A method and apparatus is provided that uses a deep learning (DL) network to correct projection images acquired using an X-ray source with a large focal spot size. The DL network is trained using a training dataset that includes input data and target data. The input data includes large-focal-spot-size X-ray projection data, and the output data includes small-focal-spot-size X-ray projection data (i.e., smaller than the focal spot of the input data). Thus, the DL network is trained to improve the resolution of projection data acquired using a large focal spot size, and obtain a resolution similar to what is achieved using a small focal spot size. Further, the DL network is can be trained to additional correct other aspects of the projection data (e.g., denoising the projection data).

The background description provided herein is for the purpose of generally presenting the context of the disclosure. Work of the presently named inventors, to the extent the work is described in this background section, as well as aspects of the description that cannot otherwise qualify as prior art at the time of filing, are neither expressly nor impliedly admitted as prior art against the present disclosure.
Radiography systems and methods are widely used, particularly for medical imaging and diagnosis. Radiography systems generally create two-dimensional projection images through a subject's body. A radiation source, such as an X-ray tube, irradiates the body from one side. A collimator, generally adjacent to the X-ray source, limits the angular extent of the X-ray beam, so that radiation impinging on the body is substantially confined to a cone-beam/fan-beam region (i.e., an X-ray projection volume) defining an image volume of the body. At least one detector on the opposite side of the body receives radiation transmitted through the body substantially in the projection volume. The attenuation of the radiation that has passed through the body is measured by processing electrical signals received from the detector.
X-ray projection images having high spatial resolution are desirable in order to visualize fine details in the image. However, spatial resolution can be limited by the detector pixel size. Additionally, the spatial resolution can be limited by the spatial extent of the X-ray source (i.e., the focal spot size), and the geometrical arrangement among the source, the imaged object, and the X-ray detector. The short wavelength of X-rays minimizes the effects of diffraction. However, as the size and spacing of the pixels of the X-ray detector array continue to get smaller with improvements in detector technology, improvements to decreasing the size of the focal-spot size in X-ray sources have failed to keep pace, resulting in the X-ray source being the limiting factor in resolution. Due to intrinsic material and thermal constraints in X-ray tubes, the focal spot size has remained relatively constant, whereas the critical dimensions of the X-ray detector array (e.g. the width and spacing of the detector elements in the array) have decreased over time, until now the spatial resolution for X-ray detects is smaller than the width of the point-spread function of X-ray sources operating under typical clinical settings.
The focal spot is the point where the electron beam strikes a target within an X-ray tube. Thus, the focal-spot size is determined by the size of the electron beam and the aspect angle between the surface struck by the X-rays and the direction from the X-ray source to the target. A small focal-spot size improves the resolution of the X-ray imaging, resulting in more detailed images. However, it is often difficult to use a small focal-spot size due to the constraints imposed by X-ray tube loading necessary to achieve a desired exposure and signal-to-noise-ratio (SNR).
The width of the focal spot is not the only factor determining the point-spread function. Additionally, the point-spread function is affected by the ratio between object-imager distance (OID) and source-imager distance (SID). The closer an object is to the detector and the farther away the object is from the source, the smaller the point-spread function becomes, resulting in less blurring in the generated image. Thus, the spatial resolution can be improved by making the ratio SID:OID large. This can be accomplished by keeping the OID to a minimum, e.g., by keeping the object close to the detector. Further, the ratio SID:OID is large when the SID is large by positioning the object a long distance from the X-ray source. However, practical constraints impose bounds on how large the ratio SID:OID can be for clinical applications.
In clinical X-ray imaging systems, the focal-spot size is typically on the order of one millimeter, which is large enough to be the limiting factor for the X-ray image resolution. High-resolution detectors with a pixel size significantly less than one millimeter create potential for higher resolution X-ray imaging, but this potential cannot be fully realized without overcoming the practical limitations imposed by the size of focal spots and magnification factors. Tube design limitations present obstacles to improve X-ray imaging resolution without degrading the SNR by decreasing the exposure. A method of increasing resolution without significantly degrading SNR in X-ray images would be advantageous.
This resolution limit arising for the spot-size not only affects fluoroscopy, but also impacts other modalities of X-ray radiography, such as X-ray computed tomography (CT). X-ray CT systems and methods are widely used, particularly for medical imaging and diagnosis. CT systems generally create images of one or more sectional slices through a subject's body. A radiation source, such as an X-ray source, irradiates the body from one side. At least one detector on the opposite side of the body receives radiation transmitted through the body. The attenuation of the radiation that has passed through the body is measured by processing electrical signals received from the detector.
A CT sinogram indicates attenuation through the body as a function of position along a detector array and as a function of the projection angle between the X-ray source and the detector array for various projection measurements. In a sinogram, the spatial dimensions refer to the position along the array of X-ray detectors. The time/angle dimension refers to the projection angle of X-rays, which changes as a function of time during a CT scan. The attenuation resulting from a portion of the imaged object (e.g., a vertebra) will trace out a sine wave around the vertical axis. Those portions farther from the axis of rotation correspond to sine waves with larger amplitudes, and the phase of the sine waves corresponds to the angular positions of objects around the rotation axis. Performing an inverse Radon transform—or any other image reconstruction method—reconstructs an image from the projection data in the sinogram.
Factors that limit the spatial resolution of the sinogram will also limit the resolution of the reconstructed image. Accordingly, improved resolution methods in the projection domain can provide a benefit for many areas of X-ray radiography.
The "background" description provided herein is for the purpose of generally presenting the context of the disclosure. Work of the presently named inventors, to the extent it is described in this background section, as well as aspects of the description which may not otherwise qualify as conventional art at the time of filing, are neither expressly nor implicitly admitted as conventional art against the present disclosure.

Apparatus and method using deep learning (DL) to compensate for large focal spot size in x-ray projection imaging


A method for crystallizing a silicon substrate includes manufacturing a crystallized silicon test substrate that is crystallized by scanning excimer laser annealing beams with different energy densities on respective areas of an amorphous silicon test substrate, irradiating a surface of the crystallized silicon test substrate using a light source, and measuring reflectivity corresponding to the respective areas of the crystallized silicon test substrate in a visible light wavelength range, extracting average reflectivities of the respective areas of the crystallized silicon test substrate in wavelength ranges corresponding to respective colors, calculating an optimum energy density (OPED) index per energy density by using a value acquired by subtracting average reflectivity of red-based colors from average reflectivity of blue-based colors, selecting an optimal energy density, and crystallizing an amorphous silicon substrate using the optimal energy density.

1. Field
Embodiments relate to a method for crystallizing a silicon substrate using laser beams.
2. Description of the Related Art
In order to form an active layer used for a thin film transistor (TFT) with a polysilicon thin film, a method for depositing intrinsic amorphous silicon on an insulation substrate through a plasma enhanced chemical vapor deposition (PECVD) method or a low pressure chemical vapor deposition (LPCVD) method and crystallizing it is used.
The crystallization method includes: an excimer laser annealing (ELA) method for instantly irradiating excimer laser beams that are high-power pulse laser beams to apply heat and crystallizing amorphous silicon; a solid phase crystallization (SPC) method for crystallizing amorphous silicon in a reactor by heating the reactor; a sequential lateral solidification (SLS) method for using energy in a complete melting band; and a metal induced crystallization (MIC) method for selectively depositing metal on an amorphous silicon layer, applying an electric field, and inducing crystallization with the metal as a seed.
The above information disclosed in this Background section is only for enhancement of understanding of the background of the invention and therefore it may contain information that does not form the prior art that is already known in this country to a person of ordinary skill in the art.

Method for crystallizing a silicon substrate


A method for supporting a communication application between a plurality of enterprises in a secure manner, where each enterprise includes a plurality of clients, includes providing a distributed instant multimedia communication (IMC) system that includes a plurality of autonomous networks communicatively coupled to one another via a network. Each autonomous network is associated with an enterprise and includes an IMC server that manages IMC services for a plurality of clients in the enterprise, The IMC server is configured to support a private channel that allows each client in the enterprise to share its presence information with other clients in other enterprises. The method also includes providing the communication application in a first client in a first enterprise such that a user of the first client is allowed to invoke and control the communication application locally, and allowing the user of the first client to invoke the communication application to create application specific data and to create a recipient list comprising a recipient client in a second enterprise. The application specific data and the recipient list are received by a first IMC server associated with the first enterprise, and in response to receiving the application specific data and recipient list, utilizes the private channel to transmit the application specific data to the recipient client in the second enterprise.

In many large and small enterprises, as illustrated in FIG. 1A, it is common for a central server, e.g., 110a, to provide advanced communication software tools or applications 120a to a plurality of clients 112a in the enterprise 100a. Such applications or tools 120a can support for example, file sharing, on-line polling, on-line questionnaires, intra-office communications, scheduling and calendaring, and information postings/announcements. For example, a user 130a of a client 112a can launch a meeting scheduler tool 120a residing on the central server 110a to schedule a meeting with several enterprise attendees. The tool 120a can allow the user 130a to select the attendees and to propose several times and days for the meeting. The tool 120a can then send the proposal to the attendees, allow each attendee to select one or more of the proposed times and days, compile the responses, and determine a mutually convenient meeting time and day based on the responses.
In another example, company wide information can be disseminated or made available to the clients 112a through the central server 110a. An announcement tool 120a can post Information concerning functions, meetings and seminars, such as meeting rooms, times, and scheduled speakers, on the enterprise's 100a internal website hosted by the central server 110a and accessed by any of the clients 112a. In another example, clients 112a can access files or documents stored in a central database 140a via the central server 110a. The central server 110a can support many other applications and tools 120a for the enterprise 100a and for the clients 112a therein, and those described above are but a few examples.
Typically, for security reasons, the central server 110a resides behind at least one firewall 150a insulated from a public network 160, such as the Internet. As a result, the central server 110a generally is not accessible by an external client 112b, i.e., a non-enterprise client, due to complications related to firewall traversal, authentication and access control. While this scheme protects the central server 110a from malicious users and viruses, it also precludes access by friendly external clients 130b, e.g., customers, vendors, and partners who have business relationships with the enterprise 100a. Thus, customers 130b who are invited to a meeting at the enterprise 100a would not be allowed to access the enterprise's internal website to find the meeting room and time. Such information would need to be provided outside of the enterprise 100a, e.g., on a website hosted by a server outside of the firewall 150a, where the information would be available to the public. This is not a desirable solution if the meeting involves sensitive and/or confidential matters.
To address some of these concerns, an independent service provider 170, on the Internet, illustrated in FIG. 1B, can offer enterprise-to-enterprise communication tools and applications 120c. The independent service provider 170 acts like a central server in that it controls the application 120c, e.g., on-line polling, on-line questionnaire, meeting scheduler, and file sharing, and routes all network traffic between enterprises 100a, 100b, and through firewalls 150a, 150b, if needed. To that extent, the independent service provider 170 can create supposedly secure communication channels for the information exchange. Nevertheless, because the independent service provider 170 is responsible for sign-in authentication for all attendees where individual enterprises have no control, it is susceptible to a security breach and therefore, the enterprises 100a, 100b using the service can be potentially exposed to identity and virus issues.
In both of the systems described above, the central servers 110a, 110b and independent service provider 170 are generally isolated from other central servers and service providers. The clients registered on different servers or different service providers are isolated from one another. To connect clients who are using difference services requires yet another communication process for service invitation, and this process can be different from enterprise 100a to enterprise 100b. As a result, the application scope of these centralized services can be very limited in terms of the number of clients 112 and enterprises 100a, 100b who are accessing the same service at the same time and who are trying to communicate with each other. This limitation has serious impact to applications in vertical industries, where many enterprises are involved together for business collaborations. Their interactions can follow a "star" model or a "mesh" model, depending on the business relationships. Complicated connection setups between centralized services can cause severe scalability problems among enterprises that have flexible and dynamic collaboration models. In short, the centralized environment is not scalable and typically involves a single enterprise 100a, 100b or a limited number of enterprises. Therefore, the central server solution is not suitable for a vertical industry that can have hundreds of thousands of employees and partners residing in different offices in different countries and continents.
Accordingly, there is a need for a system and method that not only allows users within an enterprise to utilize advanced communication applications and tools within the enterprise, but also allows the users to utilize the same tools with users in different enterprises without requiring a centralized independent service provider to connect services across enterprises. The system should be scalable and should regulate traffic according to enterprise security policies. The system should be adaptable by a large number of enterprises who are conducting business collaborations with each other dynamically in a de-centralized, i.e., distributed, environment.

Supporting communication applications between enterprises in a secure manner


A computer system has a plurality of parallel execution units for executing instructions with assigned guard indicators, one execution unit including a master guard value store and another execution unit having a shadow guard value store, together with guard ownership circuitry to indicate whether the shadow guard value store owns the current value of the guard indicator and transfer circuitry operable to transfer a guard value from the master store to another execution unit.

Computer systems are known in which instructions include a guard indicator so that the execution or otherwise of the instruction is dependent upon the guard value. Problems do however arise when a plurality of instructions are executed simultaneously in a plurality of parallel execution units. This may arise in computer systems operating in superscalar or very long instruction word (VLIW) instruction modes so that the execution of some instructions may effect the guard values to be associated with other instructions in parallel execution units. Problems may also arise from pipelined execution of instructions so that the execution of some later instructions commences prior to the completion of execution of earlier instructions in the pipeline.
It is an object of the present invention to provide computer apparatus and methods which enable efficient transfer of guard values between more than one execution units.
Guarded instruction execution has the same meaning as predicated instruction execution.
The invention provides a computer system for executing instructions having assigned guard indicators, which system comprises instruction supply circuitry, a plurality of parallel execution units for receiving respective instructions from the supply circuitry, each instruction having a respective guard indicator selected from a set of guard indicators, common to the plurality of execution units, one of said execution units including a master guard value store containing a master representation of current values for the guard indicators in said set of guard indicators, another of said execution units including a shadow guard value store containing a secondary representation of values for the guard indicators in said set, guard ownership circuitry to indicate whether said shadow guard value store owns the current value for a guard indicator, and guard value transfer circuitry operable to transfer a guard value from said master store to said another execution unit thereby enabling selection of a guard value for said another of said execution units from either the master or shadow guard value store depending on the indication of the guard ownership.
Preferably said execution unit includes circuitry for executing guard value modifying instructions and said guard value transfer circuitry is operable to transfer to, and thereby update, said master guard value store any modified guard value generated in said another execution unit.
Preferably the instruction supply circuitry comprises a control unit common to each parallel execution unit, said control unit including said guard ownership circuitry and being operable in response to an indication of guard ownership to supply to the execution unit instructions to enable access to a selected one of the guard value stores.
Preferably said control unit includes a further secondary store of guard values and said guard ownership circuitry is operable to indicate whether ownership of a selected guard value is held by said secondary store of guard values in the control unit.
Preferably said control unit includes an instruction dispatch unit for dispatching instructions to said parallel execution units, said dispatch unit being responsive to said secondary store of guard values and to said guard ownership circuitry to prevent dispatch of instructions for which the guard value is owned by the control unit and known to be false.
Preferably said dispatch unit is operable to dispatch an instruction with a predetermined guard value requiring normal execution of the instruction in response to locating that the guard value for the instruction is owned by the control unit and indicated by said secondary store as a true value.
The invention provides a method of executing instructions in a computer system, said instructions having assigned guard indicators, which method comprises supplying a plurality of instructions to parallel execution units, each instruction having a respective guard indicator selected from a set of guard indicators common to the plurality of execution units, holding a master set of current values for the guard indicators in one execution unit, holding a shadow set of guard values in another execution unit, indicating which execution unit has guard ownership for the guard indicator of any one instruction being executed, execution of an instruction in said another execution unit obtaining the guard value from the shadow value if guard ownership of that guard indicator is owned by said another execution unit or effecting a transfer of the master guard value from said one execution unit if guard ownership of that guard value is not owned by said another execution unit.
Preferably the method includes executing instructions to modify said guard values wherein execution of an instruction to modify a guard value in said one execution unit updates said master value without changing said shadow value.
Preferably execution of an instruction in said another execution unit to modify a guard value is used to update said shadow guard value and to transfer the new guard value to update the master value in said one execution unit.


Provided are a sounding structure and a terminal. The sounding structure comprises: a frame comprising an accommodation cavity, the accommodation cavity comprising a first opening and a second opening provided on two opposite sides of the frame; a magnetic circuit system arranged in the accommodation cavity and comprising a first channel and a second channel; a first vibrating diaphragm arranged to face the first opening and provided with a voice coil, the voice coil partially extending into the first channel; and a second vibrating diaphragm arranged to face the second opening, the second channel communicating the first opening with the second opening.

In the related art, a telephone receiver of a dual-screen terminal is mainly disposed in two manners. In a first manner, one home screen is disposed, and then a telephone receiver is disposed on a side corresponding to the home screen, for a user to use. In a second manner, both screens are disposed as home screens, and then telephone receivers are separately disposed, for a user to use. However, in the first manner, the user needs to perform a function of the telephone receiver only on the side of the home screen. As a result, each time the user uses the telephone receiver, the user needs to first flip to the side of the home screen. In the second manner, two telephone receivers are disposed. Although the screen does not need to be flipped during usage, arrangement space of the two telephone receivers needs to be occupied to dispose the two telephone receivers. This affects space for mounting another functional component.
As can be seen, in the related art, disposing of the double telephone receivers occupies excessively large space.


Embodiments may exclude portions of input data in order to improve the accuracy and explanatory quality of the output of machine learning models by disregarding parts of the input during the optimization process by masking them during backpropagation. For example, in an embodiment, a method may be implemented in a computer system comprising a processor, memory accessible by the processor, and computer program instructions stored in the memory and executable by the processor, the method may comprise receiving, at the computer system, input data and a machine learning model to generate a prediction based on the input data, generating, at the computer system, a mask indicating portions of the input data to be disregarded during backpropagation of the machine learning model, and modifying, at the computer system, the generated mask to improve the prediction of the machine learning model.

The present invention relates to techniques to exclude portions of input data in order to improve the accuracy and explanatory quality of the output of machine learning models by disregarding parts of the input during the optimization process by masking them during backpropagation.
As machine learning algorithms continue to improve, there is an increasing need for explaining why a given model produces a certain prediction. The benefits of such an explanation fall roughly into two categories: explaining the end result for the user, and analysis of the network by the researcher. Many conventional explainability methods focus on identifying parts of the input that influence the score a machine learning process, such as a neural network, assigns to a given class. In this context, it is beneficial to be able to limit the choice of areas of input that can be presented as, or included in, the explanation. An example for such a need is a radiologist who analyzes a medical image that contains a finding, and wishes to locate incidental, for example, additional, potentially malignant findings, and wants to exclude the main finding from consideration.
One of the uses of such explainability is that of unsupervised segmentation—such as identifying an area that contains an object of a given class, despite not having access to any location information. Often, the segmented areas may only contain small parts of the object in question, such as only the parts that most strongly influence the decision.
Conventional techniques for detecting the parts of the input that are responsible for increasing the prediction of a given model are typically function by minimizing the score with respect to the input, under additional constraints. However, conventional techniques cannot remove certain regions from consideration. For example, a user may want to exclude a portion of an input from the explanation, such as a radiologist that realizes an area is suspicious and wants to analyze another area's contribution. Another example is when a small area has such strong contribution that it completely dominates the optimization process, resulting in convergence to only partial explanation (this is usually the case in practice).
Accordingly, a need arises for techniques that provide the capability to exclude portions of the input in order to improve the accuracy and explanatory quality of the output.

Region constrained regularized adversarial examples for model interpretability

International Business Machines Corporation


To secure easiness of component selection at a reception side. A transmission stream is generated in which a first transmission packet including a predetermined component and a second transmission packet including signaling information related to the predetermined component are multiplexed in a time division manner.

In current broadcasting systems, a Moving Picture Experts Group-2 Transport Stream (MPEG-2 TS) scheme or a Real Time Protocol (RTP) scheme is being widely used as a media transport scheme (for example, see Patent Literature 1). An MPEG Media Transport (MMT) scheme (for example, see Non-Patent Literature 1) is under review as a next digital broadcasting scheme.

This patent is subject to a terminal disclaimer.

Transmission device, transmission method, reception device, and reception method


A method for treating alopecia and/or hair depigmentation includes administering to a subject in need of such treatments a synthetic peptide, which has an amino acid sequence that has 20-44 amino acid residues and includes at least 20 consecutive residues that has at least 90% amino acid sequence identity to residues 16-35 of SEQ ID NO: 10. Also disclosed herein are pharmaceutical compositions containing the synthetic peptide; and uses thereof. According to various embodiments of the present disclosure, the synthetic peptide is useful in treating alopecia and/or hair depigmentation in a subject.

1. Field of the Invention
The present disclosure relates to the treatment of alopecia and/or hair depigmentation. In particular, the disclosed invention relates to the use of PEDF-derived polypeptides for treating alopecia and/or hair depigmentation.
2. Description of Related Art
Alopecia means loss of hair from the head or body, and can be categorized as either cicatricial (scarring) alopecia or non-cicatricial (non-scarring) alopecia. In patients with cicatricial alopecia, the hair follicles would be destroyed and replaced with scar tissues, whereas in patients with non-cicatricial alopecia, there are no such irreversible damages. While not life-threatening, alopecia affects personal appearance, and therefore personal social interactions, self-esteem, and psychological wellbeing.
Non-cicatricial alopecia includes anagen effluvium, telogen effluvium, androgenic alopecia, and alopecia areata, each of which is resulted from a distinct biological defect. Depending on the type of alopecia a subject might be experiencing, its effects on the hair follicles differs accordingly.
Anagen effluvium is generally caused by abrupt cessation of mitotic activity in hair matrix cells of anagen hair follicles. As such, the hair follicles produce either no hair, or narrow defective hair sheaths which are predisposed to fracture and loss. Anagen Effluvium is common in patients underwent chemotherapy or radiotherapy. Generally, hair follicles would resume their original growth cycle once the cause of anagen effluvium ceases to exist. Hence, in most cases, re-growth of hair starts after the treatment ends. However, the color and texture of the newly grown hairs may be different from those of the original hairs.
Telogen effluvium occurs when cycling hair follicles enter the telogen phase of the hair growth cycle prematurely, thereby causing excessive shedding of hair. It may be caused by various stress-related conditions, including imbalanced diet, medications (e.g., beta blockers, calcium channel blockers, antidepressants, and non-steroidal anti-inflammatories, etc.), childbirth, high fevers, major surgery, an over- or under-active thyroid gland, severe infections, severe chronic illness, and severe psychological stress. Generally, hair loss appears 3 to 4 months after the individual had experienced any of the stress incidents; and the lost hair will be replaced within 6 to 12 months.
Androgenic alopecia (also known as male pattern baldness) is the most common type of male hair loss. Androgenic alopecia affects both male and female, although female subjects tend to lose less hair than male subjects. The underlying mechanism for androgenic alopecia is not well understood. However, it is believed that the hypersensitivity of hair follicles against dihydrotestosterone (a derivative of androgen) is associated with the development of androgenic alopecia in men. The hypersensitivity may cause the miniaturization of hair follicles and shorten the anagen period of hair follicle cells, thereby resulting in the formation of the club hair which is eventually shed from the hair follicle.
Currently, there are two drugs proved by the U.S. Food & Drug Administration (FDA) for the treatment of androgenic alopecia: topical minoxidil (brand name: ROGAINE®) and oral finasteride (brand name: Propecia®). Minoxidil is a potassium channel agonist that affects the hair follicles by extending the anagen period of hair follicles, stimulating the telogen-to-anagen transformation, and promoting the follicle size enlargement. Minoxidil is also applicable in the treatment of alopecia areata as well as anagen effluvium caused by chemotherapy. Finasteride is a competitive inhibitor of type II 5-α-reductase, an enzyme that converts testosterone to dihydrotestosterone (DHT). Therefore, finasteride treats androgenic alopecia by blocking the activity of type II 5-α-reductase. Although these two drugs stimulate hair regrowth in some patients, they are only effective during the medication period, and hence, the patients are advised to take the medication continuously. In addition, use of minoxidil or finasteride is occasionally found to be accompanied by a number of side effects. Possible side effects of minoxidil include scalp itching or rash; decreased libido; elevated heart rate; difficulty breathing; weight gain; and hypertrichosis. Possible side effects of finasteride include skin rash; breast enlargement or tenderness; testicular pain; decreased libido; decreased volume of ejaculate; and impotence.
Hair color is the result of pigmentation of the hair. When the supply of the pigment (i.e., melanin) from the melanocytes decreases, the newly grown hair would loss its original color and exhibits a lighter or even white color, a phenomenon generally known as hair depigmentation. Factors that cause hair depigmentation includes at least, aging, stress, disorders (e.g., piebaldism), etc. In addition, hair depigmentation is often found in newly grown hairs of patients whom previously underwent chemotherapy or radiotherapy. To date, there is no medical treatment that is effective in inducing the depigmented hair to regain its former color. Therefore, most people experiencing hair depigmentation have to cope with their appearances or to cover the depigmented hair by dying the hairs or by wearing a wig.
In view of the foregoing, there exists a need in the art for means that effectively treats various types of alopecia and/or hair depigmentation.

Use of PEDF-derived polypeptides for treating alopecia and/or hair depigmentation


The impurity laden particulate material to be cleaned by a gravity feed deduster is passed through a magnetic field of varying intensity to neutralize the static charge causing the impurities to adhere to the primary product. The material is then subjected to air flows to separate the neutralized debris from the primary product. The air flows can be of high velocity and can be either pressurized air or vacuum induced. The cleaned product is collected and the contaminated air is treated to recover the debris therefrom.

1. The Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to deduster apparatus and in particular represents an improvement over my previous inventions described in U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,299,693 and 4,631,124.
2. The Prior Art
It is well known that, in the field of transporting particulate product, commonly powders, granules, and the like generically referred to as powders, it is important to keep the product as free as possible of contaminants. Contaminants would include both foreign material as well as broken particles or streamers of the product being transported. In either case, using plastics as an example, such foreign material would have a detrimental effect on the finished product. Specifically, foreign material different in composition from the primary material, such as dust, and non uniform material of the primary product, such as streamers, would not necessarily have the same melting temperatures as the primary product and would cause flaws when the plastics material is melted and molded.
There have been many attempts to come up with means for transporting particulate product without causing breakage of the product and for separating out foreign matter of all types so that a substantially uniform clean product is delivered.
In my previous patents, mentioned above, I described apparatus which used neutralization of static charges together with counter flow of air currents to separate lighter dust particles from the main product being transported. Subsequently I have learned that there is more to separating dust, streamers, and the like than just passing the material through a magnetic field. Different materials require different handling because the charges which they carry may vary depending upon the makeup of the primary product. Thus it is desirable to not only pass the material through a magnetic field, but to vary that magnetic field to achieve a magnetic resonance which will effectively neutralize the charge of the dust and debris adhering to the primary particulate product.

Method and apparatus for removing dust and debris from particulate product


Heat is recovered from a heat source to heat water to high temperatures. Apparatuses, systems and methods are described to heat water to a high temperature by using heat, such as may be considered in some instances as waste heat, recovered from a heat source. The methods, systems, and apparatuses described utilize low pressure refrigerant(s) as a fluid to provide a refrigeration cycle that utilizes a source of heat to heat water to a high temperature. The refrigeration cycle can be with or without a cascade cycle. The refrigerant cycle in some examples uses an oil free compressor.

Current high temperature hot water heating (e.g. >160 F) is generated through primarily natural gas or electric hot water heaters. There are applications where heating, ventilating, and air conditioning (HVAC) heat pumps are utilized for hot water up to 160 F but current refrigerants are typically limited from reaching higher temperatures due to decomposition issues or efficiency issues. CO2 hot water heat pumps are currently used in some markets for residential or very light commercial applications but are typically very expensive. Natural gas or electric hot water heaters are limited in efficiency to coefficients of performance (COP) where COPs<1. Current hot water heater/boiler market is tens of billions of dollars globally. Improvements may be made to generating high temperature hot water.

Using heat recovered from heat source to obtain high temperature hot water


A fire sprinkler mount including a base, a bracket and a screw mounting the bracket to the base. The base includes a support attachable to a beam with two arms extending therefrom. Support holes extend through the arms. The bracket includes two parallel plates spaced to receive a standard sprinkler fitting. A cradle is provided at one of the plates while a retaining hole is provided on the other. The screw is able to rotate within the support holes and is threaded to a mounting hole in the bracket for vertical adjustment of the bracket retaining the sprinkler fitting.

The field of the present invention is mountings for fire sprinklers in buildings.
Fire sprinklers are commonly installed in buildings today. Safety regulations now require same in many applications. The sprinklers are most often installed in ceilings where the sprinkler head extends below the ceiling or is flush with the ceiling while the sprinkler fitting of which there are standard sizes is positioned in the space above the sprinkler head. The placement of the sprinkler head protruding or flush with the ceiling creates the need for locational adjustment. The adjustment may require displacement in the plane of the ceiling or vertically perpendicular to that plane.
In many applications, particularly in the home, the sprinkler system might include PVC pipe and fittings. Such components are typically glued together, requiring cutting and reassembling for adjustment. Further, the pipe is not as resistant to vibrational wear making it more easily damaged by metal fittings, clamps and the like. However, the piping tends to be more flexible than steel pipe or copper tubing. These attributes and detriments of PVC piping provide for reasonably easy locational adjustments but are less tolerant of being gripped and retained by conventional hardware.
The present invention is directed to a fire sprinkler mount which includes a base with a support having an arm extending from the support and a support hole through the arm. A rod is associated with the base to mount a bracket which includes two plates and a web therebetween. One plate includes a retaining hole while a cradle is located at the distal end of the other. The rod extends through mounting holes in the plates and the support hole of the base.
Additional and separate aspects of the invention contemplate the cradle being through the distal end of the other plate defining a semicircular surface coaxial with the retaining hole or, alternatively, the cradle being two fingers extending past the distal end of the other plate with each finger forming a saddle concavely facing one another to define segments of a circle. The base may be provided with two arms which alternatively may enclose the bracket, extend through a slot in the bracket to receive the rod or, alternatively, define two guideways which slidably grip edges of the bracket.
In further separate aspects of the invention, the plates may be preferably spaced a distance equal to a standard sprinkler fitting to insure controlled placement of the sprinkler head; the rod may be defined by a screw extending through mounting holes on the plates; and one of the mounting holes may engage the rod with threads while the other mounting hole allows the rod to pass therethrough for adjustment of the bracket relative to the base.
As a further separate aspect, any of the foregoing separate aspects are contemplated to be employed in combination to further advantage.
Accordingly, it is an object of the present invention to provide an improved adjustable mount for fire sprinklers. Other and further objects and advantages will appear hereinafter.


A method and system provides for monitoring, troubleshooting and acquiring diagnostics information from an aspirating dispensing system (10). The dispensing system (10) uses an aspirator (12) with a plurality of liquid inlet ports and a flow meter (30) connected in liquid communication with at least one of the liquid inlet ports and a liquid source. The system monitors, troubleshoots and acquires diagnostics information from one or more components of the dispensing system by monitoring operation of the flow meter (30).

1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates generally to a method and system for monitoring operation of a dispensing system, and more particularly to a method and system for accurately diagnosing operation of a dispensing system for dispensing liquid products.
2. Description of Prior Art
Dispensing systems using aspirators to dispense product can be used in many cleaning and sanitizing processes, such as laundering, warewashing or the like. These processes vary from, on one hand, simply manually measuring and mixing to utilize in a computer-controlled dilution device. One common dilution mode involves utilizing a dispensing device that combines, under mixing conditions, a flow of concentrate and then a flow of diluent. The flow of liquid diluent can be directed through an aspirator such that, as the diluent passes through the aspirator, a negative pressure rises inside the aspirator drawing the liquids concentrate into the aspirator to mix with the liquid diluent. Both Copeland, et al., U.S. Pat. No. 5,003,649 and Freese, U.S. Pat. No. 4,817,825 and Mehus, et al., U.S. Pat. No. 5,915,592 disclose dispensers having aspirators for diluting liquid concentrates to produce liquid products in this general way. Such aspirator-type dispensers have been used for diluting and dispensing a liquid concentrate.
In a number of applications, there is a desire to supply a certain amount of liquid concentrate. In using a timing mechanism wherein the aqueous diluent is used for a certain amount of time, various amounts of concentrate may be dispensed depending upon the pressure of the liquid diluent and/or the viscosity of the liquid concentrate.
Given the range in viscosity of varying formulated liquid products, and the change that can result in viscosity due to the conditions uncontrollable by the manufacturer, such as temperature of the use location and pressure of the aqueous diluent used for dispensing, problems can and do occur that result in too little or too much product being dispensed. Even situations may arise where no product is dispensed as a result of the product source being empty or the dispenser malfunctioning without notice to an operator. There are numerous parameters and conditions that effect the dilution of liquid products that are dispensed by an aspirating dispenser.
To address these problems, U.S. application Ser. No. 12/862,990 disclosed a method, apparatus and system for accurately measuring and calibrating liquid components dispensed from a dispenser independent of the viscosity of the aqueous liquid product or the pressure of the source of the liquid diluent by using a flow meter in combination with an aspirating dispenser.
Before the invention of U.S. application Ser. No. 12/862,990, troubleshooting aspirating dispensers was typically accomplished by a guess and check method; an expense most companies are not willing to bear. With little diagnostics information to work with, operators and service technicians could spend hours and even days troubleshooting a dispensing system.
The present invention addresses these problems and provides a method and system for monitoring, troubleshooting and acquiring diagnostics information from a dispensing system.
In addition, the present invention provides valuable and useful information, both historical and in real-time, about the state of the dispenser.

Method and system for monitoring operation of a dispensing system


A floor dressing spreader includes an elongated handle and an elongated back-up plate. The elongated handle is secured to the back-up plate and extends generally upwardly therefrom. Front and rear attachment plates are disposed adjacent lower portions of the back-up plate and a resilient flexible spreader element is clamped between an attachment plate and the back-up plate. The spreader extends downwardly beyond the lower edge of the back-up plate for spreading the concrete dressing material. The resilient spreader is preferably composed of a material which is flexible and resiliently deformable such as a rubber material.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a spreader for a floor dressing material and more specifically, it relates to such a spreader which has an elongated handle and a downwardly projecting resilient spreader element for applying dressing material over concrete, asphalt and similar surfaces.
2. Description of the Prior Art
U.S. Pat. No. 5,460,461 discloses a manual concrete screed handle wherein the elongated handle is secured to a clamping plier that receives and clamps a screed member.
U.S. Pat. No. 3,803,662 is directed toward a carpet adhesive spreader and has a serrated blade and mounting member hinged to a frame member between push and pull stops. The frame member is pivotally connected to a long handle and pivots about an axis perpendicular to the handle to control the flow of excess adhesive.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,982,470 discloses a manually operable device for applying adhesive to floor coverings which permits the user to remain in standing position. The device has an elongated handle and an operating rod which is separately gripped and is connected to a serrated spatula which has an irregular lower surface.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,308,370 discloses an adhesive spreader which has blade having a rectangular planar portion with a plurality of indentations and a pair of generally perpendicular flange portions. Gripping is effected directly over the rectangular planar portion.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,379,479 discloses a long handle adhesive spreader having a housing which receives an upper end of a blade and overlying upwardly projecting pins which receive weights thereon for providing a downward force on the blade.
U.S. Provisional Patent Application Ser. No. 60/545,761, which is owned by the assignee of the present invention, discloses a trowel having an elongated handle with a pair of first and second blades of different height and a pair of weights secured to a blade and handle connector portion.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,202,249 discloses a long-handled floor-coating applicator device having a removable weight system and a removable applicator. The applicator is said to resist wicking of the coating material into the applicator.
There remains, therefore, a very real and substantial need for an improved long handle spreader which will in a controlled and efficient manner permit spreading of concrete dressing material and the like.


A sequence of programs enable execution of a guest operating system (OS) (116) installed on virtual hard disks (VHDs), one storing system, one storing user data (210, 212). The VHDs are stored on a storage device as for example a USB flash drive (216). The storage device is connected to a host system (110). Virtual machine monitor (VMM) (118) type, available RAM and an access path to an internal storage device (220) are detected. The guest OS (116) configuration is modified to support hardware emulated by the detected VMM. A virtual machine (VM) configuration for this VMM is created allocating a portion of the detected RAM for the VM (112). Both VHDs are attached as copy-on-write VHDs, and VM write operations to VHDs (210, 212) are redirected to overlay files (228, 230) on the host's internal storage device. After shutdown overlay files can be merged with corresponding VHD base files.

1. Prior-Art
This patent application contains a large number of technical terms a layman may not be familiar with. A glossary providing a short explanation of these terms is available on page 10.
A virtual machine monitor (VMM) is a software program that emulates a computer system. A computer would run a VMM in order to enable the concurrent execution of additional operating system (OS) instances. The additional OS instances run in what is referred to as a virtual machine. A virtual machine consists of 'virtual' emulated hardware resources such as a CPU, graphics- and network-adapters, hard disks and hard disk controllers. Each virtual machine runs one OS instance, for example Linux or Microsoft Windows. The computer executing the VMM is referred to as a host system, each OS instance running in a virtual machine is referred to as guest OS. The technology is referred to as full virtualization (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Full_virtualization, Mar. 10, 2009) but will in the following only be referred to as 'virtualization'.
Each guest OS runs applications in an isolated environment, independent of the other OS' and the host OS. The host system controls access of the virtual machines to the available hardware resources, such as a physical memory, graphics-, network-, or sound-adapters. The guest OS is typically installed on a virtual hard disk. A virtual hard disk is a large file that contains the complete content and structure of a physical hard disk.
Virtualization is often used in datacenters where applications are tied to operating system installations that each run on a single computer system. It is common that applications deployed in this way only use a fraction of a system's compute capacity. Virtualization allows for replacing multiple underutilized computer systems with virtual machines that run on a single physical system. This migration from real physical machines to virtual machines reduces operating expenses for power and cooling. Other areas where this technology is applicable are development, testing and demo environments. By decoupling the guest OS and applications installed in the guest OS from physical hardware, virtualization allows for the quick deployment of OS instances and applications on existing host systems without requiring the procurement of a new physical system.
Virtualization technologies emerged in the late 1960s and 1970s and virtualization systems for modern hardware architectures have been available since the late 1990s as shown in U.S. Pat. No. 6,397,242 to Bugnion et al., May 28, 2002.
With increasing hardware performance of affordable desktop and laptop systems, the rapidly declining price/capacity ratio of external storage devices, and the free or low-cost availability of VMMs from vendors like Microsoft Inc. or VMWare Inc. these technologies can now be combined to facilitate the concept of a portable virtual machine. A virtual hard disk image that contains an installed OS can be stored on an external storage device, such as a USB flash memory drive, compact flash card, mini hard disk drive, portable music player, or a cell phone with embedded storage. This enables a personal portable 'computer in a pocket' that provides persistent storage of an OS, applications, user settings and user data. (Persistent storage means that data is not lost when the system is shut down).
Various solutions for portable computing environments have been proposed. One approach is sold under the trademark Mojopac from RingCube Technologies Inc. of Santa Clara, Calif. Mojopac is not based on full virtualization as described above but rather simulates isolated instances of OS services as for example the registry in Microsoft Windows. The drawback of the approach taken by RingCube is that it is inherently OS specific. The applications installed on a portable device are not portable across different host operating systems.
Another approach to providing a portable computing environment is trademarked Moka5 from Moka5 of Palo Alto, Calif. Moka5 uses hardware virtualization and incorporates a customized VMM from VMware Inc. Other VMMs are not supported. The disadvantage of this solution is that I/O read and write operations from the portable OS directly access a virtual hard disk stored on a portable storage device or a network repository (U.S. patent application Ser. No. 11/428,008 to Monica Sin-Ling Lam et al., Jun. 30, 2006). For maximum portability a small form factor of the portable storage device is highly desirable. Consumer grade flash memory devices offer the smallest form factor but only support significantly lower write speeds than internal storage (The term internal storage refers to storage mediums that are attached internally to a computer system, typically through an internal IDE, SATA or SAS bus). Compared to an OS that is installed on a virtual hard disk on internal storage Moka5 delivers low performance. In addition, I/O operations to a network repository depend on the availability and reliability of a network connection, a dependency that is not desirable for a portable solution.
Another I/O related problem that is not addressed by Moka5 is the fact that the number of sustainable erase/write cycles for flash-memory-based devices is limited. Flash memory is non-volatile computer memory. Storage blocks are electrically erased and reprogrammed with every write operation to the flash memory device. The number of erase/write cycles each data block can sustain is limited. An entire storage device can become unusable because a few blocks that are accessed very frequently, have reached their erase/write cycle limit. If an OS writes directly to a virtual hard disk that is stored on a flash-memory-based device, the lifetime of the storage device is negatively impacted since the OS accesses the virtual hard disk very frequently.
To mitigate the problem of flash memory 'wearing out' the concept of 'Wear Levelling' was introduced. For consumer grade flash memory devices 'Wear Levelling' is implemented in the firmware of the devices' flash memory controller. The method tries to distribute data written to flash-based-memory evenly across all available data blocks on the storage device. The goal is to avoid the situation described above where storage blocks that are erased and re-written frequently fail and render the entire device unusable before the less used data blocks have reached the end of their lifetime.
Several wear levelling algorithms have been proposed, for example in U.S. Pat. No. 5,568,423 to Jou et al., Oct. 22, 1996, and U.S. Pat. No. 5,341,339 to Wells, Aug. 23, 1994. While wear levelling mitigates the problem, the underlying issue remains. Particularly when a high percentage of a device's capacity is in use, write operations can only be balanced across a relatively small number of physical data blocks.
The concept of a 'Portable Personal Computing Environment Server' is proposed in U.S. patent application Ser. No. 11/154,084 to Narayanaswami et al., Jun. 16, 2005 (see also Publications U.S. Ser. No. 10/795,153 and U.S. Ser. No. 11/281,795). The concept is based on bootstrapping an OS from a portable storage device. The personal computing environment is then run in a virtual machine that runs on the OS that was booted from the portable storage device. While this approach allows for saving and restoring the state of the personal computing environment it suffers from the limitation that the host OS needs to be booted from the portable device. This implies that any running OS on the host system needs to be shut down first. The other drawback of this approach is that it requires the adjustment of Basic Input/Output System (BIOS) settings on the system the portable storage drive is connected to (The BIOS is a standard defining a firmware interface for IBM PC compatible computers). Particularly inexperienced users will not feel comfortable making changes to the BIOS, as a configuration mistake can render a system unusable. This approach also suffers from the same disadvantage described in the context of Moka5. The virtual machine as well as the portable host OS directly access the portable storage device. Particularly if flash-memory-base storage is used this results in slow performance and limited longevity of the storage device.
U.S. patent application Ser. No. 11/032,775 to Birrell et al., Jan. 10, 2005 proposes a personal computing environment that is based on a combination of data cached on a portable storage device and data stored on a storage device accessible through a network connection. Such an approach is dependent on the availability, performance and reliability of a network connection.
Another approach to providing a portable computing environment is based on the customization of applications to enable them to execute directly from the portable storage device. An example of this approach is sold under the trademark U3 from U3 LLC of Milpitas, Calif. The main drawback of this solution is that only a relatively small number of modified applications is available. The other drawback is the dependence on a host OS that supports the respective applications.
A feature that enables an OS that is installed on a flash-memory-based device to take advantage of a storage medium with faster I/O performance is called Enhanced Write Filter (EWF) from Microsoft Inc. of Redmond, Wash. EWF is packaged with Microsoft Windows XP Embedded. Windows XP Embedded is a modular version of Windows XP specifically for use in embedded devices such as ATMs, arcade games, slot machines, cash registers, industrial robotics, thin clients, set-top boxes etc. EWF is based on a technique that is referred to as copy-on-write (COW). With COW, write operations to a storage medium are redirected to another storage medium. (The COW technique will be described in more detail below). EWF's COW implementation supports the redirection of write operations to flash-memory-based storage to fast volatile Random Access Memory (RAM) or alternatively a second partition on the storage medium the OS is installed on. Redirecting write I/O operations to a second partition on the same storage device does not address the described problem of lack of performance and longevity of flash-memory-based storage devices. Reliably redirecting write I/O operations to RAM provides performance benefits but requires that the storage capacity available on the storage device is matched by the amount of memory available on the host system. Moreover, running an instance of Windows XP Embedded from a portable flash-memory-based storage device would also require the modification of BIOS settings and shut down of the OS running on the system the device is connected to. The other obvious limitation of EWF is that this method is specific to one version of one OS.
2. Advantages
Accordingly, several advantages of one or more aspects are to provide a method for the efficient and secure launch and operation of an OS instance installed in a virtual hard disk that is stored on a portable storage device. After the portable storage device has been connected to a host system with an installed VMM, the OS instance can be run in a virtual machine. In the following this OS instance will be referred to as the portable OS.
Unlike other solutions that require the installation of a specific VMM on a host system or only support a specific host OS, the proposed method provides flexibility by automatically and dynamically adapting the portable OS installation to hardware that is emulated by the VMM that was autodetected on the host system. Examples of VMMs supported in the first embodiment are VMware Workstation and VMware Player from VMware Inc. of Palo Alto, Calif., Virtual PC from Microsoft Inc. of Redmond, Wash. and VirtualBox Open Source Edition (OSE) from Sun Microsystems Inc. of Mountain View, Calif. through acquisition of Innotek GmbH of Weinstadt, Germany.
Providing the source code for the method is compiled for the respective host OS and packaged with the portable storage device, the portable OS can be launched on a wide range of hardware platforms supported by the respective VMMs, such as Microsoft Windows XP, Microsoft Windows Vista, RedHat Linux, SuSE Linux and Apple MacOS. Supporting a wide range of OS and VMM platforms is crucial for a portable solution. A user may not know in advance what type of system will be available for use with the portable OS. For source code portability the first embodiment was implemented in C++ using the cross-platform development toolkit QT from Nokia Corporation that is supported on Microsoft Windows, Unix/Linux and Apple MacOS.
The described method also optimizes the configuration of the virtual machine running the portable OS for performance, security and stability. Write operations from the portable OS to virtual hard disks are redirected to overlay files on a storage medium that provides better I/O write performance than the portable storage device. Particularly consumer grade, flash-memory-based portable storage devices show poor write I/O performance as compared to internal storage. With the proposed configuration slow write I/O performance of the portable storage device does not adversely affect run time performance of the guest OS. It is important to note that read performance of flash-memory-based storage devices is significantly higher than write performance and therefore has a much lesser effect on virtual machine performance.
After the portable OS has been shut down, data that was written to overlay files at run time can be merged with the virtual hard disks on the portable storage device if the respective data is not to be lost.
Another benefit of the described method is increased longevity of the portable storage device, particularly for devices that use flash-memory. Storage blocks in flash-memory can only sustain a limited number of erase/write cycles (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flash memory, Mar. 10, 2009). The amount of write operations to the external storage device is reduced, as data blocks that have been modified multiple times are only written back to the portable storage device once. As Operating systems frequently access very specific areas of a disk drive the reduction in write operations through consolidated write operations after shut down is very significant.
Other benefits of the described method are superior security and stability as compared to a traditional OS installation to a system's internal storage. User and system data are separated and stored on two different virtual hard disks. For the typical use case where a user accesses user data through an installed application, the first embodiment provides a GUI that allows for enabling the automatic removal of modified system data after shutdown. This means that system changes that are the result of virus infections or unknowingly installed malware can not compromise the system's integrity after shut down. The GUI also provides a configuration option that enables that the user is prompted for feedback regarding the merging of overlay files for system data. This option is provided in case it is not known beforehand if applications will be installed on the virtual hard disk storing system data.
Another benefit of the described method is that it enables a user to create a fixed system installation that includes stable versions of all applications needed. If system changes are deleted after shutdown, the user can rely on a clean installation and the exact version of the respective applications whenever the system is started. As user data is stored on a separate virtual hard disk, system changes can be discarded while user data remains persistent. This is an important factor as some applications update themselves automatically to newer versions that are sometimes less stable than the versions that they are replacing.
The described method also maximizes usable virtual hard disk space on the portable storage device through a specific OS configuration for the management of page file data. Page files are used by modern operating systems to temporarily store data that cannot be accommodated by physical memory. Page files are created and expanded by the OS as needed. Page data is transient and does not need to be permanently stored by the OS. The described method uses a separate, dynamically expanding virtual hard disk for storing paging data. At startup time this virtual hard disk does not contain any data and only one 'empty' virtual hard disk per supported VMM type needs to be stored on the portable storage device. This method significantly increases the amount of virtual hard disk space available for the portable OS on the external storage device.
Further advantages of various aspects will become apparent from a consideration of the ensuing description and drawings.

Method for dynamically generating a configuration for a virtual machine with a virtual hard disk in an external storage device


A virtual machine executive (VME) system operating on a target platform that includes a virtual machine monitor (VMM) and a dynamic compiler, in particular, a trace compiler (TC). System embodiments include a virtual machine monitor configured to record a trace corresponding to a selected cycle, and configured to transform the trace into a representation of a trace tree; and a trace compiler cooperating with the virtual machine monitor to compile the representation of the trace tree into a compiled code segment of native machine code executable on the target platform, in which the trace is a linear instruction sequence traversing at least a portion of a method, a loop, or a branching node.

Typically, cross-platform software is compiled into an intermediate code, which may be translated into native machine code and subsequently executed, by a platform-specific execution engine, or virtual machine (VM). However convenient, the intermediate step of instruction-by-instruction interpretation into native code may impose substantial performance penalties, relative to purely native code execution. For example, many languages employ a stack-based VM that generates and stores a frame upon each method invocation to preserve its pre-invocation state. A frame may include an operand stack, an array of local variables, and a reference to a related pool of constants. After each method completes, the VM recoups the respective state data, and releases the frame. Thus, a sequence that invokes multiple methods, nested methods, or loops having complex method sequences, may result in significant performance-draining overhead. An unconstrained resource platform may have sufficient processor speed, memory, available power, or other platform resources, so that program execution by exclusive interpretation produces little perceptible performance degradation. However, in a constrained resource platform, exclusive interpretation may impose an unacceptably high cost, high power consumption, and reduced performance.
In an effort to reduce interpretation, a VM may include a just-in-time (JIT), or dynamic, compiler that translates particular sequences into native machine code, on-the-fly, prior to, or during, direct execution by the underlying physical CPU. Nevertheless, dynamic compilation techniques may impose significant costs during execution of an application. For example, where an instruction sequence invokes multiple methods, each method may be compiled in its entirety. As a result, dynamic compilation may result in a delay, or latency, which may extend from the beginning of compilation until the onset of the underlying system response to the executed code. This latency can be significant when compiling complex sequences, and may be undesirable for time-sensitive applications. In another example, dynamic dispatching is a costly runtime technique used to determine a particular method code invocation sequence, which may not be known at compile time. As a result, current dynamic compilers can do little to ameliorate overhead which may be associated with dynamic dispatching. Also, compiled method code may be stored in a code cache for future execution, potentially reducing future latency. Over time, a dynamic compiler may compile and store even rarely-used methods encountered during VM operation, which may represent a suboptimal use of platform resources.
On an unconstrained platform, many current dynamic compilation techniques may produce optimized native code transparently, despite consuming significant platform resources. However, the platform resources used to dynamically compile optimized native code may be far beyond those available in many embedded computers, for example, on an inexpensive mobile telephone using an embedded processor. In an attempt to strike a balance between resource consumption and compiled code performance, embedded dynamic compilers have evolved, using simple algorithms and heuristics, which may not yield sufficient code optimization and, ultimately, execution performance, particularly for sophisticated embedded applications. In view of the foregoing, there is a need for a dynamic compiler capable of producing optimized native code that may be suitable for use in a constrained-resource platform, including an embedded system.

The Regents of the University of California


A method is described for determining the rate of performing neighbor cell measurements by a User Equipment (UE) in an idle mode, which is based on the RANK information of the serving cell and neighbor cells. The RANK information is available with the UE. Comparison of the RANK of the serving cell with a predefined Threshold Value along with the status of the Order of the RANKs of the neighbor cells for a predefined number of DRX cycles, are verified to conclude whether the UE should perform the neighbor cell measurement when the UE is in the idle mode. Thus the method utilizes cell RANKs to determine the network topology. The RANKs are deduced using Hysteresis, Cell Individual offsets, and other parameters by the UE to provide a more practical indication of the neighboring environment of a cell.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to power consumption in a User Equipment (UE) in a mobile communication network, and more particularly, to reduction of power consumption in a UE of 2G, 2.5G or 3G mobile communication network when the UE is in an idle mode.
2. Description of the Related Art
As per Global System for Mobile communication (GSM) specifications, once a UE is in an idle mode and the UE has received a neighbor cell list, the UE performs neighbor cell measurements at a periodic rate irrespective of prevalent network conditions. This activity leads to higher power consumption in the UE.
Attempts at resolving this unnecessary power consumption issue have been addressed in 3G system (UMTS), where the UE performs measurements only when the UE is in a poor signal area (defined by the usage of S_intrasrch, S_intersrch and S_srchRAT). Further efforts to address this power consumption issue are found in U.S. Pat. No. 6,331,971, where the UE or other remote units are able to sleep for a longer period of time, thus extending the battery life of the UE, by optimizing the periodicity at which the UE measures control channels on a neighbor cell list to determine whether a new control channel should replace the serving control channel. This requires modification of a paging frame class, which has been assigned to a UE. The UE can then monitor the paging channel at intervals making it more battery conservative for the UE because it is based on current communication conditions.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,067,460 proposes a method of optimizing power consumption by avoiding measurement of the neighbor cells when a UE is stationary or moving slightly with respect to the serving cell and with respect to the neighbor cells, until it determines that it is no longer stationary. The stationary condition of the UE is deduced using measured Received Signal Strength Indication (RSSI) values of the serving cell and neighbor cells.
Thus, efforts have been made to optimize the power consumption in the UE of a 3G system when the UE is in the idle mode, however a need still remains for the reduction of power consumption in the UE when the UE is in the idle mode. The stationary/non-stationary condition of the UE, which is determined using a change in absolute value/rate of change of signal strength of a serving cell and neighbor cells is insufficient for determining suitability for avoiding neighbor cell measurements.

Method of reducing power consumption in a UE when the UE is in idle mode


An improved apparatus for separating and feeding a preformed container fron a nested stack, said apparatus adapted for accepting a nested stack of containers in a vertical array, tilting the nested stack to a horizontal array by means of a tilting carriage assembly (34), advancing the horizontal stack (170) on an advancing portion (36), stopping the nested stack at a preferred position and immediately lifing the nested stack from the advancing portion (36) by means of an elongated rail assembly 96. A separating assembly (38) separates a first container from the nested stack, said first container advances to a pivoting hook assembly (40) where the first container is oriented from a substantially horizontal array to a substantially vertical array, and a stabilizer assembly (42) steadies the horizontal container for transfer to subsequent machinery.

1. Field of the Invention
With respect to the art, as established in and by the United States Patent and Trademark Office, this invention is believed to be found in the general class entitled "Article Handling" and more particularly "separating and reorienting a preformed container".
2. Description of the Prior Art
As far as it is known, apparatus for separating a preformed container from a nested stack are known. Some examples of prior art are U.S. Pat. No. 4,054,212 as issued to Mueller on Oct. 18, 1977; U.S. Pat. No. 3,120,888 as issued to Piel on Feb. 11, 1964, and U.S. Pat. No. 3,160,260 as issued to Holland on Dec. 8, 1964. In U.S. Pat. No. 4,054,212, Mueller discloses an apparatus for separating preformed cups from a nested stack then placing said cup in a holder of a conveyor. U.S. Pat. No. 3,120,888, as issued to Piel, discloses a vibratory feeder for reorienting a preformed container. Holland, in U.S. Pat. No. 3,160,260, discloses an apparatus for handling stacked containers. These known prior art devices do not satisfy the present need for an apparatus for separating a preformed container from a nested stack and metering each separated container in a preferred orientation for subsequent filling and capping operations. This needed apparatus should be capable of accommodating various types of containers in a range of sizes.

Separating and feeding a preformed container from a nested stack


An image forming apparatus in which a toner layer is formed onto a developing roller which is restricted by a toner restricting member and rotated, toner is supplied to a photosensitive drum by the toner layer, and a toner image is formed onto the drum and transferred onto a print medium, thereby forming an image. The apparatus has: a counter which counts the toner image, on a dot unit basis, formed on the drum and a control unit which stops the rotation of the developing roller for a predetermined time and intermittently executes a series of image forming operation when a count value is equal to or larger than a predetermined reference value. The occurrence of filming is prevented by preventing an increase in toner temperature.

1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to an image forming apparatus of an electrophotographic system.
2. Related Background Art
An image forming apparatus of an electrophotographic system in which an electrostatic latent image is formed by exposing the surface of a photosensitive drum, the electrostatic latent image is developed, toner (developing material) is supplied onto the photosensitive drum through a developing roller, and a toner image is formed has been disclosed in JP-A-2002-365890.
According to the image forming apparatus of JP-A-2002-365890, when an image ratio called a print duty is high, in order to avoid a white-on-black phenomenon of an image which is caused by a lack of supply amount of the toner, a rotational speed of a developing material agitation conveying member to convey the toner to the developing roller while agitating it is raised in accordance with the print duty, thereby increasing the supply amount of the toner and preventing the occurrence of the white-on-black phenomenon of the image.
According to the above conventional image forming apparatus, the toner which is supplied by the developing material agitation conveying member is formed in a layer shape on the developing roller and the toner is supplied to the photosensitive drum through the developing roller. At this time, by making the toner-deposited developing roller come into pressure contact with a toner restricting member while rotating such a developing roller, it is restricted so that the toner of a thickness over a predetermined thickness dimension is not deposited onto the developing roller, and the toner layer of the desired thickness dimension is formed.
However, in the above conventional image forming apparatus in which the toner restricting member is come into pressure contact with the developing roller and the toner amount is restricted, there occurs inconvenience called filming in which, although the amount of toner which is supplied to the developing roller is sufficient, in the case of forming an image of a high print duty, the toner is fixed onto the toner restricting member of the portion corresponding to a region where such an image is formed.
The present inventors have vigorously examined causes of occurrence of the filming and considered as follows.
That is, when the image of the high print duty is formed, the toner on the developing roller has the heat, the toner is melt-bonded onto the toner restricting member by the heat, and the filming occurs. Thus, on the developing roller with which the toner restricting member is come into contact, in the peripheral portion in which the toner has been melt-bonded, a toner layer which is influenced by such toner and is thinner than the predetermined thickness dimension is formed. The inventors considered that in the toner image which is formed by supplying the toner from such a toner layer, since a desired toner amount is not supplied from the toner layer, a concentration is partially uneven in the print result.
The inventors considered that the reasons why the toner has the heat are as follows.
Although the toner is supplied from the toner layer to the photosensitive drum in accordance with the image to be formed, all of the toner of the layer thickness is not supplied in the supplying portion of the toner layer according to the image. That is, in the supplying portion of the toner layer, only the toner in the upper layer portion is supplied and the toner in the lower layer portion is not supplied but remains. Thus, a difference occurs between the thickness dimension in the toner layer after the toner supply in the portion where the toner supply amount is large and that in the portion where the toner supply amount is small.
In the case where the print duty is high or in the continuous printing, on the other hand, since the toner image is repetitively formed on the photosensitive drum, the reproduction of the toner layer for supplying the toner to the photosensitive drum is repeated.
As mentioned above, the toner is supplied to the developing roller having the toner layer of the uneven thickness dimensions after completion of the toner supply and the toner is restricted by the toner restricting member, thereby reproducing the toner layer. At this time, in the portion of the low thickness dimension in the toner layer, since the number of toner particles is small, each toner particle per unit in such a portion receives a large amount of energy generated by the depression of the toner restricting member. Thus, the inventors considered that the toner particles which received the large amount of energy vibrate among the toner particles and the toner has the heat by frictional heat caused by friction due to the vibration. The inventors, therefore, considered that an increase in toner temperature can be prevented by dispersing the energy which the toner particles per unit receive.

Image forming apparatus including a counting section for counting the toner image


In a power supply system, a high-side (HS) insulated-gate bipolar transistor (IGBT) has a first collector, a first gate, and a first emitter. A low-side (LS) IGBT has a second collector coupled to the first emitter, a second gate, and a second emitter. A gate drive circuit is coupled to the first gate of the HS IGBT and the second gate of the LS IGBT. A control circuit is coupled to the gate drive circuit. The control circuit is configured to control the gate drive circuit for biasing the HS IGBT to a HS saturation, and determine a HS degradation of the HS IGBT based on a HS digitized gate voltage of the HS IGBT in the HS saturation.

In the design of a power electronics converter, much attention may be paid to the power conversion efficiency, power density, and system cost. Recently, the reliability performance of power electronic systems is gaining more and more attention, especially for those systems with long operation hours in a harsh environment. The reliability of a system has a significant effect on the life cycle cost of the system.
Semiconductor failures may account for a large percentage of system failures of power electronic systems. The reliability of insulated gate bipolar transistor (IGBT) modules has been improved substantially for the past decade with the help of advanced designs and optimized use of materials. Reliability assessment of IGBT modules may be used during the production stage for mission-critical applications such as transportation, military, aerospace, and offshore wind power in an attempt to guarantee reliable operations over life time. Different techniques may be used to implement condition monitor (CM) of IGBTs. The CM approach for IGBT modules aims to detect changes in parameters indicative of die and package degradation during operation. Collector-emitter saturation voltage VCESAT and threshold voltage VGTH may be two reliable precursors of IGBT failures. Conventional approaches for measuring these two parameters involves removing a module, holding one or more IGBTs, from its associated application and connecting the module for IGBT testing by dedicated test equipment such as power device analyzer. An uncomplicated method and device for condition monitoring, especially in an operational field setting, are needed for measuring important parameters such as VCESAT and VGTH.


The planetary tubing cutter of the invention provides a gearing assembly having a pair of ring gears and a number of pinions with a blade affixed to each pinion. The ring gears are parallel to one another and are individually driven. The pinions are rotatably mounted to a side surface of one ring gear and engage a sun gear assembled to the other ring gear. When the ring gears rotate at the same speed, the pinions and blades do not revolve around their respective axes, and when one ring gear rotates at a speed different from the other ring gear, the pinions and blades revolve about their respective axes, intercepting and cutting a tube passing through an axial passage through the ring gears.

Thin wall plastic tubing is often used for over-wrapping product containers, typically bottles, in which products, for example personal hygiene, pharmaceutical or food products, are shipped. In one form, the plastic tubing is applied as a label over a major portion of the container to identify the product and/or enhance the appearance of the container. In another form, the plastic tubing provides a tamper-evident band that covers the container cap and neck, serving to indicate whether the container has been opened after shipping. In many cases the plastic tubing is processed so as to be shrinkable by the application of heat after a cut length of tubing has been placed over the container, and thus the tubing conforms snugly to the contours of the container.
The subject plastic tubing labels and tamper-evident bands are applied to product containers in manufacturing environments, therefore process speed, tubing length consistency and neatness of the cut edge are important factors. Most known machines for the application of thin wall plastic tubing to containers employ a scissor-type double blade cutter or a guillotine-type single blade cutter. Another cutter type is described in U.S. Pat. No. 5,531,858 entitled "Shrinkable Label Inserting Machine" in which a plurality of blades are mounted circumferentially around a passage through which a thin wall plastic tube is conveyed. Each of the blades is mounted rotatably on a wheel that is in contact with a driven band, e.g. a belt or chain. When an appropriate length of tubing has moved through and extends beyond the passage, the band is rotated to cause the blades to swing in plural overlapping arcs, cutting the tubing. A drawback of the cutter described in the '858 patent is that for each cut to occur, the band and the plurality of wheels and blades must be driven from a stop to a high rotational speed in a minimal time interval. This rapid acceleration and subsequent deceleration requires a relatively large expenditure of energy and causes relatively great wear of machine components. A further drawback of the '858 patent cutter is that the mechanism is limited to a small range of tubing diameters, and the diameter of the cutter mounting circle as well as the number of cutters must be changed to accommodate a significantly different tubing diameter. The cutter invention disclosed below provides the needed speed, consistency and neat cut while minimizing the power requirement and amount of wear. Furthermore, the present invention cutter is capable of handling a greater range of tubing diameter than previously known without requiring equipment modification.


Methods and apparatus for device virtualization and for communication between network devices are described. In one example, all devices on a first Local Area Network (LAN1) which are to communicate with devices on a second Local Area Network (LAN2) have a virtual presence on LAN2, and all the devices on LAN2 which are to communicate with devices on LAN1 have a virtual presence on LAN1, enabling these devices to communicate as if they were located in the same LAN. In another example, a device which uses different networking protocols to other devices on a network is virtualized on its own network, along with all the devices with which it communicates. In either example, the proposed virtualization technique may ensure that virtualized devices appear like physical devices to the other devices such that no modifications of the networking protocol is necessary to interact with a virtualized device.

Local Area Networks (LANs) allow devices connected to a network to communicate with each other. For example, in a home environment, a LAN may allow a games console including a screen, for example a television, to play media from a media server by streaming packets of video data over the LAN. Each packet is sent to a destination device using an address which is local to that LAN.
The availability of multicast and broadcast within LANs enables a range of features which enhance and simplify a user's experience, for example allowing auto discovery of Universal Plug and Play (UPnP) devices and of Web Services Dynamic Discovery (WS-Discovery) enabled devices. Once devices have been discovered, they can send and receive packets over the LAN. These features are local to each LAN.
There are various technologies which enable remote access to a LAN, for example Virtual Private Networking (VPN), which allows a remote device to act as part of a LAN by providing the remote device with some client software which enables it to connect to the target LAN and be part of it as if the device was physically located in the LAN. As long as the remote device is able to be reprogrammed with the VPN client software, VPN can be used to extend the borders of the LAN.
The embodiments described below are not limited to implementations which solve any or all of the disadvantages of known device virtualization systems, or systems which link LANs.


A method and apparatus for de-prioritizing mobile-to-mobile calls in favor of mobile-to-landline calls in a communication system. De-prioritizing mobile-to-mobile calls, which are less sensitive to infrastructure delays due to to their bypass of encoding and decoding steps, allows more delay sensitive mobile-to-landline calls requiring extra processing time due to encoding and decoding to be transmitted over a communication system first. A control processor creates a modified FIFO queue to effect a queuing scheme to de-prioritize mobile-to-mobile calls. Application of the de-prioritizing scheme in a packet based network affords an increase in the quality of mobile-landline calls while not adversely affecting quality of service for mobile-to-mobile calls.

The present invention relates to an apparatus and method for de-prioritizing bypass packets in a frame relay system and, more particularly, effecting a prioritization scheme in a transcoder where access to a packet based network by mobile-to-mobile calls is given lower priority than calls between mobile users and landline users.
In the area of cellular telephony, a plurality of base stations each serving mobile wireless telephone users are connected together via an infrastructure that routes calls from a base station to another base station and also to existing landline based public switch telephone networks (PSTN's). Although various methods of communicating signals from base sites to their serving base stations exist, increasingly in wireless infrastructure systems packet based networks, such as frame relay, have been adopted to handle voice traffic as frame relay affords efficient use of bandwidth and lower cost as opposed to traditional voice or circuit switching networks.
Because frame relay was originally designed to handle bursty traffic data, packet switching networks such as frame relay are inherently less efficient than circuit switching networks in dealing with voice traffic, which tends to be periodic and less random. In order to achieve good voice quality, the delay of voice packets across the frame relay network must be minimal. Hence, when multiple users are vying for access to a frame relay pipe that is configured for serial transmission, in particular, minimal delay of voice communication signals becomes critical.
Another concern about voice traffic is that for mobile-to-landline calls, encoded wireless communication signals from a mobile station to a base station must be decoded by a voice processor in a transcoder (i.e., a device performing both encoding and decoding) at the base site before the voice information is sent to a PSTN. This step of decoding the signal from the wireless user presents additional delay to the voice traffic signals. In order to mitigate this delay, as well as prevent audio degradation due to double transcoding, wireless systems typically employ a bypass scheme that allows voice information sent from one mobile station to another mobile station to "bypass" the decoding and encoding steps performed in the transcoders of the base sites, thereby eliminating the delay inherent with these steps.
As mentioned above, voice processors in a base site must still vie for access to the frame relay pipe. Typically a control processor, which controls access of the voice processors to the serial frame relay pipe, allows frame relay access to the voice processors one at a time based on the order they come in. This is typically referred to as a FIFO (first in, first out) queue.
Thus, in a typical transcoder pool comprised of one control processor and 12 voice processors, for example, a packet transmission could be delayed by 11×(packet transmission time) milliseconds if all 12 voice processors have packets to send on the frame relay pipe at roughly the same time in a worst case scenario. Accordingly, no discrimination is made between bypass mode calls and normal mode calls (e.g., mobile-to-landline or vice versa) and, thus, normal calls requiring extra processing time for vocoding may be placed at the end of the FIFO queue and be transmitted after bypass calls requiring no decoding or encoding.

Apparatus and method for de-prioritization of bypass packets in a packet based communication system


According to one embodiment, an array antenna apparatus includes a distributor, transmission phase shifters, transmission amplifiers, transmission filters, transmission/reception switches, limiters, reception filters, low-noise amplifiers, reception phase shifters, a combiner, a vacuum vessel, a refrigerating unit, and a cooling plate.

A system having a signal receiving function such as a radar or communication system is designed to improve reception sensitivity by reducing the noise temperature of the reception subsystem. The noise temperature of this subsystem is generally caused by the transmission loss occurring in the transmission line from the antenna to a low-noise amplifier (LNA) and the internal noise generated in the LNA.
As a method of reducing this transmission loss and internal noise, there has been proposed a method of housing the transmission line from the antenna to the LNA, electronic circuits such as a reception filter, and the LNA in a thermally insulating container such as a vacuum vessel and cooling them to a superconducting phase by using a refrigerating unit or the like. Cooling the transmission line and the electronic circuits to a superconducting phase will reduce the transmission loss occurring in the transmission line from the antenna to the LNA close to zero. In addition, cooling the LNA to a superconducting phase will reduce the internal noise in the LNA. The conventional method proposed above is designed to improve the sensitivity of a reception subsystem by reducing the transmission loss between the antenna and the LNA to almost zero and reducing the internal noise in the LNA by using a superconductivity technique.
A conventional antenna apparatus based on the above proposal uses an airtight coaxial connector for an electrical (high-frequency) interface which connects a normal-temperature unit outside a thermally insulating container to a cryogenic unit inside the thermally insulating container. The antenna apparatus uses a coaxial cable in the thermally insulating container for connection from the coaxial connector to the high-frequency circuit.
The antenna apparatus having the above arrangement, however, uses the coaxial connector and the coaxial cable for the coupling portion between the normal-temperature unit and the cryogenic unit, and hence the normal-temperature unit is connected to the cryogenic unit through the outer conductors (metal) of the coaxial connector and coaxial cable. In this case, heat from the normal-temperature unit flows into the cryogenic unit through the outer conductors (metal), raising the temperature of the cryogenic unit. It is therefore necessary to provide a cooling capacity that takes into account the rise in temperature due to heat flow. This inevitably increases the size of a cooling means such as a refrigerating unit.
As a method of suppressing an increase in the size of the above cooling means, it is conceivable to use a method of reducing heat flow by decreasing the diameter of the coaxial cable. This method, however, increases the transmission loss in the coaxial cable, and hence the reception sensitivity deteriorates. In contrast, if the diameter of the coaxial cable is increased to maintain high sensitivity, the heat flow increases. In this case, since it is necessary to consider an increase in temperature due to the increased heat flow, the size of the cooling means increases. In addition, the above connection method requires the use of an expensive airtight coaxial connector. It is also necessary to structurally ensure a size that allows the connector to be mounted.