Abstract: The body member positioning apparatus disclosed herein operates to clamp a body member, such as a foot, in relation to a fixture, e.g. such as may be used for ultrasonic bone testing. A shell member is provided which conforms to the expected shape of the body member with a space therebetween, this space being filled with a compliant foam liner. An inflatable bladder or bellows operates between a stationary housing part and a movable housing part to which the shell member is attached so that, by inflating the bladder, a clamping pressure can be exerted against a body member positioned between the shell and the fixture.

Abstract: The autofocus system disclosed herein utilizes grazing angle illumination of a spot on the surface of a semiconductor wafer approximately on the axis of the projection lens so that the position of the spot varies as a function of the spacing between the lens and the wafer. The spot is viewed, also at grazing angle, by an optical system which projects an image of the spot towards a set of detectors. The beam is split and the split beams are directed against oppositely facing reflective surfaces on an angularly oscillatable mirror. After reflection from the mirror, the respective split beams are detected so as to generate respective pulse signals corresponding to the passing of the respective spot image past a predetermined position.

Abstract: In the method disclosed herein for preventing and treating anaerobic infectons in the region of the penile sulcus, a radially compliant ring, formed of a helically coiled resilient filament, is passed over the penile head and then seated in the sulcus behind the corona, the foreskin having been rolled back to expose the sulcus. The foreskin may then be released but is prevented from moving forward to cover the sulcus and penile head by the ring, thus allowing air to circulate in the region of the sulcus.

Abstract: The one-shot multivibrator disclosed herein provides precise timing at high speed by controlling the charging and discharging of a timing capacitor over a voltage swing which is compensated so as to be essentially independent of any temperature-dependent offset voltages such as base-emitter drops.

Abstract: The adaptive computing system disclosed herein employs a data structure involving a multiplicity of classifiers, each of which includes a match string of characters which the system attempts to match up with messages generated either by the environment or by other classifiers. Associated with each match string is a response message definer or action part which defines the response to be given when a match is obtained. To facilitate matching in a noisy or changing environment, there is associated with each character in the match string a weighting value and the degree of match is judged by means of a score value which is a function of the weighting values of the characters which match between the match string and the message.

Abstract: The refrigeration system disclosed herein operates evaporators in both moderate and low temperature environments, respective compressors being associated with each type of evaporator. A condenser is provided for rejecting heat into the environment. Refrigerant from the condenser is provided both to the moderate temperature evaporators and to a refrigerant processing vessel which can allow a mixture of gas and liquid phase refrigerant to separate. A heat exchanging conduit is submerged in the liquid phase refrigerant in the lower portion of the processing vessel and the outlets of the compressors serving the low temperature evaporators are connected to the inlet end of that conduit. Liquid phase refrigerant from the processing vessel is provided to the low temperature evaporators.

Abstract: The laser diode modulator disclosed herein employs a series of field-effect transistors provided with an input circuit utilizing a succession of inductive elements arranged to form a lumped element transmission line of essentially constant characteristic impedance. The drain or output terminals of the transistors drive an output circuit employing a series of inductive elements which, together with shunt capacitors, form a singly terminated filter providing a graduated and decreasing characteristic impedance. The laser diode is connected as the termination of the filter.

Abstract: The floating point processor performs floating point addition or subtraction on a pair of binary arguments, each of which includes an exponent and a mantissa, without requiring a barrel shifter. The processor utilizes a serial arithmetic scheme in which corresponding portions of the arguments are examined sequentially as they are presented thereby to determine which argument is the larger. The exponent of the larger is loaded into a counter. The counter is decremented stepwise and each of the mantissas is shifted, most significant bits first, into an arithmetic circuit which generates carry save form results, starting when the value held by the counter corresponds to the respective exponent. The carry save form results are subsequently normalized and converted to canonical form by propagating the carries.

Abstract: In the voltage controlled oscillator disclosed herein, the charging and discharging of a timing capacitor is controlled by a differential input comparator which establishes precisely defined switching thresholds. The comparator input circuit is provided with an internally generated, temperature compensated input bias current which substantially relieves the timing components from providing bias current, thereby facilitating a wide range of operation.

Abstract: In the high pressure furnace disclosed herein, convection currents in the furnace hot zone are minimized by bringing electrical feedthroughs for the heating element through a horizontal spacer ring which separates a pressure body and cover. A heat zone defining chamber base has an annular flange which extends to the pressure vessel body and a hot zone cover has a corresponding flange which extends to the pressure vessel cover. The feedthroughs pass in spaced relation between these flanges. As the feedthroughs enter the hot zone through the space between the flanges, a relatively small volume of unheated atmosphere is available to support convection currents stemming from necessary clearances around the feedthroughs where they enter the hot zone.

Abstract: In the sine wave inverter disclosed herein the input of a low pass filter is switched at high frequency between positive and negative supply voltages. The switching is controlled by a comparator which is responsive to a composite of signals which include contributions from a sine wave control signal at the same frequency desired for the output and a square wave control signal which is at a frequency substantially higher than the desired output frequency. The filter input voltage is attenuated and phase adjusted to generate a feedback signal having a high frequency component which is substantially in phase with the high frequency control signal. This feedback signal is combined with the sine wave and high frequency square wave control signals to generate the composite of signals which controls the comparator. Accordingly, the duty cycle of the filter input voltage is varied in correspondence with both the sine wave control signal and the loading of the inverter output.

Abstract: Tungsten heating elements are protected inside sapphire tubes which extend through an insulating shell made up of layers of successively more refractory material. Common plenums are provided at each end of the tubes and a controlled flow of a non-reactive gas is introduced into one of the plenums and is vented from the other plenum after passing through the tubes and protecting the heating elements.

Abstract: In the bag pack disclosed herein, a plurality of thermoplastic "T-shirt-type" carry bags are joined together in a pack by both a hot weld around a central rack-mounting aperture and also by readily frangible pressure bonds linking the film layers forming the bag handles to allow for handle support while on a rack dispensing system. A "pull tab" adjacent the aperture is provided to allow easy opening of each bag in the pack.

Abstract: The refrigeration system disclosed herein provides separate chilling and freezing compartments and operates in alternate phases. In the first phase, an evaporator which controls chilling compartment temperature also absorbs heat from a thermal mass through the change of phase of a liquid to a solid. In the second phase, this evaporator becomes a condenser for the operation of a second evaporator associated with the freezer component. During this second phase, the heat transfer is reversed, the fusion energy of the first phase is recaptured as melting energy in the second. Accordingly, heat is transferred from the second evaporator to the mass over a temperature differential which is less than that existing between the second evaporator and the environment.

Abstract: In the sealed feedthrough construction disclosed herein, a maximally compliant solder joint is provided between the low expansion ferrule of a glass insulted feedthrough connector and a bore in an enclosure bulkhead of a high expansion metal. The desired uniform radial thickness is established by providing a step on either the outer diameter of the ferrule or the inner diameter of the bore.

Abstract: In the thread wrapping apparatus disclosed herein a binder spindle is driven by control circuit at a speed corresponding to the operating frequency of a variable oscillator. First, second and third sets of drafting rolls which draw and feed a sliver of fibers to the binder spindle are driven by respective stepper motors through control circuits which operate each of the motors at a respective speed which is an individually preselectable proportion of the speed of the spindle.

Abstract: In the supermarket cooling system disclosed herein, a variety of evaporative loads having different suction requirements are served by respective compressors, each operating across a corresponding pressure differential but pumping into a common high side header. A single condenser unit serves the combined refrigerant flow from all loads and, from the condenser, the refrigerant flow normally passes through an air-cooled heat reclaim exchanger which is downstream of an air conditioning evaporator in the air conditioning ductwork. The heat reclaim exchanger can be selectively bypassed for certain extreme conditions of operation. By varying the air flows through the condenser unit and the heat reclaim exchanger, a highly efficient thermal operation under the most prevalent conditions is achieved in a very simple hardware configuration.

Abstract: In a speech recognition system disclosed herein, acoustic speech waveforms are initially analyzed to obtain, at successive sample times, digital frames of speech information. This initial analysis may, for example, be performed by multi-channel filtering or linear predictive encoding. Stored in the apparatus is a list of representative standard frames, represented by coded indices, together with a table of difference values which represent the vector distances between each standard frame in the list and all other standard frames. For each token (vocabulary) word which is to be recognized, there is stored a sequence of standard frame indices which represent that token word. As each sample frame is generated, a representative standard frame is selected which best represents the sample frame.

Abstract: In the service request communication system disclosed herein, a plurality of battery-powered table units communicate a variety of service requests to a central server or master unit by a bi-directional wireless radio frequency data link. The table units remain in a low-power "sleep" state until any one of a plurality of switches is actuated by a customer to denote a corresponding service request. A transceiver is controlled by a microprocessor to transmit a coded signal identifying the request and then to receive and indicate to the customer an acknowledgment signal transmitted from the server or master station. At a server station a display is operated to identify the table unit/request combination, the display being canceled when a corresponding switch at the server unit is actuated, e.g. by the employee who will provide the service requested.

Abstract: In the apparatus disclosed herein, a bone containing body member to be tested is placed between a pair of transducers and a predetermined sequence of tone signals having frequencies spanning a range from 200 to 600 kilohertz is transmitted through the body member, and the set of values representing the amplitudes of the corresponding received signals are stored. The set of values obtained with the body member between the transducer is normalized using a set of values obtained from the same sequence without the body member in place thereby to generate a third set of values which are compensated for the response characteristics of the transducer and related interfaces. A value corresponding to the rate of change of attenuation with respect to frequency is then calculated from the third set of values and is adjusted for the bone thickness, this adjusted value being related to characteristics of the body member. The bone thickness is determined by a broadband pulse echo measurement.