A rolling regeneration diesel particulate filter and filtering process that utilizes NO produced in the process to generate additional amounts of NO2 than the NO2 produced by the diesel engine. The process includes the step of flowing diesel engine combustion exhaust through a filter system including a first section and a second section. The first section is positioned upstream of the second section with respect to the direction of the flow of the diesel engine exhaust through the filter. The first section includes a foam constructed and arranged to trap carbon-based particulates in the exhaust. A first catalyst is carried by the foam to promote the conversion of NO in the exhaust from the diesel engine to NO2. The first catalyst also promotes the reaction of NO2 with at least a portion of the carbon-based particulates trapped by the foam to form CO and NO. The first catalyst carried by the foam also promotes the oxidation of CO to CO2, and the oxidation of NO, generated by the reaction of NO2 with carbon, to generate additional amounts of NO2.

FIG. 1 illustrates a prior art filter system 10 for a diesel engine 12. An exhaust line 14 is provided between the diesel engine 12 and the filter system 10. The filter system may include a housing 16 that includes at least a first section 18 and a second section 20. The first section 18 typically includes a flow-through monolith 22 therein and wherein the flow-through monolith is coated with a catalyst such as platinum. The exhaust gas from the diesel engine 12 includes a variety of constituents including NO and particulate matter which typically is in the form of a carbon-based material. The catalyst on the flow-through monolith 22 promotes the reaction of the NO with oxygen also present in the exhaust gas to form NO2. However, the reaction is not efficient enough to completely convert all of the NO in the exhaust gas to NO2. Thus, as shown in FIG. 1, both NO and NO2 leave the first section 18 of the filter and enter the second section 20 of the filter system. The second section 20 typically includes a wall flow monolith 24 therein. Wall flow monoliths are known to those skilled in the art and typically are manufactured from a ceramic material in a manner to provide a plurality of through hole cells running the longitudinal length of the monolith. The cross-sectional area of these through hole cells is extremely small, on the order of 10 microns. Wall flow monoliths are capable of trapping 99+ percent of the particulate emissions from a diesel engine. However, wall flow monoliths can become plugged very easily due to the very small openings of the through hole cells. As shown in FIG. 1, NO2 in the exhaust gas can be used to oxidize the carbon to form NO and CO, thus removing some of the particulate blocking the wall flow monolith. However, the amount of NO2 present in the exhaust gas from the diesel engine or generated in the flow-through monolith 22 may not be sufficient to completely oxidize the particulate blocking the wall flow monolith. Accordingly, the engine must be operated in order to generate substantial amounts of NO2 necessary to oxidize all the carbon and other particulate matter blocking the wall flow monolith. Otherwise, the wall flow monolith must be cleaned in another fashion.
Thus, it would be desirable to provide a filter system for a diesel engine which resulted in the wall flow monolith being plugged less often and providing an alternative means for regenerating the trap. The present invention overcomes deficiencies in the prior art and provides alternatives and advantages thereto.

Rolling regeneration diesel particulate trap


A magnetic recording/reproducing apparatus for recording data on a medium, for checking the recorded data and for retrieving any of the recorded data comprises a data reproduction device for reading data from a medium includes a conversion device for converting the signals for the reproduced data from the data reproduction device into read data pulses, a variable frequency oscillator for producing read data and window data out of the read data pulses from the conversion device and a follow-up characteristics switch device for switching the follow-up characteristics of the variable frequency oscillator from a narrow range option suitable for data checking to a wide range option suitable for data reproduction. With such an arrangement, a high level of quality of recorded data can be maintained, a wide range of compatibility of recording media is ensured and the rate of issuing error messages due to ISVs that can interrupt the operation of the apparatus is reduced.

Field of the invention
This invention relates to a magnetic recording/reproducing apparatus using magnetic tapes or magnetic discs for data back-up applications.
b) Background Art
Magnetic recording/reproducing apparatuses capable of recording data that do not contain clock pulses on a recording medium such as a magnetic tape or a magnetic disc, checking the recorded data and retrieving selected data are already known. FIG. 6 shows the reproduction circuit of such an apparatus.
In a magnetic recording/reproducing apparatus of this type, data that d(i not contain clock pulses can be recorded on a recording medium by a magnetic head and any of the data stored in the medium can be reproduced by the head 1. The electric signals for the data reproduced by the magnetic head 1 then go through an amplifier and a reproduction circuit 2 having a filter and are converted into corresponding read data pulses by a read data generating circuit 3. A variable frequency oscillator 4 produces read data and window data out of the read data pulses received from the read data generating circuit 3. Formatter 5 is constituted by a host system comprising a computer and discriminates the positions of the read data by using the window data from the variable frequency oscillator 4 and determines if the data are normal.
Where a RAW (read after write) system is involved, after the magnetic medium is moved a given distance on the magnetic head to record data, the medium is moved back and caused to pass by the magnetic head for a second time to reproduce and check the recorded data. If an error is found, the above process of data recording and reproduction is repeated to eliminate the error.
Where a RWW (read while write) system is used, on the other hand, the magnetic medium is moved a given distance either on a magnetic head having two channels or on two magnetic heads so that the data recorded by one of the channels or the heads are reproduced immediately after the recording by the other channel or head for error checking. If any error is detected, the above process of data recording and reproduction is repeated to eliminate the error.
The follow-up characteristics of the variable frequency oscillator 4 and therefore the relationship between the level of external disturbances applied to the read data pulses from the read data generation circuit 3 and the gain of the circuit will be typically such as shown in FIG. 7. In the frequency range where external disturbances are high, the circuit remarkably loses its follow-up capability.
Any of the data stored in the magnetic medium of the above apparatus can be reproduced by the magnetic head 1 and the signals for the reproduced data are then transmitted by way of the reproduction circuit 2 to the read data generation circuit 3, where they are converted into corresponding read data pulses. The variable frequency oscillator 4 produces read data and window data out of the read data pulses from the read data generation circuit 3 and the formatter 5 discriminates the positions of the read data by using the window data from the variable frequency oscillator 4. The follow-up characteristics of the variable frequency oscillator 4 for data reproduction are invariable and are identical with those for data recording.
Japanese Patent Publication Sho 64-17263 discloses a magnetic recording/reproducing apparatus comprising a variable frequency oscillator having two different sets, of follow-up characteristics that allow the operation of error detection to be conducted only in a frequency range where errors are liable to occur during data reproduction. The purpose of this operation is to detect a deteriorated portion of a disk so that that portion may be avoided during recording. During normal read and write operations, however, the filtering quality of the variable frequency oscillator is not changed.
With a magnetic recording/reproducing apparatus as described above with respect to FIG. 6, however, if the formatter 5 determines that the recorded data do not contain any error even if an ISV (instantaneous speed variance) is detected near the upper limit of the follow-up frequency range of the variable frequency oscillator 4 during data recording, it can later reverse its judgment and determine that the data contain an error because the variable frequency oscillator 4 cannot follow-up the ISV when the data are reproduced sometime later. The drawback may be remedied by broadening the width of the follow-up frequency range of the variable frequency oscillator 4 but such a broadened follow-up range is inevitably accompanied by the problem of deterioration of recorded data over a wide frequency range that results in incompatible magnetic media and the loss of feasibility.
The follow-up characteristics of the variable frequency oscillator 4 can vary from supplier to supplier and also from apparatus to apparatus to adversely affect the compatibility of magnetic media, entailing frequent occurrences of errors of the type described above.
It is therefore a primary object of the present invention to provide a magnetic recording/reproducing apparatus which is free from the above problems and can significantly reduce the frequency of occurrence of errors due to ISVs during data reproduction so that the compatibility of magnetic media and the quality of recorded data can be remarkably improved.


An item to be processed is received and scanned. The scan identifies any functions or procedures in the item being processed, and extracts actual code representing those functions or procedures. Any invoking functions, which invoke the identified function, are, themselves, identified. Actual code for the invoking function is extracted as well. An output documentation file is generated that includes a name of the identified function or procedure, as well as actual code for the function or procedure, and actual code from at least one example of an invoking function.

Computing systems are currently in wide use. Some such computing systems are relatively large systems that include many hundreds or thousands of objects, each of which can include a set of functions. Such systems can also include hundreds or thousands of different forms, each having many different controls or control states.
Some of these types of systems generally provide a platform upon which a developer develops source code. The source code unlocks the capabilities and functionality of the platform and is stored, as a solution, in a data store, for use by end users. Thus, the various items in such a solution may be accessed by multiple different people. They may be accessed by the developer that developed the solution, or a different developer who wishes to understand how the solution works, so that modifications or customizations can be made. They may also be accessed by end users who may wish to obtain help in determining how to use the solutions. Further, they may be accessed by test engineers in order to determine whether the entire solution is being adequately tested.
Such computing systems are often heavily customized For instance, a base computing system may be developed or generated by a software manufacturer. The base computing system may be customized by a value added reseller or independent software vendor to generate a customized version. That customized version may be further customized at an end user organization, in order to meet the specific needs of the customization. In such an environment, it is difficult to keep help files, and other documentation, in general, up-to-date so that they can be accessed in a meaningful way.
The discussion above is merely provided for general background information and is not intended to be used as an aid in determining the scope of the claimed subject matter.


A method and apparatus is provided for restoring a sagging voltage signal on a power transmission line, caused by a remote fault in the utility power system, to a balanced three-phase condition at the pre-fault voltage level. Voltage restoration is provided by injecting a voltage signal in series with the power transmission line which restores the load voltage vectors to the pre-fault condition. The restored load voltage vectors are rotated by a selected phase angle such that zero real power flow is associated with the voltage restoration. The voltage compensation signal may be injected into the power transmission line by connecting a voltage compensator inverter in series with the transmission line. The voltage compensator inverter may be controlled to provide the desired injected voltage signal using a synchronous reference frame based controller. The voltage restoration function may be achieved by controlling the inverter to generate an inverter voltage signal which restores the positive sequence load voltage component to pre-fault conditions, and which cancels negative and zero sequence components of the load voltage signal. Phase rotation to ensure the zero power flow condition is achieved by controlling the inverter to generate an inverter voltage signal which balances the voltage across a DC bus capacitor which powers the inverter. Uninterruptible power supply and active harmonic filtering functions may be provided by the system.

Two of the most important power quality problems facing industrial customers of electrical power utilities are voltage sags and voltage interruptions. A voltage sag is a momentary (i.e., 0.5-30 cycle) decrease in the RMS voltage magnitude provided to the customer. Voltage interruptions occur when a protective device actually interrupts the power provided to a particular customer. Voltage interruptions will normally only occur if there is a fault on the particular circuit that is being interrupted. Voltage sags, however, may occur during the period of a fault for faults over a wide part of a power system network. Faults on parallel feeder circuits or on remote parts of a power transmission system will cause voltage sags in many parts of the power system, but typically will not result in actual voltage interruptions. Voltage sags are thus much more frequent than voltage interruptions. For equipment that is sensitive to voltage sags, the frequency of problems resulting from voltage sags will be much greater than that resulting from complete voltage interruptions.
Faults resulting in voltage sags can occur within a particular customer's plant, or in the utility system providing power to the customer's plant. The voltage sag condition will last until the fault is cleared by a protective device. In the plant, this will typically be a fuse or a plant feeder breaker. On the utility system, the fault could be cleared by a branch fuse or a substation breaker. If reclosing is used by the utility, the voltage sag condition can occur multiple times.
Utility system faults can occur on the distribution system or on the transmission system. The typical distribution system includes a number of parallel feeders supplied from a common bus. A fault on one of the feeders will cause a voltage interruption on that feeder, which will directly affect the customer on that feeder. All of the customers on parallel feeders will experience a voltage sag while the fault is actually on the system. With the reclosing breakers at the substation, customers on parallel feeders can experience several voltage sags in succession, each lasting for durations ranging from a couple of cycles to more than ten cycles. Utility system faults on the transmission system can affect even more customers. Customers hundreds of miles from the fault location can experience a voltage sag when the fault is on the transmission system, resulting in equipment misoperation.
The large majority of faults on a utility system are single line-to-ground faults (SLGF). Three-phase faults are more severe, but less common. SLGFs often result from weather conditions such as lightning, wind, and ice. Contamination of insulators, animal contact, and accidents involving construction or transportation activities also cause such faults. Although utilities go to great lengths to prevent such faults on the system, they cannot be eliminated completely.
When a SLGF occurs, the voltage on the faulted phase goes to zero at the fault location. The voltage at the substation and on parallel feeders will depend on the distance of the fault from the substation. On transmission systems, the phase voltage at remote locations from the fault depends on the overall network impedances.
The quantity of concern to utility customers is the voltage level at the customer bus resulting from an SLGF somewhere on the utility system. The customer bus voltage will depend on the transformer connections between the faulted system and the customer bus. For a distribution system fault, the worst case occurs when the fault is close to the substation bus. Effectively, this is the same as a fault near the customer transformer primary. It is important to note that even a SLGF on the primary winding of the customer transformer will typically not result in a zero voltage across any of the secondary windings. For example, for an SLGF on the primary winding of a wye grounded/delta transformer, a circulating fault current in the delta secondary winding results in a voltage on each winding. With such a customer transformer connection, an SLGF on the primary of the transformer will result in a voltage sag at the customer bus that is no lower than 33% of the normal value.
SLGFs resulting in voltage sags, but without causing complete voltage interruptions, account for the great majority of faults on a utility power system.
However, statistics of voltage disturbances show that the vast majority of voltage sags are within 40% of the normal voltage level, and last less than 10 cycles.
Various types of electrical devices can be affected by even modest amounts of voltage sag. Such devices include motors, adjustable-speed drives, high-intensity discharge lighting, and control devices such as computers, contactors, and programmable logic controllers. The voltages experienced during a voltage sag condition will depend on the equipment connection. Individual phase voltages and phase-to-phase voltages can be quite different during an SLGF condition on the utility system. Thus, some single phase loads may be unaffected during the voltage sag condition, while other single phase loads may drop out, even though their sensitivities to voltage sags may be identical. Voltage unbalance is also a concern for motor heating. However, the durations of the unbalanced voltages during fault conditions are so short that motor heating is typically not a significant concern. Different categories of equipment, and even different brands of equipment within a category, can have significantly different sensitivities to voltage sags. It is important to recognize than an entire industrial process can depend on the sensitivity of a single piece of equipment. The overall process may involve controls, drives, motor contactors, robotics, etc., that are all integral to the plant operation. The failure of a single piece of equipment due to a voltage sag can, therefore, cause an entire industrial process to shut down. The interruption of an industrial process due to a voltage sag can result in very substantial costs to the operation. These costs include lost productivity, labor costs for clean-up and restart, damaged product, reduced product quality, delays in delivery, and reduced customer satisfaction.
Various solutions to the voltage sag problem have been suggested. It is possible for utilities to reduce the number of faults on the utility system through design practices and additional equipment, but it is never possible to eliminate faults on the system. Industrial plant equipment may be designed to handle the most common voltage sag conditions, or be retrofitted with appropriate power conditioning to ride through the voltage sag condition. Power conditioning equipment may be provided for particularly sensitive loads. Many voltage sag conditions can be handled by ferroresonant, or constant voltage, transformers. Such transformers may be effective power conditioners for loads with relatively low power requirements and loads which are constant. High power and variable loads pose a problem for such transformers because of the tuned circuit on the transformer output. Moreover, such transformers are heavy, expensive, and difficult to design and construct.
Another method for compensating voltage sags caused by faults in a utility power system involves the injection of energy into the power system transmission line to restore the load voltage magnitude. This may be accomplished by connecting an inverter in series with the transmission line. A DC power source, such as a battery, superconducting magnetic energy storage device, or a large DC bus capacitor, is used to provide power to the inverter. The inverter is controlled to convert the DC power provided by the DC power source into a voltage waveform which is injected into the transmission line to compensate for the voltage sag to restore the load voltage to the pre-fault load voltage condition. Since, in such systems, energy is provided from the DC power source to the utility transmission line, sufficient power must be stored in the DC power source to provide for voltage sag compensation throughout the duration of a fault on the utility system.
Other power quality problems which are also faced by industrial customers include unbalanced multi-phase power, which may be caused by unbalanced loads connected to the power system, and harmonic distortion in the power supply line, which is typically caused by non-linear loads, such as three-phase diode and thyristor bridge inverters used in DC power supplies, adjustable speed drives (ASDs), and Uninterruptible Power Supplies (UPS), which cause harmonic distortion in the power supply by injecting harmonic current into the power system that generates transient and spurious frequencies in the power signal. Active power line conditioners and/or active filters may be used to compensate for such unbalanced load and harmonic distortion conditions. Active line conditioners/balancers and harmonic filters may be implemented using inverters connected in series and/or in parallel with the power system transmission lines supplying the load. The inverters are controlled to inject or withdraw energy from the transmission line at the desired frequency to compensate for the unbalanced load and/or harmonic distortion condition.
Control of active power line conditioners and active harmonic filter inverters is often accomplished using a synchronous reference frame (SRF) based controller. An SRF based controller receives measure voltages or currents in the three-phase a-b-c reference frame as inputs, and transforms the three-phase quantities into a synchronously rotating two-phase d-q reference frame. Inverter control signals are generated initially from the measured quantities in the two-phase synchronous reference frame, and then converted back to the three-phase reference frame to be applied to control the inverter.
The transformation from a three-phase reference frame to a synchronously rotating two-phase reference frame is illustrated in FIG. 1. For exemplification purposes, the three-phase quantities may be three-phase currents i.sub.a, i.sub.b, and i.sub.c. The transformation of the three-phase currents i.sub.a, i.sub.b, and i.sub.c into synchronously rotating two-phase currents i.sup.e.sub.q and i.sup.e.sub.d is a two-step process. First, the three-phase currents are transformed to a two-phase ds-qs reference frame that is stationary with respect to the three-phase system. This three-phase to two-phase stationary transformation is equivalent to a set of linear equations with constant coefficients, as shown in FIG. 1. The two-phase stationary currents i.sup.s.sub.q and i.sup.s.sub.d are vectors that are 90.degree. out of phase with each other. This three-phase to stationary two-phase transformation may be accomplished by a conventional three-phase to two-phase stationary transformation device 40 which executes the following equation: ##EQU1## where k.sub.1 is a constant value equal to .sqroot.(2/3). The second step of the three-phase to two-phase synchronous reference frame transformation is the transformation of the stationary two-phase reference frame quantities ds and qs into synchronous rotating reference frame quantities de and qe. This stationary to rotating transformation 41 is achieved by multiplying the stationary reference frame values ds and qs by unit vectors cos .theta. and sin .theta.. Transformation from the stationary to rotating two-phase reference frame is accomplished by execution of the following equation: ##EQU2## The rotation transformation is often referred to as a "vector rotation", since the d-q quantities can be combined as a vector. The transformation then amounts to the rotation of one vector with respect to another. FIG. 1 includes the vector rotation equations.
The unit vectors cos .theta. and sin .theta. are obtained from a phase-locked loop (PLL). An exemplary prior art PLL is illustrated at 42 in FIG. 2. The PLL obtains an instantaneous vector sum of (for example) the three-phase input voltages (V.sub.ia, V.sub.ib, and V.sub.ic) by using a three-to-two phase transformation 43 that generates signals V.sub.di and V.sub.qi in the synchronously rotating two-phase reference frame. These signals are conveyed to a phase detector 44. The phase detector output may be defined as: EQU sin (phase error)=V.sub.di cos .theta.-V.sub.qi sin .theta..(3)
In equation 3, sin .theta. and cos .theta. are the values presently pointed to in a look-up table 45. The phase detector 44 output is processed by a proportional plus integral (PI) controller 46 that provides a fast response and zero steady-state tracking error. The PI controller 46 is used to determine the count parameter value of a timer or digital oscillator 47. The timer count value is decremented from the count parameter value at a constant rate. When zero is reached, the sin .theta. and cos .theta. pointers in the look-up table 45 are incremented. Since this is a closed-loop system, the count parameter value is either increased or decreased, depending on the PI controller 46 output, so as to reduce the phase error until a phase-locked condition is achieved.
The transformation from a synchronously rotating two-phase de-qe reference frame to a three-phase a-b-c reference frame is illustrated in FIG. 3. A rotating to stationary transformation 48 first transforms rotating two-phase quantities, for example, voltages V.sub.d.sup.e and V.sub.q.sup.e, to stationary two-phase values using the equation: ##EQU3## where cos .theta. and sin .theta. are derived from a PLL. The resulting stationary two-phase values V.sup.s.sub.d and V.sup.s.sub.q are then transformed by a stationary two-phase to three-phase transformation 49 to three-phase voltage quantities using: ##EQU4## The vector rotation equations for the two-phase to three-phase transformations are also presented in FIG. 3.

Dynamic series voltage restoration for sensitive loads in unbalanced power systems


A method of blocking spoofed packets. The method receives an address allocation message from an address provisioning server that provisions addresses for virtual machines. The address allocation message includes a source address. The method stores the source address of the address allocation message. The method forwards the address allocation message to a virtual machine. The method receives, from the virtual machine, a packet with a second source address. When the second source address is the same as the first source address, the method allows the packet to be forwarded. When the second source address is not the same as the first source address, the method blocks the second packet. An additional method determines the first source address from an initial packet sent from the virtual machine instead of the address allocation method.

Many current public (i.e., multi-tenant) datacenters and private (i.e., single-tenant) enterprises implement virtual machines on host machines of the datacenters or enterprises. In a public datacenter, there is a risk that a tenant of the datacenter will attempt to use the virtual machines for illicit purposes that include IP (Internet Protocol) address spoofing. Similarly, on a private enterprise, there is a risk that a virus or other type of malware will infect the virtual machines and attempt to use the infected virtual machines for illicit purposes that include IP address spoofing.
An IP packet includes multiple fields. Packets are generally sent through multiple intermediate network elements between their original source system and their destination system. Accordingly, the fields of the packets include a source IP field and a destination IP field. The destination IP field identifies the intended recipient of the packet and therefore allows intermediate network elements to forward the packet toward its intended recipient system. The source IP address allows the recipient system to identify the original source of the packet and thus address reply packets to the correct system.
IP address spoofing is the creation of Internet Protocol (IP) packets with a counterfeit source IP address (i.e., a source IP address that does not accurately identify the origination of the packet). Packets with counterfeit source IP addresses are sometimes referred to as "spoofed IP packets". Spoofed IP packets disrupt packet forwarding systems because the network sends the reply packets either to a system that is not expecting the reply packets, or to an address that is not the address of any actual system. Spoofed IP packets are often used for illicit activities such as distributed denial of service attacks by botnets, or any other activity where the sender of the packet is not concerned with getting a reply from the receiver of the packet.

Auto detecting legitimate IP addresses using spoofguard agents


A wrist wearable device for the detection and monitoring of possible allergy symptoms and relation to specific triggering conditions. The device has a visual display and is operatively attached to a human pulse point. It also has a clock/calendar timer, pulse measurement mechanism and alarm, an addressable memory with an input control, preinstalled icons and user controlled identification symbols and a logic circuit system. The device is adapted to be worn constantly with pulse measurements, related to time and date, being stored in memory. Average pulse rates are determined, based on time and day of week and stored in memory. Excessively elevated pulse rate spikes (relative to determined average pulse rates) are monitored and the wearer is warned of the elevated level. Absent ostensible physical and emotional causes, elevated pulse rates are attributable to allergic reactions. To ascertain the source of the allergy, the wearer of the device, scrolls through pre-programmed icon representations of common allergy inducing foods or conditions and sets the device to monitor conditions present at the time of pulse rate spike. Thereafter, the device is addressed by the wearer when any or all of the conditions are replicated. The device relates time (time and day) with elevated pulse rate and replicated condition and stores pulse spikes in memory. After a pre-determined time period, correlated and stored conditions are downloaded for analysis of possible allergic reactions and causes.

Various procedures exist for determining the cause of a patient's allergic reactions or even that an allergic reaction exists. Such tests usually involve the use of a series of minor dermal inoculations with small doses of common sources of allergies and an inspection to see if there is a local skin reaction. Oftentimes determination of the source for an allergy is much less straightforward and a source of allergy is not as forthcoming. Under such circumstance the patient is advised to keep logs of lifestyles and conditions during occurrences of untoward reactions in order to try to relate the reaction to foods or drinks being ingested, inhalants, tactile irritants, ambient conditions and the like, which are or may be present during adverse reactions. This procedure is utilized in an effort to narrow down, over time, the scope of suspected sources. This is however, an onerous task which is often not scrupulously (or even properly) followed by patients. It is also particularly difficult with respect to children who are unable to follow directions properly and usually requires adult supervision (which may not even be at hand) to ascertain conditions and to help with recordal.
In addition, some discomfort conditions might not even be allergic reactions yet they may be noted as such. Even allergic reactions are not consistent in occurrence and may in fact require a confluence of factors before a trigger point is reached. Thus, a cat's presence may or may not trigger an allergic reaction depending on other atmospheric conditions and ventilation. Record keeping, according to the prior art, is onerous and often difficult to reconcile and evaluate.

Pulse rate monitor for allergy detection and control


A method and system for selectively fluorinating organic molecules on a target site wherein the target site is activated and then fluorinated are shown together with a method and system for identifying a molecule having a biological activity.

The importance of fluorine in altering the physicochemical properties of organic molecules and its exploitation in medicinal chemistry has been highlighted in recent reviews (Bohm, Banner et al. 2004). Although similar in size to hydrogen, H→F substitutions can cause dramatic effects on several properties of organic molecules, including the lipophilicity, dipole moment, and pKa thereof. In addition, fluorine substitutions can dramatically alter the reactivity of the fluorinated site as well as that of neighboring functional groups.
In particular, in medicinal chemistry, there is a growing interest towards incorporating fluorine atoms in building blocks, lead compounds and drugs in that this may increase by many-fold the chances of turning these molecules into marketable drugs. Several studies have shown that potent drugs can be obtained through fluorination of much less active precursors. Some representative examples include anticholesterolemic Ezetimib (Clader 2004), anticancer CF3-taxanes (Ojima 2004), fluoro-steroids, and antibacterial fluoroquinolones.
The improved pharmacological properties of fluoro-containing drugs are often due to their improved pharmacokinetic properties (biodistribution, clearance) and enhanced metabolic stability (Park, Kitteringham et al. 2001). Primary metabolism of drugs in humans generally occurs through P450-dependent systems, and the introduction of fluorine atoms at or near the sites of metabolic attack has often proven successful in increasing the half-life of a compound (Bohm, Banner et al. 2004). A comprehensive review covering the influence of fluorination on drug metabolism (especially P450-dependent) is presented (Park, Kitteringham et al. 2001).
In other cases, the introduction of fluorine substituents leads to improvements in the pharmacological properties as a result of enhanced binding affinity of the molecule to biological receptors. Examples of the effect of fluorine on binding affinity are provided by recent results in the preparation of NK1 antagonists (Swain and Rupniak 1999), 5HT1D agonists (van Niel, Collins et al. 1999), and PTB1B antagonists (Burke, Ye et al. 1996).
Over the past years, fluorination has been playing an increasingly important role in drug discovery, as exemplified by the development of fluorinated derivatives of the anticancer drugs paclitaxel and docetaxel (Ojima 2004).
However, only a handful of organofluorine compounds occur in nature and even those are found in very small amounts (Harper and O'Hagan 1994). Consequently, any fluorine-containing substance selected for research, pharmaceutical, or agrochemical application has to be man-made.
Despite a few reports on the application of molecular fluorine (F2) for direct fluorination of organic compounds (Chambers, Skinner et al. 1996; Chambers, Hutchinson et al. 2000), this method typically suffers from poor selectivity and requires handling of a highly toxic and gaseous reagent. Several chemical strategies have been developed over the past decades to afford selective fluorination of organic compounds under friendlier conditions. These have been recently reviewed by Togni (Togni, Mezzetti et al. 2001), Cahard (Ma and Cahard 2004), Sodeoka (Hamashima and Sodeoka 2006), and Gouverneur (Bobbio and Gouverneur 2006). These strategies involve catalytic as well as non-catalytic methods. The latter comprise substrate-controlled fluorination methods, which generally make use of a chiral auxiliary, and reagent-controlled fluorination methods, which generally make use of chiral electrophilic N—F or nucleophilic fluorinating reagents.
These fluorination methods, however, need several chemical steps to prepare the chiral substrates (Davis and Han 1992; Enders, Potthoff et al. 1997) or the chiral reagents (Davis, Zhou et al. 1998; Taylor, Kotoris et al. 1999; Nyffeler, Duron et al. 2005) and have an applicability restricted to reactive C—H bonds (Cahard, Audouard et al. 2000; Shibata, Suzuki et al. 2000; Kim and Park 2002; Beeson and MacMillan 2005; Marigo, Fielenbach et al. 2005) in specific classes of compounds such as aldehydes (Beeson and MacMillan 2005; Marigo, Fielenbach et al. 2005) or di-carbonyls (Hintermann and Togni 2000; Ma and Cahard 2004; Shibata, Ishimaru et al. 2004; Hamashima and Sodeoka 2006).
Despite much progress in the field of organofluorine chemistry, the number of available methods for direct or indirect asymmetric synthesis of organofluorine compounds remains limited and additional tools are desirable. In particular, a general method to afford mono- or poly-fluorination of organic compounds at reactive and unreactive sites of their molecular scaffold is desirable.

Methods and systems for selective fluorination of organic molecules


The invention relates to a method and apparatus for screening pulverized or chip material, such as fibers or wood chips, free from impurities. The material to be screened is fed onto a roll set formed by a number of adjacent, essentially parallel rolls (1) and is brought to an advantageous movement with the help of the rolls (1), whereby material particles of highest density drift downward closest to the surfaces of the rolls and that the material fraction closest to the roll surfaces can escape the rolls via a gap (B) a width essentially larger than the gap width (A) of the preceding roll pairs.

Pulverized and chipped materials comprise, e.g., different kinds of fibers and wood chips used in the manufacture of particleboard/fiberboard and similar products. Such boards are made increasingly from residue materials. Resultingly, a need arises for removing impurities from the raw material stock. Typical impurities comprise different minerals, rocks, sand and similar particulates. In the board manufacturing process, the content of impurities significantly affects the wear rate of tools such as different cutting means employed in the finishing operations of boards made from residue materials. Hence, a variety of screening methods has been developed. Known in the art are arrangements in which mere blowing by air is used for separating impurities from the raw material. Such embodiments are handicapped by high specific energy consumption and dust emissions. Moreover, extremely fine impurity particulates are not removed in a desired manner by air blowing, whereby the end result of the screening operation remains unsatisfactory.
It is an object of the present invention to provide an entirely novel method and apparatus for removing impurities from pulverized or chip material, said method and apparatus being free from the disadvantages of conventional techniques.

Method and apparatus for removing impurities from pulverized or chipped material, especially wood chip and fiber materials


Relevant files are determined for a user upon detecting a user action such as save, load, open, view, share, or comparable ones associated with a file. The relevancy may be determined through one or more queries based on, a number of criteria, where the queries are executed on local or remote data stores related to the user. For example, files on the local computing device of the user, files in an enterprise network associated with the user, files on a social network subscribed by the user may be evaluated for various relevancy criteria. Files determined to be relevant may be prioritized, ordered, and/or grouped for suggestion to the user and presented through a user interface of an application performing the detected action.

Users often work with many file, which may be locally saved, or from one or more networks. When working with a variety of applications, users need access to files to open a new file, to send a file to another user, to save a file, to share a file, and other use scenarios. Users may have to find files they need through manual search. Some approaches provide a list of most recently used files or a list of files from a current or last used location. However, in the multi-dimensional file storage, use, and attribute environments of today's computing, these approaches may be limited and one-dimensional.

Relevant file identification using automated queries to disparate data storage locations


A TASKS_RCU grace period is detected whose quiescent states comprise a task undergoing a voluntary context switch, a task running in user mode, and a task running in idle-mode. A list of all runnable tasks is built. The runnable task list is scanned in one or more scan passes. Each scan pass through the runnable task list searches to identify tasks that have passed through a quiescent state by either performing a voluntary context switch, running in user mode, or running in idle-mode. If found, such quiescent state tasks are removed from the runnable task list. Searching performed during a scan pass includes identifying quiescent state tickless user mode tasks that have been running continuously in user mode on tickless CPUs that have not received a scheduling clock interrupt since commencement of the TASKS_RCU grace period. If the runnable task list is empty, the TASKS_RCU grace period is ended.

1. Field
The present disclosure relates to computer systems and methods in which data resources are shared among data consumers while preserving data integrity and consistency relative to each consumer. More particularly, the disclosure concerns a mutual exclusion mechanism known as "read-copy update."
2. Description of the Prior Art
By way of background, read-copy update (also known as "RCU") is a mutual exclusion technique that permits shared data to be accessed for reading without the use of locks, writes to shared memory, memory barriers, atomic instructions, or other computationally expensive synchronization mechanisms, while still permitting the data to be updated (modify, delete, insert, etc.) concurrently. The technique is well suited to both uniprocessor and multiprocessor computing environments wherein the number of read operations (readers) accessing a shared data set is large in comparison to the number of update operations (updaters), and wherein the overhead cost of employing other mutual exclusion techniques (such as locks) for each read operation would be high. By way of example, a network routing table that is updated at most once every few minutes but searched many thousands of times per second is a case where read-side lock acquisition would be quite burdensome.
The read-copy update technique implements data updates in two phases. In the first (initial update) phase, the actual data update is carried out in a manner that temporarily preserves two views of the data being updated. One view is the old (pre-update) data state that is maintained for the benefit of read operations that may have been referencing the data concurrently with the update. The other view is the new (post-update) data state that is seen by operations that access the data following the update. In the second (deferred update) phase, the old data state is removed following a "grace period" that is long enough to ensure that the first group of read operations will no longer maintain references to the pre-update data. The second-phase update operation typically comprises freeing a stale data element to reclaim its memory. In certain RCU implementations, the second-phase update operation may comprise something else, such as changing an operational state according to the first-phase update.
FIGS. 1A-1D illustrate the use of read-copy update to modify a data element B in a group of data elements A, B and C. The data elements A, B, and C are arranged in a singly-linked list that is traversed in acyclic fashion, with each element containing a pointer to a next element in the list (or a NULL pointer for the last element) in addition to storing some item of data. A global pointer (not shown) is assumed to point to data element A, the first member of the list. Persons skilled in the art will appreciate that the data elements A, B and C can be implemented using any of a variety of conventional programming constructs, including but not limited to, data structures defined by C-language "struct" variables. Moreover, the list itself is a type of data structure.
It is assumed that the data element list of FIGS. 1A-1D is traversed (without locking) by multiple readers and occasionally updated by updaters that delete, insert or modify data elements in the list. In FIG. 1A, the data element B is being referenced by a reader r1, as shown by the vertical arrow below the data element. In FIG. 1B, an updater u1 wishes to update the linked list by modifying data element B. Instead of simply updating this data element without regard to the fact that r1 is referencing it (which might crash r1), u1 preserves B while generating an updated version thereof (shown in FIG. 1C as data element B′) and inserting it into the linked list. This is done by u1 acquiring an appropriate lock (to exclude other updaters), allocating new memory for B′, copying the contents of B to B′, modifying B′ as needed, updating the pointer from A to B so that it points to B′, and releasing the lock. In current versions of the Linux® kernel, pointer updates performed by updaters can be implemented using the rcu_assign_pointer ( ) primitive. As an alternative to locking during the update operation, other techniques such as non-blocking synchronization or a designated update thread could be used to serialize data updates. All subsequent (post update) readers that traverse the linked list, such as the reader r2, will see the effect of the update operation by encountering B′ as they dereference B's pointer. On the other hand, the old reader r1 will be unaffected because the original version of B and its pointer to C are retained. Although r1 will now be reading stale data, there are many cases where this can be tolerated, such as when data elements track the state of components external to the computer system (e.g., network connectivity) and must tolerate old data because of communication delays. In current versions of the Linux® kernel, pointer dereferences performed by readers can be implemented using the rcu_dereference ( ) primitive.
At some subsequent time following the update, r1 will have continued its traversal of the linked list and moved its reference off of B. In addition, there will be a time at which no other reader task is entitled to access B. It is at this point, representing an expiration of the grace period referred to above, that u1 can free B, as shown in FIG. 1D.
FIGS. 2A-2C illustrate the use of read-copy update to delete a data element B in a singly-linked list of data elements A, B and C. As shown in FIG. 2A, a reader r1 is assumed be currently referencing B and an updater u1 wishes to delete B. As shown in FIG. 2B, the updater u1 updates the pointer from A to B so that A now points to C. In this way, r1 is not disturbed but a subsequent reader r2 sees the effect of the deletion. As shown in FIG. 2C, r1 will subsequently move its reference off of B, allowing B to be freed following the expiration of a grace period.
In the context of the read-copy update mechanism, a grace period represents the point at which all running tasks (e.g., processes, threads or other work) having access to a data element guarded by read-copy update have passed through a "quiescent state" in which they can no longer maintain references to the data element, assert locks thereon, or make any assumptions about data element state. By convention, for operating system kernel code paths, a context switch, an idle loop, and user mode execution all represent quiescent states for any given CPU running non-preemptible code (as can other operations that will not be listed here). The reason for this is that a non-preemptible kernel will always complete a particular operation (e.g., servicing a system call while running in process context) prior to a context switch.
In FIG. 3, four tasks 0, 1, 2, and 3 running on four separate CPUs are shown to pass periodically through quiescent states (represented by the vertical bars). The grace period (shown by the dotted vertical lines) encompasses the time frame in which all four tasks that began before the start of the grace period have passed through one quiescent state. If the four tasks 0, 1, 2, and 3 were reader tasks traversing the linked lists of FIGS. 1A-1D or FIGS. 2A-2C, none of these tasks having reference to the old data element B prior to the grace period could maintain a reference thereto following the grace period. All post grace period searches conducted by these tasks would bypass B by following the updated pointers created by the updater.
Grace periods may synchronous or asynchronous. According to the synchronous technique, an updater performs the first phase update operation, invokes a function such as synchronize_rcu ( ) to await a grace period, then blocks (waits) until a grace period has completed, and then implements the second phase update operation, such as by removing stale data. According to the asynchronous technique, an updater performs the first phase update operation, specifies the second phase update operation as a callback, invokes a function such as call_rcu ( ) to await a grace period and invoke callback processing, then resumes with the knowledge that the callback will eventually be processed at the end of the grace period. Advantageously, callbacks requested by one or more updaters can be batched (e.g., on callback lists) and processed as a group at the end of an asynchronous grace period. This allows asynchronous grace period overhead to be amortized over plural deferred update operations.
Modern operating system kernels have been adapted to account for CPU low power states (such as, on Intel® processors, the C1E halt state, or the C2 or deeper halt states). Such operating system kernels can take advantage of low power state capabilities by using mechanisms that withhold regular timer interrupts from CPUs unless the CPUs need such interrupts to perform work. The dynamic tick framework (also called "dyntick" or "nohz") available in current versions of the Linux® kernel is one such mechanism. Selecting the CONFIG_NO_HZ_FULL_IDLE compiler option provides nohz functionality for idle CPUs. In such Linux® kernel builds, the kernel's RCU grace period detection mechanism does not interfere with a CPU entering or remaining in a low power state, provided RCU does not require the CPU to acknowledge a quiescent state in order to end a grace period. The reason for this is because grace period detection processing is normally driven by the scheduling clock interrupt, and such processing cannot be performed on a CPU whose scheduling clock tick is suppressed.
Another Linux® kernel compiler option known as CONFIG_NO_HZ_FULL is used to withhold timer ticks from certain CPUs during times when they have only one runnable task. Such CPUs may be referred to as "adaptive-tick" or "tickless" CPUs. They may be designated at system boot time with the "nohz_full=" boot parameter. When one or more CPUs in a computer system are designated as a tickless CPU, the operating system kernel will avoid disturbing those CPUs whenever they have only a single runnable task. This option may be used to minimize OS jitter for HPC workloads or to improve latencies for real-time workloads. It is desirable that tickless CPUs executing a single runnable task in user mode should not be disturbed, either by scheduling-clock interrupts, IPIs, device interrupts, or kernel threads. All such potential sources of latency and jitter may be kept on some other CPU that has been designated for that purpose. For example, it is customary to exclude the boot CPU (CPU 0) from the nohz_full=set, so that this CPU always receives regular timer ticks and can be used to handle various timer-driven events.
More recently, a flavor of RCU named TASKS_RCU has been developed to allow freeing of "trampolines" (indirect jump vectors), which are used by some forms of tracing and also by some types of no-downtime live-kernel-patching mechanisms. TASKS_RCU is analogous to other flavors of RCU, but with a key difference being that grace period detection is handled by tracking when tasks (rather than CPUs) can no longer hold references to shared data. Other differences include the fact that readers do not invoke any RCU read-side primitives, such as the rcu_read_lock ( ) or rcu_read_unlock ( ) functions used in other flavors of RCU. For updaters, a call_rcu ( ) variant named call_tasks_rcu ( ) is provided for posting callbacks to be processed at the end of a TASKS_RCU grace period.
TASKS_RCU uses voluntary context switch (not preemption) and user mode execution as its sole quiescent states (possibly with addition of the idle loop). At the beginning of a TASKS_RCU grace period, the TASKS_RCU grace period detection mechanism creates a separate list of task structures corresponding to every runnable process in the system. Tasks that are not runnable are deemed unable to hold a reference to data structures protected by TASKS_RCU, and are not therefore included. Each task on the runnable holdout list is deemed a "holdout task," and a special "rcu_tasks_holdout" flag is set in its task structure at the beginning of the TASKS_RCU grace period. This flag is cleared by the operating system scheduler whenever the task voluntarily relinquishes the CPU or returns to user mode. A TASKS_RCU kernel thread loops through the list of holdout tasks on the runnable task list, and removes any that have had their rcu_tasks_holdout flag reset. Once the runnable list is empty, callbacks posted prior to the start of the current grace period, e.g., using the call_rcu_tasks ( ) function, may be invoked.
Unfortunately, the above-described TASKS_RCU grace period detection mechanism will ignore a tickless CPU running a single task in tickless user mode at the time the task is added to the runnable task list. While the task is running, there would be neither a context switch nor a scheduling-clock interrupt to tell TASKS_RCU that the task in question has passed through a quiescent state. Instead, TASKS_RCU would have to wait for the next voluntary context switch, which could extend the grace period indefinitely.
It would therefore be desirable for TASKS_RCU to be able to detect which tasks are running in tickless user mode on tickless CPUs, without disturbing these CPUs.

International Business Machines Corporation


An electro-mechanical energy regulator for controlling an application of power supplied to a heating element of a cooking appliance that provides simmer operation is provided. The temperature and/or mode of operation is made via a user interface knob that is coupled to a switching control cam. This cam has an outer profile configured to drive a switching element via a power switch cam follower to close two power line contacts to power a heater. The heater drives a bimetal element whose deflection forces a temperature control switching element to close to enable power to flow to the heating element. The regulator also includes a cooking mode selector operable to open and close a pair of electrical contacts coupled in series with the heating element, and a diode coupled in parallel with the pair of electrical contacts.

The use of infinite switch energy regulators are well known in the art of energy and load control. For example, infinite switch energy regulators are employed in electric ranges, to control the energy supplied to a load, such as a burner. In a typical infinite switch energy regulator, depending on the setting of the switch, a duty cycle is selected to be provided as an output from the energy regulator to the load. An infinite switching type energy regulator works on the principle that if the contacts are opened and closed at different on-to-off time ratios, or different duty cycles, sometimes referred to as % (percent) on-times, the energy transmitted to a physical mass, through an electrical load, can be regulated as those ratios are varied. However, in order to regulate the temperature of the heating element to which the electrical power is supplied, the on/off switching of electrical energy requires that the cooktop heating element (load) and physical mass in contact with the heating element, such as a pot or pan with water or food, have a significant lumped thermal capacitance.
An infinite switching type energy regulator typically has a bimetal element coupled to a cycling contact and an internal heater that causes the bimetal element to deform when energy is applied to the internal heater and the resistive load. As the load and the internal heater are heated, the bimetal element deforms and the switch is opened. The cycling contact closes, due to spring forces, after the bimetal has cooled sufficiently to allow it to deform back to its original ambient temperature shape. An infinite switch energy regulator is typically employed in a 240 volt ac application and the internal heater and collaboration are configured for use in such an application.
One of the problems with the presently available energy regulator is that, due to various factors including mechanical tolerances, infinite switches typically have trouble maintaining consistent low duty cycle performance as is required for simmer cooking cycles. This is because the duty cycle effect is produced by the bimetal material in combination with the internal heater. As this duty cycle is reduced to low settings, which is necessary for the simmer of delicate foods/ingredients, changes to the mechanical tolerances over time can cause issues for performance. It is not uncommon for such changes to result in 2% changes in the cycle time.
However, a low duty cycle setting for simmer operation might only be 2% to 9% (−5% average) as part of a 30-90 cycle time for a typical appliance. Even though the infinite switch may calibrate correctly at 2% upon its initial build, changes to components over time, including wear and deformation, can cause this same infinite switch to stop cycling with only a 2% shift in component switching performance. This would result in a loss of simmer control for very delicate sauces and other foods. What is needed, therefore, is an infinite switch controller for a cooking appliance that provides lower duty cycle operational calibrations to allow for more consistent operation over time as changes to the operative components occur.
Embodiments of the present invention provide such electro-mechanical energy regulators, or infinite switches, for use with a cooking appliance to provide enhanced simmer control over time. These and other advantages of the invention, as well as additional inventive features, will be apparent from the description of embodiments of the invention provided herein.

Electro-mechanical energy regulator providing enhanced simmer performance


A system and method for providing a baffler between contents transported in a shopping cart and potential pathogens and contaminates on the shopping cart upper surface. The invention is a cart liner which is placed between the contents and the shopping cart's upper surface to prevent the contents from contacting the surface. The shopping cart liner may be converted to a baglike structure for transporting the contents following transport.

In a typical shopping experience, the average shopper uses hand propelled shopping carts or shopping carts to transport items the shopper wishes to purchase. Ordinarily a shopper places household items, produce, or meat products into the shopping cart, conveys the items to a checkout counter, then removes the items from the cart for purchase. The shopper may then leave the shopping cart at the store location for use by subsequent shoppers, who may also use the cart to transport items as described above.
A typical shopping cart may be used multiple times in a single day by a plurality of shoppers. In some instances, the items placed in the shopping cart may leave an infectious residue, such as blood, mucus, urine, saliva, chemicals, pesticides or the like, on the cart's surface or in the cart's basket. The residue is often left on the cart during each use, thereby causing the residue to build up over time.
Occasionally, a shopper may have a communicable illness, which may be easily transferred to the cart and possibly to any subsequent shoppers. It is well known that disease agents are passed or vectored from infected individuals to other individuals directly, through body contact, or indirectly, through contact with objects that have come into body contact with infected individuals. While disease agents such as the cold virus typically do not remain infectious outside of the human body for more than a few hours because of drying or desiccation, many similar viruses will remain active outside of the body for up to six hours in moist conditions and up to four hours in dry conditions. There are also many bacterial disease organisms that may be transferred directly or indirectly and that may be infectiously viable for considerably longer periods of time. For example, some strains of staphylococcus and streptococci bacteria are quite resistant to drying and thus remain infectious for long periods of time. Indeed, staphylococcus aureus has achieved considerable notoriety as a so-called nosocomial, or hospital, infectant—one that is frequently spread in hospitals as well as in other environments via objects that come into contact with susceptible individuals.
In some instances many shoppers pay less attention to their personal hygiene than might be desirable. Even fastidiously clean individuals may unwittingly transfer disease organisms to others via the handles of hand-propelled carts. Some members of the public recognize this danger and are loathe to touch the handles of hand-propelled carts. Indeed, parents have begun to recognize that it may be detrimental for their children to chew or teethe on cart handles (not an uncommon occurrence).
The pathogens associated with illnesses may be transferred from the shopper to the shopping cart during normal cart usage. As such, when a subsequent shopper uses the cart, the subsequent shopper may contract the illness as well.
In the instance where the shopping cart is used to transport the items into the parking lot area, the cart may additionally be soiled by dirt and debris (e.g., gum, oil, transmission fluid, gasoline, etc.) cast onto the cart from, for example, the parking lot surface.
The pathogens, debris and residue discussed above may be called "contaminants" herein. Typically, a shopping cart may be in use for many years without the contaminants being removed. A study done by the University of Arizona Microbiology Department tested areas of shopping carts, which are most often contacted by the shopper or articles transported in the shopping cart. The test conducted involved analyzing swab samples retrieved from the shopping carts to determine the presence of any foreign organic matter. The results of the study suggested that a full fifty-four percent of the shopping carts contained harmful contaminants. As such, a need exists for a system and method for protecting the average shopper from the health danger associated with using shopping carts during their shopping experience.
One such system which is used is the Clean Shopper® baby/toddler shopping cart seat cover sold by Babe Ease, LLC of Pelham, N. H. The Clean Shopper® cover is a re-usable cotton, quilted shopping cart cover that fits over the entire front portion of the shopping cart (e.g. child transport areas), which is ordinarily used to seat and transport an infant or small child. The child is seated on the Clean Shopper® cover during cart usage. In this way, a toddler may be seated in the shopping cart without being exposed to the cart's contaminated surface.
One drawback to the Clean Shopper° cover is that the cotton or quilted material from which it is constructed is porous. As such, the Clean Shopper® cover is prone to having the contaminants transferred to the Clean Shopper® cover from the shopping cart's surface during each use, thereby contaminating the Clean Shopper® cover. Another drawback is that the Clean Shopper cover does not cover the entire shopping cart. Thus, the contaminants which are present in the cart's basket, for example, may be transferred to the items transported on the basket's surface.
Consequently, a need exists for a system and method which protects the shopper and the articles or persons transported by the shopping cart from contaminates which may exist on portion of a shopping cart's surface.

System and method for shopping cart liner


A method of fabricating a semiconductor device includes forming at least one trench from a top side of a semiconductor layer, wherein the trench is lined with a trench dielectric liner and filled by a first polysilicon layer. The surface of the trench dielectric liner is etched, wherein dips in the trench dielectric liner are formed relative to a top surface of the first polysilicon layer which results in forming a protrusion including the first polysilicon layer. The first polysilicon layer is etched to remove at least a portion of the protrusion. A second dielectric layer is formed over at least the trench after etching the first polysilicon layer. A second polysilicon layer is deposited. The second polysilicon layer is etched to remove it over the trench and provide a patterned second polysilicon layer on the top side of the semiconductor layer.

Some processes include the formation of polysilicon filled dielectric lined trenches. For example, polysilicon filled dielectric lined trenches can be used for dielectric isolation (e.g., shallow trench isolation (STI)), for making capacitors, or for making both. Some of these trenches are deep trenches, typically formed by reactive ion etching (RIE), which can be 10 μm to 50 μm deep, or more. Several of these processes add a polysilicon gate for metal-oxide-semiconductor field-effect transistor (MOSFET) devices and/or other polysilicon filled trenches, so that there are two levels of polysilicon trench filling.
For example, certain MOSFETs have a gate structure including polysilicon gate electrodes and a vertical drain drift region between RESURF trenches which are polysilicon filled regions. For the purposes of this application, the term "RESURF" is understood to refer to a material which reduces an electric field in an adjacent semiconductor region. A RESURF region may be for example a semiconductor region with an opposite conductivity type from the adjacent semiconductor region. RESURF structures are described in Appels, et. al., "Thin Layer High Voltage Devices" Philips J, Res. 35 1-13, 1980.
There can be active area RESURF trenches (hereafter "active area trenches") which contain field plates which are electrically coupled to a source of the MOSFET. In the case of a n-channel MOSFET, there is a p-body region within an n-drift region on a substrate, where n-type dopants are in the source regions formed in the p-body region. The drain for the MOSFET can be a vertical drain drift region that uses the entire n-drift region below the p-body region, that has a drain contact on the bottom of the substrate which can be an n+ substrate.
A contact metal stack makes electrical contact with the source regions at lateral sides of the contact structure, makes electrical contact with a body contact region at a bottom surface of the contact structure, and makes electrical contact to the field plates in the active area trenches at the bottom surface of the contact structure. A perimeter RESURF trench (hereafter a "termination trench") surrounds the MOSFET, including the active area trenches. The termination trench is formed at a first polysilicon level and the active area trenches include formation steps including a second polysilicon level, creating the need to remove the second polysilicon layer from over the termination trench.

Reduction of polysilicon residue in a trench for polysilicon trench filling processes


Apparatus is disclosed forming an optical fiber communication signal distribution system which is uniquely designed to cooperate with the interior or edges of a typical modular office panel or an extension thereto. It can conveniently be considered to have three key interacting and cooperating elements; a removable channel, a complementary raceway, and optical fiber signal distribution means incorporated into the channel. The system typically provides fiber optic communication signals to a variety of computers and communication devices such as telephones and facsimile machines. The system is flexible and can be used to serve any number of work stations within the modular cluster. It also provides for routing and passage of electrical power lines as well as the optical communications fibers.

1. Field of the Invention
The invention herein relates to fiber optic communications and to the use of optical fibers in conjunction with office equipment. More particularly relates to apparatus for the incorporation of optical fiber distribution systems in modular office furnishings.
2. Background of the Invention
It is common in many offices, research facilities, light manufacturing plants and similar work places to have a number of people all working in the same room. Each employee's work space is defined by work area furnishings, which are commonly modular structures. Typically the work areas are formed by the interconnection of modular panels to form clusters of work areas. These panels also normally can be configured to include counters or desk tops, book shelves, storage cabinets and the like, so that each employee's work space can be configured to the optimum arrangement for the employee's particular work tasks. Also, because these various panels are modular, the various work areas can be disassembled and reassembled in various configurations as needed to ensure that working areas remain efficient as the company's work needs change.
In most if not all of these modular work areas, there will be a variety of types of office equipment, including computers and communication equipment such as telephones and facsimile machines. Since most of the work areas are clustered into groups (typically of two to twelve work spaces), it is most efficient if the communications cables serving the various work stations are led in centrally through the work station panels.
In the past, there have been numerous designs of modular panels which have included paths or raceways for electrical power lines and electronic communication cables. Virtually every manufacturer of modular office structures offers panels incorporating such features; typical systems are described in U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,203,639; 4,841,699; and Re. 31,733. In such panels, the cables are led through narrow raceways and exit at various outlet boxes formed into or attached to the panels, so that the various pieces of office equipment can be connected to the power and/or communication cables by simply being plugged into the outlets on the face of the panels for each work area.
In recent years, fiber optic communications have largely displaced electrical communication systems in many applications, including but not limited to telephone, facsimile and computer communications. Optical fibers carry communication signals much more efficiently than electrical cables, particularly in multiplexing systems, since a much higher number of light signals can be carried separately and distinctly by optical fibers than the number of electrical signals which can be carried by conventional electrical wires. In addition, since there is no radiation field surrounding an optical fiber as there is surrounding an electric wire, many optical fibers can be bundled together without interference between their carried signals. Because of this transition to optical fiber communications, there has been a clear need to be able to use optical fibers in modular office panel systems in place of electrical communication systems.
However, several problems exist which prevent customers from simply directly replacing electrical communication wires with optical communication fibers. First, optical fibers have much different physical properties than electric wires, since they are made of light transmitting materials such as glass and acrylic polymers rather than electrical conductive metals. The physical properties of the glass and polymer fibers require much more space in raceways to make the various turns necessary since light cannot be transmitted around sharp bends in a fiber. See Hecht, Understanding Fiber Optics, Chapters 2 and 4 (1987). If the bending radius of the optical fiber is too great, a critical parameter called the confinement angle of the light will be exceeded, so that a portion of the light will escape from the fiber in the curve, thus diminishing or distorting the transmitted signal. Also, glass is susceptible to physical damage. Consequently, different accommodations for optical fibers must be made in panels than are required for electrical wires, which can be bent and twisted essentially at any angle.
Further, optical fibers are more efficiently used for communications if the final distribution point of a signal to a target piece of equipment, such as a telephone or computer, is placed as close to that piece of equipment as is physically reasonable. It is much more technically effective and economical to run a multi-fiber trunk cable from a remote location to the modular work area, and then run the various fiber duplex pairs for the shortest practical distance possible.
In addition, a typically configured remote distribution system reduces the overall efficiency of space planning for the work areas and the manager's ability to organize the work for the most efficient work flow. Because of the significant distance between the distribution room and any individual work station, any change in work tasks assigned to that station or in the equipment used at that station requires that entirely new fiber cables be run from the remote distribution room to the work station, clearly a time consuming and expensive project. Also, since the cables have to be run for some distance, including through the ceiling or floor of the work room, it is not uncommon for such changeovers also to seriously disrupt the work of other employees whose work spaces are located near the work space being converted, at least for the period of the changeover.
Finally, optical fibers are useful for communications, but they are not able to transmit power in addition to signals. Consequently, electrical power must still be provided to the various work areas to run office equipment, including that equipment which receives its signal communications through optical fibers. In the past, this has required separate distribution systems and raceways and therefore most modular equipment manufactures and most business and industrial end-users have been reluctant to incorporate optical fiber communication capability into their panels and other modular products, because of the additional cost, complexity of panels and duplicate distribution structures required.
It would therefore be quite advantageous to have an optical fiber communication apparatus which can be directly incorporated into modular panels, and for such panels to be easily and economically structured to accommodate and to provide optimum use of the optical fibers. Such systems would also provide for rapid and simple reconfiguration of work spaces with little or no loss of signal transmission efficiency or disruption of adjacent work areas.

Fiber optic signal distribution system and raceway and panel associated therewith


A system and method for positioning a cursor associated with a dynamic background is described. In a first step, the position of the dynamic background in a first frame is calculated. In a second step, the position of the dynamic background in a second frame is calculated. In a third step, the change in position of the dynamic background from the first frame to the second frame is calculated. Lastly, the position of the cursor in the second frame is adjusted according to the change in position of the dynamic background. The change in position of the dynamic background from the first frame to the second frame can be calculated in one, two or three dimensions. Likewise, the position of the cursor in the second frame can be adjusted in one, two or three dimensions. This advantage allows for easier positioning of the cursor by a user on a desired object in the display.

1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to the field of cursor positioning. More specifically, this invention relates to cursor positioning in a video broadcast.
2. Background Art
Many computer applications use a mouse-driven cursor to allow a user to interact with the display. The cursor is generally used to perform a function, such as selection, on a displayed object. For example, the user can locate the cursor over an object, and then click a mouse button in order to select the object. Typically, a displayed object is in a fixed position in the display. This provides little difficulty for the user to position the cursor over the object before clicking on the object. When the desired object is not in a fixed position in the display, however, the task of positioning the cursor over the object can become more difficult.
In one example, a live video broadcast of a baseball game can allow a user to interact with the display using a cursor. In this example, objects, such as bases, can be clicked in order to retrieve information. For example, a user can use a remote control with directional buttons to move a cursor and click on the bases in order to retrieve statistics on the corresponding baseman. The composition of the live video broadcast, however, is constantly varying. That is, as different cameras are used, or as the pan, tilt and zoom of a camera is adjusted, the position of the objects in the user's display changes. Thus, if the position of the first base is initially on the right side of the user's display, then, as the camera pans to the right, the position of the first base will begin to move to the left side of the user's display. Typically, a cursor only moves in response to a user's movement of a mouse or other device. Thus, as an object in the display moves, the cursor stays put. If the user desires to click on the moving object, the user must chase the moving object around the screen with the cursor in order to click on it. This makes the user's task of clicking on the object more difficult. This is also annoying for the user.
Accordingly, what is needed is a system and method for allowing a user to easily place a cursor on a moving object in the display.

Positioning of a cursor associated with a dynamic background


Due to an ever growing shortage of conventional energy sources, there is an increasingly intense interest in harnessing solar energy. The instant invention can contribute to the goal of achieving environmentally clean solar energy to be competitive with conventional energy sources. Method and apparatus are presented for coupling to a transparent sheet with an embedded array of preformed or formable mirrored micro-balls for use in a solar energy concentrator, and functionally similar applications such as optical switches and solar rocket assist. Mirrored micro-balls and particulate formable mirrors in cells are covered with a thin spherical shell of lubricating liquid so that they are free to rotate in an almost frictionless encapsulation in the sheet. Induced polarization electric or magnetic dipoles in the mirrors provide a method of controlling the alignment of the mirrored balls. Electrophoretically and magnetophoretically forming mirrors in situ on a rigid surface in a rotatable cell are also disclosed. Confining the balls and cells in cavities within a single sheet, rather than loosely between two sheets, allows for greater alignment accuracy which is needed for higher concentrations with gains greater than 10×. Immersing balls and cells in a lubricating fluid permits nearly frictionless rotation which reduces the power requirement for rotation, and further enables greater alignment accuracy as the impediment of unnecessary friction need not be overcome.

This improved invention provides a better means to achieve low cost affordable solar energy. It does so by greatly increasing the concentration factor over that which was hitherto possible, and hence further reducing the cost of solar concentrators which increase (concentrate) the density of solar energy incident on a solar energy converter. The utilization of solar energy has been encumbered by the high cost of energy converters such as photovoltaic solar cells. For example, this invention makes it possible to replace an even larger number of expensive solar cells with a small number of solar cells operating in conjunction with the inexpensive intelligent micro-optics of this invention. Thus the instant invention can contribute to the goal of achieving environmentally clean energy on a large enough scale to be competitive with conventional energy sources.
A limiting factor in U.S. Pat. No. 6,612,705, of which the inventor of this instant invention is a co-inventor, is that it is dificult to achieve a concentration greater than 10× because the mirrored balls are not closely enough confined between two sheets, permitting some lateral motion between the two sheets of that Patent. In that issued Patent, the balls have too large a translational degree of freedom, which problem is solved by the instant invention. The instant invention overcomes this problem by much more closely confining each mirrored ball in an individual cavity within a single sheet. Another problem of the issued U.S. Pat. No. 6,612,705, is that of having higher friction than can be readily tolerated, which also limits the exacting alignment required by the mirrored balls for concentrations much greater than 10×. The instant invention also overcomes the friction problem.
The 1978 Gyricon U.S. Pat. No. 4,126,854 of Sheridon, entitled "Twisting Ball Panel Display" is exclusively concerned with Displays. There is no mention of any other application than Displays, either specifically or by general statement. In this and other Sheridon patents, no mention is made of a mirror in the gyricon balls, nor is there any mention of specular reflection as would be obtained from a mirror. On the contrary, diffuse reflection needs to be increased from the balls so the Gyricon display may easily be observed from all angles. Certainly there is no anticipation of a solar concentrator application, solar propulsion assist, optical switching or any other micro-mirror application. Furthermore, a uniform monolayer(s) of micro-mirrored balls are preferred in these applications, whereas the Sheridon patent and related patents only teach a random dispersion of non-mirrored Gyricon balls.
The instant invention is primarily concerned with solar concentrator micro-mirrors in cavities in a single sheet, rather than two sheets, for more accurate alignment and for nearly frictionless rotation. However, it has broader applications wherever focusing planar mirrors are used for applications such as for solar propulsion assist and optical switching. In the instant invention the micro-mirrors can be either pre-formed (pre-existing), or formable in-situ.
Definitions
"Concentrator" as used herein in general is a micro-mirror system for focusing and reflecting light. In a solar energy context, it is that part of a Solar Collector system that directs and concentrates solar radiation onto a solar Receiver.
"Dielectric" refers to an insulating material in which an electric field can be sustained with a minimum power dissipation.
"Elastomer" is a material such as synthetic rubber or plastic, which at ordinary temperatures can be stretched substantially under low stress, and upon immediate release of the stress, will return with force to approximately its original length. Silicone elastomers have exceptional ability to withstand ultraviolet light degradation.
"Electret" refers to a solid dielectric possessing persistent electric polarization, by virtue of a long time constant for decay of charge separation.
"Focusing planar mirror" is a thin almost planar mirror constructed with stepped varying angles so as to have the optical properties of a much thicker concave (or convex) mirror. It can heuristically be thought of somewhat as the projection of thin equi-angular segments of small portions of a thick mirror upon a planar surface. It is a focusing planar reflecting surface much like a planar Fresnel lens is a focusing transmitting surface. If a shiny metal coating is placed on a Fresnel lens it can act as a Fresnel reflector.
"ITO" is a thin conducting alloy of Indium/Tin Oxide that is transparent.
"Packing fraction" herein refers to the fraction of an available area occupied by the collection (ensemble) of rotatable elements.
"Plasticizer" as used herein refers specifically to a dielectric plasticizer fluid that is absorbed by an elastomer thereby causing it to swell thus creating a spherical shell around each of the micro-mirror balls which do not substantially absorb the plasticizer. More commonly plastizers are added to a material to make it softer, more flexible, or more moldable.
"Receiver" as used herein in general is a system for receiving reflected light. In a solar energy context, it receives concentrated solar radiation from the micro-mirror assembly for the conversion of solar energy into more conveniently usable energy such as electricity.
"Silicone" as used herein refers to a heat-stable, rubber-like elastomer that is a water repellent, semiorganic polymer of organic radicals attached to silicon containing molecules, such as dimethyl silicone. Silicone elastomers are an excellent material within which to embed the mirrored balls or cylinders, because of their durability with respect to ultraviolet light, among other reasons.
"Thermoplastic" refers to materials with a molecular structure that will soften when heated and harden when cooled. This includes materials such as vinyls, nylons, elastomers, fuorocarbons, polyethylenes, styrene, acrylics, cellulosics, etc.
"Van der Waals force" as used herein refers to an attrative force between atoms or molecules. It can arise because a fluctuating dipole moment in one molecule induces a dipole moment in the other. The two dipole moments then attract.
"Zeta potential," is the net surface and volume charge that lies within the shear slipping surface resulting from the motion of a body through a liquid. It is an electrical potential that exists across the interface of all solids and liquids. It is also known as the electrokinetic potential. The zeta potential produces an electric dipole moment (field) of a spherical body when it is made from two dielectrically different hemispheres due to the interaction of the sphere with the fluid that it is immersed in.


A system and a method for displaying and analyzing a business process based on the document flow of that business process. The graphical user interface may graphically display a set of documents relevant to a business process and the linkages between the set of documents as a document chain on a computer display to facilitate analysis of a business process. The linkages may represent change processes or binary relationships. A subset of documents may be filtered from the group of documents. The filtering may be performed based on a type of linkage. The subset of documents may be all successors of a starting document, all predecessors of the starting document, all successors of a root document of the starting document, or all successors and predecessors of the starting document. The graphical user interface may further graphically display items within documents and the linkages between the items. The graphical user interface may further display details about the selected document.

Business processes that last over a period of several years, and evolve over that period, lead to a lot of documents. These documents may evolve by changes to the original agreement, execution of options, and the like. Each of these evolutions lead to a new document. That new document is linked to the preceding document. By analyzing the flow of such documents, one can get a sense of the progress of the overall business process. However many of these business transactions are highly complex with too many documents to process in an efficient manner.


A lens driving device includes a lens, a moving member that supports the lens, a stationary member that movably supports the moving member, a pitch drive mechanism that drives the moving member in the pitch correction direction, and a yaw drive mechanism that drives in the yaw correction direction. The pitch drive mechanism has first and second magnets provided to the stationary member, and first and second coils provided to the moving member. The yaw drive mechanism has a third magnet provided to the stationary member, and a third coil provided to the moving member. The first and second coils are arranged on opposite sides of the lens when viewed in a third direction that is perpendicular to the pitch and yaw correction directions, and the third coil is arranged on the same side as the first coil with respect to the lens when viewed in the third direction.

1. Technical Field
The technical field relates to an optical element driving device for driving an optical element of an imaging apparatus, and to an imaging apparatus in which this device is used.
2. Description of the Related Art
Recent years have witnessed the practical application of products such as digital imaging apparatus, typified by digital still cameras and digital video cameras, which are equipped with image blur correction mechanisms that correct image blur caused by hand shake in the pitch and yaw directions of the apparatus during image capture. With most image blur correction mechanisms, image blur is corrected by using a lens driving device (an example of an optical element driving device) to drive part of the imaging optical system in two directions, namely, a pitch correction direction and a yaw correction direction that are perpendicular to the optical axis.
Furthermore, lens driving devices for correcting image blur are increasingly being installed in imaging apparatus that make use of a bending optical system including prisms, mirrors, and so forth.
An advantage of an imaging apparatus equipped with a bending optical system is that the camera main body can be thinner. Accordingly, the lens driving device for correcting image blur also needs to be thinner in the thickness direction of the camera main body, which is accomplished, for example, by disposing the linear actuator or other drive unit on one or both sides with respect to the lens. For instance, imaging apparatus are known in the past in which the drive unit is provided on one or both sides of the lens and the camera main body is made thinner in its thickness direction, as disclosed in Japanese Laid-Open Patent Applications 2006-243704, 2007-17957, and 2000-194027.
With the lens driving device disclosed in Japanese Laid-Open Patent Application 2006-243704, two drive units for driving in the pitch and yaw correction directions are provided on one side in the yaw correction direction of a circular lens (an optical element), and disposed to be spaced apart vertically. The elliptical coil and magnets that constitute the drive units are disposed above and below on one side of the lens. The coils are disposed such that they are wound around an axis perpendicular to the optical axis.
With the lens driving device disclosed in Japanese Laid-Open Patent Application 2007-17957, the correcting lens is roughly elliptical in shape, obtained by cutting off two circular sides in parallel. The major axis direction of this lens is termed the yaw correction direction, and two drive units for driving in the pitch and yaw correction directions are disposed on one side in the yaw correction direction, and aligned vertically. The coils are disposed such that they are wound around an axis parallel to the optical axis.
With the lens driving device disclosed in Japanese Laid-Open Patent Application 2000-194027, a pair of drive units for driving in the pitch correction direction and a pair of drive units for driving in the yaw correction direction are disposed on both sides in the lengthwise and lateral directions of a circular lens to surround the lens on four sides.
With these three patent documents, a guide unit having a guide shaft is used to guide in the pitch correction direction and the yaw correction direction, and the lens is guided linearly by a bi-directional guide shaft.
With the lens driving devices discussed in Japanese Laid-Open Patent Applications 2006-243704 and 2007-17957, first and second direction drive mechanisms are disposed on one side of the lens, so no drive mechanism needs to be disposed in the thickness direction, which allows the camera main body to be thinner. However, since drive force is imparted to one side of the lens that is driven, the drive center of the drive mechanisms ends up being separated from the movable center of gravity of the portion that moves. Therefore, rotational moment is generated in the moving portion, the drive direction is at an angle to the movement direction with the guide shaft that linearly guides the lens, and a jerky motion tends to result from an increase in sliding resistance. Consequently, the lens driving devices discussed in Patent Documents 1 and 2 tend not to drive the lens accurately.
With the lens driving device discussed in Japanese Laid-Open Patent Application 2000-194027, the lens can be driven relatively accurately because both sides of the lens are driven uniformly. However, since pairs of drive units of the lens driving device are disposed to surround the lens on four sides, the size of the lens driving device increases in the thickness direction of the camera main body, so it is more difficult to reduce the thickness of the camera main body.

Optical element driving device and imaging apparatus