A demolition hammer intended for attachment to a bracket or the like. The demolition hammer includes an adapter bracket which connects to the arm of a backhoe in place of the conventional bucket of the backhoe, and a hammer head spaced apart from the adapter bracket by a hammer spring arm cantilevered or pivotably mounted with respect to the adapter bracket. Repeated operation of the backhoe hydraulic cylinder which normally pivots the bucket will instead move the hammer into repetitive impacts with the concrete or other work surface undergoing demolition. The flexibility of the hammer spring adds a whipping action which increases the effective impact of such movement.

Demolition of existing masonry or concrete surfaces generally require subjecting those surfaces to repeated impacts containing enough energy to destroy the structural integrity of the surface. Existing pavement, bridges, decks, and the like are typical of surface structures which require demolition for replacement by different construction or, particularly in the case of pavement, to remove the existing surface before rebuilding the pavement.
The conventional air-powered jackhammer for many years was the tool of choice for breaking up existing pavement or other masonry structures. However, the conventional jackhammer is a relatively slow and labor-intensive tool and its use is not efficient in many applications, for example, for breaking up relatively large expanses of concrete deck or pavement. Attempts to overcome this known inefficiency have included mounting a jackhammer on a tractor or similar vehicle, thereby allowing the tractor operator to position the jackhammer without having to personally manhandle that relatively-heavy object. This approach, while for many applications an improvement over a jackhammer positioned by an individual operator, still requires a separate air compressor or other power source to operate the jackhammer, external from the tractor which carries the jackhammer.
Also known in the prior art are demolition vehicles designed for that particular purpose and limited to that application. These vehicles generally are self-contained and self-propelled for movement along a roadway or other surface undergoing demolition, and include a tool for impacting that surface. One such vehicle is shown in U.S. Pat. No. 3,133,730. Such special-purpose demolition vehicles are very expensive to acquire and operate, and thus are beyond the reach of the small contractor who has occasional demolition work but cannot justify purchasing expensive equipment useful only for that one purpose.


A bracket for mounting a sensor. The bracket may include a base with a base loading mechanism for mating with the sensor, a first arm attached to the base, and a second arm adjustably attached to the base. The first arm may include a first arm loading mechanism for mating with the sensor.

Various types of sensors are used with electrical generators and similar types of equipment. For example, capacitive sensors generally may be attached directly to a wall of a stator with a permanent adhesive. If the sensor needs to be removed, however, a substantial amount of force may be required. The sensor can be damaged or destroyed during the removal process. Likewise, there is the risk of damaging the stator or the generator itself. Further, the information that might be gained from sensor analysis could be lost or corrupted.
There is a desire therefore for a mounting device and a mounting method that would securely position a sensor in place adjacent to the stator wall or similar locations while allowing easy removal of the sensor if required. The device and the method preferably should provide flexibility for different types and sizes of sensors as may be desired.


A support including a plurality of spaced plates coextensive and parallel to one another in a fixed relationship, including a slider plate mounted therebetween, wherein the slider plate is extensible relative to the top and bottom plates that are secured together for positioning upon an individual's shoulder. The slider plate includes a slot with an abutment member cooperative with a set screw to prevent removal of the slider plate relative to the top and bottom plates. Spring detent means are provided to maintain the slider plate between the top and bottom plates in a stored configuration.

1. Field of the Invention
The field of invention relates to camera support apparatus, and more particularly pertains to a new and improved camera support apparatus wherein the same permits compact storage in association with a camera member and subsequently permits ease of extension for mounting upon an individual's shoulder.
2. Description of the Prior Art
The transport and use of contemporary camera structure, and particularly the advent of video cameras, such as camcorders and the like, has introduced an aspect of film making where individuals are required to position and transport such devices for extended periods of time. In an effort to provide a steady and convenient support positioning structure, there have been prior attempts to provide camera rests, but such rests have included relatively elaborate and awkward structure relative to the instant invention. Such structure may be found for example in U.S. Pat. No. 4,244,500 to Fournier wherein a generally "C" shaped mount is pivotally mounted at a central junction, wherein the junction includes a support for mounting a camera thereon.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,514,067 to Gallegos, et al. sets forth an elongate twin camera mounting structure, with a rearwardly oriented "C" shaped bracket and a surrounding strap for mounting and positioning the bracket relative to an individual's shoulder.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,437,753 to Dunn sets forth a support structure for a camera providing a multiple of articulated linkages for mounting adjacent an individual's shoulder and chest portion.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,542,966 to Knaudt sets forth a further example of a shoulder positioned camera support, wherein the organization includes various linkage members for the mounting and positioning of the camera structure.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,327,986 to Carter sets forth a camera support, wherein an elongate rod is provided with a plurality of straps that circumferentially position about an individual's torso in addition to a shoulder strap structure for mounting the organization.
As such, it may be appreciated that there continues to be a need for a new and improved camera support apparatus as set forth by the instant invention which addresses both the problems of ease of use as well as effectiveness and compactness of construction and in this respect, the present invention substantially fulfills this need.


The object of the present invention is to provide an annular device superior to a conventional annular device in the stability over an eyeball when being worn, which overcomes problems caused by wearing a conventional annular device.

As a medication method for treating an eye disease, there has been developed a method using a drug delivery system-type contact lens (DDSCL). In such a method, the DDSCL contains a drug and, when being worn, gives controlled release of the drug to an ocular tissue. Since a DDSCL can cover the whole surface of an eye, this method has been understood to be able to deliver a drug at an effective concentration to a tissue in the anterior eye segment such as the cornea and the aqueous humor and to a tissue in the exterior eye segment such as the conjunctiva and tear.
Such a method using a DDSCL, however, is difficult to deliver a drug selectively to a tissue in the posterior eye segment such as the retina, the choroid, the sclera and the vitreous, which are located posterior to the crystalline lens. Given this, there is disclosed a method using an annular (ring-shaped) device having an opening in its center to deliver an ophthalmic drug efficiently to a tissue in the posterior eye segment (see Patent Document 1 below, contents of this document are incorporated herein by reference in its entirety).

Abstract: The above object is attained by preparing an annular device to be worn over the surface of the sclera, the annular device including an opening exposing the cornea and one or a plurality of approximately encircling grooves on an intermediate part between an inner rim part and an outer rim part. The annular device has a maximum thickness preferably in the intermediate part.


Certain example embodiments relate to a method of storing data in a tabular data structure having columns and rows in a column-oriented storage system. At least one of the columns is divided into a plurality of segments. Each segment has an associated cell size that indicates the maximum size of the data items in the respective segment. When storing a data item into one of the segments, it is determined whether the size of the data item exceeds the cell size of the segment; and if the size of the data item exceeds the cell size of the segment, the cell size of the segment is adapted to accommodate the size of the data item. The adapting of the cell size of the segment to accommodate the size of the data item is performed independent of the cell sizes of the other of the plurality of segments.

Modern computer systems oftentimes operate on tabular data, i.e. data which is structured as a two-dimensional table, wherein each data item (also called "cell") can be addressed by its column and row number. Popular examples of systems supporting such tabular data structures are database systems, such as relational database systems. The theoretical concepts underlying tabular data storage approaches have been the subject of scientific research dating back to the 1970s (for an overview see e.g. G. Copeland et al.: "A decomposition storage model", Proceedings of the 1985 ACM SIGMOD international conference on Management of data (SIGMOD '85). ACM, New York, N.Y., USA, 268-279).
Accordingly, on a conceptual level tabular data can be understood as a two-dimensional table. However, when storing such data the two-dimensional data must be serialized into a one-dimensional sequence of bits in order to be stored in the working memory (e.g. RAM) and/or persistent storage means (e.g. hard drive) of the underlying computer hardware. To this end, most conventional database management systems (DBMS) follow the so-called row oriented approach, in that the two-dimensional table is stored one row after the other. Another approach is followed by so-called column-oriented DBMS, which store their data tables as series of columns. Both approaches have their individual advantages and drawbacks, e.g. column-oriented systems are more efficient when an aggregate needs to be computed over many rows but only for a notably smaller subset of all columns of data, because reading that smaller subset of data can be faster than reading all data. On the other hand, row-oriented systems are more efficient when many columns of a single row are required at the same time, and when row-size is relatively small, as the entire row can be retrieved with a single disk seek. Regardless of the used storage strategy, a physical storage allowing fast random access reads can greatly increase the operation speed. The random access allows minimizing the amount of read data in case of queries where only few fields and few rows have to be read. It achieves this because only the individual cells of interest have to be transferred from the storage. Finding those individual cells is easiest and fastest if all cells of a type have the same size because the address of the cell can then be calculated through a simple multiplication.
A further obstacle which affects both approaches is that the data in a table is seldom static, since new rows are frequently added, deleted, and cell values may be changed. For example, if a cell is added to a column and that cell does not fit into the number of bits available per cell in this column, the underlying data structure of the column has to be adapted. In particular in row-oriented storage models, the costs to change a column's width (i.e. the number of bits available per cell) may be prohibitive, since whole rows must be re-coded, effectively resulting in the whole table being converted.
In the column-oriented storage model, a simple strategy for adapting the data structure is to increase the number of bits per cell for the affected column. This strategy, however, has two drawbacks that become particularly relevant if the column is large. Firstly, all the cells of the old structure with the old cell capacity need to be transformed into the new structure with the increased cell capacity. Secondly, as long as this transformation is running, the amount of memory allocated for the old and new data structures together is more than twice as large as that of the old structure alone. This means on the one hand, that the system must provide a lot more memory than is actually needed outside the transformation operation. Secondly, there is additional effort for the automatic memory management system that operating environments usually provide nowadays.
The load on automatic memory management systems is particularly problematic in devices with very limited resources in terms of computing power and/or memory access speed, such as embedded systems or smartphones. On the other end of the spectrum, applications on large server class machines using many gigabytes of working memory can also run into issues resulting from high load on automatic memory management and the resulting loss in computing power and responsiveness.
In summary, conventional compressed column-oriented storage systems for frequently changing tabular data suffer from the following drawbacks: increased processing time to transform data of a column, and temporarily doubled memory consumption (with its associated load on automatic memory management).
It is therefore the technical problem underlying certain example embodiments of the present invention to provide an improved method and system for storing tabular data which is more resource efficient in terms of memory and processing power consumption, thereby at least partly overcoming the above explained disadvantages of the prior art.
This problem is according to one aspect of the invention solved by a method of storing data in a tabular data structure having columns and rows in a column-oriented storage system (e.g. a database, a database management system (i.e. a system comprising a database and processing logic for accessing the database), or any other storage system operable to store tabular data, i.e. most generally denoted a "table store"). In the embodiment of claim 1, the method comprises the steps of:    a. dividing at least one of the columns into a plurality of segments, wherein each segment has an associated cell size which indicates the maximum size of the data items in the respective segment;    b. when storing a data item into one of the segments,            determining whether the size of the data item exceeds the cell size of the segment; and        if the size of the data item exceeds the cell size of the segment, adapting the cell size of the segment to accommodate the size of the data item;            c. wherein adapting the cell size of the segment to accommodate the size of the data item is performed independent of the cell sizes of the other of the plurality of segments.
Accordingly, the embodiment is based on the general concept of splitting the column(s) of a table into smaller sub-units called segments. Each data item within a segment has the same size (e.g. the number of bits allocated for storing a data item) indicated by the segment's cell size, but the different segments may have different cell sizes. This way, it is possible to have e.g. a column with two segments, wherein the first segment stores data items with only 128 bits, while the second segment stores data items having 256 bits. As can be seen, this approach has considerable advantages when a new data item is added to a table segment which exceeds the segment's maximum cell size. This is because in this case, only the cell size of the affected segment needs to be adapted (in this case: increased) to accommodate the size of the new data item, but the other segments do not have to be adapted. This is beneficial both in terms of performance (since only a subset of the column needs to be adapted, namely the affected segment) and memory consumption (since the segments can be chosen to require only a minimum amount of storage capacity). In summary, splitting a column into multiple subunits (segments) allows for a more fine-grained memory optimization. It should be noted that since the adaptation of the affected segment's cell size is preferably performed when a new data item is to be stored into the table, the above-explained approach is particularly flexible, dynamic and self-optimizing. However, the general concept of adapting the cell sizes on a per-segment-level may in alternative embodiments also be employed independent of a specific request for storing a new data item, such as periodically (e.g. as a background process) or manually by an administrator.
In another aspect of the present invention each segment has an associated segment size which indicates the maximum number of data items in the respective segment (of course, the segment sizes may differ between columns). Preferably, all segments of a column have the same segment size. Accordingly, not only the size of the individual data items within a segment can be limited by an upper boundary (the above-explained cell size), but also the number of data items allowed per segment (by means of the segment size). Choosing an optimal segment size can lead to considerable performance and memory usage improvements, as will be explained in more detail further below. Furthermore, if all segments of a given column have the same segment size, the address calculation of the individual data items is particularly fast and efficient.
Furthermore, the method may comprise a step of determining an optimal segment size based on characteristics of the underlying hardware system, such as a bandwidth between the working memory and the processor. Additionally or alternatively, the step of determining an optimal segment size may be based on statistics on the data stored in the tabular data structure and/or on the frequency of addition, update and/or removal operations performed on the data of the tabular data structure. Also, the step of determining an optimal segment size may be performed: (a) automatically when data is added, updated and/or removed (i.e. the determination of the optimal segment size is both automatic (i.e. self-optimizing) and dynamic); (b) automatically and periodically (i.e automatic and non-dynamic), and/or (c) manually.
Since the method of the embodiment of claim 1 operates in a column-oriented storage system, the columns of the tabular data structure are preferably stored one after the other in a working memory and/or persistent storage means of the storage system. Accordingly, this aspect follows the column-oriented approach explained in the introductory part above (also called columnar table storage). This aspect is particularly efficient for minimizing the memory consumption of the tabular data, as the data items of one column (usually) have the same data type and a similar memory consumption. Of course, it is also advantageous when an entire new column needs to be added to an existing table, since in this case the new column can be simply appended to the serialized one-dimensional data structure. In other words, segmenting the data values on a column-basis is particularly advantageous, since the values of one particular column typically fall into the same value range and thus each have a similar memory requirement. The cells of a row, on the contrary, typically have quite different memory requirements. Combining the column-oriented segmenting with the column-oriented storage model is particularly advantageous, since if the row-oriented storage model was used, changing the cell size would require to copy/move all cells of the segment and not only the cells of the particular column. It should be noted that while in the column-orientated approach the data is generally stored by column, a particular column is not necessarily contiguous as if one of its segments has had to be adapted to cope with change of cell size it may no longer be in its original place in the memory.
Moreover, the method may comprise the further steps of providing a dictionary data structure which maps data items to integer values and storing the integer value in the tabular data structure instead of the data item. Accordingly, instead of the actual data item (e.g. a data item of type "text" with the value "Smith") only a simple integer value (e.g. "123") is stored in the table and/or respectively in the serialized memory representation, which leads to less memory consumption, since the data is effectively compressed. To achieve such a compression, a dictionary is then provided which maps the data items to the integer values (in the sense of "Smith"="123"), so that the data can be resolved.
Preferably, adapting the cell size of the segment to accommodate the size of the data item comprises selecting a minimum number of bits needed for storing the biggest data item in the respective column. This way, the memory representation of the table data structure can be kept as small as possible.
Certain example embodiments of the present invention are also directed to a computer program comprising instructions for implementing any of the above-described methods. Lastly, also a column-oriented storage system is provided for storing data in a tabular data structure having columns and rows, wherein the system comprises means for dividing at least one of the columns into a plurality of segments, wherein each segment has an associated cell size which indicates the maximum size of the data items in the respective segment; means for storing a data item into one of the segments, adapted for determining whether the size of the data item exceeds the cell size of the segment, and if the size of the data item exceeds the cell size of the segment, adapting the cell size of the segment to accommodate the size of the data item; wherein adapting the cell size of the segment to accommodate the size of the data item is performed independent of the cell sizes of the other of the plurality of segments.
Further advantageous modifications of embodiments of the system of the invention are defined in further dependent claims. It will be appreciated that such embodiments of the system may be adapted to perform in accordance with any of the above-described methods.

Method and system for storing tabular data in a memory-efficient manner


A system is provided that includes a Q3D endoscope disposed to image a field of view and a processor that produces a Q3D model of a scene and identifies target instruments and structures. The processor is configured to display the scene from a virtual field of view of an instrument, to determine a no fly zone around targets, to determine a predicted path for said instruments or to provide 3D tracking of said instruments.

Quantitative three-dimensional (Q3D) vision provides numerical information about the actual physical (x, y, z) 3D coordinates of target points in a real world scene. With quantitative 3D vision, a person not only can obtain a three-dimensional perception of a real world scene, but also can obtain numerical information about physical dimensions of objects in the scene and physical distances between objects in the scene. In the past, some Q3D systems have been proposed that use time-of-flight related information or phase information to determine 3D information about a scene. Other Q3D systems have used structured light to determine 3D information about a scene.
The use of time-of-flight information is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 6,323,942, entitled, "CMOS-compatible three-dimensional image sensor IC", which discloses a three-dimensional imaging system that includes a two-dimensional array of pixel light sensing detectors fabricated on a common IC using CMOS fabrication techniques. Each detector has an associated high speed counter that accumulates clock pulses in number directly proportional to time-of-flight (TOF) for a system-emitted pulse to reflect from an object point and be detected by a pixel detector focused upon that point. The TOF data provides a direct digital measure of distance from the particular pixel to a point on the object reflecting the emitted light pulse. In a second embodiment, the counters and high speed clock circuits are eliminated, and instead each pixel detector is provided with a charge accumulator and an electronic shutter. The shutters are opened when a light pulse is emitted and closed thereafter such that each pixel detector accumulates charge as a function of return photon energy falling upon the associated pixel detector. The amount of accumulated charge provides a direct measure of round-trip TOF.
The use of time delay information is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 8,262,559, entitled, "Apparatus and method for endoscopic 3D data collection", which discloses a modulated measuring beam and a light-transmitting mechanism for conducting the measuring beam onto an area to be observed, where the light-transmitting mechanism includes an illuminating lens, in addition to a light-imaging mechanism for imaging a signal beam from the area to be observed at least onto a phase-sensitive image sensor. Time delays, which may correspond to differences in depth in the millimeter range, result in phase information that makes possible the production of an image that depicts depth and distance information.
The use of structured light to determine physical coordinates of objects in a visual image is disclosed in U.S. Pat. App. Pub. No. 2012/0190923, entitled "Endoscope"; and in C. Schmalz et al., "An endoscopic 3D scanner based on structured light", Medical Image Analysis, 16 (2012) 1063-1072. A triangulation method is used to measure the topography of a surface. Structured light in the form of projection rays, which may have a range of different color spectra, are incident upon and are reflected from a surface. The reflected rays are observed by a camera that is calibrated to use the reflected color spectra information to determine 3D coordinates of the surface. More specifically, the use of structured light typically involves shining a light pattern on a 3D surface, and determining physical distances based upon a deformation pattern of the light due to contours of the physical object.
An imager array camera has been built that includes a plurality of pixel arrays that can be used to compute scene depth information for pixels in the array. High resolution (HR) images are generated from multiple low resolution (LR) images. A reference viewpoint is selected and an HR image is generated as seen by that viewpoint. A parallax processing technique utilizes the effects of aliasing to determine pixel correspondences for non-reference images with respect to the reference image pixels. Fusion and superresolution are utilized to produce the HR image from the multiple LR images. See e.g., U.S. Pat. No. 8,514,491, entitled "Capturing and Processing Images using Monolithic Camera Array with Heterogeneous Imager"; U.S. Pat. App. Pub. No. 2013/0070060, entitled, "Systems and Methods for Determining Depth from multiple Views of a Scene that Include Aliasing using Hypothesized Fusion"; and K. Venkataraman et al., "PiCam: An ultra-Thin high Performance Monolithic Camera Array".
FIG. 1 is an illustrative drawing showing details of a known imager sensor 180 in accordance with some embodiments. The image sensor 180 includes an arrangement of sensors 184. Each sensor in the arrangement includes a two dimensional arrangement of pixels having at least two pixels in each dimension. Each sensor includes a lens stack 186. Each lens stack 186 has a corresponding focal plane 188. Each lens stack 186 creates a separate optical channel that resolves an image onto a corresponding arrangement of pixels disposed in its corresponding focal 188 plane. The pixels act as light sensors, and each focal plane 188 with its multiple pixels acts as an image sensor. Each sensor with its focal plane 188 occupies a region of the sensor arrangement different from regions of the sensor arrangement occupied by other sensors and focal planes.
FIG. 2 is an illustrative drawing showing a simplified plan view of the known arrangement of sensors 184 of FIG. 1 that includes sensors labeled as sensors S11 through S33. The imager sensor arrangement 184 is fabricated on a semiconductor chip to include a plurality of sensors S11 through S33. Each of the sensors S11 through S33 includes a plurality of pixels (e.g., 0.32 megapixels) and is coupled to peripheral circuitry (not shown) that includes independent read-out control and pixel digitization. In some embodiments, the sensors S11 through S33 are arranged into a grid format as illustrated in FIG. 2. In other embodiments, the sensors are arranged in a non-grid format. For example, the sensors may be arranged in a circular pattern, zigzagged pattern, scattered pattern, or irregular pattern including sub-pixel offsets.
Each individual pixel of the sensors 184 of FIGS. 1-2 includes a microlens pixel stack. FIG. 3 is an illustrative drawing of a known microlens pixel stack of the sensors of FIGS. 1-2. The pixel stack 800 includes a microlens 802, which is positioned above an oxide layer 804. Typically beneath the oxide layer 804 there may be a color filter 806, which is disposed above a nitride layer 808, which is disposed above a second oxide layer 810, which sits atop a silicon layer 812 that includes the active area 814 (typically a photodiode) of the individual pixel. The primary role of the microlens 802 is to gather the light incident on its surface and to focus that light onto the small active area 814. The pixel aperture 816 is determined by the spread of the microlens.
Additional information concerning the above-described known imager sensor arrangement architecture is provided in U.S. Pat. No. 8,514,491 B2 (filed Nov. 22, 2010), and in U.S. Patent Application Pub. No. US 2013/0070060 A1 (filed Sep. 19, 2012).

Quantitative three-dimensional visualization of instruments in a field of view


A method and system for delivering a datagram across multiple inter-network servers. The datagram is delivered from a source device having a first network level protocol to a destination device having a second network level protocol. The inter-network servers transport the datagram in accordance with a transport level protocol while the datagram has a transport priority defined by the first and second network level protocols. The source device delivers the datagram from a source port that designates the transport priority and the destination device receives the datagram at a destination port that also designates the transport priority. In accordance with the method of the present invention, either the source port or said destination port is first identified. The transport priority of said datagram is identified utilizing the transport priority designation of the identified source port or destination port. A current server capacity of each of the inter-network servers is determined. A server eligibility for each of the inter-network servers is determined in accordance with the determined current server capacity and the determined transport priority. Finally, the datagram is dispatched to one of the inter-network servers in accordance with the determined server eligibility.

1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to computer networks, and more particularly to a method and system in an Internet Protocol (IP) network for optimally dispatching IP telnet datagram traffic among multiple TN3270 Servers.
2. Description of the Related Art
SNA and IP Environment
Companies are increasingly interested in consolidating the multiple specialized networks that they operate or lease from service providers onto a single protocol network. These multiple specialized networks operate on diverse networking technologies such as Systems Network Architecture (SNA), Internet Protocol (IP) or Internetwork Packet Exchange (IPX). In making consolidation one of their top priorities, companies are almost exclusively selecting IP as their protocol of choice. For the overwhelming majority of these companies that are using SNA protocols and applications, however, there remains the need to maintain the ability to access the enormous quantity of existing corporate data that resides in traditional mainframes and only accessible through SNA applications.
Internet
The Internet is a global network of computers and computers networks (the xe2x80x9cNetxe2x80x9d). The Internet connects computers that use a variety of different operating systems or languages, including UNIX, DOS, Windows, Macintosh, and others. To facilitate and allow the communication among these various systems and languages, the Internet uses a language referred to as TCP/IP (xe2x80x9cTransmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocolxe2x80x9d). TCP/IP protocol supports three basic applications on the Internet:
(1) transmitting and receiving electronic mail,
(2) logging into remote computers (the xe2x80x9cTelnetxe2x80x9d), and
(3) transferring files and programs from one computer to another (xe2x80x9cFTPxe2x80x9d or xe2x80x9cFile Transfer Protocolxe2x80x9d).
TCP/IP
The Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) protocol suite is used to establish an interconnection of networks that provide universal communication services: an internetwork, or internet. Each physical network has its own technology dependent communication interface (in the form of a programming interface) that provides basic communication functions between the physical network and the user applications. The architecture of the physical networks is hidden from the user. TCP/IP also provides interconnection between different physical networks to form what appears to the user to be one large network.
TCP is a transport layer protocol providing end-to-end data transfer and is responsible for providing a reliable exchange of information between networked computer systems. Multiple applications can be supported simultaneously over one TCP connection between two computer systems.
IP is an inter-network layer protocol hiding the physical network architecture bellow it. Part of the communicating messages between computers is a routing function that ensures that messages will be correctly directed within the network to be delivered to their destination. IP provides this routing function. An IP message is called an IP datagram.
Application Level protocols are utilized in addition to TCP/IP to transfer user and application data from a computer system to a destination computer system. Examples of such Application Level protocols include File Transfer Protocol (FTP), Telnet, Gopher, Hyper Text Transfer Protocol (HTTP).
IP Router
A xe2x80x9crouterxe2x80x9d is a computer that interconnects two networks and forwards messages from one network to the other. Routers select the best transmission path between networks utilizing the IP layer of the TCP/IP protocol stack, such that any host (or computer) or workstation running TCP/IP over more than one interface could, in theory, forward messages between networks. Because IP implements basic routing functions, the term xe2x80x9cIP routerxe2x80x9d is often used. However, dedicated network hardware routers can provide more sophisticated routing functions than the minimum functions implemented in IP.
World Wide Web
With the increasing size and complexity of the Internet, tools that are often called navigators or navigation systems have been developed to help find information on the network. Navigation systems include standards such as Archie, Gopher and, most well-known, the World Wide Web (xe2x80x9cWWWxe2x80x9d or xe2x80x9cthe Webxe2x80x9d). In addition to serving as an Internet-based navigation system, the Web is also an information distribution and management system for the Internet. The Web provides an end user with a seamlessly integrated format of information, including still images, text, audio and video. A user on the Web using a graphical user interface may transparently communicate with different host computers on the system, different system applications, and different information formats for files and documents including text, sound, and graphics.
Telnet 3270
In an IP environment, telnet technologies (TN3270) is widely utilized to transport SNA information across an IP network. This technique for SNA xe2x80x9cgreen screenxe2x80x9d workstation users employs a Client/Server approach. IBM""s xe2x80x9cHost On Demandxe2x80x9d or xe2x80x9cWebClientxe2x80x9d by CISCO are examples of client software implementations. Network Utility from IBM or CISCO router""s offerings are typical Server implementations (hardware and software). The xe2x80x9cTN3270 clientxe2x80x9d component usually runs within the customer""s workstation while the xe2x80x9cTN3270 server.xe2x80x9d component is usually placed in front of the customer""s Data Center mainframes (or sometimes directly within the mainframe itself) or within the customer""s branch offices. As illustrated in FIG. 1, IP protocols are used between a TN3270 server (102) and TN3270 clients (101), while traditional SNA protocols are used between TN3270 server (102) and target SNA Applications (103). The TN3270 client usually runs on an end user workstation.
Telnet 3270 Device Type
The characteristics of TN3270 data exchanged between TN3270 client and SNA application, depend on both the device on which the TN3270 client is located, and the SNA application. For instance, a device which is only capable of displaying information retrieved from the SNA application, is not capable of processing TN3270 print data. The characteristics of TN3270 data are partly identified by the Device Type (DEVICE-TYPE) parameter negotiated between the TN3270 client and the TN3270 server when the TN3270 connection is established. The possible values of this DEVICE-TYPE parameter are defined in the extension of the TN3270 protocol (TN3270E) described in the Request For Comments (RFCs) 2355, xe2x80x9cTN3270 Enhancementsxe2x80x9d of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF). Typically, the DEVICE-TYPE indicates if the device is a display terminal or a printer.
Dispatcher System
When multiple TN3270 servers are used to gain access to SNA applications located within a SNA network, a dedicated device called a xe2x80x9cdispatcher systemxe2x80x9d is often used within the TCP/IP network for dispatching the traffic to these multiple TN3270 servers. The main goal of the dispatcher system is to balance the load across the multiple TN3270. For instance, when a very powerful TN3270 server and a smaller TN3270 server are available, more traffic should be dispatched on the very powerful TN3270 server than on the smaller one. Such dispatcher systems are either dedicated hardware devices, or software components installed on existing network devices such as IP routers.
More detailed explanations of telnet, TN3270, and Network Utility, can be found in the following publications incorporated herewith by reference:
xe2x80x9cTCP/IP Tutorial and Technical Overviewxe2x80x9d by Martin W. Murhammer, Orcun Atakan, Stefan Bretz, Larry R. Pugh, Kazunari Suzuki, David H. Wood, International Technical Support Organization, October 1998, GG24-3376-05.
xe2x80x9cInternet in a nutshellxe2x80x9d by Valerie Quercia, published by O""Reilly, October 1997.
xe2x80x9cIBM 2216/Network Utility Host Channel Connectionxe2x80x9d, Erol Lengerli, Jacinta Carbonell, Thomas Grueter; IBM International Technical Support Organization, January 1999, SG24-5303-00.
xe2x80x9cIBM Network Utility Description and Configuration Scenariosxe2x80x9d, Tim Kearby, Peter Gayek, Gallus Schlegel, Imre Szabo, Zhi-Yong Zhang; IBM International Technical Support Organization, January 1999, SG24-5289-00.
xe2x80x9cInternetworking with TCP/IPxe2x80x94Volume Ixe2x80x94Principles, Protocols, and Architecturexe2x80x9d Douglas E. Comer, Second Edition, Prentice Hall 1991.
Request For Comments (RFCs) from the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF):
RFC 1576: TN3270 Current Practices,
RFC 1646: TN3270 Extensions for LU name and Printer Selection,
RFC 1647: TN3270 Enhancements,
RFC 2355: TN3270 Enhancements.
When multiple TN3270 servers are used within a TCP/IP network to access SNA applications located within a SNA network, an optimized system and method for dispatching and balancing TN3270 traffic across these multiple TN3270 servers must be provided.
The TN3270 protocol is a form of encapsulation of the data exchanged between the TN3270 client and the SNA application. TN3270 traffic (that is the TN3270 data comprised in the IP datagrams) can have different characteristics as explained hereinbelow.
TN3270 Interactive Traffic
TN3270 traffic is considered interactive insofar as it relates to menu driven SNA applications. This situation arises, for example,.when an end user displays a screen of information retrieved from a SNA application by a TN3270 client. This screen includes multiple options. According to an option selected by a user, a next screen is retrieved from the SNA application that is different from the screen on which the options are displayed. TN3270 interactive data should be processed at a high priority level within the TCP/IP network in order to provide the best possible interaction response time to an end user.
TN3270 Print Traffic TN3270 print traffic is TN3270 data delivered by a TN3270 client to SNA applications for print. By its nature, TN3270 print traffic is less sensitive to response time than interactive traffic.
Depending on TN3270 traffic characteristics (either interactive or print), the TN3270 traffic should be processed in accordance with different priority levels within a TCP/IP network. For example, IP datagrams comprising TN3270 interactive data should be treated with a higher priority than IP datagrams comprising TN3270print data. In this manner, a better response time will be provided to the interactive traffic.
In a TN3270 environment as described above, a problem arises in that the dispatcher system processes the different types of TN3270 traffic uniformly because the dispatcher does not recognize the characteristics of the TN3270 data within a given IP datagram. As a consequence, interactive traffic and print traffic are treated alike by the dispatcher system, thus frustrating the need to allocate different priority levels to interactive and print applications.
One possible solution to this problem is to dispatch TN3270 traffic based on either the IP address of the source computer system or on the IP address of the destination computer system. However, for a given origin or destination system, TN3270 traffic is processed at a uniform priority level. IP routers and dispatcher systems acknowledge one unique TN3270 traffic priority level without differentiating the characteristics of the TN3270 data. For example, an interactive connection and a batch print connection from the same source will be processed with the same priority. Thus, a high priority interactive connection may be slowed down by a low priority print connection.
An alternate solution is to dispatch TN3270 traffic according to the Type Of Service (TOS) field within the IP datagram header. The main drawbacks of this solution are as follows. First, the TOS field must be set in the IP datagrams that the dispatcher system receives from either the source workstation system (the system which creates the IP datagram with the TOS field), or by other network devices within the TCP/IP network (for instance an IP router which includes the functionality to alter the TOS field of an IP datagram it routes). Therefore, in an TCP/IP network in which the TOS field cannot be set or used, the dispatching of TN3270 traffic in accordance with the value of the TOS field is not possible. Another problem with dispatching in accordance with TOS, is that the TOS field of IP datagrams set: by workstations or devices within the TCP/IP network may be used for alternate purposes and may not reflect the actual priority and characteristics of TN3270 data comprised in the IP datagrams.
A method and system for delivering a datagram across multiple inter-network servers are disclosed herein. The datagram is delivered from a source device having a first network level protocol to a destination device having a second network level protocol. The inter-network servers transport the datagram in accordance with a transport level protocol while the datagram has a transport priority defined by the first and second network level protocols. The source device delivers the datagram from a source port that designates the transport priority and the destination device receives the datagram at a destination port that also designates the transport priority. In accordance with the method of the present invention, either the source port or said destination port is first identified. The transport priority of said datagram is identified utilizing the transport priority designation of the identified source port or destination port. A current server capacity of each of the inter-network servers is determined. A server eligibility for each of the inter-network servers is determined in accordance with the determined current server capacity and the determined transport priority. Finally, the datagram is dispatched to one of the inter-network servers in accordance with the determined server eligibility.

Method and system for optimally dispatching internetwork traffic

International Business Machines Corporation


A cooling pump receives fluid from a heating system and supplies cooled fluid to an engine. The cooling pump includes a body housing and a cover housing. The cover housing is attached to the body housing to define an internal pumping chamber. The internal pumping chamber is defined between an inlet passage and an outlet passage of the body housing. A chamber outlet opening is defined between the internal pumping chamber and the outlet passage such that fluid flows from the internal pumping chamber and into the outlet passage. The cover housing includes a sloped wall which extends into the outlet passage between the chamber outlet opening and a terminus. The sloped wall has a concave portion and a convex portion disposed such that the concave portion is between the chamber outlet opening and the convex portion to direct fluid through the outlet passage and into the engine.

Rapid warm-up of engine coolant, engine oil, and transmission oil after a cold start can improve vehicle fuel economy. A cold start is a start-up of the vehicle when the vehicle has not been running and the engine and transmission are relatively cold. Engine warm-up is especially challenging for diesel and hybrid applications, as less fuel is burned.


A telescopic double wall air intake device having an antenna including an air intake canister attached to one end of the antenna and an air plenum arranged on the other end of the antenna. The air canister has disposable filtering material therein. The air plenum is attached to a frame of a car or other vehicle and carries the pneumatic or electric motor for moving the telescopic air intake device up and down. The air plenum may also be connected to a radio and other communication devices. The inlet side of a high static air moving device, e.g., an air booster fan, is connected to the air plenum via a flexible duct. The discharge side of the booster fan is connected to a second air plenum, e.g., an air mixing plenum, via a flexible metal air duct. The air mixing plenum has three connection ports, two of which are used for inlet flows and one of which is for discharge flow. The inlet ports are provided with check valves. The check valve in one of the inlet ports prevents air from travelling backwards to the booster fan. The other inlet port is connected to a conventional air inlet grille through a flexible metal duct. The discharge side of the air mixing plenum is connected to the conventional air distribution inlet of a car to provide air-conditioning inside the car cabin.

The present invention relates to an air intake device for improving the quality of air within the passenger compartment of land vehicles, such as automobiles.
The modern city dweller spends about two hours per day in his or her car, plus additional leisure time, vacation time, commuting time. All told, the time a city dweller spends inside of, or in the vicinity of, a car in an urban environment is close to six hours per day or nearly one fourth of a person's lifetime.
In the prior art, the air intake system of land vehicles, such as automobiles, is usually arranged behind the grille at the front end of the car. Air is drawn through the grille and then passed into the passenger compartment. The front grille is typically arranged at the level of the vehicle before the engine so that the air drawn through the grille is obtained from the air flow near the boundary layer of the road. However, it is known that some pollutants in vehicle exhaust plumes tend to settle near the ground. Thus, the air flow near the boundary layer of the road may contain pollutants exhausted from other vehicles on the road, especially in the case of bumper-to-bumper traffic when the exhaust plume of the car immediately in front may be directed into the front grille. In view of the irritating effects these pollutants may cause, it is desirable to avoid inhalation and contact with such pollutants.
One solution to provide cleaner air in the passenger compartment of a vehicle is to drastically reduce the emission of pollutants in the exhaust gases of the vehicles. However, this solution seems highly unlikely at least for the first half of the twenty-first century.


A LAN (Local Area Network) system employs a plurality of terminals and a shared equipment such as an internet facsimile. When an error occurs in the shared equipment, an error message is transmitted from the shared equipment to a predetermined terminal, for example, a maintenance manager""s terminal, and when the error is recovered by someone, the shared equipment transmits an error recovery message to the predetermined terminal.

The present invention relates to a local area network system (referred to as a xe2x80x9cLAN systemxe2x80x9d hereafter), and more particularly, to a LAN system including equipment shared and commonly used by a plurality of user terminals of the LAN system.
Conventionally, there has been known a LAN system employing an internet facsimile machine sharing system, as disclosed in the Japanese Patent Laid-open Publication No. HEI 2-172348, in which a single internet facsimile machine is connected with a plurality of user terminals through a LAN, through which the results of receipt and/or transmission of facsimile messages are notified to respective users by E-mail messages based on receiver identifying data and/or terminal identifying data. Accordingly, in the above-described conventional system, it is unnecessary for respective users to go to the internet facsimile machine to check whether a facsimile message has been received and/or whether a facsimile message was successfully transmitted.
Further, the conventional sharing system is constituted such that, if a trouble occurs in the facsimile machine, an error message is transmitted as an E-mail message to a terminal of a maintenance manager who is responsible for maintenance of the facsimile machine. Since the error conditions are notified by the E-mail messages, it is unnecessary for the maintenance manager to regularly go to the facsimile machine to check whether it is working well. In other words, the maintenance manager is required to go to the facsimile machine only when an error message is transmitted from the internet facsimile machine.
When the error message is transmitted from the facsimile machine to the maintenance manager, however, the maintenance manager may not be able to go to the facsimile machine immediately. In such a case, some other user might go to the facsimile machine to check receipt and/or transmission of a facsimile message, and at that time, the user might restore operation condition of the facsimile machine if the occurred error is an easy one, such as a shortage of paper.
In such a situation, the maintenance manager may go to the facsimile machine in order to recover the noticed error, if the maintenance manager does not know the error has been recovered, and then find that no errors have occurred. That is a waste of time for the maintenance manager, and further, if such a situation occurs again and again, the maintenance manager may tend to regard the error messages as incorrect ones even if the error messages have been transmitted due to actually occurred errors, which reduces reliability of the LAN system.
It is therefore an object of the present invention to provide a LAN system capable of reducing the above-described problem in the conventional LAN system, and improving the reliability of the system.
For the above object, there is provided a local area network system which includes a plurality of user terminals, at least one shared equipment which is shared by said plurality of user terminals. The plurality of user terminals and at least one shared equipment are interconnected through a local area network. The LAN system is further provided with an error notifying system that notifies occurrence of an error to at least a predetermined one of said user terminals when an error occurs in at least one shared equipment, and an error recovery notifying system that notifies recovery of the error to the predetermined one of user terminals when the error has been recovered after the error notifying system notified the error to the predetermined one of the user terminals.
Since the recovery of the error is notified to the predetermined one of the user terminals (i.e., a maintenance manager""s terminal), the problem described above can be solved, and accordingly, the reliability of the LAN system will be improved.
According to another aspect of the invention, there is provided a local area network system including a plurality of user terminals and at least one shared equipment which is shared by the plurality of user terminals. The plurality of user terminals and at least one shared equipment are interconnected through a local area network. The LAN system is further provided with an error notifying system that transmits a first E-mail message indicating occurrence of an error to at least a predetermined one of the user terminals when an error occurs in at least one shared equipment, and an error recovery notifying system that transmits a second E-mail message indicating recovery of the error to the predetermined one of user terminals when the error is recovered after the error notifying system transmitted the first E-mail message to the predetermined user terminal.
Since the occurrence and recovery of an error is notified by E-mail, the user of the predetermined user terminal (e.g., a maintenance manager) can recognize the recovery without going to the shared equipment.
Preferably, the LAN system includes a mail server, and the predetermined one of the user terminals has a mail downloading system that regularly downloads newly arrived E-mail messages from the mail server. Further, the predetermined user terminal may be provided with a display, a first display system which displays an error message indicating occurrence of the error on said display when the first E-mail message is downloaded from the mail server, and a second display system which displays an error recovery message indicating recovery of the error on the display when the second E-mail message is downloaded from the mail server.
With this configuration, management of E-mail messages can be done easily, and the first and second E-mail messages can surely be transmitted to the predetermined user terminal (e.g., the maintenance manager""s terminal). Thus, the local area network system saves time for the maintenance manager.
Further, even if the maintenance manager leaves his or her terminal before the second E-mail message is received, he/she can recognize that someone else has recovered the error afterwards, and confirm that the first E-mail message (i.e., an error message) was correct. That improves reliability of the LAN system.
In particular, first display system may display a message window on the display, in which the error message is displayed. Optionally, the second display system may display the error recovery message in the same message window.
With this control, the maintenance manager can easily recognize that what error occurred and then recovered. This is convenient especially when a plurality of errors occurred and part of them have been recovered and the remaining errors are not recovered.
It is preferable that the error message is included in the first E-mail message. Optionally or alternatively, the error recovery message is included in the second E-mail message.
With this configuration, the predetermined terminal device is required to display the message as received, which reduces load to the CPU of the terminal device.
In a particular case, the local area network is connected to the internet, and the shared equipment is an internet facsimile machine which transmits and receives a facsimile message via the internet. In such a case, the internet facsimile machine may be capable of transmitting E-mail messages indicating results of transmission and receipt of facsimile messages to respective terminals, and preferably, the internet facsimile machine is capable of sending first and second E-mail messages.
With this system, since the shared equipment is capable of sending E-mail messages, it can be utilized to send the error messages and/or the error recovery messages.
Preferably, the error notifying system and the error recovery notifying system are provided in the shared equipment.
In this system, since the error messages and/or the error recovery messages are sent by the shared equipment, it can be easily identified by the user of the predetermined user terminal (e.g., the maintenance manager), based on the sender of the E-mail, that the messages are transmitted from the shared equipment and may include the error and/or error recovery messages.
The error notifying system may include an error message generating system that generates an error message in accordance with a type of an error occurred in the shared equipment.
In a particular case, the error message generating system may generate the error message by selecting one message from among a plurality of predetermined messages. Similarly, the error recovery notifying system may include an error recovery message generating system that generates an error recovery message upon recovery of the error occurred in the shared equipment. In a particular case, the error recovery message generating system may generate the error recovery message by selecting one message from among a plurality of predetermined messages.
According to another aspect of the invention, there is provided a local area network system, which is provided with:
a plurality of user terminals;
at least one shared equipment which is shared by said plurality of user terminals, said plurality of user terminals and said at least one shared equipment being interconnected through a local area network; and
an error recovery notifying system that notifies occurrence of an error in said shared equipment and recovery of the error to said at least a predetermined one of said user terminals when an error occurred and has been recovered.
Since the occurrence and recovery of an error is notified, the user of the predetermined user terminal can recognize that an error occurred actually, and then were recovered. Thus, reliability of the LAN system will not be lowered.
Optionally, the error recovery notifying system notifies the occurrence and recovery of the error by transmitting an E-mail message to said at least a predetermined one of said user terminals.

Local area network system including shared equipment


An organic EL display including lower electrodes arranged on a substrate to correspond to first organic EL elements of blue and second organic EL elements of any other color, respectively; hole injection/transport layers arranged on the lower electrodes; second organic light-emitting layers of the other color arranged on the hole injection/transport layers for the second organic EL elements; a first organic light-emitting layer of blue arranged on whole surfaces of the second organic light-emitting layers and the hole injection/transport layers for the first organic EL elements; an electron injection/transport layer arranged on a whole surface of the first light-emitting layer, the electron injection/transport layer made of a nitrogen-containing heterocyclic compound with an electron mobility of 1.0×10−6 cm2/Vs to 1.0×10−1 cm2/Vs both inclusive and having one or both of electron injection properties and electron transport properties; and an upper electrode arranged on the electron injection/transport layer.

The present disclosure relates to an organic EL display emitting light with use of electroluminescence (EL) effect, and a method of manufacturing the same.
As the development of information and communication industry is accelerated, display elements with higher performance are demanded. An organic EL element attracting attention as a next-generation display element has advantages of not only a wide viewing angle and excellent contract but also fast response time.
Materials of a light-emitting layer and the like forming the organic EL element are broadly divided into low-molecular materials and high molecular materials. It is generally known that the low-molecular materials exhibit higher light emission efficiency and a longer lifetime, and in particular, the low-molecular materials have high performance of emitting blue light.
Moreover, as a method of forming an organic film of the organic EL element, a film made of a low-molecular material is formed by a dry method (an evaporation method) such as a vacuum deposition method, and a film made of a high-molecular material is formed by a wet method (a coating method) such as a spin coating method, an ink jetprinting method or a nozzle coating method.
The vacuum deposition method has an advantage that it is not necessary to dissolve a forming material of an organic thin film in a solvent, and it is not necessary to remove the solvent after film formation accordingly. However, in the vacuum deposition method, separate coating with use of a metal mask is difficult, and in particular, facility and manufacturing cost for forming large panels is high; therefore, the vapor deposition method has disadvantages that it is difficult to apply the vacuum deposition method to a large-screen substrate and mass production is difficult. Therefore, the ink-jet printing method or the nozzle coating method which relatively easily achieves an increase in area of a display screen attracts attention.
However, specifically blue light-emitting materials in high-molecular materials used in the ink-jet printing method or the nozzle coating method are not practical because the blue light-emitting materials have low light-emission luminance and low lifetime characteristics, and it is considered difficult to perform patterning of a blue light-emitting layer by the wet method.
Therefore, Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 2006-140434 discloses a display formed by forming, as common layers, a blue light-emitting layer and subsequent layers, which have insufficient characteristics when being formed by the wet method, above a red light-emitting layer and a green light-emitting layer formed by the wet method including ink-jet printing. When the display has such a configuration, very fine pattering on the blue light-emitting layer is not necessary; therefore, there is a high possibility of achieving an increase in size of the display.

Organic EL display and method of manufacturing the same


An information processing apparatus coupled to a storage device via a network includes a processor configured to: acquire a host physical address over a physical storage region in which information regarding an access to the storage device from a guest OS is stored from a first packet stored in the physical storage region storing a packet obtained by encapsulating the information regarding the access; convert the acquired host physical address into a guest physical address recognized by the guest OS; create a data structure of a block device; store the guest physical address in a data address region of the data structure; specify the host physical address corresponding to the guest physical address while referring to the memory when reading from the data address region is detected; read data from the specified host physical address over the physical storage region; and transfer the read data to the guest OS.

In related art, as a protocol for constructing a storage area network (SAN) by using an Internet Protocol (IP) network, there is Internet Small Computer System Interface (iSCSI). The iSCSI integrates a SCSI command and data into one IP packet, and transfers the SCSI command and data by using the Transmission Control Protocol (TCP)/IP.
An example of related art is Japanese National Publication of International Patent Application No. 2005-525619.
An example of related art is Japanese Laid-open Patent Publication No. 2007-328611.

Information processing apparatus reading data using host physcal address and guest physical address and computer-readable recording medium recording control program reading data using host physical address and guest physical address


A likelihood weighting circuit includes a weighting part assigning a weight to a first soft-decision likelihood for a subcarrier in a received signal based on a power value of the received signal or a modulation error ratio of the subcarrier, a first variance calculator calculating a variance of the power value, a second variance calculator calculating a variance of the modulation error ratio, a likelihood measurement part measuring a distribution of a second soft-decision likelihood obtained by assigning the weight to the first soft-decision likelihood, a controller computing a first relaxing level of the power value and a second relaxing level of the modulation error ratio based on the respective variances, and a value of the second soft-decision likelihood, a first normalization processor normalizing the power value based on the first relaxing level, and a second normalization processor normalizing the modulation error ratio based on the second relaxing level.

There is disclosed in the related art an orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM) demodulation device having a Viterbi decoder configured to decode a convolutional code, a fading determination unit configured to determine a fading level of a primary demodulated signal, and a soft-decision bit selector configured to select from the demodulated signal soft-decision bits to be input into the Viterbi decoder. The soft-decision bit selector selects part of the demodulated signal as soft-decision bits based on the fading level determined by the fading determination unit. Further, the fading determination unit computes the maximum amplitude difference between the highest amplitude value and the lowest amplitude value of each of subcarriers in the propagation path estimating preamble to determine a fading level based on the computed maximum amplitude difference (e.g., Patent Document 1).
In addition, there is disclosed in the related art a receiver having a demodulator configured to soft-decision demodulate a received signal, a mode detector configured to detect the mode in signal amplitudes based on a frequency distribution of the soft-decision signal amplitudes in a decoding unit-interval of an output signal of the demodulator, a normalization unit configured to normalize soft-decision signal series based on the detected mode, and a decoder configured to decode received data based on the normalized soft-decision signal series (e.g., Patent Document 2).
In the related art OFDM demodulation device, the fading level is determined based on the maximum amplitude or the variance between the highest value and the lowest value of each of the subcarriers to optimize a soft-decision bit scale of likelihood information. Hence, in the related art technique, the appropriate likelihood may be obtained under a frequency selective fading environment where a level of receiving a specific frequency is lowered.
However, under an environment where spurious noise is generated against a specific frequency, the effect of the spurious noise is mixed with the effect of the frequency selective fading. Hence, the appropriate mode (likelihood) will not be obtained by the normalization of the soft-decision signal series alone.


Described herein are fastener inserts formed from a titanium alloy which reduce corrosion in a fastener assembly. In addition to reduced corrosion, particularly galvanic corrosion, the fastener insert is lightweight and provides improved strength to weight ratios as compared to stainless steel fastener inserts.

The present invention relates to fastener inserts and, more particularly, to helically coiled titanium wire fastener inserts which are useful in both substrates having tapped holes and nut assemblies.
Fastener assemblies come in a variety of shapes, sizes, designs and materials. Many fastening assemblies include not only a fastener such as a bolt, pin or screw, but also will include a fastener insert to be positioned within a tapped hole of a substrate or threaded nut barrel. One specific type of fastener insert useful in association with a threaded fastener is the helically coiled wire insert as described in U.S. Pat. No. 2,672,070 entitled xe2x80x9cWire Coil Screw Thread Insert for Molded Materialxe2x80x9d.
Generally speaking, tapped threads are strengthened due to the inherent flexibility of such helically coiled wire inserts since the insert provides a more balanced distribution of dynamic and static loads throughout the length of thread engagement. This flexibility also compensates for variation in lead and angle error.
Since helically coiled inserts generally do not exhibit crimping, staking, locking or swaging and do not require keying in place, helically coiled wire inserts greatly reduce stress which would otherwise be transferred to the receiving substrate. While such helically coiled wire inserts are generally useful as anchoring mechanisms for threaded fasteners, in order to be used in high strength applications, such inserts must be formed from high strength materials. Heretofore, 302/304 stainless steels have been used to manufacture fastener inserts.
The use of stainless steel inserts in fastener assemblies wherein the nut and/or fasteners are formed from other alloys leads to certain perceived problems such as corrosion, generally, and galvanic corrosion, in particular. By the phrase xe2x80x9cgalvanic corrosionxe2x80x9d, it is meant the electrochemical corrosion resulting from the current caused in a galvanic cell between two dissimilar metals in an electrolyte because of the difference in potential (emf) of the two metals.
Stainless steel fastener inserts have been coated with zinc chromate in an effort to prevent galvanic corrosion. However, application of the zinc chromate requires strict quantitative controls and is considered labor intensive. The application of too much zinc chromate can restrict movement. Additionally, the installation tools would require frequent cleaning to prevent build up of the zinc chromate on mandrels of the tool which is undesirable. The application of too little zinc chromate leads to certain other problems such as inadequate corrosion protection, for example.
Another recent approach to preventing galvanic corrosion in tapped holes is described in co-pending U.S. application Ser. No. 09/356,988. According to this document, improvements in preventing galvanic corrosion were seen as a result of coating fastener inserts made from stainless steel with a fluoropolymer composition. The additional step of applying a coating, sealant or plating to the insert can lead to added expense in the manufacturing process.
It is therefore a primary object of the present invention to provide titanium alloy fastener inserts which tend to limit, if not eliminate, galvanic corrosion in fastener assemblies.
Still another object of the present invention is to provide titanium alloy fastener inserts which are significantly lighter in weight than similarly sized and shaped stainless steel fastener inserts, e.g., improved strength to weight ratios.
To accomplish these objectives, among others, the present invention relates to a fastener inserts including a body formed from a titanium alloy comprising at least about 50.0 wt. % titanium, preferably 60.0 wt. % titanium, and, still more preferably, at least about 70.0 wt. % titanium. In addition to the titanium component, the alloy may include one or more of nitrogen, carbon, hydrogen, iron, oxygen, aluminum, vanadium, tin, ruthenium, palladium, cobalt, molybdenum, chromium, nickel, niobium, zirconium, silicon, hafnium, bismuth, yttrium, copper, tantalum, boron, manganese and tungsten.
As the alloy is being formed into a wire, the wire may be shaped to a desirable cross-sectional geometry and subsequently coiled. After allowing the wire to cool to approximately 23xc2x0 C., the wire may be heat treated as will be described in greater detail below to obtain specific tensile hardness and torque values. The resulting fastener inserts should have excellent corrosion resistance, be lightweight and provide superior strength.

Helically coiled titanium wire fastener inserts


A system for geo-steering during directional drilling of a wellbore including a processor, a data storage, and client devices in communication with the processor through a network. The processor can receive data from directional drilling equipment and can present that data to users in an executive dashboard. Users can send data and/or commands to the directional drilling equipment. The executive dashboard can present: a portion of interest in a stratigraphic cross section for user identification of: the drill bit in the stratigraphic cross section, formations in the stratigraphic cross section, and other formation data. The system can be used to identify a projected path for the drill bit, import data, compute wellbore profiles and stratigraphic cross sections, plot actual drilling paths, overlay the actual drilling path onto the projected path, and present control buttons to the user.

A need exists for a system for dynamic drilling monitoring system that can provide real-time formation information and alarms when the drilling approaches a dangerous condition.
A further need exists for drilling monitoring system that can provide real-time location identification for a drilling bit during horizontal drilling.
The present embodiments meet these needs.
The present embodiments are detailed below with reference to the listed Figures.

This patent is subject to a terminal disclaimer.


Provided is a source-load cooperation access method for a power distribution region. The method includes: establishing a timing feature model of a distributed generator and a timing feature model of a load respectively, acquiring a timing feature of the distributed generator in an access power distribution region by using maximum likelihood estimation and acquiring a timing feature of a user which accesses the power distribution region by using classification and regression trees; and inputting the timing feature of the distributed generator and the timing feature of the user which access the power distribution region into a combination optimization model, and determining a source-load access feeder through optimization.

With the continuous development of national economy, load characteristics of a power distribution region (hereinafter referred to as a region) are undergoing profound changes. At a load end, loads belonging to the region demonstrate complex forms of diversity, complementarity and correlation, a peak-to-valley difference of a transformer in the region (hereinafter referred to as a region transformer) continuously increases, a contradiction between supply and demand during a peak electricity usage period is increasingly prominent, and it is difficult to perform peak load regulations for a power grid. At a source end, distributed generators (DGs) represented by photovoltaic and wind power access the power distribution region in large quantities. However, the access of the DGs in large quantities imposes a higher requirement for safe operation of the power distribution region, changes comprehensive load characteristics showed by "source-load" combinations in the region, and even leads to problems such as an increased peak-to-valley difference and a reverse power transmission.
A large number of researches have been conducted on the region with the access of both the DG and the load (hereinafter referred to as a source-load), and different control strategies have been proposed, which mainly focus on orderly guiding cooperative and optimized operation of a controllable load and the distributed generator through a reasonable control measure and an electricity price guidance mechanism. In some documents, a probability model for residential electricity consumption is established, and based on a load state probability matrix, an active load-demand response scheme aiming at maximizing distributed photovoltaic consumption is made. An interactive charging control strategy for electric vehicles proposed in some documents can make the electric vehicles match photovoltaic output to promote photovoltaic consumption. In some documents, a cooperative scheduling model of the controllable load, the DG and an energy storage device is proposed to support full consumption of renewable energy resources. In some documents, a weighted coefficient queuing algorithm based on an improved colored power algorithm is proposed, which may be used for directly controlling common temperature control loads such as air conditioners and heat pumps in a home environment to participate in a demand side response, promoting optimized utilization of the distributed generator. In some documents, a cooperative potential of an electric heating load in wind power consumption is embodied through optimized scheduling of the electric heating load. In some documents, a cooperative and optimized scheduling model for the source-load which relates to the control of an air conditioner load group is established, which reduces power generation costs and load control costs. However, existing documents mostly focus on a source-load cooperation control in the region.
Planners still use relatively extensive procedures or standards for source-load access to the region, and it is easy to cause long-term high-load operation of some regions and long-term light-load operation of some regions. Therefore, for the source-load cooperation access, how to improve a power supply capacity of a feeder while ensuring the full consumption of new energy resources is an urgent problem to be solved.

Source-load cooperation access method for a power distribution region, terminal and storage medium

ELECTRIC POWER SCIENCE & RESEARCH INSTITUTE OF STATE GRID TIANJIN ELECTRIC POWER COMPANY


A system for estimating the modulation index and frequency offset of a CPM signal. An estimator filters the received signal and utilizes a training sequence to determine the modulation index and frequency offset of the CPM signal. The estimator can also include a post-processing step to eliminate all or part of a bias that might be created by the estimator.

1. Technical Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to the field of radio receivers that utilize continuous phase modulation (CPM) and, more particularly, to a method of and system for estimating a modulation index and a carrier frequency offset of a CPM signal.
2. Description of Related Art
Wireless technologies, such as terrestrial and satellite mobile communications and/or BLUETOOTH systems, may use continuous-phase-modulated (CPM) signals to transmit data. Binary CPM or M-ary CPM may be employed for the wireless transmission of data packets. When data is transmitted using CPM, the modulation index may need to be known in some receiver architectures.
To improve performance, receiver architectures could be employed that require knowledge of the value of the modulation index of the transmitted signal. Due to the use of independent frequency generating circuits in the transmitting and receiving devices, a carrier frequency offset is typically generated. In order to achieve optimal performance, the carrier frequency offset should be compensated for as much as possible. Therefore, there is a need for a method of and system for estimating the modulation index and the carrier frequency offset of a CPM signal.

Method and system for concurrent estimation of frequency offset and modulation index


Designs for a rackmount chassis having multiple card slots are presented herein. In one example, an apparatus includes a chassis configured to mount into a server rack, including a plurality of peripheral card slots, and a plurality of status lights configured to provide indications of operational status for an associated slot. The chassis further includes switch circuitry, including at least three switch elements, configured to couple the slots, wherein a first portion of ports on each of the switch elements is coupled to corresponding slots, a second portion of the ports on each of the switch elements is coupled to external ports of the chassis, and a third portion of the ports on each of the switch elements is coupled to at least another among the switch elements. The chassis may further include a plurality of external ports on the chassis communicatively coupled to the slots through the switch circuitry.

Clustered computing systems have become popular as demand for data storage, data processing, and communication handling has increased. Data centers typically include large rack-mounted and network-coupled data storage and data processing systems. Many times, data centers and associated computing equipment can be employed to execute jobs for multiple concurrent users or applications. The jobs include execution jobs which can utilize resources of a data center to process data using central processing units (CPUs) or graphics processing units (GPUs), as well as to route data associated with these resources between temporary and long-term storage, or among various network locations. GPU-based processing has increased in popularity for use in artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning regimes. In these regimes, computing systems, such as blade servers, can include one or more GPUs along with associated CPUs for processing of large data sets. A blade server with a plurality of GPUs may be referred to as a JBOGs (Just a bunch (or box) of GPUs).
Many existing JBOGs fall short in a number of performance areas. Individual slots, such as Peripheral Component Interconnect Express (PCIe) ports into which GPU cards can be inserted, are not power protected. Individual GPUs or peripheral cards cannot be live serviced while the rest of the GPUs in the JBOG chassis remain powered on and running, and require powering down the entire unit or chassis to replace or service failed cards. Hard reset is available via OOB (out of band) signaling. The units don't allow for power cycling to recover from card failures, and some failing GPUs can cause the whole system to hang. Furthermore, units do not provide indicators of which individual card has failed and require removal of one card at a time until the failed card is discovered.


A semiconductor manufacturing apparatus includes at least one UV lamp provided at a position facing a surface of a semiconductor substrate arranged to irradiate the surface of the semiconductor substrate with UV light, and a shutter disposed between the surface of the semiconductor substrate and the at least one UV lamp and configured to block UV light emitted by the UV lamp. The shutter includes a first movable part movable in a first direction being an in-plane direction parallel to the semiconductor substrate, and a second movable part movable in a second direction being an in-plane direction perpendicular to the first direction, the second movable part being movable independently of the first movable part.

With regard to a three-dimensional semiconductor memory, an example of a semiconductor device, the amount of warpage of a semiconductor substrate (wafer) increases with increase in the number of layers in the surface of the semiconductor substrate. A technique which involves forming, for example, a silicon nitride (SiN) film on the back surface of a semiconductor substrate is known as a method to reduce warpage of the semiconductor substrate.

Semiconductor manufacturing apparatus and method for manufacturing semiconductor device


One embodiment is a method of installing a block-level write tracking driver in a Microsoft Windows™ operating system so that no reboot of the system is need, another embodiment is a method of installing a block-level write tracking driver in a Linux operating system so that no reboot of the system is needed, and still another embodiment is a method of tracking block-level writes to snapshots under newer Microsoft Windows™ operating systems.

A "physical machine to virtual machine converter for disaster recovery" module ("P2V-DR" module) such as a VMware vCenter Converter software module that is available from VMware, Inc. of Palo Alto, Calif. converts a physical machine to a virtual machine and creates and stores an image of the created virtual machine ("VM"). As such, a P2V-DR module extends disaster recovery strategies to physical machines in a data center by allowing images of physical machines to be archived at remote sites, i.e., the P2V-DR module enables a user to use a VM as a backup for a physical system. An advantage of having a backup VM is an effectively zero recovery time since, in case of a disaster, the user only needs to power up the backup VM to recover. Also, with the backup being a VM, one can maintain multiple backup images (for example, as VM snapshots), and even test the backup VM by powering it up in an isolated virtual network.
A P2V-DR module typically starts with a full "physical machine to virtual machine" ("P2V") conversion. After that, the P2V-DR module creates incremental backups, for example, on a periodic basis, to transfer ongoing changes from the source system to a target VM. The P2V-DR module typically uses block-level write tracking to determine which blocks were changed between backup cycles.
In another example, a P2V conversion is usually performed by taking a snapshot of the source system, and then cloning the snapshot to the target VM. Effectively, this means that the target VM represents the state of the source system at the moment the P2V conversion process started. If there were any changes in the source system during the cloning process, these changes would be missing from the target VM. Consequently, a user must take the source system out of production before migrating it to a target VM to avoid losing any data. For a typical server, a full P2V conversion could take many hours. Thus, the user has to schedule at least a day of server downtime. But, using a P2V Motion software module, for example a P2V Motion software module contained in the VMware vCenter Converter software module that is available from VMware, Inc. of Palo Alto, Calif., this downtime (i.e., the time between ending use of the source system to generate a target VM and completing the VM generation process) can be shortened to a few minutes.
The P2V Motion software module starts block-level write tracking on the source system before starting a full P2V conversion. After that, the P2V Motion software module proceeds with the full P2V conversion. Once the full P2V conversion is completed, the P2V Motion software module performs a "catch-up" phase. In the catch-up phase, the P2V Motion software module uses tracking information provided by a block-level write tracking driver, and transfers all changed blocks to the target VM. Thus, the duration of the downtime becomes equal to the duration of the catch-up phase.
Windows
Block-level write tracking is usually implemented in a Microsoft Windows™ operating system as follows (referred to herein as "Windows"). Windows divides all devices into classes, and each device class has a globally unique identifier ("GUID"). For each device class GUID, there is a place in the Windows registry where Windows maintains a list of upper (and lower) filter drivers for this device class. If a driver wants to filter requests to a particular device class, it needs to add itself to the list of upper or lower filter drivers for this device class.
When Windows discovers a new device, it first asks the device driver to create a device object (called a functional device object) for the new device. After that, Windows enumerates all filter drivers registered for the device object class, and asks each filter driver to create a filter device object for the new device. As is known, a filter driver is a driver/program/module that inserts a filter device object into a device stack to perform some specific function. Any number of filter drivers can be added to Windows—upper level filter drivers sit above the primary driver for the device (the functional driver), while lower level filter drivers sit below the functional driver and above the bus driver. Eventually, all device objects form a device stack, refer to FIG. 1. Note that the order in which filter device objects are positioned in the device stack is not specified nor guaranteed by Windows.
As is known, whenever an operation is performed on a device, Windows passes an I/O request packet ("IRP") data structure to a driver corresponding to the top device object in the device stack. Each driver either handles the IRP or passes it to the driver that is associated with the next-lower device object in the device stack. Once the IRP reaches the functional device object, the corresponding device driver carries out the requested command, and marks the IRP as completed. Once the IRP is marked as completed, Windows walks the device stack from the bottom to the top and notifies each filter driver that the IRP has been completed.
Usually, a write tracking driver (i.e., a driver that tracks block-level writes to volumes in the system) needs to register itself as an upper filter driver (referred to as a write tracking filter driver) to a device class called "Generic Storage Volume." Then, when a new volume appears in the system, Windows calls the write tracking driver to create a corresponding write tracking filter device object. Then, the write tracking driver can monitor all requests coming through this write tracking filter device object and perform special processing for write requests, for example, by maintaining a bitmap of blocks that have been changed since a particular moment in time (for example, such a write tracking driver may be referred to herein as a bitmap driver).
Using the above-described "upper filter approach" in Windows requires the source system to be rebooted for the write tracking driver to start tracking block-level writes. Because a reboot cycle for a production server carrying a heavy load could take a long time (resulting in a long downtime period), finding a time slot for such a long downtime period could be problematic for such a production server or for a production server responsible for mission critical applications. In particular, in the case where a P2V-DR module is used, no backup protection could be configured until the source system was rebooted. Since downtime is usually scheduled during the night, but setting up to run the P2V-DR module on the source system is usually done during the day, a long downtime due to a need to reboot could delay the availability of a fully functional backup VM for several days. This could be costly if a disaster happens. In the case of use of a P2V Motion software module, any server downtime is usually unacceptable because the main reason for the user to use the P2V Motion software module in the first place is to avoid server downtime.
Tracking writes in Windows may be problematic for another reason. In particular, Windows provides a standard mechanism for taking a snapshot of a running system that is provided by a Volume Shadow Copy Service ("VSS"). On one hand, VSS provides a generic snapshotting API, and on the other hand, it provides a callback API (called writer API) for any database (or any other application maintaining open files) to participate in the snapshot creation process and to create a consistent image of the system.
In Windows XP and Windows 2003, VSS requires all writers (i.e., applications that want to be aware of the snapshot—typically database applications) to flush data directly to the volumes for which a snapshot will be created ("working volumes") just before VSS creates the snapshot. This enables the writers to make sure the "working volume" has the data the writers want to be on the "working volume" before the snapshot is created. Then, once the snapshot is created, VSS allows the writers to continue accessing the "working volume." Since it may take up to several minutes to create a snapshot, the availability of a server could be negatively affected while the snapshot is being created. However, starting with Windows Vista (i.e., Windows Vista, Windows 2008 and Windows 7), VSS allows writers to write directly to the snapshot without flushing to the "working volume" itself. This enables VSS to create a snapshot much faster and without affecting the server's availability.
However, a problem with using VSS is that "directly-to-the-snapshot" writes occur only while the snapshot is being created and before it is made available to an application requesting the snapshot (typically an application performing a backup). If the backup application uses a write tracking filter driver attached to the "working volume" to track block-level writes, the write tracking filter driver will miss snapshot writes. Consequently, if the backup application were to copy from the snapshot only those blocks that were reported by the write tracking filter driver, the backup image would be incomplete and inconsistent. Unfortunately, VSS creates snapshots in an unusual way in that snapshot volumes are not considered regular storage volumes and thus cannot have a filter driver attached to them.
Linux
Block-level write tracking is usually implemented in the Linux operating system (referred to herein as "Linux") by adding a block-level filter driver through a "Device Mapper." The Device Mapper is a kernel component which could transform a block I/O ("BIO") request based on different policies. By transforming a BIO request, a Device Mapper device could remap the request to a different address, to a different block device, or simply perform some bookkeeping task and then pass the request to the underlying device. A Device Mapper device is itself a block device, and stacking them is allowed, refer to FIG. 2.
To track writes to a block device in Linux, one can instantiate a write tracking Device Mapper device stacked on top of the block device. Then, whenever the write tracking Device Mapper device receives a BIO write request, it tracks the write, for example, with a bitmap of changed blocks and, after that, it passes the BIO write request down to the underlying block device. In addition, to track writes to a block device, Linux needs to be told to access the write tracking device instead of the block device itself. Thus, if a file system is already mounted on the block device, it would have to be remounted to the write tracking device.
At boot time, Linux selects the block devices on which its file systems mount by looking at a File System Table (fstab). By changing the block device on which a specific file system mounts to a write tracking device in fstab, write tracking will occur after the next reboot.
Thus, modifying the fstab in Linux requires the source system to be rebooted for a write tracking driver to start tracking block-level writes. This is problematic for the same reasons discussed above with respect to Windows.
Tracking writes in Linux may be problematic for another reason. In particular, tracking writes to the boot volume in Linux may occur as follows. When a Linux operating system is started, a boot loader (usually GRUB) is responsible for loading an image of the Linux kernel together with the core drivers from the boot volume into memory. Consequently, the boot loader must have a built-in driver to access a block device with the boot volume. If this block device were provided by a write tracking Device Mapper device, the boot loader would not know how to access the boot device because GRUB would not know about the write tracking Device Mapper device. GRUB has built-in support for IDE and SCSI block devices. Thus, short of writing one's own boot loader, there is no way to add another driver to GRUB to access a custom filter block device. As a result of this limitation, it is impossible for a backup application to track block-level writes to the boot volume. The situation is aggravated by the fact that in some Linux distributions the boot volume is combined with the root volume which contains the entire Linux installation and most of the applications.
To solve this problem, some backup applications require the boot volume to be separated from the root volume. However, this requires careful advanced planning and may prevent a user from using the backup application on an existing server without reinstalling the entire system. Other backup applications choose to back up the boot volume non-incrementally during each backup cycle. However, if the boot volume is combined with the root volume, this could result in large amounts of data being backed up unnecessarily during each backup cycle.