Apparatus and methods for lockout of toggle switches, such as those toggle switches that include a captivating switch head (e.g., an enlarged and/or offset switch head) disposed on a cylindrical-shaped switch arm of the toggle switch. In one example, the apparatus and methods may employ a securement housing configured to be secured to a toggle switch by capturing at least a portion of the switch arm of the toggle switch between a switch head and an adjacent surface in a manner that prevents movement of the switch arm from a first switch position (e.g., “off” position) to a second switch position (e.g., “on” position).

Occupational Health and Safety Administration (OSHA) and Air Force Occupational Safety and Health (AFOSH) regulations require circuit breaker switches to be locked in the OFF position during servicing and/or maintenance of machines and equipment, such as aircraft. These regulations include OSHA standard 1910.147 and AFOSH standard 91-501, and require affixing of appropriate lockout devices to energy isolating devices during servicing and/or maintenance of machines and equipment.
Examples of circuit breaker switches traditionally employed for aircraft electrical systems include push/pull circuit breaker switches that are pulled outward to place the switch in the OFF position. Such push/pull switches may be locked out for servicing or maintenance by using a collar that is configured to be inserted under the push/pull switch to lock the switch in the OFF position by preventing the switch from being pushed in toward the ON position. The lockout collar may be removed following a servicing or maintenance operation so that the circuit breaker switch may then be pushed in to the ON position. Other types of circuit breaker lockout devices include those having a casing member having an opening that may be positioned around a conventional household circuit breaker toggle switch and having a set screw that may be driven into engagement with the circuit breaker toggle switch to secure the switch in the desired position. However, available lock out devices do not work well, if at all, with circuit breaker toggle switches having cylindrical switch arms, such as Military Standard MS24509 circuit breakers and similar circuit breakers having cylindrical switch arms.

Apparatus and methods for securing switch devices


A method, system and computer program product for ensuring a user interface specification accurately describes its corresponding user interface. The system links sections of the user interface code with corresponding user interface objects. Furthermore, the system links these sections of the user interface code with corresponding sections of the user interface specification. Upon detecting a modification to the user interface code which reflects an update to the user interface, the system notifies the user that the user interface specification needs to be updated. By linking the user interface objects to the user interface code and linking the user interface code to the corresponding sections of the user interface specification, appropriate modifications to the user interface specification can be recommended or implemented based on the modifications to the corresponding sections of the user interface code, which reflect the changes to the corresponding objects on the user interface.

User interfaces provide a mechanism that allows human beings to interact with computer systems. A wide variety of user interfaces exist. User interfaces may include menus, windows, buttons, tables, icons and a variety of other graphical means for representing functionality, operations, or elements of a computer program.
A user interface specification is a document that captures the details of the user interface into a written document. The specification covers all possible actions that an end user may perform and all visual, auditory and other interaction elements. The user interface specification is the main source of implementation information for how the software should work.
When a user interface is updated (e.g., modifying the name of a button), the user interface specification may need to be updated as well. Corresponding updates to the user interface specification is especially important in lean and agile software development, which may involve iterative and incremental development, since the user interface specification is used for testing the user interface throughout the development process.
However, in many cases, the user interface specification fails to be updated. As a result, the user interface specification becomes stale and inaccurate.
Attempts have been made to update the user interface specification by manually examining the user interface for changes, and then, after noticing changes, generating a new user interface specification by translating the macros (rules or patterns that specify how a certain input sequence should be mapped to an output sequence) and program instructions of the user interface code (e.g., markup languages, such as HyperText Markup Language (HTML)) into a newly generated user interface specification after recording the macros and program instructions. However, whenever the code for the user interface language is modified, the user would be required to re-record all of the macros and program instructions of the user interface code to generate an updated user interface specification. Such a process is inefficient and time-consuming.

Ensuring user interface specification accurately describes user interface after updates to user interface

International Business Machines Corporation


An apparatus for orienting random oriented lightweight articles. The apparatus includes a wheel which rotates on an axis which is substantially horizontal. A plurality of alignment troughs is mounted on the interior of the wheel. Each of the alignment troughs has a longitudinal axis substantially parallel to the wheels horizontal axis. Each trough has a plurality of openings to allow air to pass through the trough and out of the wheel to hold lightweight articles in the troughs against the force of gravity. Each of the articles has a longitudinal axis which is parallel to the troughs longitudinal axis. Rotation of the wheel selectively positions the troughs with a source of air under pressure to move the articles to the end of the respective trough. Each article at the end of its respective trough moves into an external receiver where the article is transferred to a vertical attitude. A retriever positioned adjacent to the wheel retrieves each article in a vertical attitude and delivers each article to a conveyor.

Lightweight plastic bottles or containers have been accepted for containing a myriad of liquids from drinking water to cleaning solutions. The plastic containers are customarily made in a machine which expels the containers in a random orientation. Modern day filling machines require that containers to be filled be aligned in a vertical attitude. Machines for orientating articles of this type are well known. A machine typical of this class of machines is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 3,650,368, entitled, "Article Orientating Apparatus" issued Mar. 21, 1972, and invented by the inventor of the instant improvement, John C. Nalbach. He is also the inventor of the subject matter of U.S. Pat. No. 3,662,872, entitled, "Apparatus for Orientating and Feeding Articles" issued May 16, 1972; U.S. Pat. No. 3,948,386, entitled, "Apparatus for Orientating and Feeding Articles"; and U.S. Pat. No. 4,825,965, entitled "Article Orientating Apparatus" issued May 2, 1989.
The speed of filling machines has progressively increased so that it is necessary to increase the speed of availability of containers in a vertical attitude. It has been found that the lightweight containers being discharged from an unscrambling machine have a tendency to tip and fall over unless each container is held in a vertical attitude long enough to stabilize the container as it leaves the unscrambling machine. The generally accepted construction for an unscrambling machine is one which initially aligns the containers in a circle end-to-end attitude and rotates the containers to a location where they are positioned in a vertical attitude and aligned with each other. The end-to-end circular orientation of the bottles requires rotation of the unscrambler at a high rate to increase the rate of output of aligned containers. The increased rate of rotation increases cyntrifical forces which must be overcome to stabilize the containers in a vertical attitude.


A novel method of and system for providing common value-added services for two-way point-to-point, multi-point-to-multi-point, point-to-multi-point, and/or multi-point-to-point real-time communications using various communication protocols. The present invention provides common value-added service protocols for receiving a request from a first of a multiple of communication protocol sources for a first value-added service using the first common value-added service protocol, and providing the requested first value-added service to the first communication protocol source using the first common value-added service protocol. The present invention further includes receiving a request from a second of the multiple communication protocol sources for the first value-added service using the first common value-added service protocol, and providing the requested first value-added service to the second communication protocol source using the first common value-added service protocol.

The International Telecommunication Union (ITU) Working Party 2 (WP2) of Study Group 16 (SG16) has developed and promulgated widely accepted standards for multimedia protocols for systems/terminals/application, for example, H.323, H.310, H.324. H.323 provides the real-time multimedia (audio, video, and/or data [text, still images and/or graphics]) communications over packet-based networks (e.g., Internet/Internet Protocol [IP], Asynchronous Transfer Mode [ATM], and Frame Relay [FR]). H.310 provides the real-time multimedia (audio, video, and/or data [text, still images and/or graphics]) communications optimized over the Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM) network only. H.324 provides the real-time multimedia (audio, video, and/or data [text, still images and/or graphics]) communications over the circuit-switched network line Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN). These multimedia applications use common audio (G-series) and video (H-series) codecs as well as data (T-12x series) protocol standards.
In addition to the above-identified multimedia protocols, WP2 of SG16 (WP2/16) has developed a common control standard, Control Protocol for Multimedia Communication, which is also known as H.245. The H.245 control protocol is an end-to-end protocol and is used by all multimedia application protocols (including, for example, H.323, H.31 0, H.324), and others for controlling media, for example, audio, video, and/or data (such as text, still images, and/or graphics) between, user terminals.
However, H.323, H.310, H.324 and other multimedia protocol systems/terminals/applications often need additional value-added services to enable communications between users on the system. These value-added services can include, for example, Policy, Security, Directory, Billing/Accounting, Visitor/Home Location Functions, and others, and can be implemented as front-end services (FES) and/or as backend services (BES). In general, the above value-added services are implemented as BES and are used to provide information and resources necessary for call completion. An example of a common front-end protocol is a H.245 protocol standard, which was developed to be used with all of the above listed multimedia protocol systems/terminals/applications.
The characteristic control functions performed by the H.245 protocol can be summarized as follows:
Master-slave determination;Capability exchange;Bi-directional logical channel signaling;Mode request;Round trip delay determination;Maintenance loop detection; andSpecific user commands and indications.Because these characteristic control functions are common to all applications, H.245 was developed as a common control protocol for all of the applications without making it application-specific. This design characteristic has provided a very efficient and solid common foundation for the optimization of resources for both equipment manufacturers and service providers. As a result, separate control and services protocols do not need to be provided for each application.
Although each multimedia application protocol, for example, H.323, H.310, or H.324, has been standardized, each of these protocol use a unique protocol for requesting and communicating with the servers providing the value-added services. Specifically, functional entities, such as, multi-point controllers (MCUs), gateways (GWs), media gateway controllers (MGCs), and/or gatekeepers (GKs) operating using a given multimedia application protocol communicate with each other and the value-added service servers using a unique protocol known as an application-specific protocol. For example, the H.323 system uses its own H.323 protocol to communicate with its own terminals, GKs, MCUs, GWs, and MGCs. The same is the case for the H.310, H.324 and other multimedia application protocols. Unfortunately, none of these application-specific protocols are compatible with each other.
Similarly, since each application may need additional value-added services such as Policy, Security, Directory, Billing/Accounting, Visitor/Home Location Functions, and others, separate application-specific communication protocols are currently required for each multimedia application protocol to request and communicate with the value-added services. Fortunately, since these services are generally provided as application layer value-added services, the services do not need to be application-specific and, thus, can be implemented as common functions that are directly accessible by all application protocols using a common communication protocol.
Therefore, the development of non-application-specific common communication protocols that can be used by all multimedia application protocols to support each value-added service would be desirable.

Method and apparatus for providing common intelligent value-added service protocols for accessing value-added services by all multimedia application protocols


A ventilator control device has a hollow lower seat, a hollow upper seat disposed on the hollow lower seat, and a block disk disposed between the hollow lower seat and the hollow upper seat. The hollow lower seat has a top flange and a top notch. A lower cushion surrounds the hollow lower seat and is blocked by the top flange. The upper seat has a bottom flange, a bottom notch, and a protrusion. An upper cushion surrounds the hollow upper seat and is blocked by the bottom flange. The block disk has an axle and an opposite block seat. The axle and the opposite block seat are arranged along an axis. A motor seat is inserted in the top notch. The motor seat receives a motor. The motor has a block inserted in the block seat. A controller is disposed on the hollow lower seat to control a rotation of the motor and a vibration of the block disk.

The present invention relates to a ventilator control device. More particularly, the present invention relates to a ventilator control device which can control a ventilator and an amount of wind.
A conventional ventilator control device often needs a large number of parts and many assembled elements. Furthermore, a conventional ventilator control device is easily broken.


A VLIW processor has a hierarchy of functional unit clusters that communicate through explicit control in the instruction stream and store data in register files at each level of the hierarchy. Explicit instructions transfer values between sub-clusters through a cluster level switch network. Transfer instructions issue in dedicated instruction issue slots in parallel with instructions that perform computation in functional units. The switch network can perform permutations on the data being moved. The switch network enables for operands to be broadcast between the sub-clusters, global register file and memory.

Very long instruction word (VLIW) processor datapaths have traditionally depended on a large centralized register file to store variables for all functional units for the machine. This is not scalable as the issue width of the machine grows. The Texas Instruments C6000 family of digital signal processors tackled this problem by partitioning the datapath into 2 clusters. An implicit cross-cluster path connection used implicitly when a functional unit from a cluster sourced/wrote an operand from the register file of the other cluster provided inter-cluster communication. This does not scale well to higher number of clusters used to achieve even wider issue width. Transferring data between a large number of clusters of functional units is limited by the interconnect delays in deep submicron silicon processes. Implicit operand transfer with short latency functional unit operation impedes performance for a large number of functional unit clusters. Thus there is a problem in the art concerning inter-cluster communication and register file structure in wide issue VLIW processors.

Inter-cluster communication network and heirarchical register files for clustered VLIW processors


A semi-hollow body of a stringed instrument is claimed the body having nautilus shell-shaped tonal modifiers modified to receive piezo electric pickups. The tonal modifiers generally create a tonal distribution that enhance sound originating from the body cavity of the stringed instrument.

In music, there exists a number of ways to modify the tonal sound of any given stringed instrument. A common feature, even in electric guitars, can be a resonant core having a cavity that produces the notes and tones of sound generated by the strings of the instrument. When playing an electric stringed instrument, which has a hollow core or semi-hollow core, the tones are merely defined by the dimensions of the cavity. In one example, U.S. Pat. No. 7,863,507 there exists at least one tuning fork inside the core of a stringed instrument for resonance enhancement. There exists a need to have modification of the tonal distribution in a hollow or semi-hollow body core via other more effective means.

Nautilus shell-shaped tonal modifiers for stringed instruments


A device and method for synchronizing a local clock to a reference clock. The device uses a frequency acquisition loop and a phase acquisition loop. The frequency acquisition loop delays the reference clock to produce an intermediate clock which falls within the operating range of the phase acquisition loop. The phase acquisition loop then delays the intermediate clock to produce a local clock synchronized to the reference clock.

1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates generally to producing a local clock synchronized in frequency and phase to a reference clock, and more particularly, to producing the local clock by delaying the reference clock.
2. Description of the Related Art
In synchronous systems, the integrated circuits in the system are synchronized to a common reference clock. This synchronization often cannot be achieved simply by distributing a single reference clock to each of the integrated circuits for the following reason, among others. When an integrated circuit receives a reference clock, the circuit often must condition the reference clock before the circuit can use the clock. For example, the circuit may buffer the incoming reference clock or may convert the incoming clock from one voltage level to another. This processing introduces its own delay, with the result that the processed reference clock, which will be referred to as a local clock, often will no longer be adequately synchronized with the incoming reference clock. The trend towards faster system clock speeds flirter aggravates this problem since faster clock speeds reduce the amount of delay, or clock skew, which can be tolerated.
To remedy this problem, an additional circuit is typically used to synchronize the local clock to the reference clock. Two common circuits which are used for this purpose are the phase-locked loop (PLL) and the delay-locked loop (DLL).
In the phase-locked loop, a voltage-controlled oscillator produces the local clock. The phases of the local clock and the reference clock are compared by a phase-frequency detector, with the resulting error signal used to drive the voltage-controlled oscillator via a loop filter. The feedback via the loop filter phase locks the local clock to the reference clock. Stability of the feedback loop, however, depends in part on the loop filter. The electronic characteristics of the loop filter, in turn, often depend significantly on manufacturing parameters. As a result, the same loop filter design may result in a stable feedback loop when manufactured with one process but an unstable loop when manufactured by another. It is difficult to produce a single loop filter design for use with all manufacturing processes, and the design of the loop filter typically must be optimized on a process by process basis.
The delay-locked loop generates a synchronized local clock by delaying the incoming reference clock by an integer number of periods. More specifically, the buffers, voltage level converters, etc. of the integrated circuit introduce a certain amount of delay. The delay-locked loop introduces an additional amount of delay such that the resulting local clock is synchronous with the incoming reference clock. This approach avoids the stability problem inherent in the phase-locked loop approach. Delay-locked loops, however, have a disadvantage of narrow frequency range. The delay-locked loop adjusts the amount of additional delay in order to achieve the desired synchronization, but this adjustment is essentially a phase adjustment. The delay-locked loop lacks any significant frequency adjustment, thus limiting the overall frequency range of conventional delay-locked loops.
Accordingly, there is a need for a device which synchronizes local clocks to reference clocks, is robust to variations in the manufacturing process, and can operate over a wide frequency range.


The present disclosure discloses a method for growing a crystal for detecting neutrons, gamma rays, and/or x rays. The method may include weighting reactants based on a molar ratio of the reactants according to a reaction equation (1-x-z)X2O3+SiO2+2xCeO2+zZ2O3→X2(1-x-z)Ce2xZ2zSiO5+x/2O2↑ or (1-x-y-z)X2O3+yY2O3+SiO2+2xCeO2+zZ2O3→X2(1-x-y-z)Y2yCe2xZ2zSiO5+x/2O2↑; placing the reactants on which a second preprocessing operation has been performed into a crystal growth device after an assembly processing operation is performed on at least one component of the crystal growth device; introducing a flowing gas into the crystal growth device after sealing the crystal growth device; and activating the crystal growth device to grow the crystal based on the Czochralski technique.

Currently, the scintillation crystal can be used to detect γ-rays and X-rays, but cannot be used to detect neutrons. The neutron detection is widely used in nuclear energy field (e.g., nuclear reactor monitoring field, nuclear power plant monitoring field), an arms control field (e.g., nuclear explosion field, weapon fire control and guidance), an anti-terrorism security monitoring field (e.g., detection of hidden nuclear material), space physics field, aerospace field, oil well exploration field, or the like, or any combination thereof. Therefore, it is desirable to provide a scintillation crystal with neutron activity and γ/X-ray activity. For a scintillation crystal with doped elements (e.g., lithium, gallium), secondary charged particles generated by a nuclear reaction between the doped elements and neutrons may be used to achieve indirect neutron detection.

Crystals for detecting neutrons, gamma rays, and X rays and preparation methods thereof

MEISHAN BOYA ADVANCED MATERIALS CO., LTD.


The claimed subject matter provides for systems and/or methods for debugging a computer-executable file. The computer-executable file may be executing in a first runtime environment and located in a first process. The file may further comprise on object having a proxy in that first runtime environment. One method embodiment comprises the steps of debugging said computer-executable file; detecting a proxy for an object called by said file; decoding said proxy to obtain physical information regarding said object; returning said physical object information; and transforming said physical object information into logical object information. In addition, one embodiment of a system is provided that comprising a debugger, said debugger debugging client code; a proxy decoder, said proxy decoder providing information to said debugger about the object pointed by said proxy; and an abstraction transformation, said abstraction transformation transforming physical expressions of a proxy into higher level logical expressions.

Modern software runtime environments create abstractions when implementing Application Programming Interfaces (APIs). Such abstractions hide the complexity of the system and provide a logical view of the system to the user.
Debugging objects in such modern software runtime environments presents a challenge—as debugging such objects typically executes the code within the context of the application being debugged. As a result, debugging objects in an environment potentially changes the environment.


Systems and methods are provided for authenticating a user for access to a conference session by validating the user's location. The systems and methods may include receiving an image captured with an image-capturing device. The image may be of an object visible to a user from an authorized conference-session location. The image may be associated with the authorized conference-session location. The systems and methods may further include receiving location information indicating the authorized conference-session location, generating challenge questions based on the image, and designating one or more challenge questions for display to the user. The systems and methods may further include receiving a response to the designated challenge questions, validating the user's location based on the response, authenticating the user for access to a conference session based on the response, and granting the user access to the conference session based on the authentication.

In a conference system, security measures may be employed to prevent unauthorized access to a conference session facilitated by conference system. Such security measures may comprise authentication mechanisms such as requiring users to provide user names and passwords, digital certificates, or other credentials. Network-security threats, however, are growing in sophistication and can potentially overcome these measures using, for example, phishing schemes. As a result, conference-system designers face technical challenges to developing security measures to prevent unauthorized access to their conference systems. Some of these technical challenges arise due to current conference systems having architectures unable to leverage currently deployed information-technology (IT) and security resources (e.g., hardware) when performing authentication tasks. Therefore, there is a need for a conference-system architecture and authentication mechanism capable of using existing IT and security resources to prevent unauthorized system use.

Systems and methods for authenticating a user for access to a conference session by validating the user's location


The present invention relates generally to a method of producing plant proteins for use in nutritional products that have reduced levels of phytoestrogens, manganese or nucleotides. More specifically, this invention is directed to a method of using ion exchange technology to remove phytoestrogens, manganese or nucleotides from plant proteins. This invention is also directed to the plant protein product resulting from the inventive process and to nutritional products that use the plant protein product as a source of amino nitrogen.

Phytoestrogens or plant estrogens occur in a variety of plants, including vegetable protein materials such as those derived from soybeans. Phytoestrogens are defined as plant substances that are structurally and functionally similar to the gonadal steroid 17 .beta.-estradiol or that produce estrogenic effects. There are three main groups of nonsteroidial dietary estrogens which are 1) the isoflavones, 2) the coumestans and 3) the mycoestrogens (fungal). The structural similarity between these substances and the endogenous mammalian estrogens have been studied. A review of phytoestrogens and their effects in mammals is reported by Kaldas and Hughes in an article entitled, "Reproductive and General Metabolic Effects of Phytoestrogens in Mammals", Reproductive Toxicology, Vol. 3, pp. 81-89, 1989. The teachings of this article are herein incorporated by reference. As used in this specification and the appended claims, the term "isoflavones" is equivalent to the term "phytoestrogens" as that term is defined in the Kaldas et al. article. Representative of the isoflavones that are reduced in plant proteins in accordance with the present invention are daidzein, daidzin, genistein and genistin.
Flavonoids and isoflavones are produced by numerous leguminosoe and grasses, including many plants commonly consumed by man and livestock. Soy isoflavones include compounds such as daidzin, genistin, daidzein and genistein. A general structural formula for these compounds is: ##STR1##
It has recently been recognized that isoflavones contained in vegetable proteins may have a detrimental impact upon the mammals that consume the vegetable protein, see Kaldas et al., supra. The concentration of isoflavones in plant protein isolates or concentrates such as soy protein isolates, can be as high as 3,000 .mu.g/g of protein. Isoflavones also provide the bitter or "beany" taste to vegetable proteins, (see Ewan et al. infra) may reduce the bioavailability of essential minerals and may influence the nutritional value of proteins (see Kaldas et al., supra). The consumption of isoflavones by man and livestock has also been connected with compromised reproductive systems in mammals. There is some concern that consumption of current soy based infant formulas that contain soy isoflavones may have an undesired physiological impact on the developing neuro-endocrine system of the infant. This concern is based in part, on evidence that soy-based animal feed may cause fertility problems in cheetahs. Setchell et al., 1987: "Gastroenterology" 93:225-33.
Further, the presence of high levels of manganese in body tissues has been suspected in the development of criminal behavior. See Gottschalk et al., "Abnormalities in Hair Trace Elements as Indicators of Aberrant Behavior", Compr Psychiatry 1991; 32:229-237, and Scientific American, March, 1995 pp. 104-105. Furthermore, there have also been reports that learning disabilities in children may be associated with increased levels of manganese in hair as reported by Collipp et al., in an article entitled, "Manganese in Infant Formula and Learning Disabilities", Ann. Nutritional Metals, 27:488-494, 1983. Typical plant protein isolates contain up to 1000 .mu.g of manganese per gram of protein. Thus, there is a need for improved processes that economically and on a commercial scale, provide for the reduction of isoflavone and manganese content in plant protein.
The use of nucleotides and nucleosides (or nucleotide equivalents as defined below) in nutritional formulas has received much attention in the last few years. It has been suggested that certain levels and ratios of the various nucleic acids can have a positive impact on the mammalian immune system and even prevent certain maladies such as diarrhea. The problem with using plant protein in such nutritional formulas is that the plant protein contains typically very high, inherent level of nucleic acids that may not be in the correct form (i.e., RNA) and at the correct ratios. Further, the high level of variation in the nucleic acid content causes problems in commercial manufacture. Typical plant protein isolates contain up to about 15 mg of nucleotide equivalents per gram of protein. Thus, the nutritional industry desires a source of plant protein that has substantially reduced levels of inherent nucleic acids. One additional benefit to the process of this invention is that, not only can the isoflavones and manganese be removed by the ion exchange column but also a substantial portion of the inherent nucleic acids.
Ion-exchange technology has been known for a great number of years. Ion-exchange resins are typically synthetic, insoluble, cross-linked polymers carrying acidic or basic side groups. They have high exchange capacities and can be used for an almost unlimited number of reactions. Ion-exchange resins are used in water-treatment, extraction, separation, analysis and catalysis.
Ion-exchange resins have an extended, open molecular framework that includes electrically charged ionic groups. A cation exchanger exchanges positive ions and therefore has negative ions built into its framework. An anion exchanger has positive ions in its framework. The ions of the lattice are called the fixed ions; the smaller ions of opposite charge that can change places with ions in the solution are called counterions.
Common problems encountered with ion exchange processes conducted on proteins include poor protein recovery (i.e., protein adhered to the resin) and inability of the protein slurry to pass through the resin bed resulting in a high pressure drop across the resin bed. The process which is disclosed herein fulfills the need in the nutritional industry for a source of plant protein that has highly reduced levels of isoflavones, manganese and nucleotides is economical, provides good protein recovery and can be used on a commercial scale.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,352,384 to Shen discloses a process to produce an isoflavone enriched vegetable protein fiber. This patent discloses the use of a glucosidase to convert the glucone isoflavones (i.e., daidzen) in a protein slurry to the aglucone isoflavones. The fiber fraction is then recovered from the slurry by centrifugation to provide an aglucone enriched fiber.
An article by Ewan et al. in the Journal of Food Science, Vol. 57, No. 2, 1992 entitled: "Isoflavone Aglucones and Volatile Organic Compounds in Soybeans; Effects of Soaking Treatments", discloses the beneficial effects of soaking soybeans in mildly alkaline NaHCO.sub.3 solutions at elevated temperatures, for manufacturing soymilk with improved flavor. This publication does not suggest or disclose the use of an ion-exchange resin to remove isoflavones, manganese and nucleic acids from plant protein.
In an article published in volume 47 (1982) of the Journal of Food Science, pp. 933-940, by J. How and C. Morr entitled "Removal of Phenolic Compounds from Soy Protein Extracts Using Activated Carbon", they report subjecting soy protein extracts to activated carbon and ion exchange process treatments to remove phenolic compounds that have been reported as being responsible for adverse color and flavor characteristics of soy protein products. Protein extracts were subjected to a two stage, sequential ion exchange treatment prior to protein precipitation. The protein extract was pumped "down-flow" through a cation exchange column in the Na+form and then an anion exchanger in the hydroxyl and chloride form to remove polyvalent anions including phenolic acids, phytate and others.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,248,804 to Nardelli et al. discloses a process for the removal of phytate from plant protein using ion-exchange resins. The process uses a macroporous anion exchange resin (weak base or strong base) which has been conditioned by 1) conversion to the hydroxide form; 2) conversion to the chloride or sulfate form; and 3) thereafter conversion of the strong base sites to the carbonate form and the weak base sites to the free base form. The plant protein containing phytate is then contacted with the treated resin to remove the phytate. The teachings of U.S. Pat. No. 5,248,804 are herein incorporated by reference.
Phytate comprises the salts of phytic acid. Phytic acid is also known as inositol hexaphosphate. Thus, in using an anion exchange resin, the highly anionic phosphate groups provide the handle by which the resin can extract the phytate from the protein slurry. In contrast, isoflavones and nucleotides are neutral molecules and would not be expected to attach to the resin or exchange with the anions on the resin.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,492,899 to Masor et al. discloses an infant formula with ribo-nucleotides. This patent teaches the use of certain levels and ratios of nucleotide equivalents in infant formulas and discloses an analytical technique to identify and quantify the nucleotide equivalents in a nutritional matrix. As used herein and in the claims of this invention, the term "nucleotide" is the same as the term "nucleotide equivalent" as defined in U.S. Pat. No. 5,492,899. U.S. Pat. No. 5,492,899 defines nucleotide equivalents as polymeric RNA, ribo-nucleosides, ribo-nucleosides containing adducts and mono-, di- and triphosphate ribonucleotides. The teachings of U.S. Pat. No. 5,392,899 are herein incorporated by reference.
The present invention comprises a method through which low isoflavone, low manganese or low nucleotide plant proteins can be manufactured. The invention further comprises the low isoflavone, low manganese and low nucleotides protein isolates themselves and to such protein isolates that are produced according to the method of the present invention. The present invention further comprises nutritional products made with the protein isolates produced in accordance with the invention. This, and other aspects of the invention are specifically described in detail in the description set forth below.

Plant protein for nutritional products and method of making same


A window shade located between the two window panes of a window is automatically driven by two electric motors attached to the roller of the window shade so as to place the window shade in a raised position or a lowered position in accordance with the polarity of the power supplied to two electric motors. A relay, when activated, provides power to a manually activated switch having two positions to control the polarity of the power supplied to the electric motors. When deactivated, the relay bypasses the manually activated switch and provides power to the electric motors having a polarity to place the window shade in its lowered position.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to window shades having a roller driven by an electric motor. More particularly, the present for invention pertains to the use of window shades used in booths viewing X-rated performances; in which the window shades are driven up upon payment of a fee and the activation of a switch by the user and remain up for a predetermined period of time thereafter.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Reversible electric motors have been used to allow a user to raise and lower shades through the use of a switch so as to eliminate the need of the user having to reach up to pull the shades down or having to pull on the shades in order to raise the shades. The switch is generally provided in the vicinity of the window and provides power to the motor in one direction to raise the shades and in another direction to lower the shades.
U.S. Pat. No. 2,492,721 issued Dec. 27, 1949 and U.S. Pat. No. 2,606,607 issued Aug. 12, 1952, both to Lawrence Vita, disclose windows having electric motors for lowering a window glass below the window sill so as to place a window screen in the window opening. When the motors are reversed, the window screen is rolled up on a roller, raising the window glass into the window opening.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,974,658 issued Dec. 4, 1990 to Komatsu et al. discloses a sheet shutter raised and lowered by a motor and having both an upper and lowlier limit switches.
U.S. Pat. No. 3,186,473 issued Jun. 1, 1965 to D. E. Myers et al. discloses shades having various designs thereon for allowing various amounts of light into the room. An electric motor winds the shades up on a lower roller as shades are being unwound from an upper roller. In this manner various amounts of light may be allowed into the room.
U.S. Pat. No. 3,294,152 issued Dec. 27, 1966 discloses a motorized shade in which a photosensor detects the amount of light in the room and automatically causes the shades to be further lowered or raised to vary the amount of sunlight in the room in accordance with a comparison of the amount of light detected by the photosensor and a predetermined threshold value.
None of the above inventions and patents, taken either singly or in combination, is seen to describe the instant invention as claimed.


A method intended for gradual deformation of a Boolean model allowing best simulation of the spatial configuration, in a heterogeneous underground zone, of geologic objects defined by physical quantities. The model is optimized by means of an iterative optimization process from realizations including objects whose number is a random Poisson variable of determined mean, and by minimizing an objective function. In order to impose a continuity in the evolution of the objects in size, number, positions, within the model, a combined realization obtained by combining on the one hand an initial realization comprising a number of objects corresponding to a first mean value and at least another independent realization having another number of objects corresponding to a second mean value is constructed. An application is construction of a Boolean underground reservoir model allowing simulation of the configuration of heterogeneities such as fractures, channels, etc.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a method of gradual deformation of a Boolean model simulating a heterogeneous medium, constrained to dynamic data.
2. Description of the Prior Art
The following documents mentioned in the description hereafter illustrate the state of the art:    Chilès, J. P., and Delfiner, P., 1999, Geostatistics: Modeling Spatial Uncertainty, Wiley, New York, 695p.,    Hu, L.-Y., 2000a, Gradual Deformation and Interative Calibration of Gaussian-Related Stochastic Models, Math. Geol., 32(1),    Hu, L.-Y., 2000b, Gradual Deformation of Non-Gaussian Stochastic Models, Geostats 2000 Cape Town, W J Kleingeld and D G Krige (eds.), 1, 94-103,    Hu, L.-Y., 2003, History Matching of Object-Based Stochastic Reservoir Models, SPE 81503,    Journel, A., and Huijbregts, C. J., 1978, Mining Geostatistics, Academic Press, London, 600p.,    Le Ravalec, M., Noetinger, B., and Hu, L.-Y., 2000, The FFT Moving Average (FFT-MA) Generator: An Efficient Numerical Method for Generating and Conditioning GaussianSimulations, Math. Geol., 32(6), 701-723,    Le Ravalec, M., Hu, L.-Y., and Noetinger, B., 2001, Stochastic Reservoir Modeling Constrained to Dynamic Data: Local Calibration and Inference of the Structural Parameters, SPE Journal, 25-31.
Various methods based on a gradual deformation scheme are described in the assignee's French patents 2,780,798, 2,795,841, and 2,821,946, and in French patent applications 02/13,632 or 03/02,199.
Realizations of Gaussian or Gaussian-related stochastic models are often used to represent the spatial distribution of certain physical properties, such as permeability or porosity, in underground reservoirs. Inverse methods are then commonly used to constrain these realizations to data on which these methods depend in a non-linear manner. This is notably the case in hydrology or in the petroleum industry. These methods are based on minimization of an objective function, also referred to as cost function, which measures the difference between the data measured in the field and the corresponding responses numerically simulated for realizations representing the medium to be characterized. The goal is to identify the realizations associated with the lowest objective function values, that is the most coherent realizations as regards the data.
The gradual deformation method was introduced in this context (see Hu, 2000a; Le Ravalec et al., 2000). This geostatistical parameterization technique allows gradual modifications of the realizations from a limited number of parameters. It is particularly well-suited to minimization problems because, when applied to realizations, it induces a continuous and regular variation of the objective function. In fact, minimization can be performed from the most advanced techniques, that is gradient techniques. The gradual deformation method has proved efficient for constraining oil reservoir models to production data (See Le Ravalec et al., 2001).
The gradual deformation method initially set up for Gaussian models has afterwards been extended to non-Gaussian models (See Hu, 2000b) and more particularly to object or Boolean models. These models are used to describe media comprising for example channels or fractures. The channels or fractures are then considered as objects. An algorithm has been proposed to simulate the gradual migration of objects in space, that is the gradual displacement of objects in space. For a realization of an object model, this type of perturbation translates into a smoothed variation of the objective function, as for Gaussian models. This algorithm has then been generalized to the non-stationary and conditional Boolean model (See Hu, 2003). Besides, still using the gradual deformation of Gaussian laws, solutions allowing progressive modification of the number of objects that populate a model are proposed (See Hu, 2003), this number being representative of a Poisson's law. However, one limit of these developments is that the objects appear or disappear suddenly, which can generate severe discontinuities of the objective function and make the gradient techniques conventionally used for carrying out the minimization process difficult to implement.
Gradual Deformation: Reminders
Multi-Gaussian Random Function
The gradual deformation principles that have been proposed to date apply to multi-Gaussian random functions. Let there be, for example, two independent random functions Y1(x) and Y2(x), multi-Gaussian and stationary of order 2 with x being the position vector. These two functions are assumed to have the same means and variances, i.e. 0 and 1, and the same covariance function. A new random function Y(t) is then constructed by combining Y1 and Y2 according to the expression as follows:Y(t)=Y1 cos(t)+Y2 sin(t).
It can be shown that, whatever t, Y has the same mean, variance and covariance model as Y1 and Y2. Besides, Y(t) is also a multi-Gaussian random function because it is the sum of two multi-Gaussian random functions.
According to this combination principle, a chain of realizations y(t) depending only on deformation parameter t can be constructed from two independent realizations y1 and y2 of Y1 and Y2. The basic minimization processes use gradual deformation to explore the chain of realizations and to determine the deformation parameter providing the realization which is the most compatible with the data measured in the field, that is the pressures, production rates, breakthrough times, etc. Since exploration of a single chain of realizations does generally not allow identification of a realization providing a sufficiently small objective function, the desired process is iterated. The optimum realization determined for the 1st chain is then combined with a new independent realization of Y2, and a new chain of realizations whose exploration can provide a realization which reduces the objective function even further is deduced therefrom, etc.
Poisson Point Process
The key element of Boolean models is a Poisson point process which characterizes the spatial layout of the objects. A base Boolean model is considered for which the objects have the same shape and are randomly and uniformly distributed in space. The positions of these objects are distributed according to the Poisson point process of constant density. In other words, the position of an object in space with n dimensions [0,1]n is defined by vector x whose n components are uniform numbers drawn independently according to the uniform distribution law between 0 and 1.
The objects migration technique (See Hu, 2000b) gradually deforms the position of the objects. The position of an object is determined by uniform numbers. First and foremost, these uniform numbers are converted to Gaussian numbers:Y=G−1(x).
G is the standard normal distribution function. Let x1 be the initial position of a given object and x2 another possible position, independent of x1. A trajectory is defined for the object by combining the Gaussian transforms of these two positions according to the gradual deformation method:x(t)=G└G−1(x1)cos(t)+G−1(x2)sin(t)┘
It can be shown that, for any value of deformation parameter t, x is a uniform point of [0,1]n. When the two positions x1 and x2 are fixed, the trajectory is completely determined. A two-dimensional example is shown in FIG. 1.
The object migration technique is a first move towards the gradual deformation of Boolean simulations. One of its limits is that the number of objects is assumed to be constant during deformation. Solutions have been proposed to progressively modify the number of objects that populate a model (See patent application N-01/03,194 or Hu, 2003 mentioned above). However, one limit of these developments is that the objects appear or disappear suddenly, which can generate severe discontinuities of the objective function. The gradual deformation method according to the invention allows, as described below, to reduce this discontinuity and thus to facilitate the implementation of gradient-based optimization techniques.

Method intended for gradual, deformation of a boolean model simulating a heterogeneous medium, constrained to dynamic data


A rivet fastener which can be readily and repeatedly removed and reinstalled including a rivet body and a drive pin where the drive pin can be inserted within the rivet body so as to retain the fastener within an article and upon further insertion of the drive pin the fastener is released from an article where the drive pin does not protrude from the back side of the rivet body either during fastening or removal thereof.

1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates generally to rivet fasteners, and more particularly, to a front mounted rivet fastener which can readily and repeatedly be removed and reinstalled and includes a drive pin which can be inserted and which retained within a shank of a rivet body at a pre-driven position, inserted past the pre-driven position so as to be retained at a driven position which retains the fastener within an article and which can be inserted further past the driven position so as to be retained at a release position which disengages the fastener from the article, wherein the drive pin does not protrude from the rivet body when positioned at the pre-driven, driven or release positions.
2. Description of the Related Art
Rivet fasteners are typically utilized to secure two members together, such as two panels or the like, and include a rivet body and a corresponding drive pin. The rivet body includes a head portion and a shank portion and an axial bore extending therethrough. After the shank portion is inserted through aligned apertures formed in the members which are to be connected, the drive pin is inserted through the axial bore so as to contact and outwardly expand the shank portion behind the members and provide the desired fastening.
One type of rivet fastener is known as a "push-push" or "double-push" rivet fastener, an example of which is illustrated in U.S. Pat. No. 4,637,765. That patent discloses a push-push type fastener having only one expandable leg which can retain the drive pin to the rivet body in a pre-driven position prior to installation. Removal of this fastener after installation is provided by pushing the drive pin further into the rivet body beyond the fastened position. At that point, the leg can be compressed and the rivet body released from engagement within the aperture of a panel. A head is provided on the drive pin to prevent the drive pin from coming all the way out of the rivet body when pushed therethrough.
When such a rivet is fastened, however, the distal end of the drive pin protrudes from the back side or shank of the rivet body. Additionally, when the drive pin is pushed further into the body to remove the fastener, the drive pin protrudes even further from the shank of the rivet body. Thus, in use, additional clearance space must be provided behind the shank of the fastener in order to accommodate the portion of the drive pin which protrudes beyond the shank when fastened and released. In most applications, such additional clearance space is simply not available.
It therefore is desirable to provide a push-push type rivet fastener which can readily and repeatedly be removed and reinstalled, which includes a drive pin and a rivet body, and which does not require additional space beyond the shank of the rivet body to accommodate the drive pin when pre-driven, driven or removed.

Rivet fastener with push-in releasable drive pin


An electric motor drives a variable capacity backup hydraulic pump that can supply pressure oil to an actuator when a loss or reduction occurs in the function of an aircraft central hydraulic power source. A power source unit rectifies electric power supplied from a variable frequency supply. A driver supplies the electric power from the power source unit, and drives the electric motor so as to rotate the pump at a predetermined constant rotational speed. The constant rotational speed is set, based on the change in the efficiency of each of the pump, the electric motor, and the driver with respect to the rotational speed of the pump, such that the overall efficiency, obtained as a product of these efficiencies, has a maximum value.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a hydraulic system for aircraft actuators that includes a hydraulically operated actuator for driving a control surface of an aircraft and that supplies pressure oil to the actuator.
2. Description of Related Art
An aircraft is provided with control surfaces that are formed as moving surfaces (flight control surfaces) and are configured as an aileron, an elevator, and the like. A hydraulically operated actuator is often used as an actuator for driving such control surfaces. Further, pressure oil is supplied to such an actuator from an aircraft central hydraulic power source. However, a loss or reduction in the function (pressure oil supply function) of the aircraft central hydraulic power source may occur. To address this problem, JP 2007-46790A discloses a hydraulic system (hydraulic system for aircraft actuators) that can supply pressure oil to an actuator even if a loss or reduction in the function of the aircraft central hydraulic power source occurs.
The hydraulic system for aircraft actuators that is disclosed in JP 2007-46790A includes an actuator, a pump that is provided independently of the aircraft central hydraulic power source, and an electric motor. The pump is provided so as to raise the pressure of pressure oil that is discharged from the actuator and to supply the pressure oil to the actuator. The electric motor is configured to drive the pump when the aircraft central hydraulic power source undergoes a pressure decrease and a loss or reduction in its function occurs.


A rotor for an electric motor has a shaft and a rotor laminated core connected to the shaft. A coolant duct is formed in the rotor in order to enable coolant to flow through the coolant duct. The coolant duct has a first portion, which runs at least in regions in the rotor laminated core. The rotor laminated core has a sleeve on the outer circumferential surface in order to avoid coolant escaping at the outer circumferential surface of the rotor laminated core. In a method for producing a rotor, a material having glass fibers or carbon fibers and a resin are applied to the rotor laminated core, and the resin is subsequently cured in order to produce the sleeve.

US 2013/0313928 A1, which is incorporated by reference herein, shows an electric motor with a cooling duct which extends from the shaft of an internal rotor outward via the cooling duct into the region of the air gap and of the external stator and is guided back from the external stator via a connection of the external stator housing in order to form a cooling circuit.
EP 0 461 905 A2, which is incorporated by reference herein, shows an internal rotor motor with a cooling duct, in which the coolant is supplied and removed via a rotary coupling at a shaft end.
DE 10 2011 052 085 A1, which is incorporated by reference herein, shows an electric motor with an internal rotor, in which the shaft has a fluid inlet and a fluid outlet on an axial side.
DE 10 2007 006 986 B3, which is incorporated by reference herein, shows an internal rotor with a basic body, a laminated core and magnets attached on the outer side of the laminated core. A binding made of carbon fiber reinforced plastic is attached around the magnets.
US 2003/0230950 A1, which is incorporated by reference herein, shows an electric motor with an external stator and an internal rotor, wherein a sleeve is fastened to the inner side of the outer stator in order to bring about isolation.
EP 2 658 099 A1, which is incorporated by reference herein, shows an electric motor with an external stator and an internal rotor. The internal rotor has a shaft and a laminated core, and a sleeve is provided between the shaft and the laminated core and bounds a coolant duct of the shaft.


An electrical connector includes a substantially cylindrical conducting outer body and coaxial contact portion; the outer body having an opening for receiving an end of a cable; a ceramic annular insulator surrounding the contact portion, thereby electrically isolating the contact portion from the outer body; a connecting body connecting to the outer body and coaxial with the opening; and a ring having an exterior surface in contact with an interior surface of the clamp body and coaxial with the opening. The contact portion includes front and rear portions; the rear portion has a hole therein, substantially coaxial with the opening in the outer body, and a slot intersecting the hole for making a solderless connection to a central conductor of the cable. The ring has a slot therein, the ring thereby being closable to make a solderless connection to an outer conductor of the cable.

RF cables and connectors are used in a wide variety of applications. RF connectors are typically used with coaxial cables; in an arrangement including cables and RF connectors, the connectors generally offer shielding in accordance with the coaxial design of the cable.
In some situations, for example military applications, coaxial RF connectors must perform in harsh environments. In particular, high-temperature operation may require a solderless connection between the RF connector and the cable.
Accordingly, it is desirable to implement a design for an RF connector suitable for high temperatures, with respect to both its composition and design.


A plug-in structure includes a connector and a plug; wherein the connector is provided with a jack. The jack is provided with a first terminal and a first guide rail structure are arranged, the first terminal being configured to be electrically connected to a first flexible circuit board; and the plug is provided with a second terminal and a second guide rail structure, the second terminal being configured to be electrically connected to a second flexible circuit board, and the second guide rail structure of the plug being in cooperation with the first guide rail structure in the jack to guide the plug to move in the jack, such that the first terminal and the second terminal are electrically connected.

At present, flexible circuit boards are usually connected by a connector and a plug.
The connector is electrically connected to one flexible circuit board, and the plug is electrically connected to the other flexible circuit board. When connecting the connector and the plug, generally, an operator uses tweezers to clamp a position of the flexible circuit board proximal to the plug, and the plug is plugged into a jack of the connector after the plug is aligned with the jack of the connector, such that the plug is plugged into the connector.

Plug-in structure, connector, plug, and plug-in method thereof

Chengdu BOE Optoelectronics Technology Co., Ltd.


Mechanisms are described to extract location information from unstructured text, comprising: building a language model from geo-tagged text; building a classifier for differentiating referred and physical location; given unstructured text, identifying referred location using the language model (that is, the location to which the unstructured text refers); given the unstructured text, identifying if referred location is also the physical location using the classifier; and predicting (that is, performing calculation(s) and/or estimation(s) of degree of confidence) of referred and physical location.

The present disclosure relates generally to the field of geotagging unstructured text.
With the continued advances of social network services, such as TWITTER, FACEBOOK and FOURSQUARE, a tremendous amount of unstructured textual data has been generated. One of the most popular forms of such unstructured texts is a short text message, called a "tweet", from TWITTER. Each tweet has up to 140 characters. TWITTER users are posting tweets about almost everything from daily routine, breaking news, score updates of various sport events to political opinions and flashmobs (see A. Kavanaugh, S. Yang, S. D. Sheetz, and E. A. Fox. Microblogging in crisis situations: Mass protests in iran, tunisia, Egypt—in CHI 2011, and K. Starbird and L. Palen. (how) will the revolution be retweeted?: information diffusion and the 2011 Egyptian uprising—in CSCW 2012). Over hundreds of millions of such tweets are generated daily.
Furthermore, more and more business organizations recognize the importance of TWITTER and provide their customer services through TWITTER, such as receiving feedback about products and responding to customers' questions using tweets (see Twitter: A New Age for Customer Service—Forbes. http://onforb.es/VqqTxa).
Tweets can be much more valuable when tagged with their location information because such geo-tagged tweets can open new opportunities for many ubiquitous applications. For example, if a user posts a tweet tagged with her current location, nearby local stores can immediately send her customized coupons based on the context of the tweet or her profile (assuming that she is a subscriber of such location-based advertisement services). Similarly, local news and places of interest can be recommended based on the location, the context of the tweet and the past experiences of her friends on a social network. Geo-tagged tweets can also be used to report or detect unexpected events, such as earthquakes (see T. Sakaki, M. Okazaki, and Y. Matsuo. Earthquake shakes twitter users: real-time event detection by social sensors—in WWW 2010), robbery or gun shots, and notify the event to the right people instantly, including those who are close to the location of the event.
On one hand, like most social network services, TWITTER recognizes the value of tagging tweets with location information and provides the geo-tagging feature to all its users. On the other hand, such opt-in geo-tagging feature is confronted with several challenges. First, TWITTER users have been lukewarm in terms of adopting the geo-tagging feature. According to a recent statistical analysis over 1 billion tweets spanning three months (discussed in more detail below), only 0.58% tweets include their fine-grained location. With such a tiny amount of geo-tagged tweets, it would be very hard to realize the many social and business opportunities such as those mentioned above. Second, even for the limited tweets tagged with geometric coordinates, a fair amount of them cannot be used effectively because their geometric coordinates cannot be applied as quality indicators of useful semantic locations, such as points of interest and places where events of interest may happen or have happened. This location sparseness problem makes it very challenging for identifying the types of tweets in which their location information can be inferred, i.e., the location where a tweet was written. In order to derive new values and insights from the huge amount of tweets generated daily by TWITTER users and to better serve them with many location-based services, it is important to have more geo-tagged tweets with semantically meaningful locations.
For the purposes of this disclosure, various conventional techniques are categorized into four categories: 1) location prediction in TWITTER-like social networks, 2) topic and user group prediction in TWITTER-like social networks, 3) analysis of FOURSQUARE check-ins, and 4) location prediction using other online contents.
Referring first to conventional location prediction in social networks, these techniques can be divided into the problem of predicting the location of each TWITTER user (see Z. Cheng, J. Caverlee, and K. Lee. You are where you tweet: a content-based approach to geo-locating twitter users—in CIKM 2010; and B. Hecht, L. Hong, B. Suh, and E. H. Chi. Tweets from justin bieber's heart: the dynamics of the location field in user profiles—in CHI 2011; and J. Mahmud, J. Nichols, and C. Drews. Where is this tweet from? inferring home locations of twitter users—in ICWSM 2012) or predicting the location of each tweet (see Y. Ikawa, M. Enoki, and M. Tatsubori. Location inference using microblog messages—in WWW 2012 Companion; and W. Li, P. Serdyukov, A. P. de Vries, C. Eickhoff, and M. Larson. The where in the tweet—in CIKM 2011). Concretely, Z. Cheng, J. Caverlee, and K. Lee, You are where you tweet: a content-based approach to geo-locating twitter users proposes a technique to predict the city-level location of each TWITTER user. It builds a probability model for each city using tweets of those users located in the city. Then it estimates the probability of a new user being located in a city using the city's probability model and assigning the city with the highest probability as the city of this new user. To increase the accuracy of the location prediction, it utilizes local words and applies some smoothing techniques. B. Hecht, L. Hong, B. Suh, and E. H. Chi, Tweets from justin bieber's heart: the dynamics of the location field in user profiles uses a Multinomial Naive Bayes model to predict the country and state of each TWITTER user. It also utilizes selected region-specific terms to increase the prediction accuracy. J. Mahmud, J. Nichols, and C. Drews. Where is this tweet from? inferring home locations of twitter users presents an algorithm for predicting the home location of TWITTER users. It builds a set of different classifiers, such as statistical classifiers using words, hash-tags or place names of tweets and heuristics classifiers using the frequency of place names or FOURSQUARE check-ins, and then creates an ensemble of the classifiers to improve the prediction accuracy. These coarse-grained location prediction methods rely heavily on the availability of a large training set. For example, the number of tweets from the users in the same city can be quite large and comprehensive. In contrast, embodiments of the disclosure predict the location of tweets (the short unstructured text) at a fine granularity.
Y. Ikawa, M. Enoki, and M. Tatsubori. Location inference using microblog messages—in WWW 2012 Companion and W. Li, P. Serdyukov, A. P. de Vries, C. Eickhoff, and M. Larson, The where in the tweet—in CIKM 2011 centered on predicting the location of each tweet. W. Li, P. Serdyukov, A. P. de Vries, C. Eickhoff, and M. Larson, The where in the tweet builds a POI (Place of Interest) model, assuming that a set of POIs are given, using a set of tweets and web pages returned by a search engine. For a query tweet, it generates a language model of the tweet and then compares it with the model of each POI using the KL divergence to rank POIs. Since it uses only 10 POIs and a small test set for its evaluation, it is unclear how effective the approach is in a real-world environment in which there are many POIs and a huge number of tweets and furthermore many tweets contain noisy text, irrelevant to any POI. Y. Ikawa, M. Enoki, and M. Tatsubori, Location inference using microblog messages extracts a set of keywords for each location using tweets from location-sharing services, such as FOURSQUARE check-in tweets, and other general expression tweets posted during a similar time frame. To predict the location of a new tweet, it generates a keyword list of the tweet and compares it with the extracted keywords of locations using cosine similarity. A clear problem with this work is that it treats all tweets equally in the context of location prediction. Thus, it suffers from high error rate in the prediction results, especially for those location-neutral tweets.
Reference will now be made to conventional topic and user group prediction in social networks. In addition to location prediction of TWITTER data, research efforts have been engaged in inferring other types of information from TWITTER data. J. Lin, R. Snow, and W. Morgan, Smoothing techniques for adaptive online language models: topic tracking in tweet streams—in KDD'11 proposes a framework to predict topics of each tweet. It builds a language model for each topic using hashtags of tweets and evaluates various smoothing techniques. M. Pennacchiotti and A.-M. Popescu. Democrats, republicans and starbucks afficionados: user classification in twitter—in KDD'11 proposes a social network user classification approach, which consists of a machine learning algorithm and a graph-based label updating function. L. Barbosa and J. Feng. Robust sentiment detection on twitter from biased and noisy data—in COLING 2010 proposes an approach to predict sentiments of tweets and F. Benevenuto, G. Magno, T. Rodrigues, and V. Almeida, Detecting spammers on twitter—in CEAS 2010 presents a technique to classify TWITTER users as either spammers or nonspammers. Most of the techniques in this category build their language-based classification model using supervised learning and utilize some external knowledge to initialize the classification rules, such as spam or non-spam. In contrast to this line of work, various embodiments focus on location detection of tweets rather than TWITTER user classification.
Reference will now be made to conventional analysis of FOURSQUARE check-ins. Z. Cheng, J. Caverlee, K. Lee, and D. Sui, Exploring millions of footprints in location sharing services—in ICWSM 2011; and A. Noulas, S. Scellato, C. Mascolo, and M. Pontil, An empirical study of geographic user activity patterns in foursquare—in ICWSM 2011 analyze FOURSQUARE check-in history in various aspects. Z. Cheng, J. Caverlee, K. Lee, and D. Sui, Exploring millions of footprints in location sharing services shows spatial and temporal (daily and weekly) distribution of FOURSQUARE check-ins. It also analyzes the spatial coverage of each user and its relationship with city population, average household income, etc. A. Noulas, S. Scellato, C. Mascolo, and M. Pontil, An empirical study of geographic user activity patterns in foursquare also shows spatiotemporal patterns of FOURSQUARE check-ins and calculates the transition probabilities among location categories.
Reference will now be made to conventional location prediction using other online contents. Many studies have been conducted to infer the geographical origin of online contents such as photos (see P. Serdyukov, V. Murdock, and R. van Zwol. Placing flickr photos on a Map—in SIGIR 2009), webpages (see E. Amitay, N. Har'El, R. Sivan, and A. S offer. Web-a-where: geotagging web content—in SIGIR 2004) and web search query logs (see R. Jones, R. Kumar, B. Pang, and A. Tomkins. "i know what you did last summer": query logs and user privacy—in CIKM 2007). P. Serdyukov, V. Murdock, and R. van Zwol, Placing flickr photos on a map builds a language model for each location (a grid cell) using the terms people use to describe images. E. Amitay, N. Har'El, R. Sivan, and A. S offer. Web-a-where: geotagging web content identifies geographical terms in web-pages using a gazetteer to infer a geographical focus for the entire page. R. Jones, R. Kumar, B. Pang, and A. Tomkins. "i know what you did last summer": query logs and user privacy utilizes a geo-parsing software which returns a list of locations for web search query logs to infer the location of users (at zip code level).


The present invention is a novel pixel structure, and method for making the same, that reduces wasteful voltage drop associated with other pixel structures that cover their pixel elements with a final passivation layer. The presently claimed pixel structure is a combination of a thin film transistor (TFT), an associated pixel element, and a passivation layer. The TFT is first deposited atop a suitable substrate and patterned. Then, the passivation layer is deposited on top of the thin film transistor. Contact cuts are made into the passivation layer where the pixel element is to contact the TFT. Finally, the pixel element is deposited--lying atop the passivation layer and contacting with the underlying TFT where the contact cuts were made in the passivation layer.

Liquid crystal displays (LCDs) are increasingly replacing cathode ray tubes as displays in computers and in other video screen applications. This is particularly true for devices where minimizing size and weight are important design considerations. For example, LCDs are used almost exclusively in portable computers and laptops. Two types of standard architectures have emerged for LCDs: passive and active matrix. Passive LCDs use a pair of electrode plates with a liquid crystal layer sandwiched between them. Each plate in a passive LCD has a set of lines that runs orthogonal to the lines in the opposing plate. Addressing individual pixels in a passive LCD amount to placing a signal of the pair of lines whose intersection defines the pixel location. AMLCDs, while a little more expensive than passive LCDs, are preferred for high performance applications because of their better viewing angle, and higher contrast and resolution than passive LCDs. Today, several trends are currently speeding the acceptance of both types of liquid crystal displays (i.e. active matrix and passive) in the marketplace--decreasing cost of manufacture, increasing pixel densities and resolution, increasingly faster screen refresh rates--to name a few.
The portable consumer electronic goods that are employing AMLCDs are typically battery powered. One appealing aspect to the consumer is the "mean time between battery recharge" for an item--the longer a good can operate on a fully charged set of batteries, the more desirable. Thus, it is desirable for component suppliers to such portable goods to have energy efficient components. The same is true for manufacturers of AMLCDs.
Typically, an AMLCD comprises a liquid crystal layer sandwiched between an active matrix and a common electrode plate. The active matrix itself comprises a collection of pixel structures. Each such pixel structure comprises a thin film transistor (TFT) and a pixel element, connected in such a fashion that the source and drain lines of the TFT are coupled to a data line and the pixel element respectively. A passivation layer is usually deposited over and covering both the TFT and the pixel element, usually consisting of indium-tin-oxide (ITO). One such AMLCD structure currently being used is a 6.3 million pixel, 13 inch diagonal display built by the Xerox Corporation. The structure of that particular AMLCD is described in commonly assigned U.S. Patent Application, application Ser. No. 08/235,011 (Attorney Docket Number D/94179), entitled "Thin-Film Structure with Dense Array of Binary Control Units for Presenting Images" (hereinafter the "Array" application), filed concurrently herewith and which is hereby incorporated by reference.
One way to reduce the amount of energy consumption of an AMLCD is by reducing the amount of voltage required to activate the liquid crystal layer. To activate the liquid crystal, a threshold voltage must be applied between the pixel element and the common electrode plate. Therefore, any change in design that allows the pixel element and the common electrode plate to reach the threshold voltage with a lesser amount of charge would save on energy consumption. One way to achieve threshold voltage with lesser amounts of charge is to ensure that no unnecessary voltage drop is occurring between the pixel element and the common electrode plate.
Therefore, it is desirable to design a AMLCD pixel structure that would avoid unnecessary voltage drops between the pixel element and the common electrode plate.
Thus, it is an object of the present invention to design a AMLCD pixel structure that decreases the amount of wasteful voltage drop that could otherwise be used to reach the threshold voltage needed to activate the liquid crystal.

Electrically isolated pixel element in a low voltage activated active matrix liquid crystal display and method


A method for determining possible transitions of system states in an industrial system with a plurality of agents with discrete agent states. The method comprises the steps of defining a plurality of rules, each rule comprising a pre-condition of at least one agent state that is to be changed, a post-condition of the at least one agent state, and an action or actions resulting in a corresponding transition of the at least one agent state; defining a plurality of nodes, each node comprising a system state; and evaluating for a plurality of pairs of nodes, whereby one node of each pair acts as a pre- condition node and the other node of each pair acts as a post-condition node, whether the pair can, given the rules, be directly connected by an edge, each edge comprising an action or actions required for a transition between the respective pre- and post-condition system states.

Creating a program for an industrial system comprising an industrial robot is difficult and time consuming. One major reason is that there is a vast number of incorrect states that need to be handled, so that the robot program can continue without interruption.
Today this work is iterative, hard to get right and probably impossible for robotic systems comprising several agents, such as a cell with multiple collaborative robots. When any program of this type is constructed, there is no way to determine if it will handle all possible error cases.
US2014088763 discloses a method for determining an efficient robot-base position that has the shortest, collision free robotic path between start and end nodes. The method includes a step of generating for the valid robot-base position respective directed graphs providing a plurality of robotic paths. A robotic system generates directed graphs for the respective valid robot-base positions. A valid robot-base position is defined as a robot-base position from which the end of arm may reach a target to perform predetermined tasks without causing a collision. The directed graph provides a plurality of robotic paths with a plurality of nodes including a start and an end node, and a plurality of directional connectors connecting the nodes. The nodes are arranged based on the ordered locations and the directional connectors have respective weight factors. The nodes represent the robot joint configurations at the ordered locations and the weight factors represent the effort required by the robot-joint to move from a source to a target. The robotic system determines the shortest route between the start and end nodes for the valid robot-base positions using the directed graph. The shortest robotic path is determined based on the weight-factors of the directional connectors that connect the nodes.
The robotic system of US2014088763 has an infinite number of states, because the motion path is continuous. A number of points or states are randomly determined and these are stored as nodes in the graph. The points selected are thus not optimal, and each time the nodes are determined, different points will be associated with the nodes. Due to the infinite number of points, all the states of the robotic system will never be determined.

Method for determining possible transitions of system states


A dual braking device for a power winch includes a first braking device and a second braking device, which is composed of a transmitting sleeve, a braking lining, an electromagnetic induction coil, a magnetic conduction member, and an elastic member. When the power winch is electrically connected for retracting or releasing steel ropes, the induction coil will produce magnetic force to attract the magnetic conductive member to move and compress the elastic member, and the braking lining cannot perform braking. When the power winch is electrically disconnected, the electromagnetic induction coil cannot produce magnetic force, and the magnetic conduction member will be actuated by the elastic member to contact with and force the braking lining to stop the rotating shaft and the spindle.

1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to a dual braking device for a power winch, particularly to one able to quickly stop both the rotating shaft of a motor and the spindle driven by the rotating shaft when the power winch is electrically disconnected to avoid wear of the spindle and the transmitted components, able to surely brake the whole power winch and lower the probability of accidents.
2. Description of the Prior Art
A power winch, also called as a hoisting winder, is a hoisting apparatus able to retract or release steel ropes for slinging up or lowering down heavy loads. A power winch can be positioned on a high building for slinging or lowering goods, or assembled on a jeep or on a cross-country vehicle for trailing other vehicles or for rescuing people in danger. A power winch has to be provided with a braking device so that when circuit is broken (whether by pressing a stop button or due to abrupt power outage), the power winch can be timely stopped operating. A conventional braking device for a power winch, as disclosed in a U.S. Pat. No. 6,520,486, titled "BRAKING DEVICE FOR MOTIVE WINCH", which was a patent of the inventor of the present invention, as shown in FIG. 1, includes a reduction device 1 composed of a sectional shaft 11, an elastic member 12, a first engraved block 13, a second engraved block 14 and a clutch base 15. The first engraved block 13 is fitted on the sectional shaft 11 and secured thereon with a braking lining 131 able to contact with or separate from a frictional surface 16 formed in the reduction device 1 for performing braking or not. The elastic member 12 is assembled on the first engraved block 13, able to produce a proper reverse torsional force relative to the first engraved block 13 and force the braking lining 131 of the first engraved block 13 to be ready to push against the frictional surface 16 of the reduction device 1. The second engraved block 14 is combined with the sectional shaft 11 for rotating together synchronously. The first and the second engraved block 13, 14 have their corresponding side edges respectively formed with a slope (13A), (14A), which are able to closely contact with each other for pushing the braking lining 131 on the first engraved block 13 to carry out braking, and also respectively formed with an actuating projection (13B), (14B) to be pushed and rotated by the projecting block fixed on the inner side of the clutch base 15. The clutch base 15 is actuated to rotate by a spindle (S1) driven by the motor. Thus, when the motor is operated, the clutch base 15 will be driven to actuate the two engraved blocks 13, 14 to rotate together to let the braking lining 131 move away from the frictional surface 16 of the reduction device 1 to stop braking. When the motor stops operating, the reaction torsional force coming from the heavy loads hung on the steep rope will force the slope (14A) of the second engraved block 14 to push the slope (13A) of the first engraved block 13 and actuated the braking lining 131 to move and closely contact with the frictional surface 16 of the reduction device 1, thus achieving effect of braking. The foresaid structure is the main braking device for a conventional power winch.
Although the braking device for a power winch disclosed in the U.S. Pat. No. 6,520,486 and described above is excellent in use, yet there is still certain respect that has to be improved. As mentioned above, the spindle (S1) is driven by the motor; therefore, when the motor is electrically disconnected, the motor itself, based on inertia action, will rotate the spindle (S1) continuously for a little while. Thus, when the power winch carrying a light load is broken, the gliding distance of braking may become comparatively long, and this situation is likely to cause unexpected accidents. In the braking device for a winch disclosed in the U.S. Pat. No. 6,520,486 mentioned above, although braking is surely done by the reduction device 1, yet the spindle (S1) and the cultch base 15 still may be pushed to rotate by inertia action, thus causing wear to the components and lowering their service life.
To improve the above-mentioned defects, an auxiliary second braking device for a power winch is additionally disposed between the motor and the spindle so that when the motor is electrically disconnected, both the rotating shaft of the motor and the spindle can be timely stopped rotating, able to lower the probability of accidents.


A vault for storing batteries underground, having glass fiber reinforced concrete body including a floor and vertical walls, and an insulated fiberglass top closure, and a method of storing batteries. Two conduits disposed in generally concentric fashion communicate between the interior of the vault and the external atmosphere. One conduit has a connector for connecting to a supply of pressurized nitrogen gas. The other conduit branches into two secondary conduits, each having a unidirectional check valve opening when a pressure differential between the interior of the vault is established relative to the external atmosphere. One check valve admits air to the vault and the other check valve allows air to escape to the external atmosphere. The vault includes an external support structure for supporting a davit in an operable position for lifting batteries from the vault. The method of storing the batteries includes burying a water tight vault in the ground, venting the vault, and periodically purging air from the vault under pressure.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to vaults and more particularly to subterranean vaults. The present invention provides lightweight, water-tight construction in a vault and venting and purging features. All of the novel qualities extend life of batteries being stored within the novel vault.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Electrical equipment is frequently stored in enclosures such as cabinets or vaults so that the equipment is located proximate premises served by the equipment, while enabling the equipment to remain substantially inaccessible to the public. In particular, telephone utility companies store batteries for operating the telephone system. Cabinets and vaults are useful in protecting batteries against animals and human vandals and thieves, but are prone to deleterious influences shortening battery life.
The useful life of batteries is reduced by exposure to elevated temperatures and to water. Battery manufacturers supplying batteries typically specify that the environment of the battery average no higher than 77.degree. F. over time and not to exceed 92.degree. F. at any time. Therefore, it is desirable to limit temperatures within and to deny infiltration of water into any enclosure housing batteries. Water may infiltrate by seepage in the liquid state and also by circulation of air laden with humidity into the enclosure. Water vapor will condense when temperatures cool, and will come to rest on battery surfaces, ceiling surfaces above the batteries, and on battery racks, with eventual drippage onto the batteries.
Operation of acid using batteries typically releases hydrogen into the air due to electrolysis of water from the acid. Hydrogen is notoriously combustible, and must be vented to mitigate hazards of fire and explosions. Therefore, it is not feasible to fully seal the enclosure to eliminate infiltration by water. Simultaneously, the enclosure must limit its internal temperature.
Underground vaults for protecting electrical equipment has been proposed in the prior art. Underground vaults are shown in U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,390,225, issued to Robert O. Couch et al. on Jun. 25, 1968, 3,420,943, issued to Herbert D. Short on Jan. 7, 1969, and 4,709,120, issued to Dean C. Pearson on Nov. 24, 1987. The vault of Pearson comprises inner and outer concentrically disposed chambers, the inner chamber being wooden and the outer chamber being metallic. Pearson's vault is ventilated by a duct having a controllable damper. By contrast, the vault of the present invention comprises a single chamber formed from fiberglass reinforced concrete, and has a tightly controlled venting and air purging system.
Short provides a concrete vault having a raised floor or stand for supporting a transformer. This vault is cooled by a wind powered ventilating fan mounted atop an exhaust stack. By contrast, the concrete vault of the present invention is impervious to water and is effectively closed to constant communication with the atmosphere by its venting and air purging system.
Couch sets forth an inexpensive construction wherein a metallic pipe or the like is arranged vertically, with one end resting on or embedded within a concrete pad. This invention lacks the continuous concrete construction and venting and air purging system of the present invention.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,949,626, issued to Douglas W. Townsend et al. on Aug. 21, 1990, describes a sump assembly designed to expel both water and radon gas from a building. The sump comprises a pit covered by a hood. The hood encloses both a pump for ejecting accumulated water and a fan for forcibly venting radon gas. This device is far from air and water tight, as is the present invention. The device of Townsend et al. further lacks the fiberglass reinforced housing and air purging system of the present invention.
None of the above inventions and patents, taken either singly or in combination, is seen to describe the instant invention as claimed.


Various semiconductor chip thermal management systems and methods are disclosed. In one aspect, a method of manufacturing is provided that includes coupling a semiconductor chip to a substrate and coupling a diamond heat spreader that has a thermoelectric cooler to the semiconductor chip. A vapor chamber is coupled to the diamond heat spreader.

1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates generally to semiconductor processing, and more particularly to methods and apparatus for managing heat in a semiconductor chip.
2. Description of the Related Art
Heat is an adversary of most electronic devices. Integrated circuits, such as various types of processors, can be particularly susceptible to heat-related performance problems or device failure. Over the years, the problem of cooling integrated circuits has been tackled in a variety of ways. For conventional plastic or ceramic packaged integrated circuits, cooling fans, heat fins and even liquid cooling systems have been used, often with great success.
In the past few years, the size and power consumption of integrated circuits has climbed to the point where designers have turned to other ways to shed heat. One of these conventional techniques involves a liquid coolant micro heat exchanger in which a coolant is circulated past a top surface of an semiconductor chip. Another conventional technique for more localized thermal management involves the use of a thermoelectric or Peltier device. Conventional Peltier devices have been incorporated directly into a semiconductor die or supplied as an add on. In another conventional design suitable for a packaged semiconductor chip with a lid, micro channels are formed in the lid to increase the surface area available for conductive heat transfer. In still another conventional variant, a plate is coupled to a semiconductor die. The plate is provided with several diamond pins that act as heat pipes for the transfer of heat away from the semiconductor die.
The aforementioned conventional designs tend to focus on specific device and heat transfer levels, i.e., microscopic, macroscopic etc. New varieties of integrated circuits dissipate up to a few hundred watts of power. With die sizes continuing to fall, power densities can reach over a thousand watts per square centimeter. Conventional cooling systems may not be able to manage such power levels.
The present invention is directed to overcoming or reducing the effects of one or more of the foregoing disadvantages.

Holistic thermal management system for a semiconductor chip


Systems, devices, and methods including: capturing, by a capture device, an audio and corresponding location metadata associated with an emergency call; refining the location metadata to provide a refined location metadata; correlating, by the capture device, the refined location metadata of the emergency call with a geofenced location of the computing devices of one or more first responders (FRs); screening, by the capture device or the computing device, the emergency call data; transmitting, by the capture device, a first signal to the one or more computing devices based on the correlation, the transmitted signal including a portion of the captured audio and corresponding location metadata; receiving, by the capture device, an accept signal from the one or more computing devices of one or more FRs; transmitting, by the capture device, a second signal to the one or more computing devices based on the received accept signal.

A Public Safety Answering Point (PSAP) is a call center where emergency calls are received from distressed users. A worker at the call center who receives an emergency call is known as a call-taker. The job of a call-taker is to receive the emergency call, and quickly identify the caller's situation and location among other things and input this information into a CAD (Computer Aided Dispatch) system. Another worker at the call center is known as a dispatcher. The dispatcher reads the information entered the CAD system by the call-taker, and then broadcasts the call (over police radio) to an officer or field security personnel who is best suited to respond to the emergency of the caller. The call-taker and/or the dispatcher may need to make several decisions in a short time span, to be able to get the best match of the field security personnel directed to the caller. These field security personnel are known as First Responders (FRs). Generally, when an emergency call is received on the PSAP, the caller may be in urgent need of help. For example, if there is an accident situation or a medical emergency. And in such cases, the response time by the PSAP and the FRs is a crucial factor in saving lives.

This patent is subject to a terminal disclaimer.

Systems and methods of live streaming emergency dispatch data to first responders


Using standard or “off the shelf” cable to interconnect between the PET block detector and the detector circuit may save substantial costs given the number of PMTs in a PET system. Given space constraints, simple maintenance with reduced risk of disturbing cabling is desired, making ongoing use of standard cabling without adding further cabling desired. To implement digital gain control, a further communication is provided between the PET detector block and the detector circuit. Since the standard cable may not have additional wires for such communications and to reduce timing degradation, the PMT signals are combined, such as generating position and energy signals at the PET detector block. The four PMT signals are reduced to three signals without reduction in function, allowing a fourth twisted pair of wires in a CAT5 cable to be used for digital gain control.

The present embodiments relate to an interconnect for a block detector of a positron emission tomography (PET) system.
Photomultiplier tubes (PMTs) are used in block detectors of PET systems. The PMTs detect light generated by scintillation crystals. For example, four PMTs detect light generated by an array of crystals. Four signals are generated. The signals from the PMTs are communicated over a cable, such as category 5 (CAT5) cable, to a detector circuit for signal processing, event discrimination, and time stamping. Due to the different amounts of twist for different pairs of wires in CAT5 cable, timing performance of the PET system may be degraded.
The PMTs may not be balanced or uniform, resulting in different signal levels for a same amount of light. Aging of the PMTs may cause changes in the relative signal levels. To better equalize the signal levels, the PMTs are gain adjusted. Analog potentiometers (POTs) adjust the gain of the PMTs in an initial calibration. A variable gain amplifier in the detector circuit may account for signal changes due to aging. However, more effective gain control is desired.
In single photon emission computed tomography (SPECT), the gain for PMTs may be implemented by a bias change of dynodes. The gain is controlled digitally. Printed circuit board, ribbon cable, and flexible circuit interconnect are used for transmitting the digital gain control. However, ribbon cabling may have interference problems and result in difficulty in maintenance.

Positron emission tomography block detector interconnect