Planar rendering is described. In an implementation, a method includes approximating a shape that corresponds to an overlapping portion of at least one graphical element that is translucent with another graphical element. A color is computed for the approximated shape from respective colors of each of the graphical elements and the translucence of the at least one graphical element. The approximated shape having the computed color is formed into a communication for output to a printer.

A variety of rendering devices may be communicatively coupled to a computing device to provide an output for a user. For example, a computing device configured as a desktop personal computer (PC) may include a display device (e.g., a monitor) that provides an output for viewing by the user and a printer for printing images to a printable medium which may then be viewed by the user. Each rendering device, however, may support different rendering functionality, one to another, such that one provides an output that cannot be rendered as intended by utilizing another.
A graphics environment for output on a display device, for instance, may support a concept known as transparency. Transparency is used to provide a visual effect in which a graphical element that is rendered using the effect may appear to be transparent or translucent to varying degrees. For instance, a translucent object, when displayed, enables any underlying object and/or background to be seen through the translucent object to varying degrees depending on an amount of transparency that is specified for the translucent object.
Traditional printers, however, do not support transparency. For instance, for each graphical element that is to be printed to a page utilizing a traditional printer, there are a variety of different scenarios that can be encountered. In a first scenario, a pixel of the graphical element is to be drawn to a location which does not already contain a pixel. In this scenario, the pixel does not affect any other pixel and therefore can be drawn to the location. In a second scenario, a new pixel is to be drawn to a location having a preexisting pixel. In this scenario, however, traditional printing devices merely overwrite the preexisting pixel using the new pixel. Therefore, when a new graphical element that contains the new pixel is printed using a traditional printer in the second scenario, the new graphical element opaquely covers any preexisting graphical element that was previously provided for output at that location.
In a third scenario, portions of an output file that contain translucent and overlapping graphical elements for output are rasterized to form a rasterized image, such as a bitmap. A raster is a grid of individual coordinates that is used to specify a location of each individual pixel in a display. A raster image identifies each of the coordinates in the raster and a corresponding color value. Rasterizing a portion of the image file, however, introduces resolution dependency. For example, to display the rasterized image as intended, a printer should have a resolution that generally corresponds to the resolution of the rasterized image. Additionally, because each individual pixel is mapped in a rasterized image, the amount of memory used to store a raster image generally consumes more memory resources than a vector image. Vector images are created through a sequence of mathematical statements that may be utilized to place vector shapes in a two-dimensional space. Therefore, instead of using a storage location for each pixel of a line drawing, a vector image describes a series of points to be connected.
Accordingly, there is a continuing need for planar rendering such that transparency functionality may be provided in a memory efficient manner using traditional printers that would not otherwise support transparency.


A programmable object model allows a user/programmer to programmatically access the Extensible Markup Language (XML) functionality of a software application. The programmable object model is comprised of a plurality of object-oriented message calls or application programming interfaces for allowing a user to access the XML functionality of an application by sending one or more object-oriented message calls or application programming interfaces to the XML functionality of a given application along with any required parameters for customizing or otherwise manipulating XML markup applied to a document.

Computer software applications allow users to create a variety of documents to assist them in work, education, and leisure. For example, popular word processing applications allow users to create letters, articles, books, memoranda, and the like. Spreadsheet applications allow users to store, manipulate, print, and display a variety of alphanumeric data. Such applications have a number of well known strengths including rich editing, formatting, printing, calculation and on-line and off-line editing.
Most computer software applications do not contain all necessary programming for providing functionality required or desired by every potential user. Many programmers often wish to take advantage of an existing application's capabilities in their own programs or to customize the functionality of an application and make it more suitable for a specific set of users or actions. For example, a programmer working in the financial industry may wish to customize a word processor for a user audience consisting of financial analysts editing financial reports. In recent years, the Extensible Markup Language has been used widely as an interchangeable data format for many users. A word processor or other application capable of receiving and editing XML data provides great value to its users. However, because the native .XML functionality of such an application is not exposed to users/programmers wishing to customize the functionality to further take advantage of the functionality for their own programs, such users/programmers are limited in their ability to utilize the XML functionality.
Accordingly, there is a need in the art for a programmable object model for allowing users/programmers to programmatically access the XML functionality of a software application in order to customize or otherwise modify the XML functionality to enhance their utilization of the functionality. It is with respect to these and other considerations that the present invention has been made.

Programmable object model for extensible markup language markup in an application


A channel based network is provided that allows one or more hosts to communicate with one or more remote fabric attached I/O units. A split-model network driver includes a host module driver and I/O unit module driver. The host module driver and the I/O unit module driver each includes a messaging layer that allows the hosts and I/O units to communicate over the switched fabric using a push-push messaging protocol. For a host to send data, the host either initiates a RDMA write to a pre-registered buffer or initiates a message Send to a pre-posted buffer on the target. For the RDMA case, the initiator would have to send the target some form of transfer indication specifying where the data has been written. This notification can be done with either a separate message or more preferably with immediate data that is included with the RDMA write.

Current input/output (I/O) technology for computer systems provide for a single I/O device driver program controlling an I/O device, with that I/O device driver executing as a component of operating system (OS) software solely within the OS environment on a host system. Such a single or monolithic I/O device driver is provided on the host computer to allow access to the local I/O device or controller. Such a conventional arrangement is not very flexible.
Moreover, such an arrangement requires an inefficient communications process to allow one host to communicate with an I/O device on another host. The OS directly controls I/O operations between the I/O device and its physical memory. If another host wants access to the I/O device, it must request service from the OS on the host system owning the I/O device. In a simple single I/O unit or single host system operating environments this is sufficient, but in clustered environments several data movements or messages may be required to complete a requested data transfer.
Several communications models are presently used for either a distributed environment or in single host systems. In Pull-Pull models, entities request data from other entities and provide a known location for that data to be placed in. Examples of network applications that use the pull/pull model include FTP (File Transfer Protocol and HTTP (Hypertext Transfer Protocol). The disadvantages of this model include heavy data transfer latency, and the inability for entities to know when data has been updated. These limitations (and others) have led to a lack of Pull-Pull models in system architectures.
In Push-Pull Models, one entity (typically the faster entity) will push data to and pull data from the target entity (typically a slower entity). Advantages of this approach include the ability to use combinations of faster (server) and slower (I/O devices) entities to perform efficient data transfer. A disadvantage is the heavy latency incurred between the request for data and the receipt of that data. Push-Pull models are also used in networking applications such as IP-multicasting and webcasting. Traditional Shared Memory Architectures (e.g., Peripheral Component Interconnect or PCI in a single host environment) favor a Push-Pull model for most of data transfers.
While the current models are designed for the existing shared memory systems, to take advantage of the channel based systems where the host and IO unit are distributed, there is a need for improved techniques to perform communication between computers or nodes in a clustered environment.

Split model driver using a push-push messaging protocol over a channel based network


An off-highway machine such as an agriculture harvester has an enclosed cab and a pressurizing blower or fan assembly for developing a primary or rapidly moving flow of air theretoward and directing a pressurized stream of a away therefrom. An apparatus is arranged proximate to and in operable combination with the blower or fan assembly on the off-highway machine for providing precleaned air to the enclosure.

Off-highway machines typically operate in areas having a relatively high concentration of dirt, dust and other debris in the surrounding atmospheric or ambient air. As an agricultural combine moves through a field, the normal operation of separating grain from material other than grain further complicates the air contamination problem in and about the entire machine.
Concern for operator comfort has led to development of increasingly sophisticated operator enclosures or cab regions on such machines. Modern cab designs are ergonomically configured to offer a comfortable and relatively clean atmosphere for the operator regardless of the outside environment.
It is well known in agricultural combines to provide a completely enclosed cab which takes in and filters outside air, heats or cools the air as ruined through an atmosphere control system, and circulates it within the cab as by means of a fan or pressurizing blower. Preferably, the air within the cab is maintained at a pressure slightly higher than atmospheric, so as to discourage the entry of dust or other contaminants through, for example, imperfectly sealed doors or windows. Some off-highway machines are provided with air inlets arranged toward a roof line of the enclosure. From the air inlet, air is drawn downwardly through a hollow rollover protective structure and then to a filter assembly.
Filter of the air from the intake becomes a formidable task, especially on agricultural combines. With agricultural combines, the entire environment immediately surrounding the combine is often saturated with dust and chaff. This load of debris in the inlet air can very quickly inundate the typical filtering systems (paper element inline filters) if fed directly from the outside environment to the filter without first precleaning a major portion of the undesirable matter out of the flow.
Accordingly, some off-highway machines utilize a precleaner apparatus disposed between the air intake and the filter. Most current commercially available precleaning units are not capable of sufficiently scrubbing the air of dust at the very low air flow rates required for this application. Moreover, the extremely dirty a that this application is subjected to has proven to overwhelm these devices and cause premature failure of their function. Accordingly, when the precleaner fails, the filter becomes plugged with dust and the effective cab pressurization is lost as the fan mounted within the cab enclosure is starved for inlet air. This results in dirty environmental air entering the cab through the aforementioned imperfectly sealed doors or windows, thus reducing the efficiency of the heating and air conditioning system and leading to extreme operator discomfort.
The remedy for this problem is to temporarily discontinue harvesting operations and take the necessary steps to service the air intake system. This requires the harvesting operation to cease. Thereafter, the filter must be cleaned to remove the built up debris from the inlet filter element and/or precleaning apparatus. This lost time and extra effort leads to operator dissatisfaction with the machine, and a desire for an alternative system that would not fall in these circumstances. Moreover, having to repeatedly clean the air intake system quickly leads to added downtime, reduced harvesting capacity and, thus, lost profits.
Thus, there is a need and a desire for an a intake system for an off-highway machine wherein it is possible to provide a very low air flow of precleaned air to the cab station while offering prolonged or extended operating times for the off-highway machine.

Air intake system for an off-highway machine


A clutter reduction effect using adaptive beam forming is uniformly obtained with respect to the entire image even in an imaging condition in which the number of bundled signals is greatly distributed in an ultrasonic image. A received signal processing unit includes a summing unit that bundles the plurality of received signals for a predetermined imaging point or a plurality of signals obtained by processing the received signals, and a weighting unit that obtains a coherence value among the plurality of signals summed in the summing unit, and weights the plurality of signals before being summed in the summing unit or a signal obtained through summing in the summing unit, with a weight corresponding to the coherence value. The weighting unit weights the coherence value nonlinearly in a predetermined direction in the subject, and weights the plurality of signals before being summed in the summing unit or the signal obtained through summing in the summing unit by using the nonlinearly weighted coherence value.

An ultrasonic imaging technique is a technique of imaging the inside of a subject including a human body in a noninvasive manner by using an ultrasonic wave (a sonic wave not intended to be listened, and, generally, a sonic wave with a high frequency of 20 kHz or more).
A method of transmitting an ultrasonic beam to a subject from an ultrasonic probe includes two types such as expanded type transmission of transmitting an ultrasonic beam which is spread in a fan shape, and focused type transmission in which a transmission focal point of an ultrasonic beam is disposed inside a subject, and the ultrasonic beam converges. Planar wave transmission without a focus is equivalent to a case where a focal position is placed at infinity in the above-described two transmission methods, and is included in at least any one of the two types of transmission.
Transmission and reception of an ultrasonic wave in an ultrasonic imaging apparatus are performed by an array having a finite opening diameter, and thus it is hard to improve a resolution in an azimuth direction due to the influence of diffraction of an ultrasonic wave occurring at an edge of an aperture portion. This problem can be solved if an infinitely long array is provided, but realization thereof is not easy in the current circumstances. Thus, in the recent years, in order to improve a resolution in an azimuth direction, a phasing technique effectively using received data in a channel domain has been actively examined, and a new phasing method such as adaptive beamformer or synthetic aperture imaging has been frequently reported.
Synthetic aperture imaging will be described briefly. First, an ultrasonic beam is transmitted, and an echo from a subject is received by an ultrasonic probe in which a plurality of elements are arranged. A delay time is applied to each received signal output from the plurality of elements such that the signals focus on a virtually present point, and are then summed together, and thus a phasing signal is obtained. The phasing signal is combined with another phasing signal obtained through transmission and reception performed once or more for the same point so as to be superimposed thereon, and thus synthetic aperture imaging is performed.
In the synthetic aperture imaging, phasing signals obtained through transmission and reception from different directions with respect to a certain point in an ultrasonic probe can be superimposed on each other, and thus it is expected that high resolution of a point image is achieved, and robustness against heterogeneity is given. Since a process gain is improved through the superimposition process, transmission in which the number of times of transmission of ultrasonic waves is reduced more than during normal times can be performed, and thus the synthetic aperture imaging can be applied to fast imaging.
There is a technique of reducing a clutter caused by acoustic artifact such as a side lobe or a grating lobe by using an adaptive process in an ultrasonic diagnosis image. For example, as the adaptive process, algorithms such as a coherent factor, minimum variance distortionless response (MVDR), amplitude and phase estimation (APES), and eigenspace minimum variance (ESMV) are known. The fundamental concept of the adaptive process in an ultrasonic diagnosis apparatus is that statistics of respective received signals are calculated, and only a probable signal is used. Consequently, it can be expected that an ultrasonic image from which the influence of a signal due to unnecessary acoustic artifact is excluded as much as possible is obtained.
PTL 1 discloses a technique regarding a phasing method including a synthetic (synthetic aperture imaging) process of a plurality of transmissions and removal of a clutter from an ultrasonic image using a coherence factor which is one type of adaptive signal processing, in an ultrasonic diagnosis apparatus.
PTL 2 discloses a technique of combining synthetic aperture imaging with an eigenspace beam forming method which is one type of adaptive process in an ultrasonic diagnosis apparatus.


A drive (D) for an auger conveyor (FC) is disclosed where the auger conveyor comprises a conveyor conduit (11) and a centerless helical coil auger (15) disposed within the conduit. The auger has a longitudinal axis and a plurality of spaced, helical flights (17). The drive (D) is a drive screw (23) substantially coaxial with the auger and having a plurality of flights in face-to-face engagement with corresponding flights of the auger. A drive member (47) is in driving engagement with the drive screw with the drive screw and the drive member being mounted for rotation about the longitudinal axis. A power drive (27) is rotatably drives the drive screw about its longitudinal axis so as to effect movement (either axial or rotational movement) of the auger relative to the conveyor conduit. A method of driving the auger is also disclosed.

This invention relates to a drive for an auger conveyor of the type which is used to convey feed (or other granular, or powdered, or fluent material) from a bulk feed tank or (other storage container or vessel) to a number of feeders in a poultry or hog house. Typically, such auger conveyors comprise a conduit, which may be a closed tube or and open trough, or a combination of lengths of closed tubes and open troughs, and a "centerless" auger disposed within the conduit. Generally, a centerless auger comprises an open helical coil which does not have a center shaft. The auger is formed of a single elongate wire or rod (which may be either of round or rectangular cross section) which is formed into an open helical coil arrangement having a multiplicity of spaced flights, with the flights being spaced from one another at substantial equal distances from one another. The spacing of the flights from one another is oftentimes referred to as the pitch of the auger. Such centerless augers are advantageous because without a center shaft, they may readily go around turns and can accommodate changes in elevation.
Such auger conveyors are driven by a motor so as to convey feed in axial direction along the conveyor conduit from the supply of feed to distribute the feed to one or more feeders located along the conduit. As shown in the co-assigned U.S. Pat. No. 5,311,839, and in U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,230,933 and 3,415,228, such centerless feed augers may rotate within their respective conduits by means of an electric motor located at one end of the conduit. In this manner, the auger acts like a screw conveyor to move feed axially within the conduit as the auger is rotated. In other feeding systems, the feed conveyor (i.e., the conduit and the centerless auger therein) is arranged in an endless loop with a plurality of feeders located along the loop for conveying feed from a feed source (e.g., a feed hopper) to the feeders along the loop. In such endless loop feed auger conveyors, one or more lengths of a centerless auger are joined together in end-to-end fashion and the endless centerless auger is axially propelled through the conduit so that the flights of the auger axially drag or push feed axially through the conduit. In U.S. Pat. Nos. 2,232,606 and 3,003,464, the auger is shown to be entrained around a drive wheel which in turn is rotated by a motor so as to move the auger axially through a tube to convey a granular material through the tube. As shown in U.S. Pat. No. 4,640,230, an endless, centerless auger may be axially propelled through a conveyor conduit by a gear in mesh with the flights of the auger. The gear was driven by an appropriate gear motor (i.e., an electric motor with a built in gear speed reducer) such that one tooth of the gear engages a respective flight of the auger as the gear is rotated in a radial plane containing the longitudinal axis of the auger. In this manner, the auger is propelled in axial direction through the conduit. While such gear drives work well for their intended purposes, they have certain shortcomings.
In addition, U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,198,320 and 3,249,210 describe center driven drives for rotary augers having a center shaft may be of interest. However, these patents have no disclosure or suggestion of how such a drive could propel an auger axially within a feed conveyor tube.
When such centerless augers are installed in a closed loop conveyor conduit, it is necessary to join the ends of the auger segments for form an endless auger. This may be done by welding or (more commonly) brazing the overlapping ends of the auger together. It is also known that the ends of the auger segments may be joined together by means of mechanical couplers. Reference may be made to U.S. Pat. No. 5,002,421 for a description on one such prior art mechanical auger section connector. However, such prior art auger connectors had certain drawbacks, particularly for use with axial drives for such endless loop augers.

Auger drive and method of driving an auger


A method measures an intensity of motion activity in a compressed video. The intensity of the motion activity is used to partition the video into segments of equal cumulative motion activity. Key-frames are then selected from each segments. The selected key-frames are concatenated in temporal order to form a summary of the video.

It is desired to automatically generate summaries of videos, and more particularly, to generate the summaries of a compressed digital videos.
Compressed Video Formats
Basic standards for compressing a video as a digital signal have been adopted by the Motion Picture Expert Group (MPEG). The MPEG standards achieve high data compression rates by developing information for a full frame of the image only every so often. The full image frames, i.e., intra-coded frames, are often referred to as "I-frames" or "anchor frames," and contain full frame information independent of any other frames. Image difference frames, i.e., inter-coded frames, are often referred to as "B-frames" and "P-frames," or as "predictive frames," and are encoded between the I-frames and reflect only image differences i.e., residues, with respect to the reference frame.
Typically, each frame of a video sequence is partitioned into smaller blocks of picture elements, i.e., pixel data. Each block is subjected to a discrete cosine transformation (DCT) function to convert the statistically dependent spatial domain pixels into independent frequency domain DCT coefficients. Respective 8×8 or 16×16 blocks of pixels, referred to as "macro-blocks," are subjected to the DCT function to provide the coded signal.
The DCT coefficients are usually energy concentrated so that only a few of the coefficients in a macro-block contain the main part of the picture information. For example, if a macro-block contains an edge boundary of an object, then the energy in that block includes a relatively large DC coefficient and randomly distributed AC coefficients throughout the matrix of coefficients.
A non-edge macro-block, on the other hand, is usually characterized by a similarly large DC coefficient and a few adjacent AC coefficients which are substantially larger than other coefficients associated with that block. The DCT coefficients are typically subjected to adaptive quantization, and then are run-length and variable-length encoded. Thus, the macro-blocks of transmitted data typically include fewer than an 8×8 matrix of codewords.
The macro-blocks of inter-coded frame data, i.e., encoded P or B frame data, include DCT coefficients which represent only the differences between a predicted pixels and the actual pixels in the macro-block. Macro-blocks of intra-coded and inter-coded frame data also include information such as the level of quantization employed, a macro-block address or location indicator, and a macro-block type. The latter information is often referred to as "header" or "overhead" information.
Each P-frame is predicted from the last I- or P-frame. Each B-frame is predicted from an I- or P-frame between which it is disposed. The predictive coding process involves generating displacement vectors, often referred to as "motion vectors," which indicate the magnitude of the displacement to the macro-block of an I-frame most closely matches the macro-block of the B- or P-frame currently being coded. The pixel data of the matched block in the I frame is subtracted, on a pixel-by-pixel basis, from the block of the P- or B-frame being encoded, to develop the residues. The transformed residues and the vectors form part of the encoded data for the P- and B-frames.
Video Analysis
Video analysis can be defined as processing a video with the intention of understanding the content of a video. The understanding of a video can range from a "low-level" syntactic understanding, such as detecting segment boundaries in the video, to a "high-level" semantic understanding, such as detecting a genre of the video. The low-level understanding can be achieved by analyzing low-level features, such as color, motion, texture, shape, and the like, to generate content descriptions. The content description can then be used to index the video.
Video Summarization
Video summarization generates a compact representation of a video that conveys the semantic essence of the video. The compact representation can include "key-frames" or "key-segments," or a combination of key-frames and key-segments. As an example, a video summary of a tennis match can include two frames, the first frame capturing both of the players, and the second frame capturing the winner with the trophy. A more detailed and longer summary could further include all frames that capture the match point. While it is certainly possible to generate such a summary manually, this is tedious and costly. Automatic summarization is therefore desired.
Automatic video summarization methods are well known, see S. Pfeifer et al. in "Abstracting Digital Movies Automatically," J. Visual Comm. Image Representation, vol. 7, no. 4, pp. 345–353, December 1996, and Hanjalic et al. in "An Integrated Scheme for Automated Video Abstraction Based on Unsupervised Cluster-Validity Analysis," IEEE Trans. On Circuits and Systems for Video Technology, Vol. 9, No. 8, December 1999.
Most prior video summarization methods focus almost exclusively on color-based summarization. Only Pfeiffer et al. has used motion, in combination with other features, to generate video summaries. However, their approach merely uses a weighted combination that overlooks possible correlation between the combined features. Some summarization methods also use motion features to extract key-frames.
As shown in FIG. 1, prior art video summarization methods have mostly emphasized clustering, based on color features, because color features are easy to extract in the compressed domain, and are robust to noise. A typical method takes a video sequence A 101 as input, and applies a color based summarization process 100 to produce a video summary S(A) 102. The video summary includes either a summary of the entire sequence, or a set of interesting segments of the sequence, or key-frames.
The method 100 typically includes the following steps. First, cluster the frames of the video according to color features. Second, arrange the clusters in an easy to access hierarchical data structure. Third, extract a key-frame or a key sequence from each of the cluster to generate the summary.
Motion Activity Descriptor
A video can also be intuitively perceived as having various levels of activity or intensity of action. An examples of a relatively high level of activity is a scoring opportunity in a sport video. On the other hand, a news reader video has a relatively low level of activity. The recently proposed MPEG-7 video standard provides for a descriptor related to the motion activity in a video.
One measure of motion activity can be the average and variance of the magnitude of the motion vectors, see Peker et al. "Automatic measurement of intensity of motion activity," Proceedings of SPIE Conference on Storage and Retrieval for Media Databases, January 2001. However, there are many variations possible, depending on the application.
Fidelity of a Set of Key-Frames
The simplest approach to finding a single key-frame is to select an arbitrary frame from the sequence, but single key-frame based approaches fail when the video content has more information than can be conveyed by the single frame. The first frame of a video segment can be assigned as the first key-frame, and then the frame at the greatest distance in feature space from the first frame can be assigned as the second key-frame, see In M. M. Yeung and B. Liu, "Efficient Matching and Clustering of Video Shots," Proc. IEEE ICIP, Washington D.C., 1995. Other multiple key-frame generation techniques, and a key-frame generation technique based on a measure of fidelity of a set of key-frames are described by H. S. Chang, S. Sull and S. U. Lee, "Efficient video indexing scheme for content-based retrieval," IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems for Video Technology, Vol. 9, No. 8, 1999. The fidelity measure is defined as the Semi-Hausdorff distance (dhs) between the set of key-frames S and the set of frames R in the video sequences. A practical definition of the Semi-Hausdorff distance is as follows.
Let the set Si include of m frames for i=1, . . . , m, and let the set of frames Ri include n frames for I=1, . . . , n. Let the distance between two frames Si and Ri be d(Si, Ri). Define di for each frame Ri asdi=min(d(Sk,Ri)),k=0 . . . m.
Then the Semi-Hausdorff distance between S and R is given bydsh(S,R)=max(di),i=1 . . . n.
In other words, first for all i, measure the distance di between the frame Ri and its best representative in the key-frame set S. Next, find the maximum of the distances di computed above. The distance represents how well the key-frame set S represents R. For a better representation, the Semi-Hausdorff distance between S and R is smaller. For example, in the trivial case, if the sets S and R are identical, then the Semi-Hausdorff distance is zero. On the other hand, a large distance indicates that at least one of the frames in R was not well represented by any of the frames in the key-frame set S.
Most existing dissimilarity measures satisfy the properties required for the distance over a metric space used in the above definition. One can also use a color histogram intersection metric described by M. J. Swain and D. H. Ballard, "Color indexing," J. Computer Vision, vol. 7, no. 1, pp. 11–32, 1991, which is defined as follows.
If the K-bin color histograms of two images fi and fi of size M×N, are Hi and Hj, then the dissimilarity between the two images is given by
      d              (                        f          i                ,                  f          j                    )        =      1    -                  1                  M          ×          N                                            ∑                      k            =            1                    K                                                                    min                                              {                                                                    H                    i                                                                          (                    k                    )                                                  ,                                                      H                    j                                                                          (                    k                    )                                                              }                        .                                                              Note                                                                        that                                                              the                                                              dissimilarity                                                              is                                                              within                                                              the                                                                                range                                                                        [                              0                ,                1                            ]                        .

Method for summarizing a video using motion descriptors

Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratories, Inc.


The invention provides a system that allows logic entities that perform within different browser pages to exchange state information such as variable or data element values between each other. To do so, the system of the invention defines a data element having a value for use by a first application logic entity in a first browser page. The system then dynamically generates a browser page identifier for a second browser page which includes state information such as values for data elements defined in the first browser page. The system then invokes access to the second browser page within a browser using the browser page identifier that was dynamically generated. When the browser loads the second browser page, and logic entity in the second browser page of the invention retrieves the value of the data element from the browser page identifier used by the browser to retrieve the second browser page. State information transferred using a browser page identifier in this manner may include multiple values for multiple data elements. The application logic entities within each browser page can thus manipulate values of data elements in those values can be transferred to other application logic entities in other browser pages via the invention. In this manner, multiple application logic entities that exist in different browser pages can operate collectively as a single software application via the state exchange mechanisms of the invention.

Computer networks such as the Internet provide a variety of different mechanisms that allow a person to perform communications and data processing tasks. One such mechanism is called the World Wide Web or simply "the web." Generally, the World Wide Web comprises a collection of inter-operating client and server software applications which use a suite of data communications protocols to communicate with each other. A typical conventional client software application is a web browser and operates on a client computer system such as a personal computer or workstation under control of a user. The user can operate the web browser to access web pages that conventional server software operating on a server computer system serves to the web browser over a computer network such as the Internet. In some circumstances, a web browser can access or load web pages, documents, files or other information other than those provided by server software. By way of example, a user of a computer can operate a web browser to access web pages or other documents stored locally within a file system (e.g., on a disk) in that user's computer, without the web browser having to interact with a web server in a remote location over a computer network.
A conventional web page may include information formatted in a markup language such as the hypertext markup language (HTML). The web browser can load and interpret an HTML formatted web page in order to display or present to the user any text, graphics, audio, video or other data contained within, or referenced by, the web page. A typical web page can include one or more hypertext links, also referred to simply as "links" or Uniform Resource Locators (URLs) which can reference information not specifically contained within the web page.
A link or URL within a web page can serve a variety of purposes. Generally, however, links operate as location identifiers to reference other data or information not specifically contained within the web page that contains the link. Some links are called embedded links that reference data (e.g., an audio file or a graphic image) that is to be loaded into the web browser in conjunction with the web page, when a web browser accesses the web page containing the embedded link. For instance, an HTML instruction within a web page may contain in embedded link to a graphic file. Many different web pages may each contain an embedded link to the same graphic file. When a web browser loads any one of such web pages, the web browser, during interpretation of the HTML instructions within the web page, detects the embedded link and proceeds to reference and load the graphic image contained in the graphic file referenced by that embedded link. In this manner, the embedded link serves as a location identifier for the graphic image and causes the graphic image data to be incorporated into the view of the web page that the web browser presents to the user.
Other links within a web page may provide navigation functionality for the user of the web browser. For instance, a link within a first web page may reference a second web page. Such a link may not be an embedded link in this sense that a web browser that interprets such a link within a web page may not immediately reference the data or other information (i.e., the second web page in this example) referred to by the link. Instead, the web browser can present, render or otherwise display the link to the user along with the rest of the web page contents. A typical web browser implementation can associate a link to a text phrase, graphic or icon associated with the link. A user of the web browser that invokes the link, for example, via a click of a mouse on the text, graphic or icon associated with the link, causes the web browser to navigate (i.e., to load and obtain) the data referenced by that link. In the instant example then, a user may select the underlined link referencing the second web page, which causes the browser to invoke access to the second web page for display to the user. In this manner, a link can be used to cause a web browser to navigate between web pages. Web browsers often provide other web page navigation features such as BACK and FORWARD buttons that cause the browser to load a next or a previous web page, based on a history of web page location identifiers (e.g., URLs) of web pages that a user has visited (i.e., that the browser has displayed for viewing by the user).
Modern web browser software applications also typically include an ability to process web pages that include logic or programming instructions that can perform complex tasks within the processing environment of a web page provided by the web browser. As an example, most web browser software applications come bundled with (i.e., include an interface to) a Java or JavaScript interpreter (also known as a Java virtual machine or JVM) that allows the web browser to process web pages that include JavaScript. JavaScript is a scripting language that provides functionality much like a programming language within the environment of a web page. For instance, a single web page can include JavaScript statements (i.e., JavaScript commands and/or logic instructions) that can perform complex calculations, data manipulations, graphics processing or other tasks. A web browser typically causes such script processing to occur with the web page containing the JavaScript is loaded into web browser for presentation to a user. Other conventional scripting languages exist as well which operate within the context of a web page loaded into a web browser. An example of another of such scripting languages for use in web pages is VBScript, produced by Microsoft Corporation of Redmond, Wash.
Typical examples of conventional web browser software applications are Netscape Navigator manufactured by Netscape Corporation, of Mountain View, Calif., and Internet Explorer manufactured by Microsoft Corporation.

Methods and apparatus for exchanging information between browser pages


Methods for detecting oil conditions including a top level of an oil in an oil system which is reduced to a top level of a predetermined threshold amount of the oil, a normal oil deterioration which occurs in the absence of water having a confirmed actual remaining usage of the oil, and an abnormal oil deterioration which occurs in the presence of water. The methods include a first preferred embodiment which applies reference and sensing capacitors to obtain a measured temperature compensated electrical property of the oil. From which a quantitatively measured remaining usage is obtained so as to a predicted one for the oil. Therefore, the respective top oil level, or the normal or the abnormal oil deterioration can be concluded according to the measured remaining usage which is respectively larger than, or similar to, or less than the predicted one for the oil. A second preferred embodiment only includes the sensing capacitor for obtaining the measured temperature compensated electrical property of the oil. Variations to the embodiments lead to application of at least two sensing capacitors to monitor an uneven distribution of the oil deterioration or a full range of the level of the oil in the entire oil system.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention is generally related to oil which is used in machinery such as internal combustion engines and electrical transformers, and more particularly related to methods for the on-line detection of the oil level, and the oil deterioration which occurs in the presence or absence of water.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Devices and methods for detecting oil deterioration and oil level are well known. The following 20 patents and published patent applications are the closest prior art references which are related to the present invention.
1. U.S. Pat. No. 4,517,547 issued to Gary et al. on May 14, 1985 for "Water-In-Fuel Sensor Circuit And Method" (hereafter the "Gary Patent");
2. U.S. Pat. No. 4,646,070 issued to Yasuhara et al. on Feb. 24, 1987 for "Oil Deterioration Detector Method And Apparatus" (hereafter the "Yasuhara Patent");
3. U.S. Pat. No. 4,764,258 issued to Kauffman on Aug. 16, 1988 for "Method For Evaluating The Remaining Useful Life Of A Hydrocarbon Oil" (hereafter the "Kauffman Patent");
4. U.S. Pat. No. 5,540,086 issued to Park et al. on Jul. 30, 1996 for "Oil Deterioration Sensor" (hereafter the "Park First Patent");
5. U.S. Pat. No. 5,929,754 issued to Park, et al. on Jul. 27, 1999 for "High Sensitivity Capacitive Oil Deterioration and Level Sensor" (hereafter the "Park Second Patent");
6. U.S. Pat. No. 6,297,733 issued to Park, et al. on Oct. 2, 2001 for "Stable, Reliable Capacitive Oil Deterioration And Level Sensor" (hereafter the "Park Third Patent");
7. U.S. Pat. No. 5,377,531 issued to Gomn on Jan. 3, 1995 for "Portable Oil Change Analyzer" (hereafter the "Gomn Patent");
8. U.S. Pat. No. 4,733,556 issued to Meitzler et al. on Mar. 29, 1988 for "Method And Apparatus For Sensing The Condition of Lubricating Oil In An Internal Combustion Engine" (hereafter the "Meitzler Patent");
9. U.S. Pat. No. 6,278,282 issued to Marszalek on Aug. 21, 2001 for "Method And System For Determining Oil Quality" (hereafter the "Marszalek Patent");
10. U.S. Pat. No. 6,590,402 issued to Wang et al. on Jul. 8, 2003 for "Engine Oil Condition Sensor" (hereafter the "Wang First Patent");
11. U.S. Pat. No. 6,535,001 issued to Wang on Mar. 18, 2003 for "Method and device For Sensing Oil Condition" (hereafter the "Wang Second Patent");
12. U.S. Pat. No. 6,577,112 issued to Lvovich et al. on Jun. 10, 2003 for "Method And Apparatus For On-Line Monitoring Of Quality And/Or Condition of High Resistive Fluids" (hereafter the "Lvovich Patent");
13. U.S. Pat. No. 7,143,867 issued to Chopra on Dec. 5, 2006 for "Electronic Oil Level Detection And Replacement System" (hereafter the "Chopra Patent");
14. United States Patent Application Publication No.: 2006/0232267 issued to Halalay et al. on Oct. 19, 2006 for "Determining Quality Of Lubricating Oils In Use" (hereafter the "Halalay Publication");
15. U.S. Pat. No. 6,718,819 issued to Schoess on Apr. 13, 2004 for "Oil Quality Sensor System, Method and Apparatus" (hereafter the "Schoess Patent");
16. U.S. Pat. No. 6,278,281 issued to Bauer et al. on Aug. 21, 2001 for "Fluid Condition Monitor" (hereafter the "Bauer Patent");
17. U.S. Pat. No. 6,014,894 issued to Herron on Jan. 18, 2000 for "Motor Sensor System" (hereafter the "Herron Patent");
18. U.S. Pat. No. 6,917,865 issued to Arai et al. on Jul. 12, 2005 for "Engine Oil, Degradation-Determining System And Method, And Engine Control Unit" (hereafter the "Arai Patent");
19. United States Patent Application Publication No.: 2006/0114007 issued to Cho on Jun. 1, 2006 for "Apparatus, A method, And Measuring Sensors For Scanning States Of Engine Oil" (hereafter the "Cho Patent"); and
20. China Patent Application Publication No.: 03140986.5 issued to Sun on Dec. 3, 2003 for "Methods For Detecting Deterioration In Oil" (hereafter the "Sun Publication").
The Gary Patent discloses an invention of a water-in-fuel sensor circuit and method. The invention includes a reference capacitor coupled in parallel with a variable capacitor which is immersed in a fuel of a fuel tank, wherein two capacitors are alternately charged and discharged by an oscillator. Water in the fuel will cause increase of the effective capacitance value of the variable capacitor which reduces the absolute magnitude of the current that is detected. The absolute magnitude of the detected current can be utilized to indicate excessive water levels in the fuel.
The Yasuhara Patent illustrates an oil deterioration sensor and method. The oil deterioration sensor is comprised of a voltage divider which is constructed by a sensor capacitor and a fixed capacitor, wherein a constant frequency AC voltage source is applied to the voltage divider. Therefore a developed voltage across the sensor capacitor corresponds to the dielectric constant of the lubrication oil, from which the oil deterioration can be detected. The frequency of the AC voltage ranges from 50 KHz to 500 KHz.
The Kauffman Patent discloses a method for evaluating the remaining useful life of a hydrocarbon oil containing at least one additive species. A voltammetric analysis is applied to test the remaining amount of the additive, which results in amount of the redox current corresponding to the remaining amount of the additive species. Therefore, the remaining useful life can be concluded in accordance with the magnitude of the current.
The Park First Patent discloses an oil deterioration sensor. The sensor includes an oil deterioration sensor capacitor which is constructed with two metal plates, and a total reference capacitor which includes an external fixed reference capacitor. The respective capacitances of the oil deterioration capacitor and the total reference capacitor provide an engine oil deterioration indication for the oil deposited within a gap of the metal plates. The oil deterioration sensor further includes a temperature sensitive resistor thermally connected to a substrate of the sensor for providing a temperature adjustment to the engine oil deterioration indication, and a circuitry utilizing the capacitance of the respective oil deterioration sensor capacitor and the total reference capacitor to generate the engine oil deterioration indication.
The Park Second Patent discloses a combination of a capacitive oil deterioration and oil level sensor. The sensor comprises a conductive cylindrical housing member that includes a conductive shielding member defining a ground electrode, and a conductive inner member defining a measuring electrode. The sensor also includes electronics adapted to generate signals indicative to the deterioration of the oil deposited within a gap of two electrodes and a level of the oil along the length of the cylindrically shaped sensor. The oil level is monitored from detecting a ratio of the capacitance of oil dielectric constant over the capacitance of the oil level as C∈/CL.
The Park third patent discloses a sensor which has a similar main structure as the sensor of the Park Second Patent. In addition, the patented sensor applies electronics including at least one isolating capacitor to eliminate a flow of current between two electrodes that may cause a build up of material on the two electrodes that define the capacitor. This build up of unwanted material may cause an undesirable effect in the sensor output signal. The Park Third Patent further discloses the capacitance C∈ of the oil deterioration and level sensor capacitor is proportional to ∈ times L, where ∈ is the dielectric constant of the oil and L is the length of the inner electrode. Therefor, the oil level affects the length of the inner electrode, which also affects the capacitance of the sensor.
The Gomm Patent discloses a portable oil change analyzer for a laboratory oil test, which is comprised of a viscosity analyzer and a contamination analyzer. The contamination analyzer is based on an optical mechanism, where increase of contaminates in oil results in decrease of a light intensity for an incident light after passing through the oil sample. The oil quality is determined by results from both viscosity and contamination tests.
The Meitzler Patent discloses an oil deterioration sensing system comprising an identical reference capacitor and sampling capacitor immersed in the respective fresh oil and sample oil under test. The system tests change of responded frequencies of the tested oil when both capacitors are under excitation of applied frequencies. Results of the test indicates change of the responded frequencies is consistent with change of the viscosity of the oil which is related to the aging of the oil.
The Marszalek Patent discloses a method for detecting quality of lubricating oil, which includes a sensor having two electrodes. The method includes applying a potential of a first amplitude to the electrodes immersed in an oil in use, testing a first voltage phase lag, increasing amplitude of the potential to a second amplitude, testing a second voltage phase lag. Therefor, the patented invention can determine the quality of the oil based on the voltage phase lags.
The Wang First Patent discloses a method of detecting engine oil if it is contaminated by presence of antifreeze. The method includes applying a series of different voltages to a sensor immersed in an oil in use, testing a corresponded series of the current sensor output voltages, determining a voltage difference between each of the current sensor output voltage relative to a reference voltage. Thereby determining if presenting the antifreeze in the oil after comparing the voltage differences.
The Wang Second Patent discloses a device for testing oil condition including an oil condition sensor having electrodes. The electrodes are separated by a gap that is filled with an engine oil. A processor connected to the sensor can be used to determine if the oil is at a first, second and third stage of oil degradation, which is corresponding to a first, second and third sensor output signal trend.
The Lvovich Patent discloses an apparatus and a method for monitoring a highly electrically resistive fluid. The method includes applying an AC signal that comprises at least two different AC electrical potentials, with at least one AC potential having a none-zero DC offset, measuring the fluid's electrical response including impedance and its real and imaginary components, thereby determining the fluid quality.
The Chopra Patent discloses an invention of electronic oil level and replacement system. The invention is based on the physical phenomenon that a position of a float member is dependent upon an level of the oil. Therefore, a change of the vertical position of the float member will cause a motion of a piston which opens or stops a passage to an oil reservoir. Therefore, the replacement system can work. Following the same mechanism, another float member can activate a lower oil level electric switch or an upper oil level electric switch according to the respective oil level, so that the oil level can be electrically detected.
The Halalay Patent illustrates a method to detect a change of oil resistivity over a period of elapsed times for an oil in use, which is consistent with to a change of the oil viscosity over the time. Therefore, the method can be applied to monitor oil deterioration including a remaining useful life of the oil.
The Schoess Patent discloses an apparatus for determining condition of the engine lubricating oil. The apparatus includes a sensor have a plurality of spaced apart electrode pairs on a nonconductive polymer film. A forcing-function waveform reactive circuit is applied to the sensor input electrode as a common voltage potential. The output current of the sensor output electrode is converted to an equivalent voltage. Based on the voltage values, the sensing apparatus will determine the oil's condition, and will therefore trigger a trouble code if the equivalent voltage falls within a predetermined range.
The Bauer Patent discloses a fluid condition monitor, comprising a capacitive spaced array electrode probe which is immersed in the fluid and is applied by an oscillating voltage. A first frequency of at least one hertz is applied and a corresponded first current of the electrode probe is measured. A second frequency is then applied and a corresponded second current is measured. Therefore a difference between the first and second current can be obtained, which can be used to predicated the fluid condition, as compared with a predetermined threshold value.
The Herron Patent discloses a motor sensor system for detecting the presence of water in a sealed oil chamber of an engine. The sensor system includes a plurality of flat conductive and insulative annular rings which are alternatively sandwiched together to be an assembly. The assembly is mounted on the propeller shaft in the sealed oil chamber of an engine. Each conductive ring is connected to a remote alarm circuit. In addition, the ring includes a plurality of radially inwardly extending probe sections which are circumferentially spaced around the propeller shift. Thus, if water enters the engine in running, a mixture of the oil and water spans one or more of the gaps formed between the complementary probe sections of the conductive element. Therefore, it completes the alarm circuit and provides an operator of the engine a warning of the water in the oil of the engine.
The Arai Patent discloses an engine oil degradation-determining system. The system applies a crankshaft angle sensor which detects the engine rotation speed of an internal combustion engine. Therefore, an electronic device calculates a cumulative revolution number indicative of a degradation degree of the engine oil. An oil level sensor detects an oil level of the engine oil, which is comprised of an upper limit switch and a lower limit switch. Basically, the upper switch monitors the oil level when it reaches a predetermined upper limit, and the lower limit switch monitors the oil level when it reaches a predetermined lower limit. Following this detection mechanism, the invention of the oil level sensor enables to monitor the oil level.
The Cho Patent Application Publication relates to an apparatus, a method, and measuring sensors for scanning engine oil of a vehicle. The invention includes a viscosity sensor which predominantly monitors the oil deterioration, and an oil level sensor which monitor the oil level. The oil level sensor in FIG. 8 has an input electrode 106 having a shape of pipe and installed to have an electric current applied thereto, and an oil level electrode 105 having a shape of a pipe installed apart from the inner surface of the input electrode 106 so as to receive the electric current from the input electrode 106. Therefore, the oil level is calculated on the basis of the capacitance and dielectric constant measured between the oil level electrode 105 and the input electrode 106.
The Sun Patent Application Publication discloses methods for detecting deterioration in oil, comprising a preferred embodiment having a reference and a sensing capacitor. Therefore, variations of electrical properties of the sensing capacitor, which are caused by the temperature variations, can be compensated by the same variations of electrical properties of the reference capacitor. This results in a temperature compensated electrical property of the sensing capacitor, which represents the oil deterioration. Following the same procedure a predicted temperature compensated electrical property profile for the used oil can be established including the property of the respective new oil and spent oil. The profile corresponds to a usage interval having usage of the respective new and spent oil. Therefore, a remaining usage ratio R can be calculated according to the obtained temperature compensated electrical property of the used oil, thereby to determine the remaining usage of the used oil as R times the usage interval. In addition, various methods are disclosed to detect presence of water in oil.
There is a significant need to have methods for detecting oil conditions including a top level of an oil system which is reduced to a top level of a threshold amount of the oil, and oil deterioration which occurs in the absence or presence of water, to significantly improve usage of the oil and protect machines which use the oil.

Methods for detecting oil deterioration and oil level


A method for determining a set of f low paths in a code listing that are most likely to fail comprises the steps of: converting the code listing to a directed acyclic graph representation, the representation including nodes and directed edges, each node representing a basic block of unconditional code statements. The method loads, as facts into a knowledge base, representations of the nodes and edges, and unconditional statements from the basic blocks. The method also loads, as rules into the knowledge base, conditional statements and complexity indicator values for conditional and unconditional statements. Weights are assigned to each node based upon complexity indicator values for statements associated with the node. A determination is then made of a set of flow paths through the code listing, each path ranked in order of assigned weights, those flow paths with larger assigned weights being assumed as those paths most likely to fail.

The creation of software and, in particular, the creation of high quality application software has become increasingly expensive. The failure of an application under unforeseen circumstances can create disastrous results and undermine the market acceptance for the application. As a result, increasing efforts are being given to prerelease testing of application software. Based upon the realization that some aspects of software testing can be automated, the prior art has created a number of products specifically directed to aiding the software development engineer in the testing of an application.
In U.S. Pat. No. 4,885,717 to Beck et al., a "diagramming debugger" creates a graphical representation of a sequence of messages that are sent during the operation of an object-oriented program. The debugger displays representations of the transmitting and receiving objects on a screen to enable the development person to understand the internal functioning of the program. As program operations proceed, a box representing an object is added to the display whenever an object first receives a message. Arrows are drawn on the screen between method symbols within display boxes, providing a graphical representation of the order in which messages are sent. In this manner, the debugger "animates" program operation so as to make the sequence of messages sent and methods performed easier to comprehend.
In U.S. Pat. No. 4,730,315 to Saito et al., a diagrammatic method is disclosed for testing a program that enables interactive operations between the user and the program. In this case, a procedure starts with a diagram produced interactively by the user which is then translated into a source program embodying the diagrammatic specifications. Then, the source program is tested and execution results are displayed which indicate the success or lack of success of the test.
In U.S. Pat. No. 4,833,641 to Lerner, a method is described for converting a program's code listing into a hard copy or a display of the program's logic and control flow. This method enables programs that have been altered and re-altered to be analyzed for their logic and control flow.
The International Business Machines Corporation has offered a software application entitled "Software Analysis Test Tool" which enables the software developer to measure and analyze the effectiveness of testing of an application. The Software Analysis Test Tool can both statically and dynamically analyze an application; analyze the coverage of a test performed on the application, and report on the test's coverage. The Software Analysis Test Tool extracts information from the application's compiler listing and displays a diagram of the application's structure. The "tool" enables the user to browse the diagram to understand the software's structure, identify test case design needs and to locate inefficient and/or unused code. In analyzing an application, the Software Analysis Test Tool uses information from the application's execution history files and simulates the application during run time. It highlights paths in a displayed structure diagram that are exercised or not exercised by the test cases. It also is capable of highlighting source code statements to indicate how frequently each statement is exercised during simulation. In this regard, the Software Analysis Test Tool also measures the extent to which the test data has exercised the application structure and then displays the test coverage results in a graphic format. Summary and detailed reports of test coverage results are also generated.
As indicated by the description of the Software Analysis Test Tool, the charting or graphing of a program's structure is known in the prior art. A control flow graph is a known software chart that models the control structure of a program. It is a directed graph comprising nodes and edges. Each node represents a basic block of sequential program code, whereas edges represent possible control paths between blocks, the traversal of a path being dependent upon a conditional statement at the end of a basic block. A basic block is a sequence of program statements that is entered only via the first statement in the sequence, executed sequentially, and is departed only via the last statement.
A directed acyclic graph (DAG) is a control flow graph in which the lines (or arcs or links) that connect nodes have arrows attached that indicate the direction of control flow traversal. Acyclic refers to the lack of cycles (loops) in the graph. Each node has, at most, two branches (edges) that connect to two subsidiary modes. Nodes with two subsidiary nodes have a true or false condition associated with one edge and a complementary condition associated with the other edge.
Normally in a flow graph, there is a unique start node where the graph is entered and a terminal node which is a unique node for exiting the graph. There may be a plurality of terminal nodes depending upon the control flow of the program. All nodes of the flow graph are reachable from the start node. In certain cases, more than one start and terminal node are provided for in the control flow.
Traversal of a sequence of edges in a DAG is called a "walk", and a "path" is defined as a walk through the graph beginning at a start node and ending at a terminal node.
An expert system, a form of which is employed by the invention described herein, is a software application that performs functions in a manner similar to that of a human who is expert in the field. An expert system can solve problems by drawing inferences from a collection of available rules and facts. Expert systems generally have two parts: a knowledge base and an inference engine. The knowledge base is a data base that holds specific facts and rules about the subject under consideration. The inference engine is a part of the expert system that uses the contents of the knowledge base to find an object in the knowledge base that matches a desired format or characteristic.
Inference engines employ various search techniques, e.g., forward-chaining - which is a method of traversing a network of logical AND's and OR's until a terminal point or goal is reached; backward-chaining which is the reverse of forward-chaining where the inference engine begins with a goal and requests information to confirm or deny it, etc. Expert systems/knowledge-bases are available commercially, e.g., The Integrated Reasoning Shell (TIRS) from the International Business Machines Corp; AION, from AION Inc., etc.
Even with the availability of prior art systems for program debugging and testing, the increasing complexity of application software indicates the necessity of providing further automated aids to the software engineer that will enable the identification of error-prone portions of code.
Accordingly, it is an object of this invention to provide a rule-based method for testing programming segments wherein segments that are prone to failure are identified automatically.
It is a further object of this invention to provide an improved method for testing programming segments that enables a series of heuristics to be used to determine the probability of failure of a segment.
It is still another object of this invention to provide a method for program analysis testing that automatically identifies a set of program paths most susceptible to failure.

Rule-based method for testing of programming segments


A method is described which uses a CMP slurry with an abrasive of spherical particles to lift-off photoresist used in the patterning of the sensor for a magnetic transducer. The spherical particles, preferably less than 0.015 microns, are preferably silica, alumina, titania or zirconia with colloidal silica being preferred. An alternative method of fabricating a CPP sensor structure according to the invention deposits a dielectric or CMP resistant metal over the hard bias structure. The CMP-resistant metal is preferably selected from the group consisting of rhodium, chromium, vanadium and platinum. A CMP resistant mask deposited over the dielectric or CMP-resistant metal can include an optional adhesion layer such as tantalum followed by a DLC layer. The CMP-assisted lift-off of the photoresist and the excess materials is executed at this point. The photoresist used to protect the selected area of the sensor structure is lifted-off using the slurry.

The read and write head portions of the slider for use in a typical prior art magnetic disk recording system are built-up in layers using thin film processing techniques. In the typical process of fabricating thin film magnetic transducers, a large number of transducers are formed simultaneously on a wafer. After the basic structures are formed the wafer is cut into rows or individual transducers.
The magnetic sensor can be any one of various types including tunnel-junction (TMR) and spin valves. In TMR and some spin valves designs the current in the sensor flows perpendicular to the film (CPP). The fabrication problems for TMR and CPP spin valves sensors are different than for those where current flows in the plane of the film (CIP). FIG. 1 illustrates selected components in a TMR head 10 as viewed from the ABS. In CPP sensors the lower electrical lead 22 is also the magnetic shield S1. The upper electrical lead 23 is also the magnetic shield S2. The hard bias layer structure 16 which conventionally abuts the sensor must be electrically insulated from the sensor and the S1 shield. The hard bias structures are, therefore, sandwiched between two dielectric layers such as alumina 15, 17. The section of the head shown in FIG. 1 is along the plane which will become the air-bearing surface after further processing. The track centerline is shown on the ABS passing over the sensor structure perpendicular to the plane of the thin films. The ABS is exposed after the fabrication of the thin film structures by cutting the wafer.
Lift-off patterning is a general process that is used to define structures on the surface of a wafer. The lift-off process typically involves the deposition of resist material, followed by a sequence of other processes, including exposure, development, metal or dielectric deposition, and subsequent removal of the resist protective layer along with the unwanted materials deposited on top of the resist, in order to pattern a structure on a substrate. A CMP-assisted lift-off process uses a slurry with abrasive particles assisted by a low-pressure chemical mechanical polishing technique. The typical CMP lift-off slurry also includes surfactants and corrosion inhibitors.
FIG. 2 illustrates a section of wafer 11 on which a plurality of partially completed CPP magnetic heads are being manufactured according to the prior art. The phase of the fabrication process represented in FIG. 2 is when the track width of the sensor structure 14 is defined, i.e., the width of sensor structure perpendicular to the track centerline. The sensor 14 and diamond-like carbon (DLC) layer 63 have been deposited and patterned and the refill materials which form the structures at the sides of the sensor have been deposited. Since multiple materials are used in this refilling process, it is referred to as a "refill stack." The first layer of the refill stack is a dielectric such as alumina 15. The hard bias structure 16 in this example consists of three layers: chromium (Cr), a hard ferromagnetic material and tantalum (Ta). The hard bias structure 16 is followed by a second dielectric layer such as alumina 17. A thin tantalum layer 18 and a DLC layer 19 complete the layers at the selected state of the process. The portion of the dielectric layer 15 deposited on the side of sensor 14 is critical since it acts to insulate the electrically conductive hard bias materials from the sensor. After the refill materials have been deposited, a chemical-mechanical polishing (CMP) is used to lift-off the photoresist (not shown) and the unneeded portions deposited films. Current slurries used in photoresist lift-off for magnetic heads have abrasive particle sizes around 0.15 microns.
The prior art CMP process has been partially executed in FIG. 2 to illustrate the initial stages of damage that can occur during the process. The DLC and Ta layers at the edge of the sensor have failed in that they have been completely removed when they ideally should survive the CMP. The DLC is intended to be CMP resistant, but can fail. The failure of the DLC layer results in the erosion of the edges of the upper dielectric 17, the hard bias structure 16 and the lower dielectric 15 since they are relatively fragile. In FIG. 3 the areas 26A, 26B next to the sensor 14 illustrates more severe damage that can occur during the CMP process where the lower dielectric layer 15 has been eroded exposing the side surface of the sensor 14 which means that the head will be defective. The process window in the prior art for the CMP lift-off process after deposition of the refill stack is too small for reliable, high yield manufacturing and results in frequent damage to critical structures next to the sensor.
In U.S. Pat. No. 6,554,878 to Dill, Jr., et al., a slurry is described for chemically-mechanically polishing copper, alumina and nickel iron to a common plane. The slurry includes colloidal silica, potassium and/or sodium persulfate and ammonium persulfate. The concentrations are tailored to chemically-mechanically polish alumina and nickel iron at the same rate or to chemically-mechanically polish the copper at the same rate as the other materials to the same plane.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,669,983 to Kagami, et al. describes a manufacturing method for a thin-film magnetic head with an MR structure in which a current flows in a direction perpendicular to surfaces of layers of the MR structure. Various embodiments are described in which CMP is used to planarize the wafer. In one embodiment the insulation film which is deposited at the sides of the MR structure is flattened by CMP until at least upper surface of the MR multi-layered structure is exposed. In another embodiment the photoresist on top of the MR structure is left in place when the insulating film is deposited, then CMP is used to partially planarize the wafer removing the insulating material from above the photoresist, but leaving the photoresist itself. The remaining photoresist is then removed by solvent. The slurry described in Kagami '983 consists of colloidal silica, cerium oxide, corundum, boron nitride, diamond, chromium oxide, iron oxide, fumed silica, alumina and zeolite, or of a mixture containing one of colloidal silica, cerium oxide, corundum, boron nitride, diamond, chromium oxide, iron oxide, fumed silica, alumina and zeolite may be additionally used. The slurry has an average particle diameter of 100 nm or less, preferably 50 nm or less, more preferably 10 nm or less.
What is needed is an improved slurry and method for its use in photoresist lift-off when fabricating the structures in magnetic heads.

Method for fabricating a magnetic transducer using a slurry with spherical particles for CMP-assisted photoresist lift-off

Hitachi Global Storage Technologies Netherlands B.V.


A hand-held feeder for fasteners having a head and a shank comprises a handle configured to contain fasteners and a channel extending from the handle, the channel having a free end and a support slit extending from the free end toward the handle. The support slit is wider than the fastener shanks but narrower than the heads, so that when fasteners emerging from the handle encounter the slit, the shanks will drop down through the, slit while the heads remain accessible within the channel. The channel is designed to provide unobstructed access to the heads of fasteners having shanks extending through the slit.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to the use of headed fasteners such as screws and nails, and in particular to devices for feeding such fasteners into a use-ready orientation.
2. Description of the Related Art
Automated devices for installing fasteners such as screws and bolts typically utilize feeder mechanisms that place the fasteners into an appropriate orientation for affixation. Frequently, the fasteners are carried on a tape (U.S. Pat. No. 4,199,014) or in a package (U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,007,834 and 1,556,240) for presentation to the automated assembly device, which sequentially drives a fastener into its intended location and advances the carrier to the next fastener.
This approach adds expense (not only in the form of the carrier itself, but in the need to properly attach the fasteners to the carrier), and may not be well-suited to larger fasteners. Furthermore, these types of carriers do not lend themselves well to manual applications, where a user repeatedly installs fasteners by hand. The maneuvers necessary to orient a loose fastener properly for installation can, if repeated persistently, prove fatiguing under the best of conditions. In cold weather, especially if gloves are worn, the handling of individual fasteners--bringing them from a container into position for affixation, and maintaining this position until the fastener is driven--can be particularly awkward and time-consuming.
A need exists, therefore, for a hand-held feeder for fasteners such as screws and nails, and which repeatedly and conveniently delivers fasteners into position for sequential affixation.


A method for measuring a dimension of a pattern formed on a sample using a secondary electron image obtained by picking up an image of the sample using a scanning electron microscope includes: obtaining a secondary electron image of a sample by picking up an image of the sample using a scanning electron microscope; creating, using the secondary electron image, an image profile of a pattern whose dimension is to be measured, within the obtained secondary electron image; retrieving a model profile that matches best with the created image profile from a plurality of model profiles prestored that are obtained from respective secondary electron images of a plurality of patterns, the cross sections of the plurality of patterns being of known shapes and dimensions and being different in shape; and obtaining a dimension of the pattern using information of the retrieved model profile.

The present invention relates in general to an electron microscope of the types used for measuring a dimension of a fine pattern formed on a semiconductor substrate, and, more particularly, the invention relates to a scanning electron microscope having the function of calculating measurement data associated with a dimension measuring position in a cross section of a pattern.
In semiconductor wafer manufacturing processes, finer design of multilayer thin-film patterns formed on a wafer has been advancing rapidly, and process monitoring to monitor whether or not the patterns are formed as designed is becoming increasingly important. According to the 2002 edition of the ITRS (International Technology Roadmap for Semiconductors), which shows a roadmap for finer patterns of semiconductors, it is anticipated that the wiring pattern width of a transistor gate, where the finest pattern on a semiconductor wafer is formed, will become approximate 25 nm or less in about 2007. Therefore, it is necessary to have the ability to accurately measure such a fine pattern at a semiconductor manufacturing site from now on.
Scanning electron microscopes for use in pattern width measurement (measuring SEM (Scanning Electron Microscope), or a CD (Critical Dimension) SEM) that can pick up the image of a pattern under a hundred thousand to two hundred thousand magnifications, have conventionally been employed as a dimension measurement tool for measuring the width of a fine pattern in the order of several tens of nanometers. Patent Reference 1 (JP-A No. 11-316115) describes an example of dimension measurement processing employing such a scanning electron microscope. In this example, a pattern dimension is calculated as the distance between the left and right measuring points detected in an image profile created from a part area in the picked-up image of a pattern under measurement by averaging a signal wave of the pattern in the longitudinal direction of the pattern.
In addition to this, a method for measuring pattern dimensions by verifying the image profile of a pattern to be measured against a library of image profiles of various cross-sectional shapes that have been created beforehand with an electron beam simulation is disclosed in Non-Patent Reference 2 (A Simulation Study of Repeatability and Bias in the CD-SEM. J. S. Villarrubia et al., Metrology, Inspection, and Process Control for Microlithography XVII. pp. 138).
At the time of measuring a pattern of a semiconductor, which is likely to become increasingly finer, it can be considered that the measuring position in the cross-sectional shape of the pattern will become important from now on. For example, at the time of measuring the width of the wiring pattern of a transistor gate, since the bottom dimension of the wiring pattern of the gate largely affects characteristics of the transistor, it is necessary to accurately control the width of the bottom at the manufacturing site. Thus, from now on, it is necessary to perform manufacturing control using a dimension measurement value corresponding to a measuring position in the cross-sectional shape of the pattern.
However, in employing a dimension measurement method using conventional technology, a pattern dimension is calculated as the distance between the left and right measuring points detected in an image profile created from the picked-up image of the pattern under measurement. Methods for detecting pattern edges from the image profile include a method of specifying a height position on the image profile and a method of specifying a point of a specific slope on the image profile. However, in these methods, since a measuring position is determined from only the obtained image profile information, there is no clear correlation between a measuring position detected from the image profile and a measuring position in the cross-sectional shape of the pattern.
Methods for measuring a clear measuring point in the cross-sectional shape of a pattern currently include a method of observing a cross-section of a cut semiconductor wafer with a scanning electron microscope, etc., and a method of observing with an AFM (Atomic Force Microscope). However, there is a disadvantage have in that it is costly and time-consuming to perform these methods.
Further, in the method for measuring pattern dimensions by verifying the image profile of a pattern to be measured against a library of image profiles of various cross-sectional shapes that have been created beforehand with an electron beam simulation, as disclosed in non-patent document 1, the ability to obtain a dimension corresponding to the cross-sectional shape of the pattern has not been achieved at this time. Further, measuring dimensions with the method disclosed in non-patent document 1 is based on the assumption that models of various dimensions and shapes have been prepared in large quantities, whereas there is a problem in that dimension measurement cannot be performed with high accuracy in the case of a small number of models.


In one aspect, a system includes a conventional, film-based X-ray machine and a digital imaging assembly. The X-ray machine includes an X-ray source and a bracket assembly configured to hold X-ray film. The digital imaging assembly is configured to be mounted on the bracket assembly of the X-ray machine. The digital imaging assembly includes a scintillation screen and a digital image sensor. The digital image sensor is coupled with one or more processors that is configured to receive user input that selects a mode of operation from between a still image capture mode and a video capture mode, receive digital signals from the digital image sensor, process the digital signals to generate digital X-ray image data in accordance with the selected mode of operation, and present the generated digital X-ray image data on a display device.

This specification relates to an X-ray imaging system.
Conventional diagnostic X-ray machines capture static X-ray images of an object on X-ray film. An X-ray source is used to generate X-rays that illuminate the X-ray film plane upon which the object is positioned at a known distance from the X-ray source. The X-ray generator exposes the object and the X-ray film. After exposure, the X-ray film is treated in a series of chemical baths to produce an X-ray image of the object. A light box is typically used to view the X-ray image.

Digital X-ray imaging system with still and video capture modes


A device for locking movable objects, such as all terrain vehicles, in place. The device comprises an anchor member engageable with an embracing member where the embracing member embraces the object to be locked in place and engages the anchor member. The embracing member is locked with the anchor member with a lock. The anchor member can be inserted into the ground or fixedly attached to an immovable object thereby securing the invention in place.

1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to a device and method for locking objects in place. More specifically, the invention relates to a device and method for locking all terrain vehicles in place.
2. Prior Art
For owners of all terrain vehicles, as well as other types of small, mobile objects, a common problem is preventing theft of these objects. Generally, these movable objects are too large or too cumbersome to be placed in a garage or other protected area. Many owners simply leave these object in their yards, believing they will not be stolen. However, thieves often walk right in and steal the objects, and in the case of all terrain vehicles, the thieves just drive off with no trace. Obviously, efforts such as chaining the objects are not effective because thieves can simply cut the chains or pick the locks because of the easy access to the locking apparatus.


In a motorcycle provided with a water-cooling type engine mounted to a lower portion of a motorcycle body, a radiator unit is arranged in front of the engine. The radiator unit is disposed so as to cover the front wheel and a cylinder head of the cylinder assembly from a front side thereof and is connected to the engine through a hose, the radiator unit has a vertically rectangular shape in an elevational section and is mounted to the motorcycle body through a rotational shaft extending vertically on lateral one side of the radiator unit in a traveling direction of the motorcycle, so that another one side one thereof is swung forward around the rotational shaft.

For example, generally, a scooter-type motorcycle has a specific structure such that an entire structure of a vehicle body of the motorcycle is covered by a body cover, a body portion between a handle and a front portion of a rider's seat is downwardly bent largely in almost U-shape to form a foot moving space in a width direction of the vehicle body of the motorcycle, and a low-floor type foot step on which rider's foot are rested is formed to the bottom of this U-shaped bent portion on each lateral side.
In the case of a scooter-type motorcycle having a small size, its engine is generally arranged below a rider's seat, but in the case of a scooter-type motorcycle having a medium or large size, it is necessary to mount a large-sized power unit including an engine, and for this reason, the engine is generally disposed below a foot-step.
On the other hand, in accordance with a requirement for mounting a large-sized engine, many vehicles and motorcycles have been equipped with water-cooling (-cooled) engines in order to achieve stable cooling performance and noise reducing performance. In addition, a radiator or radiator unit for cooling a cooling water is arranged directly behind a front wheel of the motorcycle to maximally utilize a traveling wind.
However, in the arrangement in which the engine is disposed below the foot-step and the radiator unit is disposed directly behind the front wheel, a head portion of the engine takes a position near the radiator unit. Thus, it becomes difficult to carry out, for example, maintenance working such as exchanging of an ignition plug of a cylinder head in a working space behind the radiator unit.
The present invention was conceived in consideration of the circumstances mentioned above, and an object of the present invention is to provide a radiator unit of a motorcycle capable of providing a working space behind the radiator unit for easily performing maintenance working in the space.

Radiator device for two-wheeled motor vehicle


A method and an apparatus for deriving a device-specific value from a physical unclonable function realized on a device are provided. Categorization information items are allocated to responses derived from challenges. The categorization information items are derived from statistical variations. The device-specific value may be processed further as a key bit or as an identifier.

The present embodiments relate to deriving a device-specific value from a physical unclonable function.
Physical unclonable functions are known for the purpose of reliably identifying objects based on intrinsic physical properties. A physical property of an article (e.g., a semiconductor circuit) is used as an individual fingerprint in this context. A physical unclonable function has a challenge applied to the physical unclonable function and delivers a response that, when cloning the device, is meant to be ungeneratable when the same challenge is applied. A response is meant to be unpredictable and hence not able, even if the challenge is known, to be produced on another, cloned circuit. Hence, authentication may be achieved by the physical unclonable function (e.g., by virtue of a response or a value derived therefrom), such as a cryptographic key, being able to be generated only if there is access to the unaltered, unmanipulated circuit with the physical unclonable function implemented thereon.
Similarly, a physical unclonable function may be used to test whether a device or semiconductor circuit is an original product. In this case, too, a response is evaluated, for example, that may not be generated on a cloned or manipulated device or semiconductor circuit.
In the context of cryptographic security mechanisms, there is provision for the use of physical unclonable functions in order to avoid storing a cryptographic key in a memory or manually inputting the key. The production of a cryptographic key by applying a challenge to a physical unclonable function is a secure key memory.
In the context of the production of cryptographic keys and when using a physical unclonable function for checking identity or testing originality, a device-specific or hardware-specific identifier is to be provided in reproducible form.
The prior art includes physical unclonable functions or challenges that are applied to the physical unclonable function being tested in an initialization phase for their suitability for use for key derivation or authenticity testing. In this context, it is, for example, generally known practice to use a static random access memory (SRAM) physical unclonable function (PUF). An initial state of memory cell is used as a device-specific property. This requires a check to determine which memory cells are stable. Only stable cells are used for the subsequent ascertainment of a key or identifier.
The use of physical unclonable functions for producing cryptographic keys involves the use of Fuzzy Key Extractors, which use auxiliary data records to perform an error correction code method. Production of the auxiliary data is complex, and auxiliary data records that are produced are to be stored in suitable memory chips. This provides reproducible and secure generation of a cryptographic key. At the same time, the auxiliary data is to not contain a reference to the key, so that an error correction code is complex to produce.
Regardless of whether production of a device-specific cryptographic key or identifier involves the use of the raw response values from a physical unclonable function or of post-processed responses, the problem frequently arises in practice that the bit values obtained for a physical unclonable function have a bias (e.g., tend predominantly either toward bit values of 0 or toward bit values of 1). The information-theoretic entropy per data bit is thus less than 1 bit. The post-processing of responses from a physical unclonable function requires more data as input than may be attained as output. To achieve a particular level of security, a complex post-processing method is thus also provided for the entropy per data bit. If a PUF configuration has a strong tendency in the responses toward one bit value (e.g., a tendency toward 0 for the bits of a multibit response), then it is easier to guess keys, and the security of a cryptographic method is reduced. Distinction between different devices or an integrity check accordingly also requires the same bit pattern to be prevented from appearing repeatedly.


Magazine block device for firearm dry fire practice which allows a user to practice proper firearm handling skills without expending ammunition, including recocking and actuating the firearm slide without pressing the slide lock release. In an aspect, a magazine block device is provided having a bullet-shaped body, two upper ridges forming a longitudinal channel through which the firearm breach face loading tab may pass without dislodging the magazine block device, and an offset lower ridge. The lower ridge is configured to evenly force a magazine follower down a sufficient distance to prevent actuation of the firearm slide lock. This allows dry fire practice of pulling the slide. Several other features include ridges to assist a user to remove and load the block device in and out of a magazine, as well as a pocket to mechanically remove same.

Dry fire practice involves manipulating and using the weapon without loading it. The technique is often used to simulate actual firing of the firearm when there is not a suitable place to practice with live ammunition. The user may handle, aim, pull the trigger, pull the slide and/or cock the firearm during such practice. Dry fire exercises are a versatile and safe way to practice with firearms and improve one's shooting skills. Historically safety or "dummy" rounds have been used to simulate proper loading, reloading, and quick trigger engagement after reloading. However it is laborious and time consuming to load the practice magazine and then have to retrieve the ejected safety rounds from the ground. Most pistols use magazines featuring a spring loaded follower. When the magazine is emptied, the follower engages a slide lock which prevents travel of the slide until a new, loaded magazine is inserted. While this functionality is useful for quickly reloading the firearm during live firing, it hampers practicing with the firearm because the operator must disengage the slide lock after insertion of a fresh magazine. If that magazine is empty the spring loaded follower prevents the disengagement of the slide stop. As mentioned above the historic use of safety rounds is problematic.
Some pistols, such as the Smith & Wesson M&P9c pistol (available from Smith & Wesson Corp. of Springfield, Mass.), contain a magazine safety. Such pistols cannot function without a magazine, preventing the most basic practice of cycling the slide to cock the firearm and then pulling the trigger. Using an empty magazine automatically locks the slide back with each cycle, which hinders the drill. Thus use of safety rounds is very inefficient.
Devices are known which facilitate using a firearm to practice.
U.S. Pat. No. 119,357, issued to A. C. Hobbs on Sep. 26, 1871, discloses a black cartridge containing no gun powered. The cartridge includes a rubber disk positioned at the rear of the cartridge casing. During dry fire practice, the Hobbs blank is chambered and the disk absorbs blows from the firing pin, allowing the user to simulate some firing actions.
Improvements on the Hobbs blank are known, such as the firearm snap cap disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,435,090 issued to J. E. Darrow on Jul. 25, 1995. The snap cap is also designed to be chambered and consists of a bore cleaning brush attached to a unit body having a diameter equal to the diameter of ammunition used with the firearm.
While the Hobbs blank, the Darrow snap cap, and other types of chamber-able simulated ammunition may be used during dry fire practice, such practice ammunition may be expelled prematurely if the firearm's round ejection mechanisms are simulated (e.g., pulling a pistol slide back when a practice round is in the chamber). Thus, practicing actuating the firearm slide, reloading the firearm magazine, and other techniques may be difficult and/or require multiple rounds of practice ammunition.
Other safety devices are known, such as the magazine block device disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 7,240,449 issued to N. E. Clifton on Jul. 10, 2007. The Clifton magazine block is designed to be inserted into a magazine and, when the magazine is loaded into a rifle, the magazine block occupies the loading chamber, thereby preventing live rounds of ammunition from being loaded while still allowing the user to practice with the rifle. Some designs of the Clifton magazine block impede full motion of the firearm slide and/or charging handle.
Given the foregoing, what are needed are devices which allow a user to conduct dry fire practice drills with a firearm, including magazine removal are reload exercises.