A bed rail mount consisting of a curved tube. The tube is provided with a female end for receiving one end of a cylindrical bed rail and provided with an opposite end that secures to a mounting plate. The mounting plate has gouged openings and ears which allow the mounting plate to be welded to an inside wall of the tube by welding the ears to the inside wall through the gouged openings. A flange nut is secured on a top side of the mounting plate so that it surrounds a central opening provided in the mounting plate. One end of a bolt extends through the central opening and engages the flange nut while an opposite end extends through a center opening in a wear plate, through a hole drilled in the vehicle, through a washer and engages a nut that secures the mount to the vehicle. An upwardly extending perimeter lip provided on the wear plate conceals the mounting plate.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a mount for attaching a bed rail to a top portion of a carrier sidewall located on a bed of a pickup truck. More specifically, the present invention is a mount that is provided on one end with concealed attachment means for attaching the mount to a top portion of the carrier side wall and provided on an opposite end with means for holding one end of a cylindrical bed rail.
2. Description of the Related Art
A variety of bed rail mounts have been employed to secure a bed rail to the top portion of a carrier sidewall of a pickup truck's bed. Until now all such mounts had one disadvantage; they all had a means of attaching the mount that was visible or had openings in the mounts for admitting the necessary attachment means. In some styles of mounts, the attachment means or opening therefor was on the top of the mount where water and debris could reach the attachment means and cause rust or other types of damage. Although covers are normally provided to cover these openings and to try to hide the attachment means, the covers come loose over time and are lost. Also, the visible attachment means or opening therefore detracts from the esthetics of the mount.
The present invention addresses these problems by providing a mount that has on one of its ends a concealed means for attaching the mount to the top portion of the carrier sidewalls. The present invention has on its opposite end a slightly enlarged female end for receiving one end of a cylindrical bed rail. By employing two mounts constructed in accordance with the present invention, opposing ends of a cylindrical bed rail can be captured between the mounts and secured to the carrier sidewall of the bed of a pickup truck.

Bed rail mount with concealed attachment


A gain medium 12 and a tunable filter are provided in an optical path of laser oscillation. The tunable filter has an optical beam deflector for periodically changing an optical beam at a constant angular speed, a prism 26 on which deflected light is made incident, and a diffraction grating 27. Appropriate selection of the apex angle α of the prism 26 and an angle β formed by the prism 26 and the diffraction grating 27 can provide a tunable laser light source for changing the oscillation frequency at high speed and a constant variation rate.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a tunable laser light source, which generates monochromatic light to scan continuously in a wavelength range at a constant variation rate thereof.
2. Discussion of the Related Art
Hitherto, as a light source of an analyzer for analyzing an object to be measured by irradiating the object with light, a light source of a wide bandwidth is used. In spectral analysis, there is widely used a method of projecting light of a wide bandwidth to an object to be measured, spatially decomposing reflection light or transmission light of the projected light to wavelength components by a grating or the like, Fourier-analyzing the frequency components by an interferometer, and making an analysis. As a light source used in such a method, for example, a white light source, an ASE light source using an erbium doped fiber (EDF), or the like is used. In such spectral analysis, however, the intensity and density of the light from the light source with respect to the wavelength is low, and those of light which is used in spectral analysis is also low. Consequently, the light source has a drawback such that even if Fourier transformation is performed, a light signal cannot be detected due to noise, and it is difficult to carry out the analysis.
Another method uses, as the light source of the analyzer, a tunable light source for emitting light of a single spectrum of high power density in which wavelength changes in a desired bandwidth. The light source emits a strong single spectrum light beam to an object to be measured while changing the wavelength of the light beam, so that the light beam passes through the object or reflection light of the light beam is directly received by a light detecting element. In the method, the intensity and density of the optical output with respect to the wavelength of the light source is high, so that the level of detected light and a S/N ratio are sufficiently high and sufficiently high measurement precision can be realized.
YAMASHITA ET AL., IEEE JOURNAL ON SELECTED TOPICS IN QUANTUM ELECTRONICS, VOL. 7, No. 1 January/February 2001, PP41 to 43 shows another conventional tunable light source of a ring laser using an erbium doped fiber. The tunable light source is obtained by using the erbium doped fiber (EDF) and a fiber amplifier for exciting the fiber as a gain medium, providing a bandpass filter of a tunable type in the optical fiber loop, and changing the wavelength of the bandpass filter. In this case, the length of a resonator of the optical fiber loop can be set to be long such as 30 m, so that the interval between longitudinal mode can be narrowed. Consequently, without changing the length of the resonator, the influence of mode hopping can be eliminated. Thus, although it is, strictly, not single mode oscillation but only by changing the wavelength to be selected of the bandpass filter, virtually continuously wavelength change can be achieved.
US 2005/0055295A1 discloses a tunable filter combining together a diffraction grating, a lens system, and a polygon mirror, and proposes a tunable light source using this filter.


Articles such as catheters or balloons that have an ester-linked poly(ester-block-amide) substrate have a lubricious hydrogel coating which suppresses particle development under accelerated aging conditions. A polymerizable coating composition is applied to the substrate without application of an intervening primer layer and cured. The coating composition comprises an uncrosslinked polyvinylpyrrolidone polymer that is free of attached photoinitiator groups and at least one polyfunctional ethylenically unsaturated monomer.

U.S. Pat. No. 4,898,591 describes catheter tubing formed of a blend of ester-linked PEBA (poly(ester-block-amide) with nylon 11. A lubricious hydrogel coating is applied to the surface. The lubricious coating may be a copolymer of polyurethane and polyvinylpyrrolidone or cross-linked copolymer of polyethylene oxide and polyhydroxyethyl methacrylate.
Surmodics, Inc. has described polymerizable compositions employing polyvinylpyrrolidone polymers that include photoinitiator groups thereon and use of such compositions on Pebax® polymer substrates in U.S. Pat. No. 7,348,055, US 2006/0030669 and US 20060240072. These compositions however are expensive to produce as the polymers with photoinitiator groups thereon must be specially prepared.
U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,585,057 and 5,433,713, Trotta, describe catheter tubing of ester-linked PEBA ("polyesteretheramides") such as Pebax® polymers have a blooming phenomena that is attributed to the ester linkage in these polymers. The blooming develops on accelerated aging and detrimentally affects adherence of hydrophilic coatings. These documents propose blending polyesteretheramide polymers having a Shore D hardness of greater than 70 with polyetheramides having no ester linkages, or with polyamides, to prevent particle blooming.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,629,961, Israelsson, also describes a blooming phenomena that occurs when ester-linked PEBA polymers (e.g. Pebax® polymers) are used for catheter tubing and teaches to use sequentially applied coatings of polyisocyanate and polyvinylpyrrolidone to avoid adherence problems despite the fact that blooming is sometimes observed after some months storage. This is attributed to the manner in which the coating is applied. The sequential coating provides a polyvinylpyrrolidone-polyurea interpolymer coating. The polyisocyanate coating step, however, substantially adds to the cost of this process.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,693,034 Busemi et al describes a lubricious coating for insertable medical devices such as catheters, balloons, and the like that is formed by polymerizing a polyfunctional acrylate monomer in a composition that also includes an uncrosslinked hydrogel polymer. Specific uncrosslinked hydrogel polymers that may be used include polyethylene oxide, polyacrylic acid, polyacrylamide, poly(sodium-4-styrenesulfonate), poly(3-hydroxybutyric acid), polyvinylpyrrolidone, and 2-hydroxyethyl methacrylate. One particular formulation according to U.S. Pat. No. 5,693,034 that has been commercialized is a lubricious coating in which the polyacrylate network is a polymer of neopentyl glycol diacrylate and the hydrogel polymer is polyethylene oxide. This coating has been successfully employed without significant problem on diverse substrates such as polyethylene, polyester, metals, polyester elastomers, and the like. The coating has the advantage that it involves a single application and that it can be photocured rapidly. However, when applied to substrates of Pebax® polymers that are susceptible to blooming, this polyethylene oxide/polyacrylate does not prevent particulate from passing therethrough. Under high humidity accelerated aging conditions high particle counts develop rapidly.

Hydrophilic coating that reduces particle development on ester-linked poly(ester-block-amide)


The present invention is directed to an improved process to convert morphine into noroxymorphone having economic and ecological advantages.

U.S. Pat. No. 5,112,975 (EP 0 158 476) discloses processes using morphine as starting material for manufacturing noroxymorphone. This 6-step process is illustrated in scheme 1.

Whereas the general outlay of the process looks attracting major drawbacks are noticed when reading the teachings as disclosed for the individual steps.
Step 1 is executed with the problematic solvent chloroform. According to the European Medicines Agency's Q3C (R4) Guideline for Residual Solvents chloroform is a highly problematic solvent that can only be tolerated in medical compositions in a maximal concentration of 60 ppm.
Step 2 is executed with Jones' reagent, a Cr(VI) reagent bearing an inherent risk for both product safety and environment. An alternate methodology is disclosed by Schwartz in FR 2 515 184 (U.S. Pat. No. 4,795,813). N-ethoxycarbonylnorcodeine (compound III) may be oxidized by manganese dioxide. However, oxidations with manganese dioxide are very sensitive to the nature of the reagent, which widely varies for commercially available material. Typically a huge excess of manganese dioxide is needed (Ninan A.; Sainsbury M. (1992). "An improved synthesis of noroxymorphone", Tetrahedron 48 (11): 6709) making this process costly and generating significant amounts of wastes.
For step 4 FR 2 515 184 discloses that peracids may be used for this transformation. The peracids may be either formed in situ by mixing hydrogen peroxide with acids or acid anhydrides or be used as isolated compounds. Isolated peracids are hazardous compounds due to their intrinsic nature to decompose. Therefore handling and storing these compounds is demanding. In situ generated peracids overcome the storage and transport problems however, reported yields for simple organic acids such as acetic and formic acids are low (38% and 33%, respectively). Maleic acid would allow higher yields; however, additional solvents are needed.
For step 6 FR 2 515 184 reports as being performed with moderate yield only. The di-ethoxycarbonyl compound yields 60% noroxymorphone only. This may be due to the harsh reaction conditions needed for the hydrolysis of the ethoxycarbonyl amide moiety. More gentle conditions can be used if alternate oxycarbonyl amide compounds are used. However, viable substitutes such as alpha-chloroethoxycarbonyl amide are significantly more expensive see for example Peter G. M. Wuts, Theodora W. Greene: "Green's Protective Groups in Organic Synthesis", 4th Ed., John Wiley & Sons Inc., Hoboken, N.J.).
The reported overall yield in FR 2 515 184 for the 6 step synthesis does not exceed 37%.
The overall yield of 37% for reactions of the state of the art is asking for further investigations to improve ecological and economic aspects of the process and to reduce the use of toxic agents and solvents.
Hence, there is still a need for an improved process for producing noroxymorphone from morphine.

Synthesis of noroxymorphone from morphine


A drum brake assembly which includes a rotatable drum having a radially inner drum braking surface and a brake shoe of single piece construction and of generally circular form mounted within the drum and against a backing plate. The brake shoe includes friction lining and at least one flange projecting radially inwardly. The brake shoe has positioning arrangement for positioning the brake shoe within the drum in an inoperative condition against lateral movement into engagement with the drum braking surface, to provide for complete clearance between the friction lining and the drum braking surface in the inoperative condition. The positioning arrangement includes an engagement member for engagement with an abutment arrangement. The abutment arrangement includes radially inner and outer abutments and the engagement member is arranged for engagement with the radially inner abutment in the inoperative condition of the assembly to position the friction lining away from the drum braking surface, and with the radially outer abutment when the brake shoe is radially expanded to the operative condition of the assembly.

The present invention relates to a drum brake assembly and in particular to a drum brake assembly that employs a single piece brake shoe.
A drum brake assembly of that kind is disclosed in Applicant's U.S. Pat. No. 5,246,093. That patent discloses a friction lined brake shoe which is of generally circular loop form and which defines two separate and opposed ends. The patent further discloses a drum brake assembly, in which an actuator is disposed between the opposed ends of the brake shoe for increasing the separation of the ends during a brake application to thereby radially expand the shoe to an operative condition, in which the friction lining engages the drum braking surface. The brake shoe is constructed to resiliently distort during radial expansion and to act as a return spring when the actuating force between the opposed ends is released, to return the shoe to a radially contracted, inoperative condition, in which the friction lining is spaced from the drum braking surface.
The drum brake assembly disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,246,093 advantageously reduces the number of brake components compared to prior art drum brake assemblies and it simplifies machining or grinding of the friction lining during brake shoe manufacture. The reduction in components achieved in the drum brake assembly of U.S. Pat. No. 5,246,093 includes a reduction in the number of components employed to secure the brake shoe in place against the backing plate and within the drum, and therefore, compared to prior art drum brake assemblies, the brake shoe of U.S. Pat. No. 5,246,093 is less constrained within the drum brake assembly. In that assembly, the brake shoe is not fully restrained against "floating" or shifting movement (hereinafter referred to as "lateral movement") across the backing plate when the drum brake assembly is in the inoperative condition. The brake shoe is not loose within the drum, as it is connected at the opposed shoe ends to the actuator and it is restrained against lifting away from the backing plate by spring clips or a conventional hold down spring, but those connections cannot under all circumstances, prevent the lateral movement referred to above. Thus, the brake shoe can, under certain circumstances, such as during excessive vibration, move laterally over the backing plate and that can cause the brake shoe to become misaligned within the drum when the drum brake assembly is in an inoperative condition, i.e., when there is no brake actuating load being applied, so as to reduce the running clearance between the friction lining and the drum braking surface below the set running clearance. In some circumstances, that misalignment may cause the brake shoe to engage the drum braking surface in the inoperative condition, which is undesirable.
It is an object of the invention to provide an improved brake assembly which employs a single piece brake shoe of the above described kind, in which the brake shoe is more reliably returned to a position spaced from contact with the drum braking surface in the inoperative condition.


The present invention provides compositions and methods based on genetic polymorphisms that are associated with autoinflammatory diseases such as psoriasis. For example, the present invention relates to nucleic acid molecules containing the polymorphisms, variant proteins encoded by these nucleic acid molecules, reagents for detecting the polymorphic nucleic acid molecules and variant proteins, and methods of using the nucleic acid molecules and proteins as well as methods of using reagents for their detection.

Examples of autoinflammatory diseases include inflammatory and autoimmune disorders such as psoriasis, inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) (including Crohn's disease, which further includes both adult and pediatric Crohn's disease, and ulcerative colitis) and other chronic inflammatory disorders, atopic dermatitis, multiple sclerosis, rheumatoid arthritis (RA), ankylosing spondylitis (AS), celiac disease, Graves' disease (including Graves' ophthalmopathy (GO) and Graves' disease without opthalmopathy), and Barrett's esophagus.
Psoriasis is described here as an example of an autoinflammatory disease.
Psoriasis
Psoriasis is a common, chronic, T-cell-mediated inflammatory disease of the skin affecting ˜2-3% of whites of European descent. Although this disease is found in all populations, its prevalence is lower in Asians and African-Americans and also declines at lower latitudes. The most common form, psoriasis vulgaris, is characterized by varying numbers of red, raised, scaly skin patches that can be present on any body surface, but most often appear on the elbows, knees and scalp. The onset of disease usually occurs early in life (15-30 years) and affects males and females equally. Up to 30% of individuals with psoriasis will develop an inflammatory arthritis, which can affect the peripheral joints of the hands and feet, large joints, or the central axial-skeleton. Pathologically, psoriasis is characterized by vascular changes, hyperproliferation of keratinocytes, altered epidermal differentiation and inflammation. In particular, the reaction of cells in the epidermis to type 1 effector molecules produced by T-cells results in the characteristic pathology of the plaques.
The genetics of psoriasis are complex and highly heritable as evidenced by an increased rate of concordance in monozygotic twins over dizygotic twins (35%-72% vs. 12-23%) and a substantially increased incidence in family members of affected individuals (first-degree relatives 6%); however, it is clear that environmental effects are also responsible for disease susceptibility. Ten genome-wide linkage scans have resulted in strong evidence for a susceptibility locus in the MHC region on 6p21 (PSORS1 [MIM 177900]), but have not yielded consistent evidence for other regions.
Linkage and association in the MHC (6p21) are thought to be due to HLA-C, in particular psoriasis susceptibility effects are thought to be caused by the *0602 allele, although other candidate genes in the area may also contribute to disease predisposition. Association studies have identified three genes under linkage peaks, with considerable evidence for linkage disequilibrium with psoriasis, namely SLC9A3R1/NAT9 and RAPTOR (KIAA1303) in 17q25, and SLC12A8 in 3q21. Several other genes including VDR, MMP2, IL10, IL1RN, IL12B, and IRF2 (Genetic Association Database, OMIM) have been associated with psoriasis in sample sets of varying sizes and of different ethnicities; however, without more data from additional independent studies, it is difficult to draw statistically sound conclusions about whether these markers are truly associated with disease. Thus, there remains a need for the discovery of reliable markers that can associate themselves with psoriasis, and in turn, would facilitate the diagnosis and treatment of the disease. The discovery of genetic markers which are useful in identifying psoriasis individuals who are at increased risk for developing psoriasis may lead to, for example, better therapeutic strategies, economic models, and health care policy decisions.
Single Nucleotide Polymorphisms (SNPs)
The genomes of all organisms undergo spontaneous mutation in the course of their continuing evolution, generating variant forms of progenitor genetic sequences. Gusella, Ann Rev Biochem 55:831-854 (1986). A variant form may confer an evolutionary advantage or disadvantage relative to a progenitor form or may be neutral. In some instances, a variant form confers an evolutionary advantage to the species and is eventually incorporated into the DNA of many or most members of the species and effectively becomes the progenitor form. Additionally, the effects of a variant form may be both beneficial and detrimental, depending on the circumstances. For example, a heterozygous sickle cell mutation confers resistance to malaria, but a homozygous sickle cell mutation is usually lethal. In many cases, both progenitor and variant forms survive and co-exist in a species population. The coexistence of multiple forms of a genetic sequence gives rise to genetic polymorphisms, including SNPs.
Approximately 90% of all genetic polymorphisms in the human genome are SNPs. SNPs are single base positions in DNA at which different alleles, or alternative nucleotides, exist in a population. The SNP position (interchangeably referred to herein as SNP, SNP site, SNP locus, SNP marker, or marker) is usually preceded by and followed by highly conserved sequences of the allele (e.g., sequences that vary in less than 1/100 or 1/1000 members of the populations). An individual may be homozygous or heterozygous for an allele at each SNP position. A SNP can, in some instances, be referred to as a "cSNP" to denote that the nucleotide sequence containing the SNP is an amino acid coding sequence.
A SNP may arise from a substitution of one nucleotide for another at the polymorphic site. Substitutions can be transitions or transversions. A transition is the replacement of one purine nucleotide by another purine nucleotide, or one pyrimidine by another pyrimidine. A transversion is the replacement of a purine by a pyrimidine, or vice versa. A SNP may also be a single base insertion or deletion variant referred to as an "indel." Weber et al., "Human diallelic insertion/deletion polymorphisms," Am J Hum Genet 71(4):854-62 (October 2002).
A synonymous codon change, or silent mutation/SNP (terms such as "SNP," "polymorphism," "mutation," "mutant," "variation," and "variant" are used herein interchangeably), is one that does not result in a change of amino acid due to the degeneracy of the genetic code. A substitution that changes a codon coding for one amino acid to a codon coding for a different amino acid (i.e., a non-synonymous codon change) is referred to as a missense mutation. A nonsense mutation results in a type of non-synonymous codon change in which a stop codon is formed, thereby leading to premature termination of a polypeptide chain and a truncated protein. A read-through mutation is another type of non-synonymous codon change that causes the destruction of a stop codon, thereby resulting in an extended polypeptide product. While SNPs can be bi-, tri-, or tetra-allelic, the vast majority of the SNPs are bi-allelic, and are thus often referred to as "bi-allelic markers," or "di-allelic markers."
As used herein, references to SNPs and SNP genotypes include individual SNPs and/or haplotypes, which are groups of SNPs that are generally inherited together. Haplotypes can have stronger correlations with diseases or other phenotypic effects compared with individual SNPs, and therefore may provide increased diagnostic accuracy in some cases. Stephens et al., Science 293:489-493 (July 2001).
Causative SNPs are those SNPs that produce alterations in gene expression or in the expression, structure, and/or function of a gene product, and therefore are most predictive of a possible clinical phenotype. One such class includes SNPs falling within regions of genes encoding a polypeptide product, i.e. cSNPs. These SNPs may result in an alteration of the amino acid sequence of the polypeptide product (i.e., non-synonymous codon changes) and give rise to the expression of a defective or other variant protein. Furthermore, in the case of nonsense mutations, a SNP may lead to premature termination of a polypeptide product. Such variant products can result in a pathological condition, e.g., genetic disease. Examples of genes in which a SNP within a coding sequence causes a genetic disease include sickle cell anemia and cystic fibrosis.
Causative SNPs do not necessarily have to occur in coding regions; causative SNPs can occur in, for example, any genetic region that can ultimately affect the expression, structure, and/or activity of the protein encoded by a nucleic acid. Such genetic regions include, for example, those involved in transcription, such as SNPs in transcription factor binding domains, SNPs in promoter regions, in areas involved in transcript processing, such as SNPs at intron-exon boundaries that may cause defective splicing, or SNPs in mRNA processing signal sequences such as polyadenylation signal regions. Some SNPs that are not causative SNPs nevertheless are in close association with, and therefore segregate with, a disease-causing sequence. In this situation, the presence of a SNP correlates with the presence of, or predisposition to, or an increased risk in developing the disease. These SNPs, although not causative, are nonetheless also useful for diagnostics, disease predisposition screening, and other uses.
An association study of a SNP and a specific disorder involves determining the presence or frequency of the SNP allele in biological samples from individuals with the disorder of interest, such as psoriasis, and comparing the information to that of controls (i.e., individuals who do not have the disorder; controls may be also referred to as "healthy" or "normal" individuals) who are preferably of similar age and race. The appropriate selection of patients and controls is important to the success of SNP association studies. Therefore, a pool of individuals with well-characterized phenotypes is extremely desirable.
A SNP may be screened in diseased tissue samples or any biological sample obtained from a diseased individual, and compared to control samples, and selected for its increased (or decreased) occurrence in a specific pathological condition, such as pathologies related to psoriasis. Once a statistically significant association is established between one or more SNP(s) and a pathological condition (or other phenotype) of interest, then the region around the SNP can optionally be thoroughly screened to identify the causative genetic locus/sequence(s) (e.g., causative SNP/mutation, gene, regulatory region, etc.) that influences the pathological condition or phenotype. Association studies may be conducted within the general population and are not limited to studies performed on related individuals in affected families (linkage studies).
Clinical trials have shown that patient response to treatment with pharmaceuticals is often heterogeneous. There is a continuing need to improve pharmaceutical agent design and therapy. In that regard, SNPs can be used to identify patients most suited to therapy with particular pharmaceutical agents (this is often termed "pharmacogenomics"). Similarly, SNPs can be used to exclude patients from certain treatment due to the patient's increased likelihood of developing toxic side effects or their likelihood of not responding to the treatment. Pharmacogenomics can also be used in pharmaceutical research to assist the drug development and selection process. Linder et al., Clinical Chemistry 43:254 (1997); Marshall, Nature Biotechnology 15:1249 (1997); International Patent Application WO 97/40462, Spectra Biomedical; and Schafer et al., Nature Biotechnology 16:3 (1998).

Genetic polymorphisms associated with autoinflammatory diseases, methods of detection and uses thereof


Disclosed is a food composition relieving the symptoms of various kinds of viral diseases or diseases suspected to be viral diseases. The food composition according to the present invention contains coix, xylitol, vitamin C, manuka honey, frankincense, myrrh and propolis in the form of powders, liquid or extract.

The present invention relates to a food composition, and more particularly, to a food composition relieving symptoms of various viral diseases or suspected viral diseases.
The methods of avoiding illness and overcoming the illness are mostly the same. One way to do this is to develop immunity to pathogenic microorganisms and to eradicate pathogenic microorganisms. Pathogenic microorganisms include viruses, bacteria, fungi, Acarus folliculorum, and the like. Among them, viruses were not correctly identified by modern medicine. Therefore, modern medicine is not responding well to virus. The present inventor has come to assume that many diseases in which modern medicine cannot provide a proper treatment are caused by infection of viruses, and it has been confirmed that this speculation is true while applying the food composition according to the present invention to many patients. Therefore, in the future, the fight against viruses will play a key role in overcoming many diseases.
On the other hand, viruses are difficult to screen for their virulence due to their nature. It is very difficult for vaccines or therapeutic drugs to show the therapeutic effect continuously because of the easy occurrence of resistant viruses. In addition, the virus is parasitic in the host's cells, and when the host's immunity is strong, it loses its contact with the immune cells in the cell, and when the immunity of the host becomes weak, it exits the cell and exerts its virulence. Therefore, unlike bacteria or fungi, even if the virus is infected, it is difficult to confirm the pathogenicity of the virus because there are many cases in which the pathological symptoms do not appear due to the inactivity of the virus. Tuberculosis and leprosy have been mistaken for genetic diseases in times of lack of information about germs. Although some diseases are viral diseases, they are misdiagnosed as diseases caused by genetic or familial reasons because no virus was found or the virulence of the virus was not revealed.
Viruses are parasitic in living cells, small in size, simple in structure, and highly likely to mutate. There are many more types of viruses that are unknown than known types, because new types or variants continue to emerge. Since the emergence of new or variant viruses is frequent and difficult to predict, development of vaccines is difficult. With the advent of frequent variant viruses, it is often difficult for an antiviral agent developed by hard-working to continue to exert therapeutic effects.
Conventionally, different antiviral agents have been developed and applied for different types of viruses. For viral diseases such as avian influenza, severe acute respiratory syndrome, novel influenza, and Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus, vaccines or therapeutic agents having unique effects only on individual diseases are being developed. However, such a vaccine or a therapeutic agent does not exhibit any effect for a variant virus or a newly emerging virus.
Therefore, there is a need to develop foods that can alleviate or cure symptoms of various kinds of viral diseases or suspected viral diseases.
US Patent Application Publication No. 2004/0091555 A1 discloses a method for producing an agrimonia extract that exhibits an antiviral effect against hepatitis B virus and a food composition containing the agrimonia extract. However, the agrimonia extract is merely exert effective activities against the hepatitis B virus, there cannot be effective with other types of diseases which are suspected viral infection or viral diseases.

Food composition for relieving symptoms of allergic and autoimmune diseases


Systems, methods, and firmware for power control of data storage devices are provided herein. In one example, a data storage device is presented. The data storage device includes a transaction queue configured to enqueue storage operations received over a host interface of the data storage device for storage and retrieval of data on storage media. The data storage device includes a storage controller configured to process a power/current target to establish a dequeue process for storage operations in the transaction queue which operates the data storage device within the power/current target.

Computer and network systems such as data storage systems, server systems, cloud storage systems, personal computers, and workstations, typically include data storage devices for storing and retrieving data. These data storage devices can include hard disk drives (HDDs), solid state storage drives (SSDs), tape storage devices, optical storage drives, hybrid storage devices that include both rotating and solid state data storage elements, and other mass storage devices.
As computer systems and networks grow in numbers and capability, there is a need for ever increasing storage capacity. Data centers, cloud computing facilities, and other at-scale data processing systems have further increased the need for digital data storage systems capable of transferring and holding immense amounts of data. Data centers can house this large quantity of data storage devices in various rack-mounted and high-density storage configurations.
Data center operators typically attempt to maximize data center utilization by including a high density of storage devices in a given volume. However, these higher densities lead to greater power dissipation with associated heat generation and cooling problems. Power capping has been employed in data centers to set maximum power usages for the various computing systems contained in the data centers. However, power dissipation by individual components of the computing systems is limited to very coarse adjustments, such as sleep modes or powering down of unused computing elements.

Enhanced queue management for power control of data storage device


A stabilizing system stabilizes articles carried on conveyors for automated bulk processing equipment. In a preferred embodiment, a flow of gas (e.g., air) is projected along a conveyor belt in a direction generally parallel to that in which articles are carried by the belt. The air flow has a velocity (i.e., speed and direction) substantially the same as that of the belt to reduce aerodynamic resistance that would otherwise bear against the articles. As a result, the articles may be transported on the conveyor belt at high speeds with substantially increased stability or throughput.

Automated bulk optical processing equipment can perform a variety of tasks such as, for example, inspecting or sorting bulk articles including raw or processed fruit, vegetables, wood chips, recycled plastics and other similar products. The articles may be characterized according to size, color, shape or other qualities. Modern bulk optical processing equipment can rapidly separate very large quantities of articles into numerous categories.
Such equipment typically includes a conveyor system that moves the articles past an inspection station where cameras or other detection devices examine the articles. The inspection station sends signals to a sorting or treatment station where the articles are sorted or otherwise treated by category. For example, defective or foreign articles may be removed from the flow of articles carried by the conveyor system.
Rapid inspection or sorting of large quantities of articles typically requires high-speed conveyor systems such as, for example, conveyor belts with widths of 3-4 ft (1-1.3 m) and that carry articles at speeds of over 10 ft/sec (3 m/sec). A problem with conveyor systems driven at such speeds is that many articles are relatively unstable on the belts and tend to roll, tumble, bounce and collide with each other. Unstable articles carried by a high-speed conveyor system are difficult to inspect, sort or otherwise process for at least two reasons.
First, automated bulk optical processing equipment includes cameras or other optical detectors that optically determine selected characteristics of the articles (e.g., size, color or shape). The rolling, tumbling or bouncing of an article typically diminishes the clarity with which an image of the article is generated, thereby decreasing the accuracy and reliability of the optical information about the article. As extreme examples, rolling could cause a cubic article to appear round or an article with regions of two different colors to be of a single mixed color.
Second, unstable articles moving on a conveyor belt can move laterally across the belt or along the belt in its direction of travel. Lateral movement of the articles is undesirable because it misaligns the articles as they pass from the inspection station to the processing station, thereby resulting in incorrect processing. Similarly, articles that move along the belt in its direction of travel have different effective speeds along the belt and may be temporally misaligned for subsequent processing operations.
Some articles have increased susceptibility to unstable motion on a conveyor, such as light-weight articles and articles of low and non-uniform density (e.g., wood and bark chips). As a consequence, these types of articles are correspondingly difficult to inspect and sort accurately at high speeds.
To decrease the instability of articles resulting in image degradation and processing errors, some conveyor systems operate at reduced speeds or have greater lengths. Such systems are undesirable because the reduced speeds result in lower processing rates and the conveyor systems of greater length can limit the placement of such systems.

System for stabilizing articles on conveyors


A set expansion system is described herein that improves precision, recall, and performance of prior set expansion methods for large sets of data. The system maintains high precision and recall by 1) identifying the qualify of particular lists and applying that quality through a weight, 2) allowing for the specification or negative examples in a set of seeds to reduce the introduction of bad entities into the set, and 3) applying a cutoff to eliminate lists that include a low number of positive matches. The system may perform multiple passes to first generate a good candidate result set and then refine the set to find a set with highest quality. The system may also apply Map Reduce or other distributed processing techniques to allow calculation in parallel. Thus, the system efficiently expands large concept sets from a potentially small set of initial seeds from readily available web data.

Set expansion refers to the practical problem of expanding a small set of "seed" entities, into a more complete set by discovering other entities that also belong to the same "concept set". Here a "concept set" can be any collection of entities that conceptually form a set that people have in mind, and "seeds" are the instances of entities in the set. As an example, a person wanting to discover all camera brand names may give a small number of well-known brand names like "Canon" and "Nikon" as seeds; the set expansion techniques would leverage the given data sources to discover other camera brands, such as "Leica", "Pentax" and "Olympus" that are also camera brands.
Set expansion systems are of practical importance and can be used in various applications. For instance, web search engines may use the set expansion tools to create a comprehensive entity repository (for, say, brand names of each product category), in order to deliver better results to entity-oriented queries. As another example, the task of named entity recognition can also leverage the results generated by set expansion tools.
There is a substantial amount of data on the web, but present set expansion techniques work poorly with noisy web data. Two readily available forms of general web data sources are Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) lists extracted from web pages by web crawls (henceforth referred to as web lists) and web search query logs (query logs). Such general-purpose web data can be highly useful for set expansion tasks: they are very diverse in nature, with rich information that covers most domains of interest. In addition, since these general data are not domain/seed specific, they can be pre-processed and optimized for efficiency purposes. However, these general web data can be inherently noisy. Random walk or other similarity measures alone may not be sufficient to distinguish true results from the noises, especially when the number of seeds is limited. Random walk based ranking techniques used in previous work perform poorly on general-purpose web lists and query logs and produce results with low precision/recall. Partly because of that, previous approaches use seed-specific and page-specific wrappers to reduce the candidate set to a smaller and much cleaner subset over which the random walk based ranking techniques work reasonably well. However, this additional data extraction process is at the cost of overall architectural complexity and system responsiveness.
One set expansion system for using web data to expand a set of seed entities is presented in U.S. patent application Ser. No. 13/163,736 entitled "ITERATIVE SET EXPANSION USING SAMPLES," and filed on Jun. 20, 2011, which is hereby incorporated by reference and referred to herein as SEISA. SEISA solves several of the above problems. SEISA uses web-lists as one data source. A web-list is the hypertext markup language (HTML) fragments between <ul> or <ol> and its corresponding closing </ul> or </ol> tag. The text between each <li> and its closing </li> tag is considered as a named entity. All named entities that belong to the same web-list are considered to be from the same concept set. The similarity between any two named entities are measured by how many web-lists they share versus how many web-lists they belong to using popular scoring functions such as Jaccard or Cosine. For example, if Boston belongs to List_1 and List_2 and Chicago belongs to List_1 and List_3, and using Jaccard as the similarity function, then Similarity (Boston, Chicago)=1/(2+2−1)=0.33.
Experiments show SEISA works well for concepts of relatively small cardinality such as countries and colors. However, in practice there are also uses for expanding a large concept that includes many entities such as all the cities in the United States. Such expanded sets can be used for data cleaning or as features for name entity recognition in document understanding. One typical behavior of set expansion algorithms is as the expanded set becomes larger, the expansion precision (that is, fraction of the expanded set that belongs to the concept set) drops. So one particularly interesting application setting is to find as many entities as possible in a large concept while keeping the precision of the expanded set above a relatively high threshold such as 0.9. There are a few drawbacks when applying SEISA in the above setting. First, SEISA treats each web-list as equal so that introducing less popular entities in a large concept is likely to reduce the quality score. Second, SEISA does not use negative seeds so that giving feedback that New Jersey is not a city is not possible.

High precision set expansion for large concepts


An apparatus comprising a processor and a display connected to the processor, the display being configured to present a first and second application on the display so that the second application is transparently presented over the first application wherein the first and second applications are active applications.

1. Field
The disclosed embodiments relate to user interfaces and, more particularly, to user interfaces for electronic devices.
2. Brief Description of Related Developments
Currently electronic devices such as personal computers, personal digital assistants, mobile phones and the like can run applications simultaneously, but a user of the device must switch between the application when the user wants to use one the running applications. For example, if a calendar application is running in the foreground of an electronic device (i.e. the active application) and a music player is running in the background the user must deactivate the calendar application or otherwise make the calendar application inactive or move the application to the background rather than the foreground before the user can access and operate the music player and vice versa.
It would be advantageous to be able to simultaneously operate more than one application without continuously switching from one application to another.


A circuit interrupter includes: a first fixed terminal including a first fixed contact; a movable contactor which is formed as a separate part from the first fixed terminal and includes a first movable contact; a holding unit configured to hold the movable contactor so that the first movable contact is connected to the first fixed contact; and a squib configured to generate gas by combustion. In the circuit interrupter, pressure of the gas generated by the squib causes movement of the movable contactor in a direction away from the first fixed terminal so that the first movable contact is separated from the first fixed contact.

Patent Literature 1 discloses a breaker including a pyrotechnic actuator which is intended to be mounted on an automobile, in particular, an electric vehicle.
The breaker of Patent Literature 1 includes a conductor, a housing, a matrix, a punch, and a pyrotechnic actuator.
The housing is partially intersected by the conductor. Opposite ends of the conductor serve as two connection terminals for the breaker. The matrix and the punch are placed on opposite sides (upper and lower sides) of the conductor.
The pyrotechnic actuator moves the punch from a first position to a second position when ignited. In movement of the punch from the first position to the second position, the punch, and the matrix break (chop) the conductor into three separate parts. The punch includes a groove. While the punch is in the second position, the groove of the punch is engaged with the matrix.
The breaker disclosed in Patent Literature 1 breaks the conductor by use of energy generated by the pyrotechnic actuator, thereby interrupting a circuit. Therefore, this breaker needs a time for interrupting the circuit. And, in the broken circuit, it is difficult to increase a gap between higher and lower voltage side circuits. Improvement of current interruption performance is limited.

PANASONIC INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY MANAGEMENT CO., LTD.


Methods and apparatus for customizing a telephone are disclosed in which preferred communication services are conveniently accessible to a user, in which a telephone is tailored to the specific requirements of a user.

With the convergence of voice and data networks and the integration of corresponding services, the usage of a telephone is no long confined to conversational communication. A telephone allows a user to use many services including personal communication services, such as telephone services, conference services, voice messaging services, and directory services, such as yellow page services. Telephones also permit access to and use of information services, such as stock quote services, weather services, traffic condition services and the like; commercial services, such as fund transfer services, movie ticketing services or merchandise ordering services; to purchase products or services; conduct financial or banking transactions; obtain healthcare advice, healthcare provider referrals, or for "hotline" connection to his/her doctors or nurses, to name just a few.
A typical telephone has a display panel and navigation keys to help a user to find and use a service. Due to the many available services, the user often has to navigate through many menu displays in order to find a desired service.
The proliferation of the number of communication services available via telephone creates a new problem for a user.
In one example, a parent with small children might typically use his telephone for several communication services relating to parenthood and schooling, such as obtaining school activity information, and quite regularly contacting a pediatric consultation service for childcare questions. Each time he tries to use one of these communication services, he must fumble through several levels of display menu in order to find it.
In another example, a senior citizen living alone might often use communication services relating to a senior person, such as phoning a pharmacy, an elderly healthcare inquiry service, and a hotline service for medical problems. In a similar fashion, this user must go through multiple navigation steps to find the service she needs. This is particularly troublesome when she has a medical emergency and needs to use the hotline service, but is unable to locate it in the complex menu.
In another example, a company might offer various communication services for its employees with different responsibilities. For instance, a receptionist's often-used communication services include a company directory service, and a service that provides up-to-date business information for enquiry purpose; an office administrator's often-used communication services includes a yellow page service and a business travel reservation service; and a manager's often-used communication services includes a conferencing service and a service that provides ongoing project status. It is important for employees with different responsibilities to be able to conveniently access their often-used communication services without having to fumble through complex menus.
Therefore, there is a need to provide a method to customize a communication device with often-used communication services reflecting a role of a user, and devices so customized.

System and method to customize a telephone


A planar top yoke in a magnetic write head is disclosed. The top yoke includes a backside region and a second pole tip region that is thinner than the backside region and forms a step at the ABS. Alternatively, a front section of the backside region includes a step with a thickness greater than the second pole tip region. Therefore, flux is directed from a thicker backside region toward the gap side of the second pole tip layer near the ABS. A lower flux density is formed at the top of the step at the ABS which reduces the flank field/gap field ratio and prevents unwanted erasure of adjacent data tracks. A high gap field is achieved while maintaining a low flank field during high write current conditions. The step recess from the ABS toward the backside region is about 0.2 to 2 microns.

A magnetic disk drive includes a rotating magnetic disk with circular data tracks and read and write heads that may form a merged head which is attached to a slider on an arm which positions the head. During a recording operation, the merged head is suspended over the magnetic disk on an air bearing surface (ABS). The write head has first and second pole pieces that are connected at a back gap region. The first and second pole pieces or yokes have first and second pole tips, respectively, that are separated by a write gap layer and terminate at the ABS. An electric current is passed through coils formed around the back gap region to magnetize the first and second pole pieces. As the leading first pole tip is moved over a magnetic disk, a magnetic flux passes from the second pole tip onto a data track and then to the first pole tip and is called the gap field.
A trend in the industry is to increase the recording density which requires increased coercivity to overcome the demagnetization field of the magnetic transition. However, as the data track width shrinks, the write head field strength tends to decrease due to saturation of the second pole tip region. Unfortunately, a high-end hard disk drive (HDD) generates such a high data rate transfer that not only is greater write head field strength required, but a faster flux rise time is needed. To produce a large enough overwrite value, the write current is boosted and a large overshoot of its waveform results. This condition causes severe excess saturation of the second pole tip and adjacent track erasures often occur.
A conventional planar write head 10 is depicted in FIG. 1 and features a bottom yoke or first pole piece 2 formed on a substrate 1 which may be ceramic, for example. There is a planar top yoke or second pole piece 3 that is connected to the bottom yoke 2 through a back gap region 4 and which is covered by an overcoat layer 14. The bottom yoke 2 has a pedestal 5 with a first pole tip 7 and a throat region 6. The top yoke 3 has a second pole tip region 3a that terminates at a second pole tip 8 at the ABS. The throat region 6 and second pole tip region 3a are separated by a write gap layer 9 which is non-magnetic and extends from the ABS toward the back gap region 4 by a distance TH which is the throat height. At this point, the bottom yoke 2 begins to separate from the top yoke 3 and forms a cavity with sidewalls and a bottom. A conformal first dielectric layer 11 is formed on the sidewalls and bottom of the cavity. A coil layer 13 is wrapped between the top yoke 3 and bottom yoke 2 and around the back gap region 4 and is contained in a second dielectric layer 12 which is coplanar with the top of the write gap layer 9. This design enables the top yoke 3 to be formed on a planar surface to allow good track width control for the second pole tip 8 definition. In a merged head design, the bottom yoke 2 of the write head also serves as the top layer of the read head (not shown).
Referring to FIG. 2, a top-down view of the write head 10 is depicted in which the overcoat layer 14 and dielectric layers 11, 12 have been removed to show the arrangement of the top yoke 3, bottom yoke 2, back gap region 4, and coil layer 13. The top yoke 3 has a length d1 of about 5 to 25 microns which includes the length d2 of the second pole tip region 3a. The maximum width of the top yoke 3 and bottom yoke 2 is w1. The main body of the top yoke 3 behind the second pole tip region 3a is also referred to as the back side region.
Referring to FIG. 3, a side view from the plane 15—15 in FIG. 1 is shown that depicts the second pole tip region 3a and the second pole tip 8 at the ABS end of the top yoke. The write gap layer 9 overlays the first pole tip 7 and the pedestal 5. The second dielectric layer 12 is on either side of the write gap layer 9 and pedestal 5 at the ABS while the second pole tip region is surrounded on the top and sides by the overcoat layer 14.
In a conventional planar writer shown in FIG. 4 which is an enlarged view of the ABS end of write head 10 in FIG. 1, the top yoke 3 can provide a significant amount of flux 16 toward the write gap layer 9. The flux 16 passes from the second pole tip region 3a through the second pole tip 8 onto a recording track (not shown) and then through the first pole tip 7 and into pedestal 5. However, there is some leakage represented by a flank field 17 across the ABS onto an adjacent recording track. When a high write current is employed with large overshoot waveforms, then a significant amount of erasure on adjacent data tracks occurs because of the flank field. Therefore, a new write head design is needed that reduces the flank field to prevent unwanted data track erasure.
In U.S. Pat. No. 6,473,276, a merged magnetic head which includes a write head with a single sided notched first pole piece is described. A data track is formed that has a narrow erase band on one side and a wide erase band on the other side. The narrow erase band enables a large signal amplitude while a wide erase band allows flexibility in spacing the read head from adjacent tracks.
A magnetic write head with a zero throat height (ZTH) layer is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 6,111,724. The ZTH is formed close to the first and second pole tips to reduce flux loss between the first and second pole pieces. The method of forming the ZTH layer avoids reflective notching and thereby improves definition of the second pole tip.
Another second pole piece is described in U.S. Pat. No. 6,337,783 where a second yoke component is stitched to the back and sides of the top edge of a second pole tip to provide improved magnetic coupling. The top stitched area is minimized so that the coil layers may be closer to the ABS to increase the data rate of the head. In related art disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 6,029,339, the stitching of the yoke component to the second pole tip is achieved by a method that avoids reflective notching in the top yoke.
Unwanted side writing is prevented in U.S. Pat. No. 6,504,675 by modifying the second pole tip such that the leading edge of the pole tip is narrower than the trailing edge. Thus, the second pole tip has a trapezoidal cross-section with tapered sides.


A lighter comprises a lighter housing, a gas container for storing liquid inflammable gas, a combustion device connected to the gas container, and an igniter for igniting inflammable gas in the combustion device. The housing includes an upper cover and a case, wherein one side of the upper cover includes a protuberance forming a small hole thereon; a connector disposed below the protuberance of the upper cover for connecting the upper cover and the case, wherein the connector includes a recess portion coupling with the protuberance and having transverse holes on both sides of the recess portion; and a bolt for rotationally connecting the protuberance and the recess portion; wherein the case has at its edge port a longitudinal groove connected to the connector and having an opening at the edge port of the groove to couple with the protuberance of the upper cover.

Currently, lighters with upper covers on market have their upper covers connected to brackets of combustion devices, which disadvantageously make the structures complicated and the connections between the upper covers and the brackets vulnerable to abrasion. Besides, it is relatively difficult to manufacture and assemble the lighter with such structure, which may lead to high rate of unqualified products, and furthermore, if there is any failure in the connection, it would be much difficult to fix it. In addition to such lighters, there is another type of lighter which has its upper cover integrated with the lighter housing. Disadvantages of such structure are that the structure is complicated, the proportion of unqualified products is high due to the application of point-welding process to the connection, and the overall aesthetic effect of the lighter is damaged by possible concave welding spots caused by high temperature welding.


A cantilevered roller assembly for a conveyor system includes a non-rotating shaft, a sprocket, a roller, a sleeve, and a clutching spring. The non-rotating shaft has a first end with a first retention feature and second end with a second retention feature. The sprocket is rotatably disposed over the shaft. The roller is rotatably disposed over the shaft adjacent the sprocket. The sleeve is slidably and rotatably disposed over the non-rotating shaft. The sleeve has a first end in non-rotatable engagement with one of the sprocket and the roller on a first end and has a second end with an adjusting nut threadably disposed thereover. The clutching spring is axially disposed between the second end of the sleeve and the second end of the shaft. The clutching spring induces a clutching load between the sprocket and the roller. Rotation of the nut varies the clutching load between the sprocket and the roller.

Conveyor systems are widely used to move objects from a first location to a second location. Conveyors can take on a wide variety of characteristics, depending, in part, on the nature of the goods being moved, on the environmental conditions in which the conveyor will be used, and the specific path of the conveyor including changes in vertical elevation, turns and the radii of the turns.
One type of conveyor is a power roller conveyor. Power roller conveyors have a plurality of rollers drivingly connected with a driving means such as an electric motor. The rollers are engaged, directly or indirectly, by the goods being moved or conveyed. Rotation of the rollers moves the goods in a desired direction. Driving torque is communicated to each driving roller by a drive system commonly comprising in part a belt, a chain, or a drive shaft. Each type of drive system has certain advantages and disadvantages. Drive shafts are able to transmit high levels of torque to the rollers via gear sets connecting the drive shaft to the rollers, but such systems are expensive and can be difficult to service. Chain drive systems are durable and can also transmit high levels of torque to the rollers. Chains, however, require lubrication which may make them unsuited for use in clean environments. Belts typically do not require lubrication and are therefore cleaner than chains. Flat and V-belts, however, are somewhat subject to slipping. Known toothed belts have teeth on just one side and can only be drivingly engaged on that one side, making the possible relative orientations of the driving unit and the rollers more limited than those possible with chains.
The rollers in some conveyors are preferentially mounted in cantilever fashion to a supporting structural member. The rollers are typically rotatably disposed on a shaft which is fixed on one end relative to the structural member. The cantilever mounting arrangement facilities moving the rollers. However, the shaft must be sized sufficiently large to support a pallet or the like without bending.
Another concern with known conveyors is in preventing damage to both the conveyor and to the goods or objects being moved when the goods or objects being conveyed are stalled or jammed up on the conveyor. Such stalling can occur when goods accumulate at the end of the conveyor if there is a delay in removing the goods from the conveyor. The damage results from rollers continuing to rotate relative to the stationary goods. Also, such stalling may cause the motor to require more power to keep the rollers rotating at a constant speed. An oversized motor may be needed to ensure that the motor will not be stalled. One approach used to minimize the risk of damage and excess energy consumption is to provide a clutching mechanism between the roller and the drive gear. When a roller experiences drag torque exceeding a predetermined magnitude, as might occur with stalling of goods, the clutch slips, allowing the roller to stop rotating even though the drive belt and sprocket keep moving. For many clutching systems, the torque at which the clutch slippage occurs either cannot be adjusted at all or cannot be adjusted very easily.
Some known power roller conveyors rely on an axial deflection of springs, such as wave washers or Belleville springs, to generate a clutching preload. In some such power roller conveyors, there is relative rotation between the elements which axially contain the springs, either when the rollers are rotating or when they are stalled. This relative rotation can cause the springs to wear and deteriorate, decreasing the axial load the springs are able to provide and/or causing them to break. In one known clutching system in which the springs rotate in unison with the adjacent elements, the arrangement is not well suited for packaging into a cantilevered roller application.
Another concern with known power roller conveyors relates to the level of difficulty involved in both shifting the relative locations of the rollers to accommodate a change in package size and the ease of removal of the rollers from the conveyors. Many conveyors use bores in the supporting structure for mounting the rollers. This limits the locations of the rollers to the locations of the bores. Some supporting structures have longitudinally extending T-slots for fixing the rollers in place. The T-slots enable infinite adjustment of the space between the rollers. However, even with T-slots, the rollers are often more difficult to access and reposition within or remove from the conveyor's supporting structure by surrounding supporting members and guards.
A further concern with known belt or chain driven power conveyors employing separate left and right hand rollers relates to coupling the rollers to a common drive motor. Usually, a connecting shaft extends between the two sides. However, if the shaft is difficult to remove and/or install, then the chain or belt is consequently more difficult to remove and/or install.


A programmable integrated circuit includes a plurality of interconnected logic blocks, each including a logic circuit and an output multiplexer circuit. The output multiplexer circuit includes a first multiplexer having first and second data inputs respectively coupled to first and second outputs of the logic circuit, a select input coupled to an output of another logic block, and a first data output. A second output multiplexer may also have first and second data inputs respectively coupled to the first and second outputs of the logic circuit, a select input coupled to the output of the another logic block, and a second data output. The output multiplexer circuit is programmably coupled, in one of a plurality of operating modes, to provide an output token with the first output of each logic block only when the output multiplexer circuit of the logic block receives tokens indicating valid new data on each of the first, second, and select inputs of the circuit.

Multiplier circuits are common in many types of systems, such as DSP (digital systems processing) systems. Therefore, several different types of multiplier circuits have been devised. One such type is the array multiplier circuit, in which a matrix of partial products is derived in parallel, and then a 2-dimentional array of full adders is used to sum the rows of partial products. The matrix of partial products is naturally trapezoidal in shape. However, the trapezoid can be skewed into a rectangle with the sum or carry bits being propagated diagonally. The rectangular array multiplier is regular in structure, and each cell in the rectangle is coupled only to the neighboring cells. Therefore, this architecture is suitable for implementation in an integrated circuit (IC).
FIG. 1 illustrates a well-known array multiplier circuit. The illustrated array multiplier circuit includes an N×N (N by N) array of cells (101, 102, 103, 104) including full adders plus adjacent half adders and AND gates, with a ripple carry adder (112, 113) added at the top of the array to provide the upper N bits of the final sum. In the circuit of FIG. 1, the two N-bit inputs to the multiplier circuit are X[N−1:0] and Y[N−1:0], and the 2N-bit product output of the multiplier circuit is P[2N−1:0]. Each &/FA sub-circuit 102 (see FIG. 2) includes a full adder and a logical AND gate coupled to one of the full adder inputs. The &/FA cell 102 provides the partial product bit SOUT and the carry out signal COUT from the carry input CIN, the two bit inputs YIN and ZIN, and the partial product input bit SIN. Each &/HA sub-circuit 103 (see FIG. 3) includes a half adder and a logical AND gate coupled to one of the half adder inputs. Each &/HA cell 103 provides the partial product bit SOUT and the carry out signal COUT from the carry input CIN, the two bit inputs YIN and ZIN, and the partial product input bit SIN. Each AND sub-circuit 104 (see FIG. 4) includes a logical AND gate driven by the corresponding YIN and ZIN inputs and providing the AND output signal ANDOUT. The N×N array provides the lower N bits of the product P[N−1:0].
The ripple carry adder at the top of the array includes full adder sub-circuits (RCFA 112) and a half adder sub-circuit (RCHA 113), with the ripple carry chain going from right to left as shown in FIG. 1. The ripple carry adder performs the final summation of the partial products and provides the upper N bits of the product P[2N−1: P[N]).
Thus, a standard array multiplier circuit can have a rectangular aspect well suited for implementation in an integrated circuit. However, a typical multiplier circuit includes several types of cells and thus is not completely regular in design.
Other multiplier architectures in common use utilize "Wallace trees". These architectures use carry propagate adders instead of the long carry chains required by an array multiplexer. For sufficiently large values of N, these architectures have improved multiplier performance compared to the structure of FIG. 1, but at the price of having a much less regular structure. Thus, multipliers utilizing Wallace trees and similar methods may be less suited for implementation in array-type integrated circuits, e.g., in many programmable integrated circuits.
Programmable integrated circuits (ICs) are a well-known type of arrayed IC that can be programmed to perform specified logic functions. An exemplary type of programmable IC, the field programmable gate array (FPGA), typically includes an array of programmable tiles. These programmable tiles can include, for example, input/output blocks (IOBs), configurable logic blocks (CLBs), dedicated random access memory blocks (BRAM), multipliers, digital signal processing blocks (DSPs), processors, clock managers, delay lock loops (DLLs), and so forth.
Each programmable tile typically includes both programmable interconnect and programmable logic. The programmable interconnect typically includes a large number of interconnect lines of varying lengths interconnected by programmable interconnect points (PIPs). The programmable logic implements the logic of a user design using programmable elements that can include, for example, function generators, registers, arithmetic logic, and so forth.
The programmable interconnect and programmable logic are typically programmed by loading a stream of configuration data into internal configuration memory cells that define how the programmable elements are configured. The configuration data can be read from memory (e.g., from an external PROM) or written into the FPGA by an external device. The collective states of the individual memory cells then determine the function of the FPGA.
Another type of programmable IC is the Complex Programmable Logic Device, or CPLD. A CPLD includes two or more "function blocks" connected together and to input/output (I/O) resources by an interconnect switch matrix. Each function block of the CPLD includes a two-level AND/OR structure similar to those used in Programmable Logic Arrays (PLAs) and Programmable Array Logic (PAL) devices. In CPLDs, configuration data is typically stored on-chip in non-volatile memory. In some CPLDs, configuration data is stored on-chip in non-volatile memory, then downloaded to volatile memory as part of an initial configuration (programming) sequence.
For all of these programmable ICs, the functionality of the device is controlled by data bits provided to the device for that purpose. The data bits can be stored in volatile memory (e.g., static memory cells, as in FPGAs and some CPLDs), in non-volatile memory (e.g., FLASH memory, as in some CPLDs), or in any other type of memory cell.
Other programmable ICs are programmed by applying a processing layer, such as a metal layer, that programmably interconnects the various elements on the device. These ICs are known as mask programmable ICs. Programmable ICs can also be implemented in other ways, e.g., using fuse or antifuse technology. The terms "programmable integrated circuit" and "programmable IC" include but are not limited to these exemplary devices, as well as encompassing devices that are only partially programmable. For example, one type of programmable IC includes a combination of hard-coded transistor logic and a programmable switch fabric that programmably interconnects the hard-coded transistor logic.
Traditionally, programmable ICs include one or more extensive dedicated clock networks, as well as clock management blocks that provide clock signals for distribution to all portions of the IC via the dedicated clock networks. These clock management blocks can be quite complicated, encompassing, for example, digital locked loops (DLLs), phase locked loops (PLLs), and so forth. For example, the Virtex®-4 series of FPGAs from Xilinx, Inc. includes up to 20 clock management blocks, each providing individual clock deskewing, frequency synthesis, phase shifting, and/or dynamic reconfiguration for a portion of the IC. Thus, a significant amount of design and testing time is required to provide these features in the device, and their use also requires time and effort on the part of the system designer. Additionally, because a global clock signal may be needed at virtually any position in a programmable IC, a global clock network is very extensive and consumes large amounts of power when in use.
A large IC design typically has a large number of timing requirements. For example, a clock signal must reach the destination within a certain window within which the data being provided to the destination is valid. Meeting these timing requirements for every logic block in a large IC can present a significant challenge, particularly when complicated by issues such as multiple clock domains, skew, jitter, and process, voltage, and temperature variability. Thus, the well-known timing requirements known as the "setup time" for data (the amount of time by which the data signal must precede the active edge of the clock signal at the input terminals of the logic block) and the "hold time" for the data (the amount of time the data signal must remain at the data input terminal after the arrival of the active edge of the clock signal) are vital to the success of a clocked design, and must be met for every clocked element, or the logic cannot be expected to operate properly.
Therefore, it is clear that the design of reliable clock networks for a large programmable IC with multiple clock domains may consume a large amount of engineering resources and may adversely impact the design cycle of the programmable IC.
Programmable ICs are typically designed to be useful in a large variety of customer applications. Therefore, they tend to include a large number of substantially similar logic blocks that are designed with flexibility in mind. To improve the efficiency of certain target applications, including compute-intensive applications such as digital signal processing (DSP), specialized blocks may be included as well as the array(s) of highly flexible logic blocks. However, to achieve the optimum mix of flexibility and efficiency, it may be desirable to provide a programmable IC in which the logic blocks are optimized, in themselves, for compute-intensive applications.

Dynamically controlled output multiplexer circuits in a programmable integrated circuit


Microfluidic systems and methods are disclosed which are adapted to transport and lyse cellular components of a test sample for analysis. The disclosed microfluidic systems and methods, which employ an electric field to rupture the cell membrane, cause unusually rapid lysis, thereby minimizing continued cellular activity and resulting in greater accuracy of analysis of cell processes.

Interest in microfabricated devices for chemical sensing and analysis has grown substantially over the past decade, primarily because these miniature devices have the potential to provide information rapidly and reliably at low cost. Microchips fabricated on planar substrates are advantageous for manipulating small sample volumes, rapidly processing materials, and integrating sample pretreatment and separation strategies. The ease with which materials can be manipulated and the ability to fabricate structures with interconnecting channels that have essentially no dead volume contribute to the high performance of these devices. See, for example U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,858,195 and 6,001,229, which are commonly owned with this application. To carry out a complete analysis, many different kinds of functional elements can be designed and integrated on microchips. These elements include filters, valves, pumps, mixers, reactors, separators, cytometers and detectors, which can be operatively coupled together under computer control to enable the implementation of a wide range of microchip-based analyses.
One area of particular interest is the analysis of cells and cell populations. At present most techniques for cellular analysis depend upon pooling a population of cells to obtain a large enough quantity of analyte for detection. Pooling of cells, however, obscures any variation in analyte concentration from cell to cell. For many studies average analyte values across a large population of cells will be acceptable; however, for the study of processes such as carcinogenesis, the ability to quantitate analytes in individual cells is required so that rare mutations in cells, which lead to drastic changes in cell metabolism and progression to cancer, can be detected.
With the advances in Capillary Electrophoresis over the last two decades the quantitation of analytes in individual cells has become feasible albeit slow because of the intensive manual manipulations which have to be performed. The potential to automate and integrate cell transport, manipulation and lysis with separation and analyte detection make microfluidic devices a desirable platform for performing high throughput screening of individual cells from large populations. A key step in integrating cell handling with analyte detection and quantitation is providing a method of cell lysis which is rapid and generates small axial extent plugs for subsequent analysis. Because the resolution or separation between any pair of compounds can be detrimentally affected by long injection plug lengths, small axial extent plugs are important for a successful separation. It should be noted, however, that while small axial extent plugs are desired, the contents of the cell after lysis should be spread over several cell volumes so that reaction pathways within the cell are terminated and proteolytic enzymes released from vesicles during lysis are sufficiently diluted. This will prevent the possible digestion of proteins of interest.
The use of an applied electric field for cell lysis is known. For example, the lysis of erythrocytes in suspension by pulsed electric fields has been reported both for bovine (Sale and Hamilton, "Effects of High Electric Fields on Microorganisms III, Lysis of Erythrocytes and Protoplasts", Biochim et Biophys Acta, 163:37 (1967)) and human erythrocytes (Kinosita and Tsong, "Voltage-Induced Pore Formation and Hemolysis of Human Erythrocytes", Biochim et Biophys Acta, 471:227 (1977); and Kinosita and Tsong, "Hemolysis of Human Erythrocytes by a Transient Electric Filed", Proc Nail Acad Sci., 74:1923 (1977)). These reports indicate that applied electric fields resulting in cellular transmembrane potentials on the order of 1 Volt can result in lysis of erythrocytes. However, these previously reported cell lysis techniques utilizing an electric field are typically carried out in a macroscale device, rather than a microchip device. Consequently, such techniques are lacking in certain respects. Specifically, the conditions employed in macroscale electric cell lysis devices do not consistently release relatively high molecular weight nucleic acid molecules, because such molecules do not readily pass through the pores created in the cell membrane by this lysis technique. Also, the existing macroscale, electric lysis devices function as stand-alone units, thus precluding integration of cell manipulation and lysis with separation and analysis of cell lysate in a unitary device.
Other methods of cell manipulation and/or lysis on microscale devices have been proposed. See, for example, U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,676,274 and 5,304,487. Chemical lysis on a microchip device has been demonstrated by mixing a surfactant, i.e. sodium dodecylsulfate, with canine erythrocyte cells. (Li and Harrison, Anal. Chem., 69:1564-1568 (1997)). This report indicates that the cells were lysed in under 0.3 sec. No subsequent analysis of the cellular contents, however, was reported. Single erythrocytes have been lysed and the cell contents separated using two capillaries across which an electric field is applied. A gap of about 5 μm is provided between the two capillaries. As intact cells pass through the gap, they are lysed and the contents of the lysed cells are transported to the second capillary for separation. The lysis is presumed to be caused by the mechanical shear stresses induced by the change in electric field strength between the capillaries and the gap region. The gap region is considerably larger in cross sectional area, so that the field strength and, therefore, cell velocity is lower than in the capillaries. See, Chen and Lillard, Anal. Chem., 73:111-18 (2001).
Cell lysis can be considered an extreme form of cell membrane permeablization (poration). Optoporation has been carried out using highly focused light from a pulsed laser (Soughhayer et al., Anal. Chem. 72(6):1342-1347 (2000)). The laser is focused near the cell at the aqueous/glass interface. When the laser is pulsed, a stress (shock) wave is generated which transiently permeablizes the cell. This technique has been shown to be capable of lysing cells, as well. The occurrence of cell lysis or poration only is a function of the cell's distance from the laser focal spot.
Although the above-mentioned cell lysis techniques of the prior art are useful for certain applications, there exists a need in the art for microchip-based cell manipulations and lysis which is sufficiently rapid to minimize continued cellular activity after lysis, thus producing greater accuracy in the analysis of cell processes.

This patent is subject to a terminal disclaimer.

Microfluidic systems and methods for transport and lysis of cells and analysis of cell lysate


There is disclosed a method of forming a radioactive sourcewire and a radioactive sourcewire formed according to the preferred method. The method generally includes providing a substantially thick walled tubular member and drilling or counterboring an enlarged cavity in a distal end of the tubular member. A radioactive source is inserted into the tubular member and the distal end of the cavity is sealed shut. During drilling of the cavity, material removed from the inside of the cavity may be allowed to flow to the space between the bore of the tubular member and the cavity thereby to form a plug. Finally, the proximal end of the tubular member may be sealed shut.

The technical field relates generally to radioactive sourcewires for treatment of diseases, and, more particularly, to a flexible sourcewire for use in radiation therapy after an angioplasty procedure in order to minimize the occurrence of restenosis.
During or after the performance of a percutaneous transluminal angioplasty procedure to relieve a constriction within a patient""s vessel, it has been found beneficial to irradiate the site of the constriction to prevent reclosure or restenosis due to smooth muscle cell proliferation. Typically, a catheter having a blind lumen extending to a distal end thereof is advanced to the treatment site and a sourcewire having a radioactive tip is advanced to the treatment zone of the catheter adjacent the treatment site within the vessel. This is typically accomplished by connecting a proximal end of a catheter to a mechanism for advancing the sourcewire, such as an afterloader, and operating the afterloader to advance the sourcewire to the treatment site.
Commonly, in afterloaders, the sourcewire is substantially wound about a reel or spool with only the distal end, that end containing the radioactive source, left in a straight or uncoiled position. The radioactive source is typically housed within a shielded container provided on the afterloader. In operating the afterloader, the sourcewire is unraveled off the reel and advanced through the catheter down the various narrow or tortuous pathways to reach the arteries and, in particular, the remote coronary arteries. Sourcewires may be repeatedly used over again until such time as the radioactive level of the radioactive source is of no further beneficial use.
During the repeated cycling of the sourcewire about the reel and through the catheter to reach the coronary arteries, the sourcewire is subjected to various stresses and strains along its length thereof. This may pose problems in particular sourcewire constructions which can result in cracking, buckling or kinking at various positions along the sourcewire. In one known sourcewire construction, the sourcewires are formed by having a thin walled tube with a substantially full length backbone wire affixed therein. The backbone wire terminates short of the distal end of the tube to define a cavity for receipt of a radioactive source or sources therein. The backbone wire construction of the radioactive sourcewire provides the advantage of allowing a relatively long treatment zone to be provided by the tube defining the cavity at a distal end thereof. Alternatively, sourcewires formed from an entirely solid wire having a drilled distal end for receipt of a radioactive core are known. The solid wire construction is less prone to damage from repeated cycling. However, when constructing sourcewires of relatively small diameters, i.e. generally less than 0.014 of an inch, it becomes difficult to drill a cavity into the solid wire of sufficient length to accommodate the desired longer radioactive sources.
Thus, there exists a need for a radioactive sourcewire combining the strength and flexibility of a substantially solid wire along the predominant length thereof as well as having a tubular construction at a distal most end to accommodate varying lengths of radioactive sources.
The above discussed and other drawbacks and deficiencies of the prior art are overcome or alleviated by the radioactive sourcewire and method for forming a radioactive sourcewire of the present invention. The present method for forming a radioactive sourcewire includes providing a generally elongated thick walled tubular member and drilling an enlarged cavity in the distal end of the tubular member. The cavity is of sufficient length to retain a radioactive source. During drilling of the cavity, material removed from the tubular member to form the cavity is preferably allowed to flow from the cavity and into a bore of the elongated tubular member to thereby form a plug and to seal the cavity from the bore. A radioactive source may then be inserted into the cavity either in a radioactive state, in which case the source is preferably coated with a neutron permeable material, or an inert state. The distal end of the tubular member is then welded or otherwise sealed shut to seal the radioactive source within the cavity. Finally, the proximal end of the elongated tubular member may also be welded or otherwise sealed shut.
The disclosed sourcewire generally includes an elongated tubular member having a substantially elongated bore of a first diameter and an enlarged cavity formed in the distal end of the tubular member having a diameter greater than that of the first diameter. A radioactive source is positioned within the cavity and the distal end of the elongated tubular member is sealed, preferably by being welded shut, or by other methods. Preferably, the sourcewire additionally includes a plug between the bore of the elongated tubular member and the enlarged cavity. Further, the plug may preferably be formed of material removed from the elongated member to form the enlarged cavity. A proximal end of the radioactive sourcewire is welded shut.
The above description and other features and advantages of the present invention will be appreciated and understood by those skilled in the art from the following detailed description, drawings and appended claims.

Method of making a sourcewire with integral capsule


It is presumed in the method that message cell streams having a high cell loss priority as well as message cell streams having a low cell loss priority appear on an ATM transmission line. The check of the admissibility of the set-up of a virtual connection via such a transmission line occurs in two steps. In a first step, a first capacity limit value, or a second capacity limit value that is lower in comparison thereto, is defined for the ATM transmission line based on the measure of the message cell streams having high cell loss priority, including the message cell stream to be potentially taken into consideration to be set-up. Proceeding on the basis of the respectively defined capacity limit value, a check is then made in a second step to see whether--taking into account all message cell streams transmitted via the corresponding ATM transmission line--a set-up of a virtual connection that has just been requested is possible.

The invention is directed to a method for checking the admissibility of setting up virtual connections on a transmission line designed for an asynchronous transfer mode in communication equipment connected to the transmission line. At least one peak bit rate value as well as one average bit rate value are retained for each of the virtual connections proceeding via the transmission line during the course of a respective call set-up. A virtual connection is only newly established when either an aggregate value calculated from the peak bit rate values of the virtual connections already established and the peak bit rate value of the virtual connection now to be established is less than or equal to a limit value that lies below a maximum transmission capacity that is defined for the transmission line or, given an aggregate value exceeding the limit value, the limit value is adequate for a statistical multiplexing of the corresponding virtual connections taking the peak bit rate values and average bit rate values of the virtual connections already established, as well as the virtual connection now to be set up, into consideration.
Such a method is already known from "INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF DIGITAL AND ANALOG COMMUNICATION SYSTEMS", Vol. 3, pages 143 through 153 (1990). In this known method, one and the same cell loss probability, i.e. cell loss priority, is assumed for all message cell streams occurring during the course of virtual connections.

Method for checking the admissibility of setting up virtual connections


Embodiments of the present disclosure disclose an OTDR test signal modulation circuit, including a laser diode drive, a laser diode, a current adjusting unit, and an OTDR control unit. The laser diode drive is connected to the laser diode and is configured to drive, according to an input data signal, the laser diode to transmit data light. The current adjusting unit is connected to the laser diode and the OTDR control unit and is configured to adjust a current flowing through the laser diode according to an OTDR test signal provided by the OTDR control unit, so as to modulate the OTDR test signal to the data light transmitted by the laser diode. Moreover, the embodiments of the present disclosure also disclose a passive optical network system and apparatus.

The PON system is more and more widely applied in the field of communications, therefore, services installation, acceptance test, and routine maintenance of a PON device and an optical fiber network also increase. An OTDR can play an important role in aspects such as testing, fault positioning and removal, and so on of the PON system. Therefore, how to better utilize the OTDR to improve maintenance efficiency of a passive optical network has a significant and positive meaning.
When the OTDR is used for detection of the PON system, a data transmitter may be shared to send an OTDR test signal. For example, in normal communications, a laser diode (LD) sends a data signal; and when a test is performed, a test signal is superposed on the data signal and the superposed signal is transmitted through the LD, and a reflected signal corresponding to the test signal is returned to an OTDR receiver for processing. Accordingly, the PON system is ensured to maintain a communication status during the OTDR test.
To implement sharing the data transmitter to send the OTDR test signal, in the prior art, the OTDR test signal is used to control a modulation current of an LDD (Laser Diode Drive) on the data signal. By adjusting the modulation current of the LDD, optical power of the laser diode is controlled to output a test waveform, so as to modulate the OTDR test signal to the data signal. However, a modulation bandwidth of the modulation current of the LDD is very small. As a result, a rate of the OTDR test signal is limited, and furthermore, a spatial resolution of the test of the OTDR is low. Therefore, quality of the OTDR test signal is poor.

Optical time domain reflectometer test signal modulation circuit, and passive optical network system and apparatus using same


A fuel cell stack is formed by stacking unit cells and each unit cell is formed by sandwiching a membrane electrode assembly between a pair of separators having depression parts and protrusion parts. A cooling liquid flow space is formed between the unit cells, and a displacement absorption member which absorbs displacement between the unit cells C is disposed in the flow space. The displacement absorption member includes a spring function part having a free end and a fixed end, and an intrusion prevention means which prevents the free end of the spring function part from intruding into the depression part. A displacement absorption function between the unit cells is well maintained, while size reduction of the fuel cell stack is achieved.

Conventionally, as a fuel cell stack as described above, there is one disclosed as a fuel battery in Japanese Patent (Granted) Publication No. 4432518, for example. The fuel battery disclosed in Japanese Patent (Granted) Publication No. 4432518 is one in which a plurality of fuel cells are stacked. The fuel cell includes, on both sides of an MEA (membrane electrode assembly), a hydrogen electrode having a shape with protrusions and depressions in cross-section and an oxygen electrode that includes a drainage layer likewise having a shape with protrusions and depressions in cross-section. It also includes a planar plate separator that respectively forms a hydrogen passage and an oxygen passage between the hydrogen electrode and the oxygen electrode. Furthermore, the fuel cell includes a coolant passage portion on the oxygen electrode side.
The coolant passage portion includes two planar plate separators, a pre-load plate sandwiched between them. The spaces between both planar plate separators are made passages for cooling water. The pre-load plate has a wave-shaped cross-section, and distributes a locally generated load caused by a form error in the component parts of the fuel cell. The load is thereby evenly applied to each of the component parts.


An inflatable buoy launch and retrieval system comprises an underwater platform, a launch/retrieval tube within the underwater platform, and a mechanism for ejecting and retrieving an inflatable buoy from the launch/retrieval tube. The ejection mechanism comprises a reel within the tube for unwinding a length of a tether attached to the buoy and a mechanism for introducing a high pressure gas into the tube.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a system and a method for deploying and recovering inflatable buoys from an underwater platform.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Existing inflatable buoy systems that carry antennae for submarine radio frequency communication are single-use devices. At the end of the transmission cycle, the buoy is severed from the underwater platform, and a relief valve is opened that deflates the buoy and allows it to sink after being collapsed by wave action. Disadvantages to the present buoy system include the expense of jettisoning a buoy for each launch, the long collapse time for the buoy, and the increased possibility of threat detection.

Retrievable pneumatic buoy system for submarine use

The United States of America as represented by the Secretary of the Navy