658 results about "Time variable" patented technology

A method of and system for providing an incentive program for conserving a consumable resource such as electricity, natural gas, oil, air or water. The present invention monitors utilization of the resource at a location, and then determines a type and quantity of variable resource points to be provided to an account associated with the location or with a participant by analyzing the monitored resource utilization with respect to a plurality of varying conditions (time-variant, location-variant, cost-variant etc.). These conditions may be independent or interdependent; these relationships will be incorporated into the calculations resulting in the award of the type and quantity of resource points determined by the Program. The resource points are then stored in an account associated with the location or with a participant for future use.

The invention provides a system and method for creating and facilitating the exchange of wagering-based transferable financial instruments. The instruments may be used to embody multiple various positions based upon the ultimate outcomes of uncertain future contingent events, including but not limited to outcomes of games of skill and chance. The invention further provides systems and platforms for monitoring, displaying information, and facilitating trading as to such instruments among multiple investment market participants, and a hosting or house participant, for time-variable buying and selling of such instruments.

In one embodiment, the invention provides a portable wireless personal communication system for cooperating with a remote certification authority to employ time variable secure key information pursuant to a predetermined encryption algorithm to facilitate convenient, secure encrypted communication. The disclosed system includes a wireless handset, such as PDA, smartphone, cellular telephone or the like, characterized by a relatively robust data processing capability and a body mounted key generating component which is adapted to be mounted on an individual's body, in a permanent or semi-permanent manner, for wirelessly broadcasting, within the immediate proximity of the individual, a secret or private key identifying signal corresponding to a time variable secure key information under the control of the certification authority. The key identifying signal is generated in a format that facilitates secure wireless communication with the individual in accordance with a predetermined encryption algorithm including a PKI encryption algorithm. The disclosed system may be used with a console for coordinating access to a variety of different communication system and networks.

A system and a method for establishing or specifying the online status of a user forming part of an instant messaging system. The IM system includes clients having IM client applications, an IM server, and a user information database that is selectively connected to the clients via the internet. The user database stores an activity status for each user's activity with the IM server system. The activity status includes: (i) a time variable signifying the time of or time since the last prescribed involvement with the IM server; and (ii) a probability variable signifying the likelihood of the user still being online. Monitoring means is provided to continuously monitor user activity with said IM server and to continuously update the activity status of users stored on the database. Checking means is also provided to check the activity status of each user stored on the database and adjust said probability variable.

A method and apparatus processes multi-channel audio by encoding, transmitting or recording “dry” audio tracks or “stems” in synchronous relationship with time-variable metadata controlled by a content producer and representing a desired degree and quality of diffusion. Audio tracks are compressed and transmitted in connection with synchronized metadata representing diffusion and preferably also mix and delay parameters. The separation of audio stems from diffusion metadata facilitates the customization of playback at the receiver, taking into account the characteristics of local playback environment.

Apparatus and methods are provided for analyzing surface characteristics of a test object using broadband scanning interferometry. Test objects amenable to these apparatus and methods include but are not limited to semiconductor wafers, semiconductor devices, metallic surfaces, and the like. An interferometry system is used to obtain an interferometry signal and related to data embodied in the signal representative of the test object surface. This signal and / or data is used to construct an n-dimensional function that includes an independent frequency variable and an independent time variable, and / or an n-dimensional function that includes an independent scale variable and an independent time variable, and / or a multi-domain function. These functions are compared with various models to obtain a best match that is then used to characterize the test object surface.

A system to improve safety of workers who are in proximity to mobile machines includes a machine mountable radio-frequency identification reader that wirelessly monitors radio-frequency identification tags worn by workers moving relative to and in proximity to a mobile machine when the reader is mounted on the machine. The reader includes a processor and an antenna front-end which is switchable between an omni-directional antenna or at least one directional antenna. The omni-directional antenna is mountable so as to monitor a machine circumference completely around the mobile machine. Each directional antenna is mountable so as to monitor only either a front or a back of the mobile machine relative to the machines direction of motion.

According to a first aspect, there is provided a method for controlling uplink access transmissions in a radio communication system, wherein a user equipment determines a delay time for transmitting a signal on an uplink access channel, wherein the delay time is randomly determined based upon a probability distribution that increases in density with increasing delay. According to a second aspect, there is provided a method for controlling uplink access transmissions in a radio communication system, wherein from a base station of the radio communication system, time variable information is signalled in downlink to user equipments located in an area covered by the base station, wherein the information is used to determine delay times for transmitting signals on an uplink access channel and wherein the information varies based upon a probability distribution which increases in density with increasing time.

A stimulation system, an implantable electrode device and a method for operating an implantable electrode device are proposed. A simplified implantation, a simple construction and reliable control are made possible by the electrode device being supplied with energy, and controlled, in an exclusively wireless manner via a time-variable magnetic field. The magnetic field is generated by an implanted control device.

A method of and system for providing a consumable resource such as electricity, natural gas, oil, air or water together with an incentive program of variable resource points to reward the buyer for not using the resource being provided. The invention monitors utilization of the resource at a location, and then determines a type and quantity of variable resource points to be provided to an account associated with the location or with a participant by analyzing the monitored resource utilization with respect to a plurality of varying conditions (time-variant, location-variant, cost-variant etc.). The resource points are then stored in an account associated with the location or with a participant for future use.

Systems and processes for more accurate mortgage scoring are described. A proportional hazards model is employed in which not only the occurrence of an event, but also the time to an event such as default of a loan, is considered. In this approach, a hazard rate can be viewed as the chance that an observation will experience an event in the next instant. There are two components to the response, and a binary variable is utilized to indicate whether the event was observed or not, and a time variable. As a result, the number of loans used for modeling is greatly increased, and the time it takes to observe the event, a valuable piece of information in itself, is included in the process. In addition, nonlinear effects are advantageously modeled in a continuous fashion using hat functions to map a series of independent variables. This approach typically yields smaller prediction errors near boundary points.

The invention relates to management of contact lists in a presence enabled application supported by a communication system and having a client side on a user equipment and a server side within a presence enabled network accessible by the users through said communication system, the application being of a type in which uses of the application form time-variable virtual communities of users that temporarily interact for the purposes of the application. The method includes: users' registration with the server-side of the application, to provide candidates for the virtual communities; creation, from the candidates, of a list of the members of each virtual community in a buddy list management unit in the presence enabled network; notification of the buddy list by the list management unit to client units in the user equipment of members of the community; and displaying the notified list on the user equipment of each member receiving it.

A method and device for determining a parameter (RTO) associated with a retransmission time-out feature in a data unit transmitter implementing a protocol (TCP) that provides an acknowledgment feature and a retransmission time-out feature, where according to one aspect decreasing values of the round trip time (RTT) are treated differently with respect to their influence on a mean deviation parameter (RTTVAR) than increasing values of the round trip time, where according to another aspect weight values (g, h, w) used in the determination of the parameter (RTO) are chosen such that at least one of them is time variable, and where according to a further aspect the parameter (RTO) is also calculated on the basis of a value (SR) indicative of the number of spurious time-outs in the communication.

A method of controlling an encoding (bit) rate and a method of transmitting video data, and an encoding (bit) rate controller for a video encoder and a video data transmission system employing the methods, wherein the number of bits is allocated to a current picture on the basis of previous encoding results without defining a relation between an encoding rate and the distortion, the limited number of bits is not forced when features of the current picture are different from those of the previous pictures, and a quantizer scale is set adaptively to various features of the current picture without using an additional number of bits corresponding to variation of the quantizer scale, so that it is possible to improve the picture quality of video data to be displayed on a monitor by using such real time variable bit-rate control.

A method of and system for providing an incentive program for conserving a consumable resource such as electricity, natural gas, oil, air or water. The present invention monitors utilization of the resource at a location, and then determines a type and quantity of variable resource points to be provided to an account associated with the location or with a participant by analyzing the monitored resource utilization with respect to a plurality of varying conditions (time-variant, location-variant, cost-variant etc.). These conditions may be independent or interdependent; these relationships will be incorporated into the calculations resulting in the award of the type and quantity of resource points determined by the Program. The resource points are then stored in an account associated with the location or with a participant for future use.

The field of invention is computer-implemented methods and systems for distributing targeted messages and the serving, collecting, managing, and analyzing and reporting of information relating to mobile and other electronic devices. Targeting of messages can be improved by employing additional variables to target messages. In the push message process (1000) a message is sent to users of mobile devices based on one or more variables that may include current location as well as temporal variables such as time of day and other spatial or kinetic variables—measured and / or derived—including but not limited horizontal velocity, vertical velocity, heading, orientation, travel distance, travel time, range and / or past points of reference in additional variables such as demographics, user preferences, and / or purchasing behavior. The user may be prompted to take an action in response to the message. In the user request process (2000) a user may make a request for information with or without first receiving a message. The request may be based on one or more variables that may include current location and geographic variables such as altitude as well as temporal variables such as time of day and other spatial or kinetic variables. Information is collected, managed, analyzed, and reported in the collect information process (3000), manage information process (4000), and analysis and report information process (5000), respectively. In addition, such methods and systems can also be used for advertising, marketing, promotions, campaigns, orders, sales, subscriptions, donations, pledges and so on.

Provided are fibrous composites prepared by methods of the present invention, comprising oxides and biodegradable polymers, in which the fibers are made of aerogel-like oxide materials having nanometer-sized pores. The fibrous composition advantageously has, at least, the following characteristics: (i) a very high nanoporous surface area, which also permits nucleation of crystallites; (ii) mesoporous / macroporous interspacial networks between the fibers, providing high bioactivity and a high transport rate; (iii) macropores for natural one-like tissue growth; (iv) good mechanical properties for handling and for implant support; and (v) biodegradability for implant dissolution and time-variable mechanical properties. Further provided are methods for using the bioactive biodegradable fibrous composites as osteogenic composite materials for tissue engineering, tissue re-growth, bone implants, and bone repair, and / or for the delivery of drugs or therapeutic compounds.

This invention provides a system and method for cogeneration of electric power and building heat that efficiently interfaces a liquid-cooled electric power generator with a multi-zone forced hot water (hydronic) space heating system. The system and method utilizes an electric generator with an electric output capacity (kW) that is near the time-averaged electric power consumption rate for the building and with a heat generation capacity that is useful for meeting building heating needs. This generator is operated as the priority source of heat for the building, but normally only when there is a demand for heat in building, with the intent of running the generator for long periods of time and generating a total amount of electric energy (kWhs) that is significant in comparison to the total electric energy consumption of the building over time. The actual onsite time-variable power demand (kW) is met by a combination of the cogenerated electric power produced on site and quantities of electric power from the public electric power grid or another external power source. Hence, useful electric power is generated on site as a by-product of the required generation of heat for space or water heating. The generator is run at a speed / operating condition that is appropriate to maintaining a long operational life.

A computer-implemented method for crop type identification using satellite observation and weather data. The method includes extracting current and historical data from pixels of satellite images of a target region, generating temporal sequences of vegetation indices, based on the weather data, converting each timestamp of the temporal sequences into a modified temporal variable correlating with actual crop growth, training a classifier using a set of historical temporal sequences of vegetation indices with respect to the modified temporal variable as training features and corresponding historically known crop types as training labels, identifying a crop type for each pixel location within the satellite images using the trained classifier and the historical temporal sequences of vegetation indices with respect to the modified temporal variable for a current crop season, and estimating a crop acreage value by aggregating identified pixels associated with the crop type.

Techniques are described herein that may be used to invalidate all entries in a table. For example, the table may be a flow cache. For example, an expiry time may be associated with one or more entries in the table. The expiry time of an entry may be initially set to the sum of the system time, the expiry time of the protocol associated with the entry, and a global time variable. To check if the entry is expired at any time, the current system time may be added to the global time variable and if the result is greater than the expiry time in the entry, then the entry is expired. To invalidate all the entries, the global time variable may be incremented by a large amount which may equal the maximum expiry time of all protocols. This may cause all entries to expire. New entries may be added using the new incremented value of the global time variable and will hence not expire.

A wireline apparatus for deep well measurements in a borehole being drilled includes a drill string having multiple drill pipe sections connected end-to-end, with at least one of the drill pipe sections being electrically conductive and isolated to provide an electrode section. A nonmagnetic drill pipe section is connected in the drill string below said electrode section, and a hydraulic motor having a rotatable drill bit carrying a drill bit instrument sub having a magnetic field sensing instrument package is connected to a lowermost end of the drill string. A wireline locatable within said drill string incorporates an electrode locatable within the drill pipe electrode section, and carries at its distal end a wireline instrument package that is locatable within the nonmagnetic drill pipe section to receive data representing magnetic field data from the magnetic field sensing instrument package. A time-variable AC source is connected to the wireline to energize the drill pipe electrode section by way of the wireline electrode to produce a corresponding target current magnetic field to be detected at the drill bit instrument.

Disclosed is a wireless power transmitter which wirelessly transmits power through a wireless power repeater to a wireless power receiver using resonance. The wireless power transmitter includes a power supply unit for outputting AC power having a predetermined frequency, a transmission coil for receiving the AC power to generate a time-variable magnetic field, and a transmission resonant coil unit for transmitting power received from the transmission coil coupled with the transmission resonant coil, wherein the wireless power transmitter determines a resonance frequency for a power transmission while controlling a frequency of the AC power output from the power supply unit and a resonance frequency of the transmission resonant coil unit.

A general, computational-mathematical modeling method for the solution of large, boundary-coupled transport problems involving the flow of mass, momentum, energy or subatomic particles is disclosed. The method employs a modeling processor that extracts a matrix operator equation (or set of equations) from a numerical transport code (NTC). The outputs of software codes, available for modeling physical problems governed by conservation laws in the form of differential equations, can be processed into closed-form operator equations with the method. Included is a numerical transport code functionalization (NTCF) model which can be determined numerically, based on a system of solutions of an NTC, evaluating outputs for a given set of inputs. The NTCF model is a linear or nonlinear, multi-variable operator equation or set of such equations. The NTCF model defines relationships between general, time-variable inputs and outputs, some known and some unknown, considered as boundary values. The user of an NTCF model can directly work with the processed model output, instead of running the original numerical code in general applications of a boundary-value problem. The numerical transport code functionalization model can be employed as a surrogate for representing the numerical transport code to provide a solution to the transport problem. The invention enables modeling efficiency and availability to be increased, while computational complexity and cost decreased. Computational times for complex modeling problems can, in some cases, be dramatially reduced, for example by several orders of magnitude.

The present invention relates to a method and an apparatus for the characterization and / or the counting of particles by means of non uniform, time variable force fields and integrated optical or impedance meter sensors. The force fields can be of positive or negative dielectrophoresis, electrophoresis or electro-hydrodynamic motions, characterized by a set of stable equilibrium points for the particles (solid, liquid or gaseous); the same method is suitable for the manipulation of droplets (liquid particles) by exploiting effects known to the international scientific community with the name of Electro-wetting on dielectric. The aim of the present invention is to act on the control of the position of each particle which is present in the sample, for the purpose of displacing such particles in a deterministic or statistical way, in order to detect their presence with the integrated optical or impedance meter sensors and / or characterize their type, for the purpose of counting or manipulating them in an efficient way.

A time-variable magnetic fields generator for a magnetic resonance apparatus has at least one gradient coil with conductors extending essentially in the region of a subject-receiving hollow opening of the magnetic resonance apparatus, and that is free of conductors in a middle axial region of the hollow opening, a first radio-frequency shield that encloses the conductors disposed on the one side of the middle region, a second radio-frequency shield that encloses the conductors disposed on the other side of the middle region, a radio-frequency antenna element that emits a radio-frequency field, disposed between the first and second radio-frequency shield in the middle region, a third radio-frequency shield proceeding radially, externally around the antenna element, such that the radio-frequency shields delimit a field return space within the generator and that is designed for a return of the radio-frequency field.

A self-oscillation switching power supply including a transformer having a primary winding, a secondary winding, and a feedback winding, and further including a control winding if necessary; a switching transistor for turning on and off the current of the primary winding; a control transistor for controlling a positive feedback signal from the feedback winding or control winding to the switching transistor; and a time constant circuit which is charged by a voltage generated across the feedback winding or control winding and which supplies a control voltage to the control transistor. The self-oscillation switching power supply further comprises an electronic switch which is opened and closed in response to the positive feedback signal from the control winding or feedback winding wherein an external voltage source is connected to the time constant circuit via said electronic switch so that the charging time of the time constant circuit is varied according to an output voltage detection signal.