| Document | Document Title |
|---|---|
| US09009860B2 |
Tamper resistance extension via tamper sensing material housing integration
Systems and apparatuses disclosed herein provide for a tamper resistant electronic device. The electronic device can include a circuit board, housing, a security shield, one or more pressure sensitive switches, and security electronics. The security shield can cover a first area of the circuit board and be configured to sense tampering. The security shield can also be integrated into the first part of the housing, wherein a second area of the circuit board is covered by the housing and is outside of the security shield, both the first area and the second area having electronics therein. The security electronics on the circuit board can be coupled to the security shield and the one or more pressure switches, and can be configured to zeroize data stored on the circuit board if the security shield senses tampering or if one or more of the one or more pressure sensitive switches is disengaged. |
| US09009859B2 |
Address exchange system and methods
The present disclosure provides systems and methods for an address exchange system including a controller configured to provide an API configured to receive an identifier from a user and further configured not to receive a physical address from the user, wherein the user provides an item for shipment to the physical address. In response to receiving the identifier, the controller is further adapted to request the physical address from a data storage system wherein the data storage system stores an association between the identifier and the physical address and further stores one or more permission settings defining situations in which the physical address is to be provided in response to receipt of the identifier. In response to receipt of the identifier, the data storage system tests the permission settings to determine whether or not to provide the associated physical address. |
| US09009855B2 |
Generating developer license to execute developer application
One or more techniques and/or systems are disclosed for generating a developer license that allows a developer application to run on developer machine. A user identification (userID) used to register a user can be used by the user to register as a developer. The userID can be authenticated for the registered developer. Further, a machine used by the developer for the developer application can be registered, and a resulting hardware identification (hardwareID) can be authenticated for the registered developer machine. Additionally, a developer certificate can be generated for the registered developer. The developer certificate can be authenticated and used to sign the developer application. The developer license can be generated for the developer, allowing the developer machine to execute the developer application, based at least upon the authenticated userID, the authenticated hardwareID, and the authenticated developer certificate. |
| US09009847B2 |
Information management apparatus, information management system, information management method and program
An information management apparatus which can set an area in which use of a file is not allowed for each file separately is provided. The existing zone area information acquisition unit 61 acquires existing zone area information that is a condition set for each file and is information used for determination of whether a file is allowed to be used by being compared with a condition about an area in which use of a file is allowed or an area in which use of a file is forbidden. The determining unit 62 compares the existing zone area information and each condition set for each file, and determines whether each file to be a target of use by a user is allowed to be used or not. |
| US09009843B2 |
Social discovery of user activity for media content
Aspects of the present disclosure provide techniques that may enable user activity information to be automatically generated and shared with other users of a social network. In one example, a method of automatically publishing, to one or more social network services, information about user activities regarding media content items includes receiving user activity information regarding a media content item, wherein a user is a member of one or more social network services, and the user activity information is generated in response to one or more activities taken by the user with respect to the media content item. The method may also include receiving an indication of one or more users of the one or more social network services to whom the user activity information is to be made accessible, and automatically publishing the user activity information to the one or more social network services. |
| US09009841B2 |
Testing web applications for file upload vulnerabilities
A system for detecting file upload vulnerabilities in web applications is provided. The system may include a black-box tester configured to upload, via a file upload interface exposed by a web application, a file together with a signature associated with the file. An execution monitor may be configured to receive information provided by instrumentation instructions within the web application during the execution of the web application. The execution monitor may be configured to recognize the signature of the uploaded file as indicating that the uploaded file was uploaded by the black-box tester. The execution monitor may also be configured to use any of the information to make at least one predefined determination assessing the vulnerability of the web application to a file upload exploit. |
| US09009838B2 |
Method and apparatus for effecting an internet user's privacy directive
Disclosed is a method for effecting an internet user's privacy directive. In the method, copied packets, that are based on original packets sent from a user client, are monitored for a web content request including state information that is not in compliance with a user's privacy directive. Upon detection of a copied packet having a web content request including noncompliant state information, the state information is modified to comply with the user's privacy directive. A replacement packet is forwarded to the user client such that the user client receives the replacement packet before receiving a response packet from a target server of the corresponding original packet. The replacement packet has a redirection with a renewed web content request including the modified state information. |
| US09009837B2 |
Automated security assessment of business-critical systems and applications
Systems and methods which provide a new application security assessment framework that allows auditing and testing systems to automatically perform security and compliance audits, detect technical security vulnerabilities, and illustrate the associated security risks affecting business-critical applications. |
| US09009835B2 |
Smart card, anti-virus system and scanning method using the same
A smart card installed in a device receives from the device data to be scanned and determines whether a virus exists in the data. Accordingly, security of the device may be enhanced without using substantial resources of the device. |
| US09009825B1 |
Anomaly detector for computer networks
A computer system includes a data collector and an anomaly detector. The data collector monitors network traffic/event log and sends monitoring data to the anomaly detector. The anomaly detector extracts values for a category of measure from the monitoring data and processes the values to generate a processed value. The anomaly detector predicts an expectation value of the category of measure based at least on time decayed residual processed values. The anomaly detector determines a deviation of the processed value from the expectation value to detect an anomaly event, and applies a security rule to the anomaly event to detect a security event. |
| US09009823B1 |
Framework for efficient security coverage of mobile software applications installed on mobile devices
A method is described that includes generating a representation of an application that describes specific states of the application and specific state transitions of the application. The method also includes identifying a region of interest of the application based on rules and observations of the application's execution. The method also includes determining specific stimuli that will cause one or more state transitions within the application to reach said region of interest. The method also includes enabling one or more monitors within the application's run time environment and applying the stimuli within the application's run time environment, where, the application's run time environment is existing on a mobile device that the application is installed on. The method also includes generating monitoring information from said one or more monitors. The method also includes applying rules to the monitoring information to determine a next set of stimuli to be applied to the application in pursuit of determining whether the region of interest corresponds to improperly behaving code. |
| US09009822B1 |
Framework for multi-phase analysis of mobile applications
A method is described that includes 1 receiving one or more user provided rules for an application of a mobile device through a user interface. The method also includes generating a representation of the application that describes various states and state transitions of the application. The method also includes referring to the one or more rules and the representation to identify a region of interest of the application. The method also includes configuring one or more monitors for the application to be enabled in a run time environment of the application. The method also includes setting conditions of the application within the run time environment to drive the application's execution to the region of interest. The method also includes observing behavior of the application and determining whether the region of interest corresponds to improperly behaving code. |
| US09009819B1 |
Method and system for detecting rogue security software that displays frequent misleading warnings
A method and apparatus for detecting rogue security software whereby a timeframe and a threshold pop-up score are defined. A user computing system is monitored/scanned for any pop-up events being presented to the user and once a pop-up event is detected, the source process, or application, associated with the pop-up event is identified. The identified source process is then monitored for at least the defined timeframe and each pop-up event associated with the identified source process in the defined timeframe is counted and used to compute a pop-up score for the identified source process. The pop-up score for the identified source process is then compared with the threshold pop-up score and if the pop-up score associated with the identified source process exceeds the threshold pop-up score, the status of the identified source process is transformed to the status of identified “suspect” source process. |
| US09009815B2 |
Increasing chosen password strength
An approach is provided to increase password strength in a group of users. The approach detects a password event corresponding to one of the users. In response to the detected password event, the approach identifies a strength of the user's password and compares it to one or more password strength metrics that correspond to the group of users. The password strength comparison data is then transmitted as feedback back to the user. |
| US09009812B2 |
System, method and apparatus that employ virtual private networks to resist IP QoS denial of service attacks
An approach provides a communication network that supports one or more network-based Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) to resist Denial of Service (DoS) attacks. A first boundary router is configured to provide a Virtual Private Network (VPN) that supports quality of service levels, and interfaces an access network via a Customer Premise Equipment (CPE) edge router and a physical access link. A second boundary router is coupled to a public network. The access network connects to the first boundary router, and wherein the first boundary router and the second boundary router are connected by a separate logical connection to prevent denial of service attacks on the physical access link originating from sources outside the VPN. |
| US09009811B2 |
Network system with electronic credentials and authentication for appliances
An appliance has a communication network with a plurality of nodes for executing commands to enable operation by components. A firewall is provided to restrict access to the commands by the nodes without a password. |
| US09009809B2 |
Computer or microchip with a secure system BIOS and a secure control bus connecting a central controller to many network-connected microprocessors and volatile RAM
A computer or microchip including a system BIOS located in flash memory which is located in a portion of the computer or microchip protected by an inner hardware-based access barrier or firewall, a central controller of the computer or microchip having a connection by a secure control bus with other parts of the computer or microchip, and a volatile random access memory located in a portion of the computer or microchip that has a connection for a network. The secure control bus is isolated from input from the network, and provides and ensures direct preemptive control by the central controller over the volatile random access memory, the control including transmission to or erasure of data and/or code in the volatile random access memory and control of a connection between the central controller, the volatile random access memory and at least one microprocessor having a connection for the network. |
| US09009808B2 |
Delivery of multiple third-party services to networked devices
Systems and methods for authenticating a media device or other information handling system so as to be able to receive content from one or more media content providers. Authenticating the device includes determining what authentication information the media content providers require for access and then to generating and providing to the media device an authentication token that includes the required information. In some embodiments this may be accomplished by a service center, which removes the need for additional authentication steps to be performed by the media device or the media content providers. In addition, the service center may also determine when changes are made to the authentication information and may then ensure that the authentication token is changed or updated to reflect these changes. This ensures that the media device is at least partially immune to changes to authentication. |
| US09009805B1 |
Method and system for provisioning an electronic device
This application discloses a method of provisioning an electronic device. The electronic device proactively broadcasts an advertising packet that includes a device identifier associated with the electronic device. A server receives the device identifier via a client device, and issues a link approval response when it verifies that the electronic device associated with the device identifier is available for provisioning in association with a user account. In response to the link approval response, the electronic device and the client device establish communication via a short range wireless link. The client device encrypts at least a portion of network credentials of a secure wireless network using a password key generated at the server, and provides the encrypted network credentials to the electronic device. The electronic device decrypts the encrypted network credentials using a key generated at the electronic device, and accesses the secure wireless network using the decrypted network credentials. |
| US09009803B2 |
Method and system for planning and management of digital events
A method and system is provided that manages events involving an individual's digital assets and/or external services that the individual interfaces with using external service credentials. The method and system allow the individual to securely store digital assets and external service credentials used to login to external services. The method and system further allow the individual to create a plan of actions to be executed on specified dates, where the actions involve one or more of the individual's digital assets and/or involve one or more external services that the individual interfaces with using one or more external service credentials. The plan of actions takes the format of a timeline that includes one or more timeline events, where an action and a date are associated with a timeline event. |
| US09009799B2 |
Secure access
Secure access to a resource is provided by receiving a user request associated with a username for access for a resource and checking the username associated with the request against a reference username associated with the user. The reference username is linked to a second username associated with the user. If the received username matches the reference username, the request is modified by replacing the received username with the second username, and the modified request is forwarded towards the resource. A new username can be recorded upon receiving a request for the user. In response to the received request, the new username is recorded at a reference location linked to the location of the second username. |
| US09009796B2 |
Spot beam based authentication
In one embodiment, a method to authenticate a claimant comprises receiving, from the claimant, at least one of a set of beam data from a spot beam transmission, comparing the claimed at least one set of beam data to a known valid data set, and authenticating the claimant when a difference between at least one set of beam data and the known valid data set is less than a threshold. |
| US09009789B2 |
Diameter signaling for mobile IPv4
The invention consists of a new registration and authentication protocol for between a Mobile Node and a Home Agent. The new protocol uses a novel messaging sequence to request registration, authentication and authorization of the Mobile Node when it is located on a foreign network, and the novel protocol will avoid some of the standard registration and authentication protocol messages in order to eliminate the problems associated with re-transmission errors. |
| US09009784B2 |
Automated correction and reporting for dynamic web applications
A run-time application-generated change to dynamic web content, generated during an application run-time by a dynamic web application, is detected in response to user run-time interactions with the dynamic web content rendered by the dynamic web application that changed the dynamic web content during the run-time. The detected run-time application-generated change to the dynamic web content is parsed. The parsed run-time application-generated change to the dynamic web content is compared with web content compliance rules that define specifications for web content representation. A noncompliant element associated with the parsed run-time application-generated change is identified based upon the comparison with the web content compliance rules. A run-time correction of the identified noncompliant element within the dynamic web content changed by the dynamic web application is performed to cause the identified noncompliant element to comply with the web content compliance rules. |
| US09009781B2 |
Cloud based firewall system and service
A cloud-based firewall system and service is provided to protect customer sites from attacks, leakage of confidential information, and other security threats. In various embodiments, such a firewall system and service can be implemented in conjunction with a content delivery network (CDN) having a plurality of distributed content servers. The CDN servers receive requests for content identified by the customer for delivery via the CDN. The CDN servers include firewalls that examine those requests and take action against security threats, so as to prevent them from reaching the customer site. The CDN provider implements the firewall system as a managed firewall service, with the operation of the firewalls for given customer content being defined by that customer, independently of other customers. In some embodiments, a customer may define different firewall configurations for different categories of that customer's content identified for delivery via the CDN. |
| US09009780B2 |
Privacy verification tool
Systems and methods for protecting the privacy of users by controlling access to the users' data. In particular, some embodiments provide for a higher-level declarative language for expressing privacy policies which can be verified using a computer-aided verification tool. The verification tool uses the expressed privacy policies along with language-level assumptions and assertions in the verification process. For example, high-level models of the privacy policies can be reduced to a simpler verification representation (e.g., a Boolean representation) based on a set of assertions. This verification representation can then be submitted to a constraint solver (e.g., Satisfiability Modulo Theories solver) for verification. |
| US09009776B2 |
Information processing apparatus and output control method
According to one embodiment, an information processing apparatus includes a display, a speaker, a connector to output a video signal and audio signal, a display driving module to control outputting of the video signal with respect to the display and connector, a sound driving module to control outputting of the audio signal with respect to the speaker and connector, and an output control module to instruct the sound driving module to output the audio signal from the connector when an event of instructing the display driving module to output a video signal to the connector occurs. |
| US09009770B2 |
Methods and systems for media consumption
Methods and apparatus for increasing media consumption are disclosed. The present invention can provide viewers increased access to content of interest across various platforms, such as online articles, online audio and video clips, and television and radio broadcasts. In an embodiment, an individual viewing content online, such as a news article, is given a link. The link provides the viewer access to a list of content related to the article being viewed. The related content is not limited to the platform related content across, and allows the user to view the content, automatically set the content to be recorded by a digital video recorder, or reserve the content for future viewing. Accordingly, by providing the user with convenient access to content across platforms, based on their interests, they are more given media content they are more likely to enjoy. Accordingly, viewership of this content will increase, through this connection of individuals with content that aligns with their interests. |
| US09009767B2 |
Process and method of providing a shared experience with multimedia content
A system, method and computer readable media are disclosed for presenting a simultaneous multimedia experience to a plurality of computing devices, each at different locations. The method involves coordinating a simultaneous presentation of multimedia content to a plurality of computing devices, receiving a control signal from a computer of one of the plurality of computing devices to control the presentation of multimedia content, and broadcasting the control assigned to each of the plurality of computing devices such that a control event substantially simultaneously occurs in the presentation of a multimedia content at each of the plurality of computing devices. Where commercial breaks and length of presentation differences occur in various time zones or geographically disparate areas, the method may include utilizing synchronization points, adding new content in time gaps at a computing device and/or modifying the length of the presentation to maintain synchronization among the computing devices in a group. |
| US09009766B2 |
Optimization of video for wireless delivery
In one embodiment, a method includes receiving at a network device interposed in a network path between a source and a receiver, video optimized for a wired network link located between the source and the network device, identifying the receiver as a wireless device, optimizing the video for wireless transmission, and transmitting the video optimized for wireless transmission to the receiver. An apparatus is also disclosed. |
| US09009765B2 |
Method and server for fast channel change in unicast-multicast IPTV networks
An object with embodiments of the present invention is to achieve a solution for fast channel change that improves bandwidth utilization, wherein the fast channel change is accomplished by initiating a unicast stream until a multicast stream can provide the desired media. The bandwidth utilization is achieved by delaying the multicast session and by terminating the unicast session at the latest when the multicast session starts. The delay of the multicast session is dependent on the network latency. Latency in this context refers to the time passed from when the client sends an IGMP JOIN message until it receives the first packet of the multicast stream. |
| US09009760B2 |
Provisioning interactive video content from a video on-demand (VOD) server
A system may send a request for video content to a server device; obtain, in response to the request, control information, associated with the video content, where the control information may include one or more digital versatile disc (DVD) features that correspond to one or more portions of the video content; and present the control information, for display, via a user interface, where presenting the control information for display may enable a user, of the video client device, to interact with the control information as though the video content was being played by a DVD player. The system may also receive selection of a DVD feature, of the one or more DVD features; and obtain, from the server device, a portion of the video content, of the one or more portions of the video content, that begins at a point that corresponds to the selected DVD feature. |
| US09009758B2 |
System and method for searching an internet networking client on a video device
A system and method for enabling a user to display and interact with a social networking structure on a video device connected to a network enabled host device is provided. A user interface (UI) 700 is also provided for displaying content (e.g. messages or tweets) that is output in an overlay for display on a display while program video is playing. The method provides for accessing a social networking site in response to a user input, the user input initiated while outputting a program for display, generating at least one keyword for searching the social networking site based on at least one characteristic associated with the program, retrieving content from the social networking site based the at least one keyword and outputting the retrieved content in an overlay for display simultaneous with the program. |
| US09009757B2 |
Program guide apparatus
A method acquires program guide information in an image signal receiver, and program guide method and apparatus using the same. In the program guide apparatus, information immediately required by a user is obtained first, and information of less preferential channels is obtained next, thus presenting a smooth interface to the user. The method of acquiring program guide information for channels includes acquiring the program guide information for each channel by scanning accessible channels while a received program is not displayed. The program guide apparatus includes a tuner tuning a channel, a program guide information detector, a memory, a key input, a microprocessor, and a character signal generator. |
| US09009754B2 |
Method and apparatus for alternate content scheduling on mobile devices
Alternate digital content is inserted into mobile devices with a method and apparatus that comprises an alternate content scheduler, an alternate content reporter, and a micro-splicer. The alternate content scheduler further comprises a mobile network interface for interaction with a mobile data and broadcast network, a micro-splicer interface for interfacing with a micro-splicer, a rulebook that is shared with the network which provides the rules for alternate content scheduling, a preference provisioning module comprising an alternate content scheduler library for storing user or network preferences, a scheduler for providing tight synchronization between original program content and alternate content, and a metric recording interface to an alternate content reporter. The micro-splicer works in tandem with the alternate content scheduler to render synchronized display of alternate multimedia content on the mobile device. |
| US09009751B2 |
Systems and methods for searching based on information in commercials
A system that incorporates teachings of the subject disclosure may include, for example, determining if a commercial contains one of metadata, close captioning information, recognizable speech in an audio component of the commercial, or a combination thereof. In response to determining that the commercial does not contain metadata, but does contain close captioning information, an advertised show is identified based on the close captioning information. Likewise, in response to determining that the commercial contains neither metadata, nor close captioning information, but does contain recognizable speech in an audio component of the commercial, the advertised show is identified based on the recognizable speech. Other embodiments are disclosed. |
| US09009746B2 |
Secure transaction through a television
The present disclosure involves a method of conducting a transaction. In one aspect, the method includes: displaying a media program on a media display device; indicating, while the media program is being displayed, an item associated with the media program is available for purchase; receiving authentication information of a prospective purchaser of the item; and completing a purchase of the item in response to the authentication information. In another aspect, the method includes: receiving, from a media display device, a user authentication request that contains user login credentials; granting the user authentication request in response to the user login credentials; and sending an authentication permission to the media display device; wherein the receiving and the sending are each performed such that the user login credentials and the authentication permission are sent through one or more intermediate hops without being inspected by any of the intermediate hops. |
| US09009745B2 |
Thin web optical media guiding method
An optical data storage device includes an optical storage tape having one or more optical storage layers. A plurality of optical pickup units reads and/or writes data to the optical storage tape. A feed reel provides the optical storage tape to the optical pickup units. A guiding wheel that guides the optical storage tape when the optical storage tape is in the vicinity of the optical pickup units during read and/or write operations. Finally, a take-up reel receives the optical storage tape from the guiding wheel. |
| US09009744B2 |
Library system
The present invention relates to a library system including a disc recording/reproducing unit, a disc container, and a disc transport unit for transporting a disc between the disc recording/reproducing unit and the disc container. In order to improve the reliability of the operation of moving the disc from the disc recording/reproducing unit to the disc transport unit, a disc transport controller determines the situation in both the disc recording/reproducing unit and the disc transport unit, and error-stops the operation according to the result of the determination. Alternatively, the disc transport controller retries the movement of the disc, by pulling the disc into the disc transport unit or returning the disc to the disc recording/reproducing unit, and by finely adjusting the relative positions of the disc recording/reproducing unit and the disc transport unit if necessary, in order to solve the problem of damage to a surface of the disc. |
| US09009740B2 |
Invocation of additional processing using remote procedure calls
In one embodiment, a method for invoking additional processing at a remote computing device using remote procedure calls (RPCs) is provided. In this method, a list of functions supported by the remote computing device is received from the remote computing device. From the list of functions, a function that requires metadata about the function is identified. The metadata and argument required by the function is accessed, and an RPC message that includes the metadata and the argument is composed. The RPC message is then transmitted to the remote computing device. Here, the RPC message is transmitted to call the function with the argument as input and to invoke the additional processing based on the metadata. |
| US09009732B2 |
Method of processing a source set of raw events to a target set of typed events
A method of processing raw events to typed events, each raw event including data items containing data values, the method includes: providing a library of event type objects, each event type object relating to a given event type and including attributes of given data types, the attributes in each event type object structured according to a given structure; for each raw event, determining an event type object in the library which meets: (i) each of the data items in the raw event maps to an attribute in the event type object, and (ii) a data value in each of the data items is of a data type detected to match the given data type of the mapped attribute; and generating a typed event from each raw event, the typed event including the data values of the raw event structured according to the structure of the determined event type object. |
| US09009731B2 |
Conversion of lightweight object to a heavyweight object
Processing an object that shares a parent with another object is disclosed. An indication is received with respect to an object that shares a parent object instance with one or more other objects that a change associated with the object is to be made to a data comprising the shared parent object instance. The parent object instance is cloned to create a new parent object instance. The new parent object instance is designated as the parent of the object instance. |
| US09009730B2 |
Transaction capable queuing
Transactional capable queuing is provided. A queue having an ordered list of messages is provided. A get cursor operation is provided within the queue to point to a current starting place for a getting application to start searching for a message to retrieve. A first lock is provided for putting operations, in response to there being more than one putting application, to ensure only one application is putting to the queue at a time. A second lock is provided for getting operations, in response to there being more than one getting application, to ensure that only one application is getting from the queue at a time. Putting applications and getting applications are synchronized to check and update the get cursor operation. |
| US09009725B2 |
System of growth and automated migration
A combination of workflow management tools is utilized to implement a logical system that supports the needs of both simple and complex workflow environments. Team members may access a central database to collaborate on a project via user interfaces with work item functionality, such as creation, reporting, performance, updates, and communications. Select management of work items may be automated. Work items may represent server-oriented tasks and sub-tasks and may be ticketed and tracked. A knowledge base may provide help for the system application, such as online or live access to access helpful information. In an example embodiment, the workflow management tools are implemented to support the creation of a Video Hub Office project. |
| US09009724B2 |
Load balancing data access in virtualized storage nodes
Systems and methods of load balancing data access in virtualized storage nodes are disclosed. An embodiment of a method includes receiving a data access request from a client for data on a plurality of the virtualized storage nodes. The method also includes connecting the client to one of the plurality of virtualized storage nodes having data for the data access request. The method also includes reconnecting the client to another one of the plurality of virtualized storage nodes to continue accessing data in the data access request. |
| US09009723B2 |
Distributed acceleration devices management for streams processing
A method for managing distributed computer data stream acceleration devices is provided that utilizes distributed acceleration devices on nodes within the computing system to process inquiries by programs executing on the computing system. The available nodes and available acceleration devices in the computing system are identified. In addition, a plurality of virtual acceleration device definitions is created. Each virtual acceleration device definition includes attributes used to configure at least one of the plurality of identified acceleration devices. When an inquiry containing an identification of computing system resources to be used in processing the inquiry is received, at least one virtual acceleration device definition that is capable of configuring an acceleration device in accordance with the computing system resources identified by the inquiry is identified. That acceleration device is configured in accordance with the identified virtual acceleration device definition and is used to process the inquiry. |
| US09009721B2 |
Method and system for communicating between isolation environments
A method and system for aggregating installation scopes within an isolation environment, where the method includes first defining an isolation environment for encompassing an aggregation of installation scopes. Associations are created between a first application and a first installation scope. When the first application requires the presence of a second application within the isolation environment for proper execution, an image of the required second application is mounted onto a second installation scope and an association between the second application and the second installation scope is created. Another association is created between the first installation scope and the second installation scope, an this third association is created within a third installation scope. Each of the first, second, and third installation scopes are stored and the first application is launched into the defined isolation environment. |
| US09009714B2 |
Method, medium and apparatus scheduling tasks in a real time operating system
A scheduling method, medium and apparatus are provided. In the scheduling method, medium and apparatus, it is possible to prevent the possibility that the order between the priorities of the tasks represented by the expired timers and the tasks requested by the interrupt is reversed while also not deteriorating the performance of a real time operating system (RTOS), even though the number of timers expired when the interrupt occurs or that are already expired before the interrupt occurs is large, by selecting a timer for representing a point of time corresponding to a point of time when an interrupt occurs from among one or more timers each of which representing a task, a point of time assigned to the tasks, and a priority assigned to the task and executing a task represented by the selected timer and one or more tasks requested by the interrupt in order of priority. |
| US09009712B2 |
GPU distributed work-item queuing
Methods and systems are provided for graphics processing unit distributed work-item queuing. One or more work-items of a wavefront are queued into a first level queue of a compute unit. When one or more additional work-items exist, a queuing of the additional work-items into a second level queue of the compute unit is performed. The queuing of the work-items into the first and second level queue is performed based on an assignment technique. |
| US09009711B2 |
Grouping and parallel execution of tasks based on functional dependencies and immediate transmission of data results upon availability
The present invention provides a particular efficient system of scheduling of tasks for parallel processing, and data communication between tasks running in parallel in a computer system. A particular field of application of the present invention is the platform-independent simulation of decomposition/partitioning of an application, in order to obtain an optimal implementation for parallel processing. |
| US09009708B2 |
Method and system to effectuate recovery for dynamic workflows
A computer-implemented smart recovery system for dynamic workflows addresses a change to a data object during execution of an instance of a workflow by selectively re-executing workflow tasks that are affected by the change, without cancelling the instance and restarting a new instance of the workflow. A determination of whether a task is to be re-executed during the smart recovery process may include examining a re-evaluation label assigned to the task. |
| US09009705B2 |
Authenticated distribution of virtual machine images
A computer implemented method, a computer program product, and a computer distribute a virtual machine image. A request for a virtual machine image is received. Responsive to receiving the request or the virtual machine image, the authenticity of a virtual machine image catalog associated with the virtual machine image is identified. Responsive to identifying that the virtual machine image catalog is authentic, a first digital signature to be sent with the virtual machine image is determined. Responsive to determining the signature, the virtual machine image and the signature is sent. |
| US09009699B2 |
Providing a POJO-based microcontainer for an application server
A method and apparatus for using a microcontainer as a Plain-Old-Java-Object (POJO) based kernel in an application server. In one embodiment, the method includes dynamically construct deployed objects of a deployment from aspects. The method further includes providing a runtime infrastructure by dynamically constructing kernel objects of an application server from the aspects to execute the deployed objects. |
| US09009694B2 |
Pre-verification and sequencing of patches
The present invention provides an interactive graphical user interface (GUI) patch environment for installing a patch on the targeted systems. A system administrator or other authorized user interfaced with a machine may perform the installation of a patch on the machine using a software wizard. Additionally, the Wizard pre-verifies the patch dependencies (pre-installed software) required by the patch and checks the target systems to ensure the target systems possess the requisite dependencies. Once the target systems have been validated and the required dependencies identified on the target systems, the sequencing algorithm sorts patches in correct order before applying patches to the target systems. The user can remove the patch from the pre-validated patch list about to be applied to the target system. The patch dependency is checked before removing the patch from the pre-validated patch list for proper removal order. |
| US09009684B2 |
Method, apparatus and product for porting applications to embedded platforms
A computer-implemented method and apparatus for transforming code to embedded environments, the method comprising: receiving program code not complying with a limitation of an embedded computing environment; transforming at least part of the program code to modified program code in order for the modified program code to be in compliance with the limitation; and storing the modified program code on a storage device. wherein the modified program code complies with the limitation of the embedded computing environment. |
| US09009673B2 |
Collaborative software debugging in a distributed system with collaborative step over operation
In a distributed system that includes a debug server and debug clients coupled for data communications through a data communications network, where the debug server includes a debug administrator, a message router, a back-end debugger, and a debuggee, collaborative software debugging includes receiving application-level messages including receiving, from a requesting debug client, a step over command that includes an instruction to ignore, during the step over command, events established by the requesting debug client; routing the application-level messages among the debug clients, the debug administrator, and the back-end debugger, including providing distributed control of the back-end debugger and routing the step over command to the back-end debugger; performing the step over command, including ignoring the events established by the requesting debug client and processing any other events; and returning, to the debug clients in response to the application-level messages routed to the back-end debugger, client-specific debug results. |
| US09009671B2 |
Crash notification between debuggers
Crash notification between debuggers, including: initiating, by a first debugger, a first debug session of a first application; detecting, by the first debugger, an error condition in the first application; determining, by the first debugger, whether any variables utilized by the first application are related to variables utilized by a second application, wherein the second application is being debugged in a second debug session by a second debugger; and communicating, by the first debugger to a second debugger, information associated with the error condition in the first application. |
| US09009668B2 |
Software testing using test entity
A mechanism for performing dynamic software testing on a computer system using a test entity. A method of embodiments of the invention includes causing a test execution script to run a test based on a first configuration setting as defined in the test execution script. The test execution script is executed in a script execution environment utilizing a software framework of a computer system. The method further includes modifying, in runtime, the first configuration setting into a second configuration setting, and causing, in runtime, the test execution script to rerun the test based on the second configuration setting. |
| US09009667B2 |
Application server that supports multiple component models
A Java-based application server supports runtime operations of components that belong to multiple component models. The components may cross-reference each other. A component of a source component model can be integrated into a target component model to form an integrated component. State transitions of the integrated component can be managed according to the target component model with reference to the libraries of the source component model. The integrated component can be installed in the application server for execution by a Java virtual machine. |
| US09009666B1 |
Systems and methods for testing software and for storing and tracking test assets with the software
A test for a piece of software may be created, and stored with the software. The software and the test may be stored in a code repository, where the test appears in a dependency graph, and is subject to version tracking, in a manner similar to other components of the software. These mechanisms may be used to determine whether a test is current relative to the software component that the test is used to evaluate. Tests may be developed by the software developers, by test developers, or by anyone else. Tests may be specified in a generic format, such as an eXtensible Markup Language (XML) format that meets some schema. The generic format test may be converted into a script that is usable with various script engines, thereby allowing tests to be developed in a test-engine-independent manner. |
| US09009659B2 |
Method and system for displaying context-based completion values in an integrated development environment for asset management software
A method includes: displaying an editor of an integrated development environment executed by a computing system; receiving an input command from a user; detecting existence or absence of text preceding a cursor position in the editor; identifying at least one completion attribute, the at least one attribute being based on content of text preceding the cursor position if existence of text is detected, or the editor if absence of text is detected; transmitting the identified at least one attribute to a server configured to execute asset management software; receiving a plurality of completion values from the server based on the identified at least one attribute; storing the received plurality of completion values; and displaying, for selection by the user, the plurality of completion values at the cursor position in the editor. |
| US09009658B2 |
Component based software system
A computer implemented model-driven method to generate platform specific code for a user interface is disclosed. In one embodiment, the method includes, capturing customer requirements of the software component in a schema, modeling business-software architecture of the software component in a first level of the schema, modeling technical architecture of the software system from the modeled business-software architecture in a second level of the schema, defining events in the schema that connect the first level and the second level of the schema, defining links in the schema that represent interactions between the user interfaces, defining integration services in the schema for each of the events, mapping each element in the first level to a corresponding one of the elements in the second level using the events, links, and integration services in the schema, loading the schema of the software component into a code generation repository. |
| US09009657B2 |
Component-oriented architecture for web mashups
A component-oriented web mashup system and method for communicating between component-oriented Web gadgets to facilitate secure Web mashups. Embodiments of the system and method redefine the traditional definition of gadget to mean a Web component having a verifiable controlled communication channel (a CompoWeb gadget). A CompoWeb gadget is created and defined using new HTML tags and global script objects and functions that extend the functions of the browser. CompoWeb gadget content is treated as a component that is isolated from other gadgets and frames by a browser, and only those allowed access can view data and code therein. Called functions of a CompoWeb gadget are run in the callee's environment instead of the caller's environment. This adds security, because all the requesting CompoWeb gadget receives is the run result. Embodiments of the system and method also include delayed binding of CompoWeb gadgets, such that binding is performed at run time. |
| US09009656B2 |
Source code analysis archival adapter for structured data mining
Embodiments of the present invention address deficiencies of the art in respect to code reuse management and provide a method, system and computer program product for source code archival adapter for structured data mining In one embodiment of the invention, a method for adapting archived source code for structured data mining for source code reuse can be provided. The method can include parsing source code to identify individual classification elements within the source code, generating a markup language formatted set of code constructs corresponding to the classification elements, and storing the markup language formatted set of code constructs in a source code archive. |
| US09009651B2 |
System and method for management of a program throughout its lifecycle in an organization
A system for facilitating management of one or more programs throughout their lifecycle in an organization is provided. The system comprises a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) module to create one or more programs, an Order Management System (OMS) module to create one or more tracks, and a program management module to create one or more projects. The system further comprises a resource allocation module for allocating resources for executing the one or more programs. The system further comprises a finance budgeting module for budgeting revenue, costs and profitability of the one or more programs. The system further comprises a program module that displays details of the one or more programs, the one or more tracks, and the one or more projects to one or more authorized users. The system further comprises a central repository to store data associated with the one or more programs. |
| US09009650B2 |
Generating a semantic graph that allows a user to intelligently and efficiently connect with people and assets involved in projects
A method, system and computer program product for intelligently and efficiently connecting with people and assets involved in projects. Semantic graphs for different projects or different versions of the same project are generated based on resources (e.g., templates, documents) within these projects or versions of the same project. Each semantic graph builds a relationship among the entities (e.g., development processes) of the particular project in question. The differences between these semantic graphs is illustrated in a single unified semantic graph. The single unified semantic graph highlights the different entities that were used in these projects as well as highlights the different personnel assigned to the same entities in these projects or versions of the same project. In this manner, a user is able to quickly identify the difference processes and personnel involved in the different projects or different versions of the same project. |
| US09009647B2 |
Methods and systems for lithography calibration using a mathematical model for a lithographic process
A method of efficient optical and resist parameters calibration based on simulating imaging performance of a lithographic process utilized to image a target design having a plurality of features. The method includes the steps of determining a function for generating a simulated image, where the function accounts for process variations associated with the lithographic process; and generating the simulated image utilizing the function, where the simulated image represents the imaging result of the target design for the lithographic process. Systems and methods for calibration of lithographic processes whereby a polynomial fit is calculated for a nominal configuration of the optical system and which can be used to estimate critical dimensions for other configurations. |
| US09009640B1 |
Automatic computation of transfer functions
Technologies pertaining to the automatic computation of transfer functions for a physical system are described herein. The physical system is one of an electrical system, a mechanical system, an electromechanical system, an electrochemical system, or an electromagnetic system. A netlist in the form of a matrix comprises data that is indicative of elements in the physical system, values for the elements in the physical system, and structure of the physical system. Transfer functions for the physical system are computed based upon the netlist. |
| US09009639B2 |
Method and system for enhanced integrated circuit layout
An integrated circuit (IC) design method includes providing a design layout of the IC and placing a first cell and a second cell into the design layout. The second cell is a mirror of the first cell. The method further includes dividing the first cell into a first plurality of segments and dividing the second cell into a second plurality of segments. A third cell is formed by connecting a first portion of the first plurality of segments with a first portion of the second plurality of segments. A fourth cell is formed by connecting a second portion of the first plurality of segments with a second portion of the second plurality of segments. The first, second, third and fourth cells each have substantially the same function. |
| US09009633B2 |
Method of correcting assist feature
A method of correcting assist features includes the following steps. At first, a first layout pattern is received by a computer system, and the first layout pattern is split into a plurality of first regions. Subsequently, a plurality of assist features are added into the first layout pattern to form a second layout pattern, wherein at least one of the assist features neighboring any one of the edges of the first regions is defined as a selected pattern. Then, the second layout pattern is split into a plurality of second regions. Afterwards, a check step is performed on the second region including the selected pattern, and the second layout pattern is corrected to form a corrected second layout pattern. |
| US09009631B2 |
Lithography system and method for storing positional data of a target
The invention relates to a lithography system for patterning a target, said system comprising a feedback control system comprising an actuator for displacing the target, a measurement system for measuring a position of said target, and a control unit adapted for controlling the actuator based on the position measured by the measurement system, said feedback control system having a first latency being a maximum latency between measuring and controlling the actuator based on said measuring, a storage system for storing the measured positions, comprising a receive buffer and a storage unit with a second latency being an average latency between receiving measured positions in the receive buffer and storing said measured positions in the storage unit, wherein the first latency is at least an order of magnitude smaller than the second latency, the feedback control system comprising a unidirectional connection for transmitting said measured positions to the storage system. |
| US09009628B2 |
Method and system for processing information fed via an inputting means
A method for processing information fed by a user via an inputting means is provided. The method enables, firstly, receiving a set of directional elements via a user interface. The set of directional elements represent textual or non-textual information fed by the user. Secondly, the method enables interpreting the set of directional elements. The set of directional elements are identified as a combination of motion of the inputting means on the user interface and one or more inputs from the inputting means. Further, the method enables converting the directional elements into a sequence and translating the sequence into the textual or non-textual information using a mapping format. The mapping format corresponds to a predetermined mapping format or a new mapping format. Finally, the method enables rendering the textual or non-textual information on the user interface in the form of one or more symbols. |
| US09009627B2 |
Electronic apparatus, program, and control method for displaying access authority for data files
An electronic apparatus includes a display unit, a sensor, and a controller. The display unit includes a screen. The sensor is configured to detect a user operation with respect to the screen and output a signal corresponding to the user operation. The controller is configured to cause a data icon and an access authority editing icon for editing an access authority of data related to the data icon to be displayed on the screen, judge a user operation with respect to the access authority editing icon based on the signal from the sensor, and change a state of the access authority of the data related to the data icon according to the user operation. |
| US09009625B2 |
Real-time menu architecture
A system and method for implementing a dynamic menu characterized by a real-time menu architecture. An example method includes determining a menu structure, with reference to a data set, for use with user interface software. A menu is then displayed, wherein the menu includes menu items arranged according to the menu structure. An initial drop-down menu list of the menu includes one or more of the menu items. Each menu item is associated with a data object of the data set. A signal is generated when a change is made to a data set corresponding to a menu item. The menu is then updated based on the signal. In an illustrative embodiment, the example method further includes employing a browser to trigger implementation of the method. The browser communicates with a web server, which communicates with an application that is adapted to analyze the data set and associated data structure and provide an update in response thereto via, the signal, to the web server. The web server includes software for enabling the browser to render an updated menu or graphical representation thereof. |
| US09009624B2 |
Keyboard gestures for character string replacement
A computing device includes at least one processor and at least one module. The module may determine and output for display a list of one or more suggested character strings based on a first input received at a presence-sensitive display. The module may further receive an indication of a second user input detected at the presence-sensitive display. The module may further determine whether the second user input includes a replacement gesture, wherein the replacement gesture includes a first gesture in a substantially leftward direction and a second gesture in a substantially rightward direction. Responsive to determining that the received gesture input includes the replacement gesture, the module may output for display in place of the displayed text, a character string chosen from the list of one or more suggested character strings. |
| US09009623B2 |
Custom ordering of an article
A manufacturer or other retailer provides a consumer with a graphical user interface for customizing an article. The graphical user interface includes an analog-style selection control that allows a user to select at least one characteristic of a feature of the article. With this type of selection control, a consumer need not select a particular control value or designate a combination of control values to choose a characteristic for a feature of an article to be custom-manufactured. Instead, the consumer need only select a position or value relative to a range of positions or values provided by the analog-style selection control. |
| US09009618B2 |
Three-dimensional visualization of status and progress of a process
A method of tracking status and progress of a process is presented and described herein. The method provides a plurality of markers that can be visualized in three dimensions, where each of the plurality of markers represents a respective trackable event. The markers are arranged in a three-dimensional configuration that visually indicates current status of a plurality of trackable events corresponding to the plurality of markers, and the three-dimensional configuration is updated over time to visually indicate an updated status of the plurality of trackable events. The markers and the three-dimensional configuration may be realized using a tangible model or a virtual model that is generated and rendered on a display element. |
| US09009617B2 |
Decision aiding user interfaces
Various embodiments include at least one of a system, method, and software providing at least one user interface allowing a user to rapidly choose an optimal item, as represented by multi-attribute data objects, among a set of comparable items. One example method embodiment includes receiving a dataset having a plurality of data objects with a plurality of data object attributes. The method further includes generating a view of the data objects within a user interface on a display device. Such a view may include a representation of at least a subset of the plurality of data objects along a first axis with data objects positioned in proximity to a first pole of the first axis relative to importance of the data objects according to data object attribute criterion. The view may also include a representation of data object attributes including at least two designated as data object attribute criterion. |
| US09009615B2 |
Portal for submitting business metadata for services
A user interface display provides access to an analysis portal that receives customized code for a business data system. The code is provided through the user interface display to a cloud based service that analyzes the customized code based on the types of services requested by the user. A report is generated, based on the analysis, and displayed to the user. |
| US09009612B2 |
Devices, methods, and graphical user interfaces for accessibility using a touch-sensitive surface
A method is performed by an accessible electronic device with a display and a touch-sensitive surface. The method includes: displaying a plurality of user interface elements on the display, wherein a current focus is on a first user interface element; detecting a first finger gesture on the touch-sensitive surface, wherein the first finger gesture is independent of contacting a location on the touch-sensitive surface that corresponds to a second user interface element; and, in response to detecting the first finger gesture: changing the current focus from the first user interface element in the plurality of user interface elements to the second user interface element in the plurality of user interface elements; and outputting accessibility information associated with the second user interface element. |
| US09009610B2 |
Method and apparatus for managing real estate data
A system and method for managing real estate data using a mobile device, such as a tablet computer. The data is displayed in a manner that facilitates quick analysis suing a mobile device. User interfaces, processing, and other features provide a mobile user with information required to make intelligent decisions on real estate transactions. A tour can be constructed based on a subset of data returned as a result of a database query. |
| US09009600B2 |
Filter module for a browser history
An embodiment relates generally to a method of filtering for a browser. The method includes providing a browser with a browser history function, the browser history function configured to store each site web page visited and stored in time sequential order as a browser history. The method also includes providing a filter module for the browser; and applying the filter module to the browser history function to eliminate intermediary web pages from entering the browser history. |
| US09009595B2 |
User manipulation of video feed to computer screen regions
A process for dividing an electronic screen, such as a television or computer screen, into discrete, independently operating sub-screens includes the step of electronically linking the screen to a screen operating system. This operating system is capable of selectively dividing the screen into two or more sub-screens which support audio or visual data in an active mode simultaneously and independently. This is performed through the use of a plurality of data access lines which provide data simultaneously to the two or more sub-screens such that the data can be simultaneously accessed and manipulated in more than one sub-screen such that each sub-screen actively supports data generated from a dedicated software program. Such invention may be implemented in customized encoded hardware or a combination of hardware and software. |
| US09009587B2 |
Browser locking tool to control navigation away from a current webpage to a target webpage
A browser locking tool for an information handling system (IHS) may prevent data loss on a webpage. The browser locking tool may prevent navigation away from the webpage by both browser level navigation controls and webpage level navigation controls. Alternatively, the browser locking tool may allow navigation away from the webpage when the navigation should not cause data loss. |
| US09009586B2 |
Knowledgebase article authoring system, apparatus and method
A method and apparatus for authoring an article entry comprising a plurality of data fields from at least one electronic document and storing the article in a knowledgebase. The apparatus comprises an authoring applet displayed on an electronic display, the applet comprising a plurality of panes, one of each of the panes associated with a respective one of the plurality of article data fields, wherein the selection device is used to highlight a text snippet from the at least one electronic document by moving a cursor to a start of the text snippet, depressing and holding a user operable selection device button while moving the cursor to an end of the text snippet wherein on release of the button the highlighted text snippet is copied to an active pane as a pane content and for subsequent editing and publishing to the knowledgebase. |
| US09009584B2 |
Peeking into the Z-dimensional drawer
Described herein are methods and systems for analyzing multidimensional data that use tangential exploration of data via a third or Z-dimension to the current two-dimensional view. The tangential exploration allows higher dimensionality to be explored without causing visual clutter. |
| US09009582B2 |
Converting spreadsheet applications to web-based applications
A networked version of a spreadsheet application can be automatically created from an existing “conventional” spreadsheet. In one implementation, a server may obtain a data file, where the data file represents a networked version of a spreadsheet application that was converted from the “conventional” application and the data file defines characteristics of the networked version of the spreadsheet application including logic and interactivity attributes of cells in the networked version of the spreadsheet application. A remote request may be received from a client to access the networked version of the spreadsheet application. In response, the server may transmit a document to the client that represents a portion of the networked version of the spreadsheet application that the interactivity attributes specify as being displayable to the client. |
| US09009581B2 |
System and method for dynamic content insertion from the internet into a multimedia work
According to a preferred aspect of the instant invention, there is provided a system and method for supplementing a multimedia work with content from the Internet. The instant method utilizes a combined multimedia editing and browsing functionality in one multimedia editing program. The instant invention will make it possible for casual users to be able to extract multimedia data from a website and include that data in a project. Multimedia content that is not supported by the editing component will be automatically converted to a format that is supported. |
| US09009579B2 |
Address translation checking device, central processing unit, and address translation checking method
An information processing apparatus includes an MMU that translates between a virtual address and a physical address on the basis of a translation table for translation between physical addresses that are addresses in physical memory and virtual addresses that are addresses in virtual memory. Stored in a RAM are page table information indicating a page table, as well as error detection information attached to the page table information for detecting the presence or absence of an error in translation between a virtual address and a physical address performed by the MMU. A CPU detects the presence or absence of an error in translation between a virtual address and a physical address performed by the MMU on the basis of the error detection information. |
| US09009577B1 |
Circuitry and method for forward error correction
A decoding circuit is disclosed that includes a decoding pipeline configured to receive a data block that includes a plurality of data symbols, encoded with a Reed-Solomon (RS) FEC coding thereafter further encoded by a second FEC coding. The data block also includes a first and second sets of FEC datagrams for correcting received words of the plurality of data symbols encoded with the RS FEC coding and second FEC coding, respectively. Each decoding stage of the pipeline is configured to decode the plurality of data symbols using the first and second sets of FEC datagrams. A post-processing circuit connected to an output of the pipelines is configured to perform bitwise RS decoding of ones of the plurality of data symbols in error. |
| US09009575B2 |
Rebuilding a data revision in a dispersed storage network
A method begins by a processing module identifying a set of encoded data slices that have been created in accordance with a dispersed storage error encoding function having a decode threshold equal to or less than half of a number encoded data slices in the set of encoded data slices. The method continues with the processing module identifying a first sub-set of encoded data slices having a non-current revision level and identifying a second sub-set of encoded data slices having a more-current revision level. When a number of encoded data slices of the second sub-set of encoded data slices is greater than or equal to the decode threshold and when a number of encoded data slices of the first sub-set of encoded data slices is less than the decode threshold, the method continues with the processing module facilitating rebuilding of the first sub-set of encoded data slices. |
| US09009574B2 |
Identification and mitigation of hard errors in memory systems
Embodiments provide a method comprising estimating a first set of log-likelihood ratio (LLR) values for a plurality of memory cells of a memory; based on the first set of LLR values, performing a first error correcting code (ECC) decoding operation; in response to determining a failure of the first ECC decoding operation, generating, by adjusting the first set of LLR values, a second set of LLR values for the plurality of memory cells; and based on the second set of LLR values, performing a second ECC decoding operation. |
| US09009568B2 |
Sensing parameter management in non-volatile memory storage system to compensate for broken word lines
Disclosed is a technology to change the parameters by which a read operation is performed in a block with a broken word line. The first method is for reading a broken word line, which may involve changing the voltage on word lines neighboring the broken word line to let the voltage on the broken word line reach the appropriate magnitude through capacitive coupling between word lines. The first method may also involve increasing the time delay before memory cells connected to the broken word line are sensed to allow the voltage on the word line to settle due to increased RC delay. The second method is for reading an unbroken word line in a block with a broken word line, which involves increasing the time delay before memory cells connected to the unbroken word line are sensed while raising the voltages on the word lines neighboring the broken word line. |
| US09009565B1 |
Systems and methods for mapping for solid-state memory
Apparatus and methods provide relatively low uncorrectable bit error rates, low write amplification, long life, fast and efficient retrieval, and efficient storage density such that a solid-state drive (SSD) can be reliably implemented using various types of memory cells, including relatively inexpensive multi-level cell flash. One embodiment intelligently coordinates remapping of bad blocks with error correction code control, which eliminates the tables used to avoid bad blocks. |
| US09009563B2 |
Cyclic redundancy check circuit and semiconductor device having the cyclic redundancy check circuit
An object of the present invention is to provide a CRC circuit with more simple structure and low power consumption. The CRC circuit includes a first shift register to a p-th shift register, a first EXOR to a (p−1)th EXOR, and a switching circuit. A data signal, a select signal, and an output of a last stage of the p-th shift register are inputted to the switching circuit, and the switching circuit switches a first signal or a second signal in response to the select signal to be outputted. |
| US09009562B2 |
Providing memory protection using a modified error correction code
Data and a corresponding initial error correction code is written to a first portion of a memory device. Based on an error in the first data and the initial error correction code, the initial error correction code is modified. |
| US09009560B1 |
Apparatus for encoding and decoding using sparse matrices
An apparatus includes a circuit configured to at least one of (i) encode first data to produce encoded data or (ii) decode second data to produce decoded data. The circuit is configured to operate according to a predetermined matrix. The predetermined matrix is represented by a two-dimensional grid of elements. Each element of the predetermined matrix labeled with a hyphen corresponds to a zero matrix. Each element of the predetermined matrix labeled with a number corresponds to a respective cyclic-permutation matrix. |
| US09009557B2 |
Systems and methods for reusing a layered decoder to yield a non-layered result
The present inventions are related to systems and methods for data processing, and more particularly to systems and methods for performing data decoding. |
| US09009556B2 |
Error correction and recovery in chained memory architectures
Electronic apparatus, systems, and methods to construct and operate the electronic apparatus and/or systems include a memory unit configured to receive data flow from two directions. The memory unit can be configured serially in a chain with other memory units. The chain can include an error check and correcting unit (ECC). Additional apparatus, systems, and methods are disclosed. |
| US09009554B2 |
IC class T0-T2 taps with and without topology selection logic
Topology discovery of a target system having a plurality of components coupled with a scan topology may be performed by driving a low logic value on the data input signal and a data output signal of the scan topology. An input data value and an output data value for each of the plurality of components is sampled and recorded. A low logic value is then scanned through the scan path and recorded at each component. The scan topology may be determined based on the recorded data values and the recorded scan values. |
| US09009553B2 |
Scan chain configuration for test-per-clock based on circuit topology
Aspects of the invention relate to generating scan chain configurations for test-per-clock based on circuit topology. With various implementations of the invention, weight vectors between scan chains in a circuit are first determined. Based on the weight vectors, a scan chain configuration is generated by assigning some scan chains in the scan chains to a stimuli group and some other scan chains in the scan chains to a compacting group. Here, the stimuli group comprises scan chains to operate in a shifting-launching mode, and the compacting group comprises scan chains to operate in a capturing-compacting-shifting mode. |
| US09009551B2 |
Adapter circuitry resetting scan test logic to mandatory feature set
A method comprises a system comprising a host device coupled to a first remote device actively operating according to a state diagram that the host device and all remote devices follow during operation of the system. The method further comprises powering up a second remote device while the host device and first remote device are actively operating according to the state diagram. The second remote device waits for a synchronization point sequence. Upon detecting the synchronization point sequence, the second remote device implements a predetermined feature set and synchronizes itself to the state diagram at a common point as the host device and first remote device. |
| US09009550B2 |
pBIST engine with distributed data logging
A programmable Built In Self Test (pBIST) system used to test embedded memories where the memories under test are incorporated in a plurality of sub chips not integrated with the pBIST module. A distributed Data Logger is incorporated into each sub chip, communicating with the pBIST over serial and a compressed parallel data paths. |
| US09009548B2 |
Memory testing of three dimensional (3D) stacked memory
A method includes reading, at a memory controller, data from a first dynamic random-access memory (DRAM) die layer of a DRAM stack. The method also includes writing the data to a second DRAM die layer of the DRAM stack. The method further includes sending a request to a test engine to test the first DRAM die layer after writing the data to the second DRAM die layer. |
| US09009543B2 |
Computer systems that acquire a plurality of statuses of non-normally operating hard disk drives
A computer system includes multiple hard disk devices, a hard disk device backplane, an information management unit, a middle backplane and multiple motherboards. The hard disk device backplane is coupled to and configured to manage the hard disk devices. The information management unit, coupled to the hard disk device backplane, is configured to acquire statuses of the hard disk devices. The middle backplane is coupled to the hard disk device backplane. The motherboards, coupled to the information management unit and the middle backplane, respectively have a baseboard management controller. When the operating system is loaded for operation on the motherboards, the baseboard management controllers are coupled to the hard disk device backplane via the middle backplane to acquire the statuses of the hard disk devices. When the motherboards are not operated normally, the baseboard management controllers acquire the statuses of the hard disk devices via the information management unit. |
| US09009541B2 |
Efficient trace capture buffer management
A system and method for efficiently storing traces of multiple components in an embedded system. A system-on-a-chip (SOC) includes a trace unit for collecting and storing trace history, bus event statistics, or both. The SOC may transfer cache coherent messages across multiple buses between a shared memory and a cache coherent controller. The trace unit includes a trace buffer with multiple physical partitions assigned to subsets of the multiple buses. The number of partitions is less than the number of multiple buses. One or more trace instructions may cause a trace history, trace bus event statistics, local time stamps and a global time-base value to be stored in a physical partition within the trace buffer. |
| US09009540B2 |
Memory subsystem command bus stress testing
A memory subsystem includes logic buffer coupled to a command bus between a memory controller and a memory device. The logic buffer detects that the memory controller places the command bus in a state where the memory controller does not drive the command bus with a valid executable memory device command. In response to detecting the state of the command bus, the logic buffer generates a signal pattern and injects the signal pattern on the command bus after a scheduler of the memory controller to drive the command bus with the signal pattern. |
| US09009537B2 |
Diagnostic data capture in a computing environment
A multithreaded computing environment for capturing diagnostic data includes initiating a trap delay component having a delay threshold in response to a monitor determining that the computing environment is in a predetermined invalid state. The multithreaded computing environment for capturing diagnostic data also includes recording, by a first thread, diagnostic data for the computing environment. The trap delay component delays the step of recording diagnostic data until the monitor determines that the predetermined invalid state has been repeated for at least one of a total count or a period corresponding to a predetermined indicator that it is a state other than a transient state of the computing environment. The transient state corresponds to a transition of the computing environment by one or more other threads from a first valid state to a second valid state. |
| US09009535B2 |
Anomaly detection at the level of run time data structures
A useful embodiment of the invention is directed to a method associated with a computer program comprising one or more basic blocks, wherein the program defines and uses multiple data structures, such as the list of all customers of a bank along with their account information. The method includes identifying one or more invariants, wherein each invariant is associated with one of the data structures. The method further includes determining at specified times whether an invariant has been violated. Responsive to detecting a violation of one of the invariants, the detected violation is flagged as an anomaly. |
| US09009531B2 |
Memory subsystem data bus stress testing
A memory subsystem includes a test signal generator of a memory controller that generates a test data signal in response to the memory controller receiving a test transaction. The test transaction indicates one or more I/O operations to perform on an associated memory device. The test signal generator can generate data signals from various different pattern generators. The memory controller scheduler schedules the test data signal pattern, and sends it to the memory device. The memory device can then execute I/O operation(s) to implement the test transaction. The memory controller can read back data written to a specific address of the memory device and compare the read back data with expected data. When the read back data and the expected data do not match, the memory controller can record an error. The error can include the specific address of the error, the specific data, and/or encoded data. |
| US09009526B2 |
Rebuilding drive data
A method that includes identifying an inaccessible portion of a first disk drive. The method also includes regenerating data corresponding to the inaccessible portion of the first disk drive and storing the regenerated data to a second disk drive. The method also includes copying data from an accessible portion of the first disk drive to the second disk drive. |
| US09009525B1 |
Methods and systems for NAS device pairing and mirroring
One embodiment is a system, comprising a first NAS device, a second NAS device. The first and second NAS devices may be configured to be paired with one another to enable an ongoing secure exchange of content (e.g., files, pictures, movies, audio recordings) and NAS settings (e.g., RAID settings, backup schedules, etc.) between the first and second NAS devices across a network. According to one embodiment, through this ongoing secure exchange of content and NAS settings, the second NAS device may become and may be thereafter maintained as a mirror of the first NAS device, such that the second NAS device may be maintained as a drop-in physical and functional replacement for the first NAS device in the event of a failure of the first NAS device. |
| US09009521B2 |
Automated failure recovery of subsystems in a management system
Systems and methods for automated failure recovery of subsystems of a management system are described. The subsystems are built and modeled as services, and their management, specifically their failure recovery, is done in a manner similar to that of services and resources managed by the management system. The management system consists of a microkernel, service managers, and management services. Each service, whether a managed service or a management service, is managed by a service manager. The service manager itself is a service and so is in turn managed by the microkernel. Both managed services and management services are monitored via in-band and out-of-band mechanisms, and the performance metrics and alerts are transported through an event system to the appropriate service manager. If a service fails, the service manager takes policy-based remedial steps including, for example, restarting the failed service. |
| US09009519B2 |
Timing control device and control method thereof
Provided is a timing control device including: a storage unit that stores multiple pieces of timing control information including identification information and expected value data; a first selector that selectively outputs any of the multiple pieces of timing control information; a second selector that selectively outputs any of data items output from data output devices based on the identification information; a reference data generation unit that generates reference data based on expected value data and a data item output from the second selector in synchronization with a switching of the timing control information; a comparator that compares the reference data with the data item output from the second selector and outputs a coincidence signal when the reference data and the data item coincide with each other; and an output control unit that outputs a timing signal according to the coincidence signal. |
| US09009517B2 |
Embedded voltage regulator trace
One embodiment of the present invention relates to a power and trace profiling system. The system includes a microcontroller based device having a voltage regulator. Additionally, the microcontroller based device is configured to receive a supply power. A system analyzer is configured to receive power profiles from the power profiler and trace profiles from the system profiler. The system analyzer is configured to identify power reduction modifications based on the power profiles and the trace profiles. |
| US09009511B2 |
Power switch system and method thereof
A power switch system for a computer system includes a power supply module for generating a system operational power source and a power transistor driving source according to an external power source, a control module for generating a control signal according to a feedback signal, and a power switch module coupled to the power supply module and a control module for adjustably outputting the system operational power source and the power transistor driving source to a power source module, wherein the feedback signal is utilized to determine an operational mode of the computer system to be a high performance operational mode or a power saving operational mode. |
| US09009501B2 |
Power supply control circuit
A power supply control circuit for an electronic device includes an input/output (I/O) microchip, a southbridge microchip and a power management unit. The control circuit is electrically connected to the I/O microchip and the southbridge microchip to output a driving voltage to the I/O microchip and the southbridge microchip. The power management unit includes a power management microchip electrically connected to the control circuit, the I/O microchip and the southbridge microchip. The power management microchip outputs a power on/off control signal to the southbridge microchip to power on/off the electronic device, and controls the control circuit to provide a driving voltage to the I/O microchip and the southbridge microchip when the electronic device is powered on and controls the control circuit to stop providing the driving voltage to the I/O microchip and the southbridge microchip when the electronic device is powered off. |
| US09009496B2 |
Method and apparatus for implementing secure and selectively deniable file storage
A method for writing data to a memory device comprising a first and a second memory device the first memory device comprises data blocks numbered with block numbers and the second memory device comprises at least one reference calculated from a data block digest and its physical block number. The invention comprises at least the steps: calculating the digest from at least part of the data block content, receiving at least one physical block number, to which the data block contents in the first memory device is stored, encrypting the data block content, storing the data block content to the first memory device to the position pointed by the physical block number, and storing or issuing a command to save the digest, or a number derived from it, and at least one said physical block number to the second memory device. A system, computer program, and server are also presented. |
| US09009495B2 |
High speed cryptographic combining system, and method for programmable logic devices
A system, apparatus, method, and/or computer program product is disclosed for decreasing side channel signal leakage and increasing speed of cryptographic combining operations. An exemplary method may be incorporated, in an exemplary embodiment, in an exemplary programmable logic device (PLD) such as, e.g., but not limited to, a field programmable gate array (FPGA) implementation of at least one cryptographic combining process, or may include an application specific integrated circuit (ASIC) design where cryptographic combining with minimal side channel signal leakage and high speed are provided. |
| US09009491B2 |
Distributed storage network and method for encrypting and decrypting data using hash functions
A DS processing unit includes a grid module and a DSN interface. The grid module is operable to encrypt a data segment and to decrypt an encrypted data segment. To encrypt the data segment, the grid module partitions the data segment into portions and encrypts the portions using encryption keys generated from other portions to produce encrypted portions. The grid module then dispersed storage error encodes the encrypted portions to produce a set of encoded data slices, which the DSN interface outputs to a DSN. The DSN interface also receives a set of encoded data slices, which the grid module disperse storage error decodes to produce the encrypted data segment. The grid module then partitions the encrypted data segment into encrypted data portions and decrypts the encrypted data portions using decryption keys generated from other encrypted data portions to produce decrypted portions of a recovered data segment. |
| US09009490B2 |
Implementing dynamic banding of self encrypting drive
A method and controller for implementing dynamic banding of a storage device, such as a Self Encrypting Device (SED) in a data storage array, and a design structure on which the subject controller circuit resides are provided. The controller dynamically identifies band boundaries for the storage device at the time a data storage array is created, when one or more devices are added into an existing data storage array, and when a replacement device is rebuilt into an exposed array, or an array with a failed device. A storage device band definition is provided based upon the dynamically identified band boundaries for the storage device. |
| US09009482B2 |
Forensic marking using a common customization function
Methods, systems, and apparatus are disclosed which enable flexible insertion of forensic watermarks into a digital content signal using a common customization function. The common customization function flexibly employs a range of different marking techniques that are applicable to a wide range of forensic marking schemes. These customization functions are also applicable to pre-processing and post-processing operations that may be necessary for enhancing the security and transparency of the embedded marks, as well as improving the computational efficiency of the marking process. The common customization function supports a well-defined set of operations specific to the task of forensic mark customization that can be carried out with a modest and preferably bounded effort on a wide range of devices. This is accomplished through the use of a generic transformation technique for use as a “customization” step for producing versions of content forensically marked with any of a multiplicity of mark messages. |
| US09009480B1 |
Techniques for handshake-free encrypted communication using public key bootstrapping
Techniques for handshake-free encrypted communication using public key bootstrapping are described. An apparatus may comprise a key component, a message component, and a network component. The key component may be operative to generate a symmetric encryption key. The message component operative to construct a message, the constructed message comprising a key section and a data section, the key section encrypted using an asymmetric encryption key and comprising the symmetric encryption key, the data section encrypted using the symmetric encryption key. The network component may be operative to transmit the message to a device. Other embodiments are described and claimed. |
| US09009479B2 |
Cryptographic techniques for a communications network
Techniques are described for enabling authentication and/or key agreement between communications network stations and service networks. The techniques described include the negotiation and use of a cryptographic primitive shared between a service network and a home environment of a station. The techniques described also feature a key usage indicator, such as a sequence number, maintained by the service network and a station. Comparison of the key usage indicators can, for example, permit efficient authentication of the service network. |
| US09009474B2 |
Method and system for detecting data modification within computing device
A method and apparatus for detecting data modification in a layered operating system is disclosed. Outbound content indicators at different layers are compared to detect potential outbound data modifications. Likewise, inbound content indicators at different layers are compared to detect potential inbound data modifications. Content indicators include checksum, cryptographic hash, signature, and fingerprint indicators. Embodiments of the present invention enable detection of data modifications across an operating system's kernel and user mode spaces, prevention of modified outbound data from reaching a network, prevention of modified input data from reaching a user application, and detection of malware and faults within an operating system. |
| US09009468B1 |
System for transaction authentication
Systems and methods for secure transaction authorization are provided. An emulator is instantiated on a host device and configured to emulate an integrated circuit having a different instruction set than an integrated circuit of the host device, and a guest operating system executing on the emulated integrated circuit is configured to communicate with a host operating system of the host device through an emulated network interface of the emulator. Under control of one or more guest operating system processes executing on the emulated integrated circuit, a request is received over a first secure communication channel from an application executing on the host operating system to authorize a transaction. Further, based on the received request, user input is obtained from an input device of the host device and transformed into verification data. A different second secure communication channel is established to a remote system through the emulated network interface, and a request is sent over the second channel to the remote system to authorize the transaction based on the verification data. An authorization result is received from the remote system over the second secure communication channel, and a response is sent to the application over the first secure communication channel indicating the authorization result. |
| US09009461B2 |
Selectively performing man in the middle decryption
A HTTP request addressed to a first resource on a second device outside the network is received from a first device within the network. The HTTP request is redirected to a third device within the network. A first encrypted connection is established between the first device and the third device, and a second encrypted connection between the third device and the second device. The third device retrieves the first resource from the second device. The first resource is modified to change pointers within the first resource to point to location in a domain associated with the third device within the network. The third device serves, to the first device, the second resource. |
| US09009460B2 |
Node computing data encryption method
A data encryption method, adapted to a node computing device in a cloud server system comprises following steps. A primary data is received. A dimension of an encrypted matrix is computed. An encryption length is computed, and data segments matching the encryption length are extracted from the primary data sequentially according to the encryption length. A plurality of encrypted segments is obtained by encrypting the extracted data segments respectively through the encrypted matrix. |
| US09009459B1 |
Systems and methods for neutralizing file-format-specific exploits included within files contained within electronic communications
A computer-implemented method for neutralizing file-format-specific exploits contained within electronic communications may include (1) identifying an electronic communication, (2) identifying at least one file contained within the electronic communication, and then (3) neutralizing any file-format-specific exploits contained within the file. In one example, neutralizing any file-format-specific exploits contained within the file may include applying at least one file-format-conversion operation to the file. Additionally or alternatively, neutralizing any file-format-specific exploits contained within the file may include constructing a sterile version of the file that selectively omits at least a portion of any exploitable content contained within the file. Various other methods, systems, and computer-readable media are also disclosed. |
| US09009450B2 |
Mixed operand size instruction processing for execution of indirect addressing load instruction specifying registers for different size operands
A data processing system 2 includes a processor core 4 and a memory 6. The processor core 4 includes processing circuitry 12, 14, 16, 18, 26 controlled by control signals generated by decoder circuitry 24 which decodes program instructions. The program instructions include mixed operand size instructions (either load/store instructions or arithmetic instructions) which have a first input operand of a first operand size and a second input operand of a second input operand size where the second operand size is smaller than the first operand size. The processing performed first converts the second operand so as to have the first operand size. The processing then generates a third operand using as inputs the first operand of the first operand size and the second operand now converted to have the first operand size. |
| US09009446B2 |
Using broadcast-based TLB sharing to reduce address-translation latency in a shared-memory system with electrical interconnect
The disclosed embodiments provide a system that uses broadcast-based TLB-sharing techniques to reduce address-translation latency in a shared-memory multiprocessor system with two or more nodes that are connected by an electrical interconnect. During operation, a first node receives a memory operation that includes a virtual address. Upon determining that one or more TLB levels of the first node will miss for the virtual address, the first node uses the electrical interconnect to broadcast a TLB request to one or more additional nodes of the shared-memory multiprocessor in parallel with scheduling a speculative page-table walk for the virtual address. If the first node receives a TLB entry from another node of the shared-memory multiprocessor via the electrical interconnect in response to the TLB request, the first node cancels the speculative page-table walk. Otherwise, if no response is received, the first node instead waits for the completion of the page-table walk. |
| US09009445B2 |
Memory management unit speculative hardware table walk scheme
A system and method for efficiently handling translation look-aside buffer (TLB) misses. A memory management unit (MMU) detects when a given virtual address misses in each available translation-lookaside-buffer (TLB). The MMU determines whether a memory access operation associated with the given virtual address is the oldest, uncompleted memory access operation in a scheduler. If this is the case, a demand table walk (TW) request may be stored in an available entry in a TW queue. During this time, the utilization of the memory subsystem resources may be low. While a demand TW request is stored in the TW queue, subsequent speculative TW requests may be stored in the TW queue. When the TW queue does not store a demand TW request, no more entries of the TW queue may be allocated to store TW requests. |
| US09009444B1 |
System and method for LUN control management
A method, computer program product, and computing system for receiving a reservation for a LUN from Host A, wherein the LUN is defined within a data array. A lock for the LUN is defined as Host A. A write request is received for the LUN from Host B. The lock for the LUN is defined as Transitioning A to B. The write request is delayed for a defined period of time. |
| US09009443B2 |
System and method for optimized reclamation processing in a virtual tape library system
A storage management application determines that a source virtual tape requires reclamation, identifies all block addresses for active data of a source virtual tape and sorts the block addresses in an ascending order, identifies a target virtual tape which has sufficient free capacity to store the active data of said source virtual tape and the last written block address on said target virtual tape, and sends a command to the VTL-system instructing it to perform reclamation including information about said source and said target virtual tape, the sorted list of block addresses denoting active data on the source virtual tape and the starting block address on the target virtual tape. The reclamation logic references the active data host blocks of said source volume to said target virtual tape starting at said starting block address by just updating the host block to disk block mapping table. |
| US09009438B2 |
Space reclamation in multi-layered and thin provisioned storage systems
An approach to efficient space reclamation in multi-layered thinly provisioned systems. A parent storage volume is thinly provisioned, and uses one or more child storage volumes that are also thinly provisioned for storage. A reclamation command sent to the device providing the parent thinly provisioned storage volume identifies that data has been released, and that the physical storage storing that data can be placed in a free pool and used to satisfy future write requests in the parent storage volume. An identify module identifies which child storage volumes supporting the parent storage volume are thinly provisioned. The data is released at the level of the parent storage volume, and the reclamation command is sent to the child storage volumes supporting the parent storage volume and that are themselves thinly provisioned. The storage is thus released by all affected thinly provisioned storage volumes, and not just the parent storage volume that received the reclamation command. |
| US09009437B1 |
Techniques for shared data storage provisioning with thin devices
Described are techniques for performing data storage management. A first data portion is stored at a first logical address of a first device that is mapped to a first physical storage location at which the first data portion is stored. A second data portion is stored at a second logical address on a second device that is mapped to a second physical storage location at which the second data portion is stored. The first data portion is a duplicate of data contents of the second data portion and the first physical storage location is the same physical storage location as the second physical storage location. The first device and the second device are thin devices where physical storage is unallocated for at least a portion of each thin device's storage capacity at a point in time. |
| US09009436B2 |
Flushed data alignment with physical structures
A method and system are disclosed herein for performing operations on a parallel programming unit in a memory system. The parallel programming unit includes multiple physical structures (such as memory cells in a row) in the memory system that are configured to be operated on in parallel. The method and system perform a first operation on the parallel programming unit, the first operation operating on only part of the parallel programming unit and not operating on a remainder of the parallel programming unit, set a pointer to indicate at least one physical structure in the remainder of the parallel programming unit, and perform a second operation using the pointer to operate on no more than the remainder of the parallel programming unit. In this way, the method and system may realign programming to the parallel programming unit when partial writes to the parallel programming unit occur. |
| US09009427B2 |
Mirroring mechanisms for storage area networks and network based virtualization
A technique is provided for implementing online mirroring of a volume in a storage area network. A first instance of the volume is instantiated at a first port of the fiber channel fabric for enabling I/O operations to be performed at the volume. One or more mirroring procedures may be performed at the volume. In at least one implementation, the first port is able to perform first I/O operations at the volume concurrently while the mirroring procedures are being performed at the first volume. In one implementation, the mirroring procedures may be implemented at a fabric switch of the storage area network. Additionally, in at least one implementation, multiple hosts may be provided with concurrent access to the volume during the mirroring operations without serializing the access to the volume. |
| US09009426B1 |
Methods, computer readable media, and systems for optimizing cache utilization
A method of storing data on a data storage device having a cache, includes receiving, by the data storage device, a write command indicating a data portion and a range of addresses on the data storage device, the write command instructing the data storage device to write the data portion to each address in the range of addresses; and storing, in the cache, indicia that each address in the range of addresses comprises the data portion. |
| US09009424B2 |
Data placement for loss protection in a storage system
Embodiments of the invention relate to data placement for loss protection in a storage system. One embodiment includes constructing multiple logical compartments. Each logical compartment includes a placement policy including a set of storage placement rules for placement of storage symbols into a set of physical storage containers. A first logical compartment of said plurality of logical compartments is container-overlapped with respect to a second logical compartment of said plurality of logical compartments. The first logical compartment is data loss independent with respect to the second logical compartment. Each of multiple storage volumes is associated with a logical compartment. The storage symbols that represent a data stripe are placed onto physical storage containers in conformity with the placement policy associated with the logical compartment containing the data stripe. |
| US09009423B2 |
Serially connected memory having subdivided data interface
A memory system has a controller. A plurality of memory devices are serially interconnected with the controller via an n-bit data interface. The memory system is configurable in a first mode to communicate each read and write operation between the controller and the memory devices using all n bits of the data interface. The memory system is configurable in a second mode to concurrently: communicate data associated with a first operation between the controller and a first target memory device using only m bits of the data interface, where m is less than n; and communicate data associated with a second operation between the controller and a second target memory device using the remaining n-m bits of the data interface. A memory device, a memory controller, and a method are also described. |
| US09009417B2 |
Storage control apparatus and operating mode control method of storage control apparatus
It is an object to improve a reliability of a data protection for a storage control apparatus that is provided with a redundant configuration that is made of a plurality of clusters.A memory unit in each of the clusters C1 and C2 is provided with a first memory 3 having a volatile property, a battery 5 that is configured to supply an electrical power to the first memory 3, and a second memory 4 that stores data that is transferred from the first memory 3 in the case of a power outage. A control unit selects an operating mode for protecting data from a normal mode, a write through mode, and an access disable mode (a not ready state) based on a remaining power level of the battery 5. |
| US09009416B1 |
System and method for managing cache system content directories
A method, computer program product, and computing system for reclassifying a first assigned cache portion associated with a first machine as a public cache portion associated with the first machine and at least one additional machine after the occurrence of a reclassifying event. The public cache portion includes a plurality of pieces of content received by the first machine. A content identifier for each of the plurality of pieces of content included within the public cache portion is compared with content identifiers for pieces of content included within a portion of a data array associated with the at least one additional machine to generate a list of matching data portions. The list of matching data portions is provided to at least one additional assigned cache portion within the cache system that is associated with the at least one additional machine. |
| US09009415B2 |
Memory system including a spiral cache
An integrated memory system with a spiral cache responds to requests for values at a first external interface coupled to a particular storage location in the cache in a time period determined by the proximity of the requested values to the particular storage location. The cache supports multiple outstanding in-flight requests directed to the same address using an issue table that tracks multiple outstanding requests and control logic that applies the multiple requests to the same address in the order received by the cache memory. The cache also includes a backing store request table that tracks push-back write operations issued from the cache memory when the cache memory is full and a new value is provided from the external interface, and the control logic to prevent multiple copies of the same value from being loaded into the cache or a copy being loaded before a pending push-back has been completed. |
| US09009413B2 |
Method and apparatus to implement lazy flush in a virtually tagged cache memory
A processor includes a processor core including an execution unit to execute instructions, and a cache memory. The cache memory includes a controller to update each of a plurality of stale indicators in response to a lazy flush instruction. Each stale indicator is associated with respective data, and each updated stale indicator is to indicate that the respective data is stale. The cache memory also includes a plurality of cache lines. Each cache line is to store corresponding data and a foreground tag that includes a respective virtual address associated with the corresponding data, and that includes the associated stale indicator. Other embodiments are described as claimed. |
| US09009409B2 |
Cache region concept
A method to store objects in a memory cache is disclosed. A request is received from an application to store an object in a memory cache associated with the application. The object is stored in a cache region of the memory cache based on an identification that the object has no potential for storage in a shared memory cache and a determination that the cache region is associated with a storage policy that specifies that objects to be stored in the cache region are to be stored in a local memory cache and that a garbage collector is not to remove objects stored in the cache region from the local memory cache. |
| US09009398B2 |
Write operations for defect management in nonvolatile memory
Data that is stored in a higher error rate format in a nonvolatile memory is backed up in a lower error rate format. Data to be stored may be transferred once to on-chip data latches where it is maintained while it is programmed in both the high error rate format and the low error rate format without being resent to the nonvolatile memory. |
| US09009397B1 |
Storage processor managing solid state disk array
A method of writing to one or more solid state disks (SSDs) employed by a storage processor includes receiving a command, creating sub-commands from the command based on a granularity, and assigning the sub-commands to the SSDs independently of the command thereby causing striping across the SSDs. |
| US09009390B2 |
Method for changing read parameter for improving read performance and apparatuses using the same
A memory system including a non-volatile memory device and a memory controller is provided. When a read operation on a first data initially output from the non-volatile memory device during a first read operation is successful, the memory controller may change a read voltage for reading a second data stored in the non-volatile memory device during a second read operation. |
| US09009389B2 |
Memory management table processing method, memory controller, and memory storage apparatus
A memory management table processing method for storing a plurality of entries belonging to a plurality of memory management tables into a buffer memory of a memory storage apparatus is provided, wherein each of the entries has at least one invalid bit. The present method includes following steps. An area corresponding to each of the memory management tables is configured in the buffer memory. Invalid bit information corresponding to each of the memory management tables is recorded. The invalid bit in each of the entries is removed according to the invalid bit information corresponding to each of the memory management tables, so as to generate a valid data stream corresponding to each of the entries. Each of the valid data streams is written into the corresponding area in the buffer memory. Accordingly, the storage space of the buffer memory can be efficiently utilized. |
| US09009388B2 |
Performing discard commands on RAID storage devices
A method and system for efficiently freeing storage in a Redundant Array of Independent Disks (RAID) system. A computer system is coupled to storage devices that are organized as a RAID with block-level striping. Each storage device is partitioned into multiple physical sectors. The computer system receives a request to free a contiguous range of logical sectors that are mapped to the storage devices. In response, the computer system issues, for each storage device, a discard command to free contiguous physical sectors in the storage device that correspond to non-contiguous logical sectors. |
| US09009384B2 |
Virtual machine memory management in systems with asymmetric memory
A system is described herein that includes a predictor component that predicts accesses to portions of asymmetric memory pools in a computing system by a virtual machine, wherein the asymmetric memory pools comprise a first memory and a second memory, and wherein performance characteristics of the first memory are non-identical to performance of the second memory. The system also includes a memory management system that allocates portions of the first memory to the virtual machine based at least in part upon the accesses to the asymmetric memory pools predicted by the predictor component. |
| US09009382B2 |
USB hubs with galvanic isolation
A universal serial bus (USB) hub includes a USB AFE circuit module, a hub core and an isolator circuit module interposed between the USB AFE circuit module and the hub core. Data communications between the hub core and the first USB AFE circuit module pass through the isolator circuit module. A method for communicating through a universal serial bus hub includes providing a USB AFE circuit module, providing a hub core, providing an isolator circuit module interposed between the USB AFE circuit module and the hub core, and directing communication from the USB AFE circuit module to the hub core through the isolator circuit module. |
| US09009375B2 |
Sharing of bypassed I/O transaction information
A first I/O transaction request is sent to a storage controller for processing by firmware running on the storage controller. A second I/O transaction request is sent to storage hardware without further processing by the firmware running on the storage controller. Since the firmware did not process the second I/O transaction request, information associated with the second I/O transaction is stored in in a circular buffer accessible to the firmware running on the storage controller. The firmware running on the storage controller reads, from the circular buffer, the information associated with the second I/O transaction that was stored in the circular buffer. |
| US09009372B2 |
Processor and control method for processor
A processor includes a plurality of nodes arranged two dimensionally in the X-axis direction and in the Y-axis direction, and each of the nodes includes a processor core and a distributed shared cache memory. The processor also includes a first connecting unit and a second connecting unit. The first connecting unit connects adjacent nodes in the X-axis direction among the nodes, in a ring shape. The second connecting unit connects adjacent nodes in the Y-axis direction among the nodes, in a ring shape. The cache memories included in the respective nodes are divided into banks in the Y-axis direction. Coherency of the cache memories in the X-axis direction is controlled by a snoop system. The cache memories are shared by the nodes. |
| US09009371B1 |
Full-duplex communications device
A device is described for establishing communication between a first device and a second device. In one implementation, a first internal interface of the first device couples to a first external interface of the second device while a second internal interface of the first device couples to a second external interface of the second device. A first unidirectional data channel may be opened for incoming data using the first internal interface. A second unidirectional data channel may be opened for outgoing data using the second internal interface. The pair of unidirectional data channels is established, allowing data transfer between the devices. These channels allow for asynchronous-like transmission of data, in that transmission and corresponding receipt of data may take place at irregular intervals. |
| US09009370B2 |
Intelligent data buffering between interfaces
A dynamically controllable buffering system includes a data buffer that is communicatively coupled between first and second data interfaces and operable to perform as an elasticity first-in-first-out buffer in a first mode and to perform as a store-and-forward buffer in a second mode. The system also includes a controller that is operable to detect data rates of the first and second data interfaces, to operate the data buffer in the first mode when the first data interface has a data transfer rate that is faster than a data transfer rate of the second data interface, and to operate the data buffer in the second mode when the second data interface has a data transfer rate that is faster than the data transfer rate of the first data interface. |
| US09009368B2 |
Interrupt latency performance counters
A system and method for finding the sources of increased interrupt latencies. An interrupt controller includes monitoring logic for measuring and storing latencies for servicing interrupt requests. The interrupt controller determines a measured latency is greater than an associated threshold and in response sends an indication of a long latency. The interrupt controller may send the indication to firmware, a device driver, or other software. The interrupt controller stores associated information with the measured latency for debug purposes. Additionally, the monitoring logic may perform statistical analysis in place of, or in addition to, software. |
| US09009366B2 |
Method and apparatus for minimizing within-die variations in performance parameters of a processor
Described herein are a method and an apparatus for minimizing within-die variations in performance parameters of a processor. The apparatus comprising: a reference generator to generate an adjustable compensated reference signal; a bias generator to generate a bias signal based on the adjustable compensated reference signal; a transmitter coupled with the bias generator to transmit an output signal; and a feedback mechanism to sample the output signal from the transmitter and to provide the sampled output signal to the bias generator. |
| US09009363B2 |
Methods for providing and indicating storage load indexes
A method for indicating an overload condition of a data storage system, comprises the steps of: defining one or more load indexes, wherein each of the load indexes has an overload threshold; and if one of the load indexes has met its respective overload threshold, providing an indicator of the overload condition of the storage system, else, monitoring the load indexes. |
| US09009358B1 |
Configuring a data storage device with a parameter file interlocked with configuration code
A method is disclosed for configuring a data storage device. Configuration data records of a parameter file are compared to configuration execution records of an executable file, wherein the configuration execution records for configuring at least one configuration file of a data storage device. If the configuration data records interlock with the configuration execution records, the configuration file is modified and the modified configuration file is stored to the data storage device. The method may be performed by a computer external to the data storage device, or by control circuitry internal to the data storage device, or a combination of both. |
| US09009356B2 |
Data output method and apparatus
A data output method and apparatus according to the present invention, which are applicable in a data processing device comprising an output unit, a computer system and an embedded system, generate a control command for enabling an establishment of a channel for outputting data when it is determined that the computer system stays in a non-operating state, establish a data transmission channel between the embedded system and the output unit based on the control command, determine data to be outputted, and transfer the data to be outputted from the embedded system to the output unit through the data transmission channel. In this way, the method and apparatus according to the present invention can ensure that a user need not wait a long time for the computer's start-up, and can carry out an operation on local data for the computer in time, which improves the user satisfaction. |
| US09009352B1 |
Transformation of common information model messages
A common information model (CIM) message received in a processing device of an information processing system is transformed to a message in a designated message queuing protocol format, such as an advanced message queuing protocol (AMQP) message format. The transformed message is then posted or otherwise provided to a message queuing protocol server. The CIM message may comprise, for example, a CIM notification received in a CIM client from a CIM server, responsive to an indication subscription from the CIM client. The transformation of the CIM message to the message in the designated message queuing protocol format may more particularly involve, for example, transforming a CIM notification associated with the CIM message to a CIM instance object, transforming the CIM instance object to an alerting object, and transforming the alerting object to an AMQP message. One or more of these operations may be performed in a CIM transform module. |
| US09009351B2 |
Brokerage transaction server and method using encapsulated messages
Brokerage transactions servers and related methods are provided having low latency. In a first embodiment of the invention there is provided a method of processing exchange transaction information for exchange brokerage purposes in an inbound digital message stream in a first protocol dialect. One embodiment utilizes canonical FIX messages for processing purposes. A related embodiment includes, for each message in the stream, storing in memory each successive change made to the message and any metadata created by the foregoing processes; and in an encapsulation process, accessing memory and creating an encapsulated version of the message that includes: (i) the message in original form prior to the receiver process, (ii) the metadata, and (iii) each successive change made to the message by any of the foregoing processes. |
| US09009346B2 |
Systems and methods of communication using a message header that includes header flags
A method includes determining, at a first computing device, whether data to be communicated to a second computing device includes media data or protocol data. The method also includes, in response to determining that the data includes media data, generating a message header and a message body based on the media data. The message header includes a header flags portion and a header fields portion, and the header flags portion includes at least one flag having a value that indicates a length of a corresponding field of a plurality of fields of the header fields portion. The method further includes encapsulating the message header and the message body into a message and inserting the message into a media stream to be transmitted from the first computing device to the second computing device in accordance with a media communication protocol. The media stream is a bidirectional media stream. |
| US09009342B2 |
Network relay apparatus
A network relay apparatus which conducts data transfer by using a plurality of network LSIs includes a transfer engine unit having at least two network LSIs and a central control unit which controls the operation state of the network relay apparatus. The transfer engine unit includes the network LSIs capable of changing over at least one of a clock and an operation which differ every function block, a load judgment unit for judging a load laid upon each of function blocks in the network LSI, and a frequency voltage control unit for individually changing over at least one of the clock and operation voltage supplied to each function block on the basis of the load judged by the load judgment unit. |
| US09009336B2 |
Method and system for pacing, acking, timing, and handicapping (path) for simultaneous receipt of documents
A computing device determines impactful content in transmittable content. The computing device assigns the impactful content in the transmittable content to one or more impactful block units. Each impactful block unit comprises a determined numbers of characters. The computing device extracts the one or more impactful block units from the transmittable content. The computing device places the one or more impactful block units at the end of the transmittable content. The computing device transmits the transmittable content to a plurality of intended recipients. Each character, or a small packet set of sequential characters, of the determined number of characters of the one or more impactful block units is transmitted using a time delay for a particular intended recipient and a pacing method. The one or more impactful block units are to be received substantially simultaneously by the plurality of intended recipients. |
| US09009328B2 |
System and method for dynamic negotiation of device name with wildcard character
A method and system for dynamically negotiating a device name for establishing a communications session between a host computer and a client computer are provided. A host computer receives from a client computer, a device name that includes as part of the device name at least a wildcard character. The host computer replaces the wildcard character with one or more characters that can be used in device names, to generate a unique device name that is not already being used by the host computer. |
| US09009324B2 |
Managing and reconciling information technology assets in a configuration database
A method and system for managing and reconciling naming conflicts in a configuration database. Attributes are collected about a detected resource in a network. Valid names for the detected resource are created based on the collected attributes and a set of naming rules. A valid name is created for each naming rule, and the naming rules have a priority order. A master-alias table is search to locate a match between existing names of known resources recorded in the master-alias table and any of the valid names. A partial match of resource attributes is determined to exist when all of the valid names in the set of valid names do not match an existing name in a matching entry. The detected resource is determined to be a new resource or an existing resource based on a priority of the naming rules used to create the valid names. |
| US09009321B2 |
Multi-dimensional reputation scoring
Methods and systems for assigning reputation to communications entities include collecting communications data from distributed agents, aggregating the communications data, analyzing the communications data and identifying relationships between communications entities based upon the communications data. |
| US09009320B2 |
Apparatus and methods for optimizing scheduled operations in hybrid network environments
Methods and apparatus for intelligent scheduling of client device tasks based on one or more network scheduling constraints. During normal network operation, a client device performs an array of scheduled maintenance tasks to optimize network performance (e.g., signal strength measurements, etc.) However, during hybrid network operation, regularly scheduled maintenance tasks for a first network can interrupt higher priority tasks on other networks. Consequently, the present invention in one embodiment provides a method for a client device to properly prioritize and re-schedule maintenance tasks. For example, CDMA 1X cell selection (or cell re-selection) procedures have flexible time constraints, and can be postponed (or expedited) to minimize impact on LTE network traffic. |
| US09009318B2 |
Offline resource allocation algorithms
Various embodiments provide offline algorithms for resource allocation. A known set of “offline” requests may be matched to available resources using an online resource allocation algorithm that models the offline resource allocation problem as though the requests were received stochastically. Requests may be scaled and then sampled to provide random, stochastic input for the online resource allocation algorithm. For each request, resources are allocated to the request by evaluating multiple options based upon shadow costs assigned to resources associated with the different options. After each request is processed, an adjustment is made to the shadow costs for remaining resources to reflect differences in rates for allocation and/or consumption of the resources and the updated shadow costs are used for a subsequent request. A scaled resource allocation determined using sampled requests in this manner may be scaled back up to obtain a solution for the offline resource allocation problem. |
| US09009310B1 |
System and method for provisioning of internet access services in a guest facility
A system and method for provisioning Internet access services to guests of a facility (e.g., one or more hotel chains). Equipment and devices for access service are installed throughout the facility. Each device that supports the Internet access services has a unique identifier. Zones representing various public and private areas within each facility are defined and one or more devices are associated with each zone. Service offerings for wired and wireless connections are defined and associated with one or more zones. Service offerings are also paired with pricing plans that provide various payment options and amounts. A web-based administration application allows an administrator to define and manage service offerings associated with the zones. The application also allows the administrator to define and manage the pricing plans. The ability to customize offerings in each facility allows development of consistent offerings, regardless of the size or layout of the facility. |
| US09009308B2 |
Hybrid device and person based authorized domain architecture
This invention relates to a system and a method of generating an Authorized Domain (AD) by selecting a domain identifier, and binding at least one person (P1, P, PN1), at least one device (D1, D2, . . . , DM), and at least one content item (C1, C2, . . . , CNZ) to the Authorized Domain (AD) given by the domain identifier (Domain ID). Hereby, a number of verified devices (D1, D2, . . . , DM) and a number of verified persons (P1, P2, . . . , PN1) that is authorized to access a content item of the Authorized Domain (100) is obtained. In this way, access to a content item of an authorized domain by a person operating a device is obtained either by verifying that the content item and the person are linked to the same domain or by verifying that the device and the content item are linked to the same domain. Thereby, enhanced flexibility for one or more persons when accessing content in an authorized domain is obtained while security of the content is still maintaining. This is further done in a simple, secure and reliable way. |
| US09009306B2 |
Method, system, client and server for locating operation nodes in communication system
The present disclosure relates to the field of mobile communication technologies, and provides a method for locating operation nodes in a communication system. The method includes using an identifier in the received message to obtain an adjusted path from the root node of the management tree of the client to the standard management object corresponding to the identifier, using the message to obtain a relative path between the target operation node and the root node of the standard management object on the management tree, concatenating the adjusted path with the relative path, and locating the target operation node according to the concatenated path. The present disclosure also provides a system for locating operation nodes, a client for locating operation nodes in a communication system, and a server for performing management operations for clients. |
| US09009304B2 |
Mapping virtual internet protocol addresses
The embodiments provide for analyzing activity of devices in a network. Activity from a device may result from multiple devices translated to a common address, such as a public internet protocol (IP) address. In some embodiments, the activity from a network or device is analyzed to identify if multiple devices communicate via translated addresses from the common address. The devices may be identified based on various criteria, such as a unique identifier, protocol header information, or a media access control (or “MAC”) address. Other criteria may also be employed. Each device that is mapped to common address is then remapped so that each device has its own address. The activity data is then modified so that each device is correlated with its unique address. Alternatively, a new activity data file may be generated so that the activity of each device is indicated. |
| US09009300B2 |
Method and apparatus for providing mission service based on user life log in wireless communication system
A method and an apparatus provide a customized service based on a user log in a wireless communication system. A method of a terminal collects user data existing inside a terminal. The method transmits the user data to a log manage server. The method receives a mission determined based on user data from the log manage server. The method transmits performance results regarding the mission to the log manage server. |
| US09009299B2 |
Method and apparatus for identifying members of a peer-to-peer botnet
A peer-to-peer (P2P) bot(s) in a network is identified using an already identified P2P bot. More specifically, such embodiments may facilitate determining a candidate set of computers, which may be potential P2P bots, by identifying computers in a network that have a private mutual contact with a seed bot, which is a computer identified as a P2P bot, and identifying additional computers that have private mutual contacts with the identified computers. Further, a confidence level indicative of a certainty of a membership of each of the candidate computers in the P2P botnet is determined and responsive to a determination that the confidence level of the candidate computer exceeds a determined threshold confidence level, the candidate computer is identified as a P2P bot. |
| US09009294B2 |
Dynamic provisioning of resources within a cloud computing environment
The present invention provides a solution (e.g., rules, techniques, etc.) for enabling the dynamic provisioning (e.g., movement) of Cloud-based jobs and resources. Such provisioning may be within a Cloud infrastructure, from Cloud to Cloud, from non-Cloud to Cloud, and from Cloud to non-Cloud. Each movement scenario is assigned a specific technique based on rules, profiles, SLA and/or other such criteria and agreements. Such dynamic adjustments may be especially advantageous in order to balance real-time workload to avoid over-provisioning, to manage Cloud performance, to attain a more efficient or cost-effective execution environment, to off-load a Cloud or specific Cloud resources for maintenance/service, and the like. |
| US09009293B2 |
System and method for reporting packet characteristics in a network environment
A method is provided in one example and includes receiving a request to initiate a communication flow associated with a subscriber and identifying one or more parameters to be monitored for the communication flow. The method further includes extracting one or more bits from packets associated with the communication flow; the bits are used to determine an operating system associated with the communication flow. A policy decision can be executed for the communication flow based on the operating system associated with the communication flow. In more specific examples, the bits are sent to a next destination in response to a threshold being reached for at least one of the parameters. The parameters can be associated a volume parameter or a time parameter. The policy decision could include blocking traffic associated with the subscriber, initiating billing, redirecting the communication, managing a quality of service level for the communication flow, etc. |
| US09009291B2 |
System and method for directing attention to web site functionality
A system determines if functionality offered via a Web site is being underutilizing by a user, e.g., not being using at all or not being using with some desired degree of regularity. When it is determined that the functionality offered via the Web site is being underutilized by the user, the system provides to content of the Web site a cue, e.g., audio and/or visual, for directing the attention of the user to the functionality offered via the Web site. |
| US09009289B1 |
Systems and methods for assessing application usage
Various of the disclosed embodiments disclose systems and methods for assessing usage of a resource, such as hardware, software, or firmware, in a computer system. For example, some embodiments contemplate a model in which an enterprise application derives its license cost based upon the actual business value provided by the licensed resource to the enterprise. If an enterprise has purchased software that it uses very heavily, then the license cost may increase. Conversely, if the enterprise uses the software rarely, then the license cost may decrease. This usage granularity may allow an enterprise executive to purchase a software license without fear that the software will be inefficiently utilized. A licensor may similarly use the system to charge more accurate fees. |
| US09009285B2 |
Network system and management method therefor
The network system includes a command transmitting unit that transmits a command for requesting information required by the representative device for network management from the non-representative device, when the non-representative device has joined a network or when there is a change in a state of the non-representative device, and a command receiving unit that receives a command including the information sent from the non-representative device that has received the command. |
| US09009281B2 |
Composition of services
A method of generating a set of composite services is provided herein. The method includes receiving standardized service descriptions of a set of component services from service providers. The standardized description of a component service may be translated to an automaton-based description. A specified goal associated with the set of component services may be received. The set of composite services may be generated based on the automaton-based description and the specified goal. Each of the generated composite services may accomplish the specified goal. |
| US09009277B2 |
Configuration management repository for a distributed platform
Some embodiments provide a repository that manages configurations for a distributed platform and that automatedly configures servers of the distributed platform with different hierarchical sets of configurations while ensuring integrity and consistency across the servers and in the repository. In some embodiment, the repository includes a data store that stores configurations for a first set of servers that are operated by a first service provider and a second set of servers that are operated by a second service provider. The data store also identifies different sets of configurations to deploy to different sets of servers from the first and second sets of servers. The repository also includes a function processor to automatedly deploy the different sets of configurations to the different sets of servers and to perform functions for updating the configurations in a manner that ensures integrity and consistency. |
| US09009276B2 |
Broadcast receiver apparatus
A broadcast receiver capable of receiving correct channel information anytime, even if a network to which the broadcast receiver is connected changes to another one, includes a storage unit and a controller. The storage unit stores a network configuration information file and channel information. The controller controls units of the broadcast receiver. Each time the broadcast receiver is activated, the controller connects to a network, acquires a network configuration information file from the connected network without simultaneously acquiring channel information therefrom, and determines whether network-identifying information described in the acquired network configuration information file is different from network-identifying information the network configuration information file stored in the storage unit. If the network names differ, the controller erases the stored channel information. |
| US09009275B2 |
Image forming apparatus, control method of image forming apparatus, program, and storage medium
An image forming apparatus for executing a processing flow including a plurality of steps, includes a determination unit which determines whether or not a processing flow to be executed includes an instruction required step that requires an instruction of a user, a selection unit which selects, when the processing flow to be executed includes the instruction required step, a notification destination of information required to display an operation window for accepting the instruction of the user, a notification control unit which notifies the notification destination selected by the selection unit of the operation window, and an execution unit which executes processing of the instruction required step according to instruction contents input via the operation window. |
| US09009274B2 |
Configuring a client application
A method of customizing an application on a device, the method comprising: at a server, receiving a request message from the device, while the device is running the application, the request message comprising information identifying the application and further information relating to a network operator associated with the device; using the further information to identify the network operator associated with the device and to obtain network operator specific customization information relating to the application; and sending a response message to the device, the response message comprising the obtained network operator specific customization information, the network operator specific customization information usable by the device to customize any of: the application components, application user interface, and application settings. |
| US09009269B2 |
Mediation server, control method therefor, communication device, control method therefor, account provisioning server, and control method therefor
In the first embodiment, the mobile phone 20 obtains the PCID from the CCE 10, and sends the PCID and the IMSI of the USIM of the mobile phone 20 to the CAPS 50. The MCC+MNC part of the IMSI is later used as the operator identification information by the mediation server 30, which is operated by the RO, in order to identify the SHO for the CCE 10. The MSIN part of the IMSI is later used as the user identification information by the account managing server 40, which is operated by the SHO, in order to identify the user of the mobile phone 20. The mediation server 30 forwards the account request from the CCE 10 to the account managing server 40 of the SHO identified by the operator identification information. The account managing server 40 generates the MCIM that is associated with the user identified by the user identification information. |
| US09009262B2 |
Device collaboration in a virtual session
Methods, systems, and devices are described for using a central server computer system disposed to dynamically manage collaboration between terminal devices and peripheral devices during a virtual session. The central server computer system may associate a peripheral device with a virtual session hosted by a host device. The virtual session may be further associated with a terminal device communicatively coupled with the central server computer system. The central server computer system may establish a connection between the central server computer system and the peripheral device; forward peripheral data between the peripheral device and the host device such that the virtual session perceives the peripheral device as locally connected to the host device; and forward user interface data associated with the virtual session between the host device and the terminal device. |
| US09009261B2 |
Optical character recognition for video automation
A video analysis system may utilize display screen snapshots captured from a device. The system may receive time information that indicates a time duration, position-related information that indicates a region, and reference information that indicates information expected to appear in the region during the time duration. The system may transmit an instruction to capture display screen snapshots during a time duration indicated by the time information. The system may receive a display screen snapshot and recognize information in the region indicated by the position-related information. The system may then determine whether the recognized information corresponds to the reference information and based on the result determine whether the video test automation has passed. |
| US09009259B2 |
Automatic client device location detection within hospitality establishment
An apparatus for automatic client device location detection includes a controller module configured to receive first network traffic transmitted on a computer network of a hospitality establishment from a known location within the hospitality establishment. The controller module is further configured to query one or more network components of the computer network to determine a source access-node from which the first network traffic originated, and store a mapping of the source access-node to the known location in the storage device. The controller module is further configured to receive second network traffic transmitted on the computer network by a client device at the hospitality establishment, query the one or more network components of the computer network to determine that the second network traffic originated from the source access-node, and automatically determine the client device to be at the known location according to the mapping in the storage device. |
| US09009252B2 |
Rules-based transactions prefetching using connection end-point proxies
Network proxies reduce server latency in response to series of requests from client applications. Network proxies intercept messages clients and a server. Intercepted client requests are compared with rules. When client requests match a rule, additional request messages are forwarded to the server on behalf of a client application. In response to the additional request messages, the server provides corresponding response messages. A network proxy intercepts and caches the response messages. Subsequent client requests are intercepted by the network application proxy and compared with the cached messages. If a cached response message corresponds with a client request message, the response message is returned to the client application immediately instead of re-requesting the same information from the server. A server-side network proxy can compare client requests with the rules and send additional request messages. The corresponding response messages can be forwarded to a client-side network proxy for caching. |
| US09009251B1 |
Server content adjusted based on automated report of available client bandwidth
An information server computer system may be configured to receive a request for electronic information from a client computer system. In response, a request to the client computer system may be delivered for an automated report of the bandwidth that is available for delivery of the electronic information. The client computer system may provide the automated report in response. In response, the information server computer may select a form of the electronic information which is substantially compatible with the bandwidth specified in the automated report from among multiple forms that are each compatible with a different available bandwidth. |
| US09009250B2 |
Flexible and dynamic integration schemas of a traffic management system with various network operators for network traffic alleviation
Flexible and dynamic integration schemas of a traffic management system with various network operators for network traffic alleviation are disclosed. One embodiment includes a method of integration of content caching with a network operator for traffic alleviation a wireless network, including detecting, by an operator proxy of the network operator, a poll from an application on a mobile device which would have been served using a cache element from a local cache on the mobile device, after the cache element stored in the local cache has been invalidated and forwarding the poll from the application on the mobile device to a proxy server. Whether the poll is sent to a service provider of the application directly by the proxy server, or by the proxy server through the operator proxy is configurable or reconfigurable. |
| US09009243B2 |
Tracking usage of and sharing data between mobile device applications
Described herein are methods and systems for tracking usage of and sharing data between mobile device applications. A mobile device receives a first application to be installed on the mobile device. The first application includes a first notification module, a content developer identifier, and a first application identifier. The mobile device receives a second application to be installed on the mobile device, the second application including a second notification module, the content developer identifier, and a second application identifier. The mobile device stores a mobile device identifier in a keychain area of the mobile device. The mobile device provides access to the keychain area for applications which include the content developer identifier. The mobile device retrieves the mobile device identifier from the keychain area for use by the first application and the second application. |
| US09009237B2 |
Propagating instant message status change
A method and computer program product for propagating instant message status change is described. A method may comprise receiving, via at least one of a client electronic device and a server computer, an instant message request associated with an instant message request target. The method may further comprise determining, via at least one of the client electronic device and the server computer, an instant message status based upon, at least in part, the instant message request and the instant message request target. The method may also comprise in response to the determination, providing, via at least one of the client electronic device and the server computer, an indication of the instant message status. |
| US09009231B2 |
Group communication in a communication system
A resource list or a user profile is provided with a new parameter, called a group advertisement parameter, which indicates whether a user allows a group advertisement for an individual communication group or not. The user can set the group advertisement parameter in a resource list when he/she creates the communication group. When the user has created a communication group, a group communication server processes the group further as any other group. If the group communication server observes that a group advertisement parameter is present or set active, the server starts advertising the communication group to all group members or to a selected subset of group members. |
| US09009230B1 |
Machine-to-machine instant messaging
Techniques and systems for interfacing Internet Things (IoT) devices using different connection protocols are provided. For example, computing device, a method, and a computer-program product may be provided, and may include one or more data processors and a receiver for receiving a communication from a first IoT device communicatively connected to the computing device using a first connection protocol. The communication is received using the first connection protocol. A non-transitory computer-readable storage medium may contain instructions which when executed on the one or more data processors, cause the one or more processors to determine a second IoT device to which the communication is intended to be transmitted, determine a second connection protocol used by the second IoT device, and translate the communication to the second connection protocol. A transmitter may transmit the communication to the second IoT device that is communicatively connected to the computing device using the second connection protocol. The communication is transmitted using the second connection protocol. |
| US09009229B2 |
Device, system, and method of sharing social network information
Device, system, and method of sharing social network information. A method of sharing social information includes: obtaining from a social network social information of passengers associated with a flight; and presenting the social information to a prospective passenger of said flight. The obtaining includes obtaining from the social network in bulk social information of at least two passengers associated with a flight, by sending a query which includes an identifier of said flight, and which excludes any identifier of any passenger on said flight. |
| US09009228B2 |
Method and apparatus for sharing concurrent ad hoc web content between users visiting the same web pages
A method and apparatus are provided for sharing concurrent ad hoc Web content between users visiting the same Web domain, sub-domain, section or page. In one example, the method includes associating a user with a current uniform resource locator and Web domain, sub-domain, section or page being browsed by parsing the current uniform resource locator of the current Web page, creating a Web content sharing group by identifying one or more other users with whom the user would like to share, saving current uniform resource locators of pages being browsed calculating a status of the Web content sharing group by determining if any users in the Web content sharing group are currently browsing on a same Web domain, sub-domain, section or page as the user, and communicating the status of the Web content sharing group with a front-end device. |
| US09009227B2 |
Facilitating meeting invitation extension
Enabling meeting extensions using an electronic meeting scheduling system may include enabling a second user invited to a meeting by a first user via an electronic meeting scheduling system to invite one or more third users to the meeting; and applying one or more meeting attributes set by the second user to said one or more third users. |
| US09009218B2 |
Cloud server/thin client/gateway selective browser instantiation
A gateway having at least one communications interface and processing circuitry establishes communications with at least one service provider device and at least one serviced client device. The gateway then determines that a serviced client device is to establish an Internet browsing session. Based upon characteristics of the serviced client device, the gateway determines where to instantiate a web browser to service the Internet browsing session. Based upon the determination, in a first operation, instantiates the web browser to service the Internet browsing session at the gateway or client device. In a second operation, the gateway instantiates the web browser to service the Internet browsing session at a service provider server. In other operations, the gateway may determine to instantiate a browser for a first client device at a cloud server and to instantiate a browser for a second client device either locally or at the second client device. |
| US09009217B1 |
Interaction with a virtual network
Systems and method for the management of virtual machine instances are provided. A network data transmission analysis system can host virtual machine networks. A component of a hosted virtual machine network is configured in a manner to receive commands directed towards a simulated network device. The component may then execute a process or processes on the hosted virtual machine network which correspond to the received command. |
| US09009216B2 |
Server device, and method and program for processing on the same
A server device which makes a function equivalent to its own function available on an old-generation client device inferior in functionality includes a request receiving unit which receives from the client device a request for processing using a function which the client device lacks, a device status determination unit which determines whether or not the server device is capable of the requested processing depending on statuses indicated by status information tables, and, when it is determined that the server device is capable of it, specifies alternative processing corresponding to a function for the requested processing among functions of the server device with reference to a function information table, an alternative-processing providing unit which performs the specified alternative processing, and a transmission unit which transmits data generated through the performing of the alternative processing to the client device. |
| US09009214B2 |
Management of process-to-process inter-cluster communication requests
A mechanism is provided for managing a process-to-process inter-cluster communication request. A call from a first application is received in a first operating system in a first data processing system. The first operating system passes the call from the first operating system to a first host fabric interface controller in the first data processing system without processing the call. The first host fabric interface processes the call to determine a second data processing system in the plurality of data processing systems with which the call is associated, wherein the call is processed by the first host fabric interface without intervention by the first operating system. The first host fabric interface initiates an inter-cluster connection to a second host fabric interface in the second data processing. The call is then transferred to the second host fabric interface in the second data processing system via the inter-cluster connection. |
| US09009210B2 |
Distribution of multimedia files using a transportation provider wireless device
Methods and apparatus for distributing multimedia files units are disclosed. In an exemplary method, a plurality of multimedia files are downloaded using a transportation provider wireless device associated with a fare-based transport vehicle, such as a taxi, bus, ferry, or airplane. The downloaded multimedia files are stored in a data storage unit operatively connected to the transportation provider wireless device. In response to passenger input data received from a passenger wireless device, a desired multimedia file selected by the passenger is transferred to the passenger wireless device or played back using local speakers and/or video displays. In some embodiments, a selected multimedia file is associated with digital rights management information regulating authorized uses of the file. |
| US09009206B1 |
Method and system for optimizing traversal and storage of directory entries of a storage volume
Machine implemented method and system for adding a directory entry to an existing directory data structure maintained by a storage system for storing a plurality of directory entries are provided. A first level storage block is used for storing a pointer to a first hash value from among a plurality of hash values. A new third level storage block is allocated when a second level storage block has reached a threshold level for storing pointers to hash values for the plurality of directory entries. A group of pointers including a pointer to a second hash value from among the plurality of hash values is selected. The group of pointers is stored in the third level storage block with a pointer to a third hash value from among the plurality of hash values such that the directory entry can be searched using the plurality of hash values. |
| US09009205B2 |
Activity-based block management of a clustered file system using client-side block maps
A technique for operating a client node in a clustered file system includes allocating a number of blocks during a first time window and tracking the number of blocks allocated during the first time window. The technique further includes transmitting a block allocation request to a server node of the clustered file system for a number of requested blocks in response to a number of free blocks in a client-side block map reaching a first threshold value. In this case, the number of the requested blocks is based on the number of blocks allocated by the client node during the first time window. |
| US09009199B2 |
Data mining using an index tree created by recursive projection of data points on random lines
The present invention relates to a method computer program product for datamining with constant search time, the method and computer program product comprises the steps of: traversing a search tree to a leave, retrieving a one or more data store identifier from said leave, read data pointed to by said data store identifier, locating one or more value in said data, referencing one or more data descriptor, retrieve the n-nearest data descriptor neighbors, terminate said search. |
| US09009197B2 |
Methods and systems for a compliance framework database schema
Generating a compliance framework. The compliance framework facilitates an organization's compliance with multiple authority documents by providing efficient methodologies and refinements to existing technologies, such as providing hierarchical fidelity to the original authority document; separating auditable citations from their context (e.g., prepositions and or informational citations); asset focused citations; SNED and Live values, among others. |
| US09009196B2 |
Discovery and client routing to database nodes
Aspects of the subject matter described herein relate to database access. In aspects, a request for access to a database is received at a node of a database cluster. Also received at the node is an intent associated with the request. If the intent is to potentially write to the database, a primary instance of the database services the request. If the intent is to read from but not write to the database, an identifier of a secondary instance of the database is sent to the requestor for use in accessing the database. |
| US09009195B2 |
Software framework that facilitates design and implementation of database applications
An intelligent framework is provided that is disposed between a high-level language environment and a database system environment. According to one embodiment, a software framework infers the need for one or more integrity constraints. The software framework programmatically receives (a) information regarding definitions of a multiple data structures associated with multiple objects participating in a software application, and (b) information regarding relationships among the data structures, where each object represents an instance of a data structure of the multiple data structures. Then, the software framework infers the need for one or more integrity constraints based upon the information regarding definitions of the data structures and the information regarding relationships among the data structures. Finally, the software framework instructs a storage system to apply the one or more integrity constraint. |
| US09009191B2 |
Systems and methods for presenting content relevant to text
A system and method are provided for presenting relevant content for attaching files, e.g. for an email application or an instant messaging application. In one example, a method includes providing a keyword extraction engine to extract keywords from text, and providing a keyword mapping engine to map the keywords to at least one attribute and at least one attribute value based on a pre-determined mapping scheme. In another example, a method includes receiving, e.g. from a user, at least one keyword, at least one attribute, and least one attribute value to define a mapping scheme. |
| US09009189B2 |
Managing and improving question and answer resources and channels
Methods and arrangements for handling user queries. Submitted queries are accessed, and there are identified queries as being insufficiently addressed. A priority is estimated for the identified queries, and the identified queries are ordered based on the estimated priority. A priority-ordered list of queries is provided as output. |
| US09009185B2 |
Scalable performance management system
A performance management system leverages an iterative process to provide performance reports, with reduced computing resources. In response to a request for a performance report, a respective subset of performance data records may be received from each of a plurality of sources. It may then be determined whether additional performance data records are to be requested from the plurality of sources for the report. The received data may be processed and the resultant report may be outputted. For example, the iterative process may be applied to generate a top-n report based on network flow performance data in a computer information system. |
| US09009182B2 |
Distributed transaction management with tokens
A system, method and computer product for managing distributed transactions of a database. A transaction manager is provided for each of a plurality of transactions of the database. Each transaction manager is configured to perform functions that include generating a transaction token that specifies data to be visible for a transaction on the database. The database contains both row and column storage engines, and the transaction token includes a transaction identifier (TID) for identifying committed transactions and uncommitted transactions. A last computed transaction is designated with a computed identifier (CID), record-level locking of records of the database is performed using the TID and CID to execute the transaction, and the plurality of transactions of the database are executed with each transaction manager. |
| US09009181B2 |
Accessing objects in a service registry and repository
This invention relates to a service registry and repository system, method and computer program product for accessing objects in an object repository. A method of managing an object database for objects comprising: receiving a database XPATH query; translating the database path query into an object query; and querying the object database using the object query. The translating comprises: breaking the path query into nodes; examining each node to identify objects for selection and objects from which selection is made; consolidating objects for selection from each node; consolidating objects from which selection is made; and forming the object query from a SELECT clause made up of the consolidated objects for selection from each node and from a FROM clause made up of the consolidated objects from which selection is made. |
| US09009179B2 |
System, method, and computer program product for performing graph matching
A system, method, and computer program product are provided for performing graph aggregation. In use, a graph with a plurality of vertices and a plurality of edges is identified. Additionally, graph matching is performed on the vertices and edges of the graph by computing a graph matching, wherein the performance of the graph matching is optimized. |
| US09009172B2 |
Methods, systems and computer readable media for comparing XML documents
The present invention provides a method and system for comparing a first XML document with a second XML document. An XML event is parsed from the first XML document or the second XML document based on a plurality of parameters. The parsed XML event is stored as a node in a first data structure or a second data structure, and compared with one or more nodes stored in the second data structure or the first structure, respectively. A comparison result is outputted, when the one or more nodes is a comparable node of the stored node, and on outputting the comparison result the comparable node and the stored node are deleted from the first data structures and the second data structures. Aforementioned steps are repeated till the first XML document and the second XML document are completely parsed and compared. |
| US09009168B2 |
Technique for increasing the number of persistent consistency point images in a file system
An on-disk storage arrangement increases the number of persistent consistency point images (PCPIs) that may be maintained for a volume of a storage system. The on-disk storage arrangement comprises a novel volume information (volinfo) block representing a root of the volume; the volinfo block is stored at predefined locations on disk and comprises various system wide configuration data. The volinfo block further comprises a data structure configured to provide a level of indirection that increases the number of PCPIs maintainable by a file system executing on the storage system. To that end, the data structure may be organized as an array of pointers, wherein each pointer references a block containing a snapshot root, thereby enabling efficient access to each PCPI maintained by the file system. |
| US09009166B2 |
Method and system for social credit scoring
A method for calculating a social credit score based on online activity of a user is provided. Online activity may be monitored and processed to calculate an indicant of user activity and its influence on other users to obtain a social credit score of the user. Social credit scores may be used to stimulate users to be more active in their online socializing, share their content, and provide information. Social credit scores may be a source of information for advertisers, employers, bankers, and others. Information on social credit scores may be analyzed to determine users with high scores to distinguish top score users and mark them with special prizes, titles, or symbols. Additionally, a list of top scorers may be published via a social networking engine or otherwise as an additional factor of stimulation for other users. |
| US09009162B1 |
Method for search disambiguation using hashtags having context data associated therewith
In an information searching method, information content records are provided in a computer network, each information content record including a tag indicator forming a subset less than a whole of a context hashtag record. When a search query including at least one search term is received from a user, a search is performed of an index of context hashtag records for the at least one search term. The index of context hashtag records is based on data other than only the subset less than the whole of the context hashtag record. Based on the searching, a list of context hashtag record matches is generated, and a search result is returned to the user. The search result includes a list of information content records, each information content record on the result list being associated with at least one context hashtag record on the list of context hashtag record matches. |
| US09009161B2 |
Data processing
A system for processing arbitrary time-series datasets, the time-series datasets comprising a set of data points, each data point having: i) a time value; ii) a first data value representing the magnitude of a first parameter; and iii) one or more further data values each representing the state of a respective further parameter, and the system comprising: an input configured to receive first and second time-series datasets; a data point analyzer configured to store the content of each data point in a record, each record having: a first field for holding a time value; a second field for holding one or more values of a descriptor; a third field for holding a descriptor; and a fourth field for holding a value, the data point analyzer being configured to store the content of each data point received by the input in a respective record by storing: said time value in the first field; said one or more further data values in the second field; a descriptor of the first value in the third field; and said first value in the fourth field; a storage device comprising a data structure configured to store a plurality of the said records; and a data structure analyzer configured to access the data structure based on the stored time values so as to enable the comparison of data from the first and second datasets. |
| US09009153B2 |
Systems and methods for identifying a named entity
Systems and methods for identifying a named entity are described. In one described system, a computer program, such as a query system, identifies an event associated with an article, identifies a named entity within the event, and creates an implicit search query comprising the named entity. |
| US09009148B2 |
Clickthrough-based latent semantic model
There is provided a computer-implemented method and system for ranking documents. The method includes identifying a number of query-document pairs based on clickthrough data for a number of documents. The method also includes building a latent semantic model based on the query-document pairs and ranking the documents for a search based on the latent semantic model. |
| US09009146B1 |
Ranking search results based on similar queries
In general, in one aspect, embodiments of the invention feature a computer-implemented method for providing input to a document ranking process for ranking a plurality of documents, the document ranking process taking as input a quality of result statistic for an individual document in the plurality of documents, the plurality of documents having been identified in response to a query, the quality of results statistic being for the query and the individual document. The method for providing input can include, for a first document identified as a search result of a user-submitted query, scoring one or more other queries based upon a similarity to the user-submitted query, each of the one or more other queries being different from the user-submitted query. |
| US09009145B2 |
Travel booking method and system
A method for searching for a travel product having one or more data elements associated therewith from a plurality of potentially suitable travel products in a system comprising a web based interface for receiving inputs from a user and from one or more sources of data, and for displaying results to a user based on the inputs; a business logic layer providing access to the sources of data in a predetermined manner, such as based on rules and preferences; and a database including data relating to the parties associated with the system; wherein the method comprises the steps of: entering one or more search parameters into the interface; launching multiple simultaneous searches based on the search criteria and one or more attribute of the travel product to the one or more sources of data to identify the potentially suitable travel products; displaying the potentially suitable travel products on the interface; selecting one or more of the potentially suitable travel products for further processing; further processing the potentially suitable travel products by normalizing the data elements associated with the potentially suitable travel products into a homogeneous display; determining a combination of data elements of the one or more potentially suitable travel products which in combination are the most suitable travel products for a customer based on customer preferences and attributes. |
| US09009139B2 |
Query pipeline
A query pipeline is created (514) from a query request. The query pipeline includes multiple query operations including multiple query operators. A first query operator and a second query operator perform first and second query operations on a database (526) and on data outside the database (534). A result from the first query operation in the query pipeline is fed to the second query operation in the query pipeline. |
| US09009134B2 |
Named entity recognition in query
Named Entity Recognition in Query (NERQ) involves detection of a named entity in a given query and classification of the named entity into one or more predefined classes. The predefined classes may be based on a predefined taxonomy. A probabilistic approach may be taken to detecting and classifying named entities in queries, the approach using either query log data or click through data and Weakly Supervised Latent Dirichlet Allocation (WS-LDA) to construct and train a topic model. |
| US09009130B2 |
Topic and time based media affinity estimation
An affinity server estimates an affinity between two different time based media events (e.g., TV, radio, social media content stream), between a time based media event and a specific topic, or between two different topics, where the affinity score represents an intersection between the populations of social media users who have authored social media content items regarding the two different events and/or topics. The affinity score represents an estimation of the real world affinity between the real world population of people who have an interest in both time based media events, both topics, or in a time based media event and a topic. One possible threshold for including a social media user in a population may be based on a confidence score that indicates the confidence that one or more social media content items authored by the social media user are relevant to the topic or event in question. |
| US09009128B2 |
Information processing apparatus, information processing method and program
An information processing apparatus including a search unit configured to access a server storing a plurality of contents therein, and search for a desired content from among the plurality of contents, a recognition unit configured to recognize a reproduction apparatus which is capable of reproducing a content stored in the server, an instruction unit configured to instruct the reproduction apparatus to reproduce the content having been searched for by the search unit, and an acquisition unit configured to acquire reproduction information relating to the content having been reproduced by the reproduction apparatus. |
| US09009126B2 |
Discovering and ranking trending links about topics
A system and a method for discovering and ranking trending links about topics are presented. The method comprises steps of receiving a plurality of messages from a social networking server, identifying a plurality of trending objects from the plurality of messages, generating at least one trending score for each trending object of the trending objects, and presenting a list of the trending objects based on the trending scores. |
| US09009125B2 |
Creating and maintaining order of a log stream
Provided are techniques for using a series of compare and swap operations to assign a Relative Byte Address (RBA) and a Logical Record Sequence Number (LRSN) to a log record. One or more log buffers for storing the log record are identified, and the log record is moved to the one or more log buffers. |
| US09009120B2 |
Active memory expansion in a database environment to query needed/uneeded results
Techniques are described for estimating and managing memory compression for request processing. Embodiments of the invention may generally include receiving a request for data, determining if the requested data contains any compressed data, and sending the requesting entity only the uncompressed data. A separate embodiment generally includes receiving a request for data, determining if the requested data contains any compressed data, gathering uncompression criteria about the requested data, and using the uncompression criteria to selectively determine what portion of the compressed data to uncompress. |
| US09009111B2 |
Distributed storage system with web services client interface
A distributed, web-services based storage system. A system may include a web services interface configured to receive, according to a web services protocol, a given client request for access to a given data object, the request including a key value corresponding to the object. The system may also include storage nodes configured to store replicas of the objects, where each replica is accessible via a respective unique locator value, and a keymap instance configured to store a respective keymap entry for each object. For the given object, the respective keymap entry includes the key value and each locator value corresponding to replicas of the object. A coordinator may receive the given client request from the web services interface, responsively access the keymap instance to identify locator values corresponding to the key value and, for a particular locator value, retrieve a corresponding replica from a corresponding storage node. |
| US09009100B2 |
Web page customization based on a search term expertise level of a user
A Web site, through the use of a Rules Engine, determines an expertise level of a User for one or more topics on a Web page. The Rules Engine may analyze User related data, such as the search term used by the User to find the Web site, the past products purchased by the User, the path through the Web site taken by the User, the usage history by the User on the Web site, the demographics of the User and/or the self declared expertise level of the User, to determine an expertise level of the User for the topics on the Web page. A Display Engine may customize a Web page based on the expertise levels of a User so that topics on the Web page are presented in a manner most appropriate for the User. An Email Engine may be used to customize emails to the User so that topics in the email are presented in manner most appropriate for the User. A Support Entity Engine may also be used to route an incoming support inquiries from a User to an appropriate technical support person for the User. |
| US09009089B1 |
Secure pattern matching
Described is a system for allowing sets of processors to engage in a secure pattern matching protocol. An input pattern is received from a first set of processors, while a text is received from a second set of processors. A matrix is constructed based on values computed for each character determined by each character's position in the pattern. The first set of processors sends an encrypted matrix to the second set of processors. The second set of processors processes each character in the text and creates a set of vectors. A final activation vector is created based on processing the set of vectors and an encrypted activation vector. The second set of processors sends the final activation vector to the first set of processors. The second set of processors decrypts the final activation vector. The system provides to the first set of processors where the pattern matches the text. |
| US09009084B2 |
System and methodology providing automation security analysis and network intrusion protection in an industrial environment
The present invention relates to a system and methodology facilitating automation security in a networked-based industrial controller environment. Various components, systems and methodologies are provided to facilitate varying levels of automation security in accordance with security analysis tools, security validation tools and/or security learning systems. The security analysis tool receives abstract factory models or descriptions for input and generates an output that can include security guidelines, components, topologies, procedures, rules, policies, and the like for deployment in an automation security network. The validation tools are operative in the automation security network, wherein the tools perform security checking and/or auditing functions, for example, to determine if security components are in place and/or in suitable working order. The security learning system monitors/learns network traffic patterns during a learning phase, fires alarms or events based upon detected deviations from the learned patterns, and/or causes other automated actions to occur. |
| US09009080B2 |
Content protection system
Provided is a content protection system, in which: a user terminal judges, when a content is to be reproduced or executed, whether or not the user terminal has a usage right of the content, and makes, if it is judged that the user terminal does not have the usage right of the content, a request to a license management apparatus to acquire the usage right of the content; the license management apparatus generates, when the request to acquire the usage right is received from the user terminal, license information containing information on an expiration date that is set based on a timing when the request is received, and transmits the generated license information to the user terminal; and the user terminal judges that the user terminal has the usage right of the content until the expiration date indicated by the license information received from the license management apparatus arrives. |
| US09009075B2 |
Transfer system for security-critical medical image contents
A transfer method, a system and a product are disclosed for transferring security-critical medical image data records with PHI sections from a source application to a destination application. In an embodiment, the method accesses a PKI infrastructure that provides a user-specific key for each user. Following detection of a copy command for at least one image data record in the source application, a data convolute is produced, including an anonymized and an encrypted image data record, which are forwarded to a trader module and/or a memory module. After a pasted command is detected, the key is used to access the clipboard and/or the memory module in order to decrypt the image data record from the encrypted image data record and to paste it (for a secure destination application), and/or to access the anonymized image data record and to paste it (for a nonsecure destination application). |
| US09009073B1 |
Product availability check using image processing
A server for monitoring product availability at a retailer of products provided by a distributor is disclosed. The method includes storing a product list that defines products the distributor provides to the retailer, receiving a current document image that represents products currently sold by the retailer, performing a text recognition process on the current document image, accessing text of a previously dated document image associated with the retailer, detecting differences between the document images, determining whether one or more of said differences pertain to the product list, and if so, then assigning an accuracy value to said one or more differences, and if the accuracy value is greater than a predefined threshold, transmitting an alert to a user, wherein the alert includes a text of one or more differences. |
| US09009067B1 |
System, method and apparatus for managing made-to-order food tickets for a restaurant service
A customer service system operated by a restaurant service provides a restaurant service server. From a database, the restaurant service server retrieves a ticket that is generated by a restaurant service server application. The restaurant service server applies a diner credit policy to the ticket, and issues a diner credit for the diner associated with the ticket. |
| US09009064B2 |
Contingent fee advertisement publishing service provider for interactive TV media system and method
A purchase-transaction-settled online consumer referral and reward system and method using real-time specific merchant sales information is provided for the advertising publishing industry. The system provides a pay per transaction platform that allows advertising publishers to monetize interactive and/or broadcast media advertising by tracking and linking ad acceptance events to consummated consumer purchases. |
| US09009063B1 |
Method and system for compiling a consumer-based electronic database, searchable according to individual internet user-defined micro-demographics
A system and method include storing at least one database comprising user information and solicitor information comprising information associated with one or more of a plurality of solicitation entities. Information is received from a first user computing device, and a relevance factor is determined based on at least a relationship of the electronic information with one or more of the user information and the solicitor information. At least one electronic solicitation is generated, and transmitted to the first user computing device. Electronic message information associated with at least one of the plurality of persons is received, and information associated with the electronic message information is transmitted to a second user computing device. |
| US09009061B2 |
Cooling resource capacity allocation based on optimization of cost function with lagrange multipliers
In a method of determining cooling resource capacity allocations for resource units in a shared environment for optimized operations, cost parameters associated with operating the resource units in at least one of delivering and receiving cooling resources are identified, one or more constraints associated with operating the resource units are identified, in which at least one of the one or more constraints comprises meeting at least a total cooling demand of components in the shared environment, a cost function that correlates the plurality of identified cost parameters is developed, a minimized cost function is solved for through application of a Lagrange multiplier subject to the identified one or more constraints, and cooling resource capacity allocations for the resource units that result in optimized operations in the shared environment based upon the minimized cost function solution are determined. |
| US09009060B2 |
Information management and synchronous communications system
An information management and synchronous communications system and method facilitates database equilibrium and synchronization with wired, wireless and Web-based systems, user-friendly and efficient generation of computerized menus and reservations with handwritten/voice modifications for restaurants and other applications that utilize equipment with nonstandard graphical formats, display sizes and/or applications for use in remote data entry, information management and communication with host computer, digital input device or remote pager via standard hardwired connection, the internet, a wireless link, printer or the like. Various operations employing automated telephone calls and/or messaging may, for instance, be performed. For example, desired reservation and/or appointment information may be automatically converted and conveyed to one or more entities via automated telephone call and/or messaging. As another example, information regarding reservation acceptability may be received and automatically converted via automated telephone call and/or messaging. Telephones may, for instance, be the only equipment required by the entities. |
| US09009054B2 |
Program endpoint time detection apparatus and method, and program information retrieval system
This invention relates to retrieval for multimedia content, and provides a program endpoint time detection apparatus for detecting an endpoint time of a program by performing processing on audio signals of said program, comprising an audio classification unit for classifying said audio signals into a speech signal portion and a non-speech signal portion; a keyword retrieval unit for retrieving, as a candidate endpoint keyword, an endpoint keyword indicating start or end of the program from said speech signal portion; a content analysis unit for performing content analysis on context of the candidate endpoint keyword retrieved by the keyword retrieval unit to determine whether the candidate endpoint keyword is a valid endpoint keyword; and a program endpoint time determination unit for performing statistics analysis based on the retrieval result of said keyword retrieval unit and the determination result of said content analysis unit, and determining the endpoint time of the program. In addition, this invention also provides a program information retrieval system. With present invention, program information regarding a program attended by user can be rapidly obtained. |
| US09009052B2 |
System and method for singing synthesis capable of reflecting voice timbre changes
Herein provided is a system for singing synthesis capable of reflecting not only pitch and dynamics changes but also timbre changes of a user's singing. A spectral transform surface generating section 119 temporally concatenates all the spectral transform curves estimated by a second spectral transform curve estimating section 117 to define a spectral transform surface. A synthesized audio signal generating section 121 generates a transform spectral envelope at each instant of time by scaling a reference spectral envelope based on the spectral transform surface. Then, the synthesized audio signal generating section 121 generates an audio signal of a synthesized singing voice reflecting timbre changes of an input singing voice, based on the transform spectral envelope and a fundamental frequency contained in a reference singing voice source data. |
| US09009051B2 |
Apparatus, method, and program for reading aloud documents based upon a calculated word presentation order
According to one embodiment, a reading aloud support apparatus includes a reception unit, a first extraction unit, a second extraction unit, an acquisition unit, a generation unit, a presentation unit. The reception unit is configured to receive an instruction. The first extraction unit is configured to extract, as a partial document, a part of a document which corresponds to a range of words. The second extraction unit is configured to perform morphological analysis and to extract words as candidate words. The acquisition unit is configured to acquire attribute information items relates to the candidate words. The generation unit is configured to perform weighting relating to a value corresponding a distance and to determine each of candidate words to be preferentially presented to generate a presentation order. The presentation unit is configured to present the candidate words and the attribute information items in accordance with the presentation order. |
| US09009041B2 |
Systems and methods for improving the accuracy of a transcription using auxiliary data such as personal data
A method is described for improving the accuracy of a transcription generated by an automatic speech recognition (ASR) engine. A personal vocabulary is maintained that includes replacement words. The replacement words in the personal vocabulary are obtained from personal data associated with a user. A transcription is received of an audio recording. The transcription is generated by an ASR engine using an ASR vocabulary and includes a transcribed word that represents a spoken word in the audio recording. Data is received that is associated with the transcribed word. A replacement word from the personal vocabulary is identified, which is used to re-score the transcription and replace the transcribed word. |
| US09009040B2 |
Training a transcription system
According to certain embodiments, training a transcription system includes accessing recorded voice data of a user from one or more sources. The recorded voice data comprises voice samples. A transcript of the recorded voice data is accessed. The transcript comprises text representing one or more words of each voice sample. The transcript and the recorded voice data are provided to a transcription system to generate a voice profile for the user. The voice profile comprises information used to convert a voice sample to corresponding text. |
| US09009039B2 |
Noise adaptive training for speech recognition
Technologies are described herein for noise adaptive training to achieve robust automatic speech recognition. Through the use of these technologies, a noise adaptive training (NAT) approach may use both clean and corrupted speech for training. The NAT approach may normalize the environmental distortion as part of the model training. A set of underlying “pseudo-clean” model parameters may be estimated directly. This may be done without point estimation of clean speech features as an intermediate step. The pseudo-clean model parameters learned from the NAT technique may be used with a Vector Taylor Series (VTS) adaptation. Such adaptation may support decoding noisy utterances during the operating phase of a automatic voice recognition system. |
| US09009037B2 |
Encoding device, decoding device, and methods therefor
Disclosed is an encoding device that improves the quality of a decoded signal in a hierarchical coding (scalable coding) method, wherein a band to be quantized is selected for every level (layer). The encoding device (101) is equipped with a second layer encoding unit (205) that selects a first band to be quantized of a first input signal from among a plurality of sub-bands, and that generates second layer encoding information containing first band information of said band; a second layer decoding unit (206) that generates a first decoded signal using the second layer encoding information; an addition unit (207) that generates a second input signal using the first input signal and the first decoded signal; and a third layer encoding unit (208) that selects a second band to be quantized of the second input signal using the first decoded signal, and that generates third layer encoding information. |
| US09009034B2 |
Voice activity detection/silence suppression system
A Voice Activity Detection/Silence Suppression (VAD/SS) system is connected to a channel of a transmission pipe. The channel provides a pathway for the transmission of energy. A method for operating a VAD/SS system includes detecting the energy on the channel, and activating or suppressing activation of the VAD/SS system depending upon the nature of the energy detected on the channel. |
| US09009032B2 |
Method and system for performing sample rate conversion
A method and system for performing sample rate conversion is provided. The method may include configuring a system to convert a sample rate of a first audio channel of a plurality of audio channels to produce a first audio stream of samples. The system may be dynamically reconfigured to convert a sample rate of a second of the plurality of audio channels to produce a second audio stream of samples, wherein the first and second audio streams are output from the system at the same time. The method may further include arbitrating between request for additional data from the first and second audio stream of samples, where processing of the first channel is suspended when the request corresponds to a second channel that is of higher priority. |
| US09009029B1 |
Semantic hashing in entity resolution
According to one aspect, a computer-implemented method for entity resolution is disclosed. In one embodiment, the method includes generating a semantic hash for an entity having an assigned entity identifier (ID) and, upon the occurrence of an entity milestone, changing the entity ID. The method further includes generating a semantic hash for the entity having the changed entity ID, and maintaining history information associated with the entity and corresponding entity IDs and semantic hashes over a period of time that includes a plurality of entity milestones. The method also includes periodically removing at least one set of older entities and retaining entity IDs and semantic hashes associated with the removed entities. |
| US09009027B2 |
Computer-implemented systems and methods for mood state determination
Computer-implemented systems and methods are provided for determining an overall mood score of a document. For example, the document is received from a computer-readable medium. A text segment in a document is identified to be indicative of a mood of the document. The text segment is mapped to a mood scale among a predetermined set of mood scales. A mood weight associated with the mood scale for the text segment is generated. An overall mood score of the document is determined based at least in part on the mood weight. |
| US09009017B2 |
Arrangement and method relating to analysis of transmission lines
Embodiments of the present invention relate to an arrangement for analyzing transmission line properties. Measurement data providing means provide data of a first frequency dependent line property, line property calculation arrangement with model handling means, a Hubert transform handler and line property determination means calculate said first property based on model parameters, line resistance at 0 frequency, roc, a cut-off frequency, v, a line capacitance C∞ and a line inductance L∞H. The line model handling means calculates the line inductance L(f) via a Hubert transform of a function of Q(f/v), wherein the function Q(f/v) relates the line resistance R(f) to roc as R(f)=roc·Q(f/v). The Hilbert transform values are calculated using a parameterized closed form expression for the Hubert transform or they are tabulated. The line property determination means calculates the first property and criteria function application means uses the measured first property and the calculated first property for model parameters to find optimized numerical model parameter values. |
| US09009014B2 |
System, method and computer program product to simulate the progressive failure of rupture disks in downhole environments
Systems and related methods to simulate, predict, and report progressive failures of rupture disks in response to thermal expansion of trapped annular fluids. |
| US09009012B2 |
Modular surgical kit for cartilage repair
A modular surgical kit for repair of diseased cartilage at an articulating surface of a joint and a design method for a modular surgical kit are disclosed. The modular surgical kit is adapted for removal of damage cartilage and bone and also adapted for insertion of a medical implant a grafted plug or an artificial plug having an implant body with a predetermined cross-sectional profile and adapted for guiding insert tools during repair of diseased cartilage at an articulating surface of a joint. The modular surgical kit includes an implant, and a medical implant a grafted plug or an artificial plug having an implant body with a predetermined cross-sectional profile a guide base having a positioning body with a guide hole through said positioning body and a guide body with a guide channel, the guide channel having a cross-sectional profile that is designed to correspond to the cross-sectional profile of the implant body and having a muzzle. The modular surgical kit includes a drill adjustment device being arranged to enable adjustment of the drill depth. The positioning body has a cartilage contact surface that is designed to fit the contour of cartilage or subchondral bone in the joint in a predetermined area surrounding the site of diseased cartilage. The guide hole has a muzzle on the cartilage contact surface at a position corresponding to the site of the diseased cartilage. The positioning body includes a device for releasably connecting to the guide body such that, when connected, the guide channel is positioned in relation to the positioning body such that its muzzle emanates at a site corresponding to the site of implantation into the bone. |
| US09009011B2 |
Integrated construction platform
Method and system disclosed herein provides generating a three-dimensional construction grid based on a data file generated by an architectural software, wherein the three-dimensional grid includes three-dimensional position information of various structural building components; displaying the three-dimensional construction grid using a display device of a computing device; receiving information of various non-structural building components, the information including location of the non-structural building components on the three-dimensional grid; associating the non-structural building components to one or more of the structural components of the three-dimensional grid; and automatically generating a plurality of specifications for the non-structural building components. |
| US09009010B2 |
Systems and methods for hydraulic fracture characterization using microseismic event data
Systems and methods for hydraulic fracture characterization using microseismic event data to identify the orientation spacing and dip for subsurface fractures. |
| US09008998B2 |
Systems and methods for processing mapping and modeling data
A method for post-processing georeferenced mapping data includes providing positioning data indicating a position of a data acquisition system in a defined space at specific moments in time, providing ranging data indicating relative position of objects in the defined space with respect to the data acquisition system at the specific moments in time, performing a smoothing process on the positioning data to determine smoothed best estimate of trajectory (SBET) data for trajectory of the data acquisition system, performing a scan matching process on the SBET data and the ranging data to identify objects and/or object features in the defined space, performing a process to revise the SBET data so that the SBET data aligns with the identified objects and/or object features and storing the revised SBET data with the range data. |
| US09008997B2 |
System and method for vibration analysis and phase analysis of vibration waveforms using dynamic statistical averaging of tachometer data to accurately calculate rotational speed
Vibration analysis is performed on a machine having a variable frequency drive by using a tachometer to monitor rotational speed of the drive shaft and a logic device to calculate speed parameters associated with the drive shaft using the tachometer data. The speed parameters include a maximum speed, a minimum speed, and an average speed of the drive shaft. By correlating the vibration spectra of the motor drive with the speed parameters, machine faults can be identified based upon the energy distribution in the spectra. Further, vibration waveforms from two or more locations on the machine can be sequentially acquired through synchronous triggering by using a pulse edge of a stable tachometer signal. The waveforms can be compared to determine a phase difference to help in identifying any machine faults that may be present. |
| US09008994B2 |
Portable electronic device, storage medium and method for reporting location of the portable electronic device
In a method for reporting a location of a portable electronic device, an acceleration of the portable electronic device is detected via an accelerometer of the portable electronic device. The portable electronic device is determined as falling when a difference between the acceleration of the portable electronic device and an acceleration of gravity is in a predetermined range. An angular velocity of the portable electronic device is detected via a gyroscope of the portable electronic device when the portable electronic device is determined as falling. The portable electronic device is determined as static when the angular velocity of the portable electronic device equals zero. If the portable electronic device is static for a predetermined time period, location information of the portable electronic device is collected from a global position system receiver of the portable electronic device. The location information is sent to a target electronic device. |
| US09008993B2 |
Methods and apparatus for detecting unauthorized batteries or tampering by monitoring a thermal profile
According to one aspect, a portable electronic device having a heat generating component, a thermal sensor, an energy storage device for powering the portable electronic device, a thermal element thermally coupled to the heat generating component, the energy storage device, and the thermal sensor. The thermal element is sized and shaped so that heat generated by the heat generating component flows through the thermal element towards the thermal sensor and interacts with the energy storage device. The thermal sensor is used to monitor a thermal profile for the thermal element, and the monitored thermal profile is compared with an expected thermal profile to determine if the integrity of the portable electronic device has been compromised. |
| US09008992B2 |
Testing and monitoring an electrical system
A method includes outputting a test initiation command over a power supply cable to a first load device, receiving, at the first load device, the test initiation command and testing the first load device. The method also includes generating first test data for the first load device, inserting the first test data into a data packet and forwarding the data packet to another load device. The method further includes repeating the inserting and forwarding for each of the load devices. |
| US09008989B2 |
Wireless controller
A computing device receives acceleration information from an accelerometer mechanically coupled to a wireless controller, magnetic bearing information from a magnetometer mechanically coupled to the wireless controller, and rotation information from a gyroscope mechanically coupled to the wireless controller. When the wireless controller is primarily vertical, the computing device determines a rotation angle of the wireless controller by filtering the rotation information using the acceleration information. When the wireless controller is primarily horizontal, the computing device determines the rotation angle of the wireless controller by filtering the rotation information using the magnetic bearing information. |
| US09008988B2 |
Method of calibrating inertial sensors
A method of calibrating inertial sensors of working equipment, such as a vehicle or survey equipment, includes determining whether the working equipment is in operation or not. Data is captured from inertial sensors and associated temperature sensors while the working equipment is out of operation. The captured data is used to update a thermal bias error model for the inertial sensors. |
| US09008986B2 |
Variable tool calibration
The present disclosure relates to a method to calibrate logging measurements from a logging tool for which one or more attributes vary over the course of logging. A logging tool is provided and a pre-logging calibration function for the logging tool is obtained. Logging measurements are made using the logging tool, and a post-logging calibration function for the logging tool is obtained. A variable calibration function using the pre-logging calibration function and the post-logging calibration function is determined, and the logging measurements are calibrated using the variable calibration function. The variable calibration function may be discrete or continuous and linear or non-linear. A non-linear calibration function may be based on measurements of one or more of the varying attributes of the logging tool. A discrete calibration function may have three or more calibration factors. |
| US09008982B2 |
Systems and methods for determining residual flux in a power transformer
The present disclosure provides systems and methods for calculating the flux in a core of an unloaded power transformer using current measurements taken from a capacitance-coupled voltage transformer (CCVT) attached to the same phase line as the power transformer. According to various embodiments, the current sensors may both be positioned at zero-voltage points in the CCVT, eliminating the need for high-voltage insulated current sensors. An intelligent electronic device (IED) may determine the magnetic flux within the core of the power transformer using the measured and/or derived currents through capacitive assemblies of the CCVT. The IED may calculate the residual flux in the power transformer when it is de-energized. The IED may use the calculated residual flux to facilitate an optimized re-energization of the power transformer, thereby reducing inrush currents during re-energization. |
| US09008980B2 |
Power consumption display apparatus and power consumption display method
A display is estimating every day working time of a worker involved in a load based on power consumption data in which electricity supplied to the load is measured in a certain period; calculating power consumption of the load during working time a day to calculate an average of the power consumption in a predetermined period; and calculating estimated daily power saving for every day based on a difference between maximum power during working time a day and power for each of the time, in which an index in which a proportion of the daily estimated power saving to a sum of the estimated electric saving and the power consumption serves as a parameter while a proportion of the power consumption a day to an average of the power consumption in a predetermined period serves as another parameter is displayed with the measured power consumption for each of the time. |
| US09008979B2 |
Total energy quantity controlling device and method
A total energy quantity controlling device has a calculation data generating portion for defining, as calculation data, data for the amount of energy used for a processing energy type at a processing location for a processing month in a processing fiscal year, if this data is confirmed, or substitute data if this data for the amount of energy used is not confirmed; a substitute data determining portion for determining the substitute data; a data calculation processing portion for using the calculation data to calculate an aggregate value for the amount of energy used; a substitution rate calculating portion for calculating a substitution rate that is the use rate of the substitute data or the confirmed data within the aggregate value for the amount of energy used; and a displaying portion for displaying the aggregate value for the amount of energy used and the use rate. |
| US09008976B2 |
Wireless torque measurement system using programmable gain amplifier
A system includes a rotor, a rotor antenna attached to the rotor, a strain detection device attached to the rotor, a programmable gain amplifier attached to the rotor, and a control module attached to the rotor. The strain detection device is configured to generate signals that indicate an amount of strain in the rotor. The programmable gain amplifier is configured to amplify the signals generated by the strain detection device by a gain value. The gain value is programmable. The control module is configured to program the gain value of the programmable gain amplifier and transmit, via the rotor antenna, digital data that is derived from the amplified signals. |
| US09008975B2 |
Apparatus for detecting periodic defect and method therefor
An apparatus for detecting periodic defects includes a sensor that obtains signals to evaluate properties of an area having a length longer than an expected defect period; a small area selector that separates small areas whose area length is shorter than that of the area so that all adjacent distance intervals are equal in a periodic defect arrangement direction, and selecting signals corresponding to the positions of the plurality of small areas from outputs from the sensor; an evaluation index calculator that calculates a similarity evaluation index between signal patterns among signals selected by the small area selector; a set value changer that changes the positions of the small areas and the distance interval, and repeating computational processings of the small area selector and the evaluation index calculator; and a period judgment device that judges the distance interval as a period when the evaluation index is higher than a value. |
| US09008969B2 |
Pulsed x-ray signal processing
Method and system for analyzing electrical pulses contained in a pulse train signal representative of the interaction of x-ray bursts with a nuclear detector configured for subsurface disposal. The pulse train signal is sampled to form a digitized signal. The total energy deposited at the detector during an x-ray burst is determined from the digitized signal, and a count rate of x-ray pulses from the burst is determined. A subsurface parameter is determined using the total energy deposit. |
| US09008963B2 |
Map information distribution systems and methods
Map information distribution systems and methods store map information and version information for each road category of the map information stored in a navigation device, the version information correlated with identification information identifying the navigation device. The systems and methods receive the identification information from the navigation device and obtain, based on the received identification information, the version information for each road category of the map information stored in the navigation device corresponding to the stored identification information. The systems and methods extract, based on the obtained version information for each road category, differential data for each road category with stored map information of a latest version, and transmit the extracted differential data for each road category to the navigation device corresponding to the received identification information. |
| US09008961B2 |
Determining and displaying auto drive lanes in an autonomous vehicle
Aspects of the present disclosure relate generally to identifying and displaying traffic lanes that are available for autonomous driving. This information may be displayed to a driver of a vehicle having an autonomous driving mode, in order to inform the driver of where he or she can use the autonomous driving mode. In one example, the display may visually distinguishing between lanes that are available for auto-drive from those that are not. The display may also include an indicator of the position of a lane (autodrive or not) currently occupied by the vehicle. In addition, if that lane is an autodrive lane the display may include information indicating how much further the vehicle may continue in the autonomous driving mode in that particular lane. The display may also display information indicating the remaining autodrive distance in other lanes as well as the lane with the greatest remaining autodrive distance. |
| US09008958B2 |
Extra-vehicular anti-collision system
Device, system and method, in a vehicle communication system using a first protocol, of implementing a gateway using a distinct second protocol. Embodiments include a first protocol transmitting in a government set vehicle safety band, and a second protocol in the set of: WiFi, Bluetooth, cellular phone and cellular data. An embodiment uses a validity-testing module to prevent insecure messages on the second protocol from interfering with the first protocol. Both one-way and two-way inter-protocol message transfers are described. Embodiments use the gateway to communicate from a vehicle using the first protocol to pedestrians, bicyclists, and equipped animals using the second protocol. Embodiments use a computed and transmitted risk-of-collision value. Embodiments include a driver or operator warning responsive to the transmitted risk value. Embodiments include computation of likely future position. |
| US09008955B2 |
Route planning system for vehicles
A navigation system includes a user-operable input device configured to receive a desired destination. A storage medium stores a map database that describes a road network comprising route segments. The map database includes, for each of the route segments, a respective attribute value and a respective energy cost. A processor is configured to analyze the route segments in the database in accordance with a predetermined optimization algorithm that considers both the attribute values and the energy costs of the route segments in order to select a combination of route segments from the database that interconnects a starting location and the destination. |
| US09008954B2 |
Predicting impact of a traffic incident on a road network
A method and system for predicting impact of traffic incidents on a road network by using a classification scheme to identify a known impact classes associated with captured traffic data. |
| US09008952B2 |
Managing vehicles on a road network
A system for managing vehicles on a road network includes a processor that performs operations including accessing a matrix of vehicle parameters of a plurality of communicating vehicles on the road network, and representing the plurality of communicating vehicles in a graph with a plurality of nodes corresponding to the plurality of communicating vehicles and with a plurality of edges corresponding to the vehicle parameters. The system can include partitioning, with the processor, the graph to reduce disruptions to the road network below a threshold level to support safe and efficient traffic flow, and assigning one or more exclusion zones within the road network to each partition of the graph by associating the vehicle parameters for each vehicle. |
| US09008947B1 |
Method of calculating average revolutions per independent unit
A method to obtain average revolutions per independent unit includes a total number of engine revolutions with the engine control unit (ECU) and a current odometer value with the ECU so that a final value can be calculated by dividing the total number of engine revolutions with the current odometer value for a designated time period. The current odometer value can be a distance unit or time unit as the final value, which is the average revolutions per independent unit, is displayed with a control panel of a vehicle. The final value provides an accurate conclusion regarding the current condition of an engine in addition to the mileage of the engine or the engine hours. |
| US09008945B2 |
Turbosupercharged internal combustion engine control method
A method of controlling an internal combustion engine supercharged by a turbosupercharger having a turbine and a compressor; the control method including the steps of: determining, in a reduced mass flow/compression ratio graph, at least one limit operation curve of the compressor representing a limit of the operating range of the compressor; controlling the turbosupercharger to keep the actual reduced mass flow and actual compression ratio of the compressor within the limit defined by the limit operation curve of the compressor; determining an index as a function of the dynamics of the reduced mass flow of the compressor; and modifying the limit operation curve of the compressor as a function of the index. |
| US09008942B2 |
Method of managing an engine failure on a multi-engined aircraft having a hybrid power plant
A method of managing an engine failure on a rotary wing aircraft (1) having a hybrid power plant (5) with at least two fuel-burning engines (13, 13′), at least one electric machine (12), and a main gearbox (11). Said aircraft (1) also has electrical energy storage means (14) and a main rotor (2) mechanically connected to said hybrid power plant (5). In said method, during each flight, the operation of said engines (13, 13′) is monitored in order to detect a failure of any one of them, and then once a failure of one of said engines (13, 13′) has been detected, said electric machine (12) is controlled, if necessary, to deliver auxiliary power We in order to avoid a deficit appearing in the total power WT of said hybrid power plant (5), thereby enabling the pilot of said aircraft (1) to fly said aircraft (1) safely without degrading said hybrid power plant (5). |
| US09008941B2 |
Anti-jerk control apparatus and method for Hybrid Electric Vehicle
The present invention relates to an anti-jerk control apparatus and method for an Hybrid Electric Vehicle (HEV).The anti-jerk control apparatus includes a model speed calculation unit for calculating a model speed of the motor in a state in which a vibration of a drive shaft is not considered. A vibration occurrence determination unit detects a speed vibration component while calculating a reference speed difference and an average speed difference from differences between the model speed and an actual speed of the motor, thus determining whether a vibration occurs on the drive shaft. A torque correction value calculation unit calculates a motor torque correction value for anti-jerk required to damp the vibration of the drive shaft, and controls torque of the motor if the vibration occurrence determination unit determines that the vibration occurs on the drive shaft. |
| US09008940B2 |
Vehicle control device and vehicle control method
A cruise control device and an obstacle detection device are provided which achieve a safe and appropriate tracking control by avoiding a sudden recognition of a short following distance when a preceding vehicle is found in an uphill or downhill gradient, in a curve, or at an intersection, or by reducing the damage of a crash when the crash cannot be avoided. An obstacle determination process section is provided which receives information from a sensor which detects an obstacle, receives terrain information of the position of the host vehicle from a navigation device, and determines the presence of the obstacle when a predetermined condition is satisfied after the sensor detects the obstacle. The predetermined condition to determine the presence of the obstacle is changed based on the terrain information of the position of the host vehicle received from the navigation device. |
| US09008939B2 |
Vehicle control system and method using control allocation and phase compensation
A vehicle control system and method combining control allocation and phase compensation for forming a phase compensated actuator command signal based on a control demand signal. A feedback unit includes a matrix multiplication unit for forming an estimated behavior signal, from a control efficiency matrix and the actuator command signal. The estimated behavior signal is fed to a second summation unit for forming a difference signal. The difference signal is processed by a filter unit for forming a feedback signal which is connected to a first summation unit for forming a modified control demand signal, such that the modified control demand signal is adjusted to always represent a control demand realizable by the vehicle. The modified control demand signal is further connected to the second summation unit and to a control allocator which output is then connected to the matrix multiplier to form a feedback loop. |
| US09008938B2 |
Control system in vehicle
A control system for controlling a driving power source in a vehicle, includes a driving state detector for detecting a driving state of the vehicle; a first determiner for determining whether or not the driving state detected by the driving state detector is a first state; a second determiner for determining whether or not the driving state detected by the driving state detector is a second state; a rotational speed limiter for executing rotational speed limiting control for limiting a driving power source rotational speed to a predetermined upper limit value or less when the first determiner determines that the driving state is the first state, during an operation of the driving power source; and a rotational speed limiting termination unit for terminating the rotational speed limiting control, when the second determiner determines that the driving state is the second state, during the operation of the driving power source. |
| US09008937B2 |
Method and control device for open-loop or closed-loop control of a vehicle brake system
A method for carrying out closed-loop or open-loop control of a vehicle brake system includes, when a braking request signal is present, setting brake pressures at brakes on axles and/or wheels of the vehicle by distributing brake pressure. Before braking is initiated on the basis of current, received or detected data relating to friction conditions or grip conditions between the roadway surface and tire surfaces of the vehicle, a determination is made as to whether, or to what extent, the distribution of brake pressure occurs in a brake wear pressure distribution or in a frictional engagement pressure distribution for the subsequent initiation of the braking process. |
| US09008928B2 |
Vehicle control apparatus
Disclosed is a vehicle control apparatus which can prevent the deterioration of drivability. The ECU can set a control accelerator opening degree to be converted when a control permission condition is established. The control accelerator opening degree is equal to or larger than an accelerator lower limit which is larger than an idle determination value for determining an automatic stopping of an engine by an eco-run. The control accelerator opening degree thus set can prevent the drivability from being deteriorated without the automatic stopping of the engine being caused even if the accelerator opening degree is converted to reduce the torque of the engine with the establishment of the control permission condition. |
| US09008925B2 |
Method for controlling a gear brake for an automated change-speed gearbox
A method of controlling a transmission brake of an automated change-speed transmission having a control cylinder, that is pressurized by inlet and outlet valves, and an upstream main cut-off valve by which a nominal pressure, supplied to the control cylinder, is regulated. Functional deviations of the transmission brake can be considered during a shifting operation, when the transmission is in neutral, the motor coupling clutch is disengaged and the transmission brake is engaged. The rotational speed gradient and the mass of the transmission components to be braked are determined and used to calculate the current braking torque of the transmission brake. The current braking torque relates to the current regulated nominal pressure, and the determined values are stored in a control unit and used during subsequent actuation of the transmission brake. |
| US09008924B2 |
Transmission creep control
A transmission control system and method for controlling the level of creep torque supplied by a powertrain. The transmission control system having a controller configured to receive output signals from any one of a driver interface device sensor, a grade sensor, and a brake pedal sensor. Based on the output signals, the level of necessary creep torque and be determined and supplied, reducing unnecessary fuel consumption. |
| US09008922B2 |
Reference position setting method for automated manual transmission
A reference position setting method for an automated manual transmission is allowed to initialize an accurate reference position while minimizing relative movement of a finger, and to reduce noise generated when the finger moves to an end of a shifting direction to secure quieter and faster operation capability. |
| US09008921B2 |
Pressure regulation method for an automatic transmission
A transmission control system for a vehicle includes a transmission control module (TCM), a solenoid valve, a pressure regulator valve, and a transmission element. The TCM includes a control algorithm providing output signals to valve drive electronics, where the valve drive electronics supply current to the solenoid valve. The solenoid valve controls an output pressure located in a passage between the pressure regulator valve and the transmission element. During an engine start-up condition of the vehicle, the control algorithm of the TCM includes control logic for activating a solenoid adjustment algorithm. The solenoid adjustment algorithm decreases the sensitivity of the valve drive electronics when supplying current to the solenoid valve. The solenoid adjustment algorithm is activated for a predetermined amount of time after engine start-up, and is then terminated. Alternatively, the solenoid adjustment algorithm is activated until a vehicle operating condition reaches a particular value, and is then terminated. |
| US09008919B2 |
Swing control apparatus and method of construction machinery
A swing control apparatus and a swing control method for a construction machine are provided. The swing control apparatus includes a start position estimation unit, a stop target position calculation unit, and a swing motor position control unit. Even if an operator releases a lever or commands a stop at different times, an upper swing structure of the construction machine (for example, excavator) can be stopped within a predetermined range, and thus the inconvenience caused by an additional driving operation, which is required as the stop position differs according to the time point where the stop command starts, can be solved. |
| US09008915B2 |
Four-wheel steered vehicle and torque distribution control methods for same
A method for operating steerable rear wheels of a vehicle includes detecting a rear wheel steering angle of at least one of the steerable rear wheels, and detecting a first vehicular condition. The method further includes determining a weighted rear steering angle value based at least in part upon the rear wheel steering angle and the first vehicular condition, and controlling the steerable rear wheels in response to the weighted rear steering angle value. |
| US09008913B1 |
Steering control system for a towed axle
A trailer includes a chassis having a hitch, an axle having a pair of tractive elements rotatably coupled to the chassis, an actuator coupled to the chassis and positioned to steer the pair of tractive elements, and a processing circuit. The processing circuit has an input for receiving a transmission gear of a tractor vehicle and a variable output for engaging the actuator. The processing circuit is configured to control the steering of the pair of tractive elements according to a control strategy that varies based on the transmission gear of the tractor vehicle. |
| US09008912B2 |
Rear camera system for vehicle having parking guide function and parking guide system using the same
Provided are a rear camera system for vehicles and a parking guide system using the same, which displays the minimum width and maximum width of a parking area guideline in consideration of the dimensions of a vehicle in displaying a parking area, and displays a stop position in backing. The parking guide system includes a camera mounted on a vehicle, a display unit disposed inside the vehicle, and a parking guide control unit connected to the camera and the display unit. The parking guide control unit includes a parking logic operation unit receiving a steering angle, a speed, or a parking mode from the vehicle, a parking area guideline display unit displaying a guideline for parking guide on the basis of the result of the logic operation, and an image synthesizer synthesizing the results, displayed by the parking area guideline display unit, and an image obtained by the camera. |
| US09008911B2 |
Electrical limitation of a steering gear travel path
A method for an electrical limitation of the travel path of a steering gear in a wheeled vehicle, in particular a passenger car, which exhibits a steering drive, is provided. The method includes adjusting the steering gear in a first direction and acquiring a first maximum travel path in the first direction. The method includes prescribing a first limiting value based upon this acquired first maximum travel path and electrically limiting the travel path of the steering gear in the first direction based upon the first limiting value. The first maximum travel path is acquired by the steering drive. |
| US09008910B2 |
Electrical power steering system for a motor vehicle
An electrical power steering system for a motor vehicle. The system includes a rack actuator and a sensor for measuring torque applied to the steering wheel by the driver, the actuator and the sensor being arranged on the steering column, respectively between the steering wheel and the rack, and between the actuator and the steering wheel. The system develops a final assistance torque of the electrical power steering, which is adapted to simulate an identical localization of the rack actuator and the torque measuring sensor on the steering column, such that the Bode diagram phase representing the operation of the system is essentially nil at the two main frequencies of the mechanical resonance of the system. |
| US09008907B2 |
Intelligent vehicle power control system and method
The present disclosure provides a system and method for managing a vehicle electrical system providing power to auxiliary systems. The system comprises a power control device with the ability to control the power to multiple auxiliary systems. The device has one or more sensor inputs for reading the system voltage and other data. The device can be configured with preset voltage thresholds for turning individual accessories on or off at predetermined voltage levels, or otherwise entering shutdown procedures. The system may also comprise a computer that is running dedicated software for managing the system and reconfiguring the device behavior. |
| US09008906B2 |
Occupant sharing of displayed content in vehicles
The present disclosure describes a displayed object movement module that causes displayed objects or other content to be moved from a first source vehicle display to a second target vehicle display at the request of a source vehicle occupant associated with the first source vehicle display. |
| US09008905B2 |
Windscreen wiper drive control system and method
The invention relates to a drive control means, in particular for controlling a windscreen wiper drive of a motor vehicle, having a first interface and a second interface, wherein, after receiving control information via the first interface, the drive control means is arranged to configure itself in a master role and to output control information via the second interface in order to control a further drive control means. |
| US09008903B2 |
Wheel diameter variation-detecting device
The present disclosure presents a wheel diameter variation-detecting device capable of properly detecting relative variation in diameter between a plurality of wheels of a vehicle. The wheel diameter variation-detecting device can detect variation in diameter between a plurality of wheels of a vehicle, can detect rotational speeds of the respective wheels, and can calculate a variation parameter indicative of variation in diameter between the wheels using one of the wheels as a reference wheel, based on a result of comparison between the rotational speed of the reference wheel and that of one of the wheels other than the reference wheel. Further, the wheel diameter variation-detecting device can learn the variation parameter based on a value obtained by averaging a plurality of values of the variation parameter obtained before the detected travelled distance reaches a predetermined distance. |
| US09008894B2 |
Automobile mileage notification system
The application describes a system for notifying a vehicle owner regarding service due for a vehicle based on the vehicle's accumulated mileage. The system determines vehicle mileage based on GPS data, determines whether the mileage has exceeded a threshold, transmits a wireless signal from the vehicle to a notification service provider computer when the threshold is exceeded, and sends a notice from the notification service provider to the dealer and/or customer to indicate that vehicle service is due. |
| US09008893B2 |
Systems and methods for vehicle monitoring with processing interruption tolerance
Embodiments relate to systems and methods for vehicle monitoring with processing interruption tolerance. One or more vehicle sensors can transmit one or more data streams to a primary data processing system via a data channel. A secondary data buffer can be coupled to the data channel to continuously capture the set of data streams and/or subsets thereof. During normal operation, the set of data streams are processed by the primary data processing system. After a limited-duration fault occurs in the primary data processing system, it can recover by accessing the backup data in the secondary data buffer. The lost data can be retrieved from the secondary data buffer using timestamp information to process the data in its original time context and to ensure that no already-processed data is included. The set of data streams can be downsampled or decimated in the secondary data buffer to extend storage capacity. |
| US09008888B1 |
Cost based navigation
Determination of a most efficient intermediate destination while traveling toward a primary destination is provided. With respect to its effect on the primary destination, the most efficient intermediate destination such as a fast-food restaurant, gas station, ATM, etc., may be determined. The navigation system may search in a user-defined radius for all intermediate destinations and present the deviation costs associated with each destination thereby allowing the user to choose the most efficient option. The deviation costs may be determined by the navigation system with respect to user preferences for minimizing time, minimizing distance, minimizing fuel consumption, restaurant preferences, and the like, and their impact on the primary destination arrival time. |
| US09008882B2 |
Vehicle and control method of vehicle
A vehicle capable of traveling using electric power from a power storage device mounted thereon has an ECU executing, when traveling by electric power from the power storage device: the step of calculating a reference electric consumption based on an average operating point determined by an average vehicle speed and average driving force for every predetermined period; the step of calculating an actual electric consumption based on power consumption and travel distance during the period; the step of calculating a predicted electric consumption by a smoothing processing based on the reference electric consumption and actual electric consumption; and the step of calculating an allowed travel distance RMD that the vehicle can travel by the electric power remaining in the power storage device, based on the predicted electric consumption and the SOC of the power storage device. |
| US09008876B2 |
Yaw motion control of a vehicle
A vehicle having two forwardly positioned steerable road wheels and first and second rearwardly positioned wheels disposed on opposing lateral sides of the vehicle has first and second independently controllable electric motors to apply driving and braking torque to respective rearwardly positioned wheels. An angle sensor indicates a steering angle of the steerable road-wheels, and a speed sensor indicates vehicle longitudinal speed. A yaw-rate sensor indicates the vehicle's measured yaw-rate. The vehicle has control means to determine a target yaw-rate from the steering angle of the steerable road wheels and the longitudinal velocity; determine a yaw rate error by comparing the vehicle's measured yaw-rate with said target yaw-rate, and determine an amount of yaw torque to correct or reduce the yaw-rate error; and control the electric motors to apply an amount of differential torque to the respective first and second rearwardly positioned wheels to generate said amount of yaw torque. |
| US09008870B2 |
Display for terrain avoidance
A terrain warning system includes an indicator to inform a pilot of a proposed degree of flight parameters for safely clearing terrain. An aural message may identify a vertical speed that may be used to safely traverse terrain to the pilot. A visual indicator on a display informs the pilot of a vertical speed or climb angle to traverse terrain. The display may be a vertical speed indicator also capable of displaying traffic advisories. |
| US09008869B2 |
Low-altitude altimeter and method
A low-altitude altimeter (10) and a method of determining low altitudes for unmanned aerial vehicles (24). The altimeter includes at least two illuminators (12, 14), at least one sensor (16), and a computing device (18). The illuminators (12, 14) emit signals which are received by the sensor (16) in such a way that an angle at which they are received is determinable by the computing device (18). The computing device (18) processes each signal received by the sensor (16), determines the angle at which the sensor (16) received the signal, and, based thereon, determines the altitude of the unmanned aerial vehicle (24). When a first pair of illuminators are arranged along a fuselage axis, and a second pair of illuminators are arranged orthogonally to that axis, the computing device can combine first and second altitude, pitch angle, and roll angle measurements to provide a more refined altitude determination. |
| US09008868B1 |
Cloud based management of aircraft avionics
Methods, systems and devices for a cloud based management of aircraft avionics allows a service provider, or equipment owner to place a list of tasks to be performed into a centrally managed “Cloud based’ system where the tasks are queued to be performed when appropriate. These tasks can be from a predefined list such as but not limited to, uploading configuration data, uploading log and or support data, downloading new configuration data, and the like. |
| US09008867B2 |
Method and device for automatically monitoring the ability of an aircraft to follow a flight trajectory with at least one turn
A monitoring device for automatically monitoring the ability of an aircraft to follow a flight trajectory with at least one turn includes a series of elements that estimate the ability of the aircraft to follow at least one turn of the flight trajectory. For example, a turn radius and limit speed for each of the upcoming turns in a flight plan (or a partial portion of the upcoming turns) are analyzed by comparing to a current speed of the aircraft to determine if there will be any risk of excursion outside the flight plan path, such that warnings can be emitted to a crew of the aircraft to take corrective action before the turns are performed. Consequently, required navigational performance maneuvers can be assured before the beginning of the turns in the flight plan. |
| US09008865B2 |
Method and device for managing, processing and monitoring parameters used on board aircraft
A standardized identification code is used to identify each flight parameter used on board an aircraft and to provide some of its characteristic information. Descriptive complementary information is advantageously associated with the identification codes to form parameter identification maps stored, for example, in a shared database. The parameter identification codes may in particular be used to perform certain checks when parameter values are received. These checks make it possible to process only the monitored parameter values and to generate alerts if an inconsistency is detected. |
| US09008862B2 |
Lid lock controller
A lid lock controller includes a lid lock unit operable in a lock state, which keeps the lid closed, and an unlock state, which allows for the lid to open. A detection unit detects an unlocking operation performed on the lid lock unit. A key check unit checks whether or not an electronic key is located in the vicinity of the vehicle through wireless communication between the vehicle and the electronic key when the unlock operation is detected. An unlocking unit switches the lid lock unit to the unlock state when the electronic key is located in the vicinity of the vehicle. The unlocking unit switches the lid lock unit to the unlock state even when the electronic key is not located in the vicinity of the vehicle as long as a further lid unlock condition is satisfied. |
| US09008860B2 |
Touch-screen vehicle remote control
A vehicle remote control device includes a communications device for transferring vehicle movement control signals to a remote vehicle and a touch-screen interface configured to present a graphical representation of the remote vehicle and to allow a user to manipulate the graphical representation on the touch-screen. A conversion component converts the manipulation of the graphical representation into vehicle control signals for transfer by the communications device. |
| US09008851B2 |
Control system and method for initializing the control system
A control system and a method for initializing the control system are provided. The control system includes a control platform and a plurality of target modules SM1˜SMn. Data transmission ends of the target modules are connected to the control platform. A power input end of the target module SM1 receives an operation electrical energy. The target module SM1 delays the operation electrical energy by a first period, and outputs the operation electrical energy via a power output end of the target modules SM1. A power input end of the target module SMi receives the operation electrical energy from a power output end of the target module SM(i-1). The target module SMi delays the operation electrical energy by an nth period, and outputs the operation electrical energy via a power output end of the target modules SMi, wherein 1≦i≦n. |
| US09008848B2 |
System and method for injecting a fluid additive into a fluid dispensation system
A method for operating a fluid additive control system to inject a fluid additive into a fluid dispensation system is provided. The method includes receiving a first control signal indicating that a fluid dispensation device within the fluid dispensation system is active, and determining a fluid additive quantity based upon the identity of the fluid dispensation device. The method also includes activating a fluid additive injection system, where the fluid additive dispensation system injects the fluid additive into the fluid dispensation system in response to the activation. The method further includes receiving a second control signal from the fluid additive injection system when the fluid additive quantity for the zone has been injected into the fluid dispensation system, and deactivating the fluid additive dispensation system in response to the second control |
| US09008846B2 |
Lock-setting thermostat with flash-memory key
Property-management or lock-setting thermostats have maximum and minimum set points locked in to prevent abuse of management-provided heating and/or air conditioning. An ePROM or similar internal memory device stores heating and cooling limit parameters that are set in by a technician at the time of installation. A plug-in flash memory module contains an unlock code to match the unlock code stored in said ePROM, to unlock the thermostat and allow the settings to be adjusted; when said flash memory module is removed the thermostat reverts to its lock condition. The thermostat can also respond to unusual rates of change of temperature to block furnace or A/C operation temporarily. |
| US09008844B2 |
System and method to route airflow using dynamically changing ducts
The invention generally relates to ventilation systems and methods, and more particularly to selectively configurable climate control systems and methods for use in data centers and the like. A method includes receiving or obtaining input data, generating at least one actuation signal to change a flow configuration of a re-configurable duct system based upon the input data, and transmitting the at least one actuation signal. |
| US09008841B2 |
Robotic picking of parts from a parts holding bin
A robot system (10) for picking parts (41) from a bin (40) uses the image from one or more cameras (38) to determine if the robot gripper (24) has picked one part or more than one part and uses one or more images from one or more cameras (38) to determine the position/orientation of a picked part. If the robot (12) has picked more than one part from the bin (40) then attempt is made to return the excess picked parts to the bin (40). The position/orientation of a picked part that does not meet a predetermined criteria is changed. |
| US09008840B1 |
Apparatus and methods for reinforcement-guided supervised learning
Framework may be implemented for transferring knowledge from an external agent to a robotic controller. In an obstacle avoidance/target approach application, the controller may be configured to determine a teaching signal based on a sensory input, the teaching signal conveying information associated with target action consistent with the sensory input, the sensory input being indicative of the target/obstacle. The controller may be configured to determine a control signal based on the sensory input, the control signal conveying information associated with target approach/avoidance action. The controller may determine a predicted control signal based on the sensory input and the teaching signal, the predicted control conveying information associated with the target action. The control signal may be combined with the predicted control in order to cause the robotic apparatus to execute the target action. |
| US09008839B1 |
Systems and methods for allocating tasks to a plurality of robotic devices
Methods and systems for allocating tasks to robotic devices are provided. An example method includes receiving information associated with task logs for a plurality of robotic devices and in a computing system configured to access a processor and memory, determining information associated with a health level for the plurality of robotic devices based on the information associated with the task logs. A health level for a given robotic device may be proportional to a current level of ability to perform a function, which may change over a lifespan of the given robotic device. Information associated with a plurality of tasks to be performed by one or more or the robotic devices may also be determined. According to the method, the computing system may optimize an allocation of the plurality of tasks such that a high precision task may be allocated to a robotic device having a greater current health level than another robotic device. |
| US09008832B2 |
Diamond sorting system
A diamond sorting system comprising a diamond source for supplying one or more diamonds to be graded by a vision system having one or more cameras arranged to take one or more images of the diamond, and a processor arranged to receive the image data and execute an algorithm on the data to grade the diamond. The sorting system further comprising a diamond collection unit arranged to receive a graded diamond from the vision system and an electromechanical diamond transporter arranged to transport a diamond to be graded from the diamond source to the vision system, and further arranged to transport a graded diamond from the vision system to the diamond collection unit. |
| US09008829B2 |
Inventory system with connectable inventory holders
A system includes a first mobile drive unit and a second mobile drive unit. The first mobile drive unit is operable to dock with a first item holder at a first end of a column of connected item holders. The second mobile drive unit is operable to dock with a second item holder at a second end of the column of connected item holders. The system also includes a management module that is operable to instruct the first mobile drive unit and the second mobile drive units to transport the column of connected item holders from a first location to a second location. |
| US09008821B2 |
Servo control system capable of improving processing accuracy
A servo control system capable of using an angle-based synchronization learning control, even when a reference position is not given, while maintaining the advantage of the angle-based synchronization method. The servo control system has X-, y- and z-axes servo controllers, each configured to control x-, y- and z-axes servomotors, respectively. Each of x- and y-axes servo controllers has a reference signal generating part configured to generate a reference signal which monotonically increases or varies in one direction, based on the position command of each axis transmitted from a higher-level controller. |
| US09008817B2 |
Substrate positioning apparatus, substrate processing apparatus, substrate positioning method, and computer readable medium having a program stored thereon
Disclosed is a substrate positioning apparatus capable of accurately performing positioning of a center of a circular-shape substrate with respect to a rotating shaft. The substrate positioning apparatus includes: a substrate disposing part; a first positioning mechanism including a first reference part contacting a side of the substrate; a second positioning mechanism including a second reference part contacting the side of the substrate; a first driver configured to drive the first positioning mechanism; a controller configured to control the drive of the first positioning mechanism. In particular, the second reference part contacts the substrate at a contact part and includes an elastic part that applies force in a moving direction of the first driver to the contact part and a detector that detects position information of the second positioning mechanism. |
| US09008816B2 |
Build up edge monitoring method
A build up edge monitoring method is provided for performing online real-time detection and suppression of abnormal build up edges of cutters occurred in a CNC manufacturing process. Signal variation analysis and fast Fourier transform are used for analyzing signals and establishing an algorithm of diagnosing build up edges to improve the efficiency and reliability of the cutting abnormality diagnostics. A vibration acceleration signal is captured and filtered to a frequency exceeding 1.1 times of a blade passing frequency, and an occurrence of accumulated chips is determined according to a sudden increase of the vibration acceleration and whether the main vibration frequency of the current vibration signal determined by a fast Fourier transform analysis matches with the frequency of the build up edge characteristic, and a shutdown instruction is issued to a CNC controller to shut down a cutting machine. |
| US09008815B2 |
Apparatus for monitoring pharmaceutical manufacturing processes
An apparatus for monitoring data generated by a device adapted for use in a pharmaceutical manufacturing environment are described and disclosed herein. The method creates a historic record of the pharmaceutical manufacturing process and provides it to an end user or a plurality of end users. Consequently, the methods provide a means to track the frequency of hazards associated with said device and thereby perform quality control on an integrated level whereby a pharmaceutical manufacturer can ensure data and product integrity and minimize cost. |
| US09008812B2 |
Method and apparatus for using selected content tracks from two or more program channels to automatically generate a blended mix channel for playback to a user upon selection of a corresponding preset button on a user interface
A method and apparatus are provided for generating a personalized radio channel playlist by simultaneously buffering multiple received channels from one or more source streams, and then selecting songs or tracks to playback from the buffered channels. Users can specify favorite channels for building their personal playlists, or multiple default playlist channels can be provided by genre or channels related in some other way. Navigation tools permit users to skip ahead and backward in the playback stream. A personalized radio channel playlist can be implemented as (1) content selected from buffered channels based on user preferences for artists, songs and the like, or (2) as a Mix Channel in which content from selected buffered channels is automatically mixed for playback in response to selection of a preset button assigned to the Mix Channel. |
| US09008811B2 |
Methods and systems for adaptive time-frequency resolution in digital data coding
Embodiments are described for a system and method for implementing an adaptive time-frequency resolution in audio and video coding systems. A method of adaptively transforming the time-frequency resolution for a defined spectrum comprises dividing the spectrum of the input signal into a into plurality of bands; determining, for each band of the plurality of bands, a characteristic of the content (e.g., tonal or transient content); modifying the time-frequency resolution value to one or more bands of the plurality of bands to increase either a time resolution of the band or a frequency resolution of the band depending on the characteristic of the content; determining a cost associated with modifying the time-frequency resolution value of the one more bands based on an entropy measure of the bands, and altering the modified time-frequency resolution values in a manner that accounts for the coding cost. |
| US09008810B2 |
Coding apparatus and method, decoding apparatus and method, and program storage medium
In order to obtain coded data which does not strike viewers and listeners as being incongruous, when plural audio data are to be coded, a coding program groups the respective audio data into one audio data, codes the grouped audio data in sequence with a predetermined number of samples being treated as units, and sets delimitations corresponding to the delimitations of the plural audio data in the coded data at coding units of the coded data. |
| US09008808B2 |
Control system for safely operating at least one functional component
A system includes a functional control unit and a controller. The functional control unit is configured to enable and disable operation of a functional component. The controller is configured to receive a sensor signal, evaluate safety quality of the sensor signal, generate an evaluation parameter representing the safety quality of the sensor signal, and output the sensor signal with the evaluation parameter as a pair for receipt by the functional control unit. The functional control unit is configured to control operation of the functional component depending on the safety quality indicated by the evaluation parameter. |
| US09008807B2 |
Method of large scale process optimization and optimal planning based on real time dynamic simulation
This invention provides a system and method of Advanced Process Control for optimal operation of multi-unit plants in large scale processing and power generation industries. The invention framework includes the following components: continuous real time dynamic process simulation, automatic coefficient adjustment of dynamic and static process models, automatic construction of transfer functions, determination of globally optimal operating point specific to current conditions, provision of additional optimal operating scenarios through a variety of unit combinations, and calculation of operational forecasts in accordance with planned production. |
| US09008801B2 |
Wearable therapeutic device
A wearable therapeutic device that includes a garment configured to contain an external defibrillator. The garment is configured to house at least one of an alarm module and a monitor and to house a first therapy electrode and a second therapy electrode. The garment is also configured to releasably receive a receptacle that contains a conductive fluid proximate to at least one of the first therapy electrode and the second therapy electrode, and to electrically couple the receptacle with the garment. |
| US09008800B2 |
Separated-interface nerve electrode
Example ionic coupling electrodes are described. One example ionic conducting electrode includes a first portion that can be coupled to a single phase current source. The first portion carries current flow via electrons. The electrode includes a second portion to apply a current to a nerve tissue. The second portion carries current flow via ions. The second portion is positioned between the nerve tissue and the first portion to prevent the first portion from touching the nerve tissue. The current applied to the nerve tissue is produced in the second portion in response to a current that is present in the first portion. The current present in the first portion is provided from a single phase current source. The electrode may be used in applications including, but not limited to, nerve block applications and nerve stimulation applications. |
| US09008795B2 |
Catheter handle assembly
A catheter handle assembly includes a holder having a proximal end and a distal end. An electrode sheath carrier is arranged at the distal end of the holder. A shape imparting element carrier is removably mountable to the proximal end of the holder, the shape imparting element carrier having at least one mounting formation for mounting at least a part of a shape imparting element. A slide is displaceably arranged in the holder with a distal end of the slide mounting the electrode sheath carrier and a proximal end of the slide terminating in proximity to the shape imparting element carrier. |
| US09008784B2 |
Device and methods for preventing knee sprain injuries
Devices and methods for preventing knee sprain injuries. To protect the knee joint from knee sprain injuries, the device comprises a sensing part configured to sense data associated with knee motion; an analyzing part configured to analyze the knee motion data to determine a knee articulation; and a stimulating part configured to stimulate one or more lower limb muscles to initiate an earlier muscle reaction than would naturally occur in response to the determined knee joint articulation. The determined knee joint articulation may include knee joint articulation or a particular type of articulation such as a knee sprain movement associated with knee sprain. The methods involve sensing data associated with knee joint motion, analyzing the data to determine a knee joint articulation; and stimulating one or more lower limb muscles to initiate an early muscle reaction within the determined knee joint articulation. |
| US09008782B2 |
Occipital nerve stimulation
An implantable medical device comprises one or more electrical stimulation generators, and a housing that contains the one or more electrical stimulation generators. The implantable medical device also includes a first medical lead no greater than about 6 inches in length, and a second medical lead no greater than about 6 inches in length. The housing includes a first connector block that electrically connects the first medical lead to at least one of the one or more electrical stimulation generators, and a second connector block that electrically connects the second medical lead to at least one of the one or more electrical stimulation generators. The implantable medical device may be part of an electrical stimulation system implanted beneath the skin and inferior to the inion of a patient to deliver stimulation therapy to at least one of an occipital nerve and a branch of the occipital nerve. |
| US09008781B2 |
Method and system for treatment of mobility dysfunction
Effective systems and methods for improving neural communication impairment of a vertebrate being and affecting motor activity of a peripheral body part including a first signal providing component configured to provide pulsed peripheral stimulation signals at the peripheral body part, a second signal providing component configured to provide a pulsed motor cortex stimulation signal to a motor cortex area, a substantially DC signal providing component configured to provide direct current spinal stimulation signal at a neural spinal junction and a controller component configured to control timing of the pulsed peripheral stimulation signals and the pulsed motor cortex stimulation signal. |
| US09008780B2 |
Methods and associated neural prosthetic devices for bridging brain areas to improve function
Methods for bridging brain sites between which there is substantially no effective communication, and associated neural prosthetic devices, are provided. A neural spike in a first neural site in a subject is detected, and a stimulus to a second neural site in the subject is delivered within a defined period of time after the detection of the neural spike, wherein there is substantially no effective communication between the first and second neural sites. The method forms an artificial bridge between the two neural sites, and establishes lasting communication between the two sites. The present disclosure provides, among other things, a neural prosthetic device comprising an integrated circuit that comprises a recording front-end comprising a plurality of recording channels; a processor unit; and a stimulus delivering back-end comprising a plurality of stimulation channels. |
| US09008779B2 |
Insulator for a feedthrough
A hermetic feedthrough for an implantable medical device includes an insulator body and a ferrule. The insulator body includes ceramic material and one or more electrically conductive conduits extending through the insulator body. The insulator is disposed in an opening of the ferrule. The insulator body includes a plurality of substantially flat surfaces that each include a plurality of edges. A rounded corner extends between adjacent edges of any two adjacent substantially flat surfaces. Each corner between any two adjacent substantially flat surfaces that face toward the ferrule has an average radius that is less than approximately 25% of a length of the corresponding edges. |
| US09008778B2 |
Implantable electrical stimulation systems with shielded control module and methods for making and using
An implantable control module for an electrical stimulation system includes a header coupled a sealed body. The header includes at least one connector assembly. The control module also includes a conductive shield disposed over at least a portion of the connector assembly or connector assemblies of the header. The conductive shield is provided to hinder generation of current in the header or in a portion of a lead received in the header in response to application of an external radiofrequency (RF) or magnetic field. A similar shield can also be used to shield a connector assembly disposed on the end of a lead extension or any other component of the electrical stimulation system. |
| US09008769B2 |
Methods and systems for lowering blood pressure through reduction of ventricle filling
Methods and devices for reducing ventricle filling volume are disclosed. In some embodiments, an electrical stimulator may be used to stimulate a patient's heart to reduce ventricle filling volume or even blood pressure. When the heart is stimulated in a consistent way to reduce blood pressure, the cardiovascular system may over time adapt to the stimulation and revert back to the higher blood pressure. In some embodiments, the stimulation pattern may be configured to be inconsistent such that the adaptation response of the heart is reduced or even prevented. In some embodiments, an electrical stimulator may be used to stimulate a patient's heart to cause at least a portion of an atrial contraction to occur while the atrioventricular valve is closed. Such an atrial contraction may deposit less blood into the corresponding ventricle than when the atrioventricular valve is opened throughout an atrial contraction. |
| US09008766B2 |
Medical device adjusting operation when used with non-authenticated patient parameter collecting accessory
Embodiments are directed to a medical device, such as a defibrillator, for use with an accessory capable of collecting a parameter of a patient. The medical device is capable of at least performing a basic functionality, an advanced functionality, and of defibrillating the patient. The medical device includes an energy storage module within a housing for storing an electrical charge that is to be delivered to the patient for the defibrillating. The medical device includes a processor structured to determine whether a data set received from the accessory confirms or not a preset authentication criterion about the accessory. Although when the accessory is coupled to the housing the medical device is capable of the defibrillating and the basic functionality, the medical device is capable of the advanced functionality only when the accessory is coupled to the housing and it is determined that the preset authentication criterion is confirmed. Embodiments also include methods of operation and a programmed solution. |
| US09008753B2 |
Look-locker IR-SSFP for cardiac MR imaging with simultaneous generation of cardiac T1 maps, cine images and IR-prepared images
The present invention is directed to a method for use in conducting cardiac MR imaging which allows for reconstruction of T1 maps, cine images and IR-prepared images from one raw data set, wherein the method comprises the following steps: a) acquisition of raw data by use of an ECG-triggered, segmented, inversion recovery (IR) -prepared Look-Locker type pulse sequence for data acquisition, wherein the pulse sequence encompasses more than one shot, wherein each shot comprises: i) an ECG-triggered inversion pulse; ii) SSFP cine data acquisition of radial segmented profiles over more than one RR-interval for a predefined acquisition duration AD; and iii) a relaxation duration RD, during which no data is acquired; b) retrospective gating of raw data by sorting acquired raw data for each RR-interval into a pre-determined number of heart phases by definition of specific time windows within the RR-intervals and sampling of raw data acquired during the time windows respectively; c) image reconstruction, wherein the retrospectively gated raw data is used for reconstruction of T1 maps, cine images and/or IR-prepared images. |
| US09008750B2 |
Method for determining the ventilation of a lung
In a method for determining the ventilation of a lung of an object under examination by magnetic resonance imaging, at least two first lung-representing image data sets are acquired at different intervals of the breathing phase. The density change of the lung tissue is automatically determined from the signal difference between the image signals of the first image data sets in at least one corresponding region of the first lung-representing image data set. The lung or the thorax volume is automatically determined using at least two of the first image data sets, or using at least an additional second lung-representing image data set in a breathing phase that corresponds with the breathing phase of a first image data set. The localized, quantitative ventilation of the lung is automatically calculated depending on the density change of the lung tissue and the change of the lung or thorax volume. |
| US09008749B2 |
Apparatus and method for influencing and/or detecting magnetic particles in a field of view having an array of single-sided transmit coil sets
The present invention relates to an apparatus and a method for influencing and/or detecting magnetic particles in a field of view. To increase the field of view and, at the same time, allow access to the patient during imaging, the apparatus comprises two or more transmit coil sets (200) wherein neighboring coil sets are partially overlapping, a transmit coil set comprising: a pair (210) of concentrically arranged selection field coils (211, 212) for generating a magnetic selection field (50) having a pattern in space of its magnetic field strength such that a first sub-zone (52) having a low magnetic field strength and a second sub-zone (54) having a higher magnetic field strength are formed in the field of view (28), and at least one pair (220, 230) of drive field coils (221, 222; 231, 232) for changing the position in space of the two sub-zones (52, 54) in the field of view (28) by means of a magnetic drive field so that the magnetization of the magnetic particles changes locally, said at least one pair (220, 230) of drive field coils being arranged parallel to said pair (210) of selection field coils (211, 212) and being formed by two neighboring coil loops. |
| US09008746B2 |
Method and apparatus for localizing myocardial infarction during catheterization
A catheter with a tissue property sensor provides for localization of myocardial infarction (MI) by utilizing one or more differences between properties of infarcted myocardial tissue and properties of normal myocardial tissue. The tissue property sensor is to be placed on endocardial wall or epicardial wall during catheterization to sense at least one tissue property allowing for detection of MI. In one embodiment, the tissue property sensor includes a contractility sensor and senses a tissue property in various locations on endocardial wall or epicardial wall and detects substantial changes in the tissue property that indicate a boundary between infarcted tissue and normal tissue. |
| US09008744B2 |
Method and apparatus for continuous analyte monitoring
Embodiments of the invention provide analyte sensors and sensor systems such as amperometric glucose sensors used in the management of diabetes as well as optimized methods for monitoring analytes using such sensors and sensor systems. |
| US09008741B2 |
Superconducting structure comprising coated conductor tapes, in particular stapled perpendicularly to their substrate planes
A superconducting structure (1) has a plurality of coated conductor tapes (2; 2a-2o), each with a substrate (3) which is one-sided coated with a superconducting film (4), in particular an YBCO film, wherein the superconducting structure (1) provides a superconducting current path along an extension direction (z) of the superconducting structure (1), wherein the coated conductor tapes (2; 2a-2o) provide electrically parallel partial superconducting current paths in the extension direction (z) of the superconducting structure (1), is characterized in that the coated conductor tapes (2; 2a-2o) are superconductively connected among themselves along the extension direction (z) continuously or intermittently. A more stable superconducting structure with which high electric current strengths may be transported is thereby provided. |
| US09008739B2 |
Terminal structure of superconducting cable conductor and terminal member used therein
In a terminal structure of a superconducting cable conductor, a terminal portion of the superconducting cable conductor is connected with a terminal member of a good conductor. The terminal portion includes a superconducting layer disposed on an outer periphery of a central support; and an insulating layer surrounding the superconducting layer. The insulating layer and the superconducting layer are partially removed to expose the central support and the superconducting layer in this order from an end of the superconducting cable conductor. The terminal member includes a metal sleeve which includes a first cylindrical portion whose inner surface is in close contact with an exposed portion of the central support; a second cylindrical portion which is soldered around an exposed portion of the superconducting layer; and a third cylindrical portion into which the insulating layer is inserted. |
| US09008737B2 |
Mobile terminal and an antenna for the mobile terminal
A mobile terminal includes a terminal body, an antenna module coupled to the terminal body and including a radiator for transmitting and receiving radio signals, a circuit board electrically coupled to the antenna module for processing the transmitted and received radio signals, and at least one coupling member positioned proximate to and spaced from the radiator a particular distance for coupling the antenna module to the terminal body. The at least one coupling member is coupled to the radiator. |
| US09008735B2 |
Runtime selection of most energy-efficient approach for services requested by mobile applications
An energy conservation module may be included in a mobile communication device that receives requests for services from application programs running in the device. For each request, the energy conservation module may determine which of different, selectable ways of performing the request is likely to be the most energy efficient. The energy conservation module may then cause the request to be performed in this most energy-efficient way. This determination may be dynamic and based on current operating conditions. Middleware between the application programs and an operating system may be included that presents various APIs to the application programs to allow them to easily invoke this functionality. The different, selectable ways of performing the services may be of any type, including different, selectable computer network interfaces (e.g., Wi-Fi and cellular) and whether a complex computation should be performed within or outside of the mobile communication device. |
| US09008732B2 |
Mobile communication terminal and method for operating the same
A mobile communication terminal and a method for operating the same are disclosed. The mobile communication terminal can be connected to first and second communication networks. The first communication network may be a legacy network and the second communication network may be a Long Term Evolution (LTE) network. The mobile communication terminal is also capable of displaying a two-dimensional (2D) image and a three-dimensional (3D) image. The mobile communication terminal reproduces a 2D image, receives a display mode switch request signal from a user, determines whether 3D image reception is available according to an environment of a current connected mobile communication network, receives a 3D image from a server, if 3D image reception is available and a 2D image from the server if 3D image reception is not available, and displays the received 3D image or 2D image. |
| US09008731B2 |
Mobile terminal
A mobile terminal as broadly described herein may include a first body, and a second body formed of a transparent material and attached to the first body. The second body may include a recess formed on a surface of the second body and recessed away from the first body, a transparent display provided in the recess and formed of a transparent material, and configured to display visual information thereon, and a filler material provided in the recess at a gap between the transparent display and the recess. The filler material may be formed of a transparent material. |
| US09008727B2 |
Radio communication system, radio communication method, base station device and terminal device
A base station broadcasts a message saying that transmittable ranging codes are limited by antenna IDs to limit antennas and the ranging codes to be searched, thereby reducing a processing load of the search. In a cellular radio communication system in which a base station device is connected to plural antennas, and antenna IDs for identifying the antennas are transmitted from the respective antennas, the base station device broadcasts a message saying that a group of ranging codes transmittable by a terminal device is limited by the antenna IDs, the terminal device receives the message, identifies the antenna ID, selects the ranging code from the group of the ranging codes corresponding to the antenna ID, and transmits the selected ranging code. |
| US09008726B2 |
Base station apparatus, mobile station apparatus, communication system, base station apparatus control method, mobile station apparatus control method, and recording medium storing program
To enable a mobile station, when a base station carries out a measurement of a radio signal coming from an adjacent cell while suspending at least one of radio transmission to and radio reception from the mobile station when a base station's own cell is in operation, to recognize that the adjacent cell is being measured. A home base station 1 carries out a measurement of a radio signal coming from an adjacent cell while suspending at least one of radio transmission to and radio reception from a mobile station 3-1 when a base station's own cell (home cell) is in operation. Further, the home base station 1 notifies, prior to beginning the measurement, advance notice information indicating an execution of the measurement to the mobile station 3-1. |
| US09008725B2 |
Strategically located touch sensors in smartphone casing
A wireless or handheld device or phone is equipped with corner sensors which control functioning of the device. The corner sensors are configured based how a user holds the handheld device while utilizing the corner sensors. The corner sensors may also be configured based on a spatial orientation of the handheld device. The corner sensors may be configured based on which hand or hands control the corner sensors, the dexterity of the fingers controlling the sensors and/or the spatial orientation of the device. The corner sensors may include a touch sensor, a trackpad and/or a pressure sensor and may detect various single sensor inputs or simultaneous gestures. The device may sense when it is held in a hand and may disable the corner sensors when it is not held. |
| US09008721B2 |
Broadcast reception mobile terminal
There is provided a broadcast reception mobile terminal capable of improving both electric power saving and user-friendliness includes a broadcast reception mobile terminal that is constructed to be foldable as a result of a lid body arranged to be rotated with respect to a main body, and includes a main LCD panel (202a) on an inner surface side of the lid body and a sub LCD panel (202b) on an outer surface side of the lid body. A CPU (209) detects that the lid body is opened or closed by a signal from an opening/closing detection switch. In addition, the CPU (209) obtains from an earphone connector (203) information indicating whether or not an earphone is connected. In a case that the CPU (209) detects the lid body being closed during television viewing on the main LCD panel (202a), and performing a TVOFF process if the earphone is not connected, and stopping video display but continuing output of received audio if the earphone is connected. |
| US09008720B2 |
Method and system for small cell discovery in heterogeneous cellular networks
A method and a user equipment in a network having a macro cell and at least one small cell, the method in one embodiment receiving a measurement restriction over a broadcast channel from the macro cell; and applying the restriction for a corresponding measurement at the user equipment. In one embodiment the method includes receiving a small cell list from the macro cell; and measuring at least one of a reference signal receive power and a reference signal received quality based on the received small cell list. The method includes, in one embodiment, receiving a neighboring small cell configurations from the macro cell; and utilizing the received small cell configurations to attach to a small cell. The method includes, in one embodiment, receiving an s-measure offset value over a broadcast channel from the macro cell; and applying the s-measure offset value to an s-measure for neighbor cell discovery. |
| US09008717B2 |
Method for transferring base station energy-saving information and method and system for implementing energy-saving
The invention discloses a method for transmitting energy-saving management information. The method includes: a base station and its neighboring base station encapsulating and transmitting the energy-saving management information through an interface message. The invention further discloses a corresponding method for implementing base station energy saving, a system for transmitting the energy-saving management information, and a system for implementing base station energy saving. The invention can be used to solve transmission of the energy-saving information between base station devices of a network, and avoid the problems, for example, handoff and coverage loss caused by the base station being required to be shut off due to reasons such as energy saving, etc., thus guaranteeing network performance and user experience when the base station is performing the energy saving operation. |
| US09008716B2 |
Mobile station
In a mobile station UE, a PHR transmission unit transmits a PHR to a RAT#1 when “prohibitPHR-Timer_up” is interrupted and when an increment in transmission power or P-MPR in second communication exceeds “dl-PathlossChange” compared with a value in finally transmitting the PHR. When “prohibitPHR-Timer_down” is interrupted and when a decrement in transmission power or a decrement in transmission power or P-MPR in the second communication exceeds “dl_PathlossChange”, the PHR transmission unit transmits the PHR to the RAT#1, and “prohibitPHR-Timer_up” is ended in a period shorter than that of “prohibitPHR-Timer_down”. |
| US09008713B2 |
Method of cutting off a transmission signal of a main transmitter relayed by a cell of a base station and associated system
Method of cutting off a transmission signal of a main transmitter relayed by a cell of a base station and associated system. According to this method, the transmission signal is cut off:—if the power of the transmission signal emitted by the main transmitter is greater than the power of each transmission signal of other transmitters relayed by the same cell of the base station, and—if the power of the transmission signal of the main transmitter does not decrease after several identical successive transmitted-power regulating commands (TPC) emitted by the base station. |
| US09008712B2 |
Method and communication device for handling time offsets between communication device and transmission points
A method of handling a plurality of time offsets between a communication device of a wireless communication system and a plurality of transmission points of the wireless communication system is disclosed. The method is utilized in the communication device, and comprises obtaining the plurality of time offsets by using a first reference signal; and transmitting the plurality of time offsets to the plurality of transmission points, respectively; wherein the plurality of transmission points compensate the plurality of time offsets, respectively, when communicating with the communication device. |
| US09008710B2 |
Controlling communication between whitespace devices
Methods, apparatuses, and computer program products for controlling communication between whitespace devices are provided. Embodiments include identifying, by a base-station array controller, a user whitespace device within a coverage area of a base-station array, wherein the base-station array includes a plurality of base-station whitespace devices of varying power consumption profiles; identifying for each base-station whitespace device, by the base-station array controller, transmission channels available to the base-station whitespace device; selecting from the plurality of base-station whitespace devices, by the base-station array controller, a base-station whitespace device based on the power consumption profiles and the identified available transmission channels corresponding to the plurality of base-station whitespace devices; and instructing, by the base-station array controller, the selected base-station whitespace device to communicate with the identified user whitespace device on one of the identified available transmission channels. |
| US09008709B2 |
Method and apparatus for providing a WiFi network information service
An approach is provided for providing a WiFi network information service. A configuration client processes and/or facilitates a processing, by at least one module of at least one access point, of configuration data stored at the at least one access point to determine network information. The configuration client then causes a transmission of the network information by the at least one module to at least one server. A location client also determines at least one request, from at least one client, for network information associated with at least one access point, at least one location, or a combination thereof. The location client then processes and/or facilitates a processing of the at least one request to cause a generation of at least one query for the network information from at least one server, wherein the network information is determined from at least one module of the at least one access point. |
| US09008707B2 |
Method and arrangement for reducing interference and enhancing coverage
In a method of controlling downlink transmitting power and antenna coverage of base stations in a communication system, the system comprising a plurality of base stations and a plurality of user equipment each associated with at least one of the plurality of base stations, providing (S10) interference and noise information for each of at least a subset of the plurality of user equipment. Subsequently, identifying (S20) at least one interfering base station for at least one user equipment of the subset, and jointly analyzing (S30) the provided interference and noise information for the subset together with the identified at least one interfering base station. Finally, jointly adapting (S40) a transmitting power level and/or an antenna beam of the at least one identified interfering base stations based on the analysis, to provide reduced power consumption and increased coverage in the communication system. |
| US09008703B1 |
Ubiquitous voice messaging
Methods and apparatus for providing ubiquitous and configurable communications between users is provided. Ubiquity and other features are provided using a common identifier linking two or more users. In one embodiment, a common identifier is automatically provided when call forwarding is directed to a designated phone number. In another embodiment, a user can cause a common identifier to be created linking the user with a user of their choice by sending an SMS text message to a designated address. This Abstract is provided for the sole purpose of complying with the Abstract requirement rules that allow a reader to quickly ascertain the subject matter of the disclosure contained herein. This Abstract is submitted with the explicit understanding that it will not be used to interpret or to limit the scope or the meaning of the claims. |
| US09008702B2 |
Base station and method of controlling the same
Provided is a base station capable of maintaining a communication quality of a communication terminal (mobile station) having registered its position with the base station itself, even if an operating frequency is changed. According to the present invention, the base station includes a transmission and reception unit 102 configured to transmit and receive signals at the operating frequency for communication with the communication terminal, a pilot beacon transmission unit 104 configured to transmit a pilot beacon to a communication terminal, in communication with another base station, at an operating frequency of the another base station in order to allow the communication terminal to detect the operating frequency of the base station itself, and a control unit 101, if changing the operating frequency of the transmission and reception unit 102, configured to control the pilot beacon transmission unit 104 to change the frequency of the pilot beacon to transmit therefrom to the operating frequency of the transmission and reception unit 103 before changed and transmit the pilot beacon at this frequency. |
| US09008700B2 |
Methods and apparatus for position location in a wireless network
Methods and apparatus for position location in a wireless network. In an aspect, a method is provided that includes determining whether a symbol to be transmitted is an active symbol, wherein the symbol comprises a plurality of subcarriers, and encoding identification information on a first portion of subcarriers if it is determined that the symbol is the active symbol. The method also includes encoding idle information on a second portion of subcarriers if it is determined that the symbol in not the active symbol. In an aspect, an apparatus includes detector logic configured to decode a plurality of symbols to determine identification information that identifies a plurality of transmitters, and to determine a plurality of channel estimate associated with the plurality of transmitters. The apparatus also includes position determination logic configured to calculate a device position based on the plurality of transmitters and the plurality of channel estimates. |
| US09008695B2 |
Method, system and/or device for adjusting expected received signal strength signature values
Disclosed are systems, methods and devices for application of determining position information for mobile devices. In specific implementations, measurement of a signal travel time and a signal's strength may be combined to characterize a transmission power of the signal's transmitter. The characterized transmission power may be applied to affect expected signal strength signature values for use of the signal's transmitter may be updated in order to enhance a location based service where location may be effected by accuracy of a transmitter's power. |
| US09008691B2 |
Systems and methods to provide an advertisement relating to a recommended business to a user of a wireless device based on a location history of visited physical named locations associated with the user
In general, the invention relates to methods and systems that record the location of a user and determine the corresponding physical named location (e.g. business location) visited by the user. The system further provides suggested or recommended destinations and targeted content, which may include advertisements, to the user. A network includes a server programmed with a database of location information, a database of user information, payment account information, and a wireless communication system capable of communicating with the user's mobile device. The location of the mobile device is ascertained and recorded. The system determines the physical named location (e.g. business location) visited by the user and stores the information in a location history including specific businesses visited by the user. The system further provides suggested or recommended businesses of interest, and may also additionally provide advertisements, based on the user's current location and location history. |
| US09008688B2 |
Calendar matching of inferred contexts and label propagation
Methods, systems, computer-readable media, and apparatuses for calendar matching of inferred contexts are described. In one potential embodiment, a mobile device may use context information to generate a calendar of inferred contexts. Label information from raw calendar data may be used to update an inferred context within a calendar of inferred contexts. Additionally, the label may be propagated to future contexts and entries in an inferred context calendar. |
| US09008686B2 |
Collaborative location/orientation estimation
It is inter alia disclosed to estimate at least one of a location and an orientation of a first-type device (11) at least based on respective location estimates for one or more signal sources (10), wherein at least one location estimate for a signal source (10) of the one or more signal sources is determined at least based on respective signals from the signal source (10) received at one or more second-type devices (12) and respective locations of the one or more second-type devices (12), and respective position relationships between the one or more signal sources (10) and the first-type device (11). |
| US09008682B2 |
Performance monitoring of location-based service in a mobile telecommunications network
A method, a device and a system are provided for monitoring Location-based Service of a mobile telecommunications network. A passive monitoring method is applied processing both positioning and Location-based Service information of different interfaces. In the system, a monitoring device is attached at the standard interfaces of the network calculating Key Performance indicators and/or measures of network usage from the combined information. In a preferred embodiment, traffic of Le and Gi interfaces (106, 107) of a 3GPP GPRS network (102) are monitored, however the invention can be applied to both circuit-switched and packet-switched telecommunications network supporting positioning. |
| US09008681B2 |
Method and system for controlling station operation mode
A system for controlling a station operation mode is provided. The system for controlling a station operation mode, including: a distance information generation unit measuring a distance between a first communication station and a second communication station and generating distance information; a distance information comparison unit comparing the distance information and a predetermined threshold distance; and an operation mode determination unit determining any one of an active mode and an idle mode as an operation mode of the second communication station, based on a comparison result of the distance information comparison unit. |
| US09008664B2 |
Redirecting handovers in LTE networks
An architecture that can redirect communications upon detection of a handover failure in a Long Term Evolution (LTE) network is described. The architecture can obtain information indicative of a handover failure that is available in a first portion of the LTE network (e.g., a serving gateway) that has no control over the communication path. The architecture can utilize the information to instruct a second portion of the LTE network (e.g., a mobility management entity), one that can control the communication path but conventionally has no access to the handover information, to reroute the communication path to avoid unresponsive or failing network entities. |
| US09008663B2 |
Mobile station and method for mobile communication system
A mobile station includes a measurement unit that measures radio qualities for a serving cell and a candidate switching target cell; a cell switching determination unit that determines whether the radio quality of the serving cell is less than a reference quality corresponded in advance with a predetermined throughput, wherein, when the radio quality of the serving cell is less than the reference quality, the cell switching determination unit determines whether the serving cell is to be switched to the candidate switching target cell by comparing the radio quality of the serving cell with that of the candidate switching target cell; and a radio communication unit that transmits a signal for requesting the switching of the serving cell, and that receives a signal for instructing the switching of the serving cell from a network apparatus. |
| US09008661B2 |
Systems and methods for service in multimedia broadcast multicast services
A method for providing service among a plurality of Multicast Broadcast Single Frequency Networks (MBSFNs) that are providing multimedia broadcast services, includes storing a pointer in data to be transmitted by a base station corresponding to a serving of a first MBSFN. The pointer points to either a location of a multimedia broadcast multicast service (MBMS) control channel or a location of MBMS data in a second MBSFN. |
| US09008657B2 |
Centralized context awareness through network association
A user's context is determined based on the wireless network to which the user is connected. Targeted information, based on the determined context, is then delivered to the user. A centralized mechanism associates identifiers of wireless access points to one or more providers, such as retail establishments, that have set up those access points and have been registered by the centralized mechanism. The providers also provide targeted information that they wish to have delivered to users whose context indicates that they are in or near that provider's store. The centralized mechanism further has information associating the wireless computing device with contact information that can be utilized to deliver targeted information. The targeted information can be delivered to the user via the wireless network, a cellular network or through other communicational mechanisms. The provider, or retail establishment, can also be informed of the presence of the user near its premises. |
| US09008656B2 |
Method and apparatus of searching for operator network in a multi-radio access technology environment
A method and apparatus of searching for an operator network in a multi-Radio Access Technology (RAT) environment are provided. The method, calculating a length of a sleep interval to perform background Public Land Mobile Network (PLMN) searching, comparing the length of the sleep interval with a predetermined reference parameter, if the length of the sleep interval is larger than the reference parameter, performing background PLMN searching of a passive RAT during the sleep interval, and if the length of the sleep interval is equal to or smaller than the reference parameter, performing background PLMN searching of an active RAT during the sleep interval. |
| US09008654B2 |
Auto IMSI switch for international roaming
The invention concerns a method for automatically switching from a Home IMSI to a Roaming IMSI and vice versa, said Home IMSI and Roaming IMSI being contained in a SIM card adapted to be used in a mobile station and adapted to comprise elementary files, wherein it comprises the step of triggering the switch from one IMSI to another when detecting an update of the elementary file comprising forbidden public land mobile networks (EFFPIMN). |
| US09008652B2 |
Method and system integrating geographical location information and bluetooth technology for relaying electronic business card
Provided in the present invention are method and system for delivering an electronic business card by combining geographical location information and Bluetooth technology. The method comprises: a requesting user submitting the current geographical location information, the name of a Bluetooth communication device, and a list of the names of other detected Bluetooth communication devices to an electronic business card delivery server by using a mobile client, acquiring a list of users corresponding to neighboring mobile clients as well as the user's condensed identity information, the neighboring mobile clients being located within a predetermined distance range and located within a detection range of the Bluetooth communication device; selecting a user from the user list, sending an electronic business card delivery request to the electronic business card delivery server; the electronic business card delivery server transmitting the request to the mobile client corresponding to the selected user, and when receiving corresponding confirmation information, responding to the request so as to deliver the electronic business card. Compared with the prior art, the present invention allows for the delivery of large quantity of electronic business cards, simplified operations, and ensured accuracy and security of electronic business card contents. |
| US09008651B2 |
Wireless communication devices
A telecommunication network is described in which information relating to access to resources such as the world wide web, may be transferred between wireless communication terminals at least one of which is a client of a server connected to the network and providing access to the resources. A method of transfer and a terminal suitable therefor are described. |
| US09008647B2 |
Mobile radio communication network device, mobile terminal, and method for transmission/reception of control information
A mobile radio communication network device is described including a receiver configured to receive control information from a mobile terminal, wherein the receiver is configured to receive the control information in a first mode or in a second mode, wherein in the second mode, less of the control information is received in time from the mobile terminal than in the first mode, and a controller configured to control the receiver to receive the control information in the first mode if the mobile terminal is associated with a first mobile terminal mobility class and to control the receiver to receive the information in the second mode if the mobile terminal is associated with a second mobile terminal mobility class. |
| US09008644B2 |
Dynamic geographic beacons for geographic-positioning-capable devices
In one embodiment, a mobile device may receive information on entities socially connected to a user of the mobile device. The information may comprise a location for each of the entities, an affinity score with respect to the user for each of the entities, and a relevancy score for any advertisement corresponding to each of the entities. The user may be socially associated with the entities through an on-line social network. For each of the entities, the affinity score may be adjusted based on the relevancy score. The mobile device may periodically determine a current location of the mobile device, a radius from the location of each entity (based on the adjusted affinity score for the entity), and whether the current location is within an area defined by the radius. If the current location is within the one of the radii, then the mobile device may be woken. |
| US09008639B2 |
Controlling audio of a device
Techniques and tools are described for controlling an audio signal of a mobile device. For example, information indicative of acceleration of the mobile device can be received and correlation between the information indicative of acceleration and exemplar whack event data can be determined. An audio signal of the mobile device can be controlled based on the correlation. |
| US09008638B2 |
System and method for deploying application program components having a service sector to wireless devices
A communication system includes a development sector for registering a plurality of wireless devices, a business sector for controlling utilization of an application program and for receiving application data, a service sector for deploying the application program and for providing the application data to the business sector in accordance with communication with at least one wireless device of the plurality; and a mobile sector comprising the plurality of wireless devices, each device for receiving the application program deployed by the service sector, executing the application program in response to the business sector, and communicating with the service sector to support provision of the application data to the business sector. The wireless device, such as a cell phone, personal digital assistant, or palm top computer may include an auxiliary device such as a bar code scanner, a magnetic stripe card reader, or a printer. The business sector or service sector may monitor or limit utilization of the auxiliary device. Deployment of application programs may be controlled by the business sector or the development sector by rendering an application program or auxiliary device available for use only after a particular time or after receipt of a message. Distributed processing application programs having components in the business, service, and mobile sectors may thereby be updated in an orderly manner. An application program on a wireless device may assist confirmation of an order made by a buyer via a web site. The wireless device is expected to be operated by the buyer. Fraud reporting is accomplished by comparing data obtained by registration of the wireless device with data provided in the confirmation. |
| US09008637B2 |
Call forwarding system and method for forwarding a call to a terminal through near-field wireless communication
In a call forwarding system, a management apparatus of the call forwarding system determines service terminals capable of near field wireless communication within a reception range of near field wireless communication, generates a terminal list, and receives a call event message reporting the receipt of a call from a reference terminal. The management apparatus may transmit a call report message including the terminal list to the reference terminal and the service terminals. The management apparatus may forward the call initially received by the reference terminal to a terminal which transmitted a receipt request message by transmitting a call forwarding request message to the reference terminal. The management apparatus may transmit, to the reference terminal and the service terminals, a receipt report message reporting the call was forwarded. According to a change receipt message or upon non-receipt by an intended terminal, the call may be reforwarded to another terminal. |
| US09008631B2 |
Providing context information during voice communications between mobile devices, such as providing visual media
A system and method for providing context information along with a voice call is disclosed. In some examples, a calling device receives context information from a user and transmits the context information when establishing a voice call with the user. The context information may include various types of media, such as pictures or videos taken by a calling device. In some examples, a destination mobile device receives a voice call that does have context information and sends a request to a calling mobile device for information related to the voice call. |
| US09008628B2 |
Interactive voice access and notification system
An interactive voice access and notification method includes monitoring one or more notification events associated with one or more recipients identified by a user to detect a trigger of the notification event(s). The method also includes initiating a call to the recipient(s) in response to detecting the trigger of the notification event(s). The method also includes playing back an interactive audible notification message received from the user in response to confirming the recipient(s) are on the call. The method further includes sending a confirmation response to the user when a response from the recipient(s) to the interactive audible notification message triggers a confirmation response. |
| US09008627B2 |
Mobile communication terminal and information providing system
Information that is no longer valid due to the passage of time is not provided to a user. When a stock price information server acquires updated stock price information from a securities market network, a message that instructs that a predetermined application be started up and to which a term of validity has been attached is sent to a user terminal over a paging channel via an SMS server. When the user terminal receives the message, it determines whether or not the message is within the term of validity, and if it determines that the message is within the term of validity, starts up the instructed application from among a plurality of applications that are stored. The stock price information server then sends to the user terminal the stock price information that is requested by the started up application. |
| US09008625B2 |
Fraud prevention techniques
System, apparatus, computer program products and methods for preventing fraud attacks (e.g., on a virtual PBX service provider) are disclosed. In some implementations, a set of fraud evaluation processes are performed, an overall fraud evaluation score is incremented as each of the set of fraud evaluation processes are performed and a step result is obtained. A user request (e.g., account activation) can be denied or accepted based on the overall fraud evaluation score. In some implementations, the set of fraud evaluation processes can include one or more of: an internal fraud evaluation process, a process for checking multiple trial accounts associated with a common account parameter, a process for geolocation verification of multiple account parameters, a process for device type verification for a contact phone number, a process for credit card verification, and a process for placing a contact number verification call. |
| US09008623B2 |
Dynamic device naming and connection in wireless communication system and method thereof
A dynamic device naming and connection in a wireless communication method includes the following steps: firstly, a first device changes a first name of the first device according to a first state, and then a second device searches the device which has a second name according to a second state. Afterwards, whether the second name is equal or relative to the first name or not is determined. If the second name is equal or relative to the first name, the first device may communicate with the second device. |
| US09008618B1 |
MRCP gateway for mobile devices
A system and method for securely bridging mobile-originated Media Resource Control Protocol (MRCP) transactions with at least one Media Resource Server. A mobile device initiates TCP/IP requests to a MRCP Gateway Server over at least one of the wireless and mobile broadband capabilities of the mobile device. The MRCP Gateway Server includes TCP/IP-based ingress, and the MRCP Gateway Server is arranged in front of the at least one Media Resource Server. The Media Resource Server supports MRCP communication. A secure channel may be established between the mobile device and MRCP Gateway Server, and the mobile device may pass authorization credentials, media resource requirements, and additional user-defined data to the MRCP Gateway Server over the secure channel. |
| US09008613B2 |
Connection and data application billing
A server and related method embodiments for determining usage on a wireless network are described. The server includes a connection detector, a connection classifier connected with the connection detector, and a usage tracker connected with the connection classifier. The connection detector detects a connection from a mobile station. The connection classifier determines the type of the detected connection. The usage tracker determines usage for each detected connection based on the connection type. A connecting mobile station for accessing the server includes a session controller for controlling a session with the server, a connection controller for controlling a connection related to the session, and an application assigner for controlling assignment of an application executed by the client to a particular connection. |
| US09008603B2 |
Integrated circuit comprising an integrated transformer of the “BALUN” type with several input and output channels
An integrated circuit includes an integrated transformer of the balanced-to-unbalanced type with N channels, wherein N is greater than 2. The integrated transformer includes, on a substrate, N inductive circuits that are mutually inductively coupled, and respectively associated with N channels. |
| US09008592B2 |
Low power multi-band, multi-mode transmitter
A transmitter includes a power amplifier driver connected with a first transformer and a second transformer. The first transformer is configured for a first band mode and the second transformer is configured for a second band mode. The power amplifier driver drives both the first transformer and the second transformer. |
| US09008590B2 |
Liquid MEMS component and RF applications thereof
A radio circuit includes a front-end module, a board, a liquid MEMS component, and a coupling component. The front-end module is implemented on at least one integrated circuit (IC) die and includes a variable circuit. The variable circuit is adjustable to facilitate an operational adjustment of the front-end module for a given operational condition of the radio circuit. The board supports the liquid MEMS component and supports, at least indirectly, the at least one IC. The coupling component electrical couples the liquid MEMS component to the variable circuit, wherein, based on a control signal, one or more characteristics of the liquid MEMS component is changed, which adjusts the variable circuit. |
| US09008588B2 |
System and method for the calibration and verification of wireless networks with control network
In a system and method computerized devices are connected to each other over a wireless network and to a controller over an additional network. The devices perform antenna beam angle testing of the wireless network. The controller receives, over the additional network, transmitted and received test signal data acquired during such testing. Based on the test signal data, the controller calculates calibration data, which indicates, for each pair of devices, different path loss amounts associated with different transmitted test signal beam angles and a single transmitted test signal power level. The controller generates calibration matrices corresponding to each pair of devices using the calibration data; analyzes the matrices to determine, for each pair, an optimal antenna beam angle that results in the least amount of path loss; determines an optimal power level for the pair based on the path loss; and communicates the optimal specifications to the pair. |
| US09008587B2 |
Systems, methods, and devices having databases for electronic spectrum management
Systems, methods, and apparatus are provided for automated identification of baseline data and changes in state in a wireless communications spectrum, by identifying sources of signal emission in the spectrum by automatically detecting signals, analyzing signals, comparing signal data to historical and reference data, creating corresponding signal profiles, and determining information about the baseline data and changes in state based upon the measured and analyzed data in near real time, which is stored on each apparatus or device and/or on a remote server computer that aggregates data from each apparatus or device. |
| US09008586B2 |
Methods and apparatus to collect wireless information
Example methods, apparatus, and articles of manufacture to collect wireless information are disclosed. A disclosed example method involves installing an operating system and a data collector to execute outside a context of the operating system on a wireless handheld device. A testing process is performed to ensure functionality of the wireless handheld device. An application is installed on the wireless handheld device to execute in the context of the operating system. The data collector is to collect usage information regarding the application and to provide the usage information to a network provider. |
| US09008585B2 |
System and method for wireless communications measurements and CSI feedback
Measurements and Channel State Information (CSI) feedback are configured using communications between a network and user equipment (UE). The communications includes a first signaling from a network component to the UE indicating one or more reference signal (RS) resource configurations, a second signaling indicating one or more interference measurement (IM) resource configurations, and a third signaling indicating a CSI report configuration, wherein the CSI report configuration indicates a subset of the one or more RS resource configurations and a subset of the one or more IM resource configurations. The UE establishes a RS based measurement according to the subset of the one or more RS resource configurations and an IM according to the subset of the one or more IM resource configurations. The UE then generates and sends to the network a CSI report in accordance with the CSI report configuration and using the RS based measurement and the IM. |
| US09008584B2 |
Environment estimation in a wireless communication system
A method and system are described for estimating an environment surrounding a wireless communication system, the environment including at least one inflector that inflects transmitted signals. An observation generator receives an input signal transmitted from a transmitter to a receiver via a wireless communication channel and also receives system state information pertaining to at least one of the receiver, the transmitter and the inflector. An observation processor uses observations from the observation generator to estimate at least one property of the inflector based on the received input signal and the system state information. |
| US09008581B2 |
Radio devices and methods for controlling radio devices
In an embodiment, a radio device is provided. The radio device may include a signal transmitter configured to transmit a plurality of signals, the signals being transmitted with different intensities; a response receiver configured to receive a response message to one of the transmitted signals from a radio communication device having received the respective transmitted signal of the plurality of transmitted signals, the response message identifying the received message; and a assessment circuit configured to assess the reachability of the radio communication device from the radio device based on the intensity of the signal to which the radio communication device has responded. |
| US09008579B2 |
System and method for transmitting data between communication terminals
A system and method for transmitting data between at least two communication terminals includes handling useful address data by a switching unit and handling useful data records by a data exchange node. A spatial distance of the at least two communication terminals is calculated. A time interval of communication inquiries to the switching unit in order to initiate a data transmission between the at least two communication terminals is determined. The data transmission is controlled depending on predeterminable threshold values of the spatial distance of the at least two communication terminals and the at least one time interval between the communication inquiries. |
| US09008576B2 |
Mobile communications device providing NFC applet compatibility features and related methods
A mobile communications device may include a near field communication (NFC) device, and a processor coupled with the NFC device. The processor may be configured to operate a first NFC applet and a second NFC applet, determine whether concurrent enabling of the first NFC applet and the second NFC applet will cause a compatibility conflict, and concurrently enable the first NFC applet and the second NFC applet for communicating data via the NFC device based upon a determination that concurrent enabling of the first NFC applet and the second NFC applet will not cause the compatibility conflict. |
| US09008575B2 |
Portable mobile communication device and method of controlling near field communication
A portable mobile communication device (10) has a mobile host processor (104) permanently installed in the portable mobile communication device (10) and a near field communication circuit (100) comprising a non-volatile memory (101). Configuration data is maintained in the non-volatile memory (101) of the near field communication circuit (100), for control of communication dependent on the configuration data. Prior to communication between the near field communication circuit (100) and the mobile host processor (104) a session identity value is tested. If the session identity value does not match a reference value, at least part of the configuration data for the communication channel is initialized, after which the session identity value and the reference value are equalized after setting up the configuration data. If the session identity value matches the reference value, the mobile host processor (104) proceeds with communication without said initialization. In this way wear of the non-volatile memory due to superfluous initialization after unintentional power downs or resets of the mobile host processor (104) is prevented. |
| US09008572B2 |
Touch sensitive screen information apparatus that includes close proximity or near distance radio frequency field communication
A touch sensitive screen mobile information apparatus having a wireless communication unit for wireless device discovery is herein disclosed. Close proximity wireless device discovery is enabled by wireless searching near distance via radio frequency field for a wireless device, receiving information from the wireless device over the near distance wireless communication, and storing the received information at the information apparatus for future wireless connections. Authentication or pairing of devices may be eliminated due to close proximity of the direct wireless device discovery. After wireless device discovery, the information apparatus and the wireless device may become locked or paired for subsequent wireless communication over any number of wireless communication protocols or standards (e.g., Bluetooth, IEEE 802.11, 2.4GHz) without the need to repeat wireless discovery or pairing. Examples of information apparatus include smart phones, digital camera, laptops, or information pads. Examples of wireless devices include televisions, audio output devices, or printers. |
| US09008569B2 |
Image forming system having function to permit staple processing for job including small size sheet based on page position of small size sheet in a job, and image forming method for the same
An image forming system includes an image forming unit to print an image on a sheet based on a job, a postprocessing unit to carry out postprocessing to the sheet based on the job, and a control unit to manage the job, and to control the print and the postprocessing, the control unit can determine whether the postprocessing execution job includes an applying prohibition sheet or not, and if a predetermined condition such as a page other than first and last pages is satisfied in predetermined postprocessing such as bundle processing, permits the job for the predetermined postprocessing to carry out an output such as insertion of the applying prohibition sheet, for which the postprocessing is prohibited in applying due to a difference in sheet size from a prescribed size and the like, into a bundle of applying permission sheets. |
| US09008560B2 |
Slide member for fixing device, fixing device, and image forming apparatus
A slide member for a fixing device includes a fluororesin layer having a slide surface dotted with recesses. The recesses in the slide surface are arranged in an array having parallel hexagons as unit cells. |
| US09008558B2 |
Separator and separation device, fixing device, and image forming apparatus incorporating same
A separator includes a front edge disposed opposite an outer circumferential surface of an endless belt. The front edge contacts and separates a recording medium from the endless belt. A separation plate mounts the front edge. A contact plate projects from the separation plate in an axial direction of the endless belt and contacts a belt holder that supports the endless belt. A bracket projects from the separation plate in a direction orthogonal to the direction in which the contact plate projects from the separation plate. The bracket includes a notch that engages the belt holder. The contact plate contacting the belt holder and the notch of the bracket engaging the belt holder produce an interval between the front edge of the separator and the outer circumferential surface of the endless belt. |
| US09008555B2 |
Image forming apparatus including toner case, driving mechanism, and installed part and toner case therefor
An image forming apparatus includes a toner case, a driving mechanism and an installed part. The toner case includes a container main body, a rotating member and a transmission coupling. The container main body is provided with a discharge port configured to discharge a toner. The rotating member is installed into the container main body. The transmission coupling is connected with the rotating member. The driving mechanism includes a drive coupling and a drive unit. The drive coupling is detachably connected with the transmission coupling. The toner case has a lever supported onto the container main body. The driving mechanism has a movement mechanism which works in accordance with the operation of the lever, in a state of installing the toner case into the installed part, to move the drive coupling from a disconnecting position to a connecting position with the transmission coupling. |
| US09008553B2 |
Developer conveying device, and developing device and image forming apparatus provided with same
A developer conveying device includes a housing, a developer conveyance path and a conveying member. The developer conveyance path extends between the pair of wall portions of the housing. The conveying member conveys developer from one wall portion toward the other. The conveying member includes a spiral member, shaft portions, a rib member, a supporting member and a projecting portion. The spiral member is formed by connecting spiral pieces in a conveying direction of the developer and includes a hollow interior formed by the connected spiral pieces. The rib member extends in the conveying direction and bridges adjacent ones of the spiral pieces of the spiral member. The supporting member connects an end part of the rib member in the conveying direction and the shaft portion. The projecting portion projects from the end part of the rib member more toward the wall portion than the supporting member. |
| US09008551B2 |
Electrophotographic photoreceptor
An electrophotographic photoreceptor is removably installed and used in a device main unit of an electrophotography application device so as to form a process cartridge. The device main unit includes a driving-side power transmission portion. The photoreceptor includes a photosensitive drum including a cylindrical conductive base having a photosensitive layer containing a photoconductive material. A flange is fitted to the photosensitive drum. The flange includes a driven-side driving force transmission portion that has a cylindrical member and engaging protrusions. The flange transmits to the photosensitive drum a rotational driving force from the driving-side power transmission portion. A center of the cylindrical member is disposed on a central axis of the photosensitive drum. The protrusions are parallel to the central axis at positions on the outer periphery of the cylindrical member that trisect the cylindrical member. Each protrusion protrudes in a radial direction and engages the driving-side power transmission portion. |
| US09008548B2 |
Fixing device provided with reinforced nip member
A fixing device includes a metal plate, an endless belt, a rotating body, and a stay. The metal plate has a main part comprising a first end portion, a second end portion, and a center portion positioned therebetween and having rigidity higher than that of the first end portion and the second end portion. The endless belt has an inner peripheral surface configured to be in sliding contact with the metal plate. The main part is aligned with the rotating body in a direction from the metal plate to the rotating body. The stay is disposed opposite to the nip region with respect to the metal plate. The stay and the main part of the metal plate are deformable upon application of the load to the stay such that the main part provides a convex shape protruding toward the rotating body. |
| US09008547B2 |
Moving device and image forming apparatus including the moving device
A moving device includes a rotary member rotatably supported by a frame of the image forming apparatus to move a latent image forming device between a first position at which the latent image forming device forms a latent image on a latent image bearing member and a second position at which the latent image forming device is separated from the latent image bearing member, a biasing member for biasing the rotary member, and a restriction member for restricting rotation of the rotary member in a state in which the latent image forming device is at the first position. A direction of the force of the biasing member is changed from a stopping direction in which rotation of the rotary member is stopped to a direction opposite the stopping direction while the rotary member is rotated to move the latent image forming device from the second position to the first position. |
| US09008546B2 |
Image carrier, process cartridge, and image forming apparatus
An image carrier includes a tubular image carrier body to carry an image on an outer circumferential surface thereof, a shaft disposed inside the image carrier body, a first flange mounted on the shaft, and a second flange spaced apart from the first flange in an axial direction of the image carrier and mounted on the shaft. Each of the first flange and the second flange includes a through-hole contacting the shaft, a first engagement portion to engage a lateral end of the image carrier body in the axial direction of the image carrier, and a second engagement portion, constituting at least a part of the through-hole, to engage the shaft. The second engagement portion is disposed inboard from the first engagement portion in the axial direction of the image carrier. |
| US09008538B2 |
Image forming apparatus
An image forming apparatus includes a lubricant applying member located opposite a contact portion of a cleaning blade with an image bearing member below in the vertical direction, an opposed position of the lubricant applying member opposite the contact portion of the cleaning blade with the image bearing member below in the vertical direction being located upstream of a contact position of the lubricant applying member with a cleaning member in the rotational direction of the lubricant applying member, and a carrying member configured to carry the toner removed from the lubricant applying member, the carrying member being disposed at a position on a tangent to an outer circumference of the lubricant applying member at a contact position with the cleaning member and on a vertical line extending from a contact position of the lubricant applying member with a solid lubricant member. |
| US09008537B2 |
Image forming apparatus
An image forming apparatus includes a roller pair, a paper dust collecting member, a scraping member, and a paper dust receiver. The paper dust collecting member can be drawn out from the apparatus main body and is disposed along an axis direction of the roller pair so as to collect paper dust adhered to one roller of the roller pair. The scraping member scrapes off paper dust adhered to the paper dust collecting member when the paper dust collecting member is moved in a draw-out direction. The paper dust receiver is disposed below the scraping member so as to receive the paper dust scraped off by the scraping member. |
| US09008533B2 |
Processing apparatus, image forming apparatus, processing method and computer readable information recording medium
A processing apparatus that an uninterruptible power supply system supplies power to and carries out a process. The processing apparatus includes an electric energy amount determination part that determines, based on a charged amount of electric energy in the uninterruptible power supply system, an amount of maximum electric energy that the uninterruptible power supply system can supply; and a function selection part that selects, depending on the amount of maximum electric energy, functions that can be used for carrying out the process. |
| US09008531B2 |
Constant current-type high-voltage power supply apparatus and method of controlling power output from the same
A constant current-type high-voltage power supply apparatus which is used in an image forming apparatus includes a leakage current detection unit that detects a leakage current leaked from at least one output terminal of the constant current-type high-voltage power supply apparatus and outputs the detected leakage current, a direct current voltage output unit that outputs different direct current (DC) voltages according to whether the leakage current detected by the leakage current detection unit is input, and a power control unit that controls power supply to the constant current-type high-voltage power supply apparatus according to the output DC voltage. |
| US09008530B2 |
Image forming apparatus and power control method thereof
An image forming apparatus and a power control method thereof, the power control method of an image forming apparatus which includes a finisher to perform at least one of finishing jobs including arranging, sorting, grouping, folding, stapling, binding, and punching a print medium which is ejected after an image is formed thereon, the power control method including: determining whether or not a power mode of the image forming apparatus meets requirements for entering a power save mode in which power supplied to a part of elements of the image forming apparatus is shut off; determining whether or not the image forming apparatus has an ongoing job if the requirements for entering the power save mode are met; and entering the image forming apparatus in the power save mode while the power supply to the finisher is maintained if the image forming apparatus has the ongoing job. |
| US09008529B2 |
Image forming apparatus, image forming system, non-transitory computer readable medium, and image forming method
An image forming apparatus includes a fixing unit. The fixing unit performs a fixing process selectively using a first fixing energy and a second fixing energy. The first fixing energy is used for a transparent recording medium having thereon an image and a light-shielding layer superposed on the image, the light-shielding layer being substantially impervious to light. The second fixing energy is used for a transparent recording medium having the image thereon but not having the light-shielding layer thereon. The first fixing energy is lower than the second fixing energy. |
| US09008528B2 |
Induction heating fusing device and image forming apparatus
An induction heating fusing device and an image forming apparatuses that may control even a very small current region by tracking a resonance frequency to perform PWM control and phase control without considering a deviation of a part constant or a temperature change are provided. The induction heating fusing device includes: a serial resonance circuit having an induction coil and a condenser; a phase comparator, a phase controller, a resonance frequency tracking oscillator, and a PWM (pulse width modulation) signal generator. The phase comparator compares a phase of a pulse outputted by the PWM signal generator with a phase of current flowing through the induction coil, outputs a comparison result obtained by the comparing to the phase controller when controlling the phase, and outputs the comparison result to the resonance frequency tracking oscillator when performing PWM control. |
| US09008524B2 |
Image forming device having a toner supply control portion
For each of N imaginary regions divided at predetermined intervals in the direction of the rotation shaft of a developer roller (12), the amount of toner consumed when an image is formed is previously calculated. Then, the same amount of toner as a toner consumption amount calculated for each imaginary region is supplied to a development device (2) earlier by a time in which the toner supplied from a toner hopper (5) is transported to each imaginary region than at the time of the development. Thus, it is possible to maintain a toner concentration within the development device within a predetermined range without the toner being dispersed and an image formation speed being reduced even if an image having a high print rate is formed. |
| US09008523B2 |
Image forming apparatus, method of controlling the same, and storage medium
An image forming apparatus capable of distinguishing whether paper material retained in a sheet conveying path is an original or a recording material. An image forming apparatus includes an image reading unit that reads an original, a photosensitive drum that forms an image on a recording sheet, and a main motor and a double-sided-printing drive motor which convey the original and the recording sheet. Paper sheet sensors detect an occurrence of a jam of the original or the recording sheet. When a paper jam is detected, a CPU controls a display section to display a plurality of sheets retained in a conveying path, in a manner distinguishing between the original and the recording material. |
| US09008522B2 |
Developing cartridge having housing and developing roller
In a developing cartridge, a first supporting member is attached to a housing and has a first developing supporting portion and a driving-force-receiving-member supporting portion, the first developing supporting portion being configured to rotatably support a first part of a rotational shaft, the driving-force-receiving-member supporting portion being configured to rotatably support a driving-force-receiving member. The second supporting member is attached to the housing and has a second developing supporting portion and a detection-rotational-body supporting portion, the second developing supporting portion being configured to rotatably support a second part of the rotational shaft, the detection-rotational-body supporting portion being configured to rotatably support a detection rotational body. |
| US09008520B2 |
Visible light communication system and method
Disclosed is a visible light communication system including a transmission device, including multiple light emitting units emitting light of different colors and mapping transmission data to a chromaticity point, calculating luminescence of each of the light emitting units, generating a preamble signal for channel matrix estimation, and emitting light based on the preamble signal and calculated luminescence amount. A reception device of the visible light communication system includes multiple light receiving units and estimates a channel matrix based on a corresponding optical signal when an optical signal corresponding to the preamble signal is received in each light receiving unit, compensates the optical signal corresponding to the chromaticity point for a propagation path based on the estimated channel matrix, detects a chromaticity point on the chromaticity coordinates based on a signal after the propagation path compensation, and demodulates the transmission data. |
| US09008518B2 |
Optical transmitter and receiver circuit arrangement
A system includes an optical transmitter package comprising an optical transmitter to generate optical transmission signals based on electrical transmission signals. The system also includes an optical receiver package comprising an optical receiver to generate electrical reception signals based on optical reception signals. The system further includes a printed circuit board (PCB) on which the optical transmitter package and the optical receiver package are mounted. The PCB includes a heat generating circuit component. The optical transmitter package can be mounted to the PCB to subjected to less heat from the heat generating circuit component than the optical receiver package. |
| US09008509B2 |
Measurement of optical performance for passive WDM systems
A system, a device, and a method include a network interface device that measures optical power of a passive optical device; generates optical power data, and stores the optical power data. The system, the device, and the method, also includes generating alarms based on the optical power data and communication with remote network interface devices via the passive optical device. |
| US09008504B2 |
Transmission apparatus and method for serial and parallel channel interworking in optical transport network
A transmission apparatus and method for serial and parallel channel interworking in an optical transport network are provided. The transmission apparatus for serial and parallel channel interworking ensures interworking between parallel optical modules or between parallel and serial optical modules, regardless of a protocol, without having to add logics or with only a minimum number of logics, in order to manufacture a small-size optical module with low power consumption. |
| US09008501B2 |
Network and method for providing redundancy in an optical distribution network
Disclosed herein are optical distribution networks and corresponding methods for providing physical-layer redundancy. Example embodiments include a head-end passive optical splitter-combiner (OSC) to split optical signals from an Optical Line Terminal (OLT) onto primary and secondary optical paths for redundant distribution to optical network terminal(s) (ONTs), a passive access OSC for tapping the redundant signals, and an optical switch for selecting between the redundant signals and providing an ONT access to the selected signal. Example optical distribution networks and corresponding methods provide multiple drop points, a fully cyclical path, and autonomous protection switching, all at low cost. A further advantage of these networks and methods is that where faults may occur, maintenance may not be required for a certain time. |
| US09008499B2 |
Optical viewfinder
An optical viewfinder is configured to be attached to a camera body with an interchangeable lens. The optical viewfinder includes: a Keplerian viewfinder optical system 301 including a scalable objective lens group 330; a stepping motor 305 configured to drive the objective lens group 330 along an optical axis; and a control circuit configured to control driving of the stepping motor 305 based on a result of detection by a PI 306. When a variable focal length lens (an interchangeable lens) is attached to a camera body, the control circuit controls driving of the stepping motor 305 in accordance with a focal length of the variable focal length lens and displays at least a photographing frame on an EVF panel 307. |
| US09008496B2 |
Probe
A probe including a liquid sample channel through which a liquid sample flows in a specified direction; a nebulizer gas channel through which a nebulizer gas flows in a specified direction, formed at the outer circumference of the liquid sample channel so as to have a round annular outer circumference and be coaxial with the liquid sample channel; a heating gas channel for injecting an assist gas in a specified direction, wherein a heating gas injection port is formed around the outlet end of the nebulizer gas channel so as to have a round annular outer circumference and be coaxial with the nebulizer gas channel; and a heating element which is arranged inside the heating gas channel and heats the assist gas for injecting through the heating gas injection port. |
| US09008493B2 |
Information processing device, information processing method, and program
The present invention relates to an information processing device, an information processing method, and a program, whereby playback of PG and TextST images can be controlled from a BD-J application. There are defined a mono PG/TextST stream of a PG/TextST image that is a mono image serving as a 2D image, a stereo PG/TextST stream of a PG/TextST image that is a stereo image serving as a 3D image, and a PG/TextST stream for offset of a PG/TextST image that is a mono image to be used for generating a stereo image along with an offset value for giving disparity to the mono image, as a PG/TextST stream of a PG/TextST image. An stream selecting API selects a mono PG/TextST stream, a stereo PG/TextST stream, or a PG/TextST stream for offset. The present invention may be applied to a BD player configured to play a BD, or the like. |
| US09008491B2 |
Snapshot feature for tagged video
A method takes a snapshot of a video sequence containing a video tag. The method comprises causing a display device to present a video sequence for a period of time and causing the display device to display at least one video tag contemporaneously with the video sequence. The method further comprises accepting, at a moment during the period of time, an input associated with a user action signifying taking a snapshot of the video sequence with a video tag of interest displayed with the video sequence at the moment. The method further comprises storing, in response to acceptance of the input, data sufficient to reproduce a still image from the video sequence with video tag of interest at approximately the moment. Optionally, the method may further comprise causing the display device to display the still image at a later time or including the still image in an email message. |
| US09008488B2 |
Video recording apparatus and camera recorder
A video recording apparatus preferentially transmits important video data, while reducing user's operational burdens. An operating section receives operation instructions of a first recording video image. A video recording section records a second recording video image, and records the first recording video image in accordance with the operation instructions input to the operating section. An overlapping period detection section generates overlap information indicating temporal overlap between the recording video images, from an output of the operating section. The video recording section divides the second recording video image into blocks at timing based on recording operation of the first recording video image, and determines priority of the divided blocks based on the overlap information. |
| US09008487B2 |
Spatial bookmarking
Methods, apparatuses and computer-readable media for creating a spatial bookmark are provided. A method includes performing an action at a near location which causes a spatial bearing parameter corresponding to a real-time video image captured by a video-camera platform at a remote location to be stored in a computer-readable memory, wherein the video-camera platform has a controllable LOS. Performing an action at the near location that designates to a computer an image displayed on a screen, wherein the image is representative of the real-time video image, thereby causing the computer to retrieve the spatial bearing parameter from the computer-readable memory, and performing an action causing the computer to aim the video-camera platform along a LOS, wherein the video-camera platform captures a real-time video image that is received at a screen for display at the near location. |
| US09008482B2 |
Optical cable terminal box
An optical cable terminal box for distributing an optical cable with a plurality of cores to subscriber lines is provided. The optical cable terminal box may include a housing having a slot, the slot having a first receiving groove formed at an edge of the slot. The optical cable terminal box may also include a cover member coupled to the housing to close the slot, and the cover member may have a second receiving groove formed at an edge of the cover member. When the cover member closes the slot, the first and second grooves may be coupled to each other to form a wiring hole that is configured to pass an optical cable therethrough. |
| US09008481B2 |
Arrangement for processing optical waveguides
An arrangement for processing at least one optical fiber that includes a first processing element and a second processing element for processing at least one optical waveguide. The first and second processing elements have a common base element and a common actuating element for simultaneously actuating the first and second processing elements. The actuating element is capable of moving relative to the base element. |
| US09008480B2 |
Method of manufacturing optical waveguide core, method of manufacturing optical waveguide, optical waveguide, and optoelectric composite wiring board
In order to provide a method of efficiently manufacturing an optical waveguide core having an endface inclined at a predetermined angle, the following method of manufacturing an optical waveguide core is employed. The method includes: a core material layer forming step of forming a core material layer formed of a photosensitive material on a surface of a cladding layer that has been formed on a substrate; a high refractive index substance covering step of covering a surface of the core material layer with a substance having a refractive index higher than 1 by bringing the high refractive index substance into close contact with the core material layer surface; an exposure step of pattern exposing the core material layer in a predetermined core-forming shape to from a core by irradiating the core material layer on a side covered with the high refractive index substance with exposure light inclined at a predetermined angle with respect to the cladding layer surface; a high refractive index substance removing step of removing the high refractive index substance from the surface of the core material layer exposed in the exposure step; and an development step of developing the core material layer from which the high refractive index substance has been removed in the high refractive index substance removing step so as to form the core having an inclined endface. |
| US09008476B2 |
Polarization conversion device
A polarization conversion device includes: a directional coupler that includes an input side optical waveguide and an output side optical waveguide which are disposed in parallel to each other and each of which has a core. Assuming that a direction in which the input side optical waveguide and the output side optical waveguide face each other is a width direction and a direction perpendicular to the width direction is a height direction in a cross section perpendicular to a longitudinal direction of each of the input side optical waveguide and the output side optical waveguide, and the directional coupler is configured to couple first light guided through the input side optical waveguide to second light guided through the output side optical waveguide, the polarization direction of the second light is perpendicular to that of the first light. |
| US09008474B2 |
Optical module having focused optical coupling system for single fiber
An optical module is disclosed, in which the optical module installs a plurality of optical devices each optically coupling with a single fiber in the focused beam coupling system. The optical module includes a condenser lens, and respective optical devices install an individual lens. One of the beam waists of the condenser lens locates on the end of the optical fiber and the other of the beam waist locates on the outer wall of the coupling unit to which the optical devices are attached. One of the beam waists of the individual lens in the optical device substantially aligns with the other beam waist of the condenser lens, while, the other of the beam waist of the individual lens aligns at the semiconductor optical device. |
| US09008473B2 |
Optical transmission-reception system and light-receiving unit
An optical transmission-reception system includes: a light-emitting element having a first semiconductor multilayer structure with a ring- or disk-like shape and generating a first optical signal and a second optical signal rotating in a direction opposite to the first optical signal; a first optical waveguide optically coupled with the light-emitting element and propagating the first optical signal; a second optical waveguide optically coupled with the light-emitting element and propagating the second optical signal; and a light-receiving element having a second semiconductor multilayer structure with a ring- or disk-like shape, optically coupled with the first and second optical waveguides, and optically receiving the first and second optical signals. The first optical waveguide has a spiral shape at a coupling part with the light-receiving element, and the second optical waveguide has a spiral shape winding in the same direction as the first optical waveguide at a coupling part with the light-receiving element. |
| US09008471B2 |
Optical circuits and circuit elements
Circuits and circuit elements adapted to function at optical or infrared frequencies are made from plasmonic and/or nonplasmonic particles disposed on a substrate, where the plasmonic and nonplasmonic particles have respective dimensions substantially smaller than a wavelength of an applied optical or infrared signal. Such particles are deposited on a substrate in a variety of shapes and sizes from a variety of plasmonic and/or nonplasmonic materials so as to form resistors, capacitors, inductors and circuits made from combinations of these elements. |
| US09008470B2 |
Method and apparatus for wavelength selective switch
Apparatus and method embodiments are provided for implementing a wavelength selective switch (WSS). The embodiments use combinations of switchable polarization grating (SPG) and LC cells and combinations of polymer polarization grating (PPG) and LC cells to achieve 1×N WSS systems. An embodiment optical switch includes a liquid crystal cell and a SPG cell adjacent to the liquid crystal cell. The SPG includes liquid crystal material between two photo-alignment layers, an electrode layer overlying each photo-alignment layer, and a glass substrate overlying each electrode layer. An embodiment method includes polarizing an incident light beam at a circular polarization before diffracting, at a polarization grating, the polarized incident light beam in a determined angle that corresponds to a diffraction order in accordance to the circular polarization of the incident light beam and a hologram pattern direction formed inside the polarization grating. |
| US09008468B2 |
Electro-optic modulator of large bandwidth
An electro-optic modulator includes a substrate, a waveguide lens, a Y-shaped waveguide, and electrodes. The waveguide lens and the Y-shaped waveguide are formed in the substrate. The Y-shaped waveguide connects the waveguide lens and includes a first section dedicated for transmitting TE mode and a second section dedicated for transmitting TM mode. The electrodes are configured to modulate outputs of the waveguide lens, the first section, and the second section. |
| US09008464B2 |
Media data customization
Techniques and systems for media data customization system are provided. In one embodiment, a media data customization system includes a resource allocator that receives media data and a media data customization request and that allocates customization resources for a service of the media data customization request, a pipe repository that stores pipe filter modules, and a pipe manager that retrieves pipe filter modules stored in the pipe repository based on the media data customization request, that integrates the retrieved pipe filter modules to form a pipe group, and that applies the pipe group to the media data using the customization resources to generate customized media data. |
| US09008455B1 |
Adaptive MPEG noise reducer
The disclosed technology provides a system and a method for adaptive MPEG noise reduction. In particular, the disclosed technology provides a system and a method for reducing blocking artifacts and mosquito noise in an MPEG video signal. An overall MPEG noise detector may be used to determine the presence of noise in one or more frames of a video signal. When a sufficient amount of noise is detected in the one or more frames of the video signal, portions of the video signal that contain noise may be located and filtered to reduce the amount of noise present in the video signal. |
| US09008453B2 |
Blur-kernel estimation from spectral irregularities
A method for deriving a blur kernel from a blurred image is provided herein. The method may include the following steps: obtaining a blurred image B, being a product of a blur kernel k applied to an original image I; calculating fθ(x)=Rd*Pθ(B)(x) for every angle θ, wherein R denotes an autocorrelation operator, Pθ denotes a projection operator of based on angle θ, and d denotes a one dimensional differentiation filter; estimating spectral power of the blur kernel based on a given support parameter; estimating the blur kernel k using a phase retrieval algorithm, based on the estimated spectral power of the blur kernel; updating the support parameters; and repeating the estimating of the spectral power, the estimating of the kernel and the updating of the support parameters in an iterative, to yield the blur kernel. |
| US09008450B1 |
Directional cross hair search system and method for determining a preferred motion vector
A system and method for determining a preferred motion vector is provided, which may be used to estimate motion in a series of video image frames. The system may include a video encoder having a motion vector selector. The motion vector selector may include a first generator to generate a cost associated with motion vectors in a first direction, a selector to set a cross over point corresponding to a lowest cost motion vector in the first direction, a direction indicator to sample a set of motion vectors about the cross over point to select a preferred direction, and a second generator to generate a cost associated with the motion vectors in the preferred direction. The method may include determining a final motion vector having the lowest cost within a search window. |
| US09008445B2 |
Solid-state image capturing element and method for driving solid-state image capturing element
A solid-state image capturing element includes: a plurality of pixels arranged in rows and columns, each of which outputs an electric signal corresponding to an amount of received light; a plurality of column signal lines each of which is disposed for a corresponding one of columns of the pixels and sequentially transfers the electric signal provided from the corresponding one of the columns of the pixels; and a plurality of holding circuits each of which is disposed for a corresponding one of the column signal lines and holds the electric signal transferred via the corresponding one of the column signal lines. Each of the holding circuits includes a circuit element including an input capacitance, and holds the electric signal in the input capacitance. |
| US09008444B2 |
Image rectification using sparsely-distributed local features
This invention is a method for rectifying an input digital image including warped textual information. The method includes analyzing the input digital image to locate a plurality of local features, at least some of the local features including textual features. A sparse set of local image regions are located corresponding to reliable combinations of spatially-consecutive local features, and corresponding local orientations are determined. A global deformation function is formed by interpolating between the determined local orientations and is used to form a rectified image. |
| US09008442B2 |
Information processing apparatus, information processing method, and computer program
There is provided an information processing apparatus including an image acquisition unit configured to acquire images captured from a plurality of observation points for a predetermined object, a feature point extraction unit configured to extract a feature point in each of the images acquired by the image acquisition unit, a correspondence relationship acquisition unit configured to acquire a correspondence relationship of the feature points based on images from among adjacent observation points, and an information presentation unit configured to quantitatively present information about the correspondence relationship acquired by the correspondence relationship acquisition unit. |
| US09008439B2 |
Image processing method and system
A method of comparing two object poses, wherein each object pose is expressed in terms of position, orientation and scale with respect to a common coordinate system, the method comprising: calculating a distance between the two object poses, the distance being calculated using the distance function: d sRt ( X , Y ) = d s 2 ( X , Y ) σ s 2 + d r 2 ( X , Y ) σ r 2 + d t 2 ( X , Y ) σ t 2 . where X is the object pose of one object and Y is the object pose of the other object, d s ( X , Y ) = log ( s ( X ) s ( Y ) ) , d r ( X , Y ) = R ( X ) - R ( Y ) F , d t ( X , Y ) = t ( X ) - t ( Y ) s ( Y ) , s(X) and s(Y) are scalar functions representing the scale of the object poses X and Y respectively, R(X) and R(Y) are matrices expressing the rotation of object poses X and Y respectively, t(X) and t(Y) are vectors expressing the translation of object poses X and Y respectively, and σs, σr and σt are weighting factors for ds, dr and dt respectively. |
| US09008436B2 |
Image recomposition from face detection and facial features
A computer implemented method for modifying a digital image comprising identifying two or more individual regions in the digital image that each include a human face, and digitally defining at least one combined region that includes the two or more individual regions wherein at least one border of the at least one combined region is collinear with a border of one of the individual regions. |
| US09008433B2 |
Object tag metadata and image search
Techniques are disclosed for ordering images. The technique includes receiving a request, the request including keywords and parameters specifying desired image characteristics. Further, the technique includes identifying a set of images responsive to the request based on a match of the keywords to tags associated with objects depicted in the set of images. Finally, the technique includes determining an ordering of the identified set of images by comparing the received parameters with metadata fields associated with respective tags of the objects and returning an indication of the set of images and the determined ordering of the images. |
| US09008431B2 |
Character string extraction method and character string extraction device
In a character string extraction method, a character portion, a rim portion, a character frame, and a character string frame are set, a feature value of each image in the character portion and the rim portion is calculated for each character frame, a character string frame evaluation value is calculated based on the feature value for the character string frame, a position of the character string frame is moved on the paper sheet image, and the image in the character portion is extracted by using the character string frame at a position at which the character string frame evaluation value reaches a maximum. |
| US09008430B2 |
Identification method and apparatus of confusable character
An identification method and apparatus of confusable character are provided. The method involves: the detected character image is identified to gain the initial character information which is corresponding to the character image; the step change times of the corresponding external outline of the character image are counted if the initial character information is the confusable character; the final character information corresponding to the character image is confirmed according to the step change times; The final character information of the character image can be known conveniently according to the step change times, therefore the corresponding correct character information of the character image can be identified more precisely. The possibility of wrong identification of the character image because of the appearing confusable character can be reduced, and the identification precision rate of the confusable character can be improved. |
| US09008426B2 |
Generating an image presegmented into regions of interest and regions of no interest
A camera system (10) is provided for generating an image presegmented into regions (106a-b) of interest and of no interest, having an evaluation unit (20) which is designed to divide the raw image into part regions (106a-b) to calculate a contrast value for each part region (106a-b) and to decide with reference to the contrast value whether the respective part region (106a-b) is a region of interest (106a) or a region of no interest (106b). In this respect, the evaluation unit (20) has a preprocessing unit (22) which is implemented on an FPGA, which respectively accesses the pixels of a part region (106a-b) and generates summed values (a), b) for the respective part region (106a-b) and has a structure recognition unit (24) which calculates the contrast value of the part region (106a-b) from its summed values (a, b) without accessing pixels of the part region (106a-b). |
| US09008422B2 |
Methods of content-driven image cropping
A method of cropping an image based on a content of the image according to one example embodiment includes identifying image features in the content of the image, determining horizontal histogram frequencies and vertical histogram frequencies of the identified image features, determining borders of a document bounding box based on the determined horizontal histogram frequencies and vertical histogram frequencies, and cropping the image according to the document bounding box. |
| US09008415B2 |
Automatic image adjustment parameter correction
Techniques are disclosed relating to modifying an automatically predicted adjustment. In one embodiment, the automatically predicted adjustment may be adjusted, for example, based on a rule. The automatically predicted adjustment may be based on a machine learning prediction. A new image may be globally adjusted based on the modified automatically predicted adjustment. |
| US09008413B2 |
Processing method for a pair of stereo images
A processing method for a pair of stereo images is provided. The method includes: extracting a pair of edge images from the stereo images, each edge image having edge pixels, each edge pixel of one of the edge images being associated with an overlap record and a disparity record; providing a plurality of image lateral shifts to sequentially determine a plurality of overlap levels between the pair of edge images; and updating the overlap record and the disparity record associated with a selected edge pixel to a maximum overlap level and a most-likely disparity, respectively. The maximum overlap level is a maximum among a plurality of associated overlap levels to which the selected edge pixel contributes. The most-likely disparity corresponds to the maximum overlap level. |
| US09008412B2 |
Image processing device, image processing method and recording medium for combining image data using depth and color information
To enhance the accuracy of the search of a corresponding point in a plurality of sheets of images photographed by a camera array and to acquire more pieces of color information on a subject. First color information is calculated from pixel values of the plurality of pieces of photographed image data photographed by the camera array, and the first color information is used to calculate a corresponding point between images indicated by the plurality of pieces of photographed image data. The calculated corresponding point is used to calculate information on the depth of the subject in the image indicated by the photographed image data. Second color information that is used for reproducing the color of the subject faithfully is calculated from the pixel values of the plurality of pieces of photographed image data. The calculated depth information and second color information are used to combine the plurality of photographed images. |
| US09008403B1 |
Method of compensating ultrasound image
A method of compensating ultrasound image comprising demarcating a plurality of a main material regions of an ultrasound image; executing a full compensation process to generate a full compensation image according to a first attenuation curve of the main material region; generating a brightness comparison table including a plurality of brightness zones which are correspond to a plurality of brightness compensation values according to a plurality of first pixel brightness values of the ultrasound image and a plurality of second pixel brightness values of the full compensation image; executing a linear sum process to generate a compensation image including a second attenuation curve according to the brightness compensation values; generating a compensation curve according to the first and second attenuation curve; and executing space comparison process to the compensation image to generate a better compensation image according to the compensation curve. |
| US09008398B2 |
Template matching method for image-based detection and tracking of irregular shaped targets
An image processing method includes: obtaining an input image; enhancing an object in the input image; and after the input image is enhanced, applying a low-pass filter using a processor to obtain a processed image. A computer product includes a non-transitory medium storing a set of instructions, an execution of which causes a method to be performed, the method comprising: obtaining an input image; enhancing an object in the input image; and after the input image is enhanced, applying a low-pass filter to obtain a processed image. |
| US09008394B2 |
Methods and apparatus for determining brain cortical thickness
Methods and apparatus for determining brain cortical thickness are provided. One method includes determining an intensity profile at each of a plurality of cortical surface points of an imaged brain using brain tissue image data and calculating a cortical thickness based on a parametrically determined transition point of each intensity profile. |
| US09008391B1 |
Systems and methods for processing retinal images for screening of diseases or abnormalities
Embodiments disclose systems and methods that aid in screening, diagnosis and/or monitoring of medical conditions. The design includes a system and method for accessing retinal images related to a patient, each retinal image including a plurality of pixels. For each of the retinal images, the system designates a first set of the plurality of pixels as active pixels including interesting retinal image regions and computes a first vector of numbers comprising pixel-level descriptors for each of the active pixels. The system computes a second vector of numbers for each of the retinal images and provides a second classification using supervised learning. |
| US09008388B2 |
Information processing system and information processing method
[Object] To provide an information processing apparatus and an information processing method more excellent in convenience for the user.[Solving Means] An information processing system according to a first aspect of the present technology includes: an acquisition unit to acquire image data obtained by capturing a slide on which a plurality of sections obtained by cutting a single specimen in the same direction are discretely placed; a detector to detect a plurality of specimen areas in the acquired image data and to calculate position information relatively indicating positions of the individual specimen areas in a coordinate space of the image data, the plurality of specimen areas having the same shape and including the individual sections; a first storage unit to store the calculated position information; and a controller to switch display between the specimen areas based on the stored position information. |
| US09008385B2 |
Systems, devices, and method for determining treatment compliance including tracking, registering, etc. of medical staff, patients, instrumentation, events, etc. according to a treatment staging plan
Systems, devices, and methods are described for tracking, registering, etc. of medical staff, patients, instrumentation, events, or the like according to a treatment staging plan. For example a medical apparatus includes a right-patient verification device having an interrogation interface device that elicits at least one of identification data, authorization data, or treatment plan data from a medical procedure authorization device associated with a patient; and a right-site verification device that generates patient-specific treatment staging data consistent with the at least one of the identification data, the authorization data, or the treatment plan data. |
| US09008382B2 |
Method and system for analysing tissue from images
Disclosed is a method of analyzing tissue from an image comprising providing an electronic image of tissue (100, 400, 450, 600, 800, 1100), determining a reference value from the image (1070, 1170, 1270), establishing an hint representation (500,700) of the image, and using the hint representation in analysis of the tissue to quantify the breast and compute a calibration error. Also disclosed is a system which runs an inner breast edge detection algorithm (1310) on the electronic image to detect the inner breast edge on the image (1315), and refined the inner breast edge location (1340) if a calibration error is not acceptable (1324). Also disclosed is automatic estimation of breast composition and temporal analysis of images. |
| US09008378B2 |
Arrangement and imaging of biological samples
High-resolution three-dimensional imaging of a specimen is facilitated. According to an example embodiment of the present invention, a series of very thin slices from a specimen are serially and robustly arranged on an imaging device such as a microscope slide. The slices are imaged and the images are used to reconstruct a three-dimensional image having high resolution at depths into the specimen. The serial arrangement of the slices facilitates the proper ordering of images for reconstruction. Further, the robust nature of the slice arrangement facilitates treatment of the slices and, in some applications, multiple treatments with corresponding imaging sequences for each treatment. Various embodiments are directed to methods and arrangements for three-dimensional characterization of biological specimen and to data that is accessible and/or executable by a computer for linking different images together in order to characterize such biological specimen in three dimensions. |
| US09008377B2 |
System and method for identifying an individual
The present invention provides a system for identifying an individual provided with a portable communication device. In a system for identifying an individual using a portable communication device with a display, the display is a sensor-incorporated display, the sensor-incorporated display reads the biological information of a user, and, based on the read information, identifies an individual. |
| US09008376B2 |
Ultra-thin sensing device with flat contact surface
An ultra-thin sensing device with a flat contact surface comprises a package substrate, an interposer structure, a vertical electrical connection structure and a sensing chip. The interposer structure disposed on the package substrate comprises connection pads and second bonding pads electrically connected to the connection pads and first bonding pads of the package substrate. The vertical electrical connection structure disposed on the interposer structure comprises vertical conductors electrically connected to the connection pads. The sensing chip disposed on the vertical electrical connection structure comprises a chip substrate, and sensing members, sensing circuit cells and vertical through electrodes, which are formed on the chip substrate. The sensing member senses specific features of an organism to obtain sensing signals, processed by the sensing circuit cells into biometrics feature signals transmitted to the first bonding pad through the vertical through electrode, the vertical conductor and the second bonding pad. |
| US09008374B2 |
Method of improving orientation and color balance of digital images using face detection information
A method of generating one or more new spatial and chromatic variation digital images uses an original digitally-acquired image which including a face or portions of a face. A group of pixels that correspond to a face within the original digitally-acquired image is identified. A portion of the original image is selected to include the group of pixels. Values of pixels of one or more new images based on the selected portion are automatically generated, or an option to generate them is provided, in a manner which always includes the face within the one or more new images. Such method may be implemented to automatically establish the correct orientation and color balance of an image. Such method can be implemented as an automated method or a semi automatic method to guide users in viewing, capturing or printing of images. |
| US09008373B2 |
Device, system and method for transit testing of samples
Disclosed herein is a method and device for testing an agricultural product for the presence of an unwanted residue including a reader-incubator combination that can utilize onboard motor vehicle systems, such as an onboard microprocessor and onboard power supply. |
| US09008368B2 |
Method for identifying and defining basic patterns forming the tread pattern of a tyre
A method for inspecting tire tread, having circumferentially juxtaposed elements separated by identically shaped boundaries and having patterns arranged in a predetermined sequence, includes: acquiring an image of a surface of the tire tread, the image including pixels associated with a light-intensity level; transforming the image by circumferentially offsetting pixels located axially at a same distance (x1, x2) from a given circumferential reference (OY), by an inverse (−y1, −y2) of a circumferential offset (y1, y2) with respect to an axial line (OX) of a point (P1, P2) located on a boundary line of known shape at the same axial distance (x1, x2) from the circumferential reference (OY), such that boundaries between elements appear as straight traces orientated in an axial direction; and analyzing the image to identify points located on an axially orientated straight line, the points being treated as points located on a boundary line between two elements. |
| US09008367B2 |
Apparatus and methods for reducing visibility of a periphery of an image stream
Apparatus and methods are described for imaging a portion of a body of a subject that undergoes a motion cycle, including acquiring a plurality of image frames of the portion of the subject's body. A given feature is identified in at least some of the image frames. At least some image frames are image tracked with respect to the feature, and the image frames that have been image tracked with respect to the given feature are displayed as a stream of image frames. Visibility of a periphery of the displayed stream of image frames is at least partially reduced. Other applications are also described. |
| US09008365B2 |
Systems and methods for pedestrian detection in images
System, apparatus, and method embodiments are provided for detecting the presence of a pedestrian in an image. In an embodiment, a method for determining whether a person is present in an image includes receiving a plurality of images, wherein each image comprises a plurality of pixels and determining a modified center symmetric local binary pattern (MS-LBP) for the plurality of pixels for each image, wherein the MS-LBP is calculated on a gradient magnitude map without using an interpolation process, and wherein a value for each pixel is a gradient magnitude. |
| US09008362B1 |
Correlation of 3-D point images
A method and system is disclosed for tracking object clusters. The method comprises obtaining a first sensor image and a second sensor image. Angular measurements between objects of the first sensor image are determined. Angular measurements between objects of the second sensor image are also determined. Angular measurements from the first sensor image are compared to angular measurements of the second image, and correlated object clusters are identified. The sensor system includes a command and decision unit that receives a first sensor image and a second sensor image. The command and decision unit determines angular measurements for the first sensor image, and determines angular measurements for the second sensor image. The command and decision unit compares the angular measurements for the first sensor image to the angular measurements for the second sensor image, and identifies correlated object clusters based on the comparison. |
| US09008360B2 |
Authentication system, and method for registering and matching authentication information
A certain amount of unique data of a target is extracted from image information that was read, and it is determined whether or not the target is valid on the basis of the extracted unique data. Processes are executed by means of an image reading unit which extracts an image by scanning a target, an individual difference data calculating unit which calculates individual difference data from the obtained image, an individual difference data comparing unit which compares the calculated individual difference data, and a determination unit which determines whether or not to grant validation. |
| US09008359B2 |
Detection of static object on thoroughfare crossings
Foreground object image features are extracted from input video via application of a background subtraction mask, and optical flow image features from a region of the input video image data defined by the extracted foreground object image features. If estimated movement features indicate that the underlying object is in motion, a dominant moving direction of the underlying object is determined. If the dominant moving direction is parallel to an orientation of the second, crossed thoroughfare, an event alarm indicating that a static object is blocking travel on the crossing second thoroughfare is not generated. If the estimated movement features indicate that the underlying object is static, or that its determined dominant moving direction is not parallel to the second thoroughfare, an appearance of the foreground object region is determined and a static-ness timer run while the foreground object region comprises the extracted foreground object image features. |
| US09008358B2 |
Encoding a specific area with higher quality than a non-specific area
An image of a prescribed frame of images of respective frames is set as a target image, and an area including a prescribed pattern is detected from the target image as a specific area. An image other than the target image is set as a non-target image, and the specific area in the non-target image is predicted. The images of the respective frames are encoded so that the specific area is encoded to have higher image quality than an area other than the specific area. In encoding, the images of the respective frames are encoded so that the specific area in the non-target image is not referred to from another frame. |
| US09008357B2 |
Target detection method and apparatus and image acquisition device
A target detection method including the following steps controlling a modulated light emitting device to emit optical pulse signals with a first light intensity and a second light intensity to a target to be detected and a background, controlling an image sensor to acquire images of the target to be detected and the background, and distinguishing the target to be detected and the background, using the first frame image and the second frame image. |
| US09008351B2 |
Method and apparatus for processing image, and medical imaging system employing the apparatus
A method of processing an image is provided. The method includes estimating a thickness of an object that includes at least two materials, from a radiation image taken with radiations of at least two energy bands; and generating an image by comparing the estimated thickness to a thickness of a local region and extracting a region of interest. |
| US09008350B2 |
Loudspeaker, electronic device and mobile device both including the same, and method of producing the same
A magnetic circuit includes an upper plate, a magnet, a lower plate, and a center pole. The outer circumference of a frame is coupled with a diaphragm. One end of a voice coil is coupled with the diaphragm, and the other end is inserted into a magnetic gap formed between the upper plate and the center pole. The frame is provided with a through hole. An insertion part provided on the outer circumference of the upper plate is inserted into the through hole. The frame is coupled with the upper plate by bending the insertion part. |
| US09008349B2 |
Speaker diaphragm, speaker, and electronic equipment and mobile device using the speaker
A speaker diaphragm of the present invention is formed by mixing polylactic acid as a plant-derived resin, bamboo fibers and a natural binder. It is thereby possible to realize a speaker diaphragm capable of obtaining sufficient sound velocity, while having low environmental load and high sound quality. |
| US09008346B2 |
Articulating headphones with biased arm positions
A headphone with articulating earpieces includes a headband, a hinged fork, and earpieces connected to the fork in a manner allowing the earpieces to articulate relative to the fork as a hinge on the fork articulates. The earpieces are arranged on the fork in a manner allowing them to face each other while articulating from a folded position adjacent the headband, to an unfolded position for listening. When unfolded for listening, the earpieces are adapted to fully extend into a biased open position with an audible click. Similarly, when articulating the earphones to a closed position, they are biased against the headband with an audible click. |
| US09008344B2 |
Systems and methods for using a speaker as a microphone in a mobile device
In accordance with methods and systems of the present disclosure, a mobile device may include an enclosure adapted such that the enclosure is readily transported by a user of the mobile device, a speaker associated with the enclosure for generating sound, and a controller within the enclosure, communicatively coupled to the speaker. The controller may be configured to receive a signal from the speaker, the signal induced at least in part by sound incident on the speaker other than sound generated by the speaker and process the signal. |
| US09008343B2 |
Annular diaphragm compression driver
An annular diaphragm compression driver for electro-acoustic conversion has an annular diaphragm, which bears a moving coil, and a compression driver housing with a closed housing base. Opposite the housing base is a sound wave routing element having a sound discharge channel. The compression driver also has an annular magnet system unit, which has an annular magnet gap (M) and a compression chamber, adjoining the magnet gap (M), for the annular diaphragm. The open exit end of the sound discharge channel is in slot form and its entry start is annular. The sound path between the compression chamber and the entry start contains an annular collecting space. The collecting space and the sound discharge channel contain a central sound guidance body having a portion which merges to match the slot-like exit end. The sound discharge channel is formed between the sound guidance body and the sound wave routing element. |
| US09008342B1 |
Waterproof speaker system
Disclosed herein is a waterproof speaker system for use in residential and commercial applications. The disclosed speaker system is particularly applicable to wet conditions such as greenhouses, gardens, boats, and other outdoor installations or where traditional speakers are negatively affected by water and humidity. The waterproof speaker system generally comprises a solid water impermeable cast rear and side casing, and internal front frame member housing the speaker drivers and in some cases a simple electronics or amplification circuit, and a water impermeable front face panel sealed to the front frame member and/or the rear casing to completely enclose the speaker driver from contact with moisture. |
| US09008336B2 |
Condenser microphone
The present invention has: a condenser microphone unit which performs electroacoustic conversion according to a change in an electrostatic capacitance between a diaphragm and a fixed pole; a non-inverting amplifier which is connected to one of the diaphragm and the fixed pole, and which has an impedance converter which converts an output impedance of the microphone unit into a low impedance; an inverting amplifier which receives an input of an output signal of the non-inverting amplifier through an input resistance, and which has a feedback resistance; and a variable resistor which is connected between an output of the non-inverting amplifier and an output of the inverting amplifier, and in which a wiper is connected to the diaphragm or the fixed pole, whichever is not connected to the non-inverting amplifier, and the sensitivity changes according to the position of the wiper of the variable resistor. |
| US09008332B2 |
Processing chip for a digital microphone and related input circuit and a digital microphone
A processing chip for a digital microphone and related input circuit and a digital microphone are described herein. In one aspect, the input circuit for a processing chip of a digital microphone includes: a PMOS transistor, a resistor, a current source, and a low-pass filter. The described processing chip possesses high anti high-frequency interference capabilities and the described input circuit possesses high high-frequency power supply rejection ratio. |
| US09008331B2 |
Equalization system to improve the quality of bass sounds within a listening area
Frequency equalization system substantially equalizes the room frequency responses generated by at least one loudspeaker within a listening area so that the frequency responses in the listening area are substantially constant and flat within a desired frequency range. The frequency equalization system uses multiple microphones to measure the impulse responses of the room and uses the impulse responses to design filters to process the audio signals of one or more subwoofers to achieve an improved bass response that is flat across the relevant frequency range. The system employs an algorithm that is a closed-form, non-iterative, mathematical solution and features very short computation time. |
| US09008329B1 |
Noise reduction using multi-feature cluster tracker
Provided are methods and systems for noise suppression within multiple time-frequency points of spectral representations. A multi-feature cluster tracker is used to track signal and noise sources and to predict signal versus noise dominance at each time-frequency point. Multiple features, such as binaural and monaural features, may be used for these purposes. A Gaussian mixture model (GMM) is developed and, in some embodiments, dynamically updated for distinguishing signal from noise and performing mask-based noise reduction. Each frequency band may use a different GMM or share a GMM with other frequency bands. A GMM may be combined from two models, with one trained to model time-frequency points in which the target dominates and another trained to model time-frequency points in which the noise dominates. Dynamic updates of a GMM may be performed using an expectation-maximization algorithm in an unsupervised fashion. |
| US09008328B2 |
Headphone, headphone stand and headphone system
A wireless headphone system 102 includes a headphone 144 and a headphone stand 104. The headphone 144 has two ear cups 150a and 150b. The ear cup 150a incorporates a receiving coil L3 and a capacitor C3. The ear cup 150b incorporates a charge controller 138 and a secondary battery 112. The headphone stand 104 incorporates a feeding coil L2. When the headphone 144 is set in the headphone stand 104, AC power is supplied from the feeding coil L2 to the receiving coil L3, and the secondary battery 112 of the headphone 144 is charged with the AC power. |