System and method for determining a location of a first target. The sensor network comprises a first sensor cluster comprising a first plurality of bearing measuring sensors. A first gateway is operatively coupled to the first plurality of bearing measuring sensors. A second sensor cluster comprises a second plurality of bearing measuring sensors. A second gateway is operatively coupled to the second plurality of bearing measuring sensors. A central command node is operatively coupled to the first and the second gateways. A first limited set of pre-computed numbers representative of information for generating a global target location estimation is transmitted from the first gateway to the central command node. A second limited set of pre-computed numbers representative of information for generating the global target location estimation is transmitted from the second gateway to the central command node. A global target location estimate of the first target is computed by the central command node based on the first and second limited set of pre-computed numbers.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention is generally directed to bearing measuring sensors. More particularly, the present invention is directed to methods and systems for providing at least one clustered network of bearing measuring sensors. The invention is particularly useful in utilizing at least one clustered acoustic bearing sensor network for estimating a target location. For example, the present invention may be used for estimating a target location of a ground or an airborne asset. However, aspects of the invention may be equally applicable in other scenarios as well.
2. Description of Related Art
Acoustic sensing technology can be used effectively by the various armed services of the United States of America for detecting and tracking ground and airborne assets. For example, acoustic sensing technology allows the acoustic sound emitted by ground vehicles, helicopters, aircraft and the like to be passively detected without certain line-of-sight restrictions. Such line-of-site restrictions may arise with other conventional tracking systems, such as radar and/or optical systems. Acoustic sensing technology may also be employed for a variety of civilian uses as well. For example, one such application could involve providing a low-cost, passive, aircraft tracking capability for small airports where radars are not practical and/or cost effective.
As is generally known, acoustic bearing sensors measure a bearing angle from a sensor to a target using an array of three or more microphones. An acoustic bearing sensor generally refers to an assembly comprising an array of microphones. Theoretically, once two sensors determine a bearing angle to a target, geometric triangulation can be used to determine the target location. For example, FIG. 1 illustrates a conventional two sensor arrangement 10. As shown in FIG. 1, two bearing sensors 12, 14 are provided in a conventional sensor arrangement and are arranged to establish a target location of target 16. This arrangement 10 utilizes a triangulation method to derive target location information. Triangulation in this simple two-sensor case consists of determining the intersection of the two bearing lines. The estimated location of the target is at the intersection.
A typical acoustic bearing sensor determines the bearing (or azimuth) to target by analyzing acoustic sound waves 18 that target 16 emits. Such acoustic sound waves 18 could include an engine noise, a muffler noise, a tire-road noise, or other like acoustic sounds. Muffler noise is a dominant noise that is typically detected in most situations. Therefore, particular acoustic sensors are used to track or locate targets having engines (and/or wheels) such as trucks, tanks, airborne crafts such as helicopters and airplanes, and the like.
One concern with acoustic bearing sensors is that they possess a random bearing angle measurement error and therefore cannot be used with the simple triangulation method as illustrated in FIG. 1. Such a random bearing angle measurement error could have a standard deviation of three degrees (i.e., 3°) or more and this standard deviation can cause an uncertainty area when determining a location of a target, such as target 16. Consequently, accurate generation of target location information is difficult.
FIG. 2 illustrates an arrangement 20 of two sensors 22, 24 having a potential uncertainty area 19 in determining the location of target 16 based on acoustic sound waves 18. The uncertainty area is due to an uncertainty of the bearing direction estimates of the two sensors. The two bearing lines originating from each sensor define the uncertainty of the bearing angle estimate. The correct bearing directions are somewhere in between the two lines. When the two bearing lines from each sensor intersect the two bearing lines from the other sensor, they define a quadrilateral (a polygon with 4 sides) which represents the uncertainty area 19 of the target location estimate. While the target 16 is at a specific location, the triangulation of the bearing estimates of the sensors 22, 24 would estimate the target location at a random point that could be anywhere within the uncertainty area 19.
Consequently, depending on a distance between sensor and target, a large and therefore unacceptable uncertainty area 19 may be present. As just one example, in the event that an acoustic sensor is positioned at a distance of 500 meters from target 16, the three degree angular error translates into a linear target location error with a standard deviation (σ) of 500 meters×tan(3°), or approximately 26.2 meters. Assuming that a random variable can frequently reach its ±3σ values, a linear uncertainty such as uncertainty area 19 can approach ±3×26.2 m=±78.6 meters in magnitude. Such a linear uncertainty on the order of almost 80 meters is considered too large of an uncertainty for certain applications, such as most target tracking applications since there may be a desire to intercept a target with a weapon and the weapon will miss the target if the target is substantially smaller than this uncertainty area. These error estimates are derived assuming optimal sensor geometry where the two bearing lines intersect perpendicularly. Sub-optimal sensor geometry results in even larger linear errors, as do longer sensor-to-target distances. When the two bearing lines intersect approximately perpendicularly, as in FIG. 2, the uncertainty area is a quadrilateral (polygon with 4 sides) that is close in shape to a square and the errors are approximately equal in all directions. When the bearing lines intersect with a small angle, such as on the order of 10°, the uncertainty area becomes a very long and thin quadrilateral. Consequently, the errors in the direction where the uncertainty area is very long can be quite large, for example, several times the ±78.6 meter error estimate from above.
One method of overcoming this concern of large location estimation errors is to estimate a target location using a plurality of bearing sensors. For example, in one arrangement, a plurality of sensors on the order of hundreds or even thousands of bearing sensors may be networked together to produce a global target location estimate, that is, a target location estimate generated by input from many bearing sensors. Using such a large quantity of bearing sensors with each bearing sensor having an independent random bearing error will average out these random errors and therefore lead to a more accurate global target location estimate.
For example, FIG. 3 illustrates a bearing sensor network 50 comprising a single cluster 68 comprising a plurality of bearing sensors. In this arrangement, the triangulation method of FIG. 2 is replaced with an optimization that can use a large number of sensors. More particularly, network 68 comprises six sensors 52, 54, 56, 58, 60, and 62 and these sensors are all operatively coupled to a central computing node 70. Network 50 of six bearing sensors 52, 54, 56, 58, 60, and 62 illustrated in FIG. 3 could include hundreds or even thousands of sensors. This network could also be disbursed over a large land mass, for example, a land mass on the order of tens or even hundreds of square kilometers.
One approach to locating target 64 in FIG. 3 is to utilize an expanded sensor network and transmit a bearing measurement of each sensor 52, 54, 56, 58, 60, and 62 to a central computing node 70. Central computing node 70 then gathers bearing measurements generated by each of the plurality of bearing sensors 52, 54, 56, 58, 60, and 62 and utilizes a global optimization to estimate a global target location estimate of target 64. In the absence of a global optimization, each pair of bearing sensors in FIG. 3 would estimate a different target location based on triangulation of their two bearing lines. The intersections of these pairs of bearing lines are marked by the circles in FIG. 3. However, it is preferred to estimate one globally optimal location of the target that is based on the measurements of all the sensors rather than computing multiple estimates based on each pair of sensors. The one globally-optimal location is the most accurate estimate that can be derived based on the mathematics and physics of this target location problem.
Typically, sensors measure bearing angles about once per second and target location estimates are computed at the same rate (i.e, 60 estimates per minute). Therefore, a centralized sensor network control approach requires high communication bandwidth so that each sensor in the network can transmit wirelessly its bearing estimate to the central computing node 70 once per second. It is likely that this would result in wireless communication bottlenecks and not all sensor measurements would reach central computing node 70 in time for the once-per-second computation of the target location. Such a centralized sensor network approach would also be more prone to failures when sensors or entire regions of the sensor network fail because the central computing node 70 would have to resolve these problems while possibly located many kilometers away from the location of the problem.
There is, therefore, a general need for a method and/or system that provides a means of optimally estimating a target location using bearing measurements, preferably from a plurality of sensors. There is a further need to provide a means of optimally estimating a target location using bearing measurements from a plurality of sensors while minimizing the required communication within the network so that the information from all the sensors can reach the central computing node in time for target location computation. There is a further need to make the sensor network more robust to local sensor failures and to communication failures by making the network less centralized, i.e., by managing clusters of sensors locally and allowing the central computing node to deal with a limited number of clusters rather than to deal individually with every single sensor in the network.

Method and system of providing clustered networks of bearing-measuring sensors


A composite blade (26) comprises a root portion (36) and an aerofoil portion (38). The aerofoil portion (38) has a tip (42), a chord (C), a leading edge (44), a trailing edge (46), a suction surface (48) extending from the leading edge (44) to the trailing edge (46) and a pressure surface extending from the leading edge (44) to the trailing edge (46). The composite blade (26) comprises reinforcing fibres (52) in a matrix material (54). The aerofoil portion (38) adjacent the root portion (36) has regions (56, 58) at least at the leading edge (44) and trailing edge (46) comprising an asymmetric lay up of reinforcing fibres (52) and the aerofoil portion (38) adjacent the tip (42) having at least a region (62) at the mid-chord comprising an asymmetric lay up of reinforcing fibres (52).

It is known that different aerofoil shapes for fan blades, or compressor blades, perform differently at different operating conditions. A fan blade, may be optimised for take off conditions, or for cruise conditions, but to perform adequately for both take off conditions and cruise conditions generally requires a compromised aerofoil shape. The compromise to the aerofoil shape is based upon the mission that a particular gas turbine engine is to perform, for example whether the gas turbine engine is for long distance flight, short distance flight etc.
A fan blade, or a compressor blade, generally comprises a twisted aerofoil, e.g. the stagger angle increases from the root to the tip of the aerofoil portion of the fan blade or compressor blade, to give the correct angle of incidence at each point along the length, radius, of the aerofoil portion of the fan blade, or compressor blade. In operation due to rotation of the rotor upon which the fan blades, or compressor blades, are mounted the aerofoil portions of the fan blades, or compressor blades, untwist due to the centripetal loads and these centripetal loads increase with increasing rotational speed. Typically the aerofoil portion of a fan blade untwists by about 5°, where 4° of the fan blade untwist is due to the centripetal loads and 1° of the fan blade untwist is due to gas pressure loads. Generally the increase of untwist with increasing rotational speed is an advantage because it results in an increase in efficiency, but the untwist of the aerofoil portions of current fan blades does not provide as much untwist as is required.
A fan blade, or compressor blade, generally comprises an aerofoil portion, which is strongly curved, or cambered, into a C-shaped cross-section near the root portion of the fan blade, or compressor blade, because the gas flow velocity is relatively low and the curvature of the aerofoil portion enables the gas flow impinging on the radially inner region of the aerofoil portion to work harder on the inner region of the aerofoil portion. The aerofoil portion 138 is nearly straight in cross-section in the tip region of the aerofoil portion 138, with a suction surface 148, a pressure surface 150 and a bend at the trailing edge 146, as shown in FIG. 11. The straightness and amount of bend at the trailing edge 146 of the aerofoil portion 138 is a matter of compromise between part speed, e.g. cruise, and high-speed, e.g. take off, operational requirements.
A fan blade, or compressor blade, optimised for high-speed, e.g. take off, operation is S-shaped in cross-section at the tip region of the aerofoil portion 238 as shown in FIG. 12. An S-shaped cross-section is generally one where the suction surface 248 is initially concave 247 and then convex 249 between the leading edge 244 and the trailing edge 246 and the pressure surface 250 is initially convex 251 and then concave 253 between the leading edge 244 and the trailing edge 246.
A compressor blade, optimised for part speed, e.g. cruise, operation is C-shaped in cross-section at the tip region of the aerofoil portion 338 as shown in FIG. 13. A C-shaped cross-section is generally one where the suction surface 348 is convex between the leading edge 344 and the trailing edge 346 and the pressure surface 350 is concave between the leading edge 344 and the trailing edge 346.
High speed operation, for example take off, is 100% rotational speed and part speed, for example cruise, is 95% rotational speed, although it is desirable to reduce the air speed of an aircraft during cruise conditions to increase the efficiency of the aircraft and this results in a corresponding reduction in rotational speed of the rotor and fan blades and therefore cruise speed may be less than 95% rotational speed.
Fan blades, which can be optimised for a wide variation in operating rotational speeds have a significant advantage to enable a significant reduction in specific fuel consumption.


An annular filler mountable in the well of a one piece car or truck wheel rim for increasing the diameter of the well to a point where that bead seating diameter generally corresponds to the diameter of the tire size which is intended to be mounted on that wheel. Thus when a tire is mounted by placing one portion of its bead into the well while the diametric opposite portion of the tire bead is forced over the rim flange, only a tire having a correct bead seating diameter will be able to pass over the wheel flange and a tire with an incorrect bead seating diameter cannot pass over said flange.

This invention relates to pneumatic vehicle tires and wheel rim assemblies and in particular insuring greater vehicle safety by a method and device for preventing the mounting of a tire on a wheel rim of a size and type that is not intended to receive that tire. Each tire of a particular size and type is designed to be mounted upon a particular size wheel rim. The variables in tire to wheel rim fitment include rim bead seating diameter verses tire bead diameter; axial design width (distance between the two beads) of the tire verses axial width of the wheel rim and the bead seating angle. All of these variables must be compatible to have a proper fitment of the tire on the wheel rim.
The presently popular pneumatic vehicle tire is well known, it has a toroidal shaped elastomer carcass with at least one carcass reinforcing ply embedded therein and a tread band on its outer ground contacting surface. The radial inner ends of the carcass ply are turned up around a pair of bead wires or bead bundles, which are usually made of a plurality of steel wires. The bead bundle is normally of planar circular configuration but it can be forcedly distorted into an oval and into a non-planar shape for the purpose of mounting on a one piece steel wheel rim. In ordinary use the bead bundle is considered to be "inextensible" but this is of course a relative term and if subjected to too much stress, the bead bundle can stretch or break.
The wheel rim, when viewed in cross section along a radial plane extending parallel to the axis of rotation of the tire, has a pair of radially outwardly extending flanges on the axially outer sides of the wheel rim and axially inward from each flange is a bead seating surface and central portion of smaller diameter in the form of a drop center portion or well. This well has a diameter smaller than the bead seating surface diameter so that when a tire bead is forcedly distorted so as to pass over the wheel rim flanges, the portion of the tire bead passed over the flanges can then be dropped into the well so that the diametrically opposite portion of the tire bead can then also be forced over the wheel rim flange. Thus the entire circumference of both tire beads may be passed over the flanges, step by step working around the bead circumference, until both beads are in the well. In modern day passenger car and light truck tires there is usually no inner tube in the tire but instead a tire inflation valve is mounted in an aperture in the wheel rim. Heavy truck and bus tires may have an inner tube although the trend is toward tubeless tires. If there is a tube the inflation valve is of course part of the tube. Upon pressurizing the inside of the tire, by use of the tire valve, the tire beads will be forced axially outward so as to seat, with an interference fit, snugly upon the wheel rim bead seating surfaces and pressed axially outward against the rim flanges.
The radial inward end of the bead is an annular surface which, when properly seated on the rim bead seating surface, lies at an angle to the axial direction; in passenger car tires this angle is 5.degree.; in tubeless truck and bus tires it is 15.degree.. However in light truck tires both 5.degree. and 15.degree. seating angles exist; this is part of the problem of mismatched mounting of tires and wheels.
When the tire beads are properly seated on a wheel rim for which they are designed to be mounted the bead core wires will be stretched tight and due to the taper of the bead seating surface, the surrounding relatively hard rubber, the inflation pressure and compression of rubber and fabric under the bead, the bead will stay firmly in place when the tire is subjected to strong sideway forces during turning, accident avoidance maneuvers, acceleration and deceleration of the vehicle, thus enabling the driver to get and keep the vehicle under proper control.
When the tire beads are not properly mounted, especially when a tire is placed upon a wheel rim for which it was not intended, e.g. a tire bead diameter of 16 inches on a bead seating surface of 16.5 inches, disastrous results can follow. This includes: breaking of the bead core wires so that the tire blows off the rim when inflated; breaking, kinking or displacement of some of the wires of the bead bundle so as to make the tire susceptible to early failure; stretching of the bead bundle so as to lead to an improper fit that will impair the tire's structural integrity.
The sideway force on a tire tends to exert a force on the bead of that tire tending to cause the bead bundle to rotate about its own longitudinal axis with the hard rubber filler strip that is radially outward of the bead bundle acting as a lever arm to cause the bead to rotate about the bead bundle on the rim bead seating surface. If the bead does succeed in rotating, the bead will usually become of a different effective circumference, upsetting the tension on the reinforcing bead bundle wires, and permitting at least one of the tire beads to unseat, that is to move axially inwardly toward the center of the rim and into the well. If this happens, the driver's control very likely will be lost.
In the prior art in passenger car tires the possibility of mounting the wrong size tire on a wheel rim had been largely avoided by making a distinct difference in sizes; e.g. maintaining at least a whole inch diameter difference between sizes. Thus popular tire bead diameter sizes have in the past been 13 inch, 14 inch, 15 inch, 16 inch, 17 inch, etc. with a 5.degree. taper but not any 131/2, 141/2, 151/2 or 161/2 inch sizes or 15.degree. tapers in passenger car tires. Maintaining at least a whole inch difference between size can prevent tire rim mis-mountings; for example, it is virtually impossible to get a 13 inch tire over the rim flanges of a 14 wheel and if one could do so, upon attempt to inflate the tire to seat the flanges, the 13 inch tire bead diameter will simply not fit onto the bead seating surface of a 14 inch wheel rim. This lack of fit is caused by two factors: the difference in diameter and the fact both the wheel rim and the tire are 5.degree. tapers which is relatively "flat" with little opportunity for an improper size to even get started on the bead seating surface even when considerable air pressure for mounting is applied.
Experience has shown that a 16 inch 5.degree. tire can be introduced onto a 16.5 inch 15.degree. wheel rim and that such an introduction will not result in a proper mounting even if it might appear visually to be correct. Unfortunately the relative diameters and the 15.degree. seating surface on the wheel rim will lead to a situation where the inflation pressure (especially high inflation pressure) will cause a seal (albeit an improper seal) between the tire beads and the rim that is usually sufficient for the tire to inflate and thus potentially misleading the tire installer to believe that the tire is a proper fit on the wheel rim when such is not in fact the case. In such a mounting the tire beads are not properly engaged with the rim so that the entire radially inwardly facing annular surface of the tire bead is no likely to be in full intended contact with the wheel rim bead seating surface, thus setting up a situation for latent failure (i.e. bead breakage or other bead area damage).


A kettle is adapted for use on a narrow ledge of a wood, pellet, or coal burning stove or the like by flattening one side and providing substantially greater weight per unit area to the flattened side and bottom such that the center of gravity of the kettle is located in the vicinity of the juncture between the bottom and the flattened side. A spout for the kettle is adapted with an opening which points horizontally away from the flattened side to direct steam to a space in front of the stove and thereby minimize damage from steam otherwise rising directly upward and depositing moisture on adjacent or nearby stove pipes or parts.

1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to improvements to a conventional kettle, tea kettle, steamer, or covered spouted pot.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Apparatus exists in the prior art primarily for use in the heating of rooms, namely, space heaters. Space heaters are free standing fireplace versions of heaters fueled by wood, coal, fuel, pellets, gas, propane, heating oil and the like. These space heaters are used today to conserve energy and to efficiently heat rooms and other spaces within homes. These space heaters are also used in restaurants to decorate foyers and waiting areas. The water heated in the prior art apparatus serves to humidify the room and surrounding areas and prevent drying of the sinuses and nasal passages. Thus, the steam produced from the heating and boiling of water in a vehicle on a space heater or free standing fireplace offsets the dry heat produced by many room heaters.
One problem with the prior art kettles and pots used to provide humidity is that those available are not adapted to be placed on tope of a space heater or free standing fireplace or stove. Accordingly, the consuming public has resorted to various containers which open upward and rapidly deplete the water content and often result in burning and overheating of the receptacle. Another problem with these open receptacles is that the volume of steam released upwards is so great that sometimes damage is done to the ceiling of the room in which they are used and to the piping or portion of the structure above the ledge or flat surface on which these open top vehicles are placed for heating.
Another problem with these open top vehicles and receptacles is that oftentime they do not have handles. Thus, when a user attempts to remove a receptacle to replenish the water therein burning sometimes occurs or spillage. Sometimes these improvised containers are made of a breakable material and in the process of removing the container for refilling they are dropped and broken because of their being overheated and there being no handle available to facilitate picking up and moving the container.
In 1903 Doggett received U.S. Pat. No. 748,052 which disclosed a receptacle preferably formed with a vertical wall. The vertical wall is used to facilitate attachment of another receptacle with a mating flat wall. In 1927 Jacobs received U.S. Pat. No. 1,633,022 which disclosed a carrier frame or skeleton construction adapted to receive several sectional buckets or receptacles adapted with flat walls to nest together in the carrier frame. The patent suggests that one of the sectional buckets may be removed for the purpose of replenishing the contents thereof without disturbing the other flat wall buckets in the carrier frame. In FIG. 2 is disclosed a bucket with an open top and one side flattened.
In 1926 Adams was issued U.S. Pat. No. 1,577,781 for a cooking utensil made of a plurality of segmental sections. In FIG. 5 there is shown one section of two flat walls and a spout which opens upward.
In 1909 Geig was issued U.S. Pat. No. 927,521 for a cooking utensil comprising a plurality of receptacles in a carrier skeleton with at least one of the receptacles having one side flattened and further having a handle and a top. In 1956 Quinones was issued U.S. Pat. No. 2,738,893 for double bucket, namely, a pair of similar receptacles detachably interconnected each with a flat side wall, a flat bottom and open top, and semicylindrical side wall. The art further progressed in 1987 when Horvath was issued U.S. Pat. No. 4,651,900 for a "Dual Compartment Serving Pot". This pot included a pair of pot halfs having substantially flat inner walls. The flat sided pot halfs each has an opening fully covered by a lid member. The patent further disclosed a spout extending above the movable lid and opening upwards. A somewhat similar container was patented in 1989 by Bouldin, U.S. Pat. No. 4,802,406. There is disclosed a pair of containers each having a flat side wall and a semicylindrical side wall as well as an upwardly open top.
The device shown in the prior art patents address the broad concept of a container having a flattened side wall for the distinct purpose of juxtaposing or attaching that side wall to another receptacle having a mating flattened side wall. However, the prior art does not address utilizing a flattened side wall for the purpose of placement and retainment on a narrow ledge or the weighting of the bottom and side wall to shift the center of gravity to or near the flattened side wall and away from the front of the ledge. Further, the prior art collectively discloses receptacles which either provide a lid which completely seals the receptacle or an opening which opens upward and does not address a structural means for directing steam from liquids boiled in the receptacle in a direction other than upwards.

Truncated kettle adapted for use as a steamer


Embodiments of a method and an apparatus for multi-link communications are disclosed. In an embodiment, a method for multi-link communications involves associating, by an access point (AP) multi-link device (MLD), with a non-AP MLD operating on a first set of links, and allocating, by the AP MLD, an Association ID (AID) to the non-AP MLD, such that the AID is included in a first plurality of AIDs, wherein the first plurality of AIDs does not include a first set of AIDs, and wherein at least one of the first set of AIDs are assigned to at least one of APs and Basic Service Set Identifiers (BSSIDs) on a second set of links.

In multi-link communications, wireless devices, e.g., access point (AP) multi-link devices (MLDs), can buffer data and transmit buffered data to non-AP MLDs, e.g., station (STA) MLDs, through one or more communication links. For example, certain APs of a wireless AP MLD may wirelessly transmit buffered data to one or more wireless STAs of a non-AP MLD through one or more wireless communication links, whereas other APs of the wireless AP MLD may not transmit buffered data. To facilitate the proper transmission of buffered data between APs of the AP MLD and corresponding STAs of the non-AP MLD, an indication is needed to identify which communication links (used by APs of the AP MLD and corresponding STAs of the non-AP MLD) have buffered data. However, typical multi-link communications technology may not be able to efficiently identify communication links with buffered data. Therefore, there is a need for multi-link communications technology that can efficiently indicate which communication links have buffered data.

Method and apparatus for multi-link communications


The invention provides compositions of novel high penetration compositions (HPC) or high penetration prodrugs (HPP) of 1H-imidazo[4,5-c]quinolin-4-amines and 1H-imidazo[4,5-c]quinolin-4-amine-related compounds, which are capable of crossing biological barriers with high penetration efficiency. The HPPs are capable of being converted to parent active drugs or drug metabolites after crossing the biological barrier and thus can render treatments for the conditions that the parent drugs or metabolites can. Additionally, the HPPs are capable of reaching areas that parent drugs may not be able to access or to render a sufficient concentration at the target areas and therefore render novel treatments. The HPPs can be administered to a subject through various administration routes, e.g., locally delivered to an action site of a condition with a high concentration or systematically administered to a biological subject and enter the general circulation with a faster rate.

1H-Imidazo[4,5-c]quinolin-4-amines and 1H-Imidazo[4,5-c]quinolin-4-amine-related compounds have been used as antiviral agents to treat lesions caused by herpes simplex virus.
A variety of formulations for topical administration of 1H-Imidazo[4,5-c]quinolin-4-amines and 1H-Imidazo[4,5-c]quinolin-4-amine-related compounds have been developed, such as Aldara (1-Isobutyl-1H-imidazo[4,5-c]quinolin-4-amine) cream developed by 3M for the treatment of actinic keratosis, superficial basal cell carcinoma, and external genital and perianal warts.
However, 1H-imidazo[4,5-c]quinolin-4-amines and 1H-Imidazo[4,5-c]quinolin-4-amine-related compounds have low solubility in water and organic solvents and their skin penetration rates are low. The cream compositions may keep the drug on the skin for prolonged period of time in high concentration and cause side effects such as redness, swelling, sores, blisters, or ulcers, skin that becomes hard or thickened, skin peeling, scabbing and crusting, itching, burning and changes in skin color that may become permanent. Moreover, due to the poor penetration ability, these compounds are not very effective to treat many cancers, except superficial basal cell carcinoma.
Therefore, a need exists in the art for novel compositions that are capable of being delivered efficiently and effectively to the action site of a condition (e.g., a disease) to prevent, reduce or treat conditions as well as minimize adverse side effects.

High penetration prodrug compositions of 1H-imidazo[4,5-c]quinolin-4-amines and 1H-imidazo[4,5-c]quinolin-4-amine-related compounds and uses thereof


Each node of a metric tree comprises a similarity hash of a member of a dataset of known message threats, calculated using a given similarity hashing algorithm. The nodes are organized into the tree, positioned such that the differences between the similarity hashes are represented as distances between the nodes. Messages are received and tested to determine whether they are malicious. When a message is received, a similarity hash of the message is calculated using the same similarity hashing algorithm that is used to calculate the hashes of the members of the dataset. The tree is searched for a hash of a known message threat that is within a threshold of distance to the hash of the received message. Searching the tree can take the form of traversal from the root node, to determine whether the tree contains a node within the similarity threshold.

Electronic messaging, both in the forms of email and text messages, is an extensively used and convenient communication mechanism. Unfortunately, electronic messaging is widely used to disseminate spam, attempted phishing scams, malware and other threats. Such message based threats range from unwanted advertising material, to pornographic material, to attempts to get users to click on links or send text messages to phone numbers in attempts to scam the user into entering personal or financial information, or to infect the user's computer or smartphone with malware. Many utilities exist that attempt to filter out message threats before they reach the user's inbox.
Conventional messaging threat detection examines messages for specific features indicative of threats, such as certain keywords commonly used in spam, specific links or phones numbers known to be used by scammers, or cryptographic (e.g., md5, sha2) hashes of messages. Conventional message filtering technology typically focuses on two main approaches: 1) to look for an exact text match of some keyword or preselected feature; and 2) to apply regular expressions for known spam templates. To evade such detection, attackers may change or intentionally misspell the filtered keywords, or change the domain and/or phone number used. Surprisingly, these small variations are often sufficient to evade conventional detection.
For example, one filtering technique is to scan messages for a specific URL or phone number that is known to be used in spam or other message threats. Such a URL or phone number is often called a CTA (Call-to-Action), because the receiver of the message is encouraged to take an action (e.g., click the link or text/call the number). CTA-based filtering can fail to detect message threats where the URL on which the user is encouraged to click is modified slightly, for example by using a shortening service such as Bitly. Furthermore, CTA-based scanning fails to take into account the context of the message. For example, the same domain might appear in both benign and malicious messages, resulting in either false positives or false negatives depending upon how the domain is classified.
In the case of regular expression based detection, an analyst writes a regular expression for a known spam template. In other cases, the regular expression is automatically generated by a script or the like. In either case, the regular expression might be prone to errors. Furthermore, small changes of the text in question such as intentional typos or misspellings often evade this type of detection. When such minor changes have been detected, updates to the previously provided regular expressions must be created and distributed.
Switching topics, similarity hashing functions ensure that similar inputs result in similar hashes. A known property of similarity hashes is that similar messages have similar, but not exact, hashes. For example, using the algorithm called simhash to calculate a hash of the text "Some spam message a" would result in a hash of value 0x5d5eaa672f24cc0c, whereas calculating a hash of the similar message "Some spam message b" would result in a hash value of 0x5d5eaa632a66cc04. Such small modifications to content are common in message threats, for example when spammers use URL shortening services or intentionally misspell words.
A serious difficulty arises when trying to apply simhash to detect message threats. More specifically, even if a message being evaluated produces a similar hash to that of a known threat, it is still challenging to find the similar hash in a dataset of hashes of known message threats. This is so because small changes of the message content affect both the least significant bits and the most significant bits of the resulting hash. Thus, simply sorting a dataset of hashes of known message threats would not result in a meaningful, ordered organization. For this reason, when attempting to determine if there exists a hash in the dataset that matches or is within a given threshold of similarity to a hash of a message being evaluated, binary search and other known efficient approaches for locating members of ordered sets would not be usable. Instead, because minor variations in the input affect the least and most significant bits, a simhash of a given threat candidate conventionally needs to be compared to each simhash in the dataset of confirmed message threats, using pairwise comparisons, until a hit meeting a predetermined similarity threshold is found, or the set of simhashes of confirmed threats is exhausted. This is very computationally expensive, and the number of required pairwise comparisons grows proportionally as the number of simhashes of known message threats increases. Such an approach is simply not practical for any large dataset.
It would be desirable to address these issues.

Detecting electronic messaging threats by using metric trees and similarity hashes


A method of producing a nanoemulsion is disclosed that provides an oleaginous base fuel, and water in an amount of at least 10 wt %. A first nonionic surfactant, a second nonionic surfactant and a third nonionic surfactant are mixed in substantially equal weight ratios into a surfactant mixture. The surfactant mixture is mixed with the water and the base fuel to form the nanoemulsion fuel. A nanoemulsion fuel composition can comprise an external oleaginous phase comprised of base fuel, an internal aqueous phase comprised of water, and a surfactant mixture comprised of a plurality of surfactants. The first surfactant can be derived from ethylene oxide, the second surfactant and the third surfactant are detergents having a fatty acid.

The demand for hydrocarbon is increasing even as alternative energy sources become more common. Transportation is still a major use of energy and demand for fuels used for transportation, jet fuel and diesel, for example, continues to rise. Use of these fuels generates emissions that can cause increased carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, which has been cited as a cause of global warming.
Increasing the efficiency of fuel can be obtained by adding water to the fuel or injecting water into the intake of an engine. Creating an emulsion of water in diesel fuel is an example fuel that has been used to reduce the emission pollution for combustion engines. However, these known fuel emulsions only permit a limited water ratio and are not as stable as a nanoemulsion.

Water in fuel nanoemulsion and method of making the same


There is disclosed a mobile apparatus for mixing and dispensing mixtures from an ingredients container including a hopper with a channel-shaped floor portion containing a screw auger. A cover over the screw auger may be raised so that a gap between the cover and the hopper walls allows metered amounts of ingredients to be conveyed by the screw auger to a separate mixer and a dispenser. The mixer and dispenser can be in the form of a tapering ribbon-blade mixer located in a frusto conical hollow body pivotally, slidably and extendably mounted at the rear of a transport vehicle. The mixer and dispenser can be pivotally mounted to a bracket mounted on rails to move slidably across the width of the transport vehicle.

The use of mobile batching apparatus and mobile mixing apparatus for concrete mixtures in particular is well known as is the use of mobile apparatus which have combined batching and mixing functions.
The most commonly employed apparatus for mixing and transportation of pre-mixed concrete and the like comprises a vehicle mounted agitator bowl which receives the ingredients for a concrete mix from a stationary batching plant and, by rotation of the agitator bowl, mixes the concrete mixture prior to and during transit to a discharge site.
Whilst generally effective for their intended purpose, there are a number of disadvantages associated with such mobile agitator bowl mixers. Only a relatively short time is available from the commencement of mixing to on site placement and as the use of chemical retardants can affect concrete quality, generally such use is restricted. This short mixing time thus limits the effective travelling radius of an agitator bowl mixer to a distance which safely can be travelled during the maximum mixing time of the concrete batch. This can be a particular problem in urban areas where a risk of transit delays due to traffic problems is a likelihood. Moreover, if the mobile transit mixer is involved in a traffic accident or otherwise suffers a mechanical breakdown, the entire batch of concrete can be lost and if this is allowed to set in the agitator bowl, this necessitates replacement of the bowl.
Accordingly it is necessary to locate a plurality of stationary batching plants at spaced locations in urban and suburban areas in order to provide effective delivery radii for pre-mixed concrete. Apart from being inefficient in terms of double handling of raw materials, this gives rise to substantial capital overheads and local inconvenience of increased vehicular traffic, dust and noise in the vicinity of batching plants.
As cities grow, town planning and environmental constraints will limit or even reduce the number of batch plants permitted in an urban environment. Already, town planning controls have placed restrictions on the location, days of operation and hours of operation. With growing constraints and competition in the industry, economic considerations have driven organisations towards larger batch plants and transit mixers with necessarily high capital investments and greater operational overheads.
With operational accuracies of larger batch plants more suited to larger transit mix batches, smaller capacity transit mixers are not well served. More importantly however, the capacity to serve a market for small to very small batches of premixed concrete has virtually been eliminated.
Generally speaking, the carrying capacity of larger agitator bowl mixers is usually maximised to carry a pre-mixed batch of about 6.4 cubic meters of concrete.
Where lesser quantities of concrete may be required, smaller agitator bowl mixers may be employed to deliver batches of, say, 0.40 to 2.2 cubic meters.
The main disadvantages of mobile agitator bowl mixers however is that in practice, they should discharge their entire load once on site and this must occur during a relatively short period of time. This can be grossly inconvenient to users of concrete mixes who require less than the predetermined mixer batch size and/or require discharge of small quantities of concrete over a prolonged period of time.
In the supply of ready mixed concrete to a site, it is customary to order an excess of about 10% over that calculated as required by the user as the cost and inconvenience of undersupply or undercalculation is too great. For example, if the quantity required is undersupplied by, say, 0.25 cubic meters, an extra delivery will be required. This can take up to one hour for delivery while a concrete finishing crew is not effectively employed, but as the minimum quantity supplied is normally 0.4 cubic meters this gives rise to wastage. Moreover there exists the risk of a "cold joint" formation in the pour if there is a shortfall in delivery or a delay in delivery of a subsequent batch.
As there are now penalties for disposal of excess concrete dumped on site, it is customary to add a retardant composition to any excess concrete in the agitator bowl and return the excess to the batching plant where it is dumped into a settling pond for separation and treatment of water and recovery of aggregate and cement fines for reworking. Environmental controls associated with re-treatment of unused concrete add substantially to capital costs of a batching plant.
Other problems associated with conventional agitator bowl delivery vehicles is that when rain is forecast or a delivery site is wet or boggy, such vehicles are not permitted on site due to the risk of becoming bogged and all of the attendant problems that arise therefrom and transit mixers cannot be held on stand-by on site.
In order to overcome the disadvantages associated with conventional agitator bowl mixers, there have been many proposals for mobile batching and mixing apparatus employing bulk containers for sand, aggregate, cement powder, water etc, metering devices for each constituent and a mixing and/or dispensing mechanism.
Australian Patent Application No. 27574/88 describes a mobile batching/mixing apparatus comprising a plurality of hoppers, each with a respective metering means for discharging dry ingredients onto a conveyor belt located below the hoppers. The conveyor belt delivers proportioned quantities of dry ingredients to an elevatable batch mixer in the form of a paddle mixer which is tiltable, in an elevated position, to discharge the contents thereof.
U.S. Pat. Nos. 5624577 and 4538916 describe highly sophisticated, purpose built vehicles which operate as mobile batching and mixing apparatuses to deliver variable quantities of pre-mixed concrete as required.
Australian Patents Nos. 575263 and 590101 describe a mobile batching and mixing apparatus which is located at the rear end of a vehicle having a tipping body. The apparatus, which is removably located in the tipping body to release the vehicle for other uses, comprises containers for water and cement powder and a plurality of metering devices for the various components of a concrete mix or the like. Bulk sand and aggregate is fed to respective metering devices under the influence of gravity when the tipping body is raised.
Partial mixing of the dry ingredients is achieved by simultaneous metering into the feed hopper of a mixing and discharge conveyor in the form of a screw auger located in a tubular housing. The dry ingredients and water are introduced at one end of the auger housing and mixing and discharge occurs as a continuous operation.
A particular disadvantage associated with the apparatus of Australian Patents Nos. 575263 and 590101 is that the hopper of the mixing and discharge conveyor must be centrally located below the outlets of the gravity fed metering devices. Accordingly the pivotally mounted inner end of the screw auger is lowered close to the ground surface as the vehicle body tips to feed the metering apparatus.
In order to compensate for this effective lowering of the discharge conveyor and also to provide effective mixing during the continuous mixing and discharge operation, the screw auger is of extended length which extends well above the upper portion of the vehicle body when the auger is in an upright travelling position.
A further disadvantage of this apparatus is that the drive motor for the auger screw is necessarily located at the outer or free end of the auger to avoid contact with the ground surface and consequent damage when the vehicle body is elevated to the required tipping position. The placement of the drive motor at free end of the auger shaft in turn necessitates a discharge opening in the auger body adjacent the free end thereof on an under surface.
Possibly the most serious disadvantage of all of the prior art apparatus referred to above is that none are capable of movement and/or operation in regions of restricted access to areas such as vehicular carparks, basement areas of houses or other buildings, mine tunnels and the like because of limitations on headroom, width, axle load, turning circle etc.
Another disadvantage associated with all of the prior art apparatus referred to above is that each represents a substantial capital investment with high operational overheads due to the physical size and complexity of the apparatus.

Mobile concrete mixing and delivery system


Embodiments of this application provide a channel calibration method, where the method includes: obtaining at least two channel sets including a first channel set and a second channel set, where the at least two channel sets are obtained by grouping a plurality of to-be-calibrated channels, each of the at least two channel sets includes a reference channel and at least one to-be-calibrated channel, and the first channel set and the second channel set have an intersection set; determining a compensation value of each to-be-calibrated channel in each of the at least two channel sets; determining an inter-set compensation value between the first channel set and the second channel set; and calibrating the plurality of channels based on the inter-set compensation value and the compensation values of the to-be-calibrated channels. In embodiments of this application, frequency responses of all channels can be kept consistent, thereby improving calibration accuracy.

In a multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) system, to improve frequency spectrum efficiency based on a multiple-antenna technology and make full use of a high spatial resolution capability brought by a large channel array, there is a need to ensure a consistent receive/transmit channel frequency response on a network device side. Compared with a case in which four antennas or eight antennas are configured for a network device in an existing long term evolution (LTE) system, in a large-scale channel array system, a network device has hundreds of or even more antennas. To make a width (including a vertical width and a horizontal width) of a beam formed by a large channel array in space for a terminal device become very narrow via precoding, and to enable the beam to point to the terminal device more precisely, to increase received signal power and reduce interference between paired terminal devices and between cells, there is a need to perform high-precision channel calibration on a receive/transmit channel of the network device.
A channel calibration manner used currently is wired calibration. The wired calibration is a method of performing channel calibration by using a wired manner such as a coupling disk as a calibration signal transmit channel to connect a to-be-calibrated channel and a reference channel. With the application of large-scale arrays, in the wired calibration manner, the coupling disk includes a coupler, radio-frequency cables, a combiner, and the like. When a quantity of channels increases dramatically, complexity, a volume, and costs of the coupling disk are increased significantly. In actual application, the wired calibration manner is not feasible.
To avoid impact of the coupling disk in the wired calibration manner, another channel calibration manner emerges, that is, wireless calibration. The wireless calibration is a calibration manner in which a wireless channel between array elements is used as a calibration signal transmit channel to replace a wired connection such as the coupling disk. Signal transmission between a to-be-calibrated channel and a reference channel is implemented by using an air interface radio channel between antennas.
A problem about coupling disk does not exist in the wireless calibration manner. However, when the wireless calibration manner is used in a large-scale channel array system, a dynamic problem is caused by an increase in scale of array elements (channels), and calibration accuracy is ultimately affected.
Therefore, how to improve channel calibration accuracy has become an urgent problem to be resolved.

Channel calibration method and network device


The present invention provides a method and apparatus for using input data to optimize a computer program. Initially, the computer program is divided into one or more logical units of code. Next, a CPU simulator is used to simulate execution of each logical unit using the input data. The output from the simulation is used to generate a first optimization metric value and corresponding state information for each logical unit. In one embodiment, the first optimization metric value and corresponding state information are stored in a first optimization vector. Using well known optimization techniques, the instructions within each logical unit are optimized iteratively until additional optimizations would result in very small incremental performance improvements. A second simulation is performed using the same input data except that this time the optimized logical units are used. This second simulation is used to measure how much the optimizer has improved the code. The output from the second simulation is used to generate a second optimization metric value and corresponding state information. The degree of optimization is determined by determining the difference between the first optimization metric value and the second optimization metric value for the sum of the logical units. If the difference is less than a predetermined threshold value, additional optimization iterations would provide little code improvement and thus the optimization is complete. However, if the difference is greater than or equal to the predetermined threshold value, additional optimizations would likely improve performance. In the latter case, the present invention would repeat the optimization process described above.

In most cases, programmers write computer applications in high level languages, such as JAVA.sup.1 or C.sup.++, and rely on sophisticated optimizing compilers to convert the high level code into an efficient executable computer program. Optimizing compilers have replaced the time consuming and commercially unfeasible task of handcoding applications in low level assembly or machine-code for maximum efficiency. Instead, an optimizer portion of the compiler performs transformations on the code designed to improve execution times and utilize computer resources more efficiently. Accordingly, some of the code transformations are based on the structure of the code and not related to the target processor used for execution. Other types of transformations improve the code by utilizing specific features available on the target processor such as registers, pipeline structures and other hardware features. FNT 1. The Network Is the Computer, Sun, the Sun logo, Sun Microsystems, Solaris, Ultra and Java are trademarks or registered trademarks of Sun Microsystems, Inc. in the United States and in other countries. All SPARC trademarks are used under license and are trademarks or registered trademarks of SPARC International, Inc. in the United States and other countries. Products bearing SPARC trademarks are based upon an architecture developed by Sun Microsystems, Inc. UNIX is a registered trademark in the United States and other countries exclusively licensed through X/Open Company, Ltd.
Unfortunately, most optimizes available today only estimate which portions of the program will benefit most from the optimization routines before actual execution. These optimizers analyze the application code in a static state and without any input data. Graphing theory and complex data flow analysis are used at compile time to determine which portions of the code might be executed most frequently at execution time. If these determinations are not correct, frequently executed portions of the code or "hot spots" will not be optimized and the code will run less efficiently. Also, if the application is unusual or behaves in an atypical manner these techniques may also fail to optimize the code effectively.
The current state of optimizing compilers must be significantly improved as the compiler becomes a more integral part of the processor performance. On many pipelined multiple issue processor architectures, the performance of hardware based instruction schedulers have been enhanced using sophisticated optimizing compilers which generate an instruction stream which further exploits the underlying hardware. Unfortunately, these compilers show limited results optimizing computer programs using the current static optimization techniques. In practice, the typical optimizer has difficulty fully optimizing a computer program because the input data and actual runtime characteristics of the computer program are unknown at compile time. Consequently, the optimizer may only increase the performance of a computer program marginally. For example, a very-long-instruction-word (VLIW) computer relies primarily on an optimizing compiler to generate binaries capable of exploiting the VLIW processor's multiple issue capabilities. If the run-time characteristics of a particular computer program are complex, the VLIW optimizing compiler will not be able to predict the run time characteristics of the program and exploit all the processor's features adequately.
Optimizers are also important when comparing processor's based on industry standard benchmarks such as SPECint95, SPECfp95, and TPCC/CB. These standard benchmarks are used to compare different processors based upon how quickly each processor executes the given benchmark program. An inherently powerful processor can appear relatively slow if the optimizing compiler does not optimize the code properly. As a result, the apparent throughput on a processor may be significantly less than a computer manufacturer expects.
What is needed is a dynamic optimizing compiler which uses input data to profile a computer application in a systematic manner suitable for producing a highly optimized executable. These techniques can be used to optimize executables on a wide variety of platforms.

Method and apparatus for dynamically optimizing an executable computer program using input data


A marine propulsion system, incorporating a jet pump, provides improved mass flow through the pump by utilizing an inlet opening which initially diverges to a transition point in front of an impeller and then diverges from the transition point past the impeller region to the outlet opening of the pump. Significantly increased flow rates per horsepower are achieved by reducing the normal restrictions caused by the inlet and outlet openings of known pumps. A transmission is provided to connect the output shaft of an engine to the drive shaft of the impeller. Either a V-drive or a torpedo-type gear housing can be employed.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention is generally related to an improved marine propulsion system and, more specifically, to a marine propulsion system that utilizes a jet pump having a significantly improved flow rate which is achieved by certain advantageous configurations of its inlet and outlet structures.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Most marine propulsion systems utilize either an open propeller configuration or ajet drive configuration (i.e. a water jet). Open propellers are used with outboard, stem drive, and inboard systems. Jet drives or jet pumps, which incorporate a shrouded impeller, are typically used in jet boats, personal watercraft, and certain outboard motors that are equipped with a jet pump in place of an open propeller. Both the open propeller system and the jet pump system are well-known to those skilled in the art.
Both types of marine propulsion systems exhibit certain advantages and certain disadvantages. In a typical open propeller system, the propeller extends downward below the hull of a boat and damage can be caused if the propeller strikes a submerged object. Jet drives do not usually exhibit this disadvantage but typically are less efficient in operation and, when equipped with similarly sized engines, typically do not achieve the same maximum speed as an open propeller system.
In addition to having a lower operating efficiency and a lower maximum speed, jet drives known to those skilled in the art also exhibit certain disadvantageous spatial requirements. Most applications of jet drives require the engine to be placed in front of the pump. This utilizes valuable space in the central portion of the boat that could otherwise be used for seating or storage.
The limitation on the maximum speed for most jet drives is caused by limited water flow through the pump. As a result, to achieve a performance similar to an open propeller system, larger and more powerful engines must be used with jet drives. This, in turn, increases the cost of the propulsion system because the more expensive, higher horsepower engines are needed to achieve similar results to open propeller systems with much smaller engines.
Another difficulty that exists with most known jet drive propulsion systems is that the steering capability is severely limited under certain circumstances. Watercraft with jet drive propulsion systems can be stopped in two ways. First, the speed of the engine can be reduced by a manual throttle selection to slow the engine and allow the speed of the watercraft to decrease as a result of the friction between the hull and the surrounding water. In addition, certain jet propulsion systems are provided with a reverse gate which can be lowered behind the outlet to redirect the water and, in some cases, to create a reverse thrust to more rapidly slow the watercraft. This gate is referred to as a "bucket" or "clam shell" and is generally well-known to those skilled in the art.
When the engine of a jet propulsion system is decelerated, as during some braking maneuvers, the flow of water from the outlet is significantly reduced and, as a result, the steering capabilities of the watercraft are severely restricted. When the gate is used for braking purposes, the resulting effect on steering can be opposite to that which is normally expected. As a result, most watercraft with jet propulsion systems have little or no braking capability and, even when this capability is provided, the ability to properly steer the watercraft is severely compromised.
U.S. Pat. No. 3,982,497, which issued to Caron on Sep. 28, 1976, describes a jet-propelled powerboat. The powerboat has a tunnel drive and a propeller which is external to the boat. The boat described in this patent is fiberglass with the front rounded to prevent cracking when docking or otherwise striking an object. The cockpit is surrounded with a raised deck on all sides, including the rear, and also by rails on the inner portion of the deck sides. This patent shows in its FIGS. 3 and 5 views of the inlet opening of a jet pump which are helpful in comparison to the present invention described below.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,577,941, which issued to Chartier on Nov. 26, 1996, discloses a marine jet drive weed grate. The weed grate has a plurality of cantilever tines extending rearwardly along the water intake. They have suspended aft end tips spaced from the aft end of the water intake such that weeds and debris may slide rearwardly along and then off of the cantilever tines without clogging. The weed grate is shaped to cover the inlet opening of a jet drive propulsion system and is thus illustrative of the prior art.
A document entitled "Waterjet Propulsion Latest Developments," published by The Royal Institution of Naval Architects and presented at an International Symposium in London on Dec. 1, 1994, discusses several important factors in the development of waterjet systems. In that paper, its authors, John G. Stricker, Alan J. Becnel, and John G. Purnell, describe several water jet designs including an advanced amphibious assault vehicle (AAAV). A propulsion system demonstrator (PSD) is described and illustrated in the first figure of the paper. In that figure, a water jet is shown driven by a hydraulic motor which rotates an impeller. The outlet opening of the water jet appears to have a diameter approximately equal to the diameter of the impeller blades. Steering of a watercraft is accomplished by providing two or more water jets and using variations in the thrust of the water jets to maneuver the vehicle. In the paper no rudder or nozzle is discussed. The propulsor described in this document is intended for low speed operation with heavy loads. For example, the tested prototype described in the paper fed a diameter of 16.1 inches and a power of approximately 500 horsepower at 16 miles per hour.
Report SIT-DL-83-9-2362, dated August 1983, by the Stevens Institute of Technology for the Defense Logistics Agency of the Defense Technical Information Center of the Department of Defense is titled "Model Test of a Waterjet Propulsion System for High Speed Amphibians" by F. Thomas Korsmeyer. The report describes a water jet that was designed for evaluation in a 15 foot manned test craft. The goals of the model experiment were to determine the resistance of the test craft, to characterize the model propulsion system, and to use the characterization to reflect on the merits of the water jet design method used for the manned test craft.
Report SIT-DL-85-9-2518, published in March 1985 by the Stevens Institute of Technology for the Defense Logistics Agency of the Defense Technical Information Center of the Department of Defense is titled "Design Procedures for Low Speed Waterjets Suitable for Application in Amphibious Vehicles" and was written by John K. Roper. The paper describes a manned test craft that was constructed in order to evaluate a 14 inch diameter water jet unit at vehicle speeds up to 25 miles per hour in water. Among other things, the report concluded that a 1.0 area ratio impeller shows evidence of cavitation inception under certain circumstances, whereas two larger area impellers show no such evidence under certain condition. The inlet opening of the device was 19.5 inches and was selected to minimize the overall length of the system since trial results showed no consistent penalty associated with the shorter inlet length.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,472,359, which issued to Allbright Jr. et. al. on Dec. 5, 1995, describes an enclosed shaft system for a marine jet propulsion drive. The system provides an improved lubrication and coolant system over current designs. The preferred embodiment contemplates the utilization of an enclosed shaft system wherein the drive propeller drives a portion of the water passing through the tunnel drive through a water intake. The water is filtered and directed to a fitting where a portion of the water is directed to the engine for cooling and the remaining water is directed to the base of the shaft housing. U.S. Pat. No. 5,472,359 shows a cross-sectional area of a water jet.
U.S. Pat. No. 3,263,643, which issued to Tattersall on Aug. 2, 1966, discloses a vehicle operable over water. The invention relates to systems that operate by taking in water, energizing it, and then expelling it. It relates specifically to vehicles known as Hovercraft by those skilled in the art.
U.S. Pat. No. 33,165, which was reissued to Whitehead on Feb. 13, 1990, describes a boat hull with a flow chamber. The hull has a two-stage flow chamber. The first stage chamber starts approximately amidships as a V-shaped fairing upward at a shallow angle and flattening out approximately halfway to the stern. The second stage flow chamber starts at the end of the forward flow chamber curving upward at a greater angle than the first stage and curving downward slightly at the stern.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,088,091, which issued to Smith on May 9, 1973, discloses a fin assembly for powerboats. The fin structure is intended for mounting in an opening in the hull of a powerboat having an elongated rectangular panel connected between the base edges of a pair of elongated fins. Each fin has a base edge, a leading edge, and a trailing edge. These are joined to the elongated rectangular panel to locate the pair of fins in substantially parallel alignment in order to form a channel adapted to receive a propeller and a propeller shaft therein with the propeller in proximity of the trailing edges. The trailing edge of each fin projects from one end of the base edge beyond the outer most extremities of the propeller received in the channel. A rudder may be attached to each trailing edge of the fins and a V-drive unit may be added to reverse the longitudinal direction of the transmission power trained between the propeller shaft and the engine within the hull.
U.S. Pat. No. 3,589,325, which issued to Tattersall on Jun. 29, 1971, describes a method and apparatus for steering a marine craft. The craft is fitted with a water jet propulsion unit having a rudder disposed adjacent the outlet of the unit so as to influence the direction taken by water discharged from the outlet. The rudder, besides being pivotal about an axis passing through the plane of its surface, is also rotatable about an axis passing through the outlet of the unit. When executing a turn, the rudder is not only pivoted to execute the turn but is also rotated, in the general direction of the turn, so as to create an upward component of force on the rudder which tends to cause the craft to bank into the turn.
U.S. Pat. No. 3,598,080, which issued to Shields on Aug. 10, 1971, describes a monoshaft propeller water jet. The propulsion system of the water jet provides a semi-submerged super cavitating propeller rotating coaxially with water jet producing impellers mounted on the same shaft.
The United States patents described above are hereby explicitly incorporated by reference herein.
As described above, known pumps for jet propulsion systems exhibit significantly lower efficiencies of operation than equivalently sized open propeller systems. There are several reasons for this decreased operational capability. First, known jet pumps use outlet openings which are tapered and significantly smaller in diameter than the effective diameter of the impeller blades within the pump. This reduction in size at the outlet opening severely restricts the flow of water from the pump and increases the resistance to that flow of water. Typically, the reduced diameter of the outlet opening restricts the flow of water through the pump to a magnitude significantly less than that which the impeller could otherwise pump if the nozzle restriction did not exist. Another reason for the decreased operational efficiency of jet pumps is the restrictive configuration of the inlet opening. Simply stated, the impeller of the typical jet pump has the capability of driving a significantly higher quantity of water (i.e. mass flow) through the pump than can be efficiently drawn into and through the inlet opening toward the impeller and expelled through the outlet opening.
A third adverse effect on jet pump efficiency is the need for most known pumps to raise, or lift, water from the inlet to the location of the impeller. Energy must be expended to lift the water from the inlet opening to the height of the impeller which is typically located a significant distance from the bottom of the hull. This required work decreases the power that is available from the engine to propel the watercraft.
Another factor that reduces the fuel economy of most known jet drive propulsion systems is the fact that the engine is connected directly to the impeller and the impeller must therefore rotate continually even though the watercraft is not moving. In other words, as long as the engine is running, the impeller is rotating and attempting to force water through the pump even though that water is then merely redirected by a reversing bucket or clamshell in such a way as to prevent actual movement of the watercraft. This results in a significant waste of energy and a resulting decrease in fuel economy.
It would therefore be significantly beneficial if a marine propulsion system could be developed which utilizes a jet pump that does not exhibit the disadvantageous characteristics of lower operational efficiency, reduced maximum speed, limited acceleration capability, inconvenient spatial requirements within the watercraft, and steering difficulties during braking and reversing operations.


A system for updating and delivering an interactive application delivery store, where the system includes a client computer, a server and an application delivery store executing on the server, the client computer communicating with the server over a communicative connection. A user accesses the application delivery store using the client computer, and subscribes to an application not included in a user profile of the user using the application delivery store. In response to subscribing to the application, the application delivery store verifies user permissions of the user and determines whether the user is permitted to subscribe to the application. Upon determining the user can subscribe to the application, the application delivery store updates the user profile with the application and transmits a stub application to the client computer. The stub application represents the application subscribed to by the user in that the stub application includes a portion of the application.

Typically applications are remotely provided to users via a web-based application that populates links associated with an address such that when the links are selected by a user, the web-based application establishes a communication channel between a client computer and a server. The web-based application can then facilitate transmitting graphical application data over the communication channel, where the graphical application data represents an application executing on the server. This process allows a user on the client computer to interact with an application executing on the server through the windows generated by the web-based application. In some instances, the communication channel and interaction between the remote application and the client can occur only after a user logs into a remote delivery system.
In most embodiments, a user likely is required to use the web-based application interface to remotely access applications executing on the server. Further, the applications enumerated within the web-based application interface typically included a group or set of applications that are configured by an administrator. The applications included in the enumeration can include each application a user has permission to use despite whether the user actually uses the application. Thus, users only have access to those applications provided to them by an administrator
There exists a need for an interactive application delivery store that permits users to self-subscribe to applications they not only have permission to use, but that they wish to use. An additional feature of this may be installing a stub application representative of the remotely accessible application so that a user of a client machine can access the application via a desktop on a client machine rather then via a web-based application interface.

Methods and systems for generating and delivering an interactive application delivery store


According to one embodiment, an information processing apparatus includes: a plurality of graphics processing units (GPUs) having different characteristics; a memory configured to store information on association between one of the plurality of GPUs and an application program; and a drawing control unit configured to control the GPU associated with the application program to perform drawing processing when the application program is run.

1. Field
One embodiment of the invention relates to an information processing apparatus including a plurality of GPUs having different characteristics, and particularly, an information processing apparatus which is capable of changing GPUs based on a type of drawing processing in performing the drawing processing.
2. Description of the Related Art
In recent years, as high quality moving pictures are run or 3D games with complicated drawn 3D screens are run at information processing apparatuses such as personal computers (PCs), there have been proposed information processing apparatuses having two or more graphics processing units (GPUs) or a dual GPU for a purpose of improving drawing capability.
As one example, JP-A-2007-48269 discloses a drawing method giving flexibility to development of graphic chips. This drawing method is to draw data using two cooperating GPUs having different new and old architectures for the purpose of providing compatibility. More specifically, in this drawing method, a first GPU performs a drawing processing for data supplied from a second GPU via a data input/output interface and returns the drawn data to the second GPU via the data input/output interface. Then, the second GPU processing the data from the first GPU if necessary and outputs a digital video signal to the outside.
An information processing apparatus having a plurality of GPUs having the same level of function typically divides a picture into a plurality of regions to be assigned to the plurality of GPUs, respectively, and performs a drawing processing for the regions by causing corresponding GPUs to draw their respective regions. In the meantime, although various types of application programs run at information processing apparatuses have been developed, there is necessity of high speed drawing processing irrespective of the type of drawing processing in order to allow various types of drawing processing such as 3D operation, moving picture processing, etc.


The invention pertains to a method of passivating direct process solids and to passivated and quenched compositions resulting from said method. The method of passivating direct process solids according to the invention comprises combining direct process solids with a passivating composition comprising clay, base, and water. The passivated composition of the invention comprises direct process solids and a passivating composition comprising clay, base, and water. The quenched composition of the invention comprises the passivated composition, wherein the passivated composition has been held for a sufficient period of time for the reactive species from the direct process solids to be substantially quenched and/or oxidized.

Organohalosilanes, halosilanes, and in particular methylchlorosilanes, are the building blocks from which silicone polymers are produced. Organohalosilanes and halosilanes are commercially produced by what is commonly called "the direct process", in which silicon metal is reacted with an organic halide or hydrogen chloride, optionally in the presence of a catalyst. Various aspects of the direct process are well known in the art, and have been described in patent literature.
In, for example, the commercial production of methylchlorosilanes by the direct process, finely ground silicon metal powder is reacted with methyl chloride in the presence of a catalyst by fluidizing the silicon powder in a fluid bed by passing methyl chloride gas through at a temperature of between 200° C. and 500° C. At the end of the reaction, there remains in the fluid bed, solids material. Similar steps are taken and similar direct process solids material is produced when manufacturing halosilanes.
In the commercial production of methylchlorosilanes, after the removal of the methylchlorosilanes from the fluid bed reactor, the direct process solids material remaining in the fluid bed reactor comprises mainly silicon metal and silicon oxides with minor amounts of other materials such as catalyst, unreacted organic halide, carbon residues, impurities and reaction product.
It is well known that direct process solids material can be hazardous if left in an unpassivated state. When in contact with moisture, such as atmospheric moisture, it evolves hydrogen gas, and it is highly susceptible to atmospheric oxidation and self-heating, which represents a potential fire hazard. Consequently, methods have been developed to passivate direct process solids. One such method is through quenching by reaction with an alkaline substance such as an aqueous lime solution. However, this method requires long reaction times, energy to heat the reaction, and subsequent separation steps to remove metals such as silicon, copper, zinc and aluminum. These negatives, along with the added large amount of water that remains after the reaction, make this process expensive. Another method of passivating direct process solids is to mix the direct process solids material with clay; however, this method increases the amount of waste generated, and the direct process solids material is still active for a period after mixing with the clay. Examples of quenching and/or passivating methods are described in U.S. Pat. No. 5,000,934 (Dow Corning); Russian Patent No. 2118561 (State Scientific Centre of the Russian Federation); and US Patent Application Publication U.S. 2004/0029713.
The present inventors have found that direct process solids may be passivated using a mixture of clay, water, and base. The method has economic advantages such as reducing waste, equipment maintenance, labor, raw material costs, and the amount of passivating and inert compounds present from the clay. Reducing the inert materials also results in an increased amount of valuable copper in the final material, because the copper from the direct process solids is less diluted by the inert material. In addition to the economic benefits, the new method also improves other properties of the resulting material. The new method reduces the passivated product's dustiness by improving its ability to be rewet. It reduces the environmental, health and safety concerns of neutralizing the activity of the direct process solids, and it requires less quenching time and improves the consistency of the clay-direct process solids compositions.


An apparatus for generating a virtual engine sound is provided. The apparatus includes a rotating bracket member that is disposed within a wheel of a vehicle and includes movement space therein, and elastic bodies, each of which has a first end fixed to a substantial rotation center position of the rotating bracket member. In addition, the apparatus includes weight bodies which are fixed to a second end of the elastic body, and are configured to move within the movement space based on a rotation speed of the wheel of the vehicle, and selectively contact the rotating bracket member.

Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an apparatus for generating a virtual engine sound, and more particularly, to an apparatus that generates a virtual engine sound when a vehicle travels at a substantially low speed.
Description of the Related Art
In general, an environmentally-friendly vehicle (e.g., an electric vehicle or the like) may not include an engine or may have periods of time when an engine does not operate. Further, a pedestrian may hear an engine sound of the vehicle, and recognize that the vehicle is traveling in the vicinity of (e.g., near) to the pedestrian.
However, engine sounds that correspond to acceleration and deceleration of the vehicle may not be generated in the environmentally-friendly vehicle. Accordingly, a collision between a pedestrian and the environmentally-friendly vehicle may occur when the vehicle travels at a substantially low speed.
Therefore, to virtually generate an engine sound for the environmentally-friendly vehicle, a speaker may be disposed at a front part of the vehicle. However, the installation of a speaker, an amplifier, and the like may increase cost of the vehicle and decrease fuel efficiency.
Further, the speaker is installed within a front bumper of the vehicle, but an opening part of the bumper is minimally configured within the environmentally-friendly vehicle to improve fuel efficiency and aerodynamic performance, which may cause a decrease in acoustic transfer efficiency of the speaker. In addition, the virtual engine sound varies based on a speed of the vehicle, thus requiring controller, which may cause a further increase in a cost of the vehicle.
The above information disclosed in this section is merely for enhancement of understanding of the background of the invention and therefore it may contain information that does not form the prior art that is already known in this country to a person of ordinary skill in the art.

Apparatus for generating virtual engine sound


An apparatus and method for forming a stringer are provided. The stringer generally includes a web having a desired corrugated configuration and first and second flanges welded to opposite edges of the web. The apparatus includes a support structure, a strongback that is supported by the support structure, and a plurality of dies that are adjustable relative to the strongback. The strongback defines a corrugated contour surface corresponding to the desired corrugated configuration of the web. The dies define corresponding forming surfaces and are configured to be advanced toward the strongback to thereby form the web to the desired corrugated configuration between the contour surface of the strongback and the forming surfaces of the dies. Further, the apparatus can receive the flanges of the stringer in a predetermined configuration with the web so that the flanges can be welded to the web while the web is supported by the strongback and dies in the desired corrugated configuration.

1) Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to the forming of members and, more particularly, an apparatus and method for forming corrugated contours in a member, such as a metal web that is disposed between flanges to produce a stringer or beam.
2) Description of Related Art
Corrugated members are widely used for a variety of applications. For example, metal structural panels used in vehicles, buildings, and containers can be corrugated to provide an increased resistance to bending or buckling relative to flat sheets. A corrugated web can be used to form a structural component such as a beam or stringer. For example, a corrugated stringer, which includes a corrugated web that extends between top and bottom flanges, can be used in the construction of a larger assembly such as an aircraft wing or fuselage. The profile of such a corrugated member typically defines wave-like sinusoidal contours, which affect the rigidity and other structural characteristics of the member. Relative to a stringer with a planar web, the corrugated stringer can generally provide greater rigidity, greater strength, and/or decreased weight.
According to one conventional method of forming a corrugated stringer, the web is pre-corrugated by conventional forming methods and then welded to the flanges. The web typically is characterized by some "spring back." That is, if the web is elastically and plastically deformed from a flat configuration to the corrugated configuration, the web may then return partially from its formed shape when the forming forces are removed. In addition, the amount of spring back can vary throughout the web and throughout different webs, e.g., depending on variations in the web thickness or other properties. When the pre-corrugated web is welded to the flanges, any spring back in the web can result in the web having a configuration that differs from the desired configuration. In some cases, the amount of expected spring back can be calculated or otherwise determined so that the web can be formed to a shape that, after spring back, conforms to the desired configuration. However, an accurate determination of spring back can be difficult or impossible and can add to the cost and complexity of the manufacturing process. Thus, in some cases, the web may not be lined up and welded with the flanges in the desired configuration, and the desired configuration of the stringer may not be achieved.
The manufacturing operation of such corrugated stringers can be further complicated by the use of materials with special forming or processing requirements and characteristics. For example, welding of some materials such as titanium generally requires a controlled environment to prevent undesired oxidation or other chemical effects to the material during welding. For this reason, titanium is often welded in a vacuum chamber. That is, titanium components are arranged in a vacuum chamber, the chamber is closed, air is evacuated from the chamber, and then the welding operation is performed. This evacuation method increases the time and expense for welding.
Thus, there exists a need for an improved apparatus and method for forming corrugated contours in a member and for welding members, e.g., for the manufacture of corrugated stringers or beams and the like.

Apparatus and method for forming corrugated members