Methods for removing arsenic from water by addition of inexpensive and commonly available magnesium oxide, magnesium hydroxide, calcium oxide, or calcium hydroxide to the water. The hydroxide has a strong chemical affinity for arsenic and rapidly adsorbs arsenic, even in the presence of carbonate in the water. Simple and commercially available mechanical methods for removal of magnesium hydroxide particles with adsorbed arsenic from drinking water can be used, including filtration, dissolved air flotation, vortex separation, or centrifugal separation. A method for continuous removal of arsenic from water is provided. Also provided is a method for concentrating arsenic in a water sample to facilitate quantification of arsenic, by means of magnesium or calcium hydroxide adsorption.

The present invention relates to methods for removal of arsenic from water, and more specifically from municipal or rural water systems, utilizing magnesium hydroxide or calcium hydroxide as an adsorbent for arsenic. The present invention also relates to a method for concentrating arsenic in a water sample that allows more accurate, easier, and less expensive laboratory quantification of arsenic in water samples.
Arsenic concentrations in drinking water are a subject of significant concern. It is known that high levels of arsenic in drinking water are carcinogens. The acceptable and safe maximum level of arsenic in drinking water is a subject of significant debate. The current applicable regulations of the United States Environmental Improvement Agency set the maximum limits of arsenic at 50 parts per billion (ppb) in drinking water. However, there are regulatory proposals that the maximum arsenic levels be no more than 10 ppb, and it is advocated by some that maximum arsenic levels be as low as 2 ppb.
Water produced by many municipal water systems, particularly in the western United States as well as other locals, typically has arsenic levels up to about 50 ppb and higher, and thus is commonly higher than proposed lower levels for arsenic, and is in some instances higher than currently accepted levels for arsenic. Some purification means must be employed to remove arsenic prior to consumption of the water. The problem is compounded by the presence of minerals, including carbonates, which interfere with many purification schemes and methods. Particularly with water obtained from areas with geologic evidence of volcanic activity, both high arsenic levels and high mineral content, including carbonates, are typical.
There have been a number of methods used to remove arsenic and other heavy metals from water, including primarily reverse osmosis, column purification, and hydroxide precipitation. Many of these processes provide acceptable results only within narrow and restrictive parameters. In addition, many if not most of these processes are costly and comparatively inefficient.
None of the prior art methods meet the requirements of efficient removal of arsenic utilizing commonly and inexpensively available reagents with a minimum of mechanical processing and steps. Thus there is a need for an inexpensive and simple process that specifically removes arsenic from drinking water, such as municipal water systems and rural well systems.
In addition to the treatment of water to remove arsenic, quantitative measurement of arsenic concentration in water at 1-50 ppb levels requires expensive and complex equipment that is not feasible for small and medium-sized municipal water treatment facilities. There is thus a need for a method of concentrating arsenic from less than 50 ppb to much higher concentrations in water, preferably by a factor of at least 10 to 30 times. The concentration of arsenic to a 100 ppb level and above thereby allows less expensive equipment and less complex techniques to be used for arsenic quantification.
Against this background, the present invention was developed.


A method detects a programmable pattern (e.g., Ethernet comma or SONET A1A2 frame) and simultaneously byte aligns to that pattern. The technique uses a content addressable memory (CAM) programmed (e.g., selected by the user) with a particular pattern to enable detecting of a symbol or symbols, or pattern, of bits in an incoming serial stream. The circuitry deserializes the serial stream and byte aligns parallel data based on output from the CAM and a state machine.

The present invention relates to the field of programmable integrated circuits and in particular, to techniques and circuitry for implementing a pattern detection and data alignment mechanism in a programmable logic device.
Integrated circuits are important building blocks of the modern age. Technology continues to evolve and integrated circuits continue to provide improved functionality. As integrated circuits improve, so do the electronics systems that are built using integrated circuits. There are many types of integrated circuit such as memories, microprocessors, application specific integrated circuits (ASICs), and programmable logic. Programmable logic integrated circuits such as PALs, PLDs, FPGAs, LCAs, and others are becoming more complex and continually evolving to provide more user-programmable features on a single integrated circuit. Modern programmable logic integrated circuits incorporate programmable logic including logic gates, products terms, or look-up tables. Programmable logic integrated circuits also included embedded user-programmable memory or RAM.
Despite the success of programmable logic, there is a continuing desire to provide greater functionality in a programmable logic integrated circuit, but at the same time, provide greater performance. Desired functionalities include high speed serial interfaces. These interfaces are needed especially as data and communications interfaces.
Data is transferred serially through a network. When serial data is input into an integrated circuit, the data is converted into parallel form for further processing and handling. However, when converting serial data into parallel form, it is important to form the parallel bits from the serial data using the correct byte or word boundaries. For example, the most significant bit (MSB) and least significant bit (LSB) of a byte of data should be in the correct positions of the byte of data. The byte of parallel data needs to be aligned properly from the serial stream. Once converted in a proper parallel data format with correct byte or word alignment, the integrated circuit, such as a programmable logic integrated circuit, may process the data.
In data transmission, there is typically a symbol or symbols (or pattern) that is used to denote the beginning of a frame boundary or some other unique symbol such as an idle character which can be used to achieve byte alignment. It is desirable to provide a technique to recognize or identify the symbol and align the serial data properly as rapidly and efficiently as possible, even though it may not be aligned within the parallel byte of data coming from a deserializer. As with circuitry for integrated circuits, the circuitry used to implement the approach should be area efficient.
Furthermore, the symbol or symbols for different serial or networking protocols are different or may change. It is costly to replace a "type A" integrated circuit with a "type B" integrated circuit to address different symbols. It is also costly to manufacture several types of integrated circuits where the only difference is the circuitry used to recognize a symbol and adhere to a particular protocol. Therefore, it is desirable to have one type integrated circuit which may be programmed or reprogrammed to recognize any symbol or a range of different symbols, so this integrated circuit may be used with different serial transfer or networking protocols. It is important that the circuitry used to implement the technique may be programmed, reprogrammed, altered, or changed easily, without a major change such as a mask change, in order to recognize different symbols and achieve byte or word alignment.
Therefore, there is a need to provide techniques and circuitry for implementing a serial-to-parallel conversion with pattern detect and byte alignment, especially as an input interface for programmable logic.

Pattern detect and byte align circuit using CAM


The present invention provides an automated method for the preparation of 123I-labelled radiopharmaceutical compositions, together with disposable cassettes for use in the method. The use of an automated synthesizer apparatus in the preparation of 123I-labelled radiopharmaceuticals is also described. Also described is the use of cassettes of the present invention in the preparation of 123I-labelled radiopharmaceuticals.

Automated methods for the preparation of radiopharmaceuticals which comprise a positron-emitting radioisotope for positron emission tomography (PET) are well-established [D. Alexoff, in "Handbook of Radiopharmaceuticals", M. J. Welch & C. S. Redvanly (Eds.), pages 283-305 Wiley (2003)].
WO 02/051447 describes an automated synthesizer apparatus of the preparation of radiopharmaceuticals, which incorporates a disposable module containing pre-metered amounts of chemical reagents. The device is said to be particularly useful for the short-lived positron-emitting radioisotopes 11C, 13N, 15O and 18F.
Efforts have also been made to investigate automated radiopharmaceutical dispensing (APD) [Solanki, Hosp. Pharmac., 7(4), 94-98 (2000)].
For 123I-labelled radiopharmaceuticals, the conventional approach is to carry out the radiopharmaceutical preparation steps manually. Luurtsema et al [App. Rad. Isotop., 55, 783-788 (2001)] have, however, reported on an automated radiolabelling method for 123I- and 131I-labelled α-methyl tyrosine (IMT). Luurtsema et al do not use a cassette approach, and report that the expected better standardisation did not materialise for 123I, and that the variation in the automated synthesis requires further optimisation. Such optimisation was said to be necessary for each new radiopharmaceutical.
Whilst automation is recognised as having the potential to reduce operator radiation dose, prior art automated processes have also been reported to be much slower than the manual counterpart, which makes them less attractive [Solanki, Hosp. Pharmac., 7(4), 94-98 (2000)]. There is therefore a need for an automated approach which is fast, more flexible, less subject to variability, and which can generate larger batch sizes in a more efficient manner.


A method for fabricating a silicon-oxide-nitride-oxide-silicon (SONOS) flash memory includes preparing a silicon substrate including a silicon oxide-silicon nitride-silicon oxide (ONO) layer, a first polysilicon layer and a first etch stop layer in sequence; etching the first etch stop layer along a direction of bit line; selectively etching the first polysilicon layer with the first etch stop layer as a mask, till the silicon oxide-silicon nitride-silicon oxide (ONO) layer is exposed, the etched first polysilicon layer having an inverse trapezia section along a direction of word line; and filling a dielectic layer between portions of the first polysilicon layer, the dielectric layer having a trapezia section along the direction of word line. After the above steps, it becomes easier to remove the portion of the first polysilicon layer on a sidewall of the dielectric layer by vertical etching. Thus, no polysilicon residue will be formed on the sidewall of the dielectric layer, and the short circuit between different memory cells may be avoided.

In general, semiconductor memories for storing data may be classified into two types, i.e., nonvolatile memory and volatile memory. The volatile memory is prone to lose data stored therein when its power supply is interrupted, while the nonvolatile memory may retain information stored therein even when its power supply is off. Compared with other nonvolatile memory technology (such as a magnetic disk drive), the nonvolatile semiconductor memory has the advantages of low cost and high density. Consequently, the nonvolatile memory has been widely applied in many fields including the embedded system such as a personal computer (PC) and its peripherals, a telecom exchange, a cell phone, a network interconnection device, an instrument and an automobile device; and the newly emerged product for storing voice, image and data, such as a digital camera, a digital recorder and a personal digital assistant.
Recently, a nonvolatile memory with a SONOS (silicon-oxide-nitride-oxide-silicon) structure, i.e. SONOS flash memory has been introduced. The nonvolatile memory with a SONOS structure has a very thin cell, so that it is easy to be fabricated and easy to be integrated into, for example, a peripheral region and/or a logic region of integrated circuit.
A method for fabricating a SONOS flash memory has been disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 6,797,565, which comprises the steps as shown in FIG. 1A: first, a silicon oxide—silicon nitride—silicon oxide (ONO) layer 102 is formed over a silicon substrate 100; then a first polysilicon layer 104 is deposited over the ONO layer 102; a first etch stop layer 106 is formed over the first polysilicon layer 104; a first photoresist layer 107 is spin coated over the first polysilicon layer 106; and a first opening pattern 108 is formed on the first photoresist layer 107 along the direction of bit line through a exposure and development process, the position of the first opening pattern 108 on the first photoresist layer 107 corresponds to the position where the source and drain will be formed.
As shown in FIG. 1B, the first etch stop layer 106 and the first polysilicon layer 104 are dry etched by using the first photoresist layer 107 as a mask, till the ONO layer 102 is exposed. Since a selective etching is not adopted, the etched first etch stop layer 106 and the etched first polysilicon layer 104 have a rectangle section along the direction of word line. The etched first polysilicon layer 104 is used as the gate. Then, the first photoresist layer 107 is removed. An ion implantation is performed to the silicon substrate 100 through the ONO layer 102 by using the gate as a mask, to form the source/drain 101.
As shown in FIG. 1C, a dielectric layer 110 is deposited over the ONO layer 102 and the first etch stop layer 106. The material of the dielectric layer 110 is a low temperature silicon oxide, wherein the low temperature ranges from 200° C. to 500° C. Then, a planarization process is performed to the dielectric layer 110 till the first etch stop layer 106 is exposed. Next, the first etch stop layer 106 is removed to expose the first polysilicon layer 104.
As shown in FIG. 1D, a second polysilicon layer 112 is deposited over the first polysilicon layer 104; a second etch stop layer 114 is deposited over the second polysilicon layer 112; and a second photoresist layer 115 is spin coated over the second etch stop layer 114; and then a second opening pattern 116 is formed on the second photoresist layer 115 along the direction of word line by a exposure and a development process.
As shown in FIG. 1E, the second etch stop layer 114, the second polysilicon layer 112 and the first polysilicon layer 104 are dry etched along the second opening pattern 116 by using the second photoresist layer 115 as a mask, till the ONO layer 112 is exposed; and the second photoresist layer 115 and the second etch stop layer 114 are removed to expose the second polysilicon layer 112, which connects the gates of the SONOS flash memory to form a word line.
FIG. 2 is a top view of a SONOS flash memory fabricated according to the prior art, wherein the reference numeral 110 represents a dielectric layer and 112 represents the second polysilicon layer. FIG. 2A is a sectional diagram of the SONOS flash memory shown in FIG. 2 taken along the line B-B in FIG. 2. The line B-B shows the direction of word line. With reference to FIG. 1A-1E and FIG. 2A, it may seen that the dielectric layer 110 deposited between the portions of the first polysilicon layer 104 has a rectangle section along the direction of word line, since the first polysilicon layer 104 has a rectangle section along the direction of word line after the first etch stop layer 106 and the first polysilicon layer 104 are etched. The dry etching is an anisotropy etching, that is, the etching functions mainly in the vertical direction and has little effect in the lateral direction. Thus, the portion of the first polysilicon layer 104 at the edge of the dielectric layer 110 may be absorbed by the dielectric layer 110 when the second etch stop layer 114, the second polysilicon layer 112 and the first polysilicon layer 104 are etched to a depth near the ONO layer 102. In this way, the first polysilicon layer 104 on the sidewall of the dielectric layer 110 can hardly be etched away by the weak lateral etching, while the vertical etching has little effect on the sidewall of the dielectric layer 110 either. Accordingly a polysilicon residue 120 will be formed on the sidewall of the dielectric layer 110, which may cause a short circuit between the memory cells.
In the method of fabricating SONOS flash memory according to the prior art, since the dielectric layer between the portions of the first polysilicon layer has a rectangle section along the direction of word line, and the dry etching is an anisotropy etching, that is, the etching functions mainly in the vertical direction and has little effect in the lateral direction, the portion of the first polysilicon layer at the edge of the dielectric layer may be absorbed by the dielectric layer when the second etch stop layer, the second polysilicon layer and the first polysilicon layer are etched to a depth near the ONO layer. In this way, the first polysilicon layer on the sidewall of the dielectric layer can hardly be etched away by the weak lateral etching, while the vertical etching has little effect on the sidewall of the dielectric layer either. Accordingly, the polysilicon residue will be formed on the sidewall of the dielectric layer, which may cause a short circuit between the memory cells.

SONOS flash memory and method for fabricating the same

Semiconductors Manufacturing International (Shanghai) Corporation


In an environment of spatially correlated additive noise, the direction estimation apparatus for coherent signals calculates (M−q−1) instantaneous cross-correlations between some array data, and selecting multiple pairs each of which is consisted of p instantaneous correlations from the (M−q−1) instantaneous cross-correlations to form a Hankel correlation matrix, where a length of a spatial correlation in terms of antenna elements is assumed to be q. Next, the apparatus divides that Hankel matrix into an upper submatrix and a lower submatrix, and then calculates a linear operator at time n by using the adaptive LMS algorithm with a fixed or time-varying step-size parameter. Then a noise subspace is estimated from that linear operator. Finally the directions of incident signals at a predetermined time is estimated and tracked by using that noise subspace with Newton approximation.

This invention relates to a method and apparatus for directions-of-arrival (DOAs) estimation of radio waves impinge on an array antenna at a base station and relates to an apparatus of base station that variably controls the beam directivity of the antenna based on the estimated directions of radio waves (also be referred to as signals from the aspect of signal processing hereafter). Further, this invention relates to a method and apparatus for estimating the directions of multiple incoming signals (mutually uncorrelated signals, or partially correlated signals, or fully correlated (i.e., coherent) signals) in an on-line manner and quickly tracking the time-varying directions.
In recent years, research and development on applications of adaptive array antenna for mobile communications have attracted much attention. Herein an antenna created by placing multiple antenna elements at different spatial positions with a certain geometric shape is called an array antenna. The problem of estimating the directions of radio waves impinging on the antenna is one of the important fundamental techniques of an adaptive array antenna. For the problem of estimating the direction of a signal, subspace-based methods that use the orthogonality between the signal subspace and noise subspace are well known because of their good estimation accuracy and low computational load. A typical example is the MUSIC (multiple signal classification) (see non-patent document 1: R. O. Schmidt, "Multiple emitter location and signal parameter estimation," IEEE Trans. Antenna Propagation, vol. 34, no. 3, pp. 276-280 (1986). Also for the problem of direction estimation of coherent signals, the subspace-based method with preprocessing is well known as the spatial smoothing based MUSIC (see non-patent document 2: J. Shan, M N. Wax and T. Kailath, "On spatial smoothing for arrival direction estimation of coherent signals," IEEE Trans. Acoust., Speech, Signal Processing, vol. 33, no. 4, pp. 806-811 (1985); and non-patent document 3: S. U. Pillai and B. H. Kwon, "Forward/backward spatial smoothing techniques for coherent signals identification," IEEE Trans. Acoust., Speech, Signal, vol. 37, no. 1, pp. 8-15 (1989)).
In conventional subspace-based methods, in order to obtain the signal (or noise) subspace, it is necessary to perform eigendecomposition processing such as eigenvalue decomposition (EVD) or singular value decomposition (SVD) on the array covariance matrix. Also, in practical mobile communication systems, the signals from a user (i.e, mobile terminal) that are usually reflected from buildings or the like and impinge on the array antenna at base station via a direct path and some reflected paths, hence the direction estimation in a multipath propagation environment is very important. Furthermore, the directions of incident signals may change over time due to the movement of user (i.e., signal source), thus a tracking method is required to estimate the directions in an on-line manner.
However, when conventional subspace-based methods are used to estimate the time-varying directions in real-time, it is necessary to perform the EVD (or SVD) repeatedly, and hence the computational loads of these methods become very heavy and much processing time is required.
In order to explain the disadvantages of the conventional subspace-based DOA estimation methods, the spatial smoothing based MUSIC proposed in non-patent document 2 will be briefly described.
Here, it is assumed that p narrowband signals {sk(n)} are incident on a uniform linear array (ULA) with M elements from angles {θk}. The signals received at the array elements can be expressed by the following equation 1.
                                          y                                      (              n              )                                =                                                    [                                                                            y                      1                                                                                (                      n                      )                                                        ,                                                            y                      2                                                                                (                      n                      )                                                        ,                  …                                                                                ,                                                            y                      M                                                                                (                      n                      )                                                                      ]                            T                        =                                                            A                                                        (                                          θ                                                                    (                        n                        )                                                              )                                                                                s                                                        (                    n                    )                                                              +                              w                                                  (                  n                  )                                                                                A                                      (                              θ                                                  (                  n                  )                                            )                                                      =            Δ                                          [                                          a                                                  (                                                            θ                      1                                                                                (                      n                      )                                                        )                                            ,                              a                                                  (                                                            θ                      2                                                                                (                      n                      )                                                        )                                            ,              …                                                                        ,                              a                                                  (                                                            θ                      p                                                                                (                      n                      )                                                        )                                                      ]                                                                                a                                      (                                                θ                  k                                                                  (                  n                  )                                            )                                                      =            Δ                                                        [                              1                ,                                  ⅇ                                      j                                                                                w                      o                                                                                τ                                                                    (                                                                              θ                            k                                                                                (                            n                            )                                                                          )                                                                                ,                …                                                                                ,                                  ⅇ                                      j                                                                                w                        o                                                                                (                                                  M                          =                          1                                                )                                                                                τ                                                                    (                                                                              θ                            k                                                                                (                            n                            )                                                                          )                                                                                ]                        T                                                                                s                                            (                n                )                                      =                                          [                                                                            s                      1                                                                                (                      n                      )                                                        ,                                                            s                      2                                                                                (                      n                      )                                                        ,                  …                                                                                ,                                                            s                      p                                                                                (                      n                      )                                                                      ]                            T                                ,                                                                              w                                            (                n                )                                      =                                          [                                                                            w                      1                                                                                (                      n                      )                                                        ,                                                            w                      2                                                                                (                      n                      )                                                        ,                  …                                                                                ,                                                            w                      M                                                                                (                      n                      )                                                                      ]                            T                                                                                w              0                        =                          2                                                                                π                                                                                f                0                                              ,                                    τ                                            (                                                      θ                    k                                                                          (                    n                    )                                                  )                                                                =              Δ                                                                  (                                  d                  /                  c                                )                                          sin                                                                                θ                  k                                                                  (                  n                  )                                                                                (        1        )            where f0, c and d are the carrier frequency, propagation speed, and element interval (half wavelength of the carrier wave), respectively, (·)T denotes the transposition, a(θk(n)) and A(θ(n)) are the array response vector and response matrix, and w1(n) is the temporally and spatially uncorrelated white Gaussian noise with zero-mean and variance σ2.
First, the case of estimating constant directions will be considered, i.e., θk(n)=θk. For simplicity, A(θ(n)) will be expressed as A below. Here, the array covariance matrix is expressed by the following equation.
                    R                          =          Δ                                              E                                      {                                                y                                                        (                    n                    )                                                                                y                    H                                                                          (                    n                    )                                                              }                                =                                                    AR                s                                                          A                H                                      +                                          σ                2                                                          I                M                                                                        (        2        )            where E(·) and (·)H express the expectation and the complex conjugate transposition respectively, and Rs=E[s(n)sH(n)] is the source signal covariance matrix, and IM is an M×M identity matrix. Furthermore, the correlation rik between the received data yi(n) and yk(n) is defined by rik=E{yi(n)y*k(n)], where rik=r*ki, exists, and (·)* expresses the complex conjugate. Also, the array covariance matrix R of equation (2) can be clearly expressed by the following equation.
                    R        =                  [                                                                      r                  11                                                                              r                  12                                                            …                                                              r                                      1                                                                                M                                                                                r                  21                                                                              r                  22                                                            …                                                              r                                      2                                                                                M                                                                                ⋮                                            ⋮                                            ⋱                                            ⋮                                                                                r                                      M                                                                                1                                                                                r                                      M                                                                                2                                                                              …                                                              r                  MM                                                              ]                                    (        3        )
In the spatial smoothing based MUSIC for estimating the directions {θk} of coherent signals, the entire array is divided into L overlapped subarrays with m (1≦m≦M) elements as shown in FIG. 1. Here, m and L are called the subarray size and the number of subarrays, where L=M−m+1. From Equation 1, the signal vector of the 1 th subarray y1(n) can be expressed by Equation 4.y(n)=[yl(n), yl+1(n), . . . , yl+M−1(n)]T=AmDI−1s(n)+wl(n)Am=[am(θ1), am(θ2), . . . , am(θp)]am(θk)=[1,ejwoτ(θk), . . . , ejwo(m=1)τ(θk)]T w(n)=[w1(n), wI+1(n), . . . , wI−m+1(n)]T  (4)for 1=1, 2, . . . , L, where D is a diagonal matrix with elements ejw0τ(θ1), ejw0τ(θ2), . . . , ejw0(m−1)τ·(θp), and am(θk) and Am are the subarray response vector and response matrix. The 1 th subarray covariance matrix is given by Equation 5.Rl=E{yI(n)yIH(n)}=AmDl−1Rs(Dl−1)HAmH+σ2Im  (5)Then by spatially averaging the L subarray covariance matrices {R1}, a covariance matrix is obtained as Equation 6.
                              R          _                =                              1            L                                                        ∑                              l                =                1                            L                                                                                R              l                                                          (        6        )            Hence the EVD of this spatially averaged covariance matrix is given by Equation 7 below.
                              R          _                =                                            ∑                              i                =                1                            m                                                                                λ                i                                                          e                i                                                          e                i                H                                              =                      E                                                                          Λ                                                                                E              H                                                          (        7        )            Here, ei and λi are the eigenvectors and eigenvalues of the matrix R, E is a matrix having a column {ei} and Λ is a diagonal matrix having elements {λi}. Also, the spaces spanned by the signal vectors {e1, e2, . . . ep} and noise vectors {ep+1, ep+2, . . . em} are called the signal subspace and noise subspace, respectively. Further the signal subspace can be expressed by using the array response vector. The direction estimation method based on the orthogonal relationship between the signal subspace and the noise subspace is called subspace-based method.
By using eigenvalue analysis of the covariance matrix R of Equation 7, the following orthogonal relationship is established between the noise vectors {ep+1, ep+2, . . . em} and the subarray response vector am(θk) that belongs to the signal subspace.eiHam(θk)=0  (8)for i=p+1, p+2, . . . m. From this orthogonal relationship, it is possible to calculate a spectrum as given by the equation below.
                                                        P              _                        ssmusic                                          (            θ            )                          =                  1                                    ∑                              i                =                                  p                  +                  1                                            m                                                                                                                                      e                    i                    H                                                                                a                      m                                                                                (                      θ                      )                                                                                                  2                                                                    •                                (            9            )                                  •            where am(θ)=[1,ejw0τ(θ), . . . , ejw0(m−1)τ(θ)]T. Then the spatial smoothing based MUSIC estimates the directions of multiple incoming waves from the positions of p highest peaks of the spectrum given by Equation 9.
As shown in Equation 7, in subspace-based estimation methods such as the spatial smoothing based MUSIC, it is necessary to perform the EVD of the array/subarray covariance matrix in order to obtain the signal or noise subspace. However, in actual array implementations, particularly when the number of array elements is large or when the time-varying directions should be estimated in an on-line manner, the EVD (or SVD) process becomes computationally intensive and time-consuming. Therefore, applications of conventional subspace-based methods with eigendecomposition (i.e., EVD or SVD) are limited by the computational load thereof. Therefore, when the directions of the incident waves change over time, it is not possible to estimate these DOAs quickly and with high accuracy by using conventional methods, and it becomes impossible to generate an accurate receiving/transmitting beam at the base station, correspondingly the performance of the receiving and transmitting system of the base station will degrade.
Recently, some methods for adaptive direction estimation and tracking that do not use eigendecomposition have been proposed, for example, the adaptive SWEDE method (subspace-based methods without Eigendecomposition) (non-patent document 4: A. Eriksson, P. Stoica, and T. Soderstrom, "On-line subspace algorithms for tracking moving sources," IEEE Trans. Signal Processing, vol. 42, no. 9, pp. 2319-2330 (1994)). However, in the case of coherent signals, low signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) or small number of data, the performance of these methods becomes poor, and the amount of computational load required by these methods that use Least squares (LS) is large.
Moreover, the inventor has proposed a method and apparatus for estimating and tracking the direction of radio waves based on the cyclostationarity of communication signals (refer to non-patent document 5: J. Xin and A. Sano, "Directions-of-arrival tracking of coherent cyclostationary signals in array processing," IEIC Trans. Fundamentals vol. E86-A, no. 8, pp. 2037-2046 (2003), or patent document 1: International patent application PCT/JP03/08015; U.S. Pat. No. 7,084,812). But this method uses the temporal property the cyclostationary signals.
Furthermore, the inventor has proposed a computationally efficient direction estimation method called SUMWE (subspace-based method without eigendecomposition) (refer to non-patent document 6: J. Xin and A. Sano, "Computationally efficient subspace-based method for arrival direction estimation with eigendecomposition," IEEE Trans. Signal Processing, vol. 52, no. 4, pp. 876-893 (2004), or patent document 2: International patent application PCT/JP03/06411; U.S. Pat. No. 7,068,211). However, the online DOA estimation and the tracking of time-varying directions are not considered in this method.

Method and apparatus for adaptive direction estimation of radio waves


A pressure die casting piston assembly has a pressure die casting piston. The die casting piston has a front head, a substantially cylindrical side wall extending upwardly from the front head in fixed position relative thereto. A cup-shaped chamber is defined by the front head and the side wall. The side wall is closed by the front head. The die casting piston has a coolant channel passing through the side wall to allow a coolant to pass through the side wall and within the side wall.

It is appropriate to specify beforehand that, although in the following description reference will be made for simplicity mainly to cold-chamber pressure die casting, this should not however be understood as a limiting factor, since the present invention is also applicable to, unless specifically incompatible with, other types of pressure die casting processes (e.g. hot-chamber die casting) for metallic or non-metallic materials.
The cold-chamber pressure die casting process has been known for a long time, and therefore it will not be described in detail below, with the exception of what is strictly needed in order to understand the invention. For further information, reference should be made to the numerous technical and scientific publications on this matter.
In this process, molten metal is poured into a container having a cylindrical inner cavity, in which the metal is pushed by a moving piston towards an axial outlet, thereby being injected into a die containing the mould of the part to be cast.
This type of process is mostly used for producing parts made of aluminium-based light alloys, but its field of application has been recently extended to magnesium as well; the temperatures involved may reach quite high values (over 400-500° C.), and therefore piston cooling is an important factor for the proper execution of the production process.
According to the current state of the art, in these applications the piston is cooled by a liquid which is delivered to the most thermally stressed region, i.e. the piston head, which comes directly in contact with the molten metal, and is then evacuated along an inverse path.
In particular, the liquid flows into an axial duct within the support on which the piston is mounted, leading to the piston head; the liquid is spread onto the inner wall of the piston head through radial channels provided at the support end.
The coolant flow is thus distributed in a sunburst pattern and is then collected into a circular channel encircling the piston support, from which it finally returns to the support's axial portion to be evacuated.
Some examples of pistons cooled in this manner are described in European patent application EP 423 413 published on Apr. 24, 1991 and in International patent application PCT/IT2007/000255 published on Oct. 18, 2007.
While from a general viewpoint the cooling systems known in the art are considered to be reliable because they have been tested for a long time, the higher temperatures nowadays involved in pressure die casting processes, as aforementioned, give rise to the need of improving the efficiency of the thermal exchange between the piston and the coolant.
As a matter of fact, casting magnesium and its alloys makes the piston become very hot: it follows that, in order to remove more heat, there is no other solution than to act upon the thermal exchange area lapped by the coolant, i.e. to increase the piston dimensions.
However, this is not always feasible, because it would also require changes to the container in which the piston slides, so that de facto this solution is not applicable to existing pressure die casting fixtures, which otherwise should be replaced, involving high costs.
The technical problem at the basis of the present invention is therefore to improve the above-described state of the art.
In other words, the problem is to provide a pressure die casting piston which is cooled with greater efficiency than possible through the prior art.
A piston having the same diameter as the existing ones can thus be manufactured which, all other conditions being equal (coolant flow rate, wall length, etc.), ensures better performance because it is cooled more effectively.
The idea which provides a solution to the above-mentioned technical problem is to let the coolant flow within the piston wall: in this manner, the heat is removed directly from within the latter, thus increasing the thermal exchange.
The better piston cooling allows to increase the number of die casting cycles while still keeping the piston temperature under preset values ensuring the proper operation of the machine.
As a result, the productivity of the die casting equipment is increased as well, with evident advantages from an industrial point of view.
The aforementioned technical problem is solved by a piston having the features set out in the appended claims.
Said features and the advantages thereof will become more apparent from the following description of an embodiment of the piston according to the invention referring to the annexed drawings.


Described herein are memory apparatuses, and methods of operating the same, that have a memory array module configured, in a given clock cycle, to either receive a first command to write to a first memory location having a first address, or receive a second command to read from a second memory location having a second address. A comparison circuit of the memory apparatus is configured to compare the first address to the second address. The memory apparatus also includes an output circuit configured to output data stored in the memory array module at the second memory location based at least on the first address and second address being different. The output circuit is also configured to output data received from a write data input, bypassing the memory array module, when the first address and the second address are the same.

The background description provided herein is for the purpose of generally presenting the context of the disclosure. Work of the presently named inventor, to the extent that it is described in this background section, as well as aspects of the description that may not otherwise qualify as prior art at the time of filing, are neither expressly nor impliedly admitted as prior art against the present disclosure.
Multi-port memories, such as dual-port static random access memories (SRAM) and dual-port dynamic random access memories (DRAM), are configured to receive multiple instructions on the same clock cycle. This enables the multi-port memory to, for example, concurrently write and read data. This includes concurrently reading data from, and writing to, the same DRAM array. However, if the read and write addresses associated with the concurrently received read and write commands are the same address, then the read data that is output from the memory device cannot be guaranteed. This is because a data word line is in an unknown state during a write operation, and any data concurrently read from it is therefore unreliable. To address this problem in conventional systems, a memory controller or other device that arbitrates access to a multi-port memory avoids issuing concurrent read and write commands to the memory device when the addresses are the same.

Multi-input memory command prioritization


A system for and method of unloading parts includes a rack and at least a first part held in a first position within the rack. At least one rack robot picks up the rack and moves the rack to a first orientation so as to position and orient the first part in a removal locus for removal from the rack. At least one line side robot removes the first part from the rack at the removal locus. The rack robot may move the rack to a second orientation so as to position and orient a second part in the removal locus for removal by the line side robot. The rack may include a plurality of clips moveable between a locked position in which the clip can securely hold a part, and an open position in which a part can be inserted or removed from the clip.

In many industries, dunnage is used to pack, support, and protect parts when transporting the parts. For example, in the automotive industry, manufacturers often ship their parts in large rectangular racks, with a number of parts supported within the rack by one or more dunnage strips.
Throughout the manufacturing chain, the parts may be loaded and unloaded from the racks as needed. The arrangement and number of parts per rack is often limited by how the parts may be loaded and unloaded from the racks, and normally not all of the available space is used. For example, conventional dunnage strips may have spaced apart slots and rely on gravity to hold the part within the slot, and may limit the packing density (e.g. number of parts that fit in a given rack). Furthermore, conventional assembly lines may use a robot to remove the parts from the rack, and the robot may not be able to properly locate each part within a rack when using conventional dunnage systems.
Accordingly, there is a need for improved apparatus, systems and methods for securing parts and for loading and unloading secured parts.

Apparatus, systems and methods for securing, loading and unloading parts using locking dunnage


A near field communication method between a vehicle and a mobile device includes the following steps:                establishing a contact between the mobile device and vibration elements,        installing vibration elements in a communication device mounted on the vehicle, the vibration elements adapted to emit a predetermined vibratory signal,        installing an element for detecting and analyzing vibrations in the mobile device,        implementing an authentication procedure between the communication device and the mobile device in which:                    the communication device of the vehicle emits toward communication elements of the mobile device, a request signal by near field communication and by vibratory signal, and            the communication elements of the mobile device emits, in return, a response signal to the vehicle only if it has received a near field signal and a vibratory signal according to a predetermined format. A device for implementing this method is also described.

It is already known practice to use a mobile device (smart card or cell phone), to access and/or start up a motor vehicle. The access and/or start-up authorization is given by the vehicle following a question/answer exchange between the vehicle and the mobile device. Conventionally, this exchange of data is performed by radiofrequency (RF) communication, low frequency (LF), Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, NFC (Near Field Communication) type.
For security reasons, the near field communications are preferred because they require the mobile device and the vehicle to be in immediate proximity to one another (distance less than 10 cm). This short distance is an a priori guarantee of enhanced security. This is because, by proceeding in this way, the possibility of the mobile device being spoofed is avoided, because, for that, it would be necessary to introduce a fraudulent element between the mobile device and the vehicle, which could not fail to draw the attention of the legitimate owner of the vehicle.
However, it so happens that, when the legitimate owner of the vehicle is far away from the vehicle, if an ill-intentioned person has, close to the vehicle, a first fraudulent electronic communication device and a second fraudulent communication device close to the legitimate owner, the information requested by the vehicle could be relayed by the two fraudulent electronic devices to the mobile device of the legitimate owner, even though the latter is a long way away from his or her vehicle. Because of this, an authorization to access and/or start up the vehicle could take place, in the absence of and unnoticed by the legitimate owner, even by using a so-called "near field" communication mode.
In practice, the fact that the mobile device of the owner of the vehicle uses a near field communication (NFC) does not provide protection from an ill-intentioned person managing to place a fraudulent communication device in proximity to the latter. Thus, for example, if the owner of the vehicle has a cell phone in his or her pocket and is approached (sufficiently close) by an ill-intentioned person also having a cell phone in his or her pocket, there could be an exchange of data between the two telephones without the legitimate owner noticing it. The very short distance necessary for a near field communication is not therefore totally sufficient to guarantee the inviolability of the communications between a vehicle and a device for accessing and/or starting up this vehicle.

Near field communication method, between a mobile device and a motor vehicle and corresponding device


Methods and kits for detecting transferase activity in a sample by measuring ATP using a composition comprising an ATP-dependent bioluminescence-generating enzyme, a luminogenic molecule and one or more transferase quenching agents.

Advances in the biological, biomedical and pharmaceutical sciences have accelerated the pace of research and diagnostics unparalleled to the past. With whole genome sequences becoming quickly and successively available, the assembly of large libraries of small molecules, and the ability to move pharmaceutical development, clinical diagnostic tests and basic research from a reductionist to a whole system approach demands assays that facilitate high throughput analyses. Molecules no longer need to be singly analyzed for their effects on a lone process; instead, the effects of many molecules on several biological systems can be studied simultaneously—if appropriate, fast, reliable, and accurate assays are available.
Due to their physiological relevance, variety and ubiquitousness, transferases, especially kinases, have become one of the most important and widely studied families of enzymes in biochemical and medical research. Studies have shown that protein and lipid kinases are key regulators of many cell functions, including signal transduction, transcriptional regulation, cell motility, cell division and cellular responses to drugs, toxins, and pathogens.
Protein kinases play crucial roles in the modulation of a wide variety of cellular events. These enzymes act by transferring phosphate residues to certain amino acids in intracellular polypeptides, to bring about the activation of these protein substrates, and set in motion a cascade of activation controlling events including the growth, differentiation and division of cells. Protein kinases have been extensively studied in the field of tumour biology. A lack of controlled activity of kinases in cells is believed to lead to the formation of tumours. The pharmaceutical industry is constantly in search of drugs that target these kinases, to help with the treatment of a wide variety of tumours. There are at least 1200 protein kinases that are involved in the regulation of cell functions. They occur as both transmembrane and cytosolic enzymes and they phosphorylate serine, threonine and tyrosine amino acid residues. Based on these substrate specificities the kinases are divided into two groups, the serine/threonine kinases and tyrosine kinases.
Serine/threonine kinases, includes cyclic AMP and cyclic GMP dependent protein kinases, calcium and phospholipid dependent protein kinase, calcium and calmodulin-dependent protein kinases, casein kinases, cell division cycle protein kinases and others. These kinases are usually cytoplasmic or associated with the particulate fractions of cells, possibly by anchoring proteins.
Tyrosine kinases phosphorylate tyrosine residues. These particular kinases are present in much smaller quantities but play an equally important role in cell regulation. These kinases include several soluble enzymes such as src family of protein kinases, and receptors for growth factors such as epidermal growth factor receptor, insulin receptor, and platelet derived growth factor receptor and others. Studies have indicated that many tyrosine kinases are transmembrane proteins with their receptor domains located on the outside of the cell and their kinase domains on the inside.
Lipid kinases also play important roles in the intracellular signal transduction, and have been grouped into four major classes. Exemplary lipid kinases include PI3 kinases, and phosphatidylinositol 4-kinases.
Current types of assays used to measure kinase activity and to detect potential kinase inhibitors are cumbersome and costly. These assays include Fluorescence Resonance Energy Transfer (FRET) assays, Fluorescent Plarization (FP) assays, and assays based on radioactivity such as Scintillation Proximity Assay (SPA).
FRET assays used to detect kinase activity utilize a protein substrate that has two linked fluorescent molecules. The two molecules are in close proximity, separated by a fixed distance. The energy of an excited electron in one molecule (the donor) is passed to an adjacent molecule (the acceptor) through resonance. The ability of a higher energy donor flourophore to transfer energy directly to a lower energy acceptor molecule causes sensitized fluorescence of the acceptor molecule and simultaneously quenches the donor flouorescence. In this case, the fluorescence of the donor is "quenched" by the proximity to the acceptor and the energy of the donor is transferred to the acceptor in a non-radiative manner. The efficiency of energy transfer is dependent on the distance between the donor and acceptor chromophores according to the Forster equation. In most cases, no FRET is observed at distances greater than 100 angstroms and thus the presence of FRET is a good indicator of close proximity.
In order for FRET to be useful, the fluorescence of the acceptor molecule must be significantly different from the fluorescence of the donor. A useful FRET based protein substrate may include a separation of the two fluorescent molecules via a peptide linker that maintains specificity for an endopeptidase that is capable of cleaving the peptide linker between the two fluorophores. If the peptide is phosphorylated, then the enzyme may not cleave the protein or may cleave it at a reduced rate, keeping the fluorescent molecules in close proximity such that quenching occurs. On the other hand, if the protein is not phosphorylated, then the endopeptidase cleaves the protein substrate, releasing the two fluorescent molecules such that the quenching is alleviated, and the two fluorescent molecules fluoresce independently. The FRET assay requires peptide substrates that must be carefully engineered to meet these requirements. That is, the peptide substrates must contain the enzyme recognition site required for the endopeptidase, the distance between the two fluorophores must be within the range to allow FRET to occur and the fluorescent molecules must be paired in such a way that donor fluorescence is significantly quenched, minimizing background fluorescence from the donor. Furthermore, the fluorescence of the starting material (the "quenched" substrate) must be siginificantly different from the product (the "released" non-quenched product). These requirements make a FRET based assay cumbersome and costly.
FP assays are based on binding of a high affinity binding reagent, such as an antibody, a chelating atom, or the like, to a fluorescent labeled molecule. For example, an antibody that binds to a phosphorylated fluorescent labeled peptide but not a non-phosphorylated fluorescent labeled peptide can be used for a kinase assay. When the fluorescent label is excited with plane polarized light, it emits light in the same polarized plane as long as the fluorescent label remains stationary throughout the excited state (duration of the excited state varies with fluorophore, and is 4 nanoseconds for fluoroscein). However, if the excited fluorescent label rotates or tumbles out of the plane of polarization during the excited state, then light is emitted in a different plane from that of the initial excitation state. If polarized light is used to excite the fluorophore, the emission light intensity can be monitored in both the plane parallel to the plane of polarization (the excitation plane) and in the plane perpendicular to the plane of polarization. The degree to which the emission intensity moves from the parallel to the perpendicular plane is related to the mobility of the fluorescent labeled molecule. If the fluorescent labeled molecules are large, such as when they are bound to the binding reagent, the fluorescent labeled molecules move little during the excited state interval, and emitted light remains highly polarized with respect to the excitation plane. If the fluorescent labeled molecules are small, such as when no binding reagent is bound to the fluorescent labeled molecules, the fluorescent labeled molecules rotate or tumble faster, and the resulting emitted light is depolarized relative to the excitation plane. Thus, an FP assay requires a high affinity binding reagent, e.g., an antibody, capable of binding with high specifity to the fluorescent labeled molecule. The time consuming and costly optimization of antibody binding with specific fluorescent labeled molecules such as peptides is required where antibodies are used. Additionally, the FP assay there is the potential for phosphorylated protein and other reaction components, e.g., lipids and detergents, to interfere with the polarization.
Kinase assays that use radioactive labels include SPA. In SPA, modified ligand-specific or ligand-capturing molecules are coupled to fluoromicrospheres, which are solid-phase support particles or beads impregnated with substances that emit energy when excited by radioactively labeled molecules. When added to a modified ligand such as radio-labeled phosphopeptide in a mixture with nonphosphorylated peptide, only the phosphopeptide is captured on a fluoromicrosphere, bringing any bound radiolabeled peptide close enough to allow the radiation energy emitted to activate the fluoromicrosphere and emit light energy. If the concentration of fluoromicrospheres is optimized, only the signal from the radio-labeled ligand bound to the target is detected, eliminating the need for any separation of bound and free ligand. The level of light energy emitted may be measured in a liquid scintillation counter and is indicative of the extent to which the ligand is bound to the target. However, a SPA requires radio-labeled ligands, which have disposal costs and possible health risks. In addition, a SPA requires the fluoromicrospheres to settle by gravity or be centrifuged, adding an additional step and time to the assay.
Other methods have been developed for detecting kinase activity that are based on luminescence detection, either by bioluminesce or chemiluminescences. Generally, these methods rely on specific substrates and antibodies (Lehel et al. (1977), the use of microchips and fluorescent label probes (Cohen et al. (1999), substrate concentration in a sample (Eu etal al (1999), the use of multiple steps and reagents (Crouch et al. U.S. Pat. No. 6,599,711) or are limited to specific kinases (Sala-Newby et al. (1992).
With phosphorylation events involved in so many cell functions and diseases, identifying transferase activity, especially kinase activity, is tremendously important. Thus, there is a need for enzyme assays that detect protein kinase activity, but that do not require large amounts of costly or highly specialized starting materials, that quickly generate results and are amendable to high through put screening. Additionally, there is a need for assays to rapidly identify activators and inhibitors of kinases. In addition, it is also desirable to provide kits for carrying out such assays. The method, system and kit associated with the present invention may be used for high throughput systems to allow the rapid detection and analysis of effectors, modulators, enhancers and inhibitors of one or more kinase. Moreover, the present invention allows the screening to be completed without the need for specially labeled substrates or antibodies.

This patent is subject to a terminal disclaimer.

Method for detecting transferase enzymatic activity


An apparatus for holding a stackable bucket in place when mixing materials therein which comprises the stackable bucket having a bottom wall joined to a continuous tapered side wall extending upwardly therefrom to form a rim larger than the bottom wall. The stackable bucket can be placed into another stackable bucket for storage when not in use. A pair of rectangular shaped footpads are provided. A mechanism is for pivotally securing each rectangular shaped footpad into the bottom wall of the stackable bucket at an opposite side of the stackable bucket. When the rectangular shaped footpads are pivoted outwardly away from opposite sides of the side wall of the stackable bucket and the bottom wall of the stackable bucket is placed upon a floor, a person will stand upon the pair of rectangular shaped footpads to prevent rotation of the stackable bucket when mixing the materials within the stackable bucket.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a bucket, and more particularly, an apparatus for holding a stackable bucket in place when mixing materials therein.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Numerous innovations for bucket retainers have been provided in the prior art that will be described. Even though these innovations may be suitable for the specific individual purposes to which they address, however, they differ from the present invention.
A FIRST EXAMPLE, U.S. Pat. No. 4,877,208, Issued on Oct. 31, 1989, to Kennard Jr. teaches a support for a mixer bucket which includes a raised platform having a recess shaped to accommodate a mixer bucket. Resistance means are provided in the recess which engage against the bucket to maintain the bucket stationary while the contents of the bucket are being mixed.
A SECOND EXAMPLE, U.S. Pat. No. 5,262,188, Issued on Aug. 3, 1993, to Troncone teaches a jig, for use in supporting a pail during a mixing operation to be carried out within the pail, that includes a support ring which is distorted into an elliptical condition, thus relying on the interfitment of two members of elliptical form to prevent rotation of the pail relative to the jig.
A THIRD EXAMPLE, U.S. Pat. No. 6,361,001 B1, Issued on Mar. 26, 2002, to Durand teaches a container holder for mixing slurry material in a 2½ or 5 gallon bucket. The container holder is formed from a one-piece raised top portion having a centrally disposed aperture allowing insertion of a stirring paddle. Depending from the top portion are two legs that extend downwardly and span the entire height of the bucket to be mixed with foot pads joined at the bottom of the legs extending outwardly therefrom which allow an individual to stand on during the mixing operation.
A FOURTH EXAMPLE, U.S. Pat. No. 6,464,184 B1, Issued on Oct. 15, 2002, to Lytle teaches an apparatus for retaining a canister having an adjustable base and at least one swing member attached to the base and preferably two swing members attached to the base opposite each other. The base further has a spring member disposed thereupon and in contact with the swing member to keep the swing member in a first open position. The swing member has a first end that is rotatably attached to the base via a hinge member and a second end that has a semicircular recess formed therein. The base is adjustable to provide an adjustable range of motion of the swing member with respect to the base. In operation, the apparatus moves from a first open position to a second closed position upon application of a force upon the swing members to retain a canister placed between the swing members. Use of the apparatus results in no temporary movement or constricting of a worker's limbs which can cause imbalance or injury nor requires a second person to stabilize the canister.
A FIFTH EXAMPLE, U.S. Pat. No. 7,178,766 B2, Issued on Feb. 20, 2007, to Forshee et al. teaches a retainer for immobilizing a bucket containing a liquid material, such as paint or other relatively viscous liquids, during mixing the material or to prevent accidental tipping of the bucket, is formed with a ring-like socket within which the bucket is positioned. Laterally-extending wings are formed on the socket. The user stands upon the wings to hold the socket against the ground-supporting surface upon which the socket is supported so as to prevent rotational or other movement of the socket and, consequently, movement of the bucket. The socket is formed of a generally cylindrically-shaped, vertically-axised wall which is tapered inwardly from its upper edge to its lower edge at a sufficient slope to radially inwardly frictionally grip and temporarily lock the bucket within the socket. The outwardly extending wings are of sufficient size for supporting the user's feet on opposite sides of the socket so as to position the user generally above the bucket and enable the user to manually position and hold a mixing device in the bucket while the user's feet clamp the retainer, and consequently, the bucket, against the support surface.
A SIXTH EXAMPLE, U.S. Patent Office Publication No. 20070076519 A1, Published on Apr. 5, 2007, to Kesling teaches an apparatus for stabilizing a container during mixing that includes a base platform, an engagement arm and a brace member. The engagement arm is pivotally attached to the base platform via a hinge. Additionally, the engagement arm includes two components hingably affixed together. The brace member is located opposite the engagement arm and includes a receiving portion directed toward the engagement arm for receiving the container to be stabilized. During mixing, an operator applies a force downward on the engagement arm, generally with a foot, thereby retaining the container between the engagement arm and the brace member. The contents of the container may then be stirred without the operator having to straddle the container.
A SEVENTH EXAMPLE, U.S. Patent Office Publication No. 20080224010 A1, Published on Sep. 18, 2008, to Roth et al. teaches a hold-down for a common pail used in mixing paints, drywall compound, or other applications which has a pair of swing-down, spring-loaded step-pads secured to the base of the pail. There can be a strap for this purpose, with an adjustable draw latch.
It is apparent now that numerous innovations for bucket retainers have been provided in the prior art that adequate for various purposes. Furthermore, even though these innovations may be suitable for the specific individual purposes to which they address, accordingly, they would not be suitable for the purposes of the present invention as heretofore described.

Apparatus for holding a stackable bucket in place when mixing materials therein


A temperature sensing apparatus (10) adapted for sensing the temperature of a food item in an oven includes a body (12) which encloses a chamber (34). The chamber houses an indicator (20) which is viewed through a glass pane (28). Slight amounts of water vapor that infiltrate into the chamber during washing are safely vented by a pressure relief valve (36) having a unitary body of resilient material. The check valve includes a membrane portion (40) with a diametrically extending slit (46) therethrough. The slit remains closed under most conditions. When pressure builds in the chamber during heating due to rapid expansion of infiltrated water vapor, the membrane portion deforms sufficiently to open the slit before the pressure reaches a level that may fracture the glass pane or cause other damage. When the pressure falls, the membrane portion returns to its initial position closing the slit.

Many types of thermometers are known in the prior art. A popular type of thermometer is a cooking thermometer that includes a probe portion which is inserted in a food item being cooked in an oven. A cooking thermometer typically includes a dial or other visual readout that indicates how hot the food is. By observing the temperature of the food, and by monitoring the cooking time in the oven, it is assured that the food is properly cooked.
Most cooking thermometers include a body which encloses a chamber. The chamber houses an indicator that visually displays the temperature at the probe portion. The chamber is bounded by a glass pane through which the indicator is observed. A gasket is typically mounted under the glass pane to seal the chamber from the environment.
Cooking thermometers must be thoroughly cleaned between uses. This is done to remove food particles and avoid the growth of harmful bacteria. The most common way of washing a cooking thermometer is to place it in an automatic washer in which it is immersed in a hot water based cleaning solution.
Because of the different rates of thermal expansion of the glass pane and the typical metal body of the cooking thermometer, water vapor may infiltrate past the gasket into the chamber. When this occurs, water vapor is trapped inside the chamber upon cooling.
When a cooking thermometer with water trapped inside is placed in an oven, the water vapor will expand rapidly upon heating, causing pressure to build up in the chamber. Such pressure make cause damage to the seal; or, if the seal does not rupture, the glass pane may fracture. In either event, the thermometer becomes unusable.
Thus, there exists a need for a temperature sensing apparatus that may be used to sense temperature in a hot oven environment, but which will not be damaged by the infiltration of water vapor which may enter the body of the apparatus during cleaning.


An optical transmission apparatus includes a return line for connecting a first transmission line and a second transmission line opposed to the first transmission line in order to make it possible to commonly use a transmitter-receiver or a repeater, for example, between a trunk line and a branch line and prevent a situation that the power of branched signal lights increases excessively. The optical transmission apparatus is configured so that dummy lights inputted together with signal lights to be added to signal lights transmitted through the first transmission line are sent to the second transmission line through the return line and are outputted together with signal lights to be dropped from the second transmission line.

1) Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an optical transmission apparatus (optical add/drop apparatus) and an optical transmission system suitable for use with a WDM (Wavelength Division Multiplexing) optical transmission system such as, for example, a high-capacity long-distance submarine optical transmission system.
2) Description of the Related Art
Among WDM optical transmission systems which are being developed at present, for example, those systems (DWDM) which perform a wavelength division multiplexing process for 60 to 150 signal lights of different waves are being popularized in order to implement a high-capacity system.
For example, as shown in FIG. 6, a high-capacity long-distance optical submarine transmission system (optical submarine cable system) 100 as a DWDM optical transmission system includes a transmitting station (terminal) 101 for transmitting wavelength division multiplexed signal lights, and an optical transmission line (trunk line) 102 for interconnecting the transmitting station 101 and a receiving station 103. The receiving station (terminal) 103 receives the wavelength multiplexed signal lights transmitted thereto through the optical transmission line 102. The high-capacity long-distance optical submarine transmission system 100 further includes an optical add/drop apparatus (branching unit) 104 for branching a signal light having a specific wavelength from among the wavelength division multiplexed signal lights from the transmitting station 101 and multiplexing a signal light transmitted through an optical transmission line (branch line) 106 connected to a branch station 105. The branch station (terminal) 105 receives the signal light of the specific wavelength branched by the optical add/drop apparatus 104 and transmits a signal light to be multiplexed with the signal lights transmitted in the optical transmission line 103 (for example, refer to Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 10-28106). It is to be noted that a plurality of optical amplifiers 107 are provided on the optical transmission lines 102 and 106.
In such an optical transmission system as just described, some signal lights b from among all signal lights a (refer to reference character A) transmitted from the transmitting station 101 are branched (dropped) by the optical add/drop apparatus 104 and transmitted to the branch station 105 through the optical transmission line 106 (refer to reference character B). On the other hand, the remaining signal lights c (refer to reference character C) are multiplexed with (added to) signal lights d (refer to reference character D) transmitted from the branch station 105 by the optical add/drop apparatus 104, and the multiplexed signal lights e (refer to reference character E) are transmitted to the receiving station 103 through the optical transmission line 102.
It is to be noted that, while only the trunk line (up line or down line) for one direction is shown in FIG. 6 in order to facilitate understanding, actually, not only the one-direction trunk line but also a trunk line (down line or up line) for the opposite direction are provided so that bidirectional communication can be performed. Further, while the transmitting station 101, receiving station 103 and branch station 105 here are described as terminals, even if they are formed as repeater stations, they operate similarly. In this instance, the transmitting station 101 functions as a repeater station on the transmitting side and the receiving station 103 functions as a repeater station on the receiving side, and the branch station 105 functions as a repeater station on the branch side.
In the optical add/drop apparatus (add drop branching unit) used in the optical transmission system configured in such a manner as described above, for example, as shown in FIG. 5, an optical circulator 111, an optical fiber grating 112, an optical isolator 113, another optical fiber grating 114, and another optical circulator 115 are interposed in order in an up line (trunk line) 110. Further, an optical circulator 121, an optical fiber grating 122, an optical isolator 123, another optical fiber grating 124, and another optical circulator 125 are interposed in order in a down line (trunk line) 120 opposed to the up line 110. Further, a dropping branch line 116 is connected to the optical circulator 111, and an adding branch line 117 is connected to the optical circulator 115. Meanwhile, a dropping branch line 126 is connected to the optical circulator 121, and an adding branch line 127 is connected to the optical circulator 125 (refer to, for example, Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 10-150433).
Thus, wavelength division multiplexed signal lights transmitted from the transmitting station through the up line 110 pass the optical circulator 111 and enter the optical fiber grating 112. In the optical fiber grating 112, only those signal lights individually having specific wavelengths (for example, approximately 20 signal lights) from among the wavelength division multiplexed signal lights (for example, 100 wavelength division multiplexed signal lights) transmitted from the transmitting station are reflected. Then, the reflected specific wavelength signal lights are sent to the branch line 116 through the optical circulator 111, and are transmitted to the branch station through the branch line 116. Consequently, the signal lights individually of the specific wavelengths (for example, approximately 20 signal lights) from among the wavelength division multiplexed signal lights (for example, 100 wavelength division multiplexed signal lights) transmitted from the transmitting station are dropped.
On the other hand, the signal lights having passed through the optical fiber grating 112 without being reflected enter the optical fiber grating 114 through the optical isolator 113. Meanwhile, signal lights transmitted from the branch station through the branch line 117 enter the optical fiber grating 114 through the optical circulator 115 and are reflected by the optical fiber grating 114. Then, in the optical fiber grating 114, the signal lights transmitted from the branch station through the branch line 117 are multiplexed with (added to) the signal lights transmitted from the transmitting station through the up line 110. The multiplexed signal lights pass the optical circulator 115 and are transmitted to the receiving station through the up line 110.
Similarly, wavelength division multiplexed signal lights transmitted from the transmitting station through the down line 120 pass the optical circulator 121 and enter the optical fiber grating 122. By the optical fiber grating 122, only those signal lights individually having specific wavelengths (for example, approximately 20 signal lights) from among the wavelength division multiplexed signal lights (for example, 100 wavelength division multiplexed signal lights) transmitted from the transmitting station are reflected. Then, the reflected specific wavelength signal lights are sent to the branch line 126 through the optical circulator 121 and are transmitted to the branch station through the branch line 126. Consequently, the signal lights individually having specific wavelengths (for example, approximately 20 signal lights) from among the wavelength division multiplexed signal lights (for example, 100 wavelength division multiplexed signal lights) transmitted from the transmitting station are dropped.
On the other hand, the signal lights having passed through the optical fiber grating 122 without being reflected enter the optical fiber grating 124 through the optical isolator 123. Meanwhile, signal lights transmitted from the branch station through the branch line 127 enter the optical fiber grating 124 through the optical circulator 125 and are reflected by the optical fiber grating 124. Then, by the optical fiber grating 124, the signal lights (for example, approximately 20 signal lights) transmitted from the branch station through the branch line 127 are multiplexed with (added to) the signal lights transmitted from the transmitting station through the down line 120. The multiplexed signal lights pass the optical circulator 125 and are transmitted to the receiving station through the down line 120.

Optical transmission apparatus and optical transmission system


An apparatus, method, and system for determining body wave slowness from guided borehole waves. The method includes selecting a target axial resolution based on the size of a receiver array, obtaining a plurality of waveform data sets corresponding to a target formation zone and each acquired at a different shot position, computing a slowness-frequency 2D dispersion semblance map for each waveform data set, stacking the slowness-frequency 2D dispersion semblance maps to generate a stacked 2D semblance map, and determining a body wave slowness from the extracted dispersion curve. The method may also include generating a self-adaptive weighting function based on a dispersion model and the extracted dispersion curve, fitting the weighted dispersion curve and the dispersion model to determine a body wave slowness that minimizes the misfit between the weighted dispersion curve and the dispersion model. The method can be applied to both frequency-domain and time-domain processing.

Wellbores are drilled into the earth for a variety of purposes including tapping into hydrocarbon bearing formations to extract the hydrocarbons for use as fuel, lubricants, chemical production, and other purposes. In order to facilitate processes and operations in the wellbore, various tools may be conveyed downhole. For example, sonic logging tools may be lowered into the wellbore in order to facilitate petrophysical interpretation and petroleum engineering analysis. Sonic logging provides various properties of the rock formation and borehole fluid, including, for example, the formation compressional and shear wave slowness, formation permeability, formation shear slowness anisotropy and borehole mud slowness. Among these properties, compressional and shear wave slowness is one of the most important as it provides fundamental dynamic elastic properties of the formation.
Rock formation body wave slowness, e.g., compressional and shear wave slowness, provides useful information for mechanical characterization, lithological interpretation and rock physics analysis of underground rock properties, and thus have become essential measurements in the oil and gas industry during wireline logging (WL) and logging while drilling (LWD). Generally speaking, dipole sources are generally utilized for shear slowness estimating in wireline logging, because the low-frequency dipole flexural wave slowness asymptotes approach body shear wave slowness of different formations. However, flexural low-frequency signals are generally associated with low signal-to-noise-ratio (SNR) because of their poor excitation amplitude at low-frequencies. To overcome the insufficient SNR, modern acoustic logging tools are designed to increase SNR at low frequencies by using a larger receiver array. Large-span array processing is very effective in improving slowness picking quality at low frequencies, however such a large-span receiver array may compromise the spatial resolution of shear slowness logs. This is especially true for laminated formations having thin layers or strong heterogeneous formations, in which case data processing using the whole array yields averaged shear slowness of several layers resulting in some thin layers being unidentifiable due the low spatial resolution. Therefore, averaged slowness logs are biased away from accurate shear slowness characterization of fine layers and may not be useful to identify thin layers or amenable to advanced rock physics analysis.
The compressional wave slowness evaluation from leaky-P waves in soft formations has similar problems. In soft formations, leaky-P wave slowness approaches formation compressional wave slowness at low-frequencies, where the SNR of the data is not good to their low excitation frequency at those frequencies. Large-span receiver array processing is often used to improve SNR, which consequently leads to lower slowness resolution and that compromises thin bed interpretation. Additionally, processing screw waves to obtain shear slowness in LWD environments is plagued by similar issues. Consequently, it is desirable to develop a processing and work-flow method capable of improving slowness resolution using borehole guided waves.

Enhanced-resolution rock formation body wave slowness determination from borehole guided waves


The invention features compositions and methods that are useful for the treatment of neoplasia by reducing base excision repair (BER). Such compositions are useful, for example, for enhancing the efficacy of known chemotherapeutics, such as DNA alkylating agents. In particular, the invention features agents that mimic the interaction of APC with pol-β. Such agents reduce the activity of long patch- and single nucleotide-base extension repair pathways.

Colorectal cancer is the second most common cause of cancer-related death in both men and women in the Western hemisphere. According to American. Cancer Society, an estimated 106,680 new cases of colon cancer with 57,460 deaths of both males and females would occur in the U.S. in the year 2006. Prognosis depends on the stage of the tumor at the time of diagnosis, with surgery being the most effective treatment. Colorectal cancers develop through a series of histological distinct stages from "adenoma to carcinoma." The temporal order in which mutations occur in different genes relates to the progression through the histological stages of cancer from adenoma to carcinoma. Mutations of the adenomatous polyposis coli (APC)*, Ki-ras, deleted in colorectal cancer (DCC), and p53 genes play important roles at different stages of colorectal tumorigenesis. Mutation of the APC gene is an early event in familial adenomatous polyposis (FAP), a syndrome of inherited predisposition to colon cancer. Notably, mutations in the APC gene also are found in 60 to 80% of sporadic colorectal cancers and adenomas.
APC is expressed constitutively within the normal colonic epithelium; however, little is known about how mutations of (or abnormal expression of) APC contribute to the development of colon cancer. The APC gene product is a 310-kDa-homodimeric protein localized in both the cytoplasm and the nucleus. Previous studies indicate that the cellular level of wild-type APC is critical to cytoskeletal integrity, cellular adhesion, and Wingless/Wnt signaling. Wild-type APC binds to EB1 and a tumor suppressor protein, DLG that regulates microtubule polymerization and cell cycle progression from Go/G1 to S phase, respectively. In addition, APC may act as a negative regulator of β-catenin signaling in the transformation of colonic epithelial cells and in melanoma progression. The β-catenin/Tcf4 complex regulates the proto-oncogene and cell cycle regulator c-myc, the G1/S-regulating cyclin D1, the gene encoding the matrix-degrading metalloproteinase, matrysin, the AP-1 transcription factors c-jun and fra-1 and the urokinase-type plasminogen activator receptor gene.
An association has been shown between the severe polyposis phenotype and germline mutations in the mutation cluster region (MCR) of APC. Selective pressure for an MCR mutant has been proposed based on the germline mutation in FAP. Patients with mutations outside of the MCR region have a milder phenotype. The mechanism(s) by which APC mutations may contribute to the accumulation of mutations in other genes that are associated with the colon cancer progression remains unclear.

Compositions and methods of treating neoplasia

University of Florida Research Foundation, Inc.


A noise reduction method partitions frequency band into multiple sub-bands and estimates the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) value for each sub-band. An over-subtraction factor of each sub-band is determined based on the estimated SNR value. Then, the clean speech spectrum estimate is determined by performing spectral over-subtraction on each sub-band, so as to determine the clean speech signal from the estimated clean speech spectrum.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a noise reduction method and, more particularly, to a method using spectral subtraction to reduce noise.
2. Description of Related Art
The spectral subtraction method has been proven effective in enhancing speech degraded by additive noise. It is simple to implement, hence is suitable as the pre-processing scheme for speech coding and recognition applications. This method subtracts the noise spectrum estimate from the noisy speech spectrum to estimate the speech magnitude spectrum, so as to obtain the clean speech signals.
FIG. 1 shows the flowchart of the aforementioned spectral subtraction method, wherein the input noisy speech is divided into a plurality of continuous frames, and each frame is represented by an additive noise model:yr(k)=sr(k)+wr(k),where yr(k), sr(k) and wr(k) denote respectively the k-th noisy speech, clean speech, and noise sample of the r-th frame. Taking the fast Fourier transform of the noisy speech frame yr(k) (step S101), the noisy speech spectrum of the r-th frame at the k-th frequency component is obtained and denoted as |Yr(k)|2. In addition, the noisy speech yr(k) is also applied in a silence detection process (step S102) and a noise spectrum estimation process (step S103) to estimate a noise spectrum, denoted as |Wr(k)|2. After performing a spectral subtraction process (step S104), the energy spectrum of clean speech is obtained as follows:|Ŝr(k)|2=|Yr(k)|2−|Wr(k)|2.  (1)
If the phase spectrum of the clean speech can be approximated by the phase spectrum of the noisy speech, the estimate of clean speech ŝr(k) can be obtained by taking the inverse fast Fourier transform of |Ŝr(k)|2.
Such a method is suitable as the pre-processing scheme for speech coding and recognition applications because it is easy, effective and simple to implement. However, the noise spectrum estimate may cause a relatively large spectral excursion in the spectrum estimate of clean speech. This spectral excursion will be perceived as time varying tones contributing to the so-called musical noise.
To reduce the musical noise Berouti et al proposed a noise reduction method to over-subtract the noise spectrum estimate, and a description of such can be found in M. Berouti, R. Schwartz, and J. Makhoul "Enhancement of speech corrupted by acoustic noise", pp. 208–211, 1979 IEEE, which is incorporated herein for reference, wherein the formula (1) is modified as:|Ŝr(k)|2=|Yr(k)|2−αr·|Wr(k)|2. αr≧1,  (2)so as to decrease the influence caused by the excursion of the noise spectrum estimate and thus reduce the effect of musical noise. In the method, the over-subtraction factor αr was determined by the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) of the processing frame, and can be expressed by formula:
                                          α            r                    =                                    α              0                        +                                          SNR                r                            ·                                                1                  -                                      α                    0                                                                    SNR                  1                                                                    ,                            (        3        )            where α0 is pre-selected over-subtraction factor when SNR=0, SNR1 is pre-selected SNR value when αr=1, SNRr is the estimate of signal-to-noise ratio of the processed r-th frame. Based on the formula (3), it is known that αr is inversely proportional to SNRr. The smaller the SNRr is, the larger the αr is, and a larger αr is helpful in removing the larger noise spectrum excursion.
Examining human speech spectrum, it is known that the speech energy distributes non-uniformly and often concentrates on lower frequency components. Hence SNR differs with frequencies and often have larger values at lower frequency components. From the formula (3), it is known that more suppression is needed for lower SNR and vise versa. High-frequency components thus need more suppression to avoid musical noise, while low-frequency components need less suppression to prevent speech distortion. However, for the over-subtraction method based on formulas (2) and (3), it faces the problem of too much over-subtraction and hence speech distortion at low-frequency components while too less over-subtraction and hence musical noise at high-frequency components. Accordingly, improved schemes are proposed to avoid such a problem, and one of the schemes can be found in Kuo-Guan Wu and Po-Cheng Chen "Efficient speech enhancement using spectral subtraction for car hands-free application". 2001 Digest of technical papers, pp. 220–221, which is incorporated herein for reference. However, it is unable to completely eliminate the problem. Therefore, there is a need for the above conventional noise reduction method to be improved.

Industrial Technology Research Institute