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| 20090003736 | METHOD AND APPARATUS FOR EVACUATING AND SEALING CONTAINERS - An apparatus and method for creating a vacuum-sealed package comprising the placement of the item to be vacuum packed in a container; sealing the container, placing a portion of the container in contact with a sealable chamber; sealing the chamber, creating holes in the container, evacuating the desired amount of air from the container and creating a seal between the interior of the container and the holes. | 01-01-2009 |
| 20090007523 | METHOD AND APPARATUS FOR EVACUATING AND SEALING CONTAINERS - An apparatus and method for creating a vacuum-sealed package comprising the placement of the item to be vacuum packed in a container; sealing the container, placing a portion of the container in contact with a sealable chamber; sealing the chamber, creating holes in the container, evacuating the desired amount of air from the container and creating a seal between the interior of the container and the holes. | 01-08-2009 |
| 20090173924 | HOIST WITH DETACHABLE POWER AND CONTROL UNIT - A hoist is powered by a separate power unit. The hoist unit includes: a motor, a mounting connector, a spool, webbing, auto cut-off and a first portion of a mating electrical connector. The control unit includes a hollow pole, a hook, a second portion of the mating electrical connector, a control switch, electrical circuitry and a battery pack. | 07-09-2009 |
| 20090249662 | AUTOMATIC STANDBY ELECTRIC CLOTHS IRON - An improved electric clothes iron comprises a water tank, chassis, handle, electrically heated soleplate, and steam chamber. The improvement, in one instance, includes heel and toe lifting pistons which are embedded in the soleplate and driven by an electric motor. A grip sensor in the handle triggers the lift piston motor to operate when the user is no longer gripping the handle. The lifting pistons are quickly retracted if the user grabs the handle again. The heated soleplate can be automatically turned off if the iron is left idle too long. | 10-08-2009 |
| 20100300919 | RESEALABLE VACUUM CONTAINERS AND SEALING TOOLS - In an aspect of the invention, a resealable vacuum bag is provided that is configured to stand upright when a storage compartment of the resealable vacuum bag is under vacuum. In preferable embodiments of the invention, the resealable vacuum bag includes a sealing member that is configured to seal (or close) the resealable bag prior to the application of vacuum. Vacuum is applied to the storage compartment through a vacuum member in fluid communication with the storage compartment at a vacuum application area of the resealable bag. A filtering member may be provided to prevent fine material (e.g., grains, powders) from entering the vacuum member during the application of vacuum to the storage compartment. In another aspect of the invention, a resealable vacuum bag having one or more filters is provided. In yet another aspect of the invention, a vacuum bag having a spout is provided. | 12-02-2010 |
| 20110014581 | KILNS FOR PROCESSING CERAMICS AND METHODS FOR USING SUCH KILNS - Kilns for processing ceramics and methods for using such kilns are disclosed herein. In one embodiment, a kiln includes an inner body configured to hold one or more ceramic workpieces for processing. The kiln can also include an outer body at least partially surrounding the inner body and spaced apart from the inner body to define an airflow passageway therebetween. The airflow passageway includes an inlet proximate to an upper portion of the outer body and an outlet proximate to a lower portion of the outer body. The kiln can further include an air mover positioned to move air through the airflow passageway from the inlet toward the outlet. In several embodiments, the kiln can additionally include a lid assembly pivotably coupled to the outer body and configured to sealably close against at least the inner body. | 01-20-2011 |
| 20110220606 | CONTAINER STOPPERS - A stopper is provided for mounting a container and aiding in the application of vacuum to the container. The stopper comprises a visual indicator for indicating when a predetermined level of vacuum has been reached in the container. The bottle stopper comprises one or more ribs for mating with containers having openings of various sizes. | 09-15-2011 |
| 20110220608 | JAR ADAPTORS - Jar adaptors are provided for mounting jars and aiding in the application of vacuum to the jars. The jar adaptors are configured to mount jars having openings of various sizes. The jar adaptors are configured to mount jars, provide vacuum to the jars, and be subsequently removed from the jars after vacuum has been applied to the jars. Vacuum is maintained in the jars with the aid of a seal formed between the openings of the jars and lids disposed over the openings. | 09-15-2011 |
| 20120118779 | RETRACTABLE LABEL - A labeling system comprises a wall enclosing a space and a container for holding a retractable label, the container laterally disposed in relation to the space. The retractable label is configured to extend out of and retract into the container. In some embodiments, the wall at least partially defines a container cap. In other embodiments, the wall at least partially defines another container for holding material, such as, e.g., material of medicinal utility. | 05-17-2012 |
| 20120137898 | METHODS AND DEVICES FOR HEATING FOOD ITEMS - A cooking apparatus is provided comprising a liquid heating unit. The cooking apparatus further includes a top cover and a bottom cover disposed below the top cover, wherein one or both of the top cover and the bottom cover include one or more fluid passages for flowing heating fluid from the liquid heating unit. The cooking apparatus includes a vacuum member that is in fluid communication with a food tray disposed between the top cover and bottom cover. The cooking apparatus further includes a control system configured to direct the removal of one or more gases (e.g., air) from the food tray and circulate heating fluid through the fluid passages for a predetermined period of time. | 06-07-2012 |
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| 20090313773 | Electric Toothbrush - An electric toothbrush in which the brushing head moves in an elliptical motion such that, on the brushing stroke, the bristles are proximate the teeth, and in the recovery portion of the cycle the bristles are pulled away from the teeth. A position sensitive switch automatically switches from a forward to a reverse operation of the electric motor, depending on the positioning of the toothbrush in a user's hand, allowing the user to brush both the upper and lower teeth using a stroke carrying the bristles from the gum line to the ends of the teeth, as is recommended by dental professionals, without having to move the toothbrush from hand to hand or manually move the switch from the forward to the reverse positions. A bridge pad engages the face of the teeth, maintaining a proper distance between the teeth and bristles during the elliptical rotation of the brush head. | 12-24-2009 |
| 20100012146 | Flossing Device With Internal Floss Feed - A flossing device having internal floss feed in which floss is advanced from a storage chamber inside the handle of the device, through feed gears, to a pair of spaced apart tines. Spent floss is returned through the return gears, the return drive gear having a greater diameter than the feed drive gear, thus ensuring the floss remains taut between the tines. An integral cutter allows the spent floss to be cut off and discarded. The cover over one or both sets of gears may be open at the top and bottom to allow cleaning of the gears. A flexible tile may be included over the aperture through which the floss exits the storage chamber to prevent water incursion therein. A floss advance lever advances the floss by a single action when pressed forward, which creates and maintains sufficient tension on the floss resulting in taut and snug floss between the tines. Optionally, the flossing head has a vibratory device to aid in the flossing action. | 01-21-2010 |
| 20100108779 | Spraying Device With Liquid Adjustment Mechanism - The present invention relates to a fragrance or paint sprayer. The sprayer, comprises a spraying mechanism, two liquid containers, a liquid adjustment mechanism; the spraying mechanism having a knob for activating a pump or a release valve for dispensing a liquid coming from an inlet to an outlet; two liquid feeding tubes, one end of each of the two liquid feeding tubes being in liquid communication with each of the two liquid containers respectively, and the other end of each of the two liquid feeding tubes being jointed and connected to the inlet of the spraying mechanism; the liquid adjustment mechanism comprising two sets of adjoining sloped surfaces and sets of rollers in surface contact with respective flexible portions of each of two liquid feeding tubes and, when the rollers are moving from right to left, changing flow passage areas inside the flexible portions in such a way that the amount of liquid supplied from each of the two liquid containers through each of the two liquid feeding tubes is adjusted. When flow of liquid from one feeding tube is increased by the adjustment mechanism, the flow from the other feeding tube decreases in a way that the total amount of the liquid supplied by the two feeding tubes is substantially constant. In practice, it is possible to mix two liquids, such as two different perfumes with different fragrances to create a new fragrance, or two different color paints to create a new paint color. | 05-06-2010 |
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| 20110002391 | DIGITAL IMAGE COMPRESSION BY RESOLUTION-ADAPTIVE MACROBLOCK CODING - Disclosed is an image encoder that divides a digital image into a set of “macroblocks.” If appropriate, a macroblock is “downsampled” to a lower resolution. The lower-resolution macroblock is then encoded by applying spatial (and possibly temporal) prediction. The “residual” of the macroblock is calculated as the difference between the predicted and actual contents of the macroblock. The low-resolution residual is then either transmitted to an image decoder or stored for later use. In some embodiments, the encoder calculates the rate-distortion costs of encoding the original-resolution macroblock and the lower-resolution macroblock and then only encodes the lower-resolution macroblock if its cost is lower. When a decoder receives a lower-resolution residual, it recovers the lower-resolution macroblock using standard prediction techniques. Then, the macroblock is “upsampled” to its original resolution by interpolating the values left out by the encoder. The macroblocks are then joined to form the original digital image. | 01-06-2011 |
| 20110002554 | DIGITAL IMAGE COMPRESSION BY RESIDUAL DECIMATION - Disclosed is an image encoder that divides a digital image into a set of “macroblocks.” Each macroblock is encoded by applying spatial (and possibly temporal) prediction. The “residual” of the macroblock is calculated as the difference between the predicted content of the macroblock and the actual content of the macroblock. The residual is then “decimated” by taking an orderly subset of its values. The decimated residual is then either transmitted to an image decoder or is stored for later use. To recreate the original image, the macroblocks are first recreated from their received residuals. When a decimated residual is received, the values of the residual left out during decimation are interpolated from the values actually received. Using the prediction techniques along with the residual, the original content of the macroblock is recovered. The macroblocks are then joined to form the original digital image. | 01-06-2011 |
| 20110188571 | RECURSIVE ADAPTIVE INTERPOLATION FILTERS (RAIF) - Adaptive interpolation filters which are recursively updated based on previously reconstructed images, and which can differ within a single frame as they adapt to spatial changes. An initial set of filters is known within a coding system, including both encoder and decoder. Fractional-pel motion estimation of macroblock is generalized by communicating integer-pel motion vectors and an index to a selected prediction interpolation filter. Prediction filters are updated based on local correlation data comprising auto-correlation data, and/or cross-correlation data. | 08-04-2011 |
| 20110249739 | CONTEXT ADAPTIVE DIRECTIONAL INTRA PREDICTION - Enhanced directional prediction apparatus and methods are taught which are based on edge-based adaptive directional estimation, for providing an improved prediction direction for intra prediction within a coding device. Image gradient vectors are obtained for pixels in the neighborhood of the current block, and edge directions determined. Candidate edge directions are processed to derive a dominant edge direction in response to defining an objective function as a summation of projections to a candidate direction and computing suggested direction of each neighboring pixel. The dominant edge direction may be utilized for the prediction direction, such as in response to a detection mode flag signaled to the decoder, or modified by an angular adjustment, which can be communicated to a decoder. | 10-13-2011 |
| 20120014443 | DIFFERENTIAL CODING OF INTRA DIRECTIONS (DCIC) - Spatial domain directional intra prediction has been shown to be very effective to remove the correlation between the pixels in the current block and reconstructed neighbors. In AVC, 8 directional prediction modes (plus the DC prediction mode) are defined. The prediction mode number is signaled to the decoder using a simple predictive coding method. The previous intra prediction methods have two major disadvantages: lack of precision for arbitrary directional patterns and accuracy lack of accuracy to exploit geometric dependency between blocks. To address these issues, a new method accurately predicts the intra directions from reconstructed neighboring pixels and differentially encode the intra directions. This allows a more precise directional prediction without the significant increase in the cost for transmitting the side information. | 01-19-2012 |
| 20120014452 | MULTI-PARAMETER MOTION FOR EFFICIENT PREDICTION IN VIDEO COMPRESSION - Motion Compensated Prediction (MCP) has been a key factor in most advanced video compression schemes. For further reduction in the residual signal energy in B-frames, bidirectional prediction where two motion-compensated signals are superimposed has also been utilized in most prior video coding standards such as MPEG-2 or MPEG-4/AVC. Syntax changes and appropriate motion vector prediction that allows efficient use of multi-parameter MCP is described. The prediction signal is constructed by linearly combining the motion-compensated signals from each parameter (or motion vector). | 01-19-2012 |
| 20120183041 | INTERPOLATION FILTER FOR INTRA PREDICTION OF HEVC - 4-tap interpolation filters are able to improve intra prediction when used instead of linear interpolation. | 07-19-2012 |
| 20120183050 | PARAMETRIC LOOP FILTER - A parametric loop filter uses a set of fixed filters to remove or reduce noise and artifacts introduced during video coding. The filters are pre-trained offline and hardwired into encoder and decoder, instead of online trained Wiener filters. The filters are able to be specified using one or more parameters including: direction, bandwidth along the direction (bw | 07-19-2012 |
| 20120183054 | CODEWORD SPACE REDUCTION FOR INTRA CHROMA MODE SIGNALING FOR HEVC - Intra prediction is used in state-of-the-art video coding standards such as AVC. The intra prediction modes are coded into the bitstream. Luma and chroma components could potentially have different prediction modes. For chroma components, there are 7 different modes defined in AVC: vertical, horizontal, DC, diagonal directions, and “same as luma”. Statistics show that the “same as luma” mode is frequently used, but in AVC, this mode is encoded using more bits than other modes during entropy coding, therefore the coding efficiency is decreased. Accordingly, a modified binarization/codeword assignment for chroma intra mode signaling is able to be utilized for high efficiency video coding (HEVC), the next generation video coding standard. | 07-19-2012 |
| 20120183067 | B-PICTURE SYNTAX CHANGE FOR GENERALIZED BI-PREDICTION IN HIGH EFFICIENCY VIDEO CODING (HEVC) - An enhanced prediction direction method and encoding syntax for B-pictures in state-of-the-art video compression. In bi-directional prediction, instead of using one motion vector (MV) from list | 07-19-2012 |
| 20120183237 | System and method for effectively performing an intra prediction procedure - A system and method for effectively performing an intra prediction procedure with an electronic device includes an encoder that utilizes a delta value comparison procedure to identify optimal delta values for creating optimal predicted blocks of image data corresponding to original blocks of image data. The encoder then utilizes the original blocks and the optimal predicted blocks to generate residual blocks that represent the original blocks in an encoded format. The encoder then generates a bitstream containing the delta value information and the residual block for storage or transmission purposes. A decoder may decode the delta values and the residual block to reconstruct the image block. | 07-19-2012 |
| 20120218432 | RECURSIVE ADAPTIVE INTRA SMOOTHING FOR VIDEO CODING - A recursive adaptive intra smoothing filter for intra-mode video coding is executed using one or more approaches including, but not limited to matrix multiplication, spatial filtering and frequency domain filtering. Matrix multiplication includes initially computing a prediction matrix P | 08-30-2012 |
| 20120218440 | VISUALLY OPTIMIZED QUANTIZATION - Visually optimized quantization is described herein. Specifically, the visually optimized quantization is for arbitrary block-based transforms such as Mode-Dependent Directional Transform (MDDT). The compression method involves the process of taking a discrete cosine transform of an MDDT basis function, obtaining the frequency weights, and computing the contrast sensitivity function for each of the frequency components. The overall effect of the distortion is calculated by error pooling and the quantization matrix is the inverse proportional of the overall effect. | 08-30-2012 |
| 20120218443 | DECODER-DERIVED GEOMETRIC TRANSFORMATIONS FOR MOTION COMPENSATED INTER PREDICTION - A method of estimating motion by estimating motion parameters of a complex motion model using reconstructed neighboring pixels of the current block and then applying the estimated motion parameters to the coordinates of the current block to determine motion compensated in a corresponding reference block. The parameters are not transmitted to a decoder and are derived at the decoder side. The encoder only sends a 1-bit control-flag to indicate whether the derived parameters should be used. | 08-30-2012 |
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| 20100213922 | ELECTROMAGNETIC BATH LEVEL MEASUREMENT FOR PYROMETALLURGICAL FURNANCES - In a first aspect, some embodiments of the invention provide a system for measuring the level of a plurality of phases of a conductive or semi-conductive mixture in a vessel, the system comprising: a vessel configured to hold a conductive or semi-conductive mixture including a plurality of phases, the vessel comprising a sidewall with an interior surface and an exterior surface, a plurality of antennas configured to transmit electromagnetic and/or eddy current signals into the sidewall of the vessel to impinge upon the plurality of phases in the conductive or semi-conductive mixture and to receive corresponding signals reflected from the plurality of phases in the conductive or semi-conductive mixture, the antennas situated at a plurality of different levels along the exterior surface of the vessel sidewall, wherein reflected signals are received, a transmitter module configured to generate electromagnetic and/or eddy current signals in communication with the plurality of antennas, a receiver module configured to receive electromagnetic and/or eddy current signals in communication with the plurality of antennas, a control module in communication with the transmitter module and the receiver module configured to control the operation of the transmitter module and the receiver module, and a signal analysis module in communication with the receiver module configured to process the reflected signals to determine the levels of the plurality of phases of the conductive or semi-conductive mixture within the vessel. | 08-26-2010 |
| 20110272865 | MEASUREMENT OF CHARGE BANK LEVEL IN A METALLURGICAL FURNACE - Various systems and methods for monitoring the level of a feed material layer in a metallurgical furnace are described. At least one non-contact sensor is used to sense a distance between the feed layer and a reference position. A process controller linked to the sensor provides a control signal based upon the sensed distance. The control signal may be used to control various factors in the operation of the metallurgical furnace. | 11-10-2011 |
| 20110272866 | MEASUREMENT OF CHARGE BANK LEVEL IN A METALLURGICAL FURNACE - Various systems and methods for monitoring the level of a feed material layer in a metallurgical furnace are described. At least one non-contact sensor is used to sense a distance between the feed layer and a reference position. A process controller linked to the sensor provides a control signal based upon the sensed distance. The control signal may be used to control various factors in the operation of the metallurgical furnace. | 11-10-2011 |
