| Document | Document Title |
|---|---|
| US08474803B2 |
Rotary shaft flexural vibration damping device
A damping device for damping flexural vibration of a shaft rotating about a first axis, the device having: a supporting body; and a member, which defines an annular opening fitted through with the shaft, and is movable, with respect to the supporting body and radially with respect to the first axis, between a first and a second position when the shaft flexes radially with respect to the first axis. The member is set to the first position, and the opening is traversed loosely by the shaft when the rotation speed of the shaft is within a first range; the member is set to the second position, and the opening cooperates with the shaft, when the rotation speed of the shaft is within a second range differing from the first range and including at least one critical speed of the shaft; and the damping device has elastic means interposed between the supporting body and the member. |
| US08474800B2 |
Fluid filled type vibration damping device
A fluid filled type vibration damping device including an elastic rubber body elastically connecting an inner shaft member and an outer tube member. The elastic rubber body has a solid rubber wall that includes inside face recesses and outside face recesses respectively formed to either side of the inner shaft member in an axis-perpendicular direction so that a pair of thin portions and a pair of thick portions respectively situated in opposition along mutually orthogonal axes lying in axis-perpendicular directions are formed in the solid rubber wall. A deepest part of the inside face recesses is situated towards an axial small diameter side of the solid rubber wall with respect to an deepest part of the outside face recesses, with the inside face recesses and the outside face recesses overlapping one another in the axis-perpendicular direction of the solid rubber wall. |
| US08474792B2 |
Valve device and manually operated shutoff valve device
In a valve device for selectively opening and closing a flow passage formed to open on a valve seat by a valve body through a resin-made seat, a hollow portion is formed on either one of the valve body and the valve seat and receives the resin-made seat therein, the resin-made seat has a thickness so that the resin-made seat partly protrudes from the hollow portion, and when the valve body is operated to close the flow passage, the resin-made seat is compressed to bring an end surface of the valve body into contact with the valve seat. |
| US08474784B2 |
Non-reopening locking pinch clamp for tubing
A tube clamp having first and second opposed jaws (1012, 1014) joined by a hinge (1016), the jaws (1012, 1014) movable between open and closed positions, the tube clamp adapted to attach to a flexible plastic tube (1024) so that the tube (1024) passes between the jaws (1012, 1014), whereby the flow of fluid through the tube (1024) is permitted when the jaws are open but is blocked when the jaws are brought together to the closed position to pinch closed the tube there-between, and locking means (1048,1036,1042) to effect substantially permanent and irreversible locking of the jaws (1012, 1014) in the closed position. |
| US08474780B2 |
Cable retainer for utility pole base
A cable retainer assembly for use inside utility pole base assembly. The cable retainer is anchored to the foundation using the same bolts as the pole base. The cable retainer discourages pole-to-pole cable theft by securing the copper conductor cables to the foundation and pole base plate below the handhole in the pole. Access to the clamps of the cable retainer may be prevented by including a blocking structure positioned between the cable retainer and the handhole in the pole base. |
| US08474779B1 |
Post anchoring device and related methods
A line post anchoring device for a roadway cable barrier system includes a lower helical anchor to which a detachable line post socket member is secured. The helical anchor and line post socket of each line post anchoring device have mating coupling sections that are preassembled and hydraulically screwed into the ground in a single operation. Each socket includes interior guide plates for properly guiding and positioning a line post therein, such that the cabling system can be effectively strung under tension at the same time the anchoring devices are installed in the ground. Damaged sockets are easily replaced with minimal disruption to the surrounding soil by backing the helical anchor out of the ground only so far as necessary to detach and replace the damaged socket, and then reinserting the helical anchor in the same location. There is no delay or multiple operations required for installation or repair, thus enhancing roadway safety by minimizing traffic disruptions and possible accidents incident thereto. |
| US08474778B2 |
Adjustable hands-free mounting apparatus for tablet personal computers
The invention provides an apparatus for adjustably mounting a tablet PC, portable personal computer, or flat panel video display, which is particularly suited for use during travel and in rugged conditions. The apparatus enables stable and versatile emplacement of a tablet PC by incorporating multiple independent adjustment and attachment elements. A mounting means, such as a suction cup assembly, is attachable to various surfaces and is connected to a hanger from which cordage or straps descend to a suspended frame. The frame features clips, resilient spacers, and adjustable dimensions to securely hold any commercially available tablet PC therein. The frame may further comprise various swappable stabilizer elements to separately regulate the orientation and attachment of the tablet PC to a surface. In a preferred embodiment, the apparatus is mounted to a windshield and the frame positions the tablet PC over the center console in an automobile. |
| US08474776B2 |
Antenna leveling system
An apparatus for manually maintaining the level of a radar antenna mounted on a stern pole affixed to the deck or transom of a vessel providing a platform pivotably mounted to a distal end of the pole and oriented to rotate about an axis substantially parallel to the centerline of the vessel. A controller at the lower end of the pole proximal to the cockpit permits manual adjustment of the horizontal angle of the radar antenna to maintain level due to heeling of the boat. The controller utilizes a first plate secured to the pole having a series of detent positions angularly spaced around and equidistant from a center point and a second plate rotatably secured at the center point. A grip handle projecting from the front surface of the second plate permits rotation of the plate when a cooperatively aligned release handle is grasped to withdraw one or more pins extending through holes in the second plate engage the detent positions. A pair of cable or rod linkages transmit rotation of the second plate to the antenna mounting platform. |
| US08474770B2 |
Wall mounting bracket
A wall mounting bracket assists in mounting equipment to a wall. The wall mounting bracket includes a plate, a post, and a sliding nut. At least a portion of the post extends outwardly from the surface of the plate. The plate is coupled to a stud or other mounting device positioned within the wall behind the sheetrock. The post includes an equipment mounting section and a spacer. The spacer is positioned between the equipment mounting section and the plate and accommodates different wall thicknesses. The bottom surface of the sliding nut is slidably and securely positionable along the top surface of the equipment mounting section. Different types of wall-mounted equipment is coupled to the sliding nut and the equipment mounting section of the wall mounting bracket. Use of the wall mounting bracket allows the equipment to be mounted to the wall without an exposed flange and preserve structural integrity. |
| US08474769B2 |
Mounting apparatus for back panel
A mounting apparatus includes a drive bracket assembly, a back panel, and a securing member. The back panel is mounted to the drive bracket assembly along a first direction. The securing member is slidably mounted on the drive bracket assembly. The securing member secures the back panel to the drive bracket assembly to prevent the back panel moving along the first direction. The securing member is capable of sliding along a second direction that is generally perpendicular to the first direction to a position, so the back panel is capable of moving along the first direction. |
| US08474765B2 |
Releasable barb assembly
The embodiments provide a barb assembly for use with a cable duct component to oppose removal of a cable duct section from the cable duct component. The barb assembly can comprise a releasable assembly for applying a force to a barb and, responsive to the application of the force, for moving the barb and one or more barb arms from an unengaged position to an engaged position without the use of tools. The barb assembly and/or cable duct component can also comprise a spring bias, which can bias the releasable assembly to the unengaged position upon actuating the releasable assembly to the unengaged position. The embodiments also provide methods of installing cable duct components and systems with the above-described features. |
| US08474764B2 |
Lightweight three-dimensional wire structure and method for the production thereof
A lightweight three-dimensional wire structure which includes a plurality of wires that are connected to each other and intersect in the three-dimensional space to form a plurality of cells. In addition, a method for producing the three-dimensional wire structure. |
| US08474763B2 |
Wing arrangement comprising an adjustable flap and fairing element for covering a flap adjustment mechanism of a wing
A wing arrangement includes, but is not limited to an adjustable flap, which is adjustable between a retracted position and at least one extended position, has at least one fairing element for covering a flap adjustment mechanism and at least one cover element. The fairing element extends downstream at least as far as the flap and has, in a surface facing the flap, a cutout which correlates with an intended adjustment movement of the flap. The cover element is movably arranged with respect to the fairing element and adapted such to cover the cutout in the fairing element in the retracted position of the flap and expose at least part of said cutout in an extended position. |
| US08474760B2 |
Polygonal support structure
A polygonal support structure is disclosed herein. The polygonal support structure has a plurality of rigid segments configured to be joined at longitudinal ends by a joint affixed to at least one end of each rigid segment. Each joint is configured to rigidly, rotatingly or hingedly join each rigid segment to an adjacent rigid segment to form the polygonal support structure. A plurality of flexible members are configured and disposed to provide tension between each joint and joints spaced two segments therefrom, in each direction, about the polygonal support structure. One or more joints may be configured to join and un-join two adjacent rigid segments and each rigid segment and each joint may be configured to enable stacking of rigid segment into a compact configuration for transport. In at least one aspect, a polygonal support structure may be configured to support assemblies in a substantially weightless environment. |
| US08474754B2 |
Cargo hold floor for a cargo hold of an aircraft and method for the installation thereof
Cargo hold floors are provided, and comprise panels or similar two-dimensional floor elements for the attachment of roller elements, ball elements, locking bar elements or similar functional elements. Support elements, in particular floor beams, are provided which support the two-dimensional floor elements whereby the floor elements are permanently joined to the support elements to make pre-fabricated floor modules and the floor modules are installable in the aircraft. To make installation work easier, separate load-bearing elements, for supporting the floor modules on and joining the floor modules to a body or a skin of the aircraft, are provided which, before the floor modules are installed in the aircraft, are joinable to the body or skin of the aircraft, and, when the floor modules are installed in the aircraft, are joinable to the support elements. As a result, it is possible in particular cases to make installation significantly easier. |
| US08474745B2 |
Rotor hub vibration attenuator
A vibration attenuator for an aircraft has at least one weight mounted in a rotating system of a rotor hub of the aircraft, each weight being rotatable about an axis of rotation of the hub relative to the hub and to each other weight. Drive means are provided for rotating each weight about the axis of rotation at a selected speed for creating oscillatory shear forces that oppose and attenuate rotor-induced vibrations having a selected frequency. A vertically oriented vibration attenuator is configured to oppose and attenuate vertical rotor induced oscillatory forces that would otherwise travel vertical down the rotor mast and into the airframe. |
| US08474744B2 |
Floor covering storage, dispensing and retrieval rack with blower device
A floor covering storage, dispensing and retrieval rack includes a frame having a roller arrangement for enabling storage, dispensing and retrieval of at least one roll of floor covering relative to the floor surface. A blower device is connected to the frame for supplying a stream of forced air between the floor surface and the floor covering to ease installation and removal of the floor covering relative to the floor surface. |
| US08474742B2 |
Spool for telecommunications cable and method
A spool for a telecommunications cable. The spool winds-up and pays-out the cable without accumulating twist in the cable. The spool can also pay out a distal end of the cable and mount a proximal end of the cable. Because no twist is accumulated in the cable, the first end and/or the second end of the cable can remain connected while the spool is winding-up or paying-out. The spool includes a base, a cable wrap reverser, and a hub. The spool is adapted to wrap the cable about the base in a first wrapping direction and is adapted to wrap the cable about the hub in an opposite second wrapping direction. The cable wrap reverser is adapted to transition and guide the cable from the first to the second wrapping direction. |
| US08474737B2 |
Rotary forming apparatus
A rotary forming apparatus is provided. The rotary forming apparatus includes a separator configured to receive a gas flow having entrained fibrous material and further configured to separate the fibrous material from the gas flow. The fibrous material forms mini-blankets having a length along a longitudinal axis. A milling apparatus is positioned adjacent the separator and configured to receive mini-blankets exiting the separator. The milling apparatus is further configured to grind the mini-blankets into fibers having desired lengths. The milling apparatus is configured to grind the mini-blankets along the lengths of the mini-blankets. |
| US08474730B2 |
Track system including a guardrail
A track system for a railway system includes a base plate configured to be supported on a railroad tie. The system also includes a drive rail and a guard rail. The drive rail includes a head portion, a web portion, and a base portion. The head portion is configured such that wheels of a train car used in the railway system roll thereon. The web portion connects the head portion and the base portion. The base portion is supported on the base plate. The guardrail includes a head portion, a web portion, and a base portion. The head portion of the guardrail is configured to contact the wheels to prevent the wheels from slipping off the drive rail. The web portion of the guardrail connects the head portion of the guardrail and the base portion of the guardrail. The base portion of the guardrail is retained in a support on the base plate. Cross-sections of each of the head portion of the drive rail and the web portion of the drive rail are substantially the same as cross-sections of the head portion of the guardrail and the web portion of the guardrail, respectively. |
| US08474729B2 |
Forced draft direct vent type room heater
The room heater has, in an outer case 1, both a first air flow passage that leads to a vent hole 12 through a section in which the main heat exchanger 6 is arranged and a second air flow passage that does not pass through the section in which the main heat exchanger 6 is arranged but leads to the vent hole 12 through a section in which a supplementary heat exchanger 6′ is arranged provided. At least one of the first damper 20 which can freely block the first air flow passage and the second damper 21 which can freely block the second air flow passage is provided, and the first air flow passage or the second air flow passage is blocked in a weak combustion period. |
| US08474726B2 |
RFID antenna modules and increasing coupling
A transponder with an antenna module having a chip module and an antenna; a booster antenna having a first antenna structure in the form of a flat coil having a number of turns, an outer end and an inner end, and a second antenna structure in the form of a flat coil having a number of turns, an outer end and an inner end; the inner end of the second antenna structure connected with the outer end of the first antenna structure. The antenna module may be positioned so that its antenna overlaps one of the first antenna structure or the second antenna structure. An antenna module having two additional antenna structures is disclosed. Methods of enhancing coupling are disclosed. |
| US08474723B2 |
Method for optimizing auto-exposure performance of an imaging device
An imaging device includes an illumination element; an auto-exposure element; and a processor disabling the auto-exposure element and subsequently disabling the illumination element. |
| US08474719B2 |
Customizable optical reader
An optical reader, which is operable in a “host commands” mode and a “host routines” mode. In the “host commands” mode, the reader receives and executes a script routine module from a host. In the “host routines” mode, the reader receives a script routine Module identifier from the host, and the reader, in turn, executes a selected one of a plurality of reader-stored script routine modules based on the identifier. |
| US08474711B2 |
Interactive customer shopping cart
An interactive shopping system, apparatus and methods are provided for use at a brick-and-mortar merchant location. The interactive shopping system includes a basket for holding items selected by a shopper, and a unique identifier for the basket. An input device is associated with said basket to obtain information regarding specific items as they are placed in the basket. A point of sale system is associated with the input device to collect information obtained from the input device, associate that information with the unique identifier for the basket, and complete a purchase transaction for all items located in the basket at checkout. |
| US08474709B2 |
Banking system controlled responsive to data bearing records
An automated banking machine operates responsive to data bearing records to carry out financial transactions. The machine includes a card reader that operates to read data from user cards that corresponds to financial accounts. The machine also includes a display, at least one manual input device, a cash dispenser, and a machine computer that operates to cause financial transactions to be carried out on financial accounts that correspond to data read from cards. The machine computer is also operative to cause digital information to be sent from the machine to a machine user's remote system address. |
| US08474706B2 |
Printing apparatus with pre-charging unit
A charging processing unit calculates a pre-charged amount of money based on print conditions and charges the calculated pre-charged amount of money to a card through a card reader. A job control unit starts a print job to print until a penultimate page, when pre-charging is finished. Further, when an accumulated amount of money is specified by generating image data of the final page and the accumulated amount of money is smaller than the pre-charged amount of money, the printing is stopped before the final page is printed. The charging processing unit causes an UI control unit to display a message requesting to place the card again. When the card is placed in response to the message and pieces of the card information matches each other, a refunding process is carried out. The job control unit restarts printing the final page after a refunding process. |
| US08474705B2 |
Automated banking machine that operates responsive to data bearing records
An automated banking machine operates responsive to data read from data bearing records, such as user cards, to cause machine user authorization and financial transfers. Account data read from a user card is associated in a data store with instructions for displaying a customer interface uniquely associated with the particular bank where the user holds the account. The customer interface includes user-selectable financial transaction options. The arrangement enables the customer interface of the user's home bank, with which the user is familiar, to also be automatically displayed when the user operates automated banking machines of other banks. |
| US08474704B1 |
Automated banking machine and monitoring method
An automated banking machine is part of a banking system that can operate to cause financial transfers responsive to data read from data bearing records, including user cards. The machine is in operative connection with a system operable to capture images related to activity that is conducted at or adjacent to the machine. The machine is positioned at a banking facility having a vault and an entrance. A plurality of cameras are positioned at the facility. Captured images can be analyzed at a remote monitoring center. The monitoring center can operate to assure that employees or customers of the banking facility can safely enter and/or exit the banking facility. |
| US08474703B1 |
Automated banking machine and monitoring method
An automated banking machine is part of a banking system that can operate to cause financial transfers responsive to data read from data bearing records, including user cards. The machine is in operative connection with a system operable to capture images related to activity that is conducted at or adjacent to the machine. The machine is positioned at a banking facility having a vault and an entrance. A plurality of cameras are positioned at the facility. Captured images can be analyzed at a remote monitoring center. The monitoring center can operate to assure that employees or customers of the banking facility can safely enter and/or exit the banking facility. |
| US08474702B2 |
Automated banking machine that operates responsive to data bearing records
A banking system is controlled responsive to data read from data bearing records. The system includes a card reader that operates to read identifying data from user cards, and can authorize operation of an automated banking machine responsive to the identifying data. The machine can generate and present a check to the machine user in response to user inputs. The machine presents an interface for the user to sign the check. The user's banking account is charged an amount corresponding to the check value. In exchange for the same machine receiving the generated check, the user is provided with cash dispensed from the machine. The machine also allows the user to select having a canceled check image displayed at the machine and/or sent to the user's network address. |
| US08474699B2 |
Automated banking machine controlled responsive to data bearing records
A system controlled responsive to data bearing records includes a card reader that is operative to read card data from user cards including financial account data, and causes operation of an automated banking machine to carry out financial transactions responsive to the account data. The automated banking machine is operative to access at least one network. The automated banking machine is operative to receive a gift card code from a machine user, where the code is correlated with a monetary value in a data store. In response to receiving the code, the machine operates to dispense a non-currency gift card that is redeemable at a merchant for the monetary value in at least one of goods or services. |
| US08474698B1 |
Banking system controlled responsive to data bearing records
An automated banking machine operates to cause financial transfers responsive to data read from data bearing records. The automated banking machine includes a card reader operative to read card data from user cards corresponding to financial accounts. The automated banking machine also includes a display and a printer to produce records of financial transactions carried out with the machine. The machine is operative to cause a computer determination to be made that the card data corresponds to an authorized machine user. The automated banking machine may also include a storage device that is operative to unlock a secured area including information thereon that is used by the automated banking machine to carry out financial transfers. |
| US08474696B2 |
Payment terminal ESD test
Systems and methods for performing test procedures for measuring and defining the sensitivity of payment terminals to ESD (electrostatic discharge) are disclosed. In some embodiments, a plurality of test equipment in a controlled environment are used to measure the peak discharge current (Ip) when a payment device is inserted into a payment terminal during several simulated conditions. Energy levels of the discharge currents are calculated using an energy calculation program. One or more reference current and energy levels are determined. |
| US08474692B2 |
Analyzer and method of analyzing
An analyzer which analyzes an analyte by using the analyte and consumables, the analyzer comprising: an automatic reading device which reads a first product information related to a consumable via an identifier given to the consumable or a container containing the consumable; and a controller which permits an analysis operation when the first product information is suitable information read by the automatic reading device via the identifier, and prompts an operator to manually enter a second product information comprising information specifying the manufacturer or seller of the consumable when the automatic reading device cannot read the identifier or the information read via the identifier is not suitable as the first product information and permits the analysis operation and storage of the input second product information when the operator has entered the second product information. |
| US08474689B2 |
Method for in-die lamination of plural layers of material and paper-containing product made thereby
A method for making a multilayered paper-containing product, for example a paper plate or tray, includes assembling two or more sheets of paper-containing material cut into blanks. The blanks are pressed together and shaped in a die, usually with a bonding agent being used to secure the blanks. Pleats are formed in the curved portion of the shaped product. However, the pleats on each blank are formed independently so that the folded region formed in the pleats are arranged in a staggered array and are not interleaved with the pleats of the other blank. |
| US08474688B2 |
Box with removable top
A box blank comprises serially attached top, bottom, first side, and second side panels, each having two side edges, with a side flap attached to each side edge. A first tear line extends across the top panel and side flaps attached thereto. A second tear line extends across the top or first side panel, and side flaps attached thereto. The panels and flaps are foldable to form a box with bottom formed from the bottom panel, top formed from the top panel, first side formed from the first side panel, second side formed from the second side panel, third and fourth sides formed from the side flaps. The side flaps are sized so that the third and fourth sides are partially open. The tear lines are positioned so that a top portion of the box is removable by separating it along the tear lines. |
| US08474686B2 |
Corrugated container
A corrugated container for shipping containers, such as glass bottles, includes a shipping box, a liner, one or more cross-pieces, a top sheet and a bottom sheet. The liner, cross-pieces, top sheet and bottom sheet may be made of corrugated or hexacomb material to provide shock absorbing protection to the bottles received within the shipping box. The liner and cross-pieces do not extend the full height of the box to allow the corners of the box to crush or crumple in the event the container is dropped on one of its upper corners. A pair of staggered hand holes may be formed in the opposite sides of the box to enable ergonomic lifting of the container. |
| US08474684B2 |
Segmented mandrel for high temperature bonding of metallic axisymmetric shells having complex curvatures
A method for bonding a composite multi-layer shell having complex curvature by the delta-alpha high temperature bonding process uses a novel tool. The tool includes a plurality of segments that combine to form a mandrel assembly having a substantially continuous outer surface. The outer surface has a substantially axisymmetric shape including a complex curvature. When the segments are combined to form the mandrel assembly, at least one of the segments is configured to be movable in a substantially inward direction without substantial obstruction by any other segment. The segments are constructed of a first material have a first coefficient of thermal expansion that is greater than a second coefficient of thermal expansion of a second material of a composite multi-layer shell to be bonded together using the tool. |
| US08474683B2 |
Robotic high density welding body shop
A method and apparatus for managing the delivery of component parts and tooling to a robotic welding assembly positioned on a motor vehicle body assembly line. Automatic guided vehicles deliver component parts from a source of parts to a parts staging area on the robotic welding assembly including a substage awaiting area, a substage in-use area and a substage empty area, and further automatic guided vehicles deliver tooling from a tooling management area to the robotic welding assembly whereafter the tooling, upon model changeover, is moved to a tooling use area proximate the assembly line whereafter, upon further model changeover, the tooling is removed from the tooling use area and loaded onto an automatic guided vehicle for return to the tooling management area. |
| US08474680B2 |
Wirebonding method and apparatus
A method and apparatus are discloses for wirebonding leads of a plurality of lead frames being part of a lead frame assembly by a wirebonding tool to semiconductor products mounted on the respective lead frames. The semiconductor products are clamped by a clamping mechanism comprising a stationary clamp and a movable clamp. The movable clamp follows the indexing movement of the lead frame assembly during wirebonding of the semiconductor products clamped by the movable clamp. The wirebonding process does not need to be interrupted for the indexing. |
| US08474677B2 |
Fastener system comprising a retention matrix and a cover
A surgical fastening system can comprise a plurality of fasteners, wherein each fastener can comprise, one, a base and, two, a leg extending from the base, wherein each leg can comprise a tip. The fastener system can further comprise a retention matrix comprising a first side facing toward the bases of the fasteners, a second side facing away from the bases of the fasteners, and a plurality of retention members configured to engage the legs. The fastener system can further comprise a cover configured to cover the staple tips, wherein the cover can comprise a sheet of material and/or a plurality of caps. |
| US08474675B2 |
Device for automatically controlling the edges of a web of sheeting
A device for automatically controlling the edges of a web of sheeting has a first deflecting roller and a second deflecting roller, which are arranged parallel to each other, and also a drive for shifting the deflecting rollers in opposite axial directions. A sensor detects the position of the sheeting. The drive shifts the deflecting rollers in opposite axial directions and the ratio between the friction of the sheeting on the first deflecting roller and the friction of the sheeting on the second deflecting roller is changed on the basis of the position of the sheeting detected by the sensor. |
| US08474672B1 |
Hiker's buddy apparatus for sharing with a hiker the carrying load of a backpack
An arrangement for replaceably supporting a backpack having a load on the back of a user and transferring the load of the backpack to the ground by way of the legs of the user while allowing the user to take steps unhindered. The arrangement includes a harness and a leg assembly. The harness replaceably supports the backpack having the load on the back of the user. The leg assembly is pivotally mounted to the harness, extends down the legs of the user, and transfers the load of the backpack to the ground by way of the legs of the user while allowing the user to take the steps unhindered. |
| US08474671B2 |
Golf cart bag strap sleeve
A golf cart bag strap sleeve that is capable of protecting a golf bag from damage due to friction between the golf cart bag strap and the golf bag comprising a first layer of durable non-abrasive material, a second layer of foam, neoprene, cloth, or gel padding, and a third layer of durable non-abrasive material suitable for customized advertising. In the first embodiment, the three layers are folded over to form the sleeve with two open ends that engage the strap. In a second embodiment, the sleeve is comprised of two panels, both made of the first layer, second layer, and a third layer. An end cover encloses the three layers to prevent fraying and stitching secures the three layers and the end cover. |
| US08474663B2 |
Adapter for a dispenser
An adapter includes a base having an aperture extending therethrough. A wall extends upwardly from the base, wherein first and second opposing ridges are disposed on an external surface of the wall adjacent a lower end thereof and first and second opposing elongate ribs are disposed adjacent the first and second ridges, respectively. A plurality of outwardly protruding stop members are disposed on the external surface of the wall above the first and second ridges and elongate ribs. |
| US08474659B2 |
Multi-chamber fluid dispensing container with dip tubes
Described is a multi-chamber fluid dispensing container with multiple dip tubes, and a package including the container and trigger sprayer having multiple supply lines for fluid connection to the multiple dip tubes. The container includes a body having a first wall defining a first interior volume and a second wall defining a second interior volume, a first dip tube fluidly connected to the first interior volume, and a second dip tube fluidly connected to the second interior volume. The package may include the container and a trigger sprayer coupled to the container, and fluidly connected to the first dip tube and to the second dip tube. Other embodiments may also be disclosed and claimed. |
| US08474658B2 |
Adhesive dispenser system
A dispenser system employs a packaging module for use with moisture sensitive materials. The packaging module comprises an outer carton and an inner bladder, which is substantially impermeable to moisture and is filled with one part of an adhesive. The carton is loaded on a mobile cart and the one part adhesive is supplied to a pump/mixer without exposure to moisture in the atmosphere. The packaging and dispensing system can be used in conjunction with mechanized adhesive application equipment for the construction trades. |
| US08474657B2 |
Pour spout
In a bottle spout fitment (24) and cap (26) combination, the cap (26) has a removed condition disengaged from the spout fitment and an installed condition mounted to the spout fitment. The cap has a plurality of radially-protruding lugs (132). The spout fitment has a spout (60) and a plurality of channels (118) positioned to receive the lugs (132) in the installed condition to block a longitudinal extraction of the cap from the spout fitment. |
| US08474654B2 |
In-store sample dispenser
A sample dispenser is provided allowing a consumer to sample a product. The dispenser includes a dosing unit having a mechanical pump and a nozzle for dispensing sampling amounts of the flowable substance. The dispenser also includes a cradle assembly featuring a cap and a dock, the dock having a receiving area and therein a floor from which projects an upwardly oriented hollow connector with a plastic wall piercing mouth. The cap is fittable over a product container. Tubing connects the pump and hollow connector allowing communication of the flowable substance between the product container and pump. Also provided is a method to allow a consumer to sample the product. The method includes providing the sample dispenser as described above, and activating the dosing unit to deliver a portion of the flowable substance to the consumer. |
| US08474653B2 |
Method and device for singulating ophthalmic lenses
The present invention relates to a method and a device for singulating ophthalmic lenses, particularly contact lenses. The method and the device are suitable for integration into an automated production of ophthalmic lenses, particularly contact lenses. |
| US08474652B2 |
Moist towelette dispensing apparatus
A moist towelette dispenser device adapted for use in combination with a toilet paper holder assembly having an elongated cylindrical spindle with two ends engageable which mount on a conventional toilet paper fixture to support a roll of toilet paper. The device provides for concurrent dispensing of toilet paper and moist towelettes and an air freshener. A housing provides a dispensing site for the towelettes and is engageable to the room mount by two elongated members. The toilet paper is operatively mounted on the spindle engaged between the members. |
| US08474651B2 |
Towelette dispenser
A towelette dispenser is provided with an integrally molded lid. The lid has a central aperture for allowing access to a roll of towelettes maintained within a tub receiving the lid therein. The separation bar bridges the aperture, and provides a rip fence in the form of a fingered thimble that is angled with respect to the lid as a whole. The thimble is offset near one edge of the annular opening so that a user may access the back side thereof to thread an edge of the leading towelette through the thimble without having to remove the lid from the tub. A well is provided in the smaller portion of the aperture and a cap for the lid is provided with a stuffer tab to urge the leading edge of the next towelette into the well when the cap is closed. Barrier caps are also provided to seal the interior of the tub during shipment and storage before the first use of the towelette dispenser. The barrier caps have removable portions that permit access to the interior of the lid and are removable without having to remove the lid from the tub. |
| US08474643B2 |
Cup lid having a perimeter portion adapted to cause liquid to drain toward a central portion of the lid
A lid for a drinking cup may include a rim portion and a raised cover portion. The rim portion may be adapted to matingly engage an upper peripheral edge of the drinking cup so as to selectively maintain the lid in a covering relationship on the cup. The raised cover portion may extend from the rim portion, and have a perimeter adapted to impede spillage of liquid over a peripheral edge of the lid. Liquid spilled or released on the cover portion or perimeter portion may drain away from the periphery of the cover portion and into the drinking opening or a recess in the cover portion that is adapted to receive a reclosable tab. |
| US08474636B2 |
Twist-cut unsealing mechanism for container
Provided is a twist-cut unsealing mechanism in which an operator can surely sense the fact that twist-cutting of a seal member has completed in assembling of spout and cap of such a type that a container is unsealed by twisting and cutting a seal member for the liquid passage of a spout by means of a cap. A twist-cut unsealing mechanism includes both-side protrusions arranged along a virtual circle rounding around the center line of rotation and an abutment protrusion movable relatively to the both-side protrusions along the virtual circle, and is configured so that one of the both-side protrusion and the abutment protrusion for indicating completion of twist-cut is fixed to a spout (2) and the other protrusion is fixed to a cap (3), the both-side protrusion has a sliding surface of gentle slope and a stopper surface of steep slope wherein projection heights of both surfaces are substantially same in the radial direction and both surface are adjacent to each other along a circle, the abutment protrusion can abut against the sliding surface and the stopper surface, and at a position where the abutment protrusion passed the sliding surface in the rotational direction, the relative rotation positions of the spout (2) and the cap (3) is set above the twist-cut completion position of a seal member (15) and within detachment allowance positional range where the detachment of the cap (3) is permitted. |
| US08474634B1 |
Child resistant closure with vents
A child resistant closure having an outer cap and an inner cap each of which has a base wall on a peripheral skirt with sets of lugs on the inner surface of the outer closure member and on the outer surface of the inner closure member which are adapted to be engaged when the members are moved axially toward one another. The outer surface of the inner cap is provided with a plurality of vents to allow for increased evacuation of fluid between the inner and outer cap. |
| US08474633B2 |
Methods of removing a torque converter and a starting motor from an auxiliary compartment of a gas turbine
Methods for moving a starting motor or a torque converter within an auxiliary compartment of a gas turbine are provided. A removal apparatus, which includes a lifting fixture attached to a beam pivotally mounted on a mast, is secured within the auxiliary compartment. To move the starting motor, a plurality of lifting hooks on the lifting fixture are attached to the starting motor, and the lifting fixture and the starting motor are hoisted. To move the torque converter, a pair of lifting lugs on the lifting fixture is attached to the torque converter, and the lifting fixture and the torque converter are hoisted. Methods are also generally provided for securing a removal apparatus within an auxiliary compartment of a gas turbine. |
| US08474631B2 |
Filter system and filter element for filtering fluids
A filter system for filtering fluids has a filter head and a filter cup with a rim area, wherein the filter cup is connected detachably by the rim area by a rotational and/or plug-in movement to the filter head. A filter element is exchangeably arranged in the filter cup. A sealing device with several sealing areas is provided that seals the filter head relative to the filter cup. The filter element has a connecting end disk arranged at an end face that is facing the rim area of the filter cup. On the connecting end disk at least two of the sealing areas of the sealing device are arranged so as to extend circumferentially in such a way that a first sealing area seals the connecting end disk relative to the filter head and a second sealing area seals the connecting end disk relative to the filter cup. |
| US08474630B2 |
Method and apparatus for isolating platelets from blood
A platelet collection device comprising a centrifugal spin-separator container with a cavity having a longitudinal inner surface. A float in the cavity has a base, a platelet collection surface above the base, an outer surface. The float density is below the density of erythrocytes and above the density of plasma. The platelet collection surface has a position on the float which places it below the level of platelets when the float is suspended in separated blood. During centrifugation, a layer of platelets or buffy coat collects closely adjacent the platelet collection surface. Movement of a float having a density greater than whole blood through the sedimenting erythrocytes releases entrapped platelets, increasing the platelet yield. |
| US08474628B1 |
Presenting a recipient of an e-mail with an option to instant message a sender or another recipient based on the sender's or the other recipient's address and online status
Systems and techniques for transferring electronic data between users of a communications system include a host system structured and arranged to receive and deliver messages of various types between users of the communications system. The host system includes an instant messaging network; a mail gateway; and a configuring network in communication with both the instant messaging network and the mail gateway. The instant messaging network enables instant messaging communication between users of the communications system and has the capability to monitor whether a certain user is capable of receiving an instant message at a particular moment. The mail gateway receives and delivers e-mail messages to users of the communications system. The configuring network is dedicated to automatically configuring instant messaging communication between an intended recipient of an e-mail message and the sender of the e-mail message. |
| US08474624B2 |
Child resistant container
A container and method of opening a container are provided. The container includes a dispensing cartridge defining a storage cavity with an access opening. A blocking member is transitionable from a blocked state to an unblocked state relative to the access opening. The blocking member covers a greater portion of the access opening in the blocked state than in the unblocked state. The outer shell includes a piercing mechanism configured to transition the blocking member from the blocked state to the unblocked state. The method includes using the piercing mechanism to transition the blocking member from the blocked state to the unblocked state. |
| US08474621B2 |
Package system
A package system which combines an article and a container in an integrated package with the article secured in nested relationship within a recess of the container. The recess has sufficient depth such that portions of the side walls of the container extend outwardly effectively beyond an exposed surface of the article so as to protect the article against damage. Alternatively, the package system includes a pair of spaced columns which are integrally formed with the side wall of the container and which extend outwardly from the side wall. A recess is formed between the column members which is configured to receive an article in nested relationship within the recess. Methods for securing the article in nested relationship within the recess of the container are also disclosed. |
| US08474619B1 |
Unitary gift card box
A unitary gift box of clam-shell design constructed of cardboard and decorative wrapping paper is configured to releasably hold a gift card. The gift card is secured within a folded pop-up structure that moves the card to a prominently displayed position when the box is opened. |
| US08474616B2 |
Support for food product arrangement and method for assembling an arrangement
A support for a food product display arrangement is presented. The support includes a cylindrical structure having a diameter, an exterior surface and a height. The cylindrical structure is a food safe, foam material having a density suitable for supporting at least one of food products and display elements. The cylindrical structure is selectively adjustable about its diameter and height to accommodate a container used in the display arrangement. A plurality of supports are disposed in the cylindrical structure at positions and angles to create a visually interesting and aesthetically pleasing food product display arrangement. A plurality of food items are coupled to the supports. |
| US08474615B2 |
Retention dual use bit holder
A bit holder, comprising a base having a plurality of longitudinally oriented bit compartments for releasably storing multiple tool bits, a retention member positioned on the outside of the base for releasably retaining the tool bits within the base, and a magnetic member engaged with the base for allowing the base to be removably attached to a metal surface for storage. |
| US08474613B2 |
Carrier for photographic equipment such as cameras and lenses
A carrier has a variable-length compartment for receiving a device of variable length, such as a lens with a hood that may be alternated between a reversed and an extended or operative position. The carrier has an expansion gusset region that allows expansion of the carrier along one dimension when the device is elongated, whereby the carrier is able to securely accommodate the elongated device within the compartment, and contraction of the carrier when the device is less elongated. |
| US08474606B2 |
Link chain for chain conveyors and horizontal chain links therefor
A link chain or a chain link for scraper chain conveyors with vertical and horizontal chain links which are interlinked in an articulated manner for scraper chain conveyors for use in mining. In particular to horizontal chain links with front sections with a straight face zone and with longitudinal limbs, which connect the front sections around an oval inner opening and which are provided on their outer surfaces with a recess, wherein the rear sides of front sections delimiting the inner opening form a contact zone for circular arcs of vertical chain links. In order to improve the service life of the link chain, the rear sides, which face oval inner opening, of front sections are provided with a surface which has a hollow, which forms a central region of the contact zone, between a fillet cambered in a crowned manner. |
| US08474602B2 |
Multi-piece conveyor belt rollers
Multi-piece rollers for a conveyor belt. First and second roller sections fit together to form a complete roller. The two roller sections together define a bore for receiving an axle. The bore and the periphery of the roller are formed in part by each of the first and second roller sections. The roller is assembled by sliding the two sections together in a direction perpendicular to the axle with the bore closing around the axle. The roller sections have fingers that interdigitate with each other to prevent axial separation of the first and second roller sections. The interdigitated fingers surround a majority of the bore. |
| US08474601B2 |
Container transfer device having a transfer guiding member
Device (10) for transferring containers (2) from a feed rail (9) to a rotary star wheel (3). The device (10) has a transfer wheel (11) provided, on its periphery, with a plurality of recesses (12) for engaging containers (2) under their neck (7) and moving the containers (2) along a transfer path (15) extending from a loading point (13) at an end of the feed rail (9) to an unloading point (16) at the periphery of the rotary star wheel (3). Also included is a guiding member (18) having a flat lower surface (19) extending at least partly above the transfer path (15) at a distance from the transfer wheel (11) substantially equal to the height of the container neck (7). |
| US08474596B2 |
Transfer conveying apparatus
The invention describes a transfer conveying apparatus (1) having small conveying rollers (14) which form a conveying plane (13) for an item of transported goods (3) for a main conveying direction and at least one auxiliary conveying direction with a pivoting apparatus for pivoting the small conveying rollers (14) about pivot axes which extend perpendicularly with respect to the conveying plane (13) and with a drive apparatus for the small conveying rollers (14). A load-bearing frame of the transfer conveying apparatus (1) having at least one row (11) of the small conveying rollers (14) arranged transversely with respect to the main conveying direction and having pivoting transfer and drive transfer for the row (11) of the small conveying rollers (14) forms a conveying module which is connected detachably to a base module having at least one pivoting drive arrangement and at least one small-roller drive arrangement. |
| US08474587B2 |
Bicycle hub assembly with two bearings
A bicycle hub assembly includes a hub having a driving tube connected one end thereof and the driving tube includes a ratchet portion and a sprocket portion respectively defined in an outer periphery thereof. A first recess and a second recess are defined in an inner periphery of the driving tube, wherein the first recess is located corresponding to the ratchet portion and the second recess is located corresponding to the sprocket portion. A ratchet unit is mounted to the ratchet portion and a sprocket unit is mounted to the sprocket portion. A first rotary member and a second rotary member are engaged with the first recess and the second recess respectively. |
| US08474586B2 |
Clutch actuation assembly with satellite pistons
A dual clutch actuation assembly includes a housing, an annular central piston, a plurality of satellite pistons, and an annular apply member. The housing includes an inner cylindrical wall, an outer cylindrical wall, and a plurality of satellite cylindrical walls. The inner and outer walls define an inner piston annulus and the satellite walls define a plurality of satellite piston bores. Each of the satellite walls is disposed at least partially radially outward of the outer wall. The central piston is disposed in the inner piston annulus and is in sliding engagement with the inner and outer walls of the housing. The satellite pistons are disposed in the satellite piston bores and are in sliding engagement with the satellite walls of the housing. The apply member is axially engaged with each of the satellite pistons and includes an annular plate portion disposed radially outward of the outer cylindrical wall of the housing. |
| US08474584B2 |
Tamper evidencing band
A tamper evidencing band for encircling an article includes an elongate strip. The band is provided with a loop. The loop is such that attempted opening or removal of the loop will be evidenced by the band. The strip has a portion distal from the loop, which is insertable through the loop. Attachment means is provided to selectively attach the distal portion onto another portion of the strip to encircle the article whereby attempted removal of the attachment will be evidenced by the band. The tamper evidencing band may be provided as a flat strip with the loop unformed. Alternatively, the tamper evidencing band may be provided in kit form with a separate buckle to define the loop. |
| US08474583B2 |
Impact device and methods of making and using the same
In an embodiment, an impact device comprises: a metal component comprising greater than or equal to three walls forming a metal component channel; and a plastic component having a honeycomb structure with a plurality of walls defining comb channels therein. The combs channels are oriented perpendicular to at least one of the three walls, and the plastic component is inseparable from the metal component without damage to at least one of the metal component and the plastic component. A wall of the metal component can comprise an aperture, and wherein plastic material from the plastic component is located in the aperture. |
| US08474580B2 |
Floating brake disc
The invention relates to a floating brake disc (1), particularly for a motorcycle, particularly an off-road motorcycle, which comprises an outer ring (2) which carries a brake band (23) and an inner ring (3) via which the brake disc (1) is connected to a wheel of the vehicle. According to the invention, at least one region (5) of contact, in particular a number of regions (5) of contact, between the outer ring (2) and the inner ring (3) is/are formed on a circular arc (6) extending, concentrically with the brake disc (1), between the outer ring (2) and the inner ring (3), the outer ring (2) and inner ring (3) being connected to one another in the at least one contact region (5) with at least one connecting means (16), in particular a rivet. The inner ring (3) also has, next to the at least one contact region (5), a projection (7) which engages in an indentation (8) in the outer ring (2) in such a way that a bearing surface (9) between the inner ring (3) and the outer ring (2) can be formed, at least when the brake disc (1) is in operation in a vehicle, particularly a motorcycle. |
| US08474575B2 |
Mounting for a safety system
A mounting for a support post of a safety system has a cylindrical stem to be removably received in a cylindrical socket of an anchor device to be secured to a structure, and a connector enabling connection to the support post of the safety system. The connector is articulated with respect to the cylindrical stem to be adjustable over a range of attitude orientations with respect to the cylindrical stem and a securing device secures the connector at a specific attitude orientation with respect to the cylindrical stem. The mounting may be used in a safety guardrail system for working at height, with a vacuum anchor and a support post to which the guardrail is mounted. The support post is mounted to the vacuum anchor by the articulated mounting to enable the orientation angle of the support post to be adjusted with respect to the anchor device. |
| US08474574B1 |
Sound absorbing structure
PROBLEMSThe present invention provides a sound absorbing structure that enables a sound absorbing rate thereof to be raised in a low-frequency region or medium-high frequency from around 500 Hz to 10 KHz, and a thickness thereof to be reduced.SOLUTIONSThe sound absorbing structure has: a non-air permeable sheet molding object having, on one surface side thereof, a plurality of cavities including recesses formed by bending; and a non-air permeable surface sheet which is layered on the sheet molding object, on a cavity open-top side surface thereof, so as to cover open-top of the plurality of cavities, wherein the surface sheet is fixed at outer peripheral sections of the sheet molding object 11 and is not fixed to the sheet molding object at portions between adjacent cavities. |
| US08474571B1 |
Limited movement ear piece for stethoscopes and other headpieces
An ear piece assembly (10, 100, 200, 300, 500, 600, 700, 800, 900, 1000) designed for a stethoscope or other headpiece, and configured to allow rotation of an ear tip (20, 120, 220, 320, 420, 520, 620) of the assembly about a central axis (relative to the rest of the assembly) and to allow limited off axis movement of the ear tip (relative to the rest of the assembly). In typical embodiments, the ear piece assembly is designed to fit a user's ear canal and stay in place during typical use without rotational or off axis movement of the ear tip relative to the ear canal, and to provide substantially more comfort to the user than would a headpiece with a conventional ear tip assembly, particularly for prolonged wearing by the user. Other aspects of the invention are a headpiece (e.g., a stethoscope headpiece) or stethoscope including an embodiment of the earpiece assembly, an ear piece housing body configured for use in an embodiment of the earpiece assembly, and an ear tip configured for use in an embodiment of the earpiece assembly. |
| US08474570B2 |
Electric power steering apparatus
An electrical angle estimation section calculates an estimative electrical angle on the basis of an inductive voltage generated in a motor, and obtains an estimative electrical angle by correcting the estimative electrical angle by an electrical angle correction amount. On the basis of a detection value which represents the difference in electrical angle between the q-axis and the δ-axis calculated by an electrical-angle-error detection section, an electrical-angle-correction-amount computation section calculates an electrical angle correction amount such that the electrical angle of the δ-axis falls within a prescribed angular range, which lags behind the q-axis in terms of electrical angle. Thus, when sensorless control is performed, a phenomenon in which the motor loses synchronism can be restrained. |
| US08474564B2 |
Self-propelled wheel for bicycles and similar vehicles
A wheel with a self-contained drive mechanism is provided to propel (or assist in propulsion of) bicycles, tricycles, and similar vehicles. The wheel preferably takes the form of a detachable wheel, which is readily received within the dropouts of a bicycle frame or fork. Thus, the wheel may be added to (or removed from) preexisting standard bicycles and the like. |
| US08474562B2 |
Tractor center control console
A tractor center control console may be assembled before being mounted on a tractor. The tractor center control console includes a one-piece molded plastic pedestal, an instrument panel, and a steering column assembly that is solely supported by the one-piece plastic pedestal. A removable cowl covers at least part of the one-piece plastic pedestal. Electronic components are housed in the one-piece plastic pedestal and covered by the removable cowl. |
| US08474557B2 |
Air guiding device
An air guiding device is arranged in a front end part of a motor vehicle and has an air guiding duct containing a radiator unit through which fresh air flows. A wheel house grille is arranged in the guiding duct downstream of the radiator unit. The wheel house grille has differently positioned air guiding slats for the passage of radiator outlet air. The air guiding slats are positioned so that part of the radiator outlet air is guided to the vehicle outside and a further part of the radiator outlet air can be supplied to the vehicle inside and via a deflecting blade to a wheel brake for cooling. The air guiding slats may also be closed over subregions by means of a facing such that no outlet air can flow through the slats in the subregions. |
| US08474554B2 |
Fast tracked ground vehicle
An unmanned guided vehicle that is at least twice as fast as those of the prior art, lighter, less vulnerable, and more reliable than the prior art having at least one of: a dual-action dogleg suspension system; a track system comprising a plurality of cleats, a rubber insert secured to each cleat, and two cables serially joining each cleat to make up a track; a track guide system comprising a shark fin secured to each cleat that runs through a plurality of track guides; a dry clutch and braking system; a tubular chassis comprising a tubular center chassis and a tubular suspension chassis; a spring-loaded piston track tension compensator system; a flat drive tooth drive sprocket system that allows for clearing foreign debris from between the teeth; and a suspension carrier modular design assembly system comprising a passenger side suspension carrier, center cage, and driver's side suspension carrier. |
| US08474553B1 |
Self-loading locomotion mechanism and application thereof
The present invented mechanism comprises more than two (legs) with phase difference (like polygon-shape, ellipse-shape, and etc) between their rotation angles to produce pre-loading for improved adhesion. Two rigid plates covered with adhesives are attached to each phase difference wheel. Each plate connects to the wheels via a hinge embodying a torsional spring, which forces the plate back to its original position after each contact with surface. The phase difference wheels are made of elastic materials for application of controlled pre-loads at contact surfaces during locomotion. The difference between height and width of each wheel as well as the elastic properties of the materials determine the pre-load pressure applied during locomotion. The pre-load pressure is not strongly dependent on the orientation of locomotion. This enables locomotion in vertical, inclined and even upside-down orientation and also in the non-gravity environment. |
| US08474548B1 |
Measurement while drilling apparatus and method of using the same
The present invention is a method and apparatus used to transmit information to the surface from a subsurface location during the process of drilling a bore hole comprising a pressure pulse generator or “pulser” coupled to a sensor package, a controller, an active electromagnetic system for subsurface collision avoidance, and a battery power source all of which reside inside a short section of drill pipe close to the bit at the bottom of the bore hole being drilled wherein the apparatus or “MWD Tool” can be commanded from the surface to make a measurement of desired parameters and transmit this information to the surface by encoding data in pressure pulses generated by a pulser valve that includes a stator and a rotor which may be open and closed to create pressure pulses. |
| US08474546B2 |
Agricultual implement incorporating disc opener apparatus
A packing pressure adjustment assembly for a ground opener unit of an agricultural implement includes a spring interconnected between a rotatable pressure adjustment arm and a trailing arm to which a packer wheel is rotatably mounted. The pressure adjustment arm is centered about an axle of the ground opener unit and is movable between a set of mounting positions that are defined by a set of teeth spaced and arced from one another along a frame portion of the ground opener unit. As the pressure adjustment arm is rotated, the amount of force exerted by the spring on the trailing arm is varied. The packing pressure adjustment assembly is relatively compact and is useful in providing high packing forces, such as a packing force in excess of 100 lbs. |
| US08474543B2 |
Method and apparatus for controlling the flow of fluids from a well below the surface of the water
A fluid control device is provided for controlling and/or halting an uncontrolled flow of petroleum or natural gas from an open well head on the sea floor. The fluid control device includes an elongated member having a diameter smaller than the inside diameter of the well head casing. A tapered section in connection with the elongated section, has a diameter equal to or greater than the inside diameter of the well head casing. An end section connected to the tapered section has a diameter greater than or equal to the outside diameter of the well head casing. The fluid control device, under its own mass or under an external force, overcomes the upward forces created by the flowing petroleum or natural gas, resulting in sufficient downward movement of the fluid control device and contact with the open well to seal the well head casing or drill pipe. |
| US08474541B2 |
Glass forming hardbanding material
A drill pipe and a method of applying hardbanding thereto. A hardbanding alloy comprising iron and manganese present in the range of 67 to 87 weight percent (wt. %), niobium and chromium present in the range of 9 to 29 wt. %, and boron, carbon and silicon present in the range of 3 to 6.5 wt. % may be welded around at least a portion of a tool joint circumference. The hardbanding alloy may exhibit a hardness of 45 Rc to 70 Rc and a wear rate in the range of 0.08 grams to 1.60 grams of mass loss after 6,000 cycles as measured using ASTM G65-04, Procedure A. |
| US08474539B2 |
Pull tube sleeve stress joint for floating offshore structure
The present disclosure provides an improved design for a pull tube sleeved stress joint and associated pull tube for managing stresses on a catenary riser for a floating offshore structure. The pull tube sleeve stress joint includes at least one sleeve surrounding a length of the pull tube with an annular gap between the sleeve and pull tube and a link ring therebetween. For embodiments having a plurality of sleeves, a first sleeve can be spaced by an annular first gap from the pull tube and coupled thereto with a first ring between the pull tube and the first sleeve, and a second sleeve can be spaced by an annular second gap from the first sleeve and coupled thereto with a second ring between the first sleeve and the second sleeve. Both pull tube and sleeves can be made with regular pipe segments welded together with regular girth welds. |
| US08474537B2 |
High capacity wellhead connector having a single annular piston
A wellhead connector for connecting a riser or production tree to a wellhead of a subsea well utilizes a singular annular piston to lock the connector onto the wellhead. The wellhead connector includes a housing that contains dogs for engagement with the exterior of the wellhead housing. A cam ring is also included, which has an inner side for engaging the dogs and moving them inward into a locked position with the wellhead housing. The cam ring is of a reduced proportion relative to prior art. As such, the cam ring outer side is dimensioned to contact the inner side of the connector housing under load. Connecting rods connect the piston to the cam rings. As the piston moves downward, the cam ring also moves downward, forcing the dogs inward into a locked position. As the piston moves upward, the cam ring also moves upward, thereby unlocking the connector. A secondary annular piston is also provided to guarantee unlocking.At preload, a profile on the lower portion of the connector body engages a stepped profile on the outer diameter of the wellhead thereby creating a secondary load path for reacting to the applied bending moment. |
| US08474532B2 |
Invert silicate fluids for wellbore strengthening
A wellbore fluid that includes an oleaginous continuous phase; a non-oleaginous discontinuous phase comprising a water-soluble silicate therein; and an emulsifier to stabilize the non-oleaginous phase dispersed in the oleaginous phase is disclosed. A setting agent, including organic or inorganic setting agent may optionally be included to trigger gelation or precipitation of the silicate downhole. |
| US08474530B2 |
Method and apparatus for a high side orienting sub for multi-lateral installations
An apparatus for indicating the orientation of a structure which includes an orienting sub releasably connected at an outer case. The orienting sub is at a preselected orientation relative to the structure. A change in fluid pressure of a predetermined magnitude of flow rate through the orienting sub will indicate that the structure is at a desired orientation in the well. |
| US08474527B2 |
Mechanism for providing controllable angular orientation while transmitting torsional load
A mechanism for adjusting the relative angular orientation of two coaxial components includes a mandrel having a cylindrical central section between upper and lower splined sections, a sleeve rotatably and slidably disposed around the mandrel's central section, and generally cylindrical upper and lower ratchet members positioned, respectively, about the mandrel's upper and lower splined sections. The ratchet members have internal grooves which receive the mandrel splines for torsional load transfer while permitting limited rotation relative to the mandrel, but their axial positions relative to the mandrel are fixed. The upper and lower ends of the sleeve have circumferentially-arrayed ratchet teeth engageable, respectively, with corresponding teeth on the upper and lower ratchet members. The central sleeve has torque-transferring external splines slidable within matching grooves on the inner surface of a cylindrical tool housing enclosing the mechanism. The mandrel is rotatable relative to the housing, but its axial position is fixed. The teeth of the sleeve and ratchet members are configured such that movement of the sleeve from a position engaging the upper ratchet member to a position engaging the lower ratchet member, or vice versa, will effect an incremental angular shift of the mandrel relative to the tool housing, while maintaining effective transfer of torsional loads therebetween. |
| US08474522B2 |
Downhole material retention apparatus
A debris removal device features structural support from an exterior housing that allows more space for debris collection. The debris enters the collection volume from the top to eliminate debris from having to go through a valve. The screen in the device is disposed internally to protect it during handling and running. A variety of external flow diverters are used to direct debris laden fluid into the tool and to keep debris out of an annular space around the tool that could interfere with its removal. The diverters can be actuated by relative movement in the tool or applied pressure to a piston which can inflate a sleeve or orient or misalign paths through brushes for selective bypassing of fluid exterior to the tool. |
| US08474519B2 |
Methane hydrate dissociation accelerating and methane gas deriving system
Warm water is pumped up by a pump from an underground aquifer present 1000 to 1500 m below the seabed, geothermal energy is caused to flow through a permeable layer below a methane hydrate layer, a dissociation boundary surface of an un-dissociated area of the methane hydrate layer is dissociated to generate methane gas, the methane gas is led into a production well from peripheral areas and through a gas inlet screen and caused to rise so that the methane gas is collected on the sea. |
| US08474518B2 |
Automobile cooling system component
A tank body 125 comprising header tanks 120 of a radiator is composed with a polyamide composition containing polyamide 6,10, glass fiber, copper and nucleating agent. At this time, the polyamide composition contains, based on the total weight of the polyamide 6,10, the glass fiber, the copper and the nucleating agent, (a) 48.9 to 79.988 percent by weight of the polyamide 6,10, (b) 20 to 50 percent by weight of the glass fiber, (c) 0.002 to 0.1 percent by weight of the copper, and (d) 0.01 to 1.5 percent by weight of the nucleating agent, and the result of measuring half-crystallization time of the polyamide composition is 5 minutes or less. In addition, the polyamide 6,10 used has a relative viscosity, as measured in 98 percent sulfuric acid, of 2.3 to 2.9. |
| US08474516B2 |
Heat exchanger having winding micro-channels
A micro-channel heat exchanger suited for use in large-area cold plates includes a heat transfer member having winding micro-channels, a manifold, and a cover plate. The micro-channels' winding design is defined by a nonlinear flow axis that may include a plurality of short pitch and small amplitude undulations, which cause the flow to change directions, as well as two or more large amplitude bends that cause the flow to reverse direction. In low flow per unit area applications, the winding micro-channels allow a user to customize the pressure drop to promote good flow distribution, to achieve improved heat transfer uniformity, and to enable the pressure drop to remain above the bubble point of the heat transfer structure to prevent gas blockage. The winding micro-channels also improve the heat transfer coefficient. |
| US08474515B2 |
Finned cylindrical heat exchanger
A cylindrical heat exchanger for use as a gas cooler in a thermal regenerative machine such as a Stirling engine includes an imperforate middle wall of sufficient strength and thickness to withstand the pressure exerted by the working fluid. The heat exchanger includes an inner corrugated wall located within an axial gas flow passage inside the middle wall, and an outer corrugated wall which defines an axial coolant flow passage along the outer surface of the middle wall. The coolant flow passage preferably contains a corrugated intermediate wall. |
| US08474514B2 |
Carrier structure for partitioning and/or inner partitioning with integrated heating and/or cooling
The invention relates to a carrier structure (1) for partitioning and/or inner partitioning with integrated heating and/or cooling.The structure is characterized in that it comprises mounts (2) that can be fixed to the structure of a building and adapted for receiving a cladding (8); through chutes (5) formed so that they can be attached on said mounts (2); and a network of heating and/or cooling members (6) extending in a portion or the totality of said chutes (5).The invention also relates to a mount and a chute for realizing such a structure, and to a partitioning or inner partitioning for implementing the same. |
| US08474512B2 |
Cooler arrangement for a motor vehicle
A cooler device for a motor vehicle includes a radiator liquid cooler with a first cooler element for cooling radiator liquid for the motor vehicle's combustion engine, a charge air cooler with a second cooler element for cooling of charge air for the combustion engine, the first and the second cooler elements extending substantially parallel and side by side, with a narrow space between the cooler elements. A screening device in the space between the cooler elements regulates the air flow through the elements. A control mechanism switches the screening device to and fro between an open position in which the screening device does not, or at least does not appreciably, limit the air flow through the cooler elements, and a closed position in which the screening device limits the air flow through the cooler elements. |
| US08474509B2 |
Operating system for an architectural covering
Operating system (1) for rotatably controlling retraction and deployment of an architectural covering. The operating system includes a drive pulley wheel (3) having a circumferential rim (5), a length of looped drive cord (9) operatively engaged with the pulley wheel (3) about its circumferential rim (5) and having depending portions on opposite sides of the pulley wheel (3), a cover (7) co-extensive with a portion of the circumference of the pulley wheel (3) and at least one stopper (19) attached to a portion of the length of the drive cord (9) and adapted to engage the cover (7) to stop rotation upon a predetermined amount of rotation of the pulley wheel (3). The pulley wheel is provided with a cavity (17) on its toothed circumference for receiving the at least one stopper (19) to prevent it from engaging the cover (7). |
| US08474505B2 |
Temporary tattoo applicators
A tattoo applicator for applying temporary tattoos to a subject, the tattoo applicator including a handheld housing and a sponge moveably supported by the housing to moisten the temporary tattoo and to apply pressure to the temporary tattoo. In some examples, the housing defines a retaining slot for receiving a tattoo-forming sheet. In some examples, the tattoo applicator includes a timer. In some examples, the tattoo applicator includes a push rod and a tattoo mount supported by the housing, the tattoo mount defining a port through which the push rod extends. In some examples, the tattoo applicator includes a fluid reservoir mounted to the housing. |
| US08474498B2 |
Pneumatic tire
A pneumatic tire (1) provided in the tread portion (2) with a row (5R) of crown blocks (5b) divided by crown axial grooves (8), two rows (6R) of middle blocks (6b) divided by middle axial grooves (9), and two rows (7R) of shoulder blocks (7b) divided by shoulder axial grooves (10), Each of the crown axial grooves (8) is circumferentially aligned with one of the middle axial grooves (9) such that the crown axial groove (8) is positioned within a middle-axial-groove range (Mc) defined between 1st and 2nd axial straight lines (Za and Zb) which are drawn passing through 1st and 2nd extreme circumferential end points (9a and 9b) of the middle axial groove (9), respectively. The circumferential length of the middle-axial-groove range (Mc) is not less than 25% but not more than 50% of a pitch length (P) defined between the two 1st extreme circumferential end points (9a and 9a). The middle-axial-groove range (Mc) does not overlap with any of the shoulder axial grooves (10). |
| US08474494B2 |
Roadside repair kit for restoring tire bead integrity
A sealing tube is wrapped around the rim and inflated such as to seal the gap between tire and rim if the seal between the tire bead and rim has lost its integrity. After this, the tire can be inflated to specified pressure at a slow rate using a portable compressor. The repair can be done at roadside on any vehicle using inflatable tires usually without demounting the wheel or even jacking up the defective wheel. |
| US08474491B2 |
Nitrogen tire filling apparatus and method
An apparatus is provided for filling vehicle tires with nitrogen and especially to a customer operated tire inflation system for filling vehicle balloon tires with nitrogen. A plurality of tanks of nitrogen are mounted for rotation on a lazy susan and are connected to a hose on a reel having a tire filling valve on the end thereof for unreeling and filling a vehicle tire. A credit or debit card reader controls a hose reel lock and flow from the nitrogen tanks. |
| US08474488B2 |
Low pressure accumulator for anti-lock brake system
A low pressure accumulator for an anti-lock brake system of a vehicle. The low pressure accumulator includes a cylinder having one end communicated with a fluid path connected to a valve and a pump and an opposite end formed with an opening, a piston moving back and forth in the cylinder, a spring installed in the cylinder to elastically support the piston, and a plug installed in the opening of the cylinder to support one end of the spring. The plug includes a vent to ventilate air through an inside and an outside of the cylinder. |
| US08474486B2 |
Actuator system
An actuator system (14) comprising a valve assembly (40) having an inner spool (50), an outer spool (60), and a sleeve (70). An assembly (80) directly drives the inner spool (50) to move it relative to the outer spool (60), and thereby hydromechanically causes the outer spool (60) to move relative to the sleeve (70). A control assembly (90) provides current input to the drive assembly (80), which converts current input into mechanical motion. The control assembly (90) senses the position of the inner spool (50) and regulates current in accordance with the sensed position. |
| US08474480B1 |
Actuator control valve
A spool valve is formed from a spool having two adjacent lands of equal cross-sectional dimensions, and a third land having greater cross-sectional dimensions than the other two. The spool reciprocably moves through a bore formed in a housing, so as to open and close fluid communication between selected pairs of ports formed in the housing. The bore includes a first chamber which receives the third land of the spool and has no externally communicating port formed in its walls. The spool valve may be used as a control valve for the actuator of a system valve. As the spool valve begins to actuate, the third land becomes exposed to actuator pressure. The greater area of the third land serves to increase the force applied to the spool valve by the actuator pressure source, enhancing protection from unintended or malicious resetting of the spool. |
| US08474478B2 |
Float valve
A float valve comprising a shut-off lever and a float lever is disclosed. The shut-off lever is supported for pivotal movement about a first axis between a first closed position and a second open position. The float lever is supported for pivotal movement about a second axis between a first closed position and a second open position. The float lever and the shut-off lever include cams which cooperate to transmit closing forces and opening forces between the levers. The valve exhibits a snap closing action whereby seeping is prevented over a substantial range of liquid levels. |
| US08474475B2 |
Valve arrangement and construction kit for a valve arrangement
A valve arrangement (1) comprising a valve body (2) for inflating and deflating a vehicle tire and comprising a measuring device (8) for measuring the tire pressure, in which the measuring device (8) is secured on the valve body (2) against axial movement in a pulling direction (Z) away from the valve body (2) by a securing element. The securing element has a profiled element (15) with a fixing element (20) acting on the valve body (2). Furthermore, a construction kit for such a valve arrangement is provided. The profiled element can connect the valve body (2) in a signal-conducting manner to an electronic transmitting unit. |
| US08474470B2 |
Crutch
The invention provides a forearm type of crutch comprising an operatively upright staff having a ground engaging foot at one end and a transverse handle and forearm support assembly at the operatively upper end, and wherein the angle of inclination of the forearm support assembly to the staff is adjustable, wherein the angle of inclination of the forearm support assembly relative to the staff is adjustable by means of a pair of co-operating positioning portions, one being stationary relative to the staff and the other being stationary relative to the forearm support assembly and wherein the positioning portions have complementarily co-operating zones that are engagable in different angular positions of the forearm support assembly and staff to provide a desired angle of inclination of the forearm support assembly relative to the staff and wherein releasable clamping means operatively hold the positioning portions in a selected engaged position for use. |
| US08474468B2 |
Apparatus and method for thermally processing a substrate with a heated liquid
Apparatus and method for heating a substrate in a bath containing a heated liquid inside a vessel of a thermal processing system. The liquid in the bath is heated and the substrate is brought into contact with the liquid in the bath. The substrate is heated to a process temperature by transferring heat energy from the heated liquid in the bath to the substrate. The substrate is removed from the heated liquid and dried before subsequent processing steps. |
| US08474462B2 |
Tongue retaining oral appliance
An oral appliance includes a frame for mounting to a user's teeth and a tongue contacting retaining member extending from the frame and configured in use to limit movement of the tongue toward the user's throat when the user is exercising or sleeping to maintain an open air passageway. The retaining member is positioned relative to the frame such that in use the retaining member contacts the tongue in a zone behind the second molars and in front of the pharyngeal reflex region of the tongue. The retaining member is further configured to lightly contact the tongue, and to apply a restraining force to the tongue as the tongue begins to move toward the user's throat during exercise or as the user falls asleep. |
| US08474461B2 |
Apparatus for holding nasal tubes
The present invention relates to a nasal tube holder having a conformable body with a nose section and a forehead section. At least one nasal tube inserted into a patient's nose is held to the conformable body, and the conformable body is held to a patient's forehead. Also disclosed is a method for securing at least one nasal tube to a patient's nose and forehead. |
| US08474450B2 |
Enhancements introduced into prolonged tracheal cannulation processes
A method for positioning a cannula for permanent implant through the orifice or tracheostoma in a fully aligned manner with the help of an inserter. The inner end or suprastomal extension of the cannula, upon withdrawing the inserter is vertically positioned in the supra-ostial area of the trachea, allowing, once the permanent cannula has been permanently positioned, the introduction of a perforated cannula having a characteristic curvature therethrough. The perforated cannula is oriented, through the lower aperture of the permanent cannula -1-, towards the interior of the lungs in order to allow insufflation of air from the exterior, while the exhaled air is derived through the vertical extension towards the larynx through the orifices disposed in the curvature elbow thereof. |
| US08474449B2 |
Variable length pneumostoma management system for treatment of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease
A flexible pneumostoma management device maintains the patency of a pneumostoma while controlling the flow of material through the pneumostoma. The pneumostoma management device includes flange attaches to the chest of the patient to secure the device in position. The pneumostoma management device also includes a tube which enters the pneumostoma to allow gases to escape the lung. The length of the tube is selected to match the dimensions of the pneumostoma of a patient. In order to manufacture devices having different tube lengths, the tube is formed at a longer length than required, cut to size and tipped. The tube may be formed by molding or extrusion. |
| US08474448B2 |
Metered dose inhaler
The present invention provides an improved metered dose inhaler utilizing the property of the aerosol canister. The metered dose inhaler includes: a housing body (2); an aerosol canister (3) including a canister body (3a), a valve stem (3b), and a spring urging the valve stem, wherein the valve stem (3b) is held at a fixed position inside the housing body (2), and wherein the canister body (3a) is supported inside the housing body (2) to be depressible against a spring force of the spring; a dose counter (10) including display members (12) and (13) rotatably supported inside the housing body (2), and a control lever (14) swingably supported inside the housing body (2) to rotate the display member (13); and a control cap (20) including a junction member rotatably joined to the control lever (14), and a cap portion (20b) which sheaths the canister body (3a) from a bottom side of the canister body (3a), wherein the control cap (20) causes the control lever (14) to swing. |
| US08474442B2 |
Structural oil baffle for engine covers
An oil baffle, a system, and a method are disclosed for separating a gaseous component from oil in a blow-by vapor for an internal combustion engine. An example system may include a cam cover configured to be mounted on a cylinder head. The system may also include an oil baffle including a first face coupled to the cam cover and may define an oil separation chamber between the cam cover and the first face. The oil baffle may include one or more stiffening members coupled to and extending from and substantially normal to an opposite face in order to reduce noise. |
| US08474438B2 |
Fuel injection valve
A stem is installed to an injector body and is resiliently deformable upon receiving a pressure of high pressure fuel conducted through a high pressure passage of the injector body. A strain gauge is installed to the stem to sense a strain generated in the stem. A molded IC device executes an amplifying operation, which amplifies a signal received from the strain gauge. The stem, the strain gauge and the molded IC device are integrally assembled together to form a fuel pressure sensing unit, which is installed to the injector body by threadably fastening a threaded portion, which is formed at the stem, to the injector body. |
| US08474437B2 |
Fuel injection controlling apparatus of internal combustion engine
A fuel injection controlling apparatus (electronic control unit) of an internal combustion engine, which can cause first to fourth fuel injection valves of respective cylinders connected to a fuel delivery pipe to inject a fuel, which is heated after fed from a fuel pump (feed pump), is provided with a fuel pump control unit that stops a drive of the fuel pump (feed pump) until the heated fuel in the fuel delivery pipe is reduced to a predetermined amount or less. |
| US08474435B2 |
Opposed piston, compression ignition engine with single-side mounted crankshafts and crossheads
In an opposed piston, compression ignition engine two crankshafts are single-side mounted with respect to a row of cylinders, which is to say that the crankshafts are mounted so that their axes of rotation lie in a plane that is spaced apart from and parallel to a plane in which the axes of the cylinders lie. Each piston of the engine is coupled to one of the crankshafts by a single linkage guided by a crosshead. The piston has a piston rod affixed at one end to the piston. The other end of the piston rod is affixed to the crosshead pin. One end of a connecting rod swings on the pin and the other end is coupled to a throw on a crankshaft. Each crosshead is constrained to reciprocate between fixed guides, in alignment with the piston rod to which it is coupled. |
| US08474434B2 |
Motor-driven throttle valve device with inductive throttle sensor and inductive throttle sensor for detecting rotation angle of throttle shaft of motor-driven throttle valve device
In a situation where a conventional inductive throttle sensor is used with a motor-driven throttle valve device to detect the rotation angle of a throttle shaft, plural sensor connection conductor sections for connecting a connector terminal to a circuit board terminal section are formed on the cover on one lateral surface side of a circuit board in the long-axis direction. This increases the dimension of the cover in the short-axis direction (the dimension in the direction of air flow in an intake path). Consequently, it is difficult to install the motor-driven throttle valve device and inductive throttle sensor in a narrow engine room. This problem is addressed by using a separate member to achieve electrical conduction between a stator circuit board and a conductor routed inside the cover installed over the stator circuit board in a concentrated manner on one side of the circuit board. The problem is also addressed by disposing plural electrical conduction spots in a decentralized manner and away from a protrusion provided to limit the amount of axial movement of a gear. |
| US08474433B2 |
Engine braking method and system
During engine braking of a turbocharged internal combustion engine, the exhaust gas pressure increases and this is used to pressurize the seals between the turbocharger shaft and the bearing housing so as to prevent oil leakage into the compressor housing. Immediately after engine braking, stored exhaust gas pressure is used to pressurize the seals at the turbine end so as to prevent oil leakage into the turbine housing. In an alternative arrangement the exhaust gas is used to generate a reduced pressure in the bearing housing to increase the pressure gradient across the seals. |
| US08474428B2 |
Flexible ignitor assembly for air/fuel mixture and method of construction thereof
An ignitor assembly constructed in accordance with one aspect of the invention has an upper inductor subassembly coupled to a lower firing end subassembly for relative pivot movement between the subassemblies. The upper inductor subassembly includes a tubular housing with inductor windings received therein with an upper electrical connector adjacent an upper end of the housing and a lower electrical connector adjacent a lower end of the housing. The lower firing end subassembly includes a ceramic insulator and a metal housing surrounding at least a portion of the ceramic insulator. The ceramic insulator has an electrical terminal extending from a terminal end and an electrode extending from a firing end. A flexible tube couples the upper inductor subassembly to the lower firing end subassembly and maintains the electrical terminal of the lower firing end subassembly in electrical contact with the lower electrical connector of the upper at a pivot joint. |
| US08474418B2 |
Partition member for cooling passage of internal combustion engine, cooling structure of internal combustion engine, and method for forming the cooling structure
The position of a passage separating member in the axial direction of the cylinder bores is determined by causing a spacer to contact a bottom surface of a water jacket. When the separating member is inserted in the water jacket, the width of the separating member is reduced due to elastic deformation, so that the separating member can be arranged in the water jacket. After being arranged, the separating member tightly contacts the inner surface of the water jacket due to elastic restoration force. The tight contact prevents the separating member from moving upward in the water jacket. As a result, coolant is prevented from moving between the upper portion and the lower portion with respect to the separating member. The advantages of separate cooling of the coolant in the upper and lower portions with respect to the separating member are obtained. This reliably reduces the temperature difference along the axial direction of the cylinder bore forming body. |
| US08474417B2 |
Lubricating system for air-cooled general-purpose engine
An air-cooled general-purpose engine includes: a cooling fan fixed to one end portion, protruding outward from one end wall of an engine main body, of a crankshaft; and a shroud which is mounted to the engine main body, and which defines a cooling-air path between the shroud and the one end wall, the cooling-air path guiding a cooling air blown under pressure from the cooling fan. The air-cooled general-purpose engine includes: an oil pump which pumps up an oil from an oil reservoir; and an oil-supply path which is formed in the one end wall, facing the cooling-air path, of the engine main body, and configured to guide the oil discharged from the oil pump to a valve operating chamber in a head portion of the engine main body, and a jet for jetting the oil is provided in an opening of the oil-supply path, the opening being open to the valve operating chamber. Accordingly, it is possible to be excellent in cooling oil and to preferably lubricate a valve operating system in addition to the surrounding of a crankshaft. |
| US08474413B2 |
Pet restraint harness system for vehicles
A pet restraint harness system for use in a vehicle may be installed in a rear or front passenger seat. The restraint system includes a harness fastened about the pet and a restraint framework fastened about the seat and, in some configurations, to manufacturer latch points provided in the vehicle. The restraint framework includes a vertical strap positioned against the seatback and one or more lateral straps attached to the vertical strap to resist lateral movement, vertical movement, or both. One end of the vertical strap and the lateral straps may attach to the manufacturer latch locations. Alternatively, ends of the vertical and lateral straps may attach to each other about the seat. At least two restraining straps are attached to the vertical strap, the lateral straps, or among the combination of both. The restraining straps are configured to attach to an animal's collar, to a harness, or both. |
| US08474412B1 |
Carrier sling for injured or convalescent pets
A carrier sling for supporting and carrying a four-legged animal off the ground has a sling formed of flexible fabric material having leg openings for receiving the forelegs and back legs of the animal that extends along an underside of the animal including the shoulder and hip areas and around the sides of the animal and has a longitudinally extending loop along opposed shorter sides which contain a rigid support rod. Strap handles and a shoulder strap are secured to each shorter side and support rod. When the animal is supported in the sling and lifted by the handles or shoulder strap, the support rods are positioned closely together substantially parallel with one another and extend longitudinally above the animal's back and spine including the shoulder and hip areas to evenly distribute the animal's weight and significantly reduce twisting or bending stresses applied to the axis of the spine. |
| US08474411B2 |
Wild animal deterrent device and method
The invention is an animal deterrent device and method of using the device. The device consists of a dazzler laser that produces eye irritation in an animal which results in the animal turning away from the user of the device. The device incorporates a diverging lens such that the dazzler laser produces a beam with a wide spread that makes it is easy to shine the beam on a potentially dangerous animal, but where the light is of sufficient intensity to irritate the animal's eyes. |
| US08474409B1 |
Ultrasonic stimulating pet toy
The present invention relates generally to an ultrasonic stimulating pet toy and, more specifically, to a mouse-like pet toy comprising a sound chip assembly that emits ultrasonic vocalizations that replicate those studied in mice. The instant abstract is neither intended to define the invention disclosed in this specification nor intended to limit the scope of the invention in any way. |
| US08474406B2 |
Device for keeping pets' ears clean or substantially clean
An ear prop prevents a pet's ears from contacting or substantially contacting food or water in a bowl or dish. The ear prop has members for elevating, supporting or displacing the pet's ears, and the ear prop may comprise a shield. A dish for holding food or water for a pet is constructed to keep the pet's ears from contacting or substantially contacting food or water in the dish. The dish comprises a bowl section and an ear prop section. The bowl section has a floor piece with a boundary continuously connectable to a boundary of a side wherein another boundary of the side defines an opening of the dish. The ear prop section is operably connected to the opening to provide a mechanism for elevating, supporting or displacing the pet's ears. |
| US08474405B1 |
Cattle management method and system
An automated method and system for individual animal electronic identification, measurement, and management of cattle in a feedlot. Through the use of a computer system integrated with individual animal identification, multiple measurement and remeasurement systems, and a handling and sorting system, animals are individually identified and measured. The computer system calculates optimum slaughter weight, economic end point and marketing date for shipment to a packing plant. Individual animals are sorted by the computer in response to calculations from the measurements. The computer system stores individual animal measurement, performance and location data, which is used to select animals for shipment to slaughter at the optimum time. At the slaughter facility, the animal's identification is used to correlate the live animal physical characteristics and performance data to the carcass characteristics data and build a-database to more accurately identify and measure value-based characteristics in subsequent animals for more effective selection and management. |
| US08474397B2 |
Transcutaneous analyte sensor
The present invention relates generally to systems and methods for measuring an analyte in a host. More particularly, the present invention relates to systems and methods for transcutaneous measurement of glucose in a host. |
| US08474395B2 |
Device for lining or repairing offset chimneys including a reticulated centering device with an upper and lower centering guide
A device for repairing or relining an offset chimney includes a spreader assembly for spreading a repair material on the interior walls of a chimney as the device is pulled up the chimney, a pull assembly for pulling the device through the chimney, and an optionally reticulated centering device for keeping the portion of the pull assembly directly above the spreader assembly away from the chimney walls when the spreader blade assembly is moved through a chimney offset. |
| US08474394B2 |
Vertical flag display apparatus
A vertical flag display apparatus comprises a support bar, a flag spar, a flag pole, and locking end caps. The flag spar can be a rod, bar, or other tubular pole. The flag spar threads through a flag sleeve so that the flag hangs down from the spar when the spar is held parallel to the ground. The locking end caps attach to an end of the spar and ensure that the flag can not slide off of the spar. The end caps attach to each end of the support bar securing the spar to the support bar. The flag pole attaches to the support bar and extends downwards and perpendicular to the support bar. The flag pole is attached to the side of a building, etc. so as to hold the flag pole generally 45 degrees out from the side of the building and in an upwards orientation. |
| US08474390B2 |
Structural support to underwater vessels using shape memory alloys
A supporting arrangement for a vessel for counteracting compressive loads at an operating temperature. The supporting arrangement also provides inertial stiffening of the hull of the vessel as well as acoustic and vibration damping. The supporting arrangement includes a support structure that is made from a shape memory alloy that contacts and presses against the inner walls of the vessel. The supporting arrangement utilizes the shape recovery properties and/or the internal energy properties of the shape memory alloy support structure to provide reinforcing and damping forces. |
| US08474389B2 |
Personal watercraft
A sectional shape of a seat provided on a personal watercraft includes first to third seat portions, first to third hip support portions, and first and second rearward inclined portions. The first hip support portion extends rearward to a height higher than the second seat portion from the first seat portion. The second hip support portion extends rearward to a height higher than the third seat portion and higher than the first hip support portion from the second seat portion. The third hip support portion extends rearward to a height higher than the second hip support portion from the third seat portion. The second rearward inclined portion is inclined at an inclination angle larger than an inclination angle of the first rearward inclined portion with respect to a horizontal plane. |
| US08474387B2 |
Method and apparatus for incineration of combustible waste
A method and apparatus for incinerating different types of combustible waste in a cement manufacturing process. Two combustion chambers for incinerating waste are arranged in series, with first combustion chamber being a down draft chamber in which there is a downward flow of combustion gas and waste fuel to a waste and gas outlet. The second chamber is adaptable to support waste on a supporting surface incorporated in the compartment, wherein the waste is transported through the compartment from a waste inlet to a waste outlet along a circular path. |
| US08474384B2 |
Folding armrest tray for wheelchairs
A tray assembly mounted on a wheelchair. A housing containing the tray is mounted along the side of the chair arm. The tray assembly has a tray surface moveable between a stowed and unstowed position. |
| US08474382B2 |
System and method for guiding a galvanizing product wiping device
A system for guiding a mobile carriage in a frame. The frame has three parallel linear-guiding tracks including a first track extending centrally on the frame and second and third tracks arranged laterally of the first track. The carriage has at least two axes of rotation. A first axis drives at least a first wheel in the first guiding track and a second axis drives at least a second wheel and at least a third wheel, respectively, in the second and third guiding tracks. The two axes of rotation are perpendicular. The description also relates to an associated method. A primary object is to enable the end of a mobile beam, such as a beam carrying a device for wiping a galvanizing product off a steel strip, to perform a guided movement with a high degree of freedom while minimizing mechanical stresses. |
| US08474377B2 |
Combination stencil printer and dispenser and related methods
A combination stencil printer and dispenser includes a frame, a stencil coupled to the frame, a substrate support coupled to the frame to support a substrate in a print position, and a print head coupled to the frame to deposit and print viscous material over the stencil. In one embodiment, the combination stencil printer and dispenser further includes a cleaning assembly coupled to the frame to wipe excess viscous material from a bottom surface of the stencil. The combination stencil printer and dispenser further includes a dispenser mounted on the cleaning assembly to dispense viscous material on the substrate when the substrate is in the print position. In other embodiments, the dispenser can be mounted on a movable stencil or on an independent gantry provided within the combination stencil printer and dispenser. |
| US08474375B2 |
Juicer arrangement
A juicer arrangement comprises a motor-driven appliance (1), capable of extracting juice from fruit, and a vessel (10) for receiving the juice. The appliance has a tubular outlet duct (9) through which juice can flow; the duct consisting of an inner portion (12) that is fixed to the appliance (1) and an outer portion (13) which can be rotated, relative to the inner portion (12), about the longitudinal axis (12a) of the tubular outlet duct (9). Near the outlet end of the outer portion (13) of the outlet duct there is provided a chordally-extending internal wall (15), configured such that, in one rotational position of the outer portion (13) of the duct relative to the inner portion (12), the wall (15) is positioned to act as an anti-dripping dam member to resist liquid flow through the outlet duct (9). In another rotational position of the outer portion (13) of the duct relative to the inner portion (12), the wall (15) is inverted, leaving a gap through which juice can be dispensed. Preferably, the vessel (10) has a lid (27) pre-formed with an aperture (28) into which the outer portion (13) of the duct (9) can be inserted, and the outer portion (13) can be rotated relative to the inner portion (12) of the duct (9) whilst remaining inserted in the aperture (28). |
| US08474373B2 |
Device for treating elongate food products with a conditioned airflow
The present invention relates to a device for treating elongate food products in a process space using a conditioned airflow, comprising: a housing bounding the process space, with a feed opening arranged in the housing and a discharge opening arranged in the housing for respectively carrying elongate food products into the process space and discharging thereof from the process space, transport means for displacing the elongate food products through the process space, blowing means for generating an airflow in the process space, and conditioning means for conditioning the airflow. |
| US08474370B2 |
Cooking apparatus and method with product recognition
A method for controlling a clam grill that has first and second platens. The second platen is moved toward the first platen. A signal is provided in response to a detection of an impediment to the motion of the second platen. The motion of the second platen is stopped in response to the signal. |
| US08474367B2 |
Drink preparing machine including a built-in container for cleaning using steam nozzle
Beverage preparation machine comprising a body 2 having a facade, a beverage preparation area (10) delimited on one side by the facade 3, in its upper part by beverage outlets, and in its lower part by a cup rest 8, and a movable steam nozzle 7 connected to the body by a moving device. The body includes a housing 3c defining a cleaning area 25, in which is disposed a rinsing container 12 having a top opening 22 and including a draining device 23, and in which the movable nozzle 7 is driven in a vertical movement by the moving device so that its free end 7a enters the container 12 through its top opening. |
| US08474358B2 |
Pull rod release mechanism for a push-pull table tool
In at least one embodiment, a table saw includes a table, a moveable carriage supported by the table, a saw assembly supported by the carriage, and a pull rod coupled to the carriage. The pull rod is configured to move in a linear direction relative to the housing between a back position and a forward position. The carriage and saw assembly move in the linear direction when the pull rod is moved in the linear direction. A collar is positioned on the pull rod and configured to move in the linear direction between a locked position and an unlocked position. The pull rod is configured to move in the linear direction from the back position toward the forward position when the collar is in the unlocked position, and the pull rod is blocked from moving from the back position when the collar is in the locked position. |
| US08474355B2 |
Vehicle glazing panel cut out
A glazing panel cut out system for use with a cutting wire in cutting out a vehicle glazing panel cut out procedure has a dispenser unit for dispensing cutting wire and a winder unit for winding the wire, both being mounted to the glazing panel during use. The winder unit has one or more winder spools for winding the cutting wire dispensed from the dispenser. The cutting wire is paid out from the dispenser whilst mounted to the glazing panel during the cut out procedure. |
| US08474351B2 |
Ratchet wrench
A ratchet wrench has a through cavity in which a reversing lever is disposed. The reversing lever has a pair of protruding lips formed thereon opposite from one another. A cooperating ledge is formed on the head in the cavity and on the pawl which is adjacent to the reversing lever. A spring-loaded pusher is disposed longitudinally in a blind bore in the reversing lever and the pusher engages a pocket in the pawl. A cover plate is disposed on a shelf recessed on the bottom of the wrench and spaced apart from the reversing lever. |
| US08474350B2 |
Locking flex-head ratchet wrench
A ratcheting tool including a handle formed with an integral yoke at a first end and a tool head coupled to the yoke at a pivot. The tool head has a toothed hub facing rearwardly of the pivot and into the yoke. A locking spool is rotatably carried in the yoke adjacent the toothed hub. The locking spool has a first face, a second face, and a first tooth extending along both the first face and the second face and engaging the toothed hub. The locking spool is rotatable between a first position in which the first face is adjacent the toothed hub, thereby locking the tool head in a selected angular position with respect to the handle, and a second position in which the second face is adjacent the toothed hub such that the tool head is pivotable about the pivot. |
| US08474349B2 |
Idle-able auxiliary drive system
A power transfer unit (PTU) for a motive device includes an outer housing and a torque transferring clutch. The PTU also includes a piston housing located between the outer housing and the torque transferring clutch, and a piston in the piston housing. The piston is arranged to provide actuation forces to the torque transferring clutch, and to restrict reaction forces back to the piston housing. |
| US08474347B2 |
High efficiency right angle gearbox
A right angle gearbox is described that includes an enclosure, an input member, an output member, and an assembly. The enclosure has dimensions such that the gearbox is operable as a drop in replacement for a gearbox that includes a worm gear set. The input member extends from the enclosure and includes a first portion of a helical gear set housed within the enclosure. The output member extends from the enclosure and includes a second portion of a hypoid gear set housed within the enclosure. The output member is substantially orthogonal to the input member. The assembly includes a second portion of the helical gear set and a first portion of the hypoid gear set mechanically coupled to one another. |
| US08474344B1 |
Controllable composite clutch having limited torque while being in released state
A controllable composite clutch device limited torque while in a released state includes a clutch capable of being controlled for performing engaging/releasing function and a limited torque device having relatively smaller torque installed between an input/output shaft and an output shaft, or radially installed between an input shaft and a cylindrical outputting rotation part, so that when the clutch is controlled to be in an engaged state, the rotary kinetic energy between the input shaft and the output shaft is transferred through the clutch, and so that when the clutch is controlled to be in a released state, the limited torque device performs limited torque coupling and the rotary kinetic energy between the input shaft and the output shaft can continue to be transferred, or a slip rotational speed differential is generated due to over-torque. |
| US08474343B2 |
Transmission having a low launch gear
A vehicle transmission includes a pinion secured to an input shaft, a gear meshing with the pinion, an idler secured to the gear, a reverse gear meshing with the idler and secured to a second idler, a low gear supported on a layshaft and meshing with the second idler, and a coupler connecting the low gear to the layshaft. |
| US08474340B2 |
Double clutch transmission
A double clutch transmission with first and second clutches (K1, K2) with input sides connected with an input shaft (w_an) and output sides respectively connected with one of two coaxially arranged transmission output shafts (w_k1, w_k2). At least first and second countershafts (w_v1, w_v2) are provided on which are mounted idler gearwheels (8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15), while on the two first and the second transmission input shafts (w_k1, w_k2) are mounted fixed gearwheels (1, 2, 3, 4, 5) whereby at least several power shiftable forward gears (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8) and at least one reverse gear (R1, R2, R3, R4) is shiftable. A maximum of six gear planes (8-12, 9-13, 10-14, 11-4, 5-15) are provided so that at least one winding path gear is shifted upon disengagement of a coupling device (S_ab2) allocated to an output gear (18). |
| US08474330B1 |
Systems and methods for measuring bearing endplay
A system for use in measuring an end play of a wheel hub assembly includes a cap attachable to a shaft of a wheel hub assembly. A frame has a cavity receiving a measurement probe extending outwardly from the cavity. The probe contacts the cap and is configured to measure movement of the cap to determine endplay of the bearing assembly on the shaft. The frame includes a plurality of legs extending from the frame to mount on the shaft. The legs contain torque sockets and torque limiters which are threadably engaged and tightened onto lugs of the wheel hub assembly without exceeding a preselected torque. The torque sockets allow the frame and system to be used on hub assemblies having wheels thereon without removal of the wheels from the hub assemblies or lug nuts from the lugs supporting the wheel. |
| US08474329B2 |
Pipe-shaped sensor device
The invention relates to a sensor device (1) for measuring an axial force in the longitudinal pipe direction of a pipe (4) and/or at least one torque, having a measuring element (2) comprising an adapter connection (3) connected to the pipe by means of a flanged socket part, by means of which the pipe can be fixedly coupled to an adjustment adapter (5), wherein the axial force and the torque can be fed into the adjustment adapter and can be measured by means of strain gauges (11, 12) disposed in a sensor area (9) between the adapter connection and an end of the flanged socket part (6) opposite the adapter connection at strain gauge locations, wherein the flanged socket part having the sensor area is designed in a pipe shape, wherein the sensor area extends from the adapter connection to the end of the flanged socket part and has a smaller outer diameter than the end of the flanged socket part, wherein the end of the pipe facing the adapter connection and extending past the end of the flanged socket part toward the adapter connection is force decoupled from the sensor area and from the adapter connection, and wherein at least three strain gauge measuring locations are disposed on the circumference of the sensor area. |
| US08474327B2 |
Flow meter assembly, gate assemblies and methods of flow measurement
The present invention provides an acoustic flow meter assembly (2) for pipes or open channels, said assembly including a frame (24) with a predetermined geometry. The frame has at least one user accessible port (36-42) with the at least one user accessible port (36-42) adapted to receive an interchangeable cartridge (44) which contains at least one acoustic transducer (46) to measure fluid velocity through said frame (24). |
| US08474326B2 |
Load pin with increased performance
A load pin includes a main body, a plurality of recesses, and a plurality of sensor pockets. The main body has a plurality of loading surfaces and a plurality of relief surfaces formed therein. Each loading surface is disposed between two of the relief surfaces. The recesses are formed in and extend at least partially around the outer surface of the main body. Each recess has a substantially round inner surface, is formed in a different one of the relief surfaces, and is disposed between a different pair of loading surface. The sensor pockets are formed in the outer surface, extend partially into the main body, are disposed between a pair of loading surfaces, and extend through the recess that is disposed between the same pair of loading surfaces. |
| US08474324B2 |
Stress corrosion cracking testing device
The stress corrosion cracking (SCC) testing device includes a corrosion cell for placing a specimen to be tested therein. The corrosion cell is configured to simulate the extreme high temperature and pressure, as well as the corrosive environments experienced by engineered, industrial components. A heating element and a pressurizing assembly are operatively attached to the corrosive cell to simulate the high temperature and pressure environs. A circulation assembly is also attached to the corrosion cell to simulate both flowing and stagnant conditions of the corrosion solution that the industrial component can be subjected to. A loading assembly with a specimen holding shaft is operatively attached to the specimen to place a predetermined and constant tensile load on the specimen until fracture in order to determine KI and KIsec of the engineered component. PTFE seals are used to seal the specimen holding shaft during testing. |
| US08474319B2 |
Detecting an analyte using a piezoelectric cantilever sensor
A piezoelectric cantilever sensor includes a piezoelectric layer and a non-piezoelectric layer, a portion of which is attached to the piezoelectric layer. In one embodiment, one end of the non-piezoelectric layer extends beyond the end of piezoelectric layer to provide an overhang. The overhang piezoelectric cantilever sensor enables increased sensitivity allowing application of the device in more viscous environments, such as liquid media, as well as application in liquid media at higher flow rates than conventional piezoelectric cantilevers. In another embodiment, the sensor includes first and second bases and at least one of the piezoelectric layer and the non-piezoelectric layer is affixed to each of the first and second bases to form the piezoelectric cantilever sensor. In this embodiment, the sensor is robust and exhibits excellent sensing characteristics in both gaseous and liquid media, even when subjected to relatively high flow rates. |
| US08474318B2 |
Acceleration sensor
An acceleration sensor having a support frame, a weight supported within the support frame via flexible beams, semiconductor piezoresistance elements provided on the beams, and wiring interconnecting the piezoresistance elements. The acceleration sensor detects acceleration from changes in resistance of the piezoresistance elements. Stress damping sections are provided on those portions of the beams which exclude the portions where the piezoresistance elements are provided. Each stress damping section is symmetrical with respect to the point of intersection between the length center line of the beam and the width center line of the beam. |
| US08474314B2 |
Fill level switch and sensor element for a fill level switch
A fill level switch (1) for measuring the fill level of a medium in a container (2), having a sensor element (3) for contacting the medium, a sender (4) for applying an electromagnetic emission signal to the sensor element (3) and an evaluation unit (5) for detecting a received signal from the sensor element (3). The sensor element (3) includes at least one cable (6) for guiding the emission signal. To provide a fill level switch, which is based on a sturdy measuring principle and which allows for reliable cleaning, the fill level switch uses a delay line as the cable (6) of the sensor element (3) and the sensor element (3) has a window (7) facing the medium in the mounted position of the fill level switch and at least a part of the cable (6) can be electrically influenced by the medium via the window (7). |
| US08474313B2 |
Process for testing a sample of hydraulic fracturing fluid
An apparatus and process for testing a sample of a hydraulic fracturing fluid is provided. A small quantity of a fracturing fluid sample to be observed and/or tested is placed in a chamber designed with suitable heat and pressure simulation apparatus. With the sample chamber, the efficacy of the fracturing fluid can be ascertained, improper fracturing fluid compositions and/or mixtures, e.g., caused by human error, can be detected, and contamination of the frac-tank can be determined. The overall apparatus is portable and can be transported to the site of the fracturing fluid tank, thereby allowing testing immediately prior to introduction into the well. The samples in the test chamber can be observed for quality control and quality assurance prior to, or during stimulation and water shutoff treatments in the field. |
| US08474309B2 |
Noise existence diagnosis device for fuel injection system
A waveform detector detects a variation in fuel pressure generated by an injection based on a detection value of a fuel pressure sensor as a fuel pressure waveform. A differential calculator calculates a differential waveform representing a variation in differential value of the fuel pressure waveform. A noise determiner determines that noise overlaps with the fuel pressure waveform when the differential waveform has a value higher than a predetermined upper threshold or when the differential waveform has a value lower than a predetermined lower threshold. |
| US08474306B1 |
Method and apparatus for measurement of fluid properties
A method and apparatus for determining the contact angle and/or surface tension of a liquid on a solid surface is described. The method involves placing a fluid drop on a solid surface, and gradually increasing its volume by adding more fluid, while continuing to determine the corresponding increase in fluid height, until the drop attains maximum height beyond which additional fluid only increases the drop footprint and not height, and determining the equilibrium height and in turn the contact angle by means of an equation that correlates contact angle with depth below the fluid surface, together with the fluid surface tension and liquid density. The method may in turn be used to determine the fluid surface tension from the equilibrium height when the contact angle and density of the fluid are known. |
| US08474303B2 |
Chromatographic measurement apparatus
A chromatographic measurement apparatus for measuring a color development state of an insoluble carrier with a sample solution and a label solution developed thereon to test a test article, the insoluble carrier including a test detection area where a material that binds specifically to a test article is immobilized and a control detection area used for determining an end of measurement. The chromatographic measurement apparatus includes: a determining unit for carrying out determination of validity and determination of necessity of amplification of a test result of the test article; and an amplifying unit for amplifying the color development state according to the result of the determination of necessity of amplification by the determining unit. The amplification is carried out only when it is determined that amplification is necessary. |
| US08474300B2 |
Methods to provide a feature on a needle
A gripping surface is provided on an outer surface of a needle shield as incorporated into an intravenous catheter assembly. The gripping surface provides a gripping position nearer the catheter adapter, catheter and needle tip for improved balance and control of the catheter assembly during insertion of the catheter. Additionally, the gripping surfaces include a guard feature to prevent a user's unintended contact with various components of the catheter assembly whereby the contact may result in an undesirable “over the bevel” condition. |
| US08474288B2 |
Method for knitting a garment such as tights or the like, machine to implement this method and garment produced therewith
The method comprises the phases of: knitting at least one part (5 A, 5B) of the body (1) with reciprocating motion of the two cylinders of a double-cylinder machine; —knitting the leg pieces (9A, 9B) with a continuous rotational motion of the two cylinders (11, 13), a first leg piece being knitted by a first of said cylinders and a second leg piece being knitted by a second of said cylinders. It is provided for an arc of needles (C) to be maintained temporarily inactive on each of said two cylinders while knitting said at least one part (5 A, 5B) of the body (1) with reciprocating motion. Furthermore, it is provided that the temporarily inactive needles are set to work at the end of the knitting of said at least one part (5 A, 5B) of the body (1) with reciprocating motion, thus forming an interknitting line (CC) for joining the two leg pieces (9A, 9B), then continuing the knitting with continuous rotary motion with all the needles (15) of both the cylinders (11, 13). |
| US08474286B2 |
Overflow downdraw glass forming method and apparatus
The present invention significantly modifies “The Overflow Process”. It includes a method and apparatus for measuring glass flow rate and maintaining a constant glass flow rate. It also embodies design features and methods that support and stress the forming apparatus in a manner such that the deformation that results from thermal creep is corrected, thus minimizing the effect of the thermal creep on the thickness variation of the glass sheet. The present invention also embodies design features that change the process from a single step (combined flow distribution and cooling) to a two step process; step one being flow distribution and step two being cooling. |
| US08474284B2 |
Decorative bracelet with tradable token insets
A molded silicone rubber bracelet having a plurality (preferably three) specially-formed receptacles for seating and retaining the same number of play-value tokens in a convenient manner for trading and/or playing games. The tokens bear different graphic indicia but all have a uniform size and circular (or alternately-shaped) two-tier cross-section that allows them to be held captive in three outwardly-disposed and uniformly-spaced receptacles in the bracelet in tongue-in-groove manner. Since the tokens are easily removable/replacable/tradable, they can be traded at will for other tokens and/or used for playing a game. The token-carrying functionality of the bracelet coupled with its ornamental token-displaying appearance capitalizes on the popularity of conventional rubber wristbands as well as social trading interaction, resulting in great appeal to teens and youth. |
| US08474283B2 |
Refrigerator
Provided is a refrigerator including a mixing box detachably provided on a refrigerator door. Due to the mixing box, a user can conveniently utilize a beverage having a slushy shape. |
| US08474282B2 |
Water pan for water discharge device of refrigeration/air-conditioning system
Mounted in a bottom side of a water discharge device of a refrigeration/air-conditioning system for collecting waste water, a vermin-protective, high-strength and high beauty water pan is disclosed to include a bottom portion, and an upright peripheral wall extending along the border of the bottom portion and having at least one overflow port. The upright peripheral wall has a part curved inwards, defining a recessed open chamber, a recessed wall portion that surrounds the recessed open chamber, a bridge wall portion that suspends above the recessed open chamber and has the topmost edge thereof higher than the topmost edge of the recessed wall portion, and a plurality of ribs that are connected between the recessed wall portion and the bridge wall portion and divide the space in between the recessed wall portion and the bridge wall portion into multiple overflow holes that form one overflow port. |
| US08474281B2 |
Suspension bracket
Provided, in aspect, is a suspension bracket for use with an HVAC component. The suspension bracket, in one embodiment, may include a base portion, a first tab portion coupled to the base portion, wherein the first tab portion is positioned substantially perpendicular to the base portion, and a second tab portion coupled to the base portion. The second tab portion, in this embodiment, may include a first region and a second region, wherein the first region is positioned substantially perpendicular to the base portion, and further wherein the second region is positioned substantially perpendicular to the base portion and the first region. |
| US08474280B2 |
Refrigerating storage cabinet and control method for compressor thereof
A deviation calculating unit 42 calculates a deviation between an internal temperature detected by a temperature sensor 35 and a target temperature provided from a target temperature setting unit 41 for each predetermined time period. The deviation is integrated by a deviation integrating unit 46. When the integrated value exceeds a predetermined reference value, a rotational speed of an inverter motor that drives a compressor is increased. Therefore, for example, even if an internal temperature temporarily rises because a door is opened temporarily and outside air flows into a storage compartment, because there is no sudden change in the integrated value of the temperature deviation and the rotational speed of the compressor does not react in an oversensitive manner and rapidly increase. Consequently the control is stable. Thus, an unnecessarily oversensitive response to a sudden change in an internal temperature can be prevented, enabling operation at a higher efficiency. |
| US08474279B2 |
Energy management of household appliances
A refrigerator comprises a fresh food compartment and a freezer compartment and one or more power consuming features/functions including a refrigeration system for cooling the fresh food compartment and the freezer compartment. A controller is operatively connected to the one or more power consuming features/functions. The controller is configured to receive and process a signal indicative of current state of an associated energy supplying utility. The controller operates the refrigerator in one of plurality of operating modes, including at least a normal operating mode and an energy savings mode, in response to the received signal. The controller is configured to at least one of selectively schedule, delay, adjust and deactivate at least one of the one or more power consuming features/functions to reduce power consumption of the refrigerator in the energy savings mode. |
| US08474277B2 |
Compressor waste heat driven cooling system
Provided in some embodiments is a system that includes a gas compressor including an engine, a compressor driven by the engine, and a vapor absorption cycle (VAC) system driven by waste heat from the compressor, wherein the VAC system is configured to cool at least one medium. In other embodiments is provided a method that includes generating waste heat while compressing a gas, driving a vapor absorption cycle (VAC) system with the waste heat, and cooling at least one medium via the VAC system. |
| US08474276B2 |
Direct expansion ammonia refrigeration system and a method of direct expansion ammonia refrigeration
A direct expansion ammonia refrigeration system and a method of direct expansion ammonia refrigeration is described and which includes a source of liquid ammonia refrigerant which is delivered in fluid flowing relation to a plurality of evaporator tubes which incorporate wicking structures, and which through capillary action facilitated by the wicking structures are effective for drawing liquid ammonia refrigerant along the inside facing surface of the evaporator tubes so as to substantially reduce any stratified and/or wavy flow patterns of the liquid ammonia refrigerant within the evaporator tubes. The invention further includes a novel accumulator vessel and heat exchanger vessel which are coupled in fluid flowing relation relative to the direct expansion ammonia refrigeration system and which facilitate the removal of water from the ammonia refrigerant in order to enhance the operation of the direct expansion ammonia refrigeration system. |
| US08474273B2 |
Apparatus and method for providing a temperature-controlled gas
A coolant delivery system and method for maintaining a temperature within a predetermined range of a set-point temperature in a vessel into which a coolant gas is discharged or a temperature of a material onto which the coolant gas is discharged. The coolant gas results from the mixing of a supply gas with a cryogen. Temperature regulation is provided by regulating the flow rate of a cryogen using a proportional valve, while providing an essentially constant flow rate of a supply gas. |
| US08474268B2 |
Method of mitigating undesired gas turbine transient response using event based actions
A method of managing transient events regularly seen during gas turbine operation that may cause undesirable operation and hardware damage. During certain transient operations, a lag may be seen between reference exhaust temperature and actual turbine exhaust temperature. This lag can result in an under-fired condition within the combustion system of variable magnitude and duration. Either fuel split schedules or a control algorithm can be positioned during these transients to prevent combustion dynamics or loss of flame. Combustion dynamics are known to cause damage that may require hardware replacement. Once the transient has completed, normal control operation is resumed. |
| US08474265B2 |
Fuel nozzle for a turbine combustor, and methods of forming same
A fuel nozzle for a turbine engine includes a primary fuel passageway for supplying fuel to a plurality of radially extending fuel injectors arranged around the exterior of the fuel nozzle. A secondary fuel passageway couples an upstream end of the primary fuel passageway to a downstream end of the primary fuel passageway. The secondary fuel passageway acts as a resonator tube to help reduce oscillations in the fuel flowing through the primary fuel passageway. |
| US08474264B2 |
Radial counterflow steam stripper
Turbine exhaust steam, axially fed between counter-rotating radial flow disk turbines, separates into: (1) a radially inward flow of low enthalpy dry steam, and (2) a radially outward flow of high enthalpy steam, noncondensibles, and condensate. The radially inward flow goes to a conventional condenser. The radially outward flow loses enthalpy turning the disk turbines as it passes in the boundary layers against the disks, thus becoming low enthalpy dry steam, and the counter-rotation of the disks by impinging mass flow of condensate, high enthalpy steam, and noncondensibles sustains a cascade of dynamic vortex tubes in the shear layer between the boundary layers. The low enthalpy dry steam resulting from work being done flows into the condenser through the vortex cores of fractal turbulence. Condensate exits the periphery of the workspace, ready to be pumped back into the Rankine cycle. |
| US08474263B2 |
Heat conversion system simultaneously utilizing two separate heat source stream and method for making and using same
A system and method are disclosed for converting heat into a usable form of energy, where the system and method are designed to utilize at least two separate heat sources simultaneously, where one heat source stream has a higher initial temperature and a second heat source stream has a lower initial temperature, which is transferred to and a multi-component working fluid from which thermal energy is extracted. |
| US08474258B2 |
Stoichiometric compression ignition engine with increased power output
A stoichiometric compression ignition engine has a turbocharger coupled to it so that the exhaust from the engine feeds the turbine and the compressor provides combustion air past a throttle and intercooler to the engine intake manifold. An exhaust after treatment device is positioned before the exhaust of the engine. A power turbine is connected in parallel relation to the turbocharger turbine and is controlled by a valve to operate the power turbine whenever either the turbocharger compressor boost or the turbocharger turbine back pressure exceed given limits. The power turbine is connected by a power transmission device to either couple to the engine output or to an electrical generator. An EGR loop may be driven by a pump also connected to the power turbine to lower in cylinder pressures. |
| US08474255B2 |
Forming liquid sprays in compressed-gas energy storage systems for effective heat exchange
In various embodiments, efficiency of energy storage and recovery systems compressing and expanding gas is improved via heat exchange between the gas and a heat-transfer fluid. |
| US08474254B2 |
System and method for enabling floating of earthmoving implements
A system and method for performing a floating function in an earthmoving implement of an earthmoving machine without physically connecting chambers within a hydraulic actuator that is adapted to raise and lower the earthmoving implement. The system includes a device for delivering a pressurized fluid to and receiving pressurized fluid from the actuator, a valve for compensating for differences in volume between chambers of the actuator, and an electronic control circuit that includes electronic sensors for sensing the pressures in the chambers of the actuator, and a controller for receiving outputs of the sensors. The controller calculates an amount of the pressurized fluid that, when delivered to or received from the actuator, achieves a substantially constant pressures in the chambers of the actuator and enables the earthmoving implement to float regardless of motion of the actuator. |
| US08474253B2 |
Pressure accumulator to establish sufficient power to handle and operate external equipment and use thereof
A pressure accumulator (10) to establish the necessary power to drive and operate external equipment is described, such as hydraulic and/or mechanical systems comprising a main body (12) with an inner, longitudinal, main chamber (14) that is divided into several sub-chambers. The inner, main chamber (14) comprises at least three sub-chambers (14a, 14b, 14c) that are separated from each other with the help of mutual, intermediate pistons (16,18), where the first of said chambers is a compensating chamber (14a) arranged to take up the same pressure as the surroundings, the second of said chambers is a gas expansion chamber (14b) encompassing a gas generator (20) with an initiator/detonator (22), and the third of said chambers is a pressure chamber (14c) arranged to be pressurized with the help of the gas expansion chamber (14b) and to exert a force on the external equipment. |
| US08474252B2 |
Oval-to-round exhaust collector system
An exhaust collector system for discharging a flow of exhaust gases from an internal combustion engine. The exhaust collector system includes a plurality of primary headers having their discharge portions merged together at a merge angle into a substantially oval or obround-shaped manifold outlet, and a substantially-round secondary pipe having a pipe inlet with a diameter greater than the diameter of the primary headers. The exhaust collector system also includes an oval-to-round collector flowtube which has a substantially oval-or obround-shaped collector inlet that is coupled with the manifold outlet and a substantially-round collector outlet that is coupled with the pipe inlet. The collector flowtube has a constant circumference along its entire length and a transverse cross-sectional area that continuously increases from the collector inlet to the collector outlet to cause a continuous expansion of the flow of exhaust gases. |
| US08474244B2 |
Method and system for injecting a liquid
Method for controlling an injector intended for injecting a pollution-control liquid additive into the exhaust gases of an internal combustion engine at a flow rate governed by a given frequency and opening time of the injector, the injector having a calibration curve that establishes, at given frequency, pressure, temperature and nature of the liquid, the amount of liquid injected during an opening of the injector as a function of the duration of this opening, this curve comprising at least one linear zone (calibration line) and a non-linear zone, said method being characterized in that in the linear zone the parameters of the calibration line are used and in the non-linear zone use is made of a set opening time and a variable frequency according to at least one calibration point established for this purpose. SCR system to which this method can be applied. |
| US08474243B2 |
System for controlling regeneration of an adsorber
A system, method, and software for determining an amount of reductant to be supplied to a NOx adsorber during a regeneration event is disclosed. A reductant calculation module is executable by an electronic control unit for calculating a quantity of reductant delivered which is required to periodically regenerate the adsorber by accumulating the reductant fuel delivered as a function of a total fuel quantity being supplied to the internal combustion engine by a fuel system and subtracting an amount of fuel required to achieve a stoichiometric air to fuel ratio at an inlet of the adsorber. |
| US08474239B1 |
Industrial gas turbine engine
An industrial gas turbine engine capable of operating at higher temperatures than air cooled nickel based alloy airfoils in the turbine. The engine burns stoichiometric or rich to produce a hot gas stream that is mostly without oxygen, and the turbine airfoils are made from a high temperature resistant material such as a refractory material that also has poor oxidation resistance. A second small gas turbine engine is used to compress nitrogen gas that is used to pass through the turbine airfoils for cooling where the film cooling nitrogen gas is injected into the hot gas stream but without igniting the fuel rich gas stream. |
| US08474230B2 |
Saddle tree
The present invention relates to improvements in or relating to saddles and saddle trees, especially English saddle trees, particularly for horses. In particular, we describe a method of manufacture for a tree which is simplified by the use of leather, webbing and plastic in flat sheet material. This fabrication can be simply stitched and riveted together and a Y-bar and headplate are then bolted and or riveted to the finished leather plastic fabrication. This method of making a tree is fast, efficient, cost effective, safe, reliable, provides more consistent symmetrical performance, and above all is very light, providing a weight saving of 60% compared with conventional methods. The tree fabrication requires no additional finishing or tidying, unlike other forms of manufacture. As soon as the parts are assembled they are ready to go to the next stage of making the finished seat for the saddle. |
| US08474226B2 |
Thermal sealing packaging systems and methods for thermal sealing packaging
A thermal seal packaging systems and methods thereof. In one implementation a thermal sealing packaging system has a container transfer unit for transferring a container which is to contain a package item, a measuring unit for measuring the weight of the item that is loaded in the container being transported before it is loaded into the container, a capping film supply unit for a capping film to cover the opening area of the container, an indication means for indicating the measurement data of the measurement unit on the capping film, and a sealing unit for heat-sealing an opening area of the container, into which the package item is loaded, with the capping film, the opening area of the container into which the item is loaded is covered by the capping film on which the corresponding measurement data is indicated. |
| US08474223B2 |
Apparatus for loading and unloading by pallet truck a wrapping surface
An apparatus for transferring a palletized load between a pallet truck and a load wrapping surface may include a ramp configured to support at least a portion of the pallet truck. The ramp may include at least one fixed portion. The ramp may also include a movable portion configured to move relative to the fixed portion. The movable portion may be configured to support one or more wheel assemblies of the pallet truck, and move the one or more wheel assemblies of the pallet truck relative to the fixed portion. |
| US08474222B2 |
System for handling and wrapping large bales
A large bale transporter and an accompanying bale wrapper create a system for wrapping plastic around large bales retrieved by the transporter. The transporter has a loading apparatus that deposits large bales onto the load bed of the transporter until filled. The transporter is then manipulated to connect to a bale wrapper physically and operatively so that the bales can be moved into the wrapping apparatus. The frame of the transporter is pivotally connected to the axle to allow the rear end of the frame to be lowered to the ground to engage the bale wrapper and/or retrieve previously wrapped bales. The wrapping apparatus is powered by the drive mechanism of the transporter and is automatically disengaged when a pusher member placed at the end of the bales being discharged engages the drive coupler. An endless chain drive is drivable in opposite directions to move the bales on the transporter. |
| US08474218B2 |
Modular inter-locking exterior wall system
A modular interlocking exterior wall system comprises one or more laminated panels formed of a paper product core sandwiched between two cementitious skins, two vertical posts having laterally extending flanges which interlock in vertical grooves formed in the sides of the panels, and a top rail having a downwardly opening top groove which receives and reinforces the horizontal top edge of the top panel, wherein bottom portions of the posts are anchored below ground. An optional bottom rail has an upwardly opening groove for receiving and supporting the bottom edge of the bottom panel, and laterally extending flanges of an optional mid rail are received in top and bottom grooves, respectively, of bottom and top panels to interlock and reinforce the panels. |
| US08474214B2 |
Connecting structure for automotive trim panels
A connecting structure includes a first connecting part and a second connecting part. The first connecting part has a clip and a stabilizer flange that is spaced apart from the clip. The second connecting part has a first engagement structure that is engageable with the clip of the first connecting part to restrain movement of the second connecting part with respect to the first connecting part in an insertion direction. The second connecting part also has a second engagement structure that is engageable with the stabilizer flange of the first connecting part to restrain movement of the second connecting part with respect to the first connecting part in an elevational direction. |
| US08474200B2 |
Suspended ceiling grid system
A suspended ceiling system has a series of nodes interconnected by grid members to define a grid network. Each node includes a connection plate having a central port area that is adapted to form a recessed part of the finished surface of the ceiling system that is visible between adjacent suspended ceiling panels that conceal the grid members. The connection plate preferably includes grid member connecting arms extending outwardly from the connection plate. The central port area includes a cavity adapted for different purposes. This cavity can receive ceiling components, for example various light fixtures, securing devices or a removable access panel that covers the central port area. |
| US08474198B2 |
Sound insulating glazing device, in particular for aircraft and soundproofing method for glazing
Sound insulating glazing device for aircrafts, ground or maritime transportation vehicles, buildings, or others, including glazing, a sealing joint in a shape and size corresponding to the edge of the glazing and designed for assembly on said edge, sound insulation, made of at least two materials, a first resilient material and a second material with less resilience than the first, the sound insulation being used against the field of said glazing, between the glazing and the sealing joint. The invention is also for aircrafts that are equipped with at least a glazing device and a soundproofing method for glazing. |
| US08474188B2 |
Carrier having a living hinge
The present invention provides for a weatherstrip assembly for a motor vehicle. The assembly includes a carrier having a base and a first and second leg extending from the base to a first and second distal end, respectively. The legs are spaced from each other to define a channel for receiving the motor vehicle. A seal is mounted to the first distal end. At least one securing flange is coupled to the second distal end for fastening the carrier to the motor vehicle. A living hinge is disposed between the securing flange and the second distal end, such that the securing flange is moveable independent of the carrier. The living hinge comprises a first section having a generally recessed configuration and a first thickness, and a second section having a generally planar configuration and a second thickness. The second section comprises a first region extending between the first section and a first terminal edge of the living hinge, and a second region extending between the first section and an opposing second terminal edge of the living hinge. The second thickness is greater than the first thickness. |
| US08474177B2 |
Reflecting device, solar collector, pitched roof provided with a solar collector of this type, and greenhouse
Reflecting device (1) for adjustably reflecting light, such as sunlight, comprising a transparent first wall (3), a transparent second wall (40), which is arranged substantially parallel to and at a distance from the first wall (3), and a regulating layer (7), which is provided with a duct (10), which is bounded between the first wall (3) and the second wall (40), and which regulating layer (7) substantially allows light which impinges on the first wall (3) through to the second wall (40) if the duct (10) is filled with a transparent liquid (9) and reflects light which impinges on the first wall (3) if the duct (10) is empty, the regulating layer (7) being provided with a structure (11) which is prismatic in cross section, characterized in that, the reflecting device is provided with a third wall (41), which is arranged substantially parallel to and at a distance from the second wall (40), and a second regulating layer (7′), which is provided with a second duct (10′), which is bounded between the second wall (40) and the third wall (41), the second regulating layer (7′) being provided with a second structure (12) which is prismatic in cross section. |
| US08474176B2 |
Nit stripping device and method
A nit picking device and method for mechanically stripping nits, eggs, and lice from human hair. The device includes a pair of cooperating tongs each of which is elongated and joined at one end to the juxtaposed end portion of the cooperating tong. The opposite ends of the tong serve to carry an abrasive pad capable of stripping nits from nit laden human hair shafts. As the pads are moved along the length of the hair, the nits are removed from the shafts and in one embodiment captured at least in part in the pads carried by tongs. |
| US08474173B2 |
Sight system
A sight system is provided which may be selectively used in a variety of different ways. In one example, the sight system may be positioned on a rifle to provide a rifle sight system. In this example, the sight system may be positioned on the rifle barrel a substantial distance away from a user's eye. Advantageously, such an implementation may permit a user to effectively sight the rifle without compromising situational awareness. In another example, the sight system may be used to provide a reflex sight with a reticle (e.g., a dot, crosshair, mark, or other appropriate shape) superimposed on an image (e.g., a zoomed or non-zoomed image) displayed from a camera. In another example, the sight system may be used to provide an occluded sight in which a camera and/or display of the sight system is disabled. As a result, a reticle may be displayed over an opaque background. |
| US08474169B2 |
Handle for a semi-automatic firearm
A handle (20) for rapidly firing a semi-automatic firearm (22) having a trigger (24). The handle (20) includes a grip portion (52) defining a channel (54). A block (60) that is connected to the firearm (22) is slidably disposed in the channel (54) for allowing longitudinal movement of the firearm (22) relative to the handle (20). The handle (20) also includes a trigger guard (66) disposed on one side of the trigger (24) and extending longitudinally forward of the trigger (24) by a predetermined distance (D) to an open end. The trigger guard (66) presents a finger rest (70) for placing a trigger finger (74) on the trigger guard (66). The trigger guard (66) restricts access to the trigger (24) until the firearm (22) is moved longitudinally forward by the predetermined distance (D) relative to the handle (20). The handle (20) also includes a lock (44) having an open position for allowing longitudinal movement of the firearm (22) relative to the handle (20) and a locked position for restricting longitudinal movement of the firearm (22) relative to the handle (20). |
| US08474168B2 |
Adjustable sign frame and method of using the same
An adjustable sign frame and a method of using the same are provided. The adjustable sign frame has a main support rod and an adjustable hanging bar. During use, the main support rod and hanging bar are substantially parallel with respect to one another. Further, the main support rod and hanging bar are substantially identical in length. A plurality of wires may be used to hang the main support rod to the ceiling. A plurality of support clamps attached to the main support rod may temporarily hold the hanging bar which may have a retail sign attached thereto. Pegs on the hanging bar may allow a user to adjust the overall location of the retail sign hanging from the main support rod with respect to the ceiling. |
| US08474163B2 |
Apparatus and method for a greeting bag
A greeting bag is described that is includes a gift bag and a greeting card. The gift bag and greeting card connect together to form the integrated assembly of the greeting bag that has a purposefully coordinated single decorative style. The gift bag and greeting card have individual decors that define alternative aspects of that particular theme of a decorative style. An attachment mechanism can also be included in the greeting bag that further fixes the greeting card to the gift bag. The attachment mechanism can have a third decor as well as a size and dimensions that can include an image or sentiment. A method is described wherein a greeting bag is selected by selecting a gift bag from a set of one or more gift bags that share a common decorative style. A greeting card is selected from a set of one or more greeting cards that share the same common decorative style with the gift bag. The optional attachment mechanism is selected from a set of one or more attachment mechanisms that share the same common decorative style with the gift bag and greeting card. The gift bags, greeting cards and attachment mechanisms can be selectively mixed and matched from different sets within the decorative style. |
| US08474162B1 |
Ornament gift card holder
An ornament gift card holder that includes a removably attached gift card, a slot for inserting the gift card into the holder after removal for loading at the point of purchase, a loop, hook or similar means for hanging the holder upon a Christmas tree or other desired location, and audio circuitry for recording and playing sound such as music and/or a message from the gift giver. |
| US08474160B1 |
Center pin support for a dragline excavating machine
A center pivot pin support bearing assembly to provide rotatable center restraint for a dragline excavator machine. Multiple center pin bearing support fittings imparts stabilization and additional bearing wear surfaces for increased pin useful service life before replacement. An axially center pin bore receiving fitting is provided for longitudinal spaced multiple support fits combination with a center pin receiving stabilization base and fit. |
| US08474159B2 |
Land clearing device
A land-clearing implement configured to be attached to a small earth-moving machine, such as a skid loader. The land-clearing device has a pusher assembly with telescopically extendable actuator arms that are operated by a hydraulic auxiliary source accessible from the interior of the earthmoving machine. When the actuator arms are extended, the forward end of the pusher assembly applies a pushing force on the trunk of a tree, pushing the tree until uprooted. The pusher assembly is supported by a mounting bracket that rests on the ground and provides stability to the pusher assembly. A pair of opposing grabber arms with C-shaped hooks is secured to the pusher assembly by pivoting securing rods. The grabber arms partially encircle and the C-shaped hooks dig into the root ball of the tree to provide stability as the pusher assembly is engaged. |
| US08474154B2 |
Footwear for walking or running with rolling action
A footwear sole assembly (10) for walking with a rolling action is described. An elastically compressible midsole element (33) is provided with a rolling element (40) situated in and extending over a portion of the length and over at least a portion of the width of the midsole element (33). The rolling element (40) consists at least partially of a resilient material and is disposed at least in that region of the midsole (33) which is opposite to the arch of the wearer's foot. This shoe offers the rolling gait advantages of the well known MBT shoe, but has a different construction which enables it to retain the outward appearance of conventional shoes such as trainers. |
| US08474152B2 |
Method to detect an empty load in a clothes dryer
A method for determining an empty load in a clothes dryer having a drying chamber with an air inlet, an air outlet and operable according to a predetermined cycle of operation. |
| US08474149B2 |
Concentricity test device
A test device for testing whether an axis of a first portion of an article is coaxial with an axis of a second portion of the article includes a supporting member, a benchmark member fixed to a first end of the support member, and a test member slidably received in a second end of the supporting member opposite to the first end. The benchmark member includes a first test portion to position the first portion of the article that are coaxial within a coaxial tolerance. The test member includes a second test member coaxial with the first test portion. If the second portion is capable of being positioned to the second test portion, the article is qualified. If the second portion is incapable positioned to the second test portion, the article is unqualified. |
| US08474147B2 |
Method and apparatus for measuring surface profile of sample
A method for measuring surface profile of a sample, wherein jumping of a probe can be constrained without applying strong force to the sample, and an apparatus employing such a method. Control operation consists of detection of displacement in a probe in the vertical direction on the top surface of a sample being measured by means of a sensor, calculation of velocity and acceleration of the probe in accordance with detection of the displacement in the probe, detection of jumping of the probe through real-time monitoring of at least either velocity or acceleration of the probe, and a control of the current delivered to a stylus pressure generator for the probe. Such a control operation is performed in a small amount of time, and a stylus pressure applied to the probe is increased only while the probe is in the air, while the stylus pressure applied to the probe is returned to an original pressure before the probe touches the sample again. |
| US08474140B2 |
High precision grinding and remanufacturing of machine components
Grinding a machine component such as a valve component during remanufacturing, includes seating one end of the valve component in a chuck of the grinding apparatus, then contacting a steady rest with a reference surface on an outer diameter of the valve component while rotating the valve component, and then reseating the one end of the valve component in the chuck. A first valve surface on an outer diameter of the valve component is ground while contacting the steady rest with the reference surface, then a second, different valve surface on the outer diameter of the valve component is ground also while contacting the steady rest with the reference surface. The valve component is then reassembled with a hydraulically actuated device for service therein. |
| US08474138B2 |
Method of manufacturing the ink-jet head
A method of manufacturing an ink-jet head includes preparing a sheet-like piezoelectric material comprising an internal electrode and forming a plurality of individual electrodes at equal intervals in a drive area and an area around the drive area on a surface of the sheet-like piezoelectric material. The method also includes forming a piezoelectric sheet which comprises the plurality of individual electrodes and the internal electrode opposite to the respective individual electrodes by firing the piezoelectric material in which the individual electrodes are formed and forming a plurality of individual electrodes for drive voltage application on a board which drives the piezoelectric sheet. The method further includes electrically connecting the respective individual electrodes in the drive area of the piezoelectric sheet to the respective individual electrodes formed on the board. |
| US08474135B2 |
Method for fabricating printed circuit board
A method for fabricating a printed circuit board is provided. The method includes manufacturing a base film including a first side and a second side opposite to the first side; printing a first wiring on the first side with a high-viscosity conductive material having a viscosity of 5,000 to 300,000 centipoise (CPS); forming a via-hole that passes through both sides of the base film, and passes by the first wiring; and printing a second wiring on the second side with a low-viscosity conductive material having a viscosity of 100 to 5,000 CPS. The low-viscosity conductive material is applied to an inner wall of the via-hole to conductively connect the first wiring to the second wiring. |
| US08474130B2 |
Tripod constant velocity joint, and method and device for assembling same
Provided are a tripod constant velocity joint, and a method and a device for assembling the joint. The opening of a through-hole formed in an inner member of the tripod constant velocity joint has formed therein a tapered, reduced diameter section having a diameter tapered from the opening toward the inside. A first annular groove is formed in the side wall of a driving power transmission shaft, and a clip serving as an engaging member is engaged with the first annular groove. A second annular groove is formed in the inner wall of the through-hole in the inner member. In inserting the driving power transmission shaft through the through-hole in the inner member, the tapered, reduced diameter section guides the shaft in such a manner that the clip is contracted toward the bottom surface of the first annular groove. The clip expands and contracts due to the elasticity thereof when the positions of the first annular groove and the second annular groove coincide with each other. |
| US08474129B2 |
Method for producing lamination packs
Lamination packs of a controlled height are produced in that laminations are punched with a tool and glue is applied partially onto at least one of an upper surface and a lower surface of each of the laminations without the application device that applies the glue contacting the laminations. Several of the laminations are then assembled to a lamination pack. Height of the lamination packs is controlled by interrupting the application of glue for certain laminations so that between some of the laminations that are stacked for assembling a lamination pack there is no glue. |
| US08474126B2 |
Manufacturing method of semiconductor device
A manufacturing method of a semiconductor device include forming a capacitor by forming an oxide film on a surface of a valve metal based on anodic oxidization and by forming a conductive part made of a conductive material on the oxide film; adhering the capacitor on a semiconductor element mounted on a supporting substrate; and coupling the capacitor to the supporting substrate via an outside connection terminal. |
| US08474125B2 |
Method and apparatus for electrical component physical protection
A method and apparatus for protecting a heat sensitive component from high temperature, mechanical shock and moisture are provided. An enclosure includes an outer housing surrounding an inner cavity configured to receive a heat sensitive component therein, a cover configured to matingly engage the outer housing such that the inner cavity is sealed from an environment external to the enclosure, wherein at least one of the outer housing and the cover are formed from a ceramic material. |
| US08474122B2 |
Apparatus for compressing an expandable medical device
Systems and methods for compressing a medical device, such as a self-expanding stent, and loading the compressed medical device into a sheath are disclosed. A plurality of moveable blades are disposed about a central axis and form a radially contractible aperture which receives the device. An operating mechanism moves the blades between an expanded configuration and a radially contracted configuration. A subset of the blades is independently moveable in an axial direction with respect to other of the blades while the blades are in a contracted configuration. |
| US08474121B2 |
Alignment tools and methods of tool alignment
An automated driver for tightening a fastener bolt includes a housing body including a handle. A chuck is rotatably connected to the housing body. An actuation system is operatively connected to the chuck for rotating the chuck. A tool element is held by the chuck, the tool element configured to engage the fastener bolt. An alignment tool is connected to the chuck. The alignment tool includes a chuck receiving portion having an opening extending therethrough in which the chuck is located and a bit receiving portion having an opening extending therethrough in which the tool element is located. An end of the tool element extends beyond an end of the bit receiving portion. |
| US08474113B2 |
Buckle assembly
A side-release buckle assembly includes a main housing, a button positioned through a side of the main housing, a metal coil spring biased between an interior wall of the main housing and the button, and a mating member. Movement of the button is directly transferred to the spring, and vice versa. The ratchet strap is moveable through the main housing in a first direction, and when the button is pressed, the ratchet strap is moveable through the buckle housing in a second direction opposite to the first direction. |
| US08474104B2 |
Cable tie
A binding head and binding arrangement that cooperates with an elongate member that has a fastening end and a locking end. The fastening end is spaced apart from the locking end along the length of the elongate member and each elongate member has at least one lengthwise side that includes at least two teeth. The binding head includes a fastening opening for receiving a fastening end of an elongate member. The fastening opening includes a first fastening arrangement configured to cooperate with at least one of the teeth of the elongate member to lock a portion of the elongate member within the fastening opening; and a locking opening for receiving a locking end of an elongate member. The locking opening includes a second fastening arrangement configured to cooperate with at least one of the teeth of the elongate member to lock a portion of the elongate member within the locking opening. A cable tie is also claimed which includes the binding head and binding arrangement. |
| US08474099B2 |
Hinge assembly
A hinge assembly includes a first body, and a second body capable of rotating relatively to the first body. The first body includes a first main part and a pair of stopper portions respectively extending from two sides of the first main part and coplanar with the first main part. Two ends of a shaft are fixed with the pair of stopper portions, respectively. The second body includes a second main part, a pair of blocking portions and a resilient arm located between the pair of the blocking portions. When the second body rotates to be perpendicular to the first body, the second body is positioned stably relative to the first body without an external force, due to an elasticity of the resilient arm of the second body. |
| US08474095B2 |
Constant-power electric system
An electric system that includes a single-phase permanent-magnet electric machine and a control system for driving the electric machine. The control system sequentially excites and freewheels a winding of the electric machine so as maintain substantially constant power over an operating speed range spanning at least 10 krpm and/or an excitation voltage range extending between a minimum voltage and a maximum voltage, the minimum voltage being less than 80% of the maximum voltage. Additionally, a product comprising the electric system. |
| US08474092B2 |
Vacuum cleaner
A vacuum cleaner is disclosed. The present invention relates to a vacuum cleaner that is able to form dust and foreign substances collected in a dust collection device provided therein in a single mass shape to discharge it efficiently, not scattered in a dust collecting device. The vacuum cleaner includes a body, a dust separation device mounted in the body, a dust collection device independently provided from the dust separation device, connected to the dust collection device, a compression device provided in the dust collection device, to collect dust and foreign substances collected in a predetermined portion of the dust collection device and to compress the collected dust and foreign substances, and a liquid supply device provided in the dust separation device to supply liquid material to the dust separation device. |
| US08474089B2 |
Cleaning bucket system for flat mops
A double bucket system for flat mops that is mounted in a frame. One bucket contains only clean water. The second bucket is used to hold dirty water. The second bucket has a special fixture attached that the user slides the mop through. The frame compresses the mop as it slides through, which ensure complete, even pressing of the mop to extract the greatest amount of dirty water. The frame includes footpads upon which the user stands during the pressing operation. This ensures that the device remains in place during the pressing. Finally, once the mop has been thoroughly pressed, the user can pick up clean water from the first bucket for the next portion of the floor to be cleaned. In this way, the user is able to quickly clean a large floor with clean water instead of repeatedly dipping the mop back into dirty water. |
| US08474085B2 |
Toothbrush and attachment therefor
An electric toothbrush includes a handpiece and a mountable attachment. The attachment includes a working head and a coupling member which is joined to the working head and connectable to the toothbrush handpiece by positive and/or frictional engagement. The attachment can be an attachment brush for dental cleansing, or for interproximal cleaning devices, such as gum massage heads or other attachment tools for performing similar tasks in the oral cavity. The coupling member is braced against the toothbrush handpiece, to provide a low to zero-play connection which accommodates production tolerances. At least one pivot lever or toggle joint is provided for clamping the coupling member upon the toothbrush handpiece. |
| US08474084B2 |
System for cleaning surface of solar cell panel
There is provided a system for cleaning a surface of a solar cell panel. The system includes a measurement unit measuring a power generation value of a solar cell panel, a reference unit providing a reference value, a control unit comparing the power generation value measured at the measurement unit with the reference value provided from the reference unit to command cleaning of the solar cell panel, a driving unit operating a cleaning apparatus for cleaning a surface of the solar cell panel. The control unit commands cleaning of the solar cell panel only when the power generation value decreases because of a contamination of the surface of the solar cell panel. |
| US08474082B2 |
Cleaning system with balls, in particular for a heat exchanger of the plate type
A system includes an installation to be cleaned which has at an inlet a fluid feed pipe fed with fluid and at an outlet a fluid evacuation pipe. A cleaning device is arranged to cause cleaning bodies to flow in the installation, the cleaning device including on an inlet filter elements for filtering the fluid and on an evacuation pipe separator elements for collecting the cleaning bodies. The separator and filter elements are static and include separate filters, the separator elements including a filter member, the cleaning device including a circuit for recovering cleaning bodies circulating in the evacuation pipe and a circuit for reinjecting them into the inlet, the two circuits having in common the filter member and being used alternately by actuating a set of controlled valves in order to cause the fluid to flow either in the recovery circuit or in the reinjection circuit. |
| US08474081B2 |
Vortex turbine cleaner
A suction type turbine-driven pool-cleaners utilizing vortex turbines to propel and steer the pool cleaner is disclosed. The cleaner includes a housing for one or more vortex-turbine mechanisms, each with a chamber and a turbine, tracks for movement over submerged surfaces, a differential mechanism for steering purposes, a reverse of inlet flow mechanism, a cam design for engagement of steering and reversing mechanisms, a means of controller inlet flow for steering purposes, and a means of controlling flow for reversing direction of cleaner movement. |
| US08474077B2 |
Weight-stabilizing stretcher
A flat backboard for an injured person to lie upon is supported between two rigid support poles. The support poles are connected at each end of the stretcher to each other by an elevated support assembly. The support assembly has a handlebar structure and a mount assembly; this mount assembly has a central axle, around which the handlebar assembly fits, allowing for the handlebars to rotate without the mount assembly or the backboard rotating. When the holder of the handlebars generates a rocking motion, the central shaft rotates in the mount assembly, such that the weight of the injured person is supported by the mount assembly, but the rocking motion is not communicated to the mount assembly or the backboard. |
| US08474073B2 |
User interface for power drive system of a patient support apparatus
A patient support apparatus includes a frame, a patient support coupled to the frame, a plurality of casters and a wheel coupled to the frame, a motor coupled to the wheel and operable to rotate the wheel to propel the patient support apparatus along a floor, and an electrical system comprising a controller configured to signal operation of the motor to rotate the wheel to propel the patient support apparatus along the floor. The electrical system further includes user inputs adjacent at least one end of the frame and adjacent at least one side of the frame. The user inputs including forward and reverse switches that are engaged to determine whether the patient support apparatus is propelled in a forward direction or a rearward direction, respectively. |
| US08474066B2 |
Pair of pants with the L pocket
The cotton pants 1 as a pair of pants with the L pocket is that the front and the reverse edge 3Ab of the storing part 3A is perpendicular against the length direction of the belt part 3. Also because the upper edge of the raw fabric which does not have the rectangle expansion and contraction inside the elongating part 3B is sewn on and the lower edge of the raw fabric which does not have expansion and contraction is sewn on the lower edge of the belt part 3, one part of the raw fabric 6 which does not have expansion and contraction can be seen even if the one who wears it turns over the lower edge of the elongating part 3B by curiosity and the inner structure of the stretch stopper material 11 etc. can not be seen. |
| US08479305B1 |
Method and system for managing a data object so as to comply with predetermined conditions for usage
A method and a system for managing a data object so as to comply with predetermined conditions for usage of the data object. To control the usage of the data object, a set of control data, defining usages of the data object which comply with the predetermined conditions, is created for the data object. The data object is concatenated with the user set of control data, encrypted and transferred to the user. When the user wants to use the data object, a special user program checks whether the usage complies with the control data. If so, the usage is enabled. Otherwise it is disabled. |
| US08479303B2 |
Method and system for scoring employment characteristics of a person
A first method and system includes receiving initial information related to a person; verifying the accuracy of the initial information; assigning a plurality of scores to the person, the plurality of scores having a plurality of score types, each of the plurality of scores having a score value and a score type; and setting the score value of at least one of the plurality of scores based on the verified initial information. A second method and system includes, for each person of a plurality of persons, assigning a plurality of scores, each of the plurality of scores having a score type and a score value, the score value of at least one of the plurality of scores being based on verified information; receiving a request for information related to a specific score type and a specific score value; and determining a portion of the plurality of persons which have scores related to the specific score type and specific score value. |
| US08479301B2 |
Offline access in a document control system
Systems and techniques to provide offline access in a document control system. In general, in one implementation, the technique includes: receiving a request from a client, and pre-authorizing the client, in response to the request, to allow actions by a user as a member of a group of users by sending to the client offline access information including a first key associated with the group, the first key being useable at the client to access an electronic document by decrypting a second key in the electronic document. Receiving a request can involve receiving a request from the client to take an action with respect to a second document. The technique can also include verifying the user at the client as an authenticated user, and the offline access information can include user-specific keys, group-specific keys, a policy, and a document revocation list. |
| US08479298B2 |
Method for encrypting and embedding information in a URL for content delivery
A method for accessing a remote network includes identifying a content server associated with the remote network, generating a uniform resource locator, embedding additional data in the uniform resource locator, encrypting the uniform resource locator, and accessing a server in the remote network identified by the uniform resource locator. The method further includes wherein the additional data comprises authentication data, a delivery session identification, a time stamp, or comprises subscriber identification data. The URL may provide access to the content server for a time period indicated by the time stamp. The method includes wherein at least the subscriber identification data prevents unauthorized sharing of the URL. |
| US08479293B2 |
Security technique for an open computing platform system
The present invention relates to a method for ensuring the security of an open platform. Specifically, the present invention pertains to a method of using a validation program, itself highly secure, to evaluate and securely flag files in software to be loaded and used on palmtop computing devices. The method prevents the infiltration and unauthorized installation of viruses, Trojans, and other known methods of compromising security in an open-platform system. Control of access to the operating system and the operation of applications and macros in a palmtop device is therefore maintained in the user. |
| US08479292B1 |
Disabling malware that infects boot drivers
A valid entry point for each boot driver running under an operating system is gleaned. When the operating system is rebooted, a security boot driver is loaded prior to loading other boot drivers. The security boot driver reads the actual entry points of each boot driver, before the boot drivers have run. The security boot driver compares the actual entry points to the corresponding valid entry points. Responsive to an actual entry point not matching its corresponding valid entry point, it is determined that the boot driver is infected. Infected boot drivers are corrected, by replacing their actual entry points with the corresponding, valid entry points. After infected boot drivers have been corrected, the infecting malicious code can be identified and disabled. Sections of boot drivers other than entry points can be gleaned, read and compared, up to entire boot drivers. |
| US08479289B1 |
Method and system for minimizing the effects of rogue security software
A method and apparatus for minimizing the effects of rogue security software leverages the fact that virtually all rogue security software generates malware alerts to scare the user/victim into submitting their payment information, and the fact that the malware alerts generated by rogue security software are almost never changed. In one example, a user computing system is monitored/scanned for any alerts being presented to the user. Once an alert is detected, the alert content is sampled and analyzed for defined keywords that indicate the alert is a malware alert and any alert including the defined keywords is considered a malware alert and is treated as being potentially generated by rogue security software. All malware alerts are therefore subjected to an initial malware alert analysis before the user is allowed to see, and/or respond, at least without a warning, to the malware alert. If it is determined that the malware alert is suspicious for any reason, then the malware alert is determined to be potentially generated by rogue security software and the user is prevented from seeing, and/or responding to, at least without a warning, the malware alert until a more definitive analysis can be performed. |
| US08479287B2 |
Method and apparatus for spam message detection
A method, apparatus and computer program product for spam message detection. The method includes collecting time domain transmission characteristic of a message source; computing frequency domain transmission characteristic of the message source with the time domain transmission characteristic of the message source; and identifying the message source to be a spammer in response to the frequency domain transmission characteristic of the message source satisfying predefined criteria; wherein the steps of the method are carried out using a computer device. An apparatus and computer program product for carrying out the above method is also provided. |
| US08479286B2 |
Systems and methods for behavioral sandboxing
Methods and system for behavioral sandboxing are described. In one example embodiment, a system for behavioral sandboxing can include a network and a computer. The network communicatively coupled to a source of an executable application. The computer communicatively couple to the network and including a behavioral analysis module and a plurality of execution environments. The behavioral analysis module is configured to perform behavioral analysis on the executable application downloaded over the network. The plurality of execution environments including a standard execution environment and a protected execution environment. The behavioral analysis module is configured to evaluate a plurality of behavioral characteristics of the executable application to determine whether the executable application should be executed within the protected execution environment prior to execution of the executable application. The behavioral analysis module also monitors execution of the executable application to determine whether the execution environment can be changed. |
| US08479285B2 |
Method, computer program and apparatus for controlling access to a computer resource and obtaining a baseline therefor
A plurality of computer messages are classified into clusters according to the behavior of the computer messages in the context of a computer resource. For a new message of the plurality of computer messages, it is determined whether the cluster to which the new computer message is classified has been seen previously. A measure is then obtained of the probability that the cluster to which the next new message will be classified has been seen previously. |
| US08479282B2 |
Denial-of-service attack defense system, denial-of-service attack defense method, and computer product
A monitoring device is provided on a LAN to which a communication device that is a target of a denial-of-service attack is connected, and monitors a packet transmitted to the communication device via an ISP network. A restricting device is provided on the ISP network, and restricts a packet to the LAN. The monitoring device detects an attack by the packet on the communication device, and transmits protection request information indicating a request for protection against the attack to the restricting device. The restricting device restricts a packet transmitted to the communication device via the ISP network based on the protection request information. |
| US08479277B2 |
Information processing apparatus, information processing system, and computer readable medium
An information processing apparatus includes: a connecting section; an information storage; a request accepting section; a searching section; a setting information storage; a determining section; and a process executing section. |
| US08479274B2 |
Personal verification device
Provided is a personal verification device capable of easily performing personal verification of a user. In the device, under the condition that a user grasps a case (110) of a game controller (10), a vibration control unit (152) causes a vibration motor (120) arranged inside of the case (110) to vibrate in different patterns. A triaxial acceleration sensor (140) detects vibration generated by the vibration motor (120) which vibrates in the different patterns, and a storage unit (153) stores a plurality of pieces of measurement data obtained by the detection for each of the users. A determination unit (154) performs the personal verification by comparing and collating the data in the storage unit (153) with the measurement data obtained by vibrating the vibration motor (120) under the condition that the user grasps the case (110). |
| US08479269B1 |
Method and system for redirecting unauthorized wireless communication devices away from a femtocell
Methods and systems are disclosed for reducing a number of unauthorized wireless communication devices (WCDs) using a femtocell. A femtocell may transmit a pilot beacon on a macro-network carrier, and may transmit one or more overhead channels on a femtocell carrier. Subsequently, the femtocell may receive a registration request from a WCD. The femtocell may then determine whether the WCD is authorized to receive wireless services from the femtocell, and if it is not so authorized, the femtocell may, during a subsequent slot associated with the unauthorized WCD in a periodically recurring slot cycle, responsively disable at least one of (i) its pilot channel and (ii) one or more of its overhead channels. As a result of the disabling, the unauthorized WCD may move away from the femtocell, perhaps handing off to the macro network. |
| US08479268B2 |
Securing asynchronous client server transactions
A system, and computer usable program product for securing asynchronous client server transactions are provided in the illustrative embodiments. A request including an application identifier and a version of a second application is received at a first application. A service identifier is generated if a session with the second application is valid. A registry is generated at the first application. A catalog is generated based on the registry and the service identifier and the catalog are sent to the second application. A sub-request including the service identifier is received as part of an asynchronous client server transaction. Validity of the sub-request is determined by determining whether the service identifier has expired, whether the sub-request requests a service that is permissible according to the catalog, whether the service identifier is used in conjunction with the second application, or a combination thereof. If the sub-request is valid, the service is provided. |
| US08479267B2 |
System and method for identifying unauthorized endpoints
In embodiments of the present invention improved capabilities are described for identifying unauthorized endpoints. The present invention includes computer implemented methods and systems for actively polling and monitoring network devices, such as network routers and switches, to obtain information on any or all of the endpoints on a network with which the router or switch may have communicated. Address information acquired through polling is compared with an authorized endpoint list, which is generated from information reported to the store by security agents on the authorized endpoints and which is stored in a security compliance store, in order to identify unauthorized endpoints. Methods and systems disclosed herein also include remediation measures to be taken on the unauthorized endpoints. Related user interfaces, applications, and computer program products are disclosed. |
| US08479265B2 |
Usage based authorization
Embodiments of the invention provide systems and methods for authorizing a request to access a resource based on a context of the request. According to one embodiment, a method of authorizing a request for a resource based on a context of the request can comprise receiving the request from a requester, identifying the context of the request, and determining whether to authorize the request based on the context of the request. In some cases, the request can include context information describing the context of the request. In such cases, identifying the context can be based at least in part on the context information from the request. Additionally or alternatively, context information describing the context can be requested and received in response to the request. In such a case, identifying the context can be based at least in part on the received context information. |
| US08479263B1 |
Method and system for detecting captive portals
A method and system for detecting captive portals includes a two phase captive portal detection process whereby an initial HTTP ping request is sent from the endpoint captive portal detection application on an end user computing system to an Internet accessible web server. The Internet accessible web server is expected to return an initial response token to the endpoint captive portal detection application in response to the initial HTTP ping request and if the expected initial response token is received, an initial HTTPS query request is then sent together with the returned initial response token that requires server/client mutual authentication. If mutual authentication is accomplished, then it is determined that the user is not in a captive portal. Follow up HTTP ping requests are then periodically generated by the endpoint captive portal detection application and if the responses to the follow up HTTP ping requests do not change, i.e., the token does not change, no new HTTPS query request is sent. |
| US08479260B2 |
Multi-level security controls system
A method and apparatus for processing information. First information is received from a first number of devices at a first number of interfaces configured to receive the first information in a first section of a programmable integrated circuit. The first information is sent to a second section in the programmable integrated circuit. Second information is received at a second number of interfaces in the second section from a second number of devices that generates the second information with a plurality of security levels. The first and second sections are partitioned from each other such that communication between the first and second sections is controlled by the second section. The first and second information are processed to form processed information that is sent to a number of network interfaces in which an identification of a security level within a plurality of security levels is associated with the processed information. |
| US08479259B2 |
Secure customer interface for web based data management
An integrated series of security protocols is disclosed that protect remote user communications with remote enterprise services, and simultaneously protect the enterprises services from third parties. In the first layer, an implementation of the Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) version of HTTPS provides communications security, including authentication of the enterprise web server and the security of the transmitted data. The protocols provide for an identification of the user, and an authentication of the user to ensure the user is who he/she claims to be and a determination of entitlements that the user may avail themselves of within the enterprise system. Session security is described, particularly as to the differences between a remote user's copper wire connection to a legacy system and a user's remote connection to the enterprise system over a “stateless” public Internet, where each session is a single transmission, rather than an interval of time between logon and logoff, as is customary in legacy systems. Security for the enterprise network and security for the data maintained by the various enterprise applications is also described. |
| US08479258B2 |
Garage management system
A garage management and monitoring system defines and manages each operational event in a parking facility. Access events, management events, equipment operation events, equipment malfunction events, security events and defined anomaly events are labeled and parsed into a relational database, which is used for generating reports, creating logs, making management decisions, reconstructing accidents, and so on. The equipment includes a computer terminal, a reader, an identifying item or code capable of being read by the reader to control access to the facility, an IP camera, and a garage door or vehicle gate with safety sensors. Each defined event can be codified on the server and/or local controller to create an event library that is downloaded to the controller.A distributed intelligent system includes: units that gather information about garage, ingresses, and egresses; units that send data to the central server; the central server parses data sent from units and inserts it into a database; the central server formats data and presents it to users; units use unique keys to relate information from several actions the unit has taken to accomplish a task. |
| US08479255B2 |
Managing operational requirements on the objects of a service oriented architecture (SOA)
A registry for a service oriented architecture (SOA) comprising a plurality of processing objects. The registry may include a plurality of non-formalized operation requirements for the plurality of SOA objects, a plurality of technical assertions for the plurality of SOA objects, and a plurality of links, linking each non-formalized operation requirement to at least one technical assertion of the registry. |
| US08479253B2 |
Method, apparatus and machine-readable medium for video processing capability communication between a video source device and a video sink device
At one of a video source device and a video sink device, an indication of video processing capabilities of the other of the video source device and said video sink device is received. Based upon the indication and an indication of video processing capabilities of the one device, one of a plurality of video processing algorithms is selected for execution by the one device. The selecting may be based upon a set of precedence rules. Categories of video processing may for example include scan-rate conversion, interlacing, de-interlacing, de-noise, scaling, color correction, contrast correction and detail enhancement. |
| US08479251B2 |
System and method for synchronizing streaming content with enhancing content using pre-announced triggers
A client-server architecture synchronizes streaming content with enhancing content via pre-announced triggers. The architecture includes server-based components to generate announcements containing information specifying how and when to receive upcoming triggers that will be transmitted at a later time. The server transmits the announcements to a general broadcast or multicast IP address. Client-based components monitor the IP address to receive and filter the announcements. Selected announcements are stored in a guide database in correlation with the streaming content programs to indicate that the programs are interactive. When a user tunes to an interactive program, the client opens a container HTML page that contains controls to receive the streaming content program and to extract the announcements from the guide database. The latter control monitors the IP address at the times specified in the selected announcements to receive the triggers corresponding to the interactive program. The server delivers the triggers at times synchronized to the streaming content. When triggers arrive, the client control processes the triggers to coordinate presentation of the enhancing content with the streaming content program. The triggers may further be used to carry items that fill a ticker being displayed with the program. |
| US08479250B2 |
Apparatus and method for detecting a media device
A system that incorporates teachings of the present disclosure may include, for example, a mobile device having a controller to detect a location of a user by detecting at least one of a network associated with the user and a location of the mobile device, wherein the location of the user includes a media processor, transmit a request for an audio command intended for the media processor to a server on a communications network after detecting the location of the user, wherein the audio command is transmitted by the server to the media processor, detect an audio signal emitted from the media processor, wherein the audio signal is caused by the audio command, and determine an identity of the media processor by associating the detected audio signal with the media processor. Other embodiments are disclosed. |
| US08479249B2 |
Display device, program and computer readable storage medium on which said program is stored
A television receiver for content with which genre information is associated includes: a basic picture quality information receiving section which associates, with a single piece of genre information, a plurality of candidates for picture quality information regarding the content with which the genre information is associated, and which receives basic picture quality information indicating which one of the plurality of candidates is based on; a picture quality correction information creating section which receives picture quality correction information for further correcting the picture quality, and which creates, in accordance with the basic picture quality information and the picture quality correction information, information for correcting the picture quality; and a picture processing section which corrects the picture quality and which creates a picture to be displayed by a liquid crystal display device. |
| US08479240B2 |
Remote management system for at least one audiovisual information reproduction device
Method for remote management of at least one audiovisual information reproduction device comprising a host server connected to each audiovisual information reproduction device, the host server comprising a database containing management information for each audiovisual information reproduction device, wherein the host server also comprises a site manager communicating with the database, and comprising a number of screens, at least one first screen comprising a menu displaying the list of audiovisual information reproduction systems, validating the choice of each audiovisual information reproduction device causing the display of a first series of screens that the operator can use to modify the operating parameters of at least one selected audiovisual information reproduction device and/or a second series of screens that the operator can use to order at least one song for downloading onto the audiovisual information reproduction systems from a chosen list of devices or to delete at least one song, and/or a third series of screens displaying information about the use of an audiovisual information reproduction device. |
| US08479237B1 |
Wireless set-top unit and related methods
Disclosed is a set-top box capable of delivering television, internet service, video phone service, video-on-demand, and other media services to a consumer. One portion of the set-top box interacts with a CDMA network for the purpose of receiving wireless internet, video-on-demand, videophone and other IP services. Another portion of the device is satellite-enabled. The satellite portion of the device enables the user to also receive satellite service. Because the set-top box works to receive satellite programming and wireless CDMA network communications, it is not terrestrially-bound. This means it is not bound to be included within a cable, telephone, or other wired circuit network. |
| US08479234B2 |
Method and system for monitoring and controlling a local collection facility from a remote facility using an asynchronous transfer mode (ATM) network
A system of local television signals includes a plurality of local collection facilities. Each a local collection facilities includes a plurality of primary receiver decoder circuit modules comprising a first receiver decoder circuit module. The first receiver decoder circuit module receives a first channel signal and forms a first decoded signal. The local collection facility also includes an encoder in communication with the first receiver decoder circuit module forming an encoded signal. A multiplexer multiplexing the first encoded signal into a multiplexed signal and a network switch communicating the multiplexed signal through a network. Collectively, the plurality of local collection facilities communicates a plurality of multiplexed signals through the network. The system also includes a remote collection facility in communication with the plurality of local collection facilities that generate an output signal in response to the plurality of multiplexed signals. The multiplexed signal may be formed into ATM signals before communication through the network. |
| US08479233B2 |
Interactive television program guide with selectable languages
An interactive television program guide is provided. The interactive television program guide provides a user with the opportunity to select a language for playing television programming and displaying program guide text. Television program audio in the desired language may be obtained from a SAP or digital audio track and played in the selected language. Television related information in the desired language may be obtained from a digital track. If television program audio or related information is not provided in the selected language, the program guide may use a default language. The program guide may coordinate program guide display screen text with languages available for television programs when the programs are broadcast to users. |
| US08479231B2 |
Program receiving apparatus, program transmission/reception system, program reception method, program, and recording medium
Provided is a program reception terminal that can more kindly remind the user of the existence of a forgot-to-view program. The program reception terminal comprises: a want-to-view program identifying unit 149 that identifies a want-to-view program of a viewer based on the viewing history; a not-yet-viewed program extracting unit 301 that extracts not-yet-viewed programs; a forgot-to-view program determining unit 148 that searches whether there is a want-to-view program in the not-yet-viewed programs and that determines the program found out by the searching as the forgot-to-view program; a related program determining unit 154 that determines whether a related program identified from the forgot-to-view program based on a predetermined rule exists in a program group in a predetermined period later than the predetermined time; and a program guide display control unit 144 that displays the existence of the forgot-to-view program if the related program exists. |
| US08479230B2 |
System and apparatus for managing media content
A system and apparatus for managing media content is disclosed. An apparatus that incorporates teachings of the present disclosure may include, for example, a terminal device can have a controller element that receives a media guide from a Set-Top Box (STB), and presents on a display unit of the terminal device the media guide without presentation of said media guide on a media device coupled to the STB. Additional embodiments are disclosed. |
| US08479226B1 |
Methods and apparatus to identify exposure to 3D media presentations
Methods and apparatus to identify exposure to three dimensional media presentations are disclosed. An example method includes detecting a first brightness level with a first sensor and a second brightness level with a second sensor at a first time. A third brightness level is detected with the first sensor and a fourth brightness level is detected with the second sensor at a second time later than the first time. A 3D media counter is incremented when either: the first brightness is greater than the second brightness and the third brightness is less than the fourth brightness, or the first brightness is less than the second brightness and the third brightness is greater than the fourth brightness. The media is identified as 3D media when the 3D media counter exceeds a threshold. |
| US08479224B2 |
Disk drive
A disk drive that includes (i) a main chassis, (ii) a tray that is configured to have a disk removably mounted thereon and that is installed to slide into/out of the main chassis, and that includes a pickup transporting unit configured to move a pickup base back and forth in a radial direction of the disk, and (iii) a lock releasing unit that is arranged on the tray, that is driven by the pickup transporting unit, and that releases a lock of the tray from the main chassis. |
| US08479217B2 |
Apparatus, system, and method for persistent user-level thread
Embodiments of the invention provide a method of creating, based on an operating-system-scheduled thread running on an operating-system-visible sequencer and using an instruction set extension, a persistent user-level thread to run on an operating-system-sequestered sequencer independently of context switch activities on the operating-system-scheduled thread. The operating-system-scheduled thread and the persistent user-level thread may share a common virtual address space. Embodiments of the invention may also provide a method of causing a service thread running on an additional operating-system-visible sequencer to provide operating system services to the persistent user-level thread. Embodiments of the invention may further provide apparatus, system, and machine-readable medium thereof. |
| US08479210B2 |
Evenly distributing workload and providing a predictable failover scenario in a data replication system
A method for more effectively distributing the I/O workload in a data replication system is disclosed herein. In selected embodiments, such a method may include generating an I/O request and identifying a storage resource group associated with the I/O request. In the event the I/O request is associated with a first storage resource group, the I/O request may be directed to a first storage device and a copy of the I/O request may be mirrored from the first storage device to a second storage device. Alternatively, in the event the I/O request is associated with a second storage resource group, the I/O request may be directed to a second storage device and a copy of the I/O request may be mirrored from the second storage device to the first storage device. A corresponding system, apparatus, and computer program product are also disclosed and claimed herein. |
| US08479209B2 |
Automated execution of virtual appliances
Methods and apparatus, including computer program products, are provided for selecting a processor, such as a hardware provider, for executing a virtual appliance. In one aspect, there is provided a computer-implemented method. The method may include receiving information representative of whether one or more processors are capable of executing at least one of a plurality of virtual appliances. The received information may further including one or more costs to execute the at least one virtual appliance at one of the processors. One of the processors may be selected based on the received information. The selection enables the processor to execute the at least one virtual appliance. Related apparatus, systems, methods, and articles are also described. |
| US08479207B2 |
Priority inheritance in multithreaded systems
A method includes determining that a first task having a first priority is blocked from execution at a multithreaded processor by a second task having a second priority that is lower than the first priority. A temporary priority of the second task is set to be equal to an elevated priority, such that in response to the second task being preempted from execution by another task, the second task is rescheduled for execution based on the elevated priority identified by the temporary priority. |
| US08479206B2 |
Workload scheduling method and system with improved planned job duration updating scheme
A method for scheduling execution of a work unit in a data processing system comprises assigning to the work unit an expected execution duration; executing the work unit determining an actual execution duration of the work unit; determining a difference between the actual execution duration and the expected duration; and conditionally adjusting the expected execution duration assigned to the work unit based on the measured actual execution duration, wherein the conditionally adjusting includes preventing the adjustment of the expected execution duration in case said difference exceeds a predetermined threshold. The method further includes associating to the work unit a parameter having a prescribed value adapted to provide an indication of unconditional adjustment of the expected execution duration: in case said parameter takes the prescribed value, the expected duration assigned with the work unit based on the measured actual execution duration even if the difference in durations exceeds the predetermined threshold. |
| US08479201B2 |
Processor with hardware solution for priority inversion
A method for preventing priority inversion in a processor system having an operating system operable in a plurality of contexts is provided. The method comprises: providing a plurality of context control registers with each context control register being associated with a corresponding one context for controlling execution of the context; providing a plurality of sets of hardware registers, each set corresponding to one context of the plurality of contexts; and utilizing the plurality of context control registers and said plurality of sets of hardware registers to prevent priority inversion. |
| US08479199B2 |
Nested virtualization performance in a computer system
A virtualization architecture for improving the performance of nested virtualization in a computer system. A virtualization instruction reads or writes data in a control structure used by a virtual machine monitor (VMM) to maintain state on a virtual machine (VM) to support transitions between a root mode of operation of a CPU in which the VMM executes and a non-root mode of operation of the CPU in which the VM executes. A privileged data access is made to a primary control structure according to the virtualization instruction if the CPU is in the root mode. A non-privileged data access is made to a secondary control structure according to the virtualization instruction if the CPU is in the non-root mode and a secondary control structure field in the primary control structure is enabled. |
| US08479196B2 |
Nested virtualization performance in a computer system
A virtualization architecture for improving the performance of nested virtualization in a computer system. A virtualization instruction reads or writes data in a control structure used by a virtual machine monitor (VMM) to maintain state on a virtual machine (VM) to support transitions between a root mode of operation of a CPU in which the VMM executes and a non-root mode of operation of the CPU in which the VM executes. A privileged data access is made to a primary control structure according to the virtualization instruction if the CPU is in the root mode. A non-privileged data access is made to a secondary control structure according to the virtualization instruction if the CPU is in the non-root mode and a secondary control structure field in the primary control structure is enabled. |
| US08479194B2 |
Virtual machine migration
Virtual machine migration is described. In embodiment(s), a virtual machine can be migrated from one host computer to another utilizing LUN (logic unit number) masking. A virtual drive of the virtual machine can be mapped to a LUN of a storage array. A LUN mask associates the LUN with a host computer. The LUN mask can be changed to unmask the LUN to a second computer to migrate the virtual machine from the host computer to the second computer. |
| US08479193B2 |
Method, apparatus and system for enhancing the usability of virtual machines
A method, apparatus and system for improving usability of virtual machines is described. A console module on a VM host may continuously monitor incoming data (e.g., files and/or attachments) and make automatic determinations regarding how and/or whether to intercept, route, redirect and/or deliver the data (e.g., where to store files, when and/or whether to deliver the files, execute the files, etc.). Additionally, in one embodiment, a unification console may be provided to enhance the usability of the VM host. The unification console enables the user to view the VM host via a unified desktop interface while handling the underlying switching and/or interactions between VMs. |
| US08479192B2 |
Dynamic XPS filter
A system and method enhances a default workflow path of a workflow system. The system provides access to policy rules and associated triggering conditions not available to the default workflow path of the workflow system. The configured rules are stored in a repository, and may be dynamically reconfigurable. Selected ones of the rules and triggering conditions are bound to at least one resource, such as a printer. An orchestrator is installed as a default workflow path, e.g., as an XPS filter, and is thus executed during default workflow path processing for a job submitted to the default workflow path. The orchestrator may then perform additional processing functions including accessing the configured policy rules and associated triggering conditions. A processing unit may be executed if the associated triggering condition is satisfied. |
| US08479191B2 |
Software installing method based on acquired equipment information and storage medium thereof
A software installing method for installing software to a computer is disclosed. The method includes reading a software program to the computer, the software program corresponding to an equipment connected to the computer. The method further includes acquiring equipment information of the equipment from the equipment connected to the computer. The method also includes displaying an image representing a combination of parts of the equipment based on the acquired equipment information of the equipment on a display section prior to installing the software program, and installing the software program to the computer. |
| US08479189B2 |
Pattern detection preprocessor in an electronic device update generation system
A generator for generating an update package for efficiently updating the software and/or firmware in an electronic device, and a method for operating such a generator are disclosed. An embodiment of the disclosed invention may produce a compact update package comprising a set of instructions that may be executed within the electronic device to produce an updated binary image of the software and/or firmware. Pre-processing of the existing or new binary image may result in a further reduction in the size of the update package, shortening the time needed to transmit the update package to the electronic device. |
| US08479186B2 |
Method for program code execution with memory storage controller participation
Method for executing application program code is provided. The method includes loading a first segment of the application program code from a memory storage device to a host system memory; executing the first segment, wherein a host system processor executes the first segment; and authenticating application program code execution by requiring a memory controller of the memory storage device to participate in application program code execution. |
| US08479181B2 |
Interactive capacity planning
Techniques for performing capacity planning for applications running on a computational infrastructure are provided. The techniques include instrumenting an application under development to receive one or more performance metrics under a physical deployment plan, receiving the one or more performance metrics from the computational infrastructure hosting one or more applications that are currently running, using a predictive inference engine to determine how the application under development can be deployed, and using the determination to perform capacity planning for the applications on the computational infrastructure. |
| US08479180B2 |
Maintenance of over the air upgradeable wireless communication device software
Disclosed is a system and method for maintaining software instructions stored in a wireless communications device memory. The software is organized using code sections, where each code section is in a contiguous portion of memory and relocatable independently of other code sections. Maintenance includes the ability to run a unique software component called a compactor while the normal system is not in executable form. The compactor expands, compresses, and relocates code sections to allow downloaded code to be incorporated into the system code base. |
| US08479166B2 |
Detecting locking discipline violations on shared resources
Detecting locking discipline violations on shared resources. For example, a method of detecting locking discipline violations of shared resources of a computing platform, by a testing process to be executed concurrently with one or more other processes on said computing platform, the testing process comprising: locking a shared resource of said computing platform; reading a value of the shared resource; locally storing the value of the shared resource; rereading the value of the shared resource after a predefined time period; and generating a locking discipline violation report if the value of said shared resource as reread by said rereading is different from the value of said resource as locally stored by said locally storing. |
| US08479165B1 |
System for testing operation of software
A system for implementing a method for processing test results from testing operation of software. A test result of pass, fail status, or unperformed is received for each test case of a test performed for each release of the software. A group to which each test belongs is ascertained. A test result stability index is calculated for each test case as being proportional to a total number of consecutive releases that include and are prior to the last release of the software such that the test result for each of the consecutive releases denotes a pass. A module stability index is calculated for each test case as being a summation over a product of a weight at each release and a binary stability indicator of 0 at each release for which the test result is changed from that of the immediately prior release and 1 at every other release. |
| US08479163B2 |
Simplifying maintenance of large software systems
An aspect of the present invention simplifies maintenance of a software system by indicating the additional bug fixes that are to be tested when a bug is indicated to be fixed. In an embodiment, a user is required to indicate a list of software units and a first bug to indicate that the list of software units have been modified to fix the first bug. An analysis tool identifies a list of use cases, with each use case requiring execution of at least one of the list of software units. The analysis tool then determines a set of dependent bugs fixed earlier in the software system, where each of the set of dependent bugs affects at least one of the list of use cases. The set of dependent bugs are displayed as requiring further testing in view of fixing of the first bug. |
| US08479162B2 |
Method and apparatus for locating memory leak in a program
A method and apparatus for locating a memory leak in a program code by a computer device using a combination of dynamic analysis and static analysis approaches. The method includes dynamically analyzing the program to determine a memory leak characteristic; filtering out items which do not match the determined memory leak characteristic of the program to reduce a static analysis range to certain suspicious parts of a source code; and statically analyzing the suspicious parts of the program to locate the memory leak in the program. The apparatus includes a dynamic analyzer device to determine memory leak characteristics; and a static analyzer device to filter out items which do not match the determined memory leak characteristic to reduce a static analysis range to certain suspicious parts of a source code and locate the memory leak in the program. |
| US08479159B2 |
System and method for automatically determining relationships between software artifacts using multiple evidence sources
A method (which can be computer implemented) for inferring whether at least a first relationship exists between at least first and second entities includes the steps of applying a first assessor to obtain a first confidence level pertaining to putative existence of said at least first relationship between said at least first and second entities, applying a second assessor to obtain a second confidence level pertaining to putative existence of said at least first relationship between said at least first and second entities, and combining said first and second confidence levels to obtain an overall inference whether said at least first relationship exists between said at least first and second entities. |
| US08479157B2 |
Methods and apparatus for integration of declarative rule-based processing with procedural programming in a digital data-processing evironment
The present invention provides methods and systems for integrating a procedural computational model with a declarative computational model. For example, in one aspect, the present invention provides a method for integrating a plurality of procedural instructions in a procedural computational system with a plurality of declarative rules in a declarative computational system. In such a method, for each of the procedural instructions operating on one or more variables, a hash table indexed by variable names is utilized to determine whether any of these variables participate in at least one of the declarative rules. Upon execution of a procedural instruction that changes a variable participating in a declarative rule, other variables associated with the rule are updated so as to maintain a relationship imposed by the rule among the variables. The updating of the other variables is performed prior to execution of other procedural instructions. Further, for each of the updated values, changes associated with to updated variable are propagated to other rules, if any, in which the updated variable participates. The propagation of the change can be accomplished by modifying values of variables other than the updated variable so as to maintain relationships defined by these other rules. The integrated computational systems of the invention can find applications, for example, in workflow processing. |
| US08479155B2 |
Hypergraph implementation
A hypergraph implementation system is described. The hypergraph implementation system provides for a hypergraph template library that contains many hypergraphs and many bulk data areas. The hypergraphs allow a developer to program an application such that the pointers to files are contained in the memory cache. The hypergraphs consist of hyperedges and vertices residing in tables of indices that point into each other in a flat organization. Bulk data is hung directly off hyperedges and vertices via a set of features. Thus, all the relationships among objects are contained within the hypergraphs and all the bulk data such as audio, large tables, geometry and images are directly tied to hyperedges or vertices with one link. |
| US08479146B2 |
Utility computing system having co-located computer systems for provision of computing resources
System and method for providing computer resources to users. The system includes a plurality of co-located computing systems, e.g., blade computers, comprising a hierarchy of computer resources based on performance, and located at a first location, each computing system including a processor, a memory medium coupled to the processor, and a plurality of human interface systems, each located at a second location remote from the first location, and each including an interface device, and one or more human interface devices coupled to the interface device, where each human interface system is coupled to the co-located computing systems over a network, such as a LAN or a WAN, via the interface device. Computer resources are provided to users of the plurality of remote human interface systems over the network in accordance with the computer resource performance needs of the users. Charges may be assessed for usage of the computer resources. |
| US08479145B2 |
Method and system for determining a reuse factor
The present invention provides a method, system and computer program product for determining a reuse factor associated with a set of resources available for a project. The method includes identifying the set of resources from a repository. The predetermined saved-effort associated with the set of resources is also determined from the repository. The method further includes identifying one or more resources from the set of resources. The one or more resources are identified by a project leader to be used in the project. Thereafter, the reuse factor is estimated on the basis of the predetermined saved-effort associated with the set of resources and the effort saved by the use of the one or more resources. |
| US08479143B1 |
Signature based duplicate extraction
Methods and apparatus are described for electronic design automation (EDA) that effects the identification, and possibly removal, of certain duplicate circuit components. A signature value representing a circuit component is used to help identify potential duplicates. A signature table stores information about one or more components that share a corresponding signature value. The table is populated during the course of processing the design for duplicate extraction. As each component in the design is encountered, a signature for the component is determined and used to access the signature table information. The current component is compared to any component found by using the signature table and a circuit design modification is indicated to consolidate the components if they are duplicative. The signature table is maintained to reflect the most recent component encountered for a given signature. |
| US08479140B2 |
Automatically creating vias in a circuit design
Creating and detecting crossings of conductive traces on different layers of an integrated circuit or a conducting trace over a device contact in a system. Values are stored by a system simulator corresponding to a galvanic potential or same “net”. According to a set of rule based instructions vias are automatically displayed, correct-by-construction, and via connections between the traces, or the trace and device contact, to short circuit the paths. The via structure will not be created if it will short-circuit a conducting trace not associated with the net in question. By connecting traces on different layers using automatically created via structures so as not to short circuit other net traces, errors are eliminated and design cycles reduced when compared to a manual design scheme of inserting via connections. There is an interactive mode which allows the via to be easily resized by the use of familiar control handles. |
| US08479133B2 |
Method of and circuit for implementing a filter in an integrated circuit
According to an embodiment of the invention, a method of configuring a filter in a circuit to be implemented in an integrated circuit is disclosed. The method comprises receiving a high level design of the circuit; identifying a filter in the high level design; analyzing coefficients of the filter; and transforming the filter of the high level design to a filter using a processing block of the circuit configured to accommodate a common coefficient, wherein the processing block is coupled to receive taps associated with the common coefficient. A computer program product and a circuit for configuring a filter in a circuit to be implemented in an integrated circuit are also disclosed. |
| US08479130B1 |
Method of designing integrated circuit that accounts for device aging
A method of designing an integrated circuit (IC) includes simulating aging evolution of the IC by providing a standard cells library, and a device activity file of device electrical activity in the standard cells as a function of electrical activity at the pins of the standard cells, taking into account Hot Carrier Injection, Negative Bias Temperature Instability, and gate oxide breakdown. A standard cell evolution file is provided that stores electrical characteristic aging data of standard cells. An instance activity file is provided of simulated electrical activity at the pins of individual instances of the cells in the IC. The instance activity file and the device activity file are used to analyze device activity and consequent aging evolution of the devices, and then generate data for consequent aging evolution of the IC. The IC design can then be modified to account for the aging evolution. |
| US08479123B2 |
Accessing features provided by a mobile terminal
A terminal providing one or more features to a user is disclosed. The terminal comprises a control unit, a user input unit, display unit. The control unit provides, on a standby image of the terminal, an option to select type of an inputted character, an option to select one or more menus to execute features associated with the inputted character, or both. The user input unit enables the user to input the character and select type of the character or select one or more of the menus. The display unit displays the inputted character according to the selected type of the character and also displays the menus. |
| US08479122B2 |
Gestures for touch sensitive input devices
Methods and systems for processing touch inputs are disclosed. The invention in one respect includes reading data from a multipoint sensing device such as a multipoint touch screen where the data pertains to touch input with respect to the multipoint sensing device, and identifying at least one multipoint gesture based on the data from the multipoint sensing device. |
| US08479120B2 |
Navigation apparatus and navigation apparatus display method
Disclosed herein is a navigation apparatus for displaying maps on a display section based on map data held in a recording section, the navigation apparatus including: a current position detection section configured to detect the current position of the navigation apparatus; a touch-sensitive panel configured to be installed on a display screen of the display section; and a control section configured to control changes in what is displayed on the display section in response to operations performed by a user on the touch-sensitive panel. |
| US08479117B2 |
Intelligent window sizing for graphical user interfaces
A device displays a drop down detection area. When the computing device detects the presence of a cursor hovering over the drop down detection area, the computing device displays a tiling navigator on the display, which includes multiple window resizing options for a user to select in order to resize a window to particular display locations on the display. |
| US08479111B2 |
Simplified views of meta model entities of data objects
Simplifying views of meta model entities of data objects can include determining, using a distribution function calculated for each data element of a plurality of data elements available for use in executing a business process in an object-based software platform, a usage frequency ranking of the plurality of data elements. Based on the usage frequency ranking, a plurality of subsets of most frequently used data elements of the plurality of data elements can be identified. Each subset of the plurality of subsets can include a fraction of the plurality of data elements based on a threshold level of complexity. A selection of a desired complexity setting can be received from a user via a user interface. The desired complexity setting can correspond to the threshold level of complexity of one of the plurality of subsets. The user interface can display only the data elements included in the subset with the corresponding level of complexity. Computer program products, systems, and methods having similar features are also described. |
| US08479108B2 |
Methods and systems for shareable virtual devices
An intelligent virtual device, which is a widget, as well as a widget container that allows users and providers to manage the display, layout and navigation of widgets, and which is a part of a distributed infrastructure where users can freely subscribe, embed/publish, and organize a multitude of virtual devices according to their interests. In addition, the virtual device is also designed to facilitate a seamless content/information update or service access flow by integrating with other applications that control functions including but not limited to those related to content capturing, personal information management and communication management. The virtual device also serves as a flexible and internet-accessible device user interface and component platform for hardware and software providers to customize their hardware and software offerings. |
| US08479107B2 |
Method and apparatus for fluid graphical user interface
A method including causing, at least in part, display of selectable objects on a graphical user interface, where each of the selectable objects corresponds to data or an application accessible via the graphical user interface. The method further includes causing, at least in part, display of the selectable objects in motion travelling across the graphical user interface based on a category of the selectable object or context dependent data, and allowing user selection and manipulation of the selectable objects displayed on the graphical user interface. |
| US08479106B2 |
Method and device to simplify message composition
A method and device to simplify message reply composition on a communications device, using a partially transparent overlay to allow a user to freely scroll and move around to other sections of a message or message chain while still being able to see and edit the reply being composed. When the reply is scrolled such that the composition field is not visible on the display screen, the device displays the overlay when the user enters text or on user request. The user may then type text into the overlay while viewing the underlying portion of the reply message, such as previous messages in the string. |
| US08479105B2 |
Managing graphical user interface objects in a computing environment
Systems and methods for managing graphical user interface objects in a computing environment are provided. The method comprises monitoring activity status associated with a graphical user interface object instantiated in a computing environment in response to establishment of a communication session with a remote party; and changing display status of the graphical user interface object when a time threshold expires in relation to the activity status associated with the graphical user interface object. |
| US08479104B2 |
Methods, systems, devices and computer program products for collecting and sharing selected personal data
Methods, systems, devices and computer program products obtain and share personal data of celebrities and others over a communications network. The methods include; (a) electronically capturing personal data associated with a plurality of celebrities; (b) electronically storing the captured data in a database of electronic personal data records, the records being correlated to a respective celebrity; (c) accepting user input to request data of interest for a particular celebrity; (d) electronically automatically extracting records in the historical data base related to the user input; and (e) electronically publishing celebrity personal data to the user based on the extracting step. |
| US08479093B2 |
Metamodel-based automatic report generation
A metamodel-based system for automatically generating reports is provided. Much of the work involved in creating report designs and reports is automated, allowing developers to produce a broad variety of report designs and reports in a fraction of the time required with standard report development, according to one illustrative embodiment. Metamodels for data and style templates may be created, that allow for the automated design and manipulation of report models. The report models may be used to generate reports that include the indicated data, arranged according to indicated data field properties, settings, and style templates. Changes made in the metamodels can automatically be reflected in reports designed according to those metamodels. |
| US08479089B2 |
Constructing and applying a constraint-choice-action matrix for decision making
The present invention is an apparatus and method for constructing a Constraint-Choice-Action Matrix for making decisions based on constraints. Columns (in one matrix orientation) state conditions. The column header presents a partial boolean expression. Such variable expression may be any object or type, e.g., a number, string, or list. An entry in a cell, selected using a GUI pick-list, combines with the column header, to complete the boolean expression. The set of boolean expressions in a row may be combined into an action boolean statement. If that statement evaluates to true, some action, represented as a row header, is recommended or executed. The matrix is applied to an instance of a context domain, for decision-making. The context domain may be represented in a model representing an instance of that domain (e.g., a product specification for configuration of a machine) in data and rules. |
| US08479088B2 |
Opening network-enabled electronic documents
System(s), method(s), and/or technique(s) (“tools”) are described that enable a user to open a network-enabled electronic document in either a specific software application associated with the electronic document or a network browser. In some cases the tools do so using a single link. On selection of the link, if the user's computing device has access to the specific software application, the tools may load the electronic document using that application. Or, if the user's computing device does not have access to the specific software application, the tools may render the electronic document with a network browser. In so doing, the tools may make the document available to a larger set of potential users through their browsers, allow users the convenience of accessing the document within a browser, optimize users' experience in working with the document through a specific software application, or provide a simpler opening procedure. |
| US08479085B2 |
Memory system with error correction decoder architecture having reduced latency and increased throughput
A memory system includes: a memory controller including an error correction decoder. The error correction decoder includes: a demultiplexer adapted to receive data and demultiplex the data into a first set of data and a second set of data; first and second buffer memories for storing the first and second sets of data, respectively; an error detector; an error corrector; and a multiplexer adapted to multiplex the first set of data and the second set of data and to provide the multiplexed data to the error corrector. While the error corrector corrects errors in the first set of data, the error detector detects errors in the second set of data stored in the second buffer memory. |
| US08479082B2 |
Packet error correction in networks
An apparatus and a method for packet error correction in packet-switched networks is provided. Message packets to be transmitted on a network are subdivided into k symbols over GF(q), and the symbols are then encoded by a symbol-level encoder into a codeword of n>k symbols over GF(q). The codeword is transmitted on the network in a plurality of network packets to a symbol-level decoder, which recovers any symbols lost or corrupted in transmission. Encoding at the symbol level increases the amount of data that can be recovered in any single correction operation. The efficiency of the decoding is also enhanced because the location of symbol errors can be determined prior to decoding. |
| US08479080B1 |
Adaptive over-provisioning in memory systems
A method for data storage includes, in a memory that includes multiple memory blocks, specifying at a first time a first over-provisioning overhead, and storing data in the memory while retaining in the memory blocks memory areas, which do not hold valid data and whose aggregated size is at least commensurate with the specified first over-provisioning overhead. Portions of the data from one or more previously-programmed memory blocks containing one or more of the retained memory areas are compacted. At a second time subsequent to the first time, a second over-provisioning overhead, different from the first over-provisioning overhead, is specified, and data storage and data portion compaction is continued while complying with the second over-provisioning overhead. |
| US08479078B2 |
Distributed storage network for modification of a data object
A distributed storage network generates a plurality of data segments from a data object and stores each of the plurality of data segments as a plurality of encoded data slices generated from an error encoding dispersal function. When the distributed storage network receives a modification request for the data object, it determines a size of the plurality of data segments of the data object from a segment size field and identifies one of the plurality of data segments requiring modification. The identified data segment is reconstructed from the plurality of encoded data slices and modified in accordance with the modification request. |
| US08479075B2 |
System and method for preserving neighborhoods in codes
A system and method for preserving neighborhoods in codes are provided. A method for transmitting information includes receiving an information string to transmit, generating a first address and a second address from the information string, encoding the first address and the second address with a layered code encoder, thereby producing a codeword and transmitting the codeword. The generating is based on a linear block code. |
| US08479074B2 |
Method and module for correcting transmission errors in a datastream, communication system comprising said module
The subject of the present invention is a method for correcting transmission errors in a data stream transmitted by a communications system using a protocol stack. According to the invention, the method consists in utilizing the redundancy of sequences whose content is fixed across several layers in a stack of protocols so as to correct transmission errors; the method consisting to this end in searching at the level of the receiver for sequences corresponding to a known sequence present in the stream received and doing so by detecting sequences similar to this known sequence, non-similar sequences not being retained; the method consisting furthermore, when similar sequences are present, in detecting transmission errors in the known sequence and in modifying the similar sequences (erroneous sequences) with the aid of the known sequence. |
| US08479073B2 |
Method of transmitting and receiving ARQ feedback information
A method of transmitting and receiving Automatic Repeat reQuest (ARQ) feedback information in a wireless communication system is disclosed. The method of transmitting ARQ feedback information in a wireless communication system includes, at a transmitter, transmitting a Protocol Data Unit (PDU) including an extended header including an ARQ feedback Polling Request (APR) field indicating whether or not the transmitter makes a request for ARQ feedback polling, and receiving an Acknowledgement (ACK) from a receiver if the APR field indicates that the transmitter makes the request for ARQ feedback polling to the receiver. |
| US08479065B2 |
Adaptive, wireless automatic identification system pilot port interface
A remotely-accessible electronic circuit is provided, which, in wireless communication with a maritime pilot's Personal Pilot Unit (PPU), or other remote computer, is able to identify a common mis-wiring of an Automatic Identification System (AIS) Pilot Port in a maritime vessel. The circuit then is remotely controlled to electronically manipulate the connections that provide raw transmit and receive signals from the AIS Pilot Port. The electronic manipulation corrects the common mis-wiring without actual physical intervention of the pilot with the AIS Pilot Port, or other mechanical interface between that port and the pilot's PPU. |
| US08479063B2 |
Failure analyzing device and failure analyzing method
According to one embodiment, a failure analyzing device includes a classifying unit that classifies a failure type in a fail bit map corresponding to each layer, a storage unit that stores a rule to combine failed cells of different layers, and a determining unit that groups a classification result matched with the rule among classification results based on the classifying unit. The rule includes a base point failure, an association failure becoming a combination object of the base point failure, a combination condition defining a relationship between the base point failure and the association failure, and a combination failure name. The determining unit extracts the base point failure from the classification result of one layer, extracts the association failure matched with the combination condition from the classification results of the other layers, groups the extracted base point failure and association failure, and provides the combination failure name. |
| US08479058B2 |
Information processor and information processing method
An information processor is provided, for preventing an illegal operation from being caused by configuration information set in the information processor being updated, even if the information processor receives configuration information from outside during execution of a job. The information processor makes it possible to know and externally confirm that update has not been performed, and updates the configuration information as soon as possible after the job ends. If configuration information is input from an external device, the information processor included in, for example, a multi-function peripheral determines whether the information processor is executing a job. If it is determined that the information processor is not executing a job, then the received configuration information is recorded and the configuration information is updated. If it is determined that the information processor is executing a job, then the receiving operation is terminated. |
| US08479053B2 |
Processor with last branch record register storing transaction indicator
In one embodiment, a processor includes an execution unit and at least one last branch record (LBR) register to store address information of a branch taken during program execution. This register may further store a transaction indicator to indicate whether the branch was taken during a transactional memory (TM) transaction. This register may further store an abort indicator to indicate whether the branch was caused by a transaction abort. Other embodiments are described and claimed. |
| US08479052B2 |
Exposing application performance counters for .NET applications through code instrumentation
Disclosed is a method for adding performance counters to a .NET application after compilation of the .NET application to Common Intermediate Language code without a requirement for code changes to the original .NET application code or application recompilation from the development side. With regard to a further aspect of a particularly preferred embodiment, the invention may provide a method for adding the performance counters by declarative instrumentation of a .NET application at runtime or compile time, without the need for an application developer to hardcode instrumentation logic into the application. An instrumentation configuration file provides declarative definition for performance counters that are to be added to a particular application, and particularly includes a complete list of performance counters that need to be added and settings for each performance counter. |
| US08479051B2 |
System and method for customized error reporting
An error reporting system within the operating system of a computer that provides error reporting and/or debugging for managed applications. The error reporting service supports a registration programming interface through which applications that use non-native or non-standard error reporting functions can register runtime exception modules. A similar interface may be provided for applications to register debuggers. In response to a failure, such as a crash or an application hang, the error reporting service can poll the registered components to ascertain whether any is adapted for use in conjunction with such a failure. If so, the appropriate registered components can be used to collect failure data and/or debug the failed application. In this way, the error reporting service, and an existing framework that supports aggregation of application error reports, can be customized, including to allow error reporting and debugging of non-native applications. |
| US08479050B2 |
Identifying access states for variables
A method, apparatus, and computer instructions in a processor for selectively performing operations on data. An operation to be performed on data is identified to form an identified operation. A determination is made as to whether metadata identifying a state of the data is associated with the data. A determination is made as to whether the identified operation can be performed on the data based on the state of the data, in response to the metadata being associated with the data. The operation is performed on the data if the state of the data allows for the operation to be performed. The processor selectively performs the operations based on the state of the data. |
| US08479049B2 |
Electronic device and method for detecting power failure type
A method for detecting a power failure type of an electronic device sets a shutdown flag as a first value when the electronic device is turned on, modifies the shutdown flag to a second value if a shutdown status of the electronic device is detected, and modifies the shutdown flag to a third value when the electronic device keeps the shutdown status for a predetermined time. The method further determines the power failure type of the electronic device according to a value of the shutdown flag when the electronic device is turned on the next time. |
| US08479041B2 |
Disaster recovery failback
Pursuant to execution of a predetermined failback policy, if a storage device is not preexistent in a source storage system operable in the computing environment, and an owner of the storage device is one of a DR storage system and a storage system having previously withdrawn from a replication grid, and the DR storage system has authorization to transfer ownership of the storage device by a replacement operation, an instance of the storage device is replicated to the source storage system to generate a replicated instance of the storage device on the source storage system, and ownership of the storage device is designated as the source storage system for each of the instance and the replicated instance of the storage device. |
| US08479039B2 |
Memory errors
The present invention provides a method of protecting against errors in a boot memory, the method comprising initiating booting of a processor by executing primary boot code from a primary boot memory, and based on the execution of the primary boot code: accessing a data structure comprising a plurality of redundant portions of boot information stored on a secondary boot memory; performing an error check on a plurality of the portions to determine whether those portions contain errors and, based on the error checks, to identify a valid portion; and booting the processor using the valid portion of boot information. |
| US08479038B1 |
Method and apparatus for achieving high availability for applications and optimizing power consumption within a datacenter
A method and apparatus for achieving high availability for applications and optimizing power consumption within a datacenter is provided. In one embodiment, a method for providing high availability and optimizing power consumption within a datacenter comprises upon execution of an application at a target node amongst a plurality of nodes in a datacenter, selecting a failover target node amongst the plurality of nodes for the application, and reserving a failover capacity of at least one resource of the selected failover target node. |
| US08479036B2 |
Disaster recovery replication throttling in deduplication systems
Communication is arrested between a source data entity and a replicated data entity at a location declared in a DR mode. The DR mode is negotiated to a central replication management component as a DR mode entry event. The DR mode entry event is distributed, by the central replication management component, to each member in a shared group. The DR mode is enforced using at least one replication policy. |
| US08479031B2 |
System switching unit having a switch to switch on/off a channel for data interaction between a first system and the bus interface of a second system according to the operation state of the second system
Disclosed is a hybrid-system computer comprising a first system, a second system and a power supply unit, wherein the power supply unit is connected to the first system and the second system, respectively, and wherein power consumption in an operating state of the second system is lower than that in an operating state of the first system; the hybrid-system computer further comprises: a triggering unit configured for obtaining a switching command when the first system is in an operating state and the second system is in a non-operating state; and a switching unit connected to the triggering unit, the first system and the second system, respectively, and configured for receiving the switching command and controlling the first system to enter a non-operating state and the second system to enter an operating state based on the switching command. With the hybrid-system computer, in the case that only low power consumption applications are required, the first system is caused to enter a non-operating state, and the second system is put into an operating state. Therefore, the overall power consumption can be effectively reduced. |
| US08479028B2 |
Techniques for communications based power management
Techniques for communications based power management are described. An apparatus may comprise a managed power system having a communications sub-system and a computing sub-system, the communications sub-system to include a network state module operative to determine communications power state information, and send a power management message with the communications power state information. The apparatus may further comprise a power management module to receive the power management message, retrieve the communications power state information from the power management message, and manage power states for the computing sub-system based on the communications power state information. Other embodiments are described and claimed. |
| US08479025B2 |
Motherboard
A motherboard includes a power circuit, a system power supply, and a central processor unit (CPU). The power circuit includes a direct current (DC) voltage input terminal. A first control circuit receives a direct current (DC) voltage through the DC voltage input terminal and outputs a first control signal. A second control circuit receives the first control signal and outputs a second control signal to the CPU and output a third control signal. A switching circuit includes a number of switches. The second control signal controls the corresponding switches to be on or off. A voltage converting circuit receives the third control signal and converts the DC voltage from the DC voltage input terminal, and outputs the converted DC voltage to the system power supply. The CPU receives the second control signal and controls the motherboard operation. |
| US08479023B2 |
Power over Ethernet system and method for detecting disconnection of a device
A detection system to detect disconnection of a powered device from a link of a power over Ethernet system is disclosed. The detection system can include closed-loop control configured to supply a predetermined test current to an electrically conductive path that includes at least a portion of the link via which the powered device is connectable for receiving power. A detector is configured to monitor the closed-loop control, the loop detector providing a disconnect signal if the closed-loop control is outside of expected operating parameters, thereby indicating that the powered device has been disconnected from the link. |
| US08479022B2 |
Secure mode indicator for smart phone or PDA
A digital system is provided with a secure mode (3rd level of privilege) built in a non-invasive way on a processor system that includes a processor core, instruction and data caches, a write buffer and a memory management unit. A secure execution mode is thus provided on a platform where the only trusted software is the code stored in ROM. In particular the OS is not trusted, all native applications are not trusted. The secure mode is entered through a unique entry point. The secure execution mode can be dynamically entered and exited with full hardware assessment of the entry/exit conditions. A secure mode indicator is provided to tell a user of the digital system that the device is in secure mode. This indicator may be a small LED, for example. The user should not enter any secret information (password) or should not sign anything displayed on the screen if the secure mode indicator is not active. |
| US08479020B2 |
Method and apparatus for providing an asymmetric encrypted cookie for product data storage
A process may be utilized by a device to implement public key asymmetric encryption. The process encrypts a data set with a symmetric encryption key to form an encrypted data set. Further, the process encrypts the symmetric encryption key with a public key component of an asymmetric encryption key to form an asymmetric encrypted cookie. Finally, the process stores the encrypted data set and the asymmetric encrypted cookie in a non-secure area of a storage medium. |
| US08479018B2 |
System for making program difficult to read, device for making program difficult to read, and method for making program difficult to read
An obfuscating apparatus creates a table for inputting the same number of arguments for multiplying and squaring operations, and sets the output values of the table so that the outputs may depend on the arguments. With regard to the squaring operations, there are added and tabulated adding operations using the arguments necessary only for the multiplications, so that the number of arguments is equal to that of the multiplication operations. The outputs depend on all the arguments, so that the presence or absence of the added arguments is unknown unlike the case in which dummy arguments that are not processed are added. |
| US08479017B2 |
System and method for N-ary locality in a security co-processor
Enhancing locality in a security co-processor module of a computing system may be achieved by including one or more additional attributes such as geographic location, trusted time, a hardware vendor string, and one or more environmental factors into an access control space for machine mode measurement of a computing system. |
| US08479013B2 |
Secure portable data transport and storage system
A portable data transport device that provides security to data stored therein, and is configured to communicate data with a host computer for securing and transporting data. The portable data transport device includes a first processor and a biometric identification system. Upon successful biometric identification of an enrolled user, the first processor permits mounting of the data transport device to a host computer. However, prior to the commencement of read/write operations, cross-checking of stored identification codes of components of the portable data transport device occurs, including the use of a hash function. If any identifier does not match, no read/write data operations are permitted. The portable data transport device includes a file security program that includes a DLL encryption/decryption program having a self-check feature. Upon self check, if any changes were made to the encryption/decryption program, no read/write operations are permitted. |
| US08479012B1 |
Using biometrics as an encryption key
An image of an biometric part is used as encryption or decryption key. The biometric part image is obtained, and items within the biometric part are analyzed. Relationships between those parts are determined, e.g. ratios between different parameters of different parts. Those ratios are then used to form the key. A sequence of biometric information can used in which case both the information itself and the sequence are used to form to the key. |
| US08479008B2 |
Providing security services on the cloud
Embodiments are directed to the providing a cloud keying and signing service and to securing software package distribution on the cloud. In an embodiment, a computer system instantiates a signing service configured to sign software packages. The computer system receives a signing request from a computer user requesting that a selected software package be signed. The signing request includes a computed hash of the selected software package. The computer system generates a private and public key pair on behalf of the computer user and stores the private key of the generated key pair in a secure data store. |
| US08479006B2 |
Digitally signing documents using identity context information
Creating a token for use by an entity when digitally signing documents. In a computing environment, a digital identity representation for an entity is accessed. The digital identity representation includes information identifying identity attributes about the entity and capabilities of an identity provider that provides tokens for use by the entity. Context information is accessed. The context information includes information about one or more of which, how or where the attributes for the entity identified in the digital identity representation will be used. A security token is created from the information in the digital identity representation and the context information. The security token makes assertions by the identity provider. The assertions are based on the information in the digital identity representation. The token further includes information related to at least a portion of the context information. |
| US08478978B2 |
System and electronic device having multiple operating systems and operating method thereof
A system and an electronic device having multiple operating systems and an operating method thereof are provided. The electronic device includes a display and a system having a first operating system, a second operating system, and an embedded controller. The first operating system consumes less power than the second operating system. The embedded controller receives an input signal to switch between the first operating system and the second operating system and display an interface of the switched operating system on a screen of the display. The first operating system and the embedded controller remain in an alive state after the electronic device is turned on, and the second operating system enters a non-working state after a preset idle time. |
| US08478974B2 |
Method and system for reducing an impact of malware during a booting sequence
Methods for reducing the impact of malware during a booting sequence for an interrupt driven computing device are disclosed. One or more parameters associated with an interrupt vector table (IVT) are manipulated to force the computing device into a clean state following a system level portion of the booting sequence. In another embodiment, occurring prior to the loading of an operating system or a call to a non-returnable main( ) function, one or more unused interrupt vectors in an IVT are replaced. A function filter is implemented for one or more interrupt vectors in the IVT to disallow unnecessary interrupt functions from being executed. One or more required interrupt vector functions are replaced with one or more corresponding custom vector functions. One or more memory locations are wiped if the one or more memory locations do not hold at least a portion of the IVT and/or the interrupt vector functions. |
| US08478973B2 |
System and method for providing a secure application fragmentation environment
System and method for providing and using expanded memory resources secure application environment is disclosed. An embodiment comprises a system and method for providing secure application functionality comprising receiving a request for a secure operation; determining if required application code for the secure operation is present in an application fragment store; sequentially loading a plurality of fragments of the required application code from an external memory, if the required application code is not present in the application fragment store; sequentially executing the plurality of fragments of the required application code; and sending a reply to the request for the secure operation. The system and method may further comprise decrypting each of the plurality of fragments of the required application code using a secure key prior to execution of the fragment and verifying the integrity of the code fragment. |
| US08478972B2 |
Methods and apparatus for handling switching among threads within a multithread processor
A system, apparatus and method for handling switching among threads within a multithread processor are described herein. Embodiments of the present invention provide a method for multithread handling that includes fetching and issuing one or more instructions, corresponding to a first instruction execution thread, to an execution block for execution during a cycle count associated with the first instruction execution thread and when the instruction execution thread is in an active mode. The method further includes switching a second instruction execution thread to the active mode when the cycle count corresponding to the first instruction execution thread is complete, and fetching and issuing one or more instructions, corresponding to the second instruction execution thread, to the execution block for execution during a cycle count associated with the second instruction execution thread. The method additionally includes resetting the cycle counts when a master instruction execution thread is in the active mode. |
| US08478969B2 |
Performing a multiply-multiply-accumulate instruction
In one embodiment, the present invention includes a processor having multiple execution units, at least one of which includes a circuit having a multiply-accumulate (MAC) unit including multiple multipliers and adders, and to execute a user-level multiply-multiply-accumulate instruction to populate a destination storage with a plurality of elements each corresponding to an absolute value for a pixel of a pixel block. Other embodiments are described and claimed. |
| US08478968B2 |
Synchronizing commands and dependencies in an asynchronous command queue
Provided are techniques for the managing of command queue dependencies and command queue synchronization. Incoming commands are actively tracked through their dependency relationships. Command dependencies may be tracked across multiple lists, including a submission list and a completion list. Each command on the submission list is prepared for processing and ultimately submitted to command processing logic. Command completion processing is performed on each command on the completion list, including by not limited to removing dependencies from pending commands and possibly queuing pending commands for submission to the command processing logic. Also provided as features of a command queue are a standby barrier, an active barrier and a marker. Standby and active barriers are employed to synchronize and track commands through the command queue. Markers are employed to track commands through the command queue. |
| US08478962B2 |
Tiered data management method and system for high performance data monitoring
A method for managing memory in a system for an application, comprising: assigning a first block (i.e., a big block) of the memory to the application when the application is initiated, the first block having a first size, the first block being assigned to the application until the application is terminated; dividing the first block into second blocks (i.e., intermediate blocks), each second block having a same second size, a second block of the second blocks for containing data for one or more components of a single data structure to be accessed by one thread of the application at a time; and, dividing the second block into third blocks (i.e., small blocks), each third block having a same third size, a third block of the third blocks for containing data for a single component of the single data structure. |
| US08478956B2 |
Computing system and method controlling memory of computing system
Provided is a computing system and method. The computing system may back up, based on an overlay scheme, a task of an internal memory in an external memory, and the task may be restored to the internal memory from the external memory. The computing system may include a first memory to store data associated with a first task processed in a processor, as a first data structure, a second memory to store backup data of the data associated with the first task, and a memory controller to copy, to the second memory, data other than data previously backed up in the second memory among the data associated with the first task, when the data associated with the first task is backed up in the second memory to process a second task in the processor. |
| US08478954B2 |
Prioritizing subgroups in a consistency group
A method which prioritizes the subgroups in a consistency group by usage and/or business process. Thereafter, in case of abnormal operation of the process for copying the consistency group from primary storage to secondary storage, only a portion of the subgroups of the consistency group are copied from primary storage to secondary storage. |
| US08478953B2 |
Buffer snapshots from unmodifiable data piece tables
A snapshots data structure provides compilers and other tools with snapshots of a buffer at different points in time. Snapshot heads identify trees within a directed acyclic graph (DAG) of nodes. Leaf nodes of a given tree collectively hold data elements representing information that was resident in the buffer at a particular point in time regardless of subsequent editing of the buffer. During buffer editing operations a new tree is created in the DAG with leaf nodes holding data elements that match one-to-one a subsequence of data elements held by leaf nodes of an existing tree. |
| US08478950B2 |
Data processing circuit with arbitration between a plurality of queues
Requests from a plurality of different agents (10) are passed to a request handler via a request concentrator. In front of the request concentrator the requests are queued in a plurality of queues (12). A first one of the agents is configured to issue a priority changing command with a defined position relative to pending requests issued by the first one of the agents (10) to the first one of the queues (12). An arbiter (16), makes successive selections selecting queues (12) from which the request concentrator (14) will pass requests to the request handler (18), based on relative priorities assigned to the queues (12). The arbiter (16) responds to the priority changing command by changing the priority of the first one of the queues (12), selectively for a duration while the pending requests up to the defined position are in the first one of the queues (12). Different queues may be provided for read and write requests from the first one of the agents. In this case, the priority raising request from the agent may be used to raise the priority level of the write queue temporarily to the level of the read queue, until all write requests issued before the priority raising command from the agent have been passed to the request handler. |
| US08478948B2 |
Method and system for efficient tracing and profiling of memory accesses during program execution
A system and method for performing efficient program instrumentation for memory profiling. A computing system comprises a memory profiler comprising a static binary instrumentation (SBI) tool and a dynamic binary analysis (DBA) tool. The profiler is configured to selectively instrument memory access operations of a software application. Instrumentation may be bypassed completely for an instruction if the instruction satisfies some predetermined conditions. Some sample conditions include the instruction accesses an address within a predetermined read-only area, the instruction accesses an address within a user-specified address range, and/or the instruction is a load instruction accessing a memory location determined from a data flow graph to store an initialized value. An instrumented memory access instruction may have memory checking analysis performed only upon an initial execution of the instruction in response to determining during initial execution that a read data value of the instruction is initialized. Both unnecessary instrumentation and memory checking analysis may be reduced. |
| US08478947B2 |
Memory controller
A method of controlling a memory and a memory controller are disclosed. The memory controller is operable to control a memory, the memory being operable in a plurality of modes, the memory controller comprising: memory interface logic configurable to interact with the memory in each of the plurality of modes; and memory mode change logic operable, in response to a memory mode change request instruction specifying a predetermined one the plurality of modes being issued by the memory interface logic to the memory, to request the memory interface logic to be configured to interact with the memory in the predetermined one of the plurality of modes and to prevent interaction between the memory interface logic and the memory until the memory interface logic confirms that it is configured to interact with the memory in the predetermined one of the plurality of modes. In this way, it will be appreciated that both the memory and the memory controller can be reconfigured to operate in a different mode using a single instruction which provides performance benefits, increases reliability and reduces infrastructure requirements. |
| US08478945B2 |
Dynamic management of destage tasks in a storage controller
Method, system, and computer program product embodiments for facilitating data transfer from a write cache and NVS via a device adapter to a pool of storage devices by a processor or processors are provided. The processor(s) adaptively varies the destage rate based on the current occupancy of the NVS for a particular storage device and stage activity related to that storage device. The stage activity includes one or more of the storage device stage activity, device adapter stage activity, device adapter utilized bandwidth and the read/write speed of the storage device. These factors are generally associated with read response time in the event of a cache miss and not ordinarily associated with dynamic management of the destage rate. This combination maintains the desired overall occupancy of the NVS while improving response time performance. |
| US08478944B2 |
Method and apparatus for adaptive cache frame locking and unlocking
Most recently accessed frames are locked in a cache memory. The most recently accessed frames are likely to be accessed by a task again in the near future and may be locked at the beginning of a task switch or interrupt to improve cache performance. The list of most recently used frames is updated as a task executes and may be embodied as a list of frame addresses or a flag associated with each frame. The list of most recently used frames may be separately maintained for each task if multiple tasks may interrupt each other. An adaptive frame unlocking mechanism is also disclosed that automatically unlocks frames that may cause a significant performance degradation for a task. The adaptive frame unlocking mechanism monitors a number of times a task experiences a frame miss and unlocks a given frame if the number of frame misses exceeds a predefined threshold. |
| US08478943B2 |
Content caching device, content caching method, and computer readable medium
A first acquisition unit acquires each of the resources defined by the scenario, from locations depending on identifiers of the resources. A judging unit judge, when a resource having same identifier and structure as the resource acquired is existent in the cache storage, erases the resource, the identifier thereof, and the receipt time information from the cache storage, and when not existent, stores the acquired resource in association with the identifier thereof and the receipt time information of the bookmark instruction, in the cache storage. A second acquisition, when the identifiers of the resources specified by a first scenario are existent in the cache storage, acquires the resources from the cache storage according to the receipt time information corresponding to the first scenario and identifiers of the resources, and when not existent, acquires the resources from a location depending on the identifiers. |
| US08478942B2 |
Method and apparatus for reducing processor cache pollution caused by aggressive prefetching
A method and apparatus for controlling a first and second cache is provided. A cache entry is received in the first cache, and the entry is identified as having an untouched status. Thereafter, the status of the cache entry is updated to accessed in response to receiving a request for at least a portion of the cache entry, and the cache entry is subsequently cast out according to a preselected cache line replacement algorithm. The cast out cache entry is stored in the second cache according to the status of the cast out cache entry. |
| US08478940B2 |
Controlling simulation of a microprocessor instruction fetch unit through manipulation of instruction addresses
Instruction fetch unit (IFU) verification is improved by dynamically monitoring the current state of the IFU model and detecting any predetermined states of interest. The instruction address sequence is automatically modified to force a selected address to be fetched next by the IFU model. The instruction address sequence may be modified by inserting one or more new instruction addresses, or by jumping to a non-sequential address in the instruction address sequence. In exemplary implementations, the selected address is a corresponding address for an existing instruction already loaded in the IFU cache, or differs only in a specific field from such an address. The instruction address control is preferably accomplished without violating any rules of the processor architecture by sending a flush signal to the IFU model and overwriting an address register corresponding to a next address to be fetched. |
| US08478939B2 |
Relative heat index based hot data determination for block based storage tiering
Disclosed is a process for determining a heat index for a block of data, such as an extent, for storage tiering. Weighted scores are used for read and write operations, since solid state devices operate better with read operations than write operations. The heat index associated with each extent is a function of a base score, rather than an absolute value. The base score is determined by adding the number of extents in a hot tier plus the access score, divided by the number of extents in the hot tier. In this fashion, the base score measures the weighted I/O activity relative to the size of the hot tier. |
| US08478938B2 |
Performing data writes in parity protected redundant storage arrays
A first and a second physical disk identifier, a physical Logical Block Address (LBA), a data length, and a span identifier are calculated from a data write operation. A first request command frame is created for retrieving the existing data block from the storage array, the first request command frame including at least one of the calculated parameters. At least one second request command frame is created for retrieving the at least one existing parity data block from the storage array, the at least one second request command frame including the calculated at least one second physical disk identifier and at least one of the calculated parameters. At least one new parity data block is calculated utilizing the existing data block, the new data block, and the at least one existing parity data block. |
| US08478935B2 |
Program, method, and device for communication processing
A path controller controls a plurality of paths, including switching between those paths in response to an error notice. Upon detection of a path connection timeout at the path controller, a target driver submits an I/O abort request to a disk array device. The target driver also forwards an error notice to the path controller when it is received. A Fiber Channel driver controls a Fiber Channel adapter. In response to an I/O abort request submitted by the target driver, the Fiber Channel driver blocks every operation on the disk array device, as well as sending an error notice to the target driver. |
| US08478931B1 |
Using non-volatile memory resources to enable a virtual buffer pool for a database application
A buffer pool for a database application is maintained in a volatile main memory component. A control portion that corresponds to a block of application data residing on a non-volatile, asymmetric memory component and that includes a reference to a location of the block of application data on the non-volatile, asymmetric memory component is added to the buffer pool maintained in the volatile main memory component. The control portion from the buffer pool maintained in the volatile main memory component that corresponds to the block of application data is accessed and the location of the block of application data on the non-volatile, asymmetric memory component is identified. Based on identifying the location of the block of application data on the non-volatile, asymmetric memory component, the database application is enabled to access the block of application data directly from the non-volatile, asymmetric memory component. |
| US08478930B1 |
Solid state drive power safe wear-leveling
A solid state drive includes a plurality of flash memory devices, and a memory controller coupled to the plurality of flash memory devices. The memory controller is configured to logically associate blocks from the plurality of flash memory devices to form zip codes, the zip codes associated with corresponding erase counters. The solid state drive further includes a processor and a computer-readable memory having instructions stored thereon. The processor may perform a wear-leveling operation by determining that blocks in a first zip code have been erased and incrementing a first erase counter associated with the first zip code. It may then be determined that a second erase counter associated with a second zip code is low relative to at least one other erase counter, and based on this determination, data from blocks in the second zip code may be written to new blocks as part of a wear-leveling operation. |
| US08478929B2 |
Data processing semiconductor device
To improve the reliability of controlling overwriting of a nonvolatile memory in a data processing semiconductor device.In a data processing semiconductor device, a control unit which controls reading, writing, or erasing of data in a rewritable nonvolatile memory area has an operation mode that, referring to the input temperature data, controls a temperature range in which writing or erasing of data is performed to be narrower than the temperature range that allows reading of data in the memory area. |
| US08478926B1 |
Co-processing acceleration method, apparatus, and system
An embodiment of the present invention discloses a co-processing acceleration method, including: receiving a co-processing request message which is sent by a compute node in a computer system and carries address information of to-be-processed data; according to the co-processing request message, obtaining the to-be-processed data, and storing the to-be-processed data in a public buffer card; and allocating the to-be-processed data stored in the public buffer card to an idle co-processor card in the computer system for processing. An added public buffer card is used as a public data buffer channel between a hard disk and each co-processor card of a computer system, and to-be-processed data does not need to be transferred by a memory of the compute node, which avoids overheads of the data in transmission through the memory of the compute node, and thereby breaks through a bottleneck of memory delay and bandwidth, and increases a co-processing speed. |
| US08478920B2 |
Controlling data stream interruptions on a shared interface
A mechanism for controlling data stream interruptions on a shared bus is provided. A first request is received to transfer data. High priority data components and low priority data components are determined for the first request. The high priority data components are transferred without interruptions. In response to receiving requests when transferring the high priority data components, the received requests are rejected. |
| US08478915B2 |
Determining extended capability of a channel path
A computer program product, apparatus, and method for determining extended capability of a channel path in an I/O processing system are provided. The computer program product includes a tangible storage medium readable by a processing circuit and storing instructions for execution by the processing circuit for performing a method. The method includes receiving a request to provide a channel path description for a channel path, where the channel path includes a channel coupled to a control unit. The method further includes outputting the channel path description for the channel path in response to the request. The channel path description includes a descriptor indicating that the channel path supports a link protocol for commanding an I/O operation, and an extension support indicator specifying whether the channel path supports an extension to the link protocol. |
| US08478914B2 |
Display apparatus, video signal transmission method for display apparatus, transmitting apparatus, and transmission method of video signal
Provided is a display apparatus including a first signal receiving unit that receives a non-compressed video signal from an external device via a first transmission path through a plurality of channels by means of a differential signal, an image display unit that displays images by processing the video signal received by the first signal receiving unit, a second signal receiving unit that receives a compressed video signal of a same video source as the non-compressed video signal by using a bi-directional communication path configured by predetermined lines of the first transmission path, and a signal transmitting unit that transmits a compressed video signal corresponding to the compressed video signal received by the second signal receiving unit to another external device different from the external device. |
| US08478913B2 |
Adapter for electronic devices
An adapter for connecting an accessory to a portable electronic device includes a first connector compatible with a connector of the portable electronic device and a second connector compatible with a connector of the accessory. The connectors of the accessory and the portable electronic device are otherwise incompatible with each other. The adapter provides two levels of authentication. First, the adapter authenticates itself to the portable electronic device. If this first authentication is successful, then the adapter authenticates the accessory to the adapter. |
| US08478911B2 |
Methods and systems for migrating data between storage tiers
Methods and systems for migrating data between storage tiers may include various operations, including, but not limited to: determining at least one activity index of at least one data storage region; receiving an input/output request addressing at least one data segment included in the at least one data storage region; qualifying a data segment addressed by the input/output request for migration to at least one higher-performing storage device; and adding a data segment reference associated with a qualified data segment to a priority queue according to the at least one activity index. |
| US08478910B2 |
Supply device and processing device as well as instruction method
According to one embodiment, there is provided an instruction method for providing an instruction from a supply device to a processing device via an HDMI cable, the method comprising detecting a signal from an operating switch in the supply device, generating a packet signal in which instruction information according to the detected signal is described, in an ASCII description area of source product description (SPD) of a packet signal for use in the HDMI standard, in the supply device, supplying the packet signal from the supply device to the processing device via the HDMI cable, and detecting the instruction information from the ASCII description area of SPD of the packet signal in the supply device, and performing a desired operation accordingly. |
| US08478909B1 |
Method and system for communication across multiple channels
Machine implemented method and system is provided. The method includes sending a packet to a device by a computing system; determining an address for the packet, where an interface logic for the device determines the address; updating a location associated with the address; where the interface logic for the device updates the location; updating a bitmap value associated with the location to indicate to a processor for the device that a location associated with the address has been updated; where the interface logic updates the bitmap value; clearing the bitmap value by writing a same value that is read by the processor for the device; and processing the packet received by the device. |
| US08478907B1 |
Network interface device serving multiple host operating systems
A network interface device for use with a host computer that includes a host processor and a memory, and which is configured to concurrently run a master operating system and at least one virtual operating system. The device includes a bus interface that communicates over a bus with the host processor and the memory, and a network interface, which is coupled to send and receive data packets carrying data over a packet network. A protocol processor is coupled between the bus interface and the network interface so as to convey the data between the network interface and the memory while performing protocol processing on the data packets under instructions from the at least one virtual operating system, while bypassing the master operating system. |
| US08478897B2 |
Process for communication between a device running a mobile device platform and a server over the air, as well as related system
Process of communication via HTTP or HTTPS between a device running Java ME® and a server over the air, said server receiving and transmitting SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol) messages from/to an operator on a host over a network and being capable of exchanging SOAP messages under Application Protocol Data Unit (APDU) data form/with the device, characterized in that the SOAP messages are translated from/to binary messages according to a protocol in the server, said binary messages being exchanged with the device, the binary messages being binary request messages or binary response messages. |
| US08478896B2 |
Data packet encapsulation methods
A data encapsulation system and related methods. Implementations may include: forming at least one frame having a data payload, a data sequence, and one or more control bytes; evaluating data to be stored in the data payload and setting a value of the one or more control bytes, where the value of the one or more control bytes may be equal to: a first control byte value where one or more values of the data correspond with the first control byte value; a second control byte value indicating a size of the data; or a third control byte value where one or more values of the data continue beyond the frame. The value of each one of the one or more control bytes for each of the at least one frames may be equal to either the first, second, or third control byte values. |
| US08478891B1 |
Employing socket ranges to ascertain layer 2 addresses
Computer systems, computer-readable media, and computerized methods for determining a media access (MAC) address that corresponds with a network identifier in a wireless or wired network are provided. A dynamic host configuration protocol (DHCP) server is employed to allocate a set of socket IP addresses that include a common IPv4 address paired with a selected group of ports, where none of the ports in the selected groups overlap. When assigned to a client device, the socket IP address uniquely identifies the client device within the network. A host device within the network is configured to broadcast an address resolution protocol (ARP) request to other devices within the network, such as the DHCP server, where the ARP request includes a socket IP address associated with recipient(s) of communications from the host device. In response to the ARP request, the appropriate device or DHCP server returns a MAC address of the recipient. |
| US08478887B2 |
Providing advertisements to a computing device based on a predetermined criterion of a wireless access point
A geographic-based communications service system has a mobile unit for transmitting/receiving information, and access points connected to a network. The access points are arranged in a known geographic locations and transmit and receive information from the mobile unit. When one of the access points detects the presence of the mobile unit, it sends a signal to the network indicating the location of the mobile unit and the information requested by the mobile unit. Based on the signal received from the access point, the network communicates with information provides connected to the network and provides data to the mobile unit through the access point corresponding to the location of the mobile unit. |
| US08478883B2 |
Session persistence management by a server in a content delivery network
A method and apparatus for establishing session persistence between a client and an origin server are provided. The session persistence can be managed by an intermediate cache server. The persistence is established by inserting an identifier and origin server address in a cookie or URL. Alternatively, the persistence is established by a table mapping a source IP address or a session ID to a specific origin server. Subsequent requests from the same client are mapped to the same origin server using these methods of establishing persistence. |
| US08478879B2 |
Optimizing it infrastructure configuration
A computer implemented method optimizes a configuration of an information technology (IT) infrastructure. A processor establishes a technology rule set, which defines technology weights of an IT infrastructure by mapping capabilities of IT infrastructure components to IT infrastructure attributes needed to execute a specific workload. A candidate IT infrastructure for executing the specific workload is then configured. The processor then receives responses, provided by a customer, to an attribute questionnaire. Each question in the attribute questionnaire is mapped to an IT infrastructure attribute of the candidate IT infrastructure, and the responses define a customer's level of agreement/disagreement with the technology weights. In response to the processor determining that the candidate IT infrastructure fails to meet the customer's expectations, the candidate IT infrastructure is reconfigured until the customer's expectations are met. |
| US08478878B2 |
Placement of virtual machines based on server cost and network cost
A method, information processing system, and computer program product manage server placement of virtual machines in an operating environment. A mapping of each virtual machine in a plurality of virtual machines to at least one server in a set of servers is determined. The mapping substantially satisfies a set of primary constraints associated with the set of servers. A plurality of virtual machine clusters is created. Each virtual machine cluster includes a set of virtual machines from the plurality of virtual machines. A server placement of one virtual machine in a cluster is interchangeable with a server placement of another virtual machine in the same cluster while satisfying the set of primary constraints. A server placement of the set of virtual machines within each virtual machine on at least one mapped server is generated for each cluster. The server placement substantially satisfies a set of secondary constraints. |
| US08478875B2 |
Method and apparatus for adaptive in-operator load shedding
One embodiment of the present method and apparatus adaptive in-operator load shedding includes receiving at least two data streams (each comprising a plurality of tuples, or data items) into respective sliding windows of memory. A throttling fraction is then calculated based on input rates associated with the data streams and on currently available processing resources. Tuples are then selected for processing from the data streams in accordance with the throttling fraction, where the selected tuples represent a subset of all tuples contained within the sliding window. |
| US08478873B2 |
Techniques for use of a system-unique identifier in an architecture having a file system utilizing distributed metadata servers
Use and generation of an identifier. An indication of a value to be used to generate system-unique identifiers is received. The indication and an associated count value are stored in a metadata server interconnected with one or more remote metadata servers. A modified value to be used to generate system-unique identifiers generated based, at least in part, on the indication and the associated count value is transmitted to a remote metadata server. |
| US08478867B1 |
Dynamic audio notifications
Provided are methods and systems for providing dynamic audio notifications, as well as computer programs encoded on computer storage devices and configured to perform the actions of the methods. A notification application executing on a device receives data from another application. The notification application selects a rule associated with the other application, from among one or more rules, and applies the data to the selected rule. The notification application provides a notification based on applying the data to the selected rule, where the notification comprises at least two components, and where at least one of the at least two components is associated with the data. |
| US08478862B2 |
Method and apparatus for internet traffic monitoring by third parties using monitoring implements
Disclosed is an internet traffic monitoring method that includes a network service provider analyzing an HTTP transaction involving an internet user client. The network service provider responds to the HTTP transaction by forwarding, to the internet user client, an interstitial web page including a monitoring implement. After forwarding the interstitial web page to the internet user client, the network service provider forwards web content, originally associated with the HTTP transaction, to the internet user client. |
| US08478861B2 |
Managing distributed devices with limited connectivity
A method of managing devices may include downloading information to a courier device from an enterprise. The information may be information for performing a device management operation. The method also includes communicating the information from the courier device to a monitored agent coupled to at least one of a disconnected device and an intermittently connected device. |
| US08478848B2 |
Multi-tiered media services using cloud computing for globally interconnecting business and customers
A multi-tiered communication system for provisioning a cloud computing system to host a media server. The system includes a data center including one or more Interactive Voice Recognition (IVR) functions that are configured for use with a caller who initiates contact with the data center. The system also includes a media server implemented in a cloud computing system. The media server is configured to route an incoming call from one subscriber to another, or in the case of a caller to the data center, to route one or more IVR messages to the caller and to connect the caller with an agent for real-time communication. |
| US08478845B2 |
End-to-end provisioning of storage clouds
Embodiments discussed in this disclosure provide an integrated provisioning framework that automates the process of provisioning storage resources, end-to-end, for an enterprise storage cloud environment. Such embodiments configure and orchestrate the deployment of a user's workload and, at the same time, provide optimization across a multitude of storage cloud resources. Along these lines, input is received in the form of workload requirements and configuration information for available system resources. Based on the input, a set (at least one) of storage cloud configuration plans is developed that satisfy the workload requirements. A set of scripts is then generated that orchestrate the deployment and configuration of different software and hardware components based on the plans. |
| US08478839B2 |
Information processing apparatus, information processing system, method for controlling information processing apparatus, and program
An information processing apparatus according to the present invention transmits first processing request data in accordance with the content of a user instruction through an operation screen displayed on a Web browser to a Web server, receives a request based on the first processing request data from the Web server, and executes processing in accordance with the received response data. Moreover, before completion of the execution of the processing, the information processing apparatus transmits second processing request data to the Web server at the timing specified by the Web server, and displays an operation screen indicating the state of the processing according to response data received from the Web server. |
| US08478837B2 |
Offline global address list
The present invention provides a method and system for providing a mobile device with a selected subset of global address list (GAL) contacts. The offline GAL contacts stored on the device are in sync with the master corporate GAL. The GAL contacts are automatically selected based on the user's emails or meetings and are not duplicates of the contacts within the user's personal contact list. The GAL contacts are browsed and searched seamlessly with the user's other contacts. |
| US08478836B1 |
Proxy cache technology
Proxy cache technology, in which a system determines a subset of content files to include in a proxy cache maintained by a network service provider that provides network service to user downloader devices included in a content delivery network. The system controls the network service provider to store the subset of content files in the proxy cache. The system also controls the user downloader devices to attempt to use the proxy cache as a peer to download a content file prior to using an external peer. |
| US08478831B2 |
System, method and program to limit rate of transferring messages from suspected spammers
Managing e-mails from a source suspected of sending spam. The e-mails are received at a firewall or router en route to a mail server. A determination is made whether a source has sent an e-mail which exhibits characteristics of spam. In response, subsequent e-mails from the source destined for the mail server are rate-limiting at the firewall or router such that the firewall or router limits a rate at which the subsequent e-mails are forwarded from the firewall or router to the mail server. The rate limit can be a limit on a number of e-mails per unit of time from the source that will be forwarded from the firewall or router to the mail server. |
| US08478830B2 |
Method and apparatus for processing digitally signed messages to determine address mismatches
A method and apparatus for processing digitally signed messages in which address mismatch errors are detected. In at least one aspect, the number of address mismatch errors reported to a user for a message may be minimized for messages that properly incorporate message portions signed by someone other than the sender of the message, as may be the case where the message contains a conversation thread for example, by performing at least one pre-determined action for digital signatures corresponding to signed data appearing after a message separator. The message separator may indicate that the message contains data from an older forwarded message or from an older message that has been replied to, for example. The at least one-predetermined action may comprise bypassing verification of address matches for those digital signatures, or verifying address matches for those digital signatures but suppressing user notification of any address mismatch errors, for example. |
| US08478826B2 |
Conditioning responses to emotions of text communications
A text communication, such as an email or blog posting from a user, is monitored to identify an issue. A score(s) of the text communication is determined by analyzing words/phrases in the text communication. A score can be based on various factors such as annoyance, language precision, help-ability, a communication length, and the like. A range for the score(s) is determined. When a response to the text communication is generated, a score(s) of the response to the text communication is determined. If one or more of the score(s) of the response is outside the range for the score(s), the response is rejected. Words/phrases are identified in the response to the text communication that can be changed in order to get the score(s) of the response within the range of the score(s) of the text communication. This information is displayed to an agent so an appropriate response can be formulated. |
| US08478822B2 |
Device and method of sharing contents based on time synchronization
A device and method of sharing contents based on time synchronization are provided. A first device may generate a time stamp with respect to contents being replayed by a second device and transmit the time stamp to the second device. In response, the second device may generate a contents list based on the time stamp and transmit the contents list to the first device. The first device may request contents selected by a user from among the contents list, and the second device may provide the requested contents to the first device. |
| US08478816B2 |
Transferring application state across devices
A first client device or system performs a method that includes retaining in memory registration information for a respective application indicating the respective application is registered for sharing application state with other client devices or systems. The method further includes storing an application state of a respective application, and detecting a transfer triggering condition. The transfer triggering condition includes presence of a second client device or system within a predefined proximity of the first client device or system, and the predefined proximity is a predefined proximity for near field communication. Furthermore, upon detecting the triggering condition, the first client device or system determines, in accordance with the stored registration information, that the respective application is registered for application state sharing, and transmits the application state of the respective application to the second client device or system. |
| US08478814B2 |
Method and system for remotely directing a fishing tournament
A method for remotely directing a fishing tournament makes use of a data network over which participants transmit submissions indicating sizes of fish caught. The submissions may include digital images of fish, and size may be determined from a scale established using a reference object depicted in the image. The data network may also be used to register participants and provide them with tournament results. Participants may register for a fishing period, or multiple fishing periods of the tournament, and may be issued a code to be displayed in images of fish. Validation of entries may include an examination of metadata in submitted digital images. |
| US08478810B2 |
Message hub apparatus, program product, and method
There is provided a message hub apparatus for efficiently processing service processing messages in an enterprise system. The message hub apparatus stores a value of minimum residence time as minimum time during which the service processing message is to reside in a message queue. The message present in the message queue is transmitted to a service provider on condition that the minimum residence time has elapsed. The apparatus performs a merge processing of the received service processing message and the service processing message which resides in the queue. A history of the merge processing stored in the apparatus is analyzed, and the value of the minimum residence time is modified based on an analysis result. |
| US08478808B1 |
Approximate calculation of 2D matrix entries via GPU
Minimizing memory access by converting a given matrix computation into a set of low-order polynomials. The low-order polynomials can be used by dividing the domain of the polynomials into smaller subregions. If the domain is divided into equal intervals, the low-order polynomial can be used to approximate results from the matrix computation. The set of polynomials is processed using parallel computational hardware such as graphical processing units. |
| US08478806B2 |
Method for determining sampling rate and device therefor
A method and a device for determining sampling rate are provided. The device receives an input signal of SPDIF. The method includes following steps. A plurality of multiple values between a plurality of bi-phase clock frequencies of the input signal and a system frequency are obtained, and a first weighted average and a second weighted average are calculated according to a first filter range, a second filter range and the multiple values. When a first difference is greater than a second difference, the sampling rate is set to a first sampling rate. Otherwise, the sampling rate is set to a second sampling rate. The first difference and the second difference are obtained according to the first weighted average, the second weighted average and a frequency threshold. The method determines the sampling rate rapidly according to weighted averages adjusted by filter ranges, reduces a probability of erroneous judgment and saves memory. |
| US08478800B1 |
Log streaming facilities for computing applications
To facilitate log streaming in a computing cloud, application service providers may dynamically provision one or more named log streams. A file-oriented interface to log streams may be made available to a plurality of virtual computer system instances used to provide the application services. Application service providers may further dynamically provision one or more sets of log stream processing agents arranged in one or more log stream processing graphs. Particular log streams may be assigned to particular log stream processing graphs for real-time processing. Processed log streams and/or associated data may be stored for later inspection. Such provisioning and/or configuration may be performed with a unified Web-based interface. |
| US08478795B2 |
Method and system for automatically defining organizational data in unified messaging systems
A method and system for automatically defining and provisioning organizational data in a unified messaging (UM) platform are disclosed. An adapter in a unified messaging platform connects to at least one client human resources database. Human resources information that is organized in an organizational hierarchy is retrieved from the human resources database, and hierarchical organizational data is automatically generated in the UM platform based on the organizational hierarchy of the human resources information retrieved from the human resources database. UM mailboxes are provisioned to messaging centers in the UM platform based on the hierarchical organizational data. |
| US08478792B2 |
Systems and methods for presenting information based on publisher-selected labels
Publishers define relationships between their own content items (e.g., World Wide Web pages) and content items created or maintained by other publishers. A central namespace manager provides grouping labels that publishers insert into their content items. Content items having matching grouping labels are identified as related. Different classes of grouping labels can be used to define different types of relationships, and multiple classes of grouping labels can co-exist. Grouping labels are made available to an information server such as a search server, which uses the labels in identifying content items related to a currently displayed content item. |
| US08478791B2 |
Interoperability across heterogeneous taxonomies
Interoperability across two or more heterogeneous clinical medical error taxonomies can be improved by associating categories in various taxonomies with one or more categories in a master taxonomy. These associations can be expressed using a unique identifier, e.g., a number that identifies one or more categories in the master taxonomy. Various aspects of the associations and/or one or more master taxonomies can be modified by users of a system employing embodiments of the technologies described herein. Searches of clinical medical error records can also be aided using the technologies described herein. |
| US08478789B2 |
Adapter architecture for mobile data system
A data architecture provides View objects that define an enterprise data source interface to an application through connectors, and also by Data Objects defined by Commands. Thus, a Data Object comprises a configurable request for data that is issued through Commands to the Adapters of the enterprise data sources. The architecture provides an application developer with the ability to create custom enterprise connectivity to disparate backend enterprise data sources. |
| US08478788B1 |
Centralized information technology resources analysis system
SecureFusion is a knowledge management system that integrates asset and risk management of Information technology resources for enterprises and provides metrics for the holistic representation of voluminous technical data. Integration of risk management, security operations and asset management creates an efficient and effective synergistic solution. SecureFusion is a solution that enables enterprises to perform real-time high speed operations research of Information Technology assets and security risks in a process-driven methodology. SecureFusion is comprised of modular, scalable components, utilizing web services to communicate with a centralized SecureFusion Portal. The myriad of data elements discovered and analyzed are converted into a knowledge-based information system. The knowledge-based system and portal provide real-time, dynamic reporting and graphic portrayal of management information for the enterprise. Metrics are used to provide a graphical global security status and scorecard. The security and asset data is summed up to provide key metrics for business leaders to understand and act on the data without having to understand the nuance of every bit and byte. The knowledge-based information system facilitates a hierarchical view of the enterprise assets and risk management data. Management is provided a score card on business unit vulnerabilities and can assign resources for corrective action as appropriate to the priority. |
| US08478780B2 |
Method and apparatus for identifying and classifying query intent
Linguistic analysis is used to identify queries that use different natural language formations to request similar information. Common intent categories are identified for the queries requesting similar information. Intent responses can then be provided that are associated with the identified intent categories. An intent management tool can be used for identifying new intent categories, identifying obsolete intent categories, or refining existing intent categories. |
| US08478779B2 |
Disambiguating a search query based on a difference between composite domain-confidence factors
A query may be ambiguous when the domain-confidence factors indicate a high likelihood that the search query may belong to two or more domains. A domain is a subject matter category such as shopping, sports, entertainment, music, or politics. A domain-confidence factor indicates the likelihood that a search query is related to a particular domain. Upon determining that a search query is ambiguous, embodiments of the present invention may present an interface that allows the user to place the search query into one or more domains. Updated search results, or other objects, may be returned based on the selection of a domain by the user. |
| US08478777B2 |
Gesture-based search
In general, the subject matter described in this specification can be embodied in methods, systems, and program products for performing searches with gesture-based input. A search system receives gesture data corresponding to one or more characters that have been drawn on a display of a client device. The search system recognizes the one or more characters that correspond to the gesture data. The search system formulates a search that includes the one or more characters as a query term. The search system communicates to the client device one or more search results for the search, and data identifying the one or more characters. |
| US08478776B2 |
Methods and systems for peer-to-peer network discovery using multi-user diversity
A collection of nodes in a peer-to-peer (P2P) network can have a larger aggregate coverage footprint than any given single node. This inherent multi-site property of P2P wireless networks can provide each node with benefits of multi-user diversity. This can improve the effective coverage of nodes within a P2P wireless network and improve discovery of devices in the P2P network. |
| US08478766B1 |
Unified data architecture for business process management
A computer-implemented method of processing business data, the method including storing data in SPO (subject-predicate-object) format in multiple databases; using a storage layer to connect to the multiple databases and maintaining a record of which data is stored in which database, the data comprising rules and axioms, the axioms representing user data; the rules and the axioms stored in the SPO format; at least one ontology representing a union of at least some rules and axioms that represent a particular data interpretation; a storage layer that permits working with data stored in different databases simultaneously and permits a user to use data from several storages simultaneously; transforming the user data based on context provided by a business application that works with specific objects and ontologies, the context being defined by a particular ontology; performing operations on the data based on triggers specified by the rules; generating new data in the same context; processing requests from a business layer to transform the data; and presenting the data to the user based on the context. |
| US08478762B2 |
Ranking system
Ranking systems are described. In an embodiment a large scale data center has peta bytes of items and a query engine is provided to find the top k most frequently occurring items. In embodiments, samples are taken from the data center at least until a specified number of samplings is met, or until a stopping rule is met. In examples, the samples form a sample sketch which is used to find the top k most frequently occurring items without the need to examine every item in the data center. In other examples, the number of samplings or stopping rule is varied to provide ranks or frequencies. In other embodiments the ranking system operates on items having values to find separators which divide the items into bins such that the proportion of the items in each bin is different. For example, a data set may be apportioned to different types of processor. |
| US08478759B2 |
Information presentation apparatus and mobile terminal
Information in which a user is interested when viewing a program and a situation and a behavior of the user are to be associated with each other. A keyword dictionary defining program information and a user behavior model are provided, and thereby the scene interesting the user is registered and stored, and information on the interesting scene is presented in a situation optimal to the user. |
| US08478758B2 |
Content management and delivery system
A content management and delivery system that works with a publisher website to deliver access to advertising content within Microsites relevant to content accessed by the user on the publisher website. The system includes a computer program product for determining relevance of the advertising content with regard to a selected item of editorial content, and for creating a link to the advertising content in accordance with the relevance thereof. The computer program product ensures that when a user navigates to the advertising content using the link, the user is not caused to exit from a publisher environment. |
| US08478757B2 |
Systems and methods for managing profiles
Methods and systems for managing profiles for electronic content. The methods and systems may involve profiles for a plurality of electronic content items. If a user interaction with an electronic content item of the plurality of electronic content items meets an event definition, the user interaction may be identified as an event associated with the electronic content and recorded in the profile. |
| US08478756B2 |
Contextual document attribute values
Metadata is generated that contains attribute values for a first document that in turn contains one or more key words. The attribute values of the first document are based on contextual information such as attribute values associated with other documents that contain at least one of the key words. Once generated, the metadata may be associated with the first document. Related techniques, apparatuses, and articles are also described. |
| US08478753B2 |
Prioritizing search for non-exact matching service description in service oriented architecture (SOA) service registry system with advanced search capability
A system and associated method for advanced searching of a service registry for a service description that is most closely matches a service name provided by a user. A Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) service registry system receives the service name and searches the service registry for the service description that is an exact match of the service name. Upon determining that the exact match does not exist in the service registry, the SOA service registry system generates an alternative service name list by use of a name parser, a dictionary, and a name composer of the SOA service registry system and calculates respective ranks of alternative service names. The service registry is searched pursuant to respective ranks of the alternative service names and the SOA service registry system returns the service description that is searched by a highest ranked alternative service name from the ranked alternative service name list. |
| US08478747B2 |
Situation-dependent recommendation based on clustering
Data relating to usage patterns of the user is stored, wherein the data includes an application portion having information as to items which were used and a context portion having information as to the context in which the items were used. The data is clustered into clusters of data points and centroid are computed, wherein the centroid includes an application portion and a context portion. Clusters similar to a current context of the user are selected by comparing a data point representing the current context of the user to the context portions of one or more of the centroids. For each of one or more items, a expectation value that the user wishes to use the corresponding item is computed, based on the application portions of the selected similar clusters, wherein the expectation values are used to recommend one or more of the items. |
| US08478746B2 |
Operationalizing search engine optimization
A method for managing reference to an entity on a network includes determining shares of voice for an entity and other entities across a plurality of channels with respect to a plurality of search terms. The method also includes correlating shares of voice for the entity and the other entities with respect the search terms to determine a relative change in share of voice for the entity with respect to the other entities. Thereafter, shares of voice for the entity across the plurality of channels may be correlated to determine relative changes in share of voice for the entity within each of the channels. The relative change in share of voice for the entity with respect to the other entities and the relative changes in share of voice for the entity within each of the channels may then be displayed. |
| US08478744B1 |
Dynamic query sequences for retrieval of negotiable instrument image
Determining sequences of queries for retrieving images of negotiable instruments such as checks. A request for a check image is received from a first computer such as an account holder computer at a second, intermediate computer that hosts an on-line banking program and is in communication with a third computer of a financial institution. A sequence program is executed to determine a first sequence of queries having respective query formats available to attempt to retrieve the requested image from an image server or data store. The first sequence is determined based on historical data of whether respective query formats were successfully used in the past to retrieve respective requested images from the data store and is dynamically updated to reflect whether queries were used to retrieve requested images. Thus, with embodiments, the order of queries to utilize is dynamic and can change as opposed to being pre-determined or static. |
| US08478729B2 |
System and method for controlling the storage of redundant electronic files to increase storage reliability and space efficiency
A storage control system including an overlap retrieval arrangement for retrieving overlap files, which are stored in at least one storage area of a plurality of storage areas, and which overlap one another, and a storage controlling arrangement for storing data of at least one overlapped part of the retrieved overlap files in a storage area having reliability that is greater than that of the storage area in which the data of this overlapped part is stored. A large number of files are stored in a plurality of storage areas, and the overlap retrieval arrangement retrieves overlap files from among a number of files, which is smaller than the number of stored files. |
| US08478725B2 |
Method and system for performing live migration of persistent data of a virtual machine
Persistent data of virtual machines are migrated between and across data stores using a method that provides for a bounded disk size, low performance overhead, arbitrarily low downtimes, atomic switch-over, and ability to build optimizations based around block level heuristics. The method includes the steps of copying the persistent data at the source data store to the destination data store, updating a bitmap data structure during the copying step to indicate which blocks of the persistent data have been modified during the copying step, identifying the blocks that have been modified during the copying step using the bitmap data structure, and copying the identified blocks to the destination data store. The method may further include the step of determining that the number of the identified blocks is below a predetermined threshold and suspending the virtual machine prior to the second copying step. |
| US08478719B2 |
System and method for media file synchronization
Media files are drop box-synchronized to limit the amount of new functionality to which a user must grow accustomed in order to synchronize the content of a media player with a remote server within a cloud computing network. Thusly, users are not required to change the way they use their media player(s), but rather are required to use the familiar drag and drop functionality of their native media player. The present invention contemplates synchronizing host and nodal processing units via a server within native media player formats for quick access for the purpose of media playback, media modification, etc. This is achieved through the creation of a media file play list folder that acts as a drop box into which the user drops the desired play list to synchronize with the server. Certain methodology enhances and supports the synchronization process, which methodology incorporates the use of signature waveform metrics. |
| US08478713B2 |
Row-level security in a relational database management system
An access control system provides multilevel and mandatory access control for a database management system. The access control systems provide access control at the row level in a relational database table. The database table contains a security label column within which is recorded a security label that is defined within a hierarchical security scheme. A user's security label is encoded with security information concerning the user. When a user requests access to a row, a security mechanism compares the user's security information with the security information in the row. If the user's security dominates the row's security, the user is given access to the row. |
| US08478712B2 |
Method and apparatus to facilitate using a hierarchical task model with respect to corresponding end users
One automatically accesses (101) a hierarchical task model as corresponds to a particular task to be executed by a given end user to thereby identify one or more presently un-executed agenda elements. One also automatically accesses (102) characterizing information for that given end user. (By one approach, for example, this characterizing information can comprise information regarding the given end user's knowledge.) This information regarding the un-executed agenda elements and the characterizing information are then used (103) to identify a highest hierarchical level within the hierarchical task model as corresponds to the given end user's wherewithal to successfully execute without also needing lower hierarchical level content within the hierarchical task model. The identified highest hierarchical level within the hierarchical task model is then used (104) to generate a presentation to present to the given end user to thereby facilitate execution of the particular task by the given end user. |
| US08478705B2 |
Portable data management using rule definitions
Embodiments for methods, systems, and computer program products for creating and managing a portable data rule using an electronic computing device are presented including: causing the electronic computing device to create a rule definition including, defining an expression by a user, where the expression defines a logic of a rule, causing the electronic computing device to parse the expression into a logical variable associated with the expression, causing the electronic computing device to identify the logical variable, and causing the electronic computing device to store the rule definition, where the rule definition includes the expression and the logical variable. In some embodiments, the causing the electronic computing device to identify the logical variable includes: causing the electronic computing device to return a name of the logical variable; and causing the electronic computing device to return an expected type of the logical variable. |
| US08478704B2 |
Decomposable ranking for efficient precomputing that selects preliminary ranking features comprising static ranking features and dynamic atom-isolated components
Methods and computer storage media are provided for generating an algorithm used to provide preliminary rankings to candidate documents. A final ranking function that provides final rankings for documents is analyzed to identify potential preliminary ranking features, such as static ranking features that are query independent and dynamic atom-isolated components that are related to a single atom. Preliminary ranking features are selected from the potential preliminary ranking features based on many factors. Using these selected features, an algorithm is generated to provide a preliminary ranking to the candidate documents before the most relevant documents are passed to the final ranking stage. |
| US08478699B1 |
Multiple correlation measures for measuring query similarity
Methods, systems, and apparatus, including computer programs encoded on a computer storage medium, for determining query suggestions from multiple correlation measures. In one aspect, a method includes receiving a first query and second queries, each of the first and second queries including one or more terms; for each second query and a linear model, receiving correlation scores measuring the correlation between the first query and the respective second query, each correlation score received from a respective correlation process, and each respective correlation process being different from the other respective correlation processes, and applying the linear model to the plurality of correlation scores to determine a combined correlation score that quantifies a combined correlation between the first query and the respective second query based on the plurality of correlation scores. The second queries are ranked in an order according to their respective combined correlations scores. |
| US08478698B1 |
Methods and systems for employing artificial intelligence in automated orthodontic diagnosis and treatment planning
The methods and systems generally entail the use of a server that is configured to receive patient data through a website. The methods and systems further include the use of a database that has access to (i) information derived from textbooks and scientific literature and (ii) dynamic results derived from ongoing and completed patient treatments. The methods and systems further include the operation of at least one computer program within the server, which is capable of analyzing the patient data and identifying at least one diagnosis of the orthodontic condition. The methods and systems further entail assigning a probability value to the at least one diagnosis, with the probability value representing a likelihood that the diagnosis is accurate. The methods and systems further include instructing the computer program to identify at least one treatment approach, a corrective appliance, or a combination thereof for the at least one diagnosis. |
| US08478697B2 |
Determining whether to provide an advertisement to a user of a social network
Techniques are described herein for determining whether to provide an advertisement to a user of a social network. The determination is based on a click probability and a social network value for the user. The click probability indicates a likelihood of the user to select the advertisement if provided to the user via the social network. The social network value is based on a subscription probability of the user and further based on subscription probabilities of other users in the social network that are included in an affinity set of the user. Each subscription probability indicates a likelihood of a respective user to subscribe to a paid service with respect to the social network. |
| US08478695B2 |
Technique for effectively generating postage indicia using a postal security device
In a franking system, a postal security device (PSD) is used to account for postage dispensation, and generate digital signatures for inclusion in postage indicia to authenticate same. In accordance with the invention, the PSD includes multiple crypto processors which participate in franking transactions and generate the digital signatures in a multiplexed manner. Each crypto processor verifies the accounting of postage dispensation leading to and including the transactions in which the crypto processor participates. In addition, the crypto processors re-create transaction records and store them therein in a distributed manner. |
| US08478688B1 |
Rapid transaction processing
An improved technique identifies risky transactions from a set of transactions and updates risk scores only for those transactions identified as risky. Along these lines, a transaction sorting engine sorts the set of transactions according to risk score. The transaction sorting engine identifies as risky those transactions having risk scores above a specified percentile; for instance, the transactions having risk scores above the 90th percentile would be identified as risky. Some time later, a risk score engine adjusts, based on new historical transaction data, Bayesian weights which it uses to compute risk scores. The transaction sorting engine sends to the risk score engine only those transactions it identified as risky. The risk score engine computes new risk scores for the risky transactions and makes the new risk scores available to the transaction sorting engine so that it can sort all of current transactions (e.g., received within the past week). |
| US08478673B2 |
Using commercial share of wallet in private equity investments
Commercial size of spending wallet (“CSoSW”) is the total business spend of a business including cash but excluding bartered items. Commercial share of wallet (“CSoW”) is the portion of the spending wallet that is captured by a particular financial company. A modeling approach utilizes various data sources to provide outputs that describe a company's spend capacity. Private equity firms and other investors of small businesses can use the CSoW/CSoSW modeling approach to more accurately evaluate small and privately held companies, both during investment and for evaluating prospective investments. Over-the-counter securities trading systems can also use this modeling approach to provide more accurate information and/or rankings of listed companies to their customers. |
| US08478671B1 |
Method and system for community-based tax deduction advice
A method for community-based tax deduction advice involves displaying a suggestion input control in a networked tax preparation application, obtaining tax deduction suggestions from taxpayers using the suggestion input control, and displaying a live feed of tax deduction suggestions to a user of the networked tax preparation application. |
| US08478669B1 |
Systems and methods for modeling telecommunication switch investments
In one of many possible embodiments, a system is provided for modeling telecommunication switch investments. The exemplary system includes a telecommunication switch modeling application configured to determine equipment quantities having capacity to satisfy switch design parameters descriptive of at least one model telecommunication switch, and calculate model investments associated with the equipment quantities. The exemplary system also includes a telecommunication switch investment modeling application configured to weight the model investments in accordance with at least one of a network parameter descriptive of an actual telecommunication switch and a “what-if” input descriptive of a hypothetical telecommunication switch configuration to form weighted investments that are specific to at least one of the actual telecommunication switch and the hypothetical telecommunication switch configuration. |
| US08478666B2 |
System and method for processing data related to management of financial assets
A computer system for management of financial data relating to funds holding investments includes a data storage device and a server configured for execution of computer-readable instructions embodied in components. The components include an expense component for accessing and verifying fund expense calculation data, and storing the verified fund expense data in a common data format; a pre-trade component for receiving data relating to fund ownership, determining and storing data indicative of fund trading requirements in the common data format; a settlement component for accessing data indicative of instructions for execution of trades, determining data indicative of instructions for payment in settlement of trades consistent with the trade instructions data and providing output data signals indicative of the instructions for payment; and an accounting component for accessing accounting ledgers stored in the data storage devices and updating the accounting ledgers. |
| US08478664B1 |
Recommendation system with user interface for exposing downstream effects of particular rating actions
An interactive system generates personalized item recommendations for users based partly or wholly on ratings assigned by the users to particular items. The system includes an item rating user interface that enables a user to view, prior to rating an item, information regarding the types of items that will be recommended to the user if the user assigns a particular rating or type of rating to the item. The user interface thereby enables users to refrain from performing rating actions that will tend to result in low utility or “poor quality” recommendations from the users' perspectives. |
| US08478661B1 |
Gifting method using gift proxy
A system for purchasing and delivering a specific gift, in which, at the time of the purchase, the buyer, instead of being provided with the gift, is provided with a gift proxy or special package which includes a gift token which includes an authentication device. The gift proxy also includes a picture of the specific gift. The buyer delivers the gift proxy to the recipient. At a future time and place, not necessarily pre-determined, the recipient provides the gift proxy to the seller, the seller authenticates the gift proxy, and the recipient receives the gift from the seller. A centralized and networked order management system monitors the gift tokens. The system can be online and/or store oriented, and can be used to transact in goods and/or services other than gifts. |
| US08478660B2 |
Method and system for improving the selection of services in a service exchange environment
A method and a system for improving the selection of a group of services, in an exchange services environment, by a user of a telecommunication network. The following steps are comprised by the invention: defining a first set of requirements in a selection criteria manager module to be fulfilled by the services; performing a search among all services available, according to services functionalities defined in a service catalog and matching the first set of requirements; discarding services which do not fulfilled the first set of requirements; defining a second set of requirements in the selection criteria manager module, the second set of requirements indicates user preferences; assigning weights to the services taking into account the second set of requirements, data from an historical information module of previous selections of the user, data from a profile of the user with previous preferences; arranging all service combination according to the weights obtained, being the first one an optimal selection; storing the selection of the user at the historical information module. |
| US08478651B1 |
Automated ranking of online service or product providers
An online computer system is configured to receive requests from seekers for products or services and to provide the seekers and products a place to complete work once connected. The computer system searches through personal contacts of the seekers for trusted providers of the product or service request based on their proximity to the seekers. The computer system is configured to search through contacts within referral networks of the personal contacts for level-1 and level-2 providers of the product or service request. The level-2 providers might be more reliable because they are referred through the personal contacts of the seekers. The providers and referral contacts of the referrals can be rated and then provider candidates ranked according to the associated provider and referral ratings. |
| US08478642B2 |
System, method and device for predicting navigational decision-making behavior
A system method and device for predicting navigational decision-making behavior is provided. The location of a device is used to generate the current location of the device, and a history of past locations of the device. A behavior predicting application predicts the route a drive is going to travel based on driver preferences, such as left-hand turns, avoidance of bridges, etc., as well as the preferred destinations and/or routes traveled in the past. The preferences of a particular driver can be learned by the system to be implemented in the behavior predicting application, or manually input by the driver. The system can employ GPS or other positioning technology to determine the location of the device. The device can be a standard GPS-enabled in-car device, or other portable device such as a cell phone or PDA. |
| US08478638B2 |
Portable hand-held multi-function device with multiple transaction and reward accounts
A system and method for operating a reward points accumulation and redemption program wherein a user earns reward points from a plurality of independent reward points issuing entities, with each tracking the user's earned reward points in a user reward point account stored on a multi-function card (such as a frequent flyer account or a credit card loyalty account). The multi-function card is adapted to aggregate some or all of the user's earned reward points from the reward accounts and credit the aggregated points into a single reward exchange account on the multi-function card. The user may then select an item for purchase with the accumulated reward points from the multi-function card. The item is provided to the user in exchange for a subset or all of the reward points from the multi-function card. |
| US08478637B1 |
Index for assessing discount potential
A computerized system and method of calculating a discount index value for a supplier can include receiving information related to a plurality of discount leverage factors for the supplier, calculating a discount index value for the supplier based on the information related to the discount leverage factors, receiving information related to an actual discount event for the supplier, recalculating the discount index value for the supplier based on the discount leverage factors and the information related to actual discount events, and displaying the discount index value for the supplier. The system and method can also include placing the discount index value on a discount index scale, defining a plurality of discount leverage regions on the discount index scale, and attributing a leverage value to the supplier based on the proximity of the discount index value to one of the discount leverage regions. |
| US08478632B2 |
System and method for defining a sales promotion
A method of defining a sales promotion for a plurality of products includes determining a group of sales promotion sites to be included in the sales promotion from a plurality of sites using a computerized system, wherein the plurality of sites have been previously organized according to a predetermined grouping structure, and wherein the group of sales promotion sites is independent of the predetermined grouping structure. The method also includes determining a list of products associated with the group of sales promotion sites, and determining the products to be included in the sales promotion from the list of products associated with the group of sales promotion sites. |
| US08478631B2 |
Market segmentation analyses in virtual universes
A computer system for market segmentation analysis includes program instructions to be executed. The program instructions are configured to collect virtual universe data about avatars, entities, and objects in a virtual universe. The program instructions are configured to perform a market segmentation analysis on the virtual universe data, wherein the market segmentation analysis comprises a first segmentation across multiple segments of the avatars that is based on an amount of time and an amount of money spent in the virtual universe. The market segmentation analysis further comprises a second segmentation across multiple segments of the avatars that is based on whether activity of the avatars includes social activity and business activity in the virtual universe relative to a time of day. The program instructions are configured to receive, from users, consent allowing collection of the virtual universe data and to present a reward to the users for giving the consent. |
| US08478627B2 |
Method for reducing risk associated with a task
A method and system of reducing risk in the life cycle of a product, in one aspect, obtain one or more tasks required to achieve an overall task, determine risk impact of each task, the risk impact being an impact of each task on the likelihood of failure for the overall task and compute risk of overall task based on risk impacts of the tasks. The method and system utilize said risk impact of each task to schedule the tasks in such a way so as to reduce said risk of overall task as rapidly as possible. |
| US08478621B1 |
Customer satisfaction dashboard
An instrument for measuring and presenting customer impressions of a company uses weighted response values of survey questions to develop a customer experience score and a customer interaction score. The two scores are added to produce a composite score. The three scores for a company may be presented with other score sets for other companies to provide a simple and consistent comparison of companies. When different businesses or even different industries have different customer experiences and interactions, weighting of response values can be adjusted to more accurately reflect the importance of that factor on the overall customer experience, which models customer satisfaction. |
| US08478614B2 |
System and method for ensuring accurate reimbursement for travel expenses
An Expense Verification System (EVS) checks for fraud and errors in reimbursement requests. The EVS stores requests including reference numbers, and receives travel reservation records from a payment clearinghouse system. Each record includes a reference number and associated reservation data. The EVS selectively denies stored reimbursement requests as a function of data contained in the travel reservation record. Alternatively, the EVS selectively issues an alert as a function of data contained in the travel reservation record. Further, the EVS may parse a received reimbursement request to identify a respective reference number, compare the parsed reference number to the stored reimbursement requests to determine whether the parsed reference number matches a stored reference number, and deny the received reimbursement request if the parsed reference number matches a stored reference number. The EVS may store the received reimbursement request if the parsed reference number does not match a stored reference number. |
| US08478612B2 |
System and method of providing an optimized-personalized health maintenance plan
Systems and methods for providing an optimized-personalized health maintenance plan are presented. The teachings include a method for creating an iteratively-optimized, personalized health maintenance plan for a user. The method includes producing a recognized health profile for a subject, developing a first personalized health maintenance plan from the recognized health profile, and converting compiled information into a presentation format for the first personalized health maintenance plan, or an optimized-personalized health maintenance plan based on at least a first iterated questionnaire. The personalized health maintenance plan is optimized to increase the level of specificity of the personalized health maintenance plan for the user. |
| US08478598B2 |
Apparatus, system, and method for voice chat transcription
An apparatus, system, and method to transcribe a voice chat session initiated from a text chat session. The system includes a chat server, a voice server, and a transcription engine. The chat server is configured to facilitate a text chat session between multiple instant messaging clients. The voice server is coupled to the chat server and configured to facilitate a transition from the text chat session to a voice chat session between the multiple instant messaging clients. The transcription engine is coupled to the voice server and configured to generate a voice transcription of the voice chat session. The voice transcription may be aggregated into a text chat history. |
| US08478597B2 |
Method and system for assessing pronunciation difficulties of non-native speakers
The present disclosure presents a useful metric for assessing the relative difficulty which non-native speakers face in pronouncing a given utterance and a method and systems for using such a metric in the evaluation and assessment of the utterances of non-native speakers. In an embodiment, the metric may be based on both known sources of difficulty for language learners and a corpus-based measure of cross-language sound differences. The method may be applied to speakers who primarily speak a first language speaking utterances in any non-native second language. |
| US08478596B2 |
Impairment detection using speech
A device may include logic configured to receive a first speech input from a party, to compare the first speech input to a second speech input to produce a result, and to determine if the party is impaired based on the result. |
| US08478592B2 |
Enhancing media playback with speech recognition
A method for enhancing a media file to enable speech-recognition of spoken navigation commands can be provided. The method can include receiving a plurality of textual items based on subject matter of the media file and generating a grammar for each textual item, thereby generating a plurality of grammars for use by a speech recognition engine. The method can further include associating a time stamp with each grammar, wherein a time stamp indicates a location in the media file of a textual item corresponding with a grammar. The method can further include associating the plurality of grammars with the media file, such that speech recognized by the speech recognition engine is associated with a corresponding location in the media file. |
| US08478588B2 |
Run-time simulation environment for voiceXML applications that simulates and automates user interaction
A method and system for testing voice applications, such as VoiceXML applications, is provided. The system provides a run-time simulation environment for voice applications that simulates and automates user interaction. A user simulation script is provided in a customized mark-up language. The voice application is processed to derive a nominal output of the voice application. The user simulation script is processed to generate a simulated output for the voice application corresponding to the nominal output. The user simulation script is also processed to generate a simulated input for the voice application corresponding to a pre-determined user input to the voice application. The simulated inputs and outputs are executed in conjunction with the voice application in real-time to test the application. |
| US08478585B2 |
Identifying features in a portion of a signal representing speech
Methods, systems, and machine-readable media are disclosed for processing a signal representing speech. According to one embodiment, processing a signal representing speech can comprise receiving a region of the signal representing speech. The region can comprise a portion of a frame of the signal representing speech classified as a voiced frame. The region can be marked based on one or more pitch estimates for the region. A cord can be identified within the region based on occurrence of one or more events within the region of the signal. For example, the one or more events can comprise one or more glottal pulses. In such cases, cord can begin with onset of a first glottal pulse and extend to a point prior to an onset of a second glottal pulse. The cord may exclude a portion of the region of the signal prior to the onset of the second glottal pulse. |
| US08478581B2 |
Interlingua, interlingua engine, and interlingua machine translation system
An embodiment provides (a) a method and system for representing natural languages in a common machine-readable form, including the thorough design of the lexicon and grammar, the resulting representation called interlingua, (b) a method and system for using a computer to convert a text of a natural language into and out of a coded text of said interlingua representation, including a programming framework which is independent of other languages, said system is called interlingua engine, and (c) a method and system of machine translation using said interlingua engine, said system called interlingua machine translation system. Alternative embodiments are described. |
| US08478580B1 |
Model driven command language translator
An embodiment includes a method that includes receiving source commands to establish a configuration to control a computer networking function in a computer networking device, wherein the source commands are written in a source command language. The method selectively translates the source commands from the source command language to target commands written in a target command language, wherein the translation is based, at least in part, on a function-to-function translation model. The configuration is established in the computer networking device based on the target commands. |
| US08478579B2 |
Conditional translation header for translation of web documents
Methods, systems, and apparatus, including computer program products, for translation of web documents. The original language of document text in the web document is identified. A translation header is displayed with the web document text only if the original language is different from a user's preferred language. The translation header provides the user with an option of translating the document text or portions of the document text to the user's preferred language. |
| US08478576B1 |
Including variability in simulation of logic circuits
According to various techniques of the present invention, probability models for circuit simulation are generated as linear, piecewise linear, nonlinear, and/or continuous probability waveforms. These waveforms represent probability values for logic levels over some period of time. Probability models are defined according to characteristics of the electronic components being modeled, so as to capture variability in characteristics and performance of logic circuits and their components. The probability waveforms of the present invention can be used to predict circuit component behavior resulting from state changes; a range in response time can be indicated by a probability waveform indicating the probability that the response has taken place at a given time after an input state change. Construction of a probability model for a circuit with interconnected electronic components allows timing problems resulting from variability in component performance to be identified. |
| US08478571B1 |
Plug and play reconfigurable processor boards for use with mission spacecraft design tools in rapidly developable spacecraft
Systems and methods reduce development, integration and testing time of a spacecraft implemented with one or more reconfigurable processor boards. Mission spacecraft design tools design, configure, simulate and analyze the spacecraft based upon constraints of the mission requirements. The mission spacecraft design tools utilize a database of defined module specifications and firmware components. One or more RPBs are programmed based upon the configuration and interfaced to other end item components defined by the configuration to form the spacecraft. |
| US08478568B2 |
Prediction system and method
A system for predicting a condition includes an electric machine having slip rings and an exciter providing current and voltage to the electric machine through the slip rings. The system also includes a monitoring device that measures the current and voltage provided by the exciter to the electric machine and that forms a regression model from a current sample and compares values from a next sample to values predicted by the regression model. |
| US08478567B2 |
Systems and methods for measuring the effectiveness of a workload predictor on a mobile device
Systems and methods for measuring the effectiveness of a workload predictor operative on a mobile device are disclosed. A load manager includes a workload predictor, a sensor, an error generator and a controller. The workload predictor generates an estimate of the workload on a processor core operative on the mobile device. The sensor generates a measure of the actual workload on the processor core. The error generator receives the estimate of the workload and the measure of the actual workload on the processor core and generates an error signal. The controller receives the error signal and determines the effectiveness of the workload predictor as a function of the error signal over time. |
| US08478566B2 |
Systems and methods for computing emission values
A system and method for computing emission values. In one aspect, a system and method is described to include an input module operable to receive raw activity data to define a record for an activity; a data provisioning module operable to compute standardized activity data using the raw activity data; a location module operable to compute a location hierarchy for a given location; a factor data module operable to compute factor data for a given location hierarchy and time period; a reference data module operable to compute reference data; and an emission engine operable to compute at least one emission value for the activity based on the optimal emission equation. |
| US08478565B2 |
Method of monitoring soot mass in a particulate filter and monitoring system for same with correction for active regeneration inefficiency
A method of monitoring soot mass in a particulate filter of an exhaust system includes determining a pressure differential across the filter, obtaining a first soot mass estimate by fitting the determined pressure differential to a first stored database of measured or modeled pressure differentials and corresponding measured soot masses taken during filter regeneration using a substantially similar filter previously loaded following a complete filter regeneration, and obtaining a second soot mass estimate by fitting the determined pressure differential to a second stored database of measured or modeled pressure differentials and corresponding measured soot masses taken during filter regeneration using a substantially similar filter loaded following an incomplete filter regeneration. Actual soot mass is estimated by calculating a weighted sum of the first and second soot mass estimates with weighting based on operating parameters indicative of regeneration efficiency. A monitoring system for a particulate filter is also provided. |
| US08478564B2 |
Shape measuring apparatus
A 3D measuring apparatus includes a probe that has a spherical gauge head for measuring a measured object; a motion mechanism that holds and moves the probe; and a motion controller that controls the motion mechanism. The controller includes a contact point obtainer that obtains a contact point location of a surface of the measured object and the gauge head based on a central location of the gauge head; a radius of the gauge head; and a swing amount of the gauge head. The controller also includes a motion commander that calculates a location command value causing the motion mechanism to move the probe, based on the contact point location obtained by the contact point obtainer. |
| US08478563B2 |
Device and method for the dimensional characterization of a cylindrical object
A device for the dimensional characterization of an object comprising a cylindrical surface which is symmetrical about a longitudinal axle. The device comprises at least six probes used to emit six pulsed waves, each probe being respectively oriented towards a separate measuring point of the cylindrical surface, and to collect the pulsed waves reflected at each measuring point. The device calculates a position of each measuring point, and calculates a characteristic curve of the cylindrical surface by interpolation from the corresponding position of each of the points. |
| US08478562B2 |
Measuring instrument
A measuring instrument includes a main body, a stylus configured to be movable in relation to the main body, an encoder for detecting the amount of displacement of the stylus relative to the main body, a calculating section for calculating a measurement value from the amount of displacement detected by the encoder, a display section for displaying the measurement value calculated by the calculating section, an operation section for issuing a command to the calculating section, and a storage section that stores an effective measurement range larger than a lower limit and smaller than an upper limit of the movement stroke of the stylus. The calculating section makes a determination as to whether or not the amount of displacement detected by the encoder falls within the effective measurement range stored in the storage section and displays the result of such a determination on the display section. |
| US08478560B2 |
Three wire transformer position sensor, signal processing circuitry, and temperature compensation circuitry therefor
A three-wire transformer position sensor is provided that includes an excitation coil and an output coil. The excitation coil is adapted to be electrically excited with an excitation signal, and has a first end and a second end. The output coil includes a first coil and a second coil and is inductively coupled to the excitation coil upon electrical excitation thereof the excitation coil. The first end of the first coil is electrically connected to the second end of the second coil and to the second end of the excitation coil, and the second end of the first coil is electrically connected to the first end of the second coil. The output coil is configured, when it is balanced and the excitation coil is being electrically excited, to supply a null output signal. |
| US08478558B2 |
Method for processing a temperature sensor signal
A method for processing a pulse width modulated signal from a temperature sensor, wherein the signal varies non-linearly and non-exponentially with changes in temperature. An exponential equation is defined that is closely fitted to the relationship between a characteristic of the signal and the temperature. The signal from the sensor is processed by measuring the characteristic to produce a sensor value. That sensor value then is employed to solve the exponential equation which produces a value for the temperature. |
| US08478555B2 |
System and methods of improved tomography imaging
The present invention is a system and methods of improved tomography imaging such as microwave tomography (MWT). An improved inversion technique surrounds the imaging region with an electrically conducting surface to create field distortions producing an improved tomographic image. The improved inversion technique of the present invention creates a new physical situation for proposed imaging systems. |
| US08478554B1 |
Reducing eye monitor data samplers in a receiver
The present specification describes techniques and apparatus for reducing eye monitor data samplers in a receiver. A single eye monitor data sampler is used for multiple normal data samplers in a receiver. |
| US08478553B2 |
System for calculating resistive values for microelectronics CAD
A method for calculating resistive values of an electronic circuit represented in the form of masks and connections includes defining the circuit in the form of a first list of electrical components and connections between them, identifying circuit entry and exit ports, selecting part of the resistive components of the circuit alone, producing a matrix of resistances of the resistive components alone selected in the previous step, and calculating equivalent resistances. |
| US08478550B2 |
Generator set calibration controller
A calibration system for a generator set controller is disclosed. The calibration system may have a source of electric power, a controller in communication with the source and configured to monitor a parameter of the electric power and produce at least one output corresponding to the monitored parameter, and a power meter configured to measure the parameter of the electric power. The calibration system may also have a processor in communication with the source of electric power, the controller, and the power meter. The processor may be configured to direct electric power having a first test voltage from the source to the controller, and directly relate a value of the at least one output corresponding to the first test voltage and a value of the measured parameter to an offset error. |
| US08478549B2 |
Weld check stations
A method of manufacture for a portable computing device is described. In particular, methods and apparatus for assessing a quality of weld joints used to connect one or more components of the portable computing device are described. The weld joints can include one or more weld points. At a weld check station, using a vector network analyzer, a test signal generated can be passed through the weld joint and a response signal can be measured. The measured characteristics can be used to assess a quality of the weld joint. In one embodiment, the vector network analyzer can be used to generate a number of high frequency test signals that are passed through the weld to perform a time domain reflectometry measurement where the weld joint can be accepted or rejected based upon the measurement. |
| US08478548B2 |
User interface system and method for diagnosing a rotating machine condition not based upon prior measurement history
A vibration data collection and rotating machinery fault diagnostic instrument includes a machine setup engine, a measurement engine, a diagnostic engine, a measurement user interface module, a machine setup user interface module, and a diagnostic user interface module. The machine setup engine requests and receives parameters about the machinery through the machine setup user interface module. The measurement engine requests and receives sensor placement locations through the measurement user interface module and keeps track of locations that have been measured and locations that still need to be measured. The diagnostic engine diagnoses machinery faults and presents the information to the user through the diagnostic user interface module using an intuitive graphical severity scale. |
| US08478538B2 |
Selection of signal regions for parameter extraction
According to embodiments, techniques for extracting a signal parameter from a selected region of a generally repetitive signal are disclosed. A pulse oximetry system including a sensor or probe may be used to obtain an original photoplethysmograph (PPG) signal from a subject. A filter transformation may be applied to the original PPG signal to produce a baseline PPG signal. The baseline PPG signal may contain artifacts and/or noise, and a region of the baseline PPG signal suitable for extracting the signal parameter may be selected. A suitable region of the baseline PPG signal may be selected by applying one or more thresholds to the baseline PPG signal, where the values of the thresholds may be set based on derivative values, amplitude-based percentiles, and/or local minima and maxima of the baseline PPG signal. A portion of the original PPG signal corresponding to the selected region may be processed, and the signal parameter may be extracted from the processed region. In an embodiment, the signal parameter may correspond to the respiration rate of a patient. |
| US08478532B2 |
Testing additives for production enhancement treatments
Fluid tests may be performed to determine suitability of an additive for a production enhancement treatment. In one aspect, a measuring device is used to determine a result of adding a sample of solid material to a test fluid that includes an additive. The result may include, for example, a change in surface tension, a change in contact angle, and/or another result. The measured result is used to determine the suitability of the additive for use in a stimulation treatment for a subterranean formation. For example, the additive may be determined suitable for use during a pad phase of a fracture treatment, during a proppant-laden phase of a fracture treatment, and/or for other phases and/or types of stimulation treatments. |
| US08478531B2 |
Dip-based corrections for data reconstruction in three-dimensional surface-related multiple prediction
A best fitting trace in seismic data is determined for a desired trace to be reconstructed. A dip-based correction is calculated per trace and per sample for differences in azimuth, common midpoint coordinates, and offset between the best fitting trace and the desired trace. The dip-based correction is applied to the best fitting trace to reconstruct the desired trace for 3D surface-related multiple prediction. |
| US08478529B2 |
Visibility determination in environments containing airborne dust particles
Determining optical visibility in an environment that may contain airborne dust particles is described. In one aspect, a method determines an ambient relative humidity in the environment. A near infrared wave is transmitted through a portion of the environment. An optical visibility in the environment is calculated based on the ambient relative humidity and attenuation of the near infrared wave during transmission through the environment. Various contrast thresholds are employed in the determination of optical visibility in the environment. |
| US08478527B2 |
Method and system for displaying navigation information and mapping content on an electronic map
A method for displaying object vector indicators (“OVI”) and mapping-media content, referencing map-objects (“MO”) on an electronic map, the method including determining that at least one MO is outside a visible area of a displayed map, creating an OVI to reference the MO, displaying the OVI on the electronic map, receiving user input selecting the OVI, retrieving media-content associated with the MO and displaying the media-content. In various embodiments, the OVI may contain various navigation information referencing the OVI; the OVI may be displayed at the periphery of the displayed map; the OVI may be repositioned in response to a changing in position of an electronic device displaying the OVI and/or the MO, etc. |
| US08478526B2 |
Enabling a first mobile device to navigate to a location associated with a second mobile device
A method is described that allows a first mobile device to persistently lock onto a second mobile device, thereby allowing the first mobile device to not only constantly monitor the dynamic location of the second mobile device but also to adaptively navigate in real-time to the dynamic location associated with the second mobile device. The dynamic location may include a current location of the second mobile device or a final destination for travel of the second mobile device. |
| US08478524B2 |
Methods and apparatus for dispensing marking material in connection with underground facility marking operations based on environmental information and/or operational information
Methods, apparatus, and systems for facilitating a marking operation to indicate a presence or an absence of at least one underground facility. Marking information relating to the marking operations, including one or both of environmental information representative of at least one environmental condition of an environment in which the marking operation is performed, and operating information representative of at least one operating condition of a marking device used to perform the marking operation, is electronically acquired. A marking material is dispensed to mark the presence or the absence of the at least one underground facility is dispensed, and the dispensing is controlled based at least in part on the acquired marking information. |
| US08478522B2 |
Map-updating-data creating method, and map updating method and apparatus
A map-updating-data creating apparatus performs, for each old map file, creating a map-updating file for rewriting the map file to a new map file, determining the serial number of each of the updated map files, creating a serial number management file in which marks are respectively written at positions corresponding to the serial numbers, and generating, as map-updating data, the map-updating file and the serial number management file. A navigation apparatus performs map-updating processing and determines, by referring to the serial number management file, whether a map file has already been updated. The navigation apparatus uses the map-updating file to execute navigation control if the map file has already been updated, and updates the map file and subsequently executes the navigation control if the map file has not been updated. |
| US08478520B2 |
Systems and methods for off-board voice-automated vehicle navigation
A method of providing navigational information includes processing destination information spoken by a mobile processing system user. The processed voice information is transmitted to a remote center wirelessly. The processed voice information is voice recognition analyzed to recognize components of the destination information spoken. The remote center generates a list of hypothetical recognized components of the destination information listed by confidence levels. The list of hypothetical recognized components is displayed with confidence levels at the remote center for selective checking by a human data center operator. A component set is selected based on the confidence levels and accuracy of the selected set is confirmed by interactive voice exchanges. A destination is determined from confirmed components of the destination information. Route information to the destination is generated at the remote center and the route information is transmitted wirelessly to the mobile processing system from the remote center. |
| US08478518B2 |
Traffic information processing system, statistical processing device, traffic information processing method, and traffic information processing program
A navigation device mounted in a vehicle determines a traffic condition when the vehicle travels in a road zone along a facility, and determines whether a payment terminal mounted in the vehicle has made a payment through communication with a facility terminal installed in the facility. If it is determined that a payment has been made through communication, then probe data is generated that associates the traffic condition in the road zone with a payment service of the facility. |
| US08478509B1 |
Method and apparatus for varying the duration of a fuel injector cycle pulse length
A voltage spike generated by the collapse of the magnetic field in a fuel injector coil is stored in a capacitor and sent to an engine control unit at a correct time regardless of when the magnetic field in the injector coil actually collapses. |
| US08478508B2 |
Controller for internal combustion engine
An ON-ignition signal is outputted from an ignition control portion in a period from a posterior time point of the power stroke to an valve opening timing of an exhaust valve so that a capacitor is charged. Then, when it is determined that the maximum value of an ion-output value detected during a negative valve overlap period becomes greater than or equal to a threshold, it is determined that the applied voltage between an center electrode and a ground electrode of a spark plug is dropped. The ON-ignition signal is outputted again to charge the capacitor before the intake valve is opened. |
| US08478507B2 |
Control device for internal combustion engine
A control device used for an internal combustion engine and capable of determining an actuator operation amount is provided. The control device includes a computation element that uses engine status amounts to compute the actuator operation amount. The computation element uses a model that includes a plurality of submodels arranged in a hierarchical sequence. The computation element computes the actuator operation amount by using a parameter calculated by the lowest level submodel and changes the number of higher-level submodels to be used in combination with the lowest level submodel in accordance with the operation status of the internal combustion engine. |
| US08478504B2 |
Skid steer machine with automatic operating ratio change system
A skid steer machine having separate left and right hydraulic propulsion units includes an operating ratio change system by which the ratio of the propulsion speed of at least one of the hydraulic propulsion units versus the hydraulic flow directed to the propulsion units can be changed from at least a first ratio to a second ratio and inversely. The operating ratio change system includes an operating ratio change ECU which controls an operating ratio change device to operate in at least a first ratio configuration or a second ratio configuration, and the operating ratio change system operates in an automatic operating mode where the operating ratio change ECU selects the operating ratio according to machine parameters received by the operating ratio change ECU. |
| US08478495B2 |
Shift control device for continuously variable transmission
A requested cruise-control horsepower calculator obtains a requested cruise-control horsepower from a speed difference between a target cruising vehicle speed and an actual vehicle speed. A requested cruise-control torque calculator obtains a requested cruise-control torque on the basis of the requested cruise-control horsepower and an engine rotation speed. A cruise-control accelerator-opening calculator sets a cruise-control accelerator opening by referring to an engine torque map in which a cruise-control accelerator-opening characteristic curve is set along an equal horsepower line on the basis of the requested cruise-control torque and the engine rotation speed. A target primary rotation-speed calculator sets a target primary rotation speed by referring to a shift-line map on the basis of the cruise-control accelerator opening and the actual vehicle speed. A shift controller obtains a target gear shift ratio on the basis of the target primary rotation speed and the actual vehicle speed so as to perform shift control. |
| US08478492B2 |
Method and system for performing non-contact based determination of the position of an implement
Embodiments of the present invention are directed to a method and system for performing non-contact based determination of the position of an implement. In one embodiment, a non-contact based measurement system is used to determine the relative position of an implement coupled with a mobile machine. The geographic position of the mobile machine is determined and the geographic position of said implement based upon the geographic position of the mobile machine and the position of the implement relative to the mobile machine. |
| US08478488B2 |
Impact event countermeasure control method and system for automotive vehicle
An impact event countermeasure control method and system for an automotive vehicle includes management of impact countermeasures using not only variable timing responsive to impact severity, but also event control as a function of the displacement of a vehicle's occupant with respect to the passenger cabin environment, including various countermeasure devices. |
| US08478484B2 |
Control of vehicle rollover
A motor vehicle includes a body characterized by a center of gravity, a plurality of wheels for maintaining contact with a road surface, and a roll-reduction apparatus. The apparatus is configured to resist an impending rollover of the vehicle via at least one of i) applying a force between the body and at least one of the plurality of wheels and ii) lowering of the center of gravity of the vehicle. The vehicle also includes a sensing device configured to detect a roll moment acting on the vehicle and having a threshold magnitude. The vehicle additionally includes a controller configured to trigger the roll-reduction apparatus to generate a moment on the body opposite to the detected threshold moment such that an angle of the vehicle relative to the road surface during rollover is reduced. A method of reducing the angle of the body during rollover is also disclosed. |
| US08478482B2 |
Position detection for activation of device and methods thereof
Embodiments of position detection devices for vehicles and methods of position detection are provided. One embodiment of a detection device comprises a wireless device inside a vehicle, a mobile communication device paired to the wireless device, such that the wireless device automatically activates when it senses the mobile communication device within an operable range of the wireless device, a position sensing system configured to generate an output indicative of the mobile communication device's presence within the vehicle and a controller responsive to the output and configured to deactivate the wireless device when the output indicates that the mobile communication device's presence is not within the vehicle but is still within the operable range. |
| US08478480B2 |
Vehicle evaluation using infrared data
A solution for evaluating a vehicle using infrared data is provided. In particular, evaluation data for the vehicle is obtained, which includes infrared data for a plurality of sides of the vehicle as well as vehicle identification data for distinguishing the vehicle from another vehicle. The infrared data is processed to enhance a set of signal features. Additional non-infrared based data also can be obtained for evaluating the vehicle. The evaluation data is analyzed to determine whether one or more anomalies are present. The anomaly(ies) can be correlated with a possible problem with a component of the vehicle. Data on the anomaly, problem, and/or vehicle identification can be provided for use on another system, such as a remote inspection station, maintenance system, and/or the like. |
| US08478477B2 |
Method of organizing aircraft maintenance
A method of managing maintenance of an aircraft. The method includes defining a recommended maintenance program for the aircraft. Maintenance deadlines for the recommended maintenance program are determined by using primary data from a testing of at least one of pieces of equipment and elements of the aircraft. Utilization data for the aircraft is used and stored. A calculation device is used to implement at least one algorithm to recalculate the maintenance deadlines as a function of the actual utilization data. The recommended maintenance program is updated. |
| US08478475B2 |
Vehicle-mounted electronic appliance
A vehicle-mounted electronic appliance has a vehicle state detection portion which detects a vehicle being parked, a sound indication portion, and a sound indication control portion. When the vehicle state detection portion detects that the vehicle is parked, the sound indication control portion makes the sound indication portion indicate a warning to watch out for theft. |
| US08478474B2 |
Diagnostic apparatus and diagnostic method for belt squeezing force adjusting mechanism
A diagnostic apparatus and a diagnostic method are provided for a belt squeezing force adjusting mechanism of a continuously variable transmission in which a belt is wound around a primary sheave that receives driving force and a secondary sheave that outputs force to a drive line, and which continuously changes the output rotation speed by adjusting the width of the groove the primary sheave and the secondary sheave by shift control. This diagnostic determines, as a precondition, whether a target control value calculated in shift control is in a low region, and performs a diagnostic on the belt squeezing force adjusting mechanism based on the relationship between an actual control value and the target control value during control to reduce a control value when it is determined that the precondition is satisfied. According to this diagnostic apparatus and diagnostic method, an erroneous diagnosis can be prevented so the diagnostic can be performed accurately. |
| US08478473B2 |
Method and systems for controlling gas turbine engine temperature
A method and systems for controlling an engine are provided. The system includes an engine model programmed to receive engine operating condition values from a plurality of sensors on an engine. The engine model is programmed to determine a plurality of engine operating parameter values. The system also includes a processor configured to compare the operating parameter values to a predetermined allowable range for the operating parameter and control the operation of the engine to facilitate returning the determined operating parameter to the allowable range or maintaining the determined operating parameter within the allowable range, output the determined operating parameter values to a user, and/or generate maintenance requests based on the comparison. |
| US08478472B2 |
System and method for simultaneous localization and map building
An autonomous vehicle comprises at least one image sensor to provide measurements of landmark position for a plurality of landmarks; and processing functionality to estimate the position of the plurality of landmarks in a global frame and in the autonomous vehicle's frame, and to estimate the kinematic state of the autonomous vehicle in a global frame based, at least in part, on the measurements of landmark position from the at least one image sensor. The processing functionality is further operable to calculate errors in the estimated positions of the plurality of landmarks in the global frame and in the estimate of the kinematic state of the autonomous vehicle in the global frame by using a plurality of unit projection vectors between the estimated positions of the plurality landmarks in the autonomous vehicle's frame and a plurality of unit projection vectors between the estimated positions of the plurality of landmarks in the global frame. |