A method of producing a marker on a substrate includes projecting a patterned beam on a layer of resist disposed on a substrate in a lithographic apparatus to create a latent marker; and locally heating the substrate at the marker location in the lithographic apparatus to transform the latent marker into a detectable marker.

A lithographic apparatus is a machine that applies a desired pattern onto a target portion of a substrate. Lithographic apparatus can be used, for example, in the manufacture of integrated circuits (ICs). In that circumstance, a patterning structure, which is alternatively referred to as a mask or a reticle, may be used to generate a circuit pattern corresponding to an individual layer of the IC, and this pattern can be imaged onto a target portion (e.g. including part of, one or several dies) on a substrate (e.g. a silicon wafer) that has a layer of radiation-sensitive material (resist). In general, a single substrate will contain a network of adjacent target portions that are successively exposed. Known lithographic apparatus include so-called steppers, in which each target portion is irradiated by exposing an entire pattern onto the target portion at once, and so-called scanners, in which each target portion is irradiated by scanning the pattern through the projection beam in a given direction (the "scanning"-direction) while synchronously scanning the substrate parallel or anti-parallel to this direction.
Although specific reference may be made in this text to the use of lithographic apparatus in the manufacture of ICs, it should be understood that the lithographic apparatus described herein may have other applications, such as the manufacture of integrated optical systems, guidance and detection patterns for magnetic domain memories, liquid-crystal displays (LCDs), thin-film magnetic heads, etc. The skilled artisan will appreciate that, in the context of such alternative applications, any use of the terms "wafer" or "die" herein may be considered as synonymous with the more general terms "substrate" or "target portion", respectively. The substrate referred to herein may be processed, before or after exposure, in for example a track (a tool that typically applies a layer of resist to a substrate and develops the exposed resist) or a metrology or inspection tool. Where applicable, the disclosure herein may be applied to such and other substrate processing tools. Further, the substrate may be processed more than once, for example in order to create a multi-layer IC, so that the term substrate used herein may also refer to a substrate that already contains multiple processed layers.
The terms "radiation" and "beam" used herein encompass all types of electromagnetic radiation, including ultraviolet (UV) radiation (e.g. having a wavelength of 365, 248, 193, 157 or 126 nm) and extreme ultra-violet (EUV) radiation (e.g. having a wavelength in the range of 5-20 nm), as well as particle beams, such as ion beams or electron beams.
The term "patterning structure" used herein should be broadly interpreted as referring to a structure that can be used to impart a beam of radiation with a pattern in its cross-section such as to create a pattern in a target portion of the substrate. It should be noted that the pattern imparted to the beam of radiation may not exactly correspond to the desired pattern in the target portion of the substrate. Generally, the pattern imparted to the beam of radiation will correspond to a particular functional layer in a device being created in the target portion, such as an integrated circuit.
A patterning structure may be transmissive or reflective. Examples of patterning structures include masks, programmable mirror arrays, and programmable LCD panels. Masks are well known in lithography, and include mask types such as binary, alternating phase-shift, and attenuated phase-shift, as well as various hybrid mask types. An example of a programmable mirror array employs a matrix arrangement of small mirrors, each of which can be individually tilted so as to reflect an incoming radiation beam in different directions; in this manner, the reflected beam is patterned.
The support structure supports, i.e. bears the weight of, the patterning structure. It holds the patterning structure in a way depending on the orientation of the patterning structure, the design of the lithographic apparatus, and other conditions, such as for example whether or not the patterning structure is held in a vacuum environment. The support can be using mechanical clamping, vacuum, or other clamping techniques, for example electrostatic clamping under vacuum conditions. The support structure may be a frame or a table, for example, which may be fixed or movable as required and which may ensure that the patterning structure is at a desired position, for example with respect to the projection system. Any use of the terms "reticle" or "mask" herein may be considered synonymous with the more general term "patterning structure".
The term "projection system" used herein should be broadly interpreted as encompassing various types of projection system, including refractive optical systems, reflective optical systems, and catadioptric optical systems, as appropriate for example for the exposure radiation being used, or for other factors such as the use of an immersion fluid or the use of a vacuum. Any use of the term "lens" herein may be considered as synonymous with the more general term "projection system".
The illumination system may also encompass various types of optical components, including refractive, reflective, and catadioptric optical components configured to direct, shape, or control the beam of radiation, and such components may also be referred to below, collectively or singularly, as a "lens".
The lithographic apparatus may be of a type having two (dual stage) or more substrate tables (and/or two or more mask tables). In such "multiple stage" machines the additional tables may be used in parallel, or preparatory steps may be carried out on one or more tables while one or more other tables are being used for exposure.
The lithographic apparatus may also be of a type wherein the substrate is immersed in a liquid having a relatively high refractive index, e.g. water, so as to fill a space between the final element of the projection system and the substrate. Immersion liquids may also be applied to other spaces in the lithographic apparatus, for example, between the mask and the first element of the projection system. Immersion techniques are well known in the art for increasing the numerical aperture of projection systems.
It may be desirable to project the beam of radiation imparted with a pattern in its cross-section accurately to the substrate (e.g. with respect to one or more features or process layers already formed on the substrate, or with respect to a predetermined characterization of the substrate surface). In such cases, it may be desirable to know the relative position of the substrate with respect to the reticle, in order to position the substrate in the focal plane of the projection system that is located optically between the reticle and the substrate. Therefore, it may be desirable to measure accurately the position of the substrate. This measurement may for instance be done by, in an operation, determining the position of the substrate with respect to the substrate table carrying the substrate. In another operation, the relative position of the substrate table is determined with respect to the reticle. These two measurements together can be used to compute the relative position of the substrate with respect to the reticle. However, it will be understood that several other strategies may be used to determine the relative position of the reticle with respect to the substrate, for instance by directly determining their relative position or by determining the relative position of the substrate with respect to the reticle table. It is implicit in these strategies that the position of the substrate is determined with respect to the position of another object (for example, the substrate table, the reticle table, or the reticle).
Several methods are known to a person skilled in the art to determine the relative position of a substrate with respect to another object. For instance, in case the relative position is determined with respect to the substrate table, the substrate and the substrate table are both provided with alignment markers. The substrate may be provided, for example, with up to 30 alignment markers. First the positions of some or all of the alignment markers on the substrate and the substrate table are determined. This procedure may be done by providing an alignment beam to a first alignment mark. The first alignment marker is positioned in the alignment beam by moving the substrate table, while monitoring the position of the substrate table with interferometric devices. By performing measurements to the diffraction pattern generated by the alignment marker in combination with the alignment beam, the position of the substrate table for which the alignment marker is optimally positioned with respect to the alignment beam can be determined. This operation may be done for some or all of the alignment markers (on the substrate as well as on the substrate table). By comparing the readings of the interferometric devices monitoring the position of the substrate table that correspond to different positions of the alignment markers, the relative position of the substrate with respect to the substrate table can be determined.
However, any other known method may be used to determine the relative position of a substrate with respect to another object. Most of these alignment techniques use alignment markers provided on the substrate. Therefore, use of such techniques may require that alignment markers are provided on the substrate. Such measuring markers may be provided to the substrate by projecting an alignment marker pattern to a layer of resist provided on top of the substrate.
After the exposure, the alignment markers are latently present, and the substrate is transported out of the lithographic exposure apparatus to a place where the latent alignment markers can be made visible, i.e. the alignment marker is made detectable for the alignment arrangement used. This is usually done in a track, as will be known to a person skilled in the art. In such a track, a post exposure bake (PEB) may be carried out in which the substrate is heated to a certain suitable temperature in order to make the latent alignment marker visible, as will be known to a person skilled in the art. After this, the substrate may be transported back into the lithographic apparatus where the alignment markers can be used for determining the relative position of the substrate as described above.
Transporting the substrate out of the lithographic apparatus to the track, where the latent markers are made visible, and transporting the substrate back in to the lithographic apparatus is a time-consuming process and therefore reduces the throughput of the system. This transportation process may also lead to inaccuracies, since the substrate is removed from the substrate table and repositioned on the substrate table after treatment in the track. For example, it will be understood that the substrate may not be in the exact same position with respect to the substrate table after repositioning as it was before removal from the substrate table.

Method for producing a marker on a substrate, lithographic apparatus and device manufacturing method


An enlarged computer graphic image of seismic data is displayed on a concave three-dimensional surface having a shape corresponding to the shape of selected data extracted from a three-dimensional seismic volume. Thus providing an enlarged image of a seismic surface where the data is spatially correct in three-dimensions, and which increases the ease with which interpreters can locate geological features such as horizons, faults, and channels.

For many years seismic exploration for oil and gas has involved the use of a source of seismic energy and its reception by an array of seismic detectors, generally referred to as geophones. When used on land, the source of seismic energy can be a high explosive charge electrically detonated in a borehole located at a selected point on the terrain, or another energy source having capacity for delivering a series of impacts or mechanical vibrations to the earth's surface. Offshore, air gun sources and hydrophone receivers are commonly used. The acoustic waves generated in the earth by these sources are reflected back from strata boundary and/or other discontinuities and reach the earth's surface at varying intervals of time, depending on the distance traversed and the characteristics of the subsurface traversed. On land these returning waves are detected by the geophones, which function to transduce such acoustic waves into representative electrical analog signals, which are generally referred to as traces. In use on land an array of geophones is generally laid out along a grid covering an area of interest to form a group of spaced apart observation stations within a desired locality to enable construction of three-dimensional views of reflector positions over wide areas. The source, which is offset a desired distance from the geophones, injects acoustic signals into the earth, and the detected signals at each geophone in the array are recorded for later processing using digital computers, where the analog data is generally quantized as digital sample points, e.g., one sample every two milliseconds, such that each sample point may be operated on individually. The geophone array is then moved to a new position and the process is repeated to obtain a 3D data volume for a seismic survey.
After exploration of an area is completed, data relating to energy detected at a plurality of geophones will have been recorded, where the geophones are located at varying distances from the shotpoint. The data is then reorganized to collect traces from data transmitted at various shotpoints and recorded at various geophone locations, where the traces are grouped such that the reflections can be assumed to have been reflected from a particular point within the earth, i.e., a common midpoint. The individual records or "traces" are then corrected for the differing distance the seismic energy travels through the earth from the corresponding shotpoints, to the common midpoint, and upwardly to the various geophones. This step includes correction for the varying velocities through rock layers of different types and changes in the source and receiver depths. The correction for the varying spacing of shotpoint/geophone pairs is referred to as "normal move out." After this is done the group of signals from the various midpoints are summed. Because the seismic signals are of a sinusoidal nature, the summation process serves to reduce noise in the seismic record, and thus increasing its signal-to-noise ratio. This process is referred to as the "stacking" of common midpoint data, and is well known to those skilled in the art. Accordingly, seismic field data undergoes the above-mentioned corrections, and may also undergo migration, which is an operation on uninterpreted data and involves rearranging of seismic information so that dipping horizons are plotted in their true location. Other more exotic known processing techniques may also be applied, which for example enhance faults and stratigraphic features or some other attribute, before the continuously recorded traces are reduced to vertical or horizontal cross sections or horizontal map views which approximate subsurface structure, and are usually in color.
Despite significant progress in interactive 3D seismic interpretation systems, seismic workstations continue to rely on vertically and horizontally displayed planar slices of recorded data to provide almost all of the "working surfaces" for horizon and fault picking, and correlation. These planar slices provide only a limited perspective of the full three dimensional picture. Often animation of successive slices is required to provide information about the third dimension. However, animation intrinsically forces a three-dimensional interpretation based on the interpreters memory of the changing picture through time, rather than on direct comparison and correlation of the data.
Once the seismic data is satisfactorily processed to incorporate necessary corrections and desired enhancements, the geophysicist interprets the 3D seismic information. In general terms, interpretation involves deriving a simple plausible geological subterranean model that is compatible with the observed data. This model is never unique, and discovering it involves a sequence of somewhat arbitrary choices.
Accordingly, it is an object of this invention to create a truly three-dimensional interactive graphic workstation to aid in geological interpretation of seismic data.
A more specific object of this invention is to visualize spatially correct seismic data on a large concave screen that facilitates horizon and fault mapping of seismic data.
Still another object is to provide a projection system for computer graphic images of seismic data that includes a portable self-supporting rigid screen with a concave inner display surface, which is economical in cost, and includes about fifty times more viewing area compared to conventional seismic workstation monitors.
Another more specific object of this invention is to provide a desk-top-based projection system having a concave screen, and a projector located about nine feet in front of the curved screen for use in interactive desk top viewing environments.
A further object is to provide a projection display system which can be used to view large scale monoscopic as well as stereoscopic color imagery of three-dimensional seismic data.

Method and apparatus for interactive curved surface seismic interpretation and visualization


A method is provided for manufacturing high-purity vitamin E compounds by selectively separating vitamin E compounds such as tocotrienols and tocopherols from oil raw materials such as deodorized distillate, and more specifically, a method is provided, applying to a rich fraction of vitamin E compounds, for obtaining high-purity vitamin E compounds by separating and removing only free fatty acids contained as impurities. The method comprises a process in which a solution containing vitamin E compounds and free fatty acids is placed in contact with a weakly basic anion exchanger, and the free fatty acids are preferentially adsorbed.

Vitamin E compounds (tocotrienols and tocopherols) are attracting attention as substances with health functionality and high antioxidant activity. In particular, tocotrienols have the same basic structure as tocopherols, but with three double bonds in their side chains, and thus have approximately 50 times higher antioxidant activity than tocopherols (Non-patent Reference 1). Recently, it has been reported that tocotrienols have high bioactivity, such as improvement arteriosclerosis and anti-cancer effects (Non-patent Reference 2), and there are expectations for active use in the pharmaceutical and food fields.
However, whereas tocopherols are contained in a wide-range of vegetable oils such as soy bean, rapeseed, sunflower, corn and so on, tocotrienols are contained at ultra-low concentration in certain vegetable oils such as palm. rice bran and so on. In addition, tocotrienols tend to decompose by oxidation due to the double bonds of their side chains, and easily lose their bioactivity.
Deodorizer distillate (scum oil) discharged in the deodorization process during manufacturing of edible oil is used as the raw material for separating and recovering these vitamin E compounds. Although, in all cases, the amounts of vitamin E compounds contained in scum oil are a few tens of times higher than the crude oil, the main component is free fatty acids, and scum oil also contains triglycerides, sterols and various hydrocarbons.
Therefore, no matter which vitamin E compounds are the target, there needs to be a process for recovering rich fraction of vitamin E compounds (corresponding to rough fractionation of vitamin E compounds) separated from raw materials, and a process for obtaining high-purity vitamin E compounds by further separating vitamin E compounds in the recovered solution from other contaminants. Various chromatographic separation methods have been proposed for the latter high-level separation process, and when necessary it is possible to separate the α, β, γ and δ isomers of tocopherol and tocotrienol by trying them chromatographic separation method.
However, for the rich fraction of vitamin E compounds recovered in the former process: the content of vitamin E compounds is low, the amount of contaminants such as free fatty acids is much, and (as issues specific to the chromatographic separation) it requires a large amount of eluent and a long elution-operative time, as specific issues to the chromatographic separation. As results, the production cost and environmental load of the waste liquid had increasingly been problems. Regarding the recovery process for vitamin E compounds, various studies have previously been carrying out focusing on tocopherols. For example, the molecular distillation method has already reached the stage of industrialization.
However, if the molecular distillation method is applied to deodorizer distillate derived from rice bran or palm containing tocotrienols, there is a large thermal decomposition loss due to distillation. Thus there was a problem because the recovered amount of tocotrienol and its purity were extremely low. (Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 1996-100131, Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication (Translation of PCT Application) No. 1998-508605, Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 2002-194381, Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 2002-3488, Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 2003-171376, Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 2004-305155, Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 2005-536191, Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 2007-521382, Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 2007-176801).
On the other hand, the inventors have developed a method for simultaneously producing tocotrienols and biodiesel fuel from fats and oils (Patent Reference 1). Patent Reference 1 discloses a method for manufacturing vitamin E compounds from the fats and oils, including separation by adsorption of vitamin E compounds contained in fats and oils to an anion exchanger, and thereafter, desorption and recovery from the anion exchanger. This method requires no molecular distillation process, and thus can prevent decomposition of vitamin E compounds such as tocotrienols.
However, the method disclosed in Patent Reference 1 had the problem that free fatty acids remained as impurities in the rich fraction of vitamin E compounds.

Method for the production of vitamin E with a high purity, vitamin E produced by said method, and a composition comprising said vitamin E


An internal bus bridge architecture and method is described. Embodiments include a system with multiple bus endpoints coupled to a bus root via a host bus bridge that is internal to at least one bus endpoint. In addition, the bus endpoints are directly coupled to each other. Embodiments are usable with known bus protocols.

As computer and other digital systems become more complex and more capable, methods and hardware to enhance the transfer of data between system components or elements continually evolve. Data to be transferred include signals representing data, commands, or any other signals. Speed and efficiency of data transfer is particularly critical in systems that run very data-intensive applications, such as graphics applications. In typical systems, graphics processing capability is provided as a part of the central processing unit (CPU) capability, or provided by a separate special purpose processor such as a graphics processing unit (GPU) that communicates with the CPU and assists in processing graphics data for applications such as video games, etc. One or more GPUs may be included in a system. In conventional multi-GPU systems, a bridged host interface (for example a peripheral component interface express (PCIE)) interface must share bandwidth between peer to peer traffic and host traffic. Traffic consists primarily of memory data transfers but may often include commands. FIG. 1 is a block diagram of a prior art system 100 that includes a root 102. A typical root 102 is a computer chipset, including a central processing unit (CPU), a host bridge 104, and two endpoints EP0 106a and EP1 106b. Endpoints are bus endpoints and can be various peripheral components, for example special purpose processors such as graphics processing units (GPUs). The root 102 is coupled to the bridge 104 by one or more buses to communicate with peripheral components. Some peripheral component endpoints (such as GPUs) require a relatively large amount of bandwidth on the bus because of the large amount of data involved in their functions. It would be desirable to provide an architecture that reduced the number of components and yet provided efficient data transfer between components.

Internal BUS bridge architecture and method in multi-processor systems


An electronic apparatus wherein, when a video camera is employed as a TV telephone or a portable telephone is employed as a TV telephone and when the direction of the display face of an LCD panel is directed (the display direction) is the opposite of that of a lens (the photographing direction), the image of an object photographed through the lens is displayed as the main picture on the LCD panel, and wherein, when the direction of the display face of the LCD panel is directed (the display direction) is the same as that of the lens (the photographing direction), an image transmitted by a communication partner is displayed as the main picture on the LCD panel.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an electronic apparatus that can transmit/receive image data and audio data, an image pickup apparatus such as a video camera, a portable communication apparatus including an image pickup unit, and an image display control method and a program therefor, all of which are appropriate for the implementation of a TV telephone function.
2. Related Background Art
Portable communication terminals on which cameras are mounted have recently been provided. Communication terminals of this are employed for the transmission to friends of e-mails including static images obtained by the cameras, or for images for the standby screens of the liquid crystal displays of the terminals.
Also proposed is a camera that employs a built-in communication function for providing data communication with the outside. FIG. 13 is a diagram showing an example of this type of camera, a video camera 301. The video camera 301 comprises: a lens 303, a liquid crystal display panel 304, on which is displayed an image obtained by the lens 303, a photographing/recording trigger button 305, a battery 306, an electronic viewfinder 307, a data communication unit 308, by which a radio communication function relative to an external system is implemented, and various manipulation units 309.
When a portable communication terminal having a built-in camera or video camera that can communicate with the outside is employed, a so-called TV telephone function for exchanging image data and audio data can be provided. In this case, the image of a user can be obtained by the built-in camera for portable communication terminal or by the video camera, and the data for the photograph can be transmitted to a communication partner, or an image received from the communication partner can be displayed either on the liquid crystal display of the portable communication terminal or on the liquid crystal display of the video camera.
However, when the TV telephone function is carried out by using the portable communication terminal or the video camera, the employability thus provided is not fully satisfactory. For example, when the TV telephone function is implemented by using the video camera 301 during a telephone call, merely an image received from the communication partner is displayed on the liquid crystal display panel 304. This configuration is satisfactory only when the user is photographed by the fixed video camera, and the obtained image is transmitted to the communication partner. However, when the image of a scene around the user or of surrounding persons is to be transmitted to the communication partner, the liquid crystal display panel 304 can not be employed for the adjustment and the framing of a photograph.


A water outlet valve structure for a water bag mouthpiece, which includes a mouthpiece, a threaded base disposed on one end of said mouthpiece, a blocking member disposed at one end of said threaded base, and a sleeve base disposed at one end of said blocking member; wherein said blocking member having a push bottom on one side, such that the sleeve base can displace when operating the push bottom from the outside in order to control the water releasing and water stopping functions. By means of the above structure, the user can easily use the mouthpiece to drink water from the water bag, and the mouthpiece can be fixed onto the water outlet valve more securely.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a water outlet valve of a water bag mouthpiece, more particularly to a water outlet valve of a water bag mouthpiece with water releasing and water stopping functions and also can be secured onto the water bag.
2. Description of the Related Art
A prior-art xe2x80x9cSoft type mouthpiece with water releasing and water stopping functionsxe2x80x9d of U.S. Pat. No. 6,085,947 is a soft type mouthpiece, comprising: a soft type mouthpiece having a water outlet at a front end, and a toothed tube portion at a rear end; a positioning seat having a toothed tube portion internally provided with an internal channel of a smaller diameter at one end, and a sectioned portion of a larger diameter, said sectioned portion having an inner wall provided with a leakage-proof flange and a depressed groove, said rear end of said mouthpiece being insertably secured on said toothed tube of said positioning seat; and a slidable sleeve having a ratchet tooth tube at one end, and an annular tube at the other end that can insert into said sectioned portion of said positioning seat, said annular tube having an annular wall provided with a positioning flange, a suitably indented slide groove at a rear end of said positioning flange, and an urging post at the center of a front end of said annular tube, the periphery of said urging post being hollowed out to form water slots; whereby said slidable sleeve is inserted into said sectioned portion of said positioning seat such that said urging post closes a gate, with said leakage-proof flange of said positioning seat retained in said slide groove of said slidable sleeve, said positioning flange of said slidable sleeve being retained in said depressed groove of said positioning seat as well, thereby changing the relative position of said positioning seat and said slidable sleeve to achieve water release or water stopping.
Although the aforementioned xe2x80x9cSoft type mouthpiece with water releasing and water stopping functionsxe2x80x9d can improve the prior-art xe2x80x9cMouthpiece structure of sports water bag xe2x80x9d, its operation still requires the user to suck or bite the soft sucking head since the sucking head is a soft type mouthpiece. Therefore, it requires a larger force from the user to bite the mouthpiece for the use, and the above prior-art structure still needs to be improved.
The primary objective of the present invention is to provide an easy-to-use water outlet valve for the users to drink water from the water bag and secure the mouthpiece onto the water outlet valve.
To make it easier for our examiner to understand the objective of the invention, its structure, innovative features, and performance, we use a preferred embodiment together with the attached drawings for the detailed description of the invention.
The foregoing object and summary provide only a brief introduction to the present invention. To filly appreciate these and other objects of the present invention as well as the invention itself, all of which will become apparent to those skilled in the art, the following detailed description of the invention and the claims should be read in conjunction with the accompanying drawings. Throughout the specification and drawings identical reference numerals refer to identical or similar parts.
Many other advantages and features of the present invention will become manifest to those versed in the art upon making reference to the detailed description and the accompanying sheets of drawings in which a preferred structural embodiment incorporating the principles of the present invention is shown by way of illustrative example.

Structure of a water outlet valve for water bag mouthpieces


A method, system and computer program product for developing a semantic network are disclosed. The system includes a server and a client computer, and the method involves: creating a semantic network containing at least one root concept; performing a set of instructions associated with the semantic network, the set of instructions comprising: transmitting information about the semantic network from the client computer to a server; providing information about at least one resource to the server, the at least one resource containing concepts and relations associated with the at least one root concept; receiving information about a modified semantic network from the server; presenting the information about the modified semantic network to a user; receiving a response from the user; based on the response, further modifying the semantic network. The system interactively modifies semantic networks in response to user feedback, and produces personal semantic networks and document use histories.

1. Field of Invention
The present invention relates to a post-Gutenberg reading experience and, in particular, to a method of generating a document representation, to a related computer program product and to a related system.
2. Description of Related Art
a. Introduction
The World Wide Web is having a profound impact on humankind. Because information in many forms from many sources is made instantaneously available around the world to anybody with an internet connection, our perceptions of space, time and knowledge are changing. The internet, as we all concede now, has profoundly changed the functioning of human societies across the world. At the center of this change is the democratization and globalization of information by way of electronic documents. In this regard, the internet of the mid-1990s is likened to the Gutenberg printing press of the Renaissance—a profound catalyst in the development of human thought and knowledge.
And the Web continues to evolve, from a strict separation of information producers and consumers that communicate with each other using simple wire and message protocols (HTTP/HTML) to communities of information prosumers that exchange information using application programming interfaces (APIs) known as Web Services. The current state of affairs, which is sometimes called the "read/write Web" or "Web 2.0", is characterized by the ever-present Web as a platform, data centrism, the use of XML/XML Schema as a standard for data exchange between machines, a plethora of collaboration models (Wikis, Folksonomies) and rich client technologies (AJAX, Microformats, RSS feeds, etc.). It is said that a "collective intelligence" is embedded in the Web, that "the growth of the Internet over the last several decades more closely resembles biological evolution than engineering".
b. "Drowning in Information, Starving for Knowledge"
However, the globalization and democratization of information enabled by the Web poses tremendous challenges for both individual and community. It is not just that the amount of information is overwhelming; it is also unstructured and cacophonous. Without a formalism that a machine can understand and without an assignment of semantics, information cannot be processed by a machine in any meaningful way, leaving Web users "drowning in information, starving for knowledge". The problem of information overload is quite insidious, and forces many people to rely on a remarkably small number of information sources as a coping mechanism.
c. Semantic Web
The goal of the Semantic Web is to enable machine understanding so that information becomes knowledge, that this knowledge is understood by both human and machine and that machines talking to machines enhance the human experience on the Web.
A first and far-reaching step towards the Semantic Web is the Resource Description Framework (RDF), an open standard recommended by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) as early as 1999, and revised in 2004. The purpose of RDF is to facilitate knowledge representation and information modeling via directed graphs. The result is that RDF has become an assertion semantic network, a product of artificial intelligence work in the 1980s. As such, RDF is a form of knowledge representation: it allows statements about web resources to be made. Statements take the form of a triple: subject-predicate-object, and every element in a statement references either a Uniform Resource Identifier (URI) or a literal.
RDF, replete with syntax but not semantics, is a necessary but not a sufficient condition for realizing the Semantic Web. Semantics requires the ability to model the real world, to formulate abstractions about entities and their relations. To assist in reaching this goal, the W3C recommended OWL (Web Ontology Language) in 2004. OWL is built upon RDF Schema, which in turn is expressed in RDF. There are three OWL variants: OWL Lite, OWL DL and OWL Full. The three variants provide for increasing expressiveness and commensurately decreasing computational completeness, respectively.
d. Semantic Web Inertia
While the Semantic Web has made great progress in some problem domains (medicine, bio-informatics, life sciences), and remains critical in many ways to data and system integration (grid computing, enterprise application integration), it has yet to obtain wide, popular acceptance. Lack of acceptance stems from the intrinsic difficulties of implementing the Semantic Web. In particular, the formulation and use of knowledge with respect to correctness, coherence and completeness is extremely hard for most people. Some argue that knowledge by nature is neither machine tractable nor fully amenable to deductive logic; that real-world knowledge can never be truly and fully captured; that striving towards correctness and completeness of semantics result in overly complex, poorly understood and ultimately counter-productive systems; that shared views are hard to create and that enforcing shared views does "more to debase semantics than create informative connections".
e. Limitations of Folksonomies
The folksonomies of Web 2.0 are not an answer to the inaccessible formalisms of the Semantic Web. Collaborative tagging or social classification provides metadata, but this metadata has few or no restrictions. So, while it may be true that "tags are causing context to explode", enabling more sophisticated searching, the dearth of rules means lack of structure and organization, sparse semantics, and little or no enablement of the machine's ability to understand.
f. Perspective Change
The crux of the problem distills to this: is there something between folksonomies (tag clouds) and ontologies (formal specifications of conceptualizations) that can help the user, with machine assistance, to function effectively against an overwhelming tide of information on the Web?
Without some sort of formalism, machine interaction is not possible; with too much formalism, human interaction dissipates. One way to decrease the demands of formal knowledge representation is to not insist on sharing knowledge while continuing to share information. Personal knowledge versus shared knowledge on the Web is a more tractable problem. This change in perspective reduces the criticality but does not obviate the need for formal knowledge representation or the utility of ontologies.
g. Personal Knowledge as Semantic Network
With respect to personal knowledge, an exceedingly simple, elegant and effective way to represent knowledge that is both human and machine understandable is a semantic network. A semantic network is a form of structured data, the data comprising concepts and relations between the concepts, e.g., in the form of concept-relation-concept (CRC) triples. Semantic networks per se (i.e. as a topic of research in the field of linguistics) are well known in the art.
"Semantic nets" were first invented for computers by Richard H. Richens of the Cambridge Language Research Unit in 1956. Concept maps, developed by Joseph D. Novak in the 1970s, attest to the appropriateness of semantic networks to human learning and understanding. John F. Sowa is credited with research on conceptual graphs and semantic networks as formal knowledge representation in the 1980s. On a technical level, RDF and Topic Maps (ISO/IEC 13250) have been public standards for the representation and interchange of knowledge as semantic networks since the late 1990s.
h. Patent Literature
U.S. Pat. No. 6,263,335, entitled "Information Extraction System and Method Using Concept-Relation-Concept (CRC) Triples" discloses an information extraction system that allows users to ask questions about documents in a database, and responds to queries by returning possibly relevant information which is extracted from the documents. In this context, concept-relation-concept triples are built from unstructured text.
US 2008/0133213, entitled "Method and System for Personal Information Extraction and Modeling with Fully Generalized Extraction Contexts", focuses on concept-based extraction and modeling in a way to concisely control both the terms that are being sought, and the context in which they are sought. The underlying principle hinges on the pairings of resource-context (R:C) and extractor-concept (X:K), such that X [extractor] is an algorithm that identifies the instances of K [concept] within C [context] in each resource r in a resource set R.
This has several direct consequences:
(i) The system requires an a priori model to start. A model is an unordered set of concepts, absent the notion of any root or starting concept. The user can manually generate a concept model, but better would be an import of a project with a previously defined model, meaning concepts and their corresponding extractors. At any time, a user can add, remove or modify concepts in a model, thereby creating a model of personal information.
(ii) The relationship between X and K in the underlying principle requires that X have some sort of a priori knowledge of K, in order for X to fulfill its goal of K identification. Managing more than one concept at a time requires that "boolean operations be used on extractors to create extraction patterns".
(iii) The basic modus operandi of the system requires the user to work with concepts in a serial manner when extracting (X) concept (K) relevant information from a corpus of documents (R:C). In order to identify all instances of many concepts at once in a document corpus, the user would be obliged to use a priori knowledge to combine extractors through "boolean operations".
(iv) The primacy of context (C) makes the overall application document (R) centric. This is apparent in the statement that one of the key objectives in the system is the identification of all instances of a concept within a document corpus. Hence, the document relates to both "a method for annotating a set of documents in a model of information" and "a method of determining a trigger phrase related to the set of documents and defining the set of concepts and corresponding extractors based on the trigger phrase."
In sum, the a priori requirements of this patent application publication US 2008/0133213 and its process of structuring unstructured text into a pre-defined model using a generalized technique, wielded by the user, appear similar in nature to the Message Understanding Conferences (MUC) on information extraction and template completion. This observation remains true for the case when there is no previously defined model and the application produces a suggestion list of noun phrases from the project's corpus of documents using conventional information extraction techniques (lexical parsing, N-gram analysis and the like).
i. Electronic Readers
Although we live in what has been called the "post-Gutenberg era", we have not yet created the tools which allow us to read electronic documents with any more efficiency than their paper counterparts. Indeed, the online reading experience is so inferior to the reading experience of printed material that many people print electronic documents that are more than two or three pages in length.
The problems associated with the online reading experience have spawned an industry of dedicated electronic readers. Most of these readers attempt to emulate the physicality of paper, especially with respect to layout, background lighting, font-size, etc. These readers also have rudimentary searching, annotation and navigation abilities. The latest reading devices exploit multi-media capabilities. Of course, many of these reading features can be implemented by software running on general computing devices. The e-reader, however, is designed to facilitate the human ergonomics of reading a book.
The e-reader emphasis on reading as a material activity is inherently limiting—it aspires to no more than what is achievable by paper. Such an approach remains rooted in a Gutenberg mindset, not at all appropriate in a post-Gutenberg world of information where hundreds if not thousands of relevant electronic documents are accessible with the right search request.
The online reading experience, therefore, is not only subject to form but also substance. It is the volume of information, often contradictory and incomplete, which challenges our conventional reading skills and habits. In effect, the more information that we are exposed to, the less we understand. It is the nature of being human, and not a machine, to have limited working memory and to experience diminishing returns with every new bit of information that we are exposed to.
Presently, there are no adequate post-Gutenberg tools, if any at all. An object of the present invention is to address the above shortcomings. It is an object of the present invention to use semantic networks to represent knowledge, most especially personal experience and knowledge, and that the availability of said knowledge facilitates human-machine collaboration, thereby changing how people interact with text, in whatever form.

Generating a document representation using semantic networks


An electrified mortise lock where the same method and articles can be used for electrifying the mortise locks of many manufacturers and styles. The electrified mortise lock includes a solenoid and a cradle. The cradle includes a frame for embracing the solenoid and cradle pins for fixing the solenoid to a housing.

1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates generally to electrified mortise locks and more particularly to an electrified mortise lock having a solenoid cradle for enabling the same solenoid to be fixed into the housings of a multiplicity of styles of mortise locks.
2. Description of the Prior Art
A mortise lock is a lock fitting into a mortise of a door or the like so that the lock is covered on both sides by door material. Electrified mortise locks are well known for door hardware and usually include a solenoid or a motor for locking or unlocking a handle. When the handle is locked, a mechanism in the mortise lock drives a latch outward to engage a door strike. When the solenoid or motor unlocks the handle, the handle can be turned in order to retract the latch so that the door can be pushed or pulled open. Typically, the latch can also be retracted with a key override that operates through the mechanism. A standard mortise lock has a width to fit into a one and one quarter inch wide mortise hole in the edge of the door. However, within this standard there are many manufacturers and styles of such locks.
There is a need by manufacturers, installers and users of non-electrified mortise locks to convert non-electrified locks into electrified locks. Unfortunately, to date the schemes for making such conversions have required expensive manufactured articles and machine operations. Moreover, each one of such schemes has been limited to one or only a few manufacturers and styles.
It is therefore an object of the present invention to provide a simple method and an inexpensive solenoid cradle for electrifying mortise door locks where the same method and cradle can be used for mortise locks of many manufacturers and styles.
Briefly, in a preferred embodiment, the present invention is an electrified mortise lock kit including a solenoid cradle and a solenoid. In another preferred embodiment, the present invention is an electrified mortise lock including the solenoid cradle and the solenoid of the kit; and a mechanism, a handle, a latch, and a housing. The solenoid cradle includes a frame for embracing the solenoid and cradle pins for fixing the frame, and thereby fixing the solenoid, in the housing. The solenoid includes an armature for engaging the solenoid to the mechanism for alternatively unlocking or locking the handle. The solenoid is end-for-end reversible without removing the cradle from the housing for providing fail secure or fail non-secure operation. The same solenoid and cradle is used with the mechanisms, latches and housings for many manufacturers and styles. Conversion of a non-electrified mortise lock to an electrified mortise lock requires removing parts of the mechanism not needed for electrified operation and using a simple hand drill for drilling cradle mounting holes in the housing.
These and other objects and advantages of the present invention will no doubt become obvious to those of ordinary skill in the art after having read the following detailed description of the preferred embodiments which are illustrated in the various figures.

Electrified mortise lock having a solenoid cradle


According to one embodiment, a magnetoresistive effect element includes: a nonmagnetic layer; a stacked structure body; and a detection layer. The stacked structure body is provided on the nonmagnetic layer. The stacked structure body includes: a reference layer; an oscillation layer; and an intermediate layer. The reference layer is provided on the nonmagnetic layer. A magnetization of the reference layer is fixed. The oscillation layer is provided on the reference layer. A magnetization of the oscillation layer is substantially parallel to the magnetization of the reference layer and is variable. The intermediate layer is provided between the reference layer and the oscillation layer. The detection layer is provided on the nonmagnetic layer apart from the stacked structure body.

A magnetoresistive effect element is used for a magnetic head (for example, an MR head; a magnetoresistive head). The MR head is mounted on a magnetic recording and reproducing apparatus, and reads information from a magnetic recording medium such as a hard disk drive. To enhance the performance (recording density) of the hard disk, a technology utilizing the spin accumulation effect is desired as a high resolution reproducing head. In the technology utilizing the spin accumulation effect, there is room for improvement of the deficiency in the output voltage and spin injection efficiency.

Magnetoresistive effect element with an oscillation layer


The systems and methods disclosed herein, in one aspect thereof, can encrypt and decrypt messages using a multivariate extended Clipped Hopfield neural network that uses a Diffie-Hellman like key exchange algorithm. The proposed cryptosystem comprises three stages that are involved in the communication. A first stage, where parameters are initialized and private keys are generated, a second stage where various base matrix pairs and threshold vectors are synchronized between the sender and the recipient, and a third stage, where encryption/decryption is performed.

Security issues in electronic communications have been very important in the information age. Public key cryptographies (PKC) such as RSA and ECC (elliptic curve cryptosystems) have been adopted as key components for internet security, and in particular, for e-commerce systems authentication (electronic signatures) and secure communications. The RSA and ECC are mainly constructed from the complexity of integer factorization and discrete logarithm respectively. Although no proof is known for their NP-completeness or NP-hardness, both cryptosystems are still believed to be hard to break using convention systems. However, quantum computers have re-defined what problems are computational tractable and intractable, which has posed a new challenge to the security of classical cryptosystems.
The above-described background is merely intended to provide an overview of contextual information regarding networks, and is not intended to be exhaustive. Additional context may become apparent upon review of one or more of the various non-limiting embodiments of the following detailed description.

Multivariate cryptography based on clipped hopfield neural network


The present disclosure discloses a method and a system for generating AR/VR content in real-time. The system upon receiving a user query or gestures, identifies query attributes and action attributes associated with IOT devices. Thereafter, system identifies IOT data corresponding to the query attributes and the action attributes from the IOT devices. Based on the IOT data, system generates multimedia content using trained machine learning model. The machine learning model is trained to provide multimedia content based on the IOT data associated with the query attributes or the action attributes. Thereafter, the system generates AR/VR content in real-time based on the multimedia content. In this manner, present disclosure supports interactive queries over AR/VR content and provides AR/VR content in real-time thereby reducing storage requirement for storing various images for interpolation.

At present, Internet of Things (IoTs) have become popular and finds a huge space in digital solutions. They predominantly capture snapshot of the environment that they are designed for and provide data for further processing. To strengthen the visualization of the system dynamics captured using the IoT data, Augmented Reality (AR) and Virtual Reality (VR) content are increasingly used.
However, there is a lack of query mechanism supported over the AR/VR content in the existing methods, as the content itself exists for a short while and is highly dynamic and contextual. Further, to render the content, different User Interface (UI) frames may be required which calls for large memory and complex system requiring multiple UI layouts. Further, there is a lack of a mechanism to generate a framework based on the data to be rendered or based on the IoT itself.
The information disclosed in this background of the disclosure section is only for enhancement of understanding of the general background of the invention and should not be taken as an acknowledgement or any form of suggestion that this information forms the prior art already known to a person skilled in the art.

Method and system for generating augmented reality (AR)/virtual reality (VR) content in real-time


A method and apparatus for separating mixtures of fluids having different densities. According to one aspect of the invention, a lower density fluid is separated from a higher density fluid. A mixture of the two fluids is received in a tank. A centrifugation of the mixture is induced in the tank. The lower density fluid is evacuated from the tank until the level of an interface created at least in part by the centrifugation between the higher density fluid and the lower density fluid reaches a predetermined threshold.

There is often a need to separate or retrieve fluids out of fluid mixtures. An important example is cleaning water contaminated by an oil spill. Typically, the fluids have different densities, and so it is common to separate the fluids by centrifugation.
In a centrifugal separator, the mixture is caused to swirl in a tank, referred to herein as "vortex flow." The heavier, higher density fluid is thrust outwardly against the sides of the tank with a greater force than the lighter, lower density fluid. The higher density fluid thereby accumulates at the periphery of the tank, while the lower density fluid accumulates at the center of the tank.
U.S. Pat. No. 3,743,095 provides a number of design considerations for centrifugal separators. The disclosed separator is oriented horizontally. Both the water outlet and the oil outlet are centrally located on the cylindrical axis, one outlet at one end of the tank and the other outlet at the other end of the tank. It is important to maintain the oil within a narrow central region of the tank by closely controlling the flow rate of the separated oil output from the device to ensure that it is equal to the flow rate of incoming oil in the oil/water mixture input to the device. This is due to the means used to ensure that water leaving the tank is not contaminated by the separated oil. Particularly, to prevent oil from re-mixing with the out-going water, a blocking disc is provided immediately in front of the water outlet, the blocking disc having a diameter that is less than the diameter of the water outlet but greater than or equal to the diameter of the cylindrical region in which the separated oil is contained.
As it is difficult to ensure that the flow rates of oil entering and leaving the tank are always equal, especially since the amount of oil entering the tank is not easily measured, the reference proposes recirculating the separated water back through the separator to improve separation. The criticality of controlling the flow of oil removed from the separator, and the requirement, to improve separation, to repeat the separation process by recirculating the separated water back through the separator, are distinct disadvantages of the system.
U.S. Pat. No. 2,180,811 proposes a centrifugal separator that is oriented vertically to take advantage of the force of gravity in providing vertical settling of the separated fluids. A lower outlet is provided at the bottom of the tank for removing the higher density fluid and an upper outlet is provided at the top of the tank for removing the lower density fluid. A valve is provided in the path of the outflow of higher density fluid from the lower outlet. The valve automatically opens to allow removal of the higher density fluid as the interface between the higher density fluid and the lower density fluid rises above a threshold; otherwise, the valve remains closed to ensure that the level of the higher density fluid will not fall below the prescribed threshold.
The '811 patent fails to explain why this control is believed to be advantageous. In any event, the valve cannot ensure that higher density fluid will not back up into the outlet provided for removing the lower density fluid. This could be a problem in situations where the lower density fluid must be stored. For example, when cleaning an oil spill in the open sea, the water may simply be pumped back into the sea but the oil must be stored on-board the ship where storage space and capacity is at a premium. The valve mechanism of the '811 patent is also undesirably complex.
Therefore, as the present inventor has recognized, there is a need for a method and apparatus for separating mixtures of fluids having different densities that provides for more simple, efficient, and effective separation than has been provided in the prior art.

Method and apparatus for separating fluids having different densities


The electric power system is provided with a main module 10 having a switching device 17, and a sub-module 20. The output-side of the sub-module 20 sub-reverse current protection diode 24 is connected to a connection point CP between the main module 10 main reverse current protection diode 14 and the switching device 17 to allow power to be supplied to the load from the sub-battery pack 21 through the sub-reverse current protection diode 24 and the switching device 17. The main module 10 main control circuit 13 controls the switching device 17 ON and OFF to supply power from both the main module 10 main battery pack 11 and the sub-module 20 sub-battery pack 21 to light an illumination source 3.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an electric power system that stores power generated from renewable energy in rechargeable batteries, and at night powers a source of illumination with the rechargeable batteries.
2. Description of the Related Art
A streetlight has been developed that charges rechargeable batteries via renewable energy and lights an illumination source with the charged batteries at night.
Refer to Japanese Laid-Open Patent Publication 2007-26962.

Modular electric power system with a renewable energy power generating apparatus


A flash memory array architecture. In one embodiment, a flash memory device comprises a first and second bank. Each bank has a pair of quadrants of memory cells. Each quadrant has a redundant fuse circuit to store operating parameters. Moreover, each redundant fuse circuit is coupled within an associated quadrant to reduce routing of signal lines. Each quadrant further has a sense amplifier circuit to read the memory cells.

This application claims priority to Italian Patent Application Serial No. RM2001A000516, filed Aug. 29, 2001, entitled xe2x80x9cFLASH MEMORY ARRAY ARCHITECTURE,xe2x80x9d and which is incorporated herein by reference.
The present invention relates generally to non-volatile memory devices and in particular the present invention relates to flash memory array architecture.
A flash memory is a type of non-volatile memory. That is, a flash memory is a type of memory that retains stored data without a periodic refresh of electricity. An important feature of a flash memory is that it can be erased in blocks instead of one byte at a time. Each erasable block of memory comprises a plurality of non-volatile memory cells (cells) arranged in rows and columns. Each cell is coupled to a word line, bit line and source line. In particular, a word line is coupled to a control gate of each cell in a row, a bit line is coupled to a drain of each cell in a column and the source line is coupled to a source of each cell in an erasable block. The cells are programmed and erased by manipulating the voltages on the word lines, bit lines and source lines.
Typically, flash memory integrated circuits include a primary or main array comprising a plurality of blocks of cells for storing external data and a secondary array of cells used to store operating parameters needed for operation of the flash memory. The types of data stored in the secondary array can include configuration bits to set the memory in a desired state at start up, engineering bits to store testing and manufacturing data, one time programmable (OTP) bits to store security and other customer data, trimming bits for the many analog functions of the memory, redundant bits to store memory addresses of defective rows and columns as well as redundancy columns and rows.
Traditionally, the secondary array is positioned along side the primary arrays in the integrated circuit in order to avoid discontinuities in the primary array. However, this type of architecture is quite cumbersome and requires the routing of many signal lines between the primary and secondary arrays. Moreover, interconnections in this architecture tend to waste a significant amount of silicon area as well as affect the overall speed of signals.
For the reasons stated above, and for other reasons stated below which will become apparent to those skilled in the art upon reading and understanding the present specification, there is a need in the art for a flash memory architecture that reduces the size of the flash memory without impacting the speed of the flash memory.
The above-mentioned problems with memory devices and other problems are addressed by the present invention and will be understood by reading and studying the following specification.
In one embodiment, a flash memory device is disclosed that includes a first and second bank. Each bank has a pair of quadrants of memory cells. Each quadrant further has a redundant fuse circuit to store operating parameters. Each redundant fuse circuit is coupled within an associated quadrant to reduce routing of signal lines. In addition, each quadrant has a sense amplifier circuit to read the memory cells.
In another embodiment, a non-volatile memory device comprises a memory array, a plurality of sense amplifiers, a plurality of data path circuitry and control circuitry. The memory array has two banks. Each bank has two quadrants of non-volatile memory cells. Moreover, each quadrant includes a plurality of non-volatile redundant fuses. There is a sense amplifier circuit for each quadrant of the memory array. The sense amplifier circuits are used to read the flash memory cells and the plurality of redundant fuses in each quadrant. Each of the data path circuitry is coupled to route data to and from each quadrant. The control circuitry is used to control memory operations to the memory array.
In another embodiment, a flash memory device comprises a first bank, a second bank and control circuitry. The first bank has a pair of quadrants of flash memory cells separated by a first row decoder circuit. The first row decode circuit is coupled to decode row address requests in the quadrants of the first bank. The second bank has a pair of quadrants of flash memory cells separated by a second row decoder circuit. The second row decoder circuit is coupled to decode row address requests in the quadrants of the second bank. Each quadrant is separated into individually erasable blocks of flash memory cells. Also included is a redundant fuse circuit for each quadrant. The redundant fuse circuit has a plurality of non-volatile redundant fuses that are used to store operating parameters that are used to operate an associated quadrant. A sense amplifier circuit is further included for each quadrant. Each sense amplifier circuit is coupled to read flash memory cells and non-volatile redundant fuses in the quadrants. In addition, there is a data path circuit for each quadrant to provide a data path to and from each quadrant. The control circuitry is used to control memory operations to the flash memory cells in the quadrants and the redundant fuses.
In another embodiment, a flash memory system comprises a memory array, a first and second row decoder, redundancy fuse circuits, sense amplifier circuits, data path circuitry, control circuitry and a processor. The memory array includes a first bank having a pair of quadrants of flash memory cells arranged in row and column fashion and a second bank having a pair of quadrants of flash memory cells arranged in row and column fashion. The first row decoder circuit is coupled to decode row address requests to the pair of quadrants in the first bank. The second row decoder circuit is coupled to decode row address requests to the pair of quadrants in the second bank. Each quadrant has a redundancy fuse circuit to store operating parameters. Moreover, each redundancy circuit is coupled within its associated quadrant to reduce routing of signals. A sense amplifier circuit is used for each quadrant. Each sense amplifier is coupled to read memory cells in its associated quadrant. A data path circuitry is used for each quadrant. The data path circuitry is used to transfer data to and from its associated quadrant. The control circuitry is used to control memory operations to the memory cells. The processor is coupled to provide external commands to the control circuitry and to receive and provide data to the data path circuitry.
A method of forming a flash memory comprising, separating a flash memory array into two banks of memory cells so the memory array can run two different memory operations concurrently, embedding redundant rows and redundant columns into each bank of the memory cells, embedding redundant fuse circuits to store operating parameters in the banks of memory cells to reduce the routing of signals and coupling sense amplifiers to the memory cells in the memory array and fuses in the redundant fuse circuit to read the memory cells and the operating parameters.
A method of operating a flash memory comprising, coupling regular columns of memory cells in a memory array into groups, wherein the columns within each group are selectively coupled to an associated sense amplifier, coupling redundant columns of memory cells embedded in the memory array into a redundant group, wherein the redundant columns in the redundant group are selectively coupled to a redundant sense amplifier and coupling an output of the redundant sense amplifier to a data path circuit to replace the output of a sense amplifier when an address request is to a defective column coupled to the sense amplifier.


A form-fitting, detachable component connection includes a first component and a male securing element that has at least two spheres which are arranged coaxially to one another and interconnected, or two spherical sections which are arranged coaxially to one another and interconnected. The male element protrudes from the first component. A second component is arranged such that the male securing element projects into a recess of the second component. The second component includes at least one blocking recess through which or into which a blocking element extends which bears against the male securing element from outside and form-fittingly engages between the spheres or the spherical sections thus opposing removal of the second component from the male securing element.

The present invention relates to a component connection having a first component, a male securing element which has at least two interconnected spheres which are disposed so as to be coaxial in relation to one another, or two interconnected spherical portions which are disposed so as to be coaxial in relation to one another, and which projects from the first component, and a second component, which is disposed such that the male securing element protrudes into a clearance of the second component.
A component connection of this type is disclosed in DE 10 2012 206 938 B3. There, a male securing element which is formed by two interconnected spheres and which protrudes through a through hole which is provided in a second component is welded onto a first component. A clip element which engages across the through hole and thus clamps together the two components is clipped onto the male securing element. In a component connection of this type the clip element has to be clipped onto the male securing element, which is formed by two or more spheres, using a minimum degree of force. In order for the clip element to be detached from the male securing element, a very high force may be required, depending on the exact construction of the clip element.
It is an object of the invention to provide a form-fitting, releasable component connection which is capable of being established using low assembly forces and capable of being disassembled using low disassembling forces and which in the assembled state has great strength.
This and other objects are achieved in accordance with embodiments of the invention.
The starting point for the invention is a form-fitting, releasable component connection having a first component from which a male securing element projects. The male securing element has at least two interconnected spheres which are disposed so as to be coaxial in relation to one another, or two interconnected spherical or spherically shaped portions which are disposed so as to be coaxial in relation to one another.
The first component and the male securing element may be manufactured from one and the same material or from different materials. For example, the first component may be a sheet-metal part, a plastics part, a wooden part or similar. The male securing element may be composed of steel, aluminum, plastics, wood or similar, for example.
Furthermore, the releasable component connection has a second component which is disposed such that the male securing element protrudes into a clearance recess of the second component.
The core of the invention lies in that the second component has at least one "blocking clearance" through which or into which a "blocking element" extends. In the assembled state, the blocking element bears from the outside on the male securing element and, specifically, in such a manner that it engages in a form-fitting manner between the spheres or the spherical or spherically shaped portions and, on account thereof, resists detachment of the second component from the male securing element. The blocking element thus has a function which is similar to that of a "cotter pin".
In order for a component connection of this type to be established, the second component may be placed onto the male securing element almost without force. Subsequently, the at least one blocking element is applied, that is to say introduced into the blocking clearance, likewise almost without force or with only a light joining force. In the assembled state a component connection of this type, on account of the form fit, withstands even very high detachment forces.
The male securing element having at least two spheres or at least two spherical or spherically shaped portions is preferably configured such that the at least two spheres or spherical or spherically shaped portions are directly interconnected. For example, they may be integrally interconnected or be welded, screwed, adhesively bonded or be interconnected in another way.
The male securing element may be connected to the first component in a materially integral manner. For example, the former may be connected to the first component by welding. Alternatively or complementarily thereto, the male securing element may be connected to the first component in a form-fitting manner, for example by screwing, riveting, clinching, etc. Alternatively thereto, the male securing element may be integrally connected to the first component. In the case of a plastics component, the male securing element may be, by way of example, injection-molded in one operational step together with the first component. Alternatively thereto, the male securing element may at least partially be injection-molded or laminated within the first component.
According to one refinement of the invention, the second component has a housing-type frame, wherein a passage or a through-hole, respectively, through which the blocking element is pushed through or into which the blocking element is inserted, respectively, is provided in a first wall of the frame.
It may be provided in particular that in each case one through hole through which or into which the blocking element extends is provided in two mutually opposite walls of the frame. The blocking element may have a blocking arm. Alternatively thereto, the blocking element could also have two or a plurality of blocking arms. In the case of a blocking element having two arms it may be provided that the two blocking arms from the outside bear on the securing element on two mutually opposite sides of the securing element and engage in a form-fitting manner between the spheres or spherical or spherically formed portions of the securing element.
The blocking element, or the arm or the arms of the blocking element, respectively, may be designed to be flexural. In particular, the blocking element may be configured to be a "bracket-type element". It may be manufactured from a round wire or from plastics, for example, or from another material. Alternatively thereto, the blocking element could also be manufactured from sheet metal in the form of a cut-and-bend part.
It may furthermore be provided that the blocking element has a portion which protrudes from the frame and at least partially brackets the frame. On account thereof, it is ensured that the blocking element is captively, or captively secured in a relative sense, respectively, in a force-fitting and/or form-fitting manner on the second component.
A component connection of this type may be employed in the most varied of technical fields, for example in the automotive industry, in the furniture industry, in the field of "white goods", etc. Accordingly, the first component may be a vehicle component, for example, a vehicle body component, for example, on which a wiring loom, for example, or another component may be secured by way of the second component.
Other objects, advantages and novel features of the present invention will become apparent from the following detailed description of one or more preferred embodiments when considered in conjunction with the accompanying drawings.

Bayerische Motoren Werke Aktiengesellschaft


A multiport pump and adapter kit for use with a water circulation system for a body of water includes a centrifugal pump assembly having a plurality of outlet ports oriented in different directions and at least one adapter having a first open end configured and dimensioned to be removably connectable to one of said outlet ports, a second open end configured and dimensioned to be removably connectable to a water circulation system, and a hollow body connecting the first open end and the second open end.

The present invention relates to multiport pump and adapter kits and, more particularly, to multiport pump and adapter kits for use in connection with water circulation systems for swimming pools, spas and other recreational bodies of water.
Numerous pumps have been developed in the past for use in connection with water circulation systems for swimming pools, spas, whirlpools and the like. A pump should adapt easily to the specific configuration of an existing water circulation system. For example, a return line of the water circulation system needs to be connected to a pump outlet having a position horizontally, vertically, or in any position therebetween. However, the outlets of many conventional pumps may not be compatible with the return lines of the wide variety of configurations of the water circulation systems on the market. Therefore, customers may be uncertain about whether one particular pump would correctly fit with a water circulation system. For example, in one situation, customers trying to utilize an exist water circulation system may have difficulty finding a compatible pump. In another situation, replacing one piece of broken equipment, for example, a pump, may require the customers to replace the entire filtration system due to compatibility issues.
Accordingly, there is a need for multiport pump and adapter kits which are universally compatible with different configurations of the water circulation systems.


The invention is in the field of automatic systems for electronic classification of objects which are characterized by electronic attributes. A device and a method for generating a classifier for automatically sorting objects, which are respectively characterized by electronic attributes, are provided, in particular a classifier for automatically sorting manufactured products into up-to-standard products and defective products, having a storage device for storing a set of electronic training data, which comprises a respective electronic attribute set for training objects, and having a processor device for processing the electronic training data, a dimension (d) being determined by the number of attributes in the respective electronic attribute set. The processor device has discretization means for automatically discretizing a function space (V), which is defined over the real numbers (Rd), into subspaces (VN, N=2, 3, . . . ) by means of a sparse grid technique and processing the electronic training data with the aid of a processor device.

The invention is in the field of automatic systems for electronic classification of objects which are characterized by electronic attributes.
Such systems are used, for example, in conjunction with the manufacture of products in large piece numbers. In the course of production of an industrial mass-produced product, sensor means are used for automatically acquiring various electronic data on the properties of the manufactured products in order, for example, to check the observance of specific quality criteria. This can involve, for example, the dimensions, the weight, the temperature or the material composition of the product. The acquired electronic data are to be used to detect defective products automatically, select them and subsequently appraise them manually. The first step in this process is for historical data on manufactured products, for example on the products produced in past manufacturing processes, to be stored electronically in a database. A database accessing means of a computer installation is used to feed the historical data in the course of a classification method to a processor device which uses the historical data to generate automatically characteristic profiles of the two quality classes xe2x80x9cProduct acceptablexe2x80x9d and xe2x80x9cProduct defectivexe2x80x9d and to store them in a classifier file. What is termed a classifier is formed automatically in this way with the aid of machine learning.
During the production process for manufacturing the products to be tested and/or classified, the electronic data supplied for each manufactured product by the sensors are evaluated in the online classification mode by an online classification device on the basis of the classifier file or the classifier, and the tested product is automatically assigned to one of the two quality classes. If the class xe2x80x9cProduct defectivexe2x80x9d is involved, the appropriate product is selected and sent for manual appraisal.
A substantial problem in the case of the classifiers described by the example is currently to be found in the large number of the acquired historical data. In the course of the comprehensive networking of computer-controlled production installations or other computer installations via the Internet and Intranets, as well as the corporate centralization of electronic data, an explosive growth is currently taking place in the electronic data stocks of companies. Many databases already contain millions and billions of customer and/or product data. The processing of large data stocks is therefore playing an ever greater role in all fields of data processing, not only in conjunction with the production process outlined above. On the one hand, the information, which can be derived automatically from historical data which are present in very large numbers, is xe2x80x9cmore valuablexe2x80x9d with regard to the formation of the classifier, since a large number of historical data are used to generate it automatically, while on the other hand there exists the problem of managing the number of historical data efficiently with regard to the time expended when constructing the classifier.
Known classification methods such as described, for example, in the printed publication U.S. Pat. No. 5,640,492 are based for the most part on decision trees or neural networks. Decision trees admittedly permit automatic classification over large electronic data volumes, but generally exhibit a low quality of classification, since they treat the attributes of the data separately and not in a multivariat fashion.
The best conventional classification methods such as backpropagation networks, radial basis functions or support vector machines can mostly be formulated as regularization networks. Regularization networks minimize an error functional which comprises a weighted sum of an approximation error term and of a smoothing operator. The known machine learning methods execute this minimization over the space of the data points, whose size is a function of the number of the acquired historical data, and are therefore suitable only for historical data records which are small- to medium-sized.
It is usually necessary in this case to solve the following problem of classification and/or regression. M data points exist in a d-dimensional space xi, i=1, . . . , M, xixcex5Rd. The data points are assigned function values: yi, i=1, . . . , M, yixcex5Rd (regression) or y1xcex5{xe2x88x921; +1} (classification). The training set is therefore yielded as S={(xi, yi)xcex5RdxR}i=1M. The following regularization problem now needs to be solved:
min R(ƒ) ƒxcex5Vxe2x80x83xe2x80x83(1)
with                                           R                                      (              f              )                                -                      xe2x80x83                                                        1              M                                                                  ∑                                  i                  =                  1                                M                                                          C                                                  (                                                            f                                                                    (                                                  x                          i                                                )                                                              ,                                          y                      i                                                        )                                                              +                      λxe2x88x85                                      (              f              )                                      ,                            (        2        )
where
C(x,y) is an error functional, for example C(x,y)=(xxe2x88x92y)2;
xcfx86(ƒ) is a smoothing operator, "PHgr"(f)=∥Pf∥22, for example Pf=∇f;
ƒ is a regression/classification function with the required smoothness properties for the operator P; and
xcex is a regularization parameter.
The classification function ƒ usually determined in this case as a weighted sum of ansatz functions "PHgr"i over the data points:                                           f            C                                          (            x            )                          =                              ∑                          i              =              1                        M                                                        α              i                                                                                ϕ                  i                                                                  (                  x                  )                                            .                                                          (        3        )
The known approach to a solution leads essentially to two problems: (i) because of the global nature of the ansatz functions "PHgr"i and the number of coefficients xcex1i (equal to the number M of data points), the solution to the regression problem is very time-consuming and sometimes impossible for larger data volumes, since it requires the use of matrices of size Mxc3x97M; (ii) the application of the classification function ƒc to new data records in the course of online classification is very time-consuming, since summing has to be carried out over all functions "PHgr"i(i=1, . . . , M).
It is the object of the invention to create a possibility to use automatic systems for the electronic classification of objects, which are characterized by electronic attributes, even for applications in which a very large number of data points are present.
The object is achieved according to the invention by means of the independent claims.
An essential idea which is covered by the invention consists in the application of the sparse grid technique. For this purpose, the function ƒ not generated in accordance with the formulation of (3) but a discretization of the space V is undertaken, VNxcex5V being a finitely dimensioned subspace of V, and N being a dimension of the subspace VN. The function ƒ is determined as                                           f            N                                          (            x            )                          =                              ∑                          i              =              1                        N                                                        α              i                                                                                ϕ                  i                                                                  (                  x                  )                                            .                                                          (        4        )
The regularization problem in the space VN determining ƒN is then:                                           R                                      (                              f                N                            )                                =                                                    1                M                                                                            ∑                                      i                    =                    1                                    M                                                                                (                                                                                f                          N                                                                                (                                                      x                            i                                                    )                                                                    -                                              y                        i                                                              )                                    2                                                      +                          λ                                                              "LeftDoubleBracketingBar"                                      Pf                    N                                    "RightDoubleBracketingBar"                                                  L                  2                                2                                                    ,
                                              with                                      xe2x80x83                                                  C                                            (                                  x                  ,                  y                                )                                              =                                                                      (                                      x                    -                    y                                    )                                2                                                          xe2x80x83                                          and                                            xe2x80x83                                                          φ                                                  (                  f                  )                                                      =                                                            "LeftDoubleBracketingBar"                  Pf                  "RightDoubleBracketingBar"                                2                2                            .                                                          (        5        )
By contrast with conventional methods, the sparse grid space is selected as subspace VN. This avoids the problems of the prior art. The number N of the coefficients xcex1i to be determined depends only on the discretization of the space V. The effort on the solution of (5) scales linearly with the number M of data points. Consequently, the method can be applied for data volumes of virtually any desired size. The classification function ƒN is built up only from N ansatz functions and can therefore be evaluated quickly in the application.
The essential advantage which the invention provides by comparison with the prior art consists in that the outlay for generating the classifier scales only linearly with the number of data points, and thus the classifier can be generated for electronic data volumes of virtually any desired size. A further advantage consists in the higher speed of application of the classifier to new data records, that is to say in the quick online classification.
The sparse grid classification method can also be used to evaluate customer, financial and corporate data.
Advantageous developments of the invention are disclosed in the dependent subclaims.

Device and method for generating a classifier for automatically sorting objects