US09819067B2

A planar-transmission-line-to-waveguide adapter is provided, to reduce limitations on bandwidth expansion. The planar-transmission-line-to-waveguide adapter includes a planar transmission line structure includes at least a planar transmission line, a dielectric substrate, and a metal ground having a coupling gap. a gradient waveguide structure includes m dielectric waveguides with gradient sizes, and any dielectric waveguide is surrounded by metal via holes in a dielectric substrate, where m is a positive integer not less than 2. a1st dielectric waveguide in the m dielectric waveguides with gradient sizes is coupled with the coupling gap in the planar transmission line structure. Adjacent dielectric waveguides are connected by using a metal ground, and a radiation patch is disposed between the adjacent dielectric waveguides. A metal ground and a radiation patch are disposed on a surface on which an mth dielectric waveguide comes into contact with a standard waveguide.
US09819065B2

A passive radiofrequency microelectronic components for an integrated circuit which includes a dielectric substrate and at least one metal conductive layer positioned on said substrate. The conductive layer including at least one first metal conductive portion and a second metal conductive portion separated by an insulation. A microelectronic component according to the invention includes at least one graphene layer positioned so that a radiofrequency or hyperfrequency signal crosses said at least one graphene layer when it is transmitted between said first metal conductive portion and said second metal conductive portion, said graphene layer being able, when it is subject to an electric potential, to transmit said radiofrequency or hyperfrequency signal along a first direction and to attenuate said radiofrequency or hyperfrequency signal along a second direction opposite to said first direction.
US09819061B2

The invention relates to a method for determining the temperature of a battery, comprising the following steps: a) determining the state of charge of at least one battery cell; b) determining a change in the open-circuit voltage (VL1, VL2) of the at least one battery cell immediately after the end of the flow of an electric current (IL, IE) through the at least one battery cell; and c) determining the temperature of the at least one battery cell on the basis of the state of charge and the change in the open-circuit voltage (VL1, VL2). The method described above economically enables especially reliable operation of the battery that is stable over the long term.
US09819047B2

In a state where battery cells (2) are sandwiched from both ends by a pair of end plates (3) comprising a plurality of plates, the pair of end plates (3) are secured by metal bands (4). The end plates (3) are secured by bolts to a base, at the inside end of the plates as seen from the battery cells (2). Then, elongation of the assembled battery (1) can be kept to a small range, even when the battery cells (2) are swollen.
US09819044B2

A fuel cell unit with a plurality of fuel cells defining a longitudinal axis and a main flow direction coaxial to the longitudinal axis. Fuel cell inlets and fuel cell outlets are arranged at opposite ends of the fuel cell unit and in line with the main flow direction. Also, a component comprising first fluid conduits arranged parallel to the main flow direction, the first fluid conduits comprising first fluid inlets and first fluid outlets arranged at opposite ends of the component and in line with the main flow direction. The component is arranged adjacent the fuel cell unit such that at least one of the first fluid inlets and the first fluid outlets of the component are arranged adjacent at least one of the fuel cell outlets and the fuel cell inlets such that a fluid flow may flow substantially parallel to the longitudinal axis of the apparatus in the first fluid conduits of the component and in the fuel cell unit and when passing from the component to the fuel cell unit or vice versa.
US09819043B2

A fuel cell system is disclosed that comprises a fuel cell unit operable to store at least one of water and hydrogen. At least one membrane is provided at one or more ends of the fuel cell unit. The membrane is operable to enable a flow of oxygen through the at least a portion of fuel cell unit. Further, the membrane is further operable to prevent water from flowing through at least a portion of the fuel cell. Moreover, an electrical source in operative engagement with the fuel cell unit. The fuel cell operates in a first mode to collect the hydrogen when receiving voltage from the electrical source, and further the fuel cell operates in a second mode to generate electricity using the hydrogen. The fuel cell unit is preferably stackable via a combination of conductible studs and receptacles.
US09819038B2

A power generation system includes a fuel cell including an anode that generates a tail gas. The system also includes a hydrocarbon fuel reforming system that mixes a hydrocarbon fuel with the fuel cell tail gas and to convert the hydrocarbon fuel and fuel tail gas into a reformed fuel stream including CO2. The reforming system further splits the reformed fuel stream into a first portion and a second portion. The system further includes a CO2 removal system coupled in flow communication with the reforming system. The system also includes a first reformed fuel path coupled to the reforming system. The first path channels the first portion of the reformed fuel stream to an anode inlet. The system further includes a second reformed fuel path coupled to the reforming system. The second path channels the second portion of the reformed fuel stream to the CO2 removal system.
US09819028B2

An electrode, in particular a gas diffusion electrode, for a metal-oxygen battery. To achieve an improved performance output, e.g., an improved energy density or an improved capacity, the electrode includes a porous carrier substrate on which a porous active material is situated, the electrode having a gradient of medium pore sizes between the carrier substrate and the active material. Also described is an energy store including the electrode as described.
US09819026B2

A positive electrode for a non-aqueous electrolyte secondary battery, comprising: a positive electrode current collector and a positive electrode active substance layer formed upon the positive electrode current collector. The positive electrode active substance layer has a positive electrode active substance and a melamine-acid salt being a salt comprising melamine and acid.
US09819022B2

A battery cell includes a negative electrode and a positive electrode. The battery cell also contains a thermally expandable graphite intercalation compound.
US09819015B2

A core-shell elemental sulfur sub-micron particle having a core of elemental sulfur and a shell of a membrane containing alternating layers of oppositely charged polyelectrolytes is provided. A functionalized conductive carbon material is optionally present in one or more of the core and an outer layer. A cathode containing the core-shell elemental sulfur sub-micron particle and a lithium-sulfur battery constructed with the cathode are also provided.
US09819007B2

A negative-electrode material has negative-electrode active-material particles including: an element being capable of sorbing and desorbing lithium ions, and being capable of undergoing an alloying reaction with lithium; or/and an elementary compound being capable of undergoing an alloying reaction with lithium. The negative-electrode active-material particles includes particles whose particle diameter is 1 μm or more in an amount of 85% by volume or more of them when the entirety is taken as 100% by volume, exhibit a BET specific surface area that is 6 m2/g or less, and exhibits a “D50” that is 4.5 μm or more.
US09818995B2

The present invention relates to a battery pack system, comprising: a plurality of battery cells, sealing fluid and a battery pack case. The battery cells are immersed in the sealing fluid in the battery pack case, which includes a box and a top cover. The case is equipped with an inlet port and an outlet port. The outlet port is connected with the inlet port through a circulation pump and a buffer vessel, forming a circular route; some sensors are configured in the buffer vessel. When an electrolyte leakage occurs in the battery pack, it is confined in the sealing fluid, preventing the electrolyte to be exposed to air and further catch on fire. When the mixed fluid circulates through the buffer vessel, the sensors detect the leakage at once and send out warnings to the battery system to increase its safety level. The leaked flammable gases are separated from the circulation channel and get released to avoid too high internal pressure and consequently break the battery box.
US09818985B2

An organic light emitting diode (“OLED”) display device includes: a substrate; a reflective layer disposed on the substrate; a refractive index anisotropic layer disposed on the reflective layer; a first electrode disposed on the refractive index anisotropic layer; an organic light emitting layer disposed on the first electrode; and a second electrode disposed on the organic light emitting layer.
US09818981B2

A display panel includes an EL panel part, a CP panel part, and a resin layer. Light is extracted from a luminous part including an organic luminous layer in the EL panel part in a direction of an arrow. The CP panel part includes a circular polarizing film. The resin layer is formed to cover an upper surface of the EL panel part, has a layer thickness of 15 μm, and includes a resin part and a plurality of getter particles dispersed in the resin part. The getter particles are dispersed at a density at which the getter particles do not overlap one another in plan view.
US09818977B2

OLED panels and techniques for fabricating OLED panels are provided. Multiple cuts may be made in an OLED panel to define a desired shape, as well as the location and shape of external electrical contacts. The panel may be encapsulated before or after being cut to a desired shape, allowing for greater flexibility and efficiency during manufacture.
US09818965B2

A method of fabricating an organic light-emitting device, including: providing a substrate; forming a control electrode on the substrate; forming an insulating layer covering at least a top surface of the control electrode; forming a hole transport layer pattern through printing on at least a part of the insulating layer; forming an organic light-emitting layer to be in contact with at least a part of a surface of the hole transport layer pattern; forming an electron transport layer pattern through printing to be in contact with at least a part of a surface of the organic light-emitting layer; and forming a first electrode and a second electrode respectively on the hole transport layer pattern and the electron transport layer pattern.
US09818964B2

A method of growing a III-V semiconductor compound film for a semiconductor device including the steps of depositing a textured oxide buffer layer on an inexpensive substrate, depositing a metal-inorganic film from a eutectic alloy on the buffer layer, the metal being a component of a III-V compound and forming a layer on the inorganic film on which additional elements from the III-V compound are added, forming a top layer of a tandem solar cell.
US09818958B2

Provided are an organic electroluminescence device having high current efficiency and a long lifetime, and a biscarbazole derivative for realizing the device. The biscarbazole derivative has a specific substituent. The organic EL device has a plurality of organic thin-film layers including a light emitting layer between a cathode and an anode, and at least one layer of the organic thin-film layers contains the biscarbazole derivative.
US09818949B2

An organic compound with characteristics excelling in hole-injecting/transporting performance and having an electron blocking ability, a highly stable thin-film state, and excellent heat resistance is provided as material for an organic electroluminescent device of high efficiency and high durability, and the organic electroluminescent device of high efficiency and high durability is provided using this compound. The compound of a general formula (Chemical Formula 1) having a substituted acridan ring structure is used as a constituent material of at least one organic layer in the organic electroluminescent device that includes a pair of electrodes and one or more organic layers sandwiched between the pair of electrodes.
US09818946B2

A film comprising a polymer compound and a low molecular weight compound having carrier transportability, wherein the content of the low molecular weight compound is 5 to 40 parts by mass with respect to 100 parts by mass of the sum of the polymer compound and the low molecular weight compound, the diffraction intensity A specified by the following measuring method A is 3 to 50, and the intensity ratio (A/B) of the diffraction intensity A specified by the following measuring method A to the diffraction intensity B specified by the following measuring method B is 30 or less: (Measuring method A) the diffraction intensity A is the maximum diffraction intensity in a range of scattering vector of 1 nm−1 to 5 nm−1 in a profile obtained by an Out-of plane measuring method using a film X-ray diffraction method; (Measuring method B) the diffraction intensity B is the maximum diffraction intensity in a range of scattering vector of 10 nm−1 to 21 nm−1 in a profile obtained by an In-plane measuring method using a film X-ray diffraction method.
US09818937B2

A miniature oxygen sensor makes use of paramagnetic properties of oxygen gas to provide a fast response time, low power consumption, improved accuracy and sensitivity, and superior durability. The miniature oxygen sensor disclosed maintains a sample of ambient air within a micro-channel formed in a semiconductor substrate. O2 molecules segregate in response to an applied magnetic field, thereby establishing a measurable Hall voltage. Oxygen present in the sample of ambient air can be deduced from a change in Hall voltage with variation in the applied magnetic field. The magnetic field can be applied either by an external magnet or by a thin film magnet integrated into a gas sensing cavity within the micro-channel. A differential sensor further includes a reference element containing an unmagnetized control sample. The miniature oxygen sensor is suitable for use as a real-time air quality monitor in consumer products such as smart phones.
US09818935B2

Some embodiments relate to an integrated circuit including a magnetoresistive random-access memory (MRAM) cell. The integrated circuit includes a semiconductor substrate and an interconnect structure disposed over the semiconductor substrate. The interconnect structure includes a plurality of dielectric layers and a plurality of metal layers that are stacked over one another in alternating fashion. The plurality of metal layers include a lower metal layer and an upper metal layer disposed over the lower metal layer. A bottom electrode is disposed over and in electrical contact with the lower metal layer. A magnetic tunneling junction (MTJ) is disposed over an upper surface of bottom electrode. A top electrode is disposed over an upper surface of the MTJ and is in direct electrical contact with a lower surface of the upper metal layer.
US09818933B2

An apparatus including an array of memory cells arranged in a grid defined by word lines and bit lines in a generally orthogonal orientation relative to one another, a memory cell including a resistive memory component and an access transistor, wherein the access transistor includes a diffusion region disposed at an acute angle relative to an associated word line. A method including etching a substrate to form a plurality of fins each including a body having a length dimension including a plurality of first junction regions and a plurality of second junction regions that are generally parallel to one another and offset by angled channel regions displacing in the length dimension an end of a first junction region from the beginning of a second junction region; removing the spacer material; and introducing a gate electrode on the channel region of each of the plurality of fins.
US09818915B2

A manufacturing method of a LED display is provided. A temporary substrate is provided, wherein the temporary substrate has a first adhesive layer and a plurality of first, second and third LED chips mounted on the first adhesive layer. A first transparent substrate is provided, the transparent substrate has a plurality of pixels disposed thereon, and each of the pixels comprises a first sub-pixel, a second sub-pixel and a third sub-pixel respectively surrounded by a light-insulating structure. Then, the temporary substrate and the first transparent substrate are bonded together, such that each of the first, second and third LED chips is correspondingly mounted in each of the first sub-pixels, the second sub-pixels and the third sub-pixels. After that, the temporary substrate is removed. A LED display manufactured by said method is also provided.
US09818910B2

An optoelectronic component and a method for the producing an optoelectronic component are disclosed. In an embodiment, the component comprises an active zone for generating electromagnetic radiation, wherein the active zone adjoins at least one layer arrangement of a semiconductor material, wherein the layer arrangement comprises at least two layers, wherein the two layers are formed in such a way that at an interface between the two layers a piezoelectric field is provided, the piezoelectric field configured to provide an electrical voltage drop at the interface, wherein a peak doping region is provided at the interface of the two layers in order to reduce the electrical voltage drop, wherein, in the direction away from the active zone, a doping of the peak doping region increases at least by a first percentage value and then decreases by at least a second percentage value, and wherein the first percentage value and the second percentage value are greater than 10% of a maximum doping of the peak doping region.
US09818904B2

In a processing of immersing substrates in a chemical solution, and agitating the chemical solution by as bubbles or liquid, the gas bubbles or liquid is supplied so as to bring about alternate occurrence of a first state and a second state. The first state is a state in which an amount of the gas bubbles or the liquid supplied to first side in one direction of each substrate is greater than an amount of the gas bubbles or the liquid supplied to a second side in the one direction of the substrate. The second state is a state in which the amount of the gas bubbles or the liquid supplied to the first side in the one direction of the substrate is smaller than the amount of the gas bubbles or the liquid supplied to the second side in the one direction of the substrate.
US09818899B2

A system and method for generating power from the low-light emissions prevalent in rainforests through a low-light emission solar panel in order to transmit data over a network. The low-light emission solar panels can be formed to have four sets of three cells wired in series, with each of the four sets of three cells wired in parallel. The power generated by the low-light emission solar panels can be used to power a cellphone, which can collect and transmit data over a network to remote users for monitoring.
US09818894B2

A photodetector assembly for ultraviolet and far-ultraviolet detection includes an anode, a microchannel plate with an array of multichannel walls, and a photocathode layer disposed on the microchannel plate. Additionally, the photocathode may include nanowires deposited on a top surface of the array of multichannel walls.
US09818888B2

A method of forming a coating layer on a glass substrate in a glass manufacturing process includes: providing a first coating precursor material for a selected coating layer composition to at least one multislot coater to form a first coating region of the selected coating layer; and providing a second coating precursor material for the selected coating layer composition to the multislot coater to form a second coating region of the selected coating layer over the first region. The first coating precursor material is different than the second precursor coating material.
US09818879B2

An IC device includes a substrate including a device region having a fin-type active region and a deep trench region; a gate line that extends in a direction intersecting the fin-type active region; and an inter-device isolation layer that fills the deep trench region. The gate line includes a first gate portion that extends on the device region to cover the fin-type active region and has a flat upper surface at a first level and a second gate portion that extends on the deep trench region to cover the inter-device isolation layer while being integrally connected to the first gate portion and has an upper surface at a second level that is closer to the substrate than the first level.
US09818877B2

A shallow trench isolation layer is formed on a structure comprising semiconductor fins. Portions of the fins are recessed to a level below the shallow trench isolation layer. Epitaxial stressor regions are then formed on the recessed fin areas. A bottom portion of the epitaxial stressor regions are contained by the shallow trench isolation layer, which delays formation of the diamond shape as the epitaxial region is grown. Once the epitaxial stressor regions exceed the level of the shallow trench isolation layer, the diamond shape starts to form. The result of delaying the start of the diamond growth pattern is that the epitaxial regions are narrower for a given fin height. This allows for taller fins, which provide more current handling capacity, while the narrower epitaxial stressor regions enable a smaller fin pitch, allowing for increased circuit density.
US09818874B2

Methods of forming a semiconductor structure include providing a multi-layer substrate having an epitaxial base layer overlying a strained primary semiconductor layer above a buried oxide layer. Elements within the epitaxial base layer are used to alter a strain state in the primary semiconductor layer within a first region of the multi-layer substrate without altering a strain state in the primary semiconductor layer within a second region of the multi-layer substrate. A first plurality of transistor channel structures are formed that each comprise a portion of the primary semiconductor layer within the first region of the multi-layer substrate, and a second plurality of transistor channel structures are formed that each comprise a portion of the primary semiconductor layer within the second region of the multi-layer substrate. Semiconductor structures fabricated by such methods may include transistor channel structures having differing strain states.
US09818871B1

In one embodiment, a semiconductor device comprises one or more defense layers, the one or more defense layers each characterized by at least two lattice constants that are mismatched, wherein a mismatch in the lattice constants causes a destabilizing force that comprises at least one of a tensile force or a compressive force; and a plurality of other layers, wherein at least a sufficient part of the destabilizing force is restrained for the one or more defense layers to remain intact unless reduction in thickness of at least a section of one or more of the plurality of other layers, causes at least some of the destabilizing force that was restrained to no longer be restrained, and consequently at least part of at least one of the one or more defense layers to break.
US09818870B2

An apparatus including a heterostructure disposed on a substrate and defining a channel region, the heterostructure including a first material having a first band gap less than a band gap of a material of the substrate and a second material having a second band gap that is greater than the first band gap; and a gate stack on the channel region, wherein the second material is disposed between the first material and the gate stack. A method including forming a first material having a first band gap on a substrate; forming a second material having a second band gap greater than the first band gap on the first material; and forming a gate stack on the second material.
US09818867B2

Non-volatile (NV) Multi-time programmable (MTP) memory cells are presented. The memory cell includes a substrate and first and second wells in the substrate. The memory cell includes first transistor having a select gate, second transistor having a floating gate adjacent to one another and on the second well, and third transistor having a control gate on the first well. The control gate is coupled to the floating gate and the control and floating gates include the same gate layer extending across the first and second wells. The transistors include first and second diffusion regions disposed adjacent to sides of the gates. The first and second diffusion regions include base lightly doped drain (LDD) and halo regions. One of the first and second diffusion regions of one of the second and third transistors includes second LDD and halo regions having higher dopant concentrations than the base LDD and halo regions.
US09818865B2

Disclosed is a semiconductor device, including: a first pipe gate; a second pipe gate on the first pipe gate; a stacked structure on the second pipe gate; a first channel layer including a first pipe channel layer positioned within the first pipe gate and first cell channel layers connected to the first pipe channel layer; a second channel layer including a second pipe channel layer positioned within the second pipe gate, and second cell channel layers connected to the second pipe channel layer; and a slit insulating layer passing through the stacked structure and positioned between the adjacent second cell channel layers, wherein the second pipe channel layer has a body portion and a protrusion portion extending below the body portion at a position below the slit insulating layer.
US09818863B2

A device includes a semiconductor substrate having a first conductivity type, a device isolating region in the semiconductor substrate, defining an active area, and having a second conductivity type, a body region in the active area and having the first conductivity type, and a drain region in the active area and spaced from the body region to define a conduction path of the device, the drain region having the second conductivity type. At least one of the body region and the device isolating region includes a plurality of peripheral, constituent regions disposed along a lateral periphery of the active area, each peripheral, constituent region defining a non-uniform spacing between the device isolating region and the body region. The non-uniform spacing at a respective peripheral region of the plurality of peripheral, constituent regions establishes a first breakdown voltage lower than a second breakdown voltage in the conduction path.
US09818852B2

In some aspects of the invention, an n-type field-stop layer can have a total impurity of such an extent that a depletion layer spreading in response to an application of a rated voltage stops inside the n-type field-stop layer together with the total impurity of an n− type drift layer. Also, the n-type field-stop layer can have a concentration gradient such that the impurity concentration of the n-type field-stop layer decreases from a p+ type collector layer toward a p-type base layer, and the diffusion depth is 20 μm or more. Furthermore, an n+ type buffer layer of which the peak impurity concentration can be higher than that of the n-type field-stop layer at 6×1015 cm−3 or more, and one-tenth or less of the peak impurity concentration of the p+ type collector layer, can be included between the n-type field-stop layer and p+ type collector layer.
US09818843B2

A transistor having a source region and a drain region which are separately formed in a substrate, a trench which is defined in the substrate between the source region and the drain region, and a gate electrode which is formed in the trench. The gate electrode includes a first electrode buried over a bottom of the trench; a second electrode formed over the first electrode; and a liner electrode having an interface part which is positioned between the first electrode and the second electrode and a side part, which is positioned on sidewalls of the second electrode and overlaps with the source region and the drain region.
US09818842B2

A chip includes a semiconductor substrate, a well region in the semiconductor substrate, and a Dynamic Threshold Metal-Oxide Semiconductor (DTMOS) transistor formed at a front side of the semiconductor substrate. The DTMOS transistor includes a gate electrode, and a source/drain region adjacent to the gate electrode. The source/drain region is disposed in the well region. A well pickup region is in the well region, and the well pickup region is at a back side of the semiconductor substrate. The well pickup region is electrically connected to the gate electrode.
US09818832B2

Provided is an integrated circuit having a LOCOS-drain type MOS transistor mounted thereon in which, even in the case of poor pattern formation, a withstand voltage is not lowered and a poor withstand voltage does not result. A drain oxide film thicker than a gate oxide film is formed on an active region on a drain side of the LOCOS-drain type MOS transistor, to thereby prevent the withstand voltage of the MOS transistor from being lowered even if the gate electrode reaches the active region on the drain side.
US09818831B2

An electronic device can include a transistor having a drain region, a source region, a dielectric layer, and a gate electrode. The dielectric layer can have a first portion and a second portion, wherein the first portion is relatively thicker and closer to the drain region; the second portion is relatively thinner and closer to the source region. The gate electrode of the transistor can overlie the first and second portions of the dielectric layer. In another aspect, an electronic device can be formed using two different dielectric layers having different thicknesses. A gate electrode within the electronic device can be formed over portions of the two different dielectric layers. The process can eliminate masking and doping steps that may be otherwise used to keep the drain dopant concentration closer to the concentration as originally formed.
US09818828B2

Apparatus and associated methods relate to an edge-termination structure surrounding a high-voltage MOSFET for reducing a peak lateral electric field. The edge-termination structure includes a sequence of annular trenches and semiconductor pillars circumscribing the high-voltage MOSFET. Each of the annular trenches is laterally separated from the other annular trenches by one of the semiconductor pillars. Each of the annular trenches has dielectric sidewalls and a dielectric bottom electrically isolating a conductive core within each of the annular trenches from a drain-biased region of the semiconductor pillar outside of and adjacent to the annular trench. The conductive core of the innermost trench is biased, while the conductive cores of one or more outer trenches are floating. In some embodiments, a surface of an inner semiconductor pillar is biased as well. The peak lateral electric field can advantageously be reduced by physical arrangement of trenches and electrical biasing sequence.
US09818827B2

A semiconductor device includes first and second load contacts and a semiconductor region extending along an extension direction. A surface region is arranged above and coupled to the semiconductor region. At least one control electrode is arranged within the surface region. At least one connector trench extends into the semiconductor region along the extension direction and includes a connector electrode. A contact pad is arranged within the surface region. A contact runner is arranged within the surface region and placed separately from both the contact pad and the at least one control electrode, the contact pad, the contact runner and the at least one control electrode being electrically coupled to each other. Either both the contact pad and the contact runner or both the contact runner and the at least one control electrode are electrically connected to the connector electrode of the at least one connector trench.
US09818821B2

Systems and methods are disclosed for integrating functional components of front-end modules for wireless radios. Front-end modules disclosed may be dual-band front-end modules for use in 802.11ac-compliant devices. In certain embodiments, integration of front-end module components on a single die is achieved by implementing a high-resistivity layer or substrate directly underneath, adjacent to, and/or supporting SiGe BiCMOS technology elements.
US09818819B2

Lattice-mismatched epitaxial films formed proximate non-crystalline sidewalls. Embodiments of the invention include formation of facets that direct dislocations in the films to the sidewalls.
US09818814B2

An organic light emitting display device includes a plurality of pixel regions on a substrate, each having a sub-pixel region, a transmissive region and a peripheral region, a plurality of sub-pixel circuits in the sub-pixel region that control the sub-pixel region, a planarization layer that covers the sub-pixel circuits, a first electrode disposed on the planarization layer in the sub-pixel region, a second electrode disposed on the first electrode, and a plurality of wirings disposed at different levels over the substrate in the peripheral region. The wirings are arranged in at least double level configuration and include first wirings that extend in a first direction over the substrate, and second wirings that extend over the substrate in a second direction substantially perpendicular to the first direction.
US09818812B2

An organic light-emitting display apparatus includes a buffer layer formed on a substrate; a gate insulating layer formed over the buffer layer; an interlayer insulating layer formed over the gate insulating layer; a first opening formed through the gate insulating layer and the interlayer insulating layer; a first organic insulating layer formed over the interlayer insulating layer and including a second opening that overlaps with the first opening; a pixel electrode formed in the second opening, and directly contacting the buffer layer; a light emission layer formed over the pixel electrode; and an opposite electrode formed over the light emission layer.
US09818795B2

In described examples, an integrated circuit containing CMOS transistors and an embedded thermoelectric device may be formed by forming active areas which provide transistor active areas for an NMOS transistor and a PMOS transistor of the CMOS transistors and provide n-type thermoelectric elements and p-type thermoelectric elements of the embedded thermoelectric device. Stretch contacts with lateral aspect ratios greater than 4:1 are formed over the n-type thermoelectric elements and p-type thermoelectric elements to provide electrical and thermal connections through metal interconnects to a thermal node of the embedded thermoelectric device. The stretch contacts are formed by forming contact trenches in a dielectric layer, filling the contact trenches with contact metal and subsequently removing the contact metal from over the dielectric layer. The stretch contacts are formed concurrently with contacts to the NMOS and PMOS transistors.
US09818794B2

An image sensor including a first semiconductor region of a first conductivity type that is arranged in a substrate, a second semiconductor region of a second conductivity type that is arranged in the first semiconductor region to form a charge accumulation region. The second semiconductor region includes a plurality of portions arranged in a direction along a surface of the substrate. A potential barrier is formed between the plurality of portions. The second semiconductor region is wholly depleted by expansion of a depletion region from the first semiconductor region to the second semiconductor region. A finally-depleted portion to be finally depleted, of the second semiconductor region, is depleted by the expansion of the depletion region from a portion of the first semiconductor region, located in a lateral direction of the finally-depleted portion.
US09818791B1

A stacked image sensor includes a first plurality of photodiodes, including a first photodiode and a second photodiode, disposed in a first semiconductor material. A thickness of the first semiconductor material proximate to the first photodiode is less than the thickness of the first semiconductor material proximate to the second photodiode. A second plurality of photodiodes is disposed in a second semiconductor material. The second plurality of photodiodes is optically aligned with the first plurality of photodiodes. An interconnect layer is disposed between the first semiconductor material and the second semiconductor material. The interconnect layer includes an optical shield disposed between the second photodiode and a third photodiode included in the second plurality of photodiodes. The optical shield prevents a first portion of image light from reaching the third photodiode.
US09818789B2

A solid-state imaging device includes a P-well, a gate insulating film, a gate electrode, a P+-type pinning layer that is located in the P-well so as to be outside the gate electrode and start from a first end portion of the gate electrode, a P−-type impurity region that is located in the P-well so as to extend under the gate electrode from a first end portion side and be in contact with the pinning layer, an N−-type impurity region that is in contact with the P−-type impurity region and the gate insulating film, and an N−−-type impurity region that surrounds at least a portion of the N−-type impurity region in plan view.
US09818773B2

A supporting device includes a main body and a ring-shaped glue layer. The main body includes a top surface and a bottom surface opposite to the top surface. The top surface defines a first groove. The first groove is substantially ring-shaped. The glue layer is arranged in the top surface and surrounds the first groove. A plurality of glass-frits is distributed in the glue layer. A thickness of the main body is approximately in a range from 0.5 millimeters to 0.8 millimeters. The glue layer is directly attached the top surface.
US09818766B2

A thin film transistor includes a substrate, a semiconductor layer on the substrate, a first insulating layer covering the substrate and the semiconductor layer, a first gate electrode on the first insulating layer and overlapping the semiconductor layer, a second insulating layer covering the first gate electrode and the first insulating layer, a second gate electrode on the second insulating layer and overlapping the semiconductor layer and the first gate electrode, a third insulating layer covering the second gate electrode, a first contact hole defined in the first insulating layer, the second insulating layer and the third insulating layer, and through which a portion of the semiconductor layer is exposed, and a source electrode and a drain electrode connected to the semiconductor layer through the first contact hole.
US09818763B2

A highly flexible display device and a method for manufacturing the display device are provided. A transistor including a light-transmitting semiconductor film, a capacitor including a first electrode, a second electrode, and a dielectric film between the first electrode and the second electrode, and a first insulating film covering the semiconductor film are formed over a flexible substrate. The capacitor includes a region where the first electrode and the dielectric film are in contact with each other, and the first insulating film does not cover the region.
US09818757B2

This semiconductor device comprises a plurality of first conductive layers arranged above a substrate in a first direction intersecting an upper surface of the substrate. The conductive layers includes a portion in which positions of ends of the first conductive layers made different from each other in a second direction intersecting the first direction. Furthermore, this semiconductor device comprises a transistor electrically connected to the portion of the conductive layers. That transistor comprises: a channel layer extending in the first direction; a gate electrode layer disposed in a periphery of the channel layer; and a gate insulating layer disposed between the channel layer and the gate electrode layer.
US09818755B1

A semiconductor device including a non-volatile memory (NVM) cell and method of making the same are disclosed. The semiconductor device includes a metal-gate logic transistor formed on a logic region of a substrate, and the NVM cell integrally formed in a first recess in a memory region of the same substrate, wherein the first recess is recessed relative to a first surface of the substrate in the logic region. Generally, the metal-gate logic transistor further including a planarized surface above and substantially parallel to the first surface of the substrate in the logic region, and the NVM cell is arranged below an elevation of the planarized surface of the metal-gate. In some embodiments, logic transistor is a High-k Metal-gate (HKMG) logic transistor with a gate structure including a metal-gate and a high-k gate dielectric. Other embodiments are also disclosed.
US09818753B2

In general, according to one embodiment, a semiconductor memory device includes a first conductive layer, a second conductive layer, a first sub-conductive layer, a first insulating film. One portion of the first conductive layer overlaps at least one portion of the first sub-conductive layer in the first direction. One other portion of the first conductive layer overlaps at least one portion of the second conductive layer in the first direction. One portion of the first insulating film overlaps at least one portion of the second conductive layer in the second direction. The One portion of the first insulating film overlaps one portion of the first sub-conductive layer in the second direction. The second conductive layer overlap one other portion of the first insulating film in a direction intersecting the second direction.
US09818748B2

A semiconductor device is provided. A substrate includes a first region and a second region. A first wire pattern, extending in a first direction, is formed at a first height from the substrate of the first region. A second wire pattern, extending in a second direction, is formed at a second height from the substrate of the second region. The first height is different from the second height. A first gate electrode, surrounding the first wire pattern, extends in a third direction crossing the first direction. A second gate electrode, surrounding the second wire pattern, extends in a fourth direction crossing the second direction. A first gate insulation layer is formed along a circumference of the first wire pattern and a sidewall of the first gate electrode. A second gate insulation layer is formed along a circumference of the second wire pattern and a sidewall of the second gate electrode.
US09818747B2

A number of first hard mask portions are formed on a dielectric layer to vertically shadow a respective one of a number of underlying gate structures. A number of second hard mask filaments are formed adjacent to each side surface of each first hard mask portion. A width of each second hard mask filament is set to define an active area contact-to-gate structure spacing. A first passage is etched between facing exposed side surfaces of a given pair of neighboring second hard mask filaments and through a depth of the semiconductor wafer to an active area. A second passage is etched through a given first hard mask portion and through a depth of the semiconductor wafer to a top surface of the underlying gate structure. An electrically conductive material is deposited within both the first and second passages to respectively form an active area contact and a gate contact.
US09818745B2

Semiconductor devices and manufacturing and design methods thereof are disclosed. In one embodiment, a semiconductor device includes an active FinFET disposed over a workpiece comprising a first semiconductive material, the active FinFET comprising a first fin. An electrically inactive FinFET structure is disposed over the workpiece proximate the active FinFET, the electrically inactive FinFET comprising a second fin. A second semiconductive material is disposed between the first fin and the second fin.
US09818734B2

A semiconductor device has a first build-up interconnect structure formed over a substrate. The first build-up interconnect structure includes an insulating layer and conductive layer formed over the insulating layer. A vertical interconnect structure and semiconductor die are disposed over the first build-up interconnect structure. The semiconductor die, first build-up interconnect structure, and substrate are disposed over a carrier. An encapsulant is deposited over the semiconductor die, first build-up interconnect structure, and substrate. A second build-up interconnect structure is formed over the encapsulant. The second build-up interconnect structure electrically connects to the first build-up interconnect structure through the vertical interconnect structure. The substrate provides structural support and prevents warpage during formation of the first and second build-up interconnect structures. The substrate is removed after forming the second build-up interconnect structure. A portion of the insulating layer is removed exposing the conductive layer for electrical interconnect with subsequently stacked semiconductor devices.
US09818729B1

A method includes attaching a first semiconductor package on a carrier, wherein the first semiconductor package comprises a plurality of stacked semiconductor dies and a plurality of contact pads, depositing a first molding compound layer over the carrier, wherein the first semiconductor package is embedded in the first molding compound layer, forming a plurality of vias over the plurality of contact pads, attaching a semiconductor die on the first molding compound layer, depositing a second molding compound layer over the carrier, wherein the semiconductor die and the plurality of vias are embedded in the second molding compound layer, forming an interconnect structure over the second molding compound layer and forming a plurality of bumps over the interconnect structure.
US09818728B2

Semiconductor die assemblies having interconnect structures with redundant electrical connectors are disclosed herein. In one embodiment, a semiconductor die assembly includes a first semiconductor die, a second semiconductor die, and an interconnect structure between the first and the second semiconductor dies. The interconnect structure includes a first conductive film coupled to the first semiconductor die and a second conductive film coupled to the second semiconductor die. The interconnect structure further includes a plurality of redundant electrical connectors extending between the first and second conductive films and electrically coupled to one another via the first conductive film.
US09818727B2

The invention provides a semiconductor package assembly. The semiconductor package assembly includes a first substrate. A first semiconductor die is disposed on the first substrate. A passive device is located directly on the first semiconductor die. The passive device is disposed within a boundary of the first semiconductor die in a plan view.
US09818725B2

An inorganic-light-emitter display includes a display substrate and a plurality of spatially separated inorganic light emitters distributed on the display substrate in a light-emitter layer. A light-absorbing layer located on the display substrate in the light-emitter layer is in contact with the inorganic light emitters. Among other things, the disclosed technology provides improved angular image quality by avoiding parallax between the light emitters and the light-absorbing material, increased light-output efficiency by removing the light-absorbing material from the optical path, improved contrast by increasing the light-absorbing area of the display substrate, and a reduced manufacturing cost in a mechanically and environmentally robust structure using micro transfer printing.
US09818720B2

Structures and formation methods of a chip package are provided. The chip package includes a first chip structure and a second chip structure. Heights of the first chip structure and the second chip structure are different. The chip package also includes a package layer covering sidewalls of the first chip structure and sidewalls of the second chip structure. Top surfaces of the first chip structure and the second chip structure are not covered by the package layer.
US09818710B2

An embodiment includes a semiconductor structure comprising: a backend portion including a plurality of metal layers between bottom and top metal layers; the top metal layer including a top metal layer portion having first and second opposing sidewall surfaces and a top surface that couples the sidewall surfaces to one another; an insulator layer directly contacting the top surface; and a via coupling a contact bump to the top metal layer portion; wherein a first vertical axis, orthogonal to a substrate coupled to the backend portion, intercepts the contact bump, the nitride layer, the via, and the top metal layer portion. Other embodiments are described herein.
US09818691B2

A corrosion resistant semiconductor device includes fuse elements that can be cut by laser light. An upper portion of the fuse elements is covered with a porous insulating film so that, when laser light irradiated from a rear surface of a semiconductor substrate is collected at selected fuse elements, the fuse elements generate heat, expand, and rupture. A metal lattice having a plurality of windows is disposed over the fuse elements to permit rapid expansion of the fuse elements when irradiated with the laser light. Alternatively, a metal array having a plurality of independent light-shielding portions may be disposed over the fuse elements to prevent the laser light from adversely affecting circuitry on the front surface side of the semiconductor device.
US09818683B2

A met of fabricating an electronic package is provided, including: providing a carrier body haying a first surface formed with a plurality of recessed portions, and a second surface opposing the first surface and interconnecting with the recessed portions; forming on the first surface of the carrier body an electronic structure that has a plurality of conductive elements received in the recessed portions correspondingly; and removing a portion of the carrier body, with the conductive elements exposed from the second surface of the carrier body. Therefore, the carrier body is retained, and the fabrication cost is reduced since no temporary material is required. The present invention further provides the electronic package thus fabricated.
US09818675B2

An integrated circuit (IC) device may include a leadframe and an IC die having a first surface coupled to the lead frame and a second surface opposite the first surface. The IC device may further include a conductive clip including a first portion coupled to the second surface of the IC die, a second portion coupled to the first portion and extending laterally away from the IC die, and at least one flexible lead coupled to the second portion and looping back under the second portion toward the leadframe. Furthermore, a package may be over the leadframe, IC die, and conductive clip and have an opening therein exposing the at least one flexible lead.
US09818673B2

A cooler includes a cooling pipe having a cooling surface in contact with a heat-exchanged component, and a refrigerant passage. A pair of outer passages are formed between a pair of opposed inner wall surfaces which are located at both ends of an inner wall surface of the cooling pipe in a perpendicular direction and which constitute the refrigerant passage, and a pair of partition walls that are located at both ends of an inner fin in the perpendicular direction. At least one flow-regulating rib is formed in the refrigerant passage to project into the refrigerant passage at a position inward of the pair of outer passages in the perpendicular direction and at a position outward of an inflow hole and a discharge hole in the perpendicular direction as well as at a position outward of the inner fin in an arrangement direction and at a position inward of the inflow hole and the discharge hole in the arrangement direction. The flow-regulating rib is configured to restrict flow rates of refrigerant through the pair of outer passages.
US09818665B2

In one aspect, a method of packaging a semiconductor module includes providing a semiconductor module having a first surface, a second surface opposite the first surface and edge sides extending between the first surface and the second surface. A packaging assembly is formed at least partly by a 3D printing process. The packaging assembly includes the semiconductor module and a protective covering that extends over the first surface.
US09818662B2

A packaged electronic system comprises a slab (210) of low-grade silicon (l-g-Si) configured as ridges (114) framing a depression of depth (112) including a recessed central area suitable to accommodate semiconductor chips and embedded electrical components, the depth at least equal to the thickness of the chips and the components, the ridge covered by system terminals (209b) connected to attachment pads in the central area; and semiconductor chips (120, 130) having a thickness and terminals on at least one of opposing chip sides, the chips terminals attached to the central area terminals so that the opposite chip side is coplanar with the system terminals on the slab ridge.
US09818653B2

A first package includes a laminate layer, an overmold layer above and in direct contact with the laminate layer, and a logic circuit-through-silicon via (TSV) layer including a first logic die and TSVs. The logic circuit-TSV layer is within the overmold layer, and the TSVs are electrically exposed at a top surface of the overmold layer. The first package may be fabricated and tested by a first party prior to being provided to a second party. A second package includes a second logic die. The second party may attach the second package to the first package at the electrically exposed TSVs of the first package to realize a complete and functional semiconductor device.
US09818650B2

A method for forming semiconductor devices includes forming a highly doped region. A stack of alternating layers is formed on the substrate. The stack is patterned to form nanosheet structures. A dummy gate structure is formed over and between the nanosheet structures. An interlevel dielectric layer is formed. The dummy gate structures are removed. SG regions are blocked, and top sheets are removed from the nanosheet structures along the dummy gate trench. A bottommost sheet is released and forms a channel for a field effect transistor device by etching away the highly doped region under the nanosheet structure and layers in contact with the bottommost sheet. A gate structure is formed in and over the dummy gate trench wherein the bottommost sheet forms a device channel for the EG device.
US09818649B2

A semiconductor device includes a substrate having first and second fins extending lengthwise generally along a same line; a first gate stack over the substrate and engaging the first fin; a second gate stack over the substrate and engaging the second fin; a first isolation structure disposed between the first and second fins; and spacer features on sidewalls of the first and second gate stacks and on sidewalls of an upper portion of the first isolation structure.
US09818644B2

The present disclosure provides an interconnect structure, including a substrate, a first conductive feature over the substrate, a second conductive feature over the first conductive feature, and a dielectric layer surrounding the first conductive feature and the second conductive feature. A width of the first conductive feature and a width of the second conductive feature are between 10 nm and 50 nm. The present disclosure also provides a method for manufacturing an interconnect structure, including (1) forming a via opening and a line trench in a dielectric layer, (2) forming a 1-dimensional conductive feature in the via opening, (3) forming a conformal catalyst layer over a sidewall of the line trench, a bottom of the line trench, and a top of the 1-dimensional conductive feature, and (4) removing the conformal catalyst layer from the bottom of the line trench and the top of the 1-dimensional conductive feature.
US09818639B2

The reliability of wirings, each of which includes a main conductive film containing copper as a primary component, is improved. On an insulating film including the upper surface of a wiring serving as a lower layer wiring, an insulating film formed of a silicon carbonitride film having excellent barrier properties to copper is formed; on the insulating film, an insulating film formed of a silicon carbide film having excellent adhesiveness to a low dielectric constant material film is formed; on the insulating film, an insulating film formed of a low dielectric constant material as an interlayer insulating film is formed; and thereafter a wiring as an upper layer wiring is formed.
US09818636B2

Compositions containing an adhesive material and a release additive are suitable for temporarily bonding two surfaces, such as a wafer active side and a substrate. These compositions are useful in the manufacture of electronic devices where a component, such as an active wafer, is temporarily bonded to a substrate, followed by further processing of the active wafer.
US09818635B2

An electronic package is provided, including: a circuit structure having opposite first and second surfaces, wherein first and second circuit layers are formed on the first and second surfaces of the circuit structure, respectively, the first circuit layer having a minimum trace width less than that of the second circuit layer; a separation layer formed on the first surface of the circuit structure; a metal layer formed on the separation layer and electrically connected to the first circuit layer; an electronic element disposed on the first surface of the circuit structure and electrically connected to the metal layer; and an encapsulant formed on the circuit structure to encapsulate the electronic element. By disposing the electronic element having high I/O function on the circuit structure, the invention eliminates the need of a packaging substrate having a core layer and thus reduces the thickness of the electronic package.
US09818628B2

A UV curing apparatus includes a processing chamber, a UV light source disposed above the processing chamber, a window disposed between the processing chamber and the UV light source for allowing a UV light from the UV light source passing through and entering the processing chamber, a sealing ring disposed between the processing chamber and the window for sealing the processing chamber, and a light shading kit disposed between the UV light source and the sealing ring for preventing the sealing ring from being exposed of the UV light. Therefore the sealing ring is not exposed of UV light directly, and the bonding of the rubber sealing ring would not be destroyed.
US09818619B2

Provided is a carrier head. The carrier head includes: a body having a ring shape, wherein a first locking part is formed on an external surface of the body; a support unit surrounding lateral and lower parts of the body to be elevatably coupled to the body, wherein a second locking part vertically facing the first locking part is formed on an internal surface of the support unit; a regulating member located in a space between the first locking part and the second locking part; a retainer ring having a ring shape and located at the external bottom of the support unit; and an elevating unit coupling the retainer ring to the support unit to enable a height to be regulated relative to the support unit.
US09818617B2

A solution for providing electroless deposition of a metal layer on a substrate is provided. A solvent is provided. A metal precursor is provided to the solvent. A first borane containing reducing agent is provided to the solvent. A second borane containing reducing agent is provided to the solvent, wherein the first borane containing reducing agent has a deposition rate of at least five times a deposition rate of the second borane containing reducing agent, and wherein the solution is free of nonborane reducing agents.
US09818598B2

An object of the present invention is to be able to obtain a high removing performance of particles. The substrate processing method according to the exemplary embodiment comprises a film-forming treatment solution supply step and a removing solution supply step. The film-forming treatment solution supply step comprising supplying to a substrate, a film-forming treatment solution containing an organic solvent and a fluorine-containing polymer that is soluble in the organic solvent is supplied. The removing solution supply step comprises supplying to a treatment film formed by solidification or curing of the film-forming treatment solution on the substrate, a removing solution capable of removing the treatment film.
US09818596B2

An arc lamp includes an arc tube configured to receive a reaction gas therein, and an anode and a cathode disposed opposite one another within the arc tube and configured to generate an electrical arc. The anode includes an anode head portion extending inwardly from an end portion of the arc tube, and an anode tip portion bonded to the anode head portion and comprising a trench extending in a top surface along a peripheral region of the anode tip portion.
US09818594B2

Methods, systems and devices that generate differential axial transport in a fluidic device having at least one fluidic sample separation flow channel and at least one ESI emitter in communication with the at least one sample separation flow channel. In response to the generated differential axial transport, the at least one target analyte contained in a sample reservoir in communication with the sample separation channel is selectively transported to the at least one ESI emitter while inhibiting transport of contaminant materials contained in the sample reservoir toward the at least one ESI emitter thereby preferentially directing analyte molecules out of the at least one ESI emitter. The methods, systems and devices are particularly suitable for use with a mass spectrometer.
US09818591B2

An electrostatic dual-mode lens assembly is provided for selectively transmitting or reflecting an ion beam in a mass spectrometer. The assembly comprises at least one electrode that provides a switchable electric field that, during a first mode of operation, directs an ion beam that enters the assembly along a first path so that the beam is transmitted through the assembly along the first path, and during a second mode of operation, directs an ion beam that enters the assembly along the first path so that the ion beam is reflected by the electric field and exits the assembly along a second path. Methods for operating a mass spectrometer using an electrostatic lens are also provided.
US09818577B2

A method for evaluating a specimen, the method can include positioning an energy dispersive X-ray (EDX) detector at a first position; scanning a flat surface of the specimen by a charged particle beam that exits from a charged particle beam optics tip and propagates through an aperture of an EDX detector tip; detecting, by the EDX detector, x-ray photons emitted from the flat surface as a result of the scanning of the flat surface with the charged particle beam; after a completion of the scanning of the flat surface, positioning the EDX detector at a second position in which a distance between the EDX detector tip and a plane of the flat surface exceeds a distance between the plane of the flat surface and the charged particle beam optics tip; and wherein a projection of the EDX detector on the plane of the flat surface virtually falls on the flat surface when the EDX detector is positioned at the first position and when the EDX detector is positioned at the second position.
US09818571B2

An X-ray generation tube includes: an anode including a target configured to generate X-rays under irradiation of electrons, and an anode member electrically connected to the target; a cathode including an electron emitting source configured to emit an electron beam in a direction towards the target, and a cathode member electrically connected to the electron emitting source; and an insulating tube extending between the anode member and the cathode member. The anode further includes an inner circumferential anode layer electrically connected to the anode member, the inner circumferential anode layer extending along an inner circumferential face of the insulating tube, and is remote from the cathode member.
US09818561B2

A clutch mechanism includes a transmission shaft, driven by an output shaft of a motive power device; a clutch element, including an engagement end, in unidirectional transmission connection with the transmission shaft, and a meshing end; a push rod, passing through the clutch element and including a contact end and a fixed end connected to the transmission shaft; a gear shaft, including a transmission gear in transmission connection with the meshing end; a rotary element, surrounding the gear shaft in a rotatable fashion and including a transmission end and a drive end; and a restoring element, one end bearing against the transmission shaft and another end bearing against the output shaft; and a drive gear, in transmission connection with the gear shaft and provided in a circumferential direction with a drive portion capable of pushing the transmission end. A gas insulated circuit breaker including clutch mechanism is also disclosed.
US09818553B2

The present invention relates to an electric switch with rubbing contact (3) comprising on the one hand at least one fixed contact (9) and on the other hand at least one moving rubbing contact (3) that can move along a predefined trajectory and exhibiting a contact surface (10) intended to rub on said at least one fixed contact (9), characterized in that at least said contact surface (10) is treated by ion bombardment by virtue of an ion beam, and in that the fixed (9) and moving (3) contacts are bare.
US09818548B2

A thin film capacitor comprises a base material, a dielectric layer provided on the base material, and an upper electrode layer provided on the dielectric layer. The dielectric layer includes a plurality of columnar crystals that extend along a normal direction with respect to a surface of the upper electrode layer, the columnar crystal has a perovskite crystal structure represented by AyBO3, an element A is at least one of Ba, Ca, Sr, and Pb, an element B is at least one of Ti, Zr, Sn, and Hf, y≦0.995 is satisfied, and the dielectric layer contains 0.05 to 2.5 mol of Al per 100 mol of AyBO3.
US09818547B1

A multilayer ceramic electronic component includes a ceramic body including a plurality of dielectric layers stacked on each other and having first and second surfaces opposing each other in a first direction, third and fourth surfaces opposing each other in a second direction, parallel to a stacking direction and connected to the first and second surfaces, and fifth and sixth surfaces opposing each other in a third direction and connected to the first to fourth surfaces, first and second external electrodes disposed on the first and second surfaces of the ceramic body, respectively, first and second conductive thin films disposed on at least one of the third and fourth surfaces, connected to the first and second external electrodes, respectively, and having a thickness lower than that of the first and second external electrodes, and first and second solder preventing films disposed on the first and second external electrodes, respectively.
US09818545B2

A ceramic electronic component includes a dielectric layer and an electrode layer. The dielectric layer contains a plurality of ceramic particles and grain boundary phases present therebetween. A main component of the ceramic particles is barium titanate. An average thickness of the grain boundary phases is 1.0 nm or more. A thickness variation σ of the grain boundary phases is 0.1 nm or less.
US09818542B2

A gate-all around fin double diffused metal oxide semiconductor (DMOS) devices and methods of manufacture are disclosed. The method includes forming a plurality of fin structures from a substrate. The method further includes forming a well of a first conductivity type and a second conductivity type within the substrate and corresponding fin structures of the plurality of fin structures. The method further includes forming a source contact on an exposed portion of a first fin structure. The method further comprises forming drain contacts on exposed portions of adjacent fin structures to the first fin structure. The method further includes forming a gate structure in a dielectric fill material about the first fin structure and extending over the well of the first conductivity type.
US09818540B2

A film capacitor includes a stacked body formed by stacking metalized films in each of which a metal electrode is formed on a surface of a dielectric film, at least one of the dielectric films containing a high thermal conductive filler; and external electrodes formed at electrode forming ends provided at opposed positions in the stacked body. The stacked body includes a high thermal conductive portion in which a content of the high thermal conductive filler in the at least one dielectric film is relatively high, and a low thermal conductive portion in which the content of the high thermal conductive filler in the at least one dielectric film is relatively low, or the high thermal conductive filler is not contained. The high thermal conductive portion is provided to continuously extend from an inside of the stacked body to a side portion other than the electrode forming ends.
US09818539B2

A thin film capacitor includes a lower electrode layer, an upper electrode layer, and a dielectric substance layer provided between the lower electrode layer and the upper electrode layer. A dielectric patch member formed of a dielectric material is formed on a surface of the dielectric substance layer on an upper electrode layer side, a cross-sectional structure of the dielectric patch member has a taper angle of 1 to 25 degrees in a cross section perpendicular to the dielectric substance layer, the taper angle being an angle formed by (1) a tangential line tangent to an end portion of the dielectric patch member at a position that is 50% of a maximum height of the dielectric patch member and (2) a line being an interface between the dielectric substance layer and the upper electrode layer, and an area of the dielectric patch member is 100 to 900000 μm2.
US09818533B2

A winding apparatus includes a nozzle for feeding a wire to a first end side of a magnetic pole in a winding position, a first latch pawl capable of latching the wire fed from the nozzle, a first latch pawl moving mechanism that moves the first latch pawl from the first end side to a second end side of the multi-pole armature, and a nozzle moving mechanism that moves the nozzle in both the radial direction and the circumferential direction of the multi-pole armature. A width of the first latch pawl in the circumferential direction of the multi-pole armature is set at a width enabling insertion of the wire wound around and bent back by the first latch pawl into slots formed on both sides of one or more of the magnetic poles in the winding position.
US09818532B2

By supplying power from the power-supplying resonator to the power-receiving resonator by means of resonance, an electromagnetic space having a relatively low magnetic field strength is formed between the power-supplying resonator and the power-receiving resonator. In so doing, the position where the electromagnetic space is formed is changed by setting the frequency of the AC power supplied from an AC power source to the power-supplying module to an antiphase resonance mode or an inphase resonance mode, and the size of the electromagnetic space is changed by changing the distance between the power-supplying coil and the power-supplying resonator and the distance between the power-receiving resonator and the power-receiving coil.
US09818527B2

An apparatus for a multilayer printed circuit board (PCB) coil, comprising: a first coil layer of a PCB; a plurality of vias coupled to and distributed to cover substantially the surface of the first coil layer within the PCB; and a second coil layer of the PCB and coupled to the vias to cover substantially the surface of the second coil layer, wherein the vias are positioned between the first coil layer and the second coil layer and enable substantially high current and low equivalent series resistance (ESR) for the multilayer PCB coil.
US09818521B2

There is provided a compression-bonded magnet with a case, which can realize high magnetic properties, high corrosion resistance and high durability strength even at low cost. The compression-bonded magnet with a case is a compression-bonded magnet with a case 1, comprising: a compression-bonded magnet 2 comprising a rare earth magnet powder such as an isotropic Nd—Fe—B magnet powder and a resin binder of a thermosetting resin; a case 3 for inserting the compression-bonded magnet 2; and a sealing member 4, wherein the compression-bonded magnet 2 is formed by compression-molding a mixture comprising the rare earth magnet powder and the resin binder into a green compact and curing the resin binder contained in the green compact, the rare earth magnet powder is contained in a large amount with respect to the entire compression-bonded magnet (for example, in a volume ratio of 85% to 90%), the sealing member 4 is fixed at an insertion opening part 3a of the case 3, and the compression-bonded magnet 2 is hermetically sealed by the sealing member 4 and the case 3.
US09818519B2

Provided is soft magnetic powder used to manufacture a dust core having good mechanical strength and superior formability while iron loss is reduced. The soft magnetic powder for dust cores according to the invention is soft magnetic mixed powder that includes pure iron powder and soft magnetic iron-base alloy powder, wherein the proportion of the soft magnetic iron-base alloy powder in the mixture is 5 to 60 mass %, the ratio of the modes of the particle size distributions of the soft magnetic iron-base alloy powder and the pure iron powder ((the mode of the particle size distribution of the soft magnetic iron-base alloy powder)/(the mode of the particle size distribution of the pure iron powder)) is 0.9 or more and less than 5, and the ratio Rover/Runder is 1.2 or more, where Rover is the mass proportion of soft magnetic iron-base alloy powder in mixed powder with a particle size of D50 or more based on the mass fraction, and Runder is the mass proportion of soft magnetic iron-base alloy powder in mixed powder with a particle size of less than D50 based on the mass fraction.
US09818513B2

Provided is a combined type RFeB-based magnet, including: a first unit magnet; a second unit magnet; and an interface material that bonds the first unit magnet and the second unit magnet, in which the first unit magnet and the second unit magnet are RFeB-based magnets containing a light rare earth element RL that is at least one element selected from the group consisting of Nd and Pr, Fe, and B, in which the interface material contains at least one compound selected from the group consisting of a carbide, a hydroxide, and an oxide of the light rare earth element RL, and in which an amount of a heavy rare earth element RH that is at least one element selected from the group consisting of Dy, Tb and Ho in the second unit magnet is more than that in the first unit magnet.
US09818508B2

A theft deterrent product may be provided. First, a plurality of unique codes may be created. Then a plurality of indicia may be placed periodically and longitudinally on the product. The plurality of indicia may respectively correspond to the plurality of unique codes. The product may have an outer layer and into an portion. Placing the plurality of indicia may comprise etching through the outer layer and into the inner portion. In a database, the plurality of unique codes may be assigned to an organizational entity. The organizational entity may comprise a first enterprise.
US09818504B2

A wire harness including: an electrically conducting path including an electrical wire having a front end portion to which a terminal fitting is fixed; a corrugated tube configured to enclose the electrical wire; a rubber boot that is attached to a front end portion of the corrugated tube and is configured to enclose the electrical wire; and an electrical wire holder that is provided with: a holding part configured to hold the electrical wire; and a locking part configured to be locked to a circumferential surface of the corrugated tube. It is possible to stabilize the positional relationship between the front end portion of the electrically conducting path and the front end portion of the rubber boot by holding the electrical wire with the electrical wire holder and locking the electrical wire holder to the circumferential surface of the corrugated tube.
US09818499B2

A method of forming an electrically conductive composite is disclosed that includes the steps of providing a first dielectric material and a second conductive material that is substantially dispersed within the first dielectric material; and applying an electric field through at least a portion of the combined first dielectric material and second conductive material such that the second conductive material undergoes electrophoresis and forms at least one electrically conductive path through the electrically conductive composite along the direction of the applied electric field.
US09818497B2

A method of manufacturing an elongated electrically conducting element having functionalized carbon nanotubes and at least one metal, includes the steps of mixing functionalized carbon nanotubes with at least one metal, to obtain a composite mixture, and forming a solid mass from the composite mixture from step (i). A solid element obtained from the solid mass from step (ii) is inserted into a metal tube, and the metal tube from step (iii) is deformed, to obtain an elongated electrically conducting element.
US09818492B2

A method for testing a memory includes performing an error correction code check (ECC check) on user data stored in the memory, inverting the user data stored in the memory, performing a further ECC check on the inverted user data stored in the memory, and inverting the inverted user data stored in the memory for restoring the user data in the memory.
US09818489B2

A semiconductor memory device according to the present invention includes a first memory cell, a second memory cell, a dummy transistor, and a voltage control circuit. The first memory cell has a first transistor that is coupled to a first word line, a first source line, and a bit line. The second memory cell has a second transistor that is coupled to a second word line, a second source line, and the bit line. The dummy transistor has the same structure as the first transistor and is coupled to a dummy word line, a dummy source line, and a dummy bit line. When a predetermined voltage for writing data into the first memory cell is to be applied to the first word line, the voltage control circuit couples the dummy bit line to the second source line and applies the predetermined voltage to the first dummy word line.
US09818481B2

A resistive memory device includes a memory cell array including a unit memory cell coupled between a word line and a bit line, wherein the unit memory cell includes a data storage material and a non-silicon-substrate-based type bidirectional access device coupled in series, a path setting circuit coupled between the bit line and the word line, suitable for providing a program pulse toward the bit line or the word line based on a path control signal, a forward write command, and a reverse write command, and a control unit suitable for providing a write path control signal, a forward program command, and a reverse program command based on an external command signal.
US09818480B2

The gate of the access transistor of a 1 transistor 1 resistor (1T1R) type RRAM cell is biased relative to the source of the access transistor using a current mirror. Under the influence of a voltage applied across the 1T1R cell (e.g., via the bit line), the RRAM memory element switches from a higher resistance to a lower resistance. As the RRAM memory element switches from the higher resistance to the lower resistance, the current through the RRAM cell switches from being substantially determined by the higher resistance of the RRAM device (while the access transistor is operating in the linear region) to being substantially determined by the saturation region operating point of the access transistor.
US09818474B2

A memory device with a keeper circuit is disclosed herein. The memory device (i) improves current tracking between the device's memory cells and the keeper circuit, (ii) improves Vccmin for memory operations, and (iii) has an efficient circuit layout. The memory device includes a memory array with a plurality of bitlines coupled to the memory cells. The keeper circuit includes a plurality of switches and a current mirror circuit. The plurality of switches is respectively coupled to the plurality of bitlines. The current mirror circuit mirrors a bias current to a plurality of current mirror transistors respectively coupled to the plurality of switches.
US09818473B2

This invention provides a semiconductor device with high speed operation and reduced size. A circuit includes a circuit including a memory circuit and a circuit including a logic circuit; thus, the circuit functions as a memory device having a function of storing data and a function of performing logic operation. The circuit can output, in addition to data stored in the circuit, data corresponding to a result of logic operation performed using data stored in the circuit as an input signal. The circuit can directly obtain a result of logic operation from the circuit, and thus, the frequency of input/output of a signal performed between the circuit and the circuit can be reduced.
US09818468B2

A technique for erasing a ferroelectric field effect transistor (FeFET) memory circuit comprising a plurality memory cells comprising FeFETs is described. Each FeFET comprises a gate stack, a source, a drain, a channel and a bulk substrate region, where the gate stack comprises a gate and a ferroelectric layer disposed between the gate and the channel. A positive or a negative voltage is applied to the source and drain regions of at least one FeFET memory cell depending on the channel type. The gate and bulk substrate regions are held at a ground state during said applying of the positive voltage to the source and drain regions of the FeFET memory cell to cause erasure of the at least one FeFET memory cell. In addition, a FeFET is described with a charge storage layer disposed adjacently to the ferroelectric layer within the gate stack.
US09818467B2

According to one embodiment, a semiconductor memory device includes: a first bit line; a first source line; a first word line; a first control line; a first memory cell comprising a first variable resistance element and a first transistor, the first transistor including a gate coupled to the first word line, the first memory cell including one end coupled to the first bit line and another end coupled to the first source line; a second transistor including one end coupled to the first bit line; and a third transistor including a gate coupled to the first control line, one end coupled to the first bit line, and another end coupled to the first source line.
US09818459B2

The present disclosure includes apparatuses and methods related to performing logical operations using sensing circuitry. An example apparatus comprises an array of memory cells and sensing circuitry coupled to the array. The sensing circuitry includes a plurality of sensing components coupled to a controller. The controller is configured to selectively activate a first control line and a second control line to invert signals stored on a latch.
US09818457B1

Electronic devices and methods including a printed circuit board configured to accept CPUs and memory modules are described. One apparatus includes a printed circuit board that includes a first row of elements including a first CPU positioned between first and second groups of dual in-line memory modules (DIMMs). The printed circuit board also includes a second row of elements including a second CPU positioned between third and fourth groups of DIMMs. The apparatus also includes a third row of elements including a fifth group of DIMMs, wherein the second row of elements is positioned between the first row of elements and the third row of elements. Other embodiments are described and claimed.
US09818452B2

A hard disk drive carrier assembly includes a back panel, and a connection mechanism in physical communication with the back panel of the hard disk drive carrier assembly along a first surface of the connection mechanism. The connection mechanism includes guide pin extending away from a second surface of the connection mechanism. The guide pin to align the hard disk drive carrier assembly with a mid-plane module of an information handling system when the hard disk drive carrier assembly is inserted into a bay of the information handling system. A screw is in physical communication with the connection module to mount the connection mechanism onto the back panel. The screw includes a post, and is inserted through a hole in the connection mechanism and is connected to the back panel. A first diameter of the post is smaller than a second diameter of the hole.
US09818443B2

The magnetic recording medium has a nonmagnetic layer satisfying: the ratio of the total area accounted for by voids observed to the area of the observed region falls within a range of 13.0% to 25.0% in a sectional image taken by SEM; R+σr is 58.0 nm or less and R−σr is 21.0 nm or greater when denoting the average value of the diameters of corresponding circles for voids observed in the sectional image as R, denoting the standard deviation of the diameters of the corresponding circles as σr; N+σn is 185 voids/μm2 or less and N−σn is 120 voids/μm2 or greater when denoting the average number of voids observed per μm2 unit area of the observed region in the sectional image as N, denoting the standard deviation of this number as σn; and the thickness of the nonmagnetic layer is 0.20 μm or greater.
US09818441B2

Disclosed is a thermally assisted magnetic recording medium comprising a substrate, a plurality of underlayers formed on the substrate, and a magnetic layer which is formed on the underlayers and predominantly comprised of an alloy having a L10 structure, characterized in that at least one of the underlayers is predominantly comprised of MgO and comprises at least one oxide selected from SiO2, TiO2, Cr2O3, Al2O3, Ta2O5, ZrO2, Y2O3, CeO2, MnO, TiO and ZnO. The thermally assisted magnetic recording medium has a magnetic layer comprised of fine magnetic crystal grains, exhibiting a sufficiently weak exchange coupling between magnetic grains, and having a minimized coercive force dispersion.
US09818424B2

A method, and one or more non-transitory computer-readable media storing instructions, and a device for removal of unwanted components in an audio signal, the device comprising a processor, coupled to memory, configured to receive reference and processed inputs into memory where the processed input is a result of a reduction process of unwanted components of the audio signal, estimate envelope values for processed and reference inputs at a plurality of time and frequency instances, for each time and frequency instance: compute a first gain in relation to a ratio of the estimated envelope value of the processed input to the estimated envelope value of the reference input, apply a nonlinear process to said first gain to produce a second gain, compute an output gain as the ratio between second gain and first gain and, apply the output gain to processed input, thereby producing a filtered output with unwanted components suppressed.
US09818421B2

An apparatus for selecting one of a first encoding algorithm and a second encoding algorithm includes a filter configured to receive the audio signal, to reduce the amplitude of harmonics in the audio signal and to output a filtered version of the audio signal. First and second estimators are provided for estimating first and second quality measures in the form of SNRs of segmented SNRs associated with the first and second encoding algorithms without actually encoding and decoding the portion of the audio signal using the first and second encoding algorithms. A controller is provided for selecting the first encoding algorithm or the second encoding algorithm based on a comparison between the first quality measure and the second quality measure.
US09818419B2

A method includes receiving, at a first device, a bit-stream from a second device. The method also includes generating, at a decoder of the first device, a low-band excitation signal from the bit-stream. The method also includes generating a first baseband signal at a high-band excitation generator of the decoder. Generating the first baseband signal includes performing a spectral flip operation on a nonlinearly transformed version of the low-band excitation signal, and the first baseband signal corresponds to a first sub-band of a high-band portion of an audio signal received at the second device. The method also includes generating a second baseband signal corresponding to a second sub-band of the high-band portion of the audio signal. The method also includes outputting at least a partially reconstructed version of the audio signal based at least in part on the first baseband signal and the second baseband signal.
US09818418B2

A method performed in an audio decoder for reconstructing an original audio signal having a lowband portion and a highband portion is disclosed. The method includes receiving an encoded audio signal and extracting reconstruction parameters from the encoded audio signal. The method further includes decoding the encoded audio signal with a core audio decoder to obtain a decoded lowband portion and regenerating the highband portion based at least in part on a cross over frequency and the decoded lowband portion to obtain a regenerated highband portion. The method also includes creating a synthetic sinusoid with a level based at least in part on a spectral envelope value for the particular subband and a noise floor value for the particular subband and adding the synthetic sinusoid to the regenerated highband portion in the particular frequency band specified by the location information. Finally, the method includes combining the lowband portion and the regenerated highband portion to obtain a full bandwidth audio signal.
US09818409B2

Methods, systems, and apparatus, including computer programs encoded on computer storage media for modeling phonemes. One method includes receiving an acoustic sequence, the acoustic sequence representing an utterance, and the acoustic sequence comprising a respective acoustic feature representation at each of a plurality of time steps; for each of the plurality of time steps: processing the acoustic feature representation through each of one or more recurrent neural network layers to generate a recurrent output; processing the recurrent output using a softmax output layer to generate a set of scores, the set of scores comprising a respective score for each of a plurality of context dependent vocabulary phonemes, the score for each context dependent vocabulary phoneme representing a likelihood that the context dependent vocabulary phoneme represents the utterance at the time step; and determining, from the scores for the plurality of time steps, a context dependent phoneme representation of the sequence.
US09818406B1

Techniques are disclosed for adjusting user experience of a software application based on paralinguistic information. One embodiment presented herein includes a computer-implemented method for adjusting a user experience of a software application. The method comprises receiving, at a computing device, an audio stream comprising audio of a user. The method further comprises analyzing the audio stream for paralinguistic information to determine an attribute of the user. The method further comprises identifying content of the audio stream. The method further comprises determining one or more actions based on the content of the audio stream. The method further comprises selecting at least one of the one or more actions based on the attribute of the user.
US09818398B2

In some embodiments, recognition results produced by a speech processing system (which may include two or more recognition results, including a top recognition result and one or more alternative recognition results) based on an analysis of a speech input, are evaluated for indications of potential errors. In some embodiments, the indications of potential errors may include discrepancies between recognition results that are meaningful for a domain, such as medically-meaningful discrepancies. The evaluation of the recognition results may be carried out using any suitable criteria, including one or more criteria that differ from criteria used by an ASR system in determining the top recognition result and the alternative recognition results from the speech input. In some embodiments, a recognition result may additionally or alternatively be processed to determine whether the recognition result includes a word or phrase that is unlikely to appear in a domain to which speech input relates.
US09818395B2

An acoustic diaphragm which has excellent Young's modulus and internal loss (tan δ) values is provided. The acoustic diaphragm according to the present invention is made from papermaking material substantially solely including cellulose nanofibers. In one embodiment, the cellulose nanofibers are unoxidized cellulose nanofibers.
US09818394B2

An apparatus for realizing an active noise cancellation control law transfer function between a sensing microphone and a speaker. The apparatus includes a multiplicity of filters. Each filter is operable over a different frequency range. At least one filter has an adjustable parameter whereby the filter can be adjusted such that the filters cumulatively realize a required control law transfer function. The adjustable parameter may in one embodiment be the amplitude. In other embodiments, it may be other parameters.
US09818392B2

A suction unit includes a suction motor for generating air flow; a noise reduction unit which surrounds the suction motor and acts as a resonator in order to reduce noise generated during the operation of the suction motor; and a motor chamber which surrounds the noise reduction unit. The noise reduction unit includes an air flow path which provide a path of air flowing by the suction motor, a noise reduction chamber for eliminating the noise of at least one frequency band, and at least one communicating hole which causes sound wave of the noise to enter the noise reduction chamber. The air flow path is divided from the noise reduction chamber and thus the sound wave of the noise enters the noise reduction chamber through the communicating hole during a process in which air passes through the air flow path.
US09818375B2

Provided are a liquid crystal display device and a drive method thereof, capable of promptly making an afterimage, which is visually recognized during pause drive, visually unrecognizable while suppressing power consumption. When updated image data is transmitted, a first refresh is performed by used of this image data, and a refresh pauses based on Ref_int just in the next two-frame period. Then, the second and third refreshes are consecutively performed, and a refresh pause is repeated until the next updated image data is transmitted. In this case, since a refresh can be performed three times in a short period after reception of the updated image data, it is possible to make liquid crystal molecules oriented in a direction corresponding to an applied voltage in a short time and make an afterimage visually unrecognizable.
US09818372B2

A computer includes an image processing apparatus, the image processing apparatus includes a transformation unit that transforms color information on an input image signal on the basis of a transformation rule; a correction range calculation unit that calculates a correction range in a predetermined color space on the basis of a positional relationship between source coordinates and destination coordinates in the color space; and a point-based transfer distance calculation unit that calculates transformation destination coordinates at respective points within the correction range on the basis of the positional relationship between the source coordinates and the destination coordinates, and a positional relationship between coordinates at the respective points within the correction range and the source coordinates to reflect the calculated transformation destination coordinates on the transformation rule.
US09818366B2

A display apparatus comprises a display panel including a plurality of data lines and a plurality of gate lines, a data driver circuit configured to convert image data to a grayscale voltage and to output the grayscale voltage to a data line, a voltage generator configured to provide the data driver circuit to a driving voltage, and a heat blocking circuit configured to compare a load current voltage with a reference voltage and to output a control signal for controlling the data driver circuit, the load current voltage being proportionate to a load current flowing toward the data driver circuit.
US09818360B2

An LCD and a control method for the same are disclosed. The LCD includes a first frequency division unit for receiving a first control signal, performing a frequency division to the first control signal to obtain a first clock signal; a second frequency division unit for receiving a second control signal, performing a frequency division to the second control signal to obtain a second clock signal; a GOA unit for generating a scanning signal according to the first and the second clock signal; and a control unit for receiving the first and the second control signal, and when the scanning signal is effective, controlling a first pixel and a second pixel to be charged in a time-division manner according to the first and the second control signal. Accordingly, reducing the number of inputted signals, the time for adjusting timing sequence of the inputted signals and improving the production efficiency.
US09818355B2

A display device has a display panel. The display panel comprises multiple pixels arranged in a matrix. A TFT corresponding to the pixels is driven by AC voltage. Each pixel includes a first color sub-pixel, a second color sub-pixel and a third color sub-pixel arranged in sequence along a first direction. The first color sub-pixel includes a first sub-sub pixel and a second sub-sub pixel arranged along a second direction. The second color sub-pixel includes a third sub-sub pixel and a fourth sub-sub pixel arranged along the second direction. The third color sub-pixel includes a fifth sub-sub pixel and a sixth sub-sub pixel arranged along the second direction. The adjacent sub-sub pixels are supplied different voltages with opposite polarities. The sum of the brightness of the two sub-sub pixels of each sub-pixel are the same before and after the polarity of the voltage is changed.
US09818352B2

Disclosed herein is a display apparatus including: a first pixel including three sub-pixels for displaying three primary colors respectively; and a second pixel including three sub-pixels for displaying two colors selected among the three primary colors and a predetermined color other than the three primary colors, wherein, in the first pixel, the size of the display surface of a sub-pixel for displaying a specific color included in the three primary colors as a specific color missing from the second pixel is larger than each of the sizes of the display surfaces of the two other sub-pixels for displaying the two other primary colors respectively.
US09818350B2

A method of synchronizing a driving module includes applying a plurality of original data enable (“DE”) signals to a plurality of timing controller of the driving module, respectively, generating a synch DE signal from the driving module based on the earliest signal among the original DE signals, and transferring the synch DE signal to the plurality of timing controllers in a cascade mode.
US09818345B2

Disclosed is an organic light emitting display device. The organic light emitting display includes a display panel including a plurality of pixels, which are respectively formed in a plurality of pixel areas defined by crossings of a plurality of gate lines and a plurality of data lines, a plurality of sensing lines, and a plurality of second gate voltage lines connected to the plurality of pixels, a panel driver to drive the display panel in a display mode or a sensing mode, to sense a threshold voltage of at least one transistor to generate a sensing data in the sensing mode, and generate a second gate voltage data in the display mode, and a voltage supply unit to generate a second gate electrode voltage corresponding to the second gate voltage data, and apply a second gate electrode voltage to a second gate electrode of the transistor.
US09818342B2

Disclosed are a transistor structure for a display and an organic light emitting display device. The transistor structure includes: a voltage line positioned in one direction and configured to supply voltage to pixels; and two or more transistors which share one of drains and sources which are formed integrally with the voltage line and respectively include the other of the drains and sources which are individually formed and connected with different nodes directly or through a connection pattern.
US09818331B2

A method is provided for a display system including an electronic packaging box and an electronic display device, and the electronic packaging box includes a receiving structure configured to receive the electronic display device, a transmissive/reflective component configured to form a virtual image of the image displayed on the display screen of the electronic display device when viewed by a viewer at a viewing angle. The method includes identifying a type of image information corresponding to image information to be displayed on the display screen, processing the image information based on the type of image information, adjusting at least one of display brightness, display contrast, and Gamma value of the electronic display device based on ambient light condition using a photosensitive component on the electronic packaging box and a gray scale linear transformation, and displaying the processed image information such that the virtual image of the displayed image information on the display screen is a normal image when viewed by the viewer at the viewing angle.
US09818312B2

A real-time virtual reality welding system including a programmable processor-based subsystem, a spatial tracker operatively connected to the programmable processor-based subsystem, at least one mock welding tool capable of being spatially tracked by the spatial tracker, and at least one display device operatively connected to the programmable processor-based subsystem. The system is capable of simulating, in virtual reality space, a weld puddle having real-time molten metal fluidity and heat dissipation characteristics. The system is further capable of importing data into the virtual reality welding system and analyzing the data to characterize a student welder's progress and to provide training.
US09818303B2

Flight path determination for unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) in which three-dimensional coverage information, corresponding to a wireless network, is used to optimize the flight path to ensure that the UAVs maintain network coverage throughout the flight. The flight path information may be provided as a service to UAV operators. In one implementation, network coverage for a cellular network may be mapped in a three-dimensional manner. That is, the radio signal strength of the network may be mapped at various heights that correspond to heights at which UAVs are likely to fly.
US09818301B2

The embodiment provides a method of correcting a lane. The method includes receiving first lane information detected by a lane departure warning system; comparing the received first lane information with previously stored second lane information to identify a degree of variation of a lane as a function for time; sensing whether a fault detection of the received first lane information exists according to the identified degree of variation of the lane; correcting the received first lane information when the fault detection of the first lane information is sensed; and transmitting the corrected lane information to the lane departure warning system.
US09818296B2

A system and method for generating traffic reports is described. The system receives a set of inputs specifying at least a geographical region, a first period of time, and a second period of time. The system then identifies one or more streets within at least a threshold proximity of the specified geographical region and aggregates traffic information for the one or more streets over the first period of time and the second period of time, respectively. Further, the system generates a traffic report for the geographical region based at least in part on a comparison of the aggregated traffic information for the first period of time with the aggregated traffic information for the second period of time.
US09818283B2

A method of alerting a vehicle's driver. The method comprises receiving an azimuth value indicating a gazing direction of a head of the driver from a primary device placed on the driver, receiving a vehicle bearing value indicating a vehicle moving direction of the vehicle driven by the driver, calculating an angular difference between the azimuth value and the vehicle bearing value, generating an alert when the angular difference deviates from an angular threshold, and automatically presenting the alert to the driver in response to the angular difference.
US09818279B2

A device includes an interface adapter configured to physically couple to a corresponding interface adapter of a mobile communication device. The device includes a blast sensor configured to generate blast data based on one or more measurements and to communicate the blast data to the mobile communication device via the interface adapter. The device further includes a housing at least partially enclosing the blast sensor and at least partially enclosing the mobile communication device.
US09818276B2

A configuration method for a fire alarm controller may include presenting a configuration matrix, in which either the rows represent inputs while the columns represent outputs, or the rows represent outputs while the columns represent inputs, with a matrix element in the configuration matrix being binary data, which indicates whether a causal relationship exists between the input and output in the row and column where the matrix element is located; receiving at least one external input adapted to amend the value of a matrix element in the configuration matrix; and according to the amended configuration matrix, generating a configuration file for updating linkage control logic of the fire alarm controller.
US09818264B2

A gaming ticket dispensing device is provided for dispensing tickets having prize-revealing characters and a removable covering for hiding the prize-revealing characters prior to acquisition by an end user. The ticket dispensing device includes a storage mechanism for holding a plurality of gaming tickets. A revealer is provided for removing the removable covering to reveal the prize-revealing characters, and a scanner is provided for scanning the prize-revealing characters. A processor is in communication with the scanner for processing the scanned characters' information to determine a prize value associated with the characters scanned. An audio visual display displays an audio visual message relating to the prize value and a dispensing port is provided for dispensing the gaming ticket to the user.
US09818262B2

A gambling hybrid game that provides game world engine driven triggering of gambling events is disclosed. The gambling hybrid game includes an entertainment system engine that provides an entertainment game to a user, a real world engine that provides gambling games to users, and a game world engine that monitors the entertainment game and provides gambling games when appropriate. The entertainment system engine provides an entertainment games that provides values for a set of entertainment game variables. The game world engine receive the values of set of entertainment game variables and determined whether a gambling event in a gambling game is triggered based upon the values one or more entertainment game variables in the set.
US09818254B2

In various embodiments, promotions are featured on mobile gaming devices.
US09818242B2

System and methods for detecting anomalies and identifying faults of a gas turbine engine may include a recorder in communication with a processor. The recorder may be configured to capture archival data of the gas turbine engine. A flight normalizer module may be configured to produce normalized results based on the archival data. A flight parameter features module may be configured to generate flight parameter features based on the normalized results. A data warehouse module may be configured to determine suspected fault classes by comparing the flight parameter features against training parameter features stored in the data warehouse module based on queries from the flight parameter features module. A majority vote module may be configured to determine a diagnosed fault class based on the suspected fault classes.
US09818240B1

A computing device-implemented method includes receiving data representative of one or more travel parameters for distribution ranges for a vehicle that includes a first propulsion system, and, receiving data representative of one or more travel parameters for distribution ranges for a vehicle that includes a second propulsion system. The distribution ranges for the vehicle that includes the first propulsion system are equivalent to the distribution ranges for the vehicle that includes the second propulsion system. The method also includes receiving data representative of one or more travel parameters for distribution ranges for a collection of vehicles. The distribution ranges for the collection of vehicles are equivalent to the distribution ranges for the vehicle that includes the second propulsion system.
US09818234B2

3D shape reconstruction of objects including specular objects in which structured light patterns are projected toward an object which reflects the patterns onto multiple layers of EGlass arranged in spaced-apart relation with each other while each layer is in turn controlled to be in the diffuse mode with all others being in the transparent mode. Images are captured of the structured light pattern as reflected onto the EGlass layers by the mirror-like surface of the specular object. By projecting multiple different patterns, such as multiple different Gray code patterns, and by sequencing through each EGlass layer for each pattern, the 3D shape of the entirety of the visible surface of the object can be reconstructed by analysis of captured images of the distorted reflections of the patterns by the surface of the object. Embodiments are also described which can be used without reconfiguration for surface reconstruction of the shape of diffuse objects.
US09818232B2

Methods and systems for correcting depth irregularities in a three-dimensional scanned model. In particular, one or more embodiments obtain depth data and color data for an object using a depth scanner and a color scanner, respectively. One or more embodiments identify, based on edge information in the color data, regions that have no depth data that are part of the object. One or more embodiments then correct the depth frame by assigning depth data to the identified regions based on a gradient of depth data from areas near the identified regions. The methods and systems use the corrected depth data to generate a corrected three-dimensional model of the object.
US09818209B2

A method for analyzing a level gauge, comprising storing in a storage device a consecutive sequence of data triplets including a time stamp, a filling level measurement, and an echo curve information, plotting a trend line including filling level as a function of time, graphically indicating a pointer in the trend line, displaying an echo curve corresponding to a point in time initially represented by the pointer, receiving user input indicating a set of points along a section of the trend line selected for analysis, and for each point in the set of points, moving the pointer to this point and replacing contents of the second graphical element, such that an echo curve displayed in the second graphical element always corresponds to a point in time represented by a current position of the pointer.The invention enables a user to analyze operation of the level gauge during a time period corresponding to the selected trend line section.
US09818208B2

A system and method for determining a set of visualization points from any given two-dimensional dataset to best describe a given visual analytic. A first user selection is received in a data processing apparatus for a chart. A chart type associated with the first user selection is identified for the chart. One or more visualization strategies are accessed from a strategy pool database based on the chart type. A second user selection is received in the data processing apparatus for a two-dimensional dataset from a data provider in communication with the data processing apparatus. The two-dimensional dataset is analyzed to determine a best strategy from the one or more visualization strategies accessed from the strategy pool database. Metadata representing the two-dimensional dataset is generated based on the best strategy, and a display representing the metadata is generated to visualize the two-dimensional dataset according to the best strategy.
US09818206B2

A display device includes: a display means that displays a virtual image of a picture by projecting display light representing the picture on a windshield; an identification means that identifies a target outside the vehicle; a control means that causes a first captured image, visually recognized as being superposed on at least a part of the target, to be displayed in the picture; and a vibration detection means that detects the amount of vibration of the vehicle. The control means, when the amount of vibration detected by the vibration detection means exceeds a threshold value, causes a second captured image to be displayed instead of the first captured image. The second captured image is an image of which a color shade difference between pixels configuring an image end and a region outside the image and adjacent to the image end is decreased compared with the first captured image.
US09818203B2

An apparatus for monitoring movement of objects of interest in an area includes an activity map generation circuit and a unified activity map generation circuit. The activity map generation circuit is configured to: generate a plurality of activity maps based on video content from a plurality of cameras, each of the plurality of activity maps being indicative of relative activity of the objects of interest over time within a field of view of a camera among the plurality of cameras, and each of the plurality of cameras having a different corresponding field of view in the area; and standardize the plurality of activity maps with regard to a single common point of view. The unified spatial activity map generation circuit is configured to combine the plurality of standardized activity maps into a unified activity map.
US09818202B2

Provided is an image processing apparatus including a distance information acquisition unit that acquires distance information on a distance up to an object imaged by an image sensor, a pixel value information acquisition unit that acquires pixel value information of an image corresponding to the object, and a tracking unit that tracks the object that moves, based on the acquired distance information and the acquired pixel value information.
US09818200B2

An image data processing apparatus including a data receiver receiving image data to be segmented, and an atlas selection processor accessing a plurality of atlas data sets and selecting a subset of the atlas data sets for use in segmenting the image data, wherein the atlas selection processor is configured to select the subset of atlas data sets in dependence on the positions of one or more anatomical landmarks comprised in the plurality of atlas data sets.
US09818197B2

A system and computer-implemented method for searching for regions of interest may include performing a first linear image slice of an object including a machine-readable code associated therewith. Interesting blocks within the first linear image slice may be identified. A determination as to whether at least one isolated interesting block or multiple interesting blocks that are adjacent to one another exist within the first linear image slice may be made, and, if so, at least one blob inclusive of the at least one isolated interesting block or multiple interesting blocks being adjacent to one another may be identified, otherwise, the first linear image slice may be discarded. Respective geometrically shaped area(s) that include respective blob(s) may be formed, where the geometrically shaped area(s) define at least one region of interest is which the machine-readable code is located.
US09818194B2

An image registration method includes acquiring first image data for a target object that includes first coordinate information; acquiring second image data for the target object that includes second coordinate information, by using a probe; and registering the first image data with the second image data, using the first coordinate information and the second coordinate information. According to the image registration method, image registration between a plurality of pieces of volume data adjusted so that their coordinate axes correspond to each other is performed, whereby a high-quality registered image may be quickly and simply obtained.
US09818191B2

The disclosed technology relates generally to medical imaging, and more particularly, some embodiments relate to systems and methods for creating and using a covariate modulated or “dynamic” atlas. Some embodiments of the disclosure provide a method for predicting an alas using General Additive Model (GAM) parameters, wherein the GAM parameters are derived by registering (and optionally segmenting) a plurality of image data sets from a plurality of different subjects to an initial atlas estimate (e.g., a seed atlas), and analyzing the resulting registration, segmentation, and intensity parameters as correlated with input covariates.
US09818185B2

Disclosed is an ultrasonic imaging method. The method includes: on a basis of performing fuzzy segmentation of a membership function on an echo signal, sequentially dividing an input image into a plurality of fuzzy segments according to a strength of an echo; dividing the image into a plurality of layers accordingly; and performing a spatial neighborhood operation on a membership degree value in the plurality of layers, so as to obtain a space fuzzy segmentation array; in another aspect, determining a manipulated variable vector of the image according to image content-based self-adaptive calculation or user-based input, flexibly weighting and stretching space fuzzy segmentation arrays at the layers according to the manipulated variable vector finally, and adjusting and compounding the input image by using obtained echo increment and brightness compensation, so as to obtain a final output image. Also disclosed is a corresponding ultrasonic imaging apparatus.
US09818182B2

The present invention prevents aliasing of the X-ray detector from lowering the spatial resolution and enhances the precision of measurement in an X-ray CT device. This has the effect of making it possible to measure finer structures, such as blood vessels, and enhance the diagnostic capability, without having to increase the subject's exposure in, for example, medical CT.
US09818181B1

A system and method are presented for generating shearograms from raw specklegram images which may, for example, be collected from airborne or other mobile shearography equipment. The system and method is used to detect and characterize buried mines, improvised explosive devices (IEDs), and underground tunnels, bunkers, and other structures. Amongst other purposes, the system and method may also be used for rapid scanning of ship hulls and aircraft for hidden structural defects, rapid pipeline inspection, and non-contact acoustic sensing for in-water and underground sources.
US09818176B2

An image processing apparatus processes image data. A first correction unit (i) corrects a pixel value of a target pixel in the image data based on a first similarity determined by comparing pixels included in a first target pixel group including the target pixel with pixels included in a first reference pixel group including a reference pixel, and (ii) produces a first corrected pixel value of the target pixel. A second correction unit (i) corrects the pixel value of the target pixel based on a second similarity determined by comparing pixels included in a second target pixel group including the target pixel with pixels included in a second reference pixel group including a reference pixel, and (ii) produces a second corrected pixel value. An output unit obtains corrected image data by using the first and second corrected pixel values based on the first similarity or the second similarity.
US09818170B2

This disclosure describes techniques for processing unaligned block transfer (BLT) commands. The techniques of this disclosure may involve converting an unaligned BLT command into multiple aligned BLT commands, where the multiple aligned BLT commands may collectively produce the same resulting memory state as that which would have been produced by the unaligned BLT command. The techniques of this disclosure may allow the benefits of relatively low-power GPU-accelerated BLT processing may be achieved for unaligned BLT commands without requiring a CPU to pre-process and/or post-process the underlying unaligned surfaces. In this way, the performance and/or power consumption associated with processing unaligned BLT commands in an alignment-constrained GPU-based system may be improved.
US09818168B2

A data tuning software application platform relating to the ability to apply maskless lithography patterns to a substrate in a manufacturing process is disclosed in which the application processes graphical objects and configures the graphical objects for partition into a plurality of trapezoids. The trapezoids may be selectively merged in order to minimize the trapezoid count while limiting the loss of edge fidelity.
US09818151B2

A system for renting vehicles is disclosed. The system can comprise a vehicle access communicator (“VAC”) capable of interfacing with one or more functions of a rental vehicle and a user provided portable electronic device. The VAC can control various functions of the vehicle including, but not limited to, the door locks and/or enabling/disabling the vehicle. The VAC can also monitor various functions of the vehicle including, but not limited to, the fuel level and/or the odometer readings. The VAC can connect to the portable electronic device using a suitable connection method to access additional functionality such as, for example and not limitation, locations services, cellular, and/or internet access. The VAC and the portable electronic device can be used to provide a rental system with reduced infrastructure and operating costs. The system can enable the use of “Green Zones” to provide permanent or temporary vehicle rental areas.
US09818145B1

Recommendations of items may be provided to a customer who purchases items from an online marketplace on behalf of a user account based on the interactions of the customer with the marketplace or with one or more external resources, such as a social network account affiliated with the customer. For example, systems and methods may utilize such interactions to determine which of the purchases of items on behalf of the user account are affiliated with the customer, and which may be affiliated with one or more other individuals. Similarly, the systems and methods may also identify recommendations for customers who have purchased items for delivery to a destination based on other items that have been delivered to the destination, and may further determine when a customer has purchased an item for a recipient who has already received the item from another customer.
US09818140B2

Embodiments of sales generation, including sales generation employing reverse lead generation using vehicle data systems and methods, are presented herein. In particular, in certain embodiments a user may utilize the vehicle data system to obtain pricing data corresponding to a desired vehicle configuration. When the user is presented with the pricing data associated with the specified vehicle configuration the user may additionally be presented with an upfront price offered by a dealer, where by providing their personal information the user may obtain the name of the dealer offering the upfront price and may additionally be offered the opportunity to purchase the desired, or similar, vehicle at the upfront price.
US09818135B2

Social graphs using shared personal data are described, including techniques for capturing data from a social data source, determining one or more connections associated with an item using the data, and creating a social graph using the one or more connections, the social graph comprising the one or more connections associated with the item. Embodiments of the invention also include techniques for updating social graphs.
US09818126B1

Sensor data analysis may include obtaining video data, detecting facial data within the video data, extracting the facial data from the video data, detecting indicator data within the video data, extracting the indicator data from the video data, transforming the extracted facial data into representative facial data, and determining a mood of the person by associating learned mood indicators derived from other detected facial data with the representative facial data. The analysis may include determining that the representative facial data is associated with a complex profile, and determining a context regarding the person within the environment by weighting and processing the determined mood, at least one subset of data representing information about the person of the complex profile, and the indicator data. The analysis may include determining a user experience for the person, and communicating the determined user experience to a device associated with the person.
US09818123B2

Disclosed are methods and systems for generating digital memorabilia including: providing a digital memorabilia signor with a digital photograph, a digital sports jersey, or a combination thereof; receiving at least one of an electronic signature or an electronic written message from the digital memorabilia signor to be embedded in the digital photograph, the digital sports jersey, or the combination thereof; embedding the at least one of an electronic signature or an electronic written message from the digital memorabilia signor into the digital photograph, the digital sports jersey, or a combination thereof to form the generated digital memorabilia; sending the generated digital memorabilia including the electronic signature and the electronic written message to a verification service to verify authenticity of the electronic signature and electronic written message in the generated digital memorabilia; and delivering the generated memorabilia to a digital receiver.
US09818119B2

Systems and methods for managing concurrent secure elements on a mobile device to coordinate with an application or “app” running on the mobile device and an appropriate communications protocol for conducting transactions using the mobile device include: informing, by the processor, the reader device of a preferred app and a communication protocol usable by the preferred app; receiving, by the processor, information about which apps and communication protocols are supported by a reader for processing a transaction; locating, by the processor, a secure element supporting an app and a communication protocol supported by the reader; channeling the communication protocol for the specific configuration of the app and the supporting secure element; activating the secure element that supports the app; and processing, with the activated secure element, using the supported app and communication channel, the transaction with the reader.
US09818118B2

Systems and methods for determining and reporting aggregated transaction level data regarding a particular user are disclosed. Based on the requests of one or more information requesters, an aggregator server can request transaction level data for all accounts associated with a particular user or a group of users from a transaction database. The transaction database returns raw transaction level data for accounts associated with the particular user to the aggregator server. The aggregator server can then parse the raw transaction level data based on a number of transaction level data elements and information requester input. The parsed raw transaction level data can then be used to determine the number of predefined or information requester defined transaction level data aggregates. The resulting transaction level data aggregates can then be sent in a report to the one or more information requesters.
US09818117B2

A computer-implemented method for analyzing potentially fraudulent e-commerce payment transactions utilizing social media data is provided. The method uses a fraud monitoring device in communication with a memory. The method includes receiving a request to assess the fraud risk of an online transaction initiated by a cardholder using a payment card and accessing a social media account associated with the cardholder. The social media account includes a circle of friends, where each friend in the circle of friends is associated with a social media account. The method also includes determining one or more historical transactions associated with at least one friend in the circle of friends, calculating a social risk score for the cardholder based in part on the determined one or more historical transactions, and transmitting a consolidated risk assessment of the online transaction based in part on the social risk score.
US09818103B2

Secure exchange of value and associated information in financial transactions involving beneficial offers available for customers is provided. Various offers, including discounts, prepaid amounts, and the like may be purchased by customers for use with various merchants. A third party issuer obtains information from the customer in selling the offers and issues some kind of indicium of value having a representation of the value of the offer associated therein. Record of the indicia are maintained and either transmitted to the merchant or kept by the issuer or associated financial institutions. When the customer redeems the offer by presenting the indicium to the merchant, the merchant may either authenticate the indicium using the records received by the issuer, or establish communication with the issuer for the issuer to authenticate the indicium, either by itself or in cooperation with one or more related financial institutions.
US09818099B2

A system and method of transaction processing is provided. The system includes a central server, which, after receiving transaction and recipient information from an initiator, sends a verification code to the initiator. The server also sends instructions for the initiator to send the code to a recipient via an outside communication channel. The server receives the verification code from the recipient, and verifies the transaction. In this manner, security may be maintained.
US09818092B2

A system for implementing at least one cryptocurrency transaction at a point-of-sale by using a mobile terminal is provided. The system is operable to provide authentication for implementing the one or more cryptocurrency transactions, wherein the system is operable to send at least one authentication request for the at least one cryptocurrency transaction from a payment terminal to a payment service hosted via one or more virtual computing machines, wherein the payment service is operable to provide a request for a PIN code at the mobile terminal; to send the PIN code from the mobile terminal via a secure channel to open a vault in the one or more virtual machines, wherein the vault contains one or more private keys (PKI) which are useable for authenticating the at least one cryptocurrency transaction; and to confirm execution of the at least one cryptocurrency transaction to at least the payment terminal.
US09818091B2

A method is disclosed for transferring receipt data to a computing device corresponding to a customer. The method may include initiating a transaction at a point-of-sale system. During the transaction, a computer system comprising the point-of-sale system, may collect receipt data documenting the transaction. The computer system may generate a barcode unique to the transaction and comprising encoded data. Once the transaction has been completed, the computer system may present the barcode to the customer. This may be done via a printed receipt, a customer-facing display, or the like. Using the encoded data, the computer system may deliver the receipt data to a computing device in the possession of the customer. For example, the encoded data may comprise the receipt data. Alternatively, the encoded data may comprise a URL directing the computing device to a resource system from which the receipt data may be downloaded.
US09818088B2

A vehicle having communications circuitry for connecting over a wireless network to a server for exchanging vehicle condition information is provided. The vehicle includes an on-board computer for interfacing with vehicle systems and the communications circuitry. The on-board computer is further configured to process input received from at least one vehicle interface of the vehicle and processing output via at least one vehicle output of the vehicle. The communications circuitry is configured to send to the server over the wireless network vehicle data for vehicle status information, the vehicle status information is for one or more vehicle systems of the vehicle. The server accesses at least one database that include diagnostics data for a vehicle type of the vehicle and crowd sourced data for the vehicle type, the crowd sourced data includes comments received from one or more users of vehicles of the vehicle type that relate to the vehicle status information of one or more vehicle systems of the vehicle. The server is configured to process the comments to identify a condition derived from the comments and reasoned from description in the comments of substantially similar circumstances associated with a condition of the vehicle. The server is configured to automatically process the vehicle data that is received against the diagnostics data and the crowd sourced data, and the processing is configured to select an alert from among a plurality of possible alerts.
US09818077B2

Visual representations of gadgets, each of which is configured to perform a different function, are displayed by an electronic device. The gadgets are arranged in a sequence to build a workflow. The gadgets are executed in the sequence to execute the workflow on a project.
US09818074B2

The method converts GPS signals from a GPS-enabled phone-tablet-device into time-on-site data. A database includes unique task data and data on task person (T-P), task situs, time-on-site, and assignment. Server determines when the GPS is in an idle mode defined by a territory about a current GPS data by a threshold or other algorithm. Processor determines whether the GPS moves by applying an “idle to movement” algorithm, movement by positional data or velocity and “movement to idle.” A time-on-site is determined when idle ON and current-GPS matches task situs. Method transforms GPS data into travel time indicator data and time-on-site data for quality assurance, billing and accounting. The method automatically identifies and divides the movements of a person or apparatus into types of actions (including the non-action, idle mode). The method analyzes, identifies and divides it into sequential segments.
US09818073B2

A demand response management system which may be implemented with demand response logic. The system may be used by utilities, independent system operators, intermediaries and others to manage operations of demand response programs relative to customers, clients, participants, and users of outputs from the utilities, independent system operators, and the like. Demand response logic of the demand response management system may provide demand signal propagation and generation from demand response events.
US09818072B2

Systems and methods create a digital geospatial display of facilities to aid facility management. In one implementation, a system retrieves data for a plurality of facilities from various databases, including, but not limited to, map data for creating maps, location data for the facilities, and resource data for the facilities. The system marks the locations of the facilities on a map display using a facility icon. The facility icon comprises one or more resource status areas, each of which convey information about the state of a resource at a facility. The system calculates the resource status areas of the facility icons based at least on the resource data.
US09818068B2

A metrics based design method and system is disclosed. The method includes receiving by a computer processor, an informational model comprising data objects, attributes, and relationships associated with a service. The data objects comprise sub-objects. The computer processor receives business affinity (BA) band data associated with the data objects, threshold levels associated with the business affinity (BA) band data, business affinity (BA) levels associated with the business affinity (BA) band data, and service interface operation parameters. The computer processor computes a business affinity (BA) for the informational model based on the business affinity (BA) band data, the threshold levels, the business affinity (BA) levels, and the service interface operation parameters. The computer processor computes a data variation percentage and a reusability count. The computer processor performs: a nested level computation for service valency, a factorization process for computing service valency, and a data element count.
US09818066B1

Technologies are disclosed herein for generating and utilizing machine-learning generated classifiers configured to identify document relationships. Manually-generated data is captured that indicates if documents in a document corpus have a relationship with one another, such as duplicates or variations. A determination may then be made as to whether a classifier is to be generated based on the duplicate decision data. If a classifier is to be generated, machine learning may be performed using training documents from the document corpus and the duplicate decision data to generate a classifier. The machine-learning generated classifier may then be utilized in a production environment to determine whether a new document is a duplicate of documents in the document corpus and/or to identify other relationships between documents in the document corpus, such as documents that are similar or are variations of one another.
US09818063B2

Information related to a time series can be predicted. For example, a repetitive characteristic of the time series can be determined by analyzing the time series for a pattern that repeats over a predetermined time period. An adjusted time series can be generated by removing the repetitive characteristic from the time series. An effect of a moving event on the adjusted time series can be determined. The moving event can occur on different dates for two or more consecutive years. A residual time series can be generated by removing the effect of the moving event from the adjusted time series. A base forecast that is independent of the repetitive characteristic and the effect of the moving event can be generated using the residual time series. A predictive forecast can be generated by including the repetitive characteristic and the effect of the moving event into the base forecast.
US09818038B2

An image recognition apparatus includes a memory, an interface and a processor. The memory stores identification information obtained from code information attached to the objects and image information on the objects used for object recognition, the storage storing the identification information and the image information for each of objects to be recognized. The processor which controls to: extract a target object region including an object therein from a photographed image; extract code information in the target object region and recognize the identification information based on extracted code information; and recognize the object based on an image of the target object region and image information on each object, if the processor fails to recognize the object based on the code information.
US09818032B2

System and techniques for automatic video summarization are described herein. A video may be obtained and a semantic model of the video may be generated from frames of the video. Respective relevancy scores may be assigned to the frames. The semantic model may be initialized with the respective relevancy scores. The semantic model may then be iteratively processed to produce sub-scenes of the video, the collection of sub-scenes being the video summarization.
US09818031B2

A wearable apparatus is provided for capturing and processing images from an environment of a user. In one implementation, a server-based system includes a data interface for receiving a data stream including image-based information. The image based information may include images captured by a camera present on a particular wearable apparatus from among the plurality of wearable apparatuses worn by different users. The server-based system also includes at least one processing device programmed to receive the data stream from each of the plurality of wearable apparatuses using the data interface, and analyze the data streams to determine at least one trait common to two or more of the different users of the plurality of wearable apparatuses. The at least one processing device may also be programmed to store in a database information relating to the determined at least one trait.
US09818030B2

An ophthalmic device capable of obtaining B-scan graphical images at high speed while eliminating positional displacement due to movement of a subject eye. The device includes: anterior eye image obtaining means configured to obtain an image of an anterior eye of a subject eye; eye fundus image obtaining means configured to obtain an image of an eye fundus of the subject eye; and control means configured to detect a moving distance of the subject eye in the anterior eye image using means configured to calculate correlation between a moving distance of the subject eye in the anterior eye image and a moving distance in the eye fundus image, and to control a position for imaging of the eye fundus image based on the detected moving distance of the subject eye and the calculated correlation.
US09818027B2

An image forming apparatus forms only a required entry field on an application form, and, upon the application form in which this location has been filled in being scanned, further forms an additional entry field and prompts the applicant to fill in this entry field. An application form that has been completely filled in by the applicant is created by repeating this processing.
US09818025B2

A discriminator generation device 10 includes a feature quantity extraction unit 13 which, using at least two pattern groups having patterns of different sizes for a detection object, extracts a feature quantity of patterns configuring each pattern group, and a discriminator generation unit 14 which generates a discriminator for detecting a detection object of a size corresponding to each pattern group in an image based on the feature quantity of the patterns of each pattern group.
US09818018B2

A flexible fingerprint sensor laminate comprising: a layer of flexible substrate having a front surface and a back surface, at least a domain of electrically conductive material deposited on the front surface, a protective hard coating layer that covers the domain of electrically conductive material, and a plurality of sensor electrodes deposited preferably on the back surface and related circuitry (e.g. integrated circuit for driving and sensing). Preferably, the layer of flexible substrate is no greater than 20 μm in thickness, the domain of electrically conductive material has a thickness no greater than 2 μm, the protective hard coating has a thickness no greater than 1 μm, and the laminate has a surface sheet resistance no greater than 200 Ohm per square and surface scratch resistance no less than 3 H. The laminate exhibits good scratch resistance, low sheet resistance, good flexibility and mechanical integrity. The invention also provides a biometric sensor, such as a fingerprint sensor. The invention further provides a process for producing such a sensor laminate.
US09818013B2

A device can comprise a processor, a memory, an imaging subsystem configured to acquire an image of decodable indicia, a display, and a communication interface. The device can be configured, responsive to acquiring an image of one or more objects within a field of view of the imaging subsystem, to locate within the image and decode one or more decodable indicia. The device can be further configured to display the image on the display and visually mark the one or more successfully decoded decodable indicia. The device can be further configured, responsive to accepting user input selecting at least one decodable indicia of the displayed one or more decodable indicia, to transmit to an external computer at least one decoded message corresponding to the at least one decodable indicia.
US09818012B2

A method for barcode detection, barcode detection system and program. In method for detecting a barcode, an information processing apparatus executes the steps of: detecting a plurality of blobs from an image; for each detected blob, obtaining imaginary lines bisecting the detected blob perpendicular at the middle of the detected blob, determining at least one cluster of the imaginary lines in a feature space according to slopes and positions of the imaginary lines and grouping the blobs in one cluster to a rectangular shape corresponding to the barcode.
US09818001B2

An apparatus for securing a component to prevent unauthorized removal of the component, the apparatus comprising a security device for securing the component, the security device having: a first corner engagement member pivotally mounted to a first arm for engaging a first corner of the component; a second corner engagement member pivotally mounted to a second arm for engaging a second corner of the component that is diagonal to the first corner; and a locking assembly to secure the first arm relative to the second arm.
US09817998B2

A facility for accessing information relating to a person is described. In a reader device, the facility accesses first credentials stored in a first storage device, second credentials stored in a second storage device, and third credentials stored in the reader device. In the reader device, the facility uses a combination of the first credentials, second credentials, and third credentials to decrypt information relating to the person stored in the first storage device.
US09817990B2

Provided are a system and method of encrypting a folder in a device. The device for controlling access to the folder includes a communication part configured to transmit, to a server, an encryption key generation request with respect to the folder, and receive, from the server, an encryption key associated with the folder that is generated in response to the encryption key generation request, wherein the encryption key generation request includes an identification of the folder and authentication data of a user who accesses the folder is an authorized user; and a controller configured to authenticate the user by using the encryption key.
US09817987B2

Various embodiments restrict or enable access to content items of an account based on login information or content request properties. For example, a synchronized online content management system can receive a request including one or more content request properties from a client device to access a user account. Access rules for the user account can be obtained and applied based on the content request properties to generate an access status. In one instance, the client device is provided with full account access if the access status indicates that the client device is an authorized device. In another instance, if the client device is an unauthorized device, at least one aspect of access to the user account is restricted.
US09817984B2

Disclosed are various embodiments for providing access to application data associated with multiple applications of a user. A request to store application data is obtained by a data storage service from an application associated with a user. The application is executed in a client computing device, and the request is obtained by way of a network. The application data is stored by the data storage service in response to the request to store. The data storage service may be configured to store data for multiple applications associated with the user.
US09817981B2

Methods and systems for secure cloud storage are provided. According to one embodiment, a gateway maintains multiple cryptographic keys. A file that is to be stored across multiple third-party cloud storage services is received by the gateway from a user of an enterprise network. The file is partitioned into chunks. A directory is created within a cloud storage service having a name attribute based on an encrypted version of a name of the file. For each chunk: (i) existence of data is identified within the chunk associated with one or more predefined search indices; (ii) searchable encrypted metadata is generated based on the identified data and a selected cryptographic key; (iii) an encrypted version of the chunk is generated; and (iv) a file is created within the directory in which a name attribute includes the searchable encrypted metadata and the file content includes the encrypted chunk.
US09817977B2

One embodiment of the present invention provides a system for stable selection of collaborating partners for exchanging security data. During operation, the system receives vectors of collaboration values from a plurality of entities. A collaboration value is a measure of an expected benefit of collaborating with a respective entity. The system sorts each of the vectors by the collaboration values of the respective vector. The system then determines matching entities given a number of partners wanted by each organization in N. The system may add matching entities to lists of collaborating partners given the number of partners wanted by each organization in N. Subsequently, the system sends the lists of collaborating partners to facilitate exchanging security data with partners in the list of collaborating partners.
US09817971B2

Detecting computer anomalies by determining probabilities of encountering call stack configurations at various depths, the call stacks being associated with software application instances on computers having the same operating system, where snapshots of the call stacks are recorded on the computers responsive to detecting predefined software application events, determining entropies of call stack configurations at various call stack depths using their associated probabilities, determining stack frame rarity scores of call stack configurations at various depths based on their associated stack frame entropies in accordance with a predefined rarity function, determining a call stack rarity score of any given call stack configuration as the maximum stack frame rarity score of the given configuration, and detecting an anomaly associated with any given one of the computers where any of the snapshots recorded on the given computer is of a call stack whose call stack rarity score meets a predefined anomaly condition.
US09817960B2

Some embodiments include a method of providing security and privacy for a message sender. The method can include a messaging application determining that a messaging interface of the computing device is active and is revealing or about to reveal the electronic message. The messaging application can identify a recipient account of a messaging server system that is associated with the electronic message according to the electronic message or the messaging server system. The messaging application can then monitor a data feed from a sensor of the computing device to detect a biometric pattern that matches against a biometric profile model associated with the recipient account utilizing a biometric recognition process. In response to determining that the detected biometric pattern does not match the biometric profile model associated with the recipient account, the messaging application can activate a privacy shield to prevent content of the electronic message from being revealed.
US09817954B2

A method, apparatus, media and data structure for rendering a wrapper. The wrapper includes at least one data structure in a format that is renderable by a standard rendering engine and containing censored content comprising source content identification information. When the wrapper is opened by a standard rendering engine, the censored content is rendered. When opened by a trusted rendering engine, the source content is rendered.
US09817953B2

Systems and methods in which multiple key servers operate cooperatively to securely provide authorization codes to requesting devices. In one embodiment, a server cloud receives a device authorization code request and selects an “A server”. The “A server” requests authorization from one or more “B servers” and authorizes the “B servers” to respond. The “B servers” provide authorization to the “A server”, and may provide threshold key inputs to enable decryption of device authorization codes. The “A server” cannot provide the requested device authorization code without authorization from the “B server(s)”, and the “B server(s)” cannot provide the requested server authorization code and threshold inputs without a valid request from the “A server”. After the “A server” receives authorization from the “B server(s)”, it can provide the initially requested device authorization code to the requesting device.
US09817949B2

Computer implemented techniques for classifying mental states of individuals are described. The techniques determine sets of words that are associated with multiple groups having different mental status, and a classification model is used to classify one group against another group. Furthermore, by determining points of intersection of words between a first group and second group, words that are statistically predictive terms and that are unique to each group, to provide further predictive features for differentiating the multiple cohorts.
US09817948B2

A device and system are provided for notifying a user contact of the status of a user of a portable device. The status is determined by the portable device collecting user provided information and device collected information relevant to a user of portable device. The portable device may then transmit the device collected information and the user provided information to a server that in turn performs an analysis on the device collected information and the user provided information to determine whether a triggering event has occurred. If it is determined that a triggering event has occurred, the server will proceed to send a status update regarding the user of the portable device to preset user contacts. The triggering event is determined to have occurred based on preset user conditions and algorithms and artificial intelligence being executed at the server.
US09817947B2

A method, apparatus, system, and computer program product are disclosed to track beacons utilizing a device management infrastructure. The method includes registering, by a device management server, at least a first detection device associated with a first location and a second detection device associated with a second location with a device management infrastructure, receiving a beacon identifier associated with a beacon detected by the first detection device, storing a first time stamp associated with detection of the beacon by the first detection device, receiving the beacon identifier associated with the beacon as detected by the second detection device, determining, based on the first time stamp and a second time stamp associated with detection of the beacon by the second detection device, an elapsed time between detection of the beacon by the first detection device and detection of the beacon by the second detection device, and reporting the elapsed time to a healthcare information system.
US09817941B2

Various embodiments implement additional connectivity for electronic designs by identifying one or more regions for a route in normal connectivity of an electronic design, identifying a plurality of seeding segments from the route based at least in part upon the one or more regions, identifying a plurality of additional nodes in the plurality of seeding segments, and generating one or more additional routes connecting the plurality of additional nodes in the plurality of seeding segments. The one or more additional routes are generated without disturbing the normal connectivity including a plurality of Steiner points and the route. Additional nodes differ from Steiner points and are used to implement additional routes that belong to a different route type.
US09817937B2

A method of generating an area efficient power switch cell includes receiving, by a cell library design tool, a specification of a power switch circuit to be established as a power switch cell in a cell library. The cell library design tool also receives one or more attributes of the power switch cell including a height of the cell boundary and receiving, by the cell library design tool, a layout placement constraint requiring the power switch cell to be placed in a semiconductor layout so as to bridge two parallel rows of doped wells. The parallel rows of doped wells are interleaved with doped substrate and the doping of the wells is of a different type than that of the substrate. Based on the specification of the power switch circuit, the one or more attributes, and the layout placement constraint, the cell library design tool generates the power switch cell.
US09817935B2

Interlaced bi-sensor super-resolution enhancement techniques and a resultant scalable pixel array suitable for a mega-pixel design are disclosed. The method includes interlacing a first array of pixels of a first size with a second array of pixels of a second size. The interlacing of the first array of pixels with the second array of pixels avoids crossing two or more photosensitive areas of the first array of pixels and the second array of pixels.
US09817932B2

This application discloses tools to build a topology library including one or more topologies, each of which includes a description of multiple transistors, their parameters, and associated connectivity, and also includes rules or criteria to be utilized in downstream design flow processes. The tools can analyze a circuit design describing an electronic device to recognize a subset of transistors in the electronic device has a pre-defined circuit topology, and identify layout rules or simulation criteria for the transistors in the recognized circuit topology. The tools can utilize the layout rules to automatically generate a portion of a physical design layout corresponding to the recognized topology in the circuit design. The tools also can compare results from a simulation of the circuit design that correspond to the transistors in the recognized circuit topology to the simulation criteria to determine whether the transistors in the recognized circuit topology meet design specifications.
US09817911B2

Disclosed is a system and method for analyzing, by a server computer, closed captioning text associated with a media program being experienced by a user having a client device. The server computer obtains, based on the analyzing, a subject matter of a portion of the media program from the closed captioning text. The server computer constructs a query associated with the determined subject matter and submits the query to a computer network as a search query. The server computer receives, in response to the submitting of the query, content relating to the subject matter and measures an elapsed time period between the receiving of the content and the obtaining of the subject matter. If the elapsed time period is less than a predetermined period of time, the server computer communicates, to the client device, information related to the content.
US09817910B2

A processing device identifies uniform resource identifiers (URIs) for a RESTful (Representational State Transfer) web service in a server and creates server-side metadata describing each of the URIs without nesting metadata of one of the URIs in metadata of another one of the URIs. The processing device creates a file that includes the URIs and the corresponding server-side metadata for the corresponding URI to describe the RESTful web service.
US09817907B1

Systems and methods for using place of accommodation as a signal for ranking reviews and point of interest search results are provided. One example method includes receiving a search query from a user and identifying a place of accommodation at which the user is staying. The method includes determining a score for each of a plurality of points of interest according to a scoring formula. The scoring formula provides the score based on a plurality of reviews of each point of interest. Reviews provided by reviewers that were staying at the place of accommodation have a greater influence on the score than reviews provided by reviewers that were not staying at the place of accommodation. The method includes selecting one or more of the plurality of points of interest to provide as search results to the user based the plurality of scores.
US09817901B1

The present application describes performing a user initiated search query comprising receiving user input comprising description details of at least one desired object, retrieving a plurality of objects from a database sharing one or more of the description details of the user input, retrieving an image of the at least one desired object based on one or more of the plurality of objects, generating a contour of the image and comparing the generated contour with other related contours of other images stored in the database, displaying all of the available contours of all of the images that match the generated contour, receiving a selection of one of the available contours from the user and performing the search query based on the user selected contour.
US09817891B1

A system, method, and computer program product are provided for creating metadata-based search queries. In use, a plurality of data objects in one or more databases are identified. Additionally, a plurality of attributes associated with each of the plurality of data objects are identified (e.g. attributes from a table, derived attributes, etc.). Further, a plurality of relationships associated with each of the plurality of data objects are identified. In addition, at least one of the plurality of data objects, the plurality of attributes, or the plurality of relationships are filtered to generate a first subset of data objects, a first subset of attributes, and a first subset of relationships. At least a metadata representation of at least a portion of the first subset of data objects, the first subset of attributes, or the first subset of relationships is displayed utilizing a user interface. Furthermore, a selection is received from the user interface, the selection including data associated with one or more of the first subset of data objects, one or more of the first subset of attributes, or one or more of the first subset of relationships. Moreover, a search query is automatically generated based on the selection. Additionally, the one or more databases are searched utilizing the search query. Still yet, results of the search query are displayed utilizing the user interface.
US09817888B2

A method for supplementing structured information within a data system for entities based on unstructured data analyzes a document with unstructured data and extracts attribute values from the unstructured data for one or more entities of the data system. Entity records with structured information are retrieved from the data system based on the extracted attribute values. Entity references for corresponding entities of the data system are constructed based on a comparison of the retrieved entity records and the extracted attribute values. The entity references are linked to the corresponding entities within the data system, with the entity references including extracted attributes from the unstructured data for corresponding linked entities.
US09817886B2

An information retrieval system uses phrases to index, retrieve, organize and describe documents. Phrases are identified that predict the presence of other phrases in documents. Documents ate the indexed according to their included phrases. Index data for multiple versions or instances of documents is also maintained. Each document instance is associated with a date range and relevance data derived from the document for the date range.
US09817885B2

A method for grouping network service users includes acquiring attribute and/or behavior data of multiple users within a current period, and converting the attribute and/or behavior data into standardized data; determining multiple group central points according to the standardized data, and placing the standardized data in a group where a group central point having a shortest distance is located; determining group features of groups according to standardized data in the groups; and separately pushing corresponding service push information to users in the groups according to the group features of the groups. In addition, an apparatus for grouping network service users is further described.
US09817882B2

An apparatus includes a processor and a storage storing instructions causing the processor to receive representation metadata indicating features of representation data to be generated from a plurality of representation portions, receive a command to generate at least one row of the representation data, determine a subset of data blocks of a data blob required to generate the at least one row, and a subset of node devices that store the subset of data blocks, for each node device of the subset of node devices, derive a node block map identifying at least one data item of a data block for generating a representation portion, transmit the node block maps to the subset of node devices; and transmit a command to the subset of node devices to each generate at least one row of one of the plurality of representation portions.
US09817881B2

A method, apparatus, and tangible computer readable medium for processing a Hidden Markov Model (HMM) structure are disclosed herein. For example, the method includes receiving Hidden Markov Model (HMM) information from an external system. The method also includes processing back pointer data and first HMM states scores for one or more NULL states in the HMM information. Second HMM state scores are processed for one or more non-NULL states in the HMM information based on at least one predecessor state. Further, the method includes transferring the second HMM state scores to the external system.
US09817880B1

A system and method for social-aware clustering of user data replicas in a large-scale distributed computing system is disclosed. An exemplary system finds at least one user's connected users based on communications between the user and other users. The datacenters that contain the user replicas of the user's connected users are found. Connections and connection weights between the user and the user's connected users' datacenters are computed. The preferred datacenters for the user's current user data replica is computed based on the location of the connected datacenters and the weights of the connections. An optimization model minimizes the distance between the user's current datacenter and the user's preferred datacenter to reduce network traffic and central processing unit usage and determines the user's datacenter. The user's current datacenter is updated to the datacenter determined by running the optimization model.
US09817869B2

Certain embodiments of the disclosed technology include systems and methods for determining the priority of a notification on a mobile device using machine learning. Other aspects of the disclosed technology include selectively displaying notifications based on the priority of a notification. According to an embodiment of the disclosed technology, a computer-implement method is provided that comprises outputting, to a display device operatively coupled to a mobile device, a plurality of notifications, wherein each respective notification from the plurality of notifications is associated with a respective priority score; modifying, by the mobile device, a ranking model based on a user input received responsive to a first notification from the plurality of notifications and a characteristic of a second notification from the plurality of notifications; determining, by the mobile device, a priority score associated with a third notification based on the modified ranking model; and outputting, to the display device, the third notification based on the priority score associated with the third notification, wherein the third notification is graphically emphasized responsive to the priority score associated with the third notification being greater than at least one respective priority score associated with a corresponding respective notification from the plurality of notifications.
US09817865B2

Various embodiments for identifying data in a data deduplication system, by a processor device, are provided. In one embodiment, a method comprises efficiently identifying duplicate data in the data deduplication system by identifying fingerprint matches using a direct inter-region fingerprint lookup to search for the fingerprint matches in at least one of a plurality of metadata regions, the direct inter-region fingerprint lookup supplementing a central fingerprint index.
US09817864B1

Monitoring data can be sent, received, stored, and accessed with zero setup. Customers can send monitoring data to be stored without the customers having to perform any setup ahead-of-time, such as arbitrary lists of key-value pairs. Customers can perform zero setup pivot queries using stored monitoring data. For example, users can perform pivot queries using any available stored information, such as available metric types and dimensions, without any setup needed ahead-of-time.
US09817857B2

Techniques are described herein that are capable of deep cloning (a.k.a. deep copying) objects using a binary format. A deep clone of a designated object includes references to other objects (and potentially copies of the other objects) included in the designated object. A binary representation of each object in an object graph is generated to provide a binary clone of the object graph. Objects created by a dynamic language engine are called dynamic language objects. Objects created by a host (e.g., that hosts the dynamic language engine) are called host objects. Each host object is associated with an intermediate representation thereof via a property bag that describes properties of that host object. Each intermediate representation is understandable by the dynamic language engine. A binary representation of each dynamic language object and each host object may be generated in accordance with the binary format to provide the binary clone.
US09817839B2

A method for managing information at a construction site is disclosed. In one embodiment, task data is received from a handheld tool at a construction site. A database is populated with the task data such that the task data can be retrieved from the database. The task data is then used to generate at least one report.
US09817837B2

Disclosed embodiments relate to storing and accessing files. In an embodiment, a method includes writing a file to a writing a file to a storage device having a file system having a file allocation table (FAT). Writing the file includes allocating a plurality of clusters of the file system to the file, wherein at least a portion of the allocated clusters is contiguous. The FAT includes a plurality of cluster addresses corresponding to the allocated clusters. A signature value is stored in a cluster address corresponding to a first cluster of the contiguous clusters to indicate the presence of the contiguous clusters. In each of a set of consecutive cluster addresses succeeding the cluster address corresponding to the first cluster, a value that partially represents the number of the contiguous clusters is stored. The number of contiguous clusters is determinable by combining the values stored in the consecutive cluster addresses.
US09817836B2

Information from multiple databases is retrieved and stored on a database storage system. Multiple point-in-time copies are obtained for each database. A point-in-time copy retrieves data changed in the database since the retrieval of a previous point-in-time copy. A virtual database (VDB) is created by creating a set of files in the data storage system. Each file in the set of files created for a VDB is linked to the database blocks on the database storage system associated with a point-in-time copy of the source database. The set of files associated with the VDB are mounted on a database server allowing the database server to read from and write to the set of files. Workflows based on VDBs allow various usage scenarios based on databases to be implemented efficiently, for example, testing and development, backup and recovery, and data warehouse building.
US09817835B2

Performing data synchronization is disclosed, including: receiving an indication to synchronize a container to a snapshot, wherein the container has a first data state and an identity, wherein the snapshot corresponds to a second data state; causing the container to have the second data state corresponding to the snapshot; and maintaining the identity of the container.
US09817829B2

A priority for one or more source components can be determined for use in providing metadata for a composite media presentation. For example, an audio component containing or associated with a text transcript may be prioritized based on a gain value, gain differential, and/or frequency range associated with the audio component, with data indicating the priority stored in a computer-readable medium. When transcript or other metadata is provided for the composite media presentation, the priority information can be used to select how (or whether) data or metadata associated with each component will be used in providing transcript metadata for the presentation as a whole.
US09817827B2

Techniques are described for determining relationships between user activities and determining search results and content recommendations based on the relationships. A plays-related-to-searches application may determine a relationship score between plays of a media title and searches of a query by determining a distance between a projection of the search onto the space of the users and a projection of plays of the media title onto the space of the users. A plays-after-searches application may determine a score for plays of the streaming media title given the search by multiplying a number of times plays of the media title occur after the query is entered by the number of times any play occurs, and dividing by a product of the number of times plays of the media title occur after any query is entered and the number of times plays of any media title occur after the query is entered.
US09817816B2

Techniques for graph based natural language processing are described. In one embodiment an apparatus may comprise a client service component operative on the processor circuit to receive a natural language user request from a device and to execute the natural language user request based on matched one or more objects and a social object relation component operative on the processor circuit to match the natural language user request to the one or more objects in an object graph, the object graph comprising token mappings for objects within the object graph, the token mappings based on data extracted from a plurality of interactions by a plurality of users of the network system, wherein the one or more objects are matched with the natural language user request based on the token mappings. Other embodiments are described and claimed.
US09817811B2

Provided is a Web server system capable of dynamically changing a display format of a single item displayed on a screen into the contents which are different in different levels such as in respective Web sites or respective screens. According to a typical embodiment, a dictionary system for providing dictionary data to a Web server system has: a plurality of types of dictionary tables having a hierarchical structure, the dictionary table having a large applicable range serving as a higher level regarding a range to which the dictionary data is applied; and a dictionary processing unit for acquiring the dictionary data corresponding to a specified key from the specified dictionary table. When the dictionary data is to be acquired from the dictionary table, the dictionary processing unit receives specification that the dictionary table of which hierarchy is to be referenced and, if the dictionary data corresponding to the specified key is not present in the dictionary table of the specified hierarchy, sequentially inquires the dictionary table of a further higher level whether the dictionary table has the dictionary data corresponding to the key or not.
US09817804B2

A device implementable in a website design program includes a component based version comparer to compare at least two versions of a website, the at least two versions having components in a set of hierarchies and to generate a difference tree representing the differences in the components between the at least two versions of the same website, where the version comparer preprocesses the components in each single version of the at least two versions of the website to determine at least one of internal geometric, semantic, content and attribute relationships before comparing the components and the relationships between the at least two versions of the website using at least one of semantic, geometrical, content and attribute analysis. The device also includes a version merger to create an integrated version of the two versions of the website based on the difference tree.
US09817800B2

The present disclosure relates to a pre-5th-Generation (5G) or 5G communication system to be provided for supporting higher data rates Beyond 4th-Generation (4G) communication system such as Long Term Evolution (LTE). Provided are a method and apparatus for reducing the page load time in a wireless communication system. The method for page loading in a mobile terminal may include: selecting, when a page is visited, a candidate page to be pre-inspected with respect to the page; performing pre-inspection of the candidate page and determining types of objects associated with the candidate page; generating tree information for the candidate page based on a result of the determination; and computing the loading time of the candidate page based on the tree information and determining download priorities of objects that are to be downloaded when the candidate page is visited.
US09817799B2

A method for providing a web page in a web server accessed by a user device, comprising: obtaining access behavior information to the web page by the user; and providing page contents and page layout adaptor of the web page to the user device so that a updated web page with an adapted page layout is generated by the user device according to the access behavior information.
US09817785B2

A standardized hot-pluggable transceiving unit comprising a housing, a SDI connector, and a signal conversion module. The housing is adapted to being inserted into a chassis of a hosting unit. The SDI connector receives a SDI signal comprising a video payload and at least one other payload. The signal conversion module is in the housing, and converts the SDI signal into a first IP flow for transporting the video payload and at least one other IP flow for transporting the at least one other payload. The generated IP flows are outputted from the SFP unit by one or more connectors different from the SDI connector. The other payload can be an audio or a metadata payload. In another aspect, a transceiving unit provides for combining a plurality of IP flows each comprising a different type of payload into a SDI signal.
US09817782B2

In accordance with an embodiment, a method of operating a bus interface circuit includes detecting a start sequence on a plurality of input terminals, determining whether a first input terminal and a second input terminal is a data terminal and a clock terminal, respectively, or whether the first input terminal and the second terminal is a clock terminal and a data terminal, respectively. The method also includes routing the first input terminal to a data terminal and the second input terminal to a clock terminal if first input terminal and the second input terminal are determined to be a data terminal and a clock terminal, respectively, and routing the first input terminal to the clock terminal and the second input terminal to the data terminal if first input terminal and the second input terminal are determined to be a clock terminal and a data terminal, respectively.
US09817777B2

Methods and SATA devices having more than one operating state suitable for providing efficient command and data transfers over a SATA bus. A SATA device is provided for communicating with a host. The host sends commands to the SATA device and the SATA device sends data to the host in response to the commands being received by the SATA device. The SATA device has a queue of commands received from the host. The SATA device is configured to operate in a first operating state wherein the commands are received by the SATA device and the data are not sent to the host, and a second operating state wherein the commands are received by the SATA device and the data are sent to the host wherein data being sent to the host has priority over receiving commands by the SATA device.
US09817776B2

Memory descriptor list caching and pipeline processing techniques are described. In one or more examples, a method is configured to increase efficiency of buffer usage within a pipeline of a computing device. The method includes creation of a buffer in memory of the computing device and caching of a memory descriptor list by the computing device that describes the buffer in a buffer information cache and has associated therewith a handle that acts as a lookup to the memory descriptor list. The method also includes passing the handle through the pipeline of the computing device for processing of data within the buffer by one or more stages of the pipeline such that access to the data is obtained by the one or more stages by using the handle as the lookup as part of a call to obtain the memory descriptor list for the buffer from the buffer information cache.
US09817774B2

A bridge for coupling a requesting interconnect and a serving interconnect connected to a number of coherent units in a computer system includes N machines configured to handle requests from the requesting interconnect and for handling allocated responses from the serving interconnect, wherein each of the N machines has an allocated local count; a tracking entity configured to track priorities of the N machines for issuing received requests to the serving interconnect and for issuing received responses to the requesting interconnect based on the N local counts; a first arbiter configured to arbitrate the received requests to be issued to the serving interconnect based on the tracked priorities; and a second arbiter configured to arbitrate the received responses to be issued to the requesting interconnect based on the tracked priorities.
US09817770B2

A method and apparatus for creating, updating, and using guest physical address (GPA) to host physical address (HPA) shadow translation tables for translating GPAs of graphics data direct memory access (DMA) requests of a computing environment implementing a virtual machine monitor to support virtual machines. The requests may be sent through a render or display path of the computing environment from one or more virtual machines, transparently with respect to the virtual machine monitor. The creating, updating, and using may be performed by a memory controller detecting entries sent to existing global and page directory tables, forking off shadow table entries from the detected entries, and translating GPAs to HPAs for the shadow table entries.
US09817767B2

A semiconductor apparatus may include: a buffer configured to store write request data input in response to a write request from a host; a memory device configured to store data evicted from the buffer; and a controller configured to control the buffer and the memory device to process the write request.
US09817765B2

A computing device-implemented method for implementing dynamic hierarchical memory cache (HMC) awareness within a storage system is described. Specifically, when performing dynamic read operations within a storage system, a data module evaluates a data prefetch policy according to a strategy of determining if data exists in a hierarchical memory cache and thereafter amending the data prefetch policy, if warranted. The system then uses the data prefetch policy to perform a read operation from the storage device to minimize future data retrievals from the storage device. Further, in a distributed storage environment that include multiple storage nodes cooperating to satisfy data retrieval requests, dynamic hierarchical memory cache awareness can be implemented for every storage node without degrading the overall performance of the distributed storage environment.
US09817763B2

A method of establishing pre-fetch control information from an executable code is described. The method comprises inspecting the executable code to find one or more instructions corresponding to an unconditional change in program flow during an execution of the executable code when the executable code is retrieved from a non-volatile memory comprising a plurality of NVM lines. For each unconditional change of flow instruction, the method comprises establishing a NVM line address of the NVM line containing said unconditional change of flow instruction; establishing a destination address associated with the unconditional change of flow instruction; determining whether the destination address is in an address range corresponding to a NVM-pre-fetch starting from said NVM line address; establishing a pre-fetch flag indicating whether the destination address is in the address range corresponding to a NVM-pre-fetch starting from said NVM line address; and recording the pre-fetch flag in a pre-fetch control information record.
US09817762B2

The disclosed embodiments relate to a computing system that facilitates performing prefetching for scatter/gather operations. During operation, the system receives a scatter/gather prefetch instruction at a processor core, wherein the scatter/gather prefetch instruction specifies a virtual base address, and a plurality of offsets. Next, the system performs a lookup in a translation-lookaside buffer (TLB) using the virtual base address to obtain a physical base address that identifies a physical page for the base address. The system then sends the physical base address and the plurality of offsets to a cache. This enables the cache to perform prefetching operations for the scatter/gather instruction by adding the physical base address to the plurality of offsets to produce a plurality of physical addresses, and then prefetching cache lines for the plurality of physical addresses into the cache.
US09817755B2

The disclosure is related to systems and methods of managing a memory. In a particular embodiment, a memory channel is disclosed that includes multiple memory units, with each memory unit comprising multiple garbage collection units. The memory channel also includes a controller that is communicatively coupled to the multiple memory units. The controller selects a memory unit of the multiple memory units for garbage collection based on a calculated number of memory units, of the multiple memory units, to garbage collect.
US09817753B2

Disclosed aspects include managing the access of flash memory by a computer system. A physical memory address space which includes a flash memory portion is established. The flash memory portion may correspond to an input/output memory range. An access request may be detected with respect to the physical memory address space. Using a load-store technique to process the access request, the flash memory portion of the physical memory address space may be accessed.
US09817750B2

A method for storing user data is provided. The method includes distributing the user data throughout a plurality of storage nodes through erasure coding, wherein the plurality of storage nodes are housed within a single chassis that couples the storage nodes as a cluster, each of the plurality of storage nodes having nonvolatile solid-state memory for user data storage. The method includes performing analytics on user data and grouping portions of the user data according to results of the analytics. The method includes writing the user data to blocks of flash memory in the non-volatile solid-state memory, wherein each block receives portions of the user data grouped according to at least one of the results of the analytics.
US09817739B1

Methods and apparatuses for triggering backups of virtual machines using high-availability applications in the virtual machines are described herein. Also, methods and apparatuses for restoring individual components that are backed up within an application infrastructure within the virtual machine are described herein.
US09817730B1

The following description is directed to storing properties of requests to potentially block future requests having similar properties. In one example, a request can be received. A property of the request can be stored so that the property persists across an initialization sequence of a computer system. At least the property can be used to determine whether to block any future requests having similar properties.
US09817729B2

A system and method for generating replicas of a file of a protected storage system from protected data in a recovery system. The method including protecting data in a recovery system including a target disk configured to store a replica of the protected storage system from a before a time window and a journal including data and metadata of write operations to the protected storage system that occurred during the time window, obtaining a request to restore a file and an indication of a specified time point from which the file should be restored, generating a replica of a table of content of a file system of the protected storage system from the journal and the target disk, extracting location of the file from the table of content, and generating a replica of the file from the journal and the target disk, using the extracted file location.
US09817727B2

Replicated instances in a database environment provide for automatic failover and recovery. A monitoring component can periodically communicate with a primary and a secondary replica for an instance, with each capable of residing in a separate data zone or geographic location to provide a level of reliability and availability. A database running on the primary instance can have information synchronously replicated to the secondary replica at a block level, such that the primary and secondary replicas are in sync. In the event that the monitoring component is not able to communicate with one of the replicas, the monitoring component can attempt to determine whether those replicas can communicate with each other, as well as whether the replicas have the same data generation version. Depending on the state information, the monitoring component can automatically perform a recovery operation, such as to failover to the secondary replica or perform secondary replica recovery.
US09817723B2

For efficient Flashcopy backup and mount, clone, or restore collision avoidance with reuse using dynamic volume allocation, performing at least one attempt to reuse an existing FlashCopy target volume that is not currently being used for at least one of a mount task, a clone task, and a restore task at the same time for a FlashCopy backup. If the at least one attempt to reuse the existing FlashCopy target volume fails, dynamically allocate a new Flashcopy target volume for the Flashcopy backup.
US09817710B2

Self-describing data blocks of a minimum atomic write size may be stored for a data store. Data may be received for storage in a data block at a persistent storage device. Metadata may be generated for the data that includes an error detection code which is generated for the data and the metadata together. An individual atomic write operation may write together the data and the metadata in the data block. When accessed, the error detection code is applicable to detect errors and the metadata may also be applicable to determine whether the data is stored for a currently assigned purpose or a previously assigned purpose of the data block.
US09817706B2

An information processing device in a parallel computer system, the information processing device includes a processor. The process is configured to execute a process including performing first communication having a message length within a specific range according to communication algorithms different from each other, and measuring communication speeds according to the respective communication algorithms, determining a procedure of the communication algorithms in performing second communication on the basis of the measured communication speeds, the second communication having a message length within a range of the message length that is longer than the message length of the first communication, performing the second communication according to the determined procedure, and measuring the communication speeds according to the respective communication algorithms, and determining the communication algorithm according to the message length on the basis of measurement results in the first communication and the measurement results in the second communication.
US09817704B2

An information processing apparatus is provided including a first operating system incapable of adding or deleting an application and a second operating system capable of adding and deleting an application; and determines whether a received command is a command directed to the first operating system or a command directed to the second operating system by referencing a table in which the command and an operating system for processing the command are associated with each other; retains the table; controls a memory so that the first operating system or the second operating system can start processing based on a result of the determining by the means for determining; and transfers the received command to the first operating system or the second operating system based on the result of the determining.
US09817697B2

A method, apparatus, and computer program product are provided for thermal- and spatial-aware task scheduling. The method may include monitoring a temperature for each core of a central processing unit having a plurality of cores; determining, from the monitoring, a set of hotspot cores from the plurality of cores determining temperature information and distance information for each hotspot core in the set of hotspot cores relative to each of the other cores on the central processing unit; calculating a placement metric for each core of the central processing unit based at least on the determined distance information and the determined temperature information; and scheduling a task by allocating the task to one or more cores of the central processing unit according to the placement metric.
US09817690B2

Methods, computer program products, and systems are presented. The methods include, for instance: predictively provisioning, by one or more processor, cloud computing resources of a cloud computing environment for at least one virtual machine; and initializing, by the one or more processor, the at least one virtual machine with the provisioned cloud computing resources of the cloud computing environment. In one embodiment, the predictively provisioning may include: receiving historical utilization information of multiple virtual machines of the cloud computing environment, the multiple virtual machines having similar characteristics to the at least one virtual machine; and determining the cloud computing resources for the at least one virtual machine using the historical utilization information of the multiple virtual machines. In another embodiment, the predictively may include updating a provisioning database with the historical utilization information of the multiple virtual machines of the cloud computing environment.
US09817686B2

A system includes a first computing device comprising a virtual machine (VM), a second computing device, and a third computing device coupled to the first and second computing devices. The third computing device includes a management module configured to migrate the VM from the first computing device to the second computing device. The management module is also configured to create a first signature of data associated with the VM stored by the first computing device over a first period of time and create a second signature of data associated with the VM stored by the first computing device over a second period of time. The management module is further configured to compare the first signature and the second signature throughout the migration process to determine whether the data has been altered and generate an alert when a difference between the first signature and the second signature is detected.
US09817684B2

In the present disclosure, functions associated with the central office of an evolved packet core network are co-located onto a computer platform or sub-components through virtualized function instances. This reduces and/or eliminates the physical interfaces between equipment and permits functional operation of the evolved packet core to occur at a network edge.
US09817681B2

Methods, systems, and computer program products relate to recommending settings include collecting operating parameter and usage condition data for a plurality of electronic devices from one or more databases, analyzing the data to create a predictive model to estimate predicted operating parameters based on usage conditions, applying current device usage conditions from a current device to the predictive model to determine recommended device settings, and changing current device settings based on the recommended device settings.
US09817665B2

A technique includes receiving a request from a processor to retrieve a first instruction from a memory for a staged execution pipeline. The technique includes selectively retrieving the first instruction from the memory in response to the request based on a determination of whether the processor will execute the first instruction.
US09817632B2

In one embodiment, a user interface narrator may use data binding to associate an item control label 404 with a control list item 402. The user interface narrator may use a narration control 212 of an operating system 210 to vocalize a user interface 222 of an application module 220. The user interface narrator may receive from the application module 220 a control list item 402 associated with an item control label 404 via an item data binding. The user interface narrator may vocalize the item control label 404 with the narration control 212.
US09817628B2

The present invention provides a display system including a first display terminal and a second display terminal. The first display terminal includes a first display unit, an acquiring unit configured to acquire information indicating display content which are being displayed by the first display unit, and a sending unit configured to send the information indicating the display content acquired by the acquiring unit to the second display terminal which is communicatably connected to the first display terminal. The second display terminal includes a second display unit, a receiving unit configured to receive the information indicating the display content which is sent from the first display terminal, and a control unit configured to control the second display unit to display relevant information which is related to the display content of the first display unit based on the information indicating the display content received by the receiving unit.
US09817621B2

In order to make it possible to recognize the status in which job processing is disabled, by checking a job queue; printer 110 includes print-job obtaining unit 114 that obtains print job from a cloud server, image forming related unit 113 that is involved in image forming according to the print job obtained by print-job obtaining unit 114, and monitoring unit 115 that monitors a status of image forming related unit 113 and notifies the cloud server of status information on the status of image forming related unit 113, as information indicating a status of the print job obtained by print-job obtaining unit 114.
US09817618B2

To provide an image forming system, an image forming device, a mobile communication terminal, and a relay server, all of which are interrelated to each other such that the mobile communication terminal is capable of remotely controlling the image forming device without having to conduct a confirmation of the image forming device. When a user changes a setting value through a setting value operation screen that appears on an operation panel, the mobile communication terminal transmits a setting value change demand notification including the changing setting value to the relay server. The relay server compares the preceding setting value to a setting value of the image forming device that the relay server stores currently to detect a setting value of the image forming device which is to be rewritten. The relay server rewrites the resulting setting value.
US09817603B1

Migrating data in a storage array that includes a plurality of storage devices and a plurality of write buffer devices, including: detecting, by the storage array, an occurrence of a write buffer device evacuation event associated with one or more source write buffer devices; responsive to detecting the occurrence of the write buffer device evacuation event, determining, by the storage array, whether the storage array includes at least a predetermined amount of write buffer resources in addition to the one or more source write buffer devices; and responsive to determining that the storage array includes at least a predetermined amount of write buffer resources in addition to the one or more source write buffer devices, reducing, by the storage array, write access to the one or more source write buffer devices.
US09817591B2

A storage device communicating with a host includes a plurality of memory devices and a memory controller. Each of the memory devices includes at least one of a plurality of memory areas that have different storage reliability levels. The memory controller controls the memory devices such that data and required level data associated with a required reliability level of the data are stored in some or all of the memory areas. The data and the required level data are provided from the host. The data is stored in a memory area having a storage reliability level corresponding to the required reliability level from among the memory areas, according to a control of the memory controller.
US09817590B2

A PLC data log module with backup function is proposed, the module including an internal memory configured to store the log data and to transmit the stored log data to the external memory, a backup memory configured to back-up the log data transmitted from the internal memory to the external memory and to store the backup data, and a controller configured to transmit the backup data stored in the backup memory to the external memory by controlling the backup memory when the PLC is turned off or reset.
US09817589B2

A computer-implemented method includes receiving, utilizing a processor, a fencing command at a storage controller from an initiating host system. The fencing command identifies a shared volume. Additionally, the computer-implemented method includes determining which other host systems are connected to the shared volume, and fencing each of the other host systems connected to the shared volume by setting a fencing indicator for each of the other host systems. Still yet, the computer-implemented method includes sending a notification to each of the other host systems that have been fenced, and receiving an unfencing command from at least one of the other host systems that have been fenced.
US09817587B1

A data store maintaining data may implement memory-based on-demand data page generation. Log records may be maintained in system memory according to a version threshold for data pages of data stored in persistent storage. When a request for a version of a particular data page is received that is within the version threshold, the data page may be obtained from persistent storage and log records associated with the data page may be applied to the data page to generate the requested version of the data page. The version threshold for the data pages may change, and log records in system memory may be identified for coalesce operations. The coalesce operations may be efficiently performed (e.g., in the background), updating the data pages in persistent storage to include the changes of the identified log records and space in system memory for the identified log records may be reclaimed.
US09817569B2

Systems and methods are provided for use with a computing device having a touch sensitive display including a touch sensor configured to detect touches of a digit of a user. The method may include detecting an initial digit down position on the display via the touch sensor, and establishing a neutral position for a virtual controller at the digit down position. The method may further include detecting a subsequent movement of the digit relative to the initial digit down position, and determining a controller input parameter based on the subsequent movement of the digit relative to the initial digit down position. The method may further include generating a controller input message indicating the determined controller input parameter.
US09817568B2

A method, computer readable storage medium, and electronic device are provided which operates on hierarchical data having a plurality of levels by detecting one of a plurality of gestures on a touch-sensitive input mechanism of the electronic device. Each of the plurality of gestures is associated with a different level in the hierarchical data.
US09817561B2

A pattern of visual interactivity may be automatically proposed for processing a data set that exhibits dimensions of variability. A visual display component may be analyzed to assess whether it is capable of receiving user input representing changes that correspond to types of changes of the identified dimensions of the data set. A suitable visual display component may be provided as a suggestion on a user interface for potentially using the visual display component to allow a user to interact with the data. In some embodiments, a visual display component includes a number of visual objects and/or visually interactive components for use within a graphical user interface. A visual display component may include one or more analytic patterns having at least one of an equation, rule, constraint, expression or combination thereof that represents the analytic pattern. Alternatively, a visual display component may involve a visual display representation of data through visual characteristics of a graphical object.
US09817543B2

A user interface through which information is proactively provided utilizes visual cues indicative of the relevance of the information that is being proactively provided. Such visual cues include sizing, color, intensity, movement, and other like visual attributes. A single discrete visual element proactively presents information to the user. The user is provided with the opportunity to define discrete events, whereby information associated with such events is presented through other discrete elements. The physical orientation of such discrete elements indicates relationships between elements. Ranking functionality identifies more immediately relevant information and the rankings of related elements are increased based upon other, contextual information with which such information is associated, and on which the importance of such information is based. Information is surfaced to provide a vector through which the user responds or utilizes such surfaced information independently of specific application programs having discrete informational focus.
US09817542B2

Some embodiments provide a meta touch interface (MTI) with multiple position indicators with each position indicator operating as a separate pointing tool that can be activated (i) using taps on a touchpad or other touch sensitive surface or (ii) by pressing certain keyboard keys. The MT pointer allows for adjacent UI elements to be selected without having to reposition the MT pointer for each selection or activation. Some embodiments provide a multi-device UI that comprises at least two UIs, wherein the first UI is presented on an essentially horizontal plane that is aligned with operational focus and the second UI that is presented on an essentially vertical plane that is aligned with visual focus of the user. Some embodiments provide a precision pointer that includes an adjustable magnified region to better present underlying on-screen content, thereby allowing the user to more precisely position the pointer.
US09817535B2

This disclosure generally provides an input device with a matrix sensor that includes a plurality of sensor electrodes arranged on a common surface or plane. Moreover, the input device includes routing traces that electrically couple the sensor electrodes to analog front ends (AFEs). Because of the spatial relationships between these electrical components, the sensor electrodes can be categorized into groups where each of the sensors in the group is affected by a common noise source. The capacitive measurements for the sensor electrodes in each of the groups are compared to a touch threshold to determine if an input object (e.g., finger or stylus) is proximate to the sensor electrodes. If the capacitive measurements are below the touch threshold, the input device calculates an offset value that compensates for the noise. After the offset is applied, the compensated capacitive measurements are used to generate a capacitive image.
US09817532B2

The present disclosure provides a touch panel and a display device. The touch panel includes a conductive layer which includes first electrode layers parallel arranged in columns in a Y-axis direction and second electrode layers parallel arranged in rows in an X-axis direction. Each first electrode layer includes first pattern electrodes sequentially connected, and each second electrode layer includes second pattern electrodes sequentially connected. Each first pattern electrode is of a hexagonal shape. The second pattern electrodes are arranged at a region between two adjacent columns of the first electrode layers. A projection of a connection end between two adjacent second pattern electrodes in an identical row onto a plane parallel to the conductive layer partially overlaps a projection of a connection end between two adjacent first pattern electrodes in an identical column which are arranged adjacent to the two adjacent second pattern electrodes in an identical row.
US09817524B1

An electronic device improves touch accuracy and prevents false or missed touches on a capacitive touch display by monitoring contextual events or environments unrelated to user input. When a capacitance change occurs, the device dynamically evaluates whether it may have been caused by the contextual events or environments. The device intelligently adjusts one or more parameters to account for the change in capacitance caused by the contextual events or environments to thereby prevent detection of the capacitance event as a false touch and/or prevent a missed true and legitimate user input.
US09817520B2

A novel transmissive imaging panel, a novel imaging panel with a display function, or a novel imaging device is provided. The imaging panel that includes a plurality of windows or pixels arranged in matrix, a photoelectric conversion element extending between the plurality of windows or pixels, and a sensor circuit supplied with a signal from the photoelectric conversion element has been devised.
US09817516B2

The present invention provides a Gate driver on Array circuit, a display panel and a display device. The Gate driver on Array circuit comprises: shift register SR circuits of multiple stages and a signal connection circuit of the shift register SR circuits of multiple stages, and the shift register SR circuit of each stage comprises: a pre-charge controller, three thin film transistors and a capacitor; and the SR circuit of each stage further comprises: at least one switch, and a G electrode of the switch is inputted with a touch panel scan signal, and a S electrode of the switch is coupled to a K output end, and a D electrode of the switch is coupled to a scan line gate electrode signal of the SR circuit; the K output end inputs a K signal, and the K signal is synchronized with a touch panel signal TP signal.
US09817513B2

A sense amplifier can be designed with a series variable resistance circuit to dynamically adjust an input resistance in series with the sense amplifier for stability during the different operating modes. In some examples, a switchable resistor can be switched into the input path of the sense amplifier for stability when required by increased capacitive loading of the sense electrodes, and can be switched out of the input path of the sense amplifier when unnecessary for stability. In some examples, an adjustable resistor can be coupled to and in series with the input of the sense amplifier. The resistance of the adjustable resistor can be tuned to stabilize the sense amplifier during operating modes having increased capacitive loading from the sense electrodes and can be minimized when additional input resistance is unnecessary for stability.
US09817502B2

A discrete-time harmonic rejection mixer, an input device, and methods for using the same are described herein. In one example, a discrete-time harmonic rejection mixer includes a switched-capacitor network and a switch controller. The switched-capacitor network includes first, second, and third switched capacitor sub-circuits, each including a pair of capacitors and a set of switches. The switch controller is coupled to the switched-capacitor network, and is configured to operate the sets of switches. More specifically, the switch controller is configured to operate the sets of switches in an out of phase manner to produce the harmonic rejection effect. Capacitance values for the first pair of capacitors are roughly equal to capacitance values for the third pair of capacitors. An input device, method, and harmonic rejection circuit exhibiting the above features are provided as examples.
US09817497B2

A touch window includes a substrate, and an electrode part on the substrate. The sensing electrode includes a base substrate formed with a pattern part, and an electrode layer on the pattern part, where the electrode layer has a thickness in a range of 0.03 μm to 3 μm.
US09817491B2

A pen configured for use with a touch sensor includes a pen tip that is configured to make contact with the touch sensor. The pen body includes an electrically conductive receiver portion and an electrically conductive emitter portion that is electrically insulated and electrostatically shielded from the receiver portion. The pen includes circuitry configured to receive a touch sensor drive signal applied to a drive electrode of the touch sensor through the receiver portion of the pen body. In response to the received signal, the pen circuitry generates a pen drive signal that is phase additive with the touch sensor drive signal and emits the pen drive signal through the emitter portion of the pen body.
US09817481B2

In one embodiment, an electronic device to be worn on a user's forearm includes a display and a set of one or more sensors that provide sensor data. In one aspect, a device may detect, using sensor data obtained from a set of sensors, that a first activity state of a user is active. The device may determine, while the first activity state is active, that the sensor data matches a watch check rule associated with the first activity state. Responsive to the detected match, the device may cause a change in visibility of the display.
US09817479B2

A method, apparatus and computer program product are provided to facilitate user interaction with a display that is capable of presenting at least portions of the user interfaces of multiple devices, such as by recognizing and interpreting a gesture as providing input to one of the devices. In the context of a method, an identification of one or more valid gestures of at least a first device is received in an instance in which a plurality of devices interact such that portions of the respective user interfaces are capable of being presented upon a display. The method also includes receiving information indicative of a gesture and determining whether the gesture is valid. Depending upon whether the gesture is a valid gesture, the method also includes causing an indication of the gesture to be provided to the first device.
US09817476B2

An augmented reality device includes a frame assembly including a nose piece and a pair of temple pads configured to accommodate a plurality of fit points of a user. A set of mountings on the frame assembly is configured to mount to the frame assembly any of a plurality of different see-through display modules having different exit pupil distances. A see-through display module is coupled to the frame assembly via the set of mountings. The see-through display module is selected from among the plurality of different see-through display modules to match an exit pupil distance of the see-through display module to an inter-pupillary distance of the user.
US09817473B2

A method of controlling a portable device according to one embodiment of the present specification may include the steps of displaying a first application including a first object and a second object, receiving a first triggering signal indicating that a front direction of the foot wearable device corresponds to a first direction from the foot wearable device, detecting a front direction of the portable device corresponding to a second direction, displaying the first object based on the first direction and displaying the second object based on the second direction.
US09817472B2

Embodiments disclose a display apparatus which processes an image signal to display and a control method thereof, the display apparatus including: a display device; an image processing device with processes an image signal to display an image on the display device; a detection device with detects a motion of a user; and a controller which moves a pointer corresponding to the motion detected by the detection device in a preset first mode, the pointer being displayed on the image, and moves the pointer in a preset second mode, which is different from the first mode, in response to a distance between a position where the motion is detected by the detection device and the display apparatus being changed.
US09817470B2

An apparatus includes a first circuit and a second circuit sharing an instruction stream. A voltage controller circuit is configured to provide an operation voltage and at least one low-power voltage to the second circuit independent of a supply voltage of the first circuit in response to a sequence of the instruction stream. In another aspect, a method of operating a power management function is presented. The method includes providing an instruction stream for a first circuit and a second circuit and providing selectively an operation voltage and at least one low-power voltage to the second circuit independent of a supply voltage of the first circuit in response to a sequence of the instruction stream.
US09817455B2

The present invention provides a processor and a circuit board including the processor. The processor includes a data processing unit, and an external power supply component that is coupled to the data processing unit; wherein the data processing unit includes a power management unit that is integrated into the data processing unit, and the power management unit is used for performing power management for the data processing unit; and the power management unit further includes a pulse signal output terminal which is used for outputting a pulse-width modulation signal, and the pulse-width modulation signal controls the external power supply component to supply a stable operating voltage to the data processing unit. The present invention provides a processor with the improved performance, the improved stability and the simplified structure.
US09817453B2

A cooling device that is thermally connected to a heat source and cools the heat source by means of a heat medium flowing inside the cooling device, includes: a first passage configured such that the heat medium before being heated by the heat source flows through the first passage; a second passage configured such that the heat medium after being heated by the heat source flows through the second passage; a plurality of heat exchanging chambers each configured such that in the heat exchanging chamber, the heat medium is heated by heat generated by the heat source; a first communicating passage provided in each of the plurality of heat exchanging chambers and configured such that through the first communicating passage, the first passage and the heat exchanging chamber communicate with each other; a second communicating passage provided in each of the plurality of heat exchanging chambers.
US09817451B1

An electronic device includes a chassis defining an opening. A motherboard is received in the chassis and a data storage device comprising a circuit board with storage unit can be directly coupled to the motherboard. The data storage device is mounted to the chassis through the opening but is detachable.
US09817446B2

Systems and methods for providing merchant/customer interaction include determining that a tablet computer is in a merchant orientation, retrieving merchant product information according to a received instruction and merchant orientation information, and displaying a merchant screen on the tablet computer that includes the merchant product information according to the merchant orientation information. A change in the orientation of the tablet computer enclosure/stand is then detected from the merchant orientation to a customer orientation. In response, the merchant screen is transitioned on the tablet computer display to a customer screen as the tablet computer enclosure/stand changes orientations by moving the merchant screen and the customer screen linearly while in a stacked orientation. The customer screen includes the merchant product information displayed according to customer orientation information such that the merchant product information is displayed differently on the customer screen relative to the merchant screen.
US09817443B2

A display apparatus is provided. The display apparatus includes a housing having an opening, a first roll and a second roll rotatably provided within the housing, a display configured to be wound on the first roll, and to be retracted and withdrawn through the opening according to a rotation direction of the first roll, a protection member configured to be wound on the first roll together with the display or to be wound in the second roll as the display is withdrawn from the housing, and a moveable component mounting part which is disposed between the first roll and the second roll and on which various components are mounted within the housing. The component mounting part moves within the housing to selectively provide space and utilize space according to a retraction operation and a withdrawal operation of the display.
US09817440B2

Methods of forming garments having one or more stretchable conductive ink patterns. Described herein are method of making garments (including compression garments) having one or more highly stretchable conductive ink pattern formed of a composite of an insulative adhesive, a conductive ink, and an intermediate gradient zone between the adhesive and conductive ink. The conductive ink typically includes between about 40-60% conductive particles, between about 30-50% binder; between about 3-7% solvent; and between about 3-7% thickener. The stretchable conductive ink patterns may be stretched more than twice their length without breaking or rupturing.
US09817437B2

A stretchable display device including a stretchable display to display an image, the stretchable display having a band shape; holes on an outwardly facing surface of the stretchable display; and a stopper on an inwardly facing surface of the stretchable display, the stopper being coupleable with any one of the holes to loop the stretchable display device in a ring form, wherein a size of an image display area of the stretchable display is controllable based on a current value that depends on a position of a hole to which the stopper is coupled.
US09817435B2

A conductive mesh for a touch panel consists of a plurality of carbon nanotube composite wires. The carbon nanotube composite wire comprises a carbon nanotube wire and a metal layer. The carbon nanotube wire comprises a plurality of carbon nanotubes spirally arranged along an axial direction of the carbon nanotube wire. A touch panel using the conductive mesh is also provided.
US09817430B2

In some embodiments, a protective apparatus for rotary control knobs may comprise a cover adapted fit over a rotary control knob; a knob cavity internal to the cover adapted to provide space for the rotary control knob to rotate about; and an access aperture located on the surface of cover member and adapted to provide limited user access to the rotary control knob. The cover member may be configured to encase or surround a control knob. The apparatus may further comprise a plate which may be integrally formed or molded to the cover and which contains a control shaft aperture adapted to receive the control shaft of a rotary control assembly. Once a control shaft is inserted through the control shaft aperture, a fastener may be secured to the control shaft over the plate, thereby securing the apparatus to the control shaft.
US09817429B2

Methods and circuits for adjusting the output parameter of a device wherein the output parameter is temperature dependent are disclosed herein. An example of a method includes: adjusting the output parameter to a target level at a first temperature; adjusting a linear temperature-dependent variable related to the output parameter to zero at the first temperature; adjusting a nonlinear temperature-dependent variable related to the output parameter to zero at the first temperature; adjusting the output parameter to the target level at a second temperature using the linear-dependent variable; adjusting the nonlinear temperature-dependent variable to zero at the second temperature; and adjusting the output parameter to the target level at a third temperature by adjusting the nonlinear variable.
US09817428B2

In a current-mode bandgap reference integrated circuit: a bandgap voltage generator is configured to generate a bandgap voltage, a zero-temperature coefficient current generator configured to generate a zero-temperature coefficient current, and a proportional to absolute temperature current generator configured to generate a proportional to absolute temperature current. The integrated circuit includes a first pair of bipolar junction transistors (BJT) comprising a first BJT and a second BJT. The integrated circuit also includes a second pair of bipolar junction transistors, comprising a third BJT and a fourth BJT. The first pair of BJTs matches the second pair of BJTs.
US09817423B2

A method for regulating a power transfer between a utility grid and a renewable energy system includes receiving a power transfer request from the utility grid at a controller of the renewable energy system that includes at least one of a desired power transfer level, power factor and energy or time duration of the power transfer. A SOC of an energy storage device of the renewable energy system and a power output of the renewable energy source are compared to respective SOC and power output thresholds, with the power transfer request being completed if the SOC and the power output are greater than the respective SOC and power output thresholds so as to cause the requested power to be transferred to the utility grid, and the power transfer request being denied if the SOC and the power output are less than the respective SOC and power output thresholds.
US09817422B2

This invention is a platform and method for using cognition for managing enterprise energy needs. Cognitive platform allows for dynamic management of energy consumption, demand and baseline calculations by use of a cognitive platform and cognitive device. Employees as well as internal and external stakeholders can set performance indicators and monitor the parameters against the energy performance indicators. Based on the initial knowledge, the system identifies improvements in order to reach the energy key performance indicators. Depending on the feedback, the system learns and improves the accuracy of the predictions and suits them to a given industry or given enterprise scenario. Enterprise-wide energy and/or environmental management covers policies, planning, key performance indicators, goals, targets, works flows, user management, asset mapping, input-output energy flows, conservation options, performance management, analytics. The system and method allow for monitoring and verification by internal and/or external stakeholders.
US09817421B2

An apparatus, including a plurality of devices, a network operations center (NOC), and a plurality of control nodes. Each device consumes a portion of the resource when turned on, and performs a corresponding function by cycling on and off to maintain a level of comfort. The NOC generates a plurality of run time schedules that coordinates run times for the each of the plurality of devices to control the peak demand of the resource, where activation of one or more of the plurality of devices is substituted in order to maintain a level of comfort. Each of the control nodes is coupled to a corresponding one of the devices. The plurality of control nodes transmits sensor data and device status to the NOC for generation of the plurality of run time schedules, and executes selected ones of the run time schedules to cycle the plurality of devices.
US09817418B2

A power supply system contains a plurality of power generating devices, a plurality of power consuming devices, and a controller. The controller controls the power supply system based on a rated consumption value indicating an anticipated power consumption of the power supply system and also based on a standby value indicating a standby power. The standby value indicates the standby power made available by the power supply system at which emergency measures can be avoided if the actual power consumption deviates from the rated consumption. The power supply system further has a preprocessing device for calculating a rated consumption value and a standby value at which an emergency measure-free operation can be attained with the required probability, based on consumption values recorded in the past and using a probability value defined on the user side which defines the probability of the emergency measure-free operation of the power supply system.
US09817415B2

A low drop-out regulator circuit comprises a pass transistor providing an output voltage on an output terminal in response to a gate voltage on a gate of the pass transistor. A feedback circuit is coupled to the output terminal to generate a feedback voltage, and an error amplifier provides a drive signal in response to a reference voltage and the feedback voltage. A first gate driver circuit is operable over a first voltage range to provide the gate voltage to the pass transistor in response to the drive signal. A second gate driver circuit is operable over a second voltage range to provide the gate voltage to the pass transistor in response to the drive signal, where the second voltage range is lower than the first voltage range.
US09817406B1

A spherical modular autonomous robotic traveler (SMART) is provided for rolling along a surface from a first position to a second position. The SMART includes an outer spherical shell; an inner spherical chamber disposed within the outer shell; a plurality of weight-shifters arranged within the inner chamber; and a controller therein. The chamber maintains its orientation relative to the surface by a gyroscopically homing stabilizer. Each weight-shifter includes a mass disposed in a default position, and movable to an active position in response to activation. The controller selectively activates a weight-shifter among the plurality to shift the mass from the default position to the active position. The outer shell rolls in a direction that corresponds to the weight-shifter activated by the controller. The weight-shifters for the SMART employ pneumatic actuation as a spherical pneumatic actuated robotic commuter (SPARC). Each weight-shifter in the SPARC includes a conduit containing a liquid armature and a pressure source with valves activated by the controller, with the conduits arranged in a cruciform configuration.
US09817402B1

Work cell and factory level automation require that an Automated Guided Vehicle (AGV) achieve demanding positional accuracy and repeatability relative to a cradle fixture or workstand within a work cell. The AGV makes distance measurements of objects within the work cell using laser scanner sensors. The distance measurements are filtered of objects that are not target features on the cradle fixture or workstand. Systematic or bias errors of the laser scanner sensor are removed from the filtered distance measurements, and a mathematical filter or estimator is applied to the filtered distance measurements using random errors of the laser scanner sensor to generate estimated distance measurements. A map of the target features is then constructed using the estimated distance measurements, wherein the map is used for path planning and navigation control of the AGV relative to the cradle fixture or workstand within the work cell.
US09817398B2

In an apparatus for controlling operation of an autonomously navigating utility vehicle equipped with a prime mover to travel about a working area delineated by a boundary wire in order to perform work autonomously, there are provided with an objective location identifying unit that identifies a location of an objective in the working area, a route generating unit that generates a target return route for the vehicle to return to the objective, and a travel controlling unit that controls operation of the prime mover to make the vehicle travel along the target return route. The route generating unit selects, among a first set of radial lines imaginarily drawn on the working area to radiate from the position of the vehicle and a second set of radial lines imaginarily drawn on the working area to radiate from the objective, a first radial line and a second radial line that result in shortest distance from the position of the vehicle to the objective and generates the target return route by the first radial line and the second radial line.
US09817393B2

In some examples, an adaptive machining system may include a model comparison unit, a compromise shape determination unit, and a program modification unit. The model comparison unit can be configured to compare electronic measured dimensional surface data of a component with an electronic surface model of the component. The compromise shape determination unit can be configured to determine a compromise shape for the component based on the comparison. The program modification unit can be configured to modify a machine tool program code based on the compromise shape.
US09817392B2

Several embodiments of photolithography systems and associated methods of overlay error correction are disclosed herein. In one embodiment, a method for correcting overlay errors in a photolithography system includes measuring a plurality of first overlay errors that individually correspond to a microelectronic substrate in a first batch of microelectronic substrates. The method also includes determining a relationship between the first overlay errors and a first sequence of the microelectronic substrates in the first batch. The method further includes correcting a second overlay error of individual microelectronic substrates in a second batch based on a second sequence of the microelectronic substrates in the second batch and the determined relationship.
US09817383B1

A building management system (BMS) including a controller having an adaptive interaction manager and an agent manager. The system further includes one or more input-output (I/O) devices, the I/O devices in communication with the adaptive interaction manager. The controller further including a number of BMS field devices. The I/O devices are configured to receive an input from a user, and further configured to communicate the input to the adaptive interaction manager. The agent manager is configured to determine if one or more existing software agents are capable of performing the desired action, and to automatically transmit the existing software agents to one or more of the BMS field devices based on the agent manager determining the existing software agents are capable of performing the desired action. The software agents are configured to automatically be installed in a processing circuit of the BMS field device to perform the required action.
US09817382B2

A method of collecting data in a field device includes receiving indications of variables for which data is collected, receiving indications of trigger events to trigger collection of data, receiving threshold values associated with each of the trigger events, monitoring the trigger events, and initiating data collection when at least one of the trigger events crosses one the threshold values associated with the corresponding trigger event. A method of tuning a PID controller in a field device includes setting a limited range for selecting a value for a control parameter of the PID controller, selecting the value of the control parameter, wherein the selected value is constrained to be within the limited range, transmitting the selected value to the field device, obtaining, from the field device, a measurement of a response of the field device to a setpoint change, and displaying the obtained response measurements to a user.
US09817379B2

A system and method for encouraging an energy user to conserve energy by providing the user with musical feedback describing their energy use as a musical piece. Various musical parameters of the musical piece may be manipulated to describe higher- or lower-than-expected energy use, in order to encourage the user to conserve energy. A visual animation may also be added to the musical piece to illustrate it further.
US09817378B2

A handheld controller interface device that receives communications from one or more components of an HVAC system. The controller interface device is removably secured to an enclosure of the HVAC system. When not being engaged by a user, the controller user interface may be secured within the enclosure in a mounted position. When the HVAC system is being serviced, the controller user interface may be removed from the enclosure so as to be in an unmounted position. Further, when in the unmounted position, the controller interface device still at least receives communications from one or more components of the HVAC system, including, for example, a controller.
US09817376B1

The present disclosure provides an adaptive energy storage operating system that is programmed or otherwise configured to operate and optimize various types of energy storage devices.
US09817375B2

According to various implementations, a demand response (DR) strategy system is described that can effectively model the HVAC energy consumption of a house using a learning based approach that is based on actual energy usage data collected over a period of days. This modeled energy consumption may be used with day-ahead energy pricing and the weather forecast for the location of the house to develop a DR strategy that is more effective than prior DR strategies. In addition, a computational experiment system is described that generates DR strategies based on various energy consumption models and simulated energy usage data for the house and compares the cost effectiveness and energy usage of the generated DR strategies.
US09817373B2

A motor controller configured to be coupled to a motor and to a system controller is described. The motor controller includes a proportional-integral (PI) regulator coupled to a timer controller. The motor controller is configured to generate, by the PI regulator, a pulsed signal representing a reported speed of the motor. Additionally, the motor controller is configured to transmit the pulsed signal to the system controller, measure a time period that elapses for the motor to make a predefined number of revolutions, measure a number of pulses transmitted in the pulsed signal, and determine a measured speed of the motor from the time period. Further, the motor controller is configured to determine, by the PI regulator, a difference between the reported speed and the measured speed, and adjust, by the PI regulator, the pulsed signal based on the difference between the reported speed and the measured speed.
US09817369B1

To provide a mechanical component, a mechanical component manufacturing method, a movement, and a timepiece allowing the forcing-in portion to be firmly fixed to the shaft member, providing a sufficient buffer effect, and capable of precisely determining the outer diameter dimension. Provided is a mechanical component rotating around a shaft member. This mechanical component includes: a component main body having a through-hole through which the shaft member is passed; and a forcing-in portion formed on the inner surface of the through-hole and fixed to the shaft member through the forcing-in of the shaft member. The component main body has a retaining recess constituting an anchor structure regulating displacement of the forcing-in portion with respect to the component main body. The forcing-in portion is formed of a metal material.
US09817361B2

On a projection plane orthogonal to an axial line of a developing agent bearing member, forming an imaginary region surrounded by a plurality of straight lines and edges of electric contacts, while satisfying first, second, and third conditions, disposes the entirety of a positioning region inside an imaginary region. The first condition is that each of the ends of the plurality of straight lines is situated at an edge of the electric contacts or at the center of the developing agent bearing member. The second condition is that the center of the developing agent bearing member is situated at an intersection of the plurality of straight lines, or upon one of the straight lines. The third condition is that each of the straight lines is stipulated so that the area of the imaginary region is maximal, within the constrictions of the first and second conditions.
US09817354B2

An image forming apparatus includes a main body of the image forming apparatus with an opening portion, an image forming unit, an accommodation portion, a stack portion, a sheet moving unit, and a control unit that controls switching between a first mode that moves, with the sheet moving unit, a sheet accommodated in the accommodation portion and stops the sheet when a part of the sheet is exposed external to the main body of the image forming apparatus from the opening portion, and a second mode that moves the sheet, with the sheet moving unit, accommodated in the accommodation portion and that discharges the sheet to the stack portion.
US09817334B2

An image formation unit includes: an image carrier that carries an electrostatic latent image; a developer carrier that carries a developer and develops the electrostatic latent image on the image carrier; and a developer regulation member that includes a contact portion which comes into contact with a surface of the developer carrier and that regulates a thickness of a developer layer to be formed on the surface of the developer carrier. A value of D/L is greater than or equal to 0.283%, where D is an amount of displacement of the contact portion of the developer regulation member caused by the contact of the contact portion with the surface of the developer carrier, and L is a dimension of the developer regulation member in a longitudinal direction thereof.
US09817330B2

An image forming apparatus forms an image by exposing an image bearer on the basis of image data including at least one predetermined pattern. The image forming apparatus includes a processing device that sets an exposure amount of a plurality of exposure pixels. The predetermined pattern is constituted by the plurality of exposure pixels, and a peripheral region of the predetermined pattern in the image data is constituted by a plurality of non-exposure pixels. The processing device sets an exposure amount of an exposure pixel in a specific region that is adjacent to a boundary between the predetermined pattern and the peripheral region and is constituted by at least one exposure pixel in the predetermined pattern, and an exposure amount of an exposure pixel in a region other than the specific region in the predetermined pattern to values different from each other.
US09817327B2

A toner comprises a binder resin, a colorant, and a compound represented by the following general formula [1]: (in the formula, R1 to R8 each independently represent a group selected from the hydrogen atom, fluorine atom, bromine atom, iodine atom, hydroxy group, acetyl group, aldehyde group, C1 to C6 hydrocarbon groups, and amino group; X represents a group selected from the oxygen atom, sulfur atom, carbonyl group, and —CR9R10—; and R9 and R10 each independently represent a group selected from the hydrogen atom, bromine atom, C1 to C3 hydroxyalkyl groups, hydroxy group, phenyl group, and C1 to C6 hydrocarbon groups).
US09817324B2

An electrophotographic photosensitive member, a process cartridge and an electrophotographic apparatus wherein a streak-like image defect otherwise occurring in output in a low printing mode performed under a H/H environment can be reduced are provided. A surface of the photosensitive member has a convex and concave portions continuously in a peripheral direction of the photosensitive member, and alternately in an axial direction of the photosensitive member, a width w of the concave portion is 30 to 100 μm, a depth d of the concave portion is 1 to 5 μm, the convex portion has a rising slope and a descending slope in the peripheral direction of the photosensitive member, and a distance from a starting point of the rising slope to an end point of the descending slope and a distance from a starting point of the descending slope to an end point of the rising slope are 300 μm or less.
US09817317B2

The invention relates to an optical system of a microlithographic projection exposure apparatus, in particular for operation in the EUV, comprising at least one polarization-influencing arrangement having a first reflection surface and a second reflection surface, wherein the first reflection surface and the second reflection surface are arranged at an angle of 0°±10° or at an angle of 90°±10° relative to one another, wherein light incident on the first reflection surface during the operation of the optical system forms an angle of 45°±5° with the first reflection surface, and wherein the polarization-influencing arrangement is rotatable about a rotation axis running parallel to the light propagation direction of light incident on the first reflection surface during the operation of the optical system.
US09817299B2

Wired portable or permanent pylon-mounted, single or multiple camera assemblies providing high-definition images, remote video parameter adjustment, real time imaging, lower camera mounting, microphone use, no overheating problems, longer run times, and installation and removal without disturbing field surface. Pylon is molded from high-density, impact resistant foam, integrated with a break-away connect providing for non-destructively breaking and remaking electrical connections. Increased content of high impact, resistant material provides player and pylon protection. Camera wiring extends internally to integral connecting base fitted with magnets for quick and accurate mating with stationary turf base. Wires in turf carry signals from camera to a fiber optic transmitter that powers the pylon cameras, converts the electrical signals to optical signals, and receives control signals converting them to electrical signals. Thousands of meters range optical signals converted back to electrical high-definition video signals by fiber optic receiver and recorded by replay devices for instant viewing.
US09817292B2

A display unit of the present invention includes, in an insulating liquid (1), migrating particles (10), and a porous layer (20) formed using a fibrous structure (21), and the fibrous structure (21) includes non-migrating particles (22) having light reflectivity different from light reflectivity of the migrating particles (10) and being at least partially modified with a surfactant.
US09817275B2

A display device includes: a first substrate on which a display area and a non-display area which is outside the display area are defined; and a dam pattern disposed on at least one side of the display area and in the non-display area. The dam pattern includes a first dam pattern defining a first stem portion thereof which lengthwise extends in a first direction, and a first branch portion which extends from the first stem portion, and a second dam pattern defining a second stem portion thereof which lengthwise extends in the first direction, and a second branch portion which extends from the second stem portion and is spaced from and faces the first branch portion.
US09817270B2

A phosphor sheet includes: a stacked structure including a first phosphor layer and a pair of transparent films each being in contact with either side of the first phosphor layer; a seal layer integrally covering an area from an end face of the stacked structure to a periphery of the stacked structure; and a second phosphor layer further covering a portion of the seal layer, the portion covering at least the periphery of the stacked structure.
US09817265B2

A display panel and a display device are disclosed. The display panel includes an upper substrate (1) and a lower substrate (2) that are disposed opposite to each other; a liquid crystal layer (5) provided between the upper substrate (1) and the lower substrate (2); and a common electrode (3) provided on a side of the liquid crystal layer (5). The common electrode (3) has a wire gating polarizing structure that forms an polarization analyzer structure or a polarizer structure. Upon the common electrode (3) being applied for polarizing the light or analysis of light polarization, a polarizer or a polarization analyzer can be omitted in the display panel, which can reduce numbers of layered structures in the display panel and hence reduce a thickness of the display device.
US09817264B2

The invention discloses a QD CF substrate and manufacturing method thereof. The manufacturing method uses a patterned photo-resist layer as a masking layer to perform selective quenching on QD layer with a quencher to obtain selectively quenched QD layer, which simplifies QD CF substrate manufacturing process and reduces cost. The QD CF substrate does not use blue QD material in QD layer, but uses blue backlight and organic transparent photo-resist layer to improve light utilization efficiency and reduce material cost. The QD layer is a selectively quenched QD layer, and the portion of the QD layer located above the organic transparent photo-resist layer is quenched by the quencher, and will not emit light when excited by backlight. As such, the invention achieves using the QD material to improve color gamut and brightness, avoid color impurity at blue sub-pixels caused by light mixture, and the manufacturing method is simple.
US09817263B2

A liquid crystal display includes: a TFT array substrate; a counter substrate; a black matrix located on a surface of the counter substrate on the TFT-array-substrate side, the black matrix having, in a display region in which the pixels are disposed, a plurality of first openings formed at positions corresponding to the pixels, the black matrix being formed in a solid manner in a non-display region that is a periphery of the display region and is adjacent to the display region; a color material layer located on the counter substrate through the plurality of first openings and on the black matrix, the color material layer being formed in a solid manner in the display region and being formed to have the plurality of second openings as dummies in the non-display region; and a plurality of columnar spacers extended between the color material layer and the TFT array substrate.
US09817260B2

A display device includes: a display panel including a display surface that displays an image and is exposed to the outside and a rear surface that is opposed to the display surface; a backlight unit formed at a lower part of the display panel and providing light to the display panel; a panel support member disposed between the display panel and the backlight unit and supporting an edge of the display panel; and a magnetic adhesive member disposed between the panel support member and the backlight unit and having magnetism.
US09817257B2

A process including positioning a coating head to define a gap between a first external opening in flow communication with a source of a first coating liquid, and a major surface of a substrate; creating relative motion between the first coating head and the substrate; dispensing a pre-determined quantity of the first coating liquid to form a discrete patch in a predetermined position on the substrate's major surface; positioning a second coating head to define a gap between a second external opening in flow communication with a source of a second coating liquid and a major surface of the patch; creating relative motion between the second coating head and the substrate, and dispensing a pre-determined quantity of the second coating liquid to form a discontinuous pattern on the patch's major surface. The first and optionally the second coating liquids exhibit a viscosity as dispensed of at least 1 Pascal-sec.
US09817253B2

An electro-optic modulator comprising at least one nanodisordered potassium tantalate niobate crystal; first and second conductors operatively connected to the nanodisordered potassium tantalate niobate crystal adapted to be connected to a voltage source to modulate light passing there through; whereby light is modulated by passing through the nanodisordered potassium tantalate niobate crystal. A method for modulating light comprising providing at least one at least one nanodisordered potassium tantalate niobate crystal; providing first and second conductors operatively connected to the nanodisordered potassium tantalate niobate crystal adapted to be connected to a voltage source to modulate light passing there through; providing an interrogating light beam striking at least one nanodisordered potassium tantalate niobate crystal; modulating light passing through the nanodisordered potassium tantalate niobate crystal; and receiving a modulated light beam.
US09817252B2

A display device and a manufacturing method thereof are disclosed. The display device comprises an upper substrate (103), a lower substrate (104), a solvent (102), and ellipsoids (101), and the solvent (102) and the ellipsoids (101) are provided between the upper substrate (103) and the lower substrate (104). The ellipsoids are configured for forming photonic crystals and have electromagnetic characteristics. By means of photonic crystals formed by the ellipsoids having a shape of oval spheres with a size in order of nanometer or sub-micrometer, the display device can change wavelength of reflected light and present different colors, thus color images can be displayed.
US09817251B1

An optical filter comprising a first distributed Bragg reflector (DBR) layer, a second DBR layer, and an intrinsic semiconductor layer positioned between the first DBR layer and the second DBR layer, with the intrinsic semiconductor layer providing a passband wavelength for the optical filter based on a carrier density of the intrinsic semiconductor layer.
US09817250B2

An optical modulator includes a plurality of nanostructures, each nanostructure of the plurality of nanostructures having a refractive index that is variable; a first insulation layer having a refractive index that is less than the individual refractive indexes of the plurality of nanostructures and surrounding the plurality of nanostructures; and a refractive index changer configured to change the refractive indexes of the plurality of nanostructures.
US09817247B2

A customizable eyeglass system for use in any remote situation, and which is ideal for use in third-world countries or areas where electrical power and typical machinery for manufacturing eyeglasses is lacking. The system includes a frame with receivers for the temples to connect into and lock into place. A pair of customizable lenses is connected to the front of the frame. The lenses can be rotated to dial in the correct prescription for the patient and then locked into place as well. Thus the invention corrects near and distance vision while also correcting astigmatism. If adjustments need to be made, the patient can easily unlock the lenses, rotate them to a proper orientation for proper sight, and then lock the lenses into place again.
US09817219B1

An infinity mirror includes a light-transmissible and reflective layer, a reflective layer, a light-transmissible layer and at least one light-emitting element. The light-transmissible and reflective layer is disposed on a top surface of the light-transmissible layer. The reflective layer is disposed on a bottom surface of the light-transmissible layer. The at least one light-emitting element emits a light beam. The light-transmissible layer includes a pattern zone and a non-pattern zone. There is a height difference between the pattern zone and the non-pattern zone of the light-transmissible layer. The infinity mirror can provide a multi-mirror image effect.
US09817214B2

Photographing lenses and a photographing apparatus including the photographing lenses using several lenses and to incorporate high-performance photographing apparatuses in slim portable terminals while maintaining optical characteristics and aberration characteristics of the high-performance photographing apparatuses. The photographing lenses include: a first lens having a positive refractive power and a convex object-side surface; a second lens having a positive refractive power; a third lens having a negative refractive power; a fourth lens having a convex image-side surface; a fifth lens having an object-side surface and an image-side surface that are concave in a region around an optical axis of the photographing lenses; and a sixth lens having an image-side surface that is concave in a region around the optical axis of the photographing lenses. The first lens to sixth lens are sequentially arranged in a direction from an object side to an image side.
US09817203B2

Various embodiments include methods, systems, and apparatus for optically aligning multiple sensors in a multi-sensor electro-optical (EO) system. Various embodiments include ways of aligning these sensors using a combination of optical elements.
US09817198B2

The present disclosure provides an optical module. The optical module of the present disclosure may include: a base, the base being provided with a fixing part configured to place a lens; the lens located in the fixing part; and a laser, located on the base, the laser being configured to transmit an optical signal to the lens, where fixing adhesive is filled symmetrically in gaps between two symmetric sides of the lens and the fixing part.
US09817193B2

An optoelectronic integrated circuit for coupling light to or from an optical waveguide formed in an optical device layer in a near-normal angle to that layer. In an embodiment, the integrated circuit comprises a semiconductor body including a metal-dielectric stack, an optical device layer, a buried oxide layer and a semiconductor substrate arranged in series between first and second opposite sides of the semiconductor body. At least one optical waveguide is formed in the optical device layer for guiding light in a defined plane in that device layer. Diffractive coupling elements are disposed in the optical device layer to couple light from the waveguide toward the second surface of the semiconductor body at a near-normal angle to the defined plane in the optical device layer. In an embodiment, an optical fiber is positioned against the semiconductor body for receiving the light from the coupling elements.
US09817189B2

Embodiments of present invention provide a digital dispersion compensation module. The digital dispersion compensation module includes a multi-port optical circulator; and a plurality of dispersion compensation units connected to the multi-port optical circulator, wherein at least one of the plurality of dispersion compensation units includes a fiber-bragg grating (FBG) having a first port and a second port; and an optical switch being capable of selectively connecting to one of the first port and the second port of the FBG, wherein the at least one of the plurality of dispersion compensation units is adapted to provide a positive dispersion to an optical signal, from the multi-port optical circulator, when the optical switch connects to the first port of the FBG and is adapted to provide a negative dispersion to the optical signal when the optical switch connects to the second port of the FBG.
US09817188B2

A pigtail fiber module comprises: a large mode area fiber (LMA fiber) 10 having a fiber core wire 1 composed of a core where single-mode light travels and a clad, and a protective coating 2 surrounding the core wire; and a fiber holding member, and has the following structure. The fiber holding member includes a ferrule 20 having a through hole 21, and a capillary 30 having a narrow hole 31 and incorporated in a tip end side of the ferrule. The narrow hole houses the fiber core wire of the LMA fiber. The through hole houses the LMA fiber having the protective coating. An end portion of the narrow hole at the through hole side is provided with a sealing member 40 for sealing a gap between the fiber core wire and the narrow hole and shutting the narrow hole off from the through hole, and the protective coating is fixed to the through hole with a thermosetting adhesive.
US09817187B2

One or more embodiments of the disclosure relates to an end cap holder for fixing an end cap to aid in alignment with an optical fiber prior to splicing by a splicing device. The use of the end cap holder may provide a method to fix an end cap holder having a different diameter from an optical fiber that the splicing device may be set up or adjusted for.
US09817185B2

A silicon photonic platform includes a substrate supporting a buried oxide layer, an active silicon layer deposited on the buried oxide layer, a first silicon nitride layer separated from the active silicon layer by a first spacer, the first silicon nitride layer and the active silicon layer constituting a first light-transferring interlayer transition and a second silicon nitride layer covered by a cladding and separated from the first silicon layer by a second spacer, the second silicon nitride layer and the first silicon nitride layer constituting a second light-transferring interlayer transition. The second silicon nitride layer passes over one or more waveguides in the active silicon layer to thereby define a waveguide crossing. The silicon nitride layers may be substituted with an equivalent dielectric with a similar refractive index and high optical transparency in the desired operating wavelength range.
US09817183B2

No core is disposed at the lattice point of a triangular lattice of a first layer LY1. First cores 11a and 11b of the core elements 10a and 10b are disposed at the lattice points of a second layer LY2. A first core 11c of the core element 10c and the second core 21 are alternately disposed at the lattice points of a third layer LY3. In a fourth layer LY4, no core is disposed at six lattice points, and the first cores 11a and 11b of the core elements 10a and 10b are disposed at the other lattice points. The second cores 21 are adjacent to the lattice points of the fourth layer LY4, at which no core is disposed. The effective refractive indexes of the core elements adjacent to each other are different from each other.
US09817178B2

The present invention provides a backlight module, having a glue frame, a light guide plate, a first light source assembly and a second light source assembly, and the light guide plate, the first, the second light source assemblies are accommodated in the glue frame, and the first light source assembly has a light source, and the second light source assembly has a substrate, a plurality of laser light sources and a diffuser, and the laser light sources are aligned on the substrate, and the light guide plate has a first, a second incident surfaces, and the light source of the first light source assembly and the first incident surface are oppositely positioned, and the laser light sources and the second incident surface are oppositely positioned, and the diffuser is positioned between the laser light sources and the second incident surface with certain distances.
US09817174B2

A polycarbonate resin composition for light guides which has excellent light guiding properties and flame retardancy, a light guide and a surface light source body.The light guide is formed from a resin composition which comprises (A) 100 parts by weight of a polycarbonate resin (component A) and (B) 0.001 to 0.1 part by weight of a metal salt-based compound (component B).
US09817172B2

The disclosure is related to a backlight module comprising a light guide plate, a light source assembly and a frame. The frame surrounds the light guide plate. The light source assembly is arranged between the light incident surface of the light guide plate and the frame. The light source assembly comprises a substrate, a light emitting body and a transparent body. The transparent body packages the light emitting body on the substrate. The outer surface of the transparent body facing the light emitting body is a light emitting surface having a groove formed thereon facing the light incident surface of the light guide plate. The groove enables the light emitted from the transparent body to congest toward the direction of the center of the light guide plate to increase the optical coupling efficient of the backlight module. The disclosure further provides a liquid crystal display device.
US09817169B2

A method of illuminating a component, having an outer skin layer, the method including the steps of: forming the outer surface layer from at least two separate pieces of an outer skin layer, the outer skin layer having a show surface and an opposite backing surface; forming a seam in the outer surface layer such that the at least two separate pieces are secured to each other; locating an elongated light conducting medium in the seam and behind a stitch securing the at least two separate pieces together; and securing the elongated light conducting medium to the outer surface layer.
US09817168B2

A circuit module is provided, including: a substrate, having a PCI-E or PCI strip, the PCI-E or PCI strip for being inserted into and electrically connected with a PCI-E or PCI slot; at least one LED, disposed at a side of the substrate opposite to the PCI-E or PCI strip, electrically connected with the PCI-E or PCI strip; a light guide member, being pervious to light, at least corresponding to the at least one LED.
US09817165B2

A method and apparatus for increasing duality modulation of electromagnetic radiation beyond levels achievable by individual duality modulation generators where duality modulation imparts to radiation a disproportion of irradiance and wave intensity. Various techniques are disclosed for configuring a multiplicity of individual duality modulation generators in a cascade such that initially input radiation acquires cumulative increments of duality modulation upon traversing the cascade of individual generators.
US09817161B2

The present disclosure relates generally to light management constructions comprising microstructured prismatic elements useful in the preparation of sun-facing light redirecting films having reduced glare.
US09817160B2

To obtain a white reflective film that is hard to warp and can ameliorate unevenness in the luminance even when used in such a manner as to be superimposed on a chassis having convex and concave portions for placing circuits and the like or used with an LED, and can prevent uneven close contact with a light guide plate and damage of the light guide plate, the white reflective film for edge-lit backlight is made to meets the requirements (i) to (iii): (i) the stiffness is 2 to 10 mN·m; (ii) convex portions are formed on at least one surface (A) and the maximum height of the convex portion is 15 to 60 μm; and (iii) the cushion rate at the side of a surface (B) opposite to the surface (A) is 12% or more.
US09817157B2

When it comes to configuring the lens array substrate on which a multistage lens array is formed, a first concavity which is formed of the concave surface is formed on a first surface which is formed of a substrate surface of one of several translucent substrates. In addition, on the substrate surface of one of the translucent substrates, a first lens layer, a first translucent layer, a second lens layer, a second translucent layer, a translucent protective layer, and a common electrode are stacked in order. The first translucent layer has the same refractive index as that of the first lens layer and the second lens layer. In addition, a refractive index of the protective layer is within a range between the refractive index of the second translucent layer and the refractive index of the common electrode.
US09817149B2

The present invention discloses a vehicle inspection system, comprising: a radiation source; an inspection passage enabling a vehicle to pass; a dragging system comprising a first dragging means and a second dragging means, which are sequentially arranged along a vehicle dragging direction; in the vehicle dragging direction, the first dragging means is arranged at the upstream of the second dragging means, and a separating section is arranged between the first dragging means and the second dragging means, so that the first dragging means is separated from the second dragging means by a preset distance in the vehicle dragging direction; and the first and second dragging means both include a supporting plate, an elongated traction element and a pushing element connected with the elongated traction element, the elongated traction elements of the first and second dragging means are continuous and integrated, thus the elongated traction elements and pushing elements extends on the separating section; the supporting plates of the first and second dragging means are separated and two pieces type, and no supporting plate is provided on the separating section.
US09817142B2

A system and method for analyzing geologic features including fluid estimation and lithology discrimination may include the steps of identifying areas of interest on a seismic horizon, computing statistical data ranges for the seismic amplitudes within the areas of interest, and analyzing the geologic features based on the amplitude variation with offset (AVO) or angle (AVA) curves including the statistical data ranges.
US09817137B2

A thin, lightweight, and highly reliable energy ray detector that enables high-speed reading is provided. An energy ray detector (1) includes TFTs (20) that are arranged in a grid pattern and that each have an active layer formed of a semiconductor having an electrical property changing in accordance with the amount of applied energy ray radiation, and a property detection circuit unit (5) and a controller (60) that detect information regarding the energy ray radiation from changes in the electrical property of the TFTs (20).
US09817136B2

A radiation monitoring device includes: a scintillator emitting fluorescence upon absorption of radiation, a photo-multiplier tube converting the fluorescence into an electron pulse, a preamplifier converting the electron pulse into an analog voltage pulse, a pulse amplifier amplifying the analog voltage based on a gain control value, a dose rate measurement part measuring a dose rate based on an output of the pulse amplifier, an average half width measurement part, measuring a half width of a voltage pulse, which is among the outputs of the pulse amplifier and has a wave height larger than a preset value, and processing a predetermined number of measured data on the half widths to calculate a half width deviation, a gain control part receiving the half width deviation from the average half width measurement part, and determining the gain control value using a table, which lists relations between half widths and temperature calibration factors.
US09817126B2

The invention, in some embodiments, relates to the field of global navigation satellite systems, and more particularly to the field of methods and devices for identifying whether a satellite in a global navigation satellite system has a line of sight to a specific global navigation satellite system receiver (LOS satellite) or does not have a line of sight to the global navigation satellite system receiver (NLOS satellite).
US09817125B2

The description relates to mobile device location. One example can identify global navigation satellite system (GNSS) satellites expected to be in line-of-sight of a mobile device. This example can detect differences between received GNSS data signals and expected GNSS data signals from the expected GNSS satellites. The example can also determine a direction from the mobile device of an obstruction that is causing at least some of the detected differences.
US09817107B2

The present invention provides an above-ground building recognition method, including the following steps: (1) taking an infrared image of the ground from the air; (2) performing detection and positioning in the infrared image to determine a suspected target; (3) aiming at the suspected target to perform laser imaging; (4) performing range gating on a laser image to filter out foreground and background interference; and (5) extracting a shape feature of the suspected target from the laser image with interference filtered out, and taking the shape feature as a target matching element to perform matching with a target shape feature template, so as to recognize the target. In the method of the present invention, laser imaging is integrated into infrared imaging target positioning, so that an advantage of a large range of infrared imaging is utilized, and three-dimensional range information of laser imaging is also utilized, thereby effectively improving the precision of positioning a building.
US09817101B2

In one example embodiment, a Wi-Fi based location determination technique both determines one or more locations of a mobile device, and calculates a confidence score for each determined location. A request is received at a certified location service executing on a server for one or more locations of the mobile device and a data package. The data package may include an indication of a plurality of beacons observed by the mobile device. The certified location service determines one or more locations of the mobile device based on a calculated location of at least some of the plurality of beacons. The certified location service also determines a confidence score for each beacon used in determining each location. An overall confidence score for each determined location may be calculated based on a combination of the confidence scores for each of the beacons used in the determination of the location.
US09817100B2

An array of microphones placed on a mobile robot provides multiple channels of audio signals. A received set of audio signals is called an audio segment, which is divided into multiple frames. A phase analysis is performed on a frame of the signals from each pair of microphones. If both microphones are in an active state during the frame, a candidate angle is generated for each such pair of microphones. The result is a list of candidate angles for the frame. This list is processed to select a final candidate angle for the frame. The list of candidate angles is tracked over time to assist in the process of selecting the final candidate angle for an audio segment.
US09817099B2

A method for precision collaborative targeting includes determining information indicative of a current location and of a known remote location. A first distance is determined from the current location to the known remote location. A sensor is slewed towards an unknown remote location, the sensor being initially directed from the current location to the known remote location. The distance from the current location to the unknown remote location is measured. Information indicative of the location of the unknown remote location is determined from the amount of slewing and the distance from the current location to the unknown remote location.
US09817098B2

A scaling unit (1) for reception antennae (A1, A2, A3, A4) of a plurality of local coils (LS) of a magnetic resonance imaging scanner (MRT) includes a plurality of signal inputs (in1, in2, in3, in4) configured for the reception of signals from the reception antennae (A1, A2, A3, A4), and a plurality of signal outputs (out1, out2, out3, out4) configured for the output of unaltered and/or altered signals from the reception antennae (A1, A2, A3, A4).
US09817091B2

According to one embodiment, an MRI apparatus includes a first RF coil device, a radio communication unit and an image reconstruction unit. The first RF coil device is wirelessly connected to a second RF coil device, and receives a nuclear magnetic resonance signal wirelessly transmitted from the second RF coil device. The first RF coil device wirelessly transmits the nuclear magnetic resonance signal detect by the first RF coil device and the nuclear magnetic resonance signal obtained from the second RF coil device to the radio communication unit, via an induced electric field. The radio communication unit receives the nuclear magnetic resonance signals wirelessly transmitted from the first RF coil device via an induced electric field. The image reconstruction unit reconstructs image data on the basis of the nuclear magnetic resonance signals received by the radio communication unit.
US09817090B2

An intracavity probe for use with a magnetic resonance system includes: a pair of coil loops arranged in a phased array configuration; a pair of decoupling circuits; a pair of output cables; and a spacer material positioned adjacent to an anterior surface of the coil loops. Each coil loop has a drive capacitor and a tuning capacitor. Each decoupling circuit is connected across the tuning capacitor of one of the coil loops. Each output cable is connected at a first end thereof across the drive capacitor of one of the coil loops such that each of the drive capacitors is provided with a separate ground. The spacer material assures a predetermined distance between the pair of coil loops and the region of interest, which thereby reduces intensity of the magnetic resonance signals in proximity to the coil loops, maintains SNR at depth within the region of interest and reduces artifacts.
US09817077B2

A circuit device includes an output circuit having a high-side transistor and a low-side transistor, and a control circuit configured to detect a voltage between the drain node and the source node of a detection target transistor that is at least one of the low-side transistor and the high-side transistor, and detect a malfunction in the case where it is determined that the detection voltage did not exceed a given comparison voltage.
US09817069B1

Systems and methods for a sequential decompressor which builds equations predictably provide a first-in, first out (“FIFO”) shift register which is fed by a first XOR decompressor and provides outputs to a second XOR decompressor.
US09817064B1

An I/O control circuit includes a plurality of IO cells including an input section for stimulating a plurality of (n) pins of a device under test (DUT) and an output section for processing data output by the pins. The input section of each cell includes a latched driver each including a driver input, a first driver output, a next state driver output, and a current source. The next state driver output and current source are for coupling to drive the pins, and the latched drivers are serially connected with the first driver output of an earlier IO cell connected to the driver input of a next IO cell. The output section of each cell includes an analog to digital converter (ADC) for coupling to the n pins, and a memory element coupled to an output of the ADC.
US09817060B2

A method for emission testing of a semiconductor device (DUT), by mounting the DUT onto an test bench of an emission tester, the emission tester having an optical detector; electrically connecting the DUT to an electrical tester; applying electrical test signals to the DUT while keeping test parameters constant; serially inserting one of a plurality of shortpass filters into an optical path of the emission tester and collecting emission test signal from the optical detector until all available shortpass filters have been inserted into the optical path; determining appropriate shortpass filter providing highest signal to noise ratio of the emission signal; inserting the appropriate shortpass filter into the optical path; and, performing emission testing on the DUT.
US09817051B2

An alternating current loss measuring apparatus for superconductors includes a superconductor specimen, a magnetic field applying coil, a radiation shield, a vacuum vessel, first cooling means, and second cooling means. The first cooling means or the second cooling means is provided with a temperature regulating mechanism. The magnetic field applying means and the radiation shield are set to be a first cooling part, whereas the superconductor specimen is set to be a second cooling part, and the first cooling part and the second cooling part are cooled by first and second cooling means, respectively. A high thermal resistance member is disposed between the superconductor specimen and the second cooling means, and temperature measuring means are disposed at at least two positions on the high thermal resistance member. The alternating current loss of a superconductor under an external magnetic field can be measured at each of different temperatures.
US09817033B2

A high-voltage measurement divider for an X-ray tube is provided. The high-voltage measurement divider includes a ground connection, a high-voltage connection, a measuring tap, and divider modules of substantial identical design apart from the circuitry. Each of the divider modules has a first connection, a second connection, a resistor board, and at least one flat potential electrode. The divider modules are connected at corresponding connections in series between the ground connection and the high-voltage connection. At least one division stage is formed by each of the divider modules, and a first division stage is formed between the measuring tap and the ground connection.
US09817028B2

An apparatus comprises a contactless sense probe, an electro optic sensor module, and a test signal emitter circuit. The contactless sense probe includes a photoconductive switch and the signal bandwidth of the photoconductive switch is variable. The test signal emitter circuit configured to apply a test signal to a device under test (DUT) at a first location of the DUT, wherein the test signal includes a test signal frequency. The electro-optic sensor module is coupled to the contactless sense probe and configured to: generate an impulse signal at the contactless sense probe using an optical signal input to the first photoconductive switch; sense the test signal frequency in the impulse signal using the contactless sense probe at a second location of the DUT; and generate an indication of a defect in the DUT when the test signal frequency is undetected in the impulse signal.
US09817017B2

A system for monitoring individuals while protecting their privacy includes at least one energy emitter configured to emit energy onto a field-of-view that may contain an individual, and at least one energy sensor configured to capture reflected energy from within the field-of-view. A spatial measurement module calculates spatial measurements of objects within the field-of-view based on data from the energy sensor. A schematic generation module creates schematic views of objects within the field-of-view, distinguishing human beings from each other and from inanimate objects or animals. Three-dimensional measurements of the individual and environs are transformed into a two-dimensional or other schematic view, allowing ongoing monitoring of the individual while preventing viewing of the individual's face and appearance, and preventing observation of what the individual may be wearing or watching.
US09817014B2

A method is provided for determining a number of revolutions per minute (RPM) of a rotating object. The method includes transmitting interrogation signals at a regular period from a fixed antenna positioned adjacent to the rotating object. The method also includes transmitting echo signals from a sensor antenna positioned on the rotating object, in response to the interrogation signals. The method also includes counting a number of echo signals detected by the fixed antenna, during one revolution of the object. The method also includes determining the RPM of the rotating object based on the number of response signals and the regular period of the signals. A system is also provided for determining the number of revolutions per minute (RPM) of the rotating object.
US09816995B2

The present invention provides a protein-based biomarker that is useful in qualifying ovarian cancer status in a patient. In particular, the biomarker of this invention is useful to classify a subject sample as ovarian cancer or non-ovarian cancer. The biomarker can be detected by SELDI mass spectrometry.
US09816993B2

Identification, quantification and characterization of biological micro- and nano-systems is enabled by magnetically spinning these natural, non-magnetic systems with the aid of induced magnetization. Biofriendly magnetic micro- and nano-labels enable magnetorotation in extremely weak electromagnetic fields. The spinning of these micromotors can be observed by a simple, CD-like, optical tracking system. The spinning frequency response enables real-time monitoring of single (cancer) cell morphology, with sub-microscopic resolution, yielding previously undeterminable information. Likewise, it enables super-low detection limits for any (cancer) biomarker.
US09816981B2

Methods for metabolic oligosaccharide engineering that incorporates derivatized alkyne-bearing sugar analogs as “tags” into cellular glycoconjugates are disclosed. Alkynyl derivatized Fuc and alkynyl derivatized ManNAc sugars are incorporated into cellular glycoconjugates. Chemical probes comprising an azide group and a visual or fluorogenic probe and used to label alkyne-derivatized sugar-tagged glycoconjugates are disclosed. Chemical probes bind covalently to the alkynyl group by Cu(I)-catalyzed [3+2] azide-alkyne cycloaddition and are visualized at the cell surface, intracellularly, or in a cellular extract. The labeled glycoconjugate is capable of detection by flow cytometry, SDS-PAGE, Western blot, ELISA, confocal microscopy, and mass spectrometry.
US09816976B2

A system and method to accurately estimate the strength and changes of the monitoring signal for sensing applications, this invention involves the monitoring of signal strength and changes through the use of a pseudorandom binary sequence bit stream to modulate the transmitter of a data link, when beating the transmitter signal with absorption structure signal from the sensor at the receiver, the changes in the received signal strength are proportional to the sensing signal being monitored. The received signal bit pattern is monitored by an error detector scheme to report a Bit Error Rate level based on the changes in the sensing signal level as compared to the bit stream from the transmitter. This results in a very accurate robust monitoring technique with high consistency and repeatability.
US09816967B2

A through-transmission ultrasonic (TTU) inspection system for ultrasonic inspection of a part and for determining alignment calibration data for increased alignment accuracy. The TTU inspection system may include first and second end effectors located on opposite sides of the part, each having at least one transducer for transmitting or receiving ultrasonic or sound waves through the part. The TTU inspection system may also include actuators and a system controller. The system controller may command the actuators to actuate the first end effector according to one or more scanning patterns, while the transducers send and/or receive signals to or from each other through the part. The system controller may use signal strength measurements received along these scanning patterns to determine alignment calibration data for applying to the first end effector and/or its associated actuators.
US09816956B2

A portable analytical device includes a housing, a measuring facility and a processor in the housing, and an electrical connector coupled to the housing and having one end electrically connected to the processor and an opposite end extending outwardly from the housing. The measuring facility is configured to analyze an optical or electrochemical change in the test element having received a liquid sample of the body fluid and to generate measuring values resulting from the analysis. A memory has stored therein software at least a portion of which is executable by the processor to process the measuring values to produce analytical measuring data taking into account calibration values. The electrical connector may be a male universal serial bus (USB) electrical connector, a Type-A USB electrical connector or a mini-USB electrical connector having electrical connections for electrical power, ground, data and ID.
US09816955B2

An liquid sample measuring system includes a measuring device including a measuring section which measures biological information from liquid sample of a living subject within a housing in which a biosensor, on which the liquid sample of the biological body is deposited, is detachably mounted and a movement measuring section which measures movement information of the housing within the housing, and an administrating device including a movement determining section which determines whether or not a degree of the movement of the housing is within an allowable range by analyzing the movement information received from the measuring device.
US09816951B2

In order to determine a volume thermal expansion coefficient of a liquid, a sample of the liquid is placed inside a cell of a calorimeter followed by an incremental increase of pressure inside the cell containing the liquid. After each pressure increase heat flow into the cell and volume of the liquid are measured. Based on results of the measurements of the heat flow and accounting for initially evaluated cell volume, the volume thermal expansion of the liquid is determined.
US09816947B2

Apparatus for optical imaging of Cerenkov luminescence from an object subsequent to the object receiving a dose of a radiopharmaceutical, the apparatus comprising: a light tight enclosure within which the object can be received at a sample location; an imaging means; a means to mitigate direct particle impingement between the sample location and the imaging means; and one or more optical elements for transmitting Cerenkov photons from within the light tight enclosure to the imaging means.
US09816946B2

Methods and apparatus are disclosed for the preparation of microscopic samples using light pulses. Material volumes greater than 100 μm3 are removed. The methods include inspecting an object with a scanning electron microscope (SEM) or a focused ion beam (FIB). The inspection includes recording an image of the object. The methods also includes delineating within the object a region to be investigated, and delineating a laser-machining path based on the image of the object so that a sample can be prepared out of the object. The methods further include using laser-machining along the delineated laser-machining path to remove a volume that is to be ablated, and inspecting the object with the scanning electron microscope (SEM) or a focused ion beam (FIB).
US09816938B2

A component inspection process includes positioning a component (e.g., a semiconductor component or other object) such that component sidewalls are disposed along an optical path corresponding to sidewall beam splitters configured for receiving sidewall illumination provided by a set of sidewall illuminators, and transmitting this sidewall illumination therethrough, toward and to component sidewalls. Sidewall illumination incident upon component sidewalls is reflected from the component sidewalls back toward the sidewall beam splitters, which reflect or redirect this reflected sidewall illumination along an optical path corresponding to an image capture device for sidewall image capture to enable component sidewall inspection. Sidewall illuminators and sidewall beam splitters can form portions of a five sided inspection apparatus that includes a brightfield illuminator, a darkfield illuminator, and an image capture beam splitter such that the five sided inspection apparatus is configurable for inspecting component bottom surfaces and/or component sidewalls in a selective/selectable manner.
US09816933B2

A plasma spectrometry method with high reproducibility of plasma light emission is described, wherein the method comprises: a detection step of applying a voltage, thereby detecting the resulting plasma light emission; and non-detection step of detecting no plasma light emission.
US09816932B2

A pulsed light synchronizer synchronizes a first pulsed light having a first period and a second pulsed light and having a second period equal to the first period with each other. A third pulsed light is acquired by providing a first delay time between two pulsed lights acquired by dividing the first pulsed light, and by multiplexing the pulsed lights acquired from the first pulsed light. A fourth pulsed light is acquired by providing a second delay time between two pulsed lights acquired by dividing the second pulsed light, and by multiplexing the pulsed lights acquired from the second pulsed light. The pulsed light synchronizer detects, through a detector, a pulsed light acquired by multiplexing the third and fourth pulsed lights, and adjusts at least one of the first and second periods based on a timing difference between the third and fourth pulsed lights acquired from the detector.
US09816931B2

The present invention generally pertains to methods and kits for managing the variation in spectroscopic intensity measurements through the use of a reference component. The reference component may comprise a reference spectroscopic substance and may be contained together with a sample of interest in a sample to be tested, wherein the sample of interest may comprise a sample spectroscopic substance. Each sample to be tested may be uniquely identified and, hence, “barcoded” by combinations of different colors and concentrations of spectroscopic substances, contained therein.
US09816924B2

The present invention relates to the use of amphipathic polymers to enhance lateral flow and reagent mixing on assay devices. More specifically, the invention relates to use of an amphipathic polymer in assay methods including a device for determining the concentration of lipids in blood serum or plasma.
US09816917B2

In an embodiment, a distortion-measuring apparatus for measuring a distortion distribution of an entire vitreous silica crucible in a non-destructive way includes: a light source 11; a first polarizer 12 and a first quarter-wave plate 13 disposed between the light source 11 and an outer surface of a vitreous silica crucible wall; a camera 14 disposed inside of a vitreous silica crucible 1; a camera control mechanism 15 configured to control a photographing direction of the camera 14; a second polarizer 16 and a second quarter-wave plate 17 disposed between the camera 14 and an inner surface of the vitreous silica crucible wall. An optical axis of the second quarter-wave plate 17 inclines 90 degrees with respect to the first quarter-wave plate 13.
US09816912B2

A method for evaluating a biological material for unassociated virus-size particles having a particular epitope indicative of an adeno-associated virus viral type or an adenovirus viral type uses a fluorescent antibody stain specific for binding with the epitope and a fluid sample with the virus-size particles and fluorescent antibody stain is subjected to flow cytometry with identification of fluorescent emission detection events indicative of passage through a flow cell of a flow cytometer of unassociated labeled particles of virus size including such a virus-size particle and fluorescent antibody stain.
US09816907B2

A sample is analyzed by temperature-modulated thermogravimetric analysis (TMTGA), using a thermogravimetric analysis (TGA) instrument. The TGA instrument comprises a furnace arranged in a furnace housing and an electronic balance with a load receiver arranged in a balance housing, wherein the load receiver extends into the furnace housing. A measuring position is arranged at one end of the load receiver within the furnace housing. A control unit controls the balance and/or the furnace. The TMTGA method includes at least using the TGA instrument to subject the sample to a temperature program that varies the temperature of the furnace and provides temperature-time setpoints for controlling the sample temperature, measuring the mass change of the sample as a function of time, and determining at least one kinetic parameter of the sample based on mass change. The temperature program may be stochastic and/or event-controlled in nature.
US09816903B2

Disclosed is a filtration device for liquid samples as well as a close and push-through device for said filtration device.
US09816893B2

The subject matter disclosed herein relates to fluid leakage detection. More particularly, subject matter relates to a device for detecting fluid leakage in a fluid drain pipe attached to a power transformer device. The device comprises fluid collection compartment attached to bottom of the fluid drain pipe and a fluid level switch is positioned in the fluid collection compartment to generate alarm signal to indicate fluid leakage.
US09816886B2

A force detection apparatus includes a first member, a second member, and a third member, the second member and the first member sandwich a plurality of piezoelectric elements (in a narrow sense, a first piezoelectric element and a second piezoelectric element), and the third member and the first member sandwich a plurality of piezoelectric elements (in a narrow sense, a third piezoelectric element and a fourth piezoelectric element) different from the plurality of piezoelectric elements sandwiched by the second member and the first member.
US09816884B2

For measuring tensile and/or compressive loads force measuring systems are provided for measuring a tensile and/or compressive load of a structure have a first force measuring sensor assigned to the structure, and a second force measuring sensor assigned to the structure. To provide a force measuring system that enables high measuring accuracy, the first and the second force measuring sensor differ in such a way, that the first force measuring sensor is designed to measure a nominal load range, and the second force measuring sensor is designed to measure a sub-range of the nominal load range.
US09816882B2

The invention provides a piezoresistive electronic skin, a preparation method and a use thereof. The piezoresistive electronic skin uses carbon nanotube film as the conductive layer and uses materials provided with micro-nano patterns, such as polydimethylsiloxane, polyethylene terephthalate, polyvinyl alcohol, polyvinyl formal, polyethylene, and so on, as the substrate, enabling the substrate has advantages of high flexibility and being pliable, and it needs low operating voltage and little power consumption, but has high sensitivity and short response time. More importantly, the invention uses the patterned flexible substrate as the basis, greatly improving the sensitivity of electronic skin reacting to tiny applied force from outside. The invention also provides a capacitive electronic skin and a preparation method thereof. Further, the invention also provides a use of the piezoresistive electronic skin or the capacitive electronic skin on speech recognition, pulse detection, medical robot, etc.
US09816879B2

The invention relates to a temperature sensor (1) for a motor vehicle comprising:—a housing (3) defining an internal volume comprising a temperature sensitive element (5),—electrical wires (9) linked electrically to said temperature sensitive element (5) and configured to transmit an item of temperature information from said sensitive element (5) to the exterior of the housing (3),—a seal (13) partially surrounding the said electrical wires (9) so as to isolate the sensitive element (5) with respect to the exterior of the housing (3), the seal (13) extending preferably in a direction, termed the longitudinal direction. According to the invention, said sensor (1) furthermore comprises a guidance means (15) integral with said seal (13) for the guiding of said electrical wires (9) out of said sensor, said guidance means (15) lying in the extension of said seal (13) according to the longitudinal direction of said seal (13) from a central zone of the seal (13) towards the exterior of said sensor housing (3), and the cross section of said guidance means (15) being of smaller dimension than that of the cross section of the seal (13), at least one portion of said guidance means (15) lying outside the housing.
US09816873B2

A system is disclosed for measuring a temperature of air within a container or other enclosure containing temperature controlled items or other product. The system includes a temperature sensor having a thermocouple within a shaft, and a fan for drawing air from within the container through the shaft and past a junction of the thermocouple. The temperature sensor further includes a control unit for correlating a voltage from the thermocouple to a temperature.
US09816869B2

A method for evaluating a measurement result of a thermal analysis. A program-controlled computer unit is used to calculate at least one probability of the agreement of the measurement result with at least one dataset previously stored in the computer unit, wherein this calculation is based on a comparison of effect data previously extracted from a measurement curve of the thermal analysis with corresponding stored effect data of the dataset. The evaluation can advantageously include, an automatic recognition and classification of measurement curves and can be carried out in particular more efficiently, more economically and more quickly than previously, with at the same time a high quality of evaluation.
US09816866B2

The invention provides a method for a non-destructive, non-contacting and image forming examination of a sample by means of the heat flow thermography method where the examination consists of evaluating an existence and/or depth distance values of any heat flow velocity transitions below a surface of the sample, wherein the sample is excited by heat pulses of at least one excitation source, and a thermal flow originating therefrom is captured by at least one infrared sensor in an image sequence of thermal images, and wherein the thermal images obtained from the image sequence are evaluated by means of a signal and image processing and depicting a thermal flow with a resolution in time and in space. The method comprises: exciting the sample at least twice independently from each other by means of the heat pulses from the excitation source where a second excitation and any succeeding excitation is delayed with respect to a preceding excitation by a time delay whereby the start of the captured sequence happens at another defined point of time within the time between two images within an image sequence; detecting the respective total thermal flow processes generated by the at least two excitation processes of the sample by the infrared sensor in the independent image sequences containing the excitation as well as the thermal answer signal from the sample, combining all captured image sequences to a total image sequence in which all images are arranged in a sequence which is correct in time with respect to the point of time of the pulse like excitation, and extracting from the total image sequence, in a manner known per se, an indication of the depth distance of a heat flow velocity transition from a surface of the sample. Therein, the heat flow velocity transitions can be a boarder layer of a layered material or defects in a substrate or below a surface of a work piece.
US09816862B2

A computer implemented method. The method includes generating, using a processor, a multi-dimensional object from a plurality of data obtained from a spectrophotometric measurement of a target coating. The method also includes calculating, using the processor, at least one geometric property of the multi-dimensional object. The method further includes correlating, using the processor, the at least one value with a plurality of known values to identify at least one pigment effect in the target coating, and outputting, using the processor, the at least one pigment effect.
US09816860B2

A spectrometer includes a light source that emits a beam into a sample volume comprising an absorbing medium. Thereafter, at least one detector detects at least a portion of the beam emitted by the light source. It is later determined, based on the detected at least a portion of the beam and by a controller, that a position and/or an angle of the beam should be changed. The beam emitted by the light source is then actively steered by an actuation element under control of the controller. In addition, a concentration of the absorbing media can be quantified or otherwise calculated (using the controller or optionally a different processor that can be local or remote). The actuation element(s) can be coupled to one or more of the light source, a detector or detectors, and a reflector or reflectors intermediate the light source and the detector(s).
US09816857B2

A method for calculating a rate of UV radiation absorbed by a user's skin including: capturing image data of an area of the user's skin; determining a skin tone of the user's skin based on the captured image data; calculating a rate of UV radiation absorption for the determined skin tone; measuring an amount of UV radiation exposed to the user's skin; and calculating a rate of UV radiation that would be absorbed by the user's skin based on the user's skin tone and the amount of UV radiation exposed to the user's skin. The method can further comprise calculating an amount of time that the user can be exposed to the amount of UV radiation exposed to the user's skin based on predetermined criteria. The predetermined criteria can at least include an SPF level of sunscreen applied to the user's skin.
US09816848B2

Methods and apparatus for non-invasive determination of one or more physical properties of a material in a conduit are presented. In one example, the method comprises initiating a vibration on a wall of the conduit at a first location, capturing a response to the vibration at the first location, capturing a response to the vibration at a second location, and determining at least one physical property of the material based on at least one of the captured responses at the first location and the second location.
US09816846B2

System and methods for determining a non-condensable gas parameter relating to the amount of non-condensable gas within a variable flow rate fluid flow containing both non-condensable gas and condensate are disclosed. An apparatus may include a measurement tube for receiving the fluid flow and arranged such that the fluid flow through the measurement tube comprises alternating sections of non-condensable gas and condensate; a flow sensor for generating a flow rate signal relating to the flow rate of the fluid flow in the measurement tube; a phase sensor for monitoring over time the alternating sections of non-condensable gas and condensate flowing through the measurement tube and arranged generates a phase signal characteristic of the said sections monitored; and a non-condensable gas determining unit configured to determine a non-condensable gas parameter relating to the amount of non-condensable gas in the fluid flow based on the flow rate signal and phase signal.
US09816841B2

An encoding sequence is configured to detect the position and direction of motion of an actuator. The actuator includes at least two members where one of the members moves with respect to the other. Two sets of binary indicators are either affixed to or integrally assembled along one of the members. Each pair of indicators defines a position of the actuator and each binary indicator is configured to identify one of two states, such as a magnetic pole or a graphical mark where each state corresponds to a logical zero or a logical one. The indicators are arranged on the actuator such that at least one of the indicators transitions between one of the two states at each position along the actuator. At least one sensor is provided to detect the state of the binary indicators as the two members of the actuator move with respect to each other.
US09816839B2

A stroke sensor system includes a tubular vehicle-body-side member, a tubular vehicle-wheel-side member, and a displacement obtainer. The tubular vehicle-body-side member is disposed at a vehicle body side. The tubular vehicle-wheel-side member is coupled to the vehicle-body-side member on a vehicle wheel side and movable in an axial direction of the vehicle-body-side member relative to the vehicle-body-side member. At least one of the members is a conductor. Another one of the members includes a coil. The displacement obtainer includes a capacitor electrically coupled to the coil and constituting an LC oscillation circuit that outputs an oscillation waveform when the members move relative to each other. The displacement obtainer digitizes the oscillation waveform to obtain a reshaped waveform, divides a frequency of the reshaped waveform by a frequency division ratio to obtain a frequency-divided waveform, and uses the frequency-divided waveform to obtain a displacement by which the members move relative to each other.
US09816836B2

Systems, methods, and other embodiments associated with identifying mismappings of electric meters using voltage data are described. In one embodiment, a method includes selecting an electric meter from a plurality of electric meters represented in a connectivity model. The connectivity model is an electronic data structure that specifies information about connections between the plurality of electric meters and transformers in an electric distribution grid. The example method may also include analyzing mismapping metrics that characterize voltage data about the selected electric meter in relation to a set of electric meters that are geographically related to the selected electric meter to determine whether the connectivity model includes a mismapping of the selected electric meter.
US09816835B2

An event information memory stores an occurrence time of an event so as to cause the occurrence time of the event to correspond to each of monitoring targets in which the events occurred (or are scheduled to occur) among a plurality of the monitoring targets. Based on position information for displaying each of a plurality of monitoring targets on a general view, a controller instructs control to draw an event display image on the general view so as to cause the event display image to correspond to the monitoring target in which the event occurred (or scheduled to occur), the monitoring target being stored in the event information memory. The event display image includes: a circular portion indicating a predetermined time in a circumferential direction, an indicator indicating a current hour or minute, and an event occurrence time display portion caused to correspond to the occurrence time of the event.
US09816832B2

Vehicle route-planning system can acquire position signals and surrounding images from vehicle terminal apparatuses in real time. The vehicle route-planning system includes an images-analyzing module and a vehicle route-planning module. The images-analyzing module synthesizes a driving condition signal in real time, according to position signals and surrounding images. The vehicle route-planning module can merge the real-time driving condition signal and a map data to synthesize a real-time driving condition mapping data. When a vehicle terminal apparatus receives a route terminal point configuration, the vehicle route-planning module can generate an optimized vehicle-route signal corresponded to the route terminal point configuration, according to the position signal of the vehicle terminal apparatus, the route terminal point configuration and the real-time driving condition mapping data. The optimized vehicle route signal can be transmitted to the vehicle terminal apparatus receiving the route terminal point configuration.
US09816829B2

An in-vehicle navigation apparatus that provides guidance to a lane on which a user's vehicle should travel, among driving lanes on a route, includes a landmark information acquiring unit and a lane guide unit. The landmark information acquiring unit acquires landmark information representing an object which serves as a landmark existing along the route within a landmark acquisition range that is set between a certain point on a near side of a specific point and the specific point. The lane on which the user's vehicle should travel on the route is restricted at the specific point. The lane guide unit provides guidance to the lane on which the user's vehicle should travel in association with the object represented by the landmark information acquired by the landmark information acquiring unit.
US09816827B1

A method is disclosed for mitigating the risks associated with operating an autonomous or semi-autonomous vehicle by using calculated route traversal values to select less risky travel routes and/or modify vehicle operation. Various approaches to achieving this risk mitigation are presented. A computing device is configured to generate a database of route traversal values. This device may receive a variety of historical route traversal information, real-time vehicle information, and/or route information from one of more data sources and calculate a route traversal value for the associated driving route. Subsequently, the computing device may provide the associated route traversal value to other devices, such as a vehicle navigation device associated with the autonomous or semi-autonomous vehicle. An insurance company may use this information to help determine insurance premiums for autonomous or semi-autonomous vehicles by analyzing and/or mitigating the risk associated with operating those vehicles.
US09816823B2

A technique for updating road maps is disclosed. A number of GPS traces can be matched with a number of roads in a map. Matched GPS traces may be processed by a matched segment module to produce proposed changes to the map. The map can be updated using a map updating module based on the proposed changes from the matched segment module. Unmatched GPS traces may be processed by an unmatched segment module to produce proposed changes to the map. The map can be updated using a map updating module based on the proposed changes from the unmatched segment module. The proposed changes to the map may include metadata defining new roads in the map, new intersections in the map, updates to turn restrictions in the map, updates to the allowable directional traffic flow on the roads within the map, updates to road closures in the map.
US09816816B2

A method of displaying information pertaining to an air vehicle is disclosed. Information is displayed indicative of first portions of a map where distance between a current altitude of the air vehicle and terrain in the map are within a first threshold. Information is displayed indicative of second portions of a map where a distance between the current altitude of the air vehicle and terrain in the map are within a second threshold. The first and second portions are updated based on a change in the current altitude of the air vehicle. In another example, a map including a projected flight path of an aircraft is displayed. Location-based information pertaining to radio frequency (RF) status between the aircraft and at least one ground radio is displayed on the map. The location-based information pertaining to RF status is updated based on a change in the current position of the air vehicle.
US09816813B2

Some embodiments of the invention relate to a handheld measuring aid for use in a system—having a station for position and orientation determination of the handheld measuring aid—for surveying an object surface. the handheld measuring aid has in this case on a body, visual markings which are arranged in a defined spatial relationship, forming a pattern, on the body in a marking region, a measuring probe, which is arranged on an orifice of the body in a defined spatial relationship in relation to the pattern, for the object surface, an operating element, an electronic circuit for generating a measurement triggering signal—occurring as a function of an actuation of the operating element—and wireless communication means for transmitting the measurement triggering signal to the station.
US09816812B2

Systems and methods for sea state prediction and autonomous navigation in accordance with embodiments of the invention are disclosed. One embodiment of the invention includes a method of predicting a future sea state including generating a sequence of at least two 3D images of a sea surface using at least two image sensors, detecting peaks and troughs in the 3D images using a processor, identifying at least one wavefront in each 3D image based upon the detected peaks and troughs using the processor, characterizing at least one propagating wave based upon the propagation of wavefronts detected in the sequence of 3D images using the processor, and predicting a future sea state using at least one propagating wave characterizing the propagation of wavefronts in the sequence of 3D images using the processor. Another embodiment includes a method of autonomous vessel navigation based upon a predicted sea state and target location.
US09816810B2

Methods and systems for evaluating the performance of multiple patterning processes are presented. Patterned structures are measured and one or more parameter values characterizing geometric errors induced by the multiple patterning process are determined. In some examples, a single patterned target and a multiple patterned target are measured, the collected data fit to a combined measurement model, and the value of a structural parameter indicative of a geometric error induced by the multiple patterning process is determined based on the fit. In some other examples, light having a diffraction order different from zero is collected and analyzed to determine the value of a structural parameter that is indicative of a geometric error induced by a multiple patterning process. In some embodiments, a single diffraction order different from zero is collected. In some examples, a metrology target is designed to enhance light diffracted at an order different from zero.
US09816809B2

A system for obtaining three-dimensional information about a surface, the system comprising: a sensing device having: a pattern projector for providing a projected pattern on the surface; and a camera for acquiring a 2D image of the surface from a viewpoint, wherein at least one target of a set of reference targets and at least a portion of the projected pattern is apparent on the 2D image; a storage for calibration data; an image processor for extracting 2D image coordinates of surface points of the projected pattern and target contours from the 2D image; a 3D surface point calculator for calculating 3D coordinates of the surface points from the 2D image coordinates of the surface points; a 3D target calculator for calculating a 3D position and/or an actual orientation for the reference target.
US09816805B2

Method of predicting a distribution of light in an illumination pupil of an illumination system includes identifying component(s) of the illumination system the adjustment of which affects this distribution and simulating the distribution based on a point spread function defined in part by the identified components. The point spread function has functional relationship with configurable setting of the illumination settings.
US09816799B2

A deformation sensing fabric comprises a fabric substrate comprising a first fabric layer and a first conductive element woven into the first fabric layer. The first conductive element outputs a first instrumented signal, responsive to an applied stimulus signal, indicative of a measure of change in an electrical property of the first conductive element in response to a strain applied to the fabric substrate along a long-axis of the first conductive element. The first conductive element is instrumented by a measurement system which stimulates the first conductive element and measures an electrical property of the first conductive element.
US09816798B2

A position detector has first and second magnets with a magnet width that is different from a gap width of a gap. As a result, the gap width and the magnet width are independent of each other. The gap width is minimized relative to a molding member that molds a Hall element. The first and second magnets have a specific magnet width that generates a required magnetic flux density without increasing the magnet width, which enables a volume reduction of the position detector.
US09816795B2

Disclosed is a measurement marking device for attachment onto a measuring tape or ruler; wherein the attached measurement marking device may slide/travel along the measuring tape or ruler, and set measurement(s) marking(s) onto the measured object at desired measurements/locations/sizes/lengths.
US09816780B1

A lens cover for, and a method of reducing the signature of, an optical imaging system presented. A support structure is provided having a first ring-shaped end, a second ring-shaped end and a mounting portion for attaching one end of the support structure to a lens. A rotatable member is disposed at the second end of the support structure. A pliable membrane tube has a first end attached to the first ring-shaped end of the support structure and a second end attached to the second ring-shaped rotatable member so that the membrane tube forms an aperture. By rotating the rotatable member to twist the membrane tube the size of said aperture may be varied.
US09816773B1

A wire spring retained end cap for a firearm sound suppressor is provided. The discharge end of the firearm sound suppressor has a notched internal bore and a female threaded portion that receives a threaded male portion of the end cap. The threaded end cap has a channel and wire spring disposed within the channel. The wire spring biases a detent within one of the notches of the internal bore, thereby preventing the end cap from loosening during use of the firearm sound suppressor. The end cap is easily removed to clean or service the firearm sound suppressor.
US09816770B2

An enclosure holds an air mover, a switch, and a power source such as one or more electric storage batteries. A hollow outflow tube receives air drawn into the enclosure by the air mover. An end of the outflow tube has an outer diameter selected to pass through the action of a firearm and into the firing chamber. When the end of the outflow tube is inserted into the chamber and the air mover is turned on, ambient air is drawn into the enclosure, through the air mover, through the outflow tube, into the chamber, through the bore of the barrel, and out the muzzle, thereby cooling the firearm's barrel. When the end of the outflow tube is inserted into a chamber, an embodiment provides a visual indication that the chamber does not contain a cartridge.
US09816766B2

A manifold for a heat exchanger assembly includes a body with a first end disposed opposite a second end, and a top surface disposed opposite a bottom surface. A first side surface extends between the top and bottom surfaces, and a second side surface extends between the top and bottom surfaces opposite the first side surface. A first plurality of chambers is formed in the body with each chamber of the first plurality of chambers being spaced apart from one another between the first end and the second end of the body. A second plurality of chambers is formed in the body with each chamber of the second plurality of chambers being spaced apart from one another between the first end and the second end of the body.
US09816765B2

A piping module is described which comprises at least two fluid connections or ports for connection to at least one main heat exchanger of an air fractionation plant, whereby the main heat exchanger becomes linked to at least two fluid lines in a warm part of the air fractionation plant. The piping module comprises at least two ports on the main compressor side, couplable to at least two fluid lines in the warm part of the air fractionation plant, and at least two ports on the main heat exchanger side, couplable to at least two fluid ports of the at least one main heat exchanger, and at least two fluid lines connecting the ports on the main compressor side to the ports on the main heat exchanger side. A corresponding air fractionation plant and a method for erecting such an air fractionation plant (100) are likewise described.
US09816761B2

A method for manufacturing a heat exchanger is provided. The heat exchanger includes a plurality of plate-like fins that are stacked with a predetermined fin pitch, and a plurality of flat heat exchanger tubes that are disposed with a predetermined spacing from one another along the longitudinal direction of the plate-like fins and extend through the plate-like fins along the stacking direction. The plate-like fins each have a plurality of notches provided in an end portion along the long side. The plate-like fins have a shape corresponding to the cross-sectional shape of the flat heat exchanger tubes, and the flat heat exchanger tubes are inserted into the notches. The manufacturing method includes disposing the flat heat exchanger tubes with a predetermined spacing from one another, and attaching the plate-like fins to the flat heat exchanger tubes one by one by inserting the flat heat exchanger tubes into the notches of each of the plate-like fins.
US09816759B2

A power generation system includes four heating fluid circuits thermally coupled to heat sources from sub-units of a petrochemical refining system. The sub-units include a hydrocracking plant, an aromatics plant, and a diesel hydro-treating plant. Subsets of the heat sources includes hydrocracking plant heat exchangers coupled to streams in the hydrocracking plant, aromatics plant heat exchangers coupled to streams in the aromatics plant, and diesel hydro-treating plant heat exchangers coupled to streams in the diesel hydro-treating plant. A power generation system includes three organic Rankine cycles, each including a working fluid that is thermally coupled to at least one heating fluid circuit to heat the working fluid, and an expander to generate electrical power from the heated working fluid. The system includes a control system to activate a set of control valves to selectively thermally couple each heating fluid circuit to at least a portion of the heat sources.
US09816755B2

A process for separating carbon dioxide from a fluid containing carbon dioxide, NO2, and at least one of oxygen, argon, and nitrogen comprises the steps of separating at least part of the fluid into a carbon dioxide enriched stream, a carbon dioxide depleted stream comprising CO2 and at least one of oxygen, argon, and nitrogen and a NO2 enriched stream and recycling said NO2 enriched stream upstream of the separation step.
US09816748B2

The present invention relates to a refrigerator (1) comprising a fresh food compartment (2) wherein foodstuffs to be cooled are placed, a freezing compartment (3) wherein foodstuffs to be frozen are placed, and an ice cream making device (4) that is placed into the freezing compartment (3) and that has a cabinet (5), a receptacle (6) disposed inside the cabinet (5) and wherein ice cream is prepared, a mixer (7) situated in the receptacle (6), a motor (8) that actuates and rotates the mixer (7) and a transmission means (9).
US09816743B2

An electric motor drive device including a drive controller configured to control an operation of an inverter, the drive controller including a frequency setting unit configured to set an operating frequency of an electric motor, a frequency determining unit configured to determine whether or not the operating frequency set in the frequency setting unit is equal to or lower than a set frequency threshold value, a voltage determining unit configured to determine whether or not a value of a DC voltage is equal to or larger than a set voltage threshold value, and an inverter controller configured to control the inverter based on the operating frequency set in the frequency setting unit.
US09816737B2

A DC power-supply device that suppresses an excessive inrush current, can prevent breakage of elements and burnout of circuits, and converts alternating current from a three-phase AC power supply into direct current to supply it to a load, includes a rectifier circuit having a reactor connected to input or output side thereof and rectifying the alternating current from the three-phase AC power supply; first and second capacitors and connected in series between output terminals to the load; a charging unit selectively charges one or both of the first and second capacitors; and a control unit controlling the charging unit. When charging of the first and second capacitors is started, the control unit reduces the on-duty ratio, and then, until the on-duty ratio during a normal operation is reached, the control unit executes control such that the on-duty ratio is gradually increased as a predetermined time period is passed.
US09816735B2

Methods and systems for pumping compressible fluids in high pressure applications such as high-pressure liquid chromatography (HPLC) or supercritical fluid chromatography (SFC) applications are disclosed. An improved cooling device for a pump head for use in a supercritical fluid chromatography (SFC) system is described. A system for chilling a pumping system, includes a Peltier cooling element in thermal contact with a pump head, wherein the cooling element chills the pump head and a mobile phase fluid flowstream prior to the mobile phase fluid entering the pump; a fluid-cooled heat exchanger, attached to the Peltier cooling element, which removes heat from the cooling element using a circulating fluid; and a second heat exchanger which cools the circulating fluid.
US09816733B2

Embodiments provided herein are directed to systems and methods of re-injecting vaporized flash refrigerant from an economizer into a two-stage compressor. The injection can be through an injection port positioned after the first compression stage. The location of the injection may have a relatively low static refrigerant pressure. The injection port and/or an injection pipe of the economizer may be configured to pre-condition the vaporized flash refrigerant so that a flow velocity and/or direction of the vaporized flash refrigerant flow can be match a flow velocity and/or direction of the refrigerant in the refrigerant conduit.
US09816730B2

A solar radiation panel that has inlet and outlet collectors and a series of conduits that run from the inlet collector to the outlet collector. A working fluid that is heated by solar radiation flows inside the conduits. The panel is a single piece and includes an upper layer, at least one intermediate layer, and a lower layer. The upper layer receives the solar radiation. The at least one intermediate layer is located under the upper layer, and contains the conduits through which the working fluid flows. The lower layer is located under the intermediate layer, and the working fluid inlet and outlet collectors are coupled in said lower layer. The working fluid that is heated in the panel subsequently proceeds to a combustion engine that produces electricity by means of an alternator.
US09816729B2

In one embodiment a solar collector is provided. The collector has a modular heat transfer component, which includes a heat transfer core to heat up a heat transfer fluid in the form of an aerogel. The heat transfer core positioned comprises a light absorption element, and a fluid transfer element in the form of an aerogel. The aero gel comprises voids shaped and dimensioned to support passive pumping of the heat transfer fluid therethrough.
US09816726B2

A door with a gas burner on an inner surface and a system for carrying a combustible gas to the burner on the outer surface thereof. The door comprises a pair of metal sheets rigidly connected to one another at the edges thereof, each sheet having input and output openings for the gas mixture that are mutually separated in order to leave an inner space receiving a deflector plate serving as a thermal shield to be swept over on either side by the flow of the gas mixture supplying the burner. This arrangement reduces heat loss through the door; thus, keeping the outer surface cold, avoiding the risk of burns, and preheating the gas mixture. The invention can be used in heating appliances.
US09816725B2

A heat exchanger usable with a ventilator, the heat exchanger having an improved structure so that air passing through the heat exchanger may be prevented from leaking. The heat exchanger of the general inventive concept includes a heat-exchanging element having a plurality of liners stacked in a uniformly spaced state and a plurality of spacers disposed between the liners to define air passages, and corner guides respectively coupled to corners of the heat-exchanging element. Each of the corner guides includes a guide channel forming a space to receive the corner of the heat-exchanging element so that the corner guides securely come into close contact with the heat-exchanging element, and to minimize a loosening of the corner guide due to an adhesive applied between the heat-exchanging element and the corner guide.
US09816718B2

A device control determiner outputs a control information request containing a condition of facility devices in a data possessing device group possessing control information, and a kind of the control information. A connection relationship manager manages information regarding a connection relationship among each of the plurality of facility devices. A connection route database stores information regarding a connection route from a reference device that is a reference among the plurality of facility devices to another facility device. The device grouper creates a data possessing device group based on the control information request, the connection route database and information managed by the connection relationship manager. An information collective obtainer obtains control information from the facility device in the data possessing device group through a communicator, and creates a data array of the obtained control information.
US09816712B2

An outdoor unit includes a casing having a bottom plate and is configured such that at least a part thereof is made of metal, a compressor provided within the casing to compress a flammable refrigerant, an outdoor heat exchanger provided within the casing to exchange heat between the refrigerant and outside air, and an electric heater provided on an upper surface of the bottom plate. The power consumption of the electric heater is 250 W or less.
US09816701B2

A safe gas flame device providing more visible flames includes a burner having an air inlet end and a flame exit. The combustion end is configured to include a horizontal section of a fluid transporting tube. A fluid guiding device connects to the burner and includes at least one first and at least one second supporting structures disposed on opposite sides of the fluid transporting tube, a plurality of first fluid guiding members connecting and extending transversely to the at least one first supporting structure and arranged side by side along a length of the at least one first supporting structure, and a plurality of second fluid guiding members connecting and extending transversely to the at least one second supporting structure and arranged side by side along a length of the at least one second supporting structure.
US09816699B2

A lighting module having at least a semitransparent cover and at least one light emitting diode oriented to emit light through the semitransparent cover. Each light emitting diode is positioned a minimum distance from an inner surface of the semitransparent cover.
US09816688B1

Devices, systems and methods of converting the necks on lamp shades into threadable couplers that allow the shades with the couplers to be screwed onto the exterior threads on light sockets, such as those types of sockets found on wall mounted and ceiling mounted candelabras and ceiling fans. The couplers can include plate members that are fastened in a sandwich configuration on both the inside and outside of the neck portion of the shade with the sandwiched plate members having an interior threaded surface. Modified lamp shades can be screwed to exterior threaded light sockets on candelabra lights, pendant lights, ceiling fan lights, and any other type of lamp sockets that have removable lamp shades.
US09816682B2

A cover for a light source for use in a lamp or luminaire. An outer surface of the cover, opposite the light source, comprises a rounded shape and includes a protrusion extending from the cover. The protrusion extends substantially in a light emission direction and is shaped the protrusion to direct light emitted from the light source in a desired direction.
US09816680B2

Some embodiments provide a lighted cable termination assembly that includes a stand designed to be supported by a pipe and a substantially circular lens in communication with the stand. The lens includes a proud surface extending outwardly therefrom. A plurality of light emitting components are disposed under the lens. The proud surface of the lens provides an obstructed viewing angle of less than about 11° of the lighted cable termination assembly when installed on a 10 cm diameter pipe.
US09816679B2

Light assembly having reflector, light source, an outer light cover, and a curved transflective surface. Embodiments of light assemblies described herein are useful, for example, as signs, backlights, displays, task lighting, luminaire, and vehicle (e.g., cars, trucks, airplanes, etc.) components. Vehicle comprising light assemblies include those where the light assembly is a vehicle tail light assembly
US09816673B2

A vending machine includes a controller with an interface to control vending machine peripherals including an integrated LED lamp assembly having a plurality of light emitting diodes (LEDs) and a DC power connector to connect to a source of DC power within the vending machine. A power regulating circuit adjustably controls the amount of power provided to the LEDs in response to vending machine control signals.
US09816660B2

The subject matter of the invention is a lining hose as a composite hose for lining a pressure pipe to be renovated, comprising at least one first layer and a second layer which adjoins the first layer, the first layer forming a substantially fluid-tight and/or gas-tight diffusion barrier and the second layer being a textile fabric soaked in a resin and being provided for an all-over adhesive connection to an inner wall of the pressure pipe to be renovated, the lining hose being flexible in a state in which the resin has not cured. The second layer is at least 3 mm thick, the textile fabric and the resin being selected such that the lining hose forms a self-supporting pipe in a state in which the resin has cured. The invention also relates to a method for renovating a pressure pipe using such a lining hose and a corresponding renovated pressure pipe.
US09816657B2

A pipe fitting having a main body portion into which a retainer is inserted and which, when inserted over a pipe, a flange provided to the pipe contacts first taper portions formed to a front side of the retainer, pushes out the first taper portions, and passes by the retainer. When the main body portion is pulled off the pipe, the flange contacts second taper portions formed to a rear side of the retainer, pushes out the second taper portions and passes by the retainer.
US09816656B2

A locking pipe joint assembly, device and method can employ a center body connector, one or more sealing elements, such as a wiper seal and a sealing ring, a sealing ring retainer and a retaining cap. In various embodiments, primary and secondary fastening rings are employed along with a retaining cap sleeve. In embodiments, the retaining cap includes an internal or external thread that mates with an external or internal thread on one side of the center body connector, which allows the retaining cap to tighten the packing arrangement components around an inserted piping or tubing element, and in secure engagement with the interior of the center body connector. In embodiments, a bolt element is provided for further securing of the retaining cap to the center body connector.
US09816655B2

A push fitting joint packaging arrangement allows for rotation locking as between a fitting and an inserted pipe or tubing element. In various embodiments, the arrangement comprises one or more sealing members, a fastening ring with one or more prolated ear members, a tube support member and a push release member.
US09816637B2

A testing cap for a valve body includes a base configured to releasably attach to the valve body and to cover an opening in the valve body. The opening is configured to receive a valve cartridge and the base covers the opening in place of the valve cartridge. The testing cap includes a structure extending from the base. The structure is configured to be oriented relative to the valve body in a first orientation and a second orientation. The structure allows fluid to enter the valve body through an inlet port in the valve body and exit the valve body through an outlet port in the valve body when the structure is oriented in the first orientation. The structure covers at least one of the inlet port and the outlet port when the structure is oriented in the second orientation, thereby preventing fluid flow through the valve body.
US09816635B2

Valve for fluid and gaseous media, more particularly for regulating the pressure in pipelines, containing a housing of at least one upper and lower part, a pressure adjustment unit, wherein the pressure adjustment unit comprises a spindle, a spring plate, a spring holder and at least one spring, a cartridge, wherein the cartridge forms a function unit by means of which the function of the valve is defined, wherein the cartridge preferably contains an interior housing, a fastening means, a poppet and a diaphragm, wherein the diaphragm serves for dividing the housing into a medium-free and a medium-flowing area, wherein the cartridge is pre-fitted as a function unit and is disposed replaceably as a complete unit in the housing.
US09816632B2

An actuated valve system operates (open/close) automatically under overpressure condition. The system includes an on/off valve assembly, a spring actuator assembly configured to actuate the on/off valve assembly to open or close a path for the pressurized fluid, a lock mechanism with one locking yoke and two rotatable locking handles, a collapsible pin type pressure sensing assembly configured to trigger the action of the spring actuator assembly, and a pressure sensing line. The collapsible pin type pressure sensing assembly includes a body, a plunger with two stems, one of which is rigidly connected with the locking yoke, and a collapsible pin, which mechanically fails when the fluid pressure reaches the predetermined level. When the collapsible pin fails, the plunger moves together with the locking yoke, and the locking yoke loses its restriction to the motive element of the spring actuator assembly, and thus trigger the operation of the actuated valve system.
US09816629B2

The invention relates to a pressure control valve having a control element that includes a valve component and a drive component. The valve component include an orifice that, in a first position, may be closed by the control element, disconnecting a control chamber from a return chamber, such that a control pressure acts on a first control surface of the control element and in a second position, the orifice may be partially opened, so that the control and return chambers are fluidically connected to each other, such that the control pressure in the control chamber acts on a second control surface of the control element.
US09816628B2

A check valve including a clevis, a hinge pin, a hinge configured to be rotatably coupled to the clevis by the hinge pin, and a disc configured to be detachably coupled to the hinge. The hinge includes a first hinge member having a male interlocking feature and a second hinge member defining a female interlocking feature corresponding to the male interlocking feature. The second hinge member is configured to be detachably coupled to the first hinge member. When the first hinge member is coupled to the second hinge member, the male interlocking feature of the first hinge member is received in the female interlocking feature defined in the second hinge member to prevent angular separation of the first and second hinge members about the hinge pin. The first and second hinge members may define a non-circular opening configured to prevent rotation of the disc relative to the hinge.
US09816622B2

A check valve (100) has a valve seat (20), and a valve disc (30) which closes the valve seat (20) in an openable/closable manner by linear reciprocating oscillation in the direction approaching or departing away from the valve seat (20), the check valve (100) being configured, as a lift-type check valve, to allow therein the inflow direction (D1) of a fluid (F) flowing into the valve seat (20) and the passing direction (D2) of the fluid (F) passing through the valve disc (30) to cross each other, the valve disc (30) being provided with, on the inflow side (primary side) thereof, a deflection surface (40) on which the fluid (F) is deflected from the inflow direction (D1) to the passing direction (D2).
US09816619B2

A thrust plate for a butterfly valve includes a thrust plate body that defines a recess. The recess extends between a bottom thrust surface, side walls and an open top. A wear-resistant coating is located on the bottom thrust surface.
US09816617B2

A magnetic fluid seal includes a pole ring having an inner diameter, a rotatable shaft having an outer diameter, the rotatable shaft configured to extend along the inner diameter of the pole ring between an atmosphere side and vacuum side, at least one magnet coupled to the pole ring, the at least one magnet configured to emit a magnetic field having a strength and a shape, and grooves formed on either the inner diameter of the pole ring or the outer diameter of the shaft, the grooves capable of containing ferromagnetic fluid. The ferromagnetic fluid contained the grooves varies so as to improve the performance of the magnetic fluid seal.
US09816608B1

A gear engagement method for a hybrid vehicle includes detecting whether or not baulking occurs when a controller attempts to engage a target gear via a synchronizer. The gear engagement method also includes checking, by the controller, for a stationary state of the vehicle if the result of the detecting shows that there is baulking. The gear engagement method also includes engaging, by the controller via the synchronizer, a different gear that shares a same input shaft with the target gear if the result of the checking shows that the vehicle is in a stationary state. The gear engagement method also includes reattempting an engagement with the target gear after disengaging the different gear. The disengaging and the reattempting are performed by the controller via the synchronizer after the engaging.
US09816606B1

A gear shifting device, for engagement to bicycle or other device, for actuating a translating to actuate sequential shifts in a gear train, is provided. A base of the device engages with one or a plurality of index plates which employ sequential detents to regulate a distance rotated by a cable spool which translates a cable to acuate shifting. The index plate may be interchanged to one having detents matching a new gear train when users change their bike configuration.
US09816590B2

A planetary gear train of an automatic transmission includes an input shaft, an output shaft, and first to fourth planetary gear sets respectively including first to third, fourth to sixth, seventh to ninth, and tenth to twelfth rotating elements, wherein the input shaft and the second rotating element, the output shaft and the eleventh rotating element, the first and sixth rotating elements, the first and eighth rotating elements, the seventh and eleventh rotating elements, and the ninth and tenth rotating elements are fixedly interconnected, and the output shaft is selectively connected with the third rotating element, and achieves ten forward speeds and one reverse speed by selectively operating three control elements among seven control elements.
US09816585B1

A repair link for chain comprises a body and first and second loop sections. The body has a longitudinal axis. The first loop section extends from the body and defines a first loop opening with a first loop axis extending normal to the first loop opening. The second loop section extends from the body opposite the first loop section. The second loop section defines a second loop opening with a second loop axis extending normal to second loop opening. The first loop axis and the second loop axis are non-parallel. Each of the first and second loop sections has a removable loop segment. Each removable loop segment is removable to open the respective loop opening to couple the repair link to another link of chain, and reassembleable with the respective loop section in a locked position to secure the removable loop segment and enclose the respective loop opening.
US09816583B2

The flywheel energy storage device (3) comprises a rotor (2) with at least two hubs (11, 12) and a drive (33) for the rotor (2), whereby the rotary element (23) is mounted at least via the first hub (11) with the first journal (21) in a first bearing (31) of the flywheel energy storage device (3), and at least via the second hub (12) with the second journal (22) in a second bearing (32) of the flywheel energy storage device (3), and the rotor (2) can be made to rotate by means of the drive (33) via the first and/or second journals (21, 22), whereby the journals (21, 22) in the rotor (2) are connected to each other exclusively via the hubs (11, 12) and via the rotary element (23).
US09816575B2

A caliper disk brake of a vehicle with a brake disk, a brake caliper, a brake anchor plate, a force transmission element guided and supported in a shaft of the brake caliper or of the brake anchor plate, a holding-down spring for holding down the force transmission element, and a holding-down device held and supported on the caliper by a holding device, pretensions the holding-down spring radially against the force transmission device and pretensions the holding-down spring tangentially in the direction of rotation against the force transmission device during forwards travel. The holding device has a center line parallel to the axis of rotation of the brake disk. The tangential pre-tensioning is at least partially attributed to the dimensions of the holding-down device, as measured in the tangential direction from the center line, being larger at least in sections on the disk exit side than on the disk entry side.
US09816572B2

A machine tool deceleration device, in particular a hand-held machine tool deceleration device, for a portable machine tool, includes at least one magnetic deceleration unit. The magnetic deceleration unit includes at least one movably mounted claw segment element that is configured to change at least one parameter of a magnetic field of the magnetic deceleration unit.
US09816566B2

A seal for a cross member unit for universal joints has a carrier ring to be inserted into a bearing cup of the cross member unit. The carrier ring has an L-shaped cross section with a cylindrical portion coaxial to a longitudinal axis and a flange portion extending form the cylindrical portion inwardly. An elastomeric sealing lip element is connected to the carrier ring. The sealing lip element has first engagement elements form fittingly engaging into first engagement apertures. The first engagement apertures extend through the flange portion of the carrier ring. The sealing lip element further has second engagement elements form fittingly engaging into second engagement apertures. The second engagement apertures extend through the cylindrical portion of the carrier ring.
US09816560B2

The present invention achieves construction for a seal ring-equipped ball bearing (1a) that allows the outer-diameter dimension of a load-bearing surface (35a) to be made large, allows a large contact area with a transmission gear (16) to be secured, and allows dynamic torque to be reduced. Seal lips (14a) of seal rings (4a) that cover opening sections on both sides of the seal ring-equipped ball bearing (1a) have a substantially horizontal V-shaped cross-section and are configured so that an outer-diameter-side inclined section (25) and an inner-diameter-side inclined section (26) are connected by a continuous portion (27). The inner-circumferential edge section of the inner-diameter-side inclined section (26), which is the tip-end edge of the seal lip (14a), is made to slide over the entire circumference of the outer peripheral surfaces of both end sections of an inner ring (8a), the end sections being cylindrical surfaces (30) without seal grooves. The angle (α1) of an inside-continuous surface (29) of the continuous portion (27) is at least 104°, and the overall length of the inner-diameter-side inclined section (26) is kept long by the continuous portion (27) entering radially inward into a wave-shaped retainer (10a).
US09816556B2

Rolling bearing (1) comprising an inner ring (3), an outer ring (2), at least one row of rolling elements which are arranged between raceways formed on the rings (2, 3) and a ring gear (6) that has a circumference of less than 360° and is fixed to one of the rings (2). The ring gear (6) is formed of a single gear segment (7) which has a circumference substantially equal to the circumference of the ring gear (6) and is provided on its inner or outer peripheral surface with a plurality of meshing means (7b) and fixed only to one of either the inner or outer rings (3) of the rolling bearing (1).
US09816548B2

In a method for connecting a press-in bolt with a metal sheet, the metal sheet is positioned upon a cover element of a joining tool. The press-in bolt is forced by the joining tool in a pilot hole of the metal sheet as the metal sheet is supported by the cover element in its capacity as a die, until a head portion of the press-in bolt rests upon one side of the metal sheet and the cover element is pressed upon a shaft portion of the press-in bolt and radially deformed to rest upon another opposite side of the metal sheet.
US09816547B2

A clip nut, including a clip. The clip has a first retaining device, a second retaining device, and a connecting device, which connects the first retaining device to the second retaining device. The distance between the retaining devices is variable. The extension of the first and second retaining devices substantially define an x axis and the extension of the connecting device substantially defines a z axis. A y axis is perpendicular to the x axis and the z axis. The clip nut also includes a nut, which is arranged on the second retaining device such that an axis of the nut is aligned parallel to the z axis and/or perpendicular to the x axis. The axis of the nut is pivotable from the position of the axis of the nut parallel to the z axis and/or perpendicular to the x axis about the axis in an xz plane such that the parallelism of the axis of the nut with respect to the z axis and/or the perpendicular position of the axis of the nut with respect to the x axis is abandoned. A seal facing the first retaining device is provided on the nut, and a component, to which the clip nut is fastened, directly contacts the first retaining device and the seal.
US09816546B2

A firearm barrel nut assembly including barrel nut, generally cylindrical in shape with a threaded central bore, and an externally threaded locknut which is used in conjunction with the barrel nut to secure a barrel to a firearm upper receiver. The barrel nut has an integral bushing on its exterior constructed to support either the gas tube or piston of the host firearm's operating system. The barrel nut is configured so that it may be independently and non-rotationally held within a vice or other fixture during installation of the barrel and while the locknut is tightened to a preset torque to hold the barrel in place while the barrel nut is independent of the torque applied to the locknut to properly secure the barrel to the upper receiver.
US09816534B2

A hydrostatic drive system (1) has a hydrostatic pump (3) driven by a drive motor (2) and connected in a closed circuit with a hydrostatic motor (4). The hydrostatic motor (4) drives a consumer (5) and the closed circuit is formed by a first hydraulic connection (6a) and a second hydraulic connection (6b). A hydrostatic accumulator (30) can be connected with at least one of the two hydraulic connections (6a, 6b). A hydrostatic drive unit is located in an accumulator flow path (21) between one of the two hydraulic connections (6a, 6b) and the hydrostatic accumulator (30) and an additional hydrostatic drive unit is located in a tank flow path (22) between the other of the two hydraulic connections (6a, 6b) and a tank (17). The hydrostatic drive unit and the additional hydrostatic drive unit are a hydrostatic dual-flow double drive unit (20) provided in the accumulator flow path (21) and in the tank flow path (22).
US09816533B2

A jet pump, a jet pump data tool system, and method of use thereof. The jet pump includes a body having an intake, a first aperture, and a second aperture between the first aperture and the intake. A carrier is seated in the body and receivable in the first aperture. The carrier includes a venturi for drawing wellbore fluid from the intake into the venturi. A housing for a data tool extends from the carrier. The housing is in fluid communication with the intake for allowing wellbore fluid to be exposed to the data tool. The carrier is seatable in the body by flowing power fluid and the carrier into the first aperture. The carrier is retrievable from the body by flowing power fluid into the second aperture.
US09816529B2

A propeller system for an aircraft includes an assembly for modifying a sound field of the propeller system. The propeller system includes a rotor supported for rotation about a rotor axis. The rotor has a central hub and a plurality of blades each extending outwardly from the hub to a tip. The rotor and blades are operable to propel an aircraft to travel in a direction. The rotor blades define a rotor plane perpendicular to the rotor axis. The blade tips define a circumferential rotational path as the blades are rotated by the rotor. The propeller system includes an acoustic resonator or multiple resonators having openings disposed within a distance to the propeller blade tip that is small compared to the wavelength of the propeller's fundamental blade tone and proximate to the rotor plane. The resonators are excited by tip flow of the blade as it passes the opening. The acoustic resonators are configured and positioned so as to direct acoustic energy to modify the sound field of the propeller system at blade pass or higher harmonic frequency tones in a desired direction relative to the aircraft.
US09816525B1

A fan assembly comprises a fan and a movable fan support. The fan has a motor and a fan blade drivable by the motor to move air in an airflow direction through an opening. The movable fan support is configured to movably support at least the fan. The fan support is mountable adjacent the opening on a first side and comprises extension members extendable from an operating position on the first side of the opening to an access position on a second side of the opening opposite the first side. In the access position, the extension members extend through the opening from the first side to the second side to support the motor and fan blade on the second of the opening for access.
US09816520B2

A pump fitting has an inlet adaptor (10) for connection to an outlet (39) of a container (38) of fluid and including an inlet passage (10), an outlet passage (11) for fluid and a pump housing (12) between the inlet passage (10) and the outlet passage (11). The pump housing (12) contains a rotor (17) rotatably received in an interior surface of the housing (12). The rotor (17) includes a housing-engaging surface (23, 24) co-operating with the interior surface of the housing (12) to form a seal therebetween and also including at least one shaped surface (21, 22) radially inwardly of the housing-engaging surface and forming with the interior surface of the housing a chamber (25, 26) for conveying fluid from the inlet passage (10) to the outlet passage (11) on rotation of the rotor (17). A seal (28) is provided between the outlet passage (10) and the inlet passage (11), the seal (28) being urged into engagement with the rotor (17) to prevent fluid passing from the outlet passage (11) to the inlet passage (10) as the shaped surface rotates. The inlet passage (10), the outlet passage (11) and the housing (12) are formed as a one-piece molding.
US09816517B2

A turbo-compressor includes an impeller, a motor that generates heat by rotation and rotatably drives the impeller, a fluid passage through which a working fluid is forced by the impeller, and a heating mechanism that transfers the heat generated by the rotation of the motor to fluid upstream of the impeller so as to heat the working fluid at the inlet of the fluid passage.
US09816515B2

A ceiling fan includes a support, a motor portion, a blade portion, control section, illumination portion, and case. Illumination portion includes lower illumination cover, upper illumination cover, and LED substrate portion. Heat dissipation plates are provided on a side of upper illumination cover.
US09816511B2

An apparatus for driving a load is provided. The apparatus comprises a multiple-shaft gas turbine comprising a high pressure compressor and a high pressure turbine drivingly connected to one another by a first gas turbine shaft and a low pressure compressor and a power turbine drivingly connected to one another by a second gas turbine shaft extending coaxial with the first gas turbine shaft, the high pressure compressor and the high pressure turbine. The apparatus also comprises a load coupling drivingly connecting the power turbine to the load and a dual-speed turning gear with an output shaft drivingly engageable to and disengageable from the load, the dual-speed turning gear comprising a low speed turning motor and a high speed turning motor, wherein the low speed turning motor and the high speed turning motor are configured to selectively drive the load.
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