In some implementations, a computing device can detect changes in map data based on device activity data received from a mobile device. For example, the device activity data can include location data that describes locations where the mobile devices have traveled, direction, speed, and/or other data. Based on the received location data, the computing device can determine whether stored map data for a particular area accurately reflects the real world characteristics of the particular area. The device activity data can identify user behavior with respect to the mobile device. For example, the characteristics of a real world geographic area may influence how users use their mobile devices (e.g., which applications are used) in the geographic area. The computing device can analyze the user behavior identified in the device activity data to detect changes in the real world characteristics of the geographic area.

Many users of mobile devices use software-based mapping applications executing on the mobile devices to navigate the physical world. For example, mobile device users may often use a mapping application to get driving directions from a starting location to a destination location. A mapping application often generates a virtual representation (e.g., a map) of a physical location or geographic area when providing navigation instructions to the user. Such a virtual representation or display is generated using a large amount of map data relating to and/or representing, for example, roads, speed limits, lanes, addresses, points of interest, landmarks, buildings, or the like.
Over time, the real world may change, and the map data may no longer accurately represent the real world. For example, a road may undergo construction and be reconfigured such that its physical state deviates considerably from its representation in the map data. Similarly, user activity in the real world may change. For example, users at a physical location may activate different mobile applications or access different wireless networks than previously identified at a given physical location. Detecting these changes and/or differences between the map data and the real world can be difficult, burdensome, time consuming, and expensive.

Active change detection for geospatial entities using trend analysis


A double-blade peeler includes two elongated, arched handles joined at one end by a pin and retained in an open position by a spring, and two cutter blades respectively fastened to the handles on an inner side by respective threaded rods. The tension of the cutter blade is adjusted by turning the respective threaded rod in either direction.

The present invention relates to a double-blade peeler which comprises two handles joined at one end and biased by a spring therebetween, and two cutter blades, each blade being respectively fastened to a handle on an inner side thereof.
Various fruits and vegetables must be properly peeled before eating or cooking. People may use a knife to remove the outer skin of a fruit or vegetable. While cutting, the fingers may be injured by the sharp edge of the knife. Further, using a knife to peel a fruit or the like cannot remove the outer skin in a uniform thickness. FIG. 1 shows a prior art peeler for peeling fruits and vegetables which eliminates the aforesaid problems. The peeler comprises a handle having a forked front end formed into two supports, and a cutter blade having two projecting portions on two opposite ends thereof, respectively disposed within a respective hole formed in each support. The outer skin of a fruit or the like is removed by moving the middle cutting edge of the cutter blade over the fruit or the like. Because the peeler has only one cutter blade, the peeling speed is limited.

No. 3, Alley 55, Lane 352, Chye Dong Load, Ah Yi Li


Various systems for providing secure signatures based on post-quantum computing are provided. The systems allow may one-time signatures (“OTS”) to be based on the same public key. The systems provide for efficient use of OTS signatures with blockchains. The systems provide for rapid verification of signatures. The systems provide for caching for Winternitz-based OTS schemes and for use of short checksum.

The bitcoin system was developed to allow electronic cash to be transferred directly from one party to another without going through a financial institution, as described in the white paper entitled "Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System" by Satoshi Nakamoto. A bitcoin (e.g., an electronic coin) is represented by a chain of transactions that transfers ownership from one party to another party. To transfer ownership of a bitcoin, a new transaction is generated and added to a stack of transactions in a block. The new transaction, which includes the public key of the new owner, is digitally signed by the owner with the owner's private key to transfer ownership to the new owner, as represented by the new owner public key. The signing by the owner of the bitcoin is an authorization by the owner to transfer ownership of the bitcoin to the new owner via the new transaction. Once the block is full, the block is "capped" with a block header that is a hash digest of all the transaction identifiers within the block. The block header is recorded as the first transaction in the next block in the chain, creating a mathematical hierarchy called a "blockchain." To verify the current owner, the blockchain of transactions can be followed to verify each transaction from the first transaction to the last transaction. The new owner need only have the private key that matches the public key of the transaction that transferred the bitcoin. The blockchain creates a mathematical proof of ownership in an entity represented by a security identity (e.g., a public key), which in the case of the bitcoin system is pseudo-anonymous.
To ensure that a previous owner of a bitcoin did not double-spend the bitcoin (i.e., transfer ownership of the same bitcoin to two parties), the bitcoin system maintains a distributed ledger of transactions. With the distributed ledger, a ledger of all the transactions for a bitcoin is stored redundantly at multiple nodes (i.e., computers) of a blockchain network. The ledger at each node is stored as a blockchain. In a blockchain, the transactions are stored in the order that the transactions are received by the nodes. Each node in the blockchain network has a complete replica of the entire blockchain. The bitcoin system also implements techniques to ensure that each node will store the identical blockchain, even though nodes may receive transactions in different orderings. To verify that the transactions in a ledger stored at a node are correct, the blocks in the blockchain can be accessed from oldest to newest, generating a new hash of the block and comparing the new hash to the hash generated when the block was created. If the hashes are the same, then the transactions in the block are verified. The bitcoin system also implements techniques to ensure that it would be infeasible to change a transaction and regenerate the blockchain by employing a computationally expensive technique to generate a nonce that is added to the block when it is created. A bitcoin ledger is sometimes referred to as an Unspent Transaction Output ("UTXO") set because it tracks the output of all transactions that have not yet been spent.
Although the bitcoin system has been very successful, it is limited to transactions in bitcoins or other cryptocurrencies. Efforts are currently underway to use blockchains to support transactions of any type, such as those relating to the sale of vehicles, sale of financial derivatives, sale of stock, payments on contracts, and so on. Such transactions use identity tokens, which are also referred to as digital bearer bonds, to uniquely identify something that can be owned or can own other things. An identity token for a physical or digital asset is generated using a cryptographic one-way hash of information that uniquely identifies the asset. Tokens also have an owner that uses an additional public/private key pair. The owner public key is set as the token owner identity, and when performing actions against tokens, ownership proof is established by providing a signature generated by the owner private key and validated against the public key listed as the owner of the token. A person can be uniquely identified, for example, using a combination of a user name, social security number, and biometric (e.g., fingerprint). A product (e.g., refrigerator) can be uniquely identified, for example, using the name of its manufacturer and its serial number. The identity tokens for each would be a cryptographic one-way hash of such combinations. The identity token for an entity (e.g., person or company) may be the public key of a public/private key pair, where the private key is held by the entity. Identity tokens can be used to identify people, institutions, commodities, contracts, computer code, equities, derivatives, bonds, insurance, loans, documents, and so on. Identity tokens can also be used to identify collections of assets. An identity token for a collection may be a cryptographic one-way hash of the digital tokens of the assets in the collection. The creation of an identity token for an asset in a blockchain establishes provenance of the asset, and the identity token can be used in transactions (e.g., buying, selling, insuring) involving the asset stored in a blockchain, creating a full audit trail of the transactions.
To record a simple transaction in a blockchain, each party and asset involved with the transaction needs an account that is identified by a digital token. For example, when one person wants to transfer a car to another person, the current owner and next owner create accounts, and the current owner also creates an account that is uniquely identified by the car's vehicle identification number. The account for the car identifies the current owner. The current owner creates a transaction against the account for the car that indicates that the transaction is a transfer of ownership, indicates the public keys (i.e., identity tokens) of the current owner and the next owner, and indicates the identity token of the car. The transaction is signed by the private key of the current owner, and the transaction is evidence that the next owner is now the current owner.
To enable more complex transactions than bitcoin can support, some systems use "smart contracts." A smart contract is computer code that implements transactions of a contract. The computer code may be executed in a secure platform (e.g., an Ethereum platform, which provides a virtual machine) that supports recording transactions in blockchains. In addition, the smart contract itself is recorded as a transaction in the blockchain using an identity token that is a hash (i.e., identity token) of the computer code so that the computer code that is executed can be authenticated. When deployed, a constructor of the smart contract executes, initializing the smart contract and its state. The state of a smart contract is stored persistently in the blockchain. When a transaction is recorded against a smart contract, a message is sent to the smart contract, and the computer code of the smart contract executes to implement the transaction (e.g., debit a certain amount from the balance of an account). The computer code ensures that all the terms of the contract are complied with before the transaction is recorded in the blockchain. For example, a smart contract may support the sale of an asset. The inputs to a smart contract to sell a car may be the identity tokens of the seller, the buyer, and the car and the sale price in U.S. dollars. The computer code ensures that the seller is the current owner of the car and that the buyer has sufficient funds in their account. The computer code then records a transaction that transfers the ownership of the car to the buyer and a transaction that transfers the sale price from the buyer's account to the seller's account. If the seller's account is in U.S. dollars and the buyer's account is in Canadian dollars, the computer code may retrieve a currency exchange rate, determine how many Canadian dollars the seller's account should be debited, and record the exchange rate. If either transaction is not successful, neither transaction is recorded.
When a message is sent to a smart contract to record a transaction, the message is sent to each node that maintains a replica of the blockchain. Each node executes the computer code of the smart contract to implement the transaction. For example, if 100 nodes each maintain a replica of a blockchain, then the computer code executes at each of the 100 nodes. When a node completes execution of the computer code, the result of the transaction is recorded in the blockchain. The nodes employ a consensus algorithm to decide which transactions to keep and which transactions to discard. Although the execution of the computer code at each node helps ensure the authenticity of the blockchain, it requires large amounts of computer resources to support such redundant execution of computer code.
Although blockchains can effectively store transactions, the large amount of computer resources, such as storage and computational power, needed to maintain all the replicas of the blockchain can be problematic. To overcome this problem, some systems for storing transactions do not use blockchains, but rather have each party to a transaction maintain its own copy of the transaction. One such system is the Corda system developed by R3, Ltd., which provides a decentralized distributed ledger platform in which each participant in the platform has a node (e.g., computer system) that maintains its portion of the distributed ledger. When parties agree on the terms of a transaction, a party submits the transaction to a notary, which is a trusted node (or cluster of nodes), for notarization. The notary maintains an UTXO database of unspent transaction outputs. When a transaction is received, the notary checks the inputs to the transaction against the UTXO database to ensure that the outputs that the inputs reference have not been spent. If the inputs have not been spent, the notary updates the UTXO database to indicate that the referenced outputs have been spent, notarizes the transaction (e.g., by signing the transaction or a transaction identifier with a public key of the notary), and sends the notarization to the party that submitted the transaction for notarization. When the party receives the notarization, the party stores the notarization and provides the notarization to the counterparties.
An important part of any distributed ledger system is the public key cryptographic techniques used to sign the transactions. Most current public key cryptographic techniques are considered to be secure in the sense that the complexity of algorithms to break the public key cryptographic techniques, given the current state of the art in computer technology, is be exponential time. However, because of recent considerable advances in quantum computing technology, it is thought that many of these public key cryptographic techniques could be broken in polynomial time. For example, implementations of Shor's algorithm could factor an integer of size n in polynomial time, which would break Rivest-Shamir-Adleman ("RSA") encryption. As another example, implementation of Shor's algorithm could efficiently solve discrete logarithms, which would break elliptical curve encryption techniques such as Elliptical Curve Digital Signature Algorithm ("ECDSA") encryption.
The impact of breaking public key cryptography would be disastrous for the computing industry because the public key infrastructure would be broken. Public distributed ledgers would be particularly vulnerable because (a) information is usually public (e.g., Bitcoin, Ethereum) allowing offline attacks, (b) in active, unused, or lost keys might hold assets or coins for years, and (c) transaction might not go through or be delayed for various reasons leaving a window for attacks even when hashed public key (i.e., addresses) are used, and (d) there is economic incentive for hackers to get access in distributed ledger accounts. The Bitcoin system attempts to mitigate this vulnerability by not exposing a public key corresponding to the private key used to sign a transaction until the output of that transaction is spent. However, once the output is spent, the public key is publicly available and the private key could be generated by an implementation of Shor's algorithm. To further mitigate the risk that public keys, once publicly available, could be used to generate the corresponding private keys, modern Bitcoin clients, such as wallet systems, generate a new private/public key pair and a corresponding new address for every transaction. Nevertheless, older Bitcoin clients and some mining pools still reuse addresses. Another risk to the Bitcoin system is that prior to 2012, addresses were simply public keys, rather than hashes of the public keys. As a result, pre-2012 transactions with unspent output (or even transactions with spent output) can have their corresponding private keys generated by an implementation of Shor's algorithm. Another risk to the Bitcoin system occurs when a new transaction, which includes the public key corresponding to the address of the input transaction, is broadcast across the Bitcoin network for insertion into a block of Bitcoin blockchain. A recipient of the new transaction (e.g., a miner) could generate the private key from the public key. The recipient could then quickly create an alternate transaction that includes the signature of the same input transaction generated with the private key and broadcast the alternate transaction in hopes that the alternate transaction is added to the Bitcoin blockchain instead of the new transaction.
To address this concern, post-quantum cryptography is dealing with the design and evaluation of techniques that will survive the quantum computing security threat. Many of these techniques employ one-time signature ("OTS") schemes because they are thought to be unbreakable even with quantum computing. One OTS scheme is Lam port OTS, which has many variations. (See, Lamport, L., "Constructing Digital Signatures for a One Way Function," SRI CLS-98, Oct. 18, 1979.) According to a simple variation, to sign a message, Lamport OTS generates an OTS key pair that includes an OTS private key and an OTS public key. The OTS private key (or OTS signature key) includes a private key pair for each bit of the message to be encrypted. Each private key pair includes a pair of random numbers as private keys of the private key pair. So, for example, if the message is 256 bits, the OTS private key includes 256 private key pairs. Lamport OTS then generates an OTS public key (OTS verification key), which includes a public key pair for each private key pair. Each public key pair includes a hash of each of the two private keys of the corresponding private key pair. The OTS public key (or hash of the OTS public key) is then published. To sign the message, the signer generates an OTS signature that includes one of the two private keys of each private key pair based on the value of the corresponding bit of the message, for example, selecting the first private key of the private key pair if the bit value is 0 and the second private key of the private key pair if the bit value is 1. Continuing with the example, the OTS signature includes 256 private keys. To verify the OTS signature of a message, the verifier generates a hash of each of the 256 private keys of the OTS signature, which should correspond to 256 of the public keys, depending on the value of the message. The verifier compares the 256 hashes of the private keys to the 256 public keys of the OTS public key based on the bit value of the message. If they all match, then the signature is verified.
Another OTS scheme is the Winternitz OTS ("WOTS"), which also has many variations. (See, Merkle, R. C., "A Certified Digital Signature," Advances in Cryptology-CRYPTO-89, 1989, pp. 218-238.) According to one simple variation, to sign a message, WOTS generates one private key for each bit of the message. WOTS then generates a WOTS public key that includes a public key for each private key that is a double hash of the private key. To sign a message, the signer generates a WOTS signature that includes the private key or a hash of the private key based on the value of the corresponding bit of the message. To verify the signature, the verifier regenerates the WOTS public key by hashing each value of the signature once or twice based on the value of the corresponding bit of the message. If the regenerated WOTS public key matches the published WOTS public key, the signature is verified. Implementations of WOTS typically sign groups of four bits at a time using a chain of 16 hashes to represent each of the 16 possible values of the group.

Blockchain post-quantum signature scheme


An image capturing device may capture image data for processing to form an image. The image capturing device may perform a hashing procedure on the image data, wherein performing the hashing procedure generates a hash value of the image data. The image capturing device may provide, to an image authentication device, the hash value of the image data, wherein the hash value of the image data is to be used by the image authentication device to validate the image based on a request to authenticate the image received from a receiving device. The image capturing device may process the image data to form the image for display to a user. The image capturing device may provide, after providing the hash value of the image data to the image authentication device, the image for display to the user.

When a device captures image data for processing to form an image, the device may provide the image for display to a user. The user may be able to modify the image via the user device by adding elements that were not in the image as captured, removing elements from the image as captured, changing elements of the image as captured, and/or the like. The user device may provide the modified image to another user and/or another device without indicating whether the modified image has been modified.

Systems and methods for authenticating an image


A method for operating an inverter-based resource includes monitoring a current magnitude in the inverter-based resource. The method also includes monitoring a voltage magnitude in the inverter-based resource. Further, the method includes comparing the current magnitude in the inverter-based resource to a primary current threshold. Moreover, the method includes comparing the voltage magnitude in the inverter-based resource to a voltage threshold. As such, the method also includes disabling switching of the switching elements of the power converter when the current magnitude increases above the primary current threshold and the voltage magnitude decreases below the voltage threshold to bypass the switching elements of the power converter until excess energy in the inverter-based resource is dissipated.

Wind turbines have received increased attention as a renewable energy source. Wind turbines use the wind to generate electricity. The wind turns multiple blades connected to a rotor. The spin of the blades caused by the wind spins a shaft of the rotor, which connects to a generator that generates electricity. Certain wind turbines include a dual-fed asynchronous generator (DFAG) (also commonly referred to as a doubly-fed induction generator (DFIG)) to convert wind energy into electrical power suitable for output to an electrical grid. DFAGs are typically connected to a converter that regulates the flow of electrical power between the DFAG and the grid. More particularly, the converter allows the wind turbine to output electrical power at the grid frequency regardless of the rotational speed of the wind turbine blades.
A typical DFAG system includes a wind driven DFAG having a rotor and a stator. The stator of the DFAG is coupled to the electrical grid through a stator bus. A power converter is used to couple the rotor of the DFAG to the electrical grid. The power converter can be a two-stage power converter including both a rotor-side converter and a line-side converter. The rotor-side converter can receive alternating current (AC) power from the rotor via a rotor bus and can convert the AC power to a DC power. The line-side converter can then convert the DC power to AC power having a suitable output frequency, such as the grid frequency. The AC power is provided to the electrical grid via a line bus. An auxiliary power feed can be coupled to the line bus to provide power for components used in the wind turbine system, such as fans, pumps, motors, and other components of the wind turbine system.
Inverter-based resources (IBRs), such as wind turbines, solar inverters, or energy storage systems, that include power converters, are generally sensitive to current flow beyond their design rating. Excessive currents can flow in these power converters if sudden imbalances in the energy input/output of their surrounding electric system occur and stored energy in the system has a path for dissipating through the converter. Such sudden energy imbalances may be due to inception of various faults and/or clearing of such faults. This can result in excessive energy in the power converter, which can cause damage to the converter. For example, in a DFAG, a grid fault that causes a sudden drop in voltage results in a sudden drop in the power/energy that can be exported from the system. This event results in an increase in the voltages induced on the rotor circuit of the DFAG due to the stored energy within the magnetic components of the generator, which can lead to high currents flowing in the converter.
Another example that may result in high currents flowing in a power converter involves a series-compensated transmission system. During grid faults, the high short-circuit currents flowing from the grid through the series capacitor bank results in a large energy buildup in the series capacitor. Upon clearing of this fault, the energy stored within the series capacitor dissipates through the interconnected transmission system, which may include nearby IBRs. This sudden discharge of energy from the series capacitor bank may manifest as high currents and/or voltages in nearby IBRs. For this event, the IBR should avoid tripping, take control actions to try and maintain the voltage/current within the equipment capability, and damp the resonance resulting from the series-compensated system.
Accordingly, a previous method of managing high currents in the power converter of an IBR is provided in U.S. application Ser. No. 15/604,921 filed on May 25, 2017 entitled "Methods for Operating Electrical Power Systems." The disclosed method involves detecting the high currents in a converter, comparing to a threshold, and deciding to turn off gating of the converter if the detected currents exceed a threshold. This method works well when the amount of energy in the system dissipates quickly and gating can be resumed quickly upon dissipation of the stored energy (for example, through a dynamic brake circuit).
In some cases, however, where a resonance is present in the system (such as a resonance due to a series capacitor bank) or the source of energy causing the high currents is large relative to the converter dissipation capability, it may be beneficial to continue gating despite high currents in the converter. This benefit is due to the converter ability to mitigate the high voltages and/or currents through control action, which would otherwise not be possible if gating is disabled.
Accordingly, the present disclosure is directed to systems and methods for distinguishing between events causing high currents that can successfully be managed by disabling gating versus events that are best managed by continuing gating to attempt mitigation of high current levels via control action.

Methods for operating an inverter-based resource connected to a series-compensated transmission system


A dispensing apparatus for determining a location of a container into which at least one of a liquid and ice is dispensed from a refrigerator. A sensor is configured to sense a position of the container, without contacting the container, and to send a first signal indicating the sensed position. A microprocessor is configured to receive the first signal and to send a second signal based on the first signal. An indicator is configured to receive the second signal and to indicate the position of the container.

The described technology relates to a dispensing apparatus, such as a water and/or ice dispensing apparatus for a refrigerator, and a corresponding method.
It is known to provide a refrigerator with a dispenser that dispenses water and ice. One type of known refrigerator is a so-called side-by-side refrigerator that includes a freezer section disposed to the side of a fresh food section. In the known side-by-side refrigerator, the water from a source exterior to the refrigerator is dispensed by a dispenser disposed in a door of the freezer section. The dispenser also dispenses the ice previously formed and held in the freezer section.
Another type of known refrigerator is a so-called bottom freezer or bottom mount freezer refrigerator, which includes a bottom freezer section disposed below a top fresh food section. In a manner similar to that of the known side-by-side refrigerator, in the known bottom freezer refrigerator the water is dispensed by a dispenser disposed in a door of the fresh food section. Again, the dispenser dispenses the ice previously held in the freezer section.
Each of these known dispensers includes a dispenser opening disposed in the door of the freezer or fresh food section, which receives a container (e.g., a drinking glass) suitable for receiving and holding the water and ice. The known dispenser includes a paddle or cradle, with which the container must be brought into contact to dispense the water and ice. The shape, location and other characteristics of the cradle serve as visual and physical cues of a position at which the water and ice is to be dispensed.

Dispensing apparatus and method for determining the location of a container


A magnetic-polymer particle, useful in immunoassay techniques and various other biological/medical applications is produced by coprecipitation of transition metals in the presence of a polymer having available coordination sites. These particles are capable of forming stable aqueous suspensions and may be easily resuspended after agglomeration.

This invention pertains to particles comprised of certain polymers in combination with magnetic metals, to compositions including such particles, and to methods of making and using such particles and compositions. More particularly, this invention pertains to such particles in which the polymer has a biochemical function.
Biologically active magnetic particles may find use in a variety of preparative and diagnostic techniques. Among these is high gradient magnetic separation (HGMS) which uses a magnetic field to separate magnetic particles from suspension. In instances where these particles are attached to biological materials of interest (e.g. cells, drugs), the material of interest may thereby be separated from other materials not bound to magnetic particles.
Several properties are important if a magnetic particles is to be useful in biological and diagnostic systems. First, the particle must possess the necessary biological activity, affinity, or reactive nature, by which it will perform its function. Second, the particles must be suspendable in an aqueous medium for delivery to the biological or reaction system. It may also be desirable that the particle suspension be stable (i.e. not settle out or agglomerate). Finally, small particle size may be desirable to that a suspension of the magnetic particles may be filter sterilized by conventional techniques.
Many techniques have been suggested in the prior art for the preparation of magnetic particles or organomagnetic materials. U.S. Pat. No. 4,001,288 to Gable et al. discloses a preparation of magnetic organo-iron compounds which are both water soluble and strongly magnetic. In the preparation taught by Gable et al., ferrous iron in solution is treated with hydrogen peroxide and then with ammonium hydroxide in order to precipitate an iron oxide compound. This compound is subsequently oxidized with peroxide, treated with a hydroxy-carboxylic acid, and reacted with an alkaline material in order to form a soluble product.
Gable et al., also disclose the introduction of proteins or "protein degradation products" into the ferrous iron solution which is subsequently reacted to precipitate iron oxides. The only material for which examples are presented is the hydrolysis product of gelatin treated with hydrogen peroxide.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,452,773 to Molday discloses "colloidal sized" iron oxide particles coated with a polysaccharide, (exemplified in the patent by dextran and dextran derivatives). Although Molday's particles are prepared in a manner somewhat similar to that used in preparing particles in the present invention, they are believed to be substantially different from the particles of the present invention.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,454,234 to Czerlinski teaches the preparation (generally by suspension polymerization on a magnetic particle substrate) of coated magnetic particles which are reversibly suspendable in solution. The suspension parameters taught by Czerlinski involve the effect of the Curie temperature of his magnetic particles which may be used alternately to cause the particles to be magnetic and non-magnetic. When the particles are magnetic, they tend to agglomerate, but may be resuspended after heating the particles to a temperature above the Curie temperature of the magnetite contained therein.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,230,685 to Senyei, et al., discloses the preparation of microspheres containing magnetite, albumin, and protein A. The preparation taught by Senyei does not involve the precipitation of magnetite in the presence of these other constituents, but rather is a coating of performed magnetite particles.
Other patents which may be considered to be of interest include U.S. Pat. No. 4,152,210 to Robinson, et al.; U.S. Pat. No. 4,335,094 to Mosbach; U.S. Pat. No. 4,018,886 to Giaever; and U.S. Pat. No. 4,070,246 to Kennedy, et al. While these patents all disclose the preparation or use of magnetic-biologic particles, none of these are thought to be similar to those of the present invention.


Regions of n.sup.+ - and p.sup.+ -types of a semiconductor device are interconnected with a laminated wiring having a low wiring resistance. On the surface of a semiconductor substrate (10), an insulating film (20) is formed covering a field insulating film (12). Contact holes for the n.sup.+ - and p.sup.+ -type regions are formed in the insulating film (20) at areas corresponding to the n.sup.+ - and p.sup.+ -type regions. Thereafter, a refractory metal layer (30A) such as Ti for forming an ohmic contact having a thickness of 100 angstroms or less, an impurity diffusion preventing conductive layer (32A) such as TiN layer, and a refractory metal layer or refractory metal silicide layer (34A) such as W or WSi layer, are formed sequentially in this order from the bottom. A laminated structure of these layers (30A, 32A, 34A) is patterned to form a wiring layer (36). The laminate is subjected to rapid thermal annealing for ohmically contacting the laminate to the n.sup.+ and p.sup.+ -type regions.

a) Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a laminated semiconductor interconnection wiring structure of a semiconductor device such as a complementary MOS type LSI having regions of opposite conductivity types (n.sup.+ and p.sup.+ regions) to be connected to an electrode.
b) Description of the Related Art
A known conventional complementary MOS type LSI using refractory metal wiring has such a wiring structure as shown in FIG. 5 (for example, refer to JP-A 3-101253).
On the surface of a silicon substrate 10, there are formed a field insulating film 12, a thin insulating film 14, an n.sup.+ -type region 16, a p.sup.+ -type region 18, and other regions (not shown). After forming an insulating film 20 above the substrate, a contact hole is formed in the insulating films 20 and 14 at the area corresponding to the p.sup.+ -type region 18. A polycrystalline silicon layer 22 is then deposited covering the contact hole.
Next, a contact hole is formed through the polycrystalline layer 22 and the insulating films 20 and 14 down to the n.sup.+ -type region 16. A TiN (titanium nitride) layer 24 and a WSi (tungsten silicide) layer 26 are deposited in this order. A resist mask is formed on the WSi layer 26. By using this resist mask, p.sup.+ -type impurity ions are heavily doped selectively into a partial region of the polycrystalline layer 22 via which electrical connection to the p.sup.+ -type region 18 is provided. The partial region of the polycrystalline layer 22 therefore becomes p.sup.+ -type of low resistance. Thereafter, the laminated structure of the polycrystalline layer 22, TiN layer 24, and WSi layer 26 is patterned to leave a wiring layer 28 of a desired pattern.
The TiN layer 24 of the wiring layer functions as an impurity diffusion preventing layer. More particularly, without the TiN layer 24, n.sup.+ -type impurities doped in the n.sup.+ -type region 16 such as phosphorus or arsenic would diffuse laterally from the n.sup.+ -type region 16 to the p.sup.+ -type region 18 via the WSi layer 26 during the thermal treatment at about 800.degree. to 900.degree. C. to be performed after the impurity doping, because the n.sup.+ -type impurities such as phosphorous and arsenic have a high diffusion coefficient in a refractory metal silicide such as WSi. The ohmic contact to the p.sup.+ -type region 18 would therefore be degraded and the contact resistance would increase. In order to prevent the lateral diffusion of n.sup.+ -type impurities, the TiN layer 24 is placed under the WSi layer 26.
With this conventional technique, however, it is difficult to obtain a good ohmic contact to the n.sup.+ -type region 16 because of the direct contact of the TiN layer 24 to the silicon surface. Furthermore, because of the laminated structure of the TiN layer 24 and underlying polycrystalline silicon layer 22, it is necessary to form the contact holes for the regions 16 and 18 at different processing steps, and to selectively dope impurities in the polycrystalline layer 22.

Method of manufacturing a laminated wiring structure preventing impurity diffusion therein from N+ and P+ regions in CMOS device with ohmic contact


Barbecue apparatus includes a housing and a top defining a primary vent interconnecting the interior of the housing to the ambient atmosphere. A fuel grate is located within the housing interior spaced from the housing bottom. A grill is located in the housing interior at a location between the fuel grate and the primary vent. A secondary vent is positioned below the grill and above the grate for venting potentially harmful combustion gases, such as carbon monoxide gas, from the housing interior.

Many systems are known in the prior art for cooking meats and other foods outdoors. Among devices of this type are covered cookers or closed barbecue pits, often referred to as "smokers". Closed cookers generally use combustible fuel in the form of wood charcoal. Holes in the bottom of the unit admit air for supporting the combustion and a damper at the top of the device controls release of the heated air and smoke. The food cooks in the hot gases and smoke, free of open flame. Because there is no flame, the cooking temperatures are much lower than those found with respect to open flame barbecues; consequently, covered cookers or closed barbecues can be left unattended for long periods of time.
Closed barbecues are commonly constructed of metal and are the modern equivalent of the barbecue pits long employed in the southern portion of the United States in which an open fire has been made in a pit lined with stone. After the fire heated the stones, the meat was wrapped, placed on the stones, and the pit was covered to prevent any combustion of the meat or wrapper from occurring.
While modern metal enclosed cookers are highly convenient and the food bears more than a passing resemblance to southern barbecue pit cooked food, the present day devices do have drawbacks.
Perhaps the greatest drawback of all is that closed cookers can and often do produce harmful carbon monoxide gas which contacts the food being cooked for prolonged periods of time. Of course, carbon monoxide gas is also produced by open barbecue cookers but the gas is readily dissipated or converted in such an arrangement because of direct exposure to the air. The essence of closed cookers is, however, the fact that they are substantially closed to the outside atmosphere, admitting air only through the bottom of the cooker.
Prior art closed cookers are also relatively thermally inefficient, at least partially due to the fact that calories are lost during the conversion of carbon dioxide first formed by the burning of the fuel to carbon monoxide.
Applicant is aware of the following United States Patents, which are believed to be representative of the current state of the barbecue cooker art, including the closed cooker art: U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,144,939, issued Sep. 8, 1992, 5,086,752, issued Feb. 11, 1992, 4,604,986, issued Aug. 12, 1986, 4,471,751, issued Sep. 18, 1984, 4,706,643, issued Nov. 17, 1987, 4,532,911, issued Aug. 6, 1985, 4,489,706, issued Dec. 25, 1984, 4,094,295, issued Jun. 13, 1978, 4,026,265, issued May 31, 1977, 3,974,760, issued Aug. 17, 1976, and 3,354,848, issued Nov. 28, 1967.


A composition and method of making same comprising a grass of the family Graminae with the addition of an extract from bermuda grass in an amount effective to render said composition as an attractant or phagostimulant for hervivorous insects wherein the extract comprises an isoprenoid ketone having a 6, 10, 14-trimethylpentadecane-2-one skeleton in its molecular construction.

Phytone per se, an isoprenoid ketone identified by G.C. and mass spectrae Analyses as having a 6, 10, 14-trimethylpentadecan-2-one skeleton, is a composition which has been found in nature. It has been found in marine algae, and lavender oil. It has also been found to be a component of a male crab, Carcinus maenas, androgenic glands functioning as an inhibitor of ovarian vitellogenesis. This molecule however has never before, insofar as known, been disclosed as showing biological activity against insects.
Natural materials, and compositions that modify insect behavior via one type of biological activity or another have been known for many years. For example, host selection by phytophagous insects is known to be mediated principally by secondary plant metabolites. Both larval and adult insect herbivores are responsive to a variety of plant chemical stimuli. Phagostimulants and deterrents are thought to provide the bulk of the information that govern choice of food plant and host suitability, and hence crop plants with defined allelochemic profiles has been recognized, and at times manipulated in insect pest management. Although, over the last two decades, much activity has been directed to chemical work on the isolation and identification of a wide array of biologically active natural products which in some way affect the behavior, development or reproduction of insect pests, agricultural scientists yet depend largely on traditional methods for selecting adequate yield properties. Even though highly active allelochemicals have been identified, only in relatively limited situations has chemical guidance been a leading factor in screening for biological properties.
Environmental concerns nonetheless circumscribe the present use of insecticides, and accordingly there is an increasing need to limit the amount and kinds of insecticides which are applied to crops; if not a need to limit the use of insecticides entirely. Hence there is a present need for biologically active products derived from nature for regulating and controlling the populations of insect herbivores, notably insect graminivores. Such products are generally valuable because they are not normally harmful to the environment, and they are biodegradable.

Compositions which show biological activity against herbivorous insects, and process for the production of such compositions

Louisiana State University Board of Supervisors


An imaging system includes transmit circuitry, a transducer array with an array of capacitive micromachined ultrasonic transducer elements, a beamformer, a decoder and a display. The transmit circuitry includes a signal generator and at least one excitation coding scheme. The transmit circuitry combines an excitation signal generated by the signal generator with an excitation coding scheme of the at least one excitation coding scheme, generating a coded excitation signal. The array of transducer elements is excited with the coded excitation signal to emit ultrasound signals. The coding scheme does not introduce heating on the capacitive micromachined ultrasonic transducer elements. The array of ultrasonic transducer elements receives echo signals produced in response to the ultrasound signals interacting with structure and generates electrical signals indicative thereof. The beamformer beamforms the electrical signals, the decoder removes the coding from the beamformed signals, and the display displays an image with the decoded signals.

Ultrasound imaging has been used to determine information about the interior characteristics of an object or a subject. Generally, an ultrasound imaging system includes a transducer array and components for at least generating and transmitting ultrasound waves, receiving echoes or reflected waves, and generating ultrasound images thereon. The arrays have included a piezoelectric (PZT) or a capacitive micromachined ultrasonic transducer (CMUT) element. CMUT arrays, relative to PZT arrays, have greater design flexibility, are more compatibility with complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) technology, and are easier to fabricate, resulting in a possible lowering of transducer cost. CMUT arrays also have low mechanical impedance, which results in a large immersion bandwidth and therefore high axial resolution. However, as a consequence of the low mechanical impedance, the output pressure is lower compared to PZT arrays, and thus, unfortunately, CMUT arrays are less suited for deep imaging than PZT arrays. A thickness of the moveable membrane of a CMUT can be increased so that a larger voltage can be applied to increase the output pressure and imaging depth. However, this reduces the bandwidth and axial resolution, degrading image quality and possibly diagnostic value.


A fluid-cooled jacket formed by a plurality of panels surrounding and cooling the inlet portion of an air-swept distributor, a component of a fluidized bed reactor system. Each panel contains inlet and outlet tubes, inlet and outlet headers, and a heat exchange portion partitioned to direct the fluid flow through the heat exchange portion. The heat dissipated from the reactor is extracted to prevent the temperature of the entire distributor and the fuel from rising, which allows the use of fuels having a lower temperature softening point.

This invention relates to a fluid-cooled jacket and, more particularly, to a fluid-cooled jacket for an air-swept distributor for particulate solid materials.
Fluidized bed reactors, such as combusters, steam generators, and gasifiers are well known. In these arrangements, air is passed through a bed of particulate materials, including a fossil fuel such as coal and an adsorbent for the sulfur generated as a result of the combustion of the coal, to fluidize the bed and to promote the combustion of the fuel at a relatively low temperature. When the heat produced by the fluidized bed is utilized to convert water to steam, such as in a steam generator, the fluidized bed system offers an attractive combination of high heat release, high sulfur adsorption, low nitrogen oxide emissions, and fuel flexibility.
The particulate fossil fuel combusted in these fluidized bed reactors is supplied to the reactor by a distributor which transports the particulate fuel from the fuel supply to the fluidized bed reactor. The particular design of the distributor controls the flow characteristics of the fuel.
Utilization of fluidized bed reactors has increased with their ability to combust lower heating value fuels, which often have a relatively higher moisture level and a lower temperature softening point. The higher moisture level in the fuel causes increased adhesiveness, which makes these fuels difficult to transport. Therefore, air-swept distributors have been utilized, since they provide efficient, low-cost, low-maintenance transportation of these relatively high moisture-level fuels.
However, when the temperature of the air-swept distributor causes the fuel to be heated above its softening point, the adhesive qualities of the fuel are dramatically increased, which severely curtails fuel transportation through the distributor. Also, if the air-swept distributor is heated to such a high temperature that the fuel will stick and then burn in the distributor, the distributor would be damaged.

Fluid-cooled jacket for an air-swept distributor


A suction nozzle for a floor care appliance such as an upright vacuum cleaner having at least a first channel located above an agitator to carry air and dirt to a suction passageway. The cleaner has several embodiments, one of which has a single channel and a single agitator. Another embodiment has front and rear suction ducts, a channel, and a single agitator. Yet another embodiment has the single channel and dual agitators. Still yet another embodiment has front and rear suction ducts and dual agitators. Further yet still, another embodiment has front and rear suction ducts, a channel, and dual agitators. Several embodiments of an agitator drive assembly are provided using various means to provide rotary power to the agitator(s).

1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to a suction nozzle for floor care appliances having single or multiple agitators and the appliances having single or multiple channels for air flow entrained with dirt.
2. Description of Related Prior Art
Cleaners have been provided using single ducts or two ducts for carrying away dirt. However, none of these ducts were centrally located in the nozzle and located above the agitator. Further, cleaners utilizing dual agitators are known but are generally not common in the art. What is needed in the art are floor care appliances having multiple channels for carrying away dirt with the option of providing at least two agitators.


A method of fabricating a normally “off” GaN heterostructure field effect transistor having a source and a drain including depositing a passivation layer patterned to cover a channel region between a source and a drain, forming a first opening in the passivation layer, the first opening for defining a gate area in the channel region and the first opening having a first length dimension along a direction of current flow between the source and the drain, and implanting ions in an implant area within the gate area, wherein the implant area has a second length dimension along the direction of current flow shorter than the first length dimension.

GaN HFETs are very promising solid state devices for use in power switching applications. Some notable power switching applications include hybrid and fuel-cell vehicles. For these applications and others high efficiency and fast switching is needed. Also needed is a light-weight power system with low power loss and therefore relatively lower heat dissipation, so that the power system allows a vehicle to carry larger payloads and/or have a longer range.
Typically GaN HFETs are made in a depletion-mode or "normally-on" configuration. For safety reasons, some system designs call for "normally-off" power switches. In this discussion, "normally on" means that the transistor can conduct current without a voltage applied to the gate of the field effect transistor. "Normally off" means that the transistor cannot conduct current unless a voltage is applied to the gate.
There are "normally-off" GaN HFETs in the prior art; however, these prior art GaN HFETs are not power efficient. In the prior art, "normally-off" operation has been achieved by shifting the threshold voltage of the device to a positive value, which requires that a voltage be applied to the gate of the transistor in order to put the transistor into an "ON" state. Methods known in the art rely on converting the material under the entire gate length of the transistor so that the threshold voltage of the device is shifted to a positive value. However, these known methods result in a device that has an undesirable high electrical resistance in the "ON" state, which results in a relatively high power loss and heat dissipation in the device. Using such inefficient devices, for example, in hybrid vehicles may limit the operating range of the vehicles, which is a severe drawback.
What is needed is a highly efficient GaN HFET that is "normally-off". Also needed is a fast switching GaN HFET that has low power loss when in the "ON" state. The embodiments of the present disclosure answer these and other needs.

Enhancement mode normally-off gallium nitride heterostructure field effect transistor


A tone generating apparatus comprises a wave memory for consecutively storing first tone wave data acquired by performing pulse code modulation on a tone waveform in a first predetermined interval starting at an attack of a musical tone, second tone wave data provided by adding that tone wave data which is obtained by performing pulse code modulation on a tone waveform in a second predetermined interval following the first predetermined interval and is then weighted with a fade-out characteristic and that tone wave data which is acquired by synthesizing waveform components of a tone waveform in a third predetermined interval following the second predetermined interval and is then weighted with a face in-characteristic after being linked for the second predetermined interval, and third tone wave data produced by synthesizing waveform components of a tone waveform in a third predetermined interval following the second predetermined interval based on a characteristic of the tone waveform in the third predetermined interval. The first tone wave data, the second tone wave data and the third tone wave data are read out once in the named order from the wave memory, and then the third tone wave data is repeatedly read out, thereby generating a tone signal.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a tone generating apparatus for use in an electronic keyboard, electronic piano, synthesizer and so forth. More particularly, this invention pertains to a tone generating apparatus which generates musical tones by repeatedly reading out tone wave data stored in advance in a memory.
2. Description of the Related Art
There is a tone generating apparatus which sequentially reads out tone wave data from a wave memory and puts the data through tone generation or tone-ON processing to thereby generate musical tones.
Such a conventional tone generating apparatus is designed such that tone wave data corresponding to every waveform from the rise or attack portion of a musical tone to the end or release portion thereof is stored in advance in the wave memory and these pieces of tone wave data are sequentially read out from the beginning to prepare an associated tone signal, thus providing a continuous or sustaining musical tone.
The tone generating apparatus employing this system, however, requires a great amount of memory capacity to store the tone wave data, and inevitably become expensive.
As a solution to this shortcoming, there is a tone generating apparatus which has a wave memory to store in advance tone wave data corresponding a multiple-period waveform of a predetermined interval starting at the attack portion of a musical tone, reads the tone wave data from the beginning of the predetermined interval to the end thereof, and, after reading out the last piece of the tone wave data, repeatedly reads out tone wave data of a given interval at the end portion of the predetermined interval, thereby providing a sustaining musical tone. (The given interval will be hereinafter called "repetitive reading interval.")
According to this type of a tone generating apparatus, however, at the time wave data of the repetitive reading interval is repeatedly read out, it is difficult to accurately read out the wave data continuously in a given period, and discontinuity may occur at the repeated portion. The occurrence of such a discontinuous portion would make the continuity of a musical tone unnatural and would generate many unnecessary harmonic overtones even if the tone has a sinusoidal waveform, resulting in generation of low-quality musical tones.

Tone generating apparatus utilizing preprogrammed fade-in and fade-out characteristics


A communication amount monitoring circuit (124) monitors a transmission buffer (123) to which communication data (122) is input, and discriminates the magnitude of the amount of communication data. If the amount of information per unit time is relatively large, information is read out from the transmission buffer in accordance with a chip clock. This information is modulated as communication data (137) by a modulator (139) and transmitted. If the amount of information is relatively small, information is read out from the transmission buffer (123) in accordance with a clock obtained by frequency-dividing the chip clock. This information is exclusive-ORed with a spreading code generated by using the chip clock and is then modulated by a modulator (139). The resultant data is transmitted as communication data (137). Since there is no change in the frequency of the communication data (137), there is no need to provide any resynchronization on the reception device side at the time of switching between the large and small amounts of information. There is therefore no need to provide any buffer area for resynchronization.

The present invention relates to a digital communication system and, more particularly, to a variable communication system which switches communication schemes in accordance with the communication amount.
In digital communication systems, there have been various proposals to efficiently transmit data. For example, in the digital communication system disclosed in Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 7-123039, the traffic of communication is detected from an m-sequence signal input to a rate conversion multiplexer (not shown), and the rate conversion multiplexer multiplexes data at a rate corresponding to the traffic. A variable rate modulator (not shown) then modulates the multiplexed signal and transmits it to a transmission path at a transmission rate corresponding to the magnitude of the traffic. That is, the modulation clock rate is time-modulated. On the receiving side, a variable rate demodulator (not shown) performs demodulation, and a rate conversion demultiplexer (not shown) demultiplexes and rate-converts the demodulated signal to reproduce the data. Claim 2 in Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2000-316035 proposes a technique of efficiently assigning bands by dynamically changing the transmission rate in accordance with the transmission amount as in the above prior art.
In this manner, in the field of digital communication systems, when the communication amount is small, the transmission rate of information to be transmitted is set low to set a line with a low modulation clock rate, whereas as the communication amount increases, a line with a high modulation clock rate and high transmission rate is set. For example, a router which has selected a general voice line connects to a predetermined content server on the Internet at a given time point to transfer large-volume data. Likewise, when a cell phone switches to the videophone mode during voice communication, the communication amount increases at this time point. In a case opposite to the above case, the communication amount decreases at a predetermined time point.
Properly switching the transmission rates of information in accordance with the communication amount in this manner makes it possible to perform efficient communication. In general, however, when the modulation scheme to be used remains the same, if the transmission rate is low and the modulation clock rate is low, a line tends to relatively deteriorate because it is susceptible to the influences of phase noise in a local oscillator in an up converter which performs frequency conversion to obtain carrier waves or a down converter in a reception unit. This makes it impossible to obtain a stable transmission path. In general, therefore, it is preferable to use a line with a high transmission rate and high modulation clock rate.
In contrast, it is conceivable to use a technique of performing multilevel modulation in the same band by different modulation schemes while the modulation clock rate is kept constant. 16-QAM (Quadrature Amplitude Modulation) which can obtain 16 signal states is capable of obtaining a quadruple transmission rate at the same modulation clock rate as compared with BPSK (Bi-Phase Shift Keying) which is a modulation scheme of making bit information of a baseband correspond to two phases. When, however, multilevel modulation is to be performed, in order to keep transmission path quality (i.e., a bit error rate) equivalent to a modulation scheme with a low transmission rate, it is necessary to increase the output level by an amount equal to or more than a band improvement in terms of transmission rate. In the above case, although 16-QAM realizes a band improvement of 6 dB in terms of transmission rate as compared with BPSK, the transmission carrier power must be increased by 10 dB or more to obtain the same bit error rate at 10E-6 as that in BPSK.
In addition, when the transmission rates are switched in accordance with the communication amount, demodulation synchronization must be established with respect to the transmission rate after switching at the time of this switching operation. Demodulated data is temporarily interrupted until demodulation synchronization is established. Compare a case wherein the transmission rate after switching is high with a case wherein the transmission rare after switching is low. In the latter case, for example, in a carrier wave reproducing circuit, the frequency error of a reception carrier wave with respect to the modulation clock rate becomes relatively large. For this reason, in a PLL circuit for carrier wave reproduction, it takes a longer time to establish demodulation synchronization than in the case wherein the transmission rate after switching is high. Omission of communication data due to the interruption of demodulated data leads to a crucial result on the reproduction of information. In order to prevent omission of information due to the interruption of demodulated data, a buffer memory has been conventionally used. There has been a communication sequence in which when transmission or reception is to be performed, communication data is temporarily stored in the buffer memory, and transmission is stopped at a predetermined timing which poses no problem in the reproduction of information. In this sequence, when the receiving side detects omission of communication data, a re-transmission request is generated to read out the corresponding portion from the buffer memory on the transmitting side and re-transmit it.
In order to prevent omission of communication data and guarantee the perfection of reproduction of information by using such a technique, a considerably large buffer memory must be prepared. If information rates are set in two levels, i.e., a low rate and a high rate, as in the above case, in particular, the interruption of communication data becomes large in the case wherein the information rate is low. In this case, therefore, a buffer memory large enough to cover this must be prepared.


A driving device provides output power to an illumination device including a plurality of filaments is provided. A first converting module converts input power into direct current (DC) power. The first converting module includes a pair of first input terminals receiving the input power and a pair of first output terminals coupled to a first node and a second node and outputting the DC power. A first capacitor is coupled between the first node and a third node. A second capacitor is coupled between the second and third nodes. The first clamping module is connected to a first specific capacitor in parallel. The first specific capacitor is the first capacitor or the second capacitor. A second converting module converts the DC power to generate the output power.

Field of the Invention
The invention relates to a driving device, and more particularly to a driving device to light an illumination device.
Description of the Related Art
Illumination is a base requirement for people. In recent years, economic and trade activities and business activities are frequently held, and quality of home life is increased. The amount of electricity required for illumination is increased. Therefore, the power consumption of illumination is appreciable. Low-voltage, gas-discharge lamps are used widely. These lamps are referred to as fluorescent lamps.


There are provided novel 1,4 Diamine 2,3 Dihydroxybutanes useful as antiviral agents, pharmaceutical compositions containing them and processes for preparing such compounds.

Current treatments for viral diseases usually involve administration of compounds that inhibit viral DNA synthesis. Current treatments for AIDS (Dagani, Chem. Eng. News, Nov. 23, 1987 pp. 41-49) involve administration of compounds such as 2',3'-dideoxycytidine, trisodium phosphonoformate, ammonium 21-tungsto-9-antimoniate, 1-b-D-ribofuranoxyl-1,2,4-triazole-3-carboxamide, 3'-azido-3'-deoxythymidine, and adriamycin that inhibit viral DNA synthesis; compounds such as AL-721 and polymannoacetate which may prevent HIV from penetrating the host cell; and compounds which treat the opportunistic infections caused by the immunosupression resulting from HIV infection. None of the current AIDS treatments have proven to be totally effective in treating and/or reversing the disease. In addition, many of the compounds currently used to treat AIDS cause adverse side effects including low platelet count, renal toxicity and bone marrow cytopenia.
Proteases are enzymes which cleave proteins at specific peptide bonds. Many biological functions are controlled or mediated by proteases and their complementary protease inhibitors. For example, the protease renin cleaves the peptide angiotensinogen to produce the peptide angiotensin I. Angiotensin I is further cleaved by the protease angiotension converting enzyme (ACE) to form the hypotensive peptide angiotensin II. Inhibitors of renin and ACE are known to reduce high blood pressure in vivo. However, no therapeutically useful renin protease inhibitors have been developed, due to problems of oral availability and in vivo stability. The genomes of retroviruses encode a protease that is responsible for the proteolytic processing of one or more polyprotein precursors such as the pol and gag gene products. See Wellink, Arch. Virol. 98, 1 (1988). Retroviral proteases most commonly process the gag precursor into the core proteins, and also process the pol precursor into reverse transcriptase and retroviral protease.
The correct processing of the precursor polyproteins by the retroviral protease is necessary for the assembly of the infectious virions. It has been shown that in vitro mutagenesis that produces protease-defective virus leads to the production of immature core forms which lack infectivity. See Crawford, J. Virol. 53, 899 (1985); Katoh et al., Virology 145 280 (1985). Therefore, retroviral protease inhibition provides an attractive possible target for antiviral therapy. See Mitsuya, Nature 325 775 (1987).
Moore, Biochem. Biophys. Res. Commun., 159 420 (1989) discloses peptidyl inhibitors of HIV protease. Erickson, European Patent Application No. WO 89/10752 discloses derivatives of peptides which are inhibitors of HIV protease.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,652,552 discloses methyl ketone derivatives of tetrapeptides as inhibitors of viral proteases. U.S. Pat. No. 4,644,055 discloses halomethyl derivatives of peptides as inhibitors of viral proteases. European Patent Application No. WO 87/07836 discloses L-glutamic acid gamma-monohydroxamate as an antiviral agent.
The ability to inhibit a protease provides a method for blocking viral replication and therefore a treatment for diseases, and AIDS in particular, that may have fewer side effects when compared to current treatments. The topic of this patent application is 1,4-dimino-2,3-dihydroxybutanes and the development of processes for the preparation of these diols which compounds are capable of inhibiting viral protease and which compounds are believed to serve as a means of combating viral diseases such as AIDS. The diols of this invention provide significant improvements over protease inhibitors that are known in the art. A large number of compounds have been reported to be renin inhibitors, but have suffered from lack of adequate bio-availability and are thus not useful as therapeutic agents. This poor activity has been ascribed to the unusually high molecular weight of renin inhibitors, to inadequate solubility properties, and to the presence of a number of peptide bonds, which are vulnerable to cleavage by mammalian proteases. The diols described herein have a distinct advantage in this regard, in that many do not contain peptide bonds, are of low molecular weight, and can be hydrophilic yet still inhibit the viral protease enzyme.
Additionally, many compounds that inhibit renin do not inhibit HIV protease. The structure-activity requirements of renin inhibitors differ from those of HIV protease inhibitors. The diols of the invention are particularly useful as HIV protease inhibitors.
Other HIV protease inhibitors have been reported, but to date very few have shown activity against viral replication in human cells. This lack of cellular activity is probably due to the factors discussed above for renin inhibitors. Unlike other HIV protease inhibitors, diols disclosed herein show potent inhibition of viral replication in human cells.
An additional advantage of the diols disclosed herein is that some of them are symmetrical. The symmetrical diols may offer improved binding potency to the HIV protease enzyme relative to dissymmetric counterparts, and are more readily prepared from inexpensive starting materials.
The 1,2-diol unit is one of the most ubiquitous functional groups in nature, and consequently a wealth of methods leading to its synthesis have been developed. Foremost in this arsenal are the catalytic osmylation of olefins (Behrens and Sharpless, J. Org. Chem., (1985), 50, 5696), ring opening of epoxides (Wai et al., J. Am. Chem. Soc. (1989), 111, 1123), reduction or alkylation of a-hydroxy/alkoxy carbonyls (Davis et al., J. Org. Chem., (1989), 54, 2021). Common to all of these approaches is the preexistence of the central carbon-carbon bond of the diol function. Methods that lead directly to a 1,2-diol via formation of this bond are less common and include the reaction of an a-alkoxy anion (Cohen and Lin, J. Am. Chem. Soc., (1984), 106, 1130), with a carbonyl, and the reductive coupling of two carbonyls (i.e., pinacol coupling) (Pons and Santelli, Tetrahedron, (1988), 44, 4295).
Of all these methods, pinacol coupling is conceptually one of the simplest methods for the synthesis of 1,2-diols. Consequently, a number of methods have been developed which utilize this reaction for the preparation of these compounds. For example, McMurry et al., report the preparation of a 1,2-diol by pinacol coupling of a dialdehyde in the presence of TiCl.sub.3 (dimethoxyethane).sub.2 Zn-Cu in dimethoxyethane (McMurry et al., Tetrahedron Lett., (1988), 30, 1173). In a recent review article, Pons and Santelli describe many other methods leading to 1,2-diols which rely on low valent titanium complexes (Pons and Santelli, Tetrahedron, (1988), 44, 4295). Finally, Freudenberger et al., J. Am. Chem. Soc., (1989), 111, 8014-8016 disclose a method which utilizes a vanadium (II) complex, [V.sub.2 C.sub.13 (THF).sub.6 ].sub.2 [ZN.sub.2 Cl.sub.6 ] to couple aldehydes.
While these methods are generally useful for the preparation of 1,2-diols, none of these teach how amino moieties can be incorporated into the diols. Furthermore, none of the methods disclosed in the prior art teach to make four stereocenters in a selective manner.
EP 402 646 discloses retroviral protease inhibiting compounds of the formula: A-X-B where A and B are independently substituted amino, substituted carbonyl, functionalized imino, functionalized alkyl, functionalized acyl, functionalized heterocyclic or functionalized (heterocyclic) alkyl and X is a linking group.


A printing apparatus includes a dryer that heats and dries a print base material on which a print image is formed in a printing unit. The dryer includes a rotational drum that supports and transports the print base material, and a blower unit that blows hot air to the print base material supported by the rotational drum. The dryer includes a movement unit that displaces the blower unit to a first position which allows the print base material to be heated and to a second position which is away from the print base material while maintaining the blower unit in operation.

1. Technical Field
Embodiments of the present invention relates to a printing apparatus.
2. Related Art
An ink jet printer is an example of a printing apparatus that forms a print image by ejecting ink droplets to a recording medium. Some ink jet printers have a dryer that heats and dries the ink ejected on the recording medium (for example, JP-A-2013-203544, JP-T-2010-533076).


A secondary battery including a case; an electrode assembly and electrolyte accommodated in the case; an electrode terminal electrically connected to the electrode assembly, the electrode terminal including a terminal body; a cap plate sealing the case, the terminal body penetrating through the cap plate; and a seal gasket surrounding a lower portion of the terminal body, wherein the electrode terminal includes a laterally protruding part on a portion of the terminal body protruding outside the case, and the seal gasket is in close contact with a lower end of the protruding part.

1. Field
Embodiments relate to a secondary battery.
2. Description of the Related Art
Unlike a primary battery which is not rechargeable, a secondary (rechargeable) battery is capable of being charged and discharged. A low-capacity secondary battery composed of a single battery cell packaged in a pack structure may be used as a power source for various small portable electronic devices, e.g., cellular phones and camcorders. A high-capacity secondary battery in which a plurality of battery cells are connected to each other in a pack structure may be used as a power source for driving a motor of a hybrid electric vehicle (HEV).
Secondary batteries may be manufactured in various shapes. Generally, secondary batteries may be classified as a cylindrical shape battery or a prismatic shape battery. The secondary battery may be formed such that an electrode assembly formed by disposing a separator as an insulation member between positive and negative electrode plates and an electrolyte are accommodated in a case, and a cap assembly having electrode terminals is provided in the case. The electrode terminals may extend outside through the cap assembly.


A surgical instrument for treating fractures of the neck and shaft of the femur has a frame attachable to an intramedullary pin inserted in the medulla and bearing a drill jig for inserting screws into the femur head.

In the operative treatment of fractures of the femur, combination fractures of the femur neck and shaft cause the greatest problems, because of the incompatible osteosynthetic procedures for these two different types of fractures.
In the current state of the art, femur shaft fractures are immobilized with intramedullar nails or pins. Femur-neck fractures are immobilized with angular plates, hip screws, or by means of three screws inserted in parallel. In younger patients the screw method is the principal method used, because this type of treatment causes the least additional damage to the femur neck.
As regards the urgency with which the two fractures must be immobilized, treating the femur neck fracture is the most immediate. With this type of fracture there is a danger that if it is not immobilized, a circulatory disturbance will occur in the femur head. Most such circulatory disturbances end in a resection of the femur head and the installation of a full prosthesis. In contrast to this complication, a delay in treating a fracture in the femur shaft is easier to deal with. Nevertheless, use of intramedullary implants for immobilizing this type of combination fracture is becoming increasingly frequent. Such intramedullary nails or pins have at their proximal end cross-holes for screws to be inserted laterally through the intramedullary pin into the femur head.
The screws needed for immobilizing the femur-neck fracture have a diameter of at least 6.5 mm., and are inserted in parallel fashion into the femur head. Because of the intramedullary pin, these screws can be inserted only one below the other, and so only two screws can be inserted through the pin into the femur head.
To ensure that the intramedullary pin is not too greatly weakened by the two cross-holes and the additional conveying of force via the screws, the intramedullary pin is made larger in diameter than would otherwise be used. This larger diameter requires a larger drilling of the medulla, which is out of proportion to the shaft fracture to be immobilized.
However, the principal disadvantage of this osteosynthetic procedure is that the shaft fracture is treated first, before the femur-neck fracture can be stabilized. The disadvantage of this method becomes particularly apparent when we realize the amount of force needed to drive in an intramedullary pin. Every blow needed to drive in the pin further separates the fracture in the neck area, which inevitably threatens the blood supply in the femur head area.

Surgical instrument for positioning osteosynthetic elements


The present invention is a semiconductor pressure sensor. In one embodiment, the semiconductor pressure sensor includes a diaphragm having a first thickness and at least cone raised boss that is coupled to a first side of the diaphragm. The at least one raised boss increases the diaphragm thickness in the region occupied by the at least one raised boss to a second thickness. A plurality of piezoresistors are disposed on a second side of the diaphragm in regions of the first thickness. In another embodiment, a semiconductor pressure sensor diaphragm includes at least one raised boss disposed along a central axis on a first side of the diaphragm. At least two raised bridge regions are disposed along the central axis, interconnecting the at least one raised boss and a diaphragm edge. Each raised bridge region is narrower than the raised boss. A plurality of piezoresistors are disposed on the raised bridge regions of the diaphragm along the central axis.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to pressure sensors, and specifically, to micro-machined piezoresistive pressure sensors.
2. Background Information
A conventional prior art silicon-based pressure sensor consists of a semiconductor die having a thinned region or diaphragm, a sensing means for sensing diaphragm displacement, and an enclosure with one or more pressure ports. Pressure from external sources is typically communicated to one or both sides of the diaphragm using gaseous or liquid media. Differential pressure across the diaphragm results in bending of the diaphragm, which is typically detected by means such as stress-sensitive piezoresistors strategically implanted into the silicon diaphragm.
FIG. 1a illustrates a prior art anisotropically etched silicon pressure sensor 10. The pressure sensor 10 includes a sensor die 12 having a silicon diaphragm 14 in a central region of the sensor die 12, and four strain-sensitive piezoresistors 16 placed around the periphery of the central region, as shown in FIG. 1a. Referring now to FIG. 1b, a cross-sectional view of the prior art anisotropically etched silicon pressure sensor 10 may be seen. This view shows an underlying cavity 18 formed during anisotropic etching, and slanted flanks 20 which define the diaphragm edge 24.
FIG. 1c illustrates the typical piezoresistor placement of the prior art anisotropically etched silicon pressure sensor 10 of FIG. 1a. Referring to FIG. 1c, resistors R2 and R4 are mounted parallel to their respective diaphragm edges 24, and resistors R1 and R3 are mounted perpendicular to their respective diaphragm edges 24.sub.2. The resistors are formed in a Wheatstone bridge configuration, as shown in FIG. 1d, where the resistances of resistors R1 and R3 increase in value with increased pressure P1 (FIG. 1b) and the resistances of resistors R2 and R4 decrease in value with increased pressure P1. With a constant voltage Vb or constant current applied to the bridge, an output voltage Vo of the bridge varies as a function of the applied pressure P1.

Piezoresistive pressure sensor with sculpted diaphragm


A network gateway device providing peer-to-peer proxy service is provided, including a P2P meta descriptor detector detecting an original P2P meta descriptor file from the public network, a P2P proxy control unit modifying the original P2P meta descriptor file to generate a modified P2P meta descriptor file, and forwarding the modified P2P meta descriptor file to a computer in the private network, an internal tracker receiving a first inquiry message, and replying with a pseudo sharing computer list, and a peer-to-peer engine loading the original P2P meta descriptor file to download shared contents, and forwarding the shared contents to the computer.

1. Field of the Invention
The invention generally relates to peer-to-peer communications and, more particularly, to an apparatus and method for providing peer-to-peer proxy services in peer-to-peer communications.
2. Description of the Related Art
In recent years, peer-to-peer applications, such as BitTorrent and eMule, have become increasingly popular. Users from around the world can conveniently download and share all kinds of files. In a conventional downloading scenario, there is only one uploading user for several other users to download a shared file. Thus, the upstream bandwidth of the uploading user can easily become bottlenecked when the number of downloading users increases. Additionally, when bottlenecks occur, the system resources and the network bandwidth of the uploading user may become insufficient. On the other hand, in a peer-to-peer application, take BitTorrent as an example, every downloading user is also uploading the shared file so that the uploading task may be distributed to every user. In this case, every user can benefit from increasing connection sources when there are more users sharing the same shared file.
In spite of the above mentioned benefits, the number of connections established by peer-to-peer applications is far more than that by other applications. This results in a huge burden on network gateway devices, especially the broadband gateway devices for households and small/medium sized enterprises. In a private network, each computer connected to a network gateway is assigned a private network address. When a computer in the private network tries to establish a connection to the public network, the network gateway performs the network address translation (NAT) procedure to replace the private network address with the public network address of the network gateway. During the NAT procedure, the network gateway creates a NAT table for storing the mapping information of every incoming and outgoing connection, including a source IP, a source port number, a destination IP, a destination port number, a mangled IP, a mangled port number, etc. FIG. 1 is a block diagram illustrating the NAT table of a network gateway. As shown in FIG. 1, the source and destination of every incoming and outgoing connection needs to be identified by the NAT procedure (by looking up the NAT table). As the number of connections increases, the NAT procedure occupies more and more system resources of the network gateway. This will cause the efficiency of the network gateway to drop significantly.
FIG. 2 is a block diagram illustrating BitTorrent communications through a network gateway device. In FIG. 2, a computer 221 in a private network 220 first downloads a torrent file 201 from a public network 210. The network address of a public tracker 212 and the information of the shared contents are included in the torrent file 201. The computer 221 sends an inquiry message to the public tracker 212 to ask for the list of computers that are sharing the shared contents. In the feedback of the public tracker 212, the computer 221 recognizes that a computer 211 is sharing the shared contents. The computer 221 further establishes a connection with the computer 211 to download the shared contents. The information of the connection is maintained, by the network gateway device 230, in a NAT table 231.

Apparatus and method for providing peer-to-peer proxy services in peer-to-peer communications

Industrial Technology Research Institute


A crop harvesting combine having a body with a feeder house at its front end. The feeder house carries a detachable header which may be wider than the body and can thus be detached when moving the combine. The feeder house is vertically moveable in an arcuate path from a header ground contacting position to an elevated position. A first thrashing cylinder is in the header and a second thrashing cylinder is at the front of the combine body. The arcuate path of the feeder house has its center approximately at the rotational axis of the second thrashing cylinder so the distance between the axes of the first and second cylinders remains approximately constant as the feeder house is moved vertically. Downstream of the thrashing cylinder are a plurality of separation cylinders, at least some of which have concaves thereunder for reorienting elongate trash before being discharged.

This invention relates to a peanut combine of the general type disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,696,151 (the '151 patent), U.S. Pat. No. 5,205,114 (the '114 patent), U.S. Pat. No. 4,136,507 (the '507 patent) and U.S. Pat. No. 5,138,826 (the '826 patent); the disclosures of each of these prior art patents is hereby incorporated by reference and they may be referred to herein by the shorthand number indicated above.
Each of the foregoing patents discloses a peanut combine which is designed to be towed behind a tractor. There are inherent disadvantages in towing such a machine because the driver needs to look ahead to be careful that he is in alignment with the windrows of peanut vines, but also needs to look behind to check on the operation of the combine, the power take-off connection thereto and the condition of the windrow after the machine passes thereover.
It is known in the prior art to utilize self-propelled combines for the harvesting and threshing of grain, for example U.S. Pat. No. 4,531,528; 4,770,190; 4,802,496; 4,838,101; 4,843,803; 4,866,920 and 4,906,262, the disclosures of each of these prior art patents is hereby incorporated by reference.


An automotive bucket seat with a frame, a back cushion mounted on the frame, a bottom cushion removably mounted on the frame, and a set of interchangeable bottom cushions in a range of lengths that are alternately mountable on the frame. A tool-less releasable attachment mechanism provides fast but secure interchange of cushions. This provides a bucket seat that properly fits users of different sizes.

1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to automotive bucket seats with a bottom cushion that is interchangeable to accommodate different sized users.
2. Background of the invention
Current auto industry practice with regard to sizing automotive bucket seats is that "one size fits all". Accordingly, bucket seat design is guided by ergonomic data favoring drivers with average statures, and the seat bottom cushion must be short enough for most short drivers. This leaves larger statured drivers and/or front seat passengers, and even some very short people, at a disadvantage relative to the level of comfort that they experience on long trips. Short drivers sometimes must place cushions behind their backs so their knees bend over the front edge of the seat bottorn cushion. In addition, a one-size-fits-all seat bottom cushion is often too low for optimum vision of short drivers over the dash, reducing both driving comfort and safety.
Comfort is proportional to how well the torso/arms/head weight is reacted through the buttocks and upper legs into the seat bottom cushions. This can be quantified as pounds of body weight per square inch (psi) of contact area of the legs and buttocks on the seat bottom cushion. If three or four inches of a person's upper legs are unsupported by the seat bottom cushion, the remainder of the upper legs and buttocks must support the entire torso/arms/head weight. The unit pressure (psi) on this reduced area is higher than would be the case if the entire upper legs were supported. The result is an earlier onset and a higher level of discomfort during a long trip.

Interchangeable seat cushions for automotive bucket seats