Abstract: Methods for using rapid setting plugging compositions comprising oil, clay, magnesium chloride, and magnesium oxide powder to seal permeable zones in subterranean formations are provided. The permeable zones may be sealed by passing the plugging composition and water to the subterranean formation. While being exposed to downhole temperatures in a range of from about 0° F. to about 500° F., the plugging composition quickly thickens to form a sealing mass that is substantially impermeable to fluid in less than about 1 minute after contacting the water. It then usually develops an effective amount of compressive strength to prevent it from being washed away within a period ranging from about 5 minutes to about 2 hours at temperatures ranging from about 0° F. to about 500° F.

Abstract: A method and system are provided for integrating a WLAN radio access network into a GSM/GPRS core network wherein gateways are added that transparently transport services between the two networks. A further aspect of the invention is secure authentication. The system has two network elements: a Radio Link Manager (RLM) and a Radio Access Controller (RAC), and a software application, a Multi-Link Client (MLC) to control the functionality of the integration and the authentication. The MLC resides on a user device. The RAC provides protocol stacks and interworking functions to allow the MLC to talk to a Home Location Register (HLR). The RLM and MLC set up a “tunnel” employing, for example, PPP over Ethernet (PPPOE), and all of the data packets received on this tunnel are forwarded by the RLM to the Gateway GPRS Support Node (GGSN over a further tunnel using the GPRS Tunneling Protocol (GTP).

Abstract: A 3D graphics architecture in which interfaces to memory are combined with pipeline processing. The rendering units are not all connected in a straight-through pipeline relationship: instead the rendering pipeline is “broken,” so that the stream of fragments (e.g. triangles) being processed is parked in memory. This turns out to be surprisingly efficient as a way to separate rendering processes where the workload balance is different. Preferably a first write to memory is performed after transformation and lighting calculations and before double-pass Z-buffering, and a second write to memory is performed before texturing. If Z-buffering or texturing is not being used for a particular rendering task, one or both of the memory interfaces can be switched off for that task. This economizes on memory bandwidth while retaining full flexibility.

Abstract: Systems and methods for the on-site determination of water content in crude oil. The water content of crude oil is determined by mixing a sample of the crude oil with a fixed amount of molecular sieves. The electromagnetic characteristics of the molecular sieves upon mixing with the sample are then measured and used to determine the water content of the sample. This provides a simple approach to measuring the moisture content in crude oil that is extremely fast, accurate, and reproducible without the use of hazardous chemicals.

Abstract: A system and method for measuring an amount of constituent elements in a wet gas mixture, particularly of a wet gas containing petrol. As the wet gas is passed through a two stage measurement system, the total permittivity of the mixture and the amount of water in the mixture are determined. These data, combined with some assumptions about the system, permit calculation of the amount of petrol in the mixture.

Abstract: A set of techniques for rapidly computing a half-plane membership test for successive patches of pixels. By using an inheritance relation to carry forward values already computed at patch boundaries, the computational load for each successive patch is minimized. In a sample embodiment, just one interior point and one new boundary point are computed for each new patch of 64 pixels. Each of the 64 pixels can be described by an offset from one of the 5 reference points (i.e. the one interior point, the one newly computed boundary point, and 3 previously computed boundary points). By exploiting shift and complement relations, only a small number of offsets need to be independently computed (only 10 in this example). Since membership is determined merely by the sign of the relevant half-plane functions being computed, a simple compare between the half-plane function at the reference point and the half-plane function for the relevant offset suffices to evaluate the function's sign for that particular pixel.

Abstract: A graphics system architecture, in which condensed cache tags for texture are achieved by a remapping operation which exploits the relation between the level-of-detail parameter of mip mapping and the maximum resolution.

Abstract: A texture caching controller, located on the graphics card, handles address logical-to-physical translation for texture addresses which are not downloaded to level-1 memory due to low use or dynamically changing values. This offloads texture memory management duties from the host.

Abstract: A roller-cone drill bit in which a large groove is machined into the backface of each cone, near the crack where the cone meets the arm assembly. By making the outer lip of this crack more exposed to the open volume of turbulent flow, turbulence near the crack is increased, deposit of sediments near the crack is reduced, and infiltration of sediments through the crack is also reduced.

Abstract: A system and method for increasing rendering efficiency in pipelined graphics systems. In the disclosed embodiments, reads of pixel information during the rendering of a primitive are suspend if the pixel information has not been updated by a previous primitive. In some embodiments, reads of pixel information are also suspended periodically when a table tracking the information becomes full. In some embodiments a Read Monitor Unit 108 controlled by the graphics system's Memory Controller 106 is used to track pixels which have been affected by rendered primitives. In some embodiments, a history list is used to avoid suspension of reads for antialiased lines. In a particular embodiment, the table used to track affected pixels is two-bits, the first bit tracking whether the pixel has been touched by a primitive since the last SuspendReads command was invoked and the second bit tracking whether the pixel has been touched by the current primitive. Both bits are reset when a power on or SuspendReads command occurs.

Abstract: A rotary-cutter Earth-penetrating bit in which a given track of bottom hole is attacked by inserts of two different types, e.g. chisel-shaped and pointed, wider and narrower, higher and shorter, and/or of different materials. The different types of inserts can both be included within a single row of a cone.

Abstract: A cutting tool having a cutting tip partially constructed from ultrahard materials. The cutting tip is oriented on the cutting tool such that the face has a reduced surface area. This has the effect of greatly reducing cutting tool costs and of maintaining the radius of the blade essentially constant even after repeated sharpening of the cutting tip.

Abstract: A load-pulled oscillator system in which the oscillator is switched between a distributed measurement section, coupled to a material being monitored, and a constant lumped reference load.

Abstract: A graphics memory architecture in which row addresses are permuted, in a basically tile-oriented storage architecture, so that fast parallel access is provided both by scanlines (for video operations) and also by tiles (for graphics operations).

Abstract: A thin layer of carbide containing an ultra-hard component, such as diamond, is applied to a formed compact for a drilling tool. The compact is then subjected to a high-temperature, high-pressure process to bond it to the added layer. This process allows the use of an underlying substrate which has a lower binder content than previously possible. The compact provides superior cutting ability, as even if the diamond-enhanced layer wears through, the carbide can provide enhanced hardness.

Abstract: A load-pulled oscillator circuit in which RF blocking on the power supply connections is achieved by an active stage rather than an inductor. This avoids the problems of temperature dependence, low-frequency oscillation, and backward tuning which can occur when using an inductor in a load-pulled oscillator.

Abstract: An architecture in which data outputs from an application program into a communication interface are diverted, by changing their address to a reserved address, and then are processed further by an added program which is invisible to the application program. The added program can provide authentication, privacy, data reformatting, or other such desired features to the data outputs without requiring it to be integrated with the application program.

Abstract: An antialiased mask generation technique where a patch of pixels is tested in parallel for fragment membership, and this test is looped with successive subpixel vector offsets from a programmed set. Antialiasing smoothness can be traded off for throughput by varying the size of the programmed set.

Abstract: An apparatus and method for monitoring and reporting downhole bit failure. Sensors are located on a sub assembly (which is separate from the drill bit itself but located above it on the drill string). Strain measurements are taken from the sensors to detect changes in induced bending and axial stresses which are related to a roller cone bearing failure. As a cone begins to fail, the average share of the total load on the bit that the failing cone can support changes, which causes a change in the bending strain induced by the eccentric loading of the cone.

Abstract: A design tool which accepts the input of a grayscale underpainting and a number of artistic selections, such as primary colors, levels of intensity for each color, and lines of color drawn on a copy of the grayscale underpainting and forms a data base which can be used by a painting tool to create a Matrix painting.