A multilingual electronic transfer dictionary provides for automatic topic disambiguation by including one or more topic codes in definitions contained the dictionary. Automatic topic disambiguation is accomplished by determining the frequencies of topic codes within a block of text. Dictionary entries having more frequently occurring topic codes are preferentially selected over those having less frequently occurring topic codes. When the topic codes are members of a hierarchical topical coding system, such as the International Patent Classification system, an iterative method can be used with starts with a coarser level of the coding system and is repeated at finer levels until an ambiguity is resolved. The dictionary is advantageously used for machine translation, e.g. between Japanese and English.

A portion of the disclosure of this patent document contains material which is subject to copyright protection. The copyright owner has no objection to the facsimile reproduction by anyone of the patent disclosure, as it appears in the PTO patent file or records, but otherwise reserves all copyright rights whatsoever. Copyright (copyright) 1999 ISTA.
The present invention relates to multilingual electronic dictionaries that may be used for machine translation.
xe2x80x9cMultilingualxe2x80x9d means pertaining to two or more languages.
Unless the context otherwise requires, the terms xe2x80x9csubjectxe2x80x9d, xe2x80x9ctopicxe2x80x9d and xe2x80x9cfieldxe2x80x9d are virtually synonymous in this disclosure, as are the terms xe2x80x9cdictionaryxe2x80x9d, xe2x80x9cglossaryxe2x80x9d and xe2x80x9clexicon.xe2x80x9d
The existence of field-dependent translations of terms has long been a problem for both ordinary human translation and for machine translation. A term in a source language, for example, Japanese, may have more than one translation in a target language, for example, English, depending on the subject, topic or field of the document being translated. For example, the word xe2x80x9csoshikixe2x80x9d in Japanese would be translated to the English xe2x80x9ctissuexe2x80x9d in a medical document, to the English xe2x80x9cweavexe2x80x9d in the case of textiles, or to the English xe2x80x9cmicrostructurexe2x80x9d in the case of metallurgy.
Conventional machine translation programs, for example, Systran(copyright), contain topical dictionaries or glossaries. The user must manually select topical dictionaries appropriate for the document being translated. In this case, there is one dictionary per topic, for example, chemistry or medicine, rather than one topic per dictionary entry or record as in the current invention.
The machine translation program METAL contains three individual lexicons: a German monolingual lexicon, an English monolingual lexicon and a German-English bilingual lexicon (Katherine Koch, xe2x80x9cMachine Translation and Terminology Databasexe2x80x94Uneasy Bedfellows?xe2x80x9d Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence 898, Machine Translation and the Lexicon, Petra Steffens, ed., Springer, Berlin, 1995, pp. 131-140.) Semantic information is disclosed only for the monolingual lexicons, not for the bilingual lexicon. Even for the monolingual lexicon, only 15 semantic types are disclosed, such as xe2x80x9cabstractxe2x80x9d, xe2x80x9cconcretexe2x80x9d, xe2x80x9chumanxe2x80x9d, xe2x80x9canimalxe2x80x9d and xe2x80x9cprocess.xe2x80x9d These are quite different from the topical classifications that are the subject of the current invention.
Brigitte Blaser, in xe2x80x9cTransLexis: An Integrated Environment for Lexicon and Terminology Management,xe2x80x9d Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence 898, Machine Translation and the Lexicon, Petra Steffens, ed., Springer, Berlin, 1995, pp. 158-173, discloses the incorporation of concepts, including broader concepts, narrower concepts and related concepts in a lexicon database management system for machine translation. However, this disclosure does not extend to the incorporation of subject codes, notably hierarchical subject codes, in a multilingual electronic dictionary not does it disclose the use of concepts or other subject area information for automatic topic discrimination in machine translation. Notably, these concepts are not subject areas; rather, they constitute the interlingua for interlingua-based machine translation.
Masterson disclosed a means of automatic sense disambiguation for the machine translation of Latin to English in the article xe2x80x9cThe thesaurus in syntax and semantics,xe2x80x9d Mechanical Translation, Vol. 4, pp. 1-2, 1957. As described by Wilks, Slator, and Guthrie in Electric Words: Dictionaries, Computers and Meanings, MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass., 1996, pp. 88-89, Masterson disclosed a nonstatistical method using the headings in Roget""s Thesaurus.
In this predecessor to interlingua-based machine translation, Masterson disclosed a concept thesaurus for the words in a Latin passage from Virgil""s Georgics. Each word stem from the Latin passage was associated with a set of head numbers from Roget""s International Thesaurus by translating the word stems into English and selecting the head numbers for the corresponding English words. For example, the three Latin noun stems, xe2x80x9cagricolaxe2x80x9d, xe2x80x9cterramxe2x80x9d and xe2x80x9caratroxe2x80x9d have the following heads (where the head words are shown instead of the head numbers):
AGRICOLA: Region, Agriculture
TERRAM: Region, Land, Furrow
ARATRO: Agriculture, Furrow, Convolution
In the case of the text, xe2x80x9cAgricola incurvo in terram dimovit aratroxe2x80x9d, the heads that occur more than once are selected into a concept set. In the above example, this yields the following sets:
AGRICOLA: Region, Agriculture
TERRAM: Region, Furrow
ARATRO: Agriculture, Furrow
Finally, the English words listed under each head in Roget""s Thesaurus are intersected to leave the appropriate translation candidates. In the current example, this yields the following sets:
AGRICOLA: farmer, ploughman
TERRAM: soil, ground
ARATRO: plough, ploughman, rustic
Masterson does not disclose a multilingual dictionary, nor does she disclose use of topical codes in a multilingual dictionary for disambiguation.
Kenneth W. Church, William A. Gale and David E. Yarowsky, in U.S. Pat. No. 5,541,836, also disclosed the use of the categories from Roget""s Thesaurus in automatically disambiguating word/sense pairs and the use of bilingual bodies of text to train word/sense probability tables. Church et al do not disclose a multilingual dictionary nor do they disclose the use of topical codes in a multilingual dictionary for sense disambiguation.
JuneJei Kuo, in U.S. Pat. No. 5,285,386, xe2x80x9cMachine Translation Apparatus Having Means for Translating Polysemous Words Using Dominated Codesxe2x80x9d, discloses interlingua-based machine translation using semantic codes in the role of the interlingua. While Kuo discloses transfer dictionaries, these are not multilingual transfer dictionaries. Rather they are transfer dictionaries between the semantic codes, the interlingua in this case, and words in the target language.
The requirement of manually selecting a topical dictionary is a barrier to the automated translation of documents such as patent documents that cover many topical areas. Also, the semantic methods of the interlingua-based approaches do not provide for automatically determining the topic of the document being translated. There is a need for a means for automatically determining the most appropriate target definition depending on the topic of the document. Such a means is referred to as xe2x80x9cautomatic topic disambiguationxe2x80x9d in the text below.
Elizabeth Liddy, Woojin Palk and Edmund Szi-li Wu, in U.S. Pat. No. 5,873,056, xe2x80x9cNatural Language Processing System for Semantic Vector Representation Which Accounts for Lexical Ambiguityxe2x80x9d, disclose a monolingual lexical database that contains nonhierarchical subject codes assigned to each word in the database. To avoid unnecessary reiteration of prior teachings, the disclosure of each reference cited herein is hereby incorporated by reference.
This invention provides a multilingual electronic dictionary comprising a memory that contains a data structure composed of a plurality of records, each record comprising representations of the following: a first term (in a first language), a second term (in a second language), and a topical code. The topical code indicates a topical area in which the second term is a translation of the first term.
Such an electronic dictionary allows for selecting topic-appropriate translations of terms in a textual object in a first language into a second language. This is accomplished by:
(a) providing an electronic dictionary containing records comprising representations of terms in the first language and the second language;
(b) scanning a textual object in the first language to identify each occurrence of a term in the textual object in a record of the electronic dictionary;
(c) inserting each topical code associated with each of the records identified in step (b) into a data structure that provides for counting of the frequency of occurrence of each topical code; and
(d) whenever there occur a plurality of terms in the second language corresponding to a term in the first language, selecting the term associated with the most frequently occurring topical code.
In one embodiment of the invention, step (c) is performed by generating a table associating each topical code occurring in the textual object with its frequency of occurrence.
In another embodiment, as illustrated in the Examples below, step (c) is performed by the use of a map class.
In preferred embodiments of the apparatus and methods of this invention, one or more of the terms are represented in Unicode.
In the electronic dictionary of the present invention, each record may optionally include a representation of the part of speech for the first term, or for each term. However this is not a necessary field in the record.
Also, each record may optionally include a representation of the language of the first term and of the language of said second term. Alternatively a specific representation of the language (e.g. its name or a code such as JP indicating Japanese) may be omitted where an indication of the language is inherent in the structure of the record. (e.g. first field is always Japanese; second is always English).
The dictionary of the present invention is not limited to bilingual records, but may be generated with records that accommodate a third language, or any number of languages.
In preferred embodiments of the invention, the topical coding system is a hierarchical one, e.g. the International Patent Classification system.
Such embodiments are desirably used for selecting topic-appropriate translations of terms in a textual object in a first language into a second language by doing the following:
(a) providing an electronic dictionary containing records comprising representations of terms in the first language and the second language along with a topical code from a hierarchical system;
(b) scanning a textual object in the first language to identify each occurrence of a term in the textual object in a record of said electronic dictionary;
(c) inserting each topical code associated with each of the records identified in step (b) into a plurality of data structures that provide for counting of the frequency of occurrence of each topical code at a code at a plurality of levels of the hierarchy; and
(d) whenever there occur a plurality of terms in the second language corresponding to a term in the first language, selecting the term associated with the most frequently occurring topical code;
wherein steps (c) and (d) are applied iteratively, first at a coarser level of the topical code hierarchy, then at successively more detailed levels of the topical code hierarchy until topical ambiguities are either completely resolved or resolved to the extent allowed by the most detailed level of the hierarchy.
The multilingual electronic dictionary of this invention provides for automatic topic disambiguation by including one or more topic codes in definitions contained the dictionary.
A dictionary record according to this invention is part of a data structure contained in amachine-accessible memory. This record contains at least one topic code comprising the following items (with an example of a record for the Japanese term xe2x80x9csoshikixe2x80x9d as shown in Table 1):
Although the Japanese term is shown in the Tables herein in English characters within quotation marks, in the records of the present invention, a term in a language that uses other than English characters is preferably represented in a customary coding system such as Unicode. Alternatively all terms, optionally including the Topic Code, may for consistency be represented in such a coding system.
The electronic dictionary of the present invention is embodied as a data structure in any form of machine-accessible memory, which may be permanent or transient. For example, the data structure may be stored using means known in the art for digital or other discrete encoding that is readable to produce a physical signal responding to the contents of selected memory locations, as by electromagnetic or optical means. Various magnetic memories are well known, including fixed disc drives, removable diskettes, tape, and cards. Integrated circuit memory modules may also be used in the present invention, including those in a self-contained form such as PCMCIA cards. A dictionary of the present invention may desirably be stored in permanent form, as on CD-ROM or like media.
In accordance with the present invention, the dictionary may be accessed by a general purpose computer running an operating system (e.g. Windows, Mac OS, Unix, Linux, Pick, etc.) suitable to access the memory on which the dictionary is resident (either permanently or transiently) and including suitable application programming. For purpose of exemplification, programming in the C++ language is disclosed herein, but the reader will appreciate that any of a wide variety of programming languages or database applications may alternatively be employed, including, for example, Pascal, Fortran, COBOL, Eiffel, Java; Access, dBase, FoxPro, Paradox, and the like.
A dictionary of the present invention may be incorporated in a standalone, handheld unit, as an enhanced version of translators such as those currently available from Selectronics, Sony EB Electronic Book, and Franklin Computer Corporation. Alternatively, a dictionary and associated programming in accordance with the present invention may be stored on a single general purpose computer or distributed on a CD-ROM; or it may be made available as a service via a network of computers, e.g. an intranet, a wide-area network, or a global communications network such as the Internet.
Although the records illustrated in this disclosure include fields for Part of Speech, the reader should understand that an electronic dictionary of the present invention does not require information as to a term""s Part of Speech, and so the present invention may optionally be implemented without any such fields.
A dictionary record according to this invention may contain more than two languages. For example, it may also contain the term in German and French as shown in Table 2 below.
Alternatively, a record representing a term in more than two languages may be structured to include a field for a representation of the language for which each translation is provided. For example: xe2x80x9cshoshikixe2x80x9d/Japanese/tissue/English/Gwebe/German/tissu/French/A61K 47/38
A dictionary record according to this invention may contain more than one topic code, as own in the record in Table 3 below.
There are several topical code systems in existence that can be used in this invention. This can be a nonhierarchical system such as that disclosed in Appendix A of U.S. Pat. No. 5,873,056. However, hierarchical topical code systems are preferred.
There are several known hierarchical topical code systems that can be used. Examples include the International Patent Classification (IPC) codes, the United States Patent Classifications, the categories of Roget""s International Thesaurus(copyright), the Dewey Decimal System, and the Library of Congress Card Catalog Classification system. Other subject codes that may be used include the Longman subject codes disclosed in the Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English published by Longman Group UK Limited, Longman House, Burnt Mill, Harlow, Essex CM22JE, England.
For example, the IPC codes contain five levels of classification as illustrated in Table 4 below.
These levels in hierarchical topical code systems present the advantage of granularity. As is disclosed in the Examples below, if an ambiguity cannot be resolved at a shallow level, it may be resolvable at a deeper code level.
The topic codes for a given set of terms can be selected by locating a document that has previously been classified by topic and for which the source term and its translations are appropriate. For example, in translating a Japanese patent document into English, the main IPC code for that document can be used for Japanese-English term pairs that are encountered during translation.
According to this invention, these topic codes are used to determine a favored subject area within which to translate a particular term. Briefly, to determine the favored subject area, the topic codes for part or all of the terms in a particular block of text are counted. The block can be a sentence, a paragraph, a table, a set of text occurring within a certain number of bytes or words, a subdocument, an entire document or any other definable set of text in the source document.
There are several counting methods known to the art. For example, a two-column table comprising topical codes and their corresponding frequencies may be used. The preferred method is a xe2x80x9cmapxe2x80x9d as used in the programming language C++. Descriptions of xe2x80x9cmapxe2x80x9d may be found in Mark Nelson""s xe2x80x9cC++ Programmer""s Guide to the Standard Template Library,xe2x80x9d IDG Books Worldwide, Inc, Foster City, 1995, or in Microsoft Corporation""s xe2x80x9cMicrosoft(copyright) Visual Studio(trademark) 6.0 Development Systemxe2x80x9d, 1998 (hereinafter, xe2x80x9cMVSxe2x80x9d). To quote the latter:
xe2x80x9cThe template class describes an object that controls a varying-length sequence of elements of type pair less than const Key, T greater than . The first element of each pair is the sort key and the second is its associated value. The sequence is represented in a way that permits lookup, insertion, and removal of an arbitrary element with a number of operations proportional to the logarithm of the number of elements in the sequence (logarithmic time). Moreover, inserting an element invalidates no iterators, and removing an element invalidates only those iterators that point at the removed element.xe2x80x9d
In the current invention, the topical code or a substring generated from the topical code is assigned to the Key and inserted into the map. The second member of the pair less than const Key, T greater than  may be arbitrary as the map only needs to be used for counting the frequencies of the codes.
If a document has been assigned one or more topical codes, for example, IPC codes in the case of patent documents, these assigned codes can optionally be added to the counts of topical codes for the block of text being analyzed. It should be stressed that the use of such document-level assigned codes is optional and that the method of the current invention can be applied to any text.
While there are several coding systems that may be used in this invention, the preferred coding system is the Unicode(copyright) wide character set as described in Microsoft Corporation""s xe2x80x9cMicrosoft(copyright) Visual Studio(trademark) 6.0 Development Systemxe2x80x9d, 1998 as follows:
xe2x80x9cUnicode: The Wide Character Set A wide character is a 2-byte multilingual character code. Any character in use in modern computing worldwide, including technical symbols and special publishing characters, can be represented according to the Unicode specification as a wide character. Developed and maintained by a large consortium that includes Microsoft, the Unicode standard is now widely accepted. Because every wide character is always represented in a fixed size of 16 bits, using wide characters simplifies programming with international character sets.xe2x80x9d
A complete listing of the Unicode(copyright) codes preferred for this invention, and especially preferred for encoding Japanese, Chinese and Korean terms for this invention, can be found in The Unicode Consortium, xe2x80x9cThe Unicode Standard: Worldwide Character Encoding, Version 1.0, Vols. 1 and 2xe2x80x9d, Addison-Wesley, Reading, Mass., 1992.

Multilingual electronic transfer dictionary containing topical codes and method of use


A method of timing an attempt to establish a connection path between a first and second node in a communications network is provided. The method initiates the attempt to establish a connection path after a period of time has elapsed wherein the period of time is greater than another period of time which had previously elapsed between two previous attempts, if any, to establish the connection.

MPLS is quickly gaining support in the industry as a robust way of transmitting Internet Protocol (IP) packets. This is primarily because MPLS eliminates the need to examine the destination IP address of a packet at every router or network node in the path of the packet. As such, MPLS has particular utility in the high speed core of many networks. Recognizing that within the high speed core ATM switching infrastructure is likely to exist, the industry is presently in the process of formulating standards for deploying MPLS over an ATM infrastructure.
As in the nature of most standardization efforts, the focus has been to define the functional features necessary to enable interoperability amongst equipment manufactured by a variety of participants. However, many problems arise in implementing MPLS functionality. These include: (1) the general management and maintenance of signalled label switched paths (SLSP) on an ATM infrastructure; (2) procedures on the failed establishment of an SLSP; (3) management of signalling links; (4) procedures when a signalling link or physical link fails; and (5) procedures under various changes in network topology, such as the creation of a new signalling link. The present invention seeks to provide solutions to these various issues.


A manually manipulable actuator mechanism includes a body and a manually manipulable element. The body has at least one wall element having a length extending along a first axis and a height extending along a second axis orthogonal to the first axis. The manually manipulable element has a button portion adapted for human digital manipulation and at least one wing portion extending outwardly from the button portion. The manually manipulable element is movable along the first axis between a first position in which an operative element is in a non-actuated condition and a second position in which the operative element is in an actuated condition. The wall element, which has a first height at the first position and a different second height at the second position, cooperates with the wing portion to constrain movement of the manually manipulable element at least along a third axis orthogonal to the first and second axes while the manually manipulable element is moved between the first and second positions.

1. Technical Field
The present invention relates in general to actuator mechanisms, and in particular, to manually manipulable actuator mechanisms having a constrained range of motion.
2. Description of the Related Art
Manually manipulable actuator mechanisms are commonly employed to actuate or facilitate the operation or function of electronic, electromechanical and mechanical systems. These manually manipulable actuator mechanisms include a wide variety of push buttons, switches, dials, sliders, knobs, triggers and other actuator mechanisms.
A primary consideration in the design of an actuator mechanism is the range of motion through which the actuator mechanism will be permitted to move when subjected to anticipated levels of manual force. The range of motion through which an actuator mechanism moves can influence consumer perception of the overall system because too much "play" in the actuator mechanism is often taken as an indication of poor system design and/or quality. Moreover, the failure to properly constrain the range of motion of the actuator mechanism can lead to breakage of the actuator mechanism or improper operation of the system, for example, if the actuator mechanism is subject to greater than necessary force or force in a direction other than that required to actuate the system.

Manually manipulable actuator mechanism having constrained range of motion


A virtualization manager receives a request to install a new feature in a first virtualization environment. The virtualization manager identifies a first database upgrade script corresponding to the new feature and compares a first identification number of the first database upgrade script to a second identification number of a second database upgrade script, the second database upgrade script previously run on a management database for the first virtualization environment. If the first identification number is less than the second identification number, the virtualization manager generates a copy of the first database upgrade script and names the copy of the first database upgrade script with a third identification number that is greater than the second identification number. The virtualization manager then runs the copy of the first database upgrade script on the management database.

Virtualization allows multiplexing of the underlying host machine between different virtual machines. The host computer allocates a certain amount of its resources to each of the virtual machines. Each virtual machine is then able to use the allocated resources to execute applications, including operating systems (referred to as guest operating systems). The software layer providing the virtualization is commonly referred to as a hypervisor and is also known as a virtual machine monitor (VMM), a kernel-based hypervisor or a host operating system. The hypervisor emulates the underlying hardware of the host computer, making the use of the virtual machine transparent to the guest operating system and the user of the virtual machine.
A host controller in the virtualization system may include a virtualization manager to manage the allocation of resources from host servers to virtual machines, monitor the status of the virtual machines, as well as the progress of commands and processes being executed by the virtual machines and generally manage operations in the system. The host controller may maintain a management database with entries pertaining to the various entities in the virtualization system (e.g., host computers, virtual machines, virtual disks). Each entry may include data representing the status of the corresponding entity. The database may be organized according to a particular schema. The schema defines the structure of the database and controls the organization of the data.
Over time, as new features are added to the virtualization system, the management database is upgraded to reflect changes caused by the new features. Typically a series of one or more upgrade scripts may be run on the database to update the schema or data contained in the database. In conventional systems, the upgrades scripts are run according to an upgrade script number which uniquely identifies the script. If for some reason, the upgrade process of the virtualization manager attempts to run the scripts out of numerical order (e.g., to install one feature before another), certain scripts may be inadvertently skipped because they have a lower upgrade script number. Certain scripts may have lower upgrade script numbers because they were developed prior to other scripts, although they may be introduced (i.e., installed) later. This may cause the management database to not reflect all of the desired features.

Deploying database upgrades to multiple environments in a different order


A locking device for mounting a heat sink to a CPU mounted on a printed circuit board, includes a first locking member extending the heat sink and the circuit board and having a block for pressing the heat sink, an operating member pivotably connected to the first locking member, a second locking member extending the heat sink and the circuit board and pivotably connected to the operating member, and an actuating structure formed between the first and second locking members. The first and second locking members each includes a hook located below the circuit board. The operating member is pivotable about the first locking member to drive the second locking member to move upwardly and to cause the actuating structure to simultaneously drive the first and second locking members to move away from each other, whereby the hooks engage below the circuit board.

As computer technology continues to advance, electronic components such as central processing units (CPUs) of computers are made to provide faster operational speed and greater functional capabilities, which results in the CPU and other electronic components generating more and more heat. To ensure the CPU and other electronic components in the enclosure to function within their normal operating temperature ranges it is desirable to dissipate the generated heat quickly, for example, by using a heat sink attached to the CPU in the enclosure. Generally, a locking device is required for mounting the heat sink to the CPU and other electronic components.
FIG. 8 shows a conventional locking device for mounting a heat sink 200 to a CPU 600. The CPU 600 is mounted on a printed circiut board 500 which defines mounting holes 502 about the CPU 600. The heat sink 200 forms a pair of extension arms 202 each defining a through hole 204 corresponding to one of the mounting holes 502 of the printed circuit board 500. The locking device comprises a pair of push-pins 300 and a pair of springs 400. In assembly, the pins 300 extend sequentially through the respective springs 400, through holes 204 of the heat sink 200 and mounting holes 502. The bottom ends of the pins 300 are engaged with the printed circuit board 500 below the mounting holes 502. The springs 400 are compressed between the top ends of the pins 300 and the heat sink 200 to thereby exert downward force to the heat sink 200 to cause the heat sink 200 to intimately contact with the CPU 600.
However, in disassembly, it is difficult to detach the push-pins 300 from the printed circuit board 500. Furthermore, the springs 400 are prone to fatigue after a long time using. As a result, the heat sink 200 is not capable of intimately contacting with the CPU 600.

Locking device for heat dissipating device


A vehicle equipped with a fuel cell system is disclosed including a vehicle body having a floor, and a fuel cell system disposed below the floor and including a fuel cell stack and a water supply device connected to a water storage tank. The water supply device includes component elements (a pump, a water supply conduit and a water recovery conduit) that are disposed below the floor of the vehicle body in a higher area than the water storage tank.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a fuel cell vehicle equipped with a fuel cell system that has a water supply device adapted to supply humidifying water to a fuel cell stack and, more particularly, to a technology for avoiding associated delivery conduits and component parts from damages resulting from the freezing of water at a temperature below the freezing point.
2. Description of the Related Art
As counter measure to count environmental issues in recent years, particularly air pollutions resulting from exhaust gas emissions of automobiles and global warming issues resulting from carbon dioxide emission, a fuel cell technology has been attracting public attention as counter measure that is able to achieve clean emission and high-energy efficiency. A fuel cell serves as an energy conversion system that supplies hydrogen or hydrogen rich gas, serving as fuel, and air to an electrolyte-electrocatalyst composite body to allow electrochemical reaction to occur for thereby converting chemical energy to electrical energy. Particularly, a solid polymer electrolyte fuel cell employing a solid polymer membrane is low in cost and easy to be formed in a compact structure while having a high energy density and is highly expected to be applied as a power supply for a moving object such as an automobile.
By the way, with the solid polymer electrolyte fuel cell, the solid polymer membrane functions as an ion conductive electrolyte as a result of water being saturated and, also, has a function to separate hydrogen and oxygen from one another. If water content in the solid polymer membrane is insufficient, ion resistance increases to cause hydrogen and oxygen to mix with one another, resulting in an inability of serving as the fuel cell to generate electric power. In the meanwhile, with the solid polymer electrolyte fuel cell, when hydrogen ions dissociated in a hydrogen electrode as a result of generating electric power pass through the electrolyte membrane accompanied with movement of water, and the hydrogen electrode is liable to be dried. Also, if steam contained in hydrogen or air that are supplied is low in content, the solid electrolyte membrane tends to be dried in areas in the vicinity of respective reaction gas inlets.
Because of such reasons, there has been a need for the solid electrolyte membrane of the solid polymer electrolyte fuel cell to be supplied with water to humidify the solid polymer electrolyte in a positive manner up to now and, to this end, some kind of humidifying means has been employed for humidifying the electrolyte per se or for humidifying hydrogen and air to be supplied.
With such humidifying means in the solid polymer electrolyte fuel cell described above, a need arises for counter measure to be undertaken for countering the freezing of humidifying water in consideration of use in cold climates. A probability occurs in humidifying water that would freeze and expand in associated delivery conduits and component parts at a temperature below the freezing point, resulting in a fear of causing damages in no small measure such as damages in the delivery conduits and the component parts. Therefore, for the purpose of avoiding such an issue, a proposal has heretofore been made to provide a technology of recycling humidifying water into a freezing tank (see first related art: Japanese Patent Provisional Publication No. 2000-257430 and second related art: Japanese Patent Provisional Publication No. 2002-158024).


The invention relates to a method of updating an authentication algorithm in at least one data processing device (CARD, SERV) which can store a subscriber identity (IMSI1) which is associated with an authentication algorithm (Algo1) in a memory element of said device (CARD, SERV). The inventive method comprises the following steps, namely: a step whereby a second inactive (Algo2) authentication algorithm is pre-stored in a memory element of the device and a step for switching from the first algorithm (Algo1) to the second algorithm (Algo2) which can inhibit the first algorithm (Algo1) and activate the second (Algo2).

1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to a method of updating an authentication algorithm in a computer system.
The invention applies to any data processing device storing an authentication algorithm. The invention applies more especially to a smart card.
The smart card can be coupled with any system, embedded or not.
The invention can be implemented in any type of telecommunication network such as GSM (Global System for Mobile communication), UMTS (Universal Mobile Telecommunication Service), GPRS (General Packet Radio Service), etc.
The example chosen to illustrate the invention will be that of the mobile telephone coupled with a SIM (Subscriber Identity Module) smart card.
2. Description of the Related Art
In order to manage a user roaming in a GSM (Global System for Mobile Communication) network, this user must be specifically identified.
Since a radio channel is used, the communications are vulnerable to eavesdropping and fraudulent use. The GSM system therefore:                authenticates each user (or subscriber) before allowing access to a service,        uses a temporary identity,        encrypts the communications.
The GSM system currently uses four types of code associated with the subscriber:                The IMSI (International Mobile Subscriber Identity) code. This identity is written in the SIM card;        The TMSI (Temporary Mobile Subscriber Identity) code is a temporary identity allocated by the network to a mobile telephone, then used for the transactions on radio channel;        The MSISDN code is the Mobile Station International ISDN Number in compliance with the ITU (International Telecommunications Union) numbering plan E164, and known by the subscriber;        The MSRN (Mobile Station Roaming Number) code is a number allocated temporarily, using a regular telephone number that routes the call to an MSC where the roaming subscriber is currently located.
During the subscription, a key Ki is allocated to the subscriber with the IMSI code. This pair IMSI/Ki is stored both in the subscriber's SIM card and outside the card, in particular in an authentication centre AuC. A pair is closely linked to one or more authentication algorithms.
Note that the authentication centre AuC is used to authenticate subscribers of a GSM network. For information, note that authentication enables the network to check that a subscriber is authorised to use the network by checking the presence of a secret key in the SIM card.
Another pair may also be stored in a second database known as the HLR (Home Location Register). This database stores the pair MSISDN/IMSI associated with each subscriber, consisting of the subscriber's MSISDN and the invariant IMSI.
A problem arises when updating an algorithm stored in the card, and in any data processing device storing data specific to users (the authentication centre AuC, the home location register HLR, the visitor location register VLR database, etc.) communicating with the card. Updating involves, amongst other things, modifying the algorithm used to authenticate each pair IMSI/Ki and the pairs MSISDN/Ki, both in the card and outside the card in the AuC, the VLR, the HLR, etc.
One simplistic solution could consist in downloading the new algorithm into the card and outside the card in the AuC, the VLR, the HLR, etc. This solution poses a problem in terms of security, however; it is out of the question to consider sending this algorithm on the network, especially since this algorithm is non proprietary.

Method of updating an authentication algorithm in a computer system


A transceiver system employing vector feedback to linearize the transmitter over a narrowband channel to support concurrent low-rate subchannels, each providing a low bit error rate (BER). Symbols in each subchannel are transmitted at a rate sufficiently slow to avoid multipath errors, thereby spreading each signal component across the entire channel bandwidth to eliminate any remaining discrete non-linearity. The system provides for generating constellations of signal states that can be optimized for both phase and amplitude to represent symbols within existing narrowband mobile communications channels. Symbols are transmitted at a rate sufficiently slow in each subchannel to decorrelate multipath interference at the receiver, thereby better discriminating adjacent symbol states. This transceiver is particularly useful for mobile environments, although it applies equally well to stationary environments. Data sequences may be transferred at up to 110 kbits/sec within a standard 25 kHz RF channel for slow scan video applications.

1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates generally to data communications systems and more particularly to a transceiver system for transferring multiple symbol states at low bit-error rates (BERs) in a narrowband channel.
2. Description of the Related Art
Many useful methods are known in the art for transmitting digital data through a channel. Radio-frequency (RF) channels are allocated by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and licensed for use by various entities, including the general public. Much of the Very-High/Ultra-High Frequency (VHF/UHF) band available to the general public is allocated in 25 kHz channels and new spectrum allocations are unavailable from the FCC because of demand from many other competing users. This allocation scheme prevents using these narrowband channels for many high-bandwidth communications applications. As used herein, "narrowband" denominates a bandwidth of less than 0.1%, which is understood to include the standard 25 kHz VHF (30–300 MHz) and UHF (300–3000 MHz) channel because it occupies a bandwidth less than 0.1% of the carrier frequency. Adapting such standard narrowband channels for video and other multimedia applications requires some new method for transferring data in a single 25 kHz channel at bit rates above the 19–20 kbits/sec limits known in the art for mobile applications.
The conventional RF channel capacity is limited by the distortion and noise arising from the hardware used to transmit and receive the RF signal and presents two basic challenges. Unless the channel transmitter hardware can be made to operate linearly over the range of signal power levels, no more than two signal states (symbols) can be used to reliably represent the data transferred in the channel. Unless the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) at the receiver is high enough, then the uncertainty (blurring) of the symbol states at the receiver is too small to permit data recovery without error. Both of these challenges have been separately addressed by many practitioners in the art.
Discrimination among more than two symbol states at the transmitter and receiver is a useful method for increasing the amount of data transferred over a single channel. Unfortunately, the data rates in most systems known in the art, especially those well-known for mobile applications, are limited by the nonlinear operation of their transmitter components, such as amplifiers, modulators, mixers, and common integrated devices. But even introducing expensive precision components to improve transmitter operational linearity has limited effect on channel capacity when significant output power levels are required. The RF output device impedances change drastically over the extreme output power fluctuations encountered in high Peak-to-Average Power Ratio (PAPR) systems. This can, for example, produce uncontrollable phase shifts up to 30° between the two power extrema in a digital phase shift keying (PSK) modulated output waveform, thereby severely limiting discrimination among more than two symbol states at the transmitter. Linear Class A amplifiers avoid these large variations, but Class A amplifiers are grossly power-inefficient, which is a critical issue in most mobile applications.
Several other useful methods for linearizing the output characteristic of a RF transmitter are known in the art. For example, the basic feedback principle was introduced by Black in the 1920's. Black showed that distortion in the forward branch is reduced by 1/T, where T is the loop gain of the amplifier feedback combination. Distortion in the feedback branch appears directly in the output. The fundamental problem with basic feedback is that it uses an output that already exists to correct the input that caused the output distortion, which works well only with periodic signals and suffers from stability and bandwidth problems and from transient intermodulation distortion with signals that exceed the feedback loop bandwidth.
Other well-known linearizing methods also suffer from associated disadvantages that limit their application to the channel capacity problem. For example, predistortion methods require adding a predistortion to the amplifier input signal to compensate for amplifier nonlinearity. But the compensating nonlinearity widens the transmitted signal spectrum, requiring higher sampling rates, wider intermediate-frequency (IF) filters and so forth. Linear amplification with Nonlinear Components (LINC) methods are also well-known in the art but suffer generally from the disadvantageous requirements of high component precision and effective signal separation.
At radio frequencies, it may be difficult to achieve very high loop gain with simple feedback. One way to circumvent this is to form the error signal at the baseband frequency and use quadrature up- and down-conversion to provide orthogonal baseband components (I&Q) in the direct and feedback branches for linearizing the output. This is denominated "vector feedback," which is known in both Cartesian and polar feedback embodiments. But any mixer or amplifier device delays reduce the bandwidth achievable with this technique. Also, the achievable output linearity is directly reduced by any noise or non-linearity in the feedback mixers. Finally, over wideband channels, Cartesian feedback suffers from stability problems. However, these bandwidth and stability restrictions are largely offset by the simplicity and robustness of Cartesian feedback amplifiers, including embodiments using low-precision components.
Even with otherwise good SNR, discrimination among more than two symbol states at the receiver is limited by the phenomenon of multipath distortion, which may create interfering time-delayed copies of the original signal, distorting the received waveform and smearing the symbol content at the receiver. Many practitioners have proposed solutions to the wideband multipath distortion problem. Adaptive receivers for discriminating against selective in-band fading in wideband channels are known in the art but are not widely used because of high cost and complexity. Generally, a method of reducing the effective data rate is employed so that delayed versions of the original signal do not interfere at the receiver, at least on average, having decayed or decorrelated over a relatively long intersymbol time interval. One strategy for accomplishing this is to use multiple sub-carriers with a reduced data rate in each. For example, Ditzel et al. [Ditzel et al., "Minimal Energy Assignment for Frequency Selective Fading Channels," International Symposium on Mobile Multimedia Systems & Applications (MMSA2000), Delft, NL, December 2000] describe a method for minimizing the total energy necessary to communicate data with a desired average bit error rate at a fixed gross bit rate over a frequency-selective fading channel using multi-carrier data transmission. Ditzel et al. describe a numerical approach for splitting the data among multiple sub-carriers to reduce individual data rates with particular advantages for multi-carrier communications systems in channels with deep fades.
Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM) modulation is a well-known and effective technique for combating selective in-band fading through decorrelation of symbol echoes. With OFDM modulation, the fast Fourier transform (FFT) is used to break a broadband channel with intersymbol interference (ISI) into several narrower subchannels, each exhibiting flat fading characteristics. Several multiuser OFDM schemes are known in the art, including time-division, frequency-division, and code-division multiplexing. Code-division multiplexing is an effective technique for capitalizing on the frequency diversity of an OFDM modulation system and frequency-division multiplexing with optimal subcarrier allocation is known to vastly outperform other multiuser techniques when the transmitter has knowledge of the channel.
The application of OFDM modulation to wideband channels suffers from several unresolved problems, which are described in excellent detail by Martone [Max Martone, "On the Necessity of High-Performance RF Front-ends in Broadband Wireless Access Employing Multicarrier Modulations (OFDM)," GLOBECOM 2000—IEEE Global Telecommunications Conference, no. 1, November 2000, pp. 1407–1411]. But Martone does not propose specific solutions to these problems other than noting that wideband OFDM modem throughputs are actually much lower than typically advertised for transceivers with low-performance analog RF circuits. In fact, Martone suggests that OFDM vulnerability to RF amplifier distortion is actually so severe that the "popularity of OFDM scheme should be revisited in light of practical RF implementation issues." Even so, Martone considers only RF channels typically much wider than 0.1% of the carrier frequency. Other problems with OFDM modulation in wideband channels include, for example, the severe symbol recovery problems presented when the channel has inband nulls or severe fades close to the FFT grid.
Various solutions are proposed for such problems. For example, Wang et al. [Wang et al., "Linearly Precoded or Coded OFDM against Wireless Channel Fades?" Third IEEE Signal Processing Workshop on Signal Processing Advances in Wireless Communications, Taoyuan, Taiwan, Mar. 20–23, 2001] propose adding a linear precoding to the symbols before multiplexing to overcome the loss of diversity otherwise experienced with critical fades. As another example, Wesolowski et al. [Wesolowski et al. "Efficient Algorithm for Adjustment of Adaptive Predistorter in OFDM Transmitter," UTC'00, Fall, Boston, 2000] describes a useful predistortion technique for "linearizing" or compensating the RF amplifier distortion in OFDM transceiver system. Wesolowski et al. suggest that other techniques such as clipping to reduce the high PAPR and adding error correction coding do little to improve the system bit-error rate (BER). In U.S. Pat. No. 5,598,436, Brajal et al. disclose and claim a OFDM modulated communications system employing a predistorter circuit between modulator and RF amplifier to compensate for RF amplifier nonlinearity, thereby solving the multicarrier distortion problem by predistorting the OFDM subcarriers instead of the initial symbols. Brajal et al. specifically distinguish their invention over the earlier monocarrier systems and neither consider nor suggest methods for improving channel capacity in a narrowband channel.
In U.S. Pat. No. 5,914,933, Cimini et al. describe a method for wireless transmission of data in a wideband channel where the frequency response characteristic of each transmission sub-channel is first measured and fed back to the transmitter before distributing the digital data symbols over several clusters and switching each cluster to the transmission sub-channel that is optimal according to the measured frequency response. The method described by Cimini et al. spreads the symbols over many carriers within a wideband channel and does not suggest the use of any particular modulation or encoding methods. Cimini et al. neither consider nor suggest methods for better exploiting an existing narrowband channel.
OFDM modulation as not generally been applied to narrowband (less than 0.1%) channel applications, perhaps because of less concern for selective in-band fading. The usual benefit of using OFDM in a frequency-selective environment is that the effects of delay variation over the channel are minimized by dividing the transmitted bandwidth into many narrower sub-channels that are transmitted in parallel, thereby eliminating the need for an expensive channel equalizer. This also reduces the PAPR at the transmitter because fewer tones are transmitted per subchannel, producing less spectral spreading by any transmitter nonlinearities.
Practical OFDM modulation systems may employ, in each of the several subcarriers, quadrature phase shift keying (QPSK), eight-phase shift keying (8PSK), or some form of amplitude/phase shift keying (APSK) or quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM). Because APSK is merely a combination of amplitude shift keying (ASK) and PSK modulation, the term APSK modulation is intended to include PSK modulation and QAM, as used herein. It is known in the art that the error performance of APSK systems generally, for example, 8PSK and 32QAM systems, depends strongly on phase distortion from noise and system nonlinearities (see, for example, J. Pinto and I. Darwazeh, "Magnitude and Phase Distortion Effects on Error Vector Magnitude in 8-PSK Systems," Proceedings of 3rd Conference on Telecommunications (Conftele-2001), Figuera da Foz-Portugal, pp. 351–355, April 2001). Disadvantageously, in many narrowband mobile system applications, high level APSK constellations are impractical because the amplitude of the signal (representing the symbol state) can fade to become indistinguishable from an adjacent symbol state. Wireless transmission systems using OFDM modulation are attractive because of their high spectral efficiency and resistence to noise and multipath distortion. But OFDM modulated transceiver systems disadvantageously require additional signal processing steps or pilot subcarrier symbols to achieve the BER of associated spread-spectrum techniques, thereby imposing a corresponding burden on useable channel capacity and limiting usefulness in narrowband channels. Moreover, the use of computationally-efficient FFT multiplexing methods generally requires an inter-symbol guard interval greater than the channel delay to avoid inter-symbol interference (ISI) and inter-channel interference (ICI), presenting yet another disadvantage for narrowband OFDM applications.
Generally, until now, there has been no method known in the art that can effectively transfer a data sequence through a single standard 25 kHz VHF/UHF channel at bit rates above about 19.2 kbits/sec in mobile applications. Commercial applications requiring more capacity use wideband channels at higher base frequencies in the cellular spectrum. There is accordingly a clearly-felt need in the art for a transceiver system that exploits more of the typical 0.1% narrowband (e.g., 25 kHz VHF/UHF) channel. These unresolved problems and deficiencies are clearly felt in the art and are solved by this invention in the manner described below.

Method and apparatus for transferring multiple symbol streams at low bit-error rates in a narrowband channel


A method for manufacturing a light emitting device includes (a) preparing a semiconductor element formed with a crystalline substrate, and a temporary element, the temporary element including a laser-transmissive substrate and a laser-dissociable layer formed on the laser-transmissive substrate, (b) attaching the laser-dissociable layer of the temporary element to the epitaxial layer of the semiconductor element through a adhesive layer, (c) thinning the crystalline substrate, (d) applying a laser beam to the temporary element so as to dissociate the laser-dissociable layer of the temporary element, and removing the temporary element from the adhesive layer, and (e) removing the adhesive layer from the epitaxial layer of the semiconductor element.

1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to a method for making a light emitting device, more particularly to a method for manufacturing a light emitting device involving application of a temporary element having a laser-transmissive substrate and a laser-dissociable layer.
2. Description of the Related Art
Since light emitting diodes have a relatively small size, they have been widely utilized in backlight modules, computers, traffic lights, and outdoor displays.
For a conventional blue light emitting diode, since blue light has a relatively wide energy gap and requires a relatively high exciting energy to bridge the energy gap, the driving current applied to the blue light emitting diode is correspondingly high. Accumulative heat will increase with an increase in current injected into the blue light emitting diode. Therefore, output power of the blue light emitting diode will be reduced due to failure of heat dissipation, and intensity of light emitted by the blue light emitting diode is not satisfactory, accordingly.
Attempts have been made to improve insufficient emitted light intensity of the blue light emitting diode through epitaxial process techniques, chip-processing techniques, and packaging techniques. For the epitaxial process techniques, it has been tried to increase concentrations of donors and acceptors in the light emitting layer, and to decrease dislocation density of the light emitting layer. Nevertheless, it is relatively difficult to increase the concentration of the acceptors in the light emitting layer, particularly in the light emitting layer of GaN system having a relatively wide energy gap. Since there is a relatively high degree of lattice mismatch between sapphire substrate and gallium nitride layer formed on the sapphire substrate in the conventional light emitting diode, it is difficult to make a breakthrough in reducing dislocation density of the active light emitting layer.
Referring to FIG. 1, a conventional blue light emitting diode 1 includes: a sapphire substrate 11 having a top surface 111, and a bottom surface 112 opposite to the top surface 111; a GaN epitaxial layer 12 formed on the top surface 111; a reflective layer 13 formed on the bottom surface 112; an adhesive layer 14 formed on the reflective layer 13; and a Si heat-dissipating substrate 15 attached to the reflective layer 13 through the adhesive layer 14.
The GaN epitaxial layer 12 includes a N-type semiconductor sub-layer 121 having a first region and a second region, a light emitting sub-layer 122 formed on the second region of the N-type semiconductor sub-layer 121, a P-type semiconductor sub-layer 123 formed on the light emitting sub-layer 122, and first and second electrodes 124, 125 formed on the first region of the N-type semiconductor sub-layer 12 and the P-type semiconductor sub-layer 123, respectively.
Particularly, the sapphire substrate 11 is thinned so as to have a thickness ranging from 80 μm to 100 μm.
However, commercially available sapphire substrates suitable for the conventional blue light emitting diode 1 have a relatively low conductivity, and a thickness ranging from 380 μm to 430 μm. Even though such sapphire substrates are thinned to 80 μm to 100 μm in thickness, when used in the blue light emitting diode 1, reduction of output power, which is attributed to excessive accumulative heat generated by a high current injected into the conventional light emitting diode 1, cannot be avoided. Output power of the conventional blue light emitting diode 1 is saturated when the injected current reaches about 75 mA. The output power of the conventional blue light emitting diode 1 cannot be further increased by increasing the current to more than 75 mA, which instead causes the output power to decrease due to excessive accumulative heat.
Therefore, there is still a need in the art to provide a method for improving heat dissipation of the light emitting diode, particularly the blue light emitting diode.

Method for manufacturing a light emitting device


Embodiments enable discovery of services in a wireless communications medium. In example embodiments, a method comprises inserting, by an apparatus, an indication associated with a service requested by the apparatus to an apparatus address field of a wireless service discovery packet; and transmitting, by the apparatus, the wireless service discovery packet including the inserted indication associated with the requested service. The packet may be a Bluetooth Low Energy SCAN_REQ PDU packet. The apparatus's address field may be a non-resolvable private address format in a ScanA field of the Bluetooth Low Energy SCAN_REQ PDU packet. The apparatus may be functioning as a subscriber in a Neighbor Awareness Networking (NAN) network.

Modern society has adopted, and is becoming reliant upon, wireless communication devices for various purposes, such as, connecting users of the wireless communication devices with other users. Wireless communication devices can vary from battery powered handheld devices to household and/or commercial devices utilizing electrical network as a power source. Due to rapid development of the wireless communication devices a number of areas capable of enabling entirely new types of communication applications have emerged.
Cellular networks facilitate communication over large geographic areas. These network technologies have commonly been divided by generations, starting in the late 1970s to early 1980s with first generation (1G) analog cellular telephones that provided baseline voice communications, to modern digital cellular telephones. GSM is an example of a widely employed 2G digital cellular network communicating in the 900 MHZ/1.8 GHZ bands in Europe and at 850 MHz and 1.9 GHZ in the United States. While long-range communication networks, such as GSM, are a well-accepted means for transmitting and receiving data, due to cost, traffic and legislative concerns, these networks may not be appropriate for all data applications.
Short-range communication technologies provide communication solutions that avoid some of the problems seen in large cellular networks. Bluetooth™ is an example of a short-range wireless technology quickly gaining acceptance in the marketplace. In addition to Bluetooth™ other popular short-range communication technologies include Bluetooth™ Low Energy (LE), IEEE 802.11 wireless local area network (WLAN), Wireless USB (WUSB), Ultra Wide-band (UWB), ZigBee (IEEE 802.15.4, IEEE 802.15.4a), and ultra-high frequency radio frequency identification (UHF RFID) technologies. All of these wireless communication technologies have features that make them appropriate for various applications.
Applications for short-range wireless devices are evolving to include awareness applications providing the device with an awareness about the local network environment. Awareness applications have the promise of extending business and social networking by enabling users to share local contextual data in a peer-to-peer fashion by using their mobile wireless devices. For example, users may be able to share information in real-time for local-area business networking, social networking, dating, personal safety, advertising, publishing, and searching.

Method, apparatus, and computer program product for service discovery in short-range communication environment


A switch over device provides a product dispenser with the capability to switch from a first diluent flow circuit to a second diluent flow circuit. The switch over device attaches to the dispenser, and includes a manifold having a first diluent inlet and a second diluent inlet in communication with a diluent outlet. The switch over device further includes a first and a second stem assembly, wherein the first and second stem assemblies are biased to a first position that interrupts flow from the first and second diluent inlets to the diluent outlet. In a second position, the stem assemblies permit fluid flow to the diluent outlet. The switch over device further includes actuators that enable an operator to easily switch from the one flow circuit to the other. The product dispenser may switch from virtually any type of diluent, and/or diluent temperatures, including ambient, chilled, and carbonated diluents.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to product dispensing equipment and, more particularly, but not by way of limitation, to methods and an apparatus for switching from a first fluid line to a second fluid line without depressurizing the complete fluid system.
2. Description of the Related Art
Historically, the beverage dispensing industry revolved around the reconstitution of syrup concentrates with carbonated water. Consumers often were offered a multitude of soda flavors with a single non-carbonated option in a beverage dispenser. With changing philosophies in the areas of health and nutrition, product dispensing suppliers have been forced to offer a wider variety of products through basically the same interface, a beverage dispenser. Presently, it is common to see beverage dispensers delivering multiple non-carbonated beverages, such as lemonades, teas, sports drinks, and the like.
This changing trend has caused some challenges, as the life expectancy of a beverage dispenser is approximately seven to ten years. Many times older dispensers are not outfitted with product and diluent lines for every possible product valve combination. While newer beverage dispenser designs do take into consideration the possibility of switching between diluents, switching across two media paths provides the possibility of a leak across the switching mechanism, and a compromised mixture upon dispensing.
Similar considerations arise when switching from a chilled product to an ambient product, or the opposite. When utilizing a cold plate to chill product lines in a beverage dispenser, manufacturers are forced to commit fluid media flow paths to delivering either a chilled fluid or an unchilled fluid. Further, fluid lines must be committed to delivering either a carbonated fluid or an uncarbonated fluid. As the allocation of fluid paths is somewhat inflexible, changing of a product valve to deliver a chilled drink instead of an ambient drink, or a carbonated drink instead of an uncarbonated drink, may be difficult, or simply impossible. In most cases, the entire pressure system of the product fluids must be depressurized to manipulate product lines.
Accordingly, an apparatus that provides some flexibility in allowing customers to reconfigure the product valves of a product dispenser to deliver either chilled or ambient products on location without depressurizing the entire system would be beneficial to dispenser manufacturers, dispenser owners, as well as the producers of the product concentrates.

Method and apparatus for switching flow circuits in a product dispenser


Method and apparatus for an Intelligent Prefix Dialer, eliminating the necessity for manually dialing a local area code as a prefix to a call within the same area code in telephone systems in which such action is a requirement. An Intelligent Prefix Dialer is quiescent and monitors the dialing sequence from the caller's Customer Premise Equipment, CPE, when off-hook condition has been sensed. When the caller wishes to dial seven digits or less of a telephone number, my invention parses a caller defined default prefix, with the abbreviated digits the caller has dialed to form a complete telephone number. The Intelligent Prefix Dialer changes state from quiescent to active and interrupts the call progress to clear the subscriber's telephone line. The Intelligent Prefix Dialer then dials the complete telephone number to successfully complete the call.

The invention relates to a method and apparatus for dialing a predetermined telephone number prefix, such as an area code, along with the suffix, comprising the complete telephone number for successfully completing calls where such a requirement exists in the Central Office used by the calling party, and for selectively activating said method and apparatus.

Method and apparatus for an intelligent telephone prefix dialer

Abstract: The Intelligent Prefix Dialer is also user programable to dial Caller ID Blocking or Caller ID Sending * codes, (i.e., *67 or *82), the Intelligent Prefix Dialer intersperses the area code in the correct position before redialing the number, (i.e., *67NPA-Nxx-xxxx) to successfully complete the call. When required, the Intelligent Prefix Dialer is user programmable to dial 1 plus code access, (i.e. 1NPA-Nxx-xxxx)

Abstract: Features of the Intelligent Prefix Dialer allow for the seamless, uninterrupted successful completion of dial sequences which a caller may initiate, such as, but not limited to, 411, 911, 0, 1-Nxx-xxxx., and various * codes required by the Central Office for special features subscribed to by the caller.


The invention disclosed relates to novel functionalized benzocyclobutenones of structural formula I ##STR1## wherein R is NH.sub.2, reactive NH.sub.2 derivatives including acids, acid chlorides, amides and diazonium salts, OH, CN, NO.sub.2, H, I, F Br, Cl, mercapto and deuterium. Also disclosed are polymer compositions comprising thermal reaction products of the benzocyclobutenones of formula I and either a polyol or a polyamine.

1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to novel functionalized benzocyclobutenones (BCBOs) and to polymers derived therefrom.
A variety of modified polymers or toughened polymer blends can be produced in reactive processing such as molding, casting and melt blending, through the reactions of certain functional groups. For example, maleic anhydride-modified polyolefins or oxidized poly(phenylene oxide)s are reactive targets in these processes for covalent linkage with nylons. Acetylene may be introduced as a reactive end group into high-performance polymers such as NASA's LARC polyimides. It reacts to cause rapid crosslinking of the polymer at elevated temperatures without the evolution of volatiles during molding or melt processing.
2. Description of the Prior Art
In the late 1970s, Kirchhoff et al at the Dow Chemical Company initiated a research program on the use of benzocyclobutenes in polymer synthesis and modification. The first patent describing the use of benzocyclobutenes in the preparation of high molecular weight polymers was issued in 1985.1! Similar work was independently by Tan and Arnold.2! Since these initial discoveries, the field of benzocyclobutene polymers has rapidly expanded to include more than 50 patents and numerous papers.3!
Benzocyclobutene can be viewed as a latent functional group that upon thermal activation can generate the highly reactive diene (o-quinodimethane), which can then enter into a wide variety of dimerization, oligomerization and Diels-Alder cycloaddition reactions. Thus, the basic technology based on benzocyclobutenes involves a family of thermally polymerizable monomers which contain one or more benzocyclobutene groups per molecule. Heating a bisbenzocyclobutene monomer without a dienophile (olefin or acetylene) leads to a highly crosslinked polymer. The AB monomer containing a benzocyclobutene and a vinyl group yields a linear Diels-Alder cycloaddition polymer upon thermolysis. The benzocyclobutene group is mainly used in a small amount as either an end group or a pendant group. Thus, it has been incorporated into high-performance polyimides, aromatic polyamide and poly(arylene ether)s. A variety of AB monomers have been synthesized and thermally cured to make polymers and composites for aerospace and electronic applications.
Although the benzocyclobutene chemistry is fascinating, the area of its application is confined due to its limited types of interpolymer coupling reactions (just dimerization and Diels-Alder cycloaddition). Accordingly, only dienes can be used as comonomers to produce linear thermoplastics. Other commercial materials such as diols and diamines could not be utilized, because of many unpredictable side reactions with the o-quinodimethane intermediate. In addition, the applications of this chemistry to vinyl polymers and polyols are scarce, as a few reports on the modification of polystyrene have appeared.4!
Benzocyclobutenone (BCBO), similar to but different from benzocyclobutene, can be prepared in several ways.5! Some substituted analogues, including 3-methyl-, 3-methoxy-, 4-methyl-, 4-methoxy-, 5-methyl-, 5-methoxy, 6-methyl-, 4,4-dimethyl-, 3,6-dimethyl-, 3,6-dimethoxy, 3-methoxy-6-methyl-, 3-methyl-6-methoxy-, 3,4,5-trimethyl-, 3,4,5,6-tetramethyl-, 3,6-dimethoxy-4, 5-dimethylbenzocyclobutenones are known.6!
Benzocyclobutenone is also known to undergo the reaction with methanol and cycloaddition reactions with aldehyde and dienophiles such as maleic anhydride and dimethyl fumarate upon flash photolysis.6d,7!
An isocoumarin as a dimer of benzocyclobutenone is also isolated from the reaction of o-(trimethylsilylmethyl)benzoyl chloride with cesium fluoride in refluxing acetonitrile.7!

Benzocyclobutenones and polymers derived therefrom


A heating blanket may include a conductor for receiving electrical current and generating a magnetic field in response to the electrical current. A plurality of sleeve segments may be mounted on the conductor in end-to-end relation to one another. Each one of the sleeve segments may be formed of magnetic material having a Curie temperature. The sleeve segments may be inductively heated in response to the magnetic field.

The reworking of composite structures frequently requires the localized application of heat. For example, when installing a patch in a rework area of a composite structure, heat must typically be applied to the adhesive at the bondline between the patch and rework area in order to fully cure the adhesive. When applying heat to the patch, the temperature of the bondline must typically be maintained within a relatively narrow temperature range which must be held for an extended period of time until the adhesive is cured. Overheating or under heating the rework area or structure located adjacent to the rework area is generally undesirable during the rework process.
Conventional heating equipment for heating composite structures may include heating blankets comprised of electrically resistive heating elements. A heating blanket may be positioned to heat the patch installed in the rework area. The heating blanket may conductively heat the patch, rework area and/or bondline to the desired temperature. Unfortunately, conventional heating blankets may lack the ability to provide uniform heat at the bondline for several reasons. For example, variations in the construction of conventional heating blankets may result in differential heating across the rework area. In addition, conventional heating blankets may lack the ability to compensate for heat sinks located adjacent to the rework area. Such heat sinks may comprise various elements such as stiffeners, stringers, ribs, bulkheads and other structural members in thermal contact with the structure. Such heat sinks may have relatively large thermal capacities and may therefore draw heat away from certain portions of the rework area while remaining portions of the rework area are continuously heated by the heating blanket. As a result, portions of the rework area that are adjacent to the heat sink may not reach the required adhesive curing temperatures.
Attempts to overcome the non-uniform heating of the rework area due to heat sinks include the use of waxes or other liquefiable materials that are added to an interior of the resistive heating blankets in attempts to distribute heat more uniformly throughout the rework area. In this manner, the wax or liquefiable medium allows for more intimate thermal contact between the heating blanket and the rework area of the composite structure. Unfortunately, the addition of wax increases the overall thickness and stiffness of the heating blanket reducing the ability of the heating blanket to substantially conform to the shape of a rework area in a complexly-curved location of the composite structure. A further issue associated with the use of wax in conventional heating blankets is the risk of contamination of the rework area in the event that the enclosure containing the wax develops a leak.
Further attempts to provide uniform heat distribution using conventional resistive heating blankets include multi-zone blanket systems, feedback loop systems, positive temperature coefficient heating elements, and temperature stabilizing plugs. Unfortunately, the additions of such systems to conventional resistive heating blankets are generally ineffective in providing a substantially uniform temperature without substantial variation across the bondline of the rework area.
As can be seen, there exists a need in the art for a system and method for heating a structure such as a rework area of a composite structure in a manner which maintains a substantially uniform temperature across the rework area. More specifically, there exists a need in the art for a system and method for uniformly heating a composite structure and which accommodates heat drawn from the rework area by heat sinks and other thermal variations located adjacent to the rework area. Furthermore, there exists a need in the art for a system and method for uniformly heating a composite structure in a manner which prevents overheating or under heating of the composite structure. Ideally, such system and method for uniformly heating the composite structure is low in cost and simple in construction.


A variable aperture includes a chamber, a transparent and electrically conductive aqueous solution, an opaque and electrically non-conductive oily solution, a transparent insulative and hydrophobic layer, a first electrode and a second electrode assembly. The chamber includes a first transparent portion and a second transparent portion located on opposite sides. The aqueous solution and the oily solution are contained in the chamber thus forming a contact interface therebetween. The transparent insulative and hydrophobic layer is arranged between the oily solution and the second transparent portion. The first electrode is arranged electrically contacting the aqueous solution. The second electrode assembly is arranged adjacent to the second transparent portion, and includes a transparent circular electrode and a plurality of concentric transparent annular electrode surrounding the transparent circular electrode, the circular electrode being insulated from the annular electrode.

With the ongoing development of micro-circuitry and multi-media technologies, digital cameras are now in widespread use. High-end portable electronic devices, such as mobile phones and PDAs (personal digital assistants), are being developed which are increasingly multi-functional. Therefore digital cameras now are popularly employed in portable electronic devices to allow the portable electronic devices to have an additional function of taking images and recording audiovisual information.
A typical digital camera includes a lens module for capturing optical information of an object and an image sensor for sensing the optical information captured by the lens module. Usually, an aperture is a necessary optical element in the lens module and is used for controlling an amount of light passing through the lens module. In FIGS. 6-8, a conventional mechanical aperture 100 is shown. The mechanical aperture 100 includes a number of arc laminas 110. The arc laminas 110 are movable so that a central through hole 120 having a predetermined diameter can be formed. The diameter of the central through hole 120 can be adjusted by moving the arc laminas 100 for controlling the amount of light passing through the aperture 100. However, the movement of the arc laminas 110 generally requires the assistance of a number of mechanical components, which renders the aperture 100 unduly bulky and therefore limits the application of lens module incorporating such an aperture 100 in a portable electronic devices.
What is needed, therefore, is an aperture with a compact configuration and a variable aperture size.


A debris filter has a housing, a filter screen mounted to the housing and disposed so as to extend across a flow path through the housing, a debris extractor mounted to the housing, and a splitter bar also mounted to the housing. The debris extractor and the filter screen are so mounted to the housing as to enable rotation of the filter screen and the debris extractor relative to one another. The debris extractor has a debris intake opening and the debris extractor and the splitter bar are so mounted to the housing that the intake opening is positionable adjacent to or in juxtaposition with the splitter bar with the splitter bar overlapping and shielding the intake opening.

Thermal and nuclear power plants use steam condensers for condensation of steam after the energy has been utilized to drive the turbine(s). The steam condensers may be water-cooled or air-cooled. In water-cooled process, water is typically obtained from sources like sea, rivers and lakes. The quantity of water required is quite large and it contains debris like grass, shells, fish, cloth and plastic sheet material. Such debris tends to clog the tubes of the steam condensers, causing reduction in heat transfer, which in turn may affect power generation. The problem of accumulation of debris and the need for periodic removal of debris poses a serious challenge to the power generating plants. To overcome this problem, an automatic debris filter is installed at the inlet of the condenser, which filters and removes suspended particles. Conventional automatic debris filters use different techniques for removing debris. In one such conventional debris filter, a tubular housing and a screen basket are provided, the screen basket being fastened to an inner periphery of housing. In the general arrangement of the debris filter, a debris extraction arm is mounted on the inlet side of the basket and is rotatable with respect to the screen and on its complete surface area.
For dislodging and removing debris clogged on the screen suction arms, which completely closes a segment of the screen and is rotatable to cover the complete screen, another method was adopted in the prior art is to use a debris filter with a rotatable suction arm inside the basket arm along with a jet water spray arrangement positioned outside the screen. In this debris filter the profile of the debris extractor does not facilitate removal of sticky debris from the screen easily. Hence, an additional water spray pump which delivers water at a velocity more than the inlet velocity of water from the clean side of filter is required to reverse the sticky debris from the screen. This arrangement results in additional power consumption for the water spray pump and also makes it more expensive.


Methods and configurations are drawn to a plant in which an effluent gas with a sulfur dioxide content of more than 1.5% is mixed with a substantially sulfur dioxide free offgas from a contactor to form a mixed feed gas for a hydrogenation reactor, wherein the mixed feed gas has a sulfur dioxide content of less than 1.5%.

Sulfur removal from effluent gases has become increasingly important as regulations require refineries and other petrochemical facilities to reduce their output of sulfurous compounds below previously tolerated concentrations. There are various processes known in the art to recover sulfur from numerous process gases.
For example, in a typical Claus sulfur recovery plant configuration, hydrogen sulfide is catalytically oxidized to elemental sulfur by reacting hydrogen sulfide with sulfur dioxide, which is typically generated in the same process by combustion of hydrogen sulfide with air in a reactor furnace. Because the Claus reaction represents an equilibrium chemical reaction, it is not possible for a Claus plant to convert all the incoming sulfur compounds to elemental sulfur. To increase at least to some extent the sulfur recovery, two or more stages may be coupled in series. However, depending on the configuration and initial concentration of sulfur compounds, multiple stages may not sufficiently limit output of hydrogen sulfide and/or sulfur dioxide in such plants.
Consequently, additional tail gas treatment units may be used to further reduce the output of hydrogen sulfide and/or sulfur dioxide. For example, some process configurations include heating and reducing all sulfur compounds to hydrogen sulfide, cooling and quenching, and hydrogen sulfide absorption, stripping and recycle as depicted in prior art FIG. 1. Here, sulfur components in the Claus tail gas are reduced to hydrogen sulfide in a hydrogenation reactor. The so formed hydrogen sulfide is then removed in an amine or other removal unit. While such processes are relatively simple and effectively remove sulfur from the feed gas to a significant extent, they are typically limited to sulfur dioxide concentrations of less than 1 percent in the feed gas (here: the Claus tail gas). At sulfur dioxide concentrations higher than about 1.5 percent, the temperature across the hydrogenation reactor will rise to unacceptable levels and likely damage or even completely destroy the catalyst bed. Moreover, the feed gas for such processes typically needs to be substantially free of oxygen for proper operation of the hydrogenation reactor.
Alternatively, sulfur can be removed in a process, in which sulfur and its compounds entrained in the tail gas of a Claus plant are converted to hydrogen sulfide through simultaneous hydrogenation and hydrolysis (DelaMora, et al. 1985). The so generated hydrogen sulfide is then converted to elemental sulfur in a Stretford process using an alkaline solution of salts on vanadium oxide (V2O5) and anthraquinone disulfonate to absorb and oxidize hydrogen sulfide to sulfur. The hydrogenation step is substantially the same as in the process described above; therefore, it is subjected to the same limitations. Hence, despite a relatively high rate of sulfur removal, the feed gas is generally limited to sulfur dioxide concentrations of less than 1 percent in the feed gas (here: the Claus tail gas).
Although various configurations and methods are known to reduce sulfur concentrations in effluent streams, all or almost all of them suffer from one or more disadvantages. Among other things, known processes are frequently limited to an essentially oxygen free feed gas and a sulfur dioxide concentrations of less than 1 percent in the feed gas. Therefore, there is still a need to provide improved methods and configuration to reduce the sulfur content in effluent gases.

Configurations and methods for effluent gas treatment


A software-driven method for the initialization of re-writable optical media is provided. Embodiments include a software-driven method for the formatting of re-writable optical media to include defining a file system and writing a UDF reader to the optical media to enable implementation on a plurality of optical media devices in a plurality of operating system environments. The re-writable optical media is initialized using either user data or initialization patterns in a background operation to allow user interaction with the optical media during initialization. Methods are provided for multi-track capabilities of the optical media. Prior to initialization of the entire media space of an optical media, a session can be closed to enable compatibility of a partially initialized media in a ROM device. Further methods are provided to re-open a closed session to complete initialization of the media space.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to the recording of data onto optical media, and more particularly to a method for formatting and initializing re-writable optical media to provide user access to the media after only a short preparation time, and to provide for data integrity during the format and initialization operations, and during the life of the media.
2. Description of the Related Art
When recording data to optical media, a user typically provides a blank optical media for recording, selects a plurality of files from a source or plurality of sources, and executes a recording function. The selected files can be of any type including audio files, video files, photographic files, data files, program application files, and the like. The recording function is typically executed by use of an optical media recording program which accomplishes such tasks as mapping out precise locations of source files, determining size of source files, mapping out a precise target destination for the selected files, calculating a theoretical transfer rate for reading the file from a source and recording the file to a destination, identifying those files that will be cached and those files that will be recorded directly from source to destination, performing necessary file formatting as required, and burning the selected files to a destination optical media.
Before any of the above functions can occur, however, the target optical media must be properly formatted. Generally, formatting includes defining a file system and structure for writing data to a media, or for simple audio recording, defining a generic structure. Although different types of data require different types and levels of destination media formatting, the process of formatting re-writable optical media has failed to keep up with basic user demand for simple and efficient methods for rapidly formatting and initializing optical media.
Typically, a user must spend from 30 to 50 minutes in preparing re-writable optical media for recording data files. Assuming compliance with such standards as ISO9660 and Universal Disc Format (UDF™), preparation of re-writable optical media for recording data files requires at least writing to the entire disc, and then, for optimum preparation, verification by reading back each block. In the remaining document, reference to "UDF" shall be understood to be with reference to registered trademark UDF™. Verification of user data recorded to the media after formatting only occurs upon reading data back from the media. If a problem occurs but is not detected during the write process, the user's data is already lost by the time the problem is eventually discovered.
FIG. 1A shows a block diagram 10 of a typical formatted re-writable optical media according to the UDF standard. Block 20 is the Lead In area, block 22 is the UDF file system, and block 23 is an area of null data. Null data consists typically of 0's written to the disc specifically for the purpose of formatting. Block 24 represents the UDF area reserved for redundant file system information and possibly for sparing purposes, and block 26 represents the Lead Out area. The structures shown in block diagram 10 are well known, and represent a typical UDF formatted media. FIG. 1A is representative of a formatting structure that, in prior art, must be accomplished before data is recorded to re-writable optical media, and such formatting typically takes from 30 to 50 minutes to complete. Generally, no other processes or operations may be conducted with the optical media once the formatting has been initiated and until the formatting is complete.
One prior art solution to the amount of time that is required for media formatting has been the manufacture and sale of pre-formatted media. The pre-formatting, or formatting of the re-writable optical media prior to the sale or distribution to a user, continues to take the aforementioned 30–50 minutes, but is accomplished during the manufacture of the media. Pre-formatted re-writable optical media are simply formatted during manufacture, and the cost of formatting during production is passed on to the user. Further, a typical user is easily confused if not skilled enough to know, for example, that data is commonly recorded in UDF format, but audio is not. If a user desires to record audio files, then a UDF-formatted disc will indicate to the recording system that the media is "full". The recording system would then require that the media's pre-formatting be erased in preparation for audio recording.
Another prior art solution has been to utilize programming options described in the UDF specification. One such option is the "grow" format command defined in the MMC specification (SCSI-3 Multimedia Commands (MMC), published by the American National Standard of Accredited Standards Committee X3, Publication No. ANSI X3.304:1997, and other similar or related documents). The "grow" format command is designed for use to incrementally format a partially formatted media, and provides a reasonably rapid method of saving of files to a formatted area. Once the formatted area of the media has been filled, however, the process slows down dramatically, if supported at all. Many currently available media recording devices do not support the method prescribed by the "grow" format command, which further requires a number of programming or implementation steps well beyond the level of skill of the typical user.
Yet another prior art method of reducing the time required for re-writable optical media formatting has been a hardware solution. The hardware solution implements a rapid format technique allowing a user to write to media in just a few minutes after initiation of the rapid formatting. The hardware solution generally utilizes the UDF format, and proceeds to incrementally initialize whole sections of media while allowing a user to write to those sections that have been initialized. While the total time to format optical media may remain approximately the same as described and known for other methods of media formatting, the hardware-implemented rapid formatting provides the ability to write to the media before the formatting of the entire disc has been completed. So long as the user leaves the optical media in the hardware device capable of the hardware rapid formatting, the user can write to those portions of formatted media, as they become available.
FIG. 1B shows a block diagram 15 of a typical prior art rapidly formatted re-writable media using a hardware-implemented rapid formatting process. Block 30 represents a Lead In area, and block 32 represents the UDF file system. The Lead In area and the UDF file system shown in blocks 30 and 32 are substantially identical to the Lead In area and UDF file system shown in blocks 20 and 22 of FIG. 1A. In FIG. 1B, the UDF file system shown in block 32 is followed by an uninitialized area represented by block 34. The uninitialized area 34 represents an area of the media between the Lead In 30 and the Lead Out 40 that has never been written to or otherwise formatted. The uninitialized area 34 will be formatted and written to in the process of the media formatting, but the initial structures shown in FIG. 1B allow the media to be accessed with a system incorporating the hardware implementing the rapid formatting.
The uninitialized area 34 is followed by an area of null data 36, the UDF redundant file system information and sparing region 38, and the Lead Out area 40. Because a section of the media remains uninitialized 34, the Lead In 30 lacks an accurate reference to point to an exact location for the Lead Out 40. The null data block 36 ensures that devices implementing a seek-calibration process as part of the spinning up of a disc have adequate formatted space in and near the Lead Out 40 for the seek calibration process. In substantially all other respects, the UDF redundant file system information and sparing region 38 and the Lead Out 40 are the same structures as those described in FIG. 1A at blocks 24 and 26.
As illustrated in FIG. 1B, the hardware-implemented rapid formatting creates a formatted re-writable media that looks and operates similar to the typical UDF formatted media. When the hardware-implemented method is initiated, the Lead In 30, UDF file system 32, a small amount of null data 36, the file system information and sparing region 38 and the Lead Out 40 are written and verified. Once these structures are established and verified, the media appears as a formatted media, and can be written to and verified as any other media might be. So long as the media remains in the hardware device capable of implementing the hardware-implemented formatting, the remainder of the uninitialized area 34 is formatted in whole sections, during which time a user can access and interact with those sections of the media that have been formatted. As each whole section of media space is written and verified, that section becomes available for use as a formatted section of media. The process of formatting sections of media continues and allows use of those sections of media that have been formatted while the formatting is proceeding. This is true only as long as the media remains in the device that initiated the formatting, or is inserted into another device capable of performing the hardware-implemented rapid formatting.
If the media is ejected from the formatting device prior to completion of the formatting of the entire media, it can be inserted into another device, but there are limitations on its use. If the other device into which the media is inserted is not capable of a hardware-implemented rapid formatting of media, the media can only be accessed in read-only mode. Essentially, the media presents itself as having a closed session of data written thereon, and therefore can be accessed for reading, but not for writing or completion of the formatting process.
Another limitation of the prior art formatting process is that although many formatting process applications utilize some form of defect management in the initial formatting of a media, there is no known prior art method of defect management of media during its useful life. By way of example, the UDF specification defines a sparing table to be used for re-writing data that was discovered to contain errors during the verification process, and the process of implementing the sparing table is known in the art. The UDF specification does not, however, define an area or process for defect management that includes periodic verification of data after its initial writing to the optical media.
In accordance with the above, what is needed is a method and system for the formatting and initialization of media which allows user access to media after only a short preparation time, allows full read and write capabilities during the initialization process, provides data integrity during the initialization and during the life of the media, allows a user to eject the media during the initialization and have the initialization continue upon media reinsertion, and uses an incremental initialization method to allow partially initialized media to be readable and writable by a plurality of systems and software applications.

Method and apparatus for formatting and initialization of re-writable optical media using multiple tracks