Abstract: A nanostructure comprising germanium, including wires of less than 1 micron in diameter and walls of less than 1 micron in width, in contact with the substrate and extending outward from the substrate is provided along with a method of preparation.

Abstract: A method of continuity checking an optical connection. An first optical source transmits an optical signal. A first optical receiver is checked for the optical signal. A second optical source transmits another optical signal. A second optical receiver checks for the other optical signal.

Abstract: A computer has one or more communication interfaces that determine if one or more client (client devices) is within a range of communication of the computer. The computer also has one or more computer interfaces capable of communicating with one or more of the second computers. The second computers can be at any general location and/or installed as subsystems of other devices. An application process determines from the client signal that the client is within the range of communication and that requests and receives one or more of the application programs through the computer interface from one or more of the second computers at the commuter location. Thus, the application program (and necessary databases) are moved to a next computer as the client moves within the range of communication of this next computer. The application programs/databases can be discarded once the client moves outside of the range of communication of the computer.

Abstract: This invention is a system and method to perform categorization (classification) of multimedia items. These items are comprised of a multitude of disparate information sources, in particular, visual information and textual information. Classifiers are induced based on combining textual and visual feature vectors. Textual features are the traditional ones, such as, word count vectors. Visual features include, but are not limited to, color properties of key intervals and motion properties of key intervals. The visual feature vectors are determined in such a fashion that the vectors are sparse. The vector components are features such as the absence or presence of the color green in spatial regions and the absence or the amount of visual flow in spatial regions of the media items. The text and the visual representation vectors are combined in a systematic and coherent fashion. This vector representation of a media item lends itself to well-established learning techniques.

Abstract: A computer system and method computes conversion rates for individual products and/or product categories in an e-commerce Web site for measuring the effectiveness of the marketing in the Web site, and to associate the conversion rates with metadata information about products and/or product categories on served Web pages. An aggregation process traverses the log to determine the number of one or more of the shopping activities by requesters in the Web site, to compare two or more of the activity numbers in a conversion rate, and to relate the conversion rate to one or more of the metadata fields. The conversion rates give a measure of the effectiveness of the Web site and/or portions of the Web site for sales, marketing and merchandising.

Abstract: An integrated signal sensor with processing power to augment a challenge from server and compute the response is proposed to guarantee that the sensed signal is live and not stored. The sensor-processor computes the response to the augmented challenge based on the signal charactersitics of the sensed signal and then transmits both the signal and the response. The host or the server can verify the response to authenticate liveness of the input image/signal and reject it if the response is different. Areas of application include automated biometrics and remote medical imaging.

Abstract: Authentication methods are very important in several applications. Existing methods of authentication based on possessions or knowledge have several problems that can be overcome by using biometrics. Unfortunately biometrics-based authentication is unrevocable today and has many privacy concerns in users' minds. The proposed technique employs signal scrambling and morphing techniques to intentionally distort the original biometrics signal in a non-invertible fashion. If the security is compromised, the system can cancel a particular distortion and reacquire the signal with a new distortion function. This provides functionality as good as non-biometric authentication methods in terms of their power of revocation.

Abstract: A system and method is provided for training a speaker-dependent Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) system to a desired level of accuracy. In one aspect of the system and method, a user requests an ASR Training Center to train his or her ASR system within certain service parameters. During training, a certain level of accuracy is maintained, even during the very first session, by having a stenographer transcribe the audio material. When the user uses his or her ASR system, the stenographic transcription, rather than the ASR system transcription, is output to the user until the ASR Training Center determines that the user's ASR system has achieved the desired level of accuracy. The stenographic transcription is also used by the ASR Training Center to train the user's ASR system in a manner appropriate to that system.

Abstract: A technique and system for selecting level-of-detail representations of geometric models to be rendered within an image processing system. For each geometric model, fractional visibility estimations are computed, thereby ranking how likely it is that a model is visible. Using these rankings, an appropriate level-of-detail for each geometric model is selected to optimize the rendering process by reducing the number of primitives that need to be rendered, while preserving the quality of the final image produced and displayed upon the screen. Visibility estimates for the geometric models are summed to produce a number which is then used to scale the number of primitives used in the level-of-detail representation of the geometric models.

Abstract: A hierarchical power supply noise monitoring device and system for very large scale integrated circuits. The noise-monitoring device is fabricated on-chip to measure the noise on the chip. The noise-monitoring system includes a plurality of on-chip noise-monitoring devices distributed strategically across the chip. A noise-analysis algorithm analyzes the noise characteristics from the noise data collected from the noise-monitoring devices, and a hierarchical noise-monitoring system maps the noise of each core to the system on chip.

Abstract: A characteristic identifier for digital data is generated. Thereby, the information contained in a digital data set is reduced such that the resulting identifier is made comparable to another identifier made in the same manner. The generated identifiers are used for detecting identical digital data or to determine inexact copies of digital data. In one embodiment of the invention, the digital data is a digital audio signal and the characteristic identifier is called an audio signature. The comparison of identical audio data according to the invention can be carried out without a person actually listening to the audio data. The present invention can be used to establish automated processes to find potential unauthorized copies of audio data, e.g., music recordings, and therefore enables a better enforcement of copyrights in the audio industry.

Abstract: To identify and describe one or more topics in one or more documents in a document set, a term set process creates a basic term set from the document set where the term set comprises one or more basic terms of one or more words in the document. A document vector process then creates a document vector for each document. The document vector has a document vector direction representing what the document is about. A topic vector process then creates one or more topic vectors from the document vectors. Each topic vector has a topic vector direction representing a topic in the document set. A topic term set process creates a topic term set for each topic vector that comprises one or more of the basic terms describing the topic represented by the topic vector. Each of the basic terms in the topic term set associated with the relevancy of the basic term. A topic-document relevance process creates a topic-document relevance for each topic vector and each document vector.

Abstract: A system and method for intra-operatively providing a surgeon with visual evaluations of possible surgical outcomes ahead of time, and generating simulated data, includes a medical imaging camera, a registration device for registering data to a physical space, and to the medical imaging camera, and a fusion mechanism for fusing the data and the images to generate simulated data, without correcting for distortion. The simulated data (e.g., such as augmented X-ray images) is natural and easy for a surgeon to interpret. In an exemplary implementation, the system preferably includes a data processor which receives a three-dimensional surgical plan or three-dimensional plan of therapy delivery, one or a plurality of two-dimensional intra-operative images, a three-dimensional model of pre-operative data, registration data, and image calibration data.

Abstract: The invention is directed towards an automated system for extracting voice messages from a voice mail system and for providing unified access to voice mail and electronic mail or voice mail and the internet. For a given user, a voice mail remote access server connects to the user's voice mail system through a telephone or data network, and uses speech recognition and understanding to navigate through the prompts of the voice mail system and extract the user's voice mail. Depending upon the access mechanism preferred by the user, the voice messages are sent as e-mail messages with attachments (audio files) to the user or made accessible to the user's world wide web server or displayed to the user using a stand-alone voice mail player application.

Abstract: A method is disclosed for forming an antenna and a radio frequency transponder. The method comprises the steps of (1) forming a paste comprising metal powder, polymeric material, and solvent; and (2) screening the paste through a screen onto a substrate. Additional steps couple electrical components to the paste and dry the paste.

Abstract: The present invention is directed to a hardware device for parallel processing a determined instruction of a set of programmable instructions having a same format with an operand field defining the execution steps of the instruction corresponding to the execution of micro-instructions, comprising decision blocks (12—20) being each associated with a specific instruction of the set of programmable instructions, only one decision block being selected by the determined instruction in order to define which are the specific micro-instructions to be processed for executing the determined instruction, activation blocks (22-30) respectively associated with the decision blocks for running one or several specific micro-instructions, only the activation block associated with said selected decision block being activated to run the specific micro-instructions, and a micro-instruction selection block (46) connected to each activation block for selecting the specific micro-instructions to be executed.

Abstract: A server system on a network such as the World Wide Web aggregates and stores information about the content of Web pages served by a server on a network. A server process receives one or more requests for Web pages from requesters connected to the network. Upon receiving the request, the server produces a requested Web page and serves the Web page to the requester. The Web pages have with one or more content elements in addition to one or more metadata entries. The metadata entries are associated with the content elements of the respective Web page produced. The system also creates and maintains a log having a plurality of records. Each record has requester fields and metadata fields. A logger process stores the metadata entries contained in each of the Web pages in one or more of the metadata fields, and stores a requester identification, associated with the requester, in the requester field of the record associated with the respective Web page.

Abstract: The present invention relates to flexible facilities for supplying documents where the index to the documents is stored in a central archive but the documents themselves are stored in an external archiving system. The solution according to the invention is based on management of the addresses in the external archiving systems which is undertaken at the central archive. The approach adopted supports the specifying of any desired number of backup servers and, by allowing the configurable supply either of the address relation itself and/or of server address information attached to the list of search results, it provides a facility which supports the full range of document supply capabilities available when a central archive system is being used.

Abstract: The system and method includes a manipulator for manipulating a surgical instrument relative to a patient's body and, a position sensor for sensing the position of the surgical instrument relative to the patient's body. The manipulator can be manually or computer actuated and can have brakes to limit movement. In a preferred embodiment, orthogonal only motion between members of the manipulator is provided. The position sensor includes beacons connected to the patient and manipulator or surgical instrument and, a three dimensional beacon sensor adapted to sense the location and position of the beacons. Redundant joint sensors on the manipulator may also be provided. The system and method uses a computer to actively interact with the surgeon and can use various different input and output devices and modes.

Abstract: The invention is a system and method for deriving a single dimensional representation for a set of points e.g.,minutiae, in image of a two dimensional pattern of lines, e.g. a fingerprint, by creating a one dimensional (string) representation of one or more points (e.g., minutiae) and the respective attributes of each point therein. A landmark point is selected from the two dimensional image, preferably from the set of the points to be represented in single dimension. The relationships of each of the points with reference to the landmark determines a linear order for the points and the attributes associated with each point.