A launch system is provided which includes a secondary payload. The secondary payload includes a propellant tank and at least one module that is supported by an adapter ring that is commonly used to secure an upper stage to a primary payload. The propellant tank is launched empty and subsequently filled with residual propellant from the upper stage.

Generally, launch vehicles are comprised of a booster stage that provides the initial boost towards orbit. In addition, an upper stage is often employed to carry a payload to a further desired orbit or to achieve escape velocity. Commonly, upper stages are powered by rocket motors that are fed by cryogenic fuels and oxidizers, such as liquid hydrogen (LH2) and liquid oxygen (LO2). Alternatively, other propellants known to those of skill in the art, such as hydrazine (N2H4), may be used. After orbit insertion or a desired escape velocity is achieved, the payload is separated from the upper stage by way of methods which are well known by those of skill in the art. The payload may have its own propulsion system or propulsion module to control its position and altitude. An example of a booster stage and upper stage combination is the Atlas V launch vehicle and the Centaur upper stage manufactured by either the United Launch Alliance (ULA), the assignee of the instant application, or the Lockheed Martin Corporation. One skilled in the art will appreciate that other launch vehicles employ upper stages, such as the Delta II and the Delta IV launch systems manufactured by either the ULA or the Boeing Corporation.
The upper stage is generally provided with a quantity of propellant which is greater than what is required to perform a mission. The additional propellant is used to help stabilize the upper stage propellant tanks and provide propellant to accommodate unforeseen mission deviations. After the payload has achieved orbit and separated from the upper stage, normally all residual propellant is expelled in a process called "blow down" to "safe the stage." Blow down refers to venting upper stage residual propellant material, possibly through the upper stage rocket motor. Safing the stage refers to minimizing the potential of future risk of the stage coming apart and causing additional space debris.
It will be apparent to those of skill in the art that in order to provide sufficient propellant for deep space exploration or to allow heavy payloads to be delivered to higher energy orbits than their launch vehicles would otherwise permit, it may be highly advantageous to undergo refueling in space. For example, space exploration and colonization visionaries foresee the use of orbiting depots that are used to fuel or refuel upper stages and/or payloads (some payloads are capable of independent propulsion and therefore have independent propellant requirements). The ability to fuel a rocket or engine in orbit has the advantage of decreasing the launch weight of launch vehicles, thereby increasing performance of those launch vehicles, increasing safety and decreasing costs associated with the launch. The Orbital Express space mission is one example of a system that is designed to refuel/service a payload in space. The Orbital Express mission generally comprised two spacecraft, an Autonomous Space Transport Robotic Orbiter (ASTRO), and a next generation satellite. ASTRO established the technical feasibility of an autonomous on-orbit refueling and reconfiguration of the next generation satellite. Furthermore, U.S. Pat. No. 5,862,670 to Lak, the entire disclosure of which is incorporated by reference herein, describes a system wherein upper stage propellant is stored in the cargo bay of the space shuttle, launched into space by a booster stage, and is used to fuel the space shuttle or other payloads to reduce ground handling of the volatile cryogenic upper stage propellants.
It has been long appreciated that certain portions of a launch vehicle are not effectively used. One example of efforts to utilize available space is the Ariane Structure for Auxiliary Payloads (ASAP) launch vehicle. ASAP is positioned in the upper stage of the launch vehicle and may carry multiple payloads. The upper stage or primary payload delivery system positions the primary payload for deployment. Once the primary payload is deployed, the ASAP launcher deploys the one or more secondary payloads and maneuvers between deployment as is needed using its own propulsion system or propulsion module. Another example of increased utilization of space is a payload adapter ring (or "adapter") interconnected to the upper stage and designed for supporting a payload. The space internal to the ring and between the ring and a payload fairing of the upper stage has been used to accommodate additional payloads, i.e., "secondary payloads." One example of such a ring is the Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle (EELV) Secondary Payload Adaptor (ESPA). Secondary payloads are generally separated from the adapter ring subsequent to primary payload separation. Secondary payloads may be designed to be used for a limited time until their orbits decay and they are destroyed during re-entry or may be designed for a more extended lifetime. Further, as previously noted, some secondary payloads are capable of independent propulsion and include propulsion systems, such as thrusters and control modules, that allow the secondary payload to maintain a desired orbit or to achieve escape velocity. None of the launch systems currently in existence or otherwise known to those of skill in the art, however, disclose a method of filling a propellant tank associated with a payload delivery system or a payload propulsion system subsequent to launch and in space.
NASA's Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite (LCROSS) includes a propellant tank that is situated inside a payload adapter ring that is positioned between the upper stage and the primary payload. The payload adapter ring also provides mounting positions for avionics and hydrazine thrusters. However, the propellant tank is filled with hydrazine prior to launch. After separation from the booster stage, the upper stage launches the primary payload (LRO) and the secondary payload (LCROSS) on a trajectory towards the moon. Thereafter, the secondary payload, which includes the payload adapter ring, a secondary payload delivery system comprising a propellant tank, avionics and propulsion module, and perhaps one or more other modules containing test or experimental apparatus, is separated from the upper stage. The upper stage then impacts the lunar surface forcing lunar dust into space that is collected and analyzed by one or more of the other modules of the LCROSS. Importantly, the propulsion system of the LCROSS does not utilize propellant residuals of the upper stage.
Thus, there is a long felt and unresolved need to utilize the residual upper stage propellant to fuel a payload delivery system which includes one or more payload propulsion systems. For convenience purposes, such an on-orbit payload delivery system is called OPADS (Orbital Payload Delivery System). The concept embodies the transfer and use of any upper stage propellant (e.g., LH2, LO2, RP1, MMH, NTO, etc) and is not limited to any single propellant such as LH2. The following disclosure describes some, but not all, embodiments of the OPADS wherein residual propellant from the upper stage is transferred to a propellant tank that is launched empty and is used by one or more payloads and/or payload propulsion modules.

Apparatus and method of transferring and utilizing residual fuel of a launch vehicle upper stage


An improved tank clamping mechanism includes a first tank shell which has at least one first flange projecting from it. The first flange has a first aperture configured to restrain an abutment member. A second tank shell has a second flange projecting from it which is positioned in general registry with the first flange. The second flange includes a second aperture in general registry with the first aperture and similarly configured to restrain the abutment member. A clamping assembly includes a clamp, an abutment member received in the two apertures and an adjusting means. The clamp is configured to engage the first flange and the second flange and urge the flanges toward clamped engagement with one another as the clamp is urged toward the abutment member by manipulating the adjustment means. The tank shells are thereby clamped together for confining a pressurized medium therewithin.

Clamping mechanisms are often used to secure covers to containers or to secure tank halves to one another. Certain of such clamping mechanisms are used for simple attachment tasks. Because significant separating forces are not encountered the related clamping mechanisms require only minimum strength. Other types of clamping mechanisms are required to be quite sturdy, e.g., those which retain shells of pressurized vessels in closely fitted engagement with one another.
One type of known clamping mechanism is used with tank shells or housings, each of which has an annular flange or lip fitted to a similar flange on the companion shell. Such flanges offer a significant area of sealing contact and are maintained in a clamped position by a plurality of bolts received through holes spaced about the flanges. While clamping mechanisms of this type are strong, a very significant amount of time is required to assembly the tank and to remove all bolts to separate the shells in the event such is required for service. If one is required to separate the shells more frequently for service, such as to replace a filter, the described construction becomes even more disadvantageous.
Other types of known clamping mechanisms are shown in German Offenlegungsschrift DE 31 08 442 A1, U.S. Pat. No. 4,674,650, U.K. Patent specification 896,695 and Italian Brevetto per Invenzione 597282. The clamping mechanisms shown in the foregoing documents tend to share certain disadvantages.
Each of them includes a hoop-like band which is conformably fitted to and engaged with the projecting rims of the two container portions or shells to be clamped. Over time, the bands tend to undesirably adhere to such rims. It is not uncommon to encounter a band which must be tapped about its circumference with a mallet in order to loosen it prior to removal. Another disadvantage lies in the fact that such clamping bands are often joined at their ends by a single bolt or other fastener. Inadvertent failure to securely tighten the bolt or inattention to a bolt weakened by rust or corrosion can result in a bolt failure.
Yet a further disadvantage is that some of the clamping mechanisms illustrated in the documents noted above are intended only for joining together a non-pressurized container and its cover, for example. Such mechanisms are poorly or only moderately well suited for clamping together tank shells which confine a pressurized medium within them.
An improved tank clamping mechanism which may be installed and removed quickly and easily, which may be adapted to provide multiple points of clamping force and which is suitable for use with tank shells having a pressurized medium confined therewithin would be an important advance in the art.


This invention encompasses new and substantially improved methods and compositions for delivery of therapeutic agents to specifically chosen body sites. Conjugation of fibronectin to bioactive agents or to lipids or to liposomes which entrap the bioactive agents permits immobilization of the bioactive agent when administered at collagen-, heparin-, hyaluronic acid-, fibrin/fibrinogen-, or ganglioside-rich sites. Covalent conjugation is achieved by two methods: (1) the enzymatically catalyzed cross-linkage of fibronectin to an amine containing compound, and (2) by a modified NHS method which permits formation of peptide bonds between fibronectin and lipid compounds.

2.1. TARGETED AND LOCALIZED DRUG DELIVERY SYSTEMS
In order to exert characteristic therapeutic effects an administered drug must reach the proper site of action at an appropriate concentration. Thus, desirable features of drug delivery systems include resistance to rapid clearance and sustained release of drug at its site of activity. Another desirable feature is the ability to deliver the drug to a specific site of intended action without adversely affecting non-target tissues or systems. This latter feature is especially important when administering drugs such as anti-tumor agents which are particularly toxic, or drugs such as local anesthetics or steroid hormones which may have undesirable systemic side effects.
Although much has been written regarding the potential advantages of lipid vesicles or liposomes as in vivo drug delivery systems, failure to deliver drug to a specific site of activity continues to be a serious drawback (see review by Mayhew and Papahadjopoulos, 1983, "Therapeutic Applications of Liposomes" in Liposomes, Ostro, ed., Marcel Dekker, Inc., pp. 289-341).
Administration of targeted liposome preparations (liposomes designed to "home" to specific tissue or cell sites upon application in vivo) has been attempted by a number of researchers. Liposomes bearing substances such as antigenic lipids, i.e., N-dinitrophenyl-aminocaproyl phosphatidylethanolamine (Lesserman et al., 1979, J. Immunol. 122: 585-591), heat-aggregated IgM molecules (Weissman et al., 1975, Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 72: 88-92) , and sialoglycoprotein which binds lectins (Juliano and Stamp, 1976, Nature (London) 261:235-238)) have been used in vitro to enhance specific binding to cell surfaces. Huang et al., 1980, J. Bill. Chem. 255:8015-8018, demonstrated specific binding of liposomes to mouse L-929 cells in vitro by incorporation of anti-H-2-monoclonal antibody linked to palmitic acid into the lipid bilayer. More recently, Martin and Papahadjopoulos have demonstrated targeting of liposome preparations by the covalent linkage of Fab' fragments via disulfide bonds to a derivative of phosphatidylethanolamine incorporated into the lipid bilayer (1982, J. Biol. Chem. 257:286-288; Martin, Hubbell and Papahadjopoulos, 1981, Biochem. 20:4229-4238).
The use of of liposome preparations for localized drug delivery has also been attempted. In the liposome preparations which are designed to adhere at the site of administration, enhanced affinity is conferred by means of "stick" adjuvants. Liposomes with synthetic amino-saccharide compounds conjugated to cholesterol incorporated into the lipid bilayer have been shown to have enhanced affinity for cells or tissues when extravascularly applied by subcutaneous administration (Wu et al., 1981, Biochim. Biophys. Acta 674:19-29; Wu et al., 1981, Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci., U.S.A. 78:2033-2037).
Localized drug delivery has also been attempted by utilization of specific routes of administration. For example localized administration of steroid (cortisol palmirate) entrapped in dipalmitoylphosphatidylcholine liposomes by means of intra-articular administration to joints has been demonstrated to have superior anti-inflammatory activity compared to administration of free steroid (Shaw et al., 1978, Ann. N.Y. Acad. Sci. 308: 435-436; Philips et al., 1979, Ann. Rheum. Dis. 38: 553-557).

Localized delivery using fibronectin conjugates


The present invention concerns a dynamic load distributing method and system using local state information in a communication network comprising nodes connected by links. State information is transmitted from one or more nodes to one or more neighboring nodes. A traffic flow comprising packets is originated at a source node to be transmitted to a destination node via available paths. Weights are determined for the available paths as a decreasing function of cost of the corresponding path, state information of the present node and received state information of one or more nodes at the corresponding path. One of the paths is selected based on the determined weights. The traffic flow is dispatched to the next node of the selected path. Said determining weights, selecting paths and dispatching the traffic flow is repeated at one or more nodes via which the traffic flow is forwarded.

A communication network comprises nodes connected by links. A node refers to a network element implementing a protocol used for communicating with other nodes. A link refers to a communication facility or medium over which nodes can communicate. A communication network may either be connectionless such as an IP-based (Internet Protocol) network, or connection-oriented such as a fixed telephone network. When a traffic flow comprising data packets is transmitted from a given source node to a given destination node, there are often multiple different routes available via various nodes and links between the source and destination node. These routes are referred to as paths. In the following the term path is used to refer specifically to a loop-free path.
Different paths have different costs associated with them. For example, a given path may have higher delay than another path. Thus it is advantageous to determine these costs beforehand and select a path based on this information. Since a traffic flow comprising packets may be distributed via multiple paths simultaneously, more than one paths may also be selected.
The process of determining costs and selecting paths is often referred to as load distribution. Load in this context refers to the amount of packets or bytes being transferred over nodes and links thus loading them. Distributing traffic flows over multiple paths in a communication network has several advantages, such as fast failure recovery due to pre-existence of multiple available paths between source and destination, higher throughput for a given infrastructure and reduced packet delay. Load distribution may be static, in which case assignment of jobs to hosts is done probabilistically or deterministically, without consideration of runtime events. Alternatively load distribution may be dynamic, in which case it is designed to overcome problems of unknown or uncharacteriseable workloads, non-pervasive scheduling and runtime variation, i.e. any situation where availability of hosts, composition of workload or interaction of human beings can alter resource requirements or availability. Dynamic load distribution systems typically monitor workload and hosts for any factors that may affect the choice of the most appropriate assignment and distribute jobs accordingly.
A prior art method of static load distributing based on cost optimization is based on an estimate of static traffic demand between all node pairs and a weight function that is a decreasing function of the load over a link. Optimizing is performed using this heuristic cost function so that the cost of the total network is minimal, i.e. throughput through the network is optimized. The usefulness of the method is completely dependent on the accuracy of the traffic demand estimates.
A prior art method of dynamic load distributing based on cost adjustment is generally referred to as Optimized Multi Path. Costs associated with links are slowly changed based on changes of network state parameters. If OSPF-protocol (Open Shortest Path First) is used in connection with Optimized Multi Path, information about the changes is disseminated in opaque LSAs (Link State Advertisement). Adjustments in link costs are made gradually enough to insure stability, yet to provide reasonably fast reaction to traffic demands. Paths between two nodes are based on the adjusted costs, so the paths may change over time.
There are problems with prior art load distributing. Mechanisms that efficiently distribute traffic generally require network-wide state information to optimize or adjust path selection. These mechanisms use state information collected over varying time scales. Therefore they are reactive and operate on an hours to days time scale. Load distribution mechanisms that do not affect the paths between source and destination, on the other hand, distribute the load in a node over the available paths optionally including the costs of available paths. These mechanisms do not consider state information other than that which they may have themselves. Another problem associated with dynamic load distribution is maintaining flow integrity at all times. If flow integrity is not maintained, packet re-ordering generally occurs. In the case of TCP-based (Transmission Control Protocol) traffic this will reduce throughput considerably, whereas in the case of UDP-based (User Datagram Protocol) traffic applications may not be able to recover from packet reversal.
Thus there is obvious need for a solution providing efficient dynamic load distribution using local state information in a communication network as well as using information of the neighbors to improve efficiency by taking into account the local environment.

Dynamic load distribution using local state information


A system comprising a data memory, a first processor with first execution pipeline, and a co-processor with second execution pipeline branching from the first pipeline via an inter-processor interface. The first pipeline can decode instructions from an instruction set comprising first and second instruction subsets. The first subset comprises a load instruction which loads data from the memory into a register file, and a compute instruction of a first type which performs a compute operation on such loaded data. The second subset includes a compute instruction of a second type which does not require a separate load instruction to first load data from memory into a register file, but instead reads data from the memory directly and performs a compute operation on that data, this reading being performed in a pipeline stage of the second pipeline that is aligned with the memory access stage of the first pipeline.

The processor architecture of a given processor will be designed to execute instructions instantiated from amongst a particular instruction set. The instruction set of a processor is the fundamental set of definitions of the kinds of machine code instruction that the processor is configured to execute. These will include a number of compute instructions, e.g. arithmetic instructions such as add, multiply, etc. Each instruction executed is an instance of one of the instruction types from the instruction set. Each instruction defined in the instruction set is a machine code instruction formed of an opcode and zero or more operand fields, wherein the opcode specifies the operation to be performed and the operand field(s) (if any) are used to specify one or more operands to be operated upon by the specified operation. An operand can be an immediate operand, i.e. the value to be operated upon is encoded directly into the instruction; or alternatively an operand can take the form of an indirect operand, i.e. an address where the value to be operated upon can be found. For instance an add instruction may take three pointers as operands: two specifying addresses from which to take values to be added, and another specifying a destination address to which to write the result.
In the early days of processors, a compute instruction when executed would cause the execution unit of the processor to read a value directly from a memory address into an implicit, internal register of the execution unit and then perform the compute operation on that value, all in response to a single machine code instruction with a single opcode. However, this led to complex instruction sets where all compute instructions existed with all variants of addressing modes. For example, to support 10 instructions with 4 addressing modes, then one may end up with a full matrix of possible instructions: 4×10 if just a single operand supports all addressing modes, or 4×4×4×10 if three operands support all addressing modes. As a result, not all versions would be created, and compilers had to work out which sequences to create.
Reduced Instruction Set Computers (RISC) were developed based on the philosophy that it is preferable to have small set of simple instructions rather than a large set of complex, dedicated instructions. In contrast to the above-described approach, many RISC processors are instead configured to perform computations based on separate load instructions and compute instructions. That is, first the program will include one or more load instructions that load the value(s) to be operated upon from a memory address into a specified register in a register file, the source memory address and destination register being operands of the load instruction. Only after that, in a separate compute instruction fetched in a separate processor cycle, is the compute operation performed on the value(s) in the register. This reduces the complexity of the instruction set. In turn, this reduced the complexity of the compiler back end, and the complexity of the chip design, enabling higher clock speeds.
So for example, in order to perform an add operation that a CISC (complex instruction set computer) could perform in one instruction, a RISC needs four instructions. A CISC would have an instruction ADD Z, X, Y that adds the contents of memory locations X and Y into Z; whereas a RISC would need to execute a sequence LOAD X, LOAD Y, ADD, STORE Z. The add instruction takes three indirect operands. In the RISC case two of these operands specify register addresses of two respective source registers from which to take values to be added, and the other operand specifies a destination register address to which to write the result. Prior to executing the add instruction, the RISC program will need to include load instructions to load values from a specified memory address into the source registers. After the add instruction the program may then include a store instruction to store the result from the destination register to a specified address in memory (or alternatively may continue to perform cumulative operations on the value in the destination register). The memory addresses and register addresses are operands of the load and store instructions.
A further technique used to improve the efficiency of processors is pipelining. In a pipelined processor, the execution unit is divided into a series of pipeline stages, each for performing a particular type of operation. The pipeline will typically include a fetch stage, decode stage, a register read stage, at least one compute stage, and one or more memory access stages. The instruction fetch stage fetches a first instruction from memory and issues it into the first stage of the pipeline. In the next processor cycle the decoded instruction passes down to the next stage in the pipeline, e.g. the register read stage. At the same time, the fetch stage fetches a second instruction from the instruction memory into the decode stage. In the next successive processor cycle after that, the first instruction is passed to the third pipeline stage, e.g. compute stage, while the second instruction is passed to the second pipeline stage, and a third instruction is issued into the first pipeline stage, and so forth. This helps keep the processor busy and thereby reduces latency, since otherwise the processor would need to wait for a whole instruction to execute before issuing the next into the execution unit.
Yet another technique used to improve the efficiency of processors is multi-threading. In a multi-threaded processor, the processor comprises a plurality of sets of context registers, each set of context registers representing a context (i.e. program state) of a respective one of multiple currently-executing program threads. The program state comprises a program counter for the respective thread, operands of the respective thread, and optionally respective status information such as whether the thread or context is currently active. The processor further comprises a scheduler which is configured to control the instruction fetch stage to temporally interleave instructions through the pipeline, e.g. in a round-robin fashion. Threads interleaved in such a manner are said to be executed concurrently. In the case where the execution unit is pipelined, then as the instruction of one thread advances through the pipeline from one pipeline stage to the next, the instruction of another thread advances down the pipeline one stage behind, and so forth. This interleaved approach is beneficial as it provides more opportunity for hiding pipeline latency. Without the interleaving, the pipeline would need mechanisms to resolve dependencies between instructions in the pipeline (the second instruction may use the result of the first instruction, which may not be ready in time), which may create a pipeline bubble during which the second and further instructions are suspended until the first instruction has completed execution.

Processing system with a main processor pipeline and a co-processor pipeline


A process for the production of EPM or EPDM comprising contacting ethylene, propylene, and, optionally, one or more dienes, in a fluidized bed, at a temperature at or above the sticking temperature of the product resin, under polymerization conditions, with. (i) a prepolymer containing a transition metal catalyst precursor with the proviso that the prepolymer is not sticky at the process temperature; PA1 (ii) a hydrocarbyl aluminum and/or a hydrocarbyl aluminum halide cocatalyst,; and, optionally, PA1 (iii) a halocarbon promoter; and, optionally, PA1 (iv) an inert particulate material having a mean particle size in the range of about 0.01 to about 150 microns wherein the particulate material is either contained in the prepolymer or is independent of the prepolymer, PA1 wherein the amount of prepolymer or the combined amount of prepolymer and inert particulate material is sufficient to essentially prevent agglomeration of the fluidized bed and the product resin.

The production of amorphous EPR elastomers in a gas phase fluidized bed process above their sticking temperatures is difficult due to agglomeration of the sticky, granular resin bed particles under polymerization conditions.
The term "sticky polymer" is defined as a polymer-which, although particulate at temperatures below the sticking temperature, agglomerates at temperatures at or above the sticking temperature. The term "sticking temperature", which, in the context of this specification, concerns the sticking temperature of particles of polymer in a fluidized bed, is defined as the temperature at which fluidization ceases due to the agglomeration of particles in the bed. The agglomeration may be spontaneous or occur on short periods of settling.
A polymer may be inherently sticky due to its chemical or mechanical properties or pass through a sticky phase during the production cycle. Sticky polymers are also referred to as non-free flowing polymers because of their tendency to compact into aggregates of much larger size than the original particles and not flow out of the relatively small openings in the bottom of product discharge ranks or purge bins. Polymers of this type show acceptable fluidity in a gas phase fluidized bed reactor; however, once motion ceases, the additional mechanical force provided by the fluidizing gas passing through the distributor plate is insufficient to break up the aggregates which form and the bed will not refluidize. These polymers are classified as those, which have a minimum bin opening for free flow at zero storage time of up to two feet and a minimum bin opening for free flow at storage times of greater than five minutes of 4 to 8 feet or more.
Because of the tendency to agglomerate, sticky polymers are difficult to produce in typical gas phase processes, which are usually carried out in fluidized beds. Both economic and safety/environmental considerations indicate, however, that fluidized bed type polymerization is preferred for the manufacture of polymers that can exist in a granular, fluidizable form.
Although polymers that are sticky can be produced in non-gas phase processes, there are certain difficulties associated with the production of such products in, for example, slurry or bulk monomer polymerization processes. In such processes, the diluent or solvent is present in the resins exiting the reaction system at a high concentration leading to severe resin purging problems, particularly if the material in question is a low molecular weight resin or a very low crystallinity resin. Environmental considerations are such that the dissolved monomers and diluent must be removed from the polymer prior to its exposure to air. Safety also dictates the removal of residual hydrocarbons so that closed containers containing the polymers will not exceed safe volatiles levels in the gas head space over the resin. The safety and environmental concerns are accompanied by a definite economic factor in determining a preference for a gas phase fluid bed reaction system. The low number of moving parts and the relative lack of complexity in a basic fluidized bed process enhances the operability of the process and typically results in lower costs of production. Low costs of production are due, in part, to low volumes of recycled process streams and a high unit throughput.
Three major process types have been used for the production of some or all of these sticky resins, i.e., the bulk monomer slurry process; the diluent slurry process; and the solution process. All of these processes, although suitable for the production of many different types of polymers have deficiencies that are not present in the fluidized bed reaction system. The absence of large volumes of solvent or liquid monomer increases the safety of the system. The granular nature of the resultant polymer increases the flexibility of the system in that both granular resin and compounded resin can be delivered to the customer. The granular, porous nature of the polymer also facilitates purging of unwanted monomer to environmentally safe levels. A wide range of molecular weights can be produced in a fluidized bed, i.e., from ultrahigh molecular weights having a melt index of less than 0.001 gram per 10 minutes to relatively low molecular weights having a melt index of up to 100 grams per 10 minutes. Melt index is measured under ASTM D-1238, Condition E, at 190.degree. C., and reported as grams per 10 minutes. The high heat removal capacity of a fluidized bed (due to the circulation of the fluidizing gas) and the ability to control reaction concentrations without the limitations imposed by the solubility of components such as hydrogen in the diluent are also desirable features of the fluidized bed process.
It is clear, then, that the production of polymer by means of a fluidized bed reaction system is advantageous. A typical system of this type is described in U.S. Pat. No. 4,482,687. Unfortunately, this system requires that the granular product be free-flowing. Industry has generally dealt with the problem of sticky polymers by avoiding operating regimes at or above the sticking temperature of the polymer. Low pressure polymerization of olefins in a gas phase reactor using transition metal catalysts is generally performed at temperatures below 120.degree. C. Where high levels of comonomers are used in combination with ethylene and crystallinity levels are reduced below 30 percent by weight, the sticking temperature of the olefin polymer can be close to the polymerization temperature. Under such conditions, in either a fluidized bed or a stirred gas/solid phase reactor, stickiness of the resin particles becomes a problem. The stickiness problem becomes even more critical with copolymers of ethylene and propylene (EPMs) and ethylene/propylene/diene/terpolymers (EPDMs) having a crystalline content of less than about 10 percent by weight. These particular polymers are also known as EPRs, i.e., ethylene/propylene copolymer rubbers. Commercially desirable EPMs and EPDMs contain about 20 to about 55 percent by weight propylene and the EPDMs contain about 2 to about 15 percent by weight ethylidene norbornene (ENB).
EPRs are practically amorphous with glass transition temperatures of minus 50.degree. C. to minus 60.degree. C. At temperatures above the glass transition temperature, EPM and EPDM are rubbers whose viscosity decreases, like all rubbers, exponentially with increases in temperature. This viscosity decrease with rising temperatures is a major obstacle in the fluidized bed production of EPR because agglomeration increases as particle surface viscosity decreases.
At temperatures above about 30.degree. C., amorphous EPM particles become so sticky that fluidized bed polymerization cannot be carried out reliably. EPDM particles are even stickier than EPM due to the presence of soluble liquid dienes such as ethylidene norbornene.
The stickiness problem can be reduced in a fluidized bed by the introduction of a fluidization aid, and this is described in U.S. Pat. No. 4,994,534. While this procedure is generally effective, it is deficient in the preparation of amorphous or nearly amorphous resins at temperatures at or above their sticking temperatures, i.e., under conditions of maximum stickiness. In this case, large quantities of the fluidization aid, about 15 to about 50 percent by weight based on the weight of the final product, are required. This, in turn, increases the cost of material; requires large quantities of fluidization aid; to be treated to ensure inertness; reduces the polymer throughput of the reactor; increases residues; limits the end use applications of the resin; can affect polymer properties in an undesirable way, e.g., by increasing block or gel formation; and imposes various other economic penalties.
The problem lies, then, in how to produce essentially amorphous or nearly amorphous EPRs at temperatures at or higher than their sticking temperatures, since the higher the temperature the greater the productivity, while at the same time reducing the amount of fluidization aid and, thus, fluidization aid residues, or eliminating the fluidization aid altogether.

Process for the production of sticky polymers

Union Carbide Chemicals & Plastics Technology Corporation


A system and method for domain adaptation involves a first domain and a second domain. A machine learning system is trained with first sensor data and first label data of the first domain. Second sensor data of a second domain is obtained. Second label data is generated via the machine learning system based on the second sensor data. Inter-domain sensor data is generated by interpolating the first sensor data of the first domain with respect to the second sensor data of the second domain. Inter-domain label data is generated by interpolating first label data of the first domain with respect to second label data of the second domain. The machine learning system is operable to generate inter-domain output data in response to the inter-domain sensor data. Inter-domain loss data is generated based on the inter-domain output data with respect to the inter-domain label data. Parameters of the machine learning system are updated upon optimizing final loss data that includes at least the inter-domain loss data. After domain adaptation, the machine learning system, which is operable in the first domain, is adapted to generate current label data that identifies current sensor data of the second domain.

Deep learning systems typically rely on abundant data and extensive human labeling. As such, during deployment in real-world scenarios, they often face critical challenges when domain shifts occur and the labels under novel distributions are scarce or unavailable. These challenges relate to unsupervised domain adaptation (UDA), which involves utilizing a relevant source domain with abundant labels to build predictive modeling for an unannotated target domain. In addressing these challenges, some work has focused on the adversarial approach of learning domain-invariant features. However, it has been found that this work is insufficient to achieve desirable target domain performance. In addition, there has been other work, which has introduced additional training constraints, such as cluster assumptions. However, these other approaches impose constraints on a chosen domain individually and independently and face several performance drawbacks, as they ignore the important interplay between the source domain and the target domain.

System and method for unsupervised domain adaptation with mixup training


A constant-to-variable cache router is situated between a constant bit-rate network and a variable bit-rate network. A monitor within the variable bit-rate network measures the available bit-rate within the variable bit-rate network and communicates the available bit-rate to the constant-to-variable cache router. When data is received from the constant bit-rate network at the constant-to-variable cache router, the constant-to-variable cache router determines if the available bit-rate is large enough to support the delivery of the data from the constant bit-rate network at the constant bit-rate. If not, then the constant-to-variable cache router caches the data and delivers it at a rate dependent on the available bit-rate of the variable bit-rate network.

The connections between computers are not all the same. Whereas within a particular network the capacity may be a known constant, connections between computers on different networks may result in one computer delivering data to the other computer faster or slower than the other computer may process. A well-known example of this is the Internet. Although individual computers typically connect to Internet Service Providers (ISPs) using connections that run at roughly 1-2 megabits per second (Mbps), the backbone of the Internet, which connects the core computers of the Internet, allows for data to flow at rates hundreds and thousands times faster.
In addition, as an individual computer on a variable bit-rate network sends or receives data, the traffic consumes some of the network capacity. This traffic limits that amount of "other data" that may be sent over the network. Thus, the available bit-rate (also called the available bandwidth) of the connection varies from the maximum capacity of the connection. This situation is further compounded where the individual computer shares a connection to the Internet (for example, a computer connected via a cable-modem or within a Local Area Network (LAN)): the available bit-rate may vary without the individual computer sending or receiving data.
Where data is coming out of a constant bit-rate network, the data is being delivered at a known rate (hence the "constant bit-rate" in the description of the network). But where the data enters a variable bit-rate network, a problem may arise. The data coming from the constant bit-rate network may exceed the available bit-rate of the variable bit-rate network. Unless there is guarantee regarding the quality of service (something most variable bit-rate networks do not provide), data coming from the constant bit-rate network may be lost.
A need remains for a way deliver data from a constant bit-rate network to a variable bit-rate network without loss of data, that addresses these and other problems associated with the prior art.

Automated method for mapping constant bit-rate network traffic onto a non-constant bit-rate network


In order to specify a dust emitting mechanism portion, a wafer must be provided near a mechanism portion in operation and the mechanism portion must be operated so that foreign matter sticks to a surface of the wafer. A mechanism that allows foreign matter to stick to a wafer by repeating operation of each of particular portions in a device and thus intentionally bringing about dust emission is provided. For example, the device includes a control device, a sample chamber in which a sample is processed, and a mechanism that loads and unloads a sample to and from the sample chamber, the mechanism has a plurality of portions, the control device has a script, and a particular portion of the plurality of portions of the mechanism is repeatedly operated as the control device executes the script.

After resist coating, exposure, and development, evaluation of the process is carried out by measuring a pattern width and the like using a CD-SEM (Critical Dimension-Scanning Electron Microscope). More specifically, a semiconductor inspection device such as the CD-SEM is used to determine whether a pattern on a sample such as a semiconductor wafer is correctly formed. In recent years, as finer patterns have been formed on samples such as semiconductor wafers, even very small adhering foreign matter cannot be overlooked.
The user checks for foreign matter day by day and starts steps for process evaluation if the number of foreign matter particles adhering to a wafer is less than a prescribed number. A dummy wafer is used to check for adhering foreign matter (Patent Literature 1). If however the prescribed number is exceeded, the use of the device is prohibited and a service engineer is called. The service engineer examines for a source and a cause of foreign matter emission, specifies a dust emission portion, and then carries out cleaning or replaces parts. Then, the device is operated for a predetermined period and the user gets back the device once it is confirmed that no more foreign matter is emitted.

Device for dust emitting of foreign matter and dust emission cause analysis device


An antenna device includes a ground plate that is a conductive member having a plate shape, a patch section that is a conductive member having a plate shape and is disposed in parallel with the ground plate with a predetermined interval so as to face the ground plate, a plurality of first short-circuit vias each having an axial center disposed on a circumference of a via arrangement circle located in a center portion of the patch section and each having a first end connected with the patch section and a second end connected with the ground plate, and at least one second short-circuit via having an axial center disposed at a position different from the circumference of the via arrangement circle and having a first end connected with the patch section and a second end connected with the ground plate.

Conventionally, there has been known an antenna device having a flat plate structure. The antenna device includes a metal conductor having a plate shape and functioning as a ground (hereinafter referred to as a ground plate), a metal conductor having a plate shape, disposed to face the ground plate and provided with a feeding point (hereinafter referred to as a patch section), a short-circuit via for electrically connecting the ground plate and the patch section, and a feeding via for supplying power to the feeding point.


A color data converter includes a plurality of memories configured to store lattice points for a color space. The lattice points of the first axis are assigned to memories in a sequential manner. The lattice points along the other two axes are assigned to memories in an alternating manner.

The present invention relates to color data conversion and more particularly to devices and methods for converting color data from a color space to a print space.
Certain image processing devices, such as printers, displays, image rendering systems and output files may use a different color space than other image processing devices such as a color driver for a computer system, camera, display or input graphics file. For example, a cyan, magenta, yellow and black (CMYK) color space is used for a color printer. However, a red, green and blue (RGB) color space may be used for certain graphics files. Accordingly, a color transformation is needed for converting the RGB color space into the CMYK color space.
One method of color transformation uses a look-up table to store a plurality of color values associated with the CMYK color space. A conversion between the RGB color space and the CMYK color space is performed by indexing the CMYK values in the look-up tables using addresses corresponding with RGB color values, one look-up table per output color.
A large amount of memory is required for the look-up table. For example, a 24-bit RGB color system may use 8 bits for red color values, 8 bits for green color values and 8 bits for blue color values. This 24-bit RGB color system can require a table size of 16 MegaBytes (MBs) or larger per output color.
To reduce memory requirements, some color transformation devices combine interpolation with the color mapping process. The hybrid transformation process first identifies a set of vertices that surround or neighbor an input color point in the color space. A value for the second color space is then derived by interpolating the identified vertices to the relative position of the input color point. However, this interpolation process is computationally intensive.
A color data converter includes a plurality of memories configured to store lattice points for a color space. The lattice points of the first axis are assigned to memories in a sequential manner. The lattice points along the other two axes are assigned to memories in an alternating manner.

Apparatus and method for color data conversion


A policy based service aware engine is provided to dynamically and/or statically provision a traffic navigation processor at a visited network according to service profiles of the home network. The service aware engine thus allows the visited network to gain full knowledge of the service to which a user subscribes, and thus, a user experience consistent with the user's home network can be obtained at the visited network. In various embodiments, the visited network's front-end-processor retrieves or receives service policies from the service aware engine of the home network, and then performs policy-based traffic navigation to intelligently handle and/or backhaul roaming traffic received by the visited network. Thus, the visited network is capable of dynamically classifying incoming roaming traffic and intelligently routing the traffic according to the service characteristics of the traffic flow for each subscriber, e.g., the need for QoS (Quality of Service) support, real time performance requirement, specific level identification, or the like.

One of the most challenging issues facing telecommunications networks today is how to handle roaming traffic to and from disparate networks, which should involve not only routing plain user traffic, but also routing services that people might wish to use when they roam. Currently, the services are routed back to the home network, and there is no mechanism for the roamer to obtain the same or similar services using the "visited" (or "roaming") network in order to maintain the user's service continuity.
In this regard, current networks operate under a "bit pipe" model where the network is agnostic to the data it carries. In a bit pipe, bits representing the traffic for the home network travel through the visited network, which merely forwards those bits on for handling by the home network. Thus, a current problem is that when users roam to a visited network, all of the traffic is backhauled to the home network, treating the visited network as an unintelligent bit pipe where bits enter one end of the pipe from the user's wireless portable device and exit the pipe where forwarded to the home network, with no intelligent processing of the bits by the visited network except to ascertain the home network to which to forward the bits.
A clear problem with such networks is that the visited network does not have knowledge of what the service is that the user may be requesting through the bit pipe, and thus, even where the visited network may possess the capability to wholly or partially process the bits without involving the home network, the visited network must blindly forward or "backhaul" the bits to the home network for processing.
However, there are transport costs to the home network for handling roaming traffic to/from the home network. For instance, the home network operator is required to pay the GRX interconnection provider to backhaul all the traffic to the home network from the visited network in this manner. Moreover, the home network must allocate resources to handle roaming traffic received from visited networks as well as traffic received directly by the home network. This can become expensive when home network traffic is already congested during busy hours, as a result of which, the home network needs to over-provision its capacity and processing load in order to support additional roaming traffic. As a result, the user experience is inconsistent and unmanageable when user is roaming and trying to request services.
Accordingly, it would be advantageous to allow visited networks to process some roaming traffic directly without passing the data blindly back to the home network. It would be further desirable to define a mechanism that allows a visited network to dynamically analyze whether roaming traffic should be forwarded to the home network, or processed directly by the visited network. It would be still further desirable to provide policy based service awareness in connection with such a mechanism in order to classify a service that is requested in a visited network and to apply one or more policies from the home network to the classification by the visited network to determine how resulting traffic should flow to satisfy requests for service on the visited network.
Solutions to these and other deficiencies of the state of the art of roaming in telecommunications networks are thus desirable.

This patent is subject to a terminal disclaimer.

Dynamic provisioning system for policy-based traffic navigation for roaming traffic


Methods for producing a semiconductor component that includes a transistor having a cell structure with a number of transistor cells monolithically integrated in a semiconductor body and electrically connected in parallel. In an example method, first trenches extending from the top side into the semiconductor body are produced, as are second trenches that each extend from the top side deeper into the semiconductor body than each of the first trenches. A first dielectric abutting on a first portion of the semiconductor body is produced at a surface of each of the first trenches. Also produced is a second dielectric at a surface of each of the second trenches. In each of the first trenches, a gate electrode is produced, after which a second portion of the semiconductor body is electrically insulated from the first portion of the semiconductor body by removing a bottom layer of the semiconductor body.

Transistors, for instance IGFETs (Insulated Gate Field Effect Transistors) like MOSFETs (Metal Oxide Field Effect Transistors) or IGBTs (Insulated Gate Bipolar Transistors), are produced from a semiconductor body. For many of these transistors it is desirable to electrically connect structures arranged at or on opposite sides of the semiconductor body.
For instance, n-channel MOSFETs have a semiconductor body with a source region and a drain region, a gate electrode, a source contact terminal, a drain contact terminal and a gate contact terminal. In this regard it is to be noted that in the sense of the present application, a "contact terminal" is a terminal that allows for electrically contacting the completed semiconductor component. That is, a "contact terminal" is accessible from outside the completed semiconductor component. Further, a "gate electrode" is regarded as an electrode that directly abuts on the gate dielectric. The source contact terminal is electrically connected to the source region, the drain contact terminal is electrically connected to the drain region, and the gate contact terminal is electrically connected to the gate electrode. Due to the construction of a vertical MOSFET, the gate electrode and the source region are arranged at the same side of the semiconductor body, whereas the drain region is arranged at an opposite side of the semiconductor body.
Since the waste-heat producing pn-junction of the MOSFET is located closer to the source region than to the drain region, it is advantageous to cool the MOSFET from that side of the semiconductor body at which the source region is located. However, in such a concept for cooling the semiconductor component, electrically connecting the gate contact terminal is difficult if the gate contact terminal is arranged at the same side of the semiconductor body as the source region. Therefore, it is desirable to arrange the gate contact terminal at that side of the semiconductor body that is opposite to the side at which the source region is arranged. However, since the gate electrode is arranged at the same side of the semiconductor body as the source region, an electrical connection between the gate electrode and the gate contact terminal, that is, an electrical connection between structures arranged at or on opposite sides of the semiconductor body is required.
Since in general the production of electrical connections between structures arranged at or on opposite sides of a semiconductor body is complicated and expensive, there is a need for a simple method for the production of a semiconductor component having an electrical connection line connecting structures arranged at or on opposite sides of a semiconductor body of the semiconductor component.

Method for producing a semiconductor component


A method and apparatus for generating an excitation signal for background noise are provided. The method includes: generating a quasi excitation signal by utilizing coding parameters in a speech coding/decoding stage and a transition length of an excitation signal; and obtaining the excitation signal for background noise in a transition stage by generating a weighted sum of the quasi excitation signal and a random excitation signal of a background noise frame. Moreover, the apparatus includes: a quasi excitation signal generation unit and a transition stage excitation signal acquisition unit. Through the synthesizing scheme of comfortable background noise according to the present invention, the transition of a synthesized signal from speech to background noise could be more natural, smooth and continuous, which makes the listeners feel more comfortable.

In speech communications, speech processing is mainly performed by speech codecs. Since a speech signal has short-time stability, speech codecs generally process the speech signal in frames, each frame being of 10 to 30 ms. All the initial speech codecs have fixed rates, that is, each of the codecs has only one fixed coding rate. For example, the coding rate of a G.729 speech codec is 8 kbit/s, and the coding rate of a G.728 speech codec is 16 kbit/s. As a whole, among these traditional speech codecs with fixed coding rate, the speech codecs with higher coding rate may guarantee coding quality more easily, but occupy more communication channel resources; while the speech codecs with lower coding rate may not guarantee coding quality that easily, but occupy less communication channel resources.
The speech signal includes both a voice signal generated by human speaking and a silent signal generated by gaps in human speaking. The coding rate of the voice signal is referred to as speech (in this case, the speech specifically refers to a signal of human speaking) coding rate, and the coding rate of background noise is referred to as noise coding rate. In speech communications, only the useful voice signal is concerned, while the useless silent signal is not desired to be transmitted, and this decreases transmission bandwidth. However, if merely the voice signal is coded and transmitted and the silent signal is not coded and transmitted, the discontinuity of background noise would occur. Thus a person who is listening at a receiving end will feel rather uncomfortable, and such feeling will be more apparent in the case of stronger background noise so that sometimes the speech would be difficult to understand. In order to solve this problem, the silent signal needs to be coded and transmitted even when no one is speaking Silence compression technology is introduced into speech codecs. In the silence compression technology, the background noise signal is coded with lower coding rate to efficiently decrease communications bandwidth, while the voice signal generated by human speaking is coded with higher coding rate to guarantee communications quality.
At present, an approach for generating an excitation signal for background noise for a G.729B speech codec adds a Discontinuous Transmission System (DTX)/Comfort Noise Generated (CNG) system, i.e., a system for processing background noise, to the prototype of the G.729B speech codec. The system processes 8 kHz-sampled narrowband signals with a frame length of 10 ms for signal processing. According to a CNG algorithm, a level-controllable pseudo white noise is used to excite an interpolated Linear Predictive Coding (LPC) synthesis filter to obtain comfortable background noise, where the level of the excitation signal and the coefficient of the LPC filter are obtained from the previous Silence Insertion Descriptor (SID) frame.
The excitation signal is a pseudo white noise excitation ex(n) which is a mixture of a speech excitation ex1(n) and a Gauss white noise excitation ex2(n). The gain of ex1(n) is relatively small, and ex1(n) is utilized to make the transition from speech to non-speech (such as, noise, etc.) more natural. After the pseudo white noise excitation ex(n) is obtained, ex(n) could be used to excite the synthesis filter to obtain comfortable background noise.
The process for generating the excitation signal is as follows.
Firstly, a target excitation gain {tilde over (G)}t is defined as a square root of average energy of current frame excitations. {tilde over (G)}t is obtained based on the following smoothing algorithm:
            G      ~        t    =      {                                                      G              ~                        sid                                                if                                                                                (                                                Vad                                      t                    -                    1                                                  =                1                            )                                                                                7                8                                                                            G                  ~                                                  t                  -                  1                                                      +                                          1                8                                                                            G                  ~                                sid                                                              otherwise                                    where {tilde over (G)}sid, is the gain of a decoded SID frame.
For each of two sub-frames which are formed by dividing 80 sampling points, the excitation signal of a CNG module may be synthesized by:                (1) randomly selecting a pitch lag in a range of [40, 103];        (2) randomly selecting positions and signs of non-zero pulses in fixed codebook vectors of the sub-frames (the structure of the positions and signs of the non-zero pulses is the same as that of the G.729 speech codec); and        (3) selecting a self-adaptive codebook excitation signal with a gain, labeling the self-adaptive codebook excitation signal as ea(n),n=0 . . . 39, labeling a selected fixed codebook excitation signal as ef(n),n=0 . . . 39, and then calculating a self-adaptive codebook gain Ga and a fixed codebook gain Gf based on the energy of the sub-frames:
            1      40                          ∑                  n          =          0                39                                    (                                                    G                a                            ×                                                e                  a                                                                  (                  n                  )                                                      +                                          G                f                            ×                                                e                  f                                                                  (                  n                  )                                                              )                2              =            G      ~        t    2                  where Gf may be selected as a negative value.
It is defined that
            E      a        =          (                        ∑                      n            =            0                    39                                                            e              a                                                  (              n              )                                2                    )        ,                I    =                  (                              ∑                          n              =              0                        119                                                                        e                a                                                          (                n                )                                                                                e                f                                                          (                n                )                                                    )            .      According to the excitation structure of Algebra Code-Excited Linear Prediction (ACELP), it could be known that
            ∑              n        =        0            39                                    e          f                                  (          n          )                    2        =  4.
If the self-adaptive codebook gain Ga is fixed, the equation expressing {tilde over (G)}t will become a second order equation related to Gf:
            G      f      2        +                                        G            a                    ×          I                2                          G        f              +                                        E            a                    ×                      G            a            2                          -        K            4        =  0
The value of Ga may be defined to ensure that the above equation has solutions. Further, the application of some self-adaptive codebook gains with large values may be restricted. Thus, the self-adaptive codebook gain Ga may be randomly selected in the following range:
      [          0      ,              Max                          {                      0.5            ,                                          K                A                                              }                      ]    ,            with                                      A        =                  E        a            -                        I          2                /        4                            where the root with the smallest absolute value among the roots of the equation of
            1      40                          ∑                  n          =          0                39                                    (                                                    G                a                            ×                                                e                  a                                                                  (                  n                  )                                                      +                                          G                f                            ×                                                e                  f                                                                  (                  n                  )                                                              )                2              =            G      ~        t    2  is used as the value of Gf.
Finally, the excitation signal for the G.729 speech codec may be constructed with the following equation:ex1(n)=Ga×ea(n)+Gf×ef[n],n=0 . . . 39
The excitation ex(n) may be synthesized in the following manner.
It is assumed that E1 is the energy of ex1(n), E2 is the energy of ex2(n), and E3 is a dot product of ex1(n) and ex2(n):E1=Σex12(n)E2=Σex22(n)E3=Σex1(n)·ex2(n)                where the calculated number of dots exceeds the value of themselves.
It is assumed that α and β are proportional coefficients of ex1(n) and ex2(n) in a mixed excitation respectively, where α is set to 0.6 and β is determined based on the following quadratic equation:β2E2+2αβE3+(α2−1)E1=0, with β>0.
If there is no solution for β, β will be set to 0 and α will be set to 1. The final excitation ex(n) for the CNG module becomes:ex(n)=αex1(n)+βex2(n)
The above discussion illustrates the principle of generating an excitation signal for background noise for the CNG module of the G.729B speech codec.
According to the implementation process described above, certain speech excitation ex1(n) may be added when generating an excitation signal for background noise for the G.729B speech codec. However, the speech excitation ex1(n) is just added formally, but actual contents, such as lags of the self-adaptive codebook and positions and signs of the fixed codebook, are all generated randomly, resulting in a strong randomness. Therefore, the correlation between the excitation signal for background noise and the excitation signal for the previous speech frame is poor, so that the transition from a synthesized speech signal to a synthesized background noise signal is unnatural, which makes the listeners feel uncomfortable.

Method and apparatus for generating an excitation signal for background noise


A belt holder includes a top section; slats; first straps attached to the slats, a strap of the first straps being configured to at least partially hold a belt to a respective slat of the slats; second straps attached to the slats, a strap of the second straps separating a slat of the slats from an adjacent slat of the slats by a first distance, the first distance being sufficient to allow folding of the slats; and wherein an end of at a first strap of the second straps and an end of a second strap of the second straps are attached to the top section and separate the top section from a topmost slat of the slats by a second distance, the second distance being sufficient to allow folding of the slats with the top section.

As part of a colored belt system, individuals who participate in martial arts often obtain a newly colored belt to serve as a visual symbol of the participant's progress and ranking in their area of martial arts. Such participants are often desirous of displaying the belts collectively in an aesthetic manner.
A belt holder, such as for, but not limited to, a Karate belt, is disclosed.

Milliard Enterprises Limited Liability Company


A catheter assembly includes a catheter hub having an elastomeric septum that divides the catheter hub into a distal chamber and a proximal chamber. The septum also includes at least one slit that is closed and sealed when the septum is in an at-rest state. A septum activator is proximal the septum. When an external force pushes the activator against the septum, the activator deforms the septum so as to break the seal and create a flow path through the septum. A portion of the septum activator can be collapsible when subjected to the outside force. When the outside force is removed, the collapsible portion springs back to its at-rest shape, helping to pull the activator out of deforming engagement with the septum so that the septum can reseal. The activator can also be spring-biased away from engagement with the septum so that when the outside force is removed, the spring urges the activator out of engagement with the septum. With the activator removed, the septum slit can reseal.

The present disclosure relates to the field of infusion devices, and more particularly to peripheral intravenous (IV) catheters.
A catheter assembly for an IV catheter generally includes a flexible catheter, or catheter tube, coupled to a distal end of a catheter adapter, which can include a catheter hub. The catheter adapter retains the catheter tube so that other components can interact with the catheter tube. In order to place the catheter tube in the patient's blood vessel, an introducer needle is coupled to the catheter adapter so that the needle extends through the catheter adapter and catheter tube, with the sharp distal tip of the needle positioned just beyond the distal end of the catheter tube. The clinician uses the introducer needle to penetrate the patient's tissue and place the distal end of the catheter tube in a blood vessel.
Once the needle tip and the catheter tube are in the vessel, the clinician typically uses blood flashback to confirm that placement is correct. For example, when the needle tip and/or the catheter tube is properly placed in the vasculature of the patient, blood from the vessel may flow through the needle and/or the catheter tube into the catheter adapter. When the clinician sees the blood in the catheter adapter, the clinician knows that the distal tip of the needle and/or the distal end of the catheter tube is in place in the blood vessel. Once it is verified that the catheter is correctly placed in the blood vessel, the introducer needle is removed.
During blood flashback, blood may accumulate in the catheter tube and catheter adapter. A valve such as an elastomeric septum in the catheter adapter contains the blood in a distal chamber of the catheter adapter. It can be desired to selectively open the septum to, for example, obtain a blood sample or to deliver IV fluids to the patient. Typically a septum activator is arranged proximal the septum. When the septum activator is forced into the septum, the septum is deformed and opened, creating a flow path for collection of a blood sample or delivery of IV fluids.
In some instances it is desirable to have a reusable septum and septum activator so that the septum activator can be disengaged from the septum, and the septum will again seal, but forcing the septum activator into the septum at a later time will again break the seal and create a fluid flow path.


The present invention relates to a super continuum light source comprising a pump source arranged to emit light having a center wavelength λcenter arranged to provide pump pulse to a generator fiber, where the refractive index profile of the core is arranged to allow modal cleaning of the light is it propagates, such as via stimulated Raman scattering. An example of invention is the application of a relatively high power pump laser utilized to provide an optical super continuum with relatively high spectral density and/or good beam quality even though the pump laser may provide a beam with a high M2.

Super continuum (SC) generation is a nonlinear phenomenon characterised by dramatic spectral broadening of intense light passing through a nonlinear material. SC generation occurs in various media and may find use in numerous applications such as spectroscopy or ultra-short-pulse generation. Spectral slicing of a generated SC is an elegant way of replacing multiple light sources having separate wavelengths.
Many prior art SC light sources are based on micro structured fibres (MF) which posses unique optical properties with a large degree of freedom of design thus allowing for optimization of the fibre for SC generation. However, SC generation in standard fibre has also been demonstrated. Most prior art disclosures of SC sources utilise femto-second (fs) pulses (10−15 s) to generate the SC. The physical mechanism responsible for the SC generation is believed to be due to multiple nonlinear processes. It has also been shown that it is possible to create SC by use of pico- and nanosecond pulses, and the mechanism responsible for these SCs is often attributed to a combination of four wave mixing and stimulated Raman scattering. In either case of pump duration and/or fibre type, the size of the guiding core has been relatively small (<6 μm diameter) to ensure a high optical density in the core so that non-linear effects are maximized. This limits the optical power with which the fibre may be pumped either due to the damage threshold of the end facet of the fibre or the damage threshold of the fibre core. The optical power may also be limited by the availability or cost of a high power laser having an output with a sufficient beam quality to allow a substantial amount of its output to enter the fibre.


A method and apparatus for granting wireless connection resources for a UE within a communication system is provided herein. During operation, an application requests allocation of wireless communication resources (a bearer reservation) to sustain transmission at a specified bit rate across the communication system via an admission control function. In response to the bearer reservation request, an admission control function calculates a wireless connection efficiency as a function of the requested bit rate and an amount of shared wireless connection resources required to sustain the requested bit rate given the current wireless connection quality associated with the UE. The wireless connection efficiency is then utilized to determine whether or not to admit the bearer reservation request.

Modern wireless networks employ agile modulation and forward error correction (FEC) techniques. As such, the amount of wireless connection resources (e.g., over-the-air resource blocks) required to sustain transmission of a data stream at a given bit rate (i.e., throughput) to or from a wireless communication device depends on the associated wireless connection quality (e.g., the signal-to-noise Ratio (SNR)) between the wireless communication device, herein known as user equipment (UE), and an infrastructure communication device, herein known as a base station (BS). When a UE is subject to interference, its associated wireless connection quality will deteriorate. To compensate for that deterioration, the transmitting entity (UE or BS, respectively) will select a lower complexity modulation and/or apply additional FEC in order to sustain transmission at a given bit rate.
Although these mitigation techniques can potentially provide a UE associated with a relatively poor wireless connection quality with a higher sustained bit rate, they also require a significantly larger amount of wireless connection resources to be allocated with respect to a UE associated with a relatively good wireless connection quality. In one example, a UE transmitting a 128 kb/s data stream and subject to wireless interference (e.g., when located between neighboring cells in a cellular system) will consume 11 times the amount of wireless connection resources with respect to a UE associated with a relatively good wireless connection quality also transmitting a 128 kb/s data stream.
Modern wireless networks are architected in such a way that all UEs connected to the same point-of-attachment (e.g., a BS sector) draw from the same pool of available wireless connection resources. Following the example above, a given point-of-attachment may be able to simultaneously support 11 UEs associated with a relatively good wireless connection quality, each transmitting a 128 kb/s video stream, or 1 UE associated with a relatively poor wireless connection quality transmitting a 128 kb/s video stream.
Modern wireless networks provide a means of unfairly sharing available wireless connection resources via bearer reservations. As used herein, a bearer reservation is an allocation of sufficient wireless connection resources to sustain transmission of a data stream at a requested bit rate across a communication network. Notably, bearer reservations are typically requested in units of bits/second, irrespective of the amount of wireless connection resources required to actually sustain the requested bit rate. When an application running on a UE or an application running on an application server requests a bearer reservation, the admission control function interfaces with the BS serving the identified UE to determine if sufficient wireless connection resources exist to sustain the requested bit rate. If sufficient wireless connection resources exist, the bearer reservation request is admitted. If sufficient wireless connection resources do not exist and priority preemption is not applicable, the bearer reservation request is rejected.
When operating on modern wireless networks, applications interface with an admission control function to request bearer reservations. Applications may associate an admission priority and bearer retention policy, commonly referred to as Allocation, Retention, and Priority (ARP), with a bearer reservation request. Accordingly, each request for a bearer reservation can be associated with an admission priority such that the communication system may preempt an existing bearer reservation in favor of admitting a requested bearer reservation of a higher priority. Bearer reservation requests associated with the same priority typically compete for wireless connection resources on a first come, first serve basis. In other words, the first bearer reservation to be admitted at a particular point-of-attachment may block admittance of subsequent bearer reservations having the same priority and targeting the same point-of-attachment. Referring again to our example, if a bearer reservation for a 128 kb/s data stream associated with a given priority and identifying a UE associated with a relatively poor wireless connection quality is admitted, the bearer reservation would consume the balance of available wireless connection resources for a given point-of-attachment. This, in turn, would block admittance of all subsequent requests for bearer reservations (e.g., 11 other UEs associated with a relatively good wireless connection quality attempting to allocate 128 kb/s data streams) at the same point-of-attachment and associated with the same priority.
It is believed that such behavior may be undesirable for private (e.g., public safety and enterprise) and public (e.g., cellular carrier) network operators. In the case of public safety, an agency may wish to invoke a policy which prevents an officer inadvertently parked at a location inflicting a relatively poor wireless connection quality from conducting routine (non-emergency) video surveillance, at the expense of 11 other officers operating in locations associated with a relatively good wireless connection quality also wanting to conduct routine video surveillance. In the case of public networks, a carrier may wish to invoke a policy which prevents one customer inadvertently parked at a location inflicting a relatively poor wireless connection quality from streaming a movie at the expense of 11 other customers operating in locations associated with a relatively good wireless connection quality also attempting to stream a movie.
Invoking such a policy is not possible with the current mechanisms for requesting bearer reservations on communication networks. Therefore a need exists for a method and apparatus for admitting requests for allocation of wireless connection resources in a communication system that more fairly allocates wireless connection resources to alleviate the aforementioned issues.
Skilled artisans will appreciate that elements in the figures are illustrated for simplicity and clarity and have not necessarily been drawn to scale. For example, the dimensions and/or relative positioning of some of the elements in the figures may be exaggerated relative to other elements to help to improve understanding of various embodiments of the present invention. Also, common but well-understood elements that are useful or necessary in a commercially feasible embodiment are often not depicted in order to facilitate a less obstructed view of these various embodiments of the present invention. It will further be appreciated that certain actions and/or steps may be described or depicted in a particular order of occurrence while those skilled in the art will understand that such specificity with respect to sequence is not actually required.

Method and apparatus for granting wireless connection resources to a wireless communications device within a communication system


A liquid developer includes metallic particles that may be surface-treated using an insulating material, and a carrier liquid.

1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to a liquid developer, a circuit board, and a conductive pattern forming apparatus.
2. Related Art
As a technique of preparing an electrical circuit on a resin substrate or the like which is used in the electrical circuit, a photolithographic method, a screen printing method, an offset printing method, or direct drawing or the like by an inkjet method is put to practical use.
Out of these methods, in the photolithographic method and the screen printing method, a mask or a plate is used, and thus a required circuit may not be prepared on demand, and the cost of the mask or the plate is high.
In the inkjet method, direct drawing is possible. However, there are many technical problems, such as preparation of a conductive ink, control of wettability of an ink and a base material, and a lack of resistance to a current due to a wiring formed of a thin film.

Liquid developer, circuit board, and conductive pattern forming apparatus


The present disclosure provides a fan-out antenna packaging structure and a preparation method thereof. The fan-out antenna packaging structure comprises: a semiconductor chip; a plastic packaging material layer enclosing a periphery of the semiconductor chip, a via being formed in the plastic packaging material layer; a conductive pole located in the via and running through the plastic packaging material layer from top to bottom; an antenna structure located on a first surface of the plastic packaging material layer and electrically connected with the conductive pole; a redistribution layer located on a second surface of the plastic packaging material layer and electrically connected with the semiconductor chip and the conductive pole; and a solder bump located on a surface of the redistribution layer, electrically connected with the redistribution layer and insulated from the plastic packaging material layer.

Circuits of lower-cost, more reliable, faster and higher-density are the goal pursued by integrated circuit packaging. In the future, integrated circuit packaging will increase the integration density of various electronic components by continuously reducing the minimum feature size. At present, advanced packaging methods include Wafer Level Chip Scale Packaging (WLCSP), Fan-Out Wafer Level Packaging (FOWLP), Flip Chip (Flip Chip), Package on Package (POP), and so on.
Fan-out wafer level packaging is an embedded chip packaging method based on wafer level processing, and it is one of the advanced packaging methods with more input/output (I/O) ports and better integration flexibility. Fan-out wafer level packaging has the following unique advantages over conventional wafer level packaging: 1) I/O spacing are flexible and it is independent of chip sizes; 2) only effective dies are used and the product yield can be improved; 3) the 3D packaging path is flexible and patterns in any array can be formed at the top; 4) the electrical and thermal performance is better; 5) it can be applied in high frequencies; and 6) it is easy to achieve high-density wiring in a redistribution layer (RDL).
At present, a fan-out wafer level packaging method of radio frequency chips generally comprises the following steps: providing a carrier and forming an adhesive layer on a surface of the carrier; obtaining a redistribution layer (RDL) on the adhesive layer by performing photo-etching and electroplating; mounting the radio frequency chip on the redistribution layer by adopting a chip bonding process; packaging the chip in a plastic packaging material layer by adopting an injection molding process; removing the carrier and the adhesive layer; forming an Under-Bump Metal (UBM) layer on the redistribution layer by performing photo-etching and electroplating; performing ball placement and reflow on the UBM layer to form a solder ball bump; and then performing wafer bonding and dicing. For the sake of communication effect, antennas will be provided when the radio frequency chip is used, and for the existing radio frequency chip, antennas are directly laid out on a PCB or interfaces for connecting external antennas are provided by developers when layout design is performed for radio frequency function modules. However, due to the inconvenience in connecting the external antennas, most of the existing antennas are laid out directly on the PCB, in order to ensure the antenna gain, the size of the antennas must be large enough, and this will inevitably be at the expense of the PCB area, such that the area of the PCB and the entire packaging structure will become larger.
In view of this, it is necessary to design a new fan-out antenna packaging structure and a preparation method thereof to solve the above-mentioned technical problems.

Fan-out antenna packaging structure and preparation method thereof


A data access control system and a method thereof is disclosed. First, the master key is divided into n subkeys to be kept by n holders, by way of secret sharing. The master key reconstruction procedure utilizes the shared secret with the subkey holders to obtain m subkeys (1 less than m less than n) and then reconstructs the master key, using the (m,n)-threshold scheme. The system then uses the master key to access the data. Thus, m subkeys are required to reconstruct the master key in order to amend or read the data in the system.

This application incorporates by reference Taiwanese application Serial No. 88108252, Filed 1999 May 20.
1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates in general to a data access control system and a method thereof, and more particularly to a system and method, using secret sharing and dynamic password, in order to increase the security of data access while data log-in is performed.
2. Description of the Related Art
Due to the rapid developing of computer system and the technique of storage media, the data of a variety of systems, such as on-line transaction, mail delivery, database and electrically stored information communications are accessed electrically. The popularity of digital access brings convenience to the users, however, also causes some side effects. Counterfeit and manipulation become even harder to detect and trace while the data is electrically stored. Taking the bank transaction system as an example, the credit card paying system is stored with card numbers of cardholders, details of each transaction and personal references. The privacy of cardholders could not be well protected if the bank is lack of secure control system. Therefore, it is highly demanded to encrypt important information so that administrators are able to control the information better and the related staff can be kept away from the temptation of counterfeit.
As mentioned above, data have to be encrypted to insure the security. However, freely accessing all the encrypted data by a single data administrator would be insecure. Moreover, we have to ensure that the data should not be accessed by the previous data administrator and as less as possible of the encrypted data needed to be amended. This kind of problem is frequently met. Taking a server of electrical transaction as an example, its database contains the personal references of cardholders.
For a control procedure for data management system of a bank, the data is not allowed to be handled, read or erase by a single staff, particularly, when the data includes any of the following features.
(1) The recorded data represents the status of the procedure.
(2) The system contains data not desired to be read.
Referring to FIG. 1, which shows a block diagram of a conventional data access control system. As a system user 11 is accessing the data on-line or locally, via the internet 13 , the inputted data will be sent to the data access control system 15 as cipher text or directly. In the data access control system 15, the data is encrypted, if desired, by servers or the storage processing unit 151. The data is then sent to and stored in the data storage unit 153. The data access of the system is controlled by a key K of a storage processing unit 151 to prevent the data being read by unauthorized persons. Since the key K is usually controlled a single data administrator, the following problems may occur:
(1) data administrators could interrupt the normal procedure to counterfeit and manipulate the data in the data storage unit;
(2) the selection of a key holder is hard since the key is completely controlled by the key holder;
(3) all the cipher text has to be changed because of the transference or resign of the key holder, which is time-consuming.
A system of secret sharing is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,764,767 by Beimel et al. Referring to FIG. 2A, Secret S, such as a code of a safe, is divided n Secret Shares si (i=1xcx9cn) by a dealer 21, using a method provided by Shamir and Blakley. The n Secret Shares si of the Secret S along with n Key Ki are delivered to n Participants Pi, respectively. Referring to FIG. 2B, the Key Ki is composed of nxe2x88x921 Key Constituents kij (j=1xcx9cn, ixe2x89xa0j). The Key Constituents kij is for each Participant Pi to communicate with other Participants Pj(jxcex5[1,n], jxe2x89xa0i). Referring to FIG. 2C, the Secret S reconstructing procedure includes the following steps. First, m (1 less than m less than n) Participants Pjxe2x80x2(jxcex5[1,m]) are selected from n Participants Pi, and at least one Participant Pkxe2x80x2(kxcex5[1,n]) is denoted from m Participants Pjxe2x80x2 as a Recipient to execute. Then, the Recipient Pkxe2x80x2 receives and decrypts the encrypted Secret Shares sjxe2x80x2 from the other mxe2x88x921 Participants PJxe2x80x2(jxe2x89xa0k), and utilizes the mxe2x88x921 Secret Shares sjxe2x80x2 and his own Secret Share skxe2x80x2(m Secret Share si in total) to reconstruct the Secret S. In addition, the Recipient Pkxe2x80x2 receives mxe2x88x921 Secret Share sjxe2x80x2 and completes decrypting by using his own nxe2x88x921 Key Constituent kij.
According to the above-mentioned secret reconstruction system, secret data has to be divided into a number of secret shares to be shared by the respective participants. To reconstruct the secret data, each participant needs to obtain the authority of all the other participants. For example, each Ki includes nxe2x88x921Key Constituent kji to communicate with other Participants Pi. As a result, if any one of the Participants is changed, the process of secret reconstruction becomes redundant. In addition, little error of any one participant may cause unrecoverable mistake, since the system proposed by Beimel et al. is not designed particularly for the managing member to obtain the secret data. Moreover, since the recipient utilizes the key constituent to obtain the encrypted secret shares from other participants and the encryption method does not change along with each load in, it is easy to be recognized while the procedure is repeated and the system is restarted.
It is therefore an object of the invention to provide a system and method for the control of data access. A key is first divided into a number of subkeys for different key holders. The accessing right of the data administrator is therefore distributed and the above-mentioned problems of the conventional system and method are overcome. By packaging the subkey to form a dynamic code while data log-in is performed, the system security is then increased.
It is another object of the invention to provide a method for data access control, wherein a master key is used to access data. The method includes the following steps. The master key is first divided into n subkeys and the subkeys are kept separately, wherein a (m,n)-threshold scheme is used, and m is a natural number larger than 1 but smaller than n. A master key is then used for the reconstruction procedure to obtain m subkeys in order to reconstruct the master key. Next, the master key is used to encrypt and decrypt said data while said data is desired to be accessed.
It is therefore a further object of the invention to provide a method for secure data access control, wherein a master key is used to access data. The method includes the following steps. First, the master key is divided into a number of subkeys that are kept separately. Next, a master key reconstruction procedure and dynamic data log-in are utilized to obtain a number of subkeys in order to reconstruct the master key. Then, the master key is used to encrypt and decrypt said data while said data is desired to be accessed.
It is therefore another object of the invention of the invention to provide a data access control system for accessing data. The system includes the following elements: a data storage unit for saving the data; a master key for encrypting and decrypting the data; a subkey control module for dividing the master key into n subkeys, using a (m,n)-threshold scheme, wherein m is a natural number larger than 1 but smaller than n; a master key reconstruction module which receives m subkeys to reconstruct the master key; and a data control module ,which uses the master key reconstructed by the master key reconstruction module to control accessing the data form the data storage unit.
Thus, anyone, including the data administrator, has to obtain m subkeys to reconstruct the master key in order to amend and read the data. Hence, the data are effectively protected. Even if any subkey holder is transferred or resigned, simply by changing one subkey, the master key can be reconstructed. Therefore, the influence of changing the code to the original encrypted data is highly reduced.
Moreover, while the system is accessing the data, the master key reconstruction program also can use the shared secret with the subkey holder to obtain m subkeys (1 less than m less than n), by applying the function of dynamic data log-in.

Data access control system and method thereof

Industrial Technology Research Institute