British Telecommunications Public Limited Company

British American Tobacco (investments) Limited

Nicoventures Trading Limited

British American Tobacco Limited

Andrew Gordon Davis

John Richardson

John Major

Simon Giles Thompson

Timothy Sean Stevens

John Roger Sampson

David Richard Lewis

Walid Abi Aoun

Karl Kaljura

Colin John Dickens

Rory Stewart Turnbull

Richard Hepworth

Dominic Woodcock

Douglas L Williams

Alexandre J Bourret

Yahia Lemmouchi

Daniel Kenneth Freeman

Timothy Stevens

Caner Umit Yurteri

Barry Dimmick

David S Hands

Glen Elgar

Christoph Rieger

Wing-Tak Kenneth Wong

Andreas Ullrich

Damien Bayart

Philip Coackley

Martin Dauner

Alexandre Jean Bourret

David Sneddon Hands

Caner Yurteri

Colin Dickens

There is described a container for an aerosol provision device for providing an inhalable medium comprising an aerosol, the container including a first section and second and third sections either side of the first section, wherein the first section and the second and third sections each includes a respective material that permits the aerosol generated in the device to flow into and through the container. A first substance is distributed in the material of the first section, the first substance for modifying a property of the aerosol when the aerosol flows through the container. The material of at least one of the second and third sections is substantially free of the first substance and acts as a barrier to prevent first substance exiting the container.

Container for an aerosol provision device

Disclosed is a consumable for use with apparatus for heating aerosolisable material to volatilise at least one component of the aerosolisable material. The consumable comprises an outer tube, an inner member inside the outer tube, and at least one support that supports the inner member relative to the outer tube so that at least one air gap exists between the inner member and the outer tube. At least one of the inner member, the outer tube and the support comprises aerosolisable material that is heatable to generate aerosol in the air gap. The consumable has at least one outlet for permitting the aerosol to pass out of consumable from the air gap.

Consumable for use with apparatus for heating aerosolisable material

The present invention relates to filter material for inclusion in a smoking article, said filter material comprising a base material comprising or made from fibers having a first diameter or mean diameter, and fine fibers having a diameter or mean diameter which is smaller than the first diameter, wherein the filter material comprises more than 10% by weight and/or by volume fine fibers or wherein the diameter or mean diameter of the fine fibers is between about 1.0 &#x3bc;m and about 1.5 &#x3bc;m. The invention also relates to filters or filter elements comprising the filter material, smoking articles comprising the same, and use of the filter material in smoke filtration.

Filter materials and filters made therefrom

Mailing wrapper

This invention provides a method of face recognition and a device for implementing said method, the method comprising the steps of: (a) performing a face recognition algorithm on an image of a user to determine an identity of the user, the image having an illumination level; (b) determining if a reliability measurement of the identity of the user determined by the face recognition algorithm meets a threshold indicating reliable identification and, if the reliability measurement is below the threshold indicating reliable identification; (c) receiving a new image of the user, the new image having an adjusted illumination level; and (d) performing a further face recognition algorithm on the new image of the user to determine the identity of the user.

Biometric identification

This invention relates to a method for face recognition and a device for implementing said method, the method comprising the steps of: displaying a point of interest on the screen such that a user adopts a gaze direction with respect to the screen; capturing an image of the user at the adopted gaze direction; and performing a face recognition algorithm on the image of the user, using an Enrollment image classified by said gaze direction.

A wireless access point () connected to a fixed telecommunications network () broadcasts codes relating to one or more network identities () identifying availability of wireless connection to the access point, If connection to the telecommunications network () is lost, it suspends one of the identity codes () and replaces it with a special identity code for a network identity () configured to co-operate with a mobile terminal () equipped to recognize the special identity code and transmit a message over another communications link () to alert a service center () to the fault ().

Network access fault reporting

The present invention relates to improvements in filters for use in smoking articles such as cigarettes, cigars and cigarillos. The improvements, particularly but not exclusively, relate to filter capabilities and to the manufacture of such filters. In one example, a filter for a smoking article comprises a first fibrous filter material having an average fiber denier in the range 7 to 9 and a second fibrous filter material having an average fiber denier of below 7. The application also describes a filter for a smoking article comprising various other filter arrangements including absorbent and/or adsorbent materials.

Smoking article filters

The invention presents a new NR-H method for assessment of packet loss visibility measure for a video sequence, where the measure is indicative of the effect on the perceptual quality of the video. Packet loss can occur as a result of the video being transmitted over an imperfect network. The invention combines dynamic modelling of temporal and spatial properties of the decoded pictures with bitstream information revealing location, extent and propagation of any errors. Analysis is performed on blocks of pixels, and preferably the macroblocks defined in the particular video encoding scheme. Knowledge of the error extent from the bitstream information is used to target spatial analysis around the specific error locations. Perceptual impact is estimated by utilizing spatio-temporal modelling to predict the properties of a missing block, and comparing those predictions with the actual properties of the missing block.

Assessing packet loss visibility in video

A loss of connection between a wireless access point and a network is reported to a network-based service platform by the wireless access point by automatically establishing wireless contact with a second wireless access point, and transmits a predetermined fault report message to a predetermined network platform address by way of the second wireless access point and the second network interface. Authentication credentials are stored in the access point allowing automatic access to the service platform without user intervention, to allow the report to be generated without user intervention. The message may include data on recent usage of the access point, or may be repeated when a user attempts to use the access point, in order to prioritize the fault reported at the service platform.

In order to detect interlace errors in a video signal, one receives successive digitally coded frames, each frame comprising data for a field of a first type and data for a field of a second type (i.e. a top field and bottom field or vice versa). One then generates for each field of the first type:&#x2014;a first difference signal (DF) representative of the difference between the field and the second-type field of the previous frame;&#x2014;a second difference signal (DF) representative of the difference between the field and the second-type field of the same frame; and&#x2014;a third difference signal (DF) representative of the difference between the field and the second-type field of the following frame. Then, in dependence of the values of said difference signals, a decision signal (wOFlag) is generated indicating an estimated temporal relationship of the field to the second-type field of the same frame. This can be compared with a signal (IDFO) indicating a purported temporal relationship, and an alarm signal (wEFlag) generated in the event of a mismatch.

Video signal analysis

This invention is concerned with a video quality measurement method, in particular where the video signal having: an original form; an encoded form in which video signal has been encoded using a compression algorithm utilizing a variable quantizer step size such that the encoded signal includes a quantizer step size parameter; and, a decoded form in which the encoded video signal has been at least in part reconverted to the original form. The method comprises the steps of: a) generating a first quality measure which is a function of said quantizer step size parameter; b) generating a masking measure and c) combining the first and second measures. The masking measure is which is a function of the spatial complexity of parts of the frames represented by the video signal in the decoded form, these parts being selected by generating a second measure which is a function of the prediction residual and identifying one or more regions of the picture for which the second measure exceeds a threshold.

Video quality measurement

A digitally encoded video fingerprinting system for generating and comparing/matching finger-prints from digitally encoded video which has been encoded according to an encoding method which involves the generation of residual macroblocks of pixels and the generation of quantized transform coefficients of the residual macroblocks, or of portions of the residual macroblocks, comprises a fingerprint database () and a video processing subsystem (). The video processing subsystem () includes a fingerprint sequence selection module () which is operable to select one or more sets of frames from input video content to be processed in order to generate a fingerprint; a fingerprint calculation module () which is operable to generate a fingerprint based on a set of frames selected by the fingerprint sequence selection module; and a fingerprint comparator module () which is operable to compare two fingerprints and to output a similarity score of the compared fingerprints. The method used by the fingerprint selection and fingerprint calculation modules includes selecting a group of frames of the encoded video content; processing the digitally encoded video content to obtain a set of quantized transform coefficients of residual macroblocks or portions of residual macroblocks associated with each of the selected frames; identifying a set of residual macroblocks per frame whose transform coefficients satisfy a threshold criterion; and generating a digital video fingerprint for the encoded video content in dependence upon the identified macroblocks or some property thereof within each of the selected frames.

Digital video fingerprinting

The present invention relates to improvements in filters for use in smoking articles such as cigarettes, cigars and cigarillos. The improvements, particularly but not exclusively, relate to filter capabilities and to the manufacture of such filters. In one example, a filter for a smoking article comprises randomly oriented discrete short length fibres of absorbent having adsorbent particles dispersed therein. The invention also provides a filter for a smoking article comprising various other filter arrangements including absorbent and/or adsorbent materials.

A method of generating a measure of quality for a decoded form of a video signal comprises: generating a quality measure dependent on a quantizer step size parameter according to a predetermined relationship; generating a plurality of masking measures, and applying a weighting to each masking measure, wherein each masking measurement is dependent on the spatial complexity of one or more types of regions present in pictures formed by decoding the video signal. One type of region comprises an active region of a picture in a video sequence for which a prediction residual measure meets a first condition. Another type of region comprises a region of the picture in the video sequence for which the prediction residual measure meets another condition. The quality measure and the plurality of weighted quality masking measures are combined to generate a combined quality measure for the decoded form of the video signal.

Growing community of inventors

Woodbridge, United Kingdom

Andrew Gordon Davis