An information transmission method, an apparatus, a first device, and a second device are provided. The information transmission method includes: transmitting a Beam Failure Recovery (BFR) request to a second device in time slot N, and performing a preset reception scheme on control information on a first Control Resource Set (CORESET) starting from time slot N+K; wherein N is an integer greater than or equal to 0, and K is an integer greater than or equal to 0.

A wireless transmitter with multiple antennas (such as a base station gNB) can form a narrow wireless signal pointing to a specific direction (such as beamforming). Width and direction of a beam can be flexibly adjusted by applying appropriate weights to each antenna unit. Beamforming can be in digital or analog domain. For digital beamforming, each antenna unit has a separate baseband module, and independently control amplitude and phase of a signal transmitted on it. Therefore, a digital beam can be narrowband (for example, with a narrower bandwidth than total system bandwidth). Different digital beams can be multiplexed in time or frequency domain. For analog beamforming, multiple antenna units share same digital baseband module, and each antenna unit has an independent phase shifter. A signal transmitted by each antenna unit can only be adjusted on transmission phase shift (the amplitude cannot be adjust). Therefore, an analog beam is broadband and can only be multiplexed in time domain.
Communication between a transmitter and a receiver needs to include data information and control information, and the control information is used to instruct the receiver how to decode the data information. For example, the control information, such as Downlink Control Information (DCI) in Long Term Evolution (LTE), is transmitted on a physical channel called Physical Downlink Control Channel (PDCCH). Similar to a data channel, the PDCCH can also be beamformed to obtain benefits of spatial diversity gain brought by multiple antennas. A possible PDCCH beamforming method is to divide available time and/or frequency resources into multiple components, each of which is called a Control Resource Set (CORESET). Different transmission beams are used on each CORESET. A PDCCH carrying the DCI can be transmitted on any CORESET. The receiver (such as a terminal or UE) has no information about precise location of PDCCH transmission (such as CORESET), and blind detection of the PDCCH will be performed on all CORESETs. If the PDCCH is explicitly detected on a CORESET, the UE obtains the DCI. The transmitter (such as gNB) can arbitrarily select a CORESET to transmit the PDCCH. If a beam on a CORESET or a subset of a CORESET (such as part of time-frequency resources included in the CORESET, such as one or more search spaces on a CORESET) has poor channel quality, the PDCCH transmitted on the CORESET cannot be successfully decoded by the UE, but if the PDCCH is transmitted on another CORESET with good enough signal quality, the UE can still successfully decode the PDCCH. In this way, spatial diversity of the control information can be achieved. The transmission beam corresponding to each CORESET may be indicated by dynamically signaling or semi-statically configured, and it can be known to the UE before the UE performs PDCCH decoding.
Propagation characteristics of a wireless signal in a mmWave frequency band are different from those in sub 6 GHz (below 6 GHz) bandwidth, because the former has stronger pathloss and blockage. For control channels under different beams (for example, different CORESETs), the UE can detect quality of each control beam to determine whether it is strong enough for reliable control transmission. For this purpose, a network configures M RSs (Reference Signals), corresponding to M CORESETs, each RS uses a same beamforming matrix as a corresponding CORESET for beamforming, and enables the UE to detect channel quality of the PDCCH transmission assumed under the beam. If all beams fail, the UE can report this event to the gNB. Optionally, the UE may also report a new candidate beam that can meet a certain reliability index and can be used for subsequent PDCCH transmission. The new candidate beam can be selected from a group of candidate beams. The UE selects based on measurement results of a set of RS resources configured for new beam selection.
After the UE reports a beam failure event (optionally, including a new beam) to the gNB, the UE starts to detect a gNB response corresponding to the report. The UE can detect the gNB response on a dedicated CORESET (here it is defined as CORESET-Beam Failure Recovery (BFR)). If the UE successfully detects the gNB response on the CORESET-BFR, the beam failure is considered to have been recovered.
However, in the related art, there is no definition of a scheme for the base station to transmit control information on an existing CORESET after a Beam Failure Recovery (BFR) request is reported by the UE, and there is no definition of a scheme for the UE to detect control information on the existing CORESET. As a result, behaviors of the base station and the UE may not match, and a system may not operate properly or system performance is adversely affected.
For example, after the UE transmits a BFR request message to the base station, the base station still continues to transmit the control information on the existing CORESET, but the UE does not detect it, which may cause the UE to lose the control information and fail to perform corresponding data transmission, thereby causing a waste of resources and adversely affecting system performance.

Information transmission method, apparatus, first device and second device

DATANG MOBILE COMMUNICATIONS EQUIPMENT CO., LTD.


A tactile sensor for curved surfaces applicable to objects with multi-dimensional curvature and a small radius of curvature and a manufacturing method thereof are disclosed. The tactile sensor for curved surfaces includes a lower pattern including a plurality of lower polymer film layers spaced at specified intervals in a lower direction, lower metal layers disposed on the lower polymer film layers, and a number of lower resistors disposed on the lower metal layers, an upper pattern including a plurality of upper polymer film layers spaced at specified intervals in a direction perpendicular to the lower direction, upper metal layers disposed on the upper polymer film layers, and a number of upper resistors disposed below the upper metal layers to be electrically connected to the lower resistors, and a lower polymer layer and an upper polymer layer to bond the lower pattern and the upper pattern to each other.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a tactile sensor and a manufacturing method thereof, and more particularly to a tactile sensor for curved surfaces, wherein metal layers and resistors are formed on upper and lower films with excellent bending property and high restoration force, respectively, and the upper and lower films are perpendicularly bonded to each other, thereby increasing flexibility to be applicable to objects with multi-dimensional curvature and a small radius of curvature and a manufacturing method thereof.
2. Description of the Related Art
Recently, a tactile function for obtaining information regarding circumferential environment through touch, for example, a contact force, vibration, surface roughness, heat conductivity versus temperature change and the like has been used for advanced information collection. A biomimetic tactile sensor capable of replacing tactile sensation can be used for microsurgery of blood vessels, various medical diagnoses such as a cancer diagnosis and treatment. Further, the biomimetic tactile sensor can be applied to tactile display technology which is important in virtual environment technology in the future.
Sensors developed as the biomimetic tactile sensor include a force-torque sensor with six degrees of freedom which is used on a wrist of an industrial robot and a sensor used for a gripper of a robot, capable of sensing a contact pressure and instantaneous sliding motion. Such sensors have a relatively large size, thereby having a problem such as low responsiveness.
A possibility of developing the tactile sensor has been verified using technology for manufacturing micro electro mechanical systems (MEMS). However, since the sensor has been developed using a silicon wafer and the like, the sensor does not have flexibility.
FIG. 17 shows an example of a conventional tactile sensor, which is developed by Takao Someya and colleagues at the University of Tokyo in Japan in 2005.
In this case, the conventional tactile sensor is manufactured by performing a punching process on a single film, thereby realizing flexibility and extensity to some extent.
However, the conventional tactile sensor manufactured through the punching process fails to maximize flexibility because a single film is punched for flexibility. Thus, it is possible to apply the conventional tactile sensor to spherical objects with a large radius of curvature. However, it is hard to apply it to fingers of a humanoid robot or a very small sphere due to a lack of softness like human skin.

Tactile sensor for curved surface and manufacturing method thereof

Korea Research Institute of Standards and Science


The present disclosure discloses a camera lens assembly includes, sequentially along an optical axis from an object side to an image side, a first lens, a second lens, a third lens and a fourth lens, the lenses having refractive powers. At least one of the first lens or the second lens has a positive refractive power. An object-side surface of the third lens and an image-side surface of the fourth lens are both concave surfaces. Half of a diagonal length ImgH of an effective pixel area on an image plane of the camera lens assembly and a total effective focal length f of the camera lens assembly satisfy: ImgH/f>1.

With the development of chip technologies such as CCD or CMOS, camera lens assemblies have gradually developed toward the fields of miniaturization, light weight, and high pixel. In some application fields, corresponding requirements on the large field-of-view of lens assemblies have also been put forward, and the lens assemblies need to have a wide-angle characteristic while satisfying miniaturization and high imaging quality. In addition, in order to realize stable mass production, the lens assemblies also need to have a good sensitivity.
In order to realize the wide-angle characteristic, the field-of-view of a lens assembly is generally enlarged by increasing the number of lenses, but this approach is not conducive to realizing miniaturization and light weight of the lens assembly; at the same time, the excessive number of lenses also limits the reduction of various aberrations, which is not conducive to improving the imaging quality of the lens assembly.
Therefore, it is necessary to provide a wide-angle camera lens assembly having a compact structure, high image quality and low sensibility without excessively increasing the number of lenses of the lens assembly.


Embodiments relate to a method of manufacturing an image sensor. According to embodiments, the method may include preparing a semiconductor substrate formed with a plurality of photodiodes, forming an interlayer dielectric layer on the semiconductor substrate, forming a color filter layer on the interlayer dielectric layer, forming a planar layer on the color filter layer, and forming micro-lenses coated with fat-soluble polymer on the planar layer. Since the micro-lens is uniformly formed due to the fat-soluble polymer coated on the micro-lens, the photo-sensitivity and color reproduction of the image sensor are improved, resulting in the high-quality image sensor.

An image sensor may be a semiconductor device for converting optical images into electric signals. An image sensor may be generally classified into a charge coupled device (CCD) image sensor and a CMOS image sensor.
An image sensor may include a photodiode for detecting light and a logic circuit for converting detected light into electric signals. Thus, light that is detected may be represented as data. As a quantity of light received in the photodiode increases, the photo sensitivity of the image sensor may be improved.
Photo sensitivity may be improved by various methods. For example, a fill factor, which may be a ratio of a photodiode area to the whole area of the image sensor, may be increased. Alternatively, photo-gathering technology may be used to change a path of light incident onto an area other than the photodiode area such that the light may be gathered in the photodiode.
A micro-lens is an example of the photo-gathering technology. For example, a convex micro-lens may be formed on a top surface of a photodiode. The micro-lens may be formed using a material having superior light transmittance. The micro-lens may refract a path of incident light in such a manner that a greater amount of light may be transmitted into the photo-diode area. Hence, light parallel to an optical axis of the micro-lens may be refracted by the micro-lens, and light may be focused at a specific position on the optical axis.
A related art image sensor may include various components, such as a photodiode, an interlayer dielectric layer, a color filter, a micro-lens, and so on.
An interlayer dielectric layer may be formed on a semiconductor substrate formed with a plurality of photodiodes. RGB color filter layers may be formed on the interlayer dielectric layer and may correspond with the photodiodes, respectively.
A planar layer may be formed on the color filter layers and may planarize an irregular surface that may occur on the color filter layers. In addition, micro-lenses may be formed on the planar layer to correspond (i.e. be aligned) with the photodiodes and the color filter layers, respectively.
The photodiode may detect light and may convert the light into an electric signal. The interlayer dielectric layer may insulate metal interconnections from each other. The color filter may exhibit the three primary colors of red, green, and blue (R, G, B). The micro-lens may guide the light onto the photodiode.
FIGS. 1A to 1D illustrate a related art method of manufacturing a micro-lens.
Referring to FIG. 1A, micro-lens layer 52 may be formed on semiconductor substrate 10 on which a plurality of photodiodes 40, an interlayer dielectric layer 20, a color filter layer 30, and a planar layer 25 may be formed.
Referring to FIG. 1B, micro-lens layer 52 may be patterned such that a micro-lens pattern may correspond to locations of to photodiodes 40.
Referring to FIG. 1C, semiconductor substrate 10 may be loaded on hot plate 60 and heat may be applied to semiconductor substrate 10. Accordingly, the micro-lens may be formed.
Referring to FIG. 1D, as illustrated in portions A and B, micro-lens 50 of the image sensor manufactured through the related art method may have an irregular surface.
If heat is applied to semiconductor substrate 10 to form the curvature surface of micro-lens 50, micro-lens 50 may be moved. Micro-lens 50 may be bonded to an adjacent micro-lens 50, and micro-lens 50 may have an irregular surface. This may negatively affect pixels adjacent to micro-lens 50 and may degrade a focusing efficiency of a micro-lens.


A liquid crystal dispensing apparatus determines an amount of liquid crystal remaining within a liquid crystal container. The apparatus includes a liquid crystal dispensing unit for containing dispensable liquid crystal, capable of be dispensed directly onto a substrate and a main control unit for determining a total amount of liquid crystal dispensed onto the substrate based on a unitary amount of liquid crystal dispensed and the number of times the unitary amount was dispensed, and determining an amount of liquid crystal remaining by deducting the determined total amount dispensed from an initial amount of liquid crystal contained within the liquid crystal dispensing unit.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a liquid crystal dispensing apparatus, and more particularly, to a liquid crystal dispensing apparatus capable of determining an amount of liquid crystal material to be dispensed onto a substrate and also capable of determining an amount of liquid crystal material remaining within a liquid crystal container.
2. Discussion of the Background Art
As portable electric devices such as mobile phones, personal digital assistants (PDA), notebook computers, etc., continue to be developed, small, light, and power-efficient flat panel display devices such as liquid crystal displays (LCD), plasma display panels (PDP), field emission displays (FED), vacuum fluorescent displays (VFD), etc., have become the subject of intense research. Due to their ability to be mass-produced, ease in driving, and superior image qualities, LCDs are of particular interest.
LCDs display information on a screen using refractive anisotropic properties of liquid crystal material. Referring to FIG. 1, an LCD 1 typically includes a lower substrate (i.e., a driving device array substrate) 5 connected to an upper substrate (i.e., a color filter substrate) 3 via sealant 9. A layer of liquid crystal material 7 separates the lower and upper substrates 5 and 3. A plurality of pixels (not shown) are formed on the lower substrate 5 and driving devices such as thin film transistors (TFTs) are formed on each of the pixels. A color filter layer is formed on the upper substrate 3 allowing the LCD to express color. Further, pixel electrodes and a common electrode are also formed on the lower and upper substrates 5 and 3, respectively. An alignment layer is formed on both the lower and upper substrates 5 and 3 to uniformly align molecules within the layer of liquid crystal material 7. The molecules within the layer of liquid crystal material may be selectively oriented by the driving devices. Accordingly, as the orientation of the molecules within the liquid crystal material is manipulated, the amount of light transmitted through portions of the LCD may be selectively controlled to convey information.
Fabrication processes for LCD devices may be roughly divided into a driving device array fabrication process, where driving devices are formed on the lower substrate 5, a color filter fabrication process, where the color filter is formed on the upper substrate 3 sand a cell fabrication process. These fabrication processes will now be described with reference to FIG. 2.
Referring to FIG. 2, in the driving device array substrate fabrication process (S101), a plurality pixel areas are formed at crossings of a plurality of gate lines and data lines formed on the lower substrate 5 and thin film transistors arranged in each pixel area are connected to gate lines and corresponding ones of data lines. Also, pixel electrodes are connected to each of the thin film transistors to drive the layer of liquid crystal material. Accordingly, the layer of liquid crystal material may be driven in accordance with a signal applied to the thin film transistor.
In the color filter fabrication process (S104), red (R), green (G), and blue (B) color filter layers for producing color and a common electrode are formed on the upper substrate 3.
The alignment layer is formed on both the lower and upper substrates 5 and 3, respectively. After being formed on the substrates, the alignment layer is rubbed to induce molecules within the layer of liquid crystal material to inherit a predetermined pretilt angle and alignment direction between the lower and upper substrates 5 and 3 (S102 and S105). Subsequently, spacers are dispensed over the lower substrate 5 to maintain a uniform cell gap between the upper and lower substrates (S103). The sealant is applied to an outer portion of the upper substrate 3 (S106) and the lower substrate 5 is pressed and attached to the upper substrate 3 (S107).
The lower and upper substrates 5 and 3 are formed from glass substrates having an area larger in size than any individual panel areas. Accordingly, a plurality of corresponding panel areas where driving devices and color filter layers are may be arranged within the attached glass substrates. Thus, in fabricating individual liquid crystal display panels, the attached glass substrates are cut into individual panels (S108). Subsequently, liquid crystal material is injected through a liquid crystal injection opening into the cell gap formed between the two substrates of each individual liquid crystal display panel (S109). After the liquid crystal material is injected, the liquid crystal injection opening is sealed (S109) and each individual liquid crystal display panel is inspected (S110).
To inject the liquid crystal material through the liquid crystal injection opening, a pressure difference between the exterior and the interior of the liquid crystal display panel is induced. FIG. 3 illustrates a device used to inject liquid crystal material into cell gaps of liquid crystal display panels.
Referring to FIG. 3, liquid crystal material 14 is provided in a container 12 arranged within a vacuum chamber 10 that is connected to a vacuum pump (not shown) capable of creating and maintaining a vacuum within the vacuum chamber. A liquid crystal display panel moving device (not shown) is installed within the vacuum chamber 10 and moves separated liquid crystal display panels down from an upper portion of the container 12 toward the surface of the liquid crystal material 14. In what is known as a liquid crystal injection method, the liquid crystal injection opening 16 of each liquid crystal display panel is arranged to contact the liquid crystal material. Subsequently, nitrogen gas (N2) is pumped into the vacuum chamber to increase the pressure therein from the initial vacuum pressure. As the pressure within the vacuum chamber 10 increases, the liquid crystal material 14 contacting the liquid crystal injection opening 16 is extruded (i.e., injected) into the cell gap of the liquid crystal display panel due to the pressure difference between the interior of the liquid crystal display panel and the interior of the vacuum chamber containing the pumped nitrogen gas. After the cell gap is completely filled with liquid crystal material 14, the injection opening 16 is sealed using a sealant.
Injecting liquid crystal material according to the process described above is disadvantageous, however, at least for the following reasons.
First, the amount of time required to completely inject liquid crystal material 14 into the liquid crystal display panel 1 can be excessively long. For example, the cell gap between the driving device array and the color filter substrates is very narrow (e.g., on the order of a few micrometers) and, therefore, only a very small amount of liquid crystal material can be injected into the liquid crystal display panel at any time. Accordingly, injecting liquid crystal material into a typical 15-inch liquid crystal display panel, using the injection process described above may take up to about eight hours. Thus, the time required to fabricate LCDs is unduly increased with the use of the liquid crystal injection process.
Second, the amount of liquid crystal material required by the liquid crystal injection method described above is exceedingly large. While only a small amount of liquid crystal is removed from the container 12, a large amount of liquid crystal may become exposed to the atmosphere or to the nitrogen gas. Accordingly, a large amount of liquid crystal material reacts with, and can be contaminated by, nitrogen or other gases within the atmosphere. As a result, the cost of fabricating LCDs increases because liquid crystal material not injected into the liquid crystal display panel must be discarded after the injection process.

This patent is subject to a terminal disclaimer.

Liquid crystal dispensing apparatus having confirming function for remaining amount of liquid crystal and method for measuring the same


A method for determining a phase constant for a dielectric medium is provided. The method includes deploying a calibration object with a known free-space spectral response within a dielectric medium of interest, determining the spectral response of the calibration object deployed in the dielectric medium, and determining the phase constant for the dielectric medium using a relationship between the free-space spectral response of the calibration object and the spectral response of the calibration object when deployed in the dielectric medium.

The field of the disclosure relates generally to the detection of objects using resonant radio frequency location, and more specifically, to methods and systems for determining the phase constant of a dielectric medium within which such objects could be embedded.
The detection and identification of an object using resonant radio frequency (RF) location generally requires prior knowledge of the spectral response of the object to incident RF energy. However, when the object is embedded in a medium other than air, such as an object embedded in sand or other medium, the spectral response of the object, and thus its resonant frequencies, are shifted by a factor equal to 2π multiplied by frequency and divided by the phase constant of the medium and the wavelengths of the spectral components. The phase constant is a factor dependent upon frequency and the permeability/permittivity of the medium. Without knowledge of either the permeability/permittivity or the phase constant of the medium, the reflected spectral response, including the resonant frequencies, of a buried object cannot reliably be predicted, and resonant RF location cannot be effectively used to detect and identify the object.
The permeability, permittivity, and phase constant typically cannot be measured without access to a sample of the medium. Furthermore, the dielectric properties of certain media vary with conditions such as bulk density, water content, and composition. Thus, a permeability, permittivity, or phase constant measurement taken at one time cannot be used reliably to determine the spectral response of an embedded object at another time.
In the application of resonant RF location to cases like the detection of objects buried in a medium, such as sand, with unknown dielectric properties a method is needed for remotely and immediately determining the permeability and permittivity or phase constant of the medium.

Methods and systems for determining the phase constant for a dielectric medium


A system (100) is provided for storing knowledge, information and data (KID). The system includes a plurality of sources of KID (20), at least one receiver of KID (30) from the plurality of sources, a universal knowledge, information and data store (UKIDS 160) and an interface (150) coupling the receiver and the UKIDS. The interface provides a plurality of logical partitions (200) for storing KID within the UKIDS. In one embodiment, a first level of the logical partitions segregates information into personal and professional KID. A plurality of second personal levels under the first personal level (210) segregates KID storage into a teams of people subset (212), an activities and organization subset (214) and an organization and administration subset (216). A plurality of second professional levels under said first professional level (220) segregates KID storage into a clients subset (230), an output subset (250), a teams subset (270) and an administration subset (290).

One problem facing people in today's information age is managing the volume of information that each person receives, reviews, stores and/or passes on to others. While computers and other electronic devices assist in these tasks, electronic forms of communication and duplication have themselves supported an explosive increase in the volume of information transmitted within the home and workplace. Experts describe people experiencing adverse physical and psychological affects of managing an ever-increasing volume of information as suffering from "information overload."
One aspect of information overload, for example, is an inability to locate a document or a portion of a document containing information of interest. Often, a person generally recalls seeing the information but cannot recall the specific content and wishes to review the information again. Regrettably, the location of the information is not known. Therefore, a search of electronic and/or printed copies of documents is performed to locate the information. As can be appreciated, this inefficient handling of information consumes time and generally leads to frustration.
In an attempt to increase the efficiency by which information is stored, individuals often employ customized naming conventions for storing electronic and printed information in electronic folders and/or filing cabinets. The aim of the customized naming convention is to describe information stored in the storage system to facilitate more efficient retrieval. While a naming convention may assist a first person that develops the convention, a second person or persons seeking access to the stored information typically does not understand the naming convention. This lack of understanding is particularly troublesome when the first person is not available to explain the convention and the second person needs the stored information to complete a job task. One example of an unavailable person includes an occurrence when a person leaves a job and a next person assumes responsibility for the job. Such responsibility includes locating and managing previously stored information.
Systems and methods exist in the art for managing information storage. For example, FIG. 1 depicts a simplified block diagram of an information management system 10 as is known in the art. As shown in FIG. 1, a plurality of sources 20 provide information to receivers of information 30. Sources 20 include, for example, paper 22 and electronic 24 information provided by hand delivered mailing systems such as, for example, internal office mailing systems, carrier services such as the U.S. Postal Service and FEDERAL EXPRESS® (registered trademark of the Federal Express Corporation, Memphis, Tenn.) or the like, and electronic systems such as, for example, email systems, time management systems, software application programs such as MICROSOFT® WORD™ (registered trademark of Microsoft Corporation, Seattle, Wash.) and LOTUS® NOTES™ (registered trademark of Lotus Development Corporation, Cambridge, Mass.) or the like. The receivers of information 30 include, for example, individual addressees 32 of the provided information that take receipt by hand or electronically via a computing device 34 such as a portable electronic device such as, for example, PDA, laptop computer or the like, personal computer, work station or terminal coupled to a mainframe computer. It should be appreciated that it is within the scope of the present invention for the computing devices 34 to broadly define all standalone and networked computing devices as are known in the art.
As noted above, information of interest to the receiver 30 is typically stored in at least one of a plurality of storage devices 40 for subsequent retrieval. Storage devices 40 include, for example, filing cabinets 42 for storing hand delivered information and/or printed copies of electronic information, electronic records 44 in files or database formats residing within memory devices (e.g., hard drives and other memory devices of the aforementioned computing devices 34).
A number of computer software applications running on the computing devices 34 provide mechanisms for storing and managing data. However, the inventors have found a number of deficiencies in such systems. For example, the use of such conventional systems typically yields divergent and counter intuitive data structures having information stored in non-standard and often incompatible storage devices. As noted above, stress and frustration increase as individuals attempt to find information of interest within these systems.
FIG. 2 illustrates a conventional data storage paradigm 50 wherein computer software applications and manual business processes (referred to collectively as information inputs 60) direct information to a user. The user evaluates the information and typically stores it in a data store. In the data storage paradigm 50, the data store corresponds to a process by which the user receives or evaluates the information. Since the user receives and evaluates information in a number of different ways, a plurality of unconsolidated, divergent data stores 70 are created. The divergent data stores include, for example, electronic files and data bases to paper-based filing cabinets. Generally speaking, the data stores 70 are created "on the fly" and, whether electronic or paper-based, include data stored in alphabetically ordered sequences.
Manufacturers of computer software applications have created many different kinds of data storage shells. In most cases, these shells are designed to hold only the data created by a particular software application. For example, a pre-set storage location for MICROSOFT® WORD documents in a WINDOWS® operating system environment is a hard disk file folder referred to as "C:/My Documents/WORD." Similarly, email is generally stored within the email application's hanging file folder system. In addition to these electronic applications, users may have manually stored information in, for example, filing cabinets, on their desktop, and on bookshelves. The inventors have observed that the aforementioned application/process specific storage locations contribute to the number of divergent data stores (e.g., stores 70) and make it more difficult for users to locate information within an increasingly large number of places. The resulting "clutter" contributes to the aforementioned "information overload" syndrome that is a challenge for almost every knowledge worker in the world.
While some computer software application such as, for example, Microsoft Corporation's WINDOWS operating system and EXPLORER file management system provide a frame of reference for accessing data stored in differing file folders by most software applications, there appears to be no common portal or universal data structure available to users. Complicating the conventional data storage paradigm (illustrated in FIG. 2), the inventors have observed that most employees have no rules or standards for their individual storage structures 70. As a result, each employee's storage structures, which include their library of stored documents, are unique and highly customized. The lack of storage rules and resulting high degree of customization is seen to cause the following business challenges:
(1) When an employee leaves an enterprise their successor(s) find it extremely difficult to understand and manage inherited information because only the departing employee understands their individually customized data storage structure.
(2) The lack of rules or standards causes most storage systems such as, for example, corporate data servers, and individual libraries of knowledge to degrade over time. One cause is that the vast majority of employees have no system of "breaking ties" between documents that could be placed in one or more folders within their data storage system 70. Another cause is that ninety-nine percent (99%) of employees do not appear to have a system in place that allows for a uniform data structure to be applied across all storage platforms (e.g., electronic and physical data storage devices).
(3) It is difficult to tell an employee where to put an important file or document because everyone has his or her own customized filing system. Similarly, it is difficult to advise an employee how to name files in a logical standardized way.
(4) Rarely does the typical person separate personal and professional documents within electronic and physical storage devices. As a result, a greater number of documents must be searched through before a document of interest can be located.
Efficiency experts market file management seminars and/or guides such as, for example, products and services of the Franklin Covey Co., Salt Lake City, Utah USA. However, there appears to be no entity that markets or teaches a specific, universal, concrete, and tangible information structure that is not employee, industry, or business unit specific. Most marketed data storage classes and systems help users to create a customized filing structure that matches their chosen vocation and storage style. Such filing structures are seen to include, for example:
(1) Data structures created for a specific individual, industry, vocation, or group.
(2) Data structures created "on the fly" by well intentioned individuals, the structures are customized in the sense that they have been slowly constructed over time in a fashion that even their creators find difficult to navigate after a predetermined period of time.
The inventors have found that the vast majority of these teachings do not direct trainees to merge or synchronize email hanging file folder system with other electronically stored information such as, for example, documents within a "C:/My Documents" hard drive directory to facilitate formation of a central data repository. As a result, employees are tasked with managing multiple and divergent data stores such as, for example, email hanging file folders, hard drive documents, various computer applications with separate data storage locations, filing cabinets, bookshelves for manuals, CD Rom libraries, etc., as illustrated generally at 70 of FIG. 2. There appears to be no existing product designed to synchronize, organize, and pare down these divergent structures. Since there is no guidance for organizing storage structures the inventors have found that there are almost as many divergent knowledge storage structures as there are people.
Accordingly, a need existing for systems and methods of providing a universal knowledge, information, and data store to simplify the process of storing and retrieving information and increasing personal and professional productivity and quality of life. As described herein, the inventors have discovered that such systems and methods based on the human thought process and the free enterprise model provide an efficient storage structure.

Universal knowledge information and data storage system


Apparatus for retrieving and teeing golf balls includes a golf ball retrieving member in the form of an open framework having an opening at a side thereof. The golf ball is trapped within the interior of the golf ball retrieving member by rotating the golf ball retrieving member relative to the ball. A golf ball engagement member is movably mounted relative to the framework between two positions. In one of the positions the golf ball engagement member engages a golf ball within the interior of the retrieving member to retain the golf ball in place within the retrieving member interior.

As is the case with many sports, the sport of golf requires considerable practice to attain the skills necessary to become an accomplished player. A golfer must hit many golf balls to become proficient and to develop the level of confidence required to compete with the course, opponents, and oneself.
Many golf shots employ the use of a tee and during regular practice sessions a ball may be teed up many times, requiring the golfer to bend from the waist or at the knees everytime a tee is applied to the ground and a golf ball is teed up. This expenditure of energy can be detrimental and detract from the golf shot itself. In some cases bodily injury can result.
As a consequence, numerous attempts have been made to provide devices which aid the golfer through reduction of the physical effort required to tee up a golf ball.
The following United States Patents disclose devices which are believed to be representative of the current state of the art in this field: U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,889,946, 2,609,198, 5,165,744, 5,439,213, 4,589,661, 5,499,813, 5,540,432, 5,494,279, 5,383,659, 4,969,646, 4,360,199, and 4,313,604.
The devices disclosed in the above-identified United States patents have one or more of the following deficiencies and disadvantages:
(a) Manufacturing cost is high because of the complexity of the device and materials used; PA1 (b) Many structural components and complex structural inter-relationships are required to accomplish the intended task; PA1 (c) Considerable time must be employed to accomplish the task; PA1 (d) The mechanism is awkward to use or is not reliable insofar as operation is concerned; and PA1 (e) Use is limited; for example, use is limited to just teeing a golf ball.


The invention relates to a process for manufacturing semiconductor devices with active device structures which are connected with one another in a wafer, the area of a semiconductor device being determined by process parameters and being substantially greater than the area of an active device structure. An improvement of the process is achieved by forming several like active device structures on each of the semiconductor devices.

Processes for manufacturing semiconductor devices having active device structures which are connected together with each other in a wafer are well known in the art. The minimum area of such a semiconductor device is frequently determined by processing parameters. For example, a tolerance zone between the semiconductor devices is required to separate the individual devices. This tolerance zone must be taken into account in determining the minimum area of a semiconductor device. For this tolerance zone, a corresponding additional area is necessary. After the device-separation step, the individual devices must be transported, i.e., they must be capable of being mechanically handled. A semiconductor device separated from the wafer is, for example, placed on a lead frame and attached thereto by bonding, using for example, an adhesive bonding or soldering technique. This contributes to the minimum size of the semiconductor devices, which in many cases is a contributory factor in determining the area of a semiconductor device. There are many applications in which the active structure that is deposited on such a semiconductor device, is substantially smaller than the area of the device required for mechanical handling. As a result, the manufacturing process becomes expensive, since a considerable portion of the semiconductor material is not used to obtain the desired properties of the device. A further increase in manufacturing costs results from active device structures which are frequently faulty. Such faults can be detected by testing the active device structures. Faulty structures or structures which do not meet a user's requirements are commonly marked with an ink and are not attached to the lead frame. After being attached to the lead frame, the chips are commonly fed to a wire bonder for making electrical connections to the active device structures.
It is the object of the invention to provide an improved, lower-cost process for manufacturing semiconductor devices with active device structures.

Process for manufacturing semiconductor devices with active structures


Systems and methods for generating synthesized images are provided. An input medical image of a patient in a first domain is received. A synthesized image in a second domain is generated from the input medical image of the patient in the first domain using a first generator. The first generator is trained based on a comparison between segmentation results of a training image in the first domain from a first segmentor and segmentation results of a synthesized training image in the second domain from a second segmentor. The synthesized training image in the second domain is generated by the first generator from the training image in the first domain. The synthesized image in the second domain is output.

The present invention relates generally to synthesizing and segmenting medical images, and more particularly to cross-domain synthesizing and segmenting medical images using generative adversarial networks trained with adversarial learning, cycle-consistency loss, and shape-consistency loss.
In the current clinical practice, a multitude of imaging modalities may be available for disease diagnosis and surgical planning. Each of these imaging modalities captures different characteristics of the underlying anatomy and the relationship between any two modalities is highly nonlinear. These different imaging techniques provide physicians with varied tools and information for making accurate diagnoses.
Machine learning based methods have been widely used for medical imaging analysis for, e.g., the detection, segmentation, and tracking of anatomical structures. Such machine learning based methods are typically generic and can be extended to different imaging modalities by re-training the machine learning model on the target imaging modality. However, in practice, it is often difficult to collect a sufficient amount of training images, particularly for a new imaging modality not well established in clinical practice.
Cross-modal translation generates synthetic medical images in a desired target modality from images of a given source modality. Such synthetic medical images are often used as supplementary training data for training a machine learning model for medical image analysis. Conventional approaches to cross-modal translation require paired multi-modality training images from the same patient with pixel-to-pixel correspondence.

Synthesizing and segmenting cross-domain medical images


A method for adhesively assembling cellulosic products which comprises placing adjacent to the surfaces of the pieces to be joined a continuous, non-perforated metallic foil strip, which absorbs electromagnetic waves. The strip, which is contiguous with a heat activatable adhesive material, is positioned between the pieces and exposed to electromagnetic waves while the pieces are held together to form a bonded relationship between the cellulosic pieces.

This disclosure relates to the assembly of a variety of cellulosic products using an adhesive device that is activated by electromagnetic waves. The cellulosic products include assemblies such as corrugated boxes, cartons, other paper packaging, books, and articles being fashioned from fabric materials such as cotton, linen and the like. Examples of manufactured items that have cellulosic materials attached to them are bed frames and box springs, office and commercial seating, upholstered chairs and sofas, auto, airplane, boat and bus upholstery and headliners, lambrequins, drapery and curtain assemblies, awnings, outdoor furniture, clothing, shoes and the like.
The adhesive assembly of cellulosic products is typically effected by stitching and employing a variety of adhesives. However, these traditional fastening means are rapidly falling into disfavor as it becomes desirable and even necessary to work quicker and neater and form even more secure adhesive bonds. It is apparent, then, that inventions are waiting to be made which address the placement of adhesive material in a neat, clean, safe and effective manner especially with regard to the assembly of cellulosic products. Not surprisingly then, others have experimented with alternatives to traditional fastening devices for adhesively joining the components of an assembled product.

Method of adhesively assembling cellulosic products


Provided is a resin composition for an under coat of an UV coating layer and a coated steel sheet using the resin composition. The coated steel sheet comprises a material steel sheet; an under coat layer including a cured product of a resin composition for the under coat layer which contains a main resin and a metal powder, the under coat layer being formed on one side or both sides of the material steel sheet; and a top coat layer formed on the under coat layer and containing a radical compound, thereby providing a superior appearance, scratch resistance, corrosion resistance and superior weldability.

In general, a conventional weldable coated steel sheet is a steel sheet manufactured by coating organic solvent type resin containing metal powder, and aqueous chrome-free treatment must be applied to the steel sheet in order to secure adhesion with the steel sheet and corrosion resistance. The chrome-free coating formed on the steel sheet is less than 1 μm thick, but cannot contain conductive pigments such as metal powder, conductive ceramic, graphene and so on, in order to secure corrosion resistance, and hence, is deteriorated in weldability.
In the meantime, a coated steel sheet for shielding electromagnetic waves in order to enhance conductivity of a surface-coated layer is manufactured when aqueous paint composition containing metal powder is coated on the steel sheet. Such an aqueous paint composition containing metal powder is superior in adhesion with the steel sheet, but is vulnerable to corrosion resistance, thus it is difficult to be utilized as a steel sheet for construction materials which require high-degree corrosion resistance.
A surface coated steel sheet which is coated with UV-curing paint composition has superior appearance and scratch-resistance, but is difficult to be welded because a thick surface-coated layer is formed on the surface of the steel sheet. Particularly, because a curing reaction of the UV-curing paint composition occurs by irradiation of ultraviolet rays, it is difficult to use opaque metal powder or pigments into the UV-curing paint composition.
Therefore, in order to use the surface coated steel sheet coated with the UV-curing paint composition, which has superior appearance and scratch-resistance, in the field of the construction field, it is necessary to develop a coated steel sheet which enhance coating adhesion with the steel sheet, secure corrosion resistance and has superior weldability.
Accordingly, the present invention has been made in an effort to solve the above-mentioned problems occurring in the prior arts, and it is an object of the present invention to provide a coated steel sheet having superior weldability, scratch-resistance, and corrosion-resistance properties, and a method of manufacturing the same.

Coated steel sheet having superior welding, scratch-resistance, and corrosion-resistance properties


In a method of determining a focus position for a substrate exposure process and a substrate exposure apparatus capable of performing the same, a reticle having a light-transmitting region may be illuminated by an off-axis illumination light. A projected light, which is transmitted through the reticle and a projection optical system, may be detected by a light sensor disposed on a substrate stage. An intensity of the projected light measured at a light-receiving surface of the light sensor may vary in accordance with positions of the light-receiving surface. The focus position may be determined based on the variations in the intensity of the projected light.

1. Field of the Invention
Example embodiments relate to a method of determining a focus position for a substrate exposure process and a substrate exposure apparatus capable of performing the same. More particularly, example embodiments relate to a method of determining a focus position for an exposure process for transcribing image patterns onto a substrate such as a semiconductor wafer, for example, and an exposure apparatus capable of performing the same.
2. Description of the Related Art
In a fabrication process, electronic circuits may be formed on a semiconductor substrate such as a silicon wafer, for example. An electrical die sorting (EDS) process may be performed for inspecting electrical characteristics of elements and/or semiconductor devices formed on the semiconductor substrate. In a packaging process, semiconductor devices may be separated and packaged with epoxy resin.
The fabrication process may include a number of processes which are repeatedly performed to form electrical elements on the semiconductor substrate. For example, the fabrication process may include a deposition process, a photolithography process, an etching process, a chemical mechanical polishing process, an ion implantation process, a cleaning process, etc.
The photolithography process may be performed to form photoresist patterns on a layer formed by the deposition process. The photoresist patterns may be used as etching masks in the etching process so that the layer is formed into patterns having electrical characteristics.
The photolithography process may include a photoresist coating process for forming a photoresist layer on the semiconductor substrate, a baking process for hardening the photoresist layer, an exposure process for transcribing image patterns onto the photoresist layer, a development process for developing the photoresist layer to form the photoresist patterns, etc.
As semiconductor devices become highly integrated, sizes of patterns to be formed on the semiconductor substrate are reduced and thus, resolution becomes increasingly more important in the photolithography process. The resolution in the photolithography process may be influenced by a depth of focus (DOF), a focus position, etc.
Further, the resolution in the photolithography process may be influenced by a wavelength of an illumination light and/or a numerical aperture (NA) of a projection lens. Examples of the illumination light used in a photolithography process may include a g-line light beam having a wavelength of 436 nm, an i-line light beam having a wavelength of 365 nm, a krypton-fluoride (KrF) laser beam having a wavelength of 248 nm, an argon-fluoride (ArF) laser beam having a wavelength of 193 nm, and an F2 laser beam having a wavelength of 157 nm.
Increasing the numerical aperture of the projection lens to improve the resolution may cause the DOF to deteriorate. An off-axis illumination (OAI) may be used to improve the DOF by projecting zero-order and positive first-order light beams diffracted by image patterns of a reticle onto a semiconductor substrate.
Examples of the OAI may include an annular illumination, a dipole illumination, a quadrupole illumination, a cross-pole illumination, a hexapole illumination, etc.
Further, to increase the numerical aperture, various conventional techniques for improving focusing accuracy of a projected light passing through a reticle have been developed. However, as the integration degree of semiconductor devices increase, there still remains a need for an improved method of determining a best focus position for a substrate exposure process.

Method of determining a focus position for a substrate exposure process and substrate exposure apparatus capable of performing the same


Disclosed is a method for treating relapsing-remitting multiple sclerosis in a patient by administering to the patient autologous, ex vivo-expanded CD4+CD25+Foxp3+CD127low T reg cells when the patient is in remission. Also disclosed is a method of inhibiting the activity of autoimmune, autologous cytotoxic T and B cells in a patient suffering from relapsing-remitting multiple sclerosis, comprising administering a therapeutically effective amount of autologous CD4+CD25+Foxp3+CD127low T reg cells to the patient.

Multiple sclerosis (MS) is a chronic, progressive disease of the central nervous system (CNS), which is clinically manifested by multisystemic neurological symptoms and signs, and is pathomorphologically characterized by formation of multiple foci of demyelination in the white matter of the brain and spinal cord (Noseworthy et al. (2000) New Engl. J. Med. 343:938-952). The pathogenetic mechanism of the disease is the activation of autoreactive T cells specifically against components of the myelin, which leads to damage of the myelin sheath of oligodendrocytes and axons and consequently to formation of a persistent neurological deficit in the patient (Comabella et al. (2012) Clin. Immunol. 142:2-8).
Today, drugs used for MS drug therapy can be divided into two groups: drugs for symptomatic treatments, and drugs modifying the course of multiple sclerosis (Goodin, et al. (2002) Neurol. 58:169-178; Menge et al. (2008) Drugs 68:2445-2468). Drugs used for symptomatic treatment of MS include glucocorticoids (e.g., prednisolone, metypred, Solu-Medrol) and immuno-suppressive drugs (e.g., cyclophosphan, azathioprine, and mitoxantrone).
The mechanisms of action of glucocorticoids include both a reduction in the number of activated immunocompetent cells and inhibition of autoantibodies (Tischner et al. (2007) Mol. Cell. Endrocrinol. 275:62-70). The anti-inflammatory effect results in the reduction of the permeability of the blood vessels and the blood-brain barrier, which, in turn, leads to a reduction in the rate of prostaglandin synthesis. Due to reduced permeability of the endothelium of the capillaries, migration of leukocytes and other cells to the inflammatory focus is reduced. Adrenocorticotropic hormone (ACTH) and its synthetic analogs (tetracosactide) have a neurotransmitter effect.
A disadvantage of this group of drugs is the symptomatic nature of the treatment, where the prolonged use of these drugs causes hypercorticism syndrome (Cushing's syndrome), psychiatric disorders, arterial hypertension, and hypertrichosis (Weinstock-Guttman et al. (2004) Multiple Sclerosis 10:170-175).
Along with corticosteroids, drugs used in primary or secondary progressive multiple sclerosis include cytostatics, such as azathiaprine, cladribine, methotrexate, cyclophosphamide, mitoxatrone, etc. These drugs have pronounced side effects associated with poor tolerability and depression of bone marrow hemopoiesis.
Pathogenetic treatment of MS includes the use of a number of drugs, such as interferon beta (IFNβ)-1a and IFNβ-1b. The therapeutic effects of IFNβare associated with the inhibition of antigen presentation and suppression of both the proliferation and the activation of inflammatory cells. IFN-β1 induces anti-inflammatory cytokines and a change in the cytokine profile toward the anti-inflammatory phenotype, and also reduces entry of leukocytes into the central nervous system through the blood-brain barrier (see, e.g., Chofflon (2005) Biodrugs 19:299-308; Schreiner et al. (2004) J. Neuroimmunol. 155:172-182; Leppert et al. (1996) Ann. Neurol. 40:846-852; Finocchiaro et al. (2002) J. Interferon Cytokine Res. 22:1181-1184; Huynh et al. (1995) J. Neuroimmunol. 60:63-73; Liu et al. (2001) J. Neuroimmunol. 112:153-162.
The major disadvantages of IFNβuse are the length of treatment (at least six months, and if a positive effect is observed, potentially lifelong), the high cost of a treatment course, and the side effects, including flu-like symptoms (elevated body temperature, acute muscle and joint pain, weakness, fatigue), as well as the production of neutralizing antibodies. In most patients, these antibodies appear between 6 and 18 months after beginning treatment. The negative effect of neutralizing antibodies has been proven by clinical parameters (frequency of relapse) and by neurovisualization parameters of MS activity, as well as by the progression of disability (Kappos (2005) Neurol. 65:40 and Reder (2007) J. Multiple Sclerosis 13:53-62).
Another drug used for treatment of multiple sclerosis is glatiramer acetate (Copaxone), a synthetic polymer of four amino acids. The mechanism of this drug involves competitive binding with the major histocompatibility complex class II molecule, participating in presentation of antigens with the major myelin protein. This drug also activates Th2 CD4+T cells crossing the blood-brain barrier and induces suppression of the autoimmune response against multiple myelin antigens (Neuhaus et al. (2001) Neurol. 56:702-708).
Direct comparative studies of Copaxone with high doses of beta interferons (Refib, Betaferon) have not shown any significant differences in the ability of the drugs to reduce the relapse frequency, or to reduce the number and volume of lesions on MRI (Mikol et al. (2007) Program and Abstracts of the ECTRIMS: 23rd Congress of the European Committee for Treatment and Research in Multiple Sclerosis, Oct. 11-14, 2007, Prague, Czech Republic, Poster 119). The disadvantages of treatment with this drug include the need for prolonged use (course of treatment lasts at least 6 months), the high cost, and the presence of side effects both at the injection sites (hyperemia, stinging) and a generalized post-injection reaction (breathlessness, tachycardia, flushed skin, cold sweats, chest pain, and dimming of vision). Furthermore, when the drug is taken for many years, lipoatrophic changes may occur (local atrophy of fatty tissue at the injection sites) (Lebrun et al. (2011) J. Multiple Sclerosis 17:88-94).
Also used for MS treatment is Natalizumab (Tysabri), a preparation of monoclonal antibodies against integrin molecules. In MS patients, the drug blocks molecular interaction between a4-integrin (which can be expressed on autoaggressive lymphocytes), and vascular cell adhesion molecule 1 (VCAM-1) of the vascular endothelium of the blood-brain barrier, and prevents the migration of lymphocytes through the endothelium to the inflammatory foci in the CNS (Von Andrian et al. (2003) New Engl. J. Med. 348:68-72).
The disadvantages of the drug include high frequency (in up to 25% of patients) of side effects (headaches, dizziness, itching, chills, hives, asthenia). Delayed side effects are associated with immunosuppression arising as a result of the action of the drug, which include urinary tract infections, vaginal infections, pneumonia, tonsillitis, and herpes infection. 0.1% of the patients who undergo treatment with Natalizumab develop liver, and accordingly, the European Medicines Agency for registration of drugs (EMA) has recommended routine monitoring of patients with liver damage. However, the most serious side effect of Tysabri treatment is progressive multifocal leukoencephalopathy (PML), a demyelinating disease manifested by headaches, paresis, loss of coordination, vision impairment, speech impairment (aphasia) and pronounced cognitive deficits. Most often, the disease ends with the death of the patient. PML is associated with activation (under immunodeficiency conditions) of the JCV polyomavirus in the CNS.
Thus, what is needed is an improved and efficacious treatment for relapsing-remitting MS with reduced or no side effects.

Treatment method for relapsing-remitting multiple sclerosis


A chip type varistor in which first and second inner electrodes are embedded in a sintered body obtained by laminating a plurality of semiconductor ceramics layers so as not to be overlapped with each other in the direction of thickness of the ceramics layers, respective one edges of the first and second inner electrodes are led out to one and the other of a pair of side surfaces opposed to each other of the sintered body and are electrically connected to outer electrodes formed on the pair of side surfaces of the sintered body, respectively, a non-connected type inner electrode which is not electrically connected to the above described outer electrodes is embedded in the sintered body, and the non-connected type inner electrode is arranged so as to be overlapped with the first and second inner electrodes while being separated by the semiconductor ceramics layer.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to a chip type varistor functioning as a voltage non-linear resistor, and more particularly, to a chip type varistor so constructed as to obtain varistor characteristics in the interface of an inner electrode and a semiconductor ceramics layer.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Recently in the field of electronic equipments such as a communication device, miniaturization and integration of electronic components have proceeded. Correspondingly, also in a varistor, the demands for miniaturization and a lower voltage have been increased. A monolithic type varistor as shown in FIG. 5 has been conventionally proposed as one meeting the demands (Japanese Patent Laid-Open Gazette No. 302496/1989).
In this monolithic type varistor 20, a pair of inner electrodes 22 and 23 are embedded in a sintered body 21 formed by laminating a lot of semiconductor ceramics layers. In addition, only respective one edges 22a and 23a of the inner electrodes 22 and 23 are led out to side surfaces 21a and 21b of the above described sintered body 21, and are connected to outer electrodes 24 and 25 formed on the side surfaces 21a and 21b. Non-connected type inner electrodes 27 which are not connected to the above described outer electrodes 24 and 25 are embedded in semiconductor ceramics layers 28 between the above described inner electrodes 22 and 23, and each of the non-connected type inner electrodes 27 is sealed in the sintered body 21.
In this monolithic type varistor 20, varistor characteristics are obtained in each of the interfaces of the above described inner electrodes 22 and 23 and non-connected type inner electrodes 27 and the semiconductor ceramics layers 28. In addition, the number of grain boundaries in the direction of thickness of the ceramics layers 28 among the above described electrodes 22, 23 and 27 is set to not more than two, and a varistor voltage is controlled by selecting the number of ceramics layers 28 laminated.
Meanwhile, in the above described conventional monolithic type varistor, the inner electrodes or the non-connected type inner electrodes are formed on a plurality of ceramic green sheets and then, the plurality of ceramic green sheets are laminated and cofired, thereby to obtain the sintered body 21. Consequently, mesh-shaped holes are easily generated in the inner electrodes and the non-connected type inner electrodes after sintering by the shrinkage of a metal constituting the above described inner electrodes or the like and the evaporation of organic matter at the time of sintering. As a result, a semiconductor crystal grows in the direction of thickness in the sintered body through the holes, thereby to encounter the problems of causing the variation of a varistor voltage and increasing a leakage current. In addition, there also arises the problem of decreasing the surge current withstand because current concentrations are easily caused in the above described semiconductor crystal portion which has grown.


A system and method perform cross-modal information retrieval, by generating a graph representing the set of media objects. Each node of the graph corresponds to a media object and is labeled with a set of features corresponding to a text part of the respective media object. Each edge between two nodes represents a similarity between a media part of the two nodes. A first relevance score is computed for each media object of the set of media objects that corresponds to a text-based score. A second relevance score is computed for each media object by inputting the graph into a graph neural network. The first relevance score and the second relevance score are combined to obtain a final ranking score for each media object.

When a user enters a search query into a web search engine, a list of ranked results comprising documents relevant to the query is returned. Beyond textual search, different types of content are often integrated in the search results, such as images, videos, or audio, in order to cover different user needs. This is known as cross-modal retrieval, where the goal is to retrieve relevant objects that are of a different nature to the query. For example, a query of one content type (e.g., text) is used to retrieve search results in another content type (e.g., images).
However, directly including non-textual features in the search ranking process is not straightforward due to the semantic gap between different content types (e.g., between text and images). This is why the problem of cross-modal retrieval has initially been addressed using standard text-based indexing and retrieval by considering only the textual content of multi-modal objects.
However, building a universal training collection of paired (image, text) instances, where the text describes faithfully the content of the image in terms of elementary objects and their relationships, is too expensive and time-consuming in practice. Consequently, image search engines rely on such pairs crawled from the Web, where the link between image and text (e.g., image caption, surrounding sentences, etc.) is tenuous and noisy.
To circumvent this problem, query logs have been conventionally used but real queries are never expressed in the same way as the ones considered when evaluating joint embedding methods. In practice, queries are characterized by very large intent gaps, as queries do not accurately describe the content of the image but contain only a few words, and are far from expressing the true visual needs.
Another conventional approach is disclosed in Published US Patent Application Number 2009/0292685. Published US Patent Application Number 2009/0292685 discloses a video search re-ranking via multi-graph propagation technique employing multimodal fusion in video search is presented, employing not only textual and visual features, but also semantic and conceptual similarity between video shots to rank or re-rank the search results received in response to a text-based search query.
However, the multi graph propagation approach in Published US Patent Application Number 2009/0292685 fails to learn the final ranking of the model. Moreover, the multi graph propagation approach in Published US Patent Application Number 2009/0292685 fails to learn the representation or features of objects and fails to modulate the influence of nodes and edges automatically for the function to be optimized.
To improve the quality of the search results, some conventional techniques aim to exploit visual information in the ranking process. Specifically, two main lines of work can be distinguished regarding cross-modal retrieval. The first approach focuses on designing effective cross-modal similarity measures, while the second approach seeks to learn how to map images and text into a shared latent space.
The first approach combines different mono-media similarity signals, relying either on simple aggregation rules, or on unsupervised cross-modal pseudo-relevance feedback mechanisms, that depend on the choice of a few but critical hyper-parameters. The unsupervised cross-modal pseudo-relevance feedback mechanism is formulated as a two-step pseudo-relevance feedback propagation process in a graph, where nodes represent multi-modal objects and edges encode their visual similarities.
An example of the first approach, which uses cross-modal similarity measures, builds similarity measures by fusing mono-modal similarities, using either simple combination rules or more complex propagation mechanisms in similarity graphs (e.g., J. M. Ah-Pine et al., "XRCE's Participation to ImageCLEF 2008," 9th Workshop of the Cross-Language Evaluation Forum, CLEF 2008; S. Clinchant et al., "Advances in multilingual and multimodal information retrieval," Trans-Media Pseudo-Relevance feedback Methods in Multimedia Retrieval, pp. 569-576, 2008).
However, the first approach lacks strong theoretical foundations, is sensitive to label noise (which is often the case with implicit feedback such as clicks), is unable to model complex relevance/click patterns, and is unsupervised (i.e., the first approach does not learn from data). The latter characteristic (unsupervised) lacks some dynamic behavior, such as being able to adapt to different queries.
In other words, cross-modal pseudo-relevance feedback methods have the advantage of being simple, but rely on a model with few parameters that cannot capture many different search scenarios.
The second approach emerged from the computer vision community, where text and images are embedded in the same latent space (i.e., joint embedding), allowing to directly match text queries to images (e.g., A. Frome et al., "DeViSE: A deep visual semantic embedding model," 2013; Y. Gong et al., "Improving image-sentence embeddings using large weakly annotated photo collections," 2014; A. Gordo et al., "Beyond instance-level image retrieval: Leveraging captions to learn a global visual representation for semantic retrieval," 2017; J. Weston et al., "Scaling up to large vocabulary image annotation").
Joint embedding techniques aim at learning a mapping between textual and visual representations. Canonical Correlation Analysis and its deep variants, as well as bi-directional ranking losses (or triplet losses) ensure that, in the new latent space, an image and corresponding text are correlated or close enough with respect to the other images and pieces of text in the training collection. Other objective functions utilize metric learning losses, machine translation-based measures, or even adversarial losses.
For example, a conventional joint textual and visual embedding model, (Wang, Liwei, Yin Li, and Svetlana Lazebnik, 'Learning Deep Structure-Preserving Image-Text Embeddings,' In 2016 IEEE Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR), 5005-13, Las Vegas, Nev., USA: IEEE, 2016.), uses a two-view neural network with two layers of non-linearities on top of any representation of the image and text views. To train this network, in a way which is reminiscent of some "learning to rank" strategies, four different triplet losses (visual-visual, textual-textual, visual-textual, and textual-visual) are used. The aim is to enforce that two documents relevant to the same query should have both textual and visual embeddings close in the new common (i.e., joint) latent space, while a document relevant to a query q should be far from documents non-relevant to the same query or from documents relevant to other queries.
However, the second approaches are generally evaluated on artificial retrieval scenarios and are rarely considered in a re-ranking scenario, where mechanisms like pseudo-relevance feedback are highly effective.
Overall, these two approaches suffer from several limitations: the approaches are sensitive to the triplet sampling strategy as well as the choice of appropriate margins in the ranking losses. Moreover, constituting a training set that ensures good learning and generalization is not an easy task: the text associated to an image should describe its visual content (e.g. "a man speaking in front of a camera in a park"), and nothing else (e.g. "the President of the US, the 10th of March", "John Doe", "joy and happiness").
Moreover, neural networks, such as RankNet and LambdaRank, have been intensively used in image retrieval to address the learning to rank task. While standard strategies focus on learning a global ranking function that considers each query-document pair in isolation, the strategies tend to ignore the difference in distribution in the feature space for different queries
Graph Neural Networks (GNNs) are extensions of neural networks that deal with structured data encoded as a graph (e.g., T. N. Kipf et al., "Semi-supervised classification with graph convolutional networks," http://arxiv.org/abs/1609.02907, 2016).
On the other hand, Graph Convolutional Networks (GCNs) have been proposed for classifying nodes in a graph in a semi-supervised setting, i.e., when labels are only available for a subset of nodes. Each layer of a graph convolutional network can generally be decomposed as follows: (i) node features are first transformed (e.g., linear mapping), (ii) node features are convolved, meaning that for each node, a differentiable, permutation-invariant operation (e.g., sum, mean, or max) of its neighboring node features is computed, before applying some non-linearity, (iii) finally, a new representation for each node in the graph is obtained, which is then fed to the next layer.
Although graph convolutional networks are standard feed-forward networks, graph convolutional networks differ from such standard feed-forward networks, which process elements independently from each other, by processing all the nodes (or a subset) of the graph simultaneously. Therefore, graph convolutional networks introduce implicitly some dependencies among the predictions for nodes.
Accordingly, it is desirable to provide a process of cross-modal information retrieval without relying on a model with few parameters that cannot capture many different search scenarios.
Moreover, it is desirable to provide a process of cross-modal information retrieval that is not sensitive to label noise.
Furthermore, it is desirable to provide a process of cross-modal information retrieval that is able to model complex relevance/click patterns.
Also, it is desirable to provide a process of cross-modal information retrieval that is able to adapt to different queries.
Additionally, it is desirable to provide a process of cross-modal information retrieval without introducing dependencies among the predictions for nodes.

System and method for performing cross-modal information retrieval using a neural network using learned rank images


It is an object of the invention to achieve a stable idling revolution speed in a short time and to prevent easily the occurrence of abnormal combustion, misfire, or the like by effectively controlling a gas flow rate adjustment valve even in a case where a fuel gas which tends to fluctuate in fuel gas concentration, as represented by a coal mine gas, is used. The invention includes a revolution speed detection part 5 detecting the revolution speed of a gas engine 1, a gas concentration detection unit 7 detecting the gas concentration of a fuel gas, a gas flow rate adjustment valve 4 disposed in a fuel gas pipeline 3 supplying a fuel gas to the gas engine 1, a governor actuator 21 for operating the gas flow rate adjustment valve 4, and an operation amount computation part 15 computing the operation amount of the governor actuator 21 according to the gas concentration of the fuel gas detected by the gas concentration detection unit 7; and a governor controller 10 operating the governor actuator 21 based on the operation amount computed by the operation amount computation part 15 is further provided.

With a gas engine in which a combustible gas such as methane or propane is directly introduced into a cylinder (combustion chamber) to be combusted, the ratio between the fuel gas and air is changed by a gas flow rate adjustment valve disposed at the fuel gas path to the engine. As a result, sure ignition and combustion are allowed. In addition, the output of the engine is changed by adjusting the gas flow rate with the gas flow rate adjustment valve, and a governor actuator for driving the gas flow rate adjustment valve.
Japanese Patent Publication No. 3500047 (Patent Document 1) discloses a technology of adjusting the amount of the fuel gas to be supplied. The accompanying FIG. 8 shows the outline of fuel control and the like of the related-art technology. In FIG. 8, 01 represents an engine; 02 represents a crank shaft of the engine 01; 03 represents a fuel gas pipeline; 04 represents a gas flow rate adjustment valve disposed in the fuel gas pipeline 03; and 020 represents an electronic governor. Whereas, 010 represents a governor controller of the electronic governor 020; and 021 represents a governor actuator for driving the gas flow rate adjustment valve 04.
According to the Patent Document 1, the governor controller 010 compares the detected value of the engine revolution speed inputted from a revolution detector 05 and the set revolution speed, and calculates the fuel gas flow rate equivalent to the revolution speed deviation, and outputs the calculated value to the governor actuator 021. The governor actuator 021 changes the gas flow rate adjustment valve 04 by the amount equivalent to the flow rate deviation. As a result, the gas engine 01 is operated at the set revolution speed.
FIG. 9 is a diagram showing a change in engine revolution speed and a change in governor actuator output after start of the gas engine of the related-art technology. At the revolution speed between the start and the idling revolution speed N2 at the engine 01, there is set a revolution speed transition point N1 at which the output of the governor actuator 021 for controlling the gas flow rate adjustment valve 04, in other words, the increasing rate of the fuel limiting value is changed.
Between the engine stop and the revolution speed transition point N1, the increasing rate α1 of the governor actuator output S from a point a equivalent to the governor actuator output S1 set as the initial limiting value of the fuel gas flow rate at the start to a point b equivalent to the governor actuator output S2 at the revolution speed transition point N1 and the increasing rate α2 of the governor actuator output S from the revolution speed transition point N1 to a point c equivalent to the governor actuator output S3 at the idling revolution speed N2 are set in the relationship of α2>α1.
Then, by setting the fuel gas flow rate limiting value S2 at the revolution speed transition point N1, and the fuel gas flow rate limiting value S3 at the idling revolution speed N2, the amount of the fuel gas to be supplied is prevented from increasing more than necessary during the period until the idling revolution speed N2.
Therefore, the fuel gas flow rate limiting value from the governor actuator can be controlled so as to be changed properly following the increase in engine revolution speed at the start of the engine. This can inhibit the occurrence of the following situation: the fuel gas flow rate sharply increases upon start, so that the gas in the combustion chamber is in a rich state. Accordingly, after starting, a proper amount of the fuel gas is supplied to the engine combustion chamber, resulting in the implementation of the stable start free from the occurrence of misfire or knocking.    Patent Document 1: Japanese Patent Publication No. 3500047.
However, a gas engine using a combustible gas such as methane or propane as a fuel may use, particularly, methane with a low concentration generated in a coal mine or the like as a fuel.
In such a case, there is performed underground ventilation aiming at discharge of methane generated during the underground coal mining operation in a coal mine. The gas discharged to the outside of the underground tunnels is retained to be used as the fuel for the gas engine.
Therefore, the concentration of the retained methane is not invariably constant, and tends to vary.
On the other hand, when the gas is used as the fuel for the gas engine, it is a condition for obtaining an efficient operation that the ratio of air and the fuel gas (CH4) falls within a given range.
For this reason, when the fuel gas discharged from a coal mine or the like is used, the fuel gas is required to be supplied to the combustion chamber of the engine in consideration of the concentration.


Organic dyes that are covalently bonded multimers or higher order symmetrical structures where one or more dye units may optionally contain deuterium substitutions are disclosed. The disclosed dyes are particularly useful for optical coatings, new optical nanomaterials, high density storage devices. The structural and optical characteristics of the disclosed dyes provide avenues for increased information-content through surface-enhanced Raman resonance spectroscopy.

1. Technical Field
This disclosure relates to new organic dyes that are covalently bonded multimers or higher order symmetrical structures in which one or more dye units may optionally contain deuterium substitutions. The disclosed dyes may be particularly useful for optical coatings, new optical nanomaterials, high density storage devices. The structural and optical characteristics of the disclosed dyes provide avenues for increased information-content through surface-enhanced Raman resonance spectroscopy.
2. Description of the Related Art
Reactive fluorescent dyes have many important applications including photonic technology, specifically as active media within systems requiring syntonizable lasers, photo- and opto-electronic devices such as solar energy conversion, microscopic non-linear optical devices, and molecular probes in biochemical systems. Commonly used fluorescent dyes include, but are certainly not limited to Rhodamine (R6G), Crystal Violet (CV), and Nile Blue. Other dyes and their synthetic derivatives have been studied in optoelectronic devices include cyanin, ruthenium-based dyes, isophorone derivatives, perylene dyes, anthracene dyes, BODIPY dyes, porphyrin and Azoaromatic polymers.
Among those fluorescent dyes, R6G has been widely studied and applied for thin film lasers. For example, R6G has been incorporated into transparent and porous SiO2 thin films. The resulting R6G/SiO2 composite thin films do not disperse light and therefore can be used for integration into optical and photonic devices. A high order of R6G non-covalent dimers has been observed during the aggregation process of R6G laser dye intercalated in supported thin films of Laponite clay.
Some fluorescent and non-fluorescent dye dimers that display unique optical properties have been studied in various areas. For example, synthesized porphyrin dimers showed efficient electron injection into TiO2 in dye-sensitized solar cell based energy conversion. Hoechst dimers have also been prepared and shown to either bind dsDNA or form bridges between two dsDNA chains. Tethered merocyanine dimers displayed novel solvatochromic effects compared to the corresponding monomers. Recently, a reactive and bioreducible thiol-containing tetramethylrhodamine dimer was synthesized and proved useful as a dithiol reduction-sensitive fluorescent probe in cellular tracking systems as well as a thiol-based dye labeling reagent.
On the other hand, Raman spectroscopy is becoming an increasingly practical technique because of its minimal sample preparation requirements and compatibility with biological materials in aqueous solutions. Raman spectroscopy is the measurement of the wavelength and intensity of scattered light from molecules. The Raman scattered light occurs at wavelengths that are shifted from the incident light by the energies of molecular vibrations related to the overall polarization of the system. Typical applications are in structure determination, multi-component qualitative analysis, and quantitative analysis.
More recently, Surface-enhanced resonance Raman spectroscopy (SERRS) has become an attractive technique for applications in protein, nucleic acid, and related biomarker analysis because of its unprecedented signal enhancement. For example, R6G derivatives, as monomers, have been prepared and applied to Surface Enhanced Resonance Raman Spectroscopy (SERRS) for accurate quantification of protein concentration. Accurate quantification of protein content and composition has been achieved using isotope-edited surface enhanced resonance Raman spectroscopy (IERS). The spectral signatures reflect the expected statistical distribution of isotopologue labels incorporated into proteins in a gel matrix format without interference from protein features. However, during technology transfer to an industrial setting, these R6G monomer dyes have suffered shortcomings. The interactions between R6G and nanoparticles are variable and difficult to control, which renders their Raman signals difficult to repeat. The conjugation between the R6G monomer dye, linker, and target protein is sensitive to sample conditions. Therefore, development of new R6G derivatives that can overcome shortcomings of the monomeric forms in SERRS is an urgent task for the development of IERS.
Although R6G dimer formation in solvent has been widely studied, R6G dimer aggregation has also been observed when dyes are intercalated in solid supported thin films. Covalently linked R6G molecules have not been synthesized and their optical properties in film coating and Raman spectroscopy have not yet been characterized. The optical industry has recently indicated that R6G dimers exhibit properties desirable for certain optical coating applications; for example, extremely high absorption in the light band from 500 nm to 600 nm is needed. Development of properties to meet industrial needs is therefore desirable.
Hence, there is a need for new dyes with enhanced optical features. Moreover, there is a need for new dyes that can be used as optical coatings. Finally, there is a need for new dyes as optical coatings with stronger association to substrate surfaces.

Higher order structured dyes with enhanced optical features


A method and apparatus comprising a resin layer, a number of conductive elements, and a number of layers of reinforcement material. The number of conductive elements is on the resin layer. The number of conductive elements has a configuration that forms an antenna system. The number of layers of reinforcement material forms a reinforcement for a composite structure, and at least a portion of the resin layer forms a matrix for the composite structure.

1. Field
The present invention relates generally to antennas and, in particular, to structurally integrated antennas. More particularly, the present disclosure relates to a method and apparatus for a slot antenna that is a composite structure or is integrated into a composite structure.
2. Background
Antennas are used in many applications to transmit and/or receive radio frequency signals. Antennas are commonly used on aircraft. For example, an antenna on an aircraft may be used to provide communication between the aircraft and another aircraft, a ground station, a satellite, and/or some suitable type of platform.
Antennas can also be used in radar systems on aircraft. When used in a radar system, antennas may aid in detecting objects, such as, for example, ground objects, maritime objects, airborne objects, and/or other suitable types of objects. Antennas used in radar systems may also support generating images, such as synthetic aperture radar images, inverse synthetic aperture radar images, and/or other suitable types of radar images. In this manner, antennas may be used in communications and remote sensing.
Different parameters are taken into account in designing antennas for aircraft. These parameters may include a desired level of performance for remote sensing and communications functions. Further, the antennas may be required to take into account the constraints of the aircraft for which these functions are performed.
Weight, size, and shape of antennas are additional examples of parameters taken into account in antenna design for aircraft. Reducing the weight of an aircraft by reducing the weight of an antenna may increase the fuel efficiency or the distance an aircraft may travel. Further, the size of the antenna may place constraints on what other components may be included in the aircraft and may place constraints on the design of the aircraft. Reducing the size of the antenna may reduce space issues in an aircraft. Also, the shape of the antenna on the aircraft may affect performance of the aircraft. For example, depending on the shape of the antenna and a required orientation for the antenna, undesired drag on the aircraft may be introduced.
With respect to unmanned aerial vehicles, ultrahigh frequency (UHF) radar systems may be mounted in pods attached to unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). Currently designed antennas for these radar systems may have undesired characteristics.
For example, depending on the specific implementation, pods containing antennas may be as long as about 21 feet long. The weight of these pods may reduce the time or distance that an unmanned aerial vehicle can fly. These reductions may increase as the size of the unmanned aerial vehicle decreases. Therefore, it would be advantageous to have a method and apparatus that takes into account at least some of the issues discussed above, as well as other possible issues.