A system and method for order packing forms a mixed pallet or a mixed multi-pack. In this system, a first embodiment utilizes a high volume module, a low volume module, a sorting and packing module, a prepackage module and a mixed palletizer module for picking, sorting, packaging and palletizing articles. In a second embodiment of the present invention, a bulk load can be fed via a carrousel to a bank of elevators. A transfer device will load different levels of the elevators which can then be moved adjacent a discharge conveyor. A lane is provided in this discharge conveyor for each of the elevators in the bank of elevators. The different levels of the elevators are positioned adjacent the lanes and can discharge articles onto the conveyor in order to form groups of the same or different types of articles. Many different types of articles including beverage containers such as cans, bottles or beverage boxes can use this system. A pallet is formed from the same or different sized package and different varieties of articles can be placed within a single package.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a system and method for order packing to form a mixed pallet and a mixed multi-pack. In addition, the present invention relates to a system and method for reducing storage requirements and for forming a design in a stack of articles. The present system and method are contemplated for use with beverage containers.
2. Description of the Background Art
Various order packing methods and systems are known in the art. These systems, however, do not provide great flexibility and do not readily accommodate different sized packages on a pallet. Moreover, with conventional method and systems, it is difficult to customize orders.
In current manufacturing systems, such as a bottling plant for beverage containers, the system is operated with the object of filling a warehouse. Orders are packed from the stock within the warehouse and to therefore meet customer orders, a large inventory is needed. Such beverage containers can include bottles, cans or single serve beverage boxes (such as juice boxes). This leads to increased storage requirements and increased costs.
Also, in current systems for manufacturing beverage containers, for example, the units are stored based on stock keeping units. For example, one flavor of beverage would be stored in six packs, twelve packs, twenty-four packs, etc. The base unit of each of these stock keeping units would be a can of soda for example, but the need to store different sized packages of each soda has lead to an increase in demand for storage space.
Accordingly, a need in the art exists for a simple and effective system and method for order packing. This system should change the production process such that orders are assembled just before they are shipped in order to reduce storage requirements and costs. In other words, there is a need for a production process to be order driven rather than driven by the need to maximize the amount of product warehoused. Also, there is a need in the art to simplify the storage requirements such that items can be stored on the bases of a flavor type, for example, rather than as a stock keeping unit. This need goes hand in hand with a need to reduce current inventory requirements.


It is to provide a lithium ion capacitor having a high energy density, a high output density, a large capacity and high safety.

In recent years, a battery using a carbon material such as graphite as a negative electrode and using a lithium-containing metal oxide such as LiCoO2 as a positive electrode, has been proposed. This battery is a so-called rocking chair battery such that after it is assembled, lithium ions are supplied from the lithium-containing metal oxide as the positive electrode to the negative electrode by charging, and the negative electrode lithium ions are returned to the positive electrode by discharging. This battery is called a lithium ion secondary battery since no lithium metal is used for the negative electrode but only lithium ions are involved in the charge and discharge, and the battery is distinguished from a lithium battery using lithium metal. This battery is characterized with a high voltage, a large capacity and high safety.
Further, as concern for environmental problems is increasing, storage system for clean energy by solar power generation or wind power generation, and power sources for electric automobiles and hybrid electric automobiles which replace gasoline-powered vehicle, have been actively developed. Further, along with the tendency to high quality and high functionality of on-vehicle apparatus and equipment such as power windows and IT devices in recent years, a new power source has been required in view of the energy density and the output density.
As a storage device to be used for such an application which requires a high energy density and high output characteristics, attention has been paid to a storage device called a hybrid capacity comprising a combination of storage principles of a lithium ion secondary battery and an electric double layer capacitor in recent years. As one example, an organic electrolyte capacitor has been proposed (for example, Patent Document 1) in which as a negative electrode, carbon material obtained in such a manner that lithium ions are preliminarily made to be absorbed and supported (hereinafter sometimes referred to as doping) by a carbon material capable of absorbing and releasing lithium ions by a chemical or electrochemical method to lower the negative electrode potential, is used, whereby the energy density can be significantly increased.
Such an organic electrolyte capacitor is expected to show high performance, but has drawbacks such that when lithium ions are preliminarily supported on the negative electrode, the supporting requires a very long time, and it tends to be difficult to make lithium ions be uniformly supported by the entire negative electrode. Particularly, for a large-size, large capacity cell such as a cylindrical apparatus having electrodes wound or a rectangular battery having a plurality of electrodes laminated, it has been considered to be hardly used practically.
To solve such problems, an organic electrolyte battery has been proposed (for example, Patent Document 2), wherein each of a positive electrode current collector and a negative electrode current collector has pores penetrating from the front surface to the back surface, a negative electrode active material is capable of reversibly supporting lithium ions, and lithium ions are supported by the negative electrode by electrochemical contact with lithium metal disposed to face the negative electrode or the positive electrode.
In the organic electrolyte battery in which the electrode current collector has pores penetrating from the front surface to the back surface, lithium ions can move from the front surface to the back surface of the electrode without being blocked by the electrode current collector. Thus, even in a storage device having a cell structure with a large number of electrodes being laminated, it is possible to make lithium ions be electrochemically supported by not only a negative electrode disposed in the vicinity of lithium metal but also a negative electrode disposed distant from lithium metal, via the through-pores.
Further, Patent Document 2 discloses a cell structure of the above organic electrolyte battery using a positive electrode and a negative electrode. FIG. 8 illustrates the cell structure of the above battery wherein lithium metal is provided on the lower portion of an electrode laminate unit. As shown in the drawing, in this cell, positive electrodes 1 formed on a positive electrode current collector 1a and negative electrodes 2 formed on a negative electrode current collector 2a are alternately laminated with a separator 3 interposed therebetween to constitute an electrode laminate unit 6, each of the upper and lower outermost portions of the electrode laminate unit 6 is a negative electrode 2′, and lithium metal 4 is disposed to face the lower negative electrode 2′. As the electrodes, the electrodes 1 and 2 in the main portion of the electrode laminate unit 6 are ones having electrode layers on both sides of the current collectors 1a and 2a, and the negative electrodes 2′ disposed at the outermost portions of the electrode laminate unit 6 are ones having an electrode layer only on one side. Even when the outermost portion of the electrode laminate unit 6, to which no lithium metal 4 is disposed, is a positive electrode, similarly one having an electrode layer only on one side is used for this positive electrode.
As mentioned above, in a conventional cell, an electrode having an electrode layer only on one side of a current collector is used for each of the outermost electrodes of the electrode laminate unit constituting the cell. The reason will be explained with reference to FIG. 9. FIG. 9 is a schematic cross section illustrating the outermost portion of a conventional organic electrolyte battery. As shown in the drawing, an electrode layer 14 formed on one side "a" of a current collector 13 (having through pores) has a counter electrode layer 15, whereby the electrode layer 14 undergoes charge and discharge together with the counter electrode layer 15. However, since it has no counter electrode layer on the outside surface b (outermost portion), if an electrode layer 14′ (imaginary line) is formed on the outside surface b, this electrode layer 14′ also undergoes charge and discharge together with the counter electrode layer 15 on the one side "a" via the through pores, and thus a load corresponding to the electrode layer 14 and the electrode layer 14′ on both sides of the current collector 13 is applied to the counter electrode layer 15. Therefore, in a case where the outermost electrode is a positive electrode having electrode layers on both sides of the current collector 13, a load corresponding to the positive electrode layers on both sides is applied to one side of the counter negative electrode, whereby the negative electrode potential tends to be low, and lithium metal tends to be deposited, thus causing short circuit. In a conventional organic electrolyte battery, in order to avoid the above phenomenon, the outermost electrode portion is an electrode having no electrode layer 14′ on the outside surface b i.e. having an electrode layer 14 only on one side "a" of the current collector 13.
Patent Document 1: JP-A-8-107048
Patent Document 2: WO98/033227

Abstract: A lithium ion capacitor comprising a positive electrode, a negative electrode and an aprotic organic solvent solution of a lithium salt as an electrolytic solution, wherein a positive electrode active material is a material capable of reversibly supporting lithium ions and anions, a negative electrode active material is a material capable of reversibly supporting lithium ions, and the potentials of the positive electrode and the negative electrode are at most 2.0 V after the positive electrode and the negative electrode are short-circuited, characterized in that the positive electrode and the negative electrode are respectively made by forming electrode layers by the positive electrode active material and the negative electrode active material on both sides of a positive electrode current collector and a negative electrode current collector each having pores penetrating from the front surface to the back surface, the capacitor has such a cell structure that the positive electrode and the negative electrode are wound or laminated, and the outermost portion of the wound or laminated electrodes is the negative electrode.


A method for cataloging and reporting Internet merchant data uses a data center for receiving a plurality of site activity messages regarding two or more seller sites and provides a standardized taxonomy schema with a node for each of two or more products. The method derives from the plurality of site activity messages a sales metric for the two or more products and for a specific time period, aggregates the sales metric data for each of the two or more seller sites and the two or more products, then derives a comparative report for the sales metric for the two or more seller sites, by reference to at least one of the two or more products in the standardized taxonomy schema.

Access to real time sales and competitive information enables merchants to make informed decisions on product positioning and/or price that will optimize their businesses' performance. Today, merchants typically utilize tools that provide incomplete information on a merchant's own sales performance and little or no information on how the merchant is performing against its competition. Tools that enable merchants to analyze pricing and channel sensitivity and compare their sales results with competitors on a product, category, or seasonality basis are useful to improve profitability of the merchant. Further, given the plethora of marketing approaches, such as pay-per-click advertising, direct mail, search engine optimization, free shipping promotions, e-mail newsletters, and leveraging dominant marketplaces such as Yahoo, eBay or Amazon, merchants require tools that can objectively analyze sales data and provide actionable advice to improve the merchant's sales and profitability.
Today, online merchants use a variety of tools to track their business performance, including accounting systems (e.g., QuickBooks), web traffic reporting software (e.g., Google Analytics, WebSideStory, WebTrends, and DeepMetrix LiveStats), pay-per-click keyword performance (e.g. Google Adwords and Yahoo Overture), as well as reports from their eCommerce shopping cart software (e.g., osCommerce, VP-ASP, StoreFront.net). In addition, if a merchant uses a marketplace such as eBay, it can use the reporting tools for that marketplace.
Larger merchants can use sales analytics and customer profile services (e.g., CoreMetrics, WebSideStory HBX, WebTrends Enterprises, and Omniture). However, only CoreMetrics provides competitive analytics, but in a manner limited to comparing a merchant's results against others at a very high product category level such as General Merchandise or Apparel. If a merchant sells specialty items (e.g., pest control mole chasers) or if a merchant has a large amount of sales in multiple product categories (such as Food, Home Furnishings, Sporting Goods and also Apparel), the competitive analytics provided by this application may not provide sufficient detail for a meaningful comparison against a merchant's competitors. CoreMetrics also does not permit a merchant to compare how it performs against its peer group on a per channel (e.g., NexTag, Shop.com, Froogle), per product, or per category basis. None of the other known web analytics offerings provides competitive sales analytics. Also, most require significant setup and are too expensive for many small-to-medium businesses (SMBs). For SMBs, Google Analytics is free, easy to configure, and provides basic sales reporting functions. However, Google Analytics also lacks the ability to provide competitive analysis or overall e-commerce market research and is presently only available to merchants invited by Google to utilize this service.
Other sources of market research and competitive analysis exist, such as ComScore, Compete, eBay Marketplace Research, and Shopzilla AccuRate service, each with limitations. ComScore (and similarly, Compete) provides a consultancy offering where the company can produce a custom report of a merchant vs. its competitors based on ComScore's network of 2 million consumers that agreed to permit ComScore to track their shopping patterns. This service does not yield an interactive, configurable application that permits a merchant to "drill-down" into how the merchant competes against other vendors on a per-category or per-channel basis. ComScore's research services may be too expensive for a small merchant, and ComScore's user base, while possibly large enough to produce statistically significant results for very large e-commerce merchants, may not provide sufficient coverage of an SMB's sales patterns to produce a comprehensive comparison report with actionable recommendations for the merchant.
Shopzilla also advertises a 'Buyer Satisfaction Service' that allows a merchant to compare its customers' online buying experiences via "point of sale" and "fulfillment" surveys against category benchmarks. This solution is primarily focused on customer surveys, but Shopzilla does mention an "AccuRate" tool to "run trends and statistical analysis with historical data" for "competitive benchmarking, trending, filters, cross tabulations, and comment retrieval." Shopzilla also promotes "Analyst Services" where an "assigned research analyst to manage your account. Analyst will provide ad-hoc analysis, recommendations, identify data trends, propose additional survey customization, etc." It is unknown if Shopzilla's AccuRate product and related services are truly available, as a search on Google for "Shopzilla and AccuRate" returns no relevant results and a recent inquiry from a large e-commerce store went unanswered. It appears that Shopzilla is primarily focused on trends of customer satisfaction instead of trends of actual sales volume. However, Shopzilla's research fundamentally is limited in at least three respects:                a) Neither Shopzilla nor any other existing solution provides the merchant with a customized sales profile based on per product category sales analyses that directly enable the merchant (or the solution) to compare the merchant's results with other vendors on a per product category and per channel basis;        b) Shopzilla can only analyze that segment of a merchant's product offerings that is submitted to Shopzilla. Because Shopzilla is a comparison-shopping service requiring bidding on a pay per click basis for products to be listed on Shopzilla's site, many merchants may submit only products that are top sellers or produce high profit margins.        c) Shopzilla cannot provide merchants with information about how their products perform in markets other than Shopzilla.
Market research reports such as those provided by eBay require the merchant to find a combination of keywords and categories to see actual sales results. If the merchant cannot guess the 'correct' keyword data, it may not see any results. For instance, a search done May 31, 2006 on "molechasers" for eBay's MarketPlace Research returned no results, while a search on "mole chaser" returned the data in the table below.
71 items for "mole chaser" in All Categories
Auction and Fixed Price Metrics
Avg. Sold Price $18.41
Sold Price Range $5.99-$35.10
Avg. Sold Buy It Now Price $16.79
Sold Buy It Now Price Range $7.99-$29.99
Avg. Start Price $18.67
Start Price Range $5.99-$28.30
Avg. Shipping Cost $7.74
Shipping Cost Range $5.75-$10.99
Last Sold Price $29.99
Last Sold Date and Time May-30 08:13 PDT
Completed Items 60
Sold Items 35
Avg. Bids per Item 2.95
Store Inventory Metrics
Avg. Sold Price $36.51
Sold Price Range $24.62-$128.80
Avg. Shipping Cost $14.50
Shipping Cost Range $14.50-$14.50
Last Sold Price $27.95
Last Sold Date and Time May-30 23:10 PDT
Completed Items 11
Sold Items 11
eBay Marketplace Research does little to help the merchant know what it should search on to find comparable merchants or sales. Further, there is no concept defining the peers of a given merchant, nor is there an ability to compare one merchant's performance against other merchants. Plus, on eBay, when a user does find a keyword combination to produce good search results, the raw transaction data is available by product. Many merchants would prefer not to permit their competitors to drill down into actual individual sales made by the merchant. Finally, eBay is just one sales channel and seldom the only sales channel in which a product is sold.
While existing solutions can provide some useful competitive information for a merchant, they all have significant limitations. None provides a tool permitting an SMB merchant to compare its results on a per product or per product category basis against competitive results while considering performance in multiple sales channels. This type of analysis is critical for merchants to determine market size and how well they compete at a level where specific marketing decisions can be made.
Therefore, there is a need in the art for a method that facilitates the efficient collection and reporting of competitive market information for Internet merchants.

System for collaborative internet competitive sales analysis


An image is optically scanned by projecting the image onto an optical sensor through an optical shutter. In an exemplary embodiment, the image is projected through the optical shutter while the shutter is made substantially opaque except for a selected substantially transparent group of contiguous pixels. Then, the contents of the document are scanned by advancing this group of pixels across the shutter in a predetermined pattern. The shutter, for example, may comprise an LCD screen. To scan a document, the document is first placed against the shutter. As a light source directs light through the document and the shutter, the shutter is made substantially opaque except for a selected substantially transparent group of contiguous pixels. Then, the contents of the document are scanned by advancing this group of pixels across the shutter in a predetermined pattern. The document may be placed against either side of the shutter--near the light source or near the optical sensor.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to optical image scanning systems. More particularly, the invention concerns an optical image scanning method and apparatus where an image is scanned by projecting it onto an optical sensor through an optical shutter.
2. Description of the Related Art
In processing data, a crucial step frequently involves introducing the data into the computer. Data is entered into computers using keyboards, computer mice, modems, touch screens, and other peripheral devices. Furthermore, many modern offices conveniently employ optical scanners.
Scanning is sometimes significantly less convenient, however, for travelers. Although suitable for use in the office, high quality scanners can be bulky and heavy. And, although lower resolution scanners are commercially available, their output may fall short of some users' needs. Furthermore, even the reduced bulk and weight of portable scanners may still be too much for some travelers who are also carrying laptop computers, cellular telephones, briefcases, luggage, and the like.

System for optically scanning images using optical shutter

International Business Machines Corporation


Completely automated end-to-end method and system for markerless motion capture performs segmentation of articulating objects in Laplacian Eigenspace and is applicable to handling of the poses of some complexity. 3D voxel representation of acquired images are mapped to a higher dimensional space (k), where k depends on the number of articulated chains of the subject body, so as to extract the 1-D representations of the articulating chains. A bottom-up approach is suggested in order to build a parametric (spline-based) representation of a general articulated body in the high dimensional space followed by a top-down probabilistic approach that registers the segments to an average human body model. The parameters of the model are further optimized using the segmented and registered voxels.

Human motion capture and analysis has applications in different fields such as kinesiology, bio-mechanics, surveillance, human-computer interaction, animation and video games. Motion capture for humans describes the activity of analyzing and expressing human motion in mathematical terms. The task of motion capture may be divided into a number of systematically distinct groups, e.g. initialization, tracking, pose estimation, and gesture recognition.
There is a correspondingly large body of developments on human motion analysis and pose estimation from video data. However, the requirements in terms of the detail of pose parameters and accuracy in estimation vary from application to application as does the form of the available input data. Surveillance applications, for instance, usually require just the location of the subject or an approximate estimate of human pose from a single video stream, whereas bio-mechanical applications require detailed pose estimation, including different joint angles, from images obtained using multiple video cameras. Bio-mechanical and clinical applications require accurate capture of normal and pathological human movement without the artifacts associated with current state of the art marker-based motion capture techniques.
The most common methods to accurate capture of 3-D human movement, such as optical, magnetic, and elective mechanical, require attachment of markers, fixtures, or sensors to body segments. These methods are invasive, i.e., they encumber the subject, and require subject preparation time. They may also hinder or influence the movement of the subject due to their invasive nature. Marker-based motion capture systems, although widely used, are not very accurate due to the relative motion between muscle and skin tissue and the underlying skeletal structure. A passive or non-invasive motion capture system composed of video cameras, therefore, possesses several advantages over marker-based systems and is highly desirable.
There exist a number of techniques to estimate the pose of human subjects from both single and multiple cameras. Some of these methods are applied directly to images, while others are applied to 3-D volumetric data (or voxels), which can be computed from image silhouettes. Most methods, however, address applications such as surveillance, human computer interaction, or animation, where accurate joint angle estimation is not necessary or important.
Most approaches use a human body model to guide the pose estimation process, as the use of a model greatly increases the accuracy and robustness of the algorithm. It is therefore necessary to estimate the parameters of the human body model as well. Estimating 3-D pose of an articulated object using images from a single camera is an inherently difficult task due to ill-posed nature of estimating 3-D structure and motion from 2-D images as well as self-occlusion. In order to accurately estimate the 3-D joint angle parameters required in bio-mechanical and clinical applications, it is necessary to use 3-D input data such as voxels in the estimation algorithm. Voxels can be computed from 3-D mesh data obtained from laser scanners as well as images obtained from multiple calibrated cameras.
A large number of pose estimation algorithms use a single image or single image stream to estimate the pose of the subject or use simplified models. Several pose tracking algorithms also assume that the initial pose is known, and use either motion or silhouettes, or alternatively voxels. But few tracking algorithms combine both motion and static cues. The accuracy and the robustness of these algorithms vary as does the suitability of the techniques for different applications. Cedras and Shah in "Motion-based recognition: A survey," Image and Vision Computing, vol. 13, no. 2, pp. 129-155, March 1995, provide a survey of motion-based recognition methods which require the use of motion data that the markerless motion capture methods can provide. There are several methods (K. Rohr, Human Movement Analysis Based on Explicit Motion Models, Kluwer Academic, 1997; D. Ramanan and D. A. Forsyth "Finding and tracking people from the bottom up." in CVPR (2), 2003, pp. 467-474; X. Ren, A. C. Berg, and J. Malik, "Recovering human body configurations using pairwise constraints between parts," in International Conference on Computer Vision, 2005; and G. Mori and J. Malik, "Estimating human body configurations using shape context matching," in ECCV, 2002, pp. 666-680) to estimate pose from a single view, while I. A. Kakadiaris and D. Metaxas, "3D human body model acquisition from multiple views," in Fifth International Conference on Computer Vision, 1995, p. 61; I. Mikic, M. Trivedi, E. Hunter, and P. Cosman, "Human body model acquisition and tracking using voxel data," International Journal of Computer Vision, vol. 53, no. 3, 2003; C. W. Chu, O. C. Jenkins, and M. J. Mataric, "Markerless kinematic model and motion capture from volume sequences: in CVPR (2), 2003, pp. 475-482; K. Cheung, S. Baker, and T. Kanade, "Shape-from-silhouette of articulated objects and its use for human body kinematics estimation and motion capture," in IEEE CVPR, June 2003; and J. Carranza, C. Theobalt, M. Magnor, and H. Seidel, "Freeviewpoint video of human actors," ACM Transactions on Graphics, vol. 22, no. 2, pp. 569-577, 2003) estimate the pose from multiple views. Specifically the algorithms presented in I. Mikic, et al., C. W. Chu, et al., K. Cheung, et al., J. Carranza, et al., estimate the pose from voxel representations. Carranza, et al. describe a system that uses multi-view synchronized video footage of an actor's performance to estimate the motion parameters and to interactively re-render the actor's appearance from any viewpoint.
Chu, et al. describes a method for pose estimation using Isomaps (J. B. Tenebaum, V. de Silva, and J. C. Langford, "A global geometric framework for nonlinear dimensionality reduction," Science, vol. 290, no. 5500, pp. 2319-2323, 2000) to transform the voxels to its pose-invariant intrinsic space representation and obtain a skeleton representation. Cheung, et al. extend shapes-from-silhouette methods to articulated objects. Given silhouettes of a moving articulated object, they propose an iterative algorithm to solve the simultaneous assignment of silhouette points to a body part and alignment of the body part. These methods work well with simple poses, but they are usually unable to handle complex poses where there is self-contact, i.e., one or more of the limbs touches the others.
Anguelov, et al. ("Recovering articulated object models from 3-D range data", Uncertainty in Artificial Intelligence Conference, 2004) describe an algorithm that automatically decomposes an object into approximately rigid parts, their location, and the underlying articulated structure given a set of meshes describing the object in different poses. They use an unsupervised non-rigid technique to register the meshes and perform segmentation using the EM algorithm. Krahnstoever, et al. ("Articulated models from video," in Computer vision and Pattern Recognition, 2004, pp. 894-901) address the issue of acquiring articulated models directly from a monocular video. Structure, shape and appearance of articulated models are estimated, but this method is limited in its application as well as in accuracy in extracting complete 3-D human body models as it uses a single camera.
Algorithms that estimate the complete human body model from multiple views are presented in Mikic, et al. and Kakadiaris, et al. For example, the Mikic, et al. propose a model acquisition algorithm using voxels, which starts with a simple body part localization procedure based on fitting and growing template and uses prior knowledge of shapes and dimensions of average body parts. Kakadiaris, et al. present a Human Body Part Identification Strategy (HBPIS) that recovers all the body parts of a moving human based on the spatio-temporal analysis of its deforming silhouette using input from three mutually orthogonal views. However, they specify a protocol of movements that the subject is required to go through.
Brostow, et al., ("Novel skeletal representation for articulated creatures" European Conference on Computer Vision, 2004) present a skeletonization method that uses voxel data to estimate a skeleton representation.
Many methods assume some kind of human body model.
For example, N. I. Badler, et al. (Simulating Humans. Oxford University Press, Oxford, UK, 1993) suggest several methods to represent human subjects in terms of the shape as well as the articulated structure. Modified super-quadrics to represent shapes for the human body model is suggested in D. Gavrila, et al. ("3-D model-based tracking of humans in action: A multi-view approach," in Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition, 1996, pp. 73-80).
M. Belkin, et al. ("Laplacian eigenmaps for dimensionality reduction and data representation," Neural Comput., vol. 15, no. 6, pp. 1373-1396, 2003) describe the construction of a representation for data lying in a low dimensional manifold embedded in a high dimensional space and use Laplacian Eigenmaps for dimensionality reduction. While Laplacian eigenmaps and other manifold methods have been applied to dimensionality reduction problems such as classification and Face retrieval using Laplacian faces, none of them, however, map the voxels to a higher dimensional space in order to extract the 1-D structure.
There also exist other methods for dimensionality reduction such as Isomaps, charting a manifold (M. Brand, "Charting a manifold," in Neural Information Processing Systems, 2002), Kernal Eigenvalue analysis (B. Schölkopf, et al. ("Nonlinear component analysis as a kernel eigenvalue problem,", Neural Computation, vol. 10, pp. 1299-1319, 1998), the Locally Linear Embedding algorithm (S. T. Rowels, et al. "Nonlinear dimensionality reduction by locally linear embedding," Science, vol. 290, no. 5500, pp. 2323-2326, 2000) and for reducing articulated objects to pose-invariant structure A. Elad, et al. ("On bending invariant signatures for surface," IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence, vol. 25, pp. 1285-1295, 2003). M. Belkin, et al. analyze the connection of Locally Linear Embedding algorithm proposed by S. T. Rowels, et al. ("Nonlinear dimensionality reduction by locally linear embedding," Science, vol. 290, no. 5500, pp. 2323-2326, 2000) to the Laplacian.
M. Yamamoto, et al. ("Human motion analysis based on a robot arm model", CVPR, pages 664-665, 1991) analyze human motion based on a robot model and M. Yamamoto, et al. ("Incremental tracking of human actions from multiple views), CVPR, pages 2-7, 1998) track human motion using multiple cameras. D. M. Gavrila, et al. ("3-D Model-based tracking of human in action," Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition, pp. 73-80, 1996) present a multi-view approach for 3D model-based tracking of humans in action. They use a generate-and-test algorithm in which they search for poses in a parameter space and match them using a variant of Chamfer matching. R. Plankers, et al. ("Articulated soft objects for video-based body modeling", ICCV, pages 394-401, 2001) use articulated soft objects with an articulated underlying skeleton as a model, and silhouette data for shape and motion recovery from stereo and trinocular image sequences. Christian Theobalt, et al. ("Combining 3D flow fields with silhouette-based human motion capture for immersive video", Graph. Models, 66(6):333-351, 2004) project the texture of the model obtained from silhouette-based methods and refine the pose using the flow field. Q. Delamarre, et al. ("3D articulated models and multi-view tracking with silhouettes", ICCV, pages 716-721, 1999) use 3D articulated models for tracking with silhouettes. They use silhouette contours and apply forces to the contours obtained from the projection of the 3D model so that they move towards the silhouette contours obtained from multiple images. Cheung, et al. ("Shape-from-silhouette of articulated objects and its use for human body kinematics estimation and motion capture", IEEE Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition, pages 77-84, June 2003) extend shapes-from-silhouette methods to articulated objects. Given silhouettes of a moving articulated object, they propose an iterative algorithm to solve the simultaneous assignment of silhouette points to a body part and alignment of the body part.
There are also methods that attempt to estimate the pose from a monocular video sequence. They propose different techniques to resolve kinematic ambiguities faced in the monocular pose estimation problem.
Despite extensive research and development in the area of motion capture, further improvements are still needed.
It is highly desirable to have a markerless motion capture technique providing accurate capture of the motion in an effective automated fashion capable of handling poses of any complexity.

Method and system for markerless motion capture using multiple cameras


The invention relates to a photoplethysmography apparatus (100), comprising a source of light (110) configured to provide source light (130) of at least a first and a second spectral position directed at a tissue (140); alight detector (120) configured to detect scattered source light, and to provide at least a first and a second sensor signal (127, 29) indicative of the scattered source light of the first and second spectral position; and a processing unit (150). The processing unit is configured to calculate a corrected sensor signal (160), indicative of a variation in blood absorbance within the tissue, by removing a tissue-path error signal component, indicative of a variation in optical path length through the tissue over time, and a light-coupling error signal component, indicative of a variation of source light intensity of the source light emitted at the tissue, from the at least first and second sensor signals.

A photoplethysmography (PPG) apparatus measures changes in the volume of an external object in an optical way. In medical applications, these changes in volume are usually changes of the amount of blood within a tissue of a subject and can therefore be used to monitor vital-sign information of the subject.
In conventional PPG applications, in addition to a desired signal contribution from light transmitted through or reflected by the blood, a far greater portion of a detected signal originates from tissue or blood sloshing, i.e. venous blood movement. Low venous pressure blood "sloshes" with back and forth movement which is seen when an individual is physically active. This local perturbation of venous blood adds to the AC (alternating current) component of the detector signal.
In WO 99/32030 a method for removing motion artifact in PPG applications is described comprising the steps of emitting source light at a tissue using at least first and second wavelengths, receiving the source light at the different wavelengths after it has been transmitted through or reflected within the tissue, providing at least first and second signals which are a logarithmic measure of the received first and second emitted wavelengths and subtracting the second signal from the first signal, removing a DC component of the result of the subtraction and providing an AC component to digital sampling means, and processing the digital samples in order to provide a desired value representing a property of the tissue.
WO 2009/109185 is concerned with eliminating influences of "shunt light" which is described as sensor light received after either passing through tissue only, without passing through pulsating blood, or received after not passing tissue at all. Information about interferences is extracted from the measured values and/or taken into account. The metrological determination takes place with the use of electromagnetic waves, which are emitted by at least one emitter having at least two different wavelengths. The electromagnetic waves are conducted through tissue through which blood flows and subsequently detected as measured values. Signal processing is carried out based on measurements during at least two different times of measuring.


Wafer structures and associated methods of fabrication are described. The wafer structures are fabricated to have aerodynamic shapes. Even if the structures on the wafer are fragile, the aerodynamic shapes of the structures create less resistance to a fluid flow of a cleaning process, and are less likely to be damaged by the cleaning process. Also, the aerodynamic shape of the structures allows a fluid flow to be directed toward the wafer from a single angle to effectively clean the wafer.

1. Field of the Invention
The invention is related to the field of wafer fabrication and, in particular, to fabricating wafer structures with aerodynamic shapes so that the structures are less likely to be damaged during cleaning processes.
2. Statement of the Problem
Wafer fabrication is a procedure composed of many repeated sequential processes of depositing layers of material, and patterning the deposited layers to produce structures for electrical circuits, devices, chips, etc. For example, wafer fabrication is typically used to build semiconductor components, such as amplifiers, transistors, and MEMS devices. Wafer fabrication is also used to build magnetic recording or magnetic memory devices, such as magnetoresistance (MR) read elements, write elements, etc. Some of the processes commonly used in wafer fabrication are photolithography, nanoimprint lithography, etc.
Photolithography is a process used to selectively remove parts of a thin film. As an example of photolithography, a wafer is covered with photoresist. An exposure system then shines ultraviolet light through a photomask to produce an image on the photoresist. The ultraviolet light changes the chemistry of the exposed photoresist, which allows a solution, referred to as a "developer", to remove the exposed photoresist. The result is a photoresist on the wafer having a desired pattern. The pattern in the photoresist is then used to pattern one or more layers on the wafer to form the desired structures. For instance, a milling process may be used to remove any material that is exposed by the photoresist to form structures underneath the photoresist. In another instance, a material may be plated or deposited on areas of the wafer that are exposed by the photoresist to form the structures. After the structures are formed, the photoresist is removed.
Subsequent to wafer fabrication processes forming structures, a cleaning process may be performed to remove residual particles which remain on the structures due to surface tension, re-deposition, etc. If the residual particles are not removed by the cleaning process, then the particles may cause problems in subsequent processing steps or in the final product.
In one common cleaning process, a high-velocity fluid flow, such as carbon dioxide in a supercritical state, is directed onto the surface of the wafer. As the fluid flow passes over the wafer, the flow removes residual particles from the surfaces that are exposed to the flow. The fluid flow is typically directed onto the surface of the wafer from multiple angles or is swept between multiple angles. For instance, assume that a structure has a square or rectangular shape. To remove residual particles from each side of the structure, the flow should be directed towards the structure from all four sides. Also, the structures may have indentations or pockets where residual materials are trapped. Directing the fluid flow from multiple angles helps to remove these residual materials from the indentations or pockets.
In present wafer fabrication, the structures being built are getting smaller and smaller, such as on the nanometer scale. One problem encountered is that the small structures tend to be fragile and the cleaning processes may damage the structures on the wafer. To avoid damaging the structures, the velocity of the flow may be reduced, or the flow may be directed along the wafer's minimum cross section. This unfortunately reduces the effectiveness of the cleaning process.
It is therefore desirable to develop wafer fabrication techniques that generate small structures on a wafer, but also facilitate cleaning processes performed on the wafer.

Aerodynamic shapes for wafer structures to reduce damage caused by cleaning processes

Hitachi Global Storage Technologies Netherlands, B.V.


A convertible writing instrument can be put into either a compact capped configuration, 3 to 4 inches in length, or an extended writing configuration, 5 to 6 inches in length. A relatively elongated cap, which covers most of the relatively shortened pen member in the compact configuration, can be re-attached to the back of the pen, so as to lengthen the instrument in preparation for writing. Multiple interchangeable caps and rear modules can be coupled to the pen member to provide a variety of appearances and functions.

Conventional writing instruments, such as ball-point pens, have several limitations that limit their utility. When capped for storage and/or transport, they are 5″-6″ long—too long to fit into a shirt pocket without protruding, and too long to be comfortably stowed in a pants pocket. Since the longer writing barrel, as compared to the shorter cap, dominates the appearance of the instrument, the ability to use interchangeable components to change the appearance and/or functions of a conventional writing instrument is very limited. Because the potentially fungible cap is structurally and dimensionally subordinate to the non-fungible writing barrel, the opportunity to employ a variety of interchangeable caps with different visual, attachment and/or other functional features is foreclosed.
Moreover, the conventional writing instrument configuration, with its dominant writing barrel, often requires that the entire instrument be discarded when its ink supply is depleted. In a cap-dominant configuration, on the other hand, the shortened writing barrel itself becomes a secondary, disposable component, which is readily and inexpensively replaceable.
Finally, the dual coupling means, required for switching the elongated cap from frontal to rear connection on the writing barrel, enables various additional functional components to be attached to the back end of the writing instrument in its compact capped configuration, thereby expanding the versatile utility of the instrument.

Compact convertible writing instrument with interchangeable multi-functional components


A information retrieval system wherein design and content are separated. Within a section of a title, a designer can layout pages with controls that define areas for content to be inserted into the pages. Two commonly used controls in the system are a static story control, wherein a preselected story is statically placed on a page in the area defined by the control, and a dynamic story control, wherein the designer defines search objects to retrieve stories. An information retrieval (IR) server indexes and searches stories in titles. Indexing takes place when a title is released to the network by a publisher workstation. The IR server interrelates title, section and story objects by their globally unique identifiers and creates a routing table which is used to locate objects across multiple database partitions. The IR search service is requested in two different ways at customer runtime. The first way is the resolution of the search objects to retrieve matching stories. The retrieved stories are concatenated and poured into the area defined by the dynamic control when the title is viewed. In the second way, the IR search service is requested when a search is initiated by a customer using a "find" dialog to search across all stories in one or more titles, both dynamic and static.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to information retrieval systems and more particularly, to a system and method for indexing, querying and retrieving information in an on-line network.
2. Description of the Related Technology
Microsoft Network, Internet, Compuserve, Prodigy, and America Online are examples of on-line networks. End users typically access these networks using a microcomputer equipped with a modem. During an on-line session, a user can use a variety of information-related services and communications services, including news services, weather services, bulletin board services, E-mail, and the like.
While on-line services are becoming increasingly popular, today's on-line applications are still in their infancy. In fact, significant problems continue to block independent content providers or publishers from deploying the type of sophisticated and compelling services that are necessary to provide a sustainable on-line business. At the same time, providers of existing on-line services are working to find the right technical business model and usability solutions that will promote acceptance beyond just an early-adopter audience.
In any large city, it is impossible for a single individual to keep up with the activities and events unfolding in the community. Consequently, people turn to writers, reporters, editors, critics, and others, for help in understanding and structuring the information available. In a related trend, broadcast media are increasingly unable to satisfy the needs of a diverse populace. Consequently, in most markets, narrowcast media (media that have tailored and distributed their content to smaller, well defined audiences) have become increasingly popular and profitable. In the on-line community this trend will be correspondingly more important.
One problem content providers encounter when creating applications for the mass market is the diverse audience. For example, some customers will be interested in games, some in business, some in computer technology, and some in movies. What information should content providers deliver to keep their customers satisfied? What is needed is a system that enables a content provider to create applications that blend the content provider's editorial voice with individual customization. For example, from within a particular application, a customer could indicate an interest in the computer business and/or classical music, and be able to acquire additional information focused on these areas. Similarly, an on-line publication might automatically synthesize and prioritize content based on different consumer preferences.
Current publication systems include software for electronically publishing stories across on-line networks such as CompuServe, America On-Line, or the Internet. Most of these systems create and display stories that are formatted in a Standard Generalized Markup Language (SGML) or Hypertext Markup Language (HTML). Both the HTML and SGML are standards for tagging text in documents to be displayed in an on-line network. Documents that are formatted in HTML or SGML can be viewed by several widely distributed browsers such as Mosaic and Netscape for the Internet. These browser programs read SGML and HTML tagged documents and display them with proper formatting. However, the formatting information is stored with the browser and is not distributed by the publisher.
Computer users look for information in disk-based computer systems and in on-line environments. In a personal computer environment, most personal computer users are used to a browsing model of navigating through content. On a personal computer the hard disks have been fairly large, but they have been of a manageable size until now. Users assembled the content on their disk themselves, so it is a finite structure that users are fairly comfortable searching through. The hard drive content has known context because of the way things are located side-by-side; it gives good organization to the material and it also permits casual searching. Users don't have to have a specific goal in mind but can browse and find things in a serendipitous manner. But the problem with this is that it doesn't scale well for large amounts of information.
With going on-line, just the sheer volume of content makes it unreasonable to browse in this way. Therefore, what is needed is a searching strategy that enables people to specify more of a criteria or a specification to some facility or agency that will actually go off and do the matching for them. When the search results or hits are received by the user, there will be a reasonable size of results that a user can actually browse. Some of the problems with this approach are that these results are often brought out of context, the user does not have any idea about the adjacent material, and it requires the user to be very goal directed.
Some on-line systems, such as Microsoft Network (MSN), Prodigy, Compuserve and America Online have a type of a department structure. In this structure there is a top level categorization of business and finance or certain special interests, which provides one editorial view of slicing content as a way to organize information for people to search. The problem with this approach is, of course, that everyone's conception of where a certain topic resides may differ. For example, one person may look in one area for things on scuba diving and someone else may look under a totally different categorization. Because people conceive of topics stored in different places, there is often a mismatch in finding things when one browses according to someone else's classification or categorization.
Another on-line system is the Internet World Wide Web (WWW). The WWW provides a rich medium by virtue of how links are constructed between related information. By utilizing links and citations, many different editors can propagate different ways of looking at content. So the WWW is not one structure but many structures. A user will often identify with a certain directory service that matches the way they conceive of information which makes it easier to browse. The problem is, just because of the sheer size of the Web, it cannot be browsed exhaustively. A user is always left with a sense there's something else out in the Web. A user doesn't have a very good sense of completion in actually searching.
Some of the techniques to actually search the Internet are crawler-based full-text indices. This type of indexer actually goes around traversing the different Internet sites, building up an index as it travels, so that on some basis of updating, people can search and see what new content appears on the Web. But here again, users are often left with the sense of not knowing how complete a search is. Different indices may have access to some sites that others may not. There is no real clear way of finding all the desired content. WAIS provides an Internet server that indexes and retrieves text strings over multiple databases. This server is based on the evolving 239.50 search protocol used with WAIS and Gopher sites.
An example of a WWW crawler-based indexer is the Web Crawler. Another WWW indexing engine is known as Lycos. The Lycos engine makes a weighted random choice of which links to follow in a document, biased towards documents with multiple links pointing at them (implying popularity) and links with shorter path names (URLs), on the theory that short path names tend to imply shallower Web links and, therefore, more breadth. Lycos tries to make a summary of a document to preserve its content while alleviating the inefficiency of cataloging it in its entirety. The Lycos search language does not support Boolean queries (AND, OR, and so forth) or adjacency searches.
Another WWW indexer under development is the Harvest project. Harvest provides a means of gathering and distributing indexing information; supports the construction of different types of indexes for each information collection; and provides caching and replication support.
Another problem of the current indexers is that it takes a lot of time to try to traverse the servers on the Web. When new content is added to a server that has just been accessed by a current indexer, it may be a long time period before the indexer returns to index the server again. Alternately, content may be removed from a server, but the indexer has no way to know this event until the server is revisited. These indexers are also vulnerable to "robot exclusion" that prevent a Web server from being indexed. A "No Robots" standard is applied to some Web servers, which prevents any of the content on the server from being included in the index. What is desired is an indexing and search component of an information retrieval service that is always up-to-date and can index all the content on the system or on-line service.
Getting content to an on-line service will not be a major problem, but once all this content swells to an enormous size, the problem is going to be the user's ability to wade through all of the content to find the specific things they want. The on-line industry needs the ability of content providers to tag their information and target their customers to make this connection from both sides to make the content delivery a success. So to depict this problem with the traditional on-line services, an administrator may go with the approach of providing a new service that will be put on-line and will locate it in a couple of spots. The problem that frequently occurs is that a user may think the service resides somewhere else and therefore, a connection is not made. What is needed therefore is a way of full-text based searching across an entire on-line service. This searching should allow searches over text like the properties (e.g., for images, stories, sound clips) and titles of different available services, as well as searching within the titles, e.g., within an article or story. Thus, for example, a user would have the ability to search over services by a description of properties.
A publisher could define a search object to retrieve content matching desired criteria. The publisher could also specify where to search. Thus, a system and method for indexing structured titles and search objects would be an advance in the industry.
The above disadvantages are overcome by the present invention.

Information retrieval system in an on-line network including separate content and layout of published titles


Automated image analysis methods to identify and quantify tumor buds in a high resolution image of a section of a tumor that is stained using either pan-cytokeratin AE1/3 or hematoxylin and eosin (H&E) are disclosed. The methods may be used to aid and/or replace manual visual inspection for tumor buds and may be used to predict a clinically relevant outcome or treatment in some cases. The disclosed methods may be used for many different cancer types, such as colorectal cancer.

Tumor budding has emerged as an important adverse prognostic factor for increasing number of different cancer types, including colorectal cancer, head and neck squamous cell carcinoma [1, 2], breast cancer [3], esophageal cancer [4], gastric cancer [5, 6], and cervical cancer [7, 8]. In multiple recent studies of colorectal cancer, tumor budding [9-16] has been associated with higher tumor stage, lymph node metastasis, and decreased disease-free survival. Additionally, tumor budding has been included as a reportable feature in the Colorectal Cancer Protocol published by the College of American Pathologists.
Tumor budding is defined as the presence of single tumor cells or small tumor clusters (e.g., up to 5 cells) that "bud" from the invasive front of the main tumor [17]. Tumor budding is believed to represent a type of epithelial-to-mesenchymal transition, in that the tumor cells gained migratory capability by loss of cell-to-cell adhesions and polarity. Thus, tumor budding is the first biologic step towards metastasis. In colorectal carcinoma, for example, tumor budding has been associated with tumors having an aggressive biology. Additionally, tumor budding, in cases of colorectal cancer, has been independently associated with poor treatment outcome, lymph node metastasis, and high recurrence [18]. Because tumor budding has been associated with poor treatment outcomes, identification of tumor budding in colorectal cancers (e.g., via endoscopically-resected malignant polyps) is important at an early stage so that more aggressive management may be pursued.
Assessment of tumor budding (i.e., tumor bud identification) by manual methods requires close evaluation of the tumor invasive front under intermediate to high power (e.g., 200 or 400 times) magnification. This manual assessment, however, is time-consuming and subjective, which could hinder it from becoming a routine procedure in diagnosing and treating common cancers. Colorectal cancer, for example, is the third most common cancer with an estimated incidence in 2017 of over a hundred thousand (i.e., 134,430) new cases in the United States alone [19]. Manual assessments for this large number of cases is challenging and plagued by inter-observer variability. A need, therefore, exists for automating the process of tumor bud identification, not just for evaluation of colorectal cancer, but also for an increasing number of other cancer types.


A cooling system with a thin walled cooling plate. The system includes an enclosure with a cover that defines an interior space and that has an open side. Temperature sensitive devices are contained in the interior space. A cooling plate closes the open side and includes an inner side with a surface that is substantially flat and that faces into the interior. The cooling plate defines a flow channel adjacent the inner side that is configured to channel a circulating fluid to remove heat from the interior space. The flow channel extends across substantially all of the opening. An outer side of the cooling plate may be anodized to block heat from entering the interior space through the cooling plate.

Temperature sensitive devices such as electronic assemblies for transportation applications, machinery or other equipment are often mounted in environments where extreme temperatures are encountered that may have adverse effects on the functionality of the devices. Providing cooling features for electronic units employed in such applications may involve solutions such as radiative fins, or conductive heat exchangers. The known solutions are typically less efficient than needed or have excessive size and weight. For example, cast components are typically heavy and impose constraints on design freedom due to limitations in manufacturing processes. In addition, known solutions for fluid heat exchangers are often complicated to assemble by using multiple components leaving joints that may fail, and/or by requiring brazing or soldering operations.
In an example of gas turbine engine applications, such as those used to power modern commercial aircraft, an electronic unit such as an engine control unit (ECU) may require remote mounting away from areas where high temperatures are commonly encountered because of limitations on available ECU heat protection options. This is because current gas turbine engine combustors generally operate at very high temperatures to achieve high operability, and to produce relatively low levels of gaseous emissions during combustion, and conventional heat management solutions have limitations. Due to needs to reduce size and weight of components, or because of packaging preferences, mounting an ECU remotely is less desirable. Mounting an ECU where shorter harnesses are required, would save weight or provide other advantages, but when doing so involves a hot area, added thermal protection may more than offset any weight savings.
Accordingly, it is desirable to provide light, simple and more effective heat management solutions for temperature sensitive devices such as those found in electronic assemblies. Furthermore, other desirable features and characteristics of the present invention will become apparent from the subsequent detailed description of the invention and the appended claims, taken in conjunction with the accompanying drawings and this background of the invention.

System with thin walled cooling plate for an electronic enclosure


A system comprising engine driven pumps, control units, a rate control algorithm, and a trained algorithmic model. The control units store operation variables for the engine driven pumps. The rate control algorithm includes an instruction set to read the operation variables for the engine driven pumps. The instruction set comprises a trained algorithmic model with a parameter space based on historical operation variables. The trained algorithmic model determines an optimal distribution rate based on an objective. The instruction set generates rate control variables based on the determined optimal distribution rate. Each rate control variable comprises a selected control unit identifier and a rate value. The instruction set distributes each rate control variable based on the selected control unit identifier. The trained algorithmic model determine the optimal distribution rate using an objective that defines a desired mixture between a first fuel and a second fuel.

Single and dual fuel engine driven pumps are used to pump stimulation fluids into wells during a fracturing operation. Dual fuel engine driven pumps are preferred since these types of engines reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The engines utilize diesel fuel or a combination of natural gas and diesel. In the case of dual fuel engine driven pumps, the theoretical maximum substitution rate is about 70% natural gas for diesel. Typically, during a stimulation operation, an operator operates these pumps using his/her prior experience of running conventional diesel pumps. However, a stimulation operation can comprise an fleet of engine driven pumps configured with a combination of single and dual fuel type engines or entirely of dual fuel type engines. In these types of configurations, manual intervention doesn't result in optimal substitution for a fleet of pumps. Distributing rates manually to pumps to maximize gas substitution in a wide variety of operating conditions and constraints, and to be consistent, is very challenging.

Rate control algorithm having a trained algorithmic model for optimizing fuel distribution