A polynucleotide comprising a nucleotide sequence encoding Vif, wherein each of the amino acids corresponding to positions 127, 128, 130, 131, 132 and 142 of the amino acid sequence in FIG. 1A representing the Vif wild-type consensus sequence, are replaced with another amino acid, and wherein the nucleotide sequence does not encode the amino acid sequence shown in FIG. 2, representing the Vif sequence of the F12 non-producer variant of HIV-1.

AIDS is one of the leading causes of death in the developing world, its spread reaching pandemic proportions. However, eradication of HIV-1 is far from being accomplished. Currently, the highly active anti-retroviral therapy (HAART) is the only efficacious treatment to reduce progression and spread of AIDS, although its long-term use is associated with drawbacks and limitations such as adherence to a complex dosing regimen, side effect toxicity and elevated cost (Richman et al., 2001). The great intra- and inter-subtype genetic and antigenic variability of HIV-1, stemming from the high mutation rate of its genome, together with inadequate compliance, is responsible for resistance to HAART drugs, as well as for the repeated failure in developing a multiple clades-based preventive vaccine (Ho et al., 2002). On this basis, development of alternative and/or additional therapeutic strategies against AIDS are mandatory.
Many years of pre-clinical investigation have shown that the HIV-1 life cycle can be interfered with at many levels, and proved at least the concept of anti-HIV gene therapy (Buchschacher et al., 2001). Hematopoietic stem cells (HSCs), T-cell precursors or T lymphocytes can be genetically modified with, for example, genes encoding ribozymes, decoys, antisense and small interfering RNA (siRNA) molecules directed against viral and cellular genes (Buchschacher et al., 2001; Jacque et al., 2002; Novina et al., 2002; Lee et al., 2002; Coburn et al., 2002; Qin et al., 2003), or proteins such as intrakines, toxins and single chain antibodies. However, early clinical trials with T lymphocytes transduced with retroviral vectors expressing transdominant mutants of viral proteins or anti-HIV-1 rybozimes have been disappointing (Woffendin et al., 1996; Ranga et al., 1998; Wong-Staal et al., 1998) mainly due to low gene transfer efficiency, insufficient engraftment and short in vivo persistence of the genetically modified T cells. Most of the pre-clinical and clinical studies carried out so far have been based on the use of retroviral vectors derived from the Moloney murine leukemia virus (MLV) to transduce HSCs or T-cells. However, MLV-derived vectors have shown major limitations for clinical applications, such as poor efficiency in transducing non-dividing HSCs and T-cells, insufficient expression of potentially therapeutic anti-HIV products, and propensity to induce neoplasia by insertional activation of oncogenes (Baum et al., 2003).
Among the possible targets of anti-HIV gene therapy is the product of the viral infectivity factor (vif) gene. vif is one of the 4 accessory genes of HIV-1, expressed at a late phase during virus replication in a Rev-dependent manner (Cullen et al., 1998; Frankel et al., 1998). The Vif protein is required for high viral infectivity in the so-called 'non-permissive' cells, which include the natural targets of HIV-1 (T-cells and macrophages) and some T-cell lines, for example, CEM, H9, and HUT 78 (Fisher et al., 1987; Fouchier et al., 1996; Gabuzda et al., 1992; Sheehy et al., 2002; Simon et al., 1996; von Schedler et al., 1993). This requirement depends on the ability of Vif to counteract the action of the recently identified CEM15/APOBEC-3G protein (Sheehy et al., 2002) which confers innate immunity to HIV-1. Thus, disabling, or interfering with, the function of Vif could represent an alternative anti-HIV-1 therapeutic approach.
F12-vif is a natural mutant of vif, carrying 15 unique amino acid substitutions, originally discovered in the F12 non-producer variant of HIV-1 (Federico et al., 1989; Carlini et al., 1992; Carlini et al., 1996). The F12 non-producer HIV induces a block in the replication of superinfecting HIV and F12-Vif may play a role in the reduced infectivity of this producer. However, there is a need to provide further vif mutants with anti-HIV activity, and to provide effective delivery systems for these mutants. The present invention seeks to overcome these problems.


A control system for a storage apparatus includes two input/output modules (IOMs), and two non-volatile memory (NVM) devices that are electrically connected to the IOMs, respectively, and that each store a firmware code. Each of the IOMs is configured to execute a firmware corresponding to the firmware code stored in the corresponding NVM device, and to enter an active mode or a passive mode after executing the firmware. The IOMs are configured such that when one IOM operating in the passive mode detects abnormal operation of the other IOM operating in the active mode, the one IOM sends, to the other IOM, the firmware code stored in the NVM device electrically connected to the one IOM, in order to update the firmware code in the NVM device electrically connected to the other IOM.

A conventional enterprise storage system is a high availability (HA) system that includes a power unit, a fan unit, two main boards, at least one hard disk drive (HDD), and two input/output modules (IOMs) for monitoring and managing the at least one HDD, the power unit and the fan unit. The two IOMs are disposed on the two main boards, respectively. One of the two IOMs is adapted to operate in an active mode, and the other is adapted to operate in a passive mode so as to serve as a backup. After being powered on, each of the two IOMs performs an initialization procedure to execute a firmware by reading a firmware code (which may be an image file) from a non-volatile memory device. Errors that might occur in the IOM operating in the active mode are often caused by an error of the firmware.
In order to address the problem in IOM operation caused by a defective firmware, a conventional solution is to dispose, on each of the two main boards, two non-volatile memory devices that include a default memory device and a backup memory device and that both store a firmware code. The firmware codes respectively stored in the two non-volatile memory devices may be the same, or of different versions (e.g., one is of an original or default version corresponding to factory settings, and the other is of a newer version). The IOM disposed on the main board is preset to read the firmware code stored in the default memory device that is disposed on the same main board after being powered on, in order to execute the firmware corresponding to the firmware code. When the IOM that is operating in the active mode and that is executing the firmware that comes from the default memory device encounters an error caused by the firmware, the IOM may read the firmware code stored in the backup memory device to execute the firmware corresponding to the firmware code in the backup memory device, in order to resume normal operation. However, disposing two non-volatile memory devices on each main board not only occupies more valuable space on the main board, but also incurs additional cost.
Another conventional solution is to switch the IOM originally operating in the passive mode to operate in the active mode in order to urgently resume normal operation of the system, and then manually repair the system by replacing an associated main board with a new main board, or replacing the defective firmware code with a new firmware code (e.g., by burning a functional firmware code into the non-volatile memory device). However, this solution would require much human labor and time, thereby increasing the overall operation and maintenance cost. In addition, the new main board or the new firmware code does not in fact provide one hundred percent guarantee of normal operation of the system.

Storage apparatus and control system for the same


A unified program method and circuitry for performing concurrently a programming and verifying operation in an array of Flash EEPROM memory cells is provided. Each of the memory cells includes a floating gate array core transistor. A single bandgap voltage is provided which corresponds to a predetermined amount of drain current at which programming is to be terminated. A program voltage is selectively connected to at least one of the columns of array bit lines containing the array core transistor which is to be programmed. A control gate bias voltage corresponding to a programmable memory state is selectively connected to the gate of the array core transistor. A core cell current flowing through the array core transistor and the predetermined amount of drain current is compared. The program voltage is disconnected so as to terminate automatically programming of the array core transistor when the core cell current falls below the predetermined amount of drain current.

This invention relates generally to floating gate memory devices such as an array of flash electrically, erasable programmable read-only memory (EEPROM) cells. More particularly, the present invention relates to a unified program method and circuitry used in an array of Flash EEPROM memory cells for concurrently programming and verifying the programmable threshold voltage levels in the selected memory cells during programming which is simple in its construction and consumes less power than has been traditionally available.
As is generally well-known in the art, there have been provided electrical programmable and erasable memory array devices using a floating gate for the storage of charges thereon which are sometimes referred to as "Flash EPROMs or EEPROMs". In such conventional EEPROM memory device, a plurality of one-transistor core cells may be formed on a semiconductor substrate in which each cell is comprised of a P-type conductivity substrate, an N-type conductivity source region formed integrally with the substrate, and an N-type conductivity drain region also formed integrally within the substrate. A floating gate is separated from the substrate by a thin dielectric layer. A second dielectric layer separates a control gate from the floating gate. A P-type channel region in the substrate separates the source and drain regions.
Such EEPROMs are programmed in a conventional operation via hot-electron injection to the floating gate by application of high voltages to the control gate and the drain region which are above the potential applied to the source region. For example, the drain voltage applied is approximately +5.5 volts and the control gate voltage is approximately +12 volts. The source region is held at a ground potential. For the erasing operation by way of Fowler-Norheim tunneling, a positive voltage (e.g., +5 volts) is applied to the source region. A negative voltage (e.g., -8 volts) is applied to the control gate, and the drain region is allowed to float. In a read operation, the source region is held at a ground potential (0 volts) and the control gate has applied thereto a voltage of about +5 volts. The drain region is held at a voltage between +1 to +2 volts. Under these conditions, an unprogrammed or erased cell (storing a logic "1") will conduct a predetermined amount of current. On the other hand, the programmed cell (storing a logic "0") will not be rendered conductive. It should be clearly understood that the above examples are given for explanation only and that other voltage values may be used so as to provide similar programming, erasing, and reading operations.
In particular, there is known in the prior art of one conventional programming technique which applies a plurality of pulses in order to program a memory cell in a Flash EEPROM array from a logic state "1" to a logic state "0". After each programming pulse, a program verify operation is performed so as to read the state programmed in order to verify if the desired state has been achieved. Since bias conditions for the respective programming operation and program verify operation are quite different, this prior art programming technique suffers from the disadvantage of requiring additional time for switching between the two bias conditions. Further, if more than one programming pulse is required for programming the cell, there will be a substantial amount of time used for the non-programming operations. Another drawback encountered by the programming pulse technique is due to the fact that the actual programming time is discrete since it is determined by the total number of pulses applied. In addition, there will be a problem of over-programming associated with this programming technique if there is an upper limit for the programmed threshold voltage.
In an attempt to solve the problems discussed above with the programming pulse technique, there has been also provided heretofore in the prior art of a programming method for Flash EEPROM memory cells which combines the programming mode of operation with the program verify mode of operation into one step. Such a program method is described and illustrated in U.S. Pat. No. 5,712,815 to C. S. Bill et al. entitled "Multiple Bits Per-Cell Flash EEPROM Capable of Concurrently Programming and Verifying Memory Cells and Reference Cells," which is hereby incorporated by reference in its entirety.
This '815 patent is based upon a different hot carrier injection mechanism, i.e., drain-side injection at low drain current levels, than the conventional channel hot-carrier injection mechanism used in most Flash EEPROM memory devices. Thus, the program method in the '815 patent suffers from the disadvantage of requiring special circuit elements so as to accommodate the drain-side injection mechanism. In particular, as can be seen from FIG. 5 of the patent, the program method utilizes a program current source circuitry 36a which includes a current source I.sub.s. Further, in order to program a memory cell to different program states (multiple bits-per-cell) the bandgap reference derived voltage BGR from a reference generator 134 must be selectively set to one of the target program-verify voltages (corresponding to each program state).
Accordingly, there has been developed by the inventor an improved unified program method and circuitry for use in Flash EEPROM memory cells which is relatively simple in its construction and consumes a small amount of power. The unified program method of the present invention requires only a single bandgap reference voltage and does not require the need of a current source. The present invention represent a significant improvement over the aforementioned '815 patent of the prior art.

Unified program method and circuitry in flash EEPROM


A test device (21) sits between two or more nodes (20, 22). The nodes (20, 22) communicate in conversations, according to some predetermined protocol. The test device (21), under user control, may introduce jitter, drop packets, create new packets, reroute packets, and reorder packets in the conversations. Particular conversations are detected and tracked by respective virtual state machines (38, 39, 40) within the test device.

The application relates generally to test equipment and relates more particularly to test equipment for networks, packet data, and communications links.
Historically, and more often before the time of the Internet, many networking and communications protocols were proprietary or at least administered by a controlling entity under circumstances limiting the extent to which third parties could attempt to make compatible equipment and software. In the case of a protocol or standard that was tightly controlled by a particular entity (typically a large corporation), it commonly happened that that entity took it upon itself to certify whether particular third-party equipment was or was not "compatible" with the protocol or standard. In the case of a proprietary standard or protocol it might develop that only the proprietary entity had the ability to make equipment intended to be "compatible," perhaps due to patents or due to an unpublished "standard" known only to the entity. One natural consequence was that compatibility problems and standards-compliance problems occurred relatively rarely, and another was that barriers to entry often reduced or eliminated competition in particular markets.
In more recent times, there has been a trend toward "open" standards, perhaps paralleled to some extent by "open-source" and general-public-license software. Some open standards have come to be widely adopted, in some cases providing levels cross-platform connectivity and interoperability which, as recently as twenty-five years ago, would have been difficult to imagine. For example, in recent years it has come to be possible to exchange data between almost any two operating systems with the help of IP and TCP protocols. Likewise it has come to be possible to exchange email between almost any two email systems, regardless of the designer or the underlying operating system and hardware, with the help of the RFC (request for comments) 822 standard. These trends have led to presence of multiple suppliers in some markets and improved performance and reduced prices in some markets.
If an IP packet is lost, nothing about the IP standard will detect the loss. Likewise if two IP packets happen to arrive in a different sequence than they were sent, nothing about the IP standard will detect the change in sequence. To the extent that a system designer wishes to detect and deal with lost or reordered packets, there is no choice but to do it at some protocol level above IP. IP packets do have CRC (cyclic redundancy check) checksums and thus corruption of a packet will nearly always be detected within the IP protocol level.
It is convenient to define some terms that characterize things that can go wrong in communications networks. These include the following:                Packet loss. This is simply the disappearance of a packet that was transmitted or ought to have been transmitted.        Some media have mechanisms to recover lost packets (generally with some additional delay.) For purposes of this note, packets recovered by such media are not considered lost.        Packet Delay. Delay is the amount of time that elapses between the time a packet is transmitted and the time it is received. There is always delay—the speed of light in a vacuum places a lower limit on how small the packet delay can be. The actual propagation time of a packet across a telecommunication link varies considerably depending on the media.        Some media have complex access mechanisms. For example, CSMA controlled media, such as Ethernets, have fairly intricate access procedures that cause delays often larger than the raw propagation time.        In addition to propagation time, packets are delayed as the bits exit and enter computer or switch/router interfaces, as packets spend time in various queues in various switching and routing devices, and as software (or hardware) in those devices examines the packets, including any option fields, and deals with them.        Packets are sometimes delayed simply because a computer, router, or switch needs to do something else first, such as doing an ARP handshake to obtain the next hop's MAC address or looking up forwarding information.        Jitter. Jitter is a measure of the the variation in the packet delay experienced by a number of packets. Some packets may experience an unimpeded ride through the net while others may encounter various delays.        Jitter is often, but not always, accompanied by some degree of packet loss.        Jitter is important because it has a significant impact on how long software can expect to wait for data to arrive. That, in turn, has an impact on software buffering requirements. And for media streams, such as voice or video, in which late data is unusable, jitter affects algorithms that are used to create elastic shock-absorbing buffers to provide a smooth play-out of the media stream despite the packet jitter.        There are various formulas used to compute jitter. These formulas vary depending on the emphasis that one wants to put on more recent versus older transit variations.
One protocol level that is overlaid above IP and that deals with lost and reordered packets is TCP (transmission control protocol). With TCP, a connection is agreed upon between two nodes. The connection has an explicit start and (barring some extreme timeout or loss of connectivity) an explicit end. For the duration of the connection, all packets that are sent are numbered and acknowledged. For the sending node, there is an obligation to preserve a copy of each packet sent until it has been acknowledged. (There is, by definition, some upper limit on how many unacknowledged packets will be permitted to exist at any given moment.) For the receiving node, there is a need to keep track of any gap in the numbers of the received packets, so that when a missing packet finally arrives it can be placed in proper sequence relative to those numbered above and below it. (There is also, by definition, some upper limit as to how many out-of-sequence packets may be stored while the missing packet or packets are awaited.) As a matter of terminology these functions (and others, such as congestion avoidance) are carried out by what is called a "TCP stack."
With the above-mentioned trends come potential problems. Any would-be supplier of a node or network device or system (hereinafter often referred to as a "node") could offer it to the public as supposedly complying with relevant standards or RFCs, with no choke-point controller (such as a large corporation controlling a standard) to block it. This led to a natural concern as to whether a particular node or device or system was, in fact, compliant with the standard or RFC. As described by Jon Postel in RFC 1025 (September 1987):                In the early days of the development of TCP and IP, when there were very few implementations and the specifications were still evolving, the only way to determine if an implementation was "correct" was to test it against other implementations and argue that the results showed your own implementation to have done the right thing. These tests and discussions could, in those early days, as likely change the specification as change the implementation.        There were a few times when this testing was focused, bringing together all known implementations and running through a set of tests in hopes of demonstrating the N-squared connectivity and correct implementation of the various tricky cases. These events were called "Bake Offs."
With the growth of the Internet, it became impossible to carry out an "N-squared" demonstration in which each of N devices could be tested for interoperability with the other N−1 devices (and indeed with a device of its own kind), due, among other things, to N becoming very large. In the particular case of TCP connectivity, it became clear that while most TCP stacks performed their desired functions fairly reliably when presented with a connection made up of "ordinary" data, some of them did not perform well in the event of connections made up of inputs that, while standards-compliant, were somewhat out of the ordinary.
The traditional approaches to these problems include the following:                Design reviews. Designers, engineers, and programmers review a design as it is developed, hoping to assure standards compliance.        Code reviews. The actual code written by one or more programmers is discussed with additional programmers, for example with a "walk-through" of the program flow.        Protocol test suites. A standardized body of data (e.g. a data file) is fed into a system again and again to test the ability of the system to handle the data. An effort is made to include, within this data file, some fairly wide range of possible inputs.        Traffic generators. A device may be created that generates traffic (e.g. packets) according to some particular protocol, thereby testing (among other things) the bandwidth of the node being tested as well as its ability to operate for long periods of time (e.g. to test for certain categories of memory leaks).
None of these approaches suffices by itself to test fully the standards compliance of a node, and even these approaches taken together do not lead to complete confidence as to standards compliance. A design review or code review, for example, are performed by humans and thus may completely miss something important that was omitted; it is well known that humans are better at catching something that is visibly incorrect than they are at noticing that something is missing entirely. If a design or body of code is simply lacking a way to test for a boundary condition, for example, this is easy to miss.
A distinction can also be drawn between systems and code that are deterministic (that always have the same outputs given certain highly predictable inputs) and systems and code that must deal with a variety of inputs at various times (e.g. asynchronous inputs) and that must deal with potential race conditions among various circuits or data flow paths. An example of a deterministic code body is software to generate, say, daily credit card statements in batches. In the universe of computer programmers and software designers and electrical engineers and systems engineers, almost all are competent to create and to review deterministic systems and code sets. But the fraction of this universe composed of persons who are very good at reviewing the latter types of systems (systems with timing issues, race conditions, asynchronous inputs) turns out to be extremely small. Experience suggests that the need for such people far exceeds the supply. There are not enough of them, for example, to do even a small proportion of the design reviews and code reviews that would be needed to for comprehensive standards-compliance reviews of Internet-related products.
While protocol test suites are an important part of testing nodes, they cannot test all or even most of the ways in which a node may be improperly designed. Traffic generators can also be important but again are unlikely to detect subtle design errors. Some prior-art known traffic generators do not, for example, lose packets, reorder packets, corrupt packets, modify packets, create new packets, or delay transfer of packets. Prior-art known traffic generators furthermore do not do these things based upon past traffic. Such traffic generators are not designed to act as an intermediary between two nodes, are not designed to receive packets from multiple sources, do not modify packets based on predetermined or user-controlled criteria, or resend packets which have been intercepted and then modified.
One prior-art approach is described by Postel (id.):                Some tests are made more interesting by the use of a "flakeway." A flakeway is a purposely flakey gateway. It should have control parameters that can be adjusted while it is running to specify a percentage of datagrams [packets] to be dropped, a percentage of datagrams to be corrupted and passed on, and a percentage of datagrams to be reordered so that they arrive in a different order than sent.
While such flakeways have been devised and actually used for limited testing of TCP stacks, their function has been confined to testing a single connection over a single protocol (e.g. TCP). five-tuple
Further, as their function has been limited to simple manipulations only within a single protocol, they do not fully test all of the ways in which a node may fail to handle standards-compliant but infrequent events. With some more recent protocols, there are many options and variants which are within the protocol and yet which are not actually implemented in a first wave of node designs, and which may only come to be implemented in later node designs. This gives rise to a concern that a node from among the first wave may function as expected at first, but may fail to function properly as later-designed nodes commence being put into service.
As an example, in fairly recent times it has been proposed to communicate voice information over IP (VoIP). Large portions of the Internet, and many nodes on the Internet, predate VoIP and this raises the natural question whether the existing enterprise network can support VoIP with acceptable voice quality. This raises another natural question namely under what conditions voice quality will be impaired. For example, dynamic routing protocols such as BGP can lead to abrupt changes in the routing of packets during a particular voice conversation, raising the question of how the terminal equipment will handle such changes. Protocols used for VoIP permit the use of any of a number of "codecs" (coders/decoders) which define the manner in which analog signals are converted to digital and later converted back to analog; the protocols further permit shifting dynamically (during a particular voice conversation) from one codec to a different codec. Will such shifts be handled properly? Prior-art test devices do not provide full answers to these questions.
Yet another problem of long-standing duration arises from the development of standards which define more than one connection running in parallel (simultaneously). Consider a protocol which defines one connection to pass audio data and another connection to pass video data. Each connection, somewhat analogous to TCP, has mechanisms for detection of and dealing with missing packets. (Depending on the type of data being passed, such as audio data, the protocol may not actually bring about a retransmission of a dropped packet but may instead take some other action such as interpolating the audio signal for the interval represented by the dropped packet.) But it is not enough for each connection, taken by itself, to deal with dropped or delayed or out-of-order packets. There is an additional need, in the example of an audio path and a video path, for the rendered video (perceived by a human) and the rendered audio (again perceived by the same human) to be synchronized. Existing test devices do not fully test this requirement and there is a long-standing need for test devices which would fully test this requirement.
Yet another problem of long standing arises from the fact that there are whole categories of design mistakes that are simply not detected if the suite of tests is limited to dropped, delayed, corrupted, duplicated or reordered packets. There is a long-standing need for test devices which would detect more nearly all of the possible design mistakes in modern nodes that are intended to be compliant with present-day standards.


A side bearing assembly for a railway vehicle includes a cage, a cap coupled to and moveable relative to the cage, and an insulator disposed between the cage and the cap. The railway vehicle includes a bolster extending laterally and a car body disposed on the bolster. The cage is attached to the bolster and the cap supports a portion of the car body such that the side bearing assembly is disposed between the bolster and the car body to dampen lateral pivoting of the car body relative to the bolster. The insulator is formed of microcellular polyurethane for resiliently deforming and storing energy during compressive movement between the car body and the bolster through a range of temperatures between −40° C. and 80 ° C. Microcellular polyurethane maintains flexibility at this temperature range such that the side bearing assembly maintains its ability to dampen lateral pivoting through this temperature range.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a side bearing assembly for a vehicle. Specifically, the invention relates to a side bearing assembly including an insulator for storing energy when the insulator is subjected to compressive forces.
2. Description of the Related Art
Side bearing assemblies for railway vehicles are known in the art. Generally, railway vehicles include a truck, i.e., a wheel assembly, and a car body disposed on the truck. For example, the car body could be a tanker. The truck includes a plurality of bolsters extending transversely across the truck. Each bolster of the truck includes a center bowl and the car body includes a body center plate corresponding to each center bowl. One of a pair of side bearing assemblies is attached to the bolster on either side of the center bowl. Each center bowl pivotally receives the corresponding body center plate such that the car body is laterally pivotal relative to the truck in the center bowl. The car body is supported by the center bowl and each of the pair of side bearing assemblies. The side bearing assemblies are often referred to as constant contact side bearing assemblies because each of the pair of side bearing assemblies remains in constant contact with the car body of the railway vehicle. If contact between the car body and the side bearing is interrupted, the car body may slide relative to the bolster, which increases the potential for derailment.
The truck includes wheels that ride on tracks. Due to the shape of the wheels and the shape of the tracks, when the railway vehicle moves along a straight section of the track, the wheels are constantly hunting, i.e. searching, for a centered position on the track. Due to the hunting, the truck of the railway vehicle will oscillate relative to the track. As the truck oscillates relative to the track, the car body laterally pivots on the center bowl. As the car body laterally pivots, the car body makes a compressive movement to compress one of the side bearing assemblies of the pair of side bearing assemblies while simultaneously making a decompressive movement to decompress the other side bearing assembly of the pair of side bearing assemblies. The oscillation of the truck relative to the track increases as the speed of the railway vehicle increases, which increases the lateral pivoting of the car body relative to the truck. At high speeds, forces generated by the oscillation of the truck and forces generated by the car body laterally pivoting relative to the truck can cause the wheels to climb off the track resulting in derailment of the railway vehicle.
The side bearing assemblies dampen the lateral pivoting of the car body relative to the truck. The lateral pivoting of the car body repeatedly loads compressive forces on the cap and unloads the compressive forces from the cap. When the car body loads compressive forces on the cap, the insulator is compressed between the cap and the cage. When the car body unloads force from the cap, the insulator decompresses and delivers the energy back to the cap to urge the cap upwardly and to keep the cap in constant contact with the car body. In other words, the insulator is constantly urging the cap upwardly to maintain contact between the cap and the car body. Because an increase in the speed of the railway vehicle results in an increase in pivoting of the car body relative to the truck, the increase in speed of the railway vehicle increases the lateral pivoting of the car body. Therefore, the speed of the railway vehicle is limited by the ability of the side bearing assembly to dampen the pivoting of the car body relative to the bolster.
For example, a side bearing assembly is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 3,712,691 to Cope (the '691 patent). Specifically, the '691 patent discloses the side bearing assembly including a cage for attachment to the bolster, a cap disposed over the cage, and an insulator disposed between the cap and the cage. The cap contacts and supports a portion of the car body and is moveable relative to the cage. The insulator of the '691 patent is made from a rubbery material.
On occasion railway vehicles are operated in relatively cold temperatures. When the insulator is subjected to relatively cold temperatures, the flexibility of the insulator is decreased. In other words, in relatively cold temperatures the insulators are significantly less compressible. Accordingly, cold temperatures decrease the ability of the insulator, such as the insulator in the '691 patent, to dampen the lateral pivoting of the car body relative to the truck. Because the speed of the railway vehicle is limited by the dampening capability of the side bearing assembly, when the dampening capability is decreased at relatively cold temperatures, the speed of the railway vehicle must also be decreased. It is desirable to manufacture a side bearing assembly including an insulator that maintains flexibility at relatively cold temperatures.
In addition, the current insulators have a relatively small compression travel, i.e. the difference between the height of the uncompressed insulator and the height of the compressed insulator. When subject to compressive movement of the car body, the insulator is compressed and the height of the insulator is decreased. When subject to decompressive movement of the car body, the insulator decompresses and retains its height. When subject to decompressive movement, the insulator must decompress and exert force on the cap such that the cap remains in constant contact with the car body. If the compression travel is insufficient such that the insulator does not exert sufficient force on the cap, then the contact between the cap and the car body is interrupted, which can lead to movement of the car body relative to the bolster and increase the potential of derailment. Because increased speed of the railway vehicle increases the pivoting of the car body relative to the bolster, the speed of the railway vehicle is limited by the compression travel of the insulator. Current insulators are too rigid and too incompressible such that the compression travel of the insulators is insufficient to maintain constant contact at higher speeds. It is desirable to manufacture a side bearing assembly including an insulator with improved compression travel such that the insulator exhibits more compression travel and absorbs larger forces produced by increased pivoting of the car body relative to the truck at high speeds.


Latency reduction techniques for radio access networks are described. In various embodiments, a reduced transmission time interval (rTTI) may be implemented in order to reduce air interface latency in a radio access network. In some embodiments, an rTTI block may be defined, and some operations may be performed in rTTI block-wise fashion in order to reduce the marginal overhead associated with implementation of the rTTI. In various embodiments in which an rTTI is implemented, DM-RS granularity may be improved by use of techniques that enable data and reference signals to be multiplexed within a same OFDM symbol. In some embodiments, a current transmission time interval (TTI) may be maintained, and latency reduction may be achieved via the use of novel techniques for one or more of code block (CB) segmentation, uplink (UL) resource element (RE) mapping and HARQ cycle timing. Other embodiments are described and claimed.

Latency reduction for Long-Term Evolution (LTE) has been identified as an important consideration with respect to the future path of LTE. As noted in a recent study item proposal, reducing latency can increase throughput by improving the performance of transmission control protocol (TCP) in the upper layers, by reducing the impact of TCP slow start, a major limiting factor for small size packets. Furthermore, reducing the air interface latency of LTE can enable a new, emerging category of services known as ultra-low latency and mission critical traffic. Such new services were identified as important for use cases such as vehicular networks, among others, in a 5G White Paper published by the influential Next Generation Mobile Networks (NGMN) alliance of mobile operators. Ultra-low latency services are expected to require one-way air interface latency to be on the order of 1 millisecond or less, which is represents a significant reduction with respect to current LTE latency.


A conductive electrolessly plated powder used, for example, for bonding a small electrode of an electronic device, its producing method, and a conductive material containing the plated powder. Conventionally, there has been known, as conductive powders, metallic powders such as of nickel, carbon powders, and conductive plating powders the resin core particles of which are coated with a metal, e.g., nickel. However, there has been no conductive electrolessly plated powders having a good conductivity with respect to connection between conductive patterns having an oxide coating thereon or between electrodes and no methods for producing such powders industrially. The conductive electrolessly plated powder of the present invention consists of resin spherical core particles the average size of which is 1 to 20 xcexcm and each of which has a nickel or nickel alloy coating formed by electroless plating. The coating includes small projections of 0.05 to 4 xcexcm on its outermost layer and the coating is substantially continuous with the small projections. A method of producing such a powder is also disclosed.

The present invention relates to a conductive electrolessly plated powder used, for example, for bonding small electrodes of electronic devices and the like, its producing method, and a conductive material containing the plated powder. Specifically, the present invention relates to a conductive electrolessly plated powder, its producing method, and a conductive material used for a conductive adhesive, an anisotropic conducting layer, and an anisotropic conductive adhesive or the like for conducting and bonding the confronting connecting circuits.
Heretofore, as a conductive powder used for a conductive adhesive, an anisotropic conducting layer, an anisotropic conductive adhesive or the like, metal powder such as nickel, copper, silver, gold, solder and the like; carbon series such as carbon powder, carbon fiber, carbon flake and the like; and conductive plated powder coated with metal such as nickel, nickel-gold, copper, gold, silver, solder and the like to the surface of a resin core particle with electroless plating, vacuum deposition and the like, are known.
The conductive powder using the metal powder mentioned above is large in specific gravity, as well as amorphous in shape, and wide in particle size distribution. Therefore, when such powder is used by being mixed with various matrix materials, the purpose of the product becomes limited because the sedimentation or dispersion of the powder is extremely difficult.
The conductive powder using the carbon series powder mentioned above is not used in a purpose requiring high conductive property or high reliability, because the conductivity of the carbon itself is small.
The conductive powder using the conductive plated powder mentioned above is generally produced with a method of dipping the core powder to a plating solution prepared in beforehand, performing plating reaction for a period of time determined by an empirical supposition, and stopping the reaction. The electrolessly plated powder having projections to the surface thereof is easily obtained with such method. However, when the core to be plated is a granule or a powder having large specific surface, autolysis of the plating solution occurs, so that the obtained electrolessly plated powder becomes mixed with fine nickel resolvents.
Also, because a strong aggregate is formed, the aggregate is cracked with physical technique or the like. This results in breaking of the aggregates and a phenomenon of exposing the uncovered surface.
An example of an electroless plating method for a powder or powdery core solving such problem includes a conductive filler consisting of an electrolessly plated powder with fine metal particles deposited and formed as thick and substantially continuous coating to the surface of an organic or a mineral base material using electroless plating method, which the applicant of the present invention had developed earlier (Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. H1-242782).
The electrolessly plated powder obtained by the above-mentioned method has the plated fine metal particles deposited and formed as a thick and substantially continuous coating to the core powder, with the shape of the coating excelling in flatness, without forming bumps. Therefore, it is possible to provide excellent high conductive property, when the powder is used for the conductive adhesive, the anisotropic conducting layer, and the anisotropic conductive adhesive or the like.
However, the electrolessly plated powder obtained in the method mentioned above has a flat surface. Therefore, for example, when the powder is used for a conductive adhesive and the like for adhering circuit boards formed with aluminum wiring patterns in a condition where the aluminum wiring patterns confront each other, there are cases where good conductivity cannot be obtained. This is because the surface of the aluminum wiring pattern is normally formed with 3-9 nm of oxide coating, so that the powder cannot break through the oxide coating, as well as the contact area becomes small.
Also, the Japanese Patent Laid-open No. H4-36902 discloses a method of producing conductive particulates by performing metal plating to the surface of non-conductive particulates that has projections at the surface thereof.
However, the conductive particulates mentioned above is characterized in its core, with the projections formed to the surface of the particulates (mother particles) indicating a flat surface by a method of adhering using an adhesive or welding directly the child particles of the same material or of a different material, or by a method of adhering the child particles to the surface of the mother particles by putting the mother particles in a rotating container and evaporating the solvent while rotating the container, and the like, and with the metal plating being provided to the surface of the particles thereafter. With such structure, the conductive particulates mentioned above suffers from defects such as the child particles easily detaching by ultrasonication used for dispersion and the like during plating pretreatment process and the like, resulting in occurrence of dispersion in the surface condition after plating. Therefore, the conductive particles mentioned above cannot obtain good conductivity constantly.
The present invention solves the problems mentioned above, with the aim of providing a conductive electrolessly plated powder having a good conductivity with respect to connection between conductive patterns or between electrodes having an oxide coating thereon, a method of producing such powders in a manner advantageous industrially, and a conductive material containing the electrolessly plated powder.
That is, the present invention provides a conductive electrolessly plated powder formed with nickel or nickel alloy coating with electroless plating to a surface of a spherical core particle having an average particle diameter of 1-20 xcexcm, wherein said plated powder includes small projections of 0.05 to 0.4 xcexcm on an outermost layer thereof, and said coating is substantially continuous with said small projections.
Moreover, the present invention provides a method of producing a conductive electrolessly plated powder, the method comprising:
a catalyzing treatment process of carrying palladium to a surface of a spherical core particle by first capturing the palladium ion to the surface of the spherical core particle and reducing the same;
an A process which is an electroless plating process of adding an aqueous slurry of the spherical core to an electroless plating bath including nickel salt, reducing agent, compelxing agent and the like; and
a B process which is an electroless plating process of adding components of an electroless plating solution divided into at least two solutions, respectively, to an aqueous slurry of the spherical core simultaneously and sequentially; wherein at least both of said A process and B process are carried out after said catalyzing treatment process.
Further, the present invention provides a conductive material using the conductive electrolessly plated powder.

Conductive electrolessly plated powder, its producing method, and conductive material containing the plated powder


Disclosed are systems, methods and computer program products for treatment of malware using an antivirus driver. In one aspect, an example method includes performing, by an antivirus software, an antivirus scan of the computer; detecting, by the antivirus software, a malicious object on the computer; formulating at least one task for treatment of the detected malicious object; configuring and activating on the computer an antivirus driver of the antivirus software to execute the at least one formulated task for treatment of the detected malicious object; and rebooting the computer by the antivirus software, whereby upon rebooting of the computer the antivirus driver is loaded by the operating system of the computer to execute the at least one task for treatment of the detected malicious object.

Presently, there are many different type of malicious computer programs, also known as malware, which impose a serious threat to computers and computer networks. Malware can infect a computer and can spread by various mechanisms, such as e-mail, Internet chat, and instant messaging, thereby quickly infecting other computers. Different types of malware can be distinguished by their behavior from relatively innocuous ones (such as those which present annoying messages to the user) to harmful and catastrophic types, including complete destruction of data on the hard drive, which results in loss of data and the possible need to completely restore the operating system and the given applications from a backup copy.
One should note the ambition of the creators of malicious programs to write code which is very hard to treat (an example of malware treatment might be removal or quarantine, and also the restoration of uninfected copies of objects, such as files). In the past, the creators of malicious programs were little concerned about this aspect, since it was more important to many nonprofessional creators of malicious programs to spread the malicious programs with the greatest speed and infect as many computers as possible. With the commercialization of the writing of malicious programs, the goals have also changed—the professional creators of malicious programs often seek to create code segments of complicated structure to guarantee that the malicious programs written by them will not be so easy to treat and remove.
Thus, there is a category of malicious programs today that are specially designed to prevent treatment. For example, malicious programs that prevent treatment usually create many copies of themselves on the same computer, which are executed at the same time, using the threads of different processes. Thus, in this scenario, the malicious program can have one copy of its code which has infected Internet Explorer® (it is executed in the thread of this process), and another copy of its code which infected the Outlook® mail client (i.e., it is executed in the thread of the process of the mail client). When an antivirus software identifies one of the copies of the malicious program (e.g., the copy of the malicious program that infected Internet Explorer®), the antivirus software removes this copy of the malicious program and removes the copy of the executable file which contains the code of the malicious program.
But this is insufficient for malicious programs resistant to treatment—the other copy of the malicious program (in this case, the copy which infected the mail client) determines that the first copy has been removed, and immediately copies itself into that part of working memory where Internet Explorer® resides, again infecting the browser and again launching the thread of the first copy of the malicious program. When the antivirus software finds the second copy (the one that infected the mail client), the whole process occurs precisely in reverse.
One may also note the development of so-called rootkit technologies, by which malicious programs have the ability to hide, limit access and restore the files or OS registry branches needed by them. In this case, if the antivirus is not able to determine the malicious driver which is hiding the malicious files, detection and treatment becomes almost impossible.
Technologies exist at present for fighting such malicious programs. However, the existing technologies do not make possible a stepwise execution of a series of actions guaranteeing the removal of the malicious code from the system. One of the problems in the treatment of malicious programs is that there is no guarantee that the rootkit driver will not be loaded first during boot procedure and hide the malicious files or OS register branches from the antivirus driver that will be performing the search and treatment. Another problem is, for example, the need to load the appropriate drivers during boot procedure (for the file system, for example) in order to be able to remove the malicious objects (e.g. files).
Therefore, there is a need for an improved mechanism for treatment of malware.

System and method for treatment of malware using antivirus driver


Disclosed is a process for the preparation of a pigment dispersion starting with a tank flushed pigment that is continuously fed into a twin screw extruder, washed and dried by vacuum to get a desirable product.

This invention relates to the production of pigment dispersion starting with a tank flushed pigment using the twin screw. This approach gives a lower conductivity and better dispersed material without affecting the throughput of the process.
Conventional flush colors are made by using a Sigma blade mixer where the pigment presscake and the oleoresinous vehicle are mixed in the presence or absence of alkyds in portions to get a stiff paste. The water which breaks out during the process is decanted. The final stiff paste (flush) is dried under vacuum to eliminate the residual water. The dried product is then cut back with solvents, oil and the vehicle to make a standardized flush. This process is time consuming and requires heavy duty machines to accomplish the task. Further, it is a batch process and variation due to presscake quality, solids content of pigment and vehicle characteristics will result in wide variation in quality.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,474,473 illustrates a process to make pigment dispersions continuously using a twin screw co-rotating extruder wherein the hydrophobic liquid organic liquid media and the wet pigment presscake are fed into the extruder, and the pigment presscake is flushed and dehydrated continuously to obtain the pigment dispersion. The drawback of this process is the pigment presscakes used should be very high in solids content to achieve flushing. Further, the organic liquid media and the wet cake must be metered at proper rates to achieve flushing and dehydration. The other problem is that if the presscake is not washed well, there is no provision for washing in the process to reduce the conductivity of the resulting flush.
The present invention provides a process for the preparation of a pigment dispersion, said method comprising:
is (a) providing a twin screw extruder which comprises a pair of co-rotating parallel screws, a feed section, a dispersion section and a dehydrating section;
(b) feeding a tank flushed pigment into said feed section of the twin screw extruder and feeding a hydrophobic liquid organic media into the twin screw extruder;
(c) continuously flushing pigment particles from a water phase to an organic medium phase, thus forming a flushed pigment mixture; and
(d) transferring said flushed pigment mixture from said flushing section to said dehydrating section and therein continuously dehydrating said mixture by rotation of said pair of screws thereby forming pigment dispersion,
wherein feeding the hydrophobic liquid organic media is done at any time prior to or after the dehydration of step.
It has now surprisingly been found that using a tank flushed pigment (preflushed pigment) slurry or presscake when fed into a co-rotating extruder equipped with a feeding section, and multiple washing sections to achieve proper pH and conductivity levels, and a dehydrating section to remove the water, provides a method to make a consistent quality flush. The extruder can be equipped with sections to charge components to add prior to dehydration or after dehydration to get the desired rheology of the resulting flush.
The advantage of the process is that it can get a good dispersion of the pigment using the preflushed pigment or presscake. The rheology of the flush can be controlled by changing the process parameters.
Preferably, the twin screw extruder used in the present invention consists of 15 barrels (sections) with a feed section, 3 wash zones, 3 vent or vacuum zones and 1 discharge. The barrel sections are provided with water cooling and electric heating. The maximum screw speed of the extruder is 588 rpm and maximum power is 40 kW. The feeding of the preflushed material is preferably done using a K-Tron S60 feeder.
For the lithol rubine (C.I. Red 57) two kinds of preflush material were processed through the twin screw, the unwashed and washed preflush. For the unwashed material, the necessary washing was accomplished in the wash zones to reduce conductivity.

Methods for production of pigment dispersion


The motor includes the following elements: a stator-core having plural teeth, and a yoke that links the teeth, coils wound on the teeth in a concentrated winding form, and a rotor with interior permanent magnets. The rotor with interior permanent magnets includes the following elements: a rotor core having plural slits of which ends extend closely to the rotor circumference, permanent magnets positioned in the slits, non-magnetic-sections provided between the circumference of the rotor-core and respective ends of permanent magnets. This construction allows the motor to withstand persistently demagnetization, to be a smaller size with high efficiency, and to be manufactured in a highly efficient manner. The motor can be integrated as a driver into an apparatus driving unit.

A high efficiency motor, which can utilize magnet torque as well as reluctance torque by burying interior magnets within a rotor core, is well known in the market, one example is disclosed in the Japanese Patent Application Unexamined Publication No. H08-331823. FIG. 18 is a cross section illustrating this kind of conventional motor.
In FIG. 18, stator 401 comprises a plurality of teeth 403 and yoke 405 which connects roots of the plural teeth, and stator 401 is shaped as a ring. A plurality of slots 407 formed between teeth 403 are wound in a three-phase winding manner.
Rotor 410 is substantially coaxial with stator 401 and is shaped substantially as a cylinder, and faces an inner wall of stator 401 via an annular space. Rotor 410 has four rotor poles, and is supported by a bearing (not shown) so that rotor 410 can rotate on shaft 421. Four slits 413 bored through axially and disposed at equal intervals along a rotational direction of rotor core 411 are provided on rotor 410, and plate-like permanent magnet 415 is inserted into each slit. A terminal plate (not shown) is disposed on each axial end of rotor core 411 to secure permanent magnet 415. The terminal plate is fixed on the end face by riveting pin 425 through hole 423, whereby the permanent magnet 415 is fixed into rotor core 411. An outer wall of rotor 410 has notches 419 at boundary areas between the respective rotor poles, and both of longitudinal ends of permanent magnet 415 are adjacent to respective notches 419. An electric current runs through the stator coil to create a rotating magnetic field. Then, the rotor poles attract/repel teeth 403 of stator 401, thereby spinning rotor 410.
In the above structure, the following relation is established between inductances Ld and Lq: Ld<Lq
where Ld is an inductance along "d" axis which crosses the rotor pole at right angles, and PA1 Lq is an inductance along "q" axis extending through the boundary area between the rotor poles. PA1 .psi.a: interlinkage magnetic flux PA1 I: stator coil current PA1 .beta.: leading phase angle of the current I (electrical angle) PA1 (a) a stator core having a plurality of teeth and a yoke connecting the teeth; PA1 (b) concentrated windings on the teeth; PA1 (c) a rotor having interior permanent magnets; PA1 and the rotor with the interior permanent magnets comprises the following elements: PA1 (a) stator core having a plurality of teeth and a yoke connecting the teeth; PA1 (b) windings on the teeth; PA1 (c) a rotor having interior permanent magnets; PA1 and the rotor comprises the following elements: PA1 (a) stator core having a plurality of teeth and a yoke connecting the teeth; PA1 (b) windings on the teeth; PA1 (c) a rotor having interior permanent magnets; PA1 and the rotor comprises the following elements: PA1 (a) stator core having a plurality of teeth and a yoke connecting the teeth; PA1 (b) concentrated windings on the teeth; PA1 (c) a motor including a rotor with interior permanent magnets; PA1 and the rotor with the interior permanent magnets comprises the following elements:
In general, motor torque "T" is expressed by the following equation: EQU T=Pn{.psi.a.cndot.I.cndot.cos.beta.+0.5(Lq-Ld)I.sup.2.cndot.sin2.beta.}
where, Pn: a number of paired rotor poles,
In the equation discussed above, the first term represents magnet torque, and the second represents reluctance torque. Since the relation of Ld<Lq is satisfied, a winding current is so controlled to advance the phase of the winding current "I" with regard to respective induced voltage generated in each phase winding, thereby .beta. becomes greater than zero (.beta.>0), and the reluctance torque is generated. When .beta. is set at a predetermined value, the greater torque "T" can be produced with a same current than the case where only the magnet torque is available.
However, according to the above structure, since steel section 417 having high permeability exists between slit 413 and notch 419, magnetic flux at the end of permanent magnet 415 runs through magnetic path 430 of steel section 417. The magnetic flux is thus short-circuited as shown in FIG. 18, although it should have reached stator 401 and contributed to torque production. In other words, the magnetic flux decreases by the short-circuited amount, thereby lowering a motor efficiency. Further, the magnetic flux resulted from short-circuited increases cogging torque, which increases noises and vibrations of the motor.
A motor employing another type of interior permanent magnets is disclosed in the Japanese Patent Application Unexamined Publication No. H08-331783 as shown in FIG. 19. This prior art, different from the conventional motor discussed above, has no notches on the outer wall, and a distributed winding method is employed on stators.
In FIG. 19, rotor 503 has four sets of interior permanent magnets 501 and 502 in rotor core 507 made of electromagnetic stacked steel sheets. Magnets 501 and 502 are placed on each pole in a radial direction with a space. Each set of magnets 501 and 502 are places such that "S" pole and "N" pole are adjacent to each other. Magnets 501 and 502 forming a layer structure are placed such that the outer sides of respective outer magnets 501 facing the outer rim of rotor 503 have the same polarity as the outer sides of respective inner magnets 502. Magnets 501 and 502 are shaped as arcs and show their hills toward the rotor center, and the two magnets in the layer structure form substantially concentric circles and lie in parallel. A space between the two magnets is substantially constant.
Rotor 503 as defined above is rotated by composite torque of magnet torque and reluctance torque: i.e. the magnet torque is generated by the relation between the magnet field of magnets 501 and 502 and rotating magnetic field produced by the current running through a group of coils 509 striding over a predetermined number of teeth 506 defined by broken lines 517, on the other hand, the reluctance torque is generated by magnetic paths formed by the rotating magnetic field and appearing between magnets 501 and 502 as well as on the surface of rotor 503. The reluctance torque is thus utilized, thereby realizing a higher efficiency motor than the motor using only magnet torque.
Among such motors as employing interior permanent magnets, another idea is carried out not only to increase efficiency but also to downsize the motor, i.e. a concentrated winding method is practiced on the teeth of stator in a higher density.
However, in conventional motor with the concentrated winding on the teeth, an adjacent magnetic pole turns to an opposite pole when the motor is powered with three-phase 120.degree. current and winding volume for one pole and one phase is concentrated on one tooth. Magnetizing force is thus as strong as twice of the motor with the distributed winding, and therefore magnetic flux runs between the adjacent teeth, which demagnetizes the interior permanent magnets.

Motor using rotor including interior permanent magnet, and apparatus-driving-unit employing the same motor


An engine with a lockable valve actuator and method of controlling an engine with such an actuator are disclosed. The actuator may include an actuator cylinder with an actuator piston reciprocatingly disposed therein. The actuator piston may be moved by directing pressurized fluid into the actuator cylinder, and locked into a given position by maintaining the pressurized fluid in the actuator cylinder. The actuator may be used in conjunction with a mechanically driven actuator used to move a valve, with the fluidically driven actuator being used to maintain the valve into a desired position.

This disclosure relates generally to internal combustion engines and, more particularly, to engine valve actuators.
The operation of an internal combustion engine requires, among other things, the timed opening and closing of a plurality of valves. For example, with a typical four-stroke, diesel engine, one of ordinary skill in the art will readily recognize such an engine operates through four distinct strokes of a piston reciprocating through a cylinder, with intake and exhaust valves operating in conjunction with the piston. In an intake stroke, the piston descends through the cylinder while an intake valve is open. The resulting vacuum draws air into the cylinder. In a subsequent compression stroke, the piston reverses direction while the intake valve and an exhaust valve are closed, thereby compressing the air within the cylinder. This is followed by a combustion or power stroke wherein fuel is injected into the compressed air and thereby ignited, with the resulting force pushing the piston again in the descending direction while both the intake and exhaust valves are closed. Finally, the piston reverses direction with the exhaust valve open, thereby pushing the combustion gases out of the cylinder.
In certain variations on the typical diesel or Otto cycle, it is desirable to open or close one of the intake and/or exhaust valves at alternative times. For example, in a compression release braking mode, the exhaust valve is opened as the piston approaches a top dead center position during the compression stroke to, in effect, increase engine braking operation. In so doing the engine cylinders draw in air during the intake stroke, compress the air, and then vent the compressed air out of the exhaust valve near top dead center of the piston.
Another mode of engine operation requiring a typical valve sequencing is known as the Miller cycle. During the Miller cycle, the intake valve is held open during the initial stages of the compression stroke. Such operation reduces the effective compression ratio of the engine and results in a more mechanically efficient power producing engine. Alternatively, the intake valve is closed prior to completion of a normal intake stroke to provide Miller cycle benefits.
One other situation modifying typical valve operation is internal exhaust gas recirculation. One disadvantage of diesel or Otto cycle engine operation is that all of the fuel brought into the cylinder and compressed may not entirely combust. Among other things, this phenomenon may be undesirable due to an unacceptably high level of pollutants, such as nitrous oxide (NOx) and particulates, being released during the exhaust stroke.
Exhaust gas recirculation (hereinafter referred to as xe2x80x9cEGRxe2x80x9d) attempts to curtail such drawbacks of conventional engine operation. With EGR, at least a portion of the exhaust gases is not exhausted to the atmosphere, but rather is introduced back into the engine cylinder to be combusted in subsequent power or combustion strokes of the engine. With typical internal EGR, the exhaust gases are expelled through the exhaust valve and re-introduced to the cylinder through the exhaust valve itself. Such a process requires that the exhaust valve stay open not only through the exhaust stroke, but also on the intake stroke, after the piston reverses direction, thereby creating a vacuum and drawing a portion of the exhaust gases back into the cylinder through the still open exhaust valve.
One of ordinary skill in the art will readily appreciate that a substantial force is required to open the exhaust valve and maintain the valve in an open position as the piston reciprocates through the cylinder toward the top dead center position. A valve actuator employing highly pressurized oil may be used to apply this force to open the exhaust valve.
However, holding an exhaust valve in an open position by a valve actuator employing highly pressurized oil requires, for example, pressurized oil on the order of fifteen hundred to five thousand pounds per square inch (10.34 to 34.4 MPa). The engine or machine in which the engine has been mounted therefore has had to provide a high pressure source or high pressure rail and be able to supply the high pressure oil to the actuator when desired. Such a requirement has, among other things, the disadvantage, at least with respect to Miller cycle and EGR operation, of decreasing the engine efficiency in that the engine must continually direct usable work to the high pressure rail to maintain such pressures even though the high pressure oil is only required for a relatively short duration during the engine operation. Not only is the provision of such pressurized fluid taxing on the efficiency of the engine, but with certain machines the provision of such a high pressure rail is simply not available or desirable.
The present disclosure is directed to overcoming one or more of the problems or disadvantages associated with the prior art.
In accordance with one aspect of the disclosure, an engine valve actuator is provided which comprises an actuator cylinder, an actuator piston reciprocatingly disposed in the cylinder, the actuator piston including a rod associated therewith, a source of pressurized fluid, and a control valve connected in fluid communication with the source of pressurized fluid and the actuator cylinder, the control valve having first and second positions, the first position placing the source of pressurized fluid in fluid communication with the actuator cylinder, the second position maintaining pressurized fluid in the actuator cylinder.
In accordance with another aspect of the disclosure, an engine valve assembly is provided which comprises a valve seat, a valve element adapted to move relative to the valve seat between an open position and a closed position, a mechanically driven actuator adapted to move the valve element to the open position, and a fluidically driven actuator adapted to hold the valve element in the open position.
In accordance with another aspect of the disclosure, an internal combustion engine is provided which comprises a engine cylinder, an engine piston reciprocatingly movable relative to the engine cylinder, an engine valve element disposed in a port connected to the engine cylinder, a valve actuator connected to move the engine valve element, a source of low pressure fluid in fluid communication with the valve actuator, a mechanical linkage mounted proximate the engine valve element and adapted to move the engine valve element, and a control valve adapted to control flow of pressurized fluid from the source of pressurized fluid to the valve actuator.
In accordance with yet another aspect of the disclosure, a method of controlling an engine having at least one valve is provided. The method comprises the steps of moving the valve to an open position, and holding the valve in the open position with an hydraulically locked actuator.


A method and means are offered of providing of a calibrated output of a analog to digital converter. The method includes the steps of, and means for, generating a calibration table relating a calibrated output of the analog to digital converter and a detected output, and, upon determination of a need, providing, by reference to the calibration table, the calibrated output of the analog to digital converter corresponding to an detected output of the analog to digital converter.

Analog to digital signal converters (ADCs) are known. Such converters are normally necessary where a digital device, such as a digital computer, must process inputs from non-digital signal sources. Examples of the use of such converter devices include the processing of analog inputs to digital communication systems, automobile engine sensors, and analysis of seismic information from seismic sensors.
ADCs typically provide a digital output proportional to the analog input. The number of bits available within the binary word, output from the device, typically provide a measure of resolution of the measured signal. Such resolution within the ADC is provided by a series of interrelated voltage references and/or voltage dividers within the ADC. Such references within the ADC are compared to an input during ADC operation under an algorithm providing a digital output proportional to the input. During manufacture the relative values of the reference voltages may be produced by a manufacturing process using etching, laser trimming, or other appropriate manufacturing technique.
To insure overall performance characteristics, ADCs are typically subject to the initial calibration during manufacture to ensure accuracy at two voltage extremes (high and low). Calibration at the two extremes insures that the output of the A/D is relatively accurate at the two extremes. Input voltage values between the two extremes, on the other hand, may exhibit considerable linearity error. The relative value of the linearity error between the two extremes is related to the manufacturing used to produce the proportional reference voltages.
Where reference voltages are produced using an etching process, linearity may be of a lesser quality. Where laser trimming is combined with etching then quality may be significantly improved and may offer a high-performance alternative where linearity requirements are restrictive in nature. Such high-performance alternatives, on the other hand, can be prohibitively expensive.
Total device accuracy is, typically, specified within the product literature of a device. Inaccuracies relative to non-linearity of device response may also be specified within device literature under a variety of different measuring methodologies. Accuracy may also drift, with time, as the ADC ages.
While ADCs perform well in converting analog data to a digital format, the accuracy of such devices may vary depending upon the magnitude of the sensed signal, and with time. ADCs may also vary in accuracy, from device-to-device. In addition, individual ADCs are sometimes constructed with phased clocks to increase their effective sampling rate, or in a composite offset structure, to increase their effective number of bits of resolution. Since multiple ADCs never have the same linearity characteristics, the composite structures suffer even worse linearity than any of their individual components. This creates particularly poor performance in spectral applications. Because of the importance of ADCs in signal processing a need exists for a method of improving the accuracy of A/D output data without resort to high-performance alternatives.

Digital linearization calibration for analog to digital converter


Methods and devices for processing and retransmitting highway communication system transmissions include determining a reliability of a received message and including an indication of the reliability in retransmitted transmissions. Reliability of received messages may be based on a signal strength of the received peer transmission, comparison of the signal strength to a distance to the transmitter based on message contents, the age of the received message, the signal quality of the received message, and other parameters. An indication of the determined reliability may be included in retransmissions of the message to enable other vehicles and receiver units in the highway communication system to benefit from the reliability determination. Message reliability may be used as part of prioritizing messages for processing. Messages may be processed according to priority so that high priority messages are processed before lower priority messages.

1. Field
The present application relates generally to highway communication systems, and more particularly to efficient methods for prioritizing and processing received peer transmissions.
2. Background
Vehicle communication networks that can transmit and receive wireless data have been in development as part of systems to improve safety and relieve congestion on the highways. In such highway communication systems, short wave messages may be exchanged to, from, and between vehicles, and between vehicles and roadside base stations. These peer transmissions may be received by a wireless communication device within a vehicle's on-board processing unit, with the contents of the message used for a variety of safety and driver awareness purposes.
If such highway communication systems are ever deployed, it is expected that a great many messages will be generated and received by each vehicle's on-board communication unit. Such inter-vehicle peer transmissions may be received as frequently as one message per 0.1 second according to some estimates. Some messages may require significant data processing, and as the number of received transmissions increases, the vehicles' processing unit may become inundated. This may increase the amount of time required to process some messages. Thus, in a heavy stream of traffic, critical messages may not be processed in time as processing resources are consumed by non-important messages.

Method and apparatus for filtering and processing received vehicle peer transmissions based on reliability information


A pictorial system is devised to assist in the administration of medication, either to self or to another, based on picture stamps of a particulate medication to be taken by or given to a patient at a specified time either over a specified period of time or over an extended and unspecified calendar period. The picture stamps, each reflecting a unit of a medication, are to be pasted into discrete spaces of a sheet, card, label or box cover divided into columns and rows identified by icons for the time of day one or more units of the medication or of the medications are to be taken or given.

This invention relates to a visual guidance or reminder system to assist in the administration of medications, whether taken by oneself or given by a caregiver. The pictorial medication system is desirable since many patients must take multiple medications, often at different times of the day. The taking or giving of medications often becomes confusing because of the complex identifying names of the medications, similarities of the containers for the medications, and the circumstance of the patient who may be ill, infirm, or limited in ability to read or to grasp pharmacologic or medical terminology.
The NATIONAL COUNCIL ON PATIENT INFORMATION AND EDUCATION, Washington, D.C. published the following data for the U.S.A. for 1987: (1) Nearly 2.3 billion inpatient and outpatient prescriptions were dispensed; (2) An estimated $23 billion was spent on prescription drugs; (3) The average pharmacy dispensed nearly 27,500 prescriptions that year; (4) In 1986, the Food and Drug Administration received almost 54,000 reports of adverse drug reactions, including 1,347 deaths and 4,1481 hospitalizations; (5) Sales of nonprescription drugs were rising by 6% a year, as two-thirds of Americans self-medicate; (6) Almost 100% of over-the-counter (OTC) medication purchasers used self-selected regimens, and even those taking prescription drugs complied only about 50% of time with the regimens advised.
Among the many problems and complications that arise from the improper timing of medication are ineffectiveness, as with antibiotics or anticonvulsants when doses are missed, or oversedation when doses are taken too close together as with antihistamines. Often, there may be failure to identify the correct medication to be taken or the correct dosage to be administered. Frequently, the very infirmity that requires a patient to take medication, may debilitate judgment and memory.
The interval between doses of a drug, or how frequently during the day a drug must be taken, is determined by its pharmacokinetics, i.e. the rate of absorption, peak blood or tissue level, and rate of degradation and elimination. Thus while the administration of medications is not always critical as to the precise time of the day, it is necessary to take most drugs within readily identifiable periods or at fairly regular intervals. While various dispensers have been devised for periodic dispensing of preselected pills and the like, such devises require preloading by the patient, a caregiver or the pharmacist, and are usually expensive. The visual reminder system of this invention is cost effective, is comprised solely of paper goods, and enables the pharmacist (or less frequently the physician) to quickly and easily select the pictorial representation of the medication to be taken, and to paste such representation on a sheet, in a booklet, on a card, the top of a box, or as a part or tag of a label that can then guide the patient or caregiver in the administration of the medication. Further significant advantages of this pictorial reminder system are that such filled-in sheets may be kept posted in several places about a home such as on the refrigerator door and by the bedside, or kept in a booklet or a card which can be readily carried on one's person as in a purse or wallet. This latter application of the visual guide to medication also permits ready identification of the medication an individual may be taking, which may be of crucial importance to the treating and prescribing physician in the recognition and prevention of polypharmacy and drug-drug interaction, and determination of a suitable regimen for the client. Finally, the ready identification of drugs being taken by a person may be of critical importance in life-threatening situations.
Preferably, the visual depictions of the medications can be directly reproduced on picture stamps from the Physicians Desk Reference (PDR) published by Medical Economics Company, from the Compendium of Drug Therapy, published by McGraw-Hill Book Company, or from their equivalents in other countries. The icon or stamp of a particular medication preferably includes the name and strength of the drug as additional reminders to the patient or caregiver, providing a learning experience in associating the appearance of the drug with its name and strength.
The principal object of this invention is to provide a convenient and inexpensive means of identifying particular medication and the time of day and period that the medication is to be taken to assist in self-administration or the giving of medications while reducing the risks of improper medication that could result in serious consequences.

Pictorial guidance/reminder system for medication


An authenticable digital code includes a printable medium, a machine-readable digital code, formed on the printable medium, that graphically represent information, and at least one security signature positioned relative to the machine-readable digital code. The security signature includes a fluorescent material that, when excited by light of a first wavelength, fluoresces and emits light at a second wavelength that is different from the first wave length. Authenticity of the authenticable digital code is determined by detecting, when the authenticable digital code is illuminated by light of the first wavelength, light of the second wavelength at a position relative to the machine-readable digital code.

Products are typically packaged with a machine-readable code (e.g., a QR code, a barcode, a data matrix, and other similar codes) that identifies the product. For example, the machine-readable code may include manufacturer identification (ID), a product ID, a product serial number, and so on. However, the machine-readable code cannot provide authentication of the product it is attached to, even when containing a unique serial number, since the code itself is easily copied. That is, there is no way to ascertain whether the machine-readable code being scanned is authentic or an image duplicate. Thus, even where a consumer product is marked with the machine-readable code, the code provides no indication of authenticity of the object.
Many mobile phones and tablets include cameras for capturing pictures. These cameras typically use a CMOS (complementary metal-oxide semiconductor) sensor with an infrared (IR) cut-off filter that is designed to block near-IR photons from reaching the imaging sensor, while passing visible light. The IR cut-off filter prevents IR radiation from distorting images formed from visible radiation. While this results in more natural looking images, conventional mobile devices are therefore unsuitable for detecting fluorescent emission at IR wavelengths without removal of the included IR cut-off filter.
Many phosphors emit visible light when excited by Ultraviolet (UV) light. However, mobile phones cannot generate UV light at the appropriate wavelength and intensity to excite these phosphors. Thus, mobile phones have not been considered suitable for visible light authentication.

Authenticable digital code and associated systems and methods


A GAA (Gate-All-Around) CMOSFET device includes a semiconductor substrate, a PMOS region having a first channel, an NMOS region having a second channel and a gate region. The surfaces of the first channel and the second channel are substantially surrounded by the gate region. A buried insulation layer is disposed between the PMOS region and the NMOS region and between the PMOS or NMOS region and the semiconductor substrate to isolate them from one another. The structure is simple, compact and highly integrated, has high carrier mobility, and avoids polysilicon gate depletion and short channel effect.

1. Technical Field
The present invention relates generally to the field of semiconductor manufacturing technologies and more particularly to GAA (Gate-All-Around) CMOSFET (Complementary Metal Oxide Semiconductor Field Effect Transistor) devices.
2. Description of Related Art
A CMOS device integrates both NMOS (N-type Metal Oxide Semiconductor) and PMOS (P-type Metal Oxide Semiconductor) transistors in one device. As the device size continues to shrink, a major challenge in scaling down the channel length is to maintain a high current drive capability (Ion) and a good stable threshold voltage, and control the device leakage current (Ioff) within requirement. The short-channel effect degrades device performance and is a severe obstacle to scale down conventional planar CMOS devices.
For nanometer-scale channel length CMOS devices, it is important to control the channel conductance mainly through a gate electric field without being affected by a drain scattering electric field. For SOI devices, the above-described problem is alleviated with the reduced silicon thickness in both partial-depletion and full-depletion structures. Compared with the conventional planar CMOS devices, inversion mode dual-gate or tri-gate fin-type FETs have better gate control and scaling down capabilities. Besides operating in an inversion mode, ultra-thin SOI devices can operate in an accumulation mode. Comparing to the full-depletion FET, in an accumulation mode, current flows through the whole SOI device, which increases the carrier mobility, reduces low-frequency noises, lowers the short channel effect, and increases the threshold voltage so as to avoid polysilicon gate depletion effect. In an inversion mode FET, the type of impurities doped in the source and drain regions is different from that in the channel region, the conductive carriers are of minority carriers, and p-n junctions are formed between the source region and the channel region and between the drain region and the channel region, respectively. The inversion mode FETs are currently the most widely used devices. On the other hand, in an accumulation mode FET, the source and drain regions are doped with impurities of the same type as that in the channel region, the conductive carriers is of majority carriers, and there is no p-n junction. Since the carrier mobility is the bulk material mobility, the accumulation mode FET achieves high carrier mobility.
Further, in Si(110) substrates, current flows along <110>crystal orientation, hole mobility is more than doubled compared with in conventional Si(100) substrates, and electron mobility is the highest in Si(100) substrates. To fully utilize the advantage of the carrier mobility depending on crystalline orientation, M. Yang et al. at IBM developed a CMOS fabricating technology on hybrid substrates with different crystal orientations ('High performance CMOS fabricated on hybrid substrate with different crystal orientations', Digest of Technical Paper of International Electron Devices Meeting, 2003). Through bonding and selective epitaxy growth techniques, an NMOS device is fabricated on a Si (100) surface and a PMOS device is fabricated on a Si (110) surface. The paper reported the drive current of the PMOS device on the Si(110) substrate increases by 45%, when Ioff=100 nA/μm. But the PMOS device is fabricated on an epitaxy layer and does not have a buried oxide layer to isolate it from the substrate, thus adversely affecting the performance of the device performance.
Therefore, the present invention provides gate-all-around CMOSFET devices to overcome the above-described problems.

This patent is subject to a terminal disclaimer.

Shanghai Institute of Microsystem and Information Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences


A method for ultrasound image acquisition for tracking an object of interest in ultrasound image information includes receiving X-ray image information and ultrasound image information, determining, before the tracking, a spatial relationship between the X-ray image information and the ultrasound image information, detecting an object of interest in the X-ray image information and steering two-dimensional ultrasound image acquisition such that the object of interest is within an ultrasound image plane.

A current trend in interventional procedures is a tighter integration of ultrasound and X-ray modalities. In other words, different image modalities are not employed separately but rather conjointly during a specific procedure. Thereby, drawbacks of certain modalities may be compensated by advantages of other modalities.
E.g., although modern interventional ultrasound solutions offer the possibility of 3D imaging, it is often relied upon two-dimensional ultrasound imaging for various reasons. Amongst those reasons may be a higher image quality, a higher frame rate and no need for cropping, volume orientation or rendering parameter tuning when employing two-dimensional ultrasound images versus 3D imaging.
For interventional procedures, an object of interest, e.g. the tool by which the procedure is performed, is depicted in the image information acquired by the respective modalities. By depicting said object or overlaying image information of said object and the image information of a respective modality, a person performing the procedure readily obtains visual information about the location and/or orientation of the object of interest with regard to anatomic structures shown in the modality's image information. E.g., the path of a tool tip through tissue, may be tracked in the respective image information, i.e. visually followed by the person performing the procedure. Such tracking thus allows to reconfirm the correctness of a procedure, i.e. whether the procedure is correctly conducted.
However, during transcatheter intracardiac procedures, such as mitral clip or arterial fibrillation ablation, transcatheter tools being employed, e.g. a mitral clip or ablation catheter, are rather narrow objects that may experience substantive passive motion due to breathing, heartbeat and blood flow as well as active motion due to the interventionist steering the tool.
In such procedures, ultrasound images are regularly acquired by employing a transesophageal echocardiogram or TEE. The TEE is performed by a specialized probe being inserted into a patient's esophagus, which contains an ultrasound transducer at its tip. The ultrasound transducer is adapted for image acquisition and Doppler evaluation of ultrasound images. TEEs regularly provide clearer images, especially with regard to tissue structures that are difficult to view transthoracically, i.e. through the chest wall by employing an external ultrasound transducer.
Since the TEE itself lies in the esophagus, it experiences very low levels of motion. In particular for transcatheter procedures, the motion of the TEE probe regularly is below the motion of transcatheter tools previously described. In other words, the spatial relationship and/or the distance between the transcatheter tool and the TEE transducer is non-constant and consequently, when considering 2D image acquisition of a particular ultrasound plane, the tool tip periodically goes out of an ultrasound plane currently under observation.
To make the tool tip appear again in the imaging plane, readjustment of the imaging plane is required. This in turn requires a tedious coordination between the interventionist operating the transcatheter tool and the echographer operating in particular the ultrasound image acquisition device.

Integration of ultrasound and x-ray modalities


A self cleaning header assembly for use within a spray application system includes a plurality of spray guns for spraying a mix of air and liquid, e.g., an adhesive, and comprises a cleaning mechanism including one or more wash nozzles and a shroud. During a cleaning cycle, the shroud is closed and the spray guns rotate to approach the wash nozzles. The wash nozzles apply pressurized liquid, e.g., water, to the spray gun nozzles to remove excess adhesive that may affect the spray pattern and flow. After the washing cycle is complete, the spray guns are rotated to again face the target of interest and the shroud is reopened.

In the production of materials, it is often necessary to adhere one piece of material to another. This is very often the case in the production of sheet-like materials, wherein laminating is used to improve the physical properties or appearance of the finished product. One problem that arises in such situations is that it is necessary to apply an adhesive to one or both surfaces, and yet adhesives, by their nature tend to be, or to become, sticky and viscous, thus eventually clogging the machinery used to apply such adhesives.
Although it is possible to remove and clean or replace the affected portions of the system, this entails labor and material costs, and also results in excessive downtime of the production line. While the present invention also may entail certain costs and may result in a small amount of downtime, it very often provides a significantly more economical solution than the state of the art.
When considering this background section, the disclosure and claims herein should not be limited by the deficiencies of the prior art. In other words, the solution of those deficiencies, while desirable, is not a critical limitation of any claim except where otherwise expressly noted in that claim. Moreover, while this background section is presented as a convenience to the reader who may not be of skill in this art, it will be appreciated that this section is too brief to attempt to accurately and completely survey the prior art. The preceding background description is thus a simplified and anecdotal narrative and is not intended to replace printed references in the art. To the extent an inconsistency or omission between the demonstrated state of the printed art and the foregoing narrative exists, the foregoing narrative is not intended to cure such inconsistency or omission. Rather, applicants would defer to the demonstrated state of the printed art.