An extension of an inverse inference search engine is disclosed which provides cross language document retrieval, in which the information matrix used as input to the inverse inference engine is organized into rows of blocks corresponding to languages within a predetermined set of natural languages. The information matrix is further organized into two column-wise partitions. The first partition consists of blocks of entries representing fully translated documents, while the second partition is a matrix of blocks of entries representing documents for which translations are not available in all of the predetermined languages. Further in the second partition, entries in blocks outside the main diagonal of blocks are zero. Another disclosed extension to the inverse inference retrieval document retrieval system supports automatic, knowledge based training. This approach applies the idea of using a training set to the problem of searching databases where information that is diluted or not reliable enough to allow the creation of robust semantic links. To address this situation, the disclosed system loads the left-hand partition of the input matrix for the inverse inference engine with information from reliable sources.

The present invention relates generally to systems for searching document sets, and more specifically to an advanced system for cross language document retrieval.
Latent Semantic Analysis
Latent Semantic Analysis (LSA) is a promising departure from traditional models. The LSA method attempts to provide intelligent agents with a process of semantic acquisition. Researchers at Bellcore (Deerwester et al., 1990, No. 11 in Appendix A; Berry et al, 1995, No. 5 in Appendix A; Dumais et al, 1991 and 1998, Nos. 11 and 12 in Appendix A) have described a computationally intensive algorithm known as Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI). LSI is an unsupervised classification technique based on a matrix factorization method. Cognitive scientists have-shown that the performance of LSI on multiple-choice vocabulary and domain knowledge tests emulates expert essay evaluations (Foltz et al, 1998, No. 16 in Appendix A; Kintsch, in press, No. 18 in Appendix A; Landauer and Dumais, 1997, No. 20 in Appendix A; Landauer et al., 1997 and 1998, Nos. 22 and 23 in Appendix A; Wolfe et al., 1998, No. 37 in Appendix A). LSI is based on Singular Value Decomposition (SVD). Bartell et al. (1996), No. 3 in Appendix A, have shown that LSI is an optimal special case of multidimensional scaling. The aim of all indexing schemes which are based on multivariate analysis or unsupervised classification methods is to automate the process of clustering and categorizing documents by topic. An expensive precursor was the method of repertory hypergrids, which requires expert rating of knowledge chunks against a number of discriminant traits (Boose, 1985, No. 6 in Appendix A; Waltz and Pollack, 1985, No. 36 in Appendix A; Bernstein et al., 1991, No. 4 in Appendix A; Madigan et al., 1995, No. 24 in Appendix A). While theoretically appealing, this approach has serious limitations. First, it typically takes several hours to index tens of thousands of documents. Additionally, lack of scalability limits the amount of information that is available for semantic learning. This in turn places a serious limitation on the precision of the search. Lack of scalability has also prevented the extension of the LSI technique to cross language semantic analysis, a field in which it holds much promise.
Cross Language Document Retrieval
The Internet is a multilingual universe where travel is limited by the speed of indexing. However, existing search portals do not equalize the accessibility of information across languages. No existing search engine indexes more than 30% of the Web. This results, at least in part, from technological limitations, which have to do with the speed and scalability of existing Web crawling technology, and the availability of network bandwidth. Also, many existing sites cannot maintain up-to-date indices because indexing technology has not been fully integrated with a database management system. Whenever possible, existing Web robots and crawlers limit indexing to pages in the language that is most likely the language of a regional audience. The assumption on which these limitations are based is that user information cannot be matched to requirements for more than one language at a time, and that information in a foreign language is of no interest to a general user. Experiments in monolingual search with foreign language portals point to the segmentation of the Internet space into cultural and linguistic provinces. Accumulating background information in many foreign languages at once is a significant technical challenge. For example, how can a system measure the reaction of the Italian, Greek, Croatian, Russian people to events in nearby Kosovo? Opinions on such a subject are expressed in home pages, articles, editorials and chat rooms in many languages. It would be desirable to weight articles and opinions across languages and isolate the most relevant clusters of information for translation.
Furthermore, any algorithm applied to cross language document retrieval should be scalable to very large information matrices. An effective system could power the first truly international search portal. Multilingual search provided through such a portal could change the overall dynamics and structure of the Internet, upset its cultural imbalance, and open new markets. Today, seventy-five to eighty percent of Web content, including many authority pages, is in English. The great majority of Internet users are from English speaking countries. Many American users are not multilingual, or find it difficult to formulate a query in other languages. The converse is true of many foreign users, even those with an elementary reading knowledge of English. It would therefore be desirable for Web surfers to be able to express queries or examples in the language in which they are most competent, and obtain relevant text passages in any language. Automatic translation engines, referred to as Machine Translators (MT), could then be applied to selectively convert some of this information in the source language. Examples of existing Machine Translators include Babelfish™ as provided by the AltaVista Company, and NeuroTran™ provided by Translation Experts, Ltd. Multilingual search technology could also improve monolingual search in more than one way. The omission of many foreign language pages from the relevant indices destroys the integrity of the link structure of the Web. As a result, for example, the HTML page of a foreign researcher or a foreign institution may never be found, even if it points to a publication in the English language. In addition, multilingual search capabilities could resolve keyword and concept ambiguities across languages.
Existing Approaches
A direct approach to multilingual interrogation is to use existing Machine Translation (MT) systems to automatically translate an entire textual database from every single language into the language of the user. This approach is clearly unrealistic for the Internet, due to the size of the target search space. Moreover, MT syntax errors, and, more significantly, errors in translating concepts make it technically unsuitable for other multilingual database collections in general. A variation on this approach is multilingual interrogation. In multilingual interrogation, the idea is to translate the query from a source language to multiple target languages, for example, using inter-lingual dictionaries and knowledge bases. In addition, translation into different languages must account for the fact that concepts expressed by a single term in one language sometimes are expressed by multiple distinct terms in another. For example, the term "tempo" in Italian corresponds to two different concepts in English: time and weather.
Existing approaches based on creation of inter-lingual pivot concepts require the introduction of keyword tags that can discriminate between word meanings in different languages. This controlled vocabulary approach cannot account for all semantic variations in all languages, and often prohibits precise queries that are not expressed with the authorized keywords. A more data driven approach consists of deducing, during indexing, the keywords that would be supplied for a document from the terms contained in the full-text or summary of the document. Unfortunately, the creation of these directories is time consuming. It can be done either manually by a team of experts, or by an automatic learning process from previously indexed documents. Again, linking different languages requires the introduction of a pivot language.
Still another existing approach consists of combining machine translation methods with information retrieval methods. This approach has been developed by the European ESPRIT consortium in the project EMIR (European Multilingual Information Retrieval) (EMIR, 1994, No. 15 in Appendix A). This system uses three main tools: 1) linguistic processors (morphological and syntactic analysis) which perform grammatical tagging, identify dependency relations and normalize the representation of uniterms and compounds; 2) a statistical model which is used to weight the query-document intersection; 3) a monolingual and multilingual reformulation system whose aim is to infer, from the original natural language query words, all possible expressions of the same concept that can occur in the document, whatever the language. Tests with a trilingual (English, French and German) version of the Cranfield corpus show that multilingual interrogation is 8% better than using MT followed by monolingual interrogation. However, this system has yet to demonstrate scalability and ease of extension to other languages.
The most promising automated-approach to cross language retrieval is an extension of LSI given by Dumais et al. (1996 and 1997, Nos. 13 and 1 in Appendix A) and known as CL-LSI (Cross-Language LSI). In a vector space model, documents for which there exist a translation into multiple languages can be observed in language subspaces. CL-LSI approximates these language subspaces by the usual eigenvector decomposition. By identifying and aligning principal axes for the various languages, the LSI algorithm correlates clusters of documents across the various language subspaces. The alignment is made possible by 1) cross-language homonyms, and 2) the general statistics of term distributions in a reasonably large training collection. Testing on a sample of 2,500 paragraphs from the Canadian Parliament bilingual corpus (the Hensard collection), has demonstrated that cross-language retrieval with LSI is equivalent to monolingual interrogation of a fully translated database.

Extended functionality for an inverse inference engine based web search


A system page is implemented to provide direct access to operating system data structures by user tasks. Frequently accessed data structures are located in the system page, and may be linked against during linking. The system page memory locations are mapped into user tasks as read-only memory locations, allowing read-only memory accesses during run-time. The system page reduces execution overhead without sacrificing system security.

Traditional multitasking operating systems (e.g., UNIX, Windows) have been implemented in computing environments to provide a way to allocate the resources of the computing environment (e.g., CPU, memory, Input/Output (I/O) devices) among various user programs that may be running simultaneously in the computing environment. The operating system itself comprises a number of functions (executable code) and data structures that may be used to implement the resource allocation services of the operating system.
Operating systems have also been implemented in a so-called xe2x80x9cobject orientedxe2x80x9d manner. That is, when a particular function and/or data structure (defined by a xe2x80x9cclassxe2x80x9d definition) is requested, the operating system creates (xe2x80x9cinstantiatesxe2x80x9d) an xe2x80x9cobjectxe2x80x9d that uses executable code and/or data structure definitions specified in the class definition. Such objects thus may contain executable code, data structures, or both. Objects that perform actions are typically referred to as xe2x80x9ctasksxe2x80x9d (also known as xe2x80x9cthreadsxe2x80x9d), and a collection of tasks may be referred to as a xe2x80x9cprocess. xe2x80x9d Upon loading and execution of the operating system into the computing environment, system tasks and data structures will be created in order to support the resource allocation needs of the system. User applications likewise upon execution may cause the creation of tasks (xe2x80x9cuser tasksxe2x80x9d), processes (xe2x80x9cuser processesxe2x80x9d), and other objects in order to perform the actions desired from the application.
In order to protect the operating system and each task running in the computing environment from interference from other tasks also running in the computing environment, typical operating systems apportion the computing environment""s execution xe2x80x9cspacexe2x80x9d (e.g., its memory) into a xe2x80x9csystemxe2x80x9d space and a xe2x80x9cuserxe2x80x9d space. The system space generally contains the operating system tasks and data structures, while the user space contains the code and data structures for user tasks. Typically, operating systems are designed so that user tasks cannot directly access the memory apportioned to system tasks. The operating system itself, however, can typically access all portions of memory.
Conceptually, this xe2x80x9cprotection modelxe2x80x9d is illustrated by FIG. 1. In a computer system 1 controlled by an operating system 2, there may be any number of user processes 3 and system tasks 5 executing at one time. User processes 3 each include a number of user tasks 6. Because each user process 3 is only allocated a portion of the system memory, the operating system 2 may restrict access by any user task 6 affiliated with a particular user process 3 to the memory allocated to another user process or the operating system. Typically, however, system tasks 5 have unrestricted access to memory allocated to the operating system 2 and each user process 3 (indicated by direct connections 7).
There may be instances, however, when a user task desires access to resources controlled by the operating system. For example, a user task may want access to a network I/O connection, the control of which is delegated to a system task. Alternatively, a user task often may want to read information from a data structure maintained and used by the operating system (e.g., an error status report, or the time remaining until some preplanned system event occurs). Using known operating systems, in order to make such access, the user task is required to request execution of the system functions that perform the desired actions or control access to the desired data structures via a xe2x80x9csystem callxe2x80x9d. A system call is typically implemented via a special instruction used to cause the processor executing the code to xe2x80x9ctrapxe2x80x9d to a trap routine (implemented in the system software) that makes a function call to the desired facilities of the operating system. Thus, the user task executing the system call cannot directly access the instructions and data structures in the system space it wishes to access, but rather must employ a special access procedure (represented in FIG. 1 as connections 4). Furthermore, since the user task is not permitted access to system resources or data structures, another task must be created by the operating system in the system space in order to perform the requested action. While this procedure protects the operating system from potential interference caused by user tasks, it increases system-processing overhead and thus increases execution time.
Certain operating systems, called xe2x80x9creal-time operating systems,xe2x80x9d have been developed to provide a more controlled environment for the execution of application programs. Real-time operating systems are designed to be xe2x80x9cdeterministicxe2x80x9d in their behavior, i.e., responses to an event can be expected to occur within a known time of the occurrence of the event. Determinism is particularly necessary in xe2x80x9cmission-criticalxe2x80x9d applications, although it is generally desirable for all operating systems, as it increases the reliability of the system. Real-time operating systems are therefore implemented to execute as efficiently as possible with a minimum of overhead.
Particularly in real-time systems, it is common and desirable for user tasks to obtain information about the overall state of the operating system, or information about particular aspects of the operating systems operations. This information allows tasks to operate more efficiently and reliably. For example, in a real time application, where a user task must return an answer by a deadline, a user process may choose a different method of computing a result depending on how much CPU time the user process expects to receive. A faster less, accurate method of computing might be used when the system is busy and less computation time is available, while a more accurate, but resource-intensive method might be used when more system resources are available. Similarly, a user process might decide to operate in a xe2x80x9csafexe2x80x9d mode when errors have occurred. Thus, it would be beneficial to implement a system and method whereby user tasks are able to access operating system information without incurring operation overhead (such as created using the system trap) or compromising system security.
According to the present invention, an exemplary computer system is described, comprising a memory space having a number of memory locations, an operating system, a software module located, a plurality of operating system data structures, a system page including a subset of the plurality of operating system data structures, and a function located within the software module.
A first method is also described as part of the exemplary embodiment according the present invention. The method includes the steps of creating a task assigned to execute at least one function, assigning a memory access map to the task, including in the memory access map indications of read-only access to memory locations of a system page including operating system data structures, and allowing a read memory access by the task to the system page.
A second method is also described as part of the exemplary embodiment according to the present invention. The second method includes the steps of retrieving a software module having a symbol reference used by an instruction, resolving the symbol reference to obtain a symbol value for the symbol, and inserting a symbol value in the into the instruction.

Method of providing direct user task access to operating system data structures


A braking force distribution method and system for multiple marshalling train compartments are provided. The method includes: determining a current train compartment of multiple target marshalling train compartments, calculating current axel loads of axels of the current train compartment, and distributing braking forces for the axels of the current train compartment in a positive correlation manner based on the current axel loads of the axels. The braking forces of the axels are distributed by using an axel load compensation technology. A braking force generated by an axle with a small axle load is reduced according to a load-decreasing amount of the axle load, while a braking force generated by an axle with a great axle load is increased according to a load-increasing amount of the axle load, so that the braking forces generated by the axles match the axle loads.

With the development of technology, a braking force distribution method for multiple marshalling train compartments gets more and more attention.
In the conventional art, axle loads of a part of moving axles of the multiple marshalling train compartments decrease due to the impact of axle load transfer, thereby resulting in the problem that an adhesion utilization rate of a train decreases and a total braking force is not sufficiently utilized.
Therefore, the technical problem to be solved by those skilled in the art is how to optimize the adhesion utilization to utilize the total braking force most sufficiently.

Braking force distribution method and system of multiple train units


An apparatus and method for operating water meter valves is disclosed herein. A water meter tool includes a body extending longitudinally from a first end to a second end. The body includes a water meter valve key at the first end and a hole formed through the body between the first and second ends, where a center line of the hole is in a transverse plane of the body. The water meter tool includes a movable cross arm disposed through the hole, where the movable cross arm extends along a longitudinal axis from a first arm end to a second arm end, and where the movable cross arm includes a first box key proximate the first arm end.

Embodiments described herein generally relate to a water meter tool. Conventional water meter tools may be formed of materials having low torque strength (e.g., die-cast aluminum). In addition, conventional water meter tools may require a large radial clearance (i.e., for turning a water meter valve). In that regard, conventional water meter tools may have a fixed cross arm. Furthermore, conventional water meter tools may not be adaptable to other tools for enhanced torqueing of the water meter tool. Embodiments of this disclosure overcome at least some of these issues.


A method for forming a double step surface on a semiconductor substrate includes, with an etching process used in a Metal-Organic Chemical Vapor Deposition (MOCVD) process, forming a rough surface on a region of a semiconductor substrate. The method further includes, with an annealing process used in the MOCVD process, forming double stepped surface on the region of the semiconductor substrate.

Semiconductor fabrication often involves the formation of multiple semiconductor layers on top of each other. In some cases, different types of semiconductor materials may be used for different layers. For example, a type III-V semiconductor material may be formed on top of a type IV semiconductor material.
The crystal lattice of a type III-V semiconductor alternates between a type III element and a type V element, for example, gallium and arsenic respectively. It is desirable that this pattern remain consistent throughout the crystal. During epitaxial processes which are used to grow a type III-V semiconductor, certain defects may occur. Particularly, Anti-Phase Boundary (APB) defects can occur which can adversely affect the performance of circuits formed within the semiconductor layer. Therefore, it is desired to have methods of fabrication that reduce or eliminate the formation of such defects.

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, Ltd.


A method for controlling an electric motor of a power tool having a receptacle for a tool, at least a current of the electric motor and/or a rotation speed of the electric motor during an impact operating mode of the electric motor being detected as a parameter, a driving time of the electric motor for the impact operating mode being specified as a function of the detected parameter. A method is also described for controlling an electric motor of a power tool having a receptacle for a tool for unscrewing a screw from a mating part.

Conventionally, an electric motor of a power tool is controlled as a function of an actuation of a switch. In this context, control is applied to the electric motor, for example, with a predefined rotation speed or with a predefined torque.
An object of the invention is to furnish an improved method for controlling the electric motor, an improved control device, and an improved power tool.

Method for controlling an electric motor of a power tool


An assembly for extending the shelf-life of a pressurized resin cartridge. The assembly includes at least one pressurized resin cartridge comprising a first compartment for holding a catalyst and a second compartment for holding a resin mastic. The assembly has a pressurized container sealingly disposed about the pressurized resin cartridge. Such assembly minimizes depressurization of the pressurized resin cartridge and extends the shelf-life of the pressurized resin cartridge. An assembly for extending the shelf-life of a depressurized resin cartridge. The assembly includes at least one depressurized resin cartridge comprising a first compartment for holding a catalyst and a second compartment for holding a resin mastic. The assembly has a pressurized container sealingly disposed about the depressurized resin cartridge. Such assembly increases pressurization of the depressurized resin cartridge and extends the shelf-life of the depressurized resin cartridge.

1. Field of the Disclosure
A method is provided which comprises storing resin cartridges in a pressurized environment. A preferred method is to store the resin cartridges in a pressurized container designed to contain singular or multiple resin cartridges, or packs of resin cartridges, and this container will double as a shipping container. The pressurized shipping and storage container slows or completely arrests the process that contributes to "limp" or depressurized resin cartridges, thus extending the shelf life of the resin cartridges. A secondary method is to store resin cartridges in a pressurized environment designed to hold multiple resin cartridges specifically to enhance the internal pressure. Thus a cartridge with lesser pressure can be modified so it now has more pressure.
2. Discussion of the Background Art
Anchor bolts are employed in various fields of engineering, for example, as strengthening or reinforcing members in rock formations and in structural bodies. The bolts are inserted into drill holes in the formation or body, and often are fixed or anchored, at their inner end or over substantially their entire length, by means of a reactive grouting composition that hardens around the bolt. When used in a mine roof, bolts grouted in this manner help significantly to prevent mine roof failure.
A reactive grouting composition can contain a resin and catalyst. Such a reactive grouting composition is typically placed in a two compartment tubular shell and is referred to as a resin cartridge. The resin cartridge should be held rigid by the internal package pressure that is created by a cartridge packaging machine when end clips are applied to the cartridge film to seal the contents.
However, within a short period of time from several weeks to several months, the cartridges become limp or lacking in stiffness or firmness. Such limp cartridges are a problem for the customer because limp cartridges are difficult to insert into overhead boreholes. It was found that one cause of the limpness was water permeating through the film and through the end clips. For example, a PET (polyethylene terephthalate) film is used throughout the industry because of its high modulus of elasticity. But a potential drawback of a PET film is a high water vapor transmission rate. Thus, any resin cartridge containing PET film as a shell, and water as a component, is subject to limpness due to loss of water volume. Reactive grouting compositions utilizing water are described in U.S. Pat. No. 4,280,943. It was also found that a second cause of limpness is expansion or creep of the PET film due to stresses created from pressurizing the contents of the resin cartridge. Creep is a permanent dimensional change in the film that comprises the shell from prolonged stress or a combination of stress and elevated temperature. The expansion or creep of the PET film reduces the internal pressure by increasing the internal volume of the resin cartridge.
Solutions that reduce water loss by covering the PET film with a barrier coating such as PVdC (Polyvinylidene chloride) or a metalized (metal impregnated) PET film work well and have been employed to reduce water loss. However, such solutions can be expensive and potentially can create problems in manufacturing resin cartridges. These solutions also do not help with the expansion of the cartridge due to PET film creep. Therefore, there is an increasing need to develop a solution that can retain the firmness or stiffness of the resin cartridge for a reasonable period time and at reasonable cost.
Resin cartridges are known to develop cosmetic defects with time. Primary among these cosmetic defects is the "limp" resin cartridge. Resin cartridges are typically manufactured with internal pressure and this internal pressure gives the package and its contents a rigidity that lends itself to easier use by the customer. A limp resin cartridge is a cartridge that has lost some or all of its internal pressure. Limp resin cartridges can be difficult to use in the mining environment. The present disclosure overcomes the disadvantages of the limp resin cartridges, by reducing the occurrence of limp resin cartridges and extending the shelf-life of the product via the novel concept of storing the resin cartridges in a pressurized environment until time of consumption. The present disclosure also describes a method to increase the internal pressure of a resin cartridge that has lost some or all of its internal pressure by storage in a pressurized environment.
The present disclosure provides many advantages, which shall become apparent as described below.

Method for preserving the firmness and internal pressure of a resin cartridge and improving the shelf-life of a resin cartridge


A payment receipt system is provided. The payment receipt system comprises: a receipt management database for managing at least information on the payers who have to pay and the payment amount that the respective payers have to pay for a certain period; and a payee server including an information extracting part for extracting information including the information on the payers and the payment amount from the receipt management database, a code converting part for converting the extracted information into a two-dimensional (2D) code, a bill forming part for making out a bill for payment with the converted 2D code attached thereto, a bill transmitting part for transmitting the bill for payment to a receiver of the payer, and a controller receiving information on the payers who have completed a payment from a financial institution server.

The present invention relates to a system and method for payment receipt using a two-dimensional (2D) code, and more particularly, to a system and method for payment receipt, capable of simplifying a settlement process using a bill where a 2D code storing certain information is imprinted.
Generally, the sellers or the service providers have used a billing method (hereinafter, referred to as "OCR method") using an optical character recognition (OCR) card in order to ask the buyers or the service-beneficiaries to pay for the provision of material or immaterial goods, or services, such as electricity, service water, milk, newspaper, security, and so on. A process of the OCR method, in which the sellers or the service providers (hereinafter, referred to as "payee"), who provide goods or services, send a bill to the buyer or the service-beneficiaries (hereinafter, referred to as "payer"), who receive goods or services, and the payer pays for them, is as follows:
First, the payee makes a contract with an authorized institution such as Financial Telecommunications and Clearings Institute (hereinafter, referred also to as "the FTCI") for the use of OCR method so that the payee is assigned a payee code from the FTCI. Also, the payee provides the FTCI with information on the payers who receive goods or services and the like, and is assigned a payer code from the FTCI. In a condition where a payee should bill to a payer, the payee informs the FTCI of the payment amount for a period by the payer registered in the FTCI.
Then, the FTCI makes out information on the payee, payer, payment amount, and payment due with OCR codes, imprints them onto OCR sheet, and provides the payee with the OCR sheet as in the form of a bill. The payee then transmits the bill with OCR codes to the payer by mail and the like.
The payer goes to the financial institution while carrying the bill and cash, pays the payment amount with cash to a receiving teller in the financial institution, together with presenting the bill, and gets a receipt certifying the payment. The financial institution then provides the bill received from the payer to the FTCI.
The FTCI receiving the bill reads out the OCR codes printed in the bill, and sorts information of the bill by the payee, payer, and payment amount. The FTCI provides the financial institution, who has provided the bill, with information on the payee and the payment amount among the sorted information items, and provides the payee with information on the payer among the items.
In addition, the financial institution that has received information on the payee and payment amount from the FTCI remits the payment amount to the account of a financial institution that the payee has previously designated using a method such as a transfer to an account.
Further, the payee who has received information on the payer from the FTCI compares the payer information received from the FTCI with one that the payee has in order to sort the payer who has not paid the payment amount, so that the payee either sends the payer a separate notice of arrears, or asks the same payer to pay for the payment while adding the former payment amount to the next period bill.
However, the OCR method has problems as follows:
First, in order for the payee to use the above mentioned method, the payee should pay a fee both to FTCI and the financial institution that receives the bill. Particularly, since the bill provided from the FTCI is made out through the imprint of OCR ink onto an OCR card, and the OCR card and the ink are expensive to manufacture, the payee has a burden to pay the FTCI a fee including a cost for using an expensive OCR card. Also, in using the OCR method, as seen in the foregoing, many steps should be processed. In particular, considerable periods are consumed in provided an OCR card (a bill for payment) by the financial institution to the FTCI and in reading-out the OCR card and providing read-out information back to the financial institution by the institute. The process period taken between the FTCI and the financial institution consequently delays a time to pay the payee the money paid, so that for the delayed time, money liquidity is decreased, additional financial expenses occur, and a chance to gain a financial income is lost.
Further, since most time limits for payment are designated to month-ends, near the month-ends, the financial institution is crowded with the payers trying to complete the payment so that the payers spend a lot of time waiting to complete the payment as well as the financial institution may have a burden to increase labor costs due to the expanding of separate manpower to receive the payment. Furthermore, since the method provides the payee with the bill using an off-line method such as mail and the like, it takes a long time to deliver, and there is a risk of misdelivery. In this case, although there is such risk of misdelivery, the payer may totally suffer damage caused by non-receipt of the bill, so that the payer always has a fear of suffering accidental damage as well as the payee may have a complaint from the payer.
Meanwhile, in order to solve the problem particularly concerned to the crowdedness of the financial institution at the ends of the months and to labor cost increase, the financial institutions have recently raising weight on using an automated teller machine (ATM). In such case, the financial institution installs the ATM first at the place where it receives the payment. Then, when the payer puts into the ATM the bill for payment and the bankbook, or credit or cash card of the payer, the ATM reads out information on the payment amount among OCR codes written to the bill for payment, and withdraws the payment amount from the account of the bankbook or the card.
However, even by the method, as similar to the above OCR method, there still remains the problems in that the payee should pay a fee both to the financial institution and the FTCI, and it takes a long time until the money paid is transferred to the payee. Further, the OCR method has to use an OCR card, which however, is sensitive to an external damage so that even by slight damage due to an external shock, the ATM cannot read-out the card. In this case, the payer should pay the payment amount directly to the receiving teller in the financial institution.
Further, instead of the prior OCR method, a method for payment receipt using a 2D code has being recently developed. This method is one that instead of transmitting an OCR code made out from the FTCI in its entirety to the payer, the OCR codes are converted into a 2D code and a bill for payment including the converted code is transmitted to the payee. Then, the payer inputs into the ATM the bill for payment where the 2D code is imprinted and the bankbook or the cash or credit card of the payer, and the ATM senses the 2D code instead of the prior OCR codes. The financial institution converts the sensed 2D code information into OCR codes, and provides the code to FTCI using wireless or wire communication method. Since the bill for payment using 2D code is much lower in failure rate when the ATM reads out the OCR code, in comparison with the prior method using the OCR codes (generally, in case of using the OCR codes, 3% or more damage makes the read-out of the code impossible, but in case of using the present-known 2D code, even 37% damage can read-out various kinds of information successively.), even in case that the payment receipt is done not directly by the receiving teller but by the ATM, the failure rate for receipt can be considerably reduced.
However, although using the method, eventually, information sensed from the ATM is interpreted into the OCR codes and transmitted to the FTCI, and the OCR codes are interpreted by the FTCI so that proper information is transmitted to the financial institution and the payee, respectively. Consequently, there still remained the problems of such as duplicate fee both to the financial institution and the FTCI, requiring a long time until the money paid is transferred to the payee, and a risk of misdelivery of the bill due to mail delivery.
Further, in case of the payment receipt method using the OCR codes or the 2D code, since after the payment receipt, the financial institution provides the payee only the personnel details and total money paid of the respective payers, the payee cannot obtain information on what item did the payer pay. That is, the payee cannot obtain detail information of the payer, for example, on whether or not the payer who is a few months behind in his dues paid only a portion of the payment amount and on whether or not with the payment the arrearage has been completely released. Accordingly, in order for the payee to obtain detail payment information on the respective payers, the payee should proceed a step of inputting information written to the OCR card and information on the payer and the amount of payment which is informed from the financial institution, again into a database, and sorting the same, which however is a time and labor-consuming working, causing the expenses of the payer, i.e., the business taxpayer, to be increased.
Furthermore, generally, the sellers or service provider tries to improve efficiency of their company by utilizing a variety of management programs, for example, such as tax accounting programs, which calculate and record information on such as sales, tax amount, advance payments, liabilities and so on. However, since the payment receipt system and the management system in the prior art are not linked with each other, the sellers or the service provider (the payee) has directly inputted information on the amount of money paid by the payer, i.e., information on sales, into the management program, and the management program has outputted various information on which the business taxpayer demands using the inputted information. This method of direct input of various information into the management program makes the time and expense increased, and causes various problems such as information input errors.

System and method for payment receipt using 2D code


The rotary axle of the support arm device is adapted to be maintained in position rigidly and in adjustable manner at the free end of the arm and the free end of the arm comprise plane and generally axial bearing surfaces adapted to contact corresponding bearing surfaces directed generally transversally and provided on two rings of a removable bracket piece in order to allow a rigid blocking of this bracket piece on the free end of the arm after adjusting the position and the device is applied when an easy adjusting of the chain tension is required, especially for a rear wheel of a motorcycle.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention concerns an arm device for supporting a rotating element, the end of which is subject to great forces, such as, for example the single support and suspension rear arm of a driving wheel of a motorcycle, in which the rotary support axle of the rotating member is adapted to be maintained rigidly in position in an adjustable manner at the free end of the arm. It also concerns the support arm per se ready to receive the removable bracket piece of the rotary axle as well as the bracket piece of the rotary axle with means that allow it to be rigidly connected, but nevertheless in an adjustable manner, with the support arm.
2. Summary of the Prior Art
Such support arms which constitute first a development of current automobile manufacture, are used on motorcycles in order to support the rear driving wheel of these vehicles. An advantageous adaptation to the motorcycle consists in mounting the rear wheel and the brake disk on the rotary axle on one side of the arm while the sprocket or chain pinion is mounted on the axle on the other side of the arm, thereby allowing rapid wheel change and, where necessary, removal of the brake disk without having to modify the adjustment of the chain. In these wheel mountings on a single arm, the chain tension adjustment is generally performed by means of an eccentric system that carries the high rigidity bearings of the rotary axle. The eccentric system is thus constituted by an accentric bearing support that is caused to rotate there about in a receiving bore in order to adjust the chain tension and which, after adjustment, is blocked by pressing together, i.e. by moving together the lips of a slot opening upon the receiving bore.
These means for adjusting the chain tension have been tested in competition and the maintaining in position of the accentric bearing support by pressing has proved to be reliable and fairly easy to operate. However, these chain tension adjusting means present various drawbacks revealed during use, namely:
precise adjustment of the chain tension has proved to be very difficult to perform in the end stroke zones of the eccentric system., due to the absence of screw positioning means; PA0 adjustment of the chain tension only provides, within admissible limits of required space, a restricted adjustings stroke of about one chain link at the maximum, whereas it would be necessary to dispose of a adjusting stroke exceeding two links; PA0 during the adjustment by rotation of the eccentric bearing support, a variation of the direction of the chain occurs with respect to the support arm which carries the friction chain guides and, sometimes even, has a chain channel passing through it in its zone subjected to the maximal stresses. Such a variation in direction has proved to be prejudicial for the correct guiding of the chain when the chain is at a distance from the central adjusting zone and the need was expressed to return to an adjustment of the chain tension by axial traction; PA0 means for adjusting the chain tension must currently resist chain traction forces that exceed 2000 daN for the small diameter rear wheel chain sprockets, which are necessary in order to limit the chain speeds of high speed motorcycles.
The aim of the present invention is to overcome the defects and drawbacks described herein-above while preserving a chain adjustment that is easy to perform, reliable and simple to manufacture.
With this aim, according to the invention, the free end of the arm comprises plane and generally axial bearing surfaces, adapted to enter into contact with corresponding and generally transversally directed bearing surfaces, provided on a removable bracket piece of the rotary axle, so as to axially guide this bracket piece in order to ensure adjustment of the axial position of the bracket piece and to allow the rigid blocking of this bracket piece on the bearing surfaces of the free end of the arm by a radial pressing wedging upon contact between the said corresponding bearing surfaces which are generally and respectively directed axially and transversally.
According to another embodiment, the axial bearing surfaces provided at the end of the arm are foreseen on the faces of the free end of the arm which are disposed in a polygonal manner, for example square or rectangular, about the median mean line of the arm, whereby the rotation of the bracket piece about this mean median line during the adjustment displacements of the said bracket piece is prevented.
The support arm can comprise, on each face, disposed polygonally and on the side opposite the bearing surfaces, at least one rib destined to ensure the strengthening and the stiffness of the said face. The support arm can also comprise abutment means, adjustable where necessary, adapted to cooperate with corresponding abutment means provided on the bracket piece, in such a manner as to allow the exact adjustment of the axial position of this bracket piece prior to its rigid blocking on the free end of the arm.
According to another embodiment, the bearing surfaces on the free end of the arm are provided on the inner wall of the end of the arm in order to cooperate with corresponding bearing surfaces provided on the external surface of the bracket piece and means for pressing and wedging are provided on the external surface of the end of the arm.
According to another particularly advantageous embodiment of the invention, the bearing surfaces on the free end of the arm are provided on the external faces at the end of the arm in order to cooperate with corresponding bearing surfaces provided on the inner wall of a generally tubular portion of the bracket piece. The other portion of the bracket piece comprises at least one bearing shell in which is provided a bearing bore intended to receive and support the rotary shaft and the tubular portion comprises at least one pressing and wedging means. The corresponding bearing surfaces provided on the inner wall are placed, preferably, along at least two transversel rings, generally annular and protruding from the inside of the said inner wall. Pressing and wedging means are provided opposite each bearing surface ring and is constituted by at least one axial slot provided opposite the transversel ring protruding from the width of this ring, each of the lips of the slot being extended towards the outside by a pressing lug adapted to be crossed through at least partially by a pressing screw. The free end of support arm comprises at least one notch having a generally rounded shape and adapted to receive at least one part of the bearing shell of the bracket piece.
According to another embodiment facilitating the exact adjustment of the position of the bracket piece, at least one axial groove opened towards the outside but closed at the end is provided on at least two substantially diametrically opposed bearing surfaces and is adapted to receive bearing members, for example a spindle or roller plate, interposed between the internal bearing surfaces of the bracket piece and the bottom of the said groove in order to facilitate the axial adjustment movement of the bracket piece with respect to the support arm.
The bracket piece of a rotary axle according to the invention, for example of the axle of a motorcycle rear wheel, intended to be fitted onto or within the free end of a support arm to constitute a previously described support arm device, has a generally tubular form open at one end with bearing surfaces provided on its inner wall, while its other end is closed by a bearing shell intended to receive the rotary axle and its bearing members. The bearing surfaces provided on the bracket piece are disposed according to at least one transversel ring having a generally annular shape and protruding inwardly from the inner wall.
The bracket piece advantageously comprises opposite each bearing surface ring at least one pressing mean constituted by an axial slot each lip of which is extended outwardly by a pressing lug adapted to be crossed through at least partially by a pressing screw. The bracket piece has the general form of a tube with internal or external square or rectangular cross-sections, open at one end and closed at the other by a bearing shell having the general shape of a revolution body, extended outwardly by at least one pivoting bracket lug of a wheel braking member.

Arm support device for a rotating element


A coiled anchor is positioned at a mitral valve by extending and deflecting a catheter such that a distal end portion of the catheter has a curved shape that is disposed in a left atrium and a distal end of the catheter is positioned near a commissure of the mitral valve. A ventricular portion of the coiled anchor is advanced from the catheter under the mitral valve at the commissure and into a left ventricle. An atrial portion of the coiled anchor is deployed in the left atrium by retracting the catheter off the atrial portion of the coiled anchor while maintaining the position of the ventricular portion of the coiled anchor in the left ventricle.

The invention generally relates to medical devices and procedures pertaining to prosthetic heart valves. More specifically, the invention relates to replacement of heart valves that may have malformations and/or dysfunctions. Embodiments of the invention relate to a prosthetic heart valve for replacing a mitral valve in the heart, an anchor to facilitate and maintain a positioning of the prosthetic heart valve in the native valve, and deployment devices and procedures associated with implantation of the prosthetic heart valve.

Coiled anchor for supporting prosthetic heart valve, prosthetic heart valve, and deployment device


A circuit substrate includes a core substrate having a cavity penetrating through the substrate, a combined component accommodated in the cavity of the substrate, a first build-up layer laminated on first surface of the substrate and including an insulating layer such that the insulating layer is covering the cavity, a second build-up layer laminated on second surface of the substrate and including an insulating layer such that the insulating layer is covering the cavity, and a filling resin filling gap formed between the cavity and combined component accommodated in the cavity of the substrate. The combined component includes an electronic component and a metal block, the electronic component has terminal surface on side facing the first surface of the substrate, and the metal block is superposed to surface of the electronic component on the opposite side of the electronic component with respect to the terminal surface.

Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a circuit substrate in which a build-up layer is laminated on a core substrate that has a cavity, and to a method for manufacturing the circuit substrate.
Description of Background Art
In a circuit substrate, an electronic component may be accommodated in a cavity (for example, US2012/0186866A1). The entire contents of this publication are incorporated herein by reference.

Circuit substrate and method for manufacturing the same


A corked bottle opener comprising a stationary shaft and a rotatable stem extending longitudinally from the shaft and mounted for axial movement relative thereto. An adjustably mounted retainer extends from the shaft and engages the neck of the bottle. A jaw member extends from the stem, but is held against rotation, engages the stopper. An actuator rotates the stem to move it axially and thereby raise the jaw member so as to remove the cork.

This invention relates to a bottle opener. In its more specific aspect, this invention relates to a device or mechanism for removing a cork or stopper from a bottle such as a champagne bottle.
Bottles of champagne and sparkling wine are corked with a friction fit stopper, which today is customarily a plastic material. An extremely tight and secure fit or retention is necessary to prevent the pressurized gas from pushing out the stopper. Consequently, at the time of serving, one must exert considerable manual force and pulling, and even for a strong person, it is extremely difficult to remove the stopper by hand. Also, because of the internal pressure, caution must be exercised to prevent the cork from flying and possibly injuring someone nearby or causing property damage.
Aside from the long standing corkscrew, which is not at all useful for the new plastic corks in wide use today, a number of mechanical devices have been proposed for removing the stopper. Typically, the plastic stopper in common use today is of a generally cylindrical shape having smooth or ribbed side walls, and a downwardly facing annular shoulder. Many mechanical devices shown in the prior art for removing the plastic stopper utilize gripping jaws and a screw action, and some devices disclose means for positioning the device on the bottle for accurate gripping and removing of the stopper. For example, the corked bottle opener described in U.S. Pat. No. 4,295,392 to Peck has a base member for positioning the bottle, a retaining bracket to support the neck of the bottle, and a hinged corkscrew bracket. This device would not be useful for the typical plastic stopper in wide use today.
British Patent 1543, issued on June 21, 1864, though obviously designed for the conventional cork and long before plastic stoppers, might theoretically have utility for todays plastic stopper. According to the teachings of the British patent, there are two spaced apart jaws, lower jaw d that engages the neck of the bottle and upper jaw c that engages the shoulder of the cork. These jaws are forced apart (move in opposite directions) as the screw h is turned by handle f. This means that jaw d is forced downwardly onto the bottle, and jaw c is forced upwardly. This device presents several disadvantages. To operate the British opener, three hands are required. One hand is necessary to turn the screw; a second hand is reguired to hold the opener and bottle; and a third hand is required to hold the cork. If one holds the bottle only, as the handle is turned, the whole opener would rotate, and therefore it would not be possible to remove the stopper. Hence, it is necessary to hold the opener and bottle together. Further, the opener is of a fixed length, and therefore can be utilized with a bottle having a neck length that is within an average range because the jaws operate within a narrow range. Thus, the opener cannot fit a bottle with a very short neck, because the adjustment of the jaws is limited to the length of the screw. Similarly, if the bottle has a very long neck, the screw length would not be sufficient for the jaws to extend between the two positions. Also, the adjustable stopper remover of the jaw member shown in FIG. 8 of the British Patent requires two screws to be turned in opposite directions (one screw in front and one in back, with a vertical center-line shaft), which makes the operation of the opener cumbersome.
U.S. Pat. No. 3,800,345 to Feliz discloses an integral wire cutter and cork remover. The Feliz mechanism includes a yoke for engaging the bottle neck flange, and a clamp for gripping the cork. The clamp is affixed to a telescopically slidable column which is actuated for longitudinal movement by a screw. The bottle opener disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,422,355 to Burns also utilizes a clamping means for gripping the cork, and an axial turning movement is applied to the clamp by a screw to lift and remove and stopper.
The devices shown in the prior art, however, appear to have a complicated structure, are cumbersome to operate, or lack positioning and support means.
This invention, therefore, has as its primary purpose to provide a cork extractor that removes the cork from the bottle by a precision controlled, safe and easy means.
It is a further object of the invention to overcome the limitations of the prior art.
It is yet another object of the invention to provide a mechanism which is economical and of a relatively simple structure.


Systems and methods for use in tri-spot point spread function imaging are provided that include a phase mask. The phase mask includes three partitions that each include a subset of the total area that is asymmetrical to other partitions. Each partition includes a phase delay ramp aligned along a phase delay axis, and includes a gradient of phase delays. Each phase delay axis is oriented in a different direction with respect to each other. Included is a source that outputs an excitation beam into a sample containing at least one light emitter that emits a radiation pattern when illuminated. Included is at least one sensor arranged to capture at least one image of the radiation pattern and a phase mask positioned between the at least one emitter and the at least one sensor. The phase mask is configured to produce a tri-spot point spread function.

Single-molecule imaging has become a powerful tool for gaining insight into the biochemical activities in living cells, such as DNA bending and tangling within cell nuclei, or transbilayer lipid motion within cell membranes. In some existing methods, optical imaging with resolution beyond the diffraction limit is achieved by localizing single-molecule light emitters, such as fluorescent molecules that may produce a dipole-like radiation pattern and are typically attached to biological structures or other objects of interest.
The fluorescence photons emitted by single molecules contain rich information regarding their rotational motions, but adapting existing methods, such as single-molecule localization microscopy (SMLM), to measure the orientations and rotational mobilities of single-molecule emitters with high precision remains a challenge. Some existing methods have attempted to measure the orientation of these single-molecule emitters to improve the localization accuracy by estimating the localization bias due to orientation effects. Other existing single-molecule imaging methods measure molecular orientation and rotational mobility of single-molecule emitters by modeling the emission patterns of single-molecule emitters or by tuning the excitation polarization. However, these existing methods may require complicated optical instruments and typically lack sufficient sensitivity to measure both 3D molecular orientation and rotational mobility of single molecules simultaneously.

Systems and methods for performing optical imaging using a tri-spot point spread function (PSF)


The present disclosure discloses an image recognition method and apparatus, and belongs to the field of computer technologies. The method includes: extracting a local binary pattern (LBP) feature vector of a target image; calculating a high-dimensional feature vector of the target image according to the LBP feature vector; obtaining a training matrix, the training matrix being a matrix obtained by training images in an image library by using a joint Bayesian algorithm; and recognizing the target image according to the high-dimensional feature vector of the target image and the training matrix. The image recognition method and apparatus according to the present disclosure may combine LBP algorithm with a joint Bayesian algorithm to perform recognition, thereby improving the accuracy of image recognition.

A facial recognition technology usually includes two steps. First, a feature is extracted from a face image; second, a similarity between the extracted feature and a feature in a reference face image is calculated.
The similarity between features is usually calculated based on a Mahalanobis distance. However, limited by a Mahalanobis distance-based calculation algorithm, the accuracy of the similarity calculated by using the foregoing solution is relatively low.

TENCENT TECHNOLOGY (SHENZHEN) COMPANY LIMITED


An electrical connector assembly is described. The electrical connector assembly includes a first connector body, a second connector body, a first removable cap, and a second removable cap. The first connector body has a first connector end, a first cap end, and first and second electrodes that protrude from the first cap end. The second connector body has a second connector end, a second cap end, and third and fourth electrodes that protrude from the second cap end. The first and second removable caps each have a cavity, formed by an outer wall portion that shields the corresponding electrodes, and an interior wall portion that shields at least a portion of the corresponding electrodes. Upon an engagement of the first and second connector bodies, the first connector end abuts the second connector end, the first and third electrodes are electrically connected, and the second and fourth electrodes are electrically connected.

With improvements in battery design, many battery-powered devices require that a relatively large amount of electrical current be carried when operating the battery-powered device. It is also common that this electrical current must be carried through an electrical connector so that a more fully charged battery can be easily plugged into the battery-powered device or that other control cables must be easily connected or disconnected. Because of the large amount of current flowing in such battery-powered devices, some electrical connectors have a risk of galling at the interface between a male and female connector which in turn would cause an increased electrical resistance. The increased electrical resistance can lead to a heating and often destruction of the electrical connector or reduced performance of the battery powered device.
An example of an electrical connector assembly capable of carrying a large amount of current is disclosed by Deans, U.S. Pat. No. 5,533,915 ("the '915 patent"). The '915 patent generally describes a male connector assembly 10 and a female connector assembly 11. A male connector pin 12 of the male connector assembly has a top 16, a bottom 17, a first side 18, a second side 19, a forward end 20, and a rearward end 21 and is fabricated from copper which has preferably been nickel plated followed by gold plating. A leaf spring 14 has a flat length 27 held within connector body 25 and a curved length 26 that extends past a face 28 of the connector body 25. Male conductors 42 and 43 are soldered near the rearward end 21 of each of the connector pins in a manner analogous to that shown on the female connector assembly 11.
The '915 patent also describes a female connector body 45 having a first side 46, a second side 47, a top 48, a bottom 49 and a back 50 and also a generally rectangular upper opening 51 and a lower generally rectangular opening 52 identical to 51 except that it is rotated 270 degrees as viewed in FIG. 7. Female connector pin 59 can be seen to have a top 60, a bottom 61, a forward end 62, a rearward end 63, a first side 64, and a second side 65. Connector pin 59 is shown in phantom view in FIG. 8 where it can be seen that the forward end 62 is recessed from the face 44. This helps to avoid any undesired contact of male connector pins 12 and 13 unless they are oriented properly so that they will pass beneath the face 44 of connector body 45. It can also be fairly seen in FIG. 1 that conductor 68 is soldered at 69 to a rearward portion of female connector pin 59 which extends past back 50 of conductor body 45. Similarly, conductor 70 is soldered at 71 to connector pin 59′. The connector pins 12, 13, 59, and 60 are connectable externally to the electrical connector assembly at their respective rearward portions. The connector pins 12, 13, 59, and 60 thus provide an external connection to the battery and/or battery-powered device via the conductors 42, 43, 68, and 70. In other words, the battery and battery-powered device are electrically connected via the conductors 42 and 43, the male connector pins 12 and 13, the female connector pins 59 and 60, and the conductors 68 and 70.
In operation of the connector assembly of the '915 patent, connector pins 12 and 13 are inserted into generally rectangular openings 51 and 52. The leaf spring 14 contacts the top 53 of rectangular opening 52, thereby forcing the leaf spring 14 of connector pin 12 against the top 60 of connector pin 59. This provides an effective contact area and yet the male and female connectors do not require excessive force to be plugged together or to be unplugged. The connector bodies are preferably fabricated from strong dielectric materials such as glass fiber reinforced nylon. The '915 patent indicates that when using a gold plated male connector and a silver plated female connector, it has been found that the resulting connection is capable of passing 30 amps from an 8 volt battery without any breakdown at the connection.
Although the electrical connector assembly described in the '915 patent helps to avoid undesired contact of male connector pins 12 and 13, it does not provide protection or shielding to reduce breakdown at the rearward ends of the male connector pins 12, 13 or the rearward ends of the female connector pins 59 and 60. As shown in FIG. 1 of the '915 patent, the conductor 68 is soldered at 69 to the portion of female connector pin 59. The configuration of the '915 patent relies upon a sufficient air separation between soldering joints for the conductor 68 and conductor 70. The size of the air separation is affected by the quality of the soldering joints, which may be performed by a non-professional hobbyist, for example, in the case that the battery-powered device is a remote controlled (RC) car, airplane, helicopter, boat, or other suitable RC device.
Additionally, the electrical connector assembly described in the '915 patent does not protect or shield the rearward ends of the connector pins 12, 13, 59, and 60 from a short-circuit that may be caused by contact with a foreign object. For example, a battery placed in a container with metallic spare parts, keys, or other suitably conductive objects may short-circuit if the air separation between the conductors is effectively reduced by contact with a conductive object.
Another example of an electrical connector assembly is disclosed by Hariharesan et al., U.S. Pat. No. 7,374,460 ("the '460 patent"). The '460 patent generally describes an electrical connector 1000 having a male member 500 with male terminals 600 and a female member 100 with female terminals 200. Retention members 512 are configured to retain the male terminal 600 after assembly into the male member 500. As shown in FIG. 6A of the '460 patent, the male terminals 600 are shielded from each other by the housing 502, thus providing protection from breakdown between the male terminals 600, but the unitary housing and retention members 512 reduce accessibility of the male terminals 600. While the male terminal 600 can be soldered to a conductor before insertion into the male member 500, the retention members 512 impede removal of the male terminal 600 or disconnection of a connected conductor, for example, to perform maintenance, cleaning, or removal of the electrical connector assembly for installation on a different battery or battery-powered device.

Electrical connector assembly having connector bodies and removable caps


An integrated roller bearing and fluid transfer sleeve adapted for supporting and transferring fluid to a rotating shaft in a gas turbine engine reduction gearbox. The integrated roller bearing and fluid transfer sleeve comprises a fluid transfer sleeve having a sleeve casing defining therein an annular fluid plenum open radially outwardly, and at least two spaced apart roller bearing assemblies each comprising an annular outer race integral with the sleeve casing and each assembly comprising a plurality of roller elements supported by the outer race. Each roller bearing assembly is disposed within the sleeve casing, one at each opposing end thereof, and the plurality of roller elements in each assembly define a first inner diameter substantially equal to an outer diameter of the rotating shaft adapted to be supported by the roller elements. The sleeve casing has an inner circumferential, axially extending surface, between the roller bearing assemblies, and defining a second inner diameter greater than the first inner diameter, such that an annular fluid leakage clearance can be formed between said inner circumferential surface of the sleeve casing and an outer circumferential surface of the rotating shaft. A plurality of apertures are defined in the sleeve casing to permit fluid flow from the annular fluid plenum to the fluid leakage clearance, whereby fluid, in the fluid leakage clearance is transferable to the roller elements and the rotating shaft.

The present invention relates generally to a gas turbine engine reduction gearbox, and in particular, to an integrated roller bearing and oil transfer sleeve for use in a gas turbine engine reduction gearbox.
Reduction gearboxes of gas turbine engines, especially those in acrobatic propeller-driven engines, experience considerable in-flight stresses resulting in significant bending of all rotating shafts within the gearbox. As these gearboxes contain gears rotating at extremely high speeds, a constant supply of oil is required for cooling and lubrication of the components. As such, it is known to feed oil to rotating gears via paths between concentric rotating parts and internal oil supply cavities within the shafts and planetary gear carriers. These oil paths and cavities can become restricted due to the flight stress-induced bending of the components, which results in a reduced oil flow to the rotating elements.
It is currently known to use an oil transfer sleeve 52 which aids distribution of oil within a gearbox 50, as shown in FIG. 1. Such a sleeve 52 generally receives oil from an outer chamber 54, and provides distribution of the oil to inner rotating elements such as the planetary carrier 56 and the planet gears 58. An oil film can be provided within the inner diameter of the oil transfer sleeve 52, creating a journal bearing for supporting the inner rotating shaft 60 of the planetary carrier 56, for example. Internal oil feed cavities 62 within the inner shaft 60 that is supported by the journal bearing can become pinched by bending forces, resulting in reduced oil flow to the rotating gears.
There is therefore a need for a new shaft supporting member which reduces shaft bending and provides oil to the shaft inner cavities.
It is an object of the present invention to provide a bearing element which reduces shaft bending in a gas turbine engine gearbox.
It is a further object of the present invention to provide a roller bearing assembly integrally formed with a fluid transfer sleeve capable of lubrication fluid distribution.
Therefore, in accordance with the present invention, there is provided an integrated roller bearing and fluid transfer sleeve adapted for supporting and transferring fluid to a rotating shaft in a gas turbine engine reduction gearbox, the integrated roller bearing and fluid transfer sleeve comprising: a fluid transfer sleeve comprising a sleeve casing defining therein an annular fluid plenum open radially outwardly; at least two spaced apart roller bearing assemblies each comprising an annular outer race integral with the sleeve casing and each assembly including a plurality of roller elements supported by said outer race, each roller bearing assembly being disposed within the sleeve casing, one at each opposing end thereof, and the plurality of roller elements in each assembly defining a first inner diameter substantially equal to an outer diameter of the rotating shaft adapted to be supported by the roller bearing assemblies; the sleeve casing having an inner circumferential, axially extending surface, between said roller bearing assemblies, and defining a second inner diameter greater than said first inner diameter, such that an annular fluid leakage clearance can be formed between said inner circumferential surface of the sleeve casing and an outer circumferential surface of the rotating shaft; and at least an aperture being defined in the sleeve casing, permitting fluid flow from the annular fluid plenum to the fluid leakage clearance; whereby fluid in the fluid leakage clearance is transferable to the roller elements of the roller bearing assemblies and to the rotating shaft.
There is also provided, in accordance with the present invention, a composite bearing assembly adapted for supporting a rotating shaft in a gas turbine engine reduction gearbox, the composite bearing assembly comprising: a substantially cylindrical sleeve casing having at least a roller bearing disposed at each end thereof; the roller bearing comprising an outer race, integrally formed with the sleeve casing, and a plurality of roller elements supported by the outer race and disposed radially inward therefrom; and the sleeve casing comprising a central portion, axially located between the roller bearings, comprising an inner circumferential surface having an internal diameter greater than an outer diameter of the rotating shaft adapted to be supported by the roller bearings, such that an annular fluid leakage clearance, adapted to receive a fluid therein, is formed between said inner circumferential surface and an outer surface of the rotating shaft; whereby the composite bearing assembly provides both direct rolling contact and hydrodynamic support for the rotating shaft.

Integrated oil transfer sleeve and bearing


A fastener for splicing wires and the like is mace by forming a tubular sleeve of spring material such as phosphor bronze. In its unrestrained shape, the tubular sleeve is too small to receive the wires, but the tubular sleeve is expanded elastically and held expanded by solder, so that the wires can be inserted. Upon the application of heat the solder melts, flowing into the joint and allowing the sleeve to spring back to its original size or at least to the diameter of the wires. The fastener can be mounted on a stud to provide a replacement for the familiar solder cup terminal. An expanded sleeve can be placed around a piece of heat shrinkable tube. When heated, the tube and the sleeve contract, the sleeve reinforcing the tube giving a much greater compressive force during shrinking. The sleeve then becomes a metallic protector for the tube.

This invention relates generally to fasteners for splicing wires or the like, or for terminating wires at a terminal.
Often wires are joined by a crimp connection or a solder connection. The connector must be oversized to allow the wire to be slipped in easily, making a bulky discontinuity in the diameter of the wire. Where a large number of connections must be made in the same general location, the bulk of the connectors, with the space required between them, can be substantial.
It is an object of this invention to provide a fastening means which adds minimally to the diameter of the wire being connected.
It is a further object of this invention to provide a fastening means which is easily applied with simple tools, and provides a tightly soldered connection.

Springy fastener held open by a meltable material


Apparatus and methods of controlled therapeutic modulation of an immune response by an immune system of a patient. UV radiation is applied to the skin of a patient for a predetermined time period or dose. The application of UV radiation is repeated for the predetermined time or dose or for a modified predetermined time period or dose based on patient feedback after applying for the predetermined time period or dose, multiple times, wherein each repetition is performed after a predetermined rest period has passed. The patient is tested after at least one session of application of UV radiation and levels of one or more indicators read by the test are compared to levels that were established as baseline levels from a test taken before the initial application of UV radiation. The treatments are discontinued when a predetermined differential threshold between retesting levels and baseline levels in at least one indicator has been met, or for a predetermined number of times, whichever occurs first.

Phototherapy has been used for treatment of a larger variety of cutaneous diseases, including psoriasis, atopic dermatitis, vitiligo, mastocytosis, pruritus and early-stage cutaneous T-cell lymphoma, see Zizi et al., "How it Works: The Immunology Underlying Phototherapy", Deramatol Clin 38 (2020)-53. However, a method to optimize a photo-immune response into a systemic immune therapy has not been described.
The dysregulation of the immune system is age and sex dependent and is documented with men reaching an inflection point at around 63 years old and women at around 68 years old, which reflects upon the life span differences between the sexes during which the immune system undergoes more abrupt epigenomic changes representing age and sex dependent risk profile for susceptibility to manage additional acute and chronic immune responses. (Marquez et al., "Sexual-dimorphism in human immune system aging", Nat Commun 11, 751 (2020)).
Cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes, cognitive disorders, such as dementia and Alzheimer's, and osteoporosis, to name a few, are known to be exacerbated by a poorly regulated innate immune system. Inflammatory dysregulation and immune frailty is considered as a driver of baseline inflammation associated with age, and in studies of 90 and 100 year old people, a healthy immune regulation system is a strong predictor of survival, "establishing a healthy balance of pro- and anti-inflammatory biomarkers that may delay the progression of inflamm-aging and its related morbidities in this unique population." (Flynn et al., "Elevated Inflammatory Status and Increased Risk of Chronic Disease in Chronological Aging: Inflamm-aging or Inflamm-inactivity?", Aging and Disease, Volume 10, Number 1, February 2019).
There is a need to improve the quality of life and survival of people by assisting/correcting the regulatory response of those where a dysregulated immune system is driving clinical presentations including slowly presenting conditions, such as, but not limited to, cardiovascular, cognitive decline and acute settings including stroke, GVHD and the cytokine release system and the subsequent cytokine storm associated with coronavirus.


An off-axis telescope having a primary optical element configured to reflect an energy beam from an optical reference source that emits the energy beam along an optical path. The telescope includes angle sensors arranged on a periphery of the primary optical element to determine angular motion of the energy beam from the optical reference source. The angle sensors are operable to be biased to positional settings associated with a desired pointing direction of the energy beam. A secondary optical element is arranged in the optical path and translated along three orthogonal axes. A plurality of steering mirrors arranged between the optical reference source and the secondary optical element is configured to be tilted in response to a control signal. A controller auto-aligns the telescope by at least translating the secondary optical element and tilting the steering mirrors via the control signal using at least inputs from the plurality of angle sensors.

This disclosure relates generally to the field of optics and, more specifically, to systems and methods for automatically aligning, stabilizing, and focusing high-power beams of electromagnetic energy.
High power lasers are being considered for a variety of industrial, commercial, and military applications, including materials processing, satellite imaging, target tracking and identification, and directed energy weapons (DEW). Laser DEW systems generally involve the use of a high energy laser (HEL) to irradiate and destroy a target. To achieve performance objectives, many of these applications require that the energy beam be accurately steered and optimally focused on a target. HEL can be used with a telescope system to steer and focus the energy beam onto a target.
Auto-alignment systems have been implemented for on-axis telescope systems to optimally steer and focus the energy beam onto a target. The conventional auto-alignment systems are based on the assumption that the line of sight (LOS) of the directed energy beam is independent of the range of the target. However, for an off-axis telescope system, the alignment of the energy beam (LOS) is range-dependent. Accordingly, a conventional auto-alignment system cannot optimally auto-align and focus the energy beam of the off-axis telescope.
Thus, a need exists in the art for an improved system or method for auto-aligning and focusing an energy beam of the off-axis telescope. This can be achieved with an articulated secondary mirror in the telescope, together with two or more steering mirrors.

System for automatic alignment, stabilization, and focus for an off-axis telescope using biased angle sensors


The invention relates methods and products for inducing mucosal immunity. In particular, the invention relates to the use of immunostimulatory oligonucleotides containing a CpG motif for inducing mucosal immunity. The CpG immunostimulatory oligonucleotides may be administered alone or in combination with antigen and/or with other adjuvants.

Two distinct compartments of the immune system have been identified: (i) the systemic, which comprises the bone marrow, spleen and lymph nodes, and (ii) the mucosal, which comprises lymphoid tissue associated with mucosal surfaces and external secretory glands (McGhee et al., 1992). Mucosal surfaces are associated with the gastrointestinal (GI), genitourinary (GU) and respiratory tracts. Each compartment is associated with both humoral (antibodies) and cell-mediated (cytotoxic T-cells) responses, however there are differences in the nature of the immune responses induced in each compartment. Antibodies associated with the systemic compartment are predominantly of the IgG isotype, which function to neutralize pathogens in the circulatory system. In contrast, antibodies in the mucosae are primarily secretory IgA (S-IgA), which function to prevent entry of the pathogen into the body via the mucosal surface (Lamm et al., 1992). Systemic immunity cannot prevent entry of pathogenic organisms at mucosal surfaces.
Successful systemic immunization (i.e., delivery of antigen to the systemic compartment) will induce systemic immunity but does not usually yield mucosal immune responses. In contrast, antigen delivered at mucosal surfaces triggers both mucosal (at local and sometimes at distant sites) and systemic responses (Haneberg et al., 1994, Gallichan and Rosenthal, 1995).
Most vaccines developed to date are delivered parenterally, for example by intramuscular (IM) or intradermal (ID) injection, and as such induce primarily systemic immunity. However, the combined mucosal surface area is more than 200 times greater than that of the skin and is the primary site of transmission of numerous infectious diseases. Therefore, current vaccination strategies permit the pathogen to enter the body and only fight it once it is in circulation. Infection and morbidity rates could be reduced if effective mucosal immunity could be induced. Furthermore, there is evidence that mucosal vaccines may have a broader age range of recipients. Finally, mucosal vaccines are often administered by non-invasive means (e.g., nose drops, nasal spray, inhaled nebulizer), thus they are easier and less expensive to administer, have less need for trained personnel and no risk of needle stick injury or cross contamination (for reviews see Mestecky et al., 1992, Staats et al 1994, O, Hagan 1994).
As mentioned above, the hallmark of mucosal immunity is local production of S-IgA antibodies. These constitute >80% of all antibodies in mucosae-associated tissues and are induced, transported and regulated by mechanisms quite distinct from those of the systemic response. IgA is of primary importance to the host defense because it acts not only to resist strict mucosal pathogens but also of the many microorganisms which initially colonize mucosal surfaces but subsequently cause systemic disease. There appear to be three sites of IgA mediated mucosal defense: (i) in the lumen, where S-IgA can neutralize viruses, bacterial toxins and enzymes, and act as a mucosal barrier to prevent viral attachment, microbial adherence and adsorption of antigen; (ii) within epithelial cells where dimeric IgA can bind to intracellular antigen; (iii) within the lamina propria where dimeric IgA can complex with antigen and the immune complex thus formed transported to the lumen (Lamm et al., 1992).
Many vaccines in development are composed of synthetic or recombinant antigens (peptides or polypeptides). These are considered safer than traditional attenuated or inactivated whole pathogens, however they are often poorly immunogenic and require adjuvants to enhance specific immunity. For systemic administration, aluminum precipitates (alum) may be added to the antigens to augment immune responses. Alum is currently the only adjuvant licensed for human use in most countries including the USA, however it is not suitable for delivery to mucosal surfaces. Therefore most mucosal vaccines used today contain live-attenuated organisms, and little success has been obtained with mucosal delivery of subunit vaccines.
Cholera toxin (CT) is the mucosal adjuvant most commonly used in animal models. CT is the primary enterotoxin produced by Vibrio cholerae. It is an 84 kilodalton polymeric protein consisting of two subunits, a monomeric A subunit and a pentameric ring shaped B subunit. The B subunit binds GM1 gangliosides at the surface of eukaryotic cells and enables insertion of the A subunit into the cytosol, where it ADP-ribosylates GTP-binding regulatory protein associated with adenylate cyclase (Spangler, 1992).
CT enhances antigen presentation by macrophages, epithelial cells and B cells, promotes differentiation and isotype switching in B cells, and has complex inhibitory and stimulatory effects on T-cell proliferation and lymphokine production (Snider, 1995). Some groups report that CT can selectively activate Th2-type CD4+ T cells while inhibiting Th1-type cells (Takahashi et al., 1996,) while others report activation of both TH1 and Th2-type CD4+ T cells (Hornquist and Lycke, 1993). Differences may be due to a number of factors including route of immunization and the nature of the antigen.
The Escherichia coli heat-labile enterotoxin (labile toxin, LT) is structurally and functionally closely related to CT, and has similar adjuvant properties (Lycke et al., 1992). LT can confer immunity to co-administered antigens that are on their own non-immunogenic when administered by mucosal routes; this adjuvant effect is noted whether LT is simply mixed with or is physically coupled to the antigen (Holmgren et al., 1993).
While very effective as mucosal adjuvants in animal models, CT and LT are highly toxic, and especially so in humans. Genetically detoxified mutants of both CT and LT have been developed by using site-directed mutagenesis, which, at least in animal models appear to be less toxic yet retain some adjuvanticity (e.g., LTK63 is LT with a single substitution at serine-63) (Rappuoli et al., 1995, Douce et al., 1994, Pizza et al., 1994, De Haan et al., 1996). Nevertheless, the level of adjuvanticity appears to be proportional to the level of retained toxicity, and thus there is a clear need for an alternative safe and effective mucosal adjuvant.

Methods and products for inducing mucosal immunity


A vehicle roof structure is provided with a roof panel dampening bracket which adds mass to a roof panel in order to control the resonance frequency of the roof panel. The dampening bracket has a base part, a mass adding part and a connecting part. The base part is joined to a roof bow. The mass adding part is joined to the undersurface of the roof panel by an adhesive agent in at least two points in both end parts of the vehicle in the front to aft direction. The connecting part extends in the front to aft direction of the vehicle to interconnect the base part and the mass adding part. The connecting part has at least one bent part that extends in the lateral direction of the vehicle.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention generally relates to a dampening bracket for a vehicle roof panel. More specifically, the present invention relates to a vehicle roof structure with a dampening bracket that can prevent unpleasant noise from being generated in the passenger compartment from the sound caused by vibration of the roof panel of the passenger compartment.
2. Background Information
Passenger vehicles sometimes encounter a situation in which roof panel vibrates. In particular, the roof panel sometimes vibrates as a result of vibrations from vibration sources such as the engine and the like. If the resonance frequency of the roof panel from this vibration is that same as the cavity resonance frequency of the vehicle body, or is greater than this cavity resonance frequency, then the roof panel emits noise such that an unpleasant noise is generated inside the passenger compartment.
One example of a technique that has been proposed as a countermeasure for preventing the generation of an unpleasant noise in the passenger compartment as a result of the vibration of the roof panel is described in Japanese Unexamined Patent Application No. 59-29366. In this publication, a dampening steel plate is joined by bonding to the undersurface of the roof panel, which adds mass to the roof panel so that the resonance frequency of the roof panel is shifted from the cavity resonance frequency of the vehicle body. In such a construction, however, since a dampening steel plate is directly joined by bonding to the undersurface of the roof panel, which has a large vibration amplitude, there is a danger that this dampening steel plate will separate from the roof panel by this vibration, and may, in the worst case, fall from the roof panel.
In view of the above, it will be apparent to those skilled in the art from this disclosure that there exists a need for an improved vehicle roof panel dampening bracket. This invention addresses this need in the art as well as other needs, which will become apparent to those skilled in the art from this disclosure.

Vehicle roof structure with dampening bracket


Described herein are methods for detecting a bacteria in a subject and methods for detecting, imaging or diagnosing a site, disease, disorder or condition in a subject using bacteria. The methods can be used in conjunction with methods for treating a disease, disorder or condition. Such sites, diseases and disorders include sites of cellular proliferation, such as tumors, tumor tissues, metastases, areas of inflammation, immunoprivileged sites or tissues, wounds and infections. Further described are bacteria for use in the methods and compositions, combinations and kits, including diagnostic and pharmaceutical compositions, containing a bacterium. Bacteria described herein include those that bind, sequester or accumulate radiolabeled compounds by expression of an endogenous gene product that binds to the radiolabeled compound. Additional imaging and therapeutic agents and methods also are described.

Targeting of bacteria to solid tumors has been demonstrated for several bacterial species including Bifidobacterium spp. (Kimura et al. (1980) Cancer Res. 40:2061-8), Listeria monocytogenes (Liu et al. (2007) Cancer Res. 67:429-32; Riedel et al. (2007) Appl Environ Microbiol. 73:3091-4), Clostridium spp. Bettegowda et al. (2005) Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 102:1145-50), Salmonella spp. (Toso et al. (2002) J. Clin. Oncol. 20:142-52), Shigella flexneri (Stritzker et al. (2007) Int. J. Med Microbiol. 297:51-62) Vibrio cholerae (Yu et al. (2004) Nat. Biotechnol. 22:313-20) and E. coli (Stritzker et al. (2007) Int. J. Med. Microbiol. 297:51-62). The use of certain bacteria for therapy and diagnosis of tumors, however, is often impeded by risks of opportunistic infections and low tumor colonization rates. For example, in clinical trials of Salmonella VNP20009, a low percentage of tumor-targeting efficacy was observed (Toso et al. (2002) J. Clin. Oncol. 20:142-52). Thus, for bacterial therapy and diagnosis of tumors, there is a need for methods that employ bacteria that are non-toxic to the patient, can be administered at low doses and show a high degree of preferential accumulation in tumors versus normal tissues.
In addition, biopsy is currently the only clinical method available for determining the presence of bacteria in the tumor. A majority of studies on bacterial tumor colonization in tumor-bearing mice have used luciferase- and/or fluorescence-(GFP) imaging for bacterial detection. However, current optical imaging modalities using fluorescent proteins or luciferases are restricted to small animals and cannot be readily translated to patient studies. Hence, there is a need for methods for non-invasive imaging of bacteria-colonized tumors to accurately detect the presence of bacteria in tumors without excision of the respective tissue.
Overexpression of HSV-thymidine kinase in tumors has been used to localize radiolabeled tracers to tumors for tumor imaging by positron emission tomography (PET) (Serganova et al. (2004) Cancer Res. 64:6101-8; Tjuvajev et al. (1998) Cancer Res. 58:4333-41; Tjuvajev et al. (2002) J. Nucl. Med. 43:1072-83; Jacobs et al. (2001) Lancet 358:727-9). Salmonella bacteria that overexpress HSV-thymidine kinase, Salmonella VNP20009, have been employed to image C-38 colon carcinoma and B16-F10 murine melanoma by PET using the radiolabeled tracer [124I]-FIAU (Soghomonyan et al. (2005) Cancer Gene Ther. 12:101-8). However, gene expression systems that are designed to overexpress proteins can be highly variable, leading to varying amounts of gene expression at the site of accumulation. Such systems are not quantitative and cannot be used to accurately measure the accumulation of the administered bacteria within a tumor over the course of treatment, diagnosis or monitoring of a tumor. Hence, there is a need for methods to accurately measure the amount of bacterial accumulation in a tumor in order to use the bacteria for diagnostic methods, such as monitoring therapeutic treatment and/or optimizing therapeutic regimens and with decreased reliance on foreign protein expression.

Methods and compositions for detection of bacteria and treatment of diseases and disorders