A medical device includes an insertion shaft, having a longitudinal axis and having a distal end adapted for insertion into a body of a patient. A resilient end section is fixed to the distal end of the insertion shaft and is formed so as to define, when unconstrained, an arc oriented obliquely relative to the axis and having a center of curvature on the axis. One or more electrodes are disposed at respective locations along the end section.

Ablation of myocardial tissue is well known as a treatment for cardiac arrhythmias. In radio-frequency (RF) ablation, for example, a catheter is inserted into the heart and brought into contact with tissue at a target location. RF energy is then applied through an electrode on the catheter in order to create a lesion for the purpose of breaking arrhythmogenic current paths in the tissue.
Recently, circumferential ablation of the ostia of the pulmonary veins has gained acceptance as a treatment for atrial arrhythmias, and particularly for atrial fibrillation. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 6,064,902, whose disclosure is incorporated herein by reference, describes a catheter for ablating tissue on the inner wall of a blood vessel, such as a pulmonary vein. The tip portion of the catheter is deflectable from a first, generally straight, configuration, in which the proximal and distal sections are substantially co-linear, to a second, J-shaped, configuration in which the proximal and distal sections are generally parallel with a separation therebetween substantially corresponding to the inside diameter of the blood vessel. The distal end portion of the catheter is rotated about the longitudinal axis of the catheter to cause a circumferential displacement of proximal and distal ablation electrodes on the catheter along the inner wall of the pulmonary vein. In this way, the electrode catheter may be used to ablate a number of circumferentially-spaced sites on the inner wall of the pulmonary vein by ablating one or two sites at each circumferential position.
U.S. Patent Application Publication 2005/0033135, whose disclosure is incorporated herein by reference, describes a lasso for pulmonary vein mapping and ablation. A catheter for circumferentially mapping a pulmonary vein (PV) includes a curved section shaped to generally conform to the shape of the interior surface of the PV. The curved section comprises one or more sensing electrodes, and its proximal end is joined at a fixed or generally known angle to a base section of the catheter. Position sensors are fixed to the curved section of the catheter and to the distal end of the base section. The catheter is inserted into the heart, and the curved section is positioned in contact with the wall of the PV, while the base section remains within the left atrium, typically positioned such that the joint with the curved section is at the ostium of the vein. The information generated by the three position sensors is used to calculate the locations and orientations of the sensing electrodes, which enables mapping of the surface of the PV. The sensing electrodes may additionally perform ablation of selected sites, or the catheter may further comprise ablation elements.
U.S. Pat. No. 7,008,401, whose disclosure is incorporated herein by reference, describes compound steering assemblies, usable in both diagnostic and therapeutic applications, for steering the distal section of a catheter in multiple planes or complex curves. These assemblies are said to enable a physician to swiftly and accurately position and maintain ablation and/or mapping electrodes in intimate contact with an interior body surface. U.S. Pat. No. 5,820,591, whose disclosure is incorporated herein by reference, similarly describes compound steering assemblies of this sort.


A method for identifying one file in a plurality of files facilitates a user rapidly selecting the file. In an input operation, at least one character that was input by a user is received. In a find file operation, the method compares an input character string that is, or that includes, the at least one character with each individual data file name of a plurality of data file names. The find file operation identifies individual data files names that include a character string that corresponds to, i.e., matches, the input character string. A send to display operation sends at least one of the identified individual data file names to a display unit, which in turn displays the sent information to the user, i.e., suggests an individual data file name to the user. If the user accepts the suggested individual data file name via one input order action forwarded, the selected file is processed as desired by the user. Alternatively, the user can scroll through the identified individual data file names and selected the desired file, or input another character in which case the autocomplete process is automatically repeated.

1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates generally to data file retrieval, and in particular to a method for easily and quickly selecting a data file, which is stored on a memory of a computer system.
2. Description of Related Art
In computer systems, regularly many data files have to be organized. These data files may be stored in the memory of the computer system, including any external memories accessible by the computer system. The mere number of data files in such a computer system may render the selection of a particular data file time consuming, in particular, if the exact name of the desired data file is not known to the user of the computer system. To accelerate and facilitate the process of finding data files in a computer system, different methods are known in the prior art.
The most common approach is simply to type in the data file name and, if necessary, also the directory of the desired data file via a suitable input device, for example, a keyboard Since each data file has a certain name and is stored in a certain directory in a storage medium of a computer system, this search is successful, if the data file with the chosen name actually exists in any of the searched directories. This search may be facilitated if the data file names were chosen in a logic order, which may reflect the content of the data file, the date of creation or any other information useful for identification, as well as by an advantageous organization of the data files, that means by arranging the data files in the various directories in the light of certain logic or practical criteria, like adherence to a certain project. This option to search for a data file by hand may become time consuming if the exact name of the data file is not known and several data files, which may be even in different directories, exist which have similar names.
Another possibility to find the requested data file employs a tree, representing the hierarchical structure of the directories and of the data files organized therein. Here, the user may find the desired data file using a mouse or a keyboard, connected to the I/O interface of the computer system, by clicking through the structure and finally clicking on the desired data file representation. Finding a certain data file may be easier here, if the data files are properly organized in a tree-like structure as described. If, however, the data files are not arranged in a comprehensible logic order, the tree-scheme is only of limited help.
Another solution to quickly retrieve several data files is to retrieve the data files last opened or amended, for example, the five last opened data files. This method offers practical advantages, but only if the user worked on a few data files in a short period of time.
In addition, several computer systems offer the user a search function for data files. Here, the user has the possibility to specify the requested data file by giving, for example, a part of the name, the directory, the subdirectory, the kind of data file, the date of storing, or a combination of some of these parameters. Based on such search criteria, the search function searches for the requested data file and presents all data files corresponding to this description. Although these functions allow an improved search, they lack user friendliness in that they require significant activities of the user to eventually select the desired data file.
Finally, prior art software is known which allows a user to search in a computer system for a certain data file by typing in the first few letters of the data file""s name at a command line prompt and then hitting a predefined key, e.g., the tab key, to start the search. Thee computer system compares the available data file names with the typed in letters. If the first few letters of a data file""s name and the typed in letters correspond, the complete data field is displayed and the cursor is moved to the end of the name. None of the name is selected, e.g., highlighted. If this is the correct data file, the user can select the file by depressing, for example, the enter key.
If there are several potentially requested data files, only one of them is selected, by some decision scheme, and displayed. To display a different data file name that matched, the user hits a predefined key, for example, e.g., again hits the xe2x80x9ctabxe2x80x9d key. Once this conditional user input has been delivered, the system automatically displays the next data file that matched. If this choice is not the desired data file, the user can hit the predefined key again, or can manually delete the selected name, or at least a part thereof, and then type in another character and hit the predefined key again to start another search. This model for finding data files is, therefore, in many cases inconvenient. In addition, it is not possible to use this method from within an application.
According to the principles of this invention, a method for selecting a data file with an individual data file name from a plurality of data files each having an individual data file name eliminates the shortcomings of the prior art. In particular, the method results in the suggestion of an individual data file name based upon a character or character string input by the user. The information added to the character or character string input by the user is automatically selected, e.g., highlighted, in the display. If the user wishes to select the suggested data file, the user performs a predefined input action. Alternatively, the user can view other matches with the input character or character string, terminate the search, or input another character.
If the user elects to view other matches, i.e., rejects the first suggested individual data file name, the next matching data file name is displayed. Again, the information added to the input character or character string is automatically selected, e.g., highlighted in the display. If the user wishes to select the next suggested data file, the user performs the predefined input action.
If at this time the user inputs another character, i.e., rejects the next matching data file name, the selected portion of the next matching data file name is replaced in the display by the characters input by the user and the method of this invention automatically, without further user input, autocompletes the data file name.
In one embodiment, the method receives a string of at least one character, and compares the string of at least one character with each of the individual data file names of a plurality of data files to identify individual data file names having characters in a predefined location in the data file name corresponding to, i.e., matching, the user input string of at least one character. The method sends at least one of the identified individual data file names to a display unit, and receives an acceptance or rejection of the suggested individual data file name made via one input order action by the user. The rejection can result in the automatic display of the next matching data file name, or the automatic initiation of a new search depending on the type of the one input rejection order.
In one embodiment, all of the identified individual data file names are sent to the display unit. The user has the option of viewing each of the identified individual data file names and accepting or rejecting each of the identified individual data file names via one input order. Optionally, all of the identified individual data file names comply with at least one filtering criterion such as a data file type. Alternatively, at least two of the identified individual data file names are sent to the display unit in an order determined by a listing function. In one embodiment, the listing function determines the display order according to the date of last handling of the data files corresponding to the identified individual data file names.
The invention includes a memory having an autocomplete process stored therein. Upon execution of the autocomplete process, the autocomplete process includes: receiving a string of at least one character, comparing the string of at least one character with each of the individual data file names of a plurality of data files to identify individual data file names corresponding in their first characters to the string of at least one character, sending at least one of the identified individual data file names to a display unit wherein upon display of the at least one of the identified individual data file names as a suggested individual data file name, a portion of the at least one of the identified individual data file names different from the string of at least one character is selected, and receiving an acceptance or rejection of the suggested individual data file name made via one input order action.
In one embodiment, one rejection input order action results in the display of another identified individual data file name, and upon display of the another identified individual data file name, a portion of the another identified individual data file name different from the string of at least one character is selected. This portion is the part of the data file name that is not included in the input character string.
Also, the stored autocomplete method is transferred from the memory to another memory in a another device. In one embodiment, the transfer comprises a download over a communications network.
The invention also includes a computer system includes: means for receiving a string of at least one character, means for comparing the string of at least one character with each of the individual data file names of the plurality of data files to identify individual data file names corresponding in their first characters to the string of at least one character, means for sending at least one of the identified individual data file names to a display unit wherein upon display of the at least one of the identified individual data file names as a suggested individual data file name, a portion of the at least one of the identified individual data file names different from the string of at least one character is selected, and means receiving an acceptance or rejection of the suggested individual data file name made via one input order action.
The method of this invention can be implemented in a wide variety of computer systems including a client-server system. Alternatively, the processor and the memory are in a first device, and the display and input unit are for a second device different from the first device.

Autocomplete method and apparatus for data file selection


A dual-mode smart card comprising several pads of physical contact with an external reader and two pads of connection to an antenna for a contactless operation, and comprising a voltage regulator capable of extracting from a radio frequency excitation reaching the antenna, a supply voltage of the chip's processing circuits, this regulator being controllable by a central circuit to be deactivated in the presence of a supply voltage on contacts of the chip.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to the field of so-called dual-mode chip-cards or smart cards, that is, cards which are likely to establish a communication with a read/write terminal via physical contacts as well as via an inductive coupling through an antenna.
2. Description of the Related Art
U.S. Pat. No. 6,168,083 depicts a dual-mode smart card, capable of operating either in a contact mode, or in a contactless mode. This patent provides selecting a communication session of contactless type if an A.C. voltage is induced in the antenna and a session of operation via physical contacts with a read/write terminal in the absence of such an A.C. voltage and if a D.C. voltage is present on the physical contacts provided for this purpose. The smart card is provided with two interfaces, respectively for the contactless mode and the contact mode, with a card memory, as well as with circuits for selecting one of the interfaces. In fact, the circuits of the smart card are activated as soon as a sufficient supply voltage level is detected by a level detection circuit, and the contactless interface is selected if another detector detects the present of an A.C. voltage across the antenna.
A disadvantage of the system provided by this document is that it does not allow switching from a contact operation to a contactless operation during a same operating session, that is, when the selection circuit has selected one of the interfaces. A system reset must then be awaited to, if desired, allow a switching by a new detection phase.
Another disadvantage of the system described by the above-mentioned document is that the linear regulator required for the contactless operation introduces a power dissipation even in the case of an operation with a power supply through physical contacts.
It would be desirable, in a dual-mode smart card, to allow switching from a contact operation to a contactless operation within a same communication session. Such a functionality is particularly advantageous in the case of smart cards coupled to portable devices provided with a battery. In such a case, the need to reset a communication session with the chip may impose an intervention of the user for a switching to a contactless operating mode. For example, in an application to mobile phones, an electronic chip of a smart card containing personal information of the user is by default in an operation with contacts with the rest of the mobile phone. This chip could be associated with a contactless operation, for example, to allow passing of automated public transport turnstiles by means of the same chip. Such an application cannot be envisaged with known systems, since this would force the user to cut a telephone communication to reset the smart card and then allow a selection to a contactless operating mode.


The present invention provides a method for identifying a tumor as likely to metastasize, or likely to have metastasized, comprising obtaining a sample of the tumor and quantitating alternatively spliced mRNA isoforms of a cell motility gene, a cell adhesion gene and/or an actin cytoskeletal remodeling gene in the sample, or any specified genes or the level of RNA binding proteins compared to a predetermined non-metastasizing control.

The ".txt" Sequence Listing filed with this application by EFS and which is entitled 54887_0006_ST25.txt, is 7 kilobytes in size and which was created on Jan. 30, 2012 is hereby incorporated by reference.
Throughout this application various publications are referred to in brackets. Full citations for these references may be found at the end of the specification. The disclosures of these publications, and of all patents, patent application publications and books referred to herein, are hereby incorporated by reference in their entirety into the subject application to more fully describe the art to which the subject invention pertains.
Breast cancer is one of the most common malignant diseases in the United States: 1 in 8 women are diagnosed with breast cancer during their lifetime (NIH website, breast cancer statistics). The main cause of death for breast cancer patients arises from dissemination of the primary tumor by metastases to other organs, a process that may only manifest as long as 10 or more years after initial diagnosis [1].
Currently established clinical prognostic criteria, including the histopathologic grade of the tumor, tumor size, the presence of the lymph node metastasis and hormone receptor status, can predict systemic metastatic potential in only a subgroup of patients with breast cancer. Microarray gene expression platforms, such as the MammaPrint™ 70 gene signature, are emerging as predictors of distant metastasis [1,2] but lack broad applicability [1] and offer relatively limited predictive power [3]. Therefore, novel prognostic markers are needed to identify patients with the high risk of developing metastasis to drive clinical treatment decisions.
About 90% of human malignancies are carcinomas, tumors of epithelial origin [4]. The early steps in carcinoma metastasis often bear a striking resemblance to developmental programs involving Epithelial-to-Mesenchymal Transition (EMT), a process that converts polarized organized epithelial cells into isolated, migratory cells with a mesenchymal morphology [5]. A growing body of work implicates EMT-like mechanisms in tumor cell invasion and dissemination in experimental systems, and recently, in human cancer [6,7]. Normal epithelia are comprised of cells with aligned apical-basal polarity that are interconnected laterally by several types of junctions including adherens junctions (AJs), which play important roles in establishing and regulating cell-cell adhesion [8]. E-cadherin, the major component of epithelial AJs, is a homophilic transmembrane protein that engages E-cadherin molecules on neighboring cells, and loss of functional E-cadherin is a hallmark of EMT. During EMT, apico-basolateral polarity is lost, cell-cell junctions dissolve and the actin cytoskeleton is remodeled to endow cells with mesenchymal characteristics including an elongated, migratory and invasive phenotype.
Importantly, as a consequence of EMT, cells may escape the tumor, invade the surrounding tissue and migrate towards blood vessels or lymphatic vessels guided by the cells and extracellular matrix present in their microenvironment [9]. Thus, EMT, a mechanism important for embryonic development, plays a critical role during malignant transformation.
While much is known regarding the regulation of EMT at the transcriptional level, alternative splicing of several genes has also been correlated with EMT progression. The extent of splicing changes and their contributions to the morphological conversion accompanying EMT have not been extensively investigated.
The molecular mechanisms underlying EMT have been studied extensively in the last decade. EMT-inducing growth factors can trigger signaling cascades that activate a network of transcription factors, such as ZEB-1, Goosecoid, FOXC2 and Twist [17], that orchestrate the EMT program; ectopic expression of a number of the EMT-associated transcription factors can initiate the program as well. Twist, a potent EMT driver, was identified originally as an inducer of mesoderm formation in Drosophila [18]. Ectopic Twist expression in epithelial cells results in loss of E-cadherin-mediated cell-cell adhesion, acquisition of mesenchymal markers and increased motility of isolated cells [19], a hallmark of the mesenchymal phenotype. E-cadherin expression is suppressed by several EMT-inducing transcription factors [20,21], while some mesenchymal markers are activated directly by this same repertoire of factors.
The control of EMT is likely also subject to regulation at post-transcriptional levels such as alternative pre-mRNA splicing. Alternative splicing expands the diversity of the proteome by producing multiple mRNA isoforms from each gene [22]. More than 90% of human genes are estimated to undergo alternative splicing, with a majority of alternative splicing events exhibiting tissue-specific splicing differences [23]. A variety of cancer-associated genes express alternatively spliced isoforms [24], indicating that regulation at the level of splicing may play important roles in cancer onset and progression. Alternative splicing of FGFR2 correlates with EMT in rat bladder carcinoma cells, where mutually exclusive inclusion of one of two exons defines the ligand binding specificity of the receptor during EMT [25]. ENAH (also known as Mena), an actin cytoskeleton regulatory protein, contains a small coding exon 11a that is included exclusively within epithelial cells and is excluded in mesenchymal cell lines and during EMT [26,27]. Alternative splicing of p120catenin (CTNND1) generates protein isoforms that display opposite effects on cell motility in epithelial and mesenchymal cells [28].
Recently, two epithelial-specific RNA binding proteins, ESRP1 and ESRP2, homologs of the nematode splicing factor Sym-2, were identified in a screen for FGFR2 splicing regulators [27]. REFOX2 (formerly "Fox2") splicing factor has been recently demonstrated to regulate subtype-specific splicing in a panel of breast cancer cell lines [29]. The ESRPs and RBFOX2 promote epithelial splicing of a number of transcripts including FGFR2 and ENAH, some of which play important roles in EMT [27,30]. Loss of ESRPs in epithelial cells promotes EMT-like changes in cell morphology [31]. However, the full extent of alternative splicing during EMT and its functional consequences to cell phenotype has yet to be elucidated.
The present invention has identified signatures of multi-exon genes that undergo alternative splicing during EMT and are predictive of metastasis.

Alternatively spliced mRNA isoforms as prognostic indicators for metastatic cancer

Albert Einstein College of Medicine, Inc.


In one embodiment, a package for a micro-device includes a substrate, a transparent material covering the substrate, and a bond ring bonding the transparent material to the substrate. The bond ring comprises a silicon oxide layer on one of the substrate or the transparent material bonded to a silicon layer on the other of the substrate or the transparent material.

Microelectromechanical system (MEMS) devices are used to modulate the display of color and light in digital projectors and other optical devices. Optical MEMS devices are often formed on a silicon substrate using semiconductor processing techniques and then sealed under a glass cover that allows light to reach the MEMS device. In one type of optical MEMS package, a thermally grown or deposited silicon oxide layer on the bottom of the glass cover bonds to a thermally grown or deposited silicon oxide membrane formed over the MEMS device to affix the cover to the underlying structure. The silicon oxide to silicon oxide bond is transparent but may not be strong enough for some applications. It may be desirable in some optical MEMS packages, therefore, to increase the strength of the cover-to-membrane bond while still allowing light to reach the MEMS device.

Hewlett-Packard Development Company, L.P.


An optical module is provided for mounting in a cage of a host device. The optical module includes at least one optical subassembly (OSA) and a printed circuit board (PCB) supported by a first housing structure. The optical module also includes a latch mechanism, which includes a lever and a latch, as well as a clamp. A pivot pin of the latch is rotatably supported by the first housing structure and the clamp in cooperation. Advantageously, the clamp secures both the OSA and the latch, while providing access to the PCB.

Optical modules, such as transceiver or transponder modules, are used in telecommunication and data-communication applications to communicate signals between an optical network and a host device, such as a computer, a router, a switch, or a hub. Usually, optical modules are pluggable, meaning that they may be releasably mounted in a cage of the host device. A conventional optical module includes at least one optical subassembly (OSA), such as a transmitter optical subassembly (TOSA) or a receiver optical subassembly (ROSA), and a printed circuit board (PCB) housed within a two-part housing. The optical module also includes a latch mechanism to secure the optical module, once mounted, to the cage of the host device. Examples of conventional optical modules are disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 6,439,918, issued on Aug. 27, 2002 to Togami, et al., in U.S. Pat. No. 6,994,478, issued on Feb. 7, 2006 to Chiu, et al., in U.S. Pat. No. 7,004,647, issued on Feb. 28, 2006 to Malagrino, Jr., et al., in U.S. Pat. No. 7,114,857, issued on Apr. Oct. 3, 2006 to Kayner, et al., in U.S. Pat. No. 7,118,281, issued on Oct. 10, 2006 to Chiu, et al., in U.S. Pat. No. 7,351,090, issued on Apr. 1, 2008 to Moore, and in U.S. Pat. No. 7,955,003, issued on Jun. 7, 2011 to Teo, et al., which are incorporated herein by reference.
Conventional optical modules incorporate various latch mechanisms, which, typically, include a lever and a latch. Unfortunately, some of these latch mechanisms result in undesirable height limitations. For example, in the latch mechanism disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 7,351,090, the lever is in the form of a bail including two arms and a handle, and the two arms have bent tabs at ends thereof opposite the handle. The bent tabs, as well as the envelope in the housing required to accommodate the bent tabs, limit how close the OSA can be moved towards the bent tabs. Such height limitations restrict the positioning of the optical axis of the OSA relative to the housing, preventing direct attachment of the OSA to the PCB.
In the manufacture of some conventional optical modules, a covering housing structure is slid horizontally onto a supporting housing structure to assemble the two-part housing. Consequently, a clear sliding path is required, which limits component placement on the PCB. Furthermore, in some conventional optical modules, the OSA is only held in place after the two-part housing is assembled. During assembly and testing, before the two-part housing is assembled, the OSA is free to move and may become misaligned, making insertion of an optical-fiber connector difficult.
As the functional density of optical modules increases, these limitations and shortcomings become increasingly problematic.


In a magnetic resonance apparatus eddy current effects are compensated by measurement of the eddy current behaviour in a comparatively large measurement object on the basis of resonance signals generated therein, for example briefly after de-activation of a gradient field control signal. From these measurements a series of exponentially decreasing signals is calculated. These correction signals are generated by appropriate switching circuits which are preferably adjustable as regards decay time and amplitude. The correction can be performed for the gradient field symmetry corresponding to the switched gradient field transition as well as for eddy currents, if any, having a field symmetry which deviates therefrom.

The invention relates to a method of compensating eddy current effects in a magnetic resonance apparatus in which a signal for eddy current compensation is derived from a non-compensated gradient control signal, and also relates to an apparatus comprising means for eddy current compensation via gradient control signals.
A method and apparatus of this kind are known from EP No. 215 547 corresponding to U.S. Pat. No. 4,703,275 This document describes a method of eddy current compensation where the gradient field generated via a non-compensated gradient control is measured and compared with a desired gradient field, a signal being derived from the comparison in order to compensate the gradient field control signal. For carrying out this method it is necessary to include additional measurement coils in the apparatus or a gradient coil to be used for imaging must be suitable for performing the measurements. Additional measurement coils, however, themselves may have an effect on the eddy current behaviour and must be accurately positioned in the apparatus, and customary gradient coils produce comparatively inaccurate measurement results. Moreover, deviations from the desired gradient fields are also measured, while the consequences thereof for diagnostic measurements of resonance signals are of primary importance.

Method of and device for eddy current compensation in MR apparatus


A system and method maintains mappings from data containers to their parent directories within a file system of a storage system. Each inode is modified to include a primary name data structure comprising a parent directory inode and a parent directory cookie value. The parent directory cookie value identifies a particular directory entry within a specified block of a directory identified by parent directory inode. An alternate name file is utilized to store alternate names, such as those associated with hard links.

A storage system typically comprises one or more storage devices into which information may be entered, and from which information may be obtained, as desired. The storage system includes a storage operating system that functionally organizes the system by, inter alia, invoking storage operations in support of a storage service implemented by the system. The storage system may be implemented in accordance with a variety of storage architectures including, but not limited to, a network-attached storage (NAS) environment, a storage area network (SAN) and a disk assembly directly attached to a client or host computer. The storage devices are typically disk drives organized as a disk array, wherein the term "disk" commonly describes a self-contained rotating magnetic media storage device. The term disk in this context is synonymous with hard disk drive (HDD) or direct access storage device (DASD).
Storage of information on the disk array is preferably implemented as one or more storage "volumes" of physical disks, defining an overall logical arrangement of disk space. The disks within a volume are typically organized as one or more groups, wherein each group may be operated as a Redundant Array of Independent (or Inexpensive) Disks (RAID). Most RAID implementations enhance the reliability/integrity of data storage through the redundant writing of data "stripes" across a given number of physical disks in the RAID group, and the appropriate storing of redundant information (parity) with respect to the striped data. The physical disks of each RAID group may include disks configured to store striped data (i.e., data disks) and disks configured to store parity for the data (i.e., parity disks). The parity may thereafter be retrieved to enable recovery of data lost when a disk fails. The term "RAID" and its various implementations are well-known and disclosed in A Case for Redundant Arrays of Inexpensive Disks (RAID), by D. A. Patterson, G. A. Gibson and R. H. Katz, Proceedings of the International Conference on Management of Data (SIGMOD), June 1988.
The storage operating system of the storage system may implement a high-level module, such as a file system, to logically organize the information stored on the disks as a hierarchical structure of directories, files and blocks. For example, each "on-disk" file may be implemented as set of data structures, i.e., disk blocks, configured to store information, such as the actual data for the file. These data blocks are organized within a volume block number (vbn) space that is maintained by the file system. The file system organizes the data blocks within the vbn space as a "logical volume"; each logical volume may be, although is not necessarily, associated with its own file system. The file system typically consists of a contiguous range of vbns from zero to n, for a file system of size n+1 blocks.
A known type of file system is a write-anywhere file system that does not over-write data on disks. If a data block is retrieved (read) from disk into a memory of the storage system and "dirtied" (i.e., updated or modified) with new data, the data block is thereafter stored (written) to a new location on disk to optimize write performance. A write-anywhere file system may initially assume an optimal layout such that the data is substantially contiguously arranged on disks. The optimal disk layout results in efficient access operations, particularly for sequential read operations, directed to the disks. An example of a write-anywhere file system that is configured to operate on a storage system is the Write Anywhere File Layout (WAFL®) file system available from Network Appliance, Inc., of Sunnyvale, Calif.
The storage system may be configured to operate according to a client/server model of information delivery to thereby allow many clients to access the directories, files and blocks stored on the system. In this model, the client may comprise an application, such as a database application, executing on a computer that "connects" to the storage system over a computer network, such as a point-to-point link, shared local area network, wide area network or virtual private network implemented over a public network, such as the Internet. Each client may request the services of the file system by issuing file system protocol messages (in the form of packets) to the storage system over the network. By supporting a plurality of file system protocols, such as the conventional Common Internet File System (CIFS) and the Network File System (NFS) protocols, the utility of the storage system is enhanced.
Each data container, such as a file, directory, etc., within a file system is typically associated with an inode that serves as the root of a buffer tree of the data container. The buffer tree is an internal representation of blocks for the data container stored in the memory of the storage system and maintained by the file system. The inode is a data structure used to store information, such as metadata, about the data container, whereas the data blocks are structures used to store the actual data for the container. The inode typically contains a set of pointers to other blocks within the file system. For data containers, such as files, that are sufficiently small, the inode may directly point to blocks storing the data of the file. However, for larger files, the inode points to one or more levels of indirect blocks, which, in turn, may point to additional levels of indirect blocks and/or the blocks containing the data.
Certain events occurring within the storage system and/or a storage operating system executing thereon may result in a message being displayed to an administrator. For example, the storage system may detect that one or more data containers have become corrupted. A pathname provides a way for the administrator to refer to a data container served by the storage system. To that end, each pathname typically represents one data container within the hierarchical structure of the file system. However, the storage system typically reports the identity of the data container to the administrator by using its associated inode number. The inode number is used internally within the file system to identify the inode associated with the data container and, unfortunately, is not easily understood by humans. It is therefore desirous for the administrator to know the pathname of the data container to which the message relates so that appropriate action may be taken.
A "brute force" technique to identify the pathname of a data container associated with a specific inode number is for an administrator to utilize a client, such as a network file system (NFS) client, to traverse ("walk") the buffer trees of the file system and access ("open") every data container within the file system. Upon opening a data container, the inode number associated with the data container is returned to the client. Thus, the client may have to walk the entire file system until an open data container operation returns the same inode number as that identified by the message. Such a brute force approach is extremely computationally, disk and network intensive and, as a file system may contain tens or hundreds of millions of data containers, time intensive. Additionally, the NFS client may not be able to access every data container due to, e.g., access controls, while certain data containers may not be NFS accessible, such as virtual disks (vdisks).
Another limitation is that multiple names in the file system may reference the same inode. For example, a data container, such as a file, is created in the file system in a particular directory and associated with a specific name. At some later point in time a hard link is generated that references the previously generated file, which results in a separate name being associated with the inode. A system administrator may want to know all of the names associated with an inode. Thus, a technique is needed that enables inode to pathname (I2P) mapping to thereby allow rapid identification of all names associated with a particular inode.
Certain storage system vendors have implemented various forms of I2P mapping functionality. For example, the Novell NetWare system stores character strings of all of the names associated with an inode within the inode itself. However, inodes are typically fixed sized data structures and if a sufficient number of names are associated with an inode, additional "spill over" inodes must be allocated for the data container. Such a solution increases the complexity of managing data and utilizes extra and valuable inode numbers, which may be limited within the file system.
Alternately, the Solaris operating system, available from Sun Microsystems, Inc., stores a pathname in the in-memory vnode data structure. However, modifications to the names of any directories in the pathname are not updated in the cached path within the vnode. Should a directory be renamed, the cached pathname data within the vnode data structure is not updated, which can result in incorrect pathnames being presented to an administrator. Another noted disadvantage is that no pathname information is stored persistently.

This patent is subject to a terminal disclaimer.

System and method for maintaining mappings from data containers to their parent directories


A sealant application system for applying sealant to a surrounding surface into which an associated fastener extends includes a source of sealant and a concentrator. The concentrator includes a housing with a top wall, a bottom wall, and a side wall. The housing includes an inner chamber for receiving sealant. One of the housing walls has inlet port in communication with both the source of sealant and the inner chamber for delivery of sealant into the inner chamber. The top wall has formed therein an open basin in communication with the inner chamber. An applicator tool separate from the concentrator receives the sealant from within the basin.

The present disclosure generally relates to a system for applying sealant to a surrounding surface into which a fastener, for example a bolt, extends to provide a fluid-tight seal between the fastener head and the surrounding surface. Vehicles are typically assembled by fastening together various components, for example by bolting one component to another. To provide a fluid-tight seal between the fastener head and the surrounding surface of a threaded opening, a sealant is generally applied along the interface between the fastener head and the surrounding surface. Current techniques for applying sealant are typically manual such as brushing sealant onto the surrounding surface or using a dispenser, with or without a metered supply of sealant. These current techniques can have results that vary with personnel applying the sealant and between applications performed by the same individual. These methods can also often lead to an excess amount of sealant applied, and can lead to the sealant being applied into the threaded opening for the fastener which can affect the tightening of the fastener.


Provided is an environment map automatic creation device using a flying object. The environment map automatic creation device includes a travelable area extraction unit that extracts a travelable area where a vehicle can travel in a certain area based on three-dimensional shape information of an area for creating an environmental map, which is acquired by a sensor in a flying object, an area category determination unit that determines a category of the travelable area, a complementary portion determination unit that determines whether or not to measure a complementary portion which complements the travelable area based on the travelable area and the category, and a complementary measurement portion presentation unit that presents the complementary measurement portion.

In an autonomous traveling system in a vehicle and a mining dump truck, traveling control of the vehicle is performed so that the vehicle can autonomously travel based on vehicle position information from a positioning device such as a GPS mounted on these autonomous traveling vehicle.
In a case of causing the vehicle to perform autonomous traveling, it is necessary to create an environmental map having route information, a travelable area and obstacle information of the environment. As the method, for example, there is a method of measuring the environment and creating the environmental map for the autonomous traveling vehicle by using a manned measuring vehicle equipped with a GPS, an inertial sensor, a camera, and LIDAR, and traveling a course on which the autonomous traveling vehicle travels in advance. In addition, another method is to measure the environment with an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) equipped with a GPS, an inertial sensor, a camera, a laser distance measuring sensor (light detection and ranging: LIDAR), and the like, and to create a map based on the information.
However, in the case of the former method, there is a possibility that the environment cannot be sufficiently measured due to measurement performance of the measuring vehicle and occlusion caused by an environmental obstacle and the like. For example, as a technique for solving the problem, PTL 1 discloses "a terrain information acquisition device that includes an area specifying unit which specifies a completed area where a three-dimensional map is created and an uncompleted area where a three-dimensional map is not created of the predetermined area with reference to a three-dimensional map created in advance for a portion of the terrain in a predetermined area, a terrain gradient estimation unit which estimates a terrain gradient in the uncompleted area based on the three dimensional map, and a terrain data acquisition unit which acquires terrain data in the uncompleted area while optimizing the terrain data acquisition condition based on the uncompleted area and the terrain gradient estimated in the uncompleted area".

Environment map automatic creation device


A vehicle storage device includes a panel, a storage unit provided adjacent to the panel, having an opening in a certain part thereof, and capable of storing a person's goods and belongings therein, a lid which can open and close the opening, and a locking device capable of keeping the lid in a closed state. An operation unit includes a design surface that is exposed in a vehicle interior. One end of the operation unit design surface is substantially continuous from a design surface of the panel, and the other end of the operation unit design surface is positioned adjacent to the lid.

A vehicle interior is equipped with a storage device designed for use in the vehicle and capable of storing goods and belongings (i.e., things) of a person in the vehicle. One of the conventional storage devices for vehicles is disclosed in Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open Publication No. 2012-25178.
The storage device for a vehicle such as the storage device disclosed in Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open Publication No. 2012-25178 includes a storage portion whose top is open and which can store goods and belongings therein, a lid which can open and close the opening of the storage portion, and a locking device which is supported by the lid and can keep the lid in a closed state.
The locking device can prevent the lid from opening while the vehicle is traveling.


Disclosed herein are compositions of synephrine and a penetration enhancer and methods of reducing hair loss from pulling by applying the compositions. In one embodiment, the composition is a prewash composition comprising water, synephrine, and PEG-6 caprylic/capric glycerides.

Many hair care products and hair styling techniques require pulling on the hair and therefore exert force on the hair follicle. Often this results in hair loss. It is an object of the present invention to reduce hair loss and mitigate the damage to hair caused from procedures that pull at the hair by applying a composition of synephrine topically at hair follicles in the scalp or skin.
Many cosmetic procedures used in hair salons and at home involve exerting strong force on the hair to pull it in a direction away from the scalp. For example, washing, brushing and combing hair involves exertion of a force on the hair that pulls the hair away and out of the hair follicle. Brushing hair with vigorous, powerful strokes damages it. Such procedures result in hair shedding or hair loss. It is desirable to minimize hair breakage during hair care and styling procedures. The hair then may be treated and styled as desired while retaining more hair, thereby making the hair appear stronger and more vibrant. It is desirable to be able to continue these hair procedures yet reduce or stop the hair shedding that occurs during the procedure.
Hair styles that are known to result in hair loss due to pulling at the hair include hair extensions and weaves, which can be worn either to conceal hair loss, or purely for cosmetic purposes. Hair weaves create a braid around the head below the existing hairline, to which an extended-wear hairpiece, or wig, is attached. Because the hair of the braid is still growing, it requires frequent maintenance, which involves the hairpiece being removed, the natural hair braided again, and the piece snugly reattached. The tight braiding and snug hairpiece cause tension on the hair that is already at risk for falling out. Shampooing and styling is also known to result in hair loss.
One example of a disorder due to hair pulling is traction alopecia. Traction alopecia results from the chronic application of tensile force to scalp hair. The condition was described as early as 1907 in subjects from Greenland who had developed hair loss due to prolonged wearing of tight ponytails. Traditionally, the term "traction alopecia" has been related to specific hairstyles that cause increased tension on the scalp (e.g., ponytails, Afro-Caribbean hair styles with tight braiding (such as cornrows) or the tightly wound turbans of Sikh men). It has also been seen in female ballerinas. It is also seen in cultural traditions where the hair is voluntarily not cut in religious obeisance, which causes progressively increasing weight of the hair itself. Traction alopecia is mechanical in etiology, rather than androgenic. Management includes cessation of the chronic traction. However, this is unacceptable to people who favor the specific hairstyles and styling techniques that give rise to the condition.
Traction alopecia is one of the most common causes of hair loss in African American women. "Traction alopecia" includes hair loss or shedding due to increased traumatic force on hair follicles caused by hairstyle or mechanical hair procedures such as blow drying, flat ironing, hair curling and chronic brushing. Traction alopecia can also develop in patients constantly pulling their hair such as in trichotillomania. In traction alopecia, affected areas depend on the etiology of the disorder, but usually hair loss is localized on frontal and temporal scalp. According to population studies in African women, prevalence of traction alopecia varies from 17.1% in young women (6-21 years) to 31.7% in older women (18-86 years). Clinical features of traction alopecia include itching of the scalp, perifollicular erythema, scaling, folliculitis, and pustules, but it can also present as slow onset of hair loss without other symptoms. Primarily, traction alopecia is considered noncicatricial, yet excessive tension can lead to permanent alopecia, due to physical damage of hair follicles. Prolonged force on hair follicles may lead to inflammatory changes in immune cell infiltrate and fibrosis can result. Therefore, it is important to recognize the condition early, while it is still reversible.
In view of the popularity of hairstyles and hair techniques that pull at the hair and result in hair loss, there is a need for a product useful for treatment and prevention of hair loss associated with pulling on the hair.
PCT patent application WO2016/077744 entitled System and Method for Preventing Alopecia discusses treating traction alopecia by administering a composition containing an alpha-1 adrenergic receptor agonist to contract the arrector pili muscle. WO2016/077744 discusses that a suitable alpha-1 adrenergic receptor agonist is synephrine, among other compounds. p-synephrine (referred to as synephrine herein) is the primary protoalkaloid in Citrus aurantium (bitter orange) and in other Citrus species. Stohs, S. et al., Oxidative Medicine and Cellular Longevity, vol. 2011, Article ID 482973, pp. 1-9. The extract of bitter orange and synephrine have been marketed as dietary supplements purported to be a weight-loss aid and an appetite suppressant. They are also applied to the skin for pain, bruises, and bed sores. See Bitter Orange entry, National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health website, https://nccih.nih.gov/health/bitterorange (accessed Feb. 16, 2017). Bitter orange extract contains synephrine
U.S. Patent App. Pub. 20080107679A1 to Dilallo et al. describes a wrinkle reduction eye serum comprising an acetyl hexapeptide and REMODULINE® cosmetic product containing bitter orange flower extract sold by Silab. REMODULINE® comprises water, propylene glycol, and bitter orange flower extract, as reported in U.S. Patent App. Pub. 20080107679A1. The eye serum comprising bitter orange extract does not include PEG-6 caprylic/capric glycerides. U.S. Patent App. Pub. 20030235595 A1 to Chen et al. discloses pharmaceutical compositions including transesterification products of oils and alcohols that include PEG-6 caprylic/capric glycerides (sold under the brand name SOFTIGEN®676 (Huels) and GLYCEROX 767 (Croda).
It is an object of the present invention to provide compositions of synephrine or bitter orange extract that when applied topically to human skin or scalp reduce hair loss due to hair pulling activities, such as shampooing, brushing, combing, styling, applying hair weaves, etc. Such compositions may require high concentrations of synephrine and/or be formulated to allow for sufficient synephrine penetration of the skin to provide effective amounts of synephrine at the hair follicle to reduce hair loss due to pulling, and to prevent or reduce damage due to traction alopecia.


A method and a system are disclosed for querying a document collection based on the layout of only a fragment of the content of a document, specified as a query zone. The method includes providing an index for a collection of documents. In the index, content of a document page in the collection that has been decomposed into layout blocks is indexed according to representations of the blocks and one or more geometric relations between the blocks. A query is generated which is based on representations of blocks determined to be within the query zone and geometric relations between them. This is used to query the index to retrieve pages of documents in the collection which can each be expected to include a layout zone somewhere in the page that is similar in layout to the query zone.

The exemplary embodiment relates to indexing and querying of documents. It finds particular application in connection with querying databases of documents based on document layout, and will be described with particular reference thereto.
Much information is now available in electronic format and stored in personal, intranet, and internet document collections. Over the last twenty years, significant progress has been achieved in the area of full text indexing and retrieval. Current techniques of information retrieval allow a user to query document collections with one or multiple keywords and retrieve and rank the relevant documents. In the case of documents available on the World Wide Web (Web), search engines crawl the Web and index Web pages as well as PDF and Word documents. For all document types, the search engines use text and link information contained within the documents in order to retrieve relevant documents and rank them. However, layout information contained within the documents is generally ignored.
Nevertheless, querying document collections by document layout would be extremely useful when a user possesses visual, as opposed to textual, information, or when a query is difficult or even impossible to express with keywords. This is particularly true in the office environment, where documents often have a generic structure, such as financial bills, forms, templates, catalogs, CVs, letters, etc. It would be advantageous for office personnel to find documents with a layout similar to a given document. Unfortunately, none of the current document query systems is capable of addressing such a need.
Example-based querying is widely used in the context of content-based image retrieval. However, because images are inherently complex, the understanding and semantic indexing of images is limited to specialized query types such as exact image matching, logo recognition and more categorization-like tasks, such as recognizing sky, flower or bike images. Querying by document layout can be considered a form of example-based querying. However, accurate relevance ranking of images by their (semantic) similarity is still far beyond the capabilities of current systems.
Existing methods of querying document collections by layout generally require intense processing for each (document, query) pair, including a 2-dimensional alignment between a query and each document in the collection. Geometric page layout analysis (GPLA) algorithms recognize different elements of a page, often in terms of text blocks and image blocks. Examples of such algorithms include the X-Y Cut algorithm, described by Nagy et al. (A prototype document image analysis system for technical journals. Computer, 7(25): 10-22, 1992) and the Smearing algorithm, described by Wong et al. (Document analysis system. IBM Journal of Research and Development, 26(6):647-656, 1982). These GPLA algorithms receive as input a page image and perform a segmentation based on information (such as pixel information) gathered from the page. These approaches to element recognition are either top-down or bottom-up and mainly aim to delimit boxes of text or images in a page. Some methods, such as the X-Y Cut algorithm, can generate hierarchical relations among recognized blocks.
Such alignment algorithms are time consuming and limit alignment-based techniques to small and medium size collections. In a very large collection, the user is often interested in retrieving the top k relevant documents, thus the exhaustive document-to-query alignment can be unnecessary and time consuming.
For large collection of electronic documents, querying by layout would be useful when the user defines some visual keys for querying, or when a query is hard to express with keywords. This is particularly true in the office environment, where large numbers of financial records, such as bills, different forms, templates, catalogs, resumes, letters, and the like are stored and may be difficult to distinguish using text-based searching.
In above-mentioned U.S. application Ser. No. 12/556,098, a method for indexing and querying documents by their layout is disclosed. The method queries by page layout. The present exemplary embodiment provides a system and method for indexing and querying documents by layout that allows querying by parts of a page.

Method for layout based document zone querying


A leather finishing composition includes water, a polymeric component, and a non-ionic surfactant component covalently bonded to the polymeric component. Advantageously, the leather finishing composition is substantially free of ionic groups. A method for applying the leather finishing composition to a leather substrate is provided.

Leather finishing involves the application of polymer containing compositions to improve the appearance and for protection. Some of these polymer-containing compositions are emulsions that include anionic character that helps to stabilize the polymer in water. Although these prior art leather finishing compositions work reasonably well, there tends to be issues with fouling, and in particular staining from denim, transferred by vehicle occupants.
Accordingly, there is a need for a leather finishing composition that results in a leather with improved fouling resistance.

Use of non-ionically stabilized waterborne antisoil coatings for automotive leather


A work garment having a waist portion covering a lower back area of a wearer and a front closure, and a support member, attached to the garment, for supporting a lumbar region of the wearer. The support member preferably includes a plurality of elastic bands extending about the waist portion of the garment and having complementary closure members positioned adjacent to the front closure of the work garment, and a contact member, attached to the elastic straps, positioned to contact the lumbar region of the wearer. In one embodiment, the elastic straps are integral with the work garment, which may be a coverall, and in other embodiments with firefighter garments such as a jacket, pant, and girdle. In one embodiment, the contact member consists of a resilient pad centered in the lumbar area of the wearer, and in another embodiment, the contact member consists of a plurality of elongate, vertically-extending stays.

The present invention relates to work garments and, more particularly, garments having orthopedic components for reducing the strain of a wearer when encountering heavy loads.
Many work-related activities require a worker to lift and carry heavy objects causing strain in the lower back area of the worker. A typical work garment, such as a coverall, provides little means for supporting the lower back area of a worker while performing his duties. The objective of a coverall is rather to provide a barrier between the worker's clothing and the work area to prevent the worker's clothing from being soiled.
A work garment having a particularly specialized application is a firefighter garment. A typical firefighter garment includes a pant and jacket, each having an outer shell of a fire-resistant aramid fiber such as NOMEX or KEVLAR (NOMEX and KEVLAR are trademarks of E. I. Dupont de Nemours & Co., Inc.) and an inner liner having a moisture barrier component and a thermal barrier component. The moisture barrier may be GORTEX material (GORTEX is a trademark of W. L. Gore & Associates, Inc.) and the thermal barrier may be a felt of aramid fibers. The inner liner components typically are quilted together, and the inner liner is separable from the outer shell to facilitate laundering of the garment.
The firefighter pant typically is beltless and is held in position by suspenders which fit under the jacket. The inner pant liner and outer pant shell snap or button together and the suspender ends or tabs may attach to such buttons or snaps, or may be attached by separate means. Both the jacket and the pant are loose fitting and somewhat baggy to allow freedom of movement.
While such firefighter garments provide adequate protection against such hazards as heat, water and flash flame, they, like conventional work garments, provide no protection for the hazard of muscle strain, especially in the lumbar region of the spine of the wearer. In the fighting of fire, the firefighter is called upon to carry heavy equipment such as hoses and ladders, over his shoulder, and occasionally is required to carry an injured person over his shoulder in the well-known "firemen's carry" maneuver. In addition, the firefighter often carries a tank of breathing air strapped to his back. All of these items and activities impose a stress upon the lumbar region of the back which is often an unbalanced imposition of a weight load.
While there are many types of designs for so-called lumbar stabilizers, such as the stabilizer disclosed in Porterfield, et al. U.S. Pat. No. 4,794,916 and Miller U.S. Pat. No. 4,991,573, such devices are designed to provide comfort and reduce stress to an individual who has sustained an injury in the lumbar area of the spine. It is not an object of such devices to provide a prophylactic benefit to a wearer in a typical work environment or in the hazardous environment of a firefighter. Further, such devices are designed to be worn independently of any other type of garment and typically are worn underneath the outer garments of a wearer.
It is impractical to require workers and firefighters to keep track of and separately put on such lumbar stabilizers, in addition to other garments and gear, in day-to-day work activities or in the rush to answer an alarm. Accordingly, there is a need for a work garment which provides support for a worker in the lumbar region of the wearer's spine in order to minimize the risk of injury to that region sustained during strenuous work activity.


A method and system for routing communications includes building a first user profile for a first user based on a history of communications associated with a first communication identifier to route inbound communications. The first communication identifier is associated with the first user and subsequently, the first communication identifier may be assigned to a second user. A second communication identifier is assigned to the first user such that a received inbound communication is directed towards the first communication identifier. The method routes the inbound communication based on an analysis of the first user profile of the first user.

1. Field of the Invention
Embodiments of the present invention generally relate to the field of electronic communications systems. More specifically, embodiments of the present invention relate to management/routing of incoming communications based on a history of previous communications.
2. Description of the Related Art
As the number of users of communication equipment continues to grow, the availability of communication identifiers, such as telephone numbers for example, decreases and identifiers are often reused by different people. However, as users transition to new communication identifiers from old communication identifiers, not all of their contacts or potential contacts are updated with the new identifier. In a highly connected society, missing a contact is a source of frustration for users and compounds network congestion.
In other instances, users may receive calls from unwanted callers such as telemarketers. Incoming calls thus become less welcomed and may also frustrate users who find themselves on an unsolicited call list.
Thus, there is a need to reduce the probability of misdials and decrease network congestion.

Routing communications based on history of previous communications


A method for retrieving an image-text block from a web page is provided, which comprises: retrieving an image node; filtering the image node to obtain candidate image nodes; traversing, for each of the candidate image nodes, a node in sequence toward an ancestor node of the candidate image node in a preset maximum traversal depth until an ancestor node with a text is visited, using the ancestor node with the text as a candidate image-text block; clustering the candidate image-text blocks based on hash values of the path information of the candidate image-text blocks; and determining, for each image-text block cluster, a common ancestor node of the candidate image-text blocks within the image-text block cluster based on the path information of the candidate image-text blocks, and determining path information of the image-text block cluster based on the common ancestor node.

As the Internet technology develops, there are increasingly abundant structural types of information data on the Internet, and how to efficiently acquire key information from a large number of web pages of different structural data types has become an important direction in research.
Usually, an image-text block having images and texts on a web page contains the key information of the web page, for example product information, processing technology, and other key information on the website of a machining equipment manufacturer, and is usually displayed using images and texts. When retrieving an image-text block from a web page, the existing method is generally manually analyzing the HyperText Markup Language (HTML) structure of a page, and obtaining the path of the image-text block by manual annotation, or retrieving the path of page elements of the image-text block clicked by the annotator using an annotation plugin. This method needs to manually annotate each page separately, and has low annotation efficiency. The page structure will be dynamically updated, that is, the HTML structure of the page will change, and it is necessary to reannotate the path of the image-text block, resulting in the inability to implement an automatic update.

Method and apparatus for retrieving image-text block from web page

Baidu Online Network Technology (Beijing) Co., Ltd.


An apparatus for and method of enforcing precedence of committed traffic over excess traffic that overcomes the difficulty in supporting committed over excess traffic and has particular application to distributed queuing systems. Queue control messages are generated and transmitted to other line cards to guarantee that committed traffic is not dropped when sent from multiple sources such as line interface cards to a single destination. When the level of a queue exceeds a threshold and flow control is received for the corresponding destination, the queue starts dropping excess traffic and messages indicating the queue status are sent to all other lines cards. When a line card receives a queue control message that another line card started dropping excess traffic to a specific destination, it also starts dropping excess traffic to that destination as well.

The growth in demand for telecommunication services is increasing at an ever-quickening pace. The majority of the demand is being driven by the explosion in the use of the Internet and a steady stream of new applications being introduced which further increases the demand for increased bandwidth. Currently, a large portion of Internet traffic is still carried by circuit switched transport facilities. In the case of Metropolitan Area Networks (MANs), most of the traffic is transported over SONET/SDH based networks most of which were originally designed for voice traffic. With time, more and more customers are using the networks for transporting data rather than voice.
The requirements for networked communications within the user community have changed dramatically over the past two decades. Several notable trends in the user community include (1) the overwhelming domination of Ethernet as the core networking media around the world; (2) the steady shift towards data-oriented communications and applications; and (3) the rapid growth of mixed-media applications. Such applications include everything from integrated voice/data/video communications to the now commonplace exchanges of MP3 music files and also existing voice communications which have begun to migrate towards IP/packet-oriented transport.
Ethernet has become the de facto standard for data-oriented networking within the user community. This is true not only within the corporate market, but many other market segments as well. In the corporate market, Ethernet has long dominated at all levels, especially with the advent of high-performance Ethernet switching. This includes workgroup, departmental, server and backbone/campus networks. Even though many of the Internet Service Providers (ISPs) in the market today still base their WAN-side communications on legacy circuit oriented connections (i.e. supporting Frame Relay, xDSL, ATM, SONET), their back-office communications are almost exclusively Ethernet. In the residential market, most individual users are deploying 10 or 100 Mbps Ethernet within their homes to connect PCs to printers and to other PCs (in fact, most PCs today ship with internal Ethernet cards) even though the residential community still utilizes a wide range of relatively low-speed, circuit-oriented network access technologies.
The use of Ethernet, both optical and electrical based, is increasing in carrier networks due to advantages of Ethernet and particularly Optical Ethernet, namely its ability to scale from low speeds to very high rates and its commodity-oriented nature. With the rapid increase in demand for user bandwidth, and the equally impressive increase in the performance of Ethernet with the LAN environment, the demand for Metropolitan network performance is rapidly increasing. In response, there has been a massive explosion in the amount of fiber being installed into both new and existing facilities. This is true for both the corporate and residential markets.
In metro Ethernet markets, one of the parameters that can be selected is the Quality of Service (QoS). Quality of service is a term which refers to the set of performance parameters that characterize the traffic over a given connection. Several different classes or levels of QoS are defined, two of which are committed traffic and best effort traffic. To enable many services in the metro Ethernet market, a critical QoS parameter is committed information rate (CIR) versus excess information rate (EIR). Committed traffic is guaranteed to make it through the network with a very high probability of success with a very low probability of being dropped. This is a higher class of service and the customer pays a premium for it.
Excess traffic, however, is not guaranteed to make it through the network and may be provided on a best effort basis. This means that the committed traffic is serviced first and excess traffic is serviced using any bandwidth left in each section in the system. Note that EIR is usually not a service of its own but rather is the EIR portion of the same service. For example, a policer may be used at the ingress of the provider network to decide which part of the traffic of a service is excess traffic and therefore should be marked as discard-eligible, and which is committed traffic and therefore should not be marked as discard eligible. Committed and Excess traffic of a single service (and having the same priority) should use the same queue in order that there is no misordering between packets (or frames) belonging to the same service. As described below, different frames of the same service may be marked as committed or excess traffic according to the bandwidth profile defined in the Service Level Specification (SLS) of that service. From an overall network point of view, the expectation of the service provider and the customer is that if a customer pays a premium for the committed bandwidth of the service, then committed customer traffic will not be dropped. The expectation of the service provider is that the excess traffic will always be dropped before committed traffic is dropped, if at all. Note also that excess traffic is not the same as best effort traffic. For example, there may be a high priority service with excess traffic that is not within its SLS profile. Diff-Serv is another example where there are two per hop behavior (PHB) families (among others): (1) assured forwarding service (RFC 2597) and (2) best effort wherein the discard eligibility traffic is part of the assured service family.
To be able to distinguish between committed traffic and excess traffic, in the edge of metro networks, the traffic is classified and policed according to the Service Level Agreement (SLA). The traffic identified from the SLA or from the results of a traffic policing mechanism as excess traffic is marked as discard eligible while the traffic identified as committed traffic is marked as non-discard eligible. There are many methods of marking the packets as discard eligible traffic. In the case of ATM cells, the Cell Loss Priority (CLP) bit in the header of ATM cells may be used to indicate that the packet is discard eligible. In the case of Ethernet IP packets, the Differentiated Services Code Point (DSCP) bits in the IP header can be used for the discard eligible information as defined in RFC 2597. For a detailed discussion of the specifications of SLA, CIR and EIR in Metro Ethernet Networks, see MEF 1: Ethernet Services Model—Phase I and MEF 5: Traffic Management Specification—Phase 1.
To meet the committed traffic requirements in a single queue queuing system, excess traffic should always be dropped before committed traffic and if possible, committed traffic should never be dropped. Note that this is typically a requirement even if there are multiple queues (e.g., one queue per priority) or if the committed and excess traffic belong to the same service, in which case it is forbidden to place them in different queues since this would cause the misordering of packets that belong to the same service. As long as the total bandwidth of incoming traffic to a specific link is less than the available link bandwidth, all excess and committed traffic is passed. Due to the bursty nature of data traffic (e.g., file transfer, Internet, etc.), however, the total incoming bandwidth destined to a specific link may at times exceed the total available link bandwidth. It is for this reason queues are implemented to store the data traffic until such time that it can be sent over the link. Queues, however, have limited size and if a queue is in the full state incoming traffic begins to be dropped. If incoming traffic is dropped based solely on the queue full status, than whether committed or excess traffic is dropped cannot be controlled. This is because all the packets that are received when the queue is full must be dropped and specific incoming packets cannot be controlled in relation to the status of the queue.
A solution to this problem is to set a threshold 'T' in the queue and to implement the following dropping algorithm. If the level of the queue is below threshold T, then accept all traffic including both committed traffic and excess traffic. If the queue is full, drop all traffic. If the queue is not full, but above threshold T, then accept only committed traffic and drop all excess traffic.
A diagram illustrating an example queue having a threshold above which excess traffic is dropped is shown in FIG. 1. The queue, generally referenced 20, has a threshold T 26 below which both committed and excess traffic are accepted 22 and above which only committed traffic is accepted 24. The upper portion 24 of the queue should be large enough to compensate for a burst constituting the largest expectant difference between incoming committed traffic and queue output bandwidth. If the upper portion is sufficiently large, committed traffic will never be dropped. It is possible, however, that a very large burst may occur wherein some committed traffic will be dropped. This, however, can be considered as overbooking.
Considering a distributed queuing system, a problem arises when attempting to enforce the policy of precedence of committed over excess traffic. A block diagram illustrating an example prior art distributed queuing system including a plurality of core switches interconnected by network communication links is shown in FIG. 2. The example network (which can be a MAN), generally referenced 10, comprises a plurality of core switches 12 connected via communication links 18. Each core switch comprises a switching fabric 16 and one or more line cards 14. The line cards provide the transmit and receive interfaces for the network communication links on one end and provide connections to the switching fabric on the other end.
In a typical implementation of core switches such as shown in FIG. 2 there are a plurality of interface cards (or line cards) combined with one or more switch cards located inside a chassis. The switch cards are responsible for implementing the switching fabric and forwarding the traffic between the line cards. The majority of off the shelf integrated circuits (ICs) available for implementing the high speed switching fabric have no packet discard eligibility and excess traffic marking and processing capabilities. Further, the scheduling algorithm used by these integrated circuits to switch traffic of a single priority generated by multiple line cards going to the same destination line card is some variation of a round robin algorithm.
A block diagram illustrating an example prior art scheme whereby the output of several input queues is forwarded by a scheduler to an output queue is shown in FIG. 3. In this example of the scheduling scheme, a plurality of input queues 32 has data destined to the same output queue 36. In most switches, the scheduler 34 is operative to schedule the transfer of packets from the several input queues to the output queue using a round robin type algorithm.
Assuming that there is virtual output queuing (i.e. one queue per destination interface or one queue per interface card per priority) in the ingress path (i.e. traffic coming from a network link into a line card and going into the switch fabric) of each line card and that each individual queue implements the committed over excess traffic single queue algorithm, then committed traffic should never be dropped due to excess traffic coming into a line card. It cannot be guaranteed, however, that committed traffic from one line card will not be dropped due to excess traffic coming from another line card. This is the problem in a distributed queuing system.
Consider the following example to illustrate the problem. A switch chassis comprises three line cards each having 10 Gbps capacity. Two line cards attempt to send a total of 10 Gbps traffic to the third line card. The switch fabric, using a round robin algorithm, divides the 10 Gbps bandwidth of the third card evenly between the two line cards allotting each 5 Gbps. Now, if each of the line cards transmits less than 5 Gbps committed traffic, there is no problem. However, if the committed traffic comprises 7 Gbps from the first line card and only 3 Gbps from the second line card, then the destination line card will receive only 5 Gbps of committed traffic and no excess traffic from the first line card and 3 Gbps committed traffic and 2 Gbps of excess traffic from the second line card. Thus, 2 Gbps of excess traffic from the second line card was forwarded at the expense of 2 Gbps of committed traffic from the first interface card.
Note that in the general case, there may be more than a single destination per line card due to several reasons including (1) each line card may contain multiple ports, links and interfaces wherein each constitutes a separate destination, and (2) in a system supporting priorities (or any other mechanism for supporting multiple classes of service) multiple queues are required for each output port in order that packets (or frames) of different priorities can be processed differently, wherein each queue can logically be viewed as a different destination for the purposes of this invention and related disclosure.
A solution to the above problem is to use a weighted round robin algorithm in the switching fabric and to configure the weights for each line card according to the provisioned committed bandwidth coming from each line card to the destination line card. Note, however, that this solution works as long as there is no overbooking of committed traffic. Using the example illustrated above, the weight of the first line card is configured to 7 and the weight of the second line card is configured to 3. Thus, the first line card is allotted 7 Gbps out of the available 10 Gbps and the second line card is allotted 3 Gbps out of the available 10 Gbps. In each line card, the single queue algorithm described above handles the dropping of the excess traffic and prevents the committed traffic from being dropped.
Although this solution works, it has several disadvantages. Firstly, the switch fabric itself may not support weighted round robin between different input sources in which case it cannot be implemented. Secondly, the switch fabric weights must be reconfigured each time a new service is provisioned or an existing service is changed so that the weights reflect the new committed rate distribution between the line cards. Thirdly, this solution does not work if the committed traffic is oversubscribed during the provisioning stage.
An illustrative example of this third disadvantage is provided. Consider a switch chassis with three line cards, each line card having a capacity of 10 Gbps. Two line cards attempt to send a total of 10 Gbps of traffic to the third line card. We provision 9 Gbps of committed traffic from the first line card and 6 Gbps from the second line card. Note that the total traffic provisioned is 15 Gbps which is more than the 10 Gbps available.
If the fabric weights are configured according to the committed traffic distribution, the first line card will receive 60% (9/15=6 Gbps) and the second line card will receive 40% (6/15=4 Gbps). Now consider the first line card attempts to forward an actual committed bandwidth of 4 Gbps and the second line card attempts to forward an actual bandwidth of 6 Gbps. A problem arises since the first line card will forward 6 Gbps (4 Gbps committed, and 2 Gbps excess) while the second line card will forward only 4 Gbps resulting in the dropping of 2 Gbps of committed traffic.
Thus, there is a need for a mechanism for enforcing the precedence of committed over excess traffic in a distributed queuing system that overcomes the disadvantages of the prior art. The mechanism should be able to support SLA policies of committed over excess traffic without dropping committed traffic (as long as the total about of committed traffic to be forwarded in each link does not exceed the amount of bandwidth in that link).

Apparatus for and method of support for committed over excess traffic in a distributed queuing system


A device for monitoring air ionization. The charge build-up and decay monitor uses two metal plates, a first "floating" plate electrically isolated from the monitoring circuitry and a second "sensing" plate, to form an air dielectric capacitor of known capacitance. In charge decay mode the floating plate is charged and a second capacitor is connected between the sensing plate and electrical ground, producing a capacitive voltage divider. In charge build-up mode the second capacitor is disconnected and a second air dielectric capacitor of known capacitance is formed between the sensing plate and the ground metal casing of the device, again producing a capacitive voltage divider. The monitoring circuitry measures the charge present on the sensing plate, which is proportional to the charge present on the floating plate, without using failure-prone chopper electrometers or other electromechanical means. Internal monitoring circuitry computes the absolute value of the charge present on the floating plate to avoid the need for parallel processing circuits for positive and negative charges, the accuracy of the measurements are enhanced by the use of a large-valued resistor as part of the monitoring circuit to slow greatly the discharge of the second capacitor. Additional accuracy is obtained by monitoring the decay time between two predetermined voltages occurring on a portion of the decay curve that changes relatively slowly. Using predetermined test voltages also avoids the need to set multiple switches and dials and thereby decreases the possibility of human error in using the device.

Excessive amounts of static electricity can easily and insidiously destroy or damage integrated circuit (IC) devices. Over-voltages or power densities resulting from static. electricity can destroy certain IC junctions and components by, among other things, radically altering the doping structure of the lattices or by impairing the silicon substrate of the IC. As a consequence, industries involved in the fabrication of ICs and other microelectronic components maintain such circuits and components and their environment at or near zero electrical potential during fabrication and packaging. Prevenative measures used in the industry include providing workers and work stations with anti-static carpet, using conductive or dissipative grounded desk top work surfaces, and providing workers with grounding straps such as that described in U.S. Pat. No. 4,577,256. Additionally, effective environmental control requires use of one or more hot air or other ion generators which emit ions to neutralize static charges.
Monitoring the air ion density in an area used for fabricating ICs also is an important factor in limiting or preventing component damage due to excess static charge. Commercially available monitoring devices include charge build-up monitors, which measure directly the static potential present in the area's atmosphere, and charge decay monitors, which measure the time needed for a given charge to be neutralized. Charge decay monitors according to the prior art use a mechanically chopped electrometer head with a vibrating reed to measure voltage on a single charge plate. The mechanical nature of the sampling device results in an increased possibility of system failure and precludes continuous sampling of the voltage on the plate.
Devices of the prior art also typically require that the user set a series of dials or switches in order to determine the starting and stopping voltages for the decay test. If the positions of any of these dials or switches are accidentally altered between tests, the resulting measurements from test to test will not compare. In addition, the large number of dials and swithes increases the likelihood that an incorrect setting on one or more will be used. As a consequence, many ICs may be damaged or destroyed before the mistake could be realized and the generators adjusted to produce sufficient quantities of ions.
One such prior art device, for example, contains a single 6".times.6".times.1/4" metal plate positioned so as to have a 20 pf capacitance between it and electrical ground and uses a mechanically chopped head as mentioned above. A 0-150 second timer also is provided for mesuuring the decay time of the voltage on the plate. This device allows the user to start the test at either 5 kV or 1 kV and stop it at 500 V or 100 V, respectively, or when the plate voltage crosses a manually selected cut-off value. A second such devce contains a microprocessor system so that the user may select from any variety of values the start and stop voltages to be used in the decay test. A liquid crystal display (LCD) provides alpha-numeric and graphical output of the results.


An Si/C composite includes carbon (C) dispersed in porous silicon (Si) particles. The Si/C composite may be used to form an anode active material to provide a lithium battery having a high capacity and excellent capacity retention.

1. Field of the Invention
Aspects of the present invention relate to an Si/C composite, anode active materials, and a lithium battery including the same. More particularly, aspects of the present invention relates to an Si/C composite having a high charge/discharge capacity and a good capacity retention, anode active materials, and a lithium battery including the same.
2. Description of the Related Art
Various conventional techniques for using of lithium metals as anode materials for lithium batteries have been suggested. However, when lithium metals are used as anode materials, short circuits of a battery may occur due to lithium dendrite formation, which creates a high risk of explosion. Thus, to overcome such shortcoming, carbonaceous active materials have been widely used as anode materials instead of lithium metals. Examples of carbonaceous active materials include crystalline carbon, such as natural graphite and artificial graphite, and amorphous carbon, such as soft carbon and hard carbon. However, although amorphous carbon has good capacity, when used, many of the charge/discharge reactions are irreversible. Since the theoretical capacity of crystalline carbon (such as, for example, graphite) is relatively high, i.e., 372 mAh/g, crystalline carbon has been widely used as an anode active material. However, although the theoretical capacity of such graphite- or carbon-based active materials is currently considered to be rather high, the theoretical capacity is not high enough for future lithium batteries, which may require higher capacities.
To address these problems, research into metal-based anode active materials and intermetallic compound-based anode active materials has been actively conducted. For example, research into lithium batteries using metals or semimetals such as aluminum, germanium, silicon, tin, zinc, lead, etc., as the anode active materials has been conducted. Such materials are known to have large capacities, high energy densities, and good insertion/extraction capabilities compared to carbon-based anode active materials. Thus, lithium batteries having large capacities and high energy densities can be prepared using these materials. For example, pure silicon is known to have a high theoretical capacity of 4017 mAh/g.
However, such materials typically have shorter life cycles than carbon-based materials, and thus are difficult to put to practical use. When inorganic particles such as silicon or tin are used as the anode active material, the volume of the inorganic particles changes considerably during charge/discharge cycles. This may result in the degradation of the electronic conduction network between the active material particles or may result in the detachment of the anode active material from the anode current collector. That is, the volume of inorganic material such as silicon or tin increases by about 300 to 400% due to alloying with lithium during charging, and the volume decreases due to extraction of lithium during discharging. Therefore, after repeated charge/discharge cycles, spaces may be generated between the active material particles, and electrical insulation may occur, thereby rapidly lowering the capacity retention of these materials, thereby causing a serious problem when these materials are used in lithium batteries.
To overcome these disadvantages, research into methods of absorbing the volume expansion of metal particles by using nano-sized silicon particles or porous silicon has been carried out. With regard to the nano-sized silicon particles, Japanese Laid-Open Patent Application Publication No. 1998-003920 discloses a lithium secondary battery having metallic nanoparticles coated with carbon. However, the nanoparticles are quite expensive to produce, the carbon (which is brittle) on the surface of the nanoparticles cracks due to expansion during charging, and spaces are generated between carbon and metal nanoparticles due to contraction during discharging. Therefore, improvements in battery life cycle are restricted. With regard to porous silicon, several methods have been disclosed. For example, Japanese Laid-Open Patent Application Publication No. 2004-327330 discloses the use of cathodic oxidation. Korean Patent Publication No. 2004-0063802 discloses a preparation method of a negative active material in which an alloy is formed of Si and an elemental metal such as Ni, and the elemental metal is then eluted. Also, Korean Patent Publication No. 2004-0082876 discloses a preparation method of porous silicon comprises mixing an alkali metal or alkali earth metal powder with a silicon precursor powder such as silicon dioxide, and heating the mixture under inert atmosphere, followed by eluting with acid. Although these methods demonstrate an improvement in the initial capacity retention to some extent owing to the absorbing effects of the volume expansion derived from porous structures, the use of only porous silicon particles with low conductivity may lower the electric conductivity among particles in the course of manufacturing an electrode plates unless nanoparticles are used, ultimately deteriorating the initial coulombic efficiency or the capacity retention. However, according to these methods, it is not possible to prepare nanoparticles, or additional processing costs may be involved.
Accordingly, there is a need for an anode active material with high initial coulombic efficiency and good capacity retention using a material that can improve the conductivity of particles.

Si/C composite, anode active materials, and lithium battery including the same