The inventive concept disclosed comprises a storage grate for grills of the type typically used in outdoor barbecue grills and particularly, kamado-style grills. The device is essentially a one-piece rod having been bent and formed into specific angles and segments, thereby allowing the device to be attached onto an outdoor cooking grill or kamado-style charcoal cooking grill as is marketed by many commercial brands. The device serves the purpose of short-term or long-term retention and storage of the grill used in the cooking process prior to, or after use of the grill for cooking.

(1) Field of the Invention
The inventive concept herein relates to equipment, utensils, and accessories frequently used in outdoor cooking, particularly grilling, smoking, or barbequing of fresh meats or vegetables. The inventive concept herein generally is particularly suitable for the handling and storage of grill tops that are used over outdoor cooking equipment. Specifically, the preferred embodiment of the device described herein is a convenient grate device for retaining a grill near the apparatus which contains the heat source or combustible materials. The preferred embodiment of the grate disclosed herein is used in conjunction with kamado-style cooking grills with legs within or upon which the grate may be attached or inserted.
(2) Description of the Related Art, Including Information Disclosed Under 37 CFR 1.97 and 1.98
The following documents are illustrative of similar mechanisms used for outdoor cooking:
In U.S. Pat. No. 6,298,843 (Oct. 9, 2001) presented is an outdoor cooking apparatus including an elongate support assembly with a tubular member having a bore extending therethrough with elongate support assembly being adapted to penetrate the ground for above-ground extension. Also included is a grill support assembly having a cable being adjustably extended through the bore of the tubular member. The device further includes a grill assembly including a grill member being suspended above the ground by the cable.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,638,786 (Jan. 27, 1987) discloses a magnetic utensil-holder having a first ring with magnets therein that are placed on a cooking surface, such as a stove top or grill, surrounding a heat source. A second ring is spaced a predetermined distance above the first ring by a plurality of support means. A cooking utensil is placed inside of the holder and a plurality of adjustment means are adjusted until they contact the cooking utensil. The cooking utensil is thus held firmly on the cooking surface. Extension pins extend above the second ring to prevent pot lids from sliding off. Further, joinder bars co-act with the extension pins to fasten two such magnetic utensil-holders together.
U.S. Pat. No. 7,344,173 (Mar. 18, 2008) shows removable handles for use with a cooking utensil. In the preferred embodiment, the cooking utensil is a griddle which is intended for use on a grill to provide for the frying of foods. The removable handles are put into or out of engagement with a griddle, and have downwardly extending legs which elevate and support the griddle when placed on a flat surface. It is intended that the handles be removed from the griddle during the period of time that the griddle is used for cooking, such that the handles and leg supports always remain cook. Thus, when the food is cooked, the griddle can be removed from the grill using the handles without the use of oven mitts.

Grate device and method for storing a barbecue grill


A bonded structure including one or more substrates bonded together with a tackified amorphous poly-alpha-olefin adhesive composition. One method of making such a bonded structure is carried out by applying a tackified amorphous poly-alpha-olefin adhesive composition to one or more substrates at a temperature of about 170 degrees Celsius or lower, and joining the substrates to themselves or to one another. The bonded structure has a dynamic peel strength between about 400 and about 1000 grams per 25 millimeters. The bonding efficiency of the bonded structure renders the bonded structure suitable for incorporation into a variety of articles, including personal care products, health/medical products, and household/industrial product, for example.

Bonded structures are incorporated into a variety of articles, including personal care products, medical garments, and industrial workwear garments, for example. Also, quite often, one or more components of an article are adhesively bonded together. For example, adhesives have been used to bond individual layers of an absorbent article, such as a topsheet (also known as, for example, the body-side liner) and backsheet (also known as, for example, the outer cover), together. Adhesives are also used to bond discrete pieces, such as fasteners and leg elastics, to the article.
Styrene block copolymer adhesives are often used to bond various materials to create bonded structures. Amorphous poly-alpha-olefin adhesives have been shown to provide slightly improved bond strengths relative to styrene block copolymer adhesives, particularly when bonding polypropylene film substrates. While the bond strengths of styrene block copolymer adhesives and amorphous poly-alpha-olefin adhesives may be sufficient for some uses, bond failure remains a problem in a number of applications.
In personal care products, such as diapers, bond strength is particularly important in the waist region and around the leg openings. These areas of disposable garments are exposed to considerable tension while the garments are being applied to or removed from a wearer, as well as while the garment is in use on a wearer. Consequently, the bonded structures in the waist region and leg openings of such garments are highly susceptible to bond failure. If bond failure between a topsheet and a backsheet occurs in the waist region, in particular, there is a likelihood that absorbent material positioned between the topsheet and the backsheet may escape from the garment, thereby causing a mess.
Bonding efficiency of adhesives requires adequate product bonding while minimizing such concerns as adhesive bleed-through, roll-blocking, machine contamination, and susceptibility to substrate deformation with hot-melt adhesives. Balancing these factors along with other factors such as cost is difficult. Additionally, it is difficult to achieve a bonded structure having sufficient bond strength when the structure includes certain substrates, such as polyethylene substrates or other low-energy olefin-surfaced substrates.
Burn-through is another potential problem that may occur during lamination or bonding processes. Preventive steps for avoiding burn-through typically include process changes such as reducing the adhesive add-on level, adjusting the temperature, installing new adhesive nozzles, adjusting a nozzle distance, or other processing changes. While effective in reducing burn-through, a reduced adhesive amount can have negative consequences on bond strength, and other process changes can be unrealistic due to adhesive rheology, high capital expenditures or lengthy machine down time.
There is a need or desire for a bonded structure having sufficient bond strength, particularly when the bonded structure includes one or more low-energy olefin-surfaced substrates. There is a further need or desire for a bonded structure that possesses sufficient bond strength that can be formed with minimal or no burn-through and without requiring process changes. There is yet a further need or desire for a cost-efficient bonded structure having sufficient bond strength. There is still a further need or desire for a personal care garment including one or more bonded structures or bonded components having sufficient bond strength.


Domains can be used to secure resources of a cluster. An administrator can configure a node of a cluster as a member of a particular domain. Membership in a cluster can be restricted to nodes that are members of the particular domain. When a node generates a cluster message, a kernel process or operating system process of the node will indicate the domain(s) of the node in the cluster message. The cluster message can be a command message to read or write to a storage resource of the cluster. When the cluster storage resource node or node that controls the storage resource receives the command message, the node will examine the command message to ensure the message indicates a domain that aligns with the cluster. If the proper domain is indicated in the command message, then the command message is processed. Otherwise, the command message is denied.

Embodiments of the inventive subject matter generally relate to the field of computers, and, more particularly, to domain based cluster security.
A cluster is a group of logically connected machines in a networked environment. The connected machines or nodes share storage resources. The nodes of the cluster coordinate to deliver set of services to clients of the cluster. A single node of the cluster can operate as a server or multiple nodes of the cluster can operate as servers ("distributed cluster"). In addition, the cluster can provide a distributed operating system environment with a logical aggregation of operating systems.
An administrator can configure user registry security on a portal to protect a server from unauthorized users. The administrator can configure a stand-alone centralized database user registry or can add centralized database user registries and/or database user registries to the default federated repository. After configuring the user registry, the administrator can add realms for Virtual Portals or a look aside database to store attributes that cannot be stored in the centralized user registry.

International Business Machines Corporation


A diagnostic system and method and an interconnected laboratory system comprising clinical diagnostic systems are presented. The diagnostic system comprises a sample preparation module, a liquid chromatography (LC) separation module coupled to the sample preparation module via a sample preparation/LC interface, a mass spectrometer (MS) module coupled to the LC separation module via an LC/MS interface, and a result calculation module for identifying and/or quantifying analytes or substances of interest contained in the samples and passed through the LC separation and MS modules. The diagnostic system comprises a controller programmed to monitor operational parameters (1-n) indicative of a performance status of the diagnostic system, to trigger a quality control procedure and/or a maintenance procedure whenever one or more parameters (1-n) of the operational parameters (1-n) is out of specification, and to minimize the quality control and/or maintenance procedures as long as the operational parameters (1-n) remains within specification.

The present disclosure generally relates to a clinical diagnostic system and method that includes automated sample preparation, liquid chromatography and mass spectrometry as well as an interconnected laboratory system comprising a plurality of clinical diagnostic systems.
There is growing interest for the implementation of mass spectrometry and more specifically of liquid chromatography coupled to mass spectrometry in the clinical laboratory.
The use of mass spectrometry, however, may face regulatory challenges to be approved for clinical diagnostics. This is mostly because of lack of standardized procedures, except for a very few analytes, and because of the still large number of user dependent factors, e.g., due to a number of manual steps that are still conducted and the diversity of hardware components that may be used and combined and that play a role in delivering reliable and reproducible results of clinical relevance. In particular, sample preparation is typically a manual and tedious procedure. Protein precipitation with subsequent centrifugation is the most popular method to remove unwanted and potentially disturbing sample matrix. The use of kits may in part facilitate sample preparation that can be, at least in part, automated. Kits are however available only for a limited number of analytes of interest and the entire process from sample preparation, to separation and detection remains complex, requiring the attendance of highly trained laboratory personnel to run highly sophisticated instruments.
Also, typically, a batch approach is followed where a batch of samples prepared in advance under the same preparation conditions undergo consecutive separation runs under the same separation conditions. This approach however does not enable high throughput and is not flexible, e.g., does not allow re-scheduling (changing a pre-defined processing sequence) in view, for example, of incoming emergency samples that have higher priority and have to be processed first.
A system and an automated workflow that make use of LC coupled to mass spectrometry more convenient, easier to use and more reliable and therefore suitable for clinical diagnostics is disclosed e.g., in WO2017103180A1. In particular, high throughput, e.g., up to 100 samples/hour or more with random access sample preparation can be in principle obtained.
Despite automation, however, the effective throughput and usability of such a technically complex system and associated workflow, may be affected by the fact that a significant part of the operational time may have to be dedicated to the execution of quality control procedures such as e.g., referred to in the recent CLSI C62-A guideline, in order to make sure that, after an initial system suitability check, the system continues to operate according to specification. Whereas this practice may be acceptable for a batch-mode approach where e.g., only one analyte of interest at a time for several samples is measured and the same reagent or reagents are used, it becomes much more inefficient for a random access approach where processing of different samples and testing for different analytes may occur in a random sequence and where different reagents for preparing samples according to the type of sample and/or to the analytes of interest are used, meaning that a different quality control procedure for each different analyte/reagent and each sample/analyte specific workflow may be required.
Furthermore, after successful passing a quality control procedure, if any component of the system, e.g., any of the several components of the sample preparation module, of the liquid chromatography module, of the MS module, has a technical malfunction or failure, such a malfunction or failure can be often detected only when executing the next scheduled quality control procedure. As a consequence, all results obtained in between two quality control procedures may have to be flagged and/or rejected and the samples may have to be processed once again after successful elimination of the root cause and passing again the quality control procedure. For some samples, there might be not sufficient sample volume left to repeat the measurement, e.g., for sample from a newborn, or may be difficult or complicated and time consuming to return to an input position for repeating the entire process. Thus, a higher frequency of quality control procedures may be important in order to more frequently check the operational status of the system, while compromising sample processing throughput even further.
Therefore, there is a need for a clinical diagnostic system and method that are capable of ensuring analytical performance of the system without unnecessarily compromising sample processing throughput as well as identifying eventual malfunctions and failures in real time as they occur and, in some cases, even predicting them before they occur.

Automated clinical diagnostic system and method


Provided in the present invention are common resource-based data transmission method and device. A communication method according to the present invention comprises: acquiring common resource configuration information; determining, based on the common resource configuration information, an available resource for data transmission; and transmitting data based on the available resource. Another communication method according to the present invention comprises: determining common resource configuration information; sending to one or more terminals the common resource configuration information; and performing, based on the common resource configuration information, data transmission with a first terminal of the one or more terminals. The solutions provided in the present invention enable a terminal to transmit data with no signaling cost or a reduced required signaling cost.

In an existing Universal Mobile Telecommunication System (LUMTS) or Long Term Evolution (LTE) system, if a terminal is required to perform data transmission (for example, receiving or sending specific data of the terminal), it is necessary at first to establish a Radio Resource Control (RRC) signaling connection with a network to enter an RRC connected state and establish a dedicated data bearer. After the data is received or sent, the terminal is also required to coordinate with the network to execute an RRC connection release process.
It can be seen that, when a terminal is required to receive or send data, particularly when there is only a small amount of data required to be received or sent, a signaling overhead is relatively high, while if a large number of terminals are required to receive or send data, massive RRC signaling interactions may be generated in a network. All of these conditions may bring a heavy signaling burden to the network.
Therefore, there is a need for a solution capable of implementing data transmission of a terminal in a manner of avoiding or reducing a required signaling overhead.

This patent is subject to a terminal disclaimer.

Common resource-based data transmission method and device

GUANGDONG OPPO MOBILE TELECOMMUNICATIONS CORP., LTD.


The disclosed systems and methods aid advertisers in improving the calculation of the return on investment (ROI) for online marketing. The systems and methods allow advertisers to calculate the ROI of the online marketing of one or a plurality of advertisements by tracking the user identifier of the user devices used to interact with online marketing materials (e.g., online advertisement) and then, once a purchase is made, reconciling which marketing materials the customer interacted leading up to the purchase.

The present subject matter relates generally to systems and methods of online marketing. More specifically, the present invention relates to systems and methods of online marketing which aid in determining return on investment.
Determining the return on investment (ROI) for advertising and marketing costs is an important metric for every company to monitor. The proliferation of technology and people's ever increasing use of the Internet has meant an unprecedented increase in the number of opportunities for companies to present themselves to customers. Rather it is email, text messages, social media, or advertisements imbedded in streaming media or websites, and there are currently numerous routes a company may take to reach prospective customers. These numerous routes, while providing highly customizable marketing strategies, also present the possibility of increased advertising costs and decreased ROI due to ineffectual advertisements.
The methods for tracking receipt of and responses to advertisements used in prior systems have been addressed in a relatively inefficient manner. Typically, tracking of Internet-based advertising and user responses to the same is accomplished by redirecting a user's response. First, a connection is established with a tracking system that records the user's response to the URL of the selected advertisement or link, and then, the destination IP address URL is provided. If an advertisement placed on a website delivers a customer to a different website for purchase, there is no way for the website in which the advertisement s placed to know for sure what has happened once the user arrives at that buy site. Therefore, the website in which the advertisement is placed has no way to know for sure if it is being compensated properly. In addition, the customer may visit the buy site later, making a purchase that would not be linked to the advertisement placed on the other website.
Click through rate (CTR) is a common online marketing statistic that represents the percentage of people visiting a web page who access a particular advertisement. This statistic may or may not coincide with the ROI for a given ad, but can be used to highlight the assertion above about the possibility of ineffectual online advertisements. The current CTR across all advertisement formats and placements online is estimated to be around 0.06 percent. This means less than 1 click per 1000 views of a given advertisement. While some companies may find this number frustratingly low, some advertising formats such as media rich advertisements or those placed on social media may double or even triple the average CTR rate.
This increased CTR rate suggests what most already know, some advertising methods are more effective than others. The issue companies' face currently is that while they do know which advertising methods are the most effective in garnering consumer interest (based off CTR and other statistics), they are unable to determine which method(s) lead to the most sales. This ability, to determine information about what advertisements lead to the most sales, is difficult to evaluate currently because typically there is little to no information which ties a sale to a given advertisements.
Presently, customers who view Internet advertisements do so almost completely anonymously. Only the most basic information, such as an IP address or device identification number is typically recorded when a customer views an online ad. Presently, this information cannot be reconciled with a customer's contact information unless they willing provide it as part of the advertisement (e.g., filling out a form to obtain a quote on a product). This is a rarity and typically advertisers have no idea what, if any, advertisements were viewed by a customer prior to making a purchase.
As shown, there has been no effective system or method available to advertisers to assess which advertisements their customers view and which are ignored when making a purchase. Basic statistics such a click through rate (CTR) can be recorded and reported, but there is no way to know which of these click through interactions lead to a sale. Accordingly, there is a need for a method of online marketing which associates users who have made a purchase to the advertisement(s) that lead to that purchase in order to determine ROI.


Apparatus and methods for practicing telemedicine in the form of software systems acting over a network and kits containing laboratory supplies and equipment to organize the laboratory operations and interpret the results of molecular diagnostic testing are disclosed. At least two computers in communication over the Internet or other network are used, a remote computer located at a remote site and a central server located at a central site. The remote site may be geographically distant from the central site. A specimen is procured from a patient proximate to the remote site. Laboratory operations are conducted on the specimen at the remote site. The laboratory data resulting from the laboratory operations is interpreted by an expert reviewer who may be located at the central site, and a report is then transmitted back to the remote site.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to business methods and, more particularly, apparatus and methods to bring molecular diagnostic testing to remote sites.
2. Description of the Related Art
Samples of blood, tissue and biologic fluids are analyzed in the clinical laboratory for molecular, chemical and morphologic features that define both health and disease. Molecular diagnostic tests are now conducted in the clinical laboratory. These molecular diagnostic tests are based in sophisticated technologies that analyze the sequence of nucleic acid, DNA and RNA, as well as protein composition and structure. However, only a limited number of clinical laboratories have the facilities and the expertise to conduct and to interpret molecular diagnostic tests. Clinical laboratories having the capability of conducting molecular diagnostic tests are typically found in academic medical centers and in reference lab companies. Patients requiring a molecular diagnostic test would need to travel, perhaps a great distance, to a clinical laboratory having such capability so that the availability of molecular diagnostic tests is restricted. As a result, molecular diagnostic tests are used typically in the care of patients in tertiary care medical settings.

Apparatus and methods for medical testing


The present invention relates to a method of control of the Zebra Mussel from infestation of:. (a) waterworks by applying an effective amount of ozone to a fresh (raw) water system of the waterworks, PA1 (b) cooling system of power plants and industrial plants by applying an effective amount of ozone to the intake water of the system, and PA1 (c) industrial process water systems by supplying an effective amount of ozone to the intake water of the system.

Growths of sessile organisms such as mussels are of frequent occurrence on the walls of water pipes. Their presence is unwelcome mainly for two reasons: first because by reducing the effective bore of the pipe and increasing the roughness factor, they diminish the water carrying capacity of the system, and second, through setting up local differences in the state of oxidation on the inner surface they can be responsible for electro-corrosion of steel and cast-iron pipes. These consequences are responsible for much waste in the water supply industry in increased pumping costs, loss of water carrying and treatment capacity, in pipe cleaning, maintenance and replacement. Similarly, in the electrical power generation, the chemical, refinery and other industries they are responsible for diminished cooling capacity, lower production capacity and the more frequent cleaning maintenance and replacement.
The Zebra Mussel is dark brown or black in color, and often has a very pretty arrangement of brown and fawn stripes, hence its name of Zebra Mussel. It attaches itself to firm objects such as water pipes by up to 200 tough fibers of a dark horny material (the byssus) and usually leads a sessile existence. Frequently the mussels fix these lyssel threads to other mussels, thus forming clusters in open water, and layers of up to a foot or more on walls and pipes.
The earliest published reference to Dreissena polymorpha dates to the mid-eighteenth century when their presence in the northern Caspian Sea and the Ural River was described by Pallas. The mussel has since spread relentlessly throughout central and southern Europe and is making inroads in the southern portions of Scandinavia and eastward into Asia.
Dreissena polymorpha was unknown in the Laurentian Great Lakes prior to 1988 when substantial infestations were discovered in southeastern Lake St. Clair. Presumably, the mussels were introduced with ballast water discharged from the tanks of international shipping about two years earlier. They have spread throughout Lake Erie with phenomenal speed and reports of their presence at Green Bay, Wis. and Gary, Ind. on Lake Michigan imply that it is only a matter of time before all the Great Lakes and the adjacent Mississippi and Ohio River Basins are affected. With time, the threat may extend to every body of surface water in North America.
The explosive development of the mussel population in western Lake Erie has prompted dire predictions for the future. The number of animals per unit area promises to increase exponentially, especially during the years immediately following the initial infestation.
Various methods have been proposed for the removal of existing growth of the Zebra Mussel such as by scraping the mussels from mains and tanks. This method is not only slow and expensive but the greatest drawback is that it cannot be expected to remove every mussel from the pipe mains and cooling or heat exchange equipment. Moreover, it means that the pipe mains and other equipment cannot be in service during the treatment intended to remove the Zebra Mussel.
Chlorine has been proposed for the removal of the mussels and dosing of the water with up to 50 ppm chlorine as it flows through the main for periods upwards of two weeks has been shown to be a reliable method of control.
However, the use of chlorine for such purposes has certain obvious disadvantages since it is quite toxic to humans and animals and is corrosive to the operating equipment. It produces undesirable often toxic, even carcinogenic, chlorinated organic compounds in the water.
It would be highly desirable, therefore, if an improved process could be developed for controlling the infestation of the Zebra Mussel without the use of laborious time-consuming scraping or pigging operations or the use of materials which are toxic to humans and animals and are corrosive to the operating equipment.
It would also be highly desirable if an improved process could be developed that would permit the use of a non-toxic material that would effectively remove the Zebra Mussel from water pipes and other waterworks with a minimum of difficulty, time and expense.
It is, therefore, an object of the present invention to provide an improved process for controlling Zebra Mussel infestations with the use of a material which is non-toxic to humans and animals.
It is a further object of this invention to provide a novel process for removing infestations of the Zebra Mussel in water pipes and waterworks in the water cooled equipment, heat exchangers, condensers and piping of power plants, chemical plants and other industrial equipment that is efficient and relatively inexpensive and does not involve disruption of the water system to the consuming public.
These and other objects of the present invention are readily achieved by the process hereinafter described.

Method for controlling Zebra Mussel (Dreissena polymorpha)


The invention relates to a barcode marking method and apparatus for an electro-luminescence display device. According to the barcode marking method and apparatus for an electro-luminescence display device of the present invention includes, an information barcode is marked on the electro-luminescence display devices by using the ink jetted from the ink-jet head while moving at least any one of the stage and the ink-jet head.

1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to a barcode marking method for an electro-luminescence display device, and more particularly, to a barcode marking method and apparatus for an electro-luminescence display device capable of improving a production yield.
2. Description of the Related Art
Recently, there have been highlighted various flat panel display devices reduced in weight and bulk that is capable of eliminating disadvantages of a cathode ray tube (CRT). Such flat panel display devices include a liquid crystal display (LCD) device, a field emission display (FED) device, a plasma display panel (PDP), an electro-luminescence (EL) display and the like.
Among these, the EL display device is a spontaneous light-emitting device capable of light-emitting a phosphorous material by a re-combination of electrons with holes. The EL display device is generally classified into an inorganic EL device using an inorganic compound as the phosphorous material and an organic EL device using an organic compound as the phosphorous material. The EL display device has many advantages of a low voltage driving, a self-luminescence, a thin-thickness, a wide viewing angle, a fast response speed and a high contrast, etc. such that it can be highlighted into a post-generation display device.
Meanwhile, it is common that the EL display device has not any marks thereon, e.g., on its sectional surface, but it is current trend to mark an information barcode on the EL display device for the identification. According to the international organization for standardization ISO for, it is required that the information barcode should be marked on the sectional surface of the EL display device. Accordingly, in order to mark the information barcode on the sectional surface of the EL display device, there are employed several methods including a manual labor using a marking pen, a method of etching a substrate of the EL display device by a laser to directly mark the information barcode inside the EL display device, and a method of sticking a sticker having a printed information barcode on a rear surface of the EL display device.
However, the manual labor using the marking pen is applicable to a large-sized display device, but it is difficult to applicable to such a small-sized display device as an EL display device. Also, since the manual labor is manually performed, there is a problem that a production yield is deteriorated. The method of etching the substrate of the EL display device by the laser has a disadvantage that a repair of the EL display device is impossible when an information barcode is wrongly marked, or when a badness is occurred during the marking process of the information barcode. Further, the method of sticking the sticker having the printed information barcode on the rear surface of the EL display device has a disadvantage that the sticker is easily detached from the EL display device and the repair is impossible as the laser method.

Barcode marking method and apparatus for electro-luminescence display device


A system, method and computer program product are provided for producing an instance of a memory device from a banked memory architecture. The banked memory architecture specifies a maximum number of memory banks and a maximum number of rows per memory bank. The method comprises the step of receiving input parameters indicating a number of properties of the memory device, the properties comprising at least a number of rows R for the memory device. Thereafter, a degeneration process is performed on the banked memory architecture in order to produce the instance of a memory device having those properties. The degeneration process comprises the steps of: (i) selecting a number of memory banks B for the instance, where the number is an integer less than or equal to the maximum number of memory banks specified by the banked memory architecture, and B is not constrained to be a factor of R; and (ii) partitioning the number of rows R amongst the selected memory banks such that in each memory bank the number of rows in that memory bank is an integer less than or equal to the maximum number of rows per memory bank specified by the banked memory architecture. This has been found to provide a very flexible technique for producing instances from a banked memory architecture allowing fine granularity in the number of rows provided, which is particularly suitable for highly banked memory architectures.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to degeneration techniques for designing memory devices, and in particular to a method, computer readable medium and system for producing an instance of a memory device from a banked memory architecture using a degeneration technique.
2. Description of the Prior Art
There is a continuing trend for the storage requirements of memory devices to increase, as a result of which the size and complexity of those memory devices also tends to increase. However, the larger the memory device, the more power is likely to be consumed accessing it, and the slower the access is likely to be. In order to seek to improve the speed of access and reduce the power consumption, it is known to produce banked memory designs, where the memory device is arranged as a plurality of banks. As a result, accesses can be made to the individual banks, rather than to the memory device as a whole, thereby improving the speed of access and reducing the power consumption.
When designing banked memory devices, there are two general approaches that can be taken. In accordance with a first approach, the memory device can be custom designed for a particular implementation, which can lead to an efficient design. However, the disadvantage of such an approach is that there is little chance of re-using that design in different implementations and accordingly such an approach is costly. In accordance with an alternative approach, a banked memory architecture is developed, and then a memory compiler tool is used to create an instance (i.e. a particular instantiation) of that banked memory architecture to form the design of a required memory device having regard to some required properties of that memory device.
In producing an instance of a memory device from a specified banked memory architecture, the compiler tool may perform a degeneration process in which the rows in each bank can be degenerated in order to produce instances of the memory device containing less rows than the maximum possible. One such known degeneration process is illustrated schematically in FIG. 1. In accordance with the banked memory architecture illustrating in FIG. 1, four banks are provided, each pair of banks sharing peripheral logic 50, such peripheral logic consisting of column decoders, sense amp logic, control circuits, etc as will be understood by those skilled in the art. In accordance with the banked memory architecture to which FIG. 1 applies, it is assumed that the maximum number of rows per memory bank is 64, and accordingly the instance 10 represents the largest memory device that can be produced using the banked memory architecture. As shown in FIG. 1, the instance 10 consists of the four banks 12, 14, 16, 18, each bank containing 64 rows, and each pair of banks sharing peripheral logic 50.
However, the person using the compiler tool may indicate that they require less than that number of rows. Applying the degeneration process, this may result in the production of an instance having less than the maximum number of rows, for example the instance 20 where each of the four banks 22, 24, 26, 28 have 62 rows. However, in accordance with this known degeneration technique, the row degeneration in each bank is constrained to be the same, and accordingly there is no possible instance between the instance 10 and the instance 20. Similarly, the next smaller possibility following the instance 20 is the instance 30 where the four banks 32, 34, 36, 38 each have 60 rows therein. The minimum size possible will be dictated by the minimum allowable number of rows per bank, which may for example be eight rows per bank as shown by the instance 40 of FIG. 1 where each of the banks 42, 44, 46, 48 have eight rows.
Hence, whilst the maximum sized instance will provide 256 rows, the next available instance 20 will provide 248 rows. Accordingly, such an approach leads to a fairly coarse granularity between the available number of rows, as illustrated schematically by FIG. 2 which is a diagram illustrating delay as a function of size. The symbols a, b, c, d in FIG. 2 correspond to the four instances 10, 20, 30, 40 illustrated in FIG. 1. Considering instance 30, this provides 240 rows. If the person using the compiler wants to design a memory device having 240 rows, then instance 30 would be generated. However, if that person wishes to produce a memory device having 242 rows, then in accordance with this degeneration technique the instance 20 needs to be adopted, which as discussed earlier has 248 rows, i.e. six rows which are not necessary for the indicated device. As a result, from FIG. 2 it will be seen that due to the need to produce a memory device according to instance 20, the resultant jump in access delay is relatively coarse, potentially putting pressure on the designer to find a way of removing the need for the two additional rows, i.e. thereby enabling the instance 30 to be adopted.
Coupled with this problem, there is a continuing trend for memory architectures to become more highly banked, i.e. to include more and more banks, and from the above description of FIGS. 1 and 2 it will be appreciated that as more banks are included, the coarseness between the possible instances becomes even greater. Hence, considering the earlier example, the delay penalty resulting from the requirement for the two extra rows becomes even larger.
Additionally, it will be appreciated from FIG. 1 that as the memory device instance decreases in size, the efficiency of the resultant memory device is reduced due to the relative overhead of the peripheral logic 50. In particular, it can be seen that when adopting the instance 10 the peripheral logic 50 is shared between 128 rows, whilst when adopting the instance 40, the peripheral logic 50 is shared between 16 rows. Hence, the area required to produce a memory device according to the instance 40 is less efficient than the area required to produce the instance 10.
Accordingly, it would be desirable to provide an improved technique for producing instances of memory devices from a banked memory architecture.

Degeneration technique for designing memory devices


A method for determining bond integrity of a sealed package has a lid bonded to a container rim by detecting flaws in the bond between the lid and the container. The method comprises: i) positioning the container rim between an ultrasonic transmitter system and an ultrasonic receiver system; ii) ultrasonically coupling the transmitter system and the receiver system to the container rim; iii) transmitting ultrasound waves from the transmitter system through the container rim to the receiver system; iv) generating a signal representative of the ultrasound waves received by the receiver system; and v) analyzing the signal for predetermined signal characteristics representative of a flaw in the bond to identify a flawed package seal.

A variety of containers are used to package substances which are sensitive to air to ensure extended shelf-life of the contained product. The seal for the lid of the container must be complete to ensure viability of the contents. This is particularly important in the field of packaging food and other comestibles and medical products and the like. Containers, which are particularly sensitive to defects in container seal, are those containers where a lid is welded or glued to the container rim. Such types of containers are used for packaging a variety of food products, such as meal portions, pet foods, dairy products and the like, as well as liquids usually in the form of medications and cosmetics.
There are presently available a variety of techniques which may be used to test the integrity of the container seal to ensure extended shelf life of the contained product. Such testing procedures include application of a pressure differential to the container exterior and thereby ascertain whether or not there are leaks at the bond of the lid to the container. The pressure differential may be applied by either drawing a vacuum on or applying pressure to the container. This testing procedure only works with rigid or semi-rigid containers. Soft containers are either crushed or blowout. Container defects may also be determined by way of costly visual inspection which cannot check internal aspects of the seal. X-ray imaging may also be used, but is of questionable worth and does not work with aluminum laminates.
It has been suggested in the publication R and D, Selman, J. D. "On-Line Detection of Food Container Faults" February, 1987, that optical equipment could be used to provide measurement of the seam dimensions by use of fibre optics systems or lasers to detect seal faults. Thermo-imaging is another technique that may have application in determining flaws in the seal, but it has been found to be too insensitive. The thermal properties of trapped defects, such as meat fibres and bond line materials, are similar. It is also suggested in this reference that ultrasonics could be used to measure the internal seam bond structure of the lidded container. There is no discussion, however, in the reference of the manner in which ultrasonic testing equipment could be used in detecting flaws in the seal of the container.
Published U.K. patent application 2,029,960 (Mar. 26, 1980) discloses an ultrasonic testing device for testing claddings, solder joints, adhesive points other types of surface connections. The device is particularly suited for testing solder joints. A transmitting transducer is coupled to the bonded surface via coupling medium. On the other side of the bond, a receiving transducer is coupled via a coupling medium. Adaptors may be used to conform to the geometric shape of the bonded item. The received ultrasonic sound is converted into a signal which is displayed by the apparatus as a sound intensity. A drop in sound intensity indicates that the bond is not complete and hence faulty.
Langrock et al disclose in a report from the Central institute for Welding Technology of the DDR in Halle entitled "Possibilities of Testing Lap-Welded Joints in Thermoplastic Sealing Strips" that a reflective form of electrosonic tester unit would be useful in detecting faults in lap-joints of plastic material. Pulse wave forms generated by the testing equipment are analyzed to detect defects in the welded lap-joint of similar plastic materials. The pulse echo mode of operation is effective with this type of lap-joint in view of the thickness of the films which can be in excess of 1 to 2 mm. By analyzing the reflection of the ultrasonic energy, evaluation can be made in the uniformity of the lap-joint in the sealed plastic surfaces. However, the echo system would not be sufficiently sensitive to detect very fine defects in the joint, such as experienced in containers where meat fibers and other food fibers can be caught between the bond of the lid to the container which constitutes forming a defective seal. Compared to these thicknesses, the containers in question have a welded plastic thickness of only 15 .mu. with a total seam thickness of only 185 .mu..

Ultrasonic inspection of seal integrity of bond lines in sealed containers


A silicon substrate has area-selectively formed porous silicon in which porosity, pore size, and pore size distribution of a porous silicon region and a shape of the porous silicon are controlled. In a silicon forming method of immersing the silicon substrate coated with a mask layer having an opening area into a solution to which forming current is applied, and anodically forming a part of the silicon substrate from the opening area of the mask layer so as to form a porous silicon area in the silicon substrate, the forming current is increased according to degree of growth of the porous silicon such that the interface current density between a growing end part of the porous silicon and silicon substrate in the anodizing process may be substantially kept at constant.

This invention relates to a silicon (Si) substrate and a method of forming a silicon substrate. More specifically, the invention relates to a method for depositing a mask layer on a silicon substrate, so as to selectively form at least one kind of porous silicon regions in which porosity (P) and pore size (R) are controlled centering around a part from which said mask layer is partially removed, and to a method for forming a region in which an impurity is selectively doped in one of plural kinds of said porous silicon regions, and/or relates to a silicon substrate having a silicon dioxide region which is formed by oxidizing said porous silicon region.
Porous Silicon (hereinafter referred to as PS) is a substance in which infinite numbers of pores in nanometers are formed in silicon. The porous silicon is formed by anodic oxidation (hereinafter referred to as forming) of silicon in an electrolyte solution containing hydrogen fluoride (HF) acid. As to the porous silicon of this kind, its fundamental forming method and physical properties have been studied as a material which can be expected to be applied to various products.
Especially, as shown in FIG. 19A, in a method of whole surface forming in which the whole of one surface 3 of a silicon substrate 1 is anodically formed, HF acid concentration and forming current are uniformly distributed from the whole surface of the substrate. Even if the forming proceeds to an arbitrary thickness (d) of a PS layer, an interface area between porous silicon 120 (FIG. 19A) and the silicon substrate 1 is constant at all times. Consequently, forming conditions do not drastically change with forming depth (d). That is, even if the forming is continued at constant forming current 121 (FIG. 19B), HF acid concentration and PS/Si interface current density (I.D.C.) 122 (FIG. 19B) can be easily kept at constant. Accordingly, this method makes it possible to obtain porosity 131 (FIG. 19C) and pore size 132 (FIG. 19C) independent of the forming depth (d), and there have been reported a number of studies about it as an optimum method for studying a relationship between a porous silicon forming method and physical properties of the porous silicon. Among these studies, [1] R. Herino, G. Bomchil, K.Barla, C. Bertrand, and J. L. Ginoux, J.Electrochem. Soc. 134,1994(1987) state details of a relationship between forming conditions and physical properties of the porous silicon to be formed in the whole surface forming.
As to a method of depositing a mask layer on a silicon substrate, and anodizing the silicon substrate centering around an opening area of said mask layer so as to selectively form the porous silicon region (hereinafter this method is referred to as selective forming), there are following major documents [2] [5]: [2] P. Steiner and W. Lang, Thin Sold Films 255, 52 (1995), [3] K.Imai and H. Unno, IEEE Trans. Electron Devices ED31, 297 (1984), [4] V. P. Bondarenko, V. S. Varichenko, A. M. Dorofeev, N. M. Kazyuchits, V. A. Labunov, and V. F. Stel""makh, Tech. Phys. Lett. 19, 463 (1993), [5] V. P.Bondarenko, A. M. Dorofeev, and N. M. Kazuchits, Microelectronic Engineering 28, 447 (1995) and so on. The above documents [2] [5] introduce a method of the forming in a condition that the forming current is kept at constant.
The document [4] indicates that selectively formed PS is oxidized and employed for an optical waveguide. However, it does not give a detailed explanation of factors of change in a refractive index for confining light in the waveguide. Further, the document [5] indicates that an impurity can be doped into the selectively formed PS. However, it does not disclose a thought that an impurity is selectively doped into a specific PS region.
On the other hand, as to a known document for changing forming current with time in PS forming, [6] M. Berger et al. PCT/DE96/00913 discloses a method for it. Also, [7] A. Loni, L. T. Canham, M. G. Berger, R. Arens-Fischer, H. Munder, H. Luth, H. F. Arrand, and T. M. Benson, Thin Solid Film 279, 143 (1996) discloses a method for steeply changing continuous direct current in stages, thereby forming porous silicon in which porosity intermittently changes depending on current value.
The above prior arts [6] and [7] mainly disclose that the multilayer porous silicon having high porosity (60% or more) is formed and grown into an optical waveguide itself by employing the property that the refractive index of the porous silicon depends on the porosity, and disclose that the porous silicon is oxidized and the silicon dioxide which is not densified in a porous state, is grown into an optical waveguide. In the documents [6] and [7], forming current is changed with time and in stages, and kept at constant for a predetermined period.
As to documents mainly aiming at forming by pulse current, the following documents are given: [8] Xiao-yuan Hou, Hong-lei Fan, Lei Xu, Fu-long Zhang, Minquan Li, Ming-ren Yu, and Xun Wang, Tech. Phys. Lett., 68, 2323 (1996), and [9] L. V. Belyakov, D. N. Goryachev, and O. M. Sreseli, Tech. Phys. Lett. 22, 97 (1996). Both of the documents [8] and [9] compare an effect of the pulse current with that of continuous direct current in the whole surface forming of the silicon substrate. However, they disclose nothing about the selective forming.
Next, as to documents about oxidation of the porous silicon, there are following documents: [10] J. J. Yon, K. Balra, R. Herino, and G. Bomchil, J. Appl. Phys., 62, 1042 (1987), and [11] K. Balra, R. Herino, and G. Bomchil, J. Appl. Phys., 59, 439 (1986).
The above technical literatures [10] and [11] concern oxidation of porous silicon forming a whole surface, but do not concern selectively formed porous silicon. They emphasize the importance of porosity control because volume expansion and shrinkage caused by oxidation considerably depend on porosity. However, these documents state that the volume expansion caused by oxidation affects increase of thickness of a silicon dioxide film forming the whole surface even if the porosity is equal to or lower that the later-explained critical porosity.
All of the above-mentioned prior arts [1] [11] do not disclose a thought for designing porosity of the selectively formed porous silicon to be constant. The selective forming has following problems.
As shown in FIG. 17 for the later-described compared example, when the selective forming is carried out in the silicon substrate 1 (FIG. 17A) on which the mask layer 3 having an opening area 7 is deposited an interface area 111 (FIG. 17B) between the porous silicon 100 and silicon 1 changes (increases) as the forming proceeds. If the forming is carried out at constant forming current, interface current density 113 (FIG. 17C) in an interface 102 between porous silicon 100 and silicon 1 (FIG. 17D) relatively decreases as the forming proceeds. Accordingly, both of porosity 115 (FIG. 17D) and pore size of the porous silicon also decrease as the forming proceeds, wherein there is a problem that these values cannot be kept at constant. Further, in the selective forming, a limited condition that a supply route for HF in the forming solution, a supply route for forming current, and an escape route for anodic gas generated in the forming concentrate into the part 7 (FIG. 17A) from which said mask layer is removed cause problems.
In addition, various problems are caused by the volume change after oxidizing the porous silicon in the selective forming. Low porosity expands the volume after oxidation, and partially brings about inside stress on the PS/Si interface, which reduces the reliability of the applied devices. However, high porosity extremely shrink the volume after oxidation. If the porous silicon is applied to an optical waveguide and so on, the volume shrinkage makes it difficult to form the waveguide having a desirable shape. This invention makes it possible to minimize the volume expansion and shrinkage of the porous silicon after the oxidation by porosity control of the selectively-formed porous silicon, and besides, allows the selective doping of an impurity by pore size control.
This invention is made in the above-described background. First object of the present invention is to provide a silicon substrate having a porous silicon region in which porosity, pore size, pore size distribution and PS/Si interface shape are controlled into predetermined values in selective forming of the porous silicon region on one surface of the silicon substrate, and to provide methods for forming said silicon substrate. The first method is a method for directly forming porous silicon having any desired porosity, pore size and pore size distribution. The second method is a method for forming porous silicon having porosity, pore size and pore size distribution of specific values, and then partially oxidizing the formed porous silicon. The partial oxidation of the porous silicon expands the volume of the silicon according to degree of oxidation, so that a fraction of pore spaces decreases. That is, this increases the volume of solid parts consisting of silicon column and silicon dioxide in the porous silicon, and decreases pore size. On the other hand, if the oxide film is removed by dilute HF acid, the volume of solid parts is decreased, and pore size is increased. Employing combination of these effects, the method forms the porous silicon having any desired porosity, pore size and pore size distribution. Second object of the present invention is to provide a method of continuously forming plural kinds of porous silicon regions each of which has any desired porosity, pore size and pore size distribution. Third object of the present invention is to provide a method of selectively doping a desired impurity into a specified region of plural porous silicon regions, and provide a silicon substrate in which physical properties of the specified region are controlled. Fourth object of the present invention is to minimize the volume change of the porous silicon before and after oxidation, thereby providing a silicon substrate in which a surface of the formed silicon dioxide region is in the same plane as an original surface of the silicon substrate, and providing a forming method of said silicon substrate.
In order to achieve the above-mentioned objects, in a silicon substrate in which a silicon dioxide region is selectively formed in one surface, when depth of said silicon dioxide region is xe2x80x9cbxe2x80x9d, and difference between the surface of said silicon dioxide region and one surface of said silicon substrate is xe2x80x9cc+dxe2x80x9d, the value (c+d)/b is designed to be in a range of xc2x113%.
According to a silicon substrate in which a porous silicon region is selectively formed in one surface, porosity of said porous silicon region is designed to be from 52% to 65%.
Further, in a method of forming a silicon substrate wherein said silicon substrate which is clad by a mask layer having an opening area is immersed into a forming solution to which forming current is applied, and then a part of the silicon substrate is anodized from the opening area of the mask layer so as to selectively form a porous silicon region in the silicon substrate, the forming current is changed dependent on degree of growth of the porous silicon such that the interface current density between a growing end part of the porous silicon and silicon substrate in the anodic forming process may be substantially kept at constant.
Furthermore, in a method of forming a silicon substrate, the forming current is pulse current, and applying time per unit pulse and/or repeating time thereof are changed with growth of the porous silicon region.
Moreover, in a method of forming a silicon substrate, wherein said silicon substrate which is clad by a mask layer having an opening area is immersed into a forming solution to which forming current is applied, and then a part of the silicon substrate is anodically formed from the opening area of the mask layer so as to selectively form a porous silicon region in the silicon substrate, the porous silicon region is formed, following which, an oxide film is formed on the surface of said porous silicon region.

6-2-1, 7-Chome, Hikaridai, Seika-Cho, Souraku-Gun


The present disclosure presents various systems and methods for implementing a physical unclonable function device. One such method comprises providing an integrated circuit having a plurality of set/reset flip flop logic circuits, wherein each of the set/reset flip flop logic circuits enters a metastable state for a particular input sequence. The method includes varying circuit parameters for each of the plurality of set/reset flip flop logic circuits to account for manufacturing variations in the set/reset flip flop logic circuits and enable generating a stable but random output in response to the particular input sequence. Thus, by applying the particular input sequence to the integrated circuit, a unique identifier for the integrated circuit can be derived from an output response of the plurality of set/reset flip flop logic circuits.

Due to the horizontal business model and vertical disintegration of integrated (IC) design, most of ICs' manufacturing and testing of fabless design houses are performed in foreign foundries. In the heart of this design ecosystem, original intellectual property (IP) owners face several security challenges including overproduction, counterfeiting, authentication, and trust in manufactured products. Although cryptography algorithms have been put into practice to perform the authentication, they are difficult to upload due to recent attacks. Moreover, deployment of computationally intensive cryptographic algorithms in resource constrained IoT (Internet of Things) devices limit their wide adoption.
In contrast, among all the possible existence of security solutions, Physical Unclonable Function (PUF) acts as one-way function that can map certain stable inputs (challenges) to pre-specified outputs (responses). PUF utilizes inherent silicon variations such that if a similar design is manufactured onto two different dies, process variations would act differently within and across both dies and this forms the basis for a PUF. Ideally, a PUF implementation should be low cost, tamper-evident, unclonable, and reproducible. The PUF response also need to be invariant to environmental variations.

SR flip-flop based physical unclonable functions for hardware security


Systems and methods for designing and customizing tangible products are disclosed. Examples may include apparel, such as footwear, shirts, or sporting goods, athletic equipment and/or electronic devices, including but not limited to activity monitoring devices or media devices. Aspects relate to customizing products based on visual and tactile properties of the materials to be utilized in the design and construction of the product. Both the visual and tactile property selections may be displayed to the consumer to on an exemplary graphical representation of the product. Embodiments allow a user to select and review both visual and tactile properties of the product, thus the consumer is able to visualize and touch the materials of a customized product.

The present disclosure relates to an apparatus, system, method, and computer generated user interfaces for designing of (e.g., customization of) consumer products, such as articles of footwear, articles of apparel, athletic equipment (e.g., bags, gloves, watches, socks, uniforms, protective equipment, pads, team gear, etc.).
Recent years have ushered in dramatic advancements in electronic computing devices and their capabilities, including dramatic advances in the information readily available to such devices (e.g., over the internet or other networked connections) and communications capabilities between such devices. The present disclosure provides for an apparatus and system for designing and customizing products by users. While there are systems for customizing products, often virtual representations of products are merely overlays of simple color wheels over a product. Further, if users select a color for the virtual representation, its appearance will be based on the user's display device setting, lighting, and/or the settings of the capture device capturing the product and/or color to overlay. The display may also inaccurately show a texture or reflectivity of a material that does not accurately capture the actual material of a product or part of it.
The current disclosure is directed towards systems and methods to overcome one or more of the deficiencies above as well as others in the art.


A method of fast mode decision of an enhancement layer using a bitrate-distortion cost in an SVC encoder includes: calculating a bitrate-distortion cost for a current macro block of an enhancement layer and a bitrate-distortion cost for a previous macro-block of the current macro block of an enhancement layer based on an optimal motion mode and an motion vector for a macro block of a base layer of a current frame; correcting the bitrate-distortion cost for the previous macro block calculated at the calculating by a correction value for reflecting relationship with the previous frame to calculate a final bitrate-distortion cost for the previous macro block; and comparing the bitrate-distortion cost for the current macro block calculated at the calculating with the final bitrate-distortion cost calculated at the correcting and selecting a motion mode that will be removed from the current macro block according to the comparison result.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a method of fast mode decision of an enhancement layer using rate-distortion cost (RD cost) in an SVC encoder and an apparatus thereof, and in particular, to a method of fast mode decision of an enhancement layer using rate-distortion cost in an Scalable Video Coding (SVC) encoder capable of fast determining motion prediction in an enhancement layer without deteriorating image quality using a bitrate-distortion cost of a lower layer and a bitrate-distortion cost of a previous frame to perform fast video encoding and an apparatus thereof.
2. Description of the Related Art
In general, due to uncompressed digital data having a very large size, frame signals to be transmitted and stored need to be compressed. In other words, in order to minimize a bandwidth required to transmit digitally encoded video data, a video compression algorithm is applied to the digitally encoded video data.
A video compression technology according to the related art compresses a large capacity of video data under the assumption it is within a predetermined network bandwidth due to a limited operation environment of hardware, which does not consider a flexible network environment.
Therefore, in order to compress the video data to be used under the network environment where the bandwidth frequently varies, a new compression technology is needed. A scalable video codec algorithm was developed in order to solve the above problem.
However, the scalable video codec, which is an extended codec based on the currently and widely used H.264 (MPEG-4 AVC), provides three scalabilities associated with spatial, temporal, and image quality aspects, the complexity is significantly increased accordingly. Therefore, the complexity should be lowered in order to be applicable for various platform terminals or service applications.
As a result, the scalable video codec providing three scalabilities based on the complex algorithm of H.264 essentially performs a significantly complex operation as compared to H.264. The complex video codec cannot perform fast encoding at the user desired rate upon processing general video signals. Therefore, a method for effectively and fast encoding an algorithm without deteriorating image quality should be researched.

Method of fast mode decision of enhancement layer using rate-distortion cost in scalable video coding (SVC) encoder and apparatus thereof

Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute


A method for treating a neurodegenerative disease or an inflammatory disorder in a subject, comprising administering to the subject in need thereof, a compound, or a pharmaceutically acceptable salt thereof, of formula II:

PTEN-induced putative kinase 1 (Pink1) is a serine/threonine protein kinase encoded by the Pink1 gene. Pink1 functions in a critical important role for the maintenance of high quality mitochondria, through its effects on dynamics, function and the selective degradation of damaged mitochondria through mitophagy. Loss of function mutations in the Pink1 gene cause mitochondrial dysfunction and an early onset familial form of Parkinson's disease. Pink1 deficiency models in Drosophila and zebrafish, and the in vitro knockdown of Pink1, result in significant mitochondrial dysfunction including reduction of electron transport chain (ETC) function, defective mitochondrial dynamics, increased oxidative stress, altered mitophagy, and cell death.
Pink1 deficiency has also been shown to enhance release of inflammatory cytokines (including TNF-α, IL-1β, and IL-6) after injury in the brain, by an NF-κB-dependent mechanism. These inflammatory responses are more severe in Pink1-deficient mice than in control littermates, as determined by elevated mRNA levels of the pro-inflammatory cytokines TNF-α and IL-6 and decreased anti-inflammatory cytokines such as IL-10. These observations suggest that approaches that maintain or increase Pink1 protein concentrations in cells might provide important opportunities to preserve chemical energy stores during stress, limiting neurodegeneration, cell death and inflammation. Yet to date there are no chemical entities that increase Pink1 levels in cells.
Cellular protein abundance is highly regulated by the ubiquitin proteasome system that eliminates proteins by selective degradation. Ubiquitin conjugation to a target protein is orchestrated by an enzymatic cascade involving an E1 ubiquitin activating enzyme, an E2 ubiquitin conjugating enzyme, and an E3 ubiquitin ligase, generating an isopeptide bond between the C-terminus of ubiquitin and the substrate's ε-amino lysine. Of more than 1,000 E3 ligases, the Skp-Cullin1-F-box (SCF) type E3 ligase plays diverse roles in cancer, cell cycle progression, gene expression, and inflammation. The SCF complex contains a catalytic core consisting of Skp1, Cullin1, and Rbx1, and an adaptor receptor subunit F-box protein, which recruits substrates to the E3 catalytic core. F-box proteins are categorized into three families based on their substrate-binding motif. The L family F-box protein is characteristic of a leucine-rich repeat (LRR) motif; the W family contains a WD repeat motif; and the O family contains a variety of unknown motifs. Through these substrate binding motifs, the F-box protein recognizes and recruits substrates in a highly selective manner in response to specific stimuli in different tissues. However, only a few F box proteins are well characterized with regard to both their molecular behavior and impact in human biology. Interestingly, one F-box protein, Fbxo7, partakes in mitophagy in response to mitochondrial damage by interacting with Pink1. Further, mutations in the gene encoding Fbxo7 have been identified in families with Parkinson's disease similar to that caused by mutations in Pink1. In one study, Fbxo7 binds and targets neurotrophin receptor-interacting MAGE (NRAGE) to mediate its polyubiquitylation in cells thereby activating NF-κB activity in cells, underscoring a potential role for the F box protein in disease pathogenesis. Mice defective in Fbxo7 expression also exhibit hematological abnormalities. Taken together, the data suggest that the biological role of Fbxo7 is not well characterized and the functional consequences for Fbxo7 interaction with Pink1 requires further study.

Chemical inhibition of the E3 ligase subunit FBXO7 confers neuroprotection and anti-inflammatory activity by stabilizing mitochondria

Abstract: wherein each of R3-R7 is independently H, halogen, optionally-substituted alkyl, amino, alkoxy or hydroxy;    R8 is an optionally-substituted heterocycloalkyl; and    a is 0 to 3.

University of Pittsburgh—Of the Commonwealth System of Higher Education

The United States Government as represented by the Department of Veterans Affairs


Embodiments of the invention relate to handling failures in a cluster of computer resources. The resources are represented as nodes in a dependency graph in which some nodes are articulation points and the removal of any articulation point due to a resource failure results in a disconnected graph. The embodiments perform a failover when a resource corresponding to an articulation point fails. The failover is to a local resource if the failed resource does not affect all local resources. The failover is to a remote resource if no local resource can meet all resource requirements of the failed resource, and to a remote resource running in a degraded mode if the remote resource cannot meet all of the requirements.

Data centers generally rely on high-availability computer clusters, e.g., IBM High Availability Cluster Multi-Processing (HACMP) systems, to provide continuous computing services. High-availability computer clusters are networks of computers that are specially configured for the purpose of providing uninterrupted availability of computing resources in case of failures in one or more resources. These resources may include servers, networks interconnecting the servers, storage subsystems, storage area networks (SANs) and other hardware and software components supporting the operation of the cluster storage network switches, and server application programs. Computer clusters typically employ redundant components, e.g., server (nodes), networks, switches and data storage systems, that are set up to automatically switch over to a functioning component when a component of a similar type fails. The automatic switching to operational resources to provide uninterrupted services is referred to as a failover. The failover allows the cluster to continue providing the same computing services to hardware and software components that were receiving services from the failed component before the failure. Normally, when a computer hosting a particular application fails, the application will be unavailable to the users until the failed computer is serviced. A high-availability cluster avoids service interruption by monitoring for faults in the computers and networks, and immediately restarting the application on another computer in the cluster when it detects a fault without requiring administrative intervention.
In order to provide failover support, a data center typically employs a cluster management software component that closely manages resources and groups of resources in the cluster. The cluster management software component configures resources in a cluster before their operation and monitors their status and performance characteristics during the operation. In the event of a failure of a resource, the services provided by the failed resource are migrated to another cluster resource to continue supporting components and applications receiving the services. Typically, resources and resource groups are transferred to a surviving computing node without regard for whether or not that action will resolve the issue that caused the failover in the first place.
In geographically separated clusters, an efficient failover process becomes more significant when both local and remote components are involved in a failover and affect the effectiveness of the failover. Most geo-cluster configurations will first try to failover resource groups locally. Only in the case of local failure of a resource group that the resource group is geographically migrated to the remote site. Since each resource group failover causes the resource group to be stopped and restarted on the node to which it is migrated, application downtime results for each attempt at resource group failover. Obviously, minimizing the number of failover attempts reduces the total application outage.

High-availability computer cluster with failover support based on a resource map


A method for communication transmission includes the steps of: performing sub-frame transmission in accordance with a first communication standard and pausing sub-frame transmission in accordance with a second communication standard in a first communication period; performing a sub-frame uplink operation in accordance with the second communication standard and pausing a sub-frame uplink operation in accordance with the first communication standard in a second communication period; and performing a sub-frame downlink operation in accordance with the second communication standard and pausing a sub-frame downlink operation in accordance with the first communication standard in a third communication period. The transmission band of the first communication standard overlaps, at least partially, the transmission band of the second communication standard.

1. Field of the Invention
The disclosure relates to a wireless communication system, and particularly to a method for coexistence of different wireless communication systems.
2. Description of Related Art Including Information Disclosed Under 37 CFR 1.97 and 37 CFR 1.98
The current Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) 802.16e standard known as WiMax is one kind of wireless metropolitan area network (Wireless-MAN). The IEEE 802.16e standard uses an orthogonal frequency division multiple access (OFDMA) system in its physical layer, has a bandwidth between 1.25 MHz and 20 MHz, and comprises at most 2048 sub-carriers.
The long term evolution (LTE) standard implemented by the third generation partnership project (3GPP) also uses the OFDMA system in its physical layer, and has a bandwidth between 1.4 MHz and 20 MHz. The two aforementioned standards both use the same wireless access system and similar bandwidths. Therefore, an interference issue may occur due to the overlapped channels of these two standards.
FIG. 1 shows a schematic view of a wireless communication system using the IEEE 802.16e standard and the LTE standard. As shown in FIG. 1, the base station BS1 applies the IEEE 802.16e standard, and the base station BS2 applies the LTE standard. The mobile station MS1 is located within the communication range of the base station BS1 but not within the communication range of the base station BS2. The mobile station MS2 is located within the communication range of the base station BS2 but not within the communication range of the base station BS1. Therefore, mobile stations MS1 and MS2 can communicate with base stations BS1 and BS2 respectively without interference between two standards. However, the mobile station MS3 is located within the communication range of the base stations BS1 and BS2, and it may interfere with others or be interfered.
FIG. 2 shows bandwidths of the wireless communication system shown in FIG. 1. As shown in FIG. 2, the base station BS1 uses bandwidth BW1 as its transmission bandwidth, and base station BS2 uses bandwidth BW2 as its transmission bandwidth. In addition, the bandwidth BW1 partially overlaps the bandwidth BW2. Therefore, the mobile station MS3 may interfere with others or be interfered during operation.
With the development of mobile communication systems, the trend of the coexistence of different wireless communication systems is inevitable. Accordingly, there is a need for a method for coexistence of different wireless communication systems; such a method can effectively reduce the interference caused by coexistence of different wireless communication systems. The disclosure provides such a method.

Industrial Technology Research Institute


A single-fiber bidirectional optical transceiver module of the same wavelength. A sub-wavelength grating and a Faraday rotator are used, and the same element is reused to implement a polarization multiplex/de-multiplex function, so as to implement transmission and receiving of an optical signal in a small space. The single-fiber bidirectional optical transceiver module has less optical elements, a compact structure, and low cost, meeting the needs on a miniaturized, integrated, and high speed optical transceiver module for a modern optical communication system.

High-speed data transmission is the foundation of modern information society, the requirement of the data capacity that transmits in a fiber gets bigger and bigger with the massive growth of the amount of information. In addition to increasing modulation rate and using more wavelengths, bidirectional transmission in one optical fiber, which use the bidirectional optical transceiver module with low cost, can double the data transmission capacity in one fiber, this is an effective and adopted method in the optical communication industry.
In addition, the accuracy requirement of clock synchronization for modern communication network increase highly. The traditional optical transceiver module transmits and receives the optical signals by using two optical fibers, respectively, the length of the two optical fibers in the practical application will cause the propagation delay of the two signals inconformity, which causes huge difficulty to the clock synchronization. The use of single optical fiber bidirectional transmission can meet the accuracy requirement of the clock synchronization.
The generally adopted single-fiber bidirectional optical transceiver module scheme is as shown in FIG. 1. The transmission and receiving modules of the optical transceiver modules (102) and (103) have different configuration, such as the transmitting wavelength of the optical transceiver module (102) is λ1, and the receiving wavelength is λ2; the transmitting wavelength of the optical transceiver module (103) is λ2, and the receiving wavelength is 1. The wavelength filters (104) and (105) in the optical transceiver modules (102) and (103) have different optical filter properties, such as the wavelength filter (104) transmits λ1, and reflects λ2; wavelength filter (105) transmits λ2, and reflects λ1.
It can be seen that the single-fiber bidirectional transmission with dual-wavelength scheme in the existing technology shown in FIG. 1 needs to prepare two different types of optical transceiver module to be paired in the practical application. This is not only increase the inventory pressure, but also increase a certain difficulty in field deployment. Besides, due to the effect of the dispersion, the two different wavelengths also have a certain delay inequality even being transmitted in the same optical fiber, which can not meet the demand for high accuracy of clock synchronization in the application scenario.
Using the same wavelength in the bidirectional transmission of the same optical fiber is the way to solve the problems. In the existing technical solution as shown in FIG. 2 (Chinese Patent Application No. 201110282629.6), the transmitting and receiving of the optical transceiver modules (202) and (203) of the optical fiber ends adopt the same wavelength λ, and use the beam splitters (204) and (205) to replace the wavelength filter in scheme 1. The function of the beam splitter is partially reflecting and partially transmitting the optical signal that incident on it, the splitting ratio is usually 50% to 50%. The redundant reflected light generated by the beam splitter (204) and (205) is absorbed by the black light absorption body (206) and (207), which can avoid the crosstalk to the system. Thus, the optical transceiver module (202) and (203) of the optical fiber ends are the same, and no need to be paired.
The existing technology shown in FIG. 2 has a significant deficiency, that is the beam splitter (204) and (205) can produce a total of 6 dB link loss. And in many applications, the extra 6 dB loss is unacceptable.
To avoid the extra loss problem of the technical solution shown in FIG. 2, Chinese Patent Application 201110373606.6 disclosures a technical solution, as shown in FIG. 3. The technical solution adopts a set of optical elements (303) to (310), which enable the transmitting and receiving of the same wavelength. Specifically, the optical signal inputted to the input/output end (302) of the optical transceiver module (300) transmitted from the optical fiber (301) usually contains the first and the second polarization-states (using "|" and "⋅"), after passing through the first polarization beam splitter (303), two polarization-states separates; the optical signal of the first polarization-state arrives at the optical receiver (312) after passing through the Faraday rotator (305), half wave plate (307), the second polarization beam splitter (308), half wave plate (309) and the third polarization beam splitter (310); and the optical signal of the second polarization-state arrives at the optical receiver (312) after passing through the mirror (304) and the third polarization beam splitter (310).
The optical signal emitted from the optical transmitter (311) is with the first polarization-state ("|"), which arrives at the input/output end (302) after passing though the second polarization beam splitter (308), half wave plate (307), Faraday rotator (305) and the first polarization beam splitter (303).
Magnetic ring provides the magnetic field required by the Faraday rotator (305).
The technical solution shown in FIG. 3 enable the single-fiber bidirectional transmission of the same wavelength, which avoids the excessive power loss. However, the technical solution adopts overmuch optical element, which increases the cost; and two polarization-state transmission paths have larger separation in space, which also causes the volume difficult to further reducing. U.S. Pat. No. 7,039,278B1) also discourses the similar structure in scheme as shown in FIG. 3, which has the same problems of the volume and cost.
U.S. Pat. No. 7,039,278B1) further discourses a relatively compact structure, as shown in FIG. 4. The inputted optical signal of the transceiver module's (400) input/output end (401) incident on the first polarization beam splitter (403) after collimating by the first collimating lens (402), and disintegrating into the first polarization-state optical signal and the second polarization-state optical signal that are perpendicular to each other, and the second polarization-state optical signal is reflected by the second polarization beam splitter (403), and then reflected by the group of a ¼ wave plate (404) and a mirror (405), and the polarization-state rotates 90-degree, transmitting through the first polarization beam splitter (403), and passing through the second collimating lens (406), converging and getting to the optical detector (407), and receiving it.
The disintegrated first polarization-state optical signal by the first polarization beam splitter (403) transmitting through the first polarization beam splitter (403) rotates 90-degree after passing through the ½ wave plate (408) and the Faraday rotator (409), and reflected to the mirror (411) on the second polarization beam splitter (410), which reflected by the mirror (411) and the second polarization beam splitter (410) again, passing the Faraday rotator (409) and the ½ wave plate (408) in reverse direction, for the non-reciprocity of the Faraday rotator (409), the returned optical signal is perpendicular to the polarization-state of the first polarization-state optical signal, thus reflected by the first polarization beam splitter (403), and through the second collimating lens (406), converging and getting to the optical detector (407), and receiving it.
The outputted optical signal emitted form the laser chip (413) has the single polarization-state, after becoming the collimated beam through the third collimating lens (412), transmitting through the second polarization beam splitter (410), and through the Faraday rotator (409) and ½ wave plate (408), the polarization-state keeps the same, and further transmitting through the second polarization beam splitter (403), outputting to the input/output end that focuses through the first collimating lens (402).
The above scheme still uses a plurality of optical elements, causing big volume and high cost, and assembly difficulty. Furthermore, compared with the second polarization-state optical signal, the first polarization-state optical signal propagate back and forth through the second polarization beam splitter twice more, and the time of getting to the optical detector (407) has difference, causing a great polarization mode dispersion. The polarization mode dispersion depends on the size and refractive index of the second polarization beam splitter, if the refractive index is 1.5, even with the smallest size of 1 mm, the generated polarization mode dispersion will be about 10 ps, which is not suitable for high speed signal receiving (more than 10 G).
US Patent Application US20140054657, US20080042050 and the above U.S. Pat. No. 7,039,278B1 also revealed using a pair of birefringent crystals, inserting half wave plate and a Faraday rotator in the middle to separate the transmitting and receiving channels, however, the basic limitation is the distance of the transmitting and receiving channels is in direct proportion to the length of the birefringent crystals, to make the position of the transmitting and receiving channels having enough separation, the length of the optical element is close to 10 mm.
U.S. Pat. No. 7,039,278B1 also revealed using a pair of birefringent crystals wedge, adding the Faraday rotator in the middle, which can separate the transmitting and receiving channels in the form of angle separation, and use an optical lens to transform the angle separation into the location separation for the transmitting laser and optical detector. However, the scheme needs integrated transmitting and receiving chip, the process isn't easy to realize and the cost is high. Besides, the transmitting and receiving chip are too close, the reflected light from the lens surface, which is originally emitted from the transmitting laser chip, can easily get into the optical detector; for the power of optical signal emitted from the transmitting laser chip is very high, so even a small reflection will produce unacceptable crosstalk to the receiving end.
In conclusion, the existing single-fiber bidirectional transmission solution with the same wavelength has the lack of performance, size, and cost more or less, therefore, a new technology of low cost without larger crosstalk and loss, and small sized single-fiber bidirectional optical transceiver module with the same wavelength is needed. Particularly, if the geometric structure and size provided by the new technology is compatible with the existing technology shown in FIG. 1, which can maximally use the existing platform, significantly lower the cost, and share the simple and convenient of communication system bring by the technology of single-fiber bidirectional with dual-wavelength.

Micro single-fiber bidirectional optical transceiver module of the same wavelength

XUZHOU XUHAI OPTO-ELECTRONIC TECHNOLOGIES CO., LTD.


A method and apparatus for manufacturing wings includes a fixture that holds wing panels for drilling and edge trimming by accurate numerically controlled machine tools using original numerical part definition records, utilizing spatial relationships between key features of detail parts or subassemblies as represented by coordination features machined into the parts and subassemblies, thereby making the parts and subassemblies intrinsically determinant of the dimensions and contour of the wing. Spars are attached to the wing panel using the coordination holes to locate the spars accurately on the panel in accordance with the original engineering design, and in-spar ribs are attached to rib posts on the spar using accurately drilled coordination holes in the ends of the rib and in the rib post. The wing contour is determined by the configuration of the spars and ribs rather than by any conventional hard tooling which determines the wing contour in conventional processes.

Conventional manufacturing techniques for assembling components and subassemblies to produce airplane wings to a specified contour rely on fixtured "hardpoint" tooling techniques utilizing floor assembly jigs and templates to locate and temporarily fasten detailed structural parts together to locate the parts correctly relative to one another. This traditional tooling concept usually requires primary assembly tools for each subassembly produced, and two large wing major assembly tools (left and right) for final assembly of the subassemblies into a completed wing. Assembly tooling is intended to accurately reflect the original engineering design of the product, but there are many steps between the original design of the product and the final manufacture of the tool, so it is not unusual that the tool as finally manufactured produces missized wings or wing components that would be outside of the dimensional tolerances of the original wing or wing component design unless extensive, time consuming and costly hand work is applied to correct the tooling-induced errors. More seriously, a tool that was originally built within tolerance can distort out of tolerance from the hard use it typically receives in the factory. Moreover, dimensional variations caused by temperature changes in the factory can produce a variation in the final part dimensions as produced on the tool, particularly when a large difference in the coefficient of thermal expansion exists between the tooling material and the wing material, as in the usual case where the tooling is made of steel and the wing components are made of aluminum or titanium. Since dimensions in airplane construction are often controlled to within 0.005″, temperature induced dimensional variations can be significant.
Hand drilling of the part on the tool can produce holes that are not perfectly round or normal to the part surface when the drill is presented to the part at an angle that is slightly nonperpendicular to the part, and also when the drill is plunged into the part with a motion that is not perfectly linear. Parts can shift out of their intended position when they are fastened in non-round holes, and the nonuniform hole-to-fastener interference in a non-round hole or a hole that is axially skewed from the hole in the mating part lacks the strength and fatigue durability of round holes drilled normal to the part surface. The tolerance buildup on the wing subassemblies can result in significant growth from the original design dimensions, particularly when the part is located on the tool at one end of the part, forcing all of the part variation in one direction instead of centering it over the true intended position.
Wing components are typically fastened together with high interference fasteners and/or fasteners in cold worked holes. Interference fasteners, such as rivets and lock bolts, and cold working of a fastener hole, both create a pattern of stress in the metal around the hole that improves the fatigue life of the assembled joint, but a long line of such stress patterns causes dimensional growth of the assembly, primarily in the longitudinal direction, and also can cause an elongated part to warp, or "banana", along its length. Attempts to restrain the assembly to prevent such distortion are generally fruitless, so the most successful technique to date has been to attempt to predict the extent of the distortion and account for it in the original design of the parts, with the intent that the assembly will distort to a shape that is approximately what is called for in the design. However, such predictions are only approximations because of the naturally occurring variations in the installation of fasteners and the cold working of holes, so there is often a degree of unpredictability in the configuration of the final assembly. A process for nullifying the effects of the distortion in the subassemblies before they are fastened into the final assembly has long been sought and would be of significant value in wing manufacturing, as well as in the manufacture of other parts of the airplane.
Wing major tooling is expensive to build and maintain within tolerance, and requires a long lead time to design and build. The enormous cost and long lead time to build wing major tooling is a profound deterrent to redesigning the wing of an existing model airplane, even when new developments in aerodynamics are made, because the new design would necessitate rebuilding all the wing major tools and some or all of the wing component tooling.
The capability of quickly designing and building custom wings for airline customers having particular requirements not met by existing airplane models would give an airframe manufacturer an enormous competitive advantage. Currently, that capability does not exist because the cost of the dedicated wing major tooling and the factory floor space that such tooling would require make the cost of "designer wings" prohibitively expensive. However, if the same tooling that is used to make the standard wing for a particular model could be quickly and easily converted to building a custom wing meeting the particular requirements of a customer, and then converted back to the standard model or another custom wing design, airplanes could be offered to customers with wings optimized specifically to meet their specific requirements. The only incremental cost of the new wing would be the engineering and possibly some modest machining of headers and other low cost tooling that would be unique to that wing design
The disadvantages of manufacturing processes using hard tooling are inherent. Although these disadvantages can be minimized by rigorous quality control techniques, they will always be present to some extent in the manufacture of large mechanical structures using hard tooling. A determinant assembly process has been developed and is in production for airplane fuselage manufacture, replacing hardpoint tooling with self-locating detail parts that determine the configuration of the assembly by their own dimensions and certain coordinating features incorporated into the design of the parts. This new process, shown in U.S. Pat. No. 5,560,102 entitled "Panel and Fuselage Assembly" by Micale and Strand, has proven to produce far more accurate assemblies with much less rework. Application of the determinant assembly process in airplane wing manufacture should yield a better process that eliminates or minimizes the use of hard tooling while increasing both the production capacity of the factory and increasing the quality of the product by reducing part variability while reducing the costs of production and providing flexibility in making fast design changes available to its customers. These improvements would be a great boon to an airframe manufacturers and its customers and would improve the manufacturer's competitive position in the marketplace. The present invention is a significant step toward such a process.