A three-dimensional display apparatus is provided with an optical element including optical apertures arranged opposite a display module and in association with the parallax images. The optical apertures cause the parallax images to be displayed in a near-side region closer to an observer, while causing a three-dimensional image to be displayed in a far-side region located opposite the observer with respect to the display module. When a smooth three-dimensional image is to be displayed in the near-side region, the optical gap between the optical element and the display surface is set longer than a reference distance depending on the position of the three-dimensional image. In order to display a smooth three-dimensional image in the far-side region, the observer sets the optical gap shorter than the reference distance depending on the position of the three-dimensional image.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a display apparatus displaying a three-dimensional image and a display method of displaying a three-dimensional image, and in particular, to a display apparatus displaying a three-dimensional image which apparatus comprises an optical plate, i.e., a ray control element controlling a direction in which light rays are applied, as well as a display method of displaying a three-dimensional image.
2. Description of the Related Art
An integral imaging method (also simply referred to as an II system below) for displaying a large number of parallax images is known as a system for recording a three-dimensional image and reproducing it as a three-dimensional image. The II system is also referred to as an integral photography method (IP method) and is a method of displaying three-dimensional image which method belongs to a method of ray reproduction.
In general, when an observer views an object with both eyes and if θ1 denotes the angle between a near point at a short distance and both eyes and θ2 denotes the angle between a far point at a long distance and both eyes, the angles θ1 and θ2 vary depending on the positional relationship between the object and the observer. The difference in angle (θ1-θ2) is called a binocular parallax. Human beings can react sensitively to a binocular parallax to three-dimensionally view the object.
In recent years, efforts have been made to develop a display apparatus (three-dimensional display) that displays a three-dimensional image without the need for glasses. Many such three-dimensional apparatuses use a two-dimensional display module (what is called a planar display) that displays a normal two-dimensional (2D) image. A ray control element is placed in front of or behind the display module to control certain light rays. Such a three-dimensional image display apparatus displays a three-dimensional image by utilizing the above binocular parallax to control the angle of light rays so that when the observer views the display apparatus, the light rays appear to be emitted by an object at a distance of about several centimeters from the display module. Three-dimensional images can now be displayed as described above because the display module has an increased definition, so that an image of a somewhat high definition can be obtained even if light rays from the display module is divided into pieces corresponding to several angles (called parallaxes).
FIG. 1 schematically shows the configuration of a three-dimensional display apparatus for the II system which provides parallaxes in a horizontal direction, as an example of a three-dimensional image display apparatus of no glass type.
FIG. 1 schematically shows the arrangement, in a horizontal plane, of a display module surface 61 on which a two-dimensional image is displayed and an observer 64 and a ray control element 68 that controls light rays 67 from a display module surface 61. In the display apparatus shown in FIG. 1, many pieces of image information are displayed on the two-dimensional display module 61, which displays a two-dimensional image. The observer 64 observes an image via an array plate provided in front of the display surface and corresponding to a ray control element having optical apertures and blocking sections 63. A three-dimensional image is thus displayed depending on an observing direction. The optical apertures 62 correspond to slits, pinholes, micro-lenses, lenticular lenses, or the like. In the specification, the optical apertures may be simply referred to as apertures because they can act optically as apertures even without actual apertures.
With this display apparatus, as shown in FIG. 1, the observer 64 at a position a located at a distance L from the array plate 63 can view an image with a parallax number 3. The observer 64 at a position β can view an image with a parallax number 2. Similarly, the observer 64 at a position γ can view an image with a parallax number 1. The II system enables multi-parallax display so that in spite of his or her motion, the observer 64 can view an image corresponding to his or her position. Since motion parallaxes can thus be displayed, the II system enables natural three-dimensional viewing. Further, with the II system, light rays reproducing a three-dimensional image follow paths similar to those used if an object (subject) is actually provided. Consequently, this method is also excellent in that binocular rivalry does not occur.
Methods for creating and displaying a parallax image via the apertures as pixel information are roughly classified into two types, a method of mapping images by causing pixels to generate light rays that reproduce a three-dimensional image and a method of mapping images by reversely following light rays from the viewpoint position of the observer toward the pixels. In the specification, these two methods are distinguished from each other by referring to the image mapping using the former method as the II system and referring the latter as a multi-eye display method also referred to as a multi-parallax stereoscope or parallax barrier method or the like.
With the II system, unlike the parallax barrier method or the like, a pencil of light rays are not controlled so as to be directed to the position of the observer's eye but so that a number of light rays corresponding to the number of parallaxes are emitted to the observer via all the apertures at almost equal intervals. Accordingly, the II system is excellent in motion parallaxes obtained if the observer moves. However, if the viewpoint position is fixed, the II system provides a smaller number of constituent pixels contributing to generation of a three-dimensional image at a certain angle than intrinsically two-dimensional (2D) display modules. The II system thus provides a lower resolution than three-dimensional image display apparatuses (multi-eye display apparatuses) that emit light rays to the position of the observer's eye.
In general, a certain specified resolution is required for character display or for example, spherical display having components oblique to lenses or slits. However, it is difficult for an orthographic-projection three-dimensional display apparatus (II system) comprising lenticular lenses or slits to provide fine character expressions or smooth curve displays owing to a limit to the resolution, determined by the pitch of the lenticular lenses or slits. If a three-dimensional image having a depth is to be displayed, then disadvantageously, anti-aliasing may make the boundary between a background and an image notched, or in a near-side region (a space in front of the apparatus and close to the observer), the observer may see a double image near an near-side limit of 3D image position. This is because crosstalk causes the observer to see not only a parallax image to be originally viewed but also an adjacent parallax image, thus preventing the observer from seeing only the correct parallax image.
H. Hoshino, F. Okano, H. Isono and I. Yuyama, "Analysis of resolution limitation of integral photography", J. Opt. Soc. Am, A15 (1998) 2059-2065 discloses a three-dimensional display apparatus that sets the gap between the surface of each lens and a two-dimensional pattern display module equal to the focal distance of the lens. With this three-dimensional display apparatus, parallax rays toward the observer are formed into an image, via the lenses, on the display module displaying a two-dimensional pattern. Under these conditions, the parallax rays are formed into one pixel to reduce crosstalk.
Jpn. Pat. Appln. KOKAI Publication No. 07-287195 discloses a glasses-less three-dimensional display apparatus using lenticular lenses intended to improve image quality. This image display apparatus is configured to sufficiently separate adjacent images from each other. Specifically, with this three-dimensional display apparatus, compressed images formed on an image sheet are observed via a lenticular screen consisting of a plurality of the lenticular lenses. With this three-dimensional display apparatus, each compressed image is formed on the image sheet in association with one lenticular lens. A band-like buffer area is provided between the adjacent compressed images. With this apparatus, when the adjacent compressed images are observed from a continuously varying viewpoint position via the lenticular screen, two images corresponding to these compressed images appear to be separated from each other by the buffer area. Consequently, the display apparatus reduces crosstalk. This configuration is adopted because with three-dimensional display apparatuses, visible light rays for adjacent parallax images may hinder three-dimensional viewing.
Japanese Patent No. 2874985 discloses a three-dimensional video apparatus in which a lenticular lens plate is placed opposite an image display surface to allow a three-dimensional video to be viewed from multiple directions. In this three-dimensional video apparatus, the image display surface is placed within the focal distance of the lenticular lens plate to diffuse light rays transmitted through the lenticular lens plate. The pixels on the image display surface are aligned with the lenticular lenses so that even a dark part between the pixels does not result in a dark part in a viewing area. With this display apparatus, to eliminate moiré, which causes the dark parts to appear to be striped, gap length is set equal to or smaller than the focal distance of the lenses.
Jpn. Pat. Appln. KOKAI Publication No. 2001-275134 discloses a three-dimensional display apparatus for an integral photography system which supplies the observer's eye with a three-dimensional image at the optimum position. The three-dimensional image display apparatus includes a passive array having apertures and a second array that displays an image to be displayed. The display array includes a set of sub-arrays associated with the corresponding apertures in the passive array. Each point in each sub-array is associated with the corresponding aperture in the passive array and includes information on a position on a three-dimensional image to be displayed. Light rays traveling from the points in the sub-arrays to the associated points in the passive array converge at the corresponding points on the three-dimensional image.
This display apparatus comprises control means for controlling the directions of light rays and thus the position of the three-dimensional image with respect to the passive and second arrays. The control means is suitably provided so as to control the distance between the passive array and the second array. Japanese Patent No. 2874985 enables the gap and thus the display position to be varied to provide a three-dimensional display that is optimum for the observer. This patent does not refer to light rays for adjacent parallax images.
A problem with the II system is that when a three-dimensional image is reproduced at a position away from the display surface, a pencil of light rays assigned via the apertures or lenses spread to rapidly reduce the resolution. The disadvantageous decrease in resolution will be described below with reference to FIGS. 2, 3, and 4.
A cycle per radian (cpr) β is used as a measure for expressing the resolution of a three-dimensional display apparatus. The cycle per radian β is an index indicating the number of cycles in which the brightness of light rays per radian can be displayed. As shown in Jpn. Pat. Appln. KOKAI Publication No. 07-287195, if with the II system, a three-dimensional image 73 is displayed near the display apparatus (the distance zi from the observer 64 to the three-dimensional image 73 is also sufficiently short) as shown in FIG. 2, the resolution is determined by a pixel pitch called a Nyquist frequency (βnyq) and viewed by the observer 64 via the lenses or the apertures 62. The pitch of the apertures 62 and the distance between the observer 64 and the apertures 62 or lenses are defined as pe and L, respectively. Then, the resolution (βnyq) limited by the aperture pitch pe is expressed by:βnyq=L/2pe   (1-1)
Then, if the object image 73 is reproduced at a position away from the display surface of the display module 1 (the distance zi from the observer 64 to the three-dimensional image 73 is also sufficiently long) as shown in FIG. 3, a pencil of light rays assigned via the apertures or lenses spread to rapidly reduce the resolution. If the object image 73 is to be reproduced in the front- or far-side region, when the maximum value of the resolution calculated for the group of light rays 67 emitted through one of the slits 68 in order to reproduce the three-dimensional image 73 is defined as αimax, a resolution βimax determined by the spatial frequency of the object as viewed by the observer is expressed by:βimax=αimax Zi/|L-Zi|  (1-2)
An actual resolution Bimax is the lower of (1-1) and (1-2) and is thus expressed by:βimax=min(βimax, βnyq)  (3)
In FIGS. 2 and 3, a coordinate Z corresponds to a distance extending from the observer 64 along a normal to the display surface 1 of the display module 1. The distance from the apertures or lenses to the object image 73 is denoted by (L-Zi). The distance between the display surface 61 and the observer 64 is denoted by Z(=L+g). The maximum value of the resolution αimax depends on the angle αcpr formed by straight lines joining one of the slits 68 and the horizontal ends of the object image together. The near-side region means a front area with respect to the observer 64 which corresponds to an observer side of the display apparatus. The far-side region means a rear area with respect to the observer 64 which corresponds to a side of the display apparatus which is opposite the observer. The three-dimensional image display apparatus for the II system can form a three-dimensional image in the near- or far-side region.
Expression (1-1) indicates that the resolution of the three-dimensional image increases with decreasing aperture pitch, that is, increasing definition of the display surface. However, a reduction in the pixel pitch of the display surface of the display module may for example, require processes executed by the display module to be changed. Accordingly, this cannot be easily realized.
Further, as is apparent from Jpn. Pat. Appln. KOKAI Publication No. 07-287195, if the three-dimensional image is formed near the display surface, the resolution βnyq, limited by the aperture pitch, is lower than the resolution βimax, determined by the spatial frequency of the object. Consequently, the resolution βnyq, limited by the aperture pitch, is predominant. On the other hand, the farther the three-dimensional image is from the display surface, the shorter the distance Zi from the observer in Expression (1-2) is. Consequently, the resolution βimax becomes predominant. For example, the resolutions determined from Expressions (1) and (1-2) for a certain number of parallaxes and a certain viewing area angle has the relationship shown in FIG. 4. In FIG. 4, an axis z indicates the distance from the observer to the three-dimensionally displayed object, and z=L(m) denotes the position of the display apparatus. The axis of ordinate indicates the resolution βnyq, determined by Expression (1-1) and depending on the lens pitch, and the resolution βimax, determined by Expression (1-2) and by the density of light rays emitted from one of the lenticular lenses. FIG. 4 indicates that if the object is displayed near the display surface, that is, in an area with a near-side amount zn=zno(m) and a far-side amount zf=zfo(m), βnyq (1-1), determined by the lens pitch, is lower than βimax and is thus predominant. If the object is displayed in an area with a near-side amount larger than zn or a far-side amount larger than zf, βimax (1-2), determined by the density of light rays from the apertures, is predominant.
Crosstalk is a phenomenon in which the observer views light rays from a parallax image that is intrinsically not to be seen. Specifically, the defocusing of the lenses, a diffusion plate, or the like may prevent a pencil of light rays seen by the observer from being focused on the two-dimensional pattern display surface. The observer thus views light rays containing adjacent parallax images. The crosstalk may make curves and oblique lines notched, resulting in a degraded image in which the object to be displayed is mixed with its background. If for example, a round ball is to be displayed in a far-side direction, the contour of the round ball may disadvantageously be notched.
The crosstalk phenomenon occurs more markedly in parallax images to be emitted by two-dimensional display devices in certain ray directions, the observer views light rays for not only the desired parallax images but also the adjacent ones. The crosstalk also results from the defocusing of the lenses, the insertion of a diffusion film, or the like. The crosstalk may reduce the resolution.

Display apparatus displaying three-dimensional image and display method for displaying three-dimensional image


Methods, systems, and computer readable medium for providing presence data from multiple presence information providers are disclosed. According to one aspect, the subject matter described herein includes a method for providing presence service using presence information from multiple presence information providers. The method includes, at a network node including at least one processor, receiving, from a message source, a first presence-related message that includes information identifying a user, using the information identifying a user to identify, from multiple presence information providers, a presence information provider that maintains presence information associated with the identified user, and relaying the first presence-related message to the identified presence information provider or sending a second presence-related message associated with the first presence-related message to the identified presence information provider.

In computer networks, presence information is used to indicate a user's ability and/or willingness to communicate with other users, typically expressed as a "status". More precisely, however, presence information consists of an arbitrary number of elements, called presence tuples, where a tuple is a data object containing two or more components. Each presence tuple may consist of a status marker, an optional communication address, and an optional presence markup. Common presence status markers indicating the user's availability to communicate may include "online", "offline", "busy", "away", or "do not disturb". Presence information may also include positional or geolocation information, such as the current Cartesian coordinates or global positioning system (GPS) coordinates of a presentity. An optional communication address may include both a communication means and a contact address for the user. According to RFC 2778, one type of communication means defined by the presence information model is instant message (IM) service and one type of contact address is an instant inbox instant messaging systems, such as AOL, ICQ, MSN, and Google. Other types of communication means and contact addressed for use in a presence tuple may include various forms of telephony and telephone numbers.
Presence information may be managed via a presence client operating on the user's computer. Presence clients may send presence information via a network connection to a presence service, which stores the presence information to make it available for distribution to other users. For example, a presence service may store presence information for multiple users in one or more presence information databases. Presence information databases may distribute presence information to users within the same presence network or across network boundaries to users associated with other presence services. It is appreciated that a single human user may be associated with multiple presence services. This may be accomplished, for example, by operating multiple presence clients where each presence client is associated with a different presence service or, alternatively, by operating a multi-service presence client. When a user belongs to multiple presence services, each presence service may independently maintain presence information for the user. Accordingly, synchronization of presence information across multiple presence services is not required (i.e., a user may be both "online" in AOL and "away" in MSN).
Presence service users may be divided into two categories. A first set of users, called presentities, provides presence information to the presence service so that it may be stored and distributed to other users. The other set of users, called watchers, receives presence information from the presence service for keeping track of the status of one or more watched presentities. A user may be both a presentity and a watcher, as is often the case when two users wish to be updated as to the presence status of each other.
A presentity is any entity described by presence information, and typically refers to the human user of a presence client. A presentity can also refer to a group of entities, such as a collection of customer service agents in a call center. A multi-user presentity such as this may be considered available if there is at least one agent ready to accept a call. A watcher is any user who receives presence information associated with a watched presentity. The presence service may maintain watcher information associated with the activities of watchers related to fetching or subscribing to presence information.
Presence information may be distributed between watchers and presentities using either a subscription/notification model or a query/response model. In the query/response model, presence information updates are requested by a watcher. For example, a watcher may request current presence information for a presentity. The presentity's response may include updated presence information or may indicate that no presence information has changed. If the watcher queries a presentity at regular time intervals, this may be referred to as polling.
In the subscription model, changes to presence information are distributed to subscribers via notifications. For example, a watcher may subscribe to a presentity for instructing the presentity to automatically provide presence information updates to the watcher via notifications. Any changes to the subscribed presentity's status are included in a notification message and sent to the watcher. The subscription/notification model therefore reduces the burden on the watcher to periodically request presence information updates. Additionally, the subscription/notification model eliminates the transmission of response messages indicating that no presence information has changed, which may unnecessarily waste resources.
Depending on whether the query/response or the subscription/notification model is used to obtain presence information updates, watchers may be divided into two categories, called fetchers and subscribers. A fetcher is associated with the query response/model and requests the current value of some presentity's presence information from the presence service. In contrast, a subscriber is associated with the subscription/notification model and requests notification from the presence service of future changes to a particular presentity's presence information.
One problem associated with conventional presence services is that typically, each network/network service provider maintains presence information only for subscribers in its own network. When a subscriber of network A requests presence information for a subscriber of network B, a presence server on network A must somehow determine the address of a presence server on network B, if one exists, and route the presence query appropriately. This requires the presence server on network A to determine and maintain routing information to a number of presence servers on different networks. In addition, the presence server on network A must also determine which network the out-of-network subscriber belongs to.
Another problem associated with conventional presence services is that there may be different levels of cooperation or agreement between different networks. For example, networks A and B may mutually agree to charge no fee or a minimum fee for presence messages that go from A to B or vice versa, while networks A and C may charge higher fees, or possibly even prohibit presence messages that span the two networks. Thus, each network's presence server must maintain information about whether to allow or deny traffic from particular networks, and how much to charge for traffic that is allowed.
Yet another problem associated with conventional presence services is that two networks may use incompatible presence protocols, or incompatible versions of the same presence protocol. In order to facilitate exchange of presence information between the networks, conversion from one protocol to another may be needed.
While the problems just described may be overcome, it is usually at additional cost to the network. For example, the presence servers may be required to maintain additional databases or include additional functions. Since each presence server must maintain the same information, this gives rise to potential problems caused when two presence servers, whether in the same network or in two different networks, are out of synchronization with each other.
Accordingly, in light of these difficulties, there exists a need for methods, systems, and computer readable media for providing presence information from a plurality of presence information providers.

Methods, systems, and computer readable media for providing presence data from multiple presence information providers


Thermally polymerized copolyamino acids are used to make a biologically compatible self-sealing skin.

It has long been recognized that the skin or integument of multicellular organisms provides an important barrier between internal tissues of such organisms and the planetary environments in which such organisms live. One of the most important properties of biological skin in contrast non-biological skin is that biological skin usually possesses self-sealability whereas non-biological usually does not.
Among the major components of mammalian skins are various types of biologically generated proteins. Biologically generated proteins are copolyamino acids which have been synthesized on cellular ribosomes with amino acid sequences that are directed by nucleic acids.
However, it was discovered previously that thermal proteins can be made simply by heating amino acids together in a flask for several hours (Fox et al., 1958). Such compounds and methods for their preparation are described in U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,052,655 and 3,076,790, by Fox et al.
Thermal copolyamino acids form a class of thermally engineered proteins (TEPs) because they possess amino acid sequences that have not been currently found in nature. They sometimes are referred to as proteinoids to reflect the fact that, although they resemble proteins structurally and functionally, they are produced abiotically in contrast to biologically generated proteins such as collagen, to use just one example. They are also referred to as thermal proteins for the same reason. Organisms do not make proteins by heating amino acids.
Proteinoids, or TEPS, are much easier to make than proteins which are engineered by genetic means or by standard organic synthetic means.
It was previously found that thermal copolyamino acids, upon being heated in aqueous solution and allowed to cool, spontaneously form microspheres approximately one micron in diameter (Fox, 1960). Such microspheres have been found to mimic many of the properties of biological cells.
The object of this invention was to make a self-sealing artificial skin from thermal copolyamino acids, or TEps, that could mimic some of the proerties of biological skins.

Self-sealing artificial skin comprising copoly-alpha-amino acid


A high-strength, low-temperature-sintered ceramic composition having a structure comprising a SrAl2Si2O8 crystal and an Al2O3 crystal, the SrAl2Si2O8 crystal being composed of hexagonal SrAl2Si2O8 alone or hexagonal SrAl2Si2O8 and monoclinic SrAl2Si2O8, and a peak intensity ratio represented by I101/(I101+I002)×100 being 5% or more in an X-ray diffraction measurement by a Cu—Kα line, wherein I101 represents a peak intensity of a (101) plane of the hexagonal SrAl2Si2O8, and I002 represents a peak intensity of a (002) plane of the monoclinic SrAl2Si2O8.

Laminated ceramic circuit substrates having internal layer circuits, onto which semiconductor elements such as ICs, etc. and various electronic parts are mounted, have conventionally been known. Such laminated circuit substrates have conventionally been made of alumina having excellent heat dissipation, electric properties, mechanical strength, etc. as a whole. Because alumina substrates have as high sintering temperatures as 1300-1600° C., high-melting-point metals such as W, Mo, etc. are used for electrodes. However, these electrode materials have high electric resistivity, suffering from large signal transmission loss in high-frequency circuits of more than several hundreds of MHz in cell phones, etc.
In a mobile communications field of cell phones, etc., a small signal transmission loss is particularly required. Accordingly, electrode materials having small electric resistivity such as silver, gold, copper, etc. have come to be used in place of high-melting-point metals such as W, Mo, etc., and glass ceramics and low-temperature-sintered ceramic compositions simultaneously sintered with the electrode materials have come to be widely used for laminated ceramic circuit substrates (U.S. Pat. No. 6,121,174).
However, the laminated circuit substrates are extremely poorer in mechanical strength than the alumina substrate. For instance, the alumina substrate has a bending strength of about 400 MPa, while the laminated circuit substrates have a bending strength of about 150 MPa. The bending strength of 150 MPa or more is sufficient for practical use in the laminated circuit substrates in conventional cell phones, etc. However, as electronic parts used in cell phones, etc. become thinner, laminated circuit substrates used therein also become as thin as 1 mm or less, so that conventional laminated ceramic circuit substrates fail to provide sufficient mechanical strength.
Thus, higher strength is required for laminated circuit substrates used in cell phones, etc., such that cracking and breakage are not generated, for instance, by the deformation such as twisting, bending, etc. of mounting substrates or by impact when dropped.

Ceramic composition being fired at low temperature and having high strength and method for preparing the same, and laminated electronic parts using the same


A switch of a network for switching data. The switch includes a fabric for switching the data. The switch includes a parity fabric. The switch includes a connection mechanism connected to the fabric for providing data to and from the fabric and connected to the parity fabric for providing parity data to and from the parity fabric. The switch includes a first port card which receives data at a first rate from the network or sends data at the first rate to the network, performs first parity calculations on the data received at the first port card, produces first parity data from the first parity calculations or sends data at the first rate to the network. The switch includes a second port card which receives data at a second rate from the network or sends data at the second rate to the network, performs second parity calculations on the data received at the second port card, produces second parity data from the second parity calculations or sends data at the second rate to the network.

The BFS chipset of Fore Systems stripes data across multiple fabrics. The striping function is identical for both OC48 and OC192 ports. The parity generation function (calculation of the data bits for the spare fabric) requires data from multiple stripers. The derivation of the parity functions has been defined to optimize the chip to chip communication required for both encoding and decoding of the parity information on the BFS port cards and to allow for traffic to be sent between OC48 and OC192 ports.
The present invention allows a design to support both OC48 and OC192 link speed with minimal overhead in the function which calculates parity and does not require knowledge of all bits for OC192 operation. This allows the striping function to be implemented in a smaller, cheaper package. Additionally, it allows chip placement to be varied in optimizing the board level wiring between the striper function and the backplane, which is necessary to make the system implementable.


A method of graphically mapping actions to actors may include displaying a first UI element containing system diagram representative of a system diagram and a second UI element containing a list of contextually related actions through a user interface; operating branch creation logic, in response to receiving a first selection input through the user interface; operating branch merge logic, in response to receiving a subsequent selection input through the user interface; rendering a chart element from an action/outcome text node branch, in a third window of the user interface through operation of the graphics processor; and/or linking at least two chart elements in the third window based, in part, on hierarchical ranking of the associated ranked action/outcome text node branches through operation of the graphics processor.

System diagrams graphically illustrate an interaction map between the components and sub-components of a system. In the system diagram, interaction between a pair of components is represented through a linkage line connecting a pair of graphical elements representing the system components. The linkage line may provide indication to whether the interaction is directional or bi-directional between the pair of components. Although system diagrams illustrate component and sub-component interactions within a system, the nature of the interactions as well as their relation to a particular system process may not be easily conveyed. In many instances, the issue may stem from spatial restrictions within the diagram or complexity of the system. In order to effectively convey the nature of the interactions and relation within a system process, a flow chart diagram maybe provided to detail a process flow. While the aforementioned flow charts diagrams are inherently related to the system diagram, current practice is for a user to draft the flow chart and the system diagram separately.

System and method for mapping flow chart process descriptions to system diagram elements through a graphical user interface


A cluster of paving elements is formed with a peripheral edge having a re-entrant formation formed between the upper supporting surface and the lower, supported surface. The formation engages a complimentary formation on an adjacent cluster to inhibit relative movement between the clusters. The re-entrant formation may be applied to individual paving elements in the cluster or to the exposed faces of the elements at the periphery of the cluster. The elements in the cluster may be shaped to inter-engage to inhibit relative movement between the elements with in the cluster.

It is well known to provide a hard wearing surface by applying a pavement to it. The pavement may be formed from a wide variety of materials such as asphalt or concrete but a particularly attractive solution to providing a paved area is the use of paving elements. These elements are laid side-by-side to cover the required area and may be of different shapes or colours to provide an aesthetically pleasing finished surface. The elements are formed as individual units of relatively small size and may be formed with shapes that interlock with one another to inhibit relative movement once laid. Typically, the paving elements will be made from a concrete moulded to the desired shape and finish.
It is usual to manufacture the paving elements as clusters that can be formed in a single mould. The clusters can then be stacked on a palette or other transport device, one layer upon another and transported to the site for installation. With some arrangements, mechanical devices are used to transfer clusters from the palette and lay them directly upon the surface to be paved. The next cluster is then laid side-by-side and rapid installation of the paving is accomplished.
One problem found with the manufactured installation of clusters is that the periphery of the cluster is delimited by a common joint line. That common joint line may allow relative movement between the adjacent clusters even though the individual elements in the cluster are inhibited from relative movement.
One solution to the above problem has been to provide a specially shaped cornerstone for each cluster that attempts to lock the two clusters to one another. However, this arrangement is difficult to install and mould and complicates the stacking of clusters one above the other.
Even though the stones within each cluster are formed with interlocking configurations, it is frequently possible for stones to move relative to one another along a pair of mutually perpendicular axes. Such relative movement may occur en masse to give a diagonal shift within the cluster of stones.
Some configurations of stone provide indents that inhibits movement along one of the axes but still permits separation along the other axis, thereby again permitting a separation between two parts of the cluster. In practice, it is found that even highly complex shapes permit a degree of separation or sliding along particular axes when arranged in a repeating pattern in a cluster.
One solution that has been proposed is to interlock each stone with a through recess and a corresponding projection that extends between the upper and lower faces of the element. Typically, the projection is formed as a dovetail. However, such an arrangement is relatively difficult to manufacture and introduces a line of weakness at the pin of the dovetail on the block. It has also been proposed to use a key element between the stones but then the keys are visible.
It is therefore an object of the present invention to obviate or mitigate the above disadvantages.


A risk level of a software commit is assessed through the use of a classifier. The classifier may be generated based on attributes pertaining to previous commits and used to determine a risk level for deployment of a software commit into a production environment based on attributes extracted from the software commit.

With the advent of on-line services, executable software often is available 24 hours per day, every day. Any changes or improvements to the software should function correctly when released into the production version of the software. The continuous availability of software code creates a stress point on the ability to test the code.


A method of stimulating a systemic immune response to a tumor cell or antigen associated with a pathogen by administering a mixture of a controlled release vehicle containing an immunopotentiating agent and antigen is described.

1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates generally to the field of immunotherapy of cancer and infectious diseases, and more specifically, to a mixture of a controlled release vehicle containing an agent which potentiates the immune response to a tumor and tumor cells or specific antigens from tumors or pathogens. The invention includes a method for cancer therapy by immunization with the immunopotentiating mixture.
2. Description of Related Art
Active immunotherapy is considered to be a promising approach to the treatment and, particularly, to the inhibition of recurrences of human cancer. Specific active immunotherapy, one of the most promising approaches under investigation, involves activation of the host immune response against the tumor by immunization with tumor cells (which may be altered by mutagenesis, by treatment with a hapten, or by expression of foreign proteins) in order to activate specific effector cells of the immune system, such as cytolytic T lymphocytes. Nonspecific active immunotherapy may utilize microbial or chemical immunomodulators-to activate natural killer (NK) cells, macrophages, or lymphokine activated killing (LAK) cells. Unfortunately, much of the promise of these approaches remains unfulfilled.
One of the most critical questions in cancer immunology is why the immune system fails to eliminate tumors. In the 1970's, Hewitt articulated the notion that most tumors did not express any tumor-specific or neoantigens and, thus, could not be recognized as "foreign" by the immune system. Indeed, virtually no tumor cell surface antigens recognized by antibodies were found to be tumor specific, and furthermore, most spontaneous murine tumors were considered "poorly immunogenic" as defined by their failure to be eliminated when transferred into syngeneic hosts (Hewitt, etal., Br. J. Cancer, 33:241-259 1976). However, these same tumors could be rendered "immunogenic" by mutagenesis (Van Pel and Boon, Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA, 79:4718-4722, 1982) when new antigens are expressed on the tumor cell surface.
It is possible that the immune system fails to eliminate tumors not because neoantigens are absent, but rather because the response to these neoantigens is inadequate. Therefore, a method for enhancing immunogenicity of the tumor cells so as to potentiate the host's immune response to these tumor cells would provide a key advance in immunotherapy.
Failure to respond to tumor neoantigens may be due, at least in part, to a failure of T cell help. The molecular basis for Th function is the local secretion of lymphokines, such as interleukin-2 (IL-2), that act upon CTLs whose T cell receptors have first been engaged by the appropriate antigen-MHC complex (reviewed in Moller, Immunol Rev. 51, 1980). The cytotoxic potential of NK and LAK cells is also enhanced by IL-2 (Grimm, et al, J. Molecular and Applied Genetics, 2:101-109, 1982; Phillips and Lanier, J. Exp. Med., 164:814-825, 1986; Ortaldo, et al., J. Exp. Med., 164:1193-1205,1986). Although potentiation of tumor immunity by systemic injection of interleukin 2 has been attempted, those studies were hampered by the toxicity of the systemically administered IL-2. Therefore, a method for potentiating immunity to tumors by providing accessory T cell help in the location of the tumor is a more attractive option, which has long been needed for cancer therapy.
An additional difficulty in immunotherapy results from the problems inherent in administration of a living tumor cell to a patient. In the past, tumor cells used for immunization were treated prior to immunization to reduce their proliferative potential, e.g., by irradiation or treatment with mitomycin C. Unfortunately, either one of these methods of inhibiting replication also significantly diminishes the immunogenicity of the cells. For example, it has been shown that mutagen induced variants that were irradiated with 8-10,000 Rads are no longer immunogenic (Sella, et al., Clin. Exp. Metastasis, 7:97-105, 1989). Similarly, murine tumor cells secreting IL-2 or IFN-.gamma. lose their immune potential after irradiation. In addition, attempts at using membrane preparations of tumor cells also fail to produce convincing evidence of an immune response. It would therefore be advantageous to develop a means for using viable cells to induce an immunogenic response to a tumor.
A controlled delivery system which will dependably release a biologically active substance (e.g., a pharmaceutical agent) in vivo into a biological fluid (e.g., fluids of gastrointestinal tract) or into a body tissue has remained an elusive goal. Biologically active endogenous substances such as cytokines, hormones, enzymes, and antibodies are usually less stable than conventional synthetic drugs in the physiological environment. The controlled delivery system thus provides a suitable means to administer these endogenous substances to a host.
A common approach to providing controlled release of an active substance is the encapsulation of the active substance within a polymer matrix (e.g., that made of hydrophilic polymers). While some combinations of a drug and particular polymers provide a suitable drug release profile, they require a relatively large quantities of synthetic materials to be delivered to the body. This is not desirable since such materials or their metabolites may not be biocompatible in vivo or may even have toxicity such as cytotoxicity or mutagenicity. Furthermore, encapsulation involves the use of organic solvents and/or heat, both of which can be harmful to peptide or proteinaceous drugs, not to mention the above-described endogenous substances.
Complex coacervation is a process of separation of colloidal solutions into two or more immiscible liquid phases. When oppositely charged polyelectrolytes are brought into contact in aqueous medium, a spontaneous phase separation occurs with the result of formation of coacervates. The coacervate is a phase where colloids (e.g., polymers) are concentrated. Coacervation has been employed to encapsulate water insoluble biologically active substances. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 4,794,000 discloses a method for preparing a pharmaceutical composition for oral administration which is based on a two phase coacervate system where erythromycin is included as the active ingredient. U.S. Pat. No. 5,051,304 discloses microcapsules formed by coacervation between gelatin and a chemically depolymerized polysaccharide wherein a variety of water immiscible substances can be included.
While these and other references generally teach the applicability of the coacervation technique to a delivery system in the form of a coacervate, the coacervate formation to encapsulate a particular substance of interest can only be achieved by carefully controlling the phase separation conditions such as the choice and concentrations of suitable polyelectrolytes, pH and temperature.
Biodegradable polymers have become a popular in vivo sustained release drug delivery system. Therefore, the biodegradable polymer concept may be modified in order to develop a technically simpler strategy to achieve paracrine cytokine production in tumor vaccines. Based on earlier studies demonstrating the superiority of local GM-CSF production in the induction of systemic antitumor immune responses (Dranoff, et al., Proc. Nat'l. Acad. Sci., USA, 90:3539, 1993), the ability of GM-CSF incorporated into cell sized gelatin-chondroitin sulfate microspheres to act as an adjuvant when mixed with irradiated tumor cells prior to immunization is possible.
Although many vehicles for sustained release of therapeutic compounds are known, no methodology has been developed which allows a host immune system to be adequately stimulated to ameliorate not only local, but also metastatic tumors, in an animal. The present invention provides techniques which answer this need.

Controlled release of pharmaceutically active substances for immunotherapy

The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine


An amplifier device (14) is adapted for an antenna-like transducer for MRI applications, especially for an RF coil. The amplifier device (14) includes at least one amplifier channel (16) including: an input connection device (18) for connecting an RF signal source (12); an output connection device (20) for connecting the antenna-like RF transducer; an RF amplifier unit (22); and an impedance matching circuit (24) configured to adapt the coupling of the RF amplifier unit (22) to the actually connected antenna-like RF transducer with regard to an actual load of the amplifier device (14). The load results from the combination of the antenna-like RF transducer and a person or sample interacting with the antenna-like RF transducer. The impedance matching circuit (24) establishes an electric line (34) between the RF amplifier unit (22) and the antenna-like transducer with an adjustable line length.

The performance of amplifier devices (including parameters like linearity, gain, efficiency, max. available output power) depends on the load connected to said amplifier. The parameters of these amplifier devices are often optimized for a specific reference load, e.g. 50 ohms. That requires matching inside the amplifier device from the impedance at transistor terminals to the cable connectors (50 ohms). Furthermore it requires matching of the antennae to the connecting cables.
For MRI applications (MRI: Magnetic Resonance Imaging) the matching circuits are typically tuned to a fix impedance so that not all patient loading cases can be covered optimally. A compromise is to optimally match to a large patient loading which requests the highest amount of RF power (RF: radio frequency) for the desired B1-field. In cases with lower coil loading less RF power is used to generate the same B1 field in the coil. Thus a certain level of reflection at the coil due to mismatch can be accepted. This strategy worked successfully for single channel transmit systems. However, with RF shimming with two channels and more the demands change so that the tuning to the strongly loaded situation does not always fit.
This rises the demands of a more flexible architecture so that the amplifier unit (by active, adaptive means) can handle a wider range of loading situations (for different regions in the impedance plane of the smith chart without a degradation of the performance.
The gain, efficiency, thermal stress and power output depends on the impedance seen by the amplifier, which depends on the loading and coupling to other output connection devices (e.g. RF coil ports). As an example for a given mismatch up to VSWR 1:4 (VSWR: voltage standing wave ratio), the maximum available RF output power can vary by a factor of 2. That strongly adds to the costs of the MR system if the amplifier unit needs to be over specified by a factor of −2 to cover all impedances.
If the RF amplifier unit is located close to the RF coil, the impedance matching to the coil loading offers the chance to provide active impedance matching inside the RF amplifier device. By integrating in the impedance management a variable impedance circuit, the system cost of the RF amplifier can be considerably being reduced.
The advantage is that the internal communication and monitoring boards which control the RF amplifier can additionally control the impedance matching of the RF amplifier output. An RF amplifier needs to be robust for standing wave ratio (SWR) of up to 1:6. Optimal gain and efficiency matching needs to include information of the load pull characteristics of the RF amplifier output. For reasons of SAR safety (SAR: Specific Absorption Rate), the whole RF chain has to be calibrated and continuously monitored.
Document US 2013/0285659 A1 shows an amplifier device adapted for an RF coil for MRI applications and a corresponding MRI apparatus. The amplifier device comprises a plurality of amplifier channels, each channel including: (i) an input connection device for connecting an RF signal source; (ii) an output connection device for connecting the RF coil; (iii) an RF amplifier unit; and (iv) an impedance matching network. The matching network matches the impedance by means of adjustable capacitors, wherein the matching is based on a mismatch detection using a reflected signal level from the RF amplifier unit. Further, in the paper 'An alternative tuning approach to enhance NMR signals' by D. J. Y Marion and H. Desvaux in JMRI 193(2008)153 157 an experimental set up is shown for an NMR probe where it was found that the modulation of the length of wire between the amplifier and a point (A) before the diodes on the amplifier shows a minimum in the reflected power.

Amplifier device for an antenna-like MRI transducer and corresponding MRI apparatus


A retarding unit in a vehicle is automatically controlled based on conditions including a current setting of the retarding control, downhill grade, speed, current gear, and impending gear change. With the retarder control set in the high position, when the vehicle is operating at a downhill angle greater than the low angle threshold and less than the high angle threshold, and the pending gear is a large step downshift, automatically setting a retarder level to a low retarder level. When the vehicle is operating on level ground and the pending gear is a large step downshift or the current gear is first or second gear, automatically setting the retarder level to off. When the vehicle is operating on flat ground and the deceleration is above a trigger level, automatically setting the retarder level to a low retarder level.

Heavy equipment, such as large earthmoving vehicles, can use a retarder to supplement the braking provided by conventional brakes. Retarder operation is based on a manual setting and is either on or off. Some types of retarder have various level settings. When on, the retarder is active in all driving conditions including slowing to a stop by downshifting through low gears. In this, and some other conditions, the retarder may cause a rough downshift, which at a minimum is uncomfortable for the operator and at worst, may cause undue wear on drivetrain components.
U.S. Patent Publication No. 20110125376 ("the '376 publication") describes an automatic downhill speed control system in a machine. The published application describes a retarder control for slowing the machine. The retarder can be set to an automatic position. When the retarder is in the automatic mode, the controller will determine the grade of path. Based on the grade and the vehicle speed, the gear will be changed automatically as per a predetermined gear selection sequence. When the vehicle is moving on the flat ground the automatic control is deactivated. The '376 publication fails to disclose automatically disengaging or changing the retarding level based on an analysis of the speed, grade, and/or impending gear change.


The invention relates to a translucent milk drink and a method for preparing it. The drink may be prepared by (a) providing an opaque milk starting material having a pH in the range of 5.6-8.0, preferably 5.6-7.0, most preferably 5.7-6.5; (b) contacting at least a portion of the starting material with a cation exchanger until the percentage transmission of the material (when separated from the exchanger) rises to at least 5%, preferably at least 25%, more preferably at least 40%; (c) optionally mixing the translucent milk sample with another milk sample while retaining the percentage transmission at least 5%, preferably at least 25%, more preferably at least 40%. The milk drink may be used as the base for a soft drink like milk drink, which may be carbonated.

Milk and flavored milks have received wide acceptance among consumers for centuries. Much of this acceptance has related to recognition of the valuable nutrient content of the drinks.
Soft drinks and particularly carbonated soft drinks have also received wide acceptance based primarily on flavor, appearance and carbonation, despite a poor nutrient content.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,676,988 discloses a process in which milk in contacted with a strong cation-exchange in resin in acid form for a time sufficient to lower the pH in the milk to between 1.5 and 3.2. In this process the milk cations are exchanged with hydrogen ions. The decationised milk is contacted with a strong anion-exchange in resin in base form for a time sufficient to raise the pH of the milk to the value of about 3.5-4.5. This material is mixed with decationised, deanionised fruit juice to form a drink. This process has disadvantages in that it consists of numerous steps and involves adjusting the pH of a milk to a pH at which denaturation of proteins occurs.
It is an object of the present invention to provide an improved milk drink base suitable for making milk drinks more like soft drinks; and/or, milk drinks like soft drinks derived from the base; and/or processes for the preparation of the base and the milk drinks like soft drinks and/or provide the public with a useful and nutritious choice.


A method for the joint optimization of language model performance and size is presented comprising developing a language model from a tuning set of information, segmenting at least a subset of a received textual corpus and calculating a perplexity value for each segment and refining the language model with one or more segments of the received corpus based, at least in part, on the calculated perplexity value for the one or more segments.

Recent advances in computing power and related technology have fostered the development of a new generation of powerful software applications including web-browsers, word processing and speech recognition applications. The latest generation of web-browsers, for example, anticipate a uniform resource locator (URL) address entry after a few of the initial characters of the domain name have been entered. Word processors offer improved spelling and grammar checking capabilities, word prediction, and language conversion. Newer speech recognition applications similarly offer a wide variety of features with impressive recognition and prediction accuracy rates. In order to be useful to an end-user, these features must execute in substantially real-time. To provide this performance, many applications rely on a tree-like data structure to build a simple language model.
Simplistically, a language model measures the likelihood of any given sentence. That is, a language model can take any sequence of items (words, characters, letters, etc.) and estimate the probability of the sequence. The estimation performed by language models are typically made using a simple lexicon (e.g., a word list) and a segmentation algorithm or rules. A common approach to building a prior art language model is to utilize a prefix tree-like data structure to build an N-gram language model from a known training set of a textual corpus.
The use of a prefix tree data structure (a.k.a. a suffix tree, or a PAT tree) enables a higher-level application to quickly traverse the language model, providing the substantially real-time performance characteristics described above. Simplistically, the N-gram language model counts the number of occurrences of a particular item (word, character, etc.) in a string (of size N) throughout a text. The counts are used to calculate the probability of the use of the item strings. Development of a typical tri-gram (N-gram where N=3) language model, for example, generally includes the steps of:                (a) dissecting a received textual corpus into a plurality of items (characters, letters, numbers, etc.);        (b) the items (e.g., characters (C)) are segmented (e.g., into words (W)) in accordance with a small, pre-defined lexicon and a simple, pre-defined segmentation algorithm, wherein each W is mapped in the tree to one or more C's;        (c) train a language model on the dissected corpus by counting the occurrence of strings of characters, from which the probability of a sequence of words (W1, W2, . . . WM) is predicted from the previous two words:P(W1, W2, W3, . . . WM)≈πP(Wi|Wi−1, Wi−2)   (1)
The N-gram language model is limited in a number of respects. First, the counting process utilized in constructing the prefix tree is very time consuming. Thus, only small N-gram models (typically bi-gram, or tri-gram) can practically be achieved. Second, as the string size (N) of the N-gram language model increases, the memory required to store the prefix tree increases by 2N. Thus, the memory required to store the N-gram language model, and the access time required to utilize a large N-gram language model is prohibitively large for N-gram larger than three (i.e., a tri-gram).
As a consequence of these computational and architectural limitations, prior art implementations of N-gram language models tend to be very rigid. That is, prior art N-gram language models tend to use a standard (small) lexicon, a simplistic segmentation algorithm, and will typically only rely on the previous two words to predict the current word (in a tri-gram model).
A small lexicon limits the ability of the model to identify words to those contained in the lexicon. If a word is not in the lexicon, it does not exist as far as the model is concerned. Moreover, a basic multipurpose lexicon is not likely to represent the linguistic complexity or syntactic behavior of a particular application or style or writing. Thus, a small lexicon is not likely to cover the intended linguistic content of a given application.
The segmentation algorithms are often ad-hoc and not based on any statistical or semantic principles. A simplistic segmentation algorithm typically errors in favor of larger words over smaller words. Thus, the model is unable to accurately predict smaller words contained within larger, lexiconically acceptable strings.
As a result of the foregoing limitations, a language model using prior art lexicon and segmentation algorithms tends to be error prone. That is, any errors made in the lexicon or segmentation stage are propagated throughout the language model, thereby limiting its accuracy and predictive attributes.
In addition to the fundamental problems of a limited lexicon and a simplistic segmentation algorithm, the N-gram approach is fundamentally constrained by limiting the predictive features to at most the previous N-1 words. In the instance of a tri-gram (N=3) language mode (LM), the LM is limited to only the previous two words for context. These inherent limitations in the prior art of language modeling fundamentally constrain the accuracy of such language models.
In application, the prior art approach to language modeling may provide acceptable results in many alphabet-based languages with an accepted lexicon and well-defined segmentation. The aforementioned limitations inherent in such prior art language models are further exacerbated, however, when applied to numerical or character-based languages such as, for example, many Asian languages. The Chinese language, for example, is a character-based language with an expansive lexicon that is not well-defined, where single characters may form a word or may be combined with another character to form a multi-character word with a distinct and unique meaning in the language, and where there is limited punctuation to provide clues as to sentence structure, and the like. In such a language, lexicon and segmentation clues are difficult, at best, to come by. Prior art language modeling techniques provide very poor results when applied to such languages.
One proposed solution to improving the performance of a language model applied to character-based languages is to simply throw more data at the model, i.e., trade size for accuracy. The though is that more data provides a larger lexicon and basis for maximum match-based segmentation algorithms (to be defined more fully below) to refine the language model. An obvious consequence to this solution however, and a significant limitation in and of itself, is that to simply throw more data at the model significantly increases the memory requirements required to support the language model. Aside from the cost of providing the additional memory, larger language models place a greater computational burden on the host system/application utilizing the language model. The memory and computational consequences of the prior art solution typically result in a modest improvement in predicative capability. Moreover, as above, a huge data set does not necessarily provide an improved language model on a per-application basis.
Thus, a system and method for the joint optimization of language model performance and size is required, unencumbered by the deficiencies and limitations commonly associated with prior art language modeling techniques. Just such a solution is provided below.

System and method for joint optimization of language model performance and size


The present invention relates to an apparatus for laying a pipe in a trench, the apparatus comprising a placement assembly (2) for placing the pipe in the trench; a compactor mechanism (3) for compacting of the aggregate about the pipe.

In conventional practice, pipe laying comprises the steps of excavating a trench and reinforcing the structural integrity of the trench by fitting a trench box therein. The floor of the trench may then be leveled with aggregate, for example gravel, or other suitable material. A pipe is subsequently lowered into the trench, whereupon labourers disposed within the trench manipulate the lowered pipe so as to engage the pipe with previously laid pipe sections. The remainder of the trench is infilled to completely cover the laid pipe.
Principal amongst the difficulties associated with the traditional pipe laying techniques is that trench work is extremely hazardous. The threat of injury or death to workers resulting from trench cave-ins is a recurrent possibility. Moreover, the costs associated with enacting protective measures to prevent workers in the trenches from being trapped or seriously injured in the event of trench wall collapse are considerable.
A summary of current best practice for the laying of pipes is as follows: a trench is dug to a depth of circa 150 mm below the design bottom level of the pipe to allow for the placement of a layer of crushed stone pipe bedding material beneath the pipe. A steel protection box is placed in the trench to prevent the trench walls collapsing on the workers.
A crushed stone bedding material is then poured into the trench using an excavator or other means and the workers in the trench then manipulate this material to form the bedding layer for the pipe.
Great care must be taken to ensure that the top level of this bedding material is accurately aligned with the designed pipe gradient and the designed bottom level of the pipe and this is commonly achieved by measuring from an in pipe laser beam which is pre aligned to the pipe line and gradient.
The pipe is then lowered into the trench and the workers insert this pipe into a previously laid pipe and carefully adjust the pipe so as it is correctly aligned along the design line and gradient.
Additional crushed stone is then lowered into the trench and the workers place this stone either side and along the length of the pipe up to the halfway level on the pipe diameter.
This side fill stone is manipulated with a shovel or rod by inserting the tool into the gravel along both sides of the pipe thus ensuring that any voids that may exist within the stone are replaced with stone.
This is a key facet of the installation as the pipe relies on this stone to provide structural support to the pipe in the bedding and haunch zones, the bedding zone been the area underneath the pipe and the haunch zone being the area at either side of the pipe up to a level halfway up the circumference of the pipe to a level known as the springline. Improperly supported pipes may move or dislodge during and after infilling of the trench leading to additional excavation or realignment of pipes which adds considerable time and expense to the pipe laying process.
There remains a need for alternative devices capable of minimising human intervention in placing materials in a trench, thereby reducing the potential for injury resulting from trench collapse. Moreover, the device should be capable of setting a pipe secured therein to a specific slope or gradient and further provide for automated delivery and compaction of additional aggregate material such as crushed stone along either side and along the length of the pipe to ensure proper support of the laid pipe without requiring workers to operate in the trench in the manner described above.


A device for selecting an image processing function is provided. The device comprises an analog-to-digital converting unit outputting a first image in response to an image signal having a first frequency; a frame buffer unit having a frame buffering function; and an over-driving unit having an over-driving function, wherein the device for selecting the image processing function enables one of the frame buffering function and the over-driving function according to the first frequency.

Due to the popularity of the digital television, the resolution of the image is upgraded from 720*480 pixels (NTSC) to 1920*1080 pixels (Full HD). This increases the size of the flat panel display. However, the way of driving liquid crystals is not improved accordingly. Hence, the response time of the frame is increased, which results in the afterimage for the television. Therefore, an over-driving method has been proposed below to improve the above-mentioned drawback.
Please refer to FIG. 1(a), which shows the first liquid crystal response time driven by the driving voltage in the prior art. There are two curves in FIG. 1(a), wherein the upper curve represents the waveform of the input driving voltage 11 and the lower curve represents the optical response curve of liquid crystals 12. TF represents the time for a frame, the transverse axle of the waveform of the input driving voltage 11 represents the time, the vertical axle of the waveform of the input driving voltage 11 represents the voltage, the transverse axle of the optical response curve of liquid crystals 12 represents the time, and the vertical axle of the optical response curve of liquid crystals 12 represents the gray scale.
Please refer to FIG. 1(b), which shows the second liquid crystal response time driven by the over-driving voltage in the prior art. There are two curves in FIG. 1(b), wherein the upper curve represents the waveform of the input over-driving voltage 13 and the lower curve represents the optical response curve of liquid crystals 14. In FIG. 1(a), when the input driving voltage is VD, the first liquid crystal response time t1 is 3*TF. That is, it takes the time of three frames to reach the cut-off gray scale Grey 2 from the initial gray scale Grey1. However, in FIG. 1(b), when the input over-driving voltage is VOD which is larger than VD, the second liquid crystal response time t2 is TF. That is, it only takes the time of one frame to reach the cut-off gray scale Grey2 from the initial gray scale Grey 1. Although such driving method can reduce the response time of liquid crystals from t1 to t2, the liquid crystal panel cannot display normally when the vertical synchronization frequency of the television signal is larger than 60 Hz. Therefore, it is necessary to provide a method which can be used when the vertical synchronization frequency of the television signal is larger than 60 Hz.
In order to overcome the drawbacks in the prior art, a device for selecting an image processing function and the method thereof are provided. The particular designs in the present invention not only solve the problems described above, but also are easy to be implemented. Thus, the present invention has the utility for the industry.

Device and method for selecting image processing function