A device for cutting, for example, mushrooms, and, especially, champignons, including two pincer arms articulated together at rear ends thereof, with the cutting device being adapted to be held in one hand of the user, and with the arm being compressible against a return spring. One pincer arm includes a cutting grid at a forward end thereof, with the cutting grid being aligned with the receiving depression for receiving the mushroom and disposed on the other pincer arm. The receiving depression...

A sliced food product such as a cheese product or meat product having a design or figure cut or otherwise formed therein. In accordance with a preferred embodiment, the design or figure is cut entirely or substantially through the slice so that the design or figure may be removed from a surrounding peripheral portion of the slice. A method and apparatus for forming the figure or design are also disclosed. The preferred method and apparatus employ a rotary figure cutter which cuts entirely throug...

A device for taking off slices sawn from rod-shaped material, having a take-off member which includes a holder and a conical flexible member. Between the holder and the conical member an annular element supports the conical element at some distance from its edge. By means of a vacuum, the center of the conical member is moved towards the holder and the edge is moved towards the slice just before the slice has been sawn entirely, and the slice is held by means of the vacuum.

Apparatus for visualizing slices of transitive closures of entities having dependence relationships with one another. A preferred embodiment visualizes slices of programs. A display in a computer system includes reduced representations of the files, procedures, and lines making up a program. The user employs a pointing device to interactively select a reduced representation as the slice point and the apparatus computes the slice and changes the color of the reduced representations in the slice. ...

A method and apparatus for wrapping individual slices of product, such as cheese, in film where the slices are first cut from a continuously produced ribbon and are thence carried upon a web of film that is drawn through enfolding operations to entube the successive slices by successive pairs of jaws. The jaws are evenly spaced on endless conveyor driven at a speed slightly greater than the ribbon of product thus producing spaces between successive slices where the jaws engage the film and where...

A method for segmentation of characters in text that segments text into lines, words and slices and determines at least one of fixed pitch and proportional pitch prior to segmentation. The method computes histograms of the lines and defines widths of lobes of the histograms of the lines as the character pitches. In addition, the method further analyzes the character pitches; segments lines into words; computes histograms of the words and aggregating the histograms of the words at predetermined p...

In one embodiment an IC is disclosed which includes a plurality of cascaded digital signal processing slices, wherein each slice has a multiplier coupled to an adder via a multiplexer and each slice has a direct connection to an adjoining slice; and means for configuring the plurality of digital signal processing slices to perform one or more mathematical operations, via, for example, opmodes. This IC allows for the implementation of some basic math functions, such as add, subtract, multiply and...

The present invention is therefore directed to a method and apparatus for warming a stack of cheese slices. In accordance with the invention, the stack of cheese slices is positioned between and in juxtaposition with opposing generally planar electrodes, each of the electrodes having a surface area generally coextensive with that of the cheese stack. Next, a conductive material is interposed between each electrode and the cheese stack to reduce contact resistance. Once properly assembled, an ele...

Slices of flexible material such as cheese are formed into stacks by use of a special form of conveyor. The conveyor uses vacuum and a release mechanism to form particularly accurate stacks, and can also sort the slices by weight and form interleaved or overlapping stacks or combine material emanating from different sources.

A stacker is provided for stacking the slices from the forming, sealing and cutting machines into a plurality of stacks. The stacker includes a conveyor belt, which includes a plurality of apertures, onto which the slices of product are disposed. A vacuum system provides vacuum through the apertures to hold the slices on the belt. Apparatus are provided for moving the belt in order to advance the slices to the stacking locations. The vacuum is sufficient to hold the slices on the belt even when ...