A skiboard system comprising a skiboard having a channel extending along a portion of the length thereof and two bindings secured, via the channel, to the skiboard. The bindings are design to be rotated between a locked starting position, where the long axes of the bindings extend parallel to the long axis of the skiboard, and a locked skiing position, where the long axes of the bindings extend transversely to the long axis of the skiboard. After the bindings have been rotated to a selected position, the bindings are secured in place via a locking mechanism that is operated by movement of a pivotally mounted handle. In addition, the bindings include a resilient front strap assembly and a resilient heel support for securing the user's feet to the binding while at the same time permitting a user to quickly and easily remove his or her feet from the bindings in the event of a fall.

Water skiboards ("skiboards") are a relatively new recreational product related to slalom water skis. A skiboard is typically, although not always, wider and shorter than a slalom water ski that a person of given weight and ability would use. In addition, the bindings on a skiboard are mounted such that the user's feet are positioned side-by-side, at an angle to the long dimension of the skiboard. By contrast, with a slalom water ski, the bindings are positioned one in front of the other, so that the skier's feet extend parallel to the long dimension of the ski.
Because the bindings on known skiboards are mounted at an angle to the long dimension thereof, it tends to be difficult for a skiboard user to get up from a starting position in the water to the standing position the user assumes when the skiboard is pulled across the surface of the water. Currently, a skiboard user must either (a) position the skiboard so that its long axis is parallel to the direction of travel of the power boat used to pull the skiboard and user, and then position his or her body at an angle to the direction of travel, or (b) position his or her body so as to face the boat and position the skiboard at an angle to the direction of travel. In either case, it tends to be difficult to get started, with the result that less athletic persons or persons lacking the time to perfect using a skiboard often give up before attaining proficiency. In some cases, the problems associated with "getting up" on a skiboard are enough to prevent certain individuals from even trying to ski with a skiboard. Such problems do not exist with a slalom water ski because the bindings are mounted such that the long axis of the ski and the front of the user's body may be positioned in the direction of travel of the power boat used to pull the skiboard and user.
In the field of snowboarding, bindings have been developed that permit a snowboard user to adjust the rotational orientation of the bindings on the snowboard. One such binding is sold by the French company Look. The Look binding includes (1) a circular plate that is attached to the snowboard via fasteners, e.g., screws, engaged with the snowboard and (2) a footbed having a central aperture for rotatably receiving the circular plate. A lock assembly is provided for locking the footbed in predetermined rotational position with respect to the circular plate. A housing, including one or more fasteners, is attached to the footbed for securing a user's boot to the footbed such that the boot cannot be pulled free of the footbed except when the fasteners are released. Often, a user adjusts the orientation of the binding at the beginning of the season, and then no further adjustments are made.
Another snowboard with rotatably adjustable bindings is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,964,649 to Chamberlin. The Chamberlin binding is designed to permit a user to rotate the binding slightly from a preselected position by appropriate application of torque applied via the user's boots to the binding. When such torque is no longer applied, elastomeric structure in the binding causes the binding to return to the preselected position. The Chamberlin binding is not designed to permit a user to rotate the binding to a selected position during use of the associated snowboard and then lock the binding in place.
An adjustable binding designed for use with a water skiboard is disclosed in Harris U.S. Pat. No. 4,871,337. The Harris binding includes a foot plate that rests on the top surface of the skiboard and a two-layer strap attached to the plate for securing a user's foot to the plate. The plate is attached by two clamp assemblies to an elongated channel extending lengthwise of the skiboard. The clamp assemblies permit the user to secure the bindings at selected locations along the length of the channel. The clamp assemblies include set screws extending through arcuate slots in the foot plates to allow limited adjustment of the angular positions of the foot plates relative to the length of the skiboard. The range of rotation of each foot plate is limited to the normal riding positions, i.e., in the most forward rotated position of each foot plate it extends at an angle of about 45.degree. to the length of the board. Furthermore, two set screws must be loosened before the foot plate can be repositioned, and must be tightened to secure the foot plate in place, and, when the clamp assemblies are loosened to permit the bindings to be rotated to a new position, the bindings are also free to move along the length of the skiboard. Such longitudinal movement of the bindings is undesirable when only rotational repositioning is desired. The Harris construction is not adapted for convenient adjustment of the rotational position of water skiboard bindings during use of the skiboard.


Various systems and methods are provided for adaptive equalization. The adaptive equalization is performed on a data signal received from a channel in a receiver. The data signal is equalized using an equalizer in the receiver, thereby generating an equalized data signal. During equalization, an equalization setting of the equalizer is adapted based upon an overshoot of the equalized data signal at a data transition.

Adaptive equalization is employed in order to equalize data signals that experience distortion and intersymbol interference (ISI) due to the electrical characteristics of a channel over which the data signals are transmitted. Currently, there are many types of data signals that may be transmitted at various different bit rates and slew or edge rates. Adapting an equalizer to equalize data signals of different data rates can be a difficult task. Specifically, it is difficult to adapt an equalizer to equalize a data signal when the receiver does not know anything about the data rate or slew/edge rate of the incoming data signal due to the distortion and intersymbol interference in the data signal created by the channel.

Adaptive equalization based on signal overshoot


A new potato cultivar designated FL 2053 is disclosed. The invention relates to the tubers of potato variety FL 2053, to the plants and plant parts of potato variety FL 2053, to the seeds of potato variety and to methods for producing a hybrid potato variety. The invention further relates to potato variety tubers, seeds and plants produced by crossing the potato variety FL 2053 with another potato plant, and to single gene converted plants.

The present invention relates to a novel potato variety and to the tubers, plants, plant parts, tissue culture and seeds produced by that potato variety. All publications cited in this application are herein incorporated by reference.
The potato is the world's fourth most important food crop and by far the most important vegetable. Potatoes are currently grown commercially in nearly every state of the United States. Annual potato production exceeds 18 million tons in the United States and 300 million tons worldwide. The popularity of the potato derives mainly from its versatility and nutritional value. Potatoes can be used fresh, frozen or dried, or can be processed into flour, starch or alcohol. They contain complex carbohydrates and are rich in calcium, niacin and vitamin C.
To keep the potato industry growing to meet the needs of the consuming public, substantial research and development efforts are devoted to the modernization of planting and harvesting of fields and processing of potatoes, and to the development of economically advantageous potato varieties. Through crossbreeding of potatoes, researchers hope to obtain potatoes with the desirable characteristics of good processability, high solids content, high yield, resistance to diseases and pests and adaptability to various growing areas and conditions.
The U.S. acreage planted in potatoes has declined since the 1960s and 1970s, and this decline, coupled with increasing consumption, must be offset by higher useable yields. In some areas, diseases and pests damage crops despite the use of herbicides and pesticides. The problem of the golden nematode in the United States, presently endemic to portions of New York State, is one example of the destruction to susceptible potato varieties. Potato varieties with high yields, disease resistance and adaptability to new environments can eliminate many problems for the potato grower and provide more plentiful and economical products to the consumers.
For the potato chip processing industry, potatoes having high solids content, good shipping qualities and good finished chip color can increase production volumes and efficiencies and product acceptability. Potato varieties which yield low-solids tubers result in unnecessary energy usage during the frying process. Moreover, as solids content increases, the oil content of fried products decreases, which is a favorable improvement. Potato varieties in the warm southern tier of states are most in need of solids improvement overall, while those varieties grown and stored in the colder northern tier of states are most in need of the ability to recondition after cool or cold storage to increase their value for use in the potato chip industry. Reconditioning is necessary to elevate the temperature of the potatoes after cold storage and before further processing.
The research leading to potato varieties which combine the advantageous characteristics referred to above is largely empirical. This research requires large investments of time, labor, and money. The development of a potato cultivar can often take up to eight years or more from greenhouse to commercial usage. Breeding begins with careful selection of superior parents to incorporate the most important characteristics into the progeny. Since all desired traits usually do not appear with just one cross, breeding must be cumulative.
Present breeding techniques continue with the controlled pollination of parental clones. Typically, pollen is collected in gelatin capsules for later use in pollinating the female parents. Hybrid seeds are sown in greenhouses and tubers are harvested and retained from thousands of individual seedlings. The next year a single tuber from each resulting seedling is planted in the field, where extreme caution is exercised to avoid the spread of virus and diseases. From this first-year seedling crop, several "seed" tubers from each hybrid individual which survived the selection process are retained for the next year's planting. After the second year, samples are taken for density measurements and fry tests to determine the suitability of the tubers for commercial usage. Plants which have survived the selection process to this point are then planted at an expanded volume the third year for a more comprehensive series of fry tests and density determinations. At the fourth-year stage of development, surviving selections are subjected to field trials in several states to determine their adaptability to different growing conditions. Eventually, the varieties having superior qualities are transferred to other farms and the seed increased to commercial scale. Generally, by this time, eight or more years of planting, harvesting and testing have been invested in attempting to develop the new and improved potato cultivars.
Long-term, controlled-environment storage has been a feature of the northern, principal producing areas for many years. Potatoes harvested by October must be kept in good condition for up to eight months in temperatures that may drop to −30° C. at times and with very low relative humidity in the outside air. Storages are well insulated, not only to prevent heat loss but also to prevent condensation on outside walls. The circulation of air at the required temperature and humidity is automatically controlled depending on the purpose for which the potatoes are being stored. Sprout inhibition is now largely carried out in storage as it has been found to be more satisfactory than the application of maleic hydrazide (MH30) in the field.
Proper testing of new plants should detect any major faults and establish the level of superiority or improvement over current varieties. In addition to showing superior performance, a new variety must be compatible with industry standards or create a new market. The introduction of a new variety will increase costs of the tuber propagator, the grower, processor and consumer for special advertising and marketing, altered tuber propagation and new product utilization. The testing preceding release of a new variety should take into consideration research and development costs as well as technical superiority of the final variety. Once the varieties that give the best performance have been identified, the tuber can be propagated indefinitely as long as the homogeneity of the variety parent is maintained.
For tuber propagated varieties, it must be feasible to produce, store and process potatoes easily and economically. Thus, there is a continuing need to develop potato cultivars which provide good processability out of storage, with minimal bruising, for manufacturers of potato chips and other potato products and to combine this characteristic with the properties of disease and pest resistance. The present invention addresses this need by providing the new variety as described herein.
The foregoing examples of the related art and limitations related therewith are intended to be illustrative and not exclusive. Other limitations of the related art will become apparent to those of skill in the art upon a reading of the specification.


A signal reception apparatus and method for communication systems. The signal reception apparatus for communication systems according to the present invention is applicable to communication environments in which a plurality of sub-bands having different frequency bands are sequentially used for communications. An embodiment of the invention has a multi-band index generation unit, a multi-band frequency generation unit, a multiplication unit, a correlation signal reception unit, and a buffer unit. The multi-band index generation unit generates a multi-band index corresponding to a sub-band to which a received signal is transmitted in correspondence with the multi-band index. The multiplication unit outputs a signal obtained by multiplying the received signal by the multi-band frequency. The correlation signal reception unit integrates and outputs the signal of the multiplication unit based on an integral time set in correspondence with the multi-band index. Further, the buffer unit buffers the signal of the correlation signal reception unit to be outputted at a predetermined data rate.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a signal reception apparatus and a method for communication systems, and more particularly, to a signal reception apparatus and a method for multi-band Ultra-Wideband communication systems capable of compensating for a channel attenuation difference among reception signals for respective bands occurring due to different central frequencies of respective bands.
2. Description of the Related Art
Ultra-Wideband communications known as wireless digital pulses are based on a wireless communication technology for transmitting large amounts of digital data through a wide range of frequency spectrum at a low power in a short range. The Ultra-Wideband communications can intermittently transmit data, using an ultra wideband comprising a few GHz to transmit wireless data, so that the Ultra-Wideband communications are expected to solve a frequency slot shortage phenomenon. Ultra-Wideband communications have an advantage that communications can be carried out at an ultra high-speed transmission rate of 500 Mbps-1 Gbps, but power consumption is low at a level of one one-hundredth of the power consumed for products such as cellular phones, wireless LANs, and the like, despite such a fast transmission speed. As the core technologies for the Ultra-Wideband communications, there are UWB modem technology of 100 Mps class, MAC technology for supporting the high QoS (Quality of Service), and small-sized antenna technology suitable to the wideband transmission.
In the meantime, single band and multi-band approaches have been proposed recently for the Ultra-Wideband communication technology standard. The single band approach is an approach which covers the entire bandwidth of an available frequency band, and the multi-band approach is an approach that uses plural sub-bands in which the entire bandwidth of an available frequency band is divided into the plural sub-bands. Current multi-band Ultra-Wideband communication systems use M sub-bands divided in the available frequency band existing between 3.1 GHz and 10.6 GHz.
FIG. 1 illustrates a frequency spectrum for a multi-band Ultra-Wideband communication system having sub-bands of M=16. Referring to FIG. 1, the first eight sub-bands (0-7) are allocated to a low frequency set, and the next eight sub-bands (8-15) are allocated for a high frequency set. In FIG. 1, a region marked Unexpected interferer denotes a region where interference can occur due to overlapping with a frequency band used in the other communication system. The following table shows central frequencies Fc, low band frequencies FL, and high band frequencies FH for respective sub-bands.
TABLE 1#A/BFcFLFH 0A3.523.2513.789 0B3.743.4714.009 1A3.963.6914.229 1B4.183.9114.449 2A4.44.1314.669 2B4.624.3514.889 3A4.844.5715.109 3B5.064.7915.329 4A5.285.0115.549 4B5.55.2315.769 5A5.725.4515.989 5B5.945.6716.209 6A6.165.8916.429 6B6.386.1116.649 7A6.66.3316.869 7B6.826.5517.089 8A7.046.7717.309 8B7.266.9917.529 9A7.487.2117.749 9B7.77.4317.96910A7.927.6518.18910B8.147.8718.40911A8.368.0918.62911B8.588.3118.84912A8.88.5319.06912B9.028.7519.28913A9.248.9719.50913B9.469.1919.72914A9.689.4119.94914B9.99.63110.16915A10.129.85110.389
For example, considering a frequency plan B as a reference, the sub-band 14B including the highest frequencies in the sub-band, has a central frequency of 9.9 GHz, and the sub-band 0B comprising the lowest frequencies in the sub-band has a central frequency of 3.74 GHz. When the two central frequencies are compared, it can be seen that the central frequency of sub-band 14B is 2.65 times the central frequency of sub-band 0B. Since signal attenuation in a channel is proportional to the square of the frequency, a signal transmitted through the 9.9 GHz band undergoes 7 times more channel attenuation (8.45 dB) as compared to a signal transmitted through a 3.74 GHz band.
FIG. 2 is a block diagram illustrating a signal reception apparatus for a conventional multi-band Ultra-Wideband communication system. Referring to FIG. 2, a signal reception apparatus for a conventional multi-band Wideband communication system has a multi-band index generation unit 10, a multi-band frequency generation unit 12, a multiplication unit 13, a correlation signal reception unit 14, and a signal processing unit 16.
The multi-band index generation unit 10 calculates a multi-band index m corresponding to each sub-band of a received multi-band Ultra-Wideband communication signal. The multi-band frequency generation unit 12 generates a multi-band frequency for each sub-band according to the multi-band index m inputted from the multi-band index generation unit 10. The multiplication unit 13 outputs a signal obtained by multiplying a multi-band Ultra-Wideband communication signal received through an antenna by a multi-band frequency. The correlation signal reception unit 14 outputs an integral value with respect to the signal of the multiplication unit 13 in regard to a certain integral time. Further, the signal processing unit 16 processes the signal outputted from the correlation signal reception unit 14 and restores a signal transmitted from a signal transmission apparatus.
However, when the correlation signal reception unit 14 processes a signal transmitted through each of M sub-bands, the signal reception apparatus for the conventional Ultra-Wideband communication system uses an approach to sum up energies of respective received signals over the time period with respect to respective sub-bands in regard to the same integral time. Accordingly, as described in relation to Table 1, the energy difference of a received signal per sub-band can occur up to 8.45 dB at maximum.
Such energy differences among received signals by sub-bands cause bit error rates (BERs) by sub-bands which are different from one another. At this time, an average bit error rate of the entire sub-bands is mainly affected by a bit error rate of a signal received through a sub-band having the largest channel attenuation, that is, a sub-band having the highest central frequency, which causes deterioration of the performance of the entire multi-band Ultra-Wideband communication system.

Signal reception apparatus and method for multi-band ultra-wideband communication systems


A system and method permits a user to observe the Quality of Service (QoS) of Web services and allows dynamic selection based on the user's preference. The system is built on QoS observation meta-model and comprises a QoS observation manager, service criteria generator, service repository, evaluation manager and service invocation manager. The QoS observation manager allows users to define observation model and deploy to the service criteria generator. The service criteria generator computes the QoS criteria values of services by subscribing events which include user feedback events and service execution events, based on deployed observation model. The service repository provides the persistence storage for QoS criteria value. The evaluation manager allows users to specify selection preferences and select services based on QoS ranking. The service invocation manger invokes Web services and publishes events according to the QoS of Web services. The system enables users to observe the QoS of Web service and select Web service based on QoS ranking that reflects the user's selection preference.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention generally relates to computer facilitated Web service QoS (Quality of Service) observation, evaluation and selection. Using the invention, a human user is able to observe the QoS of Web services, ranking Web services, and even allows the system to select Web services based on his/her preference.
2. Background Description
Web services are autonomous software systems identified by URLs (Universal Resource Locators) which can be advertised, located, and accessed through messages encoded according to XML-based (extensible Markup Language) standards (e.g., SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol), WSDL (Web Services Description Language), and UDDI (Universal Description, Discovery and Integration)) and transmitted using Internet protocols (EPs). Web services encapsulate application functionality and information resources, and make them available through programmatic interfaces, as opposed to the interfaces provided by traditional Web applications which are intended for manual interactions. In addition, since they are intended to be discovered and used by other applications across the Web, Web services need to be described and understood both in terms of functional capabilities and QoS properties.
The ever increasing number of functional similar Web services being made available on the Internet, there is a need to be able to distinguish them using a set of well-defined Quality of Service (QoS) criteria. Currently, most approaches that deal with QoS of Web services only address some generic dimensions such as price, execution duration, availability and reliability (see Daniel A. Menasce, "QoS Issues in Web Services", IEEE Internet Computing, 6(6), 2002; Liangzhao Zeng, Boualem Benatallah. MarIon Dumas, Jayant Kalagnanam, and Quan Z. Sheng, "Quality Driven Web Services Composition", Proceedings of the 12the international conference on World Wide Web (WWW), Budapest, Hungary. ACM Press, May 2003). However, these generic criteria might not be sufficient for observing QoS of Web service, evaluation and selection.
Moreover, most of the current approaches rely on service providers to advertise their QoS information or provide an interface to query the QoS values, which is subject to manipulation by the providers. Obviously, service providers may not advertise their QoS information in a "neutral" manner, for example, execution duration, reliability, etc.

System for web service QoS observation and dynamic selection

International Business Machines Corporation


A light receiving amplification circuit according to the present invention includes: a light receiving element; an amplification circuit which amplifies a photoelectric current generated by the light receiving element and outputs from an amplification stage for external output and a plurality of amplification stages for feedback; an operating current source set in each of the amplification stages which supplies an operating current to the corresponding amplification stages; a gain selection switch set in the respective plurality of amplification stages for feedback, which interrupts the operating current between the corresponding amplification stage and the operating current source; and a gain resistor set in the respective plurality of amplification stages for feedback and connected between the operating current side of the corresponding gain selection switch and an input of the amplification circuit.

(1) Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a light receiving amplification circuit used primarily in a pickup of an optical disc.
(2) Description of the Related Art
In recent years, optical disc apparatuses able to reproduce and record information have become widespread.
In such an optical disc apparatus, the optical power of a laser differs between when recording and when reproducing. Therefore, a light receiving amplification circuit utilized in signal readout of an optical disc must switch the gain resistor of the operational amplifier and keep the output voltage within the output dynamic range of the amplification circuit when converting a light signal to an electrical signal and further amplifying that electrical signal.
One example of a light receiving amplification circuit which has a gain switching function is disclosed in, for example, Japanese Patent No. 3142214. This light receiving amplification circuit is shown in FIG. 1. In this example, a gain resistor in the operational amplifier which amplifies the output of a light receiving element 801 connected in an anode common is switched with a PNP transistor 807.
The output of the light receiving element 801 is connected to the input of an operational amplifier circuit made up of NPN transistors 803 and 804, and two gain resistors 805 and 806. The gain resistor 806 is directly connected to the output of the operational amplifier, and the other gain resistor 805 is connected to the collector of the PNP transistor 807. An emitter of the PNP transistor 807 is connected to the output of the operational amplifier circuit.
A base of the PNP transistor 807 is connected to a constant current source 810, and the on/off of the PNP transistor 807 is controlled with a switch 811.
In the abovementioned circuit configuration, because the PNP transistor 807 is controlled to be off during reproduction where the laser's optical power is low, the gain of the operational amplifier circuit is set by the gain resistor 806 only.
On the other hand, the PNP transistor 807 is on during recording where the laser's optical power is high, and the gain of the operational amplifier is set by a parallel connection of the gain resistor 805 and the gain resistor 806.
In this manner, the operational amplifier operates with a high gain value during reproduction when the photoelectric current inputted to the operational amplifier is low, and a low gain value during recording when the photoelectric current inputted to the operational amplifier is high. Therefore, stable operation, in which the output of the operation amplifier is not saturated even if the laser power changes drastically, is possible.
However, in the abovementioned conventional configuration, in the case where the PNP transistor 807 is on, there are situations where, in addition to the voltage arising in both ends of the gain resistor 805, a saturation collector-to-emitter voltage Vce (sat) of the PNP transistor enters in between the input terminal and the output terminal of the operational amplifier. Therefore, there is a problem in which the gain of the operational amplifier differs from the designed value and desirable operational characteristics cannot be obtained.

Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., Ltd.


Methods and systems are disclosed for providing within edited shell documents contextual information associated with a referenced object. The methods and systems may receive a request from an author to insert a reference to a fragment object into a shell document reflecting content to be displayed and generate response data including a reference to the fragment object and a first property reflecting contextual information associated with the fragment object. The shell document may be modified by inserting the response data into the shell document. The methods and system may also render the modified shell document including the response data such that the response data conveys a user-ascertainable characteristic of the fragment object based on the first property.

The advent and growth of the World Wide Web and networking software enable private individuals and business personnel to access information from an increasing number of sources, such as web servers, database servers, enterprise systems, and other forms of information storage systems. The information provides data for certain business processes. Accordingly, businesses rely on systems and techniques that ensure the correct data is generated and displayed as content on a user's computer display device.
To ensure the consistency of displayed information, businesses continue to harness various technologies associated with distributed systems to develop and provide specialized services. One type of technology that is gaining popularity are web services designed for business processes. A business web service is system functionality that is accessible over the Internet, an Intranet, and even an Extranet, using standard web-based protocols (e.g., Hyper Text Transfer Protocol (HTTP)). Such services may provide content that is configured and published using description languages, such as Hyper Text Transfer Markup Language (HTML) and eXtensible Markup Language (XML) interfaces and messages. Accordingly, business process services are an ideal way for businesses to provide services in heterogeneous environments where a consumer of these services may be a user operating a desktop, an application program, or even another business process hosted on any number of different platforms.
Although service technologies allow businesses to publish and retrieve information through a network, the information has to be natively managed or temporarily transformed into XML. Further, documents may be created through references to smaller chunks of data. For example, during the creation of XML-based documents, a user may use entity references or Xinclude statements to reference other content when creating a content conglomerate (i.e., a document that is constructed of smaller referenced content). One problem for the user who is editing or authoring a content conglomerate is that the references to other content do not reveal or identify the content associated with the references in a format ascertainable to a user. Accordingly, there is a need for a solution to the assembly-based approach to content management lifecycles (i.e., a decontextualized approach to editing and authoring content-based documents).

Methods and systems for providing context-based reference information


At step S21, a residual amount judging section of abattery residual amount display circuit measures a battery voltage. If a mode transition is detected at step S22, the process returns to step S21 without executing the subsequent steps. If it is judged at step S23 that the operation mode is a reception-waiting mode, the process goes to step S24, where the battery amount judging section judges a battery residual amount by comparing the detected battery voltage with threshold values. If the operation mode is judged to be a transmission mode, the battery residual amount judging section determines a voltage drop during a transmission at step S25, and converts the voltage drop into a battery voltage of a reception waiting mode at step S26 by subtracting the voltage drop from a batter voltage obtained in a reception waiting mode immediately before the mode transition. At step S27, the battery residual amount judging section determines a battery residual amount by comparing the converted battery voltage with the threshold values.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a battery residual amount display circuit and particularly, to a battery residual amount display circuit for displaying the residual amount of a battery used in an apparatus having a plurality of operation modes, such as a radio apparatus.
2. Description of the Prior Art
The Li (lithium)-ion battery has a feature that the battery voltage decreases approximately like a first-order function as it discharges. Therefore, it is possible to know the residual amount of a battery by measuring its output voltage. In an apparatus using a Li-ion battery as a power supply, the residual amount of the battery is determined by measuring its output voltage and displayed on an indicator.
For example, Japanese Unexamined Patent Publication No. Hei. 6-224844 discloses a radio apparatus having a battery residual amount display circuit. In this radio apparatus, as shown in FIG. 7, the output voltage of Li-ion battery 71 is converted into an operation voltage by power supply circuit 72, to thereby produce a stable power supply voltage. On the other hand, the output voltage of Li-ion battery 71 is converted by A/D converter 73 into a digital value, which is detected by control section 74. The battery residual amount is judged based on a detected voltage value, and a judged battery residual amount is displayed on indicator 75.
Having, for instance, a microprocessor as a main control unit, control section 74 controls a radio circuit section (not shown). At the same time, control section 74, specifically its residual amount judging section 76, compares the battery output voltage with a plurality of threshold values and thereby judges which of a plurality of levels the battery residual amount belongs to. In performing the above judgment, to eliminate a measurement error depending on the operation mode, the residual amount judging section 76 changes the threshold values based on mode information that is supplied from the main control unit. The operation of residual amount judging section 76 will be described below with reference to FIG. 8.
In residual amount judging section 76, first, at step S81, the operation mode of the radio apparatus is checked. If the operation mode is a reception-waiting mode, at step S82 the process waits for a time slot other than a transmission slot. The battery voltage is measured at step S83. Then, at step S84, the battery residual amount is judged by comparing the measured battery voltage with threshold values that were stored in advance.
If the operation mode is judged to be a talking mode at step S81, residual amount judging section 76 operates in the same manner as in the case of the reception-waiting mode. That is, the process waits for a time slot other than a transmission slot at step S85, and the battery voltage is measured at step S86. The battery residual amount is judged at step S87 by comparing the measured battery voltage with threshold values. However, the threshold values used in the talking mode is different from those used in the reception-waiting mode. This is because the discharge current (power consumption) in the talking mode is larger than in the reception waiting mode and the battery voltage is lowered accordingly.
The battery residual amount that has been measured in the above manner is displayed on indicator 75 at step S78.
In the conventional battery residual amount display circuit, the battery residual amount is judged based on the battery voltage on the assumptions that the discharge current (power consumption) is constant in each mode and that the relationship between the discharge current and the voltage drop never changes. However, the discharge current varies even in the same mode and the relationship between the discharge current and the voltage drop varies with the ambient temperature and the number of charge/discharge cycles. Therefore, the conventional battery residual amount display circuit has a problem that the battery residual amount cannot be judged in a stable manner.
Moreover, the residual amount of a battery is not judged in talking mode so as to avoid the influence of voltage drop in transmission slot, thus there was a disadvantage that the battery residual amount judgement becomes inaccurate in the apparatus which has lengthy talking mode.


In the present invention, various control can be actualized by a simple operation when display content is controlled based on a touch operation.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an electronic device including a touch-input section which detects a touch operation and a display section, and a storage medium.
2. Description of the Related Art
In an electronic device (such as a digital camera or a mobile phone) that includes a touch panel for inputting commands and data by touching with a finger or the like, the touch panel is generally used to execute operations based on gesture performed on the touch panel, in addition to being used as a software keyboard. For example, a technology such as that described in Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open (Kokai) Publication No. 2003-338975 has been disclosed in the past in which display content is controlled based on an operation mode and the pattern of a "sliding operation" performed on a touch panel, whereby display control such as image-scrolling or screen-scrolling for an enlarged image is performed.
However, in the conventional technology described above, although display control based on the pattern type of a "sliding operation" can be actualized simply by the pattern being changed, the display control is associated with a plurality of pattern types individually, and therefore the types of the display control are limited to the number of the pattern types, and detailed control and fine control cannot be performed within the same types of display control.
An object of the present invention is to actualize various control through a simple operation when display content is controlled based on a touch operation.

Abstract: When a slide operation is performed in which a finger or the like is moved on a touch sensor 8 while touching it, and the pattern of the slide operation determined based on the movement directions of the slide operation is a predetermined pattern in which the finger or the like is initially moved in one direction, and after being temporarily stopped, moved in a different direction, a control section 1 performs image scrolling based on the predetermined pattern, as control of display content displayed on a display section 7.


A transceiver assembly includes a frame section, a rigid printed circuit board, a flex circuit, and an edge connector. The frame section includes a flex circuit layer for use in carrying data, and control and power signals, and an optoelectronic device. The rigid printed circuit board includes a first rigid printed circuit board layer and a flex circuit layer for use in carrying data, and control and power signals. The flex circuit is for carrying data, and control and power signals which flexibly links the rigid printed circuit board to the frame section and forms the flex circuit layers in the rigid printed circuit board and the frame section. The edge connector is formed on one end of the printed circuit board by a plurality of connection pads disposed along one edge of the printed circuit board.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to optoelectronic devices, and more specifically to parallel optics assemblies for use in fiber optic communications.
2. Discussion of the Background
The majority of computer and communication networks today rely on copper wiring to transmit data between nodes in the network. However, copper wiring has relatively limited bandwidth for carrying electrical signals which greatly constrains the amounts of data that it can be used to transmit.
Many computer and communication networks, including a large part of the Internet, are now being built using fiber optic cabling which has superior bandwidth capabilities and can be used to transmit much greater amounts of data. With fiber optic cabling, data is transmitted using light signals (also called optical or photonic signals), rather than electrical signals. For example, a logical one may be represented by a light pulse of a specific duration and a logical zero may be represented by the absence of a light pulse for the same duration. In addition, it is also possible to transmit at the same time light at different wavelengths over a single strand of optic fiber, with each wavelength of light representing a distinct data stream. However, since computers use electrical signals as opposed to light signals the light signals used to transmit data over fiber optic links must be translated to electrical signals and vice-versa during the optical communication process. Building such fiber optic networks therefore requires opto-electronic transceivers which interface optical transmission mediums to electronic computing devices and transform optical signals to electronic signals and electronic signals to photonic signals. Such optoelectronic transceivers (transmitters or receivers) may be provided using semiconductor devices (photoactive devices) such as photodiodes which act as photo-receivers or LEDs or laser diodes which act as photo-transmitters. While transceivers using such devices can provide satisfactory performance, the optical alignment of the photoactive devices with the ends of the thread-like fiber optic ends must be precise for an effective transfer of optical power. In parallel optics modules which use multiple fibers and multiple communications channels for high bandwidth applications the fiber optic ends are closely spaced in an array which greatly increases the complexity of this alignment task.
One past alignment technique for use in constructing parallel optics modules was to etch alignment grooves along the surface of a silicon substrate using photolithography techniques. These grooves were then used in precisely positioning the fibers and fiber optic ends in aligned relationships to edge-emitting laser diodes. Although this technique can accurately align the optical components, the arrays must be manually assembled. Consequently, the process is labor intensive and results in low yields due to assembly errors and quality assurance problems.
More recently some parallel optics modules have come to use metal lead frames for mounting the photoactive devices. The lead frames then have alignment holes that cooperate with guide pins for alignment purposes. The guide pins extend from the holes in the lead frame to corresponding holes in a ferrule supporting the optic fibers in order to provide for the alignment of the ferrule with the lead frame and the fibers with the photoactive devices. However, this type of design has weaknesses. The optoelectronic device must be very accurately mounted onto the metal lead frame and at the same time the alignment holes extending through the lead frame must be very accurately positioned. Should the optoelectronic device or alignment holes be misaligned, optical misalignment will occur even though the optical fibers may appear to be correctly aligned.

Transceiver assembly for use in fiber optics communications


An optical recording medium in which information can be recorded in tracks formed by both lands and grooves provided between lands, and rows of prepits corresponding to preformat information in both adjacent lands and grooves are formed by deviating in the circumferential direction. Counting grooves for counting tracks are formed at both sides of the row of prepits for the land, the prepit for the groove has a depth or width different from that of the groove, the counting groove has a depth or width different from that of the groove, and the prepit for the land is formed narrower and/or shallower than the counting groove.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an optical recording medium and a drive of such optical recording medium, and more particularly to a preformatted portion, in which preformat information such as ID information is recorded, of an optical recording medium employing a land/groove recording system enabling recording at high density by varying the height of adjacent tracks.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Recently, as the computer becomes higher in performance, there is an increasing demand for memories of larger capacity, and optical disks and magneto-optical disks are developed. Toward the forthcoming age of multimedia, a further larger capacity is required. Optical disks include the read-only type, write-once type, and multiple recordable type such as magneto-optical disk.
Recordable optical disks are classified into a type of using a phase changing material in the recording film, and a type of using magneto-optical material. The phase changing material induces phase shift between, for example, crystal and amorphous, becoming crystal and raised in light reflectivity when exceeding a certain temperature T1, and becoming amorphous and lowered in light reflectivity when exceeding a certain temperature T2. Such reflectivity changes are made to correspond to "0" and "1", and recording and reproduction are executed. When recording in such optical disk, using a beam focused to about 1 .mu.m, the temperature of the optical disk surface is raised until phase change takes place. When erasing, by lowering to a temperature below the recording point, it is returned to the state before recording. When reproducing this optical disk, by illuminating with light sufficiently weaker than in recording and erasing, "0" and "1" can be read out from the difference in light reflectivity between recorded portion and erased portion.
The magneto-optical material forms a vertical magnetized film on a substrate, and is initialized by first applying an external magnetic field in one direction. When recording, on its surface, an external magnetic field is applied in the opposite direction of initialization, and the surface is heated by a beam focused to about 1 .mu.m nearly to the Curie temperature to decrease the coercive force of the surface portion, and the magnetization is inverted to a direction of the external magnetic field. When erasing, the external magnetic field is set in a same direction as in initializing. When reproducing, a polarized beam is emitted to the disk, and the direction of Kerr rotation by the magnetization direction of magnetic film is read out by an optical system for detecting polarization such as an analyzer.
In a conventional optical recording medium, as shown in FIG. 1, a convex track (land) 3 divided by a V-section groove 1 is a record region of pits 4 for expressing record information, and this track is divided into sectors of predetermined length, and an ID signal expressing the position information is recorded at the beginning of each sector in an array of prepits 2.
To enhance density in such conventional optical recording medium, hitherto, a land/groove recording system has been proposed for widening the groove used in division of track and recording information also therein. When the ID signal is formed in prepits in this method as in the prior art, since the interval of adjacent tracks is narrow, an adjacent signal often mixes in to cause crosstalk, and the ID signal cannot be reproduced correctly.
Accordingly, various ID signal recording and reproducing methods have been proposed for the land/groove recording system, but when such recording and reproducing methods are realized, the speed detection of optical head often goes wrong.
FIG. 2 (a) is a top view of an example of an ID signal recording and reproducing system involving the possibility of error in speed detection. In this optical recording medium, a row of prepits P2 for ID signal is arranged at an intermediate position in the radial direction between the concave groove track G and convex land track L, and the row of prepits P2 for ID signal is shared between the land track L and groove track G on both sides. In this ID signal recording and reproducing system, a groove (not shown) penetrating through the row of prepits P2 is provided so that error may not be caused in track counting when the optical head moves between the tracks.
In this system, when the optical head moves from A to C between the tracks, as the optical head moves from the recording/reproducing region including the groove G to the ID information region including the row of prepits P2 or from the ID information region to the recording/reproducing region, as shown in FIG. 2 (b), the track error signal indicated by dotted line is deviated in phase by 90.degree. as indicated by solid line, and the binary signal of the tracking error which is intended to be inverted at an intermediate position in the track direction of the ID information region as shown in FIG. 2 (c) is inverted at a different interval from the intended inverting time interval as shown in FIG. 2 (d), and an error is caused in track counting. Speed control of the optical head when tracking a specified track at the time of seeking is done during the time of crossing one track from inversion to next inversion of the binary signal of the tracking error signal, and the demerit is that the target track cannot be determined accurately.
FIG. 3 is a top view of another example of ID signal recording and reproducing system involving error in speed detection. In this optical recording medium, a concave groove track G and a convex land track L individually include a row of prepits P3 for ID signal. However, to prevent crosstalk between rows of prepits P3 as mentioned above, a row of prepits P3 of groove track G is arranged in the first half of the ID information region, and a row of prepits P3 of land track L in the latter half. In this ID signal recording and reproducing system, in order to prevent error in track count when the optical head moves between the tracks, a groove G1 penetrating through the row of prepits P3 is provided.
In this system, since the row of prepits P3 for land track L is positioned in the middle (180.degree.) of the adjacent groove tracks G, the tracking error signal produced from the row of prepits P3 for land track L is deviated by 180.degree. in phase from the tracking error occurring elsewhere, and an error is involved in the track counting.

Optical recording medium for land-and-groove recording system


An event-based scheduling method and system for providing automatic activity synchronization and automatic data exchange between workflows and between workflows and other applications. An automatic synchronization mechanism is provided for enabling workflows to interact with other workflows or other applications to automatically synchronize activity execution. An automatic data exchange mechanism is provided for enabling workflows to exchange data with other workflows or other applications. An event processing pre-compilation architecture receives a workflow definition having at least one event node and responsive thereto generates a workflow definition without event nodes at compile time. Each event node is replaced with a translated workflow node that conforms to the syntax supported by the underlying workflow engine. The translated workflow node is also assigned to an application that can implement the desired event node semantics. An event processing run-time architecture invokes the application assigned to the translated node when the translated node is encountered. The application employs a publication and subscription tool for automatically performing activity synchronization and/or data exchange at run time.

Workflow management is a rapidly evolving technology that many businesses in a variety of industries utilize to handle business processes. A business process, as defined by the Workflow standard—Terminology & glossary, Technical Report WFMC-TC-1011, Worflow Management Coalition, June 1996. Versions 2.0., is simply a set of one or more linked activities that collectively realize a business objective or a policy goal, typically within the context of an organizational structure defining functional roles and relationships. A workflow is defined as the automation of a business process, in whole or in part, during which documents, information, or activities are passed from one participant to another, according to a set of predefined rules. A workflow management system (WfMS) defines, creates, and manages the execution of workflows.
Examples of workflow software include BusinessWare software, available from Vitria Technology, Inc. of Sunnyvale, Calif., Inconcert software, available from TIBCO Software, Inc. of Palo Alto, Calif., MQ Series software, available from International Business Machines Corporation (IBM), of Armonk, N.Y., and Staffware 2000, available from Staffware of Berkshire, United Kingdom.
In most workflow management systems (WfMS), the progression of a workflow is synchronous (i.e., as soon as an activity is completed, other activities can be started by the WfMS according to the execution dependencies specified in the workflow definition). However, there is frequently the need of specifying activities that, in order to be started, need to wait for an event to occur. For instance, an activity "Pay Employees" should start on the scheduled payday. As another example, the activity "Repair Car" should start when the event "Car Accident" is detected. Hence, these activities are not only activated due to the completion of a previous activity, but also due to the occurrence of a certain event. In this regard, it is desirable for there to be a mechanism that facilitates the activation of workflow activities based on the occurrence of certain events.
Some products acknowledge the utility of having event-based workflow execution. For example, Staffware 2000 allows for a workflow to suspend execution until the occurrence of an event. Unfortunately, this event must be manually programmed by a workflow designer. As can be appreciated, it is both time-consuming and inconvenient to require a workflow designer to write software code that generates an event corresponding to a specific instance of a business process that may or may not even be in the same enterprise as the current workflow.
Another shortcoming of the Staffware 2000 product is that it does not appear to support nodes that can send events. Consequently, Staffware 2000 product does not have a uniform and homogeneous mechanism for synchronizing with other workflows. In other words, coordination between two workflows cannot be automatic since one communication leg is missing and not supported.
Another disadvantage of the Staffware 2000 approach is that since send nodes are not supported, it cannot send events that carry values taken from the state of a workflow. Consequently, the Staffware 2000 approach does not provide a uniform and homogeneous mechanism for exchanging information with other workflow. In other words, data exchange between two workflows cannot be automatic since one communication leg is missing and not supported.
Moreover, Staffware requires the application that notifies an event to determine exactly which process instance is to be the recipient of the event. As can be appreciated this task is difficult and time consuming because new instances are created and destroyed continuously.
Consequently, it is desirable for there to be a facility to automatically sychronize activities and exchange data between workflows.
Furthermore, most workflow management systems (WfMSs) only support the separate and independent execution of business processes. However, business processes in reality need to interact with each other. For example, two business processes may need to synchronize the execution of their activities, to exchange process data, or to notify the progress in the process execution. Recent market trends increase the need for cooperation and interaction not only between different processes within a single organization, but also between different processes executed in different organizations.
In this regard, it is desirable for there to be a mechanism that facilitates inter-enterprise communication between workflows and between a workflow and other applications. As can be appreciated, the need to have workflows interact and cooperate across different organizations pose numerous challenges to prior art workflow systems.
Based on the foregoing, there remains a need for a method and system for a mechanism to provide event-based scheduling for workflow activities that overcomes the disadvantages set forth previously.

Event-based scheduling method and system for workflow activities

Hewlett-Packard Development Company, L.P.


According to an embodiment, an improved flying adder circuit, comprises a fine clock, a coarse pulse clock, a rising edge triggered output connected to both the fine clock and the coarse pulse clock, a pulse clock connected to the rising edge triggered output, an adder, a 12-bit register situated to receive a signal from the adder and the pulse clock, and a single bit register situated to receive a signal from the pulse clock.

The traditional flying adder architecture generates periodic signals with an average frequency output relative to a reference clock by selecting the phases of a set of reference clocks. In order to keep the number of reference clocks reasonably small, the clock phase selection is truncated. The truncation results in consecutive output periods that are not necessarily equal, but that result in a desired average output frequency. Although the desired average output frequency is achieved, the unequal period lengths result in undesired spurious outputs. There is therefore a need for a low power square wave reference without undesired spurious outputs.
More particularly, it will be noted that flying adder frequency synthesizers generate an output pulse train having a frequency but average it over time so that the falling and rising edges of the clocks would not necessarily occur at the same exact period. This results in time jitter when the clock edges are moving around. There are a considerable number of applications where this is acceptable. However, in other applications one requires the rising and falling edges of the clock to occur at precise times so that the clock edges happen at the exact time they are supposed to happen.
Time jitter in prior art flying adder frequency synthesizers is unacceptable in certain electronic warfare applications. For instance, for those systems involving jamming it is very important that the detecting system detects what they perceive to be their own signal returning to them. If the returned signal does not look like their own transmitted signal, the jamming signal will be ineffective because it can be ignored. Thus, there is a requirement for phase coherent signal generation for jamming signals so that the pulses in the jamming signals are edge to edge exact. These type of phase coherent signals are also useful for instance in phased array radars.
An architecture for generating almost-periodic digital signals of a desired average frequency based on a frequency reference clock is known in the art. As is usual, the circuit is driven by a family of uniformly phase shifted copies of a periodic square wave that can be generated by ring oscillator. While the flying adder results in a simple compact fully digital implementation offering good resolution, it also suffers from highly spurious output content due to phase truncation and phase jitter.
Because of its wide tuning range and instant response time, the prior art flying frequency adder is highly suitable for many system on-chip applications. The frequency is controlled by a frequency control word that can be an integer or a fractional number when high frequency resolution is desired. When the frequency control word is an integer, the flying frequency adder can be viewed as a phase divider which can achieve finer resolution than traditional frequency divider circuits are capable of. However, the frequency modulation involved in these flying adder synthesizers results in spurious spikes in the frequency spectrum. Although dithering methods can be used to eliminate or effectively reduce spurs, this approach comes at the cost of increased overall noise.
Thus, a heretofore unaddressed need exists in the industry to address the aforementioned deficiencies and inadequacies.

BAE Systems Information and Electronic Systems Integration Inc.


Techniques for wireless transmission of data are provided, in which data representing a plurality of frames of a time-sequential signal are encoded. The encoded data are temporarily retained in a memory buffer before wireless transmission. A current number of frames of the encoded data awaiting transmission is determined, and a compression rate is selected for encoding the next frame of data of the time-sequential signal based on the determined number of stored frames in the memory buffer. The selected compression rate is used to encode the next frame of the time-sequential signal, which is added to the encoded data stored in the memory buffer and wirelessly transmitted from the memory buffer. The present disclosure is applicable to a smartphone and a portable player, for example.

Bluetooth (registered trademark) is known as a standard of near field communication between digital devices. Bluetooth "Advanced Audio Distribution Profile" (A2DP) allows real-time wireless transmission of audio data reproduced by a portable music player such as a smartphone or Walkman (registered trademark of Sony Corporation), for example, to a speaker or a headphone.
However, data transmission may be delayed depending on the use environment, as a result of deterioration of communication quality or for other reasons. Delay of data transmission may cause problems such as "skipping".
For preventing skipping caused by deterioration of communication quality, there has been proposed a method which estimates communication quality on the transmission device side, and increases a compression rate of data to reduce the unit size of data transmission when communication quality deteriorates (for example, see PTL 1).

Transmission device, transmission method, and program


Systems and methods of communicating between a plurality of hosts comprising one or more first hosts controlled by a first control plane and one or more second hosts controlled by a second control plane are disclosed herein. Each of the one or more first hosts runs at least one tunneling endpoint of one or more first tunneling endpoints, and each of the one or more second hosts runs at least one tunneling endpoint of one or more second tunneling endpoint. The method includes storing, at each of the one or more first hosts, a global list identifying at least the one or more second tunneling endpoints. The method further includes receiving a packet at one of the one or more first tunneling endpoints. The method further includes replicating, encapsulating, and transmitting the packet to each of the one or more second tunneling endpoints based on the global list.

Software defined networking (SDN) comprises a plurality of hosts in communication over a physical network infrastructure, each host having one or more virtualized endpoints such as virtual machines (VMs), containers, or other virtual computing instances (VCIs) that are connected to logical overlay networks that may span multiple hosts and are decoupled from the underlying physical network infrastructure. Though certain embodiments are discussed herein with respect to VMs, it should be noted that they may similarly be applicable to other suitable VCIs.
SDN involves the use of a management plane (MP) and a control plane (CP). The management plane is concerned with receiving network configuration input from an administrator or orchestration automation and generating desired state data that specifies how the logical network should be implemented in the physical infrastructure. The control plane is concerned with determining the logical overlay network topology and maintaining information about network entities such as logical switches, logical routers, endpoints, etc. The logical topology information specifying the desired state of the network is translated by the control plane into network configuration data that is then communicated to network elements of each host. The network configuration data, for example, includes forwarding table entries to populate forwarding tables at virtual switch(es) provided by the hypervisor (i.e., virtualization software) deployed on each host. An example control plane logical network controller is described in U.S. Pat. No. 9,525,647 entitled "Network Control Apparatus and Method for Creating and Modifying Logical Switching Elements," which is fully incorporated herein by reference.
For example, any arbitrary set of VMs in a datacenter may be placed in communication across a logical Layer 2 network by connecting them to a logical switch. Each logical switch corresponds to a virtual network identifier (VNI). The logical switch is collectively implemented by virtual switches on each host that has a VM connected to the logical switch. The virtual switch on each host operates as a managed edge switch implemented in software by the hypervisor on each host. Forwarding tables at the virtual switches instruct the host to encapsulate packets using a virtual tunnel endpoint (VTEP) for communication from a participating VM to another VM on the logical network but on a different (destination) host. The original packet from the VM is encapsulated at the VTEP with an outer IP header addressed to the destination host using a mapping of VM IP addresses to host IP addresses. At the destination host, a second VTEP decapsulates the packet and then directs the packet to the destination VM. Logical routers extend the logical network across subnets or other network boundaries using IP routing in the logical domain.
For example, the VTEP may be associated with software components, or it may itself, provide Layer 2 tunneling services for encapsulating egress packets from VMs and decapsulating ingress packets to implement a logical overlay network to interconnect VMs running on different hosts as part of the same layer 2 logical overlay network, meaning as part of the same logical layer-2 network/broadcast domain in the logical overlay network. Tunneling services may be implemented using tunneling protocols such as virtual extensible local area network (VXLAN), Stateless Transport Tunneling (STT), Generic Network Virtualization Encapsulation (GENEVE), or Generic Routing Encapsulation (GRE).
It should be noted that the term VTEP originally referred to a "VXLAN tunneling endpoint" and VNI referred to a "VXLAN network identifier." However, while originally the terms "VTEP" and "VNI" referred to "VXLAN" tunneling protocol, they are now often used regardless of the tunneling protocol, and therefore referred to herein as a "virtual" instead. This "backronym" can be misleading as the tunnel is not itself virtual, but does carry logical overlay networking traffic, which is sometimes referred to as virtual network traffic.
In certain datacenters, different sets of hosts may be part of different SDN environments (e.g., controlled by different MPs/CPs). However, hosts that are part of different SDN environments may still be configured to communicate with one another, such as they may each host VMs connected to the same logical switch.

Global replication mode for overlay runtime state migration


A two-stroke engine which includes a cylinder in which a piston moves with a device being provided for allowing the feeding of a charge under pressure to the cylinder and at least two inlet ports in a well of the cylinder. The engine includes a device for selectively sealing a section of flow of the inlet port in accordance with at least one working parameter of the engine The device for selectively sealing may, for example, include a rotary plug placed opposite the inlet ports, with the plug including at least two through openings.

The invention relates to a two-stroke internal-combustion engine in which a selective control of the charge introduced in the combustion chamber through one or several inlet ports is achieved, in dependence upon the working conditions of the engine.
According to the invention, the inlet ducts are "throttled" differently with respect to each other in dependence upon to the working conditions of the engine.
The selective control of the introduction of the charge according to the invention is preferably achieved on two-stroke engines of the cross-scavenging type as defined hereafter.
The control can be applied in case the charge introduced contains no fuel, the fuel being then introduced through a separate inlet.
The pressure source used for the supply of air or of carbureted mixture in the cylinder can include a pressure source outside the engine such as a compressor, a blower or any other volume under pressure, or of an inner source such as the pump housing.
Two-stroke engines conventionally comprise at least one cylinder in the upper part thereof and a lower part, also called pump housing, in view of the main function thereof, which provides the introduction of fresh gases into the cylinder by one or more specific ducts known as "transfer ducts". Transfer ports or openings in the cylinder allow this introduction.
The piston which moves in a reciprocating manner in the cylinder provides the suction in the housing and the compression of the fresh gases in the cylinder. The fresh gases are generally introduced at the level of the pump housing through an opening, for example, provided with a check valve. The motion of the piston towards the upper part of the cylinder brings about the aspiration of fresh gases into the pump-housing; whereas, the opposite motion of the piston compresses these gases which, when the transfer ports are freed by the piston, are then injected under a given pressure into the cylinder, which generates therein a scavenging of fresh gases that drive waste gases away.
The waste gases can escape through openings known as exhaust openings provided in the cylinder, slightly offset in height with respect to the transfer ports. What is called "fresh gas" generaly relates to a mixture of air, carbureted or not.
One of the most serious problems with two-stroke engines supplied with a fuel-air mixture is that the intake of a subsequent cycle occurs at the same time as the exhaust of the previous cycle, so that a large part of the mixture fed to the cylinder directly goes back to the exhaust, without the combustion of the hydrocarbons.
The atmospheric pollution resulting from this phenomenon is considerable and is about 10 to 20 times as high as the pollution generated by a four-stroke engine. Also, the fuel consumptions is high and may, for example, be 50 to 100% greater than the fuel consumptions of a four-stroke engine.
Considerable research has been carried out in order to decrease the losses of unburned fuel through the exhaust.
The basic concept of most of the suggested improvements consists in delaying the introduction of the fuel which then occurs, for example, when the exhaust port is almost closed. But, if the introduction of the fuel is delayed, it will have to be introduced and vaporized within a very short time (about 2 to 3 milliseconds at high engine speed), which may pose problems.
In two-stroke engines of the "liquid direct fuel injection" type, the fresh gas charge contains no fuel. It can be compressed, either by an outer mechanical compressor, or by a compression source provided, for example, by the pump housing itself.
The fuel is then directly injected into the combustion chamber under high pressure, a pressure which is generally higher than 30 bars.
Another type of two-stroke engine capable of delaying the introduction of the fuel is based on the principle of the air-blast injection of the mixture. Compressed air is used in this case for allowing to spray and to vaporize very rapidly the fuel in the cylinder.
There are several ways of achieving the source of pressure. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 4,693,224 shows the use of a specific compression chamber intended to contain a given amount of fuel under pressure and to inject this mixture into the combustion chamber.
In a different way, French patent application FR-2,496,7571 proposes an air-blast injection of fuel in the cylinder by using the pressure of the fresh gases inside the pump housing. A means for proportioning the liquid fuel is therefore directly linked to the transfer duct coming from the pump housing. The air compressed in the pump housing and sent towards the proportioning means through at least one specific duct provides in this case the spraying of the fuel within a very short time. The fuel droplets, very thin, are immediately vaporized into the combustion chamber.
The result of all that has been written so far is that the way the charge is introduced and then directed in the combustion chamber of a two-stroke engine is very important, and must therefore be achieved in an optimum way, with a control as rigorous as possible. In other words, the engine efficiency depends to a large extent on the spraying and the injection of the fuel into the cylinder and on the internal aerodynamics responsible for the mixing of this fuel with the fresh air.
In FR-2,649,157 one or more parts for restricting the flow of the fresh gases allowed to pass into the cylinder are provided inside the transfer duct(s) and close to the cylinder.

Two-stroke engine with selective control of the charge introduced in the combustion chamber


A radio frequency signal transmission method for transmitting a radio frequency signal through an inner conductor serving as a signal line, the radio frequency signal transmission method including: causing the radio frequency signal to be input to and propagate through the inner conductor, an impedance between the inner conductor and an outer conductor serving as a grounding line being adjusted to a predetermined impedance; and causing a component of the radio frequency signal to propagate through a capacitor provided in a middle of the inner conductor, an impedance at a portion of the capacitor installed being adjusted to match the predetermined impedance by a dielectric material provided around the capacitor.

1. Field
The embodiment discussed herein is directed to a coaxial connector for transmitting an electric signal.
2. Description of the Related Art
Generally, a coaxial connector is used to connect signal lines for transmitting a high-speed (radio frequency) electric signal. An inner conductor serving as a signal line is provided in a central part of a coaxial connector, and an outer conductor serving as a grounding line is provided to surround the inner conductor. A dielectric material is filled between the inner conductor and the outer conductor. An outer diameter of the inner conductor and an inner diameter of the outer conductor are set to predetermined diameters so as to match a specific impedance (for example, 50Ω).
In the above-mentioned coaxial connector, there is a cutoff frequency fc at which a signal having a frequency higher than a fixed frequency cannot be transmitted. The cutoff frequency fc is determined by the outer diameter of the inner conductor, the inner diameter of the outer conductor, and a specific dielectric constant of the dielectric material filled between the inner conductor and the outer conductor. The cutoff frequency fc becomes higher as the diameters become smaller and the specific dielectric constant becomes lower. Accordingly, in order to transmit a radio frequency signal, it is necessary to make the diameter of the coaxial connector small and make the specific dielectric constant of the filled dielectric material low. Generally, in order to obtain a radio frequency transmission band of about more than 60 GHz, the outer diameter of the inner conductor is reduced to about 1 mm and an air (εr=1.0) is used as a dielectric material.
In recent years, miniaturization and speeding up have progressed in measuring instruments and optical transmission and reception devices that handle a high-speed (radio frequency) electric signal. With such a progress, there is a demand for miniaturizing coaxial connectors used for those devices are required. Although connectors having a screw-type connecting part, which are represented by a 2.92 mm connector or a 1.85 mm connector, were in popular use, connectors having a push-on type connecting part, such as an SMP connector or an SMPM connector, have become popular with the demand for miniaturization (for example, refer to Non-Patent Document 1).
In many cases, a coaxial connector used for connection between measuring instrument or devices is provided with functions such as a DC block or a frequency filter. The DC block is provided for interrupting a direct current component and to transmit only an alternating current (AC) signal. The frequency filter is provided for attenuating a specific frequency component of a signal.
Specifically, the DC block and the frequency filter are formed by inserting a capacitor in the middle of the inner conductor. For example, it is suggested to divide the inner conductor into a first inner conductor and a second inner conductor and connecting the first and second inner conductors with two flat-plate capacitors located therebetween in series (for example, refer to Patent Document 1). Additionally, it is suggested to divide the inner conductor into a first inner conductor and a second inner conductor while forming surfaces parallel to the axis and connecting the first and second inner conductors with a dielectric material located therebetween (for example, refer to Patent Document 2).
According to the structures of the DC blocks, a strength of a connecting part (a part where the DC block is formed) between the first inner conductor and the second inner conductor is small, and the connecting part may be damaged due to a thermal stress of the inner conductor or the like. Thus, it is suggested to provide a stress relaxation mechanism for absorbing and relaxing a stress in the axial direction (for example, refer to Patent Document 3)    Patent Document 1: U.S. Pat. No. 6,496,353    Patent Document 2: U.S. Pat. No. 7,180,392    Patent Document 3: U.S. Pat. No. 5,576,675    Non-Patent Document 1: U.S. military standard MIL_STD—348A
If a capacitor is interposed in the middle of the inner conductor as mentioned above, it is difficult to equalize an impedance between the capacitor and the outer conductor and an impedance between the inner conductor and the outer conductor. That is, a distance between the inner conductor and the outer conductor, which is set to maintain a predetermined impedance, is changed at the portion of the capacitor, which results in a change in the impedance. Accordingly, an impedance mismatch occurs at the portion where the capacitor is provided, which causes degradation of a radio frequency signal transmission characteristic.
Accordingly, it is desirous to develop a small coaxial connector having a structure in which, even if a capacitor is inserted in a middle of an inner conductor, an impedance mismatch at a portion where the capacitor is provided is suppressed.

Radio frequency signal transmission method with coaxial connection having a dielectric material for impedance matching


A system for simultaneously transmitting and receiving multiple data messages on a unidirectional ring having a plurality of nodes coupled thereto is described. This technique utilizes a medium access (MAC) protocol for a multi-gigabit-per-second local-area optical wavelength division multiplexed (WDM) network that is particularly well suited for high-performance computing environments that need a network that provides quality of service and the ability to enforce service level agreements. The protocol uses an asynchronous, unslotted, tokenless, and collision-free access scheme that is arbitrated by a centralized scheduler. The embodiment is based on a folded-bus unidirectional ring that is passively optically tapped by the nodes to both transmit data onto the network and to receive data from the network. The system includes a scheduler based on a master/slave protocol that provisions and regulates data flow on the network, and uses a dedicated out-of-band control wavelength to broadcast scheduler directives to the nodes in the network.

As is known in the art, there has been a recent trend to develop media access control (MAC) protocols for wavelength division multiplexed (WDM) local area networks (LANs). Most of these LANs are based on a broadcast star, and require global time synchronization (or a global common clock) to coordinate access to timeslots for data transmission to and from the nodes (sometimes referred to as optical terminals). Most of the protocols also use an out-of-band Aloha-based collision scheme to access the control channel, or a reservation system that uses a slotting scheme for data transmission and a minislot scheme for access to the reservation and control channel. One notable exception is Modiano's scheme, which uses an unslotted system for data transmission, but still uses a contention based system to access the control channel.
As the packet switching marketplace has matured, despite the trend of over-provisioning of bandwidth, there has been growing interest in providing greater levels of quality-of-service for high performance computer processing networks to ensure application performance, user prioritization, and compliance with service level agreements. For switched-ethernet networks, which is a currently predominant networking technology used in data/transaction processing centers, approaches to provide quality of service (QoS) include such schemes as priority queuing and weighted fair queuing, as well as numerous congestion control mechanisms. Some have been implemented into commercial systems, while others are in the standardization process or in academic literature.

Multiple access protocol system and related techniques for multi-gigabit optical wavelength division multiplexed local area networks


An example torque reaction tool includes a first arm having an end with a longitudinally extending cavity, and an opposite end with a first socket drive element disposed perpendicular to a longitudinal axis of the cavity. The torque reaction tool further includes a second arm having an end portion slidably disposed within the cavity, and an opposite end with a second socket drive element thereon, oriented in the same direction as the first socket drive element. The torque reaction tool further includes a first fastener, disposed in a first threaded hole in the first arm that extends into the cavity, the first fastener being adjustable to engage the end portion of the second arm to restrict sliding movement of the second arm relative to the first arm.

Mating fasteners are fasteners that are inserted and/or threaded into each other to apply a compressive force to various objects. One example of a pair of mating fasteners is a nut and a bolt. A technician tightens such a pair of mating fasteners by applying torque to the first fastener while applying a "holdback" torque to the second fastener. For example, the technician may use a breaker bar to apply a holdback torque to the second fastener while the technician uses another tool such as a socket wrench to tighten the first fastener into the second fastener.
Securing fasteners in this way may have drawbacks. In some situations, the technician might not be physically able to apply torque to both fasteners sufficient for tightening the fasteners, due to insufficient arm length or limited strength, for example. Also, obstructions may exist near one or both fasteners, which could force the technician into an awkward position in which the technician is on unstable footing or otherwise vulnerable to injury. Additionally, due to misalignment or other technician error, a breaker bar or another tool may slip off a fastener while the tool is being used to apply torque. This may damage nearby equipment or injure the technician or others nearby. Lastly, many tools might not be configured to remain secured against fasteners from an underneath position without the technician holding the tool to counteract gravity.
Accordingly, there is a need for a torque reaction tool that does not require the technician to assume awkward positions, reduces the probability of technician injury, and is securable to fasteners from an underneath position.

Torque reaction tools and methods for use


A portable basket for water bottles (1) comprises a body (1) provided with a plurality of compartments (2) for individual bottles (3) in which body a handle device (9') is included. A main piping (9), which is closed at one end and open at the opposite end, is associated with the basket body and with which conduit a plurality of branch conduits (15) communicate, through which water or drinks may be fed out simultaneously from the main piping (9) to a plurality of bottles (3) in the compartments (2).

Portable baskets of the above-mentioned kind are often used in the sports movement, in particular in connection with team matches, e.g. in football, indoor bandy, handball, basketball, ice-hockey, etc. A responsible person within the team, e.g. the storekeeper thereof, has the duty of supplying each individual player with a bottle filled with drink, most often in the form of fresh water. For the purpose, plastic bottles are usually used which are equipped with a screwable cap on which there is a short tube to which a hose piece is connected which the user may stick into his mouth and suck the water out of the bottle (in practice the water is simultaneously pressed out from the deformable plastic bottle). Refilling a plurality of such bottles is a time-consuming and troublesome business in that the bottles have to be handled individually, more precisely in the following way: In a first step, the bottle is taken up from the basket, the cap being screwed off from the bottle-neck. In case stale water is left in the bottle, it has to be emptied and rinsed. Not until then, new, fresh water may be refilled by connecting the neck of the bottle to a water tap. When the bottle is filled, the cap is screwed on again, and thereafter the bottle is again put down into the basket. Then this procedure has to be repeated for all bottles, the number of which in practice often amounts to 8-10 or more.

Portable basket for drinking containers or bottles


An interrupt processing technique is provided where an interrupt message is sent to an interrupt controller of a processor in response to an interrupt request from an individual device. The interrupt message comprises a memory address and interrupt status information. The memory address is specifically allocated to the device that has issued the interrupt request. The interrupt status information indicates an interrupt status of the device. An interrupt table that is stored in the memory is updated by the interrupt controller using the interrupt status information comprised in the interrupt message. The interrupt table holds device specific interrupt statuses. Updating the interrupt table comprises addressing the memory using the memory address in the interrupt message.

1. Field of the Invention
The invention generally relates to computer systems, processors and corresponding operation methods, and in particular to techniques for processing interrupts.
2. Description of the Related Art
Generally, an interrupt can be described as an asynchronous event that suspends normal processing and temporarily diverts the flow of control through an "interrupt handler" routine. Interrupts may be caused by both hardware and software. Interrupt techniques are frequently used in many existing computer system technologies.
Referring to FIG. 1, the hardware components of a common computer system layout are depicted. It is to be noted that this figures shows only one example of a motherboard layout, and other configurations exist as well. The basic elements found on the motherboard of FIG. 1 include the CPU (Central Processing Unit) 100, a northbridge 105, a southbridge 110, and system memory 115.
The northbridge 105 usually is a single chip in a core-logic chipset that connects the processor 100 to the system memory 115 and, e.g., to the AGP (Accelerated Graphic Port) and PCI (Peripheral Component Interface) buses. The PCI bus is commonly used in personal computers for providing a data path between the processor 100 and peripheral devices like video cards, sound cards, network interface cards and modems. The AGP bus is a high-speed graphic expansion bus that directly connects the display adapter and system memory 115. AGP operates independently of the PCI bus.
The southbridge 110 is usually the chip in a system core-logic chipset that controls the IDE (Integrated Drive Electronics) or EIDE (Enhanced IDE) bus, the USB (Universal Serial Bus), that provides plug-n-play support, controls the PCI-ISA (Industry Standard Architecture) bridge, manages the keyboard/mouse controller, provides power management features, and controls other peripherals.
In modern computer systems, two different kinds of interrupts can be distinguished: level sensitive interrupts (or level triggered interrupts) and edge triggered interrupts. Generally speaking, level sensitive interrupts can be viewed to define a condition for an interrupt whereas edge triggered interrupts can be viewed as a discrete event.
Standard PCI functions and devices use level sensitive interrupts. Level sensitive interrupts can be shared by multiple I/O devices, meaning that multiple I/O devices can share the same interrupt line even though individually the interrupts from each device are discrete events. That is, multiple devices can all assert the line, and when a level sensitive interrupt occurs, the ISR (Interrupt Service Routine) must poll all the devices that are sharing the interrupt line.
Edge triggered interrupts are handled differently from level sensitive interrupts because a single edge triggered interrupt counts as a single occurrence of an event while level sensitive interrupts are conditions that exist. Modern bus concepts use e.g., MSI (Message Signal Interrupt) transport mechanisms to reduce the number of sideband signals. Message signal interrupts are edge triggered.
A conventional technique for dealing with interrupts is specified in the APIC (Advanced Programmable Interrupt Controller) standard. It is used primarily in multiprocessor systems and supports interrupt redirection and interrupt transmission between processors.
Referring to FIG. 2, APIC consists of two parts at the system level. One part 250 resides in the I/O subsystem and is called I/O APIC. The other part is the so-called Local APIC 220 in the processor 200. The Local APIC 220 and the I/O APIC 250 communicate over a dedicated APIC bus 240. The I/O APIC bus interface consists of two bi-directional data signals and a clock signal.
The Local APIC unit 220 of the processor 200 contains the necessary intelligence to determine whether or not the processor 200 should accept interrupts broadcast on the APIC bus 240. The Local APIC 220 also provides local pending of interrupts, nesting and masking of interrupts, and handles all interactions with its local processor 200. The I/O APIC unit 250 consists of a set of interrupt input signals, an interrupt redirection table, programmable registers, and a message unit for sending and receiving APIC messages over the APIC bus 240. The I/O APIC unit 250 selects the corresponding entry in the redirection table and uses the information in that entry to format an interrupt request message. Each interrupt pin is individually programmable as either edge or level triggered.
FIG. 3 illustrates a conventional system configuration that uses APIC. As apparent from FIG. 3, the I/O APIC unit 330 is located in the southbridge device 320.
When a peripheral interrupt request occurs, the I/O APIC unit 330 sends an interrupt message to the processor 300. The WSC# (Write Snoop Complete) protocol forces the northbridge 310 and the processor 300 to snoop all posted writes, and provide a status indicator to the southbridge 320. The southbridge 320 (and the I/O APIC unit 330) is now free to issue a message to the processor 300 on the interrupt bus.
Another conventional approach is shown in FIG. 4. If a peripheral interrupt request occurs, the PIC (Programmable Interrupt Controller) 430 located in the southbridge 420 sends an interrupt request to the processor 400 on the INTR pin. The processor 400 then responds with an interrupt acknowledge cycle which forces the northbridge 410 to flush all posted writes.
In the conventional techniques, the general procedure is that the computer responds to an interrupt by storing the information about the current state of the running program, storing information to identify the source of the interrupt, and invoking a first-level interrupt handler. This first-level interrupt handler can discover the precise cause of the interrupt (e.g. if several devices share one interrupt) and what must be done to keep operating system tables (such as the process table) updated. This first-level handler may then call another handler, e.g. one associated with the particular device which generated the interrupt, i.e. a device driver.
However, the conventional techniques suffer from the additional communication necessary to identify the device which has experienced the interrupt event. That is, the drivers need to send a read request to access a register in the device, and the read information needs to be sent back to the driver. This may produce severe interrupt latencies. In particular where interrupts are shared by multiple devices, the drivers need to be successively activated so that each driver can check whether the interrupt event occurred at one of the devices that are associated to the respective driver. Due to the interrupt latency produced, the operating speed of the overall computer system may be significantly affected.


Zmin and Zmax are determined for depth offset compression. Then a check determines whether Zmin is equal to Zmax. If so, only one of Zmin and Zmax is used for depth offset compression and no index mask may be used. The bits that are saved thereby may be used for other purposes, including improving precision.

Compression methods are becoming increasingly important for graphics hardware architectures, since they may reduce the power used and increase performance. Compression of depth can be done in a variety of ways.
Depth offset (DO) compression is an extremely simple method for compressing depth. A tile, which is a rectangular region of depths, is compressed at a time. The minimum and maximum depths, denoted Zmin and Zmax, are found in the tile. For each depth value, one bit is stored which indicates whether the depth is encoded with respect to the Zmin or Zmax. For each depth, a residual against Zmin or Zmax is then stored.
If all the compressed residuals are small enough so they fit within the desired bit budget for the tile, then compression succeeds. Otherwise, the data may be stored in uncompressed form, or compressed using some other method.
Better compression is always desired because it can help to lower power consumption and/or may increase performance. Bandwidth can be significantly lowered when a large percentage of tiles can be compressed, and/or if a few tiles can be compressed with a high compression ratio.