An improved anchor apparatus and method consisting of a hanger configured for connection with a surface where the hanger has a length with a first end and a second end and an anchor in the hanger where the anchor is connected with the hanger along a first part of the anchor and where the anchor is releasably connected with the hanger along a second part of the anchor such that when the second part is disconnected from the hanger the second part of the anchor extends away from the surface of the hanger.

By way of example only and not by limitation, in 2008, during the construction of a residential home, Applicant observed waste and inefficiencies in the utilization of the "prior art" brick ties used to support load bearing brick/masonry walls. The standard brick tie according to the prior art consists of a single piece of metal that is nailed to a wood surface such that a portion of it can be bent away from the surface and inserted between bricks laid in front of the tie so as to hold the brick surface in place against the wood support. Applicant specifically noted large numbers of prior art brick ties discarded to the ground during the application process and the resulting waste from unused ties. Applicant opined that this waste occurs when brick masons take a handful of ties, apply what they need to the wood frame, and then drop the remaining unused ties to the ground. Applicant also observed that the design of the ties as individual pieces cost the brick masons additional time in securing each of the ties to the frame.
Still further, Applicant has observed that the use of individual ties also inevitably introduces location errors and inconsistent spacing due to human error.
Thus, there is a need in the art for an anchor apparatus and method that addresses the aforementioned problems in a manner that is robust and flexible so as to accommodate a full spectrum of structures, shapes and dimensions and which provides accurate and repeatable anchor locations.
It therefore is an object of this invention to provide an improved anchor system that reduces application time, increases efficiency and accuracy and reduces waste.


An input control device can be configured to operate in different modes depending on proximity data provided by a proximity detection system. The input control device can include a feedback generator configured to generate feedback in response to the input control device switching between operational modes, the proximity data provided by the proximity detection system, and/or other conditions of the surgical procedure, robotic surgical tool, surgical site, and/or patient. The input control device can include a variable resistance assembly for resisting input control motions applied to an actuator thereof. Additionally or alternatively, the input control device can include an end effector actuator assembly for repositioning the end effector actuator based on feedback from a paired robotic surgical tool.

Surgical systems often incorporate an imaging system, which can allow the clinician(s) to view the surgical site and/or one or more portions thereof on one or more displays such as a monitor. The display(s) can be local and/or remote to a surgical theater. An imaging system can include a scope with a camera that views the surgical site and transmits the view to a display that is viewable by a clinician. Imaging systems can be limited by the information that they are able to recognize and/or convey to the clinician(s). For example, certain concealed structures, physical contours, and/or dimensions within a three-dimensional space may be unrecognizable intraoperatively by certain imaging systems. Additionally, certain imaging systems may be incapable of communicating and/or conveying certain information to the clinician(s) intraoperatively.
Robotic systems can be actuated or remotely-controlled by one or more clinicians positioned at control consoles. Input motions at the control console(s) can correspond to actuations of a robotic arm and/or a robotic tool coupled thereto. In various instances, the robotic system and/or the clinician(s) can rely on views and/or information provided by an imaging system to determine the desired robotic actuations and/or the corresponding suitable input motions. The inability of certain imaging systems to provide certain visualization data and/or information may present challenges and/or limits to the decision-making process of the clinician and/or the controls for the robotic system.

Jaw coordination of robotic surgical controls


A method for correcting a voice recognition error and a broadcast receiving apparatus applying the same are provided. The method for correcting the voice recognition error includes, receiving a user's spoken command, recognizing the user's spoken command and determining text corresponding to the user's spoken command, if a user command to correct the determined text is input, displaying a text correction user interface in which a morpheme of the determined text and an indicator are associated with each other, and correcting the morpheme of the determined text by selecting the associated indicator of the text correction UI. Accordingly, the broadcast receiving apparatus exactly corrects the misrecognized word with a word desired by the user.

1. Field
Methods and apparatuses consistent with exemplary embodiments relate to a method for correcting a voice recognition error and a broadcast receiving apparatus applying the same, and more particularly, to a method for correcting a voice recognition error, which corrects a voice that is misrecognized in an interactive voice recognition system, and a broadcast receiving apparatus applying the same.
2. Description of the Related Art
As broadcast receiving apparatuses have become multifunctional and have advanced in recent years, various input methods used to control the broadcast receiving apparatuses have been developed. For example, an input method using a mouse, an input method using a touch pad, and an input method using a motion sensing remote controller have been developed.
In particular, from among various input methods, a voice recognition method, which recognizes a user's voice and spoken commands and controls a display apparatus so that a user can control a broadcast receiving apparatus more easily, is becoming more popular.
However, the method that recognizes a voice or spoken command uttered by the user and controls the broadcast receiving apparatus may not obtain a satisfactory result due to differences in dental structures and pronunciations of different users.
That is, if the broadcast receiving apparatus misrecognizes a voice or spoken command uttered by the user, it is impossible to control the broadcast receiving apparatus as desired by the user or it is impossible to search for a desired content. Also, if the broadcast receiving apparatus misrecognizes a specific word uttered by the user, there is a high possibility that the broadcast receiving apparatus will consistently misrecognize the specific word when the user utters the specific word again.
Therefore, there is a demand for a method for efficiently correcting a voice recognition error by correcting a voice recognition result that is misrecognized by a broadcast receiving apparatus.

Method for correcting voice recognition error and broadcast receiving apparatus applying the same


The present invention proposes an implant, in particular an intraluminal endoprosthesis, having a body, comprising at least one at least largely biodegradable metallic material, in particular magnesium or a magnesium alloy. To improve the degradation behavior, the implant has a first layer on at least a portion of its body surface, said layer containing a hydrogen-binding material, preferably palladium. Furthermore, methods for producing such an implant are given.

Medical endoprostheses or implants for a wide variety of applications are known in a great variety from the prior art. Endoprostheses in the sense of the present invention are understood to be endovascular prostheses, e.g., stents, fastening elements for bones, e.g., screws, plates or nails, surgical suture material, intestinal clamps, vascular clips, prostheses in the area of hard and soft tissue as well as anchoring elements for electrodes, in particular pacemakers or defibrillators.
Stents are used today as implants in especially large numbers to treat stenoses (vasoconstrictions). They have a tubular basic mesh or hollow cylinder, which is open at both longitudinal ends. The tubular basic mesh of such an endoprosthesis is inserted into the vessel to be treated and serves to support the vessel there. Stents have become established for treatment of vascular diseases in particular. Constricted regions in the vessels can be widened through the use of stents, resulting in a larger lumen. Through the use of stents or other implants, an optimum vascular cross section, which is the first requirement for successful treatment, can be achieved, but the permanent presence of such a foreign body initiates a cascade of microbiological processes, which can lead to gradual overgrowth of the stent and, in the worst case, to vascular occlusion. One approach to solving this problem is to manufacture the stent and/or other implants from a biodegradable material.
"Biodegradation" is understood to refer to hydrolytic, enzymatic and other metabolic degradation processes in a living body, where these processes are triggered mainly by body fluids coming in contact with the biodegradable material of the implant and lead to a gradual dissolution of the structures of the implant containing the biodegradable material. Through this process, the implant loses its mechanical integrity at a certain point in time. The term "biocorrosion" is often used as synonymous with "biodegradation." The term "bioresorption" comprises the subsequent resorption of the degradation products by a living body.
Materials suitable for the basic mesh of biodegradable implants may contain polymers or metals, for example. The basic mesh may consist of several of these materials. The common feature shared by all these materials is their biodegradability. Examples of suitable polymer compounds include polymers from the group of cellulose, collagen, albumin, casein, polysaccharides (PSAC), polylactide (PLA), poly-L-lactide (PLLA), polyglycol (PGA), poly-D,L-lactide-co-glycolide (PDLLA-PGA), polyhydroxybutyric acid (PHB), polyhydroxyvaleric acid (PHV), poly/alkyl carbonates, polyorthoesters, polyethylene terephthalate (PET), polymalonic acid (PML), polyanhydrides, polyphosphazenes, polyamino acids and their copolymers as well as hyaluronic acid. Depending on the desired properties, the polymers may be used in pure form, in derivatized form, in the form of blends or copolymers. Metallic biodegradable materials are based primarily on alloys of magnesium and iron. The present invention preferably relates to implants whose biodegradable material contains at least partially a metal, preferably magnesium or a magnesium alloy.
There are already known stents which have coatings with various functions. Such coatings serve, for example, to release medications, to arrange an X-ray marker or to protect the underlying structures.
In the implementation of biodegradable implants, the degradability should be controlled according to the desired treatment and/or application of the respective implant (coronary, intracranial, renal, etc.). For many therapeutic applications, for example, an important target corridor is for the implant to lose its integrity over a period of four weeks to six months. The term "integrity" here is understood to be mechanical integrity, i.e., the property whereby the implant has hardly any mechanical losses in comparison with the undegraded implant. This means that the implant has such high mechanical stability that the collapse pressure, for example, drops only slightly, i.e., at most to 80% of the nominal value. Thus if it has its integrity, the implant can fulfill its main function, to maintain the patency of the blood vessel. Alternatively, integrity may be defined as such a great mechanical stability of an implant that it is hardly subject to any geometric changes in its load state in the vessel, e.g., it does not collapse to any mentionable extent, i.e., it still has at least 80% of the dilated diameter under load or, in the case of a stent, there are hardly any broken load-bearing struts.
Biodegradable implants containing magnesium or a magnesium alloy, in particular so-called magnesium stents, have proven to be especially promising for the target corridor of degradation mentioned above, but they lose their mechanical integrity and/or supporting effect too soon on the one hand, while on the other hand, the decline in integrity varies greatly in vitro and in vivo. This means that with magnesium stents, the collapse pressure declines too rapidly over time and/or there is too much variability in this decline so it is too indefinable.
Various mechanisms of controlling the degradation of magnesium implants have already been described in the prior art. These are based on organic and inorganic protective layers, for example, or combinations thereof, which present some resistance to the human corrosion medium and the corrosion processes taking place there. Approaches known in the past have been characterized in that barrier layer effects are achieved, based on the best spatial separation between the corrosion medium and the metallic material, in particular the metallic magnesium, with no defects, if possible. Protection from degradation is thus ensured by protective layers having various compositions and by defined geometric spacings (diffusion barriers) between the corrosion medium and the magnesium base material. Other approaches are based on alloy constituents of the biodegradable material of the implant body, which influence the corrosion process by shifting its position in the electrochemical voltage series. Other approaches in the field of controlled degradation produce intended breaking effects by applying physical changes (e.g., local changes in cross section) and/or chemical changes to the stent surface (e.g., multiple layers having different chemical compositions locally). However, with the approaches mentioned so far, it has not usually been possible to arrange for the dissolution, which occurs due to the degradation process, and the resulting breakage of the webs to occur within the required window of time. The result is that degradation occurs either too soon or too late and/or there is excessive variability in the degradation of the implant.
Another problem associated with passivation coatings is based on the fact that stents or other implants may usually assume two states, namely a compressed state with a small diameter and an expanded state with a larger diameter. In the compressed state, the implant can be inserted by means of a catheter into the vessel to be supported and positioned at the location to be treated. At the site of treatment, the implant is then dilated by means of a balloon catheter and/or converted to the expanded state (when a shape memory alloy is used as the implant material) by heating it to a temperature above the transition temperature. Because of this change in diameter, the implant body is subjected to mechanical stress. Additional mechanical stresses on the implant may occur during production or movement of the implant in or with the blood vessel into which the implant has been inserted. With the aforementioned coatings, this yields in particular the disadvantage that the coating may crack during deformation of the implant (e.g., forming microcracks) or may be partially removed. This may cause an unspecified local degradation. Furthermore, the onset and rate of degradation depend on the size and distribution of the microcracks formed during deformation, which, being defects, are difficult to control. This leads to a great scattering in the degradation times.
Document DE 10 2006 060 501 discloses a method of manufacturing a corrosion-inhibiting coating on an implant made of a biocorrodible magnesium alloy and an implant obtainable by this method, in which, after the implant is prepared, the implant surface is treated with an aqueous or alcoholic conversion solution containing one or more ions selected from the group of K−, Na+, NH4+, Ca2+, Mg2+, Zn2+, Ti4−, Zr4+, Ce3+, Ce4+, PO33−, PO43−, HPO42−, H2PO4−, OH−, BO33−, B4O73−, SiO32−, MnO42−, MnO4−, VO3−, WO42−, MoO42−, TiO32−, Se2−, ZrO32− and NbO4−, where the concentration of the ion(s) is in the range of 10−2 mol/L to 2 mol/L. The treatment of the implant surface with said conversion solution causes anodic oxidation of the implant. This is performed either without the use of an external current source (externally currentless) or with a current source. However, neither the examples of methods described in this publication nor the electrolyte compositions completely meet expectations with regard to degradation behavior and dilatability without destruction of the layer being used for a magnesium stent.


A floppy disk recording data regeneration system having a voltage-controlled delay circuit, voltage-controlled data phase shifting circuit and a loop filter made up of a first-stage low-pass filter with a first cut-off frequency, and a second-stage low-pass filter with a second cut-off frequency lower than the first cut-off frequency. The output voltage of the second-stage low-pass filter drives the voltage-controlled data phase shifting circuit, and the output voltage of the first-stage low-pass filter drives the voltage-controlled delay circuit. The amount of delay of the oscillation output pulse is adjusted by the voltage-controlled delay circuit to suppress the occurrence of read errors in the event of peak shifts. In the event of a wow and flutter fluctuation, the amount of shift in the phase of the read data signal pulse is finely adjusted to suppress the occurrence of read errors in subsequent stages. In a data recovery system having this type of phase correction circuit, correction is also performed in the event of jitter due to the occurrence of power source fluctuations, and, therefore, countermeasures for suppressing power source fluctuations can be implemented relatively easily.

This invention relates to regenerators, data recovery, and data separator systems for information storage mediums such as magnetic floppy disk devices and more particularly to phase correction techniques for normalizing read data bits at a prescribed position in a detection window of a window signal.
FIG. 1 is a prior art regeneration system 10 for a floppy disk drive and comprises a floppy disk 12, a read/write head 14, a preamplifier 16, a one-shot multivibrator 18, and a phase locked loop (PLL) 20 having a phase comparator 22, a low-pass filter 24, and a voltage controlled oscillator (VCO) 26. System 10 is alternatively called a data recovery or data separator system by those skilled in the art. Phase comparator 22 employs a charge pump (not shown). An oscillating signal "T.sub.1 " is output by VCO 26 and input to a data normalizer 28. A read data (RD) signal (having a frequency "f.sub.1 ") output by one-shot circuit 18 is also connected to normalizer 28. A signal "T.sub.2 " (oscillating at a frequency "f.sub.2 ") is also generated at one half of the frequency of signal "T.sub.1 " by using a divider in data normalizer 28. A discriminator 30 extracts a signal "X" from a window signal "W" and a signal "Z". System 10 uses, for example, a modified frequency modulation (MFM) encoding scheme on floppy disk 12. One-shot multivibrator 18 functions to shape a waveform "P" from preamplifier 16 into signal "RD". Phase comparator 22 compares the phase of signal "RD" to synchronizing signal "T.sub.2 " and generates a phase error signal "E". Low-pass filter 24 functions as a loop filter, and produces a DC correction voltage "C" having a magnitude that is proportional to the phase error between "f.sub.1 " and "f.sub.2 " at comparator 22. VCO 26 varies the frequency of signal "T.sub.1 " up or down appropriately, depending on voltage "C".
System 10 works in the following way. If the frequency "f.sub.1 " of signal "RD" goes higher than average, due, for example, to low-frequency wow and flutter of floppy disk 12, a phase difference develops between frequencies "f.sub.1 " and "f.sub.2 ". This causes a phase error signal "E" to be generated at the output of phase comparator 22. Low-pass filter 24 then filters and outputs this as correction voltage "C". Since VCO 26 is a voltage controlled oscillator, its output frequency is controlled by changes in voltage "C". The oscillation frequency "T.sub.1 ", in this case, moves closer to two times "f.sub.1 ", such that "f.sub.1 " approaches "f.sub.2 " (because "T.sub.1 " is divided by two). When "f.sub.1 " equals "f.sub.2 ", comparator 22 produces a voltage that causes VCO 26 to oscillate at twice "f.sub.2 ". equilibrium voltage will not necessarily be zero volts, and instead, will be dependent on the exact circuit design of VCO 26. The net result of the above is that a synchronizing signal (here "T.sub.2 ") is obtained which will track wow and flutter induced fluctuations in signal RD.
FIG. 2 illustrates that data normalizer 28 typically comprises a divide-by-two divider 32, a pair of D-type flip-flops 34 and 36, a two-input OR-gate 38, and a one shot multivibrator 40. The output of VCO 26 (signal "T.sub.1 ") is connected to the clock input C.sub.1 of divider 32 and is divided by a factor of two at outputs Q.sub.1 and Q.sub.1. A window signal "W", coming from master output M of divider 32, has a phase that is delayed one-half .pi. (90.degree.) with respect to output Q.sub.1. A flip-flop 34 receives signal "RD" at its clock input C.sub.2 and has the inverted output Q.sub.1 of the divide-by-two divider 32 applied to both its data input D.sub.2 and reset input R.sub.2. The data input of a flip-flop 36 receives signal "RD" at its clock input C.sub.3 and has the output Q.sub.1 of divider 32 connected to both data input D.sub.3 and reset input R.sub.3. OR-gate 38 has two inputs, one of which is connected to output Q.sub.2 of flip-flop 34 and the other of which is connected to output Q.sub.3 of flip-flop 36. A negative edge-sensitive one-shot multivibrator 40 senses the falling edge of synchronizing signal "T.sub.2 " at the output of OR-gate 38, and generates a signal "Z" (comprising a stream of narrow pulses).
FIG. 3 shows the timing relationships among the various signals in system 10 and especially those in data normalizer 28. Flip-flop 36 demodulates signal "RD" and functions as an MFM decoder which separates out the desired data bit sequence. Flip-flop 34 functions to extract the so-called MFM clock bit. Output Q.sub.3 corresponds to the data pulse sequence, and output Q.sub.2 corresponds to the clock pulse and indicates the bit interval. Signal "RD" has a pulse width one-quarter of the fundamental period and is synchronized with signal "T.sub.1 ". Output Q.sub.3 of flip-flop 36 goes high if signal "RD" goes high while output Q.sub.1 of divider 32 is high. Output Q.sub.3 goes low immediately when output Q.sub.1 goes low. Output Q.sub.2 of flip-flop 34 goes high if signal "RD" goes high while the inverted output Q.sub.1 of divider 32 is high. Output Q.sub.2 goes low immediately when output Q.sub.1 goes low. The outputs Q.sub.3 and Q.sub.2 are combined in OR-gate 38 and are synchronized with signal "RD" to generate synchronizing signal "T.sub.2 " having the same phase. Synchronizing signal "T.sub.2 " is input to multivibrator 40 and produces the narrow pulse width code sequence "Z". Each data pulse rise in signal "Z" is triggered by a falling edge of synchronizing signal "T.sub.2 " (and is not generated by the falling edge of signal "RD"). Since window signal "W" is the master output M of divider 32, the data pulse of code sequence "Z" appears at the center of a detection window width "w". In this way, the read data is normalized with respect to the window signal "W". The MFM code sequence (1101 . . . ), shown in FIG. 3, has the clock bit removed in a later stage and results in a demodulated code sequence (110 . . . ). Since data pulses in code sequence "Z" are produced from the edges of the output Q.sub.1 and inverted output Q.sub.1, the phases of signal "RD" and synchronizing signal "T.sub.2 " are synchronized and the data pulse of code sequence Z is always generated at the center of detection window width "w" even while experiencing wow and flutter fluctuations (low-frequency fluctuations below one kilohertz). Normalizing the data pulse to be at the center of detection window width "w" is important since window signal W and code sequence Z can have different amounts of delay due to differences in cable wiring to discriminator 30. A sufficient phase margin in the data pulse must be designed-in to prevent it from deviating outside detection window width "w" as much as possible.
FIG. 4 shows the timing of each of the signals in data normalizer 28 when a large peak shift occurs in the signal "RD". PLL 20 is designed to follow wow and flutter fluctuations and other low-frequency fluctuations, and it generates synchronizing signals "T.sub.1 " or "T.sub.2 " by following frequency fluctuations in signal "RD". It also follows phase shifts (peak shifts) in the read data pulse that are randomly generated by magnetic interference between adjacent bits on the magnetic disk. When a peak shift occurs, such as that indicated by the hatched areas in signal "RD" in FIG. 4, a pulse rise occurs and output Q.sub.1 is high, rather than output Q.sub.1 being high. The pulse which should occur in output Q.sub.3 (as indicated by a dashed line in FIG. 4) is not generated, and, instead, a pulse in output Q.sub.2 as indicated by the dashed line in FIG. 4, is generated. This results in the appearance of a pulse (hatched area) in code sequence Z in FIG. 4 which causes the bit to shift. Since this pulse with a shifted bit does not exist in detection window width "w" of the window signal, a recording code sequence for example of "110 . . . " will be incorrectly read as "100 . . . ". When a pulse with a large bit shift occurs, the oscillation frequency of VCO 26 will fluctuate, and synchronizing signal "T.sub.1 " ("T.sub.2 ") which follows this phase delay is generated. This fluctuation of the synchronizing signal, with respect to the delayed peak shift, reduces the phase margin of the next read data pulse and causes it to shift more easily out of the detection window which causes read errors. An excessively large peak shift, as shown in FIG. 4, can easily occur due to a problem in the drive circuit, etc. However, when small peak shifts occur that are not large enough to cause a read error, PLL 20 tries to follow it, but if a peak shift in the opposite direction happens, a read error will probably result. In prior art circuit configurations, read errors result in the occurrence of peak shifts in rapid succession.
Phase shifts of 20.degree. to 30.degree. are normal in operation, and perfect synchronization is essentially impossible. Peak shifts occur randomly and usually comprise both low-frequency and high-frequency components. Since PLL 20 is designed to follow low-frequency wow and flutter (below approximately one kilohertz), it essentially follows peak shifts that have relatively low-frequency components. The advance and delay margins are generally not balanced, so a read error can occur due to mutual differences in the amounts of delay of the two margins in the discriminator. During normal operation, VCO 26 also has a jitter component due to the effects of power source fluctuations, so it is easy for read errors to occur, due to the reduced phase margin of peak shifts. In the prior art, it was necessary to carefully design the loop filter or devise such counter-measures as power source stabilization and noise reduction (cable wiring, parts layout on circuit substrate, etc.) to suppress power source fluctuations.
A phase correction circuit placed in a stage before the data normalizer will correct the phases of the read data signal and the oscillation output with respect to each other. The amount by which the phase is adjusted by the phase correction circuit is controlled by the voltage of the loop filter used in the phase synchronizing circuit. A more specific means for solving one of the above problems is to configure the phase correction circuit with a data phase shifting element for setting the VCO to a pull-in range that will follow only low-frequency fluctuations and for uniformly shifting the phase of the read data signal by only a prescribed amount, using a voltage-controlled delay element for variably adjusting the amount of delay of the oscillation output pulse of VCO according to the output voltage of the loop filter. The phase correction circuit can be configured with a voltage-controlled data phase shifting circuit for variably adjusting the amount of pulse phase shift of the read data signal according to the output voltage of the loop filter. A more specific means for solving the above problems simultaneously is to configure the loop filter with a first-stage low-pass filter having a first cut-off frequency and a second-stage low-pass filter having a second cut-off frequency lower than the first cut-off frequency, and to configure the phase correction element with a voltage-controlled data phase shifting circuit which variably adjusts the amount of shift of the pulse phase of the read data signal according to the output voltage of the second-stage low-pass filter, and with a voltage-controlled delay element that adjusts the amount of delay of the oscillation output pulse of the VCO according to the output voltage of the first-stage low-pass filter.
When the voltage controlled oscillator is set to a pull-in range that follows only low-frequency fluctuations, a phase-synchronizing element will not follow fluctuations containing high frequency components such as peak shifts and it mainly follows wow and flutter fluctuations. The occurrence of peak shifts varies the output voltage of the loop filter. Due to this voltage fluctuation, the voltage-controlled delay element adjusts the amount of delay of the oscillation output pulse coming from the voltage-controlled oscillator. That is, the amount of delay of the oscillation output pulse is controlled according to the phase of the peak shift. The phase of the read data signal, however, is uniformly shifted 90.degree., for example, by the data phase shifting element. This is because the pulse which delayed the oscillation output pulse and the pulse of the read data signal are combined. Using this combined signal processing, the data bit pulse in which a peak shift has occurred can be matched without deviation within the detection window width of the window signal in the data normalizer, whereby read errors due to peak shifts are reduced compared to prior art signal processing devices.
The problem of unbalanced phase margins in wow and flutter fluctuations not containing a high-frequency component such as peak shifts is improved by adjusting the phase of the read data signal pulse. By employing a voltage-controlled data phase shifting element as the phase correcting circuit which variably adjusts the amount of shift in the phase of the read data signal pulse according to the output voltage of the loop filter. A fine adjustment in the amount of phase shift is made in response to relatively small phase fluctuations, according to the amount of phase fluctuation, rather than large phase adjustments, such as for peak shifts. Therefore, it is possible to make the advance margin and delay margin of the data bit equal with respect to the window width. Differences between the data bit sequence and the delay of the window signal inevitably occur between the data normalizer and the discriminator in a later stage, but by making the advance margin and the delay margin equal in the data normalizer, the probability of discrimination errors (read errors) occurring is reduced.
An object of the present invention is to offer a highly reliabler regenerator for information recording mediums that will not easily produce read errors when relatively large phase shifts (having high-frequency fluctuations) occur in a read data signal. Another object is to offer a highly reliable regenerator for information recording mediums that makes it difficult for read errors to occur by continually balancing phase margins even when relatively low-frequency fluctuations occur due to wow and flutter fluctuations or power source fluctuations.

Data recovery system for information recording media


A method and apparatus for dry etching pure Cu and Cu-containing layers (220, 310) for manufacturing integrated circuits. The invention uses a directional beam of O-atoms with high kinetic energy (340) to oxidize the Cu and Cu-containing layers, and etching reagents (370) that react with the oxidized Cu (360) to form volatile Cu-containing etch products (390). The invention allows for low-temperature, anisotropic etching of pure Cu and Cu-containing layers in accordance with a patterned hard mask or photoresist (230, 330).

Copper (Cu) is emerging as the metal of choice in a wide variety of semiconductor applications. Lower electrical resistivity, coupled with improved electromigration performance and increased stress migration resistance are important material properties that favor the use of Cu over aluminum (Al) in interconnect lines and contacts. The lower electrical resistance is critical since it allows signals to move faster by reducing the RC time delay. The superior resistance to electromigration, a common reliability problem in Al lines, means that Cu can handle higher power densities. An equally important benefit of using Cu over Al is that the manufacturing cost for a Cu metallization scheme can be lower due to new processing methods that reduce the number of manufacturing steps and alleviate the need for some of the most difficult steps.
The capability to process substrates anisotropically permits the production of integrated circuit features at precisely defined locations with sidewalls that are essentially perpendicular to the surface of a masked overlayer. The introduction of Cu into multilevel metallization architecture requires new processing methods for Cu patterning. Because Cu is difficult to dry etch, new process schemes have been developed for Cu patterning.
The damascene approach is based on etching features in the dielectric material, filling them with Cu metal, and planarizing the top surface by chemical mechanical polishing (CMP). Dual damascene schemes integrate both the contacts and the interconnect lines into a single processing scheme. However, Cu CMP technology is challenging and it has difficulty defining extremely fine features. In addition, CMP suffers from yield-detracting problems of scratching, peeling, dishing and erosion.
An alternative to the damascene approach is patterned etching of a Cu layer. The patterned etch process involves deposition of a Cu layer on a substrate, the use of a patterned hard mask or photoresist over the Cu-containing layer, patterned etching of the Cu layer using a reactive ion etching (RIE) process; and deposition of dielectric material over the patterned Cu-containing layer. Patterned etching of Cu can have advantages over damascene processes since it is easier to etch fine Cu patterns and then deposit a dielectric layer onto the Cu pattern, than it is to get barrier layer materials and Cu metal to adequately fill small feature openings in a dielectric film.
Patterned etching using RIE processes is characterized by relatively low pressures and high ion bombardment energies. While ion bombardment is needed to achieve the desired degree of etch anisotropy, it is also responsible for secondary damage to the underlying microstructure. As semiconductor devices have become increasingly more integrated and new advanced materials, such as copper and low-k dielectric materials, have been introduced to improve the circuit properties, the damage caused by fabrication processes presents an increasingly serious problem. A leading reason for damage formation is essentially the incidence of energetic particles, such as ions and UV photons, from the plasma environment to the substrate surface.
The primary etch reagent for removing Cu layers is traditionally a chorine-containing gas in gas mixture that includes argon (Ar). Removal of pure Cu layers and Cu-containing layers with high Cu-content using chlorine plasma essentially involves physical sputtering of the low-volatility CuClx surface layer by energetic ions in the plasma. The Cu removal rates are very low when using this method and another drawback is that the sputtered CuClx coats the chamber walls and this requires periodic cleaning of the etching chamber. An equally serious problem is encountered when high-aspect-ratio features are etched in chlorine plasma and the sputtered CuClx products redeposit on the feature sidewalls where the effects of physical sputtering are reduced.
When the abovementioned chlorine-based etching process is carried out at elevated temperatures (>200° C.) to increase the volatility of the reacted Cu-containing layer, corrosion can occur due to the accumulated CuClx etch residues on the surface. If these residues are not removed by a post-etch cleaning step, they can cause continuing corrosion of the Cu even after the application of a protective layer over the etched features.
Other energy sources have been suggested to increase the etching rate. These approaches include exposing the etching surface to UV or IR light sources to accelerate desorption of CuClx from the etching surface. However, these approaches are not practical for semiconductor batch processing of large substrates due to poor etch uniformity, high cost and added equipment complexity, and reliability problems.
Accordingly, it is desirable to develop a method for anisotropic etching in semiconductor manufacturing using plasmas that are essentially free of energetic ions and photon particles. Such particles are ordinarily required to achieve an isotropic etch with atomic oxygen plasmas in the prior art, but cause secondary damage to the underlying substrate. Furthermore, the reaction products should be highly volatile and easily removed from the etched substrate. In addition, the aforementioned limitations that are encountered when etching Cu-containing layers using conventional chlorine chemistry, show that there is a need for new low temperature dry etching methods in semiconductor manufacturing using chemical approaches that do not involve chlorine-based reactants.

Anisotropic dry etching of Cu-containing layers


A computer system is provided that includes at least one processor configured to execute a host virtual machine configured to host a session with at least one client computer device. The host virtual machine includes an operating system having a multi-media framework for rendering media content. The at least one processor is further configured to execute a media application configured to access media content from a media source, process encoded media content from the media application using the multi-media framework, and execute a multi-media redirection module configured to intercept the encoded media content from being processed by a decoding module of the multi-media framework. The multi-media redirection module is configured to redirect the encoded media content to the at least one client computer device.

In virtual environments, end users may use client devices to connect to a virtual machine running on server hardware, which may provide the end user with the benefits of added compute power, application compatibility, security and regulatory compliance, and a reduction in overall cost for the end user. Typically, these end users may consume media through media player applications, which can potentially increase the workload placed on the server hardware and increase associated costs.

This patent is subject to a terminal disclaimer.

Multi-media redirection for media applications


Disclosed herein is a cellular telephone that does not include an integrated microphone and an integrated speaker but that instead requires use of an externally connected microphone and speaker to facilitate voice communication. By omitting any integrated microphone and integrated speaker, the cellular telephone may have increased surface area usable for other purposes, such as a display or keypad. Further, the cost to manufacture the cellular telephone could be incrementally lower than the cost to manufacture a comparable cellular telephone having an integrated microphone and integrated speaker.

In order to facilitate voice communication, a cellular telephone generally includes an integrated microphone and an integrated speaker, each optimally positioned at an exterior surface of the cellular telephone so that a user can hold the cellular telephone with the speaker near the user's ear and the microphone within range of the user's mouth. Audio processing circuitry in the cellular telephone delivers to the speaker outbound audio signals representative of audible communications, for presentation of the audible communications to the user. Likewise, the audio processing circuitry receives from the microphone and processes audio signals representative of audible communications received by the microphone.
For the user's convenience or safety, a typical cellular telephone also includes a mechanism to connect with an external microphone/speaker combination through a wireless or wired link. For instance, the cellular telephone may include a short-range wireless interface, such as a BLUETOOTH or WI-FI interface (or other frequency hopping spread spectrum connection mechanism) or an infrared interface, that is arranged to pair with a correspondingly equipped headset having both microphone and speaker components, or the cellular telephone may include a jack for receiving a plug that provides a corded connection with a headset having both microphone and speaker components.
When an external headset is paired or otherwise connected with the cellular telephone, the audio processing circuitry in the cellular telephone causes audible communications to be routed between the cellular telephone and the external headset rather than between the cellular telephone and the integrated microphone and speaker. A user of the cellular telephone may thus conveniently engage in a voice call without the need to hold the cellular telephone with the integrated speaker near the user's ear or the integrated microphone near the user's mouth.

Cellular telephone without integrated speaker and microphone


The present invention includes a repeater and a server for controlling access, from a terminal of an outside network, to the server of an inside network. The repeater and the server permit a packet transmission from the terminal to the server under limited conditions. When the server acknowledges a connection for the permitted packet, transmission conditions for packets to be sent to the server are loosened. Subsequently, packet transmission between the terminal and the server is controlled under the loosened transmission conditions. As for encrypted packets, the server decodes the encrypted packets and notifies the repeater of relevant information.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an access-controlling method, a repeater, and a server.
2. Description of the Related Art
First, in this specification, a position where information to be protected and a server which manages the protected information is called an inner position, and a position which communicates via a network is called an outer position in relation to the inner position.
An access control (called a firewall and a packet filtering) is now used in order to protect the inner position from illegal access. Illegal access is, for example, accessing an inner position illegally from the outer position, blocking inner-position service from an outer position, and carrying out confidential information from the inner position to the outer position. Devices which take charge of the access control are one of or both of a server itself which offers service, and a repeater which relays communication to the server (for example, a router etc.).
Prior references regarding the prior access control include reference 1 (published Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. Hei 8-44642), reference 2 (Japanese translation of PCT international application No. Hei 10-504168), and reference 3 (published Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2000-124955).
Prior references regarding bandwidth control in TCP/IP, which is a typical network protocol, IPSec, and FlowLabel of IPv6 include non-patented reference I (reference name: "Internet QoS," coauthored by Paul Ferguson and Geott Huston, translation supervised by Iwao Toda, date of issue: May 5, 2000), non-patented reference 2 (reference name: RFC2401 "IP Encapsulating Security Payload (ESP)," coauthored by S. Kent and R. Atkinson, date of issue: November, 1998), and non-patented reference 3 (reference name: RFC2460 "Internet Protocol, Version6 (IPv6) Specification", coauthored by S. Deering and R. Hinden, date of issue: November, 1998).
(Problem 1) Measures to P2P (Pier-to-Pier) Communication
In the prior access control, control of a choice between two alternatives of whether to transmit a packet or to discard the packet is basically performed.
When a server offers service currently open to the public completely, for example, the WEB service which can be accessed from the Internet, the access control is basically just to transmit the packet to the server.
When the server offers the service with which access is restricted to the fixed range, for example, the file-sharing service by which access is limited in a network in the company, all the packets out of the fixed range are to be discarded.
However, when the server offers mail service to a computer which belongs to an employee who moved outside the company on business trip, the above-described access control cannot deal with the case. It is because, in such a case, an IP address and a port number of the computer which belongs to the employee is changed, if the employee moves outside the company.
With references 1 to 3, some proposals are made to such a subject. However, these proposals are inadequate for P2P communication.
In these references, when the packet is transmitted to an outer position from an inner position, the judging condition of the access control is dynamically changed so that a packet in the reverse direction is allowed to be transmitted in judging transmission/discard of the packet. Thereby, it is supposed that bidirectional communication is performed between the outer position and the inner position.
However, with such an art, unless a packet is transmitted towards the outer position from the inner position, the bidirectional communication cannot be performed. In short, it is impossible to perform bidirectional communication after transmitting a packet to the inner position from the outer position first.
(Problem 2) Vulnerability over a DOS (Denial of Service) Attack
To cope with a problem 1, it is considered to set up a judging condition statically under which a packet that fulfills specific conditions is allowed to be transmitted. However, since an address of a terminal is dynamically set up by DHCP in the present ISP and a hot spot, it is next to impossible to lay down such specific conditions as a matter of fact.
If such a setup is performed, occurrence of DOS attack, by a person with malice who forges a packet which fulfills the judging conditions, cannot be prevented.
In reference 3, usable bandwidth is controlled by using traffic shaping against illegal access of the DOS attack. However, when the packet by illegal access and the packet by legal access are intermingling and flowing, the traffic shaping may result in restricting a bandwidth of communication by the legal access unjustly. Therefore, it is extremely difficult to limit the traffic shaping only to the packet by the illegal access.
(Problem 3) Measures to Encryption
In the prior access control, information in a packet is referred to in judgment of transmission/discard. However, when the packet is encrypted in order to prevent wiretapping by a third person, since the information in the packet cannot be referred to in the access control, the judgment of the transmission/discard becomes impossible.

Access-controlling method, repeater, and server


An orthogonal stitch-weave method and fiber architecture. The architecture allows near-net-shape composite preforms to be fabricated, thereby reducing costs associated with complex preform shapes and increasing desired strengths of the composite.

In a gas turbine engine, air is pressurized in a compressor and mixed with fuel in a combustor and ignited for generating hot combustion gasses which flow downstream through several turbine stages. A turbine stage includes stationary turbine vanes extending radially between inner and outer castings. The vanes are hollow with openings that mate to openings within the castings. The vanes have airfoil configurations for guiding the combustion gasses between corresponding turbine rotor blades disposed downstream of the vanes. The blades are mounted to the perimeter of a rotor disk that rotates during operation for providing power to turn the compressor or fan during operation. Since the turbine vanes are heated during operation by the hot combustion gasses which flow thereover, cooling air bled from the compressor is channeled inside the vanes for cooling thereof.
In order to increase the efficiency and the performance of gas turbine engines so as to provide increased thrust-to-weight ratios, lower emissions and improved specific fuel consumption, engine turbines are tasked to operate at higher temperatures. As the higher temperatures reach and surpass the limits of the material comprising the components in the hot section of the engine and in particular the turbine section of the engine, new materials must be developed.
As the engine operating temperatures have increased, new methods of cooling the high temperature alloys comprising the combustors and the turbine airfoils have been developed. For example, ceramic thermal barrier coatings (TBCs) have been applied to the surfaces of components in the stream of the hot effluent gases of combustion to reduce the heat transfer rate and to provide thermal protection to the underlying metal and allow the component to withstand higher temperatures. These improvements helped to reduce the peak temperatures and thermal gradients. Simultaneously, ceramic matrix composites were developed as substitutes for the high temperature alloys. The ceramic matrix composites (CMCs) in many cases provided an improved temperature and density advantage over the metals, making them the material of choice when higher operating temperatures were desired.
A number of techniques have been used to manufacture turbine engine components. One such technique includes manufacturing turbine blades from CMCs. One method of manufacturing CMC components, set forth in U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,015,540; 5,330,854; and 5,336,350; incorporated herein by reference in their entirety and assigned to the assignee of the present invention, relates to the production of silicon carbide matrix composites containing fibrous material that is infiltrated with molten silicon, herein referred to as the Silcomp process. The fibers generally have diameters of about 140 micrometers or greater, which prevent intricate, complex shapes, such as turbine blade components, from being manufactured by the Silcomp process.
Another technique of manufacturing CMC turbine blades is the method known as the slurry cast melt infiltration (MI) process. A technical description of such a slurry cast MI method is described in detail in U.S. Pat. No. 6,280,550 B1, which is assigned to the Assignee of the present invention and which is incorporated herein by reference. In one method of manufacturing using the slurry cast MI method, CMCs are produced by initially providing plies of balanced two-dimensional (2D) woven cloth comprising silicon carbide (SiC)-containing fibers, having two weave directions at substantially 90° angles to each other, with substantially the same number of fibers running in both directions of the weave. The use of two dimensional plies prevents intricate, complex shapes, such as turbine blade components, from being manufactured.
One disadvantage of existing methods for production of CMC preforms is that the fibers that provide advantageous structural properties to a composite are not positioned and interlocked or interwoven to provide an optimal fiber architecture. Conventional methods of three-dimensional composite performing typically involve fabricating woven, or braided shapes that do not provide the desired complex preform shapes. What is needed is a method of weaving a three-dimensional composite preform that provides a tailored fiber architecture which may be assembled "near-net-shape".

Orthogonal weaving for complex shape preforms


A method detects events in multimedia. Features are extracted from the multimedia. The features are sampled using a sliding window to obtain samples. A context model is constructed for each sample. An affinity matrix is determined from the models and a commutative distance metric between each pair of context models. A second generation eigenvector is determined for the affinity matrix, and the samples are then clustered into events according to the second generation eigenvector.

Most prior art methods for summarizing multimedia content have focused on detecting known patterns of events in the content to provide a summary of the content. As a result, the patterns of events that are useful for summarizing are limited to particular known genres of multimedia. It is also well known how to extract the patterns using supervised statistical learning tools.
For news video, detection of 'story' boundaries, by closed caption text, speech transcript analysis, and speaker-based segmentation have been shown to be useful, Rainer, "Automatic text recognition for video indexing," Proc. ACM Multimedia, 1996, and Hsu et al., "A statistical framework for fusing mid-level perceptual features in news story segmentation," Proc. of ICME, 2003.
For situation comedies, detection of physical settings using mosaic representation of a scene, and detection of leading cast characters using audio-visual cues have been shown to be useful, Aner et al., "Video summaries through mosaic-based shot and scene clustering," Proc. European Conference on Computer Vision, 2002, and Li, "Content-based video analysis, indexing and representation using multimodal information," Ph.D Thesis, University of Southern California, 2003.
For sports video summarization, some methods detect domain-specific events that are correlated with highlights using audio-visual cues, Pan et al., "Detection of slow-motion replay segments in sports video for highlights generation," Proc. IEEE International Conf. on Acoustics, Speech and Signal Processing, 2001, and Xu et al., "Creating audio keywords for event detection in soccer video," Proc. of ICME, 2003. Another method extracts play-break segments in an unsupervised manner, Xie et al., "Unsupervised mining of statistical temporal structures in video," Video Mining, Rosenfeld et al. Eds, Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2003.
For movie content, detection of syntactic structures, such as scenes with only two speakers, and the detection of 'unusual' events, such as explosions have been shown to useful, Sundaram et al., "Determining computable scenes in films and their structures using audio-visual memory models," ACM Multimedia, 2000.
For surveillance content, detection of 'unusual' events using object segmentation and tracking from video has been shown to be effective, Wu et al., "Multi-camera spatio-temporal fusion and biased sequence data learning for security surveillance," ACM Multimedia, 2003.
The following U.S. patents and patent applications also describe methods for extracting features and detecting events in multimedia, and summarizing multimedia, U.S. patent application Ser. No. 09/518,937, "Method for Ordering Data Structures in Multimedia," filed Mar. 6, 2000 by Divakaran, et al., U.S. patent application Ser. No. 09/610,763, "Extraction of Semantic and Higher Level Features from Low-Level Features of Multimedia Content," filed on Jul. 6, 2000, by Divakaran, et al., U.S. Pat. No. 6,697,523, "Video Summarization Using Motion and Color Descriptors," issued to Divakaran on Feb. 24, 2004, U.S. patent application Ser. No. 09/845,009, "Method for Summarizing a Video Using Motion Descriptors," filed on Apr. 27, 2001 by Divakaran, et al., U.S. patent application Ser. No. 10/610,467, "Method for Detecting Short Term Unusual Events in Videos," filed by Divakaran, et al. on Jun. 30, 2003, and U.S. patent application Ser. No. 10/729,164, "Audio-visual Highlights Detection Using Hidden Markov Models," filed by Divakaran, et al. on Dec. 5, 2003. All of the above are incorporated herein by reference.
Even though it is known how to detect patterns for some specific genres of multimedia, a generalized detection task remains a problem due to intra-genre variations as a result of differing multimedia production styles used by different content providers, and other factors. For instance, patterns in surveillance videos can never be anticipated. Otherwise surveillance videos would not be necessary. Thus, it is impossible to construct supervised models for event detection in such videos.
Clearly, there is a need for a method that can detect patterns of events in any multimedia, independent of the genre.
Following are some of the desired requirements for a multimedia summarization and event pattern recognition.
First and foremost, the method should be content-adaptive and unsupervised. Second, the method should have a common feature extraction and statistical analysis framework to discover patterns of events. Then, the same feature extraction process can be used as a front-end for all genres of multimedia, and the same post-processing stage can act upon discovered patterns to identify 'unusual' events, even if the meaning of what is unusual changes depending on the genre of the multimedia. The method should also incorporate a ranking scheme for detected events so that an appropriate summary can be determined.

Multimedia event detection and summarization

Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratories, Inc.


Method and system for fine tuning frequency and phase of a sampling clock of analog signals (R, G, B) having digital information, for sampling the analog signals within an optimal sampling period, enabling optimal display by a digital display device (92). Small amount of information from input signals is required for rapidly and accurately determining values of frequency and phase of the sampling clock. After measuring using a measurement system (96) and obtaining pixel values while sweeping phase values of signals using a phase locked loop (PLL) mechanism (48), there is determining values of two parameters, (i) error of an initial frequency value of the sampling clock (Rx clock), proportional to error of an initial phase locked loop (PLL) division factor value, and (ii) phase of the sampling clock, without need for making additional measurements based on these values, using a control unit (94).

The present invention relates to signal processing used in field of electronics, and more particularly, to a method and system for fine tuning a sampling clock of analog signals having digital information for optimal digital display. The method and system are based on fine tuning frequency and phase of a sampling clock of the analog signals, for sampling incoming analog signals having digital information within an optimal sampling period, thereby enabling optimal display by a digital display device.
Currently, most common methods and systems of transmitting computer display information to display devices are based on using analog transmission. For example, the VGA format was originally defined by VESA (Video Electronics Standards Association) and other organizations for the purpose of providing a universal format for transmitting analog signals carrying digital pixel information, from a transmitter, such as a PC (personal computer) graphics card, to an analog display device, as described in "Monitor Timing Specifications, VESA and Industry Standards and Guidelines for Computer Display Monitor Timing, Version 1.0, Revision 0.8, Adoption Date: Sep. 17, 1998", Milpitas, Calif., USA.
FIG. 1 is a block diagram illustrating such an exemplary VGA interface of a transmitter 10 in a typical computer, used in the transmission of analog signals having digital pixel information to a receiver of a display device 12. Image information stored in a frame buffer is transmitted to the receiver of display device 12, by converting digital pixel information stored in the frame buffer to analog pixel information transmitted to the receiver of display device 12 using a digital to analog converter (DAC). In current VGA formats, analog pixel information is transmitted from transmitter 10 to the receiver of display device 12 along three high speed analog transmission lines, marked R (red), G (green) and B (blue), which are the three basic color components of an image.
In addition to analog pixel information, digital synchronization information, known in the art by the terms 'vertical sync' and 'horizontal sync', and indicated in FIG. 1 by the terms 'Vsync' and 'Hsync', is sent out to mark the beginning of each frame, and the beginning of each display line, respectively. Vsync and Hsync are sent along two separate lines (as shown in FIG. 1), composite to a single line, or embedded within the green color component of the analog signal. A transmitter timing clock, referred to in FIG. 1 as 'Tx clock', provides a timing signal featuring a frequency or rate at which digital pixel information is transmitted from transmitter 10 to the receiver of display device 12 by an analog signal. Digital pixel information transmitted along the R, G, and B, analog transmission lines, and the digital synchronization information signals, Hsync and Vsync, are all synchronized to the transmitter timing clock (Tx clock).
Several standard organizations, such as VESA, have defined many different types of display formats and/or standards. Each display format or standard provides the number of active (displayed) pixels and active (displayed) lines, as well as polarity of Vsync and Hsync, pulse width, cycle time, and position of the active displayed information relative to Vsync and Hsync synchronization pulses. Each display format also defines the frequency or rate of the above described transmitter timing clock (Tx clock), as the frequency or rate at which the digital pixel values are read from the frame buffer, converted to analog signal by the three DACs, and subsequently forwarded to the receiver of the display device. The VGA display interface format was originally defined for analog displays, where each one of the three electronic beam guns within the display device is controlled by the associated analog signal forwarded by the VGA interface.
There is currently a transition from using analog display devices to using digital display devices. Due to the existence of extensive and widespread electronic infrastructure, ordinarily, digital display devices are designed and manufactured for operating with the above described digital to analog VGA interface, but their pixel elements need to be fully defined and individually addressed within the digital display device. For example, in an LCD (liquid crystal display) monitor each pixel is an active element controlling light transmission. In a plasma display monitor each pixel element is a light generator. The luminance information for each color component of each pixel is extracted from the same digital to analog VGA interface, by way of analog to digital conversion, such as by using an analog to digital converter device. This extraction method is a very challenging task because it requires automatic detection of the transmission format and reconstruction of the transmitter timing clock (Tx clock), at the digital display device from the incoming analog RGB signals, and the Hsync and Vsync digital synchronization information signal pulses.
FIG. 2 is a close-up view of an exemplary transmitted analog signal 15 having digital information of a single pixel as part of a transmission format of an analog signal, illustrating pixel timing parameters at a receiver of a digital display device. It is well known that during reception of the analog signals featuring pixels having an R, G, or B, component, at a receiver, such as a receiver of a digital display device, the time period of each pixel is composed of a transition time period 20 during which signal level transition occurs, and a stable time period 22 during which pixel sampling occurs. The signal receiver of the digital display device needs to generate, known in the art as reconstruct, parameters of a sampling clock, using a phase locked loop (PLL) mechanism (functioning with hardware and/or software components) locked to the leading edge of Hsync, or, depending upon the particular type of display format or standard, locked to the trailing edge of Hsync. Frequency of the sampling clock usually exhibits an extent or degree of instability, known as 'jitter', shown in FIG. 2 as reconstructed clock phase locked loop (PLL) jitter time periods 28 and 29, which causes the optimal sampling time period 24 to be shorter than the stable time period 22. Sampling analog signals during the reconstructed clock phase locked loop (PLL) jitter time periods 28 and 29, results in less than optimal analog to digital conversion, and subsequently, results in less than optimal display by the digital display device.
There is thus a need for, and it would be highly advantageous to have a method and system for fine tuning a sampling clock of analog signals having digital information for optimal digital display. Moreover, there is a need for such an invention which is readily commercially applicable to essentially any type of electronic system where transmitted analog signals are destined for display by a digital display device.

Fine tuning a sampling clock of analog signals having digital information for optimal digital display


Briefly, in accordance with one or more embodiments, an apparatus of a user equipment (UE) comprises one or more baseband processors to decode a conditional handover command from a serving cell for the UE to connect with a target cell, and to evaluate a condition before executing the handover command, wherein a first time to trigger (TTT) is started in the event the condition is true, and wherein a second TTT is started in the event the condition is true at an expiration of the first TTT, and wherein the one or more baseband processors are to execute the conditional handover command when the condition is true after an expiration of the second TTT, and a memory to store the first TTT and the second TTT.

When a user equipment (UE) device is connected with a serving cell, the signal received from the serving cell may degrade for example due to mobility of the UE. As a result, the received signal from one or more neighboring cells may be stronger than the received signal from the serving cell. The UE may switch to a neighboring cell with a stronger received signal to be the new serving cell in a process referred to as a handover in a context referred to as mobility management. During a mobility management context, the UE may obtain one or more measurement reports on one or more neighbor cells to identify a suitable target cell to which to perform the handover. A determination may be made whether or not to switch to a new cell based on whether or not the received signal strength of reference signals received from a neighbor cell exceeds a signal strength threshold. If a lower threshold is set, then the UE will switch to a new cell sooner and more frequently, and if a higher threshold is set, then the UE will switch to a new cell later and less frequently. Normally, the handover command is executed immediately upon receiving a measurement report that indicates a target cell has exceeded the threshold. To help control the reliability of the handover process, even if a measurement report indicates a handover should occur, execution of the handover command may have an additional condition to be met before the handover is actually made.
It will be appreciated that for simplicity and/or clarity of illustration, elements illustrated in the figures have not necessarily been drawn to scale. For example, the dimensions of some of the elements may be exaggerated relative to other elements for clarity. Further, if considered appropriate, reference numerals have been repeated among the figures to indicate corresponding and/or analogous elements.


A golf club head made of a suitable metal such as stainless steel includes a hollow body and a hosel. The hollow body has a top wall, a bottom wall, a side wall, and a front wall with a face arranged for impacting golf balls. The hollow body has a weight pad which provides the golf club head with increased resistance to rotation or twisting upon impact with golf balls at off-center points on the face. The weight pad weighs between 5 and 15 grams and is located in the heel portion of the body. The weight pad is elongated in a direction extending along a length dimension of the body side wall.

This invention relates generally to golf clubs and, in particular, to a golf club head with a weight pad for increasing resistance to rotation or twisting of the golf club head on off-center impacts with golf balls.
Golf clubs known as "woods" traditionally have a head made of a suitable wooden material such as maple or persimmon attached to one end of an elongated shaft. These wooden club heads are usually solid and are shaped with their weight properly distributed about their center of gravity to maximize performance. Golf club "wood" heads have also been formed of suitable metals such as stainless steel. Metal heads are usually hollow. Various attempts have been made to distribute weight in metal heads with respect to their center of gravity so that performance is maximized. Such attempts have included placing different types and numbers of weight members at different locations inside the metal heads. Examples of such attempts are disclosed in prior U.S. Pat. Nos. 1,167,106 to Palmer; 1,526,438 to Scott; 1,582,836 to Link; 5,058,895 to Igarashi; and 5,141,230 to Antonious. In the Palmer, Scott and Link patents, weight members are located directly behind the center of gravity of the club head. In the Igarashi and Antonious patents, weight members are located in heel and toe portions of the club heads.


Embodiments described herein involve learning and distributing associations between groups and addresses. Embodiments include receiving, by a first route server associated with a first central control plane (CCP) of a first data center, a definition of a first group. Embodiments include learning, by the first route server, a first association between the first group and one or more addresses based on the definition of the first group. Embodiments include transmitting, by the first route server, the first association to a second route server in a second CCP of a second data center. Embodiments include receiving, by the first route server, from the second route server, a second association between the first group and one or more additional addresses. Embodiments include storing, by the first route server, the first association and the second association in a table and programming, by the first central control plane, the hypervisor based on the table.

Software defined networking (SDN) comprises a plurality of hosts in communication over a physical network infrastructure, each host having one or more virtualized endpoints such as virtual machines (VMs) or containers that are connected to logical overlay networks that may span multiple hosts and are decoupled from the underlying physical network infrastructure. One common characteristic of software defined networking is a separation of the control plane from the data plane. Control planes in a network are concerned with determining the logical overlay network topology and maintaining information about network entities such as logical switches, logical routers, and virtualized endpoints, etc. The logical topology information is translated by the control plane into network configuration data, such as forwarding table entries to populate forwarding tables at virtual switches at each host. A virtual switch provided by a host may be thought of as a physical network switch implemented in software by the hypervisor, and may connect virtualized endpoints running on the same host to each other as well as to virtual endpoints on other hosts. A plurality of virtual switches distributed across a plurality of hosts may collectively, by way of their forwarding tables and with adjunct processes called tunnel endpoints (TEPs) implement a logical switch that can define a logical overlay network.
A management plane in a network generally comprises one or more computing devices responsible for receiving logical network configuration inputs, such as from a user, defining one or more endpoints (e.g., VMs and/or containers) and the connections between the endpoints, as well as rules governing communications between various endpoints. In certain cases, a management plane receives definitions of groups and rules that apply to the groups. A group definition may, for instance, specify that all endpoints with a certain characteristic, such as endpoints that run a particular operating system, fall within a given group. A rule may then specify, for instance, that a first group cannot communicate with a second group. Group definitions are generally provided by the management plane to the control plane, which determines which endpoints fall within the group definitions and corresponding firewall rules are generated by the control plane and applied by the hypervisors against communication to or from those endpoints. The hypervisors generally receive the firewall rules from the control plane and enforce the rules based on which endpoints fall within the group definitions.
Sometimes an SDN comprises multiple data centers, each of which has its own control plane and hosts. In certain cases, a group may be defined that includes endpoints from different data centers.

Using a route server to distribute group address associations


The present invention includes systems and methods for continuous fracturing operations across a multichannel fracturing configuration. To swap a first well for a second well while continuously pumping water and/or frac fluid through the fracturing system, the second well may be initially prepared through a pressure equalization process. Once the second well is equalized and open, the first well may be sequentially closed and depressurized. Thus, the first well is swapped for the second well while the water and/or frac fluid continuously flows through the system. A conditional flow control valve may be used to sequentially open and/or close the flow of frac fluid through the frac manifold.

Hydraulic fracturing or "fracking" is an oil and gas well process that involves injecting water, sand, and/or other chemicals into a bedrock formation at high pressures. The water, sand, and/or other chemicals injected at high pressures are designed to further fracture the bedrock by increasing the size of current fractures and creating new fractures for the hydrocarbons to escape through. Production can be achieved when the pore spaces or fractures are connected and permeable to allow the transmission of fluid through these areas. The corresponding solution then flows through the bedrock and into the well. After the solution is extracted from the well, the oil and gas can be separated from the water, sand, and/or other chemicals for production.
These types of stimulation techniques encourage the flow of hydrocarbons from the fractures in the reservoir rocks. Initially, the frac fluids are injected into the well to increase the pressure in the well to further fracture or create new fractures in the bedrock. Then, additional frac fluid and propping agents (e.g., quartz sand grains, ceramic spheres, or aluminum oxide pellets) are introduced into the well to hold the fractures open after pumping has ceased. Now, with the fractured rocks open and permeable, the well is back flushed to remove all the frac fluids. Fracturing the well can increase the production by 1.5 to 30 times.
With the high pressures involved and the large volumes of water, sand, chemicals, and propping agents, the hydraulic fracturing operation must be set up properly and safely. Fracturing pumps help deliver the water or solution from the frac tanks to the wellheads through an intricate arrangement of valves and connections. In combination, the pumps, valves, and connections control the pressure, timing, and fluid for the pumping operation. In most fracturing operations, multi-well pads with multiple well bores are used to fracture large areas of bedrock, which increases efficiency.
One of the drawbacks of prior solutions for fracturing operations is that alternating between multiple well bores would require the operators to completely shut down one well bore before diverting the high-pressure fluid to the next well bore. This increases the time and resources required to operate through multiple well bores. The ability to sequentially apply high-pressure liquid to multiple well bores without the need to shut down the high-pressure stimulation pumps is desired.

Systems and methods for control of a multichannel fracturing pump connection


A projection control device includes a projection controller configured to control a projector of a head-up display device to project a display image such that a virtual image thereof is viewed in front of a viewer, a video data acquisition unit configured to acquire a captured video captured by an imager capable of capturing a video of the viewer, and a detection unit configured to detect a relative positional relationship of a pupil position of the viewer with respect to the virtual image, wherein the projection control unit is further configured to control the projector to project a reference position determination image on the viewer, and the detection unit is further configured to detect the relative positional relationship of the pupil position of the viewer with respect to the virtual image based on the captured video obtained by capturing the reference position determination video projected on the viewer.

A head-up display device that projects information provided to a driver, such as route guide information or speed information, as a virtual image in front of a line of sight of the driver has been known. The head-up display device needs to set a display position of the virtual image at a correct position with respect to the viewer so that the viewer can accurately view the virtual image.
A technique for moving a moving target screen by matching a line of sight and a finger pointing direction with a display screen and moving the line of sight and the finger pointing direction to a desired position has been known (for example, see Japanese Laid-open Patent Publication No. 2007-099199 A). Also a technique that is provided with a combiner, an infrared illumination device, and an image sensor for capturing an image of a face of a driver illuminated with infrared light, and that detects a line of sight and a face direction of the driver has been known (for example, see Japanese Laid-open Patent Publication No. 2017-026675 A).
In the head-up display device, in order to accurately set the display position of the virtual image to a correct position with respect to the viewer, it is preferable to detect a relative positional relationship of a pupil position of the viewer with respect to the virtual image.

Projection control device, head-up display device, projection control method, and non-transitory storage medium


A method which comprises using a specified dye taken up by erythrocytic nucleated cells so that their nuclei are stained and can be readily differentiated from other cells by measurement with a flow cytometer is disclosed. The method relies basically upon flow cytometry by two-step staining that uses a first fluid that is an acidic hypotensive fluorescent dye solution and a second fluid that is a solution that changes the osmorality and pH of the first fluid. The first fluid further contains a fluorescent dye that diffuses into erythroblasts to specifically stain their nuclei, and a group of erythroblasts is separated from other cell groups on the two-dimensional plot constructed with the flow cytometer, whereby the results of erythroblast differentiation are computed.

1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to a method of differentiating and counting erythroblasts with a flow cytometer.
2. Prior Art
Unexamined Published Japanese Patent Application No. 134958/1988 discloses a two-step staining process that uses a hypotonic acidic fluorescent dye solution and a solution that will changes its osmolarity and pH. A blood sample stained with those solutions is loaded in a flow cytometer to obtain signal for fluorescence and side-scattered light and on the basis of those signals, a two-dimensional plot of fluorescence intensity vs the intensity of side-scattered light is constructed, whereby the leukocytes in the sample are classified into five types: lymphocytes, monocytes, neutrophils, eosinophils, basophils and a noise component, respectively.
Unexamined Published Japanese Patent Application No. 134958/1988 does not mention the differentiation and counting of erythroblasts. Erythroblasts are cells ancestral to red corpuscles and they normally occur in the bone marrow but not in circulating blood. However, in certain diseases such as anemia and leukemia, erythroblasts also occur in circulating blood. Therefore, it is of clinical importance to measure erythroblasts.

Method of differentiating erythroblasts from other cells by flow cytometry


A cervical intervertebral prosthesis system includes prostheses which each have a hinge with a predefined center of hinge movement. To permit better adaptation to the different hinge radii of the cervical intervertebral disks, the cervical intervertebral prostheses of the system include at least two different prostheses with different hinge radii.

The invention relates to cervical intervertebral prostheses which have a predefined center of the hinge movement. In a first known type of such prostheses, the center of the hinge movement is located inside the prosthesis (U.S. Pat. No. 5,425,773; EP-A-1166725). This does not correspond to the natural conditions which the prosthesis is intended to simulate. In another type of intervertebral prosthesis (FR-A-2718635), the hinge is formed by a pair of slide surfaces, the common center of curvature of which lies outside the prosthesis, specifically under it. This approximates to the natural conditions but is still too far remote from them.

Cervical intervertebral prosthesis system


Small heat shock proteins, e.g., Pyrococcus fuiosus (Pfu-sHSP and/or Pfu-tsHSP), confer thermotolerance on cellular cultures and on proteins in cellular extracts during prolonged incubation at elevated temperature, demonstrating the ability to protect cellular proteins and maintain cellular viability under heat stress conditions. Such heat shock proteins are effective to combat enzymatic aggregation and intracellular precipitation during heat stress, and thereby enable enhancement of the utility and stability of enzymes in various applications, e.g., Taq polymerase in PCR applications, digestive enzymes in microbial degradative applications, etc.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention generally relates to heat shock proteins from Pyrococcus furiosus, to a method of protecting and extending the durability of a recombinant DNA polymerase, and to a PCR kit.
2. Description of the Related Art
All organisms respond to elevated temperature by specifically inducing the expression of a set of new proteins, termed "heat shock proteins" or "HSPs." Although this response has been known for over thirty years, the specific role of individual HSPs in the overall response is still largely unknown. The HSPs to which functional character has been attributed have been characterized as molecular chaperones that enable protein folding, preventing denaturation of other proteins, or mediating proteolysis. This role, however, has only been demonstrated for a few of the many known HSPs and the function of other HSPs remains unknown. Moreover, it is not known which of the HSPs are essentials for the overall shock response except in the cases described below.
All organisms have a basal level of thermotolerance that is an organism-specific temperature threshold above, which the organisms die. Basal levels of thermotolerance are probably determined by a variety of factors, including, for example, membrane composition and the innate thermal stability of enzymes involved in normal cellular processes. An additional level of thermotolerance can be acquired by exposure of an organism to sublethal processes. Such "acquired thermotolerance" is believed to result from the production of HSPs in response to the sublethal high temperature exposure.
HSPs have been categorized by size and DNA sequence into families that are evolutionarily conserved. These families include the HSP 100, HSP 90, HSP 70, the HSP 60 and a variable class of low molecular weight proteins that range from 12-42 kDa. The HSPs found in this class of low molecular weight proteins are referred to as small heat shock proteins or sHSPs. In animals, this class of low molecular weight proteins ranges from 20-25 kDA. In the plant kingdom, the corresponding range is 14-20 kDa.
All of the low molecular weight HSPs are distinguished by conserved carboxy termini that are highly homologous to the αB-crystallin structural protein of the eye lens. αB-crystallin is itself capable of acting as a molecular chaperone, and all sHSPs have been demonstrated to exhibit chaperone activities in in vitro experiments. Their role in cells has not yet been demonstrated.
While it might be assumed that the HSPs play a role in thermotolerance because of the correlation of their abundant synthesis with exposure to increased temperature, earlier work with yeast had suggested that they are unimportant for the development of thermotolerance, as elimination of a single yeast sHSP had no effect on thermotolerance. In addition, in Drosophilia cells, the use of antisense technology caused a specific decrease in the synthesis of the sHSP 26 protein, but such decrease had no effect on thermotolerance.
In addition to being induced by temperature stress, many HSPs, including those in the sHSP class, can be induced by other stresses such as exposure to arsenite, ethanol, heavy metals, amino acid analogs (Lee, Y. R., et al., Plant Physio. 110:241-48 (1996); and Nover, L., (ed.) Heat Shock Response, CRC Press (1990)) and water stress (Almoguera, C., et al., The Plant Journal 4(6):947-58 (1993). In addition, increasing numbers of HSPs and HSP homologs are found to be regulated in developmental and tissue-specific ways (see, e.g., Almoguera, C. and J. Jordano, Plant Molecular Biol. 19:781-92 (1992); Apuya, N. R. and J. L. Zimmerman, The Plant Cell, 4:657-65 (1992); Cordewener, J. H. G., et al., Plant Cell 1:1137-1140 (1989). Proteins with highly conserved sequences related to HSPs, HSP cognates, may be expressed in non-stressed normal cells, but are not induced by thermal stress.
The mechanisms of action for the small HSPs are not clearly understood at present. There is a need for a better understanding of sHSPs despite other recombinant archael sHSPs that have been overexpressed in E. coli.
The present invention embodies an advance in the field of sHSPs that correlatively advances the understanding of the mechanism of sHSPs.

Enhanced protein thermostability and temperature resistance

University of Maryland Biotechnology Institute


A carriage-type conveyance device using a carriage having a vertically movable object-supporting base that is controlled by a cam rail on the floor side, in which a turntable for changing the direction of the carriage has a low-floor structure. In the carriage-type conveyance device, the object-supporting base that is vertically movable between a lowered position and a lifted position is placed on a conveyance carriage (1), a cam follower roller vertically moving in association with the movement of the object-supporting body is provided at the bottom of the conveyance carriage (1), and a cam device (58) for pushing up the cam follower roller and a work section (3A) in which the object support base is supported at the lifted position are provided in a traveling route of the conveyance carriage (1). The conveyance device further has the turntable (7) placed in a traveling route on the downstream side of the work section (3A) and changing the direction of the conveyance carriage (1), and also has a means for holding at the lifted position the object-supporting body of the conveyance carriage (1) from at least the time immediately before the object-supporting body enters into the turntable (7) until it has exited from the rotated turntable (7).

Such a type of carriage-type conveyance device, that is, a carriage-type conveyance device in which an object supporting base vertically movable between a lowered position and a lifted position is provided on a conveyance carriage capable of traveling on a predetermined traveling route, and at the bottom of the conveyance carriage, cam follower rollers vertically moving in association with the movement of the object-supporting base are provided, and in the traveling route of the conveyance carriage, cam rails for pushing up the cam follower rollers and a work section in which the object supporting base is held at the lifted position are provided, is conventionally known as disclosed in Patent document 1, etc.
Patent document 1: Japanese Published Unexamined Patent Application No. 2004-331366