A system and method for detecting molten slag in a tap stream between a steel making basic oxygen furnace (BOF) and corresponding ladle. BOFs are used in the manufacture of steel. An infrared (IR) imaging or detecting device is used to image/view the BOF-to-ladle tap stream, the steam transmitting energy indicative of whether molten steel and/or slag is in the stream at a given time. The imaging device uses mainly long IR wavelengths (e.g. wavelengths of from about 8 to 14 .mu.m) when imaging the molten tap stream, because these wavelengths are less susceptible to being blocked or absorbed by airborne gases and particles frequently found in BOF environments. In certain embodiments, all IR wavelengths other than those greater than about 8 .mu.m are filtered out and are not used to detect slag in the tap stream.

A long-standing problem in the steel making industry has been the ability to control or minimize the carryover of slag during the tapping of a BOF converter. Tapping is the pouring of molten metal from a BOF converter into a corresponding ladle, with the metal flowing from the converter through a taphole defined therein.
During the manufacture of steel, molten iron (known as hot metal) having impurities (e.g. C, Si, Mn, S, P, etc.) therein is typically introduced into a converter vessel known as a basic oxygen furnace (BOF). In the BOF converter, gaseous oxygen (O.sub.2) is injected or jetted onto the hot metal in order to remove the impurities to desirable levels. During this purification process, fluxes such as lime (Cao) and MgO are added into the furnace and combine with oxides such as SiO.sub.2, MnO, and FeO formed during the oxidation process to form molten "slag" in the converter. This slag floats on top of the molten steel in the BOF converter, because the slag's density is less than that of the molten steel.
After the oxygen is introduced into the BOF converter for an extended period of time (e.g. from about 16-25 minutes depending upon the volume of the BOF converter, the amount of molten iron therein, and the grade of the steel to be made) and the molten slag and steel have formed, the converter vessel is tilted and tapped. During tapping, molten steel is poured from a taphole in the side of the BOF converter into a ladle located below same. It is during this tapping that undesirable slag carryover can occur.
When the BOF converter vessel is properly tapped, a small amount of carryover may occur at the beginning of tapping, but the slag carryover of most concern occurs at the end of tapping when most of the substantially purified molten steel has already been poured into the ladle below, and mostly slag (instead of mostly steel) remains in the BOF converter. When a typical BOF converter is tilted to a pouring position for tapping, the molten steel is poured from the taphole located in the side of the converter before the slag is poured, due to the different densities of the two molten materials. If the operator(s) tapping the converter does not stop tapping (or pouring) at about the precise instant when the molten slag begins to flow through the taphole, the undesirable molten slag is also poured into the ladle below on top of the already poured molten steel. When too much slag is poured into the ladle from the BOF converter, this affects the cleanliness and reintroduces impurities such as phosphorus (P) into the steel, adversely affects the aluminum efficiency during tap, and prevents certain grades of steel from being made. Any attempt to remove or minimize the effect of excess slag poured into the ladle is expensive, time-consuming, and/or labor intensive. For example, if too much slag is accidentally poured into the ladle, hundreds of dollars worth of alumina or other slag modifier(s) may have to be added to the molten ladle slag to try to minimize the levels of FeO and other unstable oxides in the slag. In sum, minimizing slag carryover from the BOF converter into the ladle is essential for efficient manufacturing of high quality steel.
Many techniques have been used in an effort to control the carryover of slag during the tapping of BOF converters. For example, see Slag Carryover in Oxygen Converters: an International Review, by Da Silva, Bergman, and Lindfors [pp. 91-95], the disclosure of which is hereby incorporated herein by reference. In this review, numerous methods for controlling the carryover of slag during BOF converter tapping are discussed. For example, it is known to use refractory plugs, metallic plugs, wooden plugs, fiber plugs, gunned clay, dart-shaped floating elements, and ball-shaped floating elements in an attempt to control or minimize slag carryover.
Certain known techniques result in the interruption of the metal pour or tap stream from the converter near the end of tapping in order to minimize slag carryover. Dart-shaped and ball-shaped floating elements are often used for this purpose. In FIGS. 4 and 5 of the above-referenced article, the often unsatisfactory results associated with these conventional methods are illustrated. For example, dart- and ball-shaped floating elements are known to be unsuccessful when the slag is thick or viscous, and it has been found that the positioning of these floating elements inside the converter is both difficult and critical. The structure of the taphole also affects the effectiveness of these types of floating elements. As discussed in the article, some steel plants have reported that the balls sometimes close the taphole too early, which results in the leaving of purified molten steel (affecting yield) in the converter or extending the tap time (this is both expensive and inefficient). Accordingly, it is known in the art that while floating elements may help to minimize slag carryover, they are often inefficient and the results are unpredictable. Still further, both balls and darts are undesirably expensive.
Despite the fact that so many slag carryover prevention techniques are known, it is stated at the conclusion of the above-referenced article that "none of the methods in use today can be considered to be of universal application, since each has its limitations and can only reach the expected results if specific conditions exists." In other words, there has existed a longstanding need in the art for a system and corresponding method for minimizing the carryover of slag during the tapping of BOF converters, which is usable in different environments by operators of different skill levels. No known technique has, to date, been found to be satisfactory in all commercial steel-making environments because many techniques are not considered to be efficient enough and others are too expensive for use with ordinary steel grades.
In view of the inefficiency and non-effectiveness of known BOF slag carryover prevention methods, many steel plants simply rely upon operators to visually detect when the slag portion of tapping is reached. Unfortunately, this method of slag carryover prevention is inefficient at best, as it is nearly impossible for most humans to visually observe any visible difference between purified molten steel being poured from the converter taphole and molten slag being poured from the taphole [both are molten and yellow to white-hot].
U.S. Pat. No. 4,222,506 discloses another method for controlling slag carryover, primarily directed toward detecting slag in a pour from a ladle into a tundish. In the '506 patent, an infrared (IR) camera looks at the molten metal being poured and attempts to detect the presence of slag therein. Unfortunately, it has been found that the system disclosed in the '506 patent is inefficient and is incapable of easily, satisfactorily, and consistently detecting BOF-to-ladle slag in steel mill environments. In column 2 of the '506 patent, an emissivity value of about 0.28 is mentioned. As can be seen below, this emissivity value may indicate that short IR wavelengths in the short-IR region (i.e. at approximately 3-5 .mu.m) are being measured by the camera in the '506 patent in order to detect slag. However, it is important to note that the '506 patent does not recognize or appreciate any importance to any potential wavelength. It has been found that utilizing short IR wavelengths in this range is insufficient to efficiently detect the tapping of slag in BOF-to-ladle steel mill environments. Accordingly, the '506 patent suffers from at least the following problems.
First, the environment within which a BOF converter is tapped so as to allow molten steel to flow into a ladle often includes much more airborne dust, smoke, gases, and particulate matter than ladle-to-tundish environments. During BOF converter tapping, much smoke, gas, and particulate matter is typically emitted into the air surrounding the tap stream. This, at times, makes it very difficult for humans to view the tap stream through the smoke, gases, and other airborne particulate matter. Airborne particulate matter can block radiation with wavelengths smaller than the size of the particle(s). In the BOF environment, the size of the particles is such that the long wavelengths of radiation are most likely able to reach an IR camera. Smaller wavelengths on the other hand will often be blocked. Because short (near) IR wavelengths, including those in the range indicated by the '506 patent, are susceptible to being blocked by dust and other airborne particulate matter, the system of the '506 patent at times is unable to accurately differentiate between slag and steel during tapping.
Second, the gases emitted during BOF-to-ladle tapping also have an adverse effect upon the IR wavelengths indicated by the '506 system. As will be discussed herein, gases such as CO.sub.2 and H.sub.2 O emitted proximate the tap stream in BOF environments absorb certain IR wavelengths, notably those in the 3-5 .mu.m range (e.g. at about 4.2 um). Thus, in BOF environments, the wavelengths used in the '506 patent often cannot be seen by the IR camera. This is yet another problem, because, without seeing these wavelengths, the image is unclear and the '506 camera may not be able to differentiate between slag and steel during tapping.
A third problem with the slag detection system of the '506 patent is that it appears to be positioned rather close to the molten tap stream being poured from the ladle into the tundish. It has been found by the instant inventors that the positioning of an IR camera in close proximity to a tap stream sometimes results in less than satisfactory tap stream slag readings due to the high temperature background surrounding the tap stream in BOF environments. When aiming the camera at the mouth of the ladle, the background is undesirably bright slag in the ladle, and this tends to affect the clarity of the image. Because of the appearance of a "hot" background, it may be difficult to differentiate between slag and steel in the '506 patent.
In view of the above, it is clear that the system of the '506 patent is less than desirable in BOF environments for many reasons. This is believed to be a result of the '506 patent being primarily designed for detecting the presence of slag in a ladle-to-tundish environment, as opposed to a BOF-to-ladle environment where many more gases and other airborne particulate matter are present. It is noted, however, that the '506 patent does discuss and illustrate that it is also possible to use it in the work of a converter into a ladle.
Still another approach used by many in the trade to minimize slag carryover in BOF environments is the positioning of electromagnetic coils on BOF converter tapholes. By monitoring such a coil(s), it is possible to determine when slag is beginning to flow through the corresponding taphole. Upon the coil detecting slag, the taphole may be closed or the converter may be tipped upward to stop tapping. Unfortunately, electromagnetic coils are problematic in that they are positioned within the converter, and often break down or fail rather frequently. Another problem with coils is that they produce only an alarm, while the melter (i.e. operator) is still looking at the tap stream to make sure that slag is being poured before stopping tap. With slag splashing, converters operate for months and months at a time through many heats (e.g. up to about 20,000 heats or for up to one and one half years). Thus, if the coil in the taphole fails, there is no way to replace or perform maintenance on it without stopping BOF operation. In all practicality, there can be no new coil until the next BOF refractory relining. This is highly undesirable, reduces yields, cuts down on efficiency, and quickly becomes rather expensive.
It is apparent from the above that there exists a need in the art for a system and method for minimizing the carryover of slag during the tapping of a BOF converter in the manufacture of steel, wherein the system/method improves reliability relative to prior art techniques, has a higher success rate than prior art techniques, results in improved slag detection, and reduces maintenance costs relative to known techniques.
It is a purpose of this invention to fulfill the above-described needs in the art, as well as other needs which will become apparent to the skilled artisan from the following detailed description of this invention.

System and method for minimizing slag carryover during the tapping of a BOF converter in the production of steel


The present invention provides a method and apparatus for processing primitives in a computer graphics display system. The present invention comprises a geometry accelerator for processing polygons to provide two-sided lighting for front and back facing polygons. The geometry accelerator comprises a lighting machine and a memory device in communication with the lighting machine. The geometry accelerator receives command data, vertex data, and parameter data from a central processing unit (CPU) of a computer graphics display system. The vertex data comprises polygon vertex color data, vertex coordinate data and vertex normal data. The parameter data comprises front and back material parameters. The command data comprises information relating to the type of primitive to be processed by the lighting machine. The geometry accelerator looks at the command data to determine whether the polygon is a front or back facing polygon and informs the lighting machine as to whether the polygon is a front or back facing polygon. The lighting machine will then fetch the correct set of material parameters and use them to calculate lighting.

Computer graphics display systems are commonly used for displaying graphical representations of objects on a two-dimensional video display screen. Current computer graphics display systems provide highly detailed representations and are used in a variety of applications. A computer graphics display system generally comprises a central processing unit (CPU), system memory, a graphics machine and a video display screen.
In typical computer graphics display systems, an object to be presented on the display screen is broken down into graphics primitives. Primitives are basic components of a graphics display and may include points, lines, vectors and polygons (e.g., triangles and quadrilaterals). Typically, a hardware/software scheme is implemented to render, or draw, the graphics primitives that represent a view of one or more objects being represented on the display screen.
Generally, the primitives of the three-dimensional object to be rendered are defined by the host CPU in terms of primitive data. For example, when the primitive is a triangle, the host computer defines the primitive in terms of the X, Y and Z coordinates of its vertices, the normals of the vertices, N.sub.x, N.sub.y and N.sub.z, and the red, green, blue and alpha (R, G, B and .alpha.) color values of each vertex. Alpha is a transparency value. Additional primitive data may be used in specific applications. Rendering hardware interpolates all of this data (hereinafter referred to as vertex data) to compute the display screen pixels that represent each primitive, and the R, G, B and .alpha. values for each pixel.
The graphics machine generally includes a geometry accelerator, a rasterizer, a frame buffer controller and a frame buffer. The graphics machine may also include texture mapping hardware (not shown). The geometry accelerator receives vertex data from the host CPU that defines the primitives that make up the view to be displayed. The geometry accelerator typically comprises a transform component which receives vertex data from the CPU, a clipping component, an illumination component, and a plane equations component. The transform component performs transformations on the vertex data received from the CPU, such as rotation and translation of the image space defined by vertex data. The clipping component clips the vertex data so that only vertex data relating to primitives that make up the portion of the view that will be seen by the user is kept for further processing. The illumination component calculates the final colors of the vertices of the primitives based on the vertex data and based on lighting conditions. The plane equations component generates floating point equations which define the image space within the vertices. The floating point equations are later converted into fixed point equations and the rasterizer and texture mapping hardware generate the final screen coordinate and color data for each pixel in each primitive.
The operations of the geometry accelerator are computationally very intense. One frame of a three-dimensional (3-D) graphics display may include on the order of hundreds of thousands of primitives. To achieve state-of-the-art performance, the geometry accelerator may be required to perform several hundred million floating point calculations per second. Furthermore, the volume of data transferred between the host computer and the graphics hardware is very large. The data for a single quadrilateral may be on the order of, for example, 56 words of 32 bits each. Additional data transmitted from the host computer to the geometry accelerator includes illumination parameters, clipping parameters and any other parameters needed to generate the graphics display.
One way of improving the throughput of the geometry accelerator is to minimize the overall amount of data that must be processed by it. One way to do this is to minimize redundancy in the data being sent to the geometry accelerator. The illumination component of the geometry accelerator receives red, green, blue and alpha (R, G, B and .alpha.) data, X, Y, and Z data, and N.sub.x, N.sub.y and N.sub.z, data for each primitive received by the geometry accelerator. The X, Y and Z coordinates define the locations of the vertices of the primitives on the display screen whereas the N.sub.x, N.sub.y and N.sub.z, data define the directions of the normals of the vertices of the primitives. The illumination component also receives light material parameters and light source parameters. The material parameters specify the material of which the model is comprised. The light source parameters specify the location of the light source in 3-D space with respect to the model and the direction of the light. The illumination component processes all this data and outputs new R, G and B data for each vertex.
Some computer graphics display systems are capable of supporting two-sided lighting. In order to support two-sided lighting of models being displayed, the illumination component in such a system receives two sets of material parameters, one for the front-facing primitives and one for the back-facing primitives. Generally, each set of material parameters includes parameters which describe how the material reflects ambient light, diffuse light and specular light, as well as how the material emits light. Currently, the architecture of computer graphics display systems is such that whenever the primitive being received by the illumination component is facing in a different direction from the previous primitive, a new set of material parameters is sent to the illumination component, along with the R, G, B and .alpha. data, the X, Y, and Z data, and the N.sub.x, N.sub.y and N.sub.z data defining the vertices of the primitive. Thus, the more often the direction in which the primitives are facing changes, the more often new sets of material parameters must be sent to the illumination component. This presents a substantial performance penalty which reduces throughput of the geometry accelerator and of the computer graphics display system as a whole.
In some systems which support two-sided lighting, the determination as to which direction the polygon is facing is made in the graphics hardware. This is generally the case in more recent computer graphics display systems. In other systems which support two-sided lighting this determination is made by the Application Program Interface (API) which is the software interface between the host CPU and the graphics hardware. This is generally the case with older systems. It is also known to allow the user to specify which direction the polygons are facing. With respect to systems which make the determination as to polygon direction in the graphics hardware, these systems generally do not support older APIs which make the determination as to polygon direction in the API software.
Accordingly, a need exists for a method and apparatus which maximizes the processing speed and efficiency of the geometry accelerator by reducing the amount of data being sent to it to provide a geometry accelerator with increased throughput while providing support for many different APIs.

Method and apparatus for processing primitives in a computer graphics display system


In one example, a media size detector includes a button coupled to a spring of a housing to interact with a media size adjuster of a media tray, a first side of a lever to receive pressure from the spring when the button is depressed by the media size adjuster, and a second side of the lever to apply pressure to activate or deactivate a switch coupled to a printed circuit assembly when the first side of the lever receives pressure from the spring.

Printing devices can utilize a number of different methods for generating images on media, The media can include print media such as paper, plastic, etc. In some examples, the printing devices can utilize a plurality of different size media. In some examples, the printing devices can include media trays to store and provide media to a print zone, In some examples, the media trays can include a media size adjuster that can be utilized to adjust the media tray for a particular size of media, In some examples, the size of the media can have different settings and/or configurations for printing.

Hewlett-Packard Development Company, L.P.


A support structure for the support of evaporative air cooler consisting of a mounting transition between the evaporative cooler and the ductwork of the installation. The mounting transition includes a means of fixing the evaporative air cooler to the transition without the use of fasteners, support and concealment of telescopic corner supports and support of an anti draft shutter assembly. The mounting transition also provides for the transitioning of air flow from a circular fan discharge to a square duct, and serves as a transportation pallet which can also be used as an installation aid.

The present invention relates to the support for transportation, installation, support after installation and structural integrity of fixed evaporative air coolers.
Evaporative air coolers are used to cool domestic and industrial premises. These coolers are normally mounted on the roof of the premises directly connected to the ductwork used to convey the air from the cooler to an air distribution system within the ceiling space under the roof of the building. The cooler must therefore generally have sufficient structural integrity to support its own weight under all weather conditions and for very long periods of time. Such structural integrity is usually incorporated in the structural design of the cooler components, in particular, the base of the cooler.
A further requirement for evaporative coolers, particularly those fitted with an axial flow fan, is to provide an airflow transition between the circular shape at the discharge of the fan and the generally square shape of the ductwork to which the airflow of the cooler is to be transmitted. This transition is generally provided by a separate transition piece between the fan discharge and the connection to the ductwork.
During the manufacture, storage, transportation and installation of evaporative coolers, it is necessary to provide additional support and strength to the cooler to withstand the rigors of movement and external impacts. This support is generally provided by mounting the cooler on a disposable shipping pallet during the manufacturing process, which is subsequently discarded once the cooler is installed at the customers"" premises. The shipping pallet must provide for access and pickup by a conventional forklift in addition to its cooler support function. The shipping pallet is generally manufactured from timber or other low cost materials, but still presents a cost that does not form part of the ultimate value of the cooler. In addition, timber pallets are often broken in transport resulting in further losses as damage to the cooler.
Traditionally, all of these requirements are met by incorporating in the cooler a base of sufficient structural integrity to support the cooler, a transition piece to match the fan outlet and ductwork connection shapes, and a low cost pallet for transportation and handling.
Other solutions to this problem in the market place utilise a plastic moulded pallet to support the cooler, which also contributes to the structural integrity of the cooler base. The pallet is left attached as a permanent part of the cooler after its installation. However, this results in an objectionable appearance to the final installation since the projections necessary to allow forklift access are left starkly visible underneath the cooler. Alternatively, the installer is required to physically remove the projections requiring additional effort and still with a compromise as to appearance.
During installation of the cooler, the installer is often faced with the problem of manoeuvring the entire cooler to a level orientation single-handed. It is essential the cooler be set level at installation for correct operation. This can be a difficult operation when the entire weight of the cooler has to be supported and orientated while fitting the fasteners to the discharge ducting through the roof.
Fixing of the cooler to the ducting presents further problems to the installer. Generally, fasteners are applied directly through the cooler base or an extension thereof to the ducting. This invariably requires the installer to access a small and difficult space beneath the cooler, and the physically difficult task of driving the fasteners through to the duct. Generally, this would necessitate two persons to remain with the cooler during the fitting of fasteners, whereas the task of fixing the cooler would be immediately completed if it could be fitted in its final position without the need for fasteners.
In some localities, particularly the USA, there are local requirements that the cooler be supported on the roof independently of the discharge ducting. In practise, this requires the fitment of support legs at the corners of the cooler. Such support legs must have sufficient strength and rigidity to support the cooler under all operating conditions. There are many methods of fitting and holding the support legs in the prior art, including our Australian patent application no. 23501/97 and its U.S. counterpart U.S. Pat. No. 6,047,935 for a telescoping leg, which is contained within the corner post of the cooler. The telescoping leg has the added advantage of being infinitely adjustable for all roof slopes and can easily be set to provide a pre-load of support to the cooler in the set position, thereby ensuring that all load is relieved from the ducting. However; from the perspective of an attractive appearance to the cooler once installed, it is necessary to hide all of a telescoping leg other than that portion which is directly supporting the cooler.
Our previous Australian provisional application no. PQ 4584 describes a weatherseal mechanism fitted to the discharge of an axial fan cooler with unique features including the complete absence of protrusions in the airstream to disturb the flow of air. As described in that application, the weatherseal mechanism is supported and hinged within the support structure described in this application. Such a mechanism is only possible with a support structure that becomes a part of the cooler once it is installed, and is an integral part of the cooler structure.
The present invention addresses all of these problems in the design of the features built into transition support mechanism of the cooler.
A support structure for the support of evaporative air cooler consisting of a mounting transition, a means of fixing said evaporative air cooler to said transition without the use of fasteners, a means of supporting and concealing telescopic corner supports, a means of supporting an anti draft shutter assembly, a means of transitioning air flow from a circular fan discharge to a square duct, and a transportation pallet which also serves as an installation aid.

Transition support for evaporative cooler


Providing interferer diversity is disclosed. A received wireless signal is processed to obtain a first processed signal in which a desired information is translated to a first frequency in a first Nyquist zone. The received wireless signal processed to obtain a second processed signal in which the desired information is translated to a second frequency in the first Nyquist zone. The second frequency is different than the first frequency.

When trying to receive a desired radio signal, one or more undesired signals/noise may interfere with the desired signal. The interference makes it difficult to receive the desired signal. Filters have been used to remove the undesired signals/noise, but in many cases filters cannot completely reject all interferers, e.g., those that are in the desired frequency band, close in frequency, or have spurious products generated during processing that are close in frequency, to the desired signal.
"Interferer diversity" has been used to minimize the impact of interference, e.g., from one or more interference sources or "interferers". Interferer diversity refers to minimizing the impact that an interferer or group of interferers has on receiving the desired signal. To date, however, interferer diversity typically has been achieved by using different receiver/antenna combinations or by frequency hopping, which may not be practical or desirable in all cases. Therefore there exists a need to improve interferer rejection.


An algorithm is disclosed for performing alien-wavelength channel balancing on channels between optical network elements within an optic-fiber communications system. The algorithm determines initial values of various optimization parameters for each of the channels, such as the input launch power and operating conditions of optical amplifiers in the optical path, and calculates an initial total optimization offset for the channels based on the initial values of the optimization parameters for each of the channels. The algorithm then adjusts the optimization parameters to new values and calculates a new total optimization offset based on the new optimization parameter values. The algorithm repeats this process until the relative channel launch powers and optical amplifiers are optimized.

1. Technical Field of the Invention
The present invention relates in general to communication systems, and in particular, to wavelength division multiplexing (WDM) fiber-optic communication systems.
2. Description of Related Art
In fiber-optic communication systems, wavelength-division multiplexing (WDM) is commonly used to multiplex multiple optical carrier signals (channels) onto a single optical fiber by using different wavelengths (colors) of laser light to carry different signals. Traditionally, the only optical interfaces available on equipment connected to the client side of WDM transmission equipment were not wavelength-controlled and were only suitable for short reach transmission. However, router vendors are increasingly adding dense WDM (DWDM) long reach interfaces as options on their products. The availability of these client side DWDM interfaces has led to a demand for "alien wavelength" transport over WDM transmission equipment, i.e. the direct connection of the third party DWDM optical signal to the transmission equipment optical multiplexer.
The optimum line operating conditions and relative channel powers need to be determined on systems carrying these alien wavelengths. On WDM long haul systems employing transponders from only one vendor, the optimum signal levels through the line together with the optimum channel powers could be determined by accessing the pre FEC error counters at the far end transponders. However, when transporting alien wavelengths, the WDM signals may be generated and received by equipment supplied by other manufacturers, and it is generally not practical to access the third party equipment pre FEC error counters.
Transmitting all channels at the same power is an adequate solution in metro/regional systems when all the channels have similar transmission characteristics. However, there is increasingly a need to support OC-48, OC-192, OC-768 and 100 GbE simultaneously within one system. A variety of modulation formats exist for transporting these signals, each with there own transmission requirements. Therefore, a need exists for automatically optimizing a line and adjusting the relative channel powers to obtain the best possible performance in a system carrying different traffic types originating from a multitude of different manufacturers equipment.

Alien wavelength channel balancing and line amplifier optimization


The present invention relates to cryptographic method that are resistant to fault injection attacks, to protect the confidentiality and the integrity of secret keys. For that, the invention describes a method to protect a key hardware register against fault attack, this register being inside an hardware block cipher BC embedded inside an electronic component, said component containing stored inside a memory area a cryptographic key K, characterized in that it comprises following steps: A.) loading the key Kram inside said register; B.) computing a value X such as K=BC(K,X); C.) after at least one sensitive operation, computing a value V such as V=BC(K,X); D.) matching the value V with the key Kram value stored in the memory area; E.) if the matching is not ok detecting that a fault occurs.

Cryptographic operations are used for a variety of processes such as data encryption and authentication. In a typical symmetrical cryptographic process, a secret key is known by two or more participants, who use it to secure their communications. In systems using asymmetric (or public key) cryptography, one party typically performs operations using a secret key (e.g., the so-called private key), while the other performs complementary operations using only non-secret parameters (e.g., the so-called public key). In both symmetric and asymmetric cryptosystems, secret parameters must be kept confidential, since an attacker who compromises a key can decrypt communications, forge signatures, perform unauthorized transactions, impersonate users, or cause other problems.
Methods for managing keys securely using physically secure, well-shielded rooms are known in the background art and are widely used today. However, previously-known methods for protecting keys in low-cost cryptographic devices are often inadequate for many applications, such as those requiring a high degree of tamper resistance. Attacks such as reverse-engineering of ROM using microscopes, timing attack cryptanalysis (see, for example, P. Kocher, Timing Attacks on Implementations of Diffie-Hellman, RSA, DSS, and Other Systems; Advances in Cryptology CRYPTO '96, Springer-Verlag, pages 104-113), and error analysis (see, for example, E. Biham and A. Shamir, Differential Fault Analysis of Secret Key Ctyptosystems; Advances in Cryptology; CRYPTO '97, Springer-Verlag, 1997, pages 513-525) have been described for analyzing cryptosystems.
Ciphers and algorithms believed to be cryptographically secure are known in the background art. For example, protocols using triple DES (a cipher constructed using three applications of the Data Encryption Standard using different keys) can resist all feasible cryptanalytic attacks, provided that attackers only have access to the standard inputs to and outputs from the protocol. However, even a product using an extremely strong cipher such as triple DES can be insecure if the attacker can generate a physical (perturbation), such as fault.
These attacks are very critical if they occur on a Key register. Indeed, a special feature of the key register, embedded in most of cryptographic elements, is that it is not possible to read it. Allowable actions are generally "use-it" or "load-it".
The "use-it" command permits to use such register during a cryptographic computation, the "load-it" command permits to load a key inside such register. Such registers are used, for example inside hardware cryptographic blocks cipher.
Such attacks can be operating as follow:
The attacker physically targets at least one bit of a register of the block cipher (he knows which bit position is attacking and we consider that the attack always causes the same perturbation (1−>0 or 0−>1)).
If the result of the block cipher execution is false or if it has no result (the fault has been detected), he knows that the previous value of the bit targeted was 1. Otherwise, (after several tentative), if the result is correct the targeted the previous value of the targeted bit was 0. By attacking bit after bit allows an attacker to retrieve all bits of the secret.
To implement such attack, the attacker can redo the same fault, several times. This attack is very efficient if it occurs during the key loading step or when the key has been loaded in the key register because the register is easy to locate into the block cipher. The impact of the attack will be readable after the block cipher execution (done with the modified key value).
Currently available protection mechanisms are implemented off-line and are not suitable for all applications. For example, existing mechanisms would not offer protection to session keys, which are generated as needed rather than in advance.
Hagai Bar-El et al., in "The Sorcerer's Apprentice Guide to Fault Attacks", Discretix Technologies White Paper, given at Workshop on Fault Detection and Tolerance in Cryptography, Florence Italy, 30 Jun. 2004 (Cryptology ePrint Archive (eprint.iacr.org) Report 2004/100; also, CiteSeer article 705084), describe various methods of implementing such fault attacks on electronic cryptographic circuits, and suggest a number of countermeasures. The countermeasures mainly involve introducing redundancy in which operations are recomputed and the results compared, on the assumption that identical faults cannot be replicated. The resulting system is admitted to be slower and less efficient, but that is conceded to be part of the cost of security.
Other known counter measures exist for specific algorithm such the DES/3DES (for Data Encryption Standard and Triple Data Encryption Standard), as known in the patent WO2010046251.
The solution proposed in the invention is not applicable to all block ciphers, because based on a mathematical property of the DES algorithm.

Cryptographic method for protecting a key hardware register against fault attacks


The present invention is related to the field of bioprotection, in particular to an antimicrobial composition comprising a Lactobacillus rhamnosus strain and/or a Lactobacillus paracasei strain. Furthermore, the present invention concerns uses for such an antimicrobial composition, food, feed and pharmaceutical products comprising such an antimicrobial composition, a method of manufacturing such food, feed and pharmaceutical products and a method for reducing the content of unwanted microorganisms of such food, feed and pharmaceutical products.

Bioprotective cultures are used as alternatives to chemical preservatives in different food applications. In dairy products, contamination with yeast and molds may limit the shelf life of the dairy products. One product area experiencing significant yeast and mold contamination problems includes fresh cheeses.
Bioprotective solutions to overcome these problems have been developed by the dairy industry. Some of the most well-known and probably most commonly used antifungal bioprotective solutions on the market are the HOLDBAC™ YM-b and HOLDBAC™ YM-C cultures from Danisco that both contain combinations of subspecies of Propionibacteria and Lactobacillus.
The use of propionic acid bacteria together with lactic acid bacteria for inhibition of microorganisms has been disclosed in the patent applications US 2005/0095318 and WO 2004/041305.
Propionibacteria ssp. are believed to contribute to the antifungal activity mainly through the production of propionic acid but also through the production of acetic acid and other meta bolites.
However, these species are rather costly to produce in an industrial scale and the production of propionic acid may cause unwanted sensory properties in the final dairy products.
Other antifungal bioprotective solutions on the market for dairy products include Lyofast LPRA from SACCO as well as Aroma-Prox® RP80 from BIOPROX. Both of these products contain combinations of Lactobacillus plantarum and Lactobacillus rhamnosus.
Tharmaraj and Shah (2009) describe the screening for bioprotective lactic acid bacterial candidates for cheese-based dips. All strains of Lactobacillus rhamnosus and Lactobacillus paracasei tested as single strains showed maximum inhibitory effect against yeasts and molds. However, no combinations of Lactobacillus rhamnosus and Lactobacillus paracasei were examined.
Thus, there is an industrial need to develop improved bioprotective solutions which omit Propionibacteria ssp. without compromising the antifungal effectiveness.

This patent is subject to a terminal disclaimer.


A tiered display unit includes a frame assembly. The frame assembly includes a first side support structure having a plurality of support members that form at least one tier, a second side support structure having a plurality of support members that form at least one tier and a plurality of cross members that connect the first support structure to the second support structure. Select cross members of the plurality of cross members include a pair of elongated components that are spaced apart from each other and occupy an area that is the same as the non-selected cross members. The space between the pairs of elongated components of the select cross members are configured to receive hooks for mating display accessories to the frame assembly.

Businesses, such as retail stores, use a variety of display structures to present products and related information to customers for purchase. Hang bars or crossbars are components that are used with display structures to support hanging products that are being offered for sale. These hang bars or crossbars fit with gondola display units or other types of display units to provide a structure for receiving hanging-type retail merchandise or for receiving other types of hardware and accessories that display merchandise.
The discussion above is merely provided for general background information and is not intended to be used as an aid in determining the scope of the claimed subject matter.


A conventional mass-spring inertially controlled anti-G suit valve is modified by adding a first electrically actuated solenoid over the mass and valve spindle and a second electrically actuated solenoid over an anti-G suit exhaust port added to the modified anti-G suit valve. The first solenoid can override the inertial valve to begin filling the anti-G suit before acceleration begins. The second solenoid controls a piston to control the exhaust from the anti-G suit to achieve more precise control over the pressure inside the anti-G suit than previously possible. This precise control allows realization of other improvements suggested by the prior art which need precise control of anti-G suit pressures. Pressure transducers can be added to the anti-G suit to provide a feedback signal to a valve controller for the two solenoid valves. The feedback control loop allows the use of less expensive cost, less accurate solenoid valves.

The present invention relates generally to apparatus and methods for increasing the ability of pilots of high performance aircraft to resist high G caused unconsciousness, and more specifically to a novel improvement to anti-G suit valves that substantially increases their G-protective effectiveness.
While flying simulated or actual combat maneuvers, a fighter pilot's body undergoes very high accelerations from the rapid changes in speed and direction. These accelerations are generally expressed in units of G, equal to the acceleration of a mass at the surface of the Earth due to gravity. The accelerations of greatest concern to a pilot are those that occur along the vertical z-axis of the cockpit when the pilot pulls back hard on the aircraft control stick to accomplish a rapid climb or a fast banked turn. The pilot's oxygen-carrying blood is forced away from its regular path between the heart-lungs and the brain, and pools toward the blood vessels of his or her lower extremities. At sufficiently high G's, the pilot's field of vision narrows as blood flow to the retinas is reduced, called grayout, followed by blackout, and finally followed by loss of consciousness (called GLOC, for G induced Loss OF Consciousness) from insufficient blood flow to the brain.
Pilots fight the effects of high G's by straining maneuvers, tensing the muscles of their torso and extremities to squeeze shut the blood vessels and force blood flow to continue in the upper parts of their body. An anti-G suit helps this process by covering the pilot's legs and torso with air bladders which automatically inflate during high acceleration maneuvers to compress the blood vessels in those regions and force blood flow to continue to the brain. Because continuous compression of the blood vessels of the lower extremities is harmful, anti-G suits include an anti-G suit valve to restrict inflation only to periods of high acceleration.
The nearly instantaneous response of modern high performance jet aircraft causes acceleration onset rates (dG/dt or G') greater than the response time of typical anti-G suit valves, leaving the pilot both unprotected for periods of time sufficient to cause unconsciousness, and causing unconsciousness due to a high onset rate of acceleration at G levels lower than the pilot could otherwise tolerate.
To solve this problem, the prior art has introduced a variety of approaches to improve anti-G suit valve response times. Standard anti-G suit valves are mechanical spring-mass controlled valves, providing pressurized air to the anti-G suit bladders at pressures proportional to acceleration along the z-axis. A standard modification to such inertially controlled valves has been to make a so-called ready pressure valve which preloads the anti-G suit bladders to about 2 psi, a pressure easily tolerated by a pilot without significant discomfort, to reduce the delay in filling the bladders to an effective pressure once inflation is triggered.
Other prior art approaches attempt to fill the bladders to an effective pressure before the onset of adverse G effects. They include mounting an electrically activated solenoid over the mass to move the mass (and its attached valve spindle) when an accelerometer and accompanying circuitry detects preselected levels of acceleration (G) and rate of change of acceleration (G'). A variation of that approach fully opens the anti-G suit valve for a preselected period of time when the solenoid is first triggered, so that full protection is provided to the pilot as quickly as possible, then backs off to allow normal inertially controlled proportional operation.
Another prior art approach has been to add microprocessor controlled circuitry to control the solenoid mounted over the mass and valve spindle. The microprocessor controlled circuit can monitor the aircraft data bus to trigger inflation after receiving a signal, such as joystick movement, indicating that a high G maneuver is imminent. The prior art has also proposed adding software to such microprocessor controlled circuits to apply preselected pressure profiles that will maximize the ability of pilots to tolerate high G forces.
Many of the prior art improvements to anti-G suit valves are retrofits to existing anti-G valves. They are intended to be failsafe so that, in the event of failure of the improvement, the anti-G suit valve will default to its normal inertial operation.
These prior art modifications to anti-G suit valves are valuable improvements. Unfortunately, particularly in the case of microprocessor controlled anti-G suit valves, the prior art valve mechanisms do not provide precise control of the actual air pressure in the bladders, thus preventing realization of many of the desired benefits.
It is, therefore, a principal object of the present invention to provide a anti-G suit valve system that combines the rapid response of prior art anti-G valves with more precise control over the pressure inside the anti-G suit.
It is another object of the present invention to make it a retrofit to existing anti-G suit valves.
It is a feature of the present invention that its retrofit to existing anti-G suit valves will be inexpensive and straightforward.
It is another feature of the present invention that it is completely failsafe in operation so that, in the event of any failure, it will fall back to normal inertial valve operation.
It is yet another feature of the present invention that it can incorporate all the advantages of prior art anti-G suit valves while still fulfilling all its objects.
It is an advantage of the present invention that its feedback feature allows precise control of anti-G suit bladder pressures with relatively imprecise valves.

The United States of America as represented by the Secretary of the Air Force


Coating a structure such as a brazed joint with a powdered wicking agent, preferably mixed with a fugitive liquid binder to form an adherent slurry, then heating the joint to allow the brazing alloy to melt and be drawn into the powdered wicking agent by capillary action. After cooling, the powder and braze alloy are mixed together to form a loosely consolidated mass which can be readily removed by mechanical and/or chemical means so that the components can then be separated for repair or reuse.

Many complex metal structures are assembled by brazing, a process of joining two metal surfaces by introducing a third metal, the brazing alloy or filler metal, between them at an elevated temperature. When the elevated temperature is relatively modest, e.g. below about 500.degree. C., the process may be called soldering. Upon cooling, the two original surfaces, along with the filler alloy, are metallurgically bonded into a unitary structure. Often it would be very desirable to be able to reverse this process, i.e. remove the filler metal and allow the two component surfaces to be separated for repair or salvage. However, merely heating the structure again to the brazing temperature will not cause the filler alloy to simply flow out of the joint but instead may cause the bond to be strengthened by diffusion of the braze alloy into the components.
While the components may be made of almost any material, including ceramics, the components of most interest in this invention are made from nickel, cobalt, and iron based stainless steels and superalloys commonly used, for example, in the aerospace industry for gas turbine engine subassemblies. Such components are very expensive and worth salvaging for repair and reuse. Common brazing alloys used with these base metals include silver, copper, gold, and nickel based alloys.
One method currently used to separate brazed components is to soak them in a warm chemical bath until the braze alloy is chemically leached from the joint. However, such a process is often complex, very time consuming and frequently requires ultrasonic agitation, and the chemical media, which is often a strong acid, can cause damage to the components and/or the environment. See, for example U.S. Pat. No. 4,274,908 to Fishter at al. which discloses a complex nitric acid solution for removing gold--nickel braze alloy from superalloy parts; U.S. Pat. No. 4,302,246 to Brindisi et al. which discloses improved acid solutions; and U.S. Pat. No. 4,324,626 to McGivern which disclosed an electrolytically assisted acid leaching process.
It should be apparent from the foregoing that there has been a long felt need in this art for a more efficient process for disassembling a brazed structure without damage to its components.

Debrazing of structures with a powdered wicking agent


A merchandise display hook attaches to a display board and has a rod assembly from which items of merchandise are hung and a base assembly that moves relative to the rod assembly. The base may lock directly to the rod or to an inner base member attached to the rod. When locked, the display hook is locked to the display board. The display hook may include an end assembly that slides along and selectively locks to the rod assembly to allow or prevent removal and loading of the items of merchandise from and onto the rod assembly. The display hook may alternately include an anti-sweeping mechanism to prevent rapid removal of the items of merchandise from the rod assembly.

1. Technical Field
The present invention relates generally to merchandise display hooks that are attached to a display board or a wire display rack. More particularly, the present invention relates to display hooks that either prevent the rapid removal of items of merchandise from the display hook or prevent removal of items of merchandise when the display hook is locked. Specifically, the present invention relates to display hooks that can be locked to a display board or wire rack to prevent the removal of the display hook from the display rack while also preventing the removal of merchandise from the display hook or preventing rapid removal of the merchandise. In this application, the term "locked" is defined as a condition that requires a key to change the condition from locked to unlocked. A locked connection is thus more secure than a latched condition.
2. Background Information
Items of merchandise are commonly displayed for sale on long protruding rods supported from peg board or slat board. These protruding rods are commonly referred to in the art as peg board hooks or slat board hooks. Similar rods may also protrude from a wire display rack for the same purpose. Usually, the items of merchandise are of a smaller range, such as batteries or small tools or other components. Such merchandise is an easy target for shoplifters because they can rapidly remove all the items from a display hook and remove the merchandise from the store without being detected. Alternately, the entire display hook with the merchandise can be removed from peg boards and the like if they are not locked thereon. Therefore, it is desired in the art to provide security hooks that prevent both the removal of the display hooks from the peg boards or wire racks and the rapid removal of items of merchandise from the display hooks.


A safety electrical outlet is disclosed which uses a covered outlet box in which the electrical contacts are on the back of the cover, and cannot easily be reached by a person (especially a child) poking into the socket. The contacts in turn form a portion of a circuit with electrically conductive leads and risers from the ordinary business power conduits. The corresponding plug has retractable contact prongs or blades which extend out from the sides of the plug, so that when the plug is inserted into the socket, the sideways-extending blades touch the contacts on the underside of the cover plate and the electrical connection is completed. When it is desired to disengage the plug, the blades are retracted and the plug removed from the socket. Built-in spring-loaded panels cover the plug openings in the cover plate when the plugs are not inserted. There may be a single socket/opening in the cover or there may be two or more ganged openings/sockets. The box, cover and plug may all be colored or decorated as desired.

1. Field of the Invention
The invention herein relates to electrical outlet boxes and the associated plugs and wiring, particularly such as are used in common residential and commercial buildings.
2. Description of the Prior Art
The ordinary electrical outlet as used in most residences and commercial buildings, with its two exposed electrically "hot" or "live" slots, is very convenient when properly used by adults. For children, however, particularly young children, the ordinary electrical outlet can be a source of serious injury and in many cases death. Children are naturally curious, and it is unfortunately not uncommon for a child to become intrigued with an electrical outlet and probe into it with a piece of metal, such as a piece of tableware, kitchen utensil, letter opener, screw driver or the like. This far too often leads to a tragic result as the metal object contacts the hot electrical leads and closes a ground circuit through the child's body, electrocuting the child.
Parents have sought ways to avoid this problem. Tape can be put over the exposed opening of the sockets, but tape frequently does not adhere for very long and has an unsightly appearance. In any case the tape itself often becomes an attractant to the child who peals it away and exposes the face of the socket. Commercial products, such as plastic caps, are also widely available, and are used by many parents. However, to be effective, such caps must fit very snugly against the socket. They are therefore quite difficult to remove, even for an adult, when one wishes to plug an appliance into the outlet. Consequently, many parents initially start using the caps with good intentions, but after a while tend to start taking them off or discarding them because of the inconvenience when plugging in appliances.
It would clearly be advantageous, therefore, to have a plug and socket system which would be both safe for use with children and convenient for adults to use for its regular connection purposes. Such a plug and socket system should be such that it is generally not an attractant to children, but also such that if a child should deliberately or inadvertently attempt to probe into it, it would very difficult for the child to make contact with live electrical circuits. The electrical connection of the present invention accomplishes those goals.


Embodiments of the present invention address deficiencies of the art in respect to calendaring and scheduling and provide a novel and non-obvious method, system and computer program product for providing a unified view of aggregated calendar data in a C&S system. In one embodiment of the invention, a method for providing a unified view of aggregated calendar data for an event in a calendar view can be provided. The method can include selecting an event in the calendar view, aggregating calendar data for the event relating to all invitees for the event, computing statistics for the aggregated calendar data, and rendering a display of the computed statistics proximate to the selected event in the calendar view.

Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to the field of calendaring and scheduling and more particularly to calendar entry management in a calendaring and scheduling (C&S) system.
Description of the Related Art
Calendaring systems have formed the core component of personal information management software and firmware applications for decades. Initially, a mere calendar display, modern calendaring systems provide scheduling and alarm functions in addition to full integration with contact management, time entry, billing and project management applications. The typical calendaring application minimally provides a mechanism for scheduling an event to occur on a certain date at a certain time. Generally, the event can be associated with a textual description of the event. More advanced implementations also permit the association of the scheduled event with a particular contact, a particular project, or both. Furthermore, most calendar applications provide functionality for setting an alarm prior to the occurrence of the event, as well as archival features.
Several software products include support for Calendaring & Scheduling (C&S). Known C&S products include Lotus™ Notes™, Microsoft™ Outlook™, and web-based products like Yahoo!™ Calendar™. These products allow one to manage personal events including appointments and anniversaries. C&S products also typically allow one to manage shared events, referred to generally as meetings. Electronic C&S software allows a group of people to negotiate around the scheduling of a proposed event such as a meeting, with the goal of selecting a time that allows most of the group to attend.
Specifically, collaborators who participate in e-meetings often maintain a personal schedule managed by a scheduling system. Collaborators can schedule e-meetings within the personal schedule sua sponte, or the collaborators can schedule e-meetings responsive to the receipt of an invitation. An invitation typically contains data regarding the e-meeting such as a topic, list of invitees, and most importantly, a date, time and location for the e-meeting. Using this data, the invitee can be prompted either to accept or decline the invitation. Oftentimes, the acceptance or declination of an invitation can be accomplished with a single user action such as a mouse click.
The typical C&S system provides a thirty (30) day calendar view for all events scheduled during the thirty days reflected in the calendar view. Each day in the thirty day calendar view can display twenty-four hours of time slots for the day. Notably, while the thirty day calendar view can be a very helpful tool for the average C&S system user, limitations subsist in the thirty day calendar view which makes it difficult for some C&S system users to readily identify important calendar data for a scheduled calendar event in the C&S system.
In this regard, in a C&S system, a meeting chairperson can schedule a calendar event involving a multiplicity of C&S users—sometimes dozens, hundreds or even thousands of C&S system users. For the meeting chairperson, it can be important to know how many of the invited C&S system users have agreed to participate in the scheduled calendar event. It further can be important to know from where the invited C&S system users will participate in the scheduled calendar event. For a scheduled calendar event of only a few invitees, it is a trivial exercise to open the scheduled calendar event into a single day view, and then a single time slot view to identify the requisite calendar data. For a scheduled calendar event of many invitees, however, such an exercise can be exhausting and error prone.

Unified view of aggregated calendar data

International Business Machines Corporation


There are provided liquid crystalline polyesters comprising 4'-hydroxy-4-stilbenecarboxylic acid type units, dicarboxylic acid units acting as a mesogen such as 4,4'-stilbenecarboxylic acid and catechol units as essential ingredients, and a liquid crystalline polyester composition comprising said polyesters and optically active liquid crystalline polyesters consisting essentially of 4,4'-stilbenedicarboxylic acid type units and aliphatic diol units having asymmetric carbons.

It is known that liquid crystals have an order of unique molecular orientation depending on their type. Accordingly, liquid crystals are utilized in various fields by utilizing and controlling said molecular orientation, and forms an industrially large field.
With respect to monomeric liquid crystals, those of the nematic type are used widely as display elements in watches, calculators or TV, as is well-known. In the field of display, they have established a firm position. As described above, the majority of the application of monomer liquid crystals is based on electric optical effects.
With respect to polymeric liquid crystals, not only their physical characteristics but also their electric optical effects or thermal optical effects similar to those of monomeric liquid crystals are well-known to be exhibited depending on the respective nematic, smectic and cholesteric liquid crystal types. The response of polymeric liquid crystals to external force such as electric field, heat etc. is slower than that of monomeric liquid crystals, so they cannot be used for the same uses as monomeric liquid crystals. However, polymeric liquid crystals have the major characteristics that orientation structures unique to the respective liquid crystal types can be fixed. Polymeric liquid crystals having an orientation structure unique to the liquid crystals fixed depending on the type of the liquid crystals are used as indicator materials, recording materials etc. The polymeric liquid crystals can be formed into films or thin films advantageous as optical materials, and the polymeric liquid crystals formed into films or thin films can be applied in various fields.
The physical values characteristic of liquid crystals regardless of whether they are monomeric or polymeric include double refractive index (.DELTA.n). The .DELTA.n values of monomeric nematic liquid crystals depends on molecular structures, and tran type (<0.28), azo, azoxy type (0.25 to 0.30), Schiff base type (<0.24) and pyrimidine type (<0.23) show relatively high .DELTA.n values. Cyclohexylcyclohexane type (<0.06), cyclohexylcarboxylic acid ester type (<0.1), and phenylcyclohexane type (0.08 to 0.19) show low .DELTA.n values. The .DELTA.n value is one of important parameters in the field of electronic display, and development of high-performance is made feasible by the characteristics of said physical value. For example, the .DELTA.n of monomeric nematic liquid crystals is raised to reduce the thickness of cells in display devices and to improve response rates. In dual-STN, a raise in the .DELTA.n of liquid crystals is desired to improve display contrast. Although the .DELTA.n value is an important parameter as described above in the field of electronic display, the .DELTA.n values of nematic liquid crystals are usually in the range of about 0.1 to 0.3 so that their further application to electronic displays are limited.
To increase the .DELTA.n value, it is necessary to raise said value by specific molecular structures. It is known that the .DELTA.n value depends on the molecular polarizability and the parameter of orientation order and can thus be improved by compounds with high polarizability generating anisotropy optically or by conjugate compounds with high electron density, such as benzene rings, polycyclic aromatic groups, ethylene-acetylene chain groups, terminal cyano groups etc. On the basis of this, M. Hird et al. have reported monomeric liquid crystals with .DELTA.n of less than 0.43 consisting of polycyclic aromatic tran type liquid crystals with high polarizablility (M. Hird et al., Liquid Crystals, 15, 123 (1993)).
However, polymeric liquid crystals with .DELTA.n values exceeding 0.3 are usually not present and there is only one report where .DELTA.n was raised to 0.865 by mechanically drawing aromatic polyamides (H. G. Rogers et al., Macromolecules, 18, 1058 (1985)).
For application of polymeric liquid crystals to recording mediums, memory elements etc. in the field of optoelectronics, it is evidently necessary to develop polymeric liquid crystals showing both self-orientation over glass transition temperature (Tg) and self-memorization below Tg, but there is no report on such liquid crystal polymers either.
As described above, development of polymeric liquid crystals having high .DELTA.n values due to the self-orientation of the liquid crystals themselves is essential for development for new use and application of polymeric liquid crystals. Further essential requirements for said polymeric liquid crystals are that they are excellent in the orientation ability and fixation ability and are easily formed into films and thin films, and there has been demand for development of such polymeric liquid crystals.

Liquid crystalline polyesters, their composition, and their uses


The present invention relates to executing data compression based on the used capacities of real pools. The present storage subsystem stores a definition information regarding conditions of starting data compression and ending data compression defined via usage rates of a real pool as physical area, wherein if the usage rate of the real pool satisfies the condition for starting compression, the compression processing is started, and if the usage rate satisfies the condition for ending compression, the compression processing is ended.

A technique called thin provisioning has been developed with the aim to facilitate management of storage subsystems and to enhance the efficiency of capacity thereof. This technique is for providing a virtual logical volume that does not have a physical storage area (hereinafter abbreviated as virtual volume) from the storage subsystem to a host computer, and dynamically allocating pages from a real pool which is a physical storage area in response to writing of data from the host computer to the virtual volume. A page refers to a single unit when the storage area is divided into multiple areas. This technique enables to enhance the capacity efficiency of a storage subsystem and to facilitate capacity design.
Another technique for realizing enhanced capacity efficiency is a compression technique that reduces the amount of data by compressing the data stored in the storage subsystem. For example, patent literature 1 teaches a method for compressing the data within a virtual volume using thin provisioning technique.

Storage system configured to selectively utilize data compression based on real pool usage rates


A system and method for protecting the integrity of a group of images is provided. One embodiment for protecting the integrity of a group of images comprises watermarking each one of a plurality of images in an image group with a unique watermark having at least an image digest, the image digest comprising information that identifies the watermarked image as an original image, and the plurality of images having a predefined order in the image group; and including in selected ones of the unique watermarks a unique decryption key, each one of the unique decryption keys configured for decrypting the unique watermark of a next image in the image group.

In digitally based image capturing devices an image or "photograph" of an object is stored in a digital data format in the memory within, or coupled to, the image capturing device. A nonlimiting example of a image capturing device is the digital camera that captures still images and/or video images. Captured images are stored in a memory that resides within or is coupled to the digital camera.
Watermarking and other tampering detection techniques are known in the art for protecting the integrity of individual images. The watermarking and tamper detection techniques allow confirmation that the image has not been altered or otherwise tampered with.
However, groupings of images can be altered or otherwise tampered with. Potential alteration of a group of images includes the removal of one or more images from the group, the addition of one or more images to the group, and/or the replacement of one or more images of the group.
For example, a group of images may be captured by the police at a crime scene. During the investigation and/or trial, it would be very undesirable if one or more of the original images were "lost" from the group, if one or more images not from the original group of images were added to the group, or if one or more original images were replaced. If any such occurrence were to occur to the group of images, individual image watermarking might fail to detect added, missing or replaced images.
Another nonlimiting example includes electronic archiving of documents. For example, images of public records such as property assignment documents filed at a public office may be digitally copied and stored electronically. Thus, a group of images could establish a chain of title for the property. During a title search, it would be very undesirable if one or more of the images were "lost" from the group, if one or more images not from the group of images were added to the group, or if one or more images were altered. If any such occurrence were to occur to the group of original images, individual image watermarking techniques might fail to detect added, missing or replaced images.

Apparatus and method for image group integrity protection

Hewlett-Packard Development Company, LP.


The present invention has as its object to provide an iridium complex represented by the general formula:[(I r H L1 L2)2(μ−X1)(μ−X2)(μ−X3)]X4  (1)(wherein L1 and L2 may be the same or different and each represent a monodendate neutral ligand, or each cooperate with the other to form a bidendate neutral ligand; X1, X2 and X3 may be the same or different, and each represent a halogen atom; and X4 is a counter-anion). Also, the present invention provides a novel catalyst which can achieve excellent performance as a catalyst for asymmetric synthesis, especially asymmetric hydrogenation, in terms of chemical selectivity, enantioselectivity and catalytic activity, and the like.

In synthesizing optically active amine compounds, heretofore, there have conventionally been employed, for example, the procedure which comprises the use of a naturally occurring amine compound and the method which involves synthesizing a racemic amine, followed by optical resolution with use of an optically active carboxylic acid, and the like. However, the former procedure encounters difficulties in obtaining or procuring the starting compounds, while the latter method has left unsolved the inconvenience that optical resolution fails to produce the desired compound in amounts in excess of those being present prior to such chemical resolution. In order to solve such problems, in recent years, extensively intensified investigation has been conducted into a method for synthesizing optically active amines through catalytic asymmetric hydrogenation of imines. For example, there have been known the methods in which a rhodium complex is used (for example, refer to J. Chem. Soc., Chem. Commun., 1991, pp. 1684), a ruthenium complex is utilized (for example, refer to Inorg. Chem. Acta, 1994, vol. 222, pp. 85), and the like. Nevertheless, it has been pointed out that such synthetic methods suffer individually from the defects or disadvantages, for example, that rhodium metal used is costly, that even when use is made of ruthenium metal being relatively cheaper than rhodium metal, the ruthenium complex as prepared therefrom is somewhat unstable, while the resultant amine shows a not so much enhanced degree of optical purity, and the like. There were published the research papers reporting that relatively less costly iridium metal is utilized, but in such cases, additives are required to be added in order to produce the highly active catalysts (for example, refer to Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. Engl., 1990, vol. 29, p. 558 and Chem. Lett., 1995, p. 955). Although some research reports were also published on the iridium complexes as prepared without use of additives (for example, refer to J. Am. Chem. Soc., 1990, vol. 112, p. 9400 and Chem. Eur. J., 2004, vol. 10, p. 267), there is confronted the problem that such complexes may merely produce the amines with a lowered degree of optical purity, depending upon the type of substrates used.
It was also reported that when an iridium-carboxylate complex catalyst is used in the asymmetric hydrogenation of imines, optically active amine compounds may be produced in high stereoselectivity and yield, even without use of additives (for example, refer to JP 11-335334-A, Proceedings of the 51st Annual Forum on Complex Chemistry, 327 (2a-A07)(Sept. 28 to 30, 2001), Proceedings I of the 81st Spring Meeting of Chem. Soc. of Japan, 499 (IPB-059) (Mar. 26 to 29, 2002) and Proceedings of Molecular Chirality-2002, 47 (PS-3) (Jun. 6, 2002)). However, there is arisen the problem that even use of such complex results in lowered catalytic activity, although this depends upon the type of substrates used.


Both search criteria and a friends list associated with a user are obtained. One or more data items that satisfy the search criteria are identified as search results. An order of the search results is adjusted based at least in part on multiple additional friends lists, each of which is associated with a data item of the one or more data items. Each of the multiple additional friends lists can also be updated to reflect changes in the friends lists made by users associated with the friends lists.

As computing technology has advanced and become increasingly widespread, the amount of digital data that is available to users has become very large. Although having large amounts of digital data available to a user has advantages, it is not without its problems. One such problem is the difficulty a user can face in trying to find a particular piece of data that he or she is looking for (e.g., a particular photo, a particular document, a friend, and so forth). The user can enter search terms describing the particular piece of data that he or she is looking for, but situations can arise where a large number of different pieces of data satisfy those search terms. The user then has to try to identify which of those large number of different pieces of data is the particular piece of data that he or she is looking for, which can lead to user frustration and annoyance.

Social distance based search result order adjustment


Tools and techniques for acquiring key roles and their relationships from a video independent of metadata, such as cast lists and scripts, are described herein. These techniques include discovering key roles and their relationships by treating a video (e.g., a movie, television program, music video, and personal video, etc.) as a community. For instance, a video is segmented into a hierarchical structure that includes levels for scenes, shots, and key frames. In some implementations, the techniques include performing face detection and grouping on the detected key frames. In some implementations, the techniques include exploiting the key roles and their correlations in this video to discover a community. The discovered community provides for a wide variety of applications, including the automatic generation of visual summaries or video posters including acquired key roles.

Promotional materials for videos are helpful in informing a potential audience about the content of the videos. For instance, video trailers, still-image posters, and the like may be helpful in letting users know about the theme or plot of a movie, television show, or other type of video. In order to create quality promotional materials, it is often useful to analyze the content of a particular video to determine the plot, key character roles within the video, and the like. With this information, the creator of the promotional material is able to create the trailer, poster, or other type of content in a way that adequately portrays the contents of the video.
Conventional approaches to movie content analysis depend on metadata provided by cast lists, scripts, and/or crowd-sourcing knowledge from the web without regard to correlations among roles. For instance, these traditional techniques may identify main characters from a video by manually identifying the characters and using metadata (e.g., cast lists, scripts, and/or crowd-sourcing knowledge from the web) associated with the movies. Some attempts have been made to associate names with the corresponding roles in news videos based on co-occurrence, as well as using face appearance, clothes appearance, speaking status, scripts, and image search results. One approach attempts to match an affinity network of faces and a second affinity network of names in order to assign a name to each face. However, such an approach has limited applicability for generating promotional posters since the matching merely matches faces to names.
While these traditional techniques may work in instances where the analyzed video includes rich metadata, such conventional approaches are not practical when little metadata is available, which may be true for internet protocol television (IPTV) and video on demand (VOD) systems. In contrast to metadata-rich videos, these videos often only include a brief title of each video section. In addition, the current process of creating promotional posters is time intensive and expensive because the current process requires the skills of graphics artists and designers. Promotional posters are characterized by: (1) having a conspicuous main theme and object; (2) grabbing attention through the use of colors and textures; (3) being self-contained and self-explained; and (4) being specially designed for viewing from a distance. Accordingly, as the amount of movies and other videos increase, manual techniques become difficult to effectively administer. In addition, not all of these movies and videos will have a sufficient amount of metadata available for analysis to create a high-quality poster or other types of promotional content.

Detecting key roles and their relationships from video


The present invention relates to a music playing/processing device for playing a musical file in a wireless communication device and determining the playing order of a plurality of tones of the musical file. The music playing/processing device comprises: an analysis module for receiving the musical file and analyzing a waveform corresponding to each of the tones to generate a plurality of order parameters of each of the tones; a sorting module for arranging a playing order to play the tones according to the order parameters of each of the tones; and a playing module for playing the tones according to the playing order. The music playing/processing device of the present invention is provided to reduce the tone commands to be executed and to make the digital signal processor use less memory to execute the wavetable synthesis operation, and to make the performance of the music as perfect as possible.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a music playing/processing device, especially to a music playing/processing device applied in a wireless communication device.
2. Description of the Prior Art
The multimedia message service (MMS), as its name implies, is utilized for transmitting messages with multimedia contents, comprising various colorful pictures, animations, and sounds (including general ring tones, chord ring tones, self-recorded ring tones, which depends on the capabilities of cellular phones). While the network transmission speed allows, even a short video clip may be transmitted. Compared with the MMS, the conventional short message service (SMS) can only transmit relatively smaller texts and some basic and simple pictures.
As the technology advances, multimedia message service (MMS) has been gradually utilized in the present communication system nowadays, providing more vivid messages with more plentiful contents. However, a more powerful device with greater capacity is required. The wavetable synthesis technology, which is an electronic synthesis technology, is developed to meet the requirement. In this technology, the sounds of the music instruments are sampled and digitized to be burned on a synthesis chip (or to be stored as disc files) for sound simulation. Because it is a string of waveforms being recorded, the microprocessor on the sound card is needed to generate loops and repeats in order to play back the sound samples.
Due to the diversity of the multimedia data, many limitations still exist in the current system structure, especially the micro controller unit and digital signal processor. The micro controller unit comprises the major components of a computer, which are the central processing unit (CPU), memory, and output/input unit. Structurally, the micro controller unit is just like a simple computer for executing control functions. The digital signal processor is a processor that can process digital signals in high speed with an instant and fast calculation function. When a lot of data are transmitted in, the capacity of the micro controller unit cannot make the execution of the control functions performed in an adequate speed, and the digital signal processor doest not have the sufficient memory to execute commands, generating a heavy load for the processing capability. Generally speaking, when the digital signal processor receives a lot of tasks at the same time, the task with high priority will be processed first. However, the priority of musical files is the lowest. The loading of the digital signal processor of the cellular phone is different all the time. If it is designed that the wavetable synthesis technology only can utilize the remained processing capability of the digital signal processor to execute, its performance will not be good. What's more, the performance will be very bad while the remained processing capability is insufficient. The present technology tries to solve the above problems by continuously promoting the processing speed and capability of the micro controller unit and the digital signal processor for handling the more complex multimedia data. However, as cellular phones tend to be smaller and smaller, it is getting more and more difficult to bring about technological breakthrough, and the cost of production is getting higher. The present invention provides a music playing/processing device for improving the efficiency of the digital signal processor of the execution of the wavetable synthesis operation. In this way, the wavetable synthesis technology can make full use of the remained processing capability of the digital signal processor so as to avoid introducing too much noise and to reduce the number of tone commands to be executed. Furthermore, the digital signal processor can use less memory to execute synthesis operation, and the performance of the music can be as perfect as possible.

Music playing/processing device and method for playing music file according to playing order of tones


Embodiments regard client-side memory management in component-driven console applications. An embodiment of one or more storage mediums include instructions for performing processing of a console application on an apparatus, including downloading records from a server for a set of one or more of multiple workspaces and opening the set of workspaces in response to request by a user, and switching an active workspace from a first workspace to a second workspace of the plurality of workspaces in response to a request from the user; monitoring memory usage for the plurality of workspaces and monitoring a state of the console application; and managing the memory allocation for the console application based at least in part on the monitored memory usage and console application state.

In a client computer operation in which a user may utilize data from a server for multiple records, the records may represent multiple different projects. Further the user may be allowed to address the records in an overlapping fashion, the user may be allowed to switch back and forth between the projects, such as by choosing a tab in a browser window, and to add additional records for additional projects.
In order to maximize performance for the user, the record data from the server may be rendered in memory at the client side as the user being required to download the record data from the server with each switch between records would create significant and noticeable delays for a user waiting for the needed data to be received.
Loading all record data from each project that a user is accessing during a session may not be practical or possible. A system may also allow for caching of certain data, with varying speed and capacity, but caching also has limitations. There may not be sufficient memory to allow for loading and/or caching of such data, and attempts to go beyond certain limitations could ultimately result in a crash of the system. For this reason, the amount of data that may be maintained on a client-side system will be limited, which results in questions regarding what and how much data is to be rendered or to be cached. However, different users may have different records to address, different workflow needs, and different operational styles, and thus the data choices that are made will affect the experiences of different users in different ways.

Client-side memory management in component-driven console applications


A two resist layer process allows a seed layer to be used to electroplate a conductive layer of an element in a way that a portion of the seed layer can be removed.

The present invention relates to methods of manufacture of flexible circuits such as those used in construction of radio frequency (RF) antenna.
Radio frequency antenna are typically made in a conductive coil pattern. The conductive coil pattern allows the antenna to receive and radiate energies in the radio frequency range. Typically, the antenna is optimized to transmit and receive energy in a relatively narrow portion of the radio frequency range.
Radio frequency antenna are used in a number of different areas including inventory control. Often the radio frequency antenna is connected to an integrated circuit. The integrated circuit receives energy from a detector unit, modulates the energy with an identification pattern stored in the integrated circuit, and then retransmits the modulated energy to the detector unit. Such inventory control units, including the radio frequency antenna, can be made quite inexpensively.

Method for an element using two resist layers


Screens for use in door or window openings are disclosed. The screens have a screen frame having at least one portion fabricated from a material possessing spring-like characteristics and a screen mesh that is secured to the screen frame to cover the door or window opening. The screen frame and screen mesh are in tension when the screen resides in the door or window opening. The screen frame may be deformed temporarily, due to its fabrication, allow for simple and easy removal and insertion of the screens into the door or window opening.

1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates generally to removable window and door screens and more specifically to embodiments of screens that are easily removed from within parallel tracks of an opening of the window or door.
2. Background of the Art
Screens have been used for thousands of years for keeping insects, leaves, birds, and debris from entering a building or other structure while permitting the inflow of fresh air. In ancient times, cloth or wicker attached to a frame was used to make the screen. Modernly, most screens consist of a fiberglass mesh or netting held taut and supported by an aluminum frame. Other common mesh materials include nylon, polyester, bronze, stainless steel, aluminum, copper, brass, and galvanized steel. Other common frame materials include wood, steel, and vinyl, sometimes in combination with each other and/or aluminum, though over the years other materials have been tried, including rubber, fiberglass, and closed-cell foams. Some screens have no frames, but are mesh material that is made to roll out from a spool and then be held taut across an opening by fastening the screen mesh to door or window itself.
Despite the maturity of the art of screen making, some improvements are still needed. One of those needed improvements relates to a type of screen which is in common use in modern residential and commercial construction. This screen type is referred to herein as a "groove-attachment screen." The groove-attachment screen is held in place in the door or window opening in which it is intended to be used by way of parallel sides of its frame fitting within receiving grooves running along two parallel sides of the door or window opening. One or more springs typically project from one of the two vertical sides of the screen frame. In some cases, the receiving grooves are located on the vertical sides of the window or door opening, while in others they are located on the top and bottom sides of the window or door opening. Typically, one of the receiving grooves is a full-groove, i.e., a u-shaped groove, while the other receiving groove may be either a full groove or an a partial groove i.e., a groove having a bottom seating side and either just one retaining wall side or two retaining wall sides of unequal height.
During installation of a conventional groove-attachment screen, the side of the screen frame which has the spring or springs extending from it is angled into one of the receiving grooves of the door or window opening. The body of the screen then is rotated into the plane defined by the receiving grooves while the screen frame side having the spring or springs is pressed into its receiving groove to compress its attached spring or springs. This compression allows the opposite screen frame side to slip past the lip of its receiving groove. Once it does, the person installing the frame stops pressing against the spring side of the screen frame so that the spring or springs release some of their tension and cause the opposite side of the spring frame to seat against the bottom of its receiving groove. The screen is removed by reversing the installation process, i.e., by pressing the spring side of the screen frame into its receiving groove to unseat the opposite side of the screen frame while rotating the screen body so that the unseated screen frame side passes the lip of its receiving groove, and then withdrawing the spring side of the screen frame out of its receiving groove.
One problem with the conventional groove-attachment screen is that it can be difficult to install and to remove from the receiving grooves of window or door opening. This is especially true for difficult to reach windows and for large window or door openings since in such cases it is difficult to simultaneously compress all of the retaining springs along one side of the screen frame while fitting or withdrawing the opposing side of the screen frame into or out of its receiving groove. This problem is often aggravated when the corners or the frame members lack sufficient rigidity to maintain the frame in a single plane, the sides of the frame in alignment with one another, or the corners in their use-angles (which are usually right angles for square or rectangular window or door openings). Another problem with the conventional groove-attachment screen is that its frame sides which are retained in the receiving grooves are wider than the depths of their respective receiving grooves. This makes the sides visible to a viewer looking at the screen with a line of vision that is perpendicular to the screen's mesh material surface, thus raising aesthetic issues with the appearance of those sides of the frame.
Some solutions applicable to one or more of these problems may be found in the following U.S. patents: U.S. Pat. No. 246,153 to Koch; U.S. Pat. No. 1,736,688 to Yerby et al.; U.S. Pat. No. 1,756,227 to Torrent; and U.S. Pat. No. 6,484,789 to Ober. However, the present invention provides novel and non-obvious solutions to the deficiencies and drawbacks of the prior art.


The present apparatus makes use of an intermediate plate on which a pressing tool can be mounted. The intermediate plate has a sensor for detecting the crimping force, from which the signals can be processed and displayed via a measurement processor. The apparatus offers the advantage of continuous monitoring of the individual crimpings, in the course of which a very high degree of measuring accuracy is additionally obtained, since the sensor is disposed particularly close to the crimping pistons. With the use of an intermediate plate, it is possible to exchange the device between individual presses in a simple manner so that the device can be used as a "mobile" device. The apparatus further relates to the use of a method for detecting the force used in crimping of cable sockets. This method is characterized in that at the start, at least one calibrated curve is prepared as a function of the part to be crimped, which becomes the basis for the subsequent detection of the quality of crimping, that in the course of crimping the deviations of the respective crimping from the determined calibration curves are detected. The respective crimping is marked or removed, if the actual deviation found exceeds the previous determined set value.

Cables provided with cable sockets are especially employed in the automobile industry. In order to connect cables with electrical components, the insulation at the cable end is removed and the open wire strand is crimped with a cable plug, also called cable socket. Some connections between cable strands and cable sockets are often the cause of interruptions or disruptions, and these can only be found with difficulty. Ignition troubles in motor vehicles are an example, which can be caused by a lack of a connection between cable strands and cable sockets. Problems occur, for example, if a portion of the insulation has been crimped along with the cable, or when individual wires have been removed from the strand in the course of removing the insulation and crimping then takes place, or with either too high or too low a crimping pressure.

Device for detecting force during pressing of cable sockets

AAT Aston GmbH Gerate fur Elektronikfertingung und Kabelbearbeitung