A system collects fluid waste within a closed waste vessel where a waste disposal cycle is determined based upon the pressure level within the waste vessel. In the preferred embodiment, a closed liquid waste vessel accepts waste solutions through conduits having valves controlling conduit fluid communication with treatment vessels. A pressure sensor determines the level of pressure within the waste vessel. A pressurizing device reduces the level of pressure within the vessel. When the pressure within the vessel is lowered to a predetermined level, the valve is opened. When the pressure sensed within the liquid waste vessel then rises above an appointed value, the valve is closed, completing the waste collection of a treated sample. This corresponds to the point in time when the treatment vessel is empty, allowing a sudden rush of air into the waste vessel, raising the vessel pressure to ambient and closing the valve. When the pressure in the waste vessel does not rise to the appointed value after the lapse of a preset length of time, a warning signal is provided advising that the system is not working properly.

FIG. 3 shows a block diagram of a conventional blood corpuscle measuring and disposal system. In FIG. 3, a lower end of sample nozzle 1 may be immersed in a blood sample 2 to be measured. A predetermined quantity of blood is removed from the sample 2 by the sample nozzle 1 when a constant volume syringe 4 provides a negative pressure within the sample nozzle 1 through tube 3. The constant volume syringe 4 is a pump composed of a cylinder and a piston.
An elevating device 5 elevates the sample nozzle 1 with respect to the blood sample 2. The elevating device 5 uses a stepping motor M as a drive source. The sample nozzle 1 is raised from the sample 2 to an appointed height, as shown by arrow A in FIG. 3.
A rinsing device 6 rinses the outer circumference of the sample nozzle 1 as the sample nozzle 1 is removed from the sample 2 by elevating device 5. Thus, blood stuck to the outer circumference of sample nozzle 1 is cleaned.
A transfer device 7 horizontally transfers the sample nozzle 1 in the direction B once the sample nozzle 1 has been raised to a sufficient height above the sample 2 by elevating device 5. Once the sample nozzle 1 is horizontally moved to a position above mix cell 8, the blood within sample nozzle 1 is expelled into mix cell 8. The blood is released when the constant volume syringe 4 provides a positive pressure within sample nozzle 1 through connection tube 3.
Mix cell 8 is a vessel wherein blood is subjected to primary treatment for the measurement of blood corpuscles. In this primary treatment, a physiological solution of salt is added as a diluent to the blood, and an anticoagulant is added to the blood such as ethylene diamine tetraacetic acid (EDTA).
The primary treated blood (hereinafter referred to as the "solution") is then provided to a white blood corpuscle (WBC) cell 9 and a red blood corpuscle (RBC) cell 10 from the mix cell 8. The WBC cell 9 receives solution supplied from the mix cell 8 to subject it to further treatment for a measurement of white blood corpuscles. In the white corpuscle treatment, a blood dissolving agent is added to destroy red blood corpuscles. Additionally, cyan is added to enable the measurement of the concentration of hemoglobin in the blood sample. The Hgb concentration measurement is conducted after the measurement of the white blood corpuscle count.
A counter 11 is annexed to the WBC cell 9 for counting the number of white blood corpuscles in the solution which has been subjected to the WBC treatment. For example, an electric resistance change detecting device may be used to determine the white blood corpuscle count or concentration.
The red blood corpuscle cell 10 also receives solution from the mix cell 8. However, the red blood corpuscle cell 10 subjects the solution to a treatment including the measurement of red blood corpuscles.
Since the number of red blood corpuscles in blood is generally about 500 times that of white blood corpuscles, a secondary dilution treatment is necessary. In the secondary dilution treatment, the solution is further diluted approximately 100 times so that an error which may be due to white blood corpuscles is then within a range of an error of measurement.
A blood corpuscle counter 12 is annexed to the RBC cell 10 in order to count the number of red blood corpuscles treated in the RBC cell 10. The red blood corpuscle counter 12 uses the same electric resistance change detecting method used by white blood corpuscle counter 11. Furthermore, the mean size of the red blood corpuscles and the number of blood platelets having a volume smaller than the red blood corpuscles are measured.
An Hgb-measuring device 13 is used to measure the concentration of hemoglobin in the blood treated in WBC cell 9. The hemoglobin measuring device 13 includes a light-transmissive flow cell, which accepts and stores a quantity of solution from WBC cell 9 to hold the solution between a light source and a photodiode. Cyan is added to the solution in WBC cell 9 and combined with the hemoglobin, resulting in cyan methohemoglobin. Cyan methohemoglobin exhibits a high absorptivity for light at a wavelength of approximately 540 nanometers such that the light transmission intensity will be reduced in accordance with an increase of the concentration of the hemoglobin.
Once the various measuring operations are conducted in WBC cell 9, hemoglobin measuring device 13 and RBC cell 10, the various used waste solutions are fed into waste cell 14 for disposal. The waste cell 14 is a closed vessel which communicates with WBC cell 9, Hgb measuring device 13, and RBC cell 10 through conduits 16a, 16b and 16c provided with electromagnetic valves 15a, 15b, and 15c, respectively. The waste cell 14 is also provided with vacuum pump 17 which reduces the internal pressure within the waste cell 14 to a predetermined value.
During the processing of the solutions, the electromagnetic valves 15a, 15b, 15c are opened by valve controlling device 18 so that the solution within the WBC cell 9, RBC cell 10, and Hgb measuring device 13 are sucked into the depressurized waste cell 14 through the conduits 16a, 16b, and 16c, respectively.
The valve controlling device 18 works on a time clock. Once a predetermined time period has lapsed from the beginning of the waste collection of the treated solutions, the electromagnetic valves 15a, 15b, and 15c are closed by the valve controlling device 18. Thus, the waste solution collection is completed within a preset time estimated to be sufficient for collecting all of the treated solutions into waste cell 14.
In the above-described conventional apparatus, the time dependency is unable to account for the quantity of solution being collected from the various treatment cells. If there is less solution than estimated, the valves 15a, 15b, and 15c remain open too long. If there is more solution than estimated, the valves are not open long enough. The more beneficial case in this regard is when the valves are left open too long in order to ensure the completion of the waste collection. However, this reduces the efficiency of the operation if blood measurements are to be made continuously, one after the other.
Furthermore, it is impossible to detect a clogging of the conduits 16a, 16b, and 16c.

Apparatus for receiving liquid treatment samples for disposal


A two sided feeder for feeding animals while the animals grow from a first smaller size to a second larger size comprises a trough having two opposed outwardly inclined front walls over which the animals can reach for taking feed from the trough and a feed hopper for discharging feed downwardly into the trough. The height of each front wall is adjustable by a hinged or removable supplementary portion to accommodate the different size animals. A shelf is provided above the trough onto which the feed is deposited. The height of the shelf is also adjustable. The hopper includes two vertical side walls defining a lower neck each having a lowermost edge adjacent the shelf for controlling deposit of material onto the shelf so that it remains on the shelf unless moved to the trough by the animal. The neck is supplemented by a clamped insert portion when the shelf is moved to its lower height.

In U.S. Pat. No. 5,640,926 of the present inventor issued Jun. 24, 1997 is disclosed a feeder for animals, primarily pigs, which includes a shelf on to which feed is deposited from a hopper, the shelf being located above a trough into which feed can fall from the shelf. In this feeder, the height of the shelf from the trough is adjustable so as to accommodate a change in size of the animals from a smaller size up to a larger size as the animals grow.
In U.S. Pat. No. 2,543,916 of Lewis issued Mar. 6, 1951 there is shown a feeder for poultry which has a hopper discharging directly into a trough. The trough is designed so that its width can be increased. In addition the trough has vertical side walls each of which carries a tubular member at its upper edge and defining a top of the respective side wall. The height of the tubular member can be adjusted by releasing a pair of wing-nuts and sliding the tubular member vertically to an adjusted position. The top edge of the tubular member thus defines the height of the side wall. A bottom surface of the tubular member overhangs the base of the trough. It is believed, although not clearly stated, that the height adjustment of the side walls is provided in order to accommodate vertical movement of the side walls of the hopper so that more or less feed can be provided within the trough. Thus as the side wall of the hopper are moved vertically upwardly to provide more feed in the trough, so the side walls of the trough are raised to accommodate that increased amount of feed. This arrangement may be suitable for poultry but is unsatisfactory for animals such as pigs in that the shape of the side walls will interfere with the animals extracting the feed from the trough thus causing some stale feed to be left underneath the side walls.


An apparatus for sealing tray-shaped or pot-shaped receptacles, such as blister packs or pots for storing dairy products, includes a sealing head having a sealing contour support, a heatable sealing contour and support plate, preferably with at least one guide bolt immobilized thereon allowing for a linear displacement of the sealing head relative to the support plate. At least one spring element impinges the sealing head with a point biasing away from the support plate. A spring seat plate is disposed between the sealing head and the support plate and can be linearly displaced in the same direction as the sealing head. A rubber mount associated with the sealing head serves as a joint element and allows the sealing contour support to be tilted about the axes that are perpendicular to the guide bolts. An adjustable element is interposed between the spring seat plate and the sealing head.

The invention relates to a device for sealing tray-shaped or pot-shaped receptacles, such as for example blister packs or pots for storing dairy products such as yoghurt, curd cheese or coffee cream. Said device is provided with a sealing head comprising a sealing contour support and a heatable sealing contour and a support plate with at least one guide bolt immobilized thereon which allows for a linear displacement of the sealing head relative to the support plate. At least one spring element impinges the sealing head with a force pointing away from the support plate. A spring seat plate is disposed between the sealing and the support plate and can be linearly displaced in the same direction as the sealing head. A rubber mount associated with the sealing head serves as a joint element and allows the sealing contour support to be tilted about the axis that are perpendicular to the aforementioned guide bolts. An adjusting element is interposed between the spring seat plate and the sealing head.
Blister packs are used for packaging of small components such as for example tablets, pills or buttons, but also sensitive or comparatively expensive components like lenses or electronic components. The mentioned packs consist of a more solid plastic dish with convexities where the remaining parts are kept and a foil cover which seals the convexities hermetically. In most cases the foil cover is glued onto the dish and has an adhesive film correspondingly which as a rule can be activated thermally. The strength of the bonding and/or of the foil cover is adjusted in such a way that on the one hand it adheres to the dish adequately and on the other hand can also be pulled off the dish.
In the same way pasty food which has comparatively small portions can be stored in receptacles which are closed with a foil cover which is easily removable. For example such packaging is used for yoghurt, curd cheese, coffee cream or ready-to-serve pudding.
For applying the foil cover sealing devices will be used which as a rule have several heatable sealing contours. The sealing contour has the task to press the foil cover with a defined force along the outline onto the dish or the cup rim and as a result of the adjusted higher temperature to glue the foil cover together with the receptacle. Sealing in the sense of this invention at issue means processes in which openings of receptacles will be closed with foils. In colloquial terms the notion bonding or welding is used.
In the actual technical state there exists a device for sealing blister packs, which consists essentially of a support plate and several sealing heads. There are bore holes in the support plate in which are guide bolts which are jointed firmly with a sealing head. This construction in hand allows a linear displacement of the sealing head relative to the support plate whereby between sealing head and support plate arranged springs which are enclosing bolts impinges the sealing heads with a force pointing away from the support plate.
Each sealing head has at its face pointing away from the support plate a heatable sealing contour plate. This construction in hand due to the actual technical state the heating is a semiconductor resistor heating and firmly integrated into the sealing contour plate. The setting of the sealing contour plate on the sealing head takes place with a cardan joint which is carrying out here as a ball which is arranged between two plate-formed elements of the sealing head. The ball makes tilting of the sealing contour plate with small angles possible, but also twisting the sealing contour plate about an axis which is perpendicular to the contour.
Sealing heads and support plate forming a unit which is for implementing the sealing attached on the foil cover of the blister pack. In this process each sealing head will come after attaching of the sealing contour into a rest position while the support plate will be shifted relatively to the sealing head and so far until the spring elements which are arranged between support plate and sealing heads produce the desired contact pressure of the sealing contours on the foil cover.
This construction due to the actual technical state have several disadvantages which lead to malfunctioning and production stop of the packaging machine.
Experience shows that an essential reason for malfunctioning lies in the construction of the heating. Particularly a problem is the contact of the resistor element which does not withstand the permanent temperature. Moreover the withstanding of the semiconductors turn out to be insufficiently small. The disadvantage consequence is that the heating often breaks down and therefore has to be changed. Due to the fact that sealing contour and heating are forming a unit, which moreover cannot be removed when built-in with the sealing head, for changing the heatable sealing contour there has to be a complete removal of the unit consisting of sealing heads and support plate. The disassembly requires much effort which costs money and there are also production stops of the packaging machine which cause high loss of production.
The unsatisfactory mechanical stability of the device due to the actual technical state has proven as a disadvantage. The setting of the sealing contour plate on the sealing head with the help of a ball joint makes the location of the sealing contour parallel to the foil cover possible. On the other hand it allows a twisting of the sealing contour plate about an axis which is perpendicular to the contour. This last mentioned possibility of motion has a special disadvantage because it hinders an exact location of the sealing contour relatively to the convexity of the lower plastic receptacle.
On the mentioned device can occur also problems with the exact set-up of the contact pressure of the sealing contour onto the foil cover. Herewith the spring path of the corresponding spring element must be adjusted with the help of screws which operate in axial direction of the spring. Due to the fact that these screws are not easily accessible the setting-up needs a considerable amount of effort and cannot be done during operation which is of great disadvantage.
The linear guiding of the sealing heads by guiding bolts whose ends are attached to a sealing head, each one individually. The other end of the guiding bolts which functions in a borehole of the support plate has not proven as a success. In this carrying out the unity out of sealing head and guiding bolt has a long lever arm which leads from the sealing contour to the guiding borehole in the support plate. Slight loose between borehole and guiding bolts causes the effect that the sealing contour can make considerable lateral motions. These motions also hinder an exact location of the sealing contour relatively to the convexity of the lower plastic receptacle.

Device for sealing tray-shaped or pot-shaped receptacles


A container is arranged with a central core support, with the core support having radially displaced vanes fixedly mounted relative to a central spine, wherein each vane fixedly mounts a floor and array of divider walls. The core support is mounted between front and rear walls, with the rear wall hingedly mounting a lid over each array of divider walls.

1. Field of the Invention
The field of invention relates to fishing lure support structure, and more particularly pertains to a new and improved rotary fishing lure container wherein the same is arranged for rotatably positioning selective rows of fishing lures.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Fishing lure support containers and holders of various types have been utilized throughout the prior art for the convenient mounting and maintenance of the fishing lure structure. Such enclosures of various types have been presented in the prior art patents to include U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,653,220; 4,958,730; 4,073,085; and 4,972,625.
The prior art has typically positioned fishing lure wherein access to individual lures when a great quantity of lures is stored is rendered more difficult, wherein the instant invention attempts to position all fishing lures for ease of access relative to an associated door structure and in this respect, the present invention substantially fulfills this need.


In some embodiments, an optical communication system may include an optical source, a modulator, and a photoreceiver. The optical source may be configured to generate a beam comprising a series of light pulses each having a duration of less than 100 picoseconds. The photoreceiver may have a detection window duration of less than 1 nanosecond. When a first pulse travels through a variably refractive medium, photons in the first pulse may be refracted to travel along different ray paths to arrive at the photoreceiver according to a temporal distribution curve. A full width at half maximum (FWHM) value of the temporal distribution curve may be at least three times as large as a coherence time value of the first pulse, and the detection window of the photoreceiver may be at least six times as large as the FWHM value of the temporal distribution curve.

FSO communications have potential to greatly increase data throughput, decrease cost, and increase access for high-speed internet and other communications technologies. To date, however, FSO communication systems have had limited operational success due to atmospheric interference, which reduces the distance over which data can be optically transmitted and introduces bit errors. Meanwhile, alternative communications technologies, such as radiofrequency and microwave communications, face significant spectrum limitations and cannot be used to deliver sufficient data to meet demand. Currently available optical systems are not able to produce sufficiently accurate, reliable, and available data transmission results that can reliably offload communications demand from these radiofrequency and microwave systems and improve data transmission and access, nor can currently available optical systems transmit data over long distances.
Accordingly, there is a need for optical communication systems that can provide highly reliable, highly available data transmission over long distances. Further, there is a need for optical communication that can reliably transmit data over long distances, such as half a mile or more.

Reducing scintillation noise in free space optical communications


The invention is a simple, low-cost, mechanical device to be inserted in the hinge area of an open door of a parked vehicle to keep the door open while people or equipment are added to or removed from the automobile. A particular use of the invention is a safety mechanism to hold the passenger-side door open while a disabled passenger is assisted in exiting the vehicle without the care-giving individual having to hold the door open or having the door slam shut on the disabled person. After this use, the device may be removed and stored in the glove compartment for easy access.

The invention is a mechanical device which is to be temporarily inserted in the open door hinge of a parked automobile to keep the door open while people or equipment are added to or removed from the automobile.
A particular use of the invention is to independently hold the passenger-side door open while a disabled passenger is assisted in entering or exiting the vehicle without the assisting individual having to hold the door open. In this case, the invention serves as a safety device.
In the same scenario, having the door held open by the invention allows the disabled individual to use the door for additional assistance in entering or exiting the vehicle without the risk of pulling the door closed on the disabled person or the caregiver.
The inventor has found no prior art that was directed to the same purpose as the present invention. However, it is clear to those skilled in the art that the same general purpose could be accomplished by a solenoid-piston electrical device permanently installed in the hinge area of the door, although at a considerably higher cost than the present invention, with the likely need for professional installation.


The present invention provides a face recognition method on a computing device, comprising: storing a plurality of training face images, each training face image corresponding to a face class; obtaining one or more face test samples; applying a representation model to represent the face test sample as a combination of the training face images and error terms, wherein a coefficient vector is corresponded to the training face images; estimating the coefficient vector and the error terms by solving a constrained optimization problem; computing a residual error for each face class, the residual error for a face class being an error between the face test sample and the face test sample's representation model represented by the training samples in the face class; classifying the face test sample by selecting the face class that yields the minimal residual error; and presenting the face class of the face test sample.

With the development of the computer and image processing technologies, face recognition is more and more used in security systems, interactive video applications, image editing and archiving applications, and computer vision applications, etc. For example, video face recognition has been driven by its huge potential in developing applications in many domains including video surveillance security, augmented reality, automatic video tagging, medical analysis, quality control, and video-lecture assessment. Even though the face recognition is a relatively easy task for human brains, it is challenging for machines due to large variations in appearance of identified objects in terms of orientation, illumination, expression and occlusion.
One challenging problem in face recognition is deducing a subject's identity through a provided image. Research efforts have been made on addressing practical large-scale face recognition systems in uncontrolled environments. Collaborative representation-based classification has been recently thoroughly investigated in recognizing human faces given frontal views with varying expressions and illumination, as well as occlusion and disguise. Previous collaborative representation-based classifiers in Face Recognition (FR) solve a regularized regression model, with the coefficients being either sparse or not sparse, under the assumption that a face can be represented as a linear combination of training faces, as is done in Sparse Representation-Based Classification (SRC).
The main idea of SRC is that a subject's face sample can be represented as a sparse linear combination of available images of the same subject captured under different conditions (e.g., poses, lighting conditions, occlusions etc.). The same principle can also be applied when a face image is represented in a lower dimensional space describing important and easily identifiable features. SRC first codes a testing sample as a sparse linear combination of all the training samples, and then classifies the testing sample by evaluating which class leads to the minimum representation error. The regression model of SRC is formulated with dense noise and an estimated coefficient vector. The coefficient vector is a sparse vector and can be estimated by optimization methods.
Despite the success of sparse representation based classifiers, the necessity of optimization methods for improved FR rates has been criticized. Researchers attribute the enhancement in FR performance to the collaborative representation of one image using multiple similar images, rather than the effect of the optimization method regularized coefficients. Furthermore, regularization of the coefficients can only be successful under certain conditions.
Various existing face recognition schemes have proven robust in modeling the noise characteristics for a range of image corruption types. Error correction methods have been proposed in order to make regression models more robust over outliers (e.g., occlusions). In error correction methods, an auxiliary variable is added to the regression model to characterize the error which is often distributed different from Gaussian. A prior assumption of the distribution of the error is needed in order to estimate it jointly with the representation coefficients. Researchers have investigated the use of the whole structure of the error in order to characterize contiguous occlusions. The error image is assumed to be low-rank and is estimated jointly with the representation coefficients.
Nevertheless, most presented approaches are mainly tested on cases where the noise fits their error model assumptions. For example, researchers consider a low-rank regularizer for the noise term, hence being successful at recognizing faces under block-occlusion. At the same time, other researchers combine low-rankness and sparsity in order to extend their recognition rates in cases such as random pixel corruptions. However, when the percentage of corrupted pixels increases significantly, failing to satisfy the low-rank assumption, recognition rates can reduce dramatically.
Further, in face recognition, complex occlusions and variations and their combinations may occur in both the query images and the training samples. The regularization of the error with one prior distribution might not be sufficient to characterize the error. For example, if the face image has varying facial expressions or lighting variations, then low-rankness alone may not adequately describe the error, rather the error can more fittingly be described as low-rank and sparse.
The disclosed method and system are directed to solve one or more problems set forth above and other problems.

Robust error correction with multi-model representation for face recognition


Method, system, and article of manufacture for selecting prospects for a product promotion though data mining. An initial set of prospects in a customer database is identified, by data mining, as initially identified prospects based on predetermined selection criteria. The number of initially identified prospects is compared to a target number of prospects. When the number of initially identified prospects matches the target number of prospects, the initially identified prospects are utilized as the final selection of prospects. When the number of initially identified prospects mismatches the target number of prospects, the final selection of prospects is determined by performing a culling process or an augmenting process to reduce or increase, respectively, the initial set of prospects using a heuristic measure H, until the number of prospects in the initial set of prospects matches the target number of prospects.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention is directed to a method, system, and article of manufacture for prospect selection using a heuristic statistic when culling or augmenting a prospect list for a given promotion.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Consumer Packaged Goods (CPG) manufacturers pay retail firms to promote their products. Typically, a CPG manufacturer specifies a number of prospects fitting specific criteria to target in a particular promotion to be conducted by a retailer. Using the CPG manufacturer's selection criteria, the retailer queries its customer database (e.g., loyalty card holders) to identify prospective targets. The CPG manufacturer pays the retailer on a per-prospect basis to conduct the promotion. Promotional revenue from sales by the retailer varies according to the number of prospects that the CPG manufacturer targets that the retailer can supply. The process of compiling a list of prospective customers to target in a promotion is known as prospecting.
The problem that the retailer faces in prospecting is that, in general, applying the CPG manufacturer's selection criteria to the retailer's customer database will result in either too many or too few prospects being identified for a given promotion. The retailer is then faced with the problem of either culling prospects in the case of too many prospects, or identifying additional prospects to supplement the initially selected prospect list in the case of too few prospects, in order to meet the desired number of prospects for the promotion. The process of culling or supplementing is manual, laborious and time-consuming, and may not produce the highest-potential list of prospects in terms of expected responsiveness to the promotion.
According to one prior-art solution, after compiling the initial list of prospects through querying its customer database using selection criteria provided by the CPG manufacturer, the retailer determines whether the initial selection has yielded too many or too few prospects for the respective promotion. If too many have been selected, then the list is culled by some ad hoc method, e.g., eliminating those whose customer loyalty card ends in, for instance, 5 or 9. If too few have been selected, then the retailer meets with the CPG manufacturer to try to negotiate a relaxation in the selection criteria, and then determines whether the relaxed criteria generate enough additional prospects to meet the specified number.
If the prospect list must be culled in order to reduce the number of prospects, typical ad hoc methods do not ensure that the highest-potential prospects are retained. As a result, overall response to the promotion may be substantially less than optimal.
If the prospect list must be augmented, and if relaxed selection criteria do not generate a sufficient number of additional prospects, or if the CPG manufacturer decides against relaxing the criteria, then the size of the promotion must be reduced. As a result, the retailer realizes less promotional revenue and reduced sales boost from the promotion. Furthermore, the CPG manufacturer's selection criteria may be based on "best guess" and hence may not identify the highest-potential prospects, again resulting in a less than optimal to the promotion.
It is therefore desirable to provide an improved method, system, and article of manufacture for prospect selection, using a heuristic statistic, when culling or augmenting a prospect list for a given promotion.

Process and heuristic statistic for prospect selection through data mining

International Business Machines Corporation


A packet data network (PDN) gateway receives a message associated with a user equipment (UE) having a PDN connection. The PDN gateway determines whether the UE is accessing a network node that has a predetermined association with the PDN gateway based on the message. In response to the determination, the PDN connection is maintained or deactivated.

A mobile communications network includes cells with which user equipments (UEs) are able to communicate wirelessly. Each cell includes a wireless access network node that is accessible by UEs.
Femtocells are being developed for use in various applications. A femtocell has a relatively small coverage area, which is generally smaller than the coverage area of a regular cell. Femtocells are generally designed for use in private premises, such as a private home, premises of a business concern or other organization, and so forth.

Deactivating or maintaining a packet data network connection


AFE circuitry handles both voltage and current input signals. In one embodiment, both a voltage path and a current path are provided from the input. Switching circuitry selects one of the paths. A switch also turns on or off a current-to-voltage conversion circuit used to convert a current input into a voltage. In one embodiment, noise is significantly reduced by using a dedicated ground pin or terminal for the negative reference of a differential circuit. This applies the same external board noise, which is on the input signal, to the negative reference, so the noise is canceled in the differential signal. In one embodiment, temperature compensation is provided via an IPTAT circuit which is used to shift the voltage up in order to balance the decrease in DC voltage with increasing temperature.

The conventional Analog Front-End (AFE) circuitry, also known as the input network, of a DVD/CD drive or other devices is tailored for only one, or at most several very similar Optical Pick-Up Units (OPUs) or Photo-Detector Integrated Circuits (PDICs). It is nontrivial to support different varieties of OPUs or PDICs, not to mention that the challenge to support both voltage-mode and current-mode OPUs or PDICs is high. A voltage-mode OPU (or PDIC) converts the optical signals read back from the discs to electrical signals in the voltage format and delivers the signals to the AFE of the DVD/CD system chip. Current-mode OPUs (or PDICs), on the other hand, deliver information in terms of current to the AFE of DVD/CD system chip.
Traditional AFEs of the DVD/CD systems tend to consume excessive amounts of power since the signal is single-ended and is prone to the strong influence of the noise and crosstalk generated both on the printed circuit board (PCB) and on the chip. Also, the common-mode level of the signal can drift substantially due to temperature variation. This hinders the effectiveness of the calibration and can demand multiple calibrations during normal operations.

Low-noise, temperature-insensitive, voltage or current input, analog front end architecture


A method of controlling a power converter (20) of a motor drive system (10)controls the power converter (20) during a first operating mode by applying a current control scheme, which sets power converter commands to control torque current flowing from the power converter (20) to the motor (30) to achieve desired motor speed; and initiates a second operating mode when power supply to the power converter (20) is interrupted. The second operating mode includes controlling negative torque current between the power converter (20) and the motor (30) so that mechanical energy from the motor (30) charges an element (58) on a power supply side of the power converter (20). The first operating mode is resumed when the input power recovers. Torque current between the power converter (20) and the motor (30) is also controlled to limit a maximum transient DC bus voltage.

An exemplary motor drive system includes the following main components: a motor, such as a three-phase permanent magnet synchronous motor (PMSM); a multi-phase power inverter; a DC power supply; and a current controller, which generates gating signals for output to the power inverter. The power inverter converts DC power from power supply into multi-phase AC power, e.g., utilizing a configuration of insulated-gate bipolar transistors (IGBTs), as a function of rotor position/speed. Rotor position/speed can be monitored using sensors or derived using sensorless techniques. The current controller controls the power inverter, e.g., using pulse width modulation (PWM) control, so that the power converter outputs the desired multi-phase AC power to the motor. Thus, during operation of the motor, the power converter converts DC power from the DC power supply into multi-phase AC power and supplies such multi-phase AC power to the motor, to create motor torque.
Variable speed motor drive systems are increasingly used in aerospace applications. In those applications, the size of DC energy storage components is typically minimized to achieve high power density, and reliable operation during DC power interruptions is a key requirement. Most current implementations respond to power interruptions by disabling inverter gating and opening all contactors between the inverter and the motor to leave the motor in a free deceleration mode. In a speed sensorless system, system operation is typically necessary to derive motor position/speed information. Because such systems will lose rotor position information once gating is disabled and the contactors are opened, it is difficult to achieve resynchronization after a power interruption. After power is resumed, the system must go through soft start and resynchronization when speed sensorless techniques are used, before resuming normal operation. Even with a speed sensor, soft start is still required. Such soft start and resynchronization procedures cause delays and non-smoothness, which is particularly undesirable for aerospace applications.

Power converter controlling apparatus and method providing ride through capability during power interruption in a motor drive system


In accordance with an embodiment, a system includes an audio signal analyzer configured to receive one or more audio microphone signals, and configured to determine a first pattern matching result by determining whether the one or more microphone signals include at least one audio pattern of one or more predefined audio patterns. Moreover, the system includes an air pressure signal analyzer configured to receive an air pressure change signal indicating an air pressure change, or configured to receive an air pressure signal indicating a current air pressure. The air pressure signal analyzer is configured to determine a second pattern matching result by determining whether the air pressure signal or the air pressure change signal includes at least one pressure sensor pattern. Furthermore, the system comprises an evaluator configured to indicate, depending on the first pattern matching result and depending second pattern matching result that a predefined event occurred.

Systems that employ speech recognition, for example, Amazon® Alexa®, Google® Home®, Apple® Homeport®, Microsoft® Cortana® are well-known in the art.
It would be appreciated, if smart speaker systems and similar systems would provide surveillance functionality for a room in which these systems used. Even though voice recognition systems may, e.g., comprise the necessary audio processing capabilities to detect audio events resulting from, for example, burglary actions, audio processing alone may not be sufficient to make conclusive decision on whether, for example, a burglary is about to occur.
Different algorithms to detect a specific audio event. Algorithms that detect a specific audio event may e.g., be used to detect a glass break or a gun shot. These algorithms may predict an event, such as a glass break, with different accuracy. However, these algorithms cannot differentiate between burglaries and accident. For example, these algorithms cannot differentiate between a break of a window during a burglary and an accident, where a glass table or a drinking glass is broken. Instead, these algorithms simply may detect that glass is broken.
Thus, according to one solution, acoustic sensing with microphones is conducted. Conducting such audio processing for the detection of a burglary would, however, be unreliable due to the unreliable recognition of various glass break audio patterns. As a result, a plurality of false alarms would be triggered, as a differentiation between the different glass break situations would not be possible (a table glass break caused by an accident and a window glass break caused by a burglary would be interpreted in the same way), or no alarm at all would be triggered.
Another solution would be to attach sensors directly to each window that shall be protected against a burglary. A special infrastructure would be needed which would result in high costs.
Regarding the sensing of gunshots, no technical solution available today for indoors in private homes. Someone must hear the shot and call the police.

This patent is subject to a terminal disclaimer.


A metal pipe fence and method of construction in which the posts of the fence are formed of lower pipe segments, which can be driven into the ground, and upper pipe segments installed on the lower pipe segments. The upper pipe segment is temporarily retained on the lower pipe segment for welding using a wedge piece driven through an eyelet which projects from the upper pipe segment such that the wedge piece is urged into a tangential slot formed through the wall of the upper pipe segment and into gripping contact with the lower pipe segment. The rails of the fence are preferably formed by connecting lengths of metal pipe or tubing end-to-end, without welding, so that the continuous series of connected pipe or tubing segments extends through rail openings provided through the upper pipe segments of the fence posts.

Metal pipe fences are commonly constructed for use as livestock fences, corrals, livestock pens, property boundary fences for homes and estates, and for other purposes. Such fences comprise a series of vertical fence posts having rails extending therebetween wherein the posts of the fence are typically formed of segments of metal pipe and the fence rails are formed of smaller diameter lengths of metal pipe or tubing.
The traditional technique for constructing metal pipe fences has involved (a) drilling holes in the ground at appropriate locations and intervals for the metal pipe posts, (b) installing the metal pipe posts in the holes, (c) coping the ends of the metal pipe or tubing rail segments so that the shape of the coped ends of the rails corresponds to the cross-sectional size and circular radius of the metal pipe posts, (d) welding the coped ends of the pipe or tubing rail segments to the metal pipe posts, and (e) painting the metal pipe fence to provide a finished appearance and to protect the fence from rust and deterioration.
Unfortunately, traditional metal pipe fences, as well as the traditional methods of constructing such fences, have many shortcomings and disadvantages. Such shortcomings and disadvantages include, but are not limited to: (a) the need to drill holes in the ground for the metal pipe posts, (b) the need to precisely locate and space the post holes and the metal pipe posts to correspond to the length of the rail segments, (c) the time and cost required to cope the ends of the rail segments, (d) the amount of welding required to attach the ends of the pipe or tubing rail segments to the metal pipe posts and the difficulty of the attachment procedure, (e) the difficulty of correcting any errors in the location, spacing, or vertical alignment of the metal pipe posts, (f) the necessity of using untreated pipe and/or untreated tubing segments for the construction process due to the extensive amount of welding required, (g) the time and cost required to paint the fence after construction, and (h) the lack of sufficient protection provided by paints or similarly applied materials against rust and corrosion.
Consequently, a need exists for an improved metal pipe fence and method of construction wherein: (1) it is not necessary to drill holes in the ground in order to install the metal pipe posts, (2) the method of installing the metal pipe posts provides a more reliable and consistent means of ensuring that the posts are properly located, spaced, and vertically aligned, (3) any errors in the placement or alignment of the metal pipe posts are much easier to correct, (4) there is a significantly greater margin for error in the spacing and alignment of the metal pipe posts, (5) the installation of the metal pipe or tubing rails between the posts is much easier and quicker, (6) the fence can be constructed with significantly less welding, (7) it is not necessary to cope the ends of the rails segments, (8) no welding of the rails to the posts is required, and (9) some or all of the metal pipe and/or metal tubing components of the fence can be pretreated by powder coating or other techniques prior to delivery to the construction site in order to provide a better appearance, eliminate or reduce painting requirements, and provide greater protection against rust and corrosion.


In a semiconductor device using a SiC substrate, a Junction Termination Edge (JTE) layer is hardly affected by fixed charge so that a stable dielectric strength is obtained. A semiconductor device according to a first aspect of the present invention includes a SiC epi-layer having n type conductivity, an impurity region in a surface of the SiC epi-layer and having p type conductivity, and JTE layers adjacent to the impurity region, having p type conductivity, and having a lower impurity concentration than the impurity region. The JTE layers are spaced by a distance from an upper surface of the SiC epi-layer, and SiC regions having n type conductivity are present on the JTE layers.

There are conventional power semiconductor devices using SIC substrates, such as Schottky diodes, pn diodes, MOSFETs, etc. Such power semiconductor devices introduce various types of termination structures in order to prevent the concentration of an electric field at the pn junction. Such of termination structures include the JTE (Junction Termination Edge) structure (see Non-Patent Document 1, for example).
Characteristically, the JTE structure can be formed easily by ion implantation. Also, the JTE structure is easy to design, by setting the carrier concentration of the JTE layer such that the JTE layer is completely depleted at the time of dielectric breakdown.
Also, there are techniques for reducing the electric-field strength at the JTE surface by covering the pn junction and JTE with a third layer (Patent Document 1,for example).
Non-Patent Document 1: B. Jayant Baliga, "POWER SEMICONDUCTOR DEVICES", pp. 111-113.
Patent Document 1: Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2002-507325

Semiconductor device and semiconductor device manufacturing method


A stopper for closing a dispensing opening of a container which includes a body element having a top face and a bottom face, the bottom face being directed towards the inside of the container; a moving element which is situated at the top face of the body element, wherein the moving element is movable from an initial position in which the moving element does not extend beyond the top face in the plane of the top face, to an opening position in which the moving element is moved to extend at least partly beyond the outer extension of the top face, wherein the moving element provides, a gripping surface for a user to remove the body element from the dispensing opening. The moving element substantially covers the entire top face of the body element in the initial position.

Stoppers for closing the dispensing openings of containers are generally known. For containers which are intended to contain powders, granulates, pills, tablets, dragées or any other products in the pharmaceutical or chemical domain, it might be crucial that their respective stoppers cannot be opened or removed by children. This is in particular the case for containers which contain medicine or other substances that can be dangerous when taken in an uncontrolled manner.
Furthermore, it is often desirable to determine whether the container has already been opened or whether it is in its originally distributed state. In particular, when it comes to the distribution of medicine, it is relevant for the end-user to know whether the container, which contains the medicine, has been tampered with and whether the user can be sure that the medicine contained in the container is original and untouched.
In order to accommodate for these needs, stoppers are provided which include a tamper-evident member which has to be removed or fractured from the stopper and/or the container before the dispensing opening of the container can be opened for the first time. These tamper-evident members are typically provided in the form of a tear-off ring, a tear-off strip or in the form of foils.
In order to make sure that the stopper cannot be opened by small children, different techniques and concepts have already been suggested in the prior art. Some of these concepts require that the stopper be opened according to a procedure which requires at least two consecutive complex movements. For example, the user has to push the container in order to gain access to an edge of a stopper which then has to be pushed in a direction perpendicular to the initial pushing direction in order to remove the stopper from the container.
A different concept is provided in U.S. Pat. No. 5,299,702 which relates to a stopper for a receptacle. According to this concept, a slide is provided in an upper portion of a stopper, wherein the upper portion of the stopper includes two head sections which project beyond the container and between which the slide is arranged.
In order to open the stopper according to this concept, the slide has to be pushed on its outer circumferential edge in order to provide, at the other side thereof, an edge to lift the stopper and remove it from the dispensing opening.

Stopper for closing a dispensing opening of a container


An image stabilization (IS) apparatus that is capable of preventing change of a field angle due to unnecessary mode transition. A selection unit transfers from a first IS mode to a second IS mode with a larger IS effect when a detected shake amount is maintained below a first threshold beyond first determination time and the shake amount is not maintained below a second threshold that is lower than the first threshold beyond a third determination time that is shorter than a second determination time, and transfers from the first IS mode to a third IS mode with the smallest IS effect when the shake amount is maintained below the second threshold beyond the second determination time that is shorter than the first determination time. A control unit controls an IS unit that corrects an image blur using the shake amount in the selected IS mode.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an image stabilization apparatus, a control method therefor, a storage medium storing a control program therefor, and an image pickup apparatus equipped with the image stabilization apparatus.
2. Description of the Related Art
There is a known image pickup apparatus equipped with an image stabilization apparatus that detects a shake of the image pickup apparatus due to a hand shake etc. and controls to drive a taking lens to correct an image blur caused by the detected shake. Furthermore, there is an image stabilization apparatus that corrects not only an image blur concerning an angle but also an image blur due to a parallel movement caused when the image pickup apparatus moves in parallel.
Moreover, there is an image stabilization apparatus that increases an image stabilization effect for a large hand shake occurring while shooting in walking by broadening an image stabilization range at a wide-angle end side when shooting video, for example.
In addition, there is an image stabilization apparatus that broadens an image stabilization frequency band so as to particularly correct an image blur at a low frequency side caused by a body shake or the like when a shake amount is small during a fixed point shooting (see Japanese Laid-Open Patent Publication No. 2013-33160 (JP2013-33160A): an image stabilization mode using this image stabilization is called a fixed pint shooting mode).
Furthermore, there is an image stabilization apparatus that stops image stabilization to prevent a malfunction of an angular velocity sensor due to a low-band shake when there is mostly no shake because the image pickup apparatus is set to a tripod (an image stabilization mode using this image stabilization is called a tripod mode).
Then, there is an image stabilization apparatus in which the above-mentioned image stabilization modes are set beforehand, and the optimal image stabilization mode is automatically selected from these image stabilization modes according to a shooting condition to perform the image stabilization control.
Incidentally, it is assumed that the image pickup apparatus equipped with the image stabilization apparatus disclosed in the above-mentioned document is moved rapidly by shaking the image pickup apparatus, for example, and then is put on a desk to be in a static state. In this case, the image stabilization apparatus may enter the fixed point shooting mode that strengthens the image stabilization effect when a shake amount threshold is large but a shake amount is small in comparison with the tripod mode, before entering the tripod mode that stops image stabilization by fixing a shift lens for image stabilization when the shake amount is small.
When entering the fixed point shooting mode that is an unnecessary image stabilization mode before entering the tripod mode, the image stabilization apparatus will correct a slow swing back, which causes a problem of changing a field angle as a result.

Image stabilization apparatus, control method therefor, storage medium storing control program therefor, and image pickup apparatus equipped with image stabilization apparatus


A method for measuring system response sensitivity, using live traffic and an analysis that converts randomly arriving stimuli and reactions to the stimuli to mean measures over chosen intervals, thereby creating periodically occurring samples that are processed. The system is perturbed in a chosen location of the system in a manner that is periodic with frequency p, and the system's response to arriving stimuli is measured at frequency p. The perturbation, illustratively, is with a square wave pattern.

This pertains to responsiveness of systems and, more particularly, to the measurement of the sensitivity of a system's responsiveness to changes in attributes of elements that make up the system. Advantageously, the measurement may be made while the system is in normal operation mode.
Many systems exist whose normal operation involves responding to stimuli, such as requests to do something, where the stimuli are substantially random. One example of such systems is network-based applications where users connect to a network and enter a request that may require numerous hardware devices to participate in order to satisfy the request. Those may be geographically dispersed devices that are interconnected through a network, for example, the world-wide-web (www) IP network, and they interact with each other through network links. Those devices, together with the links that interconnect them, are elements of a network-based system. Such a system differs from non-network-based systems in that the links that interconnect the elements are shared with other users of the network that have nothing to do with the system.
In the context of this disclosure, the term "link" without the qualifier "physical" refers to the logical connection from component A to component B. Such a logical connection typically comprises routers and physical links that interconnect the routers. Link latency is a measure of the delay that a message which is sent out by component A experiences as it flows to its component B destination via the link between components A and B.
Network-bases systems that provide network-based applications are becoming quite prevalent. Their proliferation makes it increasingly important to be able to predict and control responsiveness. Unfortunately, the complexity inherent in current software, hardware, and network architectures makes this task extremely difficult. For example, an enterprise application structured as a multi-tier architecture may involve complicated collections of interconnected and replicated web servers, application servers, and databases, not to mention load balancers, firewalls, routers and physical links. Other aspects of modern enterprise practices only exacerbate the problems. For example, an application may be running on a third party platform in remote hosting centers or on hardware that is shared in a utility model using virtualization technology. All of these factors make it virtually impossible to even detect all the dependencies that affect the end-to-end performance of a system (i.e., availability of a distributed application as seen by the end user); much less manage them. Without such information, it is difficult to predict the ultimate effect of, for example, moving a function to another machine, upgrading a network link, or replicating a server for increased availability.
In many applications the typical interaction is a request that triggers a response. The responsiveness of a network-based system to requests depends on many parameters, such as network topology, bandwidth, link latency, and processing resources; but it is generally considered that link latency is one of the more important attributes, especially if some of the links span wide area networks.
While this invention is generally directed to measurement of sensitivity of a system's responsiveness to changes in attributes of elements that make up the system, for illustrative purposes the following focuses on the task of measuring the sensitivity of a network-based system's end-to-end response time to changes in a link's latency.
Measuring the dependency of a system's responsiveness to link latency is not easy. Simply measuring a link's latency is not enough, because two components that communicate over a link that is characterized by high-latency may not have a large impact on the overall response time of an application if, for example, the communication over that link is required only for a small fraction of the user requests. Clearly, therefore, it is necessary to take into account the relationship between the inputs applied to the system and how the link under consideration affects the system's responsiveness. Randomness of the particular requests that appear at the system's inputs, and randomness in the arrival times of these requests make it extremely difficult to establish this relationship in any form that permits analysis.
An article by A. Brown, et al, "An active approach to characterizing dynamic dependencies for problem determination in a distributed environment," Proc. of the 7th IPIF/IEEE International Symposium on Integrated Network Management pages 377-390, May 2001, introduces a dependency determination based on active perturbation of system components and observation of their effects. System dependencies are modeled as a directed acyclic graph where nodes are the system components and weighted edges represent dependencies. An edge is drawn from component A to component B if the failure of component B can affect component A. The weight of the edge represents the impact of the failure's effect on A. While the described approach is generic in a sense, the experiment that the article describes employs periodic database table locking (effectively a failure to respond) as the perturbation method.
In an article titled "Dependency analysis in distributed systems using fault injection: Application to problem determination in an e-commerce environment," Proc. of the 12th International Workshop on Distributed Systems: Operations & Management, October 2001, S. Bagchi, et al employ the same approach in combination with fault injection as the perturbation method, and Candea et al in "Automatic failure-path inference: A generic introspection technique for Internet applications," Proc. of the 3rd IEEE Workshop on Internet Applications (WIAPP), June 2003, describe an Automatic Failure-Path Interference (AFRI) technique that combines pre-deployment failure injection with runtime passive monitoring.
Generalizing, it can be said that the above articles describe an approach for identifying relationships. They tell whether a failure in component A has an effect at component B. None of the above, however, provides a measure of the sensitivity of an application to changes of some attribute, such as link latency, and none of the above deal with injected changes that induce a measure of degradation short of a failure.

Quantifying the impact of network latency on the end-to-end response time of distributed applications


A luminous flux control member (100) has: a light input region (110), to which light having been outputted from a light emitting element (210) is inputted; and a light output region (150), from which the light having been inputted from the light input region (110) is outputted. The input region (110) has: a refracting section (120); a reflection fresnel lens section (130), which is positioned outside of the refracting section (120); and a reflecting surface (140), which is positioned outside of the reflection fresnel lens section (130). The reflecting surface (140) reflects, toward the light output region (150), the light which has been inputted to the reflection fresnel lens section (130), and which has not been reflected (the light leaked from the reflection fresnel lens section (130)).

In recent years, in view of energy saving and environmental conservation, light emitting devices (LED flashes) using a light-emitting diode (hereinafter also referred to as "LED") as a light source have been increasingly used for a light emitting device in an imaging camera. A well-known example of such light emitting devices is a light emitting device using a combination of an LED and a Fresnel lens (see, for example, PTL 1).
FIG. 1A is a sectional view of the light emitting device disclosed in PTL 1. As illustrated in FIG. 1A, light emitting device 10 disclosed in PTL 1 includes substrate 20, light source substrate 21, light source 30 including a light emitting element and a phosphor, and Fresnel lens 40. Fresnel lens 40 is disposed on substrate 20 in such a manner as to face the light emitting surface of light source 30.
FIG. 1B is a sectional view of Fresnel lens 40. As illustrated in FIG. 1B, refractive Fresnel lens section 41 and reflective Fresnel lens section 42 are formed on one side of Fresnel lens 40. Refractive Fresnel lens section 41 is formed at a position which faces light source 30. Reflective Fresnel lens section 42 is formed around refractive Fresnel lens section 41 in such a manner as to surround light source 30. In Fresnel lens 40, the surface on which refractive Fresnel lens section 41 and reflective Fresnel lens section 42 are formed functions as incidence region 43, and the surface on the side opposite to incidence region 43 functions as emission region 44.
In light emitting device 10 illustrated in FIG. 1A, light emitted in a forward direction (upward direction in the drawing) from light source 30 is refracted in a predetermined direction at refractive Fresnel lens section 41, and is then output from emission region 44. On the other hand, light emitted in a lateral direction (horizontal direction in the drawing) from light source 30 is incident on incidence surface 45 of reflective Fresnel lens section 42, and is reflected in a predetermined direction by reflecting surface 46, and is then, output from emission region 44. In this manner, light emitting device 10 disclosed in PTL 1 controls the distribution of the light emitted from light source 30 with use of Fresnel lens 40 including refractive Fresnel lens section 41 and reflective Fresnel lens section 42.

Light flux controlling member and light emitting device


Integrated circuits may implement a filter to identify items in a data store that match a regular expression by sharing character data across lookups in the filter. The NFA states of the may be programmed responsive to a query that includes a regular expression. The NFA states may include a character decode stage that operates on one portion of character bits, while another portion of character bits is evaluated at a state detection stage that also evaluates an output value of the character decode stage.

As the technological capacity for organizations to create, track, and retain information continues to grow, a variety of different technologies for querying data with increasing speed and efficiency continue to be developed. General purpose hardware, such as central processing units (CPUs) may execute various software applications, such as query engines for databases or other data processing platforms, and may offer many different query capabilities for searching data. While general purpose hardware offers the ability to deploy different software applications to perform queries in a variety of different contexts, performance of software applications may be limited to optimizing the design of the software applications to fit the character of the general purpose hardware. Operations performed upon dedicated circuitry, however, can optimize performance of the hardware to performance of specific operations for querying data which can achieve performance gains beyond those achievable by software applications alone.
While embodiments are described herein by way of example for several embodiments and illustrative drawings, those skilled in the art will recognize that embodiments are not limited to the embodiments or drawings described. It should be understood, that the drawings and detailed description thereto are not intended to limit embodiments to the particular form disclosed, but on the contrary, the intention is to cover all modifications, equivalents and alternatives falling within the spirit and scope as defined by the appended claims. The headings used herein are for organizational purposes only and are not meant to be used to limit the scope of the description or the claims. As used throughout this application, the word "may" is used in a permissive sense (i.e., meaning having the potential to), rather than the mandatory sense (i.e., meaning must). Similarly, the words "include," "including," and "includes" mean including, but not limited to.
It will also be understood that, although the terms first, second, etc. may be used herein to describe various elements, these elements should not be limited by these terms. These terms are only used to distinguish one element from another. For example, a first contact could be termed a second contact, and, similarly, a second contact could be termed a first contact, without departing from the scope of the present invention. The first contact and the second contact are both contacts, but they are not the same contact.

Sharing character data across lookups to identify matches to a regular expression


During registration, an iris image taken is frequency-analyzed using a plurality of frequencies f1 to fn to generate features for the respective frequencies f1 to fn. During authentication, frequencies f2 to fn are selected from the frequencies f1 to fn for use in frequency analysis for authentication. An iris image of a person to be authenticated taken is frequency-analyzed using the selected frequencies f2 to fn to generate features for the respective frequencies f2 to fn. The generated features are compared with the features generated for the same frequencies during the registration to perform personal authentication.

The present invention relates to a technology of personal authentication in which features are obtained from biological information by frequency analysis and personal authentication is performed based on the similarity between the features.
As individual identification techniques using human biological information (biometrics), there have been proposed many methods using information of fingerprints, irises, blood-vessel arrangements in the retinas, faces, and the like. Among these, individual identification using an iris, in particular, is expected to be mainstream of biometrics authentication in the future for the reasons that:                (1) an iris pattern can be acquired with a camera in a noncontact manner,        (2) the false acceptance rate (FAR) is significantly low due to complexity of the iris pattern, and        (3) the iris pattern remains unchanged substantially through the life of the owner.
Techniques for extracting iris features from iris images and identifying individuals are disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,291,560, Japanese National Phase PCT Laid-Open Publication No. 8-504979, and "High Confidence Visual Recognition of Persons by a Test of Statistical Independence", IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence, Vol. 15, No. 11, November, 1993 (these three disclosures are roughly the same in contents).
In the above techniques, an iris image is analyzed at multiple resolutions using multi-scale self-similarity type two-dimenional quadrature band-pass filters (Gabor filters, for example) to generate a feature (iris code). To state as a specific procedure, a digitized image of a human eye is captured with a video camera, and the boundary between the iris and the sclera and the boundary between the iris and the pupil are determined to separate an iris region from others. A polar coordinate system is applied to the separated iris image, and a plurality of ring analysis bands are determined. Analysis and coding are then performed for the analysis bands using a signal processor comprised of multi-scale quadrature band-pass filters. The thus-generated iris codes are compared with each other by calculating a hamming distance between the codes as shown in FIG. 24, to determine whether or not the compared iris codes originate from an identical person.
Problems to be Solved
The above technique is based on the premise that multi-scale frequency analysis is performed for predetermined fixed frequency bands using an image capture device providing a predetermined fixed resolution in both cases of iris registration and comparison. To fulfill this premise, dedicated registration and authentication devices are necessary.
In view of the recent sophistication in function of cellular phones and personal digital assistants (PDAs), increase in capacity of communication bands, and the like, the following use of personal authentication is considered possible in the near future. That is, a cellular phone or PDA equipped with an image capture device (camera) may be used for taking an iris image of a person and authenticating the person. And this capability may be utilized in occasions of access control, such as logging in to a cellular phone or PDA, authentication in electronic commerce (EC), control of entrance/exit into/from a place requiring physical security, and alternative use to a key of a house. When the above occasions are to be realized, an image capture device incorporated in or mounted externally on a cellular phone or PDA will possibly be comparatively low in resolution at the beginning. In addition, specifications for image capture devices will possibly be different among the types of the devices. Moreover, it is considered that authentication will be effected via a variety of apparatuses such as a terminal mounted on the door, not only a cellular phone and a PDA.
As described above, an iris image may be taken with a variety of apparatuses providing lower to higher resolutions during authentication. Under this situation, if frequency analysis is performed at fixed frequency bands by the conventional method described above, the following problem will arise. That is, when a low-resolution image is input, a part of a feature obtained by analysis at a high frequency (specifically, a frequency component equal to or higher than Fs/2 where Fs is a sampling frequency) is no more useful as the feature. Therefore, if this part obtained by high-frequency analysis is counted as part of the feature, the entire correlation value decreases and thus authentication precision possibly degrades.

Frequency and resolution analyzed biometric authentication method and device

Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., Ltd.


Systems and methods for providing cardiac support provide a cannula body having an inlet and an outlet. The cannula includes a preformed bend sized and configured to extend within the heart chamber between the inlet and the outlet. The cannula is inserted through a first valve into a heart chamber and through a second valve out of the heart chamber. Blood is drawn into the cannula through the inlet and discharged from the cannula through the outlet, thereby bypassing the heart chamber.

The current trend in medicine is to perform less invasive procedures so as to minimize the trauma to the patient and shorten the recovery period. A major emphasis is to make as few incisions and as small of an incision as is possible to gain access to the interior of the patient. One area of medicine in which these techniques are being used more frequently is in heart surgery. Open heart surgery typically requires significant hospitalization and recuperation time for the open heart surgery to perform various surgical procedures such as coronary artery bypass grafting (CABG) is highly traumatic to the patient. In addition, open heart procedures require the use of cardiopulmonary bypass (CPB) which continues to represent a major assault on a host of body systems.
The CABG procedure generally involves open chest surgical techniques to patient is cut in order to spread the chest apart and provide access to the heart. During surgery the heart is stopped, and by the use of CPB blood is diverted from the lungs to an artificial oxygenator. In general, a source of arterial blood is then connected to a coronary artery downstream from the occlusion. The source of blood is often an internal artery, and the target coronary artery is typically among the anterior or posterior arteries which may be narrowed or occluded.
Multiple incisions have to be made in the arteries to accomplish the diversion of the blood. The leading cause of morbidity and disability following cardiac surgery is cerebral complications. At each incision, there is a risk of gaseous and solid micro and macro emboli, and less often perioperative cerebral hypoperfusion, which produce neurologic effects ranging from subtle neuropsychologic deficits to fatal stroke. Therefore, there is a need to minimize the number and size of incisions.
Open heart surgery is just one area of medicine, that would benefit from less invasive apparatus and procedures, others include dialysis and laparoscopic surgery just to name a couple.
Two obstacles to performing surgery is the number of incisions that must be made in various arteries, vessels, ventricles, atriums and cavity walls of the patient and the safe insertion and withdrawal of various devices and elements through those incisions.
One application for cannulas involves the augmenting or supplementation of pulmonary blood flow through the beating heart during heart surgery by use of one or more cannulas involved in the intake and return of blood into the circulatory system. The cannulas interface between the patient's circulatory system and the mechanical pumps that power the argumentation procedure.
When performing cardiac surgery cannulas are placed within the patient's blood stream and used for inflow and outflow of blood or other fluids. One such bypass circuit would be a cardiopulmonary bypass circuit (CPB), in which an outflow cannula is placed in the patient's right atrium and a return cannula is placed in the aorta. The outflow cannula can be further connected to an oxygenator, blood filter, or blood heater. Even though there are negative side effects of using on pump bypasses, doctors continue to do so because of the ease and reliability of establishing the circuit.
Though presently there is a movement away from stopped heart CPB to beating heart surgery. The movement to beating heart surgery is hampered by common bypass techniques and equipment. One such problem occurs while performing a coronary artery bypass graft (CABG) on the back side of the heart. In order to access vessels on the back side of the heart the surgeon must rotate the heart. Though rotating the heart while the heart is still beating raises new complications that were not present during stopped heart surgery. Many times rotating the beating heart leads to further complications such as a decrease in pulmonary pressure which results in a decrease in oxygen content in the patient's blood. Thus many times when a surgeon is performing a graft on the back side of the heart, the heart must be rotated and replaced many times to stabilize the patient's blood pressure.

Apparatus and methods for entering cavities of the body


A method of forming an internal stress control film on one surface of an object to be processed by a sputtering method, includes selecting a pressure of a process gas at the time of forming the internal stress control film from a pressure region higher than a threshold value of 5 (Pa) so that stress of the object to be processed when a bias is applied to the object to be processed becomes larger stress on a tensile side and the internal stress control film has higher density, as compared with stress in a case in which a bias is not applied thereto.

In a process of laminating a plurality of thin films to fabricate various types of devices, internal stress (internal stress) is generated on the thin films depending on fabrication conditions such as a material of a thin film, a thickness of the thin film, or a pressure or temperature at the time of forming the thin film, or depending on relative conditions between the thin film and an object to be processed constituting an underlayer of the thin film. As such internal stress (hereinafter also referred to as film stress), there are compressive stress (compressive stress) in which atoms are compressed from a reference state and interatomic distances are stretched, and tensile stress (tensile stress) in which atoms are pulled from a reference state and interatomic distances shrink.
Conventionally, methods for reducing film stress in a thin film in which compressive stress is generated have been proposed (Patent Document 1, Patent Document 2). However, a technology for separately manufacturing a thin film having these two types of internal stresses (compressive stress and tensile stress) simply by changing fabrication conditions at the time of forming the thin film has not been realized.

Method of forming internal stress control film


A remotely manipulatable transducer element or linear transducer array for use with a remote work station including a display permits an operator of an ultrasound system to be remotely located from a patient. The transducer or linear transducer array comprises an assembly within a housing for fixation to a human body and intended to be placed one time and then remotely manipulated in directions of rotation, twist, and linearly in first and second perpendicular directions within a plane parallel to the surface of the human body under study. In one embodiment, the housing comprises a motor and a linear transducer array which are mounted to a rotor of the motor via an optional gear assembly for rotation, for example, in a range of 180 degrees so that multiple planes of imaging can be obtained, for example, of a heart or other body organ. The remotely manipulatable transducer or transducer array assembly may comprise a wireless transceiver having a unique identifier for communication with one or more work stations, each having a unique identifier.

Ultrasonic imaging is known in the art and systems typically involve the use of hand-held or temporarily affixed ultrasonic transducer arrays that may be controlled, for example, as to on/off, mode, focus control, depth control and the like. The user applies a small amount of ultrasound gel to a region of interest, holds and moves the ultrasound transducer from one location of the patient to another within the region, the unit being wired to a console, typically including a display. Ultrasound is a biologically safe and non-radiating form of energy that can provide detailed anatomic and, in some cases, functional images. It is known in the art of transesophageal echocardiography (imagery of the heart) to provide a multi-plane transducer that can image in planes in a 180 degree range.
It is also known, for example, in the telecommunications arts to remotely transmit images such as photographic images from a source such as a cellular telephone device to a receiving cellular telephone or other telecommunications device. For example, a doctor may transmit a digital image to another doctor by attaching the image to an email. An x-ray machine located in a remote laboratory may capture an image of a broken bone, and the technician may immediately transmit the image to an orthopedic unit of a hospital for analysis. Cellular telephone devices are now capable of capturing and transmitting moving images, including movies with associated sound, for personal enjoyment.
U.S. patent application Ser. No. 11/782,991, filed Jul. 25, 2007, entitled "Image Guided Catheters and Methods of Use," of the same inventor describes a plurality of embodiments of an image guided catheter that may be used, for example, to image an area of the thoracic cavity such as the heart or other region of interest and deliver medication, treatment and the like accompanied by ultrasonic and other imaging with an ultrasonic array mounted towards a distal end of a catheter. The catheter is provided with a plurality of lumen running from a proximal to the distal end. Interventional, diagnostic or therapeutic devices may be inserted via a sheath to the region of interest.
U.S. Pat. No. 7,118,531, issued Oct. 10, 2006, to Krill describes an ingestible medical payload carrying capsule with wireless, e.g. ultrasonic, communication to transducers placed on a patient. The capsule may deliver medication or contain imaging apparatus such as an optical camera and/or a transducer with a pulse driver for internal acoustic pulse illumination and external high resolution sonogram imaging and detection.
United States Patent Application, US 2002/0065464, published May 30, 2002, describes an imaging device including a wireless mobile unit. Ultrasonic imaging devices and viewing apparatus are large and bulky apparatus. The described imaging device allows an operator to move freely throughout the operating arena, without being tangled within cords and allowing the patient to remain relatively undisturbed while simultaneously allowing the operator full access to the entire patient's body.
United States Patent Application, US 2007/0066894, published Mar. 22, 2007, describes a remote wireless control device for an ultrasound machine and method. The remote wireless control device includes a subset of controls present on larger apparatus including a sonogram display. A smaller mobile unit communicates with the larger unit and may be more easily used bed-side than the larger apparatus.
Each of the above-identified patents and patent applications should be deemed to be incorporated by reference herein as to their entire contents.

Wired and wireless remotely controlled ultrasonic transducer and imaging apparatus


An iontophoresis system includes an iontophoretic drug delivery device for placement against the skin of a patient and having a pair of electrodes, and a circuit for delivering and controlling the current and voltage provided to the electrodes. The current and voltage controlling circuit includes a power supply for generating a voltage or current, an intermediary storage device and a first switching circuit interposed and coupled to the power supply and the intermediary storage device. The intermediary storage device is selectively coupled to the drug delivery device through a second switching circuit or device. Energy from the power supply is transferred and stored in the intermediary storage device for later delivery to the transdermal drug delivery device. In this way, should a component of the circuit fail, the energy or power delivered to the drug delivery device is interrupted or maintained at least equal to a predetermined safe level to avoid damage or injury to the patient's skin.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to iontophoretic devices for delivering a drug or medicant to a patient transdermally, i.e., through the patient's skin, and more specifically relates to an iontophoresis drug delivery system and circuit therefor which limits the current or voltage provided to the patient's skin to a safe level should a component of the circuit fail.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Iontophoresis can be defined as the electrically driven application of drugs or medicants, in their ionic form, to the surface tissues of a patient. The application of electric current causes migration of ions into the tissue wherein such migration is proportional to the quantity of current applied through the iontophoretic system.
One of the major drawbacks of iontophoresis is skin irritation or burns which can occur due to high current levels. It is known that the impedance of a patient's skin can range from over 100,000 ohms to nearly 1,000 ohms, depending on the duration that the iontophoretic current is applied, the magnitude of the current which is being delivered, the location of the system on the patient's body, and other factors. In a system where the desired current level, which is determined in part by the drug administered to the patient, is 1 milliamp, a voltage potential of 100 volts would result if the skin impedance is 100,000 ohms. Such a voltage would cause undesirable sensations to the user.
Numerous attempts have been made to control the amount of current or voltage provided to a patient during iontophoresis. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 4,292,968 to Ellis discloses an apparatus for delivering constant current during ion therapy (iontophoresis) which will abruptly switch to delivering constant voltage when the voltage across the electrodes of the drug delivery device reaches a predetermined level. The circuit disclosed in the Ellis patent includes a voltage limiter 14 which is provided in shunt with the electrodes of the device for limiting the output voltage across the electrodes. The Ellis patent describes the voltage limiter 14 as functioning as a variable resistive path shunting the electrodes. When the electrode voltage is less than a predetermined voltage, the limiter 14 is stated to present a high resistance and all the current generated by the circuit is provided to the electrodes. However, when the voltage across the electrodes reaches the predetermined voltage, the resistance of the limiter 14 is stated to drop, drawing current that would have been provided to the electrodes.
One of the major disadvantages of the circuit described in the Ellis patent is that it is not failsafe. Should certain of the components of the circuit fail, it is possible for the Ellis circuit to deliver excessive current to the patient, causing skin irritation or tissue damage. For example, if the voltage limiter 14 failed such that it no longer acted as a variable resistor or no longer shunted the electrodes of the device, no voltage regulation would occur when the predetermined voltage across the electrodes is reached. The voltage across the electrodes could reach dangerous levels, resulting in skin burns or tissue damage.
Another iontophoresis device is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,141,359 to Jacobsen, et al. The Jacobsen, et al. patent discloses an epidermal iontophoresis device which is stated to be capable of maintaining a constant current through the epidermal tissue. To prevent excessive voltage build-up and the accompanying dangers of shock and burns, a comparator circuit monitors current flow and voltage across the electrodes of the device and automatically triggers an SCR shut down circuit when impedance readings are outside of predetermined limits.
As with the circuit disclosed in the Ellis patent, the iontophoresis device described in the Jacobsen, et al. patent is not safe if certain components fail. For example, if the SCR fails and becomes effectively an open circuit, it will no longer be capable of de-energizing the current source used in the circuit, resulting in burns, shocks and other dangerous effects of excessive current and voltage.

Failsafe iontophoresis drug delivery system


An image displaying apparatus displays a color image with favorable quality on a predetermined surface. A light source unit emits light beams within different wavelength ranges optically modulated by image information. A light combining unit combines light beams from the light source unit into a light beam. A scanning unit scans a scanned surface with the light beam from the light combining unit and forms an image thereon. A controlling unit synchronously controls the scanning unit and the light source unit. A dividing unit divides a light beam into more than one light beam within an arbitrary optical path on light-incident side of the scanning unit. A receiving unit and adjustment unit adjust quantity of light emission of one or more light source units based on the light quantity received by the receiving unit on one of the optical paths divided by the dividing unit.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a scanning-type image displaying apparatus for displaying images on a predetermined surface by scanning the predetermined surface with light beams which are modulated based on image information and are emitted from light source means, using scanning means.
2. Related Background Art
Conventionally, liquid crystal projectors or DLP projectors, in which a two-dimensional spatial modulator such as a liquid crystal element is illuminated with light beams from light source means such as a halogen lamp using an illuminating optical system, and light beams from the two-dimensional spatial modulator are projected onto a screen to be observed using a projection lens, are known as projection-type image displaying apparatuses.
In contrast, scanning-type image displaying apparatuses, in which a screen is scanned with laser light modulated based on image information using scanning means such as a micromechanical mirror and an image is displayed on the screen, are known (U.S. Publication No. 2003/0011751, Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2004-077549, U.S. Pat. No. 5,694,180).
In such a scanning-type image displaying apparatus, it is easy to downsize the entire apparatus because of the absence of an illuminating optical system. In addition, the apparatus is characterized in that, by scanning with laser light, pixel structures doesn't appear as compared to image displaying apparatuses that use two-dimensional displaying elements such as liquid crystal elements, and that it has a wide color reproduction range, so called color gamut.
Among the three patents U.S. Publication No. 2003/0011751, Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2004-077549 and U.S. Pat. No. 5,694,180, U.S. Pat. No. 5,694,180 discloses a color image projection apparatus and a conversion optical system used therein in which images are displayed using a polygon mirror and a vibrating mirror as scanning means.
In scanning-type image displaying apparatuses, a desired image is displayed by synchronizing the driving of the scanning means and the modulation of the light beam from the light source means that is optically modulated based on image information. Among such apparatuses, it is necessary in color image displaying apparatuses that display color images to control output (quantity of light emission) from light source means that radiate red, green and blue lights in order to adjust white balance.
In particular, when displaying color images using light source means that radiate red, green and blue lights, output ratio of the three-color lights becomes very important. However, no specific configurations have been disclosed regarding a method for controlling output from each light source means.
For instance, in laser beam printers that display images with laser light, semiconductor lasers are commonly used as their light source means. With laser beam printers, to automatically perform light quantity adjustment of laser light has been referred to as automatic power control (APC). To perform APC, in a CAN package of a semiconductor laser, a photodetector (monitor PD) for monitoring light quantity output is disposed in the vicinity of a laser chip which emits laser light. Thus, laser beam printers are configured so that output upon emission of laser light is fed back from an electric output value of the monitor PD to adjust light quantity.
However, there have been no disclosures regarding a ratio of output from a plurality of light source means when a plurality of light source means are used to display color images.
A scanning-type image displaying apparatus for displaying color images by scanning a scanned surface with red, green and blue laser light modulated based on image information from the plurality of light source means (laser light sources) using optical scanning means capable of performing two-dimensional scanning, and for viewing the color images does not require the use of a two dimensional displaying element such as a liquid crystal element, thereby facilitating the display of high precision color images.
However, when scanning with laser light and displaying a color image on the screen, light source means capable of emitting light quantities of red, blue and green lights at an appropriate ratio will be required. Output from a monitor PD (sensor, photo detector) within a conventional CAN package is not the output intended to actually display images. In contrast, the monitor PD can be disposed in accordance with each of the red, blue and green laser to adjust the output ratio. However, this leads to an increase in the number of parts, which in turn makes the entire apparatus more complicated.
The object of the present invention is to provide an image displaying apparatus capable of appropriately controlling an output ratio of a plurality of light source means that emit light beams (laser lights) with different wavelength ranges (red, green and blue) that are optically modulated by image information without complicating the entire apparatus, and also capable of displaying color images with favorable image quality on a predetermined surface.

Image displaying apparatus with control over the output ratio of a plurality of light sources