Abstract: The automatic selection of an input/output scheduler in a computing system with a plurality of input/output schedulers is disclosed. Each of the plurality of input/output schedulers is mapped against a corresponding desired set of heuristics. Heuristics relating to job requests submitted by processes in the computer system are monitored and analysed. These heuristics may include the number of read and write requests, the ratio of read requests to write requests, input/output throughput, disk utilization and the average time taken for processes to submit subsequent jobs once an initial job completes. The analysed heuristics are compared to the desired sets of heuristics for the plurality of input/output schedulers to select one of the plurality of input/output schedulers.

Abstract: A selection apparatus providing user friendly interface for visually impaired people. The selection apparatus may contain a touch screen and a guide structure. The guide structure is disposed along the touch buttons in the touch screen, and contains touch points corresponding to the touch buttons. The touch points are designed such that a different sensation is felt when a user slides an object (e.g., finger) along the selection structure. An exit may be designed to help lead the object from each touch point to corresponding touch button. Thus, a visually impaired person may slide a finger along the guide structure, feel a touch points and use the associated exit to locate a corresponding touch button.

Abstract: This invention provides a method, system and computer program product for reducing transmission time and improving network utilization while broadcasting over a filly connected network, wherein it comprises simultaneous transmission of individual sequential packets by the broadcaster to each recipient in a round robin sequence until all the packets have been transmitted, retransmission of received packets by each recipients to each other recipient, and reassembly of received packets at each recipient in the original sequence of said transmission. The said transmission and said retransmission are overlapped in time.

Abstract: This invention relates to a system of checking email count at boot time wherein the BIOS in the computing system includes a means to communicate with the network adapter, a means to access the said remote email server through network during the boot up process using said network adapter, a means to download the email count for the current user from the remote email server on said network, and a means to display the email count for the current user in a defined format on the display of said computing system. The invention also provides a method and computer program product in respect of the above system.

Abstract: A method is presented for marking high-quality digital images with a robust and invisible watermark. It requires the mark to survive and remain detectable and authenticatable through all image manipulations that in themselves do not damage the image beyond useability. These manipulations include JPEG “lossy” compression and, in the extreme, the printing and rescanning of the image. The watermark also has the property that it can detect if the essential contents of the image has changed. The first phase of the method comprises extracting a digest or number N from the image so that N only (or mostly) depends on the essential information content, such that the same number N can be obtained from a scan of a high quality print of the image, from the compressed form of the image, or in general, from the image after minor modifications (introduced inadvertently by processing, noise etc.). The second phase comprises the marking.

Abstract: This invention relates to graphical email content analyser and prioritizer in an email system comprising a means for the user to define search parameters and possible values for each parameter with corresponding graphical images, for identifying and/or prioritizing received email messages, a means for parsing the contents of the email header and body contents and displaying the parameter values of the said messages in graphical form using the said graphical images, a means for grouping, and prioritising the said graphical message displays in accordance with user-defined requirements, and a means for accessing any message selected from the said graphical display.

Abstract: A method 100, an apparatus, and a computer program product for constructing a runtime symbol table SymTbl[ ] for a computer program are disclosed. In the method, a symbol table SymTbl[ ] for storing one or more entities Ei is initialized 110. One or more tickets Ti are then added 120 into the symbol table SymTbl[ ] for each entity Ei that does not already exist in the symbol table SymTbl[ ]. An offset address is then inserted 130 after a predefined token “>” for each ticket Vi in a predefined set V of tickets in the symbol table SymTbl[ ] characterized as a sequence of the tickets Vi. One or more preassigned addresses are also inserted 140 in the symbol table SymTbl[ ] for each ticket Vi in the set V of tickets that has preassigned addresses.

Abstract: A method, an apparatus, and a computer program product are disclosed for detecting memory-related errors in a computer program during compiling of the computer program. In the method, static analysis is performed upon a computer program. One or more conditions in the computer program are computed based on the static analysis. Each condition is a test for checking a memory access in the computer program and can be either a pre- or post-condition. The validity of each condition in the computer program is then evaluated. If the evaluation is determinate during compiling, the presence or absence of memory-related errors in the computer program is reported. A condition is determinate if the condition is valid or invalid during compiling. Otherwise, computer code based on the condition is generated for incorporation in the computer program for run-time detection of memory-related errors.

Abstract: This invention relates to a method, system and computer program product for intelligently handling a large volume of emails received from a plurality of senders by automatically parsing the email header and body to capture specified keywords and preparing a reply template using an expert system to analyze the received emails that are stored in a personalized email database.

Abstract: A computer implemented method in a language independent system generates audio-driven facial animation given the speech recognition system for just one language. The method is based on the recognition that once alignment is generated, the mapping and the animation hardly have any language dependency in them. Translingual visual speech synthesis can be achieved if the first step of alignment generation can be made speech independent. Given a speech recognition system for a base language, the method synthesizes video with speech of any novel language as the input.

Abstract: A method of estimating liquid flow rates in capillary structures has application in determining the surface tension-driven flow rates of liquid fuel in propellant management devices in zero-gravity conditions. Analytic equations governing an assumed open-channel geometry are simplified by reasonable approximations, which allow a modified set of analytic equations to be derived. This modified set of analytic equations is derived by assuming an artificial taper in the capillary passage. Flow rate can be determined from the modified set of equations, which closely approximates the flow rate in the open-channel geometry.

Abstract: A data network may comprise routers for transmitting data between locations in the network via alternative routes. A network gateway or server may normally send data packets to a particular default router but, for network communication recovery, the gateway needs to select a new default route if the first goes down. The recovery method of this invention comprises storing information indicative of respective ones of a plurality of said alternative routes; accessing the stored information to identify a first of said routes; directing data to the router means for the data to be transmitted to the said another location via the first route; sensing failure of said transmission and, in the event of such failure, accessing said stored information to identify a second of said alternative routes; and directing data to the router means for the data to be transmitted to the said another location via the second route.

Abstract: A method and apparatus for transferring data between a handheld device and a network over a wireless communications link. A datapool manager breaks files into virtual blocks and adds the virtual blocks to a datapool. A communications manager converts the virtual blocks into transportation packets and controls the transfer of the transportation packets between the handheld device and the network. After a transportation packet is transferred, an acknowledgment is returned indicating that the transfer was successful. If the transfer of a file is interrupted, then, upon reestablishing the wireless link, only those transportation packets for which an acknowledgment has not been returned are transferred. To properly reconstruct the file, a pointer indicates the location of each transportation packet in the file. Furthermore, to enable the use of a partially transferred file, a table of information is maintained indicating the validity of the partially transferred file.

Abstract: The present invention provides a system and a method for mining a new kind of association rules called disjunctive association rules, where the antecedent or the consequent of a rule may contain disjuncts of terms (XY or X⊕Y). Such rules are a natural generalisation to the kind of rules that have been mined hitherto. Furthermore, disjunctive association rules are generalised in the sense that the algorithm also mines rules which have disjunctions of conjuncts (C(AB)(DE)). Since the number of combinations of disjuncts is explosive, we use clustering to find a generalized subset. The said clustering is preferably performed using agglomerative clustering methods for finding the greedy subset.

Abstract: In a compiler or program proving or verification software code, it is often useful to analyse a computer program and one way in which this might be partially achieved is by comparing algebraic expressions to see if they are equivalent, i.e. to see if they are derivable from a common template or function definition. Herein a string matching and replacement algorithm is used to compare two functions. Initially, each expression is converted to a “reduced” form by reference to a set of standard rules so as, for example, to ensure that terms comprising the same variables are combined. The variables names in each term are then replaced with symbols to produce, for each expression, a corresponding character string which, arranged in a predetermined order, are compared to determine equivalence of the expressions. To achieve this, a matrix M is formed with entries corresponding to the symbols and the matrix elements are incremented according to pre-set rules.

Abstract: The present invention provides a method and system for passing parameters to a procedure characterized in that it uses an invocation map data structure to pass parameters to the procedure without using the stack, for more efficient operation. The instant invention also provides a computer program product for carrying out the instant invention.

Abstract: The present invention provides Performance groups based Simulated Annealing (PGSA) for VLSI circuit placement. This method reduces the computation time required for VLSI circuit placement using Simulated Annealing by reducing the size of the placement problem by forming Performance groups while maintaining a high quality of the final placement solution. Performance groups are formed by picking circuits connected by a net and counting their local-net-count. These circuits are then grouped based on certain pre-determined conditions and placed suitably using simulated annealing based placement approach.

Abstract: A method and computer program product for executing procedure calls, such as procedure calls in the C programing language. For a procedure call, reference parameters are identified, and replaced by respective scalar variables. The scalar values are propagated to a call site and directly accessible by the calling procedure body. As such, the scalar variables are global in scope.

Abstract: This invention relates to a method, apparatus and program product for transmitting email to selected recipients defined by one or more aliases in identified lists of recipients, by providing transmission control directives given by the user, parsing the said directives, expanding aliases wherever necessary and applying each directive to the identified lists of recipients.

Abstract: A computer method, system and program product for debugging and/or monitoring an instruction set and having an improved breakpoint handling mechanism involving a hardware debug register set (or like breakpoint register means). Instead of patching a break instruction into a debuggee instruction sequence, re-inserting the original instruction and then single stepping through that instruction before replacing it with the patch, the original instruction is left in place and continuous execution is resumed. Before resuming however, the breakpoint register is set so that the break instruction can be re-applied while a flag (eg the Intel RF flag) is set so as to prevent a hardware break before that is desired.