Abstract: Described is a liquid inlet valve having a housing configured to receive the opening of a sample bottle, a valve, a nozzle positioned within the housing, and a tube that extends downwardly from the housing. The liquid inlet valve is useful for transferring liquid samples from a sample bottle to a solvent phase extraction (SPE) disk of a bottle extractor system for purposes of conducting environmental analysis.

Abstract: Described is a liquid inlet valve having a housing configured to receive the opening of a sample bottle, a valve, a nozzle positioned within the housing, and a tube that extends downwardly from the housing. The liquid inlet valve is useful for transferring liquid samples from a sample bottle to a solvent phase extraction (SPE) disk of a bottle extractor system for purposes of conducting environmental analysis.

Abstract: A computer assisted/implemented method for developing a classifier for classifying communications includes roughly four stages, where these stages are designed to be iterative: (1) a stage defining where and how to harvest messages (i.e., from Internet message boards, news groups and the like), which also defines an expected domain of application for the classifier; (2) a guided question/answering stage for the computerized tool to elicit the user's criteria for determining whether a message is relevant or irrelevant; (3) a labeling stage where the user examines carefully-selected messages and provides feedback about whether or not it is relevant and sometimes also what elements of the criteria were used to make the decision; and (4) a performance evaluation stage where parameters of the classifier training are optimized, the best classifier is produced, and known performance bounds are calculated.

Abstract: The present invention provides automatic correction of any distortions produced when computer projection displays are misaligned with respect to the projection surface (such as keystoning). Although sophisticated LCD projectors now offer partial solutions to this problem, they require specialized hardware and time-consuming manual adjustment. The two key concepts in the present invention are: (1) using an uncalibrated camera to observe the projected image; and (2) the image to be displayed is pre-warped so that the distortions induced by the misaligned projection system will exactly undo the distortion. The result is that an arbitrarily mounted projector (in an unknown orientation) still displays a perfectly aligned and rectilinear image.

Abstract: The present invention enables a user to automatically calibrate a projector-camera system to recover the mapping from a given point in the source (pre-projection) image and its corresponding point in the camera image, and vice versa. One or more calibration patterns are projected onto a flat surface with possibly unknown location and orientation by a projector with possibly unknown location, orientation and focal length. Images of these patterns are captured by a camera mounted at a possibly unknown location, orientation and with possibly unknown focal length. Parameters for mapping between the source image and the camera image are computed. The present invention can become an essential component of a projector-camera system, such as automatic keystone correction and vision-based control of computer systems.