Abstract: A trap having a housing and an entrance, a trigger plate pivotally coupled to the housing, and when triggered by an animal, the trigger plate pivots towards the housing to thereby trap the animal against the housing. The trap may further include a biasing element to bias the trigger plate towards the housing. The trap may further include blunt fingers extending from the back wall. When the trap is triggered, an animal may be trapped between the trigger plate and the blunt fingers.

Abstract: A trap having a housing and an entrance, a platform pivotally coupled to the housing, and a trigger that, when triggered by an animal, triggers the platform to pivot towards the housing to thereby trap the animal against the housing. The trap may further include a retention element for retaining the platform in the latched position and a biasing element biasing the platform towards the back wall when the trigger is triggered. The trap may further include one or more numbing fingers extending from the back wall. When the trap is triggered, an animal may be trapped between the platform and the numbing fingers.

Abstract: A detachable vehicle trailer hitch display flag apparatus, the trailer hitch of the type having a removable towing ball. The apparatus comprises an elongated, preferably tubular flagstaff having a display flag attached or releasably attachable to an upper end portion thereof and an elongated straight support shaft adapted at a lower end thereof to be releasably attachable to the trailer hitch in upwardly extending and upright orientation in place of the towing ball when it is removed. A lower end of the flagstaff is slidably engageable over the support shaft in coaxial upwardly extending alignment with the support shaft. A releasable locking arrangement holds the flagstaff and the support shaft together while the apparatus is in use.

Abstract: In one aspect, a method and system are provided for preprocessing a weighted planar undirected graph and representing the results of the preprocessing so as to facilitate subsequent approximate distance queries. A representation can be constructed so that an approximate distance from one node to another can be computed quickly. Also, the representation in one embodiment stores information for computing distances in a relatively compact format, thus reducing memory requirements. In another aspect, a method and system are provided which use the representation for rapid computation of distances.

Abstract: A detachable vehicle trailer hitch display flag apparatus, the trailer hitch of the type having a removable towing ball. The apparatus comprises an elongated, preferably tubular flagstaff having a display flag attached or releasably attachable to an upper end portion thereof and an elongated straight support shaft adapted at a lower end thereof to be releasably attachable to the trailer hitch in upwardly extending and upright orientation in place of the towing ball when it is removed. A lower end of the flagstaff is slidably engageable over the support shaft in coaxial upwardly extending alignment with the support shaft. A releasable locking arrangement holds the flagstaff and the support shaft together while the apparatus is in use.