Abstract: A cold-atom system has multiple vacuum chambers. One vacuum chamber includes an atom source. A fluidic connection is provided between that vacuum chamber and another vacuum chamber. The fluidic connection includes a microchannel formed as a groove in a substantially flat surface and covered by a layer of material.

Abstract: Cold-atom systems and methods of handling cold atoms are disclosed. A cold-atom system has multiple chambers and a fluidic connection between two of the chambers. One of these two chambers includes an atom source and the other includes an atom chip.

Abstract: A hearing aid is enclosed in a gas-impermeable or substantially gas-impermeable package to prevent inadvertent activation of the hearing aid during transport. The package may include a housing having a groove that substantially conforms to at least a portion of the shape of the hearing aid to snugly hold the hearing aid. The groove may be substantially open adjacent a switch on the hearing aid. A securing member, such as a strap, may be used to immobilize the switch relative to the housing.

Abstract: A method for fabricating a back-illuminated semiconductor imaging device on an ultra-thin semiconductor-on-insulator substrate (UTSOI) is disclosed. The UTSOI substrate is formed by providing a handle wafer comprising a mechanical substrate and an insulator layer substantially overlying the mechanical substrate. A donor wafer is provided. Hydrogen is implanted in the donor wafer to form a bubble layer. The donor wafer is doped with at least one dopant to form a doped layer proximal to the bubble layer. The handle wafer and the donor wafer are bonded between the insulator layer of the handle wafer and a surface of the donor wafer proximal to the doped layer to form a combined wafer having a portion substantially underlying the bubble layer. The portion of the combined wafer substantially underlying the bubble layer is removed so as to expose a seed layer. An epitaxial layer is grown substantially overlying the seed layer, wherein at least one dopant diffuse into the epitaxial layer.

Abstract: A chip scale atomic clock is disclosed that provides a low power atomic time/frequency reference that employs direct RF-interrogation on an end-state transition.

Abstract: The present invention provides an improved system and method for object detection with histogram of oriented gradient (HOG) based support vector machine (SVM). Specifically, the system provides a computational framework to stably detect still or not moving objects over a wide range of viewpoints. The framework includes providing a sensor input of images which are received by the “focus of attention” mechanism to identify the regions in the image that potentially contain the target objects. These regions are further computed to generate hypothesized objects, specifically generating selected regions containing the target object hypothesis with respect to their positions. Thereafter, these selected regions are verified by an extended HOG-based SVM classifier to generate the detected objects.

Abstract: An iterative approach to vector median filtering wherein the resulting median vector need not be a member of the original data set. The iterative vector median filtering allows for fast convergence for complex computations and an output which is approximate to the mean, particularly for small data sets. In addition, a method and system for registering and matching 2.5 normal maps is provided. Registration of two maps is performed by optimally aligning their normals through 2-D warping in the image plane in conjunction with a 3-D rotation of the normals. Once aligned, the average dot-product serves as a matching metric for automatic target recognition (ATR).

Abstract: A method for transforming Video-To-Text is disclosed that automatically generates text descriptions of the content of a video. The present invention first segments an input video sequence according to predefined semantic classes using a Mixture-of-Experts blob segmentation algorithm. The resulting segmentation is coerced into a semantic concept graph and based on domain knowledge and a semantic concept hierarchy. Then, the initial semantic concept graph is summarized and pruned. Finally, according to the summarized semantic concept graph and its changes over time, text and/or speech descriptions are automatically generated using one of the three description schemes: key-frame, key-object and key-change descriptions.

Abstract: A computer implemented method for fusing position and range measurements to determine the position of at least one node of a plurality of distributed nodes is disclosed.

Abstract: A method and apparatus for detecting suspicious activities is disclosed. In one embodiment at least one low-level feature set is detected in a plurality of frames of a sequence of scene imagery. The frame-to-frame associations of the detected low-level feature set are determined, and suspicious activities is identifying on the bases of these frame-to-frame associations.

Abstract: The present invention provides an enhanced THz electromagnetic source structure achieving a very high aspect ratio of 500 to 1 of electron beam width to electron beam thickness of the electron beam moving in the direction across the grating structure while maintaining its cross-section. The structure comprises a magnetic circuit providing a unique low magnetic field slot placed in a steel core for the placement of an electron gun, thus allowing the electron beam to be focused without the interaction of a magnetic field while still supporting a high magnetic field in the grating region. Additionally, the structure comprises an electrostatic shield preventing potential difference between the anode voltage and the grounded steel core from affecting the focusing of the electron beam.

Abstract: The present invention discloses an anodically bonded vacuum cell structure with a glass substrate including a cavity, and a substrate deposited on the glass substrate, thereby enclosing the cavity to form a bonding interface. The bonding interface having silicon such that the substrate includes a layer of silicon or a secondary substrate with silicon layer bonded onto the secondary substrate.

Abstract: An anti-blooming structure for a back-illuminated imager is disclosed. In one embodiment, the anti-blooming structure is formed in a substrate of a first conductivity type having a back side and a front side, comprising a channel region of a second conductivity type formed in the substrate; a barrier region of the first conductivity type positioned in the substrate substantially overlying the channel region and proximal to the front side of the substrate; and a drain region of the second conductivity type positioned substantially overlying the barrier region, wherein when light impinges on the back side of the substrate the light generates charge carriers that collect in the channel region, the charge carriers passing through the barrier region into the drain region when a potential corresponding to the collected charge carriers in the channel region is about equal to the potential corresponding to the barrier region.

Abstract: A scene-based non-uniformity correction method employing local constant statistics for eliminating fixed pattern noise in a video comprising a plurality of images is disclosed, comprising the steps of providing an initial gain image, an initial offset image, a predetermined pyramid level, and a filter of a predetermined level; setting one of the plurality of input images to the current image; calculating a temporary true scene image for the current image based on the initial gain image and the initial offset image; accumulating a temporal mean image and a temporal standard deviation image based on the calculated temporary true scene image; setting another of the plurality of images to the current image and repeating the setting, calculating, and accumulating steps until substantially all of the images of the plurality of images have been processed, otherwise further perform the steps of calculating a Gaussian mean image based on the accumulated temporal mean and calculating a Gaussian gain image based on the

Abstract: A cold-atom system has multiple vacuum chambers. One vacuum chamber includes an atom source. A fluidic connection is provided between that vacuum chamber and another vacuum chamber. The fluidic connection includes a microchannel formed as a groove in a substantially flat surface and covered by a layer of material.

Abstract: A method for fabricating a back-illuminated semiconductor imaging device and resulting imaging device is disclosed, which includes the steps providing a substrate having a front surface and a back surface; growing an epitaxial layer substantially overlying the front surface of the substrate; forming at least one barrier layer substantially within the epitaxial layer; fabricating at least one imaging structure overlying and extending into the epitaxial layer, the imaging structure at least one charge transfer region, the at least one barrier layer substantially underlying the at least one charge transfer region, wherein light incident on the back surface of the substrate generates charge carriers which are diverted away from the at least one charge transfer region by the at least one barrier layer. At least a portion of the epitaxial layer is grown using an epitaxial lateral overgrowth technique.

Abstract: Cold-atom systems and methods of handling cold atoms are disclosed. A cold-atom system has multiple chambers and a fluidic connection between two of the chambers. One of these two chambers includes an atom source and the other includes an atom chip.

Abstract: Embodiments of the present invention relate to systems and methods for high speed, high resolution imaging, which includes a micropixel array that includes, at least one macropixel, and a macropixel selector module; a micropixel array which is coupled to the macropixel array and includes at least one micropixel, a micropixel selector module, and an analog-to-digital converter; and a global bunch counter.

Abstract: The methods and systems of the present invention enable the estimation of optical flow by performing color segmentation and adaptive bilateral filtering to regularize the flow field to achieve a more accurate flow field estimation. After creating pyramid models for two input image frames, color segmentation is performed. Next, starting from a top level of the pyramid, additive flow vectors are iteratively estimated between the reference frames by a process including occlusion detection, wherein the symmetric property of backward and forward flow is enforced for the non-occluded regions. Next, a final estimated optical flow field is generated by expanding the current pyramid level to the next lower level and the repeating the process until the lowest level is reached. This approach not only generates efficient spatial-coherent flow fields, but also accurately locates flow discontinuities along the motion boundaries.

Abstract: A pixel for an imager is disclosed that includes at least one electron multiplication (EM) gain stage configured in a loop and electrically coupled to a charge collection region and a charge readout region, the charge collection region being configured to generate a charge packet, the EM gain stage being configured to amplify the charge packet by impact ionization and to circulate the charge packet a predetermined number of times in one direction around the loop, the charge readout region being configured to receive the amplified charge packet and convert the amplified charge to a measurable signal. The at least one EM gain stage, the charge collection region, and the charge readout region can be formed monolithically in an integrated circuit. The pixel can be manufactured using a CMOS process. The pixel can further include a second EM gain stage formed in the integrated circuit to increase the amount of amplification around the loop.