A magnetic head slider includes a magnetic recording/reproducing element, a contact pad, and a groove. The magnetic recording/reproducing element moves relative to a magnetic disk medium while being in contact with it, thus recording/reproducing information. The contact pad is integrally formed with the magnetic recording/reproducing element and has a slide surface to slide on a surface of the magnetic disk medium. The groove is in the slide surface of the contact pad to move a lubricant applied on the surface of the magnetic disk medium from an outer peripheral portion to an inner peripheral portion of the magnetic disk medium along with a slide operation of the contact pad. A magnetic disk apparatus is also disclosed.

The present invention relates to a magnetic head slider and a magnetic disk apparatus and, more particularly, to a contact type magnetic disk apparatus in which the magnetic head slider moves relative to a magnetic disk medium while being in contact with it, thus performing recording/reproduction.
In recent years, the recording density increases steadily in the field of information storage files. In the magnetic disk apparatus, to minimize the gap between the magnetic head that writes/reads information and the magnetic disk medium that holds information is one of the elements that are important in increasing the recording density. A so-called contact type magnetic disk apparatus has been developed in which the magnetic head performs recording/reproduction while in sliding contact with the surface of the magnetic disk medium in order to decrease the gap between the magnetic head and the magnetic disk medium. Examples of such a contact type magnetic disk apparatus are described in H. Hamilton, "CONTACT RECORDING ON PERPENDICULAR RIGID MEDIA", Journal of the Magnetics Society of Japan, Vol. 15 Supplement, No. S2, pp. 483-490, 1991 and in WO 93/14495.
In a contact type magnetic disk apparatus of this type, the magnetic disk medium is coated with a lubricant in order to prevent wear and damage to the magnetic disk medium and magnetic head slider caused by contact between the magnetic disk medium and the contact pads of the magnetic head slider.
In this contact type magnetic disk apparatus, since the lubricant on the magnetic disk medium moves to the outer peripheral portion of the medium due to the centrifugal force generated by high-speed rotation of the magnetic disk medium, the thickness of the lubricant decreases on the inner and intermediate peripheral portions of the magnetic disk medium.
In a floating magnetic disk apparatus, when the CSS (Contact Start Stop) method is employed, the magnetic head slider and the magnetic disk medium slide on each other at the start of operation until the magnetic head slider floats from the magnetic disk medium and at the stop of operation until rotation of the magnetic disk medium stops. In this magnetic disk apparatus, the magnetic disk medium is coated with a lubricant, in the same manner as in the contact type magnetic disk apparatus, and a problem concerning depletion of the lubricant arises in the same manner as in the contact type magnetic disk apparatus.
As "a technique for preventing depletion of the lubricant on the magnetic disk medium" concerning the conventional floating magnetic disk apparatus, the carbon protective film containing hydrogen and nitrogen is formed on the magnetic disk medium, and the lubricant to be applied on the protective film is made to have a polar group, so that coupling between the lubricant and the protective film is strengthened, as shown in Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 6-333231.
As "a technique for preventing depletion of the lubricant on the magnetic disk medium" concerning the conventional contact type magnetic disk apparatus, an integrated head-suspension-wick system is employed in the head suspension so that the lubricant is supplied to the surface of the magnetic disk medium by the capillary phenomenon, as shown in Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 6-223533.
As another example of "the technique for preventing depletion of the lubricant on the magnetic disk medium", the width of the front end of the contact pad is made larger than that of the rear end thereof to suppress a decrease in the lubricant on the magnetic disk medium under the contact pad, as shown in Japanese Patent Laid Open Nos. 6-12808 and 6-44718.
Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 7-147070 discloses a magnetic head slider in which the shape of the contact pad is made appropriately in order to suppress a decrease in the lubricant under the contact pad even if a skew angle is formed upon movement of the magnetic head from the inner periphery to the outer periphery of the magnetic disk medium. In this magnetic head slider, the angle of the side surface of the contact pad is made larger than the maximum absolute value of the skew angle. Hence, when the magnetic head slider moves from the inner peripheral side to the outer peripheral side of the magnetic disk medium, the effect of suppressing a decrease in the lubricant is achieved over the entire angular range of the seek operation of the contact pad.
According to Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 7-147070, the leading edge portion of the contact pad is not parallel to the trailing edge portion thereof. This makes it possible to cause the skewed leading edge portion to provide an extra air-bearing lift at the inner peripheral side of the disk where the local disk speed is low, and a smaller lift at the outer peripheral side of the disk where the air-bearing effect is large because of the higher local disk speed.
As described above, according to the conventional contact type magnetic disk apparatus, since the lubricant on the magnetic disk medium moves to the outer peripheral portion due to the centrifugal force caused by high-speed rotation of the magnetic disk medium, the thickness of the lubricant decreases on the inner and intermediate peripheral portions of the magnetic disk medium, causing wear and damage to the magnetic disk medium and magnetic head slider (contact pad). This problem hinders realization of a high recording density and high reliability of the contact type magnetic disk apparatus.
In order to avoid this problem, the coupling force between the lubricant on the magnetic disk medium and the protective film is increased in the contact type magnetic disk by "the technique for strengthening coupling between the lubricant and the protective film" employed by the CSS type floating magnetic disk apparatus. Nevertheless, wear and damage to the magnetic disk medium and magnetic head slider cannot be prevented due to the following reason. In the contact type magnetic disk apparatus, since the magnetic slider and the magnetic disk medium are always in contact with each other, the lubricant on the magnetic disk medium tends to move easily, and the effect of increasing the coupling force between the lubricant on the magnetic disk medium and the protective film rarely occurs.
The method of supplying the lubricant onto the magnetic disk medium with the wick is difficult to apply to a thin lubricant film having a thickness equal to or smaller than 1 .mu.m, and cannot be applied to a contact type magnetic disk suitable to a high recording density. The reason for this is as follows. If the thickness of the lubricant film is increased, the gap between the magnetic head and the magnetic disk medium increases. Since the recording density largely depends on the distance between the magnetic head and the magnetic disk medium, a high recording density cannot be achieved.
Furthermore, with the shapes of the contact pads disclosed in Japanese Patent Laid-Open Nos. 6-12808, 6-44718, and 7-147070, it is difficult to prevent the lubricant from moving to the outer peripheral portion due to the centrifugal force. This is because with these contact pad shapes the lubricant cannot be moved from the outer peripheral portion to the inner peripheral portion of the magnetic disk medium.

Magnetic head slider and magnetic disk apparatus for redistributing a lubricant


A display panel with image sticking elimination circuit is provided. The image sticking elimination circuit can be applied in a display unit comprising a plurality of pixel units driven by a gate driving circuit and a data driving circuit. The gate driving circuit is driven by a first voltage and a second voltage. The first voltage turns on the pixel units for receiving data signals and the second voltage turns off the pixel units for preventing the pixel units from receiving data signals. A switch is coupled between a data line driven by the data driving circuit and an ESD circuit. The image sticking elimination circuit is charged by the first voltage and the charged power is output to turn on the switch and the pixel units when abnormal power shut down occurs.

1. Field of the Invention
This invention generally relates to an image sticking elimination circuit, and more particularly to an image sticking elimination circuit suitable for supplying charged power to display panel and driving circuit when an abnormal power shut down occurs.
2. Description of Related Art
Liquid crystal material was discovered by Europe, developed by the US, and applied by Japan in several fields. Currently, several liquid crystal technologies have been widely used in displays, especially for liquid crystal displays (LCD). The LCD has been developed from TN-LCD, STN-LCD, to TFT-LCD. Some manufacturers also begin to develop LPTS-LCD.
FIG. 1 is a conventional LCD panel. The LCD panel 100 includes a gate driving circuit 110, a data driving circuit 120, a plurality of gate lines 112, a plurality of data lines 122 and a plurality of pixel units 130, wherein each of the pixel units 130 comprises a transistor 132, a capacitor 134 and a liquid crystal cell 136. When the data is written (i.e., when the data is going to be displayed on the LCD panel 100), the gate driving circuit 110 will raise the gate line 112 from a low voltage level to a high voltage level so that the transistor 132 will be turned on. Then the data driving circuit 120 writes the data to the capacitor 134 via the data line 122. After the data is written into the capacitor 134, the gate driving circuit 110 will raise the gate line 112 from a high voltage level to a low voltage level so that the liquid crystal cell 136 can continue to display the data before the next data is written. However, when the abnormal power-off on the LCD panel 100 occurs, the data is still retained in the capacitor 134. That is where the image sticking comes from.
The conventional method to eliminate or reduce the image sticking is to shift the I-V curve of the transistor 132 (as shown in FIG. 2) to the left so that the threshold voltage of the transistor 132 is close to 0V. Hence the transistor 132 can be turned on even if the gate voltage of the transistor 132 is close to 0V so that the data stored in the capacitor 134 can be released to the data line 122.
However, to have a better resolution, one may not shift the I-V curve as he wishes because it also affects the circuits in the LCD panel 100. Hence, the image sticking issue cannot be solved by the conventional method without affecting the resolution of the LCD panel.

Display panel with image sticking elimination circuit and driving circuit with the same


A method of controlling the voltage of a sub-wordline in a variable resistive memory device includes switchably passing a voltage from a main wordline to the sub-wordline, and substantially blocking forward current flow from the sub-wordline to a variable resistive memory cell of the device.

The present invention relates to variable resistive memory devices, and more particularly to variable resistive memory devices having hierarchical wordline structures. As the demand for both high density and low power consumption continues to increase, a new generation of memory devices has emerged. The new generation of memory devices includes both nonvolatile characteristics for low power consumption and easy scalability for high density. There have been three basic types of the new generation memory devices, including Phase change Random Access Memory (PRAM), Resistive Random Access Memory (RRAM) and Magnetic Random Access Memory (MRAM).
As shown in FIG. 1, a unit memory cell for a memory device is indicated generally by the reference numeral 100. The unit memory cell 100 has a variable resistive material part 110 connected to a switching element 112, such as a transistor or a diode. Here, the variable resistive material part 110 and the switching element 112 are connected in series between a bitline BL and a wordline WL. In accordance with the particular characteristics of the variable resistive material part 110, the memory device may be one of PRAM, RRAM or MRAM. If the variable resistive material part 110 includes an upper electrode, a lower electrode, and phase change material between the upper and lower electrodes, the memory device may be classified as PRAM. If the variable resistive material part is made of upper and lower electrodes with a Complex Metal Oxide (CMO) between them, the memory device may be classified as RRAM. If the variable resistive material part is made of upper and lower electrodes, where the upper electrode is magnetic, with an insulating material between the electrodes, the memory device may be classified as MRAM.
A common characteristic of the three basic types of new generation memory devices is that a current flows from a bitline BL to a wordline WL, or vice versa, when a write operation or a read operation occurs. For simplicity of explanation, the description that follows assumes that the variable resistive material is a phase change material, but it shall be understood that the present disclosure extends to all types of new generation memory devices.
Turning to FIG. 2, a memory array or device 200 includes a plurality of unit memory cells 100 as described with respect to FIG. 1. The memory array 200 includes a row decoder and main wordline (MWL) driver 210 connected to memory blocks BLK0 through BLKn, main wordlines MWL_0 through MWL_I connected to each MWL driver respectively, sub wordline (SWL) drivers 220 each connected to one of the main wordlines MWL_0 through MWL_I, sub wordlines SWL each connected to sub wordline drivers of a main wordline, and bitlines BL in each memory block that connect through memory cells to the sub wordlines. Each sub wordline driver is located among the memory blocks and supplies appropriate voltage to the corresponding sub wordline in response to the main wordline voltage. The sub wordline drivers are of the inverter type, including a PMOS transistor 222 and an NMOS transistor 224. The PMOS 222 supplies high voltage to the sub wordline and the NMOS 224 supplies low voltage to the sub wordline.
Because each sub wordline driver has both PMOS and NMOS transistors, the layout for the sub wordline driver includes a well region to isolate each PMOS transistor from the corresponding NMOS transistor. Thus, the layout area for each sub wordline driver with well regions introduces a constraint on the minimum size for reducing the size of the memory array 200. In addition, because the voltage of a main wordline is different from that of sub wordline, if the main wordline and sub wordline became electrically shorted, such as due to a process problem, for example, repair may be difficult.

This patent is subject to a terminal disclaimer.

Controlling a variable resistive memory wordline switch


A method and a system for transferring data between a register in a processor and a point-to-point communications link. More specifically, blocking and non-blocking methods are described to get and put data between a general purpose register of a soft or hard core processor and a queue connected to a point-to-point communications channel. One implementation example is for a Fast Simplex Link multi-processor network.

Multi-processor networks provide one solution to handling the more and more complex applications that are being written. One conventional implementation uses a transputer, which is a specialized microprocessor having on-chip serial links to communicate with other transputers.
The transputer approach assumes there are two communicating processors. If processor A is on a first transputer and a processor B is on a second transputer, and if processor A wants to send processor B a data item, then processor A writes the data item to a specialized memory address in the first transputer. This specialized memory address is connected to a specialized memory address in the second transputer via an uni-directional unbuffered communication channel (there is also a uni-directional return communication channel). Processor A sends the data item and blocks until it gets an acknowledgment from processor B indicating processor B has received the data item. A more detailed explanation can be found in the description for the IMS T805 transputer, titled "32-bit floating-point transputer", by SGS-Thompson Microelectronics, dated February 1996.
Some of the disadvantages of above transputer approach are: that the transmitting processor A stops execution until the receiving processor B gets the data item; and because there is no buffering, processor B must service the data items at least as fast as processor A sends them. In addition, the communication link between processors is not a register on processor A to a register on processor B dedicated link, but through a shared resource, i.e., the specialized memory address on processor A and specialized memory address on processor B. For example, two registers on processor A may need to share the same specialized memory address, and this increases data transfer time.
Accordingly, it is desirable to have an improved scheme for transfer of data to or from the registers in a processor when there is a point-to-point communication link with a source or receiver of data, which overcomes the above-described deficiencies.

Method and system for transferring data between a register in a processor and a point-to-point communication link


A square wave voltage having an amplitude equal to an output voltage of a converter is applied to an AC motor by a square wave control block. Torque control of the AC motor is performed basically by changing the voltage phase of the square wave voltage according to the torque deviation. When the motor revolution is suddenly changed, a instruction value correction unit sets a voltage instruction value of the output voltage of the converter according to a change ratio of the motor revolutions. This improves control of the motor current by changing the voltage applied to the motor in accordance with the sudden change of the motor revolutions without waiting for torque feedback control having a low control response.

A motor drive system is generally used which converts DC voltage into AC voltage by an inverter to drive and control an AC motor. In such a motor drive system, generally, motor current is controlled according to sinusoidal PWM (Pulse Width Modulation) control based on vector control for driving an AC motor with high efficiency.
However, in the sinusoidal PWM control method, a fundamental component of an output voltage of the inverter cannot be increased enough and voltage utilization is limited, so that it is difficult to obtain a high power in a high rotational speed region. In consideration of this point, employment of a modulation method that allows outputting a voltage with a fundamental component larger than the sinusoidal PWM control method has been proposed.
For example, Japanese Patent Laying-Open No. 2000-50689 (Patent Document 1) proposes that, in a control configuration in which, for output power improvement in a high speed range, rectangular wave voltage is applied to an AC motor to rotate and drive this AC motor (also referred to as "rectangular wave control method" hereinafter), torque control of AC electric motor is performed by controlling the phase of this rectangular wave voltage based on a deviation between a torque command value and actual torque.
Furthermore, such a configuration is disclosed in that a motor drive system additionally employing "overmodulation PWM control method" using an intermediate voltage waveform between the rectangular wave control method and the sinusoidal PWM control method is adopted to a hybrid automobile (for example, "Toyota's Motor Control Technology Achieving Balance Between Ecology and Power," Nikkei Monozukuri, August 2004, p. 89-95). This motor drive system uses the three control methods, namely, the sinusoidal PWM control, the overmodulation PWM control and the rectangular wave control method, which are appropriately switched depending on the motor operation condition (typically, torque/revolutions).
In addition, such a configuration is disclosed in that, considering that when an output voltage of an inverter is saturated in motor current feedback control, a harmonic also superimposes on current flowing in a motor, motor current feedback control is performed after a harmonic component is removed from the detected motor current by a filter operation portion (for example, Japanese Patent Laying-Open No. 9-215398: Patent Document 2).
Here, in the modulation method in which a fundamental component of an inverter output voltage is larger than in the sinusoidal PWM control method, typically, in the rectangular wave control method and the overmodulation control method as described above, while output power can be improved in a mid-speed range and a high-speed range of an AC motor, control response is degraded as compared with the sinusoidal PWM control method, because the voltage waveform of the motor applied voltage is distorted.
This is because, in the rectangular wave control method, an operation amount is only a phase of motor applied voltage (rectangular wave voltage) and therefore the controllability is degraded as compared with the sinusoidal PWM control method which can employ both the amplitude and the phase of the applied voltage as the operation amount. In addition, a distortion component of motor current is greater because of a greater distortion in the motor applied voltage waveform. This requires filter processing similar to that in the aforementioned Patent Document 2 (for example, time constant: about a few tens of milliseconds), and also in this respect, a control delay occurs.
Furthermore, even in the overmodulation control method, a distortion component of motor current is greater similarly, and the controllability is degraded by the aforementioned filter processing, as compared with the sinusoidal PWM control method.
Therefore, in such a modulation method like the rectangular wave control method and the overmodulation control method in which a fundamental component of an inverter output voltage is larger than in the sinusoidal PWM control method, the control response of the motor applied voltage is delayed at a time of a sudden change of motor revolutions (which means revolutions per unit time and is synonymous with rotational speed. The same applies hereinafter), so that motor current is likely to be disturbed. In particular, if motor current is disturbed so as to diverge in the increasing direction, overcurrent/overvoltage is generated, which may lead to inconvenience such as system shutdown or equipment destruction. In addition, if the rating (withstand voltage, current capacity, and the like) of the system component is designed to excessively respond to the likelihood of overvoltage/overcurrent resulting from the degraded control response as described above, the manufacturing costs are increased.

Control device for motor drive system and electric vehicle including the same


Proposed are a washing machine and a control method therefor, which may allow a user to safely and additionally put laundry in during the operation of the washing machine including an auxiliary door. The washing machine includes an auxiliary door through which laundry is additionally put in, indicates whether additionally putting-in of laundry during the operation of the washing machine is allowed, and enables a user to determine the same, in order to provide an algorithm for safely operating the auxiliary door, and checks a rotation of a drum, a temperature of the inside, and a level of water when it is desired to additionally put laundry in, so as to enable the user to safely put the laundry in. Also, when the user additionally puts laundry in while the washing machine performs a cycle, the washing machine changes a cycle profile for each cycle, and corrects a cycle profile according to an additional put-in point, thereby raising reliability of the user for the washing machine.

In general, washing machines, for example, drum washing machines, are apparatuses which include a tub for storing water (washing water or rinsing water), a drum rotatably installed inside the tub and configured to accommodate laundry and a motor configured to generate a driving force for rotating the drum and in which, when the drum is rotated, the laundry inside the drum ascends or descends along inner walls of the drum so that the contaminated laundry can be washed.
A laundry port through which the laundry can be put into or taken out of the inside of the drum is formed in the washing machine, and a door is disposed to open and close the laundry port. Thus, a user opens the door to take or put the laundry out of or into the drum.
When operation of the washing machine is started, the door is kept in a locked state. Thus, when the user wants to additionally load laundry, the user needs to open the door. In order to open the door during the operation of the washing machine, it is necessary to wait until a wash cycle is finished, or supplied water is drained. In this way, it is not easy to additionally load laundry during the operation of the washing machine.

Washing machine and control method therefor


A spool valve includes a spool assembly axially movably disposed in a cylindrical valve case. The spool assembly comprises a guide sleeve threaded in an end portion of the valve case and having an inner end positioned in the valve case and an outer end positioned outside of the valve case, and a spool axially slidably extending through an opposite end portion of the valve case and the guide sleeve. The spool is centered with respect to the valve case by a self-centering mechanism which is retained in the guide sleeve and the spool by a stopper nut threaded in the inner end of the guide sleeve. A lock nut is threaded over the outer end of the guide sleeve for fastening the guide sleeve to the valve case.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a spool valve for use as a directional control valve in an actuator such as a power steering apparatus for use on a motor vehicle, a powered boat, or the like.
2. Description of the Prior Art
There are known spool valve assemblies for use as a directional control valve in an actuator such as a power steering apparatus for use on a motor vehicle, a powered boat, or the like.
One known spool valve is illustrated in FIG. 1 of the accompanying drawings. As shown in FIG. 1, the spool valve has a spool 101 axially movably disposed in a valve case 106. The spool 101 is axially guided by a guide sleeve 107 fitted over one end of the spool 101 and threaded in one end of the valve case 106. An annular groove 100 is defined jointly in an outer circumferential surface of the spool 101 and an inner circumferential surface of the guide sleeve 107. The annular groove 100 houses therein a pair of axially spaced spring seats 102, 103 that are axially slidable in the annular groove 100, and a centering spring 104 interposed between and acting on the spring seats 102, 103. The spring seats 102, 103 and the centering spring 104 serve as a neutral position holding mechanism, or a self-centering mechanism, for returning the spool 101 to a neutral position with respect to the valve case 106. The spool 101 is maintained in the neutral position by the neutral position holding mechanism when no external forces are applied to the spool 101. However, as the guide sleeve 107 is not positionally adjustable, the changeover timing or position of the spool 101, i.e., the timing or position for the spool 101 to switch from one position to another, suffers an error depending on the machining accuracy of the spool valve.
Another conventional spool valve is shown in FIG. 2 of the accompanying drawings. The spool valve shown in FIG. 2 is a modification of the spool valve shown in FIG. 1, i.e., has a spacer 108, Belleville springs 109, and a set screw 110 in addition to the components of the spool valve shown in FIG. 1. More specifically, the spacer 108, which is of an annular shape, is axially slidably fitted over the spool 101 and held axially against ends of the guide sleeve 107 and the spring seat 103. The Belleville springs 109 are disposed between the spacer 108 and an inner axial wall of the valve case 106. The guide sleeve 107 is fixed to the valve case 106 by the set screw 110. In the spool valve shown in FIG. 2, since the spool 101 is positionally adjustable by loosening and retightening the set screw 110, an error of the changeover timing of the spool 101 can be eliminated by adjusting the position of the spool 101. However, the guide sleeve 107 tends to be loosened and positionally displaced because it is always subject to forces from the Belleville springs 109. The conventional spool valve shown in FIG. 2 is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,777,980.

Spool valve with self-centering mechanism


A universal aircraft steering by-pass pin (24) comprising a tridimensional shaft (26) that can be installed into various nose gears (28) of different types of aircraft (30), to remove the steering capability of a pilot during a push-out procedure, when a tow bar (32) of a tow vehicle (34) is connected to the nose gear (28) of the aircraft (30). The aircraft (30) can be safely towed to a position where the pilot can start the engines and steer the aircraft to an appropriate runway (36) for takeoff after the tridimensional shaft (26) and tow bar (32) are removed from the nose gear (28).

1. Field of the Invention
The instant invention relates generally to hand held tools and more specifically it relates to a universal aircraft steering by-pass pin.
2. Description of the Prior Art
In the commercial airline industry, one of the supplied pieces of equipment, with the purchase of every aircraft is a pin which when inserted into its prescribed receptacle disables the steering mechanism from being engaged in the cockpit. The pin is a safety feature designed to keep the ground personnel from being tossed around like a rag doll should the pilot inadvertently turn the nose gear while the tow bar is attached to the aircraft.
Boeing, McDonald Douglass, Lockheed and the European manufacturers have each designed their own mechanisms to accomplish the task of disabling the nose gear, whether the methodology is to pull a lever, rotate a handle, or twist a knob. The commonality in these systems is the use of a pin to be inserted before the tow vehicle pushes the aircraft away from the gate and the removal of the pin to enable cockpit steering.
Each airline at every airport maintains a ground crew which is responsible for preparing the aircraft for its next scheduled flight. In airports where the proximity of one parked aircraft to another prevents maneuverability, or to engage the aircraft engines would endanger people or the structures surrounding the aircraft, a tow vehicle is used to remove the aircraft to a position where the pilot can start the engines and steer the aircraft to the appropriate runway.
The towing process is initiated by an airline ground crew employee who arrives at the aircraft with an inventory of pins and a tow bar. After insertion of the pin, the tow bar is attached and with the arrival of the push-out vehicle the aircraft is removed from the gate to a predetermined position, where the tow vehicle and tow bar are disengaged from the nose gear. The pin is removed and the captain is given the authority over the aircraft.
Each airline manufacture has designed its own pin for each type of aircraft, which can be of varying lengths and thicknesses, such as for Boeing 720, 720b, 707, 727, 737, 747, 757 and 767. These types of aircraft span several decades and necessitate change in design. Although these changes are welcomed within the airline industry, it creates a cumbersome system where aircraft ground crew vehicles are required to carry around a dozen or so differing pins, but also may be carrying a number of the same pin for the more popular aircraft arriving at that airport.
Further complications arise as more countries are developing their own aircraft industries and vying for their place in a world marketplace. In the case of the French Airbus A-300, the pin is only a couple of inches long, which makes it difficult to keep track of, especially amongst all the other pins. If the location ribbon is lost the size of the pin makes it hard to locate.
Numerous hand held tools have been provided in prior art. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 2,475,936 to Allen; U.S. Pat. No. 4,799,832 to Abbott; U.S. Pat. No. 4,926,721 to Hsiao and U.S. Pat. No. 5,461,950 to Iwinski all are illustrative of such prior art. While these units may be suitable for the particular purpose to which they address, they would not be as suitable for the purposes of the present invention as heretofore described.


A data packet distributor (DPD) includes a memory and a data packet transmission device (DPTD) connected to the memory. The DPTD receives a first data packet and identifies a destination queue for attempting transmission of the first data packet. The attempt for transmission is unsuccessful when a second data packet associated with the identified destination queue is present in the memory or the identified destination queue is unavailable for receiving the first data packet. The DPTD stores the first data packet in the memory when the attempt is unsuccessful. The DPTD re-attempts the transmission of the first data packet to the identified destination queue at end of a time interval. The re-attempt is successful when the second data packet is absent in the memory and the identified destination queue is available for receiving the first data packet.

In a typical communication network, a data packet transmission system (DPTS) transmits data packets associated with a host system to one or more nodes of the communication network, in a first-in-first-out (FIFO) manner. In an example, the nodes correspond to NAND flash memory chips of a solid state drive (SSD). In another example, the nodes correspond to end devices (such as routers, switches, and the like).
FIG. 1 shows a block diagram of a conventional data packet transmission system (DPTS) 100 that transmits data packets in the FIFO manner. The DPTS 100 includes a data packet distributor (DPD) 102 that sequentially receives first through nth data packets P0-PN from the host system (not shown), and distributes (i.e., transmits) the first through nth data packets P0-PN to first through mth destination queues 104a-104m (hereinafter collectively referred to as "the destination queues 104"). Each data packet is associated with a corresponding destination queue, i.e., the first data packet P0 is associated with the first destination queue 104a. The first through mth destination queues 104a-104m include first through mth memories 106a-106m, respectively.
For transmitting the first data packet P0, the DPD 102 identifies the first destination queue 104a from the destination queues 104. The DPD 102 determines an availability of the first destination queue 104a for receiving the first data packet P0. The DPD 102 transmits the first data packet P0 to the first destination queue 104a if the first destination queue 104a is available for receiving the first data packet P0. If the DPD 102 determines that the first destination queue 104a is unavailable for receiving the first data packet P0 (i.e., the first memory 106a is full), the DPD 102 waits until the first destination queue 104a is available for receiving the first data packet P0. In a scenario, the second through mth destination queues 104b-104m are available for receiving the associated data packets. However, the transmission of the associated data packets to the available destination queues is blocked as the first data packet P0 is yet to be transmitted to the first destination queue 104a, thereby causing a head-of-line-blocking (HOLB) problem. The HOLB problem introduces a delay in the transmission of the associated data packets to the available destination queues. The delay is especially critical for real-time applications such as multimedia streaming, internet-protocol-television, and the like.
In light of the foregoing, it would be advantageous to have a method and a system that manages orderly transmission of data packets in a DPTS, and reduces the delay in the transmission of the data packets.


A power factor correction circuit including a boost converter, a first capacitor, a first resistor, and a boost control unit is provided. The boost control unit includes a signal generator and a frequency controller. The boost converter transforms a rectified voltage to a correction voltage according to a pulse width modulation (PWM) signal. The first capacitor and the first resistor are coupled between an input terminal and a ground terminal of the boost converter. The boost control unit is adapted to generate the PWM signal, and adjust a duty cycle and a frequency of the PWM signal according to a current flowing through the first resistance, the rectified voltage and the correction voltage. Wherein, the signal generator is adapted to generate a ramp signal and adjust a slope of the ramp signal according to a charging current. The frequency controller adjusts the charging current according to the rectified voltage.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a power factor correction circuit and a power supply apparatus thereof. More particularly, the present invention relates to a power factor correction circuit and a power supply apparatus thereof, which may reduce an electromagnetic interference (EMI).
2. Description of Related Art
In evaluation criteria for various electronic apparatuses, electromagnetic compatibility (EMC) thereof is an essential quality indicator. Evaluation of the EMC includes electromagnetic interference (EMI) and electromagnetic susceptibility (EMS). Since signal transmission speed of a present electronic apparatus is increasingly fast, the EMI caused by electronic components within the electronic apparatus becomes more and more serious, so that normal operations of other electronic components within the electronic apparatus are influenced.
Generally, the EMI is mainly transmitted into a circuit via a power supply. Therefore, in a server, to match with some corresponding standards, an EMI test is also a key test for the power supply. Moreover, the present power supply generally has at least one switch device, and voltages to be output may be generated by turning on/off the switch device.
However, with repeated switching of the switch device, the EMI caused by the power supply is increased. Though the present power supply may constantly adjust a frequency of an internal pulse width modulation (PWM) signal thereof to mitigate the EMI, how to adjust the frequency of the PWM signal while maintaining a stable power output is still an issue under development.

Power factor correction circuit and power supply apparatus thereof


A semiconductor wafer inspection tool and a semiconductor wafer inspection method capable of conducting an inspection under appropriate conditions in any one of an NVC (Negative Voltage Contrast) mode and a PVC (Positive Voltage Contrast) mode is provided. Primary electrons 2 are irradiated onto a wafer to be inspected 6 and the irradiation position thereof is scanned in an XY direction. Secondary electrons (or reflected electrons) 10 from the wafer to be inspected 6 are controlled by a charge control electrode 5 and detected by a sensor 11. An image processor converts a detection signal from the sensor 11 to a detected image, compares the detected image with a predetermined reference image, judges defects, an overall control section 14 selects inspection conditions from recipe information for each wafer to be inspected 6 and sets a voltage to be applied to the charge control electrode 5. A Z stage 8 sets the distance between the wafer to be inspected 6 and the charge control electrode 5 according to this voltage.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a semiconductor wafer inspection tool and a semiconductor wafer inspection method for inspecting a substrate apparatus which has a circuit pattern such as a semiconductor apparatus and liquid crystal using electron beams.
2. Background Art
Conventionally, an electron beam based pattern inspection tool is known which irradiates electron beams onto a wafer to be inspected, detects secondary electrons generated and scans electron beams, thereby obtains a secondary electron image of the circuit pattern on the wafer, compares the detected image with a reference image which must have an identical pattern and judges locations where there is a large difference as defects (e.g., see JP Patent Publication (Kokai) No. 1′-160247A (1999)).
The material and construction forming a circuit pattern to be inspected by an inspection tool are becoming increasingly complicated and defects are also becoming more diversified accordingly. The conventional inspection tools create various detection conditions by appropriately setting an acceleration voltage which represents energy of electron beams on a wafer and electric field intensity or the like on the object.
As will be described more specifically later, as for electron optical systems in particular, there are modes of setting the electron optical systems called an "NVC" (Negative Voltage Contrast) mode and a "PVC" (Positive Voltage Contrast) mode. Since the NVC mode and the PVC mode have substantially different types of detectable defects, there is a demand for an apparatus which can singly make inspection performance in these two modes compatible with each other. On the other hand, however, an optimal configuration of an electron optical system to realize these two modes varies greatly and it is difficult for a single optical system to realize the optimal configuration for both conditions.
The present invention has been implemented in view of such circumstances and it is an object of the present invention to provide a semiconductor wafer inspection tool and a semiconductor wafer inspection method capable of performing inspections under appropriate conditions in any mode of the NVC mode and the PVC mode.

Semiconductor wafer inspection tool and semiconductor wafer inspection method


Human kininogen domain 3 (HK-D3) polypeptides and biologically active variants and derivatives of HK-D3 are anti-angiogenic. These molecules are used to inhibit angiogenesis or treat a disease or condition in which angiogenesis is pathogenic. Because of their anti-angiogenic potential, these molecules are useful in the treatment of cancer by inhibiting or reversing the growth of primary or metastatic tumors.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention in the field of biochemistry and medicine is directed to angiogenesis-inhibitory polypeptides comprising a part of human kininogen, particularly, the D3 domain (HK-D3) and variants thereof, and their use in diagnosis and therapy of diseases associated with endothelial cell migration and proliferation. In particular these polypeptides are useful in treating subjects with cancer.
2. Description of the Background Art
Angiogenesis, the formation of new capillaries form pre-existing ones (Folkman, J., N. Engl. J. Med., 1971, 285:1182–1186; Hanahan D. et al., Cell, 1996, 86:353–364), is a normal part of embryonic development, wound healing and female reproductive function. However, angiogenesis also plays a pathogenic role in the establishment and progression of certain diseases. Cancer, rheumatoid arthritis and diabetic retinopathy are examples of such diseases (Carmeliet P. et al., Nature, 2000,407:249–257). Anti-angiogenic therapy holds promise in inhibiting the progression of these diseases.
Angiogenesis can be triggered by several pro-angiogenic cytokines. In the setting of cancer, tumor cells under hypoxic conditions secrete vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) and/or fibroblast growth factor (bFGF). These proteins diffuse and bind to specific receptors on endothelial cells (ECs) in the local vasculature, perturbing the balance of pro- and anti-angiogenic forces in favor of angiogenesis. As a consequence of binding these proteins, ECs are activated to (a) secrete enzymes that induce remodeling of the associated tissue matrix, and (b) change the patterns and levels of expression of adhesion molecules such as integrins. Following matrix degradation, ECs proliferate and migrate toward the hypoxic tumor, resulting in the generation and maturation of new blood vessels.
Interestingly, many anti-angiogenic factors result from the degradation of matrix proteins—i.e., are a result of the action of pro-angiogenic enzymes. Examples include endostatin, a fragment of collagen XIII (O'Reilly, M. S. et al., Cell 1997, 88:277–285); kringle 5 of plasminogen (O'Reilly, M. S. et al., Cell, 994, 79:315–328) and PEX, the C-terminus non-catalytic subunit of MMP-2 (Brooks P C et al., Cell, 1998, 92:391–400).
The concept has emerged that, due to the abundance of pro-angiogenic factors, these anti-angiogenic molecules are unable to overcome the pro-angiogenic balance in a primary tumor. However, since they are secreted into circulation, these anti-angiogenic molecules are capable of inhibiting angiogenesis at other locations where tumor cells may have begun to invade. Consequently, micro-metastases comprising these tumor cells at these new locations remain dormant. This hypothesis explains the puzzling observation made by surgeons many years ago: at various times after surgical removal of a primary tumor in a patient with no obvious metastatic disease, the patient returns with advanced metastatic disease.
Thus, clinical intervention by treatment with one or more of the anti-angiogenic factors could inhibit the angiogenic process and halt tumor growth as well as metastasis. Significant evidence in the literature (cited above) supports this notion.

Human kininogen D3 domain polypeptide as an anti-angiogenic and anti-tumor agent


A system is provided to perform secure operations. The system includes an I/O subsystem, a memory subsystem and processors. The processors are operative to execute processes in trusted execution environments (TEEs) and rich execution environments (REEs). Each of the TEEs and the REEs is identified by a corresponding access identifier (AID) and protected by a corresponding system resource protection unit (SRPU). The corresponding SRPU of a TEE includes instructions, when executed by a corresponding processor, cause the corresponding processor to control access to the TEE using a data structure including allowed AIDs and pointers to memory locations accessible by the allowed AIDs.

Traditional Operating System (OS) is a collection of software that manages system hardware resources for users' application programs to achieve better utilization, performance, or efficiency. The traditional OS has become insecure due to its growing complexity and size. Furthermore, the traditional OS has become insecure due to the use of certain programming languages, such as C/C++, in users' programs. These programming languages enable users' programs to manipulate system resources (e.g., memory). As a result, both the OS and user programs may involve in memory management, causing inconsistency and lead to insecurity.
Trusted Execution Environment (TEE) such as ARM® TrustZone® was developed in the early 2000s to enhance system security. TEE has taken over a significant amount of system hardware resources (e.g., processors, memory, and I/O devices) from the traditional OS when such system resources are required to be secured. TEE also uses additional hardware, which is totally under the control of TEE, to boot the system. The result is that the traditional OS, renamed as REE (Rich Execution Environment), is treated as an application program and has no role in the management of system security. However, system security can be challenged when applications demand more than one TEE and/or more than one REE. Therefore, there is a need for a reliable, effective, and scalable security mechanism for a secure computing system.

Security schemes for multiple trusted-execution-environments (TEEs) and multiple rich-execution-environments (REEs)


A X-ray diagnostic apparatus includes an X-ray imaging unit including an X-ray tube and an X-ray detecting unit to generate an X-ray image, an image generating unit generating a 3D non-blood vessel image and a 3D blood vessel image from an original 3D image generated by the X-ray diagnostic apparatus or an X-ray CT apparatus, a projection image generating unit generating a non-blood vessel projection image from the 3D non-blood vessel image and generating a blood vessel projection image from the 3D blood vessel image, a positional shift identifying unit identifying a positional shift between the X-ray image and the non-blood vessel projection image, a correcting unit correcting a positional shift of the blood vessel projection image on the basis of the positional shift, and a display unit which displays the X-ray image and the corrected blood vessel projection image.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an X-ray diagnostic apparatus generating a road map for a blood vessel structure.
2. Description of the Related Art
In intervention or angiographic examination, a catheter is inserted into a blood vessel from, for example, the joint of a leg and is guided to a target region through the blood vessel. This catheter or a guide wire inserted in the catheter is pushed forward to a target position under X-ray fluoroscopic observation. However, the blood vessel cannot be seen in an X-ray image unless enhanced by a contrast medium. Keeping injecting the contrast medium to visualize the blood vessel may result in renal failure. For this reason, a road map function is provided, which displays an image sensed after a contrast medium is injected once and an X-ray fluoroscopic image upon superimposing them. This function allows the operator to discriminate the position of a blood vessel to a certain extent without injecting any contrast medium, and hence is often used especially when a blood vessel structure is complicated and it is difficult to push a catheter or a guide wire into the blood vessel. According to this road map function, however, the occurrence of movement of the bed, rotation of the arm to change the observation direction, slight movement (stirring) of the patient, or the like makes it necessary to re-generate a road map image. Frequently re-generating a road map image leads to increases in examination time and the amount of contrast medium used.
In order to solve such problems, a 3D road map in which a road map image generated by using a 3D image and a fluoroscopic image are superimposed on each other is expected to be effective in reducing the amount of contrast medium used and shortening the examination time.
In order to mechanically superimpose a 3D image and an X-ray image, a method of generating a positional shift table may be used. However, since no specific limitation is imposed on angles to be used for medical treatment, a large amount of calibration data is required. This method cannot follow up the movement of a patient during medical treatment.
In academic conferences and the like, there has been proposed a method of performing calibration by extracting a catheter from a fluoroscopic image assuming that the catheter travels through a blood vessel. In a region with a complicated blood vessel structure, however, there is a risk of misinterpreting the correspondence between blood vessels. In addition, the shape of a blood vessel may be changed by the catheter. Furthermore, if a patient moves, it is very difficult to make correction by using the above method.

The Research Foundation of State University of New York


A method for operating an accelerator pedal-controlled distance controller of a vehicle. The distance controller regulates a distance to a target vehicle as a function of an actuator pedal value of the vehicle and activates automatic braking operations as necessary. A braking operation is aborted when the accelerator pedal value is increased during the braking operation.

In the case of a vehicle including a distance controller, a situation-dependent setpoint distance to a preceding vehicle is set. During the approach to the preceding vehicle, the distance controller reduces an engine output of the vehicle with respect to a driver input of a driver of the vehicle tapped at an accelerator pedal of the vehicle until the vehicle travels behind the preceding vehicle, at the setpoint distance, at a speed of the preceding vehicle. The distance controller may be deactivated, for example, with the aid of a kickdown of the accelerator pedal, for example, in order to pass the preceding vehicle.

Method for operating an accelerator pedal-controlled distance controller of a vehicle and control unit


A gate for carabiners is disclosed including a first wing, a second wing and a bridge connecting the two. The first wing, the second wing and the bridge are stamped or otherwise cut out of a sheet of metal or other durable, bendable material. The wings are then bent relative to the bridge so that they oppose one another and form sides of the gate. One end of the gate is attached to the carabiner, while an opposing end of the gate is provided with a catch to selectively close an opening in the carabiner, and thereby selectively hold ropes or other items within the carabiner. In accordance with one aspect of the invention, a liner is disposed about the carabiner gate to limit wear caused to ropes, etc., by the carabiner gate. In accordance with another aspect of the invention, the area between the wings is filled with a filler to increase the strength of the gate.

The present invention relates to an improved gate for a carabiner, and in particular, to a carabiner gate formed from sheet metal, such as may be used in rock climbing and rappelling.
The use of carabiners by rock climbers and rappellers has become widespread. As is shown in FIG. 1A, a carabiner, generally indicated at 10, is typically formed of a metallic body 14 which is formed into a generally prolate loop so as to circumscribe an opening or void 18. The carabiner 10 has a back portion 22, and a front portion, generally indicated at 26, which is either generally straight, as shown in FIG. 1A, or is concave.
The front portion 26 of the carabiner 10 is formed by an upper, free end 30 which extends downwardly from a top portion 34 of the carabiner body 14 in a hook-like manner, and a lower free end 38 which extends upwardly from a bottom portion 42 of the body. The space between the upper free end 30 and the lower free end 38 provides an opening, generally indicated at 46, through which climbing/rappelling ropes may be passed into the void 18 circumscribed by the body.
The opening 46 is selectively closed by a gate 50 which is pivotably attached to the lower free end 38. Typically, the gate is biased in a closed position, represented by the dashed lines 50a. In such a position, the gate prevents a rope which is held within the carabiner 10 from being pulled out through the opening 46. The gate also usually provides structural support to the body in tension. When it is desired to position another rope 56 within the carabiner 10, the rope is placed against the gate 50 and sufficient force is applied to overcome the biasing. This moves the gate into the position shown at 50, or even into the position shown at 50b. Those familiar with carabiners will appreciate that the rear portion 22 often provides a limitation to the distance which the gate 50 can be displaced.
Once the rope 56 is positioned within the void 18 circumscribed by the carabiner 10, the pressure on the gate 50 is released and it returns to the position shown at 50a. The rope 56 is thus properly held within the carabiner 10.
As shown in FIG. 1A, the gate 50 is generally cylindrical. Such a gate 50 has the advantage that it is easy to use, and the rounded outer surface 60 provides little friction against the rope 56. Those familiar with rock climbing and rappelling will be familiar with the high cost of ropes and the importance of minimizing wear. Unlike most other applications, a climber or rappeller must not use worn ropes, as one broken rope can result in severe injury or even death.
One problem with the gate 50 shown in FIG. 1A is that they are generally expensive to produce. Typically the gates are machined out of bar stock or extrusion metal. Machining the metal is generally more expensive and time consuming that other approaches such as stamping. Once the gate 50 has been machined, a spring (not shown) or some other biasing device must be loaded prior to attachment to the body 14 of the carabiner 10.
To overcome the problems and expense of machined gates, an alternative arrangement was developed in which the machined gate 50 is replaced by a piece of curved wire-like piece of metal. Referring now to FIG. 1B, there is shown a carabiner 110 with a body 114 circumscribing a void 118. The body 114 has a back side 122 and a generally straight front side 126. The body 114 also has a top portion 134 and a bottom portion 142 which support an upper free end 130 and a lower free end 138, respectively to form an opening 146.
Instead of having a machined gate, such as that shown in FIG. 1A, the opening 146 is selectively closed by a wire which is attached at each end to the lower free end 138. The wire forming the gate 150 is attached to the lower free end 138 in such a manner as to have a biased position, shown at 150a, in which a top 154 of the gate 150 rests in a notch 160 formed in the upper free end 130. In such a position, a rope (not shown) cannot be pulled through the opening 146.
The wire gate 150 has several advantages over the machined gate discussed above. First, it is easier to make and is less expensive. Second, it does not require a spring or other resilient member to be added. Rather, the biasing force is created by tension within the piece of metal. Third, the piece of metal provides the carabiner with less weight.
The wire gate 150 does have disadvantages. First, the wire causes increased wear on climbing and rappelling ropes. Instead of passing over one cylindrical body, the rope passes over two wires having a smaller curvature, causing greater wear. Additional concern is that some less experienced climbers may view the carabiners as being less safe due to the thinness of the wire compared to the conventional gate.
Thus, there is a need to provide a carabiner gate which overcomes the respective disadvantages of each type of currently available carabiner. Such a gate must be economical, durable and easy to use.


An apparatus and method for recovering data transmitted in a wireless communication system is claimed. A plurality of signal points, the signal point including a plurality of modulation symbols from a plurality of coded bits, is received. A first subset of signal points for which a bit is equal to a first value and a second subset of signal points for which the bit is equal to a second value is determined. The first and second subsets are signal points from an expanded signal constellation. The probability that the bit is equal to the first value or the second value is determined as a function of the received signal point. A soft decision symbol may then be determined, based on the probability that the bit is equal to the first value or the second value. The soft decision symbols may be represented as log likelihood ratios.

I. Field
The invention generally relates to wireless communications. More specifically, the invention relates to an apparatus and method for determining the log-likelihood ratio for turbo codes and branch metric for convolutional codes when precoding is used.
II. Background
Wireless communication systems are widely deployed to provide various types of communication such as voice, packet data, and so on. These systems may be based on code division multiple access (CDMA), time division multiple access (TDMA), orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) or some other multiple access techniques.
Over a severe multi-path fading wireless channel, data transmission at a high rate with high spectral efficiency is a challenging task. Currently, OFDM is considered an effective modulation technique for such a channel. OFDM has been adopted for several wireless LAN standards. OFDM is also often considered for broadband wireless access (BWA) systems. Though OFDM modulation is indeed very effective in dealing with severe multi-path fading channel, it suffers from several disadvantages.
A disadvantage of OFDM systems is the overhead associated with the guard tones in frequency domain and cyclic prefix in time domain. Inefficiency also results from the data transmission block resolution problem. The minimum block size for transmission is the number of bits per OFDM symbol. This number can be large if the number of carriers is large and the high order modulation alphabet is used. For a burst data transmission system, since the frame length, in general, is not an integral multiple of number of bits per OFDM symbol, bits are wasted in padding. The wastage due to padding can be significant, especially for small frame length.
Another notable disadvantage of OFDM is its greater susceptibility to non-linearity and phase noise. The amplitude of the OFDM modulated signal is gaussian distributed. The high peak-to-average power ratio of an OFDM signal makes it susceptible to nonlinear or clipping distortion, as the signal peaks may occasionally thrust into the saturation region of the power amplifier. The result is bit error rate (BER) degradation and adjacent channel interference. Thus, larger output power back-off is needed to reduce the OFDM signal degradation.
OFDM used with good channel codes alleviates some of the problems described above. Channel coding in conjunction with a channel interleaver also eliminates the need for bit loading in OFDM system. However, channel coding does not solve the efficiency problem of OFDM. If the OFDM parameters are not properly selected, then the data transmission efficiency can be appreciably low.
Band limited single carrier system with high order quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM) is widely used scheme for data transmission at high rate with high spectral efficiency for wire line as well as line-of-sight wireless system. It does not suffer from the above-mentioned disadvantages of OFDM. However, the channel equalization for single carrier system in severe multi-path fading channel is a difficult task. Linear equalizer fails to provide satisfactory performance. It has been found through simulation that even if a lower rate channel code is used with a single carrier system, in order to make the total overhead or the spectral efficiency the same for a single carrier and a OFDM system, the single carrier performance with linear equalizer and the ideal equalizer taps is only slightly better than the OFDM.
Use of a decision feedback equalizer (DFE) is well known to be very effective equalization technique for a channel with severe inter-symbol interference (ISI) problems. DFE requires the estimates of past symbols without delay to subtract the ISI contributed by them to the current symbol. If the past symbol estimates are error free, then the ISI contributed by them can be completely subtracted without enhancing noise. This explains the superior performance of ideal DFE, which assumes that error free estimates of the past symbols are available at the receiver. If an incorrect decision is made on the past symbol, then the error propagation can occur. It has been found through simulation that for a severe multi-path channel, the effect of error propagation is so bad that the performance of a DFE is worse than that of a linear equalizer.
A number of methods have been proposed to reduce the affect of the error propagation in the DFE. One method suggests assigning a reliability measure to each equalized soft symbol. The symbol estimate to be fed back to the DFE is based on this reliability. For example, if the equalized symbol has a high reliability, the hard decision is fed back; otherwise the equalized symbol without the hard decision is fed back.
Another method suggests iterating between equalization and channel decoder in a turbo-like manner and has been named "turbo-equalization" in the literature. The main idea is if the channel decoder generates better estimates of the code bits at its output than what it received from the equalizer at its input, this can be fed back to DFE. Consequently during the next iteration of DFE less error propagation will occur within DFE and so on. The first method has almost negligible incremental implementation complexity whereas the second method has substantial increase in complexity and delay. Unfortunately, these methods have been found to be only marginally effective in combating the effect of error propagation.
There is therefore a need in the art for techniques to reduce the affect of the error propagation.

Method and apparatus for determining the log-likelihood ratio with precoding


An image forming apparatus includes a toner cartridge supporting member which is movable between an insertion position and a draw-out position. An information storage device is provided on a toner cartridge that is mounted on the toner cartridge supporting member. A connector that is configured to engage the information storage device is provided on the image forming apparatus. The connector is movable in a moving direction of the toner cartridge supporting member. When a toner cartridge on the toner cartridge supporting member moves toward the draw-out position, the connector moves with and remains engaged with the information storage device for part of the movement so that information can be read from or written to the information storage device before the toner cartridge arrives at the draw-out position.

An image forming apparatus (such as a copying machine and a printer) which forms an image by means of an electrophotographic printing method has the following feature: when toner, which is contained in a developing tank and which makes visible an electrostatic latent image formed on a surface of a photoreceptor drum, is consumed and reduced in its amount, toner is supplied from a toner cartridge to the developing tank. For example, when two-component toner including toner and carrier is used, toner contained in a toner cartridge is supplied to a developing tank so that a toner density in toner in the developing tank is not less than a predetermined value. The toner cartridge is detachably and attachably arranged to a predetermined position in the image forming apparatus. When a toner cartridge which is attached to the image forming apparatus runs out of toner, the toner cartridge is exchanged with another.
The electrophotographic printing method in the image forming apparatus encompasses various kinds of methods such as a positive charging method and a reverse charging method. There are many types of toner having different characteristics for respective methods. Also, the type of toner is predetermined for each model of image forming apparatus.
An exchange of a toner cartridge is mostly carried out by a user. When a plurality of image forming apparatuses of different models are closely provided one to another, there is a possibility that a toner cartridge prepared for one model of the image forming apparatuses is attached to another model of the image forming apparatuses by mistake. Especially in image forming apparatuses of the same manufacturer, toner cartridges having the same shape often contain toner of different characteristics. In cases where a plurality of image forming apparatuses of different types closely provided one to another are thus of the same manufacturer, a user easily makes a mistake and attaches a wrong toner cartridge in an exchange.
In light of this, there has been known a conventional image forming apparatus in which, in a toner cartridge, an information storage section for storing inherent information such as a toner characteristic is provided. With this arrangement, it is possible (i) to judge and display whether or not an attached toner cartridge is suitable based on information which is read out from an information storage section by an information processing device provided on the image forming apparatus side (Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication, Tokukaihei, No. 2-296259 (published on Dec. 6, 1990)); (ii) to inform remaining amount of toner to a user so that a toner cartridge does not run out of toner suddenly (Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication, Tokukaihei, No. 9-134098 (published on May 20, 1997)).
The conventional image forming apparatus, however, has the following problem: when a toner cartridge is suddenly detached from the image forming apparatus during a communication between an information storage section and an information processing device, such a communication is interrupted, thereby causing a communication error. This will cause the following problem. For example, in a case where a toner end of a toner cartridge is determined in accordance with the number of rotations of a motor, the main body of an image forming apparatus transmits the number of rotations of the motor to an IC chip. Therefore, if the communication between the information storage section and the information processing device is interrupted, then the IC chip will have wrong information about the number of rotations of the motor. This will cause a timing of a toner end to be inaccurate. As a result, the following problems will occur: (i) even when it is judged to be a toner end, a large amount of toner still remains in a cartridge; (ii) even when toner in a cartridge runs out, it is not judged to be a toner end.


A press brake is provided for performing one or more bending operations on a product, such as a sheet metal part, whereby the selection and laying out the clues necessary for bending the product is facilitated by detecting the kinds and layout of the dies loaded in the press brake. A display device is also provided for displaying the layout of the dies, checking interferences between the product and the dies, and displaying the details and features of the product.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a press brake. More particularly, the present invention relates to a press brake which allows easy selection and laying out of dies during bending of a product by detecting the kinds and layout of the dies loaded in the press brake, indicating the layout of the dies and the details of a workpiece and the product, and checking interference between the workpiece and the dies when the product is to be bent.
2. Prior Art
Conventionally, where lengths and shapes of a plurality of bent spots or bend lines in a bent product are different from one another, a plurality of spots in a workpiece have often been bent in sequence with one press brake by loading and properly spacing a plurality of dies in the press brake.
When a plurality of spots in a workpiece are to be bent by loading a plurality of dies in the press brake, the kinds and layout of the dies to be used are recorded in a work sheet so as to facilitate easy selection of the dies when bending of the same product is carried out again. However, this recording work is burdensome.
For a new product, such as a sheet metal part, a worker must consider the kinds and arrangement of dies according to a bending sequence of the product. It was thus troublesome to select and arrange dies in accordance with bending of a new product.
It is necessary to check interferences between a workpiece and dies for bending of the workpiece. Traditionally, it was rather difficult to see the workpiece and the dies, because they were stereoscopically shown in a display device.
Furthermore, when the whole picture of the product and the workpiece was displayed, for instance where the workpiece was long, it was difficult to see the picture because of thin or incomplete displaying of portions of the product or workpiece in the vicinity of end parts or feature sections.

Method and apparatus for displaying die layout in press brake and for checking interference


A method for predicting the elution time of a peptide in chromatographic and electrophoretic separations by first providing a data set of known elution times of known peptides, then creating a plurality of vectors, each vector having a plurality of dimensions, and each dimension representing the elution time of amino acids present in each of these known peptides from the data set. The elution time of any protein is then be predicted by first creating a vector by assigning dimensional values for the elution time of amino acids of at least one hypothetical peptide and then calculating a predicted elution time for the vector by performing a multivariate regression of the dimensional values of the hypothetical peptide using the dimensional values of the known peptides. Preferably, the multivariate regression is accomplished by the use of an artificial neural network and the elution times are first normalized using a transfer function.

Liquid phase separations (eg. liquid chromatography and electrophoretic separations) have long been used as investigative tools by scientists and researchers seeking to identify the structure of molecules, particularly peptides (as used herein the term "peptides" refers to polymers having more than one amino acid, and includes, without limitation, dipeptides, tripeptides, oligopeptides, and polypeptides. The term "protein" refers to molecules containing one or more polypeptide chains).
Proteomics involves the broad and systematic analysis of proteins, which includes their identification, quantification, and ultimately the attribution of one or more biological functions. Proteomic analyses are challenging due to the high complexity and dynamic range of protein abundances. The industrialisation of biology requires that the systematic analysis of expressed proteins be conducted in a high-throughput manner and with high sensitivity, further increasing the challenge. Recent technological advances in instrumentation, bio-informatics and automation have contributed to progress towards this goal. Specifically, in the area of proteomic identification, it is evident that greater specificity benefits the ability to deal with the high complexity of proteomes. As a result, recent efforts have focused on improvements in separation speed, resolving power and dynamic range, and these methods have generally been based on the combination of separations with mass spectrometry (MS), using correlation of tandem mass spectra with established protein databases or predictions from genome sequence data for identifications.
Additionally, modern proteomics research has increasingly taken advantage of the ability of liquid chromatography to identify proteins from their elution time from a chromatographic column. The information gleaned from a liquid chromatograph can be enhanced by identifying the molecule's mass, or mass to charge, by coupling the liquid chromatograph either on line or off line, with a mass spectrometer. Common methods include offline tryptic digestion and subsequent electrophoretic or chromatographic separation with matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization or electrospray time-of-flight or ion trap mass spectrometry. Capillary electrophoresis, mass spectrometry or liquid chromatography/mass spectrometry coupled online via electrospray interfaces have also been used to analyze tryptic and other digests of complex biological samples such as whole cell lysates and human body fluids. The dynamic range of the mass spectrometer in these methods may be limited when a sample is directly infused by ion suppression in the electrospray and the detector. Further, the dynamic range of Fourier transform ion cyclotron resonance (FTICR) and ion trap mass spectrometers can be limited by the storage capacity within the instrument, although it has been shown that the use of a mass selective quadrupole to selectively load the FTICR cell.
Researchers attempting to enhance the accuracy of these methods have devised a number of schemes to increase their accuracy. For example, in the paper "Prediction of Chromatographic Retention and Protein Identification in Liquid Chromatography/Mass Spectrometry" Magnus Palmblad, Margareta Ramstrom, Karin E. Markides, Per Hakansson, and Jonas Bergquist, Analytic Chemistry p. 4–9, 2002, the authors describe a method for using the information from liquid separation schemes such as chromatography and electrophoretic methods, to improve peptide mass fingerprinting based on accurate mass measurement. The author's concede that the resolving power and accuracy in chromatographic separations are several orders of magnitude lower than in mass spectrometry, but they contend that the information is complementary in nature and available at negligible computational cost and at no additional experimental cost. Briefly, the method described in the Palmblad paper assigns "retention coefficients" for the 20 amino acids, as well as the number of each amino acid, a term that compensates for void volumes and a delay between sample injection and acquisition of mass spectra. The parameters are then fitted by the least squares method to experimental data from ˜70 BSA peptides of ˜100 HAS and transferrin peptides putatively identified by accurate mass measurement and high relative intensities in the mass spectra. The authors found that "the accuracy of the predictor was found to be 8–10% when "trained" by each of the six BSA and CSF data sets." While approaches such as that described in the Palmblad paper provide some useful information, their utility is limited by the accuracy of the predictions.
Thus, at the present, there are two major approaches for proteomic analyses. The first one consists of the off-line combination of two-dimensional polyacrylamide electrophoresis (2D-PAGE) with MS. The proteins are first separated in a gel by their pI and mass and then the protein "spots" are enzymatically hydrolysed resulting in peptide mixtures which are analysed by matrix assisted laser desorption ionisation-time of flight (MALDI-TOF) or electrospray (ESI)-MS. Another rapid evolving approach consists of a global proteome-wide enzymatic digestion followed by analysis using on-line 1-D or 2-D liquid chromatography (LC) coupled with ESI-MS. The detection of the peptides is achieved by tandem MS (7,13) or more recently by single stage Fourier transform ion cyclotron resonance (FTICR)-MS, which provides high sensitivity, large dynamic range and high throughput in routine applications by circumventing the need for tandem MS.
An aspect of proteomic analysis that has not yet been exploited involves use of the information available from the separations (eg. LC elution time). Indeed, retention time in LC is unique and structurally dependent for a defined experiment (mobile phase composition, stationary phase etc.). If there is a way to predict the LC retention time for a given peptide structure, then this could be used in conjunction with either MS/MS data to improve the confidence of peptide identifications and/or increase the number of peptide identifications, or, with sufficiently high accuracy MS, to reduce the need for MS/MS data (i.e. if the prediction is reliable enough).
The idea that chromatographic behaviour of peptides could be predicted based on the amino acid composition is not new. In 1951, Knight and Pardee showed that synthetic peptides retention factor (Rf) values on paper chromatography could be predicted with some accuracy. In 1952, Sanger introduced the problem of isomers by demonstrating that the relationship between Rf and composition was not absolutely accurate since peptides containing the same amino acids but having difference sequences could frequently be separated. More recently, there have been several reports on the prediction of peptide elution times in reversed-phase (RP) or normal phase liquid chromatography. These methods used quantitative structure-chromatographic retention relationships (QSRR's) (e.g. partial least square or multiple linear regression) for the peptide elution time prediction. Casal et al. demonstrated that partial least squares regression provides a better predictive ability with these models using a mixture of 25 small standard peptides. One limitation of these models is that they are most effective for peptides with less than 15–20 amino acid residues.
Another approach, based on artificial neural networks (ANNs), has demonstrated better predictive capabilities in several areas of chemistry including: (i) conformational states for small peptides (31), (ii) carbon-13 nuclear magnetic resonance chemical shifts and (iii) the retardation factor or retention time of small molecules in thin layer chromatography, GC and LC. While these advances are significant, until the present invention, those having skill in the art have not yet used ANNs for peptide elution time prediction.
Accordingly, there remains a need for improved methods for predicting the identity of peptides and proteins.

Method for enhanced accuracy in predicting peptides using liquid separations or chromatography


A fluid-pressure regulator for regulating the pressure of a fluid. The regulator includes a variable-resistance fluid element and a variable-volume fluid element located downstream of the variable-resistance element. Pressure in the fluid at the outlet of the regulator is controlled by substantially simultaneously changing the resistance of the variable-resistance element and the volume of the variable-volume element. In one example, a decrease in pressure is effected at the outlet by simultaneously increasing the resistance of the variable-resistance element and increasing the volume of the variable-volume element. Some embodiments of the regulator are particularly useful to effect long-term and high-speed pressure changes in high-resistance fluidic channel networks.

The study of the dynamics of cell processes is necessary for understanding cell function, organism development, and disease. Increasingly, control engineers and cell biologists are collaborating as they recognize similar attributes in the systems they study, such as amplification, positive and negative feedback, regulation and control, oscillatory and nonlinear behavior, bi-stable behavior, disturbance rejection, noise rejection, and robustness. In many instances, the vocabularies of the engineering and biology domains are the same with regard to dynamic systems. However, one significant difference between the two domains is that there is generally no separate control unit in a biological regulation process. Rather, feedback control of a reaction in a biochemical pathway is performed implicitly by biological agents downstream of the reaction which manipulate the activity of other biological agents upstream of the reaction.
Microfluidics techniques are ideally suited to creating and maintaining the types of external chemical gradients that generate the behavior just mentioned. The ability to determine the functioning of a single cell has been handicapped by the absence of technology to introduce spatiotemporal stimulation to localized subcellular domains within single cells of sub-micron specificity. Patch clamping, micropipetting, and laser microsurgery are useful for examining local domains, but none of these methods have the potential to be as robust as those enabled by a micro- and nano-technological approach. Alternative fabrication techniques at the organic-inorganic interface can regulate the attachment and spreading of individual cells, and fluidic devices have been implemented to mediate cell population attachment, as well as to deliver chemical reagents to specific cell populations. Many cellular characteristics and processes have been discovered to be spatially and temporally responsive, including cell structure, motility, and apoptosis. To measure internal cell responses, methods for working at subcellular levels with control over these gradient behaviors are needed. Micro- and nano-technological approaches are ideally suited to these applications, as they can be used to design and develop systems on the size scale of cells and molecules and have been successfully interfaced with the cellular and molecular worlds in areas such as DNA transport, drug delivery targeting for cancer treatments, and electrically stimulating neural cells.
In U.S. Patent Application Publication No. 2008/0131323, published on Jun. 5, 2008, and titled "Method and Apparatus Utilizing Laminar Flow Interface Control In A Microfluidic Device," the present inventors described the design, fabrication, testing, and operation of apparatuses, systems, and methods for controlling the position of the interface between two or more laminar flow streams in a microfluidic network. Those apparatuses, systems, and methods allow researchers to study the behavior of cells and other objects as "black box" systems, responding to input signals in observable ways to generate output signals that can include cell position or chemical concentration. For example, variations of a chemical or other environmental factor of a cell can constitute an "input," and the cell's response to these inputs can constitute an "output." The previous invention may be used to study fundamental dynamic responses of cells, including threshold response and frequency response.
In the '323 publication, control of the position of the interface between two or more laminar flow streams is achieved using a closed-loop system that regulates pressure instead of flow. That approach achieves a high precision of positioning of the interface even at very low flow rates of one or more streams. In one embodiment of the '323 publication, the pressure in the closed-loop system is controlled using a direct current motor to actuate a syringe plunger. While that embodiment achieves the goal of providing precise control over the interface between two or more laminar flow streams, it has a limitation in the relatively small volume of the syringes used in the pressure control system. An implication of this limitation is that it constrains the duration of studies that can be conducted with the system.

Fluid-pressure regulator and related methods and systems


Provided herein are compositions and methods to reduce toxicity resulting from pharmaceutical treatment, that can lead to increased risk of developing Parkinson's disease (PD) and/or acceleration of PD-associated deterioration.

Methamphetamine (Desoxyn) and amphetamine (Adderall) are potent psychostimulants that are FDA-approved to treat attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and obesity (amphetamine is also approved to treat narcolepsy). Clinical evidence has now emerged indicating that methamphetamine/amphetamine use increases the risk of developing Parkinson's disease (PD). PD is the most common neurodegenerative movement disorder and there is currently no available therapy to prevent disease progression. Levodopa (L-DOPA) treatment is a mainstay for early and mid-stage PD patients. Although it is initially effective in alleviating symptoms, as the disease progresses, L-DOPA becomes less effective and the dose required to achieve symptomatic benefit rises. In most patients, high doses of L-DOPA produce unwanted dyskinetic movements. Alternative therapeutic strategies that reduce the likelihood of inducing development of PD and/or reduce the degenerative side effects of L-DOPA treatment are needed.

Compositions and methods to reduce pharmaceutical-induced toxicity


A method is provided for preparing flexible, free standing electrodes for use in preparing transition metal sulfide cathodes for use in high temperature electrochemical cells. Specifically, the cells contain sodium as the anode, a solid electrolyte separator of .beta."-Al.sub.2 O.sub.3, and a Teflon bonded iron (IV) sulfide cathode emmersed in a molten salt electrolyte of NaAlCl.sub.4 and electrochemically operated at 200.degree. C.

It has been desired in the art to provide a method for preparing flexible free standing electrodes for use in preparing transition metal sulfide cathodes for use in high temperature electrochemical cells; particularly cells of the type Na/.beta."-Al.sub.2 O.sub.3 /NaAlCl.sub.4 -transition metal sulfide electrochemical cell at 200.degree. C. Previous cathodes used for other Na/.beta."-Al.sub.2 O.sub.3 /NaAlCl.sub.4 -transition metal sulfide cells used a slurry mixture of the transition metal sulfide and electrolyte formed onto a graphite felt that was then contained in a separated compartment from the sodium anode. The disadvantage of this cell preparation was that large amounts of graphite felt of greater than 20 weight percent were needed in the cathode to provide sufficient electrical contact to the transition metal sulfide active material. In addition, this type of cathode process didn't immobilize the active cathode materials and thus after the electrolyte was molten, the active materials settled in the cell resulting in an nonuniform distribution of the electrochemical products.

Method of making a teflon bonded cathode for use in a high temperature cell and high temperature cell including said cathode

The United States of America as represented by the Secretary of the Army


A methodology for requesting at least one signed security measurement from at least one module is provided. The methodology includes receiving the at least one signed security measurement from the at least one module; validating the at least one signed security measurement; generating a signed dossier including all validated signed security measurements in a secure enclave, the signed dossier being used by an external network device for remote attestation of the device.

Modern networking devices are increasingly modular, wherein line cards, route processors, or other modules can be inserted or removed from a supervisor device. On top of their modularity, these modules often come equipped with their own cryptoprocessors, which require security validation above and beyond validation of the supervisor device's cryptoprocessors. However, current methods do not provide a means to validate all cryptoprocessors in a device that persists across its lifetime independent of which modules are present.

Remote attestation of modular devices with multiple cryptoprocessors