A method and apparatus for managing traffic in a network to and from a remote communications device with limited power supply resources. A controller determines the existing power level of the device and uses the determination to control data transmission to and from the device. Data may be transmitted and received by the device by determining the power required to complete a transmission or reception. The controller then determines whether to send the data, redirect the data, cancel the data transmission, or transmit only a portion of the data. The decision is made as to which option to choose based on the amount of power available to complete the data transmission.

There has been incredible progress in wireless communications in the last few decades. The economic growth and progress in worldwide prosperity has brought electronic and wireless applications into nearly everybody's reach. Cellular and mobile communications are a booming success. Portable devices, including mobile phones, can now be produced having acceptable cost, size and power consumption.
Mobile phone communications for the consumer market started with a phone system derived from the police and rescue services and was based on an analog technology improved and optimized in the seventies and eighties. These systems led to the first analog phone systems for public usage such as Advanced Mobile Phone Service (AMPS), Nordic Mobile Telephone (NMT) and Total Access Communications Systems (TACS). The usage of mobile phones really took off in the nineties with the introduction of mobile phone systems based on digital technology like Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM), Digital Advanced Mobile Phone Service (D-AMPS) and Personal Digital Cellular (PDC). Although radio technology is focused mainly on voice communications (with respect to handheld radios) data services grow in importance and eventually a mobile Internet will be established.
New systems based on packet data transmission are already planned and some are being deployed. Examples are GPRS (General Packet Radio Service) and UMTS (Universal Mobile Telephone System). Whereas cellular systems address wide area coverage, providing national services anywhere, other systems have been designed to give more localized services such as in an office or a residence. Today, indoor systems based on the WLAN IEEE 802.11 standard are widely deployed to provide high data-rate access in restricted areas. A competing system called HIPERLAN (High PERfomance LAN) has been designed to complement the cellular systems like UMTS by providing high capacity and high data rates to slowly moving users in hotspot areas. For the cordless telephony at home, DECT (Digitally-Enhanced Cordless Telephony) has been standardized and is widely used in households in Europe.
Recently, a new air interface called Bluetooth was introduced to replace all cables between mobile phones, laptop computers, headsets, PDAs, and so on. An introduction to the Bluetooth system can be found in "BLUETOOTH—The universal radio interface for ad hoc, wireless connectivity," by J. C. Haartsen, Ericsson Review No. 3, 1998. Radio communication systems for personal usage differ importantly from radio systems like the public mobile phone network. In the latter systems, a licensed band is used which is fully controlled by the phone operator and procedures are implemented to guarantee an interference free channel. In contrast, personal radio communication equipment has to operate in an unlicensed band and has to deal with uncontrolled interference. A suitable band is the ISM (Industrial, Scientific and Medical) band at 2.45 GHz, which is globally available and provides 83.5 MHz of radio spectrum.
Bluetooth is a frequency hopping system which hops over 79 hop carriers in the ISM band with a nominal hop rate of 1600 hops/s. Bluetooth deploys a slotted channel with time slots of 625 μs. Each slot uses a different hop carrier selected according to a pseudo-random hopping scheme. Bluetooth radio communications are based on peer communications and ad-hoc networking. This means that the system is not based on a hierarchical scheme with fixed infrastructure of base stations and portable terminals that communicate with the base stations via radio signals as is common in cellular systems and WLAN systems. In peer communications, all units are equal. There is no centralized control that can for example take care of resource and connection management and provide other support services.
In ad-hoc networks, any unit can establish a connection to any other unit in range. Ad-hoc networks are usually based on peer communications. To support the cable replacement scenarios as mentioned above, data traffic over a radio interface must be very flexible. The interface must support both symmetric and asymmetric (in either direction) traffic flows and synchronous and asynchronous services. In Bluetooth, this has been realized with a very flexible slot structure without any multi-slot frames or anything alike. The time axis in Bluetooth is divided into slots, and the connected units are free to allocate the slots for transmission or reception.
Advances in wireless technology and the growing demand for more flexible applications provided by wireless communications makes it highly likely that this field will expand to provide greater information flow to and from other types of portable devices and fixed access points. More specifically, it is lil<ely that further advances in technology will provide very inexpensive radio equipment, which can be easily integrated into many devices. This will reduce the number of cables currently used and vastly expand the usage possibilities. However, large deployments of wireless applications would not have been possible without large improvements in battery technology.
Size reduction and capacity increase in batteries have tried to keep pace with the size reduction and intensified processing in the wireless terminals. However, developments towards higher data rates and mobile services that require more intense data exchange as well as more advanced user presentation (like video) will put great pressure on the power supply provided by the batteries. In wireless systems, data rate and power consumption are different parameters of the same equation. In all wireless communication systems, power management functions are present to keep the power consumption to a minimum, leaving as much standby and talk time for the user as possible. It would be desirable to provide the status of a receivers battery to a connected wireless system so as to optimize and improve the operation of the user's wireless terminal.
Wireless communication devices are attractive because of the freedom of movement they offer. However, this also means that the unit will be dependent upon batteries for power supply. Wireless applications are seen more and more as a replacement of the wired application, thus putting greater demands on transfer capacity and power consumption. Unfortunately, the progress in advanced wireless applications is moving forward more quickly than the advances in battery technology. Therefore, research is taking place to look for other energy resources like fuel cells.
In general, radio protocols include features that take into account the limited power resources in the mobile terminals. For example, in cordless and cellular phone systems, low power modes are defined that keep the units locked to a beacon or control channel at a low duty cycle when there is no voice connection. In general, these power management functions try to keep the current drawn from the battery as low as possible.
There are various examples of methods to monitor and conserve battery power in wireless devices. For instance, U.S. Pat. No. 6,459,896 issued to Liebenow et al., discloses a system and method for notifying a remote device of a low battery condition in a wireless communications system. A wireless, battery operated device may be attached to a network with a battery monitor installed in the wireless device. If the battery discharges to a predetermined power level, without corrective action being taken, the battery monitor sends notification of the power level to a remote device. This notification may be a warning to the user of the remote device that the connection to the wireless device cannot be maintained due to low power level. The warning may be a pre-recorded announcement.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,108,316 issued to Agrawal et al., discloses a method for adapting scheduling priorities to conserve battery power in mobile terminals within a wireless communication system. A scheduling method is disclosed wherein a base station receives a signal from a mobile terminal that the terminal's battery level is below a predetermined threshold. The Base station may reschedule transmissions to the mobile so that messages may have a higher probability of successful transmission before the battery power level diminished further.
Most, if not all, battery-driven equipment today has some method or apparatus of determining the battery or power source status of the equipment. The above prior art examples relate to monitoring a wireless device battery and either notifying the device holder of a low battery condition or scheduling transmissions to attempt to transmit a complete message before the device battery expires. However, either example may allow a device to send a message that may not be completed. There is therefore a need in the art for a method and apparatus in a wireless communication system to account for the power supply status of the (mobile) devices in the system. In other words, there is a need to manage traffic flows based on known power supply levels in the system.

Method and apparatus for calculating whether power level is sufficient for data transfer


The subject disclosure is directed towards a data storage service that uses hash values, such as substantially collision-free hash values, to maintain data integrity. These hash values are persisted in the form of mappings corresponding to data blocks in one or more data stores. If a data error is detected, these mappings allow the data storage service to search the one or more data stores for data blocks having matching hash values. If a data block is found that corresponds to a hash value for a corrupted or lost data block, the data storage service uses that data block to repair the corrupted or lost data block.

Data stored in memory and/or storage media, such as hard disks, is susceptible to hardware and/or software errors caused by myriad of reasons. Such errors often lead to data corruption and/or loss, which negatively affect computing device operation and thus, user productivity and monetary loss. A file, for instance, may be rendered inaccessible or unreadable due to data corruption and/or data loss. A bad hard disk sector renders any data stored therein unreadable and thus, lost. File system corruption may result in a loss of entire files. Corrupted data, typically, includes incorrect data that can no longer be used in the file. These data errors represent only a fraction of the potential data errors that cause data loss and/or corruption.
Because data errors occur in conventional data storage systems, mitigating and/or preventing such data errors is a significant aspect of maintaining data integrity. Furthermore, protecting sensitive data is often considered an information customer requirement. One common solution implements a redundancy mechanism where redundant copies of data are organized to prevent data loss. Another common solution uses backup and restore mechanisms where a data backup allows a user to recover lost and/or corrupted data. Such solutions incur substantial costs, including from offline administration, and often allow data corruption to remain undetected.

Data error detection and correction using hash values


A method for the attachment or introduction of valve or cover sheets, imprints, coatings and/or embossings in the correct position on or in components of tube pieces has several process steps. The steps include (a) recording of images of the components of several tube pieces with attached or introduced valve or cover sheets, imprints, coatings and/or embossings, (b) determining the positions of the valve or cover sheets, imprints, coatings and/or embossings relative to a reference point of the components of the tube pieces, (c) calculating the deviation of the determined position from the target position and (d) changing the positions of the valve or cover sheets and components of the tube pieces by a value that follows from the calculated deviation.

1. Field of Invention
The invention concerns a method and device for positioning of valve or cover sheets relative to components of tube pieces.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Positioning of valve or cover sheets relative to components of tube pieces is important, especially in the production of sacks and bags. Such sacks, which are often prescribed for later filling with bulk products, for example, construction materials like cement, are generally produced by transporting a section of a tube across the tube axis, attaching the end areas, applying a valve strip, for example, gluing it on, then folding the parts of the applied end areas to close the sack end and finally applying bottom cover sheets to the bottoms so formed. If required, one of the two ends can be formed in a different way and it is often not essential to provide a valve on both ends. Bottom cover sheets can be dispensed with, if the strength of a bottom is already sufficient. Such a sack is later filled through the valve or a valve. However, for quality of the sacks often not only the correct position of the valve or cover sheet is important, but also the correct position of the printing, coatings and any glue application and also protrusions or grooves that mark later folding lines. Production of such sacks from tube pieces occurs in devices that are often referred to as bottom-laying devices.
To produce the described sacks the tube pieces are transported across their sack longitudinal axis and in the plane of the tube generally horizontally in a transport device, in which they are kept unmovable relative to the transport device. For this purpose the tube pieces are often clamped in the area of their two ends between the belts of so-called double conveyor belts. The valve sheet and the bottom cover sheet are transported by other transport devices to the tube pieces, in which double conveyors or also cylinders are provided for this purpose, on whose surfaces the valve or bottom cover sheets are transported. Such cylinders can be equipped with suction devices or pincers. At the beginning of the production process all transport devices must be adjusted and tuned to each other so that the valve sheet or bottom cover sheets are placed precisely at the target positions of the components of the tube pieces to be fastened there. In this case not only does the position of the sheet and strips in the transport devices play a role, but so do the transport speeds. For tuning and adjustment on devices according to the prior art random samples are taken at the beginning of production by the machine operator and measured in order to determine the deviations of the actual position from the target positions. The individual transport devices are then adjusted according to the determined deviations in order to minimize the deviations. Adjustment work is also necessary on the devices for printing, coating or embossing!A drawback here is that the adjustment process is time-consuming and the sacks are damaged or even destroyed for control.
DE 195 02 830 A1 proposes a test method for monitoring of deviations. During an unduly large deviation of an actual position from a target position the corresponding sack is later sorted out as reject.
During use of this procedure, however, it has been found in the past that the geometric product tolerances, i.e., the deviations of the actual position or the determined positions from the target positions often vary over a wide range and considerable rejects are therefore produced. In such cases the bottom-laying device can be readjusted, but production must be interrupted again for this purpose.
The task of the present invention is therefore to propose a method and device with which production tolerances can be further minimized without additional time loss and the percentage of rejections reduced.
The task is solved by a method and a device as described herein.
According to it images of the components of several tube pieces and/or units that act on the tube pieces or the components that are applied to the tube piece are initially recorded. These images can be recorded after different production steps during sack production. In this case, for example, each sack can be imaged or only every n-th sack (n>1). One or more images of a sack can be recorded, depending on which positions are to be determined. Thus, it can be useful to record images of the grooved tube pieces before the valve sheet is glued on. After gluing on of the valve sheet another image can be recorded.
In a second step the actual positions of the valve or cover sheets, imprints, coatings and/or embossings are determined relative to a reference point of the tube piece. This reference point is roughly the protruding triangle vertex that forms, when a flat-lying tube piece, which is conveyed across a tube axis but in the plane of the tube, is attached on its ends. The attached end then lies parallel to a plane lying perpendicular to the plane of the tube and orthogonal to the tube axis. The positions in the plane of the attached end are then preferably determined while the positions in the orthogonal direction to this plane have subordinate importance. The difference between the actual positions and the corresponding target positions is then determined in order to obtain the deviations from the target positions.
If, however, a cover sheet to be glued on is imaged on this feed cylinder but no reference point of the tube piece is imaged simultaneously, the actual position must be set with reference to a recorded reference point whose position in space is known. In order to be able to position the image with reference to the tube piece, the tube piece must trigger the recording when it passes a certain location.
A value by which the valve or cover sheet, imprints, coatings and/or embossings are shifted relative to the components of the tube pieces now follows from the calculated deviation. This can occur by movement of the units that carry out the mentioned attachments or introductions. As an alternative or in addition the devices that transport the tube pieces, for example conveyor belts, can also be moved. The transport devices can also be accelerated or braked when the determined deviation lies in the transport direction of the tube pieces.
The value that follows from the determined deviation can be the determined deviation itself.
The deviation is determined on a tube piece on which, however, an influence can no longer be exerted. The position changes therefore concern the following tube pieces. A position change, however, can lead to greater deviations for the following tube pieces, i.e., reverse the desired effect.
In an advantageous variant of the invention it is therefore proposed to determine the value that follows from the determined deviation from a number of deviations, in which an average is formed from this number. An average deviation is therefore calculated by average value formation over several recorded tube pieces. The position of the corresponding unit is then changed so that the corresponding actual position is corrected by the calculated average. This correction can also occur when this average lies within the product tolerance. Not only does position of the unit refer to the spatial position relative to the tube piece, but also the phase position relative to the transport device that transports the tube pieces.
The number of tube pieces over which the average is formed is advantageously the number of tube pieces that are transported during one revolution of a belt for transport of the tube pieces.
In another advantageous variant an average deviation is not calculated from the determined deviations but a deviation function is determined. This deviation function can be dependent on time. The function value of this function at a fixed time can then be the deviation value with reference to an individual sack or individual tube piece, but the deviation values from already measured or still to be measured sacks can also be considered (sliding average formation).
By means of the setup function not only can already determined deviations be reacted to, but also future deviations predicted. This is particularly advantageous, if periodic deviations occur in the bottom-laying devices, for example, synchronism deviations of the transport belts or drive motor. In an advantageous variant the function is also a periodic function. A correction of the actual positions can then also occur periodically by means of a control and regulation unit, in which the value that follows from the determined deviation and is used to adjust the positions is the function value of the function at a specific time.
Recording of images occurs with one or more cameras that can be mounted on the machine frame of the bottom-laying devices. These images recorded by the cameras are sent to an evaluation and computer unit, which determines from the recorded images the positions of the reference point and the actual positions, calculates the deviations from the target positions and determines the average values or functions. These average values are then sent to a control unit which drives the servomechanisms with which the positions of the imprints, coatings, embossings, valve sheets and/or cover sheets can be changed for the attachment or insertion units. These servomechanisms can be motor-adjustable differentials, which can be adjusted during running production so that the correction of the positions can occur without interrupting production. Such differentials, also referred to as compensation drives, are generally used in order to change the phase positions and/or rotational speeds of two components driven by a drive relative to each other. A number of units on a bottom-laying device are often driven by means of a signal drive, which drives a so-called bevel shaft, from which a torque for a unit is taken off.
The aforementioned method according to the invention can be repeatedly conducted in continuous fashion during sack production in order to avoid rejects as fully as possible.
Additional advantageous variants of the invention are apparent from the dependent claims connected to the independent.
A practical example of the invention follows from the description and drawing.

Position control on bottom layers with image processing


A system and a method of controlling vehicle starting may include a wheel speed sensor detecting a speed of at least one wheel among wheels of the vehicle, a vehicle speed detector detecting a vehicle speed, an acceleration detector detecting a vehicle acceleration, a vertical acceleration sensor detecting a vertical acceleration of the vehicle, a wheel torque detector calculating a wheel torque, an ambient temperature sensor detecting an ambient temperature, and a controller. The controller may calculate a wheel slip amount based on the speed of at least one wheel, the vehicle speed and the vehicle acceleration, determine whether a wheel slip occurs by comparing the wheel slip amount with a first predetermined wheel slip amount, determine a road state based on the ambient temperature and the vertical acceleration of the vehicle if the wheel slip occurs, and perform a starting control according to the road state.

1. Field of Invention
The present invention relates to a system and a method of controlling starting of a vehicle. More particularly, the present invention relates to a system and a method of controlling starting of a vehicle which perform a starting control of the vehicle according to a road state.
2. Description of Related Art
Generally, a starting control means a control of an engine and a transmission which is performed when the vehicle begins to run in a stopped state. Serious problems do not occur if the vehicle is started on a normal road, but slip and locking of a wheel may often occur if the vehicle is started on a low-friction road, an icy road, or a rough road.
According to a conventional starting control, a transmission is controlled at a predetermined shift-speed by using a predetermined shift pattern and an engine torque is controlled by using a predetermined torque filter regardless of a road state. Therefore, if a conventional vehicle is started on the low-friction road, the icy road, or the rough road, a driver changes a shift mode to a manual shift mode and manipulates the shift manually, activates a snow mode, or activates or deactivates a traction control. In this case, since the driver must know a suitable manipulation to each road state, an unskilled driver is hard to start the vehicle at a specific road state. In addition, if the driver manipulates incorrectly to each road state, accidents could happen. Therefore, it is necessary to differentiate a starting control according to a road state.
The information disclosed in this Background section is only for enhancement of understanding of the general background of the invention and should not be taken as an acknowledgement or any form of suggestion that this information forms the prior art already known to a person skilled in the art.

System and method of controlling starting of vehicle


An improved vibration damping system is provided for use with window structures. The window damping system employs both air-film damping technology and viscoelastic damping materials to increase mechanical and/or acoustic vibration damping in window structures.

Windows of vehicles and aircraft typically have a relatively large surface area and, therefore, have good acoustic radiation efficiency. The resonance response of such window structures results in significant vibration and acoustic energy which typically contributes significantly to the interior noise in automobiles or other vehicles, and in aircraft cabins. Particularly for aircraft, turbulent air flow at the exterior surfaces of the fuselage skin and the exterior surfaces of the windows tends to excite these resonances.
In typical conventional aircraft, the windows have low-to-moderate inherent damping. An efficient countermeasure for the resonance response of a structure is to increase the effective damping, and in the case of windows, the optical quality of the window typically should be substantially maintained. It may be permissible to degrade the optical quality by a small amount, or perhaps for small surface areas, but in general the optical quality should not noticeably vary if damping is added to a window structure.
One conventional aircraft window is depicted in FIG. 1, generally designated by the reference numeral 10. This window structure 10 has an outer pane 12 that comprises stretched acrylic material, about 0.31 inches in thickness. A second pane 14 is also made of stretched acrylic material, and in this structure it is about 0.19 inches in thickness. Between the two panes 12 and 14 is an air gap, generally designated by the reference numeral 18. In this particular window structure the air gap is about 0.26 inches across, which is the distance that these two panes are spaced-apart from one another.
The edges of these two panes 12 and 14 are coated and sealed by silicone material, at 16. The window 10 is an example of a structure seen in some contemporary commercial passenger aircraft. In conventional windows as depicted in FIG. 1, the thicker pane 12 is the exterior pane for the window, while the thinner pane 14 faces the interior of the fuselage or cabin. In many of the conventional windows such as this, the interior pane 14 has a vent hole that tends to equalize the pressure on both sides of the pane 14.
A second type of aircraft window is depicted in FIG. 2, generally designated by the reference numeral 20. A first pane of material at 22 is made of thermal tempered glass, about 0.50 inches in thickness. This is the thicker pane, which could face (be in contact with) the environment to the exterior of the aircraft, or it could be used as the inner window structure, i.e., as the interior cabin pane. A second pane of thermal tempered glass is located at 24, and in this conventional window 20, the pane 24 is about 0.19 inches in thickness. Even though this pane 24 is less thick, it may be used as an exterior pane if desired, and it can be coated with a rain repellent coating on its outermost surface.
Instead of an air gap, a vinyl interlayer 26 separates the two glass panes 22 and 24. In this window 20, the vinyl interlayer is about 0.38 inches in thickness. There are also two urethane interlayers 28 that are about 0.02 inches in thickness. One of the urethane interlayers is between the outer pane 24 and the vinyl interlayer 26, while a second urethane interlayer is between the interior glass pane 22 and the vinyl interlayer 26. This window structure 20 also includes a conductive heating film 23 that is located on the inboard surface of the glass ply (or pane) 24.
The conventional window 20 includes other supporting structures that hold together the layers described above. A stainless steel Z-bar is positioned at 30, and tends to hold in place the outer glass pane 24 and the vinyl interlayer 26, in which a layer of sealant is disposed therebetween. The sealant layer is generally disposed at 32, and may comprise a type of sealant known as "PR 1425."
An aluminum spacer member 40 is used as a support for the entire window structure 20. A silicone gasket 34 is placed on the outer surface of the Z-bar 30 and the aluminum spacer member 40. A metal insert 42 is placed within the vinyl interlayer 26, and makes contact with the aluminum spacer member 40. An edge filler structure made of phenolic is illustrated at 44, which tends to hold the inner pane 22 in place with the spacer member 40 and the vinyl interlayer 26.
Both of the conventional windows described above do not use any particular form of air-film vibration damping. The window structure 10 of FIG. 1 has a large air gap 18 which would not be particularly useful for air-film vibration damping, while the window structure 20 of FIG. 2 has no particular air gap at all.
It has been recognized by some that adding a viscoelastic material to a window may help reduce mechanical vibration or acoustical noise in moving vehicles. For example, the automotive industry is now including a clear viscoelastic material in window construction for some automobiles. The viscoelastic material in these automotive windows is located between two layers of glass or glass-like materials that would typically be found in an automotive windshield, for example. Moreover, the automotive viscoelastic materials cover the entire area of the panes of glass-like material. Of course, such viscoelastic material needs to be optically clear, so vehicle operators can see through such window structures to drive.
In these automotive industry applications, there are two panes of window-type material, in which the outer pane is the external pane that is in contact with the atmosphere, and the inner pane is in contact with the interior of the vehicle. These two panes are spaced-apart, and within this spaced-apart distance the panes are bonded to each other via a viscoelastic material which is optically "clear". In other applications, viscoelastic materials are sometimes used between layers of metal for the purpose of vibration damping. In those situations, the optical "clarity" characteristics are not important.
It would be an improvement to add a form of vibration damping or acoustic radiation damping to the windows of vehicles and aircraft (or spacecraft for that matter). The higher the speed of the vehicle/aircraft/spacecraft, the more important that sufficient vibration damping of window structures may become.

Vibration damping apparatus for windows using viscoelastic damping materials


A control circuit for controlling a switch reluctance motor including at least one phase, the control comprising a power stage including means for variably supplying a DC voltage, and a winding stage including for each phase a phase winding having one end and another end. The winding stage further includes a high voltage bus connected to the power stage, and a low voltage bus connected to the power stage. The winding stage further includes, for each phase, a first current path comprising an upper commutating switch connected to the high voltage bus, the respective phase winding one end connected to the upper switch, and a lower commutating switch connected to the respective phase winding other end and to the low voltage bus. The winding stage also includes, for each phase, a second current path comprising a first unidirectional current flow device connected to the low voltage bus and to between the upper switch and the respective phase winding one end, and a second unidirectional current flow device connected to between the respective phase winding other end and the lower switch and connected to the high voltage bus.

The invention relates to switched reluctance "SR" Motors and, more particularly, to simplified methods of controlling the speed of switched reluctance motors and for determining which phase of an SR motor to commutate at a given moment.
Switched reluctance motors have multiple poles on both the stator and the rotor. There are windings or coils on the stator poles, and each pair of windings on diametrically opposite stator poles is connected in series to form an electrically independent phase of the SR motor. There are no windings or magnets on the rotor. However, the rotor is made of a magnetically permeable material such as, for example, a ferrous alloy.

Simplified control for running a switched reluctance motor


An image sensing apparatus comprises: a mirror which reflects light coming from a photographing optical system at a mirror down position; a mirror support member which rotatably supports the mirror; a contacting member against which the mirror support member contacts at the mirror down position; a rotatable first lever member; and a second lever member to which the contacting member is secured, and which is rotatably held by the first lever member, wherein when the mirror moves to the mirror down position, the mirror support member contacts against the contacting member, the second lever member then rotates relative to the first lever member and contacts against the first lever member, and by rotating the first lever member, the first and second lever members rotate without changing a relative positional relationship, so as to adjust a position of the contacting member with respect to the mirror support member.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an image sensing apparatus for suppressing bounds of, for example, a quick return mirror of an image sensing apparatus.
2. Description of the Related Arts
Conventionally, in a quick return mirror mechanism of, for example, a single-lens reflex camera, a main mirror and sub-mirror are rotated at high speed to positions inside and outside an optical path (photographing optical path) from a photographing optical system. In the photographing optical path, the mirrors are aligned at predetermined stop positions when they contact against stoppers arranged in a mirror box, and guide light to a viewfinder optical system and focus detection unit.
In the quick return mirror mechanism, a phenomenon in which the mirrors bound since they collide against the stoppers when the mirrors are rotated at high speed from the position outside the photographing optical path to the position inside the photographing optical path (to be referred to as a return timing hereinafter) occurs (to be referred to as a mirror bound phenomenon hereinafter). By shortening a time required to stop the mirror bound phenomenon (to be referred to as a bound suppression time), a focus detection operation can be started earlier, and a larger number of photographs per unit times can be taken in a continuous shooting mode.
For example, Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 7-036105 describes a technique which decides a moment of inertia of a mirror support member and/or a mirror member so that a bound time in which each mirror collides against the mirror support member and bounds is shorter than the bound suppression time when the mirror support member is secured.
However, in Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 7-036105, a stop position of the mirror support member changes when each mirror is aligned and adjusted. As a result of this change, since a movable range of a rotation alignment member changes, an impact absorption effect changes, thus causing bound suppression time variations.


A method for production of a bio-safe polymer sorbent for selective binding of Sr and Cs isotopes from a liquid medium for treatment of liquid radioactive wastes is provided. The sorbent with high specific sorption capacity in compliance with the requirements of bio-compatibility and safety with respect to the diverse biological objects, is produced. Also, a raw mixture used for the production of the sorbent has a small weight and a volume in comparison with the given sorbent. The structure of the sorbent is formed by self-assembly during the hydration of the dry mix of the components.

1. Field of the Invention
The invention is related to treatment of liquid radioactive wastes and, in particular, to a bio-safe polymer sorbent for selective binding of Sr and Cs isotopes from a liquid medium.
2. Description of the Related Art
Currently, there are several basic types of radionuclide sorbents in the form of a sorption matrix of inorganic salts—i.e., chelating agents such as tetraborates (RU Patent No. 2200994), acrylates (JP Patent No. 2005008753, 2005), acetates (RU Patent No. 2200994), silicates (RU Patent No. 2154317, RU Patent No. 2189650) and their zeolite modifications, strontium chelator based on the diaza-complex and silicic zeolite matrix developed by NIMS, Japan (National Institute for Materials Science) (http:**.nims.go.jp/eng/news/press/2011/07/p201107270.html), aluminum silicates, aluminum substituted alumen (RU Patent No. 2200994), orthophosphates (RU Patent No. 2200994).
The common drawback of the above mentioned compounds is the complexity of their synthesis, toxicity, and a relatively low sorptive capacity.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,995,985 describes a sorbent for the selective binding of Sr and Cs—propylene glycol alginate having, in the composition of a side chain, the polymer of gelatin, which is used as a ground for growing the bacterial culture, which is included in the sorbent. A disadvantage of the sorbent is that the distribution ratio of Sr and Cs between the phase with sorbent and the phase with deactivated water medium is 1371 and 103, respectively, and the coefficient value decreases sharply with the increase of the exposure time of the sorbent to the deactivated liquid medium, which indicates a weak binding of radio-nuclides. Another disadvantage is the lack of the specific capacity of the sorbent (i.e., a specific binding site—the larger the specific capacity, the better for the intended purpose).
Thus, the existing sorbents have insufficient sorption capacity. Moreover, they are not considered to be safe bio-compatible substances, which limits their use not only in medicine, but also in biotechnology, as well as during purification of waste waters and other polluted waters that can absorb the residues of sorbent, which is unsafe for biological environment.
Accordingly, it is desired to provide a sorbent with high and specific sorption capacity in compliance with the requirements of biocompatibility and safety with respect to the diverse biological objects. It is also desired to produce a raw mixture for sorbent production.

Bio-safe nanocomposite polymer sorbent for the selective binding of Sr and Cs isotopes from liquid medium and the raw mixture for its production


A nonvolatile ferroelectric memory device includes a plurality of memory cells connected serially between a bit line and a sensing line, a first switching unit configured to selectively connect the memory cells to the bit line in response to a first selecting signal, and a second switching unit configured to selectively connect the memory cells to the sensing line in response to a second selecting signal. The first switching unit and the second switching unit have the same structure as that of the memory cell.

1. Technical Field
The present invention generally relates to a nonvolatile ferroelectric memory device, and more specifically, to a technology of controlling a read operation of a nonvolatile memory cell using a channel resistance of the memory cell which changes with a polarization state of a nano-scaled ferroelectric material.
2. Description of the Related Art
Generally, a ferroelectric random access memory (hereinafter referred to as 'FeRAM') has attracted considerable attention as next generation memory device because it has a data processing speed as fast as a Dynamic Random Access Memory (hereinafter, referred to as 'DRAM') and preserves data even after the power is turned off.
A FeRAM having a structure similar to a DRAM includes capacitors made of a ferroelectric substance, so that it utilizes the high residual polarization characteristic of the ferroelectric substance in which data is not deleted even after an electric field is eliminated.
A unit cell of a conventional nonvolatile FeRAM device includes a switching element and a nonvolatile ferroelectric capacitor. The switching element performs a switching operation depending on a state of a word line to connect a nonvolatile ferroelectric capacitor to a bit line or disconnect the nonvolatile ferroelectric capacitor from the bit line. The nonvolatile ferroelectric capacitor is connected between a plate line and a terminal of the switching element. Here, the switching element of the conventional FeRAM is an NMOS transistor whose switching operation is controlled by a gate control signal.
FIG. 1 is a cross-sectional view of a unit cell of a conventional nonvolatile ferroelectric memory device.
A conventional 1-T (One-Transistor) FET (Field Effect Transistor) cell includes an n-type drain 2 and an n-type source 3 which are formed in a p-type substrate 1. Also, the cell includes an insulation oxide 4, a ferroelectric layer 5, and a word line 6 which are sequentially formed on a channel region between the drain 2 and the source 3.
The above-described conventional nonvolatile FeRAM device reads and writes data by using a channel resistance of the memory cell which changes with a polarization state of the ferroelectric layer 5.
Specifically, the channel region has a high resistance when the polarity of the ferroelectric layer 5 induces positive charges to the channel, and a low resistance when the polarity of the ferroelectric layer 5 induces negative charges to the channel.
However, in the conventional nonvolatile FeRAM device, when the cell is scaled down, a data retention characteristic is degraded, especially if a nonvolatile ferroelectric memory cell has been fabricated on a nanometer scale. For example, in a read mode, a read voltage may appear at adjacent cells, which can generate crosstalk noise, thereby destroying data stored in these cells. In a write mode, a write voltage may appear at an unselected cell so that data stored in unselected cells are destroyed. As a result, it is difficult to perform a random access operation.

This patent is subject to a terminal disclaimer.


In an RFID tag, a ground portion attached to a magnetic recording medium so as to be electromagnetically coupled to a metal surface inside the magnetic recording medium in a high-frequency band, a monopole portion provided on a same plane as the ground portion and inside the ground portion, and a feeding portion connected to one end of the monopole portion and mounting thereon an LSI chip are provided. The ground portion has a ring shape, the monopole portion bent along the ring shape has a length for impedance matching with the feeding portion, and this length can be adjusted by providing a folded portion or a meander portion. Alternatively, the monopole portion may be decentered from the ground portion so as to locate a vicinity of the feeding portion away from the ground portion and to bring a vicinity of the tip portion near to the ground portion, in which case an adjusting portion can be provided at the tip portion of the monopole portion.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an RFID tag, and in particular to a noncontact RFID tag for a transmission/reception to/from an RFID reader/writer.
2. Description of the Related Art
An RFID system has been already known in which a reader/writer transmits a signal of approximately 1 W via a radio line of a UHF bandwidth (860-960 MHz), and a tag receives the signal and returns a response signal to the reader/writer, thereby enabling information within the tag to be read by the reader/writer. It is stipulated that the communication frequency is 953 MHz, whereby the communication distance is approximately 3 m, while it depends on the gain of an antenna provided on the tag and the operation voltage and a peripheral environment of a chip. The tag is composed of an antenna approximately 0.1 mm thick and an LSI chip (whose size is approximately 1 mm square and 0.2 mm thick) connected to an antenna feeding point.
As shown in FIG. 18, an LSI chip 21 can be equivalently represented by a parallel circuit of an internal resistance Rc (e.g. 1200 Ω) and a capacitance Cc (e.g. 0.7 pF). An admittance Yc (=1/Rc+jwCc) of the chip 21 is indicated at a position A21 on an admittance chart of FIG. 19. On the other hand, an antenna 22 can be equivalently represented by a parallel circuit of a radiation resistance Ra (e.g. 500 Ω) and an inductance La (e.g. 40 nH).
By connecting the chip 21 to the antenna 22 in parallel, the capacitance Cc and the inductance La resonate with each other and make impedance matching at a desired resonant frequency fo (the above-mentioned 953 MHz), so that the maximum reception power at the antenna 22 is supplied to the chip 21, as seen from the following equation.
                    fo        =                  1                      2                        π                                      LC                                                          Eq        .                                                    (          1          )
As a basic antenna used for an RFID tag, a dipole antenna approximately 145 mm (λ/2) long shown in FIG. 20A can be mentioned. The impedance in this case plots a track (1) in FIG. 19. At fo=953 MHz, Ra assumes 72 Ω and the imaginary part assumes 0, which are indicated at a position A31 on the track (1).
Since the radiation resistance Ra required for the antenna of the RFID tag is as extremely high as approximately 500-2000 Ω, the radiation resistance Ra is required to be raised from 72 Ω.
It is well known that with a folded dipole antenna 32 approximately 145 mm long as shown in FIG. 20B the radiation resistance Ra is raised from 72 Ω of the dipole antenna to approximately 300 Ω-500 Ω, depending on a line width. FIG. 19 shows that the impedance of the folded dipole antenna 32 plots a track (2), and at fo=953 MHz, Ra assumes 500 Ω and the imaginary part assumes 0, which are indicated at a position A32 on the track (2).
Furthermore, by connecting an inductance portion 33 in parallel to the folded dipole antenna 32 shown in FIG. 20B as shown in FIG. 20C, the track (2) on the admittance chart of FIG. 19 is rotated counterclockwise, so that the impedance can be indicated at a position A33 on the track (3) with an imaginary component (Ba=−1/ω La) of the same absolute value as the imaginary component (Bc=ω Cc) of the admittance of the chip 21. In this case, the shorter the length of the inductance portion 33 becomes, the smaller the value of the inductance La becomes, which leads to a large imaginary component and a large rotation amount.
Since the imaginary component Bc of the chip 21 has the same magnitude as that of the imaginary component Ba of the antenna 22, they are cancelled mutually and the resonance occurs at the frequency fo. The canceling of the imaginary components is the most important element upon designing an RFID tag. Although matching between the internal resistance Rc of the chip 21 and the radiation resistance Ra of the antenna 22 is the most preferable, it is not necessary to strictly match them with each other.
On the other hand, there is proposed an anti-theft article identification label in which a tag as mentioned above is attached to a magnetic medium such as a CD and a DVD. The anti-theft article identification label comprises an anti-theft tag portion for monitoring a movement of an article, and an RFID tag portion for which read and write of information by a radio communication is enabled for performing an individual identification of an article (see patent document 1). [Patent document 1 ] Japanese Patent Application Laid-open No. 2003-141650
However, as shown in FIGS. 21A and 21B, in a CD (compact disk) or DVD 10 composed of a label surface 11, a recording surface 12, and a dielectric (polycarbonate) 13 which intervenes between the surfaces 11 and 12, the metal of the recording surface 12 occupies a large part. Therefore, if the prior art folded dipole antenna shown in FIG. 20C is used for such a large tag attached to the magnetic recording medium such as a CD or a DVD, it is disadvantageous that the metal surface reflects a radio wave, resulting in extreme deterioration of the communication distance.


In a start control system for a vehicle, a memory stores a first setting value used to control a clutch to attain a start standby state and a second setting value used to control the clutch to attain a start preparation position. A clutch controller controls the clutch to attain a start standby state based on the first setting value upon determining that the vehicle has proceeded to a start standby period and controls the clutch to attain a start preparation state, in which the distance between the clutch disks is smaller than that in the start standby state, based on the second setting value upon determining the vehicle has proceeded to a start preparation period. The clutch controller controls the clutch such that the distance between the clutch disks is smaller than that in the start preparation state and carries out control such that an engine speed approaches an engine target speed.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a technique of automatically controlling a clutch provided in a vehicle.
2. Description of the Related Art
A vehicle provided with a transmission device can perform a shift change by changing a transmission gear ratio in the transmission device. In order to perform a shift change, a clutch provided upstream of the transmission device must be disengaged so that torque from the engine is not transmitted to the transmission device.
One type of transmission device is a manual transmission device in which the operation of engaging and disengaging the clutch is manually controlled by a driver. Another type of transmission device is an automatic transmission device in which the operation of engaging and disengaging the clutch is controlled automatically.
A person driving a vehicle provided with a manual transmission device adjusts an engine speed, a vehicle acceleration, and time until the clutch engages by operating the accelerator and clutch at the time of starting the vehicle. The driver attempts to start the vehicle as he/she intends by operating the accelerator and the clutch. In other words, the driver might feel uncomfortable about abrupt acceleration and stressful about too slow acceleration. The driver performs the accelerator operation and the clutch operation so that acceleration is as smooth and comfortable as possible. In the moment that the clutch starts to engage in particular, in other words, the moment the clutch starts to transmit torque, a slight shock may occur. The driver can reduce the magnitude of the shock by carefully carrying out the engagement operation of the clutch.
As for a vehicle provided with an automatic transmission device, it is desirable that traveling proceeds as intended by a driver at the time of starting the vehicle. In addition, the shock that may occur at the moment the clutch is engaged is preferably as small as possible.
JP 61-38229 U discloses a technique using an automatic clutch device. The disclosed automatic clutch device is adapted to select among preset different clutch control patterns in response to a change ratio for an accelerator position. More specifically, a control pattern for a sudden start and climbing start is selected if the accelerator position corresponds to a prescribed value or more, and a control pattern for a normal start is selected if the position corresponds to a value less than the prescribed value so that the clutch control based on the control patterns is performed.
JP 2008-232421 A discloses a clutch controller. The clutch controller is controlled such that, if the engine is operated in a predetermined driving range, torque transmitted to the downstream side through the clutch is approximated to the engine torque.


Methods and devices for the detection of proteins secreted by the hyphal growth form of Candida species are disclosed. The disclosed devices may constitute a method for the diagnosis of acute or chronic infections, including candidiasis, caused by microorganisms of the species Candida, such as C. albicans, for example. The devices of the present invention incorporate antibodies specific to secreted aspartyl protease proteins whose expression is upregulated upon the conversion of the Candida species from the commensal to the pathogenic form. The antibodies may be used in assays to allow the diagnosis of candidal infections and disease conditions. Either monoclonal antibodies or polyclonal antibodies may be used, and in the case of the monoclonals, the specific epitopes of the SAP protein may be detected as well as the SAP protein itself.

C. albicans of the species Candida is the most common fungal pathogen of humans and one of the top five most common microorganisms isolated from blood cultures. Normally, C. albicans is a benign commensal yeast microbe colonizing mucosal surfaces in the mouth and vagina. Under opportune conditions however, C. albicans may become a virulent pathogen able to cause a variety of infections. Depending upon underlying host health and condition, C. albicans may cause infections ranging from vulvovaginal candidiasis to life-threatening disseminated candidiasis that is able to infect virtually every organ of the host.
Virulence of C. albicans is correlated with a change in morphology of the cell from a spherical form to a filamentous hyphal form. In fact, the morphogenic conversion between yeast and hyphal growth forms appears to be critical in the pathogenesis of invasive candidiasis. Virulence and morphogenic conversion are also associated with a change in the cell's transcriptional profile. For example, among the proteins specifically known to have upregulated expression upon morphogenic conversion are members of the secreted aspartyl protease family.
Among the problems associated with infection caused by Candida species such as C. albicans is a lack of an accurate diagnostic procedure to recognize the opportunistic form of the cell early on in the disease process. This problem is exacerbated by the fact that there is a broad generality of symptoms for many different infections. For example, among the three most common causes of vaginal infection (vulvovaginal candidiasis, bacterial vaginosis, and trichomoneasis) symptoms may be fairly generic in nature. In addition, concurrent infections may be responsible for symptoms, which may further complicate an accurate diagnosis. In the case of infection due to C. albicans, self-treatment is often possible, but this requires an accurate diagnosis.
What is needed in the art are accurate methods and devices for recognizing the opportunistic form of pathogens such as C. albicans. For instance, a device that could provide a self-diagnosis route for opportunistic C. albicans could be of great benefit to consumers.

Detection of secreted aspartyl proteases from


An embroidery frame transport device includes a carriage, a guide portion, a rotation shaft, and a lock release lever including a first restricting portion and a contact portion. The lock release lever is configured to rotate to a first position and a second position around the rotation shaft. The first restricting portion contacts the coupling portion to restrict an embroidery frame from moving in a removing direction by moving to the first position when the embroidery frame is moved in a mounting direction in a process of mounting the coupling portion on the carriage. The contact portion contacts the coupling portion and presses the embroidery frame in the removing direction as a result of the lock release lever moving to a third position when the lock release lever is rotated in a releasing direction while the coupling portion is mounted on the carriage.

The present disclosure relates to an embroidery frame transport device that is configured to transport an embroidery frame and to an embroidery frame.
An embroidery frame transport device is known that is used by being mounted on a sewing machine capably of embroidery sewing. The known embroidery frame transport device includes an engagement mechanism and a lock mechanism. The engagement mechanism disengagably engages a coupling portion of an embroidery frame with a carriage, and stops the coupling portion of the embroidery frame that has moved in a sliding direction at a predetermined position with a locking portion. The lock mechanism is supported on the carriage. A lock member can be switched between a press position that presses the coupling portion of the embroidery frame against the locking portion, and a release position that releases the pressing.

Embroidery frame transport device and embroidery frame


A coffee maker comprises a water reservoir, a water heating and supply device for supplying hot water to a filter device, the brewed coffee flowing from the filter device to a receptacle. The coffee maker includes a level detection circuit for detecting the water level in the reservoir, and this water level is used to control the brewing process so as to vary the flow of hot water to the filter device in dependence upon the water level in the reservoir. The water level may be used to control the power of a heating element in a continuous heater or may be used to control the operation of a pump in a pumped system.

This invention relates to coffee makers.
There are various types of coffee maker used for brewing coffee. One type includes a water reservoir which supplies a water duct which is heated by a heating element. The heating process results in the formation of steam in the duct, and the resulting pressure conditions cause hot water to be forced up a riser tube into a coffee filter. Such a system has continuous heating of water in the duct during the brewing process, and this heating system will be referred to as a "continuous heater" in the following description.
Another type of coffee maker comprises a heated water reservoir, and hot water is supplied to a coffee filter under pressure by means of a pump. Espresso coffee machines also use pumped heating systems, and generally operate with higher system pressures.
This invention is equally applicable to all these types of coffee maker.
It is known that the coffee making cycle should be adaptable to the amount of coffee to be made. In particular, an optimum range of brewing times exists which provides a balance between the concentration of the coffee and the flavour. For this reason, the greater the quantity of coffee to be made, the higher should be the flow rate, so that the overall brewing time remains within the desired boundaries.
DE 2839140 discloses a coffee maker having a continuous heater, in which a manual selector is provided for indicating the quantity of coffee to be brewed, and the selection made determines the effective power of the heating element. In a continuous heater,such as that used in DE 2839140, the power supplied by the heating element determines the flow rate up the riser pipe.


A method and a device for starting an engine system, especially of a vehicle, which make possible a start of the engine system that is as quick and comfortable as possible. In this context, it is tested for a start request whether a starter-free starting method leads to a successful start of the engine system. For the case in which the test result is negative, the engine system is started automatically using a starter.

German Patent Application No. DE 196 45 943 describes a starter unit for an internal combustion engine. It permits two different starting methods. One starting is a pulse start and the other is a direct start. Both starting methods are starter-free starting methods. In this context, the pulse start is preferably carried out on a cold engine using the energy of a flywheel, and the direct start gets to be used on a hot engine, for instance at traffic light stops. In this context, the most favorable starting method is respectively selected autonomously as a function of the temperature of the internal combustion engine.
German Patent Application No. DE 197 43 492 describes a method for starting an internal combustion engine, especially of a motor vehicle. The internal combustion engine is furnished with a piston, moving in a cylinder, which is able to run through an intake phase, a compression phase, a working (expansion) phase and an exhaust phase. In addition, a control unit is provided, by which the fuel is able to be injected directly into a combustion chamber bounded by the cylinder and the piston, either in a first operating type during a compression phase or in a second operating type during an intake phase. The control unit is designed in such a way that, for starting, the fuel is injectable, in a first injection, into that combustion chamber whose appertaining piston is currently in the working phase.

Method and device for starting an internal combustion engine


A linear current regulator is disclosed herein, which comprises a first amplifier, a current converter unit, a first resistor, a reference current source, a regulating unit, and a reference voltage circuit. The current converter unit converts voltage level of an non-inverting input end of the first amplifier into a regulated current and outputs it. The first resistor is coupled to an inverting input end and an output end of the first amplifier. The reference current source is coupled to the inverting input end of the first amplifier and the first resistor. The regulating unit is coupled to the reference current source and outputs a current signal for adjusting a reference current of the reference current source. The reference voltage circuit has at least two input ends. The reference voltage circuit has one input end coupled to a reference voltage and another input end coupled to the first amplifier.

1. Technical Field
The present disclosure relates to current regulators; in particular, to a linear current regulator.
2. Description of Related Art
Due to the energy efficiency and energy saving requirements, LED is broadly used in many fields. For instance, electric products, household appliance, cars, traffic lights, and panels which using point light source or surface light source have already become the LED application market. The function of controlling the output brightness of LED is commonly configured to the driving circuit, no matter LED is driven by boost, buck, boost/buck or linearly regulating voltage circuit. Currently, the main controlling methods of LED brightness are digital dimming and analog dimming method.
The digital dimming makes the driving current switch between a zero to a predetermine value. The PWM (pulse with modulation) is a very common method utilized to set circle and duty cycles. However, the issues of electromagnetic compatibility (EMC) and electromagnetic interference (EMI) always occur to cause the potential frequency problem.
Since the output current variation of the LED driver is proportional to the brightness thereof, the analog dimming which linearly regulates LED is easily implemented. Therefore, it's an important topic in this technical filed to find a high linear current regulator for regulating the brightness of LED.


The present disclosure relates to a slice monitor for monitoring slices programmed by a slice owner and deployed by an orchestrator in the control and data planes of a communication network. The slice monitor comprises multiple databases containing different types of information, selects the probes to monitor each slice in the control plane or the data plane and instantiates the selected probes as well as a single-slice monitoring device specific to each slice. For optimization, the slice monitor configures the content of its databases by communicating through multiple interfaces with different actors such as the slice owner, the owner of the orchestrator and the owner of itself. Using alarm handlers and a reconfiguration engine, the slice monitor together with the single-slice monitoring device can detect and compensate for possible violations in the service-level agreement by reconfiguring the slice. If the compensation fails, the slice monitor requests the orchestrator for reconfiguration.

According to the industry consensus, the 5th generation (5G) mobile technology will be standardized and deployed by 2020. Compared to the 4th generation (4G) mobile technology, the devices and applications of the next generation network will support use cases with a very high diversity in terms of performance attributes, such as ultra-reliable communications for mission critical services, eHealth, public safety, real-time vehicle control, tactile Internet and connectivity for drones. In order to support services with such a diverse range of requirements, the architecture fitting all the solutions used in the 4G network will be not scalable for the myriad of different use cases. Thus, the network slicing concept is expected to be one of the key building blocks of the future 5G network according to the recent standardization agreements. Indeed, the current understanding of the 5G architecture is that each type of device or application will have its own architectural slice, which will be configured just for their requirements. The device or application will be provided by a slice owner and hosted by an operator, and the slice owner will be a vertical or an over-the-top provider of the device or application, so that the network slicing concept will enable a service-tailored network function provisioning scheme aiming in particular at vertical industries integration.
However, once the slice is deployed, the question arises about how the functioning of the slice is assured to the slice owner. The essence of the problem is that hosting virtual slices creates multiple levels of abstraction and introduces a lot of new actors to the system. At each level and for each actor information on the aspect of performance of the slice, the actor is interested in needs to be provided. Conventional monitoring systems are inbuilt into the management plane of the device they monitor and do not provide extensible monitoring capabilities. Newer monitoring systems provide this extensibility as regards the dynamic probe creation, but lack the capability to smartly calculate the creation and placement of probes in an efficient fashion.

Systems and methods for monitoring network slices using probes


A method and computer system for determining the compatibility, for application to a smartcard, of smartcard personalization profiles, the respective smartcard personalization profiles describing respective file trees on the smartcard that are required by respective applications. The method involves determining if the sets of paths of the file trees described by the respective smartcard personalization profiles are disjoint.

A smartcard is a typically credit-card sized plastic case with an embedded microprocessor chip that offers a variety of services, varying from simple secure data storage to sophisticated cryptographic services. Smartcards are becoming increasingly used for purposes of authentication and authorization of the person carrying the card, storing information of a personalized nature, and storing values.
The smartcard life cycle always starts with a personalization. Personalization of a smartcard is the process of creating and initializing smartcard objects such as directories, files, passwords, and cryptographic keys on the smartcard for future use by one or more applications. Passwords by convention are often of numerical form, known as personal identification numbers. Files include data files of arbitrary format as well as files of standardized format such as password files, which hold one or several passwords, or cryptographic key files, which hold one or more cryptographic keys. Personalization is usually performed by the manufacturer or card-issuing authority before shipping the smartcard to the end-user. The personalization of a smartcard can be formally described by a personalization profile, which defines the required smartcard objects and attributes.
Using a single smartcard for multiple applications is desirable to the end-user, who can perform multiple functions without having to carry multiple smartcards. It is also economical because it helps to prevent waste of smartcards. Further benefits arise when multiple applications can share information on the smartcard, such as the same password, the same cryptographic key, or the user's bank account information.
However, despite the benefits use of a single smartcard for multiple applications is rare today, especially for applications supplied by multiple parties. Different applications that are not carefully coordinated may require mutually incompatible personalization profiles. Trying to apply a personalization profile for an application to a smartcard that has already been personalized for another application carries the risk of failure and loss of the smartcard if the personalization profiles are incompatible.
Prior efforts have been made to facilitate the use of multiple applications with a smartcard. Smartcard manufacturers today usually provide pre-personalized smartcards and a smartcard access layer, which hard-codes the smartcard structure expected by a pre-defined application interface. Multiple applications can access the same smartcard within the confines of a pre-defined interface and smartcard structure.
The Public Key Cryptography Standard #15 describes a standard for the format of cryptographic credentials stored on cryptographic tokens, of which smartcards are a special case. The standard specifies a limited set of smartcard objects and hard-codes the names of the objects, which need to be used by applications compatible with the standard.
For smartcards comprising a Java virtual machine, support for loading multiple Java applications on the card is available. However, the support applies to Java applications or applets running on the card and not to the smartcard objects such as directories, password files, or cryptographic keys.

Hewlett-Packard Development Company, L.P.


A computer-implemented method, system and article of manufacture for managing workloads in a computer system, comprising monitoring system conditions and operating environment events that impact on the operation of the computer system, using an n-dimensional state matrix to identify at least one state resulting from the monitored system conditions and operating environment events, and initiating an action in response to the identified state.

Modern computing systems execute a variety of requests concurrently and operate in a dynamic environment of cooperative systems, each comprising of numerous hardware components subject to failure or degradation.
The need to regulate concurrent hardware and software 'events' has led to the development of a field which may be generically termed 'Workload Management.' For the purposes of this application, "events" comprise, but are not limited to, one or more signals, semaphores, periods of time, hardware, software, business requirements, etc.
Workload management techniques focus on managing or regulating a multitude of individual yet concurrent requests in a computing system by effectively controlling resource usage within the computing system. Resources may include any component of the computing system, such as CPU (central processing unit) usage, hard disk or other storage means usage, or I/O (input/output) usage.
Workload management techniques fall short of implementing a full system regulation, as they do not manage unforeseen impacts, such as unplanned situations (e.g., a request volume surge, the exhaustion of shared resources, or external conditions like component outages) or even planned situations (e.g., systems maintenance or data load).
Many different types of system conditions or events can impact negatively the performance of requests currently executing on a computer system. These events can remain undetected for a prolonged period of time, causing a compounding negative effect on requests executing during that interval. When problematic events are detected, sometimes in an ad hoc and manual fashion, the computing system administrator may still not be able to take an appropriate course of action, and may either delay corrective action, act incorrectly or not act at all.
A typical impact of not managing for system conditions is to deliver inconsistent response times to users. For example, often systems execute in an environment of very cyclical usage over the course of any day, week, or other business cycle. If a user ran a report near standalone on a Wednesday afternoon, she may expect that same performance with many concurrent users on a Monday morning. However, based on the laws of linear systems performance, a request simply cannot deliver the same response time when running stand-alone as when it runs competing with high volumes of concurrency.
Therefore, while rule-based workload management can be effective in a controlled environment without external impacts, it fails to respond effectively when those external impacts are present.

States matrix for workload management simplification


A material harmonization disposition system is provided to harmonize disparate material databases by identifying volumes of common database inventory parts and operating as a database authorizing tool for declaring and recording common inventory parts in categorized manner for disposition.

Field of the Disclosure
The disclosure relates generally to managing electronic inventories and, more particularly, to harmonizing different inventories, such as legacy inventories.
Brief Description of Related Technology
Increasingly, as data becomes more prevalent, databases increase in size, making integration across databases quite challenging. This is particularly true for legacy databases for many corporate enterprises, which themselves rely upon numerous different databases some with partially overlapping information. Legacy databases are not only relatively mature, they are often the result of a years of merging disparate databases together, as database management systems change, as enterprises merge and acquire other enterprises requiring merging of data, etc. Conventional techniques of integrating such databases are quite challenging, in terms of logistics, as well in terms of time and resources.

Material harmonization disposition system for electronic inventories


The invention relates to a low-cost, low-weight, highly stable reference object, easy to handle, for the measurement of the errors of geometry of coordinate measuring machines and machine tools. The reference object consists of an array of probing elements in the form of rings, spheres, or flats, each representing reference points by means of their surface geometry. The probing elements are glued between two panes of a geometrically stable material, establishing a firm connection between these panes. Holes in the panes enable the measuring probe of the machine under inspection to probe the reference elements' surfaces. The resulting box-type structure of the reference object gives it the said advantages of low weight, low price, and high stability.

Two-dimensional reference objects for the inspection of coordinate measuring machines and machine tools in the form of ball and hole plates allow the errors of such machines to be measured with less effort (only one reference object is needed), thereby faster (typically in one day), and more cheaply (a reference object costs about $10000) as compared with other methods that require typically five days, require a set of costly reference measuring devices (typically $100,000 of worth in total), and are difficult to handle: usually, two different laser interferometers are needed, plus two electronic level meters, plus one straight edge, plus one granite square [1,2,3].
In spite of these obvious advantages, a break-through in the spread of such reference objects has not yet been reached because so far, commercially available ball plates were not optimised neither economically nor from the technical point of view. Better acceptance would be more likely if the reference objects were optimised insofar as they
are individually tailored to the dimensions of the machines to be inspected, PA1 have arrays of probing elements with a small raster spacing (between 20 mm and 50 mm), PA1 are of light weight so that they can be handled by one person (less than 20 kg), PA1 allow materials with low thermal expansion to be used, PA1 are not more expensive than the existing ball and hole plates which do not have all the properties above (about $10000 in 1996).
A main factor of the costs for a ball or hole plate of state-of-the-art plate design is the extensive fine machining required for the bulk material used. For example, the ball seats are milled with narrow tolerances to allow to thermally shrink the balls into their matching seats (holes). Plates from rolled steel additionally require annealing for dimensional stability and surface treatments for corrosion protection.
Reducing weight by applying bores in the plate material turned out to weaken the structure in certain directions (e.g. low stiffness in the diagonals reduced the accuracy with which squareness is represented). The milling of pockets leaving a thin wall in the plate's center plane and furnishing ribs for the stability against bending turned out to be satisfactory for smaller plates but significantly increased their price. Plates bigger than 0.8 m.times.0.8 m with holes or pockets turned out to bend excessively (more than 0.3 mm are not allowed to keep cosine errors negligible). No state-of-the-art design allowed plates bigger than 0.5 m.times.0.5 m to be handled by only one person because of their weight.

Reference object for coordinate measuring machines and machine tools


A card and blister package for small articles of commerce has a clear plastic blister piece, a card and a retainer piece. The blister walls form an article-receiving cavity and a plurality of upwardly projecting spaced-apart male prongs extending along the upper edge of the blister piece. A generally rectangular card has shaped perforations for receiving there-through the prongs of the blister piece and the retainer comprises a generally rectangular ring having a plurality of sockets for receiving the prongs of the blister piece, whereby the prongs can be engaged through the perforations, snapped into engagement with the ring sockets, and UV-activated adhesive on the engaged parts illuminated by UV light so as to bond to the ring to the blister to secure the package.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to apparatus and methods for packaging articles of commerce in card-and-blister packages.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Card and blister packages are widely used for packaging small articles of commerce. Typically such a package will have a clear plastic blister piece, i.e. an open topped enclosure having a flange that is bonded to the flat surface of a generally rectangular card commonly using ultrasonic or RF techniques. In spite of its popularity there remain some shortcomings with such packages. For example they are vulnerable to tampering since the card and blister interface can be defeated by pealing back the blister flange from the card or otherwise separating the two components.


The innovation relates to a system and/or methodology for the reduction of pilot power transmission in mobile communication systems. More specifically, the innovation relates to varying the transmit power of a pilot signal to increase the power available to other services, such as customer voice and data communication. In addition, reducing the transmit power of the pilot signal can reduce or militate against interference with the pilot signals of neighboring or nearby cells.

Optimization of network coverage and service quality are constant goals for wireless network operators. Superior coverage and service quality results in enhanced user experiences, greater throughput, and ultimately increased revenue. A couple ways to achieve superior coverage and service quality are through increasing the power available to customer voice and data communication services, and reducing the interference between neighboring cells.
Mobile communication systems typically require a pilot signal (also known as a beacon signal) to be transmitted from a base station in order to provide information to mobile user devices. The information is usually related to the expected signal strength a mobile device might receive if served by the base station, although other system information can be derived from the pilot signal as well.
One example communications standard, WCDMA/UMTS, transmits what is known as a Common Pilot Channel (CPICH). The pilot channel is transmitted at full power, with no provision for power control, typically, 6% of the base station power is allocated to the CPICH. This represents a large fraction of downlink transmit power that is not available for to support customer voice or data traffic. Unfortunately, current communication standards do not provide for any systems or methodologies for reducing the transmit power required for pilot or beacon signals.

Method for the reduction of pilot power transmission in mobile communication systems


A blast furnace includes: a blast furnace body; raw material charging means for charging raw material into the blast furnace body; hot air blowing means for blowing hot air into the blast furnace body; a drying apparatus etc. for evaporating moisture in low-grade coal; a dry distillation apparatus etc. for carbonizing dried coal; a cooling apparatus etc. for cooling carbonized coal; a pulverization apparatus etc. for pulverizing the carbonized coal cooled by the cooling apparatus; a storage tank for storing powdered coal; a nitrogen gas supply source, a conveyor line and a cyclone separator etc. for conveying the powdered coal pulverized by the pulverization apparatus to the inside of the storage tank by generating a gas flow with the nitrogen gas; and an injection lance etc. for feeding the powdered coal inside the storage tank to hot air that is blown into the blast furnace body.

Blast furnace installations are designed to be capable of manufacturing pig iron from iron ore by charging raw materials such as iron ore, limestone, and coal into the blast furnace main unit through the top and blowing hot air and pulverized coal (PCI coal) as auxiliary fuel through the tuyeres on the lower lateral side.


A cryopump system includes a cryopump having a first cooling stage and a second cooling stage connected to the first cooling stage, the second cooling stage including a gas adsorber having a hydrogen adsorbing capacity of at least about 2 standard liters. The thermal storage capacity of the second cooling stage is sufficient to enable control of hydrogen pressure within the cryopump to satisfy ignition safety limits and limits on hydrogen flow rate in an exhaust line to be within limits of an abatement system to be coupled to the cryopump, upon warming of the second cooling stage during regeneration of up to a fully loaded cryopump.

Cryopump systems currently used on semiconductor manufacturing tools and other applications are often required to cryopump a significant quantity of hydrogen gas (H2). This H2 gas emanates from manufacturing processes where hydrogen gas is used as a process gas (e.g., degas chambers) or where H2 gas is released as a process byproduct (e.g., ion implantation).
Hydrogen gas (H2) combined with oxygen within a prescribed pressure range and concentration level can burn or explode, and therefore the safe removal of hydrogen gas must be considered.

Cryopump with controlled hydrogen gas release


In a front air-flow streamlining structure of an automotive vehicle comprising a cover front portion of an under cover of a vehicle front portion and an air dam provided at a front bumper, a deflector is provided between the air dam and a front wheel house to be spaced rearward apart from the air dam, to project downward, and to extend in a vehicle width direction, an outward end portion, in the vehicle width direction, of the air dam is provided substantially continuously to the deflector, a pocket portion enclosed by the cover front portion, the air dam, and the deflector is provided such that an inward side, in the vehicle width direction, thereof opens, and a traveling-air intake portion which opens so as to take in traveling air toward the pocket portion is provided at the air dam.

The present invention relates to a front air-flow streamlining structure of an automotive vehicle, which is configured to streamline traveling air which flows (comes) in below a vehicle floor from a vehicle front side of the automotive vehicle, for example.
An automotive vehicle receives air resistance which is caused by air's (traveling air's) collision, friction or the like during vehicle traveling. Since this air resistance greatly influences the power performance and the fuel-economy performance of the automotive vehicle, it has been desired to reduce the air resistance by means of a vehicle-body shape, an air-flow streamlining plate or the like.
The air resistance during the vehicle traveling which influences the performances of the automotive vehicle includes one which is caused by turbulence of the side-face air flowing down along a vehicle's side face. This air resistance is generated when the traveling air flows in below a floor of the automotive vehicle and this below-floor traveling air which flows into a front wheel house is disturbed by the rotation of a front wheel and then exhausted toward a vehicle side.
Herein, an example of technologies of restraining the below-floor traveling air from flowing into the front wheel house is disclosed in Japanese Utility-Model Laid-Open Publication No. S63-139182, for example. In a lower structure of an automotive vehicle of this publication document, the flowing direction of the below-floor traveling air is changed downward by a shut-off plate which is provided near a front end of the front wheel house to extend downward, thereby restraining the below-floor traveling air from flowing into the front wheel house.
Further, in a front lower structure of a vehicle disclosed in Japanese Patent Laid-Open Publication No. 2002-308154, the flowing direction of the below-floor traveling air is changed downward by exhausting the traveling air downward from an ejection port through a nozzle from an air introduction port provided at a front bumper, thereby restraining the below-floor traveling air from flowing into the front wheel house.
Meanwhile, a technology of obtaining a down force of vehicle front portion by streamlining the below-floor traveling air, in addition to reducing the air resistance during the vehicle traveling by restraining the below-floor traveling air from flowing into the front wheel house, has been also proposed.
A front air-flow streamlining structure of a vehicle disclosed in Japanese Patent Laid-Open Publication No. 2006-219019, for example, comprises a pocket portion which is enclosed by an air dam extending along a lower edge of a front bumper provided forward of the front wheel house and a deflector extending in a vehicle width direction at a front end of the front wheel house. This pocket portion is configured such that an inward side, in the vehicle width direction, thereof opens, and formed substantially in a fan shape in the bottom view.
Since the traveling air may not easily flow into the pocket portion, the pressure of the inside of the pocket portion becomes smaller than that of the circumference. Accordingly, in the structure of the above-described patent publication, the area having a relatively negative pressure is generated in the pocket portion, so that a strong downward-pressing force, i.e., a strong down force, can be generated at the vehicle front portion.
However, while the front air-flow streamlining structure of the vehicle disclosed in the above-described patent publication is useful to the automotive vehicle having high sporty performances including a vehicle's design, it has a problem in that a wagon type of vehicle having a box-shaped or curve-shaped vehicle's rear portion may not easily balance a (dynamic) lift generated at the vehicle front portion with another (dynamic) lift generated at the vehicle's rear portion. Therefore, there is a concern for this front air-flow streamlining structure that the position of such a wagon type of vehicle may change such that its front goes down, so that the maneuverability and stability may deteriorate, or that the air resistance may increase improperly due to an excessive down force.

Front air-flow streamlining structure of automotive vehicle


The invention relates to a folding suspended ballast guide for a crane having suspended ballast comprising two lattice pieces pivotably connected to one another, wherein in an inwardly pivoted position of the lattice pieces, one of the lattice pieces is at least partially arrangeable in the other lattice piece. The invention is further directed to a crane having a corresponding suspended ballast guide.

The invention relates to a folding suspended ballast guide for a crane having suspended ballast comprising two lattice pieces pivotably connected to one another, wherein in an inwardly pivoted position of the lattice pieces, one of the lattice pieces is at least partially arrangeable in the other lattice piece. The invention is further directed to a crane having a corresponding suspended ballast guide.
With folding suspended ballast guides in accordance with the category, it is known to pivotably couple two lattice pieces or other part sections with one another such that suspended ballast held by the suspended ballast guide can be held at different distances from the crane in dependence on the pivot angle of the lattice pieces and such that different ballast torques can thereby be introduced into the crane.
It is problematic with the suspended ballast guides known from the prior art that they only have a limited pivot angle and the suspended ballast radii and ballast torques that can be set by means of them are thus likewise limited to a restricted range. It can hereby occur that a required ballast torque cannot be achieved by means of a ballast weight placed on and that a laborious and time-consuming reballasting therefore becomes necessary.

Folding suspended ballast guide for a crane and crane having a folding suspended ballast guide