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A method and system for providing efficient menu services for an information processing system that uses a telephone or other form of audio user interface. In one embodiment, the menu services provide effective support for novice users by providing a full listing of available keywords and rotating house advertisements which inform novice users of potential features and information. For experienced users, cues are rendered so that at any time the user can say a desired keyword to invoke the corresponding application. The menu is flat to facilitate its usage. Full keyword listings are rendered after the user is given a brief cue to say a keyword. Service messages rotate words and word prosody. When listening to receive information from the user, after the user has been cued, soft background music or other audible signals are rendered to inform the user that a response may now be spoken to the service. Other embodiments determine default cities, on which to report information, based on characteristics of the caller or based on cities that were previously selected by the caller. Other embodiments provide speech concatenation processes that have co-articulation and real-time subject-matter-based word selection which generate human sounding speech. Other embodiments reduce the occurrences of falsely triggered barge-ins during content delivery by only allowing interruption for certain special words. Other embodiments offer special services and modes for calls having voice recognition trouble. The special services are entered after predetermined criterion have been met by the call. Other embodiments provide special mechanisms for automatically recovering the address of a caller.

A method and system for providing efficient menu services for an information processing system that uses a telephone or other form of audio user interface. In one embodiment, the menu services provide effective support for novice users by providing a full listing of available keywords and rotating house advertisements which inform novice users of potential features and information. For experienced users, cues are rendered so that at any time the user can say a desired keyword to invoke the corresponding application. The menu is flat to facilitate its usage. Full keyword listings are rendered after the user is given a brief cue to say a keyword. Service messages rotate words and word prosody. When listening to receive information from the user, after the user has been cued, soft background music or other audible signals are rendered to inform the user that a response may now be spoken to the service. Other embodiments determine default cities, on which to report information, based on characteristics of the caller or based on cities that were previously selected by the caller. Other embodiments provide speech concatenation processes that have co-articulation and real-time subject-matter-based word selection which generate human sounding speech. Other embodiments reduce the occurrences of falsely triggered barge-ins during content delivery by only allowing interruption for certain special words. Other embodiments offer special services and modes for calls having voice recognition trouble. The special services are entered after predetermined criterion have been met by the call. Other embodiments provide special mechanisms for automatically recovering the address of a caller.

A method and system for providing efficient menu services for an information processing system that uses a telephone or other form of audio user interface. In one embodiment, the menu services provide effective support for novice users by providing a full listing of available keywords and rotating house advertisements which inform novice users of potential features and information. For experienced users, cues are rendered so that at any time the user can say a desired keyword to invoke the corresponding application. The menu is flat to facilitate its usage. Full keyword listings are rendered after the user is given a brief cue to say a keyword. Service messages rotate words and word prosody. When listening to receive information from the user, after the user has been cued, soft background music or other audible signals are rendered to inform the user that a response may now be spoken to the service. Other embodiments determine default cities, on which to report information, based on characteristics of the caller or based on cities that were previously selected by the caller. Other embodiments provide speech concatenation processes that have co-articulation and real-time subject-matter-based word selection which generate human sounding speech. Other embodiments reduce the occurrences of falsely triggered barge-ins during content delivery by only allowing interruption for certain special words. Other embodiments offer special services and modes for calls having voice recognition trouble. The special services are entered after predetermined criterion have been met by the call. Other embodiments provide special mechanisms for automatically recovering the address of a caller.

A method and system for providing efficient menu services for an information processing system that uses a telephone or other form of audio user interface. In one embodiment, the menu services provide effective support for novice users by providing a full listing of available keywords and rotating house advertisements which inform novice users of potential features and information. For experienced users, cues are rendered so that at any time the user can say a desired keyword to invoke the corresponding application. The menu is flat to facilitate its usage. Full keyword listings are rendered after the user is given a brief cue to say a keyword. Service messages rotate words and word prosody. When listening to receive information from the user, after the user has been cued, soft background music or other audible signals are rendered to inform the user that a response may now be spoken to the service. Other embodiments determine default cities, on which to report information, based on characteristics of the caller or based on cities that were previously selected by the caller. Other embodiments provide speech concatenation processes that have co-articulation and real-time subject-matter-based word selection which generate human sounding speech. Other embodiments reduce the occurrences of falsely triggered barge-ins during content delivery by only allowing interruption for certain special words. Other embodiments offer special services and modes for calls having voice recognition trouble. The special services are entered after predetermined criterion have been met by the call. Other embodiments provide special mechanisms for automatically recovering the address of a caller.

An Internet-based customer referral system enables individuals and other business entities (“associates”) to refer customers to a merchant's web site in return for compensation, such as commissions on resulting sales. Entities initially register with the merchant web site as associates, and are provided with instructions for creating links to the merchant web site. An associate may, for example, set up an associate web site (or other information dissemination system) with reviews, recommendations, and / or editorials of specific products in the merchant's online catalog, together with links to associated pages in the catalog. When a user follows such a link and then makes a purchase (as tracked by the merchant web site), the system preferably awards a commission to the associate. The system also preferably generates feedback reports that provide each associate with data regarding the effectiveness of each link provided by that associate.

An Internet-based customer referral system enables individuals and other business entities (“associates”) to market products sold on a merchant web site in return for commissions. Following registration, the associate sets up a web site (or other information dissemination system) to distribute hypertextual catalog documents that include marketing information (product reviews, recommendations, etc.) about selected products of the merchant. In association with each such product, the catalog document includes a hypertextual “referral link” that allows a user / customer to access the merchant web site and purchase the product. When a customer selects a referral link, the customer's computer transmits unique IDs of the selected product and of the associate to the merchant's site, allowing the merchant to identify the product and the referring associate. If the customer subsequently purchases a product from the merchant's site, a commission is automatically credited to an account of the referring associate.

A database store method and system for a virtual persistent heap may include an Application Programming Interface (API) that provides a mechanism to cache portions of the virtual heap into an in-memory heap for use by an application. The virtual heap may be stored in a persistent store that may include one or more virtual persistent heaps, with one virtual persistent heap for each application running in the virtual machine. Each virtual persistent heap may be subdivided into cache lines. The store API may provide atomicity on the store transaction to substantially guarantee the consistency of the information stored in the database. The database store API provides several calls to manage the virtual persistent heap in the store. The calls may include, but are not limited to: opening the store, closing the store, atomic read transaction, atomic write transaction, and atomic delete transaction.

By introducing a atomic species, such as carbon, fluorine and the like, into the drain and source regions, as well as in the body region, the junction leakage of SOI transistors may be significantly increased, thereby providing an enhanced leakage path for accumulated minority charge carriers. Consequently, fluctuations of the body potential may be significantly reduced, thereby improving the overall performance of advanced SOI devices. In particular embodiments, the mechanism may be selectively applied to threshold voltage sensitive device areas, such as static RAM areas.

Beacon-based guidance functionality is described herein that assists the user in navigating over a desired route within an environment, or otherwise interacting with the environment. The environment, in turn, is populated with a plurality of beacons having, in one implementation, respective non-overlapping ranges. The desired route traverses ranges associated with a route-specific set of beacons, from among the plurality of beacons. In one manner of operation, the beacon-based guidance functionality determines whether a user is within a range of one of the route-specific beacons. Based on that knowledge, the beacon-based guidance module can generate guidance information which directs the user towards a next waypoint in the route.

By forming a deep recess through the buried insulating layer and re-growing a strained semiconductor material, an enhanced strain generation mechanism may be provided in SOI-like transistors. Consequently, the strain may also be efficiently created by the embedded strained semiconductor material across the entire active layer, thereby significantly enhancing the performance of transistor devices, in which two channel regions may be defined.

A coil tubing or jointed dual wall drill string assembly for subsurface drilling. The drill string assembly includes a metallic outer tube having an outer tube first end and an outer tube second end opposite the outer tube first end. The assembly also includes a flexible, substantially non-metallic inner tube that is substantially enclosed within and generally coaxially aligned with the outer tube. The flexible, substantially non-metallic inner tube has an inner tube first end, an inner tube second end opposite the inner tube first end, and an inner tube inner diameter. The inner tube and the outer tube define an annular channel therebetween. The drill string assembly also includes a means for conveying fluid through the annular channel toward the inner tube first end. The annular channel is adapted to convey drilling fluid under pressure toward the inner tube first end and the inner tube is adapted to convey cuttings toward the inner tube second end.

An access point generates beacons at different power levels at different times to provide an acceptable tradeoff between coverage area associated with the beacons and outage experienced at nearby access terminals. For example, a femto access point may transmit beacons at a relatively low power for a relatively long period of time to reduce interference at nearby access terminals that are being served by a macro access point. The femto access point may then transmit beacons at a relatively high power for a relatively short period of time to enable nearby access terminals to receive the beacons. Also, a given transmit chain may be used to provide frequency hopping of high and low power beacons.

Methods and systems are disclosed for phototreatment in which replaceable containers comprising one or more adjuvant (consumable or re-useable) substances are employed. The adjuvant substance can be, for example, a topical substance or a coolant. Systems are disclosed for using a topical substance to detect contact of a phototreatment device with a tissue, detect speed of a phototreatment device over the tissue, detect regions of tissue that have been treated by a phototreatment device and / or to provide other benefits to the tissue such as improved skin tone and texture, tanning, etc. Safety systems are also disclosed that ensure that a proper consumable substance and / or container is connected to a phototreatment device and / or directed to a proper target. Additionally, cooling systems and methods that utilize phase change materials for extracting heat from a light generating device are disclosed.

A method and apparatus to support a hierarchical architecture which integrates wireless mobile terminals into networks such as the Internet. This architecture provides for efficient packet transfers over mobile wireless networks by efficiently allocating wireless resources. Label Switched packet forwarding facilitates traffic engineering and internetworking by attaching short fixed length labels to communications packets at an entry node to a wireless network to provide an efficient path to an exit node of the same wireless network. Forwarding mechanisms and limited broadcasting of reachability information are used in managing and routing the communications packets through the wireless mobile network. The present invention also supports multiple radio links between a mobile and a multiplicity of base stations. Multi-link techniques are used to affect an efficient packet transfer and admission policy.

A solution for consumer self-service merchandise order placement, payment, and pick up, integrated with a merchant's Internet e-commerce site and with an effective merchant point-of-sale management system. The solution includes a system and apparatus and of a set of specific business methods. A self-service merchandising machine for un-attended, autonomous, and automatic dispensing of retail products includes an input / output subsystem; a control subsystem having and being based upon a computer; a specially configured storage subsystem; a unique pick-and-place robotic-based product retrieval subsystem with an adaptive material handling system; and a product extraction subsystem. A related method of using the machine includes the steps of enabling self-service retail sale; permitting Internet sale with local merchandise pick-up; managing the business operations of the system; replenishing inventory using Kanban methods; restocking inventory; operating and monitoring a security camera; handling Category I error; and handling Category II error.

A microphone circuit assembly for an external application processor, such as a programmable Digital Signal Processor, may include a microphone preamplifier and analog-to-digital converter to generate microphone signal samples at a first predetermined sample rate. A speech feature extractor is configured for receipt and processing of predetermined blocks of the microphone signal samples to extract speech feature vectors representing speech features of the microphone signal samples. The microphone circuit assembly may include a speech vocabulary comprising a target word or target phrase of human speech encoded as a set of target feature vectors and a decision circuit is configured to compare the speech feature vectors generated by the speech feature extractor with the target feature vectors to detect the target speech word or phrase.

An apparatus for automatically suggesting information layers in augmented reality may include a processor and memory storing executable computer program code that cause the apparatus to at least perform operations including providing layers of information relating to virtual information corresponding to information indicating a current location of the apparatus. The computer program code may further cause the apparatus to determine that a layer(s) of information is enabled to provide virtual information for display. The virtual information corresponds to locations of real world objects in or proximate to the current location. The computer program code may further cause the apparatus to determine other information layers associates with content for the current location based on the number of items virtual information for the enabled layer being below a threshold and automatically suggest one or more other layers of information for selection. Corresponding methods and computer program products are also provided.

A method for communication in a sequence of frames includes assigning a respective time slot to each of a plurality of mobile units, while reserving an unassigned time slot. During a first frame, one of the mobile units transmits an uplink signal in the respective time slot, carrying first uplink data over the air to a base station. The base station transmits a downlink signal to the mobile unit indicating that retransmission of the first uplink data is required. Responsively to the downlink signal, during a second frame subsequent to the first frame, the mobile unit transmits the uplink signal both in the respective time slot and in the reserved time slot so as to carry the first uplink data and second uplink data over the air to the base station. A similar method may be used for downlink retransmission.

A system and method for processing data on a plurality of distributed computing devices. In accordance with one aspect of the invention, a system and method prioritizes and distributes computing tasks over a network of computers. One embodiment, remote computers communicate signals indicative of the availability of computing resources to a server. The server determines if at least one computer has available resources that match the requirements of at least one stored computing task. If the server determines that an available resource matches at least one computing task, an agent storing the computing task is communicated to the computer for execution of the task. In accordance with another aspect, a system and method provide an improved knowledge based system utilizing a set of expressions displayed on a graphical user interface to configure and view software objects that process and manage data.

A domain manager device for managing a network. The manager issues to a new device joining the network a number of symmetric authentication keys, and preferably a number of authentication tickets. Each respective authentication key allows the new device to communicate securely with one respective other device comprised in the network. Each respective authentication ticket allows a device with a first identifier to authenticate itself to a device with a second identifier. The new device receives those authentication tickets whose first identifier matches its identifier. The new device presents the ticket with second identifier ‘B’ to device ‘B’ to authenticate itself to ‘B’. Preferably the domain manager generates a number of master device keys and issues one to the new device. Then the authentication tickets can be encrypted with the master device key issued to device with the second identifier.

A low latency multicasting receive and send apparatus and method comprising low latency receive and send queues. In an InfiniBand® network each destination group of nodes (recipients) is identified by a unique Global ID (GID)+Local ID (LID). Each node whose ports are part of a multicast group identify themselves via a LID which identifies participating ports. When a switch receives such a multicast packet with a multicast LID in the packet's DLID field it replicates the packet to each of the designated ports. Each destination adapter at a receiving node receives the multicast packet and distributes copies of the packet to QPs in the host system that are registered for the multicast address.

A control processor manages the power budget in a drive enclosure and is within the drive enclosure which monitors in real time a redundantly configured power supply unit, drives, interposers, and temperature sensors, and determines the power settings for each drive to avoid overload and overheating in the system. The control processor dynamically adjusts the mode of operation as needed during operation through the SAS interposer. A localized monitoring and control mechanism eliminates the need for extraneous coordination of information across various entities that access the storage. Data tunneling takes place directly between the compute nodes and target drives through the SAS expander and interposer, and does not need buffering the pending IO requests in the DRAM.

The invention relates to a method for assigning an IP address to a device (116), comprising the following steps: connecting the device (116) to a port (110) of a switch (104), transmitting an identification code (124) of the port (110) from the switch (104) to the device (116), transmitting the identification code (124) of the port (110) from the device (116) to an address server (122), assigning the IP address to the device (116) on the basis of the identification code (124) of the port (110).

A water-soluble photo-activatable polymer including: a photo-activatable group adapted to be activated by an irradiation source and to form a covalent bond between the water-soluble photo-activatable polymer and a matrix having at least one carbon; a reactive group adapted to covalently react with a biomaterial for subsequent delivery of the biomaterial to a cell; a hydrophilic group; and a polymer precursor. A composition including a monomolecular layer of the water-soluble photo-activatable polymer and a matrix having at least one carbon, wherein the monomolecular layer is covalently attached to the matrix by a covalent bond between the photo-activatable group and the at least one carbon. The composition further includes a biomaterial having a plurality of active groups, wherein the biomaterial is covalently attached to the monomolecular layer by covalent bonding between the active groups and reactive groups. Also provided is a method for delivery of a biomaterial to a cell.

Embodiments of the present invention relate generally to the classification and management of digital data artifacts, and particularly to systems and methods for annotating and associating a comment with a content item available on a computer, TV or mobile (e.g., handheld) device using forms. The digital data artifacts may include at least user-defined and extensible artifacts, or pre-built artifacts, or comments and tags. Comments may include, but are not limited to, one or more of unstructured text, structured data (e.g., data entered or browsed to via a form), an audio or video file, tags, etc. The artifacts may act as a classification system for a user. A method embodying the invention includes navigating to a content item for comment or annotation, and selecting a tag set and / or a form, which is filled in and used to comment on the item and then saved in a database. A tagging or data association server saves the form and user extensible tag set and related files and data sets with the content item and provides various presentation, analysis and information retrieval functionalities. Community responses to the form may be analyzed by semantic analysis and subsequent aggregation and display of the form data.

A dual wall drill string assembly for subsurface drilling. The drill string assembly includes a metallic outer tube having an outer tube first end and an outer tube second end opposite the outer tube first end. The assembly also includes a flexible, substantially non-metallic inner tube that is substantially enclosed within and generally coaxially aligned with the outer tube. The flexible, substantially non-metallic inner tube has an inner tube first end, an inner tube second end opposite the inner tube first end, and an inner tube inner diameter. The inner tube and the outer tube define an annular channel therebetween. The drill string assembly also includes a means for conveying fluid through the annular channel toward the inner tube first end. The annular channel is adapted to convey drilling fluid under pressure toward the inner tube first end, and the inner tube is adapted to convey cuttings toward the inner tube second end.

By using an implantation mask having a high intrinsic stress, SMT sequences may be provided in which additional lithography steps may be avoided. Consequently, a strain source may be provided without significantly contributing to the overall process complexity.

One embodiment of a computing system configured to manage divergent threads in a SIMD thread group includes a stack configured to store state information for processing control instructions. A parallel processing unit is configured to perform the steps of determining if one or more threads diverge during execution of a conditional control instruction. A disable mask allows for the use of conditional return and break instructions in a multithreaded SIMD architecture. Additional control instructions are used to set up thread processing target addresses for synchronization, breaks, and returns.

An apparatus and a method for an ozone-based treatment of polluted water are disclosed. The apparatus and the method generally comprise three stages. The first stage is an ozone treatment stage wherein the polluted water is treated with ozone gas. The second stage is a gas-liquid separation stage wherein excess non-dissolved gases, from the ozone treatment stage, are removed from the water whereby the water exiting the gas-liquid separation stage is substantially saturated with dissolved gases and substantially free of non-dissolved gases. The last stage is a membrane filtration stage wherein the gas-saturated water generally undergoes micro-filtration or ultra-filtration. Microbubbles formed during this final stage generally prevent the accumulation of particles and pollutants on the surface of the membranes and / or inside the openings or pores thereof; thereby acting as a self-cleaning mechanism for the membrane filter.