A semiconductor configuration is described which includes a semiconductor body having a main surface and an insulator layer disposed on the main surface of the semiconductor body. The insulator layer has a cavity formed therein extending to the main surface of the semiconductor body. A fuse having a fusible part extends from the main surface of the semiconductor body toward an upper surface of the insulator layer at right angles to the main surface of the semiconductor body, and the fuse is embedded in the cavity. A method for producing the semiconductor configuration having the fuse is also described.

Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a fuse for a semiconductor configuration having a semiconductor body with two main surfaces running essentially parallel to one another.
As is known, the use of fuses in semiconductor configurations and, in particular, in semiconductor memories is becoming increasingly important. They are used to connect appropriate substitute elements or redundant elements, such as memory cells or word lines, when individual elements fail. If, for example, a word line is found to be faulty when testing a semiconductor memory, then a redundant word line is activated instead of the faulty word line, by disconnecting or blowing fuses. Chip options can also be connected via fuses, for example.
There are now two different ways to disconnect fuses: in the first way, the disconnection is carried out by the action of a laser beam, and this is what is referred to as a laser fuse. In the second way, the disconnection is carried out by electrical destruction resulting from the production of heat; this is an electrical fuse, or E-fuse.
Both fuse types have the common feature that they are produced only in planar form (see, for example, U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,663,590 and 5,731,624). Therefore the contacts of a fuse lie in a plane, which runs essentially parallel to a main surface of the semiconductor body of a semiconductor configuration, that is to say, for example, of a semiconductor memory. Such a structure has first contacts and second contacts, which are each disposed on conductive areas, which are composed, for example, of highly doped silicon. The areas are electrically connected to one another by a fuse, which represents a conductive connection between the areas. The fuse may, for example, be composed of doped polycrystalline silicon, or else of metal. The fuse itself has a fine form, and has a width in the order of magnitude of a few xcexcm down to less than 1 xcexcm.
If a current which is greater than a certain limit value now flows between the contacts, then the fuse is destroyed by the resistive heat produced by the current flow. Therefore, the fuse is blown. The programming voltage is in this case greater than the operating voltage of the chip. The magnitude of the programming voltage is dependent, inter alia, on the width of the fuses.
The process of blowing a fuse can also, of course, be carried out by the influence of a laser beam, and this is particularly expedient when the fuse is located on the surface of a semiconductor configuration.
The fuse together with the associated contacts requires an area that is not negligible on a semiconductor chip. The area required for fuses is a disadvantageous factor in terms of the continuous aim to miniaturize semiconductor configurations. This applies in particular to semiconductor memories, since a large number of fuses are required in them.
It is accordingly an object of the invention to provide a fuse for a semiconductor configuration and a method for its production which overcomes the above-mentioned disadvantages of the prior art devices and methods of this general type, which is distinguished by a minimal area requirement; and in order to keep the programming voltage low, it should be possible to set the diameter of the fuse to values which are significantly less than 1 xcexcm.
With the foregoing and other objects in view there is provided, in accordance with the invention, a semiconductor configuration. The semiconductor configuration includes a semiconductor body having a main surface and an insulator layer disposed on the main surface of the semiconductor body and has an upper surface. The insulator layer has a cavity formed therein extending to the main surface of the semiconductor body. A fuse having a fusible part extends from the main surface of the semiconductor body toward the upper surface of the insulator layer at right angles to the main surface of the semiconductor body, and the fuse is embedded in the cavity.
In the case of the fuse for the semiconductor configuration having the semiconductor body with two main surfaces running essentially parallel to one another, the object is achieved, according to the invention, by the fuse extending in the direction between the two main surfaces and being embedded in the cavity in the semiconductor body.
The fuse according to the invention is thus not, like all the existing fuses, disposed in a planar structure. In fact, it is provided in the xe2x80x9cverticalxe2x80x9d direction between the two main surfaces of the semiconductor configuration. This factor on its own achieves a considerable reduction in area, so that it is possible to achieve a considerably improved packing density for semiconductor configurations with fuses. In addition, the diameter of the fuses can be set without any problems to values of considerably less than 1 xcexcm, and this results in low programming voltages.
The enclosure of the fuses in the cavity has a further advantageous effect, which can be achieved only with major complexity and a large space requirement with the previous planar fuses. When the fuses are destroyed, the melt that is produced cannot produce any undesirable short circuits due to vapor-deposited material, since the vapors are reliably enclosed in the cavity. There is therefore no need for any special measures in order to avoid short circuits, which can occur when planar fuses are destroyed. Such measures with existing fuses contain the maintenance of specific minimum distances to adjacent elements or other fuses, or the provision of protective ring structures around the fuses.
A method for producing the fuse according to the invention is distinguished, by method steps which includes applying an insulator layer, which is etched selectively with respect to a semiconductor substrate and is composed, for example, of silicon nitride, is applied to the semiconductor substrate, which is composed, for example, of silicon. The insulator layer and the semiconductor substrate are then anisotropically structured, so that a semiconductor area in the form of a column remains under the remaining insulator layer after structuring. The column-shaped semiconductor layer is then isotropically etched over, in which case the width and electrical characteristics of the fuse can be set without any problems in this step. A dielectric composed, for example, of silicon dioxide is anisotropically applied to the remaining structure, which can be done by vapor deposition, and as a result of which a cavity is formed.
Contact is then made with the fuse that has been produced in the normal way, once again, as well as with its metallization, with subsequent passivation. A buried layer contact may be used if required for making contact, and this contributes to a further improvement in the packing density.
The fuse itself is advantageously composed of doped or undoped silicon. In this case, it may have a length of up to a few xcexcm and a diameter of about 0.1 to 0.5 xcexcm.
At its end facing the semiconductor body, the fuse makes contact, for example, with a buried layer, as has already been explained above, while, at its opposite end, which is located in the vicinity of one main surface of the semiconductor body, a metallic contact can be provided, composed, for example, of tungsten with appropriate contact diffusion. Such a tungsten contact can then be connected to an interconnect composed, for example, of aluminum, tungsten or polycrystalline silicon.
Other features which are considered as characteristic for the invention are set forth in the appended claims.
Although the invention is illustrated and described herein as embodied in a fuse for a semiconductor configuration and a method for its production, it is nevertheless not intended to be limited to the details shown, since various modifications and structural changes may be made therein without departing from the spirit of the invention and within the scope and range of equivalents of the claims.
The construction and method of operation of the invention, however, together with additional objects and advantages thereof will be best understood from the following description of specific embodiments when read in connection with the accompanying drawings.

Fuse for a semiconductor configuration and method for its production


In a waveform generation apparatus, a coordinates information group showing original waveform data in a two-dimensional phase space having a time axis and a wave height value axis is expanded to an n-dimensional phase space (n>2) including a time axis and a wave height value axis using Takens' embedding theorem, and converted to a coordinates information group showing attractor data. In addition, an area of the attractor data is shown, and after one of the coordinates information is specified from the coordinates information group within the shown area, coordinate values corresponding to a time axis in the coordinates information are acquired as time information. Then, composite waveform data is generated by a predetermined waveform data being added to the original waveform data, and the generated composite waveform data is outputted from a position of the original waveform data on a time axis corresponding to the acquired time information.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a waveform generation apparatus and a waveform generation program that applies a different waveform to an inputted waveform by taking advantage of attractors used in chaos theory, and thereby generating a new waveform accompanied by resonation and attenuation.
2. Description of the Related Art
Conventionally, when creating music, a musician must first consider how to leave listeners with a strong impression of an image formed in the musician's mind for each song. The process of creating music is largely divided into a "composition" process for optimizing melodies and chords, and a "tone determination" process for optimizing tones used to play the composed melodies and chords. In the "tone determination" process, the musician generally finds a tone that fits an image he wishes to express, and uses it as is. The selected tone has a particularly important role in leaving an impression of the musician's music on listeners.
When performing "tone determination", the musician often extracts "sound impression" which is a feature of sound, or in other words, extracts "sound feature that leaves an impression on people", and actively uses this feature. However, the extraction of "sound impression" has not been established as a common method and is performed based mostly on experience and sensitivity. Therefore, unless the musician is very experienced, this extraction is difficult.
When the musician therefore spends time and effort to extract "sound impression" matching what he is imagining and finds a tone matching this "sound impression", the musician frequently reuses the tone in other songs "composed" later, after using it in a single "composed" song. This is because the discovered "sound impression" is very appealing and valuable to the musician, and finding a replacement tone having a similar "sound impression" is extremely difficult. However, repeatedly reusing the same tone may leave listeners with the negative impression that the musician is simply repeatedly reusing sounds of the same tone and lacks creativity. In addition, the originality of each song is lost, and a crucial problem arises in that listeners lose interest in the musician.
In recent years, it has become known that when a method called Takens' plot, which is considered to be similar to information processing performed in a human brain, is used to generate an attractor from a certain sound, an attractor indicating "sound impression" is generated. The reason for this is becoming clear through the study of the mechanism of the human brain.
First, the human brain receives external stimulus as information, and after perceiving what the stimulus is (extracts the features thereof), stores the information. This cognition is thought to be performed not only based on inputted information, but also by referencing information stored by stimuli received in the past. For example, a scene in a movie that overlaps with a personal past experience sometimes evokes strong emotions. This is because the brain references memories of experiences stored in the past when it perceives the scene from the movie, and perceives the scene as a strong stimulus if an experience having the same features are found in the memory. The same applies to when a person hears a sound that he has heard somewhere in the past and feels familiarity with the sound.
In the method by which the brain performs cognition, the brain does not necessarily perceive by referencing memories of the distant past. The more recent past is also considered to have a significant influence on cognition. In addition, sound which is information related to hearing is also considered to be perceived by more recent past sound being referenced.
From the above, it can be said that the "process of selecting a current waveform by a predetermined plot scale" in Takens' plot is very similar to the process of "simultaneously referencing past information when perceiving current information" performed in the brain. Therefore, to the brain, the process of drawing an attractor from a waveform showing sound by Takens' plot is none other than the process of extracting "sound impression" required to perceive the waveform. In other words, an attractor displayed using Takens' plot visually expresses the characterizing portion of the sound, which is its "sound impression".
For example, a waveform generator having a following configuration is described in Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open (Kokai) Publication No. 2008-275845.
The waveform generator includes a Takens' plot processing means for actualizing embedding of original waveform data in a two-dimensional phase space having a time axis and a wave height value axis to an n-dimensional phase space (n>2) based on Takens' embedding theorem by performing Takens' plot processing based on plot conditions composed of a predetermined plot scale value t and a resampling time Δt, and generating attractor data in the n-dimensional phase space; an attractor displaying means for displaying on a display screen of a display means an attractor trajectory based on the attractor data generated by the Takens' plot processing means; an attractor altering means for generating a variation attractor by altering the shape of a waveform showing the attractor displayed by the attractor displaying means in response to a user operation; and a waveform transformation processing means for generating waveform data in a two-dimensional phase space by performing inverse transformation processing in the Takens' plot processing on the variation attractor generated by the attractor changing means.
By an attractor waveform obtained by Takens' plot being altered and the altered attractor waveform being returned to waveform data in a two-dimensional phase space in this way, music edited by the user can be generated while maintaining the features of the attractor.
On the other hand, as a method of amplifying and attenuating an inputted waveform, a method is conventionally used in which the amplification rate of an inputted waveform is simply changed to perform amplification and attenuation. However, in this method, there is a problem in that only the volume is changed, and the character (tone) of the sound cannot be changed. Therefore, musical sounds having different attributes or musical sounds including harmony cannot be generated.

Waveform generation apparatus and waveform generation program


A printed wiring board including an interlayer resin insulation layer, a pad formed on the interlayer resin insulation layer and for mounting an electronic component, a solder-resist layer formed on the interlayer resin insulation layer and the pad and having an opening portion over the pad, and a coating layer formed on the pad and exposed through the opening portion of the solder-resist layer. The solder-resist layer has a protruding portion protruding toward the inside of the opening portion in a bottom portion of the opening portion, and the protruding portion of the solder-resist layer has a flat surface in an end portion of the protruding portion.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a printed wiring board and a method for manufacturing a printed wiring board.
2. Discussion of the Background
In recent years, the structures of the wiring and pads of a semiconductor element have become finer, and the pitch of bumps in a printed wiring board on which the semiconductor element is mounted has also become finer. As a result, opening portions formed in solder-resist layers are becoming smaller. In particular, the diameter of opening portions is made extremely small. As a printed wiring board, a printed wiring board is suggested where pads for mounting an electronic component are formed on an interlayer resin insulation layer while a solder-resist layer is formed as an outermost layer. Opening portions are formed in the solder-resist layer to expose the pads, and solder bumps are formed in the opening portions (for example, see WO 2006/082784). The contents of this publication are incorporated herein by reference in their entirety.

Printed wiring board and method for manufacturing printed wiring board


A method is provided for repairing a damaged rotor blade on an integrally bladed rotor by removing a damaged portion of a damaged blade leaving a blade stub extending outwardly from the disk and performing a linear friction welding operation to attach a replacement blade segment to the blade stub. The rotor may be disposed operation using a linear friction welding apparatus. The method includes disposing a support collar about the blade stub and securing the support collar to the linear friction welding apparatus prior to a commencement of the bonding operation. A lower surface of the support collar is contoured to mate with a portion of an outer circumference surface of the rotor disk.

Gas turbine engines, such as those used to power modern commercial aircraft or in industrial applications, include a compressor for pressurizing a supply of air, a combustor for burning a hydrocarbon fuel in the presence of the pressurized air, and a turbine for extracting energy from the resultant combustion gases. Generally, the compressor, combustor and turbine are disposed about a central engine axis with the compressor disposed axially upstream of the combustor and the turbine disposed axially downstream of the combustor. For a turbofan gas turbine engine, a large diameter fan is mounted to the engine shaft forward of the compressor. Air drawn into the engine passes axially through the fan and the compressor into the combustor wherein fuel is combusted in the air to generate and accelerate combustion gases which pass through the turbine and out the exhaust nozzle of the gas turbine engine. In the turbofan version of the gas turbine engine, a portion of the air flow into the engine is delivered to the compressor to pass through the engine core, while the remainder of the air passes through a bypass duct thereby bypassing the compressor and engine core.
The compressor and the turbine modules include a plurality of stages, each stage including a plurality of blades mounted to a rotor disk mounted to a rotatable shaft. One or more stages of blades may be associated with a single rotor disc. In many gas turbine engines, the compressor and/or turbine rotors constitute integrally blade rotors (IBR) wherein the blades are machined from an oversized rotor disk forging, metallurgically joined or solid state welded to a rotor disk, rather than being mechanically secured to the rotor disk, such as by a dove-tail or fir-tree blade root fit into a correspondingly shaped slot in the rotor disk. Consequently, an integrally bladed rotor assembly is lighter than a conventional bladed root rotor assembly of comparable size.
However, rotor blades are subject in service to damage from impact by foreign objects ingested into the engine, commonly referred to as foreign object damage (FOD). Rotor blades are also subject in service to damage from impact by pieces of broken or unsecured engine parts entrained in the air flow passing through the engine, commonly referred to as domestic object damage (DOD). Because of the position at the forward end of the gas turbine engine, fan and compressor damages are particularly susceptible to foreign object damage, as well as domestic object damage from pieces of blades broken off upstream blades. While minor damage may be repaired relatively easily by a process known in the art as blending, blades that suffer significant damage from an FOD/DOD event must be replaced.
Replacement of blades on integrally bladed rotors has proven to be troublesome. In a common repair method, after an integrally bladed rotor having a damaged blade requiring replacement is removed from the engine, the damaged portion of the damaged blade is removed leaving a blade stub projecting outwardly from the rotor disk. The blade is then restored by metallurgically bonding a replacement blade section to the blade stub. Although a number of variations of the aforedescribed method for repairing a damaged blade on an integrally bladed rotor have been proposed and tried in military and commercial applications, consistently obtaining a structurally sound repair with original equipment manufacture properties has proven to be elusive. For example, U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,873,751; 5,109,606; 5,197,190; 5,755,031 and 6,536,110 disclose various techniques for repairing damaged blades of integrally bladed rotors by welding a replacement blade section to a blade stub on the rotor. U.S. Pat. No. 6,354,482 discloses a linear friction welding apparatus suitable for use in bonding an airfoil to a rotor during manufacture of an integrally bladed rotor and U.S. Pat. No. 6,244,495 discloses a gripper for use in connection with a linear friction welding apparatus.


An electrical connector adapted to protect its signal circuits against power surges for at least ESD protection, having a conductive shell (60) with a transverse flange (64) on which are mounted components such as diodes (100) having first electrodes soldered thereto for grounding. A plurality of discrete straps (114) extend from second electrodes of the diodes to respective the contacts (20) and define circuits electrically connecting the contacts to the diodes. The dielectric housing (30) includes slots (46) along side surfaces within which intermediate strap sections 118 of the straps are retained, and a lateral flange (42) of the housing coextends along the transverse shell flange on each side and has recesses (54) within which the diodes are disposed, with channels (48) extending inwardly along the lateral flanges to the slots to retain transverse contact sections of said straps therein. The discrete straps (114) can be joined to carrier strips defining lead frames (110) to facilitate handling and assembly.

Electrical connectors are known having a plurality of electrical contacts therein for mating with corresponding contacts of a mating connector for signal transmission, in which each signal line is electrically connected to a discrete component on or in the connector In U.S. Pat. No. 4,804,332 each contact is connected to one electrode of a discrete filter member while the other electrode is connected by a ground member to the connector shell and then to chassis ground; the signal lines are thus protected against electronic noise such as electromagnetic interference (EMI) and radiofrequency interference (RFI). For example, appropriately selected filter members can assuredly filter out noise in the lower frequency ranges such as under 500 megahertz from the signal lines of the connector. The filter members are mounted in a common housing component which is then securable to an electrical connector such as a conventional connector so that first electrodes of filter members become electrically connected by means of discrete straps to the contacts mounted in the connector, or to discrete circuits connected to the contacts; second electrodes of the filter members are electrically connected to a separate ground bus member which then includes a portion extending outwardly from the component to be connected (such as by soldering) to the shell, for example, of the connector for grounding. Contact sections of the bus member and of each discrete strap can be exposed within apertures of the component housing into which the filter members can be inserted for soldering to the pairs of contact sections. In U. S. Pat. No. 4,804,332 the discrete circuit straps may be of the type having an apertured plate portion formed and situated to extend to the position of a pin section of the corresponding connector contact, with all plate portions in a common transverse plane to be inserted simultaneously over the pin sections of all the contacts during assembly of the filter-containing component to the connector, whereafter the plate portions are soldered to the respective pin sections. The reference thus discloses a filter-containing component which can be retrofitted onto preexisting connectors such as by being mountable externally of the connector.
It is also desirable to protect the signal lines of a connector from disruptions caused by power surges owing to electrostatic discharges (ESD) and electromagnetic pulse (EMP). Diode components are known such as from U.S. Pat. No. 4,709,253 for ESD and EMP protection, which can be mounted to individual contacts such as in U.S. Pat. No. 4,772,225, or to transverse dielectric plate members assembled within the connector such as in U.S. Pat. No. 4,729,743 having discrete circuits extending to each contact passing through the plate and ground circuits extending to the surrounding metal shell.
It is desirable to provide a connector containing components such as zener diodes for ESD or ESD/EMP protection which are easily assembled with few required parts and also which do not require more than negligible increase in the size of an otherwise standard sized connector.
It is also desirable to provide discrete diodes for closely spaced contacts of a multiterminal connector without modification of the positions of the contacts within the connector which would change the mating interface of an otherwise standard connector interface, nor require modification of the contacts.

Electrical connector containing components and method of making same


One embodiment of the present invention relates to an apparatus for preventing remodulation in a transmission chain. A first offset generation circuit selectively introduces a first frequency offset into in-phase (I) and quadrature phase (Q) equivalent baseband signals. A second offset generation circuit selectively introduces a second frequency offset into an oscillator output signal. The frequency of the offset oscillator output signal is divided by a divider to form offset local oscillator signals, which are provided to up-conversion mixers that modulate the offset equivalent baseband signals onto the offset local oscillator signals to generate a composite modulated output signal. The first and second frequency offsets are chosen to have values that cancel during modulation. However, because the second frequency offset shifts the offset oscillator output signal's frequency to a value that is no longer a harmonic of the composite modulated output signal's frequency, remodulation is prevented.

Modern portable communication devices (e.g., cell phones, PDAs, etc.) comprise transmission chains configured to transmit information wirelessly using electromagnetic waves. FIG. 1a illustrates an exemplary direct conversion (homodyne) transmitter 100 that utilizes quadrature modulation to encode data onto a composite modulated output signal, that can be wirelessly transmitted by an antenna, through the use of amplitude modulation (i.e., varying the strength of the output signal) and frequency modulation (i.e., varying the frequency of the output signal).
As shown in FIG. 1a, a baseband processor 102 is configured to generate in-phase (I) and quadrature phase (Q) equivalent baseband signals having a frequency range centered around zero Hz (e.g., −8 MHz to 8 MHz). The I and Q equivalent baseband signals are output from the baseband processor 102 to respective up-conversion mixers 106a and 106b. A local oscillator 104 is configured to generate an oscillator output signal SOSC (e.g., a sin wave) at a high frequency (e.g., 10 GHz), which is provided to a quadrature divider 108 that is configured to divide the frequency of the oscillator output signal SOSC by a division factor to generate local oscillator signals, LOI(0°) and LOQ(90°), which are offset by 90°. The local oscillator signals are provided to the up-conversion mixers 106a and 106b, which modulate the I and Q equivalent baseband signals onto the local oscillator signals, thereby up-converting the frequency of the I and Q equivalent baseband signals and generating mixer output signals having a frequency equal to that of the local oscillator signals. The mixer output signals are combined by an adder 110 to form a composite modulated output signal SCOMP that is provided to one or more amplification stages 112 before being received by an antenna 114 for wireless transmission.
The one or more amplification stages 112 are configured to amplify the composite modulated output signal SCOMP, having a small amount of energy, to form a transmitter output signal ST—OUT with a larger amount of energy. However, since the oscillator output signal SOSC is at substantially the same frequency as the composite modulated output signal SCOMP, the output signal of the one or more amplification stages 112 (or any higher harmonic frequency of it) may interfere with operation of the local oscillator 104 (e.g., shift and/or modify the frequency of the oscillator output signal), which is also at a multiple of the output center frequency, due to the LO-frequency division, and is therefore susceptible to external disturbances. Such external disturbances may result in spurious emissions being output from the transmitter 100.
For example, FIG. 1b illustrates frequency spectrum diagrams corresponding to transmitter 100. Frequency spectrum diagram 116 illustrates the frequency fOSC of the oscillator output signal SOSC and the frequency fCOMP of the composite modulated output signal SCOMP (i.e., substantially equal to the frequency of the local oscillator signals, LOI(0°) and LOQ(90°)). The frequency fCOMP is equal to the frequency fOSC divided by a division factor (e.g., 2 or 4), as described above.
Referring to frequency spectrum diagram 118, the frequency fCOMP of the composite modulated output signal will have harmonic frequencies having a reduced power. The power of the harmonic frequencies decreases with each order of harmonic, but since the division factor between the fOSC and fCOMP is typically small, the harmonic frequencies may be strong enough to disturb operation of the local oscillator 104. Therefore, since the frequency fOSC is substantially equal to first harmonic frequency, the first harmonic frequency may interfere with the frequency fOSC causing remodulation (i.e., the superposition of spurious harmonic frequencies onto frequency fOSC).
Furthermore, as shown in frequency spectrum diagram 120, since the first harmonic frequency fCOMP is substantially equal to frequency fOSC, the quadrature divider 108 may perform division of both frequency fOSC and the first harmonic frequency, resulting in a heavily disturbed spectrum around frequency fCOMP and significant phase error in composite modulated output signal SCOMP that may degrade the quality of transmitter output signal ST—OUT at antenna 114.

Method to prevent phenomenon in vector modulator transmitter


Methods, systems, and apparatus, including computer programs encoded on a computer storage medium, for retrieving and using contextual data from previous conversation sessions in conversational searches. In one aspect, a method includes receiving a first query for a first user session, determining that the first query refers to one or more tags in a first repository, the first repository associating respective identifiers to respective tags, each identifier representing a corresponding user session, determining one or more particular identifiers associated with the one or more tags in the first repository, retrieving particular contextual data associated with the determined particular identifiers in a second repository, the second repository associating respective identifiers to respective contextual data associated with corresponding user sessions represented by the respective identifiers, and performing an action responsive to the first query based on the retrieved particular contextual data.

This specification relates to natural language processing.
The Internet provides access to a wide variety of resources, for example, video files, image files, audio files, or Web pages, including content for particular subjects, book articles, or news articles. A search system can select one or more resources in response to receiving a search query. A search query is data that a user submits to a search engine to satisfy the user's informational needs. The search queries can be, for example, in the form of text, audio, or video. The search system selects and scores resources, e.g., based on their relevance to the search query and on their importance relative to other resources to provide search results. The search results are typically ordered according to the scores and presented according to this order.

Retrieving context from previous sessions


An optical system is disclosed that uses an LED light source. The light output is coupled to an optic element formed from a material with a high refractive index. The coupling of the light to the high index material significantly reduces the cone angle of the light. The system is very efficient in that nearly all the light generated by the LED is directed to the intended subject.

1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates generally to the collection and control of light from a light emitting diode (LED). More specifically, the invention is directed to the control of the wide angular emission of light from an LED to create a highly controlled beam of light.
2. Background Art
Numerous products require efficient collection and control of light from a light source. A high degree of control is required to create a collimated beam of the type needed for searchlights used for live performances, special events, and illuminating tall structures. The searchlights use a xenon arc type lamp as a light source and a deep parabolic reflector to collect and control the light direction and beam angle. This method has been used for many years, even before the invention of the light bulb.
This type of prior art searchlight generally requires a reflector that is much larger than its arc gap. A 1000-watt xenon lamp generates most of its light within a sphere 1 mm in diameter. To create a highly collimated beam, a reflector with a diameter of 20 inches is typically used. Although xenon light sources create an enormous amount of light in a small area, efficiency of these types of lamps is poor. A 1000-watt lamp may only produce 35 lumens per watt of electrical energy. Another drawback with these lamps is the length of their life, which is only a few thousand hours. Finally, xenon light sources are filled with gas at a high pressure. Persons replacing xenon lamps need to wear protective clothing and a face shield when they are servicing searchlights.
Another disadvantage of the xenon light systems is the reduction in performance as a result of the collection of dirt on the optical surfaces. This collection is compounded by the fact that the lights typically require forced-air cooling. A xenon system has at least four surfaces where dirt can collect and reduce the output. The first of these surfaces is the surface of the lamp itself. The second is the surface of the reflector. The third and fourth are the inside and outside of the window. Only a small amount of dirt on any of these four surfaces significantly reduces the light output of the system
The use of a deep parabolic reflector by searchlight manufacturers adds to the poor efficiency of the overall system. A lot of the light generated from the lamp exits the front of the open end of the parabolic reflector and doesn't contribute to the collimated beam created by the light that does strike the reflector.
Manufacturers of searchlights would like to use LEDs as the light sources for their searchlights. LEDs don't create light with as high intensity as the xenon light sources. The low intensity of LED light leads to the requirement of a much larger reflector for the same output as a xenon system. In some cases using an LED would require a reflector ten times the size of the reflector used by a system with a xenon light source. In summary, the main disadvantages of current xenon based light systems are their short life, the dangers of servicing the systems, and their low efficiency.
Optics systems to collect and control light from LEDs commonly combine a conventional reflector and refractive optics. A typical example of this type of system is shown in FIG. 1. Although this type of system is efficient in collecting all of the light from the LED, the ability to control the output is limited. The light that is collected by the reflector portion of the system has a generally uniform cone angle as it leaves the reflector. In this example the cone angle ranges from 3.9 degrees to 4.5 degrees. The refractive optics (i.e. the light transmitted through the lens) has a much greater cone angle, 41 degrees. Therefore, in searchlight systems, the light from the refractive optics does not contribute to the searchlight beam and creates spill light.
Another drawback inherent to the prior art system of FIG. 1 is that the output light comes from two sources, a lens and a reflector. The nature of the light from the lens is quite different from that from the reflector. It is therefore very difficult to optimize the output from both sources simultaneously. Output controlling measures that have a positive effect on the light output from the lens tend to have a negative effect on the light output from the reflector, and vice versa.
Another variation of conventional reflector optics is a lamp that locates an LED at the focal point of a parabolic reflector. The output normal to the surface of the LED is directed along the axis of the parabola. Light from the LED is emitted in a semispherical direction, + and −90 degrees from normal. The parabola collects all of the emitted light and directs most of the light in the intended direction. The LED and its mounting absorb some of the light that would, if not obstructed, go in the intended direction. This absorption occurs because the LED is in the output path of the light reflected by the parabola.
Electricity must be supplied to the LED to generate the light, which creates heat. To cool the LED, a heat pipe is used to conduct heat from the LED to a heat sink behind the reflector. These components also absorb some of the light, thereby reducing the efficiency of the lighting system even further.
The reflector in an LED light system needs to be large to collect the semispherical, ±90 degree output from the LED. If the cone angle could be reduced to less than ±45 the reflector could be much smaller. The output beam angle of the reflector of prior art products varies greatly as a function of the distance from the center of the reflector to the rim of the reflector. The variation in beam angle requires the reflector to be larger than would be required if the variation in beam angle over the diameter of the reflector was reduced.
There is therefore a need for a lighting system that is highly efficient, that is not as sensitive to dirt and dust, that provides a high degree of control of the output beam angle, and that is contained in a compact package.

Internal collecting reflector optics for LEDs


A wearable electronic device configured to be worn by a user while performing an invasive procedure for enhancing visualization of desired anatomical structures is provided. The wearable electronic device includes: a housing; at least one imaging sensor associated with the housing; and a visual display integrally formed with or associated with the housing. The device is configured to acquire an image of an invasive access site of a patient with the at least one imaging sensor, process the image to determine a location of a desired anatomical structure, and display a virtual trace of the location to the user via the visual display.

Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to systems and methods for enhancing visualization of an invasive procedure requiring procedural guidance, such as providing enhanced visualization of a vein during an insertion procedure using a vascular access device, and, more particularly, to systems and methods that operate in a hands-free manner using a wearable electronic device.
Description of Related Art
Blood sampling is a common health care procedure involving the withdrawal of at least a drop of blood from a patient. Blood samples are commonly taken from hospitalized, homecare, and emergency room patients either by finger stick, heel stick, or venipuncture. Once collected, blood samples may be analyzed to obtain medically useful information including chemical composition, hematology, coagulation, etc.
Similarly, fluid delivery to a patient is accomplished using a variety of vascular access devices, including syringes, auto-injectors, pen injectors, catheters, and infusion devices. In medical settings, a clinician or technician performs an injection by inserting a needle into a patient's vein. A therapeutic agent is directly or passively provided to the patient through the needle. For example, the medical technician may inject fluid by pressing a piston rod and plunger through a syringe barrel to expel fluid therefrom. Alternatively, a therapeutic agent may be provided passively from an IV bag through an infusion set.
Prior to performing a fluid sampling or fluid delivery procedure, the clinician or technician is responsible for obtaining any needed medical instruments and devices. The clinician or technician may also be responsible for performing an initial examination of the patient by checking temperature, heart rate, or breathing. The clinician or technician may review notes in the patient's medical chart or other printed instructions to ensure that these initial steps are performed correctly and that any necessary equipment has been obtained. Alternatively, the technician may scan bar codes or other identifying indicia on the obtained equipment to document that certain items are being used. The medical professional then obtains the fluid sample or performs the fluid injection. After the sample is collected or fluid is injected, the clinician or technician may be required to provide appropriate documentation that the procedure has been completed. For example, the clinician or technician may write notes in a patient's medical chart, including the time the procedure was completed, a description of the procedure that was performed, and notes concerning any abnormal or unexpected occurrences. Furthermore, in the case of obtaining fluid samples, the medical professional may be responsible for closing or sealing the collected sample with tamper-proof seals to prevent the sample from being compromised prior to testing. The technician or clinician may be responsible for verifying the seal by, for example, signing his or her name or initials on a breakable label covering the seal.
In many medical facilities, these preparation, confirmation, and documentation activities are performed manually by the clinician or technician either as the medical procedure is being performed or after the procedure is completed. For example, the clinician or technician may be responsible for manually labeling each collected fluid sample with identifying information about the patient before transferring the sample for testing. Similarly, the clinician or technician may be responsible for manually documenting the type of fluid injected to a patient in the patient's chart. The medical professional may also be expected to document the date and time that the procedure was performed. In some circumstances, the clinician or technician is provided with electronic documenting means, such as a computer, laptop computer, table PC, smart phone, or similar easily transportable computing device. However, the technician or clinician is still responsible for manually entering information to the electronic device. Alternatively, data entry technicians may be responsible for electronically entering information about the procedure that was performed based on notes taken by the clinician or technician. Furthermore, many larger medical facilities rely on electronic patient databases for electronically storing patient information. However, even such electronic databases still require manual entry of data either by the clinician or technician, or later data entry based on contemporaneous notes taken by the clinician or technician.
The numerous manual steps required before, during, and after fluid sampling or fluid delivery procedures introduce opportunities for user error. User errors may lead to incomplete or incorrect procedures being performed or may result in lost patient data. For example, the clinician or technician may inject an incorrect fluid volume, incorrect fluid type or concentration, or may not obtain a sufficient volume of fluid sample for the tests being performed. The medical clinician or technician may also forget to correctly document that a fluid sample was obtained or under what conditions the sample was obtained. Furthermore, the clinician or technician may fail to correctly record which patient provided a particular fluid sample. These problems may harm the patient or, at minimum, may require that certain fluid sample procedures must be repeated. Therefore, there is a need for a system for fluid delivery to a patient and a system for acquiring a test specimen that assists the clinician or technician in performing and documenting the medical procedure. The system should be configured to prevent errors that commonly occur during such procedures and should provide visual or auditory alerts when a mistake is made. The system should also be automatically integrated with existing patient data systems so that information about the type of procedure to perform is easily accessible to the clinician or technician. Additionally, confirmation that a procedure was performed and relevant information about the procedure may be automatically and directly provided to a patient's medical record to ensure that patient data is not lost. The systems and methods described hereinafter are provided to address some or all of these issues.

Wearable electronic device for enhancing visualization during insertion of an invasive device


A system generates a smoothed curve from a noisily drawn, multi-segmented curve by minimizing an energy function for a smoothed curve which fits between end-points of the drawn curve. The energy function has three components: a distortion component, a smoothing component and a shrink component. Numerical analysis methods are applied to evaluate the energy function and to identify the smoothed curve with the lowest energy. The transposed curve with the lowest energy value is selected as the smoothed curve.

The invention relates to smoothing a drawn curve which is rendered by a computer.
The generation and maintenance of diagrams on a computer typically require computer aided design (CAD) tools and graphics illustration software. In this process, users typically select one or more objects and place each object on a drawing sheet displayed on a monitor or other suitable display device. Users can also edit and manipulate these objects to achieve the desired appearance. To aid users in performing their lay-out tasks to generate digital drawings, common symbols or objects such as squares, rectangles, circles, and ovals, among others, are typically provided for the user to select and manipulate in creating at the design. Further, tools are also available to assist the user in drafting straight lines and curvilinear segments on the digital drawings.
The process of digitally drawing lines or curves is generally a trial and error process, especially when the curve is made up of a number of corners or segments. Attempts at drawing curves with multiple corners or segments generally result in curves which look noisy. The noise manifests itself as a sequence of jagged curves, each of which is defined by begin and end points. In addition to being visually undesirable, the editing, displaying and saving of the sequence of jagged curves can become quite complex. Thus, to improve the visual appearance and simplify the manipulation of noisy curves, it is desirable to use smoothed versions in lieu of the noisy curves.
The noise can be eliminated by suitable smoothing operations on the curves. To prevent distorting the shape of the curve, the smoothing operations need to preserve corners of the drawn curve. Potential distortions include rounding of the corners or shrinking of the curve which can be easily perceived by human observers.
Generally, given a path or curve represented by a set of points, the path can be smoothed using several techniques. One technique called a parametric technique fits one or more polynomials to a number of data points associated with the path. However, the parametric technique requires an a priori knowledge of an appropriate polynomials to use in fitting the data points. Further, the parametric technique does not preserve path corners.
A non-parametric technique can be used to reconstruct the curve. Generally, the non-parametric technique defines constraints that encompass data fidelity and smoothness requirements. An energy function is then defined in terms of the is fidelity and smoothness constraints, and a path is constructed to approximate the curve which minimizes the energy function. The energy value is a composite of a number of factors, as follows:
E=D+xcex2*S
where D represents the distortion factor;
xcex is the smoothness parameter and larger values of xcex indicating greater smoothness; and
S is a smoothness function.
Additional factors or constraints can be imposed to achieve certain curve characteristics. One such constraint can be that the average departure of the transposed curve from the drawn curve be zero. This can be imposed as
xcexa3(xixe2x88x92ui)=0
xcexa3(yixe2x88x92vi)=0
Numerical methods are applied to evaluate the smoothing function and to identify the transposed curve with the minimal energy which fits between end-points of the drawn curve. The transposed curve with the lowest energy value E is selected as the smoothed curve.
In general, the invention features a computer-implemented apparatus and method for smoothing a curve. The apparatus generates a smoothed curve from a noisily drawn, multi-segmented curve by minimizing an energy function for a transposed curve which fits between end-points of the drawn curve. The energy function has three components: a distortion component, a smoothing component and a shrink component. Numerical analysis methods are applied to evaluate the energy function and to identify the transposed curve with the lowest energy. The transposed curve with the lowest energy value is selected as the smoothed curve.
In one aspect, the apparatus generates a smoothed curve from a drawn curve by defining an energy constraint associated with the drawn curve, the energy constraint having a shrink component, a distortion component, and a smoothness component; and generating the smoothed curve by minimizing the energy constraint.
Implementations of the invention include one or more of the following. The energy constraint E may be expressed as:
E=D+xcex2*S+xcex32*B
where D is the distortion component, xcex is a smoothness parameter, S is the smoothness component, xcex3 is a shrink parameter and B is the shrink component. The shrink component may be defined as a function of the area enclosed between the drawn curve and the smoothed curve. The shrink component may also be defined as the square of the area enclosed between the drawn curve and the smoothed curve. The drawn curve includes one or more points and the smoothed curve includes one or more corresponding transposed points, further comprising approximating the enclosed area as the sum of areas enclosed between consecutive points on the drawn curve and the corresponding transposed points. The area enclosed between consecutive points on the drawn curve and the corresponding transposed points is determined by:
Areai=(xi+1xe2x88x92xi, yi+1xe2x88x92yi)X(uixe2x88x92xi, vixe2x88x92yi)
where (x1, y1) represent a point on the drawn curve, (ui, v1) represent a point on the smoothed curve, and X is the vector cross product.
The area enclosed between consecutive points on the drawn curve and the corresponding transposed points may also be determined by:
Areai=(xi+1xe2x88x92xi, yi+1xe2x88x92yi)X((uixe2x88x92xi, vixe2x88x92yi)+(ui+1xe2x88x92xi+1, vi+1xe2x88x92yi+1)).
The energy constraint may be minimized using a gradient descent method.
In another aspect, a computer system characterizes a drawn curve defined by a sequence of points on a two-dimensional space. The computer includes a display, a user input device, and a processor coupled to the display and the user input device. The processor has instructions embedded therein to:
determine a distortion component D associated with the smoothed curve in accordance with   D  =            ∑              i        =        0                    N        -        1                        (                                    (                                          u                i                            -                              x                i                                      )                    2                +                              (                                          v                i                            -                              y                i                                      )                    2                    )
where (x1, y1) represent a point on the drawn curve (u1, v1) represent a point on the smoothed curve;
determine a smoothing component S associated with the smoothed curve in accordance with:   S  =            ∑              i        =        0                    N        -        1                                                      (                                          u                i                            -                              u                                  i                  +                  1                                                      )                    2                +                              (                                          v                i                            -                              v                                  i                  +                  1                                                      )                    2
determine a shrink component B for a systematic shift in accordance with:   B  =            [                                    ∑                          i              =              1                                      N              -              1                                                      (                                                            v                  i                                ·                                  l                  i                                            +                                                u                  i                                ·                                  m                  i                                                      )                          +        M            ]        2
xe2x80x83and
generate one or more smoothed curves, each curve having an energy value E expressed in terms of the distortion component, the smoothing component and the shrink component in accordance with:
E=D+xcex2*S+xcex32*B
where xcex is the smoothness parameter, xcex3 is the distortion parameter; and
select the smoothed curve with the minimum energy as the smoothed curve.
In another aspect, computer-implemented method generates a smoothed curve from a drawn curve by defining a function for one or more signed areas between the smoothed curve and the drawn curve; and generating the smoothed curve by applying the function as a constraint.
In another aspect, an apparatus for generating a smoothed curve from a drawn curve includes means for defining a function for one or more signed areas between the smoothed curve and the drawn curve; and means for generating the smoothed curve by applying the function as a constraint.
In yet another aspect, an apparatus for generating a smoothed curve from a drawn curve, includes means for defining an energy constraint associated with the drawn curve, the energy constraint having a shrink component, a distortion component, and a smoothness component; and means for generating the smoothed curve by minimizing the energy constraint.
Among the advantages of the invention are one or more of the following. The resulting curve, as generated by the invention, is smooth without any noise artifacts when viewed. The smoothness of the resulting curve is achieved without affecting the overall shape of the curve and without shrinking the curve""s radius. The jaggedness of the curve is reduced without flattening the curve. The invention generates an accurate characterization of the curve.
Other features and advantages of the invention will become apparent from the following description and from the claims.


A locking mechanism for the trunk lid of a motor vehicle has a component which assumes a first position when the trunk lid is closed and locked. The component may or may not project outward from the trunk lid in its first position. The component is capable of assuming a second position when the trunk lid is released. In the second position, the component projects outward from the trunk lid to such an extent that a portion of the component which is recessed in the trunk lid in the first position is now exposed. This portion of the component may be gripped in order to manipulate the trunk lid.

The invention relates to a lock for car doors, particularly for trunk lids.
The locks known in the art having a locking cylinder which is released relative to the lock itself by a key and, in turn, releases or arrests the arresting device of the lock relative to the chassis of the car. In order to effect the release, the locking cylinder is generally either rotated with the help of the key or is itself pushed into the lock. In the first case, the locking cylinder terminates flush with the chassis and, in the second case, the locking cylinder projects out of the chassis by a certain distance or is pushed into the chassis to the required depth.
In both cases, the locking cylinder, or the individual components which are casually or functionally connected therewith, move inside the lock from the outer surface of the chassis to the interior of the chassis and, after actuation of the arresting device, are returned to their original positions by suitable means, e.g., spring force. For cylinders which must be depressed and are not flush with the chassis in the original position, such original position, as a rule, is one in which the projecting length is that required to actuate the arresting or releasing mechanism relative to the chassis, i.e., approximately 8-15 mm beyond the outer surface of the chassis.
In a very large number of instances, the locking cylinder is, however, in the absence of another possibility, also used as a handle to close the trunk lid, particularly when this is dirty. For a lock structure with a projecting locking cylinder, the projecting part of the latter is used as a handle; for locks which require a rotation of the key or are pushed in from a flush outer surface to effect release, the inserted key is readily employed as a handle. All possible modes of use--which cannot be enumerated here because of their large number and are represented by the preceding examples--have the purpose of allowing the user to close the trunk lid without soiling himself in the event that the outer surface is dirty.
Conventional locks with their present design cannot, or can only partially, accomplish this purpose. For locks having rotating cylinders or a flush design, the user does have available a clean aid--which does not soil his hands--in the form of his key. However, the mechanical strength of a key is not selected with a view to such uses and breakage of the key with the accompanying inconvenience is very often the result. Locks with projecting locking cylinders are not available free of dirt since the projecting part is exposed to road dirt and the desired result is not achieved. While the dirty surface to be gripped is smaller than if one had to touch the trunk lid itself in order to close the same, it would nevertheless be desirable that no dirty parts need be touched.

Lock for car doors, in particular for trunk


Systems and techniques for determining relationships and association significance between entities are disclosed. The systems and techniques automatically identify supply chain relationships between companies based on unstructured text corpora. The system combines Machine Learning models to identify sentences mentioning supply chain between two companies (evidence), and an aggregation layer to take into account the evidence found and assign a confidence score to the relationship between companies.

With computer-implemented word processing and mass data storage, the amount of information generated by mankind has risen dramatically and with an ever-quickening pace. As a result, there is a continuing and growing need to collect and store, identify, track, classify and catalogue, and link for retrieval and distribution this growing sea of information.
Much of the world's information or data is in the form of text, the majority of which is unstructured (without metadata or in that the substance of the content is not asymmetrical and unpredictable, i.e., prose, rather than formatted in predictable data tables). Much of this textual data is available in digital form [either originally created in this form or somehow converted to digital—by means of OCR (optical character recognition), for example] and is stored and available via the Internet or other networks. Unstructured text is difficult to effectively handle in large volumes even when using state of the art processing capabilities. Content is outstripping the processing power needed to effectively manage and assimilate information from a variety of sources for refinement and delivery to users. Although advances have made it possible to investigate, retrieve, extract and categorize information contained in vast repositories of documents, files, or other text "containers," systems are needed to more efficiently manage and classify the ever-growing volume of data generated daily and to more effectively deliver such information to consumers.
This proliferation of text-based information in electronic form has resulted in a growing need for tools that facilitate organization of the information and allow users to query systems for desired information. One such tool is information extraction software that, typically, analyzes electronic documents written in a natural language and populates a database with information extracted from such documents. Applied against a given textual document, the process of information extraction (IE) is used to identify entities of predefined types appearing within the text and then to list them (e.g., people, companies, geographical locations, currencies, units of time, etc.). IE may also be applied to extract other words or terms or strings of words or phrases.
Knowledge workers, such as scientists, lawyers, traders or accountants, have to deal with a greater than ever amount of data with an increased level of variety. Their information needs are often focused on entities and their relations, rather than on documents. To satisfy these needs, information providers must pull information from wherever it happens to be stored and bring it together in a summary result. As a concrete example, suppose a user is interested in companies with the highest operating profit in 2015 currently involved in Intellectual Property (IP) lawsuits. In order to answer this query, one needs to extract company entities from free text documents, such as financial reports and court documents, and then integrate the information extracted from different documents about the same company together.
Content and enhanced experience providers, such as Thomson Reuters Corporation, identify, collect, analyze and process key data for use in generating content, such as news articles and reports, financial reports, scientific reports and studies, law related reports, articles, etc., for consumption by professionals and others. The delivery of such content and services may be tailored to meet the particular interests of certain professions or industries, e.g., wealth managers and advisors, fund managers, financial planners, investors, scientists, lawyers, etc. Professional services companies, like Thomson Reuters, continually develop products and services for use by subscribers, clients and other customers and with such developments distinguish their products and services over those offered by their competition.
Companies, such as Thomson Reuters—with many businesses involved in delivery of content and research tools to aid a wide variety of research and professional service providers—generate, collect and store a vast spectrum of documents, including news, from all over the world. These companies provide users with electronic access to a system of databases and research tools. Professional services providers also provide enhanced services through various techniques to augment content of documents and to streamline searching and more efficiently deliver content of interest to users. For example, Thomson Reuters structures documents by tagging them with metadata for use in internal processes and for delivery to users.
"Term" refers to single words or strings of highly-related or linked words or noun phrases. "Term extraction" (also term recognition or term mining) is a type of IE process used to identify or find and extract relevant terms from a given document, and therefore have some relevance, to the content of the document. Such activities are often referred to as "Named Entity Extraction" and "Named Entity Recognition" and "Named Entity Mining" and in connection with additional processes, e.g., Calais "Named Entity Tagging" (or more generally special noun phrase tagger) and the like. There are differences in how these activities are performed. For example, term recognition might only require setting a flag when a certain expression is identified in a text span, while term extraction would be identifying it and its boundaries and writing it out for storage in, for example, a database, noting exactly where in the text it came from. Techniques employed in term extraction may include linguistic or grammar-based techniques, natural language or pattern recognition, tagging or structuring, data visualizing and predictive formulae. For example, all names of companies mentioned in the text of a document can be identified, extracted and listed. Similarly, events (e.g., Exxon-Valdez oil spill or BP Horizon explosion), sub-events related to events (e.g., cleanup effort associated with Exxon Valdez oil spill or BP Horizon explosion), names of people, products, countries, organizations, geographic locations, etc., are additional examples of "event" or "entity" type terms that are identified and may be included in a list or in database records. This IE process may be referred to as "event or entity extraction" or "event or entity recognition." As implemented, known IE systems may operate in terms of "entity" recognition and extraction wherein "events" are considered a type of entity and are treated as an entity along with individuals, companies, industries, governmental entities, etc.
There are a variety of methods available for automatic event or entity extraction, including linguistic or semantic processors to identify, based on known terms or applied syntax, likely noun phrases. Filtering may be applied to discern true events or entities from unlikely events or entities. The output of the IE process is a list of events or entities of each type and may include pointers to all occurrences or locations of each event and/or entity in the text from which the terms were extracted. The IE process may or may not rank the events/entities, process to determine which events/entities are more "central" or "relevant" to the text or document, compare terms against a collection of documents or "corpus" to further determine relevancy of the term to the document.
Systems and methods for identifying risks, entities, relationships, supply chains, and for generating visualizations related to risks, entities, relationships, and supply chains are described in at least: SYSTEMS, METHODS, AND SOFTWARE FOR ENTITY EXTRACTION AND RESOLUTION COUPLED WITH EVENT AND RELATIONSHIP EXTRACTION, U.S. patent application Ser. No. 12/341,926, filed Dec. 22, 2008, Light et al.; SYSTEMS, METHODS, SOFTWARE AND INTERFACES FOR ENTITY EXTRACTION AND RESOLUTION AND TAGGING, U.S. patent application Ser. No. 12/806,116, filed Aug. 5, 2010, issued as U.S. Pat. No. 9,501,467, on Nov. 11, 2016, Light et al.; FINANCIAL EVENT AND RELATIONSHIP EXTRACTION, U.S. patent application Ser. No. 12/363,524, filed Jan. 30, 2009, Schilder et al.; SYSTEMS, METHODS, AND SOFTWARE FOR ENTITY RELATIONSHIP RESOLUTION, U.S. patent application Ser. No. 12/341,913, filed Dec. 22, 2008, issued as U.S. Pat. No. 9,600,509, on Mar. 1, 2017, Conrad et al.; METHODS AND SYSTEMS FOR MANAGING SUPPLY CHAIN PROCESSES AND INTELLIGENCE, U.S. patent application Ser. No. 13/594,864, filed Aug. 26, 2012, Siig et al.; METHODS AND SYSTEMS FOR GENERATING SUPPLY CHAIN REPRESENTATIONS, U.S. patent application Ser. No. 13/795,022, filed Mar. 12, 2013, Leidner et al.; and RISK IDENTIFICATION AND RISK REGISTER GENERATION SYSTEM AND ENGINE, U.S. patent application Ser. No. 15/181,194, filed Jun. 13, 2016, Leidner et al.; each and all of which are incorporated herein by reference in their entirety.
Thomson Reuters' Text Metadata Services group ("TMS") formerly known as ClearForest prior to acquisition in 2007, is one exemplary IE-based solution provider offering text analytics software used to "tag," or categorize, unstructured information and to extract facts about people, organizations, places or other details from news articles, Web pages and other documents. TMS's Calais is a web service that includes the ability to extract entities such as company, person or industry terms along with some basic facts and events. OpenCalais is an available community tool to foster development around the Calais web service. APIs (Application Programming Interfaces) are provided around an open rule development platform to foster development of extraction modules. Other providers include Autonomy Corp., Nstein and Inxight. Examples of Information Extraction software in addition to OpenCalais include: AlchemyAPI; CRF++; LingPipe; TermExtractor; TermFinder; and TextRunner. IE may be a separate process or a component or part of a larger process or application, such as business intelligence software.
Currently, the dominant technology for providing nontechnical users with access to Linked Data is keyword-based search. This is problematic because keywords are often inadequate as a means for expressing user intent. In addition, while a structured query language can provide convenient access to the information needed by advanced analytics, unstructured keyword-based search cannot meet this extremely common need. This makes it harder than necessary for non-technical users to generate analytics.
What is needed is a natural language-based system that utilizes the benefits of structured query language capabilities to allow non-technical users to create well-formed questions.
Today, investment decisions in the financial markets require careful analysis of information available from multiple sources. To meet this challenge, financial institutions typical maintain very large datasets that provide a foundation for this analysis. For example, forecasting stock market, currency exchange rate, bank bankruptcies, understanding and managing financial risk, trading futures, credit rating, loan management, bank customer profiling, and money laundering analyses all require large datasets of information for analysis. The datasets of information can be structured datasets as well as unstructured data sets.
Typically, the datasets of information are used to model one or more different entities, each of which may have a relationship with other entities. For example, a company entity may be impacted by, and thereby have a relationship with, any of the following entities: a commodity or natural resource (e.g., aluminum, corn, crude oil, sugar, etc.), a source of the commodity or natural resource, a currency (e.g., euro, sterling, yen, etc.), and one or more competitor, supplier or customer. Any change in one entity can have an impact on another entity. For example, rising crude oil prices can impact a transportation company's revenues, which can affect the company's valuation. In another example, an acquisition of a supplier by a competitor puts an entity's supply chain at risk, as would political upheaval or natural disaster (e.g., tsunami, earthquake) affecting availability or operations of a supplier.
Given the quantity and nature of these datasets, each modeled entity tends to have multiple relationships with a large number of other entities. As such, it is difficult to identify which entities are more significant than others for a given entity.
Accordingly, there is a need for systems and techniques to automatically analyze all available supply chain related data to identify relationships and assign significance scores to entity relationships.
Event detection and relation extraction is an active field of academic research. State of the art systems employ statistical machine learning models to identify and classify relations between entities mentioned in natural language texts. Recently, deep learning-based systems have been shown to achieve similar quality, requiring less feature engineering. Knowledge base building systems make use of known machine learning models to create or augment knowledge graphs, depicting relations between entities.
What is needed is, a system configured to be applied to the identification of supply chain relationship between companies. Supply chain identification is still based on manual work and on extracting relations from structured data (financial reports, piers records etc.).
Supplier-Customer relations are very valuable to investors, among other interested classes of users, but are oftentimes hard to detect. Some information is available in structured data, but many more indications are available only in unstructured data, such as news stories, company SEC filings, blogs and company and other web sites. A lot of highly informative data is publicly available, but is too voluminous and unfeasible for manual processing to systematically identify supply chain relations.
Accordingly, what is needed is an automated system capable of processing the large volumes of available data to detect indications for supply chain relationship between companies and aggregate these indications across data sources to generate a single confidence score for the relation between such companies.

Machine learning-based relationship association and related discovery and


A control method for controlling a sheet processing apparatus having a stacking control unit configured to cause a sheet on which an image is printed by a printing unit to abut a movable abutting member, followed by stacking the sheet on a stacking unit, the control method includes: determining a position of the abutting member; and controlling a sheet which is abutted to the abutting member moved to a first position determined by the determination and mounted on the stacking unit and a sheet which is abutted to the abutting member moved to a second position determined by the determination and mounted on the stacking unit so that the sheets are mounted on said stacking unit while being prevented from overlapping from one another.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a sheet processing apparatus, a control method for controlling such a sheet processing apparatus, and a storage medium.
2. Description of the Related Art
Some of the sheet processing apparatuses, which have been known in the art, are provided with a sheet stacking portion designed like a stacking tray in a stacker device that stacks sheets therein, where sheets are stacked on each of the sheet stacking portion (see, for example, Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2008-150204).
To stack a sheet on the stacking portion, such a sheet processing apparatus employs an abutting member because of maintaining the stability of a sheet to be stacked on the stacking portion. Specifically, when ejecting a sheet, the abutting member is moved to a position at a distance corresponding to the length of the sheet from a paper ejection port in the conveyance direction. Then, the sheet to be ejected from the paper ejection port is abutted to the abutting member to stack the sheet by dropping the sheet to the stacking unit with the own weight of the sheet.
In addition, one of the conventional sheet processing apparatuses is designed so that an abutting member can change its position depending on the type of a sheet. Such a kind of the sheet processing apparatus prevents an ejecting sheet from jamming into an ejection port by changing the position of an abutting member or preventing an ejected sheet from protruding from a stacking unit.
For example, there is a need of changing the position of the abutting member when ejecting a sheet of A4 standard paper and when ejecting an A4 tab sheet. Such a change in position of the abutting member may reduce the possibility of causing the tab of the tab sheet to jam into the ejection port or prevent the tab of the tab sheet from protruding from the stacking tray.
However, when determining the position of the abutting member depending on the type of the sheet, the abutting member is located at any of different positions depending on different sheet types. Thus, the stacked sheets being abutted on the abutting member may be displaced from their suitable positions. Therefore, the stability of the stacked sheets tends to be reduced.

Sheet processing apparatus, control method of sheet processing apparatus, and storage medium


An ultraviolet curable inkjet recording ink of the present invention includes at least a colorant, a light-curable compound, a photopolymerization initiator, and at least one fluorine surfactant represented by the following formulae (1) or (2) as a surface tension regulator: where Rf is selected from CH2CF3 and CH2CF2CF3; n represents a value of 5 to 20; and each R1 represents a functional group capable of initiating an ultraviolet curing reaction and one of the two R1s in (1) may be hydrogen; where Rf is selected from CH2CF3 and CH2CF2CF3; l represents a value of 1 to 20; k and m each represent a value of 1 to 8; each R2 represents a functional group capable of initiating an ultraviolet curing reaction and one of the two R2s in (2) may be hydrogen; and R3 is selected from hydrogen and methyl.

Inkjet printing technology is used in a wide variety of image forming apparatuses for household use and industrial use.
Home-use inkjet printers, which generally use a water-based ink, cannot achieve adequate image quality unless the recording medium used has high ink absorption property. On the other hand, industrial-use inkjet printers, using a solvent with rapid drying property and with high ability to penetrate recording media, perform printing on the types of recording medium on, which images cannot be printed with water-based inks. In the latter case, however, the solvent used evaporates from the water-based ink, which causes problems of bad smell, dangerousness, and toxicity of the solvent. Though inks using less volatile solvents are available, however, the inks dry very slowly, causing problems of poor image quality and poor fixing property. Also available are hot melt inks, which are solid at room temperature, however, these are waxy inks, still causing problems of weak surface strength of fixed images and of wide variations in fixing property of the inks on different types of recording media.
In contrast to these inks, ultraviolet curable inkjet recording inks, which use volatile solvents and smell less, are capable of forming images even on recording media without having ink absorption property and of increasing the process speed of forming images by shortening the fixing time. However, when a recording medium is not sufficiently wet with an ultraviolet curable inkjet ink, the ultraviolet curable inkjet ink does not spread over a surface of the recording medium, resulting in inadequate image quality and in degradation of fixing property due to the reduced contact area between the recording medium and the ink. Furthermore, when the ink layer thickness increases after printing with an ultraviolet curable inkjet ink, the amount of ultraviolet light reaching inside of the deposited ink layer becomes excessively small, causing curing failure of the deposited ink layer.
In order to solve the above problems, an ultraviolet curable inkjet recording ink containing a fluorine surfactant which is capable of remarkably lowering the surface tension of the ultraviolet curable inkjet recording ink has been developed (Patent Literature 1; Patent Literature 2).
However, since such fluorine surfactant does not possess the property of curing on exposure to ultraviolet light, bleeding of such fluorine surfactant takes place from a deposited layer of the ultraviolet curable inkjet recording ink after the deposited layer has been cured.
In order to solve this problem, it is proposed to use fluoroalkyl acrylate or silicone acrylate in ultraviolet curable inkjet recording inks as a wetting enhancer which reacts with ultraviolet light to cure (Patent Literature 3; Patent Literature 4). Although bleeding of such wetting enhancers can be avoided by their ability to react with ultraviolet light to cure, such reactive wetting enhancers are inferior in improving the wettability to surfactants. When such reactive wetting enhancer added into an ultraviolet curable inkjet recording ink is greatly increased in amount to improve the wettability, a considerable amount of the reactive wetting enhancer molecules remain unreacted after the curing reaction, causing bleeding of the unreacted reactive wetting enhancer residue. The amount of the unreacted reactive wetting enhancer residue can be reduced by increasing the amount of a polymerization initiator or irradiated light. However, increasing the amount of the polymerization initiator may adversely influence the physical properties of the coated membrane after curing reaction and increase the toxicity of the ink before curing. Furthermore, in order to increase the amount of irradiated light, it is necessary to provide additional expensive ultraviolet lamps, which is undesirable in terms of cost and electric power consumption.

Ultraviolet curable inkjet recording ink and color image forming apparatus


A frame assembly for an aerial system including a fuselage body and first and second rotor assemblies is described herein. The first and second rotor assemblies are coupled to the fuselage body by respective positioning assemblies. Each positioning assembly including a hinge assembly to enable the first and second rotor assemblies to pivot between a deployed position and a stowed position. A first positioning assembly including tapered positioning shaft. A second positioning assembly including a positioning sleeve having a tapered inner surface defining a cavity that is configure to receive the positioning shaft therein. The first positioning assembly being coupled to the second positioning assembly such that the first positioning assembly is rotatable about the rotor assembly rotational axis independent of the second rotor assembly.

Fully autonomous aerial robots or drones are becoming increasingly popular and many uses. For example, recently, so-called "selfie drones" have become a popular consumer product category. The hovering ability of those selfie drones enables photo and video taking around people from totally different angles and perspectives. However, these types of consumer drones need to be efficient, safe, small and light in order to be successful.
The present invention is aimed at one or more of the problems identified above.

Aerial system including foldable frame architecture


A method for controlling a resource sharing apparatus coupling least one input device to a first host is disclosed. A first input signal is acquired from the input device, and whether the first input signal comprises standby indication of a switching command is determined. The input device is disconnected from the first host when the first input signal comprises the standby indication, and the input device is emulated to the first host.

1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to resource sharing, and in particular to a resource sharing apparatus capable of preventing transfer of unnecessary signals during switching.
2. Description of the Related Art
With rapid developments in information technology, computers becoming more prevalent in both homes and offices are often considered requisite "tools" for work, learning, leisure activities, and daily life. Sometimes a user may have more than one computer to process different tasks, often requiring access to multiple computers simultaneously. For example, a user may have one computer dedicated to work, and a second computer limited to non-work activities, such as browsing the Internet and playing video games. Traditionally, each computer is equipped with one set of input/output (IO) peripheral devices comprising, generally, a keyboard, mouse and monitor. However, this is a waste of money and space if one has several computers.
In order to solve such problems, keyboard/mouse/video (KVM) switches allow the same set of IO peripheral devices to interact with selected computers.

Resource sharing apparatus which disconnects an input device when detecting a standby indication of a switching command


A method, a tool, and a system for modeling sediment surface paleo-temperature are provided. The method includes: determining a latitudinal temperature gradient of a location for a time period in the geologic past based on a depositional environment of the location during the time period; determining a surface temperature of the location during the time period using the latitudinal temperature gradient and a latitude of the location during the time period; and modifying the surface temperature at the location during the time period based on an altitude of the location during the time period.

To maximize the return on investment, petroleum companies thoroughly assess their investment risk before drilling petroleum exploration wells. One of the important tools, if not the most important tool, in such an assessment is basin and petroleum system modeling. Basin and petroleum modeling examines the dynamics of sedimentary basins and the fluids within them to determine if past conditions were suitable for the generation of hydrocarbons. One of the most important constraints in petroleum system modeling is sediment surface temperature. Sediment surface temperature affects the source rock maturity and the volume of hydrocarbon generated.

Global surface paleo-temperature modeling tool


A method of holding information for identifying a cause for an object becoming problematic and presenting the information to a user. The method ascertains the cause of memory consumption by a program in a computer system. This method includes: acquiring a first call path related to the creation of an object from a memory; acquiring a second call path related to the connection to the object from the memory; and determining a common part of the acquired first and second call paths, wherein the common part indicates the cause in the program.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a method of ascertaining the cause of memory consumption in a program, and a computer system and computer program for the same.
2. Description of Related Art
In order to tune up the performance of a program, a user may get an execution profile of memory consumption by this program. In this case, the user may often want to identify what in the program causes certain memory consumption. This is because if the cause can be identified, it will be easy for the user to focus on the limited part of the original program logic as the cause of the memory consumption in order to alter it for reducing the memory consumption that poses a performance problem.
When the user employs a conventional execution profile technique using a profiler, for example, it is easy to trace down a method, which has come to create an object whose memory consumption would be problematic at a certain point during program execution, and source methods that called the method directly or indirectly, which end up with the root (very beginning) method call. For example, in the case of Java™, the user uses a profiler called hprof that comes with Java™ 2 SE 6.0 to record an object ID in a location where the object is created in the program and a method call stack up to the location. The record enables the user to get the ID of the object likely to be problematic and the call stack of methods up to the creation of the object.
However, in the above conventional execution profile technique, the user cannot understand why the problematic object stays in the memory during program execution and how the object has become problematic. In other words, the user cannot derive, from the record, what caused the object to become problematic, at least partly because the user has registered the object in a table likely to continue to stay in the memory.
In a technique disclosed in Japanese Application Publication No. 2008-134709, a request ID on an object created during processing the request to a server and a method call stack up to the creation are recorded. When there is an object staying in a memory as long as the request processing is completed, the object is suspected of causing a memory leak. The object is presented together with the method call stack recorded up to the creation of the object.
Bond, M. D., McKinley, K. S., "Probabilistic Calling Context," in Proceedings of OOPSLA 2007, the 22nd Annual ACM SIGPLAN Conference on Object-Oriented Programming, Systems, Languages, and Applications, Montreal, Quebec, Canada, pp. 97-112, Oct. 21-25, 2007 teaches a technique called probabilistic calling context (PCC). PCC is known as a technique for holding down the overhead at the time of execution profile acquisition to a small percentage. PCC aims at verifying that two calling contexts are identical with a high probability.
In the conventional execution profile technique, the user cannot understand why the object whose memory consumption is problematic at a certain point during program execution stays in the memory during program execution and how the object has become problematic. Therefore, it is desired to have a method of holding information for identifying why the object has become problematic and presenting the information to the user.

Method of ascertaining primary cause of memory consumption in program, and computer system and computer program for the same

International Business Machines Corporation


An imaging system is provided wherein a positioning stage is translated with respect to an objective lens component and a scan mirror is repositioned while a two-dimensional image is made of a biochemical site on a substrate. In an example embodiment, an imaging system comprises a camera, an objective lens component, a positioning stage, and a scan mirror controllable by a servo system that synchronizes movement of the positioning stage and the tilting of the scan mirror so that the substrate image is maintained stable during imaging of the continuously moving positioning stage.

Obtaining useful data from images of biochemical experiments requires high spatial resolution, accuracy, and speed. Such images typically need to be obtained at high enough magnification for individual experiments to be clearly resolved. At the same time, the images need to cover a large enough field of view for experiments to be correctly identified. For large-scale studies, the imaging and image processing must take place quickly enough in order to be commercially feasible.
Step-and-repeat imagers and time-delay integration (TDI) imagers are two broad types of imaging systems that can be used to image biochemical experiments. Step-and-repeat systems can acquire about 10 megapixels of image data per second with about 5 μm alignment accuracy. TDI systems can acquire about 30 megapixels of image data per second with about 50 nm alignment accuracy. While for some applications these two types of systems may perform reasonably well, for other applications they suffer from some structural and functional disadvantages that adversely affect overall throughput. For example, applications involving large-scale biochemical experiment studies (e.g., such as massively parallel whole genome sequencing) typically require overall throughput that is higher than what step-and-repeat and TDI imaging systems can currently deliver.
What is needed is a scanning imaging system that is able to capture rapidly a large amount of detailed data.

This patent is subject to a terminal disclaimer.

Imaging systems with movable scan mirrors


A valve or a valve coupling has a closing member rotatably mounted within the bore of a housing. The valve closing member is mounted on tapered shafts. The shafts may be stepwise tapered, or a portion of the shafts may be tapered. The ends of the shafts having the larger diameters engage lugs on the valve closing member and the ends having the smaller diameters extend from the housing.

Valves, in particular, butterfly valves having a disk rotatably mounted within a bore of a valve housing present numerous challenges in both their design and assembly. Valves according to the prior art are designed to be assembled from the outside of their housing. The disk is positioned within the bore and valve stems or shafts are inserted from outside of the housing into the bore to rotatably mount the disk within the housing. Such a design requires complicated seals and bonnets which must retain the shafts against the internal pressure of the valve. Advantage may be had by an improved valve design which does not suffer the disadvantages of valve according to the prior art.

Valve and valve coupling with reverse tapered shafts