International Business Machines Corporation

Microsoft Technology Licensing, LLC

David L Johnson

Brian Robert Muras

David J D'Souza

Ryan M Burkhardt

Donald McNamara

Eric G Thiemann

Tom G Yaryan

Seung-Yup Chai

Michael Lawrence Nordstrom

Daniel Joseph Strauss

Seetharaman Harikrishnnan

Nicholas R Legget

Paul Reuben Day

Pai-Hung Pan

Phillip V Mann

Don Alan Gilliland

Stephen P Capps

John Peter Shewchuk

Stephen James Millet

Peter Joseph Heyrman

Jessica R Eidem

Raymond W McCollum

David A Feinleib

James L Hunter

Warren G Stevens

Gregory Scott Lindhorst

James Dorance Gerken

David R Parlin

James Richard Coon

Timothy P Meyer

Carlos P Gomes

John R Abernathey

Joseph Prasanna Fernando

Min Wei

John Christopher Ripstra

Robert J Lavigna

Wen Lin

Jacob D Swed

Daniel M Goldman

John M Buehler

George H Williams

Kaviraj Singh

Michael James Denney

Joan Marie Ries

Tudor Toma

John D Sheehy

Subramani Rajaram

Raymond J Newman

Joseph C Veshinfsky

Danny W Johnson

Charles A Paquette

Jody E Berk

R Scott Wigton

Scot J Gellock

Roberto Barreiro

Lyndon J Schroeder

Timothy J Wilhelm

Lori Carrigan

Loren Steenhoek

Mohammadreza Ghaffarzadeh

A computer-implemented method of establishing influence relationships between data in a question-answering environment is disclosed. Establishing influence relationships can include determining a set of conditions indicating a set of user statuses and analyzing, using a first natural language processing technique, a corpus of data including a set of user data. Establishing influence relationships between data can include identifying, based on analyzing the corpus of data, a set of influence factors corresponding to a subset of the set of user data and to a subset of the set of conditions. In embodiments, establishing influence relationships can include establishing, based on the set of influence factors, a set of influence relationships between the subset of the set of user data and the subset of the set of conditions.

Data relationships in a question-answering environment

A cable assembly includes a connector head and a conductive shield arranged to at least partially encase the connector head. The conductive shield includes a first plurality of contact members. A conductive shell is arranged to at least partially encase the connector head and the conductive shield. Each of the first plurality of contact members extends outwardly from the conductive shield toward the conductive shell to electrically couple the conductive shield to the conductive shell.

Conductive shell for a cable assembly

According to embodiments of the invention, a structure for cooling electronic components may be provided. The structure may include a heat sink having a plurality of parallel heat conducting elements. The structure may also include a plurality of fans, wherein the fans are interleaved with the heat conducting elements. The structure may also include a drive shaft passing through the heat conducting elements and the fans, wherein the drive shaft rotates the fans in relation to the heat sink. According to other embodiments, the structure may include a baffle located on a side of the heat sink in an upstream location within an airflow stream.

Interleaved heat sink and fan assembly

A mechanical assembly including a pair of members each having a planar surface and a displacing structure can be designed to engage a compressible seal, and thereby reduce or eliminate shear force exerted on the seal, keeping the seal intact during compression. Each displacing structure can have a displacing surface and a latching surface. A compressible seal can be affixed to one of the planar surfaces. Contact between the displacing surfaces during parallel movement of the planar surfaces relative to each other may create a separation between the planar surfaces greater than the compressible seal height. Positioning of the displacing surfaces past each other during parallel movement of the planar surfaces relative to each other may initiate the compression of the compressible seal between the planar surfaces.

Surface positioning for compressible seal arrangement

Transferring events. A method may be practiced in a network environment including one or more interconnected systems. The method includes subscribing to receive an event stream from a sending system. Subscribing to receive an event stream includes sending a bookmark subscription. The bookmark subscription specifies events that should be sent from the sending system. The method further includes receiving an event from the sending system as dictated by the bookmark subscription. The method also includes receiving a bookmark from the sending system related to the events sent from the sending system.

Event bookmarks

A computing workflow system has a workflow process definition contained in a workflow table as script functions. The workflow table is part of an extended database schema operating with an extended store, a workflow engine and a script engine. The novel workflow system includes a server database having a data table and an associated workflow table. A workflow extended store is communicatively coupled to the server database. A workflow engine is also communicatively coupled to the server database and to the workflow extended store. Further, a script engine is communicatively coupled to the workflow engine. The workflow table includes workflow rules and associated code to be executed by the workflow engine. Each row of the workflow table represents a workflow step. Script functions are defined in the workflow table to evaluate the condition and execute the action of each workflow step. The rules and associated code in the workflow table is both declarative and procedural. The workflow engine compares the data change information from the extended store procedure with the workflow definition in the workflow table and determines the appropriate step that needs to be executed. Then it checks execution permissions on that step. If execute permission is granted, the workflow engine evaluates the workflow step condition against the workflow table and, if true, it executes the step action. Upon completing the step action, the workflow engine commits all the changes made to the current item or to other items in the database.

Workflow as data-transition driven, scriptable state machines

Software programs, such as an operating system or other application programs, are automatically customized to a specific user(s) based on data corresponding to the specific user(s) that is maintained in a user information store. In one embodiment, the information store is a unified store that is accessible by multiple programs including the operating system. Thus, new information or information changes can be made available to multiple programs by the user adding (or changing) the information only once. In another embodiment, the operating system image to be installed on a computer is pre-populated with user-specific information at the factory. The user-specific information can be integrated into the operating system at the factory or alternatively upon an initial boot of the computer by the user.

Automatic computer program customization based on a user information store

A method, apparatus, system, and signal-bearing medium that in an embodiment convert e-mail into physical mail. In various embodiments, if a recipient identifier in the e-mail is an e-mail address, the recipient identifier is retained. But, if the recipient identifier in the e-mail is not an e-mail address, the recipient identifier, or a street address associated with the recipient identifier, is printed on an envelope, and the e-mail is also printed. Postage may also optionally be printed on the envelope. In this way, persons who do not have an e-mail address may still receive the contents of e-mail via physical delivery.

E-mail to physical mail converter

An environment for developing clientside/serverside code is disclosed. The environment allows the treatment of pages as objects as well as the access of objects contained within pages by other pages. Pages may be accessed through the use of a page object control stored in each page where the page object control specifies how other pages may use the page as an object.

Page object model

A dynamic block transfer size adjustment mechanism independently defines block transfer size for each memory portion, which may include files in a file system, virtual storage segments in a memory system, or extents in physical storage. By specifying block transfer size for a memory portion independently from other memory portions, the performance of the computer system may be enhanced. In addition, the block transfer size of one or more memory portions may be dynamically adjusted according to how the memory portion is used. In an alternative embodiment, the block transfer size may also be specified for each process that accesses a portion of memory. Thus, a single file may be accessed with a first block transfer size by a first process, and may be accessed with a second (different) block transfer size by a second process. By providing the ability to independently set block transfer size for portions of memory, and to dynamically adjust those values according to the historical use of the portion of memory, the performance of a computer system is enhanced.

Computer apparatus and method for autonomic adjustment of block transfer size

A system and method for configuring a computer involves first compiling configuration information from a source computer and populating a migration file with the configuration information. The migration file is kept at a server. Subsequently, upon access to the server, the configuration information from the migration file is retrieved and used to configure a destination computer.

System and method for the automated migration of configuration information

Synchronization software in a computer operating system evaluates with respect to an exposure goal the ages of byte stream files queued for synchronization, and dynamically adjusts synchronization (&ldquo;sync&rdquo;) capacity in response to the evaluation. The synchronization of byte stream files occurs at rates responsive to the sync capacity. Several parameters are used to adjust sync capacity: a lead time, the number of active sync tasks, and the priority of the sync tasks. These parameters are adjusted in a manner to impact system performance to the least extent possible.

Adaptive, time-based synchronization mechanism for an integrated posix file system

Growing community of inventors

Duvall, WA, United States of America

David L Johnson