Did You Know...
...that several people are credited with the invention of the flush toilet? Most people have heard of Thomas Crapper (1837-1910), the sanitary engineer who invented the valve-and-siphon arrangement that made the modern toilet possible. Another claimant to "the throne" was British inventor Alexander Cumming who patented a toilet in 1775. Then there's a nameless Minoan (a native of ancient Crete) who lived 4,000 years ago who supposedly was ahead of his time and created the first flush toilet!
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| Number | Title | Issue Date |
| 7813739 | Method for reducing inter-cell interference in wireless OFDMA networks Protocols for OFDM/OFDMA/SC-FDMA based wireless networks provide adaptive inter-cell interference management without explicit spectrum or frequency planning. Base stations and mobile stations acquire information about subcarrier allocation from a handoff protocol. T... | 10/12/2010 |
| 7813555 | Method for generating a distance field of an object represented by outlines A method generates a distance field of an object, where the distance field includes a set of cells and the object includes a set of outlines. A processor is included for performing steps of the method. A first cell of the set of cells enclosing the object is determi... | 10/12/2010 |
| 7813528 | Method for detecting objects left-behind in a scene A method detects an object left-behind in a scene by updating a set of background models using a sequence of images acquired of the scene by a camera. Each background model is updated at a different temporal scales ranging from short term to long term. A foreground ... | 10/12/2010 |
| 7809165 | Method for generating distance maps using scan lines A method generates a distance map from an image including a set of pixels arranged in a Euclidian n-space. The set of pixels includes a subset of background pixels and a subset of foreground pixels. The distance map stores a distance value for every corresponding ba... | 10/05/2010 |
| 7805207 | Method and apparatus for adaptive parallel proportional-integral-derivative controller An adaptive parallel proportional-integral-derivative controller produces a fixed controller output including a fixed proportional-integral-derivative and a fixed feedforward controller command, and an adaptive controller output including an adaptive parallel PID an... | 09/28/2010 |
| 7801107 | Method for transmitting a communications packet in a wireless communications network A method and apparatus for transmitting a packet in a wireless communications network is presented. A packet is constructed to include synchronization header, a physical layer header, and a payload. A preamble and a start of frame delimiter are inserted in the synch... | 09/21/2010 |
| RE41731 | Multi-user touch surface A multi-user touch system includes a surface on which are a pattern of mounted antennas. A transmitter transmits uniquely identifiable signals to each antenna. Receivers are capacitively coupled to different users, the receivers are configured to receive the uniquel... | 09/21/2010 |
| 7796860 | Method and system for playing back videos at speeds adapted to content A method plays back a video at speeds adapted to content of the video. A video is partitioned into summary segments and skipped segments. The summary segments are played back sequentially at a normal play back speed, and the skipped segments are played back at varyi... | 09/14/2010 |
| 7796630 | Method for estimating channels in two-hop MIMO AF networks A method estimates interim channels in a two-hop multi-input-multi-output (MIMO) amplify-and-forward (AF) relay network including a source station (SS), a relay station (RS), and a destination station (DS). The estimate is according to the overall channel obtained a... | 09/14/2010 |
| 7792423 | 4D light field cameras A camera acquires a 4D light field of a scene. The camera includes a lens and sensor. A mask is arranged in a straight optical path between the lens and the sensor. The mask including an attenuation pattern to spatially modulate the 4D light field acquired of the sc... | 09/07/2010 |
| 7792314 | System and method for acquiring acoustic signals using doppler techniques A method and system enhances an acoustic signal acquired by a microphone from an acoustic source while concurrently acquiring a Doppler signal from moving parts of the acoustic source. The acoustic signal and the Doppler signal are then analyzed according to a model... | 09/07/2010 |
| 7792091 | Method for transmitting a communications packet in a wireless communications network A method and apparatus for transmitting a packet in a wireless communications network is presented. A packet is constructed to include synchronization header, a physical layer header, and a payload. A preamble and a start of frame delimiter is inserted in the synchr... | 09/07/2010 |
| 7788312 | Apparatus and method for reducing errors in analog circuits while processing signals A method and apparatus processes signals in a set of analog circuit components of an analog circuit white enforcing a set of explicit constraints corresponding to a set of implicit constraints to reduce errors in output signals. ... | 08/31/2010 |
| 7780364 | Apparatus and method for reducing glare in images Glare is reduced by acquiring an input image with a camera having a lens and a sensor, in which a pin-hole mask is placed in close proximity to the sensor. The mask localizes the glare at readily identifiable pixels, which can then be filtered to produce a glare red... | 08/24/2010 |
| 7779268 | Biometric based user authentication and data encryption Biometric parameters acquired from human forces, voices, fingerprints, and irises are used for user authentication and access control. Because the biometric parameters are continuous and vary from one reading to the next, syndrome codes are applied to determine biom... | 08/17/2010 |
| 7778659 | Multiple access by varying received power in wireless networks The invention describes a method for transmitting a packet in a wireless network of nodes. At a beginning of a scheduled time slot a metric in the node is set, in which the metric indicates a need to transmit a packet to a receiver in the wireless network. The metri... | 08/17/2010 |
| 7778598 | Asymmetric cooperation in downlink cellular networks with relay stations In a wireless network using cooperative relaying, a set of messages are broadcast from a base station to a set of relay stations during a first phase of a scheduling interval. During a second phase of the scheduling interval, the set of messages from the set of rela... | 08/17/2010 |
| 7773099 | Context aware image conversion method and playback system The embodiments of invention provide method and apparatus for converting one or more images for display on a display surface. The output image is obtained from an input image. We scale the input image to generate a foreground image, in which a content of the foregro... | 08/10/2010 |
| 7756356 | System and method for factorizing light in a sequence of images A method factorizing a sequence of images acquired of a scene into lighting components. The scene is illuminated by a moving light source. An appearance profile is constructed for each pixel in the sequence of images. The appearance profile is a vector representing ... | 07/13/2010 |
| 7756338 | Method for detecting scene boundaries in genre independent videos A computer implemented method detects scene boundaries in videos by first extracting feature vectors from videos of different genres. The feature vectors are then classified as scene boundaries using a support vector machine. The support vector machine is trained to... | 07/13/2010 |
| 7756296 | Method for tracking objects in videos using forward and backward tracking A method tracks an object in a sequence of frames of a video. The method is provided with a set of tracking modules. Frames of a video are buffered in a memory buffer. First, an object is tracked in the buffered frames forward in time using a selected one of the plu... | 07/13/2010 |
| 7756099 | Method and system for selecting antennas adaptively in OFDMA networks A method selects antennas in an OFDMA network. A channel state of a downlink is measured using a downlink subframe received in a mobile station from a base station. A channel state of an uplink is measured using an uplink subframe received in the base station from t... | 07/13/2010 |
| 7756021 | Method for finding minimal cost paths under uncertainty A computer implemented method finds a path having a minimal expected cost through a network of nodes connected by arcs, in which the path is from a source node to a destination node, and in which a traversal time for traversing each arc is a random variable. An expe... | 07/13/2010 |
| 7747107 | Method for retargeting images A method for content-aware image retargeting generates an energy image from a source image according to an energy function. From the energy image, one or more seams are determined according to a minimizing function such that each seam has a minimal energy. Each seam... | 06/29/2010 |
| 7743890 | Method and system for determining instantaneous peak power consumption in elevator banks A method and system determine peak power consumption over time by a bank of elevator for servicing a set of passenger hall calls and delivery requests, and selecting elevator schedules that keep peak power consumption below a predetermined threshold. For each car in... | 06/29/2010 |
| 7738725 | Stylized rendering using a multi-flash camera A method generates a stylized image of a scene including an object. A set of n input images are acquired of the scene with a camera. Each one of the n input images is illuminated by one of a set of n light sources mounted on a body of the camera at different positio... | 06/15/2010 |
| 7734097 | Detecting objects in images with covariance matrices A method detects objects in an image. First, features are extracted from the image. A frequency transform is applied to the features to generate transformed features. A covariance matrix is constructed from the transformed features, and the covariance matrix is clas... | 06/08/2010 |
| 7729659 | Method for signaling quality of range estimates in UWB devices A method signals a quality of range estimates in a UWB network. For each range estimate, a confidence level of a range estimate is signaled, a confidence interval for the range estimate is signaled, and a confidence interval scaling factor for the confidence interva... | 06/01/2010 |
| 7728878 | Method and system for processing multiview videos for view synthesis using side information A method processes a multiview videos of a scene, in which each video is acquired by a corresponding camera arranged at a particular pose, and in which a view of each camera overlaps with the view of at least one other camera. Side information for synthesizing a par... | 06/01/2010 |
| 7728877 | Method and system for synthesizing multiview videos A system and method synthesizes multiview videos. Multiview videos are acquired of a scene with corresponding cameras arranged at a poses such that there is view overlap between any pair of cameras. A synthesized multiview video is generated from the acquired multiv... | 06/01/2010 |
| 7724961 | Method for classifying data using an analytic manifold A computer implemented method constructs a classifier for classifying test data. High-level features are generated from low-level features extracted from training data. The high level features are positive definite matrices in a form of an analytical manifold. A sub... | 05/25/2010 |
| 7720289 | Method for constructing covariance matrices from data features A method constructs descriptors for a set of data samples and determines a distance score between pairs of subsets selected from the set of data samples. A d-dimensional feature vector is extracted for each sample in each subset of samples. The feature vector includ... | 05/18/2010 |
| 7715480 | Video encoding with motion-selective wavelet transform A method encodes a video by applying a dual-tree discrete wavelet transform to the video to generate sequences of wavelet coefficients. The sequences are compressed to produce a compressed bitstream corresponding to the video. The compression iteratively selects the... | 05/11/2010 |
| 7711182 | Method and system for sensing 3D shapes of objects with specular and hybrid specular-diffuse surfaces Surface normals and other 3D shape descriptors are determined for a specular or hybrid specular-diffuse object. A camera records an image of a smoothly spatially-varying pattern being reflected in the surface of the object, with the pattern placed at an initial posi... | 05/04/2010 |
| 7710462 | Method for randomly accessing multiview videos A method randomly accesses multiview videos. Multiview videos are acquired of a scene with corresponding cameras arranged at poses, such that there is view overlap between any pair of cameras. V-frames are generated from the multiview videos. The V-frames are encode... | 05/04/2010 |
| 7706899 | Method and apparatus for adaptive cascade proportional-integral-derivative controller An adaptive cascade proportional-integral-derivative controller produces a fixed controller output including a fixed proportional-integral-derivative and a fixed feedforward controller command, and an adaptive controller output including an adaptive cascade PID and ... | 04/27/2010 |
| 7706283 | Decentralized and dynamic route selection in cooperative relay networks A method selects an optimal route in a cooperative relay network including a set of nodes. For each node in a set of nodes of a cooperative relay network, dynamically varying channel state information is determined. A transmission policy based on the dynamically var... | 04/27/2010 |
| 7698143 | Constructing broad-band acoustic signals from lower-band acoustic signals A method generates envelope spectra and harmonic spectra from an input broad-band training acoustic signal. Corresponding non-negative envelope bases are trained for the envelope spectra and non-negative harmonic bases are trained for the harmonic spectra using conv... | 04/13/2010 |
| 7697623 | Method and system for switching antennas during transmission time intervals in OFDMA systems A method and system switches antennas in an orthogonal frequency division multiplexed access (OFDMA) wireless communication system while transmitting symbols. Each symbol includes a cyclic prefix and a block of data signals. The symbols are transmitted during a firs... | 04/13/2010 |
| 7693331 | Object segmentation using visible and infrared images A method tracks an object. A sequence of visible images and a sequence of infrared images are acquired concurrently of a scene. A visible background image is maintained from each current visible image, while an infrared background image is maintained from each curre... | 04/06/2010 |
