US08429634B2

A semiconductor device has an arithmetic processing circuit provided with an arithmetic circuit and a control circuit and a memory circuit provided with a ROM and a RAM, where the arithmetic processing circuit and the memory circuit are connected to each other through an address bus and a data bus, a machine language program executed using the arithmetic processing circuit is stored in the ROM, the RAM has a plurality of banks, processing data obtained by executing the machine language program is divided into a plurality of stacks to be written to the plurality of banks, and the arithmetic processing circuit is operated in accordance with the machine language program so that, in the plurality of stacks stored in the plurality of banks, a stack of which data is not used until the machine language program is terminated is omitted and contiguous stacks are written to the same bank.
US08429632B1

A method for debugging the object code of a program is disclosed. While executing an object code segment on an information processing device, a debugger receives a location identifier associated with the object code segment and identifies a call site within a call stack of the program using the location identifier. The call site is responsible for invoking the execution of the object code segment. Next, the debugger scans a call table for an entry of the call site that includes information for locating a debugging information entry within a compilation unit of the program. The debugger retrieves the debugging information entry from the compilation unit using the location information and identifies a unique one of multiple different source code segments as the one corresponding to the object code segment using a source code segment identifier in the debugging information entry.
US08429631B2

A system and method for managing data, such as in a data warehousing, analysis, or similar applications, where dataflow graphs are expressed as reusable map components, at least some of which are selected from a library of components, and map components are assembled to create an integrated dataflow application. Composite map components encapsulate a dataflow pattern using other maps as subcomponents. Ports are used as link points to assemble map components and are hierarchical and composite allowing ports to contain other ports. The dataflow application may be executed in a parallel processing environment by recognizing the linked data processes within the map components and assigning threads to the linked data processes.
US08429620B2

A method and an apparatus for diagnosing memory leak. The method includes: tracing the allocation of objects; recording allocation paths and allocation time of each object; giving to each object one unique identifier (ID) corresponding to an allocation path; determining the allocation path to which each object belongs; organizing the objects which are allocated but still not collected, and counting the age generations of the objects of the similar type according to the allocation time of each object; ranking the allocation paths according to the age generations of the surviving objects; and analyzing the ranking of the allocation paths, in which the allocation path with higher rank is more probable to introduce memory leaks. Thus, the suspicious allocation path possibly incurring memory leaks is selected and reported to the user for analysis.
US08429613B2

Various technologies and techniques are disclosed for providing stepping and state viewing in a debugger application. A start and end breakpoint are assigned. Source code execution begins, and upon reaching the start breakpoint, a logging feature begins storing one or more values that may be impacted upon execution of code between the start breakpoint and an end breakpoint. More lines of source code are executed until the end breakpoint is reached. When the end breakpoint is reached, the debugger is put into break mode. While in break mode, a playback feature is provided to allow a user to play back a path of execution that occurred between the start breakpoint and the end breakpoint. The playback feature uses at least some of the values that were stored with the logging feature to show how each referenced variable changed in value.
US08429612B2

Reducing graphical user interface (GUI) noise maybe achieved by recording a first execution scenario for control of operation of an application program having a GUI during a recording phase of operation of a cognitive control framework system, setting soft conditions for a search for the application program for the first execution scenario, playing back the application program according to the first execution scenario during a playback phase of operation of the cognitive control framework system, updating the first execution scenario to form a second execution scenario to reduce GUI noise conditions observed during playback, including updating recorded images originally generated by the GUI during the recording phase and updating coordinates for user input data, setting stronger conditions for the search for use in subsequent playbacks; and playing back the application program according to the second execution scenario with the stronger conditions for search.
US08429598B2

According to a first aspect there is provided a system to automatically generate software for an object to relational mapping system. The system reads class information respectively associated with a plurality of classes. The system reads meta-data based on the class information. In addition the system automatically generates the plurality of classes based on the meta-data. The plurality of classes to be used in the object to relational mapping system to enable an application program to access data that is persistently stored in a database and accessed by the application program from an instance of a data object class that is included in the plurality of classes. The plurality of classes further includes a first class that is utilized to create the instance of the data object class.
US08429585B2

A three-dimensional semiconductor device, comprising: a circuit block located in a first module layer; and a configuration circuit to control the circuit block further comprising a configurable element in a second module layer positioned above the first module layer.
US08429575B2

A method for resizing a pattern to be written by using lithography technique includes calculating a first dimension correction amount of a pattern for correcting a dimension error caused by a loading effect, for each small region made by virtually dividing a writing region of a target workpiece into meshes of a predetermined size, based on an area density of the each small region, calculating a second dimension correction amount in accordance with a line width dimension of the pattern to be written in the each small region, correcting the first dimension correction amount by using the second dimension correction amount, and resizing the line width dimension of the pattern by using a corrected first dimension correction amount, and outputting a result of the resizing.
US08429572B2

Disclosed is a method, system, and computer program product for implementing controlled breaks using sub-resolution assist features. Sub-resolution bridging features are added to implement controlled breaks between features on the layout. The bridging features may also be used to facilitate or optimize multiple mask/exposure techniques that split a layout or features on a layout to address pitch problems.
US08429565B2

The present disclosure describes various techniques that may be implemented to execute and/or interpret manipulation gestures performed by a user on a multipoint touch input interface of a computing device. An example method includes receiving a multipoint touch gesture at a multipoint touch input interface of a computing device, wherein the multipoint touch gesture comprises a gesture that is performed with multiple touches on the multipoint touch input interface, and resolving the multipoint touch gesture into a command. The example method further includes determining at least one physical simulation effect to associate with the resolved multipoint touch gesture, and rendering a unified feedback output action in a graphical user interface of the computing device by executing the command, wherein the unified feedback output action includes at least a graphical output action incorporated with the at least one physical simulation effect in the graphical user interface.
US08429564B2

The exemplary embodiment relates to a method of controlling a three-dimensional user interface, which controls a three-dimensional user interface to follow a user's motion, and a mobile terminal using the same. The method comprising: displaying a plurality of three-dimensional menu icons; sensing movement of a user; and rotating at least one of the plurality of three-dimensional menu icons according to the sensed movement such that at least one reference face of the at least one of the plurality of three-dimensional menu icons follows the user's movement.
US08429561B2

Names of pieces of information to be searched are arranged in a predetermined order, and a range display bar that is divided into sections is formed on a screen. A detailed-name-of-information display section is formed adjacent to the range display bar to display detailed information associated with the names in a scrollable manner. An arbitrary range on the range display bar may be designated as a range of the names to be searched. Preferably, the names corresponding to the divided sections are searched with respect to the designated range for the names. Predetermined portions of the names obtained through the search are displayed on the divided sections. Preferably, the portions of the names include at least the initial letter of the names. The detailed information associated with the names in the designated range is displayed on the detailed-name-of-information display section in the arrangement order.
US08429554B2

Displaying graphical indicators, instead of data, based on user-defined conditions. The user can specify conditions for displaying graphical indicators instead of actual data by specifying a test, values, and an image. The graphical indicators can be pre-assigned images that are dynamically applied based on the underlying text or numeric data values. Graphical indicators allow the user to visually represent data types or categories with graphics, based on the user's conditions. Different conditions can be specified for a given data field and each condition can be associated with a particular graphical indicator. Prioritized processing of data conditions allow for complex control of which indicator will be displayed to visually represent the data. When the underlying data in a field changes, the criteria can be reapplied and the field dynamically updated to the appropriate indicator.
US08429539B1

A system, methods and interfaces are provided for managing items in a networked environment. A set of items, such as publications or other works, can be embodied in tangible media that are mutually exclusive. In response to a selection of an item, a prioritized order of the tangible media corresponding to the selected item is provided. Each tangible media can be further subdivided into a prioritized order of physical attributes of the respective tangible media.
US08429534B2

There is provided a graphical user interface that displays information on a plurality of different types of content on a single screen. The graphical user interface includes an overview display area and a detail display area. The overview display area displays an overview of the information on the content in chronological order, based on time information for the plurality of the different types of content. The detail display area displays, in greater detail, the information on the content that corresponds to the time information that is selected in the overview display area. Scrolling the information that is displayed in the overview display area causes the information on the content that is displayed in the detail display area to be scrolled.
US08429533B2

Virtual media environments are provided. A first set of media components is received and modified to create a first virtual media instance. The first virtual media instance is provided to a user via at least one media output device. Media parameters corresponding to the user are updated based on the first virtual media instance. A second set of media components is also received. The second set is modified based on the updated media parameters to create a second virtual media instance.
US08429530B2

A graphical user interface made up of icons representing individual files and collectively forming the shape of a “v” is described along with methods of using and creating the graphical user interface. The v-shaped interface is useful to display detailed information about many of the items in a list and facilitates manipulation of list order and selection of the active file in the list. The interface further permits the use of a representative icon associated with the list as a whole. Manipulation of the representative icon can cause modification or replacement of the entire playlist represented by the icon.
US08429529B2

Provided is a proofreading device capable of accepting proofreader's marks, which includes: a user attribute identification section configured to identify an attribute of a user; a storage section configured to store proofreader's mark sets and attributes of users in association with each other and to store intermediate mark set to be used to place the proofreader's marks having the same meaning among the proofreader's sets in correspondence to each other; a proofreader's-mark-set selection section configured to a proofreader's mark set corresponding to the attribute of the user; a proofreader's mark conversion section configured to convert the proofreader's marks, added to a document by a first proofreader, into intermediate marks, to convert the intermediate marks into the proofreader's marks of the proofreader's mark set selected on the basis of the attribute of a second user, and to cause a display section to display the converted proofreader's marks together with the document.
US08429513B2

A method of verifying the integrity of code in a programmable memory, the method including: receiving the code from an insecure memory; generating error detection bits for the code as it is received from the insecure memory; storing the code and the error detection bits in the programmable memory; and verifying the integrity of the code stored in the programmable memory by performing an authentication check on the code and the error detection bits stored in the programmable memory.
US08429504B2

A DTV transmitting system includes an encoder, a randomizer, a block processor, a group formatter, a deinterleaver, and a packet formatter. The encoder codes enhanced data for error correction, permutes the coded data, and further codes the permuted data for error detection. The randomizer randomizes the coded enhanced data, and the block processor codes the randomized data at an effective coding rate of 1/H. The group formatter forms a group of enhanced data having data regions, and inserts the coded enhanced data into at least one of the data regions. The deinterleaver deinterleaves the group of enhanced data, and the packet formatter formats the deinterleaved data into corresponding data bytes.
US08429494B2

A nonvolatile random access memory includes: a nonvolatile storage area that is randomly accessible and includes a data area to store data and an error-correcting-code area to store an error correcting code, the data area including at least one data area to which a data area unit size is assigned, the error-correcting-code area including at least one error-correcting-code area to which an error-correcting-code-area unit size is assigned; and a nonvolatile storage area controller to set a data size used when the at least one data area is accessed, as the data area unit size. The nonvolatile storage area controller manages the data area and the error-correcting-code area based on the set data area unit size and assigns the at least one error-correcting-code area with the error-correcting-code-area unit size to the at least one data area with the data area unit size based on the data area unit size.
US08429491B1

Methods and apparatus are provided for more efficiently implementing error checking code circuitry on a programmable chip. In one example, Cyclic Redundancy Check (CRC) exclusive OR (XOR) circuitry is decomposed to allow efficient implementation on lookup tables (LUTs) of various sizes on a device. XOR cancellation factoring is used to break up wide CRC XORs into blocks that fit in various LUTs while maintaining focus on minimizing logic depth and logic area. Simulated annealing is used to further reduce logic area cost.
US08429487B2

An error protection method for a time-to-digital converter (TDC) decoder of an all-digital phase-locked loop (ADPLL) includes: retrieving a digital code received by the TDC decoder; retrieving a cycle code received by the TDC decoder; performing an exclusive-or operation on a first predetermined bit of the digital code and a second predetermined bit of the cycle code for generating an error protection code; and using the error protection code to fix errors within the cycle code by adding the error protection code into the cycle code and shifting the cycle code by a third predetermined number of bits.
US08429479B2

A method and system to increase the throughput of a HARQ protocol in a wireless network. When a station receives a downlink HARQ sub-burst that has an incorrect cyclic redundancy check, it determines if there is an overflow event of its buffer. If so, the station reduces the size of the HARQ sub-burst to be stored in the buffer and stores the resized HARQ sub-burst in the buffer. When the station transmits an uplink HARQ sub-burst, the station can reduce the size of the transmitted HARQ sub-burst if it exceeds the size of the buffer. The amount of buffer required in the station can also be reduced by representing each log likelihood ratio (LLR) value of each of one or more bits of each symbol of a HARQ burst with a number of quantization bits based on a metric sensitivity to noise of each bit of each symbol.
US08429476B2

An encoder/decoder system usable to decrease the probability of a failed transmission over a lossy wireless network. In one embodiment, data packets unsuccessfully sent over the wireless network may be retransmitted a particular number of times, depending on how important the data in the lost packet is. In another embodiment, when a number of transmission failures is determined to exceed a predetermined threshold, it may be signaled that multiple reference frames should be used for encoding predictions.
US08429475B2

A method for receiver processing in a 3GPP Long Term Evolution (LTE) receiver processing chain in a wireless mobile device is provided. LTE initial sub-frame transmitted from a base station is received on a LTE signalling channel. The sub-frame is received using a basic receiver. An integrity check is performed to determine if the sub-frame was demodulated and decoded correctly by the basic receiver. An advanced receiver is enabled prior to receiving an expected retransmission sub-frame based upon the integrity check failing and a hybrid-acknowledgement request (HARQ) negative acknowledgement (NAK) being sent by the wireless mobile device. The retransmission sub-frame is received using the advanced receiver. The basic receiver is enabled when the integrity check of the retransmission sub-frame passes and a acknowledgement (ACK) is by the wireless mobile device or a new data indicator (NDI) is set in a control channel indicating that the transmission is an initial transmission.
US08429470B2

Testing systems and methods, as well as memory devices using such testing systems and methods, may facilitate testing of memory devices using a read-modify-write test procedure. One such testing system receives a signal indicative of at least some of a plurality of bits of data read from an address differing from each other, and then masks subsequent write operations at the same address. Therefore, any address at which the bits of read data do not all have the same value may be considered to be faulty. Failure data from the test can therefore be stored in the same array of memory cells that is being tested.
US08429468B2

In a particular embodiment, at a controller coupled to a memory array, a method includes receiving an indication that a first group of data bits read from the memory array includes errors that are uncorrectable by an error correction coding (ECC) engine. A count of the first group of data bits having a particular bit value may be compared to a prior count of data bits having the particular bit value. In response to determining that the count exceeds the prior count, a bit of the first group of data bits that has the particular bit value and that corresponds to a same memory cell as a corrected data bit of a second group of data bits is identified. A value of the identified bit of the first group may be changed to generate an adjusted group of data bits. The adjusted group of data bits may be provided to the ECC engine.
US08429449B2

Systems and methods for reducing risk of service interruptions for one or more virtual machines (VMs) in a computing environment are provided. The method comprises computing a placement scheme for placing at least one VM on one or more hosts according to a set of placement constraints defined for the VM, wherein the set of placement constraints comprises at least one availability constraint defined for the VM, wherein the availability constraint designates a N resiliency level, wherein N corresponds to number of host failures that may occur before the services provided by the VM are interrupted.
US08429438B2

An invention is provided for transferring data between asynchronous clock domains. The asynchronous clock domains include a source clock domain operating with a source clock signal and a receiving clock domain operating with a receiving clock signal. The invention includes determining a phase shift relationship between the source clock signal and a signal. When the phase shift relationship is below a predetermined threshold the data is transferred between the source clock domain and the receiving clock domain using a first plurality of stage operations. When the phase shift relationship is above the predetermined threshold, the data is transferred between the source clock domain and the receiving clock domain using a second plurality of stage operations that delay data transfer an additional half period of the source clock signal.
US08429437B2

A system includes a plurality of storage devices and a controller. The plurality of storage devices are bus-connected to one clock signal line and one data signal line connected to the controller. Each of the plurality of storage devices stores identification information in advance to distinguish the storage devices from each other. The controller transmits data using an identification information transmission period in which one storage device is selected from the plurality of storage devices by transmitting the identification information of the one storage device to the plurality of storage devices via the data signal line and a data transmission period in which the data is transmitted to the one selected storage device. A frequency of a clock signal during the identification information transmission period is set to be lower than a frequency of the clock signal during the data transmission period.
US08429428B2

In accordance with embodiments of the invention, a method is provided for performing a storage operation in a pipeline storage system in which one or more data streams containing data to be stored are written into data chunks. The method includes generating an encryption key associated with a first archive file to be stored when encryption is requested for the storage operation, encrypting the archive data from the data stream using the encryption key to create an encrypted data chunk when a data stream containing the archive file is processed in the pipeline storage system, storing the encrypted data chunk on a storage medium, and storing the encryption key in a manner accessible during a restore operation of the encrypted data chunk.
US08429420B1

A method and apparatus are utilized to manage keys associated with encrypted stored information. Sensitive information is stored in an encrypted form, and by creating and deleting the keys needed to decrypt information according to a time-based policy, the convenient expiration of stored data can be realized. By periodically erasing old keys and creating new keys, information that has not been written recently becomes virtually deleted. A refresh policy can be utilized to cause information that is read to be re-encrypted using a newer key, thereby extending the time before it will become inaccessible.
US08429412B2

Signatures are generated for modules in a computer system. The signatures can be assembled into an integrity log. The signatures are compared with signatures in a database in an integrity validator. Once signatures are either validated or invalidated, a trust score can be generated. The trust score can then be used to determine whether the computer system should be granted access to a resource using a policy.
US08429406B2

Systems and methods for authorizing customer premise equipment into a network. A publicly available network membership key can be provided to enable initial connection to the network. Unique network membership keys associated with various customer premise equipment can be provided to enable service level access to the network and/or authorization into a sub-cell associated with the network.
US08429395B2

A request is received from a software component of a software product to access a value of a public setting of the software component. A check is made as to whether the request conforms to an appropriate format for the public setting. If the request conforms to the appropriate format, then the requested access is performed. However, if the request does not conform to the appropriate format, then the requested access is denied. Multiple values for the public setting can be received and maintained concurrently.
US08429393B1

A network security system comprises a first component that generates an address for identifying a communicating device on a network. A second component receives the address generated by the first component and facilitates transitioning from an existent address to the generated address. Such transitioning is effectuated in order to protect the network against attack while providing seamless communications with respect to the communicating device.
US08429384B2

An architecture for a digital signal processor alleviates the difficulties and complexities normally associated with writing and optimizing programs to avoid stalls during which one instruction awaits the result of a prior instruction. The architecture coordinates the processing of data for multiple instructions through a multiple stage data pipeline. As a result, the architecture not only supports simultaneous execution of multiple programs, but also permits each program to execute without delays caused by inter-relationships between instructions within the program.
US08429378B2

A system and method to manage a translation lookaside buffer (TLB) is disclosed. In a particular embodiment, a method of managing a first TLB includes in response to starting execution of a memory instruction, setting a first field associated with an entry of the first TLB to indicate use of the entry. The method also includes setting a second field to indicate that the entry in the first TLB matches a corresponding entry in a second TLB.
US08429372B2

For a storage apparatus where flash memory disks and hard disks coexist, high-density mounting of flash memory modules is achieved. The storage apparatus includes flash memories and a storage controller. A second storage apparatus including magnetic disks is connected to the storage apparatus. The storage controller can form a storage area using a flash memory or a magnetic disk to create a logical volume. When an input/output request is issued from a host computer, if a storage area is formed with a flash memory, the storage controller directly accesses the flash memory to handle the request. When the storage apparatus defines a storage area formed with a flash memory, the storage apparatus defines the storage area by adding up the capacity of a storage area to be provided for the host computer and a substitute area capacity determined in consideration of restrictions on the number deletions of the flash memory.
US08429361B2

An information-storage system storing information includes, an information-storage unit configured to store data, an encoding/decoding unit configured to encode and store input data in the information-storage unit, and decode and output the encoded data stored in the information-storage unit upon receiving a request for an information output, a transmission unit configured to output the encoded data stored in the information-storage unit, the encoded data being left undecoded, and store the encoded data in a backup spot different from the information-storage unit, a status-monitoring unit configured to monitor an unusual status of the information-storage system, and a selection unit configured to select the transmission unit between the encoding/decoding unit and the transmission unit when the status-monitoring unit confirms the unusual status of the information-storage system.
US08429357B2

A device management apparatus that executes an initialization processing to a device that stores user data includes a first initialization processing section for executing a first initialization processing in which a progress status of an initialization is notified to another device management apparatus every time when the initialization equivalent to a processing unit of the initialization processing is executed to the device, a second initialization processing section for executing a second initialization processing in which a progress status of an initialization is notified to the another device management apparatus every time when the initialization for the predetermined number of processing units is executed to the device, a monitoring unit for monitoring a status of access to the device and an operation state of the device, and a changeover section for changing over the first initialization processing and the second initialization processing based on a monitoring result.
US08429350B2

A method of providing history based done logic includes receiving a cache line in a L2 cache; determining if the cache line has a history of access at least three times on a previous call into the L2 cache; providing the cache line directly to a processor if the history of access was less then the at least three times; and loading the cache line into an L1 cache if the history of access was the at least three times.
US08429339B2

According to one embodiment, a storage device comprises a first storage unit having blocks, each including pages, a second storage unit having a free block list, and a free page list, and a control unit. In write data in units of blocks, the control unit generates compressed data blocks by compressing the data in units of blocks, writes the compressed data blocks to the blocks which can be written in accordance with the information held in the free block list, holds, in the free page list, the information about pages existing in free areas which are provided in the blocks holding compressed data blocks and which holds no compressed data blocks. In write data in units of pages, the control unit writes the data in units of pages to pages existing in the free areas, in accordance with the information held in the free page list.
US08429338B2

A method and system for emulating a byte-wise programmable memory in a sector-wise erasable memory, where emulating a byte-wise programmable memory in a sector-wise erasable memory is based on dividing the sector-wise erasable memory in a plurality of sectors, dividing each of the sectors into several memory locations suitable to store containers, with each container having a header and a payload portion, and storing a data value relating to an application in the payload portion of one of the containers and header information identifying the application in the header in an available container. The containers can be block containers, and the data portion can have two or more payload values. The storing action can be performed in such a way that the two or more payload values in the payload portion together uniquely represent the data value.
US08429334B2

The invention provides a method for preventing data loss in a flash memory during a solder reflow process. The flash memory includes a plurality of memory blocks and each memory block includes a plurality of strong pages and weak pages. Preloading data is first received and stored into the strong pages of at least one of first memory block within the flash memory. Then, the flash memory is heated for the solder reflow process. Next, the preloading data is reorganized according to a trigger signal and the strong pages and weak pages of at least one of second memory block within the flash memory are provided for storing the reorganized preloading data.
US08429332B2

The present invention discloses a control method of a multi-channel hybrid density memory storage device for access a user data. The storage device includes a plurality of low density memories (LDM) and high density memories (HDM). The steps of the method comprises: first, determining where the user data transmitted; then, using one of two error correction circuits which have different error correction capability to encode or decode the user data.
US08429329B2

Embodiments are provided that include operating a NAND memory device via an SPI interface. One such method includes cache loading a NAND memory device including loading data into a cache of the NAND memory device, writing data from the cache of the NAND memory device to an address of a memory array of the NAND memory device, and polling to determine the status of the data being written. Further one such method includes caching of data in a NAND memory device via an SPI interface comprising loading first data to a cache of the NAND memory device, writing the first data to a first address of a NAND memory array of the NAND memory device, polling the status of the cache, if polling indicates that the cache is ready, then loading a portion of the cache with second data, polling the status of the cache and the NAND memory device, and if polling indicates that the cache is ready and the device is ready, writing the second data to a second address of the NAND memory array of the NAND memory device.
US08429319B2

A multi-port memory device includes a plurality of serial I/O data pads for providing a serial input/output (I/O) data communication; a plurality of ports for performing the serial I/O data communication with external devices through the serial I/O data pads; a plurality of banks for performing a parallel I/O data communication with the ports; a plurality of first data buses for transferring first signals from the ports to the banks; a plurality of second data buses for transferring second signals from the banks to the ports; and a switching unit for connecting the first data buses with the second data buses in response to a control signal.
US08429317B2

A serial communication device has: a MAC (Media Access Control), a mask circuit and a buffer. The MAC conforms to Serial Media Independent Interface specification and outputs an identical segment data for plural times within a unit period. The mask circuit is configured to mask a predetermined segment data out of the plurality of identical segment data and to output the other segment data out of the plurality of identical segment data. The buffer is configured to receive the segment data output from the mask circuit and to output the received segment data to a physical layer device in synchronization with a clock signal.
US08429310B2

A disclosed image forming apparatus includes an image processing device including plural image processing units; a control device configured to control the plural image processing units; and a connection unit configured to connect the image processing device to the control device. Each of the plural image processing units is connected to the control device by one of plural channels; the image processing device is connected to the control device by a first bus including the channels; and the connection unit is provided on the first bus so that the image processing device is connected to the control device by a single connection unit.
US08429307B1

This invention is a system and a method for operating a storage server that provides read or write access to a data in a data network using a new architecture. The method of processing I/Os in response to a request by a client of the storage server executes one or more services communicated by a policy engine. The I/Os received from the application are tagged and catalogued to create co-related I/O patterns. The policy engine is then updated with the results of processing the I/Os after executing services on those I/Os.
US08429305B2

A method for generating privacy IP address includes pregenerating a first privacy address and generating a second privacy address when the first privacy address is allocated to an application. Addresses may be shared by applications or unique to a single application. A deprecation timer is started when an application binds to an allocated privacy address, now when the privacy address is generated. To minimize traffic flow disruptions a deprecated address is not deleted while the address remains in use. By pregenerating privacy addresses, an address can be promptly allocated to an application with out delays incurred by confirming that a new address is not a duplicate on the system. The method can be implicated on any device using privacy addresses, including mobile handset devices.
US08429300B2

A method of transferring data in which a secure authenticated channel is established with a receiving entity corresponding to receiver information included in a received control message, when receiving the control message from a control entity, a format of received plurality of data is transformed according to content format transformation information included in the control message, when receiving the plurality of data from a predetermined transmission entity in a chain constructed by a control of the control entity, the transformed plurality of data is transmitted to the receiving entity through the established secure authenticated channel, and an event message for representing a transmission status of the data is transmitted to the control entity. Accordingly, it is possible to transmit the plurality of data through a single transmission session and provide a transmission status of each data through an event.
US08429284B2

A method of transmitting/receiving digital contents and an apparatus for receiving the digital contents are disclosed. In a system connected with an Internet protocol (IP) network, service event information may be included in a service discovery record and transmitted/received. Accordingly, the apparatus for receiving the digital contents can receive a service using the service event information in a service discovery step when receiving the service including the digital contents. Since the service event information can be processed independence of the digital contents included in the service, the service can be rapidly provided and unnecessary service event information does not need to be parsed.
US08429279B2

The invention relates to a method and an arrangement for connecting packet-oriented communication terminals, wherein a first communication terminal (P1) is arranged in a first network (LAN), the first network (LAN) being connected to a second network (INT) via a network address-translating unit (NAT), a second communication terminal (P2) being arranged in said second network. For this purpose, a proxy (P) is provided in the gateway (GW) for intercepting or listening to messages, in that a STUN, ICE, or TURN protocol is implemented. The concept of the invention is to implement, on a case by case basis, IP address spoofing or port number spoofing and a “RESPONSE ADDRESS” STUN field in the proxy, thereby performing the STUN or ICE protocol not on the respective communication terminals, but at a third part on another unit. A performance takes place even if the central unit is not located in the user data path between the STUN server STUN and the respective communication terminal.
US08429269B2

A solution for server-side rendering includes, at a server configured to store a video images representing states of users in a computer application, identifying future user actions based at least in part on a state of a user in the computer application. The solution also includes, responsive to the identifying, rendering video images for sending to a user device associated with the user. At the user device, a state of the user in a computer application is sent to the server. Responsive to the sending, video images are stored, each of the video images representing a future state of the user after the user performs a future action. Responsive to a user action, one of the video images is selected for display on a user display of the user device. According to one aspect, the future user actions identified by the server are limited to less than a possible number of user actions for users having the state.
US08429265B2

Systems and methods for monitoring the performance associated with fulfilling resource requests and determining optimizations for improving such performance are provided. A processing device obtains and processes performance information associated with processing a request corresponding to two or more embedded resources. The processing device uses the processed performance information to determine a consolidation configuration to be associated with a subsequent request for the content associated with the two or more embedded resources. In some embodiments, in making such a determination, the processing device assesses performance information collected and associated with subsequent requests corresponding to the content associated with the two or more embedded resources and using each of a variety of alternative consolidation configurations. Aspects of systems and methods for generating recommendations to use a particular consolidation configuration to process a subsequent request corresponding to the content associated with the two or more embedded resources are also provided.
US08429262B2

A communication system includes multiple communication terminals that are used by multiple users; and a management unit that holds management information expressing which type of communication mode corresponding to which communication address information is used by which user and by which communication terminal, and connection information including communication address information of one communication terminal that has communicated and communication address information of the other communication terminal that has communicated. The management unit holds connection information corresponding to an instance of communication even if that instance of communication has ended. Each communication terminal can communicate with other communication terminals in one or more types of communication modes, and includes a communication support unit.
US08429261B2

Methods and systems for managing a device in a Web Based Enterprise Management (“WBEM”) environment. At least a management software component and a device management adapter are reused through receiving a network command from the management software component, and forwarding the network command to the device management adapter for conversion to a device message. The WBEM environment is supported by packaging the device message in a WBEM envelope, and transmitting the device message in the WBEM envelope to a computer system. The computer system comprises the device. Subsequently, a native command based on the device message is issued to the device.
US08429247B1

One embodiment of the present invention provides a system that facilitates intercepting browser communication protocol requests at a client. In addition, the system optionally fulfills the requests with content which is locally cached on the client rather than with content from a web server, which is located externally from the client. During operation, the system receives a communication protocol request at a browser's communication protocol stack. In response to the request, the system identifies a Uniform Resource Locator (URL) for the request. The system also determines if an item of content identified by the URL can be retrieved from a local cache. If so, the system fulfills the request from the local cache.
US08429246B2

A computer program for secure encryption and decryption provides a user interface that allows a user to drag and drop files into and out of a secure repository, wherein the program automatically encrypts files transferred into the repository and automatically decrypts files transferred out of the repository. The user can transfer file folders into the repository, wherein the program encrypts all of the files within the folder and retains the original file/folder structure, such that individual files can be moved within the repository, moved out of the repository, and opened or executed directly from the repository. The program requires the user to submit biometric data and grants access to the secure repository only if the biometric data is authenticated. The program generates an encryption key based at least in part on biometric data received from the user. Additionally, the program destroys the key after termination of each encryption/decryption session.
US08429224B2

A browser manager server is able to initialize and configure one or more browser windows on a gaming device display screen. The browser manager has the ability to configure specific URLs for each browser window, configure and Z-order depth for each window, set window size and position, and call functions on the browser pages. A browser client side application on a gaming device is capable of creating multiple windows on an electronic gaming device and responding to said server configuration or browser message commands.
US08429215B2

A receiving apparatus for a digital mobile communication system comprises an adaptive filter for filtering an input signal. A step-size parameter chosen for the adaption of filter coefficients of the adaptive filter is computed from a variation of the filter coefficients used by the adaptive filter. This facilitates an indirect measure for the channel variation so that a good reception quality over a wide range of user velocities may be enabled in contrast to a system design based on a compromise step-size parameter being optimum for one velocity only.
US08429213B2

A summing circuit for an adder decodes control signals to determine that the result should be manipulated, and generates a half-sum output which is used to produce a manipulated result based on the control signals. The half-sum output is combined with a previous carry bit to complete the sum operation. The control signals can invert the adder result, or force the result to be all 1's. These functions can be effectuated in a 3-way multiplexer that combines the operand inputs and control signals. For inversion, two separate logic circuits produce true and complement half-sums in parallel, and the appropriate half-sum is selected for the half-sum output. For a result of all 1's, a force_1 control signal pulls the half-sum output node to electrical ground and the final output is manipulated by gating the carry signals with the force_1 signal. The two functions are implemented without introducing additional delay.
US08429210B2

A method and computer-readable medium are provided for storing files in an official file repository. According to the method, a generic interface is exposed that includes a first method for requesting that a file be stored in a file vault. A record series is maintained that identifies one or more document types that may be stored in the file vault along with a location for each file type within the file vault where files of the type should be stored. A call may be made to the first method including the file to be stored in the file vault. In response to the call, a location for storing the file in the file vault may be identified based on the contents of the record series. Once the location has been identified, the file is stored in the identified location if the file type is in the record series. If the file type is not in the record series or the necessary property values are not received with the call, the file is placed in a holding zone portion of the file vault. The generic interface may further expose a second method for retrieving the file types identified in the record series and a third method for retrieving one or more properties associated with a file type identified in the record series.
US08429206B2

A logical expression of a policy is generated from another logical expression of a policy, for example, via a set of transformations, each of which comprises an input sub-expression and an output sub-expression. Any sub-expression of the input expression which matches an input sub-expression of a transformation rule is replaced with the output sub-expression of that transformation rule to form a sub-expression of the output expression.
US08429201B2

Techniques are provided to update a database, in which a browser communicates changes to the database. A change request is received from a browser, and a database update program is executed in response to the change request. The change request may be a page redirect request from a first network address to a second network address, and the database update program replaces the first network address with the second network address in one or more data tables in the database. The change request may also be a web page change request, and the database update program is a trigger program for determining additional programs to be run to update the database.
US08429200B2

Some embodiments of a system and a method to use a separate process in an interactive computer programming environment as a database have been presented. For instance, both server and client may run in an interactive computer programming environment, such as Read-Eval-Print Loop (REPL) environment. The server may receive data manipulating instructions written in a generic programming language and data from the client. The server can execute the instructions to manipulate the data. The server may further act as a database for the client by maintaining persistence of the data.
US08429190B2

Content is provided to electronic mail, commonly known as e-mail, over a network, such as the Internet. This content is provided in accordance with keywords, typically organized in a hierarchy. The presently highest ranked keyword, that is active, is passed to various content servers, along the network, in response to a request, returned from the e-mail client of a recipient user. The keywords are managed, such that after a certain number of responses from the recipients of the electronic mails, to content in each e-mail generated from a particular keyword, use of that particular keyword is terminated, as the keyword is inactivated. Content is then delivered in accordance with another keyword, typically the next highest ranked keyword.
US08429187B2

Embodiments of systems and methods are described for dynamically tagging metrics data by a provider of computing resources. In some implementations, a requesting user or application can request the provider of computing resources to tag the metrics based on configurations and/or settings specified by the requesting user or application. The tagged metrics data can then be processed by a processing user or application at a later time.
US08429172B2

According to one embodiment, a mobile communication terminal comprises a storage device which stores rule information including at least one pair of condition information and content information, wherein the condition information is composed of a plurality of condition labels, a condition estimator which generates condition estimation data indicating accuracy data regarding a condition of the terminal for each of a plurality of condition labels based on sensed data, wherein the each condition label is fallen into one of a plurality of condition items, a priority decision section which estimates the rule information and determines priority data for the pair, an estimator which generates an estimation value indicating a summation the accuracy data from the condition estimator and the priority data, and a selection section which provides a shortcut button to run a program with a display device based.
US08429169B2

Methods and systems for indexing content in a cache data structure within a content cache are disclosed. The methods and systems identify at least one characterization data associated with a received content request and input the at least one characterization data into a hash function to generate an index that is used for identifying an entry associated with the requested content in the cache data structure. The at least one characterization data may include a portion of content associated with the received content request, a portion of a Uniform Resource Locator (URL) associated with the received content request, an IP address associated with the received content request, the length of the content associated with the received content request, and one or more parameters parsed from the URL associated with the received content request.
US08429168B1

Methods, systems, and apparatus, including computer programs encoded on a computer storage medium, for identifying similar images. In some implementations, a method is provided that includes receiving a collection of images and data associated with each image in the collection of images; generating a sparse feature representation for each image in the collection of images; and training an image similarity function using image triplets sampled from the collection of images and corresponding sparse feature representations.
US08429167B2

A method and apparatus for determining contexts of information analyzed. Contexts may be determined for words, expressions, and other combinations of words in bodies of knowledge such as encyclopedias. Analysis of use provides a division of the universe of communication or information into domains, and selects words or expressions unique to those domains of subject matter as an aid in classifying information. A vocabulary list is created with a macro-context (context vector) for each, dependent upon the number of occurrences of unique terms from a domain, over each of the domains. This system may be used to find information or classify information by subsequent inputs of text, in calculation of macro-contexts, with ultimate determination of lists of micro-contests including terms closely aligned with the subject matter.
US08429165B1

Methods and systems for partitioning data for processing in a plurality of data centers are disclosed. For each of a plurality of data centers, a time period required for the data center to process an amount of information may be estimated. The plurality of data centers may be ordered based on the time period for each data center. Data may be received from one or more sources. A data center having a smallest time period from the ordered plurality of data centers may be selected to be added to a set of data centers. An overall execution time for the set of data centers to process the data may be determined. The selecting and determining operations may be repeated until the overall execution time satisfies one or more threshold criteria. The data may be transmitted to the set of data centers.
US08429162B1

Disclosed are various embodiments for facilitating data redistribution in database sharding. A database is maintained that is horizontally partitioned into a set of first buckets using modulo-based assignments. A fixed number of the first buckets are stored in each of multiple physical data stores. The database is repartitioned into a set of second buckets using modulo-based assignments. The number of second buckets in the set is a multiple of the sum of a positive integer and the quantity of the physical data stores. The data in the database is unmoved between the physical data stores by repartitioning.
US08429153B2

Method and apparatus for determining a metric for use in predicting properties of an unknown specimen belonging to a group of reference specimen electrical devices comprises application of a network analyzer for collecting impedance spectra for the reference specimens and determining centroids and thresholds for the group of reference specimens so that an unknown specimen may be confidently classified as a member of the reference group using the metric. If a trait is stored with the reference group of electrical device specimens, then, the trait may be predictably associated with the unknown specimen along with any traits identified with the unknown specimen associated with the reference group.
US08429152B2

A terminal device capable of displaying content is provided. The terminal device analyzes content data, which includes a plurality of display elements, and extracts one or more display elements satisfying a predetermined condition from the plurality of display elements. The terminal device associates each extracted display element with a corresponding display location information. The terminal device renders the extracted display elements in a predetermined display mode. The terminal device accepts a user selection of one of the extracted display elements, and displays the plurality of display elements, including display elements which are not displayed in the predetermined display mode, based on the display location information associated with the selected display element.
US08429148B1

Disclosed is a web server that includes a headlines module for automatically generating headlines based on data retrieved from a network (e.g., World Wide Web). The web server also includes an interactive agent for generating responses to inquiries relating to the headlines based on the data.
US08429139B2

A method for processing a digital file of the images, video and/or audio type which comprises a phase for putting into line per color layer and/or per audio channel, digital data of any audio, image and video file, a compression phase using algorithm in which each compressed value VCn of position N is obtained by subtracting from the value Vn of same position N of the original file, a predetermined number of successive compressed values (VCn-1, VCn-2, . . . ) calculated previously, and a restoration phase using an algorithm in which each restored value VDn of position N is obtained by adding to the value VCn, of the same position of the compressed file, a predetermined number of successive compressed values (VCn-1, VCn-2, . . . ).
US08429135B1

Techniques are provided herein to provide a processor device that has tolerance for faults associated with operations of a translation lookaside buffer. In a processor device, contents of a translation lookaside buffer are stored in a memory that is protected by an error correction code (ECC) to provide an ECC-protected backup copy of the contents of the translation lookaside buffer. When a miss exception of the translation lookaside buffer is triggered during execution of a processor function, the contents of the translation lookaside buffer is refreshed with the ECC-protected backup copy. Future operations of the processor are made using the refreshed contents of the translation lookaside buffer.
US08429131B2

Systems and methods for managing digital assets in a distributed computing environment are described. Meta-data for the digital assets is stored separately from the digital assets. Meta-data for some of the digital assets is copied and stored at a central location. Meta-data for the digital assets is generated by clients of the system.
US08429130B2

A data prefetching technique uses predefined prefetching criteria and prefetching models to identify and retrieve prefetched data. A prefetching model that defines data to be prefetched via a network may be stored. It may be determined whether prefetching initiation criteria have been satisfied. Data for prefetching may be identified based on the prefetching model when the prefetching initiation criteria have been satisfied. The identified data may be prefetched, via the network, based on the prefetching model.
US08429128B2

A system is disclosed. The system includes a server, a client application, and a first database. The first database is associated with the client application. The system further includes a second database to store data in an encrypted format, and a replicator to synchronize the data stored in the first and second databases. The system also includes a synchronizer to synchronize the data stored in the second database and the server based on a current security level.
US08429117B2

Provided is a method of loading data in a data warehouse. Two types of work tables are generated, namely, a first work table and a second work table. The data is loaded into the first work table and prepared for loading, using the second work table as temporary table for data preparation. The prepared data is loaded into the data warehouse.
US08429111B1

Methods, systems, and apparatus, including computer program products, for generating or using augmentation queries. In one aspect, statistical model of statistical data is used to support lossless predictive compression. Data instances are identified in statistical data and classified into one of a plurality of data types. Each data type is associated with a corresponding compression process that is used to compress data instances of that type.
US08429086B2

A system for improving transaction security based on location information. The system includes a transaction processing center in communication with a first transaction device and a second transaction device. The transaction processing center includes a receiver that receives respective identification and location from at least one of the first and second transaction devices. The transaction processing center also includes a transaction processor that validates the identifications, validates the locations, and executes a transaction between the first and second transaction devices when the identifications and locations are validated.
US08429079B1

Various aspects relate to systems, methods or devices for processing overdrafts made by customers. A particular embodiment is directed towards, a system that is configured to receive transaction data from customer-oriented terminals. The transaction data includes requests for monetary transfers on behalf of customers that hold a checking or savings account at a financial institution. In response to receiving the transaction data, the system accesses customer account information, which can include the amount of funds in the checking or savings accounts. The system determines whether sufficient funds exist in the accounts to cover the financial transactions. In response to a potential overdraft of one or more customer accounts, stored customer information is accessed to determine and authorize overdraft deferment eligibility of the customer based upon the stored customer information. The system defers an overdraft fee by providing a grace period during which funds can be transferred to cover the overdraft.
US08429076B1

A system and method for funding a collective account such as a charitable account includes issuing a plurality of financial instruments, linking the financial instruments to the collective account, aggregating individual financial instrument usage, calculating a bonus or other reward based on the aggregate financial instrument usage and funding or distributing the reward to the collective account. According to the invention, members of a civic, charitable, political or other entity may generate collective rewards or other benefits which may be attributed to the designated organization.
US08429072B1

Methods and systems of the invention provide a variety of techniques for processing microtransactions. In accordance with the invention, the method starts with a customer initiating a purchase through interaction with a merchant. The purchase is associated with purchase information, which includes the particulars of the purchase, such as the purchase price. In the purchase, the customer uses a transaction account, obtained from a payment enabler. The purchase is classified as a microtransaction, if the purchase price is below a predetermined monetary amount. Thereafter, the purchase information is forwarded for processing based on the classifying, i.e., either as a regular transaction or as a microtransaction. Then, upon receipt of the purchase information by an appropriate recipient, such as an interchange entity or an alternate interchange entity, the purchase information is processed to effect the microtransaction, if so classified, between the customer and the merchant.
US08429071B2

Providing for a mobile communication device (MCD) credit account and credit transactions by way of such an MCD is described herein. As an example, a credit account sponsored by a financial or commercial entity can be associated with a unique ID of an MCD. The MCD can interface with another electronic device and initiate credit transactions, such as commercial purchases, credit transfers, currency conversions, and the like, via the interface. Further, rules provided by the sponsoring entity can guide such transactions, enforcing credit limits, for instance. A management component can then synchronize transactions conducted by the device with a server of a financial institution over a remote communication interface, such as the Internet or a cellular/mobile communication network. Accordingly, a mobile device can replace a traditional credit card in transacting credit business.
US08429069B1

Methods and systems of the invention provide a variety of techniques for processing microtransactions. In accordance with the invention, the method starts with a customer initiating a purchase through interaction with a merchant. The purchase is associated with purchase information, which includes the particulars of the purchase, such as the purchase price. In the purchase, the customer uses a transaction account, obtained from a payment enabler. The purchase is classified as a microtransaction, if the purchase price is below a predetermined monetary amount. Thereafter, the purchase information is forwarded for processing based on the classifying, i.e., either as a regular transaction or as a microtransaction. Then, upon receipt of the purchase information by an appropriate recipient, such as an interchange entity or an alternate interchange entity, the purchase information is processed to effect the microtransaction, if so classified, between the customer and the merchant.
US08429068B1

A system and method to assign a score to an entity involved in a transaction where the score is used to manage risk for a transaction underwriter. In particular, the score represents the ability of the entity to fulfill a financial obligation separate from the transaction where failure to fulfill the financial obligation by the entity results in defaulting on the transaction. The score assigned to the entity may be determined by aggregating data obtained from multiple sources, such as accounting application, payroll application, inventory management application, personal financial management application, and/or tax preparation application used by the entity.
US08429063B2

A method and apparatus for managing business processes. First business process data obtained from a first trading participant includes a set of transaction messages having a first data format in accordance with a first protocol for conducting business transactions used by the first trading participant. A virtual trading participant receives fictitious business process data from the first trading participant and acknowledging the fictitious business process data and replying to the first trading participant that the fictitious business process data has been acknowledged. Operational characteristics and a connectivity of a currently trading participant connected to a process management platform accessible via an interconnection fabric are tested, by utilizing the virtual trading participant to determine if the data defining individual business processes is in a uniform format understood by a process management platform. The virtual trading participant is utilized to ensure compatibility with an identified version of the uniform format.
US08429062B2

A trading screen may display price and quantity information for price levels in a static axis of prices. The static axis of prices may be divided into two or more different regions. The price and quantity information for one or more of the regions may be consolidated from price and quantity information from plurality of un-consolidated price levels.
US08429058B2

A paired basis swap risk and credit mitigation system and collateral minimization system. In swaps used to hedge forward contracts a system authority interposes itself and forms paired basis swaps with each of the paired swap participants and itself together with a Swaption to allow it to maintain a level book in the event of a default by any counterparty. In the event of a default the system authority has the ability to either terminate a swap and pay the non-defaulting counterparty an agreed upon termination payment, terminate the non-defaulting counterparty's swap and exercise the swaption to substitute a correlated swap with appropriate correlated termination payment; or substitute a new counterparty with an identical swap as the paired swap participant. Paired basis swap control through delivery can be enabled to continue the risk and credit mitigation benefits of the system.
US08429057B1

Securities trading systems and methods for creating, issuing, offering, trading, redeeming, converting, and clearing a novel debt obligation convertible into cash plus a foreign exchange spot or forward contract that is priced to reflect the value of the debt obligation in a base currency in relation to the value of a reference currency. In the system, an order book server aggregates bid and offer information for the debt obligations. Best bid and offer information is communicated to one or more trading terminals. The trading terminals are capable of displaying best bid and offer and other information relevant to trading, redeeming, and converting the debt obligations in real time and allow a trader to trade, redeem, and convert C-Notes™ by interacting with the display on the trading terminal. The order book server and issuer calculate and track accrued interest on the debt obligations.
US08429056B2

Systems and methods for trading commodity, an item or instrument are provided. The market prices and trading may be monitored to detect a spike in the market price or artificially high market price. Excess profits resulting from the sale at an artificially high market price may be distributed to market participants based upon the participant's trading record in the market or upon some other suitable method.
US08429055B1

A method of Internet bidding wherein a plurality of bidders bid on the item in a first episode of bidding until a deadline occurs. Within a time frame at the deadline, actual bidders from the plurality of bidders are identified and are displayed in a second continued episode of bidding. The time frame is such to identify serious bidders near the deadline and to compensate for Internet communication delays. The second episode of continued bidding is a bidding war among the identified bidders. In a first embodiment, bidding rounds, TBID, occur wherein the current high bidder's bid is displayed and the other identified bidders bid against it. In a second embodiment, bidding continues among the identified bidders with the current high bid being displayed. If a predetermined wait time elapses after the last bid, then an enticement multimedia announcement is made to entice further bidding such as: GOING, GOING, GONE!
US08429050B2

A method and system are presented for identifying improper benefit payments to an ineligible beneficiary. Record data may be accessed from a financial institution and may be analyzed to identify patterns within the banking transactions. Deviations may be identified between a pre-benefit pattern and a post-benefit pattern by applying one or more rules, which may be ranked. The deviations that are identified may be determined to be either in compliance, in noncompliance, or within some acceptable level of compliance. A level of noncompliance outside of a range of acceptable noncompliance may result in generating a request for an action to be taken, such as an audit of the beneficiary. The aforementioned methods may be carried out using a computerized device.
US08429042B2

The present disclosure relates to methods for performing data processing operations associated with securities and security structures. More particularly, one embodiment of the present invention relates to a computer implementable method for performing data processing operations associated with a security, comprising: structuring the security to include a convertible note, which convertible note is convertible into a fixed number of shares of common stock of the issuer, which convertible note has associated therewith a maturity and which convertible note pays interest; and calculating whether a price of a share of common stock of the issuer is less than a predetermined threshold percentage of a conversion price associated with the note so that the note is not convertible if the price of the share of common stock of the issuer is less than the predetermined threshold percentage of the conversion price associated with the note.
US08429032B2

The invention provides one or more displays to assist a user in managing inventory for one or more migration components in a migration. In particular, forecast data for each migration component is generated based on migration data for one or more targets and a plurality of time frames. One or more displays are generated that include the forecast data, migration data, and/or inventory data for the migration components.
US08429030B2

A system for providing supplementary product sales is provided in which a central controller receives a purchase from a card authorization terminal. The purchase includes at least one purchase parameter, such as a customer account identifier, product identifiers for specifying items purchased or product price. The central controller determines a supplementary product to offer that is based on the at least one purchase parameter. A product identifier for specifying the supplementary product is transmitted to the card authorization terminal, where the customer chooses whether to accept the offered supplementary product. The card authorization terminal generates and transmits to the central controller a selection signal indicative of whether the supplementary product is accepted. If the selection signal indicates that the supplementary product is accepted, the central controller adjusts a balance of a financial account in dependence on an adjustment value associated with the supplementary product.
US08429028B2

A viewer for displaying an electronic book and providing for electronic commerce. In conjunction with viewing an electronic book, a user can view information about products and services, view an on-line electronic catalog, and receive samples of products available for purchase. By entering a purchase request, the user can purchase products or services. In the case of a digital product, the user can download the purchased product directly into the viewer. The viewer also records statistics concerning purchase and information requests in order to recommend related products or services, or for directing particular types of advertisements to the user.
US08429025B2

The present invention is a garment sizing system that that identifies the correct garment size for a particular garment type for a plurality of brands. In an embodiment, the garment sizing system is a client-server system that uses at least one server to host a website, garment sizing software, and at least one database. The consumers access the website over a communication network using networked devices. The database is populated with garment data such as garment type, brand name, brand line, retailers that sell that sell the brand, garment size, and dimensional garment measurements. Using the website, the consumer inputs the consumer's body measurement or the size of a specific garment that is known to fit the consumer, and the system retrieves and displays from the database the correct sizes for a specific garment type from a variety of brands based on the inputted data.
US08429019B1

Various embodiments of a system and method for scheduled delivery of shipments with multiple shipment carriers are described. Various embodiments may include a scheduled delivery component configured to receive delivery availability information for multiple shipment carriers. In various embodiments, for each shipment carrier, delivery availability information may specify one or more delivery periods during which that shipment carrier is available to deliver shipments of one or more items to designated locations. This delivery availability information may be utilized to generate a scheduled delivery tool that enables users to select a particular delivery period during which an item is to be delivered. The scheduled delivery tool may provide multiple selectable delivery periods based on the delivery availability information of multiple shipment carriers. The scheduled delivery component may determine that a particular delivery period has been selected and generate a delivery instruction based on such selection.
US08429017B2

A sales apparatus for selling content to a purchaser wearing a communication terminal is provided. The apparatus includes a content selection section allowing selection of content for sale; a communication section built in the content selection section for communicating with the communication terminal; a detection section detecting a selection operation of the purchaser pressing the content selection section; an identifying section identifying content selected by the purchaser based on a detection result; a settlement section executing a settlement process for the content identified by the identifying section, with the communication terminal via the communication section and the human body of the purchaser who is depressing the content selection section; and a supply section adapted to supply the communication terminal with data of the content identified by the identifying section, via the communication section and the human body of the purchaser who is depressing the content selection section.
US08429006B1

A system and method for offer targeting is disclosed. According to one embodiment, a method for offer targeting may comprise: providing a plurality of offers and a plurality of groups, wherein each group comprises one or more accounts; maintaining an offer counter for each of the plurality of groups; and assigning the plurality of offers, in a predetermined order, to the plurality of groups by repeating the following steps: (1) assigning an offer to one or more groups, wherein the one or more groups are selected from groups that are pre-qualified for the offer based on a plurality of business rules, and the selection of the one or more groups is based at least in part on the offer counters of the one or more groups; (2) incrementing offer counters associated with the one or more groups; and (3) sorting the plurality of groups based on the incremented offer counters.
US08429003B2

Certain examples relate to computer implemented methods and systems including at least three modules whose combined functionality provides for interpretation and optimization of usual and unusual patterns in energy consumption; the identification, quantification, and monetization of hidden operating and financial waste and the accurate measurement of the results of implemented energy management solutions. The first, “Expert Module”, provides information that assists with the accurate interpretation of the information provided in the Operations module. The second, “Costs Module”, allows users to modify consumption and price components and derive the resulting operating costs based on the facility's applied or available rate structures. The third, “Operations Module”, charts and evaluates the current operating performance of a facility down to 15-minute intervals in comparison to the operating performance of a pre-selected “base year”. Comparisons are synchronized over intervals in a manner that allows users to compare and comment on individual graphs interactively.
US08428998B2

A method for generating business targets includes accessing data (300) corresponding to a number of customers. The data includes variables (310-330) associated with each of the customers and an observed value for each of the customers. The observed value for a customer may represent revenue associated with that particular customer. The method also includes identifying a neighborhood that includes a first customer and a number of the other customers. The method further includes calculating a target for each of the customers in the neighborhood, where the target may represent the potential revenue from each of the customers.
US08428990B2

A resource allocation system is described in which resources and jobs are arranged as a network flow graph. In the system, resources are allocated to jobs using a network flow algorithm applied to the graph. The algorithm is applied from a graph source to a graph sink by finding a solution progressively for each time interval.
US08428985B1

A data store includes, for a dealer of interest, a target inventory mix rate for an item having a feature. A computing device is configured to perform an optimization to obtain a recommended feature allocation of the item including the feature by minimizing a difference between a projected inventory mix rate for the feature and the target inventory mix rate for the feature.
US08428983B2

A Pattern System Environment is formed. The Pattern System Environment is a representation of information technology (IT) resources of a customer's business environment. The Pattern System Environment is based on information associated with the IT resources of the customer, and that information indicates how the IT resources are utilized during a business cycle of the customer. Pattern System Environments are usable in many environments, including those that support business resiliency.
US08428975B2

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.
US08428963B2

A system and method for the efficient administration of health care plans, particularly as to the reduction and/or elimination of avoidable medical costs for select individuals who participate in the plan, is disclosed. Existing health care data is processed to determine an indication as to the relative desirability of an intervention in a plan participant's health care regimen. The data is also processed to determine the status of one or more flags, each of which potentially indicates the relative desirability of an intervention in a plan participant's health care regimen. A predictive model is used to determine the status of a flag relating to the likelihood of an insurance plan participant making a disability claim within a certain period of time. The information relating to desirability of an intervention in a plan participant's health care regimen, as well as a plan participant's medical information and claim history, is presented to case managers and/or health care providers in a user-friendly format.
US08428953B2

An audio decoding device of the present invention includes: a decoding unit decoding a stream to a spectrum coefficient, and outputting stream information when a frame included in the stream cannot be decoded; an orthogonal transformation unit transforming the spectrum coefficient to a time signal; a correction unit generating a correction time signal based on an output waveform within a reference section that is in a section that overlaps between an error frame section to which the stream information is outputted and an adjacent frame section and that is a section in the middle of the adjacent frame section, when the decoding unit outputs the stream information: and an output unit generating the output waveform by synthesizing the correction time signal and the time signal.
US08428944B2

A speech recognition system prompts a user to provide a first utterance, which is recorded. Speech recognition is performed on the first user utterance to yield a recognition result. The user is prompted to provide a second user utterance, which is recorded, processed and compared to the first utterance to detect a plurality of acoustic differences for each acoustic parameter. The acoustic model used by the speech recognition engine is modified as a function of the acoustic difference.
US08428941B2

In lossy based lossless coding a PCM audio signal passes through a lossy encoder to a lossy decoder. The lossy encoder provides a lossy bit stream. The difference signal between the PCM signal and the lossy decoder output is lossless encoded, providing an extension bit stream. The invention facilitates enhancing a lossy perceptual audio encoding/decoding by an extension that enables mathematically exact reproduction of the original waveform using enhanced de-correlation, and provides additional data for reconstructing at decoder site an intermediate-quality audio signal. The lossless extension can be used to extend the widely used mp3 encoding/decoding to lossless encoding/decoding and superior quality mp3 encoding/de-coding.
US08428939B2

A voice mixing device for mixing a plurality of voice signals, comprises: a speaker selection unit selecting at least one voice signal among said plurality of voice signals; a full signal adder unit adding all of at least one voice signal selected by said speaker selection unit; respective subtractor unit subtracting only one of said selected voice signals from an addition result of said full signal adder unit; a common noise suppression unit suppressing noise of a common voice signal, being an addition result of said full signal adder unit; individual noise suppression unit suppressing noise of respective individual voice signals, being subtraction results of said subtractor unit; and memory switching unit copying information of noise suppression obtained in said common noise suppression unit based on a selection result of said speaker selection unit, to information of noise suppression in said individual noise suppression unit.
US08428934B2

This invention is a method for incrementally and multi-dimensionally adjusting prose style in the following steps: creating a database of sets of phrase synonyms; assigning rankings and/or values to phrases in the database for each phrase's ranking and/or value with respect to a selected dimension of prose style, for at least two different dimensions of prose style; receiving input prose from a user; receiving a style adjustment preference from a user for at least one dimension of prose style through a multi-dimensional style-adjusting interface; and making adjustments to the style of the input prose using the database of phrase synonyms and phrase rankings and/or values in order to achieve the style adjustment preference specified by the user.
US08428933B1

It is possible to provide meaningful responses to queries using systems which consider usage of words in the queries when analyzing those queries and determining what information is possibly relevant. This approach can be applied in online shopping systems by identification of nouns or noun phrases reflecting products available through the system.
US08428931B2

The present invention concerns a mainframe data stream proxy (MDSP) (1) for caching communication of at least one emulator (2) directed to at least one mainframe (3), wherein the MDSP (1) comprises: a. a runtime application server (10), adapted for receiving (101, 201) at least one emulator action from the at least one emulator (2) and for sending (105, 209) at least one corresponding mainframe action to the at least one emulator (2); b. wherein the runtime application server (10) is further adapted for retrieving (102, 103) the at least one corresponding mainframe action to be sent to the at least one emulator (2) from a cache (20) of the MDSP (1).
US08428921B2

Mechanisms are provided for controlling a fidelity of a simulation of a system. A model of the system is received, the model of the system having a plurality of individual components of the system. Fidelity values are assigned to models of the individual components of the system. A simulation of the system is executed using the model of the system and the models of the individual components of the system. The fidelity values of one or more of the models of the individual components of the system are dynamically adjusted during the execution of the simulation by creating a checkpoint of a state of the simulation and modifying one or more fidelity values of one or more of the models of the individual components after generating the checkpoint, thereby generating a modified fidelity value state.
US08428914B2

A method for real-time calculation of state variables (xM) of a process model on a process computer with a first calculating unit and a process interface, wherein the computer is designed so that at least one state variable of a physical process can be received by the computer using the interface and/or at least one output variable for controlling the process can be issued by the computer, wherein the model is calculated by the first calculating unit with an explicit integration method for determining the state variables. According to this method, a second calculating unit is provided, the model is carried out with the second calculating unit using an implicit integration method essentially simultaneously with the calculation of the model with the first calculating unit and the state variables (xM,i) calculated with the second calculating unit and the implicit method are used as state variables (xM) of the model.
US08428910B2

The equipment comprises at least one computer and a material features acquisition system operable to detect a plurality of material features. The features are then evaluated according to rules that capture the multidiscipline knowledge of experts and are already inputted into the computer. The computer iterations are processed until an acceptable conclusion is made regarding the condition of the material under evaluation.
US08428909B2

The present invention relates generally to statistics and calibration of instruments. More particularly, the invention encompasses the use of statistics to determine calibration of instruments. The present invention is also directed to a remote system for determination of re-calibration of instruments. The present invention also teaches the use of multiple statistical tests to determine need for calibration. The invention also includes a novel use of tests, such as, the F-Test, the Z-Test, to determine need for calibration. Furthermore, this invention relates to an alternate instrument scheme consisting of the use of redundant sensors and statistical analysis to avoid unnecessary calibrations and to detect sensors that are starting to drift before they go out of calibration. With this invention reduced calibration cost, increased data integrity, and reduced off-spec uncertainty is achieved.
US08428905B2

A data acquisition device for an auto triggering thereof includes a movement detector, a distance detector, a processor, and a data acquiring component. The movement detector detects movement data of the data acquisition device. The movement data indicates a state of movement for the data acquisition device. The state of movement is one of static and dynamic. The distance detector detects distance data between the data acquisition device and an object to which data is to be acquired. The processor receives the movement data to determine the state of movement and, when the state of movement is determined to be static, receives the distance data to determine the distance of the object from the data acquisition device. The data acquiring component acquires the data from the object when the processor initially determines that the state of movement is static and subsequently determines the distance is within a predetermined range.
US08428902B2

Described herein are systems and methods for calculating a relative temperature of a fiber-optic cable using bi-directional analysis traces with an optical time-domain reflectometer (“OTDR”). Analysis of bi-directional traces along a length of fiber-optic cable yields a scaled local backscatter coefficient of the fiber. Accordingly, an initial set of measurement data is collected at a first time interval and a base scaled local backscatter along a fiber is calculated. A subsequent set of measurement data is collected at a second time interval and a subsequent scaled local backscatter along the fiber is calculated. The exemplary systems and methods described herein determines a change in scaled local backscatter as a function of a difference between the base scaled local backscatter and at least the subsequent scaled local scaled local backscatter along the fiber, and then determines a relative temperature variation of the fiber as a function of the change in scaled local backscatter.
US08428892B2

A method and apparatus for determining a parameter of fluid flow within a piping system is provided. The method includes the steps of: determining a measured velocity of the fluid flow using a fluid flow meter; determining a measured difference in pressure value within the fluid flow using a differential pressure meter; selecting an estimated Reynolds number of the fluid flow; determining a calculated difference in pressure value using a model which relates the calculated difference in pressure value to the measured velocity and the estimated Reynolds number of the fluid flow; determining a degree of inaccuracy of the estimated Reynolds number using the measured difference in pressure and the calculated difference in pressure; and iteratively adjusting the estimated Reynolds number, determining the calculated difference in pressure, and determining the degree of inaccuracy using the adjusted Reynolds number, until the degree of inaccuracy is within an acceptable range.
US08428888B2

A method for determining impedance includes receiving a time varying voltage signal from a biosensor and receiving a time varying current signal from the biosensor. The time varying voltage signal and the time varying current signal are transformed to a domain that represents complex values. The impedance representative of the biosensor based upon the transformed time varying voltage signal and the time varying current signal is calculated.
US08428884B1

The invention provides a high resolution three-dimensional structure of a deacylated transfer RNA protein synthesis modulator in association with a large ribosomal subunit. The protein synthesis modulator binds at least a portion of the E-site of a large ribosomal subunit. The invention provides methods for designing and/or identifying analogs of candidate molecules, for example, analogs or derivatives of the protein synthesis modulator, that bind and/or modulate the protein biosynthetic activity of the ribosome.
US08428877B2

A method of operation of a navigation system includes: receiving a retrieval reservation having an exit time; generating an alert with the exit time for retrieving a vehicle from a parked location; and identifying a pick-up location based on the alert for parking the vehicle at the pick-up location.
US08428874B2

A destination retrieving method including: analyzing map data to define a relation between points of interest (POIs) as a POI relation; and providing a search result in the tree structure based on the POI relation when retrieving a destination name is provided.
US08428868B2

A method and system for updating map data of a navigation system in a vehicle is provided. A first version of map data is stored in a memory device of the navigation system, and a first version of map data and a second more recent version of map data are stored in a memory device of a map server. A first route to a driving destination is determined by the map server on the basis of the first version of the map data. A second route to the driving destination is determined by the map server on the basis of the second more recent version of the map data, and the second version of map data and/or route data, which describe the second route, are transmitted at least partially to the navigation system as a function of the degree of agreement between the first route and the second route.
US08428837B2

When a predetermined time has passed without detection of engine stall and without detection of the neutral state and without detection of a vehicle starting operation, in a first control state in which a clutch is in a disengaged state, a clutch control system effects transition to a second control state in which transition to a third control state is permitted. When a vehicle starting operation is detected in the second control state B in which the clutch is in the disengaged state, a liquid pressure modulator is driven to effect transition to the third control state in which the clutch is put in the engaged state or a partially engaged state. When an engine stall or the neutral state is detected in the second control state, transition to the first control state A is effected.
US08428833B2

An engine control device detects the state of work of a working vehicle such as a construction machine or the like, and controls the power output capacity of an engine automatically. A determination is made as to whether excavation or uphill traveling is being performed, based upon the detection signals from a hydraulic oil pressure detector for a hydraulic cylinder of an arm, detectors for arm and bucket operation commands, a shift operation detector for a transmission, a pitch angle detector for the vehicle body, a traveling acceleration detector, and an accelerator opening degree detector. When the result of this determination is that excavation or uphill traveling is being performed, the engine is controlled to operate at a high power capacity, while at other times it is controlled to operate at a low power output capacity.
US08428832B2

An apparatus for determining the weight of a payload in a bucket of a machine where the bucket is attached to a chassis of the machine by a linkage. The apparatus comprises an energy storage device for storing potential energy of the bucket, payload, and linkage when the bucket is moved from a first suspended position to a second suspended position. A mechanism provides physical data corresponding to a physical change in the energy storage device caused by storage of the potential energy and a processor calculates the weight of the payload using the physical data.
US08428831B2

An assembly for facilitating steering of an agricultural implement linkable to a work vehicle is disclosed. The assembly comprises at least a first ground-engaging wheel to engage a ground surface below a frame of the agricultural implement to support the frame above the ground surface. The assembly further comprises a positioning system for receiving a positioning signal from a positioning source. The positioning system determines a current position of the agricultural implement from at least the positioning signal, and the positioning system generates a control signal derived from the current position of the agricultural implement. The assembly further comprises a steering cylinder connected to the first ground-engaging wheel. The steering cylinder operatively connects to the positioning system to steer the first ground-engaging wheel based on the control signal.
US08428830B2

An agricultural working vehicle has a plurality of working assemblies, at least one control unit for influencing the setting parameters of the working assemblies, a memory unit, and at least one display unit, and it is configured such that even an untrained operator may optimize the setting parameters of the working assemblies in a rapid, reliable manner. An expected change in the function and/or the working result of individual working assemblies or a plurality of working assemblies is depicted in the display unit in a manner that depends on how an operator influences individual setting parameters of the working assemblies.
US08428828B2

An apparatus is provided for controlling an automated closure panel in a vehicle. The apparatus includes a command module configured to generate a control signal. A motor is configured to actuate the automated closure panel based upon the control signal. A motor sensor is configured to measure an output characteristic of the motor, with the motor sensor having a motor sensor output signal. An adaptive logic module is coupled to the command module and to the motor sensor. The adaptive logic module is configured to provide an output to the command module to thereby adjust the control signal, wherein the adaptive logic module is configured to determine when the automated closure panel is obstructed by an obstacle based upon the motor sensor output signal.
US08428822B2

A method for determining a steering angle of a steering shaft in a motor vehicle is disclosed. The method uses a rotation sensor associated with an electric motor of a power steering system to determine the relative steering angle of the steering column. The relative steering angle is measured relative to an initial position of the steering column during vehicle startup. The relative steering angle is reset each time the motor vehicle is turned on.
US08428794B2

A computer implemented method, apparatus, and computer usable program code for managing missed approaches to runways. In one advantageous embodiment, an event requiring missing an approach to a runway by an aircraft is monitored for, while the movement of the aircraft along a route is being controlled by a flight management system. Responsive to detecting the event, a location of the aircraft is identified to form an identified location. The identified location of the aircraft is compared to a plurality of waypoints for a plurality of missed approach routes to identify an active waypoint in the plurality of waypoints closest to the aircraft to form an identified waypoint. A missed approach route from the plurality of missed approach routes associated with the identified waypoint is executed for the aircraft.
US08428788B2

An inverted pendulum type moving body moving over a floor surface in a self standing manner, the inverted pendulum type moving body comprising: an information acquisition unit obtaining a state information indicating a current state of an another moving body; and a movement control unit controlling a movement of a self moving body, based on the state information, so that a state of the self moving body with respect to the current state of the another moving body satisfies a predetermined condition established so that the self moving body and the another moving body moves in alignment.
US08428783B2

A method and system for aggregating messages. In one embodiment, the system comprises a plurality of distributed generators (DGs) and a controller, communicatively coupled to the plurality of distributed generators, for (i) receiving a plurality of messages from the plurality of DGs, (ii) correlating at least two messages in the plurality of messages based on at least one time parameter, and (iii) generating a summary message based on the at least two messages.
US08428777B1

Methods and systems for distributing tasks among robotic devices are described. A server may receive from a first device, information associated with an assigned task of the first device. The server may determine whether the assigned task can be executed more efficiently with assistance from additional devices, and may further determine available devices that can assist in executing the assigned task. The determined available devices may be ranked according to an amount of usage of the devices over time, and a second device may be selected from the available devices based on the ranking. A subtask of the assigned task may then be determined from a plurality of subtasks of the assigned task based on capabilities of the selected second device. An instruction may then be sent to the second device, instructing the second device to execute the determined subtask.
US08428773B1

Clamshells for packaging produce, or other unit packaging, are labeled with unique codes. Harvest crates for transporting filled clamshells from the harvest, or other containers for transporting unit packaging, are also labeled with unique codes. A plurality of labeled un-filled clamshells are nested together and placed into each harvest crate before the harvest, and the codes from the clamshells and the harvest crate are stored in association. In some instances, clamshells are de-nested, labeled with pre-printed labels, and nested again before being placed into the harvest crates. At the harvest the clamshells are removed from the harvest crate, de-nested, filled with produce, packed back into the harvest crate, and moved into the distribution chain. The unique codes are further associated with other information such as harvest data.
US08428772B2

In a method of processing mailpieces, Customer Applied Identifier (CAI) codes are assigned to the mailpieces by a sender of the mailpieces, and are used by the postal operator while the mailpieces are passing through a postal sorting system. Said CAI codes are recorded in memory in the sorting system in correspondence with first digital fingerprints or image signatures prior to the first pass of the mailpieces through the postal sorting system. While a current mailpiece is passing through the sorting system in a first sorting pass, an image is formed of the surface of the mailpiece that bears a postal address block, and a current fingerprint and location information for locating said mailpiece in the sorting process is derived from the image of said mailpiece. A search is made for a match between said current fingerprint and a first fingerprint recorded in memory in order to retrieve a current CAI code with which said location information is.
US08428767B2

A method for cutting out a panoply of parts. This cutting-out method includes producing data relating to points defining the contour of each part and to the position of each part in a Cartesian frame of reference of the panoply, grouping the parts together into at least one subset, each subset embodied by a box being considered as a single part; grouping the subsets into at least one set, each set embodied by a box being considered as a single part; establishing an order in which to cut out the parts from the subsets and sets defined respectively a cutting-out step in which the cutting-out tool moves from part to part in the cutting-out order.
US08428766B2

Provided is a method of manufacturing the standard ear shell for use in the ITE type general-purpose hearing aid considering the shape and size of the external auditory meatus according to the embodiment of the present invention, that quantitatively measures shape and size of an external auditory meatus to calculate an average of the measured shape and size of the external auditory meatus, and minimizes an acoustic feedback of the hearing aid or a receiver to save a manufacturing cost, to thereby quickly provide the hearing aid for a patient, mass-produce an average model ear shell, and simultaneously maintain quality of the ear shell consistently.
US08428763B2

A management apparatus obtains a list of a plurality of lots for which exposure processes are reserved, an initial value of an aberration of a projection optical system before start of the exposure processes of the plurality of lots, and an allowable value of the aberration of the projection optical system for each of the plurality of lots, generates candidates for an order of the plurality of lots based on the obtained list, calculates a time from start of an exposure process of the first lot until end of an exposure process of the last lot while adjusting time intervals between the lots so that the aberration of the projection optical system in the exposure process of each of the plurality of lots falls below the allowable value, and determines a processing order of the plurality of lots based on the calculated time.
US08428755B2

A device for adjusting a signal normally provided by a proportional plus integral (PI) control module to a process system includes a processing circuit configured to modify the signal of the PI control module by exaggerating the rate of change of the signal and an output for providing the modified signal to the process system.
US08428747B2

A lead locking device has a lead insertion member having a proximal end and a distal end and has a lead engaging assembly. The lead insertion member defines a lumen extending along a longitudinal axis between the distal end and the proximal end of the lead engaging assembly. A mandrel disposed in the lumen of the lead engaging assembly extends along substantially the entire length of the lumen and protrudes beyond the most proximal end of the lead insertion member. The mandrel includes a distal portion in slidable contact with at least a portion of the lead engaging assembly. The lead engaging assembly has a first configuration while being inserted into a lumen of a lead and a second configuration while engaging the lead from within the lumen of the lead. The lead engaging member has at least two expansion jaws that, in the first configuration, define a substantially cylindrical body. The expansion jaws translate radially outwardly from the longitudinal axis to engage the lumen of the lead when in the second configuration.
US08428745B2

A telemetry protocol for an implantable medical device is disclosed. The sending device forms a block of information to be telemetered to the receiving device, including a header, a message, and an error detection data (CRC1). The entirety of the block is divided into smaller packets of a predetermined size. Each packet has a CRC computed for it (CRC2), and is sent to the receiving device, which deduces a CRC2 and compares it with the appended CRC2. If not valid, that packet is again requested to be resent. If valid, the next packet is requested to be sent, its CRC2 checked, etc., until all packets are received and verified. The receiving device then discards the CRC2s to reconstitute the original block. The receiving device then deduces CRC1 and compares it with the CRC1 appended to the block. If valid, the block is accepted, and if not, the procedure is repeated.
US08428742B2

A stimulation system including a stimulator having a multi-channel electrode array utilizing a monopolar electrode configuration. A processor is operatively coupled to the stimulator. The processor is configured to determine a channel interaction (CI) sequence using simultaneous, sign-correlated pulses and channel interaction compensation. The CI sequence has a CI pulse rate and a CI mean pulse amplitude, and produces resulting potentials that are substantially equal to desired potentials at given positions relative to the multi-channel array. The CI sequence may include temporal gaps between pulses, wherein the processor may be configured to increase the CI pulse rate, such that the temporal gap between pulses is decreased. Furthermore, the processor may be configured to reduce the pulse amplitude of the CI sequence while increasing pulse phase duration, such that charge per pulse remains substantially unchanged and the temporal gap between pulses is decreased.
US08428737B2

A movement assist system for assisting stably a movement of a creature, particularly a creature whose body part is paralyzed due to neuropathy or the like. According to the movement assist system, walking movement of a human is assisted according to an output from an actuator of a movement assist device. A timing of an electrical stimulation applied to the creature is adjusted by an electrical stimulation device on the basis of a signal representing an arithmetic processing result by a first controller which controls the output of the actuator. According thereto, it is possible to apply an electrical stimulation to the human at an appropriate timing from the viewpoint of maintaining an appropriate posture by considering a periodical movement state of the human even in cases where the body function is degraded, allowing the human assisted by the movement assist device to continue the walking movement.
US08428733B2

Bioelectrical signals may be sensed within a brain of a patient with a plurality of sense electrode combinations. A stimulation electrode combination for delivering stimulation to the patient to manage a patient condition may be selected based on the frequency band characteristics of the sensed signals. In some examples, a stimulation electrode combination associated with the sense electrode combination that sensed a bioelectrical brain signal having a relatively highest relative beta band power level may be selected to deliver stimulation therapy to the patient. Other frequency bands characteristics may also be used to select the stimulation electrode combination.
US08428725B2

A method for controlling a position of a patient's tongue includes attaching at least one electrode to the patient's Hypoglossal nerve and applying an electric signal through the electrode to at least one targeted motor efferent located within the Hypoglossal nerve to stimulate at least one muscle of the tongue. Methods may also include the use of more than one contact to target more than one motor efferent and stimulating more than one muscle. The stimulation load to maintain the position of the tongue may be shared by each muscle. The position of the patient's tongue may be controlled in order to prevent obstructive sleep apnea.
US08428721B2

An adapter for temporary sterile electric connection of an implantable medical electronic device to an electrode line that is to be connected to the implantable medical electronic device during implantation for undistorted transmission of measured values detectable on the electrode line to the device.
US08428719B2

Neurostimulation is provided to afferent nerve fibers of an auricular vagal nerve of a patient. The neurostimulation is harmonized with the pulmonary activity of the patient. In one implementation, a neurostimulation is gated to a portion of the respiratory cycle. For example, the auricular vagal nerve may be stimulated at the end of exhalation. In another implementation, a stimulation regiment to multiple electrodes are harmonized with pre-selected triggers within the respiratory cycle to achieve selective stimulation and/or bilateral stimulation.
US08428712B2

A system, method and implantable medical for concurrently providing a therapeutic output to a patient while communicating transcutaneously with an external device. The therapeutic output is provided to the patient with an implantable medical device wherein an electromagnetic signal is associated with at least one of recharging of a rechargeable power source and providing the therapeutic output. Bi-directional transcutaneous communication is conducted via via telemetry between the implantable medical device and an external device using a telemetry signal while the telemetry signal and the electromagnetic signal occur simultaneously.
US08428710B2

At least an inner tube and an outer tube of a double tube, which forms an insertion section of an endoscopic injector, are formed of different kinds of plastic materials, and the outer tube is formed of a material with a higher rigidity than a material of the inner tube. Thereby, there are provided an endoscopic therapeutic device such as an endoscopic injector, and a double tube for a therapeutic device, which have a good operability of, for example, an operation of projecting a needle, and can perform a stable operation for a diseased part.
US08428707B2

Apparatus for performing impedance measurements on a subject. The apparatus includes a first processing system for determining an impedance measurement procedure and determining instructions corresponding to the measurement procedure. A second processing system is provided for receiving the instructions, using the instructions to generate control signals, with the control signals being used to apply one or more signals to the subject. The second processing system then receives first data indicative of the one or more signals applied to the subject, second data indicative of one or more signals measured across the subject and performs at least preliminary processing of the first and second data to thereby allow impedance values to be determined.
US08428706B2

An apparatus for testing of electrical or physical properties of a material include a single coil sensor mounted adjacent to a sample of the material. Sheet conductance of a wide variety of materials may be measured using the single coil to determine if the material conforms to generally accepted standards for the use to which the material will be put. In some examples, the material is a semiconductor wafer or flat panel. In other examples, the material is the body tissue of a patient. A non-invasive technique using the apparatus is also disclosed for monitoring the health of patient tissue such as musculature, and/or to determine whether healthy circulation is present, by measuring the conductance of the patient tissue in response to a magnetic field applied by the single coil. The single coil may be hand held, or it may be movable using an automated positioning system under computer control.
US08428697B2

An implantable medical device and associated method sense cardiac signals for deriving a template representing a known EGM waveform morphology and for classifying an unknown waveform morphology. A boundary of the template, offset from the template, is computed and compared to an unknown waveform morphology for classifying the unknown waveform morphology.
US08428692B2

An image of an object is synergistically reconstructed using two or multiple imaging modalities. A first reconstructed image, showing structural information of the object is produced using a first imaging modality. The first reconstructed image is segmented, and known optical properties of the object are then mapped to the first reconstructed image. Optical signal emissions from the object are detected and registered with the first reconstructed image. A second reconstructed image volume is then produced using a second imaging modality, based on the mapped optical properties after registration between the first image and the data from the second modality. The second reconstructed image depicts some optical property, such as a bioluminescent source distribution, or optical properties, such as, attenuation and scattering properties, of the object.
US08428691B2

An imaging system is provided with an ultrasound catheter and a controller coupled to the ultrasound catheter. The catheter includes a localizer sensor configured to generate positional information for the ultrasound catheter, and an imaging ultrasound sensor having a restricted field of view. The controller co-registers images from the imaging ultrasound sensor with positional information from the localizer sensor.
US08428688B2

A method for automatic femur segmentation and condyle line detection. The method includes: scanning a knee of a patient with medical imaging equipment to obtain 3D imaging data with such equipment; processing the obtained 3D imaging data in a digital processor to determine two lines tangent to the bottom of the knee condyles in an axial and a coronal plane; and automatically scanning the patient in the defined plane. The processing includes: determining an approximate location of the knee; using the determined the location to define a volume of interest; segmenting the femur in the defined volume of interest; and determining a bottom point on the femur portion on a right side and a left side of the segmented femur in an axial and a coronal slice to determine the two lines.
US08428684B2

A medical electrode includes a backing layer having a top face and a bottom face, and a shrinkable layer covering at least a portion of the top face of the backing layer. Shrinkage of the shrinkable layer results in flexing of a portion of the backing layer to aid placement and attachment of the electrode to the patient.
US08428680B2

A miniature microdrive system may be affixed to the skull and used to advance recording electrode bundles or injection cannula through the brain of freely moving test subjects, e.g., rodents. The microdrive may be constructed using a hybrid fabrication technique utilizing a printed circuit board and a small number of mechanical parts. The printed circuit board provides the base for both the electrical components and the mechanical components. The movement of a screw advances a shuttle that in turn moves an electrode bundle through the brain. Independently moving screws advance independent electrode bundles. The electrode wires are connected through the printed circuit board to a connector on the back of the board. Stainless steel cannulae are soldered to a grounding trace on the printed circuit board to guide the electrode bundle and provide a ground connection. With this system, multiple brain structures may be targeted simultaneously. The microdrive system or device is simple to mass produce, making fabrication simple with parts that can be recycled or discarded as needed.
US08428676B2

A system and method for generating power from temperature differences across a thermoelectric energy harvester. The system may include one or more sensing components which, acting alone or in combination, are capable of generating data related to one or more physiological parameters. The system may also include wireless communication circuitry capable of wirelessly transmitting the data related to the one or more physiological parameters. Furthermore, at least one of the one or more sensing components or the wireless communication circuitry may be at least partially powered, directly or indirectly, by energy generated via the thermoelectric energy harvester.
US08428674B2

A spectrophotometric sensor assembly for non-invasive monitoring of a blood metabolite within a subject's body tissue is provided that includes a pad, a light source, and a light detector The light source is operative to emit light signals of a plurality of different wavelengths. The light detector is operative to detect light emitted by the light source and passed through the subject's body tissue. The light detector is at least partially enclosed in EMI shielding. In some embodiments, the light detector and EMI shielding are disposed in a detector housing that encloses the light detector and shielding. The housing is aligned with a detector aperture disposed in the pad.
US08428673B2

The invention relates to a measuring device (1) for the non-invasive measurement of physiological parameters. The measuring device (1) is suited to detect and localize by way of self diagnosis diseases such as, for example, inflammations, tumors or arteriosclerosis. The invention proposes a measuring device (1) with at least one optical measuring unit (100) for the generation of oximetric and/or plethysmographic measuring signals, an evaluation unit (140) processing the measuring signals, and a unit (120, 130) for the acquisition of local tissue parameters such as fat content, water content and/or blood perfusion, with the evaluation unit (140) being designed such that at least one local metabolic parameter is determined, in particular the local oxygen consumption, from the signals furnished by the optical measuring unit and obtained from tissue parameters. Moreover, the measuring device (1) enables the non-invasive determination of the blood glucose level.
US08428665B1

A holder for a mobile phone includes a body having an opening to receive the mobile phone and having a bottom. The holder further includes a latch coupled to the body for holding the holder with the opening up; and an acoustic horn coupled to the body and having a sound receiving end and a sound emitting end. The sound receiving end is configured to be adjacent to a transducer of the mobile phone, and the sound emitting end is configured to direct sound in an upward direction. The holder further includes a set of tactile guides to tactilely guide a user's touch to a set of buttons on the mobile phone so that a user does not need to look at the buttons to activate the buttons.
US08428663B2

A slide rotation device includes a rail portion that is provided along a sliding direction of an upper case, a slide mechanism that has a slide assistance plate sliding the upper case along the rail portion of the upper case, and a rotation mechanism that is provided to be fixed in the vicinity of one end portion of a lower case and rotatably supports the slide assistance plate using a rotation shaft positioned in an extending direction of the slide assistance plate.
US08428659B1

A computer-implemented method includes generating a first signal; generating vibrations in a mobile device based on the first signal; and sensing, using a microphone associated with the mobile device, sound generated by the vibrations. The method further includes generating an output based on the sound sensed by the microphone, measuring a level of the sound based on the output, and detecting a resonant frequency of the mobile device based on the level of the sound.
US08428654B2

Disclosed is a method for automatically displaying a menu relating to a specific function by recognizing a user's voice command in a call mode, and for directly executing the menu, and a mobile terminal having the same. A mobile terminal may include a microphone configured to receive a user's voice in a video call mode, a display for displaying information, and a controller configured to recognize the voice, detect a voice command included in the voice, and automatically display a menu corresponding to the detected voice command on the display.
US08428652B2

A disclosed user apparatus includes a random access channel generating unit configured to generate a random access channel; a control channel generating unit configured to generate a control channel in accordance with scheduling information received from a base station; and an uplink transmission signal generating unit configure to generate an uplink transmission signal including the random access channel or the control channel. Further, the purpose ID indicating at least whether there is a user ID uniquely allocated by the base station is included in the random access channel or the control channel.
US08428644B1

This invention describes a protective mobile phone device case that provides a LED lighting solution integrated with the case. The LED lighting solution can be utilized with the functions of the mobile phone device to provide additional illumination for photography and videography purposes as well as to provide ornamental or decorative enhancements to the device.
US08428635B2

Provided is a system for managing group communications. The system comprises a communications server accessible by a group of users having a first mobile communication device and a second mobile communication device; a local services network interactively connected to the communications server; a group management application resident on the communications server, the group management application configured to activate a group communication session corresponding to an identification code assigned to the group, to support communications among the first mobile communication device, the second mobile communication device, and the local services network during the group session, and to terminate the group session after a predetermined time interval; the system designed to manage and distribute communications across the members of the group during the group communication session.
US08428633B2

Embodiments of methods and apparatus for estimating a channel state information (CSI) and a channel quality indicator (CQI) of a frame; determining a combined CSI and a combined CQI of the frame; and transmitting the CSI and the combined CQI are disclosed. Additional variants and embodiments are also disclosed.
US08428630B2

A method of operating a wireless mesh network comprises generating a pseudorandom sequence element in a transmitting device and a receiving device of the network using information shared by the transmitting and receiving devices. The pseudorandom sequence element is then used to calculate a communication channel/timeslot assignment for communication between the transmitting wireless device and the receiving wireless device.
US08428628B2

A communication method according to the present invention includes: transmitting, at a radio base station device (b), broadcast information for notifying a first area and a second area; transmitting, from a first mobile terminal to a radio control device (c), a first location registration request signal for the first area included in the broadcast information, when the first area is not identical to a first area stored as a current location registration area; and transmitting, from a second mobile terminal to the radio control device (c), a second location registration request signal for the second area included in the broadcast information, when the second area is not included in a second area group stored as a current location registration area.
US08428622B1

A location based method of offering a recommendation of content to a user of a mobile station includes receiving information identifying a current location of the mobile station. Then, in a content usage database, records of other mobile stations that have recently been near that location are identified. For each identified record of another mobile station, content resident on an used by the other mobile station in the content usage database is identified. Then, responsive to at least one inquiry received from the mobile station, a recommendation is transmitted through a wireless communications network to the mobile station of the user. The recommendation includes information about the identified content resident on and used by one or more of the other mobile stations.
US08428619B2

Methods and apparatus, including computer program products, for receiving a request from a requestor to locate a user. The request identifies a personal location code (PLC) for the user. It is determined if the request is allowed based on the PLC. If the request is allowed, the current location of the user is obtained based on the location of one or more devices associated with the user. The current location of the device is then provided to the requestor.
US08428618B2

A system provides location-based services through an enhanced mobile device. The system determines a current location of the mobile device, and determines whether the current location of the mobile device falls within one or more geographic regions defined in a database. If the current location falls within one or more of the geographic regions, the system identifies services available within the one or more geographic regions that the mobile device is determined to be within. The system generates a customized menu based on the identified services and displays the customized menu on the mobile device.
US08428610B2

Methods and systems for providing a dynamic and real time load factor that can be shared with other network elements is disclosed. The load factor can be used in determining the relative load among a set of network elements and in distributing new sessions requests as well as existing session on the set of network elements. The load factor can also be used for determining to which network element a user equipment is handed off. The dynamic load factor can also be shared amongst network elements to determine how the load is balanced among the network elements, such as a mobility management entity (MME).
US08428602B2

In a system including one or more femtocells within a service area of a macrocell, a method includes: (a) receiving from a base station of each femtocell information regarding available resources at the femtocell; (b) measuring an signal-interference-to-noise ratio (SINR) at a mobile station relative to the macrocell and each femtocell; and (c) selecting for the mobile station one of the femtocells for a hand-off, wherein the femtostation is selected based on the combined capacity of the macrocell and the femtocells after the hand-off. When a hand-off to a femtocell is not allowed, a method for determining whether or not a spectral resource of the macrocell is reused includes (a) receiving from a base station of the macrocell a first set of spectrum-sensing data, the first set of spectrum-sensing data comprising spectrum-sensing data of mobile station of the macrocell; (b) receiving from one or more mobile stations associated with the femtocells a second said of spectrum-sensing data; and (c) based on the first set of the spectrum-sensing data and the second set of spectrum-sensing data, determining whether or not to reuse in a femtocell a portion of a spectrum used by the macrocell. The determining step may be carried out at a base station of a femtocell, and the method further requires sensing a spectrum at the base station of the femtocell to obtain a third set of spectrum-sensing data, which is also used in determining whether or not to reuse the portion of the spectrum used by the macrocell.
US08428601B2

In general, a method is described for handing off a communication session associated with a mobile device from a first network running a first technology to a second network running a second technology different from the first technology, the method comprising: establishing a communication channel with the mobile device through the first network; and enabling, through the communication channel, a handoff of the communication session associated with the mobile device from the first network to the second network.
US08428598B2

An exemplary system and method for determining handovers for a mobile device are disclosed. An exemplary system may generally include a handover server in communication with a communication network configured to support initiated communications from a mobile device. The handover server is configured to detect an initiated communication between the mobile device and a first communication link, determine a value for each of a plurality of factors associated with each of a plurality of available communication links, and assign a desired communication link to the mobile device from the plurality of available communication using a generally simultaneous assessment of the plurality of factors.
US08428593B2

A method of enabling soft handoff between base stations using different signaling frame formats allows soft handoff from an origination base station supporting a lower Protocol Data Unit revision format to an alternative base station supporting a higher Protocol Data Unit revision format, as well as soft handoff between an origination base station supporting a higher Protocol Data Unit revision format to an alternative base station supporting a lower Protocol Data Unit revision format. The base station using the higher Protocol Data Unit revision format downgrades to the lower Protocol Data Unit revision format for the duration of soft handoff. As all base stations use the same Protocol Data Unit revision format during soft handoff, the signals from all of the receive paths can be combined by a mobile station.
US08428591B2

A plurality of carrier signals in a wide band signal is converted into a plurality of digital carrier signals. Each of the plurality of carrier signals is at a respective frequency in the wide band signal. At least one of the plurality of digital carrier signals is translated to a different frequency.
US08428581B2

Techniques to support location services for a roaming mobile station are described. The mobile station may communicate with a serving mobile switching center (MSC) in a serving network. A roaming service provider (RSP) network may map an actual MSC identity (MSCID) of the serving MSC to a generic MSCID and may provide the generic MSCID to a home network. A home mobile positioning center (H-MPC) may map the generic MSCID to an Internet Protocol (IP) address of a mapping server within the RSP network and may send a location request message containing a mobile station identity (MSID) to the mapping server. The mapping server may determine a serving mobile positioning center (S-MPC) based on the MSID and may forward the message to the S-MPC. The mapping server may also receive a location response message from the S-MPC and may forward the message to the H-MPC.
US08428578B2

A method for handling call originations is provided. The method includes sending origination information from a mobile device to an application server in an enterprise network using Short Message Service (SMS) and determining whether a hotline feature is present in a subscriber profile associated with the mobile device. Data is then routed from the mobile device to a predetermined destination based on the hotline feature.
US08428575B2

A dial testing system and a dial testing method using the dial testing system are provided. The dial testing system includes a dial testing agent device adapted to perform an automatic dial testing through a network element and control an automatic dial testing result reported by the network element; and a dial testing server adapted to collect the automatic dial testing result reported by the dial testing agent device. The dial testing system and the dial testing method provided by the present invention may assure allsidedness of a dial testing, enhance the speed and quality of the dial testing operation, and save a large amount of manpower and material resources.
US08428573B2

A radio communications system (100) includes a portable radio (200) and a mobile radio (300), the portable radio (200) being configured to remotely control the mobile radio (300). The portable radio (200) can operate in a standalone mode, in which the mobile radio (300) communicates with other radio devices using the portable radio's RF interface (285). The portable radio (200) can also operate in a remote mode, in which the portable radio (200) is operative to establish a wireless link between the portable radio (200) and the mobile radio (300) to thereby remotely control the mobile radio (300) and to use the mobile radio's RF interface (385) to communicate with other radio devices.
US08428569B2

Aspects of the present invention provide for a telematics subscriber and provider to facilitate a wireless carrier to associate a cellular telephone number from a subscriber's previous telematics unit to a subscriber's newly purchased telematics unit. In addition, the telematics provider reconfigures a new telematics device in a newly purchased vehicle to retain the same cellular phone number as the subscriber's previous telematics device.
US08428564B2

The invention provides a method of providing content to a mobile terminal, the method comprising the steps of: receiving data at the mobile terminal; classifying the content data in accordance with classification data comprised within the content data; storing the content data within the mobile terminal; creating an access object whereby the content data may be accessed; and associating the access object with further access objects having similar classification codes. This method has a significant effect in simplifying the provision of content to mobile terminals.
US08428560B2

A mobile phone includes: a television broadcast receiving unit 111 operable to receive a broadcast program; a video processing unit 104 operable to output the received broadcast program; a wireless unit 102 operable to receive incoming-mail information; and a control unit 115 operable to monitor, during the output of the broadcast program, whether a predetermined condition for providing notification of the incoming-mail information is satisfied, and if the predetermined condition is satisfied when the incoming-mail information is detected, to provide the notification of the incoming-mail information, and if the predetermined condition is not satisfied when the incoming-mail information is detected, to postpone the notification of the incoming-mail information until the predetermined condition has been satisfied.
US08428556B2

Communication from inadmissible communication parties and communication accesses are excluded from an unspecified number of communication parties and communication accesses. A communication management system is provided with a communication device for communicating with communication parties connected through a communication network, a communication control device for controlling the communication, a communication history information memory device for storing communication history information indicative of communication history of the communication device, and a communication admissible party selecting device for selecting communication admissible parties who are admitted to communication with the communication device in accordance with the communication history information, wherein the communication control device has a communication admission control function to carry out admission control of communication from the selected communication parties.
US08428553B2

The present invention provides a method and apparatus for protecting a core network (102) by receiving (202) a message (302, 402) containing a mobile identity of a MS (104) and dropping (210) the message (302, 402) whenever the received mobile identity does not match a stored mobile identity associated with the MS (104). The message (302, 402) is processed (208) whenever the received mobile identity matches the stored mobile identity associated with the MS (104). The mobile identity can be an IMSI, a TMSI or a P-TMSI. The message (302, 402) can be an uplink message (302) or a downlink message (402), such as a Mobility Management (MM) message, a General Packet Radio Service (GPRS) Mobility Management (GMM) message, or a UMA or Unlicensed Radio Resources (URR) message. The present invention can be implemented as a computer program embodied on a computer readable medium wherein the various method steps are implemented by one or more code segments.
US08428544B2

Heterodyne commutating apparatuses and methods for creating the heterodyne commutating apparatuses are disclosed. The heterodyne commutating mixer includes a plurality of switches for transferring a radio frequency input signal sequentially during a plurality of local oscillator period timeslots to a plurality of output capacitors. The heterodyne commutating mixer also includes a plurality of inductors added across differential in-phase output terminals and quadrature output terminals. Values of inductance and capacitance are set to achieve resonance at an output intermediate frequency.
US08428540B2

A communication apparatus includes an I and Q digital values table that stores values of I and Q, which are parameters for noise cancellation determined in advance, for each of reception channels. The communication apparatus reads out parameters for noise cancellation corresponding to a reception channel from the I and Q digital values table. Subsequently, the communication apparatus cancels a noise signal from a reception signal using the read-out parameters for noise cancellation.
US08428537B2

A receiver includes an input to receive data of a pilot channel having a carrier frequency associated therewith, and a first unit to obtain a quantity, wherein the quantity depends on a frequency broadening of the received data and a frequency shift of the received data with respect to the carrier frequency. The receiver also includes a second unit to adjust the bandwidth of a channel estimation unit, wherein the adjustment depends on the quantity.
US08428533B2

Techniques for optimizing gain or noise figure of an RF receiver are disclosed. In an exemplary embodiment a controller controls a capacitor bank between an LNA and a mixer of the RF front end of the receiver. For a given center frequency a first set of capacitors is switched to the mixer and a second set of capacitors is switched to ground. The ratio of capacitance of the second set to the first set of capacitors affects either gain of the RF FE or noise figure of the receiver. Therefore, the RF FE of the receiver may be controlled in such a way as to optimize for either RF FE gain or for receiver noise figure.
US08428525B2

Methods and apparatus are disclosed for predistorting input data signals to a MIMO transmitter to compensate for distortions introduced by the MIMO transmitter. Distortions introduced to data signals by a MIMO transmitter include crosstalk between multiple transmit paths and non-linearities introduced by power amplifiers. In an exemplary predistorter, post-amplifier crosstalk is compensated for by a first matrix operation before distortions introduced by power amplifiers are predistorted by power amplifier predistorters. After the power amplifier predistorters, pre-amplifier crosstalk is compensated for by a second matrix operation.
US08428524B2

Disclosed is an adaptive transmit and receive method and device in a multiple-antenna wireless communication system. A transmit mode comprises different main transmit modes each of which includes one or both of a sub-transmit mode based on STBC and a sub-transmit mode based on SM. A receiver calculates an STBC performance parameter and a SM performance parameter, and a transmitter uses the parameters to determine a main transmit mode with maximum data rates and select a sub-transmit mode for minimizing power consumption. The transmitter channel-encodes, modulates and antenna-maps input data according to the selected transmit mode, and outputs results to the receiver. The receiver antenna/symbol-demodulates and channel-decodes the received data.
US08428512B2

A method and system sharing a Bluetooth processor for FM functions are provided. The single chip may comprise an integrated Bluetooth radio, an integrated FM radio, and processor system. A processor in the processor system may be utilized for Bluetooth and FM data processing and may time multiplex between the Bluetooth and FM data processing based on interrupt signals. The processor may operate in a low power mode based on a clock signal generated from a low power oscillator. When a Bluetooth interrupt signal is received, the processor may enable Bluetooth data processing that may be based on a Bluetooth clock signal. When an FM interrupt signal is received, the processor may enable FM data processing that may be based on an FM clock signal. When data processing is complete, the processor may return to the low power mode operation.
US08428505B2

A controller controls transportation of the recording medium such that a first distance between a trailing edge of an image area of a preceding page of the two successive pages and a leading edge of an image area of a following page is equal to or longer than a second distance between the nip at a most upstream one of the image forming sections and the nip at a most downstream one of the image forming sections. Control may also be performed such that a first distance between a trailing edge of a preceding page of the two successive pages and a leading edge of a following page is equal to or longer than a second distance between the nip at a most upstream one of the plurality of image forming sections and the nip at a most downstream one of the plurality of image forming sections.
US08428501B2

In a fixing device, a nip formation member is provided inside a loop formed by a fixing member rotating in a predetermined direction of rotation. A pressing member is pressed against the nip formation member via the fixing member to form a nip between the fixing member and the pressing member through which a recording medium bearing a toner image passes. The fixing member and the pressing member rotate and convey the recording medium bearing the toner image through the nip. The heat conduction member faces an inner circumferential surface of the fixing member to guide the fixing member sliding over the heat conduction member and to transmit heat to the fixing member. The heat conduction member includes a plurality of convex portions provided on an outer circumferential surface of the heat conduction member and contacting the inner circumferential surface of the fixing member.
US08428500B2

A belt pressurizing device includes: an endless belt that is circularly driven; a pressing member that presses the endless belt against a facing member with the endless belt interposed between the pressing member and the facing member; and a lubricant supplying member that supplies lubricant to reduce sliding resistance of the endless belt pressed by the pressing member, so as not to be in contact with the endless belt.
US08428499B2

A fixing apparatus includes a flexible endless fixing member that moves in a predetermined direction for heating and melting a toner image, a heating member that is fixed to the fixing member in a position facing at least a part of an inner peripheral surface of the fixing member for heating the fixing member, and a pressing member that provides a nipping part by pressing into contact with the fixing member for conveying a recording medium. The heating member includes a metal plate subjected to a bending process.
US08428498B2

A fixing device includes a fixing member, a pressure member, a contact member, and a heater. The fixing member is provided in a width direction of a recording medium and to heat and fuse a toner image on the recording medium. The pressure member is to press against the fixing member. The contact member is provided inside the fixing member and to contact the pressure member through the fixing member to form a nip portion between the pressure member and the fixing member. The heater includes a heating element and is to heat the contact member. The heating element of the heater is a mold member of a relatively thin plate extending in a width direction of the fixing member and includes a flat surface that faces the contact member. An image forming apparatus for forming an image includes the fixing device.
US08428496B2

A wet type developing apparatus in which liquid developer is fed onto a developing roller from a liquid developer supply roller immersed in the developing liquid within a liquid developer tank and an electrostatic latent image formed on a photoconductor drum and developed into a toner image by the developing roller is improved to enable the liquid developer to be fed an appropriate amount of feed from the liquid developer supply roller onto the developing roller without residual air in the surface region of the liquid developer supply roller, where a partition plate is disposed generally under the liquid developer supply roller within the liquid developer tank for partitioning the liquid developer tank in the rotational direction of the liquid developer supply roller, the partition plate having its upper end juxtaposed with a peripheral surface of the liquid developer supply roller over its total axial length across a gap spacing.
US08428493B2

An image forming apparatus includes: a photosensitive drum; a development roller; a transfer roller; a drum driving unit that includes a forwardly and reversely rotatable motor; a forward transport unit; a reverse transport unit; and a transfer potential control unit that is configured to control a surface potential of the transfer roller to have a reverse polarity to that of the developer on the photosensitive drum during the forward rotation of the motor and control the surface potential of the transfer roller to be a potential that has the same polarity as the developer on the photosensitive drum and is equal to or higher than a surface potential of the photosensitive drum during the reverse rotation of the motor.
US08428480B2

A fixing device includes a fixing member, a pressing member, a temperature detector, and a heater. The pressing member contacts an outer circumferential surface of the fixing member to form a fixing nip between the fixing member and the pressing member through which a recording medium bearing a toner image passes. The heater heats the fixing member to a predetermined temperature based on a detection result provided by the temperature detector. A circumferential distance A between the temperature detector and the heater along a circumference of the fixing member is defined by the following formula: A≧v×(T1+T2) where v is a circumferential velocity of the fixing member rotating in a predetermined direction of rotation, T1 is a response time of the temperature detector, and T2 is a response time of the heater.
US08428479B2

An imaging device includes an image carrying member; a developing unit for forming a toner image by developing an electrostatic latent image that has been formed on the image carrying member in a charged state; a cleaning unit for cleaning a toner that remains on the image carrying member after the toner image has been transferred from the image carrying member onto a transfer material; a lubricant applying unit for applying a lubricant on the image carrying member; and a control unit for performing drive control of the image carrying member, the developing unit, the cleaning unit, and the lubricant applying unit. Before the imaging device starts an imaging operation, the control unit controls the image carrying member, the developing unit, and the cleaning unit to perform respective operations; while controls the lubricant applying unit to repeat performing and suspending the operation in an intermittent manner.
US08428468B2

A polarization multiplexing optical receiver according to the invention includes a polarization splitting unit receiving polarization multiplexed lights which are modulated according to a first input signal and a second input signal including respective identifier, and splitting the polarization multiplexed light into a first polarized received light and a second polarized received light, a pair of photoelectric conversion units, a demodulation unit performing symbol recognition about the first received signal and the second received signal, and outputting a first demodulated signal and a second demodulated signal, an identifier detecting unit detecting the identifiers from the first demodulated signal and the second demodulated signal, and a delay compensation unit calculating a delay difference between the first demodulated signal and the second demodulated signal based on the identifiers, and inserting delay time corresponding to the delay difference into the first demodulated signal or the second demodulated signal.
US08428464B2

Methods and devices for detecting at least one first input signal superimposed on at least one second signal. The method comprises the steps of providing said at least one first input signal superimposed on at least one second signal to at least one half-wave rectifier; transforming, in said at least one half-wave rectifier, said at least one first input signal superimposed on at least one second signal into a half-wave rectified signal; providing said half-wave rectified signal to an envelope detector; and transforming, in said envelope detector, said half-wave rectified signal into an envelope signal and wherein the at least one half-wave rectifier comprises at least one optoelectronic device. In this way, a simpler and cheaper method and/or device are provided for e.g. detecting a transmitted information signal superimposed on a high frequency carrier signal.
US08428463B2

Consistent with the present disclosure, a method and apparatus for providing a uniform spectral gain of an optical amplifier is provided. Namely, a “balancing” step is carried out in which an optical channel having the lowest power level input to an optical circuit, such as an dynamic gain equalizer (DGE), is assigned a zero “attenuation error” and is substantially un-attenuated by the DGE. The lowest power level optical signal does not require further attenuation and effectively serves as a reference power level, which the power levels of the remaining optical signals are set to. For example, remaining optical signals are assigned either positive or negative attenuation errors relative to the zero attenuation error based on optical signal input powers to the DGE and accumulated DGE attenuations over time. Those optical signals having a negative attenuation error are substantially unattenuated by the DGE, because such optical signals are adequately attenuated and do not require further attenuation. On the other hand, the DGE is controlled to attenuate those optical signals having positive attenuation errors to thereby flatten the output spectrum of the amplifier. In one example, interpolation techniques may be employed to control those portions of the DGE (e.g., attenuators or pixels) that do not receive a channel, such that adjacent pixels that receive channels may impart a desired amount of attenuation. In addition, further interpolation may be provided to appropriately control the DGE pixels, if the number of channels supplied to the DGE is different than the number of pixels of the DGE.
US08428450B2

The instant disclosure relates to an integrated optic module for adapting in a finger sensing apparatus. The integrated optic module comprises an illumination portion including a light guiding array arranged to direct incident light from the electronic module toward the window module at a predetermined angle of incidence and an imaging portion having an imaging lens array arranged thereon to direct reflected light from the window module toward the electronic module for photo imaging. The micro-lens array includes an elongated recognition unit having a row axis substantially normal toward the light guiding array and a navigation unit adjoining the recognition unit and offsetting the row axis thereof. The optic module mediates a window module and an electronic module to provide both finger navigation and fingerprint recognition capabilities.
US08428436B2

Embodiments of the disclosed invention include an apparatus, method, and computer program product for enabling a user to configure a media receiving device to auto-extend a recording of a program beyond its scheduled end recording time. For instance, in one embodiment, a computer implemented method for extending recording of a broadcast is disclosed. The method comprises recording a program associated with a broadcast signal until a scheduled ending time; determining whether an end of program indicator within the broadcast signal has been detected in response to reaching the scheduled ending time; and extending the recording of the program associated with the broadcast signal based upon a user selected setting associated with a set of user configurable options for extended recordings.
US08428434B2

Provided herein are: a data acquiring unit which acquires a plurality of angle video data equal or less than the angle video data and relative display position information from a recording unit which records the plurality of angle video data corresponding to the plurality of angle videos taken at a plurality of taking angles different from one another in which a taken object is taken and records the relative display position information indicating a relative display position of each angle video in consideration of each taking angle; a video signal output unit which outputs a plurality of angle video signals corresponding to the plurality of angle videos to display units based on the plurality of angle video data; and an arrangement determining unit which determines a display position arrangement of the plurality of angle videos based on the relative display position information.
US08428425B2

A high resolution video signal is divided by video division means into a main signal and a sub signal, and the main signal and the sub signal are MPEG-encoded. The stream of the main signal and the stream of the sub signal are divided into 1 GPO or more of frames. First interleave blocks each including 1 GOP or more of the stream of the main signal and second interleave blocks each including 1 GOP or more of the stream of the sub signal are recorded on an optical disk. A high resolution reproduction apparatus reproduces both the first and second interleave blocks to obtain a high resolution video output. A non-high quality picture reproduction apparatus reproduces only the first or second interleave blocks to obtain a standard resolution video output.
US08428406B2

Armor, configured for use with a fiber optic assembly, includes a dielectric tube having an armor profile and a length, where the dielectric tube has at least one layer formed from a rigid material. The armor profile is undulating along the length, and the armor profile has a band thickness and a web thickness. The band thickness is between about 0.5 millimeters and about five millimeters. The web thickness is less than the band thickness, and the web thickness is greater than or equal to 0.1 times the band thickness.
US08428400B2

An extensometer having a loop of a single-mode optical fiber. At least two points of the loop are attached to desired locations on a specimen. Light is transmitted through the loop and the transmitted optical power is measured by a photodetector. The deformation of the specimen causes the size and shape of the loop to change, which changes the transmitted optical power. The change in optical power is related to extension or compression using calibration curves. The sensor works on the principle of transmitted power modulation through the curved section.
US08428394B2

The present invention provides a method and system for resolving complete free space orientation of an active receiving device at high speed using simple optics, trigonometry, simple circuitry, and using minimal processing power. The rapid triangulation of distance from the emitters, as well as resolution of rotational orientation, are determined by changing the contrast level in an infrared spectrum and by using wide angle lenses with greater than 180 degree hemispherical viewing angles. Furthermore, the system consists of an optional accelerometer, resident on the receiver, to dynamically adjust the image sensor frame rate.
US08428376B2

A method, system, and apparatus are directed towards computing minimum mean squared error (MMSE) predictive-transform (PT) source coding integrated with subband compression to further improve the performance of low bit rate MMSE PT source coders. A desirable byproduct of the advanced scheme is that the incorporation of joint optimum prediction and transformation from subband to subband is ideally suited to its integration with JPEG2000 to yield even higher compression levels while producing an outstanding objective as well as subjective visual performance.
US08428374B2

Various techniques and tools for encoding and decoding (e.g., in a video encoder/decoder) binary information (e.g., skipped macroblock information) are described. In some embodiments, the binary information is arranged in a bit plane, and the bit plane is coded at the picture/frame layer. The encoder and decoder process the binary information and, in some embodiments, switch coding modes. For example, the encoder and decoder use normal, row-skip, column-skip, or differential modes, or other and/or additional modes. In some embodiments, the encoder and decoder define a skipped macroblock as a predicted macroblock whose motion is equal to its causally predicted motion and which has zero residual error. In some embodiments, the encoder and decoder use a raw coding mode to allow for low-latency applications.
US08428372B2

A method, apparatus and computer program product are provided for compressing data in a manner that decorrelates a plurality of components of multicomponent data and then encodes data relating to decorrelation of the components. The components may be decorrelated by organizing samples of a component into classes based upon values of samples having corresponding spatial locations in at least one preceding component. In this regard, the organization of samples of a component into classes may include defining classes based upon values of the samples in at least one preceding component. In addition, the method may also define classes based upon the slope of the samples in at least two preceding component.
US08428367B2

A system and method for electronic document classification are provided. A method in accordance with an embodiment of the present invention includes: converting a candidate electronic document comprising character data to a candidate image; obtaining a representation of a degree of visual similarity of the candidate image to a reference image, the reference image having been obtained by identifying a reference electronic document containing character data representative of a specified classification; and converting the reference electronic document to a reference image.
US08428359B2

A method of inputting a series of characters into an electronic device comprising a display, the method comprising: detecting a first input associated with a first one of a plurality of discrete areas of the display for entering characters on the display; and recognizing the first input in the first one of the plurality of discrete areas as a first character input while a second one of the plurality of discrete areas is operable to detect a second input for recognition as a second character input, the recognition of the second character input occurring separately to the recognition of the first character input.
US08428354B2

A method for rapid hierarchical image segmentation based on perceptually driven contour completion and scene statistics is disclosed. The method begins with an initial fine-scale segmentation of an image, such as obtained by perceptual completion of partial contours into polygonal regions using region-contour correspondences established by Delaunay triangulation of edge pixels as implemented in VISTA. The resulting polygons are analyzed with respect to their size and color/intensity distributions and the structural properties of their boundaries. Statistical estimates of granularity of size, similarity of color, texture, and saliency of intervening boundaries are computed and formulated into logical (Boolean) predicates. The combined satisfiability of these Boolean predicates by a pair of adjacent polygons at a given segmentation level qualifies them for merging into a larger polygon representing a coarser, larger-scale feature of the pixel image and collectively obtains the next level of polygonal segments in a hierarchy of fine-to-coarse segmentations. The iterative application of this process precipitates textured regions as polygons with highly convolved boundaries and helps distinguish them from objects which typically have more regular boundaries. The method yields a multiscale decomposition of an image into constituent features that enjoy a hierarchical relationship with features at finer and coarser scales. This provides a traversable graph structure from which feature content and context in terms of other features can be derived, aiding in automated image understanding tasks. The method disclosed is highly efficient and can be used to decompose and analyze large images.
US08428352B1

An automated, computerized method is provided for processing an image. The method comprises the steps of providing an image file depicting an image, in a computer memory, generating a material intrinsic image corresponding to the image and modifying the material intrinsic image by identifying artifacts by comparing derivatives for the material intrinsic image with derivatives for the image, modifying the derivatives for the material intrinsic image to conform the derivatives for the material intrinsic to the derivatives of the image and integrating the modified derivatives for the material intrinsic image to calculate a modified material intrinsic image.
US08428350B2

The present invention relates to color correction of video signals from a plurality of cameras. The apparatus has a correction order that defines a plurality of camera pairs and an order of the camera pairs, where each camera pair specifies a reference camera and a target camera. In the correction order, each camera is treated as a target camera at least one time, and the reference camera is treated as the target camera in a previous camera pair except for the first camera pair. The apparatus corrects a value of each pixel in a target image captured by the target camera based on a reference image captured by the reference camera, and replaces the target image by the corrected target image, for each camera pair in accordance with the order of the camera pairs.
US08428348B2

Architecture for comparing images by building an initial map from the average color and an inserted blackened area. Accordingly, a map can be built that is more information-rich and smaller, thereby making the system more efficient. The architecture employs a Kohonen neural network (or self-organizing map (SOM)) by guiding the learning of the SOM using characteristics of the images such as average color and a central area. A strong component of the average color of the image and the central area at the approximate center of the image are added to the uninitialized SOM, which allows related colors to converge toward the central area of the image. When input, the SOM organizes the color content of the image on a map, which can be used to compare the image with other images.
US08428347B2

A color processing apparatus includes a first calculation unit, a determination unit, and a second calculation unit. The first calculation unit calculates a second color signal from a first color signal by using successive approximation. The first color signal is given by repeatedly calculating a first successive solution using an inverse matrix of a sensitivity matrix of an input/output characteristic function of an output device. The determination unit determines whether or not the first successive solution calculated by the first calculation unit is divergent. The second calculation unit calculates a second successive solution using a method different from a method used by the first calculation unit when the determination unit determines that the first successive solution is divergent.
US08428346B2

Strategies are described for processing image information using a data structure which conveys color information. The color information describes color-related formatting applied to the image information. The data structure can be passed down a video processing pipeline, which includes a video mixing renderer module, a device driver, and a graphics module. Each functional component in the pipeline can draw color information from the data structure to improve the accuracy of its processing.
US08428335B2

A method of forming a combined feature boundary based on boundaries of first and second overlapping features includes dividing the boundaries of the first and second overlapping features into line segments of known shape, identifying crossing points formed by the line segments, calculating parametric coordinates of the crossing points, and determining a sequence of crossing point evaluation based on the parametric coordinates. The method also includes calculating first and second cross products based on the line segments forming first and second crossing points in the determined sequence, and choosing first and second paths of the combined feature boundary according to mathematical signs of the cross products, wherein the combined feature boundary includes the first and second crossing points and portions of at least one of the first and second feature boundaries defining the first and second paths.
US08428328B2

A technique for automatically generating a virtual model of a branched structure using as an input a plurality of images taken of the branched structure. The technique employs an algorithm that avoids inaccuracies associated with sub-optimal threshold settings by “patching” holes or leaks created due to the inherent inconsistencies with imaging technology. By “patching” the holes, the algorithm may continue to run using a more sensitive threshold value than was previously possible.
US08428313B2

An object image correction apparatus and method for object identification are disclosed. The object image correction method is firstly used for correcting a face or an object under a right position. For example, in order to reduce time consumption for facial identification, the method corrects the deviations such as a rotation, direction, and scaling before an identification process. Preferably, an image is retrieved in a first step. One or more object positions are then detected. Next, some positions of the features are found, and the positions of plural feature points thereon are computed. The method then goes to determine the degree of deviations for the object based on the positions of feature points. Moreover, one or in combination of a rotation correction, a scaling correction, a direction correction, and a shift correction is introduced to process the correction on each deviation. The positions of the feature points are consequently obtained.
US08428311B2

A system, method, and computer program product for recognizing hand postures are described. According to one aspect, a set of training images is provided with labels identifying hand states captured in the training images. Inner Distance Shape Context (IDSC) descriptors are determined for the hand regions in the training images, and fed into a Support Vector Machine (SVM) classifier to train it to classify hand shapes into posture classes. An IDSC descriptor is determined for a hand region in a testing image, and classified by the SVM classifier into one of the posture classes the SVM classifier was trained for. The hand posture captured in the testing image is recognized based on the classification.
US08428310B2

A method for configuring a pattern recognition system begins by receiving object recognition data from at least one first local image processing system. The object recognition data is stored in at least one global database. Configuration data is determined for a second local image processing system based at least in part upon the received object recognition data from the at least one first image processing system, and then transmitted to the second local image processing system.
US08428304B2

A computer system, method and computer program that retrieves, from at least one piece of moving image data, at least one scene that includes moving image content to be retrieved. The computer system includes a storage unit that stores a locus of a model of the moving image to be retrieved and velocity variation of the model; a first calculation unit that calculates a first vector including the locus and the velocity variation of the model; a second calculation unit that calculates a second vector regarding the moving image content to be retrieved included in the at least one piece of moving image data; a third calculation unit that calculates a degree of similarity between the first and second vectors; and a selection unit that selects, at least one scene which includes the moving image content to be retrieved, on the basis of the degree of similarity.
US08428303B2

According to one embodiment, a postal indicium detection method includes detecting whether or not one of a first face and a second face of a sheet corresponds to a picture card specific face, detecting a postal indicium candidate from the second face based on a first detection result indicating that the first face corresponds to the picture card specific face, and detecting the postal indicium candidate from the first face based on a second detection result indicating that the second face corresponds to the picture card specific face.
US08428302B2

A method for automatically creating spine image areas for book covers that were originally created for books without spines includes adding image areas between the front and back cover images to make a single image with the spine being a user-specified solid color or bitmap image.
US08428293B2

A speaker device includes a plurality of speaker units arranged in a line when seen from the front side of the speaker device. At least one of intervals between effective vibration regions of adjacent speaker units is set to a predetermined length. The predetermined length is a length that is set such that a difference between a distance from an end of one of the effective vibration regions, which form the at least one of intervals therebetween, to a listening position, and a distance from an end of the other of the effective vibration regions to the listening position can be less than half the shortest wavelength of a reproduced sound of each of the speaker units.
US08428283B2

A manufacturing method of a paper making part for a loudspeaker has freedom of adjusting a characteristic and a sound quality, and has a higher productivity. Accordingly, a fibrillating step of a paper making material is achieved by an explosive crushing step. Alternatively, the step is achieved by a mixing step of a paper making material and a liquid, a material micro-fabricating step of applying a pressure to a mixed solution obtained by the mixing step so as to pass through an orifice and thereafter run into a device wall, and a paper making step including the micro-fabricated material.
US08428277B1

A mixing system provides both clipping protection and signal level conservation while the system operates in the original width type. The mixing system includes a first input multiplier multiplying a first digital input signal by a first gain value to provide a first scaled signal, a second input multiplier multiplying a second digital input signal by the first gain value to provide a second scaled signal, a combiner combining the first scaled signal and the second scaled signal to provide a combined signal, a soft limiter soft limiting the combined signal by reducing some of the amplitudes of the combined signal to provide a soft limited signal, and an output multiplier multiplying the soft limited signal by a second gain value to provide a mixed output signal, wherein the first gain value is a value that is equal to an inverse value of the second gain value.
US08428258B2

A method and apparatus is provided for generating or providing any of various types of modifications purposely made to generally known signals, waveforms, conditions, functions, etc. The modifications are sensed, read, detected or interpreted to provide a content control command indicative of the difference between the original signal, waveform, condition, functions, etc., and the modified signal, waveform, condition, function, etc. The content control command may be used to provide content control for a content control system, which in turn may provide control of a selected compliant device.
US08428257B2

An embodiment of a method for rendering an item of media content includes obtaining a media presentation having a media-content portion and a display-window-configuration component. The display-window-configuration component is recovered from the media presentation and causes a defined display window to be presented contemporaneously with rendering the media content of the media-content portion. And an embodiment of a method for rendering an item of media content having an action-indicator associated with an action includes analyzing the media content to detect the action-indicator and executing the associated action. For example, the action-indicator may be a watermark, which may be visible while an image portion of the media content is displayed.
US08428252B1

A method, integrated circuit chip, and computer program product for cryptographically processing an input value with Elliptic Curve Cryptography (ECC) using ECC scalar multiplication are provided. The ECC scalar multiplication is performed with the use of an enhanced acceleration table (EAT). The EAT uses multiple running totals, at least one of which has a multiplier above 2.
US08428246B2

A server device configured to receive first-information associated with a call that was received by a first server device; receive second-information associated with the call, where the second-information is associated with processing of the call by the first server device and at least one second server device; generate a unified record associated with the call, where the unified record includes at least some of the first-information and at least some of the second-information; determine, based on the unified record, that a condition exists with respect to the call; and send an instruction to perform a customer operation with respect to the call when the condition is determined to exist, where the customer operation includes increasing a priority for handling of the call by a customer service agent.
US08428243B2

Techniques for providing a method and system for trunk independent gateway transfer of calls are disclosed. In one particular exemplary embodiment, the techniques may be realized as a computer implemented method, comprising receiving a call transfer request for a call at a gateway and determining, using a processor of the gateway, whether a trunk to be used for transferring the call requires a transfer command. In the event the trunk requires transfer command, the techniques comprise generating a transfer command, and transferring the call using the transfer command.
US08428237B1

System and method for enabling push-to-talk (PTT) private calls in a wireless communications network are described. One embodiment includes selecting a called party private identification for a private call by a calling party on a mobile device; pressing a PTT button on the mobile device; transmitting a SIP SUBSCRIBE including the calling and called parties private identifications to request a speech token; redirecting the SIP SUBSCRIBE to the PTT Server for purposes of removing the calling party and the called party from a multicast group; receiving an acknowledge message that includes a speech token; transmitting calling party information from the PTT Server to the called party; communicating speech packets from the calling party to the called party in a half-duplex manner; releasing the PTT button on the mobile device; transmitting a SIP SUBSCRIBE to release the speech token; and notifying the calling and called parties that the group's speech token is available.
US08428236B2

Conference audio systems are widely known and are usually used in political or economic debates, at fairs and wherever a plurality of people discuss with each other supported by a microphone-amplifier-loudspeaker system. In known systems each delegate of a conference has a seat with a working table in which the microphone and the loudspeaker is integrated. A conference audio system is proposed comprising a plurality of delegate units (2), each delegate unit (2) having a delegate loud-speaker (5) and/or a delegate microphone (4), a control means (3, 15) for distributing at least one audio signal from at least one of the delegate microphones (4) or another sound source to a plurality of the delegate loudspeakers (5), the plurality of delegate loud-speakers (5) generating a common audio atmosphere, delay means (16) operable to add a time delay on the audio signal, whereby the time delay is dependent from the distance between the position of the delegate microphone (4) or sound source, respectively, generating the audio signal and the individual delegate loudspeaker (5) position.
US08428234B2

A conferencing system for an enterprise is disclosed. The conferencing system includes a management apparatus for managing conferencing resources in a premises. The management apparatus includes a communications link for communicating with a proximity announcing system, which indicates whether a portable communications device is near a conferencing device within the premises. The management apparatus can transmit a message to a proximate portable communication device indicating that a conferencing device is nearby. The proximity announcing system can include wireless transmitters and receivers associated with the premises and with portable communication devices used within the premises for tracking the location of the portable communication devices throughout the premises.
US08428231B2

A service delivery platform (SDP) docking station (DS) is part of a multiple layer service delivery platform implementation. The SDP DS adds a second SDP layer between the end user and the Core SDP. The Core SDP implements the process flows that enable, provision, and execute telecommunications products and services. The SDP DS provides a customizable front end to the Core SDP to provide local service provider customization, flexible local selection and activation of products and services, and other features.
US08428228B1

Unified communication system for consolidating different message sources (e.g. emails, SMS, voice message, fax, etc.) into a single accessible location with the ability to incorporate phone calls, VoIP calls, voice commands, etc. This is achieved through integration of a Speech-ready IVR system with an E-mail client to act as the Unified Communication System. Furthermore, the IVR flexibility allows the user to access messages when internet access is not available or read messages such as SMS and emails when not physically convenient e.g. when user is driving. A computer based server receives a message in the format of SMS, fax, e-mail, or phone message. The server identifies what format the message is in and displays a notification on a graphical user interface. Through integration with a speech ready IVR system user may select to listen to the message or read the message.
US08428220B2

A method for dynamically visualizing coronary information and an apparatus adapted to implement such method is described. In a preferred embodiment of the method, first dynamic cardiac data is acquired during a first cardiac stage and second dynamic cardiac data is acquired during a second cardiac stage. Then, the two data sets are visualized continuously the in a superimposed presentation, wherein the first cardiac data and the second cardiac data corresponding to a same phase within the cardiac cycle are visualized simultaneously. In this way for example information about the vessel geometry may be immediately linked with information about the muscle irrigation or perfusion. Furthermore, this useful information may be displayed in a high-contrasted and low-noise presentation.
US08428215B2

A dimensional reactivity management system that takes into account the axial burnup shape data of a nuclear fuel assembly to determine the acceptability of placement of the assembly relative to other assemblies in a storage container.
US08428213B2

A digital waveform synthesizer (1) is implemented as a single chip integrated circuit on a single chip (2) and comprises a direct digital synthesizer (10) which produces a synthesized output signal waveform on an output terminal (4) which is substantially phase and frequency locked to the phase and frequency of an externally generated input signal applied to an input terminal (5). A comparing circuit (20) compares the period of the synthesized output signal waveform on the output terminal (4) with the period of the input signal, and a control circuit (28) produces progressively altered values of a frequency control digital word which are sequentially applied to an accumulator (11) of the direct digital synthesizer (10) in response to the comparing circuit (20), until the value of the frequency control digital word applied to the accumulator (11) is such as to produce the synthesized output signal waveform to be substantially phase and frequency locked to the phase and frequency input signal applied to the input terminal (5).
US08428209B2

A frequency offset estimation and correction apparatus including a frame averaging unit to average a plurality of frequency offset values to obtain a frame offset average for each of a plurality of frames, a re-sampling unit to produce a plurality of interpolated frequency offset values uniformly distributed over a time period of a frame of the plurality of frames based on the frame offset average of the frame and a frame offset average of at least one frame that precedes the frame, and an exponential averaging unit to calculate the estimated frequency offset based on the plurality of interpolated frequency offset values weighted by an exponential averaging coefficient.
US08428208B2

A control circuit for receiving data transmitted by a data transmitting circuit and transmitting the received data to a data receiving circuit includes: a data receiving unit for receiving the data transmitted by the data transmitting circuit; a packet analyzing unit for judging whether the data received from the data transmitting circuit is a packet including history acquisition information and reading the history acquisition information from the received data; a history acquisition executing unit for starting or stopping acquiring the history information of the transmission and reception of the data according to the history acquisition information read by the packet analyzing unit to store the history information acquired; and a data transmitting unit for transmitting the packet including the history acquisition information or a packet other than the packet including the history acquisition information to the data receiving circuit.
US08428205B2

A communications apparatus is provided. A first wireless communications module provides a first wireless communications service and communicates with a first communications device in compliance with a first protocol. A second wireless communications module provides a second wireless communications service and communicates with a second communications device in compliance with a second protocol. A clock source is shared by the first and the second communications modules and provides a reference clock to the first and the second communications modules. The first wireless communications module detects a request from the second wireless communications module for activating the clock source, determines whether the reference clock has been stably generated by the clock source, and adjusts an electrical characteristic of the clock source to facilitate the reference clock output from the clock source to achieve a target frequency when the reference clock has not been stably generated.
US08428200B2

Provided is an apparatus for estimating a frequency offset by one training symbol including two symbols having the same structure and value in an OFDM system. The apparatus includes a first likelihood function calculator for modeling non-Gaussian impulsive noise included in the training symbol to a Cauchy probability density function in which a characteristic exponent of a BISαS probability density function is 1, and calculating a likelihood function of a Cauchy distribution using the Cauchy probability density function, and a first frequency offset estimator for estimating an effective frequency offset value in which the likelihood function of the Cauchy distribution of the first likelihood function calculator becomes highest as a frequency offset estimation value. Thereby, it is possible to improve the performance of frequency offset estimation in non-Gaussian impulsive noise environments.
US08428191B2

The present invention relates to a direct current (DC) offset suppression circuit to suppress DC offsets occurring when a communication circuit where a complex filter is adopted performs self-mixing. The DC offset is suppressed by a DC feedback circuit adopted by a filter which is substituted for a complex filter in the communication circuit. But, the DC offset cannot be suppressed when a complex filter is used in the communication circuit. It is because phase changes of the complex filter cause output signal fed back to the input of the complex filter to generate phase differences. The present invention includes a phase compensation unit and a DC feedback unit. The phase compensation unit compensates a change in frequency between input and output of the complex filter for phase compensation. The DC feedback unit inverses and feeds back the compensated phase to an input of the complex filter.
US08428189B2

A determiner determines whether or not a mobile communication terminal is in a standby mode. A fast Fourier transform calculator demodulates a signal which is received at the mobile communication terminal. A controller causes the fast Fourier transform calculator to vary at least one of a frequency range for fast Fourier transform or a number of frequency samples used by the fast Fourier transform calculator, depending on determination by the determiner. Preferably, the controller is adapted to cause the fast Fourier transform calculator to vary at least one of the frequency range for fast Fourier transform or the number of frequency samples used by the fast Fourier transform calculator based on information about frequencies used in communication from a radio base station to the mobile communication terminal and notified from the radio base station.
US08428185B1

A system and method for transmitting data over a channel, in which the data are categorized in at least two different categories. For example, the data are categorized according to the effect on perceived degradation on the data when error mitigation is performed on the data. Corrupted data of the first category are replaced using a first replacement method, such as retransmission and forward error correction. The corrupted data of the second category are replaced using a second replacement method different from the first replacement method, e.g., error mitigation or interpolation.
US08428177B2

A wireless communications network is provided. The wireless communications network comprises a plurality of base stations. Each one of said base stations is capable of wireless communications with a plurality of subscriber stations. At least one of said plurality of base stations comprises a processor configured to select a codeword from a codebook and precode data with the selected codeword, and a transmitter configured to transmit the precoded data. Rank 1 of the codebook is selected from the following algorithm: Codebook Matrix Index (CMI)Base MatrixRank 1 1V8(:, :, 3)V8(:, 1, 3) 2 V8(:, 2, 3) 3 V8(:, 3, 3) 4 V8(:, 4, 3) 5 V8(:, 5, 3) 6 V8(:, 6, 3) 7 V8(:, 7, 3) 8 V8(:, 8, 3) 9 V8(:, 9, 3) 10 V8(:, 10, 3) 11 V8(:, 11, 3) 12 V8(:, 12, 3) 13 V8(:, 13, 3) 14 V8(:, 14, 3) 15 V8(:, 15, 3) 16 V8(:, 16, 3).
US08428175B2

A system and method are provided for transmitting a rotating training sequence. A rotating training signal is generated in quadrature modulation transmitter. The rotating training signal includes training information sent via an in-phase (I) modulation path, as well as training information sent via a quadrature (Q) modulation path. The rotating training signal may be generated by initially sending training information via the I modulation path, and subsequently sending training information via the Q modulation path. The training information sent via the I modulation path may include a first symbol having a reference phase (e.g., 0 degrees or 180 degrees). Then, the training information sent via the Q modulation path would include a second symbol having a phase that is ±90 from the reference phase.
US08428173B2

A method for processing a plurality of data streams from a transmitter, includes: receiving symbols via the plurality of data streams; generating a channel matrix; sorting the channel matrix to provide a sorted channel matrix; performing QR decomposition on the sorted channel matrix and a column-row-swapped-sorted-channel matrix; performing QR equalization on a sorted received symbol vector and a swapped received symbol vector to provide a equalized-sorted vector and a equalized-swapped-sorted vector; processing first and second portions of the equalized-sorted vector and the equalized-swapped-sorted vector via a QR-MLD demodulation scheme to determine soft bits and soft symbols; and rearrange soft bits in the above steps to provide an output vector.
US08428172B2

A method of transmitting a midamble for channel estimation of multiple antennas performed by a base station in a system having segregated uplink and downlink frequency bands is provided. The method includes transmitting midamble information indicating presence of the midamble within a downlink frame to a user equipment (UE), and transmitting the midamble on a single downlink subframe among at least one downlink subframe included in the downlink frame or on a common zone to the UE by using the multiple antennas. A scheduling overhead of a base station and other overheads can be reduced by decreasing the number of transmissions of a midamble on one downlink frame, and thus limited radio resources can be effectively used.
US08428169B1

Systems and methods for reconstructing digital information in a multiple-input receiver from signals transmitted by a multiple-output transmitter, in a multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) communications channel are provided. A plurality of signal streams are obtained from a plurality of transmitted signals and a first candidate signal value is selected for each of the plurality of signal streams. A plurality of additional candidate signal values are also selected for each of the plurality of signal streams in response to selecting the first candidate signal value. A log-likelihood ratio (LLR) is computed from the plurality of signal streams based on all of the selected candidate signal values. Digital information may then be estimated based on the computed LLR.
US08428168B1

A plurality of consecutive sounding data units are received via a reverse link. Each consecutive sounding data unit is received via a different subset of antennas. Channel state information (CSI) is generated based on the received plurality of consecutive sounding data units. A subset of antennas to use in a forward link is determined based on the generated CSI.
US08428167B2

The invention relates to a method of estimating symbols carried by a digital signal that is received by a receiver over a communication channel (5), said symbols being multiplexed or orthogonal frequency sub-carriers. The inventive method comprises the following steps in relation to each symbol carried by the digital signal, consisting in: performing at least two transforms towards the frequency domain (8,9) on a portion of the received signal essentially corresponding to the symbol, said transforms being performed with a determined time lag (10) therebetween: estimating the parameters (r0, r1, . . . , rn, r′0, r′1, . . . , r′n) of the communication channel from pre-determined binary information contained in the digital signal; and estimating the symbol from a combination of the result of each of the transforms performed and the estimated communication channel parameters.
US08428157B2

To provide a reference signal generation method and apparatus capable of obtaining many reference signal sequences having excellent properties. CAZAC sequences that satisfy the condition that the absolute value (|N−L|) of a difference between a sub-carrier number N in a resource block and a CAZAC sequence length L is not larger than a threshold value K are selected, and a sequence having a largest among greatest prime factors among the prime factors constituting the sequence length(s) is further selected from the initially selected sequences. Then, a reference signal sequence(s) is generated from a selected CAZAC sequence.
US08428154B2

Plural electronic control units (ECUs) are connected to each other by an electric power line that is for supplying electric power. Each ECU sends information with a carrier wave having a first frequency lower than a dip frequency estimated by the physical condition and the circuit structure of electric power line, or having a second frequency lower than the first frequency. Or, the physical condition and the circuit structure of electric power line are determined, on the contrary, to make the dip frequency become higher than the frequency of utilized carrier wave. The frequency utilized for sending information may be selected in accordance with the contents of information.
US08428143B2

An improved coding efficiency is achieved by giving the encoder the opportunity to change the field/frame-wise treatment of individual picture portions between the first precision-encoded data and the second precision-encoded data, with the second precision being higher than the first precision.
US08428141B2

An apparatus and method are provided for compensating a block error in an image frame. This may include a video codec decoder for decoding an inputted image frame, and outputting a decoded image frame. An error concealment block may detect an error-generated block in the decoded image frame and compensate the detected error block through a median filter, and output the compensated image frame.
US08428134B2

In one embodiment, the method includes selecting a list 0 motion vector of the co-located block in a first reference picture as the motion vector if the co-located block has the list 0 motion vector and a list 1 motion vector. The first reference picture is a type of reference picture permitted to be located temporally before or after the current picture. The method further includes selecting the list 1 motion vector of the co-located block in the first reference picture if the co-located block only has the list 1 motion vector, and deriving at least one motion vector of the bi-predictive block based on the selected motion vector.
US08428123B2

Some embodiments facilitate encoding/decoding of a frame by organizing frame data in a storage structure in a novel manner. Specifically, in a portion of the storage structure allocated for a frame slice, used partition entries are stored in a first section of the allocated portion and unused partition entries are stored in a second section of the allocated portion, the first and second sections each comprising a continuous area of storage in the storage structure so that used partition entries are not interspersed with nonused partition entries. In some embodiments, additional data useful in the encoding or decoding of video data is determined and stored into the unused bytes of used partition entries (such as macroblock header data or canonical reference frame index data). In some embodiments, two or more identical partitions of a macroblock are coalesced into a single partition.
US08428119B2

A computer-implemented method for decompression in data compression systems with decoder side-information including a plurality of signals each of which is correlated to a source, includes determining a conditional probability function of the source conditioned upon a subset of decoder side-information signals, wherein the decoder side-information signals include pre-stored and received statistical information, estimating an a-posteriori probability function based on the conditional probability function and extrinsic information, evaluating a stopping criterion for decompression, generating the extrinsic information based on the a-posteriori probability function, and determining a likelihood threshold for determining a most probable value of a quantized source signal based on the a-posteriori probability function and outputting the quantized source upon determining to stop decompression.
US08428112B2

An interface circuit inputting and outputting data and a clock that have multiple speeds is provided with an equalizer capable of changing a circuit parameter, a frequency detection part detecting a clock frequency, and a parameter calculation control part calculating an appropriate circuit parameter according to the clock frequency and controlling the equalizer. The frequency detection part detects at what frequency the interface circuit is operating presently and sends the frequency to the parameter calculation control part. The parameter calculation control part calculates the circuit parameter of the equalizer so that the interface circuit operates optimally at the detected frequency, and sets the circuit parameter to the equalizer. In this manner, since the circuit parameter of the equalizer in the interface circuit can be controlled appropriately according to the frequency of the input and output clock, optimum operation is always available.
US08428110B2

A system includes a memory hub chip including a Tomlinson-Harashima precoding (THP) equalizer portion operative to perform transmitter equalization at the memory hub chip and send data from to a memory chip.
US08428106B2

The technology comprises method(s) and apparatus for operating a telecommunications system. In its basic form the method comprises providing plural channelization codes for potential use by an uplink receiver; using unused channelization codes of the plural codes to generate an estimate of an impairment covariance matrix; and using the estimate of the impairment covariance matrix to form a processing parameter. For example, the processing parameter can be one or more weight values which, in turn, are can be used for generating a combined output signal.
US08428102B2

Embodiments of the present invention provide a system and method for further reducing cyclostationarity and correspondingly energy density in a chaotic spread spectrum data communication channel, by digitally generating a first chaotic sequence of values to form a spreading code. The spreading code is then used to form a digital IF spread spectrum signal having a uniform sampling interval. The digital IF spread spectrum signal is converted to a sampled analog IF spread spectrum signal at a conversion rate substantially equal to the uniform sampling interval. The duration of the sampling interval is then selectively varied in accordance with a first pseudo-random sequence, thereby introducing a known dither in the analog IF spread spectrum signal. After introducing the known dither, the analog IF spread spectrum signal is upconverted to an analog RF spread spectrum signal. The first pseudo-random sequences may be designed to be a chaotic sequence.
US08428096B2

This invention relates to an industrial furnace roof filler element to allow replacement of a failed heat source during operation. The filler element can include a lower portion, a module, an aperture, a protuberance, a bore and/or a heat source. This invention also relates to a method of operation for an industrial furnace wherein a failed heat source is replaced during operation of the industrial furnace.
US08428093B2

Semiconductor laser array devices capable of emitting mid- to long-wavelength infrared (i.e., 4-12 μm) radiation are provided. The devices include a quantum cascade laser (QCL) structure comprising one or more active cores; an optical confinement structure; a cladding structure, and a plurality of laterally-spaced trench regions extending transversely through the cladding and optical confinement structures, and partially into the QCL structure. The trench regions define a plurality of laterally-spaced interelement regions separated by element regions in the laser array device. The element regions are characterized by a non-uniform structure across their widths. As a result of this structural non-uniformity, array modes composed of coupled first-order lateral modes of the element regions are preferentially suppressed relative to array modes composed of coupled fundamental lateral modes of the element regions.
US08428087B1

A framework can be utilized with conventional networking components to enable those components to process packets of specific formats using conventional algorithms, such as algorithms for receive side coalescing (RCS) and TCP segmentation offloading (TSO). Format and flow information can be added to an opaque field or other portion of a packet, at an appropriate location or pre-configured offset. Placing information at a specific location or offset enables the networking hardware to quickly recognize a packet for processing. Packets can be segmented and coalesced using conventional algorithms on the networking hardware, enabling packets of various formats to be able to take advantage of various performance enhancements.
US08428066B2

A method for reporting carrier status in a user equipment (UE) of a wireless communication system is disclosed. The wireless communication system supports Carrier Aggregation (CA) such that the UE is able to perform transmission or reception through multiple component carriers. The method includes steps of configuring a plurality of component carriers, receiving a signaling utilized for activating or deactivating the plurality of component carriers, and using a medium access control control element (MAC CE) to indicate the signaling is successfully received after the signaling is successfully received.
US08428065B2

A group communication service maintains synchronization limiting the group to the processing entities that receive a plurality of source message streams from sources outside the group and transmit delivery message streams to destinations that are outside the group. Synchronization of message ordering and other state synchronization directives are communicated from a leader exclusively to other group members. Once having declared themselves to be synchronized and active by a reply protocol message, which is an opaque object and is interpreted by an application layer, the processing entities independently process the source message streams in accordance with the order specified in the directives, without requiring additional sequencing information from another processing entity.
US08428058B2

An efficient approach for cascading out-of-box services is disclosed. The inventive system has a packet router, with out-of-box interfaces, and out-of-box servers, the latter being connected to the interfaces and implementing the out-of-box services. The interfaces and the serves are configured in a virtual local area network (VLAN), as identified by a VLAN identifier (ID), which performs a specific number of the services and in a specific order on a stream of packets. The packet router, in a single action, routes packets with the VLAN ID to a particular VLAN in order to subject those packets to the number and order of services then associated with that VLAN ID.
US08428051B2

A switchboard device and methods of operation of same are disclosed. Embodiments of the invention may provide a flexible means of interconnecting wideband and narrowband communications interfaces, where wideband communications interfaces may transfer low-band data and high-band data, and narrowband communication interfaces may transfer low-band data. Low-band data may be combined and sent to a narrowband communications interface or a wideband communications interface. High-band data may be combined and sent to a wideband communications interface. The low-band data may represent audio signals below a predetermined frequency, while the high-band data may represent audio signals above the predetermined frequency. The predetermined frequency may be, for example, approximately 4 kHz. The spectral mask of the low-band data may meet the spectral mask of G.712. Methods of operating embodiments of the present invention are included. An additional aspect of the present invention may include machine-readable storage having stored thereon a computer program having a plurality of code sections executable by a machine for causing the machine to perform the foregoing.
US08428050B2

Embodiments of the present invention disclose a radio communication system and a radio access method. In accordance with the embodiments of the present invention, an AP with a PDP forward function unit forwards service traffic accessing an AS to a Packet Radio Service Gateway Support Node, and sends Internet service traffic to the Packet Radio Service Gateway Support Node or directly sends the Internet service data to the Internet via a configured forwarding interface according to the service property of the service traffic. Embodiments of the present invention further disclose an Access Point and a gateway. Therefore, the load of network elements of a mobile network is reduced; meanwhile, the control and the management of the high increment value services by operators can be guaranteed. The investment of the CS network can be protected by the gateway as a concentrator of Access Points and a forwarding node of CS services in the embodiments of the present invention.
US08428048B2

This disclosure describes a number of techniques for processing multimedia data that can improve multi-program “picture-in-picture” viewing, particularly in a wireless mobile apparatus setting. In one example, a method includes receiving multiple channels of the multimedia data, decoding frames associated with two or more of the channels, presenting first frames of a first channel at a first frame rate, and presenting second frames of a second channel at a second frame rate while presenting the first frames, wherein the second frame rate is lower than the first frame rate. In another example, method includes receiving multiple channels of the multimedia data, receiving channel switch frames (CSFs) associated with the multiple channels, and simultaneously presenting the CSFs associated with two or more of the multiple channels to a user.
US08428045B2

A system recovers a local media clock from a master media clock based on time-stamped packets received from a transmitter. The packets may include audio, video, or a combination of both, sampled at a rate determined by the master media clock at the transmitter. Timestamps in the packets may be based on values of a remote real-time counter at the transmitter that is synchronized with a local real-time counter at a receiver. The local media clock may be syntonized with the master media clock through the clock periods. The clocks may be synchronized by syntonizing the clocks and adjusting the phase of the local media clocks based on timestamps and a real-time counter.
US08428044B2

According to an aspect of the invention, there is provided a mobile apparatus including: a first communication module configured to communicate with a first base station of a first mobile communications network through a first radio access method; a second communication module configured to communicate with a second base station of a second mobile communications network through a second radio access method, the second communication module configured to provide a circuit switching service; a memory; and a control module configured to control the memory to store information about the second mobile communications network when the first communication module carries out a waiting processing and the second communication module carries out a synchronization processing.
US08428042B1

Efficient uplink feedback mechanisms from subscriber stations to a base station involved in a multicast/broadcast service (MBS) to report channel conditions at the subscriber stations to the base stations in order to select a suitable burst profile in transmitting MBS data by the base station in OFDM and OFDMA wireless communication systems.
US08428040B2

A radio communication apparatus capable of alleviating a burden in setting a transmission format and suppressing increases in the scale of the apparatus. In this apparatus, space multiplexing adaptability detection section (108) detects space multiplexing transmission adaptability for divided bands (DB-1 to DB-Nd) obtained by dividing a communication band to which Ns subcarrier signals belong in multicarrier transmission and to which a plurality of subcarrier signals belong, and outputs the detection results (#1 to #Nd). Transmission format setting section (110) sets a transmission format when carrying out radio transmission based on the detection results (#1 to #Nd) from space multiplexing adaptability detection section (108).
US08428038B1

Wireless communication devices include a software-defined radio coupled to processing circuitry. The system controller is configured to execute computer programming code. Storage media is coupled to the system controller and includes computer programming code configured to cause the system controller to configure and reconfigure the software-defined radio to operate on each of a plurality of communication networks according to a selected sequence. Methods for communicating with a wireless device and methods of wireless network-hopping are also disclosed.
US08428034B2

Alignment-enabled secondary nodes of a DAMA network monitor the alignment of for-transmission data as it is received, and actively align the data frames into encoded blocks such that the number of blocks occupied by encoded data resulting from an unencoded datastream of a particular length is predictable rather than variable. In some embodiments, the network is an Ethernet passive optical network and the alignment includes aligning a XGMII word having a start control code to a first position in a 72 bit word input to a 66B/66B encoder, thereby encoding a start-of-frame (/S/) code to a first byte of an encoded first Ethernet 66b block.
US08428030B2

According to one general aspect, a method may include collecting at least one Mobile Station (MS) Medium Access Control (MAC) Packet Data Units (PDUs), associated with at least one Mobile Station. In various embodiments, the method may also include generating at least one MS station identifier (STID) sub-header (MSID-SH), indicating for each MS MAC PDU (MPDU) a MS STID that is associated the respective MPDU. In some embodiments, the method may include packing the MSID-SH and the at least one of MPDU into a single Relay MAC PDU (RPDU). In various embodiments, the method may also include wirelessly transmitting the RPDU.
US08428029B2

A mobile telecommunications network includes a core network and a plurality of eNode Bs. A mobile terminal communicates with the core network via one of the eNode Bs. In an embodiment, when the mobile terminal is in a connected state and there is a pause in data transfer, during which the mobile terminal is handed over from one eNode B to another eNode B, the first eNode B informs the new eNode B of the pause in data transmission so that an optimal length of the pause in data transmission can be maintained before the idle state is entered. In another embodiment, an element of the telecommunications network stores a history of movement of the mobile terminal and passes this to a new eNode B. In another embodiment, when handover occurs, the first eNode B provides the new eNode B with radio quality information relating to the mobile terminal.
US08428027B2

A method for handling an uplink grant received on a physical downlink control channel (PDCCH) in a user equipment (UE) of a wireless communication system is disclosed. The method includes steps of setting a Temporary Cell Radio Network Temporary Identifier (Temporary C-RNTI) of the UE to a value assigned in a Random Access Response message, monitoring a contention resolution message, receiving an uplink grant on PDCCH addressed to the Temporary C-RNTI, and not using the uplink grant to transmit data if the uplink grant corresponds to a Hybrid Automatic Repeat Request (HARQ) Process different from an HARQ Process used for transmission of a MediumAccess Control (MAC) Protocol Data Unit (PDU) in a Message 3 buffer.
US08428024B2

A method implemented in a network element functioning as a home agent (HA) for a mobile node (MN) communicating with a corresponding node (CN) using Mobile Internet Protocol version 6 (MIPv6), the method including selecting by the HA a virtual home agent (VHA) to provide home agent services to the MN with a better quality of service than the HA based on pre-defined policies, sending a flow switch request (FSR) message to the selected VHA, the FSR message including transmission control protocol (TCP) parameters and the FSR message including a care-of address for the MN and an address of the CN, the FSR message to initiate a flow redirection at the VHA using multi-path TCP exchange, and receiving a flow switch acknowledgement (FSA) message from the VHA indicating that the VHA is receiving data packets from the CN and tunneling the data packets to the MN at the care-of address.
US08428015B2

Methods and apparatuses for allocating permanent dedicated preambles for connection with a femtocell. Various embodiments include selecting one or more mobile communication devices to be a main device, assigning the permanent dedicated preambles to each of the one or more main devices, transmitting the assigned permanent dedicated preambles to the one or more main devices, storing a relation of the assigned permanent dedicated preambles in a memory of the one or more main devices, and explicitly releasing one or more of the assigned permanent dedicated preambles when a release condition is met.
US08428013B2

A method of performing random access in a wireless communication system is disclosed. The method of performing random access in a user equipment of a wireless communication system which uses multiple carriers includes transmitting a preamble for random access to a network, receiving a random access response message from the network in response to the preamble, transmitting a connection setup request message to the network, the connection setup request message requesting connection establishment with the network, and receiving a first message from the network, the first message including connection setup information and contention resolution information in a random access procedure. If a user equipment identifier of the user equipment is included in the message, the user equipment determines that it has successfully performed random access and performs a next procedure in accordance with the connection setup information. If the user equipment identifier of the user equipment is not included in the message, the user equipment determines that it has failed in random access and transmits a random access preamble to the network again after the lapse of a predetermined time period.
US08428003B1

A method is provided for the automatic discovery and updating of gateway peers within a WiMAX Access Service Network in order to control R4 intra-ASN mobility. In a preferred embodiment, When a WiMAX Access Service Network Gateway is added to the network, it propagates an AUTO-DISCOVER message using the Open Shortest Path First protocol's opaque Link State Advertisement. The received messages are used to establish connections to the sending peer based on data packaged in the Link State Advertisement. Once a connection has been established, UPDATE and CONFIRM messages are used by Access Service Network Gateways to exchange WiMAX R4 routing information. The message sequence number is used to correspond UPDATE and CONFIRM messages. The OSPF-based keep-alive mechanism is used to determine whether internal peers are reachable.
US08427995B2

Aspects of reducing an occurrence of false grants for a multicast session within a wireless communications network are disclosed. For example, an access network receives an announce message to be transmitted to a plurality of access terminals, the received announce message configured to announce a given multicast session. The access network determines whether sufficient resources are available to support the given multicast session, The access network configures the received announce message to convey whether sufficient resources are available to support the given multicast session based on the determining step, and transmits the configured announce message to the plurality of access terminals. A given access terminal receives the announce message, and determines whether the received announce message indicates whether sufficient resources are available to support the given multicast session. The given access terminal sends an announce acknowledgment (ACK) message that indicates an acceptance or rejection of the given multicast session.
US08427992B2

The present invention discloses a power-efficient backbone-oriented wireless sensor network, a method for constructing the same and a method for repairing the same, wherein energy-rich nodes are used to form backbones linking to a server, and wherein regular nodes having limited energy storage link to the backbones. When one energy-rich node malfunctions, the energy-rich node, which is posterior to the malfunctioning energy-rich node, searches for and links to a linkable neighboring energy-rich node on the backbone. If there is none linkable neighboring energy-rich node, the regular nodes are used to form a temporary tunnel until the malfunctioning energy-rich node has been repaired. The present invention can relieve the influence of hot spots, increase the robustness of the wireless sensor network, and prolong the service life of the wireless sensor network.
US08427984B2

A client terminal, such as a customer premises equipment (CPE), for receiving a communication signal in a plurality of reception configurations. The client terminal comprises an antenna unit having a plurality of reception configurations for receiving communication signal having a plurality of frames, each the frame having a predefined frame segment, a receiver, a switching module configured for switching between operational and testing receptions of the communication signal respectively by the receiver via the antenna unit in operational and testing configurations, and a timing circuit configured for timing the switching during the operational reception to allow the receiver to receive the testing reception when the predefined frame segment is received via the antenna unit in operational configuration.
US08427983B2

Techniques are described for permitting uplink feedback for downlink transmission over downlink-only RF carriers to occur using uplink control channels belonging to another fully-configured RF carrier herein known as a primary carrier. Uplink feedback channels can be allocated for the downlink-only RF carriers in the uplink control regions of a fully-configured RF carrier immediately following the uplink control channels for the primary carrier are allocated. The uplink feedback channels for downlink-only RF carriers can be allocated based on global or local index number of each downlink-only RF carrier in sequential order based on ascending or descending sorting of the index numbers.
US08427979B1

A method and system for dynamic information exchange on mesh network devices. Mobile location aware mesh network devices automatically exchange information with other mobile location aware devices that are located at a pre-determined distance of each other at a desired physical location. A server network device compares electronic profiles that include stated interests of the mobile location aware devices. The server network device also provides additional information to the mobile location aware mesh network devices based on stated interests in the electronic profiles of the mobile location aware network devices.
US08427978B2

A system and method for information feedback in a wireless communications system with coordinated multiple point (CoMP) transmission are provided. A method for operating in a communications system, the communications system having a first communications controller and a second communications controller participating in a CoMP cooperation set, the method includes selecting a CoMP processing technique, and reporting channel information to the first communications controller. The channel information is based on the preferred CoMP processing technique.
US08427976B1

A first base station receives an application protocol message from a second base station. The second base station communicates employing at least one backward compatible carrier and at least one non-backward compatible carrier. The application protocol message comprises a identifier of the second base station, cell identifiers, and information identifying a carrier type. The base station operates a wireless device handover based, at least in part, on information in the second application protocol message.
US08427959B2

In one embodiment, a method for routing data flow during ECMP routing between two network nodes is provided. The method may comprise determining a bandwidth requirement of a data flow during ECMP routing, the data flow to be sent between at least two network nodes, the at least two network nodes communicating via a plurality of data paths. The method may further comprise determining the available bandwidth on each of the plurality of data paths and selecting the data path having sufficient bandwidth to accommodate the bandwidth of the data flow.
US08427951B2

Dropped packets are recovered in a link layer of a Data Center Ethernet (DCE) network. Data packets for transmission are stored in a replay buffer. Each data packet includes a header having a field including data indicating that the data packet is formatted for reliable recovery at the link layer. The data packets are transmitted to a receiver across a link layer in the DCE network. The receiver determines whether a data packet has been dropped. If a data packet has not been dropped, an acknowledgement signal is sent to the transmitter in another data packet across the link layer, indicating that the data packet has been received. If a data packet has been dropped, a non-acknowledgement signal is sent to the transmitter in the other data packet across the link layer, indicating that the data packet has been dropped. In response to receipt of the non-acknowledgement signal or no receipt of an acknowledgement signal after the timeout period, the dropped data packet is retrieved from the replay buffer and is resent to the receiver across the link layer.
US08427950B2

Disclosed are a method, system, and computer program product for identifying one or more common factors or causes which explain the one or more network threshold violations. In one embodiment, the method or the system identifies one or more network components within a network and then identifies which of the one or more network components is overloaded. The method or the system then identifies one or more simple factors for the identified network components where the one or more simple factors constitute one or more causes for overloaded network activity. The method or the system then determines a scaled composite weight for a simple factor to determine whether the scaled composite weight exceeds a second threshold. If certain simple factors are determined to exceed the second threshold, such simple factors are added to a list of common factors which are in turn stored in a tangible computer accessible medium.
US08427943B2

In one embodiment, a network device having a plurality of network interfaces maintains a database tracking multicast memberships associated with the network interfaces. The network device then uses the database for load balancing received multicast traffic over the network interfaces.
US08427942B2

A method for connecting a mobile client to a wireless network includes periodically triggering an access point scanning process so as to monitor an access point density of a wireless network. A frequency of the triggering is adjusted in response to a change in the access point density.
US08427941B2

Disclosed is a redundant storage virtualization subsystem (SVS) having branching functionality. The SVS comprises a first and a second storage virtualization controller (SVC) and a physical storage device (PSD) array. A first and a second data path are provided between the first SVC and the PSD array passing through a first and a second signal integrity enhancing device (SIED), respectively, and configured as a first pair of redundant data paths. A third and a fourth data path are provided between the second SVC and the PSD array passing through the second and the first SIED, respectively, and configured as a second pair of redundant data paths. In view of the PSD array, the first and fourth data paths form a third redundant data path pair for a PSD, and the third and second data paths form a fourth redundant data path pair for a PSD.
US08427932B2

Efficient recording and reading are achieved in an optical recording medium including servo layers and recording and reading layers. The optical recording medium includes: a first servo layer having a projection and a depression for tracking control that are formed in a first spiral direction; a second servo layer having a projection and a depression for tracking control that are formed in a second spiral direction opposite to the first spiral direction; and a plurality of recording and reading layers having a flat structure with no projection and depression for tracking control. Information is recorded on each of the plurality of recording and reading layers while tracking control is performed using the first servo layer or the second servo layer.
US08427931B2

A recording apparatus for use with a reproduction-only optical information storage medium, including: a recording unit which records data on the reproduction-only optical information storage medium; and a controller which controls the recording unit to form, on the reproduction-only optical storage medium, a plurality of areas and at least one transition area. Each transition area is located between two adjacent areas. The transition area allows data to be smoothly reproduced from the reproduction-only optical information storage medium at a low error generation rate. Also, since the optical information storage medium provides standards for the transition area, it is compatible with existing optical information storage media.
US08427925B2

A near field transducer includes gold and at least one dopant. The dopant can include at least one of: Cu, Rh, Ru, Ag, Ta, Cr, Al, Zr, V, Pd, Ir, Co, W, Ti, Mg, Fe, or Mo. The dopant concentration may be in a range from 0.5% and 30%. The dopant can be a nanoparticle oxide of V, Zr, Mg, Ca, Al, Ti, Si, Ce, Y, Ta, W, or Th, or a nitride of Ta, Al, Ti, Si, In, Fe, Zr, Cu, W or B.
US08427924B2

An optical-pickup apparatus includes: a three-wavelength-laser diode including first-, second-, and third-laser elements to emit first-, second-, and third laser beams having first, second, and third wavelengths, respectively, the three laser elements housed in the same case; an objective lens to focus the three laser beams onto first- to third-optical-disc-signal-recording layers, respectively; a first photodetector to be irradiated with first-return light reflected from the first-optical-disc-signal-recording layer, a second photodetector to be irradiated with second- and third-return lights respectively reflected from the second- and third-optical-disc-signal-recording layers; a polarizing-beam splitter to reflect the three laser beams toward the lens, and allow the three return lights having passed through the lens to pass therethrough; a semitransparent mirror on which the three return lights having passed through the polarizing-beam splitter are incident, and which guide the first-return light toward the first photodetector and the second- and third-return lights toward the second photodetector.
US08427921B2

In the present invention, to improve CD read/write characteristics having poor image height characteristics, a third light emitting source emitting a third laser beam for CD is disposed on an optical axis of an objective lens. Thereby, the third laser beam emitted from the third light emitting source travels along the optical axis of the objective lens, thus generating no coma aberration in the third laser beam. Furthermore, in the present invention, a second light emitting source emitting a second laser beam for DVD and a first light emitting source emitting a first laser beam for BD are disposed across the third light emitting source. Thereby the phase propagation directions of coma aberrations in the first and second laser beams coincide with each other. Adjustment of the coma aberration in one of the laser beams enables the coma aberration in the other laser beam to be adjusted.
US08427902B2

A method and device for monitoring a subsoil zone, wherein a plurality of receivers are arranged on a surface of the soil or near said surface, straight above a geological zone to be monitored, comprising the following steps: generating a set of reference seismic data; recording seismic data by means of said receivers; correlating the seismic data recorded with the reference seismic data; comparing each trace of the correlated data, with correlated traces located in a vicinity of said trace, in order to evaluate a similarity of each correlated trace with the adjacent correlated traces; and, detecting a microseismic event occurring in the subsoil zone by analysing said similarity. The method and device enables real-time monitoring.
US08427901B2

A method for seismic exploration of subsurface rock formations includes actuating an impulsive seismic energy source proximate the rock formations. A non-impulsive seismic energy source is actuated. A near field waveform of each of the impulsive and non-impulsive seismic energy sources is detected. A far field waveform of the combined output of the impulsive and non-impulsive seismic energy sources is determined from the near field waveforms. An impulse response of the subsurface rock formations is determined by deconvolving the far field waveform with detected seismic signals.
US08427899B2

A clock signal having a clock pulse width duration is received. A delay time is received. A first relationship and a second relationship between the clock pulse width duration and the delay time are determined. A new clock is generated that has a first new clock pulse width duration determined by the first relationship and the delay time and a second new clock pulse width duration determined by the second relationship and the clock pulse width duration. Switching between the first new clock pulse width duration and the second new clock pulse width duration is automatic based on the first relationship and the second relationship.
US08427896B1

A dynamic wordline assist circuit for improving performance of an SRAM. An SRAM is disclosed that includes a plurality of memory cells, wherein each memory cell is coupled to a wordline and a pair of bitlines; and a wordline assist circuit coupled to the wordline, wherein the wordline assist circuit includes a first input for activating the wordline assist circuit during a read or write cycle and includes a second input for deactivating the wordline assist circuit during the read or write cycle after a delay.
US08427895B2

A memory with extra digit lines in full size end arrays with an open digit architecture, which can use the extra digit lines to form repair cells. In one example, folded digit sense amplifiers are connected to an end array with an open digit architecture such that each sense amplifier corresponds to a group of four digit lines. Two digit lines of the group connect to two open digit sense amplifiers and the other two digit lines connect to the corresponding folded digit sense amplifier. A repair method can be performed on memories including the end arrays with folded digit sense amplifiers. A row in a core array including a replaceable IO is activated and a row in an end array is activated. The repair cells in the end array can be sensed by the folded digit sense amplifiers to generate a replacement IO, which is selected rather than the replaceable IO.
US08427894B2

A method and a dynamic Static Random Access Memory (SRAM) circuit for implementing single bit redundancy with any bit decode, and a design structure on which the subject circuit resides are provided. The SRAM circuit includes a plurality of bitline columns and a pair of redundancy columns respectively coupled to a respective merged bit column select and redundancy steering multiplexer. Each merged bit column select and redundancy steering multiplexer receives a respective select signal input. A select signal generation circuit receives a redundancy steering signal and a respective one-hot bit select signal, generating the respective select signal input.
US08427888B2

A representative circuit device includes a local control circuit having a level shifter, wherein in response to receipt of a first address signal the level shifter shifts the first address signal from a first voltage level to a second voltage level, providing a level shifted first address signal; and a word-line driver having at least one input for receiving a plurality of address signals, wherein the at least one input includes a first input that is coupled to the local control circuit to receive the level shifted first address signal, and an output that is electrically coupled to a word line of a memory cell array.
US08427887B2

Methods, devices, and systems are provided for a power generator system. The power generator system may include a control device configured to output a first reference voltage and a second reference voltage that define a dead band range. The control device may be configured to independently adjust the first reference voltage and the second reference voltage. The power generator system may also include a power generator operably coupled to the control device, and the power generator may be configured to receive the first reference voltage and the second reference voltage and to output a voltage that is greater than or substantially equal to the first reference voltage and less than or substantially equal to the second reference voltage.
US08427884B2

A circuit for counting in an N-bit string a number of bits M, having a first binary value includes N latch circuits in a daisy chain where each latch circuit has a tag bit that controls each to be either in a no-pass or pass state. Initially the tag bits are set according to the bits of the N-bit string where the first binary value corresponds to a no-pass state. A clock signal having a pulse train is run through the daisy chain to “interrogate” any no-pass latch circuits. It races right through any pass latch circuit. However, for a no-pass latch circuit, a leading pulse while being blocked also resets after a pulse period the tag bit from “no-pass” to “pass” state to allow subsequent pulses to pass. After all no-pass latch circuits have been reset, M is given by the number of missing pulses from the pulse train.
US08427882B2

A voltage signal multiplexer includes a control and bias stage to generate at least one control and bias signal as a function of first and second selection signals and first and second input voltage signals. The multiplexer further comprises a switching stage configured to receive the at least one first control and bias signal and to generate therefrom, on an output terminal, an output signal having the first input voltage signal in response to the first and the second selection signals indicating the selection of the first input voltage signal, and having the second input voltage signal in response to the first and the second selection signals indicating the selection of the second input voltage signal. The switching stage is also configured to place the output terminal in a high-impedance condition in response to the first and the second selection signals indicating the high-impedance condition.
US08427880B2

Embodiments of the present disclosure provide methods, devices, modules, and systems for reading non-volatile memory cells. One method includes programming a number of memory cells coupled in series between a first and second select gate transistor where edge cells are coupled adjacent to the select gate transistors and non-edge cells are coupled between the edge cells. The method includes programming a non-edge cell within a first threshold voltage (Vt) distribution. The method also includes programming an edge cell within a second Vt distribution, wherein the first and second Vt distributions correspond to a same one of a number of data states, and wherein the second Vt distribution is different than the first Vt distribution for at least one of the number of data states.
US08427879B2

There is a method for enabling a SONOS transistor to be used as both a switch and a memory. FN tunneling is carried out through the source or drain of the transistor, so as to further change the state of electrons stored in an upper charge storage layer adjacent to the drain or source, and the variation in gate-induced drain leakage is used to recognize the memory state of the drain and source. A stable threshold voltage of the transistor is always maintained during this operation. The present invention enables one single transistor having dual features of switch and memory, while being provided with a two-bit memory effect, thus providing a higher memory density in comparison with a general transistor.
US08427875B2

An exemplary method for reading data stored in a flash memory includes: controlling the flash memory to perform a plurality of read operations upon each of a plurality of memory cells included in the flash memory; obtaining a plurality of bit sequences read from the memory cells, respectively, wherein the read operations read bits of a predetermined bit order from each of the memory cells as one of the bit sequences by utilizing different control gate voltage settings; and determining readout information of the memory cells according to binary digit distribution characteristics of the bit sequences.
US08427873B2

Shifts in the apparent charge stored on a floating gate (or other charge storing element) of a non-volatile memory cell can occur because of the coupling of an electric field based on the charge stored in adjacent floating gates (or other adjacent charge storing elements). The problem occurs most pronouncedly between sets of adjacent memory cells that have been programmed at different times. To account for this coupling, the read process for a particular memory cell will provide compensation to an adjacent memory cell in order to reduce the coupling effect that the adjacent memory cell has on the particular memory cell.
US08427869B2

A voltage switch circuit includes a positive voltage supply circuit configured to supply a positive voltage to a control node in response to an enable signal, a negative voltage supply circuit configured to supply a negative voltage to the control node in response to a negative voltage enable signal, a control signal generation circuit configured to generate the negative voltage enable signal in response to the enable signal, and a switch circuit configured to transfer an input voltage with a positive potential or a negative potential to an output node in response to a potential of the control node.
US08427864B2

To write information on a memory cell of SPRAM formed of an MOS transistor and a tunnel magnetoresistive element, the memory cell is supplied with a current in a direction opposite to a direction of a current required for writing the information on the memory cell, and then, the memory cell is supplied with a current required for writing. In this manner, even when the same information is sequentially written on the memory cell, since the currents in the two directions are caused to flow in pairs in the tunnel magnetoresistive element of the memory cell each time information is rewritten, deterioration of a film that forms the tunnel magnetoresistive element can be suppressed. Therefore, reliability of the SPRAM can be improved.
US08427860B2

A memory component includes: a first electrode; a memory layer; and a second electrode which are provided in that order, wherein the memory layer includes an ion source layer containing aluminum (Al) together with at least one chalcogen element selected from the group consisting of tellurium (Te), sulfur (S), and selenium (Se), and a resistance variable layer provided between the ion source layer and the first electrode and containing an aluminum oxide and at least one of a transition metal oxide and a transition metal oxynitride having a lower resistance than the aluminum oxide.
US08427850B2

A switching power supply device including: a power transformer including a primary winding, a secondary winding, and an auxiliary winding; a switching element which is connected to the primary winding; an output voltage generation circuit which converts, into a direct-current voltage, a voltage induced in the secondary winding; a secondary-side on-time signal generation circuit which generates a secondary-side on-time signal indicating a secondary-side on-time; and a switching control circuit which controls a switching operation of the switching element so that the second direct-current voltage falls within a specified range, wherein the switching control circuit controls the switching operation so that the direct-current voltage becomes equal to or below an overvoltage specified value when the secondary-side on-time becomes smaller than a set value.
US08427849B2

A start-up circuit includes a switching-device control circuit arranged to receive an input voltage and to provide a switching-device control signal, a switching device arranged to be controlled by the switching-device control signal and to provide a start-up signal, a power-converter control circuit arranged to receive the start-up signal and to provide a power-converter control signal, and a power converter arranged to receive the power-converter control signal and to provide an auxiliary output signal. The switching control circuit is arranged to receive the auxiliary output signal such that, when the auxiliary output signal reaches a predetermined level, the switching-device control circuit stops providing the switching-device control signal.
US08427847B2

A resonant converter (10) comprising a voltage compensation circuit (72, 73) configured to generate a periodic compensation voltage signal (Vslopecompens) at a switching frequency of the converter such that conduction intervals (31, 32) are ended according to first and second voltage levels in combination with the periodic compensation signal.
US08427831B2

An exemplary server system includes a server cabinet defining a space therein; a number of racks arranged in the space, a number of servers mounted in the racks, and a heat dissipation apparatus arranged under the racks. A channel is defined between the racks. Each of the servers includes a drawing fan. The heat dissipation apparatus includes a fan module and two heat exchangers respectively arranged at opposite sides of the fan module. The fan module is aligned with the channel for generating upward a flow of cooling air upward to the channel. During operation of the server system, the cooling air is drawn across the servers by the drawing fans to evacuate heat from the servers and becomes heated air, and the heated air flows down to the heat exchangers where the heat is dissipated from the heated air such that the heated air become the cooling air again.
US08427828B2

A modular electronic component includes a circuit board having disposed thereon one or more electronic components and an enclosure for housing the circuit board. The enclosure comprises a thermally conductive shell having front and back surfaces being substantially parallel to the plane of the circuit board and being disposed on opposite sides of the circuit board from each other, left and right surfaces being substantially perpendicular to the plane of the circuit board and being disposed on opposite sides of the circuit board from each other, and top and bottom surfaces being substantially perpendicular to the left and right surfaces and substantially perpendicular to the top and bottom surfaces and being disposed on opposite sides of the circuit board from each other. A thermal shunt comprised of a thermally conductive material is disposed between the circuit board and the front surface of the enclosure and provides a thermally conductive path between at least some of the electronic components and the front surface of the enclosure, where the front surface of the enclosure conducts heat to at least one of the top, left, and right surfaces of the enclosure.
US08427827B2

A cooling apparatus comprising an impeller, a housing that encloses the impeller, an inlet opening formed between the hosing and impeller and a projection formed on the housing that extends from the housing towards the impeller.
US08427818B2

A collapsible support frame assembly includes a support frame having two parallel sliding rails, a slide holder coupled to and movable along the sliding rails of the support frame, a constant force spring mounted between the support frame and the slide holder, and a locking device having a casing affixed to the support frame and a stop member pivotally mounted in an accommodation chamber inside the casing. When the support frame is turned from a vertical position to a horizontal position, the stop member is forced by the gravity thereof to bias out of the accommodation chamber relative to the casing and to stop against the slide holder, thereby locking the slide holder, facilitating packing and delivery.
US08427810B2

The present invention relates to a capacitor film comprising a biaxially oriented polypropylene wherein a) said polypropylene has a draw ratio in machine direction of at least 4.0 and a draw ratio in transverse direction of at least 4.0, and b) said polypropylene has an electrical breakdown strength EB63% according to IEC 60243-part 1 (1988) of at least 300 kV/mm at a draw ratio in machine direction and in transverse direction of 4.0.
US08427805B2

An electromagnetic system consists of an electric circuit comprising two solenoids wired in series, one mounted either side and proximate to a toroid. Voltage is applied across the toroid and the solenoids in a specific sequence which alters the inductance behavior of the system, resulting in an inductance gain and no mutual inductance between the toroid and the two solenoids.
US08427804B2

A power amplifier for driving a load connected to an output terminal having an output transistor connected in parallel with a corresponding current detection path between the output terminal and a power supply. The detection path includes a switching device and a resistor connected in series, the switching device is turned on only during an on-state period of the corresponding output transistor, and the presence or absence of over-current generation is detected at the output transistors on the basis of a sensing signal obtained from a point connecting the switching device and the resistor. When over-current is detected, the operation of the output transistors is stopped to protect the amplifier.
US08427802B2

An overvoltage protection circuit includes a PMOS transistor Q1 that is disposed between an input circuit 21, from which an input voltage VIN is supplied, and a system 22 and functions as a switch. A comparator 110 compares the input voltage VIN with a predetermined reference voltage to determine the occurrence of an overvoltage. Further, the comparator 110 outputs a High level as an operation signal when no overvoltage is detected. A soft switching control circuit 130 starts up by using the High level output from the comparator 110 as an enable signal, and gradually turns on the PMOS transistor Q1. A sudden change of the load exerted on the circuit on the input side is suppressed by the soft start function.
US08427794B2

A multi-pole circuit breaker having the same number of sensors and controllers as poles. One pole is monitored by a first sensor and a first controller, which are disposed on a first circuit board. Another pole is monitored by a second sensor and a second controller, which are disposed on a second circuit board that is cable-connected to the first circuit board. A ground-fault sensor monitors the sum of current flowing through the line conductors and a neutral conductor, and the output of the ground-fault sensor is provided to one or both of the controllers. Each controller is operable to detect arc faults on the respective line that it is monitoring, and at least one is operable to detect ground faults. A push-to-test algorithm is executed in relay fashion, with one controller executing the test before passing the result of the test onto the next controller, which in turns executes the test.
US08427793B2

A switching power supply includes: a first switch provided between a positive terminal of a DC power supply and a positive terminal of a load; a second switch connected in parallel with the first switch; a first capacitor provided between the second switch and a node of the first switch on a DC power supply side; a first inductor provided between the first capacitor and the positive terminal of the DC power supply; and a control circuit that turns off the second switch after the first switch is turned off and when or before a voltage across the first capacitor becomes zero.
US08427789B2

The present invention provides a magnetic head suspension, wherein a supporting portion such as an arm or base plate includes a pair of supporting pieces extending from its opposite sides in the widthwise direction to a tip-end side of the suspension, and a concave portion which is defined by the pair of supporting pieces and is opened toward the tip-end side of the suspension, there is provided an elastically-deformable elastic plate which is connected to the pair of supporting pieces at a first end and a second end in the widthwise direction of the magnetic head suspension, the member forming the load beam portion is connected to the elastic plate, and the elastic plate forms the load bending portion.
US08427773B2

An object is to provide a magnetic recording method that demonstrates an additional high assistance effect to magnetic recording by applying an alternate current magnetic field in the in-plane direction to a magnetic recording medium having a large coercive force, and a method of the present invention for magnetic recording using a magnetic recording head to a recording layer of a magnetic recording medium arranged to oppose the magnetic recording head, the magnetic recording head including a main pole, an auxiliary pole, a main coil for generating a perpendicular recording magnetic field to the main pole, and either a sub-coil for generating an in-plane alternate current magnetic field of a microwave band to the main pole or a microwave radiator that is arranged in vicinity of the main pole and that radiates microwaves, the method including: a step for modulating an amplitude of the in-plane alternate current magnetic field by modulating an amplitude of microwave alternating current that is applied to either the sub-coil or the microwave radiator using a modulation signal wave so that a ratio (fc/fm) of a carrier frequency (fc) to a modulation frequency (mf) is from 10 to 40; and a step for performing magnetic recording to the recording layer of the magnetic recording medium by applying the perpendicular recording magnetic field while applying the in-plane alternate current magnetic field with the modulated amplitude to the magnetic recording medium.
US08427760B2

An image capturing optical system includes, in order from an object side to an image side: the first lens element with positive refractive power having a convex object-side surface, the second lens element with positive refractive power having a concave object-side surface and a convex image-side surface, the third lens element with positive refractive power having a concave object-side surface and a convex image-side surface, wherein the object-side surface and the image-side surface of the third lens element are aspheric. By such arrangement, the total track length and the photosensitivity of the image capturing optical system can be effectively reduced while retaining high image quality. The image capturing optical system can also be applied to an infrared optical system.
US08427759B2

An imaging lens includes a first lens having positive curvature radii on both an object side and an image side, a second lens having a concave shape on both sides, and a third lens having positive curvature radii on both the object side and the image side. The first to third lenses are arranged in this order from the object side toward the image side. When a whole lens system has a focal length f, the first lens has a focal length f1, the second lens has a focal length f2, and the third lens has a focal length f3, the following conditional expressions are satisfied: f1<|f2| f1<|f3| 0.5
US08427757B2

An image pickup apparatus satisfying certain conditional expressions comprises a zoom lens and an image pickup element. The zoom lens consists of, in order from the object side, a first lens unit having a positive refractive power in which a reflecting surface that deflects the optical path is provided, a second lens unit, comprising a plurality of negative lenses, having a negative refractive power, a rear lens unit, comprising a third lens unit and a fourth lens unit, having a positive refractive power, and an aperture stop between the second and fourth lens units. During zooming from the wide angle end to the telephoto end, the first lens unit is fixed, the second lens unit moves in such a way as to be located closer to the image side at the telephoto end than at the wide angle end, and the distances between the lens units change.
US08427754B2

The invention relates to an active matrix with data driver circuit and selection driver circuit, where the active matrix is electrically connected with the driver circuits and where it comprises electrowetting cells (EW cells) arranged in rows and columns. An EW cell comprises at least two electrodes, which are connected through at least one transistor with data lines and row lines of the driver circuits. The electrodes which are provided for controlling the EW cell are connected with the same data line and with two different control lines, where the selection driver circuit simultaneously activates the transistors which are connected with the individual selection lines by control signals and where it connects the electrodes of the respective EW cell locally so to achieve a medium voltage value.
US08427752B2

An illumination apparatus includes a light source and a collimator optical system converting light emitted from the light source to approximately-parallel light. The collimator optical system includes, in an order of proximity to the light source, a first lens having a positive power and including an approximately-flat surface and an aspheric surface, and a second lens having a positive power.
US08427745B2

A telescope includes: a concave mirror reflecting light from an object; an image pickup element receiving light from the mirror; a compensation optical system for guiding light from the mirror to the image pickup element; a lens barrel integrally holding the image pickup element and the compensation optical system; and a drive mechanism for driving the lens barrel to change the angle of the optical axis of the compensation optical system with respect to the optical axis of the concave mirror.
US08427743B2

A microscope having a night vision apparatus, which apparatus can be impinged upon by beam paths proceeding from a specimen or object to be observed.
US08427725B2

The present invention relates to a light modulating device, comprising a SLM and a pixelated optical element, in which a group of at least two adjacent pixels of the SLM in combination with a corresponding group of pixels in the pixelated optical element form a macropixel, the pixelated optical element being of a type such that its pixels comprise a fixed content, each macropixel being used to represent a numerical value which is manifested physically by the states of the pixels of the SLM and the content of the pixels of the pixelated optical element which form the macropixel.
US08427724B2

An image forming apparatus includes an image forming unit that forms an image using an electrophotographic process; a color measuring unit that measures a color of the image; a measured-value acquiring unit that acquires a measured value that is measured by the color measuring unit; and a set-value deciding unit that decides a set value related to formation of the image based on a difference between the measured value and a preset target value, wherein the set-value deciding unit determines the set value so that the image approaches a reference value in a period from a current state of the image to desired state of the image while optimizing a constraint evaluation function related to a constraint condition for the formation of the image by using an estimation equation for approximating time-series variation in a state of the image.
US08427722B2

A method for determining a blended color transform for use in producing printed colors on a color printer having at least four device color channels, comprising: forming first and second color transforms, wherein the first color transform produces printed colors that have a reduced sensitivity to color printer process variations in at least a first region of color space that includes a near-neutral color region, and wherein the second color transform produces printed colors that have a reduced image noise visibility in at least a second region of color space; defining a blending function which computes weighting values for the first and second color transforms as a function of input color values; and using a processor to determine the blended color transform by blending the first color transform and the second color transform, responsive to the blending function.
US08427708B2

When an image is formed, a document including an original image and an original additional image is read to provide document image data, the additional image being visualized when the document is reproduced. Original image data in correspondence to the original image is extracted from the document image data, and output image data is created based on the extracted original image data. Then, printing is performed based on the created output image data.
US08427707B2

A reference area is extracted from image data, and from the pixels included in the reference area, extracted are a plurality of small sections in which pixels are arranged so as to be symmetrical with respect to the center pixel of the reference area in the horizontal and vertical directions, and point-symmetrical with respect to the center pixel, while overlap of pixels is allowed between each of the small sections. Determination is made as to whether or not image data included in the reference area matches a predetermined pattern. A characteristic of the image data in the reference area is determined based on a number of characteristics of the plurality of small sections. Based on the results of the determination, it is judged whether or not to perform smoothing on the center pixel of the reference area. Then, the smoothing is performed on the judged center pixel.
US08427692B2

A self-diagnosis function is used to acquire information showing the state of deterioration of a hard disk device, and when the hard disk device is deteriorated, a job is executed under the control which is different from that in the case where the hard disk device is not deteriorated. For example, copying job is executed in the HDD use mode in the case of non-deterioration, and copying job is executed in the HDD non-use mode (an image memory is used) in the case of deterioration. Further, the number of retrials by an alternative sector in the case of occurrence of errors of writing in a hard disk device in the course of job execution is changed according to the state of the deterioration.
US08427681B2

A computer readable storage medium storing computer readable instructions to control a computer connected with a communication device is provided. The computer readable instructions control the computer to execute steps of storing correspondence information, which defines correspondence between types of a plurality of functions in the communication device and contents of status information indicating possible conditions of the communication device, detecting a type of a function activated in the communication device amongst the plurality of functions, receiving status information transmitted from the communication device, extracting content of the status information corresponding to the detected type of the function with reference to the stored correspondence information, rearranging a display order to have the extracted content of the status information in a higher position within the contents of the received status information, and displaying the received contents of the status information in the rearranged order in a display unit.
US08427677B2

An image processing device includes a date and time information management unit for managing date and time information, a device management unit for determining, whether or not image processing is restricted based on the date and time information and based on the time of image processing, an image processing restriction unit for determining an image processing restriction when the device management unit determines that image processing is restricted, and an image processing unit for performing image processing in accordance with the image processing restriction. The restriction is a blocking of image processing or a limitation on image processing.
US08427659B2

There is provided an information processing apparatus including: a memory storing a first descriptor indicating that the information processing apparatus operates as a storage device, a second descriptor indicating that the information processing apparatus operates as another device different from the storage device, and a driver which is used by the host apparatus in order to control the information processing apparatus as the other device in accordance with a given standard; a communication unit which, at the start of communication with the host apparatus, transmits the first descriptor to the host apparatus and communicates with the host apparatus in such a manner that the host apparatus is capable of accessing the driver; and a changing unit for changing the descriptor that the communication unit transmits to the host apparatus to the second descriptor after the driver has been accessed from the host apparatus.
US08427641B2

A particle detection and classification system is disclosed. The system determines the size of measured particles by measuring light scattered by the particles. The system simultaneously determines whether measured particles are biological or non-biological by measuring fluorescent light from the particles. The system uses a parabolic reflector, and optionally, a spherical reflector to collect fluorescence light.
US08427619B2

A liquid crystal display unit has: a pair of opposing substrates; an electrode pattern formed on each of the substrates on an opposing surface side; a vertical alignment film formed on each of the substrates and covering the electrode pattern; a liquid crystal layer squeezed between the substrates; and a pair of polarizer plates formed on the substrates on an opposite side to the side of said liquid crystal layer, wherein an edge of the electrode pattern includes a zigzag pattern parallel to one of axis directions of the polarizer plates and a direction perpendicular the axis direction. Optical through can be reduced along an edge portion of a pixel of a vertical alignment LCD.
US08427618B2

Disclosed is a liquid crystal display capable of high quality image and bright display. Gate signal lines are curved at near switching elements of the liquid crystal display. A pixel area is defined by the gate signal lines and their intersecting data signal lines. Pixel electrodes and common electrodes are disposed along a longitudinal direction of a pixel. A pixel signal and a common signal line is connected to the pixel electrode and the common electrode respectively. A storage capacitor may be formed in the middle of a longitudinal direction of the pixel, or where generally a texture may arise during display. One half of the pixel may be symmetrical with the other half with respect to the storage capacitor. A common signal line may be parallel with the data signal line and be disposed nearer to the data signal line than a pixel signal line. The pixel may be disposed symmetrically with respect to the data signal line therebetween. The pixel shape may also be repeated in the direction of the gate signal line.
US08427607B2

An array substrate for a transflective liquid crystal display device comprising a common electrode over a third passivation layer substantially all over a substrate, the common electrode having first openings and second openings corresponding to a transmissive area and a reflective area, respectively, wherein the first openings are spaced apart from each other and are parallel to a data line, and the second openings are spaced apart from each other and are slant at a predetermined angle with respect to the data line, wherein first ends of the first openings overlap a second gate line, second ends of the first openings overlap the common line, first ends of the second openings overlap the common line, and second ends of the second openings overlap a first gate line.
US08427605B2

The invention provides an illumination device (1), arranged to provide illumination device light (250). The illumination device (1) comprising a light chamber (100), an electrically variable scattering element (500), and a controller (600). The light chamber (100) contains a light emitting diode (10) (LED) arranged to emit LED light (20); comprises a luminescent material layer (200) arranged remote from the LED (10) and arranged to absorb at least part of the LED light (20) and emit luminescent material emission (220); and comprises an exit face (301), through which one or more of the LED light (20) and the luminescent material emission (220) may escape to the exterior (22) of the light chamber (100) thereby providing illumination device light (250). The electrically variable scattering element (500) is arranged downstream of the luminescent material layer (200) and upstream of the exit face (301). The controller (600) is electrically connected to the electrically variable scattering element (500) and arranged to control the scattering of the electrically variable scattering element (500). Such device may allow the possibility of color tuning and/or correlated color temperature tuning of the illumination device light.
US08427600B2

The present invention employs a configuration described as follows, so as to realize a surface light source apparatus which attain a thinness and a further improved luminance uniformity without suffering a deterioration in luminance. Specifically, space maintaining sections (6) are provided on a substrate (4) onto which light sources (2) are mounted, so as to cause an optical sheet (5) and a light emitting surface made up of outputting surfaces (1c) to be away from each other by a given distance. The space marinating sections 6 are provided so as to protrude from respective gaps each of which occurs between adjacent two of light guides (1) which are juxtaposed so as not to overlap each other.
US08427595B2

To provide a structure suitable for a common connection portion provided in a display panel. A common connection portion provided in an outer region of a pixel portion has a stacked structure of an insulating layer formed using the same layer as a gate insulating layer, an oxide semiconductor layer formed using the same layer as a second oxide semiconductor layer, and a conductive layer (also referred to as a common potential line) formed using the same layer as the conductive layer, in which the conductive layer (also referred to as the common potential line) is connected to a common electrode through an opening in an interlayer insulating layer provided over the first oxide semiconductor layer and an electrode opposite to a pixel electrode is electrically connected to the common electrode through conductive particles.
US08427591B2

A viewing system has a parallax separation device placed in front of a liquid crystal display panel. The liquid display panel can be used to display a composite image that has many display segments, with each segment having two or more elongated image sections of different images. Each image section may occupy one or more columns of color pixels. The parallax separation device has a plurality of parallax separation elements, each aligned with a display segment for separating the different image sections as seen in a viewer's eyes. The parallax separation device has a barrier axis parallel to the longitudinal axis of the elongated image sections. The color sub-pixels in each pixel are arranged along a direction parallel to the barrier axis.
US08427579B2

A frame rate conversion apparatus and method for an Ultra-High Definition (UD) image. The frame rate conversion apparatus may store a previous frame and a current frame of an edge of an input image, divided into N images, and insert an interpolation frame between the current frame and the previous frame. Also, the frame rate conversion apparatus may convert a frame rate of each of the N images.
US08427577B2

A method for converting video data comprises providing video data in a first format, selecting consecutive pixel data corresponding to a line or fraction of a line of an image, and adapting a maximum length of a data packet to accommodate the selected pixel data. The payload section of a data packet exclusively carries pixel data originating from one single line of the source image. The method further comprises calculating a start address for a memory in a receiver beginning at which address the pixel data is to be written. The start address is added to a header section of the data packet in the transmitter. The data packet is transmitted via a network. In the receiver the pixel data is written to the memory beginning at the start address indicated in the header section. Video data is read from the target memory in accordance with a second format.
US08427566B2

A pixel drive circuit including a plurality of pixel circuits, each including a photoelectric converting unit for converting an incident light into an electric charge and accumulating the converted electric charge, the plurality of pixel circuits being arranged in a matrix shape, an address decoder for selecting the pixel circuits to be controlled which are arranged on an identical line, a storage circuit for storing operation information to be executed by the pixel circuits selected by the address decoder, and a control circuit for controlling an operation of the pixel circuits selected by the address decoder in accordance with a storage state of the storage circuit. The control circuit controls a charge discharging operation of discharging an electric charge remaining in the photoelectric converting unit of each of the pixel circuits. The storage circuit holds the storage state until the charge discharging operation is completed.
US08427565B2

A solid-state imaging apparatus includes a reference signal generating circuit for supplying, commonly to the plurality of A/D conversion circuits, at least two reference signals of which signal levels change toward different directions of electric potential, and the A/D conversion circuit includes an amplifier; an input capacitor having one terminal receiving the analog signal and the reference signal supplied from the reference signal generating circuit, and the other terminal connected to one input terminal of the amplifier; a feedback capacitor connected between the one input terminal and an output terminal of the amplifier; a comparator for comparing, with a comparing level, an output from the output terminal of the amplifier; and a connection capacitor having one terminal connected to the output terminal of the amplifier, and the other terminal connected to one input terminal of the comparator.
US08427559B2

The invention concerns image data processing, through noise reduction comprising the following steps: associating a learning zone (ZA) with a reference point (Pref) of the image (IM); for each variable point (PC, PC′) of the learning zone, evaluating a distance (d,d′,) between: values of points in a first window (f1) of the image, centered on the reference point, and values of points in a second window (f2, f2,), of similar format as the format of the first window and centered on the variable point; repeating said distance calculation for all the points of the learning zone as successive variable points and estimating an average value to assign to the reference point, said average being weighted on the basis of the distances evaluated for each variable point.
US08427548B2

An apparatus and method for capturing digital images are provided. The digital capturing apparatus includes an image pickup unit obtaining light field data to change a view of a captured image and refocus the captured image, and a data processor generating a refocusing image using the light field data, wherein the image pickup unit performs optical modulation on light beams to obtain light field data of the modulated light beams so that the light beams are identified when two or more of the light beams overlap, and the data processor demodulates the light field data to obtain light field data of the light beams not subjected to the optical modulation.
US08427541B2

In order to eliminate an unauthorized action trying to find out authentication information, a mobile phone includes a processing execution portion (65) which executes processing corresponding to an operation when the operation is accepted via operation keys, an identification information requesting portion (51) which requests an input of identification information for identification of the operator, an authentication portion (53) which performs authentication of the input identification information, a camera arranged in a position where the operator is included in its image pickup range and outputting image data obtained by picking up an image, an image data acquiring portion (55) which activates the camera to acquire image data when the identification information requesting portion (51) requests an input of identification information, an area extracting portion (57) which extracts an area including an image recognized as a person from the image data, and a mode switching portion (61) which enables execution of the processing by the processing execution portion (65) when a first condition that the authentication by the authentication portion (53) succeeds and a second condition that the area including an image recognized as a person is extracted from the image data by the area extraction portion (57) are both satisfied.
US08427540B2

A disclosed image pickup apparatus includes a first member holding a lens, and a second member holding an image pickup element converting an image formed via the lens into an electric signal, the second member having an approximately rectangular shape and two approximately arc-shaped location cutout portions at respective diagonal corners of the approximately rectangular shape. In the image pickup apparatus, the first and the second members are bonded via an indirect bonding structure portion where the first and second members are bonded via a fixing member with an ultraviolet curable adhesive and a filler bonding structure portion where the first and second members are bonded by supplying a thermosetting adhesive therebetween.
US08427527B2

An autostereoscopic display 101, which provides a depth perception by providing a viewer's left and right eyes (104a, 104b) with two slightly different perspectives of an image to be displayed, is provided for ultrasound guided interventions with a surgical instrument (103). The surgeon watches displayed ultrasound data (102), rendered for at least two views. The plane at which those views (L, R) intersect is adjusted to correspond exactly with the tracked three-dimensional position within a displayed scene of the surgical instrument (103), which position can be extracted from the three-dimensional ultrasound data by means of, for example, 3D object recognition. Thus, the point of reconstruction of the image presented to the viewer can be dynamically adjusted to correspond with the position of the surgical instrument on which the surgeon's eyes are presumed to be focused.
US08427525B2

A sink device transmits a video information message to the source device, the video information message including video format information identifiers for identifying video formats supported by the sink device, which are selected from among a plurality of video format information identifiers for identifying video formats each including a resolution of the video data and a type of the video data, and a three-dimensional transmission method for three-dimensional video data when the type of the video data is the three-dimensional video data including first and second video frame data.
US08427524B2

A stereo image matching system includes an image processing unit for converting input images inputted from a first and a second image acquisition unit into digital signals to output first and second pixel data; and an image matching unit for computing at least two of an upward, a downward, a forward and a backward message of each pixel by using data values of the first and the second pixel data that are located on a same epipolar line to calculate a disparity value of each pixel by using the computed messages corresponding to adjacent pixel(s). The stereo image matching system employs a parallel pipeline VLSI configuration with a time complexity of O(N). Thus, a plurality of image lines are used for matching, so that correct distance image information is obtained regardless of the conditions of the surrounding environment.
US08427522B2

System and method for performing a videoconference. One or more computers are utilized to passively monitor a videoconference call between a plurality of participants at respective participant locations, where the videoconference call is performed using a plurality of videoconferencing endpoints at respective ones of the participant locations, and where the monitoring includes monitoring one or more parameters from each of the videoconferencing endpoints. The videoconference call is actively monitored upon detecting values of the one or more parameters from a first videoconferencing endpoint indicating a lack of call quality, thereby generating active monitor data. The active monitor data is automatically analyzed to determine at least one problem causing lack of call quality, and at least one action is automatically determined and performed to address the at least one problem. The active monitoring may also be invoked manually, e.g., in response to user input.
US08427509B2

A method embeds a message into a document containing a set of glyphs. Individual glyphs in the document, groups of glyphs in the document, or the entire document are represented using a distance field that includes distance values from the shapes of interest. Each symbol of the message is represented as modifications of a subset of the distance values in the distance field. This subset of the distance values in the distance field is modified according to modification to produce a modified glyph in a modified document, wherein the symbol in the message is embedded in the modified glyph.
US08427496B1

A system for compressed data transfer across a graphics bus in a computer system. The system includes a bridge, a system memory coupled to the bridge, and a graphics bus coupled to the bridge. A graphics processor is coupled to the graphics bus. The graphics processor is configured to compress graphics data and transfer compressed graphics data across the graphics bus to the bridge for subsequent storage in the system memory.
US08427472B2

Mapping, localization, and navigation systems for use with a mobile unit are provided that use a sensor model with adjustable parameters. The system includes range sensors configured to collect range data and a data storage system having stored therein an evidence grid representing an environment and a sensor model comprising adjustable parameters representing inaccuracies of the range sensors. A grid engine adjusts the adjustable parameters based on received range data from the range sensors. A navigation module can direct the mobile unit though the environment using the evidence grid, received range data, and adjustable parameters. The grid engine can also locate the mobile unit within the environment by using the adjusted sensor model parameters to compare the received range data against the evidence grid.
US08427468B2

A mobile display device driving apparatus and method which can reduce power consumption are disclosed. The driving apparatus includes a liquid crystal panel a battery, a power saving mode signal generator that detects the remaining power of the battery and generates a power saving mode signal based on the detected power to set a power saving mode of the liquid crystal panel. A controller sets a gain value in response to the power saving mode signal, converts external three-color input data into four-color data based on the set gain value and generates a dimming signal in response to the power saving mode signal. A panel driver displays an image based on the four-color data. An inverter generates a lamp drive voltage based on the dimming signal, and a backlight unit generates light in response to the lamp drive voltage and irradiates the generated light to the liquid crystal panel.
US08427465B2

Provided are a display device which may be capable of eliminating display irregularities due to the difference in the charging rate between lines, while preventing increase in heat generation and power consumption by the device, and a circuit and method for driving the same. In a liquid crystal display device employing both a 2-line dot-inversion drive method and a charge-sharing method, a charge-sharing period (TB) within a horizontal scanning period (2H period) in which the polarity of each data signal is the same as that in one horizontal scanning period previous thereto, is set to be longer than a charge-sharing period (TA) within a horizontal scanning period (1H period) in which the polarity of each data signal is different from that in one horizontal scanning period previous thereto. Thus, a charge period within the 2H period can be shorter than that within the 1H period.
US08427458B2

A scan driving circuit includes a shift register unit and a logic circuit unit. The start of a start pulse of an output signal STp+1 of a p+1'th shift register is situated between the start and end of a start pulse of the output signal STp of a p'th shift register, and one each of a first enable signal through a Q'th enable signal exist in sequence between the start of the start pulse of the output signal STp and the start of the start pulse of the output signal STp+1. The operations of a (p′, q)'th NAND circuit are restricted based on period identifying signals, such that the NAND circuit generates scanning signals based only on a portion of the output signal STP corresponding to the first start pulse, the signal obtained by inverting the output signal STp+1, and the q'th enable signal ENq.
US08427456B2

A flat display device has a circuit configuration in which a division-driving system and an aspect conversion are integrated with each other, and performs driving appropriate to achieve higher resolution even in driving a display unit. The device comprises a memory circuit which includes n unit memories each storing unit data, a display unit of which the horizontal driver is supplied signals read from the memory circuit and of which the regions divided into a plurality of portions in a horizontal direction is division-driven, and a memory control circuit which divides a digital video signal of one line into n, supplies n pieces of the unit data to the n unit memories, selects each direction of write or read addresses of the n unit memories, and outputs the read addresses so that the arrangement order of the unit data for the adjacent regions is set in an inversion horizontal direction.
US08427446B2

A touch panel and a peripheral circuit thereof are provided. Each bonding pad of the peripheral circuit includes a first conductive layer, a first protective layer, a second conductive layer, and a second protective layer sequentially arranged on a substrate from bottom to top. A covered area of the second conductive layer provided by the second protective layer is increased to cover a portion of the second conductive layer located above a junction area between the first protective layer and a terminal part of the first conductive layer, thereby increasing the reliability of the bonding pads.
US08427439B2

Embodiments are disclosed herein related to the avoidance of undesirable optical effects in a liquid crystal display used with a touch-sensitive display input device. For example, one embodiment provides a user interface comprising a body, a light source disposed within the body, and a liquid crystal display configured to create an image displayable on one or more display surfaces coupled to the body. The user interface device further includes a light delivery system positioned optically between the light source and the liquid crystal display to deliver light produced by the light source to the liquid crystal display. The light delivery system comprises a light exit surface spaced from the liquid crystal display to form a gap positioned between the light exit surface of the light delivery system and the liquid crystal display.
US08427438B2

A virtual input device, e.g., a virtual representation of a physical input device, is disclosed. In one aspect, virtual coordinates of the virtual input device correlate to real coordinates on the physical input device. Dimensions of the physical input device are proportional to dimensions of the virtual input device, and interactive objects are presented in the virtual input device.
US08427432B2

A user interface system for controlling size of content displayed on a display screen of a limited display device is provided. The user interface system comprises a first user interface for selecting a first point on the display screen; and a second user interface for performing a resizing operation on content displayed on the display screen using the first point as a center of reference for purpose of performing the resizing operation, wherein the resizing operation is performed in response to user interaction with the first user interface and the second user interface.
US08427430B2

An apparatus for and method of controlling a digital image processing device in order to reduce power consumption by automatically recognizing a state in which power of a display device can be turned off or the display device can operate in a power saving mode, and in that case, turning off the display device or operating the display device in the power saving mode. The apparatus for controlling a digital image processing device includes: a motion sensing unit sensing a motion of the digital image processing device; and a control unit operating the digital image processing device in a power saving mode when it is determined that the digital image processing device moves.
US08427429B2

An active interface control shiftable between deployed and stowed configurations, and including an active material actuator employing a bi-stable mechanism configured to increase the actuator stroke length, and/or presenting intrinsic or external sensing capability, and reconfigurable displays comprising separately shiftable sets of controls.
US08427427B2

Technology is generally described for disabling an automatic rotation function of mobile computing devices. The technology can detect a tilt angle of a display of the computing device in relation to a surface; and if the tilt angle is less than a specified threshold tilt angle, disable a rotation function.
US08427424B2

An interaction management module (IMM) is described for allowing users to engage an interactive surface in a collaborative environment using various input devices, such as keyboard-type devices and mouse-type devices. The IMM displays digital objects on the interactive surface that are associated with the devices in various ways. The digital objects can include input display interfaces, cursors, soft-key input mechanisms, and so on. Further, the IMM provides a mechanism for establishing a frame of reference for governing the placement of each cursor on the interactive surface. Further, the IMM provides a mechanism for allowing users to make a digital copy of a physical article placed on the interactive surface. The IMM also provides a mechanism which duplicates actions taken on the digital copy with respect to the physical article, and vice versa.
US08427412B2

A display device includes a substrate, gate lines, data lines, data signal links, and contact vias. The substrate includes a display region, and a peripheral region surrounding the display region. The gate lines, data lines, data signal links, and contact vias are disposed within the display region of the substrate. The gate lines cross the data lines. Each of the data signal links is disposed between adjacent gate lines. Each of the contact vias is disposed between each of the data signal links and a corresponding data line, such that each of the data signal links is electrically connected with the corresponding data line.
US08427410B2

A display device including a gate driver, a data driver and a plurality of sub-pixels is disclosed. The gate driver sequentially asserts a first scan signal and a second scan signal. The data driver provides a first data signal and a second data signal. When the first scan signal is asserted, the first scan signal and the first data signal respond with a first response signal. When the second scan signal is asserted, the second scan signal and the second data signal respond with a second response signal. The pulse of the first response signal is different from the pulse of the second response signal. A first sub-pixel among the sub-pixels displays a first color according to the first response signal. A second sub-pixel among the sub-pixels displays a second color according to the second response signal, and the first color is different from the second color.
US08427408B2

A method of providing data, an LCD and a driving method are disclosed. An image data voltage is inverted. A charge share voltage between the inverted image data voltages is used as a black data. The image data voltage and the black data voltage are applied in sequence, wherein the charge share voltage between the inverted image data voltages is applied as the black data voltage. Thus, motion blurring may be suppressed and manufacturing cost may be reduced because it is unnecessary to generate the black data voltage separately. Also, the typical driving frequency is used even if the black data voltage is used, to reduce cost.
US08427399B2

A controller to reduced power consumption and/or improve outdoor visibility of an organic light emitting display device, and an organic light emitting display device includes the same. The organic light emitting display device including: a light sensor to generate light sensing signals corresponding to an external light intensity; an image judging unit to generate image judging signals, by judging whether images generated by the data signals are moving images or still images; a signal processor to compare the light sensing signals with preset reference values, to generate selection signals, and to modify image data accordingly; a frame memory to store the image data from the signal processor; and a reset signal driver to reset the frame memory according to the image judging signals and the selection signals.
US08427393B2

The multi-layer display device apparatus has a first display part, a second display part arranged at the rear-side of the first display part, a transforming part arranged between the first and the second display part. The transforming part transforms a linear polarized light in to a non-polarized light. Further, the display device has a storage part which stores a parameter for adjusting the image quality of the image displayed on the first and second display part, and an image adjustment part which adjusts the image quality of the image displayed in the first and second display part based on the parameter stored in the storage part.
US08427387B1

A broadband power splitter and phase shifter having a plurality of transmission lines, a 3 db, zero degree power splitter for splitting a signal, an open quadrifilar spiral for receiving a first signal and reflecting power, a modified, open quadrifilar spiral for receiving a second output after a delay and for reflecting power, and wherein a difference between the reflected power from the open quadrifilar spiral and the modified, open quadrifilar spiral in conjunction with a delay provides a constant phase shift over a broad range of frequencies.
US08427384B2

A communications system including an antenna array and electronics assembly that may be mounted on and in a vehicle. The communication system may generally comprise an external subassembly that is mounted on an exterior surface of the vehicle, and an internal subassembly that is located within the vehicle, the external and internal subassemblies being communicatively coupled to one another. The external subassembly may comprise the antenna array as well as mounting equipment and steering actuators to move the antenna array in azimuth, elevation and polarization (for example, to track a satellite or other signal source). The internal subassembly may comprise most of the electronics associated with the communication system.
US08427383B1

A radio relay comprising: a housing configured to be released from a mobile platform onto a support surface; a radio mounted within the housing, wherein the radio is configured to relay radio frequency (RF) signals and to operate as a node in a telecommunications network; a first antenna mast having a proximal end and a distal end, wherein the proximal end is rotatably coupled to the housing; a first antenna element operatively coupled to the radio and mechanically coupled to the distal end; and an antenna mast rotation mechanism mounted within the housing and the proximal end such that the antenna mast rotation mechanism is configured to upwardly rotate the first antenna mast to a raised position such that the first antenna mast is substantially parallel to the ambient gravity vector.
US08427382B2

To transport electromagnetic energy at high power levels, a coaxial-to-waveguide power combiner/divider comprises a length of single-conductor closed waveguide terminated at one end by a conductive end plate. A plurality N of holes is formed in the end plate. A conductive matching plate is positioned within the waveguide opposite and spaced apart from the conductive end plate and spaced apart from the inner walls of the waveguide. A plurality of coaxial input/output ports each comprise an outer conductor that is electrically and mechanically terminated at the end plate about one hole and an inner conductor that extends through the associated hole into the waveguide and is electrically and mechanically terminated at the underside of the matching plate. The location and geometry of the matching plate and physical arrangement of the N ports are chosen so that the sum of the direct reflection and the N−1 coupled reflection contributions are small.
US08427362B2

A radar apparatus has a transmission array antenna for radiating electromagnetic waves containing a main lobe and a grating lobe in a transmission directivity, a reception array antenna for receiving electromagnetic waves radiated from the transmission array antenna and reflected from a target, and a microcomputer for setting the reception antenna in reception directivities one after another by placing a null point in a grating lobe receiving area of each directivity and placing the null points of the directivities at different positions. The microcomputer produces a reception signal, produced from the received electromagnetic waves containing the main lobe reflected from the target, every change of the reception directivity and detects the target from the average of the reception signals.
US08427352B2

An A/D converter circuit includes first to fourth pulse circulation circuits and first and second counters and configured to provide high conversion accuracy irrespective of a temperature change. The first pulse circulation circuit operates with a difference voltage of a specified voltage and an analog input voltage. The first counter outputs a difference of the number of pulse circulation in the first and the second pulse circulation circuits. The third pulse circulation circuit operates with a difference voltage of the specified voltage and a set voltage. The fourth pulse circulation circuit operates with the set voltage. The second counter outputs a difference of the number of pulse circulation in the third and the fourth pulse circulation circuits. When an output value of the second counter reaches a specified value, an output value of the first counter at that time is outputted as A/D conversion data.
US08427337B2

A planar dipole antenna is described. The antenna may include a ground element, a feed point, a matching element, and first and second radiating elements disposed on a substrate, and a feed point. The ground element may have a substantially rectangular shape and the feed point may be arranged adjacent to the ground element. The matching element may be connected to the feed point and may include a central bar connected to a first and second arm. The first and second arms may be substantially symmetrically disposed on the substrate in respect to the central bar. The first and second radiating elements may have substantially trapezoidal shapes and may be extend from the first and second arms of the matching element, respectively. The first and second radiating elements may be substantially symmetrically disposed on the substrate in respect to the central bar of the matching element.
US08427334B2

A device is provided for early registering of the closing state of a closure element for a compartment opening includes, but is not limited to an inductive proximity sensor, a measuring plate and a movement path guide. By means of the movement path guide the measuring plate is guided parallel to the proximity sensor from a predetermined degree of closing to complete closure of the closure element. In this manner a precise early statement relating to the imminent closure of the closure element can be made, for example in order to activate a locking mechanism.
US08427333B2

A lightning detection system is presented. The lightning detection system includes a plurality of sensing devices configured to generate sensor signals representative of one or more working state parameters of an object. The lightning detection system further includes a lightning signal processing subsystem configured to combine the sensor signals representative of the one or more working state parameters received from the plurality of sensing devices to generate a composite signal, extract noise signals from the composite signal, and compare the extracted noise signals with one or more lightning signal profiles to determine existence of lightning noise signals in the extracted noise signals, wherein the lightning noise signals are induced in the sensor signals in response to a lightning strike on the object.
US08427331B2

A method for testing a power converter having at least one power transistor is disclosed. The method may include receiving a power transistor test request, and resetting a fault flag. The method may also include applying a gate driver signal to each power transistor, receiving a feedback signal from each power transistor, and determining a difference between the gate driver signal and the feedback signal associated with a respective power transistor. The method may further include identifying a fault if the difference exceeds a threshold profile, and setting a fault flag when a fault is identified.
US08427330B2

Techniques are described herein that are capable of using an efficiency indicator for increasing efficiency of a wireless power transfer. A wireless power transfer system includes features that allow the system to be deployed in public spaces such as airports or in commercial establishments such as restaurants or hotels to allow a user to recharge one or more portable electronic devices while away from home. The system may provide an efficiency indicator to a portable electronic device that specifies a recommended position of the portable electronic device. The recommended position may correspond to an efficiency with respect to the wireless power transfer that is greater than an efficiency with respect to the wireless power transfer that corresponds to a position of the portable electronic device. The portable electronic device may generate a sensory signal that indicates the recommended position with reference to the position of the portable electronic device.
US08427323B2

A group monitoring system for dispenser usage compliance is provided. The system is for a predetermined group of interest in a predetermined facility type. A dispenser data collection system is operably connected to a plurality of dispensers and is capable of providing information. The information includes a unique dispenser identifier and a number of dispenser usage events. The information from the data collection system is received and the predetermined group within which each dispenser is associated is determined. The number of dispenser usage events is determined. A benchmark which corresponds to dispenser usage opportunities particular to the predetermined group and particular to the predetermined time period is determined. The dispenser usage compliance index particular to the predetermined group and particular to the predetermined time period is determined by dividing the dispenser usage events for the predetermined group and the predetermined time period by a denominator which equals the benchmark.
US08427322B2

The invention relates to a smartcard, particularly an electronic prepayment card, identification card or similar, with at least one transponder unit, and to a method for producing such a smartcard, wherein the transponder unit has at least one chip and at least one antenna connected to the chip, wherein the antenna is made from a conductor that is arranged on an antenna substrate, wherein the extension of the antenna is limited to a patch of the antenna substrate and the antenna has a plurality of conducting lead with at least two windings separated from each other, which windings are arranged so that their axes are at least partly parallel to an axis of symmetry of the smartcard.
US08427318B2

A solution for tracking the carbon footprint value of an object as the object is manufactured and/or transported. This value may be stored in a tag associated with the object. Thus, the object can track its own carbon footprint, e.g., using the tag. Alternatively, the values are stored in a database with an entry associated with a particular object. The final composite value, e.g., the sum of the intermediate values associated with manufacturing steps, components, transportation steps, and disposal, may be used, e.g., seen, by the consumer or retail store. The store may use such values to arrange objects by footprint value on a shelf or in a store, or for other purposes. Therefore, the disclosure enables manufactures of products to track the carbon footprint for their products as the products are being produced and transported.
US08427316B2

The present disclosure is directed to a system and method for tracking tampered with RFID tags. In some implementations, an RFID tag includes a tearable substrate including at least a portion of an RFID circuit. The portion of the RFID circuit is substantially destroyable in response to at least an attempt to remove the tag from a surface. In addition, the RFID includes an adhesive layer adjacent at least a portion of the tearable substrate and configured to affix the tag to the surface.
US08427310B2

A fault detection system (10) and computer-implemented method for detecting a fault in a cab signal system (100), including: a plurality of sensors (12) in electrical communication with a cab signal display circuit (106), each associated with a respective one of a plurality of lamp circuits (108) and configured to sense or measure: presence or absence of voltage, voltage level, voltage drop, presence or absence of current and/or current level. A monitoring unit (14) is in communication with the plurality of sensors (12) and generates circuit data (16) representative of at least one condition of at least a portion of the cab signal system (100). A computer-implemented method for detecting a cab signal aspect of a train (T) is also disclosed.
US08427300B2

In one embodiment, an apparatus includes a circuit coupled to a line, where the circuit may power a device, and where the power is transmitted to the device over the line as a pulse-width modulated signal. The circuit may set a duty cycle of the pulse-width modulated signal in order to transmit a determined power level to the device. The apparatus may vary a frequency of the pulse-width modulated signal to transmit data to the device while the duty cycle of the pulse-width modulated signal is fixed in order to continue to transmit the determined power level to the device. A variation in the frequency of the pulse-width modulated signal may be detectable by the device and represents at least a portion of the data.
US08427274B2

The present invention is related to a method, system and apparatus, in particular, a lighting system and method of controlling the lighting system, comprising a computer readable medium and a programmable device capable of controlling and manipulating individually addressable lights to realize a visual display at a pixel level.
US08427272B1

An amorphous alloy-based magnetic core with reduced audible noise and a method of making the amorphous alloy-based magnetic core emanating low audible noise, including: placing the core with multiple layers of high strength tape on the core legs, wherein the tapes have a high tensile strength, high dielectric strength and high service temperature, resulting in reduced level of audible noise. When operated under optimum condition, the reduced level of audible noise is 6-10 dB less when compared with a same-size core that has been coated with resin instead.
US08427268B2

An electromagnetic valve is provided with at least one coil containing at least one coil former. The coil former is provided with at least two separate wire windings, of which, in each case, two are connected in series or in parallel with one another.
US08427265B2

A laminated inductor includes a laminate constituted by multiple magnetic material layers, and coil conductors formed in a spiral pattern in the laminate. The magnetic material layers are layers of a magnetic material having multiple metal grains constituted by a Fe—Si-M soft magnetic alloy and oxide film formed on the surface of the metal grains. The magnetic material has bonding portions where adjacent metal grains are bonded via the oxide film formed on the respective surfaces of the adjacent metal grains as well as bonding portions of metal grains bonding to each other in areas where no oxide film is present, and at least some of the voids generated by agglomeration of the metal grains are filled with a resin material.
US08427262B2

An electromagnetic contactor is provided an electromagnetic contactor including an upper frame having a fixed contact point and a guide rail; a cross bar comprising a sliding portion engaged with the guide rail, a movable contact point contacting and separating with respect to the fixed contact point while sliding along the guide rail, and a movable core; and a lower frame comprising a fixed core disposed adjacent to the movable core, an excitation coil magnetizing the fixed core by an electromotive force, and a return spring exerting an elastic force to the cross bar, wherein the sliding portion is configured separately from the cross bar, and a material forming the sliding portion has a friction coefficient against the guide rail less than that of the cross bar.
US08427261B2

A device and method for operating automotive battery system relays and related switches. By aligning a magnetic field with a direction of current flow in a contact plate disposed between magnets that are producing the field, a generated Lorentz force can be used to promote arc extinguishing during a relay opening sequence, while simultaneously reducing the tendency of the Lorentz forces to interfere with the operation of a solenoid or other switch-activating mechanisms. By using a rotary-based mechanism to establish contact between a contact plate and current-carrying terminals, the likelihood of inadvertent opening of the relay is reduced. Such devices and methods may be used in conjunction with hybrid-powered and electric-powered vehicles.
US08427251B2

Disclosed is an oscillator that relies on redundancy of similar resonators integrated on chip in order to fulfill the requirement of one single quartz resonator. The immediate benefit of that approach compared to quartz technology is the monolithic integration of the reference signal function, implying smaller devices as well as cost and power savings.
US08427234B1

A circuit herein compensates an input signal for distortion introduced to that signal by a non-linear device. A predistorter predistorts the input signal based on a predistortion model to compensate for distortion introduced by the non-linear device. When this predistorted input signal is input into the non-linear device, the device produces an output signal as a function of the predistorted input signal. From this output signal, a feedback generation circuit generates a feedback signal that includes one or more input signal components and one or more distortion components. A selective attenuation circuit selectively attenuates the input signal components in this feedback signal to generate a modified version of the feedback signal with a reduced magnitude difference between the input signal components and the distortion components. Finally, a model adaptation circuit dynamically adapts model parameters of the predistortion model based on the modified version of the feedback signal.
US08427226B2

The invention relates to a gate control device for a JFET-type transistor that has a gate, a drain and a source. The gate control device includes a voltage generation circuit comprising an output connected to the gate of the transistor, where the circuit is designed to generate at the output a reference gate-source voltage following a predetermined voltage ramp. A voltage limiting circuit is designed to limit the reference gate-source voltage to a predetermined maximum value when the gate-source voltage at the terminals of the JFET transistor has reached said maximum value.
US08427225B2

To obtain a gate driving circuit in which rising of a constant current of a constant current circuit is fast and power saving is achieved, the gate driving circuit includes: a constant current driving circuit (28) for supplying a constant current; a gate terminal of a power semiconductor element (1), which is connected to an output terminal of the constant current driving circuit; a comparator (22) for comparing a voltage at the gate terminal with a predetermined voltage value and outputting a signal indicating that the voltage is higher than the predetermined voltage value; and a driving control section (20) for increasing a current from the constant current driving circuit in response to a signal for turning on the power semiconductor element, and reducing the current from the constant current driving circuit in response to the signal from the comparator.
US08427221B2

The present invention includes a solution to the adherence to and improvement of the specifications regarding the conducted susceptibility of a microwave chain. It has an advantage of enabling significant attenuation of parasitic modulated signals carried in microwave chains of microwave devices such as those that are integrated into satellites by adding one or more 180° phase shifters between the units which do not exhibit a sufficient conducted susceptibility performance. The invention consequently makes it possible to do away with certain elements charged with the attenuation of the parasitic signals generally integrated into the power supplies and other DC/DC converters present in all contemporary microwave equipment.
US08427217B1

A phase interpolation circuit based on injected passive capacitances and an inductance for forming a resonator. The circuit conducts at least a first reference signal having a first phase component and a second reference signal having a second phase component shifted from the first phase component. By selectively switching the first reference signal and/or the second reference signal through one or more capacitances, an interpolated third signal having a third phase component between the first phase component and the second phase component can be generated. An inductor is connected with one or more of the capacitances for forming a resonant circuit to boost the signal level of the interpolated third signal. By utilizing resonance, an improved signal-to-noise ratio may be obtained for the interpolated third signal. An additional amplification stage, secondary to the resonant circuit, may be incorporated for further amplifying the signal level of the interpolated third signal.
US08427216B1

A circuit configured to resist a radiation strike includes a latch having an input node and an output node, and a first resistive element configured to be coupled to the first input node to resist a change of a state data at the input node from a radiation strike. The circuit further includes an input stage coupled to the input node and configured to be clocked to transfer the state data to the latch. The circuit further includes a pass circuit configured to be clocked after the input stage to couple the first resistive element to the input node after the input stage transfers the state data to the latch.
US08427210B2

A charge pump includes a first current source unit and a second current source unit. The first current source unit is connected between a first voltage terminal and the control node. The second current source unit is connected between the control node and a second voltage terminal. According to a phase comparing signal, the first current source unit provides a first switching current to the control node. The second current source unit includes a first sub-switching current generator, a second sub-switching current generator and a select circuit. According to a voltage level of the phase comparing signal, the first sub-switching current generator generates a first sub-switching current. According to the voltage level of the phase comparing signal, the second sub-switching current generator generates a second sub-switching current. By the select circuit, the first sub-switching current or the second sub-switching current is provided to the control node.
US08427200B2

A semiconductor device includes a first mono-crystallized semiconductor layer; and a second mono-crystallized semiconductor layer; wherein said first and second mono-crystallized semiconductor layers are overlaying one on top of the other, and wherein said first mono-crystallized semiconductor layer comprise repeating memory structure with sub structures defined by etching.
US08427198B1

Calibration circuitry 42 for an off-chip driver circuit 4 and/or an on-die termination circuit 8 is provided using a parallel network of main transistors controlled by a N-bit calibration value. During the calibration operation, the N-bit calibration value is varied until a threshold impedance value is crossed by the combination of the main transistors. A rounding transistor 52 is then used to determine which of the N-bit calibration values produces a combined impedance closest to the designed threshold impedance.
US08427190B2

A power supply apparatus includes a power supply part including a plurality of power supply units, a first comparison unit comparing a first voltage of the power supply part with a first reference value, a directing unit issuing a voltage fall direction to one of the power supply units so as to lower a voltage setting value when the first voltage is higher than the first reference value, a second comparison unit comparing a second voltage of the power supply unit obtained after the voltage fall direction is issued with the second reference voltage value, and a determining unit determining that the power supply unit to which the voltage fall direction issued corresponds to a failure unit, when the second comparison unit detects that the second voltage obtained after the voltage fall direction is issued fell in the voltage level lower than the second reference voltage.
US08427189B2

Test structures, systems, and methods for semiconductor devices are disclosed. In one embodiment, a test structure for a semiconductor device includes a winding disposed in at least one conductive material layer of the semiconductor device. At least a portion of the winding extends proximate a perimeter of the semiconductor device. The winding includes a first end and a second end. A first test pad is coupled to the first end of the winding, and a second test pad is coupled to the second end of the winding.
US08427185B2

A method of inline inspection of photovoltaic material for electrical anomalies. A first electrical connection is formed to a first surface of the photovoltaic material, and a second electrical connection is formed to an opposing second surface of the photovoltaic material. A localized current is induced in the photovoltaic material and properties of the localized current in the photovoltaic material are sensed using the first and second electrical connections. The properties of the sensed localized current are analyzed to detect the electrical anomalies in the photovoltaic material.
US08427184B2

An SCR module tester facilitates rapid testing of SCR modules by a series of tests that are tailored to detect faults without applying full power to the modules. The SCR tester includes a quick clamp connector that is able to securely and easily clamp SCR modules for both the F/A-18 A/D GCU and F/A-18-E/F GCU facilitating the rapid testing of SCR modules.
US08427180B2

A multicontact tactile sensor including a matrix formed of two transparent conducting layers, at least one exhibiting an array of fine conducting tracks, a control circuit including a power supply for one of the layers, and a mechanism detecting the other layer, the sensor having an operating mode of multicontact type corresponding to a sweep of supply to the lines of the corresponding layer, and an operating mode of monocontact type corresponding to a continuous and uniform supply over a whole of the sensor, each operating mode being activated as a function of the detection or nondetection of at least one contact.
US08427176B2

At least one embodiment is directed to a sensor for measuring a parameter. A signal path of the system comprises an amplifier (612), a sensor element, and an amplifier (620). The sensor element comprises a transducer (4), a waveguide (5), and a transducer (30). A parameter such as force or pressure applied to the sensor element can change the length of waveguide (5). A pulsed energy wave is emitted by the transducer (4) into the waveguide (5) at a first location. The transducer (30) is responsive pulsed energy waves at a second location of the waveguide (5). The transit time of each pulsed energy wave is measured. The transit time corresponds to the pressure or force applied to the sensor element.
US08427175B2

Techniques for calibrating non-linearities of ADCs are described, which can be applied whether or not the non-linearities change with frequency. When the non-linearities do not change (are static), the frequency of a calibrating signal is first estimated coarsely in a calibration mode, then a fine estimate is determined using the coarse estimate. These estimates are then used to predict the sinusoidal signal using a linear predictor. A Look Up Table (LUT) containing corrections to the ADC is derived from this result. The LUT is then used in a normal operating mode to correct the output of the ADC. In a case where the characteristics of the non-linearities of the input signal are dynamic and thus change with frequency, a frequency spectrum of interest is broken into several regions. In each of these regions, a frequency is identified and used as a calibrating signal to generate the corresponding LUT. During normal operation of the ADC, in a first method, the bin corresponding to dominant frequency of the signal is identified using a short-length FFT. This bin is used to select the appropriate LUT for operating on the output of the ADC to provide the calibrated output. In a second method used when dynamic input is expected, a single LUT is developed using the averages values from the LUTs determined from the various regions.
US08427172B2

A test arrangement is provided for AC testing of electrical high voltage components including at least one inverter, at least one test transformer and at least one high voltage inductor arranged as test components in a common cuboid container. The at least one high voltage inductor runs along an imaginary axis and may be at least partly removed from the container through at least one opening in a limit face of the container by means of a movement device. The at least one high voltage inductor includes has integrated surge protection.
US08427171B2

A system and method of detecting battery connection failures relies upon measuring battery cell body temperature and battery connector temperature at a measured current. The difference between these two temperatures is calculated using a software driven comparator. The comparator compares the difference as measured against a predetermined safe difference for the measured current. If the measured value exceeds the predetermined safe value an alarm is given. In one embodiment of the invention the difference between the two temperatures is compared to a predetermined safe difference independent of current measurements.
US08427165B2

A method for removing the effects of an airwave from marine electromagnetic data comprising providing an electromagnetic source and at least one receiver in the water; measuring the electromagnetic response at a first source-receiver separation; determining a scaled version of the airwave response at a source-receiver separation where the earth response is negligible and using the scaled airwave response to determine the earth response measured at the first separation. Using this method, an improved estimate of the earth's response can be achieved.
US08427154B2

In a method and an apparatus for magnetic resonance guided high intensity focused ultrasound (HIFU), precise localization of the focal point of the HIFU is determined by imaging an examination subject in parallel with GRE sequences that respectively include a positive monopolar gradient pulse and a negative monopolar gradient pulse, that respectively encode the acoustic radiation force (ARF)-induced phase shift that is induced by the simultaneous activation of HIFU during the sequences. A GRE phase image is reconstructed from each acquisition sequence, and a difference image is formed between the two GRE phase images, from which the HIFU focal point is determined. An average image is formed of the two GRE phase images from which PRFS temperature map is determined simultaneously to ARFI map. The use of parallel imaging and the use of partial Fourier reconstruction for reconstructing the GRE phase images allows the data to be acquired sufficiently rapidly so as to minimize the adverse effect of tissue heating that occurs with conventional longer-duration, and repetitious, techniques.
US08427150B2

It has an object to suppress reduction of an examination efficiency caused by limitation of SAR (specific absorption rate) to the minimum level in an examination that plural imaging sequences containing different imaging sequences are consecutively executed. In consideration of the time variation of time average SAR value in the overall examination, the order of executing the imaging sequences is determined so that the SAR value falls within a predetermined range and the waiting time between imaging sequences is minimum. The determination is performed by calculating a waiting time of each of all conceivable execution orders and selecting an execution order having the minimum waiting time.
US08427149B2

A magnetic resonance imaging apparatus includes a magnetic resonance data acquisition unit and a cerebrospinal fluid image data generation unit.The magnetic resonance data acquisition unit consecutively acquires a plurality of magnetic resonance data for generating a plurality of cerebrospinal fluid image data, each corresponding to a different data acquisition time, after a labeling pulse is applied.The cerebrospinal fluid image data generation unit generates the plurality of cerebrospinal fluid image data based on the plurality of magnetic resonance data.
US08427147B2

A three-dimensional projection reconstruction pulse sequence acquires two half echoes in a steady state free precession (SSFP) scan. A method for combining the two echoes to suppress either fat or water in the reconstructed image is described and includes shifting the phase of one echo and combining them in a regridding process used to transform the radial data to a Cartesian grid prior to image reconstruction. Images having either fat or water substantially suppressed are then produced by applying a phase difference mask to images reconstructed from the regridded data. These images are then further processed using information of the phase differences between the two half echoes. In this manner, more consistent and accurate suppression is achieved.
US08427141B2

In a method according to the invention to determine the relative position (ρ) of a resolver, an exciter winding is excited with a reference signal, a first signal resulting from the reference signal in a first winding is sampled and a second signal resulting from the reference signal in a second winding is sampled, an uncompensated Fourier coefficient for the first signal is determined and an uncompensated Fourier coefficient for the second signal is determined. A compensated Fourier coefficient for the first signal and a compensated Fourier coefficient for the second signal is determined and the relative position of the resolver is determined from the compensated Fourier coefficients. The compensated Fourier coefficients essentially compensate the change of the uncompensated Fourier coefficients due to the phase shift of the resolver and/or the change of the relative position during the sampling.
US08427132B2

A voltage detection circuit comprises a plurality of even-number voltage detection nodes, at least one odd-number voltage detection node, a voltage differential generation circuit, a selection circuit and a computing circuit. The selection circuit is for controlling the coupling relationship between the voltage differential generation circuit and the even and odd-number voltage detection nodes, so that the voltage differential generation circuit generates a voltage differential between the nodes. The computing circuit knows a voltage of a first even-number voltage detection node being as a reference voltage or obtains the voltage of the first even-number voltage detection node on the basis of the reference voltage, and respectively obtains a voltage of the nodes on the basis of the voltage differential between two adjacent nodes and the obtained voltage of a first even-number voltage detection node.
US08427127B2

A control loop for a clocked switching power converter where the loop features a comparator (44) and a filter (61) in series to linearize the nonlinear response of the comparator (44). The filter (61) has poles and zeros offsetting the poles and zeros of a bridge rectifier (M1 and M2).
US08427126B2

A system and method for controlling a digital pulse-width modulated power converter achieves a fast large-signal transient response while maintaining a slow response near the steady-state operating point in order to assure stability and to reduce the system's susceptibility to noise. Digital output error samples are processed through a gain scheduling block that applies a non-linear gain function to produce a weak loop response when the system is near its steady-state equilibrium point and a strong loop response when large transients are encountered. The resulting system maintains a fast transient response to large error signals while reducing noise and loop jittering and assuring loop stability.
US08427124B2

A method and apparatus of reducing peak current variation with changing input line voltage in a switch mode power supply is disclosed. An example method includes sensing a current through a switching device of the switch mode power supply. A variable current limit threshold is generated, which increases from a first level to a second level during an on time of the switching device. The current is compared to the variable current limit threshold. A feedback signal representative of an output voltage of the switch mode power supply is sensed. The switching device is controlled in response to the feedback signal and said comparing the current to the variable current limit threshold.
US08427123B2

A switch mode power supply (SMPS) has optimized efficiency over an entire operating range, from no load to full load, by transitioning between pulse frequency modulation (PFM) and pulse width modulation (PWM) for control of the SMPS depending upon load current. Accurate, smooth, and seamless transitions between PFM and PWM modes of operation occur at a preset load current(s). PFM operation improves efficiency during light load conditions, and PWM has better efficiency at higher load currents. This is advantageous in battery powered applications, and thereby results in a longer time before battery replacement or recharge is necessary.
US08427122B2

A scheme for enhancement of the power-supply ripple rejection for operational amplifiers (op-amps) and low-dropout (LDO) voltage regulators is described. The scheme adds calculated amounts of current derived from the power-supply ripple with the input differential pair current to cancel off the output ripple, improving the high-frequency power-supply ripple rejection without requiring a substantial redesign of the circuitry involved.
US08427117B2

Electromechanical arrangements are utilized widely whereby a prime mover in the form of a mechanical assembly such as a gas turbine engine is utilized to drive an electrical machine as an electrical generator. Unfortunately the loads applied to the electrical generator may vary creating oscillation across phases of the electrical generator. Such oscillations generally will be translated to the mechanical assembly in the form of torque oscillations which may cause stressing. Stressing of the mechanical assembly will reduce its life and may alter its performance as well as fuel consumption. By provision of appropriate mechanisms for balancing electrical loads across an electrical machine as well reducing the time decay period for stored charge within an electrical assembly associated with an electrical machine it is possible to reduce torque oscillations as presented to the mechanical assembly and therefore improve its operational performance.
US08427109B2

A battery control module is provided for use with a battery and includes a voltage measuring module that measures battery voltage, a current measuring module that measures battery current, and a state of charge (SOC) module. The SOC module communicates with the current and voltage measuring modules, determines a reset voltage based on the battery current, compares the battery voltage and the reset voltage, and resets a battery SOC based on an outcome of the comparison.
US08427104B2

A plurality of rechargeable and removable batteries are allocated to a plurality of industrial vehicles based on the power delivery capability of each battery and the intensity level at which each vehicle is operated. One of a plurality of ratings is assigned to each industrial vehicle, wherein a rating denotes an operating intensity level. The actual capacity of each battery is measured. A given battery is installed on a particular industrial vehicle in response to the relationship between the rating assigned to that industrial vehicle and the actual capacity of the given battery. Batteries with greater actual capacity are installed on industrial vehicles that are used more intensively. When a battery ages and its actual capacity diminishes, that battery is installed on less intensively used industrial vehicles.
US08427095B2

The actuation system including a control system, an actuator comprising a drive part and a step motor comprising a rotor and a stator with at least one electric phase, an actuated system comprising a controlled element coupled to the drive part, and an elastic part capable of generating an elastic return force on the rotor of the motor or on the drive part. The control system comprises means for measuring an induced electric parameter on the phase of the stator after switching off the current of said at least one phase of the stator to detect a return of the rotor resulting from elastic return force when a mechanical clearance is overtaken.
US08427093B2

A controller for an electro-mechanical actuation system (e.g., missile fin actuator) includes a Kalman estimator circuit generating an estimate of operating state including position and velocity of motor, position and velocity of a position-controlled element (PCE), and motor current. The estimate is generated based on a dynamic model explicitly including the effect of structural stiffness and damping in the coupling between the motor and PCE, for example by treating it as a mechanical oscillator having spring and damping constants. The Kalman estimator operates on a motor drive control signal and a measured position signal which may be from a Hall sensor sensing motor position. A linear quadratic regulator circuit applies a state feedback gain matrix to a state vector to generate a control effort signal. The state feedback gain matrix minimizes a quadratic cost function representing variance of the control effort signal and/or the measured position signal.
US08427089B2

A motor driving device driving coil terminals of a three-phase motor to flow three-phase currents includes: a pulse modulator generating three-phase modulation pulses, each of which has a duty ratio in accordance with a voltage level of a coil terminal; a shift amount selection unit selecting a first shift amount corresponding to at least one of two predetermined amounts according to a pulse width of the longest pulse among the three-phase modulation pulses; a first shift unit shifting the second-longest pulse among the three-phase modulation pulses backward by the first shift amount to delay timing; a second shift unit shifting the third-longest pulse among the three-phase modulation pulses backward by a predetermined second shift amount to delay timing; and an inverter driving each of the coil terminals by switching a driving power supply with the three-phase modulation pulses by reflecting shift results of the first and second shift units.
US08427083B2

A four-stage power distribution system (100) includes (i) a first stage (110) having an inverter (112) that provides power to a frequency drive (114) and an electric motor (116) controlled by the frequency drive; (ii) a second stage (120) having a flywheel (122) driven by the motor; (iii) a third stage (130) having an alternator (132) driven by the motor (116) and connected to the flywheel, and a rectifier (134) that receives current from the alternator and generates a direct current; and (iv) a fourth stage (140) having a charge control switch (142) that receives power from the rectifier, and a plurality of power storage devices such as batteries (144A-144C). A master control switch (150) controls the charge control switch to transition the plurality of batteries individually between a charging configuration and a load configuration. One or more of the battery(ies) in the load configuration provides power to the inverter.
US08427078B2

A light-emitting element driving device includes: a plurality of light emitters; a power supply; a plurality of current control transistors; a plurality of constant-current circuits; a voltage selecting circuit; a control circuit; and a voltage controller.
US08427071B2

An LED driving device includes: an LED circuit having an input side for receiving a driving current corresponding to an AC input voltage from an external power source when the magnitude of a driving voltage across the input side is greater than a predetermined value; and a clamp circuit coupled between the input side of the LED circuit and the external power source, and permitting the driving current to pass through for clamping the magnitude of the driving current to a predetermined current level and for clamping the magnitude of the driving voltage to a predetermined voltage level.
US08427051B2

A support for filiform elements containing an active material in form of powders is described, comprising anchoring means of the support and blocking means for the filiform element, a method for manufacturing said support and lamps wherein said supports are employed.
US08427049B2

A display device includes: a light emitting layer configured to emit light in accordance with current; a first pixel separation film configured to define a first opening for providing a light emitting region when the light emitting layer emits light; and a second pixel separation film laminated on the first pixel separation film and configured to define a second opening that is restricted so as not to gradually become wider as apart from a surface contacted with the first pixel separation film.
US08427046B2

The present invention provides an organic electroluminescent device exhibiting a long life, a high luminance, and a high efficiency.An organic electroluminescent device comprising on a substrate an anode, a hole transport layer, an organic light-emitting layer, and a cathode, wherein the organic light-emitting layer contains an organic compound having a pyridine ring, a pyrazine ring, or a triazine ring as a partial structure and the hole transport layer contains a monoamine compound represented by the following formula (I): wherein R1 to R9 represent a hydrogen atom, an aryl group, or an alkyl group; R1 to R9 may be the same or different from each other; and R1 to R9 may further have an aryl group or an alkyl group as a substituent in the case where R1 to R9 are an aryl group or an alkyl group.
US08427037B2

A luminaire includes a lamp holder, a first light-emitting module, a second light-emitting module, a light guide, and a lamp cover. The lamp holder has a top portion. The top portion includes a first upper face and a platform projecting upwardly from the first upper face. The platform has a second upper face at a top end thereof. The first light-emitting module is disposed on the first upper face and around the platform. The second light-emitting module is disposed on the second upper face. The light guide is disposed around the platform and on the first light-emitting module. The lamp cover is disposed on the lamp holder for covering the first light-emitting module, the second light-emitting module, and the light guide.
US08427029B2

It is an object of the present invention to provide a rotor shaft capable of sufficiently securing a fastening strength between an inner shaft and an outer shaft, obtaining an excellent anti-rotation torque, and reducing a weight of the rotor shaft. A rotor shaft is divided into an inner shaft and an outer shaft. The inner shaft includes a tip end portion, a rear end portion, and a thick portion. The thick portion connects the tip end portion 41 and the rear end portion with each other in the radial direction, and has the same inner diameter as that of the tip end portion and the same outer diameter as that of the rear end portion. The outer shaft includes an inner cylindrical portion, a magnetic body-mounting outer cylindrical portion, and a flange that connects the inner cylindrical portion and the magnetic body-mounting outer cylindrical portion with each other. Outer peripheral surfaces and of the thick portion and the rear end portion and an inner peripheral surface of the inserting hole of the inner cylindrical portion are brought into contact with each other, and the inner shaft and the outer shaft are fastened and fixed to each other. The flange is disposed at a position opposed to the thick portion in the radial direction.
US08427028B2

These and other objects of the present invention are achieved by a brush holder assembly for an electric motor or generator wherein the brush box or holder is arcuate and curved in relationship to a commutator and supports a brush means and a floating constant force spring which allows dynamic movement and control of the brush as it moves towards a commutator.
US08427027B2

A brush unit for an electric machine has a simple and low-cost but robust design, and can be assembled at low-cost using simple process steps comprises four ring-shaped board elements are stacked on each other, namely two outer circuit boards, each of which is electrically conductively connected to one or more brushes. Two guide boards made of electrically insulative material disposed therebetween, comprise a shape having protrusions and recesses for forming radial guides for the brushes and receptacles for springs acting on the brushes. The springs are spiral springs wound around a mandrel, the flat ends thereof protruding past the springs being rotationally fixedly guided in a guide groove of each receptacle and able to engage behind a stop. In order to assemble the brush unit, the circuit and guide boards are stacked on each other in the axial direction and riveted, then the brushes are inserted in the guides in the radial direction and the springs are placed in the receptacles.
US08427023B2

A rotor includes a rotor core; and first and second permanent magnets arranged in the core such that each of the first magnets corresponds to one of the second magnets and, on a cross-sectional plane of the rotor core perpendicular to a rotation axis thereof, a first line passing through the first magnet and a second line passing through the second magnet meet at a point pointing toward the rotation axis. The first and second magnets are arranged such that a straight line interconnecting the rotation axis and the point is interposed therebetween, an angle of the first magnet relative to the straight line being smaller than that of the second magnet relative to the straight line, and a width of the first magnet in the direction parallel to the first line being smaller than that of the second magnet in the direction parallel to the second line.
US08427017B2

A split stator is manufactured in such a manner that an adhesive is applied on a teeth part of a split core to form an adhesive layer, the split core is inserted in a lower die, a molten insulator material containing fibrous fillers is injected in the die, and an upper die is moved to form an insulator. In the insulator, the fibrous fillers are oriented in random directions, providing increased thermal conductivity.
US08427014B2

Described embodiments include a system, apparatus, and method. A described system includes a power-receiving connector configured to be usable after sterilization, to releasably couple with a power-source connector, and configured to be carried by a health care provider proximate to a first body portion. If coupled, the power-receiving connector is operable to receive an electrical or radiant power from the power-source connector. The system also includes a power-output device configured to be usable after sterilization, to interact with a power-receiving device connected to a handheld medical device, and configured to be carried by the health care provider proximate to a second body portion. If interacting, the received electrical or radiant power is transferred from the power-output device to the power-receiving device. The system further includes a wearable connective structure configured to be usable after sterilization, and to transfer the received electrical or radiant power from the power-receiving connector to the power-output device.
US08427008B2

An electronic power supply circuit for a load composed of at least two independent circuit branches connected in parallel to each other, where a first branch requires a different power supply voltage from the power supply voltage of a second branch. The circuit includes a step-up converter, a timer circuit connected to the step-up converter so that the converter generates, alternately, at least a first output voltage able to power the first circuit branch and a second output voltage able to power a second circuit branch, a regulation circuit able to regulate the overvoltages at the ends of an output capacitor of the converter during commutations between the different output voltages; and a commutation circuit able to activate the step-up converter, according to the timer signals coming from the timer circuit, when the output voltage at the ends of the output capacitor has reached the level needed to power the activated branch and regulate the current flowing thereto.
US08427005B1

A device and method for a generator power module. The power module includes an end generator module and an interior generator module that together form a substantial enclosure. The power module may also include a switchgear module. A base may support the modules and may supply common fuel to each of the generators. The enclosure may include a control system to coordinate the generators as a unit in parallel to a utility grid and to control each generator's power output in response to a power load demand. In other embodiments, the enclosure includes a series of drawer air intake louvers to move air into the enclosure. A method of operating the power module includes activating the generators and controlling the control system to individually operate a generator in the block of generators in response to a power load demand.
US08426996B2

A wind turbine control master unit has a communication interface and a signal processing unit. The communication interface is configured to receive a rotor rotational speed of at least a first and a second wind turbine over a communication link. The signal processing unit is configured to determine a synchronized rotor speed value based on a mean value of the rotor rotational speeds. The signal processing unit is configured to calculate a synchronized azimuth angle value based on integrating the synchronized rotor speed value. Further, the communication interface is configured to send the synchronized rotor speed value and the synchronized azimuth angle value over a communication link. Also, a signal light control module and a wind turbine in connection with the control master unit are provided.
US08426995B2

According to the present disclosure, a wind turbine power generator (118) including a stator (120) comprising at least one stator segment (120, 121), a rotor (122) rotatably mounted in the stator (120, 121) and one or more conversion assemblies (210, 220, 222) is provided. The one or more power conversion assemblies (210, 220) are attached to the at least one stator segment (120, 121).
US08426990B2

Turbine apparatus for a hydroelectric power station, with a turbine impeller, which is capable of rotating about a turbine rotary spindle, which is in particular arranged vertically, with turbine blades (4), which are fitted at an angle with respect to the turbine impeller (3), in particular a fixed angle, with a generator, which converts the mechanical rotation energy of the turbine impeller into electrical energy, wherein the generator is in particular an annular generator (5), with an annular rotor (6) and a stator (7), which is correspondingly arranged in annular fashion, wherein the turbine rotary spindle (2) is coupled to the rotor (6) in such a way that it is fixed against rotation, and the rotation about the turbine rotary spindle (2) takes place by means of a hollow shaft (8), with a pot-like receptacle (9), into which a fixed bearing journal (10) with movable bearings (11) arranged around it is inserted, in particular directly, and the turbine impeller (3) and the rotor (6) are capable of rotating about the bearing journal (10).
US08426987B2

A misalignment detection device comprising a substrate, at least one integrated circuit (IC), and at least one detection unit is disclosed. The substrate comprises a first positioning pad and a second positioning pad adjacent to the first positioning pad. The integrated circuit is disposed on the substrate and comprises a first positioning bump and a second positioning bump adjacent to the first positioning bump. The first and second positioning bumps substantially correspond to the first and second positioning pads, respectively. The at least one detection unit is electrically coupled to the substrate, wherein the detection unit outputs a fault signal in response to a positioning shift occurring between the first and second positioning pads and the first and second positioning bumps.
US08426985B2

A positive tone photosensitive composition comprising: (A) an alkali-soluble resin having a phenolic hydroxyl group; (B) a phenol resin modified by a compound having an unsaturated hydrocarbon group containing 4 to 100 carbon atoms; (C) a compound that generates an acid by the action of light; (D) a thermal cross-linker that crosslinks the ingredient (A) and the ingredient (B) by heating; and (E) a solvent.
US08426984B2

A substrate structure with compliant bump comprises a substrate, a plurality of bumps, and a metallic layer, wherein the substrate comprises a surface, a trace layer, and a protective layer. The trace layer comprises a plurality of conductive pads, and each of the conductive pads comprises an upper surface. The protective layer comprises a plurality of openings. The bumps are formed on the surface, and each of the bumps comprises a top surface, an inner surface and an outer surface and defines a first body and a second body. The first body is located on the surface. The second body is located on top of the first body. The metallic layer is formed on the top surface, the inner surface, and the upper surface.
US08426977B2

A semiconductor apparatus includes, a semiconductor substrate having first and second main surfaces and a through hole connecting the first and second main surfaces; a first insulation layer arranged on the first main surface, and having an opening corresponding to the through hole; a first conductive layer arranged on the first insulation layer, and covering the through hole; a second insulation layer arranged on an inner wall of the through hole and the second surface; a second conductive layer arranged in the through hole and on the second insulation layer, the second conductive layer contacting the first conductive layer; and a filling member arranged on the second conductive layer in the through hole, and having a gap between the second conductive layer on the first main surface side.
US08426971B2

A titanium-nickel-palladium solderable metal system for silicon power semiconductor devices (10), which may be used for one or both of the anode (20) or cathode (30). The metal system includes an outer layer of palladium (40,70), an intermediate layer of nickel (50,80), and an inner layer of titanium (60,90). For certain applications, the nickel may be alloyed with vanadium. The metal system may be deposited on bare silicon (100) or on one or more additional layers of metal (110) which may include aluminum, aluminum having approximately 1% silicon, or metal silicide. The use of palladium, rather than gold or silver, reduces cost, corrosion, and scratching.
US08426970B2

Methods for substrate processing are described. The methods include forming a material layer on a substrate. The methods include selecting constituents of a molecular masking layer (MML) to remove an effect of variations in the material layer as a result of substrate processing. The methods include normalizing the surface characteristics of the material layer by selectively depositing the MML on the material layer.
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