A Call Server in a network is able to monitor an offered rate of incoming calls per Access Gateway (AGW). A calculated GlobalLeakRate can be distributed between the AGWs in proportion to the traffic rate they offer. A leak rate calculation method is used to calculate the GlobalLeakRate control parameter of the ETSI NR restrictor at an overloaded Control Server The leak rate calculation is based on the POTS call rejection rate. In one particular embodiment of the present invention, the calculation is based on bringing the call reject rate close to a configurable low target reject level. An MGC is able to identify the end of an overload event with a greater degree of confidence and an AGW is able respond appropriately if the AGW is prematurely instructed to stop the control.

The present invention relates to Access Media Gateways (AGWs). More particularly, and not by way of limitation, the present invention is directed to a system and method for overload control between AGWs and the associated Media Gateway Controllers (MGC) in Next Generation Networks (NGNs).
Abbreviations and Definitions
a. AACC Adaptive Automatic Congestion Control
b. AGW Access Media Gateway
c. CS Call Server
d. GOS Grade of Service
e. ISUP ISDN User Part
f. MSAN Mufti Service Access Node (equivalent to and interchangeable with AGW)
g. MGC Media Gateway Controller (equivalent to and interchangeable with CS)
h. NGN Next Generation Network
i. POTS Plain Old Telephone Service
FIG. 1a is a high-level block diagram of a Next Generation Network (NGN). The NGN typically contains multiple domains which are controlled by a single Call Server (CS) (also known as a Media Gateway Controller (MGC)). Call Servers are connected to each other and to call control nodes in peer networks. Call related signaling messages are exchanged and the Call Servers control gateway nodes. The gateway nodes served by these Call Servers provide bearer (transport) functionality for media streams corresponding to calls going on between subscribers.
For the successful establishment of an end to end call, several nodes in the access and the core network have to have enough spare processing resources to serve the call attempt. Numerous scenarios could be envisaged, such as televoting or disaster events, where certain nodes become the bottleneck in the network and therefore need to reject call requests in order to preserve their integrity and stable state. By increasing the load on a target node above its engineered capacity its throughput degrades significantly, moreover an extremely high offered load may cause the target node to restart. Hence signaling protocols have to be armed with load control functions, which ensure that the source node decreases its admission rate by rejecting calls in order to relieve the heavy load on the congested target node.
Each Access Media Gateway (AGW) provides connection to the network for thousands of subscribers. Currently, simulations of a proposed European Telecommunications Standards institute Notification Rate (ETSI_NR) control have shown that control in the NGN can be dependent on a choice of algorithm used by a control adaptor and setting of control parameters. It has been shown that Inappropriate choices can lead to premature termination of control during times of overload. Overloads can be caused by a moderate increase across all the associated AGWs at the same time or by an increase on a smaller subset of the AGWs. Normally, an AGW initiates new calls by sending off-hook notification events to a Call Server (equivalent to a Media Gateway Controller and will be interchangeable with MGC hereinafter.
FIG. 1 b illustrates a high level block diagram of an overload control mechanism between an MGC and AGW. The ETSI draft mentioned above (ETSi_NR) describes an overload control mechanism between the MGCs and the AGWs to protect the MGCs from becoming overloaded during the previously described mass call events. FIG. 1 b illustrates a high-level functional block diagram according to ETSi_NR. ETSi_NR proposes that leaky bucket restrictors be applied at the AGWs to throttle originating POTS call attempts towards the MGCs, A so-called LoadLevel supervision function is implemented in the MGC which periodically measures its load state. If the LoadLevel reaches a critical value, the MGC Initiates the originating call restriction mechanism at the AGWs. During periods of overload, the MGC periodically calculates a GlobalLeakRate based on the current LoadLevel. This GlobalLeakRate is then distributed among the AGWs based on their associated Wj weights. The weight set is fixed and preconfigured in the MGC. This new teak rate value (notrat), calculated for each AGW using its preconfigured Wj weight, is sent to the gateway in a subsequent H.248 MODIFY command from that MGC. Notrat (Notification Rate) provides the rate of off-hook notifications from terminations in the NULL context that can be sent to the MGC by a given AGW. The AGW then sets the leak rate of its leaky bucket to the notrat rate received from the MGC end will use this leak rate to regulate the off-hook notifications. The initial value of the GlobalLeakRate, which is used when the overload is detected at the MGC, is a configuration parameter in the MGC called InitGlobalLeakRate. The value is set to a sufficiently low value to immediately relieve congestion at the MGC, and the calculated GlobalLeakRate is expected to adapt upwards gradually to ensure high utilization of the Media Gateway Controller.
The mechanism described in the current ETSI draft may not provide appropriate protection of the Media Gateway Controllers in all cases. It is foreseen that—if the draft is implemented as currently specified—certain distributions of originating call attempts among the Access Media Gateways can fool the adaptation algorithm and temporarily render the overload control ineffective.
Four main areas can be identified where the currently proposed control scheme has shortcomings:                Failure to tackle focused overload from a group of nodes;        Slow convergence of the control mechanism;        No interoperability with overload control solutions protecting the Media Gateway Controller from other interfaces; and
Termination of control.
If a small group of AGWs (m) are responsible for an overload, then the m group of AGWs offer calls to the associated MGC at a rate determined by restrictors which are styled as "leaky bucket" restrictors (the teak rate of the restrictors are a weighted portion of the MGCs GlobalLeakRate). If the small group of AGWs are the only AGWs offering calls to the MGC while the remaining AGWs (n) offer no calls to the MGC and assuming that all AGWs are equally weighted (i.e., AGW weight, Wj=1/(m+nJ| then if the situation persists Song enough the MGC GlobalLeakRate (G), may settle to G=(C/m)*(m+n), where C is the capacity of the MGC. Depending on the ratio of m and n, this can be many times more than the actual capacity of the MGC. Also each AGW regardless if it is offering calls to the MGC receives a leak rate of G*Wj=C/m.
If traffic demand subsequently increases on the non-loaded group of AGWs (n), then the rate of calls offered to the MGC by this group of AGWs will be limited to the rate determined by their leaky buckets and the MGC will become overloaded since the earlier active group m, together with the newly activated group n of the AGWs offer more traffic ((C/m)*(m+n)) than its engineered capacity of C. This state potentially renders the control ineffective for a period of time until a Control Adaptor adjusts the GlobalLeakRate appropriately.
FIG. 2 is a high-level block diagram Illustrating overloads of an MGC causing ineffective control at an MGC. If the load offered to an MGC is not distributed evenly, but e.g., group 208 of AGW1 and AGW2 are responsible for an overload, the GlobalLeakRate value will be increased by the Control Adaptor (see FIG. 2) far above the real call processing capacity of the MGC. In this scenario this pair of AGWs, group 206, causing the overload will admit calls at a rate determined by their leaky bucket, while other AGWs belonging to group 208 offer calls far below the leak rate they have received from the MGC. (Their leaky buckets do not restrict). If the traffic demand suddenly increases in the area served by group 208 of AGWs, then the nodes in group 208 start to offer calls at the rate determined by their leaky buckets and the MGC will get into overload causing the control to be ineffective for a considerable amount of time. For instance, the Media Gateway Controller can have four MSANs (AGWs) connected to it. Each MSAN has an equal weighting as each of them terminates the same number of subscriber lines. When group 206 of nodes want to offer higher calling rates than the capacity of the MGC, the MGC will detect overload, set the GlobalLeakRate to the InitGlobalLeakRate, and send ¼ of this GlobalLeakRate value to each of the four MSANs.
The MGC starts to gradually increase the GlobalLeakRate value in order to increase the MGC utilization, and continues this process of increasing the GlobalLeakRate until the total incoming rate from the MSANs reaches C, the processing capacity of the Media Gateway Controller. Since it is assumed that only 2 of the four MSANs are responsible for the overload, the increase of the GlobalLeakRate continues until it reaches 2C. At this point, the MGC sends LeakRate2*C/4=C/2 leak rate values to the MSANs, so the 2 MSANs (AGWs) in group 206 offer enough calls to saturate the Media Gateway Controller. If group 208 of nodes starts to offer traffic then they are also allowed to send C/2 each, therefore the total incoming rate will be 2 times C resulting in two times overload. This case is clearly different than when the overload initially occurs at the initiation of control, because initially the GlobalLeakRate value is initialized to a suitably low value, while in this case the overload will persist for a considerable amount of time until a downward adaptation of the GlobalLeakRate occurs.
Another concern is whether the control can adapt fast enough to be able to follow the changes in the offered rate with reasonable speed. In case of a serious focused overload the global leak rate has to be increased to an extremely high level, e.g. if 10% of the AGWs generate the overload and the CS capacity is 1000 cail/s then the global leak rate shall rise to 10000, and even with a quite large adaptation step (e.g. 10 call/s^2) it can take 1000 seconds to adapt to full utilisation of the MGC, which is about 16 minutes!
The above illustration might be an extreme example but minutes long adaptation times are still not impossible. This questions the adaptation ability of the whole ETSI-NR algorithm—in fact, what happens here is that the constant provisioned weighting system has a multiplicative effect that can slow down the adaptation in case of a focused overload. The Call Server will unnecessarily reject many calls for a long time period in case of a step overload which means a huge loss of revenue, especially in scenarios when the step overload is caused by e.g. tele-voting, typically with a premium call rate. On the other band, if we increase the adaptation step then the control will oscillate.
It is assumed that when the Call Server fails to allocate capacity for an originating call request it rejects the attempted request. The main purpose of overload control is to minimize the number of such rejects allowing the CS to maximize its throughput. In NGNs the Call Servers have to serve network initiated and access initiated call requests. Therefore if the CS becomes overloaded its own infernal overload protection mechanism will reject both originating and incoming calls, incoming call requests are initiated using the ISUP protocol from legacy POTS exchanges or enveloped in the SIP-I protocol from Call Servers, but other industry standard call control protocols like SIP or H.323 can also be used. As an example, the ISUP protocol utilizes its own overload control mechanism called Adaptive Automation Congestion Control (AACC). It is desirable to guarantee that in periods of overload, incoming and originating calls to get a configurable ratio of share in the admitted stream, therefore interoperability of overload control solutions (e.g. ETSI_NR and AACC) protecting the same node is crucial. The current ETSI_NR draft provides no solution to solve this interoperability problem. A GlobalLeakRate calculation algorithm is needed, which ensures that the GlobalLeakRate is updated in such a way that the incoming calls from POTS exchanges and other Call Servers cannot squeeze out originating calls from the AGWs and vice versa when contending for the capacity of the CS.
Finally, the existing solution fails to tackle the problem of termination of the control properly. Since the call admission control is not performed on the Call Server (CS), it is not known when calculating the leak rate if the leaky buckets at the MSANs (AGWs) are still restricting traffic, or if the overload event has ceased. ETSI_NR suggests simply using a timer. A 'TerminationPendingTimer' is started when the measured LoadLevel of the Call Server falls below the GoalLoadLevel. If the measured LoadLevel does not go above the GoalLoadLevel during the lifetime of this timer, the control will be switched off upon timer expiry. But a LoadLevel below the GoafLoadLevel does not necessarily mean that overload has ceased, as it is possible that the mechanism is over-restricting, so that the sources do not offer enough calls to the CS for overload to occur. If the control switches off while the leak rate is still adapting upwards and the overload is present, the CS will soon be overloaded again, and the control will be switched back on with InitialGlobalLeakRate which then can easily result in on-off oscillation of the control, and under utilization of the CS. The required value of the GlobalLeakRate (G) will be dependent upon m and n making the G difficult to estimate, although typically it will need to be significantly larger than C. Under these circumstances, the convergence time of the control to the CS (MGCs) GoalLoadLevel maybe prolonged, consequently making setting the value of Termination Pending timer difficult. Inappropriate choices for these parameters can exacerbate this situation even more and potentially lead to premature termination of the control during the overload. For instance, if a TerminationPending timer is set too short and the overload control in the MGC terminates prematurely, the MGC will see a couple of undesired sudden high surge of load (solid curved line). Also, the admitted rate of calls will be lowered many times to the InitGlobalLeakRate and the control will switch on and off again and again. The graph in FIG. 8 illustrates this problem.
In an ideal case, at the start of an overload, the MGC enters the state 'Overloaded' and starts adapting the GlobalLeakRate so as to move closer to the MGCs GoalLoadLevel. If the point is reached whereby the MGCs' LoadLevel has fallen below the GoalLoadLevel (which is highly likely in the focused overload case as the InitGlobalLeakRate will likely result in the control over-restricting), the MGC changes state to TerminationPending', and the MGC invokes the following behavior:
a. if a TerminationPending timer (set when the MGC enters the Termination Pending state) expires, then state in the MGC Is changed to 'NotOverloaded'. Termination of throttling at an AGW is caused by the receipt of a negative Notification Rate (notrat) value; and
b. if a new terminating or outgoing call attempt is received, then the MGC proceeds
with the call as normal. A Distribution Function in the MGC will calculate a current notrat value for that AGW (from the GlobalLeakRate) and send the current notrat value using an H.248 Modify command against the ROOT termination (unless the current notrat has already been sent to that AGW1 in which case the current notrat is not sent). In order to minimize the number of H.248 transactions, the MGC may nest the Modify command within the same H.248 transaction as that used to progress the call. The Distribution Function notes the notrat value sent to that AGW.
c. the Control Adaptor continues to monitor the MGC Load Level, the Off Hook arrival rate and periodically updates the GlobalLeakRate, subject to the following two conditions:
1. the MGC is not exceeding the MaxGlobalLeakRate and
2, If the previous change to the GlobalLeakRate was an increase and the current Off Hook arrival rate is not greater than the previous Off Hook arrival rate, revert to the GlobalLeakRate in force before the previous change.
d. if the Control Adaptor detects that the LoadLevel exceeds the GoalLoadLevel, the MGC will move back to the 'Overloaded' state.
These two restrictions on the growth of the GlobalLeakRate are required in order to prevent the notrat values sent to the restrictors from rising to an extent that would be problematic in the event of a sudden increase in the off-hook rate. It would be advantageous to have a system and method for detecting the end of overload that overcomes the disadvantages of the prior art. The present invention provides such a system and method.

System and method for overload control in a next generation network


In accordance with the invention, an optical switch employs a long-period grating for switching light between alternative optical paths. In essence, the device comprises a variable intensity light source, a length of optical waveguide dimensioned for co-propagating light in two distinguishable modes, and a long-period grating in the waveguide for coupling between the two modes. The waveguide is nonlinear so that the effective refractive index is a function of intensity. As a consequence the coupling produced by the grating is a function of intensity. Thus different levels of light intensity can switch between the separate modes. Advantageously a mode separator is provided for directing light in the two modes onto respectively different optical output paths. A variety of two-mode switches and optical limiters are described, as well as an optical system using the switch.

Optical waveguides are key components in modern telecommunications systems. Optical waveguides are typically in the form of optical fibers or "planar" waveguides. In essence, an optical fiber is a small diameter circular waveguide characterized by a core with a first index of refraction surrounded by a cladding having a second (lower) index of refraction. It is capable of transmitting an optical signal containing a large amount of information over long distances. A planar waveguide is usually a substrate-supported waveguide of rectangular cross section. It also has a core and a cladding. Planar waveguides are typically much shorter than fibers, but can be formed in complex configurations. Typical optical waveguides are made of high purity silica with minor concentrations of dopants to control the index of refraction.
A typical optical system comprises a source of optical input signals, a network of optical waveguides coupled to the source, and one or more receivers coupled to the waveguide for receiving the optical signal. Amplifying devices such as rare-earth doped amplifiers can be disposed at various points in the network. Contemplated WDM telecommunications systems would employ wavelength division multiplexing using many different wavelength channels to convey information between points in the network. Contemplated optical data processing applications would employ similar networks on a much smaller distance scale.
Optical switching devices are key components in optical communications and processing networks. Switches are essential for routing communications or data channels from one point in the network to another.
Conventional optical switching devices are mainly hybrid devices using electro-optical or electromechanical effects. They are typically slow, expensive and lossy. They must be inserted into the system by cutting and splicing with high precision alignment. Accordingly there is a need for a simple, fast, efficient optical switching device.

Long-period grating switches and devices using them


An automatic document handler having a sheet separator-feeder mechanism for separating a sheet from a stack of such sheets and for forward feeding the separated sheet without damage to an image on the sheet. The automatic document handler includes a stacking tray having a surface for supporting a stack of sheets; air knife means positioned opposite the stack of sheets for separating a sheet at an end of the stack of sheets, and a sheet separator-feeder mechanism including a bi-level support plate having vacuum ports. The sheet separator-feeder mechanism is mounted toward the downstream end of the stacking tray relative to a direction of forward sheet movement, and applies a negative air pressure through the vacuum ports in the support plate. The sheet separator-feeder mechanism importantly includes a non-relative motion sheet corrugating device comprising an endless corrugating feed belt that is mounted over the support plate and extends through at least a front end of the sheet stacking tray for acquiring, corrugating and advancing a sheet separated from the stack of sheets. The endless corrugating feed belt has a bottom surface for riding on the support plate, a top surface for contacting a sheet to be corrugated and fed, and a series of vacuum apertures formed therethrough from the bottom to the top surface. The top surface importantly includes a raised corrugating rib integrally incorporated therein for contacting, moving with, and corrugating the sheet separated from the stack of sheets, without relative motion between the corrugating rib and the sheet, thereby preventing damage to any image on a side of the sheet in contact with the endless corrugating belt.

The present invention relates to electrostatographic reproduction machines, and more particularly to an automatic document handler for use therewith that includes a sheet separator-feeder mechanism having a non-relative motion vacuum corrugating device which effectively prevents damage to images on document sheets being separated and fed thereby.
Generally, the process of electrostatographic production or reproduction of an image on a sheet of material is initiated by exposing a light image of an original image document onto a substantially uniformly charged photoreceptive member. The original image document may be manually placed, in registration, at an exposure station for such exposure, or it may be fed automatically by an automatic document handling device, also in registration, to the exposure station. Exposing the light image onto the charged photoreceptive member discharges areas of a photoconductive surface thereof corresponding to non-image areas in the original document, while maintaining the charge in image areas, thereby creating an electrostatic latent image of the image of the original document on the photoreceptive member.
Thereafter, developing material including charged toner particles is deposited onto the photoreceptive member such that the charged toner particles are attracted to the image areas on the photoconductive surface to develop the electrostatic latent image into a visible image. This developed image is then transferred from the photoreceptive member, either directly or after an intermediate transfer step, to an image receiving support substrate, such as a copy sheet of paper, thus creating a toner image on the support substrate corresponding to the original image of the original document. The image receiving support substrate, such as a copy sheet of paper, typically is fed automatically from a supply source, and in timed registration, to an image transfer station for receiving the toner image as such. Subsequently, the transferred image is typically fused and affixed to the image support substrate to form a permanent image thereon. In a final step, the photoconductive surface of the photoreceptive member is cleaned to remove any residual developing material thereon in preparation for successive imaging cycles.
It is known to employ in such an electrostatographic reproduction machine, an automatic document handler or handling apparatus as disclosed for example in U.S. Pat. No. 5,071,110. In such a machine, the automatic document handler automatically transports or feeds document sheets, one at a time, from a stack thereof to a registered position at an exposure station of the machine. With the advent of high speed electrostatographic reproduction machines, such an automatic document handler thereon must handle sets of simplex and duplex original image documents as above, for producing copies thereof at a rate in excess of a hundred simplex copies per minute. Usually, handling document sheets effectively at such speeds requires the use of a vacuum corrugating sheet separating and feeding device as disclosed for example, in U.S. Pat. No. 4,231,562; U.S. Pat. No. 4,305,576; U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,411,417 and 5,071,110.
For example, U.S. Pat. No. 4,305,576 discloses a typical vacuum separating and feeding system wherein a plurality of friction belts is arranged to run over a vacuum plenum placed at the bottom of a sheet supply tray which has a "U" shaped pocket formed in it. The pocket serves to provide space for the bottom sheet to be captured by the vacuum feed belt assembly, to provide an air seal between the bottom sheet and the edges of the pocket and to provide a high pressure seal between the bottom sheet and the remainder of the stack. This high pressure seal is achieved by supporting a major portion of the stack weight on the edge regions of the pocket.
In U.S. Pat. No. 4,411,417, the bottom sheet vacuum corrugation feeder includes a differently designed stack support tray that has a planar base portion defining a base plane, the front of the base portion having an opening within which the bottom sheet separator is positioned. The tray also includes two sloping planar side wings, one at each side of the opening in the base portion. The sloping planar side wings are angled upward from the base plane and are angled outward from front to rear of the tray and intersect the base plane such that the intersection at the rear of the tray is in the approximate location of the rear corners of a rectangle the size of a sheet to be fed.
Typically, such prior art is directed to devices including top or bottom sheet vacuum corrugation feeder trays which are used in combination with vacuum transport devices. Air injection means are provided to inject air between a sheet at end of the stack (top or bottom) and the remainder of a stack. A fixed position raised portion or corrugating member in the center of a vacuum plenum imparts a corrugation, that is, for example, U-shape, to a sheet when the sheet is pulled off the stack by a vacuum.
However, it has been found in some cases that original images on document sheets are damaged by such document sheet handling devices due to relative motion between the pulled off document sheet and the corrugating member, thus ordinarily resulting in poor quality copies.
Since the documents must be handled gently but positively to assure separation without damage through a number of cycles, a number of solutions have been suggested such as a separator-feeder mechanism that has a center belt which runs over the top of a fixed position corrugator or corrugating member. Such an arrangement with a fixed position corrugating member, is partially effective by eliminating relative motion between the belt and the sheet, however, it importantly does not eliminate relative motion between the corrugating member and the sheet. Additionally, such an arrangement has several other disadvantages such as the belt tending to wear relatively more rapidly due to the concentrated drag over the fixed position raised corrugator, and such as the belt tending to "dampen" the affect of the corrugator. In addition, the amplitude and shape of the corrugation on the sheet is limited by the ability of the belt which must track over the corrugator.

Automatic document handler having non-relative motion vacuum corrugating device


This invention relates to a method of transforming plant cells using whiskers on various types of target tissue. And further relates to a method of transforming plant cells using whiskers with an improved agitation method.

Since the early 1980's scientists have been seeking new and better methods for transforming plants of all type. Initially, dicots were more readily transformed and monocots were fairly difficult. However, in the last ten years methods of transforming both types of plants have been achieved. In light of these achievements the choice of method for the transformation of plant cells tends to be limited to those which are convenient for the target plant type. As a generalisation, research in transformation has focused on new techniques which improve the usefulness of the transformation methods. Several transformation methods which have been available for introduction of foreign DNA include: Agrobacterium technology (U.S. Pat. No. to 5,591,616 to Japan Tobacco); electroporation technology (U.S. Pat. No. 5,679,588 to PGS), and microinjection. This last method known as "microinjection" is where a DNA construct is injected from a hollow needle into a target cell. A variant of that procedure is the rupturing of the cell wall with a needle, the DNA being added to the surrounding medium and allowed to diffuse into the cell through the break in the cell wall. This is known as "micropricking". Both of these procedures require a high degree of manipulative skill by the operator and are very time consuming.
The most well known transformation approach may be the biolistic bombardment. In this method microparticles coated with DNA are accelerated and blasted into cells (U.S. Pat. No. 4,945,050 to Cornell and U.S. Pat. No. 5,538,877 to Dekalb). This approach abandons the high precision of targeting which is inherent in microinjection and micropricking, in favour of a rapid "shotgun" approach which blasts large numbers of cells in a short time, giving a larger number of putative transformants for screening.
In such an approach, tungsten or gold microspheres, coated with DNA are fired at target tissue at very high velocity, for example under propulsion of an explosive charge. One problem with this technique is the effect of the blast on the target tissue.
The most closely related technology to the present invention is another transformation method that involves the use "whiskers" to transform (U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,302,523 and 5,463,765 to Zeneca and PCT/US99/01815 to Dow Agrosciences LLC). In this approach there was provided a method of transforming cells comprising contacting the cells with a multiplicity of needle-like bodies so that the cells are impaled upon the bodies, transforming DNA being either surface-bound to the projections or present in a liquid medium in contact therewith.
In one embodiment a quantity of the needle-like bodies was added to a liquid suspension of the cells to be transformed and the mixture agitated, for example by stirring, so that the moving cells and bodies interact resulting in penetration of the cell wall of the cells.
However, this whisker method lacked efficiency. Even when the first applications were filed it was realized that efficiency could come from all different aspects of whiskering.
At that time the Zeneca application stated was stated that, It has been found that the efficiency of DNA delivery varies according to the conditions; it is affected by several factors including the following: vortex time; cell suspension type (variation also found by H. F. Kaeppler et al, 1990, Plant Cell Reports, 9, 415-418); cell suspension age; osmolarity of culture medium; type of fibres; number of fibres present; type of DNA construct; concentration of DNA. Other factors which may affect DNA delivery include: the physical mixing methods used; the size, shape and uniformity of the fibres; the topology of the DNA (eg. linear, supercoiled); the presence of "carrier" DNA alongside the transforming DNA.
What was not discovered or suggested was that a change in the agatition step would substantially reduce, by a third at least, the time and effort needed to complete whisker mediated transformation of cells.
Another method used through out PCT/US 99/01815 to Dow Agrosciences LLC comprised mixing the DNA and fibre suspension, then adding this mixture to the target tissue. The final mixture was vortexed together. The cells were then incubated, and tested for expression of recombinant DNA and regenerated into transgenic plants.
Throughout the application underlying PCT/US 99/01815 the examples are attempting to optimize the production of small quantities of transformants using the Whisker transformation process through, for example, use of osmotic treatments, testing vessels and varying agitation (vortexing) time (see Table 9 in PCT/US 99/01815). In table nine the effect of vortexing time on the transformation of rice showed that 15 seconds of vortexing resulted in twice as much Gus expression as did 120 seconds of vortexing. The expression of the transformed gene in the small microfuge tubes decreased with each increase in vortexing time. Thus increased agitation by vortexing led to less positive transformation results. Therefore altering the type of agitation from vortexing to a more robust, or violent agitation method seemed an unlikely way of increasing production of transformants.
Thus there remained a need for a new technique within a whisker method that permits large amounts of target tissue to be transformed more effectively.
Additionally, there remains a need for an improvement in the whisker method that allows previously incompetent tissue (or tissue with very low transformant yield) to be more effectively transformed with whiskers.
Furthermore, there remained a need for a method that more effectively accesses whiskers and DNA to most of the surface area of the target tissue thus whereby tissues are more effectively transformed.
Additionally, there was a need for an improved whisker method that could be used with all of the target tissues that the regular method could be employed with such as type I, type II, type III callus or explants or scutella or zygotic embryos, protoplasts, hypcotyl or cotyledon derived callus, stomato cells, germline tissue, cell suspensions cultures and elite germplasm.
Although the whisker technology has undergone numerous technical achievements, including use of different types of target tissues like Type I and type two II callus or either elite or non-elite germplasm, forming commercially viable transgenic plants with the whisker method is still a laborious task. The method does not produce as many transformants per experiment as would be desirable when compared to using the gun technique. Whiskers low efficiency rate results in difficulties and added costs.
There remains a need for a modified method that will yield larger quantities of putative transformants than presently exists.
There also remains a need for an efficient whiskering method for transforming elite Zea mays germplasm.
There also remains a need for a more time efficient whisker method for transforming target tissue from wheat, barley, rye, soybeans, Brassica species, and grasses including perennial ryegrass, bentgrass and the like.
Additionally, there remains a need for a whisker method that may be employed to transform stomato cells or "guard cells" which are regenerable without the step of forming a protoplast.


A surface treatment system is disclosed to form a deposition layer at a surface of an object of surface treatment by using a deposition reaction in which an electrode (110) for applying power to form a deposition reaction in the deposition chamber (100) is installed between an inner wall (120) of the deposition chamber (100) and an object of surface treatment (900) and further includes a cooling unit (200) installed at the inner wall (120) of the deposition chamber (100) facing the electrode (110) and cooling ambient thereof.

In general, a surface treatment is to make a surface of a product made of a material such as a metal look good, or to improve the surface to achieve heat resistance, corrosion resistance, abrasion resistance, etc. so that the function of the product can be improved according to the condition of usage of the product. That is, the surface treatment conceals inner defects, etc. by properly treating a surface of the metal.
The surface treatment includes plating on a surface of accessory, chromium plating on brass, or a tinplating for an iron sheet, etc.
The surface treatment methods include alumite for protecting the inside of an object by surface treatment by providing an oxide layer, an anticorrosive paint coating, a chemical vapor deposition (CVD) reaction, or a physical vapor deposition (PVD) reaction.
A heat exchanger used in an air conditioner, a refrigerator, a heating apparatus, etc. is a device for transferring heat from a fluid of high temperature to a fluid of low temperature through a heat transfer wall. At this time, the flow of the fluid becomes different according to a characteristic of a surface of the heat transfer wall, and the characteristics of the surface of the heat transfer wall greatly influence the heat exchange efficiency of the heat exchanger.
Accordingly, a radiator surface of a heat exchanger is required to have a surface treatment with various characteristics according to the performance of the heat exchanger. To this end, fins of the heat exchanger are fabricated by processing a sheet having a treated surface to improve hydrophilicity, hydrophobicity, or corrosion resistance.
Also, the sheet for processing the fins of the exchanger has a surface treatment that forms a deposition layer at the surface of the sheet by using a chemical vapor deposition reaction or a physical vapor deposition reaction.
In the meantime, for the surface treatment, a reaction gas is injected in a deposition chamber and then power is applied thereto for producing a deposition reaction. A method for applying power includes a method for applying power to the object of surface treatment for the deposition reaction.
In the conventional surface treatment method represented in PCT Publication No. WO9927157, power is directly applied to the object to be surface treated, in a polymerization chamber injected by reaction gas to cause a plasma polymerization reaction, thereby forming a deposition layer at a surface of the object of surface treatment.
The deposition layer formed at the surface of the surface-processed product differs depending on chemical compositions, but the deposition layer forming process also has a great influence on the quality of the deposition layer formed at the surface of the product. The quality differs depending on the composition of gas for the deposition reaction, configuration of the deposition chamber or the like.
Consequently, a surface treatment system is needed to form a satisfactory deposition layer on the surface of an object to be surface treated.
In addition, a surface treatment system is needed to effectively process the surface of a product in line with mass surface processing.


An electronic circuit element has two capacitance values selected by means of a main control signal. The electronic circuit element comprises two variable-capacitance electronic components connected in parallel and each receiving opposite intermediate control signals, derived from the main control signal. The two variable-capacitance components are differentiated by a configuration parameter. The electronic circuit element exhibits a variation in capacitance corresponding to a difference between respective variations in capacitance of the two variable-capacitance electronic components during an inversion of the main control signal. The variation in capacitance of the electronic circuit element may be less than 5 attoFarads.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a variable-capacitance circuit element and device, which may be used in particular in an oscillator with frequency controlled by a voltage.
2. Description of the Related Art
Certain applications of electronic circuits require a variable-capacitance capacitor. It is known to produce such a capacitor in the form of a circuit element consisting of two varactors connected in series. FIGS. 1a and 1b represent the production of such a variable-capacitance circuit element. The two varactors are produced in MOS technology (standing for "Metal-Oxide-Semiconductor"). An N− doping well, referenced 202, is formed in a P type semiconductor substrate, referenced 200. The well 202 is surrounded by an electric insulation barrier 201, for example of the STI type (standing for "Shallow Trench Isolator"). A central zone 203 and two lateral zones 204a and 204b, situated in the well 202, have a strengthened doping of N type, denoted N+. A first MOS gate, referenced 205a, is formed on the surface S of the substrate 200 between the zones 203 and 204a, and a second MOS gate, referenced 205b, is formed on the surface S between the zones 203 and 204b. The gates 205a and 205b are electrically insulated from the well 202 by insulating layers 206a and 206b, respectively. Each of the two varactors, referenced 10a and 10b, therefore corresponds to a modified structure of MOS transistor, in which the channel zone on the one hand, and the source and drain zones on the other hand, have dopings of the same type but of different concentrations of doping species. The two varactors 10a and 10b are connected in series by the common zone 203. Preferably, they are identical. Together they constitute the variable-capacitance circuit element 1.
The zones 203, 204a and 204b are connected electrically by respective connections 13, 14a and 14b which are linked together. These connections form an intermediate link for arranging the varactors 10a and 10b in series (see FIG. 1b). The two gates 205a and 205b are connected electrically by respective connections 12a and 12b and form the two outputs of the circuit element 1.
A bias terminal 11 links moreover an additional N+ doped zone, situated in the well 202. This terminal constitutes the input of the circuit element 1. The capacitance of the circuit element 1, measured between the outputs 12a and 12b, varies as a function of an electrical control voltage C1 applied to the input 11.
Such a circuit element makes it possible to obtain minimal variations in capacitance which are of the order of 30 aF (aF standing for attoFarad, 1 aF=10−18 F), for present-day MOS technologies. Now, these minimal variations are too big for certain applications. In particular, an oscillator with frequency controlled by a voltage, or VCO standing for "Voltage Controlled Oscillator", which is suitable for use with an inductance of 1 nH (nanoHenry) approximately in a radio transmitter, requires a frequency spacing of the order of 100 Hz (hertz) to 1 kHz (kilohertz). Such a frequency spacing corresponds roughly to a capacitance spacing of the order of 1 to 10 aF.


A detection device that is activated by the interaction of a hazardous chcal with a coating interactive with said chemical on an optical fiber thereby reducing the amount of light passing through the fiber to a light detector. A combination of optical filters separates the light into a signal beam and a reference beam which after detection, appropriate amplification, and comparison with preset internal signals, activates an alarm means if a predetermined level of contaminant is observed.

This invention relates to a device that can be worn or carried by an individual, and is capable of detecting air-borne hazardous chemicals such as hydrazine, at extremely low concentrations.
Hydrazine is a colorless, fuming hygroscopic liquid that is miscible with alcohol and water. A strong reducing agent, it is highly toxic by ingestion, inhalation and skin absorption and is a strong irritant to skin and eyes. In addition to being a carcinogen, it poses a severe explosion hazard when exposed to heat or flame or by reaction with oxidizing materials. For these reasons its recommended tolerance in air is on the order of 100 parts per billion (ppb).
Hydrazine has a multitude of uses, most notably in rocket fuels, agricultural chemicals, drugs, metal and glass plating, fuel cells, solder flux, explosives, photographic developers and as a corrosion inhibitor in water-cooled nuclear power plants. Because of this wide range of product uses and its deadly nature, it is of paramount importance to carefully monitor for the presence of hydrazine in those places where hydrazine may be present in the air due to leakage, spillage, or other means.

Detection device for hazardous materials

The United States of America as represented by the Department of Energy


In one embodiment of the original feeding device of the present invention, an original feeding device causes a drawing roller to contact an original, and draws the original for forwarding by rotating the drawing roller, and is provided with an original pressing member that generates frictional force on the original surface at a position on the side further upstream in a forwarding direction of the original than the drawing roller.

This application claims priority under 35 U.S.C. §119(a) on Patent Application No. 2005-274221 filed in Japan on Sep. 21, 2005, the entire contents of which are hereby incorporated by reference.
The present invention relates to original feeding devices that are provided in copying machines, fax machines or the like that perform capturing to copy or transmit an original, and draw an original out of an original tray to forward the same.
In devices of this type, when an original P is placed on an original tray 101 as illustrated in FIGS. 16 and 17, a drawing roller 102 is caused to contact the proximity of the leading edge of the original P, and is rotated so as to draw the original P for forwarding the same. The original P is transported to PS rollers 104 via separating rollers 103 for separating originals one by one, and is transported through the PS rollers 104 to a scanner (not shown). The scanner captures an image of the original.
As illustrated by the dashed line in FIG. 17, when the original P drawn by the drawing roller 102 is transported at a slant to the scanner and captured, the image of the original P is captured at a slant. Therefore, the leading edge of the original P is abutted against the PS rollers 104 for alignment, before being transported to the scanner.
However, in a case where the original P is slanted significantly when the original P is drawn by the drawing roller 102, it becomes impossible to align the leading edge of the original P parallel to the PS rollers 104 merely by abutting the original P against the PS rollers 104.
Even if the leading edge of the original P could be aligned parallel to the PS rollers 104 by being abutted against the PS rollers 104, the direction of the original P has been changed and a center line p1 of the original P is displaced from a capturing center s1 of the original by the scanner, as shown in FIG. 18. Even a slight amount of such displacement makes it impossible for the scanner to capture the edge portions of the original. Therefore, an original with no margin at the edges cannot be captured accurately.
For this reason, a pair of guide plates 105 for guiding the original are provided in the original tray 101 so as to prevent slanted transport of the original. In addition, each guide plate 105 is arranged in a manner that the pair of guide 105 plates can be shifted symmetrically with respect to the capturing center of the original. The distance between the guide plates 105 is adjusted according to the width of the original so as to guide originals with various widths with the guide plates 105 without displacing the capturing center of the original.
JP H11-79435A (hereinafter referred to as "Patent Document 1") discloses technology in which a pair of ancillary rollers are provided at both ends of the drawing roller (referred to as the "forwarding roller" in the Patent Document 1) on the side further upstream in the original forwarding direction than the drawing roller, and causes the ancillary rollers to press the original together with the drawing roller in order to prevent slanted transport of the original.
JP H8-282880A (hereinafter referred to as "Patent Document 2") discloses technology in which a pressure roller is arranged on the side further upstream in the original forwarding direction than the drawing roller (referred to as the "transport roller" in the Patent Document 2), and causes the pressure roller to press the original together with the drawing roller in order to prevent slanted transport of the original.
However, even if a pair of guide plates 105 are provided as illustrated in FIG. 17, in a case where the widths of a plurality of sheets of originals placed between the guide plates 105 are different from one another, only the original with the greatest width is guided by the guide plates 105, and other originals with smaller widths are not guided by the guide plates 105. Consequently, the originals with smaller widths are transported at a slant.
Generally, originals of the same size are transported for capturing, and therefore, all originals are appropriately guided by the guide plates 105. However, a use condition is also possible in which a plurality of originals with different widths are captured in a mixed state. In such a case, even if these originals are placed on the original tray, not all the originals are guided by the guide plates 105, and the originals with smaller widths are transported at a slant, resulting in defective capturing.
In addition, when ancillary rollers are provided as in Patent Document 1 and Patent Document 2, the mechanism itself becomes complicated, often inviting an increase in size, and also the mechanism for interlocking ancillary rollers with the drawing roller increases in size.
Furthermore, in the method of pressing the ancillary rollers against the original as described in Patent Document 1, a plurality of locations on the original are pressed by the drawing roller and the ancillary rollers to prevent slanted transport of the original. However, even if the original is pressed by the rollers, the direction of the original easily changes during rotation of the rollers. As a result, sufficient braking force for resisting the rotation moment of the original cannot be generated, and therefore substantial effects cannot be expected. Increasing the pressure of the ancillary rollers against the original to improve the braking force makes transport of the original itself difficult. Adjustment of the pressure of the ancillary rollers is difficult even with these measures. Consequently, adequate effects cannot be achieved.
As described above, with the conventional technology, it has been impossible to concurrently achieve both generating sufficient braking force that resists the rotation moment of the original and smooth transport of the original.


Some aspects provide determination of mutual capacitances among a plurality of floating nets and a plurality of non-floating nets, determination of a self-capacitance of each of the plurality of non-floating nets based on the mutual capacitances, and, for each of the plurality of non-floating nets, association of a ground capacitance with a non-floating net that is substantially equal to a determined self-capacitance of the non-floating net. Aspects may further provide performance of a timing study of a capacitor network including the plurality of non-floating nets using the ground capacitance determined for each of the plurality of non-floating nets.

An electronic system typically employs conductive traces, or nets, to carry electrical signals between the elements thereof. For example, an integrated circuit die includes nets to carry signals between its integrated electronic devices, and an integrated circuit package substrate includes nets to carry signals between an integrated circuit die and other components coupled to a motherboard. A motherboard, in turn, includes nets for carrying electrical signals between the components coupled thereto.
Nets which terminate at a component, a power supply or ground are commonly known as non-floating nets. In contrast, floating nets comprise conductive traces or other conductive structures that are not thusly coupled. Floating nets may comprise metal fill deposited in and/or on a substrate in order to provide desired mechanical properties (e.g., integrity, layer planarity, stiffness, strength, etc.). Floating nets may also comprise other uncoupled conductors or artifacts of a manufacturing process.
Floating and non-floating nets of an electronic system are typically taken into account during simulations or other studies of the system. For example, a system designer may consider the effects of mutual capacitances among floating and non-floating nets when analyzing the performance of an electronic system. According to some system analysis techniques, the above-described mutual capacitances as well as the ground capacitance of each net are used to generate a network of capacitors. The capacitor network is then converted to a "reduced" capacitor network that does not include mutual or ground capacitances associated with floating nets. The reduced capacitor network may be used to conduct various studies, including but not limited to timing studies.
According to one technique for reducing such a capacitor network, a capacitance matrix is determined that associates each non-floating net with each other non-floating net. The capacitance matrix takes into account mutual capacitances between each floating net and each non-floating net, as well as mutual capacitances between each floating net and each other floating net. As is known in the art, the sum of all capacitances in a row of the capacitance matrix is equal to a ground capacitance of a non-floating net associated with the row. Each capacitance in the row (except for the self-capacitance located on the leading diagonal) is equal to a mutual capacitance between the associated non-floating net and another non-floating net. The capacitance matrix may therefore be used to create a reduced network including capacitors between each non-floating net and ground (i.e., ground capacitors), and capacitors between each non-floating net and each other non-floating net. However, this capacitor network reduction technique is particularly resource-consuming if the system under analysis includes a large number of non-floating nets.
Some network reduction techniques are designed to specifically deal with large numbers of non-floating nets. According to some of these techniques, a mutual capacitance between a non-floating net and a floating net is converted to a capacitor between the non-floating net and ground, with the capacitor having a value equal to the mutual capacitance multiplied by a "decoupling factor" (e.g., 0.5). Mutual capacitances between floating nets, on the other hand, are ignored and therefore do not impact the reduced capacitor network resulting from these techniques. The resulting reduced capacitor network can be unsuitably inaccurate for some uses.

Systems and methods to determine ground capacitances of non-floating nets


To provide a decorative film whereby cracking is suppressed when the decorative film is adhered to a three-dimensional molded product while it is being stretched or in a stretched state. To further provide a composition, a method for producing the decorative film, and a method for producing a three-dimensional molded product provided with the decorative film. The decorative film has at least a base film and a fluororesin layer containing a fluororesin having a crosslinked structure, characterized in that the fluororesin layer contains a urethane bond and an allophanate bond, and the average molecular weight between crosslinking-points of the fluororesin layer is more than 50,000 and at most 100,000.

The surface of a three-dimensional molded product to be used in the field of automobile interior and exterior products, etc. may sometimes be decorated by a decorative film for the purpose of imparting a design property or protecting the surface. Patent Document 1 discloses a decorative film having a layer containing polyvinylidene fluoride.

This patent is subject to a terminal disclaimer.

Decorative film, composition, method for producing decorative film, and method for producing three-dimensional molded product provided with decorative film


A self-contained automatic fire extinguishing device includes a container having container walls defining a container chamber for storage of a fire extinguishing agent therein. The container has at least one aperture through its container walls. The fire extinguishing device also includes a vessel having vessel walls defining a vessel chamber. The vessel is coupled to the container such that the container chamber is in fluid communication with the vessel chamber via the at least one aperture. The vessel also has at least one opening therethrough. A heat responsive closure/actuating element is coupled to the container for substantially selectably sealing the at least one aperture of the container to alternately prevent and permit fluid communication between the container chamber and the vessel chamber.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to fire extinguishers, and more particularly relates to an automatically operated fire extinguisher for use with a cooking device such as a kitchen range or stove.
2. Description of the Related Art
The use of automatically activated fire extinguishing devices for kitchen ranges and the like is known. Such devices typically disperse fire extinguishing compound onto a cooking device when a fire is detected. The prior art devices, however, are relatively bulky. In addition, the prior art automatic fire extinguishing devices generally store the fire extinguishing compound in a container which is at a location remote from where the agent is dispersed. The fire extinguishing compound is typically transported from the storage container through a piping arrangement to a spraying device (located above the cooking surface) for dispersion of the compound onto the cooking device.
The prior art automatic fire extinguishing devices have the disadvantage of requiring a significant amount of time for installation, and significant expense over and above that typically required to install the stove itself. This is due to the elaborate piping required to transport the fire extinguishing compound from the storage container to the spraying device. Moreover, the prior art automatic fire extinguishing devices also have the drawback that as the distance between the storage container and the spraying device (e.g. nozzles) is increased, a greater force is required to project the fire extinguishing compound. Therefore, a larger storage container and supply of fire extinguishing compound are needed.
The prior art storage container and piping are typically not aesthetically appealing and tend to detract from a kitchen's appearance. In addition to the unsightly appearance of the storage container and the piping, the spray device (i.e., nozzle) which projects the fire extinguishing compound typically extends downward from the range hood to better direct the fire extinguishing compound. The spray device generally detracts from the appearance of the kitchen and interferes with the use of the stove top.
The prior art automatic fire extinguishing device has the further drawback that it must also have a fire sensing mechanism operatively positioned to determine the existence of a fire. The fire sensing mechanism must be located proximate the cooking surface. The fire sensing mechanism, like the spray device, is readily visible and detracts from the kitchen's appearance.
There is thus a need for a fire extinguishing device which is unobtrusive, generally pleasing in appearance, relatively lightweight and streamlined, self-contained, and does not require a substantial amount of time and money to install.

Self-contained automatic fire extinguisher


Embodiments of the invention are generally directed to determination of physical connectivity status of devices based on electrical measurement. An embodiment of a method includes discovering a connection of a first device with a second device, and performing an electrical measurement of the second device by the first device via the connection between the first device and the second device, where performing the electrical measurement includes sensing by the first device of an element of the second device. The method further includes, if the sensing by the first device fails to detect the element of the second device and a predetermined condition for the electrical measurement is enabled, then determining by the first device that the connection with the second device has been lost.

For the purpose of data communications, two or more electrical devices may be interconnected. For example, a first device (such as a device operating as a source device to provide data) may be attached with a second device (such as a device operating as a sink device to receive the data from the source device), where the connection may be via a cable or similar interface. The devices may utilize various different protocols. In such a system, the devices may exchange data while the devices are connected, with the data being transferred via the cable.
However, the two or more devices may become disconnected, such as by the physical disconnection of the cable. While the devices may eventually determine that there is a disconnection via a communication protocol, this commonly will result in a delay, with one or more of the devices continuing to attempt communication with the other device until the disconnection is determined via the protocol for the devices.

Determination of physical connectivity status of devices based on electrical measurement


A measurement structure that projects into an intake passage is provided with a shunt plate adjacent to a first passage that extends from an air inlet to an air outlet. A second passage is formed around the shunt plate so as to bypass the first passage. An air flow rate measuring element is disposed in the second passage. An edge of the shunt plate is located on a imaginary line or distant from the imaginary line to the second passage side, in which the imaginary line is parallel to the axis of the intake passage and passing through the top of the air inlet, whereby dust or liquid matter is prevented from entering the second passage. Alternatively, the shunt plate is provided with an inclined portion which is projected to the first passage so that the inclined portion is inclined toward the air outlet. As a further alternative, the shunt plate is provided with an inclined portion that is inclined toward the air inlet and has a through-hole.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an intake air flow rate measuring device of an internal combustion engine that measures the intake air flow rate of the internal combustion engine that is mounted on an automobile, for example, and is used for controlling the amount of fuel such as gasoline to be mixed into the intake air.
2. Description of the Related Art
Intake air flow rate measuring devices of the above kind are disclosed in JP-A-2002-5710, for example. An intake air flow rate measuring device that is shown in FIG. 5 of this publication is provided with a shunt pipe that projects into an intake passage of an internal combustion engine. The shunt pipe has a first passage extending approximately parallel with the intake passage, a shunt plate projecting into the first passage, a second passage that is formed around the shunt plate and bypasses the first passage, and an air flow rate measuring element disposed in the second passage. The air flow rate measuring element measures the intake air flow rate of the internal combustion engine in the intake passage on the basis of the flow rate or flow speed of the air in the second passage.
FIG. 1 of JP-A-2003-176740 shows an intake air flow rate measuring device in which a dust interrupting means such as a louver is disposed at the inlet of a bypass flow passage where an air flow rate measuring element is disposed.
However, in the intake air flow rate measuring device shown in FIG. 5 of JP-A-2002-5710 in which the shunt plate projects into the first passage, if the air passing through the intake passage contains dust or liquid matter, the dust or liquid matter is stopped by the shunt plate and introduced, together with the intake air flow, into the second passage where the air flow rate measuring element is disposed. The dust or liquid matter introduced into the second passage sticks to the side walls of the second passage or the air flow rate measuring element and disables correct intake air flow rate measurement.
In the intake air flow rate measuring device disclosed in JP-A-2003-176740, the dust interrupting means such as a louver is disposed at the inlet of the bypass flow passage where the air flow rate measuring element is disposed. This publication explains that the dust interrupting means decreases the kinetic energy of dust and thereby prevents a break of the measuring element even if the dust reaches it. However, intake air flow rate measuring devices provided with the dust interrupting means have problems that the pressure loss is large and that an intake air flow is disordered and made unstable by the dust interrupting means, which results in decrease in air flow rate measurement accuracy.

Intake air flow rate measuring device of an internal combustion engine


An electronic game card (1) comprising a controller and one or more communication devices (12), all contained within a planar card having three or more sides. The communication devices (12) allow communications between adjacent cards when two cards are placed close to each other, with one side of each card opposite a side of the other card. An electronic card game method comprising: Defining the number of participants in the game; setting up the game; each participant locates his/her cards on a flat surface, adjacent to each other; performing a setup procedure; automatically recognizing the game configuration; detecting and addition of a new card and automatically responding thereto.

Prior art electronic games may use a board fitted with user interface means such as keyboards and electronic displays, in a fixed configuration.
One or more users can therefore play the game by activating the controls thereon and watching the corresponding display.
A disadvantage with such prior art games is their limited scope. After some time, the players may get bored with the game, as it loses its novelty. Moreover, the game program is fixed, thus limiting its performance.
It is an objective of the present invention to provide for a novel electronic card game overcoming the above detailed deficiencies.


A method may include receiving a digital certificate through a secure connection from a network access server, the secure connection passing through a network address translation device, validating the digital certificate with a policy management system, and establishing a secure tunnel between the network access server and the policy management system when the digital certificate is validated. Also, receiving, through the secure tunnel and from the network access server, a remote authentication dial-in user service access request having a network access server internet protocol address, validating the network access server with the network access server internet protocol address by the policy management system, and allowing a remote authentication dial-in user service traffic when the internet protocol address of the network access server is validated and closing the secure tunnel when the validating the network access server fails.

Networks may include a number of resources for network access servers to access. To manage access to the resources, and thereby prevent unauthorized access to the resources, network access server credentials may require validation. Network access servers may send requests to gain access to a particular network resource using access credentials. The access credentials may be passed through network access server devices and then to particular servers using varying types of protocols. Network access servers may then be granted access to network resources when the access credentials are verified or denied access to network resources when the access credentials are not verified. As such, network resources may be secured against access from nonauthorized network access servers.

Hewlett Packard Enterprise Development LP


A battery system has a first cell balancing circuit and a second cell balancing circuit with a bus bar disposed therebetween. The battery system further includes an integrated circuit measuring a first voltage between two sense lines coupled to opposite ends of the bus bar while the first cell balancing circuit and a second cell balancing circuit are turned off, and determining a voltage value based on the first voltage. A microcontroller receives the voltage value and determines that an open circuit condition exists in the bus bar if the voltage value is greater than a threshold voltage value.

A bus bar may be utilized to electrically couple a first cell balancing circuit to a second balancing circuit. The inventor herein has recognized a need for an improved battery system that detects when an open circuit condition undesirably exists in the bus bar between first and second cell balancing circuits.


A method of operating a battery, for example, in a geosynchronous spacecraft is presented for maximizing its service life. According to this method, the energy requirements are determined, specifically those to be satisfied by the battery at a plurality of incremental events over a predetermined operating period as when the spacecraft is in the shadow of the earth. Then, the battery is maintained at a state of charge at least sufficient to satisfy the sum of (i) the energy requirements of the battery at each of the plurality of incremental events and (ii) an energy reserve for the battery in the event of a malfunction of the spacecraft. The charge capacity of the battery is preferably adjusted in a stepwise fashion in accordance with its predetermined energy requirements. By utilizing the invention, the battery is maintained at a full state of charge for less than approximately half of the earlier mentioned predetermined operating period such that the service life of the battery is enhanced.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to the operation of batteries and, more specifically, to the manner of recharging batteries such as those used in spacecraft applications. The invention serves to extend the service life of batteries, especially those employed for powering long life geosynchronous spacecraft or in other instances in which there is a high degree of predictability about the operation of a battery.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Lithium ion batteries which are desirable for use in powering many spacecraft systems typically recharge with voltages between 3.0 and 4.5 volts. Battery voltage increases as the state of charge of the battery is increased. Thus the more charge stored in the battery, the higher its recharge voltage. High voltages can lead to parasitic reactions at both the positive and negative electrodes. Typical positive electrodes for lithium ion batteries are metal oxides such as CoO.sub.2, NiO.sub.2, and MnO.sub.2, As the voltage of these metal oxides is increased their thermodynamic stability versus oxygen decomposition, e.g., EQU M.sub.x O.sub.y .fwdarw.M.sub.x.O.sub.y-2 +O.sub.2 ( 1)
decreases. In addition recharge of the positive electrode to higher voltages increases its power as an oxidizing agent. Electrolyte in contact with the positive electrode is thus more likely to be destructively oxidized by the positive electrode. An example of such a reaction in aqueous batteries is the electrolysis of water at a nickel electrode during recharge. In the aqueous example the reaction is reversible and is not believed to strongly effect battery life. In a non-aqueous battery employing organic electrolytes a similar oxidation reaction is irreversible and will shorten the battery life.
Similarly, during recharge of the negative electrode, it becomes a stronger reducing agent as its state of charge is increased. As it is also in contact with the non-aqueous electrolyte, the tendency of the electrolyte in contact with the negative electrode to be irreversibly reduced increases. This problem is further exacerbated in lithium ion battery where the carbon or graphite lithium negative electrode may as the state of charge increases approach the voltage of lithium metal. In this case during recharge lithium metal may be deposited on the surface of the carbon based electrode which in turn will lead to a direct and irreversible reaction between lithium metal and the non-aqueous electrolyte.
It was with knowledge of the foregoing that the present invention has been conceived and is now reduced to practice.

Life extending operational regime for battery


A method of compensating for dispersion in an optical communications system includes the steps of: positioning a semiconductor optical amplifier between a first and a second length of optical fibre, launching optical signals into the first length of optical fibre, directing optical signals emerging from the first length of optical fibre into the semiconductor optical amplifier, supplying optical pump radiation to the semiconductor optical amplifier so that the optidcal signals and the pump radiation interact within the semiconductor optical amplifier and generate the phase conjugate of the optical signals, and launching the phase conjugate optical signals into the second length of optical fibre.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to methods and apparatus for compensating for dispersion in optical communications systems, and in particular to methods and apparatus employing optical phase conjugation.
2. Related Art
In order to have a high transmission capacity, an optical communications system must have low dispersion, this means that pulses of light travelling along the waveguide, generally an optical fibre, of the optical communications system should not suffer significant distortion. This distortion may arise from a number of sources. If the optical communications system employs multi-mode fibre, each of the different modes will have a different group velocity, thus modulated signals, i.e. pulses of light passing down the multi-mode optical fibre, which are made up of a number of different modes of the waveguide will experience a different group delay from each of their modes. This causes a pulse formed from more than one mode to spread out as it propagates, and is called intermodal dispersion. Once consecutive pulses have spread out so that they are no longer distinguishable, one from the other, the information transmission limit of the optical communications system has been reached. This limit is expressed as a bandwidth distance product since it will be reached at a higher bit rate for a shorter optical communications link. Intermodal dispersion between the modes of multi-mode fibres is one of the reasons why modern optical communications systems have moved to the use of single mode optical fibre which, since it only supports one optical mode, does not suffer from intermodal dispersion.
However single mode optical communications systems do suffer from pulse spreading due to the small, but finite bandwidth of the optical source employed. This type of pulse spreading is called chromatic dispersion, and is due to two effects. Firstly, material dispersion is present because the refractive index of a dispersive medium, such as silica from which optical fibres are typically made, depends on wavelength. Secondly, waveguide dispersion, since the propagation characteristics of the single mode supported by a single mode fibre also depend on wavelength. Since the material dispersion of silica is positive at most wavelengths of interest for optical communications systems, and the waveguide dispersion for single mode fibres is negative, these two effects can be carefully balanced in a well designed optical fibre so as to Vive zero total, chromatic dispersion at the operating wavelength of the optical communications system.
The vast majority of optical communications systems which have been installed worldwide contain single mode optical fibre which has been designed for use in the 1.3 .mu.m low loss window, and as such has low chromatic dispersion at this wavelength. In recent years the rapid development of erbium doped fibre amplifiers (EDFA) has meant that fibre loss, and thus the power budget of optical communications systems, is no longer the fundamental limit to achievable transmission distance. However these EDFAs are only operable in the 1.55 .mu.m optical transmission window so that if existing optical communication links are to be upgraded, for example to operate at higher bit rates, these systems must operate in the 1.55 .mu.m window, over optical fibre designed for use at 1.3 .mu.m. Thus the fundamental bandwidth distance product transmission limit when upgrading an existing optical communications system is that imposed by dispersion. Furthermore, even for systems having fibre designed for use at 1.55 .mu.m, as very high bit rates are approached, unless very narrow linewidth, externally modulated lasers are employed, dispersion again is the fundamental limit to transmission capacity.
A number of methods of compensating for dispersion are known. In one such technique the optical signal, at the transmitter end of the optical communications system, is deliberately distorted before being launched into the optical fibre. The distortion imposed upon the optical signal must be calculated so as to be compensated by the dispersion that the optical signal subsequently suffers during propagation along the optimal fibre. An example of such a technique is that disclose& by Koch and Alferness in "Dispersion Compensation By Active Predistorted Signals Synthesis" Journal of Lightwave Technology, volume LT-3, no. 4, August 1985. In order to successfully apply these techniques the transmission characteristics of the particular optical fibre employed, and the length of the transmission link need to be known so that the predistorted signal can be correctly synthenised. Generally the optical source employed in these systems needs to be sophisticated, and thus complex, so at to allow independent control of the amplitude and frequency of the optical signal. The problems inherent in predistortion dispersion compensation systems are considerably exacerbated for higher bit rate systems, where indeed dispersion compensation is of greatest importance.
In a second, known dispersion compensation technique a negative dispersion optical fibre is employed to compensate either at the transmission end, or at the receiver end of the optical link for the positive dispersion suffered by optical signals propagating along the transmission optical fibre. When optical signals at 1.55 .mu.m are transmitted along a transmission optical fibre having a dispersion zero at 1.31 .mu.m, the signals will suffer positive dispersion i.e. the sign of the differential of their group delay with wavelength, will be positive, and will typically be of the order of 17 ps/km/nm. Single mode optical fibre can be specifically designed to have a large negative chromatic dispersion, by choosing the waveguide parameters to give large negative waveguide dispersion, for example a fibre having a core of small diameter and high refractive index will have negative waveguide dispersion. Such a scheme was employed by Izadpanah et al in "Dispersion Compensation In 1310 nm Optimised SMFs Using Optical Equaliser Fibre, EDFAs And 1310/1550 nm WDM" Electronics Letters, 16 Jul. 1992, volume 28, no. 15, page 1469. Izadpanah et al employed a specially designed negative dispersion fibre having a dispersion of -45 ps/km/nm. The length of negative dispersion fibre required was approximately one third of the length of the transmission link over which dispersion was being compensated. Such large lengths of additional fibre are clearly inconvenient and expensive. Furthermore due to the high level of doping used in the core, and the small core size this fibre had a relatively high loss, so that amplification of the optical signal is essential, even if the bit rate of the system is not increased.
A third form of dispersion compensation has been theoretically proposed by Yariv et al in "Compensation For Channel Dispersion By Non-linear Optical Phase Conjugation" Optics Letters, volume 4, no. 2, February 1979. Yariv et al proposed that by generating an optical phase conjugate replica of the optical signal after it has passed through one half of the optical transmission link, and launching this phase conjugate replica into the second half of the optical transmission link, the effects of the dispersion suffered by the optical signal in the first half of the link will be reversed and the optical signal will be restored to its original shape. This technique relies on the time inversion of the group velocity dispersion of the optical signal caused by phase conjugation, and thus requires that the dispersion in the second half of the optical transmission link is the same as the dispersion in the first half, it it is to be fully compensated for.
Yariv's proposal has been implemented in an optical communications system by employing non-degenerate four wave mixing (NDFWM) in dispersion shifted fibre (DSF) to provide the necessary optical phase conjugation. In this case the phase conjugate optical signals travel in the same direction as the copropagating pump light and original optical signal. This technique has been demonstrated by Watanabe et al in "Compensation Of Chromatic Dispersion In A Single Mode Fibre BY Optical Phase Conjugation" IEEE Photonics Technology Letters, volume 5, no. 1, January 1993 and by Jopson et al in "Compensation Of Fibre Chromatic Dispersion By Spectral Inversion" Electronics Letters, 1 Apr. 1993, volume 29, no. 7. In both cases long lengths, over 20 km, of carefully designed DSF were required. A DSF is a fibre which has been designed to have zero dispersion in the 1.55 .mu.m telecommunications window, i.e. its dispersion zero has been shifted from 1.3 .mu.m to around 1.55 .mu.m. In addition to this requirement, Watanabe and Jopson furthermore needed to arrange for the wavelength of the pump light required for NDFWM in the DSF to be the same as the zero dispersion wavelength of the DSF, in order to achieve sufficient phase matching between the pump and the optical signals. This requirement for phase matching over the 20 km of the DSF is severe, and means that the wavelength of the pump light must be carefully controlled e.g. over 20 km with a pump and signal separation of 2 nm the pump wavelength must be within approximately 1 nm of the dispersion zero wavelength. Furthermore this requirement becomes more severe as the length of the DSF increases, and rapidly more severe as the wavelength separation of the pump and signal is increased. The efficiency of conversion of the optical signal to its phase conjugate replica achieved by both Watanabe and Jopson is low, approximately -25 dB in both cases. Thus the phase conjugate signal to be launched into the second half of the optical transmission link is at a very low level.
It has been suggested by Murata et al in "THz Optical Frequency Conversion Of 1 Gb/s Signals Using Highly Non-degenerate Four Wave Mixing In An InGaAsP Semiconductor Laser" IEEE Transactions Photonics Technology Letters, volume 3, no. 11, November 1991, that Yariv's phase conjugation technique for dispersion compensation could be implemented by employing a semiconductor Fabry-Perot laser as the phase conjugating device. This suggestion has not, however been demonstrated.
Another known technique for dispersion compensation is described in "Chirping Compensation Using a Two-Section Semiconductor Laser Amplifier"--Journal of Lightwave Technology, vol. 10, no. 9, September 1992, pages 1247-1254.

Dispersion compensation in an optical communications system

British Telecommunications public limited company


This disclosure relates to a natural gas absorption device that includes (1) at least one porous, flexible container that has an average pore diameter and is permeable to natural gas, (2) a natural gas absorption material at least partially disposed in the container, the material having a volume average diameter larger than the average pore diameter of the container, and (3) a storage tank having an opening, the tank enclosing the container and the natural gas absorption material.

Natural gas is one of the most promising alternative fuels because it is abundant and extremely clean burning. According to the U.S. Department of Energy, exhaust emissions from natural gas vehicles (NGVs) are much lower than those of gasoline-powered vehicles. For instance, carbon monoxide (CO) and nitrogen oxides (NOx) are reduced by more than 90 and 60 percent, respectively, and carbon dioxide (CO2), a greenhouse gas, is reduced by 30 to 40 percent. When used in medium- and heavy-duty engines, CO and particulate matter (PM) reductions of over 90 percent, and NOx reductions of over 50 percent, have been demonstrated compared to diesel engines. However, one of the reasons that NGVs have not been as widely accepted as gasoline-powered vehicles is the lack of an extensive public refueling infrastructure.
Natural gas is typically stored aboard a vehicle either as a gas (e.g., compressed natural gas) or as a liquid (e.g., liquefied natural gas (LNG)). When natural gas is stored as a gas, it can be in the form of a compressed natural gas (CNG) or an adsorbed natural gas (ANG). CNG typically refers to natural gas stored in a tank without any adsorbent and compressed to a relatively high pressure (such as about 20 MPa (i.e., about 200 bars) or higher). ANG typically refers to natural gas stored in a tank containing a natural gas adsorption material and compressed to a relatively low pressure (such as about 3.5 MPa (i.e., about 500 psi) or lower).


Provided is a method of producing an electrophotographic photosensitive member including a support and a surface layer formed on the support, the method including the steps of forming a coat of a surface-layer coating solution, and drying the coat to form the surface layer, in which the surface-layer coating solution includes resin α, resin β, solvent γ, and compound δ.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a method of producing an electrophotographic photosensitive member, a process cartridge, and an electrophotographic apparatus.
2. Description of the Related Art
An electrophotographic photosensitive member containing an organic photoconductive substance (charge-generating substance) has been frequently used as an electrophotographic photosensitive member to be mounted on an electrophotographic apparatus. In an electrophotographic process, a cleaning step of removing transfer residual toner with a cleaning blade has been required to reduce a contact stress (coefficient of friction) between the cleaning blade and the electrophotographic photosensitive member in order that the occurrence of a phenomenon such as the squeaking of the cleaning blade or the turn-up of the cleaning blade may be suppressed.
The incorporation of a siloxane-modified resin having a siloxane structure in its molecular chain into the surface layer of the electrophotographic photosensitive member, which is brought into contact with a contact member (such as the cleaning blade), has been proposed for reducing the contact stress of the electrophotographic photosensitive member. Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2009-037229 discloses a technology involving incorporating a resin obtained by building a siloxane structure in a polycarbonate resin into the surface layer to reduce the contact stress (coefficient of friction) between the electrophotographic photosensitive member and the cleaning blade.
The surface layer of the electrophotographic photosensitive member is formed by: applying, onto a support or the like, a surface-layer coating solution obtained by dissolving or dispersing a binder resin or the like in a solvent to form a coat; and drying the coat. In addition, the solvent is selected in consideration of the solubility of the binder resin or the like, the absence of influences on electrophotographic characteristics, and the absence of the whitening, sagging, or the like of the coat at the time of its coating. As described above, from the viewpoint of compatibility between the electrophotographic characteristics and coatability, various investigations have been conducted on the solvent to be used as the solvent of the coating solution. Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2001-343767 proposes a method of producing an electrophotographic photosensitive member free of whitening at the time of coating and having electrophotographic characteristics comparable to or better than those in the case where a halogen-based solvent is used, the method involving using an aromatic hydrocarbon and ethylene glycol dimethyl ether as solvents of a charge-transporting-layer coating solution. Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. H06-123987 proposes that a drying temperature at the time of the production of an electrophotographic photosensitive member and the boiling point of a solvent to be used in a photosensitive-layer coating solution be regulated for suppressing the defects of a coat.
In Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2009-037229 or the like, in the production of an electrophotographic photosensitive member containing, in its surface layer, a resin having a siloxane structure, a solvent to be used in a surface-layer coating solution contains a halogen-based solvent such as monochlorobenzene from the viewpoints of the solubilities of the resin having a siloxane structure and any other material. In recent years, however, the relevance of a chemical substance to an environment has been attracting attention, and the management of the chemical substance and the regulation of its amount of emission have been enhanced. As part of the enhancement, the replacement of the halogen-based solvent with a non-halogen-based solvent has been progressing. In addition, the halogen-based solvent must be recovered separately from the non-halogen-based solvent upon waste liquid recovery and hence productivity is liable to reduce. In view of the foregoing, its replacement with the non-halogen-based solvent has been demanded. Examples of the non-halogen-based solvent suitable for use in the surface-layer coating solution for the electrophotographic photosensitive member include xylene and toluene.
However, in the case where toluene or xylene is used as the solvent of the surface-layer coating solution containing the resin having a siloxane structure for reducing the contact stress of the surface layer, a reducing effect on an initial coefficient of friction is not sufficiently obtained as compared with that in the case where monochlorobenzene is used, and hence the initial coefficient of friction needs to be reduced.

Method of producing electrophotographic photosensitive member, process cartridge, and electrophotographic apparatus


Antenna assembly for satellite tracking system that includes a plurality of antenna arrangements, each having one or more ports, and all ports connected through transmission lines in a combining/splitting circuit. The antenna arrangements form a spatial element array able to track a satellite in an elevation plane by mechanically dynamically rotating the antenna arrangements about transverse axes giving rise to generation of respective elevation angles and dynamically changing the respective distances between the axes whilst maintaining a predefined relationship between said distances and the respective elevation angles. The combining/splitting circuit provides phasing and signal delay in order to maintain pre configured radiating parameters. The arrangements can be mounted on a rotating platform to provide azimuth tracking. The system provides dynamic tracking of satellite signals and can be used for satellite communications on moving vehicles.

There is an ever increasing need for communications with satellites, including reception of satellite broadcasts such as television and data and transmission to satellites in vehicles such as trains, cars, SUVs etc. that are fitted with one or more receivers and/or transmitters, not only when the vehicle is stationary (such as during parking) but also when it is moving.
The known antenna systems for use for mobile Direct Broadcast Satellite (DBS) reception can be generally divided into several main types. One type utilizes a reflector or lens antenna with fully mechanical steering. Another type uses phased array antennas comprised of a plurality of radiating elements. The mechanically steerable reflector antenna has a relatively large volume and height, which, when enclosed in the necessary protective radome for mobile use, is too large and undesirable for some mobile applications, especially for ground vehicles. For use with in-motion applications, the antenna housing as a whole should be constrained to a relatively low height profile when mounted on a vehicle.
The array type comprises at least three sub-groups depending on the antenna beam steering means—fully electronic (such as the one disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,886,671 Riemer et al.); fully mechanical; and combined electronic and mechanical steering. The present invention relates to the last two sub-groups.
Phased array antennas are built from a certain number of radiating elements displaced in planar or conformal lattice arrangement with suitable shape and size. They typically take the form of conformal or flat panels that utilize the available space more efficiently than reflector solutions and therefore can provide a lower height profile. In certain cases the mentioned panel arrangements can be divided into two or more smaller panels in order to reduce further the height, thereby rendering such arrangements more suitable for vehicles. Such an antenna for DBS receiving is described in A MOBILE 12 GHZ DBS TELEVISION RECEIVING SYSTEM, authored by Yasuhiro Ito and Shigeru Yamazaki in "IEEE Transactions on Broadcasting," Vol. 35, No. 1, March 1989 (hereinafter "the Ito et al. publication"). As readily shown in FIG. 1 (taken from the Ito et al. publication), the antenna consists of two antenna panels (11 and 12) that represent phased array antennas, pointed to a certain direction. During the satellite tracking they are rotated around their transverse axis (13 and 14, respectively) in order to track the satellite in the elevation plane and continuously all of them together are rotated around the axis that is perpendicular to a common platform (15) in order to track the satellite in the azimuth plane. During this movement, the antenna panels acquire different angular displacements as the angle of elevation is changed. Notwithstanding the fact that the panels 11 and 12 are angularly displaced with respect to each other, their respective axes (13 and 14) are maintained at a fixed distance with respect to each other.
As shown in FIG. 2A, at low elevation (say e1 20), the panels 21 and 22 are seen as a continuous aperture (a1 and a2) as viewed from the observation angle of the satellite 23, thereby maintaining high performance. When increasing the elevation (for example e2>e1 24 in FIG. 2B), the antenna arrangements keep being perpendicular to the observation angle of the satellite (25), but certain space between them becomes visible, thus forming certain gap g1 (26) between the projected apertures a1 and a2. Generally this is a disadvantage because it increases the average level of the sidelobes of the radiation pattern of the antenna system. The increased sidelobes result in decrease in gain and increase of the noise temperature of the antenna system and increased sensitivity to interference, thereby adversely affecting its performance.
There is thus a need in the art to provide a mobile antenna system with low profile and better radiation pattern keeping relatively low cost, suitable for mounting on moving platforms where the size is an issue as is the case in RVs trains, SUVs, bus, boats etc.

Mobile antenna system for satellite communications


A method, system and apparatus for coordinated distribution of hairstyling products using automatic pumps connected over a computer network is described, including, identifying a customer model of a customer, and receiving a product request for the customer. Based on the product request, a product and an amount of the product is determined to be distributed and a networked pump us selected, based on the product and the amount. For the selected pump, a request for distribution for the amount of the product is generated, and the selected pump automatically distributes the amount of the product based on the request for distribution. A confirmation of a distribution of the amount of the product is received from the selected pump, and the customer model is updated based on the amount of the product distributed.

Modern hair salons dispense a variety of different products for a variety of different services. Products may potentially cause health problems for a variety of reasons, for example, due to interactions with other products, due to the exposure of stylists and customers to harmful chemicals, and due to proper application techniques and protective wear not being used.
In addition to monitoring products, salons generally have many different disconnected ways of dispensing products. Keeping track of what products are available, and how to get them can be challenging.
In addition to tracking products, keeping track of customers and appointments can be challenging as well.

System, apparatus, and method for networked hair salon product pumps