Abstract: A method is provided for forming an opening in a layer of a selected material. The method comprises, forming a polymer resist layer over said selected material and plasticising areas of the resist where openings are to be formed. The plasticising is performed by depositing a first solution onto the surface of said polymer resist layer, where the first solution is a plasticiser selected to increase permeability of the polymer resist layer to a second solution, in an area which has absorbed the first solution. The second solution is selected to be an etchant or solvent for the selected material. After the resist layer has been selectively plasticised, it is contacted with the second solution, which permeates the polymer resist layer in the area of increased permeability and forms an opening in the selected material.

Abstract: A method is provided for forming an opening in a layer of a selected material. The method comprises, forming a polymer resist layer over said selected material and plasticising areas of the resist where openings are to be formed. The plasticising is performed by depositing a first solution onto the surface of said polymer resist layer, where the first solution is a plasticiser selected to increase permeability of the polymer resist layer to a second solution, in an area which has absorbed the first solution. The second solution is selected to be an etchant or solvent for the selected material. After the resist layer has been selectively plasticised, it is contacted with the second solution, which permeates the polymer resist layer in the area of increased permeability and forms an opening in the selected material.

Abstract: A method of extracting key frames from a video sequence, which video sequence includes MPEG compressed video data having block motion vectors. The method initially partially decompresses (202) the MPEG compressed video data to obtain block motion vectors and converts (204) the block motion vectors to forward block motion vectors. The method then generates (206) global motion signals and generates (306) dominant global direction clusters. The method then selects (402,404,406) potential key frames of the video sequence using the generated dominant global direction clusters. The method lastly decompresses (408) the selected key frames to obtain the extracted key frames.

Abstract: A method and apparatus are described for forming a structure on a substrate. The structure may be a circuit element. The method uses a digital specification 910 for forming the structure, including specifications for printing and curing. The structure is printed (step 112) using a drop-on-demand printer 400, wherein the printing dispenses at least one material on the substrate 420 according to the digital specification 910. The structure is cured (step 130) by irradiating the dispensed material from one or more electromagnetic radiation sources 520, 525 in the printer 400, wherein curing parameters are specified by the digital specification 910 to obtain a desired electrical property when the structure is a circuit element. The curing specification may specify the intensity of the irradiation and the location of irradiation points in the print region.

Abstract: Disclosed is a method of constructing at least one data structure from at least one data source. A representation is constructed of the data source and at least one previous view of the data source (eg. 23000). From the representations, at least one compulsory entity (eg. “branch”) is then identified. This may generally be performed by a user selection. The method then constructs the data structure (eg. 25000, 26000) comprising the compulsory entity and one or more context entities, where the context entities are obtained from the representation and context data obtained from the previous view. Typically the data source is hierarchical and the data structure is hierarchical.

Abstract: A method of learning associations between classes of documents and one or more structured data sets comprises a step of classifying an input document into a class selected from a predefined set of classes (step 115). One or more structured data sets are displayed (step 130), wherein the displayed structured data sets are dependent on association information for the class. One or more indications of changes to the displayed structured data sets are received (steps 815, 830, 845) and the association information for the class is amended (step 850) based on the received indications.

Abstract: A method of extracting key frames from a video sequence, which video sequence comprises MPEG compressed video data having block motion vectors. The method initially partially decompresses (202) the MPEG compressed video data to obtain block motion vectors and converts (204) the block motion vectors to forward block motion vectors. The method then generates (206) global motion signals and generates (306) dominant global direction clusters. The method then selects (402,404,406) potential key frames of the video sequence using the generated dominant global direction clusters. The method lastly decompresses (408) the selected key frames to obtain the extracted key frames.

Abstract: A query system (1600) is formed by a wizard (1605) operating to form a data server (1610) arranged to serve data from a data source (1615) to a client application (1630), each of the wizard, the client application, the data server and the data source being linked by a communications network (1650). The data source has native data types and data arranged in a data structure. The wizard operates to firstly identify the data source over the network. The wizard further provides an application program for traversing and examining at least one of the data structure and data of the identified data source. The application program is operable to generate a representative schema (1614) comprising mapping data for converting the native data types to predetermined data types of a common data model.

Abstract: Methods, programs (120) and apparatus (100) are disclosed for accessing and heterogenous data sources (150-153) and presenting information obtained therefrom. Specifically, the data sources may have hierarchical data, which may be presented by identifying a context data node from the data, the context data node having one or more descendent data nodes. At least one data pattern is determined in the descendent data nodes. At least one display type is assigned to the current context data node on the basis of the at least one data pattern. Thereafter, the method presents at least a subset of the descendent data nodes according to one of the assigned display types. Also disclosed is a method of browsing an hierarchically-represented data source. A user operation is interpreted to identify a context data node from the data source, the context data node having one or more descendent data nodes.

Abstract: The present invention provides a method and apparatus for detecting motion in an input sequence of images. Each image comprises a number of lines and each line has a number of pixels. Values of a region of pixels of a current image are transformed to determine a set of representation values. The set of representation values are indicative of the region of pixels at a number of resolution levels. The set of representation values of the region of pixels of the current image are compared with a set of representation values of a corresponding region of pixels from a stored previous image. Based on the comparing step, a difference measure is determined between the region of pixels and the corresponding region of pixels that is indicative of the presence or absence of motion in the current image.

Abstract: The present invention provides a method and apparatus for detecting motion in an input sequence of images. Each image comprises a number of lines and each line has a number of pixels. Values of a region of pixels of a current image are transformed to determine a set of representation values. The set of representation values are indicative of the region of pixels at a number of resolution levels. The set of representation values of the region of pixels of the current image are compared with a set of representation values of a corresponding region of pixels from a stored previous image. Based on the comparing step, a difference measure is determined between the region of pixels and the corresponding region of pixels that is indicative of the presence or absence of motion in the current image.