A diluted cleaning solution is contacted with the inner wall surface of an immunity measuring cell every time an immunity measurement treatment of a specimen is performed. Therefore, a diluting liquid is injected in advance, then a cleaning solution is injected, whereby a diluted cleaning solution is produced in the immunity measuring cell. As a result, the inner wall surface of the immunity measuring cell is maintained in a preferable state and the interval of the routine cleanings can be prolonged.

When an inflammatory reaction or tissue destruction has occurred in the body, it is diagnosed based on the detection of what is called an inflammatory marker as an index. One representative example of the marker is a C-reactive protein (hereinafter to be referred to as CRP). CRP is a serum protein secreted by the liver into the blood on affliction with autoimmune diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis, malignant tumor, primarily bacterial infectious diseases and the like. Therefore, CRP is known to show high values in patients with these diseases. However, since CRP values show high individual differences, it is a particularly useful index when observing the progression of the disease state of individual patients, rather than comparing against the standard value or the CRP values of others. CRP is generally measured immunologically by a method such as ELISA (Enzyme-Linked ImmunoSorbent Assay) and the like.
In the meantime, the left shift of white blood cells and an increase in the number of white blood cells occur in the early stages of inflammation. Therefore, it is clinically highly important to simultaneously measure not only CRP but also white blood cells.
The present inventors took note of the above-mentioned aspect and provided for the first time an apparatus for measuring blood cells and immunity from whole blood, which simultaneously enables measurement of white blood cell and CRP (JP-B-3477352, hereinafter to be referred to as patent document 1).
The apparatus described in patent document 1 is configured to classify white blood cells into 3 types. White blood cells can be divided into five kinds of cells: neutrophils, eosinophils, basophils, monocytes and lymphocytes. Of these, neutrophil, eosinophil and basophil are sometimes referred to collectively as granulocytes. In the apparatus for measuring blood cells and immunity from whole blood of the above-mentioned patent document 1, granulocytes, monocytes and lymphocytes are counted as white blood cells (i.e., classification into 3 types).
As shown in FIGS. 5(a), 5(b), and 6, in the apparatus for measuring blood cells and immunity from whole blood of the above-mentioned patent document 1, a specimen container 4 containing a specimen, a CRP cell 19, reagent containers (20, 21, 22) containing the reagents for CRP measurement, and blood cell counting-measuring cells (WBC cell 27 for white blood cells, RBC cell 28 for red blood cells) are aligned and disposed in a line in the horizontal direction. A single sampling nozzle 36 is controlled to move in the horizontal direction (positioning movement above each container and cells) and downward and upward movements (movements to go into and out from each container and cells) in a predetermined order. The sampling nozzle 36 is a thin and long tube also called a "needle".
The processing steps and the order of movement of the sampling nozzle for the measurement of CRP and counting-measurement of blood cells are as shown in the flow chart of FIG. 7.
By these configurations, various processing steps for one specimen, such as the steps of [suction and discharging of specimen and CRP reagents, CRP measurement in CRP cell, blood cell counting and measurement in WBC cell and RBC cell, cleaning processing of each cell, cleaning processing of the outside of the nozzle where necessary after each processing step, and final cleaning processing of the inside and outside of the nozzle after the final step] are performed sequentially and full-automatically, and the whole processing steps require about 4 minutes per one specimen to complete.
In addition to the processing steps as mentioned above for one specimen, conventional apparatuses for measuring blood cells and immunity from whole blood are programmed to automatically perform routine cleanings of the CRP cell (container constituted to measure CRP) every time a predetermined number of specimens are processed.
Routine cleanings of the CRP cell are necessary for the following reasons.
For CRP measurement, a latex reagent for immunity measurement (e.g., anti-human CRP sensitized latex immunoreagent) is dispensed in the cell to perform a latex coagulating method, particularly, for example, the latex immunonephelometry RATE method. The latex reagent is an R3 reagent contained in a reagent container 22 in the examples of FIG. 5(a)-FIG. 7. In this case, latex particles contained in the latex reagent also attach to the inner wall surface of the CRP cell. The latex particles accompanying CRP relatively firmly attach to the inner wall surface and, as the number of treated specimens increases, the amount of the latex particles deposited on the inner wall surface increases. As a result, permeation of irradiation light for the CRP measurement is prohibited, and accurate measurement results cannot be obtained. Therefore, routine cleaning of the CRP cell is necessary.
Conventionally, to obtain accurate results of optical measurement, routine cleanings are performed for every specimen number of 15.
For routine cleanings of the CRP cell, a cleaning solution containing a cleaning agent for the latex reagent is used, so that the latex particles adhered to the inner wall surface of the cell as mentioned above can be removed. The cleaning solution is contained in a cleaning solution tank in the apparatus, and supplied to the CRP cell through an exclusive piping at the time of the aforementioned routine cleanings.
When the routine cleanings are started, a diluting liquid to be supplied into the CRP cell for rinsing the inside of the cell at the last stage of every CRP measurement is discharged, the next CRP measurement is discontinued, the cleaning solution in the aforementioned tank is supplied as it is (i.e., as undiluted solution) until the inside of the cell is filled, and the inner wall surface of the cell is immersed in the cleaning solution. This immersion state is maintained for 1-2 minutes, and the cleaning solution is discharged. Injection of the diluting liquid into and discharge thereof from the cell is repeated 6 or 7 times to perform rinsing, and the cleaning solution is thoroughly removed by the diluting liquid to prevent any remainder thereof. In this case, not only a simple rinsing movement involving injecting and discharging a fresh diluting liquid, but also a stirring movement by repeatedly sucking a diluting liquid injected into the cell from the cell, injecting diluting liquid again into the cell, and sucking the diluting liquid again from the cell may be added.
By a series of movements mentioned above, one routine cleaning takes about 6 minutes.
Routine cleanings of the CRP cell are free of problems and preferable for general tests. However, in an institution where a large number of specimens need to be measured, it is one of the factors that decrease the daily through-put.
In the constitution of conventional apparatuses for measuring blood cells and immunity from whole blood, the interval of routine cleanings of the CRP cell (number of specimens processed between the cleanings) and the cleaning steps performed in a single routine cleaning are appropriate and essential, and there is no room for increasing the interval of the routine cleanings, or shortening the time of single routine cleaning.
The problem of the present invention is to provide an apparatus for measuring blood cells and immunity from whole blood, which is capable of increasing the interval of the routine cleanings of the CRP cell and even eliminating the routine cleanings.

Apparatus for measuring blood cells and immunity from whole blood


Disclosed is a light emitting device. The light emitting device includes a body, first and second metal layers on a top surface of the body, a heat radiation plate disposed between the first and second metal layers and having a circular outline, a plurality of light emitting parts on the heat radiation plate, first and second bonding regions disposed on the first and second metal layers and electrically connected with the light emitting parts, and a molding member disposed on the heat radiation plate to cover the light emitting parts. Each of the light emitting parts includes a plurality of light emitting chips connected with each other, and a plurality of wires to electrically connect the light emitting chips with the first and second bonding regions, and the wires of each light emitting part are arranged a radial direction about a central of the heat radiation plate.

A light emitting device, for example, a light emitting diode (LED), which is a kind of a semiconductor device to convert electrical energy into light, has been spotlighted as a next-generation light source in substitution for a conventional fluorescent lamp and a glow lamp.
Since the LED generates the light by using the semiconductor device, the LED may represent significantly low power consumption as compared with the glow lamp that generates the light by heating tungsten or the fluorescent lamp that generates the light by urging ultraviolet ray, which is generated through the high-voltage discharge, to collide with a fluorescent substance.
In addition, since the LED generates the light by using the potential gap of the semiconductor device, the LED represents a longer life span, a rapider response characteristic, and a more eco-friendly feature as compared with those of a convention light source.
In this regard, various studies have been performed to substitute the conventional light source with the LEDs. The LEDs are increasingly used as light sources for lighting devices, such as various lamps used indoors and outdoors, liquid crystal displays, electric signboards, and street lamps.


Methods and systems are proposed for transmitting data from a source (110) to a destination (130) via a relay station (120) having multiple antennae (122, 124). The relay station (120) receives from the source a message containing the data and a first cyclic prefix. It does this using each of its antennae (122, 124), so producing multiple respective received signals. In certain embodiments, the relay station (120) removes the first cyclic prefix from the received signals, replacing it with a new one. In other embodiments, the relay station (120) removes only a portion of the first cyclic prefix. In either case, the relay station (120) may apply space-time coding to generate second signals, which it transmits to the destination (130), which extracts the data. Methods are also proposed for estimating parameters of the channel, to enable the destination (130) to decode the data.

Wireless relays have shown potential for extending communication range and providing good quality of experience. In a typical wireless communication system utilizing relays, the relay station would be time shared between different sources and destination. In such a scenario, the relay station needs to estimate the Angular Carrier Frequency Offset (ACFO) present between each pair of source and relay antennae (denoted ACFO Φr). The ACFO that is present between each pair of relay and destination antennae (denoted ACFO Φd) will be compensated for at the destination.
Joint compensation of the source to relay and relay to destination ACFO is not possible in the prior art. Compensation for the source to relay ACFO Φr can thus only be performed at the relay station. The relay station of the prior art will need to estimate and compensate the ACFO for each source-and-relay pair and this complicates the relay station hardware and increases the power required by the relay station.
Implementations of analog space-time coding (ASTC) in the prior art also have the limitation that the transmission channel has to be flat fading. This is because inter-symbol interference (ISI) results when the transmission channel has frequency selective fading. The insertion of a cyclic prefix (CP) can be used to mitigate against ISI. The cyclic prefix inserted should preferably be of a length greater than that of the channel impulse response (CIR).
Typical implementations of ASTC also require that the samples within a signal be re-ordered when performing the coding.
It is an object of the present invention to provide a method for implementing cyclic prefixes and compensating for the channel effects of a wireless communication channel, which addresses at least one of the problems of the prior art and/or to provide the public with a useful choice.

AGENCY FOR SCIENCE, TECHNOLOGY AND RESEARCH


An x-ray detector, detection assembly, and method of using the detector and detection assembly. The detector is used with an x-ray source and has a converter including a mass of prompt emitting radiographic phosphor particles and a photoconductive binder. The mass of particles is dispersed and embedded in the binder. The phosphor absorbs x-rays emitted by the source and emits longer wavelength actinic radiation responsive to the x-rays. The photoconductive binder absorbs the actinic radiation and produces electron-hole pairs responsive to the actinic radiation.

Visible images of the results of exposing a patient or object of interest (hereafter "subject") to x-radiation or other high energy radiation (referred to collectively herein as x-radiation or x-rays or the like) can be divided into two broad categories: immediate images and delayed images. Immediate images are commonly producing by impinging transmitted or reflected x-radiation at a screen containing a prompt emission radiographic phosphor. The radiographic phosphor emits light in response to the x-radiation. This procedure, in medical x-ray imaging, is commonly referred to as "fluoroscopy". Delayed images can be produced by directing the x-radiation at photographic film. The shortcoming of this approach is that the required x-radiation dosage is quite high. An alternative approach is to place a sheet of photographic film against a screen containing prompt emission radiographic phosphor and to direct the x-radiation at the screen. The screen is costly, but has a relatively long useful life. The photographic film characteristics are tailored to complement the emission produced by the radiographic phosphor. One shortcoming of this approach is that the film and screen must be enclosed within a cassette or other light-tight enclosure to prevent ambient light from exposing the film. Another shortcoming is the broadening of image features that occurs as a result of the spatial separation of a first plane at which the x-ray image is absorbed and the light image generated and a second plane at which the light image is absorbed. The spatial separation can also be exacerbated by localized gaps between the screen and film due to dust particles or irregularities in the cassette. Another process used for producing delayed x-radiation images is known as computed radiography. A x-ray image is captured on a screen containing a storage radiographic phosphor. The latent image on the storage screen is then exposed to a rastorized beam of radiation which causes the storage phosphor to emit radiation on another wavelength. The emitted radiation is captured and displayed or used to print an image. A particular shortcoming of computed radiography is the complexity of the radiation capture system.
As a result of the above shortfalls, many efforts have been made to replace conventional systems with detectors that can provide an immediate digital image. One type of detector uses a technique called, "line scanned radiography". In this technique, x-rays are collimated through a small slit to produce an x-ray fan beam, which after passing through the subject impinge on a detector strip. Scintillators or x-ray phosphors (hereafter collectively referred to as "phosphors") are positioned in the detector strip between the x-ray beam and a photodiode or photosensor. "Design and Characteristics of a Digital Chest Unit", Digital Radiography, SPIE Vol. 314, (1981), pp. 160-165, teaches such a detector strip having a one-dimensional linear silicon photodiode array. While this approach is cost effective, it has the shortcoming that the fan beam and detector, or alternatively the subject, must be translated to produce a two-dimensional image.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,254,480 to Nang T. Tran discloses a process for producing a solid state radiation detector. The detectors produced have an intensifying screen or layer of prompt emitting phosphor overlying a photosensitive layer. In one embodiment, the photosensitive layer is an array of photodiodes. In another embodiment, the photosensitive layer has a pixellated electrode overlying a continuous photoconductor layer and a second electrode. These detectors suffer from the shortcoming that the light emitted by the phosphor is subject to lateral spread after it is emitted from the phosphor layer, resulting in image blur or reduced resolution. The photosensor based detectors just described also tend to suffer additional problems including: very high cost of manufacture; extreme physical fragility; low resistance to damage from x-ray radiation; and configurational complexity.
A variety of two-dimensional digital x-ray detectors are known. An x-ray detector employing an amorphous selenium detector is described in "X-ray imaging using amorphous selenium: "A photoinduced discharge method for digital mammography", J. A. Rowlands et al., Med. Phys., Vol. 18, (1991) p. 421. In this system, amorphous selenium plates are employed as the x-ray detector and the electrostatic image formed on the plate is then read out electronically. This detector is complex, and utilizes selenium which is relatively inefficient in capturing x-rays.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,313,066 to Lee et al discloses an x-ray detector having a photoconductive layer that is responsive to both actinic and x-ray radiation. The photoconductive layer includes a particulate photoconductor dispersed in a photoconductive polymer. The particulate photoconductor is employed as an x-ray absorber which converts the x-rays into electron-hole pairs which then transport through the photoconductive polymer for detection. (The photoconductive polymer itself is minimally absorptive of x-radiation.) This detector has the shortcomings that photoconductors tend to be inefficient x-ray absorbers and transfer of electron-hole pairs from the particulate photoconductor to the polymeric photoconductor is subject to a variety of difficult constraints including the work function necessary for the transfer and the negative effects of any inhomogeneities at the interface between the particulate and polymeric photoconductors.
It would thus be desirable to provide an improved x-ray detector, detector assembly and method that can exhibit both good x-ray absorption efficiency and minimizes lateral spread of light emitted by the phosphor.

X-ray dectector, detection assembly, and method


An optical scanning lens used in a scanning and imaging optical system in which a beam deflected by a light deflector is condensed on or in the vicinity of a surface to be scanned. The optical scanning lens is formed through plastic mold, and a distribution of the refractive indexes Δn(x) inside of the optical scanning lens has a local maximum within a range through which the beam passes through the lens.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an optical scanning lens, an optical scanning device and an image forming apparatus.
2. Description of the Related Art
In an optical scanning device widely known with reference to a laser printer, a digital copier, and so forth, a beam emitted from a light source is deflected by a light deflector, the deflected beam is condensed toward a surface to be scanned by a scanning and imaging optical system, a beam spot is formed thereby on the surface to be scanned, and thus, optical scanning of the surface to be scanned is performed.
Recently, a plastic-made (made of plastic) optical scanning lens is employed as the scanning and imaging optical system or as a part thereof.
The plastic-made optical scanning lens is formed through plastic mold. As this type of lens can be easily mass-produced, it can be manufactured at low costs. Accordingly, by employing the plastic-made optical scanning lens, it is possible to effectively reduce the costs of the scanning and imaging optical system, and, thereby, the costs of the optical scanning device. Further, with regard to the plastic-made optical scanning lens, it is possible to easily form a special lens surface shape such as an aspherical surface through plastic mold. Accordingly, it is possible to simplify the scanning and imaging optical system (reducing the number of lenses required) and/or to improve optical performance thereof.
However, this type of plastic-made optical scanning lens has a problem in that a non-uniform distribution of the refractive indexes occurs inside of the plastic-made optical scanning lens.
Through plastic mold, molding is performed in which thermally molten plastic material is injected into a die, and is cooled in the die. At this time, cooling begins from a part of the material in contact with the die. Accordingly, the center of the plastic material is cooled slowly relative to the periphery thereof. Thereby, a non-uniform distribution of density (the density at a part cooled rapidly becomes higher than that at a part cooled slowly) inside of the plastic. As a result, the distribution of the refractive indexes of the thus-formed lens is not uniform inside thereof. As the density of the periphery of the formed lens is higher than that of the center thereof, the refractive index is lower at the lens center while, the nearer to the surface the position thereof becomes, the higher the refractive index of the formed lens becomes, in general.
When the distribution of the refractive indexes of the plastic lens is measured by a method described later, the variation in refractive index is like an approximately quadratic curve along each of a lens optical axis direction, a main scanning direction and a sub-scanning direction.
The plastic-made optical scanning lens is designed assuming that the distribution of refractive indexes inside thereof is uniform. Accordingly, when the plastic lens has a non-uniform distribution of refractive indexes inside thereof, it cannot exhibit the performance according to the design. Specifically, defocus occurs such that a position of imaging of the deflected beam differs from the surface to be scanned, thereby, a position of beam waist of the deflected beam is changed from the surface to be scanned, and, as a result, the diameter of the beam spot increases.
In order to reduce such a non-uniform distribution of refractive indexes inside of the lens, it can be considered to cool the molten plastic material in the die, very slowly for a long time (for example, for ten and some hours) in a thermostatic chamber. However, by such a method, the productivity of the optical scanning lens becomes worse, and the manufacturing costs thereof increase. Accordingly, the advantage of the plastic-made lens such as requiring low costs may be cancelled.

Optical scanning lens, optical scanning device and image forming apparatus


A method of manufacturing an organic solar cell is provided. According to the exemplary embodiments of the present invention, a laminate section can be easily removed from a substrate by causing a cleaning unit to move up and down above the substrate or to move forward and backward in a reciprocating manner in the width direction of the substrate. Furthermore, when a contact member is detachably connected to the cleaning unit, the contact member that has been contaminated with a laminate material can be separated from the cleaning unit and easily washed. Also, the laminate section can be removed by spraying a solvent through a discharging unit to dissolve the laminate section, and suctioning the laminate section through a suctioning unit. In this case, the laminate section can be easily removed from the substrate by dissolving the laminate section with the solvent.

(a) Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a method of manufacturing an organic solar cell.
(b) Description of the Related Art
An organic solar cell is a solar cell having a structure which utilizes organic semiconductor materials, including conjugated polymers such as poly(para-phenylene vinylene) (PPV) in which double bonds are alternately disposed, photosensitive low molecular weight compounds such as CuPc, perylene and pentacene, and (6,6)-phenyl-C61-butyric acid methyl ester (PCBM). The organic semiconductor materials can be structurally designed and synthesized into a wide variety, so that organic solar cells have a potential for limitless development.
An organic solar cell such as described above basically has a thin-film type structure, and mainly uses indium tin oxide (ITO), which is a transparent electrode, as an anode and a metal electrode such as aluminum (Al) as a cathode. The photoactive layer has a thickness of about 100 nm and has a bulk heterojunction structure in which a hole acceptor and an electron acceptor exist in mixture.
As the hole acceptor, a conjugated polymer having conductivity, such as PPV, is used, and a fullerene is used as the electron acceptor. At this time, in order to collect, without loss, electrons that have been produced by light at an aluminum electrode through the fullerene, the fullerene should be sufficiently mixed into the conjugated polymer. Therefore, a fullerene derivative such as PCBM can be used so that the fullerene may be thoroughly mixed with the conjugated polymer.
When the conjugated polymer absorbs light, the conjugated polymer produces electron-hole pairs (excitons), and the electrons and holes thus produced are collected respectively at the anode and the cathode via the fullerene and the conjugated polymer, respectively.
Organic solar cells such as described above can be produced in large quantities due to their easy processability and low cost, and can be manufactured into thin films by a roll-to-roll process. Therefore, the organic solar cells described above have an advantage that flexible, large-sized electronic elements can be produced.
However, despite the technical and economical advantages mentioned above, there are still difficulties in putting organic solar cells into practical use because of their low efficiency. Therefore, studies to improve efficiency are being actively carried out in the field of organic solar cells. Studies concerning the efficiency of organic solar cells that have been conducted hitherto are focused on the selection of raw materials or the manufacturing processes for the photoactive layer, the electron transport layer and the hole transport layer so as to effectively utilize absorbed light, as well as the morphology, structure and increased crystallinity of the organic thin films for overcoming low charge mobility.

Method for manufacturing organic solar cell


An edge clock model is used to capture states from a logic-level simulation of a circuit description. The states are captured at clock edges, or transitions, according to an edge clock model based on a clock specification for the circuit description. The captured states and associated attributes are used in formal verification of the circuit description. This approach helps to reduce or eliminate inaccuracies and other issues with other clock models such as a phase clock model. In one embodiment, a phase clock model can be used in addition to the edge clock model. In another embodiment, the edge clock states can be used to generate states according to different clock models, such as the phase clock model.

This invention relates in general to analysis of digital circuit designs and more specifically to a system for modeling clocks during digital circuit design verification.
Today's approaches to simulation, testing and verification of digital circuit designs typically use a hardware design language (HDL) description of a circuit, gate array or other electronic devices or components. Examples of HDLs include, e.g., Verilog, AHDL, VHDL, etc. Once an HDL description of the circuit exists the description can be used in test bench simulations and verification to determine whether the circuit design performs correctly.
Simulations allow a circuit description to be modeled at a very detailed level. Digital logic errors, or "exceptions," can be determined. Complex simulation and modeling also takes into account electrical, electromagnetic and other types of physical effects that could cause problems with the physical circuit once the circuit description is constructed. Due to the extremely large size of many of today's circuits (e.g., millions of transistors) and the enormously complex behavior of physical systems modeling, the sole use of highly detailed simulation and modeling can not be used to investigate all possible errors at all times for all states of a circuit.
One technique to make testing of hardware descriptions of large circuits feasible is called "verification." Verification can be achieved by formal verification methods which include exhaustive mathematical and analytical techniques. This allows logic errors to be detected without complex simulation and modeling. For example, if it is known that certain logic states should not occur in the design then the detection of such states during verification can be the basis for investigation as to how or why an exception state occurred.
Another use for verification is to determine states from which to perform additional analysis. For example, if an error condition occurs a short while after starting simulation from a specific initial state then it is useful to begin analysis at the specific state. Information about the error condition can be obtained more quickly, especially with complex modeling and simulation, by starting from the specific initial state rather than starting from an arbitrary state. However, determining, identifying, managing and searching states during verification is, itself, a huge and complex task.
One problem with accurately obtaining state information for formal verification is trying to model the clock specification of a circuit description. The clock specification describes all of the clocks in a system or device under test. It is critical to obtain correct initial state and then maintain proper clock timing to derive subsequent states.

Clock model for formal verification of a digital circuit description


The techniques described herein use training data to train classification models to detect malicious Uniform Resource Locators (URLs) that target authentic resources (e.g., Web page, Web site, or other network locations accessed via a URL). The techniques train the classification models using one or more machine learning algorithms. The training data may include known benign URLs and known malicious URLs (e.g., training URLs) that are associated with a target authentic resource. The techniques then use the trained classification models to determine whether an unknown URL is a malicious URL. The malicious URL determination may be based on one or more lexical features (e.g., brand name edit distances for a domain and path of the URL) and/or site/page features (e.g., a domain age and a domain confidence level) extracted.

Due to the increased popularity and use of the World Wide Web, web users and their computing systems have become more exposed to cyber attacks and security threats. Malicious Uniform Resource Locators (URLs) are widely used in the computing industry to perform cyber attacks on web users and their computing systems. For example, malicious URLs may be accessed by users that are subjected to phishing attacks, spamming attacks, and malware attacks.
Phishing is a cyber attack, and therefore, a security threat that attempts to acquire sensitive or private information from unsuspecting victims (e.g., user names, user passwords, social security numbers, birthdates, credit card numbers, etc.). For example, phishing may involve sending an email intended to deceive a recipient into clicking on a malicious URL that locates, or points to, an illegitimate or counterfeit resource (e.g., a Web site or Web page). The illegitimate or counterfeit resource may be visually similar to an authentic resource. The recipient may then unknowingly provide the sensitive and private information to the illegitimate or counterfeit resource because the recipient incorrectly believes that the illegitimate or counterfeit resource is the authentic resource.
Spamming may involve sending or providing users with unsolicited information via a malicious URL which has been configured to manipulate the relevance or prominence of resources indexed by a search engine. Malware typically involves using a malicious URL to secretly access and infect a computing system without the owner's informed consent or knowledge.
Conventional systems for detecting malicious URLs and limiting cyber attacks and security threats employ various sources to build a blacklist (e.g., human feedback or classification). A blacklist is a list of known malicious URLs. Blacklisting identifies a malicious URL via matching a received URL with a URL on the blacklist, and then blocks the malicious URL when a match occurs. Although blacklisting is an effective means for identifying a known malicious URL, blacklisting cannot detect unknown malicious URLs that are not on the list. Therefore, it is easy for cyber attacks to evade conventional blacklisting systems by continuously modifying and altering the manner in which malicious URLs are configured so they do not result in a blacklist match.
In contrast to blacklisting, some conventional systems use whitelisting to identify known benign web sites by maintaining a list of URLs and/or domains that are known to be threat free. However, whitelisting is not a desirable counter measure to malicious URLs because whitelisting unavoidably blocks benign URLs and/or domains that are not included in the whitelist.

Malicious uniform resource locator detection


What is described is a system for determining a force applied to an outer disc of an aircraft brake by an actuator motor. The system includes a current sensor coupled to the actuator motor and configured to detect a detected amount of current applied to the actuator motor. The system also includes a controller coupled to the current sensor. The controller is configured to determine an estimated current. The controller is also configured to receive the detected amount of current. The controller is also configured to determine an adjusted current based on the detected amount of current and the estimated current. The controller is also configured to determine an estimate of the force applied to the outer disc based on the adjusted current.

Aircraft brakes include alternating stators and rotating discs that rotate about an axis. Wheels of the aircraft are coupled to the rotating discs. The stators and rotating discs are axially enclosed by two outer discs. In order to cause the rotating discs to slow down or stop rotating (i.e., brake), force is applied to at least one of the outer discs, forcing the outer discs, the stators and the rotating discs together. When forced together, friction reduces the angular speed of the rotating discs.
A motor converts electrical energy into mechanical energy that causes the force to be applied to the outer disc using an actuator. It is desirable to determine the amount of force applied to the outer disc. An actuator may include a force sensor to determine this amount of force.

Closed loop load force estimation systems and methods


Mold apparatus for continuous casting of metal, has an intermediate plate for supplying one or more mold release agents to the surface of the billet or ingot forming in a cooled mold. The intermediate plate has outlet openings which terminate in an intermediate area between a hot top section and a mold section in which the molten metal solidifies. The intermediate release agent supply plate having a central cross sectional opening is provided between the hot top section and the mold section, the surface of the central opening, adjoining the surfaces of the hot top section and the mold section. The intermediate plate comprises a flat plate having release agent-supply channels that extend to the opening edge and are precision-formed into the upper and lower surfaces of the intermediate plate to a constant depth. Liquid and/or gaseous mold release agents are fed through the supply plate to lubricate the mold surface along which the ingot is formed, cooled and lowered.

The invention relates to an apparatus for continuous casting of molten metal, in which a mold release or parting agent or mixture is supplied to the surface of the casting being formed through supply channels which open into an intermediate area of the apparatus below the hot top section where the molten metal cools and hardens. An intermediate element having a central open cross section is provided between the hot top section and the mold section, and the surfaces of said element together with the adjacent surfaces of the hot top section and/or mold section constitute at least the end sections or openings of the supply channels that lead directly to the walls of the mold section. A shoulder or wall is present around the opening cross section in the casting direction, between the hot top and the water-cooled mold; the molten metal, which is still liquid in the vicinity of the hot top, enters this shoulder so that the molten bath essentially assumes the opening cross section of the mold. It is conventional to supply a parting or release agent or a mixture of such agents to the surface of the continuous casting being formed, so that direct contact with the surface of the mold is avoided. This is necessary for the casting to have good surface quality. This is particularly necessary when the continuous-cast products are to be plastically-shaped or molded during subsequent processing, without surface layers having to be removed mechanically beforehand. When the parting agent supply is insufficient or not uniformly regulated, depending on the boundary conditions, surface and edge structural defects can develop in the casting or ingot. These include, in particular, surface irregularities or inhomogeneities in the structure near the surface. Parting oils, especially mixtures thereof with gases such as air or inert gas, have been found to be suitable parting or release agents, and must be supplied under pressure, with a gas-oil mixture being formed by virtue of the pressure and temperature conditions prevailing in the mold.

Continuous casting apparatus having gas and mold release agent supply and distribution plate


A lift transmitting component (1), particularly for a gas exchange valve train or a fuel pump drive of an internal combustion engine, and a method of manufacturing such a lift transmitting component comprising a housing (2) and a bearing pin (6) fixed in a reception bore (5) of the housing (2) as also a roller (4) rotatable about the bearing pin (6) and optionally mounted on a rolling bearing, said bearing pin (6) being connected to the housing (2) by positive engagement through radially widened front ends (8), the bearing pin (6) is core-hardened over its entire length with a core hardness of at least 58 HRC and its front ends (8) are widened by radial spot riveting.

A lift transmitting component of the pre-cited type configured as a roller tappet for activating a tappet push rod of a gas exchange valve train of an internal combustion engine is known from the generic document U.S. Pat. No. 5,099,807. The roller tappet comprises a cam-activated roller, mounted through a rolling bearing on the bearing pin that is fixed with radially widened front ends both by positive engagement and by force-locking in a reception bore of the tappet housing. The radial deformation of the front ends is effected by gyratory calking and the calked material of the bearing pin is displaced as a circular ring into a chamfer at the opening of the reception bore.
An alternative manner of fixing the bearing pin in the housing is disclosed, for example, in the likewise generic document U.S. Pat. No. 4,628,874 that, in addition to a roller tappet, also discloses a lift transmitting component configured as a roller finger lever. In both cases, the bearing pin for the roller is fixed in the reception bore of the respective housing by the fact that the material of the front ends of the bearing pin is displaced by a calking method radially outwards into a circumferential undercut situated within the reception bore.
Undercuts of the aforesaid type are also proposed for a roller tappet disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,385,124. However, these undercuts do not serve to receive calked material of the bearing pin but for the reception of circlips that serve as positively acting axial stops for the non-deformed front ends of a bearing pin that is float-mounted in the reception bore.
A common feature of all the lift transmitting components proposed in the cited documents is that, with the aim of achieving wear resistance, their bearing pins are hardened in the region of their roller raceways. But if a bearing pin is calked, it is imperative for its front ends to be adequately soft in view of the material flow that is concomitant with the calking process. Such a bearing pin with non-uniform hardness values along its length, however, can only be realized through complex and, thus, cost-intensive heat treating methods. A further drawback of bearing pins whose front ends have only a low hardness arises from the fact that their calked ends must be fixed in the reception bore not only by positive engagement but also by force-locking. The reason for this is that, in the case of a bearing pin that is not fixed by force-locking in the reception bore and comes into rotation by the friction forces of the rotating roller, the soft ends of the bearing pin would be subject to contact friction with the housing on their periphery and would suffer a loss of their axial securing function and thus shear off. A fixing of the bearing pin in the reception bore not only by positive engagement but also by force-locking can pose a problem in cases in which the housing of the lift transmitting component has to meet special shape requirements as is the case with the initially cited cylindrical roller tappets. As a rule, these roller tappets are mounted in their longitudinal guides with a lash of just a few micrometers, so that a deformation of the housing, generally configured with thin walls in the region of the roller, would lead to an impermissibly large non-circularity of the housing due to the radially widened reception bore resulting from the calking of the bearing pin.
As proposed in the cited document U.S. Pat. No. 5,385,124, it is certainly possible to circumvent this chain of drawbacks by using a completely core-hardened bearing pin deformed on its front ends, float-mounted in its reception bore and fixed axially through positive engagement by means of circlips. Nonetheless, even in this case, there still remains the cost-increasing extra expenditure for the circlips and their assembly as well as for making the undercuts in the housing for receiving the circlips.

Lift transmitting component and method of manufacturing such a component


A self checkout system/terminal includes an electronic article surveillance (EAS) system. The EAS system includes an EAS detector and an EAS deactivator. EAS tag detection is associated with a purchase transaction event, such as scanning or bagging of an item. After EAS tag detection, the customer is directed to deactivate the EAS tag. Some of the self-service checkout terminal (SCOT) operation/functionality may be paused during an EAS tag deactivation period. The subject EAS system and/or process eliminates the need to deactivate every item, thereby streamlining the self checkout process when EAS is used in a store.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to self-service checkout systems for retail businesses and, more particularly, to a self-service checkout system having an automatic electronic article surveillance system.
2. Background Information
Many general merchandise stores and an increasing number of retail grocery, supermarket, or food stores utilize electronic article surveillance (EAS) techniques to monitor, deter, and/or prevent article theft. EAS technology typically utilizes a tag or the like that is applied to an article and a sensor designed to detect the tag when the tag is proximate the sensor. The sensor is typically placed at or near an exit and provides a response when a tag is brought proximate the sensor. A deactivator is used to deactivate a tag such that the sensor will not respond when a deactivated tag is brought proximate the sensor.
The tag deactivation procedure is typically based on having a trained operator in an assisted service environment. Particularly, a trained operator either removes the tag or utilizes the deactivator on the tag to deactivate the tag. This is accomplished during or immediately after the purchase transaction. Thus, once payment has been received for the item, the tag will not set off the sensor.
EAS technology consists of two primary types. The most currently popular type is manufactured by Sensormatic Electronics Corporation of Boca Raton, Fla. 33431 (Sensormatic). The Sensormatic EAS is based on magnetic technology and requires relatively large tags and correspondingly large deactivation equipment.
Current or conventional implementation of the magnetic technology EAS in self-service checkout or self checkout involves placing a deactivator or deactivator block directly inline with a scanning and bagging portion or operation of the self checkout. Since the deactivator is large and heavy, placement of the deactivator directly inline with the scanning and bagging operation is an impediment to the essential functions of scanning and bagging, thereby causing a decrease in efficiency, adding time to the self checkout procedure, and consequently causing customer dissatisfaction.
The conventional method of implementation in a self checkout is illustrated in FIG. 1 and is thus labeled "prior art". The conventional method of implementation in a self checkout is illustrated in FIG. 1 as a flowchart, generally designated 200. In step 202, a customer scans an item. The item may or may not include an EAS tag. In step 204, a deactivator is either activated to deactivate an EAS tag after the scanning process regardless of whether the item has an EAS tag or the deactivator is always on to deactivate an EAS tag regardless of whether the item has an EAS tag. In step 206, the item is then bagged. A weighing process may be associated with the bagging of the item. After the bagging process, in step 208, the purchase transaction is completed. It should be appreciated that should there be more than one item, the scan, deactivation and bagging of each item is accomplished in the above manner before the completion of the purchase transaction.
In the event that an EAS tag is not properly deactivated through the scanning and bagging process, the customer will be stopped at the store exit by a store employee when a notification alert (such as a loud noise) is provided by the sensor. A store employee will either have to allow the customer to pass knowing they have an activated EAS tag (assuming the store employee knows that the item to which the EAS tag is associated, has been properly paid for) or the store employee will have to deactivate the item to which the EAS tag is associated. In the case of multiple items with EAS tags, each tag will need to be deactivated by the store employee.
The above nuisance of non-deactivation or underdeactivation of EAS tags has been addressed by increasing the magnetic field strength of the deactivator. This solution however, can result in damage to other magnetic media (i.e. non-EAS tags) such as credit and/or debit cards, VCR tapes, cassette tapes, and/or the like. Because of the above-noted consequences, increasing the magnetic field strength of the deactivator is not desirable.
It would thus be advantageous to have prior knowledge of which items have been tagged with an EAS tag and provide an alert to the customer when an item having such a tag is scanned and then direct the customer to deactivate the EAS tag. In this manner, the EAS deactivator may be remotely located from the scanning and bagging operation. One manner in which the self checkout or store can have prior knowledge of which items have been tagged with an EAS tag is to correlate the EAS tag with the item's Uniform Product Code (UPC) that now allow the lookup of price and weight information. This solution, however, requires another database or database entry and the requirement of accurate correlating information. Additionally, stores traditionally do not compile and/or maintain such data.
What is therefore needed is a self-service checkout system that overcomes one or more of the above-mentioned drawbacks. What is particularly needed is a self-service checkout system that implements EAS technology in a more effective manner than the prior art.
What is further needed is a self-service checkout system that utilizes EAS technology in a more efficient manner than the prior art.

Automatic electronic article surveillance for self-checkout


A method and system for re-routing a multicast stream is provided. The method for re-routing a multicast stream includes: providing a prior multicast forwarding path corresponding to a first route; establishing a new multicast forwarding path between a downstream router and a second upstream router corresponding to a second route; re-routing a multicast stream from said prior multicast forwarding path to said new multicast forwarding path, wherein said multicast stream utilizes said prior multicast forwarding path until said new multicast forwarding path is operational; and pruning said prior multicast forwarding path when said new multicast forwarding path is operational. Therefore, the multicast stream transmitting will not be interrupted during the switchover process of the multicast forwarding path caused by that a unicast route to a multicast source or a rendezvous point has changed.

1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates generally to the area of telecommunications, and more particularly to a method and system for re-routing a multicast stream.
2. Description of Related Art
Protocol Independent Multicast (PIM) is a multicast routing protocol independent of unicast routing protocols. It does not depend on a specific unicast routing protocol. When using PIM, reverse path forwarding (RPF) checking can be implemented by using an existing unicast routing table. When using a protocol independent multicast-sparse mode (PIM-SM), a rendezvous point tree (RPT) or a source path tree (SPT) may be established by using Join or Prune messages. Join or Prune messages are explicitly sent by a PIM router. A multicast stream is received by a network segment to which the multicast group belongs via the RPT or SPT. Protocol independent multicast-source-specific multicast (PIM-SSM) is an improvement of PIM-SM. When using PIM-SSM, an SPT is established by using Join or Prune messages explicitly sent by a PIM router, and the process of establishing an RPT and switching between an RPT and an SPT can be bypassed.
With the development and growth of broadband network technologies, more and more network operators provide high-quality Internet protocol television (IPTV) services to the public by deploying PIM multicast networks so as to increase revenue of broadband services. In other words, IPTV provides high-definition broadband video services to the public by using multicast technology in IP networks. Therefore, reliability of PIM multicast networks is very important to network operators.
The process of switching an SPT under conventional PIM-SM technology by changing a unicast route is described as follows:
When a unicast route changes, an RPF checking is done on all active (S,G), (*,G) and (*,*,RP) entries, and all affected incoming interfaces are updated. In particular, if a new incoming interface appears in an outgoing interface list, it is deleted from the outgoing interface list. The previous incoming interfaces may be added to the outgoing interface list by a subsequent Join/Prune message from downstream. Join/Prune messages received on the current incoming interface are ignored. Join/Prune messages received on new interfaces or existing outgoing interfaces are not ignored. Other outgoing interfaces are left as is until they are explicitly pruned by downstream routers or are timed out due to lack of appropriate Join/Prune messages. If a router has an (S,G) entry with an SPT-bit set, and the updated iif(S,G) (Incoming InterFace (Source, Group)) does not differ from iif(*,G) or iif(*,*,RP), then the router resets the SPT-bit.
The router must send a Join message with S in the Join list via a new incoming interface to inform upstream routers that it expects a multicast stream over the new incoming interface. It may also send a Prune message with S in the Prune list via the old incoming interface, if the link is operational, to inform upstream routers that this part of the distribution tree is going away.
In the above conventional PIM-SM technology, if a unicast route to a multicast source changes, for example, the unicast route changes from the second-best route to the best route, a PIM router sends a Join message to a new upstream PIM router to establish a new SPT. If the old incoming interface is still active, the PIM router sends a Prune message to the old upstream PIM router to prune the prior SPT. The inventor of the present invention found that once the prior SPT is pruned, transmitting for a multicast stream is broken until the new SPT is operational.
Therefore, there exists a need for a method for re-routing a multicast stream, which overcomes the problem that transmitting for a multicast stream is broken until the new SPT is operational.

System and method for re-routing a multicast stream


The present invention relates to compounds of the formulae herein, their acceptable salts, solvates, hydrates and polymorphs thereof. The compounds of this invention are useful in treatment of disease, particularly leukemia. The invention also provides compositions comprising a compound of this invention and the use of such compositions in methods of treating disease, disorders, or symptoms thereof in a subject.

Certain 2,4-disubstituted thiadiazolidinone (TDZD) compounds have been reported to be useful as enzyme inhibitors of glycogen synthase kinase 3β, or GSK-3. See, e.g., US 2003/0195238A1, US 2005/0222220A1. Glycogen synthase kinase-3 (GSK-3) is a serine/threonine protein kinase comprised of α- and β-isoforms that are each encoded by distinct genes (Coghlan et al., Chemistry & Biology, 7, 793-803 (2000); Kim and Kimmel, Curr. Opinion Genetics Dev., 10, 508-514 (2000)). The threonine/serine kinase glycogen synthase kinase-3 (GSK-3) fulfills a pivotal role in various receptor-linked signalling pathways (Doble, B W, Woodgett, J R J. Cell Sci. 2003, 116:1175-1186). Dysregulation within these pathways is considered a crucial event in the development of several prevalent human disorders, such as type II diabetes (Kaidanovich O, Eldar-Finkelman H, Expert Opin. Ther. Targets, 2002, 6:555-561), Alzheimer's disease (Grimes C A, Jope R S, Prog. Neurobiol. 2001, 65:391-426), CNS disorders such as manic depressive disorder and neurodegenerative diseases, and chronic inflammatory disorders (Hoeflich K P, Luo J, Rubie E A, Tsao M S, Jin O, Woodgett J, Nature 2000, 406:86-90).
Additionally certain TDZD compounds are reported to be non-competitive GSK-3β inhibitors, which demonstrate promise as AD pharmacotherapy agents. Martinez, A. et al. J. Med. Chem., 45, 1292-1299 (2002).
It is now discovered that TDZD compounds are useful in treating disorders different and distinguishable from those previously reported.


The present invention relates to the use of triborohydride salts as hydrogen storage materials. The present invention also relates to a system of using triborohydride salts to generate hydrogen gas for use in a fuel cell or other hydrogen-consuming device. A novel method of preparing triborohydride salts is also disclosed, wherein gaseous diborane is reacted with a carbonate suspended in a non-aqueous solvent in a suitable vessel with agitation. The process is typically carried out utilizing sodium carbonate to form sodium triborohydride. Other triborohydride salts can then be formed by cationic exchange. Hydrogen generating fuels according to the present invention include aqueous or hydroalcoholic solutions or slurries of a triborohydride salt, which may additionally contain a borohydride salt to provide operation over a broader temperature range.

Environmentally friendly fuels, e.g., alternative fuels to hydrocarbon-based energy sources, are currently of great interest. Of particular interest is hydrogen which is currently the subject of a considerable research effort focused on the various problems and considerations associated with making it commercially competitive with hydrocarbon-based fuels. Hydrogen, however, is volumetrically inefficient to store and transport. For compact storage, hydrogen must be compressed to high pressure and stored in specialized tanks. Hydrogen can be stored in liquid form at very low temperatures, but consuming a portion of the available energy for the liquefaction. In addition, losses of stored liquid hydrogen due to boil off are considerable, and thus it remains an ineffective storage method. As a result, chemical hydrides, particularly sodium borohydride, have been proposed as effective hydrogen storage materials for a variety of applications in both distributed power generation and transportation applications.
The goal in the study of hydrogen storage materials is to develop candidates that possess high gravimetric hydrogen potential. Chemical hydrides, including alkali metal hydrides, alkali metal aluminum hydrides and alkali metal borohydrides, generate hydrogen through a hydrolysis reaction in water resulting in gravimetric hydrogen densities that range from 9 to 25 weight percent of the hydride. When the waters of reaction and solvation are taken into account, the combined hydrolysis systems have gravimetric hydrogen densities that range from 4 to 9 wt. percent. Among the candidate hydrides, sodium borohydride (NaBH4) is considered the leader for many reasons, including safety and convenience. An aqueous solution of sodium borohydride, stabilized with sodium hydroxide at a pH between 11 and 15, has been used as a hydrogen generation fuel.
Sodium borohydride has been proved in prototype testing to deliver hydrogen in a manner and with load characteristics that are essentially non-distinguishable from that of compressed hydrogen. In addition, the fact that it can be stored as an aqueous solution adds to its advantage as a safe and convenient carrier for hydrogen. A limitation on the use of sodium borohydride as a storage material for hydrogen, however, is its solubility which limits storage solutions to 36 wt. % or less at room temperature, with a maximum gravimetric hydrogen storage of 6.6 wt. %. In addition, the discharged fuel stream is a mixture of sodium borate compounds and sodium hydroxide, which is a spectator in the hydrolysis reaction, and is strongly alkaline. There are, however, regulatory and handling issues associated with the transport and storage of both the fuel solution and the discharged solution because of their high pH.
Because of the advantages of sodium borohydride as a hydrogen storage material, a considerable amount of research has been directed to improving the synthesis thereof over the typical industrial processes that are based on either the Schlesinger process (Equation 1) or the Bayer process (Equation 2), both of which are shown below.4NaH+B(OCH3)3→3NaOCH3+NaBH4  (1)Na2B4O7+16Na+8H2+7SiO2→4NaBH4+7Na2SiO3  (2)The Schlesinger process and the Bayer process do not provide a favorable energy balance, because the energy cost of using large amounts of sodium in these reactions is high compared to the energy available from sodium borohydride as a fuel.
A second area of research has focused on the sodium borate byproduct of the use of sodium borohydride as a fuel. In order to gain widespread acceptance, a means must be found to convert the borate byproduct into a useful material, preferably sodium borohydride itself thereby regenerating the fuel. Another aspect of the research concerning the discharged fuel solution is the sodium hydroxide, which must either be recovered and reused or disposed of in an environmentally acceptable manner.
While sodium borohydride remains a primary candidate for an alternative fuel system to fossil fuel, there remains the need for other materials that might serve as hydrogen storage materials for such systems that would possess advantage over sodium borohydride. In accordance with the present invention, it has been found that a metal triborohydride has significant advantages as a hydrogen storage material.
Metal triborohydride salts are known materials. U.S. Pat. No. 3,313,603 claims a number of triborohydride salts and a process for their preparation. The primary interest in these salts to date has been as reducing agents and as intermediates in the synthesis of higher boranes, polyhedral borane anions and transition-metal complexes. U.S. Pat. No. 4,166,843 discloses a method of generating pure hydrogen by combusting a solid propellant formed by adding silicon or aluminum to alkyl-substituted quaternary ammonium octahydrotriboronitride salts. The silicon or aluminum are present to complex available carbon molecules from the combustion that would otherwise react with the hydrogen to form methane. In this way, the combustion of the solid propellant is able to generate pure hydrogen. However, the use of these salts in solid propellants does not suggest that they might be useful as hydrogen storage materials in the fuel compositions of the present invention.
Triborohydride salts are typically produced by the reaction of diborane (B2H6) or a higher borane with sodium metal, sodium amalgam, sodium hydride or sodium borohydride. This synthesis has a significant energy cost hurdle because of the large amounts of sodium required. In addition, the reactions of diborane with sodium or sodium amalgam are slow, typically requiring two days for complete reaction at room temperature. While sodium borohydride is a more reactive species, triborohydride formation only takes place at temperatures in excess of 100° C. at one atmosphere pressure of diborane. While the temperature may be lowered, it is only at the expense of raising the pressure of diborane above one atmosphere.
The reaction of diborane and sodium borohydride may also be conducted at high temperatures in ether, but this reaction entails the expense and handling of the solvent. Other preparations of triborohydride salts include the hydroboration of alkali metal compounds of naphthalene or triphenylboron; the reduction of BH3oTHF by metals, such as potassium, rubidium, cesium and the like; and the reaction of diborane with a metal naphthalide. None of these preparations is advantageous in terms of the potential use of triborohydride salts as hydrogen storage materials.
In accordance with the present invention, it has been found that triborohydride salts are useful as hydrogen storage materials. In order that such use may have practical potential for large scale application, an improved preparation of triborohydride salts is provided that is advantageous over preparations known to date.

Triborohydride salts as hydrogen storage materials and preparation thereof


Call center personnel, i.e., company agents may be monitored and information from monitoring the call center agents may be presented on a portable device. The information from monitoring the call center agents may include various key performance indexes (KPIs) that enable the performance of the call center agents to be assessed. The KPIs may be updated in near-real time based on monitoring pending calls handled by the agents. Sound analytics may also be performed on the calls. Information regarding the call center agents may be graphically organized by the portable device so that call centers agents who may need assistance may be easily identified. The portable device may join a call. For example, a setting for a session associated with the call may be modified to include the manager device in the session.

Companies often use call centers to address customer inquiries, take customer orders and/or resolve customer problems. Agents, i.e., company personnel, at the call centers interact with the company's customers during telephone calls to provide assistance. The agents are often the companies' primary contact with customers, and dissatisfaction with the agents may adversely affect the customers' perception of the company.


A complex event processing system comprises a complex event processing engine (52) and an event harvesting system, wherein the event harvesting system is operable to monitor a computer network (10, 21, 22, 31, 32, 33), generate simple event reports in response to the result of monitoring the network and pass these to the complex event processing engine for processing. The event harvesting system comprises a central configuration control module (51, 53) and a plurality of capture node modules (41, 42) each of which is operatively connected to the central configuration control module. Each capture node module is operable to receive configuration instructions from the central configuration control module to determine what simple event reports are to be generated by the module and in response to what conditions detected on the monitored computer network. The central configuration control module includes an interface (51) in the form of a web server for receiving configuration instructions from a user of the system and for processing these configuration instructions and sending them to a specified capture node module for causing the module to operate in accordance with the specified configuration instructions.

Over time, the Information Technology (IT) systems of organisations have often grown in an organic way so as to incorporate many different heterogeneous (legacy) IT components (e.g. databases, applications, servers, etc.). Many attempts have been made to integrate these heterogeneous systems into a fully integrated system.
For example, U.S. Pat. No. 7,130,812 describes a system for capturing information from multiple heterogeneous systems and storing this in a single centralised database for analysis and review by (human) users of the system.
Complex Event Processing
Complex Event Processing (CEP) systems are systems which seek to determine when a complex event has occurred based on the detected occurrence of a (typically much) larger number of simple events. There has been a large amount of research into CEP systems and sophisticated CEP engines have been developed such as that described in US 2007/0260569, in which input simple events are stored in memory such that if a rule for identifying a complex event (referred to as a situation in US 2007/0260569) is modified, it can be applied instantly even to situations which may have started occurring even before the new rule definition was known to the CEP engine.
US 2007/255529, US 2008/109824 and US 2008/189352 all describe CEP engines but none of them considers in any great depth the manner in which simple events can be harvested from a legacy system in a way which does not require significant modifications to the systems from which the events are derived and therefore none of these documents presents a solution that would be readily applicable to a typical legacy system in which great care needs to be exercised before modifying the legacy system, in particular modifying the types of inputs which legacy applications receive or the types of outputs which legacy applications need to produce.
Most previous research (including for example US 2007/0260569, US 2007/255529, US 2008/109824 and US 2008/189352) has not considered in any great detail how simple events to form the input to a CEP engine should be harvested from a system whose behaviour is to be monitored by the CEP system. In general it has simply been assumed that the system to be monitored will already produce interesting events and that these will be easy to expose to the CEP system (possibly after some pre-processing as in US 2007/0260569). However, the present inventor has determined that this is not in fact the case and that it is generally not in fact trivial to harvest useful simple events, especially from a legacy system which is still being used in a commercially critical environment.

Complex event processing system and method

BRITISH TELECOMMUNICATIONS public limited company


In a semiconductor device using a wide bandgap semiconductor material having a bandgap larger than that of silicon, reliability of the semiconductor device is improved by achieving a structure in which electric field strength in the vicinity of an outer end portion of a semiconductor chip is relaxed. A side surface of the semiconductor chip CHP1a is formed of a region R1 including a first corner, a region R2 including a second corner, and a region R3 interposed between the region R1 and the region R2. At this point, in a case of defining a minimum film thickness of a high electric field-resistant sealing member MR in the region R3 as t1 and defining a maximum film thickness of the high electric field-resistant sealing member MR in the region R1 as t2, a relation of t2≤1.5×t1 is satisfied.

JP 2013-191716 A (PTL 1) discloses a technique in which electric field strength generated inside a silicone gel from an electric field relaxation region provided in a peripheral region of a SiC element is reduced to secure stable breakdown characteristic. In this technique, it is disclosed that an inorganic layer consisting of silicon oxide and a resin layer formed on an upper portion of the inorganic layer are provided between the electric field relaxation region and the silicone gel.
JP 2014-236166 A (PTL 2) discloses a technique in which a curvature radius of a corner portion of a p-type termination region on a [−1-120] direction side from a center of a semiconductor chip is set larger than a curvature radius of a corner portion of a p-type termination region on a [11-20] direction side from the center of the semiconductor chip.

Semiconductor device, manufacturing method for semiconductor device, semiconductor module, and power conversion device

HITACHI POWER SEMICONDUCTOR DEVICE, LTD.


The application provides a user interface switching method and a terminal. After the terminal triggers a TUI display request of a CA according to a first operation on a CA interface by a user, the terminal switches a display environment of the CA from an REE to a TEE according to the TUI display request, and then displays a TA interface that is of the CA and that is in the TEE. In this case, the user may perform an operation of inputting sensitive information on the TA interface, and a malicious program that runs in the REE cannot access a hardware device to obtain the input operation in the TEE by the user. Therefore, t sensitive information of the user is stolen is prevented, thereby effectively enhancing security of the input operation by the user.

As intelligent terminals such as mobile phones become popular, an increasing quantity of users shop online directly by using mobile phones. Consequently, security problems become increasingly severe. Currently, in mainstream operating systems such as Android, application programs are installed without strict management and control. Once a user inadvertently installs a malicious program on a mobile phone, a threat may be posed to security of software such as Alipay on the mobile phone.
For payment software such as Alipay on a mobile phone, many mechanisms for password authentication and data encryption are internally provided to ensure security of data transmission. However, critical steps such as input of a user password and input of a user account are inevitably exposed in software environment of an operating system. Once these input operations are intercepted by a malicious program, sensitive information such as the user password and the user account may be stolen.
An existing solution of preventing a malicious program from intercepting an input operation by a user is to set a random keyboard. Specifically, when the user performs the input operation, keys of a keyboard are randomly disorganized (that is, the keys of the keyboard are randomly arranged each time the user performs an input operation), so as to prevent the malicious program from stealing sensitive information such as a user password and a user account.
However, this solution of setting a random keyboard only makes it more difficult to steal sensitive information such as a user password and a user account. A malicious program may still read a random keyboard and an input operation by a user. Therefore, security of this solution needs to be enhanced.

User interface switching method and terminal


In a group signature system of the present invention, user device 400 registered in the group, when receiving an issuing device public key of a set that includes order N of a cyclic group and its elements a—0, a—1 and a—2, determines such primes e and e′ that e′ is a prime that is obtained by subtracting a fixed number smaller than the prime e from the prime e, generates a user device secret key of a set including such numbers x and r that the product between a—0 and the result obtained by performing modular exponentiation of a—1 by number x, multiplied by the result obtained by performing modular exponentiation of a—2 by number r is equal to the result obtained by performing element A of the first cyclic group raised to the e-th power, based on order N as a modulus, and a user device public key of a set including prime e, prime e′ and element A, transmits prime e′ to revocation manager 300, receives B calculated based on prime e′ from revocation manager 300 to obtain a message, generates a signature statement for the message using the B value, the user device public key, the user device secret key and the message, and transmits the signature statement with the message and to verifying device 500.

A group signature scheme is a scheme that allows the members of a group to sign anonymously. Since this scheme can be applied to electronic voting, anonymous delegation and ID escrow, it is of high utility value in industries.
A conventional system for a group signature scheme includes an issuing device, a user device and a verifying device, these devices being connected so as to communicate with each other. When a user device accesses the authority called the issuing device to execute the procedure of joining means, the issuing device executes the procedure called an issuing procedure to enable the user device to become a member of the group. The user device as a member of the group can create a signature statement as a member of the group. The verifying device can verify the validity of the signature statement but cannot identify the device that created the signature statement. However, the authority called a disclosing device alone can identify the device that created the signature statement.
Other than the above configuration, there is a scheme, which has a revocation function. The group signature scheme having a revocation function needs to have an authority called a revocation manager. When a user device becomes a member of the group, it also accesses the revocation manager to execute registration means. When the user device leaves the group, the revocation manager executes revocation means to make the user device leave the group.
When some user devices left the group, the remaining user devices update the public/secret key pair held in their own by executing key updating means. One of the group signature schemes having a revocation function is proposed in "Jan Camenish. Jens Groth. Group Signatures: Better Efficiency and New Theoretical Aspects. SCN 2004, vol. 3352 of LNCS, pp. 120-133, 2004" (which will be referred to hereinbelow as document 1).
Another group signature scheme is proposed in "G. Ateniese, J. Camenish, M. Joye, and G. Tsudik. A Practical and Provably Secure Coalition-Resistant Group Signature Scheme. In Advances in Cryptology—CRYPTO 2000, vol. 1880 of LNCS. pp. 255-270, Springer-Verlag, 2000."

Group signature system and information processing method


A foldable supporting frame includes an upper frame and a plurality of legs disposed below the upper frame when unfolded to support the upper frame. The upper frame includes a plurality of bars, with adjacent bars in the plurality of bars coupled to each other or integrally formed with each other at their adjacent end portions. Each of the plurality of legs is coupled with a corresponding bar in the plurality of bars and independently rotatable about an axis defined by the corresponding bar. When folded, the plurality of legs is disposed in an interior defined by the upper frame.

A typical table usually includes a panel and a supporting frame to support the panel. In many existing tables, the panel and supporting frame are connected to each other by screws or snap fittings. Such connections are relatively complex. Tables with such connections are often difficult to fold and unfold, and thus are inconvenient to use. Some tables are not foldable and thus require larger spaces for storage.
Given the current state of the art, there remains a need for supporting frames and tables that address the abovementioned issues.
The information disclosed in this Background section is provided for an understanding of the general background of the invention and is not an acknowledgement or suggestion that this information forms part of the prior art already known to a person skilled in the art.

Foldable supporting frame having independently rotatable legs


Methods of acoustic imaging provide images with reduced reverberation noise and images of nonlinear scattering and propagation parameters of the object, and estimation methods of corrections for wave front aberrations produced by spatial variations in the acoustic propagation velocity. The methods are based on processing of the received signal from transmitted dual frequency band acoustic pulse complexes with overlapping high and low frequency pulses. The high frequency pulse is used for the image reconstruction and the low frequency pulse is used to manipulate the nonlinear scattering and/or propagation properties of the high frequency pulse. Through filtering in the pulse number coordinate and corrections for nonlinear propagation delays and optionally also amplitudes, a linear back scattering signal with suppressed pulse reverberation noise, a nonlinear back scattering signal, and quantitative nonlinear forward propagation and scattering parameters are extracted.

1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to methods and systems for imaging of spatial variation of acoustic parameters of an object and particularly gas bubbles and high density scatterers in the object. The methods have applications in a variety of fields with a variety of objects, for example ultrasound imaging of biological tissues and fluids, acoustic imaging of geologic structures, and detection of objects in water with SONAR.
2. Description of the Related Art
Acoustic imaging is used in a variety of applications, such as medical ultrasound imaging of internal organs, SONAR imaging of fish, sea animals and other objects in the sea, imaging of geologic structures for various purposes such as studies of archeological digs and surveillance of oil wells. A wide range of frequencies of the transmitted acoustic pulse are used for different applications, ranging from infrasound for imaging of some geological structures to ˜100 MHz ultrasound imaging of some biological and microscopic structures. Despite this spread of applications and imaging frequencies the imaging methods are very similar for all applications. In this patent we therefore refer to these imaging methods in general as acoustic imaging, whereas a large part of the applications, especially medical applications, will use inaudible ultrasound frequencies from ˜20 kHz to well into the ˜100 MHz range. Where the imaging frequencies are in the ultrasound range, such as medical imaging, we also will use the term ultrasound imaging, not limiting the methods to ultrasound frequencies and medical applications only.
Despite the widespread use of acoustic imaging, current images are noisy, require large skills for the interpretation, and provide limited quantitative information about the objects. This provides problems for differentiation of object structures and estimating quantitative object properties. With SONAR imaging in water it is for example often difficult to differentiate objects close to or on the sea bed, like fish or other sea animals or mines, from the seabed echoes. Similarly, in geologic imaging it can be difficult to determine material compositions of the geologic structures. In medical applications it can be difficult to differentiate structures like a tumor or atherosclerotic tissue from normal tissue. Important reasons for this are described below.
Spatial variations in the linear acoustic properties of the object (mass density and compressibility) are the physical basis for acoustic imaging. However, with large variations of the acoustic properties in complex structures, the following effects will degrade the images:
i) Interfaces between materials with large differences in acoustic properties can give so strong reflections of the acoustic pulse that multiple reflections get large amplitudes. Such multiple reflections are termed pulse reverberations, and add a tail to the propagating acoustic pulse, which shows as noise in the acoustic image.
ii) Variations of the acoustic velocity within the complex object structures produce forward propagation aberrations of the acoustic wave-front, destroying the focusing of the beam main lobe and increasing the beam sidelobes.
The reduced focusing of the beam main lobe by the wave-front aberrations reduces the spatial resolution in the acoustic imaging system. The pulse reverberations and the increase in beam side lobes by the wave-front aberrations, introduce additive noise in the image, which reduces the ratio of the strongest to the weakest scatterer that can be detected in the neighborhood of each other, defined as the contrast resolution in the image. This noise is termed acoustic noise as it is produced by the transmitted acoustic pulse itself. Increasing the transmitted pulse power will hence not improve the power ratio of the signal to the noise of this type, contrary to what is found with electronic receiver noise.
In echocardiography for example, pulse reverberation noise can obscure images of the apical region of the heart, making it difficult to detect apical thrombi, and reduced contraction of the apical myocardium. Further by example, in carotid imaging reverberation noise can obscure detection and delineation of a carotid plaque. Similar to these examples, the pulse reverberation noise limits the detection of weak targets and differentiation of small differences in image contrast in all aspects of acoustic imaging.
2nd harmonic imaging is a method to reduce the image degrading effect of the pulse reverberations in structures close to the acoustic source like the human body wall, because the 2nd harmonic content in the pulse accumulates as a function of depth and is hence very low as the pulse passes the near source structures like the body wall. However, the sensitivity with 2nd harmonic imaging is less (˜−20 dB) than with 1st harmonic imaging, which limits maximal image depth, particularly in dense objects like geologic structures and biological objects like the liver, kidneys, breast, etc, and for blood velocity imaging. For real time 3D imaging one wants a broad transmit beam that is covered with many parallel receive beams to increase volume image rate. Such broad 2nd harmonic transmit beams are difficult to obtain due to reduced 1st harmonic amplitude in broad beams, which produces problems for 2nd harmonic imaging with multiple parallel receive beams used in real time 3D imaging. This is especially true for sparse acoustic arrays where the number of elements that generates the transmit beam is limited.
In medical applications, tissue diseases like tumors and atherosclerosis of an artery wall, affect the acoustic parameters of the tissue, such as the shear modulus, the bulk compressibility, and the acoustic absorption. The variations of these properties are mainly produced by in-growth of foam cells, fat, or connective tissue fiber molecules, but also through segregation of calcium in the tissue. The in-growth of connective tissue increases the acoustic absorption and the shear modulus, the latter producing an increased stiffness to palpation that can be observed by touching the tissue. Much work has been done on estimation of the shear modulus by using ultrasound bulk waves to register the displacement of shear waves in the tissue in methods often referred to as elastography, also referred to as remote ultrasound palpation. However, to date these methods have found limited clinical application, and there is still a great need for improved differentiation of such tissue changes with ultrasound.
In breast tumors, segregated micro-calcifications are today detected with X-Ray mammography, as an indication of a malignant tumor. These micro-calcifications are so small that the scattered ultrasound signal from them is buried in the signal from surrounding tissue, and they are not detected with current ultrasound imaging. Hence, it is a need to improve ultrasound imaging to also detect such micro-calcifications. Micro-calcifications in atherosclerotic plaque also give information about the stability of the plaque and improved imaging of these micro-calcifications are needed.
Several diseases also affect the blood perfusion through the tissue, for example through angiogenesis or necrosis of the micro-vasculature in malignant tumors, or reduced blood flow due to vascular stenosis or thrombosis both in the coronary arteries of the heart and in peripheral vessels. The blood velocities in the micro-vasculature and small vessels are so small that they cannot be detected with ordinary, non-invasive ultrasound Doppler techniques. Ultrasound contrast agents in the form of solutions of small micro-bubbles (diam ˜3 μm) have therefore been developed to improve ultrasound imaging of the micro-vasculature and also to estimate the blood perfusion through the tissue. The micro-bubbles are injected into the blood stream and provide highly increased and nonlinear scattering of the ultrasound from the blood. They hence highly increase the nonlinear scattering from the tissue that contains such micro-bubbles, where in special cases single micro-bubbles can be visualized in dense tissues and provides a potential for molecular ultrasound imaging with tissue specific targeted contrast bubbles. Such micro-bubbles can also provide useful image enhancement when injected into other body fluids, for example the insterstitial fluid to trace lymphatic drainage to sentinel lymph nodes, or in the urinary system for targeted attachment of bubbles to tumor tissue, or other. During decompression in diving and space activities, micro gas bubbles often form spontaneously in the tissue causing decompression sickness, and it is a need for early detection of such gas bubbles to improve decompression profiles and avoid decompression sickness in personnel under such operations, and even to monitor formation of such bubbles as an early warning during activity.
During production in an oil well, one for example wants to monitor changes in the geological structures around the oil wells, for example to monitor the amounts of oil or gas in the sand stone, observe the boundary between gas/oil and water, and observe any structural slides in the neighborhood of the well. The acoustic properties of the structures, and particularly the nonlinear component of the acoustic properties, are influenced by the amount of gas, oil, or water in the porous rock. Acoustic imaging of the structures surrounding the oil well can be done from acoustic transducers in the oil well. Utilizing imaging methods that provide quantitative acoustic data from the object hence allows detections of the amount of gas, oil, or water in the structures surrounding the oil well.
In detection of fish or sea animals or other objects close to the seabed it is often difficult to differentiate between the echoes from the seabed and the object, particularly with side looking beams. The swimming fish or sea animals has a gas filled bladder or lungs that has quite different and nonlinear acoustic properties compared to those of the seabed. These differences in acoustic properties can with methods according to the current invention be used to differentiate overlapping echoes from such objects and the seabed. The methods can also be used to enhance small solid structures, like a mine, on a softer seabed or in soil, similar to detection of micro-calcifications in a tumor.
There is hence a great need for improved acoustic imaging that reduces the image noise, and enhances the image contrast for variations in object properties,
Methods according to the current invention reduce the image noise, and enhance the image contrast for variations in object properties by transmitting dual frequency band acoustic pulse complexes composed of overlapping high and low frequency pulses into the object. Dual frequency band ultrasound pulses have previously been used in medical ultrasound imaging for various purposes, where in M-mode and Doppler [Br Heart J. 1984 January; 51(1):61-9] simultaneous transmission was used of a 3 MHz pulse and a 1.5 MHz pulse with fixed phase relation between the pulses, for optimal M-mode imaging of the heart (3 MHz pulse) and Doppler blood velocity measurements (1.5 MHz pulse) to interrogate cardiac defects. A concentric annular transducer arrangement was used, where the 3 MHz M-mode ultrasound pulse was transmitted and received by the central transducer disc, while the 1.5 MHz Doppler ultrasound pulse was transmitted and received by a surrounding annular element.
The use of dual band transmitted pulses is also described in U.S. Pat. No. 5,410,516, for improved detection of ultrasound contrast agent micro-bubbles. In this patent, simultaneous transmission of two ultrasound pulses with different center frequencies is described, where the scattered pulses from the micro-bubbles contain sums and differences of the transmitted frequencies produced by the nonlinear scattering from the micro-bubbles, and these sum and difference frequencies are used for the detection of the micro-bubbles.
A similar use of dual band pulses is described in U.S. Pat. No. 6,312,383 for detection of ultrasound contrast agent, where the phase between the two bands is changed between transmissions. This can be viewed as a special case of U.S. Pat. No. 5,410,516, where the change in phase of the low frequency pulse can be viewed as a beat between the low frequency and the pulse repetition frequency.
However, although both the last two patents use nonlinear scattering with dual band pulses for detection of contrast agent in tissue, the presented patents both fail to recognize the nonlinear effect of the low band pulse on the forward propagation velocity of the high band pulse, which in the practical situation will limit the suppression of the tissue signal in relation to the contrast agent signal. The patents also do not recognize how the nonlinear scattering from ordinary tissues or other objects can be retrieved. Accumulative nonlinear forward propagation effects will produce similar signal characteristics for the strong, linear scattering from the tissue, as for the local, nonlinear scattering from micro-bubbles and tissues. This effect will mask the local, nonlinear scattering from micro-bubbles and other object parts and limit the contrast to tissue signal power ratio (CTR). Presence of gas and micro-bubbles in a region also heavily increases the forward, accumulative, nonlinear propagation effect and makes the linear scattering from the object beyond such a region highly mask the scattering from gas and micro-bubbles in the object. This phenomenon for example highly affects imaging of contrast agent in myocardium with pulses that passes the ventricle with contrast agent before entering the myocardium, and can for example falsely indicate perfusion in an ischemic myocardium. It will also affect the differentiation between gas and oil past a region with gas in geologic structures.
The current invention differs from the prior art in that it utilizes the nonlinear effect on the propagation velocity for the high frequency pulse by the low frequency pulse, and an understanding of this effect, in the formation of image signals based on the high frequency propagated and scattered signals. This allows a separation of the accumulative nonlinear effect on the signals from the effect of the local nonlinear object parameters, hence allowing estimation of local nonlinear object parameters, which is not possible by prior art. The invention further devices a method for separation of the accumulative effect of acoustic absorption on the signals, enabling the estimation of the local acoustic absorption parameters of the object.

Acoustic imaging by nonlinear low frequency manipulation of high frequency scattering and propagation properties