Patent application number | Description | Published |
20080266770 | AUDIO APPARATUS WITH REPLACEABLE PANEL - An audio apparatus is adapted to receive a portable music device. The apparatus has a housing with a face provided on at least a portion thereof. The housing has an interchangeable panel adapted to be removably mounted on the face of the housing to conceal a portion of the face. | 10-30-2008 |
20080301870 | BATH APPARATUS WITH HANDLE AND AUXILIARY FEATURES - The present invention discloses a bath apparatus having auxiliary features. The auxiliary features include a handle for providing ergonomic manual transportation of the bath apparatus. Additionally, improvements to conventional therapeutic effects are provided for enhancing the overall therapeutic bathing experience. Further, a bath apparatus is disclosed having a pedicure apparatus for providing a motorized rotary pedicure effect to the user. Even further, a bath apparatus having a fluid dispenser is disclosed for dispensing therapeutic additives. | 12-11-2008 |
20090124941 | MASSAGE APPARATUS AND COVER - A removable cover portion for a body massager is provided with a sheet of material sized to be placed upon the body massager and adapted to be fastened to the body massager. The sheet has a reduced contact area for altering a resultant massage effect. A method for Manufacturing the cover portion provides the sheet, integrally forms a massage formation with at least two massage nodes and a cross member interconnecting the at least two massage nodes, and assembles a plurality of massage formations to the sheet of material whereby the cross members maintain the orientation of the corresponding adjacent massage nodes during assembly of the massage nodes to the sheet of material. | 05-14-2009 |
20090173549 | Platform Scale - A scale for measuring weight has a weight measurement device to be supported by an underlying surface. A generally planar platform cooperates with the weight measurement device so a load on the platform is measured by the weight measurement device. The scale has a display for displaying a measured weight. The scale may have a battery powering the display and a removable battery powering an ancillary feature. The scale display may have three columns so a measured weight appears to scroll. The scale may have a processor outputting an audio signal when the measured weight is displayed and a speaker conveying a sound effect. The scale display may be on a majority of the surface indicating the measured weight for a time after load removal. The scale display may display a temperature when not displaying the measured weight and the scale may have an external temperature sensor and a receiver. | 07-09-2009 |
20100217164 | CHAIR WITH MASSAGE UNIT AND REMOTE CONTROLLER - A massage chair is provided with a base, a seat bottom, and a seat back having a peripheral frame. A peripheral cover is oriented over the frame. A central fabric cover is oriented within the peripheral cover and supported by the frame. A detachable massage unit is connected to the frame. A massager is provided with a seat back, a massage unit within the seat back, and a pair of armrests. A docking cavity is formed within one of the armrests and a remote controller is received within the docking cavity. A massager is provided with a body support member, a massage unit oriented in the body support member, a heater oriented in the body support member, and a wireless remote controller for controlling the operation of the massage unit and the heater by wireless signals. | 08-26-2010 |
20100288855 | SHOWERHEAD WITH MULTIMODAL OPERATION - A showerhead for personal hygiene is provided that includes a spray face in fluid communication with a cavity by way of a plurality of nozzle apertures. The cavity receives water from a water supply. A spray selector controls fluid flow between the cavity and the nozzle apertures. A battery-electric motor or a kinetic energy storing spring is provided as a power supply for an actuator that provides mechanical communication between the power supply and the selector to move the selector and thereby alter the fluid spray pattern from the spray face. A user interface provides a user with selective control over movement of the actuator and the movement of the selector to sequentially provide multiple spray patterns from the spray face without intermediate manual intervention between the multiple spray patterns emitted from the spray face. | 11-18-2010 |
20110105964 | MASSAGE APPARATUS WITH HEATER - A massage apparatus is provided with a housing, and a substrate mounted for rotation to the housing and driven by a motor. A massage node and a positive temperature coefficient (PTC) heater are mounted to the substrate. A pair of contacts and a pair of brushes maintain electrical engagement of the PTC heater with the housing during rotation of the substrate. Another embodiment provides an infrared light emitting diode (LED) beneath the massage node in electrical communication with the housing due to the contacts and brushes. Another embodiment provides a method for imparting a heated massage effect by providing a massage apparatus with a message mechanism, a PTC heater and a plurality of infrared LEDs. A massage effect is imparted and a warm-up operation is initiated of the PTC heater and the LEDs. The warm-up operation of the PTC heater is discontinued upon the massage mechanism reaching a predefined temperature. | 05-05-2011 |
20110118637 | PERCUSSIVE MASSAGER - A percussive massager is provided with a housing, a cushion, a percussive drive unit having a massage head with four spaced apart massage nodes, and a cover surrounding the massager. The nodes diametrically extend outwardly or upwardly from the exterior cushion surface to effect a rhythmic percussion to a user. The cover has at least two apertures through which the nodes protrude, and a flap extending over at least two of the massage nodes. The flap has a fastener to allow for removal of the flap from the cover. A percussive massager is also provided with a motor housing, a motor with a rotary output shaft, an elongated flexible rocker arm pivotally connected to the motor housing, and a massage node connected to an end region of the rocker arm. The flexible rocker arm deflects to provide compliance when the node contacts a massage surface. | 05-19-2011 |
20110139914 | SHREDDER - A shredder is disclosed including a compaction arm coupled to an actuator, wherein the compaction arm includes a cross-member having an array of protuberances formed thereon which facilitate safe and secure destruction of documents. | 06-16-2011 |
20110221078 | HUMIDIFIER - A humidifier includes a main body having a hollow interior, the main body including a fluid reservoir for receiving a fluid therein, wherein the fluid reservoir is formed from a material which at least one of minimizes impurities in the fluid and militates against an emergence of impurities in the fluid, and a discharge vent coupled to the main body, wherein the discharge vent includes a removable tray for receiving a fragrance therein and a compartment for receiving a heat source therein for heating the fragrance, wherein the discharge vent emits a mist to humidify the surrounding air and an aroma of the fragrance. | 09-15-2011 |
20110309165 | SHOWERHEAD WITH MULTIMODAL OPERATION - A showerhead for personal hygiene is provided that includes a spray face in fluid communication with a cavity by way of a plurality of nozzle apertures. The cavity receives water from a water supply. A spray selector controls fluid flow between the cavity and the nozzle apertures. A battery-electric motor or a kinetic energy storing spring is provided as a power supply for an actuator that provides mechanical communication between the power supply and the selector to move the selector and thereby alter the fluid spray pattern from the spray face. A user interface provides a user with selective control over movement of the actuator and the movement of the selector to sequentially provide multiple spray patterns from the spray face without intermediate manual intervention between the multiple spray patterns emitted from the spray face. | 12-22-2011 |
20120174308 | TOILET OVERFILL REGULATOR - A kit for calibrating an amount of water required by a toilet with an amount of water to be supplied to the toilet has a first recorder for determining an amount of water in a toilet bowl, a second recorder for determining an amount of water in a toilet tank if the water in the toilet bowl reaches a determined level, and a valve for setting an amount of water delivered to the tank if the water reaches a determined level in the tank. | 07-12-2012 |
20120211521 | BABY FOOD PREPARATION APPARATUS - A baby food preparation apparatus has a housing with a dispensing portion for dispensing dry baby food and water. A reservoir is located within the housing to hold dry baby food and dispense the dry baby food through the dispensing portion. A water tank is removably received within the housing to hold water and dispense the water through the dispensing portion. A user interface has a selector knob for selecting a desired serving size of prepared baby food, and selector buttons for selecting a type of baby food to be prepared. A processor is configured to dispense an amount of water corresponding to the type of baby food selected and the desired serving size. | 08-23-2012 |
20120222548 | HUMIDIFIER - A humidifier includes a base having a sound machine module and a humidifier module, a water reservoir in fluid communication with the humidifier module, a user interface supported by the base, and a controller in communication with the user interface, the humidifier module, and the sound machine module. The controller is configured to operate the humidifier module to provide humidified air using water contained in the water reservoir in response to a humidifier input to the user interface. The controller is also configured to operate the sound machine module to provide sound in response to a sound input to the user interface. | 09-06-2012 |
20120226207 | BODY MASSAGE APPARATUS - A body massage apparatus is provided with a housing. A massage unit is provided in the housing. A pair of laterally spaced apart air bladders is provided on the housing with the massage unit oriented between the air bladders. | 09-06-2012 |
20120232445 | BODY MASSAGER - A massager is provided with a housing having a first guide oriented in a longitudinal direction. A carriage is oriented in the housing and cooperates with the first guide for translation. A motor is supported upon one of the carriage and the housing and operably connected to the other for translating the carriage along the first guide. A second guide is mounted to the housing and oriented generally canted relative to the longitudinal direction. A massage member is pivotally connected to the carriage and pivotally connected to the second guide such that as the carriage is translated along the first guide, and angular orientation of the massage member is rotated relative to the carriage. | 09-13-2012 |
20120261496 | SHOWERHEAD WITH TOUCH BASED MULTIMODAL OPERATION - A showerhead for personal hygiene is provided that includes a housing have a spray face extending therefrom. A cavity in the housing is in fluid communication with a water supply and the spray face by way of nozzle apertures. A spray selector controls fluid flow between the cavity and each of the nozzle apertures. A power supply is provided of a battery-electric motor or a spring, the power supply is in mechanical communication with an actuator. The actuator operates to move the selector. A user touch interface provides a user with selective movement of the selector to sequentially provide multiple spray patterns from the spray face. The user interface is an electrically conductive portion of the housing or the spray face. | 10-18-2012 |
20130061754 | AIR PURIFIER - An air purifier includes a frame, a fan unit, and an electrostatic precipitator. The precipitator has a first strip with a first continuous conductive electrode layer directly adjacent to an edge, and a second strip with a second continuous conductive electrode layer directly adjacent to an edge. The first and second strips are nested with one another. The edge of the first strip is opposed to the edge of the second strip. An electrostatic precipitator for an air purifier includes a first spiral strip having a continuous conductive electrode, a second spiral strip having a continuous conductive electrode and nested with the first strip, a plurality of combs. Each comb extends from an outer periphery of the precipitator to an intermediate region between the outer periphery and a center of the precipitator. | 03-14-2013 |
20130153560 | TOWEL WARMER - A towel warmer is provided that has a frame assembly and one or more heating fabric sleeves affixed to the frame assembly. The heating fabric sleeves have electric heating wires that when connected to an electrical power supply to produce a more uniform heat transfer to a contacting article such as a towel than a conventional towel warmer. A thermostat is optionally provided to moderate sleeve temperature. Additionally, a controller is optionally provided to adjust operating parameters of the thermostat. A kit is also provided that includes the towel warmer partially disassembled and instructions for assembly of the frame assembly and attaching the one or more heating fabric sleeves to the frame assembly. | 06-20-2013 |
20130154134 | Humidifier Having an Anti-Contamination System - A humidifier is provided having a base including a chamber for receiving water, at least one reservoir removably mounted on the base for providing water to the base chamber, and an atomizer provided in the base for aerosolizing water from the base chamber. A duct is removably mounted on the base, the duct enclosing the atomizer and venting humidified air from the humidifier. An anti-contamination system is in communication with the duct and includes a housing, an ultraviolet (UV) light source mounted within the housing for emitting UV light to interact with at least one of the aerosolized water and humidified air, and a window at least partially transparent to UV light provided between the anti-contamination system and the duct. Embodiments may include a reflective member provided within the housing for reflecting UV light through the window. | 06-20-2013 |
20140054398 | SHOWERHEAD SYSTEM WITH FRONT MOUNTED DIVERTER CONTROL INTERFACE - A shower fixture is provided that includes a fixed fluid dispensing unit and a removable fluid dispensing unit releasably secured to a receptacle therefor associated with the fixed dispensing unit such that the fixed dispensing unit and removable dispensing unit in a secured relationship form an integral dispensing face. A fluid supply provides selective communication with a front mounted diverter control interface for directing fluid flow to at least one of the fixed and removable fluid dispensing units. | 02-27-2014 |
20140138456 | SHOWERHEAD WITH TOUCH BASED MULTIMODAL RECHARGEABLE BATTERY OPERATION - A showerhead for personal hygiene is provided that includes a valve actuator that is powered mechanically or electrically to provide variation in spray pattern, variation in water flow, or a combination thereof upon a user initiating valve actuator operation. A power supply, with a recharge capability for the power source, is provided of a battery-electric motor or a spring, the power supply is in mechanical communication with the actuator. A user interface includes buttons corresponding to different multimodal operational programs for the showerhead. A user programmable keypad allowing selection between different spray modes, flow rates and a combination thereof is provided within an integral showerhead housing or a remote control. A user is able to change modes without intervening manual manipulation between modes; as a result an enhanced massage experience is provided. A timed shower period, reduced water flow patterns, or a combination thereof is also provided to save water. | 05-22-2014 |
20150182976 | AIR PURIFIER - An electrostatic precipitator for an air purifier includes a first spiral strip having a continuous conductive electrode, a second spiral strip having a continuous conductive electrode and nested with the first strip, a plurality of combs. Each comb extends from an outer periphery of the precipitator to an intermediate region between the outer periphery and a center of the precipitator. | 07-02-2015 |
Patent application number | Description | Published |
20110125973 | System and Method for Performing Dynamic Mixed Mode Read Validation In a Software Transactional Memory - The transactional memory system described herein may apply a mix of read validation techniques to validate read operations (e.g., invisible reads and/or semi-visible reads) in different transactions, or to validate different read operations within a single transaction (including reads of the same location). The system may include mechanisms to dynamically determine that a read validation technique should be replaced by a different technique for reads of particular locations or for all subsequent reads, and/or to dynamically adjust the balance between different read validation techniques to manage costs. Some of the read validation techniques may be supported by hardware transactional memory (HTM). The system may delay acquisition of ownership records for reading, and may acquire two or more ownership records back-to-back (e.g., within a single hardware transaction). The user code of a software transaction may be divided into multiple segments, some of which may be executed within a hardware transaction. | 05-26-2011 |
20110246725 | System and Method for Committing Results of a Software Transaction Using a Hardware Transaction - The system and methods described herein may exploit hardware transactional memory to improve the performance of a software or hybrid transactional memory implementation, even when an entire user transaction cannot be executed within a hardware transaction. The user code of an atomic transaction may be executed within a software transaction, which may collect read and write sets and/or other information about the atomic transaction. A single hardware transaction may be used to commit the atomic transaction by validating the transaction's read set and applying the effects of the user code to memory, reducing the overhead associated with commitment of software transactions. Because the hardware transaction code is carefully controlled, it may be less likely to fail to commit. Various remedial actions may be taken before retrying hardware transactions following some failures. If a transaction exceeds the constraints of the hardware, it may be committed by the software transactional memory alone. | 10-06-2011 |
20120310987 | System and Method for Performing Memory Management Using Hardware Transactions - The systems and methods described herein may be used to implement a shared dynamic-sized data structure using hardware transactional memory to simplify and/or improve memory management of the data structure. An application (or thread thereof) may indicate (or register) the intended use of an element of the data structure and may initialize the value of the data structure element. Thereafter, another thread or application may use hardware transactions to access the data structure element while confirming that the data structure element is still part of the dynamic data structure and/or that memory allocated to the data structure element has not been freed. Various indicators may be used determine whether memory allocated to the element element can be freed. | 12-06-2012 |
20130290967 | System and Method for Implementing NUMA-Aware Reader-Writer Locks - NUMA-aware reader-writer locks may leverage lock cohorting techniques to band together writer requests from a single NUMA node. The locks may relax the order in which the lock schedules the execution of critical sections of code by reader threads and writer threads, allowing lock ownership to remain resident on a single NUMA node for long periods, while also taking advantage of parallelism between reader threads. Threads may contend on node-level structures to get permission to acquire a globally shared reader-writer lock. Writer threads may follow a lock cohorting strategy of passing ownership of the lock in write mode from one thread to a cohort writer thread without releasing the shared lock, while reader threads from multiple NUMA nodes may simultaneously acquire the shared lock in read mode. The reader-writer lock may follow a writer-preference policy, a reader-preference policy or a hybrid policy. | 10-31-2013 |
20140181423 | System and Method for Implementing NUMA-Aware Statistics Counters - The systems and methods described herein may be used to implement scalable statistics counters suitable for use in systems that employ a NUMA style memory architecture. The counters may be implemented as data structures that include a count value portion and a node identifier portion. The counters may be accessible within transactions. The node identifier portion may identify a node on which a thread that most recently incremented the counter was executing or one on which a thread that has requested priority to increment the shared counter was executing. Threads executing on identified nodes may have higher priority to increment the counter than other threads. Threads executing on other nodes may delay their attempts to increment the counter, thus encouraging consecutive updates from threads on a single node. Impatient threads may attempt to update the node identifier portion or may update an anti-starvation variable to indicate a request for priority. | 06-26-2014 |
20140181473 | System and Method for Implementing Shared Probabilistic Counters Storing Update Probability Values - The systems and methods described herein may implement probabilistic counters and/or update mechanisms for those counters such that they are dependent on the value of a configurable accuracy parameter. The accuracy parameter value may be adjusted to provide fine-grained control over the tradeoff between the accuracy of the counters and the performance of applications that access them. The counters may be implemented as data structures that include a mantissa portion and an exponent portion that collectively represent an update probability value. When updating the counters, the value of the configurable accuracy parameter may affect whether, when, how often, or by what amount the mantissa portion and/or the exponent portion are updated. Updating a probabilistic counter may include multiplying its value by a constant that is dependent on the value of a configurable accuracy parameter. The counters may be accessible within transactions. The counters may have deterministic update policies. | 06-26-2014 |
20140181827 | System and Method for Implementing Scalable Contention-Adaptive Statistics Counters - The systems and methods described herein may implement scalable statistics counters that are adaptive to the amount of contention for the counters. The counters may be accessible within transactions. Methods for determining whether or when to increment the counters in response to initiation of an increment operation and/or methods for updating the counters may be selected dependent on current, recent, or historical amounts of contention. Various contention management policies or retry conditions may be applied to select between multiple methods. One counter may include a precise counter portion that is incremented under low contention and a probabilistic counter portion that is updated under high contention. Amounts by which probabilistic counters are incremented may be contention-dependent. Another counter may include a node identifier portion that encourages consecutive increments by threads on a single node only when under contention. Another counter may be inflated in response to contention for the counter. | 06-26-2014 |
20140258645 | System and Method for Implementing Reader-Writer Locks Using Hardware Transactional Memory - Transactional reader-writer locks may leverage available hardware transactional memory (HTM) to simplify the procedures of the reader-writer lock algorithm and to eliminate a requirement for type stable memory An HTM-based reader-writer lock may include an ordered list of client-provided nodes, each of which represents a thread that holds (or desires to acquire) the lock, and a tail pointer. The locking and unlocking procedures invoked by readers and writers may access the tail pointer or particular ones of the nodes in the list using various combinations of transactions and non-transactional accesses to insert nodes into the list or to remove nodes from the list. A reader or writer that owns a node at the head of the list (or a reader whose node is preceded in the list only by other readers' nodes) may access a critical section of code or shared resource. | 09-11-2014 |
20140282574 | System and Method for Implementing Constrained Data-Driven Parallelism - Systems and methods for implementing constrained data-driven parallelism may provide programmers with mechanisms for controlling the execution order and/or interleaving of tasks spawned during execution. For example, a programmer may define a task group that includes a single task, and the single task may define a direct or indirect trigger that causes another task to be spawned (e.g., in response to a modification of data specified in the trigger). Tasks spawned by a given task may be added to the same task group as the given task. A deferred keyword may control whether a spawned task is to be executed in the current execution phase or its execution is to be deferred to a subsequent execution phase for the task group. Execution of all tasks executing in the current execution phase may need to be complete before the execution of tasks in the next phase can begin. | 09-18-2014 |
20140282595 | Systems and Methods for Implementing Work Stealing Using a Configurable Separation of Stealable and Non-Stealable Work Items - A system may perform work stealing using a dynamically configurable separation between stealable and non-stealable work items. The work items may be held in a double-ended queue (deque), and the value of a variable (index) may indicate the position of the last stealable work item or the first non-stealable work item in the deque. A thread may steal a work item only from the portion of another thread's deque that holds stealable items. The owner of a deque may add work items to the deque and may modify the number or percentage of stealable work items, the number or percentage of non-stealable work items, and/or the ratio between stealable and non-stealable work items in the deque during execution. For example, the owner may convert stealable work items to non-stealable work items, or vice versa, in response to changing conditions and/or according to various work-stealing policies. | 09-18-2014 |
20150026688 | Systems and Methods for Adaptive Integration of Hardware and Software Lock Elision Techniques - Particular techniques for improving the scalability of concurrent programs (e.g., lock-based applications) may be effective in some environments and for some workloads, but not others. The systems described herein may automatically choose appropriate ones of these techniques to apply when executing lock-based applications at runtime, based on observations of the application in the current environment and with the current workload. In one example, two techniques for improving lock scalability (e.g., transactional lock elision using hardware transactional memory, and optimistic software techniques) may be integrated together. A lightweight runtime library built for this purpose may adapt its approach to managing concurrency by dynamically selecting one or more of these techniques (at different times) during execution of a given application. In this Adaptive Lock Elision approach, the techniques may be selected (based on pluggable policies) at runtime to achieve good performance on different platforms and for different workloads. | 01-22-2015 |