A method of storing an amount of data D in association with a device, the method comprising: obtaining a characteristic C of the device; generating error correction data R for the characteristic C, the error correction data R enabling correction of up to a predetermined number of errors in a version of the characteristic C; combining the characteristic C with the amount of data D and an authentication key K to generate storage data P, wherein said combining is arranged so that the amount of data D and the authentication key K are obtainable using the characteristic C and the storage data P; generating a signature using a signature key, the signature being a digital signature of a quantity of data comprising the storage data P, the amount of data D and the authentication key K, wherein the signature key corresponds to a verification key accessible by the device; generating an authentication code for the error correction data R using the authentication key K, wherein the authenticity of the error correction data R is verifiable using the authentication code and the authentication key K; and storing the error correction data R, the storage data P, the signature and the authentication code to thereby store the amount of data D.

It is known to store data on a device in a manner that "locks" the stored data to the device, i.e. so that the stored data, if transferred to a second device, cannot be used on that second device. The data may, for example, comprise a cryptographic key for use by an application on the device to access (e.g. decrypt, or enable decryption of) content being stored on the device as encrypted content—in this way, even if the data and the encrypted content are distributed to other devices in an unauthorized manner, those other devices will not be able to access the content as those other devices will not be able to successfully (or correctly) use the data.
FIG. 1a of the accompanying drawings is a flowchart schematically illustrating a method 100 of storing and accessing an amount of data D in a manner that locks the amount of data D to a device. The device may be any kind of data processing device, such as a desktop computer, a mobile telephone, a laptop, a tablet computer, a set top box, a smart card, a games console, etc. The method 100 may be implemented in dedicated hardware, as software executing on a processor of the device, or as a combination of hardware and software.
At a step 102, the amount of data D is stored on the device for the first time, i.e. the device is initialized with the amount of data D. The amount of data D is not stored in clear form, but is stored in a protected form so that the amount of data D may not be determined directly by inspecting the contents of a memory or storage medium of the device. This step is sometimes referred to as an "enrolment" step.
For example, when initially installing an application (e.g. a computer program or other software) on a device, the installation process may create the amount of data D for subsequent use by the application and store that amount of data D at the step 102.
As mentioned, the amount of data D is stored in protected form. If this protected form is copied to another device, the intention is that that other device will not be able to determine, or access, the amount of data D from the copied protected form of the amount of data D.
An example of the processing performed at the step 102 shall be described shortly with reference to FIG. 1b of the accompanying drawings.
At a step 104, the device (or an application executing or running on the device) attempts to access the amount of data D using the protected form of the amount of data D. If the device that carries out the step 104 is the device to which the protected form of the amount of data D corresponds (i.e. it is the device to which the stored amount of data D is locked at the step 102), then at the step 104 the device should be able to access the amount of data D. If, on the other hand, the device that carries out the step 104 is not the device to which the protected form of the amount of data D corresponds (i.e. it is not the device to which the stored amount of data D is locked at the step 102), then at the step 104 the device should not be able to access the amount of data D.
An example of the processing performed at the step 104 shall be described shortly with reference to FIG. 1c of the accompanying drawings.
FIG. 1b is a flowchart schematically illustrating a method 130 for storing the amount of data D on a device, in a manner that locks the amount of data D to that device. The method 130 may be carried out, for example, to implement the step 102 of FIG. 1a, although it will be appreciated that other methods for implementing the step 102 of FIG. 1a could be used instead.
At a step 132, a characteristic C of the device is obtained (or determined or measured). The characteristic C is a value (or an identifier or code) that identifies the device, or that distinguishes the device from other devices. There are many known ways of obtaining a characteristic C of the device. For example, the characteristic C may be based on one or more of:                A serial number of a storage medium (e.g. a magnetic disc, a memory chip, etc) of the device.        A serial number of a processor of the device.        A serial number of any other component of the device or of the device itself.        Contents of memory during start-up of the device.        One or more properties of a component of the device, such as a processing speed of a processor of the device, a storage capacity of a storage medium of the device, a number of USB ports of the device, a resolution of a screen of the device, etc.        An identifier of one or more software applications installed on the device, or of one or more modules, elements, plug-ins, etc. of the one or more applications—for example, the version of a browser installed on the device and identities of modules (e.g. language packs, toolbars, etc.) that are installed for that browser.        Any other information, aspect, property, feature or configuration of the device.Such data about the device and its current configuration may be collected. As this data may be of variable size (depending on the nature of the device and how it is currently configured), a hash of the collected data may be generated, so as to obtain a predetermined fixed-length value from the collected data. The characteristic C may be set to be this hash value. However, it will be appreciated (and is known to the skilled person) that the characteristic C may be formed from the collected data in any other suitable way.
Error correction codes (ECCs) are well-known—examples of ECCs include Reed-Solomon codes, BCH codes, Turbo codes, etc. In particular, given an amount of data X, an ECC may be used to generate error correction data Y for the data X (or redundancy data, sometimes referred to as a checksum or a parity check). The ECC encoded version, or codeword, W for the data X may then be set to be W=X∥Y (where herein, a∥b represents the concatenation of data a with data b)—this form of ECC encoding is known as systematic ECC encoding. ECCs use a corresponding symbol alphabet (which is often a Galois field of size 2s for some positive integer s)—the original data X, the error correction data Y and thus the codeword W are represented using symbols of that alphabet. The error correction data Y is based on the original data X and is arranged such that if one or more errors are introduced into the codeword W, so as to generate a modified value W* (i.e. a new version W* of the codeword W where one or more of the symbols representing W* differ from the symbols at corresponding locations in the codeword W), then those errors can be corrected so as to obtain the original codeword W from the value W*. The number of errors that can be introduced into the codeword W to generate the value W* whilst still being able to regenerate the original codeword W from the value W* is called the error-correction-capability, α, of the ECC—this is a predetermined number for the ECC which may be set by setting appropriate parameters for the ECC. The errors may be corrected whether they are introduced into the data X within the codeword W=X∥Y and/or into the error correction data Y within the codeword W=X∥Y. However, in situations in which it is known that the errors will only occur in the original data X, then the error correction data Y may be viewed as data that enables correction of up to a predetermined number (the error-correction-capability, α, of the ECC) of errors in a version X* of the data X (where W*=X*∥Y).
As ECCs are well-known, further detail regarding ECCs, ECC encoding, ECC decoding, or other operations involving ECCs shall not be described herein.
At a step 134, error correction data R for the characteristic C is generated using an ECC. As discussed above, the error correction data R is data that enables correction of up to a predetermined number (the error-correction-capability α of the ECC) of errors in a version of the characteristic C—i.e. if a version C* of the characteristic C is generated, where the version C* has a number N (where 0≤N≤α) of errors or differences relative to the characteristic C, then the characteristic C may be regenerated or obtained from the version C*.
As mentioned above, ECCs are very well-known. The ECC used at the step 134 may be selected from any known (or future) ECCs that provide error correction data Y for an amount of input data X (as set out above).
At a step 136, storage data P is generated by combining the characteristic C with the amount of data D. In FIG. 1b, this is shown as creating the storage data P by XORing the characteristic C with the amount of data D—i.e. P=C⊕D. In this example, it is being assumed that the data D and the characteristic C are of the same length (or size)—if the initial values for the characteristic C and the amount of data D are not the same length, then they can be made to be the same length by, for example: (i) if the characteristic C is longer than the amount of data D, truncating the characteristic C so that it is the same length as the amount of data D, or expanding the amount of data D by repeating bits of the amount of data D so that the expanded amount of data D is the same length as the characteristic C; or (ii) if the characteristic C is shorter than the amount of data D, expanding the characteristic C by padding the characteristic C with padding bits (which could, for example, be existing bits of the characteristic C, or bits generated by forming one or more hashes of the characteristic C, etc.).
It will be appreciated, however, that the storage data P may be formed from the characteristic C and the amount of data D using any other method. All that is required is that the amount of data D can be obtained from the storage data P if the value of the characteristic C is known. In particular, the storage data P may be formed as a function F of the amount of data D and the characteristic C, i.e. P=F(D,C), where the function F has a corresponding function G such that G(P,C)=G(F(D,C))=D. The function F may be viewed as an invertible function (where G=F−1, i.e. the inverse of F) that is keyed, or seeded, by the characteristic C. The XOR given in the example above is, of course, just one example of such a function, and it will be appreciated that any other such function could be used instead. Preferably, though, the amount of data D is not obtainable from the storage data P without (knowledge of) the characteristic C.
At a step 138, a digital signature Sig of a quantity of data comprising (or that is a function of) the storage data P and the error correction data R is generated, for example, a digital signature Sig of just the pair {R,P}. For this, a signature key SK is used.
The signature Sig may be generated by using an asymmetric digital signature algorithm. In this case, the signature key SK is a private key that corresponds to a public verification key VK. The device may store the verification key VK for future use (as explained shortly with reference to FIG. 1c). The signature key SK may be a private key associated with the device—the device may store the signature key SK, or, alternatively, the signature key SK and the verification key VK may be generated by the device during the step 102, with the verification key VK being stored for subsequent use and the signature key SK being discarded after the step 138. In some embodiments, the step 138 is performed by the device, with the device knowing the signature key SK. In other embodiments, the device does not have access to the signature key SK and only has access to the corresponding verification key VK (e.g. the verification key is hardcoded into the device)—for example, the signature key SK may be a signature key used by, or associated with, a manufacturer of the device, in which case the manufacturer may generate the signature Sig when the manufacturer initially makes and initialises the device with the amount of data D.
Alternatively, the signature Sig may be generated by using a symmetric digital signature algorithm (e.g. the signature Sig may be a message authentication code). In this case, the signature key SK is a secret key of the device that is stored by the device—the signature key SK may be used as a verification key VK (i.e. VK=SK) in the future (as explained shortly with reference to FIG. 1c).
Digital signatures schemes/algorithms (both symmetric and asymmetric) are well-known and shall, therefore, not be described in more detail herein.
At a step 140, the device stores: the error correction data R, the storage data P and the generated signature Sig. This stored data represents the amount of data D and is the above-mentioned protected form of the amount of data D.
FIG. 1c is a flowchart schematically illustrating a method 150 for controlling access to the amount of data D at (or stored on) a device. The device is storing a protected form of the amount of data D, where this protected form of the amount of data D was generated using the method 130 of FIG. 1b. The method 150 may be carried out, for example, to implement the step 104 of FIG. 1a, although it will be appreciated that other methods for implementing the step 104 of FIG. 1a could be used instead.
At a step 152, the protected form of the data is retrieved (e.g. from the memory or storage of the device at which the protected form of the data is located). Thus, at the step 152, the error correction data R, the storage data P and the generated signature Sig are obtained or accessed.
At a step 154, the signature Sig is verified against (or for or in relation to) a quantity of data comprising the storage data P and the error correction data R. This quantity of data is formed in the same way in which the quantity of data that was signed at the step 138 of FIG. 1b to generate the signature Sig was formed—for example, the quantity of data may be just the pair {R,P}. The verification of the signature Sig uses a verification algorithm corresponding to the signature generation algorithm, and makes use of the verification key VK corresponding to the signature key SK that was used to generate the signature Sig. Such verification algorithms are well-known and shall not be described in detail herein.
If, at a step 156, it is determined that the verification at the step 154 has failed (i.e. the signature Sig does not correspond to the quantity of data comprising the storage data P and the error correction data R), then processing terminates at a step 158. If, on the other hand, it is determined at the step 156 that the verification at the step 154 has succeeded (i.e. the signature Sig corresponds to the quantity of data comprising the storage data P and the error correction data R), then processing continues at a step 160.
At the step 160, a current characteristic C* of the device is obtained (or determined or measured). This is performed in the same way in which the characteristic C of the device was obtained at the step 132 of FIG. 1b. There are four possible scenarios:                (S-a) The device carrying out the step 104 is the same as the device that carried out the step 102, and the configuration/state/etc. of the device has not changed since the protected form of the amount of data D was generated and stored: in this case, the current characteristic C* will be the same as the original characteristic C (obtained at the step 132 of FIG. 1b).        (S-b) The device carrying out the step 104 is the same as the device that carried out the step 102, and the configuration/state/etc. of the device has changed slightly (or by a sufficiently small amount) since the protected form of the amount of data D was generated and stored: in this case, the current characteristic C* may differ from the original characteristic C (obtained at the step 132 of FIG. 1b) by at most a symbols or places, where a is the error-correction-capability of the ECC that was used at the step 134 of FIG. 1b—this means that these errors can be corrected using the error correction data R, and that the original characteristic C may be obtained (or restored) from the current characteristic C*.        (S-c) The device carrying out the step 104 is the same as the device that carried out the step 102, and the configuration/state/etc. of the device has changed significantly (or by a sufficiently large amount) since the protected form of the amount of data D was generated and stored: in this case, the current characteristic C* may differ from the original characteristic C (obtained at the step 132 of FIG. 1b) by more than a symbols or places, where a is the error-correction-capability of the ECC that was used at the step 134 of FIG. 1b—this means that these errors cannot all be corrected using the error correction data R, so that the original characteristic C cannot then be obtained (or restored) from the current characteristic C*.        (S-d) The device carrying out the step 104 is different from the device that carried out the step 102 (i.e. the protected form of the amount of data D has been transferred or copied to a different device): in this case, the current characteristic C* will almost certainly differ from the original characteristic C (obtained at the step 132 of FIG. 1b) by more than a symbols or places, where a is the error-correction-capability of the ECC that was used at the step 134 of FIG. 1b—this means that these errors cannot all be corrected using the error correction data R, so that the original characteristic C cannot then be obtained (or restored) from the current characteristic C*.
At a step 162, an error-correction decoding operation is performed on the current characteristic C* using the error correction data R to (try to) correct any errors that may exist in the current characteristic C* relative to the original characteristic C. The result of this error-correction decoding operation is a value C′. As discussed above, in scenarios (S-a) and (S-b) above, the original characteristic C is obtained from this error-correction decoding operation (i.e. C′=C); whereas in scenarios (S-c) and (S-d) above, the original characteristic C will almost certainly not be obtained from this error-correction decoding operation (i.e. C′≠C).
At a step 164, an amount of data D′ is obtained or generated from the characteristic C′ and the storage data P. In particular D′=G(P,C′)—i.e. the step 164 obtains the amount of data D′ from the characteristic C′ and the storage data P using the inverse of the method (or function F) by which the storage data P was generated from the amount of data D and the characteristic C. In scenarios (S-a) and (S-b) above, C′=C, in which case D′=D, i.e. the step 164 generates the original amount of data D; whereas in scenarios (S-c) and (S-d) above, C′≠C, in which case D′≠D, i.e. the step 164 generates an amount of data D′ different from the original amount of data D.
At a step 166, the generated amount of data D′ is output or provided. Thus, if the step 104 of FIG. 1a is being performed on the same device as the device that performed the step 104 of FIG. 1a, and if the configuration of this device has not changed significantly, then the device can access the originally stored amount of data D; otherwise, the amount of data D will not be accessed at the step 104 of FIG. 1a.
In this way, the amount of data D may be stored on the device in a manner that "locks" the stored amount of data D to the device.
The problem scenario is, of course, scenario (S-c) set out above—in this scenario, the device that is trying to access the amount of data D is the correct physical device (i.e. the same device that originally stored the amount of data D in a protected form and to which the stored amount of data D is locked), however this device has been changed (e.g. by the addition, removal, or replacement of hardware, applications, software components, plug-ins, etc.) to such an extent that the current characteristic C* of this device is too different from the original characteristic C of this device, i.e. the number of differences between C and C* exceeds the error-correction-capability α of the ECC. Thus, a user of the device may: start in scenario (S-a) and thereby have access to the amount of data D; move to scenario (S-b) at some later point, e.g. due to some minor changes that the user makes to the device and still have access to the amount of data D; and then move to scenario (S-c) at some later point, again due to some further minor changes that the user makes to the device, at which point the device will not be able to access the amount of data D. This will occur despite the fact that the change to the device that moves the device from being in scenario (S-b) to being in scenario (S-c) may be very minor—as far as the user of the device is concerned, he has just made a very minor modification to his device (which may be completely unrelated to the use or purpose of the amount of data D), and now he is no longer able to carry out the functionality that would make use of the amount of data D (e.g. decrypting encrypted content).


Novel extracts, proteins, and complexes are identified, purified, and analyzed, which improve the polymerization activity of nucleic acid polymerases. Included within the aspects of the invention are methods for identifying compositions with a polymerase enhancing activity, methods for purifying and using these compositions, and specific extracts, proteins, and complexes that function to enhance polymerase activity. Implications for numerous assays and techniques are described. For example, the invention can be used to enhance polymerase activity in a PCR process and to increase the sensitivity of a PCR-based assay.

1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to the fields of nucleic acid polymerases and nucleic acid polymerization reactions.
2. Introduction
The efficiency of a nucleic acid polymerization reaction has implications for numerous assays and techniques. For example, the ability to enhance polymerase activity in a PCR process increases the sensitivity of the PCR-based assay. We have identified, purified, and analyzed novel extracts, proteins, and complexes that improve the polymerization activity of nucleic acid polymerases. Included within the aspects of the present invention are methods for identifying compositions with a polymerase enhancing activity, methods for purifying and using these compositions, and specific extracts, proteins, and complexes that function to enhance polymerase activity.
3. Description of Related Art
Manipulating nucleic acids with polymerization reactions is a fundamental component of biotechnology-related research. These reactions permit researchers to replicate DNA or RNA in vitro, which in turn allows cloning or amplification of specific nucleic acids or groups of nucleic acids. Numerous other examples exist detailing the critical nature of a nucleic acid polymerization reaction or a nucleic acid polymerization enzyme in a particular technique, including sequencing nucleic acids, mutagenesis of nucleic acid sequences, and producing nucleic acid probes for hybridization. Of particular current interest are amplification reactions, such as PCR, that have greatly increased the rate at which researchers can perform nucleic acid related experimentation. Extremely rare nucleic acids can now be amplified and manipulated using these techniques, which necessarily involve nucleic acid polymerases.
Using techniques with an amplification step has driven concern for the efficiency, fidelity, and sensitivity of the polymerase used. This has resulted in efforts to both analyze and optimize polymerization conditions for a variety of applications. (Lundberg et al., Gene 108: 1-6 (1991); Eckert and Kunkel, PCR Methods Applic. 1: 17-24 (1991); Ling et al., PCR Methods Applic. 1: 63-69 (1991); Brail et al., Mutat. Res. 303: 75-82 (1994); Garrity and Wold, P.N.A.S. 89: 1021-1025 (1992); Taylor and Logan, Curr. Opin. Biotechnol. 6: 24-29 (1995)) In particular, quantitative amplification-based reactions rely upon the ability to efficiently amplify each nucleic acid species present in a sample. (See Ausubel, et al., Chapter 15, In: Current Protocols in Molecular Biology, John Wiley & Sons (1992) and supplements through 1995.) Thus, both a concern for the accuracy of and a need for new methods to enhance the performance of amplification-based nucleic acid techniques exists in the art.
One way in which these concerns and needs have been addressed is through the use of additives to the amplification reaction. Different additives act at different points in the amplification process. For example, formamide has been used to increase the specificity of PCR with GC rich target sequences, which are particularly susceptible to intramolecular hybridization that may prevent hybridization with a primer. (Sarkar, G. et al. Nucl. Acids Res. 18: 7465 (1990)). It has also been reported that tetramethylammonium chloride increases yield and specificity of PCR reactions. (Chevet, E., et. al., Nucleic Acids Res. 23:3343-3334 (1995).) Hung et al. report the reduction in multiple satellite bands from amplifying complex DNA when dimethyl sulfoxide (DMSO) is added. (Hung, T., et al. Nucl. Acids Res. 18: 4953(1990).) The multiple satellite bands often present problems in purifying the desired amplification product from the other DNA present.
Certain proteins have been used to stabilize hybridized nucleic acids during replication. For example, E. coli single-stranded DNA binding protein has been used to increase the yield and specificity of primer extension reactions and PCR reactions. (U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,449,603 and 5,534,407.) The gene 32 protein (single stranded DNA binding protein) of phage T4 apparently improves the ability to amplify larger DNA fragments (Schwartz, et al., Nucl. Acids Res. 18: 1079 (1990)) and enhances DNA polymerase fidelity (Huang, DNA Cell. Biol. 15: 589-594 (1996)). In addition, bacterial thioredoxin combined with T7 DNA polymerase (Sequence) has been used to increase processivity, but not at high temperatures such as those used in PCR.
Another way amplification-based assays and techniques have been improved is through the development of modified polymerases or the use of combinations of polymerases. (U.S. Pat. No. 5,566,772) For example, the TaKaRa long PCR kit employs two polymerases (Takara Shuzo Co., Ltd; Japan), and a number of polymerase combinations were also tested by Barnes (Proc. Nat. Acad. Sci. USA, 91:2216-2220 (1994). Truncated Taq and T. flavus DNA polymerase enzymes that apparently exhibit increased thermostability and fidelity in PCR have also been suggested. (U.S. Pat. No. 5,436,149.) Combinations of polymerases with and without 5'.fwdarw.3' exonuclease or 3'.fwdarw.5' proofreading activity have also been used. (U.S. Pat. No. 5,489,523)
Further, amplification-based assays and techniques have been improved through empirical testing of conditions, reagents, and reagent concentrations to optimize polymerization reactions with a particular enzyme. Temperature and length of amplification cycles, primer length, and pH, for example, are all conditions that can be optimized. (Barnes, Proc. Nat. Acad. Sci. USA, 91:2216-2220 (1994).)
However, accessory proteins can be even more useful in improving polymerase activity and/or the processivity of polymerases. "Processivity" in this context refers to the number of enzymatic reactions occurring each time an enzyme binds to its substrate. In the context of nucleic acid replication reactions, "processivity" means the number of bases that can be replicated when the polymerase binds to a priming site. An increase in processivity directly relates to longer replication products.
Intracellular replication has been shown to involve accessory proteins, as characterized in E. coli, human, and phage T4 systems. The accessory proteins interact with polymerases to improve activity and provide the high processivity necessary to replicate genomic DNA efficiently while avoiding unacceptable mutation rates. Since the accessory proteins can be used in combination with the other improvements noted above, the development and application of accessory proteins holds particular promise for enhancing the results of nucleic acid replication-based reactions.
Accessory proteins have been identified in eukaryotes, E. coli, and bacteriophage-T4 and are thought to form "sliding clamp" structures. (Kelman and O'Donnell, Nucl. Acids. Res. 23(18): 3613-3620 (1995).) These structures are thought to tether the polymerase to DNA, thereby increasing processivity. The sliding clamp structures, however, have largely been studied in vivo and in model systems. Only in the case of T4 polymerase has knowledge of the activity of such accessory proteins been used to improve polymerization-based techniques employed by researchers in the art. For example, accessory proteins of the T4 holoenzyme have been reported to improve processivity when added to polymerization systems using T4 polymerase. (Young et al., Biochem. 31(37): 8675-8690 (1992); Oncor Fidelity.TM. Sequencing System, Oncor; Gaithersburg, Md.) However, since the T4 accessory proteins are derived from bacteriophage, they are not likely to enhance polymerases from bacteria, archeabacteria, or eukaryotes. Thus, the use of T4 accessory proteins is believed to have been limited to techniques where T4 polymerase is used.
Accordingly, since present knowledge and use of accessory proteins has led to limited applications in replication-based techniques, there continues to exist a need in the art for new and more widely useful compositions for enhancing polymerase enzyme activity. The present invention meets this need.

Polymerase enhancing factor (PEF) extracts PEF protein complexes isolated PEF proteins and methods for purifying and identifying same


The present invention can be used to calculate expected precision for association values between types of items in one class with types of items in another class. The present invention accommodates rare events.

The present invention relates to analysis of rare events. More specifically, the present invention relates to determining the significance of rare events that occur in, for example, natural language processing systems, such as in the machine translation context, or in any other system that encounters rare events.
There are a wide variety of natural language processing systems which use statistical processing. One such system is a machine translation system. A machine translation system receives a textual input in one language, translates it to a second language, and provides a textual output in the second language. Such systems often use statistical methods to measure the strength of association, particularly lexical associations.
One conventional measure used in natural language processing is referred to as the G2 log-likelihood-ratio statistic. This measure is discussed in greater detail in Dunning, ACCURATE METHODS FOR THE STATISTICS OF SURPRISE AND COINCIDENCE, Computational Linguistics, 19(1):61-74 (1993). Even though this statistic is widely used in natural language processing, its use remains controversial on the grounds that it may be unreliable when applied to rare events.
Another statistic conventionally used in natural language processing is referred to as the Chi-square statistic. This is described in greater detail in Adgresti et al., CATEGORICAL DATA ANALYSIS, John Whiley and Sons, New York, N.Y. (1990). It has been demonstrated that the Chi-square test is valid with smaller sample sizes and more sparse data than the G2 statistic. However, either Chi-square or G2 can be unreliable when expected frequencies of less than five are involved.
A phenomenon referred to as Zipf's Law shows that the problem of rare events invariably arises whenever dealing with individual words. Zipf's Law has various formulations, but they all imply that relatively few words in a language are very common, and most words are relatively rare. This means that no matter how large a corpus is, most of the distinct words in that corpus occur only a small number of times. For example, one corpus includes 500,000 English sentences sampled from the Canadian Hansards data supplied for the bilingual word alignment workshop held at HLT-NAACL 2003 (and referred to in more detail in Mihalcea and Pedersen, AN EVALUATION EXERCISE FOR WORD ALIGNMENT, Proceedings of the HLT-NAACL 2003 workshop, BUILDING AND USING PARALLEL TEXTS: DATA DRIVEN MACHINE TRANSLATION AND BEYOND, pp. 1-6, Edmonton Alberta (2003)). In that corpus, there are 52,921 distinct word types, of which 60.5 percent occur five or fewer times, and 32.8 percent occur only once.
While the G2 statistic has been most often used in natural language processing as a measure of the strength of association between pairs of words, the sparse data problem which renders the G2 statistic unreliable becomes even worse when considering pairs of words. For example, considering the 500,000 French sentences corresponding to the English sentences described above, it can be seen that 19,460,068 English-French word pairs occur in aligned sentences more often than would be expected by chance, given their monolingual frequencies. Of these, 87.9 percent occur together five or fewer times (i.e., they have a joint occurrence frequency of five or less) and 62.4 percent occur together only once.
Moreover, if the expected number of occurrences of these word pairs (which is the criteria used for determining the applicability of Chi-square or G2 significance tests) is considered, it can be seen that 93.2 percent would be expected by chance to have fewer than five occurrences. Thus, any statistical measure that is unreliable for expected frequencies of less than five would be wholly unusable with such data.
In the past, a wide variety of statistics have been used to measure the strength of word association. Such statistics include point-wise mutual information, the Dice coefficient, Chi-square, G2 and Fisher's Exact Test. Each of these is described in greater detail in Inkpen, Hirst, ACQUIRING COLLOCATIONS FOR LEXICAL CHOICE BETWEEN NEAR-SYNONYMS, UNSUPERVISED LEXICAL ACQUISITION: Proceedings of the Workshop of the ACL Special Interest Group on the Lexicon (SIGLEX), pp. 67-76, Philadelphia, Pa. (2002).
Despite the fact that many of these statistics arise from significance testing, the conventional practice in applying them in natural language processing has been to choose a threshold heuristically for the value of the statistic being used and to discard all the pairs below the threshold. It has been conventionally taught that there is no principled way of choosing these thresholds. See Inkpen and Hirst p. 70. Indeed, if standard statistical tests are conventionally used, the results make no sense in the types of natural language processing systems discussed herein.
An example may be helpful in illustrating the deficiencies of the conventional systems. Consider the case of two words that each occur only once in a corpus, but happen to co-occur. Conventional wisdom strongly advises suspicion of any event that occurs only once, yet it is easy to see that applying standard statistical methods to this case tend to suggest that it is highly significant, without using any questionable approximations at all.
The question that significance tests for association (such as Chi-square, G2 and Fisher's Exact Test) are designed to answer is: Given the sample size and the marginal frequencies of the two items in questions, what is the probability (or p-value) of seeing by chance as many or more joint occurrences as were observed? In the case of a joint occurrence of two words that each occur only once, this is trivial to calculate.
For instance, suppose an English word and a French word each occur only once in the corpus discussed above of 500,000 aligned sentence pairs of Hansards data, but they happen to occur together. In order to determine the probability that this joint occurrence happened by chance, it can be supposed that the English word occurs in an arbitrary sentence pair. The probability that the French word, purely by chance, would occur in the same sentence pair is clearly 1 in 500,000 or 0.000002. Since it is impossible to have more than one joint occurrence of two words that each have only a single occurrence, 0.000002 is the exact p-value for the question we have asked. However, one should not assume that the association between the words is highly certain on this basis alone, but this is what was done in conventional approaches.

Method and system for estimating the significance of rare events


In the method for the production of an aromate concentrate suitable for use as blending component for gasifier fuel, feed hydrocarbon mixtures having boiling ranges substantially between 40.degree. and 170.degree. C., are subjected, without any previous separation into individual fractions, to an extractive distillation employing N-substituted morpholine, substituents of which display no more than seven C-atoms, as selective solvent. Herewith, the lower boiling non-aromates with a boiling range up to about 105.degree. C., practically completely, and most of the higher boiling non-aromates with a boiling range between about 105.degree. and 160.degree. C., are recovered as raffinate, whereas the aromates, which are to be employed in whole or in part as blending component, come down in the extract of the extractive distillation. In order to separate heavy aromates from solvent, a partial stream of the circulating solvent is mixed with water, and the heavy aromates are separated as a light phase from the solvent-water mixture. The solvent-water mixture is then separated into its components, which are re-utilized.

The invention concerns a method for the production of an aromate concentrate suitable for use as blending component for fuel, from feed hydrocarbon mixtures displaying boiling range substantially between 40.degree. and 170.degree. C. and containing several aromates in addition to non-aromates. The feed hydrocarbon mixture, without previous separation into individual fractions, is subjected to an extractive distillation with the use of N-substituted morpholine, the substituents of which display no more than seven C-atoms, as selective solvent, with substantially all of the low-boiling non-aromates having a boiling range up to about 105.degree. C. and a majority of the higher-boiling non-aromates having a boiling range between about 105.degree. and 160.degree. C. being distilled off as raffinate from the top of the extractive distillation column, whereas the main amount of the aromates, as well as the residual non-aromates, together with the employed solvent, being discharged as extract from the sump of the extractive distillation column, whereupon the hydrocarbons in the extract are distillatively separated from the solvent in a subsequently disposed solvent separation column and employed in whole or in part as blending component, while the solvent is returned to the extractive distillation column.
A method of this general type is known from German Offenlegungsschrift DE-OS 36 12 384, employing aromate-containing hydrocarbon mixtures as feed hydrocarbon mixtures. Particularly suitable for this purpose are reformate and platformate with not too high a content of benzene, from the working up of petroleum. However, mixtures of such reformate and platformate with pyrolysis benzene can also be employed.
With these entry products, the boiling limit indeed normally lies at 170.degree. C. However, it has turned out in practice that this boiling limit is not maintained in many cases, since the initial production processes result in a formation of condensation and polymerization products which display a higher boiling point than 170.degree. C., and which correspondingly contaminate the reformate and platformate. Thus, for example, a typical reformate from the working-up of petroleum displays a portion of higher-boiling components with a boiling point greater than 170.degree. C., to an extent of about 3% by weight. The composition of this higher boiling fraction is as follows:
______________________________________ Compound KP.degree.C. % by weight ______________________________________ m-cymol 175 3.4 hemmellitol 176.1 14.3 p-cymol 177.1 12.3 N-butylbenzene 183 2.8 indane 177.8 9.9 1,2-diethylbenzene 183.4 24.3 durene 196.8 4.7 I-durene 198 16.2 tetralin 207.6 0.1 trimethylethylbenzene 213 3.0 naphthalene 218 4.0 methyltetralin 229 0.1 .beta.-methylnaphthalene 241 2.0 .alpha.-methylnaphthalene 245 1.2 diphenyl 255 0.8 dimethylnaphthalene 268 0.9 TOTAL = 100.0 ______________________________________
Since the portion of these higher-boiling condensation and polymerization products, which shall be designated hereafter as heavy aromates, can amount in individual cases to substantially more than 3% by weight in the reformate and platformate, there can result difficulties during the performance of the method according to DE-OS 36 12 384.
It has been proven in practice that these heavy aromates become concentrated in the selective solvent. With progressive operational periods, this leads to ever stronger contamination of the solvent led in circulation, so that its selectivity is steadily decreased and the separation effect in the extractive distillation is correspondingly diminished. Attempts to separate out the heavy aromates by distillation of the solvent have provided no satisfactory results, even with high distillation expenditures, since part of the heavy aromate fraction boils in the same temperature range as the solvent. Inasmuch as a distillative separation is practically impossible, this problem could only be solved previously by providing a complete exchange of fresh solvent for the contaminated solvent after a certain operational period. Obviously, this technique is extremely costly, and thereby not economical. In addition, destruction of the contaminated solvent results in further cost, since it cannot be introduced to any other use or purpose.

Method for the production of an aromate concentrate suitable for use as blending component for fuel


A reverse osmosis water filtering system includes a reverse osmosis membrane having first output port for permeate water, second output port for concentrate water, and intake port for receiving filtered water, a filtering assembly providing filtered water to the membrane, and a flow restrictor restricting a flow of concentrate water from the membrane to a water source, the flow restrictor including a housing defining an elongated conduit having a tapering conical wall defining a first screw thread and a water-channel thread extending therealong including generally between a first opening into a distal region of the conduit for receiving a flow of liquid and a second opening into a proximal region of the conduit, and an axially elongated plug received into the conduit, a surface of the plug opposed to the tapering conical wall defining a second screw thread and a tapering surface, the second screw thread disposed in threaded engagement with the first screw thread defined by the conical wall of the housing, opposed surface of the water-channel thread and the tapering surface of the plug being disposed in sealing engagement within the conduit and opposite to define a region for liquid flow, the housing with the water-channel thread and the tapering surface of the plug thereby cooperatively defining a generally spiral liquid flow path along the water-channel screw thread and the tapering surface, for flow of liquid generally between the first opening and a port defined by the flow restrictor for delivery of liquid from the conduit.

A typical reverse osmosis water filtering system uses a semi-permeable membrane that has the ability to remove and reject a wide spectrum of impurities and contaminants from water. These contaminants are automatically rinsed down the drain. The purified water is then stored in a tank.
Typically, a predetermined pressure is applied to incoming water to force the incoming water through the membrane. The membrane filters impurities from the incoming water leaving purified water on the other side of the membrane called permeate water. The impurities left on the membrane are washed away by a portion of the incoming water that does not pass through the membrane. The water carrying the impurities washed away from the membrane is called "concentrate water."

Zero waste reverse osmosis water filtering


A re-useable partitioning seal used storage containers creates a virtually airtight chambers, to preserve products therein. A disc or differently shaped layer, with flat top and bottom surfaces, is configured to fit against the interior surface of a storage container. A thin, flexible perimeter forming a gasket around the layer, and a handle attached to the layer without fissure or cavity, thereby providing and a single piece, inexpensive re-useable partitioning seal.

Food preservation is an ongoing challenge for organizations and individuals. Current adjustable position lids optimize the internal volume of containers by removing much of the ambient atmosphere from remaining in contact with the stored product. But these mechanisms are expensive, complex, and limited to a single storage area per container. Other internal partitioning solutions strive to create completely airtight seals within storage containers, which is inefficient, expensive, and unnecessary.
Adjustable seals use a variety of mechanisms to insert and secure a lid inside a container to separate excess air from food contents. However, these lids are often intricate and expensive to manufacture, which prohibits their use in many applications. The high cost of these lid assemblies prevents including them affordably with existing storage containers or with pre-packaged foods.
Most current insertable lids do not support more than one lid per container and are not able to partition storage contents. In addition to the significant cost increase of using complex seals, only the single, lower side of these are intended for contact with food and other stored products. The top side, with air valves, moving handles, knobs, and other mechanisms are not practical for food contact, as they become soiled by the stored product, diminishing cleanliness and function.
The size of existing, insertable lids also limits the use of multiple lids per container. Inserting several thick lids takes up a significant portion of the container's available storage. Storing large lids outside the storage container, is inefficient and unsanitary.
Insertable lid-only solutions require complicated mechanisms such as adjustable handles, gears, dials, or knobs for resizing and repositioning, in order to create the seal. These increase the difficulty and time needed to use the lid.
The durability of a plastic assembly with moving parts is limited. Current adjustable lid solutions depend on inexpensive materials to build a complex mechanism that are in constant use and in close proximity to food, waste, cleansers, air, water, and all manner of debris. Use and maintenance of current lids with moving parts causes buildup and wear.
Keeping existing insertable lids clean is an inconvenient, manual process. The moving parts, valves, and grooves require hand washing and delicate care, in spite of the need for lids to remain sanitary in most applications.
Current insertable lids require custom matched lid-and-container pairs, which narrows their scope of compatible containers.
Accordingly, there exists a need for a cost-effective, partitioning seal, optimized to the purpose of improving the preservation of foods and other stored products.

Adjustable partition for use inside storage containers providing sealed chambers for preservation and compartmentalization of products


Techniques and methods for navigating an autonomous vehicle using teleoperator instructions. For instance, while navigating to a location, progress of an autonomous vehicle may stop. This may be caused by the autonomous vehicle yielding to another vehicle, such as at an intersection or when the other vehicle is located along a route of the autonomous vehicle. After yielding for a threshold amount of time, the autonomous vehicle may send sensor data and/or an indication of the other vehicle to the teleoperator. The autonomous vehicle may then receive, from the teleoperator, an instruction to cease yielding to the other vehicle. Based at least in part on the instruction, the autonomous vehicle may again begin navigating.

An autonomous vehicle may navigate along designated routes or between waypoints. For example, when a control system receives a request from a user device to pick up the user at a location and provide transport to a destination location, the autonomous vehicle may receive, from the control system, instructions to navigate from the pickup location to the destination location. However, in some circumstances, progress of the autonomous vehicle navigating to the pickup location or the destination location may be stopped, such as by another vehicle. This may cause problems, such as delaying the autonomous vehicle or causing the autonomous vehicle to block the flow of traffic.

Techniques for navigating vehicles using teleoperator instructions


A rotating electrical machine according to an embodiment includes a rotor rotatable around a rotation axis, a stator arranged to face the rotor, and a frame which accommodates the rotor and the stator and in which a refrigerant flow path is formed in a sidewall. The frame includes a through hole that penetrates from the refrigerant flow path to an outer periphery of the sidewall and is covered by a lid member.

As a rotating electrical machine having a water-cooling structure, for example, a motor in which a refrigerant flow path is formed in a frame accommodating a rotor and a stator is known.
As a conventional technology of forming a refrigerant flow path in a frame, Japanese Patent Laid-open Publication No. H07-111758 discloses a technology of forming a frame by an inner cylindrical member and an outer cylindrical member and providing a partition between the inner cylindrical member and the outer cylindrical member.
However, in the above conventional technology, a refrigerant flowing in the refrigerant flow path may leak from the end portion of the inner cylindrical member and enter the inside of the frame.


A system indexes a first backup file, created for a data object when a first time period expired, in a first level of a data structure. The system indexes a second backup file, created for the data object when a second time period expired, in a second level of the data structure, the second time period being shorter than the first time period. The system receives a request to restore the data object to a specified time. The system enables restoration of the data object by identifying a first indexed backup file associated with the specified time in the first level of the data structure, by identifying a part of the second level of the data structure corresponding to the first indexed backup file, and by identifying a second indexed backup file associated with the specified time in the part of the second level of the data structure.

If a software error corrupts a data object, or if erroneous data updates the data object, a data protection administrator may restore the data object to a previous state that does not include the corrupted or erroneous data. A backup/restore application executes a backup operation either occasionally or continuously to enable this restoration, storing a copy of each desired data object state (such as the values of data and these values' embedding in a database's data structures) within dedicated backup files. When the data protection administrator decides to return the data object to a previous state, the data protection administrator specifies the desired previous state by identifying a desired time when the data object was in this state, and then instructs the backup/restore application to execute a restore operation to restore a copy of the corresponding backup files for that state to the data object.
A backup/restore application can create a full backup file for a data object by backing up all of the data in the data object. Typically, a full backup file is created at infrequent intervals, and serves as the reference point for subsequent differential backup files, incremental backup files, and/or transaction log backup files.
A backup/restore application can create a differential backup file for a data object by backing up the data that has changed in the data object since the last full backup file was created for the data object. As the elapsed time increases since the most recent full backup file, the accumulated changes increase in a data object, as does the time to create a differential backup file. Restoring a data object, which was backed up by a differential backup file, to a specified time can require starting from the most recent full backup file prior to the specified time, and then applying only the most recent differential backup file prior to the specified time.
A backup/restore application can create an incremental backup file for a data object by only backing up data that is new or changed in the data object since the most recent previous backup file was created, which may have been a full backup file, a differential backup file, or another incremental backup file. Since an incremental backup file does not store duplicate copies of unchanged data, more backup files created at more points in time may be efficiently stored by organizing the data into increments of change between points in time. Using an incremental backup file to restore a data object to a specified time can require starting from the most recent full backup file prior to the specified time, and then applying in turn each of the incremental backup files created since the most recent full backup file prior to the specified time, through the most recent incremental backup file created prior to the specified time. Such a restoration may include starting from the most recent full backup file prior to the specified time, applying the most recent differential backup file that was created prior to the specified time, and then applying in turn each of the incremental backup files created since the most recent differential backup file created prior to the specified time, through the most recent incremental backup file created prior to the specified time.
A backup/restore application creates a transaction log backup file for a data object by only backing up a history of actions executed by the data object's management system. The data object's management system can use a transaction log backup file to re-apply the changes made by committed transitions that are not materialized in the data object and roll back the changes to the data object that were made by uncommitted transactions. Using a transaction log backup file to restore a data object to a specified time can require starting from the most recent full backup file prior to the specified time, and then applying the most recent differential backup file and/or most recent incremental backup file(s) that were created prior to the specified time. Then the restoration can require applying in turn each of the transaction log backup files created since the most recent differential backup file and/or most recent incremental backup file(s) created prior to the specified time, through the most recent transaction backup file created prior to the specified time. Alternatively, using a transaction log backup file to restore a data object to a specified time can require starting from the most recent full backup file prior to the specified time, and then applying in turn each of the transaction log backup files created since the most recent full backup file created prior to the specified time, through the most recent transaction backup file created prior to the specified time.
A data object may be a collection or a group of information that is backed up as a unit, such as the information for a computer or a network of computers. A data object may be stored on a storage array, which is a disk storage system that includes multiple disk drives. Unlike a disk enclosure, a storage array has cache memory and advanced functionality, such as virtualization and Redundant Array of Independent Disks (RAID). A data protection administrator may manage a backup/restore application to create backups files of data objects and store the backup files of data objects on multiple storage arrays.


A high-radiance broadband incoherent light source is provided by pumping a body formed from a doped material, such as a Ce:YAG crystal with one or more laser diodes. The laser diodes emit at a stimulus wavelength, which may be an absorption wavelength of the body, and the body fluoresces to emit broadband light in a wide emission band. The body is either disposed in, or forms a light-concentrating cavity, e.g., reflective surfaces, which may be dichroic surfaces, can be formed on or attached to the sides of the body to concentrate the emitted light. The light is captured by a light collector that is coupled to an output face of the body to produce a broadband illumination beam. One or more of the reflective surfaces forming the light-concentrating cavity may form a heat sink.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention is related generally to optical sources, and in particular to a high radiance incoherent light source for coupling to an optical fiber.
2. Background of the Invention
In biomedical applications, as well as other applications requiring stimulation of fluorescence or other similar illumination requirements, a broadband optical source is typically needed, as the speckle field generated by narrowband illumination makes narrowband illumination unsuitable for many biomedical and imaging applications, such as optogenetics applications. Historical broadband incoherent light sources require relatively large optical systems and reflectors to concentrate light in a narrow beam in order to provide an efficient source of illumination, and to provide high intensity when coupling into a waveguide such as an optical fiber.
Existing broadband solid state sources such as broadband light-emitting diodes (LEDs) such as those used for general illumination are attractive for providing efficient and compact broadband illumination sources. Semiconductor lasers are often used as narrowband optical sources and produce narrow beams suitable for coupling to an optical waveguide. However, present-day broadband ("white") LEDs are in fact LED-stimulated fluorescent crystals that do not produce narrow beams and have relatively low radiance, making them generally unsuitable for introducing high-radiance illumination to an optical fiber. The LEDs used to stimulate the crystals are typically blue LEDs that stimulate a Ce:YAG crystal located within a diffusing broadband cavity.
Therefore, it would be desirable to provide an optical source having the advantages of solid state sources, while providing a compact high-radiance source of broadband light that can be coupled to an optical fiber.

Laser-pumped high-radiance incoherent light source


The present invention discloses a method for activating an alkaline storage cell comprising a non-sintered type nickel positive electrode comprised of a metallic cobalt powder. The method comprises a first step for fabricating the alkaline storage cell, a second step for charging the fabricated storage cell is charged with the charging amount of 1000 mAH or lower than the same per 1 g of the metallic cobalt powder included in the positive electrode, a third step for resting the charged storage cell, and a fourth step for applying an initial charging/discharging operation is applied to the storage cell which was rested at the third step.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a method for activating an alkaline storage cell which comprises a non-sintered type nickel positive electrode so as to improve the utilization of active material comprised of metallic cobalt powder.
2. Description of the Related Art
Recently, a non-sintered type nickel positive electrode comprising a core material to which a pasty active material is loaded has been widely used. Compared to the conventional sintered type nickel positive electrode, the non-sintered type nickel positive electrode has the advantages of simple production process, low production costs and attainment of high energy density.
In the non-sintered type nickel positive electrode, a high porous nickel substrate possessing the porosity of higher than 95% such as a sponge type nickel or a felt type nickel is employed as the electrically conductive core material. Further, an electrically conductive powder such as a cobalt compound powder is fixed in the active material so that electrical conductivity among the active material particles away from the nickel substrate increases. Consequently, the utilization of the active material improves. Particularly, as disclosed in Japanese Laid-open Patent Application No. 53-51449, metallic cobalt is known to improve the utilization owing to its electrically conductive characteristics. Also, at charging, the metallic cobalt is converted into the cobalt oxyhydroxide according to Formulae 2 and hereinafter 3, which is superior in electrical conductivity, and hence conductivity among the active material particles further increases.
Actually, owing to the metallic cobalt fixed in the cathode, the utilization of the nickel active material improves; and the cell capacity will improve. The improvement of the cell capacity, however, will not be sufficient only by fixing the metallic cobalt in the cathode. According to the alkaline storage cell disclosed in Japanese Laid-open Patent Application No. 64-21864, for example, the current at the initial state of the charging is suppressed so that oxidation of the metallic cobalt is given the highest priority.
This method, however, still fails to obtain the oxidation of the metallic cobalt which is smooth enough to improve utilization of the metallic cobalt; and hence the energy density of the cell has not improved as much as expected.


A bone anchor including a first fastening system for fastening a support member to the anchor, and a second fastening system for fastening the anchor to a bone. The second fastening system includes first and second clamping jaws defining between them a slot for receiving a bony part of the bone. The second jaw is movable relative to the first jaw so as to clamp the bony part between the first and second jaws. A locking mechanism is provided for maintaining the second jaw in a fixed clamping position with respect to the first jaw.

One field of application for the invention is holding together a bone and a support member in a desired relative position (while allowing in some cases a limited amount of relative movement), for example to aid in healing of breaks or to correct bony structure deficiencies and abnormalities. In particular, sufferers of abnormal spine curvature or other spine deficiencies may benefit from the invention.
The spine is formed of superposed vertebrae, normally aligned along a vertebral axis, from the lumbar vertebrae to the cervical vertebrae, each having an anterior part: the vertebral body, and a posterior part: the vertebral arch (or neural arch), the anterior and posterior part enclosing the vertebral foramen. Each vertebral arch is formed by a pair of pedicles and a pair of laminae, with transverse processes and/or a spinous process (or neural spine) projecting therefrom. The transverse processes and the spinous process project opposite to the vertebral foramen.
When the vertebrae are articulated with each other, the vertebral bodies form a strong pillar for the support of the head and trunk. In between every pair of vertebral bodies, there is an intervertebral disc.
When the spine of a person has abnormal curvature or other deficiencies (e.g. a damaged intervertebral disc), the vertebrae are typically too close together or spaced too far apart, and there is a need to stabilize the vertebrae in a correct position relative to one another. Mainly, there is either a need to compress the vertebrae (i.e. to bring and hold them closer together) or a need to distract the vertebrae (i.e. to space and keep them away from each other). In order to do this, various kinds of stabilization devices known in the art may be used.
Typically, known stabilization devices include at least two bone anchors configured to be fastened, respectively, to at least two distinct vertebrae, and a rod for connecting the anchors together, thereby providing stabilization between the vertebrae.
In certain known stabilization devices said anchors are hooks that rest on the vertebral laminas and go along the internal wall of the vertebral foramen. Examples of conventional hooks are disclosed, for instance, in U.S. Pat. No. 4,269,178, in published PCT application no 2005/023126 or in published US patent application no 2007/0161990 A1.
A hook has the advantage of providing a rigid and strong anchoring to the vertebra but, in certain cases, during implantation, the physician (or other operative) may have difficulty in placing the hook correctly on the vertebra because the hook does not fit well or slips on the vertebra. Moreover, in certain cases, after implantation of the whole stabilization device, there is a risk that the hook will slip on (or even disengage from) the vertebra, thus reducing or canceling the intended stabilization effect. Sometimes, this risk leads the physician to use more hooks than theoretically needed.


A landing pad system for absorbing horizontal and vertical impact forces upon engagement with a landing surface (15) where circumferentially arranged landing struts (12) respectively have a clevis (24) which receives a slidable rod member (13) and where the upper portion of a slidable rod member is coupled to the clevis by friction washers (30,32) which are force fit onto the rod member to provide for controlled constant force energy absorption when the rod member moves relative to the clevis. The lower end of he friction rod is pivotally attached by a ball and socket (44) to a support plate (42) where the support plate is arranged to slide in a transverse direction relative to a housing which contains an energy absorption material (50) for absorbing energy in a transverse direction.

Various types of craft or vehicles are dropped or propelled into contact with a landing surface with sufficient force to require energy absorbing devices for cushioning the landing impact. For example, spacecraft landings, cargo dropped containers and the like have utilized energy absorbing systems such as parachutes to slow landing velocities, air bag systems, skidding devices, retro-rocket firing to decrease velocity, unidirectional crushable honeycomb devices, frangible tube devices and hydraulic pneumatic shock absorbers.
Where the landing is on a surface without atmosphere, parachute systems or air-drag dependent systems are of little value. Air bags require a compressed air container and a system of valves which are subject to mechanical malfunctions. Moreover, with this type of device, it is difficult to control the landing with any predictability and stability of the vehicle can be a problem.
Some landing devices contemplate skidding along the surface when landing and use of spikes for dragging the surface. This type of device offers only unidirectional energy absorption, and can dissipate either horizontal or vertical velocity, but not both. The two methods may not be used in conjunction with each other, so another system must also be used to dissipate the uncontrolled energy. These systems also rely heavily on the properties of the landing surface being utilized. Since it is often difficult to pinpoint exactly where the vehicle will land and the surface properties at the final landing site, these systems are not very desirable.
Retro-rocket firing from the vehicle is an effective method for cushioning landing forces, but it requires a complicated rocket device and fuel which, as a system, is very heavy and difficult to maintain. Near the landing surface, plume impingement from the rockets can also create problems.
Other devices, such as unidirectional honeycomb device in a landing pad, offer effective methods, of energy absorption, but unidirectional honeycomb can only absorb energy in one direction. Frangible tubes rely on material deformation to absorb energy, but provide very unpredictable and varying degrees of energy absorption.
Hydraulic and pneumatic shock absorbers are also effective for energy absorption, but are very difficult to maintain in working order in the unique environment of space. In addition, sealing problems in shock absorbers are very common in space related activities. The shock absorbers also tend to be complicated and heavier than many of the other methods or devices described or presented in this document.
Another important disadvantage of many of the above methods or devices is that the mechanisms which perform these functions must be located within the structure of the vehicle. This means that much of the landing load imported into parts of the structure of the vehicle cannot be limited. For example, all the landing structure located below shock or energy absorbers must be large enough to survive a very high impact load. In addition, the impact loading on the landing structure is highly dependent on landing velocities, landing surface conditions, structural weights, and many factors which are difficult to quantify early in a program and present problems which are difficult to change or modify later.
The landing system which is the subject of this invention absorbs the energy with a constant load (force) for a wide range of velocities, surfaces, weights, etc.

The United States of America as represented by the Administrator of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration


A method for accepting return deliveries in an electronic parcel deposit box facility, which integrates various logistics service providers and/or customers and various user authorizations, while safeguarding the operator of the parcel deposit box facility against the abuse of the return delivery process. To verify the customer authorizations, the method for operating a parcel deposit box facility comprising several lockable deposit boxes compares recorded customer data with a stored customer profile. Operating functions for the deposit of return deliveries are only released for the customer if the verification is positive. Before a mail item can be deposited, the validity of the mailing information that is contained on the return delivery is also verified. Valid mailing information is assigned to a logistics service provider and is stored, whereas if the mailing information is invalid, no deposit box is released for the deposit. When the return delivery is collected by a postman, the mailing information is recorded again and compared with the stored data. If the details do not match, the mail item is returned to the customer.

1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to a method for operating an electronic parcel deposit box facility having several lockable compartments, whereby at least one logistics service provider is authorized to deposit shipments into or to remove shipments from a parcel deposit box facility, the method comprising accepting a return shipment from a customer (original recipient) so that it can be forwarded to a logistics service provider.
2. Related Technology
In addition to the use of locker compartment systems for storing, for example, luggage or bank documents, the use of systems specifically configured for delivering and picking up goods or mailpieces is known. Such electronic parcel deposit box facilities make it possible for a deliverer to deposit shipments into a lockable compartment of the system, after which the recipient of the shipment is normally informed about the delivery. The recipient can then pick up the shipment from the system at any desired point in time, for which purpose, an individual access code, for example, is transmitted to him/her.
Electronic parcel deposit box facilities and associated methods have the advantage that, for the shipment to be delivered, the customer does not have to be present at his/her home address as is normally the case, but rather the shipment can be deposited in a parcel deposit box facility right away or else after an unsuccessful delivery attempt. Consequently, in case of an unsuccessful delivery attempt, there is no need to leave a notification for the recipient indicating that he has to pick up the shipment during the opening hours of a post office branch but rather the parcel deposit box facility affords him an extra measure of flexibility owing to the parcel deposit box facility.
When shipments are delivered, it is possible that the original recipient might want the shipment to be readdressed so as to be sent back to a seller or logistics service provider. This is the case, for example, with deliveries that are incorrect, damaged or otherwise unsatisfactory. Also in the case of such return shipments, it is advantageous for customers if they can deposit the returns into a parcel deposit box facility at any time of day for pick-up, instead of having to drop them off at a branch of the post office.
A method for depositing goods that an addressee wishes to return to a deliverer is known from DE 100 00 830 C2. The method provides for identifying the addressee at the parcel deposit box facility, after which he can deposit the shipment in a compartment of the system. The addressee also enters the address data of a deliverer who is authorized to have access. The deliverer subsequently identifies himself at the system and removes the shipment.

Method for delivering and retrieving return deliveries to and from an electronic parcel deposit box facility


The present invention provides a portable television receiver which comprises an antenna 4 for receiving waves of television broadcast, a transmitting-receiving circuit 12 for detecting the reception condition of the waves of television broadcast before recording, a display 21, a speaker 20, and a main control circuit 14. The main control circuit 14 judges whether the recording is permitted with reference to the detected result of the reception condition of waves of television broadcast. When the recording is not permitted, the message that the recording is not permitted is shown on the display 21, and the speaker 20 produces sound.

Portable telephones have been in wide use in recent years. The portable telephones used in recent years comprise the function of showing on a display an image photographed by a CCD (Charge Coupled Device) camera and the function of showing on a display an image downloaded from a Website on the Internet in addition to the telephone communication function and e-mail communication function. The portable telephone has made its display large in size. It appears feasible that the portable telephones are given the function of watching and recording television broadcast programs.
However, the portable telephones are carried by the users, so that the location of the user may lower the reception level of the wave of television broadcast. This will make it impossible to record the television broadcast program. In the case where such a situation occurs at the time of start of recording, the user can notice that such a situation occurs if the user watches a television broadcast program. However, if the user does not watch a program, the user cannot notice that such a situation occurs. The user is therefore required to perform the manipulation for the start of watching a program and to confirm whether the recording is permitted, and thereafter to perform the manipulation for the termination of watching the program, entailing the problem of cumbersomeness of a series of manipulation for confirming whether the recording is permitted.


A method for controlling forward lighting for a vehicle includes the steps of determining whether full forward lighting is required for the vehicle, and varying the forward lighting depending on whether full forward lighting is required.

Vehicles today commonly use forward lighting when initiated by a driver of the vehicle, for example during evening hours. However, use of forward lighting consumes energy, for example in the form of battery and/or electric energy. While use of forward lighting is important to operating vehicle under various conditions, such as during evening hours, it may be desirable to decrease energy consumption from the use of forward lighting for vehicles to the extent feasible. Certain vehicles today have automatic headlamps using an ambient light sensor to turn on lighting that help to decrease energy consumption when ambient light is high, for example during daylight hours. However, it may be advantageous to achieve further decreases in energy consumption, for example in situations in which ambient light is not high, for example during evening hours.
Accordingly, it is desirable to provide an improved method for controlling use of forward lighting for vehicles, for example that reduces energy consumption from the use of the forward lighting in situations in which ambient light is not high, for example during evening hours. It is also desirable to provide an improved program product for such controlling of forward lighting for vehicles. It is further desirable to provide an improved system for such controlling of forward lighting for vehicles. Furthermore, other desirable features and characteristics of the present invention will be apparent from the subsequent detailed description and the appended claims, taken in conjunction with the accompanying drawings and the foregoing technical field and background.

Methods and systems for controlling forward lighting for vehicles


A method and system are provided for delivering calling party notifications. An artificial intelligence software application located on an Intelligence Rules Server is operable to infer why a first call to a mobile station is not connected and predict when a second call to a mobile station is likely to be connected. The application communicates the inference and the prediction to a voice messaging system. The voice messaging system delivers a message to a calling party based on the inference and/or the prediction.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to mobile communications and, more particularly, to a method and system for delivering calling party notifications.
2. Description of Related Art
When a call is placed to a mobile station and the call is not connected, the calling party may receive a pre-recorded message that the called party is unavailable. Additionally, the calling party may receive a message providing the option of leaving a message in the called party's voice mail box. The calling party may then choose to leave a message or not.
In many circumstances, the calling party may urgently need to contact the called party. In this scenario, the calling party may call other telephone numbers associated with the called party, such as a home telephone number and a work telephone number. The calling party, if still unsuccessful, may call other parties, such as family members and friends, to locate the called party. Much time may pass before the calling party eventually contacts the called party.
The called party may have missed the call for a wide variety of reasons. The mobile station may be de-registered or dropped from the wireless network and be unable to receive calls. The called party may turn off the mobile station upon reaching a particular destination, at a particular time, upon boarding an airplane, or for other reasons. The mobile station may be dropped from the network for a variety of reasons as well, such as bad weather, a poor coverage area, and network problems. Additionally, the mobile station may have rung, but the called party may have opted to not answer the call.
In any event, the calling party does not know why the call was not connected. Additionally, the calling party does not know when the mobile station is likely to become available. If the calling party knew that a second call to the called party would likely be connected in a short amount of time, the calling party may try calling the mobile station again, instead of calling other telephone numbers associated with the called party or calling other parties. If the calling party knew that it would likely be awhile before a call to the mobile station is connected, the calling party may wait to place a second call to the mobile station and/or leave a voice mail message.

Method and system for delivering calling party notifications


In one embodiment, a method comprises creating, in a computing network, a loop-free routing topology comprising a plurality of routing arcs for reaching a destination network node, each routing arc comprising a first network node as a first end of the routing arc, a second network node as a second end of the routing arc, and at least a third network node configured for routing any network traffic along the routing arc toward the destination node via any one of the first or second ends of the routing arc, the loop-free routing topology providing first and second non-congruent paths; and forwarding bicasting data, comprising a data packet in a first direction from a network node and a bicasted copy of the data packet in a second direction from the network node, concurrently to the destination node respectively via the first and second non-congruent paths.

This section describes approaches that could be employed, but are not necessarily approaches that have been previously conceived or employed. Hence, unless explicitly specified otherwise, any approaches described in this section are not prior art to the claims in this application, and any approaches described in this section are not admitted to be prior art by inclusion in this section.
Bicasting is employed in industrial wireless applications where both reliability and timeliness of data traffic must be guaranteed. However, existing routing protocols are not well suited for bicasting applications. Existing routing protocols assume recalculation of routes can be performed in response to a detected failure (e.g., loss of a link or a connecting network node); however, recalculation of routes requires computation time that likely results in a loss of data traffic. One attempt to accelerate responding to a detected failure includes "Loop Free Alternates" (LFA), where a router can respond to losing a next hop router in a path to a destination node by identifying a feasible successor for reaching the destination node, as long as the feasible successor does not create a loop by sending the packet back to the router. The IETF Draft by Atlas, entitled "U-turn Alternates for IP/LDP Local Protection (draft-atlas-ip-local-protect-uturn-00.txt)", illustrates in FIG. 3 of the IETF Draft a network topology where LFA solutions can be provided for the network nodes N2, N4, and R3 to forward a data packet to the destination node D in the event of a failed link, however, LFA cannot provide any solutions for any of the network nodes N3, S, P, R1, or R2. The IETF Draft by Atlas proposed a "U-turn protocol" to reverse a link; however, the U-turn protocol cannot provide any solution for the nodes P, R1, or R2 of FIG. 3 in the event of a link failure.
Another proposed routing protocol, referred to as "Fast Local Rerouting for Handling Transient Link Failures" (FIR) requires a complete recalculation of routes in response to a link failure, and hence recalculation of routes requires computation time that likely results in a loss of data traffic.

This patent is subject to a terminal disclaimer.

Bicasting using non-congruent paths in a loop-free routing topology having routing arcs


A method for driving a plasma display panel in which radiation noise is reduced while preventing an erroneous discharge and a display quality can be improved. Either one of scanning pulses and sustaining pulses changes in its repetitive period between at least two sub-fields.

1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to a method for driving a plasma display panel (hereinafter, referred to as PDP) of a matrix display system.
2. Description of the Related Art
In recent years, a thin display apparatus has been requested in association with the increase in size of a display apparatus and various thin display apparatuses have been put into practical use. Attention is paid to an AC (alternating current discharge) type PDP as one type of the thin display apparatuses.
The PDP has a plurality of column electrodes (address electrodes) and a plurality of row electrodes arranged so as to intersect the column electrodes. Each of the row electrode pairs and the column electrodes are covered by a dielectric layer against a discharge space and have a structure such that a discharge cell corresponding to one pixel is formed at an intersecting point of the row electrode pair and the column electrode. Since the PDP provides a light emission display by using a discharge phenomenon, each of the discharge cells has only two states: a state where the light emission is performed and a state where it is not performed. A sub-field method is used to provide a halftone luminance display by the PDP. In the sub-field method, a display period of one field is divided into N sub-fields, a light emitting period having a duration period corresponding to a weight of each bit digit of the pixel data (N bits) is allocated every sub-field, and the light emission driving is performed.
FIG. 1 is a diagram showing a schematic construction of a plasma display apparatus for performing the halftone luminance display by using the sub-field method.
In FIG. 1, a driving apparatus 100 converts a supplied video signal into digital pixel data corresponding to each pixel, applies pixel data pulses corresponding to the pixel data to column electrodes D.sub.1 to D.sub.m of a PDP 10. The driving apparatus 100 applies various driving pulses as will be explained as follows to row electrodes X.sub.1 to X.sub.n and Y.sub.1 to Y.sub.n, thereby performing a light emission drive control. One pair of row electrodes X and Y constitutes one row of the PDP 10 and is formed so as to intersect each of the column electrodes D.sub.1 to D.sub.m. The column electrodes and the row electrode pairs are formed so as to sandwich a dielectric material (not shown). One pixel cell is formed in a portion where a set of column electrode and row electrode pair cross.
FIG. 2 is a diagram showing an example of a light emission driving format in one field period by the driving apparatus 100.
As shown in FIG. 2, the display period of one field is divided into four sub-fields SF1 to SF4. In each sub-field, an all-resetting step R.sub.c, a pixel data writing step W.sub.c, a light emission sustaining step I.sub.c, and an erasing step E are executed, respectively.
FIG. 3 is a timing diagram (in one sub-field) of various driving pulses which are applied at each step from the driving apparatus 100 to the column electrodes and row electrode pairs of the PDP 10, respectively.
First, in the all-resetting step R.sub.c, the driving apparatus 100 simultaneously applies a reset pulse RP.sub.x of a negative polarity and a reset pulse RP.sub.y of a positive polarity as shown in FIG. 3 to the row electrodes X.sub.1 to X.sub.n and Y.sub.1 to Y.sub.n, respectively. In response to the applied reset pulses RP.sub.X and RP.sub.Y, all of the discharge cells in the PDP 10 are reset-discharged and a predetermined amount of wall charges are uniformly formed in each discharge cell. All of the discharge cells, thus, are once initially set to "light emitting cells".
In the next pixel data writing step W.sub.c, the driving apparatus 100 sequentially applies a pixel data pulse group DP.sub.1 to DP.sub.n of each row to the column electrodes D.sub.1 to D.sub.m at a predetermined scanning pulse period T.sub.a as shown in FIG. 3. For example, in the pixel data writing step W.sub.c of the sub-field SF1, only the first bit is extracted from each of the input pixel data corresponding to each one of all of the discharge cells of the PDP 10 and the pixel data pulse group DP according to the logic level of the first bit is sequentially applied to the column electrodes D.sub.1 to D.sub.m every row. In the sub-field SF2, only the second bit is extracted from each of the input pixel data corresponding to each of all discharge cells of the PDP 10 and the pixel data pulse group DP according to the logic level of the second bit is sequentially applied to the column electrodes D.sub.1 to D.sub.m every row. Further, the driving apparatus 100 sequentially applies scanning pulses SP of a negative polarity as shown in FIG. 3 to the row electrodes Y.sub.1 to Y.sub.n at the scanning pulse period at the same timing as each applying timing of the pixel data pulse group DP. A discharge (selective erasure discharge) occurs in only the discharge cell in the intersecting portion of the "row" to which the scanning pulse SP was applied and the "column" to which the pixel data pulse of a high voltage was applied. The wall charges remaining in the discharge cell are selectively erased. By the selective erasure discharge, the discharge cell which was initialized to the state of the "light emitting cell" in the all-resetting step R.sub.c is shifted to the "non-light emitting cell". The selective erasure discharge is not caused in the discharge cell to which the pixel data pulse of a low voltage was applied simultaneously with the scanning pulse SP and the state where it is initialized in the all-resetting step, namely, the state of the "light emitting cell" is maintained. The driving apparatus 100 applies a priming pulse PP of a positive polarity as shown in FIG. 3 to the row electrodes Y.sub.1 to Y.sub.n just before each scanning pulse SP is applied to each row electrode Y. A priming discharge occurs every row in response to the priming pulse PP applied. By the priming discharge, the charged particles which were reduced with the elapse of time although they had been obtained by the all-resetting operation are again formed in the discharge space of the PDP 10. Since the scanning pulse SP is applied just after the charged particles were again formed, therefore, the selective erasure discharge is certainly caused and the erroneous writing of the pixel data is prevented.
In the light emission sustaining step I.sub.c, subsequently, the driving apparatus 100 repetitively applies a sustaining pulse IP.sub.X of a positive polarity as shown in FIG. 3 to the row electrodes X.sub.1 to X.sub.n at a predetermined sustaining pulse period T.sub.s. Further, the driving apparatus 100 repetitively applies a sustaining pulse IP.sub.Y of a positive polarity as shown in FIG. 3 to the row electrodes Y.sub.1 to Y.sub.n at the predetermined sustaining pulse period T.sub.s for a period of time during which the sustaining pulse IP.sub.X is not applied to the row electrodes X.sub.1 to X.sub.n. The number of times (period) of applying the sustaining pulses IP.sub.X and IP.sub.Y in each sub-field is set in correspondence to the weight of each sub-field.
For example, as shown in FIG. 2, the sustaining pulses IP.sub.X and IP.sub.Y are applied by only the number shown by the following ratios of the number of times (period) in each of the sub-fields SF1 to SF4.
SF1:1 PA1 SF2:2 PA1 SF3:4 PA1 SF4:8
After completion of the pixel data writing step W.sub.c, the discharge cells in which the wall charges remain, namely, only the "light emitting cells" discharge-emit the light each time the sustaining pulses IP.sub.X and IP.sub.Y are alternately applied. That is, in the pixel data writing step W.sub.c, only the discharge cells set to the "light emitting cells" repeat the flickering operation for only the number of times (period) as mentioned above and maintain the light emitting state.
In the erasing step E, subsequently, the driving apparatus 100 applies the erasing pulse EP as shown in FIG. 3 to the row electrodes X.sub.1 to X.sub.n , thereby allowing all of the discharge cells to be erasure-discharged at the same time and erasing the wall charges remaining in each discharge cell.
By executing the driving as shown in FIG. 3 mentioned above for each of the sub-fields SF1 to SF4 in FIG. 2, a halftone luminance display of 15 stages can be performed.
The driving method, however, has a problem in that a spectrum of radiation noise which is generated by the pulse train of the sustaining pulses IP.sub.X and IP.sub.Y is concentrated to a specific frequency, so that the radiation noise increase.
There is also a problem such that if the scanning pulse period T.sub.a and sustaining pulse period T.sub.s as shown in FIG. 3 are shortened to cope with various refreshing rates of the video signal, an erroneous discharge may occur.

Method for driving a plasma display panel


A print control method and device, wherein the method includes: monitoring a print system port, storing a print task at a preset memory address in the form of job file when the print task exists at the print system port; querying the memory address on schedule, determining the target job file when there is a job file storing at the memory address; querying the printer state, if the printer is idle, sending the target job file; when the printer is in a state of failure, feeding a failure state prompting information back. The solution queries the printer work state before the job file is sent, feeds the prompting information back when the printer occurs failure, detects the print process state of job files, and performs a processing for failure when a print fails. Through the solution, users can know the states of job files in time and missing or omitting of a job file is avoided.

At present, a job file is typically printed in a manner that host software utilizing a printer driver edits with text edit software (e.g., Microsoft Word, Notebook, etc.) and distributes a print task for printing on printer.
However, in the foregoing print manner, the host software can only monitor a status of a job processed by a host without detecting a communication status between the host and the printer or a status of the printer. Consequently, the host software may not know a failure of communication between the host and the printer or a failure of the printer. Especially, when the host software distributes the job file to the printer over a network, the job file would easily be missed or incomplete if the network or the printer is not under supervision. In the catering industry, for example, a menu customized at the foreground for a consumer is transmitted through host software to a printer at a background kitchen for printing, and a cooker prepares a dish according to the printed menu. However, no job file can be printed in case of a data loss resulting from a failure of a communication line between a host and the printer or a failure of the printer (due to a paper jam or ticket paper being exhausted, for example). The host unable to know this condition may deem completion of printing by default, but actually the background cooker has not received the menu distributed from the foreground, thus failing to cater to the consumer duly.

Shandong New Beiyang Information Technology Co., Ltd.


A tilt indicator includes a plurality of compartments with one or more compartments having an indicator inside. An exit from each compartment permits one or more indicators to leave. As the degree of tilt increases, the absence of an indicator in one or more compartments will indicate the degree of tilt.

This invention relates generally to devices for indicating that goods packed in containers or otherwise have been tilted during transportation. More specifically it relates to improvements in such devices.
Devices for indicating that goods that are being transported whether for movement in a plant or other facility or for shipment from one geographical location to another are of course known in the art. However, those with which the applicant herein is familiar are all designed to provide an indication when a single amount of tilt (degrees from the vertical) has occurred. However, different goods may tolerate different angles of tilt and an assortment of indicators may be necessary. For instance different indicators for 20, 30, 50 or 60 permissible degrees of tilt may have to be made available in order to accommodate a variety of needs. As can be appreciated if excessive tilt is indicated then of course the goods have been improperly handled by the transporter and possibly have been damaged.
Therefore it is an object of this invention to provide a novel tilt indicator capable of indicating not only that goods in transport have been tilted but also the degree or amount of tilt so that a single indicator can be used on a variety of goods each having different permissible angles of tilt.
It is another object of this invention to provide a novel tilt indicator which can be constructed in a variety of ways to provide an indication of the degree or amount of tilt of a package containing goods in transport.
A still further object of this invention is to provide a novel tilt indicator which can be made using relatively inexpensive materials so as to be disposable after use.
Yet another object of this invention is to provide a novel tilt indicator that can easily be attached to goods in transport or to packages containing such goods.