A system for fast, efficient and reliable communication of object state irmation among a group of processes combines the use of a fast, but lossy and thus unreliable communications channel to the group of processes and a server coupled to the group for providing data which has been lost in the multicasting. In one embodiment, a central server supports reliability and rapid joining while using UDP multicast messaging to achieve rapid interaction and low bandwidth. Differential messages are sent over the lossy channel to compactly describe how to compute the new state of an object from any of several previous states. Such a description can be interpreted even if some number of prior descriptions were not received, greatly reducing the need for explicit, round-trip message repairs while also conserving bandwidth. In one embodiment, the central server communicates with each member of the group over a reliable channel to robustly detect and repair objects affected by lost messages.

In the case where a number of users on a network wish to share data such as graphical objects in a virtual reality scene and to be able to communicate changes in those objects to processes running at each of the nodes, there is a need for a fast and reliable updating system so that each user may quickly and reliably know what changes one user wishes to transmit. For instance, assuming there is a group of asynchronous processes interacting via the shared data-object model of distributed shared memory or some similar sharing model where the processes share objects; and further assuming that this group is possibly communicating over a network, possibly geographically separated and possibly participating in a distributed virtual environment, then the goal is to simultaneously achieve: first, rapid interaction to maximize the speed of communication of object changes in order to achieve near real-time interaction; second, low bandwidth to minimize the communication bandwidth used; third, reliability to guarantee that object changes are eventually, if perhaps sometimes slowly, successfully communicated between the processes; and fourth rapid joining to allow a new user to join a communication group and rapidly become up to date on what all the other processes know.
In the following description, assume that the data to be interactively worked on resides in a world model which is used to describe the set of all objects being shared at any given moment.
When considering how to achieve the above goal, it is important to consider the following spectrum of ways that objects can change. A communications solution must work acceptably at all points of this spectrum and should work particularly well at whatever points are most likely in a particular application.
At one extreme, some objects change very frequently, e.g., tens of times a second or more. For many applications, it matters very little to recover a particular lost message describing a change, because it is not liable to be possible to do so before the change is rendered obsolete. Rather, the focus should be on always being able to utilize the latest information as soon as it arrives. In addition, one should use as few resources as possible on useless repair attempts. Using application specific knowledge to determine that some lost messages are not worth repairing, because they have been obsoleted by subsequent changes, is central to the strategy referred to as object-based repair.
At the other extreme, some objects change very infrequently, e.g., only once every few minutes or hours. In this situation, the exact moment a change occurs may or may not matter, but the fact of the change certainly matters. It is very important that each individual change be communicated. It is also important that if information is lost about a particular change, this is detected long before the next change occurs. In this situation, some sort of positive acknowledgment scheme is needed to detect lost messages.
In the middle are objects that change at moderate speed, e.g., once every few seconds or so. Here repair is important and must be relatively timely. This is a particularly difficult part of the spectrum to support well. Fortunately, it is plausible that many applications make use of the two ends of the spectrum more than the middle.
It should be realized that a single object may be changed rapidly for a while and then change slowly or not at all for a while. Therefore, a general purpose approach cannot rely on knowing in advance which objects will exhibit which kind of behavior. Rather it must adjust dynamically to whatever is happening.
As to Distributed Database and Shared Memory Technology, one way to approach the goal above is to use standard distributed database or shared memory technology. In these approaches the paramount goal held up above all others is insuring that at any moment when two processes access a given shared object, the two processes will always obtain the same values. To satisfy this goal, locks must be used to prevent processes from accessing objects at the wrong time.
For example, suppose that process Pi wants to modify object A. To do this P1 must:
1. check that no other process has locked A, waiting if necessary until the lock is free, PA1 2. lock A so that other processes are prevented from accessing A, PA1 3. send messages to all the other processes in the group notifying them that the lock is set, PA1 4. wait until it receives return messages from all other processes acknowledging the lock. Note, this may result in discovering that some other process took the lock first, in which case P1 must return to step 1 above. PA1 5. make the desired change in A, PA1 6. send messages to all other processes specifying the change, PA1 7. wait until it receives return messages from all other processes acknowledging receipt of the change messages, PA1 8. remove the lock on A, PA1 9. send messages to all other processes saying that the lock is removed.
This handshaking wastes bandwidth and dramatically slows interaction. Setting and freeing the lock on A requires multiple messages to be sent between P1 and the other processes in the group. The back and forth communication greatly increases the latency interval between the time P1 decides to change A and the earliest time at which any other process can access the change. Each message must be sent completely reliably which further increases bandwidth usage and latency.
Finally, the latency rises rapidly as the number of processes in a group rises. As a result, standard distributed database or shared memory approaches cannot be used for the near real-time interaction of more than a handful of processes.
To achieve near real-time interaction between even a moderate number of processes, one must abandon the otherwise desirable requirement that when two processes access a given shared object, the two processes will always obtain the same values. Rather, one must dispense with inter-process locking and allow temporary disagreements between processes about the values associated with an object. In particular, when a process P1 modifies an object A, there will be a short period of time before another process P2 finds out about this change and during that time the values obtained by P1 and P2 when they access A will differ.
It is convenient to also assume that each object has an owning process and only that process can modify the object. This avoids writers/writers problems and means that there does not have to be any means of arbitrating between simultaneous changes. If an application wants to have several processes that can alter a given object, then the ownership of the object can be transferred from one process to another. Alternatively, a single process can be appointed as arbiter of change requests for the object and be the process that actually makes the changes based on these requests. This essentially mimics exactly what would have to be happening if multiple processes were to directly modify the object, because there would in that case have to be some arbitration method. For purposes of discussion, what follows assumes that at any given moment each object has only one process that can alter it.
Given a relaxed equality constraint, several approaches have been used to attempt to meet the goal above: central server systems, Distributed Interactive Simulation, DIS, and reliable multicast.
Central server approaches have each process in a group communicate the changes it makes to a central server, which then notifies the other processes. This approach does a good job of keeping the information known by the processes as close to the same as possible.
It also does a good job of allowing rapid joining, because a new process can receive a rapid download from the central server of everything it is supposed to know. In addition, by sending the messages to and from the server using a reliable protocol such as TCP, the central server approach can easily guarantee reliable delivery of information.
However, the central server approach has two problems. First, interaction speed is significantly limited, because all messages have to go first to the central server and then to the other processes in the group. In comparison to sending messages directly from one process to another, this adds an additional message flight time and adds the time required for the server to interpret the incoming message, decide what to do with it, and generate an outgoing message.
Second, bandwidth needs are increased somewhat due to the need to send messages to the central server as well as to the other processes in the group.
Systems conforming to the Distributed Interactive Simulation standard, DIS, Standard for Information Technology, Protocols for Distributed Interactive Simulation, DIS ANSI/IEEE standard 1278-1993, American National Standards Institute, 1993, send messages about object changes directly from one process to another using what is effectively multicast messages using the UDP protocol. Actually, early DIS systems use broadcast in dedicated subnetworks with special bridging hardware/software to forward messages from one subnetwork to another, but this is essentially what multicast capable network routers do.
The key virtue of the DIS approach is that it communicates information between processes at the maximum possible speed. In addition, multicast uses significantly less system bandwidth than multiple point to point connections. However, there is no guarantee of delivery of UDP messages. Therefore, DIS does not guarantee that a change made by one process will ever be known by a given other process.
To counteract the reliability problem, DIS takes two actions. First, each message sent contains full information about an object so that it can always be understood even if previous messages about the object have been lost. Second, DIS systems send out frequent `keep-alive` messages specifying the current state of each object, typically once every 5 seconds. This means that lost information is typically repaired within 5-10 seconds. It also means that a new process will be informed of everything it needs to know in 5-10 seconds.
The above notwithstanding, DIS is still left with four significant problems. First, the fact that differential messages cannot be used, and therefore each message describes an object fully, wastes a lot of bandwidth, because even when only a small part of an object is changing, a description of the whole object is continually being sent.
Second, the keep-alive messages waste a lot of bandwidth, because when an object is not changing at all, repeated messages are still sent describing the whole object.
Third, while keep-alive messages cause eventual repair, they do not cause fast repair. Therefore, the processes in the group can get significantly out of synchronization in what they believe about the data they share and near real-time interaction is impaired.
Fourth, joining is not rapid, because it takes 5-10 seconds for a new process to learn what the other processes know.
A clever part of DIS is that there is no central server process at all, and no need for any process to figure out what information other processes have received. Rather, all processes just forge ahead in ignorance of the others. When few messages are lost, things work extremely well, albeit at the cost of significant additional bandwidth. When a significant number of messages are lost, things continue to work out with no increase in bandwidth usage, albeit with a reduction in real-time interaction.
A final piece of related prior work is research on reliable multicast protocols. In that work, the primary goal is to achieve low bandwidth operation using multicast messages, but to incorporate handshaking that ensures reliability. There are two basic ways to do this: with acknowledgment messages, ACKs, or negative acknowledgment messages, NAKs.
In ACK-based approaches, each recipient sends explicit ACKs of the receipt of the messages sent to it. As in protocols such as TCP, this allows the sender to know exactly what has to be resent and to whom. However, the problem with this is what is referred to as an "ACK explosion".
Suppose that a process P is sending messages to N other processes. Each time P sends a message, N ACKs are generated. This uses significant bandwidth and causes P to receive N messages that it has to deal with for each message it sends out. Note that in the group as a whole, there are N times as many ACK messages as data carrying messages. As a result, the ACK messages soon come to dominate all communication as the group grows large. If the ACKs are themselves sent by multicast, then all the processes have to deal with all the ACKs. If the ACKs are send directly from the various processes back to the sending processes, then this means that on the order of N-squared 1-to-1 channels are open and the bandwidth needed for communicating ACKs is increased.
In NAK-based approaches, control messages are sent only when messages are lost. Specifically, when a process P2 notices that it has failed to receive a message M from another process P, it sends a NAK requesting that the message be resent. The advantage of this approach is that when messages are received, bandwidth is not wasted sending ACKs. However, there are still significant problems.
First, the primary way for P2 to tell that it has missed M is for it to receive a different message sent by P after M. In comparison to using ACKs, this delays the time at which the loss of M can be detected and therefore repaired. This problem is particularly severe if P does not send any message after M. In that case, P2 might never notice that M was lost. To counteract this problem, some kind of message must be sent that specifies what processes should have received. A pure NAK-based approach is only possible when each process sends a steady stream of messages.
Secondly, as with ACKs, if NAKs are themselves sent by multicast, then all the processes have to receive all the NAKs. If the NAKs are send directly from the various processes back to the sending processes, then this means that on the order of N-squared 1-to-1 channels are open and the bandwidth needed for communicating NAKs is increased. In either case, the N NAKs that converge on the sender when a message is entirely lost is referred to as a "NAK implosion". The existence of this traffic causes difficulty at the sender that can further impede communication beyond whatever problem caused the communication to fail in the first place.
From this perspective, reliable multicast protocols have several key problems. First, most of them do not even attempt to support near real-time interaction or rapid joining, focusing instead on reliability, and low bandwidth.
Second, many of them expend significant resources ensuring reliability features such as order of arrival that are not useful for solving the problem posed above.
Third, if ACKs are used, this uses a significant amount of bandwidth, even when few messages are being lost. If a significant number of messages are being lost, then bandwidth usage goes up further due to the need to resend messages that are lost. If NAKs are used, then bandwidth usage is much lower when things go well, but ramps up much more steeply as messages are lost, due to the need to begin sending many NAKs in addition to resending messages.
In both cases, the basic behavior of requiring more bandwidth when messages are being lost is unfortunate since bandwidth limitations are a prime reason why messages get lost. Particularly in NAK-based approaches, this can cause a negative spiral where the initial onset of problems causes more problems.
Fourth, and perhaps worst, pushing directly for reliability at the low level of multicast messages themselves does not strike at the heart of the problem posed above. For example, suppose that process P1 changes object A at time T1 and sends a message M describing this change. Suppose in a NAK-based approach that at some later time T2, a process P2 discovers that it has not received M. P2 then sends a NAK requesting the retransmission of M. This is all well and good, but what P2 really wants to get is not M, but what the state of A is at T2. That is to say, the reliability that is desired is not necessarily the receipt of every message, but rather getting at all times the most up-to-date information about A possible.

System for the reliable, fast, low-latency communication of object state updates over a computer network by combining lossy and lossless communications

Mitsubishi Electric Information Technology Center America, Inc.


A print (e.g., on paper) user interface (PUI) device for decoding an embedded message to activate a function is described. The PUI can be used for transforming an embedded message into cognizable human sensory inputs. The device includes a reader and a processor. The reader can sense light from a pattern of pixels on a printed surface and determines the pixel values of the pixels. The pattern of pixels constitutes a foreground visual image that conveys cognizable information to an observer. The primary function of the embedded message need not be to launch a Web-site but to display more information related to the cognizable information. The processor has a program of computer codes readable by the processor to recover embedded message from the pattern of pixels, the program includes codes for determining the embedded message by determining binary values based on the pixel values for pixels from the pattern of pixels and codes for performing a function according to the embedded message to result in resultant information displayable by a display suitable for human sensory reception.

With the progress of science and technology, knowledge is increasing at an accelerating pace. As a result, the amount of information that needs to be stored and retrieved is also increasing rapidly. The ability to conveniently retrieve stored information is becoming a limiting factor for many people to gain meaningful access to knowledge. In the past, printed materials such as books have been, and still is, a common way for many to access information. As the amount of information that requires storage grows at an ever escalating pace, storage in electronic form is preferred. For example, information nowadays is often stored in computer memory, hard drives, zip disks, floppy disks, compact disks, memory cartridges, tapes, and the like. Such electronic form of information in turn requires suitable tools for retrieval, since humans have no natural ability or sensory organ that can access information from electronic storage media directly.
Information stored in electronic storage media is usually retrieved through the use of electronic instruments such as computers, CD players, tape player, game consoles, and the like. However, an information retrieval involving locating a portion from a large volume of data generally involves using computer. Typically, people access information from a computer by using a keyboard, a monitor, and perhaps a pointer device such as a mouse. In many cases, text based interfaces and graphical user interfaces (GUIs) have been used. Recently, GUIs have become the user interface of choice for accessing electronic forms of information. GUIs provide an intuitive way for people to interact with computers. For example, GUIs use graphical representation of real world objects such as file folders, cabinets, and trash cans to help users learn applications faster. Such real world objects are present in popular computer operation systems such as Windows by Microsoft Corp. and Macintosh by Apple Computers Co. More recently, the hyper text markup language (HTML) has become the standard for interfacing with the Internet. Linked text and graphic objects are marked by underlines and/or colors to signal that they are hypertext and accessible. For example, while browsing the Internet, by maneuvering the pointer onto the hypertext (e.g., Johnson's Bakery) on the computer monitor and clicking a mouse will cause the browser to go to the Johnson's Bakery's Web-site).
However, traditional GUIs and HTML require a reasonable-sized computer screen with a fine resolution for them to function effectively, which often means using a cumbersome computer with a heavy monitor. Such requirements severely limit their use in more mobile applications. What is needed is a technique to access electronic information with a convenient, easily movable GUI device.

This patent is subject to a terminal disclaimer.

Print user interface system and its applications


An application cooperation system includes an instruction screen display control portion which causes a browsing portion to display a scan instruction screen, a scan control portion which stores image data output from a document reading portion, an external screen receiving portion which receives an external screen including an external control command from the external server for storage, an internal screen generating portion which generates an internal screen including an internal control command and an image data displaying area, an integrated screen generating portion which generates an integrated screen by combining the internal and external screens for output to the internal server portion, and a location information notification portion which obtains the integrated screen's network address from the internal server portion for output to the external server. The external server returns redirect information including the integrated screen's network address to the browsing portion in response to a transmission request.

Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an application cooperation system and an application cooperation method. More particularly, the present invention relates to an application cooperation system which includes a server and an image processing apparatus having an application program installed therein which performs processing in cooperation with the server, and an application cooperation method performed by the application cooperation system.
Description of the Related Art
When there is processing that cannot be performed by a multi-function peripheral (hereinafter, referred to as an "MFP"), that processing can be performed using a service, such as "software as service (SaaS)", provided by a server. In this case, a server client system having a server serving as a Web server and an MFP serving as a client is generally used, and the data that has been processed in the Web server is received by the MFP for output.
In a conventional server client system, however, the operation screen displayed on an MFP for a user to operate the MFP is the one generated by and received from a server. Therefore, in the state where the operation screen received from the server is being displayed in the MFP, the user cannot instruct the MFP to perform image processing on the data that has been scanned in the MFP. In order to cause the MFP to perform image processing on the data scanned in the MFP, it is necessary to display an operation screen that has been prepared in advance in the MFP. This produces the need to switch the screen between the operation screen received from the server and the operation screen prepared in the MFP.
Further, Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2005-167988 discloses an image processing system that is made up of an MFP connected to the Internet and one or more service providers which provide predetermined processing services. In this system, a controller in the MFP obtains from the service providers the processing function information about the services available from the providers, and the controller causes an operation portion in the MFP to display, in an alternative manner, a first processing function based on the processing function information acquired, and a second processing function executable by the MFP. With the conventional image processing system, while the system may be able to perform either the first processing function based on the processing function information about the services available from the service providers or the second processing function executable by the MFP, it is not possible for a user to designate the first processing function and the second processing function using a single operation screen.

Application cooperation system including server and image processing apparatus, and application cooperation method

KONICA MINOLTA BUSINESS TECHNOLOGIES, INC.


A method for separately detecting tastes of a plurality of similar samples by using a taste sensor employing a lipid membrane includes first, second, third, and fourth steps. In the first step, a reference solution having a taste identical or similar to one of the plurality of samples is prepared. In the second step, the reference solution is measured by using the taste sensor. In the third step, one of the plurality of samples is measured by using the taste sensor. In the fourth step, a relative value Vi-V0 of the sample is calculated from the measured value V0 of the reference solution and the measured value Vi of the sample. The second to fourth steps are repeatedly performed for each of the plurality of samples.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention generally relates to a taste sensing method using artificial lipid membranes.
The present invention also relates to a technique for detecting and measuring a difference in taste of beverages and comestibles, which is formerly difficult to measure by an artificial sensor, by utilizing a sensor that can replace the sense of taste as one of the five senses of human.
Furthermore, the present invention relates to a technique for detecting a difference in taste of food, e.g., beverage and alcohol goods to drink. Hence, the present invention relates to a technique which enables quality control of beverages and alcohols at the factories by an automated machine system without using a human labor.
2. Description of the Related Art
Basic taste elements are said to consist of saltiness, sweetness, bitterness, sourness, and "Umami". These elements are exibited in different degrees, respectively. Let us suppose that a difference between these tastes that can be evaluated by human senses or a difference between different degrees of the same taste, e.g., saltiness that can be evaluated by human senses, can be grasped as a physically measurable amount, and that a measurable taste or a measurable difference in taste (comparative or relative taste) is referred to as taste in this specification.
The present applicants have previously filed a patent application of an invention entitled "Taste Sensing System Using Artificial Lipid Membranes" (U.S. patent application Ser. No. 07/555,163). The specification and its accompanying drawings show that a lipid molecular membrane, having a matrix structure in which a lipid material comprising hydrophobic molecules and hydrophilic molecules is fixed in a polymer matrix and the hydrophilic molecules of the lipid are arranged in the matrix surface, can serve as a taste sensor that can replace the human sense of taste.
The outline of such a taste sensor will be briefly described. Namely, assume that a partial description of the above application is incorporated hereinafter.
FIG. 9 shows a schematic view of formation of such a lipid molecular membrane by an expression method used in a designing method of a chemical substance. Each lipid molecule shown in FIG. 9 includes a hydrophilic group a, i.e., a hydrophilic portion a represented by a spherical portion which is indicated by a circle, and a chain structure b (e.g., an alkyl group) of a hydrocarbon in which an atomic array extends. In FIG. 9, two chains extend to represent one molecule, thereby constituting molecule group as a whole. This chainportion of the hydrocarbon is a hydrophobic portion b. These lipid molecules 31 are received in a surface structure of a matrix 33 of a membrane material 32, i.e., in the surface of a planar wide micro structure and inside the matrix 33 so that they are dissolved therein (e.g., 31' in FIG. 9). The molecules 31 are accommodated such that the hydrophilic portions are arranged on the surface.
FIGS. 10A and 10B show a multi-channel taste sensor using such a lipid molecular membrane. FIGS. 10A and 10B show three sensing parts of multi-channel electrodes.
In FIGS. 10A and 10B, holes having a diameter of 1.5 mm are formed in a base material, and silver rods are inserted in the holes to provide electrodes. The lipid molecular membrane is applied on the base member to contact the electrodes through a buffer layer.
FIG. 11 shows a taste measuring system using the multi-channel taste sensor described above.
An aqueous solution of taste substances was prepared and put as a solution 11 to be measured in a vessel 12 such as a beaker. A taste sensor array 13 manufactured by arranging lipid membranes and electrodes on an acrylic plate (base member) as described above was put in each solution 11 to be measured. Before the sensor array 13 was used, an electrode potential was stabilized by soaking in an aqueous solution of potassium chloride having a concentration of 1 m mol/l. In FIG. 11, black dots 14-1, . . . , 14-8 represent the lipid membranes.
A reference electrode 15 was prepared as an electrode for generating a reference potential of measurement and put in the solution to be measured. The taste sensor array 13 and the reference electrode 15 were separated from each other by a predetermined distance. The surface of the electrode 15 was covered with a material prepared by fixing potassium chloride having a concentration of 100 m mol/l in agar-agar as a buffer layer 16. Therefore, the electrode system is constituted by silver 2 .vertline. silver chloride 4 .vertline. lipid membrane 3 (14) .vertline. solution to be measured 11 .vertline. buffer layer (potassium chloride 100 m mol/l) 16 .vertline. silver chloride 4 .vertline. silver 2.
Electrical signals from the lipid membranes are supplied as 8-channel signals to buffer amplifiers 19-1, . . . , 19-8 via lead wires 17-1, . . . , 17-8, respectively. Outputs from the buffer amplifiers 19 are selected by an analog switch (8 channel) 20 and loaded to an A/D converter 21. An electrical signal from the reference electrode 15 is also supplied as a reference potential to the A/D converter 21 via a lead wire 18. A difference between the reference potential and a potential from the membrane is converted into a digital signal so as to process in a micro computer 22 and display on an X-Y recorder 23.
In this example, an 8-channel taste sensor is used. The channels comprise a lipid molecular membrane shown in Table 1 which have different response characteristics with respect to a taste in order to obtain large number of taste information, thus reproducing the human sense of taste.
TABLE 1 ______________________________________ No. Name (Abbreviation) ______________________________________ 1. dioctylphosphate (2C.sub.8 POOH) 2. cholesterol 3. trioctylmethyl ammonium chloride (TOMA) 4. oleic acid 5. n-octadecylchloride 6. diphenyl phosphate 7. decylalcohol 8. dioctadecyldimethylammonium bromide (DOAB) 9. lecithin 10. trimethyl stearyl ammoniumchloride (TMSA) 11. oleylamine ______________________________________
It is assumed that an electrode of the taste sensor has a potential profile as shown in FIG. 12. In FIG. 12, an intramembrane potential gradient is expressed as 0 (positive and negative charges are uniformly distributed in the membrane).
When a taste is to be detected and measured by using the lipid molecular membrane (also called simply as a lipid membrane) described above, several new countermeasures are demanded.
For example, when taste quality control is to be performed for discriminating foods having only slightly different tastes or manufacturing foods whose only slightly different tastes must be discriminated, a difference in taste sensor outputs becomes small accordingly. For this reason, a measured value obtained by the sensor must have good reproducibility, and a measured value must not vary.
However, with the conventional taste measurement using the lipid membrane described above, such new demands cannot be satisfied.

Taste sensing method for discriminating in detail taste of substances with high reproducibility by using artificial lipid membranes

Kusagae, Chuo-ku, Fukuoka-shi, Fukuoka-ken

Miwadai, Higashi-ku, Fukuoka-shi, Fukuoka-ken

Takatori, Sawara-ku, Fukuoka-shi, Fukuoka-ken


A unitary garment for enclosing the torso and at least the upper arms and legs of the wearer is provided and has a crotch portion, a collar portion, shoulder portions on opposite sides of the collar portion, sleeve portions projecting outwardly and downwardly from the shoulder portions and a front portion extending between the crotch and shoulder portions and interconnecting the sleeve, shoulder and leg portions. The front portion defines a vertical central opening therein having upper and lower ends the opening upwardly through the collar portion and terminating downwardly adjacent the crotch portion. The sleeve portions are joined to the front portion along vertical opposite sides zones of the front portion extending downwardly from the shoulder portions to approximately the mid-height chest level of the front portions. Opposite side, horizontal openings extend from the central opening a the mid-height chest level of the front portion of the garment outwardly to points closely adjacent the corresponding aforementioned zones and spaced generally two-thirds downwardly therealong from the upper extremities thereof the horizontal openings including slide fastener structure for closing the horizontal openings and incorporating fastener elements slidable outwardly and inwardly along the horizontal openings to open and close, respectively, the horizontal openings.

1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to a jumpsuit or coverall including a removably closable vertical center front opening extending from the collar down to the crotch portion. The jumpsuit or coverall further includes waist ciching fastener means in the area of the center front opening disposed at waist level. Further, the upper opposite side breast areas of the jumpsuit or coverall are provided with horizontal openings extending from the center front opening, (immediately below the lower extremity of the collar) outwardly to the outer limits of the chest areas of the front of the jumpsuit or coverall to which the opposite arms sleeves are secured, the outer limits of the horizontal openings being disposed at locations spaced substantially two thirds the vertical extent of the sleeve seams from the upper limits thereof at the outer extremities of the shoulders of the jumpsuit or coverall. Each of the horizontal openings is provided with a slide fastener including a closure element which opens and closes the corresponding horizontal opening as the element is slid toward and away from, respectively, the corresponding sleeve seam.
2. Description of Related Art
Various different forms of jumpsuit or coverall type garments constructed to facilitate ease in adornment and removal thereof heretofore have been provided such as those disclosed in U.S. Pat. Nos. 1,321,597, 1,326,536, 1,386,950, 1,804,930 and 2,585,840. However, these previously known forms of jumpsuits and/or coveralls do not include the overall combination of structural features of the instant invention.


Systems and methods for identifying potential ablation sites using electrical parameter data are provided. A method includes geometrically isolating an arrhythmogenic substrate in a three-dimensional geometry. The method further includes generating a first cumulative map from a first dataset including electrical parameter data for each vertex in the isolated arrhythmogenic substrate, and generating a second cumulative map from a second dataset including additional data for each vertex. The method further includes generating a third cumulative map from the first and second cumulative maps, and displaying the third cumulative map on the three-dimensional geometry to facilitate identifying potential ablation sites.

Radiofrequency (RF) ablation is often an effective treatment strategy for patients with ventricular tachycardia (VT). To improve efficacy of RF ablation, it is generally desirable to identify locations that, when ablated, will likely reduce VT. For example, when VT is not inducible or not hemodynamically tolerated, a clinician may attempt to identify a VT substrate for ablation during a stable sinus or paced rhythm.
It has been established that arrhythmogenic substrates are closely related to sudden cardiac death in patients. However, the origin and involvement of the substrate in arrhythmias is relatively complex, multifactorial, and often the result of an interplay between an anatomical substrate (e.g., mixtures of viable myocytes and non-viable fibrous tissue, neural imbalance, lack of perfusion, etc.) and transient triggers leading to electrical instability (e.g., low voltages zones, signal fractionation, etc.) including increased automaticity, triggered activity, and re-entry. Such a substrate, particularly at a border zone where conductive tissue is adjacent to non-conductive scar tissue, is important for arrhythmia initiation and maintenance. Further, the mixture of different pro-arrhythmic factors in the substrate may vary significantly between patients, making it more difficult to understand.
Improvements in imaging modality technologies enable collecting additional data (e.g., tissue perfusion, metabolic status, innervation, presence of fibrosis, etc.) on a pro-arrhythmic substrate. However, tools allowing analysis of the border zone of the arrhythmogenic substrate in the ventricle have yet to be developed for electro-anatomical mapping, one of the more widely used technologies for aiding in ablation therapy delivery. In at least some existing systems, when using electro-anatomical mapping, the physician is responsible for investigating the cardiac tissue, mentally compiling various electrical maps, and determining ablation locations.
However, this may result in the physician choosing ablation locations to pursue scar homogenization instead of targeted ablations. Although pursuing scar homogenization may free patients from arrhythmic episodes, targeted ablations are generally more efficient. Further, scar homogenization techniques may take a relatively long time, and a relatively large number of patients (e.g., over 50%) may need to return for additional ablation procedures. Accordingly, it would be desirable to incorporate electrical parameter data to determine suggested ablation locations for a clinician.

Systems and methods for identifying ablation locations using electrical parameter data

St. Jude Medical, Cardiology Division, Inc.


The present invention makes available powerful tools for the study of cancer, based on a novel expression construct for a constitutively active hydrocarbon receptor CA-AhR. The invention further comprises transgenic non-human animals, preferably mammals, expressing CA-AhR in one or more tissues thereof. An animal model based on the transgenic non-human animals forms the basis for novel methods e.g. for the study of cancer; for the screening of compounds, such as drug candidates; for the investigation of the molecular mechanisms of cancer, in particular stomach cancer; for the investigation of the mechanisms of highly differentiated adenocarcinoma etc. Likewise, in vitro models based on transformed cells or cell lines, functionally incorporating the inventive construct are disclosed.

The dioxin/aryl hydrocarbon receptor (AhR) belongs to a specific class of transcription factors, basic helix-loop-helix/Per-Arnt-Sim domain (bHLH/PAS) proteins, which is emerging as an important battery of regulatory factors seemingly designed to respond to environmental cues. Other members of this family include the hypoxia-inducible factor HIF-1α, the rhythmicity regulatory protein Clock, the neuro-regulatory protein Sim, and Arnt, an essential partner factor for all of the factors mentioned above including the AhR (1). Arnt is recruited to the AhR in a ligand-dependent manner to facilitate recognition of xenobiotic response elements of target promoters.
The ligand-activated AhR mediates transcriptional activation of a network of genes encoding enzymes such as CYP1A1, CYP1A2, glutathione S-transferase Ya, UDP-glucuronosyl-transferase 1A6 and NAD(P)H quinone oxidoreductase-1 that function in the oxidative metabolism of xenobiotics (2). Well-characterized ligands of the AhR are polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons formed during combustion processes and polychlorinated dioxins and, coplanar biphenyls that contaminate industrial chemicals and the environment (2). Thus, AhR-mediated signalling pathways provide a first line of defence against potentially toxic environmental pollutants. On the other hand, induction of oxidative metabolic processes by the AhR can also cause the production of highly carcinogenic metabolites, creating a strong link between AhR activation and chemical carcinogenesis (3). In addition, the receptor appears to mediate by as yet unclear mechanisms a wide range of toxic effects by chlorinated dioxins including birth defects, impaired reproductive capacity, and immune suppression (1). A number of independent loss-of-function studies performed by gene disruption in mice have not yielded conclusive information with regard to a possible developmental role of the receptor (4–7). In view of its critical role in mediating metabolic responses to environmental pollutants, the sole biological function of the AhR could therefore be restricted to regulation of adaptive responses to xenobiotics. This notion seems to be corroborated by the fact that a putative physiological function of the AhR remains to be determined. Against this background the present inventors have performed a gain-of-function study to examine possible biological functions of the AhR system. To this end, a constitutively active AhR mutant (CA-AhR) was created and expressed in transgenic nice to study possible AhR-mediated biological effects that are generated in the absence of any exposure to environmental contaminants.

Transgenic mouse expressing constitutively active hydrocarbon receptor


A delta sigma pulse width modulator control circuit uses a delta sigma modulator as a first stage to create a sequence of pulses representing an input control signal. A pulse width modulator weighs each pulse, accumulates the sequence of weighted pulses and defines a pulse width modulated output signal from the accumulated pulses. The pulse width modulated signal is given a randomly generated offset to the time of pulse value transition and an adjacent pulse value matching technique is used to reduce harmonically related noise generation.

The present invention generally relates to an electronic circuit that controls a signal coupled to a load. It more particularly relates to a digital pulse width modulator using a delta sigma modulator as an input stage to control a drive signal to a load.
Industry has long used pulse width modulators (PWM) to supply and control drive to motors, direct-current to alternating-current conversion, power supply regulators, and many other power loads. As is well known, the duty cycle of a square wave may be varied or integrated to create a desired magnitude of an output alternating-current signal. Due to the non-zero switching time in power switching devices, the number of digital transitions per unit time typically determines the thermal power dissipation of systems using these devices. PWM circuits have a fixed number of transitions per unit time.
Traditional PWM applications use a triangle or sawtooth reference waveform to compare against an incoming analog signal (which may, among other things, be an adjustment signal or a feedback signal or both). The digital result of this comparison is a PWM output. Generally, the generation of such an analog triangle or sawtooth reference waveform has been accomplished using precision capacitors, resistors, and current sources as a charge/discharge ramp up/down circuit. While this implementation is not a problem for discrete realizations, implementing such components in an integrated circuit results in components that are hard to control. The components may exhibit non-linear behavior, especially if the integrated circuit technology is optimized for digital operation.
PWM technology is relatively simple, producing a PWM output signal that closely approximates the input signal (within the frequency band of interest), and has a fixed number of digital transitions per unit time. Unfortunately, the fixed frequency nature of traditional PWM technology results in a significant amount of spurious harmonic noise signals which can result in significant electromagnetic interference to other electronic circuits.
Overcoming the problem of harmonic noise has been addressed before, with most methods spreading the harmonic noise by dithering the PWM fundamental frequency or introducing extra transitions in the PWM waveform to tailor the spectrum. This spectrum tailoring, however, does not retain the PWM feature of a fixed number of digital transitions per unit time, which is important for some applications.
Delta sigma modulation (DSM) has been used extensively in analog-to-digital and digital-to-analog conversion, and inputs are typically sampled at a frequency several times higher than the input signal frequency. (Delta sigma modulation is occasionally referred to as sigma delta modulation. The terms are considered interchangeable herein). DSM has the advantage of allowing the shaping of quantization noise in such a way as to significantly reduce the quantization noise at low frequencies relative to the frequency of the switching clock. The output from a DSM circuit is a stream of digital pulses. An average of these digital output pulses over a finite period can be used to represent the input signal, if the averaging period chosen is at least half of the period of the input signal. An additional advantage of DSM technology is that DSM circuits can be built using standard digital CMOS processes for integrated circuits. This is because DSM circuits are usually implemented as switch capacitor circuits which rely on precise capacitor matching rather than absolute capacitor values. A disadvantage of DSM circuits is that the clock frequency employed can be 100 times the frequency of the input signal. This high oversampling of the input signal can be reduced by using alternative approaches by selecting the proper DSM and averaging technique. The high frequency DSM clock results in many more transitions per second, than traditional PWM. Operating a DSM at lower clock frequencies results in more quantization noise in the frequency band of interest, which interferes with resolution of the signal. This increased quantization noise and increased number of transitions per second has not encouraged the use of DSM when a PWM technology has been available.
Thus, in order to overcome the problems associated with the harmonic noise generation and the need for triangle or sawtooth analog signal generation, a unique combination of PWM and DSM technologies has been created.

Delta-sigma pulse width modulator control circuit


An image forming apparatus comprises: a plurality of exposure units, each of the exposure units including a plurality of light emitting elements that are arranged in a main scanning direction; a calculating unit that, with respect to each of the exposure units, calculates a pre-charge period that is a period during which a pre-charge is performed on at least any of the light emitting elements included in a corresponding exposure unit; and an emission control unit that, with respect to each of the exposure units, causes the light emitting elements included in a corresponding exposure unit to emit light such that a pre-charge period of at least any of the exposure units is shifted with respect to pre-charge periods of remaining ones of the exposure units.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an image forming apparatus and an emission control method.
2. Description of the Related Art
Electrophotographic image forming apparatuses, such as laser printers or digital copiers, sometimes use, as an exposure head (optical writing head), an organic electroluminescence (EL) head in which multiple organic EL devices are arranged in a main scanning direction. The consumption current of organic EL devices is lower compared to light emitting diodes (LEDs), or the like, so that the amount of heat generated by an image forming apparatus can be reduced; therefore, size reduction and simplification of the image forming apparatus are achieved.
However, the emission responsiveness of organic EL devices is poor. Therefore, it is common that a pre-charge is performed to apply an instantaneous high voltage (may be a current) to organic EL devices at the start of an emission, thereby improving the emission responsiveness of the organic EL devices; however, in this case, the pre-charge periods of a large number of organic EL devices are overlapped with one another, which results in an increase in the maximum instantaneous current consumption. Specifically, if a plurality of exposure heads is used, the maximum instantaneous current consumption is further increased.
Here, for example, Japanese Patent Application Laid-open No. 2013-109295 discloses a technology for controlling the emission of multiple light emitting diode array (LEDA) heads by lighting down at least any of the LEDA heads to reduce the maximum current consumption when a photoconductor drum is neutralized.
However, the above-described conventional technology does not reduce the maximum current consumption due to a pre-charge.
In view of the above-described problem, there is a need to provide an image forming apparatus and an emission control method that make it possible to reduce the maximum current consumption due to a pre-charge.

Image forming apparatus and emission control method for controlling pre-charge of light emitting elements of exposure units


A tube connection assembly comprises a male member, a female member and a mating member. The male member is provided with a retaining part that is formed with a non-circular cross-section on the outer peripheral part of a male body. The mating member is held by the retaining part, is formed from an elastic material having a C-shape, and has, on a portion thereof, mating parts. The female member is provided with a receiving part in which the male member is inserted, and mating holes and formed through the receiving part. The mating member is held, so as to prevent rotation, by a base part of a retaining part that has a non-circular cross-section as a part of the outer peripheral part of the male body, and decreases or increases in diameter in the radial direction to mate with the female member through insertion into the mating holes.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a tube connection assembly for connecting hoses or pipes that carry fluids.
2. Description of the Related Art
Conventional, a tube connection assembly has been known in JP-A-6-50482. The tube connection assembly has interposed a mating member between a male member and a female member that are connected to pipes or hoses, to connect together the male member and the female member. The mating member is formed by bending, for example, a C-shaped steel wire, or the like, and attaching to the outer peripheral part of a male member, which is circular in its cross-section. When the male member is inserted into the female member in order to connect the male member and the female member, the mating member, fastened to the outer periphery of the male member, is compressed by the inner wall of the female member, and then expands in the radial direction when a mating groove that is formed on the inner peripheral part of the female member is reached, causing the male member and the female member to be locked together by the mating member.
However, in the conventional tube connection assembly, a complex die structure is required to fabricate the mating groove on the inner peripheral part of the female member, causing difficulties in manufacturing. Moreover, because steel wire, or the like, that can be subjected to elastic deformation is used in the mating member, it is difficult to maintain the tolerances of the part that catches, by protruding into the mating groove, within a specific range, and hence there has been a problem with difficulty in insuring a specific mating force. Moreover, while the C-shaped mating member must prevent rotation of the positioning on the outer peripheral part of the male member, the structure to do so is complex, and there has also been a problem in difficulty in the positioning operations.


According to embodiments of the present invention, a first layer of electrically conductive material may be disposed in a recess in a micro-electromechanical system (MEMS) base. An electrically charged gel network may be disposed in the recess on the first layer of electrically conductive material. A second layer of electrically conductive material may be disposed in the recess on the cross-linked co-polymer gel network. A functionalizer may be disposed on the first and the second layers of electrically conductive material.

1. Field
Embodiments of the present invention relate to integrated circuit devices and, in particular, to micro-electromechanical system (MEMS) devices.
2. Discussion of Related Art
Micro-electromechanical system (MEMS) technology is a process technology used to combine electrical and mechanical components to create tiny integrated devices (or systems). MEMS devices may be fabricated using integrated circuit (IC) batch processing techniques and may range in size from a few micrometers to millimeters. MEMS devices and systems have the ability to sense, control, and actuate on the micro scale, and generate results on the macro scale. As a result, MEMS technology may be considered one of the most promising technologies for the twenty-first century, having the potential to revolutionize both industrial and consumer products.
There are limitations in MEMS technology, however. For example, the mechanical parts used are motorized and the motorized parts are built into the devices and systems. This makes manufacture of the MEMS devices and systems very costly. Additionally, the movable parts in MEMS are typically produced in low volumes.

Micro-electromechanical system (MEMS) polyelectrolyte gel network pump


Asynchronous connection-oriented transmission network of the (ATM) network type comprising a plurality of switching nodes (12, 14, 16, 18) interconnected by connection lines, each of these switching nodes being associated with a control point in charge of determining the best route between any source node (12) and any destination node (18) when a connection has to be established therebetween by identifying which ones of the connection lines are eligible based upon the requirement of a quality of service. Such an ATM network is characterized in that each switching node comprises Control ATM Test Application (CATMTA)(22) and a Deamon ATM Test Application (DATMTA)(32) so that, at any time, a user interfacing a source node can test the connectivity of a network connection from the source node to a destination node by initiating a connection procedure wherein a call setup message is sent by the CATMTA of the source node to the destination node and the DATMTA of the destination node sends back an acknowledgment message to the source node.

Different techniques have been developed for transporting information over a network, such as packet switching techniques whereby digitized data is arranged into so-called bit packets, and circuit switching techniques. In packet switching, the bit packets may either be of fixed length like in the Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM) where the packets, also called cells, are all of a conventional fixed length, or be of variable length.
ATM has been recognized as the common base on which different types of services and networks can operate. The ATM technology can efficiently combine the transmission of speech, video, audio (what is commonly called the multimedia traffic) and computer data into the wired network. Furthermore, ATM has proven to scale well from very high speed network infrastructure (the information highways) to customer premises networks. One of the great advantages of the ATM technology is the fact that it can guarantee some level of service when an ATM connection is set up. Such guarantees can correspond to transmission rate, transmission latency and information loss. They can be achieved mainly because the ATM architecture assumes that the transmission media are almost error free.
At the beginning of the ATM technology, there were only Permanent Virtual Connections (PVC). Switched Virtual Connection (SVC) were soon developed. SVCs supported the growth of ATM by providing bandwidth on demand, in real time, to any user destination, with custom-tailored performance to meet the needs of almost any application. From the beginning, SVCs have been integrated to ATM specifications and most ATM customer equipment supports SVCs.
To establish a SVC connection, a routing procedure takes place during which the control point of the source node determines the best route to the destination node. Afterwards, the source control point sends a call setup message, a copy of which is delivered to the control point of every switching node on the route. The call setup message includes all the critical information needed to define and support a connection, and is based upon information contained in the request initiated by an end user or an application. When routing the connection, the network ensures that the selected path has sufficient resources to support the traffic descriptor, bearer capability and Quality of Service (QoS) parameters specified in the call setup message. This is done by the Connection Admission Control (CAC). Then, when the call setup message is received at the destination node, a confirmation message is sent back to the source node which can initiate the exchange of information between the source node and the destination node.
All these procedures for establishing a connection are controlled by the control plane managed by a control point in each node of the network.
ATM networks are getting more and more complex and are being used to handle critical data. Therefore, the control plane is more and more complex and becomes a critical element of such networks. Unfortunately, there is currently no tool to test and verify that the control plane of a network (formed of the control planes of network nodes used in the connection) works properly in a real environment (e.g. a production network).
A solution known as Internet Protocol (IP) "Ping", was been originally designed to check the availability of a path in the IP world and whether a destination device could be reached by sending out an echo ICMP (Internet Control Message Protocol) to the specified destination device and just waiting for an acknowledgment sent back by the destination device. This procedure is mainly used for networks of routers. Even if a "Ping" works, this cannot ensure that a data stream will actually flow because of the connectionless nature of IP. There is no control plane insofar as the path is determined at the time when the data is sent in the network. Furthermore, there are no Quality of Service parameters.
One advantage of the ATM is its ability to integrate the IP protocol. For that, the first step is to define Higher Layer Protocols (HLP) to emulate the LAN protocols above ATM. Thus, LAN emulation and classical IP are widely used. The advantage is that the applications developed on top of an IP stack are still working transparently. Of course, the "Ping" function is still implemented when IP is used on top of these HLPs since, due to the connection-oriented nature of ATM, the connection must be established prior to the data transmission.
The problem with the HLPs is that they require an extra process to actually establish a connection between two users. In fact, an additional server is necessary to translate the addresses of HLPs (e.g. IP addresses) into ATM and vice-versa. That is why each user must first register to the server before doing anything else and in particular trying to do a "Ping". This is not very satisfying for testing the connectivity because the "Ping" procedure may not work for reasons which are unrelated to the control plane such as when the server has failed. Therefore, the HLPs do not integrate the full QoS capabilities of ATM.
Another solution for checking if an ATM connection is working properly is to use Operation Administration Management (OAM) cells. OAM cells were designed to test an ATM network through the user plane. Unfortunately, OAM cells do not trigger the control plane and in particular the Connection Admission Control (CAC). Besides, a connection must be established prior to the use of OAM cells. In fact, OAM cells simply check the physical path but do not test the establishment of a connection characterized by specific traffic parameters.

System for triggering the control plane in an asynchronous connection-oriented transmission network


A multi-band RF transmitter circuit (30) for a wireless communication device combines a plurality of RF transmission blocks into a single transceiver integrated circuit which includes a shared broadband SVGA (32), a shared tunable balun (34), and an output switching network (38) at the output of the balun to support three different frequency bands. The outputs of the multi-band RF transmitter circuit are connected to separate external power amplifier circuits (42-44), where each power amplifier circuit generates an amplified signal for one of the plurality of predetermined frequency bands.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention is directed in general to field of information processing. In one aspect, the present invention relates to a multi-band wireless communication device, system and methodology.
2. Description of the Related Art
With the proliferation of new wireless communication standards and/or services which use different communication frequency channels or bands, wireless communication devices and/or network operators must increasingly be capable of providing services on multiple bands. The need of support multiple transmission/reception channels is also driven by spectrum scarcity when network operators providing services on one particular band are required to provide service on a separate band to accommodate its customers. For example, there are many different frequency bands used for mobile wireless applications, including but not limited to the Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS) frequency bands or frequency ranges designated for the mobile phone operation, such as the UMTS International Mobile Telecommunications (IMT) band operating in the 1.920-2.170 gigahertz (GHz) frequency range, the 3GPP Wideband Code Division Multiple Access (WCDMA) bands, the Personal Communications Services (PCS) band operating in the 1.850-1.990 GHz frequency range, the Digital Communications Services (DCS) band operating in the 1.710-1.880 GHz frequency range, the "900 band" operating in the 880-960 megahertz (MHz) frequency range, the "800 band" operating in the 824-894 MHz frequency range, etc., where each listed frequency band includes both transmit and receive frequencies. Thus, service in a given region could be provided on a GSM system in a 900 MHz frequency band and on a DCS system at an 1800 MHz frequency band, or even a third system, such as a PCS system in a 1900 frequency band. Similarly, service in another region could include an AMPS system in an 800 MHz frequency band and a PCS system in a 1900 frequency band. In this environment, a single network operator may not provide service in a plurality of systems in a given region. In similar fashion, a user of a wireless communication device may require the ability to roam across other systems in the event the user's device is unable to obtain service on one of the systems to which the user subscribes. Thus, mobile phone manufactures often need to design phones that are operable in multiple frequency bands for use by one or more different mobile phone service providers. Similar needs exist for other wireless applications.
While wireless communication devices, such as cellular radio telephones, have been developed which can communicate over a plurality of frequency bands, such devices typically use a transmitter subsystem which includes a dedicated transformer/balun and variable gain amplifier (VGA) for each frequency band. The conventional approach is illustrated in FIG. 1 which depicts a simplified schematic illustration of a conventional transmitter architecture for using as many baluns and VGAs as there are frequency bands. As depicted, a first output 1 from a mixer core (not shown) is fed into a first variable gain amplifier 4 which provides a differential output having a first fixed gain to the first transformer/balun 7 which converts the differential outputs to a single-ended output that is amplified by the first power amplifier 10 into a first transmission signal 13 on a first frequency band. In similar fashion, a second output 2 from a mixer core is fed into a second variable gain amplifier 5 which provides a differential output having a fixed gain to the second transformer/balun 8 which converts the differential outputs to a single-ended output that is amplified by the second power amplifier 11 into a second transmission signal 14 on a second frequency band, and a third output 3 from a mixer core is fed into a third variable gain amplifier 6 which provides a differential output having a fixed gain to the third transformer/balun 9 which converts the differential outputs to a single-ended output that is amplified by the third power amplifier 12 into a third transmission signal 15 on a third frequency band. As can be seen from this example, the inclusion of a dedicated balun and VGA for each band increases the overall device size, cost and power consumption. For example, with a cellular phone covering multiple 2G and 3G bands, twenty percent of the transceiver die area is used for the dedicated baluns and VGAs. Overall design complexity is also increased when using dedicated baluns and VGAs since, with multiple RF blocks or chains, the die routing is more complex, the drive capability must be increased, and the design cycle time is increased.
Accordingly, an improved transmitter design and methodology is needed to overcome the problems in the art, such as outlined above. Further limitations and disadvantages of conventional approaches will become apparent to one of skill in the art after reviewing the remainder of the present application with reference to the drawings and detailed description which follow.


A nail appliqué product for applying dry nail polish to a fingernail. The appliqué has two ends—each of which is functionally useful for coating a fingernail. The two ends are each differently sized so that with each inventive appliqué a user is presented with two different choices of sizes to match to her particular fingernail. In one preferred embodiment, a buffer section also is provided to ensure that the functional and aesthetic integrity is preserved when the appliqué is removed from its backing.

The use of an instant fingernail coating product whereby nail polish is applied to a fingernail by adhesively securing to it a dry form of nail polish has become a preferred mode of attaining a manicure by many users. Such dry nail polish products are disclosed in U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,903,840 and 5,415,903 each of which is incorporated by reference herein.
The nail coating product, or instant nail polish referenced above, confers numerous advantages over conventional, prior art nail polish applied with a brush in a liquid form. The application of instant nail polish is faster, easier and cleaner than conventional nail polish and does not suffer from the numerous encumbrances associated with wet nail polish such as drying time and the concern of smearing or smudging
As disclosed in the applications incorporated by reference herein, a single nail appliqué is substantially sized and shaped to match the surface of a fingernail. However, because nail size varies from person to person it is virtually impossible to design a single nail appliqué that will universally fit every fingernail. To address this problem, the instant inventor has provided multiple appliqués of varying size for each fingernail For instance, in a package of appliqués there will be two different appliqués for each finger—one of them being incrementally more slender than the other
The problem with the above approach is that two sizes per fingernail did not adequately cover a broad range of nail sizes. As a result, the above-referenced nail product was unavailable to consumers with wider or narrower than average fingernails. To address this problem, one solution would be to provide yet additional sizes of appliqués per finger. However, this would make appliqués more expensive, and would require larger packaging and would as such disadvantageously affect both consumers who would be required to pay more per package and retailers who would have to stock and display larger packages
A prior attempt to resolve this problem is disclosed in pending application Ser. No. 11/543,481. In that application, a nail appliqué is presented which has two ends—each of which is differently sized (see FIG. 17). As such, a single appliqué advantageously comprises two different sizes. In this manner, if two such sets of appliqués were included per package, there would be a total of four sizes per finger. Importantly, this doubling of potential nail sizes is achieved without a significant manufacturing expense and furthermore does not require larger sized packaging.
In the above-referenced two-sided appliqué, a handling tab is disposed midway between each end of the appliqué for selectively removing the appliqué from its backing. However, this arrangement suffers from numerous disadvantages. Firstly, the tab is difficult to grasp. Additionally, because the tab is directly connected to the functional portion of the nail coating, when stress is exerted on the tab in order to remove an appliqué the appliqué is often stretched, torn or otherwise deformed—thereby impairing its integrity and usefulness.

Double-ended dry nail polish applique for coating a wide range of fingernail sizes


A CD containing case has a function of ornament and/or fragrance as well as a function of a distinction between one's own product and other's product and an ornamental effect by means of a photograph, a picture, characters or the like on a jacket. It is possible to present an ornamental effect and a fragrant effect to the CD containing case by disposing filling members for use of ornament and fragrance in a space for a hinge portion of a main portion of the CD containing case. The filling members may be disposed in an ornamental case arranged in the space for the hinge portion or disposed in a case portion formed in the hinge portion of the main body. The ornamental case or the case portion may be provided with at least a partition for dividing its interior or with a pivotable lid.

This invention relates to a case for containing a disc such as a compact disc on which a music is recorded, a CD-ROM or a DVD in which various kinds of datum such as a game, a photograph, a software, or the like, and more particularly relates to the disc containing case having a function of ornament and/or fragrance. The "disc" and "case" are hereinafter referred to a "CD" and a "CD containing case", respectively.
Currently, a CD containing case is standardized. In the case where distinctive effect between one's own product and other's product, an ornamental effect, or the like is applied to each of the CD containing cases, a jacket attached to the case performs that effect. Consequently, a photograph, a picture, characters, or the like is expressed on the jacket in order to distinguish one's own CD from other's CD or to perform an ornamental effect.


The present disclosure relates to systems and methods for determining automatically a target field angle of an image capturing device. The method may include obtaining, by the image capturing device, at least two images for determining a target field angle of the image capturing device. The method may also include obtaining a field angle range of the image capturing device. Further, the method may include determining the target field angle by matching the at least two images based on the field angle range.

Field angle is one of important parameters for an image capturing device (e.g., a dome camera), and there is a calibration value of the field angle for the image capturing device. The calibration value usually is an appropriate approximation for marking or identifying the field angle of the image capturing device and generally determined by a manufacturer according to a manufacturing process. However, sometime there is need of an accurate actual field angle. For example, in an application scenario, an image captured by the image capturing device is used to position a subject in another image based on the calibration value. Since the calibration value is the approximation, i.e., not an actual field angle of the image capturing device, (e.g., determining a particular subject that needs to shield, positioning a vehicle registration plate) the actual field angle needs to be determined first.
Taking a dome camera as the image capturing device as an example, the dome camera integrates a camera, a pan-tilt-zoom (PTZ) system, a decoder and a shield, and correspondingly has various functions, e.g., the dome camera can be used to monitor a relatively wide region. The dome camera has different zoom ratios, and each zoom ratio corresponds to a target field angle. However, the target field angle and a mechanical structure of a core of the dome camera has no simply linear relationship. In order to realize fine control requirements, the target field angle thus needs to be determined at each zoom ratio.
In the prior art, the field angle of the dome camera is mainly determined manually. For example, a field angle is assumed first, then a positive/negative error of 3D positioning may be observed, and the field angle increases or decreases accordingly until the accuracy of the field angle meets the requirements. Obviously, in the prior art, the process for determining the field angle of the dome camera results in high labor costs, and the process is complicated and cumbersome, and not suitable for use in many application scenarios.

Systems and methods for determining a target field angle of an image capturing device


A stent for occluding the human ductus arteriosus comprises a length of wire of shape memory effect or superelastic material which is expandable from a relatively straightened state for introduction into the patient to an occluding state wherein the wire defines an occluding anchor part and a spiral anchor part and a straight linking part connecting the two wherein the wire has a series of turns extending over the cross-sectional area of the occluding anchor part.

This invention relates to surgical implants which are commonly known as stents and more particularly to stents for occluding the human ductus arteriosus, cardiac septal defects and other blood vessels needing occlusion. This invention also relates to delivery systems for such stents and to methods of manufacturing such stents.
In the fetus, the ductus arteriosus is a patent vessel connecting the pulmonary artery to the aorta. At birth, a variety of physiological changes cause the ductus to constrict and it becomes permanently closed after one or two days. In a few cases, the ductus fails to occlude completely (patent ductus), allowing blood to flow from the aorta to the pulmonary artery, compromising respiration and circulation. Serious consequences may result.
Conversely, in some other circulatory birth defects in which the ductus has closed naturally, the patient benefits when the ductus is artificially reopened.
Surgical interventions to alleviate a patent ductus arteriosus consist of either surgically ligating the leak path or implantation of a "single umbrella", such as the C R Bard PDA Umbrella. The delivery system for this device is large and it cannot be used in very small children. The clinical approaches currently in use are problematic; the surgery is major, requires significant exposure and has an associated morbidity. Technically, considerable difficulties can be experienced in accurately siting and deploying the umbrella device because of its large delivery system.
As an alternative to surgery, pharmacological agents can be used to constrict the ductus but this technique can only be used in babies and is not always successful. Also such agents have side effects.
There are many designs of stents currently in commercial use, the Gianturco, (EP0282175) Palmatz-Schatz, Wall stent and others are well known in the art. These stents are designed for use in vessels which are several times longer than their diameter and the stents share this aspect ratio. Most designs exhibit spring resistance to radial compression but nevertheless are intended to be approximately parallel sided cylindrical tubes, once implanted. The ductus arteriosus is short with respect to its diameter and as a result conventional stent designs are the wrong shape and tend to migrate. It is quite usual for surgeons to modify existing devices to make them more appropriate for implantation in this procedure. But this is not an ideal solution to the problem.
Existing stents are intended to maintain the patency of diseased blood vessels and to minimise the risk of creating further local disease or trauma. For instance, introduction of a stent can cause intimal hyperplasia by damaging plaques on the vessel wall. Blood flow which impinges on the stent may become turbulent and create further neo intimal proliferation. For these reasons, stents are usually designed with the minimum of material to reduce their surface area.
EP-A-0666065 discloses stents for maintaining the patency of passages in the biliary, urinary or vascular system, wherein the stent is formed of a shape memory alloy (SMA) wire or mesh and can be changed thermally from a first configuration in which it has distal and proximal coiled or mesh cylindrical portions which are spaced apart, into a second configuration in which the proximal portion flares into a funnel shape which increases in diameter away from the distal portion which expands in diameter. However, such stents require a relatively large delivery system.
Other examples of stents based on SMA wire for maintaining the patency of vessels are disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 3,868,956 and U.S. Pat. No. 4,512,338.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,192,301 and DO 233303 disclose a number of occluding stents for the ductus arteriosus based on SMA materials. However, none of these is capable of adopting a small cross-sectional area for delivery to the required site.

Surgical implants and delivery systems therefor


A method for controlling a diesel engine in a vehicle is presented. The engine comprises at least one cylinder, a fuel injector for each cylinder for injecting fuel into the respective cylinder, and a throttle valve for controlling the flow of air into the cylinder. The throttle valve is adjusted to assume a not fully open position if an amount of fuel injected into the at least one cylinder is equal to or less than a fuel injection threshold value.

In a normal operational situation of a vehicle engine, the difference between the exhaust gas temperature, and the ambient air temperature can reach 800° C. or more. The temperature difference can cause large thermal stresses in the exhaust manifold, in turn resulting in a risk of cracks appearing in the manifold. A known way to solve this problem is to use high strength materials for the manifold, which, apart from being expensive, often have the disadvantage of being difficult to process when manufacturing the manifold.
Therefore, inventors herein have recognized it is important to make the manufacturing of exhaust manifolds for internal combustion engines less complex and cheaper and to reduce thermal stresses of an exhaust manifold for an internal combustion engine.
Accordingly, a method for controlling a diesel engine in a vehicle, the engine having at least one cylinder, a fuel injector for each cylinder, and a throttle valve for controlling the flow of air into each cylinder, the method includes: controlling the throttle valve to assume a not fully open position if an amount of fuel injected into the engine cylinder is equal to or less than a fuel injection threshold value.
While applicable to any kind of internal combustion engine with fuel injection and a throttle, the invention is especially advantageous in connection to engines with compression combustion such as diesel engines. The inventors have discovered that diesel engines subjected to a lot of overrun (motor brake), i.e., fuel injection shut-down while the crankshaft is turning, compared to engines subjected to less overrun, present higher amount of material failures in the exhaust manifold. The inventors have also recognised that this problem is growing with further developments in engine technology since there is, especially in diesel engines, an increasing use in overrun situations of power extraction from the engine.
By controlling the throttle valve, if the flow of fuel injected into the cylinder is equal to or less than a fuel injection threshold value, so as to assume a not fully open position, the flow of relatively cold air through the engine, and through the exhaust manifold, will decrease. This will decrease the thermal stresses of an exhaust manifold of the engine when heated. In turn, this will reduce the need to make the manifolds in expensive high-temperature enduring materials.
The not fully open position of the throttle valve can be a position in which the throttle valve is less than fifty percent open, preferably less than twenty percent open. If during a motor brake condition of the engine the throttle valve is less than fifty percent open, the flow of cold air to the exhaust manifold is effectively reduced. The throttle valve being less than twenty percent open further reduces the flow of cold air to the exhaust manifold, while maintaining a sufficiently high pressure in the inlet manifold of most typical vehicle engines.
The fuel injection threshold value can be a predetermined value and is preferably chosen so that at or below it, no or a negligible torque contribution from the fuel injection is given. Thereby, it can be determined that gas passing through the cylinders of the engine will not be heated, and that the exhaust manifold could be exposed to cold gas. It should be noted that the threshold value could correspond to no fuel injection at all taking place.
Preferably, the step of controlling the throttle valve is at least partly based on the engine speed. This provides a possibility to obtain at each given engine speed a good trade-off between the desire to reduce the flow of cold air to the exhaust manifold, and to maintain a sufficiently high pressure in the inlet manifold.
Preferably, the step of controlling the throttle valve is at least partly based on a position of an exhaust gas recirculation valve of the engine.
Preferably, it is determined whether a clutch for a gearbox of the vehicle is engaged, the step of controlling the throttle valve being dependent on the clutch being engaged. In a vehicle with a manual gearbox, determining whether the clutch is engaged contributes to establishing whether the engine is subjected to a motor brake situation.
It should be noted that the invention is also applicable to engines in vehicles with automatic transmission. For example, if fuel injected is equal to or less than the fuel injection threshold value, the throttle valve can be controlled as described above when the automatic transmission is in the highest gear with a so called lockup function engaged, or when the automatic transmission is in a manual mode.
Preferably, it is determined whether the engine speed is above a predetermined engine speed value, the step of controlling the throttle valve being dependent on the engine speed being above the predetermined engine speed value.
Preferably, the temperature of an exhaust manifold of the engine is determined, and the step of controlling the throttle valve is based on the exhaust manifold temperature. In a preferred embodiment, it is determined whether the temperature of the exhaust manifold is above a predetermined manifold temperature value, and the step of controlling the throttle valve is dependent on the exhaust manifold temperature being above the predetermined manifold temperature value. Thereby, unnecessary throttling, for example, immediately after a cold start of the engine when the exhaust manifold is not yet hot, can be avoided.

Internal combustion engine and a method for such an engine


A frame to cell converter (413) uses a process for converting a data transmission stream for transportation in a cell-based network (102). The frame to cell converter (413) receives a data transmission stream from a data source to produce a received data transmission stream. The received data transmission stream may be either a synchronous data stream or an asynchronous data stream. An address translation is performed based on the data source to produce a unique address identifier. The unique address identifier and a portion of the received data transmission stream are employed to create an ATM cell (238) for transportation within the cell-based network (102).

In presently available communications systems, the use of asynchronous transmission mode (ATM) technology is becoming a method of choice. In particular, ATM cells are used within telecommunications switching networks and may carry a wide variety of traffic types from different applications such as data, voice, image, and video. Furthermore, the use of CDMA for wireless communications systems is becoming a method of choice for data and voice transport due to its inherent variable rate traffic channel frame organization. The influence of variable-length packet transport inherent to CDMA and fixed-length cell-switching inherent to ATM requires efficient conversion techniques at the interface between the wireless transport and the switching network. In the conversion of data streams into ATM cells, the presently available systems focus around transporting CDMA speech packets via variable rate packets utilizing off-the-shelf segmentation and reassembly (SAR) devices, or data optimized conversion devices, yielding a more complex and costly implementation. Additionally, presently available systems provide for segmentation and reassembly (SAR) of packets in which large packet data units (PDUs) are converted into ATM cells for transport within a cell-based switching network. In converting large PDUs into ATM cells, expensive host memory and wide buses such as PCI-based architecture are required, thereby increasing the cost and preventing efficient transport of voice data within the cell-based switching network.
Existing commercial off-the-shelf SAR devices are available to perform constant-bit-rate (CBR) and/or variable-bit-rate (VBR) traffic to ATM cell conversion. SAR involves chopping packets into cells and reassembling them for multiple receive cells to form a single large packet. More information on off-the-shelf SAR devices may be found in IgT AAL 5 SAR Processor, WAC-020-A; Data Sheet, Motorola SPS ATM AAL SAR Controller With Framer, MC92516; Data Sheet, TI SAR Device with PCI Host Interface, TNETA1562; Data Sheet, TI SAR Device with Integrated 64-bit PCI Host Interface; and, TNETA1570: Data Sheet. However, these devices were developed for desktop applications and are primarily intended to handle data (i.e., non-voice) information. Furthermore, as a result of the intended application, most devices must operate within a PCI-bus environment, relying upon either an integrated or external controller and wide host-memory. Also, in order to expand the range of applications in which these devices may operate, embedded firmware is typically used to perform a specific ATM adaptation layer (AAL) conversion. Therefore, the AAL may be changed by downloading and enabling new firmware. However, the dependence upon firmware to process differing AALs, as well as upon PCI architectures for interacting with computer-based peripheral devices, along with the inability to perform per-VC mixed mode AALs (e.g., AAL 1 or AAL 5 simultaneous on various VC) limits the usefulness of such devices in voice applications. More information on PCI architecture may be found in PCI Local Bus Specification, Rev 2.0, PCI Special Interest Group, Hillsboro, Oreg., or PCI System Design Guide, Rev 1.0, PCI Special Interest Group, Hillsboro, Oreg.
In particular, PCS systems employing the CDMA air-interface utilize variable-rate speech codecs to efficiently utilize the frequency spectrum and to minimize cross-interference among other simultaneous users. Two methods are commonly known in the art for back hauling downconverted and digitized data from a base termination site (BTS) to a transcoder for conversion into a format compatible with the public switch telephone network (PSTN). Since the BTSs are located at separate locations from the central base site controller (CBSC ), separate point-to-point span line interfaces are typically provided between the BTS and the CBSC for backhaul. Backhaul relates to the mapping of information frames onto physical media (e.g., electrical or optical) for transport between the CBSC and the BTSs. Network operators seek to minimize backhaul costs associated with the physical access plant containing the physical connections in a communications system. Different techniques are utilized to achieve this operating efficiency, such as attaining higher utilization (i.e., transport of more calls) on the same fabric. A synchronous backhaul approach may be utilized whereby the variable-rate voice packet is segmented into one or two bit subslots and sent via a 16-kbps synchronous channel via either a T1 or E1 span line. More information on this approach may be found in TIA TR46 Ad-Hoc Group, "Voice Frame Format" by Karl Lewis of Motorola, Aug. 28, 1995. The CDMA air-frame is converted into a synchronous, constant-bit size packet, consisting of 320 bits that are sent at 2 bits/125 microsecond frame over 160 frames.
The synchronous backhaul approach utilizes a 320-bit fixed-length packet that contains the CDMA voice data, synchronization information, and other overhead. By contrast, the asynchronous backhaul approach utilizes variable-sized packets ranging from 13 to 36 bytes plus overhead. The appropriate AAL technique for carrying variable rate data is AAL 5. The AAL 5 method may support packets sizes ranging from 0 to 64 k octets by segmenting each packet into smaller sized groupings for encapsulation within an ATM cell payload. The final cell utilizes 8 octets of the 48-octet payload for AAL 5-specific information. However, observation of the data format present within a CDMA air-frame for 1/8; 1/4; 1/2; and full rate speech shows that the entire air-frame may be encapsulated within a single AAL 5-formatted ATM cell payload even with the fixed synchronous (320-bit or 40-bytes) format.
A second backhaul approach may be utilized whereby the variable-sized packet is encapsulated in an asynchronous packet format (frame relay, FUNI, etc.) and sent via a frame format via either a T1 or E1 span line. The advantage of the asynchronous backhaul technique over the synchronous backhaul technique is that the available bandwidth is used more efficiently since only relevant information is sent per packet transfer (e.g., only 80 plus 24 bits in the asynchronous data stream versus a fixed 320 bits for the smallest packet size in the synchronous data stream). The asynchronous interface will partially utilize a single AAL 5-formatted ATM cell payload (occupying from 8 to 24-bytes plus overhead). Thus, more subscribers/calls may be transported over the same span line than may be supported by the synchronous approach. However, the advantage of the synchronous backhaul technique over the asynchronous backhaul technique is that processing is simplified since the creation of each call is known and fixed in every frame interval, independent of the number of in-progress calls. Furthermore, the synchronous backhaul technique is compatible with the more prevalent circuit switching network topology widely deployed today. As ATM cell-switching experiences rapid growth, an efficient solution must be provided to realize the bandwidth efficiencies of newer asynchronous/packet backhaul while insuring backward compatibility with presently used synchronous backhaul in personal communication system (PCS)/CDMA communications system. In either case (synchronous or asynchronous), the data is optimally transferred within the CBSC utilizing a cell switching system. Therefore, the packet must be converted into an ATM cell utilizing the appropriate ATM adaptation layer (AAL) technique.
Currently, the most prevalent method of transporting data between the BTS and the CBSC is via the synchronous backhaul approach. However, frame-based (asynchronous) backhaul approaches promise better utilization of the backhaul transmission fabric since it utilizes only the amount of bandwidth required rather than a fixed amount of bandwidth, regardless of the amount occupied (as required by the synchronous backhaul approach). The introduction of the asynchronous-based backhaul is dependent upon an efficient method of switching packets within the CBSC. As the CBSC switching technology advances from circuit-switching to cell-switching, the PCS network will contain a significant portion of earlier deployed synchronous BTSs that must continue to be supported by the CBSC. Moreover, due to the physically distributed nature of BTSs (relative to CBSCs), the upgrade/modification process tends to be expensive. Therefore, the CBSC must efficiently convert either synchronous or asynchronous backhaul formats into ATM cells for intra-CBSC transport.
Accordingly, it would be advantageous to have an improved method and apparatus for converting data streams into cells. It also would be advantageous to have a method and apparatus that efficiently processes both synchronous and asynchronous data streams for use in a cell-based network.

Method and apparatus for converting data streams in a cell based communications system