Abstract: A magnet, such as an open magnetic-resonance-imaging (MRI) magnet) has a first assembly including a superconductive main coil and a magnetizable pole piece which, during magnet operation, has a temperature equal to generally the temperature of the main coil. In one example, a cryogenic-fluid (e.g., liquid helium) dewar encloses the main coil, and the dewar has an interior surface defined in part by a surface portion of the pole piece. A method for providing a homogeneous imaging volume for a magnet includes steps to construct the above-described magnet.

Abstract: A method and apparatus for detecting motor contamination utilizes zero-sequence currents in a sensing coil to detect contamination. The detector includes a current transformer comprised of a magnetic core and a sensing coil wound about the core. A processor processes a sub-trip level current from the sensing coil to detect contamination. Three contamination detection methods, which may be used separately or in desired combination, are based on current trends, current leakage, and current clustering. An alarm is triggered when predetermined alarm criteria have been met.

Abstract: A low NOx combustor and method improve dynamic stability of a combustion flame fed by a fuel and air mixture. The combustor includes a chamber having a dome at one end thereof to which are joined a plurality of premixers. Each premixer includes a duct with a swirler therein for swirling air, and a plurality of fuel injectors for injecting fuel into the swirled air for flow into the combustion chamber to generate a combustion flame therein. The fuel injectors are axially staged at different axial distances from the dome to uncouple the fuel from combustion to reduce dynamic pressure amplitude of the combustion flame.

Abstract: A turbine spline seal includes an elongated turbine seal member. The seal member has an elongated, imperforate, and manually-flexible first portion and a manually-rigid second portion lengthwise adjoining the first portion. The turbine assembly includes the turbine spline seal and also includes first and second turbine members. The first and second turbine members are spaced apart to define a fluid-path leakage gap therebetween, and the seal member is placed in the gap. Each lengthwise edge of the seal member engages a respective one of two opposing surface grooves of the first and second turbine members.

Abstract: A brush-seal bristle assembly, a brush seal segment containing such assembly, and a rotary machine (such as a steam or gas turbine) containing such segment. The machine has a rotor, a stator casing, and the segment. The segment has a housing and the assembly. The assembly has bristles and a bristle holder. The fixed ends of the bristles are fixedly-attached to the bristle holder, the bristle holder is rotatably-attached to the housing, and the housing is positioned in a channel of the casing. In one example, a spring rotationally biases the bristle holder to a second position to avoid unwanted bristle-rotor contact during machine startup or shutdown. Then, fluid pressure generated by the machine during steady-state operation overcomes the spring bias and rotationally biases the bristle holder to a first position wherein the bristle free ends are closer to the rotor for proper sealing.

Abstract: A horizontal axis clothes washing machine. A rotatable clothes basket has a generally longitudinally extending and generally horizontally oriented axis of rotation and has two longitudinally spaced-apart ends. The clothes basket is rotatably attached to a generally surrounding tub which is suspended from a generally surrounding cabinet. Each of a pair of balance rings has a circumferential interior cavity, is attached to the clothes basket near a corresponding one of the ends, and has a generally longitudinally extending axis generally coaxially aligned with the axis of rotation. Tubes connect the cavity of one of the balance rings with the cavity of the other of the balance rings.

Abstract: A dewpoint sensor comprises a pressure vessel having an entry port, an exit port, and a temperature controlled plate. A quartz crystal resonator is housed within the pressure vessel and disposed in intimate contact with the temperature controlled plate. A temperature sensor is disposed to generate signals representative of the quartz crystal resonator temperature. Circuitry is coupled to the quartz crystal resonator and the temperature sensor, which circuitry is configured to control the temperature of the quartz crystal resonator, to measure the frequency of the quartz crystal resonator and to monitor the temperature signals and the frequency of the quartz crystal resonator when exposed to a flow between the entry port and the exit port so as to calculate a dewpoint value of the flow.

Abstract: An open magnet useful in magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) applications. The magnet has two spaced-apart assemblies. Each assembly has a shielding coil located longitudinally outward from a main coil, a magnetizable member not carrying an electric current and spaced apart from and proximate the main and shielding coils, and a magnetizable pole piece spaced apart from the magnetizable member: The method of the invention generates a magnetic field in a first area between the two assemblies while shielding a second area not between the two assemblies from a stray magnetic field by creating the previously-described open magnet.

Abstract: In three-dimensional imaging of ultrasound data, speckle artifact data are reduced before the acquired data from a volume of interest are projected onto an image plane. A master controller performs an algorithm that iteratively morphologically filters the pixel data in a volume of interest and then iteratively projects the morphologically filtered data onto a plurality of rotated image planes using a ray-casting technique. Morphological filtering is performed by stepping a seven-point kernel through a source data volume of pixel data. The kernel, made up of a central pixel value and the six pixel values adjacent to the central pixel value, is stepped through the entire source data volume. The morphological filtering operation includes at least one erosion step, which removes speckle, followed by an equal number of dilation steps, which restore the imaging data.

Abstract: An MR magnet assembly includes a cylindrical vessel for housing a superconducting magnet and having a vacuum between its inner and outer walls. The vessel defines a magnet bore for receiving a patient to be imaged. A gradient coil assembly is mounted in the bore adjacent the inner wall of the magnet assembly. To reduce gradient coil noise, the inner wall is constructed of a non-conductive material which does not support eddy currents.

Abstract: Coded excitation for medical ultrasound imaging is implemented by transmitting code or element symbols in the encoded base sequence on different firings. The encoded base sequence is formed by convolving a base sequence with an oversampled code sequence. For each firing the designated code or element symbol in the encoded base sequence is replaced by a unit symbol (i.e., 1 or -1) while the other symbol locations are all set to zero. After each transmit, the received waveform is multiplied by the respective symbols and accumulated to synthesize the received encoded waveform.

Abstract: A method of coding and compressing telemetry data makes use of the fact that the telemetry frames are typically highly correlated at a distance, .delta., corresponding to commutation or data periodicities. The existence of such periodicity is used to render a portion of each frame to zeros. The next steps are to search for and remove correlations between the bits in a set of frames, denoted {F.sub.i *}. The compression algorithm implementing the method according to the invention has four sub-steps; Data preconditioning, Compression and coding of first frame, F.sub.1, Compression and coding of frames 2-.delta., F.sub.1 -F.sub..delta., and Compression and coding of F.sub..delta.+1 and on, the steady-state mode.

Abstract: A combustion enhancing insert for a cylinder of an internal combustion engine having a body shaped for insertion into the cylinder so as to partially occupy the squish area of the cylinder as well as the crevice area of the cylinder. The combustion enhancing insert also occupies part of the combustion area but does not interfere with valve flow. The combustion enhancing insert can be attached to the cylinder head, cylinder wall or made as part of the head gasket and can be formed as part of the cylinder inserted as a retrofit. The present invention will reduce the amount of unburned combustion gases collecting in the squish area and crevice area. Also, the compression ratio will be increased. This will result in better fuel efficiency with less deposits and emissions.

Abstract: Locally-adaptive, sub-voxel registration of two volumetric data sets is performed by generating match points and then, using the match points, generating a locally-adaptive image-to-warp transformation. Generation of the match points is accelerated by generating a volume hierarchy and then identifying a set of 3D points in the first volume for designation as interesting points. Interesting points in the first volume are then matched with their corresponding points in the second volume. After performing match point generation, points on a cubic grid in the first volume are matched to the corresponding match points in the second volume by resampling the match points on the cubic grid in the first volume. After a grid of match points has been identified, the displacement (dx, dy, dz) that should be added to each cubic grid point in the first volume to identify the coordinates of the corresponding point in the second volume is determined.

Abstract: A tolerancing method includes modeling positions and sizes of apertures in an assembly of parts. The parts are best-fit together. Aperture position in the parts is statistically varied. The best-fitting and statistical variations of the aperture positions are repeated for a statistically significant number of trials to create a statistical model. The size of fasteners for assembly through the mating apertures may be selected as determined in the statistical model.

Abstract: A direct sequence spread spectrum receiver samples an incoming signal and stores the sample in memory. Prior to sampling and storage, the incoming signal is translated to an IF signal. Also prior to storage, the IF signal is corrected for a frequency offset signal. The frequency offset may be caused by many sources, Doppler shift or local oscillator error, for example. Once the signal is corrected for the frequency offset, the signal sample is stored in memory. The signal sample is read from memory as necessary to process the signal. Such a receiver is useful in global positioning satellite (GPS) signal processing where the incoming signal contains several satellite transmissions encoded with CDMA encoding.

Abstract: A combined burner and grate structure for use in connection with a gas range includes one or more burner elements. Each burner element has one or more fuel inlets, one or more fuel outlets disposed on one or more side surfaces, and a top surface. A horizontal planar support for a cooking vessel is made up of the top surface of each burner element. A gas rangetop can include one or more of these combined burner and grate structures.

Abstract: A method and apparatus for improving the SNR in medical ultrasound imaging utilize Golay-coded excitation of the transducer array. A Golay pair is a pair of binary (+1,-1) sequences with the property that the sum of the autocorrelations of the two sequences is a Kronecker delta function. This translates into two important advantages over codes in general: (1) Golay codes have no range sidelobes, and (2) Golay codes can be transmitted using only a bipolar pulser versus a more expensive digital-to-analog converter. Degradation of the Golay code is avoided by employing multiple focal zones, where the Golay code is used only in the deepest focal zones in order to minimize dynamic focusing effects, and by employing two consecutive transmits on each beam to minimize tissue motion between the two code sequences.

Abstract: An apparatus and method are provided for calibrating a densitometer based sensor for measuring the linear density of the shot particles passing through a shot peening system to ensure that mass flow rate readings and shot velocity readings calculated therefrom are accurate. The apparatus comprises a probe having a plurality of randomly distributed particles configured to have a linear density substantially equal to the linear density of shot which the sensor should experience during operation of the shot peening system at desired parameters.

Abstract: A linking process allows a head-end unit (HEU) of a railroad train to determine the sequence of cars in the train using wireless links between nodes on the cars, and requires no physical connection between the nodes or cars. Each car in the train is equipped with a wireless communication device which models an oscillator i. Each oscillator is phase-variable, the phase .theta..sub.i linearly increasing from 0 to 1 such that, when the i.sup.th oscillator "fires", transmitting a packet, and phase .theta..sub.i then jumps back to zero. When a car receives the transmission of another car, it changes the phase of its oscillator according to a phase-response curve function, setting up a wave pattern of transmission from nodes, from one end of the train to the other end. The wave pattern, along with protocol logic, enables each car to determine the sequence in which cars are arranged in its vicinity.