A liquid ejection recording head comprises a supporting substrate having energy generating elements thereon, a lid member and a wall portion between the supporting substrate and the lid member. The wall portion includes a surrounding wall that forms a liquid chamber between the substrate and the lid member and an enclosing wall disposed around the surrounding wall that provides a gap between the surrounding and enclosing walls, which gap is in communication with the exterior of the head through an opening in the enclosing wall. The wall portion also includes a plurality of substantially similar, parallel wall members, a first plurality of which forms an array of flow paths from the liquid chamber to orifices for discharging liquid when the energy generating elements are actuated and a second plurality of which forms open channels not in communication with the liquid chamber but in communication with the exterior of the recording head. The wall portion enables a secure bond to be made with the lid member, since it presents sufficient contact area for bonding, while the open channels and gap prevent air from being trapped between the lid member and substrate during assembly of the head.

1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to a liquid ejection recording head, and more particularly to a liquid ejection recording head, particularly an ink jet recording head, in which liquid flow path walls formed of a hardened film of photosensitive resin and/or walls surrounding a liquid chamber are formed on the surface of a substrate on which liquid discharge energy generating elements are installed and a lid plate is provided on top thereof.
2. Description of the Prior Art
A liquid ejection recording head applied to the ink jet recording system is generally provided with minute ink discharge ports (orifices), ink paths and ink discharge energy generating portions provided in a part of the ink paths.
As a method of making such a conventional ink jet recording head, there is known, for example, a method of forming minute grooves in a support member of glass or metal by cutting or etching, thereafter joining the support member formed with the grooves to another suitable plate and forming ink paths.
However, in the head made by such a method, the roughness of the inner wall surfaces of the liquid paths worked by cutting is too great or distortion is created in the liquid paths due to variations in etching rate and thus, it is difficult to obtain liquid paths of a constant path resistance and irregularity is liable to occur to the ink discharge characteristic of the recording head during its use. Also, during the cutting work, breakage or planing of the plate is liable to occur and therefore, the yield of manufacture is low and on the other hand, when effecting the etching work, there are involved a number of manufacturing steps, which results in an increased cost of manufacture.
Further, a disadvantage common to the conventional methods is that when a grooved plate formed with liquid flow paths is to be cemented to a plate provided with driving elements such as electro-mechanical converting members (for example, piezo-electric elements) or electro-thermal converting members (for example, heat generating elements) as ink discharge energy generating elements which generate the energy acting on ink to eject the ink from the orifices and form flying droplets, it is difficult to align these plates and this is unsuitable for mass production.
So, as a liquid ejection recording head constructed to overcome these disadvantages, a liquid ejection recording head in which liquid flow path walls formed of a photosensitive resin hardening film are formed on a substrate on which ink discharge energy generating elements are disposed and a lid plate is provided on the flow paths is proposed, for example, by Japanese Laid-Open Patent Application No. 43876/1982.
This liquid ejection recording head made by the utilization of photosensitive resin is excellent in solving the disadvantages peculiar to the conventional heads that the finish accuracy of the liquid flow paths is low, that the manufacturing steps are complicated and that the yield of manufacture is low.
FIGS. 1 and 2 of the accompanying drawings show two forms of such a conventional liquid ejection recording head. In these Figures, reference numeral 1 designates a support member formed of glass, ceramics, plastics or a metal. Reference numeral 2 denotes a plurality of (nine in the case of the present example) liquid discharge energy generating elements disposed on the support member 1. As the discharge energy generating elements 2, use is made of heat generating elements or piezo-electric elements. Wiring for signal inputting, not shown, is connected to these elements 2. In the case of the heat generating elements, the liquid near the elements in liquid flow paths 3 in which individual elements 2 are provided is sharply heated, whereby the energy for discharging the ink is generated and the ink is discharged from discharge ports 4 formed at the end of the flow paths 3.
Also, where the discharge energy generating elements 2 are piezo-electric elements, the discharge energy for discharging the ink is likewise generated by mechanical vibration of these elements, whereby discharge of the ink can be accomplished.
Reference numeral 5 designates a liquid chamber communicating with the individual liquid flow paths 3. A surrounding wall 6B is formed around the liquid chamber 5, and flow path walls 6A are formed between the flow paths 3. The surrounding wall 6B and flow path walls 6A may be formed of a photosensitive resin hardening film by photolithography, i.e., photoengraving.
A lid plate 7 is mounted on the substrate 1 on which the flow paths 3 and liquid chamber 5 are formed in this manner. The lid plate 7 is generally formed of glass, ceramics, plastics or a metal and, for example, a photosensitive resin layer 8 is formed on the joined surface of the lid plate 7.
The formation of such a layer 8 may be achieved by applying photosensitive resin liquid to the lid plate 7 by the spinner coating method or by laminating photosensitive resin dry films on the lid plate 7. Designated by 9 are liquid supply ports formed in the lid plate 7. Thus, a recording head 10 is provided by joining the lid plate 7 formed with the photosensitive resin layer 8 and supply ports 9 to the upper surfaces of the surrounding wall 6B and flow path walls 6A.
The example shown in FIG. 1 and the example shown in FIG. 2 are similar to each other with the exception that they differ in the shape of a part of the surrounding wall 6B and flow path walls 6A, and the liquid ejecting operation in the recording head 10 provided in this manner is generally known and therefore need not be described.
However, in the conventional recording head made by the utilization of such photosensitive resin, when adhesively securing the flow path walls 6A formed of a photosensitive resin hardening film and the wall 6B for ink reservoir connected to the flow path walls to the lid plate of hardening film, it has been technically difficult to bring them into completely intimate contact with each other over the entire joined surface thereof and therefore, specifically, the procedures as described below have been resorted to.
(1) Uniformly applying an epoxy adhesive agent or an acrylic adhesive agent to a thickness of 3-4 .mu.m to the joined surface of the lid plate formed of a material such as glass, ceramics, a metal or plastics, by the spinner coating method and joining it to the upper surface of the wall of photosensitive resin hardening film, thereby hardening said adhesive agent;
(2) Spinner-coating the joined surface of the lid plate 7 with said adhesive agent, and then preliminarily heating the adhesive agent to make it into B-stage, and joining the lid plate to the upper surface of the walls formed of a photosensitive resin hardening film, thereby essentially hardening said adhesive agent;
(3) Directly thermally fusing the lid plate 7 formed of a thermoplastic resin material such as acrylic resin, ABS resin or polyethylene to the upper surface of the walls of the photosensitive resin hardening film; and
(4) Sticking a photosensitive resin layer to the joined surface of said lid plate, joining it to the upper surface of the walls of said photosensitive resin hardening film, and applying a light thereto, thereby hardening the same.
However, with any of the procedures as described above, bubbles may remain on the joined surface between the upper surface of the walls formed of the photosensitive resin hardening film and the lid plate 7. Also, when the two joined members are strongly pressed against each other to bring them into intimate contact with each other, the adhesive agent and the photosensitive resin provided on the joined surface of the lid plate 7 will protrude into the liquid flow paths 4 to clog the liquid flow paths 4, and this has left a problem as to the reliability of the joined surface.
Also, even when the adhesion has been done completely, stress and distortion have been created by the difference in adhesion strength resulting from the difference in area of adhesion, and this has sometimes led to the occurrence of peeling-off of the lid plate or distortion of the recording head.

Liquid ejection recording head having a substrate supporting a wall portion which includes support walls to form open channels that securely bond a lid member to the wall portion


When a lane-width-direction lateral position (X2obst+X0) of a vehicle (MM) reaches a predetermined control start position (60) being a lane-width-direction lateral position (X2obst+X0) serving as an approach prevention indicator for the vehicle (MM), a control start is determined and a yaw moment (Ms) toward the center of a vehicle traveling lane (200) is applied to the vehicle (MM) to control the vehicle (MM). Then, when the lane-width-direction lateral position (X2obst+X0) of the vehicle (MM) moves from the outside to the inside of the control start position (60), the determination of control start is suppressed for a predetermined period, compared to a period before the movement to the inside of the control start position (60).

A technique described in Patent Literature 1 is an example of a conventional vehicle driving support device. In this conventional technique, when a lane departure tendency of the vehicle is detected based on a lane dividing line and a future position of the vehicle after a predetermined time period, the vehicle is controlled to move in such a direction that the lane departure is prevented.

Vehicle driving support device and vehicle driving support method


A method (and apparatus) for determining, in a system including an m-bit time counter, whether an event-occurrence time lies after a predetermined timeout-value, includes reading out of a time-stamp memory a stored time-stamp value, determining the time-difference between the time-stamp value and the event-occurrence time, and determining whether the time-difference is larger than the predetermined timeout-value. The event-occurrence time is represented by a subset of the bits of the m-bit time counter, the subset being determined by a plurality of parameters including any two of a lower bit-position, an upper bit-position, and a subset width. The lower bit-position is dependent on the predetermined timeout-value.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention generally relates to a method and apparatus for determining whether an event-occurrence time lies after a predetermined timeout-value.
2. Description of the Related Art
Communication systems move more and more towards keeping a state for individual data flows (e.g., for quality-of-service (QOS) features). With several thousand flows on a high-speed network link, the maintenance and handling of a per-flow state require considerably large memories. High-speed systems require on-chip implementation of this memory, and here memory size is critical. Even single bits that are saved on a per-flow state can help reduce the memory size, and hence the chip size, and thus make it cheaper.
A common piece of information that is kept as a part of a flow state is a time-stamp (e.g., the point in time) when the last packet of a flow arrived. These time stamps are mostly used to compare the idle-time of a flow (i.e., the difference between the time-stamp and the actual system time at the time of the arrival of the next packet), to a configured time-out value which may be identical for all state entries. The system time is usually implemented as a bit vector that counts ticks of the system clock. For a system clock rate of 350 MHz and a system wrap time of higher than one second, the time vector has a size of at least 29 bits. If state is kept for a number of 16 k flows, then the time stamps alone require 464 kb (=58 kB) of memory.
In U.S. Pat. No. 5,978,928, a system and method for managing a time-stamp is proposed wherein a table of time stamps is maintained. Each time-stamp corresponds to the age of a block of data. The age of the data is determined from the value of the time-stamp in the table. When a block of data is written, the time-stamp corresponding to the data is individually reset by writing a zero to the stamped value. Each stamp is aged by updating the time stamps at predetermined time intervals.
Aging a time-stamp includes reading the time-stamp, determining whether to advance the time-stamp, and advancing the time-stamp. A random number is generated for each time-stamp. The random number is compared to an increment threshold value. If the random number matches the increment threshold value, then the time-stamp is incremented.
However, a major drawback of this solution, apart from relying on randomness, is the need to update the entire state table in regular intervals.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,974,053 discloses an apparatus for providing service to entities. The apparatus includes a server for providing the service, and a plurality of entities which require the service of the server. A scheduler is provided for scheduling when each of the entities receives the service of the server. A time-stamp mechanism provides a longer-format time-stamp to a requesting entity of the plurality of entities whenever the requesting entity requests service from the server.
Further, the apparatus includes a device for compressing the longer-format time-stamp into a corresponding shorter-format window-based time-stamp and storing the shorter-format window based time-stamp. The scheduler schedules service by the server of the requesting entity based on the shorter-format window-based time-stamp stored in the memory. The window-based time-stamp is used to assign service times to entities. However, the window is non-adjustable in its size or position within the larger-format time-stamp.

Timeout determination method and apparatus

International Business Machines Corporation


The present invention relates to a method for stabilizing a series of measurements of a physical variable captured by a digital sensor. This method comprises the steps of: capturing at least a first measurement, a second measurement, and a third measurement of said physical variable and storing each measurement in a digital memory. The first and second measurements are compared and, if a difference between the first measurement and the second measurement is below a predetermined threshold, the second measurement is replaced in the memory by a corrected second measurement where the difference with respect to said first measurement has been reduced using a first filtering strength. The corrected second measurement and the third measurement are compared and, if a difference between the filtered value of the corrected second measurement and said third measurement is also below the threshold, said the third measurement is replaced by a corrected third measurement where a difference with respect to said corrected second measurement has been reduced using a second filtering strength that is lower than the first filtering strength. This method has the advantage of filtering noise while still allowing slow but relevant variations in the series of measurements.

While physical variables are usually continuous signals, digital sensors can only output discrete readings of those variables. The discrete readings of such a continuous physical variable by a digital sensor may generate some noise or modify the accuracy of the digital expression of the said continuous physical variable. While filters may be applied to reduce or suppress such noise, they may then also introduce perceptible latency/delay or mask slow, but definite, variations along the series of measures of said physical variable. It is thus advantageous to develop a stabilisation method which can suppress noise in the series of measures of a physical variable captured by a digital sensor without significantly affecting such slow, but definite variations, and without introducing an additional perceptible delay.
Such a stabilisation method is particularly advantageous for stabilising a series of spatial position measurements captured by a digital sensor over time, and in particular a series of spatial position measurements captured by a 3D digital imaging system over time. In particular when the capture of such a spatial position measurement also involves an object recognition step, the object recognition algorithm may induce significant noise in successive measurements of the spatial position of the object, noise which may be aggravated by the limited definition of the spatial positioning raster.
An attempt has been made in US Patent Application publication US 2006/028944 to suppress noise in a chronological series of position measurements captured by a digital motion sensor by discarding or attenuating a change in a position measurement if the difference with a previous position measurement is below a certain threshold. However, such a stabilisation technique could lead to a slow, but real continuous motion being unnoticed or reflected as a jerking variation in the position measurements. Apparently for this reason, according to this disclosure, this technique is only applied punctually in response to a particular event.
US 2008/165280 discloses a method of video stabilisation in which the stabilisation of an image is achieved using an initial set of image stabilisation parameters in the form of a stabilisation algorithm. Both causal and non-causal filtering is described where the decoded images are buffered when causal filtering is used. A comparison of partial projection vectors, partial areas of two images, is carried out to determine the best match (the minimum distance between the two vectors being compared) for a jitter component. A filter formula is used to compensate for jitter in two-dimensions, the filter formula being expressed in terms of the computed motion estimate. A damping factor, α, is disclosed that steers the jitter towards zero and can be adapted from frame to frame to compensate for handshake of the video camera at frequencies≧2 Hz. The damping factor has a normalised value where 0<α<1.
US 2008/030460 discloses the comparison of a reference image to a comparison image to match features. Two threshold values are applied that effectively splits the image into three regions—a high damping region, a low damping region and a gradual or linear region. Positional information in the image is used to control the application, for example, the position of a hand within a region of interest.

Stabilisation method and computer system


Example systems, devices, media, and methods are described for controlling the presentation of one or more virtual or graphical elements on a display in response to bimanual hand gestures detected by an eyewear device that is capturing frames of video data with its camera system. An image processing system detects a first hand and defines an input plane relative to a surface of the detected first hand. The image processing system also detects a series of bimanual hand shapes, including the detected first hand and at least one fingertip of a second hand. In response, the system presents a first movable element on the display at a location that is correlated with the current fingertip location. In addition, the image processing system determines whether the detected series of bimanual hand shapes matches a predefined hand gesture. In response to a matching gesture, the system executes a selecting action of an element nearest the current fingertip location.

Many types of computers and electronic devices available today, such as mobile devices (e.g., smartphones, tablets, and laptops), handheld devices, and wearable devices (e.g., smart glasses, digital eyewear, headwear, headgear, and head-mounted displays), include a variety of cameras, sensors, wireless transceivers, input systems, and displays.
Graphical user interfaces allow the user to interact with displayed content, including virtual objects and graphical elements such as icons, taskbars, list boxes, menus, buttons, and selection control elements like cursors, pointers, handles, and sliders.
Virtual reality (VR) technology generates a complete virtual environment including realistic images, sometimes presented on a VR headset or other head-mounted display. VR experiences allow a user to move through the virtual environment and interact with virtual objects. Augmented reality (AR) is a type of VR technology that combines real objects in a physical environment with virtual objects and displays the combination to a user. The combined display gives the impression that the virtual objects are authentically present in the environment, especially when the virtual objects appear and behave like the real objects. Cross reality (XR) is generally understood as an umbrella term referring to systems that include or combine elements from AR, VR, and MR (mixed reality) environments.

Bimanual gestures for controlling virtual and graphical elements


Various implementations described herein may be directed to using inter-tier vias (IVs) in integrated circuits (ICs). In one implementation, a three-dimensional (3D) IC may include a plurality of tiers disposed on a substrate layer, where the tiers may include a first tier having a first active device layer electrically coupled to first interconnect layers, and may also include a second tier having a second active device layer electrically coupled to a second interconnect layer, where the first interconnect layers include an uppermost layer that is least proximate to the first active device layer. The 3D IC may further include IVs to electrically couple the second interconnect layer and the uppermost layer. The uppermost layer may be electrically coupled to a power source at peripheral locations of the first tier, thereby electrically coupling the power source to the first active device layer and to the second active device layer.

This section is intended to provide information relevant to understanding various technologies described herein. As the section's title implies, this is a discussion of related art that should in no way imply that it is prior art. Generally, related art may or may not be considered prior art. It should therefore be understood that any statement in this section should be read in this light, and not as any admission of prior art.
Various integrated circuit (IC) technologies have been developed which allow multiple IC layers or dies to be positioned in a vertical direction. In particular, in three-dimensional (3D) ICs, a number of IC layers or dies may be stacked in a vertical direction, where various coupling schemes may be used to stack the layers or dies together and to connect the layers or dies to package substrates. Such coupling schemes may include one or more vias used to provide inter-layer communication in the vertical direction.

Using inter-tier vias in integrated circuits


For a rolled metal strip, in particular a steel strip; a drive roller unit deflects the metal strip from a first transportation direction to a second transportation direction, and the strip is then fed to a coiler. The metal strip is coiled in the coiler to form a coil having a coil diameter. Plastic deformation of an end portion of the metal strip is caused such that the end portion in its uninfluenced state is curved at a curvature radius. The plastic deformation of the end portion (8) is at least partially caused by an asymmetric impingement with a cooling medium (21) on the sides of the end portion (8). The impingement of the end portion (8) with the cooling medium (21) is performed across a length of the end portion (8) that is longer than half the outermost coiling of the coil (6) but smaller than the outermost coiling of the coil (6).

The present invention relates to a method for coiling a rolled metal strip, in particular a steel strip,                wherein the metal strip is deflected by a drive roller unit from a first transportation direction to a second transportation direction and is fed to a coiler;        wherein the metal strip in the coiler is coiled to form a coil having a coil diameter;        wherein a plastic deformation of an end portion of the metal strip is caused such that the end portion in the uninfluenced state is curved at a radius of curvature;        wherein the plastic deformation of the end portion is at least partially caused by an asymmetric impingement on the sides of the end portion with a cooling medium prior to and/or during the coiling of the end portion.
The present invention furthermore relates to a coiling installation for coiling a rolled metal strip, in particular a steel strip,                wherein the coiling installation has a drive roller unit which deflects the metal strip from a first transportation direction to a second transportation direction;        wherein the coiling installation has a coiler to which the metal strip is fed from the drive roller unit in the second transportation direction and in which the metal strip is coiled so as to form a coil having a coil diameter;        wherein the coiling installation has a deformation installation which causes a plastic deformation of an end portion of the metal strip such that the end portion in the uninfluenced state is curved at a curvature radius;        wherein the deformation installation is configured as a cooling installation which impinges on the end portion with a cooling medium prior to and/or during the coiling of the end portion.
In hot-rolling lines, after the final rolling pass, a metal strip, usually a steel strip, is typically initially cooled to a predefined temperature (coiling temperature) in a cooling section. Thereafter, the cooled strip is coiled to form a coil. It is possible for the coiling temperature to be constant, when viewed along the length of the metal strip. Alternatively, when viewed along the length of the metal strip, it is possible for the coiling temperature to be variable. For example, the strip head (i.e. the front end of the strip) and the strip tail (i.e. the rear end of the strip) can be coiled when not cooled. The coiled coil is subsequently secured for storage and for transportation against any self-acting unwinding or opening. For this purpose, the coil is typically removed from the coiler by a transportation device and fed to a strapping machine. Securing is performed in the strapping machine. Prior to being pulled from the coiling mandrel, the coiled coil is rotated such that the end of the strip projects only slightly beyond the lowermost point of the coil, and the coil is thus stabilized by its own weight.
A plastic deformation of the metal strip typically arises already during the coiling of the metal strip so as to form the coil. Nevertheless, spontaneous opening or unrolling, respectively, of an as yet unsecured coil can arise in many cases. The reason this lies in elastic residual stresses in the coilings of the coiled coil. The degree of these residual stresses depends on several factors, for example on the thickness of the strip and on the flow stress at the coiling temperature. Spontaneous opening or unrolling, respectively, of this type can arise particularly in the case of high-tensile products having a flow stress of approx. 500 MPa (or more) and a thickness of approx. 12 mm (or more).
It is known from WO 2008/000 348 A1 for the end portion of the metal strip to be pre-bent by means of a straightening unit. According to WO 2008/000 348 A1, the combination of a bottom roller and of a top roller of the drive roller unit, in addition to a downholding roller that is upstream of the drive roller unit and is capable of being placed on the metal strip, can be used as the straightening unit. Alternatively, a straightening unit that is upstream or downstream of the drive roller unit can be used as the straightening unit. The upstream or downstream straightening unit comprises in each case three sequentially disposed straightening rollers that are placed in alternating manner on the one and on the other side of the metal strip, wherein in each case at least one of the straightening rollers being capable of being placed on the metal strip.
It is known from EP 0 906 797 A1 for a stretch leveler having a plurality of worker rollers to be disposed between the drive roller unit and the coiler, so that the metal strip is deflected on each worker roller. Cooling of the metal strip can additionally be performed between the worker rollers. A distribution of stress in the metal strip across the width of the strip can be influenced in particular by means of the assembly of EP 0 906 797 A1.
A method and a coiling installation of the type mentioned at the outset are known from WO 2011/073 016 A1. In WO 2011/073 016 A1, the end portion is cooled directly prior to coiling. The length of the end portion is chosen such that the latter is between one and five coilings.
A method and a coiling installation of the type mentioned at the outset are likewise known from JP 2012 024 793 A. In the case of JP 2012 024 793 A, the coil is first completely coiled. The outermost coiling of the coil is then cooled. The coil is rotated during cooling.
An equivalent disclosed content can be derived from JP 2010 162 594 A.

Coiling device with asymmetric cooling of the coiled strip


A virtual field-of-view frame or reference window in a field of view of a stereo camera, and projected in a reduced manner by left and right shooting lenses to form an image on each of a left and right image pickup devices. Standard image data and stereoscopic video data is sent. The standard stereoscopic video data is displayed on a display screen having positions of left and right screens exactly matching each other and having the position and size for reproducing and displaying the reference window as a reference dimension display equivalent to the reference window, simultaneously with left and right polarizations. With eyeglasses for field-of-view separation left and right videos are separately viewed.

Conventionally, electronic stereoscopic video imaging display systems in two-eye stereoscopy mode have been suggested, exhibited, and put on sale. Also, stereoscopic television broadcasting has already started in some places.
In these conventional electronic stereoscopic video imaging display systems, in order to use different systems for each model in a mixed manner, adjustment is required on a display side by shifting an image or the like. However, the adjusting method in these conventional methods is imperfect, and its general implementation is difficult.
(For example, refer to Patent Document 1).    Patent Document Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 8-275207

Three-dimensional video image pick-up and display system using a reference window and standard stereoscopic video data


The present disclosure is directed to an application store on board a vehicle. The application store contains, in one configuration, a plurality of applications for installation on an on board computer of the vehicle, with the applications provided to the vehicle operator being provided to the operator being based on predetermined types of information related to the vehicle, its state, operation, and/or configuration, vehicle location, vehicle type, make, model, and/or year of manufacture, and/or occupant(s) and/or occupant(s) of other vehicles.

Whether using private, commercial, or public transport, the movement of people and/or cargo has become a major industry. In today's interconnected world, daily travel is essential to engaging in commerce. Commuting to and from work can account for a large portion of a traveler's day. As a result, vehicle manufacturers have begun to focus on making this commute, and other journeys, more enjoyable.
Currently, vehicle manufacturers attempt to entice travelers to use a specific conveyance based on any number of features. Most of these features focus on vehicle safety or efficiency but passenger entertainment and productivity features are gaining in popularity. Personal computational devices, such as smart phones, tablet computers, ereaders, and personal digital assistants, are being viewed by potential automobile purchasers as core lifestyle elements to be used at work or home or while driving.
While the automotive industry is offering vehicles accommodating and interfacing with personal computational devices, there remains a need for higher levels of integration of personal computational devices and vehicle private networks and computational systems.

Self-configuring vehicle console application store


The invention provides functionalized antifungal-loaded liposomal formulations targeting Candida, which minimize damage to healthy human cells, limit antimicrobial exposure, and reduce the development of antifungal resistance.

Fungal infections are highly recurring and can require years to treat completely. Vallabhaneni et al., Am. J. Transplant., 17(1), 296-299 (2017). Candida spp. are the most common cause of these infections, leading to over 40,000 annual infections in the United States alone. "Antibiotic Resistance Threats in the United States." U.S. Dept. Health & Human Services, Center for Disease Control (2013). Candida albicans is an opportunistic pathogen that is the most common cause of fungal bloodstream infections. Kabir et al., ISRN Microbiol. 2012, 1-15 (2012). These infections can cause systemic candidiasis, an infection with a 33-54% mortality rate. Pfaller & Diekema, Clin. Microbiol. Rev., 20(1), 133-163 (2007). Systemic candidiasis has a high mortality rate of 33 to 54%, translating to over 10,000 deaths in the U.S. annually. Pfaller & Diekema, Clin. Microbiol. Rev., 20(1), 133-163 (2007). In the United States, annual treatment costs reach up to 4 billion dollars. Grubb et al., Infection & Immunity, 76(10), 4370-4377 (2008). Globally, these expenditures have now topped 15 billion USD. Richardson & Naglik, J. Fungi, 4(2), 43 (2018).
Antifungal resistance is a growing threat that increases the severity of fungal infections. Compounding these issues is the high toxicity and poor water solubility of many antifungals, limiting clinically viable therapeutic options. The antifungal drug repertoire is limited, with the last practical drug class (echinocandins) discovered back in 1974. Roemer & Krysan, Cold Spring Harbor Perspectives in Medicine, 4(5), a019703 (2014). Antifungal drug resistance is also a growing concern that further exacerbates the severity of fungal infections. Between 2004 and 2014, the number of echinocandin resistant Candida albicans strains doubled. Perlin, Clinical Infectious Diseases, 61(suppl. 6), S612-S617 (2015). Further complicating treatment, similarities between mammalian and fungal cells render most antifungals toxic to humans. The only current route of administration of the hydrophobic echinocandin is by a slow intravenous infusion.
Liposomes have been drug carriers because of their ability to increase circulation time, increased solubility, decrease off-site toxicity, penetrate biofilms, and localize to fungi. See, e.g., the liposome composition used in the commercial product, AmBisome®, liposomal amphotericin B, described in U.S. Pat. No. 5,965,156 (Proffit et al.) "Amphotericin B liposome preparation" and Adler-Moore & Proffitt, "AmBisome: Liposomal formulation, structure, mechanism of action and pre-clinical experience." Journal of Antimicrobial Chemotherapy, 49(1), 21-30 (2002). Currently, there are only a few commercial antifungal liposome formulations.
Because of the rise in antimicrobial drug resistance, there is a need in the medical art for targeted drug delivery formulations that limit unnecessary exposure to antimicrobials. There is a need for drug delivery systems that reduce antifungal resistance, off-site toxicity, and the number of treatment doses while increasing antifungal solubility, penetration through biofilms, and in vivo circulation times.

Antifungal nanoparticles for targeted treatment of fungal infections


A method of driving a display apparatus with which unevenness of image is precluded and the time for display is shortened. A display apparatus for displaying an image by impressing a voltage on pixels by row electrodes and column electrodes disposed in a matrix, for example, a metal deposition type electrochemical display apparatus. A voltage not less than a threshold voltage Vth is selectively impressed on predetermined pixels by superposing an address pulse voltage Vadress-row for the row electrodes and an address voltage Vadress-col for the column electrodes on each other to thereby perform address driving, and a data sustaining pulse voltage Vsus is impressed on the row electrodes immediately after the address pulse voltage Vadress-row. The data sustaining pulse voltage Vsus satisfies the condition of the following formula:Vsus+Vadress-col<Vth  (1).

In recent years, attendant on the spread of networks, documents hitherto distribution in the form of printed matter have come to be transmitted in the form of electronic documents. Further, books and magazines have come to be often provided in the form of the so-called electronic publishing. In order to read these pieces of information, reading from CRTs (cathode ray tubes) and liquid crystal displays of computers has conventionally been widely conducted.
However, in a light emission type display such as the CRT, it has been pointed out that the display causes conspicuous wearing on an ergonomic ground and, therefore, is unsuited to long-time reading. In addition, even a light reception type display such as a liquid crystal display is said to be similarly unsuited to reading, because of the flickering which is intrinsic of fluorescent tubes. Furthermore, both of the types have the problem that the reading place is limited to the places where computers are disposed.
In recent years, reflection type liquid crystal displays not using a backlight have put to practical use. However, the reflectance in non-display (display of white color) of the liquid crystal is 30 to 40%, which means a considerably bad visibility, as compared with the reflectance of printed matter printed on papers (the reflectance of OA papers and pocket books is 75%, and the reflectance of newspapers is 52%). In addition, the glaring due to reflectors and the like are liable to cause wearing, which also is unsuited to long-time reading.
In order to solve these problems, the so-called paper-like displays and the so-called electronic papers have been being developed. The media mainly utilize coloration by moving colored particles between electrodes through electrophoresis or by rotating dichroic particles in an electric field. In these methods, however, the gaps between the particles absorb light, with the result that contrast is worsened and that a practical-use writing speed (within one sec) cannot be obtained unless the driving voltage is 100 V or higher.
As compared with the displays of these systems, electrochemical display devices for color development based on an electrochemical action (electrochromic display: ECD) is better in contrast, and they have already been put to practical use as light control glass or timepiece displays. It should be noted here that the light control glass and timepiece displays are not directly suited to the electronic paper or the like uses, since it is intrinsically unnecessary to perform matrix driving. Besides, they are generally poor in quality of black color, and the reflectance thereof remains at a low level.
In addition, in such displays as electronic papers, they are continuedly exposed to solar light or room light on a use basis, and, in an electrochemical display device put to practical use in the light control glass and timepiece displays, an organic material is used for forming black-colored portion, which leads to a problem concerning light resistance. In general, organic materials are poor in light resistance, and the black color concentration thereof is lowered through fading when used for a long time.
In order to solve these technical problems, there has been proposed an electrochemical display device using metal ions as a material for color change. In the electrochemical display device, the metal ions are preliminarily mixed into a polymer electrolyte layer, the metal is deposited and dissolved by electrochemical redox reactions, and the change in color attendant on this is utilized to perform display. Here, for example, when the polymer electrolyte layer contains a coloring material, it is possible to enhance the contrast in the case where the color change occurs.
Meanwhile, in the metal deposition type electrochemical display device based on deposition and dissolution of the metal, a threshold voltage which is the deposition overvoltage is utilized to achieve display. In each pixel, the metal is deposited when a minus voltage in excess of the threshold voltage is impressed between electrodes arranged in a matrix form, whereas the metal is dissolved when a plus voltage is impressed between the electrodes.
When it is tried to drive a display apparatus based on a simple matrix system by utilizing the threshold voltage, the degree of coloration of the pixel would vary according to the sequence of selection.
For example, where display as shown in FIG. 19 is conducted by use of row electrodes and column electrodes which are arranged in a matrix, the impression of the voltage on the electrodes is performed following a time sequence as shown in FIG. 20A. Specifically, while a scan pulse voltage is impressed sequentially on the row electrodes, a data pulse voltage is impressed on the column electrodes only at the time of coloration. As a result, a voltage (scan pulse voltage+data pulse voltage) in excess of the threshold voltage is impressed on selected pixels to cause coloration (deposition of metal), and only the scan pulse voltage is impressed on non-selected pixels, so that metal deposition does not occur in the non-selected pixels, and non-colored state is maintained there.
In this case, the driving is conducted on a line sequence basis, and there has been confirmed a phenomenon in which the degree of coloration in the pixels arranged on a common column electrode becomes gradually deeper according to the sequence of selection. This is due to the following. In the pixel in which the coloration (deposition of silver) has once occurred, a tiny current flows and the coloration proceeds even where a voltage below the threshold voltage is impressed. Therefore, as is clear from an example of current waveform in FIG. 20B, the scan pulse voltage is impressed on the previously colored pixel, and a current flows there, also at the time of coloration in the subsequent pixel. For example, in a pixel (R1, C3), after the selection period for writing by impressing the scan pulse voltage at a row electrode R1, the data pulse voltage is impressed on a column electrode C3 also during the selection periods of the row electrodes R2 and R3. Similarly, in a pixel (R2, C3), after the selection period for writing by impressing the scan pulse voltage is impressed on the row electrode R2, the data pulse voltage for the column electrode C3 is impressed during the selection period of the row electrode R3. When the threshold voltage is once exceeded, the impression of only these data pulse voltages causes a current to flow and causes the coloration (deposition of metal) to proceed.
Thus, the pixel selected in the beginning stage of image rewriting undergoes writing repeatedly, dependent on the data for the following pixels. As a result, the substantial writing time is elongated according to the sequence of scanning, so that the writing concentration would be enhanced more than required.
In addition, in the conventional driving method as above, the metal such as silver must be deposited stably at the time of coloration, so that the voltage must be impressed over a certain period. Where the silver deposition characteristic of the panel is not uniform, the addressing time must be conditioned to accord to the pixel which is the worst in the characteristic. Therefore, the addressing period is elongated, and the image rewriting time would be increased.
The present invention has been proposed for the purpose of solving these problems. Accordingly, it is an object of the present invention to provide a method of driving a display apparatus with which it is possible to moderate the non-evenness of pixels formed, and to shorten the time for rewriting the image display.


A device reuses several plastic materials and paper fibers rejected in previous recycling performed by paper industries, by compacting the fragments of the plastic materials inside of a conventional container. The device uses three interlinked modules, comprised by a first module of a helical, higher, inclined and gyratory separator, with electric engine, having the separator in the lower inclined edge a duct of materials entrance and in the higher inclined edge a duct of entrance of water, with base of its inclined higher edge leading to a gutter, and with base of the inclined lower edge leading to a lower tank of decantation provided of ejector nozzles, having a higher inclined conveyor belt that connects the first module to the second module, which contains an electric operated mill and an electric operated spare mill, with a duct connected to a vertical centrifugal washing machine equipped with a discharge nozzle and a duct connected to a vertical centrifugal drying machine equipped with a discharge nozzle and a duct linked to an electric operated pneumatic transporter, which is interlinked through a duct to a higher depot with discharge valve, part of the third module of the device, said valve connected to an electric operated compacting machine.

According to the technicians' understanding, specialized in the subject, currently the paper industries perform recycle of great amounts of after-consumption paper generated by the population, observing that, in Brazil, it is estimated a monthly recycle of more than 550,000 tons of such rejects, that after being discarded by the population, initially go through a collection and although considered as selective, presents an efficiency of approximately 80%. According to the technicians' understanding, specialized in the subject, it is foreseen that to each ton of after-consumption collected paper 200 kilos of several undesirable materials are obtained, among plastics that due to its diversity, vary in compositions and tenors. In this miscellany are notably found PE, PP, PVC, PET, ABS, PA, and other plastic types in smaller volumes. During the paper recycling, such undesirable materials represent loss of productivity, being rejected and consequently becoming environmental waste.
It must be noticed that environmental waste is garbage or material that does not go through any recycling process, which accumulated without a destination and causes possible damages to the environment.
All this undesirable material becomes a problem for paper industries that only use the paper from the recycling.
In the specific case of plastic materials, they can not be recycled by current techniques due to its heterogeneous composition, observing that each thermoplastic group has its own rheologic aspect, having singular process parameters, such as fluidity index, softening temperature, crystallization temperature and others. Thus, by the own characteristic of each thermoplastic group it is impossible the agglutination, extrusion, injection, blow or any other well-known process, due to the simultaneous presence of several thermoplastics groups.
Currently, paper industries, in the operation of paper recycling, come across with the problem of the existence of plastic materials in the volume under recycling, being observed the inefficiencies aforementioned which means loss of approximately 20% of the volume put in recycling and consequently becoming environmental waste. That occurs under automation technical conditions, being elementarily used in operations of paper recycling a big-sized hydraulic device, equipped with a rotor responsible for the dissolution of the papers into fibers. However, at the moment of the dissolution of the papers into fibers, said hydraulic device does not present enough technique to prepare the plastic material contained in the volume, aiming its later use. It must to be observed that along with the plastic material—totally unused—it follows in an agglomerate iron residue, used paper fibers that can reach a significant percentile of up to 50% of the plastic material weight, and also water that can reach a percentile of up to 30% of the agglomerate weight. Such agglomerate is discarded becoming an environmental waste.
It must be point out that the referred big-sized hydraulic device, equipped with a rotor, presents the most advanced technology in the international market, and even though it does not reach a percentile of 100% of reuse of said materials.

Device for reuse of plastic materials and paper fibers rejected in previous recycling


A method for manufacturing a semiconductor device according to an embodiment includes implanting impurity ions into a SiC layer in a direction of <10-11>±1 degrees, <10-1-1>±1 degrees, <10-12>±1 degrees, or <10-1-2>±1 degrees.

Silicon carbide (SiC) is expected to be used as a material for a next-generation semiconductor device. SiC has the following excellent physical properties: a band gap is three times wider than that of silicon (Si); breakdown field strength is about ten times more than that of Si; and thermal conductivity is about three times more than that of Si. The use of these characteristics makes it possible to achieve a semiconductor device which has low power consumption and can operate at a high temperature.
An impurity diffusion coefficient in SiC is less than that of Si. Therefore, for example, even if a heat treatment is performed after impurities are introduced into SiC by ion implantation, it is difficult to drastically change an impurity profile by diffusion. For this reason, it is necessary to perform ion implantation with high accelerating voltage in order to form a deep pn junction in SiC using ion implantation.
However, there is a limitation to the accelerating voltage due to capability of an ion implantation apparatus. In addition, it costs a lot to perform ion implantation with high accelerating voltage.

Method for manufacturing semiconductor device and semiconductor device


A product sampler including a substrate layer, a barrier layer covering the substrate layer, a gelatinoid product layer covering and in contact with the barrier layer, and a barrier layer covering and in contact with the product layer is provided. The gelatinoid product layer may include a microencapsulated product, such as a fragrance. In preferred embodiments of the invention, the gelatinoid product layer includes a microencapsulated fragrance carried in a gelatinoid liquid vehicle, which vehicle may comprise, for example, propylene glycol, polyethylene glycols, glycerin, or mixtures thereof. In a highly preferred embodiment of the invention, the product sampler is in the form of a magazine insert having a protruding trimmable non-barrier substrate tab portion, whereby a user may remove a trim portion from the trimmable edge portion after binding the insert into a magazine without removing barrier material with the removed trim portion. Also disclosed is a product sampler in the form of a label.

The invention relates generally to a product sampler, and more particularly to a product sampler that is capable of being provided in the form of a handout, mailer, label, or bindable magazine insert.
The prior art has provided numerous sampler devices for use in connection with promotion of the sale of fragrances and other products. Known samplers typically are inserted into magazines and catalogs, are used as statement enclosures, or are handed out individually by salespersons at retail establishments. Such samplers typically are of a non-laminar construction and comprise one sheet of a substrate, such as paper, which sheet is temporarily bonded to itself with an adhesive. A microencapsulated fragrance oil is disposed within the adhesive, such that the adhesive thus both bonds the microcapsules to the substrate sheet and binds together the interior faces of the substrate sheet. When a user separates the sheets, some or all of the microcapsules rupture, thereby releasing the fragrance contained therein for evaluation by the user. A layer of a barrier material, such as a plastic or metal foil, may be utilized to overwrap the sampler to prevent leakage of the fragrance from the sampler.
One long-standing problem associated with known samplers is their tendency to leak, that is, to prematurely emit the fragrance intended to be delivered at a later time by the sampler. This problem is known as the xe2x80x9cpreodorxe2x80x9d problem. Preodor is particularly troublesome for product samplers that are provided as magazine inserts. Typically, such product samplers will be provided in the form of a paper insert bound directly into the magazine. During the manufacture, application, cutting and binding of the insert, some of the microcapsules within the sampler can rupture, thus causing premature release of the fragrance. Such premature leakage of the fragrance can render the sampler less effective in delivering a suitable dose of fragrance to the end user. Moreover, postal regulations place limits on the levels of emissions of fragrance from magazines and other articles that are sent through the mails. Thus, if rules become further restrictive, magazine publishers may be required to take special and expensive measures to prevent leakage of fragrance from the insert, such as wrapping the entire magazine with a barrier film material.
In recognition of these problems, the art has provided label or pouch products that are designed to effectively address the preodor issues. These products do not utilize a microencapsulated fragrance oil. Instead, the fragrance is provided in the form of a volatile oil carried in a volatile carrier to provide a xe2x80x9cwearablexe2x80x9d product that a consumer can apply to the skin. Such label or pouch products rely on a barrier film and an adhesive perimeter seal to contain the volatile fragrance oil and volatile vehicle contained therein. While the use of such a perimeter seal may be advantageous in some cases, such products generally are costly to produce. Moreover, the label or pouch generally must be secured to a separate substrate before the label or pouch may be used as a magazine insert or handout, and thus additional costly handling is generally required.
Another problem in the art relates to the binding of magazines containing product samplers. Magazine binderies sometimes need to cut off a portion of the insert after it is bound into the magazine, a step known as xe2x80x9ctaking a trim.xe2x80x9d Such a step is often necessary to properly size or position the insert within the magazine. Because of the need to take a trim, it can be difficult and costly to utilize samplers that are of a laminar construction composed of plural layers of discrete materials. If a product sampler were to comprise a laminate of a substrate and a barrier material, for example, a trim portion taken from the sampler would comprise a laminate of the barrier material and the substrate material. The removed barrier film in the trim portion would be difficult to separate from the paper, and thus the trim portion would be difficult to recycle and consequently more costly to dispose of. For this reason, such laminar products are not generally accepted at binderies.
Another problem with known samplers is that their utility generally is limited to the delivery of microencapsulated products. Such samplers generally are not cost effective for delivery of other products, such as cosmetics, and particularly not products such as wet or oil-based products or color cosmetics such as lipsticks, rouges, blushes, foundations, and the like.
In light of the foregoing problems with known samplers, there exists a need in the art for an inexpensive fragrance product sampler that will not prematurely emit the fragrance contained therein. A need exists for an economical fragrance sample capable of delivering a product that can be applied to the skin. A further need exists for a sampler that will maintain the integrity of other products, in particular wet or oil-based products contained in the sampler. Ideally, the sampler should be of simple construction, such that it may be manufactured quickly and inexpensively. The sampler further should be susceptible to processing and handling without difficulty. A need further exists for a sampler having a non-barrier trimmable substrate edge, such that a bindery may take a trim portion from the sampler without removing barrier material with the removed trim portion.
It is a general object of the invention to provide a sampler for fragrances and other products, the sampler having sufficient barrier properties so as to prevent or substantially inhibit the emission of volatile components such as odor components from the sampler.
Another object is to provide a sampler that is suitable for delivering products other than microencapsulated products, such products including, for example, color cosmetic products. In keeping with this object, the integrity of the product carried by the sampler should not be compromised by incorporation or absorption of the product or any components thereof into the sampler substrate, such that a true product representation of color, feel, texture, and/or fragrance can be achieved by preventing migration of non-volatile components into the substrate.
Another general object of the invention is to provide a sampler having a non-barrier trimmable edge, whereby a bindery may remove a trim portion from the sampler without removing barrier material with the removed trim portion.
Another object is to provide a sampler that retains the facility of opening of a conventional paper sampler but that has the capability to deliver a usable liquid sample, and that further has the advantage of being reclosable so as not to leave an unsightly flap or label.
It is a further object of the invention to emulsify and stabilize a fragrance oil in a non-volatile vehicle.
These objects have been achieved in one or more embodiments of the present invention. In accordance with one embodiment of the invention, the invention provides a product sampler that includes a substrate layer, a barrier layer covering the substrate layer, a gelatinoid product layer in contact with and covering the barrier layer, and a barrier layer in contact with and covering the product layer. The gelatinoid product layer may be applied to the barrier layer without a separate adhesive layer, and may include a microencapsulated product, such as a fragrance. Alternatively, the gelatinoid product layer may include or comprise a product that is not microencapsulated. A user may expose the gelatinoid product layer by removing the covering barrier layer to expose the gelatinoid product layer, and may thereby sample the product. A repositionable adhesive may be used to allow for reclosability of the sampler. In typical use, the user will remove only a portion of the product in the gelatinoid product layer upon each use of the sampler, thus allowing for plural uses of the sampler.
The use of a gelatinoid product layer in conjunction with the sampler provides for numerous advantages. For example, the gelatinoid nature of the product layer allows for a pleasing skin feel. Because the product layer is disposed on the barrier layer, and is not adhesively secured to the substrate layer, the sampler is suitable for delivering not only fragrance products, but also cosmetic products and other products. The barrier layer may be placed on an interior surface of the substrate, and in contact with the product layer, thus achieving an effective barrier function without the need to connect the product layer to the substrate with a separate adhesive.
In accordance with another embodiment of the invention, a method for preparing a sampler is provided. The method includes the steps of providing a substrate and placing a barrier layer over a portion of the substrate to define plural substrate regions including a barrier substrate region and a non-barrier substrate region, and removing a portion of the barrier substrate region to leave a trimmable substrate edge portion. When a sampler is prepared according to the present inventive method, a trim portion may be removed from the sampler without also removing the barrier material from the sampler.
In accordance with yet another embodiment of the invention, a product sampler in the form of a label is provided. The label includes two layers of a substrate barrier material containing therebetween a gelatinoid product layer. Because the substrate material itself possesses barrier properties, no separate barrier material is required.


In an approach for building a machine learning model that predicts the appropriate action to resolve a malfunction or system error, a processor receives an alert that a malfunction or a system error has occurred. A processor creates a workspace on a ChatOps platform integrated with a chatbot and one or more tools. A processor inputs data relating to the alert in a natural language format. A processor processes the data using a natural language processing algorithm. Responsive to determining a pre-set threshold for outputting the appropriate action is not met, a processor establishes a conversation between two or more support service agents in the workspace. A processor monitors the conversation using the natural language processing algorithm. A processor analyzes a transcript of the conversation using text analytics or pattern matching. A processor creates and trains a machine learning model to predict the appropriate action in future iterations.

The present invention relates generally to the field of data processing, and more particularly to an artificial intelligence pattern model that outputs actionable alerts for events within a ChatOps platform.
The term ChatOps refers to a collaboration model that creates a workspace where people, tools, processes, and automation are connected in a seamless and transparent way. The workspace is managed by subject matter experts such as, for example, security, network, and infrastructure experts, developers, operators, system administrators, site reliability engineers, DevOps engineers, other IT personnel and consumers of IT business applications (hereinafter referred to as "support service agents"). In the workspace, the support service agents collaborate on the work that needs to be done, the work that is currently happening, and the work that has been done in one persistent location.
Additionally, the workspace is integrated with chatbots, development tools, operations tools, event management tools, service management tools, and other processes. With these tools and processes at their disposal, support service agents can manually enter one or more commands that the chatbots are configured to execute through a custom script and plugin or can select one or more command options provided in a drop-down or a menu within the workspace. Commands include, but are not limited to, acknowledging service management incidents, responding to security events, deploying code to production, and executing runbooks on systems.
The integration of the tools and processes in the workspace and the utilization of chatbots to execute commands enables a support service agent to start an automated task and to continue to collaborate with other support service agents while the task is being completed. This allows the support service agents to concentrate on solving the problem at hand without having to deal with disruptive context switches and lengthy hand-offs. In this type of environment, the support service agents are quite literally "on the same page" as it relates to an ongoing malfunction or system error.
A ChatOps platform is implemented in phases. In the first phase, two or more support service agent identify what the malfunction or system error is, what the root cause of the malfunction or system error is, and what the possible solutions to resolve the malfunction or system error are through conversation. Also, through conversation, support service agents agree on what is the appropriate response is. In the second phase, additional support service agents are added to the conversation and instructed on how to resolve the issue. In the conversation, support service agents share simple group messages as well as screen captures, videos of problems, and files such as log files, configuration files, or command outputs with the other support service agents.
When a major incident occurs, some ChatOps platforms are prepared to automatically create a channel and invite support service agents from a pre-selected assignment list to join the conversation. As the team evolves, the ChatOps platform provides two-way communications between the support service agents and the affected system or systems that the support service agents are managing. For example, a channel is created. In the channel, the support service agents have access to tools that permit the support service agents to see information regarding current issues such as, for example, a notification about an application deployment failure from the application's monitoring tool or a notification about regular usage metrics from the application's analytics tool. The support service agents can also see relevant information regarding previously resolved issues such as the final result of a production build from a continuous delivery pipeline or the final result of changes deployed to a server or an application.

System and AI pattern model for actionable alerts for events within a ChatOps platform


A switching mode power supply (SMPS) and a power supply method using the SMPS, the SMPS including: a rectifier to rectify an alternating current (AC) voltage; a first switching unit to switch the voltage rectified by the rectifier; a first switching control unit to control the first switching unit; and a power blocking unit to block power supply to the first switching control unit in a power saving mode.

1. Field of the Invention
The present general inventive concept relates to a switching mode power supply (SMPS) and a power supply method using the SMPS.
2. Description of the Related Art
A switching mode power supply (SMPS) may be used as an apparatus for supplying power to electronic products. The SMPS converts input alternating current (AC) voltages and outputs static voltages to operate electronic products. When electronic products stand by for a predetermined period of time, electronic products enter a power saving mode. Electronic products need to guarantee partial functionality while in the power saving mode, and thus the SMPS does not entirely stop operating. Regulations for standby power of electronic products have been recently strengthened in order to reduce amounts of carbon dioxide globally, and thus a method of reducing power consumption of a SMPS in a power saving mode is needed.

Switching mode power supply and power supply method using the same


A method for encrypting a database, according to which a dedicated encryption module is placed inside a Database Management Software above a database cache. Each value of the database is encrypted together with the coordinates of said value using a dedicated encryption method, which assumes the existence of an internal cell identifier that can be queried but not tampered.

Database is an integral part of almost every information system. The key features databases propose are shared access, minimal redundancy, data consistency, data integrity and controlled access. The case where databases hold critical and sensitive information is quite common, therefore an adequate level of protection to database content has to be provided.
Businesses and organizations must continually evolve and learn to manage information correctly, in order to realize their objectives and survive in the digital era. Indeed, the very survival of these organizations may depend on securing this information.
To illustrate the scope of the problem, it can be assumed a client-server scenario where the client has a combination of sensitive and non-sensitive data stored in a database at the server side. In such a scenario there are three major vulnerabilities with respect to client data: (1) Data-in-motion: assuming that the client and server are not co-located, it is vital to secure the communications between them, a solution to this can be accomplished via a standard SSL or VPN connection; (2) Data-in-use: an adversary can directly access the memory of the database server and extract sensitive information and (3) Data-at-rest: refers to all data in the database server while excluding data that is traversing a network or temporarily residing in the server's memory.
Typically, database management systems (DBMSs) protect stored data through access control mechanisms. However, an access control mechanism by itself is insufficient to protect stored data since it can be bypassed in a number of ways: by accessing database files following a path other than through the DBMS (e.g., an intruder who infiltrates the information system and tries to mine the database footprint on disk); by physical removal of the storage media; or by accessing the database backup files.
Another source of threats comes from the fact that many databases are today outsourced to Database Service Providers (DSP). In such instances, data owners have no other choice than to trust DSP's who claim that their systems are fully secured and their employees are beyond any suspicion, assertions frequently repudiated by facts. Finally, a database administrator (DBA) may have sufficient privileges to tamper with the access control definition.
An old and important principle called defense in depth involves multiple layers of security control such that attackers must get through layer after layer of defense. In this context, encryption, which can complement and reinforce access control, has recently received much attention from the database community. The purpose of database encryption is to ensure database opacity by keeping the information hidden to any unauthorized person (e.g., intruder).
Even if attackers get through the firewall and bypass access control mechanisms, they still need the encryption keys to decrypt data. Encryption can provide strong security for data at rest, but developing a database encryption solution must take many factors into consideration.
Database encryption schemes should fulfill the following requirements, including the necessity for protecting data confidentiality, detecting unauthorized modifications and maintaining high performance.
The Attacker Model
Attackers can be categorized into three classes: intruders, insiders and administrators. Intruder is a person who gains access to a computer system and tries to extract valuable information. Insider is a person who belongs to the group of trusted users and tries to get information that he is unauthorized to access. Administrator is a person who has privileges in administering a computer system, but abuses his rights in order to extract valuable information. In many cases, a DBA has access to the whole database and protecting it against him while simultaneously enabling him to perform his tasks becomes a tremendous challenge.
All of the above attackers may use different attack strategies: Direct Storage Attacks are attacks against storage, which may be carried out by accessing database files by means other than the database software, such as by physically removing the storage media or by accessing the database backup files.
In Indirect Storage Attacks, the adversary can access schema information and metadata, such as table and column names, column statistics and values written to recovery logs, in order to estimate data distributions. In Memory Attacks, the adversary may access the memory of the database software directly. In many cases, the memory contains the database cache which holds large amounts of the database for optimization reasons.
A secure database should not reveal any information about the database plaintext values to unauthorized users. This requirement can be extended and the different types of passive attacks can be categorized as follows: (a) Static Leakage—gaining information about the database plaintext values by observing a snapshot of the database at a certain time. For example, if the values in a table are encrypted in such a way that equal plaintext values are encrypted to equal cipher-text values, statistics about the plaintext values, such as their frequencies, can easily be collected from the encrypted values. (b) Linkage Leakage—gaining information about the database plaintext values by linking a database value to its position in the index. For example, if the database value and the index value are encrypted the same way (both ciphertext values are equal), an observer can search the database ciphertext value in the index, determine its position and estimate its plaintext value; and (c) Dynamic Leakage—gaining information about the database plaintext values by observing and analyzing access patterns and changes in the database over a period of time. For example, if a user monitors the index for a period of time and, if in this period of time only one value is inserted (no values are updated or deleted), the observer can estimate its plaintext value based on its new position in the index.
In addition to the passive attacks in which data is compromised as a result of observations, there are also different types of active attacks, which modify the database, as follows: (a) Spoofing—replacing a ciphertext value with a generated value. Assuming that the encryption keys were not compromised, this attack is rarely practical. (b) Splicing—replacing a ciphertext value with a different ciphertext value. In this type of attack, the encrypted content from a different location is copied to a new location. For example, if the maximal salary value encrypted is revealed through a leakage attack, swapping it with the attacker's encrypted salary will generate a valid value as his new salary; and (c) Replay—replacing a ciphertext value with an old version previously updated or deleted.
An important aspect of data security relates to the support of multi-user access control of an encrypted database environment where each user can only access (decrypt) the database objects (e.g., groups of cells, rows and columns) to which access was granted. Hereinafter this property is referred to as Cryptographic Access Control. Encrypting the entire database using the same key, even if traditional access control mechanisms are used, will not introduce a sufficient level of security. Encrypting objects from different security groups using various keys ensures that a user who owns a specific key can decrypt only those objects within his security group. Another important issue which relates to the encryption keys is their management: where and how the encryption keys should be stored; how are they being distributed to the users; and how to recover the encryption keys in case they are lost.
Performance
Security mechanisms typically introduce significant computational overhead. This overhead may constitute a fundamental problem for the DBMS, since the performance of the DBMS has a direct influence on the performance of the whole information system. When trying to minimize the performance overhead that results from encrypting the database, the following issues should be considered: (a) Selective encryption—it would be desirable to encrypt only sensitive data while keeping insensitive data unencrypted. Furthermore, only relevant data should be encrypted/decrypted when executing a query. For example, if only one attribute participates in a query, it would be unnecessary to encrypt/decrypt the entire record.
(b) Indexes and other DBMS optimization mechanisms—encrypting the database content may prevent some crucial DBMS optimization mechanisms from functioning properly. For example, some DBMS vendors do not permit building indexes on encrypted columns, while others allow it based on the column's encrypted values (in case they are not salted, (salted in cryptography means that a random value is concatenated to the plaintext value before encryption)). The latter approach results in a loss of some of the most obvious characteristics of indexes, the range searches, since a typical encryption algorithm is not order-preserving.
(c) Encryption overhead—it is desirable that the time spent for encrypting/decrypting data is minimized. For example, encrypting the same amount of data using a single encryption operation is more efficient than encrypting it in parts using several encryption operations as described in B. Iyer, S. Mehrotra, E. Mykletun, G. Tsudik, Y. Wu, A framework for efficient storage security in rdbms, Advances in Database Technology—EDBT 2004 (2004) 627-628.
Incorporating an encryption solution over an existing DBMS should be easy to integrate, namely, it is desirable to minimize the following:
(a) The influence on the application layer—some encryption solutions require modifying the implementation of the application layer, for example, by changing the SQL queries to include encryption operations. Such modifications may constitute a fundamental problem for legacy applications, wherein most cases, the process of making changes to their implementation is extremely costly, and in some cases, might not be possible at all. Therefore, a practical database encryption solution should not require a major modification to the implementation of the application layer.
(b) The influence on the DBMS architecture—it is desirable to avoid fundamental changes to the DBMS implementation. Database technology has been around for more than 30 years. Redesigning the relational model to support a new encryption model is unacceptable. It is fundamental in respect to the practicality of a DBMS encryption solution that it will be built on top of an existing DBMS implementation, including all of its functionality, such as indexing, foreign key mechanisms and locking schemes.
(c) The influence on the DBA—it is desirable to allow the DBA to perform his administrative tasks directly over the encrypted data, without the need to decrypt it first (and as a consequence, prevent sensitive data from being disclosed to the DBA).
(d) The storage overhead—Although storage nowadays is relatively cheap, it is preferable that the encrypted database should not require much more storage than the original non-encrypted database.
The encryption operation according to prior art can take place at different layers, as illustrated in FIG. 1a. Several architectures for the encryption of databases are known in the art. In the Operating System layer 102, pages are encrypted/decrypted by the operating system when they are written/read from disk 101. This layer has the advantage of being totally transparent, thus avoiding any changes to the DBMS and to existing applications. Furthermore, encryption in this layer is relatively resistant to information leakage and unauthorized modifications as a large number of database objects are encrypted in one chunk. However, it suffers from several fundamental problems: (1) Since the operating system has no knowledge of database objects and their internal structure, it is impossible to encrypt different parts of the page using different encryption keys (e.g., when those parts belong to users with different authorizations) and thus cryptographic access control cannot be supported. (2) It is not possible to encrypt specific portions of the database and leave others in their plaintext form. Furthermore, not only relevant data is decrypted during a query execution since each access requires the decryption of an entire page. Therefore, selective encryption is very limited. (3) The DBA cannot perform any administrative task (e.g., dropping a column) without possessing the encryption keys. (4) The database cache, which usually contains a large amount of disk page copies for improving performance, is kept in its plaintext form, and is thus vulnerable to data-in-use attacks.
The next possible encryption layer is the Storage Engine 103. Similarly to the operating system layer 102, pages in this layer are encrypted/decrypted when they are written/read from disk 101. However, as opposed to the operating system layer 102, encryption/decryption operations are performed by the DBMS 110, at the cell-level granularity. In other words, each time a page is loaded from disk, all encrypted values in that page are decrypted (each one separately), and each time a page is stored to disk, all sensitive values in that page are encrypted (again, each one separately). However, although the use of cell-level encryption granularity allows different values within a page to be encrypted using different keys, when a page is read from the disk into the database cache, the whole page must be decrypted, even if the initiating user does not have authorization to access all values in that page. Moreover, the fact that each time a page is written/read from disk 101, multiple encryption/decryption operations are performed, may degrade performance substantially, compared to the single encryption/decryption operation per page in the operating system layer. Note that encryption in this layer 103, is located beneath the query execution engine 105 and is therefore transparent to the query execution engine 105 and all layers above it (including the application).
SQL Interface layer 106, is a layer where data is encrypted using predefined stored procedures, views and triggers. While encryption in this layer 106, is easy to implement and does not usually require significant changes to the application layer, it has the following limitations: (1) encryption takes place above the query execution engine, and thus some database mechanisms (e.g., indexes and foreign keys) may not function properly; (2) the use of stored procedures entails a context switch from SQL to the stored procedure language which usually has a high negative impact on performance; (3) those mechanisms (namely: triggers, views and stored procedures) can be disabled by a malicious DBA.
The next layer, is the application layer 107. In this layer, sensitive data is encrypted in the application layer 107, before it is sent to the database and decrypted before usage. It supports the highest degree of freedom in terms of enforcing cryptographic access control. However, it suffers from the following disadvantages: (1) modifying legacy applications may require a lot of resources i.e., time and money; (2) as encryption takes place above the query execution engine, different database mechanisms cannot function properly and need to be re-implemented by the application; (3) it re-invents the wheel for each new application that is being developed.
The next layer is the client layer 108, which may promise the highest degree of security since the only one that is able to access the sensitive data is the legitimate client. However, it implies limiting the ability of the database server to process the encrypted data and in extreme cases, to use the database server for storage only.
When implementing a database encryption solution, one needs to decide on the combination of: (1) trust in the database server; (2) encryption granularity; and (3) layer of encryption.
However, choosing the layer of encryption dictates the trust in the database server and the encryption granularity. The client and application layers dictate a full-mistrust in the database server, while the SQL interface, storage engine and operating system layers are implemented at the server side, and thus consider the database server to be partially trusted. The operating system layer 102 is the only layer that is unaware of the database objects' internal structure and thus requires a page level encryption granularity, while all other layers dictate a cell level encryption granularity.
Existing commercial products for database encryption commonly implement encryption at the SQL interface layer (e.g., SafeNet ProtectDB), the storage engine layer (e.g., Oracle TDE), or the operating system layer (e.g., SQL Server TDE).
The client layer 108 and the application layer 107 architectures, while providing the highest level of security, are impractical in most cases due to their high impact on performance and to the changes that they impose on the application layer.
FIG. 5 is a schematic table, which summarizes the properties of the different architectures.
It is therefore an object of the present invention to provide a system and method for database encryption, which should not require a major modification to the implementation of the application layer.
It is another object of the present invention to provide a system and method for database encryption, which is built on top of an existing DBMS implementation, including all of its functionality, such as indexing, foreign key mechanisms and locking schemes.
It is yet another object of the present invention to provide a system and method for database encryption, which allows the DBA to perform his administrative tasks directly over the encrypted data, without the need to decrypt it first.
It is yet another object of the present invention to provide a system and method for database encryption, which should not require much more storage than the original non-encrypted database.
Further purposes and advantages of this invention will appear as the description proceeds.

This patent is subject to a terminal disclaimer.

Method and system for database encryption

Ben-Gurion University of the Negev Research and Development Authority


A device for controlling a ventilation system in the interior of a motor vehicle includes a gas concentration determining arrangement to determine the exterior concentration of a gas in the exterior air surrounding the vehicle and to determine the interior concentration of the same gas in the air contained in the interior of the vehicle, and an air flow control arrangement, via which the proportion of circulating air and the proportion of fresh air from the surroundings of the vehicle in the air delivered to the interior by the ventilation system are controlled as a function of the determined interior concentration or the determined exterior concentration. The gas concentration determining arrangement is represented by a single gas sensor.

German patent document no. 35 26 462 discusses a method for checking the air quality in motor vehicles using an internal and an external sensor in a moving or stationary vehicle. The fresh air flaps are either switched to circulating air or closed when a level of harmful substances detected by the external sensor is exceeded.
If the alarm is triggered, i.e., the level of harmful substances in the exterior air has exceeded a predefined value, the value of the interior sensor is logically compared with the value of the exterior sensor. If the air quality in the vehicle is poorer than the air quality outside the vehicle, the procedure is reversed, i.e., the flaps are switched to supply of exterior air.

Device and method for detecting harmful gases using a carbon dioxide sensor


The image forming apparatus includes a fixing device for heat fixing a toner image on a recording material, a discharge device for discharging the recording material on which the toner image is fixed by the fixing device; a blowing device for blowing air onto a lower surface of the recording material discharged by the discharge device; and a control device for controlling an amount of air blow from the blowing device in accordance with a position of the recording material discharged by the discharge device. Thus, it is possible to improve stacking alignment of the recording material while maintaining conveyance property of the recording material in a recording material sheet discharging section.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an image forming apparatus such as a copying machine or a printer which employs an electrostatic recording process, an electrophotographic recording process, and the like. More specifically, the present invention relates to an image forming apparatus in which air is blown onto a lower surface of a recording material when the recording material on which a toner image is heat fixed is discharged.
2. Related Background Art
Conventionally, there is known an image forming apparatus in which the recording material is cooled immediately after passing through a conveyance roller in order to prevent a malfunction from occurring in the image forming apparatus due to heat applied to the recording material which has been subjected to heat fixing by a fixing unit.
In FIG. 11, the image forming apparatus of this kind is shown. As shown in FIG. 11, a recording material S on which a toner image is fixed by a fixing unit 300 and whose temperature is high is discharged to a sheet discharging section 150 after passing through a pair of conveyance rollers 130 and 140, and the recording material S receives the air from a blowing unit 200 immediately after passing through the pair of conveyance rollers 130 and 140.
As a result, it is possible to cool the recording material S, making it possible to prevent plastic films such as overhead transparency (OHT) sheets from adhering to one another in the sheet discharging section 150 due to high temperature. Further, by cooling the recording material S, it is possible to prevent such an adverse affect that the temperature of the sheet discharging section 150 is raised so high to adversely affect the temperature inside an image forming apparatus 500. Further, in a case where the image forming apparatus 500 is capable of forming an image on both sides of the recording material S, it is possible to cool the both sides of the recording material S one side at a time, thereby making it possible to prevent the temperature inside the image forming apparatus 500 from rising and to form a high quality image on the recording material S.
Incidentally, there is a case where the entire recording material S is curled in the sheet discharging section 150 to be turned over when the recording material S is discharged from the pair of conveyance rollers 130 and 140. In order to prevent this, a configuration can be thought in which the conveyance roller 130 and the conveyance roller 140 are disposed alternately as shown in FIG. 12 to add stiffness to the recording material S by making the recording material S to be rippled, thereby discharging the recording material S straight.
However, in this case, when the air from the blowing unit 200 is blown onto the recording material S being conveyed, it is possible to lower the temperature of the recording material S, however, there occurs such a phenomenon that the recording material outputted finally is slightly rippled. This phenomenon is especially remarkable in a case of the recording material made of plastic film such as an OHT sheet. This is deemed to occur because the OHT sheet rippled at the high temperature is cooled as it is to remain in the rippled shape.
In this regard, in order to solve the problem of the rippling, there are disposed through rollers of the pair of conveyance rollers which are straight and continuous in a longitudinal direction. Further, in order to prevent the above-mentioned curl (turning over) of the recording material in the sheet discharging, a blowing unit is disposed by which it is possible to bring the recording material upward to convey the recording material by the air blown from the blowing unit.
As a result, it is possible to prevent the rippling and curl of the recording material at the same time.
However, in the above image forming apparatus, stacking capability of the recording material is slightly deteriorated because the air in an amount large enough to bring the recording material being conveyed upward is always blown onto the recording material, although it is a minor problem. This is because the air may impart too much ascending force to the recording material. More specifically, as shown in FIG. 13A, when a trailing edge of the recording material passes through a pair of conveyance rollers 131 and 141 and falls into the sheet discharging section due to a dead weight of the recording material, the air from the blowing unit serves as a resistance, so a falling movement of the trailing edge of the recording material is not stabled. As a result, as shown in FIG. 13B, stacking alignment and stacking capability of the recording material are deteriorated.
Further, depending on a kind of the recording material, the leading edge portion of the recording material is cooled and solidified in a state where the leading edge portion of the recording material is suspended from the pair of conveyance rollers 131 and 141, thereby causing the curl in the leading edge portion of the recording material.
In addition, when the stiffness of the recording material is varied in accordance with the environment, conveyance capability of the recording material may be deteriorated.


A dual polarization planar antenna comprising a first layer comprising a first patch, a second layer beneath the first layer comprising a first feed line for coupling a first signal to the first patch and a second feed line for coupling a second signal to the first patch such that the first patch radiates a field that has two different polarizations, and a third layer comprising first and second coupling discs electrically connected to the first feed line and third and fourth coupling discs electrically connected to the second feed line, wherein the first and second discs are electrically coupled to each other by a first half wavelength conductor and the third and fourth discs are electrically coupled the each other by a second half wavelength conductor, the first and second half wavelength conductors not being disposed in the second layer.

Planar patch antennas for RF (radio frequency) reception and/or transmission are becoming increasingly popular because of their small size and other useful attributes. However, they do have some drawbacks, such as relatively narrow bandwidth. Hence, techniques have been and continue to be developed to increase the bandwidth of such antennas. For instance, multiple patches of different sizes layered together can increase bandwidth. More recently, the use of an L-shaped probe instead of a conventional strip line or microstrip feed mechanism has been used to increase the bandwidth of planar patch antennas. H. Wong, L. Lau, and K. Luk, "The design of dual-polarized L-probe patch antenna arrays with high isolation", IEEE transactions on antennas and propagation, volume 52, number 1, January 2004. This reference discusses a dual polarization antenna utilizing two L-shaped probes oriented orthogonally to each other in order to feed a single patch. The authors claim that a 20% or greater bandwidth can be obtained with this design.
However, the use of two orthogonal L-probes suffers from at least two significant deficiencies. First, it has a poor isolation between the two ports (i.e., between the two polarizations). That is, there can be significant coupling between the two ports such that signal on the first feed line of the first polarization pollutes the signal of the other polarization on the other feed line. Second, it has poor cross polarization properties. The isolation and cross-polarization levels could be as high as −10 dB. Typically, for good performance of radars, the isolation and cross-polarization levels should be on the order of −20 dB. Specifically, when two L-probes (or any other feed mechanisms, for that matter) are oriented orthogonally to each other, ideally, there should be no cross polarization between the two probes. Particularly, the E field of each probe should be parallel to the probe and, therefore, the E field of one probe should have no effective field strength at the other probe because the other probe is orthogonal thereto. However, in practice, this has proven to be far from true.
In the aforementioned paper, Wong et al. propose one solution to help increase isolation involving the use of the balanced L-probes. Id. According to this solution, instead of using a single L-probe per polarization, two L-probes oriented in opposing directions and fed with signals 180° phase shifted relative to each other are used to feed each polarization. The feed network is rather complex in order to feed each of the two L-probes associated with each polarization with the same basic signal, but 180° out of phase there with. This is achieved by branching the feed line into two lines, one of the branches being a half wavelength longer than the other branch.
This design has been found to provide substantial benefits in terms of increased isolation and, often, decreased cross-polarization. But the major disadvantage is that it requires a very complex feed network in the feed network layer of the planar antenna. Furthermore, when the feed network is microstrip, there is distortion in the antenna radiation patterns and increased cross-polarization levels.
A complex feed network is extremely disadvantageous, particularly in antenna arrays, because there often is a need or desire to place additional circuitry in this layer, such as RF transmission lines, DC lines, control lines, etc. Specifically, these lines often need to be placed in the same layer as the feed network between two ground planes in order to isolate the signals on those lines from the radiating (or receiving) patches of the antenna.
It also is known in the prior art to use disc coupling, instead of L-probe coupling. In these types of systems, instead of using an L-shaped probe, the feed network is coupled to one or more disc shape probes that capacitively couple to the patches.