a second word line, and the second word line is adjacent to the first word line. An output for the first memory cell is generated, wherein the output is based on the first and the second read signals.
US09343165B2
A system for optimizing drive strength may be utilized for identifying the maximum data transfer rate for different devices and different device configurations. The drive strength may be optimized for input/output (I/O) devices by measuring voltage drops on I/O power supply using different test patterns. The maximum drive strength is identified that satisfies a limit or threshold for the allowed voltage drop level. The test pattern may include a simultaneous toggling of each I/O device. A slew rate for the device may be utilized along with the drive strength for identifying the maximum data transfer rate.
US09343162B2
A non-volatile memory (NVM) device includes an NVM array, which is configured to store data, and control logic. The control logic is configured to receive data values for storage in the NVM array, and to write at least some of the received data values to the NVM array and simultaneously to write complements of the at least some of the received data values.
US09343160B1
Reducing peak current and/or power consumption during erase verify of a non-volatile memory is disclosed. During an erase verify, memory cells are verified at a strict reference level that is deeper (e.g., lower threshold voltage) than a target reference level. After the strict erase verify, strings of memory cells that pass the strict erase verify are locked out from a next erase verify at the target reference level. Locked out strings do not conduct a significant current during erase verify, thus reducing peak current and/or power consumption.
US09343159B2
Techniques are provided for preventing inadvertent program or erase of select gate transistors and dummy memory cells during an erase operation involving data-storing memory cells in a three-dimensional memory device. The erase operation charges up a channel of a NAND string using gate-induced drain leakage from the select gate transistors. An erase voltage waveform and a select gate waveform are ramped up to intermediate levels which allow some charging of the channel to occur. The intermediate level of the select gate waveform is low enough to avoid inadvertent programming of the select gate transistors. Subsequently, the erase voltage waveform and the select gate waveform are ramped up to peak levels which allow additional charging of the channel to occur. The peak levels are set to avoid inadvertent erasing of the select gate transistors.
US09343157B2
An EEPROM circuit includes a data reception register and a column decoder. A buffer memory having a size corresponding to the size of a data page is included between the data reception register and the column decoder.
US09343156B1
Programming techniques for a three-dimensional stacked memory device provide compensation for different intrinsic programming speeds of different groups of memory cells based on the groups' locations relative to the edge of a word line layer. A larger distance from the edge is associated with a faster programming speed. In one approach, the programming speeds are equalized by elevating a bit line voltage for the faster programming memory cells. Offset verify voltages which trigger a slow programming mode by elevating the bit line voltage can also be set based on the group locations. A programming speed can be measured during programming for a row or other group of cells to set the bit line voltage and/or the offset verify voltages. The compensation for the faster programming memory cells can also be based on their speed relative to the slower programming memory cells.
US09343146B2
Memory apparatuses and methods for low power current mode sense amplification are disclosed. An example memory apparatus may include a current mode sense amplifier and a current circuit. The current mode sense amplifier may be configured to provide an output current. The current circuit may comprise a bias generator that is configured to generate a bias signal as well as a current control circuit coupled to both the current mode sense amplifier and the bias generator. The current control circuit may be configured to receive both the output current and the bias signal and control the output current based, at least in part, on the bias signal.
US09343143B2
To improve a reading speed and a writing speed while preventing occurrence of disturbance in a resistance storage element, specifically, a nonvolatile storage device that has a memory having at least one nonvolatile resistance storage element and a control unit configured to write a high resistance state or a low resistance state to the resistance storage element, wherein the control unit applies a bias to the resistance storage element in a verification operation carried out after writing the high resistance state, or applies a bias to the resistance storage element in a verification operation carried out after writing the low resistance state, these biases being in directions opposite to each other.
US09343136B2
A first semiconductor device equalizes levels of a bit line and a complementary bit line of a high-order bit line pair in a first memory block using a first drive voltage signal whose level is controlled when a power-down mode or a self-refresh mode is activated according to a level combination of high-order command/address signals. A second semiconductor device equalizes levels of a bit line and a complementary bit line of a low-order bit line pair in a second memory block using a second drive voltage signal whose level is controlled when the power-down mode or the self-refresh mode is activated according to a level combination of low-order command/address signals.
US09343134B2
A method of writing to a magnetic tunnel junction (MTJ) of a magnetic memory array includes an access transistor coupled to the MTJ for reading of and writing to the MTJ, where when the MTJ is written to, at times, by switching its magnetic orientation from an anti-parallel to a parallel magnetic orientation, a bit line that is coupled to one end of the MTJ is raised to Vcc and a voltage that is the sum of Vcc and Vx is applied to the gate of the access transistor, with Vx being approximately the voltage at an opposite end of the MTJ. Further, the voltage of a Source Line (SL), which is coupled to the MTJ using a first transistor of a write driver that is also coupled to the SL, is regulated such that SL remains sufficiently above 0 volts to avoid violation of Vgs exceeding Vcc where Vgs is the gate to source voltage of the access transistor.
US09343123B2
Memory access alignment in a double data rate (‘DDR’) system, including: executing, by a memory controller, one or more write operations to a predetermined address of a DDR memory module, including sending to the DDR memory module a predetermined amount of data of a predetermined pattern along with a data strobe signal; executing, by the memory controller, a plurality of read operations from the predetermined address of the DDR memory module, including capturing data transmitted from the DDR memory module; and determining, by the memory controller, a read adjust value and a write adjust value in dependence upon the data captured in response to the read operations.
US09343121B2
An operating method of a storage device is provided. The storage device includes a nonvolatile memory and a memory controller to control the nonvolatile memory. Temperature is detected. A current weighted time is calculated using the temperature. Data is read from the nonvolatile memory using a read voltage level which is adjusted based on the current weighted time. The current weighted time is determined according to an amount of charges leaked from memory cells storing the data at the temperature.
US09343113B2
A control apparatus includes a storage unit and a processor. The storage unit is configured to store diagnosis information regarding storage apparatuses to be diagnosed. The processor is configured to receive a write request from an information processing apparatus. The write request requests to write first data into a first logical area corresponding to a first physical area of a first storage apparatus. The processor is configured to determine, on basis of the diagnosis information, whether the first storage apparatus is one of the storage apparatuses to be diagnosed. The processor is configured to cause, when it is determined that the first storage apparatus is one of the storage apparatuses to be diagnosed, the first storage apparatus to execute a write-and-verify process including: writing the first data into the first physical area, and confirming whether the first data is normally read from the first physical area.
US09343112B2
Methods and systems to provide supplemental content to a user who is viewing video or other content. The user's device (through which he will access the video) then provides an identifier of that video to a server or other computing facility. Here, the video identifier is used to identify supplemental content that corresponds to the user's video. The supplemental content is then provided to the user device for the user's consumption. The supplemental content may be structured in such a way that pieces of the supplemental content are accessible at particular points in the video. The piece(s) of the supplemental content available at a particular point in the video will be related to one or more objects that are present at this point. This allows a user to access one or more pieces of supplemental content in a context-specific manner, at a point in the video where the piece(s) of supplemental content are relevant.
US09343111B2
A first data group in an access sequence is selected. Those data groups located in specified regions of the tape medium are separated from other data groups located in alternative specified regions of the tape medium. The distance from the current position of the tape medium is set to be a logical distance value, determined by a calculation function, that is substituted for the physical distance value for the data groups that are located in the specified regions as compared with other data groups located in the alternative specified regions. A second data group in the access sequence is selected. The logical distance value is then determined by multiplying a coefficient based on a physical positioning of each of the data groups in the tape medium, and a percentage of those of the plurality of data groups that have already been selected as the first data group and the second data group.
US09343100B2
A method for monitoring changes in an inventory of media cartridges in a media library includes the steps of determining with a controller that the inventory of media cartridges in the media library has changed, and asynchronously reporting with the controller the specific change in inventory of media cartridges that has occurred in the media library. The method can also include the step of determining whether the change in inventory included an increase or a decrease in the quantity of media cartridges within the media library, or whether the change in inventory did not include an increase or decrease in the quantity of media cartridges within the media library. Further, the method can also include the step of determining whether the change in inventory of media cartridges is required to be reported. A media library system includes a media library having a plurality of media cartridges, and a controller that determines a change in an inventory of media cartridges in the media library. In certain embodiments, the controller asynchronously and selectively reports a specific change in the inventory of media cartridges in the media library.
US09343093B2
A tape head includes a set of one or more segments, wherein each segment of the set is individually movable with respect to a frame; each segment of the set comprising at least one of a write element configured to write data to a tape and a read element configured to read data from the tape; and each segment of the set comprising a further read element having a width transverse to a motion direction of the tape being at least a width of the write element of the segment or, in the event that no write element is comprised in the segment, of a write element of a different segment.
US09343089B2
Nanoimprint lithography can be used in a variety of ways to improve resolution, pattern fidelity and symmetry of microelectronic structures for thin film head manufacturing. For example, write poles, readers, and near-field transducers can be manufactured with tighter tolerances that improve the performance of the microelectronic structures. Further, entire bars of thin film heads can be manufactured simultaneously using nanoimprint lithography, which reduces or eliminated alignment errors between neighboring thin film heads in a bar of thin film heads.
US09343085B2
A data writer may be generally configured at least with a write pole adjacent to and separated from a side shield and a trailing shield. The side shield may be formed of a first material and configured with a trailing box region that is at least partially filled with a flux density insert formed of a second material that is different than the first material.
US09343080B2
An embodiment of the present invention is a method of presenting at least a portion of an audio or audio-visual work including: (a) retrieving an average speed contour or a democratic speed contour from a database apparatus; and (b) presenting the at least a portion at a playback apparatus using the retrieved average speed contour or democratic speed contour to provide presentation rates.
US09343079B2
Embodiments of the invention provide a communication device and methods for enhancing audio signals. A first audio signal buffer and a second audio signal buffer are acquired. Thereafter, the second audio signal is processed based on the linear predictive coding coefficients and gains based on mean noise power of the first audio signal to generate an enhanced second audio signal.
US09343074B2
An apparatus for generating an audio output signal based on an encoded audio signal spectrum has a processing unit, a pseudo coefficients determiner, a spectrum modification unit, a spectrum-time conversion unit, a controllable oscillator and a mixer. The pseudo coefficients determiner is configured to determine pseudo coefficients of the decoded audio signal spectrum. The spectrum modification unit is configured to set the pseudo coefficients to a predefined value to acquire a modified audio signal spectrum. The spectrum-time conversion unit is configured to convert the modified audio signal spectrum to a time-domain. The controllable oscillator is configured to generate a time-domain oscillator signal and is controlled by the spectral location and the spectral value of at least one of the pseudo coefficients. The mixer is configured to mix the time-domain conversion signal and the time-domain oscillator signal.
US09343066B1
The present invention includes systems and methods for sending social media messages without the need for keyboard inputs. A microphone captures live audio speech data and transmits the audio data to a processing unit. The processing unit converts the audio to speech data. The processing unit also removes censored words, emphasizes key words, and edits that data to include product and promotional messages where appropriate. The processing unit then uses code words contained in the speech data to send the speech data to the appropriate social media outlets for output.
US09343055B2
A fluid flow system, device, and method for locating a fluid layer in a fluid flow using an acoustic waveguide. The acoustic waveguide comprises a waveguide base segment, and a waveguide reflector segment. The waveguide reflector segment comprises a plurality of disc shaped waveguide reflectors along its length for locating a fluid layer.
US09343049B1
A single unit that is used to support a cymbal on a stanchion and also secure the unit to the stanchion. The cymbal is supported between a pair of soft discs with a nut provided that can be tightened or loosened for the drummer to select how tight the cymbal is secured or how not so tight thereby varying the sound emitted from the cymbal when struck by a drumstick. The unit also has a slotted collet through which the mounting rod of the stanchion is conducted. The exterior surface of the collet is tapered which fits in a tapered cavity in a body. A nut is mounted by threads on the body and when turned on the body will cause the collet to press further into the tapered cavity which will cause the collet to tightly engage with the mounting rod.
US09343046B2
A stringed musical instrument with a base portion and neck portion with an inlaid fretboard snugly secured within a recess between an upper wall and a lower wall on the neck portion is disclosed. The geometry of the upper and lower walls maybe optimized and includes walls that are substantially perpendicular to the face of the instrument, walls that are angled with respect to each other to define a wedge-shaped slot for slidably receiving and securing the mating fretboard therein, and walls that are angled to define inwardly extending protrusions that allow the fretboard to be “snapped” in place on the neck portion of the instrument. The fretboard may be rigidly secured to the neck portion with glue or the like or it may be detachably secured within the slot thereby allowing fretboards to be changed as desired for aesthetic or performance purposes.
US09343038B2
An image projection apparatus configured to project an image on the projection surface includes a light modulation unit configured to modulate light from a light source unit, an image processing unit configured to generate an image signal to be input to the light modulation unit, disposed in the image projection apparatus and, a light intensity measuring unit configured to measure an intensity of part of the modulated by the light modulation unit, a light guide optical system configured to guide the part of the light to the light intensity measuring unit and another part of the light to the projection surface, and a correction unit configured to correct brightness of the image projected on the projection surface based on a video signal supplied to the image projection apparatus and a measurement result of the light intensity measuring unit.
US09343023B2
A stereoscopic display and a driving method are disclosed herein. The stereoscopic display includes a sensor, a barrier cell, and a control unit. The sensor is configured to detect a user to generate a sensing signal. The barrier cell is configured to generate a 3D image with a 2D image. The barrier cell includes barrier pitches disposed in parallel. Each of the barrier pitches includes switchable barrier units. The control unit is configured to generate control signals to adjust the switchable barrier units according to the sensing signal, so as to make at least one of the switchable barrier units of each of barrier pitches form a shading zone, to make the switchable barrier units disposed at the two adjacent sides of the shading zone form a gray level zone, and to make the rest of the switchable barrier units in the same barrier pitch form a photic zone.
US09343020B2
In exemplary implementations of this invention, light from a backlight is transmitted through two stacked LCDs and then through a diffuser. The front side of the diffuser displays a time-varying sequence of 2D images. Processors execute an optimization algorithm to compute optimal pixel states in the first and second LCDs, respectively, such that for each respective image in the sequence, the optimal pixel states minimize, subject to one or more constraints, a difference between a target image and the respective image. The processors output signals to control actual pixel states in the LCDs, based on the computed optimal pixel states. The 2D images displayed by the diffuser have a higher spatial resolution than the native spatial resolution of the LCDs. Alternatively, the diffuser may be switched off, and the device may display either (a) 2D images with a higher dynamic range than the LCDs, or (b) an automultiscopic display.
US09343019B2
A transflective display apparatus and an operation method thereof are provided. The transflective display apparatus includes a transflective display panel and a backlight module. The transflective display panel includes a plurality of pixels. Each pixel includes a plurality of sub-pixels with different colors. Each sub-pixel includes a transparent area and a reflective area. The operation method includes: determining whether the transflective display apparatus is operated in a reflective mode or not; and driving, when the transflective display apparatus is determined being operated in the reflective mode, the transflective display panel by way of driving at least one of the plurality of sub-pixels in each pixel each time and turning off the backlight module, thereby facilitating the transflective display apparatus to display an image by using the reflective areas of the driven sub-pixels to reflect an ambient light of the transflective display apparatus.
US09343018B2
The resolution of a low-resolution image is made high and a stereoscopic image is displayed. Resolution is made high by super-resolution processing. In this case, the super-resolution processing is performed after edge enhancement processing is performed. Accordingly, a stereoscopic image with high resolution and high quality can be displayed. Alternatively, after image analysis processing is performed, edge enhancement processing and super-resolution processing are concurrently performed. Accordingly, processing time can be shortened.
US09343013B2
Provided is a method of driving a pixel circuit including a light emitting element and a driving transistor which are connected in series to each other, and a storage capacitor disposed between a path between the light emitting element and the driving transistor and a gate of the driving transistor, the method including the steps of: supplying a driving signal to a gate of the driving transistor; and changing the potential of the driving signal over time so that the time rate of change of the potential of the driving signal at the point in time when the supply of the driving signal stops becomes the time rate of change corresponding to a specified gradation of the pixel circuit.
US09343012B2
A driving circuit of an active matrix/organic light emitting diode (AMOLED) includes a first semiconductor controllable switch, a second semiconductor controllable switch, an energy-storage capacitor, an organic light emitting diode, and a sequential control unit that divides a driving time of one frame of the organic light emitting diode into driving times of N subframes. An output end of the second semiconductor controllable switch is coupled to an anode of the organic light emitting diode, a source electrode of the first semiconductor controllable switch receives a data driving signal of the AMOLED, a gate electrode of the first semiconductor controllable switch receives a scan driving signal of the AMOLED, a drain electrode of the AMOLED is connected with a gate electrode of the second semiconductor controllable switch, and the energy-storage capacitor is connected in series between a source electrode and the gate electrode of the second semiconductor controllable switch. The data driving signal is divided into an active signal that drives display of the organic light emitting diode and a blanking signal that turns off display of the organic light emitting diode in the driving time of each of the subframes.
US09343011B2
A pixel capable of displaying an image with uniform brightness is disclosed. In one aspect, the pixel includes an organic light emitting diode (OLED), a first transistor for controlling an amount of current that flows from a first power supply to a second power supply via the OLED in response to a voltage applied to a first node. The pixel also includes a second transistor that is coupled between a bias power supply and the first node and whose gate electrode is coupled to an emission control line. The pixel further includes a third transistor that is coupled between an anode electrode of the OLED and a feedback line and whose gate electrode is coupled to a control line.
US09342995B2
A double-sided, front-to-back aligned tactile learning aid is provided, which includes a substantially planar carrier medium with a protruding front tactile graphic aligned with and symmetrical to a protruding back tactile graphic. The carrier medium may be one, two, or more sheets of paper, plastic, or other generally planar material. The front graphic and the back graphic protrude from the front and back, respectively, of the carrier medium. At least a portion of the back tactile graphic is aligned with at least a portion of the front tactile graphic. The double-sided, front-to-back aligned tactile learning aid is clearly expressive of (and/or representational of) a physical structure, yet is embodied in a generally two-dimensional planar construction, so is easier to store. The double-sided, front-to-back aligned tactile learning aid may be used as a semi-concrete or demi-concrete aid for sighted and visually-impaired students.
US09342984B2
The present invention refers to a system and method for monitoring and supervising potential traffic infractions, comprising the detection of potential traffic infractions and the capture of the images thereof, wherein the images preferentially relate to a sequence of images of the pre and post events, further comprising a multi-thread module which enables the capture of images of one or more potential traffic infractions occurring in the same or in different lanes of the road, with almost simultaneous pre-event and post-event sequences.
US09342972B2
A fatigue degree input unit inputs a fatigue degree of a user through use of a processing device, and writes an input value of the fatigue degree into a storage device. A recommended duration calculation unit reads the input value of the fatigue degree written by the fatigue degree input unit from the storage device. In accordance with the input value of the fatigue degree read from the storage device, the recommended duration calculation unit calculates a bath duration to be recommended to the user, as a recommended duration, through use of the processing device. A recommended duration informing unit informs the user of the recommended duration calculated by the recommended duration calculation unit, through an output device.
US09342963B1
The present disclosure provides systems and methods for implementing a self-service terminal (“SST”) monitoring, notification and maintenance system. Embodiments of the proposed invention may simplify a task of locating an operational SST having a specific operational status and/or capability within a geographic area. Embodiments may automatically determine and monitor an operational status and/or capabilities of a SST. The operational status may include an operational status indicative of a SST that need servicing or repair. A location of a device used to submit a request for SST information may be automatically determined. Location, operational status and directions on how to locate a specific SST within a distance of the determined location may be transmitted in response to a request for SST information. The operational status of multiple SSTs within a geographic area may be monitored.
US09342955B2
A method for tracking an event of an externally controlled interface (ECI) is described. The method includes generating the externally controlled interface independent of an outcome of a wager-based game regulated by a regulatory authority, and logging the event of the externally controlled interface.
US09342954B1
Gaming machines and games are configured with one or more wheel events or features. The wheel events or features may comprise main games or bonus games, or may comprise entertaining representations of outcomes of other games or events. The wheel events comprise the selection of one or more segments of a wheel having associated awards. Wheel events may have various entertaining configurations, such as morphing wheels, symbols that reveal awards and the like.
US09342952B2
Systems and methods for authenticating an inventory list of the components installed on electronic gaming machines, including receiving, from an input device, an input signal indicating the identity and location of a gaming machine, an electronic signature of each installed component, receiving the electronic signature and software components which should be installed on the gaming machine, and comparing electronic signature of the components. If the electronic signature of the components does not match the received electronic signature of what should be installed on the gaming machine, and sending a confirmation to the inventory database component indicating the correct software is not installed.
US09342950B2
A gaming machine and method allow a player to play a game. The game has an associated set of game symbols. The game symbols in the set of game symbols are arranged in a predetermined order from lowest to highest. A display device is configured to display a plurality of symbol regions arranged in a grid. The controller is configured to randomly select an initial outcome of the game. The initial outcome of the game includes an initial game symbol associated with each of the symbol regions. The controller detects a triggering condition associated with the initial outcome of the game and responsively replaces the initial game symbol in at least one predetermined symbol region with a replacement symbol to establish a secondary outcome of the game. The replacement symbol is determined as a function of the initial symbol and the predetermined order of the game symbols.
US09342942B2
The present invention relates to a bill-recycling automated teller machine (ATM) for a teller with a supplementary collection box and a banknote transfer method applied thereto, and more particularly, to a bill-recycling ATM for a teller with a supplementary collection box and a banknote transfer method applied thereto, in which in configuring the ATM for a teller used when the teller performs a banking transaction at a counter, as the supplementary collection box for replenishing or collecting banknotes is provided in the ATM, a large quantity of banknotes can be promptly replenished into or collected from banknote cassettes through the supplementary collection box, and, at the same time, when a settlement work is performed, an automatic settlement can be performed by counting banknotes through a banknote discriminating unit provided on a transporting path in a process of transporting the banknotes stored in the banknote cassettes to the supplementary collection box.
US09342939B1
A method and system for self-service access to a card key locked room of a facility is disclosed herein. A magnetic card key with a QRC is utilized with a mobile application resident on a mobile communication device to activate the card and allow for self-service access to check into a hotel.
US09342936B2
A door lock system can comprise a door lock movable between a locked state and an unlocked state. The door lock system can detect a first indication suggestive of a presence of a visitor. The door lock system can also detect a second indication suggestive of an identity of the visitor. As well, the door lock can validate that the first indication and the second indication are associated with a first identity.
US09342927B2
A system, method, and computer program product for automatically combining computer-generated imagery with real-world imagery in a portable electronic device by retrieving, manipulating, and sharing relevant stored videos, preferably in real time. A video is captured with a hand-held device and stored. Metadata including the camera's physical location and orientation is appended to a data stream, along with user input. The server analyzes the data stream and further annotates the metadata, producing a searchable library of videos and metadata. Later, when a camera user generates a new data stream, the linked server analyzes it, identifies relevant material from the library, retrieves the material and tagged information, adjusts it for proper orientation, then renders and superimposes it onto the current camera view so the user views an augmented reality.
US09342925B2
An information processing apparatus includes an image generation unit configured to generate a viewpoint image in a case where a watch point set in a three-dimensional virtual space is viewed from a predetermined virtual viewpoint, a detection unit configured to detect a movement of an operator, and a viewpoint displacement unit configured to displace the virtual viewpoint with the set watch point as a reference on the basis of the detected movement of the operator.
US09342924B2
Embodiments presented herein provide techniques for creating and simplifying a cell and portal graph. The simplified cell and portal graph may be used to make a conservative determination of whether an element of geometry is visible for a given view frustum (and therefore needs to be rendered). That is, the simplified cell and portal graph retains the encoded visibility for given set of geometry. The simplified cell and portal graph provides a “conservative” determination of visibility as it may indicate that some objects are visible that are not (resulting in unneeded rendering), but not the other way around. Further, this approach allows cell and portal graphs to be generated dynamically, allowing the cell and portal graphs to be used for scenes where the geometry can change (e.g., as 3D world of a video game).
US09342916B2
An image processing apparatus, system, and method to generate an estimation of a disparity map for a stereo pair of images based on multiple disparity assignments and a matching cost for each disparity assignment; and generate a final disparity map by refining the estimated disparity map.
US09342911B1
In one aspect, a request to generate an automated tour based on a set of panoramic images is received. Each particular panoramic image is associated with geographic location information and linking information linking the particular panoramic image with one or more other panoramic images in the set. A starting panoramic image and a second panoramic image are determined based at least in part on the starting panoramic image and the linking information associated with the starting and second panoramic images. A first transition between the starting panoramic image and the second panoramic image is also determined based at least in part on the linking information for these panoramic images. Additional panoramic images as well as a second transition for between the additional panoramic images are also determined. The determined panoramic images and transitions are added to the tour according to an order of the tour.
US09342908B2
The present invention provides a networked computer system for retrieving and displaying information, comprising a front-end sub-system and a back-end sub-system. The back-end comprises one or more selectable pipelines for processing the user query, each comprising one or more component software modules selected from a library of modular component software modules having predefined functions or created by a user to cooperate in extracting and processing extracted data, wherein at least one of the one or more pipelines may be customized by modifying either or both of a selection or sequence of the component software modules.
US09342905B2
A disclosed display processing method includes: first generating data of a faying surface region between a first line element, for which a greatest radius is defined, and a second line element, for which a second greatest radius is defined, at a point where end points of plural line elements are connected, by using data of plural line elements for which a radius and coordinates of both end points are defined and data representing connection relationships between line elements; and second generating, for each line object of the plural line elements, data of a tubular object that is defined based on a faying surface region generated for the line element.
US09342898B2
An image inspection system, an image inspection method, and an image inspection program acquires a read image obtained by reading an output image, generates an inspection image for inspecting the read image based on data of a to-be-output image, acquires an inspection result including a determination whether the read image is defective, based on a difference between the inspection image and the read image, acquires coloring-material usage data indicating extent of coloring-material usage in the output image, the coloring-material usage data being read when the read image is generated, generates coloring-material usage defect rate data indicating a defect rate in association with coloring-material usage, based on the inspection result and the coloring-material usage data, and obtains coloring-material usage of the to-be-output image, based on data of pixels forming the to-be-output image.
US09342883B2
A method and system are provided to assess a resolution of an optical sensor. The method includes placing a target at a distance from a focal plane of the optical sensor. The target is oriented in a first orientation and includes a grid and a plurality of test objects having different sizes and orientations. An image of the target is acquired from the optical sensor. The target grid in the acquired image is identified. Each test object of the plurality of test objects is identified using the identified grid and an orientation of the identified test object is determined. The determined orientations of the identified test objects of the plurality of test objects are compared to a ground truth and presented.
US09342875B2
An image capturing device and a method for generating a bokeh effect are provided. The method includes the following steps. An image including a current input pixel is captured. Next, blurring processes are performed on the image by using a first image blur filter and a second image blur filter so as to generate a plurality of first blur images and second blur images corresponding to different blur levels. A distance between the current input pixel and a focal plane is calculated to obtain a current distance. A first current blur image and a second current blur image are respectively selected from the first blur images and the second blur images according to the current distance. Next, a first current blur pixel of the first current blur image and a second current blur pixel of the second current blur image are combined to generate a current output pixel.
US09342869B2
Methods for enhancing images with increased efficiency include using a discriminative index tree to expedite image optimization processes. The discriminative index tree indexes patch-based image priors for modifying an image by using classifiers determined by exploiting a structure of the patch-based image priors. The discriminative index tree quickly and efficiently parses a space of patch-based image patches to determine approximate dominant patch-based image priors for the space of image patches. To further improve the efficiency of the discriminative index tree, one or more embodiments can limit a number of potential patch-based image priors from which a dominant patch-based image prior is selected.
US09342868B2
An image display device is capable of realizing an effective corrected shape of the image. The image display device includes an image input section to which an image is input, an aspect ratio determination section adapted to determine an aspect ratio of the image input to the image input section, a correction section adapted to perform a correction on the image input to the image input section so that the image has an aspect ratio corresponding to an aspect ratio determined by the aspect ratio determination section, and a projection section adapted to project the image on which the correction is performed by the correction section.
US09342864B2
A scene comprising a set of visual elements may allow a user to perform “zoom” operations in order to navigate the depth of the scene. The “zoom” semantic is often applied to simulate optical visual depth, wherein the visual elements are presented with different visual dimensions and visual resolution to simulate physical proximity or distance. However, the “zoom” semantic may be alternatively applied to other aspects of the visual elements of a scene, such as a user selection of a zoomed-in visual element, a “drill-down” operation on a data set, or navigation through a portal in a first data set to view a second data set. These alternative “zoom” semantics may be achieved by presenting the effects of a “zoom” operation within the scene on the visual presentation of the visual element in a manner other than an adjustment of the visual dimensions and resolution of the visual element.
US09342863B2
A virtualized coordinate system is determined that describes an alternate monitor space. The virtualized coordinate system is provided to an application providing content to be displayed and the application provides virtualized rendering information including coordinates in the virtualized coordinate system. The virtualized rendering information is scaled for display on the monitor.
US09342859B2
Disclosed herein is a computing device that includes: a processor; a graphic processing unit having N graphic processing cores, N being an integer greater than 1; a random access memory (RAM); a video port; a non-volatile memory, and a display processing unit. The non-volatile memory stores a virtual desktop client (VDC). The VDC can communicate with a first virtual machine (VM) of a hypervisor running on a remote computing device and receive an encoded image frame from the first VM; instruct the plurality of graphic processing cores to decode the encoded image frame in parallel; and generate a decoded image frame of the encoded image frame. The display processing unit can generate display signals representing the decoded image frame and transmit the display signals to the video port.
US09342857B2
One embodiment sets forth a method for modifying draw calls using a draw-call shader program included in a processing subsystem configured to process draw calls. The draw call shader receives a draw call from a software application, evaluates graphics state information included in the draw call, generates modified graphics state information, and generates a modified draw call that includes the modified graphics state information. Subsequently, the draw-call shader causes the modified draw call to be executed within a graphics processing pipeline. By performing the computations associated with generating the modified draw call on-the-fly within the processing subsystem, the draw-call shader decreases the amount of system memory required to render graphics while increasing the overall processing efficiency of the graphics processing pipeline.
US09342855B1
A system having a dating website using facial images technology to match a first user to a second user having similar facial features and electronically introducing the users for establishing a dating relationship. The website further selects matches to the first user among the matches bearing a facial resemblance to the user based on complementary styles, values and compatible personalities. The website is accessed directly, through social networking sites or through mobile applications on smart phones and other handheld computing devices. The mobile application notifies the website where the user is and informs the user if any matching users are nearby or in the same location. If no matches are available in the location, the user photographs new acquaintances using the handheld computing device and uploads the photos to determine if the new acquaintances bear a facial resemblance to the user.
US09342854B2
Methods and systems for identifying communities based on information propagation data are described. One of the methods includes receiving a social graph, which includes nodes and relationships between the nodes. The method further includes receiving a number of the communities to find within the social graph, receiving data regarding propagation of information between the nodes, and calculating a probability of formation of a link between a first one of the nodes and a second one of the nodes based on the data. The link provides a direction of flow of media between the first and second nodes. The method includes calculating a probability that media will be accessed by the second node based on the data. One of the communities includes the first node, the second node, and the link.
US09342850B2
Disclosed herein are representative embodiments of methods, apparatus, and systems for distributing a resource (such as electricity) using a resource allocation system. One of the disclosed embodiments is a method for generating a bid value for purchasing electricity in a market-based resource allocation system. In this embodiment, a desired performance value indicative of a user's desired performance level for an electrical device is received. Price information from an electricity futures market is received. A bid value for purchasing electricity from a local resource allocation market sufficient to operate the electrical device at the desired performance level is computed. In this embodiment, the computing is performed based at least in part on the desired performance value and based at least in part on the price information from the electricity futures market.
US09342849B2
Reducing near-duplicate entries in online shopping system search results. For each pair of entries in a set of entries, each entry characterizing a product in a data store of an online shopping system and each entry characterized by a set of attributes, determining a distance between the entries in the pair based on the attributes. Determining entry clusters from a graph formed with each determined distance as an edge between nodes representing the entries used to determine the distance, each entry cluster identified by cluster identifier. Returning an ordered list of results responsive to the query from the data store of an online shopping system, filtered as a function of at least one of the distance and the cluster identifier.
US09342842B2
Systems, methods, and non-transitory computer-readable storage media for mobile advertisement based on a context-switching context taxonomy. The system collects usage data associated with a device. Based on the usage data, the system determines a switching context channel and a switching context trend, wherein the switching context channel defines a user's movement through channel classifications, and wherein the switching context trend defines the user's activity over a period of time. Next, the system generates a classification model based on the switching context channel and the switching context trend. The system then books a campaign of invitational content based on the classification model.
US09342841B2
The present invention provides methods and systems for defining commercial transaction components; defining rules for mapping customer transactions into individual components; market segmentation in light of these individual definitions and bundling individual components of an offer into optimized packages for presentation and sale. A data processing system in accordance with one embodiment of the present invention, examines the commercial behavior of enrolled customers, breaks each of the constituent transactions into purchases of atom-level components; catalogues those components; extracts demographic information from said transactions and other sources; facilitates demographic studies of groups of such customers; optimizes offerings to such groups; and facilitates the consummation of those offers of sale. The processing system may also facilitate customers fiscal management through the communication of data necessary to practice the instant invention.
US09342836B2
Disclosed herein are systems and methods for implementing a PREDICT command with a predictive query interface including means for generating indices from a dataset of columns and rows, the indices representing probabilistic relationships between the rows and the columns of the dataset; storing the indices within a database of a host organization; exposing the database of the host organization via a request interface; receiving, at the request interface, a query for the database specifying at least (i) a PREDICT command term, (ii) one or more specified columns to be predicted, and (iii) one or more column name=value pairs specifying column names to be fixed and the values by which to fix them; and querying the database using the PREDICT command term and passing the one or more specified columns to be predicted and the one or more column name=value pairs to generate a representation of a joint conditional distribution of the one or more specified columns to be predicted fixed according to the column name=value pairs using the indices stored in the database. Other related embodiments are further disclosed.
US09342834B2
Methods and systems may operate to include displaying to a user a graphical user interface (GUI) to enable the user to combine multiple search criteria having variable parameters, used in searching of a database, to produce a predefined count of search results. User selections of the multiple search criteria, values for the variable parameters, and Boolean operations to combine the search criteria may be received from the user. As the received user selections change, a count of search results retrieved from the database, based on the user selections, may be dynamically displayed. Additional methods and systems are disclosed.
US09342828B2
A consumer can receive a new credit application at their mobile device. The consumer can complete and electronically transmit the credit application via a mobile application on their mobile device. A transaction processing system can receive the credit application and electronically pass it along to the financial institution issuing the credit for a determination on the credit application. An approval or denial can be electronically received by the transaction processing system from the financial institution. If approved, the transaction processing system can forward the approval along with the new credit account information and a code or other device to allow the consumer to immediately use the new credit account. The mobile device can receive the approval via the mobile application as well as any coupons associated with the new account and can provide the consumer with a mechanism to immediately purchase items with the newly approved credit account.
US09342823B2
Described herein are networks and related devices and methods for facilitating the electronic transfer of funds and electronic purchases between consumers, merchants, and other parties. Also facilitated by the principles described herein is the electronic transfer of funds or payments between individuals. The disclosed principles provide for the funds of a user's account to never leave his original financial account until the financial transaction takes place. Thus, no special accounts within the payment system are required to be opened, maintained, or funded by a user. Instead, funds are simply transferred to or from a user's associated financial account by the financial institution maintaining that account and in accordance with instructions from the network. Thus, the present disclosure provides for fund transfers and purchases between parties in a secure, efficient, and the user-friendly manner. The disclosed principles provide for such transactions using, in some embodiments, portable devices, which may be dedicated devices associated with the disclosed network, or available consumer devices configured to operate with the network.
US09342814B2
A system comprises a database configured to store a presentation, the presentation having a presentation identifier and comprising a sequence of discrete presentation items, a first discrete presentation item of the plurality being associated with first content with first content type and a second discrete presentation item of the sequence being associated with second content of a second content type. A presenter interface is configured to receive viewer identification information identifying a viewer to which the presentation is to be made accessible. An access controller is configured to create an access credential using both the presentation identifier and the viewer identification information, the access credential to enable access to the presentation by a viewer computer system. A tracker configured to generate access history data pertaining to access by the viewer computer system to each of the sequence of discrete presentation items. The presenter interface is further configured to present the access history data to a presenter computer system.
US09342811B2
A method for fulfilling inventory requests includes receiving an inventory request requesting an inventory item and selecting the requested inventory item from an inventory holder. The method further includes storing the requested inventory item in an order holder associated with the inventory request and moving the order holder to a storage space. In addition, the method includes detecting a triggering event and in response to detecting the triggering event, retrieving the order holder from the storage space.
US09342810B2
Asset reconciliation is facilitated by dynamically determining and applying a scan context to asset-describing tag data. Tag data representative of assets are received from RFID tags. A working scan context defining a scope of coverage of assets to be included in an asset reconciliation is dynamically determined based on the received tag data. Additional tag data representative of additional assets are received, and the dynamically determined working scan context is applied to the additional tag data to automatically identifying which assets of the additional assets are to be included in the asset reconciliation. Assets included in the scope of coverage of the working scan context are included in the asset reconciliation, and assets not included in the scope of coverage of the working scan context are not included in the asset reconciliation.
US09342806B2
A method and system for method for automated work project management. The methods and systems described herein provides for a total end-to-end business solution that will receive a data relating to a new work project, allow dispatching a job in a territory to a desired worker, allow quality assurance to be included as part of the dispatch, automatically track worker time and generate an invoice for the project, and provide analytics and feedback to the business on improving its product or service.
US09342805B2
Exemplary systems and methods are directed to automated performance of a plant process in a control system included in a production management system. The control system including a processor that is configured with integration model code for executing an integration model. The processor is configured to integrate various software systems by establishing a connection to an enterprise resource planning system and exchange information between the plant process and a business process such that production data are received from the processes substantially in real time and an updated status of a production order is received continuously. The integration model includes placeholders associated with variables for at least one of events, devices and plants, placeholders associated with functions to be executed, functionalities which link the variables and call up the functions, mappings of parameters between the software systems to be linked, and requests for loading information from one software system to another.
US09342798B2
Methods, systems, and apparatus, including computer programs encoded on one or more computer storage devices, for training predictive models. Multiple training data records are received that each include an input data portion and an output data portion. A training data type is determined that corresponds to the training data. For example, a training data type can be determined by inputting the output data portions into one or more trained predictive classifiers. In other example, the training data type can be determined by comparison of the output data portions to data formats. Based on the determined training data type, a set of training functions are identified that are compatible with the training data of the determined training data type. The training data and the identified set of training functions are used to train multiple predictive models.
US09342777B2
Techniques that enable a device to advertise its mode of operation using an RFID tag attached to the device. Techniques are provided for programmatically controlling an RFID tag. An RFID tag attached to a device is programmatically enabled or disabled depending upon the mode(s) of operation of the device. The RFID tag is able to transmit a signal when enabled and not able to transmit a signal when disabled. Using such a controllable RFID tag, a device can efficiently indicate or advertise its mode of operation to an RFID reader or sensor.
US09342775B2
A dual mode detection device provides both radio frequency identification and electronic article surveillance functionality. The device includes a dual mode microchip including a logic circuit and a non-volatile memory, the dual mode microchip having an electronic article surveillance (EAS) capability and a radio frequency identification (RFID) capability. An antenna is operatively coupled to the microchip for operation of the RFID capability. A coil is operatively coupled to the microchip and a capacitor is integrated into the microchip such that the coil resonates at a specific frequency, wherein exceeding a breakdown voltage of the capacitor alters a state of a memory location in the non-volatile memory.
US09342768B2
A virtual displaying method of a three-dimensional image for displaying at least one image of a plurality of images configuring a virtual three-dimensional image providing a three-dimensional visualization through a lens layer having a plurality of lenses includes applying a deterioration processing to the at least one image, and displaying, in a display section, an obtained image by the deterioration processing.
US09342763B2
An image processing apparatus includes an operation unit having a hardware key for accepting a user operation and a light emitting device corresponding to the hardware key. A display unit displays an operation screen based on content obtained from a web server. A control unit determines whether the content includes a description for instructing operation to transmit data input via the operation screen to the web server, and causes the light emitting device to emit light in response to having determined that the content includes the description. A transmission unit transmits the data input via the operation screen to the web server when the hardware key is operated by a user while the operation screen is being displayed based on the content including the description.
US09342761B2
Swinging open the upstream-side cover part (31) and downstream-side cover part (32) of the check scanning apparatus (1) on a common support pivot (33) opens a U-shaped check transportation path (5). The check transportation path (5) can be opened with a simple single-action operation to remove checks (4) jammed in the check transportation path (5) and for maintenance of the magnetic head (84) and contact image sensors (82 and 83). When the task is completed, the open check transportation path (5) can also be returned to the original closed position by a simple single-action operation. If only those parts that require maintenance are exposed when the check transportation path is open, tasks that require opening the transportation path can be done without damaging other parts and without soiling the operator's fingers.
US09342758B2
The present disclosure introduces a method and an apparatus for classifying images. Classification image features of an image for classification are extracted. Based on a similarity relationship between each classification image feature and one or more visual words in a pre-generated visual dictionary, each classification image feature is quantified by multiple visual words in the visual dictionary and a similarity coefficient between each classification image feature and each of the visual words is determined. Based on the similarity coefficient of each visual word that corresponds to different classification image features, a weight of each visual word is determined to establish a classification visual word histogram of the image for classification. The classification visual word histogram is input into an image classifier that is trained by sample visual word histograms arising from multiple sample images. An output result is used to determine a classification of the image for classification.
US09342754B2
A method including segmenting an image into different segments, where the segmenting is based at least partially upon an estimate of blur of areas of the image; and changing the segmenting of two or more of the sections based, at least partially, upon color in the image.
US09342750B2
A method and an apparatus for detecting straight line information by Hough transform are provided, in which voting computation according to Hough transform is performed only with respect to certain pixels, while the votes of the rest pixels are calculated using the votes of the neighborhood pixels, thereby reducing overhead of voting computation and also increasing hourly throughput.
US09342747B2
A vehicle driver assistance apparatus is provided for a vehicle. The vehicle driver assistance apparatus comprises an image capture device arranged to capture image data which is representative of an object in vicinity of the vehicle. The vehicle driver assistance apparatus further comprises an electronic controller arranged to (i) process the captured image data to identify an edge line associated with the object, and (ii) process the captured image data further based upon the identified edge line to identify a distance between the vehicle and the edge line of the object.
US09342746B1
A method to estimate range to a moving rigid body from a moving platform using a monocular camera. The method does not require the camera platform to maneuver in order to estimate range. The method relies on identification and tracking of certain principal features of the object. The method extracts a silhouette of an object from an obtained image and identifies two principal linear components of the silhouette. A normalized distance between the point of intersection of the two linear components and a centroid of the silhouette is computed, compared to a data set and used to determine a direction of movement of the object.
US09342743B2
Method for supporting an operator in measuring a part of an object, comprising the steps of equipping the operator with an electronic device and with a dimension measuring apparatus. The device comprises a see-though head mounted display, a camera, and a digital processor. An image of the object is captured with the camera so that the processor recognizes or identifies the part of the object in the image. The method further comprises the steps of obtaining a model of said part and displaying on the display an indication of the dimension that is intended to be measured. A value of the dimension measured by the dimension measuring apparatus is acquired in the processor that will process it according to the model.
US09342738B2
According to the imaging device, the control unit divides the subject in the photographed image into a plurality of regions, corrects the sizes of the respective regions such that a ratio of vertical width to horizontal width of the respective divided regions and ratios of sizes between the respective reaches match prescribed target ratios. The control unit then generates a region-optimized image by connecting the plurality of corrected regions.
US09342722B1
Mechanisms for verification of an item. A controller reads out signals from an antenna array comprising a plurality of individual antenna elements that is configured to overlay an item that generates radio frequency (RF) emissions. The signals quantify the RF emissions received by antenna elements from the item. The controller generates an ad hoc RF emission signature based on the signals. A predetermined RF emission signature associated with the item is accessed. The ad hoc RF emission signature and the predetermined RF emission signature are compared to determine a verification status, and the controller performs a verification action based on the verification status.
US09342721B2
A system and method for verifying the occurrence of an environmental condition is disclosed. Rather than store information concerning the occurrence and/or success of the sterilization process, the present invention modifies the wireless transmission characteristics of the device. In some embodiments, the bandwidth of the wireless transceiver is altered as a result of undergoing sterilization. In other embodiments, the resonance frequency of the circuit is affected. In other embodiments, one or more of these parameters are affected based on other environmental conditions, such as shock or vibration.
US09342720B2
In one example embodiment, an end device includes a memory configured to store function information regarding at least one predefined function and tag information regarding at least one electronic tag that is associated with the at least one predefined function; a reader configured to read tag identification information received from a detected electronic tag located within a predetermined range of the end device; and a processor configured to select a predefined function from among the at least one predefined function based on the stored tag information and the read tag identification information and perform the selected predefined function.
US09342718B2
According to one embodiment, a memory device includes a memory, a first controller, a wireless antenna, a memory unit, and a second controller. The first controller controls the memory. The memory unit is capable of operating by the wireless antenna. The second controller is capable of operating by the wireless antenna, reads data from the memory unit when receiving a read instruction, and outputs the data using the wireless antenna.
US09342717B2
A tamper detection system and method which uses a reader and one or more tags to detect tampering near a card reader slot or any other device subject to tampering. An example tamper detection method includes transmitting a signal to a tag adjacent a device susceptible to tampering, and setting an alarm condition when no reply signal or an incorrect reply signal is received in response to the signal.
US09342714B2
A segmented 2D matrix symbol may be formed by dividing data into a plurality of segments, separately encoding the plurality of segments as corresponding arrays of cells, and arranging the arrays of cells in an abutting relationship. The segmented symbol may be reproduced, for example by receiving a bitmap corresponding to the formed symbol followed by printing; by copying a printed symbol; or by scanning a printed symbol and printing a copy. The reproduced symbol may be scanned, and data from only decoded segments, for example audio data, may be output.
US09342708B2
Concepts and technologies are disclosed herein for management of application access. A security management application can be configured to set access controls and/or other security settings relating to application programs. Additionally, or alternatively, particular functions and/or functionality associated with application programs may be individually configured. Settings reflecting the access controls and/or other security settings can be stored and can be applied at the user device. The security management application also can be configured to determine if security settings and/or access controls are to be overridden. Data can be collected from various sensors and/or other sources to use in determining if particular application programs and/or application program functionality is to be allowed. Thus, normally disallowed activities can be allowed in emergency conditions, when in a business location associated with a particular device, and/or at other times and/or under other circumstances.
US09342704B2
Enabling access control caches for co-processors to be charged using a VMX-nonroot instruction. As a result a transition to VMX-root is not needed, saving the cycles involved in such a transition.
US09342695B2
Secured automated or semi-automated systems are provided herein. In one embodiment, a sensor system includes a sensor, a legacy computing environment that is configured to communicate with the sensor and process sensor raw data output, and transmit the processed sensor output to a first network node over the network, and a trusted computing environment configured to receive raw sensor output directly from the sensor and transmit the raw sensor output to an additional network node or the first network node over the network.
US09342691B2
Blocking high-risk IP connections in real-time while allowing tailoring of an acceptable risk profile to match the security requirements of network resources. By acquiring IP threat information about IP addresses, including risk confidence levels, assigning weighting factor values corresponding to various characteristics of the IP addresses, and mathematically transforming the risk confidence levels using the weighting factor values, traffic from IP addresses posing unacceptable levels of risk is blocked. Further, mathematically transforming risk confidence level to a user-defined acceptable risk level permits allowing traffic from the IP addresses having an acceptable level of risk.
US09342687B2
Detecting synthetic keystrokes by maintaining a record of one or more keystrokes of physical keyboard input detected by an operating system of a computer, detecting a keystroke received at a computer application process that is executed by the computer, determining that the keystroke received at the computer application process is absent from the record of keystrokes of physical keyboard input, and identifying the keystroke received by the computer application process as being a synthetic keystroke.
US09342680B2
According to an aspect of the invention, a security token is conceived, in particular a smart card, comprising a tactile sensing user interface, wherein said tactile sensing user interface is adapted to capture a stream of position data corresponding to a sequence of positions of a finger engaging with said tactile sensing user interface and representing a stream of input data for a data processing device, said security token being adapted to transmit said stream of position data to a host system for further processing.
US09342656B2
The invention refers to a computer-implemented method and system for loading a loadware file on a CANopen device. The CANopen device comprises an electronic data sheet, which is extended to comprise a load object. After reading the load object with the load parameters, the respective loadware file is located, selected and accessed. Accessing the loadware file is done by applying the read load parameters.
US09342648B2
Various embodiments include computer-implemented methods, computer program products and systems for modeling at least one feature in an integrated circuit (IC) layout for an inter-layer effect. In some cases, approaches include a computer-implemented method of modeling at least one feature in an IC layout for an inter-level effect, the method including: building a set of shape measurement regions each connected with an edge of the at least one feature; determining a set of shape parameters for each shape measurement region in the set of shape measurement regions; and creating a column vector representing each shape measurement region using the set of shape parameters, the column vector representing the inter-layer effect of the at least one feature, wherein the inter-layer effect includes a physical relationship between the at least one feature and another feature on a distinct level of the IC layout.
US09342647B2
An integrated circuit design method comprises extracting parallel-connected parameters associated with circuit components of an integrated circuit (IC) based on a determination that the circuit components are connected in parallel. The method also comprises generating a parallel netlist that describes the circuit components, the parallel netlist comprising the parallel-connected parameters. The parallel-connected parameters are taken into consideration by a simulation that determines the performance capabilities of the IC.
US09342645B2
A method for testing a circuit specification after changing a first version of the circuit specification into a second version of the circuit specification due to a revision of the circuit specification includes receiving a first set of mutations that can be or have been inserted into the first version of the circuit specification and a second set of mutations that can be inserted into the second version of the circuit specification computer program. Changed and unchanged mutations are identified in the first set of mutations and in the second set of mutations based on a comparison between the second version of the circuit specification and against the first version of the circuit specification. Information configured to test the second version of the circuit specification is generated using at least a portion of the identified mutations classified as the changed mutations.
US09342644B1
A semiconductor integrated circuit comprises: a transistor region having a center line; a first block arranged in one side of the center line of the transistor region, and comprising a plurality of first and second groups each having a plurality of first and second segment transistors constituting first and second transistors of a differential amplifier; and a second block arranged in the other side of the center line, and having an arrangement corresponding to the arrangement of the first and second groups of the first block.
US09342631B2
A collaborative method of generating a design representation of an object between a first user and a second user is described. The method comprises: designating, at a first user terminal, a set of design object variables relating to different aspects of the design representation; specifying, at the first user terminal, constraints for the set of design object variables, the constraints comprising a range of first user designated values for each of the designated object variables of the set; receiving at a second user terminal, the set of design object variables, the constraints for the set and the design representation via a communication network; enabling, at the second user terminal, manipulation of the design object representation, the enabling step comprising enabling selection of a particular value of at least one of the designated object variables only within the constrained value range specified by the first user; and presenting on the second user terminal a graphical representation of the design object representation as specified by the second user selection.
US09342628B1
A combined configuration rules-attribute configuration system uses an integrated configuration model to efficiently identify and attribute prioritize valid configuration answers. Submitting an attribute-based configuration query to the combined configuration rules-attribute configuration system allows the query to be answered in a single step. The combined configuration rules and attribute data guide product configuration processing and minimize configuration processing by, for example, calculating only the valid configuration answers that are candidates for the preferred valid answer(s). Thus, the combined configuration rules-attribute configuration system can minimize the number of valid configuration answers to be considered for presentation to a client system or other user of the combined configuration rules-attribute configuration system.
US09342623B2
In one embodiment, a method includes maintaining access to a data store of information corresponding to nodes and edges; receiving a user-generated character string comprising one or more characters of text entered by a user in an input form as they are entered by the user; searching the stored information for matches between the user-generated character string and existing nodes; determining whether or not a match between the user-generated character string and an existing node exists; and when it is determined that at least one match exists, generating an edge between the node corresponding to the user and the node for which the best match is determined; and when it is determined that no match between the user-generated character string and an existing node exists, generating a new node based on the user-generated character string, and generating an edge between the node corresponding to the user and the new node.
US09342621B1
Methods, systems, and apparatus, including computer program products, for generating or using augmentation queries. In one aspect, subject phrases for detection in content are identified. Each phrase has a corresponding cardinality of terms. First hash sets for each of the subject phrases are generated, each first hash set including first hashes of bigram term subsets for each of the phrases. Sub-phrase scores for each of the hashes based on the cardinality of each phrase are assigned. The sub-phrase scores a used to detect the subject phrases in hashes of portions of received content. Other implementations of this aspect include corresponding systems, apparatus, and computer program products.
US09342619B2
Described herein are techniques related to a renderer-assisted webpage navigating tool. This Abstract is submitted with the understanding that it will not be used to interpret or limit the scope and meaning of the claims. A renderer-assisted webpage navigating tool implements keyboard shortcuts that allow a user to navigate within a webpage based on the physical locations and physical relationships of webpage graphical elements relative to each other.
US09342617B1
A webpage may be downloaded by a browser at a computing device. Such downloaded webpage may be associated with a reference to a browser identifier file. The browser may be directed to access the referenced browser identifier file. As a result, the browser may automatically check a local browser cache for the referenced browser identifier file. A request regarding the referenced browser identifier file may be sent over a communication network to an identifier server. Such request may be indicative of whether the referenced browser identifier file is found in the local browser cache. A response may be received from the identifier server. Such response may include the referenced browser identifier file when the referenced browser identifier file (or a current version thereof) is not found in the local browser cache. Alternatively, the response may include an indicator when the referenced browser identifier file is found in the local browser cache. The contents of the referenced browser identifier file may be made available to the browser and other related applications.
US09342595B2
Disclosed herein are systems, methods, and non-transitory computer-readable storage media for generating a visualization of video content. The method includes receiving video content, receiving user input associated with the received video content, extracting each frame in the video content, processing the extracted frames based on the received user input, and outputting a still image including each of the processed extracted frames positioned sequentially. The still image can include a histogram of sound data associated with the processed extracted frames. The user input can indicate an image adjustment to be applied when processing the extracted frames, a number of frames of video content per column, a paper size, and/or a frame size. The frames can be positioned sequentially in columns and/or rows. The image can be output as an image file or on a printable medium. The image can contain more than one video clip, such as films in a trilogy.
US09342592B2
A method for normalizing raw titles to canonical titles is described. The method includes designating a set of canonical titles, generating a set of n-grams for each canonical title, assigning a set of attributes to each n-gram, assigning a set of labels to each of the attributes, and storing the labeled canonical title and labeled n-grams in a database. In some examples, a new title may be mapped to an existing canonical title in the database by generating a set of n-grams for the new title, looking up the n-grams in the database of canonical titles, retrieving the set of labels assigned to n-grams in the database that match n-grams from the new title, and assigning those labels to the corresponding attributes of the new title. The new title may then be mapped to a canonical title on the basis of similarly labeled attributes.
US09342589B2
A data classifier system of the present invention selects a plurality of classifications correlated to data groups so as to output classification axes based on hierarchical classifications and data groups. The data classifier system includes a basic category accumulation means, a classification axis candidate reduction means and a priority calculation means. The basic category accumulation means accumulates classifications serving as basic categories used for desired classifications in advance. The classification axis candidate reduction means selects a plurality of classifications from among classifications descendant from each basic category so as to create classification axis candidates, thus reducing classification axis candidates subjected to calculations based on data quantity of classifications and hierarchical distances of classifications. The priority calculation means calculates priority in displaying classification axis candidates, the number of which is reduced by the classification axis candidate reduction means.
US09342586B2
Methods, systems, and articles of manufacture for managing and using shareable search lists are provided herein. A method includes generating a search list associated with a first user, wherein said search list comprises an identification of one or more sites pertaining to a given topic; managing said search list in accordance with (i) one or more instructions provided by said first user, and (ii) one or more access control policies associated with one or more additional users; and sharing said search list associated with said first user with one or more additional users based on the one or more access control policies associated with one or more additional users.
US09342585B2
The present invention provides a text searching method including the steps of: extracting initials of corresponding words in a text to be searched according to a predetermined extracting rule to form an initial character string; creating mapping relation between the extracted initial character string and the text to be searched; performing matching between the initial character string and an abbreviation character string to be searched for; and determining an expanded phrase corresponding to the abbreviation character string to be searched for and a location of the expanded phrase in the text to be searched according to a result of the matching and the mapping relation. The invention further provides a text searching device for implementing the method and a text processor including the text searching device. With the invention, a searching function can be implemented precisely and efficiently to locate an expanded phrase of a phrase abbreviation in the text to be searched, even if a user only knows the phrase abbreviation but can not completely spell the expanded phrase thereof.
US09342581B2
A system may provide generation of a file to declare one or more persistent classes, the file formatted according to a markup language syntax, and generation, based on the file, of code of an object-oriented language to declare the one or more persistent classes and to describe a structure of each of the one or more persistent classes. Further aspects may include calling a constructor to register an interface to a description of a persistent class, accessing the registered interface to determine the structure of the persistent class, and processing an instance of the persistent class based on the determined structure.
US09342576B2
An information processing device is connected to multiple information processing terminals wherein multiple types of expressions exhibited by a user during playback of content are detected, evaluation of each played-back content is obtained, of the detected plurality of types of expressions a predetermined expression serving as a high evaluation index indicated by the user during playback of high evaluation content is identified, and the expression information serving as a identified high evaluation index and the information expressing evaluation as to each content are transmitted. The information device includes a receiving unit to receive expression information serving as the high evaluation index from multiple information processing terminals; a user identifying unit to identify a user indicating an expression of similar high evaluation index for the same content; a recommended content identifying unit to identify recommended content having a high evaluation to other similar users; and a transmitting unit.
US09342572B2
Methods and apparatus, including computer program products, implementing and using techniques for automatic workflow processing in a workflow processing computer system. A data management system support module receives a data management activity description, determines a set of set references associated with the data management activity, determines a set of data sources associated with the set of set references within a data management system, determines whether the data management system includes infrastructure for accessing the references and for accessing the data sources, in response to determining that the infrastructure is not included, automatically creates the infrastructure from information in a metadata repository coupled to the data management system, replaces in the data management activity description references to set references and references to data sources by references to the infrastructure in the data management system, and delivers the data management activity description for execution by the system.
US09342570B2
A method, system and computer program product for identifying reference data tables in an Extract-Transform-Load (ETL) process, by identifying, by operation of one or more computer processors, at least a first reference data operator in the process, wherein the first reference data operator references one or more tables and evaluating at least a first table referenced by the reference data operator to determine whether the first table is a reference data table by assigning a score to the first table, wherein the score is indicative of the likelihood that the first table is a reference data table and wherein a reference data table contains a set of values that describes other data.
US09342565B1
An example device includes a memory and one or more processors configured to receive an indication of a first set of characters, responsive to determining that a predetermined amount of time has elapsed since the indication of the first set of characters was received, execute a query generated based on the first set of characters, to determine a typing speed associated with the first set of characters, and to generate, based on the predetermined amount of time and the typing speed, an adjusted amount of time, the adjusted amount of time being different from the predetermined amount of time. The processor(s) are further configured to receive an indication of a second set of characters, and responsive to determining that the adjusted amount of time has elapsed since the indication of the second set of characters was received, execute a second query generated based on the second set of characters.
US09342563B2
A search engine may perform a search for a user search query over a number of possible search categories. For example, the search query may be performed for general web documents, images, and news documents. The search engine ranks categories based on the search query and/or the documents returned for each category and presents the search results to the user by category. Higher ranking categories may be presented more prominently than lower ranking categories.
US09342561B2
Mechanisms for ingesting a document from a corpus of documents for use by a Question and Answer (QA) system are provided. The mechanisms receive a document from a corpus of documents and generate one or more titles for the document based on an analysis of content of the document. The mechanisms generate score values for the titles based on a measure of a degree to which the titles represent the content of the document. The mechanisms store the score values in association with the titles as document metadata associated with the document and output the document and document metadata to the QA system. The QA system utilizes the document metadata and document to generate a candidate answer to an input question.
US09342556B2
A method, software and/or computer system for representing a set of SPARQL queries. The set of SPARQL queries are converting into an RDF representation of the set of SPARQL queries (that is, a SPARQL RDF graph). The SPARQL RDF graph is applied to a target RDF graph to yield a transformed target representing the responses to the set of queries, as an ontology or as text.
US09342555B2
A view schema is generated from a view definition, wherein the view schema includes one or more relational views that are created by translating one or more object queries in the view definition into one or more relational queries. A report design schema is generated from the view definition by: creating one or more report tables that correspond to the one or more relational views of the view schema and extending the one or more report tables with one or more primary key constraints and one or more foreign key constraints. A reporting model is generated by reverse engineering the report design schema, wherein the reporting model includes the one or more primary key constraints and the one or more foreign key constraints. A report is generated using the reporting model, wherein the report includes the one or more primary key constraints and the one or more foreign key constraints.
US09342552B2
Particular embodiments include a method comprising accessing location data representing a first location of a first user wherein the first location corresponds to geographic coordinates, retrieving image data defining a graphical map from a remote server based on the first location accessing a search query inputted by the first user, retrieving one or more second locations in response to the search query, where the one or more second locations correspond to geographic coordinates, and displaying a first view comprising a list of the one or more second locations overlaying at least a portion of the graphical map, wherein the graphical map includes indicators for the first location and at least one of the one or more second locations in accordance with their respective geographic coordinates.
US09342549B2
Techniques of implementing partition level operations with concurrent activities are disclosed. A first operation can be performed on a first partition of a table of data. The first partition can be one of a plurality of partitions of the table, where each partition has a plurality of rows. A first partition level lock can be applied to the first partition for a period in which the first operation is being performed on the first partition, thereby preventing any operation other than the first operation from being performed on the first partition during the period the first partition level lock is being applied to the first partition. A second operation can be performed on a second partition of the table at a point in time during which the first operation is being performed on the first partition.
US09342539B2
A database manager comprises: a detector detecting a connection of an external database which comprises media files, a database file system comprising a media identifier comprising a file or directory path name and an identification on the location of the media file on the external database, and metadata for each of the media files; a database synchronizer reading and storing, as a first step, part of the database file system and, as a second step, part of the metadata when the at least a portion of the database file system is read; and a search request processor processing a search request for a media file in parallel with the second step, wherein the search request processor provides a search result based on the media identifier from the database file system, even when the metadata for the media file is not yet read and stored in the second step.
US09342531B2
Various embodiments provide a method of managing and preventing conflicted copies of a content item. For example, as changes are made to a content item, either by multiple users simultaneously or by a single user utilizing multiple devices, conflicted copies can be inadvertently created. These conflicted copes are multiple copies of the same content item where each copy may separately contain unique changes. Heuristics can be used to help users more easily avoid or manage these conflicted copies. In one example, a user could be notified and shown the difference between copies to either accept or reject changes. Further, users could also be notified when modifying a content item on a device that has not been synchronized in a determined period of time, or when the content item is known to be modified but the changes have yet to be synchronized to the device.
US09342525B1
Example apparatus and methods improve deduplication efficiency for a deduplication application or process. A first blocklet repository may have been created according to a first deduplication approach that was optimized for a first set of conditions. Example apparatus and methods create a second blocklet repository from the first blocklet repository by deduplicating the first blocklet repository using a second deduplication approach that is optimized for a second set of conditions. While the first blocklet repository may have been appropriate for the first set of conditions, the second blocklet repository may be appropriate for the second set of conditions. For example, conditions that exist for an immature repository or during ingest may be different than conditions that exist for a mature repository or for applications that use a repository rather than build a repository. The first and second repositories may reside on separate deduplication apparatus.
US09342519B2
Described herein are systems and methods for a media application including an interactive grid display. A method may comprise displaying a grid including a central hub and a plurality of spokes connected to the central hub, inserting a first media element on a first spoke of the grid, the first media element including a first timestamp and activating a first media file, inserting a second media element on the first spoke of the grid, the second media element including a second timestamp and activating a second media file, wherein the second media file is related to the first media file, comparing the first timestamp to the second timestamp, and arranging the presentation of the first and second media elements along the first spoke based on the compared first and second timestamps.
US09342518B1
An association between a set of data and a pre-storage operation is obtained where the set of data is defined in a manner that permits the set of data to include more than one unit of data. In response to receiving data which meets the definition of the set of data, the pre-storage operation is performed on the received data and the output of the pre-storage operation is stored.
US09342500B2
An object memory management system (OMMS) provides a communications link between a plurality of various types of inputs and a plurality of customers who would normally receive one or more of the various types of inputs. Included among the input signal devices are GPS, infrared (IR), photo cell, range finder, and other type sensors, and signal sources such as data bit stream, pulsed digital signals, verbal and visual signals. Included among the customers are artificial intelligence (AI) and software service providers. The system recognizes a received incoming signal, converts it into a signal the designated customer can recognize and sends it to the designated customer. Signals are processed on a first-in-first-out (FIFO) basis unless a priority designation is received. Complex incoming signals (verbal and visual) require pattern recognition wherein an object database is utilized to understand such incoming signals.
US09342488B2
Apparatus for optimizing the description of contents in a layout document is disclosed. The apparatus comprises: a parsing unit, for parsing the content of an original layout document to obtain text graphic unit data; an identification unit, for identifying text properties of each character of the text graphic unit data; a text node classification unit, for classifying characters of the text graphic unit data according to the text properties, and saving characters with the same text properties to the same text node along with the same text properties; a text content node classification unit, for, with respect to characters saved in each text node, saving characters on the same line or column. A terminal and a method for optimizing the description of contents in a layout document are disclosed.
US09342486B2
Described is a technology for use with general discrete Fourier transforms (DFTs) performed on a graphics processing unit (GPU). The technology is implemented in a general library accessed through GPU-independent APIs. The library handles complex and real data of any size, including for non-power-of-two data sizes. In one implementation, the radix-2 Stockham formulation of the fast Fourier transform (FFT) is used to avoid computationally expensive bit reversals. For non-power of two data sizes, a Bluestein z-chirp algorithm may be used.
US09342476B2
An image processing apparatus that outputs images includes: a storage unit that stores therein a printer driver, in which configurations and functions related to image outputs are described in a text format, and device information indicating configurations related to image outputs in the image processing apparatus; a receiving unit that receives, from an information processing apparatus connected via a communication line, a transmission request message that requests transmission of the printer driver; a reflecting unit that reflects the device information on the printer driver when the receiving unit receives the transmission request message; and a transmitting unit that transmits the printer driver, on which the device information is reflected by the reflecting unit, to the information processing apparatus.
US09342472B2
PRD (Physical Region Descriptor) pre-fetch methods for DMA (Direct Memory Access) unit are provided. When a DMA out transaction for a memory is performed, it is determined whether a first queue is full or nearly full, wherein the first queue is used to store data corresponding to the DMA out transaction. If the first queue is full or nearly full, at least one PRD entry is read from a first PRD table, and stored to a first cache. When a DMA in transaction for the memory is performed, it is determined whether a second queue is empty or nearly empty, wherein the second queue is used to store data corresponding to the DMA in transaction. If the second queue is empty or nearly empty, at least one PRD entry is read from a second PRD table, and stored to a second cache.
US09342470B2
Methods for enabling software from a storage-capable device including the steps of: loading, by a host system operationally connected to the storage-capable device, software from an authenticatable storage area residing in the storage-capable device; validating the software; and installing the validated software, wherein the validated software provides an interface between the host system and the storage-capable device. In some embodiments, the software is enabling software, the method further including the step of loading, by the host system, device-functionality software from the authenticatable storage area. In some embodiments, the method further includes the steps of: validating the device-functionality software; and enabling the validated device-functionality software. In some embodiments, the method further includes the steps of prior to the step of loading the software, executing a probe command in the host system; and returning, by the probe command, a list of device functional units residing in the storage-capable device.
US09342466B2
A method for encrypting data on a disk drive using self encrypting drive is provided. The method includes encryption of data chunks of a computing device. The method further includes associating the encrypted data chunks with encryption key indexes of the computing device. Moreover, the method further includes receiving the encryption key indexes for given logical block addresses of the data chunks. The method further includes determining the encryption keys to be used to encrypt the data chunks based on the encryption key indexes of the data chunks to the disk drive.
US09342465B1
In one aspect, a method includes assigning a base key to a storage array, assigning a volume auxiliary key to each volume in the storage array, for each volume in the storage array that is encrypted, encrypting every block of a backend using the base key and one of a full hash auxiliary key or a short hash handle auxiliary key and for each volume in the storage array that is encrypted, encrypting an address-to-hash table of a volume using the base key and the volume auxiliary key.
US09342451B2
A processor management method includes setting a master mechanism in a given processor among multiple processors, where the master mechanism manages the processors; setting a local master mechanism and a virtual master mechanism in each of processors other than the given processor among the processors, where the local master mechanism and the virtual master mechanism manage each of the processors; and notifying by the master mechanism, the processors of an offset value of an address to allow a shared memory managed by the master mechanism to be accessed as a continuous memory by the processors.
US09342448B2
A queued, byte addressed system and method for accessing flash memory and other non-volatile storage class memory, and potentially other types of non-volatile memory (NVM) storage systems. In a host device, e.g., a standalone or networked computer, having attached NVM device storage integrated into a switching fabric wherein the NVM device appears as an industry standard OFED™ RDMA verbs provider. The verbs provider enables communicating with a ‘local storage peer’ using the existing OpenFabrics RDMA host functionality. User applications issue RDMA Read/Write directives to the ‘local peer (seen as a persistent storage) in NVM enabling NVM memory access at byte granularity. The queued, byte addressed system and method provides for Zero copy NVM access. The methods enables operations that establish application private Queue Pairs to provide asynchronous NVM memory access operations at byte level granularity.
US09342443B2
Methods of mapping memory regions to processes based on thermal data of memory regions are described. In some embodiments, a memory controller may receive a memory allocation request. The memory allocation request may include a logical memory address. The method may further include mapping the logical memory address to an address in a memory region of the memory system based on thermal data for memory regions of the memory system. Additional methods and systems are also described.
US09342441B2
A method of establishing traceability for embedded software systems. A design code database is provided for an embedded software system. A test suite database including a plurality of test cases is structured for testing design code of the embedded software system. The structuring of the test cases provides a correspondence from a respective test case to a respective portion of the design code. A processor receives a design code modification to the embedded software. An associated test case is identified for testing the modified design code being based on traceability data. The associated test case is revised to accommodate the modified design code. The modified test cases are integrated into the test suite. A traceability database establishes a one-to-one correspondence between the modified design coder and the modified test case is updated.
US09342440B2
A test coverage analysis method and corresponding apparatus are disclosed, wherein, by executing the program under test using one or more test cases, generating one or more heapdump files containing the call stack information of the program under test, and analyzing the call stack information in the one or more heapdump files, the coverage information of the one or more test cases in terms of functions in the program under test is obtained.
US09342439B2
A method and apparatus of a novel command coverage analyzer is disclosed. Combinations of commands, options, arguments, and values of a product are extracted, customer environment and uses are considered, and a more comprehensive and accurate quality of software process and metric is provided.
US09342438B2
Embodiments of the present teachings disclose method, system, and programs for data driven dynamic logging. Data is received by a logging system where the data is flagged for dynamic logging when one or more dynamic flagging level criteria are satisfied. Data is evaluated by a logging module wrapper, which determines whether to log the data using the default logging level or dynamic logging level, according to whether the data is flagged. A logging module logs information in a logging database according to the default logging level or dynamic logging level. Based on the logged information and detected abnormalities the dynamic flagging level and dynamic logging level are automatically or manually adjusted.
US09342428B2
A mobile terminal and a method for managing a file system thereof are provided. The method of managing a file system of a mobile terminal having a battery cover and a battery cover coupling unit includes sensing an interruption of contact at a portion of a contact area between the battery cover and the battery cover coupling unit, generating a metadata list including metadata on data to be synchronized from among data cached in a volatile memory, after the sensing of the interruption of contact at the preset portion, sensing an interruption of contact at another portion of the contact area between the battery cover and the battery cover coupling unit after the previous sensing, and storing the metadata of the metadata list in a non-volatile memory, if the interval between the sensing operations is less than or equal to a threshold value.
US09342427B2
A computer system that recognizes multi-function devices and associates functions with multi-function devices. Each multi-function device may be represented by a multi-function object, allowing tools, applications or other components within the computer to take actions relating to the entire device or relating to a function based on the association of that function with other functions in the same device. These actions include displaying information about devices, instead of or in addition to information about functions. Actions also include selecting functions based on proximity within a device. Functions may be associated with a multi-function device using a unique device identifier provided by the device or generated for the function based on a connection hierarchy between functions and the computer. Devices may be configured to provide the same identifier regardless of the transport over which the device is accessed.
US09342423B2
A method of controlling data transfers between a volatile memory and a non-volatile storage, the volatile memory being on a memory device operatively coupled to a computer system, the data transfers comprising: storing data from the volatile memory to the non-volatile storage when a power source of the computer system fails, the method comprising following re-establishment of the previously failed power source, the step of: selectively restoring data from the non-volatile storage to the volatile memory by a controller software after restart operations.
US09342416B2
A processor includes a plurality of processing sections, each of which executes a predetermined process. A plurality of fault detecting circuits are respectively provided for the plurality of processing sections, to detect a fault in one of the plurality of processing sections as a fault processing section to generate a fault detection signal. A fault monitoring and control section controls a normal processing section as at least one of the plurality of processing sections other than the fault processing section to execute a relieving process in response to the fault detection signal. The relieving process is determined based on a process load of the fault processing section, a process load of the normal processing section, and priority levels of processes to be executed by the fault processing section and the normal processing section.
US09342411B2
Maintaining high availability of objects for both read and write transactions. Secondary copies of cached objects are created and maintained on disks of a secondary caching node and in remote data storage. In response to an update request, the secondary copies of cached objects are updated. Secondary cached objects are synchronously invalidated in response to the update request, and the update is asynchronously propagated to a secondary caching node.
US09342389B2
An address is received. One or more neighbors associated with the received address is/are determined. One or more neighboring hot metrics is/are determined for the one or more neighbors associated with the received address. A hot metric for the received address is determined based at least in part on the neighboring hot metrics.
US09342388B1
Embodiments of the present invention provide methods, program products, and systems to increase efficiency in message oriented middleware. Embodiments of the present invention can, responsive to receiving from an application an open request for a queue alias of a queue manager, provide to the application target cache information which includes a target name and a change flag count associated with the queue alias. Embodiments of the present invention can, responsive to receiving a message from the application that includes respective target cache information including a target name and a change flag count, determine a target location, wherein if the change flag count of the received message matches a current change flag count of the queue alias, the determined target location is a target location associated with the received target name.
US09342373B2
Virtual machine management among networked servers coupled for data communications with a data communications network that includes a network device and a Virtual Machine Management Module (‘VMMM’), where VM management includes: monitoring, by the network device, network traffic of applications executing in virtual machines of the servers; determining, in dependence upon the monitored network traffic, whether a particular application's network traffic exceeds a predetermined threshold, the particular application executing in a particular virtual machine of a particular server; if the particular application's network traffic exceeds the predetermined threshold, allocating, by the VMMM, an additional virtual machine in a different server; and instantiating, by the VMMM, in the additional virtual machine at least one application.
US09342363B2
A system and method for latency assignment in a system having shared resources for performing jobs including computing a new resource price at each resource and sending the new resource price to a task controller in a task path that has at least one job running in the task path. A path price is computed for each task path of the task controller, if there is a critical time specified for the task. New deadlines are determined for the resources in a task path based on the resource price and the path price. The new deadlines are sent to the resources where the at least one job is running to improve system performance.
US09342360B2
A virtual machine (VM) migration from a source virtual machine monitor (VMM) to a destination VMM on a computer system. Each of the VMMs includes virtualization software, and one or more VMs are executed in each of the VMMs. The virtualization software allocates hardware resources in a form of virtual resources for the concurrent execution of one or more VMs and the virtualization software. A portion of a memory of the hardware resources includes hardware memory segments. A first portion of the memory segments is assigned to a source logical partition and a second portion is assigned to a destination logical partition. The source VMM operates in the source logical partition and the destination VMM operates in the destination logical partition. The first portion of the memory segments is mapped into a source VMM memory, and the second portion of the memory segments is mapped into a destination VMM memory.
US09342359B2
An information processing system includes two or more processors each of which can execute one or more instructions, an executability information storage unit in which executability information, which includes information specifying instructions as being executable or not executable by each of the two or more processors, can be stored for each of the two or more processors, and a control unit that, at the time of execution of a program, selects at least one processor for execution of one or more instructions necessary to execute the program, from among the two or more processors, with reference to the executability information, and causes the selected at least one processor to execute the instructions.
US09342351B1
In one aspect, a computer-implemented method provides more efficient outages for databases. The method may include intercepting a database transaction request prior to connection to the database subsystem and determining whether the transaction will finish before an expected drain time for the database object, the transaction being associated with the database object. The method may also include allowing the transaction to proceed when it is determined that the transaction will finish before the expected drain time and suspending the transaction otherwise. The transaction may be associated with the database object in a table so that only transactions associated with the database object are considered for suspension. In another aspect, the method may include determining which transactions running when a drain for the object is initiated and associating the running transactions with the database object in the table.
US09342350B2
The speed of task scheduling by a multitask OS is increased. A task processor includes a CPU, a save circuit, and a task control circuit. The CPU is provided with a processing register and an execution control circuit operative to load data from a memory into a processing register and execute a task in accordance with the data in the processing register. The save circuit is provided with a plurality of save registers respectively associated with a plurality of tasks. In executing a predetermined system call, the execution control circuit notifies the task control circuit as such. The task control circuit switches between tasks for execution upon receipt of the system call signal, by saving, in the save register associated with a task being executed, the data in the processing register, selecting a task to be executed next, and loading data in the save register associated with the selected task into the processing register.
US09342346B2
A method includes running a Virtual Machine (VM) on a first compute node in a plurality of compute nodes that communicate with one another over a communication network. The VM is migrated from the first compute node to a second compute node in the plurality by generating, for memory pages accessed by the VM, page transfer state of one or more local memory pages that are accessed locally on the first compute node, and of one or more externalized memory pages whose access is not confined to the first node. Based on the page transfer state, the migrated VM is provided with access to the memory pages, including both the local and the externalized memory pages, on the second compute node.
US09342341B2
Information indicating a location of a disk image of a virtual machine hosted on a server is received. The virtual machine is deactivated. The server is instructed to mount the disk image. A static route pointing to a selected network is added to a static routing table on a file system associated with the virtual machine. The server is instructed to dismount the disk image. The virtual machine is activated.
US09342340B2
A virtual runtime module that omits an internal functional implementation of an associated executable module and that includes a runtime-resolvable public interface of the associated executable module is obtained using a processor within a module-based system. The virtual runtime module within the module-based system is resolved, using the runtime-resolvable public interface of the virtual runtime module, to satisfy dependencies associated with the executable module within the module-based system. At least a portion of the internal functional implementation of the associated executable module within the module-based system is installed during runtime using the resolved virtual runtime module.
US09342329B2
A method for cross-operating systems execution of a legacy software application on a user computing device is provided. The method comprises upon launching a native application on the user computing device, executing, on a server, a cloudified application corresponding to the legacy software application, the legacy software application is compliant with a first operating system, wherein the user computing device is compliant with a second operating system, the first operating system and the second operating system are incompatible with each other; rendering outputs responsive of inputs generated by the native application and received at the cloudified application; streaming the rendered outputs to the user computing device to be displayed by the native application; and performing file system operations requested by at least one of the native application and the cloudified application on at least a cloud storage service.
US09342325B2
A method for a multi-modal device for transferring launch information for a panel and first docking bar in a first application environment to a second application environment for a second docking bar in the second application environment includes detecting a docking of the multi-modal device to a hardware module, and displaying a user interface for the second application environment operating on the multi-modal device on the hardware module. The method includes receiving at the second application environment the launch information for launching launchable objects in the first application environment from the second application environment, and parsing, by the second application environment, the launch information to determine a change to the panel or the first docking bar. The change is in the first application environment. The method includes changing the second docking bar to include the change to the panel or the first docking bar based on parsing the launch information.
US09342324B2
A system and method for displaying a multimedia container. The method includes accessing, within a mobile device, a datastore corresponding to a multimedia container, wherein the multimedia container comprises a plurality of objects and the datastore comprises information about the plurality of objects; determining a plurality of most recently accessed objects of the plurality of objects; determining a respective image corresponding to each of the plurality of most recently used objects; determining an order of each respective image based on a respective access time of a respective object corresponding to the respective image; and displaying a multimedia container image comprising each respective image according to the order, the multimedia container image corresponds to the multimedia container. In one exemplary implementation, a first object of the plurality of objects is a first portion of content and a second object of the plurality of objects is a second portion of content.
US09342323B2
A method for implementing web applications includes projecting, using a processor of a computing device, one element of a web page of a web application into a view of the web page, the view being a visual representation of a model of the web page, the model including application data and rules. A controller mediates input and converts input to commands for the view or the model. The controller transposes the one element projected in the view of the web page and another element using an insertion point that represents a defined location in a shadow document object model subtree, without affecting a document object model tree of the web page.
US09342320B2
A computer software system is disclosed for single step coordination between software applications. A monitoring application automatically identifies a target application and presents a prompting window, such that if possible (but not necessarily) it appears to be attached to a side of the target window. Clicking a control in the prompting window automatically activates a secondary application, and automatically transfers information from the target application to the secondary application. Target desktop windows can be identified by their window captions and target HTML windows by their URL addresses. Controls on prompting windows can activate multiple secondary applications and/or different secondary application modes. Information can be obtained from a target application by reading a file stored for that purpose by the target application, by interprocess communication, or by screen scraping. In one general aspect, a medical test result viewing application is coordinated with a medical test result processing application.
US09342319B1
Handling a virtual method call includes extracting, from a pointer to an object, an identifier associated with the class of the object, the pointer to the object being associated with the virtual method call, and the identifier being embedded within the pointer; using the identifier to obtain a virtual method table, including locating a first entry in a class identifier table mapping a plurality of class identifiers to a corresponding plurality of class data, the first entry being associated with the identifier and comprising the virtual method table or a pointer used to obtain the virtual method table; locating a second entry in the virtual method table, the second entry being associated with the virtual method call; and jumping to an address associated with the second entry to execute code at the address.
US09342318B2
Technologies are described herein for configuring a communication device to be used as a digital sign. Connection to a remote portal may occur through a transceiver of the communication device. Digital content is received from the remote portal and stored in a memory of the communication device. A digital sign mode of the communication device is activated in response to receiving a first instruction from the remote portal. In the digital sign mode, a ringing function of the communication device may be disabled. A digital content present mode of the communication device is activated in response to receiving a second instruction from the remote portal. In the digital content present mode, the digital content may be presented via at least one of a screen and a speaker of the communication device.
US09342316B1
Certain aspects direct to a system for installing an operating system to a signage device from a flash memory of the signage device. In certain embodiments, the flash memory has a non-bootable partition, which stores a plurality of operating system images and an installer program. When booting the signage device, a boot program detects that no bootable device exists, and executes the installer program. The installer program receives a user input indicating one of the operating system images as a selected operating system image. Then, the installer program creates a partition in the flash memory, installs a copy of the selected operating system image in the partition as a bootable operating system, and configures the partition as the bootable device. Thus, when the signage device reboots, the boot program may detect the partition as the bootable device, and executes the bootable operating system.
US09342309B2
A method and circuit arrangement tightly couple together decode logic associated with multiple types of execution units and having varying priorities to enable instructions that are decoded as valid instructions for multiple types of execution units to be forwarded to a highest priority type of execution unit among the multiple types of execution units. Among other benefits, when an auxiliary execution unit is coupled to a general purpose processing core with the decode logic for the auxiliary execution unit tightly coupled with the decode logic for the general purpose processing core, the auxiliary execution unit may be used to effectively overlay new functionality for an existing instruction that is normally executed by the general purpose processing core, e.g., to patch a design flaw in the general purpose processing core or to provide improved performance for specialized applications.
US09342308B2
An instruction for parsing a buffer to be utilized within a data processing system including: an operation code field, the operation code field identifies the instruction; a control field, the control field controls operation of the instruction; and one or more general registers, wherein a first general register stores an argument address, a second general register stores a function code, a third general register stores length of an argument-character buffer, and the fourth of which contains the address of the function-code data structure.
US09342305B2
Technologies for low power execution of one or more threads of a multithreaded program by one or more processing elements are generally disclosed.
US09342303B2
A system and method to enhance execution of architected instructions in a processor uses auxiliary code to optimize execution of base microcode. An execution context of the architected instructions may be profiled to detect potential optimizations, resulting in generation and storage of auxiliary microcode. When the architected instructions are decoded to base microcode for execution, the base microcode may be enhanced or modified using retrieved auxiliary code.
US09342295B2
A method, and a corresponding system, for dynamically updating software while the software is running by automatically dividing a patch into a plurality of micro-updates using compiler analysis. The method includes providing the patch which includes updates to several variable units of the software, including functions, type definitions, and data stores. Next, an interference graph of the patch is generated by creating a node corresponding to each variable unit of the patch and creating connected components by adding edges connecting variable units having an impact expression with a non-zero intersection. The patch is divided into the micro-updates, where each micro-update corresponds to a connected component. The micro-updates are then applied to the software when the variable units of the micro-update are at a safepoint, and at least two of the micro-updates are applied at different times while the software is running.
US09342283B2
The technology is directed to profiling binary code based on a computed “density” of functions in the code. The density of a function can be computed as the frequency of execution of the function divided by the size of the function. Functions that execute more often and are smaller in size (“dense functions”) are moved towards the “front” (e.g., beginning) of the binary code. The frequency of execution can be measured at runtime using a performance measurement tool without requiring modification of the binary code or corresponding source code. After density is computed (e.g., over a period of time) for functions, it can be used to cause linkers to rearrange the binary code to place denser functions closer to the “front” of the binary code. By loading denser functions first (e.g., into processor caches and translation lookaside buffer (“TLB”)), the technology reduces cache and TLB misses, and thereby improves system performance.
US09342277B2
A method and apparatus for searching data associated with nodes of a visual or graphical program. The method may include the acts of searching information stored in memory using search criteria that was entered into a search box of a Graphical User Interface. The information searched is associated with nodes of the graphical program. In response to the searching, identifying one or more of the nodes. In one embodiment, the method may further include displaying one or more links corresponding to the identified one or more of the nodes, respectively, in response to the identifying.
US09342271B2
According to one embodiment, a processing device for multiplying a first polynomial with a second polynomial is described including a first memory storing a representation of the first polynomial, a controller configured to separate the first polynomial into parts, a second memory storing pre-determined results of the multiplications of the second polynomial with possible forms of the parts of the first polynomial, a third memory for storing the result of the multiplication, an address logic, configured to determine, for each part of the first polynomial, a start address of a memory block of the second memory based on the form of the part and the location of the part within the first polynomial and an adder configured to add, for each determined address of the memory block of the second memory, the content of the memory block of the second memory at least partially to the contents of the third memory, wherein the data element of the third memory to which the content of a data element of the memory block of the second memory is added is the same for a plurality of the parts of the first polynomial.
US09342268B2
Methods, apparatus, and computer-readable media are described herein related to a user interface (UI) that can be implemented on a head-mountable device (HMD). The UI can include a voice-navigable UI. The voice-navigable UI can include a voice navigable menu that includes one or more menu items. The voice-navigable UI can also present a first visible menu that includes at least a portion of the voice navigable menu. In response to a first utterance comprising one of the one or more menu items, the voice-navigable UI can modify the first visible menu to display one or more commands associated with the first menu item. In response to a second utterance comprising a first command, the voice-navigable UI can invoke the first command. In some embodiments, the voice-navigable UI can display a second visible menu, where the first command can be displayed above other menu items in the second visible menu.
US09342267B2
A meeting server facilitates an online conference session among a presenter device and a plurality of attendee devices, including a display of shared image data from the presenter device. The meeting server receives indications from the attendee devices, with each indication associated with a corresponding portion of the shared image data displayed on each of the attendee devices. The indications are combined into a message representing user interest in areas of the shared image data, and the message representing interest is transmitted to the presenter device.
US09342262B2
An image forming apparatus including a wireless tag reader is described. The wireless tag reader is configured to be located in a first position to read wireless tags associated with consumables when the consumables are inserted into, stationary in, or removed from the image forming apparatus, and in a second position to read wireless tags outside of the image forming apparatus.
US09342261B2
A function execution device may receive a request signal from a terminal device; send a response signal in response to the request signal to the terminal device; receive a first signal including function information indicating a first specific function from the terminal device after having sent the response signal; determine whether the function execution device is capable of executing the first specific function; and cause an output unit of the function execution device to output a first notice in a case where it is determined that the function execution device is capable of executing the first specific function, and not to output the first notice in a case where it is determined that the function execution device is not capable of executing the first specific function.
US09342255B2
A method of monitoring, optimizing, and dynamically varying transfer size in a storage device is provided, including: receiving data transfer parameters for a Solid State Disk (SSD) device; selecting a data transfer size from the disk characterization data associated with the SSD device, based on a SSD device identifier in the received data transfer parameters matching the SSD device identifier in the disk characterization data; searching a weight-age table for a process identifier (PID) matching the PID from the received data transfer parameters; determining a heuristic representing a statistical distribution of Input/Output (I/O) operations per second (IOPS) and transfer sizes over time; modifying the received data transfer parameters based on at least one of: the selected data transfer size from the disk characterization data; the weight-age table; and the heuristic; and completing one or more (I/O) operations with the SSD device using the modified data transfer parameters.
US09342249B2
A rack-power control module (RPC) module is used for allowing a local storage partition, located on a local server, for controlling a destination storage partition, located on a destination server, by piggybacking commands on power alerts issued by the RPC module in a clustered storage system.
US09342244B2
Techniques are described herein that are capable of optimizing (i.e., deduplicating) data in a virtualization environment. For example, optimization designations (a.k.a. deduplication designations) may be assigned to respective regions of a virtualized storage file. A virtualized storage file is a file that is configured to be mounted as a disk or a volume to provide a file system interface for accessing hosted files. In accordance with this example, each optimization designation indicates an extent to which the respective region is to be optimized (i.e., deduplicated). In another example, a virtualized storage file is mounted to provide a virtual disk that includes hosted files. In accordance with this example, optimization designations are assigned to the respective hosted files. In further accordance with this example, each optimization designation indicates an extent to which the respective hosted file is to be optimized.
US09342241B2
Data input may be effected with a keyboard including a first keypad having five keys and a second keypad having five keys. The keys of the first keypad are correlated with columns of a 5×5 matrix including 25 cells, where each of the five keys of the first keypad is associated with one column. The keys of the second keypad are correlated with rows of the 5×5 matrix, where each of the five keys of the second keypad is associated with one row. Each combination consisting of one key from each of the first and second keypads is thereby associated with one of the 25 cells in the 5×5 matrix, and each cell of the 25 cells contains content. One key from each of the first and second keypads activated, and the content from one of the 25 cells is input based on the activated keys. This input is repeated until data entry is complete.
US09342235B2
According to an aspect, a device includes a touch screen display and a controller. The touch screen display displays a lock screen including an application icon associated with an application. The controller adds an information icon to the application icon when there is new information with respect to the application.
US09342230B2
A user interface is output to a display device. If an element of a human subject is in a first conformation, the user interface scrolls responsive to movement of the element. If the element is in a second conformation, different than the first conformation, objects of the user interface are targeted responsive to movement of the element without scrolling the user interface.
US09342222B2
A method, system, and computer program product for accessible chart navigation using object neighborhood are provided. An input is received to navigate a focus away in a direction from a first object, the first object being a member of a set of objects depicted in a graphical visual chart. A set of inputs is designed to access the chart without using a pointing device or requiring visual inspection of the chart and the set of objects. The set of inputs includes the input and a second input to allow return to a previous step in navigating the chart. A second object is identified to which to navigate responsive to the input, the second object being located within a neighborhood of the first object at a shortest neighborhood distance from the first object. Navigation is performed to the second object to keep the focus within the neighborhood.
US09342219B2
Exemplary embodiments relate to a method for adapting graphic representation on a user interface of a computer user station for the graphic representation of data of an industrial processing plant. Input signals received on or at the computer user station result in a size change of the graphic representation by zooming of the predefinable display region on the user interface or the selection of an object field of the graphic representation. The object field being located in the graphic representation at an associated object field position, for display or user interaction. With the selection of an object field for display or user interaction, the size of the object field on the user interface is fixed for display or user interaction, even if zooming of the graphic representation results in other data of the graphic representation not being readable or activatable by a user.
US09342216B2
This disclosure relates to a system configured to customize a default set of menu items for diners of a food service establishment. The default set of menu items may be customized based on dietary preferences of the diners. The system may be configured such that diners may interact with the menu of the food service establishment. The system may be configured such that the customized set of menu items may be displayed to diners remotely from the food service establishment. In some implementations, the system may replace a traditional physical menu. In some implementations, the system may comprise an application server, one or more client devices, a database server, and/or other components.
US09342215B2
A method of saving and restoring an environment is disclosed. The method includes displaying, using an artwork editing application operating on a computing device, a representation of an artwork file. The method also includes receiving, using the computer device, input selecting an interface element for use in an interface of the editing application, displaying, using the computing device, the selected interface element of the application on the interface. Access to one or more editing features or editing functions is available through user interaction with the selected interface element on the interface of the artwork editing application. The method also includes saving data to a memory readable by the computing device, where the data includes a representation of the artwork file and an indication of the selected interface element of the application.
US09342210B2
A video mixing computer apparatus includes a computing device, a touch interface having multiple selectable tiles, at least some of the tiles each having an associated media viewer capable of playing a visual source in response to selection of the tile. The compositing engine, tiles, media viewers, and compositing engine interoperate such that, when a user selects a first tile, a part of a first visual source will be played by a first media player, and when the user then selects a second tile, a part of a second visual source will be played by a second media player, and concurrent with the playing, information relating to the parts will be captured for use by the compositing engine to create a media file as a sequential mix of the first and second visual sources corresponding to the user's selections' timings and durations. A video mixing method is also described.
US09342205B2
Disclosed are a display method, a terminal device and a multi-terminal device system. The display method is applied to a first terminal device and the first terminal device includes a first display unit. The method includes the first display unit displaying a first display interface; detecting a connection with a second terminal device, and obtaining a detection result, the second terminal device including a second display unit displaying a second display interface, and when the detection result indicating that the first terminal device and the second terminal device are connected, one of the first display unit and the second display unit displaying the first display interface, and the other of the first display unit and the second display unit displaying a third display interface, the third display interface and the first display interface being different.
US09342199B2
According to an aspect, a touch detection device includes a drive unit that supplies an excitation signal having at least variable magnitude to a first electrode at a predetermined period for detecting approach or a touch of an object; a detection unit electrically coupled to a second electrode provided to be opposed to the first electrode to detect approach or a touch of the object according to an output value from the second electrode; and an element that electrically couples the drive unit and the detection unit, receives the excitation signal from the drive unit, and has a predetermined size of electrostatic capacitance. The touch detection device corrects an output value from the second electrode by using an output value from the element and the output value from the second electrode obtained at the same timing.
US09342191B2
An electrostatic and piezoelectric touch panel includes a first switching circuit, a second switching circuit, at least one first sensing device, and at least one second sensing device. The first sensing device includes a first transistor and a piezoelectric-transistor. The first transistor and the piezoelectric-transistor are series-connected between a power source and ground. The first switching circuit connects to a connection point between the first transistor and the piezoelectric-transistor. The second sensing device includes a second transistor and two parallel-connected electrostatic to transistors. The second transistor and the two parallel-connected electrostatic transistors are series-connected between a negative power source and ground. The first switching circuit connects to a connection point between the second transistor and the two parallel-connected electrostatic transistors. Gates of the first and second transistors connect to the second switching circuit. The two parallel-connected electrostatic transistors include different types of doped semiconductor materials.
US09342188B2
An optical touch control device includes a touch zone, an optical module, including a light source and a sense module for emitting a light signal to a touch object within the touch zone and obtaining an image data of the touch object via the sense module, and a calculation module coupled to the optical module for determining a touch coordinate of the touch object relative to the touch zone according to a pulse of the image data, wherein the pulse comprises a position parameter and a value parameter.
US09342180B2
Apparatus and methods are disclosed for simultaneously tracking multiple finger and palm contacts as hands approach, touch, and slide across a proximity-sensing, multi-touch surface. Identification and classification of intuitive hand configurations and motions enables unprecedented integration of typing, resting, pointing, scrolling, 3D manipulation, and handwriting into a versatile, ergonomic computer input device.
US09342174B2
The electronic device is an electronic device (100) having a multilayer structure including a touch panel (12) and a display device (10), the electronic device including a manipulation surface (22A) configured to accept an input from a user, the manipulation surface being provided on a surface closer to the touch panel, and constituting a curved surface such that a central portion of the manipulation surface (22A) is dented relative to an end of the manipulation surface (22A). The most-dented portion of the manipulation surface (22A) is dented relative to an end of the manipulation surface (22A) by a distance of not less than 0.2 mm and not more than 3.0 mm along a direction perpendicular to the panel plane.
US09342166B2
In a touch substrate and a display apparatus, the touch substrate includes a first electrode, a second electrode, a first touch electrode and a blocking layer. The first electrode includes an opaque conductive material and extends along a first direction. The second electrode includes the opaque conductive material, extends along a second direction crossing the first direction, and has a gap through which the first electrode extends. The first touch electrode is formed on the first electrode and is electrically connected to the first electrode. The blocking layer overlaps the first and second electrodes.
US09342163B2
Disclosed are a position measuring device capable of precisely measuring a position of an electronic pen tip, and a position information inputting system using the same. The position measuring device includes: a position measuring unit configured to measure a position of a tip of an electronic pen using a reference signal and ultrasonic signals, and configured to input position information on the electronic pen tip to an electronic device; a housing where the position measuring unit is installed; and a coupling means having one end connected to the housing, and another end coupled to the electronic device, so as to couple the housing to one side of the electronic device. Under such configuration, the position measuring device can enhance reliability by precisely measuring positions of characters or symbols to be input to an electronic device having a screen, and can enhance a user's convenience by reducing time taken to input characters or symbols by preventing an erroneous operation.
US09342162B2
A mobile terminal and controlling method thereof are disclosed, by which a prescribed function of the mobile terminal can be performed through a button manipulation of a stylus pen and a touch input. The present invention includes a short range communication unit configured to receive a plurality of different signals from a stylus pen, a touchscreen, and a controller performing a prescribed function by combining a type of a signal received from the stylus pen among a plurality of the different signals and a touch pattern of the stylus pen recognized on the touchscreen.
US09342153B2
A device includes circuitry configured to acquire detection data from at least one sensor device corresponding to movement of the device. The circuitry is also configured to control at least one sensitivity detection mode of the at least one sensor device and determine a sampling rate for the at least one sensor device based on the at least one sensitivity detection mode. The circuitry is also configured to determine gestures performed by a user based on the detection data from the at least one sensor device and control operation of the device based on the gestures performed by the user.
US09342151B2
This disclosure includes a hand motion-capturing device with a force feedback system. In some embodiments the device includes a base, a microcontroller connected to the base, a thumb sensor module and four-finger sensor modules each electrically connected to the microcontroller. In some embodiments, the device may include five-link rods that interconnect the thumb sensor module to the base and each of the four-finger sensor modules to the base. In some embodiments, the device includes a thumb force feedback system adapted and configured to receive a human thumb and a four-finger force feedback system adapted and configured to receive an index finger, a middle finger, a ring finger, and a little finger. The thumb force feedback system and the four-finger force feedback system may each be movably connected to respective link rods and the thumb sensor module and four-finger sensor modules, respectively.
US09342150B2
A display input device includes a display portion for displaying screens, a touch panel portion for detecting a touch position, a recognition portion for recognizing the touch position based on an output of the touch panel portion, a plurality of piezoelectric elements disposed not to be visually recognized from outside, to form a plurality of piezoelectric element pairs each of which includes the elements opposed to each other in a short side direction of the touch panel portion, and a drive portion for supplying a drive signal having a predetermined voltage waveform to the piezoelectric elements one or more times so as to vibrate the piezoelectric elements and the touch panel portion, and so as to start to supply the drive signal to the piezoelectric element pairs at different timings.
US09342144B1
A rate-of-change mouse (420, 720) positions a cursor (388, 724) of a display device or monitor (390, 726) in response to a user actuating transducers (16, 17, 422A, 422B, 722A, 722), and performs switching functions, such as left click, right click, or click and drag mouse-switching functions, when a rate-of-change of an electrical signal of one of the transducers (16, 17, 422A, 422B, 722A, or 722B) exceeds a predetermined limit. In addition, macro select, “hot key” actuation, and any other selected switching functions are actuated by moving a body member such as a head (18), hand (64), or finger (67) more rapidly. Optionally, more rapidly actuating one or both of the transducers (16, 17, 422A, 422B, 722A, 722B), in selected directions and/or in selected sequences, accesses and controls augmentative and alternative communication devices (AAC) devices, environmental control units (ECUs) (14), and/or accesses and controls power wheelchairs (12), and/or accesses and controls other apparatus (26).
US09342137B2
A power excursion tolerant power system includes at least one powered component. A system capacitance and at least one power supply are coupled to the at least one powered component. The at least one power supply is operable as a voltage controlled current source to supply power to the at least one powered component when a system load is below a predetermined threshold. The at least one power supply is operable as a constant current source, and together with the system capacitance, to supply power to the at least one powered component when the system load is above the predetermined threshold. A load reduction mechanism is coupled to the at least one powered component and operable to perform at least one load reduction action when the system load is above the predetermined threshold.
US09342127B2
An electronic apparatus that selectively uses as a power source one of a battery and an external power source to be powered therefrom, the electronic apparatus includes: a charging unit that charges the battery through the external power source; a power status determining unit that determines whether the external power source can drive the electronic apparatus; a history storage unit that stores a history of determination results of the power status determining unit; and a charging control unit that sets, to a maximum capacity of the battery, an upper limit of battery remaining power if the history indicates that the external power source can not drive for at least part of a specific past period, or sets the upper limit to a given value lower than the maximum capacity if the history indicates that the external power source can drive throughout the specific past period.
US09342126B2
Disclosed is a switching voltage regulator circuitry controlled to supply a voltage to at least a portion of an integrated circuit (IC). Information corresponding to a current load for a different power state of at least a portion of the IC is received. The switching voltage regulator circuitry is controlled to adjust the voltage to a different value based at least in part on the received information. Disclosed is a voltage received for a power state of at least a portion of an IC having first logic to perform one or more functions and second logic integrated with the first logic. Information corresponding to a current load for a different power state of at least a portion of the IC is sent from the second logic to voltage regulator control logic to adjust the voltage to a different value.
US09342115B2
A mounting apparatus for a data storage device defining mounting holes in opposite first side and second side, the mounting apparatus includes a mounting plate, a first mounting member mounted to the mounting plate, a second mounting member mounted to the mounting plate, a pivoting member pivotably connected to a first side of the data storage device, and a locking member pivotably connected to the pivoting member. The first mounting member includes a supporting piece and two tips. The second mounting member includes a locking piece and a block formed at an end of the locking piece. The locking member includes a locking portion. The tips engage in the mounting holes of a second side of the data storage device. The pivoting member is rotated to be located between the second mounting member and the data storage device, and the locking member is rotated to engage under the block.
US09342110B2
A heat dissipating device includes a supporting part, a plurality of first fins and a plurality of second fins. The first fins are disposed in a vertical array at the supporting part. The second fins are disposed in an inclined array at the supporting part. The first fins and the second fins are staggeredly disposed and adjacent to each other correspondingly. The heat exchange efficiency of the fins is improved so as to increase the heat dissipating efficiency of the heat dissipating device.
US09342109B2
A system for docking a computer tablet with a docking station. The computer tablet has an asymmetrical edge that is adapted to rest in a cradle portion of the docking station. While resting in the docking station the computer tablet may be rotated to various angles and still maintain electrical connectivity to the docking station.
US09342105B2
A curved display including an external protective layer with an edge at least a part of which has a certain curvature, an opaque layer disposed at the edge of the external protective layer, and a panel module layer including an electrode trace area aligned under the opaque layer.
US09342100B2
In accordance with aspects of the disclosure, a device may include a base member formed as a receptacle with a recess defining an interior region configured for receiving internal circuitry. The base member may include first and second sides intersecting orthogonally to define a corner. The device may include a rail member having a first portion coupled to the first side of the base member and a second portion coupled to the second side of the base member. The rail member may be positioned to contact the corner of the base member. The device may include an enclosing member coupled to the first and second portions of the rail member with a plurality of fasteners to thereby enclose the internal circuitry disposed in the recess of the base member between the enclosing member and the base member.
US09342098B2
A display apparatus includes a display body, an operation member with an operation portion and a mounting portion, a bracket, and a gripping member. The operation member is slidably mounted on the inside of the bracket. The bracket includes a bracket body and a receiving member with a resisting portion. The gripping member is movably received in the receiving member and includes a gripping body, a pressing portion, and two or mover gripping arms. The mounting portion is positioned between the gripping arms positioning the operation member within the bracket body allowing the operation portion to drive the mounting member and the gripping member to slide. The pressing portion resists the resisting portion so that the gripping arms may be spread to disengage from the mounting portion.
US09342096B2
A circuit arrangement for a data processing system is configured to process data in a plurality of modules. The circuit arrangement is configured such that each module is provided with at least one clock pulse, a time base and a base of at least one additional physical variable. The circuit arrangement also comprises a central routing unit to which the plurality of modules are coupled and via which the plurality of modules can periodically exchange data amongst themselves, based on the time base and/or the base of other physical variables. Each module is configured independently and parallel to other modules of the plurality of modules in order to process data. The circuit arrangement is employed in a corresponding method.
US09342088B2
A local power converter may include a controller to manipulate the operating point of a local power converter to cause the power point tracking feature of a central power converter to operate at a point determined by the controller. In some embodiments, the controller can manipulate the operating point of the local power converter by alternating between at least two modes. In some other embodiments, the controller can manipulate the operating point of the local power converter to provide a substantially constant slope. In some other embodiments, the controller can maintain a substantially constant impedance ratio. In some other embodiments, the controller enables perturbations from the power point tracking feature of the central power converter to reach the power source.
US09342079B2
Energy efficient control of a cooling system cooling an electronic system is provided based, in part, on projected conditions. The control includes automatically determining an adjusted control setting(s) for an adjustable cooling component(s) of the cooling system. The automatically determining is based, at least in part, on projected power consumed by the electronic system at a future time and projected temperature at the future time of a heat sink to which heat extracted is rejected. The automatically determining operates to reduce power consumption of the cooling system and/or the electronic system while ensuring that at least one targeted temperature associated with the cooling system or the electronic system is within a desired range. The automatically determining may be based, at least in part, on an experimentally obtained model(s) relating the targeted temperature and power consumption of the adjustable cooling component(s) of the cooling system.
US09342078B2
Provided is a process, including: receiving, via the network interface, from a remote user device, a command to change a state of the fluid-handling device to a target state; translating the received command into a translated command operative to cause a local controller of the fluid-handling device to drive the fluid-handling equipment to the target state, the local controller being responsive to the command and feedback from the fluid-handling device indicative of whether the fluid-handling device is in the target state; and sending the translated command to the local controller.
US09342074B2
Methods and systems for adaptive methods for transitioning control to the driver are described. A computing device controlling a vehicle autonomously may be configured to receive a request for a transition of the vehicle from autonomous mode to manual mode through an indication by the driver. The computing device may determine the state of the vehicle based on parameters related to the autonomous operation of the vehicle. Based on the state of the vehicle and the indication, the computing device may determine instructions corresponding to the transition of control, which may include a strategy for the transition and duration of time corresponding to the transition of control. The computing device may provide the instructions to perform the transition of control of the vehicle from autonomous mode to manual mode.
US09342068B2
A motion controller includes a controller configured to output a motor driving command based on a motion-and-sequence time chart used for motion control of a motor, to a motor driving apparatus. The controller is configured to receive the motion-and-sequence time chart, which has been created by a general-purpose PC, from the general-purpose PC via a higher-layer network. The controller is configured to receive the motion-and-sequence time chart including a command data sequence included in the motor driving command for the motor driving apparatus. The controller is configured to receive the motion-and-sequence time chart including a sequence time chart that describes a coordinated relationship between the motion control of the motor and a certain two-level input/output signal relating to the motion control of the motor.
US09342067B2
A robot apparatus includes a rectangular wave generating portion arranged on the output side of a speed reducer, and configured to generate first output pulse signals upon driving of a joint. A control portion includes calculating portions and a motor control portion. The motor control portion estimates an estimated joint angle using input pulse signals, and controls to operate a servo motor so that this estimated joint angle matches a target joint angle. The calculating portions calculate a torsion angle of the joint corresponding to a deviation amount between the first output pulse signals and a pulse waveform of an ideal state. The motor control portion controls to operate the servo motor so as to correct the estimated joint angle by the torsion angle.
US09342066B2
A robot includes a robot arm, a force sensor, and a control unit configured to control the operation of the robot art. The control unit initializes the force sensor while the robot arm is moving at uniform speed. It is preferable that the control unit initializes the force sensor while the robot arm is moving at the uniform speed and the amplitude of a detection value of the force sensor is smaller than a threshold.
US09342061B2
A block in an electric discharge machining program is read out and analyzed, and when determined that a machining route correction command is issued to correct the machining route at a corner formed by consecutive first and second machining blocks, the machining route is corrected such that the end point of the first machining block, an extension point obtained by extending the first machining block from the end point thereof by a predetermined distance in the machining advancing direction, and a new start point obtained by partially removing the second machining block by a predetermined distance from the start point thereof are connected. Then, the wire electrode is moved with respect to the workpiece, following the corrected machining route.
US09342057B2
This disclosure discloses a motor control apparatus including a controller. The controller includes a position controller and a speed controller. The controller is configured to control the inverter on the basis of the torque command. The controller includes a torque limiter configured to start first torque limitation which limits a commanded torque based on the torque command to a first torque or less in a case where the voltage detector detects that the DC voltage falls below a predetermined voltage, and to cancel the first torque limitation in a case where the voltage detector detects that the DC voltage exceeds the predetermined voltage. The controller includes a speed limiter configured to limit a commanded speed based on the speed command to a first speed or less in a case where the torque limiter cancels the first torque limitation.
US09342054B2
Various embodiments of the invention relate generally to real-time clock circuit, and more particularly to systems, devices and methods of integrating two oscillators in one real-time clock circuit to generate accurate time of day over an industrial temperature range. A primary oscillator is employed to generate a first high precision clock while having a higher frequency and consuming more power; a secondary oscillator is employed to generate a second clock that has a low frequency and consumes less power, but may not meet the time accuracy requirement. When the real-time clock is provided with sufficient power (MSN mode), time of day is constantly tracked by the primary oscillator, but when the real-time clock is powered by a battery (SLEEP mode), time of day is tracked by the secondary oscillator while the primary oscillator is switched on at an update frequency to compensate errors in the time of day.
US09342053B2
A method of manufacturing a timepiece component, such as a balance, an oscillating mass or a wheel, comprises a micro-manufacturing technique, such as the DRIE technique. The method may comprise forming at least one member in or at the periphery of the structure, of a material different from that of the structure. This member is typically metal and is formed by electro-forming using a cavity of the structure as a mold.
US09342038B2
An image forming apparatus includes a casing having a first opening and a second opening. The first and second openings each extend between an interior of the casing and an exterior of the casing. A cover has a close position in which the cover covers the first opening and the second opening, and an open position in which cover does not cover the first opening and the second opening. A shutter has a shielding position in which the shutter covers the second opening, and a retracted position. The shutter is operably connected to the cover so as to move between the shielding position and the retracted position in response to movement of the cover. A protrusion extends from the cover, and the protrusion extends through the second opening when the cover is in the close position and the shutter is in the retracted position.
US09342030B1
An alternating current generation circuit has a transformer and generates an alternating current voltage in accordance with a pulse signal input to the transformer. A clamp circuit has a constant-voltage element and a current limit element connected in series between the transformer, an output end of the alternating current voltage, and a ground. A direct current generation circuit generates a direct current voltage in accordance with a duty cycle of the input pulse signal. The direct current generation circuit converts, into a direct current voltage, a current that flows from the clamp circuit via the ground, and superimposes the direct current voltage on the alternating current voltage, and a voltage obtained by superimposing the direct current voltage on the alternating current voltage is output from the output end.
US09342028B2
An information processing apparatus includes: a total amount control unit that applies a total amount controlling process to perform correction such that a sum of density values of all pixels composing the color plane data and clear plane data becomes not larger than a certain value; a clear toner plane generating unit that generates clear toner plane data based on gloss control plane data, the clear plane data and the color plane data; a difference calculating unit that calculates a difference between the density value of a pixel of the clear toner plane data and the density value of the pixel of the clear toner plane data to which the total amount controlling process is applied, for each pixel; and a display unit that displays an inconsistent region composed of a pixel in which the difference is not smaller than a predetermined threshold.
US09342026B2
A print control apparatus includes a generating unit that generates color image data based on gloss-control image data, the gloss-control image data containing a gloss control value for identifying a type of a surface effect being a visual or a tactile effect applied to the recording medium and for identifying a region to which the surface effect is applied in the recording medium, and generates clear-toner image data based on presence or absence of at least one post processing device connected to the printing device and based on a type of the post processing device; a post-processing control unit that controls the post processing device in accordance with the presence or absence of the post processing device connected to the printing device and the type of the post processing device; and an output unit that outputs the clear-toner image data.
US09342025B2
A conveyor device is mounted on an image forming apparatus having an image forming section. The conveyor device has: a first conveyance path for conveying the sheet after an image is formed on a side of a sheet by the image forming section; a reverse conveyance path branched from the first conveyance path; a second conveyance path branched from the reverse conveyance path and for conveying the sheet back to the image forming section. The conveyor device includes a reversing section and a decurling section that are disposed on the reverse conveyance path. The reversing section reverses a conveyance direction of the sheet fed into the reverse conveyance path so as to feed the sheet into the second conveyance path. The decurling section applies decurling by urging the sheet in a direction of forming a convex curl with a side opposite to the image-formed side facing outward.
US09342024B2
In an image forming apparatus, a sensor section includes a sheet path through which the sheet passes in a sheet feeding direction. In the sensor section, a light source unit emits light to an irradiation area set in the sheet path. Here, the light is elongated in a main-scanning direction and has quantities of light varying according to positions in the main-scanning direction and according to positions in a height direction perpendicular to a sheet feed surface. In addition, in the sensor section, a light-receiving section receives light diffused in a predetermined diffusing direction among the light emitted from the light source and then irradiated to the sheet passing in the sheet path and outputs information representing quantities of the received light. In the image forming apparatus, a control section extracts a parameter from the information and derives an amount of curl of the sheet.
US09342022B2
A document transporting device includes: a document-accommodating section; a transporting mechanism; a document-discharge section; a holding member that includes an attach-portion that is attached at an upper side of a discharge-port from which a document is discharged to the document-discharge section, and holding portion main-bodies provided such that lower ends are contacted with the document-discharge section, that hold down the document discharged on the document-discharge section from above, a length in a discharge-direction of the document from an attachment-position of the attach-portion to the lower end of the holding portion main-body being longer than a height from the document-discharge section to the attachment-position of the attach-portion; and protruding portions formed in the document-discharge section along a longitudinal direction of the discharge-port such that a top portion of the protruding portion is positioned at a downstream side of the discharge-direction relative to the lower end of the holding portion main-body.
US09342005B2
A fixing apparatus includes a rotating member including a conductive layer; a helical coil arranged inside the rotating member, a helical axis of the coil extending in a generatrix direction of the rotating member; and a magnetic member provided inside the coil, the magnetic member including a first magnetic member and a second magnetic member arranged in a line extending in the generatrix direction. A toner image is fixed on a recording material by heat which the conductive layer generates by electromagnetic induction. In the generatrix direction, a protruded portion is provided on an end surface of the first magnetic member and a recessed portion is provided in an end surface of the second magnetic member. The protruded portion and the recessed portion are disposed so as to oppose each other and overlap each other in the generatrix direction.
US09341998B2
According to an embodiment, an image forming apparatus has a fixing unit which heats an image formed on a recording medium at a fixing temperature, to fix the image on the recording medium. When a heating temperature of the fixing unit becomes a temperature higher than the fixing temperature, the image forming apparatus switches image forming, from image forming by a first mode using a discolorable coloring material, to image forming by a second mode using a non-discolorable coloring material.
US09341991B1
An electrophotographic printer having an intermediate transfer belt (ITB) module having an endless belt wrapped around a first and second roll and a plurality of imaging drums, all mounted in a frame between a rear panel and an access panel pivotally mounted to the front panel. The first and second rolls lie in an ITB reference plane and the imaging drums lie in an imaging drum reference plane that is mutually planar to the ITB reference plane. A camming device, mounted to one of the front panel and the access panel, rotates the access panel to provide a skewing adjustment to ITB module and plurality of imaging drums to substantially correct a skew error caused by the racking of the front panel with respect to the rear panel with the access panel maintaining mutual planarity between the ITB reference plane and the imaging drum reference plane.
US09341989B2
An image forming apparatus is provided. The image forming apparatus includes a chassis having a first opening on a first side, photosensitive members, an intermediate transfer belt arranged to have a surface thereof facing the photosensitive members, primary-transfer members, a secondary-transfer roller, a first feed roller, a cleaner device, a waste toner container, which is removably installed in the chassis through the first opening and settled in a position opposite from the photosensitive members across the intermediate transfer belt, a connector, a first feeding path extending in a range between the first feed roller and the secondary-transfer roller, and a second feeding path being formed in clearance between the intermediate transfer belt and the waste toner container to convey a recording sheet being inserted through a sheet inlet and merging into the first feeding path in the vicinity of the first feed roller.
US09341987B2
A development roller includes a substantially cylindrical development sleeve that has an axis and rotates about the axis; and a magnet portion that is provided in the development sleeve and has plural magnetic poles. The development sleeve has a surface and a groove in the surface along a direction of the axis. The development sleeve has an outer peripheral surface and the groove has a bottom portion, the development sleeve having a deflection of the outer peripheral surface in a radial direction of the development sleeve being larger than about 20 μm and smaller than about 30 μm, and a deflection of the bottom portion in the radial direction being equal to or smaller than about 35 μm.
US09341979B1
A system for focusing light including a gradient index lens array positioned at a first distance from a surface, and first and second positioning elements arranged to modify the first distance. The first and second positioning elements modify the first distance based on an analysis of an image formed on the surface across substantially a full width of a cross process direction of the surface.
US09341976B2
The apparatus includes a CPU which executes, based on a detection result of a BD sensor, start-up control for controlling driving of a scanner motor, so that a rotation number of the scanner motor reaches a predetermined rotation number, and executes determination control for determining a voltage to be applied to a primary transfer unit based on a detection result of a transfer current detection circuit by a transfer voltage output circuit upon execution of image formation, and when an image forming station K which executes image formation is different from an image forming station Y including the BD sensor, the CPU parallelly executes the start-up control and determination control.
US09341975B2
An image forming apparatus includes an exposure device configured to expose image bearing members charged by charging devices to form latent images on the image bearing members, and a control unit configured to, in ether one or both of an image forming unit A and an image forming unit B, adjust an amount of exposure by which the image bearing member is exposed and a charging voltage based on information about the image bearing members of the image forming units A and B. The control unit is configured to make the charging voltage and the amount of exposure in the image forming unit A different from the charging voltage and the amount of exposure in the image forming unit B.
US09341971B2
A toner comprised of toner particles including an amorphous resin and a crystalline resin is provided. The coefficient of variation in softening temperature among resin portions in the toner particles is 15% or less when the softening temperature is measured with a scanning probe microscope equipped with a heatable cantilever.
US09341969B2
Toner for electrostatic development in accordance with one aspect of the present invention contains toner base particles produced by subjecting a toner composition containing binder resin, a coloring agent, and wax to melting and kneading and thereafter pulverization and classification, the toner having a volume median particle diameter (D50) of 5.5 to 7.5 μm, and the toner having particle size distribution in which the toner base particles include 15 to 55% by number of toner base particles of not more than 5 μm in particle diameter, and include not more than 1.5% by number of toner particles of more than 10 μm in particle diameter.
US09341968B1
The disclosure provides a toner composition comprising toner particles with a core and a shell, wherein the core comprises a polyester polymer and a styrene acrylate polymer, and the shell comprises a polyester polymer and, optionally, a styrene acrylate polymer, either or both of which can be the same or different from that in the core.
US09341963B2
An electrophotographic photoreceptor includes a conductive substrate; an organic photosensitive layer that is provided on the conductive substrate; and an inorganic protective layer that is provided on the organic photosensitive layer so as to be in contact with a surface of the organic photosensitive layer, wherein the organic photosensitive layer includes at least a charge transport material and silica particles in a region on the surface side in contact with the inorganic protective layer.
US09341953B2
A microlithographic illumination system can include a light distribution device that can generate a two-dimensional intensity distribution in a first illumination plane. A first raster array of optical raster elements can generates a raster array of secondary light sources. A device with an additional optical effect can be disposed spatially adjacent to the two raster arrays. The device can be configured as an illumination angle variation device. The device can influence the intensity and/or the phase and/or the beam direction of the illumination light. The influence can be such that an intensity contribution of raster elements to the total illumination intensity can vary across the illumination field. This can enable the illumination intensity to be influenced across the illumination field in a defined manner with respect to the total illumination intensity and/or with respect to the intensity contributions from different directions of illumination.
US09341948B2
Described herein is a solution-processable composition for preparing a photopatternable material. The solution-processable composition generally includes (a) an oligomeric siloxane component that includes, based on its total weight, between about 40% by weight and about 100% by weight one or more cage-structured polyhedral oligomeric silsesquioxanes that are functionalized with one or more crosslinkable moieties such as cycloaliphatic epoxy moieties, (b) a polymerization initiator; (c) one or more thermosettable polymers that collectively are present in an amount between about 1% by weight and about 20% by weight based on the total weight of the oligomeric siloxane component; and (d) a solvent.
US09341945B2
A system and method for depositing a photoresist and utilizing the photoresist are provided. In an embodiment a deposition chamber is utilized along with a first precursor material comprising carbon-carbon double bonds and a second precursor material comprising repeating units to deposit the photoresist onto a substrate. The first precursor material is turned into a plasma in a remote plasma chamber prior to being introduced into the deposition chamber. The resulting photoresist comprises a carbon backbone with carbon-carbon double bonds.
US09341943B2
There is provided a pellicle having a frame 12, a film 11 and an adhesive 13 for bonding the film 11 to the frame 12, and this adhesive 13 is a silicone compound having a low outgassing tendency and high heat resistance; in a better mode case, it can maintain its adhesive strength at temperatures 100-200 degrees C. and it exhibits results of TML being 1.0% or lower and CVCM being 0.1% or lower when tested in accordance with ASTM E595-93; thus this pellicle is useful for EUV light exposure lithography.
US09341939B1
Implementations described and claimed herein include photolithography technology to alleviate the imbalance of transmission intensity induced. In one implementation, a method comprises exposing an alternating phase shift mask (Alt-PSM) and a trim mask, wherein an exposure placement of the trim mask is shifted relative to an exposure placement of the Alt-PSM.
US09341934B2
An optical system for LED light projectors utilizing a Fresnel or planar-convex lens that permits a considerable energy saving and an elevated quality of the illumination either in FLOOD or SPOT mode is described. The optical system has a mirror having a particular three-dimensional surface constructed by rotating a parabola and taking sectors so as to obtain a surface that is more closed than a pure parabola. A reflecting optical system for projectors utilizing a Fresnel or planar-convex lens is also described.
US09341927B1
This invention provides a system and method for projection of an image on any surface, employing a lightweight (typically polymer) housing that removably encloses a slide holder allowing for quick change of the slide. The housing includes a central channel, and allows for the mounting of a conventional camera-mounting-base lens at a front end and the insertion of a standard form factor photographic strobe/flash in the rear end. Light from the strobe passes down the channel, through the slide and is projected by the lens onto the surface. This housing is mountable on a standard tripod. The housing is straightforward to use, with the strobe effect being provided directly by the strobe unit. The system and method avoids the need of a camera body and desirably enables the user to employ one or more lenses, which are often less expensive and already available in a photographer's equipment inventory.
US09341923B2
A composite plastic member includes a first stacked body comprised of a plurality of chromium layers stacked on a plastic substrate; and a second stacked body comprised of a plurality of chromium nitride layers stacked on the first stacked body. Each of the first and second stacked bodies is formed such that a lower-hardness layer having a lower hardness than upper and lower layers which contact with and sandwich the lower-hardness layer therebetween and a higher-hardness layer having a higher hardness than upper and lower layers which contact with and sandwich the higher-hardness layer therebetween are alternately stacked in a stacking direction; and a thickness of a higher-hardness chromium nitride layer is not more than 40% of a thickness of a lower-hardness chromium nitride layer in the second stacked body. The composite plastic member has high wear resistance and satisfactory sliding performance, and the conductivity and excellent outer appearance.
US09341920B1
A wavelength convertor includes a beam splitter which splits a pulsed laser beam at wavelength λp into a first higher power pulse portion and a second low power pulse portion. A fiber super continuum (SC) generator is coupled to receive the second pulse portion which converts the second pulse portion into a SC pulse having a bandwidth of >100 nm including a narrow spectral portion at wavelength λs. An optical parametric amplifier (OPA) having a periodically poled material is included with domains arranged to provided quasi-phase matching for amplification at λs and pumping at λp. The arrival of the SC pulse portion at λs and the first pulse portion at the OPA is synchronized to overlap in time. The OPA is seeded by the SC pulse portion at λs and pumped by the first pulse portion to provide an amplified OPA seed at λs.
US09341919B2
Methods and apparatus for optimising, improving or maximising the efficiency of an acousto-optic lens (AOL) system are disclosed. Data relating to efficiency is used to select drive frequencies of the acousto-optic devices (AODs) forming the AOL, thereby both increasing the usable field of view and reducing a prior art patternation problem. Preferably according to the invention, drive frequencies are selected that maximise efficiency of transmission through the AOL. When scanning, the centre of each scan is optimised to be of maximum efficiency.
US09341911B2
An electrochromic device includes an electrochromic stack. Openings are formed in the electrochromic stack that allow light to pass through without being tinted.
US09341907B2
A liquid crystal display includes: a first substrate, a second substrate facing the first substrate, a liquid crystal layer interposed between the first substrate and the second substrate and including liquid crystal molecules, a gate line positioned on the first substrate, a data line positioned on the first substrate and crossing the gate line, a first thin film transistor and a second thin film transistor connected to the gate line and the data line, a third thin film transistor connected to the gate line and the second thin film transistor, a reference voltage line connected to the third thin film transistor, and a pixel electrode including a first subpixel electrode connected to the first thin film transistor and a second subpixel electrode connected to the second thin film transistor.
US09341902B2
The present invention provides a fanout zone structure of a slim-bezel liquid crystal display, including: a transparent substrate (22), a first metal layer (24) formed on the transparent substrate (22), an insulation layer (26) formed on the first metal layer (24), a second metal layer (27) formed on the insulation layer (26), and a protection layer (28) formed on the second metal layer (27). The first metal layer (24) is electrically connected to the second metal layer (27). The insulation layer (26) includes a first opening (31) formed therein to expose the first metal layer (24). The protection layer (28) includes a second opening (32) formed therein to expose the second metal layer (27). The second opening (32) is arranged to correspond to the first opening (31) so as to form a trough (14) in the fanout zone.
US09341899B2
A liquid crystal display includes: a first substrate; a gate line and a data line disposed on the first substrate; a passivation layer disposed on the gate line and the data line; a first electrode and a second electrode disposed on the passivation layer; and a first insulating layer interposed between the first and second electrodes, where the first and second electrodes overlap each other via the first insulating layer, the second electrode includes a plurality of branch electrodes, and an end portion of the plurality of branch electrodes includes a first side portion and a second side portion extending parallel to the data line, and an oblique portion which connects the first side portion and the second side portion to each other and forms a first angle of less than 90 degrees with an extending line of the first side portion.
US09341894B2
A backlight module includes a number of laser units, a number of diffraction units, and a number of diverging units. Each laser unit includes three colored lasers arranged in a first straight line. The three lasers respectively emit red, green, and blue light. Each of the diffraction units includes three diffraction elements. The three diffraction elements are configured to diffract the light along the first straight line. Each of the diverging units is substantially an elongated semi-cylinder, and the longitudinal direction is along the first straight line. The diverging units diffract the three colors of light along a direction which is perpendicular to the direction of the first straight line.
US09341882B2
Provided is a polarizing plate having improved single plate transmittance under high-temperature and high-humidity conditions, and a liquid crystal display device using the same. A laminate including a polarizer, and an adhesive layer adjoining to at least one surface of the polarizer, the adhesive layer containing a resin and a compound, etc. represented by the formula (1) below. In the formula (1), each of R1 and R3 independently represents a hydrogen atom, C1-20 straight-chain alkyl group, C3-20 branched alkyl group, C3-20 cycloalkyl group, C2-20 alkenyl group or C6-20 aromatic group, and R5 represents a substituent Formula (1) polarizing plate
US09341876B2
A liquid crystal display device capable of reducing or preventing display irregularities is provided. In the liquid crystal display device including: an upper frame, a lower frame, a BL resin frame and a liquid crystal display panel and used as a display part as incorporated in an equipment, the liquid crystal display panel is fixed by the upper frame (fixation area). The BL resin frame includes BL resin frame ribs serving as a receiving part to receive a fixing device for fixing the liquid crystal display device to the equipment.
US09341871B2
A method of driving liquid crystal lens includes identifying a driving mode and driving unit lenses of the liquid crystal lens. The driving mode includes a two-dimensional (“2D”) mode and a three-dimensional (“3D”) mode. Driving timings of the unit lenses are different from each other in the 3D mode.
US09341864B2
Ophthalmic lenses for correcting refractive error of an eye are disclosed. Ophthalmic lenses include an inner optic portion having a scaffold between an anterior portion and a posterior portion. The scaffold is characterized by a substantially uniform thickness formed from a material characterized by a modulus that his higher than the modulus of the peripheral portion. Openings within the scaffold are filled with a low modulus material. When applied to an eye, the lenses are configured to provide one or more lenticular volumes between the posterior surface of the lens and the cornea. The disclosure further relates to methods of correcting refractive errors of an eye such as astigmatism or spherical aberration using the ophthalmic lenses.
US09341857B2
An imaging lens includes, from the object side to the image side, an aperture stop, a first lens with positive refractive power having a convex object-side surface near an optical axis, a second lens with positive refractive power having a convex image-side surface near the axis, a third lens with positive refractive power having a convex image-side surface near the axis, and a fourth lens with negative refractive power having a concave image-side surface near the axis, wherein all lens surfaces are aspheric, all lenses are made of plastic material, a diffractive optical surface is formed on at least one of the lens surfaces from the first lens image-side surface to the second lens image-side surface, and at least one of the three positive lenses satisfies 1.58
US09341853B2
A stereo image displaying system including an image displaying apparatus and an imaging element is provided. The image displaying apparatus displays image beams along an optic axis. The imaging element has a curved-surface. The curved-surface receives the image beams and converts the image beams into deformation images. The imaging element transmits the deformation images. Furthermore, a stereo image capturing system is also provided.
US09341852B2
According to one embodiment, the system for inspecting a cell substrate is provided. The inspection system includes: a signal generator transmitting to a cell substrate a display signal causing the cell substrate to display a test image; an imaging apparatus capturing the test image displayed on the cell substrate; a parallax image generator arranging the set of parallax image information of the captured test image for each parallax image to generate a parallax image prediction of parallax image which is obtained when the cell substrate is bonded to the lenticular lens; and an interface apparatus displaying the parallax image predictions.
US09341851B2
An observer can observe a video in a state in which the visual line of the observer is caused to overlook the downward side. In particular, in a virtual image display apparatus, even when the positions of the eyes, the nose, and the ears of the observer deviate from standard positions and the observer cannot observe a video in a targeted overlooking direction in a worn state in standard setting, it is possible to change an angle in an overlooking direction with respect to a front direction and cause the observer to perform observation in a suitable visual line by changing, with a nose receiving section functioning as an adjusting section, the posture of the virtual image display apparatus and adjusting an emission state of video light from a light guide member according to individual differences of the observer.
US09341848B2
Disclosed is a method for converting a freehand drawing into a 3D model corresponding to the freehand drawing in real time. This method can be used to automatically convert a picture of an object into a 3D model of the object for further interaction. The method can seamlessly be implemented by optical head-mounted computers to convert the picture of the objects located in front of the user into 3D models, even showing parts of the objects that are hidden from the user's direct line of view.
US09341842B2
An optical distributor (10) is formed as a reflector with one or more sloping surfaces. The sloping surfaces have varying angles of inclination from a bottom edge (20) to a top edge of the reflector. The sloping surfaces may form a substantially pyramidal or conical frustum-shaped surface. The sloping surfaces may additionally or alternatively form a band of adjacent or contiguous faceted surfaces. The reflector is configured to receive light rays through an opening (32) in a first plane (30) and reflect light rays radially outward and upward at varying angles of reflection (8B) to a bottom surface of the first plane (30) in a manner that illuminates both the bottom surface of the first plane (30) and an area (40) below the first plane (30). The reflected light may illuminate the first plane (30) and the area (40) below in a substantially uniform manner.
US09341831B2
An optical system to form an image on an image plane includes, a catadioptric optical subsystem configured to collect light from an object plane; and a refractive optical subsystem configured to form the image on the image plane, the catadioptric and refractive optical subsystems being arranged in order from the object plane to the image plane along an optical axis of the optical system. A baffle to shut off light traveling toward the image plane without being reflected by the catadioptric optical subsystem is placed in the optical system, in order to form a shielded portion in a center of an exit pupil plane of the optical system, and the catadioptric optical subsystem includes a partially transparent surface around the optical axis of the optical system so that transmissivity of a region, other than the shielded portion, at the exit pupil plane varies in a radial direction of the exit pupil plane.
US09341828B2
An optical coupling system includes a first unit including a source of light or a first multi-core optical fiber, each of the source and the first multi-core optical fiber including at least a first aperture, a second unit including a second multi-core optical fiber including at least a second aperture corresponding to the first aperture of the first unit, and a lens array unit redirecting light between the first unit and the second unit, the lens array unit substantially matching light rays transmitted or received between the first aperture of the first unit and the corresponding second aperture of the second unit.
US09341826B2
Wide angled image generation may be facilitated by directing light rays of a field of view through a partial spherical ball lens along an original axis. The light rays may be redirected off of a flat surface of the partial spherical ball lens along a different axis to at least one image sensor. The at least one image sensor is operable converts the light rays into digital data representing the redirected light rays. Wide angled images may be generated from the digital data.
US09341821B2
Present embodiments provide for a mobile device and an optical imaging lens thereof. The optical imaging lens comprises five lens elements positioned sequentially from an object side to an image side. Though controlling the convex or concave shape of the surfaces and/or the refracting power of the lens elements, the optical imaging lens shows better optical characteristics and the total length of the optical imaging lens is shortened.
US09341819B2
The present invention provides a mobile device and an optical imaging lens thereof. The optical imaging lens comprises a first lens element, a second lens element, a third lens element, a fourth lens element, a fifth lens element, and a sixth lens element positioned in an order from an object side to an image side. Through controlling the convex or concave shape of the surfaces and/or the refracting power of the lens elements, the optical imaging lens shows better image performance and the total length of the optical imaging lens is shortened.
US09341818B2
A photographic lens and a photographic apparatus including the same are provided. The photographic lens includes a first lens including a convex surface toward an object side and having a positive refractive power, a second lens including a concave surface toward an image side and having a negative refractive power, a third lens having a positive refractive power or a negative refractive power, a fourth lens having a positive refractive power or a negative refractive power, a fifth lens including a convex surface toward the image side and having a positive refractive power, and a sixth lens including a concave aspherical shape with respect to an optical axis toward the image side and having a negative refractive power. The first to sixth lenses may be sequentially arranged from the object side to the image side.
US09341817B2
Disclosed is an optical system. The optical system includes first to fifth lenses sequentially arranged from an object side to an image side. The optical system satisfies 1.5
US09341815B1
An optical imaging system includes, in order from an object side to an image side, a first lens element, a second lens element and a third lens element. The first lens element with positive refractive power has an object-side surface being convex and an image-side surface being convex in a paraxial region. The second lens element with positive refractive power has an object-side surface being concave and an image-side surface being convex in a paraxial region. The third lens element with negative refractive power has an image-side surface being concave in a paraxial region thereof, wherein the image-side surface of the third lens element has at least one convex shape in an off-axis region thereof. The optical imaging system further comprises a stop between the image-side surface of the first lens element and the object-side surface of the second lens element. The lens elements are made of plastic material.
US09341812B2
First and second amplifiers amplify a voltage value of a first signal and generate first and second amplified signals. Third and fourth amplifiers amplify the voltage value of a second signal and generate third and fourth amplified signals. A corrector corrects one of the first amplified signal and the second amplified signal based on a first correction function illustrating a relationship between the voltage value of the first amplified signal and the voltage value of the second amplified signal and generates one of a first corrected signal and a second corrected signal, and corrects one of the third amplified signal and the fourth amplified signal based on a second correction function illustrating a relationship between the voltage value of the third amplified signal and the voltage value of the fourth amplified signal and generates one of a third corrected signal and a fourth corrected signal.
US09341811B2
According to one exemplary embodiment, a method for adjusting-free automatic focus includes: mounting a lens in a lens holder seat with an adhesion scheme; setting focus position of a scene of infinity distance located on a back plane passing through a sensor integrated circuits; and moving the lens a travel distance toward a scene, wherein an image of the scene focuses on a front plane of the sensor integrated circuits.
US09341808B2
A voice coil motor (VCM) includes a fastening portion, a moving portion, a magnet assembly, a coil, an elastic sheet, and glue. The lower plate seals the fastening portion. The lower plate includes a first surface and a second surface opposite to the first surface, the lower plate defines a through hole penetrating the first surface and the second surface, the low plate defines a first glue recess around the through hole and a second glue recess along an edge of the low plate in the first surface. The fastening portion is positioned on the first surface of the lower plate via glue received in the first glue recess.
US09341806B2
A fan-out subassembly includes furcation modules mounted to a furcation module holder, which is adapted to be connected to a main component. The furcation module holder includes a cable anchoring location. Each of the furcation modules has a furcation tube mounting insert and a plurality of furcation tubes. The furcation tubes are supported by the furcation tube mounting inserts and have free portions that extend outwardly from the furcation tube mounting inserts and from the furcation module holder. The furcation tubes can hold optical fibers of a cable that extends from the subassembly to a cable spool. The subassembly and the free portions of the furcation tubes can be packaged together until installation.
US09341805B2
A fiber optic distribution cable includes a jacket defining an exterior of the fiber optic distribution cable and a plurality of optical fibers extending through a cavity of the jacket. The jacket has an access location with a single opening formed in the jacket that extends to the cavity. A distribution optical fiber of the plurality of optical fibers extends through and protrudes from the single opening in the jacket at the access location. The length of the distribution optical fiber is at least 5/4 times the length of the single opening.
US09341794B1
A cage within a communication module may have a plurality of receptacles. A cover may cover at least a portion of the cage. A thermal conduction system may include a top wrap, a first side wrap, and a second side wrap. The top wrap may comprise a top wrap top portion covering at least a portion of the cover top side and a top wrap back portion covering at least a portion of the cover back side. The first side wrap may comprise a first side wrap back portion covering at least a portion of the top wrap back portion, a first side wrap side portion covering at least a portion of the cover first side, and first side fingers extending through a first slit in the cover into the cage. A heat sink may be attached to the first side wrap back portion.
US09341790B2
In one embodiment, micro-electro-mechanical-system (MEMS) mirror structure includes an electrode plate including a first deflection electrode and a second deflection electrode, where the second deflection electrode is opposite the first deflection electrode, where the first deflection electrode is configured to receive a first drive voltage, and where the second deflection electrode is configured to receive a second drive voltage. The MEMS mirror structure also includes a mirror support pillar disposed on the electrode plate, where the mirror support pillar has a bearing surface and a mirror disposed above the bearing surface of the support pillar, where the mirror has a deflection angle, and where the first voltage is nonzero when the deflection angle is zero.
US09341786B1
An optomechanical assembly for a photonic chip is disclosed. The optomechanical assembly may include a planar lightwave circuit optically coupled to a plurality of vertical coupling gratings on the photonic chip, to couple light between an optical connector abutting the planar lightwave circuit and the photonic chip.
US09341782B2
Coupled-resonator optical waveguides (CROW) can be used to control a speed of an optical signal. In particular, the coupling distance between the resonators can be adjusted to precisely control a group delay of an optical wave. Systems and methods are described to control such coupling distance in a CROW.
US09341780B2
Techniques related to optical connectors are described. A ferrule includes an optical pathway for light transmission through the ferrule. In examples, a sub-wavelength grating (SWG) assembly is integrated in the ferrule, aligned with an end of the optical pathway.
US09341779B2
Devices which operate on gradient optical forces, in particular, nanoscale mechanical devices which are actuable by gradient optical forces. Such a device comprises a waveguide and a dielectric body, with at least a portion of the waveguide separated from the dielectric body at a distance which permits evanescent coupling of an optical mode within the waveguide to the dielectric body. This results in an optical force which acts on the waveguide and which can be exploited in a variety of devices on a nano scale, including all-optical switches, photonic transistors, tuneable couplers, optical attenuators and tuneable phase shifters.
US09341775B1
A micro-truss fabricated of thermosetting polymer and toughened with a coating of thermoplastic polymer. In one embodiment the thermosetting polymer micro-truss is immersed in a solution of thermoplastic polymer in an organic solvent. The immersion causes the micro-truss to absorb the thermoplastic polymer solution and to become coated with the thermoplastic polymer solution. Subsequent drying of the micro-truss leaves a coating of thermoplastic polymer on the micro-truss, and a layer of thermosetting polymer into which the thermoplastic polymer has penetrated. In another embodiment a thermoplastic monomer solution is allowed to diffuse into, and coat, the thermosetting polymer micro-truss, and the thermoplastic monomer is subsequently polymerized.
US09341772B2
An integrated semiconductor device includes a substrate including first, second and third portions; a first waveguide provided on the first portion, the first waveguide including a first base portion containing a first core layer, and a first ridge portion provided on the first base portion; a second waveguide provided on the second portion, the second waveguide including a second base portion containing a second core layer and a second ridge portion provided on the second base portion; and a third waveguide provided on the third portion, the third waveguide including a stripe-shaped mesa containing a third core layer. The second base portion is connected to the first base portion. The second ridge portion is connected to the first ridge portion and the stripe-shaped mesa. The second core layer is formed integrally with the third core layer and is joined to the first core layer by a butt-joint method.
US09341771B2
A multimode optical fiber includes a central core surrounded by an outer cladding. The central core has a graded-index profile with respect to the outer cladding and an outer radius r1 of between about 30 microns and 50 microns (e.g., between about 35 microns and 45 microns). The optical fiber also includes an inner cladding positioned between the central core and the outer cladding, and a depressed trench positioned between the inner cladding and the outer cladding. The multimode optical fiber exhibits reduced bending losses.
US09341769B2
The disclosure is directed to a system and method of controlling spectral attributes of illumination. According to various embodiments, a portion of illumination including an excluded selection of illumination spectra is blocked, while another portion of the illumination including a transmitted selection of illumination spectra is directed along an illumination path. In some embodiments, optical metrology is performed utilizing the spectrally controlled illumination to enhance measurement capability. For instance, the spectral attributes of illumination utilized to analyze different portions of a sample, such as different semiconductor layers, may be selected according to certain measurement characteristics associated with the analyzed portions of the sample.
US09341762B2
A reflective back cover made of plastic material having micro cellular structures is processed by compression molding and cutting so as to have a monolithical structure. The white material of the reflective back cover reflects lights such that the back cover can be an integral component featuring multiple functions of various components. With the thickness control of the reflective back cover, a concave can be formed at the side of the back cover where a light source is contained and the concave further retains the light source and its flexible printed circuit board. With the incorporation of the reflective back cover, the thickness of the backlight module can be reduced and a reliable and repetitive manufacturing of the backlight module can be introduced.
US09341752B2
A protector for a viewport of a vacuum chamber includes a substrate material that absorbs radiation having a wavelength of an amplified light beam and radiation having a wavelength included in an emission spectra of a target material that produces EUV light when ionized by the amplified light beam. The substrate material transmits one or more of visible or near-infrared light. The protector also includes a layer formed on the substrate material, and the layer reflects radiation having the wavelength of the amplified light beam.
US09341750B2
Optical films for reducing color shift and organic light-emitting display devices employing the same
Optical films, and organic light-emitting display devices employing the same, include a high refractive index pattern layer including a lens pattern region and a non-pattern region alternately formed, wherein the lens pattern region includes a plurality of grooves each having a depth larger than a width thereof, and the non-pattern region has no pattern; and a low refractive index pattern layer formed of a material having a refractive index smaller than a refractive index of the high refractive index pattern layer, wherein the low refractive index pattern includes a plurality of filling portions filling the plurality of grooves.
US09341747B2
The present invention relates to an azo compound represented by the following formula (1) [wherein, A represents a naphthyl group having a substituent, R1 to R6 each independently represent a hydrogen atom, an alkyl group having a carbon atom number of 1 to 5, an alkoxy group having a carbon atom number of 1 to 5, a sulfo group, or an alkoxy group having a sulfo group and a carbon atom number of 1 to 5, and X represents a benzoylamino group having a substituent, a phenylamino group having a substituent, a phenylazo group having a substituent, or a naphthotriazole group having a substituent] and a salt thereof. By using the azo compound or a salt thereof of the present invention, a neutral color polarizing plate and a color polarizing plate for a liquid crystal projector being excellent in polarization performance and durability.
US09341741B2
An electronic device includes a temperature and humidity sensor, a timing unit, and a storage unit storing a number of temperature values provided by weather forecast. Each of the temperature values provided by the weather forecast is associated with one time point. The electronic device obtains the temperature value and the humidity value sensed by the temperature and humidity sensor, obtains current time from the timing unit, associates the obtained temperature value and the humidity value with the current time, and stores the associated temperature value, humidity value, and the current time. The electronic device further compares each obtained temperature value with each temperature value provided by the weather forecast to find at which time point there is a match, searches in the storage unit to determine that each determined humidity value associated with one found time point is a humidity value with accuracy.
US09341740B1
Optical ground tracking apparatus for use with buried object locators or other instruments or devices are disclosed. In one embodiment, a magnetic field sensing buried object locator includes a ground tracking apparatus having input and output light snoot assemblies, light generation and sensing assemblies, and a processing element to receive signals from the light sensor assembly and generate location or tracking information associated with movement of the locator.
US09341731B2
The present disclosure relates generally to well logging and measurement in subterranean formations and more particularly, the present disclosure relates to a system and method for identifying anisotropic formations, such as fractures and fracture patterns, in subterranean formations. The method uses waveforms transmitted from a monopole source. After finding the Root Mean Square energy from at least four quadrants, the energy data is normalized. At least one minimum RMS energy point is identified and the azimuth of that minimum is also identified. The azimuth and the minimum are instructive in defining fracture patterns and characteristics.
US09341714B2
A marker system includes at least one emitter. The emitter(s) emit light responsive to a flow of electrical current there through. The marker system includes a device for acquiring an incoming signal and a circuit for processing the incoming signal. The circuit for processing the incoming signal monitors the device for acquiring the incoming signal to determine if the incoming signal includes any of a plurality of incoming Identification Friend or Foe (IFF) and/or munitions-targeting signals. The circuit emits one of a plurality of responses by sending electrical current selectively through the emitter(s) and/or other feedback devices based upon which of the plurality of incoming Identification Friend or Foe (IFF) and/or munitions-targeting signals is detected by the means for processing.
US09341709B2
Provided is an image sensing device that includes a detector configured to detect a terahertz wave signal received by a receiving antenna, a voltage-controlled oscillator configured to output an oscillation frequency according to an output voltage of the detector, and a frequency digital converter configured to convert the oscillation frequency output from the voltage-controlled oscillator to a digital signal.
US09341705B2
In an embodiment, an apparatus includes a detector and a range finder. The detector is configured to determine a direction to a target in response to a signal received from the target, and the range finder is configured to determine a range to the target in response to the direction and independently of an amplitude of the signal. For example, such an apparatus (e.g., a computer-based apparatus) may be disposed on tactical fighter aircraft, and may be able to range (e.g., azimuth range or slant range) a target passively even if an accurate measure of the amplitude of the signal received from the target is unavailable.
US09341694B2
In a method for distortion correction in spiral magnetic resonance imaging, a first MR data set is acquired by scanning raw data space along a spiral trajectory beginning at a first point. A first complex MR image is determined from the first MR data set, which includes first phase information for image points of the first MR image. A second MR data set is acquired by scanning raw data space along the spiral trajectory beginning at a second point that differs from the first point. A second complex MR image is determined from the second MR data set, which includes second phase information for image points of the second MR image. A geometric distortion for image points of the first or second MR image is determined from the first and second phase information, for example with a PLACE method.
US09341691B2
A method for magnetic resonance imaging includes providing a radio frequency excitation pulse to a specimen. The pulse has a duration. The method includes, concurrent with providing the radio frequency excitation pulse, applying a first gradient having a first polarity. The method includes applying a readout gradient at a time after the duration. The readout gradient has inverse polarity relative to the first polarity. The method includes, concurrent with applying the readout gradient, acquiring magnetic resonance data from the specimen. The method includes generating an image based on the magnetic resonance data.
US09341682B2
An omnipolar magnetic sensor system includes an input stage and a behavior component. The input stage is configured to receive a source signal and to selectively chop the source signal. Further, the input stage is configured to balance the source signal using behavior parameters and generate a balanced source signal.
US09341679B2
A battery voltage monitoring apparatus for monitoring an assembled battery voltage, the assembled battery including a plurality of battery cells, the battery voltage monitoring apparatus including a plurality of input terminals, the plurality of input terminals being respectively coupled to the plurality of battery cells through a potential measurement line, a comparator having a hysteresis characteristic and including a first terminal and a second terminal, the second terminal receiving a reference voltage, and a current source, one end of the current source being coupled between one of the plurality of the input terminals and the first terminal.
US09341676B2
A packet-based testing capability is provided. The packet-based testing capability is configured to provide a packet-based JTAG (PJTAG) protocol. The PJTAG protocol is an asynchronous protocol configured to support the synchronous JTAG protocol. The PJTAG protocol is configured to convert between JTAG signals and packets configured to transport information of the JTAG signals (e.g., to convert JTAG signals into PJTAG packets at an interface from a JTAG domain to a PJTAG domain and to convert PJTAG packets into JTAG signals at an interface from a PJTAG domain to JTAG domain).
US09341671B2
A testing holder for a chip unit, a multi site holding frame for plural chip units and a method for testing a die thereof are provided. The proposed multi site holding frame for testing plural chip units simultaneously includes a first holder frame having a plurality of testing holders. Each of the plurality of testing holders includes a holder body containing a specific one of the plural chip units, and a pressure releasing device formed on the holder body to release an insertion pressure when the specific one of the plural chip units is inserted in the holder body.
US09341661B2
A tone detector is disclosed that is realizable in digital embodiment on a single integrated circuit die and does not require external components, such as a discrete capacitor. An input connects to a comparator, which in turn connects to one or more edge detectors and a flip flop. The edge detector outputs a pulse responsive to a detected edge. A counter is reset by the pulses from the edge detectors thereby preventing the counter from reaching a maximum value, which would otherwise be output from the counter and provided to a flip flop to clock in the comparator output at the D input to the flip flop. In operation, the comparator generates a rail to rail signal responsive to a received tone, which in turn is clocked through the flip flop as a logic high output indicating presence of a tone.
US09341659B2
Embodiments described herein use capacitive sensing to detect human interaction with living plants. A sensing system may utilize the natural conductive paths found in an organic plant to transmit an electrical signal between the plant and a user interacting with the plant. By directly contacting the plant or coming into proximity of the plant, the user may affect the electrical signal. That is, the electrical properties of the user (e.g., the capacitance of the human body) change a measured impedance curve associated with the electrical signal. Based on this change, the sensing system detects an interaction between the user and the plant and may inform a user interaction device to provide a feedback response to the user. For example, the feedback response may be an audio or video effect that is based on the type of user interaction such as whether the user touched the plant's leaf or stem.
US09341651B2
A probe card for an electric test of a device under test on a working table incorporating a heat source includes a circuit base plate including conductive paths connected to a tester, a probe base plate including conductive paths corresponding to the conductive paths and provided with probes connected to the conductive paths, and a heat expansion adjusting member bonded to the probe base plate, having a different linear expansion coefficient from that of the probe base plate to restrain heat expansion of the probe base plate, and constituting a composite body with the probe base plate. In a case where, when the device under test is at two measuring temperatures, the composite body is at corresponding achieving temperatures, expansion changing amounts of the device under test and the composite body under temperature differences between the respective measuring temperatures and the corresponding achieving temperatures are set to be approximately equal.
US09341649B1
A structure and method for providing a contact pin between a device under test (DUT) and a load board which provides upper and lower contact point which are axial aligned is disclosed. The pin has an upper (30) and lower (32) section and a hinge (44/46) in between which allow flex of both upper and lower contact (24/26) which, but the axial alignment can provide a direct replacement for POGO pins but with greater reliability.
US09341646B2
A system is provided for the continuous reduction, in real time, of bias in a force rebalanced accelerometers having a proof mass coupled to an accelerometer housing by a flexure suspension. The system comprises a closed loop, force rebalance servo that provides control voltage to the proof mass to null an electrical pickoff signal that indicates the motion of the proof mass with respect to the accelerometer housing, wherein a time varying disturbance signal is injected into the force rebalance servo that results in the generation of a time varying voltage in the output of the force rebalance servo that corresponds to a magnitude of the net positive spring of the combined flexure suspension and electrostatic springs acting on the proofmass. The system also comprises a negative electrostatic spring servo that applies a negative electrostatic spring DC voltage to each of a pair of negative electrostatic forcer electrodes.
US09341645B2
A system for real-time determination of a parameter of a movement having a repetitive form includes first estimating means for estimating an approximation of the period of the repetitive movement, before the end of the current movement, on the basis of representative signals indicative of the movement. A determining means determines a size of a sliding window on the basis of the period estimated by the first estimating means. Finally, a second estimating means precisely estimates, using the sliding window, the movement parameter, on the basis of the representative signals indicative of the movement and of the size of the sliding window delivered by the first estimating means.
US09341639B2
A apparatus for microfluid detection for detecting a sample fluid including a plurality of magnetic particles is provided. The apparatus for microfluid detection includes a microfluidic chip and a magnetic generating module. The microfluidic chip includes a substrate and microfluidic channels, wherein the sample fluid is carried by a carry surface of the substrate. The magnetic generating module is adapted for providing a positioning magnetic field and a surrounding magnetic field. The magnetic module controls to move the sample fluid and change a distribution of the magnetic particles in the sample fluid through the positioning magnetic field and the surrounding magnetic field.
US09341634B2
Physical condition under stress can be controlled by using adiponectin in blood as a stress marker and measuring a level thereof. Moreover, endotoxin activity can be inhibited by using adiponectin.
US09341631B2
Cell permeable metal ion indicator compounds and methods of their use and synthesis are described. The compound comprises a metal chelating moiety (Mc), a reporter molecule and two or more lipophilic groups (GL) covalently bonded through a linker to the reporter molecule, wherein the lipophilic groups, when present in a live cell, are cleaved resulting in two or more negatively charged groups. An exemplary compound for use as a cell permeable metal ion indicator is represented by the structure:
US09341619B2
Methods are disclosed for diagnosing a hyposialylation disorder. Methods are also disclosed for determining the effectiveness of a therapeutic agent for treatment of a hyposialylation disorder in a subject. These methods include measuring an amount of monosialylated Thomsen-Friedenreich (ST) antigen and measuring an amount of non-sialylated Thomsen-Friedenreich antigen (T) in a biological sample, such as a serum or plasma sample from the subject and determining the ratio of T to ST. A ratio of T to monosialylated ST of about 0.06 or higher diagnoses the hyposialylation disorder or indicates that the therapeutic agent is not effective for the treatment of the hyposialylation disorder. In other embodiments, a ratio of T to ST less than about 0.06 indicates that the therapeutic agent is effective for the treatment of the hyposialylation disorder, or the subject does not have the hyposialylation disorder. In additional embodiments, these methods can be used to determine the lowest effective dosage of the therapeutic agent of use to treat the subject.
US09341617B2
The present invention is directed to a method of identifying CD4+ T cell antigens as well as to antigens which were identified by such a method. The present invention further is directed to the application of those identified antigens in medicine.
US09341616B2
A sweet taste substance or a sweet taste-regulating substance is detected by contacting a test substance with a cell that expresses a chimeric protein of human T1R2 and mouse T1R2, and/or a chimeric protein of human T1R3 and mouse T1R3, and may further express a G protein α subunit, and by detecting an interaction between the chimeric proteins and the test substance.
US09341609B2
A monitoring assembly (201) with an intake (213) has at least one pump (210) featuring at least one pump channel mounted in the monitoring assembly (201). A plurality of fluid lines are coupled to the at least one pump (210). At least one filter cartridge (315) is also mounted in the assembly. Each filter cartridge (315) is separately coupled by one of the plurality of fluid lines to one of the pump channels, where each filter cartridge (315) contains material for extracting an analyte, and where the at least one pump operates to separately push fluid through the at least one filter cartridge (315). The filter cartridge (315) operates to separate fluid into constituent parts.
US09341608B2
A method of determining the expected shelf life of seafood. The method includes a step of placing a test strip against a piece of seafood, wherein the test strip includes an indicating pad having a pH indicator that is configured to change color in the presence of ammonia. The method further includes a step of ascertaining concentration on a parts per million level of ammonia by comparing the color of the pH indicator to a comparative chart, wherein the comparative chart includes a gradient of color intensity that indicates the concentration on a parts per million level of ammonia. Furthermore, the method includes a step of referencing a booklet having a plurality of charts to cross reference the concentration of ammonia detected by the test strip with the storage temperature to determine an expected shelf life for a piece of seafood.
US09341603B1
A handheld ultrasound detection apparatus includes a portable housing with a flexible tube that extends from the housing and includes a sound cup and an ultrasound receiver for converting received ultrasound energy into an electronic signal. A gain/active filter includes four amplifiers each having an associated gain range. The apparatus is programmed based on a size of the electronic signal, to direct the electronic signal along a linear scale through one or more amplifiers and apply an appropriate gain to the signal, and to generate a percentage value corresponding to the gain and with respect to the linear scale. In a manual mode, data is generated corresponding to a particular gain range and a percentage value from 0-100% with respect to the particular gain range, while during an automatic mode data is generated corresponding to a percentage value from 0-400% with respect to a collective gain range.
US09341601B2
An elastography device for quantitatively and/or qualitatively measuring the viscoelastic properties of any medium, includes a deformable tube for positioning the ultrasonic transducer located at the end of the deformable tube and for holding it so as to ensure, during at least one measurement, perpendicularity and contact between the ultrasonic transducer and the medium.
US09341596B1
An integrated ΔE-E ionization detector that includes an outer shell having an interior linear axis, a vacuum tube coaxial with the linear axis, and a front cathode, a center anode, and a rear anode disposed within the outer shell and around the vacuum tube. The front cathode, center anode, and rear anode are substantially planar in shape, and a ΔE detection chamber is defined by the front cathode, the center anode, the outer shell, and the vacuum tube, and an E detection chamber is defined by the rear anode, the center anode, the outer shell, and the vacuum tube. All rays defining at least one solid annular angle about the linear axis and originating from a point in front of the front cathode will intersect the front cathode, internally traverse the ΔE detection chamber, intersect the center anode, and traverse at least a portion of the E detection chamber.
US09341593B2
It is described a method for controlling an oxygen pump cell of a sensor in an internal combustion engine or in the exhaust gas after treatment system of such an engine, comprising the step of adding, to a feedback control of the current in the pump cell, a further feed-forward control path estimating an expected oxygen pump current on the basis of characteristics of the exhaust gas composition calculated from engine operation data.
US09341592B2
The present disclosure provides an improved field effect transistor and device that can be used to sense and characterize a variety of materials. The field effect transistor and/or device including the transistor may be used for a variety of applications, including genome sequencing, protein sequencing, biomolecular sequencing, and detection of ions, molecules, chemicals, biomolecules, metal atoms, polymers, nanoparticles and the like.
US09341591B2
A sensor utilizing a non-leachable or diffusible redox mediator is described. The sensor includes a sample chamber to hold a sample in electrolytic contact with a working electrode, and in at least some instances, the sensor also contains a non-leachable or a diffusible second electron transfer agent. The sensor and/or the methods used produce a sensor signal in response to the analyte that can be distinguished from a background signal caused by the mediator. The invention can be used to determine the concentration of a biomolecule, such as glucose or lactate, in a biological fluid, such as blood or serum, using techniques such as coulometry, amperometry, and potentiometry. An enzyme capable of catalyzing the electrooxidation or electroreduction of the biomolecule is typically provided as a second electron transfer agent.
US09341585B2
An X-ray detector includes a housing and an X-ray sensing device provided within the housing along the axis of the housing, wherein the housing is structured to be coupled to the electron column or sample chamber of a charged particle beam device. The X-ray detector also includes an electron detector structured to detect a plurality of electrons ejected from a sample in response to an electron beam impinging on the sample, the electron detector being coupled to the housing on or near the axis such that a first line of sight to the electron detector from a point at which the electron beam impinges on the sample is similar to a second line of sight to the X-ray sensing device from the point at which the electron beam impinges on the sample such that X-ray and Backscattered electron images will show similar parallax and shadowing effects.
US09341572B2
The present disclosure relates to a detecting device and a detecting method of a transparent display panel. The method comprises: providing a reference pattern sheet having n pairs of first regions with a first color and second regions with a second color alternately arranged in a first direction, and each of the first regions and each of the second regions having a same predetermined width D in the first direction; forming a uniform predetermined illuminance on the reference pattern sheet; detecting directly the reference pattern sheet by a measuring device; detecting the reference pattern sheet through the transparent panel display by the measuring device; and thereby determining a clarity of the transparent display panel.
US09341559B2
The present invention provides a method of analyzing a sample comprising sub-micron particles, comprising determining first information about the size of particles and number of particles in the sample by nanoparticle tracking analysis; determining second information about average particle size of particles in the sample by dynamic light scattering; determining from the first information third information representing the theoretical effect of the detected particles on results obtainable by dynamic light scattering; and adjusting the second information using the third information to produce fourth information representing adjusted information on average particle size.
US09341542B2
A fiber optic inspection apparatus includes a male connector with a protruding pin or a female connector with a plug hole, a casing, an inspection means, a first control unit and a second control unit. The casing has an accommodating space for installing the inspection means, first control unit and second control unit, and a connecting hole. The inspection means has a connecting end and a pair of moving guide pins, and the connecting end has two through holes for passing the moving guide pins and switching the status of protruding from or being received in the through holes. The first control unit is for fixing the inspection means and coupling the moving guide pins, and a control button is extended from the second control unit and has a side linked with the first control unit for switching the position of the two moving guide pins.
US09341529B2
A pressure sensor 1 comprises a semiconductor substrate 10, insulating layers 21, 22, 23 formed on the semiconductor substrate 10, a semiconductor layer 30 formed on the semiconductor substrate 10 with the insulating layers 21, 23 intervening therebetween, and a cavity portion 13 provided between the semiconductor substrate 10 and the semiconductor layer 30. The portion of the semiconductor layer 30 which overlaps the cavity portion 13 as viewed in a lamination direction serves as a movable portion 31. The cavity portion 13 is surrounded by the insulating layers 22, 23. With this arrangement, the pressure sensor 1 can be manufactured easily with high precision.
US09341528B2
A torque detector includes: a magnetic flux collecting unit including a magnetic flux collecting holder formed in an annular shape by resin molding and a magnetic shield formed by bending a metal plate and attached to an outer peripheral face of the magnetic flux collecting holder; and a sensor housing formed integrally with the magnetic flux collecting unit. The magnetic shield has a shield body, a shield end portion, and a bent portion. A second angle formed between an outer side face of the shield end portion and a radial direction is smaller than a first angle formed between an outer peripheral face of the shield body and the radial direction.
US09341517B1
Systems that enable observing celestial bodies during daylight or in under cloudy conditions.
US09341498B2
A method of operation of a navigation system includes: determining a travel context based on a travel condition; determining a guidance landmark based on a candidate landmark; and generating a navigation guidance with a control unit having the guidance landmark suited for the travel context for presenting with a device.
US09341491B2
The disclosure relates to a technique for searching points of interest, or POIs, along a calculated route to be travelled. A method implementation thereof comprises the steps of providing an initial search corridor of predetermined size, wherein the corridor is indicative of a geographic area covering at least portions of the route to be travelled, performing a POI search within the provided search corridor, and adjusting the corridor size for a subsequent POI search based on a number of POI hits found during the POI search in the currently provided search corridor.
US09341481B2
The application provides a method and system for providing tourist assistance and guided navigation of a tourist spot by transmitting metadata across a communication network. The application provides a method and system for utilizing a beyond audible frequency signal for metadata transmission across a communication network. The application provides a method and system for emitting an encoded metadata over the beyond audible frequency signal, receiving and parsing the said received encoded metadata, extracting and decoding barcode received along with encoded metadata and retrieving the tourist information by accessing a web link received along with encoded metadata for plurality of web based services.
US09341480B2
A mining machine management system includes: a route information generation unit generating route information based on position information obtained when a mining machine in operation travels along a route departing from a predetermined first position, passing a second position where a load is loaded, and moving to a third position where the load is removed, the route information including nodes of the route and a link connecting the nodes; and a route analysis unit determining a section having the links within the route information to be a specific section where a slope difference between the links falls within a value, an orientation difference between the links falls within a value, and there is no intersection between the links.
US09341470B2
A light section sensor for providing an output of a digital output coordinate has an illuminating device for projecting a light line onto a measured object and an electronic camera for detecting the projected light line on the measured object. A processing device determines at least one measured coordinate in a measured coordinate system on the basis of the light line detected. A coordinate transformation device transforms the measured coordinates from the measured coordinate system into the output coordinates in an output coordinate system by a coordinate transformation. A slope angle determination device determines the slope angle of the light section sensor in relation to a flat surface of the measured object.
US09341465B2
A dimension measuring apparatus is configured by: a movable stage; a measurement setting data storing section that holds feature amount information and measured position information; a low-magnification imaging section that photographs a workpiece with a low magnification; a workpiece detecting section that specifies a position and a posture of the workpiece in the low-magnification image based on the feature amount information; a stage controlling section that controls the movable stage 12 based on the specified location and posture such that the position to be measured of the workpiece stays within the high-magnification field of view; a high-magnification imaging section that photographs with a high magnification the position to be measured; an edge extracting section that extracts an edge of the position to be measured from the high-magnification image; and a dimension value calculating section that obtains a dimension value of the position to be measured.
US09341456B2
A system for initiating and controlling a reaction between a metal and water is provided for use in propelling a rocket, torpedo, or other munition. A thermite charge having a quantity of reducing metal in excess of that required to react with the metal oxide is utilized to melt and/or vaporize the excess reducing metal. Water may be added to the munition immediately before use, or in the case of a torpedo, may be taken in from the surrounding water. The principles embodied by Bernoulli's equation may be used to regulate the intake of water for the reaction with the reducing metal.
US09341455B2
An expanding subsonic projectile has a body that has a meplat and at least partially defines a hollow bore having a bore diameter. An insert is disposed at least partially in the bore. The insert includes an insert axis; a tip disposed on the insert axis; a leading section extending from the tip towards the meplat, wherein the leading section has an expanding section diameter along the insert axis from the tip towards the meplat; and a waist extending from the leading section towards the meplat. The waist has a contracting waist diameter along the insert axis from the leading section towards the meplat.
US09341448B2
Mechanically attachable fletching (shown as double fletching 220, 222, 224, 226, 228) is disclosed herein for a projectile 100, 102, 104, 112, 118, 120, 126, having a shaft 200, 300 having an exterior surface. The mechanically attachable fletching includes at least one fin 230, 232, 234, 236, 238, a connection section 231, 233, 235, 237, 239 bordering the at least one fin, and at least one mechanical fastener 240, 241, 244, 244′ 250, 254, 254′, 262, 266, 272, 276, 280, 282, 290, 294 for attaching the fletching to the exterior surface of the shaft via the connection section. Also disclosed herein are methods for mechanically attaching fletching to the shaft of the projectile. Also disclosed herein are illuminated projectiles 102, 108, 110, 112, 116, 120, 122, 124, 126.
US09341446B2
An oscillating target includes a base, a stand, and a pendulum. The base includes an electromagnetic coil and a power source. The stand is fixedly coupled to the base and the pendulum is rotatably supported by the stand. The pendulum includes a permanent magnet arranged opposite a target face. The permanent magnet is arranged on the pendulum at a position nearest to the base. The power source is configured to selectively operate the electromagnetic coil to generate a magnetic field to affect the permanent magnet to rotate the pendulum and thereby move the target face.
US09341444B2
This disclosure relates to thermal electric images which may form Informational Images such as landing zone markers, drop zone markers, vehicle markers, road markers, covert signs, notices, directions and the like, and may also be used to form thermal targets which may be used as training aides for weapons and other devices that are equipped with thermal imaging equipment.
US09341443B2
A high-tech security gun that works with Wi-Fi or any other special network, and will not work when it is removed from the address installed by its provider. The gun does not point forward at anyone except it is operated to point at any direction, when controlled wirelessly with a special module.
US09341441B2
A KeyMod quick mounting arrangement is arranged for detachably coupling an accessory at a firearm having a KeyMod mounting slot, wherein the arrangement includes a mounting body having a first side extended from the accessory to be detachably coupled with the firearm, and a coupling head movably extended from the mounting body between a releasing position and a securing position. The coupling head has a head portion outwardly protruded from an opposed second side of the mounting body, wherein the mounting body is stationary when the coupling head is moved between the releasing position and the securing position. In the releasing position, the head portion of the coupling head is disposed in an enlarged slot portion of the mounting slot. In the securing position, the head portion of the coupling head is slid to a narrower slot portion of the mounting slot for securing the accessory at the firearm.
US09341439B2
Firearm fore end grips and grip assemblies have a generally planar and flexible heat resistant grip which is configured for attachment or securement to a fore end of a fire arm or to a barrel cover and engaged with a Picatinny rail of the firearm or barrel cover.
US09341438B2
A handguard or other cover for a firearm includes a shell or body with a hollow interior cavity and a retaining structure configured to engage the forearm and retain the shell in place on the forearm, where the retaining structure is releasable to permit removal of the shell from the forearm. The shell may have a concave inner surface and a convex outer surface extending between the first and second edges. The concave inner surface may include at least one tab extending outwardly from the inner surface which is configured to be connected to a slot or opening formed in the forearm for the firearm.
US09341430B2
In some embodiments, a crossbow comprises a bow portion defining a first central vertical axis and a stock portion defining a second central vertical axis. The bow portion comprises an interfacing portion and the stock portion comprises a complimentary interfacing portion. The interfacing portion and the complimentary interfacing portion are arranged to provide self-alignment of the stock portion with the bow portion, such that the first central vertical axis and the second central vertical axis are coaxial.
US09341424B2
A firearm locking assembly combines a firearm and a locked safety assembly and is configured to allow owner and deny non-owner use. The assembly allows owner unencumbered use without an alarm sounding. The assembly allows owner very fast unlocking without the use of anything external, except the owner's hands. Motion detector and alarm plus trigger lock guard against the firearm being taken to a school, public place, or unauthorized use and theft. The assembly includes automatic locking if the firearm it is put down or forcefully taken away. The assembly includes means for a multiple position safety lever to signal: 1) if firearm is locked, 2) if firearm ready to accept code, 3) if firearm is unlocked, and 4) if firearm is in timed unlocked mode. The assembly also includes law enforcement and military modes, audio and silent FM alarm, a GPS and a digital camera.
US09341420B2
Provided in one aspect is an annular gas ring within or adjacent a barrel to increase the efficient transfer of pressurized gas to one or more gas ports, which may communicate the high-pressure gas from near the chamber distally to a piston to cycle the action of the firearm. Provided in another aspect is a modular quick-disconnect barrel assembly for long-stroke gas-operated firearms such as the AK-47, which allows barrel and gas systems to be replaced together simply by pulling a single pin, thereby allowing the caliber of the firearm to be instantly changed to 12-gauge shotgun or any dimensionally smaller rifle or handgun round. A novel forward-charging handle system is also provided that works with the modular quick-disconnect barrel assembly.
US09341419B2
A bimetallic tube consisting of at least one tubular element in a first metal resistant to the corrosive and/or erosive action of a process fluid with which it is put in contact, having at least one end, or an area close to an end, externally coated with a layer of a second metal, different from the first and more suitable, with respect to this, for being seal-welded to a support.Tube bundle equipment to be used for thermal exchange operations at high temperatures and pressures, under conditions of high aggressiveness of the process fluids, wherein the tube bundle comprises at least one tube having the above characteristics.Said equipment is particularly used as a heat exchanger and decomposer, for example as a stripper, in the cycle of urea synthesis processes where there are conditions of high pressure, high temperatures, high aggressiveness of the process fluids, and in which the tube bundle consists of at least one tube having the above characteristics.
US09341417B2
A heat-exchange medium for use in a regenerative thermal oxidizer has a coating of potassium aluminum silicate which prevents the build-up of silicon dioxide from processed gas on the surface of the ceramic heat-exchange media. The ceramic heat-exchange medium has 1% or less by weight of MgO based on the total medium weight and the coating has a thickness of from 0.2 to 0.4 mm. The coating consists of potassium aluminum silicate having a composition of about 4 to 8% by weight K2O, about 26 to 38% by weight Al2O3, and about 52 to 64% by weight SiO2 based on the total coating weight.
US09341416B2
A heat-dissipation unit with heat-dissipation microstructure and method of manufacturing the same is disclosed. The heat-dissipation unit with heat-dissipation microstructure includes a main body internally defining a chamber; a wick structure formed on an inner surface of the chamber; and at least a SiO2 nano thin film coated on the wick structure. The SiO2 nano thin film is formed of a plurality of SiO2 nanograins, and is coated on the wick structure of the heat-dissipation unit through the sol-gel process. With the at least one layer of SiO2 nano thin film coated on the wick structure, it is able to upgrade the heat dissipation performance of the heat-dissipation unit.
US09341415B2
A brazed heat exchanger comprises a number of heat exchanger plates (100, 200, 300) provided with a pressed pattern of ridges (110a) and grooves (110b) arranged such that flow channels for media to exchange heat are formed between neighboring plates (100,200,300). The plates (100,200,300) are further provided with port openings (120a-d) in selective communication with said flow channels and with a circumferential edge formed by skirts (130;240; 335) of neighboring plates (100,200,300) overlapping one another. A reinforcement portion (140; 250;340) extends outside the skirt (130;240; 335), and comprises a ribbon of sheet metal.
US09341413B2
A cooling tower with a plurality of fill packs has a fire stop with openings disposed below the fill packs, a water distribution system for distributing water onto the fill packs, and a cold water basin disposed below the fire stop for collecting water which has past through said fill packs. The openings in the fire stop occupy at least 80% of the area over which the fire stop extends. The fire stop is made of an intumescent material with an expansion ratio sufficient to close said openings when said material intumesces.
US09341412B2
The present disclosure relates to methods and systems for reducing silica recession of silicon-containing ceramics or silicon-containing ceramic composites, particularly those exposed to a combustion gas or to combustion gas environments, including those exposed to high temperature combustion gas environments. The methods and systems involve silicon-doping of compressed air and/or removal of moisture from compressed air prior to co-mingling the treated compressed air with the combustion gas to which the silicon-containing ceramics or silicon-containing ceramic composites are exposed.
US09341405B2
In various implementations, frost in a vapor compression system may be controlled. A property of a fan may be determined. A determination may be made whether a frost event and/or a nonfrost event has occurred based at least partially on the determined fan property.
US09341399B2
An electronic expansion valve is provided, a sleeve is fixed in a main valve cavity of the electronic expansion valve, and a valve core seat is axially movably provided in the sleeve; a circumferential side wall of the sleeve is provided with a sleeve flow passage, and a circumferential side wall of the valve core seat is provided with a valve core seat side hole; and when the refrigerant flows forward, the valve core seat closes the main valve port to disconnect a communication between the sleeve flow passage and the valve core seat side hole, and the refrigerant flows to the valve core valve port through the sleeve flow passage; and when the refrigerant flows reversely, the valve core seat moves upward to open the main valve port to communicate the valve core seat side hole with the sleeve flow passage.
US09341389B2
A heat exchanger having a helix coil incorporated into a stainless steel elongated variable diameter cylindrical housing and a radial direct-firing burner and a blower-driven hot flue gas to heat water. A buffer tank is incorporated within the lumen of the helix coil. At least one rope seal is disposed between adjacent coil loops of a portion of the helix coil for enhancing heat transfer to the helix coil. In one embodiment, the heat exchanger further comprises a Stirling engine comprised of a free piston having hot and cold ends that is disposed within the cavity taken up the buffer tank, wherein the hot end receives heat from the burner and the cold end is cooled by the incoming cold water line to form an electric power generator.
US09341385B2
An evaporative humidifier includes a humidifying element having water pockets drawing water up from a tub and then supplying the water to the upper portion of the humidifying element. The water pockets are formed between first and second covers. A first water pocket formation unit is provided on the first cover, a second water pocket formation unit is provided on the second cover, and the first and second water pocket formation units form the water pockets when the first and second covers are coupled. Therefore, the water pockets are formed through molds having a simple structure, as compared to the conventional water pocket, and thus manufacturing costs of the humidifying element assembly are reduced. Further, each water pocket includes plural sub water pockets formed at both sides of an inflow hole formed at the center of each water pocket, and thus carries a large amount of water.
US09341384B2
An endothermic heat pump water heater has a water tank supported atop a hollow base, a heat pump circuit operable to provide primary heat to water in the tank, and an electric resistance heating element operable to provide secondary heat to the water. The heat pump circuit includes refrigerant tubing in which a compressor disposed within the base, a condenser in heat exchange external contact with the tank, a refrigerant expansion device, and an evaporator disposed within the base are connected in series. A vertical duct, external to the tank, has an inlet adjacent the upper tank end, and a fan is operative to sequentially flow air inwardly through the inlet, downwardly through the duct into the base, across the compressor, across the evaporator, and then outwardly from the base.
US09341378B2
Cooking appliance having an external control panel equipped with one or more regulating valves, where the rotary regulator organ is equipped with various peripheral openings for supplying a flow Q. For the supply of one or another type of gas, NG or LPG, either the control knob or a bezel disk in the external panel are interchangeable on the appliance, being chosen between two different available units, one and the other permitting two different angular position limits A2, A3 of the regulator organ or the supply of a constant flow Qmin through one or another opening with calibrated sections, respectively for NG or LP gas. An appendix in the control knob guided in a slide groove on the control panel of the appliance, or a tongue on the bezel disk stopping the rotation of the control knob, determines the travel limit A2 for the supply of Qmin of NG.
US09341377B2
A liner and attachment structure has an exhaust liner for use in a gas turbine engine. At least one hanger has feet secured to the liner. The hanger has an aperture extending at a central web. A flanged washer is received within the opening in the hanger. The flanged washer allows adjustment relative to the hanger. The flanged washer has a spherical recess. A collet has a plurality of part-spherical fingers separated by slots, and are received in the spherical recess of the flanged washer. A member extends into the collet to hold the part-spherical fingers radially outwardly. The member is also utilized to secure static structure, and to secure the liner to the static structure.
US09341375B2
Certain embodiments include a resonator for the head end of a turbine combustor. The resonator is partially defined by first and second plates disposed about a fuel nozzle in the head end of the turbine combustor. The resonator is further configured to receive an air flow which extends through the resonator and into the fuel nozzle.
US09341371B2
The invention relates to corona ignition device comprising a housing, an insulator surrounded by the housing, an inner conductor leading through the insulator to an ignition tip, and a coil connected to the inner conductor, the coil comprising an elongate coil former and a winding formed from wire wound onto the coil former, wherein the coil former comprises at least one indentation filled with adhesive, and the wire crosses the indention such that wire portions which are arranged above the indentation are adhesively bonded to the coil former by means of the adhesive arranged in the indentation.
US09341363B2
A digital reading device with cosmetic function includes a base plate, a lighting panel, a driving unit and a transparent touch panel. The base plate includes a plurality of black units. The lighting panel is disposed on the base plate and includes as plurality of lighting units for emitting a green light. The driving unit is electrically connected to the lighting panel and the base plate, wherein the driving unit is for turning on or turning off each of the lighting units respectively. The transparent touch panel is disposed on the lighting panel for displaying a message composed of the black units. The message may also be white-colored on a green background color with various saturation levels whenever the lighting panel includes a plurality of displaying units, and each of the displaying units consists of two lighting units with complimentary colors.
US09341354B2
In various embodiments, a system for providing an LED illumination source on a surface includes a light module comprising (i) an illumination area for receiving one or more light-emitting diodes (LEDs) and (ii) slip joints at first and second ends of the light module, each slip joint comprising a slip joint slot, and at least one bracket for mounting the light module to the surface, the at least one bracket having (i) a fitting frictionally receivable within one of the slip joint slots and (ii) a mounting region engageable to the surface.
US09341353B2
A light emitting device includes a package and a light emitting element. The package includes a resin portion and at least one lead frame arranged in the resin portion. The at least one lead frame has at least one protrusion which is surrounded by the resin portion and which has an upper surface exposed from the resin portion. The light emitting element is mounted on the upper surface of the at least one protrusion and is electrically connected to the at least one lead frame. At least a half area of the upper surface is covered with the light emitting element.
US09341351B2
A luminaire and method of installing same on a mounting pole including a housing having a flange and a plurality of LEDs. The flange includes formed therein a plurality of spaced apart holes disposed along a line, a slot disposed along the line, and a central hole disposed along the line and between the slot and the spaced apart holes. The plurality of LEDs are attached to or disposed in the housing. The method includes hanging the luminaire on an upper mounting bolt extending from a mounting pole, sliding the upper mounting bolt along the slot so that a conduit hole and the central hole are at least partially aligned to each other and one of the plurality of spaced apart holes is aligned to a lower mounting hole, and installing a lower mounting bolt through a lower mounting hole and the one spaced apart hole aligned therewith.
US09341349B1
A mounting bracket assembly includes a mounting base and a plurality of arms extending down from the mounting base. A first arm of the plurality of arms includes a first pair of inwardly facing hooks coupled to the first arm and defining a first torsion spring receiver area. The first arm of the plurality of arms includes a first spring coil ramp disposed along a bottom end of the first arm and extending radially inward from the first arm at a first angle. A second arm of the plurality of arms includes a second pair of inwardly facing hooks coupled to the second arm and defining a second torsion spring receiver area. The second arm of the plurality of arms includes a second spring coil ramp disposed along a bottom end of the second arm and extending radially inward from the second arm at a second angle.
US09341346B1
A gasket for an interface between a light emitting diode (LED) and a light emitting panel (LEP) includes a first segment and a second segment. The gasket also includes a first blade extending out from a surface of the first segment and a second blade extending out from a surface of the second segment. The surface of the first segment faces the surface of the second segment.
US09341340B2
A light source unit includes a light source, a light source support to hold the light source, a fixing member which is attached to the light source support and includes a through-hole through which beams of light emitted from the light source pass, a lens holder inserted into the through-hole and attached to the fixing member by an adhesive; and a collimating lens to collimate the beams of light from the light source, wherein attachment surfaces of the adhesive for the lens holder has a tilted attachment surface tilted relative to the optical axis of the collimating lens.
US09341336B2
A vehicle headlamp has a first light source disposed on a first optical axis that extends in a front-to-rear direction of a vehicle, a first lens that projects light emitted from the first light source to a front of the vehicle, a second lens having a rear focal point on a second optical axis that is parallel to the first optical axis and disposed adjacent to the first lens, a second light source disposed on the second optical axis rearwards of the first light source, a reflector that reflects light emitted from the second light source towards the rear focal point of the second lens, and a sub-reflector disposed such that the sub-reflector does not interfere with an optical path which extends from the reflector to the second lens and that causes part of light emitted from the first light source to be incident on the second lens.
US09341328B2
A method for producing a light emitting diode arrangement. A plurality of LED modules are provided, which in each case comprise at least one radiation emitting semiconductor component on a carrier body. At least one separately fabricated connection carrier is provided. The LED modules are arranged in such a way that they are adjacent to one another in pairs. A mechanically stable and electrically conductive connection between the carrier bodies of two LED modules is produced by means of the connection carrier. Furthermore, a light emitting diode arrangement is disclosed.
US09341316B2
A pipeline leak detection, containment and cutoff system features a flexible tubular jacket fitted circumferentially around the pipeline for expansion by leaking fluid. A coil is wrapped on the jacket and has a terminal fitting that normally resides in an engaged position maintain a predetermined state of a control circuit that connected to a valve installed on the pipeline. When the jacket expands under the action of fluid leaking from the pipeline, this increases the coil diameter a the expanding area of the jacket, which pulls the terminal fitting from its engaged position, thereby changing the state of the control circuit and causing the valve to close the pipeline and prevent further leakage from same. Preferably multiple valves installed along the pipeline are wired in series such that control circuit closes all the valves under a change in the control circuit by any one of the coils.
US09341313B2
A gas hood for a gas regulator comprises a housing for covering a gas regulator, an opening for receiving the gas regulator and semi-sealing the space between the housing and the gas regulator, and a gas inlet for constantly introducing gas into the space, wherein parts of the gas escapes from the opening so that the space can maintain a micro-positive pressure.
US09341305B2
A tensile switchable supporting frame is provided. The supporting frame with an adjustable tensile structure includes at least two elastic modules, which are composed of a plurality of tension springs to achieve the objective of multi-stage adjustment. According to the weight of the loaded device, the user is capable of selecting the suitable elastic module to appropriately activate the amount of tension springs. The proper tension also provides the user with a better operative experience.
US09341297B2
A closure element for closing the ends of pipes, in particular steel pipes, having a circular base cover whose outer diameter corresponds at most to the outer diameter of the pipe, having a side which faces towards the pipe interior and comprises at least two elastic clamping elements which in the assembled condition are supported on the inner surface of the pipe and clamp the base cover therewith. In order to permit universal usage, the closure element comprises means for selectively adjusting/changing the radial position of the clamping elements on the base cover.
