A workflow scripting system is described herein that combines the features of workflows and scripts by automatically translating between the two models. Using the system, a script author can create workflows on the fly using familiar scripting language, and a workflow author can use scripting steps to perform actions. Workflows run in this manner can be setup to execute in their own process to improve robustness or efficiency. Operations in an enterprise environment frequently take a long time and are subject to interruptions. By adding reliability concepts of workflows to a shell environment, users of the system can write scripts to address common needs of large-scale computing environments. Thus, the workflow scripting system blends the available resources provided by workflow and scripting environments to provide a host of powerful, advanced capabilities to IT personnel.

Users of computing environments often encounter a need to automate various tasks. End users may wish to automate frequently performed individual tasks, while information technology (IT) personnel may be tasked with automating large tasks that span many computer systems. Tasks may include actions such as application installation and maintenance, computer setup, security verification, updating an inventory of systems and applications, and so forth.
Workflows provide one method of automating tasks in computing environments. Software programming has evolved over time from writing applications in low-level languages, such as assembly, to high-level languages like C++, C#, and Visual Basic. Higher-level languages often remove low-level management of memory and other machine-based limitations in favor of allowing the programmer to think more in terms of objects that represent the problem to be solved. However, there is still much complexity in application logic, particularly when managing asynchronous processing. Workflows, such as those provided by MICROSOFT™ WINDOWS™ Workflow Foundation (WF), provide a declarative framework for formulating application and service logic in a high-level manner as one or more workflows. Workflows are made of activities that process a particular stage of the application's processing. A group of activities forms a workflow. Workflows can be paused and resumed as applications wait for responses from other components, and are particularly well suited to asynchronous programming to improve developer productivity. WF provides a set of tools for declaring workflows, activities to help define the logic and control flow, and a runtime for executing the resulting application definition.
Scripting provides another method of automating tasks in computing environments. Scripting generally includes a scripting language and host that reads a text file or console input that provides instructions in the scripting language to carry out a variety of actions. Unlike workflows, scripts are generally much less formal and do not demand the same programmatic knowledge common to traditional software programming. Scripts can be built and tested quickly with little more tools than a text editor and the scripting host.
Unfortunately, these existing methods lie at opposite extremes of the spectrum of automating tasks, and each includes limitations that make it difficult to use for particular tasks. For example, building workflows generally involves setting up a programming environment (such as MICROSOFT™ Visual Studio) and acquiring programming skills to develop and debug workflows. This limits their accessibility and increases the expense of automating tasks. Limited programmer resources can become a bottleneck for getting things done. Scripting, while great for small, single-machine tasks, is much more difficult to use for longer tasks with potentially many dependent steps that span potentially many computer systems. In particular, scripting lacks the kind of error detection and error handling available in higher level programming languages, and is not good at stopping, recovering, and restarting after errors or unexpected events. One example of a set of steps that is difficult to perform with scripting is any task that involves rebooting a computer system. Once the system is rebooted, the script is no longer running and cannot resume at some correct point when the computer system restarts.

Automatic transcoding and semantic adaptation between scripting and workflow systems


A method for making a sulfur-graphene composite material is provided. In the method, an elemental sulfur solution and a graphene dispersion are provided. The elemental sulfur solution includes a first solvent and an elemental sulfur dissolved in the first solvent. The graphene dispersion includes a second solvent and graphene sheets dispersed in the second solvent. The elemental sulfur solution is added to the graphene dispersion, a number of elemental sulfur particles are precipitated and attracted to a surface of the graphene sheets to form the sulfur-graphene composite material. The sulfur-graphene composite material is separated from the mixture.

Sulfur is a promising cathode active material with a high theoretical specific capacity, low cost, and environmental benignity. Nevertheless, it is difficult to develop a practical secondary battery without problems such as the low electrical conductivity of sulfur, dissolution of polysulfides in electrolyte, and volume expansion of sulfur during discharge. These problems result in poor cycle life, low specific capacity, and low energy efficiency.
Carbon materials, such as active carbon, carbon nanotubes, mesoporous carbon, or graphene are combined with the sulfur to help remedy some of the problems. However, there has been difficulty uniformly combining sulfur and the carbon materials which limits the cycle life of the secondary battery.
What is needed, therefore, is to provide a method for making a sulfur-graphene composite material which can improve the cycle life of the secondary battery having the sulfur-graphene composite material used as a cathode active material.

Method for making sulfur-graphene composite material


Disclosed is an inverter with outputs being connected through two reactors to a utility network, while an energy storage capacitor (C) is connected to the PV array (P) such that the C + and − terminals are connected to two half bridges creating an H bridge so that the AC node of one half bridge is connected to the anode of a diode (D1) and the cathode of a diode (D2). An AC node of the other half bridge is connected to an anode of a diode (D3) and a cathode of a diode (D4), while the diodes form a diode bridge having a positive node connected to a transistor's (V5) collector and an anode of a diode (D5), the cathode of the diode (D5) being connected to C's positive terminal.

1. Technical Field
The subject of the invention is a DC energy supplying into the 1 phase utility network without transformer. The invention deals with a PV array energy conversion, too.
2. Background Art
It is well known that the H bridges are often applied for direct current energy conversion and feeding into utility network without isolation transformer.
There are various gating patterns for controlling H bridges. However, for the PV application, the useful solutions are limited due to the PV array stray capacitance to the ground. So the usual solution is gating one diagonal with a pulse width modulation (PWM) signal in positive half period whilst the other diagonal is prohibited. The other diagonal is gated with a PWM signal in the negative half period whilst the previous one is prohibited. The two diagonals change role in every half utility network period.
It is also well known that such a gating system can provide only two voltage levels on the output on the H bridge, namely, positive or negative voltage if the AC current is not discontinuous.
The disadvantage of this type of circuit arrangement and control method is that the L,C or L,C,L filter on the output of the H bridge is bigger if it is compared to a multi level system.
It shall be mentioned that further drawback is the unnecessary energy swing between the output filter circuit and the H bridge DC filter capacitor in every PWM period.

Advanced circuit arrangement of transformerless 1 phase PV inverter


A method for tissue assessment includes ablating tissue at a site within a body of a living subject using an invasive probe applied to the site. At a first stage in ablation of the tissue, first measurements are made of scattered light intensities from the site at a plurality of different wavelengths. At a second stage in the ablation of the tissue, subsequent to the first stage, second measurements are made of the scattered light intensities from the site at the plurality of different wavelengths. Progress of the ablation is assessed by computing different, respective measures of change in the scattered light intensities at the different wavelengths occurring between the first and second measurements, and comparing the respective measures.

Minimally-invasive intracardiac ablation is the treatment of choice for various types of arrhythmias. To perform such treatment, the physician typically inserts a catheter through the vascular system into the heart, brings the distal end of the catheter into contact with myocardial tissue in areas of abnormal electrical activity, and then energizes one or more electrodes at or near the distal end in order to create tissue necrosis.
Various methods for monitoring ablation treatments are known in the art. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 7,001,383, whose disclosure is incorporated herein by reference, describes real-time monitoring and mapping of ablation lesion formation in the heart. The disclosed method includes applying a local treatment to the heart at a plurality of sites designated for ablation. At each respective site, a parameter is sensed that is indicative of a level of ablation at the site. The method preferably includes displaying a map of the heart, and designating, on the map, during the ablation procedure, indications of the respective levels of ablation at the sites, responsive to the respective sensed parameters.
U.S. Patent Application Publication 2014/0171936, whose disclosure is incorporated herein by reference, describes a catheter having an irrigated tip with temperature sensors and an optical fiber array. The catheter comprises an insertion tube having a distal end configured for insertion into proximity with tissue in a body of a patient and containing a lumen having an electrical conductor for conveying electrical energy to the tissue. A conductive cap is attached to the distal end of the insertion tube and is coupled electrically to the electrical conductor. A multiplicity of optical fibers are contained within the insertion tube, each fiber terminating in proximity to the outer surface of the cap, and being configured to convey optical radiation to and from the tissue while the electrical energy is being conveyed to the tissue.
U.S. Pat. No. 8,147,484 describes a system and method that enable real-time optical measurements of tissue reflection spectral characteristics while performing ablation. The method involves the radiation of tissue and recapturing of light from the tissue to monitor changes in the reflected optical intensity as an indicator of steam formation in the tissue for prevention of steam pop. The system includes a catheter adapted to collect light reflected from tissue undergoing ablation, a detection component that identifies and separates constituent wavelengths of collected light, a quantification apparatus for generating measured light intensity data for the collected light, and a processor that analyzes the measured light intensity data in relation to time. A measured reflectance spectral intensity (MRSI) versus time is analyzed, wherein observation is made as to whether the MRSI initially increases in a specified time period followed by a decrease at a specified rate in the MRSI. If there is no decrease in the MRSI, then delivery of ablation energy to tissue continues. However, if there is a decrease in the MRSI within a specified time and at a specified rate, then the method infers the formation of a steam pocket and decreases or discontinues the delivery of ablative energy to tissue.
Documents incorporated by reference in the present patent application are to be considered an integral part of the application except that to the extent any terms are defined in these incorporated documents in a manner that conflicts with the definitions made explicitly or implicitly in the present specification, only the definitions in the present specification should be considered.

This patent is subject to a terminal disclaimer.


A transfer is located on an axial first side that is one side in axial direction relative to a transmission, and a rotating electric machine is located coaxially with a transmission output member, between the transmission and the transfer in the axial direction.

One example of a vehicle drive system like that described above is disclosed in U.S. Patent Application Publication No. 2008/0202829 (Patent Document 1). Reference signs in parentheses shown hereafter in the description of the background art section are those used in Patent Document 1. In a drivetrain (130) as a vehicle drive system, illustrated in FIG. 5 to FIG. 7 of Patent Document 1, an electric drive unit (34) as a rotating electric machine, and a transfer (74) are located coaxially with a transmission (32). Further, the transfer (74) is located axially between the transmission (32) and the electric drive unit (34).


The present disclosure relates to imaging processing devices, aerial refueling aircraft, and methods relating to the processing of images. An example imaging processing device includes a programmable circuit, such as a field-programmable gate array (FPGA), that is reprogrammed based on selected circuit data so as to construct a circuit configured to provide image processing on at least one image. The image processing includes receiving the at least one image. The image processing also includes adjusting the at least one image, to provide at least one adjusted image. Adjusting the at least one image includes applying: a local adaptive histogram equalization filter, a global gamma correction filter, and a local contrast filter.

Aerial refueling can be performed by a tanker aircraft by way of a refueling boom. In some instances, the boom could include a plurality of flight control surfaces to move the fuel probe of the boom so as to mate with a fuel nozzle of a receiving aircraft.
A conventional solution is to define twenty image scenes that adjust the contrast based on image statistics taken over a wide portion of an overall image captured by an image capture system of the tanker aircraft. For each scene, predefined maximum and minimum histogram limits over a third or more of the image are stretched to fill the entire dynamic range and then additional differential contrast stretching or compression is applied across the dynamic range globally over the entire image. Frequently, one or more of these twenty scenes provide good viewing results, but there are many cases where the contrast in the processed images is still too poor for aerial refueling operators (AROs) to conduct the refueling task.

Low-latency augmented contrast limited adaptive histogram equalization


An information recording apparatus capable of smoothly reproducing in succession written data and data additionally written subsequent to the written data on a recording medium without disturbing a synchronization operation for read data during reproduction of information. The apparatus comprises a writing clock generating circuit for generating a writing clock signal for writing the new data into a recording medium while establishing synchronization with new data; a clock reproducing circuit for reading the written data from the recording medium, and reproducing a synchronization clock signal of the written data to generate a reproduced clock signal; and a phase adjusting circuit for synchronizing the phase of the writing clock signal with the phase of the reproduced clock signal.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention generally relates to an information recording apparatus, and more particularly to an information recording apparatus for recording information on an additionally writable recording medium such as a write once (WO) type optical disc on which information can be written only once at the same location or on a rewritable (RW) optical disc on which information can be rewritten any number of times at the same location.
2. Description of Related Art
In an information recording apparatus of the type mentioned above, when information data is written on an additionally writable recording medium, a writing clock signal is generated for writing the information data on the disc while establishing synchronization with the information data to be written. Stated another way, the information data is generally written on the disc in synchronism with the generated writing clock signal having a stable predetermined frequency (for example, so-called bit synchronization is established). The writing clock signal is typically generated from a reference clock generator, for example, a quartz oscillator or the like which can provide an oscillation output by itself.
However, when a write-once or additional write operation is performed on a disc, which has information data partially written thereon, for writing new information data subsequent to the written information data, a writing clock signal used for the written information data may differ in phase from a writing clock signal used for the new information data.
In this event, in an operation for reading the resulting disc after recording the new information data to sequentially reproduce the old and new information data, it is often difficult to reproduce clock signals for synchronizing the data read from the disc near the junction of the old and new information data.
Particularly, when information data is subsequently written on a disc on which information data has been written by an information recording apparatus using a different information recording apparatus, different writing clock signals are generated at respective recording times from different clock sources, even if these information recording apparatus belong to the same type, whereby preceding information data and subsequent information data are inevitably written with different writing clock signals having different frequencies as well as different phases.
Reproduction of a clock signal for synchronizing read data involves the use of a PLL (Phase Locked Loop) circuit which is supplied with the read data as an input. A disc having recorded thereon preceding and subsequent information data with writing clock signals largely different in phase and frequency from each other will significantly disturb the synchronization operation of the PLL circuit near the junction of the preceding data and the subsequent data. As a result, a decoder for decoding read data based on the clock signal for synchronizing read data may erroneously detect a variety of data in the read data.
Also, data is written on a disc in a format which includes a particular synchronization signal for each data block for carrying a predetermined amount of information in addition to the bit synchronization as mentioned above, such that an associated data block is synchronized during reproduction. Even such a particular synchronization signal is located in data based on the writing clock signal. Therefore, the writing clock signals largely different in phase and frequency from each other, generated as mentioned above, will cause the interval between a particular synchronization signal located at the end of the preceding information data and a particular synchronization signal located at the beginning of the subsequent information data to be largely different from intervals before and after that interval, possibly resulting in the inability of detecting the particular synchronization signal and erroneous detection during reproduction. Particularly, this would be a grave problem for a player having poor performance of detecting such a particular synchronization signal.
Thus, the present invention has been made in view of the problem mentioned above, and its object is to provide an information recording apparatus which is capable of employing a recording form for a recording medium which permits written data and additional data written subsequent thereto to be smoothly reproduced in sequence without disturbing a synchronization operation for read data upon reproduction of information.
To achieve the above object, the present invention provides an information recording apparatus capable of additionally recording new data subsequent to previously written data on a recording medium, which comprises writing clock generating means for generating a writing clock signal for writing the new data into the recording medium while establishing synchronization with the new data, clock reproducing means for reading the written data from the recording medium, and reproducing a synchronization clock signal of the written data to generate a reproduced clock signal, and phase adjusting means for synchronizing the phase of the writing clock signal to the phase of the reproduced clock signal.
In the information recording apparatus mentioned above, the written data is data including a particular synchronization signal for every predetermined data block. The information recording apparatus may be configured to further comprise synchronization signal detecting means for detecting the particular synchronization signal from the written data, counting means responsive to detection timing of the particular synchronization signal by the synchronization signal detecting means to start a counting operation based on the reproduced clock signal, and control means for determining a writing start time at which the new data is written into the recording medium, based on a count value presented by the counting means.
In the information recording apparatus mentioned above, the phase adjusting means may synchronize the phase of the writing clock to the phase of a reproduced clock signal derived from the written data in a predetermined period before an additional recording start position for the new data on the recording medium.
Further, in the information recording apparatus mentioned above, the phase adjusting means, after synchronizing the phase of the writing clock signal to the phase of the reproduced clock signal, may be configured to return the writing clock signal to a frequency and a phase inherent to the writing clock generating means with a predetermined time constant.
The present invention also provides an information recording apparatus capable of additionally recording new data subsequent to previously written data on a recording medium, which comprises comparing means for comparing, in terms of value, an end data portion corresponding to a predetermined amount of data located at the end of the written data with a top data portion corresponding to the predetermined amount of data located at the beginning of the new data, and control means for changing values in the new data when the comparing means determines that values in the end data portion are coincident with values in the top data portion.

Information recording apparatus for writable recording media


The present invention relates to a transmucosal administration system to administer quinones, benzoquinones, and especially 1,4-benzoquinones, via the oromucosal route.

Idebenone is a synthetic analogue of coenzyme Q10 (CoQ10), a vital cell membrane antioxidant and essential constituent of the adenosine-triphosphate (ATP) producing mitochondrial electron transport chain (ETC). Up to now, idebenone has been used in a variety of medical applications. Similar to coenzyme Q10, idebenone undergoes reduction/oxidation cycles in living organisms and reduced idebenone is an antioxidant and radical scavenger (A. Mordente, G. E. Martorana, G. Minotti, B. Giardina, Chem. Res. Toxicol. 11 (1998), 54-63). It is known that idebenone protects cell membranes and mitochondria from oxidative damage because of its ability to inhibit lipid peroxidation (M. Suno, M. Shibota, A. Nagaoka, Arch. Gerontol. Geriatr. 8 (1989), 307-311). Idebenone also interacts with the ETC, preserving ATP formation in ischemic states. It has been shown that the compound stimulates nerve growth factor, a characteristic that could be important for the treatment of Alzheimer's and other neurodegenerative diseases (K. Yamada, A. Nitta. T. Hasegawa, K. Fuji, M. Hiramatsu, T. Kameyama, Y. Furukawa, K. Hayashi, T. Nabeshima, Behav. Brain Res. 83 (1997), 117-122). The compound has also been suggested for the treatment of Friedreich's Ataxia and other mitochondrial and neuromuscular diseases (A. O. Hausse, Y. Aggoun, D. Bonnet, D. Sidi, A. Munnich, A. Rotig, P. Rustin, Heart 87 (2002), 346-349; Di Prospero N. A., Baker A., Jeffries N. Fischbeck K. H. Lancet Neurol 6 (2007) 878-886).
As a lipophilic compound idebenone is well absorbed in the gastrointestinal tract after conventional oral administration, which is the normal route for administering said compound. Dosage forms such as tablets or capsules have been used in clinical trials and as marketed product. In the course of our investigations on the pharmacological profile of idebenone, we discovered that the compound, after being absorbed in the gut, is metabolized very quickly during its first passage through the liver ("first-pass-effect"). Experiments showed that more than 98% of the idebenone is metabolized during its first passage through the liver. Hepatic metabolism of idebenone results in side chain oxidation, reduction of the quinone ring, sulphate and glucuronide conjugation and subsequent renal excretion. The high liver metabolism greatly reduces the potentially high plasma levels of the pharmacologically active idebenone. Because of this strong first pass metabolism, oral administration of idebenone requires high doses of the compound to achieve pharmacologically efficacious plasma levels in the body. Said high doses can result in unwanted side effects such as diarrhea.
In addition, the requirement for oral formulations of idebenone to be swallowed inflicts difficulties in the practical administration to patients with swallowing problems, e.g. a patient with a serious neuromuscular disease such as Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy or Friedreich's Ataxia, elderly or young patients.

Transmucosal administration system for a pharmaceutical drug


A device and method for generation of digital advertisement displays in real time in digital TV-transmissions. In such digital TV-transmissions, a digital coding of the image material is made before the transmission is made; this coding compresses the content of the image as much as possible to minimize necessary bandwidth utilization at transmission of the signals. In connection with this coding and by means of pattern recognition, different patterns are identified for predefined objects in the image material, such as for example identifying an object with an unique coloring. Via the pattern identification, the image coder obtains information via a table of what the original object looks like. Also included in the table is information about which advertisement display is to be placed inside the identified object. Thus, starting from the identified object in the image material and the original form of the identified object, the advertisement display is introduced into an image storage in a TV-receiver, and the image material is transformed. TV-viewers in this way see a virtual advertisement message in the TV-transmission.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a device and a method for generation of digitial advertisement displays in real time at digital TV-transmissions.
2. Discussion of the Background
Advertisement displays which are utilized in connection with for instance sport events, which are televised, normally consists of an advertising message which is applied to a supporting material of paper, plastics, metal etc. The displays therefore normally are not exchangeable during the event itself, but may be exchanged depending on which companies that want to have advertisement space at respective event. The total advertisement space therefore, at each specific event, can be said to be restricted to the for that purpose intended advertising places. The technical problem the invention relates to is to bring about a device and a method which at digital TV-transmissions makes possible one in principle infinite number of advertising messages at in advance decided places by at transmission utilize digital image processing.
To find out whether the prior art describes and possibly solves this problem a preliminary investigation was made at which the following documents were found.
D1: U.S. Pat. No. 5,231,494 PA1 D2: U.S. Pat. No. 5,319,455 PA1 D3: EP,A2 424 648
D1 describes a device which compresses a set of TV-signals, such as a main program signal and a great number of demographically selected advertising messages. The great number of compressed TV-signals are combined to a combined signal for transmission on one single TV-channel. A TV-receiver which receives the combined signal identifies characteristics of a televised viewer, and selects a specific TV-signal from the compressed TV-signals from the received combined signal depending on the characteristics of the viewer.
D2 describes an interactive multimedia system with distributed processing of video image information in nodes arranged in a cable TV system. The nodes can be used to distribute customer adapted advertisement to TV-viewers.
D3 describes a method and a device to transmit demographically selected TV-advertisement. A first TV-channel includes TV-programs and periodical advertisement messages. A second TV-channel includes different advertisement messages. Demographical characteristics of a televised viewer are identified, and selected advertisement messages are transmitted to said viewer depending on the demographical characteristics of the viewers.
The above mentioned found documents consequently describe the principle to generate virtual advertisement messages at TV-transmissions.
These documents, however, do not solve the above described problems because they do not explicitly describe advertisement messages at sport events which are arranged at in advance decided places and with in advance decided sizes.


Failure of a processing unit that processes a plurality of information pieces is discovered in a short time. An information processing device 100 including a processing unit 1 that processes a plurality of information pieces includes: an identifier assignment unit 2 that assigns identifiers 60000 to 61023 to the plurality of information pieces 40000 to 41023, respectively; a plurality of input memories 20000 to 21023 that retain the plurality of information pieces 40000 to 41023 and the identifiers 60000 to 61023 assigned to the plurality of information pieces 40000 to 41023, respectively; a plurality of output memories 30000 to 31023 that retain the plurality of information pieces 50000 to 51023 processed by the processing unit 1 and the identifiers 70000 to 71023 assigned to the plurality of processed information pieces 50000 to 51023, respectively; an identifier verification unit 3 that verifies the identifiers 70000 to 71023 by comparing the identifiers 70000 to 71023 with the identifiers 60000 to 61023, respectively; and an error handling unit 4 that performs error handling when identifiers do not match with each other.

Some of conventional information processing devices include a single processing unit, and the processing unit processes a plurality of information pieces. Such information processing devices include a plurality of input memories and a plurality of output memories in order to process the plurality of information pieces. For example, when an information processing device processes 1024-ch information pieces ("ch" is an abbreviation for "channel"), the information processing device includes input memories for the 1024 chs and output memories for the 1024 chs.
When the processing unit is normal, the processing unit reads information of an N-th (N=0, 1, . . . , 1022, 1023) ch from an input memory for the N-th ch and, after processing the information, writes the processed information to an output memory for the N-th ch. However, when the processing unit fails, the processing unit reads information of the N-th ch from the input memory for the N-th ch and, after processing the information, erroneously writes the processed information to an output memory for an M-th (M=0, 1, . . . , 1022, 1023 and M≠N) ch in some cases. As a result, a situation may be brought about where information of the M-th ch that is different from the information supposed to be outputted is outputted to a receiver who is to receive the information of the N-th ch.
However, even when a processing unit fails as described above, there has conventionally been no means for discovering such failure in a short time. Accordingly, there has been a problem that the situation continues where information that is different from information supposed to be outputted is outputted. Particularly in digital signal processing by a DSP (Digital Signal Processor) as a processing unit (see Non-Patent Literature 1), the processing needs to be completed within a predetermined time period (latency), so a processing rate tends to be prioritized. Accordingly, conventionally, amending a processing error such as ch switching is viewed as less important.

Information processing apparatus and information processing method

Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corporation


A received electric field intensity estimates device estimaties a received electric field intensity when a signal is received, by using at least a gain in a transmitting direction indicating the direction of the receiver viewed from a transmitter's side from among gains in the individual directions of the antenna's directive pattern of a transmitter's antenna, and outputs the estimated intensity. The device includes: an averaging unit for averaging gains in the individual directions of the antenna's directive pattern within an angular range of an arrival wave angle indicating the direction of the signal arriving at the receiver, taken as the relevant direction; and a received electric field intensity calculation unit using at least the gain in the transmitting direction from among gains in the individual directions of the antenna's averaged directive pattern, and for outputting the result of the calculation as the estimated received electric field intensity.

In cases where a deterministic propagation model, for example, a ray-trace algorithmic determination, is used, a conventional received electric field intensity estimating device calculates, for a number of elementary waves transmitted from a transmitter and received by a receiver, antenna gains in the receiver direction of the antenna of the transmitter (hereinafter, called "transmitter's antenna"), propagation losses, and losses resulting from reflection, diffraction and scattering caused due to the topography of the terrain and structures in the area from the transmitter to the receiver, and estimates a received electric field intensity on the basis of the result of the calculation (refer to Patent Document 1). FIG. 1 shows an example of elementary wave emanated from a transmitter and received by a receiver. According to the construction shown in FIG. 1, it is possible to carry out a received electric field intensity estimation with high accuracy.
In cases where a statistical propagation model, for example, the Okumura-Hata Formula, is used, a conventional received electric field intensity estimating device calculates antenna gains in the receiver direction of the transmitter's antenna, calculates propagation losses calculated in accordance with a propagation loss formula, and a propagation loss compensation value based on the land-use classification information (that is, information indicating an urban section, a suburban section and a forest section) for the section around the receiver, and estimates a received electric field intensity on the basis of the result of the calculation (refer to Patent Document 2). FIG. 2 shows an example of propagation loss compensation based on the land-use classification information. According to the construction shown in FIG. 2, it is possible to carry out a received electric field intensity estimation through small number of calculating processes.
However, regardless of the deterministic or statistical propagation model mentioned above, the conventional received electric field intensity estimating device carries out an averaging process or a median value calculating process on the received electric field intensity estimated in a predetermined section around the receiver so as to smooth variation in the received electric field intensity. FIG. 3 shows an example of averaging process performed on the received electric field intensity estimated in a predetermined section around a receiver.
FIG. 4 is a block diagram showing an example of the construction of a conventional received electric field intensity estimating device in the event of using a statistical propagation model, for example, the Okumura-Hata Formula.
As shown in FIG. 4, a conventional received electric field intensity estimating device includes transmitting position input unit 10, transmitting frequency input unit 11, transmitting power input unit 12, antenna's directive pattern input unit 13, receiving position input unit 14, propagation loss formula input unit 15, received electric field intensity calculation unit 16, and received electric field intensity averaging unit 17.
Hereinafter, operation of the received electric field intensity estimating device will be described with reference to FIG. 4.
First, transmitting position input unit 10, transmitting frequency input unit 11, transmitting frequency input unit 12, antenna's directive pattern input unit 13, transmitting position input unit 14, and propagation loss formula input unit 15 provide received electric field intensity calculation unit 16 with information input from external sources.
Received electric field intensity calculation unit 16 uses P[dBm] as the value of transmitting power of a signal from a transmitter, input from transmitting power input unit 12, and f[Hz] as the transmitting frequency of the signal from the transmitter, input from transmitting frequency input unit 11.
Subsequently, received electric field intensity calculation unit 16 calculates distance D[m] between a transmitting position and a receiving position and transmitting direction θo[degree] indicating the direction of a receiver viewed from the transmitter's side on the basis of the transmitting position information indicating the position of the transmitter, input from transmitting position input unit 10 and on the basis of the receiving position information indicating the position of the receiver, input from receiving position input unit 14.
Subsequently, received electric field intensity calculation unit 16 calculates gain A(θo)[dB] in transmitting direction θo[degree] of an antenna's directive pattern on the basis of the antenna's directive pattern of the transmitter's antenna input from antenna's directive pattern input unit 13.
Subsequently, received electric field intensity calculation unit 16 calculates propagation loss L=g(D,f)[dB] by using function g of propagation loss formula input from propagation loss formula input unit 15.
Subsequently, received electric field intensity calculation unit 16 calculates the propagation loss compensation value C[dB] by comparing land-use classification information for the area around the receiver input from an external source with a propagation loss compensation value table set for the land-use classification information.
Subsequently, received electric field intensity calculation unit 16 calculates received electric field intensity R[dBm] by the following equation 1, and provides received electric field intensity averaging unit 17 with the received electric field intensity R[dBm].R=P+A−(L+C)  [Equation 1]
As a final step, received electric field intensity calculation unit 16 provides received electric field intensity averaging unit 17 with the received electric field intensity R[dBm] calculated by the equation 1.
Received electric field intensity averaging unit 17 averages, on the basis of the received electric field intensity averaging section input from an external source, received electric field intensity R which is calculated for each receiver in a received electric field intensity averaging section, and outputs, as an estimated received electric field intensity, the value obtained from the averaging process to outside.

Received electric field intensity estimating device and received electric field intensity estimating program


The disclosure concerns a method of processing a workpiece or in a plasma reactor chamber, using independent gas injection at the wafer edge.

In a plasma reactor chamber for etching silicon or polysilicon thin films on a semiconductor wafer, a uniform distribution of etch rate across the wafer is needed. Non-uniform distribution of etch rate across the wafer is indicated by non-uniformity in critical dimension (CD). The critical dimension may be a width of a typical line in the thin film circuit pattern. The CD is less in areas on the wafer surface experiencing a higher etch rate and greater in areas of lower etch rate.
In silicon etch chambers in which the process gas is injected from the ceiling, it has been found that the CD is very small at the wafer edge compared to other areas on the wafer surface. The effect of a small CD is typically confined to the outer or peripheral 1% of the wafer surface. This problem was not solved using conventional techniques. Specifically, etch uniformity can be improved by dividing the gas distribution into independent inner and outer gas injection zones at the ceiling and maximizing uniformity by adjusting the gas flow rates to the inner and outer zones. However, adjustment of the inner and outer gas injection zone flow rates does not solve the problem of small CD at the outer 1% of the wafer surface. Specifically, adjustment of the inner and outer gas injection zone flow rates at the ceiling can produce fairly uniform CD across the wafer, with the exception of a region at the wafer edge whose width is about 1% of the wafer diameter.
Therefore, there is need to independently control the CD at the outer 1% of the wafer edge without detracting from etch rate distribution uniformity achieved for the other areas of the wafer.

Method of processing a workpiece in a plasma reactor with independent wafer edge process gas injection


A modified atmosphere packaging method creates a modified atmosphere in a package including an inner package and an outer package. The inner package is composed at least partially of a polymeric material substantially permeable to oxygen, while the outer package is composed of a polymeric material substantially impermeable to oxygen. After a food product such as raw meat is placed within the inner package, the inner package is flushed with a desired mixture of gases to substantially remove oxygen from the inner package. The flushed inner package is then sealed and inserted into the outer package without sealing the outer package. Next, the outer package is flushed with the desired mixture of gases to substantially remove oxygen from the outer package. After flushing the outer package, the outer package is sealed. An oxygen scavenger is provided in the package to substantially absorb any residual oxygen within the package. The oxygen scavenger is activated with an oxygen uptake accelerator to increase the rate at which the residual oxygen is absorbed.

Containers have long been employed to store and transfer perishable food prior to presenting the food at a market where it will be purchased by the consumer. After perishable foods, such as meats, fruits, and vegetables, are harvested, they are placed into containers to preserve those foods for as long as possible. Maximizing the time in which the food remains preserved in the containers increases the profitability of all entities in the chain of distribution by minimizing the amount of spoilage.
The environment around which the food is preserved is a critical factor in the preservation process. Not only is maintaining an adequate temperature important, but the molecular and chemical content of the gases surrounding the food is significant as well. By providing an appropriate gas content to the environment surrounding the food, the food can be better preserved when maintained at the proper temperature or even when it is exposed to variations in temperature. This gives the food producer some assurance that after the food leaves his or her control, the food will be in an acceptable condition when it reaches the consumer.
Modified atmosphere packaging systems for one type of food, raw meats, exposes these raw meats to either extremely high levels or extremely low levels of oxygen (O.sub.2). Packaging systems which provide extremely low levels of oxygen are generally preferable because it is well known that the fresh quality of meat can be preserved longer under anaerobic conditions than under aerobic conditions. Maintaining low levels of oxygen minimizes the growth and multiplication of aerobic bacteria. Heretofore, low-level oxygen systems, such as the systems proposed in U.S. Pat. No. 3,574,642 to Weinke and U.S. Pat. No. 5,115,624 to Garwood, have obtained extremely low levels of oxygen by relying upon oxygen evacuation techniques.
In typical prior art packaging systems, a package composed of flexible or rigid gas barrier materials is loaded into an evacuation chamber. The package in the evacuation chamber is subjected to a vacuum which removes as much of the gases surrounding the package as possible. At this point the package is sealed. After the evacuated package is sealed, the raw meat either can be maintained in a "zero" atmosphere environment (commonly referred to as vacuum packaging) or can be refilled with a gas or mixture of gases to provide a modified atmosphere environment. To provide a modified atmosphere environment, the air-evacuated package is typically filled with a mixture of gases consisting of about 30 percent carbon dioxide (CO.sub.2) and 70 percent nitrogen (N.sub.2). Refilling the air-evacuated package with such a mixture of gases is believed to suppress the growth of anaerobic bacteria. The meat in the modified atmosphere package takes on a less desirable purple-red color which few consumers would associate with freshness. This purple-red color, however, quickly "blooms" to a bright red color generally associated with freshness when the package is opened to oxygenate the fresh meat by exposure to air. The package is typically opened immediately prior to display of the fresh meat to consumers so as to induce blooming of the fresh meat just prior to display to the consumers.
Low-level oxygen systems relying upon evacuation techniques to diminish oxygen levels suffer from several disadvantages. For example, such systems operate at exceptionally slow speeds because they require the use of an evacuation device along the packaging line. The evacuation process is time-consuming. Typically, only about four to six evacuated packages can be prepared on a packaging line in one minute. In addition, the evacuation techniques render it difficult to remove any oxygen within a previously wrapped package such as an overwrapped meat tray. The trapped oxygen raises the residual oxygen level in the package and can also cause billowing and subsequent damage to the package during evacuation.
A need therefore exists for a modified atmosphere package and a system for making that package which overcome the aforementioned shortcomings associated with existing modified atmosphere packages and existing systems for making those packages.


An ink jet recording method includes preparing a bright image and improving the lightness, or the L* value, of the bright base image. More specifically, a bright image is formed using a bright pigment, and then an ink jet process is performed to discharge a white ink composition containing a white pigment onto the bright image with a weight per unit area (g/cm2) in a range of 0.01 to 0.5, inclusive.

1. Technical Field
The invention relates to an ink jet recording method and records made by the ink jet recording method.
2. Related Art
Records carrying a bright image on their recording surface have recently been in growing demand. Known methods for recording bright images include pressing a metal foil sheet onto a recording medium having a smooth surface, depositing metal on a plastic film in vacuum, applying a bright ink to a recording medium and then compressing the medium with the ink, and so forth. However, these methods have disadvantages such as a complicated recording process and a limited range of suitable recording media, and thus some techniques to record bright images by an ink jet process have been proposed, including that disclosed in JP-A-2008-208330.
However, image formation by an ink jet process is disadvantageous in, for example, the following ways: The formed bright image (e.g., an image expressing metallic luster) has a low lightness; The image transfer method and the recording medium often involve the use of a bright material somewhat lacking in lightness, and this results in the failure to achieve the intended degree of lightness. In an ink jet recording method, a specific example of the image formation by an ink jet process, the bright ink contains a bright pigment in the form of metal fragments (e.g., aluminum fragments), metal particles (e.g., silver particles), or the like, and the use of these fragments or particles unfortunately leads to a reduced lightness of the image, making it difficult to form a bright image having an intended degree of lightness (or to increase the gloss of the image). In other words, known and ordinary techniques for recording a bright image on a white recording medium, for example, cannot achieve their aim because the formed image lacks in lightness at the portions that should be bright.

Ink jet recording method, and record made by the same


A recognition method and apparatus is disclosed which provides information on what type of barcode is to be recognized and the strategy to be applied in identifying and decoding the barcode. For N raster lines of a dimension "x", an array of one byte sums of dimension "x" is created. The sums are the sum of the "1" bits in the rectangular binary image input array in the N lines of the image. A new array can be generated which will have a dimension equal to the number of changes from black to white in the original "x-y" digital image. The values in this array will represent the length of each run of same color pels. These runs are then normalized according to rules of a particular barcode standard being handled.

1. Technical Field
The invention disclosed broadly relates to data processing systems and more particularly relates to improvements in barcode recognition.
2. Background Art
With digital imaging techniques there is a general requirement to capture coded information that can be associated with the image. This coded information is used to classify the image and to ease later retrieval of the picture from storage.
Modern digital scanning machinery can scan a page of paper in less than one second. If a human operator then has to view the image representation and key enter the relevant code information, the effective capture speed takes, perhaps, 15-20 seconds. This reduces operator productivity and prevents the imaging application from being a cost justified exercise.
The requirement is to be able to scan the bit patterns in the digital image file and to create coded information for classifying the image.
Optical character recognition (OCR) is very sensitive to noise in the image and there is little redundancy in the digital image data representing textual characters to permit (with current art) much higher than a 98% accuracy in recognition--particularly with low resolution digital images such as come from a facsimile machine.
Optical mark reading (OMR) has been used for some time to allow mechanical classification of images with high reliability. This technique has the disadvantage that the whole image is the OMR data and so the coded data can only be used to classify related images in a set containing the OMR page.
Barcodes (of which there are probably 15-20 varieties of coding techniques) are now an everyday occurrence on many objects handled by the general public--particularly groceries, toiletries and stationery items. They are easy to generate and print on current art general purpose printers. They are sufficiently unobtrusive on documents that will be scanned into a digital imaging system that they can be an integral part of the page from which coded data needs to be extracted.
The problem to be solved is to locate the occurrence of a barcode contained in the data representing a digital image and to convert that barcode image into the corresponding coded data. The requirement is to get 100% accuracy in recognition or an indication of failure. There cannot be partial recognition or potential substitution of characters since the data will be used for classification. (Recognition of "HERE" instead of "THERE" is not acceptable.)
The requirement is to be able to recognize barcodes where accidental or malicious damage has occurred (for example, someone has written across the paper where the barcode appears). A significant amount of skew that may occur during the image capture process must also be tolerated.

Method and apparatus for barcode recognition in a digital image

International Business Machines Corporation


A picture frame (10) is provided having a front shell (11) and a mating rear shell (12). The front shell has a picture cavity (18) adapted to hold a picture therein. The exterior surfaces (14) and (15) of the front and rear shells, respectively, are configured to resemble a sports item. The front and rear shells also have a generally flat bottom surfaces (21) and (26) configured so that the center of gravity CG falls within the bounds of the bottom surfaces so that each shell is independently self standing. The rear shell has an interior surface (25) contoured and imprinted to resemble the interior of a scene corresponding to the sports item depicted by the exterior surfaces.

Picture frames have existed for many years. Today's picture frames typically include a generally low profile, rectangular frame mounted about a rectangular sheet of glass. While the frame may be constructed of a variety of material with hundreds of potential colors, the basic design can be quite mundane.
Recently, picture frames have been designed having unique shapes, as shown in U.S. Pat. Nos. Des. 339,239 and Des. 261,463. These picture frames are designed to resemble baseballs. The three dimensional aspect of these frames provide for a unique appearance. These frames however still remain static, as they are intended to be merely viewed and are not intended to be interacted with by a viewer of the framed photograph.
It thus is seen that a need remains for a picture frame which is more dynamic. It is to the provision of such that the present invention is primarily directed.


A system, in certain embodiments, includes a current control brush assembly including an axial button having a first electrically conductive housing retaining a first set of electrically conductive filaments. The first set of electrically conductive filaments extends generally inward along an axial direction. The current control brush assembly also includes a radial shaft grounding ring (SGR) coupled to the axial button. The radial SGR includes a second electrically conductive housing retaining a second set of electrically conductive filaments. The second set of electrically conductive filaments is arranged circumferentially around the second electrically conductive housing, and the second set of electrically conductive filaments extends generally inward along a radial direction.

The invention relates generally to a current control brush assembly and, more specifically, to a brush assembly having axial and radial filaments configured to contact a rotating shaft.
During operation of an electric motor, a static electrical charge may accumulate on the motor drive shaft due to friction between the rotating shaft and the surrounding air. In addition, friction between rotating objects electrically coupled to the shaft and the surrounding air may further increase the static electrical charge on the shaft. Moreover, in certain embodiments, the electric motor is driven by a variable frequency drive that may generate elevated common mode voltages. As a result, an electrical charge may be induced within the shaft, thereby further increasing the accumulated charge. If the shaft electrical charge exceeds a threshold value, the shaft may discharge to the motor housing, thereby increasing wear on motor elements (e.g., bearings, windings, etc.) and/or interfering with operation of objects coupled to the shaft.

Current control brush assembly having axial and radial filaments


The present technology relates to a distance measuring device and a distance measuring method that inhibit possible noise in a pixel signal based on reflected light from an object to allow accuracy of distance measurement to be maintained. A distance measuring device according to an aspect of the present technology includes a light emitting section emitting irradiation light, a light receiving section receiving reflected light corresponding to the irradiation light reflected at an object, a calculation section calculating a distance to the object on the basis of a time from emission of the irradiation light until reception of the reflected light, and a control section controlling emission of the irradiation light. The light receiving section includes a plurality of AD converting section AD-converting pixel signals read from the pixels. A first pixel signal and a second pixel signal respectively read from a first pixel and a second pixel of the plurality of pixels forming the light receiving section are AD-converted by an identical AD converting section of the plurality of AD converting sections, the first and second pixels being adjacent to each other. During a process of calculating the time, the calculation section calculates a difference between the first pixel signal and the second pixel signal AD-converted by the identical AD converting section.

As a distance measuring device measuring a distance to an object (hereinafter also expressed as performing distance measurement of the object), a TOF (Time Of Flight) sensor is known (see, for example, PTL 1).
The TOF sensor emits irradiation light that is light radiated to an object, and receives reflected light corresponding to the irradiation light reflected at the object. The TOF sensor thus determines a time from emission of the irradiation light until reception of the reflected light, that is, a reflection time Δt until the irradiation light returns after being reflected at the object. The TOF sensor then uses the reflection time Δt and a light speed c [m/s] to calculate a distance L to the object on the basis of Equation (1).L=c×Δt/2  (1)

Distance measuring device and distance measuring method

SONY SEMICONDUCTOR SOLUTIONS CORPORATION


A play set for toy vehicles is provided, the play set having: a ramp member pivotally mounted to the play set for movement between a first un-deployed position wherein toy vehicles travelling thereon will be directed under an upper track section and a deployed position wherein vehicles travelling thereon will be launched up into the upper track section; a first mechanism coupled to the ramp member for moving the ramp member between the first position and the second position; and a second mechanism for releasing a floor portion of the upper track section such that toy vehicles located thereon are dropped through an opening in the upper track section, wherein the second mechanism is only actuated after a predetermined number of vehicles are located on the upper track section.

Play sets for toy vehicles are popular toys which are known to provide entertainment and excitement to a user. These play sets typically include a track configuration intended to guide a propelled toy vehicle, such as a 1/64 scale die-cast metal toy vehicle, through a course. The track configurations may include closed-loop continuous track arrangements and open-end arrangements. Toy vehicles are placed on these play set tracks and propelled across the configuration by hand or by an external propulsion means.
To bring increased entertainment and excitement to these play sets, the track configurations may include features such as intersecting tracks, jumps, and other types of track configurations.
Accordingly, it is desirable to provide a track set for toy vehicles that can propel multiple toy vehicles into unique stunt arrangements to provide an enhanced play factor for the user.


A braking band extends between an inner diameter and an outer diameter. The braking band has two plates having inner surfaces delimiting a gap, outer surfaces having opposite flat circumferential portions and a plate body having an extension in axial direction. The plates are joined by connecting elements. At least one plate has at least one projection projecting into the gap without reaching the opposite plate, forming a localized narrowing of the gap and a thickening of the plate body, creating a localized increase of the thickness of plate. The projection extends from a first connecting element to an adjacent connecting element, connecting them, and along the circumferential direction, connecting at least two adjacent connecting elements. A group of projections extends circumferentially along a discontinuous annular path, avoiding a uniform distribution in circumferential direction.

The brake caliper in a disc brake is generally arranged straddling the outer peripheral edge of a brake disc, adapted to rotate about a rotation axis (A-A) defining an axial direction (X-X). Moreover, in a disc brake there is defined a radial direction (R-R) which is substantially orthogonal to said axial direction (X-X), and a tangential (C-C) or circumferential direction (C-C), orthogonal both to said axial direction (X-X) and to said radial direction (R-R).
As is known, discs for disc brake comprise a bell adapted to associate the disc with a hub of a vehicle, from which an annular portion extends called a braking band, which is intended to cooperate with pads of a caliper. In the case of discs of the ventilated type, the braking band is made by means of two plates facing and connected to each other by means of connecting elements, respectively, for example in the shape of pillars or fins. The outer surfaces of the two plates define opposite braking surfaces while the inner surfaces, together with the pillars or fins, delimit ventilation channels for cooling the disc, which channels the air flows through according to a centrifugal direction during the rotary motion of the disc itself.
Said braking band is intended to cooperate with disc brake calipers adapted to exert a braking action on the vehicle by exerting, by means of pads, friction on opposite surfaces of the two plates, said braking surfaces.
It is known that during the operation of the brakes, the friction between the brake caliper pads and the braking surfaces of the braking band generates an increased quantity of heat which requires being disposed of.
The heat generated indeed causes several undesired phenomena, such as for example, the deformation of the braking band, the formation of cracks on the braking surfaces or localized transformations of state of the material forming the braking band which in turn result in the deterioration of the braking band itself.
In the applications on high performance motor vehicles with an increased braking efficiency in particular, there is much energy to be disposed of and the aforesaid need to dispose of the heat generated during the braking action is even more felt.
Ventilated discs of the type mentioned above have undergone a continuous evolution over time, in particular concerning the number and shape of the so-called ventilation channels, thus defining the gap formed by the two plates axially facing each other.
Among said known ventilated discs, the so-called "pillar discs" have shown to be particularly efficient in terms of heat disposal performance, i.e. cooling, in which discs the ventilation channels are limited internally by particular column connecting elements, having limited comparable radial and circumferential extension with respect to the axial extension thereof, defined as "pillars" which transversely connect the two plates.
For example, "pillar" ventilated discs are known from EP 1 373 751 B1, in which the pillars geometrically are arranged along three concentric circumferences which are coaxial to the disc and have a different radius, to form three "lines"; if cross-sectioned in a plane which is parallel to the two plates and is median with respect thereto, the pillars have different types of cross sections (for example, "rhomboidal" cross-sectioned pillars in the intermediate and outer lines; "drop-shaped" pillars in the inner line).
Other ventilated discs with "pillar" structures are known for example from WO 2004/102028 and from U.S. Pat. No. 5,542,503.
The so-called "fin" or "wing" discs are known among ventilated discs, in which the ventilation channels are limited internally by particular connecting elements elongated along a prevalent direction, for example directed according to a direction parallel to the radial direction (R-R), or spiral connecting elements, and which transversely connect the two plates.
It is also known that the braking action carried out by the pads against the braking surfaces of the disc generates heat, accordingly an increase of temperature of the disc up to making the disc itself incandescent in the case of particularly burdensome performance. The disc is deformed and the contact between the pads and the braking surfaces deteriorates due to the increased temperature reached by the disc during the braking. Moreover, the friction material of the pads undergoes a kind of vitrification and polluting by the disc material.
It has also been detected that the higher temperature is reached at a middle annular portion of the braking surfaces, i.e. at a middle annular portion of the outer surfaces of the respective plates. Such an area is easily subject to the formation of cracks over the course of the life of the disc.
To obviate the above-disclosed drawbacks, the need in the field is particularly felt on the one hand to increase the efficiency of the dispersion of the heat generated by the braking so as to contain the temperatures reached by the disc during and following the braking, and the need on the other hand to increase the mechanical resistance of these middle portions of the braking band.
Solutions are known from WO 2004/102028 and also from WO 2002/064992, U.S. Pat. Nos. 7,066,306, 7,267,210, US 2006 0243546, US 2004 0124047, U.S. Pat. Nos. 6,367,599, 5,542,503 and 4,865,167. Although they are satisfactory from various viewpoints, these known solutions do not allow a compromise to be reached between the desired mechanical resistance in the middle annular area of the braking band and the contrasting need to maximize, in the same area, the airflow capable of removing the significant localized increase of temperature caused by the braking action.
However, it is worth noting that ventilated discs of the type mentioned do not in themselves provide a solution to a further problem arising simultaneously to the problem mentioned above and which is to be resolved at the same time, a problem which may affect the disc brakes, in particular the disc brakes with ventilated discs, a problem briefly described hereinbelow.
As is known, during the operation of the brakes, the disc and the braking bands in particular may mechanically vibrate at various frequencies correlated with various vibration manners of the dis itself. Such disc vibrations may result for example from resonances triggered by vibrations of objects mechanically coupled to the disc which are stressed in the braking step should the vibration frequencies of such objects be coincident with or sufficiently close to the vibration frequencies of the disc.
It is also known that the above vibrations cause an audible noise, in particular in the shape of disturbing squealing noises, when the resonance frequencies are in the audible range (for example, between 2 and 9 KHz, with subsequent more or less shrill squealing noises).
Accordingly, the need arises to devise solutions for reducing or eliminating such squealing noises by means of construction contrivances which "move" the vibration frequencies of the disc to different values from the excited ones.
Certain solutions are known for discs with structures which are different from the mentioned "pillar" structures.
For example, IT 1 273 754 has braking bands with projections protruding into the inner part of the plates, towards the gap between the two plates, in particular positions and with masses which were specifically identified in order to reduce the vibrations arising and the subsequent noise.
Other ventilated discs with structures adapted to reduce disturbing vibrating phenomena are known for example, from U.S. Pat. No. 4,523,666.
Document U.S. Pat. No. 3,983,973 of Knorr-Bremse GmbH shows a brake disc comprising a pair of friction plates spaced apart from each other to form a ventilation channel. A braking force may be applied against said plates by means of a braking gasket of brake pads. The two plates are interconnected by a plurality of flow guide ribs or fins so as to define ventilation passages between the friction plates. Strips of anti-vibrating material are positioned in radial grooves formed in the opposite surfaces of the friction plates. These inserts consist of metal elements which damp the vibrations and have a greater expansion coefficient than that of the ferrous material with which the friction plates are made, such as lead, bronze or copper.
A similar solution is known from US2009035598.
It is known from document US2012111692 to couple passive dampers of the Squawk type with the braking device to reduce the vibrations.
From solutions U.S. Pat. No. 6,131,707, WO2016020820, WO2017153902, WO2017153873, EP0318687, WO2011058594, WO2006105131, US2006219500, U.S. Pat. No. 6,145,636, US2010122880, U.S. Pat. Nos. 6,325,185, 5,452,3666, 5,004,078, it is known to provide connections between the braking band plates circumferentially distributed in non-uniform manner in order to reduce the vibrations excited by the braking action.
However, under certain conditions of the braking action, these distributions of the connecting elements of the plates create structural non-uniformities capable of generating completely undesired stresses concentrated in the braking band.
Therefore, the need has arisen for new structures of ventilated discs which simultaneously offer both particular cooling efficiency performance and properties of minimizing the vibrations and noise in the braking step, and while avoiding to cause concentrated stresses in the braking band which could compromise the integrity and duration thereof.
The aforesaid known examples of ventilated discs and related braking bands are not capable of adequately meeting all the strongly desired requirements mentioned.
It is thus the problem at the basis of the present invention to devise a braking band and a disc for disc brake, which have structural and functional features such as to meet the aforesaid needs while obviating the drawbacks mentioned with reference to the known art.

Braking band of a disc for a disc brake of the ventilated type


Charge trapping memory cells are protected from over-erasing in response to an erase command. For example, in response to an erase command, one bias arrangement is applied to program charge trapping memory cells, and another bias arrangement is applied to erase the charge trapping memory cells, such that the charge trapping memory cells have a higher net electron charge, in the erased state than i.n the programmed state. In another example, an integrated circuit with an array of charge trapping memory cells has logic which responds to an erase command by applying similar bias arrangements to the charge trapping memory cells. In a further example, such an integrated circuit is manufactured.

1. Field
This technology relates generally to semiconductor devices, and more specifically to nonvolatile memories with program and erase operations.
2. Description of Related Art
Both FIGS. 1A and 1B show a charge-trapping memory cell with a substrate 170, first current-carrying terminal 150, second current-carrying terminal 160, bottom oxide 140, charge-trapping structure 130, top oxide 120, and gate 110. FIGS. 1A and 1B show a charge-trapping memory cell undergoing the establishment of a high threshold state in different parts of the charge-trapping structure. Representative top oxides include silicon dioxide and silicon oxynitride having a thickness of about 50 to 100 Angstroms, or other similar high dielectric constant materials including, for example Al2O3. Representative bottom oxides include silicon dioxide and silicon oxynitride having a thickness of about 30 to 100 Angstroms, or other similar high dielectric constant materials. Representative charge-trapping structures include silicon nitride having a thickness of about 30 to 90 Angstroms, or other similar high dielectric constant materials, including metal oxides such as Al2O3, HfO2, and others. The charge-trapping structure may be a discontinuous set of pockets or particles of charge-trapping material, or a continuous layer as shown in the drawing.
In FIG. 1A, the right part of the charge-trapping structure 130 undergoes a program operation to establish a low threshold state. The voltage of the gate 110 is −5 V. The voltage of the drain 160 is 5 V. The voltage of the source 150 is 0 V. The voltage of the substrate 170 is 0V. Consequently, the right part of the charge-trapping structure 130 has trapped charge 133. In FIG. 1B, the left part of the charge-trapping structure 130 undergoes a program operation to establish a low threshold state. The voltage of the gate 110 is −5 V. The voltage of the drain 160 is 0 V. The voltage of the source 150 is 5 V. The voltage of the substrate 170 is 0V. Consequently, the left part of the charge-trapping structure 130 has trapped charge 133.
In FIG. 2A, the nonvolatile memory cell undergoes an erase operation. The voltage of the gate 210 is −8 V. The voltage of the drain 260 is 10 V. The voltage of the source 250 is 10 V. The voltage of the substrate 270 is 10 V. Consequently, the electrons move from the gate 210 to the charge trapping structure 230 and from the charge trapping structure 230 towards the substrate 270. In FIG. 2B, the nonvolatile memory cell undergoes an erase operation with reversed voltage polarities. The voltage of the gate 210 is 10 V. The voltage of the drain 260 is −8 V. The voltage of the source 250 is −8 V. The voltage of the substrate 270 is −8 V. Consequently, the electrons move to the gate 210 from the charge trapping structure 230 and to the charge trapping structure 230 from the substrate 270. The erase operation may also be carried out with a floating voltage at the drain 260 and/or the source 250.
FIG. 3 shows an example process flow of erasing a nonvolatile memory cell. In 310, a command to erase the nonvolatile memory cell is received. In 320, in response to the erase command, a biasing arrangement for erasing the nonvolatile memory cell is applied to the terminals of the nonvolatile memory cell. In 330, an erase verify test is performed to confirm that a sufficient amount of erasing has been performed. If the erase verify test fails, then the biasing arrangement for erasing the nonvolatile memory cell is applied again. If the erase verify test passes, then the erase process is successful and done 340.
FIGS. 4A, 4B, and 4C show graphs of the relative distribution of the number of nonvolatile memory cells at various threshold voltages corresponding to the programmed state and erased state. FIG. 4A shows, prior to an erase operation, some nonvolatile memory cells having threshold voltages in the range of 3.5 V to 4 V corresponding to the programmed state 410, and some nonvolatile memory cells having threshold voltages in the range of 5 V to 6 V corresponding to the erased state 420. FIG. 4B shows an erase operation being performed on both the nonvolatile memory cells having threshold voltages corresponding to the programmed state 410 and on the nonvolatile memory cells having threshold voltages corresponding to the erased state 420. As a result, the distribution of the nonvolatile memory cells originally in the programmed state 410 shifts to the erased state 415. Similarly, the distribution of the nonvolatile memory cells originally in the erased state 420 shifts to the erased state 425. FIG. 4C shows the actual distribution of threshold voltages of the nonvolatile memory cells in the erased state after the erase operation, which is the sum of distribution 415 and distribution 425, or distribution 430 in the range of 5 V to 7 V. Because the erase operation shifted not only the threshold voltages of the nonvolatile memory cells in the programmed state 410, but also the threshold voltages of the nonvolatile memory cells in the erased state 420, the result of the program-and-erase cycle is an undesirable wide distribution 430 of threshold voltages of nonvolatile memory cells in the erased state.
Therefore, it would be desirable to perform an erase operation on a nonvolatile memory cell while reducing the tendency of the distribution of threshold voltages of nonvolatile memory cells in the erased state to drift.

Method and apparatus for protection from over-erasing nonvolatile memory cells


An electric equipment of the present invention has an insulation structure at a welding part formed by joining end parts of a plurality of conductors with each other, the welding part having a rectangular cross section and being coated with an insulating coating, in which the insulating coating is voidless and has a coating thickness of 50 to 1000 μm in the welding part, and in which an edge cover ratio of the insulating coating is 20% or more.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to electric equipment having an insulation structure at welding parts.
2. Description of Related Art
In Patent Document 1 (International Publication WO No. 98/54823), an alternating-current generator for a vehicle is disclosed in which a number of conductor segments with a square cross section are inserted to slots, and thereafter each pair of end parts of the respective conductor segments are joined with each other to form a stator coil.
However, in the alternating-current generator for the vehicle, a resin coating in a front end portion in an axial direction of a coil end is in a state of being peeled off because it is required to form a connection part by joining front end parts of a conductor segment pair to the front end portion in the axial direction of the coil end of the stator coil. Therefore, there was a room for improvement with respect to the insulation performance of the stator coil.
With the aim of improving the insulation performance of the connection part (welding part), a technology is disclosed in which a cap is arranged in the welding part and the welding part is embedded by insulation resin in Patent Document 2 (Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2000-209802).
Also, a technology is disclosed in which insulation treatment is performed using powder resin or liquid insulating varnish with a similar aim in Patent Document 3 (Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2001-54247).

Electric equipment having insulation structure at welding parts

Abstract: According to the present invention, the insulation performance of the insulation structure in which the welding part formed by joining the end parts of the plurality of conductors with each other can be improved, the welding part having a rectangular cross section and being coated with an insulating coating, and a highly reliable electric equipment can be provided.


Methods and apparatuses for controlling the flow of video over Ethernet (VoE) traffic in a network are disclosed. The method can include originating the VoE traffic from an add node in the network. A first control signal can be received from a first drop node in the network containing a drop port configured to receive the VoE traffic. The add node can determined if the first drop node contains the drop port based on the first control signal.

1. Field of the Invention
The present disclosure is related to network communications and more specifically to Video over Ethernet transport in provider networks.
2. Description of the Related Art
The technology of Video over Ethernet (VoE) is affected by and limited by the ability to separate video from standard Ethernet traffic in a reliable manner. Previous iterations of Video over Ethernet required higher layer protocols. That is, layer 2 (Data Link Layer) was not used as a method of segregating Video traffic from standard Ethernet traffic. Because video data flows unidirectionally and at a constant bit rate, any errors which occur during transmission as well as discards due to network congestion are not able to be tolerated. Accordingly, extreme care is necessary in the planning of the network in order to avoid oversubscription with other Ethernet traffic which can trigger network discards and cause video interruptions. The unidirectional nature of the traffic and the necessity to often drop and continue the flows require multicasting of VoE frames from one "add" site to multiple 'drop" locations requiring a multicast address (Destination Address (DA)) in order to steer traffic around a network. This process however causes inefficiencies in the use of network bandwidth because the traffic may flow to as well as through their intended destinations. In still other applications a unicast of the VoE frames from a single "add" site to a single "drop" site within a network is necessary or desirable. The difficulty is the ability to determine when to switch between multicast or unicast and how to accomplish this switching.
Thus the existing methods of transportation of Video over Ethernet through Ethernet switches using a multicast Destination Address provides inefficient bandwidth use and conversely using only unicast Destination Addresses restricts the usefulness because it inherently removes the drop and continue functionality. Additionally switching between the multicast and unicast mode in existing systems requires manual intervention making it impractical and certainly more difficult to implement on a regular basis.
There is thus a need to provide an automatic mechanism to determine the nature of the required destination address DA (unicast or multicast) and whether the traffic was discard eligible due to the number of destination locations.

Video over Ethernet bandwidth optimization


An image pickup apparatus is disclosed which provides an appropriate inclination guide display in accordance with an aspect ratio of a picked-up image and the like. The image pickup apparatus includes an inclination detector which detects an inclination of the image pickup apparatus, a display device capable of superimposedly showing an inclination guide display corresponding to a detection output from the inclination detector, on a picked-up image, and an aspect ratio setter which sets the aspect ratio of a picked-up image. The apparatus includes a display controller which controls whether or not to show the inclination guide display on the display device on the basis of the aspect ratio set by the aspect ratio setter.

To enable video images picked up with a video camera or the like to be seen comfortably, techniques for keeping the camera horizontal have been proposed. For example, Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 64-40824 discloses that a horizontally detector detects an inclination of the camera to display information corresponding to the detected inclination on a display device to notice and warn the user of the inclination of the camera. Further, for the display of the inclination, a proposal has been made of, for example, a technique for displaying a horizontal reference line and the inclination of the camera in different colors, and if they match, displaying them as a single line as disclosed in Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2002-271654.

Image pickup apparatus with inclination guide display


A method of comparing the closeness of a target tree to other trees located in a database of trees, said method comprising the steps of: (a) calculating a constraint in respect of each tree in the database based on an estimated number of edit operations and a characteristic of the target tree; (b) calculating a constrained tree edit distance between the target tree and each tree in the database using the constraint obtained in step (a); and (c) comparing the calculated constrained tree edit distances. The method can also be applied to matching a target tree representable structure to its closest tree representable structure.

The need to identify the parent of a subfragment arises frequently in a variety of fields ranging from engineering and medicine to electronics, computer science, physics, chemistry and biology. In most of the cases the problem is computationally intractable since the number of variables involved as a consequence of the degrees of uncertainty, renders the calculations impossible. This situation is aggravated by the common occurrence that the integrity of the sub-fragment may be compromised in some way.
Typically, when the pattern to be recognized is inherently a "two-dimensional" structure, it cannot be adequately represented using a one-dimensional (string or circular string) approximation. By representing the pattern as a tree and by utilizing tree comparison algorithms one can, generally speaking, achieve excellent recognition strategies. Indeed, such schemes have been utilized in Pattern Recognition (PR) in areas such as clustering by Lu (IEEE Trans. Pattern Anal. and Mach. Intell., PAMI 1, pp. 219-224 (1979)) and by Cheng and Lu in waveform correlation (IEEE Trans. PAMI, PAMI 7, pp. 299-305 (1985)). However, when the pattern to be recognized is occluded and only noisy information of a fragment of the pattern is available, the problem encountered can be mapped onto that of recognizing a tree by processing the information in one of its noisy subtrees or subsequence trees.
Trees are a fundamental data structure in computer science. A tree is, in general, a structure which stores data and it consists of atomic components called nodes and branches. The nodes have values which relate to data from the real world, and the branches connect the nodes so as to denote the relationship between the pieces of data resident in the nodes. By definition, no edges of a tree constitute a closed path or cycle. Every tree has a unique node called a "root". The branch from a node toward the root points to the "parent" of the said node. Similarly, the branch of the node away from the root points to the "child" of the said node. The tree is said to be ordered if there is a left-to-right ordering for the children of every node.
Trees have numerous applications in various fields of computer science including artificial intelligence, data modeling, pattern recognition, and expert systems. In all of these fields, the trees structures are processed by using operations such as deleting their nodes, inserting nodes, substituting node values, pruning sub-trees from the trees, and traversing the nodes in the trees. When more than one tree is involved, operations that are generally utilized involve the merging of trees and the splitting of trees into multiple subtrees. In many of the applications which deal with multiple trees, the fundamental problem involves that of comparing them.
Trees, graphs, and webs are typically considered as a multidimensional generalization of strings. Among these different structures, trees are considered to be the most important "nonlinear' structures in computer science, and the tree-editing problem has been studied since 1976. Similar to the string-editing problem, (see: D. Sankoff and J. B. Kruskal, Time wraps, string edits, and macromolecules: Theory and practice of sequence comparison, Addison-Wesley (1983); R. A. Wagner and M. J. Fischer, J. Assoc. Comput. Mach., 21:168-173, (1974); B. J. Oommen and R. L. Kashyap, Pattern Recognition, 31, pp. 1159-1177 (1998); P. A. V. Hall and G. R. Dowling, Comput. Sur., 12: pp 381-402 (1980); R. L. Kashyap and B. J. Oommen, Intern. J. Computer Math., 13: pp 17-40 (1983); R. Lowrance and R. A. Wagner, J. ACM, 22: pp 177-183 (1975)), the tree-editing problem concerns the determination of the distance between two trees as measured by the minimum cost sequence of edit operations. Typically, the edit sequence considered includes the substitution, insertion, and deletion of nodes needed to transform one tree into the other.
Unlike the string-editing problem, only few results have been published concerning the tree-editing problem. In 1977, Selkow (Inform. Process. Letters, 6(6):184-186, (1977)) (see also Sankoff and J. B. Kruskal, Time wraps, string edits, and macromolecules: Theory and practice of sequence comparison, Addison-Wesley (1983)) presented a tree editing algorithm in which insertions and deletions were only restricted to the leaves. Tai (J. Assoc. Comput. Mach., 26:422-433 (1979)) in 1979 presented another algorithm in which insertions and deletions could take place at any node within the tree except the root. The algorithm of Lu (IEEE Trans. Pattern Anal. and Mach. Intell., PAMI 1(2):219-224 (1979)) on the other hand, did not solve this problem for trees of more than two levels. The best known algorithm for solving the general tree-editing problem is the one due to Zhang and Shasha (SIAM J. Comput., 18(6):1245-1262 (1989)). Also, in all the papers published till the mid-90's, the literature primarily contains only one numeric inter-tree dissimilarity measure—their pairwise "distance" measured by the minimum cost edit sequence. The literature on the comparison of trees is otherwise scanty: Shapiro and Zhang (Comput. Appl. Biosci. vol. 6, no. 4, 309-318, (1990)) has suggested how tree comparison can be done for ordered and unordered labeled trees using tree alignment as opposed to the edit distance utilized elsewhere (Zhang and Shasha (1989) supra). The question of comparing trees with variable length don't care edit operations was also solved by Zhang, Shasha and Wang (Proceedings of the 1992 Symposium on Combinatorial Pattern Matching, CPM92:148-161, (1992)). Otherwise, the results concerning unordered trees are primarily complexity results: Zhang, et al., (Information Processing Letters, 42:133-139, (1992)) showed that editing unordered trees with bounded degrees is NP-hard, and even MAX SNP-hard by Zhang and T. Jiang, (Information Processing Letters, 49:249-254 (1994)).
The most recent results concerning tree comparisons are probably the ones due to Oommen, Zhang and Lee (IEEE Transactions on Computers, TC-45:1426-1434, (1996)) In this publication, the authors defined and formulated an abstract measure of comparison, Ω(T1, T2), between two trees T1 and T2 presented in terms of a set of elementary inter-symbol measures ω(.,.) and two abstract operators. By appropriately choosing the concrete values for these two operators and for ω(.,.), the measure Ω was used to define various numeric quantities between T1 and T2 including (i) the edit distance between two trees, (ii) the size of their largest common sub-tree, (iii) Prob(T2|T1), the probability of receiving T2 given that T1 was transmitted across a channel causing independent substitution and deletion errors, and, (iv) the a posteriori probability of T1 being the transmitted tree given that T2 is the received tree containing independent substitution, insertion and deletion errors.
Unlike the generalized tree editing problem, the problem of comparing a tree with one of its possible subtrees or Subsequence Trees (SuTs) has almost not been studied in the literature at all. The only reported results for comparing trees in this setting have involved constrained tree distances and are due to Oommen and Lee, (Information Sciences, Vol. 77 No. 3,4:253-273 (1994)) and Zhang, (Proceeding of the IASTED International Symposium, New York, pp. 92-95 (1990)).

Method of comparing the closeness of a target tree to other trees using noisy sub-sequence tree processing


An image display device and a method for operating the same are disclosed. The method for operating the image display device including a plurality of backlight lamp includes receiving a 3-Dimensional (3D) image, alternately aligning the left-eye image and the right-eye image of the 3D image, and displaying any one of the aligned left- and right-eye images if a display switching signal for switching the 3D image to a 2-Dimensional (2D) image is input. In the displaying step, the backlight lamps are turned on in synchronization with any one of the aligned left- and right-eye images. Accordingly, it is possible to easily view the 3D image as the 2D image.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an image display device and a method for operating the same, and more particularly to an image display device for easily displaying a 3-Dimensional (3D) image as a 2-Dimensional (2D) image and a method for operating the same.
2. Description of the Related Art
An image display device includes a function for displaying a viewable image to a user. The user can view a broadcast using the image display device. The image display device displays a broadcast, which is selected by the user from broadcast signals transmitted from a broadcast station, on a display. Currently, analog broadcasting is being phased out in favor of digital broadcasting.
A digital broadcast refers to a broadcast for transmitting digital video and audio signals. The digital broadcast has low data loss due to robustness against external noise, advantageous error correction and high-resolution, as compared with an analog broadcast. In addition, the digital broadcast can provide a bidirectional service unlike the analog broadcast.
Recently, research into stereoscopic images has been actively conducted. In addition, in various environments and technologies as well as the field of computer graphics, the stereoscopic image technology has become increasingly common and put to practical use.

Image display device and method for operating the same