Abstract: Footwear including an insole formed for relieving pressure on a common digital nerve of a foot. The insole has heel, mid and forefoot sections. The forefoot section of the insole is formed with a pad having a neuroma pad section which underlies the third and fourth metatarsal heads of the foot, so that when a bottom of the foot is placed on the insole, the neuroma pad section applies an upward force to the bottom of the foot sufficient to spread the third and fourth metatarsal heads away from one another and thereby relieve pressure on the third common digital nerve to reduce the risk of neuroma. In other embodiments, the pad is formed as a separate pad for placement in footwear. An insole designed for use with thonged footwear is also disclosed.

Abstract: A concealed holster for a weapon, characterized by a holster pocket typically mounted on the belt of a user for receiving a weapon such as the barrel of a pistol, a typically resilient grip receiver extending upwardly from the holster pocket for receiving and concealing the pistol grip and action in recessed configuration and a resilient or pivotal auxiliary case attached to the grip receiver for containing or simulating containment of a cellular telephone, radio or the like, wherein the holster pocket is designed to fit inside the slacks or pants of the user, with the auxiliary case and grip receiver extending above the belt, to facilitate quick access to the concealed pistol by forcing the grip receiver away from the pistol grip and action as the auxiliary case is pivoted outwardly, grasping the pistol grip and drawing the pistol from the holster pocket.

Abstract: A method of enabling a single instruction stream multiple data stream operation and a double precision floating point operation within a single floating point execution unit which includes providing a floating point unit with a two way aligner and a two way normalizer, selectively aligning a value based upon whether a single instruction stream multiple data stream operation is to be performed or a double precision operation is to be performed, and selectively normalizing a value based upon whether a single instruction stream multiple data stream operation is to be performed or a double precision operation is to be performed.

Abstract: Footwear comprising a sole for supporting a foot and an upper attached to the sole for covering the foot and adjoining ankle. The sole and upper define an interior of the footwear and is sized and shaped for receiving the foot and ankle. The upper has an outer shell that forms an exterior of the footwear and an inner lining that is adjacent the foot and ankle when they are received in the interior of the footwear. A compressible generally U-shaped pad is positioned between the shell and the lining of the upper. The pad has a bottom section and a pair spaced-apart side sections extending up from the bottom section. The pad is sized and positioned in the upper such that when the foot and ankle are received in the footwear, the bottom section of the pad is disposed immediately below a medial malleolus of the foot and the side sections of the pad extend up along opposite sides of the medial malleolus up to at least about the distal neck of the tibia.

Abstract: A system and method for measuring the size of a person's foot so that properly sized shoes can be selected. The measuring system has a support surface having a transparent window, and a fixture positioned over the transparent window for receiving a foot to be scanned. The measuring system also includes an imaging device for scanning the foot in the fixture through the window to produce an image of a bottom surface of the foot superimposed on foot measuring indicia. In one embodiment, the fixture is shaped like a shoe. The person can print the image and use the image to select a properly sized pair of shoes.

Abstract: Footwear having a ventilated sole system to cool the foot is provided. The footwear includes a generally horizontal sole having an outer sole and an insole providing a surface adjacent the foot. The footwear also includes an air flow pump positioned between the outer sole and the insole. The air flow pump includes a generally horizontal tubular pump element extending generally transverse of the footwear from a medial side of the sole to a lateral side of the sole. The pump element defines an interior volume and has opposite ends open to ambient air. The pump element also has a plurality of holes therein providing fluid communication between the interior volume and the surface adjacent the foot. The pump element is resiliently compressible in a generally vertical direction upon impact of the footwear during walking or running and expansible upon liftoff causing ambient air to flow through the holes in the pump elements to cool the foot.

Abstract: Footwear including a sole for supporting a foot and an upper attached to the sole for covering the foot. The sole and upper define an interior of the footwear sized and shaped for receiving the foot. The upper has an inner surface adapted for engaging the foot when it is received in the interior of the footwear and an outer surface forming an exterior of the footwear. The upper also includes compressible cushioning permitting the upper to conform to the foot when it is received in the interior of the footwear to improve the fit of the footwear. The compressible cushioning is sized, shaped and positioned in the upper to at least partially surround a protrusion extending from the foot and is at least partially omitted from an area of the upper corresponding to the protrusion. Thus, a recess is formed in the upper for accommodating the protrusion to relieve pressure applied to the foot by the upper at the protrusion.

Abstract: The present invention is a 5:2 carry-save-adder (CSA) that receives the five input signals I0, I1, I2, I3 and I4 and computes the two output signals SUM and CARRY. The 5:2 CSA comprises a first level of logic circuitry and a second level of logic circuitry. The first level of logic circuitry comprises a plurality of adders and receives the input signals and generates three intermediate terms T0, T1, and T2. The second level of logic circuitry comprises a carry logic circuit and a sum adder, and uses the intermediate terms to compute the two output signals SUM and CARRY. The 5:2 CSA of the present invention operates using either binary signals or N-NARY signals.

Abstract: A method and apparatus that performs anticipatory rounding of intermediate results in a floating point arithmetic system while the intermediate results are being normalized is disclosed. One embodiment of the present invention includes four logic levels, implemented in N-NARY logic. In the first three logic levels, propagation information is gathered for preselected bit groups from the coarse and medium shift output of the normalizer as those results become available. In the fourth level, an incremented, normalized intermediate single-precision or double-precision mantissa result is produced by combining fine shift output bit values with propagation information for the appropriate top bit group, middle bit group, and bottom bit group. The appropriate bit groups are determined by examining the value of the fine shift select signal.

Abstract: Footwear comprising a sole. The sole has a heel section for supporting a heel of the foot. The heel section has medial and lateral regions. At least a portion of the lateral region has a first compressive resilience for attenuating the shock of impact to the wearer during running and walking. Further, the sole has an arch section forward of the heel section for supporting an arch of the foot. The arch section also has medial and lateral regions. At least a portion of the lateral region of the arch section has the first compressive resilience and at least a portion of the medial region of the arch section has a second compressive resilience harder than the first compressive resilience for providing firm support for the foot during running and walking. In addition, the sole has a forefoot section forward of the arch section for supporting a ball of the foot including first, second, third, fourth and fifth metatarsal heads and associated metatarsal necks, proximal phalanges and metatarsal phalangeal joints.

Abstract: An efficient leading zero/leading one anticipator (LZA) that can operate in parallel with a floating point adder is disclosed. In one embodiment, the LZA can be implemented in three levels of N-NARY logic, wherein the first logic level generates dit-level propagate-generate-zero (PGZ) patterns and carry out signals from the input dits of the adder operands. The second logic level produces a find-zero and a find-one output signal for each two-dit group of the adder result by combining PGZ patterns for the two dits within the group with the carry-out signal from the dit immediately preceding the two-dit group. The third logic level combines find-zero and find-one output signals for each two-dit group to produce find-one and find-zero coarse and medium shift select signals.

Abstract: The present invention comprises a method and apparatus for a pipeline of functional units with a late pipe functional unit that executes instructions without stalling until the result is available. The present invention comprises one or more earlier functional units coupled to a late pipe functional unit. The late pipe functional unit does not begin executing instructions until all of the input operands are or will be available for execution so that the late pipe functional unit will execute instructions without stalling until the result will be available in a fixed number of cycles. The present invention further comprises a late pipe functional unit that may comprise a floating point unit, a graphics unit, or an enhanced floating point unit. And finally, the late pipe functional unit is non-stalling and or is non-cancelable.

Abstract: Footwear including a sole for supporting a foot and an upper attached to the sole for covering the foot. The sole and upper define an interior of the footwear sized and shaped for receiving the foot. The upper has an inner surface adapted for engaging the foot when it is received in the interior of the footwear and an outer surface forming an exterior of the footwear. The upper also includes compressible cushioning permitting the upper to conform to the foot when it is received in the interior of the footwear to improve the fit of the footwear. The compressible cushioning is sized, shaped and positioned in the upper to at least partially surround a protrusion extending from the foot and is at least partially omitted from an area of the upper corresponding to the protrusion. Thus, a recess is formed in the upper for accommodating the protrusion to relieve pressure applied to the foot by the upper at the protrusion.

Abstract: An outsole having a body member with an inner-structure including arcuately shaped channel members extending substantially from the medial to lateral sides thereof. The arcuately shaped channel members are spaced forwardly, rearwardly, and generally below the metatarsophalangeal joints of a wearer's foot inserted in footwear constructed from the outsole.

Abstract: A funnel-shaped holder for holding an implement and it's method of use. The holder includes a funnel structure having an upper end that flares open upwardly and is relatively wide for receiving an implement, a lower end that opens downwardly and is relatively narrow, and a rear wall with a substantially flat vertical inside surface. Opposite converging side walls define, in conjunction with the rear wall, a funnel-shaped recess. A front wall prevents the implement from falling forward out of the recess, and an opening in the front wall allows the implement to be inserted into the funnel-shaped recess and removably held captive in a stored position. A wall-mounted system for holding implements includes a plurality of funnel-shaped holders mountable on a panel support and at least one horizontal track on the panel support to permit the funnel structure to be slidably moved along the track to a selected horizontal position relative to the panel support.

Abstract: An enhanced floating point unit that supports floating point, integer, and graphics operations by combining the units into a single functional unit is disclosed. The enhanced floating point unit comprises a register file coupled to a plurality of bypass multiplexers. Coupled to the bypass multiplexers are an aligner and a multiplier. And, coupled to the multiplier is an adder that further couples to a normalizer/rounder unit. The normalizer/rounder unit may comprise a normalizer and a rounder coupled in series and or a parallel normalizer/rounder. The enhanced floating point unit supports both integer operations and graphics operations with one functional unit.

Abstract: The present invention describes a method and apparatus that performs parallel normalization and rounding on an ANSI/IEEE 754-1985 floating point intermediate result that dispenses with the need for shifting of the intermediate result prior to normalization or rounding. The exponent is pre-incremented prior to normalization. During normalization, the most significant bit of the intermediate fraction is shifted into the carry bit and the exponent is decremented accordingly. Selection logic then selects one of six possible formatting procedures to generate a mathematically correct output fraction in proper ANSI/IEEE 754-1985 floating point format, and formatting logic generates the output fraction according to the selected formatting procedure.

Abstract: The present invention describes an apparatus and method that normalizes an ANSI/IEEE 754-1985 floating point arithmetic intermediate result having a fraction and exponent. The exponent is pre-incremented by one prior to normalization. During normalizaion, the most significant binary “1” of the fraction is shifted left until it resides in the carry bit. For each left shift performed, the incremented exponent is decremented once.

Abstract: The present invention describes an apparatus and method to select the format of the output fraction result of an ANSI/IEEE 754-1985 floating point arithmetic operation where parallel normalization and rounding of the intermediate fraction result has occurred. The C bit and the L bit and the most significant bit of the intermediate fraction are examined, along with the Gin bit, Rin bit, and round control bit. Based on these inputs, the output fraction is formatted by performing zero or more manipulations of either the output of the rounder circuit or the output from the normalizer circuit.

Abstract: The present invention describes an apparatus and method that formats the output fraction result of an ANSI/IEEE 754-1985 floating point arithmetic operation where parallel normalization and rounding of the intermediate fraction result has occurred. The output fraction is formatted using all or some of the bits from the output of either the rounder circuit or the normalizer circuit.