Abstract: Disclosed herein are a mouse with capacitance sensors, a method for manufacturing the mouse and a method for constructing an algorithm for processing an input corresponding to force applied by a user's finger to the mouse. The mouse with capacitance sensors includes a bottom plate having a center point, a plurality of electrodes formed at regular intervals on the top face of the bottom plate and arranged apart from the center point of the bottom plate by an equal distance, a top plate bonded to the top faces of the electrodes and deformed by force applied by a pointing object, and an adhesive layer formed around the top plate and the bottom plate to combine the top plate and the bottom plate. When the pointing object touches the top plate, capacitance sensors are formed between the pointing object and the electrodes to recognize a travel distance, a travel direction and a moving speed of a cursor through the magnitude and direction of force applied by the pointing object.

Abstract: A pen based computing system concurrently captures handwriting gestures and records audio using binaural recording. A binaural headset communicatively coupled to the smart pen device uses at least two microphones. A left microphone is placed in or near the left ear and the right microphone is placed in or near the right ear, each facing outward. Speakers are integrated into a shared housing with the microphones facing inward towards the ear canal to play back the audio recordings. By recording audio with microphones placed close to the ears, the system provides realistic sounding playback and allows users to more easily differentiate between multiple sources of audio.

Abstract: A system, method, and computer program product for backing up data from a backup source to a central repository using deduplication, where the data comprises source data segments is disclosed. A fingerprint cache comprising fingerprints of data segments stored in the central repository is received, where the data segments were previously backed up from the backup source. Source data fingerprints comprising fingerprints (e.g., hash values) of the source data segments are generated. The source data fingerprints are compared to the fingerprints in the fingerprint cache. The source data segments corresponding to fingerprints not in the fingerprint cache may not be currently stored in the central repository. After further queries to the central repository, one or more of the source data segments are sent to the central repository for storage responsive to comparison.

Abstract: Design-specific attributes of a circuit (such as timing, power, electro-migration, and signal integrity) are used to automatically identify one or more regions of one or more layers in a layout of the circuit. The automatically identified regions may be provided to a manufacturing tool in GDSII by use of overlapping shapes in, or alternatively by moving existing shapes to, a different layer/datatype pair. For example, information about the automatically identified regions may be stored using a conventional datatype (e.g. value 0) with a new layer, or alternatively using a conventional layer (e.g. metal 3) with a new datatype (e.g. value 1), depending on the embodiment. The automatically identified regions contain cells and/or features (e.g. groups of shapes and/or individual shapes) whose tolerance in silicon (to be fabricated) is automatically changed from default, based on the design-specific attribute(s) and sensitivity thereto, expressed as design intent by a circuit designer.

Abstract: A user can control the animation of an object via an interface that includes a control area and a user-manipulable control element. In one embodiment, the control area includes an ellipse, and the user-manipulable control element includes an arrow. In yet another embodiment, the control area includes an ellipse, and the user-manipulable control element includes two points on the circumference of the ellipse. In yet another embodiment, the control area includes a first rectangle, and the user-manipulable control element includes a second rectangle. In yet another embodiment, the user-manipulable control element includes two triangular regions, and the control area includes an area separating the two regions.

Abstract: The invention describes compositions and method useful for the crystallization of membrane proteins.

Abstract: A virtual currency system keeps track of virtual credits, which can be owned, transferred, purchased, and sold by participants in a virtual economy. Each virtual credit has an internal value and an external value, which define, respectively, the exchange rates for creating and redeeming the virtual credits. Upon creation of new virtual credits, the internal value for those credits is the rate for which real currency was paid per credit. The external value sets the rate at which the virtual credits can be redeemed for real currency. Each virtual credit may further have a face value, which is an apparent value of the virtual credit within the virtual economy, giving users a baseline impression for valuing the virtual currency. These features of the virtual currency enable a number of useful actions within the virtual economy, including currency seeding, couponing, and chargebacks.

Abstract: A receiver for a communications link includes a receiver module and a host receiver. These two components can be tested independently. In one embodiment, the receiver module is characterized with respect to noise and distortion. The noise performance can be determined by comparing input and output signals of the receiver module, to determine the relative noise of the receiver module. The distortion performance can be determined by comparing the distortion of input and output signals of the receiver module, using a reference host receiver that includes an equalizer. The host receiver can be tested by using a reference receiver module.

Abstract: A system and method for auction based polling is provided. Parameters related to a poll are received from a first user. Parameters related to a poll are received from a first user. A query is associated with the poll. A priority of the poll is determined based on the parameters. The poll is distributed to one or more second users according to the priority. Results to the poll are gathered. The results are reported to the first user.

Abstract: A digital-optical imaging system can be operated in two modes, which shall be referred to as broadband mode and grayscale mode. In broadband mode, different color images are captured and then image processed together. The optics are intentionally aberrated to increase the depth of field, with the image processing compensating for the aberrations. In grayscale mode, the different color images are captured and then image processed separately. The color images are assumed to be correlated so that it is not necessary to have clear images of all color channels. Accordingly, the optics are designed so that the different color images focus at different locations, thus increasing the overall depth of field where at least one color image is in focus.

Abstract: A user device requests a web page from a web server of a third-party website, which is separate from a social networking system. The web server from the third-party website sends a markup language document for the requested web page to the user device which includes an instruction for a browser application running on the user device to incorporate information obtained from the social networking system within the web page. Based on the instruction in the received markup language document, the user device requests personalized content from the social networking system, which generates the requested personalized content based on social information about the user. The user device then renders the web page with the personalized content contained in a frame and displays the rendered web page and the frame to the user.

Abstract: A custom fabricated (e.g. custom shaped and dimensioned) primary wound dressing part that matches a corresponding, pre-mapped integumentary wound is combined with dressing extension parts to form a composite wound dressing system. The primary wound dressing part may include one or more liquid flow barriers composed for example of a hydrophobic and high viscosity liquid embedded in a layer of the primary wound dressing part. The dressing extension parts may include interconnect portals for operatively interconnecting with the primary wound dressing part so that liquids may be securely moved between primary wound dressing part and the extension parts.

Abstract: Physical page layout analysis for optical character recognition is performed. A physical page layout analysis method finds constituent parts of an image and gives an initial data-type label, such as text or non-text. Within the text data, connected components are identified and analyzed. Tab-stops are detected from groups of edge-aligned connected components. The detected tab-stops are used to deduce the column layout of the page by finding column partitions. The column layout is then applied to find the polygonal boundaries of and a reading order of regions containing flowing text, headings, and pull-outs.

Abstract: A reputation server is coupled to multiple clients via a network. Each client has a security module that detects malware at the client. The security module computes a hygiene score based on detected malware. The security module provides the hygiene score and an identifier of a visited web site to a reputation server. The security module also provides identifiers of files encountered at specified web sites to the reputation server. The reputation server computes secondary hygiene scores for web sites based on the hygiene scores of the clients that visit the web sites. The reputation server further computes reputation scores for files based on the secondary hygiene scores of sites that host the files. The reputation server provides the reputation scores to the clients. A reputation score represents an assessment of whether the associated file is malicious.

Abstract: Adaptive optics (AO) elements in imaging system allow dynamic and precise control over the optical wavefront to reduce uncontrolled wavefront errors in imaging systems. Traditional control of such devices is based on inverting the wavefront function to minimize the RMS wavefront error. However, this approach is not always optimal, particularly when the wavefront error is near or exceeds the limit of the AO element's correction capability. In the current approach, the AO element is instead controlled based on a performance metric that takes into account image processing, and not just RMS wavefront error.

Abstract: A tactile display apparatus includes a plurality of stimulation pins in contact with a skin; an operating unit for vertically moving the stimulation pins; and a housing accommodating the stimulation pins and the operating unit, the housing having an opening in one surface thereof such that the stimulation pins protrude outward. Here, the plurality of stimulation pins are arranged such that a contact area occupied by front ends of the stimulation pins is smaller than an area occupied by rear ends of the stimulation pins.

Abstract: An object identification system iteratively learns both a template map used to transform a template describing an object in an image, and a related similarity metric used in comparing one transformed object template to another. This automatic learning eliminates the need to manually devise a transformation and metric that are effective for a given image corpus. The template map and the similarity metric are learned together, such that the incremental component to be added to the template map at a given iteration of the learning process is based at least in part on the components of the similarity metric, and vice-versa.

Abstract: This invention provides a parameter for use in assessing video quality based on temporal frame freezing for use in an apparatus and method for perceptual video quality measurement. The invention provides a method of generating a freeze frame parameter relating to the perceptual impact of frozen frames in a video signal comprising the steps of: identifying frozen frames; identifying a freeze event comprising a plurality of consecutive frozen frames, the freeze event having a duration in dependence upon the number of frozen frames in said sequence; defining a set of duration ranges; and generating a freeze frame parameter in dependence upon the number of freeze events having a duration falling within each duration range. Methods and apparatus for perceptual video quality measurement using the method are also provided.

Abstract: In one aspect, a request to initiate a video conference is received from a caller. The request identifies one or more called parties for the video conference. A request for the video conference is sent to one of the called parties. The called party does not accept the request. In response to a lack of acceptance of the request by the called party, a videomail service is provided. A videomail message from the caller is recorded. The caller is the sender of the videomail message and the called party is the recipient of the videomail message. The called party is notified that he has a videomail message.

Abstract: The present invention provides a method for extracting relationships between words in textual data. Initially, training relationship data, such as word triplets describing a cause-effect relationship, is received and used to collect additional textual data including the training relationship data. Distributed data collection is used to receive the training data and collect the additional textual data, allowing a broad range of data to be acquired from multiple sources. Syntactic patterns are extracted from the additional textual data and a distributed data source is scanned to extract additional relationship data describing one or more causal relationships using the extracted syntactic patterns. The extracted additional relationship data is then stored, and can be validated by a supervised learning algorithm before storage and used to train a classifier for automatic validation of additional relationship data.