Abstract: An electrical circuit comprising a plurality of cells can be simulated to produce simulation results by sorting cells between active status cells and inactive status cells and reducing the processing of simulation results from inactive cells to thereby save simulation time.

Abstract: A method and apparatus are provided for providing custom product support for a computer program based on levels of execution instability. The execution of a software program is monitored over a period of time to determine the execution stability of the program. Based upon the monitoring and upon one or more threshold levels of instability, the execution stability of the program is categorized. Based upon the categorization, custom program support may be provided for a user of the computer system executing the program. For instance, based on the categorization free or reduced fee product support may be provided.

Abstract: The system described herein provides providing application support by receiving data indicating application run-time characteristics, determining severity of errors associated with running the application based on the data, and determining if there are resources available to provide application support. The system may also determine if the application passes integrity checks. If the severity of application errors exceeds a predetermined threshold and there are resources available for free application support, then the system may provide free application support. A queue may be used for instances of eligibility for free application support. Free application support may be provided by either telephone or online interaction.

Abstract: Social network information may be shared across online service providers. Thus, one online service provider M that maintains a membership separate from a second online service provider N may nevertheless use the social network maintained by the second online service provider N to tailor content and/or services based on such social network information.

Abstract: A bottle cap remover can include structure for facilitating the assembly of the bottle cap remover. The structure can include a slot established within the top portion of an interior surface of the body of the bottle cap remover. The cover of the bottle cap remover, by comparison, can include an indexing guide formed within the interior surface of the cover which can cooperatively mate with a companion guide in the body of the bottle cap remover to ensure the proper alignment of the cover with the body. Moreover, a circular trench about the interior perimeter of the cover can facilitate the mating and securing of the cover to the body of the bottle cap remover.

Abstract: An automatic speech recognition apparatus and method with a front end feature extractor that improves recognition performance under adverse acoustic conditions are disclosed. The inventive feature extractor is characterized by a critical bandwidth spectral resolution, an emphasis on slow changes in the spectral structure of the speech signal, and adaptive automatic gain control. In one the feature extractor includes a feature generator configured to compute short-term parameters of the speech signal, a filter system configured to filter the time sequences of the short-term parameters, and a normalizer configured to normalize the filtered parameters with respect to one or more previous values of the filtered parameters.