A system and method for reconfiguring a computing environment comprising a consumption analysis server, a placement server, an infrastructure management client and a data warehouse in communication with a set of data collection agents and a database. The consumption analysis server operates on measured resource utilization data to yield a set of resource consumptions in regularized time blocks, collects host and virtual machine configurations from the computing environment and determines available capacity for a set of target hosts. The placement server assigns a set of target virtual machines to the target set of hosts in a new placement. In one mode of operation the new placement is nearly optimal. In another mode of operation, the new placement is “good enough” to achieve a threshold score based on an objective function of resource capacity headroom. The new placement is implemented in the computing environment.

Methods and systems for managing a removal of a passthrough device from a guest managed by a hypervisor in virtualized computing environment. A hypervisor receives a request from the guest for access to a passthrough device. The hypervisor sets, in a memory, a last accessed state associated with a virtual machine executing the guest. The hypervisor forwards the request to the passthrough device and configures the host CPU to send a subsequent access request directly to the passthrough device. In response to a virtual machine reset, the hypervisor clears the last accessed state and instructs the host CPU to send a post-reset access request to the hypervisor.

A system and method for reordering storage levels in a virtualized environment includes identifying a virtual machine (VM) to be transitioned and determining a new storage level order for the VM. The new storage level order reduces a VM live state during a transition, and accounts for hierarchical shared storage memory and criteria imposed by an application to reduce recovery operations after dynamic resource allocation actions. The new storage level order recommendation is propagated to VMs. The new storage level order applied in the VMs. A different storage-level order is recommended after the transition.

Policy enforcement in an environment that includes virtualized systems is disclosed. Virtual machine information associated with a first virtual machine instance executing on a host machine is received. The information can be received from a variety of sources, including an agent, a log server, and a management infrastructure associated with the host machine. A policy is applied based at least in part on the received virtual machine information.

Methods and apparatus are provided for evaluating potential resource capacity in a system where there is elasticity and competition between a plurality of containers. A dynamic potential capacity is determined for at least one container in a plurality of containers competing for a total capacity of a larger container. A current utilization by each of the plurality of competing containers is obtained, and an equilibrium capacity is determined for each of the competing containers. The equilibrium capacity indicates a capacity that the corresponding container is entitled to. The dynamic potential capacity is determined based on the total capacity, a comparison of one or more of the current utilizations to one or more of the corresponding equilibrium capacities and a relative resource weight of each of the plurality of competing containers. The dynamic potential capacity is optionally recalculated when the set of plurality of containers is changed or after the assignment of each work element.

A hypervisor and one or more guest operating systems resident in a data processing system and hosted by the hypervisor are configured to selectively enable or disable branch prediction logic through separate hypervisor-mode and guest-mode instructions. By doing so, different branch prediction strategies may be employed for different operating systems and user applications hosted thereby to provide finer grained optimization of the branch prediction logic for different operating scenarios.

A system for blueprint-driven environment template creation in a virtual infrastructure comprises a processor and a memory. The processor is configured to receive a blueprint, receive an environment template configuration, and build an environment template using the blueprint and the environment template configuration. The environment template is for provisioning an environment. The environment is for deploying an application. The memory is coupled to the processor and is configured to provide the processor with instructions.

Apparatus and methods are provided for using automatic speech recognition to analyze a voice interaction and verify compliance of an agent reading a script to a client during the voice interaction. In one aspect of the invention, a communications system includes a user interface, a communications network, and a call center having an automatic speech recognition component. In other aspects of the invention, a script compliance method includes the steps of conducting a voice interaction between an agent and a client and evaluating the voice interaction with an automatic speech recognition component adapted to analyze the voice interaction and determine whether the agent has adequately followed the script. In yet still further aspects of the invention, the duration of a given interaction can be analyzed, either apart from or in combination with the script compliance analysis above, to seek to identify instances of agent non-compliance, of fraud, or of quality-analysis issues.

A multilingual electronic transfer dictionary provides for automatic topic disambiguation by including one or more topic codes in definitions contained the dictionary. Automatic topic disambiguation is accomplished by determining the frequencies of topic codes within a block of text. Dictionary entries having more frequently occurring topic codes are preferentially selected over those having less frequently occurring topic codes. When the topic codes are members of a hierarchical topical coding system, such as the International Patent Classification system, an iterative method can be used with starts with a coarser level of the coding system and is repeated at finer levels until an ambiguity is resolved. The dictionary is advantageously used for machine translation, e.g. between Japanese and English.

A visualization can include a set of swim lanes, each swim lane representing information about an event type. An event type can be specified, e.g., as those events having certain keywords and/or having specified value(s) for specified field(s). The swim lane can plot when (within a time range) events of the associated event type occurred. Specifically, each such event can be assigned to a bucket having a bucket time matching the event time. A swim lane can extend along a timeline axis in the visualization, and the buckets can be positioned at a point along the axis that represents the bucket time. Thus, the visualization may indicate whether events were clustered at a point in time. Because the visualization can include a plurality of swim lanes, the visualization can further indicate how timing of events of a first type compare to timing of events of a second type.

An electronic device for text prediction in a virtual keyboard. The device includes a memory including an input determination module for execution by the microprocessor, the input determination module being configured to: receive signals representing input at the virtual keyboard, the virtual keyboard being divided into a plurality of subregions, the plurality of subregions including at least one subregion being associated with two or more characters and/or symbols of the virtual keyboard; identify a subregion on the virtual keyboard corresponding to the input; determine any character or symbol associated with the identified subregion; and if there is at least one determined character or symbol, provide the at least one determined character or symbol to a text prediction algorithm.

Various embodiments present a combined visual entity that represents overlapping visual entities. The combined visual entity can include a primary visualization that represents one of the overlapping visual entities and annotations that represent others of the overlapping visual entities. For example, a map view can include multiple geographical entities that overlap. A primary visualization can be rendered that represents one of the multiple geographical entities. The primary visualization can be visually annotated (e.g., with symbols, letters, or other visual indicators) to indicate others of the multiple geographical entities. In some embodiments, a zoom operation can cause visual entities to be added and/or removed from the combined visual entity.

When a user enters text into an application, the application can utilize an auto-complete feature to provide the user with estimations as to a complete term a user is attempting to enter into the application. Visualization can be provided along with an estimation to disclose the likelihood the estimation is what the user intends to enter. Furthermore, a rationale can be provided to the user for the reason an estimation was provided to the user.

Methods and devices for minimizing and maximizing displayed output associated with applications are provided. More particularly, an application presented as two or more pages in a portrait mode can be minimized to present one of the two or more pages following a minimization operation. The page that continues to be displayed can comprise a primary or preferred page, while the page that is dismissed can comprise a secondary or ancillary page. With respect to a maximization operation received with respect to a page of an application results in the display of an additional page associated with that application. Maximization can include controlling the respective screens on which first and second pages of the maximized application are displayed.

A device virtualization system is described herein that separates common computer processing tasks of an embedded device from the application-specific peripherals of the embedded device to allow at least some functions of the device to be offloaded to servers or other computing devices. The device virtualization system greatly simplifies management, configuration, and control of virtual embedded devices. Because much of the software of the device runs on the virtualization server, information technology (IT) personnel can be assigned to manage the virtualization server and to apply any updates and diagnose any problems that occur. Moreover, a single server or group of servers can be used to provide virtualization services for a wide variety of virtualized embedded devices for a wide variety of users. Thus, the system enhances the usefulness of embedded devices and allows a longer lifetime and wider variety of uses than embedded devices today.

A system and method for tracking and informing about a physical, emotional, or physiological cycle, such as a menstrual cycle, includes at least one definition entry and at least one date indicator. Each definition entry defines indicia such as color to represent a stage of a physical, emotional, or physiological cycle. Each date indicator includes a date section and a tracking section corresponding to each date section. The date section of the date indicator indicates at least one date, wherein the tracking section is capable of being marked so as to indicate indicia corresponding to a definition entry to signify the stage of the physical, emotional, or physiological cycle for each date. According to one embodiment, the date indicators are arranged according to phases of the moon to allow correlation of a user's cycle to the lunar cycle.

Methods and systems for load balancing read/write requests of a virtualized storage system. In one embodiment, a storage system includes a plurality of physical storage devices and a storage module operable within a communication network to present the plurality of physical storage devices as a virtual storage device to a plurality of network computing elements that are coupled to the communication network. The virtual storage device comprises a plurality of virtual storage volumes, wherein each virtual storage volume is communicatively coupled to the physical storage devices via the storage module. The storage module comprises maps that are used to route read/write requests from the network computing elements to the virtual storage volumes. Each map links read/write requests from at least one network computing element to a respective virtual storage volume within the virtual storage device.

A computing system includes a parent partition, child partitions, a hypervisor, shared memories each associated with one of the child partitions, and trigger pages each associated with one of the child partitions. The hypervisor receives a system event signal from one of the child partitions and, in response to receiving the system event signal, accesses the trigger page associated with that child partition. The hypervisor determines whether the trigger page indicates whether data is available to be read from the shared memory associated with the child partition. The hypervisor can send an indication to either the parent partition or the child partitions that data is available to be read from the shared memory associated with the child partition if the hypervisor determines that the trigger page indicates that data is available to be read from the shared memory associated with the child partition.

System and method for conversion of virtual machine files without requiring copying of the virtual machine payload (data) from one location to another location. By eliminating this step, applicant's invention significantly enhances the efficiency of the conversion process. In one embodiment, a file system or storage system provides indirections to locations of data elements stored on a persistent storage media. A source virtual machine file includes hypervisor metadata (HM) data elements in one hypervisor file format, and virtual machine payload (VMP) data elements. The source virtual machine file is converted by transforming the HM data elements of the source file to create destination HM data elements in a destination hypervisor format different from the source hypervisor format; maintaining the locations of the VMP data elements stored on the persistent storage media constant during the conversion from source to destination file formats without reading or writing the VMP data elements; and creating indirections to reference the destination HM data elements in the destination hypervisor format and the existing stored VMP data elements.

A dynamically expandable and contractible fault-tolerant storage system employs a virtual hot spare that is created from unused storage capacity across a plurality of storage devices. This unused storage capacity is available if and when a storage device fails for storage of data recovered from the remaining storage device(s). On an ongoing basis, the storage system may determine the amount of unused storage capacity that would be required for the virtual hot spare (e.g., based on the number of storage devices, the capacities of the various storage devices, the amount of data stored, and the manner in which the data is stored) and generate a signal if additional storage capacity is needed for a virtual hot spare.

A method and apparatus are disclosed of monitoring a number of virtual machines operating in an enterprise network. One example method of operation may include identifying a number of virtual machines currently operating in an enterprise network and determining performance metrics for each of the virtual machines. The method may also include identifying at least one candidate virtual machine from the virtual machines to optimize its active application load and modifying the candidate virtual machine to change its active application load.

A method and apparatus for power-efficiency management in a virtualized cluster system. The virtualized cluster system includes a front-end physical host and at least one back-end physical host, and each of the at least one back-end physical host comprises at least one virtual machine and a virtual machine manager. Flow characteristics of the virtualized cluster system are detected at a regular time cycle, then a power-efficiency management policy is generated for each of the at least one back-end physical host based on the detected flow characteristics, and finally the power-efficiency management policies are performed. The method can detect the real-time flow characteristics of the virtualized cluster system and make the power-efficiency management policies thereupon to control the power consumption of the system and perform admission control on the whole flow, thereby realizing optimal power saving while meeting the quality of service requirements.

An apparatus and method for determining a signal quality of an input signal representing a repetitious phenomena derived from at least one sensor connected to a patient is provided. A detector receives the input signal and determines data representing the repetitious phenomena from the input signal for use in determining at least one patient parameter. A measurement processor is electrically coupled to the detector that determines a first signal quality value by identifying at least one feature of the repetitious phenomena data and compares the at least one feature of a first set of the determined repetitious phenomena data with a second set of the determined repetitious phenomena data to determine a feature variability value and using the feature variability value to determine a stability value representative of the quality of the input signal.

A dual end glycerol (meth)acrylate-modified silicone having formula (I): R1Me2SiO(R22SiO)aSiMe2R1 is novel. R1 is a mixture of 70-95 mol % of a group having formula (i) and 30-5 mol % of a group having formula (ii) wherein R3 is H or methyl, R2 is a monovalent hydrocarbon group which may be halogenated, Me stands for methyl, and a is an integer of 10-300.

A method and apparatus for estimating virtual machine energy consumption, and in particular, a method and apparatus for estimating virtual machine energy consumption in a computer system. The method includes: obtaining system energy consumption of the system hardware resources; obtaining event information of a plurality of functional units into which the system hardware resources are divided, and mapping the event information to the respective virtual machines; and calculating energy consumption of the virtual machines according to a plurality of energy consumption coefficients corresponding to the plurality of functional units and according to the event information mapped to the functional units of the respective virtual machines.

A dual-cure curable material kit comprising: (A) a radical-polymerizable monomer component; (B) a photopolymerization initiator component comprising (b1) an α-diketone compound, (b2) an aliphatic tertiary amine compound having a tertiary amino group in which three saturated aliphatic groups are bonded to a nitrogen atom and one of the saturated aliphatic groups has an electron-withdrawing group as a substituent, and (b3) an s-triazine compound having a trihalomethyl group as a substituent, or a diaryliodonium salt compound; and a chemical polymerization initiator component (C) comprising (c1) an organic peroxide, and (c2) an N,N-di(hydroxyalkyl)-p-toluidine compound; which is packed separately at least in two packages so that the component (b2) and the component (b3) of the photopolymerization initiator component (B) are not packed together in a single package and the component (c1) and the component (c2) of the chemical polymerization initiator component (C) are not packed together in a single package.

A dual feed centrifuge system for separating solids from fluids in a drilling mud, the centrifuge system including: a bowl; a screw conveyor rotatably mounted within the bowl; a first feed pipe mounted within the screw conveyor for feeding a drilling mud through a first feed port in a wall of the screw conveyor to a first annular space between the bowl and the wall of the screw conveyor; and a second feed pipe mounted within the screw conveyor for feeding a drilling mud through a second feed port in the wall of the screw conveyor to a second annular space between the bowl and the wall of the screw conveyor. The multiple feed ports may allow the centrifuge to operate more efficiently with both weighted and unweighted drilling fluids.

Various technologies and techniques are disclosed for using transactional memory hardware to accelerate virtualization or emulation. State isolation can be facilitated by providing isolated private state on transactional memory hardware and storing the stack of a host that is performing an emulation in the isolated private state. Memory accesses performed by a central processing unit can be monitored by software to detect that a guest being emulated has made a self modification to its own code sequence. Transactional memory hardware can be used to facilitate dispatch table updates in multithreaded environments by taking advantage of the atomic commit feature. An emulator is provided that uses a dispatch table stored in main memory to convert a guest program counter into a host program counter. The dispatch table is accessed to see if the dispatch table contains a particular host program counter for a particular guest program counter.

A method is disclosed for curing ink printed images on golf balls by printing an image onto a golf ball and exposing the printed image to infrared radiation, then exposing the printed image to ultraviolet radiation.

The present invention relates to a residual gas burner (13) for a fuel cell system (1) having to educt gas feeds (11, 12) for feeding an educt gas each to a combustion chamber (14) of the residual gas burner (13). An improved operation of the residual gas burner (13) is obtained when the educt gas feeds (11, 12) each comprise outlet openings (22, 27), wherein the outlet openings (22, 27) face the combustion chamber (14) and the outlet openings (22, 27) of one of the educt gas feeds (11, 12) face a first bottom surface (29) of the other educt gas feed (11, 12). In addition, the invention relates to a fuel cell system (1) having such a residual gas burner (13).

A dual rotor axial-flow rotor valve structure includes a rotor valve seat for rotatably receiving rotatable first and second rotor valves. The rotor valve seat has a first and a second extension sections connected to end sections of a second and a first tuning slide assembly s. The first rotor valve communicates with end sections of first and second flow passages with a mouthpiece and the other end of the second tuning slide assembly and communicate the other end of the second flow passage with the first or second extension section. The second rotor valve communicates ends of the first and second flow passages with the other end of the first tuning slide assembly and a main tuning slide assembly and communicate the other end of the second flow passage with the first or second extension section.

Disclosed are systems, methods, and non-transitory computer-readable storage media for scrolling a virtual keyboard on a touch screen device including a display. A first aspect allows detecting a user contact swipe motion in a predetermined direction along said keyboard, scrolling said keyboard across said display in accordance with said motion, and stopping said scrolling upon termination of user contact swipe motion. A second aspect allows scrolling of a virtual keyboard to snap to an intelligent position based on a song key or relative minor of the song key. A third aspect allows a note to be held when a user's finger remains in contact with the display even though the finger is no longer in contact with a key linked to the note on the keyboard as a result of scrolling. A fourth aspect displays a second musical instrument keyboard adjacent to a first musical instrument keyboard, wherein said second musical instrument keyboard is linked to said first musical instrument keyboard such that scrolling of one keyboard causes automatic scrolling of the other keyboard.

A virtual computer system includes virtualization software, and one or more physical network interfaces for connecting to one or more computer networks. The virtualization software supports one or more virtual machines (VMs), and exports one or more virtual network interfaces to the VM(s) to enable the VM(s) to access the computer network(s) through the physical network interface(s). The virtualization software modifies and filters network data frames from the VM(s) and from the physical network interface(s) to restrict one or more VMs to one or more virtual local area networks (VLANs) that are implemented within a VLAN topology. Restricting a VM to a VLAN limits the broadcast domain to which the VM belongs, which may reduce security risks facing the VM. Implementing the VLAN functionality within the virtualization software provides the functionality to every VM in the computer system, without requiring every VM to provide the functionality.

Various topologies of a quality of service application controller and related techniques to optimize the communications performance an application executing on a device participating in a communications environment are disclosed. The communications environment may include a cellular network, an unlicensed spectrum network, or a combination of the two. The quality of service application controller observes one or more key performance indicators of the communications network, and retrieves a policy from a policy store specific to the application. The quality of service application controller then modifies the execution of the application and/or the configurable aspects of the communications environment to optimize the communications performance of the application. For example, the application's data throughput may be increased, the power draw of the application may be minimized, data requested by the application may be minimized, or the apparent response time of the application's response to a web service may be minimized.

A mixing and kneading machine (1) for continual compounding comprises a screw shaft (3) rotating in a casing (2) and simultaneously moving axially translationally. To sustainably enhance the efficiency of the machine as regards its material thruput per unit of time the screw shaft (3) comprises at least four groups of radial screw vanes (4a, 4b, 4c, 4d) evenly distributed circumferentially, each group consisting of a plurality of screw vanes in axial sequence. The outer diameter (Da) of the screw shaft ranges from 400 to 800 millimeters. The rotary speed of the screw shaft (3) ranges from 30 to 80 rpm. A mixing and kneading machine (1) engineered as such is particularly suitable for compounding an anodic mass in the production of electrodes—anodes—for the aluminum industry.

Many GTPases such as Ras, Ral and Rho require post-translational farnestylation or geranylgeranylation for mediating malignant transformation. Dual farnesyltransferase (FT) (FTI) and geranylgeranyltransferase-I (GGT-1) inhibitors (GGTI) were developed as anticancer agents from based on an ethylenediamine scaffold. On the basis of a 4-fold substituted ethylenediamine scaffold, the inhibitors are structurally simple and readily derivatized, facilitating extensive structure-activity relationship studies. The most potent inhibitor is compound exhibited an in vitro hFTase IC50 value of 25 nM and a whole cell H-Ras processing IC50 value of 90 nM. Several of the inhibitors proved highly selective for hFTase over the related prenyltransferase enzyme geranylgeranyltransferase-I (GGTase-I). A crystal structure of an inhibitor cocrystallized with farnesyl pyrophosphate in the active site of rat FTase illustrates that the para-benzonitrile moiety is stabilized by a π-π stacking interaction with the Y361β residue, suggesting an importance of this component of the inhibitors.

A dual capability ultra high pressure (UHP) fire attack system includes a fluid jet assembly and an UHP attack line system. The fluid jet assembly and the UHP attack line system are coupled to a high pressure fluid source. The fluid is discharged from both the fluid jet assembly and the UHP attack line system as a mist having a droplet diameter of approximately 150 microns. When infused with an abrasive material, the fluid jet assembly may be used to cut through structural surfaces, so that a fire may be “knocked down” before the fuel source is attacked.

A method for adjusting an optical signal includes determining a polarization dependent loss (PDL) value associated with the optical signal, determining an angle between the optical signal and one or more axes of PDL, determining an amount of nonlinear phase noise due to PDL and nonlinear effects upon the optical signal based upon the PDL value and the angle, determining a phase rotation based upon the amount of nonlinear phase noise, and applying the phase rotation to the optical signal.

A ring mechanism has an elongate housing and rings for holding loose-leaf pages. Each ring has ring members mounted on pivoting hinge plates for movement between open and closed positions. An actuator has opening and closing arms extending from an actuator body for opening and closing the rings. The mechanism has a travel bar moveable between a locked position in which a locking element blocks pivoting movement of the hinge plates and an unlocked position. The actuator has a flexible arm positioned to push the travel bar toward the locked position when the actuator closes the rings. At least a portion of the flexible arm is adapted to deform during closing in a manner that includes rotation in a first direction relative to the body of the actuator. Movement of the actuator to close the rings includes rotation of the actuator in the first direction relative to the housing.

A flex circuit including a dual sided interconnect structure to connect electrical components on a head or suspension assembly to head circuitry is described. The dual sided interconnect structure described has application for providing an electrical connection to one or more transducer elements on a slider and one or more elements of a heat assisted magnetic recording HAMR unit. In an illustrated embodiment, a flexible structure or insulating base layer includes one or more slider and heat assisted magnetic recording traces coupled to one or more slider or HAMR bond pads on an interconnect portion. As disclosed, the slider bond pads are on the obverse side of the flexible structure and the HAMR bond pads include a reverse side bonding surface to form reverse side bond pads to connect to one or more electrical or heating elements on the HAMR unit.

An optical disk device includes an optical pickup that directs light beams onto a recording surface of an optical disk and receives reflected light, a signal generating unit that generates playback signals based on reflected light received by the optical pickup, an equalizer adjustment unit that performs equalizer adjustment of the playback signals, and an adjustment control unit. The adjustment control unit controls the equalizer adjustment unit so as to perform equalizer adjustment of the playback signals according to the playback signals based on reflected light from a management information area on a recording surface of the optical disk, the management information area including predetermined management information recorded thereon.

A method for recovery of residual actinide element from chloride molten salts that are formed after electro-refining and/or electro-winning of a spent nuclear fuel and include actinide elements and rare-earth elements is provided. The method comprises conducting electrolysis using a liquid cadmium cathode (LCC) in the chloride molten salt that is formed after electro-refining and/or electro-winning of a spent nuclear fuel and contains rare-earth elements and actinide elements; electro-depositing the actinide elements contained in the chloride molten salt on the LCC in order to reduce a concentration of the actinide elements; and adding a CdCl2 oxidant to the chloride molten salt containing the LCC-metal alloy in order to oxidize the rare-earth elements co-deposited on the LCC, thereby forming the rare-earth chlorides in the chloride molten salt.

The present invention relates to engineered multivalent and multispecific binding proteins, methods of making, and specifically to their uses in the prevention, diagnosis, and/or treatment of disease.

A virtual channel table for broadcasting protocol and a method for broadcasting by using the virtual channel table includes identification information identifying and permitting discrimination of active and inactive channels contained in the virtual channel table. At a receiver, the virtual channel table transmitted from the transmitting side is parsed, thereby determining whether the current received channel is an active or inactive channel.

A method for virtual channel management is provided. The method includes the following steps. In response to a command, a control unit of a network-based multimedia reproduction system determines whether the command is associated with virtual channel switching. When the command is associated with virtual channel switching, the control unit checks whether a channel value corresponding to the command exists in an application virtual channel table. When the channel value exists in the application virtual channel table, the control unit determines an application corresponding to the channel number from the application virtual channel table, and executes the application. According to a first operation parameter set corresponding to the application, the control unit sets the executed application to retrieve digital contents through a network unit of the network-based multimedia reproduction system.

Methods, devices, and computer program products for providing instant messaging in conjunction with an audiovisual, video, or audio program are provided. The methods include providing an audiovisual, video, or audio program to a user. Viewer/listener input is received requesting activation of a program-based instant messaging function. A viewer/listener identifier corresponding to the viewer/listener is associated with a program identifier that uniquely identifies the audiovisual, video, or audio program being provided to the user to thereby generate a program viewer/listener record. The program viewer/listener record is transmitted to an electronic database. A list of other users who are viewing or listening to the program in addition to the viewer/listener is acquired from the electronic database. The list of other users is transmitted to the viewer/listener.

A perpendicular magnetic recording disk has a graded-anisotropy recording layer (RL) formed of at least two ferromagnetically exchange coupled CoPtCr-oxide magnetic layers (MAG1 and MAG2) with two nucleation films (NF1 and NF2) between the magnetic layers. NF1 is a metal film, preferably Ru or a Ru-based alloy like RuCr, sputter deposited on MAG1 at low pressure to a thickness between about 0.1-1.5 nm. NF2 is a metal oxide film, preferably an oxide of Ta, sputter deposited on NF1 at high pressure to a thickness between about 0.2-1.0 nm. MAG2 is sputter deposited over NF2. NF1 and NF2 provide a significant reduction in average grain size in the RL from a graded-anisotropy RL without nucleation films between MAG1 and MAG2, while also assuring that MAG1 and MAG2 are strongly exchange coupled.

In a motor vehicle having a manual transmission, for, in particular, limiting the engine speed during the start-up operation when fulfilling at least one permission criterion for the engine torque, the criterion depending on the driving state of the motor vehicle, a default engine torque is preset, which is specified according to at least one engine characteristic value and which can be reduced with regard to the set engine torque called for by the position of the accelerator pedal of the motor vehicle.

A dual bin combine system for combine harvesters which increases the storage capacity of harvested grain products when compared with previous systems. The dual bin combine system generally includes a combine harvester having a frame and a first tank for storing material harvested by the combine harvester. A frame extension, which extends in a rearward direction from the frame, includes a second tank. A transferring conduit extends from the first tank to the second tank. When operating the harvester, material may be fed from both tanks to reduce downtime unloading and thus more efficiently harvest crops.

A flow distribution system for use with a combine spreader having an inlet opening at the top thereof for receiving crop residue, a pair of counter-rotating spreader paddles disposed generally side by side and forward of a back plate of the spreader, and a discharge opening below the spreader paddles. A flow guide element has an apex portion and a pair of opposed arm portions pivotally connected to the apex portion, the arm portions laterally extending to free end portions. An adjusting mechanism is operably connected to the arm portions to effect rotational movement of the arm portions about the apex portion, ends of spreader paddle members defining the outer swept diameters of the pair of spreader paddles and the crop residue flow surfaces of at least the arm portions defining clearance regions therebetween to controllably distribute crop residue in a desired pattern over a field.