A single crystal diamond (10) is provided as a single crystal diamond into which a defect portion (11) is introduced. The defect portion (11) can be detected by a phase difference occurring when the single crystal diamond (10) is irradiated with circularly polarized light. In the single crystal diamond (10), a maximum value of average values of the phase differences measured within a measurement region (M) formed in a shape of a square having a side length of 1 mm is 30 nm or more.

Conventionally, diamond tools such as a cutting tool and a wear-resistant tool have been made using a natural diamond or a diamond produced by the high pressure high temperature (HPHT) method. A natural diamond however exhibits large variations in quality, and cannot be supplied in a constant amount. A diamond produced by the high pressure high temperature method exhibits less variations in quality and can be supplied in a constant amount, but poses a problem that the cost for manufacturing facilities is high.
Another method of synthesizing a diamond is a vapor phase synthesis method such as a chemical vapor deposition (CVD) method. For example, Japanese Patent Laying-Open No. 2005-162525 (hereinafter abbreviated as PTD 1) discloses a diamond produced by the vapor phase synthesis method, which is transparent in an ultraviolet region and exhibits less crystal defects and strains. Furthermore, for example, Japanese Patent Laying-Open No. 2006-315942 (hereinafter abbreviated as PTD 2) discloses a diamond single crystal used in a semiconductor device substrate and exhibiting less strains. Furthermore, for example, Japanese Patent National Publication No. 2006-507204 (hereinafter abbreviated as PTD 3) discloses a CVD single crystal diamond material that is suitable to be used in an optical device or element. However, the diamond produced by such a vapor phase synthesis method poses a problem that chipping tends to readily occur when it is used for a tool material.


The present invention provides an improved semi-automatic pistol magainze. In one embodied form, the unique pistol magazine member comprises an apparatus on which one end is compatible with a conventional piston magazine receptacle and the other is contoured to wrap snugly around the back of the holder's hand. The inventive magazine thereby provides the holder with the advantages of both greater bullet storage capacity and also greater compactness of bullet storage space. Moreover, the magazine chamber hugs the hand within the inner periphery of its contour thus providing the holder with added support and stability of grip. Also, in its presently preferred form, the magazine has the advantage of a relatively centrally disposed center of gravity which is conducive to greater balance and therefore better aim.

1. Field of the Invention
The subject invention relates to the use of handguns, and more particularly to a semi-automatic pistol magazine In one embodied form, the disclosed invention comprises a pistol magazine which fits into the bottom of a pistol's hand-grip in a conventional manner and curves up and around the hand in a prescribed orientation so as to provide optimal storage capacity without reducing pistol manageability or balance.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Those skilled in the art have long recognized the importance of ammunition magazines. A magazine stores a number of bullets and sequentially feeds them into a firing position within the firearm. Usually, but not always, a magazine is designed as a cartridge into which the bullets are arranged sideways in a row. A tensile pressure is exerted upon the row by means of a spring which advances the array of bullets further as the empty cartridge of each fired bullet is discarded.
Various ammunition magazines have been described in the prior art that have allowed the possibility of improved ammunition magazine design.
U.S. Pat. No. 1,042,837 describes a pistol magazine which fits into the bottom of a pistol handle, as conventional magazines do, and protrudes from the bottom of the pistol grip in the form of a spiraling chamber. Bullets are sequentially pushed into firing position by means of the tensile force of a spring.
U.S. Pat. No. 122,182 describes a magazine that uses a spring to push bullets nose-first through a chamber which circumscribes the bottom surface of the pistol and curves up and around the back of the pistol.
U.S. Pat. No. 696,539 describes a design for a pistol and magazine combination in which the magazine cartridge slopes downward and feeds into the side of a revolver's barrel. The bullets slide along the declivity of the magazine's interior and drop directly into the barrel of the revolver which is specially designed to receive the bullets laterally through holes in the side of the barrel.
U.S. Pat. No. 964,419 describes a highly elaborate magazine design that transfers bullets nose-first by means of a conveyor belt which is actually built into the body of a firearm as a part of an integrated magazine-pistol system.
U.S. Pat. No. 1,308,665 describes a magazine for a pistol which is basically a very long flexible chamber that attaches to the belt of the wearer.
U.S. Pat. No. 2,147,208 describes a system of magazine design comprising a ring of separate magazines arranged around a turnstile. As each magazine is exhausted the turnstile is rotated to position a new magazine below the pistol's handle.
U.S. Pat. No. 386,535 describes a magazine design in which a chain of bullets is pulled from a spiral inside of a cylinder on the bottom of a firearm.
U.S. Pat. No. 2,114,311 describes a relatively complex set of machinery for a magazine extension that extends directly behind the handle of the firearm.
U.S. Pat. No. 226,560 relates to a method of making a magazine cartridge in which the magazine is curved presumably as a means of reducing much of the problem that would be associated with the long, straight magazine. However, this magazine is like the others in that it extends directly under and behind the pistol in a backward direction parallel to the pistol.


A power supply shut-off apparatus 10 includes a fuse-accommodating box 14, a power supply-side bus bar 15, a load-side bus bar 16, and a plug 18 for connecting a power supply and a load through a fuse 13. A mounting portion 17 is provided with an insulation wall 11, a terminal 16a of the power supply-side bus bar 16 is located on one surface side of the insulation wall 19, and a terminal 11 of the fuse 13 is located on the other surface side of the insulation wall 19. The plug 18 is formed of a plug housing 49 and a terminal member 50 having a U-shaped cross section, the terminal member 50 is mounted astride the insulation wall 19 for electrically connecting the terminals 11, 12 of the fuse 13 to either one of terminals 15a, 16b of the power supply-side bus bar 15 and the load-side bus bar 16. The insulation wall 19 is provided with wobble-suppressing means 20 for preventing each of the terminals 11, 12 from moving from a wall surface of the insulation wall 19 and preventing each of the terminals 11, 12 from wobbling.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a power supply shut-off apparatus disposed between a power supply and a load for connecting the power supply and the load through a fuse and for cutting the connection between the power supply and the fuse or the connection between the load and the fuse, and more particularly, to a power supply shut-off apparatus suitable to be mounted on the side of the power supply of an electric car for electrically cutting the connection between the power supply and the load.
2. Description of the Related Art
A knife type power source shut-off apparatus is mounted on a base such that an operation lever of the apparatus can turn around a fulcrum. A receiving terminal connected to the power supply is fixed to one side in the turning direction of the operation lever, and operation terminal is fixed to the operation lever. The operation terminal is connected to a load. The receiving terminal comprises a pair of resilient pieces, and the operation terminal is resiliently sandwiched between the pair of resilient pieces by inserting a plate-like operation terminal between the resilient pieces.
If the operation lever is turned from the right side position into a counterclockwise direction around the fulcrum, the operation terminal is inserted between the resilient pieces of the receiving terminal and resiliently sandwiched therebetween, thereby establishing electrical conduction. If the operation terminal is pulled out between the pair of resilient pieces by turning the operation lever in the clockwise direction from this state so that the operation terminal is separated from the receiving terminal, the electric conduction between the power supply and the load is shut off.
In the case of the knife type power source shut-off apparatus, the electric conduction between the power supply and the load can easily be shut off by turning the operation lever around the fulcrum.
However, if a position between the pair of resilient pieces of the receiving terminal is deviated from orbit of the turning movement of the operation lever, or if positions of the pair of resilient pieces of the receiving terminal are deviated, the operation terminal is deviated toward one of the resilient pieces when the operation terminal is inserted between the resilient pieces, deflection amount of the one resilient piece is increased, the operation terminal receives resilient force more than necessary from the one resilient piece. Therefore, when the operation terminal is inserted between the resilient pieces, excessive force is required.
Also when the operation lever is turned to pull out the operation terminal from between the resilient pieces from the state where the operation terminal is inserted between the resilient pieces, since one of the resilient pieces has greater resistance, excessive force is required.
Therefore, in the case of the knife switch type power supply shut-off apparatus, if the operation lever is deviated from orbit of the turning movement of the operation lever, there is a problem that inserting force and pulling-out force are increase and operability is deteriorated.
Further, if external forces are applied to the operation lever and the latter is turned, there is an adverse possibility that the receiving terminal and the operation terminal are unintentionally connected to each other, and there is a problem that reliably insulation can not be secured.


Cognitive enablement can include detecting sensor-generated signals received from one or more network-configured sensors, the sensor-generated signals corresponding to physical movement of an audience member during a presentation by a presenter. The sensor-generated signals can be converted to vectorized data structures for inputting to a classification model generated with machine learning. The physical movement can be classified as a prelude to a likely audience interaction, the classifying performed by the classification model based on the vectorized data structures. In response to the classifying, an audience member attribute associated with the audience member can be determined. An audience interaction can be predicted based on the audience member attribute using a prediction model generated with machine learning. A predictive alert corresponding to the predicted audience interaction can be generated. During the presentation, a user interface for displaying the predictive alert to the presenter can be generated using an electronic device.

This disclosure relates to electronic communications, and more particularly, to online presentations over data communications networks and in-person presentations enhanced by using electronic communications devices.
Lectures, conferences, and various types of group presentations are increasingly conducted over data communications networks. For example, web conferencing—including webinars, webcasts, and peer-level web meetings—enables real-time point-to-point communications over the Internet. Various telecommunications applications, for example, enable video chats and voice calls over various types over data communications networks. These and other technologies enable uses to easily and efficiently communicate even though remotely located from one another.

This patent is subject to a terminal disclaimer.

INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS MACHINES CORPORATION


A method and system for identification of malware threats on web resources. The system employs a scheduled antivirus (AV) scanning of web resources. The scheduled scanning of web resources allows to create malware check lists and to configure access to web resources. Frequency and depth of inspection (i.e., scan) are determined for each web resource. The user identifiers are used for scheduled AV scanning of web resources. The system allows for scanning a web resource based on selected configurations without using additional client applications.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention is related to methods of protection against malware located on web resources and, in particular, to malware scans of web resources and identification of malware components on web resources.
2. Description of the Related Art
Detection of viruses and malware has been a concern throughout the era of the personal computer. With the growth of communication networks such as the Internet and increasing interchange of data, including the rapid growth in the use of e-mail for communications, the infection of computers and networks through communications or file exchanges is an increasingly significant consideration. Infections take various forms, but are typically related to computer viruses, Trojan programs, or other forms of malicious code (i.e., malware).
Recent incidents of e-mail mediated virus attacks have been dramatic both for the speed of propagation and for the extent of damage, with Internet service providers (ISPs) and companies suffering service problems and a loss of e-mail and networking capability. In many instances, attempts to adequately prevent file exchange or e-mail mediated infections significantly inconvenience computer users.
Popularization of web services increases malware-related threats to web clients. With the development of web-technologies, such as AJAX, JAVA, PHP, FLASH, etc., web sites become more accessible, with more functionality with various media content, which enhances their appeal and popularity among users. With the introduction of methods of designing web-systems, known as Web 2.0, users have been enabled to not only receive information from the Internet, but also fill out web sites with their own data.
Many Internet users have their own blogs, pages within social networks, where they can share messages or data with other users. In addition to text messaging, modern technologies support transfer of media files, such as photos, video files, interactive documents, animations and applications.
Active participation of users in creation and modification of a web site leads to a rapid development and changes of the site content. A typical example of such a site is a news ticker, where new articles with links to news reports, photos or videos appear at intervals of a minute and sometimes even more often. Another example is a web forum, where a number of users can be in excess of several thousand, and where new messages appear every second.
Increasing popularity of web resources makes this environment more attractive to hackers and virus writers, who spread malicious programs over the Internet. A malicious script, such as iframe, exploits, etc. can be added to the files uploaded to the site. Thus, file exchanges, forums, blogs, web-interfaces of mail servers and any other resources can be infected.
The infection can be perpetrated through any interface, such as a usual web site form to be filled out by a user (in this case, the infection is performed mostly manually by an insider or an intruder who stole passwords). A perpetrator can exploit vulnerability in the content management system or file access the site via FTP. The list of resources is not limited to the http transfer protocol but also includes ftp-resources and other servers.
Typically, ftp-servers are used as tools for remote administration of the sites, including editing and uploading scripts. However, a connection to the ftp-server provides the ability to test all scenarios of site, and not just those that are executed on the user's computer. Access the site files via FTP allows a security system to analyze the source scripts and original pages, while access via http allows to examining only the result of the script and/or the result of processing of the web site files by a web server.
An unauthorized access to a user account and uploading on behalf of this user, a malicious program could lead to a rapid spread of malware because of the credibility of that person among other users. When dealing with mundane sites, users' attention may fade over time due to the usual circumstances. Because of this, incidents of exploitations of social networks and phishing are increasing.
In addition to public Internet services, there are some local sites (corporate, local area networks, user group sites, etc.) that are not accessible from outside of their network. This imposes significant problems in malware scanning of a given resource by anti-virus services or laboratories.
A typical scheme of interaction between a user computer system and a Web resource is illustrated in FIG. 1. Web-server is an application that performs the functions of the server (i.e., a computer system) on which the application is implemented. In addition to web-servers 110 or ftp servers 120, other server applications can be installed. For example, mail servers, proxy servers, IRC-server, etc. In order to interface with these servers, client (i.e., a user) computers 140 must have special applications installed, such as, a browser 130, a file manager 150, etc.
Client 140 access the web server 100 using a URL address of a desired web page or other resource. Each server application and a client interact, using different protocols. The primary protocols for data transfer between the client 140 and server 100 are HTTP (HTTPS), (S) FTP, POPS, SMTP, IMAP4, etc.
Most servers support authentication in the following manner: an authorization data is transferred from the client 140 to the server 100, where the authorization takes place. Then, the data is transmitted from the server 100 to the client 140 based on the rights granted to the client 140.
Personalization makes it possible to make a web resource unique to each user. Authorization is used to distinguish users, their rights and available data. User authorization is carried out by the user via a client application, for example, by filling the forms in the browser. Very often these applications allow preserving the identity of the user. Thus, each user can customize his own interface, to restrict access to his personal page or email, to identify the displayed pages by sections or topics.
In order to provide security while using Internet or on the local network, downloadable content needs to be checked. A downloaded page may contain viruses, trojans, adware, spam, exploits (i.e., HTML code, links to image or ".pdf" file, which has special modifications that result in browser errors and execution of some potentially harmful code) for applications (such as for example, PDF-reader, web browser, media player, flash-player, etc.)
A system of protection of personal computers can include a file anti-virus (AV), network screen, a firewall, a special protection against network attacks, Web anti-virus as well as remote security means of AV vendor companies. Currently AV technologies are heavily developed and includes many different methods and systems that implement both heuristic and signature analysis.
The signature type web analysis includes:
assembling black list of pages (URL-blacklist);
assembling white lists of trusted (i.e., clean) applications/components; and
storing a collection of malware components.
The heuristic analysis typically includes any of:
emulation of executable programs/components;
emulation of executable scripts;
virtualization of execution environment; and control and analysis of application activity.
A firewall or a network screen is necessary for monitoring and filtering network packets at different levels of the OSI model in accordance with assigned rules for network connections: filtering based on static rules and filtering with tracking executed applications and controlling logic and algorithms of the relevant protocols.
A system for protection against network attacks is typically launched at system startup and monitors incoming traffic activity for patterns typical of network attacks. If an attempt to attack a computer is detected, the system blocks any network activity for the attacker to a protected computer.
A conventional web anti-virus (web AV) intercepts and blocks execution of a malicious script on a web site if it poses a threat. Strict control is also imposed over all HTTP-traffic. Web AV also analyzes web resources for phishing scams and filters banners and pop-ups.
Another line of defense can be a local security server that analyzes the situation within a local network, scans the local traffic and analyzes the network activity of computers. There are also web services that allow the verification of the Internet resource or files. The user downloads a file or enters a URL of the resource and the entire malware test takes place on the web-service of an AV company.
In the case of local AV remedies, a web resource is checked when it is downloaded, in other words, when the client application goes to the corresponding URL-address. It is important to note that in this case, the user is authenticated on the web resource and downloads content, as defined for his user account. The content can be in form of scripts, links, articles, messages, reports, letters from trusted users, etc.
FIG. 2 illustrates a conventional system for checking a web resource 200 for presence of malware or links to infected resources. A connection with the resource 200 is established by an application 220 of a client 210. The client application 210 in this case can be a regular browser, a file manager or another application that interacts with a server 200 via data transfer protocol 230.
The client application 220 transmits to the server 200 user identifiers 250. Depending on authentication scheme 260, the identifiers 250 can represent logins, passwords, session keys, cookie-files, special protocol headers, network or physical addresses of the computer, biometric data, certificates, etc. A request to the server 200 by the client-application 220 is processed by a server application 240.
An authorization 260 is performed, and depending on its results, the server 200 opens a document or generates a web page, an ftp-page or other data representation based on the data type provided by the server 200. Security of data transmitted between the client 210 and the server 200 is provided by a security module 270. This conventional system can be implemented on a personal computer as well as on a web server of an AV company. Typically, the relevance of the AV databases and the effectiveness of heuristic analysis on the server side can be higher than on a personal computer.
However, the principal difference in this case is the data presented by a web resource 200 being tested for malware presence based on the user identification data 250. When the AV check takes place on the server, the result of the authorization is either denial of access or a grant of the rights of the guest account. Thus, the outcome of an AV check, even at equal technological capabilities on the server and the user computer, will be significantly different.
Yet another shortcoming of conventional AV systems is restrictions imposed upon AV web-based scanners by routing rules. If a web resource is part of the network and has no external network address, it is not available outside the network, and it can only be verified by using other security tools installed on a computer system connected to this network.
Many malware creators and hackers are aware of online scanners and knowingly block access of the scanner applications to a web resource where they have planted malware components. This makes comprehensive malware scans difficult. Furthermore, in the conventional systems, a web page cannot be scanned until it is downloaded onto a user computer. A typical web resource can contain several thousand pages. AV checking all of the web pages using a conventional system (as illustrated in FIG. 2), requires a lot of time and resources.
The situation is further complicated when several different web resources need to be periodically scanned. Statistics indicate that the majority of malware components and links to infected pages are located on the main (i.e., home) pages of web resources or on the first pages of sub-sections. This also complicates AV checking process, since each server often uses different identification parameters. In order to check a list of web resources, an AV application needs to have access authorization that also complicates scanning web sites for malware.
Accordingly, there is a need in the art for a comprehensive malware scanning system that can effectively check the web resources with a minimal overhead and costs.

Protection against malware on web resources


Searching for information in a distributed data processing system, including providing a semantics-based search index by storing in the semantics-bases search index search keywords from documents according to semantics from selected document structure templates, the document structure templates selected in dependence upon the structures of the documents and upon model document structures in the document structure templates; establishing a search scope corresponding to semantics supported by the semantics-based search index; receiving from a client a search query message comprising search terms and, optionally, the search scope; retrieving, from the semantics-based search index, index entries satisfying the search terms and the search scope; creating from the retrieved index entries a search result message; and transmitting the search result message to the client.

1. Field of the Invention
The field of the invention is data processing, or, more specifically, methods, systems, and products for indexing information in a distributed data processing system.
2. Description of Related Art
An example from current art of a large distributed data processing system is the World Wide Web. Search engines on the web are basically massive full-text indexes of millions of web pages. These search engines are specialized software programs specialized to receive search query messages from users or from users' browsers, where the search query messages comprise keywords or search terms. Search engines formulate, or 'parse,' the query messages into database queries against web search databases comprising massive search indexes.
The web includes many web sites comprising many millions of web pages, each of which is a document specially structured in a markup language, such as, for example, HTML, WML, HDML, and so on, to support some hyperlinking in some data communications protocol, such as, for example, HTTP, WAP, HDTP, and so on. The search indexes for the search engines are created by software robots called 'spiders' or 'crawlers' that survey the web and retrieve documents for indexing. The indexing itself is often carried out by another software engine that takes as its input the pages gathered by spiders, extracts keywords according to some algorithm, and creates index entries based upon the keywords and URLs identifying the indexed documents.
That is, spiders gather documents into a documents database, identifying the documents to be gathered from a URL list in the documents database or through hyperlinks in the documents themselves or through other methods. Spiders take as their inputs the entire web and produce as outputs documents to be indexed. Indexing engines take as their inputs documents to be indexed and produce as their outputs search indexes. Search engines take as inputs search indexes and search request messages bearing search terms and produce as their outputs search result messages for return to requesting users' browsers.
In current art, search engines return search results matching search terms from search requests with no indication where on a page the search terms were located. A search for the terms "ejb+xml+bmp" therefore can and often does return results in which those terms appear in an advertisement or a navigation panel in a document whose actual content has nothing to do with the search terms. This is true, despite the fact that the specially structured documents comprising the web all contain indications of the structure of the documents themselves, because the documents do not indicate the meaning of their structure. That is, the fact that search terms appear in an HTML table, form, or frame does not indicate whether the table, form, or frame is an advertisement, a navigation panel, or actual content. With no specification of the meaning, the semantics, of the structure, indexing engines are unable to include the semantics in the search indexes, and search engines are therefore unable to distinguish semantics or support search queries on the basis of semantics. There are ongoing needs for improvement, therefore, in searching and indexing documents in large distributed data processing system like the web.

Semantics-based searching for information in a distributed data processing system

International Business Machines Corporation


An image processing system for applying a video special effect to input image data. The system comprises a memory for storing image processing data; a coefficient generator for generating coefficients on the basis of the image processing data stored in the memory; a signal processor for processing the input image data on the basis of the coefficients outputted from the coefficient generator; an external storage unit for storing plural kinds of image processing data; and a controller for controlling the memory, and the external storage unit in such a manner as to transfer a desired one of the plural kinds of image processing data to the memory.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an image processing system which is capable of processing image data in a video special effect mode such as a wipe or fade mode.
2. Description of the Prior Art
There have been known heretofore a variety of video special effect apparatus adapted to process image data in a wipe or other video special effect mode, as disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,199,788 for example. However, in such conventional apparatus there are certain limits to the kinds of video special effects that may be performed therein.

Image processing system with external storage of special effect data


Methods, systems, and computer program products for verifying confidential machine learning models are provided herein. A computer-implemented method includes obtaining (i) a set of training data and (ii) a request, from a requestor, for a machine learning model, wherein the request is accompanied by at least a set of test data; obtaining a commitment from a provider in response to the request, the commitment comprising a special hash corresponding to parameters of a candidate machine learning model trained on the set of training data; revealing the set of test data to the requestor; obtaining, from the requestor, (i) a claim of performance of the candidate machine learning model for the test data and (ii) a proof of the performance of the candidate machine learning model; and verifying the claimed performance for the requestor based on (i) the special hash and (ii) the proof of the claimed performance.

There is currently a growing demand for high-quality machine learning (ML) models as they can, for example, improve efficiencies and/or provide new capabilities to systems. However, obtaining high-quality models is difficult due to limited supply of talented model providers. Model providers want to be rewarded based on the performance of such models, but, generally, are not willing to share the details of the models even for evaluation purposes. This makes it difficult for model requestors to verify the performance of the model before investing in it. In some cases, a model provider provides a well performing model (e.g., resource intensive) during evaluation phase and provides a different model at later time.

Verifying confidential machine learning models


A vehicle lamp is formed using a light guide body. Thus light with an excellent aesthetic quality can be emitted without increasing the number of components. The structure has a light guide part (6a) formed on a light guide member (6). The light guide part (6a) emits light in an elongated shape by irradiating a first light-emitting diode (9) provided on one end of the light guide part (6a) in the longitudinal direction. A projecting part (6g) projects reward on the rear face of the light guide part (6a), which is the light-emitting face. A light emission suppressing part (6h) is provided on the projection end face of the projecting part (6g) and has a metal film (6f) formed by vapor deposition.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a vehicle lamp mounted to a vehicle such as an automobile.
2. Description of the Related Art
Japanese Published Unexamined Patent Appl. No. 2007-250290 discloses a vehicle lamp formed by using a long solid light guide. A long light is radiated from the light guide when the light guide is irradiated by a light source disposed to an end portion in a longer-length direction of the light guide. The vehicle lamp can be used as a direction indicator lamp mounted into a door mirror. Indeed, the direction indicator lamp has been frequently used because legal requirements are satisfied by the emitted long light and the direction indicator lamp is excellent in design properties.
In order to improve design properties of the direction indicator lamp with the light guide, a plurality of light sources are disposed to an end portion of the light guide so that the direction indicator lamp (the light guide) emits a plurality of long lights.
However, the conventional direction indicator lamp needs more components and configurations are complicated because the plurality of light sources are mounted. A large number of components need to be installed into a small space, with a resultant exacting installation and increased cost. The present invention intends to solve the problems.


A telecommunications node architecture is disclosed that comprises multiple switching units that are connected to transceiver banks in a novel topology to enhance the reliability of the telecommunications network. Furthermore, the architecture of the illustrative embodiment facilitates redundancy in a high-bandwidth add/drop multiplexor environment.

The first generation of optical fiber systems in the public telephone network used proprietary architectures, equipment line codes, multiplexing formats, and maintenance procedures. This diversity complicated the task of the regional Bell operating companies ("RBOCs")and the interexchange carriers (e.g., AT&T, Spring, MCI, etc.) who needed to interface their equipment with these diverse systems.
To ease this task, Bellcore initiated an effort to establish a standard for connecting one optical fiber system to another. That standard is officially named the Synchronous Optical Network, but it is more commonly called "SONET." The international version of the domestic SONET standard is officially named the Synchronous Digital Hierarchy, but it is more commonly called "SDH."
Although differences exist between SONET and SDH, those differences are mostly in terminology. In most respects, the two standards are the same and, therefore, virtually all equipment that complies with either the SONET standard or the SDH standard also complies with the other. Therefore, for the purposes of this specification, the SONET standard and the SDH standard shall be considered interchangeable and the acronym/initialism "SONET/SDH" shall be defined as either the Synchronous Optical Network standard or the Synchronous Digital Hierarchy standard, or both.


Method for controlling regeneration within an after-treatment component of an engine comprises receiving an upstream temperature signal, receiving a downstream temperature signal, and calculating a temperature difference based on a difference between the upstream temperature signal and the downstream temperature signal. The temperature difference is compared to a predetermined temperature change limit to determine whether the temperature difference is less than or greater than the predetermined temperature change limit. If the temperature difference is less than the predetermined temperature change limit, an estimate of accumulated particulate matter in the after-treatment component is calculated using a primary soot accumulation model. If the temperature difference is greater than the predetermined temperature change limit, an estimate of accumulated particulate matter in the after-treatment component is calculated using a secondary soot accumulation model. The estimate of accumulated particulate matter in the after-treatment component is compared to a predetermined threshold associated with the after-treatment component.

The emission of particulate matter in exhaust from compression-ignition engines is regulated for environmental reasons. Thus, vehicles equipped with compression-ignition engines often include after-treatment components such as particulate filters, catalyzed soot filters and adsorption catalysts for removing particulate matter and other regulated constituents (e.g., nitrogen oxides or NOx) from their exhaust streams. Particulate filters and other after-treatment components can be effective, but can also increase back pressure as they collect particulate matter.
Particulate matter may include ash and unburned carbon particles generally referred to as soot. As this carbon-based particulate matter accumulates in the after-treatment components, it can increase back pressure in the exhaust system. Engines that have large rates of particulate mass emission can develop excessive back pressure levels in a relatively short period of time, decreasing engine efficiency and power producing capacity. Therefore, it is desired to have particulate filtration systems that minimize back-pressure while effectively capturing particulate matter in the exhaust.
To accomplish both of these competing goals, after-treatment components must be regularly monitored and maintained either by replacing components or by removing the accumulated soot. Cleaning the accumulated soot from an after-treatment component can be achieved via oxidation to CO2 (i.e., burning-off) and is known in the art as regeneration. To avoid service interruptions, regeneration is generally preferred over replacement of after-treatment components.
One way that regeneration may be accomplished is by increasing the temperatures of the filter material and/or the collected particulate matter to levels above the combustion temperature of the particulate matter. Elevating the temperature facilitates consumption of the soot by allowing the excess oxygen in the exhaust gas to oxidize the particulate matter. Particulate matter may also be oxidized, and thus removed, at lower temperatures by exposing the particulate matter to sufficient concentrations of nitrogen dioxide (NO2). Exhaust from a compression-engine, such as a diesel engine, typically contains NOx, which consists primarily of nitric oxide (NO) and approximately 5 to 20 percent NO2, with greater levels of NO2 being common where oxidation catalysts are present in the exhaust stream. Thus, some level of regeneration occurs even at relatively low temperatures.
The regeneration process can be either passive or active. In passive systems, regeneration occurs whenever heat (e.g., carried by the exhaust gasses) and soot (e.g., trapped in the after-treatment components) are sufficient to facilitate oxidation, and/or whenever sufficient concentrations of NO2 are present in the exhaust to enable oxidation at lower temperatures. In active systems, regeneration is induced at desired times by introducing heat from an outside source (e.g., an electrical heater, a fuel burner, a microwave heater, and/or from the engine itself, such as with a late in-cylinder injection or injection of fuel directly into the exhaust stream). Active regeneration can be initiated during various vehicle operations and exhaust conditions. Among these favorable operating conditions are stationary vehicle operations such as when the vehicle is at rest, for example, during a refueling stop. Engine control systems can be used to predict when it may be advantageous to actively facilitate a regeneration event and to effectuate control over the regeneration process.
An engine control system may use a soot model to deduce (i.e., predict) a mass of soot accumulated in the after-treatment component by monitoring properties of the exhaust stream as it flows through the after-treatment component. The control system can use the deduced soot mass data to monitor soot loading over time, to determine or anticipate when regeneration may be necessary or desirable, to facilitate a regeneration event, and/or to effectuate control over a regeneration process or other remedial measures. In one exemplary soot model, the pressure decrease across a loaded after-treatment component may be used, along with knowledge of the relationship between soot accumulation and pressure decrease, to estimate the extent of soot loading in the after-treatment component. This is possible because, as soot accumulates in an after-treatment component, the pressure decrease typically increases (at specific temperature and volumetric flow rates) from pressure decreases experienced when the after-treatment component is clean.
Because changes in temperature, pressure, and flow rate affect the pressure decrease experienced by exhaust as it passes through an after-treatment component, the accuracy and reliability of measurements for these parameters is important. Ideal gas laws may also be used to adjust flow rates for changing temperatures and pressures, further adding to the importance of accurate determinations for these parameters. Unfortunately, however, a number of difficulties have been encountered determining temperatures in and around after-treatment components. For example, experience has shown that exhaust gas temperatures can deviate significantly from material temperatures in an after-treatment component, particularly during non-steady, or transient, operation. This is due to significant thermal inertias that may exist in typical after-treatment components, which can be accompanied by correspondingly large temperature gradients as the components respond to transient operating conditions. Therefore, as a result of the large dependency on an accurate temperature measurement, errors can be caused by temperature gradients occurring in after-treatment components.
Accordingly, it is desirable to provide an improved system and method for determining when to facilitate active regeneration and for controlling active regeneration of particulate filtration systems, particularly having improved model accuracy in the presence of large temperature gradients occurring in and around after-treatment components.

System and method for controlling regeneration within an after-treatment component of a compression-ignition engine


A method for verifying sectors on an optical disc is provided. The method includes writing user data to unverified sectors of the optical disc and verifying the sectors of the optical disc with the user data. The sectors of the optical disc are verified by reading the user data on the unverified sectors of the optical disc and comparing the user data read from the unverified sectors of the optical disc with user data stored on a system buffer. The sectors of the optical disc are verified to determine whether any one of the unverified sectors having user data is defective. Also, the verifying of the unverified sectors establishes verified sectors having user data. The sectors of the optical disc that have been verified are tracked with a bitmap that is continually updated as the sectors are verified.

1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates generally to verifying rewritable optical disc media, and more particularly to verifying sectors of optical discs to check for defective sectors prior to storing data on the sectors of optical discs.
2. Description of the Related Art
Consumers are increasingly demanding storage media which have greater storage capabilities. In response to these demands, retailers have started manufacturing optical discs such as rewritable compact discs (CD-RW) that have increased storage capacity in comparison to other storage media. Optical discs store information on tracks that spiral around the center of the disk. The spiral contains sectors to which data is written and stored. When optical discs are purchased by consumers, certain defects may exist on the optical disc itself. These defects may be the culprit of mishandling during the manufacturing phase of the optical disc, drive to media compatibility, imperfection in the material of the optical disc itself or any other manufacturing error. The defects affect the storage capabilities of the optical disc in that certain sectors on the optical disc are not capable of storing information.
For packet writing, data is commonly written to a disc onto one track. Groups of sectors are then written to the track. However, before the groups of sectors are written to the track, measures must be taken to verify the optical disc in order to determine what sectors are defective to prevent writing to those sectors and potentially losing the data written to those defective sectors.
In order to determine which sectors on a optical disc are defective, the optical disc is subjected to a verification process. Current types of verification processes write data to the optical disc and then reads are performed to the written sectors to determine if particular sectors on the optical disc are defective. In one example verification process, 0's are written to the sectors and then reads are performed to determine if 0's are read back. If 0's aren't read back from a sector, the sector will be flagged and the file system of the optical disc will be updated to reflect that data should not be written to that particular sector. While this method ensures that data will not be written to defective sectors, the process is very time consuming. Using a 2× writing operation and a 6× reading operation, the verification operation can take anywhere from 50 to 90 minutes to complete. This amount of time makes optical discs and more particularly CR-RWs an unattractive option to those desiring to quickly store data to new discs. Due to the amount of time required to do verification, some software packages provide the option to skip verification altogether.
Another method used for verifying sectors on optical discs involves only verifying a small group of sectors and then writing user data to the verified sectors. This is an alternative to verifying the entire disc before allowing user data to be written (i.e., as described above). While a next set of sectors are verified, user data is allowed to be written to the verified group of sectors. Of course, user data cannot be written to the entire optical disc, just areas that have been verified. Under this scheme, additional sectors are written to keep track of what sectors have been verified. Nonetheless, this process is also time consuming because a user must wait for the verification before user data may be written to the disc. Also, extra storage capacity is occupied by the sectors that keep track of which sectors have been verified. This, as can be appreciated, uses up space that would otherwise be available for user data.
In view of the foregoing, there is a need for a method to verify optical discs that is less time consuming than prior art methods. This verification method should also allow user data to be written immediately to an optical disc as the optical disc is being verified.

Methods for optical disc sector verification


A liquid crystal display apparatus which have a circular polarizer and a liquid crystal display in a stack. The liquid crystal display has a chilral nematic liquid crystal layer between substrates, and on the mutually opposite sides of the substrates, electrodes and aligning layers are formed. The liquid crystal switches between a planar alignment state and a focal-conic alignment state depending on the voltage applied thereto through the electrodes. In a planar state, light reflected by the electrodes is absorbed by the circular polarizer, and a black display is made. In a focal-conic state, light reflected by the electrodes passes through the circular polarizer, and a white display is made. The liquid crystal is driven by a chain of voltage pulses including a reset step of resetting the liquid crystal to a homeotropic state, a selection step of selecting the alignment state of the liquid crystal under zero-volt application and an evolution step of causing the liquid crystal to evolve to the selected alignment state.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a liquid crystal display apparatus, and more particularly to a liquid crystal display apparatus which uses cholesteric liquid crystal as a display medium.
2. Description of Related Art
In recent years, reflective type liquid crystal displays are studied and developed into displays of mobile telephones and portable personal computers. Reflective type liquid crystal displays make displays by reflecting external light and therefore are advantageous of being power-saving, of being thin and light, etc.
In reflective type liquid crystal displays, generally, nematic liquid crystal is used, and these liquid crystal displays are operated typically in a TN (twisted nematic) mode and in an STN (super twisted nematic) mode. The nematic liquid crystal does not have a memory effect, and the liquid crystal displays consume power while displaying information on the liquid crystal (although the reflective type liquid crystal displays consume less power than transmitting type liquid crystal displays which use back lights).
In the meantime, lately, reflective type liquid crystal displays with a memory effect have been developed because this type of liquid crystal displays are expected to contribute to more power saving. A typical of this type is a liquid crystal display using cholestric liquid crystal. Cholestric liquid crystal is bistable, that is, has a memory effect. Specifically, cholesteric liquid crystal turns into a planar alignment state or a focal-conic alignment state depending on the voltage applied thereto and keeps in the alignment state. The cholesteric liquid crystal has the following characteristic: when the cholesteric liquid crystal is in the planar state, the liquid crystal selectively reflects light of a specified wavelength among incident light; and when the cholesteric liquid crystal is in the focal-conic state, the liquid crystal substantially does not reflect incident light. By using this characteristic, the liquid crystal display is capable of making a display without a polarizer, and the display is bright. Such a liquid crystal display using the characteristic of cholesteric liquid crystal is disclosed by SID International Symposium Digest of Technical Paper, Volume 29, 1998, page 897.
The liquid crystal display which makes a display by using the selective reflection of cholesteric liquid crystal and without using a polarizer is driven by a method in which a chain of voltage pulses is applied to the liquid crystal, the chain of voltage pulses including three steps, namely, a reset step of resetting the liquid crystal to a homeotropic state, a selection step of selecting an alignment state in which the liquid crystal will finally stay under zero-volt application, and an evolution step of causing the liquid crystal to evolve to the selected alignment state. This driving method is disclosed by International Publication No. WO98/50804 and Japanese Patent Laid-Open Publication No. 2001-228459. The driving method in which a chain of voltage pulses including the three steps is applied has the advantage that the pulse width applied in the selection step is short, resulting in high-speed driving.
When the liquid crystal display without using a polarizer is driven by the three-step driving method, from the start of the reset step to the end of the evolution step, however, the liquid crystal is substantially in a state to transmit light, and a light absorbing layer provided on the back side of the display is visible to the user. This phenomenon occurs regardless of which alignment state the liquid crystal will be finally turned into. Therefore, every time the display is updated; the screen becomes dark, that is, a blackout occurs before a new picture appears, which gives the user an unpleasant feeling.


A framework for enabling users to create User Defined Functions (UDFs), which can run simultaneously without using multiple calculation threads, is provided. A calculation engine continues a remainder of calculation operations independent of a pending asynchronous function upon starting to run the asynchronous function without waiting to receive a result. The result value is introduced to the computation at a later time during the calculation cycle, when it is received or completed by the calculation engine. When the results are received, downstream operations such as dependent functions are calculated without changing a flow of dependencies within the operations.

Spreadsheets are used in a large variety of circumstances for different purposes. For example, businesses often perform analyses of budgeting and forecasting operations, or simply gather business metrics. While many spreadsheet applications include a number of default functions for simple to complicated calculations, user defined functions are also a common aspect of spreadsheet applications.
Many user defined functions (or default functions) involve computations that can be completed completely within the spreadsheet application and without requiring extensive processing power. On the other hand, some functions may involve operations that require extensive processing or use of external resources such as external data stores or computational resources. For such functions, spreadsheet computation may slow down or come to a halt if the wait for computing the function is long. Some user may rather not use up a spreadsheet calculation thread while waiting. This is important for situations such as external data feeds, or in the High Performance Computing (HPC) field, where users may like to launch remote calculations on an HPC grid without blocking spreadsheet calculations.


Method to synchronize at least one mobile unit to at least one base transceiver station belonging to a digital telecommunication network, in which radio signals transmitted and received by said base station are subdivided in frames (Fn) having pre-determined duration and each frame is subdivided in a pre-determined number of timeslots (Tn) and codes (Cn), said signals including at least a synchronization signal (S), which is transmitted by the base transceiver station and includes a sequence of modulation elementary units suitable to identify the timeslot (T1) and the code (C1) of a service channel containing system messages (M), said method including the following operational steps:                marking the synchronization signal (S) in at least one frame (Fx) by the base transceiver station;        transmitting a pointer message (P) in the service channel of said frame (Fx) or of a subsequent frame (Fx+n) by the base transceiver station;        detecting the marked synchronization signal (S′) by the mobile unit;        receiving the pointer message (P) by the mobile unit;        extracting from the pointer message (P) the position of at least one system message (M′) by the mobile unit.The present invention relates also to a system implementing this method.

The identification of the type of system message transmitted by base stations can be made adding a header, which however reduces the neat capacity of the transmission channel, or associating the type of message to the frame number where it is placed, but this requires to unprofitably code in permanent manner the time multiplexing of the messages in the multiframe.

Method and system to synchronize mobile units to a base transceiver station

Siemens Information and Communication Networks S.p.A.


Improved gerotor pumps comprising laterally constrained floating rings, thereby providing an orthogonal degree-of-freedom and allowing gerotor sets positioned therein to establish their own preferred mesh orientation, and additionally wherein the outer rotor of the gerotor set is forcibly positioned against the inner rotor of the gerotor set at the gerotor set's in-mesh position whereat there is little relative motion between the inner and outer rotors, thereby resulting in a substantially friction- and wear-free meshing action of the gerotor set.

I. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to gerotor pumps, and more particularly to improved gerotor pumps wherein an outer rotor of gerotor sets utilized therein is enabled for finding its own eccentricity offset axis whereat it is supported mechanically via forcibly meshing with the inner rotor at the gerotor set in-mesh position and otherwise in a nominally hydrostatically balanced manner.
I. Description of the Prior Art
Gerotor pumps are most conveniently designed around commercially available gerotor gear sets (hereinafter simply "gerotor sets") such as those manufactured by Nichols Portland of Portland, ME. Such gerotor sets comprise an inner rotor having N outwardly extending lobes with N approximately circularly shaped grooves therebetween (i.e., with N typically having values of 4, 6, 8 or 10) in mesh with an eccentrically disposed outer rotor comprising N+1 inwardly extending circularly shaped elements. Often the inner rotor is mounted upon and directly driven by the drive shaft of a prime mover such as an electric motor. The eccentrically disposed outer rotor is then driven by the inner rotor via meshing of the outwardly and inwardly extending lobes then instantly located nominally nearest an "in-mesh" position. This meshing contact occurs with near zero relative velocity between inner and outer rotors in the region of the in-mesh position while a maximum relative velocity between tips of the outwardly extending lobes of the inner rotor and the inwardly extending lobes of the outer rotor occurs at the opposite or out-of-mesh position along an eccentricity axis.
Present art gerotor pumps typically comprise a fixedly positioned eccentric gerotor pocket within which the outer rotor is supported by a hydrodynamic bearing formed in the space between the eccentric gerotor pocket and the outer rotor. In most gerotor pumps the gerotor pocket is simply formed as part of the pump housing and then completed by a cover plate wherein inner surfaces of the gerotor pocket and cover plate serve as first and second sides of a gerotor cavity. The bore of the eccentric gerotor cavity is formed about a preferred eccentricity offset rotation axis located along a preferred eccentricity axis at a distance nominally equal to a gear addendum. Axially oriented symmetrical fluid commutation ports are formed in either or both of the first and second sides of the gerotor cavity to either side of the preferred eccentricity axis and are fluidly coupled to housing ports.
In operation, fluid is conveyed from the inlet fluid commutation port to inlet side ones of N+1 pumping chambers formed between the outwardly and inwardly extending lobes and elements as they move out of mesh on the inlet side, and then out the outlet fluid commutation port via outlet side ones of the N+1 pumping chambers as they move back toward mesh on the outlet side. The pumping chambers are formed between N nominal line seals provided by the mesh of the outwardly and inwardly extending lobes and elements and an additional nominal line seal between one inwardly extending element and a juxtaposed one of the grooves of the inner rotor nearest the "in-mesh" position. Thus, fluid entering via the inlet fluid commutation port is conveyed to the outlet fluid commutation port at a pressure value determined by the system load via each of the sequentially moving ones of the N+1 pumping chambers. Interestingly, the shaft must rotate (N+1)/N revolutions for a complete cycle of any of the N+1 pumping chambers.
Transverse or lateral loading between the inner and outer rotors is nominally generated by the product of the difference between the output and input pressures, and the net transverse plan area between instant ones of the sealing lines formed nearest to the "in" and "out" of mesh positions. Normally the outer rotor is directly supported by the hydrodynamic bearing formed between it and the eccentric housing bore as described above. Alternately, a needle bearing could be used to support the outer rotor for a gerotor pump that rotates at too low a speed to generate sufficient hydrodynamic bearing support.
As noted above, prior art gerotor pumps utilize fixedly positioned eccentric gerotor pockets in concert with meshing gerotor sets. As a result of this they are mechanically over constrained whereby it is impractical to utilize closely fitting inner and outer rotors such as are required for generating high output pressure values. And even with the commonly available relatively loose fitting gerotor sets (e.g., with perhaps 0.003 in. dimetral clearance), the actual driving contact position of mesh between inner and outer rotors is indeterminate. Thus, there is considerable variation in frictional rubbing and wear between and of lobes of supposedly identical gerotor pumps.
This concern was addressed in the incorporated '812 patent application wherein gerotor pumps having an additional degree of freedom and thus permitting their outer rotors to find their own optimum centers of rotation under all conditions of loading and shaft deflection were disclosed. Particularly in the case of disclosed gerotor pumps comprising floating rings for locating and supporting the outer rotors, the additional degree of freedom also allowed operation at relatively high output pressure values via utilizing precision formed gerotor sets such as those described in connection with FIGS. 33 through 43 of the incorporated '812 patent application. However, the gerotor pumps disclosed therein continued to utilize gerotor sets wherein lobe-to-lobe contact was possible at positions other than at line seals nearest the in-mesh position (i.e., including the out-of-mesh position). Furthermore, imprecisely defined hydrodynamic bearing supported forces were still present in those gerotor pumps. It would be desirable to provide gerotor pumps comprising floating rings wherein these remaining concerns have been addressed.
The primary object of the present invention, then, is to provide gerotor pumps wherein gerotor sets are forcibly held in mesh at the in-mesh position whereby the outer rotors are mechanically driven by the inner rotors under nominally zero differential velocity meshing conditions and thereby in a substantially friction- and wear-free manner.


A fusible link device comprising a housing that contains terminals for terminating incoming/outgoing wires, and that also contains a fusible link that interconnects a pair of the terminals in series, the fusible link device providing a self-contained unit/module for terminating and fusing wires to be electrically interconnected in series. The housing includes ports for inserting the wires that terminate on the terminals. These ports may be environmentally protected, such as by gel-sealing. The terminals may be implemented as insulation displacement connectors for connecting the wires and/or the fusible links. In one implementation, the fusible link device may contain a total of four of the terminals and two fusible links for terminating and fusing the tip and ring lines in a telecommunications network. The fusible link device may also include one or more voltage protection devices, of the same or different type, electrically connected across terminals that are not series connected to each other.

UL requirements specify that to protect against power surges in telephone lines and, particularly to provide current limiting, the network must include a fusing link at any network termination, such as the outside plant (OSP) terminations located at splice points (e.g., terminal blocks), building entrances (e.g., building entrance protectors (BEPs)), and/or other premises (e.g., station protectors or network interface devices (NIDs) at homes). More specifically, for example, a network termination point where these fusing links typically have been implemented is at the terminal block that is used for connecting the telco wires of the cable that runs from the telco central office to the wires that run to subscribers' premises.
Commonly, these terminal blocks are located on a telephone pole, in a ground-based pedestal closure, within an underground handhole, or at an in-building application (e.g., on outside wall, or in building service area). For convenience, the telco wires entering the terminal block from the central office side are herein referred to as the exchange wires, distribution wires, or main wires. The wires running from the terminal to the subscriber premises (where they are terminated at an NID or station protector) are commonly referred to as service drop lines, each drop line including one or more pairs of wires (tip-ring wire pair), with each pair servicing one piece of equipment such as a telephone, a fax, or an alternative form of modem.
Fusible links are typically provided at the terminal block as a stub cable comprising individual wire segments connected in series between the terminal block terminals and each wire from the telco distribution wire. Particularly, the fusible link is implemented as the finest gauge wire in the network. Thus, if excessive energy (e.g. voltage surges) appears in the network, the fusing link will fail and the excessive energy will not travel to the telephone lines.
The fusing links provided in this manner at the terminal block are typically contained within a closure containing the terminal block. Although this closure may be implemented to provide protection from environmental damage (e.g., corrosion), terminal block modules typically have been typically implemented to provide additional environmental protection (as well as surge protection) for interconnecting the drop lines to the telco distribution wires. The fusible links, however, are not implemented in a way that provides additional environmental protection. The fusible links (including their connections) are thus susceptible to environmental effects (e.g., corrosion) and/or other damage, wear, shorting, etc. Additionally, the fusible links are not well suited for servicing (e.g., repair or replacement) or testing.


According to one embodiment, a sliding inhibition portion extracting method is applied to pattern formation to press an original having a pattern against a resin on a transferred object and cure the resin to transfer the pattern of the original, and extracts a sliding inhibition portion that inhibits sliding of the original in a state of being in contact with the resin before curing in a shot region that is a region in which the pattern is formed by single transfer by either a first technique of estimating the sliding inhibition portion on the basis of at least one of an uneven distribution on a surface of the transferred object, a pattern layout of the original, and a result of misalignment of a transfer pattern, changing a thickness of the resin in the shot region on the basis of the estimation, and determining whether sliding inhibition of the original occurs, or a second technique using a table indicating a relationship between a distribution of the sliding inhibition portion in the shot region and the misalignment of a transfer pattern.

As a method of forming a fine pattern on a transferred object, a technique of pressing an original against a resin on the transferred object and curing the resin to transfer the fine pattern of the original has been proposed. In transferring the fine pattern, alignment is performed by sliding the original in a state of being in contact with the resin before curing.

Sliding inhibition portion extracting method, pattern forming method, and semiconductor device manufacturing method


In an embodiment, a method of frequency domain post-processing is disclosed. The method includes applying adaptive modification gain factor to each frequency coefficient, and determining gain factors based on Local Masking Magnitude and Local Masked Magnitude.

In modern audio/speech digital signal communication systems, a digital signal is compressed at an encoder and the compressed information is packetized and sent to a decoder through a communication channel, frame by frame in real time. A system made of an encoder and decoder together is called a CODEC.
In some applications, speech/audio compression is used to reduce the number of bits that represent the speech/audio signal thereby reducing the bandwidth (bit rate) needed for transmission. However, speech/audio compression may result in degradation of the quality of decompressed signal. In general, a higher bit rate results in higher sound quality, while a lower bit rate results in lower sound quality. Modern speech/audio compression techniques, however, can produce decompressed speech/audio signal of relatively high quality at relatively low bit rates by exploiting the perceptual masking effect of human hearing system.
In general, modern coding/compression techniques attempt to represent the perceptually significant features of the speech/audio signal, without preserving the actual speech/audio waveform. Numerous algorithms have been developed for speech/audio CODECs that reduce the number of bits required to digitally encode the original signal while attempting to maintain high quality of reconstructed signal.
Perceptual weighting filtering is a technology that exploits the human ear masking effect with time domain filtering processing to improve perceptual quality of signal coding or speech coding. This technology has been widely used in many standards during recent decades. One typical application of perceptual weighting is shown in FIG. 1. In FIG. 1, signal 101 is an unquantized original signal that is an input to encoder 110 and also serves as a reference signal for quantization error estimation at summer 112. Signal 102 is an output bitstream from encoder 110, which is transmitted to decoder 114. Decoder 114 outputs quantized signal (or decoded signal) 103, which is used to estimate quantization error 104. Direct error 104 passes through a weighting filter 116 to produce weighted error 105. Instead of minimizing the direct error, the weighted error 105 is minimized so that the spectrum shape of the direct error becomes better in terms of human ear masking effect. Because decoder 114 is placed within the encoder, the whole system is often called a closed-loop approach or an analysis-by-synthesis method.
FIG. 2 illustrates CODEC quantization error spectrums with and without a perceptual weighting filter. Trace 201 is the spectral envelope of the original signal and trace 203 is the error spectrum of direct quantization without adding weighting filter, which is represented as a flat spectrum. Trace 202 is an error spectrum that has been shaped with a perceptual weighting filter. It can be seen that the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) in spectral valley areas is low without using the weighting filter, although the formant peak areas are perceptually more significant. An SNR that is too low in an audible spectrum location can cause perceptual audible degradation. With the shaped error spectrum, the SNR in valley areas is improved while the SNR in peak areas is higher than in valley areas. The weighting filter is applied in encoder side to distribute the quantization error on the spectrum.
With a limited bit rate, the perceptually significant areas such as spectral peak areas are not overly compromised in order to improve the perceptually less significant areas such as spectral valley areas. Therefore, another method, called post-processing, is used to improve the perceptual quality at decoder side. FIG. 1b illustrates a decoder with post-processing block 120. Decoder 122 decodes bitstream 106 to get the quantized signal 107. Signal 108 is the post-processed signal at the final output. Post-processing block 120 further improves the perceptual quality of the quantized signal by reducing the energy of low quality and perceptually less significant frequency components. For time domain CODECs, the post-processing function is often realized by using constructed filters whose parameters are available from the received information of the current decoder. Post-processing can be also performed by transforming the quantized signal into frequency domain, modifying the frequency domain coefficients, and inverse-transforming the modified coefficients back to time domain. Such operations, however, may be too complex for time domain CODECs unless the time domain post-processing parameters are not available or the performance of time domain post-processing is insufficient to meet system requirements.
The psychoacoustic principle or perceptual masking effect is used in some audio compression algorithms for audio/speech equipment. Traditional audio equipment attempts to reproduce signals with fidelity to the original sample or recording. Perceptual coders, on the other hand, reproduce signals to achieve a good fidelity perceivable by the human ear. Although one main goal of digital audio perceptual coders is data reduction, perceptual coding can be used to improve the representation of digital audio through advanced bit allocation. One example of a perceptual coder is a multiband system that divides the audio spectrum in a fashion that mimics the critical bands of psychoacoustics. By modeling human perception, perceptual coders process signals much the way humans do, and take advantage of phenomena such as masking Such systems, however, rely on accurate algorithms. Because is difficult to have a very accurate perceptual model that covers common human hearing behavior, the accuracy of a mathematical perceptual model is limited. However, with limited accuracy, the perceptual coding concept has been implemented by some audio CODECs, hence, numerous MPEG audio coding schemes have benefitted from exploiting the perceptual masking effect. Several ITU standard CODECs also use the perceptual concept. For example, ITU G.729.1 performs so-called dynamic bit allocation based on perceptual masking concept.
FIG. 3 illustrates a typical frequency domain perceptual CODEC. Original input signal 301 is first transformed into the frequency domain to get unquantized frequency domain coefficients 302. Before quantizing the coefficients, a masking function divides the frequency spectrum into many subbands (often equally spaced for simplicity). Each subband dynamically allocates the needed number of bits while making sure that the total number of bits distributed to subbands is not beyond an upper limit. Some subbands even allocate 0 bits if it is judged to be under the masking threshold. Once a determination is made as to what can be discarded, the remainder is allocated the available number of bits. Because bits are not wasted on masked spectrum, bits can be distributed in greater quantity to the rest of the signal. According to allocated bits, the coefficients are quantized and the bitstream 303 is sent to decoder.
Even though perceptual masking concepts have been applied to CODECs, sound quality still has room for improvement due to various reasons and limitations. For example, decoder side post-processing (see FIG. 3b) can further improve the perceptual quality of decoded signal produced with limited bit rates. The decoder first reconstructs the quantized coefficients 304, which are then post-processed by a post processing module 310 to get enhanced coefficients 305. An inverse-transformation is performed on the enhanced coefficients to produce final time domain output 306.
The ITU-T G.729.1 standard defines a frequency domain post-processing module for the high band from 4000 Hz to 8000 Hz. This post-processing technology has been described in the U.S. Pat. No. 7,590,523, entitled "Speech Post-processing Using MDCT Coefficients," which is incorporated herein by reference in its entirety.
As the proposed frequency domain post-processing is improved by benefitting from the perceptual masking principle, it is helpful to briefly describe the perceptual masking principle itself.
Auditory perception is based on critical band analysis in the inner ear where a frequency to place transformation occurs along the basilar membrane. In response to sinusoidal pressure, the basilar membrane vibrates producing the phenomenon of traveling waves. The basilar membrane is internally formed by thin elastic fibers tensed across the cochlear duct. As shown in FIG. 4, the fibers are short and closely packed in the basal region, and become longer and sparse proceeding towards the apex of the cochlea. Being under tension, the fibers can vibrate like the strings of a musical instrument. The traveling waves peak at frequency-dependent locations, with higher frequencies peaking closer to more basal locations. FIG. 4 illustrates the relationship between the peak position and the corresponding frequency. Peak position is an exponential function of input frequency because of the exponentially graded stiffness of the basilar membrane. Part of the stiffness change is due to the increasing width of the membrane and part to its decreasing thickness. In other words, any audible sound can lead to the oscillation of the basilar membrane. One specific frequency sound results in the strongest oscillation magnitude at one specific location of the basilar membrane, which means that one frequency corresponds to one location of the basilar membrane. However, even if a stimuli sound wave consists of one specific frequency, the basilar membrane also oscillates or vibrates around the corresponding location but with weaker magnitude. The power spectra are not represented on a linear frequency scale but on a limited frequency bands called critical bands. The auditory system can be described as a bandpass filter bank made of strongly overlapping bandpass filters with bandwidths in the order of 100 Hz for signals below 500 Hz and up to 5000 Hz for signals at high frequencies. Critical bands and their center frequencies are continuous, as opposed to having strict boundaries at specific frequency locations. The spatial representation of frequency on the basilar membrane is a descriptive piece of physiological information about the auditory system, clarifying many psychophysical data, including the masking data and their asymmetry.
Simultaneous Masking is a frequency domain phenomenon where a low level signal, e.g., a small band noise (the maskee) can be made inaudible by simultaneously occurring stronger signal(the masker), e.g., a pure tone, if masker and maskee are close enough to each other in frequency. A masking threshold can be measured below which any signal will not be audible. As an example shown in FIG. 5, the masking threshold depends on the sound pressure level (SPL) and the frequency of the masker, and on the characteristics of the masker and maskee. The slope of the masking threshold is steeper towards lower frequencies, i.e., higher frequencies are more easily masked. Without a masker, a signal is inaudible if its SPL is below the threshold of quiet, which depends on frequency and covers a dynamic range of more than 60 dB.
FIG. 5 describes masking by only one masker. If a source signal has many simultaneous maskers, a global masking threshold can be computed that describes the threshold of just noticeable distortions as a function of frequency. The calculation of the global masking threshold is based on a high resolution short term amplitude spectrum of the audio or speech signal, which is sufficient for critical band based analysis. In a first step, individual masking thresholds are calculated depending on the signal level, the type of masker(noise or tone), and frequency range of the speech signal. Next, the global masking threshold is determined by adding individual thresholds and the threshold in quiet. Adding this later threshold ensures that the computed global masking threshold is not below the threshold in quiet. The effects of masking reaching over critical band bounds are included in the calculation. Finally, the global signal-to-mask ratio (SMR) is determined as the ratio of the maximum of signal power and global masking threshold. As shown in FIG. 5, the noise-to-mask ratio (NMR) is defined as the ratio of quantization noise level to masking threshold, and SNR is the signal-to-noise ratio. Minimum perceptible difference between two stimuli is called just noticeable difference (JND). The JND for pitch depends on frequency, sound level, duration, and suddenness of the frequency change. A similar mechanism is responsible for critical bands and pitch discrimination.
FIGS. 6a and 6b illustrate the asymmetric nature of simultaneous masking FIG. 6a shows an example of noise-masking-tone (NMT) at the threshold of detection, which in this example is a 410 Hz pure tone presented at 76 dB SPL and just masked by a critical bandwidth narrowband noise centered at 410 Hz (90 Hz BW) of overall intensity 80 dB SPL. This corresponds to a threshold minimum signal-to-mask ratio of 4 dB. The threshold SMR increases as the probe tone is shifted either above or below 410 Hz. FIG. 6b represents Tone-masking-noise (TMN) at the threshold of detection, which in this example is a 1000 Hz pure tone presented at 80 dB SPL just masks a critical band narrowband noise centered at 1000 Hz of overall intensity 56 dB SPL. This corresponds to a threshold minimum signal-to-mask ratio of 24 dB. The threshold SMR for tone-masking-noise increases as the masking tone is shifted either above or below the noise center frequency, 1000 Hz. When comparing FIG. 6a to FIG. 6b, a "masking asymmetry" is apparent, namely that NMT produces a smaller threshold minimum SMR (4 dB) than does TMN (24 dB).
In summary, the masking effect can be summarized as a few points:                A louder sound may often render a softer sound inaudible, depending on the relative frequencies and loudness of the two sounds;        Pure tones close together in frequency mask each other more than tones widely separated in frequency;        A pure tone masks tones of higher frequency more effectively than tones of lower frequency;        The greater the intensity of the masking tone, the broader the range of frequencies it can mask;        Masking effect spreads more in high frequency area than in low frequency area;        Masking effect at a frequency strongly depends on the neighborhood spectrum of the frequency; and        The "masking asymmetry" is apparent in the sense that the masking effect of noise as masker is much stronger (smaller SMR) than a tone as a masker.
G.722 is an ITU standard CODEC that provides 7 kHz wideband audio at data rates from 48, 56 and 64 kbit/s. This is useful, for example, in fixed network voice over IP applications, where the required bandwidth is typically not prohibitive, and offers an improvement in speech quality over older narrowband CODECs such as G.711, without an excessive increase in implementation complexity. The coding system uses sub-band adaptive differential pulse code modulation (SB-ADPCM) with a bit rate of 64 kbit/s. In the SB-ADPCM technique used, the frequency band is split into two sub-bands (higher and lower band) and the signals in each sub-band are encoded using ADPCM technology. The system has three basic modes of operation corresponding to the bit rates used for 7 kHz audio coding: 64, 56 and 48 kbit/s. The latter two modes allow an auxiliary data channel of 8 and 16 kbit/s respectively to be provided within the 64 kbit/s by making use of bits from the lower sub-band.
FIG. 7a is a block diagram of the SB-ADPCM encoder. The transmit quadrature mirror filters (QMFs) have two linear-phase non-recursive digital filters that split the frequency band of 0 to 8000 Hz into two sub-bands: the lower sub-band being 0 to 4000 Hz, and the higher sub-band being 4000 to 8000 Hz. Input signal 701 xin 701 to the transmit QMFs 720 is sampled at 16 kHz. Outputs, xH 702 and xL 703 for the higher and lower sub-bands, respectively, are sampled at 8 kHz. The lower sub-band input signal after subtraction of an estimate of the input signal produces a difference signal that is adaptively quantized by assigning 6 binary digits to have a 48 kbit/s signal IL 705. A 4-bit operation, instead of 6-bit operation, is used in both the lower sub-band ADPCM encoder 722 and in the lower sub-band ADPCM decoder 732 (FIG. 7b) to allow the possible insertion of data in the two least significant bits. The higher sub-band input signal xH 702, after subtraction of an estimate of the input signal, produces the difference signal which is adaptively quantized by assigning 2 binary digits to have 16 kbit/s signal IH 704.
FIG. 7b is a block diagram of a SB-ADPCM decoder. De-multiplexer (DMUX) 730 decomposes the received 64 kbit/s octet-formatted signal Ir, 707 into two signals, hr 709 and IH 708, which form codeword inputs to the lower and higher sub-band ADPCM decoders, respectively. Low sub-band ADPCM decoder 732 reconstructs rL 711 follows the same structure of ADPCM encoder 722 (See FIG. 7a), and operates in any of three possible variants depending on the received indication of the operation mode. High-band ADPCM decoder 734 is identical to the feedback portion of the higher sub-band ADPCM encoder 724, the output being the reconstructed signal rH 710. Receive QMFs 736 shown in FIG. 7b are made of two linear-phase non-recursive digital filters that interpolate outputs rL 711 and rH 710 of the lower and higher sub-band ADPCM decoders 732 and 734 from 8 kHz to 16 kHz and then produces output xout 712 sampled at 16 kHz. Because the high band ADPCM bit rate is much lower than the low band ADPCM, the quality of the high band is relatively poor.
G.722 Super Wideband Extension means that the wideband portion from 0 to 8000 Hz is still coded with G.722 CODEC while the super wideband portion from 8000 to 14000 Hz of the input signal is coded by using a different coding approach, where the decoded output of the super wideband portion is combined with the output of G.722 decoder to enhance the quality of the final output sampled at 32 kHz. Higher layers at higher bit rates of G.722 Super Wideband Extension can also be used to further enhance the quality of the wideband portion from 0 to 8000 Hz.
The ITU-T G.729.1/G.718 super wideband extension is a recently developed standard that is based on a G.729.1 or G.718 CODEC as the core layer of the extended scalable CODEC. The core layer of G.729.1 or G.718 encodes and decodes the wideband portion from 50 to 7000 Hz and outputs a signal sampled at 16 kHz. The extended layers add the encoding and decoding of the super wideband portion from 7000 to 14000 Hz. The extended layers output a final signal sampled at 32 kHz. The high layers of the extended scalable CODEC also add the enhancements and improvements of the wideband portion (50-7000 Hz) to the coding error produced by G.729.1 or G.718 CODEC.
The ITU-T G.729.1 encoder is also called a G.729EV coder, which is an 8-32 kbit/s scalable wideband (50-7000 Hz) extension of ITU-T Rec. G.729. By default, the encoder input and decoder output are sampled at 16 kHz. The bitstream produced by the encoder is scalable and has 12 embedded layers, which will be referred to as Layers 1 to 12. Layer 1 is the core layer corresponding to a bit rate of 8 kbit/s. This layer is compliant with G.729 bitstream, which makes G.729EV interoperable with G.729. Layer 2 is a narrowband enhancement layer adding 4 kbit/s, while Layers 3 to 12 are wideband enhancement layers adding 20 kbit/s with steps of 2 kbit/s.
This coder operates with a digital signal sampled at 16000 Hz followed by conversion to 16-bit linear PCM for the input to the encoder. A 8000 Hz input sampling frequency is also supported. Similarly, the format of the decoder output is 16-bit linear PCM with a sampling frequency of 8000 Hz or 16000 Hz. Other input/output characteristics are converted to 16-bit linear PCM with 8000 or 16000 Hz sampling before encoding, or from 16-bit linear PCM to an appropriate format after decoding.
The G.729EV coder is built upon a three-stage structure: embedded Code-Excited Linear-Prediction (CELP) coding, Time-Domain Bandwidth Extension (TDBWE) and predictive transform coding that will be referred to as Time-Domain Aliasing Cancellation (TDAC). The embedded CELP stage generates Layers 1 and 2 which yield a narrowband synthesis (50-4000 Hz) at 8 and 12 kbit/s. The TDBWE stage generates Layer 3 and allows producing a wideband output (50-7000 Hz) at 14 kbit/s. The TDBWE algorithm is also borrowed to perform FEC Frame Erasure Concealment (FEC) or Packet Loss Concealment (PLC) for layers higher than 14 kbps. The TDAC stage operates in the Modified Discrete Cosine Transform (MDCT) domain and generates Layers 4 to 12 to improve quality from 16 to 32 kbit/s. TDAC coding represents jointly the weighted CELP coding error signal in the 50-4000 Hz band and the input signal in the 4000-7000 Hz band. The G.729EV coder operates on 20 ms frames. However, embedded CELP coding stage operates on 10 ms frames, like G.729. As a result two 10 ms CELP frames are processed per 20 ms frame.
G.718 is an ITU-T standard embedded scalable speech and audio CODEC providing high quality narrowband (250 Hz to 3500 Hz) speech over the lower bit rates and high quality wideband (50 Hz to 7000 Hz) speech over a complete range of bit rates. In addition, G.718 is designed to be robust to frame erasures, thereby enhancing speech quality when used in internet protocol (IP) transport applications on fixed, wireless and mobile networks. The CODEC has an embedded scalable structure, enabling maximum flexibility in the transport of voice packets through IP networks of today and in future media-aware networks. In addition, the embedded structure of G.718 allows the CODEC to be extended to provide a super-wideband (50 Hz to 14000 Hz). The bitstream may be truncated at the decoder side or by any component of the communication system to instantaneously adjust the bit rate to the desired value without the need for out-of-band signaling. The encoder produces an embedded bitstream structured in five layers corresponding to the five available bit rates: 8, 12, 16, 24 & 32 kbit/s.
The G.718 encoder can accept wideband sampled signals at 16 kHz, or narrowband signals sampled at either 16 KHz or 8 kHz. Similarly, the decoder output can be 16 kHz wideband, in addition to 16 kHz or 8 kHz narrowband. Input signals sampled at 16 kHz, but with bandwidth limited to narrowband, are detected by the encoder. The output of the G.718 CODEC operates with a bandwidth of 50 Hz to 4000 Hz at 8 and 12 kbit/s, and 50 Hz to 7000 Hz from 8 to 32 kbit/s. The CODEC operates on 20 ms frames and has a maximum algorithmic delay of 42.875 ms for wideband input and wideband output signals. The maximum algorithmic delay for narrowband input and narrowband output signals is 43.875 ms. The CODEC is also employed in a low-delay mode when the encoder and decoder maximum bit rates are set to 12 kbit/s. In this case, the maximum algorithmic delay is reduced by 10 ms.
The CODEC also incorporates an alternate coding mode, with a minimum bit rate of 12.65 kbit/s, which is a bitstream interoperable with ITU-T Recommendation G.722.2, 3GPP AMR-WB and 3GPP2 VMR-WB mobile wideband speech coding standards. This option replaces Layer 1 and Layer 2, and the layers 3-5 are similar to the default option with the exception that in Layer 3 few bits are used to compensate for the extra bits of the 12.65 kbit/s core. The decoder further decodes other G.722.2 operating modes. G.718 also includes discontinuous transmission mode (DTX) and comfort noise generation (CNG) algorithms that enable bandwidth savings during inactive periods. An integrated noise reduction algorithm can be used provided that the communication session is limited to 12 kbit/s.
The underlying algorithm is based on a two-stage coding structure: the lower two layers are based on Code-Excited Linear Prediction (CELP) coding of the band (50-6400 Hz), where the core layer takes advantage of signal-classification to use optimized coding modes for each frame. The higher layers encode the weighted error signal from the lower layers using overlap-add modified discrete cosine transform (MDCT) transform coding. Several technologies are used to encode the MDCT coefficients to maximize the performance for both speech and music.

System and method for frequency domain audio post-processing based on perceptual masking


A backlight unit capable of preventing an initial driving malfunction is disclosed. The backlight unit includes a bottom cover opened upwardly, a reflective sheet disposed in the inner surface of the bottom cover; a plurality of lamps arranged at a fixed interval on the reflective sheet; an auxiliary light source disposed at the outer side surface of the bottom cover; and a light guide member, opposite to the emitting surface of the auxiliary light source, configured to guide light emitted from the auxiliary light source to the lamps through first and second penetration holes formed on one of the side walls of the bottom cover and the reflective sheet.

1. Field of the Disclosure
This disclosure relates to a backlight unit, and more particularly to a backlight unit which prevents an initial driving malfunction, and a liquid crystal display device having the same.
2. Description of the Related Art
Display devices used for computer monitors or TVs include self-light-emitting devices such as organic light emitting displays (OLEDs), vacuum fluorescent displays (VFDs), field emission displays (FEDs), and plasma display panels (PDPs), as well as non self-light-emitting devices such as liquid crystal displays (LCDs). In general, an LCD device includes two substrates having electric field generation electrodes and a liquid crystal layer having dielectric anisotropy interposed between the substrates. When a certain voltage is applied to the electric field generation electrodes, an electric field is generated in the liquid crystal layer. The strength of the electric field is adjusted by changing the voltage. Thus, a desired image is displayed by controlling the transmissivity of light passing through the liquid crystal layer.
The LCD device includes a data driver, a gate driver, and a backlight unit. The data driver externally receives image data, generates data signals and supplies the generated data signals to data lines on an LCD panel. The gate driver generates a gate signal to drive the pixels of the LCD panel in one line and supplies the generated gate signal to a gate line of the LCD panel. The backlight unit is disposed on the rear surface of the LCD panel and provides light.
Cold cathode fluorescent lamps (CCFLs), external electrode fluorescent lamps (EEFLs), or light emitting diodes (LEDs) are used as the light source in general backlight units. Recently, EEFLs have become popular as the light source of backlight units due to merits such as long lifespan.
If an EEFL included in a direct type backlight unit of a large LCD device is left in the darkness or at a low temperature, gas injected into the EEFL changes into a basic state. As such, the EEFL does not light up when the LCD device is initially driven. In other words, an initial driving malfunction occurs in the EEFL and the backlight unit having the same.

Backlight unit and liquid crystal display device having the same