Abstract: The patent application relates generally to a thermal laminate material, more particularly to thermal material comprising at least an intumescent layer and a refractory layer. The intumescent layer and refractory layer are generally stacked one-on-top of the other. The thermal laminate material can include a reinforcement material. The reinforcement material can be a metallic material in the form of sheet or mesh. The intumescent layer can contain one of the metallic sheet reinforcement material or the metallic mesh. The refractory layer can be a ceramic. Moreover, the refractory layer can be a ceramic fiber-based refractory material. The ceramic fiber-based refractory material can be in the form of paper or felt.

Abstract: In general, the present invention incorporates a cooling or heating wrap having internal channels to circulate a chilled or warmed fluid, with one or more layers of a thermo-conductive material to eliminate air pockets or gaps between the wrap and a human or animal body part. The thermo-conductive material may be applied directly to the human or animal skin and/or body part, may be encapsulated in a separate unit, or may be integrated into the wrap itself. The thermo-conductive material acts like a heat conduction medium between the heat exchanging wrap and the anatomical body part, to increase the therapeutic effect of the wrap.

Abstract: A method and apparatus for canceling a near-end echo of a far-end signal for each channel of a voice over packet multi-channel communications gateway. The invention applies “off-the-shelf” coding mechanisms as well as novel coding schemes to provide fixed compression rate and with options to maintain perfect speech integrity on certain processing components, such as network echo canceller, acoustic echo canceller, Voice Activity Detector, Comfort Noise Generation, etc. The off-the-shelf compression algorithm includes LPC-10, G.723.1, G.729A. The alternatives are Wavelet transform, DPCM, and ADPCM, etc.

Abstract: A method and apparatus for controlling overflow in Viterbi decoder is disclosed. The present invention allows the metrics to use short words, and to grow freely, by the use of natural wrap-back when overflow occurs. The metric compare process monitors the occurrence of wrap-back and produces results accordingly. In accordance with one aspect of the invention, a “partial subtractions” is used for the compare processes by checking the most-significant bit of each “partial subtraction” result, instead of the carry bit, to determine the comparison result. Based on the comparison result, the metric will be selected, or updated, at the next stage.

Abstract: A method and apparatus for canceling a near-end echo of a far-end signal for each channel of a voice over packet multi-channel communications gateway. The invention applies “off-the-shelf” coding mechanisms as well as novel coding schemes to provide fixed compression rate and with options to maintain perfect speech integrity on certain processing components, such as network echo canceller, acoustic echo canceller, Voice Activity Detector, Comfort Noise Generation, etc. The off-the-shelf compression algorithm includes LPC-10, G.723.1, G.729A. The alternatives are Wavelet transform, DPCM, and ADPCM, etc.