136results about How to "Maximize likelihood" patented technology

System(s) and method(s) are provided for data management and data processing. For example, various embodiments may include systems and methods relating to relatively larger groups of data being selected with comparable or better performing selection results (e.g., high data redundancy elimination and / or average chunk size). In various embodiments, the system(s) and method(s) may include, for example a data group, block, or chunk combining technique or / and a data group, block, or chunk splitting technique. Various embodiments may include a first standard or typical data grouping, blocking, or chunking technique and / or data group, block, or chunk combining technique or / and a data group, block, or chunk splitting technique. Exemplary system(s) and method(s) may relate to data hashing and / or data elimination. Embodiments may include a look-ahead buffer and determine whether to emit small chunks or large chunks based on characteristics of underlying data and / or particular application of the invention (e.g., for backup).

Systems and methods which provide mapping an arbitrary outdoor environment and positioning a ground-based vehicle relative to this map. In one embodiment, a land-based vehicle travels across a section of terrain, recording both location data from sensors such as GPS as well as scene data from sensors such as laser scanners or cameras. These data are then used to create a high-resolution map of the terrain, which may have well-defined structure (such as a road) or which may be unstructured (such as a section of desert), and which does not rely on the presence of any “landmark” features. In another embodiment, the vehicle localizes itself relative to this map in a subsequent drive over the same section of terrain, using a computer algorithm that incorporates incoming sensor data from the vehicle by attempting to maximize the likelihood of the observed data given the map.

A medical digital expert system to predict a patient's response to a variety of treatments (using pre-treatment information) is described. The system utilizes data fusion, advanced signal / information processing and machine learning / inference methodologies and technologies to integrate and explore diverse sets of attributes, parameters and information that are available to select the optimal treatment choice for an individual or for a subset of individuals suffering from any illness or disease including psychiatric, mental or neurological disorders and illnesses. The methodology and system can also be used to determine or confirm medical diagnosis, estimate the level, index, severity or critical medical parameters of the illness or condition, or provide a list of likely diagnoses for an individual suffering / experiencing any illness, disorder or condition.

Novel methods for producing, and compositions of, humanized immunoglobulins having one or more complementarity determining regions (CDR's) and possible additional amino acids from a donor immunoglobulin and a framework region from an accepting human immunoglobulin are provided. Each humanized immunoglobulin chain will usually comprise, in addition to the CDR's, amino acids from the donor immunoglobulin framework that are, e.g., capable of interacting with the CDR's to effect binding affinity, such as one or more amino acids which are immediately adjacent to a CDR in the donor immunoglobulin or those within about about 3Å as predicted by molecular modeling. The heavy and light chains may each be designed by using any one or all of various position criteria. When combined into an intact antibody, the humanized immunoglobulins of the present invention will be substantially non-immunogenic in humans and retain substantially the same affinity as the donor immunoglobulin to the antigen, such as a protein or other compound containing an epitope.

A system and method for compensating users for responding to advertisements in an interactive manner poses questions for users and dynamically generates further questions in response to users' answers to previous questions. A user sets up an account on a remote computer that is then credited each time a user has completed the series of questions and answers relating to an advertisement. In setting up the account, the remote computer obtains demographic information from the user, such as the user's name, age, gender, place of residence and occupation. The remote computer can generate the questions not only in response to answers to previous questions but also in response to the demographic information. The remote computer provides the advertisers with the users' answers or with statistical information computed in response to the answers and the user demographics.

The speech synthesizer is personalized to sound like or mimic the speech characteristics of an individual speaker. The individual speaker provides a quantity of enrollment data, which can be extracted from a short quantity of speech, and the system modifies the base synthesis parameters to more closely resemble those of the new speaker. More specifically, the synthesis parameters may be decomposed into speaker dependent parameters, such as context-independent parameters, and speaker independent parameters, such as context dependent parameters. The speaker dependent parameters are adapted using enrollment data from the new speaker. After adaptation, the speaker dependent parameters are combined with the speaker independent parameters to provide a set of personalized synthesis parameters. To adapt the parameters with a small amount of enrollment data, an eigenspace is constructed and used to constrain the position of the new speaker so that context independent parameters not provided by the new speaker may be estimated.

Automatic process control of additive manufacturing. The system includes an additive manufacturing device for making an object and a local network computer controlling the device. At least one camera is provided with a view of a manufacturing volume of the device to generate network accessible images of the object. The computer is programmed to stop the manufacturing process when the object is defective based en the images of the object.

The invention pertains to systems and method for social invitation to facilitate playing and interaction of a mobile application or mobile game on a mobile device without logging into a 3rd party social networking site. A social invitation system is provided for one or more mobile devices in communication with a remote Application Growth Engine (AGE) server, via a communication network. The AGE server is provided with an AGE algorithm to create social graph associations based on address book contacts captured from an address book resident on the mobile device, and in response to a request for social invitations from the mobile device, to generate a list of recommended invitations of target users based on user social graph associations so that a user at the mobile device can invite friends, family, and colleagues from the address book to download the mobile app / game in order to facilitate playing and interaction of the mobile application or mobile game on the user's mobile device.

A method for improving the associating articles of information or stories with topics associated with specific subjects (subject topics) and with a general topic of words that are not associated with any subject. The inventive method is trained using Hidden Markov Models (HMM) to represent each story with each state in the HMM representing each topic. A standard Expectation and Maximization algorithm, as are known in this art field can be used to maximize the expected likelihood to the method relating the words associated with each topic to that topic. In the method, the probability that each word in a story is related to a subject topic is determined and evaluated, and the subject topics with the lowest probability are discarded. The remaining subject topics are evaluated and a sub-set of subject topics with the highest probabilities over all the words in a story are considered to be the "correct" subject topic set. The method utilizes only the positive information and words related to other topics are not taken as negative evidence for a topic being evaluated. The technique has particular application to text that is derived from speech via a speech recognizer or any other techniques that results in a text file. The use of a general topic category enhances the results since most words in any story are not keywords that are associated with any given subject topic. The removal of the general words reduces the numbers of words being considered as keywords related to any given subject topic. The reduced number of words being processed allows the method to enhance the discrimination between the fewer words as related to the subject topics. The topics can range from general, for example "the U.S. economy", to very specific, for example, "the relationship of the yen to the dollar in the U.S. economy."

A system and method for compensating users for responding to advertisements in an interactive manner poses questions for users and dynamically generates further questions in response to users' answers to previous questions. A user sets up an account on a remote computer that is then credited each time a user has completed the series of questions and answers relating to an advertisement. In setting up the account, the remote computer obtains demographic information from the user, such as the user's name, age, gender, place of residence and occupation. The remote computer can generate the questions not only in response to answers to previous questions but also in response to the demographic information. The remote computer provides the advertisers with the users' answers or with statistical information computed in response to the answers and the user demographics.

Disclosed is a bone fixation device for retaining vertebra of a spinal column in a desired spatial relationship. In one embodiment, the device comprises a first member connectable to a first vertebra and a second member connectable to a second vertebra and interconnected with the first member. The first and second members are movable relative to one another across a range of motion. An adjustor member transitions between a first state and a second state, wherein the range of motion between the first member and second member spans a first distance when the adjustor member is in the first state, and wherein the range of motion between the first member and second member spans a second distance when the adjustor member is in the second state.

In a hierarchical taxonomy of document, the categories of information may be structured as a binary tree with the nodes of the binary tree containing information relevant to the search. The binary tree may be ‘trained’ or formed by examining a training set of documents and separating those documents into two child nodes. Each of those sets of documents may then be further split into two nodes to create the binary tree data structure. The nodes may be generated to maximize the likelihood that all of the training documents are in either or both of the two child nodes. In one example, each node of the binary tree may be associated with a list of terms and each term in each list of terms is associated with a probability of that term appearing in a document given that node. New documents may be categorized by the nodes of the tree. For example, the new documents may be assigned to a particular node based upon the statistical similarity between that document and the associated node.

A bone plating system is provided that permits maintenance of a compression force while also accommodating bony subsidence, among other features. Methods of implantation are also provided that improve alignment and placement during implantation and avoid maneuvers that weaken the vertebral bodies. A modular distraction screw is placed during the initial stages of surgery when all relevant landmarks are still intact. After completion of the surgical bone work, a proximal end of the distraction screw is detached, leaving a protruding distal segment implanted in the centerline of the vertebral bodies above and below the newly fused disc space. A bone plate is guided into proper position relative to the upper and lower vertebra by attaching the bone plate to the protruding distal segments. The distal segments of the distraction screws are tightened onto the plate and the plate is held stationary while bone screws are placed. The bone plating system is also extendable, allowing additional bone plates to be placed and coupled with existing plate components to create a multi-level plating system. Additional bone plates may be placed contemporaneously or during a subsequent surgical procedure.

The invention provides nucleotide analogs and methods of using them in sequencing reactions.

A method and system for selecting potential bidders or suppliers for a current electronic auction by using quantitative models to create a prioritized list of potential suppliers. A prioritization software analyzes a supplier's bidding participation history and bidding competitiveness history from the bidding data collected for all prior auctions in which the supplier participated or was requested by the auction coordinator to participate. Using the prior bid data, the software generates a participation score and a competitiveness score for the supplier. The participation and competitiveness scores may be combined to generate a combined score. All potential suppliers may be prioritized based on any of these scores individually or a combination of two or more of these scores. The prioritization list generated using quantitative values instead of subjective values minimizes the amount of unnecessary calls to potential suppliers and maximizes the likelihood that a called supplier will place a competitive bid in the current auction, thereby increasing the bidding yield per supplier selected.

The present invention relates to a system and methodology that applies automated learning procedures for determining document relevance and assisting information retrieval activities. A system is provided that facilitates a machine-learned approach to determine document relevance. The system includes a storage component that receives a set of human selected items to be employed as positive test cases of highly relevant documents. A training component trains at least one classifier with the human selected items as positive test cases and one or more other items as negative test cases in order to provide a query-independent model, wherein the other items can be selected by a statistical search, for example. Also, the trained classifier can be employed to aid an individual in identifying and selecting new positive cases or utilized to filter or re-rank results from a statistical-based search.

Systems and methods are provided for facilitating contact or communication between users or participants. A profile matching process is performed to match a user profile of a first user to a user profile of a second user. A number of questions to ask the second user are automatically selected. In addition, an answer to one or more of the questions may be suggested to the second user. The questions and any suggested answers are then sent to the second user at an associated user device. A reward to be revealed to the second user in response to answering the questions may also be provided. A summary of the answers given by the second user may be provided to the first user. In response, the first user may choose to share his or her full or partial user profile, contact information, or the like with the second user.

The present invention relates to a system and methodology that applies automated learning procedures for determining document relevance and assisting information retrieval activities. A system is provided that facilitates a machine-learned approach to determine document relevance. The system includes a storage component that receives a set of human selected items to be employed as positive test cases of highly relevant documents. A training component trains at least one classifier with the human selected items as positive test cases and one or more other items as negative test cases in order to provide a query-independent model, wherein the other items can be selected by a statistical search, for example. Also, the trained classifier can be employed to aid an individual in identifying and selecting new positive cases or utilized to filter or re-rank results from a statistical-based search.

Disclosed herein is an improvement to a reservation booking website for rental vehicle reservations wherein the functionality of managing customer profiles / accounts is expanded upon to provide customers with greater control over the profile data stored in their associated personalized accounts / profiles, particularly in connection with the “favorite” or “preferred” branch locations for rental vehicle reservations that are stored in the customer profiles / accounts. Also disclosed herein is an improvement to a reservation booking website wherein customers who plan to travel via general aviation (GA) are provided with a GA reservation creation path that is responsive to their GA travel needs. Also disclosed herein is an improvement to a reservation booking website for rental vehicle reservations wherein customers are provided with a streamlined ability to log into their customer profiles / accounts. Preferably fields for customer entry of a password for a customer profile / account (and optionally a field for customer entry of a user name for a customer profile / account) are provided on several of the displayed web pages (e.g., a choose vehicle page, a renter information page, a choose location page etc.), or more preferably, on all of the web pages that are displayed to the customer when the customer has not yet logged into his / her profile / account.

A method for determining a transmission channel for multi-hop transmission of a data packet from a plurality of data channels in an ad-hoc network. The network includes at least one local peer group. Each local peer group has a plurality of moving vehicles as nodes. The method comprises steps of determining available channels for data packet transmission at each node, transmitting a first list of available channels to at least one other node, receiving, from the at least one other node, a second list of available channel for the at least one other node, creating an available channel table including the first and second lists of available channels, selecting a transmitting channel for a data packet based upon information in the available channel table, and advertising the selected channel to the at least one other node.

The present invention relates to a method for determining the presence or absence of contaminating bacteria in a packaged food sample comprising storing food in a package having as a lining a hydrophilic polymeric composition, said composition preferably being permeable to water and at least one gas dissolved in water or water vapor and being selected from the group consisting of carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, hydrogen sulfide, sulfur dioxide, hydrogen and ammonia gas and containing an indicator for detecting the presence or abscence of said gas; said indicator being polymerized or dispersed throughout said polymeric composition or coated onto a hydrophobic polymeric composition.

The present invention provides improved methods for producing RPE cells from human embryonic stem cells or from other human pluripotent stem cells. The invention also relates to human retinal pigmented epithelial cells derived from human embryonic stem cells or other human multipotent or pluripotent stem cells. hRPE cells derived from embryonic stem cells are molecularly distinct from adult and fetal-derived RPE cells, and are also distinct from embryonic stem cells. The hRPE cells described herein are useful for treating retinal degenerative diseases.