US07882877B2
A combination wheel and valve assembly has a plurality of spokes each having at least one aperture through a rim-end thereof. A rim has an inner surface and a spoke mating element opposite the inner surface. A plurality of through-holes extend through the spoke mating element of the rim. A plurality of bolts are shaped to fit through the aperture of the rim-end of each of the spokes, and into one of the plurality of through-holes of the spoke mating element, to fasten each spoke to the rim. A conduit extends through the inner surface of the rim to one of the through-holes of the rim, such that a valve assembly can extend through the aperture of one of the spokes and engage the through-hole having the conduit, thereby enabling fluid flow through the valve assembly and the conduit to the inner surface of the rim.
US07882874B2
A plasticizing system used for plasticizing a diene rubber composition is based on an MES or TDAE oil and on C5 fraction/vinylaromatic copolymer resin, in particular a copolymer of a C5 fraction and of styrene resin. A rubber composition exhibiting an improved abrasion and cut resistance is based on at least a diene elastomer, a reinforcing filler, a crosslinking system, and a plasticizing system comprising between 5 and 35 phr of an MES or TDAE oil and between 5 and 35 phr of such a resin. A tire is formed of the above mentioned rubber composition. A process for preparing such a composition, use of said composition for the manufacture of a finished article or of a semi-finished product intended for a motor vehicle ground-contact system, in particular a tire and a tread of such a tire.
US07882871B2
A work bench (10) including at least two work piece supports (57), the two supports are positioned at intervals along an elongate member (24) and define a substantially horizontal plane in which a work piece can move, a mounting (20) for a power tool (12), the mounting is affixed to the elongate member and can rotate about an axis that is substantially parallel to the length of the elongate member, a ground engaging member (106) which supports the power tool mounting at a point spaced away from the elongate member and adjustment means for adjusting the effective length of the ground engaging member.
US07882868B2
The present invention concerns a compact, portable, lightweight, easily transportable, quickly operating wood splitting apparatus, using a knife which cuts a log or piece of wood that is deposed on a platform. This compact and portable wood splitter is actuated by a hydraulic cylinder transmitting a pendulum movement to a knife and onto an upright piece of wood. The apparatus may be attached to a truck box, to a trailer or to a wall by means of a vertical, horizontal, fixed or mobile fixture. The splitter apparatus is compact and portable and it can easily be stored in a car trunk or in a shed.
US07882864B2
An apparatus for gripping a tree, the apparatus being attachable to a carrier boom, the apparatus being usable with a cutting device for cutting a portion of the tree, the apparatus comprising: a body, the body being mountable to the carrier boom; a pair of gripper arms mounted to the body, the pair of gripper arms being selectively movable between an open configuration in which the tree is insertable therebetween and a closed configuration in which the pair of gripper arms is able to grip the tree therebetween; and a support arm operatively coupled to the body for supporting the cutting device, the support arm including a cutting device mount for mounting the cutting device thereto, the support arm being configured, sized and operatively coupled to the body in a manner such that the cutting device is rotatable relatively to the pair of gripper arms about three different rotation axes; whereby, when the pair of gripper arms grips the tree, the pair of gripper arms stabilizes the support arm relatively to the tree and allows for the orientation of the cutting device relatively to the tree by the support arm. It is a general object of the present invention to provide a new and improved hydraulic tree pruning and trimming head attachment, hereinafter abbreviated simply as head attachment.
US07882863B2
An apparatus and method for transferring a chosen quantity of medication from a vial to an intravenous infuser container under sterile conditions is described. The present invention further facilitates dissolving solid medications contained in the vial or diluting concentrated medications contained in the vial, and transferring the resulting solutions to the infuser container.
US07882854B2
The invention relates to an end hose for discharge of thick substances, particularly of liquid concrete. The end hose (12) can be connected with its entry-side end to a pressure feed line (14) of a mobile thick-matter pump, and has a discharge opening (16) for the thick substances at its exit-side end, and consists of a flexible material. In order to prevent the end hose (12) from kicking out when blockages are loosened, it has at least two hose parts (26, 28) having different bending rigidity, connected with one another at a transition point (30).
US07882852B2
A direct drive servovalve device includes (i) a servovalve motor having a stator and a rotor assembly configured to rotate relative to the stator, (ii) a valve member coupled to the rotor assembly, and (iii) a sensor assembly. The sensor assembly includes an interface configured to couple to a controller that controls the servovalve motor, a set of programmable Hall sensors coupled to the interface, and a support. The support (e.g., a ring-shaped collar or sleeve) supports the set of Hall sensors at an installation location which is (i) adjacent to the rotor assembly and (ii) fixed relative to the stator. The set of programmable Hall sensors is configured to provide a set of position signals to the controller through the interface. The set of position signals identifies a rotational position of the rotor assembly relative to the stator.
US07882851B2
A water hammer arrestor and drain trap primer valve includes a hollow pipe having a closed end, a discharging end, an inlet, an outlet port connected to said discharging end and attachable to plumbing tubing, an inlet port connected to said inlet and attachable to plumbing tubing, an insert plug within said pipe positioned at said discharging end and at said inlet, said insert plug substantially tubular with opposing flats, and having a longitudinal cylindrical bore and a latitudinal threaded through bore, a port bolt within a portion of said insert plug and a portion of said inlet port, said port bolt substantially tubular and having a longitudinal cylindrical bore and a latitudinal through bore distributor aligned with the insert plug longitudinal cylindrical bore, and a check piston within said pipe and slidingly engageable with said insert plug and said outlet port wherein said check piston engages slidably responsive to water pressure changes at said inlet port and an integral air gap outlet.
US07882834B2
An apparatus and method of controlling the delivery of therapeutic gas delivered to a patient undergoing positive airway pressure therapy is described. The method includes providing a flow of gas to a patient's airway at a pressure, obtaining information from the range of 0 to 25 Hz of the frequency domain of the flow, and adjusting the pressure based on the information. The apparatus includes a blower for providing a flow of gas to a patient's airway at a pressure, a sensor to measure a characteristic of the flow, a controller to obtain information from the range of 0 to 25 Hz of the frequency domain of the characteristic, and a pressure regulator for adjusting the pressure based on the information.
US07882832B2
Various embodiments of a fluid displacement system are disclosed. The system may include a reservoir containing a fluid in a liquid state and a first chamber hydraulically connected to the reservoir to receive the fluid from the reservoir. The first chamber may be configured to receive solar energy and configured to convert the received solar energy to vaporize the fluid. The system may also include a second chamber hydraulically connected to the first chamber to receive the vaporized fluid from the first chamber. The second chamber may be configured to condense the vaporized fluid, causing depressurization in the second chamber. The system may also include a hydraulic connection between the second chamber and a source of fluid to be displaced. The system may be configured such that the depressurization of the second chamber may cause fluid in the source of fluid to be displaced through the hydraulic connection.
US07882831B2
A system for delivering objects, such as soccer balls, the system including a delivery device and a methodology for training individuals that can be used with the delivery device, the delivery device including an accelerator that accepts, accelerates, and launches the object with motion characteristics, such as linear acceleration, angular acceleration, or a combination of both, and an assembly that adjusts the position of the accelerator to adjust an exit trajectory of the object that includes adjustment about a yaw axis, an elevation axis, and a spin axis of the object. Highly and accurate and consistent delivery of the object facilitates single and multi-player use for training, such as in the sport of soccer.
US07882830B1
A paintball gun system comprises a bolt defining a propellant passageway and a gun body defining the following elements: a receptacle for receiving the bolt, a firing charge storage chamber adjacent to but separate from the bolt receptacle, a gas inlet port, a first passageway between the storage chamber and the receptacle, a second fixed passageway between the gas inlet and the receptacle. The first passageway communicates with a first flow opening into the receptacle and the second passageway communicates with a second flow opening into the receptacle. The bolt is axially movable between a chargeup position and a firing position. In the chargeup position, the bolt and the body together define a confined flow circuit between the first opening and the storage chamber. In the firing position, the bolt and the body together define a confined flow circuit between the storage chamber and the discharge inlet.
US07882825B2
An air heater for heating air entering a combustion chamber of an internal combustion engine is disclosed. The air heater includes a heating element having a substantially planar portion and a flange portion. The flange portion is positioned at an angle to the planar portion. The planar portion is positioned within an air flow at an upstream location relative to the flange portion. A structure is operable to position the heating element in communication with the air entering the combustion chamber of the engine. In addition, a thermal expansion joint for interconnecting a heating element and a frame is disclosed.
US07882811B2
Methods for improving the efficiency of internal combustion engines are disclosed. In one embodiment, a method of improving the efficiency of an internal combustion engine comprises controlling the motion of an exhaust valve associated with a cylinder of the internal combustion engine. Camshafts and internal combustion engines configured for performing methods of the instant invention are also disclosed.
US07882801B2
A method of collecting a sample of milk while milking a succession of animals comprises diverting a portion of milk from an animal into a flowpath (74, 77) leading to an extraction point (80). The flowpath (74, 77) is dimensioned such that milk flows along the flowpath as a plug occupying the whole of its cross-section and allows some of the milk from the animal to pass the extraction point (80). Thereafter the milk is transferred into a container or other receiver and at least some of the remaining milk of that animal reaching the extraction point.
US07882796B2
A method and a device for preparing drinkware where a substance is applied to the rim of the drink-ware and substances can be dispensed from the device. One device includes a cabinet that can house and dispense substances, and the substances may either be filled directly into receptacles, stands, arms or drawers and/or pre-filled in contoured drawer liners. The cabinet may include a moistening reservoir and separates the moistening reservoir from the Spice by housing the moistening agent in a distinct and separate location.
US07882794B2
A method of using a buoyancy fluid presenting density that is less than that of sea water, and that is confined in a rigid or flexible leaktight casing, so as to constitute an immersed buoyancy element, wherein the buoyancy fluid is a compound that is naturally in the gaseous state at ambient atmospheric temperature and pressure, and in the liquid state at the underwater depth to which the buoyancy element is immersed. The present invention also relates to a method of putting a buoyancy element into place between the surface and the bed of the sea, wherein the fluid is stored in a tank on a surface ship as a liquid in the cooled or compressed liquid state, and it is injected in the liquid state into a pipe from the surface where it is stored to an said immersed casing at an underwater depth at which the underwater pressure is not greater than the vapor pressure of the gas corresponding to the compound at the temperature at the depth.
US07882792B2
The present invention refers to a floating auxiliary structure, similar to a floating rigid portal, of simple construction and low cost, designed to facilitate moving of equipment of large sizes and mass in sea operations. With the aid of the auxiliary floating structure of the present invention, equipment of large size and mass, for exporting oil production, for example, may be transported until site and lowered into sea with the use of two conventional tug boats.The invention also includes the procedure for removal of equipment from main tug boat and its descent until the sea.
US07882790B2
A sewing machine includes a display device, a display data storage device storing pattern display data for displaying each sewing pattern on the display device and pattern group display data for displaying on the display device a pattern group indication mark indicative of each of a plurality of pattern groups obtained by classifying the sewing patterns, a selecting operation device selecting one of the sewing groups and further either or any one of the sewing patterns contained in the selected pattern group, and a display control device which, when one of the pattern groups has been selected, causes the display device to display the pattern group indication mark indicative of the selected sewing pattern group on the display device firstly in an enlarged size and subsequently in a reduced normal size, based on the pattern group display data of the selected pattern group.
US07882785B2
A demolition charge system has a multi-primed initiation system with a rigid container defining an internal chamber. An initiation tube is supported within the internal chamber and is configured to receive a demolition initiator.
US07882782B2
A printing device for printing sheet elements (2) that are serially fed to the printing device, in particular product labels made of temperature-sensitive paper or paper substitute materials, comprises at least two separate feed devices (3a, . . . , 3f) for each liner strip (1) comprising the sheet elements (2), wherein each feed device (3a, . . . , 3f) comprises a peeling-off device (4a, . . . , 4f) for peeling the sheet elements (2) from the liner strip (1), and wherein the feed devices (3a, . . . , 3f) are associated with a print head (5a, . . . , 5f) with a thermal slat (6a, . . . , 6f) for printing a sheet element supported by a counterpressure surface (7a, . . . , 7f), and comprising an application device (8) for removing the printed sheet element from the print head (5a, . . . , 5f) and for applying the printed sheet element to a product.
US07882781B2
A duplex printing apparatus capable of printing by performing a slow-up operation on the printing speed so that it increases from a low speed to a set speed at the time of duplex printing. Control means controls, on the basis of a drum rotation position signal and a drum speed signal from a home position sensor and an unshown encoder sensor, a sheet feeding unit, printing unit, sheet discharge unit, sheet re-feeding means and switching member, such that the printing speed (drum speed) slows up from a low speed to a set speed in each rotation of a plate cylinder, which corresponds to feeding of each sheet to the printing unit when duplex printing is started, and further controls a stepping motor of the sheet re-feeding means such that conveyance speed of a sheet receiving board synchronizes with the printing speed.
US07882779B2
A variable displacement inclined plate type compressor comprising a spindle, an inclined plate provided to be inclinable relative to the spindle and rotating together with the spindle, a pair of shoes arranged to hold the inclined plate therebetween, and a piston coupled with the inclined plate through the pair of shoes, wherein the quantity of stroke of the piston is determined depending on the inclination angle of the inclined plate. In the sliding surface of the inclined plate with which the planar part of the shoe comes into contact, a groove is provided such that the contact area of the shoe and the sliding surface of the inclined plate when the inclination angle of the inclined plate is minimum becomes smaller than that when the inclination angle of the inclined plate is maximum. In such a structure, power consumption can be reduced during low displacement operation without damaging reliability of the compressor.
US07882775B2
An immobilization device and method of restraining vehicles, persons and animals uses tendrils attached to various devices to engage the target. The immobilization device, system and method includes a housing containing launchable tendrils that are launched from the housing by a propellant. The tendrils may be attached to straps or other elements carried by the immobilization device. The tendrils will engage the target and restrain it if it is a vehicle such as a car, truck, boat, submarine, or like vehicle. In stopping a person or animal the tendrils will deliver a marking package, a shocking package or a snare package to mark, shock or snare the target. Straps may be pulled off the housing leaving the housing near the point of deployment.
US07882771B2
A dust-collecting device for collecting cutting chips produced by a cutting device has a separator for separating the cutting chips from the carrier air by utilizing the force of gravity upon the cutting chips. A dust container collects the cutting chips separated by the separator. The separator includes a separator body having a cutting chip discharge pipe and an air discharge pipe. After separation the carrier air is discharged upward from the separator body via the air discharge pipe. The separated cutting chips are discharge downward from the separator body via the cutting chip discharge pipe. The dust container is connected to the cutting chip discharge pipe.
US07882768B2
The invention relates to a manual wrench for actuating cylindrical elements. The inventive wrench comprises a fixed jaw (1) and a moving jaw (3) which are disposed on one end of a handle (2), whereby the fixed jaw (1) is secured with a transverse keyed assembly. The invention also includes an elastic pin (5) which extends through said keying. Moreover, the face of the fixed jaw (1) that faces the moving jaw (3) is equipped with a toothed section (7) comprising identical teeth which extend along a curved zone such as to define a single arc.
US07882764B2
A steering wheel includes (a) a core member having a boss portion, a spoke portion, and a rim portion, the spoke portion stretching between the boss portion and the rim portion; and (b) a polyurethane member covering at least the rim portion of the core member, the polyurethane member having a specific gravity of 0.7 to 0.9 and a Shore A hardness of 45 to 60. A steering wheel proper defined as being a combination of the core member and the polyurethane member has a weight of 1.0 to 2.5 kg. This steering wheel is satisfied in both of weight reduction and maintenance of moment of inertia necessary for steering wheel.
US07882754B2
A gas component collector comprises a filter assembly 3 comprising an adsorbent and an adsorbent holding plate having a first face, a second face and a plurality of holes that are bored through from the first face to the second face and are filled with the adsorbent adsorbing at least one gas component to be analyzed, the filter assembly satisfying (AL−V)2/L3≧0.003 mm3 and V/AL≧0.3, where V is a total volume of the adsorbent, A is a sum of an opening areas of the holes, and L is an average length of the holes, and a holding container 2 housing the filter assembly 3. On at least one of the holding container 2 a first opening portion for introducing gas and a second opening portion for allowing the introduced gas to be discharged are formed.
US07882750B2
An apparatus for measuring at least one parameter associated with a fluid flowing within a pipe includes a single sheet of piezoelectric film material wrapped around at least a portion of the pipe and an array of sensors disposed at different locations on the film material. Each of the sensors provides a signal indicative of pressure within the pipe at a corresponding axial and/or circumferential location of the pipe. The sensors are selectively configurable to provide the pressure signals. The signals are processed to determine the parameter. The array of sensors is configurable in response to different criteria. The criteria includes at least one of the parameter of the fluid to be output, an input signal specifying sensors to be selected, a predetermined configuration based on the parameter to be determined, and in response to a previously determined parameter of the fluid.
US07882743B2
A personal noise dosimeter having functionality for increasing the dynamic range of the device. A microphone provides a signal to an RMS detector, which provides a DC signal to a two-stage amplifier circuit. The outputs of the amplifiers are provided to a processor having multiple A/D channels. The processor calculates accumulated noise doses and drives a display, which in one embodiment includes a panel of light-emitting diodes. A current source injects current into the output of the RMS detector to reduce performance degradation. Functionality detects and accounts for voltage offsets in the dosimeter. The microphone is turned off during offset determination. In one embodiment, the dosimeter includes functionality for control of external devices such as sound boards.
US07882736B2
A process fluid level measurement system is configured to measure a level of at least one process fluid in a vessel. The vessel has a cage with at least one annular isolator located inside the cage. The at least one annular isolator has a band-shaped isolator diaphragm. A differential pressure transmitter is operably coupled to the annular isolators) and is configured to generate a level output based, at least in part, upon pressure measured relative to the annular isolator(s).
US07882734B2
A mixing system comprising a bowl, mixing element and motor. A mixing element is located within the bowl and is driven by a motor to impart mechanical energy to the foodstuff being mixed upon contact. A method for predicting instantaneous loading on the mixing system motor. A method for increasing the power to the motor comprises introducing additional current in advance of instantaneous loading. A method for identifying the foodstuff being mixed to control operation of the mixer either by allowing user interaction or increasing the current to the motor in advance of instantaneous loading and demands on the motor.
US07882727B2
Embodiments of the invention generally related to a method and apparatus for scanning a v-bank filter. In one embodiment, an apparatus for scanning a v-bank filter includes a hollow body having first and second ends. An outlet, formed at the second end of the body, is adapted for coupling a testing device to an interior volume of the body. A plurality of holes are formed through the body and are fluidly coupled to the interior volume. In another embodiment, a method for scanning a v-bank filter includes inserting a probe having a plurality of sample ports into a filter adjacent a filter pack, and traversing the probe along the filter pack. In yet another embodiment, a method for scanning a v-bank filter includes scanning a slot of a v-bank filter with a probe, and collecting samples of gas passing through the filter an into the probe.
US07882724B2
A particle filter for an internal combustion engine, in particular a soot particle filter, can be tested. The filter is subjected at the inlet side to a hot gas flow which is laden with particles. The particles are supplied to the hot gas flow from a particle storage container by means of a dosing device. The quantity of particles which is introduced into the hot gas flow during a predefined measurement time period is determined by weighing the particle storage container. There is also provided a configuration for carrying out the method.
US07882711B2
To transfer the stitches from a first needle arc (7X) to a second opposed needle arc (7Y), a overturnable semicircular sector (19) presents elements (25) terminating in a bifurcate way (25F) (flanking inside the respective sinkers (11) the relevant needle (7X) of the first arc), each of which has an upper fork projection (25A) embracing the needle (7X) and forming a rear recess (25X) and a front recess (25C) suitable to engage an end stitch (M1) formed by the corresponding needle (7X), said stitch (M1) then being transferred and engaged on a corresponding needle (7Y) of the second needle arc.
US07882708B2
The invention relates to a heat exchanger, especially for motor vehicles, comprising a soldered heat exchanger network made of flat pipes (2,3) and corrugated ribs (1). A liquid and/or vaporous-type medium can flow through the flat tubes (2, 3) and air can circulate around the corrugated ribs. One corrugated rib respectively comprises two surfaces (4,5) which are arranged in an essentially parallel manner in relation to each other and which are connected respectively by an arch-shaped piece (6) which is soldered to a flat pipe, said arch-shaped piece comprising three sections (6a,6b,6c) which have different curvatures.
US07882707B2
A system for desuperheating hot gaseous refrigerant using both a heat exchanger and a dispersed Venturi-driven injection of liquid refrigerant is disclosed. Further, a system, relating to cooling at least one compressed superheated refrigerant fluid prior to condensing, relating to extending the life of at least one condenser is disclosed.
US07882701B2
A high-bandwidth MEMS actuation system includes actuator pairs coupled in parallel to a stage, each actuator energizable in a drive direction against a bias to an energized position, and movable upon deenergization, to the rest position to define an actuation cycle. The actuators are asymmetric, with an energization frequency greater than a bias frequency, and are opposably coupled to one another. A pulse generator alternately transmits pulses to the actuators, at an alternation frequency greater than the bias frequency. The pulse generator transmits the energization pulses to each of the actuator pairs sequentially at a sequence frequency greater than the cycle frequency. The actuators are each movable from energized to rest positions faster than the bias frequency, and the actuator pairs are sequentially energizable faster than the cycle frequency, wherein the stage is movable in one degree of freedom at a bandwidth of at least four times the cycle frequency.
US07882694B2
A turbine engine includes a plurality of variable fan inlet guide vanes. Where the turbine engine is a tip turbine engine, the variable fan inlet guide vanes permit the ability to control engine stability even though the fan-turbine rotor assembly is directly coupled to the axial compressor at a fixed rate. The fan inlet guide vanes may be actuated from an inner diameter of the fan inlet guide vanes.
US07882693B2
A turbofan engine assembly includes a core gas turbine engine including a high-pressure compressor, a combustor, and a high-pressure turbine, a first fan assembly disposed upstream from the core gas turbine engine, a first gearbox coupled to the first fan assembly, and a second gearbox coupled to a booster compressor such that the booster compressor rotates in a rotational direction that is opposite to the rotational direction of the first fan assembly. A method of assembling the above turbofan engine assembly is also described herein.
US07882691B2
A turbine engine includes low and high pressure spools. A high power take-off shaft is coupled to the high spool. An auxiliary component, such as a generator, is configured to be driven by the high power take-off shaft at a first speed. The low spool, in part, drives the auxiliary component, for example, by interconnecting the high power take-off shaft to a lower power take-off shaft through a speed summing gearbox. The gearbox drives the auxiliary component and increases the rotational speed of the auxiliary component from the first speed to the second speed. The low power take-off shaft also drives another generator, in one example. The turbine engine can be started by the low pressure generator, for example, in response to a command from a controller, which transforms the generator into a starter motor.
US07882687B2
Composite Alpaca yarn and a process for making same. The composite Alpaca yarn comprises special and unique characteristics created by blending long natural irregular Camelid fibers, such as Alpaca, with short synthetic fibers, or other natural fibers, in a combination determined by homogenization of fibers. The homogenization of fibers takes into account fiber lengths for twisting them with the use of high-pressure air blown nozzles, wherein Alpaca fiber is wrapped around an internal core. The face and surface of the composite Alpaca yarn, exhibit the fine characteristics of the Camelid fibers, including thermal isolation and impermeability, along with exceptional softness, wherein the Camelid fibers can be as fine as 18 microns.
US07882667B2
A panel for connection with other panels, comprising a rectilinear base member having outer edges, a first rectilinear side member extending from one edge of the base member, the first side member having a first lip extending from an outward edge of the first side member and away from the base member, the first side member further having a second lip extending from an outward edge of the first lip and toward the base member and at an angle between about zero and 90 degrees with respect to the first lip, and a second rectilinear side member extending in substantially the same direction as the first side member, from an opposite edge of the base member, the second side member having a third lip extending toward the base member. Related structural members, enclosures, posts, spray booths and methods for assembling the same which include similar features are provided.
US07882666B2
A prefabricated building component, e.g. for incorporation in a wall, a floor, a roof or another building component, comprises a frame formed by lengths of lumber with heat insulating foam material provided in spaces between the lumber so as to form a heating insulating barrier. To reinforce the frame against racking forces, a reinforcement sheet of fiber reinforced composite material is provided on the barrier and the lumber at least one side of the frame.
US07882665B2
The present invention provides construction configurations and a construction method for steel houses that eliminate the shortcoming of the conventional platform construction method for steel houses that complicates the structure because of the need to use metal reinforcements without losing the advantage of the conventional method that facilitates the construction work by using wall panels. After constructing the ground story wall (lower story wall) 22 by attaching wall panels 21 for the ground story to through vertical frame studs 20 extending to upper floors, the second story wall (upper story wall) 23 is constructed by attaching wall panels 21 for the upper Story to the through vertical frame studs 20. Of the wall panels 21 disposed along the four sides of the lower story, the top ends 29 of the two opposite wall panels 21b are positioned lower than the top ends 29a of the lower story wall panels 21a on the other two opposite sides. Both ends of the floor panel 24 are mounted on the lower top ends 29 of the wall panels 21b.
US07882655B1
A rear gun sight device for a rifle having a receiver and cover, the receiver having a tee shaped slot on the top rear of the receiver. This slot is designed to accept and retain a recoil assembly. The invention replaces the rear portion of the recoil assembly allowing the invention to perform the function of the original rear portion of the recoil assembly as well as provide a rear sight for the rifle. This invention is comprised of a sight base provided with a tee shaped base to engage the tee shaped slot in the top rear trunion of the rifle's receiver, a spring boss to accept the end of the recoil spring when assembled in the recoil assembly, a spring guide to guide the recoil spring, a sight component assembly comprised of windage and elevation adjustment components as well as aperture sight components, and cover retention elements.
US07882635B2
A method for producing an ink-jet head includes forming a buffer layer on an upper surface of a vibration plate, and forming a piezoelectric precursor layer on an entire upper surface of a surface layer, the piezoelectric precursor layer being converted into a piezoelectric sheet. The buffer layer is formed of a material with which mutual diffusion between the piezoelectric precursor layer and the buffer layer is hardly caused as compared with mutual diffusion between the piezoelectric precursor layer and the vibration plate with which no buffer layer is provided. A stack, in which the buffer layer and the piezoelectric precursor layer are formed, is heated at a predetermined temperature, and the piezoelectric precursor layer is calcinated to form the piezoelectric sheet. It is possible to suppress the deterioration of the performance of the piezoelectric member.
US07882628B2
The formation of electronic assemblies is described. One embodiment includes providing a body and forming a first metal pad layer on a first surface thereof. A second metal pad layer is formed in contact with the first metal pad layer, the second metal pad layer having a denser pitch than the first metal pad layer. A dielectric layer is formed between the metal pads in the first and second metal pad layers. Vias extending through the body from a second surface thereof are formed, the vias exposing the first metal pad layer. An insulating layer is formed on via sidewalls and on the second surface, and an electrically conductive layer formed on the insulating layer and on the exposed surface of the first metal layer. Elements are coupled to the second metal pad layer and the electrically conductive layer coupled to a substrate. Other embodiments are described and claimed.
US07882617B2
The main magnetic pole piece of a magnetic head for perpendicular magnetic recording preferably has an inverted trapezoidal shape in order to maintain a sufficient recording magnetic field. Embodiments of the present invention enhance the covering power of the protective film around the main magnetic pole piece of the magnetic head and thereby ensure reliability even when the main magnetic pole piece has such a shape. In one embodiment, the protective film for protecting the main magnetic pole piece is formed by a sputtering apparatus while applying a bias, or it is formed by a carousel type sputtering apparatus or the chemical vapor deposition (CVD) technique.
US07882614B2
A method for providing a power inductor comprises forming a first magnetic core material having first and second ends and an inner cavity that extends from the first end to the second end; forming a first notch in the first magnetic core material that projects inwardly towards the inner cavity from one of the first and second ends; and passing a first conductor through the inner cavity that is received by the first notch.
US07882613B2
A method of applying at least one magnet to a surface of a component made of a magnetic material includes placing the at least one magnet in a holding apparatus, and positioning the holding apparatus in the immediate vicinity of the component. A holding element applies a holding force to the at least one magnet to hold it in the holding apparatus. The holding element is deactivated such that the holding force is reduced, and the at least one magnet is transferred to the surface of the component. A holding apparatus for applying at least one magnet to a surface of a component made of a magnetic material includes a surface region for supporting the at least one magnet and at least one deactivatable holding element for applying a force on the at least one magnet.
US07882612B2
A method for producing a membrane for a device, e.g. a microphone, includes providing a substrate is provided on which a counter electrode is disposed. A sacrificial layer is provided on a surface of the counter electrode facing away from the substrate. The surface of the sacrificial layer facing away from the counter electrode is structured to form a plurality of recesses in the surface to define one or several antistick elements and one or several corrugation grooves at the same time. Subsequently, a membrane material is deposited on the structured surface of the sacrificial layer. Then, the sacrificial layer is removed to form the membrane, which has one or several corrugation grooves and one or several antistick elements.
US07882609B2
A X-structure of a key and a manufacturing method thereof are disclosed. The X-structure comprises a first frame and a second frame. The first frame comprises a bar. The first frame is connected and pivoted to the second frame via a fold located on the bar. The key comprises a keycap, a base and the X-structure installed between the keycap and the base. The manufacturing method of the X-structure comprises: providing the X-structure and pressing the bar to generate a fold until the first engaging portions are connected and pivoted to the second engaging portions.
US07882608B2
In a case where the load is not smaller than the predetermined value, the positioning is not completed even when it is determined that the movable body is moved to the position supposed to be the target position, then the movable body is moved to a retry starting position different from the position supposed to be the target position, subsequently a retry operation is performed for moving the movable body from the retry starting position to the position supposed to be the target position, and consequently the positioning is completed when the load becomes smaller than the predetermined value after the retry operation is performed for a predetermined number of times.
US07882605B2
A fastening element is provided for an end area of a first strap of an item of corsetry, particularly of women's undergarments. The fastening element is to be fastened to a second strap of the item of corsetry and has an number of strap plies of which at least one strap ply has a fastening part such as at least one hook, one eye or the like. Comfort of wear is improved for a fastening element of this type with a padding provided between two strap plies. This padding is attached to at least one of the strap plies by joining it near the lateral edges of the fastening element. When the fastening element is in use, the fastening is located, at least in part, between strap plies of the fastening element.
US07882604B2
An assembled structure comprising: a housing; a plate-shaped elastic member attached in the interior portion of the housing; and a confirming portion for confirming a state of attachment of the plate-shaped elastic member, wherein the confirming portion is provided in an elastic member attachment portion where the plate-shaped elastic member is attached in the housing, and is formed so as to confirm that the plate-shaped elastic member is properly attached in the housing with a predetermined positional relation between an attachment region of the plate-shaped elastic member attached to the housing and the confirming portion, is provided.
US07882602B2
A slide fastener with a separable bottom end stop, which can be handled easily by everyone and closed or separated easily. The slide fastener includes a slider through which fastener element rows of a pair of right and left fastener tapes pass; and a separable bottom end stop including a fitting body provided on one of the fastener tapes and a pivot stopper body provided on the other fastener tape and being capable of engaging with the fitting body. The pivot stopper body has a pivot stopper portion which is capable of rotatably engaging with the fitting body by fitting the fitting body in the pivot stopper portion from a side portion of the pivot stopper body and capable of rotatably engaging with the fitting body by inserting the fitting body in the pivot stopper portion through an element guide passage from a shoulder mouth of the slider.
US07882598B2
A compact low-profile clamp for clamping objects comprises a toothed band formed into a closed loop having a first end and a second end and a head that holds the band in a closed loop and comprises a first and a second side-by-side passageways that also include teeth. The second end of the band is secured in a second passageway. The band is then passed around the object to form a loop and the first end of the band is pushed into the first passageway; the teeth hold the band in the closed loop. A chamber located at one end of the first passageway has an opening that is accessible from the outside to enable the first end of the band to be pulled to tighten the band.
US07882594B2
A handle has at least one holding plate which can be mounted in an opening in a thin wall such as a sheet-metal cabinet door, a head part, such as a flange or turning handle, which covers the rim of the opening of the thin wall on its (outer) side, and a body part which proceeds from the head part and can be pushed through the opening in the thin wall, and a holding part which is carried by the body part, supported on the other (rear) side of the thin wall, and is separate from the body part. According to the invention, the holding part is formed by holding elements which project in a flexible manner from the body part in the direction of its outer surface and whose free end has an inclined surface for supporting the body part on the rim or edge of the opening without play.
US07882588B2
An applicator principally for use in the dental profession, for the placement of different materials as may be required. The applicator includes an elongated handle having an applicating end portion formed at the opposed ends thereof which may be either of like or unlike construction, i.e. formed as a brush and/or a flocked applicating end portion. The flock may extend from the distal end a predetermined longitudinal distance over an extended portion. Intermediate the opposed applicating end portion, the elongated handle is provided with a circumscribing groove to define a frangible area by which the user, at his or her option, can cleanly sever the applicator handle to form two separate and distinct applicators. The applicator is also provided with a hinging arrangement adjacent the opposed applicating end portions whereby the applicating end portions may be angularly bent relative to the elongated handle at the option of the user.
US07882582B2
A patient support apparatus has a powered transport device that is operable to propel the apparatus along a floor in forward and reverse longitudinal directions, as well as in left and right lateral directions. A user input for selection of discrete speed settings for the powered transport device is included on the patient support apparatus. User inputs for controlling the direction that the apparatus is propelled are provided at the head end, foot end, and both sides of the patient support apparatus.
US07882579B2
Various embodiments include a bassinet assembly that includes one or more rods and a floor that includes an inclinable flap. Each rod has a static portion and an inclined portion, and the rods are disposed below upper surfaces of the floor and the inclinable flap. A first longitudinal axis of the static portion and a second longitudinal axis of the inclined portion intersect at an angle greater than 0° and less than about 90°. When the inclinable flap is raised above the floor, the rods rotate about the first longitudinal axis such that the first and second longitudinal axes are in a plane substantially perpendicular to the support surface, and when the inclinable flap is allowed to lay substantially flat against the floor, the rods rotate about the first longitudinal axis such that the first and second longitudinal axes are in a plane substantially parallel to the support surface.
US07882574B2
A one-piece back support apparatus comprises a belt portion being configured to provide back and abdominal support encircling a wearer's waist and a compression pants portion. The belt portion has a front portion, a back portion, a top portion, a bottom portion and an inner surface. The compression pants portion secured to the belt is configured to provide support for the wearer's pelvis, legs, and groin area. The inner surface of the belt has one or more pack support portions with slots for receiving one or more gel packs so as to maintain contact between the gel packs and the wearer's back. Slots in the belt portion may accommodate vertically extending inserts of rigid plastic to reinforce the belt portion over the lumbar region of the wearer.
US07882572B2
The elastic cap includes a cap body, a cap bill joined to the cap body, a sweatband secured to a lower periphery of the cap body, and a strip of core wrapped by the sweatband. The sweatband is constructed with a stretchable material. The strip of core is constructed with a non-stretchable material having a liquid absorbent or liquid draining property. The strip of core extends over a forward portion of the sweatband adjacent to the cap bill, but does not extend in a rear portion of the sweatband which is remote from the cap bill.
US07886360B2
The invention relates to a security device for data carriers which may be or is secured onto or within a data carrier or its housing, and in which data may be exchanged, especially bidirectionally, with the security device, by means of a read/write device especially provided for the data carrier. The invention furthermore relates to a data carrier, especially optical data carriers with such a security device, as well as a process for securing data carriers against unauthorized copying, wherein data recorded on an electronic security device installed upon or in a data carrier, are processed by the security device and the outcome of such processing is read out from the security device.
US07886358B2
A port profiling system detects unauthorized network usage. The port profiling system analyzes network communications to determine the service ports being used. The system collects flow data from packet headers between two hosts or Internet Protocol (IP) addresses. The collected flow data is analyzed to determine the associated network service provided. A host data structure is maintained containing a profile of the network services normally associated with the host. If the observed network service is not one of the normal network services performed as defined by the port profile for that host, an alarm signal is generated and action can be taken based upon the detection of an Out of Profile network service. An Out of Profile operation can indicate the operation of a Trojan Horse program on the host, or the existence of a non-approved network application that has been installed.
US07886357B2
According to one embodiment of the invention, a method for reducing the false alarm rate of network intrusion detection systems includes receiving an alarm indicating a network intrusion may have occurred, identifying characteristics of the alarm, including at least an attack type and a target address, querying a target host associated with the target address for an operating system fingerprint, receiving the operating system fingerprint that includes the operating system type from the target host, comparing the attack type to the operating system type, and indicating whether the target host is vulnerable to the attack based on the comparison.
US07886354B2
A mechanism for segregating traffic amongst STAs that are associated with a bridge, referred to herein as the personal virtual bridged local area network (personal VLAN), is based upon the use of a VLAN to segregate traffic. The IEEE 802.1Q-1998 (virtual bridged LANs) protocol provides a mechanism that is extended by the invention to partition a LAN segment logically into multiple VLANs. In the preferred embodiment, a VLAN bridge forwards unicast and group frames only to those ports that serve the VLAN to which the frames belong. One embodiment of the invention extends the standard VLAN bridge model to provide a mechanism that is suitable for use within an AP. In a preferred embodiment, the Personal VLAN bridge extends the standard VLAN bridge in at least any of the following ways: VLAN discovery in which a personal VLAN bridge provides a protocol for VLAN discovery; VLAN extension in which a Personal VLAN allows a station to create a new port that serves a new VLAN, or to join an existing VLAN via an authentication protocol; Logical ports in which a Personal VLAN bridge can maintain more than one logical port per physical port, and bridges between ports of any kind; and cryptographic VLAN separation.
US07886349B2
The described embodiments include a system for controlling communications between a first network and a second network including a plurality of in-line security devices, the in-line security devices being configured to manage communication between the first network and the second network, and including a state server connected to the plurality of in-line security devices, the state server being configured to receive state information about the state of the connections established by a first one of the in-line security devices and to communicate the state information to at least a second one of said in-line security devices. In one embodiment, the in-line security devices are firewalls. In another embodiment, state server communicates the state information received from the first one of the firewall devices and communicates the state information to every other one of the plurality of firewall devices.
US07886339B2
A computer implemented method, apparatus, and computer program product for authenticating a user to a network. In response to receiving a request from a user to access a protected resource, the process sends a unique bit sequence into a network connection utilized by the user. Next, the process authenticates the user to access the protected resource in response to receiving a verification that the unique bit sequence was received by an access point that authenticated the user when the user logged on to the network.
US07886334B1
A first user's trust level with regard to a second user can be determined by providing questions to the second user, with the questions based on a previously-collected knowledge base including information about the first user. The information about the first user may be partitioned into levels of trust, and the second user's responses to the questions may be evaluated to determine which level of trust the second user is entitled to. The knowledge base may be assembled by prompting the first user for information and/or by scanning or otherwise collecting already-existing data about the first user. The knowledge base and/or trust assessment may be distributed across a network, and in some embodiments the knowledge base or parts thereof is distributed to other users according to the trust level of those users.
US07886332B2
A receiving apparatus for, in a case that an application program is executed at a television receiving apparatus, permitting execution of the application program during a period in which a predetermined channel or a broadcast program is viewed.
US07886330B2
A method and apparatus for set top box (STB) receiving a single selection or actuation, and in response to a single selection from a user, transferring a program and auxiliary data related to the program from a first storage device of the STB to a removable storage device.
US07886324B1
In a system in which an IEEE 1394 interface is provided for an IRD, connected equipment can be easily selected and the operability is improved. Data can be transmitted among the equipment by providing the IEEE 1394 interface for the IRD. For example, five equipment units are selected from the equipment connected to the IEEE 1394 interface and node ID numbers are allocated to the five equipment units and registered. Thus, even if the equipment is removed from the interface and connected again, the IRD can recognize the equipment. The registration may easily be changed by user input. When the registration is changed, the change of the registration is inhibited among equipment units in which a program reservation has been set or the connected equipment. Thus, even if the registration is changed, an erroneous operation does not occur.
US07886322B2
When a user touches any desired position on a display screen, a position detection section detects a specification position on the display screen and a data processing control section controls to scroll a display area based on a positional relationship between the specification position detected by the position detection section and a predetermined position on the display screen, namely, the direction, the distance, and the like.
US07886320B2
A television display device for use with a television display for displaying television services, an input for providing at least one command to the television display device and a broadcast stream containing a stream of key files including data representing respective key images, the television display device including a memory for storing a plurality of control images and for maintaining continuously in memory at least one of said key files, an event selector for selecting an event and associating the event with a selected one of the plurality of control images, an action selector for selecting an action and associating the action with the selected control image, a display section for detecting the event and, in response, producing display information for displaying for a predetermined period the selected control image on a portion of the television display superposed on the television service being viewed and a command section for initiating the action conditional on whether or not a control command is provided by the input unit within said predetermined period, wherein, the display section, when displaying the selected control image, simultaneously displays the key image of one of the data files currently stored superposed on the television service being viewed and the command section executes the content of the key file of the displayed respective key image conditional on a key command being provided by the input unit within the predetermined period.
US07886315B2
An optical disc case, in which an optical disc is stored, wherein a face cover portion and a rear-face cover portion are connected so as to be rotated with the end portion side of each of the principal faces thereof as the center, and are configured so as to form a box-shaped appearance when the face cover portion and the rear-face cover portion are closed such that the respective principal faces of the face cover portion and the rear-face cover portion face each other, the case including: a protruding holding portion, configured to fit into a central hole formed in the optical disc to hold the optical disc, provided to the inner side of the principal face of the rear-face cover portion; and a booster antenna to which a first antenna and a second antenna are connected configured to relay a signal sent/received from one antenna to the other antenna.
US07886307B1
A method transfers data from a data source to multiple data sink objects. The data acquired from the data source is encapsulated into a data object. Identification information of the data object is posted to a data server. The data server shares the identification information with the data sink objects that are registered with the data server. The data sink objects access the data object with the identification information at execution time. A counter indicates the number of data sink objects that currently use the data object. The data object is removed from the memory of the computer systems when the counter indicates that the data object is no longer used by the data sink objects. Alternatively, the data object that is no longer used may be stored in a separate memory location of the computer systems for a future use.
US07886306B2
A system and process for passing messages directly between instances of Operating System (OSs) and plurality of Coupling Facilities (CFs) through Sharable InterSystem Channels (ISCs) and without polling, in one or more Computer Electronic Complexes (CECs). Primary messages and associated secondary messages are passed by a hypervisor using a hypervisor memory.
US07886303B2
A method for dynamically arranging DSP tasks. The method comprises receiving an audio bit stream, checking a remaining execution time as the DSP transforms the audio information into spectral information, simplifying the step of transforming the audio information when the DSP detects that the remaining execution time is shorter then a predetermined interval, and skipping one section of the audio information and decoding the remaining section when the execution time is less than a predetermined interval.
US07886301B2
In a virtualization environment, there is often a need for an application to access different resources (e.g., files, configuration settings, etc.) on a computer by name. The needed resources can potentially come from any one of a plurality of discrete namespaces or containers of resources on the computer. A resource name can identify one resource in one namespace and another resource in another namespace, and the namespaces may have different precedence relative to one another. The resources needed by the application can be accessed by enumerating names in a logical merger of the namespaces such that as new names in the logical merger are needed they are dynamically chosen from among the namespaces. When two resources in different namespaces have a same name, the resource in the higher precedence namespace can be chosen.
US07886300B1
A mechanism is disclosed for implementing fast locking in a multi-threaded system. This mechanism enables fast locking to be performed even on an operating system platform that does not allow one thread to assign ownership of a lock on a mutex to another thread. In addition, the mechanism performs locking in a manner that ensures priority correctness and is low-memory safe. In one implementation, the priority correctness is achieved by using operating system mutexes to implement locking, and the low-memory safe aspect is achieved by pre-allocating a memory section to each thread. This pre-allocated memory section ensures that a thread will have sufficient memory to obtain a lock, even when a system is in a low-memory state. With this mechanism, it is possible to implement locking in a safe and efficient manner.
US07886299B2
A storage system comprises a plurality of processors, a plurality of volumes, and interconnecting means to connect the plurality of processors and the plurality of volume to each other. The storage system detects and determines the cause of the performance bottleneck, wherein the cause may be one of plurality of reasons. The storage system applies an appropriate load balancing method according to the determined cause of the performance bottleneck.
US07886295B2
The present invention provides a connection manager, method, system and program product for centrally managing computer applications. Specifically, under the present invention, a connection manager is provided that centrally manages the applications through a queue broker, and communicates with components of a heartbeat manager and cleanup manager. The connection manager of the present invention provides, among other things, a centralized point for: (1) applications to directly connect to one another; (2) heartbeats of the applications to be monitored; and (3) any necessary cleanup actions to be implemented.
US07886286B2
A system and method for integrating legacy code into a component-based system. A component-based system is provided that allows legacy components to locate necessary artifacts, and includes: a context finder that is installed as a context classloader, wherein the context finder analyzes an execution stack to identify a component that initiated a context classloader call during runtime; and a buddy loading system that examines the component to determine if the component requires buddy loading to locate an artifact and locates the artifact using a predefined policy.
US07886283B2
An alternative to a real time operating system (RTOS) is provided based on serializing compilers. A serializing compiler can transform a multitasking application into an equivalent and optimized monolithic sequential code, to be compiled with the embedded processor's native optimizing compiler, effectively filling the RTOS gap. The serializing compiler can analyze the tasks at compile time and generate a fine-tuned, application specific infrastructure to support multitasking, resulting in a more efficient executable than one that is intended to run on top of a generic RTOS. By having control over the application execution and context switches, the serializing compiler enables the fine grain control of task timing while enhancing overall performance. The serializing compiler technology strengthens existing compilers, making them timing and task-aware. The Phantom compiler provides a fully automated mechanism to synthesize a single threaded, ANSI C/C++ program from a multithreaded C/C++ (extended with POSIX) program.
US07886281B2
The disclosure is directed to a method of tracing processing of software instructions associated with a transaction. The method includes writing an access data stream addressed to a receiving application on a remote application server and writing a transaction identifier to the end of the access data stream. The receiving application is configured to read the access data stream and the transaction identifier when an instrumented version of the receiving application is implemented on the remote application server.
US07886280B2
There is disclosed a system for flattening hierarchically structured flows using a breadth-first approach. At each level of hierarchy of a hierarchically structured source flow, complex nodes are flattened by one level across the entire breadth of the flow. The results of this flattening are placed in a target flow, and any connections that existed in the source flow are re-established in the target flow in such a way that any data input into the target flow will be processed as if it had been input into the source flow. After a processing iteration, if there are still complex nodes remaining in the target flow, the target flow becomes the next source flow, and the process is repeated until the flow has been completely flattened.
US07886279B2
An information processing apparatus executes a first module, a second module, and a third module for mediating a call from the first module to a function in the second module and obtaining the log of processing in the second module in response to the call. The apparatus obtains the log from the third module, extracts, from the obtained log, attribute information of functions and identifiers assigned to the functions, and determines, on the basis of attribute information of a first function and a second function among the extracted functions, identifiers assigned to the first function and the second function, whether processing in the second module has normally ended.
US07886278B2
A system and method for object reference monitoring. In one embodiment of the invention, a method includes running a computer application, monitoring a configuration point of the computer application during runtime, determining that a program object is accessed by the computer application at the configuration point, and storing data regarding the program object.
US07886277B2
A system and method in a data processing system for error checking and resolving failed input/output open calls. A configuration mechanism configures the options, such as the information stored in databases, details of how each error check is performed, and what actions should be taken when improper error checking occurs. Based on data stored in databases, such as an I/O calls database, a rules with syntax database, and an usage calls database, a code analyzer analyzes code in software programs for an error check of a failed input/output open call. A reporting mechanism reports data from the analyzed code to a report file, such as why software programs have proper and improper error-checking instances, sends errors from the analyzed code to an error file, and enables these files to be displayed on a display. Finally, the code analyzer enables resolving an improper error check for the failed input/output open call.
US07886275B2
In a process for providing run time information for computer programs for controlling industrial robots (robot control programs), a first system time of a computer system executing the program is determined after the calling and before the execution of an individual command or a sequence of individual commands (subroutine). The individual command or the subroutine is subsequently executed, and a second system time of the computer system is determined after the execution. The determination of the system times is carried out on the basis of access times to certain areas of a program memory of the computer system, which areas characterize the individual commands or the subroutine. It is thus possible to carry out run time measurements on robot control programs in a simple and efficient manner, and the results of these run time measurements can be used to optimize such programs.
US07886273B2
Described herein is a method that produces fully (mathematically) tractable development of policies for autonomic systems from requirements through to code generation. This method is illustrated through an example showing how user formulated policies can be translated into a formal mode which can then be converted to code. The requirements-based programming method described provides faster, higher quality development and maintenance of autonomic systems based on user formulation of policies.Further, the systems, methods and apparatus described herein provide a way of analyzing policies for autonomic systems and facilities the generation of provably correct implementations automatically, which in turn provides reduced development time, reduced testing requirements, guarantees of correctness of the implementation with respect to the policies specified at the outset, and provides a higher degree of confidence that the policies are both complete and reasonable. The ability to specify the policy for the management of a system and then automatically generate an equivalent implementation greatly improves the quality of software, the survivability of future missions, in particular when the system will operate untended in very remote environments, and greatly reduces development lead times and costs.
US07886261B1
A programmable logic integrated circuit device adapted to enter a low-power mode is described. The integrated circuit device includes a programmable logic block, a first low-power mode control circuit programmed into a portion of the programmable logic block, a second low-power mode control circuit, and a low-power enable input coupled to the first low-power mode control circuit and the second low-power mode control circuit. This arrangement allows the programmable logic integrated circuit device to transition into and out of low-power mode in response to a single signal from system control logic, so that the system control logic can be designed without detailed understanding of the inner workings of the programmable logic integrated circuit device or its programmed design.
US07886256B1
Approaches for determining a static timing analysis of a logic design are disclosed. Physical delay arcs of a plurality of physical elements of an integrated circuit specify respective propagation delays from inputs of the physical elements to outputs of the physical elements. Logic components of the logic design are mapped to selected ones of the physical components of the physical elements. For each of the logic components, the logic delay arcs are determined from the physical delay arcs. Each logic delay arc for each logic component specifies a propagation delay from an input of the logic component to an output of the logic component. A static timing analysis of the logic components is performed using the logic delay arc, and data from the timing analysis is output.
US07886254B2
A method for amending layout patterns is disclosed. First, a layout pattern after an optical proximity correction is provided, which is called an amended pattern. Later, a positive sizing procedure and a negative sizing procedure are respectively performed on the amended pattern to respectively obtain a positive sizing pattern and a negative sizing pattern. Then, the positive sizing pattern and the negative sizing pattern are respectively verified to know whether they are useable. Afterwards, the useable positive sizing pattern and the negative sizing pattern are output for the manufacture of a reticle when they are verified to be useable.
US07886251B2
An invention is provided for building configurable designs synthesizable to gates. The invention includes creating a configurable design using an HDL. The configurable design has a plurality of instantiated configurable constructs that can be optionally included in a design. Basically, the configurable design is an all-inclusive design having a large set of features, including varying interfaces, FIFO depths, and other features. Then, a derived design is generated by removing configurable constructs from the configurable design based on a specification, typically a customer specification received from a customer for a particular design. The specification indicates which configurable constructs are to be included in a derived design. Thereafter, the derived design is synthesizable in logic.
US07886238B1
Systems and methods to optimize a layout based on the yield analysis is disclosed. The method includes generating an integrated circuit layout having two or more layers of wire interconnect to form net segments and having one or more via contact layers to couple net segments in the wire interconnect together. The method further includes performing a yield analysis of the net segments in the integrated circuit layout and displaying the net segments with a visual depiction of the yield analysis using multiple levels of opacity to reflect yield scores of the net segments in the integrated circuit layout.
US07886234B2
Methods for generating an embedded target image to be stored in a non-volatile memory device of an embedded system as firmware thereof are disclosed. A graphical user interface (GUI) editor is generated to facilitate a user in providing settings information for multiple pins of a chip installed in the embedded system. Source code is generated in response to operating results of the user of the GUI editor. Linking an object file compiled from the generated source code generates the embedded target image.
US07886227B2
A method for providing context-sensitive help across variable environments. In each of the variable environments, the method can include tokenizing a received network request for help, the tokenization producing a contextually pertinent help file name and a base address of a corresponding help file. Subsequently, the corresponding help file can be located in a fixed storage location referenced by associating the help file name with the base address. Finally, the located help file can be encoded with the base address, and transmitting to a requesting client.
US07886226B1
Methods, systems and program products for providing a first visual region, the first visual region configured to present content determined by a document. A distinct second visual region is provided, the second visual region not defined by the document and configured to present content that is not contained in the document. One or more attributes are identified in the electronic document. Based on the one or more attributes, the presentation of ad content in the second visual region is enabled or disabled. The electronic document is presented in the first visual region.
US07886224B2
A definition data storage unit stores definition data defining a rule for transforming tabular form data into a structured document. The definition data includes a conditional repeat specifying description specifying grouping of part of tabular form data rows which corresponds to a common item having a single value. The conditional repeat specifying description includes the common item as an attribute value for a condition for repetition. The definition data further includes a portion into which the tabular form data is inserted as content of an element. The portion includes a value insertion specifying description made to correspond to an item name of an item included in the tabular form data. A transformation unit transforms tabular form data based on the definition data, with the part of the rows grouped as one group, and embeds the value of the item name in a portion specified by the value insertion specifying description.
US07886210B2
A CRC redundancy calculation circuit is presented which is pipelined to run at high frequencies and configured to operate on an arbitrary multiple of the base granularity of the data packet. Additionally, the CRC redundancy calculation circuit provides the same multiple of outputs that provide intermediary output remainder values. Thus, for example, a circuit which processes 24 bytes of packet data per cycle and which the packets have a 4 byte granularity, the CRC redundancy calculation circuit provides 6 output remainder values, one for each 4 byte slice of data.
US07886209B2
A decoding apparatus includes a first decoder and a second decoder as a decoding processor for performing iterative decoding on received data, a hard decision section for calculating hard decision results based on logarithmic likelihood ratios L1 and L2 from the first and second decoders, and a stop determination section performing stop determination on whether or not to stop the iterative decoding on the received data based on the result of the hard decision section. The decoding apparatus completes one-time iterative decoding by executing decoding process in each of the first and second decoders. The stop determination section executes stop determination at the timings of completion of the decoding process in the first decoder and completion of the decoding process in the second decoder.
US07886205B2
Verifying operation of a data processing system. A first sequence of addressing ranges is generated for multiple requesters. Each addressing range includes a start and an end address and a respective identifying number. A second sequence of verification ranges is generated corresponding the addressing ranges of the first sequence. Each verification range includes a start and an end address and specifies at least one allowed value including each respective identifying number of all of the addressing ranges that overlap the verification range. A respective accessing activity executing on each requestor accesses each addressing range in the first sequence. The accesses include writing the respective identifying number of the addressing range to at least one address of the addressing range. A verification activity executing on a requestor reads a value from each address of each verification range of the second sequence and outputs an error message in response to the value not matching the allowed value.
US07886201B2
A method and apparatus for multi-layer integration for use in error recovery is disclosed. An error is detected in a multimedia data based on a first layer protocol and the detected error in the multimedia data is concealed based on a second layer protocol. In one aspect, the error in a multimedia data is detected based on a communication layer protocol and controlled based on a transport layer protocol. An error distribution of the controlled error is then determined based on a sync layer protocol and the detected error in the multimedia data is concealed based on an application layer protocol. In another aspect, a method and apparatus for multimedia data processing comprises error recovery as well as scalability. Finally, a method and apparatus as disclosed allows processing of multimedia stream by receiving multiple streams of encoded multimedia data, performing error recovery on an erroneous portion of a stream, and reconstructing the multimedia data from the multiple streams.
US07886198B2
A method and system of identifying overlays used by a program. The overlays may be executable overlays (e.g., overlay programs and dynamically linked library programs), or the overlays may be data sets. Depending on the number of overlays and/or the type of information used to identify the overlays, an indication of the identity of the overlays may be written to a register (whose contents are inserted into the trace data stream), or the indication may comprise an entry in a log buffer and an index value written to the register (again whose contents are inserted into the trace data stream, and where the index value identifies the entry in the log buffer).
US07886196B2
A method for process monitoring with an automation manager includes: obtaining a unique process identifier (pid) of a to be monitored application process; calling an operating system using a system call function from a monitoring process; wherein the system call function adds the monitoring process to a list of interested processes of one or more to be monitored application processes; wherein the to be monitored application processes are not child processes of the monitoring process; waiting of the monitoring process until the operating system notifies the monitoring process, that the unique pid of the to be monitored process is no longer available; wherein in the event the unique pid of the to be monitored process is no longer available: notifying the automation manager that the to be monitored application process associated with the unique pid has terminated; and wherein interested processes are the monitoring processes that have called the system call function.
US07886190B2
In some embodiments, the invention involves a system and method relating to autonomic boot recovery. In at least one embodiment, the present invention utilizes an embedded partition to safeguard boot information to be used in the event of a boot failure. An agent within a VMM may be similarly used. The embedded partition or VMM agent enables the preservation of “Last Known Good” boot configurations as well as providing an agent to provide self-healing to a platform which might have run into some type of corruption of critical data. In some embodiments a variety of intelligent filter mechanisms are enabled to allow a user to target the preservation of only certain types of configuration data. Other embodiments are described and claimed.
US07886181B2
There is provided a method executed in a cluster system comprising a first computer and at least one second computer that stores the data transmitted from the first computer. The method comprising the steps of: judging whether the failure-occurred processing is restarted by the first computer or the failure-occurred processing is switched over by the second computer based on the system information; receiving the stored data from the second computer and re-executing the processing in which the failure has occurred by the first computer, in the case of which it is judged that the processing in which the failure has occurred is restarted by the first computer; and executing, by the second computer, the processing in which the failure has occurred, in the case of which it is judged that the processing in which the failure has occurred is switched over by the at least one second computer.
US07886178B2
In order to provide a semiconductor memory apparatus which can adjust the locked loop circuit such as a DLL in detail after producing the semiconductor memory apparatus, and moreover, which can adjust the locked loop circuit by using a measuring apparatus which has a low testing frequency, an exclusive-OR circuit generates an adjusting clock signal TCLK obtained by multiplying a frequency of a pair of test clock signals which respectively have a phase difference. A DLL circuit inputs the adjusting clock signal TCLK in place to an external clock signal CLK. The counter circuit counts the control clock signal CCLK outputted from the DLL circuit for a predetermined time. A comparator compares a counted value to an expected value and outputs a comparison result. A phase adjusting circuit outputs an adjusting signal to a delay circuit inside the DLL circuit based on the comparison result outputted from the comparator, and adjusts a phase of the control clock signal CCLK outputted from the DLL circuit.
US07886168B2
Taught is a detection device for detecting impacts and the like, comprising an integrated microcontroller (1) which includes an RFID interface (101) and a non-volatile memory (201), the integrated microcontroller (1) being interfaced with at least one suitable sensing means (2) through a suitable digital interface (102), the integrated microcontroller (1) being provided with a power management logic (301) to manage operation modes of the detection device, power consumption of the sensing means (2) being managed by the power management logic (301).
US07886153B2
There is provided a communication system in which a public key certificate is easily updated when identification information is changed, while network traffic increase is prevented. A print server executes encryption communication using a public key certificate which attests that own public key corresponds to own identification information. Then, if the print server detects that the own identification information (IP address or host name) is to be changed, the own server certificate which attests that own public key corresponds to changed identification information is generated by an electronic signature using the CA private key in a server.
US07886144B2
A system and method for retrieving certificates and/or verifying the revocation status of certificates. In one embodiment, when a user opens a digitally signed message, a certificate that is required to verify the digital signature on the message may be automatically retrieved if it is not stored on the user's computing device (e.g. a mobile device), eliminating the need for users to initiate the task manually. Verification of the digital signature may also be automatically performed by the application after the certificate is retrieved. Verification of the revocation status of a certificate may also be automatically performed if it is determined that the time that has elapsed since the status was last updated exceeds a pre-specified limit.
US07886141B2
This invention relates to an advanced system and method of reprogrammable boot codes and In Application Programming (IAP) of embedded systems by booting up with boot loader to shadow program codes on to an internal high speed SRAM and extending contiguously to external higher space memory for runtime applications, and supporting on-line IAP to update run-time firmware or boot loader driver through network communication by utilizing advanced address remapping scheme as well as supporting In System Programming (ISP) to program initial Flash memory via ISP adaptor.
US07886136B2
An operating system switching method in a computer system having at least two operating systems is provided. The operating system switching method may include receiving a command of switching a first operating system that is currently running to a second operating system, causing the computer system to make a transition to a low-power sleeping state in response to the command, and booting the computer system using the second operating system in the transitioned state.
US07886127B2
A virtual memory system implementing the invention provides concurrent access to translations for virtual addresses from multiple address spaces. One embodiment of the invention is implemented in a virtual computer system, in which a virtual machine monitor supports a virtual machine. In this embodiment, the invention provides concurrent access to translations for virtual addresses from the respective address spaces of both the virtual machine monitor and the virtual machine. Multiple page tables contain the translations for the multiple address spaces. Information about an operating state of the computer system, as well as an address space identifier, are used to determine whether, and under what circumstances, an attempted memory access is permissible. If the attempted memory access is permissible, the address space identifier is also used to determine which of the multiple page tables contains the translation for the attempted memory access.
US07886119B1
A chain of snapshots includes a more recent snapshot with a data block copied from a base volume, a less recent snapshot with a skip-pointer that leads to the data block in said more recent snapshot, and one or more intermediate snapshots between the more recent snapshot and the less recent snapshot in the chain of snapshots.
US07886117B2
A method of memory management is disclosed. The invention increases bank diversity by splitting requests and is also integrated with re-ordering and priority arbitration mechanisms. Therefore, the probabilities of both bank conflicts and write-to-read turnaround conflicts are reduced significantly, so as to increase memory efficiency.
US07886116B1
Embodiments of the present invention set forth systems and methods for compressing thread group data written to frame buffer memory to increase overall memory performance. A compression/decompression engine within the frame buffer memory interface includes logic configured to identify situations where the threads of a thread group are writing similar scalar values to memory. Upon recognizing such a situation, the engine is configured to compress the scalar data into a form that allows all of the scalar data to be written to or read from the frame buffer memory in fewer clock cycles than would be required to transmit the data in uncompressed form to or from memory. Consequently, the disclosed systems and methods are able to effectively increase memory performance when executing thread group STORE and LOAD operations.
US07886111B2
The present disclosure relates to systems and methods for RAID Restriping. One method includes selecting an initial RAID device for migration based on at least one score, creating an alternate RAID device, moving data from the initial RAID device to the alternate RAID device, and removing the initial RAID device. The method may be performed automatically by the system or manually. The method may be performed periodically, continuously, after every RAID device migration, upon addition of disk drives, and/or before removal of disk drives, etc. One system includes a RAID subsystem and a disk manager configured to automatically calculate a score for each RAID device, select a RAID device based on the relative scores of the RAID devices, create an alternate RAID device, move data from the selected RAID device to the alternate RAID device, and remove the selected RAID device.
US07886106B2
A USB printer sharing switch device with automatic switching capabilities is provided for multiple computers to share a USB printer. The sharing switch device transfers USB data between the computers and the printer without changing the data format. The automatic switching function is performed by hardware and firmware of the sharing switch device in cooperation with driver software on the computers. In one implementation, the sharing switch device includes multiple USB device controllers corresponding to the multiple computers, and employs multiple switches and a USB hub so that each computer is connected to its corresponding controller and the computer that is currently connected to the printer can communicate with its controller while printing. The current computer transmits a spooling finished command to its controller when spooling is finished. After receiving the spooling finished command, the sharing switch device automatically switches the printer to another computer.
US07886091B2
A method for creating a complete data path between a user interface device (UID) and a second system device. The UID is coupled to a first system device via a UID switch prior to creating the UID, the first system device, and the second device being coupled to the UID switch. The method includes receiving from the UID at the first system device a connect request. The connect request represents a request to form the complete data path between the UID and the second system device via the UID switch. The method also includes formulating a switch command that is configured to cause the UID switch to create the complete data path when the switch command is executed by the UID switch. The method further includes transmitting the switch command from the first system device to the UID switch.
US07886089B2
The exemplary embodiment of the present invention provides a storage buffer management scheme for I/O store buffers. Specifically, the storage buffer management system as described within the exemplary embodiment of the present invention is configured to comprise storage buffers that have the capability to efficiently support 128 byte or 256 byte I/O data transmission lines. The presently implemented storage buffer management scheme enables for a limited number of store buffers to be associated with a fixed number of storage state machines (i.e., queue positions) and thereafter the allowing for the matched pairs to be allocated in order to achieve maximum store throughput for varying combinations of store sizes of 128 and 256 bytes.
US07886079B2
In one embodiment, one or more path computation requests from path computation clients (PCCs) in a first network domain are received at a first border router (BR) arranged at the border of the first network domain and a second network domain. The first BR learns of a path computation element (PCE) in the second network domain. The PCE in the second network domain is informed of path computation information for the first network domain. One or more tunnels are established between the first BR and the PCE in the second network domain. One or more path computation requests from PCCs in the first network domain are passed from the first BR, through the one or more tunnels, to the PCE in the second network domain, to be serviced by the PCE in the second network domain using the path computation information for the first network domain.
US07886069B2
A receiver driven approach for playback of remote content is described. One embodiment includes obtaining information concerning the content of the media file from the remote server, identifying a starting location within the media sequence, identifying byte ranges of the media file corresponding to media required to play the media sequence from the starting location, requesting the byte ranges required to play the media sequence from the starting location, buffering received bytes of information pending commencement of playback, playing back the buffered bytes of information, receiving a user instruction, identifying byte ranges of the media file corresponding to media required to play the media sequence in accordance with the user instruction, flushing previous byte range requests, and requesting the byte ranges required to play the media in accordance with the user instruction.
US07886064B2
The present invention relates to a program and an information processing method and apparatus with which a connection can be formed reliably between apparatuses having different capabilities. An application #1, using a presence function, announces a profile space ID representing processing for a service that can be provided. An application #n receives the announcement. The application #n requests the application #1 for detailed information of the service and registration to the service. The application #n connects to the application #1 by peer to peer, based on a URI needed for peer-to-peer access, transmitted from the application #1. The present invention can be applied to personal computers, network-enabled CE devices, and commercial application servers on the Internet.
US07886063B2
A user equipment (UE), method and system for processing session based communications, are discussed. According to an embodiment, the method includes receiving a message from a terminal that informs whether the terminal supports simultaneous PT (push-to) sessions; recognizing that the terminal supports simultaneous PT sessions according to the received message; and transporting data to one or more terminals through the server operating in B2BUA (Back-to-Back User Agent) mode, wherein a simultaneous PT session refers to a session where the server performs a PT session priority function or a PT session locking function.
US07886061B1
Requests from a client to a network device are authenticated based on a session ID obtained by the network device. Requests may be authenticated by obtaining a session ID value when a session is initiated and transmitting a document to the client that embeds the session ID in such a manner that additional requests to the network device based on the document include the session ID in the request. The additional requests are authenticated based on a determination of whether the session ID is included in the additional requests.
US07886053B1
A self access management system allows users to self-grant access rights to resources. An access policy specifies which users have what levels of access to which resources. In addition to specifying conventional access rights, the access policy specifies that at least one user has self management rights to at least one resource. A request from a user to access a resource to which the user does not have conventional access rights is received. The access policy is consulted, to determine whether the user has self management rights to the resource. If so, it is further determined whether criteria specified by the self management rights for accessing the resource are met. Responsive to the criteria being met, the access policy is updated to grant the user access rights to the resource, according to the terms of the self management rights.
US07886051B2
A method for tracking and reporting traffic activity on a web site first comprises storing a web page on a first server coupled to a network. When the web page is requested from a visitor computer, the visitor computer is selected (or not selected) for inclusion within a sample group, where the sample group is only a subset of the total traffic to the web site. A selection indicator is stored on the visitor computer associated with this selection. Data mining code within the web site is operated or not operated depending upon the value of the selection indicator. The data mining code is operated, and the activity of the visitor computer on the web site consequently tracked only if the visitor computer is selected as a member within the sample group, otherwise the data mining code is not operated and no traffic activity is generated.
US07886048B1
Embodiments of the use case-based management system enable non-technical users to manage complex integrated systems based on familiar languages and workflows, and thus reduce the costs of installing and managing these integrated systems. The dynamic use cases respond to the users' input as well as the continuous feedback of system status and health. Based on these input and feedback, the use case-based management system then subscribes to and authorizes services, manages services and resources, and configures and provisions services, resources, and devices.
US07886047B1
Computer implemented methods and systems are provided for web log category analysis of website usage. A communication service provider computer system identifies a uniform resource locator (URL) for a resource requested by a mobile device. The communication service provider computer system categorizes the URL. The communication service provider computer system increments a count in a web log category based on categorizing the URL and customer data associated with the mobile device. The communication service provider computer system analyzes a usage of a plurality of websites associated with the web log category based on the count in the web log category.
US07886039B2
Method and apparatus for providing dynamic group management for distributed interactive applications
A method, computer readable media, and apparatus of hierarchical-based communication session and data distribution management that indexes client's communication preferences and network attribute information. Indexing is used to generate dynamic group membership lists that map into communication groups. Indexing is replicated at control nodes in the network overlay to allow distributed management of group membership. Send/receive operations are decoupled through data distribution and the indexing structure. Senders and receivers register their group communication interests to a parent node in the hierarchy. The session control structure aggregates client interest and dynamically updates replicas at control nodes which are selected according to the changes in registered client interest. The indexing structure has self-managing properties for automatic clustering based on client session and data interests, and dynamic partitioning of the session/data interest attribute space. Group membership is managed by querying the indexed session/data distribution management structure and mapping output to communication groups.
US07886035B2
A method and apparatus for providing a profile service in an application server for deployment configuration. In one embodiment, the method of the profile service includes populating a repository with deployments of an application server. The method of the profile service further includes managing the lifecycles of the deployments, and determining objects to instantiate when the deployments start.
US07886034B1
A peer-to-peer storage manager measures availability (liveness) of the various nodes in a peer-to-peer storage pool, and adjusts the storage of data within the pool to meet performance expectations based on this liveness information. Based on node liveness statistics, the peer-to-peer storage manager fine tunes storage up or down to efficiently allocate storage while maintaining service level objectives for retrieval time probabilities. Responsive to node liveness information, the peer-to-peer storage manager can dynamically adjust redundancy and/or determine which nodes on which to store data. The peer-to-peer storage manager can execute these storage modifications using rateless erasure codes that allow highly robust storage with only weakly synchronized directory update protocols.
US07886032B1
Session identifiers are automatically identified in uniform resource locators (URLs). The session identifiers may be identified using classification techniques based on whether identical sub-strings are identified in multiple URLs downloaded from a web site. The URLs may then have the session identifiers extracted to generate clean versions of the URLs.
US07886025B2
An information processing unit for operating a server on a network by remote control includes a key code receiving unit that obtains a key code outputted from a keyboard and saves the key code in a memory, before an operating system obtains the key code, a key code control unit that interrupts a transmission of the key code to the operating system, and a communication unit that transmits the key code saved in the memory to the server. It is thus possible to send the key code outputted from the keyboard or the pointing device data outputted from the pointing device to a KVM device on a network without sending to the OS. In addition, it is possible to directly send the key code outputted from the keyboard or the pointing device data outputted from the pointing device to the application that runs on the OS, instead of sending to the OS. It is thus possible to send a special key to the servers without being affected by another application that is monitoring any key input.
US07886015B2
Methods, systems and devices are provided for automatically sending e-mail to a future-designated recipient. E-mail servers accordingly send an e-mail categorized with respect to a target project group to each of a plurality of e-mail clients associated with each defined member of the target project group; add the sent e-mail or a copy thereof to a future-designated role recipient e-mail batch in a storage means, wherein the batch is categorized with respect to the group; define an identity of an undefined role member of the target project group, the defining providing an e-mail address; and automatically forward the categorized e-mail batch to an e-mail client associated with the provided e-mail address in response to the identity defining. Service methods are also provided, for example, by a service provider who offers to implement, deploy, and/or perform functions for others.
US07886010B1
A digital media resource messaging system provides a convenient digital media resource viewing, managing, organizing, and editing platform that facilitates enhanced resource exchange by storing and forwarding digital media resources via a server between multiple resource-sharing partners designated by the user. In one embodiment, the digital media resource messaging system includes services to view, manage, organize, edit, and exchange digital images and video sequences.
US07886006B1
The present invention is a selective announce system for announcing the receipt of electronic mail and instant messages (e-mail). The e-mail has an attached sound file and a predetermined identifier regarding the nature of the sound file. This sound file may be in the sender's voice, a third party's voice, a computer-simulated voice, or some combination. Upon receipt of the e-mail, the sound file is played or used to convert some portion of the e-mail text to voice. The sound file may be played at a recipient computer or it may be played at a recipient's voice mail or it may be played at some other terminal.
US07886004B2
A technique for synchronizing a visual browser and a voice browser. A visual browser is used to navigate through visual content, such as WML pages. During the navigation, the visual browser creates a historical record of events that have occurred during the navigation. The voice browser uses this historical record to navigate the content in the same manner as occurred on the visual browser, thereby synchronizing to a state equivalent to that of the visual browser. The creation of the historical record may be performed by using a script to trap events, where the script contains code that records the trapped events. The synchronization technique may be used with a multi-modal application that permits the mode of input/output (I/O) to be changed between visual and voice browsers. When the mode is changed from visual to voice, the record of events captured by the visual browser is provided to the voice browser, thereby allowing the I/O mode to change seamlessly from visual to voice. Likewise, the voice browser captures events which may be provided to the visual browser when the I/O mode is changed from voice to visual.
US07886000B1
Machine, method for use and method for making, and corresponding products produced thereby, as well as data structures, computer-readable media tangibly embodying program instructions, manufactures, and necessary intermediates of the foregoing, each pertaining to digital aspects of a computerized aggregation system. The system can include a user computer system interposed between a segment of a network allowing communication between the user computer system and at least one server system, and other segments allowing communication between the user computer system and a plurality of third party server systems. The one server system enables the user computer system to access the plurality of other servers. The access permits forming an aggregation of information obtained from the third party server systems.
US07885995B2
A computer-implemented method for processing service requests in a distributed environment includes routing a type of service request to a first service provider in the distributed environment, the first service provider having a commitment level for handling the service request type, detecting a second service provider in the distributed environment capable of handing the service request type, determining a commitment level of the second service provider to handle the service request type, and responsive to the commitment level of the second provider exceeding the commitment level of the first provider, routing the service request type to the second service provider.
US07885993B2
Value-added information is generated by collecting information relating to apparatuses from a plurality of users, and service is automatically and adaptively provided in a manner that satisfies each user's own preference.Since a second electronic apparatus of a given user is controlled based on control information of a second electronic apparatus of another user to which first electronic apparatus information of the user is similar, electronic apparatus control service is performed in a manner adaptively matching preference of the user without complex signal processing such as user preference analysis. The electronic apparatus of the user is controlled based electronic apparatus information of the similar user with whom the user shares activity information such as transfer and purchases of apparatuses in common, electronic apparatus control service is performed in a manner adaptively matching preference of the user without complex signal processing such as user preference analysis.
US07885990B2
An apparatus and method for providing a source of random numbers are generally described. In one example, an apparatus includes one or more storage elements having a selected voltage and a trip point, the voltage being close enough to the trip point such that random telegraph signal (RTS) noise associated with the elements is a determinant of whether the read voltage is above or below the trip point.
US07885988B2
Prediction-based compression engines are spoon-fed with sequentially efficiently compressible (SEC) streams of input data that make it possible for the compression engines to more efficiently compress or otherwise compact the incoming data than would be possible with streams of input data accepted on a TV-raster scan basis. Various techniques are disclosed for intentionally forming SEC input data streams. Among these are the tight packing of alike files or fragments into concatenation suitcases and the decomposition of files into substantially predictably consistent (SPC) fragments or segments that are routed to different suitcases according to their type. In a graphics-directed embodiment, image frames are partitioned into segment areas that are internally SPC and multidirectional walks (i.e., U-turning walks) are defined in the segment areas where these defined walks are traced during compression and also during decompression. A variety of pre-compression data transformation methods are disclosed for causing apparently random data sequences to appear more compressibly alike to each other. The methods are usable in systems that permit substantially longer times for data compaction operations than for data decompaction operations.
US07885987B1
A computer-enabled system, method, and medium is provided to support, e.g., analyzing intellectual property documents by assigning attributes to the documents. The present invention is suitable for use by intellectual property professionals and is flexible to support development and use of customized attribute types and attributes. Optionally, a group of intellectual property documents can be divided into projects, which can be ingested including assigning attributes. Optionally, the attributes can be used to filter information included in e.g., searches, and/or reports.
US07885979B2
A method, graphical interface and computer-readable medium for forming a batch job includes selecting at least one input file to reformat in the batch job. A batch job tree is formed for constructing a batch job with each of the input files being associated to a corresponding branch of the batch job tree. At least one reformatting process is associated with each of the input files on each branch of the batch job tree. A graphical interface for configuring a batch job includes a first interface pane for displaying and enabling selection of at least one input file, a second interface pane configured for interactively configuring a batch job tree representative of the batch job, and a third interface pane for associating at least one reformatting process to each input file.
US07885977B2
The present invention is a method and system for using predetermined preferences/characteristics to ascertain personal compatibility between network or chat room participants based upon profile information. When the system determines that these preferences are favorable for interpersonal compatibility, the system will automatically notify or page the participants so as to facilitate their introduction. Further functionality, aside from the compatibility based upon profile information, includes e-mail and other electronic notification of personal compatibility as well as geographic compatibility.
US07885968B1
Converting from a database system to another database system. The conversion process including translating a set of queries for the first database to be used in the second database by determining the query types of the parent and child queries and generating the translated queries according to the type of the query. The type of the query judged as the stored-procedure or the dummy type, irrespective of the existence of a parent query, the function type query after conversion other than the same stored-procedure type query after conversion of the function are generated in all cases. As a result problem is not occurred even when there is a parent.
US07885966B2
An analyzer/classifier/synthesizer/prioritizing tool for data comprises use of an admissible geometrization process with data transformed and partitioned by an input process into one or more input matrices and one or more partition classes and one or more scale groups. The data to be analyzed/classified/synthesized/prioritized is processed by an admissible geometrization technique such as 2-partition modified individual differences multidimensional scaling (2p-IDMDS) to produce at least a measure of geometric fit. Using the measure of geometric fit and possibly other 2p-IDMDS output, a back end process analyzes, synthesizes, classifies, and prioritizes data through patterns, structure, and relations within the data.
US07885962B2
A rating program on a mobile computing device communicates with other mobile devices regarding collected ratings. A user enters ratings and requests for information; the mobile computing device will then operate in the background, actively scanning for other users with the same type of short-range communications and a ratings program. The devices are able to exchange and save ratings, providing a mobile, socially-relevant means of collecting information.
US07885959B2
A method of displaying building system controller data includes receiving a user login associated with predefined user access privileges and receiving a building system controller selection, requesting a listing of building system controller applications and activities from a building system controller associated with the building system controller selection, and generating a display of available building system controller applications and allowable activities based on the user access privileges and based on the listing.
US07885958B2
A method, apparatus, and computer program product for organizing hierarchical information according to a defined objective.
US07885957B2
A system and method for displaying clusters is provided. A plurality of clusters are generated. Each cluster includes one or more documents. A cluster concept selected from the documents is identified. The cluster concepts that satisfy an acceptance criteria are selected. Spines are formed from the clusters associated therewith. The clusters including the cluster concepts not selected are assigned to one of the spines, which provides a best fit with the cluster concept. The spines are placed into a display, wherein each placed spine is unique. An anchor cluster with an open edge on the placed spines is identified. One or more of the spines not already in the display are placed. Similarity between the non-placed spine and each anchor cluster is determined. The anchor cluster most similar is selected. The non-placed spine is set on the open edge of the anchor cluster.
US07885954B2
An apparatus and program product monitors performance of a computer system via a result size including a result set size of accesses to a database and a page size. Preferred embodiments are directed to a performance monitor that correlates data from existing tools that report data concerning access to the database and the use of system resources. Other embodiments are directed to a performance monitor that is included in an application server associated with the database.
US07885953B2
A method, storage server, and computer readable medium for off-loading star-join operations from a host information processing system to a storage server. At least a first and second set of keys from a first and second dimension table, respectively are received from a host system. Each of the first and second set of keys is associated with at least one fact table. A set of locations associated with a set of foreign key indexes are received from the host system. A set of fact table indexes are traversed. At least a first set of Row Identifiers (“RIDs”) associated with the first set of keys and at least a second set of RIDs associated with the second set of keys are identified. An operation is performed on the first and second sets of RIDs to identify an intersecting set of RIDs. The intersecting set of RIDs are then stored.
US07885945B2
A system that generates a unique identifier that employs a public key of a cryptographic key pair as a contribution to a name for an attribute associated with a schema. Additionally, a hash over the relevant entity name, version, and culture can be employed to automatically produce the remaining portion of the unique identifier. The innovation can ensure that the unique identifiers used by a schema are mathematically related to a public key in a way that can not be spoofed by malicious agents. To this end, unique identifiers can be computed at installation time by combining the n-bytes of the public key (or a hash, e.g., SHA1, of the public key) with the first n-bytes of another entity-specific hash (e.g., SHA1) computed with respect to specific attributes.
US07885944B1
A method and apparatus for providing accurate detection of confidential information is described. In one embodiment, the method includes searching a text document for multiple classified data patterns associated with confidential information that is represented as personal identifiers. The method further includes finding, in the text document, one or more personal identifier candidates matching any of the classified data patterns, and validating each of the personal identifier candidates using one or more personal identifier validators to provide accurate detection of the confidential information in the text document.
US07885939B2
Methods and systems for automatically tuning the undo retention in a database system are disclosed. The undo tablespace may be of a fixed size or may be set to be automatically extended. If the undo tablespace is of a fixed size, the undo retention is set to a “best possible” undo retention, which is calculated based on statistical data stored in the system. If the undo tablespace is configured to be automatically extensible, the undo retention may be set to be greater than the duration of the longest running query in the system. The duration of the longest running query may be calculated in a distributed process in which each instance broadcasts information about its longest running query to other instances.
US07885936B2
A method for managing digital content is provided. The method includes accessing the digital content and applying at least one content management rule by a set-top box to the digital content. The content management rule operative to place the digital content in one of a first storage location and a second storage location, which are associated with the set-top box. The digital content may include programs or movies and the storage locations are generally operable to store multiple programs and/or movies.
US07885932B2
Managing data includes: receiving at least one group of individually accessible data units over an input device or port, each data unit identified by a key value, with key values of the received data units being sorted such that the key value identifying a given first data unit that is received before a given second data unit occurs earlier in a sort order than the key value identifying the given second data unit; and processing the data units for storage in a data storage system. The processing includes: storing a plurality of blocks of data, each of one or more of the blocks being generated by combining a plurality of the data units; providing an index that includes an entry for each of the blocks, wherein one or more of the entries enable location, based on a provided key value, of a block that includes data units corresponding to a range of key values that includes the provided key value; and generating one or more screening data structures associated with the stored blocks for determining a possibility that a data unit that includes a given key value was included in the group of individually accessible data units.
US07885926B2
Apparatus is provided for an electronic vehicle storage system. The apparatus includes a data storage device configured to store multimedia files, a wireless transceiver configured to transfer multimedia files, and a controller coupled to the wireless transceiver, data storage device, and a vehicle electrical infrastructure. The data storage device has an embedded database containing a first list of multimedia files. The controller is configured to communicate with an external computing device via the wireless transceiver. The external computing device has a second list of multimedia files. The controller is further configured to synchronize the first list of multimedia files with the second list of multimedia files.
US07885925B1
A computer-implemented method is provided for managing and sharing picture files. In one embodiment of the present invention, the method comprises providing a server platform and providing a datastore on the server platform for maintaining full resolution copies of the files shared between a plurality of sharing clients. A synchronization engine is provided on the server platform and is configured to send real-time updates to a plurality of sharing clients when at least one of the sharing clients updates or changes one of said files. A web interface may also be provided that allows a user to access files in the datastore through the use of a web browser.
US07885917B2
Embodiments for monitoring one or more utilities consumed within a monitored area including detecting an amount of a first utility consumed by a load associated with a device and an amount of a second utility consumed by a load associated with the device. The identity of the device is determined based on the amount of the first and second utility consumed. A utility monitoring method is disclosed that includes measuring an amount of a utility consumed by a first device at a first time and an amount of a utility consumed by a second device at a second time. The identity of the first device is determined based on the measured consumption of the first and second devices at the first and second time. In certain implementations, the electricity meter uses an effective variance analysis of the conductance waveform on an electrical circuit to identify specific appliances.
US07885914B2
Embodiments of the invention are generally directed to systems, methods, and apparatuses for rank coordination. In some embodiments, a host includes rank coordination logic. The rank coordination logic may include performance measurement logic to measure a performance of a memory channel and dwell period control logic to select a length of a dwell period based, at least in part, on the performance of the memory channel. Other embodiments are described and claimed.
US07885909B2
A risk assessment method and system. The method includes receiving by an inference engine, first sensor cohort data associated with a first cohort located within a first airport. The inference engine receives first group technology inferences associated with the first cohort. The inference engine generates first risk cohort inferences based on the first group technology inferences and the first sensor cohort data. The inference engine receives first inference data comprising a first plurality of inferences associated with the first cohort. The inference engine generates second inference data comprising a second plurality of inferences associated with the first cohort. The second inference data is based on the first inference data and the first risk cohort inferences. The inference engine generates a first associated risk level score for the first cohort. The computing system stores the second inference data and the first associated risk level score.
US07885907B1
Methods and systems capable of creating a component for determining which subset of a set of logical expressions are true with relatively few evaluations of the primitives that, together with any standard logical connectives, make up the logical expressions.
US07885894B2
There are provided a content distribution system and a license management method for performing, in a collective manner, license management of a plurality of resources contained in contents. Each piece of content contains one upper-level resource (which is first referred to within the content), at least one lower-level resource (which can be referred directly or indirectly from the upper-level resource), one startup document and a license-corresponding document (which is an information file for performing, in a collective manner, license management of the resources contained in the content). The startup document contains at least upper-level resource reference destination information and at least one piece of license information for identifying view licenses required for viewing the resources contained in the content. In each resource, if link information for accessing other content is described, information for accessing the startup document of the other content is described.
US07885891B1
A communication portal configured to provide information regarding mortgage backed securities that have incoming cash flows backed by the excess servicing fees of the plurality of adjustable rate mortgages is described. The communication portal may be configured to display a user prompt to receive information regarding the excess servicing fees and reports regarding the mortgage backed securities that have incoming cash flows backed by the excess servicing fees of the plurality of adjustable rate mortgages. The communication portal can be accessible online.
US07885884B2
In one aspect, the invention comprises a computer-implemented method for predicting interest rates, comprising the steps of: electronically receiving data describing one or more Fed fund futures rates; electronically adjusting the data describing the one or more Fed fund futures rates to obtain adjusted data regarding the one or more Fed fund futures rates; and electronically determining data regarding one or more expected Fed fund target rates. In another aspect, the invention comprises a system for predicting interest rates, comprising: one or more processors operable to determine probability distribution data for one or more Eurodollar rates based on Eurodollar futures option data; one or more processors operable to link said probability distribution data for one or more Eurodollar rates to overnight forward Fed funds rate data; and one or more processors operable to link said forward Fed funds rate data to expected Fed funds rate data.
US07885876B2
A method and related system obtains consent from an individual for computer-aided delivery of compliance information. Initially, a computer-readable data storage device is provided to the individual. The device stores the compliance information and computer-executable instructions. By inserting the device into a computer, the instructions are executed and the individual is prompted by the computer to consent to the computer-aided delivery of additional compliance information. Once consent is indicated, it is communicated from the individual's computer to another computer such as a server over, for example, a modem connection. Having secured the individual's consent, the additional compliance information can be delivered to the individual's computer as, for example, a file attachment to an email message.
US07885875B2
A method and related system obtains consent from an individual for computer-aided delivery of compliance information. Initially, a computer-readable data storage device is provided to the individual. The device stores the compliance information and computer-executable instructions. By inserting the device into a computer, the instructions are executed and the individual is prompted by the computer to consent to the computer-aided delivery of additional compliance information. Once consent is indicated, it is communicated from the individual's computer to another computer such as a server over, for example, a modem connection. Having secured the individual's consent, the additional compliance information can be delivered to the individual's computer as, for example, a file attachment to an email message.
US07885864B2
By providing a network photograph service, prompt service can be provided to a customer without losing the advantages of easier understanding of where to access when placing an order and easier collective data management. A service center receiving an order of a printing service, and a minilab or a special laboratory spread across a plurality of places, are able to communicate through a network. A center server in the service center selects and assigns which photo-finishing laboratory will print the ordered picture, in response to order information transferred from a customer via the network. Thus, the printing processing can be carried out by a photo-finishing laboratory specified by the customer, instead of at the center server.
US07885855B2
Methods and systems (200) for reducing losses related to perishables are disclosed. The perishables are grouped based on the use-by-date (UBD) and a quantity of at risk perishables are determined (210). A financial impact of the at risk perishables is calculated for each group (220). Pricing is dynamically determined for the perishables based on the financial impact and the UBD (230) and a price display is updated to indicate the pricing of the perishables (240).
US07885850B2
A request to cancel feedback pertaining to a transaction in a network-based transaction facility is generated when a user submitting the feedback has not participated in a dispute resolution process or other process of the facility. In another embodiment, a request to cancel such feedback is generated when a user submitting the feedback has been suspended from the facility within a certain time period of that user's initial use of the facility, or indefinitely suspended within a certain time period of leaving the feedback. In yet another embodiment, a user is required to view a tutorial before leaving his first negative or neutral feedback. In another embodiment, a user is presented with an interstitial page reminding him of the effects of leaving negative or neutral feedback.
US07885846B2
A method and system for workforce planning in one aspect provide an optimization model that produce, based on the availability profile and the demand profile of skill types, a workforce plan recommending a combination of actions. The combination of actions may include hiring, contracting and cross-training. The optimization model considers constraints such as minimum residence time that a resource unit needs to spend in a skill-type that it gets cross-trained into or hired into, minimum acceptable contracting duration for a contracted skill type, first order and higher orders of cross-training for a skill type, with lead-time for training, one or more system rules associated with transfer sequences, or targets on service levels and resource utilization, or combinations thereof, in determining the workforce plan.
US07885835B2
The invention relates, in various aspects to systems, methods, and computer readable media suited for implementing a commonly administered, quota share-based multi-insurer primary insurance system.
US07885831B2
An insurance product model comprising insurance policy metadata is provided (101) in a computer memory. The insurance policy metadata may comprise, at least in part, data that describes information that comprises a given corresponding insurance policy. A computer then serves to substantively interpret (102) this insurance product model to facilitate obtaining supplemental policy-specific data. The supplemental policy-specific data and the insurance policy metadata comprise separate and discrete data models and may, if desired, be stored (103) separately from one another. So configured, these teachings further support using (104) the insurance product model and the supplemental policy-specific data to facilitate an insurance-related action.
US07885826B2
In the embodiment of the present invention, when identification information acquired from a drug or instrument to be used on a patient is not included in schedule information stored beforehand, a user is notified to confirm that the identification information is not included in the schedule information. After the notification is provided, in registering the acquired identification information as practice details, the name of a doctor who instructed to use the drug or instrument, which is different from the drug or instrument specified by schedule information, and the reason for the instruction are registered, while associated with the practice details. Accordingly, drugs or instruments necessary for patients can be used in an appropriate manner.
US07885814B2
A text information display apparatus equipped with a speech synthesis function able to clearly display a linked portion by speech and enabling easy recognition of a change from a link, provided with a controller for referring to the display rules of text to be converted to speech when converting text included in text information being displayed on a display unit to speech, controlling a speech synthesizing processing unit so as to convert the text to speech with a first voice in a case of predetermined display rules (presence of link destination, cursor position display, etc.) and convert the text to speech with a second voice having a speech quality different from that of the first voice in the case of not the predetermined display rules, and controlling the speech synthesizing processing unit so as to convert the text included in a display object to speech with a third voice when the display object linked with the link destination is selected or determined by a key operation unit.
US07885811B2
A computer program product, for performing data determination from medical record transcriptions, resides on a computer-readable medium and includes computer-readable instructions for causing a computer to obtain medical transcription of a dictation, the dictation being from medical personnel and concerning a patient, analyze the transcription for an indicating phrase associated with a type of data desired to be determined from the transcription, the type of desired data being relevant to medical records, determine whether data indicated by text disposed proximately to the indicating phrase is of the desired type, and store an indication of the data if the data is of the desired type.
US07885808B2
A pitch-estimation method, a pitch-estimation system, and a pitch-estimation program are provided, which estimate a weight of a probability density function of a fundamental frequency and relative amplitude of a harmonic component through fewer computations than ever. In the improved pitch-estimation method, 1200 log2 h and exp[−(x−(F+1200 log2 h))2/2W2] in the following expression are computed in advance and then stored in a memory of a computer: c ′ ( t ) ( h ❘ F , m ) 1 2 π W 2 exp ( - ( x - ( F + 1200 log 2 h ) ) 2 2 W 2 ) ( 61 ) The above expression is computed only with respect to a fundamental frequency F wherein x−(F+1200 log2 h) is close to zero. With this arrangement, computations to be performed may considerably be reduced, and computing time may accordingly be shortened.
US07885806B2
There is provided a simulation method of instruction scheduling comprising detecting a loop from an instruction sequence to be simulated, registering an instruction scheduling target instruction sequence in a loop detection state, comparing a current scheduling target instruction sequence with the registered scheduling target instruction sequence for each loop cycle, and skipping, when the current scheduling target instruction sequence matches the registered scheduling target instruction sequence, scheduling of that scheduling target instruction sequence, and newly registering, when the two instruction sequences do not match, the current scheduling target instruction sequence and executing scheduling.
US07885803B2
A system for, and method of, simulating traffic loads in a packetized communication network. In one embodiment, the system includes: (1) an initial arrival generator that generates an initial arrival for a simulated user session at an independent time from a previous user session arrival and (2) a subsequent arrival generator, associated with the initial arrival generator, that generates a number of connections to be associated with the simulated user session as an independent variable and, if the number of connections is greater than one, generates a mean connection interarrival time for the simulated user session and a plurality of timings of subsequent arrivals.
US07885797B2
Method for production of a system for representation of an electrical network, and use of the method
One embodiment of the present invention is a method for producing a system for describing an electrical network. An output signal of the electrical network is sampled at a frequency that corresponds to the Nyquist criterion for the input signal to the electrical network. A model with a memory is developed for the output signal, which is sampled at a low sampling rate, with this model approximating the output signal. The model is then transformed by suitable interpolation to an interpolated model with a memory. The interpolation results in the model created in this way providing a good approximation to an output signal which is sampled at a high frequency. The resultant system can be used for predistortion.
US07885791B2
The present invention provides a method of detecting the growth and development of clusters in a data set. The data set is divided into a number of slices and an algorithm is applied to the data held in each data slice set. Each slice can be compared with the subsequent slice to determine which clusters persist from slice to slice. Random data agglomerations in a single slice may give the appearance of a cluster but their random nature means that they are unlikely to persist so those clusters that persist across a number of slices, or that show the strongest measure of persistence, are most likely to represent a data cluster that represents a situation of interest.
US07885789B2
In operation to obtain an optimal observation condition in a review system, the number of trial reviews can be reduced to improve efficiency of the operation. For a defect review conducted by the review system, a recipe parameter management system stores, as recipe parameter setting history in a recipe parameter setting history database (DB), a recipe parameter setting values of recipe parameters set when the defect review is conducted, the number of trial reviews carried out until the recipe parameter setting values are set, and defect images obtained when the defect review is conducted. The apparatus displays, on a terminal, histograms and the numbers of trial reviews generated based on the recipe parameter setting history data stored in the recipe parameter setting history database (DB). Hence, the operator can easily obtain data regarding the recipe parameter setting in the past.
US07885788B2
An apparatus for weighing a stent includes a buffer for storing a stent support with a stent mounted thereon, a stent mounting and dismounting assembly that mounts and dismounts the stent from the stent support, a robotic arm for moving the stent support with the stent between the buffer and the stent mounting and dismounting assembly, and a scale assembly for weighing the stent. The stent mounting and dismounting assembly moves the stent into the scale assembly after the stent has been dismount from the stent support.
US07885786B2
A metrology system for measuring a cone angle, a cone straightness, and a cone quality of a sample and method of using the metrology system are disclosed. The system includes a rotary stage, one or more workpiece fixtures that hold the samples in the rotary stage, and a number of different sized measurement devices. The measuring devices are positioned next to the rotary stage and measure the samples using contact. The rotary stage is free to rotate when the measuring devices are in a non-measuring state. The invention also includes a processor that collects data from the measurement devices and calculates the cone angle, the cone straightness, and the cone quality of each sample based on the data.
US07885782B2
A method of manufacturing IC devices from semiconductor wafers includes providing the wafers and fabricating ICs on the wafers. At probe, a unique fuse ID is stored in each IC, and an electronic wafer map is electronically stored for each wafer indicating the locations of good and bad ICs on the wafer and the fuse IDs of the ICs on the wafer. Each IC is then separated from its wafer to form an IC die, and the IC dice are assembled into IC devices. At the opens/shorts test at the end of assembly, the fuse ID of each IC in each device is automatically retrieved so the wafer map of the IC device may be accessed and evaluated to identify any IC devices containing bad ICs that have accidentally been assembled into IC devices. Any “bad” IC devices are discarded while remaining IC devices continue on to back-end testing.
US07885778B2
An optical detection device comprising an optical sensing section that has an optical detection transistor, a threshold voltage detecting section that has a threshold value detection transistor, a sensor output value generating section that generates a sensor output value on the basis of a signal outputted from the optical sensing section, a correction coefficient determining section that determines a correction coefficient that is used for correcting a change in the sensor output value that corresponds to a threshold voltage detected at the threshold voltage section, and a correction processing section that corrects the sensor output value on the basis of the correction coefficient.
US07885777B2
A method of calibrating a probe is disclosed said probe being mounted on a machine and having a stylus with a workpiece contacting tip, comprising calculating calibration information for the probe for a first orientation of the probe, and rotating the calibration information by an angle to obtain a probe calibration information for when the probe is oriented by that angle with respect to the first orientation. Also disclosed is a method of calibrating a probe during a measurement process. The calibration information may include a vector which relates probe head axes to machine axes; a calibration matrix; datum data; an inertial matrix. The stylus tip may be datumed at the orientation of the probe or inferred from datum information obtained at different orientations. The rotation step may be carried out by a software/computer program which may be stored on a controller for the machine.
US07885776B2
There is provided a waveform generator for generating an analog signal, including a data changing section which changes an input data sequence, which is a sequence of binary data and which is to be modulated to the signal which the waveform generator should generate, to generate an after-change data sequence such that in the signal to be obtained by MSK modulation, a residual phase obtained by dividing an initial phase of the signal by 2π and a residual phase obtained by dividing a final phase of the signal by 2π are continuous, a waveform generating section which generates basic waveform data representing a waveform corresponding to the signal obtained by subjecting the after-change data sequence to MSK modulation, and an output section which outputs the signal repeating the waveform represented by the basic waveform data.
US07885773B2
Embodiments disclosed herein provide restrictive-flow flow measurement devices, valve improvements and signal control devices and processes that control the flow of liquids, including control processes for single-liquid calibration. In some embodiments, a fluid flow device can be calibrated using a single standard calibration fluid. The fluid flow of a first fluid through a flow meter is measured by calculating a first pressure difference between pressures sensed by two pressure sensors of the flow meter. The fluid flow of a second fluid through the flow meter is measured by calculating a second pressure difference between pressures sensed by the same two pressure sensors. A calibration coefficient is determined based upon the relationship between the flow rate, the fluid density and the calculated pressure difference for the first and second fluids. A relationship between the calibration coefficient and the kinematic viscosity of each fluid is then determined and stored.
US07885771B2
The invention relates to an apparatus for the acquisition and interpretation of expirograms comprising: a gas measuring probe that is designed to determine the gas concentration ƒmess of a gas in exhaled respiratory air; a reading device that is connected to the gas measuring probe via signal and is designed to read for a plurality of values x1, . . . , xN of an exhaled volume of the exhaled respiratory air the respective determined gas concentrations ƒmess(x1), . . . , ƒmess(xN) from the gas measuring probe; a storage device that is designed to store the values x1, . . . , xN assigned to the gas concentrations ƒmess(x1), . . . , ƒmess(xN); a function fitting unit that is connected to the storage device via signal and that is designed to determine a non-linear fit function ƒ(x)=g(x)·h(x)+OffsetGas for the stored gas concentrations ƒmess(x1), . . . , ƒmess(xN) by determining functions g(x) and h(x) wherein h(x)=a+b·x g(x) is a continuously differentiable, non-linear function with g ( 0 ) = 0 and lim x -> ∞ g ( x ) = const , a, b and const being constants and OffsetGas being a constant, mean concentration of the gas in room air.
US07885762B2
A destination display apparatus includes: a position obtaining unit (114) which obtains a current position of a mobile terminal; a situation obtaining unit (100) which obtains a current situation of the mobile terminal; a history accumulating unit (101) which obtains the current situation and a destination history; a destination predicting unit (102) which predicts destinations; a destination obtaining unit (103) which obtains the predicted destinations; a label accumulating unit (104) which accumulates a name label as a hierarchical structure including parent-child relationships between name labels; a number-to-be-displayed obtaining unit (105) which obtains the number of the name labels to be displayed on the mobile terminal; a label selecting unit (106) which selects a label to be displayed; an information obtaining unit (111) which obtains information from an external network medium (200); and a display unit (113) which displays the selected label and calculated information.
US07885761B2
A destination display apparatus includes: a position obtaining unit (114) which obtains a current position of a mobile terminal; a situation obtaining unit (100) which obtains a current situation of the mobile terminal; a history accumulating unit (101) which obtains the current situation and a destination history; a destination predicting unit (102) which predicts destinations; a destination obtaining unit (103) which obtains the predicted destinations; a label accumulating unit (104) which accumulates a name label as a hierarchical structure including parent-child relationships between name labels; a number-to-be-displayed obtaining unit (105) which obtains the number of the name labels to be displayed on the mobile terminal; a label selecting unit (106) which selects a label to be displayed; an information obtaining unit (111) which obtains information from an external network medium (200); and a display unit (113) which displays the selected label and calculated information.
US07885749B2
In a drive system, where power from a motor is transmitted to a drive shaft and a transmission ratio is changed by a transmission, if the absolute value of the difference between the reference torque Tm2r0, which is the drive shaft side torque Tm2r at the onset of a change in the shift speed of the transmission, and the driving shaft side torque Tm2r during the change is less than the threshold value α until the end of the change (S280), the application state of a brake in the transmission during the change and the state of the hydraulic pressure supplied to the brake are learned (S290). During the change, and actuator of the transmission is controlled using those learned results. Accordingly, any deviations that may have occurred due to changes over time in the transmission, etc. are corrected and the shift speed of the transmission is changed more appropriately.
US07885743B2
An electric mirror control device provided with a proportionality constant conversion means for converting the proportionality constant of a detection output voltage to the angle of a mirror surface to be positive or negative. When an up-down sensor and a right-left sensor for detecting the angle of the mirror surface have a plurality of specifications, each of which has a different proportionality constant of the detection output voltage to the angle of the mirror surface, controller determines the specification of the angle sensors based on whether the proportionality constant of the detection output voltage output via the proportionality constant conversion means is positive or negative, and controls an up-down motor or a right-left motor in accordance with the determined specification stored in advance.
US07885738B2
A method, medium, and apparatus of a self-propelled mobile unit with obstacle avoidance during wall-following. In the self-propelled mobile unit, a carrying unit may move the mobile unit by using a transmitted power, and a sensor unit can detect an obstacle and a wall, which may be respectively placed in front of and to the side of the mobile unit, with respect to a moving direction of the carrying unit. A controller may direct the carrying unit by generating a path along which the carrying unit moves according to a detection result from the sensor unit. Accordingly, the controller can direct the carrying unit to move while maintaining a predetermined distance (within a predetermined range) from the wall. If the sensor unit detects an obstacle, the controller directs the carrying unit to move in an obstacle free direction.
US07885736B2
A system for computing car switching solutions in a railway switch yard. The system is computer based and has an input for receiving data conveying information about one or more arrival trains arriving at the switch yard and data conveying information about departure trains to depart the switch yard. A processing entity processes the data and computes car switching solutions for the railcars.
US07885735B2
A wireless DCC model railroad throttle comprises a throttle program operable on a portable data processing device to display a graphical user interface and communicate a user's control inputs to a layout controlling interface managing communication with a digitally controlled model railroad layout.
US07885717B2
A computer-implemented method to optimize control laws (CLaws) includes inserting a unit delay downstream of at least one gain in a system model to define an extended system model and linearizing the extended system model to define an extended linear state model. On a computer at least one matrix is computed from the extended linear model. A control law is optimized using a plurality of linear models from a linear model library computed with the at least one matrix.
US07885715B2
A method of reviving and maintaining a severed nerve tissue or a bundle of nerves of a body comprising the steps of: providing a housing for conducting and modulating neural response having a first end, a second end and a cavity, wherein the cavity is interposed between the first end and second end and the first end of said housing has a plurality of openings and the second end of the housing has a plurality of openings; providing at least one conductor in communication with at least one of the first end of the housing and the second end of the housing, wherein each of the conductors are adapted to attach to at least one first nerve ending; and transporting fluids between the first nerve ending and the second nerve ending.
US07885714B2
Systems and methods for fitting cochlear implants. The cochlear implant fitting systems and methods can be used to generate various stimulus patterns for fitting patients with speech processors for cochlear implants. The fitting systems and methods provide means to identify rapidly which of several speech processing strategies could function effectively in cochlear implant patients.
US07885707B2
A method for scaling the impedance measured during the course of an electrophysiology study accounts for impedance drifts. By scaling the impedance there is greater assurance that previously recorded positional information can be used to accurately relocate an electrode at a prior visited position. The scale factor may be based upon a mean value across several sensing electrodes. Alternatively, the scale factor may be calculated specifically with respect to an orientation of a dipole pair of driven electrodes.
US07885706B2
A device comprises a head mounting arrangement sized and shaped to be worn on a user's head and a plurality of electrodes disposed on the arrangement so that, when the arrangement is worn on the user's head, the electrodes contact target portions of a scalp to detect electrical activity of a brain of the user in combination with an image capture device disposed on the arrangement so that, when the arrangement is worn on the user's head, a field of view of the image capture device includes a portion of an anatomy of the user and a processing unit generating EEG data from the electrical activity, wherein, when the EEG data is indicative of an epileptic event, the processing unit activates the image capture device to capture video data of the user and may store the EEG and/or the video data with transmission of warning signals to one or more remote displaying and/or computing arrangements.
US07885704B2
An intracavity probe for use with an MR system allows images or spectra of a region of interest within a cavity of a patient to be obtained. The probe includes a shaft, a balloon at one end thereof, and a coil loop within the balloon. The coil loop preferably includes two drive capacitors and a tuning capacitor, all of which in series. A junction node between the drive capacitors serves as a ground for electrically balancing the coil loop. Diametrically opposite the junction node, the tuning capacitor enables the coil loop to resonate at the operating frequency of the MR system. Across each drive capacitor is connected an output cable having an electrical length of SL+n(λ/4). The output cables terminate in a plug that is used to connect the coil loop to an interface device for the intracavity probe.
US07885698B2
Method and system for providing continuous calibration of analyte sensors includes calibrating a first sensor, receiving data associated with detected analyte levels from the first sensor, and calibrating a second sensor based on a predetermined scaling factor and data associated with detected analyte levels from the first sensor, is disclosed.
US07885697B2
The present invention relates generally to systems and methods for measuring an analyte in a host. More particularly, the present invention relates to systems and methods for transcutaneous measurement of glucose in a host.
US07885695B2
An electronic device comprises a first part having a first surface and a second part having a second surface confronting the first surface. The electronic device further comprises a slide module comprising a sledge part fixed on the first surface and a base part fixed on the second surface. The slide module permits a linear movement of said first part and said second part, wherein a maximum overlap of the sledge part and the base part occurs with a minimum overlap of said first part and said second part and a minimum overlap of the sledge part and the base part occurs with a maximum overlap of said first part and said second part.
US07885691B2
An apparatus for processing event data for use with a communications system comprising a wireless device operable for use in a vehicle. The apparatus in accordance with an embodiment includes: a receiver for receiving event data associated with the vehicle; a logic analyzer, responsive to receipt of the event data, for determining a score value associated with the event data; and a system, responsive to determining the score value, for identifying an action for execution.
US07885669B2
A method and system is disclosed for detecting indicators using a multi-stage and multi-threshold detection mechanism so that a mobile terminal can be removed from an idle mode appropriately.
US07885645B2
An information system includes a first module and a second module that interoperate over first and second communication ports. Interoperation over the first and second communication ports provides the first module access to functions and features of the second module, and likewise provides the second module access to functions and features of the first module. The first and second modules may be further operable to communicate over first and second networks, respectively.
US07885640B2
Disclosed is a method including receiving an authentication bootstrapping request related to a subscriber, requesting authentication information of the subscriber from a subscriber database, requesting security settings of the subscriber from a security setting database, receiving a response at least from one of the subscriber database and the security setting database, and proceeding with authentication bootstrapping at least partially on the basis of response(s) received. Also disclosed are related apparatuses, systems and computer programs.
US07885635B2
The present invention has been made in consideration of thin devices efficiently communicating ideas and transactions into data networks by using other devices with full functional user interface in the networks. According to one aspect of the present invention, the thin device exclusively controls the authentication of a rendezvous that is associated with a user account in a server. The thin device running a micro-browser provisions the rendezvous with a set of credential information in an authenticated and secure communication session so that the provisioning process is truly proprietary. To access the user account, the other devices equipped with well-known browsers must submit the correct credential information to the rendezvous for verification in the server. Once admitted, the other devices can update managed information in the user account, individually and respectively, thereby the thin device is able to conduct desired transactions based on the managed information in the user account without the need to key in pertinent information of the transactions.
US07885634B2
The present invention concerns a system for high frequency signal transmission in power line networks and also concerns signal hubs and repeaters to be used in such systems. The primary aim of the invention is to provide a communication system of a general type wherein the isolation between high frequency input and output signals is maintained. The hubs and repeaters are designed to be easily installed in the network. Radio and wireless links at subscriber nodes are also parts of the system.
US07885628B2
An FM tuner that has a multipath reception detection unit and an adjacent-channel interference detection unit while reducing expansion of the scale of the circuit is available. A control signal for a stereo separation level is generated on the basis of a signal SM-DC corresponding to a reception field strength and of a signal SMP corresponding to a multipath noise component. The SMP is extracted from a fluctuation component signal SM-AC from an S-meter circuit 92 by a multipath noise extraction circuit 104. The multipath noise extraction circuit 104 used for control of the stereo separation level is shared as a portion of the circuitry for detecting the multipath signal reception state. A multipath reception detection unit 108 compares the SMP with a threshold value to detect a multipath reception state.
US07885624B2
A communication system with variable filter bandwidth includes a first mixer circuit configured to receive a communication signal and shift the frequency range of the communication signal to a first frequency range. A second mixer circuit is configured to receive the same communication signal and shift the frequency range of the communication signal to a second frequency range. An activation circuit is coupled to the first and second mixer circuits so as to provide an activation signal that activates at least one of the mixer circuits. A plurality of filter circuits are provided such that each filter circuit is configured to receive a signal from a corresponding mixer circuit, when the corresponding mixer circuit is activated.
US07885619B2
Diversity radio transmission is accomplished with excellent performance using multiple antennas receiving a transmission signal from a single power amplifier. A data signal to be transmitted is provided to a first antenna, and a phase-shifted version of the data signal is applied a second antenna. The relative phase shift between the data signal transmitted over the two transmit antennas ensures the two antenna signals can be constructively combined at the receiver. In one non-limiting example embodiment, the relative phase shift is determined by processing pilot signals sent along with the data signal and which are transmitted with predetermined phase shifts.
US07885613B2
A multiband high-frequency circuit comprising a first switch SPDT1 for switching the connections of a multiband antenna to transmitting circuits 11bg-T, 11a-T and receiving circuits 11bg-R, 11a-R of first and second communications systems, and a transmitting/receiving circuit BLT-TR of a third communications system, a diplexer circuit Dip1 for branching a high-frequency signal to 11a-R and 11bg-R or BLT-TR and a diplexer circuit Dip2 for branching a high-frequency signal to 11bg-T and 11a-T, both of which are disposed downstream of SPDT1, each diplexer circuit Dip1, Dip2 comprising a lower-frequency-side filter and a high-frequency-side filter, a bandpass filter BPF1 being disposed downstream of the lower-frequency-side filter of the diplexer circuit Dip1, and a second switch SPDT2 being disposed downstream of the bandpass filter BPF1.
US07885612B2
It is an object of the present invention to solve a problem that malfunction of communication is generated by varying a frequency of a clock due to noise from outside in a case where there is no supplied signal in a circuit which performs negative feedback control so that the supplied signal and the feedback signal can maintain a fixed phase relationship between the signals. The present invention provides a configuration including a PLL circuit and an oscillator circuit, where a switch for switching an output between a signal from the PLL circuit and a signal from the oscillator circuit to the signal output portion is provided to switch from a connection to the PLL circuit to a connection to the oscillator circuit in a case where there is no received signal.
US07885611B2
An integrated circuit includes a on-chip pressure sensing circuit that generates a pressure signal based on a pressure of the integrated circuit. A processing module, generates a control signal based on the pressure signal. An RF transceiver generates an outbound RF signal from outbound data and to generate inbound data from an inbound RF signal, based on the control signal.
US07885610B2
A transceiver for wirelessly transmitting process variables with a radio interface and a field device interface is provided. The transceiver has two operating states. The transceiver is designed to receive a field device signal at the field device interface and relay the field device signal via the radio interface in the first operating state. In the second operating state, the transceiver receives a field device signal via the radio interface, and makes the field device signal available at the field device interface.
US07885608B2
Methods and devices in a wireless communication system are provided, in which a first portion and a second portion of signals are transmitted on a physical channel to a first transceiver from a second transceiver. A method for controlling transmission parameters in the wireless communication system comprises the steps of: transmitting an indication indicating that the first and the second receiver processing algorithms are used in the first transceiver to process the first and second portions, respectively, of signals received on the physical channel; receiving the indication at the second transceiver; and adjusting, at the second transceiver in response to the indication, a transmission parameter for at least one of the first and second portions of signals to be transmitted on the physical channel to the first transceiver. The indication could be transmitted from the first transceiver, or it could be determined through evaluations carried out at the second transceiver.
US07885604B2
A method and system for interference reduction for telecommunication systems are disclosed. The system comprises a base station control device (BCD) for configuring one or more parameters for operating one or more base stations (BSs), a first BS covering a first cell having one or more mobile terminals therein, a second BS covering a second cell neighboring to the first cell and sharing a predetermined frequency band with the first cell, wherein one or more radio frames constructed for communications between the first BS and any mobile terminal of the first cell and one or more radio frames constructed for communications between the second BS and any mobile terminal of the second cell are distinguishable by defining different channel configuration sets having one or more operation parameters, wherein the parameters includes a training sequence, a spreading code, and a channel observation window position.
US07885599B2
A system, method and computer program product are disclosed for receiving data from a satellite radio network in accordance with an embodiment of the present invention. In accordance with an embodiment of the present invention, a datagram broadcast via a satellite radio network is received utilizing a receiver. The datagram includes broadcast identifier information that identifies a segment of receivers in the satellite radio network to which the datagram is directed. Utilizing the broadcast identifier information, a determination is made as to whether the recipient receiver is a member of the identified segment of receivers to which the datagram is directed. If the recipient receiver is determined to be a member of the identified segment of receivers to which the datagram is directed, then the datagram is processed.
US07885594B2
An image forming apparatus has a spacer roller that contacts a photosensitive drum outside a running region of a transfer member. The spacer roller forms a gap between a developing roller and the photosensitive drum. A cleaning device is positioned at downstream side of a nip position formed between the photosensitive drum and the transfer member. A toner removing blade is disposed between the downstream side of the nip and an upstream side of the cleaning device. The toner removing blade has a contact portion that contacts a contact region between the photosensitive drum and the spacer roller. The rotation axis of the photosensitive drum extends along an inner end of the contact portion. This inner end of the contact portion is positioned within a toner collecting region in which toner is scraped off by the cleaning device.
US07885589B2
A technique capable of preventing deterioration of image quality resulting from a band-shaped toner image created on a photosensitive surface in order to prevent so-called carrier attraction is provided. An image forming method involving an abutting and separation step that allows a first image carrier (YMC) and a second image carrier (K) to abut on an intermediate transfer body to form an image and thereafter that allows only the second image carrier to abut on the intermediate transfer body by separating the first image carrier from the intermediate transfer body; and then a collecting step that collects a toner band on the first image carrier in situ to conduct new image formation.
US07885584B2
An apparatus and related method for a self-cleaning toner roller device adjacent a toner roller. The cleaning device having one or more shields to capture the toner debris from the toner roller, a toner debris receptacle to collect the toner debris, and a controller to move the applicator from an operational mode to a self-cleaning mode.
US07885578B2
A grid electrode, which can be included in a scorotron charger for an image forming apparatus or a process cartridge, includes a thin plate member containing multiple apertures and linear patterns, and fitting members. The multiple apertures are disposed facing a charge wire, and the linear patterns are formed in the longitudinal direction of the grid electrode and disposed at equally-shaped intervals in a lateral direction thereof to cause the fitting member to apply tension in the longitudinal axis of the thin plate member at end portions in the lateral direction of the fitting member. The fitting members engage hooks mounted on the scorotron charger at both ends of the grid electrode in a longitudinal direction of the thin plate member containing the multiple apertures and linear patterns.
US07885573B2
A cleaning device for cleaning an image forming surface of a rotating image bearing member that bears a toner image includes a cleaning member that faces and cleans the image forming surface. An operating mechanism allows the cleaning member to come in press-contact with and separate from the image forming surface. A controller controls the operating mechanism. The image bearing member rotates so that in a state where a toner image is on the image forming surface, the toner image passes through a facing position at which the cleaning member faces the image forming surface, and the controller controls the operating mechanism so that the cleaning member comes in press-contact with the image forming surface during an interval period between passing of the toner image through the facing position and arriving of the toner image at the facing position again.
US07885564B2
An image-forming device includes an image acquiring unit, an image forming unit, a determining unit, and a controller. The image acquiring unit acquires image data for one page. The image forming unit forms an image based on the image data. The image forming unit includes a developing roller, a supply roller, and a bias applying unit. The developing roller carries a developer. The supply roller supplies the developer to the developing roller. The bias applying unit applies a first voltage between the developing roller and the supply roller in a first mode, and applies a second voltage between the developing roller and the supply roller in a second mode. The determining unit determines whether the image data includes a part having density greater than or equal to a prescribed density. The controller controls the bias applying unit to apply the first voltage when the determining unit determines that the image data does not include the part having density greater than or equal to a prescribed density, and to apply the second voltage when the determining unit determines that the image data includes the part having density greater than or equal to a prescribed density.
US07885561B2
A needle electrode having a pointed section is provided so as to face a charge-target object, and a voltage to be applied to the needle electrode is set so that 2≦(E2·S2)/(E1·S1)≦5 is satisfied, where an ionization area A1 indicates an area where ionization occurs to oxygen molecules in an atmosphere; a dissociation area A2 indicates an area where dissociation occurs to the oxygen molecules in the atmosphere (excluding the ionization area A1); E1 indicates an average electric field strength in the ionization area A1; E2 indicates an average electric field strength in the dissociation area A2; S1 indicates square measure of the ionization area A1 on a plane which includes a straight line connecting the needle electrode and the charge-target object so that a distance between the needle electrode and the charge-target object becomes a shortest distance; and S1 indicates square measure of the dissociation area A2 of the plane. Thus, the electric charging device is capable of carrying out charging which (i) excels in charging uniformity, (ii) reduces products such as ozone and nitrogen oxide and (iii) stably continues for a long stretch of time.
US07885558B2
An image-forming device includes a photosensitive drum, a conveying unit, a transferring roller, an optical sensor, a ground connector. The photosensitive drum carries a developer image. The conveying unit includes a driving roller, and an endless belt. The endless belt is disposed in confrontation with the photosensitive drum and transferring roller. The optical sensor is disposed near the driving roller and detects the developer image on the endless belt. The first connection member has a first electrical resistance and is connected between the driving roller and a ground connector electrically grounded. The second connection member has a second electrical resistance and is connected between the endless belt and ground connector. The first electrical resistance is less than the second electrical resistance so that an electrical charge is quickly removed from the driving roller and more gradually removed from the endless belt, thereby simultaneously preventing adverse effects on image formation and adverse effects on the optical sensor disposed near the driving roller.
US07885556B2
In an image forming apparatus a developing device develops an electrostatic latent image on an image carrier with a developer that contains toner to obtain a toner image, a toner-amount detecting unit detects amount of toner attached to the toner image, and a toner-density detecting unit detects a density of toner in the developer. Moreover, a process control unit corrects a toner-density target value indicative of a target value of density of toner in the developer based on the amount of toner detected by the toner-amount detecting unit and the density of toner detected by the toner-density detecting unit, and a determines execution timing of next process based on corrected toner-density target value.
US07885552B2
A driver system of image forming apparatuses whose structure is improved to receive a necessary service without additional confirmation by automatically requesting a management service and to improve the efficiency of use of the image forming apparatuses and a method of controlling the same. The driver system of the image forming apparatuses that is provided in a host computer to connect the host computer to the image forming apparatuses in order to perform a management service includes an input unit to receive state information on the image forming apparatuses from the image forming apparatuses and a transmitting unit to transmit a management service requesting signal to a management service supplying unit using the input state information.
US07885547B2
An optical transmitter for performing high-rate data communication by means of optical space transmission is provided, which can reliably perform optical axis adjustment manually and visually, and can prevent a device from being made large in size and manufacturing cost of the device from being increased by using an simply-constructed optical transmitter. Thus, the optical transmitter of the present invention comprises an incident beam restriction section operable to allow only a visible beam which is emitted by a terminal located within a range in which an infrared beam is emitted and incident thereon to pass therethrough, a reflection section operable to reflect the visible beam which has passed through the incident beam restriction section, and a light source operable to emit the infrared beam to pass through the reflection section according to a data transmission request signal from the terminal.
US07885539B2
A method for detecting and locating faults in an optical transmission path, and to an optical transmission system having such a functionality, is provided. By measuring the temporal change in the state of polarization SOP, external influences on a glass fiber cable of a long-haul transmission system, e.g., a WDM transmission system, may be detected. Such fault(s) may be localized with the aid of the relative arrival time of the polarization signal at both sides of a bidirectional transmission system.
US07885533B2
An external photographic wireless communication device for connection to a camera body having a hot shoe connector for connecting to the camera body and a hot shoe connector for connecting to one or more accessory devices. Each of the hot shoe connectors includes a plurality of contacts. The device includes a switching element for selectively disconnecting one or more of the plurality of contacts in one hot shoe connector from a corresponding respective one of the other hot shoe connector.
US07885525B2
A lens barrel which is capable of increasing the total length of the lens barrel in a shooting state even in a case where the collapsed lens barrel length is short, with a simple construction. A shooting optical system is disposed movably in an optical axis direction. A lens barrel driving member moves the shooting optical system in the optical axis direction while rotating around the optical axis. A lens barrel driving member moving unit moves the lens barrel driving member in the optical axis direction in a transition region during which the lens barrel moves between a shooting state and a non-shooting state while the driving member rotating.
US07885519B2
The present invention relates to an audio/video device (100) with a replay function containing a stream source (101) providing a replayable audio/video data stream, a user interface (108) for inputting stream play requests, a stream processor (102) coupled to the stream source (101) and to the user interface (108) providing stream play status and processing the stream according to the stream play requests, a tag memory (106) and a microphone (103) receiving ambient sound. To the microphone is coupled an ambient sound analyzer (104) detecting disturbing events, to which is coupled an audio events memory (109) and a tag manager (105) coupled to the stream processor (102) and to the tag memory (106), which upon detecting a disturbing event, generates a disturbing event tag according to stream play status and stores the tag in the tag memory (106), to which is coupled a replay manager (107) coupled to the stream processor (102) and handling stream replay requests by directing a replay of the stream from a point associated with a disturbing event tag.
US07885513B2
The invention relates to an apparatus for reproducing a digital information signal which is recorded on a first and a second layer of a record carrier, the digital information signal being divided into cells, each cell being recorded in at least one sector, the digital information signal comprising a first cell recorded on the first layer and a second cell recorded on the second layer, while in addition control data indicating that the first and the second cell have to be presented in a non-seamless manner one after the other is recorded on said record carrier. The apparatus is arranged to detect that the first cell is read from the first layer and the second cell is read from the second layer and generates a control signal indicating that the first and the second cell have to be presented seamlessly in dependence on said detection. In this way the control data indicating that the cells have to be presented with a seam is replaced with a control signal indicating that the cells have to presented seamlessly. This results in an improved presentation of the digital information signal at a layer break.
US07885510B2
There are provided an information storage medium capable of real-time recording/playback of digital moving picture information, and a digital information recording/playback system using this medium. In a medium that records/plays back data including video data and control information, the control information (DA21 in FIG. 4; RTR_VMG in FIG. 30) includes information (VOBU entry in FIG. 31) for accessing a specific portion (VOBU) of the video data.
US07885490B2
An apparatus and method for optically detecting the presence of an analyte in a solution is presented. An embodiment comprises a waveguide resonator that is optically coupled to a fluid in a fluidic conduit so that the resonant wavelength of the waveguide resonator is based on the refractive index of the fluid.
US07885488B2
Provided are an image processing apparatus, method and medium, more particularly, an image processing apparatus, method and medium which perform interpolation such that a pixel value in each pixel region included in a digital image and an average value of interpolation data extracted using a predetermined interpolation method in the pixel region are equal. The image processing apparatus includes an accumulative addition unit to sequentially integrate values of pixels included in an image, an interpolation unit to interpolate the integrated pixel values, and an accumulative subtraction unit to perform differentiation at a predetermined position of the interpolated pixel values.
US07885483B2
An image alignment method includes: fetching at least two images; calculating a relative displacement between those adjacent images by utilizing a phase correlation algorithm; calculating an absolute displacement between any one of those images and the first image of those images; and computing a common area of those images by utilizing the relative displacement and the absolute displacement, then deleting remainder portions of the image excluding the common area. In the present invention, the phase correlation algorithm can be utilized to process numerous noise signals so as to get a higher precision of the image alignment.
US07885482B2
Implementations of coverage-based image relevance ranking are described. In one implementation, an acquired image is ranked relative to a set of previously stored images based upon the conditional entropy of the acquired image. The conditional entropy may be computed after first removing overlapping pixels that are present in both the acquired image and the set of previously stored images. Once the image is assigned a relevance rank, other decisions concerning the image may be made based on the rank, such as whether to save the image, delete the image, or use it to replace a less relevant image.
US07885480B2
A correlation function peak finding method for an image correlation displacement sensing system is provided. The method may include capturing a reference image and a displaced image, and searching for an initial peak correlation function value point (CFVP) with pixel-level resolution based on correlating the reference image and displaced images at a plurality of offset positions. Then a complete set of CFVPs may be determined at each offset position in an analysis region surrounding the initial peak CFVP. Then a preliminary correlation function peak location is estimated with sub-pixel resolution, based on CFVPs included in the analysis region. Finally, curve-fitting operations are performed to estimate a final correlation function peak location with sub-pixel accuracy, wherein the curve-fitting operations apply a windowing function and/or a set of weighting factors that is/are located with sub-pixel resolution based on the preliminary sub-pixel correlation function peak location.
US07885478B2
The present invention provides a noise reduction method for use in reducing noise of a digital image, the method comprising steps of: providing a plurality of luminance threshold values; determining a plurality of luminance feature values according to the luminance value of a target pixel and the luminance values of neighboring pixels of the target pixel; determining whether the target pixel is a noise point based on the comparison between each of the luminance feature values and each of the luminance threshold values corresponding thereto, respectively; and adjusting the luminance value, a first chrominance value and a second chrominance value of the target pixel if the target pixel is determined as a noise point. Using the noise reduction method of the present invention, not only noise of a digital image can be identified, but also the degradation caused by the noise can be reduced and thus the overall picture quality can be improved.
US07885474B2
A solution for detecting a streak in a JPEG image is disclosed that includes an extraction system for extracting a DC value from each cell block in the compressed image; an identification system for identifying a peak DC value in each rank of cell blocks within the compressed image; and an analysis system for analyzing the peak DC values to determine if a streak exists in the compressed image.
US07885467B2
An image of high-aspect-ratio objects is analyzed to locate linear features within the image. The gradient direction for each pixel is determined, and connected pixels having similar gradient directions are grouped into line support regions. A linear feature is determined for each line support region. The linear features are analyzed to identify those that are co-linear. The linear features are then analyzed to find groups that are parallel and that sufficiently overlap. Additional sets of linear features that intersect the identified group are combined into that group. The line support regions of the grouped linear features are analyzed to determine representative orientation and/or dimensional information, which is analyzed to determine statistical information about a plurality of the objects. This information is used to monitor or control one or more processes associated with the objects, to reject the objects or a structure or device comprising the objects, or the like.
US07885465B2
An efficient technique is provided for determining a portion of a document corresponding to a captured image. Areas of a document in which the pattern is at least partially obscured are identified. A reference pixel in the image is selected, and an offset between the pixel and the pattern is determined. A pixel-by-pixel comparison is then made of the image with the document such that the reference pixel is only compared with locations in the document that are both within the identified areas and have the determined offset from the pattern. The comparison with the highest correspondence between the image pixels and the electronic document then identifies the position of the reference pixel relative to the electronic document.
US07885458B1
Methods and systems for processing image data are described. A scene classifier determines the probabilities that various scene classes are associated with the image data. A gamut mapper determines the probabilities that various combinations of illuminant color and scene class are associated with the image data. The probabilities from the scene classifier are used to weight the probabilities from the gamut mapper. The weighted results can be used to select an illuminant color. The image data can be adjusted to compensate for the selected illuminant color.
US07885448B2
A microscope array with staggered rows of magnifying imaging systems is used to scan a biological tissue sample in a single linear pass to produce an image and corresponding optical-density data. A conventional computerized algorithm is used to identify, isolate and produce segmented images of nuclei contained in the image. The OD values corresponding to nuclear chromatin are used to identify numerical patterns known to have statistical significance in relation to the health condition of the biological tissue. These patterns are analyzed to detect pre-neoplastic changes in histologically normal-appearing tissue that suggest a risk for the development of a pre-malignant and a potentially malignant lesion. This information is then converted to a visually perceptible form incorporated into the image of the tissue sample and is displayed for qualitative analysis by a pathologist.
US07885442B2
A method for perfusion weighted imaging in which a plurality of local arterial input functions is estimated at each of a plurality of voxels. At least in part of the basis of the local arterial input functions, a cerebral blood flow at a voxel associated with one of the local arterial input functions is estimated.
US07885440B2
After selecting two or more image series for comparison, images of the image series are interleaved so that they are alternatively displayed in a comparison pane on a display device. In one embodiment, after one or more image series are selected for comparison, an interleaved image series is created containing each of the images of the one or more selected image series, or, alternatively, the interleaved image series comprises links to the images arranged in the interleaved pattern. If differences exist in the images of the multiple image series, these differences may be more easily detectable as the display device cycles between the images. Comparison of images in an interleaved image series may be more advantageous if the images of each selected image series are of a common anatomical area, common image size, and the images are in the same order.
US07885437B2
To enable extraction of a specific area (pattern area) that includes a characteristic part of the inherent pattern of individual fingerprint from an inputted fingerprint image of a human being or other creature. The pattern area is extracted as the minimum area that is surrounded by a right pattern area slope, a left pattern area slope, and pattern area bases. The right (left) pattern area slope is a fingerprint ridge which runs towards the outside on the right (left) side from the start point that is located on the upper side of the center point of the fingerprint image, and satisfies a prescribed condition. The pattern area base is a fingerprint ridge which runs on the lower side of the center and satisfies a prescribed condition.
US07885436B2
A method in accordance with the present invention is used to organize minutiae and other identifying characteristics of a patterned object to verify a user. In one embodiment, the method includes matching minutiae points of the patterned object in one more sets with minutiae points of the patterned object in a candidate set. The method also includes adjusting a confidence value of each minutia point in the one or more sets based on results of the matching. The method also includes organizing the one or more sets based on the confidence values, such as by ordering the minutiae in the one or more sets based on the confidence values, or by deleting from the one or more sets any identifying characteristics with a confidence value below a threshold.
US07885433B2
A biometrics authentication system detect body characteristics, verify the characteristics against registered biometrics data to perform individual authentication. In 1:n authentication, a plurality of different type biometrics database sets of a user are registered in a database, and at the time of verification of one type biometrics data set with one type registered biometrics data set, the control unit judges whether similar biometrics data sets of other person are registered, and if other person's similar biometrics data sets are registered, performs verification of each of the another type biometrics data sets of the plurality of similar biometrics data sets with the detected another type biometrics data set, and identifies the individual in question.
US07885429B2
Embodiments of the invention include a system and a method for determining whether a person is carrying concealed contraband, such as an improvised explosives device or other weapon. The system includes a people tracking video subsystem, a people tracking decisioning subsystem, a concealed contraband detection aiming subsystem, and a concealed contraband detection decisioning subsystem.
US07885411B2
A method carried out by a first system for establishing a secure bidirectional communication path between the first system and a second system for an exchange of one or more messages is described. A first key pair having a first public key and a first private key is generated, and a second key pair having a second public key and a second private key is generated. The second public key is generated based upon a shared secret known to the first system and the second system. The second public key and the first public key are sent to the second system. A third public key and a fourth public key generated by the second system are received, wherein the fourth public key is generated based upon the shared secret. A master key is calculated based upon the first private key, the second private key, the third public key and the fourth public key, wherein the master key is configured to be used in encryption of one or more messages.
US07885410B1
A method for providing private sidestream transmissions between a first and second client in a wireless network generally includes sending a location discovery request from a first client to an access point and receiving a location discovery response from the access point. The response includes a ticket encrypted with a session key of the second client and containing a sidestream key. The method further includes sending a direct communication request from the first client to the second client. The request includes the ticket and an authenticator encrypted with the sidestream key. A direct communication response including an updated authenticator is received from the second client. A method and apparatus for secure context transfer during client roaming are also disclosed.
US07885403B2
A hand held communications device is provided. The device includes: a circuit board including electronic components; display coupled to the circuit board; a housing substantially surrounding the circuit board and electronic components, wherein the housing includes a base element covering a bottom side of the circuit board and electronic components and a housing element attached to the base element covering a top side of the circuit board and electronic components, wherein the housing element includes a display aperture with the display partially projecting therethrough; and a cover removably connected to the housing by a connection, wherein the cover and the base element substantially enclose the housing element therebetween.
US07885399B2
A method and apparatus are disclosed for routing calls over an organization's private network of private branch exchanges. In particular, when a member of the organization (e.g., an employee, etc.) places a call from his or her affiliated off-premises telecommunications terminal (e.g., cell phone, etc.), the call is automatically routed to its destination through at least a portion of the private network of private branch exchanges when doing so reduces the cost of the call. In the illustrative embodiment, the call routing is performed automatically and transparently via software on the affiliated terminals (i.e., employees' cell phones) and on the organization's private branch exchanges.
US07885397B2
A method, system and apparatus for on-demand phone number updating. A system for on-demand phone number updating can include a smooth number transition (SNT) call routing table mapping prior telephone numbers to new telephone numbers for corresponding SNT subscribers. The system further can include an SNT processor linked to the SNT routing table and communicatively coupled to switch logic in a PSTN. Finally, the system can include at least one SNT update table indicating whether different callers associated with a particular SNT subscriber have received an update for a new telephone number for the particular SNT subscriber. For instance, the SNT update table can be coupled to the server-side SNT processor, for instance as part of the SNT routing table, or the SNT update table can be disposed in a telephone system for the particular SNT subscriber.
US07885396B2
A method and system for providing a user who places a telephone call on hold with a partial hold option. When a user places a first call on partial hold and picks up a second call, the user can still hear conversation and activity that occurs on the first call. For example a user participating in a conference call may receive a second call. The user can place the conference call on partial hold and pick up a second call (i.e. engage in a conversation on a second telephone call). However, the incoming channel to the conference call will remain active and the user will be able to hear, in the background, what is taking place in the conference call. Should the user hear something interesting in the conference call, or if the user hears someone ask a question directed to the particular use, the user can switch back to the conference call.
US07885390B2
A system for personalizing interactive services provided to users of voice and data enabled communications devices, including users of SMS, MMS and WAP enabled communications devices. The system is designed to access source information associated with a particular requester for a service and to map the source information to personalization information associated with a user of the system. The source information is extracted in various embodiments from different types of communications channels. The personalization information is employed by the system to influence the behavior of the system while providing an interactive service to the user.
US07885383B1
Crystallite size in a sample is determined by performing a quantitative γ-profile analysis on a diffraction ring in a two-dimensional X-ray diffraction pattern. In particular, a two-dimensional X-ray diffraction system is first calibrated with a sample having a known crystallite size, crystal structure and X-ray absorption coefficient. For a given instrument window, the number of grains contributing to a selected diffraction ring is determined by the effective diffraction volume, grain size and the multiplicity of the diffracting crystal planes. The grain size of an unknown sample can then be determined by a quantitative analysis of the diffraction ring.
US07885379B2
The present embodiments relate to a mammography unit may be improved, by provision of a positioning device for a mammography unit, comprising a device support section for accommodating the radiation source and an object support device for accommodating the object holder for the relative positioning of a radiation source and an object holder. The object support section may be and/or is connected to the mammography unit by means of a connector element, wherein the device support section is mounted such as to be able to rotate relative to the connector element.
US07885377B2
X-ray computer tomographic apparatus, medical imaging apparatus, and medical image display apparatus
An X-ray computed tomographic apparatus includes an X-ray tube, an X-ray detector, a rotating mechanism unit which continuously rotates the X-ray tube around a subject to be examined, together with the X-ray detector, a data storage unit which stores projection data corresponding to an output from the X-ray detector in association with the angles of the X-ray tube at the time of data acquisition, a reconstruction processing unit which reconstructs a plurality of images on the basis of a plurality of projection data sets stored in the data storage unit, the plurality of projection data sets corresponding to the same range from a first view angle to a second view angle, and a display unit which displays the plurality of reconstructed images.
US07885375B2
A technique is provided for imaging a field of view using an X-ray source comprising two or more emission points. The two or more emission points may be independently operated. Independent operation of the two or more emission points in performed in accordance with a list of commands that specifies the operation of the emission points. The list of commands, in one embodiment, is stored in a sequence buffer. In other embodiments, the list of commands is generated for a given usage, without being stored in a sequence buffer.
US07885365B2
A high-speed receiver includes multiple receiver components. Each receiver component includes sampling latches for receiving data, phase rotators for controlling timing of sampling of data by the sampling latches, and a clock-tracking logic stage for providing clock and data recovery. The clock-tracking logic stage is divided into a high-speed early/late (E/L) logic and aggregation counter section and a low-speed logic section, separated by a synchronization logic block. The receiver also includes a delay locked loop (DLL) for receiving an input clock signal corresponding to a data rate of the received data, providing coarse delay adjustment of the clock signal and outputting multiple clock phase vectors corresponding to the adjusted clock signal to the phase rotators on each receiver component. The phase rotators control sampling of the data based on the clock phase vectors received from the DLL. A single regulated power supply regulator regulates power supplied to the DLL and the phase rotators.
US07885357B1
An apparatus for signal detection to enhance performance of a receiver and method therefor. The signal detection unit provides at least three filtered output signals with different bandwidths, wherein at least one of output signals is generated by phase derotation and filtering. The three filtered digital signals are provided for a subsequent stage, such as a digital signal processor, to perform further operations of a receiver in different modes, such as a synchronization mode where the receiver synchronizes with a base station or a normal mode where transmitted data contained in the received signal is extracted. The signal detection unit includes a memory buffer with a reduced memory size for preparation of the three filtered digital signals efficiently. The circuit complexity and size can be dramatically improved and the performance of the receiver can be enhanced by the signal detection unit.
US07885354B2
A system and method are described in which space-time coding techniques are used to transmit and receive multiple data streams within a near vertical incidence skywave (“NVIS”) communication system. Within the NVIS communication system, multiple independent data streams may be transmitted from a transmitting station at a high radiation angle, approaching or reaching 90 degrees. The data streams are reflected off of the ionosphere of the earth and received by one or more receiving stations. In one embodiment, the space-time coding techniques are multiple-input multiple-output (“MIMO”) signal communication techniques.
US07885345B2
The present invention relates to a pilot allocation method for an orthogonal frequency division multiplexing system, and the said method is used for a communication system which at least includes one transmitter and two transmitting antennas, characterized in including the following steps: step 1, a user data carrier allocating module in the transmitter allocating a data carrier for a user data symbol, then mapping the user data to the allocated carrier, and finally, outputting the mapped user data to a inverse fourier transform module in the transmitter; step 2, at the same time with step 1, the pilot data carrier allocating module in the transmitter determining the allocation rule of the pilot data according to the subchannel allocation manner and the number of the transmitting antenna of the system, and allocating the pilot carriers for the pilot data, then mapping the pilot data to the allocated carriers, and finally, outputting the pilot data to the inverse fourier transform module. The present invention synthetically considers the question of practical application as well as reducing the floor effect.
US07885342B2
In one embodiment, a method includes receiving, from a decoder connected to a wireless receiver for communication with a remote apparatus, first error data that indicates a current error rate that corresponds to a first inbound data packet received from the remote apparatus. Based in part on the first error data, it is determined whether the remote apparatus should increase a current signal to noise ratio. If so, then a first outbound data packet is sent to an encoder connected to a wireless transmitter. The first outbound data packet includes first link conditioning request data that indicates a current signal to noise ratio for one or more data packets received from the remote apparatus based at least in part on the first error data. The remote apparatus increases signal to noise ratio of transmissions in response to receiving the outbound data packet.
US07885337B2
The disclosure is directed to a video slicing technique that promotes low complexity, bandwidth efficiency and error resiliency. A video encoder places an RM close to the beginning of each logical transmission unit (LTU) so that all but a very small end segment of each video slice fits substantially within an LTU. Instead of requiring placement of RMs exactly at the LTU boundaries, a video encoder applies an approximate alignment technique. Video slices are encoded so that RMs are placed close to the beginning of each LTU, e.g., at the end of the first MB falling within the LTU. A portion of the last MB from the preceding slice carries over into the next LTU. Loss of an LTU results in loss of virtually the entire current slice plus a very small portion of the previous slice.
US07885326B2
A method is presented for determining an actual pulse position in a signal. This signal comprises a plurality of successive frames, wherein each frame has length L and contains one pulse with width W, a number of discrete possible pulse positions being considered within in each frame which is at least L/W. The method comprises the steps of a) sampling the signal at a sampling rate below L/W with a varying sampling phase such that the whole frame length L is covered, b) obtaining a set of samples with at least one at each of the possible pulse positions, c) correlating this set of samples with a set of one or more predetermined values and d) determining the actual pulse position from said correlation. The method provides a low-complex signal acquisition solution in a receiver and is particularly useful for low-complexity and low-power IR-UWB transceivers.
US07885325B2
A method of synchronizing a feedforward filter (46) that receives a signal resulting from the transmission of a series of symbols through a channel, wherein the series of symbols includes a predetermined sequence of symbols includes the step of developing a plurality of samples from the received symbols (60), wherein a sequence of samples corresponds to the predetermined sequence of symbols. The method further includes the steps of estimating a channel impulse response from the plurality of samples, calculating a characteristic of the channel impulse response, and synchronizing (54) the feedforward filter in accordance with the estimated channel impulse response.
US07885314B1
A cancellation system that delays received Global Positioning System (“GPS”) signals and cancels less than all of the received GPS signals from the delayed version of the received GPS signals. A delay circuit produces a delayed version of the received GPS signals and a demodulator and despreader unit produces a demodulated and despread GPS signal corresponding to one of the received GPS signals. A respreader and remodulator unit produces a remodulated and respread GPS signal from the demodulated and despread GPS signal and a combiner produces a combined GPS signal from the delayed version of the received GPS signals and the remodulated and respread GPS signal. The cancellation system and method may also store the received GPS signals and cancel less than all the received GPS signals from the stored version of the received GPS signals.
US07885311B2
A laser head generating ultrashort pulses is integrated with an active beam steering device in the head. Direct linkage with an application system by means of an adequate interface protocol enables the active device to be controlled directly by the application system.
US07885305B2
In an active layer 15 of a semiconductor laser device 3, a refractive index type main waveguide 4 is formed by a ridge portion 9a of a p-type clad layer 17. Side surfaces 4g and 4h of the main waveguide 4 form a relative angle θ, based on a total reflection critical angle θc at the side surfaces 4g and 4h, with respect to a light emitting surface 1a and a light reflecting surface 1b. The main waveguide 4 is separated by predetermined distances from the light emitting surface 1a and the light reflecting surface 1b, and optical path portions 8a and 8b, for making a laser light L1 pass through, are disposed between one end of the main waveguide 4 and the light emitting surface 1a and between the other end of the main waveguide 4 and the light reflecting surface 1b. The optical path portions 8a and 8b are gain type waveguides and emit light components L2 and L3, which, among the light passing through the optical path portions 8a and 8b, deviate from a direction of a predetermined axis A, to the exterior. A semiconductor laser device and a semiconductor laser device array that can emit laser light of comparatively high intensity and can reduce side peaks are thereby realized.
US07885303B2
A nitride semiconductor laser device is formed by growing a group III nitride semiconductor multilayer structure on a substrate. The group III nitride semiconductor multilayer structure has a laser resonator including an n-type semiconductor layer, a p-type semiconductor layer and a light emitting layer held between the n-type semiconductor layer and the p-type semiconductor layer. The laser resonator is arranged to be offset from the center with respect to a device width direction orthogonal to a resonator direction toward one side edge of the device. A wire bonding region having a width of not less than twice the diameter of an electrode wire to be bonded to the device is formed between the laser resonator and the other side edge of the device.
US07885298B2
A system for producing frequency converted light includes a first seed laser operable to provide a first laser signal and a second seed laser operable to provide a second laser signal. The system also includes an optical combiner optically coupled to the first seed laser and the second seed laser. The optical combiner is operative to combine the first laser signal and the second laser signal into a combined laser signal. The system further includes a power amplifier optically coupled to the optical combiner. An intensity of both the first laser signal and the second laser signal are increased by the power amplifier. The system additionally includes a harmonic converter optically coupled to the power amplifier.
US07885279B2
A method for data transmission via several data channels in a network linking several units to one another, where the units can function as data sources, data sinks or transceivers, includes the steps of arbitrarily assigning a first data channel to a first predetermined one or more connection segments; arbitrarily assigning the first channel to a second predetermined one or more connection segments other than the first predetermined one or more connection segments; and simultaneously transmitting data between two units across the first predetermined one or more connection segments via the first data channel, and between two or more other units across the second predetermined one or more connection segments via the first data channel. The data are transmitted in a first direction over the first predetermined at least one connection segment, and the data are transmitted in a second direction over the second predetermined at least one connection segment, where the first ands second directions are the same.
US07885271B2
A network configuration that supports latency-equalization (LEQ) routing by effectively “storing” packets on communication links, rather than at end points. A suitable network configuration is found by (i) identifying a candidate pool of routers through which the participating client terminals and application servers can exchange packets intended for LEQ routing and (ii) analyzing the delay inventory corresponding to the network paths connecting the client terminals and application servers, through those routers. Based on the analysis, M routers from the candidate pool are selected to serve as hub nodes. Each participating client terminal is assigned m of these M hub nodes and, thereafter, directs and receives its packets intended for LEQ routing through one of these m hub nodes.
US07885270B2
Described are computer-based methods and apparatuses, including computer program products, for statistical multiplexing of compressed video streams. A deadline of a packet of a compressed video stream is computed based on a program clock reference value of the packet. A plurality of packets, which includes the packet, is sorted based on deadlines corresponding to the packets. A next packet from the sorted plurality of packets is selected, the next packet having a corresponding deadline nearest to a system clock time. The next packet is transmitted.
US07885264B2
An object is to transmit data such that the transmission speed is not reduced even in a transmission route with a comparatively high percentage of packet loss.The transmitter 1 comprises: a data transmission unit 11 which transmits data packets 50 comprising data, a data sequence number indicating the order of the data, and a transmission sequence number indicating the transmission order, and which receives acknowledgement packets 60 comprising the next data sequence number, a bit string indicating the reception status, and a received transmission sequence number; a transmission history memory unit 14 which memorizes the transmission history of the data packets transmitted by the data transmission unit 11; and a retransmission control unit 12 which refers to the transmission history memory unit 14 and specifies the data sequence numbers requiring retransmission based on the received acknowledgement packets 60, and which directs the data transmission unit 11 to retransmit. The receiver 2 comprises a data reception unit 21 which receives data packets 50 transmitted from the transmitter 1, and which produces and transmits to the transmitter 1 acknowledgement packets 60 corresponding to these packets.
US07885253B2
An improvement in the design and operation of telecommunications networks is described in which when a caller's telecommunication terminal does not know the address of the called party's telecommunications terminal, the caller's telecommunication terminal contacts one Session Initiation Protocol Proxy server after another until the address of the called party's telecommunications terminal is found. Thereafter, one or more of the Session Initiation Protocol Proxy servers that did not have the address of the called party's telecommunications terminal are populated with that information for future use.
US07885251B2
A network configuration method of a sensor network configured to collect sensed data from a plurality of sensor nodes comprising: arranging linearly a path of respective node so as to enable all sensor nodes except for a sink node and a terminal node to have respectively a predecessor and a successor; and setting the time synchronization of whole network by fixing the each node take its own time synchronization on the basis of an operation section of the predecessor.
US07885247B2
A method of transmitting feedback information is disclosed. More specifically, a mobile station (MS) receives a Protocol Data Unit (PDU) which includes a Medium Access Channel (MAC) header from a base station (BS). Thereafter, the MS determines from the received MAC header whether an extended subheader group appears after the MAC header, and also identifies a feedback request extended subheader from the extended subheader group. Lastly, the MS transmits the feedback information according to the feedback request extended subheader.
US07885246B2
A frequency band is divided into N subchannels. Sub-channels are first allocated for a power line communication system having a higher priority, such as public communication or the like. Sub-channels for a power line communication system having a relatively low priority, such as in-home communication or the like, are allocated from free subchannels. In this case, the subchannels used by the power line communication system having the high priority are limited to a plurality of consecutive subchannels from an upper side or a lower side of the frequency band.
US07885243B2
A design and proof of concept of a new type of WLAN, complete with simulation and results from the simulation has been described. Each AP Node is implemented as a self-contained embedded OS unit, with all algorithms resident in its Operating system. The normal day-to-day functioning of the AP node is based entirely on resident control algorithms. Upgrades are possible through a simple secure communications interface supported by the OS kernel for each AP node. Benefits provided by a wireless network, as proposed in this invention, are that: it installs out of the box; the network is self-configuring; the network is redundant in that mesh network formalism is supported, ensuring multiple paths; load balancing is supported; there is no single point of failure; allows for decentralized execution; there is a central control; it is network application aware; there is application awareness; there is automatic channel allocation to manage and curtail RF interference, maximize non interference bandwidth and enable seamless roaming between adjoining wireless sub networks (BSS) and it supports the wireless equivalent for switching—for seamless roaming requirements.
US07885238B2
A first transceiver determines whether a second transceiver has properly decoded at least one of a received data packet and control information associated with the corresponding data packet based on an estimated probability. The estimated probability is indicative of whether the second transceiver has properly decoded at least one of the data packet and associated control information.
US07885233B2
In a network comprising a first subnet comprising a first WLAN associated with a home wireless switch a second subnet comprising a second WLAN associated with a first current wireless switch and a third subnet comprising a third WLAN associated with a second current wireless switch, methods are provided for forwarding a Broadcast/Multicast (BCMC) packet generated by a first wireless client device when the first wireless client device roams from the first subnet to the second subnet and a second wireless device roams from the first subnet to the third subnet. Other methods are provided for forwarding a BCMC packet generated by a wired host to a first wireless client device when the first wireless client device roams from the first subnet to the second subnet and to a second wireless device when the second wireless device roams from the first subnet to the third subnet.
US07885230B2
A method for efficiently scheduling virtual resource blocks to physical resource blocks is disclosed. In a wireless mobile communication system that supports a resource block group (RBG) allocation scheme, when consecutively allocated virtual resource blocks are distributively mapped to physical resource blocks, a gap for the distribution is determined to be a multiple of a square of the number of consecutive physical resource blocks constituting an RBG.
US07885223B2
A communications infrastructure, such as a public land mobile network (PLMN) complying with the GPRS standards, is described comprising at least a local support node for packet stream communication with a plurality of terminals and a gateway support node for packet stream communication with an external network, which may be an IP network such as the public internet. The local support node and the gateway support node are arranged for interconnection by a point to point tunnel, a GTP tunnel in the case of GPRS via for instance an IP network, for carrying packets between each terminal and addressed servers on the external network. A control element and one or more edge servers are associated with the local support node. The edge servers are each associated with respective addresses on the external network and the control element is interposed between the local support node and the gateway support node. The control element is arranged in operation to extract from the tunnel packets destined for a predeterminable set of external network addresses and redirect the extracted packets to corresponding ones of the edge servers. Finally, the control element is arranged route packets received from the edge servers to a corresponding terminal via the local support node.
US07885222B2
A method for scheduling tasks for execution by a mobile device is provided. A connectivity prerequisite is defined for a task scheduled to be executed by the mobile device. Connectivity state information associated with the mobile device is received. The connectivity prerequisite is compared to the connectivity state information. The task is executed responsive to the connectivity state information satisfying the connectivity prerequisite.
US07885221B2
A method for adjusting a granularity of resource allocation in a wireless mobile communication system supporting a compact scheduling is disclosed. A resource indication value (RIV) corresponds to a start index (S) of one set of consecutive virtual resource blocks (VRBs) and a length of the VRBs. The start index (S) is selected from among ‘s’ values (where s=P+mT
US07885211B2
Within a wireless network, feedback information is used to determine channel quality. A node in the network receives a configuration message indicating at least a first type of feedback information and a subset S1, wherein S1 is a subset of S0, and wherein the set S0 comprises all possible values of the first type of feedback information. The node selects an element E1 from the set S1 and transmits the selected element E1 in a feedback transmission instance.
US07885209B1
In a communications system where a plurality of endpoints share a virtual address, all of the endpoints are involved in a communication with one of them, but only one has its talk path enabled at any one time. Each endpoint has an actuator that, when actuated, enables that endpoint's talk path and disables the other endpoints' talk paths. Preferably, one of the endpoints is either an announcement facility or a teletypewriter, while another one of the endpoints is a telephone.
US07885202B2
A method for a UE reporting a CQI comprising steps of: obtaining a total number M of CQI report sub-bands in a system and a number N of CQI report sub-bands needed to be reported; measuring channel qualities of all sub-bands and according to the measurement result, determining N CQI report sub-bands needed to be reported and corresponding CQI values; sending a L-bit long sequence to a base station for indicating the sub-bands that need to be reported; sending CQI values corresponding to the sub-bands need to be reported to the base station. The present invention uses comparatively shorter bit sequence to indicate CQI report sub-bands needed to be reported and reduces the number of information bits necessary for CQI report sub-bands and also reduces the number of information bits corresponding to the CQI values in the CQI report sub-bands.
US07885200B2
A graphic user interface facilitates the hierarchical analysis of timing parameters related to network-based applications. At the top level of the hierarchy, the user is presented a summary of the delays incurred while running an application, or while simulating the running of an application, organized by delay categories, including processing delays at each node, as well as propagation delays at each link between nodes. The interface enables a user to “drill down” into lower levels of the timing information hierarchy by ‘clicking’ on currently displayed information. The information is presented in a form most appropriate to the level of analysis. The presentation forms include, for example, pie-charts, multi-variable timing diagrams (in both absolute and relative forms), data exchange charts, and so on, and ‘zoom’ capabilities are provided as appropriate to the particular display form.
US07885195B2
A test system comprising: acquiring an upstream channel descriptor list; entering a pause network state when the upstream channel descriptor list is completed; and selecting a particular channel from the upstream channel descriptor list before exiting the pause network state.
US07885191B2
A load balance server has a first database for recording a list of identifiers of the presence servers, a second database for recording a subscription message receiving rate, an entry retrieval means for selecting a presence server that the subscription message receiving rate is lowest, in presence servers included in the list of the entry based on the presence information, a presence server selecting means for selecting an additional presence server whichever subscription message receiving rate is lower than predetermined threshold Ts, when the subscription message receiving rate in the selected presence server is higher than predetermined threshold Ts, and a message sending/receiving control means for sending the public message to the selected presence server.
US07885190B1
A packet transmitted on a network is read and decoded. A network device and its operating system are identified by analyzing the decoded packet. If more than one operating system is identified from the decoded packet, the operating system is selecting by comparing confidence values assigned to the operating systems identified. A service running on the network device is identified from the decoded packet or subsequent packets that are read, decoded and analyzed. The network topology of a network is determined by reading, decoding, and analyzing a plurality of packets. A flow between two network devices is determined by reading, decoding, and analyzing a plurality of packets. Vulnerabilities are assigned to operating systems and services identified by reading, decoding, and analyzing packets. Network configuration policy is enforced on operating systems and services identified by reading, decoding, and analyzing packets.
US07885188B2
A smoothing algorithm for round trip time (RTT) measurements is provided to a network device to effectively deal with variations or other potential anomalies that may occur in RTT measurements. The algorithm involves: first determining what should be considered a very high or a very small value for a RTT sample. If a new RTT sample is in an acceptable range, then the network device performs a relatively basic smoothing. If the new RTT sample is much higher than a current RTT value, then the network device ignores the value of this RTT sample a few times. If the network device still detects this large value after ignoring that value for some time, then the network device factors this value into the current RTT value using an additive increase. Similarly, if the value of the new RTT sample is much lower than current RTT value, the network device ignores the value of the new RTT sample a few times. If the network device still sees this small/low value after ignoring that value for sometime, then the network device factors this value into the current RTT value using a multiplicative decrease. An effective RTT value results, which can be used singly or in combination with other metrics to load balance network traffic.
US07885184B2
One embodiment of the present method and apparatus for re-establishing anonymous data transfers between a first endpoint and a second endpoint in a network includes receiving, from a first node, the identity of a second node connected to the first node, where at least the first node is a neighbor node. A third node (a neighbor node) is then selected, and instructed to connect to the second node in order to establish a link for the path. In this manner, the first endpoint and the second endpoint remain unknown at least to each other (e.g., where “unknown” means that neither endpoint knows any identifying information, such as network address, about the other endpoint), and likely to all other nodes in the path as well. In another embodiment, a failure is detected at a neighbor node, where the neighbor node is part of an original path between the first endpoint and the second endpoint. The neighbor node's repair server is contacted for a repair node associated with the neighbor node, and a connection to the repair node is made such that the path is established in a manner that maintains anonymity of the first endpoint and the second endpoint relative to each other.
US07885181B2
According to an aspect of an embodiment, a node apparatus used in at least part of nodes in a network formed by a plurality of nodes coupled in the shape of a ring, comprising: a working node function performing unit for performing functions as a working apparatus that selectively drops a frame destined for a terminal hosted by the node itself among frames transmitted on the ring and adds a frame from the terminal hosted by the node itself to frames transmitted on the ring; a back-up function performing unit for performing functions as a back-up apparatus that lets a frame destined for a terminal hosted by the node itself pass through to an adjacent node and discards a frame from the terminal hosted by the node itself; and a function selection unit for selectively enabling one of the working node function performing unit and the back-up function performing unit.
US07885170B2
A data reading/writing head reading/writing data from/to a ferroelectric recording medium by using an electric field effect, includes a semiconductor body having a first plane on which an air bearing pattern is formed and a second plane crossing the first plane. A sensing unit is located on the second plane and reads data written to the ferroelectric recording medium, wherein the second plane is separated from the first plane, and a floating gate is disposed on the sensing unit, wherein an end of the floating gate extends to the first plane to guide an electric field from the ferroelectric recording medium to the sensing unit.
US07885168B2
A data-storage device has a data-storage medium storing data as local deformations, and at least one read/write element including a supporting structure, which carries a local probe arranged facing the data-storage medium. The local probe is formed by a bipolar junction. The supporting structure is formed by a first and a second arms of semiconductor material, carried by a substrate and extending in cantilever fashion above a cavity made within the substrate.
US07885166B2
An optical pickup apparatus includes a semiconductor laser for emitting a laser light, an objective lens for irradiating the light flux emitted from the semiconductor laser onto an optical disc, and a light detector for receiving the light flux reflected from the optical disc. The light detector has a light receiving part that comprises a region 1, a region 2, a region 3, a region 4, a region 5, a region 6 and a region 7.
US07885165B2
An optical pickup device according to an embodiment of the present invention comprises a light source for projecting a beam of light to record and reproduce information with respect to an optical recording medium. A collimating lens is disposed on a path of the light to converge and convert the light into a parallel beam. An object lens condenses the parallel beam from the collimating lens and projects the parallel beam onto the optical recording medium. An optical element is disposed between the collimating lens and the object lens. A first actuator moves the collimating lens along the optical axis to thereby control a distance between the collimating lens and the optical element. A first controller drives the first actuator to find a position for the collimating lens, for reducing aberration generated in the light being projected to the optical recording medium. Accordingly, the aberration can be effectively prevented, thereby improving recording and reproducing performance of the optical pickup device.
US07885161B2
An information recording apparatus includes an information obtaining unit, a sign arrangement generating unit, a sign arrangement recording unit. The information obtaining unit obtains information to be recorded on a recording medium. The sign arrangement generating unit, based on information to be obtained by the information obtaining unit, generates an arrangement having three or more kinds of signs for expressing the obtained information. The sign arrangement recording unit, while shifting recording positions of a recording area included in the recording medium, records physical features sequentially into the respective recording positions of the recording area included in the recording medium. And each physical feature corresponds to one kind of the signs.
US07885158B2
A system controller is provided so as to record the second disk type information having the same content as that of the first disk type information, which is recorded in a DVD-R in advance, in a DVD-R in which the first disk type information is recorded as well as to record the record information in the DVD-R and reproduce the record information only if the first disk type information and the second disk type information have the same contents each other upon reproducing the record information.
US07885155B2
A data readout method is disclosed that is able to read data from an optical disk capable of super resolution readout with high accuracy. The data readout method allows reading data recorded in an optical disk by irradiating a laser beam onto the optical disk. The method includes the steps of varying a light emission power level of the laser beam while the laser beam is irradiated onto the optical disk, and acquiring a reflectivity of the optical disk corresponding to each light emission power level; calculating a second derivative of a curve representing correlation between the reflectivity and the light emission power with respect to the light emission power; calculating an extreme value of the second derivative; and calculating an optimum readout power level for super resolution readout based on the extreme value.
US07885152B2
A tracking error (TE) signal is formed from a single spot on a photodetector 25 to improve the robustness in optical disc applications having a reduced track-pitch. Reduced track pitches are employed in high data capacity optical disc formats. By using high frequency cross-correlation of a central aperture signal, the differences within the left 21 and right 23 detector halves yield a divergence from the zero crossing that produces a more pronounced tracking signal. The more pronounced tracking signal is insensitive to incoherent cross talk in multi-layer discs.
US07885148B2
In a disc processing apparatus capable of automatically carrying out processing work such as recording information on a plurality of optical discs and printing label surfaces on those optical discs, this disc processing apparatus is able to suppress by separating a conveyed optical disc from an optical disc located just under the conveyed optical disc the occurrence of a phenomenon in which a plurality of optical discs is simultaneously conveyed in the state in which they stuck together when a plurality of optical discs accommodated within a stacker in the stacked state stuck together. After a disc contact portion 17c of a disc holding mechanism C1 was brought in contact with an optical disc D, the disc holding mechanism C1 is lowered by a predetermined amount to urge the disc contact portion 17c to downwardly press the optical disc D to thereby apply force directed in the direction substantially perpendicular to the disc surface to the optical disc D. Thus, the optical disc D located at the uppermost portion of a stacker 5 can be separated from an optical disc D located just under the above-mentioned optical disc D.
US07885145B2
A system and method for selecting an object from a plurality of objects in a physical environment is disclosed. The method may include analyzing acoustic data received by a plurality of acoustic sensors, detecting a snapping sound in the acoustic data, determining the direction of the snapping sound, estimating the distance to an object based on loudness measurements of the snapping sound detected in the acoustic data, and determining the location of the object relative to the system based at least in part on the determined direction, the estimated distance to the object and the location of the system. The method may further include identifying the selected object based on its geolocation, collecting and merging data about the identified object from a plurality of data sources, and displaying the collected and merged data.
US07885132B2
An internal voltage generating circuit generates and supplies a boosted voltage higher than an internal power supply voltage, as an operating power supply voltage, to a sense amplifier in a read circuit for reading data of a memory cell. A bit line precharge current supplied via an internal data line is produced from the internal power supply voltage. It is possible to provide a nonvolatile semiconductor memory device, which can perform a precise sense operation and an accurate reading of data even under a low power supply voltage condition.
US07885125B2
A semiconductor memory device comprises a logic circuit supplied with a first supply voltage; a cell array supplied with a second supply voltage higher than the first supply voltage and including plural mutually intersecting word lines and bit lines and plural memory cells connected at intersections thereof; and a word line driver operative to drive the word lines. The word line driver includes plural pull-up circuits connected between the supply terminal of the first supply voltage and the drive terminal of the word line and between the supply terminal of the second supply voltage and the drive terminal of the word line, and a pull-down circuit connected between the drive terminal of the word line and the ground terminal, and drives the word line with an intermediate voltage between the first and second supply voltages in accordance with a driving force ratio between the plural pull-up circuits at the time of driving the word line.
US07885117B2
Disclosed is a method for programming a nonvolatile memory device including one time programmable unit cells. The method for programming a nonvolatile memory device including one time programmable (OTP) unit cells, the method comprising applying a pulse type program voltage having a plurality of cycles. The present invention relates to a method for programming a nonvolatile memory device, which can prevent malfunctions by enhancing a data sensing margin in a read operation through the normal dielectric breakdown of an antifuse during a program operation, and thus improve the reliability in the read operation of an OTP unit cell.
US07885104B2
An information storage device includes a magnetic layer configured to store information, a first and second conductive layer. The first conductive layer contacts a first end of the magnetic layer. The second conductive layer contacts a second end of the magnetic layer. The magnetic layer includes first and second pinning regions at which magnetic domain walls are pinned. The widths of the magnetic layer at the first and second pinning regions are different.
US07885100B2
A phase change random access memory (PRAM) includes a cell array divided into an active region and a dummy active region. A bitline is formed across the active region and the dummy active region and a global wordline is formed in the active region so as to intersect with the bitline. The cell array includes a phase change memory cell formed at an intersection point of the bitline and the global wordline that is electrically connected with the bitline and the global wordline. The cell array further includes a phase change dummy cell formed below the bitline in the dummy active region that is electrically isolated from the bitline. The dummy cell maintains a turn-off state as the dummy cell and the bitline are electrically isolated from each other.
US07885096B2
An end of a selected bit line in a selected column is electrically coupled to an end of a corresponding current return line by one of first and second write column select gates, which are selectively turned on in response to results of column selection. A data write circuit sets the other end of the selected bit line and the other end of the current return line to one and the other of a power supply voltage and a ground voltage in accordance with a level of write data via one of first and second data buses and an inverted data bus, respectively.
US07885088B2
A method is provided for controlling a converter of the multiphase interleaving type. According to the method, there is detected when a change of the load applied to an output terminal of the converter occurs. All the phases of the converter are simultaneously turned on, and a driving interleaving phase shift is recovered to restart a normal operation of the converter. A controller for carrying out such a method is also provided.
US07885079B2
A flexible electronic assembly including a flexible circuit board and at least one electronic component is provided. The flexible circuit board includes at least one dielectric film layer and at least one patterned conductive layer disposed on the dielectric film layer. The electronic component is disposed on the flexible circuit board and electrically connected to the flexible circuit board. The flexible angle of the flexible electronic assembly is greater than 5 degrees.
US07885074B2
Cooling apparatuses and methods are provided for facilitating cooling of an electronic device utilizing a cooling subassembly, a pump and a controller. The cooling subassembly includes a jet impingement structure, and a thermosyphon. The jet impingement structure directs coolant into a chamber of the subassembly onto a surface to be cooled when in a jet impingement mode, and the thermosyphon, which is associated with the chamber, facilitates convective cooling of the surface to be cooled via boiling of coolant within the chamber when in a thermosyphon mode. The controller, which is coupled to the pump to control activation and deactivation of the pump, also controls transitioning between the jet impingement mode and the thermosyphon mode based on a sensed temperature of the electronic device.
US07885071B2
A heat dissipation arrangement for communication chassis includes a chassis body defining an inner receiving space and being divided into at least one heat receiving portion and at least one heat dissipation portion; a first heat pipe set arranged in the receiving space to connect the heat receiving portion to the heat dissipation portion, so that heat absorbed by the heat receiving portion can be quickly transferred via the first heat pipe set to the heat dissipation portion; and at least one thermal module including a plurality of radiating fins and at least one second heat pipe, which is connected to the heat dissipation portion and extended through the radiating fins, allowing part of the heat transferred to the heat dissipation portion to be transferred to the radiating fins. The thermal module provides additional heat dissipating area, so that the communication chassis can provide excellent heat dissipation effect.
US07885068B2
Provided is a cooler for a notebook computer. The cooler includes: a body comprising an upper plate, a lower plate, and an air passage formed between the upper plate and the lower plate; one or more cooling fans mounted on the body and drawing air into the air passage; and one or more vent holes formed in portions of the upper plate other than portions of the upper plate over the cooling fans, wherein the air drawn by the cooling fan is flown through the air passage of the body and discharged through the vent holes to the notebook computer placed on the body of the cooler. Accordingly, the air drawn by the cooling fans is flown through the air passage of the body and discharged through the vent holes to the notebook computer placed on the body of the cooler, thereby cooling the notebook computer.
US07885063B2
A heat exchanger carrier system, method, and computer program product are provided. Included is a circuit board with components mounted thereon. Further included is a carrier coupled to the circuit board. Also included is a plurality of heat exchangers coupled to the carrier for transferring heat from the components.
US07885049B2
A transmission delay line is introduced between the switch and the power output side of a power switching system so that sparking of the load is hidden from the switch by the time delay of the transmission line. This makes it possible to detect the load spark and actively protect the switch, typically by turning the switch off, before it actually knows that there has been a load fault spark. Alternatively, the delay of the transmission line is long enough so that the switch has already been turned off in normal pulse operation before the load fault current reaches the switch. Either way, the switch will be turned off under normal current flow and will not be subject to destructive over-current or over-voltage conditions.
US07885048B2
A semiconductor device and an electronic apparatus incorporating the semiconductor device are disclosed. The semiconductor device includesa power circuit that further includes a power transistor for providing current to a load (load current), a temperature detector for detecting the temperature of the power transistor, and a current detector for detecting the load current. If the detected temperature of the power transistor reaches a first predetermined temperature, and if the detected load current exceeds a first predetermined load current, a signal is output through an external terminal of the semiconductor device.
US07885047B2
Adaptive electrostatic discharge (ESD) protection of a device interface has very good ESD robustness when it is handled or when installed into or removed from a system. And has robust immunity to DPI, electromagnetic interference (EMI) and the like, when it is operational in a system. There is a significant capacitive coupling between the drain and gate of a ESD protection metal oxide semiconductor (MOS) device to enhance ESD protection and lower snap back voltage thereof whenever there is no (or a low level) DPI on the external connection to be protected. Whereupon when a significant DPI/EMI signal is detected on the external connection, the capacitive coupling between the drain and gate of the MOS ESD protection device is disconnected, bypassed or attenuated so that DPI/EMI immunity of the device is enhanced.
US07885045B1
The present invention is directed to an electrical wiring device that includes a plurality of line terminals and a plurality of load terminals. The plurality of line terminals are coupled to the plurality of load terminals in a reset state and decoupled therefrom in a tripped state. A wiring state detection circuit is coupled to the plurality of line terminals or the plurality of load terminals. The wiring state detection circuit is configured to monitor an electrical signal propagating on the plurality of line terminals or the plurality of load terminals and derive at least one signal characteristic therefrom. The wiring state detection circuit is configured to automatically determine a wiring state of the electrical wiring device based on the at least one signal characteristic upon device installation or device reinstallation. The wiring state detection circuit generates a miswire detection signal if the wiring state is determined to be in a miswired wiring state and generating a proper wiring detection signal if the wiring state is determined to be in a proper wiring state. A fault detection circuit is coupled to the plurality of line terminals, the fault detection circuit being configured to generate a fault detection signal in response to detecting at least one fault condition. A circuit interrupter assembly is responsive to the wiring state detection circuit and the fault detection circuit. The circuit interrupter is configured to drive the plurality of line terminals and the plurality of load terminals into the tripped state in response to either the fault detection signal or the miswire detection signal.
US07885044B2
A cooling system is provided with a motor drive device, a fan motor, and a Hall element. The motor drive device includes a lock protection circuit and a lock controller. When a control signal instructing rotation of the fan motor that is to be driven instructs stoppage of the motor for a predetermined time-period or longer, the lock controller has the lock protection circuit inactive. At an occasion when the control signal has continued to instruct stoppage of the fan motor for a first time-period or longer, a standby controller starts time measurement, and after a further predetermined second time-period has elapsed, makes at least a part of the motor drive device transition to a standby mode.
US07885042B2
A giant magneto-resistive effect device having a CPP structure comprising a spacer layer, and a fixed magnetization layer and a free layer stacked one upon another with the spacer layer interposed between them, with a sense current applied in a stacking direction. The spacer layer comprises a first nonmagnetic metal layer and a second nonmagnetic metal layer, each made of a nonmagnetic metal material, and a semiconductor layer formed between the first and the second nonmagnetic metal layer. The semiconductor layer is an n-type oxide semiconductor. When the first and second nonmagnetic metal layers are formed in order, the first nonmagnetic metal layer is formed prior to the second nonmagnetic metal layer, and an anti-oxidizing layer is formed between the first nonmagnetic metal layer and the semiconductor layer. The anti-oxidizing layer is formed of a material incapable of producing a Schottky barrier upon joining to the semiconductor layer.
US07885038B2
Embodiments in accordance with the present invention provide a magnetic head slider which includes a magnetic recording/reproducing element and a heater which are formed in an air outflow end surface of a slider. The heater includes a heating portion, terminal portions extending from both ends of the heating portion, and lead portions overlapping the respective terminal portions at an overlap ratio of approximately 50% or more.
US07885037B2
A media cartridge including a first substantially rectangular surface, a second substantially rectangular surface, and one or more side surfaces, where the first substantially rectangular surface and the second substantially rectangular surface are connected by the one or more side surfaces. Further, a disk drive assembly is enclosed by the first substantially rectangular surface, the second substantially rectangular surface, and the one or more side surfaces. In addition, the media cartridge includes a cooling component is configured to cool the disk drive assembly.
US07885035B2
A computer program product for operating an automated data storage library with storage shelves, data storage drive(s), a bus bar; and a robot accessor with a drive system for moving the robot accessor, an accessor communication interface, a bus bar relay configured to engage and disengage the bus bar; and a robot control configured to operate the drive system to move the robot accessor, to operate a picker, and to operate the bus bar relay to engage the bus bar when the robot accessor is stationary, to provide communication capability with a library communication interface via the bus bar relay and the bus bar when the bus bar relay engages the bus bar. Additionally, a second communication system may be provided between the robot accessor and the automated data storage library, which is operable at least when the robot accessor is moving.
US07885031B1
Systems and techniques relating to interpreting signals on a channel having an asymmetrical signal amplitude response. A signal processor, such as a read channel transceiver device usable in a magnetic recording system, includes an asymmetry correction circuit configured to receive an analog signal and to compensate for asymmetry in the received analog signal, a signal equalizer configured to receive an input signal responsive to an output of the asymmetry correction circuit and to generate an equalized signal, a discrete time sequence detector operable to examine the equalized signal, and a control circuit that provides a coefficient adjustment to the asymmetry correction circuit to affect the asymmetry compensation based on an estimate of non-linearity derived from the equalized signal and an output of the discrete time sequence detector. The estimate can be a least mean squared estimate of the non-linearity in the equalized signal.
US07885027B2
Embodiments of the present invention provide a magnetic disk drive in which the error correction capability of ECC is improved without sacrificing the storage capacity. In one embodiment, a data track adopts a format structure in which no data-to-data gap area is formed in data sectors. When one of the data sectors is updated in a state in which the rotational speed of a magnetic disk does not satisfy specified conditions, a leading end area of a succeeding data sector or a trailing end area of a preceding data sector is overwritten by the data sector. If a read error occurs in the overwritten data sector, ERP steps are executed to perform read retry so that the read error is recovered by means of on-the-fly ECC or erasure correction. In the case of the erasure correction, an erasure pointer equivalent to the maximum number of overwritten bytes is set.
US07885024B2
An enhanced oscillation test for detecting off track writing associated with a read/write head writing, on a magnetic media, a measurement track. Once the measurement track is written, a series of seek, write, and read operations is performed, e.g., between various origin tracks and the tracks adjacent to the measurement track, in order to detect any off track write problems. If a measurement track read operation fails a certain number of times, then an error code is generated which indicates an off track write problem.
US07885023B2
Disclosed is a lens driving apparatus. The lens driving apparatus comprises a base, a yoke coupled to the base, having an upper surface formed with a hole, a closed side surface, and an opened bottom surface, a bobbin movably installed in an inner portion of the yoke, a lens module coupled to the bobbin to go in and out the hole according to movement of the bobbin, a magnet fixed to an inner portion of the yoke, a coil fixed to an outer portion of the bobbin while facing the magnets, and springs coupled to the bobbin to provide restoration force to the bobbin.
US07885020B2
A lens barrel includes a rotational ring, first and second movable members linearly movable having first and second followers, respectively; and first and second guide grooves formed on the rotational ring, the first and second followers being slidably engaged therein, respectively. The first movable member has a non-linear moving path. The first guide groove includes an inclined linear lead groove. The lens barrel includes a complementary cam mechanism for controlling the rotational ring to define a non-linear moving path of the first movable member via a cam track of the complementary cam mechanism and a track of the linear lead groove. The second guide groove includes first and second lead groove portions extending parallel to the linear lead groove at different positions in the optical axis direction, and a differential groove portion extending in the circumferential direction which connect the first and second lead groove portions.
US07885018B2
A second optical element is bonded to a first optical element by forming the second optical element larger in diameter than the first optical element by pressing a second optical element material against the first optical element under a condition free from restriction to at least part of the second optical element material in the direction orthogonal to a direction in which the second optical element material is pressed.
US07885015B2
A two-lens type optical lens system for taking image consists two lens elements with refractive power, from the object side: a positive first lens element with a convex object-side surface and a concave image-side surface, both the object-side surface and the image-side surface of the first lens element being aspheric; a positive second lens element with a concave object-side surface and a convex image-side surface, both the object-side surface and the image-side surface of the second lens element being aspheric, and an aperture stop located in front of the first lens element. A focal length of the first lens element is f1, a focal length of the second lens element is f2, a focal length of the optical lens system is f, a radius of curvature of the object-side surface of the second lens element is R3, and they satisfy the relations: f/f1>0.9; (f/f1)>(f/f2)>0.35; and 1/R3<−0.01 mm−1.
US07885010B1
A wide field video endoscope objective and method of assembly the objective including four groups with five lenses, a mechanical housing containing the entire image forming elements, a aperture stop, a centering member and a retainer sleeve. The centering member is at first centered over the photo sensitive area of the chip and bonded to the surface of the cover glass. The retainer sleeve slides over said centering member and is glued to the centering member and the housing of the video chip. The objective housing with the optical elements is screwed on the centering member to adjust for focusing.
US07885006B2
A lens unit includes a lens array, a first light blocking member, and a second light blocking member. The lens array includes a plurality of lens pairs arranged in a substantially linear arrangement. Each of the lens pairs includes a first lens for forming an inverted reduced-size image of an object and a second lens for forming an inverted enlarged-size image of the inverted reduced-size image. The first light blocking member is disposed between the first lenses and the second lenses, and includes first apertures. The second light blocking member includes second apertures arranged in a substantially linear arrangement corresponding to an arrangement interval of the lens pairs, and having different opening portion shapes depending on a position of the lens pairs in an optical axis direction of the lens pairs. The second light blocking member is disposed at least between the first lenses and an object plane or the second lenses and an image plane.
US07885005B2
An eyepiece system has a lens group S1 in which a lens L1 having a negative refractive index and refractive power and a lens L2 having a positive refractive index and refractive power are joined, so that the lens group S1 as a whole has a positive refractive index and refractive power; and a multi-layer (stacked) diffraction optical element PF. In an optical system positioned between an image surface I and an eye point EP, the position of a diffraction plane on the optical axis is between EF in FIG. 1. In FIG. 1, EF is the range in which the value ra of the ratio between a distance (DH2) between the diffraction plane (C) and a principal point (H2) near the diffraction plane and a distance (DH1H2) between principal points is 0.5 or less in both directions from the principal points H1, H2.
US07885001B2
An optical device may include at least one optical element and a coupling section adapted to control relative movement between the at least one optical element and the coupling section. The coupling section may include an engaging element and a detent mechanism adapted to adjustably lock the at least one optical element in a plurality of rotational positions. The rotational positions may include rotational positions around a first axis that is substantially perpendicular to a second axis of the at least one optical element, the second axis being a substantially longitudinal axis of the at least one optical element.
US07884993B2
An electrophoretic display device is described. The device includes a substrate, first electrodes, an electrophoretic film having electrophoretic particles, and second electrodes. The substrate is has a plurality of pixel regions. First electrodes are disposed respectively on each pixel region, and include first patterns separated from one another and second patterns connected to the first patterns. The second electrode is disposed on the electrophoretic film. The area of one of the electrodes, opposing the other of the electrodes has apertures formed therein, reducing the contact area between the electrode and the electrophoretic film.
US07884991B1
The present invention discloses a structure and method for realizing electromagnetically-induced transparency. In the present invention, a first split-ring resonator and a second split-ring resonator form a resonance structure. The first split-ring resonator and the second split-ring resonator are made of a conductive material. The first split-ring resonator has a “U” shape with a containing space. The second split-ring resonator has a “rectangular loop” shape with a gap or has a “U” shape with an opening. The second split-ring resonator is inserted into the containing space with the gap or opening arranged inside the containing space and faced downward to form the resonance structure. The resonance structures are periodically arranged on a chip to form an array. Thereby, different-frequency electromagnetic waves can be used to generate electromagnetically-induced transparency via regulating the dimensions of the resonance structure.
US07884984B2
A multicolor hologram (e.g., a two-color hologram) is replicated (copied) into a photosensitive layer by masking to produce a copy (replicate) of the hologram in a manner such that the copy is an accurate and true replication of the hologram (e.g., master hologram), and the copy is characterized to possess a high brightness level and color fidelity comparable to that of the multicolor hologram that was replicated. Both flood and scan modes can be employed in the replication.
US07884981B2
In order to enable a user to easily and quickly set the processing mode, the user interface device sets the processing mode for job execution in an image processing apparatus. This user interface device includes specifying means that specifies the processing modes presented to the user prior to processing mode setting as presentation processing modes, generating means that generates presentation preview images indicating processing results when the image data is processed using the presentation processing modes, display means that displays the generated presentation preview images, and setting means that sets in the image processing apparatus the processing modes corresponding to the displayed presentation preview images.
US07884978B2
An aspect of the invention provides an image reading apparatus including: first and second light emitters that emit lights; a light guide unit that guides the lights emitted from the first and second light emitters to irradiate a document with the light; a photoelectric conversion unit that converts reflected light from the document into an image signal; and a control unit that controls the first light emitter to emit light for a first time period in a unit time period and controls the second light emitter to emit light for a second time period misaligned from the first time period in the unit time period.
US07884977B2
The image processing device is provided with an area process portion for generating objects indicating specific areas included in original image data of an scanned original and for discriminating whether each of the objects is a character object or a non-character object, an integration process portion for performing a process of integrating character objects that satisfy a first condition so as to make one character object and a process of integrating character objects that have remained after integration and satisfy a second condition if the number of the remaining character objects is larger than a preset value, a lossless compression portion for performing a lossless compression process on a character object, and a lossy compression portion for performing a lossy compression process on a non-character object.
US07884974B2
An image sensor includes: a case that extends in a longitudinal direction; and a first positioning member that is disposed at one end portion in the longitudinal direction of the case, the first positioning member positioning the case in the longitudinal direction.
US07884970B2
Disclosed are an information processing apparatus and method, a recording medium and a program, by which an image can be fetched in a size appropriate to a user. An image of a subject picked up by a camera is displayed in a predetermined first range corresponding to a size designated in advance within a predetermined display region of an LCD unit which corresponds to an image pickup range of the camera, but the image of the subject picked up by the camera is not displayed in a surrounding range of the predetermined display region around the first range. If a shutter button is depressed in this state, then the image displayed in the first range is stored in the designated size into a memory. The present invention can be applied typically to a PDA, a mobile terminal, a portable telephone set, a desk-top personal computer or the like which has a function as a digital camera.
US07884962B2
Apparatus and methods for raster image processing are provided that include a networked computer coupled to a plurality of networked printers, the networked computer adapted to receive a print job, parse the print job into one or more print pieces, load balance the print pieces among the printers based on color use and print speed, and provide a list of the printers that received the print pieces.
US07884958B2
A printer, image registration method, and printer system improve image data processing efficiency by tracking and storing the identical image data that is registered and stored in a printer. The image registration device has a graphics register for registering images in a printer. The graphics register sends the image data to be registered to the printer, receives an identification number from the printer, and records and stores a registered image data information file linking the image data sent to the printer with the printer identification number.
US07884948B2
An object of the present invention is to provide a surface inspection tool in which a flat inspection range capable of measuring surface roughness of a wafer with patterns with high accuracy and in a nondestructive manner can be searched without visual search. In order to solve the object, in a surface inspection tool 110 which measures scattering light intensity of scattering light generated by irradiated irradiation light in association with a measurement coordinate on a wafer 200 with patterns and inspects the surface roughness of the wafer 200, the surface inspection tool includes a controller 250 which extracts measurement coordinate of the measured scattering light intensity that is equal to or more than a lower limit threshold L, sets an inspection range 406 of the surface roughness inspection in a partial layout 405a of a part of the whole layout 401 of the pattern corresponding to the periphery of the extracted measurement coordinate, and obtains the surface roughness in the inspection range 406.
US07884946B2
An apparatus for measuring the axial length of a human eye, the apparatus comprising a low coherence light source; a beam splitter; a fast displacement module for rapidly varying the path length within a reference arm of an interferometer; a laser directing a laser beam that is co-propagating with light from the low coherence light source into the displacement module.
US07884942B2
A probe apparatus includes a first focusing lens and a second focusing lens. The first focusing lens is arranged on a surface of a base to which a terahertz excitation beam is applied, the surface being opposite to the surface to which terahertz excitation beam is applied, with the lens axis deviated from the center of a point at which the terahertz excitation beam is applied. The second focusing lens is arranged on a surface of a base to which a terahertz detected beam is applied from a source of the terahertz excitation beam, the surface being opposite to the surface to which the terahertz detected beam is applied, with the lens axis deviated from the center of a point at which the terahertz detected beam is applied, in a direction opposite to the direction in which the lens axis of the first focusing lens is deviated.
US07884934B2
The present invention provides an apparatus for biogenic substance concentration measurement including: a cell including therein a first region, a second region, and a test solution retention space; a light source; a polarizing plate; and a photoreceiver, in which a plurality of first metallic nanorods each having a first antibody on a surface thereof are immobilized on the first region, a plurality of second metallic nanorods each having a second antibody on a surface thereof are immobilized on the second region, the respective long axes of the plurality of first metallic nanorods are aligned in the same direction, the respective long axes of the plurality of second metallic nanorods are aligned in the same direction, the long-axis direction of the first metallic nanorod is orthogonal to the long-axis direction of the second metallic nanorod, and at least one of the polarizing plate and the cell is capable of rotation with an optical axis as the rotation axis.
US07884928B2
A cup attaching apparatus for attaching a cup as a processing jig to an eyeglass lens including an illumination optical system including an illumination light source arranged to illuminate a side of the front surface of the lens by light from the light source; an imaging optical system including an imaging device and a retroreflection member placed on an opposite side from the light source with respect to the lens; an image processing device adapted to process an image signal from the imaging device to detect at least one of a mark point provided on a unifocal lens, a small lens portion of a bifocal lens, and a progressive mark provided on a progressive focal lens and obtain a position of the detected one; and an arithmetic control device adapted to determine an attaching position of the cup based on the position obtained by the image processing device.
US07884927B2
A power transmission control device includes a power-transmitting-side control circuit that controls an operation of a power transmitting device, a driver control circuit that controls operations of a first power transmitting driver and a second power transmitting driver, and a waveform detection circuit that performs a waveform detection process based on a monitor signal from a waveform monitor circuit. The first power transmitting driver drives a first node of a primary coil directly, and the second power transmitting driver drives a second node of the primary coil through a capacitor. A switch circuit is provided in the waveform monitor circuit, the switch circuit being situated in a signal path between the primary coil and a low-level power supply potential. The power-transmitting-side control circuit causes the switch circuit to be turned ON/OFF using a switch control signal.
US07884922B2
An illumination system for a microlithography projection exposure apparatus for illuminating an illumination field with the light from an assigned light source includes a pupil shaping unit for receiving light from the assigned light source and for generating a predeterminable basic light distribution in a pupil plane of the illumination system, and a transmission filter assigned to the pupil shaping unit and having at least one array of individually drivable individual elements for the spatially resolving transmission filtering of the light impinging on the transmission filter in or in proximity to a pupil plane of the illumination system. The transmission filter generates a predetermined correction of the basic light distribution. An illumination system of this type can generate a multiplicity of location-dependent intensity distributions in a pupil plane of the illumination system, and ensure a high transmittance.
US07884918B2
An exposure apparatus includes a first measurement device, a second measurement device, and a controller. The first measurement device measures the position of a substrate stage in the optical axis direction when the substrate stage is scanned in the first direction. The second measurement device measures the surface positions of the substrate in the optical axis direction at a plurality of measurement points on one straight line extending in the second direction on the substrate. The controller controls the second measurement device to measure at least one identical region on the substrate at different measurement points of the plurality of measurement points both before and after the substrate stage moves in steps in the second direction, and calculates a measurement error of the first measurement device attributed to the driving of the substrate stage in the second direction based on the measurement result obtained by the second measurement device.
US07884905B2
This invention relates to a liquid crystal device wherein the surface profile of a surface alignment grating stabilizes at least one stable state. The invention involves the introduction or breaks (34, 36, 38) or discontinuities into the grating (10) to divide the grating into a plurality of groove segments. The breaks are discontinuities in the grating in the groove direction, the grating having substantially the same groove direction on each side of the break. The introduction of breaks prevent free movement of defects along the groove of the grating and therefore help to stabilize the desired liquid crystal configuration, either a Defect state or a Continuous state. Suitable breaks involve gaps (34) in the groove ridges (30), necks (36) between the groove ridges (30) and slips or relative displacement (38) of the grating.
US07884882B2
An address generating unit 102 generates a different write start address (w_adr) of a picture memory 105 depending on an aspect ratio and/or a display plane position of a motion picture to be displayed. A picture writing unit 104 writes data to the picture memory 105, starting at the calculated write start address (w_adr). A picture reading unit 108 uses the write start address (w_adr) as a read start address (r_adr) and reads data from the picture memory 105, starting at the read start address (r_adr).
US07884869B2
A method and digital imaging device, such as a digital camera module, is provided for digital imaging. The method includes the step of determining a signal-to-noise ratio associated with a first pixel location of a plurality of pixel locations and a signal-to-noise ratio associated with a second pixel location of the plurality of pixel locations, and the steps of assigning a first exposure time to the first pixel location in response to the signal-to-noise ratio associated with the first pixel location and assigning a second exposure time different from the first exposure time to the second pixel in response to the signal-to-noise ratio associated with the second pixel location. The method further includes the step of exposing the first pixel location for the first exposure time while exposing the second pixel location for the second exposure time to create a digital image.
US07884858B2
A method and apparatus are described for improving object trackability via parametric camera tuning. In one embodiment, a determination is made as to whether the camera settings loaded cause saturation of a video image and hue differences between objects and between the objects and a background of the video image. If the saturation and hue differences do not exceed the threshold, a search of camera settings is performed to increase saturation and hue differences between objects and between the objects and a background of the video image.
US07884851B2
Apparatus and methods of processing audio files used by the apparatus are provided. The apparatus includes a camera arrangement, a storage arrangement, and a user input arrangement. The storage arrangement can store one or more audio files. A user may prepare the camera arrangement to capture an image of a subject. A selected audio file arrangement can be played through a sound generation arrangement audible to the person whose image is being captured, in response to an activation of the user input arrangement of the apparatus. After the audio file is played, the camera apparatus captures the image. One exemplary embodiment includes a wireless device, and the audio files are downloaded from a vendor using a wireless network and a computer network. In addition or alternatively, a display arrangement can be provided that displays an interactive menu for selection of options related to the audio files. A two-step shutter control of the camera arrangement can be used as the input device for causing the audio file to play.
US07884847B2
An image processing system may include an imaging device for capturing an image and an image processing apparatus for processing the image. The imaging device may include an imaging unit for capturing the image, a first recording unit for recording information relating to the image, the information being associated with the image, and a first transmission control unit for controlling transmission of the image to the image processing apparatus. The image processing apparatus may include a reception control unit for controlling reception of the image transmitted from the imaging device, a feature extracting unit for extracting a feature of the received image, a second recording unit for recording the feature, extracted from the image, the feature being associated with the image, and a second transmission control unit for controlling transmission of the feature to the imaging device.
US07884838B2
The invention discloses a gamma adjusting apparatus for adjusting the gray level of each pixel of an image signal. The gamma adjusting apparatus includes a measuring unit, a first processing unit, a second processing unit, and a third processing unit. The measuring unit measures the lightness of N reference gray levels. The first processing unit normalizes the lightness of the N reference gray levels to generate N normalized reference values. The second processing unit compares the N normalized reference values with a standard gamma curve to generate N adjusted gray levels. According to the N reference gray levels and the N adjusted gray levels, the third processing unit sets an adjusting rule. According to the adjusting rule, the gamma adjusting apparatus is capable of adjusting the gray level of each pixel of the image signal to comply with the standard gamma curve.
US07884836B2
When a physical change (e.g. a change in screen orientation) is detected at a display device that is attached to a graphics subsystem of a host device and on which images are currently being displayed, a hot plug detect signal may be provided to the graphics subsystem. In response, the graphics subsystem may adjust its processing of images to account for the physical change (e.g. the image may be rotated). The display device may communicate data representative of the physical change to the graphics subsystem. The graphics subsystem may use this data to determine how its processing of images should be adjusted. The data may be communicated over an I2C bus regardless of whether a hot plug detect signal is provided.
US07884829B1
A graphics system has a partitioned graphics memory that includes memory elements. The system supports having an non-power of two number of active memory elements. In one implementation, the memory elements are dynamic random access memories (DRAMs) and the system supports having a non-power of two number of active DRAMs.
US07884823B2
Game data is rendered in three dimensions in the GPU of a game console. A left camera view and a right camera view are generated from a single camera view. The left and right camera positions are derived as an offset from a default camera. The focal distance of the left and right cameras is infinity. A game developer does not have to encode dual images into a specific hardware format. When a viewer sees the two slightly offset images, the user's brain combines the two offset images into a single 3D image to give the illusion that objects either pop out from or recede into the display screen. In another embodiment, individual, private video is rendered, on a single display screen, for different viewers. Rather than rendering two similar offset images, two completely different images are rendered allowing each player to view only one of the images.
US07884816B2
Scanning beam display systems using fluorescent screens and various servo feedback control mechanisms to control display imaging qualities, including techniques and mechanism for measuring and correcting pyramidal errors of a polygon scanner.
US07884808B2
A cover for a mobile device is provided. The cover includes a support member having an upper surface, and a touch sensitive portion located on the upper surface of the support member, the touch sensitive portion being configured to generate a signal when touched to control the mobile device. A mobile device is also provided. The mobile device has a cover including a support member having an upper surface, and a touch sensitive portion located on the upper surface of the support member, the touch sensitive portion being configured to generate a signal when touched to control the mobile device. The mobile device also includes a display unit located in the mobile device.
US07884807B2
A proximity sensor device and method is provided that facilitates orientation changes in displays. The proximity sensor device and method provide a user with the ability to indicate an orientation change in a display using the sensing region of a proximity sensor device as a user interface. In one specific embodiment, proximity sensor device is implemented to indicate an orientation change in a first way responsive to detected object motion along the sensing region in a first direction, and is further implemented to indicate an orientation change in a second way responsive to detected object motion along the sensing region in a second direction. Thus, a user can cause orientation changes of different ways through the use of object motions in different directions along the sensing region.
US07884788B2
A liquid crystal display device provided with an audio signal processing function, which includes an audio signal processing circuit with a large S/N ratio and a small glitch is provided. The display device of the invention includes a resistor string D/A converter circuit whose dynamic range can be increased by using a common power supply for a D/A converter circuit and a signal line driver circuit. Accordingly, a glitch generated in the D/A converter circuit can be reduced relatively to an audio signal and an S/N ratio of the D/A converted signal can thus be increased.
US07884781B2
A method and apparatus for correcting video data signals for addressing an active matrix electroluminescent display device wherein input video signals are modified in accordance with stored electrical characteristic parameter values for each drive transistor (20) employed to control the current through a respective display element (11). The stored values are continually updated to ensure accurate data signal correction which counteracts variations in the electrical characteristics of each drive transistor such as threshold voltage drift, for example. A power line (10) supplies current to n display elements (11). Thus, n sets of data relating to the current through the power line are collected during normal operation of the display, for example. The data is used to calculate updated characteristic parameter values for each drive transistor (20).
US07884780B2
An electron emission display device and a method of correcting an image signal to enhance an image quality by reducing luminance unevenness among pixels. The display device includes: a display region having an anode electrode configured to collide with electrons emitted depending on a voltage applied to first and second electrodes, the image signal being corrected using a correction factor; an image signal generator for generating the corrected image signal by multiplying the image signal by the correction factor to generate a result, dividing the result by a first number to generate a quotient and a remainder, and summing the quotient with a second number corresponding to a value of the remainder; a data driver for generating a data signal using the image signal and for transferring the data signal to the first electrode; and a scan driver for generating and transferring a scan signal to the second electrode.
US07884777B2
In one embodiment, a device is disclosed that includes: a first substrate, a plurality of antennas adjacent the first substrate; a plurality of oscillators integrated in the first substrate, each oscillator providing an output signal to drive a corresponding subset of the antennas; and a plurality of photodetectors corresponding to plurality of oscillators, each oscillator being adapted to injection lock its output signal to an electronic photodetector signal from the photodetector produced in response to an illumination of the photodetectors with a free-space optical signal modulated such that the photodetector signals are globally synchronized with each other, whereby the output signals driving the plurality antennas are also globally synchronized across the plurality of antennas.
US07884770B2
A communication apparatus is provided that includes an apparatus main frame, an antenna, and a connecting element that connects the antenna to the apparatus main frame and positions the antenna away from the apparatus main frame.
US07884763B2
Techniques are provided for computing beamforming weight vectors useful for multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) wireless transmission of multiple signals streams from a first device to a second device. The techniques involve computing a plurality of candidate beamforming weight vectors based on the one or more signals received at the plurality of antennas of the first device. A sequence of orthogonal/partially orthogonal beamforming weight vectors are computed from the plurality of candidate beamforming weight vectors. The sequence of orthogonal/partially orthogonal beamforming weight vectors are applied to multiple signal streams for simultaneous transmission to the second device via the plurality of antennas of the first device.
US07884762B2
Method and apparatus for a GPS device that uses at least one cellular acquisition signal is described. More particularly, a GPS device is configured to receive at least one cellular acquisition signal for obtaining benefits associated with AGPS with only a small subset of AGPS circuitry to interact with a cell phone network. This facilitates use of GPS devices without subscription to a cell phone service provider, thus avoiding cellular subscription fees.
US07884761B2
A method for tracking a satellite signal by a GPS includes the following steps. Data is continuously received from one of satellites by using tracking frequencies updated one by one based on an average phase difference of received data. Phase inversion points in the plurality of received data are interpreted. A time difference between each two adjacent phase inversion points among the phase inversion points is calculated. It is determined whether each time difference is an integral multiple of 20 ms. When each time difference is an integral multiple of 20 ms, 1-bit data is retrieved for every 20 ms from the satellite signal by taking a first phase inversion point among the plurality of phase inversion points as a starting point. Thus, a positioning speed is increased and a required positioning time is reduced by finding out a precise tracking frequency and a correct phase inversion point.
US07884755B2
A level measuring instrument has a variable transmitting power for measuring a filling level in a tank. The level measuring instrument includes a generator unit generating one of a first oscillator signal and a second oscillator signal. The generator unit generates a transmit signal from one of the first oscillator signal and the second oscillator signal. The level measuring instrument includes further a controller controlling the generator unit. The generator unit generates one of first and second transmitting powers for the transmit signal.
US07884752B2
A radar system comprising a platform movable along a path in relation to a ground surface portion and carrying a positioning device, a timing device and a radar equipment. It is adapted to implement synthetic aperture radar (SAR) for imaging the ground portion. It includes recording means for collecting radar raw data comprising radar echo amplitudes annotated with distance and the moment of time of collection and being intertwined with platform position measurement data annotated with the respective moment of time of collection thereof.
US07884744B2
Circuit arrangement, LIN comprising such circuit arrangement as well as method for processing input signals of the LIN In order to further develop a circuit arrangement (100)—for processing at least one input signal (12) from at least one data bus (10) of at least one LIN and—for providing the data bus (10) with at least one output signal (18), as well as a corresponding operating method in such way that EMI performance and/or EMI performance of the LIN (300) is improved, it is proposed to provide—at least one analog-digital converting circuit (ADC) for converting the analog input signal (12) into at least one digital signal (14) to be processed, and—at least one digital-analog converting circuit (DAC) for converting the processed digital signal (16) into the analog output signal (18).
US07884732B2
Wireless control of building facility systems via a wireless network using a wireless relay controller with a unique identifier. The wireless relay controller receives wireless control signals via a wireless communication network. The wireless relay controller determines that a wireless control signal concerns the wireless relay controller based on the unique identifier. The wireless relay controller further identifies a mode of operation for a specified relay indicated by the wireless control signal and controls the power to the specified relay in accordance with the wireless control signal. The wireless control signal may also monitor the power consumption of the load controlled by the specified relay and send that information to the network.
US07884724B2
An adjustable radio frequency data communications device has a monolithic semiconductor integrated circuit with integrated circuitry, interrogation receiving circuitry provided on the monolithic integrated circuit forming at least part of the integrated circuitry and configured to receive an interrogation signal from the interrogator unit, an antenna electrically coupled to the interrogation receiving circuitry and configured to communicate with the remote interrogator unit, a power source electrically coupled to the integrated circuitry and configured to generate operating power for the communications device, and at least one of the antenna and the interrogation receiving circuitry having reconfigurable electrical characteristics, the electrical characteristics being reconfigurable to selectively tune the at least one of the antenna and the interrogation receiving circuitry within a range of tuned and detuned states to realize a desired receiver sensitivity of the communications device. Additionally, a method for tuning receiver sensitivity and/or transmitter sensitivity according to construction of the above device is disclosed.
US07884723B2
Provided are a radio frequency identification (RFID) tag and a wake-up method thereof. The RFID tag includes: a power source that supplies a driving voltage; a continuous wave detector that receives the driving voltage from the power supply so as to detect a continuous wave in a signal received from an RFID tag reader; a command detector that selectively receives the driving voltage and detects a command in the signal; and a controller that executes the command detected by the command detector by supplying the driving voltage to the command detector if the continuous wave is detected, and stops the driving voltage from being supplied to the command detector if no command is received from the command detector for a predetermined time period.
US07884720B2
The present invention provides an intermediate attachment mechanism, called a powerposer (10), which includes at least one power source (16) coupled to an integrated circuit (14), at least one integrated circuit, which is arranged to store a code comprising information and powered with energy provided by the power source and a substrate (12) on which the at least one power source and the at least one integrated circuit are disposed, and wherein the substrate comprises connection means (22) for connecting to an application device and attachment means for attaching to the application device. Further, the present invention provides a battery assisted or active RFID transponder featuring a transponder substrate, at least one antenna disposed on the transponder substrate and a powerposer disposed on the transponder substrate. Still further the present invention provides methods of production of a powerposer and an active or battery assisted RFID transponder comprising a powerposer.
US07884718B2
The present invention is directed to systems that use frequency selective surfaces (FSS) to aid in the operation of radio frequency identification (RFID) devices and products. In one embodiment, a system for interrogating radio frequency identification (RFID) tags includes a conveyor belt and an RFID reader. The conveyor belt has a first surface and a second surface. The first surface is configured to receive an item to which an RFID tag is affixed and the second surface is configured to slide on a metal slide plate. The RFID reader is configured to transmit instructions embodied in a radio frequency (RF) signal to the RFID tag, wherein the metal slide plate is positioned between the RFID reader and the RFID tag and comprises a frequency selective surface that is substantially transparent to the RF signal.
US07884716B2
In a movie projection system, a switch circuit is disposed on a door of a case in which a video server is disposed. A tamper detector detects a state of the door as to whether the door is open or not and a state of the switch circuit as to whether the switch circuit has been tampered with or not, on the basis of an output signal provided by the switch circuit. A projecting operation controller controls the operation of the movie projection system such that when the door is detected to be in the open state or the switch circuit is detected to have been tampered with, the projecting operation controller stops inputting and outputting video data to or from the video server.
US07884714B2
Disclosed is a method and system for altering settings on portable electronic devices based upon the surrounding sounds. The system and method create a series of improvements in electronic devices that enable a person to have a greater possibility to hear their name being called, important signals or emergency vehicles while using their electronic devices are in use by the instant user. An example embodiment (i) provides at least one sensor connected to a portable device, each sensor detecting surrounding sounds; (ii) recognizing a specific sound among the surrounding sounds by the at least one sensor by matching the specific sound to one of a plurality of reference sounds; and (iii) altering settings of the portable device from a first setting to a second setting, in a first event the specific sound matches with one of the plurality of reference sounds.
US07884694B2
A transformer is provided. The transformer includes at least a high voltage coil, at least a low voltage coil and a soft-magnetic colloid element. The soft-magnetic colloid element is disposed between the high voltage coil and the low voltage coil.
US07884682B2
When a microstrip line is connected with a waveguide, there is a limit to reducing the connection loss by using only a matching box. We have discovered that in a transmission mode line transducer for converting between the TEM waves of the microstrip line and the TE01 waves of the waveguide, if the cross-sections of the microstrip line and the waveguide are substantially the same size, in the case of a 50Ω microstrip line when the characteristic impedance of the waveguide is about 80%, i.e., 40Ω, the line conversion loss can be optimized. Therefore, according to the present invention, the microstrip line is connected with the waveguide using a λ/4 matching box by means of a ridged waveguide having a low impedance and a length of λ/16 or less.
US07884680B2
One embodiment relates to a circuit for active loss compensation. The circuit includes a parallel inductor-capacitive (LC) tank circuit having a first single-ended output. A first adjustable capacitor, which includes a first terminal and a second terminal, is coupled to the first single-ended output. The circuit also includes a first pair of transistors having sources coupled to a first common node. One transistor of the first pair of transistors has a drain coupled to the first single-ended output and the other transistor of the first pair of transistors has a gate coupled to the second terminal of the first adjustable capacitor. Other embodiments are also disclosed.
US07884664B2
An input device including an electrode a width dimension of which changes in its direction of extension, an output portion an output signal of which corresponds to an electrostatic capacity induced between the electrode and an electrically charged body when the body approaches or touches the electrode, a detecting portion to detect a change of an output signal value of the output portion, and an operation recognizing portion configured to recognize, on the basis of the detected change of the output signal value, one of a pressing operation and a sliding operation of the body performed with respect to the electrode, wherein the pressing operation is performed by a moving action of the body in which the body approaches or touches the electrode, while the sliding operation is performed by a sliding action of the body in the direction of extension of the electrode while the body is held in close proximity to or in touch with the electrode.
US07884663B2
Conventional diode rectifiers usually suffer from a higher conduction loss. The present invention discloses a gate-controlled rectifier, which comprises a line voltage polarity detection circuit, a constant voltage source, a driving circuit and a gate-controlled transistor. The line voltage polarity detection circuit detects the polarity of the line voltage and controls the driving circuit to turn on or turn off the gate-controlled transistor. The gate-controlled transistor may be a Metal Oxide Semiconductor Field Effect Transistor (MOSFET) with a gate, a source and a drain or an Insulated Gate Bipolar Transistor (IGBT) with a gate, an emitter and a collector. The constant voltage source is provided or induced by external circuits and referred to the source of the MOSFET or the emitter of the IGBT. Thanks to a lower conduction loss, this gate-controlled rectifier can be applied to rectification circuits to increase the rectification efficiency.
US07884660B2
A programmable delay element, variable-length delay chain, and ring oscillator are disclosed. The programmable delay element performs phase interpolation of input signals in response to a control signal and can be used in combination with other delay elements to create a highly-modular, variable-length delay chain or ring oscillator. The ring oscillator can be used as part of a digitally-controlled oscillator (DCO) in a digital clock synthesizer to adjust the frequency and phase of a clock signal by fractional unit delay steps. Within the variable-length delay chain, some programmable delay elements can be configured to scale the delay-step of other programmable delay elements so that a plurality of step sizes can be implemented with identical delay elements. Also, variations of the delay chain generate in-phase and quadrature phase (I/Q) signals in either an end-tap or center-tap configuration.
US07884657B2
Provided is an oscillation frequency control circuit for correcting its frequency, keeping the oscillation frequency stable when self-oscillating, and oscillating with a control voltage generated by making a fixed voltage given from outside variable. In the oscillation frequency control circuit, a CPU selects/outputs the control voltage preferentially according to a command of a control voltage selection. If the command is not given and the level of an outside reference signal detected by a detecting circuit is within an adequate range, it turns a select switch on. If the command is not given and the level of the outside reference signal is out of the adequate range, it turns the select switch off and outputs information about pulse generation stored in a memory to a PWM circuit.
US07884651B2
An electronic device compares a first voltage with a selected first reference voltage or second reference voltage. The electronic device includes a comparator having a first input receiving the first voltage, a second input receiving the selected reference voltage and an output providing an output signal based on a comparison. A control stage connected to the output of the comparator generates a control signal based on the output of the comparator. The electronic device selects either the first reference voltage or the second reference voltage in response to the control signal thus comparing the first voltage with the selected reference voltage.
US07884649B1
Techniques in which an optimal set of clock gating elements is determined for a selected circuit design. Those clock gating elements are coupled to selected flip-flops, with the effect that those selected flip-flops will consume less dynamic power during operation of the logic circuit. The selected set of clock gating elements provides an optimal savings in overall power consumption after modification of that selected circuit design.
US07884646B1
A voltage level shifting circuit may include a differential first-stage level shifter that receives a binary input signal and generates a non-inverted first-stage shifted output signal and an inverted first-stage shifted output signal, a second-stage level shifter that receives the first-stage shifted output signals and generates a non-inverted second-stage shifted output signal and an inverted second-stage shifted output signal, and a signal generator that generates a level shifted final output signal corresponding to the binary input signal that is based on the non-inverted second-stage shifted output signal and the inverted second-stage shifted output signal. The voltage swing of the first stage output signals may be limited to swing between a non-zero lower value and an upper value that is less than or equal to a source-to-drain voltage rating of transistors in the differential first-stage level shifter.
US07884642B2
A system LSI includes an input/output section and a logic circuit section. The input/output section includes an I/O power source cell having a supply voltage higher than a power source for the logic circuit section and a plurality of I/O cells in each of which an I/O power source line is provided for supplying source power from the I/O power source cell. The logic circuit section includes an I/O power consuming circuit which uses the I/O power source cell as a power source. The I/O power consuming circuit is connected to a line leading from an I/O power source line in at least one of the plurality of I/O cells.
US07884641B2
This invention is an integrated circuit having at least one data pin connecting to external circuits. The invention includes a plurality of operational units each having at least one data input/output for data transfer and an enable input. The operational unit have a normal mode and a stall mode controlled by an enable input. The operational units can exchange data via the data input/output in normal mode and are not capable of exchanging data in the stall mode. A selection logic selectively enables an operation unit and connects the data input/output of the enabled operation unit to the at least one data pin. The selection logic is responsive to external signals on at least one data pin to selectively enable operation units.
US07884633B2
Various apparatus and methods of testing a semiconductor chip for soft defects are disclosed. In one aspect, a method of testing a semiconductor chip that has a surface and plural circuit structures positioned beneath the surface is provided. An external stimulus is applied to a series of fractional portions of the surface to perturb portions of the plural circuit structures such that at least one of the series of fractional portions is smaller than another of the series of fractional portions. The semiconductor chip is caused to perform a test pattern during the application of external stimulus to each of the fractional portions to determine if a soft defect exists in any of the series of fractional portions.
US07884631B2
A parking-structure test system has motherboards that test memory modules. The motherboards are not stationary but are placed inside movable trays that move along conveyors. An unloader removes tested memory modules from test sockets on the motherboards, and a loader inserts untested memory modules into the motherboards using a robotic arm. A conveyor carries the motherboards from the loader to a parking and testing structure. An elevator raises or lowers the motherboards to different parking levels in the parking and testing structure. The motherboards move from the elevator to test stations on the parking level. A retractable connector from the test station makes contact with a motherboard connector to power up the motherboard, which then tests the memory modules. Test results are communicated from the test station to a host controller, which instructs the loader-unloader to sort the tested memory modules once the motherboard returns via the elevator and conveyors.
US07884620B2
A sensor for measuring the moisture and salinity of a material is disclosed herein. The sensor preferably includes a soil moisture circuit, a soil salinity circuit and a probe structure. The soil moisture circuit includes a high frequency oscillator, a voltage meter and a reference capacitor. The soil salinity circuit includes a low frequency oscillator, a voltage meter and a reference resistor. A third voltage meter allows for voltage outputs to be measured to calculate soil moisture and soil salinity values.
US07884619B1
Delay associated with each of two signals along respective transmission paths is accurately measured using a delay measurement circuit that is fabricated in situ on the actual device where the circuitry for propagating the two signals is fabricated. Thus, the measured delay associated with each of the two signals is subject to the same fabrication-dependent attributes that affect the actual circuitry through which the two signals will be propagated during operation of the device. The skew between the two signals is quantified as the difference in the measured delays. Coarse and fine delay modules are defined within the transmission path of each of the two signals. Based on the measured skew between the two signals, the coarse and fine delay modules are appropriately set to compensate for the skew. The appropriately settings for the coarse and fine delay modules can be stored in non-volatile memory elements.
US07884604B2
Methods and systems in a parallel magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) system utilize sensitivity-encoded MRI data acquired from multiple receiver coils together with spatially dependent receiver coil sensitivities to generate MRI images. The acquired MRI data forms a reduced MRI data set that is undersampled in at least a phase-encoding direction in a frequency domain. The acquired MRI data and auto-calibration signal data are used to determine reconstruction coefficients for each receiver coil using a weighted or a robust least squares method. The reconstruction coefficients vary spatially with respect to at least the spatial coordinate that is orthogonal to the undersampled, phase-encoding direction(s) (e.g., a frequency encoding direction). Values for unacquired MRI data are determined by linearly combining the reconstruction coefficients with the acquired MRI data within neighborhoods in the frequency domain that depend on imaging geometry, coil sensitivity characteristics, and the undersampling factor of the acquired MRI data. An MRI image is determined from the reconstructed unacquired data and the acquired MRI data.
US07884599B2
A hardware description language (HDL) design structure for performing device-specific testing and acquiring parametric data on integrated circuits, such that each chip can be tested individually without excessive test time requirements, additional silicon, or special test equipment. The HDL design structure includes a functional representation of at least one device test structure integrated into an IC design which tests a set of dummy devices that are identical or nearly identical to a selected set of devices contained in the IC. The test structures are integrated from a device under test (DUT) library according to customer requirements and design requirements. The functional representations of selected test structures are further prioritized and assigned to design elements within the design in order of priority. Placement algorithms use design, layout, and manufacturing requirements to place the selected functional representations of test structures into the final layout of the design.
US07884593B2
A controlled, symmetrical, stable current source that can power floating resistive loads, eliminates the need to connect the load directly to either a power supply or ground and protects the load against overpower should either or both sides of the load be shorted to ground. The current source includes two operational amplifiers for providing a current through the load that is proportional to an input voltage applied across the respective non-inverting inputs of the two operational amplifiers; two current sensing resistors for providing voltage drops that are proportional to the current through the load; and four summing resistors connected to the sensing resistors for providing to the inverting inputs of the operational amplifiers voltages that offset the sum of the voltage drops provided by the sensing resistors so that the current through the load is controlled by only the input voltage.
US07884585B2
The present invention relates to voltage converters and especially to a control circuit with an input from the voltage converter output and arranged to control the voltage level on the voltage converter output. The problem addressed relates to the situation when there is a pre-bias voltage on the converter output at the moment it is switched on. The object of the control circuit is to increase the voltage on the converter output fast and avoiding any drain of voltage or current from the output at the start up sequence. This is performed by a comparator in the control circuit that is arranged to compare the reference voltage with a division of the output voltage and if the reference voltage is lower that the divided output voltage the reference voltage is increased at the comparator output. The comparator circuit includes an OP-amplifier.
US07884582B2
A method in connection with a frequency converter for correcting the power factor of the frequency converter, and a power factor correction unit. The method includes connecting the power factor correction unit between a rectifier bridge of the frequency converter and the supplying AC voltage network, generating with the power factor correction unit DC voltage from the AC voltage of the supply network and feeding the generated DC voltage to the frequency converter via the rectifier bridge of the frequency converter.
US07884566B2
A system and method of implementing servomechanism control without rate feedback is provided. A position feedback signal is filtered using a non-linear lead-lag filter that has a variable frequency response to thereby generate a compensated position feedback signal. A position error signal is generated from a position command signal and a sensed position signal, and the frequency response of the non-linear lead-lag filter is varied in response to the position error signal. A compensated position error signal is generated from the commanded position signal and the compensated position feedback signal. The compensated position error signal is at least selectively filtered using a non-linear integral filter that has a variable gain to thereby at least selectively supply a filtered position error signal. The gain of the non-linear integral filter is varied in response to the compensated position error signal.
US07884560B2
A device includes a housing configured with a working element. The device also includes a motor configured for urging motion of the working element. The device also includes a power control module which may be electrically connected with at least one of the motor, a first power source configuration and a second power source configuration. Electric current is provided to the motor by the first and/or the second power source configurations. The first power source configuration may be electrically connected to a battery assembly having a DC power output. The second power source configuration may be electrically connected to a power inverter which may receive AC power and output DC power to the second power source configuration. The motor may be one of a permanent magnet DC (PMDC) motor, a universal motor and an induction motor, the motor receiving power via the power control module from at least one of the first power source configuration and the second power source configuration.
US07884557B2
A light source is protected by selectively coupling a shunt path in parallel with the light source, such that current is diverted away from the light source and through the shunt path. A detection circuit detects the current flowing in the shunt path when the shunt path is connected in parallel with the light source. A comparator determines whether the current flowing in the shunt path exceeds a predetermined threshold and, if so, prevents or limits the flow of current when the shunt path is disconnected from being in parallel with the light source. In this way, a current detector is provided for monitoring the flow of current in a shunt path, the current detector being configured to disable or limit the flow of current through a light source when a predetermined threshold is reached. This aspect of the invention has the advantage of enabling the current flowing through a light source to be controlled by monitoring the current in the shunt path rather than the path having the light source, thus enabling the maximum current to be controlled without potentially damaging the light source.
US07884553B2
Light-emitting diode illumination circuit, illumination device, and liquid crystal display apparatus
A light-emitting diode illumination circuit includes light-emitting diodes connected in series and compensating elements connected in parallel with the light-emitting diodes. Each of the compensating elements includes positive and negative terminals and at least one conductor having a predetermined melting point. The conductor melts in the event of open-circuit failure so that the terminals are connected.
US07884549B2
A gas-discharge lamp (1) is described having an inner envelope (2) comprising a discharge vessel (3) and two tubular sections (6, 7) arranged on the discharge vessel, having two electrodes (4, 5) that project from the tubular sections (6, 7) into the discharge vessel (3) and that, to enable them to be supplied with power, are electrically connected to respective electrical conductors (10, 11) that extend through the associated tubular sections (6, 7) and that are enclosed in the tubular sections (6, 7) with a gastight seal along a sealing section (8, 9). The lamp (1) has an outer envelope (18) that is connected at each of its ends to respective ones of the tubular sections (6, 7) of the inner envelope (2) and that surrounds the discharge vessel (3) while leaving an outer cavity (20) between itself (18) and the discharge vessel (3). Arranged on the outside of the inner envelope (2), at least in a region or regions, is a conductive coating (22, 23) that is conductively connected, inside the outer envelope (18), to one (11) of the electrical conductors. Also described is a corresponding method of producing a gas-discharge lamp (1).
US07884546B2
An electrodeless discharge lamp apparatus is provided which is increased in heat dissipation, making it possible to adapt to an increase in output of the apparatus. The electrodeless discharge lamp apparatus comprises a bulb containing a discharge gas and a coupler accommodated in a cavity formed in the bulb for generating a high frequency electromagnetic field. The coupler has: an induction coil; a core inserted into the coil; a heat conductor for conducting heat generated from the coil and the core; and a bobbin made of resin which accommodates the core and the heat conductor therein, and which has the coil wound therearound. The bobbin is designed to be separated in a radial direction of the coil, so that it is possible to separately mold the respective parts of the bobbin. Thus, it is not necessary to form, in the bobbin, a draft angle which has been necessary in the prior art when molding a tubular-shaped bobbin, and it is possible to make the thickness of the bobbin thin and uniform, so that the proportion of the bobbin in the volume of the cavity can be reduced to increase the proportion of the heat conductor.
US07884538B2
A light-emitting device is provided, which includes a package having a first portion and a second portion surrounding it, a semiconductor light-emitting element mounted on the first portion and emitting a light having an emission peak in a near-ultraviolet region, a transparent resin layer covering the semiconductor light-emitting element and contacted with the package, and a laminated body formed on the transparent resin layer with end faces of the laminated body being contacted with the second portion. The transparent resin layer has an arch-like outer profile perpendicular cross section. The laminated body has an arch-like outer profile in perpendicular cross section and comprises a red fluorescent layer, a yellow fluorescent layer, a green fluorescent layer and a blue fluorescent layer laminated in the mentioned order. The yellow fluorescent layer has a top portion which is made larger in thickness than that of the end face portions thereof.
US07884535B2
A low-pressure gas discharge lamp includes a gas discharge vessel having a gas filling with a discharge-maintaining composition. At least part of a wall of the discharge vessel is provided with a luminescent material including a first UV-B phosphor containing, in a host lattice, gadolinium(III) as an activator and praseodymium(III) as a sensitizer.
US07884530B2
The present invention provides, in one embodiment, an apparatus. The apparatus, without limitation, may include a substrate with a surface, and a polymer layer attached to a region of the surface. The apparatus may further include a plurality of nanostructures, a first end of each nanostructure being in the polymer layer and a second end of each nanostructure protruding through the polymer layer, wherein the nanostructures are configured to move from a first position to a second position in response to a change in thickness of the polymer layer from a first thickness to a second thickness.
US07884528B2
A driving apparatus has a piezoelectric element as a driver. The driving apparatus includes a first vibrator which generates an elliptical vibration when a voltage of a predetermined frequency is applied; a first member which holds the first vibrator; a second member which includes a first sliding member to which the first vibrator is pressed and makes a relative displacement with respect to the first member by being driven by the elliptical vibration of the first vibrator; and a first resonance preventive member which is provided to the second member and prevents a resonance in the second member from being generated by the elliptical vibration of the first vibrator.
US07884527B2
A piezoelectric thin-film resonator includes: a substrate; a lower electrode that is formed on the substrate; a piezoelectric film that is formed on the lower electrode and the substrate; and an upper electrode that is formed on the piezoelectric film, with the piezoelectric film being partially interposed between the lower electrode and the upper electrode facing each other. In this piezoelectric thin-film resonator, at least a part of the outer periphery of the piezoelectric film interposed between the lower electrode and the upper electrode overlaps the outer periphery of the region formed by the upper electrode and the lower electrode facing each other.
US07884499B2
Methods and apparatuses for intervening in the self power or thermal regulations of a plurality of independent power consumption devices are described herein. The novel methods may include monitoring power consumption and thermal conditions of the plurality of power consumption (i.e., power/heat dissipation) devices that are configured to independently self-regulate their power/thermal production. A determination may then be made as to whether an aggregate of the power and/or thermal production of the plurality of power consumption devices exceed a threshold. And if the aggregate of the power or thermal production of the power consumption devices was determined to exceed the threshold, terminating, at least partially, the independent self-regulating of the thermal production and intervening in the thermal regulation of one or more of the power consumption devices. In contrast, if the aggregate of the power and/or thermal production of the plurality of power consumption devices is determined to be below the threshold then the power consumption devices may be allowed to self-regulate their power consumptions, and in some instances, one or more of the individual power clamps for the one or more of the power consumption devices may be relaxed or raised.
US07884493B2
A disc brake arrangement is provided as adapted for a wind turbine generator incorporating a rotor shaft supporting a rotor wheel and support ring for a rotor structure surrounded by a stator structure within a generator casing. The disc brake arrangement includes a brake disc mounted normal to and concentric with the rotor shaft and operatively connected to the support ring. A plurality of disc brake calipers are arranged concentrically with the rotor shaft and adapted to engage the brake disc.
US07884491B2
A power turbine speed control system for a turbo-shaft type gas turbine engine that has a gas generator compressor spool and a power turbine spool and drives an electrical generator that powers at least one electrical load by way of at least one electrical bus, comprises a power turbine controller that senses the rotary speed of the power turbine spool and generates at least one signal that changes the torque of the electrical generator in response to the sensed change in the rotary speed of the power turbine spool.
US07884490B1
An apparatus for generating electric current from a vibrating blade exposed to a fluid flow. in one embodiment, a plurality of blades are secured within a tail cone of a steam turbine and each blade includes a magnet and a coil associated with the magnet to produce electric current in the coil when the magnet moves across the coil. Each blade is designed to have a natural frequency so that the blade will resonate under the influence of the exhaust flow from the turbine in the tail cone. Abutment members are mounted on the blade or the fixed support to limit the range of motion of the vibrating blade so that it does not exceed the fatigue limit. The blades are made from a low damping material such as titanium so that a low frequency is produced.
US07884488B2
A structure and method of forming low cost bond pads is described. In one embodiment, the invention includes depositing an insulating layer over a last metal line of a substrate and forming an opening in the insulating layer. A colloid is printed over the insulating layer and fills the opening in the insulating layer. A conductive via and bond pads are formed by heating the colloid.
US07884485B1
Systems and methods are disclosed for forming interconnects between semiconductor devices in accordance with one or more embodiments of the present invention. For example, a method of forming interconnects between semiconductor devices includes depositing a plurality of first contacts on a plurality of corresponding first pads of a first semiconductor device; forming a plurality of plated contacts on a plurality of corresponding second pads of a second semiconductor device; aligning the plurality of first contacts with the plurality of plated contacts; and joining the plurality of first contacts to the plurality of plated contacts to form the interconnects between the first semiconductor device and the second semiconductor device.
US07884484B2
A wiring board includes an insulating layer in which a semiconductor chip is embedded, and a wiring structure connected to the semiconductor chip. A reinforcing member reinforcing the insulating layer is embedded in the insulating layer. This enables reduction in a thickness of the wiring board and a suppression of warpage of the wiring board.
US07884481B2
A semiconductor chip package is disclosed. The semiconductor chip package comprises a package substrate having a bottom surface. At least four adjacent ball pads are on the bottom surface, arranged in a first two-row array along a first direction and a second direction. At least four vias are drilled through the package substrate, arranged in a second two-row array, wherein each of the vias in a row of the second two-row array is offset by a first distance along the first direction and a second distance along the second direction from the connecting ball pads in a row of the first two-row array, and each of the vias in the other adjacent row of the second two-row array is offset by the first distance along an opposite direction to the first direction and the second distance along the second direction from the connecting ball pads in the other adjacent row of the first two-row array.
US07884478B2
In a semiconductor apparatus having a plurality of wiring layers, the semiconductor apparatus includes a bonding pad formed by an uppermost wiring layer, a first-layer plug wire formed by a first lower wiring layer in a region under the bonding pad, and a first conductive plug connecting the bonding pad and the first-layer plug wire. The first-layer plug wire may include a plurality of first-layer plug wires arranged in parallel to one another in a stripe pattern.
US07884474B2
A method of fabricating a semiconductor device having an air-gapped multilayer interconnect wiring structure is disclosed. After having formed a first thin film on or above a substrate, define a first opening in the first thin film. Then, deposit a conductive material in the first opening. Then form a second thin film made of a porous material above the first thin film with the conductive material being deposited in the first opening. Next, define in the second thin film a second opening extending therethrough, followed by deposition of a conductive material in the second opening. The first thin film is removed through voids in the second thin film after having deposited the conductive material in the second opening. An integrated semiconductor device as manufactured thereby is also disclosed.
US07884467B2
A kind of microphone package structure includes at least of a substrate, a sound processing unit, an upper cap and other devices. There would be at least one trench set on the substrate, and a separation gap between the trench and the bonding pad of the substrate is maintained. After connective paste is smeared on the surface of the substrate, the trench would be assembled with other devices. This kind of package structure could prevent a short circuit being caused by the overflowing of the connective paste.
US07884454B2
A semiconductor package assembly may include a lead frame having a die bonding pad and plurality of leads coupled to the first die bonding pad. A vertical semiconductor device may be bonded to the die bonding pad. The device may have a conductive pad electrically connected to one lead through a first bond wire. An electrically isolated conductive trace may be formed from a layer of conductive material of the first semiconductor device. The conductive trace provides an electrically conductive path between the first bond wire and a second bond wire. The conductive path may either pass underneath a third bond wire thereby avoiding the third bond wire crossing another bond wire, or the conductive path may result in a reduced length for the first and second bond wires that is less than a predetermined maximum length.
US07884453B2
The present invention relates to a semiconductor device including a semiconductor chip encapsulated by an encapsulation resin and a manufacturing method thereof, and an object of the invention is to provide the semiconductor chip and its manufacturing method in which the reduction in size may be attempted. It includes a semiconductor chip 15, an external connection terminal pad 18 electrically connected to the semiconductor chip 15, and an encapsulation resin 16 encapsulating the semiconductor chip 15, wherein a wiring pattern 12 on which the external connection terminal pad 18 is formed is provided between the semiconductor chip 15 and the external connection terminal pad 18, and the semiconductor chip 15 is flip-chip bonded to the wiring pattern 12.
US07884452B2
A semiconductor power device package having a lead frame-based integrated inductor is disclosed. The semiconductor power device package includes a lead frame having a plurality of leads, a inductor core attached to the lead frame such that a plurality of lead ends are exposed through a window formed in the inductor core, a plurality of bonding wires, ones of the plurality of bonding wires coupling each of the plurality of lead ends to adjacent leads about the inductor core to form the inductor, and a power integrated circuit coupled to the inductor. In alternative embodiments, a top lead frame couples each of the plurality of lead ends to adjacent leads about the inductor core by means of a connection chip.
US07884444B2
This application relates to a semiconductor device comprising a first chip comprising a first electrode on a first face of the first chip, and a second chip attached to the first electrode, wherein the second chip comprises a transformer comprising a first winding and a second winding.
US07884443B2
A capacitor-equipped semiconductor device includes a semiconductor chip having a plurality of electrode terminals; a sheet-like substrate at least having a film capacitor; and a mounting substrate. The mounting substrate is provided on one side thereof with chip connection terminals and ground terminals. The chip connection terminals are disposed to correspond to the electrode terminals of the semiconductor chip. The ground terminals are disposed to correspond to the one electrode terminals of the film capacitor of the sheet-like substrate. The mounting substrate is provided on the other side thereof with external connection terminals connected to the chip connection terminals and the ground terminals and used to mount the mounting substrate on an external substrate.
US07884438B2
A photodetector for detecting megavoltage (MV) radiation comprises a semiconductor conversion layer having a first surface and a second surface disposed opposite the first surface, a first electrode coupled to the first surface, a second electrode coupled to the second surface, and a low density substrate including a detector array coupled to the second electrode opposite the semiconductor conversion layer. The photodetector includes a sufficient thickness of a high density material to create a sufficient number of photoelectrons from incident MV radiation, so that the photoelectrons can be received by the conversion layer and converted to a sufficient of recharge carriers for detection by the detector array.
US07884437B2
A semiconductor device includes: a semiconductor substrate having an imaging region in which a plurality of photoreceptors are arranged, and a peripheral circuit region arranged around the imaging region; a plurality of microlenses formed on the imaging region; a low-refractive-index film formed on the semiconductor substrate to cover the plurality of microlenses and part of the peripheral circuit region; and a transparent substrate formed on part of the low-refractive-index film above the imaging region. A through hole is formed in part of the low-refractive-index film above an amplifier circuit arranged in the peripheral circuit region.
US07884436B2
In a solid-state imaging device, the pixel circuit formed on the first surface side of the semiconductor substrate is shared by a plurality of light reception regions. The second surface side of the semiconductor substrate is made the light incident side of the light reception regions. The second surface side regions of the light reception regions formed in the second surface side part of the semiconductor substrate are arranged at approximately even intervals and the first surface side regions of the light reception regions formed in the first surface side part of the semiconductor substrate are arranged at uneven intervals, respectively, and the second surface side regions and the first surface side regions are joined respectively in the semiconductor substrate so that the light reception regions extend from the second surface side to the first surface side of the semiconductor substrate.
US07884433B2
A STT-MRAM integration scheme is disclosed wherein the connection between a MTJ and CMOS metal is simplified by forming an intermediate via contact (VAC) on a CMOS landing pad, a metal (VAM) pad that contacts and covers the VAC, and a MTJ on the VAM. A dual damascene process is performed to connect BIT line metal to CMOS landing pads through VAC/VAM/MTJ stacks in a device region, and to connect BIT line connection pads to CMOS connection pads through BIT connection vias outside the device region. The VAM pad is a single layer or composite made of Ta, TaN, or other conductors which serves as a diffusion barrier, has a highly smooth surface for MTJ formation, and provides excellent selectivity with refill dielectric materials during a chemical mechanical polish process. Each VAC is from 500 to 3000 Angstroms thick to minimize additional circuit resistance and minimize etch burden.
US07884413B2
A method of manufacturing a semiconductor device, includes forming a first insulating film containing silicon oxide as a main ingredient, on an underlying region, adhering water to the first insulating film, forming a polymer solution layer containing a silicon-containing polymer on the water-adhered first insulating film, and forming a second insulating film containing silicon oxide as a main ingredient from the polymer solution layer, wherein forming the second insulating film includes forming silicon oxide by a reaction between the polymer and water adhered to the first insulating film.
US07884410B2
Example embodiments may provide nonvolatile memory devices and example methods of fabricating nonvolatile memory devices. Example embodiment nonvolatile memory devices may include a switching device on a substrate and/or a storage node electrically connected to the switching device. A storage node may include a lower metal layer electrically connected to the switching device, a first insulating layer, a middle metal layer, a second insulating layer, an upper metal layer, a carbon nanotube layer, and/or a passivation layer stacked on the lower metal layer.
US07884380B2
This invention discloses a light emitting semiconductor device including a light-emitting structure and an external optical element. The optical element couples to the light-emitting structure circumferentially. In addition, the refractive index of the external optical element is greater than or about the same as that of a transparent substrate of the light-emitting structure, or in-between that of the transparent substrate and the encapsulant material.
US07884372B2
Au base electrode materials have fatal disadvantages, such as inferior adhesion to diamond, low mechanical strength, and low thermal stability.A diamond UV sensor is provided which includes a photoconductive or Schottky optical sensor element having two-terminal electrodes and detects light irradiating a light-receiving portion according to the changes in electrical resistance or photo-induced current of the material of the light-receiving portion. The sensor element includes diamond having a surface from which a conductive surface layer has been removed, and the surface of the diamond is used as the light-receiving portion and a junction interface with the electrodes. The electrodes include a rectifying and an ohmic electrode. The rectifying electrode is transparent electrode capable of transmitting light and is defined by a single layer made of a nitride of a refractory metal element. The ohmic electrode includes a first layer made of a reactive elementary metal that can react with diamond to form a carbide or a carbon-containing solid solution, and a second layer made of a nitride of a refractory metal element.
US07884369B2
The wiring of the present invention has a layered structure that includes a first conductive layer (first layer) having a first width and made of one or a plurality of kinds of elements selected from W and Mo, or an alloy or compound mainly containing the element, a low-resistant second conductive layer (second layer) having a second width smaller than the first width, and made of an alloy or a compound mainly containing Al, and a third conductive layer (third layer) having a third width smaller than the second width, and made of an alloy or compound mainly containing Ti. With this constitution, the present invention is fully ready for enlargement of a pixel portion. At least edges of the second conductive layer have a taper-shaped cross-section. Because of this shape, satisfactory coverage can be obtained.
US07884367B2
A polycrystalline Si thin film and a single crystal Si thin film are formed on an SiO2 film deposited on an insulating substrate. A polycrystalline Si layer is grown by thermally crystallizing an amorphous Si thin film so as to form the polycrystalline Si thin film. A single crystal Si substrate, having (a) an SiO2 film thereon and (b) a hydrogen ion implantation portion therein, is bonded to an area of the polycrystalline Si thin film that has been subjected to etching removal, and is subjected to a heating process. Then, the single crystal Si substrate is divided at the hydrogen ion implantation portion in an exfoliating manner, so as to form the single crystal Si thin film. As a result, it is possible to provide a large-size semiconductor device, having the single crystal Si thin film, whose property is stable, at a low cost.
US07884364B2
An array substrate includes a substrate, a gate line on the substrate, a data line crossing the gate line to define a pixel region, a thin film transistor connected to the gate and data lines, a pixel electrode in the pixel region, and a common electrode including first, second, third, fourth and fifth portions, wherein the first and second portions are disposed at both sides of the data line, each of the third and fourth portions is connected to the first and second portions, and the fifth portion is connected to the second portion and is extended into a next pixel region adjacent to the pixel region.
US07884346B2
A nonvolatile memory element comprising: a first electrode 2; a second electrode 6 formed above the first electrode 2; a variable resistance film 4 formed between the first electrode 2 and the second electrode 6, a resistance value of the variable resistance film 4 being increased or decreased by an electric pulse applied between the first and second electrodes 2, 6; and an interlayer dielectric film 3 provided between the first and second electrodes 2, 6, wherein the interlayer dielectric film 3 is provided with an opening extending from a surface thereof to the first electrode 2; the variable resistance film 4 is formed at an inner wall face of the opening; and an interior region of the opening which is defined by the variable resistance film 4 is filled with an embedded insulating film 5.
US07884331B2
A brain imager includes a compact ring-like static PET imager mounted in a helmet-like structure. When attached to a patient's head, the helmet-like brain imager maintains the relative head-to-imager geometry fixed through the whole imaging procedure. The brain imaging helmet contains radiation sensors and minimal front-end electronics. A flexible mechanical suspension/harness system supports the weight of the helmet thereby allowing for patient to have limited movements of the head during imaging scans. The compact ring-like PET imager enables very high resolution imaging of neurological brain functions, cancer, and effects of trauma using a rather simple mobile scanner with limited space needs for use and storage.
US07884329B2
A device for detecting electromagnetic radiation, with a diode structure acting absorbingly for the electromagnetic radiation and having a diode, and an ascertainer for ascertaining a measurement value for the absorbed electromagnetic radiation by means of at least two current/voltage measurements at the diode for different pairs of a diode current and a diode voltage.
US07884325B2
The present invention provides an electron beam measurement technique for measuring the shapes or sizes of portions of patterns on a sample, or detecting a defect or the like. An electron beam measurement apparatus has a unit for irradiating the patterns delineated on a substrate by a multi-exposure method, and classifying the patterns in an acquired image into multiple groups according to an exposure history record. The exposure history record is obtained based on brightness of the patterns and a difference between white bands of the patterns.
US07884323B2
The present invention relates generally to atom probes, atom probe specimens, and associated methods. For example, certain aspects are directed toward methods for analyzing a portion of a specimen that includes selecting a region of interest and moving a portion of material in a border region proximate to the region of interest so that at least a portion of the region of interest protrudes relative to at least a portion of the border region. The method further includes analyzing a portion of the region of interest. Other aspects of the invention are directed toward a method for applying photonic energy in an atom probe process by passing photonic energy through a lens system separated from a photonic device and spaced apart from the photonic device. Yet other aspects of the invention are directed toward a method for reflecting photonic energy off an outer surface of an electrode onto a specimen.
US07884321B2
A method to determine a distribution profile of an element in a film. The method comprises exciting an electron energy of an element deposited in a first film, obtaining a first spectrum associating with the electron energy, and removing a background spectrum from the first spectrum. Removing the background value generates a processed spectrum. The method further includes matching the processed spectrum to a simulated spectrum with a known simulated distribution profile for the element in a film comparable to the first film. A distribution profile is obtained for the element in the first film based on the matching of the processed spectrum to a simulated spectrum selected from the set of simulated spectra.
US07884320B2
A method for operating an ion mobility spectrometer that comprises a measuring tube, a substance collector and a membrane inlet, the measuring tube, the substance collector and the membrane inlet defining a closed internal gas circuit, comprising separating the closed internal gas circuit from an external sample gas flow through the membrane inlet, transferring circulating gas containing an analyte substance from the membrane inlet to the substance collector, the analyte substance accumulated in the substance collector, releasing the accumulated analyte substances, and transferring the released analyte substances to the measuring tube.
US07884310B2
A new pixel in semiconductor technology comprises a photo-sensitive detection region (1) for converting an electromagnetic wave field into an electric signal of flowing charges, a separated demodulation region (2) with at least two output nodes (D10, D20) and means (IG10, DG10, IG20, DG20) for sampling the charge-current signal at least two different time intervals within a modulation period. A contact node (K2) links the detection region (1) to the demodulation region (2). A drift field accomplishes the transfer of the electric signal of flowing charges from the detection region to the contact node. The electric signal of flowing charges is then transferred from the contact node (K2) during each of the two time intervals to the two output nodes allocated to the respective time interval. The separation of the demodulation and the detection regions provides a pixel capable of demodulating electromagnetic wave field at high speed and with high sensitivity.
US07884300B2
A method of realizing selective separation of metallic single-walled carbon nanotubes and semiconducting carbon nanotubes from bundled carbon nanotubes; and obtaining of metallic single-walled carbon nanotubes separated at high purity through the above method. Metallic single-walled carbon nanotubes are dispersed one by one from bundled carbon nanotubes not only by the use of a difference in interaction with amine between metallic single-walled carbon nanotubes and semiconducting carbon nanotubes due to a difference in electrical properties between metallic single-walled carbon nanotubes and semiconducting carbon nanotubes but also by the use of the fact that an amine is an important factor in SWNTs separation. The thus dispersed carbon nanotubes are subjected to centrifugation, thereby attaining separation from non-dispersed semiconducting carbon nanotubes.
US07884298B2
A switch for a switching unit for energy supply and distribution includes a first connection and a second connection, each with a cylindrical bolt. The bolts are axially adjacent one another and spaced apart. An annular sleeve with an inner diameter larger than the diameter of the bolts, is arranged in such a way that it can be axially displaced on the bolt of the first connection, and partially on the bolt of the second connection. At least a first contact element is arranged between the surface of the bolt of the first connection and the inner surface of the annular sleeve. At least a second contact element is arranged and constructed in such a way that it can be positioned between the surface of the bolt of the second connection and the inner surface of the annular sleeve. The switch has an annular third connection, the inner diameter of which is greater than an outer diameter of the annular sleeve, and which is arranged such that the sleeve can be shifted between the bolts of the first connection and the annular third connection. At least a third contact element is arranged and constructed in such a way that it can be positioned between the inner surface of the annular third connection and the outer surface of the annular sleeve.
US07884296B2
The present invention is a side-surface light-emitting unit to illuminate one or more illuminated objects disposed on a flat surface to extend in one direction, from a side surface of the illuminated object and includes a light guiding body which is disposed along the side surface of the illuminated object and emits light toward the side surface of the illuminated object, and an LED disposed at at least one end of light guiding body, an upper surface and a lower surface of the light guiding body except the side surface facing the object being optically shielded. It is possible to brightly illuminate objects such as key switches or the like from one end of the arrangement along a direction of the arrangement by uninterrupted continuous emission light.
US07884293B2
Such a control (10) firstly has a control housing (11) with a control rocker switch (21) which is mounted on the control housing in such a way that it can be rocked and at least two electrical wires in the interior of the housing, which protrude from the control housing (11) and are attached to an electrical drive of one lock. An electrical switch which in turn has a switch housing with a ductile snap disc (40), which interacts with at least two rest contacts as articulated contact when a switch actuator deforms the snap disc, is normally a part of this control. The rest contacts are connected to the wires in the control housing (11). In order to manufacture an economical and space-saving device, it is proposed that the control housing (11) is also used as the switch housing and that the control rocker switch (21) is also utilized as the switch actuator. That way the rest contacts of the switch and the wires are formed from one part in the control housing (21) and make up a grill insert in the control housing (21). The control housing (21) has a support bearing (37) in the area of the grill insert, at which the snap disc (40) is supported with its bearing points.
US07884292B2
An electrical safety receptacle with a cross-connection circuit, comprising: a line, a neutral and a ground wire input from an electrical power source, a line, a neutral and a ground wire output receptacles, four sets of fixed connection points, four sets of movable connection points, a first and a second cross-connection metal connectors, receptacle housing, a top cover, and a plurality of installation screws, when a line prong and a neutral prong of a power plug are not inserted into the line and neutral wire output receptacles, the line and neutral wire output receptacles are not electrically connected to the line wire and neutral wire of the electrical power source, and when the line prong and the neutral prong of the power plug are inserted into the line and neutral wire output receptacles, the line and neutral wire output receptacles are electrically connected to the line wire and neutral wire of the electrical power source.
US07884290B2
A sanitary, live loaded, pass-through fitting apparatus which allows for variable depth insertion of a pass-through object is disclosed. The apparatus is useful for sanitary introduction of a thermowell probe, dip tube, or other objects into a process stream or vessel. The pass-through object is sealed to the fitting at the point of fluid insertion with the seal material under a live load.
US07884285B2
An animal protectant power line electrical insulator to be placed on structures such as electrical apparatus to protect birds, wildlife and other animals. Specifically the insulator may include, a snap-fit insulating cover configured to fit over an energized part of an electrical structure of a power line, a resiliently flexible separable juncture for application onto the power line and secure closure; and perhaps even at least one formed eye on the cover. A cover may hold itself in place and may be made from plastic, fiberglass, PVC, or other semi-rigid, non-conductive material; molded, formed, or fabricated to fit a desired application.
US07884284B2
A cable includes at least one electrical conductor and at least one extruded covering layer including a thermoplastic polymer material in admixture with a dielectric liquid, wherein the thermoplastic polymer material includes (a) at least 75% by weight, with respect to the total weight of the thermoplastic polymer material, of at least one copolymer of at least two α-olefin co-monomers, the copolymer having a melting enthalpy lower than 25 J/g; and (b) an amount equal to or less than 25% by weight with respect to the total weight of the thermoplastic polymer material of at least one propylene homopolymer or propylene copolymer with at least one α-olefin, the at least one propylene homopolymer or propylene copolymer having a melting enthalpy higher than 25 J/g and a melting point higher than 130° C. The covering layer has a melting enthalpy equal to or lower than 40 J/g, and the concentration by weight of the dielectric liquid in the thermoplastic polymer material is lower than the saturation concentration of the dielectric liquid in the thermoplastic polymer material.
US07884283B1
A security cover for selectively securing an access opening in an enclosure or a utility pole using a padlock with a shackle. The security cover includes a rigid cover, that substantially covers the access opening and has a lock-bar opening formed therethrough. A shroud is fixed about the lock-bar opening on the exterior surface of the rigid cover, and the shroud has an access port for enabling insertion of the padlock between the shroud and the exterior surface of the rigid cover. A lock-bar extends through the lock-bar opening in the rigid cover while the clamp-bar is engaged with the interior of the enclosure. The shackle-hole is accessible through the access port of the shroud.
US07884278B2
Apparatuses and methods to reduce safety risks associated with photovoltaic systems by providing a safety switch on a photovoltaic panel. In one embodiment, a photovoltaic panel includes: at least one photovoltaic cell; a connector to output energy from the photovoltaic panel; and a switch coupled between the at least one photovoltaic cell and the connector. The switch is configured to disconnect the at least one photovoltaic cell from the connector during installation of the photovoltaic panel, and to connect the at least one photovoltaic cell with the connector after installation of the photovoltaic panel.
US07884276B2
Methods, systems, and devices are described for automatically converting audio input signal data into musical score representation data. Embodiments of the invention identify a change in frequency information from the audio signal that exceeds a first threshold value; identify a change in amplitude information from the audio signal that exceeds a second threshold value; and generate a note onset event, each note onset event representing a time location in the audio signal of at least one of an identified change in the frequency information that exceeds the first threshold value or an identified change in the amplitude information that exceeds the second threshold value. The generation of note onset events and other information from the audio input signal may be used to extract note pitch, note value, tempo, meter, key, instrumentation, and other score representation information.
US07884269B2
A barley cultivar, designated Champion, is disclosed. The invention relates to the seeds of barley cultivar Champion, to the plants of barley Champion, and to methods for producing a barley plant produced by crossing barley cultivar Champion with itself or another barley variety. The invention also relates to methods for producing a barley plant containing in its genetic material one or more transgenes and to the transgenic barley plants and plant parts produced by those methods. The invention also relates to barley varieties or breeding varieties and plant parts derived from barley cultivar Champion, to methods for producing other barley varieties, lines or plant parts derived from barley cultivar Champion, and to the barley plants, varieties, and their parts derived from the use of those methods. The invention further relates to hybrid barley seeds and plants produced by crossing barley cultivar Champion with another barley cultivar. This invention further relates to methods for developing other barley varieties or breeding lines derived from variety Champion including cell and tissue culture, haploid systems, mutagenesis, and transgenic derived lines.
US07884263B2
Compositions and methods for reducing the level of nornicotine and N′-nitrosonornicotine (NNN) in Nicotiana plants and plant parts thereof are provided. The compositions comprise isolated polynucleotides and polypeptides for cytochrome P450s that are involved in the metabolic conversion of nicotine to nornicotine in these plants. Expression cassettes, vectors, plants, and plant parts thereof comprising inhibitory sequences that target expression or function of the disclosed cytochrome P450 polypeptides are also provided. Methods for the use of these novel sequences to inhibit expression or function of cytochrome P450 polypeptides involved in this metabolic conversion are also provided. The methods find use in the production of tobacco products that have reduced levels of nornicotine and its carcinogenic metabolite, NNN, and thus reduced carcinogenic potential for individuals consuming these tobacco products or exposed to secondary smoke derived from these products.
US07884262B2
The invention provides a modified variant of dicamba monooxygenase (DMO). The invention relates to the unexpected finding that cells expressing this DMO exhibit high levels of tolerance to the herbicide dicamba. Compositions comprising DMO-encoding nucleic acids and methods of use are provided.
US07884261B2
The present invention relates to isolated nucleic acid molecules and their corresponding encoded polypeptides able confer the trait of modulated plant size, vegetative growth, organ number, plant architecture, growth rate, seedling vigor, growth rate, fruit and seed yield, tillering and/or biomass in plants. The present invention further relates to the use of these nucleic acid molecules and polypeptides in making transgenic plants, plant cells, plant materials or seeds of a plant having plant size, vegetative growth, organ number, plant architecture, growth rate, seedling vigor and/or biomass that are altered with respect to wild type plants grown under similar conditions.
US07884259B2
An absorbent article including a fiber aggregate formed by opening the tow, a super absorbent polymer particle, and a sheet covering these components. The super absorbent polymer particle are bonded to the sheet with an adhesive that is applied in a continuous plane to the entire surface or the substantially entire surface at least at the portion to be provided with the super absorbent polymer particle in this sheet.
US07884250B2
Use of a high shear mechanical device incorporated into a process for the production of chloral as a reactor device is capable of decreasing mass transfer limitations, thereby enhancing the chloral production process. A system for the production of chloral from acetaldehyde and chlorine, the system comprising a reactor and an external high shear device the outlet of which is fluidly connected to the inlet of the reactor; the high shear device capable of providing a dispersion of chlorine gas bubbles within a liquid, the bubbles having an average bubble diameter of less than about 100 μm.
US07884244B2
Disclosed herein is compound having a formula as described herein. Therapeutic methods, compositions, and medicaments related thereto are also disclosed.
US07884239B2
The object of the present invention is to provide a catalyst which can produce an α,β-unsaturated carboxylic acid through liquid-phase oxidation of an olefin or an α,β-unsaturated aldehyde in good reaction performance, a method for producing the catalyst, and a method for producing an α,β-unsaturated carboxylic acid by using the catalyst. The present invention resides in a catalyst for producing an α,β-unsaturated carboxylic acid, wherein a metal is supported on a carrier with a total pore volume of 0.40 to 1.50 cc/g as measured by nitrogen gas adsorption method, or wherein palladium with an average particle diameter in the range of 1 to 8 nm is supported on the carrier.
US07884237B2
Methanol carbonylation with improved aldehyde removal includes: (a) scrubbing light ends and aldehyde impurity from vent gas with an absorber solvent; (b) stripping absorbed light ends and aldehyde impurity from the absorber solvent to provide a vent-recovered light ends stream; (c) purifying the vent-recovered light ends stream to remove aldehyde impurity; and (d) recycling purified light ends from the vent-recovered light ends stream to the production system.
US07884236B2
A process for the production of acetic acid by carbonylating methanol and/or a reactive derivative thereof with carbon monoxide in the presence of a promoted iridium carbonylation catalyst wherein the promoters are boron and gallium.
US07884235B2
The invention provides a method of gas-phase catalytic oxidation, in particular, a production method of (meth)acrylic acid, which enables stable continuous operation of gas-phase catalytic oxidation over a long term, maintaining high yield and suppressing increase in pressure loss. In the method a fixed bed reactor is used, in which a treating agent for removing organic substance and/or carbides, preferably a treating agent having an adsorption capacity of at least 0.05% by mass, as measured by crotonaldehyde as an indicator of organic substance, is disposed on the upstream side of the gas-phase oxidation catalyst layer in respect of the direction of the gas flow. It is desirable that at least a part of the treating agent is exchanged at a frequency of at least once a year.
US07884227B2
A synthesis and purification of felbamate, an anticonvulsant, are provided. The product of the synthesis and purification is with high untapped and tapped bulk densities, which increase ease of handling and suitability for use in pharmaceutical formulations. The felbamate may be incorporated into pharmaceutical compositions that can be administered orally for treatment of epilepsy.
US07884179B2
A novel gene 08P1D4 (also designated STEAP-1) and its encoded protein, and variants thereof, are described wherein STEAP-1 exhibits tissue specific expression in normal adult tissue, and is aberrantly expressed in the cancers listed in Table I. Consequently, STEAP-1 provides a diagnostic, prognostic, prophylactic and/or therapeutic target for cancer. The STEAP-1 gene or fragment thereof, or its encoded protein, or variants thereof, or a fragment thereof, can be used to elicit a humoral or cellular immune response; antibodies or T cells reactive with STEAP-1 can be used in active or passive immunization.
US07884176B2
An epoxy/modified silicon dioxide corrosion resistant nanocomposite material and a preparation method thereof are disclosed. The method includes the steps of: dispersing TS(TEOS-SiO2) or APTES/TEOS-SiO2 (TAS) in solvent so as to form TS solution or TAS solution; adding triphenylolmethane triglycidyl ether and 1,4-butanediol diglycidyl ether into the TS solution or TAS solution to produce glycidyl ether/TS solution or glycidyl ether/TAS solution. Add a curing agent into the glycidyl ether/TS solution or glycidyl ether/TAS solution to generate epoxy/TS solution or epoxy/TAS solution. After curing, obtain epoxy/modified silicon dioxide nanocomposite corrosion resistant material. The material is applied to optoelectronics or other fields for corrosion prevention.
US07884149B2
A nanocomposite material suitable for electrical insulation includes a polymer compounded with a substantially homogeneously distributed functionalized nanoparticle filler. The nanocomposite material is produced by compounding the polymer with the functionalized nanoparticle filler by imparting a shear force to a mixture of the polymer and filler capable of preventing agglomeration of the filler whereby the filler is substantially homogeneously distributed in the nanocomposite material. The electrical insulation may be adapted for AC or DC high voltage, and may also be adapted for low or medium voltage to prevent formation of water tree structures.
US07884137B2
Hydroxyl polyester compounds or compositions which are useful as oilfield demulsifiers are prepared through esterifying carboxylic compounds and epoxide compounds under controlled molar ratios. The hydroxyl polyesters are useful as biodegradable demulsifiers on oil productions.
US07884136B2
The present invention relates to pharmaceutical compositions, formulations and medicaments comprising a bupropion salt, in particular, modified-release tablets comprising an effective amount of bupropion hydrobromide, and the use of the bupropion salt to prepare a medicament to treat a condition.
US07884119B2
Triazole derivatives and pharmaceutical compositions containing the derivatives are disclosed as being useful in inhibiting the activity of the receptor protein tyrosine kinase Axl. Methods of using the derivatives in treating diseases or conditions associated with Axl catalytic activity are also disclosed.
