A communication device such as a cellular or wireless telephone handset has a light display, such as handset cover light or display backlight, synchronized to audio signals from multiple audio sources such as a microphone or AM/FM receiver. The communication device further includes an audio to illumination conversion apparatus for modulating the light display in response to the audio signal. The audio to illumination conversion apparatus has a plurality of audio filter circuits for filtering the audio signal to restrict frequency content of the audio signal to a pass-band. Multiple integration circuits generate an energy content signal indicating an energy level within the pass-band and for the whole spectrum of the audio signal. An illumination modulator generates a modulation pattern for the light display in response to the energy content signals from a predefined light show.

1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates generally to illumination devices. More particularly, this invention relates to illumination devices on communication devices such as wireless or cellular phones or personal digital assistants. Even more particularly this invention relates to illumination devices on communication devices in which color, brightness, and illumination pattern is responsive to an audio signal.
2. Description of Related Art
Color organs or light organs are well known in the art. During the 1960's and 1970's, the term color organ referred to devices that converted sound to images which were synchronized with sound, particularly the audio generated during the musical performances. These devices usually had electronic filters that created frequency bands of the sound of the music. The frequency bands were coupled to colored lights whose brightness was dependent upon the amplitude and period of the particular frequencies of the frequency band.
U.S. Pat. No. 1,749,011 (Wilfred) provides a moving color projection, was a kind of light sculpture. The device was termed a "clavilux" and this term has become associated with the presentations created for light or color organs.
Motorola, Inc., Schaumberg, Ill. Markets a cellular telephone (Model V600) that provides a feature referred to as Situational Lights. The cover light on a V600 cellular telephone glows with every call. The color of the cover light and pattern are programmable to match ring tone or according to a Java programming script.
"PIC_Hi-Tech_C_Mike_Pearces_disco_light_controller," Found Jun. 9, 2004 at www.microchipc.com/sourcecode, contains schematics for a "color organ" that receives an audio signal, filters the signal and with a program running in a microcontroller modulates lights according to the audio signals.
Multiple color organ electronic kits are available from manufacturers and distributors such as Apogee Kits of Frisco, Tex. These kits, when assembled, provide electronic circuits that modulate lights according to an input audio signal.
The Encyclopedia of Electronic Circuits, Graf, TAB Books, Inc, Blue Ridge Summit, Pa., 1985 provides schematics of circuits for a sound modulated light source and an audio controlled lamp. Each circuit receives an audio signal and modulates a light based on the amplitude of the signal.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,176,581 (Stuyvenberg) describes an audio amplitude-responsive lighting display varying the intensity of a plurality of lights in accordance with plural channel audio amplitude signals. The lights are responsive to separate channels of audio amplitude signals, with each bank of lights being responsive to the amplitude of the associated channel of audio amplitude signals
U.S. Pat. No. 4,771,280 (Molinaro) teaches an acoustical visual sound device used for the visual interpretation of a received acoustical or electrical sound signal. The device has a filter for passing the intelligence contained within a band of frequencies of a received sound signal. A multistage amplifier amplifies the passed intelligence to a sufficient power level to operate an electro visual means connected at the output thereof throughout its operable visual variable range.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,056,399 (Hornstein) provides an audio display module and audio responsive circuit. The display module includes a plurality of light sources mounted in an enclosure. The audio responsive circuit is connected in circuit with the light sources. The circuit includes means for providing an electrical signal representative of an audio signal. Additionally, the circuit includes at least a first and second counter for driving the light sources in response to the electrical signal. Each of the counters has first and second inputs responsive to a positive and a negative edge, respectively, of the electrical signal to initiate the operation of the counter. The circuit also includes circuits for altering which of the first and second counters responds to the positive or negative edges of the electrical signal.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,461,188 (Drago, et al.) describes a synthesized music, sound and light system that is incorporated into articles of clothing, such as a pair of shoes. The system when activated, allows a multiplicity of lights to illuminate in synchrony with the rhythmic beat of either an internal or an external music or sound program that is heard through an audio transducer. When the system is incorporated into a pair of shoes, a person can perform a dance routine or other form of expression in compliment with the selected music and light program. To enhance the utility of the invention, the system includes three user operated controls: a music program select switch that allows the selection of musical light programs, a control that allows the speed of the lights and rhythmic beat of the selected program to be increased or decreased, and a control that allows setting the volume of the sound.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,784,096 (Paist) teaches a dual audio signal derived color display that displays two-channel audio input signals in a three-color visual pattern. In general, the visual pattern may be formed on a viewing screen by an apparently moving spot having three color components. Phase shifting means are employed to phase shift one of the two audio input signals, and both audio input signals are subsequently processed by low pass filters to produce positioning signals in X-Y coordinates for the spot which forms the visual pattern. In addition, the two audio input signals are also mixed and separately processed by a high pass filter, a band-pass filter and a low pass filter to produce frequency separated signals for controlling the intensity of each of three color components of the spot forming the visual pattern. Automatic color balance means utilizing negative feedback is employed to control the amplitude of the separate frequency-discriminated audio signals. Preferably, the display unit employs a color cathode ray tube and may comprise equipment of the type normally found in video games or in a color television receiver altered to accept X-Y position and color information. This display permits the simultaneously presentation of a plurality of colors which correspond to audio input.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,046,724 (Hvass) illustrates a method and apparatus for the conversion of sound waves to light. The sound waves are converted to an electrical signal and processed by a number of filters, the distribution between the filters being a result of the frequency of the sound wave and in which the filters are subsequently connected to their respective color display and where the individual color display's activation is directly proportional to their filter's amount of signal processing and where the color display visualization in a display means is in the form of a single color or a mixture of two or more color displays.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,232,937 (Jacobsen, et al.) details a microdisplay system that utilizes a small high resolution active matrix liquid crystal display with an illumination system and a magnifying optical system to provide a hand held communication display device. The system has an alternating common voltage which allows reduced power consumption. In addition an internal heating system in the display allows the system to be used at low temperatures. The system can employ an LED illumination system and cellular communication or processor circuits within a compact housing to provide communication devices such as pagers, telephones, televisions, and hand held computer or card reader devices with a compact high resolution data and/or video display.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,720,863 (Hull, et al.) describes a mobile electronic communication device includes a processor unit, a transceiver, a keypad and a light unit. Each key of the keypad is associated with a contact of a contact list. The light unit can perform light functions to notify a user of the reception and/or status of messages received via the transceiver. The light functions include providing an indication of the age of a received message that was sent by a contact in the contacts list. The age of the message is indicated by a modulation of the illuminating light. The age of a message may be indicated as one of a set of predetermined age ranges, with each age range being represented by a unique color.
U.S. patent application 20020154787 (Rice, et al.) illustrates a modular light dancer controller for use with holiday and other lighting displays is used to create dynamic, interesting multi-colored lighting displays in response to sound.
U.S. patent application 20010050756 (Lipton, et al.) teaches a color organ is realized through software programming. Audio signals are input to a microprocessor-based controller. The controller then correlates an object to each audio signal on the basis of selected waveform characteristics. The object is then rendered for display on an electronic display. The display may be auto-stereoscopic, or it may be viewed through a stereoscopic selection device.

Modulation of a background light or any illumination of a mobile phone


A heat sink (100) includes a cooling block (105) having a plurality of fins (110) extending through the block to provide a series of coolant channels (112) extending between the fins, the channels having in the interior of the block a venturi narrowing. Beneficially, the channels have coolant entry regions in at least two different regions (115, 120) of the block to direct a plurality of coolant flows into the interior of the block from different directions.

The processing units of computers need to be kept cool so that they can operate within their performance specification. For computers used in vehicles this can be particularly challenging since, depending on the geographical region where the computer is used, the ambient temperature may be relatively high. Also, computing devices are being designed which consume more power for the same size of device. Typically, an in-vehicle computer generates waste heat at a rate of about 30 W and the case of the processor of the computer can only withstand a maximum temperature of about 100° C. The need for cooling generally increases the longer such a computer is being continuously used. In view of these requirements, which are becoming increasingly difficult to satisfy, there is a need for an improved efficiency heat sink to provide cooling of a processor unit in a mobile computer.
Heat sinks are known which are in the form of a cylindrical block having coolant channels formed between fins extending though the heat sink. Generally, the channels are formed so that the flow of coolant is generally from a single coolant inlet region and in one direction.
US-A-2002/0174980 describes a cylindrical block heat sink in which fins extend longitudinally through the heat sink to provide coolant flow generally in one direction. The fins change shape and are concentrated to provide improved cooling in a hotspot region, but the channels are generally of uniform width.

Abstract: Also described is a method of cooling a device such as a processor of a mobile computer used in a vehicle by placing the heat sink or more than one of the heat sinks adjacent to the device to be cooled, preferably with a region in which the venturi narrowing of the coolant channels is provided close to the hottest part of the device to be cooled.


A fiber optic GPS signal device and method comprising a VCSEL multimode transmitter having a gain that, together with the GPS antenna gain, is greater than the VCSEL multimode transmitter noise. When in operative communication, via a long length of multimode fiber, i.e., up to 2000 feet and greater, with a fiber optic receiver, the GPS signals are transmitted at, inter alia, L1 and L2 frequencies with minimal degradation over the length of multimode fiber. The present invention may be used in a variety of GPS transmission applications requiring long lengths of cabling. For example, the invention is particularly useful when the GPS antenna is located on top of an office building or cell phone tower and remotely from the GPS receiver and for use in high-volume commercial telephone synchronizing (DTMF) applications.

Certain applications for Global Positioning System (GPS) receivers require the receiver to be placed a thousand feet or more from the antenna. One such application is the use of GPS timing receivers for time synchronization and frequency control in telephone networks. This application of GPS timing receivers may require the antenna to be placed atop a large office building and routing a coaxial cable through the building to the telephone network control room where the GPS receiver is located. The losses in standard low cost coaxial cable will be between 10 dB and 30 dB per 100 feet at 1.57542 GHz. It is well known that losses in coaxial cable increase with frequency. For example, RG58C coaxial cable is listed in Buchsbaum's Handbook of Practical Electronics as having 1.6 dB of loss per 100 feet at 10 MHz and 24 dB per 100 feet at 1 GHz. Coaxial cable losses have been dealt with in the past in at least three ways.
The first approach involves the placement of a Low Noise Amplifier (LNA) at the antenna with enough gain to overcome the cable losses. However at GPS frequencies, this approach is useful only for cable lengths up to about 200 feet.
The second approach utilizes Low Noise Block (LNB) down conversion to a lower frequency at the antenna and transferring the signal at a lower frequency over a coaxial cable to a receiver designed to accept the lower frequency. This approach is not suitable for GPS receivers which are designed to receive the 1.57542 GHz signal. Nor is it a cost-effective solution to redesign the GPS receiver to accept a lower frequency signal.
The third approach seeks to deal with coaxial cable losses in a third way by using a down-converter section at the antenna and an up-converter section at the receiver to convert the signal back to the original frequency received at the antenna as is described in U.S. Pat. No. 5,999,795, with common inventorship and assignment as the present invention, the disclosure of which is hereby incorporated in its entirety. Briefly summarized, this invention prevents the introduction of frequency errors, a reference signal is transmitted along the cable and is used in both the up-conversion and down-conversion processes. Thus, a received signal at a frequency too high to be transmitted along a length of cable without appreciable loss in amplitude is down-converted to a lower frequency. The down-conversion process comprises mixing the received signal with a local oscillator signal to produce an intermediate frequency. The intermediate frequency is transmitted down the length of cable. The intermediate frequency is selected to be much lower than the frequency of the received signal. Since signal attenuation along the cable decreases as frequency decreases, the lower frequency intermediate signal will experience lower loss than would the higher frequency received signal. At the opposite end of the cable, the intermediate signal is up-converted to a higher frequency output signal. The up-conversion process is accomplished by mixing the intermediate signal with a local oscillator signal. The local oscillator signals in both the up-converter and down-converter are derived from the same reference signal. For GPS applications, a GPS signal at a frequency of 1.57542 GHz is received by an antenna and enters a converter where it is subtracted from 1.6368 GHz to yield a 61.38 MHz intermediate frequency. The intermediate frequency is amplified and enters a diplexer. The diplexer is an arrangement of a two-way power-splitter and filters that isolate the 61.38 MHz intermediate frequency and the 16.368 MHz reference frequency, thus allowing the coaxial cable to transfer both signals simultaneously. The intermediate frequency arrives at the diplexer on the receiving end of the coaxial cable and is directed to a converter where it is mixed with the 1.6368 GHz local oscillator (LO) signal to reproduce the signal at 1.57542 GHz. The output of the converter is then filtered and attenuated to a signal level that is representative of a signal received by an active GPS antenna with a gain of 30 dB. The GPS receiver connected to the output of the up-converter sees the signal as if it were connected to a standard active GPS antenna. This is a workable solution, but is too complex to allow addition of other frequencies into the same cable or fiber.
In addition, Radio Frequency fiber optic links now in use assume the need for high dynamic range. The assumption underlying these devices is that general purpose link will experience signals that range over a dynamic range of 60 dB or more, thus implying a signal power range of from about 0 dBm to −60 dBm. Adherence to this assumption causes existing devices to be very expensive. The expense derives, in part, from costs associated with special low noise linear modulators and detectors.
Thus, a need still exists for an inexpensive method and apparatus for transmitting GPS signals at L1 (1575.42 MHz) and/or L2 (1227.6 MHz) frequencies, as well as any frequency between 800 MHz and 1800 MHz down a long length, e.g., up to 2000 feet or longer, of fiber optic cable to the GPS receiver.


An electronic control for a motor which eliminates the motor centrifugal switch and more particularly a control for a domestic refuse compactor which permits the user to control the approximate full trash bag weight and obtain more compaction from a split phase induction drive motor. A ferrite core sensor on the main winding of the drive motor samples the lagging phase angle of the motor main winding current during a compaction stroke. A low force cycle is achieved by terminating the stroke as soon as phase samples fall below a threshold defined at the start of each cycle by a locked motor main winding phase sample acquired prior to starting the motor. A medium force cycle terminates the stroke when compaction forces exceed the main winding breakdown torque. A high force cycle is achieved by re-activating a motor start winding when compaction forces exceed the main winding breakdown torque and terminating the stroke as soon as the phase samples exceed a threshold defined at the start of each cycle during motor starting. The control uses programmed referencing techniques to eliminate factory pre-calibration.

The present invention is directed to a control for an appliance and more particularly to an electronic control for a compactor having a split-phase induction drive motor.
In a conventional refuse compactor, a ram is driven into a refuse disposal compartment to compact trash disposed therein and continues advancing until the motor stalls. The ram is subsequently driven out of the refuse disposal compartment. Various drive mechanisms for refuse compactors are disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 3,353,478 to Stephen Hawkin; U.S. Pat. No. 3,732,805 to Jerry W. Moon; U.S. Pat. No. 3,772,987 to Charles R. Difley; U.S. Pat. No. 3,839,954 to Joseph F. Burgeois; U.S. Pat. No. 3,921,515 to William A. Eckerle; U.S. Pat. No. 4,007,678 to John K. C. Gustavson, et. al.; U.S. Pat. No. 4,188,877 to Aman U. Khan; and U.S. Pat. No. 4,565,125 to Aman U. Khan.
Various mechanical and electronic controls have been designed for regulating the operation of the drive mechanisms of a trash compactor. For example, Einar O. Engebretsen shows a compactor cycle control in U.S. Pat. No. 3,962,964 wherein a dwell period is provided at the end of the compaction cycle.
U.S. Pat. No. 3,855,919, Richard W. Potter shows a control system for a compacting apparatus including signal lamps for showing the direction of movement of the ram. The apparatus includes a time delay circuit for automatically shutting down the compactor when any of the operational cycles thereof continues beyond a predetermined time limit.
In U.S. Pat. No. 3,398,433 of Charles J. Borum, a trash compactor with a clock timer control is disclosed for providing an extended delay period after a compacting stroke. The clock is provided to permit the automatic extended compaction at a period of time during the day when the compactor is unlikely to be in use for a substantial length of time. The control operates the ram independently of any manual initiation of the apparatus to effect the compacting stroke at the predetermined time and to cause the stopping of the ram for the delay period during that independently initiated compaction stroke. In U.S. Pat. No. 3,543,676 of Gordon H. Brown, another refuse compactor is shown having control circuitry for regulating the operation of the compactor automatically.
Michael J. Bottas et al, in U.S. Pat. No. 3,613,560, show a refuse compactor including a control circuit which permits operation of the ram only when the drawer is substantially in the compacting position. The control circuit includes a tilt switch which is arranged in the circuit to permit reverse withdrawal movement of the ram by depression of a manually operable pushbutton.
Jerome F. Stratman et al, in U.S. Pat. No. 3,821,927 show a refuse compactor control system having a lower limit switch connected in parallel with a centrifugal switch.
In U.S. Pat. No. 3,831,513 of Philip Tashman, a portable solid waste compactor is shown having a compacting ram which has a stroke varying with the reaction force of the waste material being compacted therein. An interlock associated with the ram prevents operation of the compactor upon removal of the container in which the refuse is compacted. A guard gate is automatically closed across the refuse chute opening upon downward compacting movement of the ram to prevent injury to the operator's hand. If the guard gate is prevented from closing by an obstruction, a switch causes immediate reversal of the ram to its uppermost position.
In U.S. Pat. No. 4,062,282, Samuel Jacob Miller et al show a refuse compactor having a tilt switch for terminating operation of the compacting ram in the event of a preselected tilt movement of the receptacle during the compacting operation. Means are provided for preventing movement of the receptacle sufficient to open the receptacle safety switch during the compacting operation thereby preventing discontinuation of energization of the ram motor during the compaction cycle which could immobilize the compactor apparatus in midcycle.
While these prior art control patents teach that it is desirable to monitor performance of a compactor to determine, for example, when compaction is complete or when the bag is full, the prior art uses multiple sensors, typically mechanical sensors, to monitor the operation. Furthermore, the maximum torque applied is limited to the main winding breakdown torque.
A more generic control system for various appliances having an AC induction drive motor, including examples of an automatic washing machine, a dryer, an air conditioner, a refrigerator, and a dishwasher, is shown in my U.S. Pat. No. 4,481,786, assigned to the assignee of the present invention. That control system employs a ferrite core sensor having a primary winding that is formed of two turns of the drive motor's run winding, the sensor having a single turn secondary winding that forms a sense winding coupled to a motor phase monitoring circuit. The sense winding provides a signal representing a polarity change in the run winding current. The current polarity change signal is used by the motor phase monitoring circuit to provide a voltage compensated motor phase angle pulse to a microcomputer for the appliance to control various operations of the appliance. More particularly, a digital representation of the motor phase angle pulse is used by the microcomputer to monitor the starting of the drive motor by detecting a characteristic decrease in the motor phase representation. The motor phase angle representation is further used by the microcomputer of an automatic washing machine to determine the agitator torque which is in turn used by the microcomputer to automatically control the water level of the washing machine. An average motor torque number is also determined from the motor phase angle representation wherein the average motor torque number is used to provide an end of drain control for the washing machine.
While my prior patent application suggests that the control may be used to control any AC induction motor controlling any appliance, including a split phase induction motor controlling a trash compactor, the applicability or desirability of such a control to the specific needs of a compactor was neither addressed nor considered. The present invention is directed to a control utilizing some of the teachings of my aforementioned U.S. patent to a refuse compactor but applying a novel circuit and novel logic to detect the onset of stalling as the ram compacts the refuse and using that information to control the operation of a compactor in a novel way.


We claim a method of expression a thioredoxin-fused membrane protein comprising expressing said thioredoxin-fused membrane protein in a cell-free protein synthesis system in the presence of a non-ionic detergent. It is preferable that the fused membrane protein which is a highly hydrophobic protein, e.g., a G protein-coupled receptor, can be produced in a state being highly soluble and capable of forming a biologically active three-dimensional structure. Also, this invention provides a recombinant polynucleotide encoding said thioredoxin-fused membrane protein which is expressed in the cell-free protein synthesis system.

Recently, DNA sequences of various organisms including human have been analyzed increasingly and rapidly, and with regard to a large number of genes extracted from this enormous genome sequence information, a research called "Structural genomics" became an important field, which is a systematic and comprehensive analysis of the relationship between structure and function of proteins by determining three dimensional structure of proteins encoded by individual genes. In addition, a high-throughput analytical means applicable to a large scale analysis for promoting such a research is desired.
In this "Structural genomics", a most important target as a pharmaceutical development among the proteins for their structural analysis may for example be a membrane protein. While a membrane protein is responsible for important cellular functions such as a response to a stimulation, cellular skeleton and adhesion, material transportation and electron transport, it is difficult to be analyzed biochemically because of an extreme difficulty in its isolation and purification.
When a membrane protein is expressed in a cultured cell, it is accumulated in the cell membrane as a result of a localization function of the host cell. Thus, in a purification step of the resultant protein, it is necessary to extract the membrane protein from the cell membrane using various solubilizing agents, which is time-consuming and laborious and also involves a problem with regard to the extraction efficiency. Moreover, some types of the solubilizing agents may deteriorate the structure or function associated naturally with the protein.
On the other hand, a membrane protein, when expressed in E. coli, frequently precipitates as insolubles, which leads to a purification requiring a precipitation solubilizing step employing a potent denaturating agent such as guanidine or urea and a step for recovering the native structure (folding) of the protein which has once been denatured in the preceding solubilization step. These steps are problematic not only in view of the time and the labor but also in view of re-insolubilization occurring during the above-mentioned folding step.
In order to avoid these problems, a prior art employed a method for co-expressing an E. coli heat shock chaperone or foldase with a heterologous gene. For example, JP-A-9-107954 discloses, as this heat shock chaperone, heat shock proteins such as E. coli GroES and GroEL, which serves to catalyze a correct folding of a polypeptide which has been newly synthesized in E. coli. On the other hand, a foldase such as a protein disulfide isomerase or peptidylproryl cis-trans isomerase is disclosed, and an over-co-expression of these chaperone and foldases, especially an E. coli thioredoxin, allows a mouse c-Myb or human transcription factor cAMP-responding element-binding protein or p53 anticancer gene product to be expressed as a soluble protein at a level of several ten mg to 100 mg per 1 liter of an E. coli culture.
Still another method is a method for allowing an intended heterologous gene to be expressed as a fusion protein with another protein. This another protein may for example be glutathione S-transferase (GST), maltose binding protein (MBP), protein A or protein G, and a target protein is expressed usually as a protein fused with the C terminal any of these proteins (see JP-A-9-107954, supra).
However, any of these methods is still problematic because it allows a highly hydrophobic protein such as a membrane protein to be aggregated readily in E. coli cells upon expression and also because it enables the expression only at an extremely low level.
Under the circumstance discussed above, an objective of the invention is to provide a method for producing a highly hydrophobic protein such as a membrane protein in a state allowing the solubilization to be accomplished very easily and also in a state allowing a biologically active three dimensional structure to be formed.

Method for producing by cell-free protein synthesis system using thioredoxin-fused protein expression vector


Embodiments of the present disclosure relate to a method and a device for compensating for a time path. In the embodiments of the present disclosure, on the basis of not changing implemented 1588 synchronization architecture, a compensation unit is added on a service board unit, the compensation unit calculates a compensation time value for asymmetrical reception and transmission of fiber links and transfers the compensation time value into the service board unit, and the service board unit implements automatic compensation according to a port status. The method and the device for compensating for a time path according to the embodiments of the present disclosure may implement automatic compensation for receiving and sending fiber links without manually testing the asymmetry of links node by node, so that the embodiments of the present disclosure can be widely applied in time synchronization networks.

In a mobile communications system, to guarantee the service quality of wireless communications, a communications network and communications equipment have strict requirements for clock synchronization; and in particular, with the development of the third generation mobile communications technology in the mobile communications network, the mobile communications system has more strict requirements for the precision of clock synchronization.
The IEEE 1588 V2 protocol is a protocol of frequency and time synchronization, the full name of the IEEE 1588 V2 protocol is the Precision Clock Synchronization Protocol for Networked Measurement and Control Systems, or the PTP protocol for short. The IEEE 1588 V2 protocol is a universal standard for improving timing synchronization capability of network systems, provides strict timing synchronization for distributed communications networks and is applied in industrial automation systems. By adopting the 1588 V2 protocol, the precision may reach a sub-microsecond level. FIG. 1 shows a main principle of time synchronization of the protocol, of which a basic idea is to synchronize an internal clock of a piece of network equipment (a client) and a master clock of a master controller through hardware and software, and provide an application of which synchronization establishing time is less than 1 μs, so as to remarkably improve the timing synchronization index of an entire network.
Generally, for communications nodes in the mobile communications system, each node needs at least two fiber links to reach a neighboring node: one is a receiving link and the other is a sending link. A basis for implementing precise time synchronization between nodes through the 1588 protocol is that the receiving and sending fiber links of a node need have equal lengths. If the lengths of the receiving and sending fiber links are not equal, asymmetric compensation should be performed for the fibers, otherwise the inconsistency between the receiving and sending fiber links may have serious impacts on the precision of time synchronization. In this case, asymmetry between the receiving fiber link and the sending fiber link needs to be measured.
In a current solution, the GPS is used to perform node-by-node measurement and compensate the fibers with an asymmetric value. As shown in FIG. 2, the asymmetry of fibers between nodes NE1 to NE4 is measured node by node, and the asymmetric value is compensated with according to a measurement result. The prior art has three defects: nodes NE1 to NE4 all need to be measured on site, which leads to a heavy workload; the GPS should guarantee that a satellite is in the visual range of a receiver, and when a base station is placed in a site which is not suitable for deploying a GPS antenna, such as a basement or a metro station, it is difficult to carry out on-site measurement; and the most important point is that a fiber may change after the fiber is disconnected in a node and the measurement needs to be performed again on site.
For the foregoing measurement of the fibers and asymmetric value compensation for the fibers, it is found that this method has the following problems: every node needs to be measured on site, which leads to a heavy work load, and the measurement needs to be performed again on site when a fiber is disconnected in a node. Therefore, the operability of the prior art is rather poor.

Method and device for compensating for time path


The resin composition for forming plated layer disclosed herein comprises a polyamide composed of a dicarboxylic acid component recuring unit and a recurring unit derived from a diamine component unit having an alkylene group of 4 to 25 carbon atoms and at least one inorganic filler. There are also disclosed the resin molded article having plated layer formed thereon, the electromagnetic wave shielding material, the decorative resin molded article and the connecting material produced by forming plated layer on the surfaces of the resin molded articles formed from said resin composition. Further, there is disclosed the printed circuit board produced by forming selectively metallized layer in wiring circuit portion on the surface of the resin molded article formed from said resin composition and the method for plating to form these articles having the layer plated thereon.

Resin molded articles having plated layer formed thereon, which have metallized layer on the surfaces thereof by plating methods, are widely used as decorative resin molded articles which are metal substitutes, or as circuit members which electrically connects circuits or apparatuses through a metallized layer formed on the surfaces thereof in addition to electromagnetic wave shielding members and printed circuit boards (hereinafter, these articles are sometimes generally called as resin molded articles having plated layer formed thereon).
Thermosetting resins such as phenolic resins and epoxy resins, polyimides or polyamides have been used as resins for forming said resin molded articles having plated layer formed thereon.
For example, resin molded articles having plated layer formed thereon by forming plated layer on resin molded articles composed of polyamides have been used as metal substitutes for electrical and electronic components or automotive parts, because polyamides are relatively excellent in mechanical characteristics and heat resistance.
Printed circuit boards produced by forming partially plated layer on the surfaces of molded articles of resins such as polysulfone, polyethersulfone and polyetherimide are known (see, Japanese Laid Open Patent Publication No. 239694/1986 and Japanese Patent Publication Nos. 36290/1979 and 31915/1981).
However, when thermosetting resins are used, it is necessary that uncured thermoplastic resins are processed into a desired shape and then cured to produce resin molded articles. Accordingly, there is a problem that the manufacturing process of the resin molded articles having plated layer formed thereon becomes complicated.
Further, the above-mentioned thermosetting resins and such a resin as polysulfone have such a problem that heat resistance is poor. Accordingly, when printed circuit boards are produced by using these resins, there is a problem that the heat resistance of the resins reaches its limit when soldering temperature is elevated to increase the mounting speed of electronic components on the printed circuit boards.
Polyamides have not always sufficiently high heat resistance, are highly water absorbing and have difficulty in forming plated layer having excellent adhesion. Hence, resin molded articles having plated layer formed thereon produced from polyamides have a problem in that they can not meet requirements for automotive decorative parts and parts for circuit-board such as a printed circuit board, which are used under particularly severe conditions.
Polyimides have a problem in that moldability is poor, though they have excellent heat resistance. Namely, when resin molded articles having metallized layer as described above are produced from polyimides, it is necessary that a polyimide precursor is dissolved in a specific solvent such as pyrrolidone, the resulting solution is cast and a curing reaction is carried out while removing the solvent. Hence, there is a problem that the production of resin molded articles having metallized layer is very complicated.

Resin composition for forming plated layer and use thereof


A sheet processing apparatus includes a sheet conveying unit configured to convey sheets, a first scanning unit configured to scan a surface of each of the sheets conveyed by the sheet conveying unit, and generate a first image data for each of the sheets, an erasing unit configured to carry out an erasing process on the surface of each of the sheets conveyed from the first scanning unit, a second scanning unit configured to scan the surface of each of the sheets conveyed from the erasing unit, and generate a second image data for each of the sheets, and a control unit configured to cause the sheets to be sorted based on a difference between the first image data and the second image data thereof.

One type of a hall-point pen uses a decolorable ink. In addition, one type of a printer forms an image with a decolorable toner. The images written with the pen or formed with the printer can be erased by heating a sheet having the images. The image written with the ball-point pen can be erased, for example, with frictional heat. The image formed with the printer can be erased, for example, by heating the sheet with an erasing apparatus having a heater.
Such an erasing apparatus separates sheets on which images are successfully erased from sheets on which images cannot be erased, so that the sheets from which the images have been erased can be reused.

Sheet processing apparatus and method for processing sheets


A vacuum enhancer having four apertures, one of which is open to the atmosphere, wherein a piston selectively restricts fluid flow through an ejector based on a pressure differential between a vacuum chamber within the vacuum booster and true atmospheric pressure.

A vacuum brake booster is a component used on motor vehicles in a braking system to provide assistance to a driver by decreasing their needed braking effort to brake the vehicle. A vacuum brake booster used in a braking system may also be commonly referred to as a vacuum servo, a vacuum booster, a brake booster, or simply as a booster. A vacuum booster uses a stored vacuum to increase a braking force applied by a driver to the brake pedal before applying the transferred force to a brake master cylinder. The vacuum is typically generated in one of two distinct methods, dependent on the type of internal combustion engine, or other motive force (as in electric vehicles). In vehicles that have a naturally aspirated gasoline engines, the intake manifold is typically utilized, whereas in fully electric vehicles or vehicles with a turbo charger or diesel engines, a separate vacuum pump may often be used. In the case of a naturally aspirated gasoline engine, the vacuum booster is typically in fluid connection with cylinders of an engine and the vacuum is pulled during the engine pistons' intake strokes. The fluid connection is traditionally provided along semi-rigid plastic lines and is typically stored in the booster by using a check-valve. A check-valve, clack-valve, non-return valve or one-way valve is a valve that normally allows fluid (liquid or gas) to flow through it in only one direction, in this case toward the engine.
Vacuum boosters may also utilize a vacuum enhancer to pull a deeper vacuum within the booster than available directly from an intake manifold of an engine. A vacuum enhancer may have an ejector disposed between an inlet-duct and an intake manifold, bypassing a throttle, to allow a rush of fluid to provide a venturi effect and enhance the vacuum pulled within the booster to a deeper level. Conventional brake vacuum enhancers use a small size venturi which is always open. With these devices, the rate at which vacuum is generated by these small size venturis is very slow and continuously provides unmetered air to the engine which is not desirable.
An example of a vacuum enhancer with a closeable ejector may be seen in U.S. Pat. No. 6,035,881 to Emmerich et al, which is incorporated herein by reference.
Emmerich et al. relies on the differential pressure between the vacuum booster fitting and the intake manifold to open the ejector flow valve. The intake manifold is not at full atmospheric pressure and the intake manifold pressure varies as the air filter gets dirty. As well, if the vehicle has an intake manifold turbo charger and it spools up and pulls a vacuum onto the manifold, the pressure differential will vary even more. Varying pressure differentials to open and close the ejector path at differing times result in inconsistent performance of the device.
Emmerich et al. also relies on flexing membranes to open and close the ejector. The traditional materials used in this type of construction are rubber sheet, aramid reinforced rubber, and woven nylon, all of which may have varying stiffness changes as a function of temperature. Stiffness changes to the membrane due to age may also result in changes to the pressure differential to open and close the valve. For example, new devices in cold areas will require higher vacuum levels to open when compared to old devices operated in hot climate conditions. Varying stiffness of the membranes also results in inconsistent performance of the device


A high-rate constrained code is provided to encode/decode channel data. A transformer translates binary channel data into an arbitrary alphabet size. The transformer selects an indicator word and makes forbidden prefix substitutions in the data to be transformed. A finite-state encoder imposes some user-defined constraint on the transformed data before the data is transferred to the channel. The high-rate constrained coding technique may be used to produce high-rate DC-limited and run-length-limited codes. The high-rate code can be used in tandem with error-correcting codes.

This invention relates generally to the transmission of information over a channel and, more particularly, to encoding schemes for transmitting information using high-rate constrained codes.
In the field of digital communications, information must typically be encoded before it can be transmitted over a communications channel or recorded on a medium. First, if the information is not already in digital form, it is typically digitized through the use of an analog-to-digital converter so that the information is represented as symbols from the set of binary digits or bits, {0,1}. Next, the digitized information may optionally be compressed to represent the information in a reduced number of symbols. Any reduction in the number of symbols due to compression may be partially offset through the use of error-correcting codes. Error-correcting codes introduce additional symbols, called redundancy, to a data signal to form an encoded signal.
In particular, an error-correcting code operates on groups of symbols, called information words, in the data signal. Each information word is used to generate, according to a prescribed error-correcting coding rule, a codeword comprising a larger group of symbols.
Importantly, an additional or further kind of coding, termed modulation coding, is often used to process information (such as the encoded signal generated using the error-correcting codes) before transmission over a channel or recording on a medium. In particular, modulation coding advantageously transforms a group of input symbols (such as a group of symbols including a codeword generated by an error-correcting code) and generates a channel or modulation codeword comprising a larger number of symbols than the number of symbols in the group of input symbols. As with error-correcting codes, modulation coding can improve a system's immunity to noise. Perhaps more importantly, modulation codes can advantageously be used to regulate time parameters (e.g. for controlling oscillator or counting circuits) and to regulate gain parameters (e.g. for amplifier circuits) in recording and communications systems.
For example, a system may wish to record or read a channel codeword comprising a sequence of binary digits on a magnetic medium (e.g., a hard disk, magnetic tape, etc.). The binary sequence is advantageously used to modulate or control the flow of an electrical current in one of two opposite directions. The current, in turn, produces a magnetic field in one of two opposite directions depending on the direction of the current. In particular, transitions from one direction in the current (and hence in the magnetic field) to the other correspond to a binary "1" in the codeword sequence. A binary "0" in the sequence causes no change in the direction of magnetization. Thus, the first "1" in the sequence of the codeword would cause the current (and corresponding magnetic field) to transition or switch to the opposite direction. The current and corresponding magnetic field would remain in the opposite direction until the next "1" is encountered in the codeword sequence.
To represent the binary codeword sequence on the magnetic medium, the magnetic medium is divided into portions with each portion corresponding to a particular digit in the binary sequence. Each portion of the magnetic medium is then exposed to a magnetic field according to its corresponding bit in the channel codeword, and the output is consequently magnetized by the field in one of the two directions. The information recorded on the medium is termed a channel sequence and is defined by the channel codeword. The channel sequence comprises channel symbols, but, unlike the symbols in the information and channel codewords described above, the channel symbols in a channel sequence for a magnetic medium are advantageously selected from a set of bipolar symbols, {−1,1}, which set of symbols more closely reflects the physical manifestation of the channel sequence on the medium in which the portions are magnetized with equal (i.e. unit) intensity in one of two bi-polar directions.
The channel codeword which defines the channel sequence is read by detecting a change in a voltage signal caused by either changes in the magnetization of portions of the medium or by noise in the system. The voltage signal is a pulse each time a "1" is detected and noise each time a "0" is detected. The position of the pulses carries information about timing parameters in the system, and the height of the pulses carries information about gain parameters in the system. Importantly, however, if a long string of "0's" are read, there is no voltage output (other than noise), and hence no timing or gain information, thereby leading to a loss of, or drift in, timing and gain parameters. Thus, modulation coding schemes which advantageously avoid the recording or transmission of long strings of binary zeros in channel codewords (e.g., runlength-limited or "RLL" codes) may be used to ensure accurate timing and gain information.
In addition to ensuring accurate timing and gain information, modulation coding may also advantageously be used to generate "DC-limited" coding sequences. It is preferable that a stream of data to be encoded be balanced in such a way so as to include an equal number of logical one bits and logical zero bits. In electrical signal terms, a balanced data stream (i.e., a "DC-free" sequence) does not have a corresponding DC component, whereas an unbalanced data stream has a DC component. Balanced data is desirable for many reasons, especially because balanced data permits the use of AC-coupled circuits in the communication or recording link and simpler regulation and detection in optical and magnetic receivers. Balanced data can also provide further immunity from noise.
DC-limited and DC-free codes are increasingly used in such areas as high-density and perpendicular recording to improve performance. The main difference between traditional longitudinal recording and perpendicular recording is the orientation of the media grains. In the case of longitudinal recording, the magnetization is lying in the plane of the magnetic medium. When the media is magnetized by the recording head, the average magnetization is pointing in the down-track direction. When perpendicular head and media are used, the media grains are oriented in the depth of the medium, and their magnetization is pointing either up or down. With this arrangement, DC-limited data is highly desirable to reduce DC baseline wandering and data distortion.
More particularly, DC-free codes have a spectral null at zero frequency. This can be approximated by bounding the running digital sum (i.e. the arithmetic sum) of all the symbols transmitted in the sequence over a channel or recorded on a medium. One way to assure a DC-free or DC-limited sequence is to design a system in which the block digital sum or the arithmetic sum of symbols in a channel sequence approaches zero. However, these codes are difficult to produce without adding an excessive number of symbols to the information to be recorded, resulting in very low code rates. In addition, these codes typically require complex encoding and decoding circuitry that often require large power consumption and a large amount of area on integrated circuits relative to other elements in the transmission or recording system.
Thus, it would be desirable to provide an efficient, high-rate constrained coding scheme for encoding data to be transmitted or recorded. This constrained coding scheme could be used to generate high-rate DC-limited codes. The coding scheme may be simple enough to implement in software and may be used in tandem with other codes, such as error-correcting codes.

Systems and methods for constructing high-rate constrained codes


A laundry module performs a washing function to wash laundry and has a height that is less than the height of a laundry appliance. The laundry module can be part of a modular laundry system including the laundry appliance. The laundry module can be vertically arranged with the laundry appliance, such as by supporting the laundry appliance thereupon.

Field of the Invention
The invention relates to a laundry module that can be configured to spatially and functionally optimize a household laundry area.
Description of the Related Art
Most homeowners utilize laundry appliances, such as a washer and a dryer, to clean clothing and other fabric items. The laundry appliances are located in a household laundry area that can be a dedicated laundry room, a laundry closet, or part of another room or hallway of the home. A common complaint of homeowners is that the laundry area tends to be an afterthought when the home is designed. Many feel that the laundry area is small, poorly arranged, and inefficient.
Regardless of size, the laundry area is not optimized for performing functions other than the conventional washing and drying done in the washer and dryer, such as flat drying, hang drying, ironing, hand steaming, spot pre-treatment, stain removal, and the like. Laundry areas contain, at most, the washer and dryer and possibly a built-in sink and storage cabinets. This configuration meets the basic needs of doing laundry but neither provides facilities for performing other functions nor optimizes the process of doing laundry. Examples of functional deficiencies of the laundry area follow.
For example, different types of clothing require different care; some items need to be washed in a delicate cycle while others are intended for the normal cycle or the heavy duty cycle. With only the washing machine and the dryer, only one clothes load can be run at a time, and if the cycles for the clothes loads are different, i.e., delicate and heavy duty, then the loads must be washed one after another, thereby lengthening the laundry process.
For example, some clothes need to be hung or laid flat to dry after washing, but there is usually no dedicated space for these items. Consequently, some people hang clothes along the top of doors, on door knobs, on hooks attached to the washer, and in other creative locations. Furthermore, to touch up a wrinkled clothing item, people have to set up the ironing board and the iron, usually outside the laundry room, and then let the iron cool and return the ironing board and the iron to its storage location after ironing. This process is extremely inconvenient and time consuming, especially if only one garment needs to be touched up. In addition, storage is a common shortcoming in laundry areas; detergents, fabric softeners, stain pre-treatment aids, delicate garment bags, and the like are often stored in locations distant from where they are actually used.
Additionally, the laundry area typically does not provide flat surfaces that can be employed for, for example, applying stain pre-treatments, flat drying clothing items, or for folding clothes after they have been dried. Conventional laundry appliances provide a flat surface, but the surface is not particularly suited for some of these tasks. Further, the space between horizontally arranged laundry appliances can be annoying if such tasks are conducted on top of the laundry appliances, and clothing items can fall in the space between the laundry appliances. These examples are only a few of the many deficiencies of the laundry area.
To address some of these problems, a hodgepodge of different gadgets, such as sweater racks, accordion hanging racks, rolling shelves, and rolling laundry carts that store ironing boards and the like, have been made commercially available. However, these solutions are not ideal; some are inconvenient to store when not in use, others are not dimensioned to optimize the space of the laundry area, and all are not aesthetically coherent with the laundry appliances.

This patent is subject to a terminal disclaimer.

Modular laundry system and laundry module


Disclosed are compounds, compositions, and methods relating to fluoride aptamers, fluoride-responsive riboswitches, fluoride-regulated expression constructs, fluoride transporters, nucleic acids encoding fluoride transporters, expression constructs encoding fluoride transporters, and cells containing or including any combination of these.

Fluoride can be both beneficial and toxic. For years fluoride has been used in oral hygiene for its beneficial effects in products such as toothpaste and mouthwash. On the other hand, a build up of fluoride in a cell can be toxic. Therefore, appropriate amounts of fluoride and careful regulation of fluoride in cells is essential.
A key biochemical component of a bacterial cell's fluoride surveillance and response system is the new-found fluoride-responsive riboswitch class based on the crcB motif (Weinberg et al. 2010. Comparative genomics reveals 104 candidate structured RNAs from bacteria, archaeal, and their metagenomes. Genome Biol 11:R31). The general architectures and functional mechanisms for fluoride riboswitches are similar to many other known riboswitch classes. Members of each riboswitch class carry at least one ligand-binding "aptamer" domain and one adjoining "expression platform" domain that together control expression of the downstream gene(s) by one of several known mechanisms (Wickiser et al. 2005. The speed of RNA transcription and metabolite binding kinetics operate an FMN riboswitch. Mol Cell 18:49-60; Barrick and Breaker, 2007. The distributions, mechanisms, and structures of metabolite-binding riboswitches. Genome Biol 8:R239). The most common mechanisms used by bacteria include transcription termination and translation initiation, although some bacterial riboswitch classes exploit other mechanisms such as allosteric ribozyme-mediated splicing (Lee et al. 2010. An allosteric self-splicing ribozyme triggered by a bacterial second messenger. Science 329:845-848) and coenzyme-dependent ribozyme self-cleavage (Winkler W C, et al. 2004. Control of gene expression by a natural metabolite-responsive ribozyme. Nature 428:281-286).
Ligands for these riboswitches include fundamental metabolites such as coenzymes, amino acids, nucleobases and their derivatives, and amino sugars (Roth A, Breaker R R. 2009. The structural and functional diversity of metabolite-binding riboswitches. Annu Rev Biochem 78:305-334; Breaker R R. 2011. Riboswitches and the RNA World. In: RNA Worlds. J F Atkins, R F Gesteland, T R Cech, eds. CSH Press). Moreover, riboswitches with striking biochemical properties [e.g. ribozyme-based gene regulation (Lee E R, et al. 2010. An allosteric self-splicing ribozyme triggered by a bacterial second messenger. Science 329:845-848; Winkler W C, et al. 2004. Control of gene expression by a natural metabolite-responsive ribozyme. Nature 428:281-286); digital regulation by either cooperative ligand binding (Mandal M, et al. 2004. A glycine-dependent riboswitch that uses cooperative binding to control gene expression. Science 306:275-279) or by tandem riboswitch function (Welz R, Breaker R R. 2007. Ligand binding and gene control characteristics of tandem riboswitches in Bacillus anthracis. RNA 13:573-582); two-input logic gates (Sudarsan N, et al. 2006. Tandem riboswitch architectures exhibit complex gene control functions. Science 314:300-304)] have been discovered as well as others that expose critical biological circuitry [e.g. bacterial second messenger sensing (Sudarsan N, et al. 2008. Riboswitches in eubacterial sense the second messenger cyclic di-GMP. Science 321:411-413; Lee E R, et al. 2010. An allosteric self-splicing ribozyme triggered by a bacterial second messenger. Science 329:845-848); coenzyme-mediated alternative splicing control in eukaryotes (Cheah et al. 2007. Control of alternative RNA splicing and gene expression by eukaryotic riboswitches. Nature 447:497-501; Wachter et al. 2007. Riboswitch control of gene expression in plants by splicing and alternative 3′ end processing of mRNAs. Plant Cell 19:3437-3450)]. Furthermore, the first datasets that validate riboswitches as targets for antibacterial and antifungal agents have been provided (Sudarsan et al. 2005. Thiamine pyrophosphate riboswitches are targets for the antimicrobial compound pyrithiamine. Chem Biol 12:1325-1335; Blount K F, et al. 2007. Antibacterial lysine analogs that target lysine riboswitches. Nature Chem Biol 3:44-49; Kim J N, et al. 2009. Design and antimicrobial action of purine analogues that bind guanine riboswitches. ACS Chem Biol 4:915-927; Lee E R, et al. 2009. Roseoflavin is a natural antibacterial compound that binds to FMN riboswitches and regulates gene expression. RNA Biol 6:187-194; Blount K F, Breaker R R. 2007. Riboswitches as antibacterial drug targets. Nature Biotechnol 24:1558-1564). However, the identification of a fluoride-responsive riboswitch ranks as one of the most intriguing discoveries among this collection of riboswitch science advances.
Riboswitches are structured RNA domains commonly located in the 5′ untranslated regions (UTRs) of messenger RNAs where they selectively bind target metabolites (or ions in rare instances) and regulate gene expression (Mandal M, Breaker R R. 2004. Gene regulation by riboswitches. Nature Rev Mol Cell Biol 5:451-463; Roth A, Breaker R R. 2009. The structural and functional diversity of metabolite-binding riboswitches. Annu Rev Biochem 78:305-334; Smith A M, et al. 2010. Riboswitch RNAs: regulation of gene expression by direct monitoring of a physiological signal. RNA Biol 7:104-110). Recently a natural fluoride-responsive riboswitch class was discovered that offers an unprecedented opportunity to establish the molecular basis for fluoride sensing in organisms distributed among two of the three domains of life. Also, for the first time, strategies for fluoride toxicity alleviation in many species can be revealed.
The discovery of fluoride-responsive riboswitches exposes a widespread sensor and toxic response system for fluoride—an anion whose mechanisms of toxicity in bacteria and mechanisms of efficacy in humans remain incompletely defined. Reporter systems can be developed that detect the in vivo concentration of this toxic ion. Furthermore, such reporters can be used to identify compounds that influence fluoride uptake and retention, which has great potential for basic research and therapeutics development.
The discovery has immediate implications for understanding the health effects of fluoride additives in water and dental hygiene products. These studies involve the creation and exploitation of tools to sense and manipulate cellular fluoride concentrations. Systems that report the in vivo concentration of fluoride for high throughput (HTP) screening use and create compounds that manipulate these fluoride levels are disclosed. Of particular interest is the identification and optimization of compounds that can be used to sensitize cells to the effects of fluoride via fluoride transporter blocking, thus enhancing the antimicrobial action of this anion.
The disclosed invention provides compositions and methods for demonstrating compatibility of a riboswitch-reporter fusion system that measures cytoplasm fluoride concentrations and permits HTP screening for fluoride transporter inhibitors.
The disclosed invention further provides compositions and methods for using a riboswitch-reporter fusion system in HTP screens to identify compounds that increase fluoride concentrations in bacteria. Fluoride transporter inhibitors or fluoride uptake/diffusion facilitators can be identified by measuring the increase in reporter activity under otherwise non-permissive fluoride concentrations in media.
The disclosed invention further provides compounds and methods for establishing the mechanisms of various compounds which allow for the classification of targets for the future development of fluoride concentration agonists.
The disclosed invention further provides compounds and methods for determining the pharmacophore of fluoride transporter inhibitors and other fluoride agonist compounds. This can yield insight into the critical substructures of the active compounds and permit the synthesis and analysis of derivative compounds that can have improved efficacy.
The disclosed invention provides compositions and methods to identify novel riboswitch-targeting compounds in Gram positive organisms. The methods used to identify, characterize and enhance compounds that influence fluoride concentrations in cells can also be used to discover compounds that inhibit fluoride riboswitches other riboswitch classes. Such compounds could become leads for novel antimicrobial agents.
The disclosed invention further provides fluoride binding aptamers that can be used alone or in combination with an expression platform domain.

Fluoride-responsive riboswitches, fluoride transporters, and methods of use


Systems and methods are provided for estimating a patient's ventricular defibrillation threshold (VDFT). Stimulation pulses, which are of at least three different energy levels up to 2 Joules, are delivered to the patient's right ventricle during a window defined between an R-wave and a vulnerable period that follows the R-wave. Voltage potentials, induced in response to the delivered RV stimulation pulses, are measured at a location of the patient's left ventricle (LV) where it is predicted that potential gradients induced in response to RV stimulation pulses will be lowest. Potential gradients are computed using the measured voltage potentials. The patient's VDFT can then be estimated by estimating, based on the computed potential gradients, the RV stimulation energy level that would be required to achieve a minimum acceptable potential gradient at the location of the patient's LV where it is predicted that potential gradients induced in response to RV stimulation pulses will be lowest.

A properly functioning human heart maintains its own intrinsic rhythm, and is capable of pumping adequate blood throughout the body's circulatory system. However, some people have irregular cardiac rhythms, referred to as cardiac arrhythmias. Such arrhythmias can result in diminished blood circulation. To treat such arrhythmias, cardiac stimulation devices can be implanted in a patient and used to deliver therapy to the patient's heart.
Such implantable stimulation devices can include pacemakers and/or defibrillators. Pacemakers deliver timed sequences of low energy electrical stimuli, called pace pulses, to the heart, such as via an intravascular leadwire or catheter (referred to as a "lead") having one or more electrodes disposed in or about the heart. Heart contractions are initiated in response to such pace pulses (this is referred to as "capturing" the heart). By properly timing the delivery of pace pulses, the heart can be induced to contract in proper rhythm, greatly improving its efficiency as a pump. Pacemakers can be used, e.g., to treat patients with bradyarrhythmias, where a heart beats too slowly, or irregularly.
Defibrillators deliver higher energy electrical stimuli to the heart. Defibrillators can include cardioverters, which synchronize the delivery of the high energy electrical stimuli to portions of sensed intrinsic heart activity signals. Defibrillators can be used, e.g., to treat tachyarrhythmias, that is, where a hearts beat too quickly.
Tachyarrhythmias can cause diminished blood circulation because the heart doesn't have sufficient time to fill with blood before contracting to expel the blood. A defibrillator is capable of delivering a high energy electrical stimulus (often referred to as a shock), which interrupts the tachyarrhythmia, to thereby allow the heart to reestablish a normal sinus rhythm for the efficient pumping of blood.
Ventricular tachyarrhythmias, which originate in the ventricles, include ventricular tachycardia (VT) and ventricular fibrillation (VF). Ventricular arrhythmias are often associated with rapid and/or chaotic ventricular rhythms. For example, sustained ventricular tachycardia can lead to ventricular fibrillation. In sustained ventricular tachycardia, consecutive impulses arise from the ventricles at a rate of 100 bpm or more. Such activity may degenerate further into disorganized electrical activity known as ventricular fibrillation (VF). In VF, disorganized action potentials can cause the myocardium to quiver rather than contract. Such chaotic quivering can greatly reduce the heart's pumping ability. Indeed, approximately two-thirds of all deaths from arrhythmia are caused by VF. A variety of conditions such as, but not limited to, hypoxia, ischemia, pharmacologic therapy, and asynchronous pacing may promote onset of ventricular arrhythmia. VF is typically fatal if not corrected within minutes.
A ventricular defibrillation threshold (VDFT) is the smallest amount of energy that can be delivered to the heart to reliably convert a ventricular fibrillation (VF) to a normal sinus rhythm. VDFTs vary from patient to patient, and may even vary within a patient depending on the placement of the electrodes used to deliver the therapy. In order to ensure the efficacy of such therapy and check device system integrity, the defibrillation threshold is preferably determined to ensure there is a large enough safety margin between the VDFT and a device's maximum shock capability. A large safety margin could prevent shock failure in case of increased VDFT caused by disease progression or the side effects of medication therapy. Determining VDFT could also provide information so that the defibrillation energy can be safely set above the threshold value but not at the device maximum capability, which might prolong device longevity and reduce the risk of fatal electro-mechanical dissociation caused by high energy shock.
Conventional techniques for determining VDFTs induce targeted tachyarrhythmias (e.g., ventricular fibrillations), and apply shocks of varying magnitude to determine the energy needed to convert arrhythmias into normal heart rhythms. However, such shocks can cause myocardial injury and hemodynamic instabilities. Further, such shocks are typically painful to the patient.
Since such conventional VDFT determination techniques subject patients to multiple VF episodes and high voltage shocks, exposing them to potentially detrimental effects of VF and applied shock, a patient's VDFT is often not determined. Alternatively, some physicians, mainly electrophysiologists, have used what is referred to as an abbreviated defibrillation safety margin (DSM) test, instead of the conventional VDFT test. However, with this abbreviated safety margin test, there is less certainty about the defibrillation efficacy of the selected shock strength.
A technique for estimating a patient's VDFT without applying defibrillation shocks or subjecting a patient to defibrillation has been proposed in U.S. Pat. No. 6,859,664, entitled "Cardiac Rhythm Management System with Defibrillation Threshold Prediction" (Daum et al.), which is incorporated herein by reference. In such technique, very low strength stimulation pulses (of less than 10 millijoules) are delivered to the patient's right ventricle (RV) using an RV coil electrode. A response is then measured between the RV coil electrode and an RV tip electrode, and between the RV tip electrode and the device housing, to thereby estimate the electric field distribution near the RV shock coil electrode. A distance from the RV shock electrode to the outer periphery of the left ventricular (LV) apex is also measured, e.g., using a fluoroscope or other imaging apparatus. Then, based on the estimate the electric field magnitude (also referred to as "potential gradient") near the RV shock electrode, and the measured distance from the RV shock electrode to the outer periphery of the left ventricular (LV) apex, a VDFT is estimated using a model of electric field distribution that provides a desired electric field magnitude (e.g., 5 Volts/cm) throughout the heart, including at its periphery.
While the VDFT estimation technique of the '664 patent does not subject a patient to fibrillation or high energy shocks, the inventors of the present invention question its accuracy. More specifically, the VDFT estimation of the '664 patent use potential gradient measurements in the RV, generalized potential gradient from passive electric field model, and distance measurements, to extrapolate what stimulation levels would be necessary to achieve a desired potential gradient (e.g., 5 Volts/cm) at the left ventricle (LV) epicardial surface near the apex, which is the least affected region in conventional transvenous defibrillation configuration. Such approximations introduce errors because they ignore another determinant of voltage gradient—the heterogeneity of cardiac tissue resistivity. Such errors can be significant in a diseased heart having malignant structural and functional heterogeneities. Moreover, the stimulations levels (≦10 V) used in the '664 patent are very far away from the actual voltage range of VDFT (150˜830 V). Thus, the extrapolation of the '664 patent that uses passive models and relatively low stimulation levels may not be accurate enough to predict the VDFT.
Accordingly, there is a need for new techniques for estimating VDFTs. Preferably such techniques do not require the induction of ventricular fibrillation episodes.

Ventricular defibrillation threshold estimation


A memory controller for reducing a time to create an address management table during initialization of a memory card. The memory controller includes a read-write memory for temporarily storing the address management table and a second memory controller for writing, in a nonvolatile memory, an address management table temporarily stored in the read-write memory. The second memory controller also writes address range specifying information that specifies an address range, when a data writing destination is changed from a first address range to a second address range. The memory controller includes an address management table generator for reading distributed management information used for managing a state of at least one physical block included in the destination address range specified by the address range specifying information during initialization, and to generate the address management table based on the distributed management information.

A nonvolatile storage device including a re-writable nonvolatile memory is increasing in its demand mainly for use in semiconductor memory card. A nonvolatile storage system using the semiconductor memory card is also increasing in its demand mainly for use in digital still camera and personal computer.
A practical semiconductor memory card usually includes a flash memory as a nonvolatile memory and a controller LSI as its control circuit, inside. Recently, in the trend of larger capacity of semiconductor memory card, the nonvolatile memory chip is also increased in capacity by multiple-value configuration. Owing to the progress in mounting technology, the number of chips of nonvolatile memory mounted on the semiconductor memory card is increasing. For example, the memory space of semiconductor memory card is exceeding 1 GB.
As address management method for semiconductor memory card, a distributed management method has been used in the prior art. The "distributed management method" is a method of storing, in a management area of a page being a writing unit, a logical address or a status flag of its page, and generating an address management table based on the logical address or the status flag of page to store the address management table in the RAM in the controller LSI at the time of initialization. The logical address or the status flag of page is collectively called "distributed management information".
However, in the semiconductor memory card having a memory space of large capacity, a much time is taken for reading out distributed management information of the whole memory space at the time of initialization. As a result, it may exceed the upper limit of standard initialization time in the semiconductor memory card, or cause other violation of standard. In particular, in a semiconductor memory card not specified by standard, if not violating the standard, the user suffers a huge demerit due to waiting time until accessible. Still more, the capacity of RAM for temporarily storing the address management table or the like is enormous, and there is a problem of cost.
To avoid such problems, a "centralized management method" is proposed, and its technology is disclosed in patent document 1. In the nonvolatile storage device of patent document 1, an address space of nonvolatile memory mounted on the semiconductor memory card is divided into a plurality of address ranges, a plurality of address management tables corresponding to the address ranges are stored in the nonvolatile memory, and the corresponding address management table is read out into the RAM depending on the write or erase command in specified logical address from a host.
Patent document 2 discloses a method of employing both distributed management method and centralized management method of storing collectively address management tables in the nonvolatile memory. The method and apparatus disclosed in patent document 2 are not intended to write back the address management table to the nonvolatile memory on every write command from the host or access device, but are intended to write back the address management table to the nonvolatile memory at a specified timing free of access such as power off, and judge the efficacy of address management table at the time of initialization, and to use the address management table if effective, or generate an address management table based on distributed management information if not effective.
Patent document 1: JP-A-2001-142774
Patent document 2: JP-A-11-73379

Memory controller, nonvolatile storage device, nonvolatile storage system, and memory control method


The usefulness, and consequently the performance, of advertisements are improved by allowing businesses to better target their ads to a responsive audience. Location information is determined (or simply accepted) and used. For example, location information may be used in a relevancy determination of an ad. As another example, location information may be used in an attribute (e.g., position) arbitration. Such location information may be associated with price information, such as a maximum price bid. Such location information may be associated with ad performance information. Ad performance information may be tracked on the basis of location information. The content of an ad creative, and/or of a landing page may be selected and/or modified using location information. Finally, tools, such as user interfaces, may be provided to allow a business to enter and/or modify location information, such as location information used for targeting and location-dependent price information. The location information used to target and/or score ads may be, include, or define an area. The area may be defined by at least one geographic reference point (e.g., defined by latitude and longitude coordinates) and perhaps additional information. Thus, the area may be a circle defined by a geographic reference point and a radius, an ellipse defined by two geographic reference points and a distance sum, or a polygon defined by three or more geographic reference points, for example.

§ 1.1 Field of the Invention
The present invention concerns advertising. In particular, the present invention concerns improving advertising using location information.
§ 1.2 Related Art
Advertising using traditional media, such as television, radio, newspapers and magazines, is well known. Unfortunately, even when armed with demographic studies and entirely reasonable assumptions about the typical audience of various media outlets, advertisers recognize that much of their ad budget is simply wasted. Moreover, it is very difficult to identify and eliminate such waste.
Recently, advertising over more interactive media has become popular. For example, as the number of people using the Internet has exploded, advertisers have come to appreciate media and services offered over the Internet as a potentially powerful way to advertise.
Advertisers have developed several strategies in an attempt to maximize the value of such advertising. In one strategy, advertisers use popular presences or means for providing interactive media or services (referred to as "Websites" in the specification without loss of generality) as conduits to reach a large audience. Using this first approach, an advertiser may place ads on the home page of the New York Times Website, or the USA Today Website, for example. In another strategy, an advertiser may attempt to target its ads to more narrow niche audiences, thereby increasing the likelihood of a positive response by the audience. For example, an agency promoting tourism in the Costa Rican rainforest might place ads on the ecotourism-travel subdirectory of the Yahoo Website. An advertiser will normally determine such targeting manually.
Regardless of the strategy, Website-based ads (also referred to as "Web ads") are often presented to their advertising audience in the form of "banner ads"—i.e., a rectangular box that includes graphic components. When a member of the advertising audience (referred to as a "viewer" or "user" in the Specification without loss of generality) selects one of these banner ads by clicking on it, embedded hypertext links typically direct the viewer to the advertiser's Website. This process, wherein the viewer selects an ad, is commonly referred to as a "click-through" ("Click-through" is intended to cover any user selection.). The ratio of the number of click-throughs to the number of impressions of the ad (i.e., the number of times an ad is displayed or otherwise rendered) is commonly referred to as the "click-through rate" or "CTR" of the ad.
A "conversion" is said to occur when a user consummates a transaction related to a previously served ad. What constitutes a conversion may vary from case to case and can be determined in a variety of ways. For example, it may be the case that a conversion occurs when a user clicks on an ad, is referred to the advertiser's Web page, and consummates a purchase there before leaving that Web page. Alternatively, a conversion may be defined as a user being shown an ad, and making a purchase on the advertiser's Web page within a predetermined time (e.g., seven days). In yet another alternative, a conversion may be defined by an advertiser to be any measurable/observable user action such as, for example, downloading a white paper, navigating to at least a given depth of a Website, viewing at least a certain number of Web pages, spending at least a predetermined amount of time on a Website or Web page, etc. Often, if user actions don't indicate a consummated purchase, they may indicate a sales lead, although user actions constituting a conversion are not limited to this. Indeed, many other definitions of what constitutes a conversion are possible. The ratio of the number of conversions to the number of impressions of the ad (i.e., the number of times an ad is displayed or otherwise rendered) is commonly referred to as the conversion rate. If a conversion is defined to be able to occur within a predetermined time since the serving of an ad, one possible definition of the conversion rate might only consider ads that have been served more than the predetermined time in the past.
The hosts of Websites on which the ads are presented (referred to as "Website hosts" or "ad consumers") have the challenge of maximizing ad revenue without impairing their users' experience. Some Website hosts have chosen to place advertising revenues over the interests of users. One such Website is "Overture.com," which hosts a so-called "search engine" service returning advertisements masquerading as "search results" in response to user queries. The Overture.com Website permits advertisers to pay to position an ad for their Website (or a target Website) higher up on the list of purported search results. If such schemes where the advertiser only pays if a user clicks on the ad (i.e., cost-per-click) are implemented, the advertiser lacks incentive to target their ads effectively, since a poorly targeted ad will not be clicked and therefore will not require payment. Consequently, high cost-per-click ads show up near or at the top, but do not necessarily translate into real revenue for the ad publisher because viewers don't click on them. Furthermore, ads that viewers would click on are further down the list, or not on the list at all, and so relevancy of ads is compromised.
Search engines, such as Google for example, have enabled advertisers to target their ads so that they will be rendered in conjunction with a search results page responsive to a query that is relevant, presumably, to the ad. Although search result pages afford advertisers a great opportunity to target their ads to a more receptive audience, search result pages are merely a fraction of page views of the World Wide Web.
Some online advertising systems may use ad relevance information and document content relevance information (e.g., concepts or topics, feature vectors, etc.) to "match" ads to (and/or to score ads with respect to) a document including content, such as a Web page for example.
The foregoing ad serving systems can be thought of as keyword-targeted systems (where ads are targeted using terms found in a search query) and content-targeted systems (where ads are targeted using content of a document). Although keyword-targeted and content-targeted ad systems have improved the usefulness of ads, and consequently their performance (e.g., in terms of click-through rate, conversion rate, etc.), there is still plenty of room for improvement. Such improvement can be expected with better targeting.
The Google keyword ad server allows advertisers to specify (e.g., for purposes of targeting) one or more countries in which their ad may be served. This permits ads to be served to particular users who presumably speak and understand a particular language. Unfortunately, however, many businesses have only a regional or local reach. For example, a restaurant may want to target ads only to potential customers within a 30 minute drive. A dry cleaner may want to target ads only to potential customers in the same town, and perhaps a few neighboring towns. As another example, a regional chain of drug stores may only want to target ads to potential customers living within their region. Even if such businesses have ads that are relevant to a search query or a Web page, if the end user viewing a search results Web page or the content of a Web page is outside the geographic reach of their business, the ads will not be very useful and will not perform well. If ads only generate revenue (e.g., for a content owner or ad system) when they perform well (e.g., if they are selected), such ads will generate little, if any, revenue.
Such businesses often advertise in local papers and the telephone book yellow pages. While such conduits for advertisements are useful, they are limited. Such businesses may also advertise on local Websites, but this requires the business to find local Websites, and to track and manage advertising on each of the Websites.
In view of the foregoing, there is a need for improving the usefulness, and consequently the performance, of advertisements. In particular, there is a need to allow businesses to better target their ads to a responsive audience.

Determining and/or using location information in an ad system


A method and apparatus is disclosed herein for harvesting ambient energy. In one embodiment, an energy harvester comprises: a first RF rectifier to output a first voltage determined by rectified RF energy in response to received RF energy; a first energy reservoir coupled to the first RF rectifier to store energy at the first voltage; a DC/DC converter coupled to the first energy reservoir to convert the first voltage to a second voltage; a second reservoir coupled to the DC/DC converter to store energy at the second voltage, the second voltage being greater than the first voltage; and a third reservoir coupled to the second reservoir to receive energy transferred from the second reservoir periodically.

Next generation sensor networks may be powered by energy harvesting techniques to avoid requiring battery maintenance. Energy harvesting is a process by which energy is derived from external sources (e.g., radio frequency energy, solar power, thermal energy, wind energy, salinity gradients, or kinetic energy), captured and stored.
Energy may be harvested from radio frequency signals propagating wirelessly. With RF harvesting, wireless energy comes from a radio frequency transmitting device that is some distance away from a device that harvests energy from the radio frequency transmission. Properties of an energy harvester include its ability to harvest energy efficiently from available RF signals, its ability to store the harvested energy efficiently with minimal storage loss, and its ability to make the stored energy available to meet the voltage, current, and duty cycle requirements of a desired application.
One of the more popular forms of RF used today is Wi-Fi (also referred to as IEEE 802.11a/b/g/n etc.) communications. Today, most Wi-Fi communications are in the 2.4 GHz and 5.8 GHz frequency bands and there are many local area networks that are based on Wi-Fi in which access points enable Wi-Fi clients to gain access to networks such as the Internet. Furthermore, the 2.4 GHz and 5.8 GHz bands also support other networking standards, such as Zigbee and Bluetooth, and other proprietary networks, each transmitting energy by communicating in this same frequency band. Additionally there are other frequency bands that support different communication protocols, each of which transmit energy when they are communicating. These include, for example, digital television (DTV) and Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM) signals.
In a traditional RFID-like setup the RFID readers (interrogators) usually deliver RF power as a continuous wave (CW), i.e. a sinusoidal signal of a particular frequency. In contrast to systems designed for use with continuous wave (CW) signals such as RFID, some RF energy harvesters are designed for use with non-CW signals such as WiFi and GSM. These waveform aware harvesters include ambient energy harvesters that harvest signals of opportunity that are already present in the environment. For these types of harvesters, the system designer must work around the waveforms and power levels that are already present in the environment.


In a disc apparatus, a tray gear has a boss protruding from one predetermined place in an inner circumference edge part thereof. During assembly of a tray into the apparatus cabinet, when the boss is located within a predetermined range of rotation of the tray gear, the boss meshes with a groove-forming rib provided on the tray and is thereby centered so that the tray gear and the rack mesh with each other always at the same teeth thereof.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a disc apparatus that performs recording to or reproduction from a disc such as a CD or a DVD, and more particularly to a structure for assembly of a tray into such a disc apparatus.
2. Description of Related Art
In conventionally known disc apparatuses, a disc is placed on a tray, which is then moved into the apparatus cabinet, and the disc is then clamped between a disc holder (that is, a clamper) and a turntable, of which both are provided inside the apparatus cabinet. This makes the disc ready for recording or reproduction. In recent years, a variety of proposals have been made for better workability in assembly and other work on such disc apparatuses.
For example, JP-A-2004-310804 discloses a disc loading apparatus that can be assembled into an apparatus base by being slid in the transport direction of transporting means and that in addition permits proper adjustment of the meshing position between a gear mechanism including a partially toothless gear and a rack of the transporting means mesh.
Specifically, the disc loading apparatus disclosed in JP-A-2004-310804 is provided with: a tray base for transporting a disc; a drive mechanism for driving the tray base; a rack that is provided on the tray base and that meshes with an output gear of the drive mechanism; a drive gear train that includes the output gear and a partially toothless gear and that forms part of the driving mechanism; a slit wall portion that is provided on the top-face side of the drive gear train and whose orientation coincides with the movement direction of the tray base when the partially toothless gear is in a predetermined rotation position; and a protruding portion that is provided integrally with the tray base and that, as the tray base moves, passes through a slit passage that runs in the above-mentioned orientation.
On the other hand, JP-A-2002-288916 discloses a disc apparatus that prevents the mesh between a rack of a tray and a drive gear from being released during assembly of the tray. Specifically, in the disc apparatus disclosed in JP-A-2002-288916, a clearance portion is provided between teeth of the drive gear, and a large-width portion having a width corresponding to the clearance portion is provided in a guide-in portion of the rack of the tray. Here, during assembly of the tray, the large-width portion of the tray fits in the clearance of the drive gear, in which state the meshing position between a first gear and the rack of the tray coincides with the meshing position between a second gear and a movable base drive portion. This ensures that assembly of the tray is completed in a single step of work.
Disadvantageously, however, with a structure like that of the disc loading apparatus disclosed in JP-A-2004-310804, there is little freedom when the slit wall portion is brought into the orientation coincident with the movement direction of the tray base when the partially toothless gear is in a predetermined rotation position, and moreover a complicated mechanism is needed. On the other hand, with a structure like that of the disc apparatus disclosed in JP-A-2002-288916, it is impossible to cope with cases where a drive gear needs to be brought into a particular meshing position. Conventionally, in a case where a drive gear needs to be brought into a particular meshing position as just mentioned, it is customary to perform assembly of a tray while restricting the orientation of a tray-drive gear with a jig or the like. This is inconvenient and impairs workability.