Abstract: A system for shifting operation modes of Variable Flux Memory Motor (VFMM) from external inputs includes one or more VFMMs that convert electrical power to kinetic energy, the one or more VFMMs being configured to shift to any one of a plurality of operation modes, one or more man-machine interfaces that receive one or more external inputs from a user, the one or more external inputs being indicative of a target operation mode from the plurality of operation modes selected by the user, and a controller that shifts the operation mode of the one or more VFMMs to the target operation mode based on the one or more external inputs received from the one or more man-machine interfaces.

Abstract: A self driven pig may have a drive using slanted wheels on an element rotated axially relative to a reference element to drive the pig along a pipe, and may have a sensor carrier with a housing holding the sensors which rotates axially to provide better sensor coverage of the walls of the pipe.

Abstract: A network-based storage system comprises one or more block-level storage servers that connect to, and provide disk storage for, one or more host computers (“hosts”) over logical network connections (preferably TCP/IP sockets). In one embodiment, each host can maintain one or more socket connections to each storage server, over which multiple I/O operations may be performed concurrently in a non-blocking manner. The physical storage of a storage server may optionally be divided into multiple partitions, each of which may be independently assigned to a particular host or to a group of hosts. When a host initially connects to a storage server in one embodiment, the storage server initially authenticates the host, and then notifies the host of the ports that may be used to establish data connections and of the partitions assigned to that host.