A method and apparatus are provided that yields bandwidth efficient low bit rate communication of digital signals in a noisy channel. According to one aspect of the present invention, the invention includes demultiplexing a received input bit stream to divide it into a first block and a second block, convolutionally coding the first block, block coding the second block, mapping the convolutionally coded first block to a sequence of three-bit symbols, so that the bits of the convolutionally coded first block make up one bit of each three-bit symbol, mapping the block coded bits of the second block to the sequence of three-bit symbols, so that the bits of the block coded second block make up two bits of the three-bit symbol, and mapping the three-bit symbols to a phase shift keyed constellation.

1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates generally to the field of digital signal modulation and coding. More particularly, the invention relates to a low rate codec using convolutional and block coding with a phase shift keying constellation.
2. Description of the Related Art
Presently in transmitting and receiving digital data across noisy channels, it is difficult to find a suitable compromise between adequate bandwidth efficiency and adequate error correction capabilities. With full error correction coding, the bit rate becomes too low or the bandwidth requirements too high. With only modest error correction coding, much of the transmitted signal can become unrecoverable at the receiver. In order to provide a robust communications link, the data should be recoverable and yet bandwidth limitations should be honored.
The present invention provides a unique combination of error correction coding that allows for a very robust communication link in noisy channels. It is suitable for any kind of digital signal processing systems but is particularly suitable for wireless digital data communications systems.
A method and apparatus are provided that yields bandwidth efficient low bit rate communication of digital signals in a noisy channel. According to one aspect of the present invention, the invention includes demultiplexing a received input bit stream to divide it into a first block and a second block, convolutionally coding the first block, block coding the second block, mapping the convolutionally coded first block to a sequence of three-bit symbols, so that the bits of the convolutionally coded first block make up one bit of each three-bit symbol, mapping the block coded bits of the second block to the sequence of three-bit symbols, so that the bits of the block coded second block make up two bits of each three-bit symbol, and mapping the three-bit symbols to a phase shift keyed constellation.


An obstruction removal device is described, having one or more engaging members which can engage portions of the clot. The one or more engaging members have a collapsed, delivery state, and an expanded, deployed state which in some embodiments can be locked to maintain its fixed configuration.

The present invention relates to devices used to capture and remove obstructions, such as clots or other matter, from the vascular system, and the delivery of these devices to a target area within the vascular system.
The buildup of thrombi in vasculature can lead to formation of blood clots. The formation of clots can result in restricted blood supply to downstream areas of the vasculature. When located in the neurovascular system, these clots can lead to stroke.
Recent technologies to remove clots utilize devices designed to hold and capture the clot, followed by withdrawal of the device to physically remove the captured clots from the body. Several of these devices may fail to capture the clot in its entirety or may promote clot fragmentation which may allow thrombi to dislodge and accumulate at another site, thus continuing the risk of stroke. In addition, several of these devices may promote endothelial denudation due to high friction between the device and the vessel wall. Further, several of these devices collapse as they encounter a curve in the vessel, increasing the chance of allowing captured thrombi to escape and/or fragment.
There is need for an obstruction removal device which reduces the likelihood of fragmented thrombi staying in the vasculature while maximizing the chance of mechanically capturing the clot, and limiting the risk of endothelial denudation.


Glycidyl amines containing mesogenic moieties result in improved properties when cured. These amines are useful in coatings, adhesives, encapsulants, moldings, laminates, and the like.

Glycidyl amines are a specialized class of thermosettable resins with utility in a myriad of applications, notably coatings, adhesives, encapsulants, moldings, laminates, castings, electrical insulation, weatherable coatings, sealants, impregnants, plasticizers, fibers, foams, and the like. The art describes numerous incremental improvements in the physical, mechanical, thermal and/or chemical resistant properties possessed by certain polyglycidyl amines relative to their polyglycidyl ether counterparts. This nonwithstanding, substantial room for improvement in one or more of the aforesaid properties of polyglycidyl amines is desireable for each of the aforementioned applications.
The present invention provides a method for improving the properties of mono and polyglycidyl amines as well as the curable and cured compositions thereof by incorporating one or more mesogenic moieties into the structure of said glycidyl amines. These glycidyl amines exhibit ordering of the molecular chains in the melt phase and/or in the advanced compositions thereof. This morphology is susceptible to orientation during processing which can result in enhanced unidirectional mechanical properties. This is not possible to any significant extent with the conventional (non-mesogenic) glycidyl amines. The mesogenic structures incorporated into the structure of the glycidyl amines and the polymer chains of the resultant polymers thereof are believed to be responsible for the improvement in properties.


A method, and a switched network adapted to carry out the method, and computer-readable media carrying instructions for controlling the network, to increase the utilization of the North American Numbering Plan. Numbers that otherwise would be stranded in a low growth rate area are ported to a network switch serving another rate area. When a switch receives a called number it determines if the number is portable and, if so, accesses a database to determine if the number has been ported. If the number has been ported the switch processes the call in accordance with information linked to the number in the database so that stranded numbers can be assigned to stations without regard to the rate area in which the stations are located.

Currently, it is anticipated that the North American Numbering Plan (NANP) will reach exhaustion in the near future, perhaps as early as the year 2007. The NANP uses a 10 digit telephone number format for end user network addresses, i.e. telephone numbers, and eventually continued growth of the telephone network will exhaust the NANP, making it necessary to enlarge the telephone number format. This change will have a major impact. Everything that uses a telephone number will be affected. Major expenditures to accommodate the new format will be required worldwide. All countries using NANP must agree to the new format and to a transition method. Various national regulators must then order the agreed solution and then years will be required to implement the necessary hardware changes. Even the cutover period may be spread over an extended interval. While it is important to decide as soon as possible how the NANP expansion will be accomplished, it is also important to defer actually implementing the expansion as long as possible. The present value of the expansion's cost shrinks the longer the expansion can be delayed and the actual cost can actually be reduced since the changes required to implement the NANP expansion can be included in the normal modernization of equipment.
While the growth in use of the network drives the exhaustion of the NANP and is expected to reach a point where more than the 10 billion currently possible numbers will be needed, inefficiencies in the way numbers are assigned will hasten that date. Particularly, the use of numbers in the NANP to identify not just particular stations on the network but also the geographical area where the stations are actually located; and the manner in which numbers are assigned to particular geographical areas, can result in numbers being "stranded" in low-growth areas where they are unlikely to be assigned to an end user in the foreseeable future. An extreme example of this problem occurs in one area code where the assignee of the present invention uses approximately 7% of the numbers assigned.
A rate area is a geographic area represented by a single point, the "rate center". The rate center is used to represent the physical location of all end users located within the rate area. Distance is calculated between the calling station and the called station based on the rate centers associated with each station. Groups of rate areas form a station's calling area. Local calling plans for end users are usually defined as calls between certain pairs of rate areas. Rate areas determine whether inter-carrier settlements are done for local or toll traffic minutes. This is an important distinction as "toll" access minutes cost about 3 times as much as "local" traffic minutes. Rate areas are thus very important to local service providers. Currently, the first 6 digits of a 10 digit telephone number, hereinafter sometimes NPA-NXX, nominally indicate the rate area in which the identified rate station is located. Carriers comprised in the network rely on the NPA-NXX of a called telephone number to identify the called station's associated rate area and thus each NPA-NXX must correspond to only one rate area.
Typically, though not necessarily, the NPA-NXX of a number is also used to identify the switch serving the called station in order to route the call through the network, as will be described further below. Within a given area code (NPA) an office code (NXX) is assigned to a switch and to a rate area served by that switch. That is, the 10 thousand numbers defined by the last 4 digits are assigned by the network administrator to a particular switch and a particular rate area served by that switch. In rate areas that are growing slowly, or are served by a large number of carriers, assignment of numbers in blocks of 10 thousand can result in a large fraction of "stranded" numbers.
To address this problem a "thousand-block number pooling" method of number assignment has been implemented in the telephone switched network. Blocks of one thousand numbers are "ported" from the switch normally associated with an NXX to another switch serving the same rate area. This breaks the relation between NPA-NXX and the switch, and calls are routed based on pointers (LRN's) associated with the ported numbers in a database maintained by the network Administrator. It has recently been proposed to extend this approach to the porting of individual telephone numbers.
While the above described approaches to number assignment have proven to be somewhat effective in increasing the utilization of numbers in rate areas served by more than one switch, "number pooling" approaches still require that particular NPA-NXX's be associated with a single rate area with the result that large fractions of numbers assigned to low-growth areas can be stranded". Consequently, there is a need for a number assignment method, and a network adapted to such a method, which will allow the assignment of "stranded" numbers without regard to rate areas in which stations are located, and thereby improve utilization of the NANP.

This patent is subject to a terminal disclaimer.

Method and system for assignment of numbers as addresses for stations on a switched network


A nutrition-enriched rice manufacturing method includes a harvesting process of harvesting raw unhulled rice as a starting material from a paddy field, a nutrition enriching process of generating nutrition-enriched unhulled rice by heating the raw unhulled rice of which average moisture content is at a predetermined level of 20% by weight or more with a microwave heating device and heat-retaining the raw unhulled rice for a predetermined period of time with a heat retention device, and a drying, hulling and polishing process of drying nutrition-enriched unhulled rice so as to have an average moisture content suitable to a long-term storage, hulling to remove chaff, and polishing to remove embryo and bran layer so as to obtain nutrition-enriched polished rice which abundantly contains gamma aminobutyric acid in an endosperm part.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a method of manufacturing rice which abundantly contains gamma aminobutyric acid in an endosperm part.
2. Description of Related Art
Conventionally, it is said that effects of preventing hypertension and improving blood flow can be obtained by taking gamma aminobutyric acid. Therefore, germinated brown rice and germinated soybean which are foods with an increased content of the gamma aminobutyric acid are generally manufactured. Seeds of rice, soybean, and the like are germinated so that nutrition including gamma aminobutyric acid and vitamin B group is enriched without using additives more than usual.
In the conventional method of manufacturing germinated brown rice, in general, brown rice with embryo is put into a soak tank or the like with water and a water temperature in the soak tank is kept to be substantially 25 to 35° C. by using an electric heater or the like. Then, the brown rice is soaked in the water in the soak tank for 24 to 72 hours so as to be germinated. The brown rice soaked in the water absorbs water and a moisture content of the brown rice is increased. Further, the brown rice is heat-retained at a temperature suitable to germination. Eventually, the brown rice starts to germinate and becomes in a so-called "pigeon breast state". In the pigeon breast state, the embryo grows to a size of substantially 0.5 mm to 2.0 mm so that germination can be observed seemingly. The germinated brown rice obtained in such a manner contains gamma aminobutyric acid abundantly in comparison with that contained in usual brown rice. Brown rice contains only 2 to 3 mg/100 g of gamma aminobutyric acid and polished rice contains only substantially 1 mg/100 g of gamma aminobutyric acid. On the other hand, a content of gamma aminobutyric acid in the germinated brown rice is increased to substantially 5 to 20 mg/100 g.
Further, a technique of manufacturing germinated rice with embryo buds obtained by polishing germinated brown rice while embryo is left and removing bran layer has been commonly known by applying the above technique of manufacturing germinated brown rice (see Patent Document 1). Flavor of the germinated rice with embryo buds is improved in comparison with that of the germinated brown rice by removing the bran layer therefrom.    [Patent Document 1] Japanese Patent Application Laid-open No. 2005-333829
However, in the conventional germinated brown rice and germinated rice with embryo buds, gamma aminobutyric acid is increased in embryo and bran layer. Therefore, if the germinated brown rice or the germinated rice with embryo buds is polished to obtain polished rice, there arises a problem that a content of the gamma aminobutyric acid in the obtained polished rice is decreased to an equivalent level to that of usual polished rice. Therefore, the germinated brown rice or the germinated rice with embryo buds is cooked while embryo and bran layer are left so that the flavor of the germinated brown rice or the germinated rice with embryo buds is poorer than that of polished rice. The flavor thereof can be improved by mixing the germinated brown rice or the germinated rice with embryo buds with usual polished rice and cooking. However, the following problem arises in this case. That is, if the germinated brown rice or the germinated rice with embryo buds which abundantly contains gamma aminobutyric acid is mixed with the polished rice which is poor in gamma aminobutyric acid, a content of the gamma aminobutyric acid by weight in cooked rice is largely decreased.
Further, if brown rice is soaked for a long period of time in order to germinate the brown rice, when the brown rice is dried after being soaked, there arises a problem that so-called "cracking" is easily caused. The cracking is a phenomenon that a surface of brown rice is cracked. The flavor of the cracked rice is bad because a grain of the rice is cracked when polished or texture of the rice becomes sticky when boiled. Further, since bacteria is easily developed in water at a temperature suitable to germination of brown rice, there is a risk that an unusual odor is caused in the brown rice when soaked in the water and the flavor thereof is further deteriorated.

Nutrition-enriched rice manufacturing method


An optical timing extraction circuit is capable of extracting an optical clock signal of greater than tens of Gb/sec from a NRZ modulated signal. The light intensity level of a light signal modulated in intensity by an NRZ signal is amplified to a level sufficient to cause the optical Kerr effect, and combined with a CW light from a semiconductor laser which is modulated in frequency by the amplified light signal in an optical converting circuit by utilizing the optical Kerr effect. This frequency-modulated light is passed through a narrow band-pass optical filter to cause a signal intensity-modulated pulsed light at each intensity changing point of the modulated signal. Next, after the pulsed light is amplified up to a required optical intensity level, it is passed through another narrow band-pass optical filter, which is an optical tank for extracting the optical clock, to extract an optical clock signal.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an optical timing extraction circuit for use in the field of optical communication.
2. Description of the Prior Art
In recent years, as optical communication techniques has been developed in response to a demand for further speeding up of the performance of communication networks, optical transmission whose transmission speed amounts to tens of Gb/s is being realized. In this case, a timing extracting circuit is indispensable for the transmission system. However, it is difficult to realize such a circuit in a transmission speed range of over several tens of Gb/s with electronic circuits, and a clock extracting technique using an optical circuit becomes necessary. Conventionally, as such, an optical timing extraction circuit using a narrow bandwidth optical filter, such as a Fabry-Perot filter, as a clock extracting tank, was proposed in a paper entitled "All-optical Timing Extraction Circuit", Jinno et al, Material of Institute of Electronics, Information and Communication Engineers, Optical Communication System Seminar, December 1988, pages 68 through 74, in which its free spectral range substantially coincides with the fundamental frequency of the transmitted signal.
However, in a conventional optical timing extraction circuit, the transmission line signal from which the clock signal can be extracted is restricted to an RZ signal, and it cannot be done for an NRZ signal. Therefore, with the conventional optical clock extracting circuit, there has been a problem to be solved regarding the form of the optical signal from which the clock signal is to be extracted.


The present invention relates to methods for concurrent transmission and reception of information symbols over time-frequency resource elements in a wireless communication system. According to the present invention coded bits interleaving is combined with symbol spreading using LDS signatures. Thereby, the performance of coded LDS transmissions can be substantially improved in wireless communication systems. Furthermore, the invention also relates to corresponding transmit device, receiver device, computer program, and computer program product.

Spectrum spreading of information symbols is a simple method to achieve frequency diversity over a multipath, frequency-selective fading propagation channel, as well as a method for simultaneous multiple-access by a number of users to the same communication channel. Spread-spectrum communication systems with multiple-access capability based on user-specific spreading signatures (also referred to as codes, or sequences) are usually called Code-Division Multiple-Access (CDMA) systems. Multiple-access capability is based on low (ideally zero) cross-correlation between the signatures. Multipath propagation deteriorates the performance of CDMA systems, as the multiple reflections of each signature element result in the distortion of the transmitted signatures. The cross-correlations of the received, distorted signatures deviate from the designed minimized values.
On the other hand, Orthogonal Frequency-Division Multiplexing (OFDM) transmission uses a transmitted cyclic prefix for each block of transmitted symbols to make, in the receiver, the multipath fading channel appear as a single-path channel on each of the orthogonal detected subcarriers. Such a property allows for much simpler receivers than in CDMA systems, when the transmission is over multipath propagation channels. However, by its very nature an OFDM system cannot directly exploit the potential diversity gain of the multipath fading channel.
To make a compromise between the diversity gain and multiple-access capability of CDMA systems, and the receiver simplicity pertained to OFDM systems, so-called MC-CDMA systems have been developed, where n information symbols (possibly obtained after error-correction encoding) are transmitted concurrently (i.e. summed) after spreading and sub-carrier mapping: each information symbol is first multiplied (i.e. spread) by a unique corresponding signature, a sequence of m spreading symbols (chips), and then mapped to a set of m orthogonal sub-carriers, common to all concurrently transmitted information symbols, where each chip of the spread information symbol modulates a dedicated sub-carrier. Finally, the signal obtained by the previous operations is extended by preceding it with the so-called cyclic prefix, which is a block of samples taken from the end of the original signal. In the overloaded case, i.e. the situation where n>m, there are more signature sequences than chips. In this case no orthogonal signature sets exists and interference is inherent.
The operations of sub-carrier mapping and adding the cyclic prefix do not have impact on the properties of Low-Density Spreading (LDS) transmissions on Additive White Gaussian Noise (AWGN) channel. Thus, we shall model the received signal vector r consisting of n received chip-values after passing through a channel, as the following relation:r=Sx+z,   (1),where S is the m×n signature matrix (each signature being a column of this matrix), X is the column vector containing the modulation symbols, and Z is the column vector containing the complex-valued samples of white additive Gaussian noise.
The optimum demodulator for overloaded MC-CDMA transmission is the joint Maximum Likelihood (ML) detection of the set of information symbols transmitted concurrently using different signatures. Such demodulator is typically too complex for practical use, as it has to search through all possible sequences of n information symbols, so a large variety of suboptimal Multiuser Demodulation (MUD) methods have been developed. All suboptimal MUD methods are, in one way or another, approximations of joint ML demodulation.
The MUD receivers are typically still very complex, the complexity increasing non-linearly with the length of signatures. Traditionally, MUD methods have been independent of the signature design, in which case the MUD implementation complexity is dependent only on the number of signatures. It has however recently been demonstrated that the MUD complexity can be reduced by specially designed sparse signatures, accompanied with the usage of Belief Propagation joint Multiuser Demodulation (BP-MUD). If we denote an information symbol modulating a signature as a symbol variable, then the BP-MUD can be described as performing the ML searching on each chip, but only over a (small) set of information symbols that contribute to the energy of each particular chip. That set is defined by the non-zero elements in each row of the LDS signature matrix. Such sparse signatures contain only few chips where the energy is actually transmitted, i.e. each of them has only few non-zero elements. Therefore they are called Low-Density Spreading (LDS) signatures.
An LDS signature of length m is a sequence of m spreading symbols (chips) such that wc chips are not equal to zero, while m-wc are equal to zero, so that wc<<n. The LDS transmission combined, e.g. with OFDM (i.e. LDS-OFDM) is an attractive candidate for future high-capacity wireless communication systems, developed on the foundation of the existing OFDM based global cellular standard (i.e. 3GPP LTE). The concept of LDS-OFDM transmission is shown in FIG. 1 in which LDS spread information symbols are summed into a single vector of length 12 chips, wherein the chips modulate the corresponding subcarriers within an OFDM transmission interval. Further, the FFT processor in FIG. 1 maps frequency domain signal samples into time domain signal samples at its output.
The corresponding BP-MUD demodulator aims at approximating the ML detector by iterating belief values and assumes that the signature matrix S is of the so-called Low-Density Parity-Check (LDPC) type. The BP-MUD demodulator has considerably lower complexity than the ML detector and its performance can be close to that of the MAP detector. The BP-MUD is applicable to any choice of the actual values of the signature sequences.
However, the error rate performances of detected information bits in the receiver do depend on the choice of signature sequences. For example, in noise-free conditions it should be possible to unambiguously detect the information symbols that modulate the different LDS signatures. This is possible only if the modulated signatures represent a Uniquely Decidable (UD) code, as shown in the paper by van de Beek and Popovic from IEEE GLOBECOM 2009 conference.
For the overloaded scenarios, the performance of the system can typically be measured as the gap to the single-user bound (the performance on AWGN channel of a system employing only one user, hence free from inter-user interference). The single-user bound performance can is equivalent to the performance of a CDMA system with load factor 1, using the identity matrix as the signature matrix.
This gap in performance between LDS transmission and the corresponding single user transmission using the same coding and modulation format is mainly a function of the overloading factor and the modulation format (i.e. constellation size) of the information symbols.
The functional block structure of a typical transmitter in a conventional digital wireless communication system is given in FIG. 2. The information bits are grouped in blocks, and each block of information bits is encoded by error correction encoder in order to be protected against additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN) at the receiver. The encoder, for example, a convolutional encoder, produces so-called "mother" code word. The corresponding code rate Rm, defined as the ratio of the number of information bits encoded in a single code word divided by the number of bits in the code word, is called mother code rate. For some applications the code word size has to be adjusted to match available physical resources for the transmission, which is done in the rate matching block, by either puncturing (to shorten the mother code word) or repetition (to extend the mother code word).
Typical and the best error correction codes are designed to protect against the statistically independent errors. For example, such errors occur on AWGN communication channel. However, on fading communication channel, which causes large amplitude variations of the received signal, the received signal amplitude can be below a detection threshold during a number of signalling intervals, resulting in bursts of erroneously received information symbols. Because of that, the errors on the received bits are not statistically independent, and therefore the error correction code designed for AWGN channel would not be capable to effectively protect information on burst-error communication channels.
A simple and effective method for bit error correction on burst-error channels is to use already designed codes for AWGN channels along with an additional functional block, called (channel) bit interleaver, which performs permutation of the bits of each (rate matched) code word. The corresponding inverse permutation of received bits is performed in the channel bit deinterleaver, before error correction decoder. Obviously, the deinterleaver transforms a burst of errors into a disperse pattern of errors. The more disperse error pattern after deinterleaver, the better performances of error correction decoder will be achieved. The optimum bit interleaver for a given code word length is such permutation that makes two successive bits in the permuted code word being at the maximum possible distance before interleaving (counted in number of bit positions between them). Note that on AWGN channel the interleaver and the deinterleaver have no impact on the link performances. Therefore, in the applications where the communication channel is only of AWGN type, the channel bit interleaver and deinterleaver are not used. Therefore the channel bit interleaver in FIG. 2 is denoted as optional.
In FIG. 3, a general receiver block diagram is shown, corresponding to the transmission scheme shown in FIG. 2. The demodulator of FIG. 3 produces soft values of bits transmitted by each information symbol. These soft values are deinterleaved and fed into the error correction decoder, which typically is a convolutional or a turbo decoder in common systems.
The LDS transmission defined up to date is similar to the conventional one, with the only difference in the last stage of the transmitter chain, where LDS Transmitter (Tx) stage is added, to perform spreading and concurrent transmission of multiple information symbols. The functional block structure of the LDS transmitter of the prior art is given in FIG. 4. It should be noted at this point that the channel bit interleaver is optional in the LDS transmitter, meaning that the channel bit interleaver is not used if the communication channel is of AWGN type.
The corresponding state-of-the-art LDS receiver is shown in FIG. 5. The BP-MUD demodulator in FIG. 5 produces soft values (Log Likelihood Ratio—LLR) of the coded bits that are, after deinterleaving (performed only if there is a bit interleaving operation in the transmitter), fed to the error correction decoder. The LLR calculation in BP-MUD demodulator is done once the BP-MUD iterative processing is finished: it uses the final estimated probabilities of all possible symbols from the modulation constellation for each code channel, i.e. for each signature. In other words, the BP-MUD performance is determined by the performance of the estimation of transmitted modulation symbols, meaning that the bits inside these symbols are not directly estimated.
If we denote a modulation symbol modulating a signature as a symbol variable, then the detection of concurrently transmitted modulation symbols is performed in an iterative way, using the sparse connections between the energy of each chip and the subsets of the symbol variables contributing to the energy of each particular chip. These sparse connections are defined by the non-zero elements in each row of the LDS signature matrix.
On the AWGN channel, the connections between each chip and the corresponding symbol variables allow almost ML detection performance of the sequence of n symbol variables transmitted in a LDS transmission interval, but in the same time might be source of a relatively long sequence of erroneously detected symbol variables. The numerical simulations confirmed that it happens indeed, even at high signal-to-noise ratios (SNR) at the receiver: even if the average symbol or bit error rate is quite low, after averaging over a large number of LDS transmission intervals, the instantaneous error rate, obtained as the number of erroneously detected symbols in a single LDS transmission interval, can be rather high—sometimes more than 50% of n concurrently transmitted modulation symbols can be erroneously detected. These erroneous LDS reception intervals are followed by a large number of correct reception intervals, which make the overall, average error rate low.
Such burst-error behaviour of LDS BP-MUD on the AWGN channel seems to be its fundamental inherent property, which is not noticeable when the LDS transmission is without error correction coding, as it that case only the average error rate determines the performance. When the error correction encoding is included in the LDS transmission, the original code word consisting of coded bits is after modulation transformed into a code word of NCWS modulation symbols, where typically NCWS is typically much larger than the number of symbols n that can be transmitted in a single LDS transmission interval. Therefore the code word of modulation symbols has to be cut into NLDS segments, each consisting on n modulation symbols, so that NLDS transmission intervals are needed to send a single code word.
The bursts of errors of LDS BP-MUD, which may occur after reception of some segments of the code word, even on AWGN channel, result in the bursts of erroneous LLRs. The bursts of erroneous LLRs prevent correct functioning of error correction decoders designed for AWGN channels, such as Viterbi and turbo decoders. Consequently, if one compares performances of the LDS transmission to the performances of the conventional communication system on AWGN channel, both either without error correction coding, or with error correction coding, the performance of uncoded LDS transmission is relatively worse than that of coded LDS transmission. In other words, the reduction of the required received SNR which error correction code provide is less pronounced with LDS transmission than in ordinary transmission.
Hence, the error correction coding at the transmitter causes that the gap between the performance of LDS transmission and the performance of conventional transmission, both on AWGN channel, increases compared to the scenario without error correction coding using the same modulation format. The problem is how to modify LDS transmission with error correction coding over AWGN channel in order to minimize the performance gap to the conventional transmission with the same modulation and coding scheme.

Method for concurrent transmission of information symbols in wireless communication systems


In a coil type lithium battery comprising a coil electrode body formed by winding a strip like negative electrode plate of lithium or lithium alloy and strip like positive electrode about a separator, the entire outer cylindrical surface of the coil of the electrode body is covered with an insulating film to prevent internal short circuiting of the battery.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a lithium battery, and more particularly to a lithium primary battery having coiled electrode members for use in supplying high current.
2. Description of the Prior Art
In a conventional coiled type lithium battery (FIG. 1), an electrode body of a cylindrical shape of the battery is formed in such a manner that a negative electrode plate 1 made of a strip sheet of lithium or lithium alloy and a positive electrode 2 made of metal charge collecting mesh holding a positive electrode agent are laminated through a separator 3 made of a non woven cloth, such as polypropylene fibers, and are coiled in a roll.
Moreover, in order to avoid collapse of the roll of the electrode members, the outer end part of the separator 3, wound around the outer cylindrical surface of the electrode body, is adapted to contact with the inner cylindrical surface of a negative electrode can except for a portion of an adhesive tape wound around the central portion of the outer cylindrical surface of the roll of the electrode body. At the inner central portion of the roll of the electrode body, namely at the beginning of the winding of the electrode body, a rolled portion 3a of only the separator 3 is formed and the stripe-like positive electrode 2 is disposed outside of the rolled portion 3a and the strip-like negative electrode 1 is disposed outside of positive electrode 2 through the separator 3.
The inner end 1a of the strip-like negative electrode plate 1 ends beyond the inner end 2a of the positive electrode plate 2 toward the inner portion of the roll of the electrode body in order to prevent slip of the respective members of the electrode body and to facilitate winding of the electrode body when the electrode body is wound by a winding machine by clamping the inner end of the separator 3 by the rotation spindle of the machine. Accordingly, as shown by 3a, only the separator 3 is rolled along some length (normally 90.degree. to 180.degree.) from the inner end la of the strip-like negative electrode plate 1.
As the collecting mesh of the positive electrode, there is used an expanded metal plate made of stainless steel which metal plate is cut by a number of slits directed in one direction and the metal plate is expanded in a direction perpendicular to the slit to open the slits. Conventionally, the stripe-like positive electrode plate is formed in such a manner that the expanded metal is sandwiched by positive electrode agent sheets made of a positive active agent, electrically conductive powder and a binder with the positive electrode agent sheets bonded to the expanded metal by a rolling machine.
However, according to recent developments in the wide field of use of the battery, there are increasing cases of wrong use of the battery of this kind such that the battery, despite the fact that the battery is a primary battery, is erroneously subjected to charging or forced discharging by an external power source. An example of forced discharging, which occurs many times, is that one or more old batteries, which are already used and the discharging capacity thereof is depleted or small, are connected with one or more new batteries of which the discharging capacity is plentiful. In this case, if the battery of which the discharging capacity is depleted is forced to be discharged, the battery is loaded with a minus voltage by the current supplied from the other healthy battery.
In the conventional coiled type lithium battery, if such error occurs, the battery is apt to generate heat due to an internal short circuit and there are many cases of the batteries catching fire.
The holding of the positive electrode agent in the positive electrode is done mainly by bonding of the positive electrode mix, carried on the expanded metal on both sides of the slit. However, in case of expanded metal, if the slit is opened too wide, the expanded metal is apt to be cut off. Therefore, in general, the opening rate of the expanded metal is small, about less than 70%, whereby the bonding areas are insufficient, the sufficient holding force can not be obtained and therefore there is a problem that the positive electrode mix can be easily separated from the expanded metal at the time of formation of the coiled electrode body.
In case the pressing force of the positive electrode agent sheet is increased for increasing the bonding force of the positive electrode agent and electric collecting ability, there is such a problem that rigid deformation of and cut-off in the expanded metal sheet easily occur. There is a further disadvantage that since the edge of the opened slit and the cut off edge are acute in the expanded metal sheet, the separator is apt to be damaged.
It has also been discovered that when the lithium batteries are subjected to work using relatively large current, the batteries generate a lot of heat and the temperature of the battery becomes higher at the central portion, and the insulation layer 3a is molten, whereby an internal short circuit occurs at the inner end 1a of the negative electrode plate 1 and the inner end 2a of the positive electrode 2 and a further large amount of current flows there with the generation of further heat, causing the lithium and lithium alloy to become molten resulting in burning or an explosion of the battery.


The uniformity of a wet coating on a substrate is improved by contacting the coating at a first position with the wetted surfaces of periodic pick-and-place devices, and re-contacting the coating with such wetted surfaces at positions on the substrate that are different from the first position and not periodically related to one another with respect to their distance from the first position. A coating is applied to a substrate by applying an uneven wet coating, contacting the coating at a first position with the wetted surfaces of periodic pick-and-place devices, and re-contacting the coating with such wetted surfaces at positions on the substrate that are different from the first position and not periodically related to one another with respect to their distance from the first position. These methods can provide extremely uniform coatings and extremely thin coatings, at very high rates of speed. The coatings can be applied in lanes with sharply defined edges and independently adjustable coating calipers. The pick-and-place devices facilitate drying and reduce the sensitivity of drying ovens to coating caliper surges. Equipment to carry out these methods is simple to construct, set up and operate, and can easily be adjusted to alter coating thickness and compensate for coating variation.

There are many known methods and devices for coating a moving web and other fixed or moving substrates. Several are described in Booth, G. L., "The Coating Machine", Pulp and Paper Manufacture, Vol. 8, Coating, Converting and Processes, pp 76-87 (Third Edition, 1990). For example, gravure roll coaters (see, e.g. U.S. Pat. No. 5,620,514) can provide relatively thin coatings at relatively high run rates. Attainment of a desired specific average caliper usually requires several trials with gravure rolls of different patterns. Runtime factors such as variations in doctor blade pressure, coating speed, temperature, or liquid viscosity can cause overall coating weight variation and uneven localized caliper in the machine or transverse directions.
Barmarks and chatter marks are bands of light on heavy coating extending across the web. These are regarded as defects, and can be caused by factors such as vibration, flow pulsation, web speed oscillation, gap variation and roll drive oscillation. Chatter marks are commonly periodic, but barmarks can occur as the result of random system upsets. Gutoff and Cohen, Coating and Driving Defects (John Wiley & Sons, New York, 1995) discusses many of the sources of cross web marks and emphasizes their removal by identifying and eliminating the fundamental cause. This approach can require substantial time and effort.
Multiple lane coaters include those shown in U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,920,862; 5,599,602; 5,733,608 and 5,871,585. Gravure coating can also be used to produce down web lanes of a single formulation at a coating station, by using spaced circumferential patterns on the gravure roll or circumferential undercuts on the web back up roll. However, due to intermixing that occurs at the nip, abutting lanes of different formulations can not be applied from the same gravure roll.
Under some gravure roll coating run conditions, a gravure roll pattern appears in the wet coating. Gravure roll marks can be removed with an arcuate flexible smoothing film located down web from the gravure roll (see, e.g., U.S. Pat. No. 5,447,747); with a smoothing roll or rolls bearing against an intermediate coating roll (see, e.g., U.S. Pat. No. 4,378,390) or with a set of smoothing rolls located down web from the gravure roll (see, e.g., U.S. Pat. No. 4,267,215). In Examples 1-7 and 10 of the '215 patent, a continuous coating was applied to a plastic film and subsequently contacted by an undriven corotating stabilizing roll 68 and a set of three equal diameter counter rotating spreading rolls 70. The respective diameters of the stabilizing roll and spreading rolls are not disclosed but appear from the Drawing to stand in a 2:1 ratio. In Example 10 of the '215 patent, the applicator roll speed was increased until the uniformity of the coating applied to the web began to deteriorate (at a peripheral applicator roll speed of 0.51 m/s) and surplus coating liquid began to accumulate on the web surface upstream of the rolls 70 (at a peripheral applicator roll speed of 0.61 m/s). Coatings having thicknesses down to 1.84 micrometers were reported.
Several coaters having brush or roller smoothing devices are also shown in the above-mentioned Booth article.
Very thin coatings (e.g., about 0.1 to about 5 micrometers) can be obtained on gravure roll coaters by diluting the coating formulation with a solvent. Solvents are objectionable for health, safety, environmental and cost reasons.
Multiroll coaters (see, e.g., U.S. Pat. Nos. 2,105,488; 2,105,981; 3,018,757; 4,569,864 and 5,536,314) can also be used to provide thin coatings. Multiroll coaters are shown by Booth and are reviewed in Benjamin, D. F., T. J. Anderson, and L. E. Scriven, "Multiple Roll Systems: Steady-State Operation", AIChE J., V41, p. 1045 (1995); and Benjamin, D. F., T. J. Anderson, and L. E. Scriven, "Multiple Roll Systems: Residence Times and Dynamic Response", AIChE J., V41, p. 2198 (1995). Commercially available forward-roll transfer coaters typically use a series of three to seven counter rotating rolls to transfer a coating liquid from a reservoir to a web via the rolls. These coaters can apply silicone release liner coatings at wet coating thickness as thin as about 0.5 to about 2 micrometers. The desired coating caliper and quality are obtained by artfully setting roll gaps, roll speed ratios and nipping pressures.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,569,864 describes a coating device in which a thick, continuous premetered coating is applied by an extrusion nozzle to a first rotating roll and then transferred by one or more additional rolls to a faster moving web. The extrusion nozzle is placed very close to the first roll (e.g., 25 to 50 micrometers) in order to obtain an even and smoothly distributed coating on the first roll.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,460,120 describes a coating device in which a coating is spray-applied to the underside of a moving web immediately upstream from a resilient, compressible, saturable applicator.
Electrostatic spray coating devices (see, e.g., U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,748,043; 4,830,872; 5,326,598; 5,702,527 and 5,954,907) atomize a liquid and deposit the atomized droplets assisted by electrostatic forces. In some applications the desired coating thickness is larger than the droplet diameter and the droplets just land on top of each other and coalesce to form the coating. In other applications the desired coating thickness is smaller than the droplet diameter. For these thin film coatings a solvent can be used, but if a solventless coating is desired, then the drops must land on the web some distance apart from each other in order to satisfy the small volume requirement of the thin film coating. Then the droplets must spread in order to merge into a continuous voidless coating. Spreading takes time and can be a rate-limiting step for these electrostatic spray coating processes. If the surface chemistry is such that the liquid does not sufficiently spread on the substrate in the available time before cure or hardening, then voids will remain in the coating.


A fluid-permeable agent for providing fluid-permeability to non-woven sheets of polyolefin fibers contains 50 wt % or more of aliphatic diethanol amide shown by the formula: ##STR1## where R is alkyl or alkenyl group with 11-17 carbon atoms. The agent may additionally contain non-ionic surfactants and salt of certain specified kinds and is applied at a rate of 0.1-0.5 wt % with respect to the fibers for good results.

This invention relates to fluid-permeable agents for non-woven sheets made of polyolefin fibers such as composite synthetic fibers having sheath-core structure made of two or more polymers with different melting points having polyolefin polymer sheaths and also to application methods of such agents. More particularly, this invention relates to agents to be applied to such fibers for providing durability and fluid-permeability and also to methods of applying such agents.
Recently, non-woven sheets by a dry-bonding process and more particularly bondable non-woven sheets are coming to be frequently used in medical supplies and hygienical articles. For diapers, napkins and the like, polyolefin fibers and composite polyethylene fibers are frequently used in view of their skin-comfortability (that is, softness and absence of discomfort from wetting). In order to improve product characteristics such as bulkiness, restorability and shape-stability against heat, on the other hand, use is frequently made of heat-bondable composite fibers comprised of polyester fibers and polypropylene fibers as the core and polyolefin polymers as the sheath.
In order to eliminate user's discomfort from a diaper, a napkin and the like caused by sweat, urine, menstrual fluid and other body fluids, it is considered important not only that the body-facing parts of these products be wettable but also their wettability can be quickly manifested. For this reason, fluid-permeability within a short time is a required characteristic of polyolefin fibers of which these body-facing parts are comprised. Since diapers, in particular, are generally worn by infants, seniors and very sick persons who cannot take care of themselves, a single diaper should be able to handle two or more discharges without causing discomfort to the wearer. For this reason, durability of fluid-permeability (or durability against repeated use) is another strongly required characteristic.
Prior art methods of providing fluid-permeability to polyolefin fibers and sheaths of polyolefin composite fibers include (1) application of a low-molecular weight hydrophilic compound (U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,664,343 and 3,821,021), (2) application of a hydrophilic macromolecular resin (U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,934,587, 4,297,410, 4,406,660 and 4,718,899), (3) improvement of surface characteristics by chemical processing, solvent processing, plasma processing, corona discharge processing, etc. By the first of the above methods, however, not only desired fluid-permeability cannot be obtained because these agents cannot wet the fiber surface satisfactorily but also there is no durability even if fluid-permeability can be obtained to a certain extent and, in many instances, the user's skin is seriously irritated. The second of the above methods, on the other hand, generally cannot provide sufficient fluid-permeability. Additional disadvantages include insufficiency in durability if use is made of an agent which can provide fluid-permeability to a certain extent. Moreover, agents of this type have the tendency of causing troubles of various kinds during the production process of non-woven sheets. As for the third of the above methods, although it provides relatively favorable results regarding skin-irritation and permeability, resultant fluid-permeability tends to deteriorate with time along with the polar groups which are generated by the surface changes of the fibers. In other words, this method not only provides insufficient durability but also is itself uneconomical.
There have been proposals, on the other hand, to use a hydrophilic polymer as base material and to partially coat its surface with a hydrophobic compound. A water repellant polymer may be used as the hydrophobic compound as disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 3,934,587. Alternatively, use may be made of a compound of silicon or fluorine as disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 3,838,692. These proposed methods are equally unsatisfactory because a basically hydrophilic polymer is used as the base material and the aforementioned characteristics of basically hydrophobic polyolefin fibers are lacking.

Fluid-permeable agent for non-woven sheets of polyolefin fibers


A toner according to an embodiment includes toner base particles and an external additive. The external additive contains silica particles having a D50 of 70 to 120 nm. The joining degree of the silica particles is 80% or more. The toner base particles contain a crystalline polyester resin and an ester wax. The ester wax is a condensation polymer of three or more types of carboxylic acids and two or more types of alcohols. The proportion of a carboxylic acid, the content of which is highest, is between 70 and 95 mass %. The proportion of a carboxylic acid with a carbon number of 18 or less is 5 mass % or less. The proportion of an alcohol, the content of which is highest, is between 70 and 90 mass %. The proportion of an alcohol with a carbon number of 18 or less is 20 mass % or less.

There is known a toner containing a crystalline polyester resin (for example, Japanese Patent No. 3693327). The toner containing a crystalline polyester resin has excellent low-temperature fixability. However, the toner containing a crystalline polyester resin has insufficient heat resistance and storage stability. Therefore, in the toner containing a crystalline polyester resin, soft caking is likely to occur under high temperature. The toner in which soft caking occurred is solidified in an image forming apparatus to cause clogging or an image defect. Accordingly, the improvement of heat resistance and storage stability is required for the toner containing a crystalline polyester resin.
On the other hand, the use of an ester wax having excellent heat resistance is effective in the improvement of the heat resistance and storage stability of a toner. However, when an ester wax and a crystalline polyester resin are used together, the dispersibility of the components in a toner is likely to deteriorate. As a result, the electric charge amount of the toner is hardly controlled. In addition, the electric charge amount of the toner is more hardly maintained under high temperature and high humidity as in an image forming apparatus, and the scattering amount of the toner is likely to decrease. The toner whose scattering amount decreased is deposited in the apparatus to cause contamination.
In this manner, the toner containing a crystalline polyester resin hardly achieves both excellent low-temperature fixability and maintenance of an electric charge amount at the same time.

Toner, toner cartridge, and image forming apparatus


A method and an electronic device arranged to execute application programs, wherein the device comprises an operating system enabling a separation of user interface data from the rest of the data processing system, the device being arranged to check, in response to starting an execution of the application program, whether screen size information of the application program corresponds to a display size of the terminal; and download, in response to the screen size of the application program differing from the display size of the terminal, a new user interface file with an appropriate screen size from a network server.

It is generally known that portable electronic devices, like mobile stations, PDA devices and portable computers, are provided with displays of various sizes. For example 128×128/160 and 176×208 pixels are known resolutions of a mobile station display, while some PDA devices may have a display resolution of 640×200/320 pixels. Due to the differences in display resolution and size, application programs for mobile phones and PDA devices are created for each display size separately.
This causes inconveniency for both application developers and end-users. Application developers must create different software versions for each available display size. For example an application designed for a mobile station with a display size of 176×208 pixels cannot be typically run in a PDA device with a display size of 640×200 pixels, and vice versa, even though the application itself may otherwise be a compatible application for both devices. An end-user, in turn, may have a plurality of mobile devices with various display sizes. An application, compatible as such with a plurality of devices, could be stored in a memory card and executed in all compatible devices by inserting the memory card in each device at a time, but due to the differences in display resolution, the application cannot be run in every device.

Configuring user interfaces in electronic devices


A lock using lock chambers and lock gates capable of reducing the water consumption in the operations of raising or lowering the boat passing through the lock from one level to another. The lock includes flexible air chambers capable of being inflated with air, located on bases of the lock chambers which are connected by a pipe equipped with a valve for controlling a flow of air between the air chambers.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a lock for raising and lowering boats as they pass from one level to another level in a canal, a river, or a dock, by means of lock chambers and lock gates.
2. Description of the Background Art
The Panama canal connecting the Atlantic and Pacific oceans is equipped with a multiple level lock.
Such a conventional lock in general operates as shown in FIGS. 1(A) to 1(E) sequentially.
First of all, the lock comprises a lower lock chamber 105 and an upper lock chamber 107 provided between a lower stream 101 and an upper stream 103, which are separated by a middle lock gate 111. The lower lock chamber 105 is separated from the lower stream 101 by a lower lock gate 109, and the upper lock chamber 107 is separated from the upper stream 103 by a front gate 113.
The lower stream 101 and the lower lock chamber 105 are connected at their bases by a lower pipe 115 equipped with a lower valve 117, the lower lock chamber 105 and the upper lock chamber 107 are connected at their bases by a middle pipe 119 equipped with a middle valve 121, and the upper stream 103 and the upper lock chamber 107 are connected at their bases by an upper pipe 123 equipped with an upper valve 125. Both of the lower lock chamber 105 and the upper lock chamber 107 are filled with appropriate amount of water initially.
Now, a boat K on the lower stream 101 can be raised to the upper stream 103 as follows.
First, as shown in FIG. 1(A), the lower lock gate 109 is opened, the boat K is lead from the lower stream 101 to the lower lock chamber 105, and then the lower lock gate 109 is closed. Here, the water corresponding to the displacement of the boat K is discharged from the lower lock chamber 105 into the lower stream 101.
Next, as shown in FIG. 1(B), the middle valve 121 is opened, the water is poured through the middle pipe 119 from the upper lock chamber 107 to the lower lock chamber 105 until the water level of the lower lock chamber 105 meets the water level of the upper lock chamber 107.
When the the water level of the lower lock chamber 105 meets the water level of the upper lock chamber 107, as shown in FIG. 1(C), the middle valve 121 is closed, the upper lock gate 111 is opened, the boat K is lead from the lower lock chamber 105 to the upper lock chamber 107, and then the upper lock gate 111 is closed.
Next, as shown in FIG. 1(D), the upper valve 125 is opened, the water is poured through the upper pipe 123 from the upper stream 103 to the upper lock chamber 107 until the water level of the upper lock chamber 107 reaches the water level of the upper stream 103.
When the the water level of the upper lock chamber 107 reaches the water level of the upper stream 103, as shown in FIG. 1(E), the upper valve 125 is closed, the front gate 113 is opened, the boat K is lead from the upper lock chamber 107 to the upper stream 103, and then the front gate 113 is closed. Here, the water corresponding to the displacement of the boat K flows from the upper stream 103 into the upper lock chamber 107. At the same time, the lower valve 117 is opened, and the water is discharged through the lower pipe 115 from the lower lock chamber 105 to the lower stream 101 such that the whole system returns to its initial state.
The boat K on the upper stream 103 can be lowered to the lower stream 101 by the reverse of the operation for raising the boat K just described.
Now, in the operation to raise the boat from the lower stream 101 to the upper stream 103 or the operation to lower the boat from the upper stream 103 to the lower stream 101 which uses the lock chambers such as the lower and upper lock chambers 105 and 107 above, there is a problem that in order to carry out these operations, an enormous amount of water is necessary.
In a case of Panama canal, the water resource is rather limited, and in the drier year in which the water level is low in the Gatun lake which is the upper stream for the Panama canal, limiting of the draft for the boat to pass through the canal is often necessary.
Thus, in order to cope with the increase of the passage through the canal, or in order to realize a larger lock capable of dealing with larger boats, it is indispensable to secure sufficient amount of water required for the operations at the lock, and it is preferable to reduce this amount as much as possible.
As a method of reducing the water consumption at the lock, there is a proposition to utilize horizontal water storage system for temporarily storing the water discharged from the lock chambers, so as to achieve the advantage of water saving similar to that obtainable by increasing the number of the lock chambers in the lock.
However, a number of such horizontal water storages are needed in this system to achieve a higher water consumption saving rate, and this makes the operation of the system very complicated.

Foundation of River & Basin Integrated Communications


A connection arrangement with PC board features a ceramic substrate glued to a base plate of metal, used as a cooling body. Islands have been hollowed out of the adhesive layer and are filled with thermally conductive paste. Particularly effective thermal dissipation is possible in the area of the islands filled with thermally conductive paste, so that the islands are always disposed underneath components with great energy or heat dissipation.

So that the energy dissipated by electrical components on a PC board can be conducted away as best as possible, PC boards are glued flat on a cooling body by means of a suitable adhesive. In this case the PC boards can consist of a ceramic substrate and have a surface of for example 6.times.4 inches. The cooling body located underneath the PC board may consist of an aluminum plate or the like, which is adapted to the surface of the glued-on ceramic PC board.
In these connection arrangements there is, on the one hand, a requirement for the adhesive to be sufficiently resilient so that it can even out the different degrees of thermal expansion of the ceramic substrate and the aluminum plate by its resilience. On the other hand, however, the adhesive should nave the best possible thermal conductivity, so that the heat given off by the structural components (energy dissipation) can be conducted away to the aluminum plate in the best possible way, so that the respective electric components do not heat up too much. To give the adhesive improved thermal conductivity, it is possible to admix with it, for example, metal particles, ceramic particles or other materials with a high degree of thermal conductivity. However, the resilience of the adhesive is reduced in the same degree as the amount of thermally-conductive particles present in the adhesive is increased. This results in requiring the adhesive layer to be thicker than that of a highly resilient adhesive which, however, shows very poor thermal conductivity. But the thicker adhesive layers of the loaded adhesives counteract good thermal conductivity. Furthermore, the adhesives enriched with thermally conductive particles have noticeably less adhesiveness than adhesives which have not been "loaded".


Modular dendrimers with cationic groups and lipophilic groups are provided herein. In some aspects, the dendrimers provided herein may be formulated in compositions which contain a nucleic acid and one or more helper excipients. In some aspects, these compositions may also be used to treat diseases or disorders with a therapeutic nucleic acid.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to the fields of dendrimers. In particular, it relates to dendrimer nanoparticle compositions comprising a nucleic acid. More particularly, it relates to dendrimer nanoparticle compositions for the delivery of the nucleic acid. More particularly, it relates to dendrimer nanoparticle compositions for the delivery of drugs and other excipients.
2. Description of Related Art
Since the discovery of RNAi or other nucleic acid agents and the recognition of their therapeutic potential, there has been a continuous search for effective delivery carriers (Whitehead et al., 2009; Kanasty et al., 2013; Akinc et al., 2008; Davis et al., 2010; Love et al., 2010; Siegwart et al., 2011; Jayaraman et al., 2012). Progress has been made with regard to delivery efficacy of small RNAs to healthy livers, but the clinically required combination of high potency to tumors and low normal cell hepatotoxicity is not currently met by existing delivery vehicles. Unfortunately, all five Phase III human clinical trials of small molecule drugs for hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) treatment failed within the past four years in part because debilitating, late-stage liver dysfunction amplifies drug toxicity (Roberts, L. R., 2008; Scudellari, M., 2014). MicroRNAs (miRNAs) represent a promising alternative strategy because they can function as tumor suppressors by concurrently targeting multiple pathways involved in cell differentiation, proliferation, and survival, but these therapeutic agents require carriers to be effective (Ventura and Jacks, 2009; Kasinski and Slack, 2011; Ling et al., 2013; Cheng et al., 2015). A balance of potency versus toxicity of the drug carrier is a useful criteria particularly in the context of liver cancer where the carrier's own toxicity can abate the therapeutic effectiveness of the small RNA therapies.
To achieve this balance of low toxicity and high potency, the influence of chemical structure by expanding the structural diversity and molecular size of delivery carriers is useful in achieving a therapeutically effective balance. Dendrimers are monodisperse macromolecules composed of multiple perfectly branched monomers that emanate radially from a central core. The dendrimers therefore have the same high degree of molecular uniformity as small molecules and the broad theoretical space for chemical tuning as polydisperse polymers (Bosman et al., 1999; Fréchet and Tomalia, 2002; Gillies and Frechet, 2002; Grayson and Fréchet, 2001). These intrinsic characteristics enable dendrimers to have unique properties (Murat and Grest, 1996; Percec et al., 2010; Duncan and Izzo, 2005) for various biomedical applications (Stiriba et al., 2002; Lee et al., 2005; Wu et al., 2015). In gene delivery, most studies have used the limited number of commercial dendrimers for further chemical modification. (Kang et al., 2005; Taratula et al., 2009; Khan et al., 2014). The expansion of dendrimer applications therefore depends on the ability to easily tune the size, chemistry, topology, and ultimately, dendrimer physical properties through chemical synthesis. As such, the development of new dendrimers which can act as carriers of nucleic acids and other drugs is clinically useful.

Lipocationic dendrimers and uses thereof

The Board of Regents of The University of Texas System


A method is described for scanning image pixels in a sequence which, in contrast to the traditional and ubiquitous raster scan, groups effectively adjacent and neighboring image pixels together in the scanned sequence, resulting in a much lower bandwidth signal and data stream, and leading directly to bandwidth and storage gains from compression and exploitation of image redundancy. M-Scan, for meandering scan, is synthesized by iterative application of a simple primitive pattern, and analyzed by iterative partitioning. M-Scans achieve unbroken continuity between pixels in the image, and in routine application never need to step between non image adjacent pixels. Whereas a conventional raster has a low vertical and a high horizontal deflection scan rate, M-Scan has intermediate and equal vertical and horizontal rates, and no large jumps related to flyback. An M-Scan signal power spectrum has no comb at the line rate. M-Scans can be used for 3 dimensional images, or time series 2D images, whilst still preserving adjacent pixel connectivity.

Images generally consist of pixels, each of a single intensity and color, arranged on a microscopically square grid, building up to a much larger square or rectangular image. Alternative methods, using eg vectors or polygons rather than pixels as the underlying structural element, may be elsewhere referred to as "non raster." In this specification, the term "non raster" refers to a different method of scanning pixels, rather than to non-pixel based graphic representations.
Under the prior art, the large rectangle of pixels has been scanned, or placed in sequence, by simply following straight horizontal lines from left to right across the image, then by retracing (or flyback) to the left again, to the start of the next line underneath the previous one, and so on, to the bottom of the image, then retracing to the top. This is the conventional raster scan. "Deflection" signals, or waveforms, one for horizontal and one for vertical, can define the precise trajectory of the raster scan. At the retraces, these signals become very steep, and the associated video signal, carrying the sequence of scanned pixel values, generally contains discontinuities at the retrace boundaries.
The tendency for discontinuities in the deflection signals at retrace, in the video signal at retrace, and also in the video signal while traversing the image, are either eliminated or much reduced by using M-Scan as specified herein, rather than the conventional raster scan.


A method of enabling a user to manage items such as text, graphics image, audio clips, video clips etc. on a clipboard are provided. The method includes displaying a window having at least one option for managing the items on the clipboard and allowing the user to assert the option to manage the items. In another embodiment, a method is provided to indicate a selected item at a location in a document displayed in a graphical user interface with a scrollbar. The method includes selecting the item, determining whether the item is a file, and displaying, if the item is a file, an icon representing the file in the scrollbar at a location corresponding to the location of the highlighted item.

1. Technical Field
The present invention is directed to word processing application programs. More specifically, the present invention is directed to method of Managing items on a clipboard.
2. Description of Related Art
Most word processing application programs allow a user to remove or copy a block of text, an audio or video clip, graphics etc. from a document and to transfer them to another location in the document or to another document altogether. To remove an item (i.e., a block of text, an audio or video clip, or graphics etc.) from the document is generally referred to as "cut" whereas to copy the item is referred to as "copy". To transfer the cut or copied item to another location of the document or to another document is referred to as "paste".
When an item is cut or copied from a document, it is ordinarily transferred to a temporary buffer called a clipboard. This allows the user to later paste the item at the other location in the document or in the other document. Note that copying and cutting an item from a document will henceforth be referred to as copying the item onto the clipboard or plainly "to copy".
Presently, a plurality of items may be copied onto the clipboard. However, once there the items may not be manipulated (e.g., they may not be consolidated into one item).
Consequently, there is a need for a method of managing items on a clipboard.

International Business Machines Corporation


The sidestream smoke associated with a cigarette or cigarette-like smoking article is reduced by wrapping the tobacco in a double layer of paper. Each layer includes calcium carbonate (i.e., about 30-40% by weight in the outer paper and about 2-15% by weight in the inner paper, the calcium carbonate in the outer paper having a surface area of about 20-80 square meters per gram by the BET method) and a burn control chemical. The outer layer also preferably includes monoammonium phosphate and sodium carboxy methyl cellulose. The calcium carbonate employed has a relatively high surface area per unit weight. The porosity of the outer layer is about 50-100 cubic centimeters per minute by the Coresta method, and may be adjusted by electrostatic perforation.

This invention relates to smoking articles such as cigarettes, and more particularly to cigarettes or cigarette-like smoking articles having reduced sidestream smoke.
Sidestream smoke is the smoke given off by the burning end of a cigarette or cigarette-like smoking article between puffs. Such smoke may be objectionable to those near the smoker who are not smoking or who do not smoke.
It is therefore an object of this invention to reduce the amount of sidestream smoke associated with cigarettes or cigarette-like smoking articles.
It is another object of this invention to provide cigarettes or cigarette-like smoking articles having reduced sidestream smoke.

Smoking article exhibiting reduced sidestream smoke, and wrapper paper therefor


A method of reducing a temperature of at least one item including: transporting the at least one item on a moving substrate within an enclosure, the enclosure including at least one impingement apparatus; providing a coolant to at least one of a high pressure zone or a low pressure zone of the enclosure; circulating the coolant through the high and low pressure zones using a variable-speed gas circulation device of the impingement apparatus; directing impingement jets through openings in at least one impinger of the impingement apparatus toward the moving substrate disposed within the low pressure zone; and intermittently performing an operation on the at least one impingement apparatus during said transporting including: (i) reducing a speed of the variable-speed gas circulation device; (ii) vibrating the at least one impinger; and (iii) increasing the speed of the variable-speed gas circulation device.

The present embodiments relate to methods of at least partially removing snow and ice from an impinger of an impingement apparatus.
Commercial cooling apparatus, such as commercial freezers, typically rely on the transfer of heat from an item, such as a food product, that is to be chilled or frozen by using a fan or blower. In many instances, the fan or blower is situated near a conveyer belt upon which the item is being carried. The item entering the freezer has a boundary layer of air surrounding it which insulates the item from the surrounding atmosphere. Traditional freezers have employed blowers that generate currents of cooling vapor in many directions. However, a significant portion of the cooling vapor does not contact the item, and in many instances does not contact the item in a direction transverse to the item's movement, such as in a perpendicular direction. Under these conditions, the cooling vapor which does contact the item often does not possess sufficient energy to substantially reduce the thickness of the boundary layer at or around the surface of the item. Therefore, there has been a need to generate directed jets of cooling vapor to disturb the boundary layer and increase heat transfer at the item.
Previous attempts to generate directed jets of cooling vapor to the item have included using a plurality of vertical tubes to provide a unidirectional air flow toward the item, and the use of a plurality of nozzles along the pathway of an item for delivering discrete jets of unidirectional cooling air. However, the use of tubes or nozzles to direct air in a cooling or freezing device has met with only limited success due to the build-up of condensation in the form of snow and/or ice in the tubes or nozzles. Such build up quickly reduces the efficacy of the cooling or freezing devices.
Another previous attempt included heating or cooling an item on a moving substrate in which a continuous channel traversing at least a major portion of the width of the moving substrate converts multi-directional flow into unidirectional flow. However, this attempt suffers from having such an increased rate of flow that the items become entrained in the flow, and, consequently, controlled processing of the item through the device becomes difficult.
Increasing the velocity of the stream of cooling vapor (such as a cryogen) which impinges the item will increase the average heat transfer coefficient in a linear manner. At a certain point, however, unless the impingement stream of cooling vapor is carefully controlled, its velocity may be sufficient to damage the item, or to displace the item from and carry same off the conveyor, and into undesirable locations elsewhere in the freezer.
The total heat transfer rates are dependent on local heat transfer coefficients. That is, the amount of heat transferred from the items to the coolant is dependent on the rate of heat transfer locally between the coolant and the item. Local heat transfer rates can be changed by controlling the distance from the source of impingement stream to the item, the velocity of the impingement stream, the turbulence in the impingement stream, and the efficiency of the flow of coolant for the impingement stream.
Heat transfer and coolant flow may be adequately controlled by using an impingement apparatus comprising an impinger, such as an impingement plate, having openings to direct the flow of coolant. Over time during operation of such an impingement apparatus, snow and ice accumulate and may build up on the impinger, thereby reducing the efficiency of heat transfer provided by the impingement apparatus. In order to at least partially remove snow and/or ice from the impinger, vibration has been used to break up the snow and/or ice, which is then free to pass through the impinger, at least partially restoring the efficiency of the impingement apparatus. Some impingement apparatus may provide high pressure differentials on opposing sides of the impinger. In these instances, the high pressure differential may dampen vibration imparted to the impinger, reducing the effectiveness of the vibration to break up snow and/or ice on the impinger.
What is needed is a means by which snow and ice may be at least partially removed from an impinger which experiences a high pressure differential on opposing sides of the impinger.


Provided is a stack-type semiconductor package comprising a first semiconductor package with a first package substrate and a logic chip mounted thereon, a second semiconductor package including a second package substrate disposed on the first semiconductor package and first and second memory chips stacked on the second package substrate, and connection pads disposed between the first and second package substrates to connect the first and second semiconductor packages electrically to each other. The first package substrate has first and second edges that are substantially perpendicular to each other. The first package substrate may include first DQ connection pads electrically connected to the first memory chip, and second DQ connection pads electrically connected to the second memory chip. The first DQ connection pads may be arranged adjacent to the first edge and the second DQ connection pads may be arranged adjacent to the second edge.

Example embodiments of the disclosed subject matter relate to a stack-type semiconductor package, and in particular, to a stack-type semiconductor package including a pad structure capable of improving routability and characteristics of the package.
Recently, demand has increased for a single system with a plurality of processors or a multicore processor system in order to implement higher performance and more efficient portable electronic applications, such as a portable multimedia player (PMP), a mobile phone, a smart phone, a global positioning system (GPS), a navigation system, a digital camera, a digital video camera, or a personal digital assistant (PDA).
For example, as the result of user's requirement, there is an increasing demand for mobile phones with additional functions of playing music and movies, game console, taking pictures, or realizing payment, in addition to the basic phone function. Accordingly, there is a desire to integrate not only a communication processor, which is configured to perform communication modulation and demodulation, but also a media processor, which is configured to perform application functions, except the communication function, on a printed circuit board in the mobile phone. This may be achieved by stacking a plurality of semiconductor chips in a package or stacking one package on another package. For example, in a package-on-package (PoP) structure, one of the stacked packages may include a plurality of semiconductor chips. In this case, since the plurality of the semiconductor chips should be electrically connected to each other within one package, a wiring structure of the device may become complex: that is, the device may suffer from decreased routability.


The present method comprises the steps of advancing the coated expansion member to the obstruction in a vessel and applying opposed forces on said expansion member in an axial direction to move the expansion member to an expanded configuration wherein the expansion member dilates the obstruction and the expansion member either passively or actively delivers a therapeutic agent or medicament to the obstruction.

Cardiovascular disease is commonly accepted as being one of the most serious health risks facing our society today. Diseased and obstructed coronary arteries can restrict the flow of blood and cause tissue ischemia and necrosis. While the exact etiology of sclerotic cardiovascular disease is still in question, the treatment of narrowed coronary arteries is more defined. Surgical construction of coronary artery bypass grafts (CABG) is often the method of choice when there are several diseased segments in one or multiple arteries. Open heart surgery is, of course, very traumatic for patients. In many cases, less traumatic, alternative methods are available for treating cardiovascular disease percutaneously. These alternate treatment methods generally employ various types of percutaneous transluminal angioplasty (PTCA) balloons or excising devices (atherectomy) to remodel or debulk diseased vessel segments. A further alternative treatment method involves percutaneous, intraluminal installation of expandable, tubular stents or prostheses in sclerotic lesions.
A recurrent problem with the previous devices and PTCA procedures is their failure to maintain patency due to the growth of injured vascular tissue. This is known as "restenosis" and may be a result of the original injury to the vessel wall occurring during the angioplasty procedure. Pathologically restenosis represents a neointimal proliferative response characterized by smooth muscle cell hyperplasia that results in reblockage of the vessel lumen necessitating repeat PTCA procedures up to 35-50% of all cases. It has been generally accepted that a certain therapeutic agents or medicaments may be capable of selectively inhibiting the growth of these hyperproliferating smooth muscle cells and thereby reduce the rate of restenosis after the primary interventional procedure.
Heretofore, various devices have been disclosed which may be used to deliver a therapeutic agent or medicament to a blood vessel while undergoing angioplasty. Balloon angioplasty catheters have been used to place and deliver a various therapeutic agents or medicaments within human vessels. For example, in U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,112,305, 5,746,716, 5,681,281, 5,873,852, 5,713,863 and 6,102,904 disclose and claim a balloon catheter system with various injector plates mounted on the balloon for delivering a drug into an arterial segment.
Alternatively a standard angioplasty balloon may be coated with a polymeric material which is then used to bond certain medicaments or therapeutic agents. These agents are then delivered to the desired therapeutic site by inflation of the balloon and diffusion of the medicament or therapeutic agent into the vessel wall. Only limited quantities of therapeutic agents can be delivered because of "wash-out" of the drug into the circulation during balloon placement and due to the limited time the inflated balloon can be left in place due to ischemia caused by the balloon.
In addition, previously disclosed methods of delivering drug to a site of treatment are described which utilize iontophoretic or electrophoretic means. Using these iontophoretic or electroporetic means passive diffusion of the drug or medicament is enhanced by placing the medicament or therapeutic agent in close proximity to the site of treatment and then using electrically to augment delivery of the drug into the tissues or cells. These methods generally place the drug inside a balloon mounted distally on a catheter whereby the balloon is composed of a semi-porous material through which the drug can diffuse. Alternatively the electrodes themselves may be used as a method for iontophoretic or electroporetic drug delivery. One such method is disclosed which coats the surface of band-like electrodes with a polymer which bonds the drug and delivers it to the site of treatment. This method has the disadvantage of not have the capability to dilate the obstruction prior or concurrent to the delivery of a drug. Additionally the surface area of contact of the electrode bands with the vessel wall are limited to only the central portion of the arc shaped bands. This limits the contact surface area of the drug coated electrodes. This method also has the inherent disadvantage that since the site of therapy is intravascular, most of the drug will be washed off or dissolved off the electrodes into the circulating blood stream before it is advanced through the vascular system from its percutaneous entry and to the distal site of treatment. This again limits the amount of the drug delivered to the site and also potentially subjects the patient to harmful or toxic systemic exposure.
Additional devices have been disclosed which attempt to improve the depth of penetration into tissue by pressure driving a solution of the drug into the vessel wall through small orifices in the balloon material. There is, however, some evidence that high pressure "jetting" of a drug solution out of small pores close to the vessel lumen can in fact cause vessel wall injury. The development of double skinned, microporous (or weeping) balloons obviated this "jetting" effect to some extent, but diffusion of the drug into the vessel wall is still slow, and much of the drug can be lost through subsequent "washout effects". This method leads to limited amounts of drugs or therapeutics agents delivered to the tissues or cells. Furthermore, in all of these methods the balloon must be expanded and thereby restricts blood flow to the distal arterial segments while the balloon is in the expanded configuration thus limiting the time the drug delivering balloon can be clinically utilized.
There are also several disadvantages using either a stent or balloon catheter to delivery a therapeutic agent or medicament to a vascular segment. Regarding the therapeutic agent eluting stents, once the stent is deployed, there is no means outside of invasive surgical excision, to remove the eluting stent from the vascular segment. Therefore, stents or implanted prostheses with therapeutic agent eluting properties must be precisely calibrated to deliver an exact quantity of the therapeutic agent or medicament to the vascular segment upon stent deployment. Balloon catheters employed to delivery a therapeutic agent or medicament to a vascular segment have limitations including potential balloon rupture and ischemia due to balloon inflation limiting distal blood flow to the artery. This leads to tissue ischemia and potential necrosis. Even "perfusion" type angioplasty balloons used to delivery a therapeutic agent or medicament to the affected artery provide far less than physiological blood flow during balloon inflation and dwell times are limited by ischemia and tissue necrosis.
Thus, it can be seen that there is a need for a new and improved device to selectively delivery a therapeutic agent or medicament to an arterial segment and which overcomes these disadvantages.
In general, it is an object of this present invention to provide a mechanical dilatation device and method which is capable of dilating an obstruction within a vascular segment while delivering, either passively or by an electrically active means, a therapeutic agent or medicament to the vessel segment.
Another object of the invention is to provide a percutaneous device and method of the above character which can be used for prolonged periods in exposing or delivering a vascular segment to therapeutic agent or medicament while allowing continuous perfusion of blood into the distal to the treatment area.
Another object of the invention is to provide a device that is can control the release or diffusion of a medicament or therapeutic agent to minimize potential systemic affects and maximize the diffusion or delivery of the medicament or therapeutic agent to the site of treatment.
Another object of the invention is to provide a device that is not susceptible to structural damage (balloon rupture) and subsequent release of therapeutic agents or drug materials into the vasculature.

Mechanical apparatus and method for dilating and delivering a therapeutic agent to a site of treatment


The information rewriting method includes, defining to divide a display image of a monitor into a plurality of frames, the first group of frames being defined such that occurrence of an event corresponding to a mark or a marked indicator in a display region is recognizable, and the second group of frames being defined such that when data corresponding to the event that occurs in connection with the first group of frames are transferred from the server, the received data are stored in the storage as the data for the second group of frames, transferring the data from the server as data for the second group of frames and storing the data in an applicable storage of the processing terminal, and executing renewal of an image or reproduction of sound with the data stored in the storage as the data for the second group of frames.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a data transfer method, data transfer program, storage medium and terminal, by which data received from a server can be rewritten at a high efficiency in a short period of time.
2. Description of the Related Art
Recent years, services that transmit a great amount of image information and sound information at a high speed through the Internet are becoming more popular. One of the examples of the services is a digital communication network called broadband. The broadband is very useful, but it entails some drawbacks such as the service fee being still very high and having to prepare expensive device and software application.
Meanwhile, document modification information such as the size of characters and a layout, information indicating the attribution of data, and the like are directly embedded in a text using a markup language such as HTML, and they are transmitted or received with the text. It is well known that when embedding information, a location where an image file is displayed, and a link can be specified. Further, a page containing a still image, moving image, sound and the like can be also expressed, and such pages stored in a WWW server on the Internet are frequently transmitted and received to be browsed with use of a WWW browser. Transmission of the data that express a page is carried out usually in units of data corresponding to one display image (1 frame).
Further, in order to update the data that expresses a page, or to obtain the corresponding data by accessing, for example, a sound information resource such as for music, that relates to the image displayed on the page, all the data that correspond to a respective page are updated as one object, and therefore new data are transmitted and received. In the case where a display on the screen of a local computer is partially updated, the data corresponding to the entire display image (1 whole frame) that contains the portion to be updated, are transmitted and received between the local computer and a remote computer (server). In the above-described conventional technique, even if data to be updated or to be newly obtained is merely a part of the data corresponding to one entire display image (1 whole frame), the data of that entire display image (1 whole frame) are transmitted and received in any case. In this manner, a great amount of data that contains data items that correspond to a portion need not be changed, which therefore need not be transmitted or received, is transferred anyway, and thus its transmission line is occupied wastefully. Further, it takes a considerable amount of time to be prepared for the transmission and reception of the data.
In extreme cases, while browsing data on the Internet with use of the WWW browser, for example, each time some kind of an event is created with regard to one display image (1 frame) of a terminal by pressing on a key, moving of the mouse, clicking on an operation button or the like, the transmission and reception of all the data of the image always occur. As a result, the efficiency for transmission and reception of necessary data becomes poor and in many cases, the response property is not satisfactory for the users.

Information rewriting method, recording medium storing information rewriting program and information terminal device


Examples of a monolithic phosphor composite for measuring a parameter of an object are disclosed. The ceramic metal oxide phosphor composite is used in an optical device for measuring the parameter of the measuring object. The device comprises a fiber optic probe with a light guide, a light source operatively coupled to the fiber optic probe to provide excitation light into the light guide, a monolithic ceramic metal oxide phosphor composite functionally coupled to a tip of the fiber optic probe, a sensor operatively coupled to the fiber optic probe to detect the emitted light and a processing unit functionally coupled to the sensor to process the emitted light. The monolithic ceramic metal oxide phosphor composite can be embedded in a notch made into the object or can be adhered to a surface of the object with a binder. When the monolithic ceramic metal oxide phosphor composite is illuminated with the excitation light it emits light in a wavelength different from the excitation light and a change in emission intensity at a single wavelength or the change in intensity ratio of two or more wavelengths, a shift in emission wavelength peak or a decay time of the phosphor luminescence is a function of the measuring parameter.

Unless otherwise indicated herein, the materials described in this section are not prior art to the claims in this application and are not admitted to be prior art by inclusion in this section.
Phosphors when excited with a light within a certain wavelength emit a light within a different wavelength. Certain characteristics of the emitted light change with temperature including brightness, color, and afterglow duration. The response of the emitted light to temperature is monitored by various methods, such as analyzing the change in emission intensity at a single wavelength or the change in intensity ratio of two or more wavelengths, lifetime decay, and shift in emission wavelength peak. Phosphor used for measuring the temperature of an object is either coated directly to the surface or placed within a probe and brought in contact with the surface, which is then illuminated with a light source and the temperature of the object is determined based on the response of the emitted light. Phosphors are commonly bound using a binder to achieve good thermal contact and uniform temperature response. Epoxy and polysiloxanes are commonly used as chemical binders, but this limits the usage of phosphors for high temperature sensing to few hundred degrees (200-400° C.) due to the limited thermal stability of the binders. Chemical binders for high temperature sensing can be thermally stable, and such chemical binders should not change the temperature response of the thermographic phosphor under high temperature thermal cycling and prolonged exposure.

Fiber optic measuring device with monolithic phosphor composite