An electrode material is created by forming a thin coating or small deposits of metal oxide as an intercalation host on a carbon powder. The carbon powder performs a role in the synthesis of the oxide coating, in providing a three-dimensional, electronically conductive substrate supporting the metal oxide, and as an energy storage contribution material through ion adsorption or intercalation. The metal oxide includes one or more metal oxides. The electrode material, a process for producing said electrode material, an electrochemical capacitor and an electrochemical secondary (rechargeable) battery using said electrode material is disclosed.

Electrochemical capacitors (referred to as ultracapacitors or supercapacitors) are devices that use electrolytes that contain and conduct ions in conjunction with electrodes that are ionically and electronically conductive, as a system to store energy. Unlike batteries, which store charge within the bulk electrode material itself, ECs store charge at or near the interface between the electrolyte and electrode material making EC storage a surface phenomenon. EC devices store charge via one of two mechanisms: electric "double-layer" or faradaic "pseudocapacitance". Alternatively, intercalation materials typical of secondary lithium ion batteries can be combined with materials exhibiting one or more of these aforementioned storage mechanisms as a way to increase the amount of energy stored.
Electric double layer capacitors (EDLCs) store charge at the interface between the ion-rich electrolyte and an electronically conductive electrode comprising material such as activated carbon (AC). The amount of charge stored is a function of this interfacial area, which is in turn related to the electrode surface area accessible by the electrolyte-solvated ions. AC electrodes typically have surface areas between 1000 and 3000 m2/g achieved by a high concentration of micropores (pore diameter<2 nm). This concentration of micropores paradoxically serves to limit the capacitance to a range between 15 and 30 uF/cm2 because micropores are too small to accommodate the solvated ions necessary for the double layer mechanism. AC electrodes are typically fabricated as films formed from a paste comprising powdered AC, binder and conductivity-enhancing carbon. While the accessibility of the electrolyte to much of the surface area of such an electrode is limited, thus limiting the electrode capacitance and ultimately device energy density, the micropore geometries also serve to limit electrode charge/discharge rates and ultimately limit device power density.
Pseudocapacitance involves electron transfer in oxidation/reduction reactions that take place between the electrolyte ions and the electrode active materials over a voltage range similar to that of the EDLC. Electrode active materials being researched for this type of behavior include graphitic carbons, conductive polymers and transition metal oxides.
Transition metal oxides exhibit characteristics both desirable and otherwise for EC devices. In general, these oxides exhibit improved specific capacitance vs. carbon materials, but they typically do so at a monetary cost or at the expense of cycle life and power density. As an example of the former, the specific capacitance of hydrous ruthenium oxide has been demonstrated to be higher than 700 F/g, which is far greater than any known carbon EDLC. However, the cost and lack of abundant supply of the ruthenium materials prohibit broad commercial use.
Lower cost, plentiful transition metal oxides such as manganese oxide, nickel oxide and others have been investigated and in some cases commercialized. The specific capacitance of these materials ranges from approximately 200 F/g for powder/paste derived thick films (tens of microns to hundreds of microns) to more than 500 F/g for very thin planar films of less than 100 nanometers. This difference in capacitance (and ultimately energy density) demonstrates the surface nature of the pseudocapacitance charge storage mechanism. However, power density also is limited by the surface nature of pseudocapacitance as the longer ion diffusion length of thicker material serves to reduce reaction rate. The power density of electrodes using these oxides is further limited by the very low intrinsic electronic conductivity of these materials. These oxides also exhibit limited cycle stability and operating voltage ranges limited to approximately 0.8 volts.
Metal oxide paste-derived electrodes combine the powdered metal oxide with a binder and conductivity-enhancing carbon similar to the EDLC activated carbon electrode. The resulting electrode is limited by the characteristics noted above and also the lack of surface area readily accessible to the electrolyte. The limited pore volume also impedes ion flow to the inner electrode surfaces further limiting the pseudocapacitance reaction rate.
EC devices employing a metal oxide thick film configure their systems in such a way so as to use the oxide-based electrode as a largely static energy storage element creating an offset voltage from which a carbon electrode only is cycled through charge and discharge. This configuration is known in the art as an asymmetric EC.
As a way of using pseudocapacitance to increase device energy, U.S. Pat. No. 6,339,528 discloses the synthesis of an layered, amorphous phase manganese oxide containing potassium ions on a carbon powder, which is then ground to form a paste used with a binder to form an electrode for an aqueous-only ultracapacitor cell. Others have suggested similarly coating carbon nanotubes with amorphous manganese oxide subsequently mixing the coated nanotubes with a binder to form an EC electrode. While each of these approaches offer improved rate performance resulting from the reduced ion diffusion length vs. the simple oxide paste electrodes, the increase in stored energy is limited by the pseudocapacitance charge storage mechanism provided by the amorphous oxides used.
Long et al. (see for example, 20080247118; 20080248192; and 20100176767) have proposed an approach for addressing these shortcomings by applying a very thin coating of poorly crystalline MnO2 or iron oxide to a carbon structure. In doing so, the high capacitance and fast reaction rate of the thin film approach is preserved. Further, the 3-dimensional carbon structure provides a low (electronic) resistance path to the current collector and an open porosity providing much improved electrolyte ion access to the MnO2 or iron oxide active material. The synthesis approach suggested by Long involves the reduction of permanganate or potassium ferrate(VI) on the surface of the carbon. This takes place as the coating is deposited utilizing the carbon as a sacrificial reductant to synthesize the oxide. The oxide deposition method suggested by Long results in a conformal coating of the carbon structure. Again, the oxides formed in these cases are of the amorphous variety, providing pseudocapacitive behavior which produces less energy storage capacity than intercalation materials typically provide.
While the previously discussed improvements in EC technology are highly significant, there remains a need in the art for EC devices and therefore EC electrodes having expanded operating voltage range and increased the storage capacity while also exhibiting high power density.
Lithium ion secondary batteries operate through the intercalation/de-intercalation of lithium ions into and out of the solid bulk electrode materials. Today's lithium ion electrode materials typically comprise a graphite-based anode and a transition metal oxide (typically cobalt, nickel or manganese) cathode. During the charging cycle, electrons are removed from the cathode, which causes charge-compensating lithium ions to be released into and dissolved in the electrolyte where they migrate towards the anode; while electrons are simultaneously added to the anode causing lithium ions to be inserted into the anode. The opposite occurs during discharge.
Ion insertion (diffusion) into the bulk oxide cathode material takes place in vacancies present in the oxides. The rate of this process is affected by the diffusion length and the accessibility of the electrolyte to the oxide. This rate in turn affects the instantaneous power capability of the battery.
The fabrication method of these electrodes relies on powdered active materials formed into a paste including binder material and (electronic) conductivity enhancing carbon. The thickness of these cathodes ranges from 30 micrometers for high power (low energy) batteries to 200 micrometers for high-energy (low power) versions. Typical oxide powder particle sizes vary from hundreds of nanometers to a few micrometers in diameter. Lithium ions diffuse as much as a few microns into the bulk oxide particle. The charge-compensating electrons from the oxide must then traverse the low-conductivity oxide and electrolyte to complete the circuit.
Ion diffusion into the solid-state electrode particles induces mechanical stress on the oxide crystal lattice as it expands to accommodate the ion insertion. These expansion/contraction cycles cause the eventual breakdown of the oxide limiting device cycle life. It is therefore preferable for the diffusion into the oxide to be as shallow as possible and to choose ion/oxide systems that exhibit minimal expansion.
While the previously discussed improvements in secondary battery technology are highly significant, there remains a need in the art for secondary battery devices and therefore secondary battery electrodes having improved cycle life, shorter recharge time and generally increased usable storage capacity at elevated power levels.

Nanoscale intercalation materials on carbon powder, process for production, and use thereof


A viscous fluid fan clutch assembly for a vehicle includes an internally-mounted pump plate for separating a working chamber from a reservoir. A plurality of discharge orifices are provided in the pump plate to permit the return of fluid from a pumping chamber to the reservoir. A fluid discharge channel is provided for each discharge orifice to receive fluid exiting the pumping chamber and to direct the fluid to an inner portion of the reservoir. A check valve is provided at the discharge channel to prevent the flowback of fluid from the reservoir to the discharge channel, particularly when the clutch assembly is not in operation.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to a viscous fluid coupling device In particular, the present invention is concerned with an anti-flowback check valve for a viscous fluid clutch.
2. Statement of the Related Art
A thermostatically-controlled viscous fluid clutch assembly for driving and rotating a vehicle cooling fan is well-known. A multi-bladed fan is removably secured to a body of the clutch assembly. The fan and clutch assembly are installed between an accessory pulley of a vehicle engine (typically the water pump pulley) and a radiator. The clutch assembly drives the fan at high speeds close to input speed when cooling is required and permits the fan to rotate at low speeds when cooling is not required. Thermostatic control of the fan through the clutch assembly reduces the airflow noise caused by fan rotation and the load of an engine, resulting in horsepower gain and improved fuel economy.
Generally, a clutch plate, housed within the clutch assembly, having lands and grooves is mated to the body having complementary lands and grooves. A pump plate divides the assembly into a pair of internally-contained chambers, a working chamber and a reservoir. Gates in the pump plate permit selective flow of a viscous fluid from the reservoir to the working chamber and into a shear zone between the lands and grooves of the body and clutch plate. Fluid shear in the lands and grooves transfers input torque from the clutch plate to drive the body and the attached fan.
When cooling is not required, gates in the pump plate are closed and the fluid in the shear zone is pumped into a pumping chamber. Orifices in the pump plate permit passage of the fluid from the pumping chamber into the reservoir. The removal of a majority of the fluid from the shear zone substantially reduces the shear between the clutch plate and the body, thereby substantially reducing the rotation of the fan.
When an engine is not running, fluid in the reservoir may settle at an equilibrium level in a conventional clutch assembly. Fluid pressure may cause the migration of fluid from the reservoir into the pumping chamber through the pump plate orifices and into the shear zone. When an engine is next started, fluid that has migrated into the shear zone results in annoying high-speed operation of the fan. Such high-speed operation creates unwanted airflow noise from the fan blades. Also, excessive rotation of the fan of a cold engine increases the engine warm-up period.
The art continues to seek improvements. It is desirable that a viscous fluid clutch assembly provide thermostatic operation of a fan when cooling is required. Furthermore, it is desirable that a clutch assembly prevent the migration of fluid from a reservoir to the shear zone when the engine is not in operation, thereby eliminating high-speed operation and unwanted airflow noise when a cold engine is started.

Anti-flowback check valve for a viscous fluid clutch


A hard-decision (HD) forward error correcting (FEC) coded signal is decoded by a decoder to produce decoded bits using marked reliable bits of the HD-FEC coded signal and marked unreliable bits of the HD-FEC coded signal. The marked reliable and unreliable bits are computed by calculation and marking blocks based on an absolute value of log-likelihood ratios of the HD-FEC coded signal. The HD-FEC coded signal may be, for example, a staircase code coded signal or a product code coded signal.

Forward error correction (FEC) is a technique that inserts redundancy in a signal that allows a decoder to correct errors in the received signal. It is used, for example, in optical communication systems to meet the ever increasing data demands in optical transport networks (OTNs). FEC codes that can boost the net coding gain (NCG) are of key importance. Examples of important FEC codes are Reed-Solomon (RS) codes and Bose-Chaudhuri-Hocquenghem (BCH) codes, which have variants defined by parameters. BCH codes are denoted as BCH(nc, kc, t), where nc, kc, and t denote the codeword length, information length, and error-correcting capability, respectively. In order to increase transmission data rate and distance, super FECs have been developed that use two concatenated FEC codes, such as BCH(3860, 3824, 3)+BCH(2040, 1930, 10) codes, RS(1023, 1007)+BCH(2047, 1952, 8) codes, etc. Despite these improvements, FEC codes with higher NCG are needed.
Although soft-decision (SD) FEC codes provide large NCGs, they are not the best candidates for very high data rate applications due to their high power consumption and decoding latency. For applications with strict latency and complexity requirements (e.g., short reach), simple but powerful hard-decision (HD) FEC codes, e.g., product codes (PCs) and staircase codes (SCCs), are promising. Staircase codes (SCCs) are popular low-complexity high-performance forward error correcting codes. As the optical transport networks (OTNs) move forward for 400 Gb/s and beyond data rates, simple but powerful SCCs have attracted much attention. Improving the decoding performance of SCCs is the focus of attention for many researchers and companies.
Both SCCs and PCs are based on simple component codes, BCH codes being the most popular ones. The decoding is done iteratively based on bounded-distance decoding (BDD) for the component codes.
Although simple to implement, one drawback of BDD is that its error-correcting capability is limited to t=[(d0−1)/2], where d0 is the minimum Hamming distance (MHD) of the component code. BDD can detect more than t errors, but cannot correct them. In some cases, BDD may also erroneously decode a received sequence with more than t errors, a situation known as a miscorrection. Miscorrections are known to degrade the performance of iterative BDD. To prevent miscorrections and/or extend the error correcting capability, several methods have been studied in the literature. In what follows we review those methods.
One known approach to preventing miscorrections in SCCs is rejecting bit-flips from the decoding of bit sequences associated with the last SCC block if they conflict with a zero-syndrome codeword from the previous block. The obtained gains of this approach, however, are expected to be limited. Another known approach is an anchor-based decoding algorithm, where some bit sequences are labeled as anchor codewords. These sequences are considered to have been decoded without miscorrections. Decoding results that are inconsistent with anchor codewords are discarded. Although this algorithm works well with both SCCs and PCs, it suffers from an increased complexity as anchor codewords need to be tracked during iterative BDD. In another approach, a modified iterative BDD for PCs uses channel reliabilities to perform the final HD at the output of BDD, instead of directly accepting the decoding result. Large gains are obtained, but it requires additional memory (and processing) as all the soft information needs to be saved. This proposal was later simplified to only require 1-bit additional reliability memory with minor performance degradation. Later on, the component BDD decoder was replaced by generalized minimum distance decoding, which treats bits with least reliability as erasures, to obtain more gains. Furthermore, Hamming distance has taken the place of generalized distance to avoid the exchange of soft information in the decoding process and reduce the internal decoder data flow.
In one known approach to extend error correcting capability, three kinds of algorithms are used to decode block codes with channel soft information. In this class of algorithm, each bit is accompanied with a confidence value, according to the soft information. During the decoding, the algorithms will generate a sequence of test patterns first, then decode all of them and choose the decoding result with lowest analog weight as the final output. Using this technique, the error correcting capability can be extended from [(d0−1)/2] to d0−1. The main drawback of these three algorithms is that the decoder needs to decode at least [(d0/2)+1] test patterns even though not all of them are necessary. This significantly increases the decoding complexity and latency.


In a computer windowing operating environment: a method, apparatus, and program product to select the appropriate window controller corresponding the motion of the window cursor. A user will activate a first window controller by clicking on a mouse or other input means and then may drag the window cursor/arrow some distance across the window. In accordance with features of the invention, the original position and the motion of the cursor/arrow are recorded. If the motion is inconsistent with the first controller associated with the original position of the cursor/arrow, a next controller is selected and evaluated as controlling a function consistent with the motion. The process is repeated until a controller within a threshold distance of the original position accepts the motion as being consistent with its functions. Data of the original position and the cursor/arrow motion is passed to the accepted window controller and that window controller then assumes control of the window.

This invention relates generally to computers and computer software and more particularly relates to differentiating an intended movement when moving a cursor in a windows user interface environment.
A very common interface for a user to interact with her/his computer system is the windows environment. Prior to windows, a user would interact with a computer by typing and entering text, as in the DOS systems of years ago. Now windows, first developed at Xerox PARC, have become ubiquitous. A window is usually a rectangle or square that is displayed on the computer screen or monitor in which the functions of a software program are contained within the boundaries of the rectangle/square. The window may contain text, images, and other content and a user will select a specific function or feature of the program by moving a mouse or other pointer device which in turns moves a cursor, an arrow, or other visual display across the window. More than one window may be open at a time which means that more than one software application may be executing or waiting for input/output; also an application itself may have several layers of windowing. Using multiple open windows, a user can efficiently view and/or operate on the content contained in each window. For example, a first window may provide an interface for a word processing document while a second window may contain another word processing document or a spreadsheet or a presentation being developed by other software; a third window may contain an Internet browser and a fourth window may have the interface for an electronic mail program, etc. Thus, the user can view the content in any of the windows while simultaneously acting out functions associated with any other window. Windows may be stacked one on top of the other or windows may be minimized which means the application is open in the background but the window itself is only visible in a task bar which frames part of all of a display.
An experienced windows user frequently opens and closes and resizes many windows during her/his session of resizing multiple windows. What actually happens sometimes, is that the user may have moved the cursor to the edge of a scroll bar and vertically move the cursor along the edge intending to scroll the contents of the window but instead the user accidentally activates the resize controller instead of the scroll bar. Alternatively, the opposite can happen. A user may wish to resize the window but the computer mistakenly interprets the cursor/arrow motion to scroll through the content of a window.
There is thus a need in the industry to differentiate between windowing events especially when the event occurs in close proximity to two or more windowing functions.
These needs and others that will become apparent to one skilled in the art are satisfied by a method to select a window controller when a user is moving a cursor/screen arrow in a computer window display having at least one window, the method comprising the steps of moving the cursor/screen arrow to an original position; activating a first controller; moving the cursor/arrow in a direction inconsistent with a function controlled by the first controller; activating the next nearest controller; determining if the direction of motion of the cursor/arrow is consistent with a function of the next nearest controller; and repeating the steps of activating the next nearest controller and determining if the direction of motion of the cursor/arrow is consistent with that controller until the direction of motion of the cursor/arrow is consistent with a function of the next nearest controller; and selecting the next nearest controller to control the at least one window.
The inventive method may further comprise saving the original position of the cursor/arrow when the first controller was activated; and saving the time and/or movement of the cursor/arrow during the step of moving the cursor/arrow in a direction inconsistent with a function controlled by the first controller. The method may also comprise the step of determining if the next nearest controller is within a threshold distance of the original position. In addition, the method may comprise the steps of passing the original position and saved time and/or movement to the next nearest controller; and displacing the original position as if it were just within the boundary of the next nearest controller nearest to the original position. The method may also comprise the step of clearing the original position and the saved time and/or movement data before the step of activating the next nearest controller. If the motion of the cursor/arrow is not consistent with a function of any next nearest controller, the method may comprise selecting the first controller to control the at least one window.
The invention may also be considered an apparatus to control a computer window display environment comprising a microprocessor; a semiconductor memory connected to the microprocessor; a computer output display capable of displaying at least one window having a pointer on the display; a computer input device to control the motion of the pointer on the display and to activate at least one function of the window; an operating system having a window manager to manage the computer window display environment; a position recorder to record the original position of the pointer when a user activates at least one function of the window with the computer input device; a movement recorder to record the movement of the pointer when the user moves the pointer across the window with the computer input device; a motion evaluator to evaluate the movement of the pointer; and a window controller selector to select a second or subsequent window controller when the movement of the pointer is not consistent with a first window controller corresponding to the original position.
The invention is also a program product for use with a computer operating system having a windowing display environment, the program product comprising a signal-bearing medium carrying thereon a window controller selector further comprising a cursor/arrow position detector which detects the original position of a cursor/arrow on a window; a movement recorder to track the motion of the cursor/arrow on a window; a window controller selector choosing a first of a plurality of window controllers, the first window controller corresponding to the original position of the cursor/arrow; a movement/controller discriminator discerning whether the motion of the cursor/arrow is consistent with one of the plurality of selected window controllers and, if not, the window controller selector chooses the next nearest window controller not previously selected but still within a threshold distance of the original position; but if the movement/controller discriminator did discern that the motion of the cursor/arrow was consistent with one of the selected window controller, a window manager passes data from the cursor/arrow position detector and the movement recorder to the next window controller.
The invention may also be an apparatus to select a window controller in a computer windowing interface display, comprising means to display at least one window having a cursor/arrow; means to activate one of a plurality of functions associated with the at least one window; means to select the first controller associated with a position of the cursor/arrow on the at least one window; means to determine that a movement of the cursor/arrow is not consistent with a function of the first controller; means to select the next nearest controller within a threshold distance to an original position of the cursor/arrow on the at least one window; means to determine if the movement of the cursor/arrow is consistent with a function of the next nearest controller; if so, the apparatus further comprises means for the next nearest controller to control the window. The apparatus may further comprise means to repeat the function associated with the means to select the next nearest controller within a threshold distance to an original position of the cursor/arrow on the at least one window and the means to determine if the movement of the cursor/arrow is consistent with a function of the next nearest controller if the movement of the cursor/arrow is not consistent with a function of the next nearest controller until no next nearest controller within the threshold distance of the original position of the cursor/arrow has a function consistent with the movement of the cursor/arrow; and a means to default control of the window to the first controller.

Automatic determination of nearest window controller having a function consistent with motion of cursor

International Business Machines Corporation


A medical stabilization device that directs medical tubing onto a compressible foam block where it is attached and stabilized to the patient's body allowing it to be secured against excessive movement, tube dislodgement and positioned in a time efficient manner to prevent obstruction of patient treatment.

During surgery of the head and neck existing methods of securing nasotracheal tubing can be a hindrance to the surgeon, either obstructing access to or blocking a clear view of the surgical area. One of the methods used to direct the nasotracheal tubing away from the surgical area is to secure the tubing to the patient's head using operating room tape. This method results in a number of problems. It is difficult to readjust placement of the tape, difficult to remove the tape, and the patient's hair is pulled out when the tape is removed.
Another method is to place a towel between the nasotracheal tubing and the forehead. This method does not provide adequate support to stabilize the tubing if it is inadvertently contacted during surgery, and may result in an accidental extubation.
Another method involves custom cutting a piece of foam, however this is time consuming and non-standardized. The performance of this method is variable depending on the nature of the foam and on how well the foam is fashioned into a cushion for the tubing in each instance. The raw edges created by the cuts also impose a hazard of microscopic flecks of foam being dispersed and potentially contaminating the surgical area.
Accordingly, prior to the development of the present invention, positioning the nasotracheal tubing securely away from the surgical area has been laborious and lacking in predictable stability. Most importantly, other methods do not adequately prevent accidental extubation. The present invention solves the problems of the current methods in practice by implementing a substantially U-shaped foam block which provides a conduit onto which a nasotracheal tubing can be attached to keep the tubing stabilized and the surgical area of the face, neck, jaws, or oral area unobstructed. The foam block, or medical tubing stabilization device, may be retained to a flexible band that wraps around the head.


A weight bench having a slidable seat construction includes a two piece slidable bench which is pivotally connected to the frame of a weight bench. A sleeve, designed to travel along a frame member, supports the seat portion of the bench at a pivotal attachment and by an angle adjusting bracket mechanism. A back rest portion of the bench is pivotally attached at one end thereof to the sleeve. The other end is connected to the frame by a support which is pivotally attached to both to the frame and the underside of the back rest portion. The sleeve is lockable in a given position along the length of the frame member providing support therefor. Sliding movement of the bench produces simultaneous adjustment of the inclination of the back rest due to the double pivotal attachment of the support. The sliding seat assembly is particularly adapted for weight benches having uprights with barbell supports.

In the prior art, various types of weight benches with ancillary devices have been proposed to facilitate different types of weight lifting exercises. Typically, the weight bench includes a frame with upstanding legs to support a barbell. The frame also includes a bench to support an exerciser and, optionally, a removable leg lift unit.
The prior art has also proposed various adjustable bench assemblies to provide flexibility for the types of exercises adaptable for a given weight bench. U.S. Pat. No. 4,765,616 to Wolff discloses an adjustable workout bench including a laterally extending frame member that supports a bench. The back rest of the bench is supported by a cross member extending between the upstanding legs of the weight bench.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,936,572 to Desiderio teaches a seat support bracket for an exercising bench comprising a pivotally mounted inverted U-shaped bracket serving as a prop beneath the front of a bench press seat and movable through a pivotal traverse.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,653,751 to Green teaches a heavy duty multi-function exercise bench providing a manually operable, double adjustable, reversible, tiltable and sliding seat configuration. The seat includes a dual foam seat construction and manually operable angled locking pins for adjusting certain benchseat positions.
Drawbacks associated with these types of prior art weight benches include cumbersome or difficult adjustment features. For example, when an exerciser wishes to change to a different exercise routine, the tedious adjustment required for prior art weight benches interrupts the exercise routine.
In response to these deficiencies in prior art weight benches, a need has developed to provide an improved weight bench which provides a more flexible and efficient construction for adjustment of weight bench components, in particular, the weight bench seat. The present invention provides an improved weight bench with a slidable bench assembly overcoming the aforementioned disadvantages in the prior art.

Weight bench with slidable seat construction


A wall molding for a panel suspended ceiling having a vertical leg that is attached to a wall, and a horizontal ledge that supports a beam extending outwardly from the wall, with the ledge having a pair of tabs and a ratchet tooth lanced from the ledge at regular intervals along the ledge that position and secure the beam end to the ledge. A cap extends over the bottom side of the ledge to hide the lanced tabs when viewed from below.

(1) Field of the Invention
The invention relates to suspended panel ceilings, and more particularly to a wall molding that supports the ends of the beams that abut the walls surrounding such ceilings.
(2) The Prior Art
The prior art includes suspended panel ceilings of a general construction and such suspended ceilings that also conform to seismic requirements.
a. Suspended Panel Ceilings of a General Construction
Panel suspended ceilings use spaced beams to support panels on flanges of the beams. The beams are rollformed from a strip of steel into an inverted T cross section with a bulb at the top, a web, and flanges extending horizontally from the bottom of the web. Generally, a bottom cover or cap extends over the bottom of the flanges, and then upward and inwardly along the edges of the flanges to form hems that secure the cap to the flanges. Main and cross beams are generally interconnected to form a grid having rectangular 2′×2′ or 2′×4′ openings for the panels. The beams are usually suspended with hanger wires embedded in a structural ceiling. The ends of the beams that abut the walls around the ceiling rest on ledges of angled wall moldings. The ledges of the wall moldings also support the panels along the walls.
At times, in short spans of ceiling of up to, for instance, 7 feet, as in the direction across a corridor, the beams that extend across the corridor may be supported only at their ends, on the ledges of the wall molding, without hanger wires. There may be 2 ft. long interconnected cross beams in a direction lengthwise of such corridor.
In prior art panel suspended ceilings that do not conform to any seismic code, there has generally been no fixed connection between the end of a beam and the ledge of the wall molding, since the beam merely rests on the ledge.
b. Such Suspended Panel Ceilings that Also Conform to Seismic Requirements
In suspended panel ceilings in the prior art that conform to seismic requirements, means are used to prevent the ends of the beams resting on the wall moldings from shaking off the molding during an earthquake, so that the panels in the ceilings do not fall.
Such means include stabilizer bars that run along the wall molding to keep the ends of the beams from shaking in a direction parallel to the wall, and perimeter clips on the beams which keep the ends of the beams from shaking off the molding in a direction away from the wall. Two-inch wide ledges on the wall moldings may also be used in accordance with seismic requirements, instead of perimeter clips, to prevent the ends of the beams resting on the wall molding from falling off the ledge, away from the wall, during a quake.


Polarization-diverse optical devices and related methods are disclosed. In some embodiments, these devices and methods are realized by utilizing a four-port, wavelength-dependent optical coupler that is arranged to receive identical counter-propagating optical signals.

Light can be described as an electromagnetic wave that consists of periodically-varying electric "E" and magnetic "M" fields oriented at right angles to each other. Light propagates in certain intensity patterns, which are referred to as "modes." One such mode is the "transverse" mode. Transverse modes occur because of boundary conditions imposed on a light wave by a waveguide. Transverse modes are classified into different types:                TE modes (Transverse Electric) have no electric field in the direction of propagation;        TM modes (Transverse Magnetic) have no magnetic field in the direction of propagation;        TEM modes (Transverse Electromagnetic) have no electric nor magnetic field in the direction of propagation; and        Hybrid modes are those which have both electric and magnetic field components in the direction of propagation.Light traveling in an optical fiber or other dielectric waveguide forms hybrid-type modes.
Waveguides are never perfectly symmetric, nor are the forces that affect the waveguide applied in perfect symmetry around it. Any asymmetry in a waveguide, especially a single-mode waveguide, can cause differences in the manner in which polarization modes propagate through the waveguide. More particularly, due to waveguide asymmetries, the TE and TM polarization modes might experience somewhat different propagation conditions such that they: (1) travel along the waveguide at slightly different speeds and (2) experience differing amounts of attenuation. The former effect, which results in "polarization mode dispersion," causes a spreading of an optical pulse that can render it unreadable at a detector. The latter effect, known as "polarization-dependent loss," results in signal losses. Both of these problems can degrade the operation of high-performance, high-speed optical systems. For such applications, it is therefore desirable to produce optical components and systems that are effectively insensitive to polarization mode, a quality referred to herein as "polarization independence."
Polarization independence is discussed further below in the context of ring resonators.
Ring Resonators. An integrated ring resonator is a potentially very important optical device primarily for use in optical communications systems. The integrated ring resonator is seen as a promising replacement for Mach-Zehnder interferometer ("MZI")-based devices, among other devices, which are used to form optical "components" such as filters, routers, switches, and the like. The integrated ring resonator consists of a closed-loop waveguide and one, or more typically two, linear waveguides. Certain frequencies of light resonate within the loop waveguide and, as a consequence of resonator geometry, resonant light couples between the loop waveguide and the linear waveguides. The ring resonator therefore effectively functions as a highly-selective wavelength-dependent optical coupler. A device that is functionally identical to the ring resonator is the disk resonator. The difference is that rather than incorporating a ring or loop waveguide, the disk resonator includes a solid disk waveguide.
In most implementations, light energy is coupled into and out of the micro-resonator's loop waveguide via evanescent field coupling. An evanescent optical field is the portion of the optical field of guided light that extends beyond the physical surface of a waveguide. In this coupling mode, the loop waveguide is placed in close proximity to both of the linear waveguides. All of the light at the resonant wavelength is eventually transferred from one linear waveguide to the other linear waveguide. Light within a linear waveguide that is off-resonance (i.e., not at the resonance wavelength) bypasses the loop with only a small transmission loss.
Prior-Art Resonator 100. FIG. 1A depicts a typical integrated ring resonator 100, which consists of two linear waveguides 102 and 104, and a third waveguide 106 in the form of a closed loop (hereinafter "loop waveguide 106"). The loop is typically circular, oval or elliptical, but can alternatively have an arbitrarily curved circumference in the form of a distorted ring. The linear waveguides are usually termed "port waveguides" or "waveguide buses;" the former phrase will be used herein.
Integrated ring resonators are fabricated in two geometries: "laterally coupled" and "vertically-coupled." Resonator 100 of FIG. 1A is an example of a laterally-coupled resonator. The designation "laterally coupled" refers to the fact that port waveguides 102 and 104 are in the plane of loop waveguide 106. In a vertically-coupled resonator, the port waveguides 102 and 104 are situated either both above, both below, or one above and one below loop 106 (see, FIG. 1B). Each of these two basic geometries has well-understood advantages and drawbacks.
Structure of Resonator 100. FIG. 2 depicts a schematic representation of prior-art resonator 100. As depicted in FIG. 2, resonator 100 has four ports: input port 202A and pass port 202B defined on port waveguide 102 and add port 204A and drop port 204B defined on port waveguide 104.
A portion of each of port waveguides 102 and 104 is adjacent and tangential (i.e., in the direction of a tangent) to loop waveguide 106. At this portion of the port waveguides, they are separated from loop waveguide 106 by gap G. In some embodiments, this gap is filled with air or one or more materials having a refractive index that is higher than air.
In some alternative implementations (not depicted), respective portions of each of waveguides 102 and 104 that are adjacent to loop waveguide 106 are not tangential thereto; rather, they curve around a portion of loop waveguide 106 to increase the interaction length (for coupling). In some further implementations, a vertically-coupled ring resonator includes port waveguides that are disposed orthogonally to one another (see, e.g., U.S. Pat. No. 6,411,752).
Operation of Resonator 100. Certain wavelengths of light resonate within loop waveguide 106 as a function of loop characteristics. Consider a multi-wavelength optical signal propagating in port waveguide 102 past input port 202A. Light that has a wavelength that is off-resonance with loop waveguide 106 bypasses the loop and is output from pass port 202B of port waveguide 102. Light that has a wavelength that is on-resonance couples to loop waveguide 106 via evanescent field coupling.
The on-resonance light that is coupled from port waveguide 102 propagates in loop waveguide 106 and couples to port waveguide 104 via evanescent field coupling. The light that is coupled into port waveguide 104 propagates in a direction opposite to the light traveling in port waveguide 102 due to the respective orientations of the various waveguides. As a consequence, the resonant light coupled to port waveguide 104 from port waveguide 102 via loop waveguide 106 will be output from drop port 204B. This resonant light will be joined by off-resonance light that propagates along waveguide 104 from add port 204A.
In analogous fashion, on-resonance light traveling in port waveguide 104 via add-port 204A couples to loop waveguide 106. That light couples to port waveguide 102 and propagates through pass-port 202B, along with off-resonant light from input port 202A. Resonator 100 is operated so that light propagates unidirectionally—in this example in a counterclockwise direction—through loop waveguide 106.
Design Considerations for Resonator 100 It is desirable for resonator 100 to be very small so that: (i) its free spectral range is large and (ii) it occupies very little physical space, thereby enabling large-scale integration. In fact, a typical ring resonator has a diameter that is only one or two orders of magnitude greater than its operating wavelength. So, for a telecommunications application having an operating wavelength of about 1.55 microns, loop diameter is usually in the range of about 15 to about 150 microns.
Due to their small size, optical ring resonators are usually called "micro-resonators." That term will be used henceforth to refer to any of the many implementations of optical ring or disk resonators (e.g., circular, oval, elliptical, distorted versions thereof, etc.).
To guide light around the tight radius of curvature of loop waveguide 106, the dielectric contrast (i.e., difference in refractive indices) between the loop waveguide and surrounding medium in the plane must be large. Micro-resonators, including integrated port waveguides, are usually fabricated in substrates such as Si/SiO2, GaAs/AlGaAs, and Si3N4/SiO2 to facilitate their incorporation into optical systems. For this reason, the micro-resonators are often referred to as "integrated" micro-resonators.
In order to function properly, the effective refractive indices of loop waveguide 106 and port waveguides 102 and 104 should be as close in magnitude as possible. Another design consideration is that most applications for integrated micro-resonators require that port waveguides 102 and 104 are single mode waveguides.
In most applications, it is very important for the micro-resonator and components that incorporate it to be as insensitive as practical to the polarization state of the transverse polarization modes, the goal being polarization independence.
The Difficulty of Achieving Polarization Independence. It is quite challenging to produce a polarization-independent, integrated micro-resonator. This is due to the geometry of the resonator, which exhibits bending in the horizontal plane. This causes the TE polarization mode to experience a higher refractive index and lower losses in loop waveguide 106 than the TM polarization mode. Although it is theoretically possible to alter ring width and height to equalize the treatment of the polarization modes, a number of vexing problems arise when attempting to do so.
One problem with altering ring width and height is that not all materials can be used to fabricate the ring in the dimensions that are required for polarization independence due to factors such as material stress, refractive-index requirements, and processing constraints. A second problem is that even if a material possesses the requisite material parameters, there remains the issue of matching the refractive indices of loop waveguide 106 and port waveguides 102 and 104 while maintaining mono-modality and polarization independence of the port waveguides.
A third problem pertains to the issue of fabrication tolerances. That is, in order to produce an integrated micro-resonator with a desirably-small diameter, the resonator must be fabricated in materials that have a high dielectric contrast, as previously mentioned. This, on the basis of maintaining mono-modality, implies relatively smaller waveguides. But smaller waveguides are far less tolerant than larger waveguides to variations in the fabrication process. As a consequence, the polarization-independent behavior of integrated micro-resonators is very difficult to guarantee since even a small variation in either the width or height of loop waveguide 106 will cause polarization dependence.
Polarization Diversity as an Alternative to Polarization Independence. As will be clear from the foregoing discussion, it is difficult if not impossible to reliably manufacture polarization-independent integrated micro-resonators. In recognition of this difficulty, an alternative to controlling waveguide geometry/materials was developed in the pursuit of polarization independence. And that is to treat each polarization mode independently in separate, discrete integrated micro-resonators, thereby creating a polarization diverse arrangement of micro-resonators.
FIGS. 3A and 3B provide illustrations of a wavelength filter implemented via micro-resonators to illustrate the distinction between polarization independence and polarization diversity.
In FIG. 3A, the filter is implemented using a single micro-resonator 300 having port waveguides 302 and 304 and loop waveguide 306. On-resonance wavelengths of an input optical signal propagating along port waveguide 302 couple to loop waveguide 306 and then to port waveguide 304 for drop. Off-resonance wavelengths pass the loop waveguide. Since the traverse modes (TE and TM) are not separated, the micro-resonator must exhibit polarization independence. In this regard, the resonator depicted in FIG. 3A is an idealized layout, since polarization independence cannot be assured.
FIG. 3B depicts a polarization-diverse implementation of a filter equivalent to the filter of FIG. 3A. The filter depicted in FIG. 3B includes polarization splitter 310, two micro-resonators 300A and 300B, three polarization rotators 312, 314A, and 314B, and two polarization combiners 316A and 316B.
Those skilled in the art are familiar with the use of polarization splitters, polarization rotators, and polarization combiners and, as such, only a brief description of these components will be provided.
A polarization splitter is used to separate the polarization components TE and TM into separate signals. The operation should be wavelength-independent and the resultant signals should have the same wavelengths. Polarization splitters have been implemented via passive or active directional couplers, asymmetric Y-junction couplers, multimode interference couplers, 2-d grating couplers, and photonic crystals, to name a few.
A polarization combiner is simply a polarization splitter that is run in reverse. In other words, a TE and a TM signal having the same wavelength(s) are combined into a single signal.
A polarization rotator maneuvers linearly-polarized light about an optical axis, and can change the polarization state of a signal from TE to TM or vice-versa. Examples of polarization rotators include, without limitation, optical rotators, Faraday rotators, and half-wave plates.
With continued reference to FIG. 3B, at the input of the filter, polarization splitter 310 is used to separate multi-wavelength optical signal A, which exhibits both TE and TM mode polarizations, into two signals B and E each having different transverse polarizations. Signal B, which has TE polarization, propagates along port waveguide 302A. Signal E, which has TM polarization, propagates along port waveguide 302B. The polarization of signal E is immediately converted to TE in polarization rotator 312.
After polarization conversion of signal E, both signals B and E have the same polarization (TE in this case). On-resonance light from signal B couples into loop waveguide 306A and then to port waveguide 304A as signal D heading toward polarization combiner 316B for drop. Similarly, on-resonance light from signal E couples into loop waveguide 306B and then to port waveguide 304B as signal G heading toward polarization rotator 314B. The polarization of signal G is then converted back to TM in polarization rotator 314B. Signal G having TM polarization is then combined with signal D having TE polarization in polarization combiner 316B to form signal H having TE and TM polarizations. The filter drops signal H.
In summary, the following operations are conducted in the polarization-diverse arrangement described above:                (i) splitting the original signal A into two signals with different polarizations;        (ii) changing the polarization of one of those signals so that the two signals have the same polarization;        (iii) providing the two signals to duplicate parts of the filter;        (iv) extracting on-resonance wavelengths from the two signals via two wavelength-dependent optical couplers, creating two new signals;        (v) changing the polarization of one of the new signals so that the two new signals have different polarizations; and        (vi) recombining the two signals.
Operation (ii), which involves changing the polarization of one of the signals so that both signals have the same polarization, ensures that the two signals B and E (and signals based thereon) will respond identically to prevailing travel conditions. It also enables the system to be optimized for a particular mode; in this case, the TE mode. Operation (iii) ensures that the two signals (i.e., B and E) will experience identical travel conditions.
Regarding off-resonance signals F and C, the polarization state of signal C is converted to TM in polarization rotator 314A and led to polarization combiner 316A. Signal F, which has TE polarization, is also led to polarization combiner 316A. Signals C and F are then combined in polarization combiner 316A to form "pass" signal I, which exhibits both TE and TM polarizations.
The polarization-diverse scheme depicted in FIG. 3B solves many of the aforementioned design and fabrication problems that otherwise arise when designing a polarization-independent filter. Unfortunately, this solution introduces a new set of problems.
The Drawbacks of Existing Polarization-Diverse Layouts. One problem introduced by the polarization-diverse scheme depicted in FIG. 3B is that additional chip area is required to implement the filter due to its enlarged footprint (compared to the filter of FIG. 3A). But more problematic are the difficulties that pertain to the control of the resonance frequency of the complementary pair(s) of micro-resonators in the filter.
In particular, it is one thing to design a micro-resonator to operate at a particular resonance frequency, but it is quite another for a fabricated micro-resonator to actually operate (without modification) at the design resonance frequency. In fact, micro-resonators usually require some form of "tuning" to operate at a design resonance frequency. Regardless of any deviation from design parameters, tuning is often required to implement some desired functionality (e.g., switching, modulation, etc.). Most micro-resonator designs therefore employ some type of active tuning, such as electro-optic or thermo-optic, to adjust resonance frequency.
Since tuning requires an electronic driver for each individual micro-resonator, and each driver and the tuning method have an associated power dissipation, the power dissipation is approximately linearly dependent on the number of micro-resonators. The power requirement for a polarization diverse implementation is therefore approximately twice that of an implementation that uses polarization-independent micro-resonators, were such a polarization-independent arrangement possible.
Furthermore, since each micro-resonator must be connected to a driver, the pin count of the polarization-diverse implementation is greater than would otherwise be the case. Also, the polarization-diverse scheme requires the resonance frequencies of the complementary micro-resonators to be the same in order to avoid signal degradation.
These strict requirements increase the complexity of the driver electronics and add to the number of device parameters the must be validated during manufacturing of prior-art polarization-diverse optical systems. All of the foregoing issues increase the costs of a polarization-diverse implementation relative to a polarization-independent implementation of an optical filter.
A need exists, therefore, for optical components that are effectively insensitive to polarization (either via true polarization-independence or via polarization-diversity) but that avoid at least some of the drawbacks of the prior-art.

Device comprising a polarization-independent micro-resonator


In a mobile communication network, the data traffic is mapped to a number of bearers (52, 54) between a terminal (10) and a gateway (26). Upon a triggering event, data packets of a specific type, which are to be monitored, are assigned to a monitoring bearer (54), which is dedicated for performance monitoring purposes. The monitoring bearer (54) and a transport bearer for carrying data packets of said specific type between a non-monitored terminal and the gateway (26) have the same traffic forwarding policy. Data packets may then be filtered from the monitoring bearer (54) at a desired node between the terminal (10) and the gateway (26), and a performance parameter may be evaluated on the basis of the filtered data packets.

In mobile communication networks it is known to direct network traffic related to a specific service to a bearer with a certain quality of service (QoS). In this respect, a bearer is considered to be an information transmission context or path of defined characteristics, e.g.
capacity, delay and/or bit error rate. Typically, a number of bearers will be established between a gateway of a mobile communication network and a user equipment, e.g. a mobile phone or other type of mobile terminal. A bearer may carry downlink (DL) data traffic in a direction from the network to the user equipment, and may carry data traffic in an uplink (UL) direction from the user equipment to the network. In the gateway and in the user equipment the data traffic, which includes a plurality of IP data packets (IP: "Internet Protocol") can be filtered using IP 5-tuple packet filters, thereby directing the IP data packets to a desired bearer.
For performance monitoring, a packet flow associated with a certain terminal or service needs to be filtered out from the network traffic of the communication network. This typically requires significant processing resources. For example, it may be necessary to process multiple protocol header fields, e.g. source or destination IP address, source or destination port numbers, or the like, of all data packets crossing a transport network interface. With increasing transport network bitrates, the required processing resources increase as well.
Accordingly, there is a need for reliable and efficient techniques for performance monitoring in a communication network.

Performance monitoring in a communication network


A post processing apparatus, placed on a floor, and placed next to a downstream side of an image forming apparatus also placed on the floor in a sheet conveyance direction, to perform a post processing operation onto sheets ejected from the image forming apparatus, including a plurality of joining sections to join the image forming apparatus, wherein the plurality of the joining sections include an elastic member.

In recent years, various post processing apparatuses have been developed, which conduct various post processing processes, such as a hole-punching process, a sheet-folding process, and a sheet-binding process, onto sheets which carries images formed by an image forming apparatus, such as an electro-photographic copying device, a printing device, a facsimile device, or a compound-machine having the functions of the above devices. Further, image forming systems, in which the post processing apparatus and the image forming apparatus are electrically combined, are generally used as the image forming systems.
In order to exactly conduct delivery and receipt operations of the recording sheet, ejected from the image forming apparatus, it is necessary for the post processing apparatus and the image forming apparatus to be accurately positioned in relationship with each other. For determining the positional relationships between them, they are combined by screws at their combining sections (see Unexamined Japanese Patent Application Publication No. 2002-128369). According to said Patent Document, the combining section of the post processing apparatus is assembled to be a movable part in the vertical direction, whereby after the combining section of the post processing apparatus is adjusted to the combining section of the image forming apparatus, both of the combining sections are secured to each other by the screws.
On the other hand, in recent years, speeded up operation and fined image formation are required to the image forming apparatus, and more speeded up operation is also required to the post processing apparatus. However, during binding operation, hole-punching operation, and folding operation, mechanical vibration and impact are adversely generated, wherein the impact is specifically and greatly generated during the binding operation. Further, due to the speeding up of the image forming apparatus, the number of the recording sheets to be processed becomes greater, the more impact is generated.
If the image forming apparatus and the post processing apparatus, disclosed in Unexamined Japanese Patent Application Publication No. 2002-128369, are combined, most of the vibration and the impact, generated in the post processing operation of the post processing apparatus, reach the image forming apparatus, which result in the reduction of an image reading accuracy.
To overcome this problem, a technology is disclosed in that a vibration control member is sandwiched between an image reading section of the image forming apparatus and an image forming section, integrally combined with the post processing apparatus (see Unexamined Japanese Patent Application Publication No. 2008-141304).
However, according to the technology of the latter Patent Application, the vibration and the impact, generated by the post processing apparatus, directly reach the image forming section, and since the image reading section has been mounted on the image forming section, when a bundle of a large number of recording sheets are to be finished, the image reading section adversely receives no small effect, though the vibration control member has been used. Further, if the vibration control member is mounted in the vertical direction, the weight of image reading section and a document feeding device, both mounted on the vibration control member, compresses the vibration control section, which results in the reduced effect of the vibration control member. Still further, based on the difference of the weight of units to be mounted on the vibration control member, the effect of the vibration control member changes, so that the units to be mounted are limited, which is a major problem.

Post processing apparatus and image forming system using the same apparatus

Konica Minolta Business Technologies, Inc.


An apparatus, program product and method for managing access to a remote computing grid that is not normally accessible to a client. A client computer may communicate with the computing grid via a dropbox configured to receive and distribute data between the client computer and the grid. The connection may remain open while multiple commands are thus communicated to the computing grid, and the identity of the client submitting the commands may be authenticated.

Grid processing techniques enable greater processing opportunities by sharing and coordinating the resources of multiple computers that comprise a grid. As such, grid computing allows organizations to optimize computing and data resources by pooling their respective resources together to handle or balance workloads. For instance, a grid computing system may be used to verify the components of a microchip design. Verification assures that each of the millions of transistors and registers of a design performs its required function. Design verification typically consumes about seventy percent of computing time and resources of a design project. In some cases, the volume of components employed in a typical microchip design cannot be practically evaluated without the pooled computer resources of a grid.
Where a business requiring such computing power does not have its own onsite computing grid, that business will often contract with a company having the needed resources. Continuing with the above example, it may be cost ineffective for a microchip design company to own and maintain its own computing grid when sufficient grid resources are commercially available for a reasonable fee. As such, the chip design company has great incentive to submit their design or other project to a provider operating a grid computing resource.
Despite their economic practicality, conventional grid submission practices can present certain inconveniences. For instance, to maintain integrity and provide a secure environment, a grid may not be accessible from the Internet. Most conventional submission practices must consequently be accomplished manually. For instance, a chip designer seeking verification of a design must mail applicable design parameters to a computer grid provider. This design data may be submitted on a disk or may be sent as an attachment to an electronic mail transmission. In either case, an administrator having access to the provider computer grid must open and evaluate the design data to determine the most appropriate grid resources that should be applied to accomplish the task. That is, conventional grid submission practices require provider personnel to acknowledge the receipt of an email or postal delivery, and to forward it on to an applicable party or network. For instance, an administrator may manually evaluate code or message text to determine that one set of submitted data needs to be compiled by a first program executed by the grid, while a second set of data needs a simulation program.
Conventional processes can also render the grid computing resource vulnerable to corrupt data submissions. For instance, there are few regulated safeguards in place to assure that only legitimate data prepared by qualified programmers is submitted for execution by a grid resource. Improperly formatted, viral or otherwise corrupted data could impair susceptible and valuable grid processes and equipment. Consequently, it is incumbent upon the administrator to take steps to manually verify that the submitted data is properly formatted and does not contain a virus. These manual processes can be tedious, inefficient and error prone.
Known grid submission practices present additional privacy and data integrity concerns. For instance, access granted to grid users often allows them to view the work of other users. Different programs running concurrently on the grid may even interfere with each other. Conventional grid partitioning can limit a customer's access to a specific set of grid systems, but this partitioning practice requires grid administrators to manually sanitize the systems when allocating them from one user to another. This sanitation can include the costly and cumbersome tasks of deleting all the data on a hard drive of a grid computer and reinstalling an operating system. Partitioning also results in underutilization of resources. Consequently, periods may occur where one customer is not utilizing all their dedicated resources, while another customer experiencing a peak workload is left with inadequate resources. Again, such scenarios must be manually addressed by grid administrators. For at least the above stated reasons, there exists a need for an improved manner of accessing remotely located grid computing resources.

International Business Machines Corporation


A quick or limited matching process can be used to quickly get players of a gaming application into an active game session. In order to improve the quality of the match for a subsequent game session, a longer-running match process can be utilized while players are engaged in a current game session. A pool of players likely to be available around the time at which a current game session will end is determined. The longer-running match process can analyze the data for the player pool to determine matches of players for one or more future game sessions. Information for these sessions can be provided to the relevant players, who are then enabled to join in the respective sessions. Such a process provides for more flexibility and accuracy in the matching process without extending the player wait times endured.

The widespread adoption of a variety of computing devices has resulted in a corresponding increase in the variety of applications available to users. For gaming applications, many of these games enable users to engage in online multiplayer games, which may be hosted by a central gaming server. For game environments with a large number of players, the players may be divided into matches or sessions that each includes a subset of the current players, such as where a maximum number of allowable players in a session is less than the number of current players of the gaming application. In order to provide for a better player experience, attempts can be made to match certain types of players for a session based on factors such as skill level or requested game difficulty. For large numbers of players, it can be time consuming to attempt to locate players for a session that satisfy the appropriate criteria to be placed together in a single session. Further, there may not be a sufficient number of players available at a specific time that satisfies those criteria. In either of these situations a player may have to wait for an extended period of time until an appropriate game session can be located, which may cause the player to quit the game or switch to another gaming application.

Session management for virtual environments


Disclosed herein are techniques and systems for discovering functional groups in an area, such as an urban area. A process includes segmenting a map of the area into sections, and inferring, for each section, a distribution of functions according to a topic model framework which considers mobility patters of users and points of interest (POIs) in the section. The topic model framework regards the section as a document, each function as a topic, the mobility patterns as words, and a POI feature vector for the section as metadata. The process may further include clustering the sections based at least in part on a similarity of the distribution of functions between each of the sections to obtain functional groups, estimating a functionality intensity for each of the functional groups, and annotating each of the functional groups.

Urbanization fosters functional diversification across different districts or sections within a city or other area. For example, as a city develops, the formation of educational districts, business districts, and residential districts occurs. These districts, which are spread across the city, make up functional groups because each serves a different primary function for serving the people that live in the city. Whether they were designed by urban planners, or naturally formed during the course of urbanization, these functional groups will continue to evolve as lifestyles change and as a city continues to grow.
Discovering functional groups can enable a variety of valuable applications. For example, it can serve as a valuable organizational framework to give people a quick understanding of a complex area (e.g., New York City, Tokyo, Paris, etc.), which leads to useful applications such as social recommendations, travel planning, and the like. Both local citizens and visitors may find such information useful in navigating a city. In addition, urban planners can also use information about functional groups for calibrating urban planning as a form of feedback mechanism that allows for adjustments to be made in future urban planning of cities that do not develop quite as planned. Entrepreneurs and business owners can also leverage information about functional groups for choosing a location for a new business, and/or choosing where to advertise for their business. For example, a location's a distance from a district having a particular function (e.g., residential districts) may be a factor in choosing the location for a business.
The task of discovering functional groups is not a trivial endeavor. Prior attempts have considered information about an area in isolation to infer the functionality of districts or sections within the area. For instance, points of interest (POIs) may be indicative of the function of a district, but they are not sufficient when considered in isolation due to the compound functional nature of districts that often comprise a variety of different POIs (e.g., restaurants, universities, historical sites, etc.). Accordingly, current techniques for discovering functional groups are insufficient for the aforementioned applications.

Discovering functional groups of an area


A cloud computing system includes computing nodes that execute a shared application and/or service accessible by client computing devices over a network. A resilience multiplexer is configured to: receive signals (e.g., from a cloud controller, registry service, error handler, and/or failover service) indicative of potential problems with components of the system and/or network; identify a rule to be executed to determine how to respond to the potential problem, based on attributes of the received signal including which component generated it and what information is included in/otherwise associated with it, and other network-related data; execute the identified rule to determine whether a failover is or might be needed; if a failover is needed, selectively trigger a failover sequence; and if a failover only might be needed, initiate a resilience mode. In resilience mode, information regarding the potential problem is communicated to other components, without immediately initiating a failover sequence.

Cloud computing refers generally to an information technology paradigm that enables access to shared pools of configurable system resources and higher-level services that can be rapidly provisioned with little management effort, oftentimes using distributed computing systems and oftentimes over the Internet. Cloud computing generally relies on the sharing of resources to achieve coherence and the ability to scale, potentially dynamically, to address requests from requesting computing systems and the like.
Cloud computing has become more and more ubiquitous, especially as the microservice architectures have gained in popularity. Microservice architecture may be thought of as being a variant of the service-oriented architecture (SOA) architectural style, which structures an application as a collection of loosely-coupled services. In microservices architectures, services typically are fine-grained and the protocols typically are lightweight. Potential benefits of decomposing an application into different smaller services include the ability to improve modularity, and the ability to make applications easier to understand, develop, and test. Microservice-based architectures can enable continuous delivery and deployment so that applications can emerge over time, e.g., through independent and modular development.
Current failover systems are mostly implemented in hardware systems and/or third-party software. Although such systems and/or software approaches are of great benefit in a variety of scenarios, they generally do not work well with today's cloud computing infrastructures and microservice architectures, where failover mechanisms oftentimes need to be tailored to the demands of specific web applications, services, or the like. That is, current failover mechanisms generally have no knowledge of the data or use cases of the corresponding services. Yet module-based standalone services are much more applicable to modern usage in distributed computing environment. As a result, well-known failover mechanisms generally only look at the availability of specific services or application back-ends (e.g., databases, search engines, etc.) at a very abstract level.
One well-known type of failover mechanism involves a simple "aliveness" check, e.g., a ping, which determines whether a specific node of a cluster is reachable. A common strategy to provide for failover with this approach is the fail-fast strategy. This strategy directly triggers a failover mechanism as soon as a specific node is determined to be no longer reachable. In this approach, if there is downtime corresponding to even a few seconds or a few minutes, the overhead of switching to another service instance is accepted and incurred, which in some instances can even lead to longer downtimes or delays, e.g., where there are time-intensive startup procedures for complex services or replication instances, etc. Another common strategy is the on fail, try next available strategy. In contrast to the fail-fast strategy that simply triggers a failover as soon as a node is not reachable anymore, this strategy first tries the next best reachable node before triggering a failover. Yet another strategy is the on fail, try all strategy, which tries to reach all available nodes in a cluster. These latter two strategies, however, are not particularly well tailored to cloud computing environments and still depend on simple "aliveness" checks and thus operate at a very abstract level.
It will be appreciated that in providing a more sophisticated failover mechanism, it would be desirable to provide or collect appropriate information and send it to a service that is configured to process the provided information and take decisions based on patterns, machine-learning algorithms, hard-coded rules, and/or the like, that specify how to handle specific situations such as, for example, how to handle the network traffic associated with a specific web service or application in the event of a failure. The information could include, for example, parameters of the underlying infrastructure or cloud computing environment, status events from the involved services, failure detection within the infrastructure, errors arising within a running application, etc.
Additionally, it will be appreciated that it would be desirable to provide an enhanced solution that can decide on how and when to trigger certain failover mechanisms, e.g., based on the computational results described above. The technical solution could in some instances consider a second stage detection mechanism that makes it possible to verify whether the provided information is correct, if something else has led to the failover situation, etc. In this regard, a so-configured failover service therefore may include a component that checks on a lower level whether a failover is needed (e.g., whether connection to the underlying database really has been lost) and, if so, determines how failover can be achieved.
Switching to a potential backup service usually involves computational overhead and otherwise resource intensive tasks. It therefore would be desirable to configure a failover service with an intelligent component that can make decisions regarding whether and at what time a switch is needed, whether a simple wait and retry loop with a possible notification to the end users about the service unavailability could be an adequate solution, etc.
One aspect of certain example embodiments relates to addressing the above-described and/or other issues. For example, one aspect of certain example embodiments relates to failover systems suitable for use in cloud computing environments, e.g., where microservice, SOA, and/or other architectures are implemented.
Certain example embodiments provide a resilience multiplexer configured to collect information and act as a communication unit between all involved applications and services, including backend services of the environment to be supervised. The resilience multiplexer is certain example embodiments directly communicates with the failover service, which is responsible for initiation of failover procedures. In certain example embodiments, a component manages a wait and retry loop in case the decision was made to not trigger a failover, and keeps track and learns from the decisions made, e.g., for application to future events.
Certain example embodiments advantageously provide an approach that determines whether failovers really are needed as well as a generic failover approach that involves take a deeper look into the involved applications and services. Certain example embodiments thus provide technical improvements in terms of triggering fewer failovers, triggering failovers at more appropriate times, providing failovers specifically tailored for distributed computing environments including cloud-based applications and services, and provide for the ability to learn how to more gracefully handle issues that arise in the future.
In certain example embodiments, a distributed computing system (e.g., a cloud computing system) is provided. In the system, a plurality of computing nodes cooperate to execute a shared application and/or service accessible by client computing devices over a network. The system also includes a failover service. Processing resources, including at least one processor, are configured as a multiplexer for use with the distributed computing system. The multiplexer is configured to at least receive a signal indicative of a potential problem with a component of the distributed computing system and/or the network; responsive to receipt of the signal, identify, from a store including a plurality of rules, at least one rule to be executed to determine how to respond to the potential problem, the at least one rule being identified based on (a) attributes of the received signal including which component generated the signal and what information is included in and/or otherwise associated with it, and (b) other network-related data; execute the at least one identified rule to determine whether a failover is or might be needed; in response to a determination that a failover is needed, confirm that the failover is needed and, based on the confirming, selectively trigger the failover service to initiate a preprogrammed failover sequence; and in response to a determination that a failover might be needed, initiate operation of a resilience mode in which: information regarding the potential problem is communicated to one or more components of or connected to the distributed computing system, other than the component that generated the received signal, without immediately initiating a preprogrammed failover sequence; and the operation of the resilience mode is continued, without initiating a preprogrammed failover sequence, until one or more predefined conditions are met, at which point either (a) the operation of the resilience mode is cancelled and the failover service is triggered to initiate a preprogrammed failover sequence, or (b) the operation of the resilience mode is cancelled and the failover service is not triggered.
According to certain example embodiments, one or more machine-learned rules may be considered in determining whether a failover is or might be needed. Output from the one or more considered machine-learned rules may be weighted less than the at least one identified rule in determining whether a failover is or might be needed.
According to certain example embodiments, machine learned rules may be based on failover efficacy information, which may be provided over a feedback bus or the like by an authorized user and/or automatically and programmatically. The efficacy information may indicate whether a failover ultimately was needed in response to a given received signal, how one or more components performed during operation of the resilience mode, etc.
According to certain example embodiments, the information regarding the potential problem is communicated to the failover service and indicates that a failover might soon be needed, and/or the information regarding the potential problem is communicated to one or more client computing devices that is/are at least attempting to interact with the shared application and/or service.
According to certain example embodiments, the received signal may originate with a cloud controller provided to the distributed computing system that is configured to track distributed computing system service information, and the one or more predefined conditions may relate to whether the distributed computing system is operating in a maintenance mode and a retry counter, as determined in connection with the cloud controller; the received signal may originate with a registry service provided to the distributed computing system that is configured to track computing node status, and the one or more predefined conditions may relate to whether a computing node has been added, stopped, or removed, as determined in connection with the registry service; the received signal may originate with an error handler of the shared application and/or service, and the one or more predefined conditions may relate to whether there is a connection issue with respect to the shared application and/or service and/or a runtime error, as determined in connection with the error handler; and/or the received signal may originate with the failover service, and the one or more predefined conditions may relate to whether there is a connection issue, node failure, and/or node stoppage.
In addition to the features of the previous paragraphs, counterpart methods, non-transitory computer readable storage media tangibly storing instructions for performing such methods, executable computer programs, and the like, are contemplated herein, as well. Similarly, servers, client devices, and the like, usable in connection with the systems laid out in the previous paragraphs, also are contemplated herein.
These features, aspects, advantages, and example embodiments may be used separately and/or applied in various combinations to achieve yet further embodiments of this invention.

Systems and/or methods for intelligent and resilient failover for cloud computing environments


There is provided a multi-layered ceramic capacitor with reduced internal resistance by forming internal electrode groups including internal electrodes having different lengths. The multi-layered ceramic capacitor of the present invention includes a sintered ceramic body part in which cover layers are provided on both surfaces thereof as an outermost layer and a plurality of ceramic layers are stacked therebetween, first and second external electrodes each formed on an outer surface of the sintered ceramic body part, a plurality of first and second internal electrode groups adjacent to each other in a stacking direction of the plurality of ceramic layers, having the ceramic layer therebetween, and including 2N or 2N+1 (N is an integer number larger than 1) internal electrodes electrically connected to the first and second external electrodes, wherein the 2N or 2N+1 (N is an integer number larger than 1) internal electrodes are disposed to face at least one internal electrode of other adjacent internal electrode groups. A length of each internal electrode has a pyramid shape.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a multi-layered ceramic capacitor, and in particular, to a multi-layered ceramic capacitor capable of reducing resistance loss by controlling a length of each internal electrode layer to form capacitance.
2. Description of the Related Art
Recently, demand for a micro multi-layered ceramic capacitor has been increased with the miniaturization of electronic devices. A multi-layered ceramic capacitor having small loss characteristics has mainly been used for impedance matching, DC signal interception, and the like, in order to reduce signal loss in devices such as an amplification circuit of a base station of a mobile communications system.
An ideal capacitor has no loss, however, in actuality, a capacitor has both dielectric loss and resistance loss, wherein the magnitude of the loss may be represented by a quality factor (hereinafter, referred to as 'Q'). In the case that the amount of loss is small, the Q value is large.Q=1/(2πf·C·ESR)
Where f represents a frequency, C represents the capacitance of a capacitor, and ESR represents the equivalent series resistance of a capacitor. Therefore, in order to manufacture the multi-layered ceramic capacitor having a high Q value, the loss of a dielectric material should be small, within a frequency region of several hundred MHz or less, while the resistance loss of the internal electrode should be mainly improved within a frequency region exceeding several hundred MHz.


An RF power amplifier includes an amplifier device and a shunt-inductance circuit. The amplifier device includes a substrate, a combining node lead, first and second amplifier dies coupled to the substrate, and first and second output circuits. The first and second amplifier dies are configured to amplify first and second input RF signals, respectively, to produce first and second output RF signals at first and second output terminals, respectively. The first output circuit includes a first inductive path connecting the first output terminal to the lead. The second output circuit includes a second inductive path connecting the second output terminal to the lead. The lead is configured to combine the first and second output RF signals to produce a third output RF signal. The shunt-inductance circuit is coupled between the first output terminal and a ground reference.

For many years, the Doherty power amplifier has been one of the most popular amplifiers for cellular infrastructure applications. A two-way Doherty amplifier includes a carrier amplifier and a peaking amplifier, which are connected in parallel between an amplifier input and an amplifier output. During operation, an input radio frequency (RF) signal is divided into carrier and peaking signals, and a phase difference of 90 degrees is applied between the carrier and peaking signals prior to amplification by the carrier and peaking amplifiers. On the output side, the amplified carrier and peaking signals are then phase-aligned before the amplified signals are combined together by a signal combiner.
A Doherty amplifier may have a symmetric or an asymmetric configuration, where each configuration type has its advantages and disadvantages. In a symmetric Doherty amplifier, the carrier and peaking amplifiers have substantially the same current-carrying capability, which may be achieved by utilizing carrier and peaking power amplifiers of the same transistor size (or periphery). Conversely, in an asymmetric Doherty amplifier, the peaking amplifier typically has a significantly greater current-carrying capacity than the carrier amplifier. This may be achieved by utilizing a significantly larger sized peaking power amplifier than the carrier power amplifier.
In comparison with asymmetric Doherty amplifiers, conventional symmetric Doherty amplifiers tend to have better gain, RF bandwidth, and linearity (i.e., the AM-AM/AM-PM behavior is favorable for linearization). However, the load modulation for a symmetric Doherty amplifier is limited only to 2 (i.e., the variable standing wave ratio (VSWR) is about 2:1). Accordingly, the efficiency boost obtained for a modulated load in the back-off Doherty condition tends to be better for a conventional symmetric Doherty amplifier than it is for a class-AB power amplifier. However, the efficiency boost for a conventional symmetric Doherty amplifier may be significantly poorer than for a conventional asymmetric Doherty amplifier. In contrast, because an asymmetric Doherty amplifier has a load modulation greater than 2 (i.e., VSWR>2:1), asymmetric Doherty amplifiers tend to have better back-off efficiency than both class-AB and conventional symmetric Doherty amplifiers. However, due to their nonlinear AM-AM/AM-PM behavior and the need for an uneven input RF signal split ratio, asymmetric Doherty amplifiers also are characterized by relatively lower back-off gain and poorer linearity, when compared with conventional symmetric Doherty amplifiers.
Amplifier designers strive to develop Doherty amplifier designs that achieve the advantages of both symmetric and asymmetric configurations, while avoiding the various disadvantages of the two configuration types. What is desired is a relatively simple Doherty amplifier design with reduced parasitic effects, relatively-simple impedance matching circuitry, relatively-high gain, and linearizable power added efficiency.

Symmetric Doherty amplifier with in-package combining node


Methods and systems for providing distributed vibration therapy. The vibration device includes a plurality of vibration motors that are located along a grid. The vibration motors are embedded on a basal pad. A primary diffuser overlays the embedded the vibration motors. The device is portable and can be adaptable to a target body part.

The present disclosure relates to a vibration device. According to an embodiment, a vibration device includes: a basal pad; an array of vibration motors embedded on the basal pad, the vibration motors configured to generate temporal vibrations; a primary diffuser, wherein the primary diffuser overlays the basal pad and the array of vibration motors; and a controller operatively coupled to the vibration motors, wherein the controller is configured to control one or more vibration parameters of the vibration motors for synthesizing spatiotemporal waves and temporal vibrations to provide a synthetic sensation of vibration. The spatiotemporal waves are in a plurality of patterns along a surface of the device that provides a plane of contact with a target body part. The patterns of the spatiotemporal wave include a wave travelling along any principal axis in the plane of contact with the target body part, a radial inward wave that travels from one or more extremities towards a focal point, and a radial ripple wave that travels outward from the focal point. In one embodiment, the primary diffuser is a metallic mesh.
The device further comprises a medium having a generally planar first surface. The first surface provides a plane of contact with the target body part, and the array of vibration motors are arranged in a grid pattern on the first surface of the medium. The medium is made of a flexible material with an ability to conform to the target body part of a user or another object in contact with the target body part of the user. The temporal vibrations are perpendicular to the first surface.
Each vibration motor is a component of a collocated vibration subassembly including a thermal electric module. The vibration motors are electro-mechanically driven and heat of the electro-mechanically driven vibration motors can provide passive heating of the body part of the user. The device further comprises a plurality of thermoelectric modules to provide active heating and/or cooling to the body part of the user. The thermoelectric modules are attached to the medium using a thermally conductive adhesive layer. One or more of the plurality of thermoelectric modules are positioned in series and/or in parallel with one or more of the vibration motors for collocated vibration therapy with heating and/or cooling. The controller controls vibration parameters of the electro-mechanically driven vibration motors by transmitting a controlled variable voltage signal to each of the vibration motors with a controlled timing such that a sensation of travelling spatiotemporal waves of the temporal vibrations in a desired pattern with clinically valid frequencies is synthesized, and wherein frequencies of the travelling spatiotemporal waves are substantially lower than the frequencies of the temporal vibrations.
The device comprises a mechanism for regulating a predetermined temperature, frequency, amplitude, wave pattern, and time delay between waves. The mechanism further enables pre-programming a specified pattern of the spatiotemporal wave for a playback, and further enables a user to review the pre-programmed wave pattern for confirmation prior to the playback via a user-interface. The mechanism can include a touchpad screen or button interface to facilitate creation of the therapeutic wave pattern, and regulate a predetermined temperature, frequency, amplitude, wave pattern, and time delay between waves.
In one embodiment, the device further includes a sub-mechanical wave vibration augmentation mechanism. The augmentation mechanism comprises a plurality of beaded elements embedded on the basal pad interspersed among the vibrator motors.
In an embodiment, the device further includes one or more retractable mechanisms, wherein each of the vibration motors is connected to at least one retractable mechanism.
The device can be configured to stimulate cells at the target body part. The device is configured to assist in the treatment of one or more ailments, such as, Alzheimer's disease, dementia and depression. The device is configured to promote weight loss, alleviate headaches and migraines, and promote hair growth.
According to an embodiment, a method for treating an ailment involves providing an embodiment of the disclosed device; placing the device on the target body part; and actuating the device to stimulate the cells at the target body part. The ailment is selected from the group consisting of Alzheimer's disease, dementia, depression, headaches and migraines.