A technique is provided for graceful restart of a Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) router that uses a local store on the restarting router that stores prefixes on all routes or the “group best path” information on all BGP peers having a common Autonomous System (AS) number. This local store is used to run best path computations on the restarting router, rather than first awaiting receipt of route information from peers to speed the restart process. Updates are then transmitted to peers using the best path data and an end-of-Routing Information Base (RIB) message it transmitted by the restarting router to indicate that all information has now been sent by the restarting router. Thereafter the restarting router processes incoming updates from peers as received (or these peers routes are timed-out), remaining stale paths are deleted and any changed best paths, based upon the newly received updates, are then transmitted to peers.

1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates generally to routing protocols used in computer networks and, more particularly, to a technique that speeds up graceful restart of a routing protocol executing on an intermediate node in a computer network.
2. Background Information
A computer network is a geographically distributed collection of interconnected communication links used to transport data between nodes, such as computers. Many types of computer networks are available, with the types ranging from local area networks to wide area networks. The nodes typically communicate by exchanging discrete packets or messages of data according to pre-defined protocols. In this context, a protocol consists of a set of rules defining how the nodes interact with each other.
Computer networks may be further interconnected by an intermediate node, such as a switch or router, to extend the effective "size" of each network. Since management of a large system of interconnected computer networks can prove burdensome, smaller groups of computer networks may be maintained as routing domains or autonomous systems. The networks within an autonomous system (AS) are typically coupled together by conventional "intradomain" routers. Yet it still may be desirable to increase the number of nodes capable of exchanging data; in this case, intradomain routers executing interdomain routing protocols are used to interconnect nodes of the various autonomous systems (ASs).
An example of an interdomain routing protocol is the Border Gateway Protocol version 4 (BGP), which performs routing between autonomous systems by exchanging routing (reachability) information among neighboring interdomain routers of the systems. An adjacency is a relationship formed between selected neighboring (peer) routers for the purpose of exchanging routing information messages and abstracting the network topology. Before transmitting such messages, however, the peers cooperate to establish a logical "peer" connection (session) between the routers. BGP establishes reliable connections/sessions using a reliable/sequenced transport protocol, such as the Transmission Control Protocol (TCP).
The reachability information exchanged by BGP peers typically includes destination address prefixes, i.e., the portions of destination addresses used by the routing protocol to render routing ("next hop") decisions. Examples of such destination addresses include Internet Protocol (IP) version 4 (IPv4) and version 6 (IPv6) addresses. A prefix implies a combination of an IP address and a mask that cooperate to describe an area of the network that a peer can reach. Each prefix may have a number of associated paths; each path is announced to a peer router by one or more of its peers. Note that the combination of a set of path attributes and a prefix is referred to as a "route"; the terms "route" and "path" may be used interchangeably herein. The BGP routing protocol standard is well known and described in detail in Request For Comments (RFC) 1771, by Y. Rekhter and T. Li (1995), Internet Draft <draft-ietf-idr-bgp4-23.txt> titled, A Border Gateway Protocol 4 (BGP-4) by Y. Rekhter and T. Li (April 2003) and Interconnections, Bridges and Routers, by R. Perlman, published by Addison Wesley Publishing Company, at pages 323-329 (1992), all disclosures of which are hereby incorporated by reference.
The interdomain routers configured to execute an implementation of the BGP protocol, referred to herein as BGP routers, perform various routing functions, including transmitting and receiving routing messages and rendering routing decisions based on routing metrics. Each BGP router maintains a routing table that lists all feasible paths from that router to a particular network. The routing table is a database that contains routing information used to construct a forwarding table of a forwarding information base (FIB) that is used by the router when performing forwarding decisions on packets.
Periodic refreshing of the routing table is generally not performed; however, BGP peer routers residing in the as exchange routing information under certain circumstances. For example, when a BGP router initially connects to the network, the peer routers exchange the entire contents of their routing tables. Thereafter when changes occur to those contents, the routers exchange only those portions of their routing tables that change in order to update their BGP peers' tables. These update messages are thus incremental update messages sent in response to changes to the contents of the routing tables and announce only a best path to a particular network.
Broadly stated, a BGP router generates routing update messages for an adjacency, to also known as a peer router, by "walking-through" the routing table and applying appropriate routing policies. A routing policy is information that enables a BGP router to rank routes according to filtering and preference (i.e., the "best path"). Routing updates provided by the update messages allows BGP routers of the as to construct a consistent view of the network topology. The update messages are typically sent using a reliable transport, such as TCP, to ensure reliable delivery. TCP is a transport protocol implemented by a transport layer of the IP architecture; the term TCP/IP is commonly used to denote this architecture. The TCP/IP architecture is well known and described in Computer Networks, 3rd Edition, by Andrew S. Tanenbaum, published by Prentice-Hall (1996).
Often, maintenance of routers (such as BGP routers) in a network is planned, thereby leading to shutdown or reset of a BGP process executing in the router. For example, a BGP router may be shutdown and removed from service in response to, e.g., upgrading of certain hardware or rebooting of the router following a software upgrade. In addition, the router may be reset in response to changing of BGP parameters, such as when a BGP router identifier is changed. However, a planned router shutdown or reset can result in temporary outages (i.e., loss of routing information exchange) for certain routes for which the shutdown router was the best path.
In order to implement a planned shutdown or reset of BGP, the shutdown router sends a conventional BGP Notification message with error code Cease in order to close its connections with its BGP peers. Subsequently to sending the Notification message, the shutdown router closes the TCP sessions over which the connections are established. In some implementations, the Notification message may be omitted. In response to closing the connections, all original routes advertised on those connections are immediately removed (withdrawn) from service (from the FIBs) by the BGP peers. As a result, some time (i.e., a convergence time) elapses before the network re-converges. In this context, the convergence time is the time that elapses between withdrawal of a route and the time when all subsequent messages triggered by the initial route withdrawal have been exchanged. In general, this can be characterized by the time needed for a BGP router to receive and process update messages from all of its peers, select best paths for each prefix, install those best paths into the routing table and advertise the best paths back to its peers. However, in some networks, multiple such rounds of messages may be required or other factors may also play a part. This approach of simply "halting" the router and re-converging the network leads to temporary loss of routing information due to route withdrawal.
A BGP router may shutdown or become unavailable as result of a timeout or a failure condition. As such, a failed router's functions may be taken over by a designated failover (backup) router. In either a planned shutdown (above) or a sudden failure, eventually BGP connectivity within the failed router will be reestablished. The prior art defines a so-called "graceful restart" (GR) procedure that allows the BGP connection to be reestablished in a manner that causes the least disruption to other connections and avoids further timeouts. A more-detailed discussion of this procedure is provided in Internet Draft <draft-ietf-idr-restart-10.txt> titled, Graceful Restart Mechanism for BGP by S. Sangli, Y. Rekhter, et. al. (December 2004), the teachings of which are expressly incorporated herein by reference.
A graceful restart assumes that the restarting router's peers have first detected that the router's connection has shut down. Subsequently the peers detect that the shutdown router is coming back up and a graceful restart procedure is implemented in an attempt to limit the negative effects on routing caused by the restart of BGP. These negative effects result in part from the need to recompute BGP routes/paths. These processes consume significant system resources.
The conventional graceful restart approach outlined in the above-incorporated Graceful Restart Mechanism for BGP involves entry by the BGP peers into a read-only mode in which they send and receive updates of routes. The peers retrieve their local routing information and generate updates for the restarting router. The restarting router then receives route updates, and thereby updates its local FIB. Once updates are complete, any "stale" paths that are no longer employed by BGP are deleted and read only mode is exited. At this time, all other activity is completed and the "best path" procedure is run on the restarting router. Best path updates are then transmitted out to peers based upon the best path computation. Once updates are complete an end-of-RIB (routing information base) marker is sent out by peers to indicate that their updates are now complete. In this approach, the end-of-RIB marker is specified by an update message with no reachable network layer reachability information (NLRI) and empty withdrawn NLRI.
This procedure for graceful restart can be relatively slow to complete. In particular, it takes time to receive all BGP peers' routes and then to send out best paths to peers. A technique that reduces this latency is highly desirable.
An approach to preserving a BGP connection, with less latency used in so-called "high-availability" implementations of BGP architecture, is to store all state information related to the connection in a standby BGP process also termed a "stateful switchover" (SSO) that mirrors the primary BGP process. While this approach allows immediate reestablishment of the connection, and preserves the entire session, including TCP information, it is expensive both in terms of hardware and processing overhead.

System and method for speeding border gateway protocol graceful restart


The resonator comprises a shell 1 a having a pole 2 held by a support rod 3, the shell having an annular edge 4 defined by an inside surface 5 and an outside surface 6 that are geometrically similar and that extend around a common axis of revolution R, the inside surface and the outside surface being offset relative to each other along the axis of revolution in such a manner that the shell presents a thickness E along the annular edge 4 that is greater than the thickness e that it presents in the vicinity of the pole 2.

A hemispherical resonant gyro generally comprises a hemispherical resonator of silica, comprising a shell with a pole held on a support rod, the shell including an annular edge defined by a hemispherical inside surface and a hemispherical outside surface that are concentric so that the shell presents constant thickness from the pole to the annular edge. The models for such surfaces are well known and they can therefore be machined with great precision. Nevertheless, a shell of constant thickness presents the drawback of having a modal mass, i.e. an effective mass, that is less than 20% of the total mass of the shell. This means that it is not possible to take full advantage of the very low damping of silica. Increasing the modal mass has the advantage of decreasing parasitic damping effects, in particular the damping that results from the metallization; of decreasing the relative effect of geometrical defects in machining; and of increasing the quantity of momentum of the vibration.
To increase modal mass, proposals have been made to increase the thickness of the shell while keeping it constant. Nevertheless, a uniform increase in shell thickness leads to an increase in resonant frequency in the same proportion as the increase in modal mass, such that the overall performance is not satisfactory.
Furthermore, for reasons that are independent of modal mass, proposals are made in document FR-A-2 792 772 to increase the thickness of the shell in the vicinity of its annular edge. It turns out that that configuration makes it possible to increase modal mass with little increase in the resonant frequency of the resonator. Nevertheless, in the above-specified document, the increase in the thickness of the shell along the edge is obtained by changing the shape of the inside and outside surfaces defining the shell, thus making the shell more complex to machine and increasing the risk of machining defects.

Resonator particularly for a vibrating gyroscope


A method for cycling GPS computations is described in which, at a beginning of a cycle, N computing devices are determined to be members of a device group. At each of N points within the cycle: a target device of the N computing devices is instructed to compute its target location data; another member of the device group is instructed to refrain from computing its other location data; target location data is received from the target device; and the target location data is transmitted to each other member of the device group.

Many smart phones, tablets and other mobile computing devices include Global Positioning System (GPS) functionality. GPS systems in such devices provide location data by receiving and decoding time and position signals transmitted by orbiting satellites. To provide continuously updated location data, a GPS system and its associated antenna and processor repeatedly receive, decode and process such signals. In some examples, GPS systems repeat such signal reception processing at sample rates of, for example, 1 Hz., 5 Hz. and 20 Hz.
The power consumed by operating GPS system components and the related data processing may limit the battery life of computing devices. In some devices, such power consumption of GPS components is greater than the power consumed by any other sensor in the device. Additionally, when a GPS system is active, a device may be prevented from entering into a battery-saving sleep state.


A holder for a surface contact card includes a main body, a pivotal shaft, and a cover. The main body has a latching block and defines a receiving groove configured for receiving a surface contact card. The cover includes a hinge portion and a latching tab. The pivotal shaft extends through the hinge portion and rotatably connects to the main body. The cover is pivotally and slidably engaged with the main body for covering the receiving groove, and the latching tab is latched with the block.

1. Technical Field
The present disclosure generally relates to cards used in electronic devices, and particularly to a surface contact card holder for an electronic device.
2. Description of Related Art
Surface contact cards having special circuits are widely used in portable electronic devices to enhance or specialize the functions of the portable electronic devices. For example, a subscriber identity module (SIM) card in a mobile phone can dedicate the mobile phone's functions to the SIM card owner. By changing SIM cards, a single mobile phone can be used by many different SIM card owners as a personal phone.
Although surface contact card holders are simple, it can be difficult to remove the surface contact card from the surface contact card holder.
Therefore, there is room for improvement within the art.

Surface contact card holder for electronic devices

SHENZHEN FUTAIHONG PRECISION INDUSTRY CO., LTD.


Methods are provided for determining the position of a post-translationally modified (PTM) amino acid residue such as a phosphorylated amino acid residue or an O-glycosylated amino acid residue in a peptide. Also provided are methods for determining the identity of a PTM amino acid residue in a peptide. In addition, kits for practicing such methods are provided.

1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates generally to methods for characterizing proteins and more specifically to methods and compositions for chemically modifying a peptide such that phosphorylated and/or glycosylated amino acid residues can be identified by enzymatic or chemical cleavage at the peptide bond adjacent to the modified residue.
2. Background Information
The emergence of proteomics is allowing characterization of protein expression in various cells and cell types, and the identification of differences in protein expression that are associated with cell pathologies. As such, proteomics holds the promise of providing diagnostic methods based on patterns of protein expression characteristic of the particular state of a population of cells. For example, the identification of specific protein expression in cells can provide valuable information where a mutation results in the loss of expression of a protein, and the loss of expression correlates with a particular disease.
Such an approach for analyzing cells is limited, however, in that protein expression is not a static event. Instead, protein expression can increase or decrease in response to physical, chemical, biological, or environmental conditions, as well as at various times, including, for example, during development and/or during the cell cycle. Further, a protein may be modified following expression due, for example, to a proteolytic event that converts an inactive zymogen to an active polypeptide or to modification of one or more amino acids that regulates the activity of the polypeptide. Thus, an examination that is limited to the simple identification of the presence or absence of one or more proteins, or even to the level of expression of proteins, provides, at best, a starting point for proteome analysis.
Cellular regulatory mechanisms involving post-translational modification (PTM) of proteins are an integral part of any description of protein dynamics characteristic of the cellular state (proteome). Phosphorylation, for example, generally is a transient PTM that can dictate whether a protein is active or inactive. The importance of phosphorylation is indicated by the expression of more than one hundred protein kinases, and as many protein phosphatases, in vertebrates cells. Historically, reversible PTMs such as phosphorylation and glycosylation have been difficult to characterize.1−8 Initially, radiochemical labeling was used to identify phosphopeptides and glycopeptides derived from enzymatic or chemical digests of proteins.8,9 However, the method was time-consuming, tedious, and suited only to relatively short phosphopeptides, and even then, the data provided only positional information for the radiolabel obtained.
Direct, automated sequencing of phosphopeptides was made possible with the introduction of a chemistry that converted the phosphoamino acid to a form detectable in gas phase sequencing10. While peptides glycosylated on serine and threonine reportedly gave no signal during Edman degradation, their monoglycosylated residues could be detected as their phenylthiohydantoin (PTH) derivatives.11−13 Unfortunately, these derivatives co-eluted with serine, glutamine, and glycine peaks, making unambiguous assignment difficult. Although direct N-terminal sequencing provides quantitative and complete sequence information, sequencing must start from an N-terminus specified by the method of cleavage, which may be distant from the site of modification.
To a considerable extent, the above described difficulties have resulted in mass spectrometry (MS) supplanting chemical sequencing.11,14−16 Unfortunately, MS suffers certain various drawbacks, including, for example, that it generally is not quantitative, though it can be made so with difficulty.17 Also, tandem MS of phosphopeptides and glycopeptides following collisional activation tends to give primarily the parent peptides or requires extensive manipulatory methods and intensive inspection of MS spectra.5,15,18−20 Furthermore, phosphopeptides tend to ionize poorly, particularly in positive ion mode, and upon collisional activation yield fewer peptide fragments than non-phosphopeptides. A major drawback of tandem mass analysis is that large peptides tend to give incomplete or no sequence information upon low energy collision.21,22 Thus, a need exists for methods that allow the identification of post-translationally modified amino acid residues such as phosphoamino acids in peptides.

Chemically targeted positional identification of post-translationally phosphorylated peptides


A disk rotated at one of prescribed rotation speeds so as to record information is used. The disk includes a data area formed spirally or concentrically with a center of rotation, in which information is recorded when the disk is being rotated at the rotation speed, and a management area in which management information associated with writing is recorded at the rotation speed when writing is to be performed in the data area during rotation of the disk at the rotation speed. The management area is formed spirally or concentrically with the center of rotation of the disk on a side farther from the center of rotation of the disk.

The present invention relates to a recording information management method for a disk of a zone CLV (every time the recording track zone changes, the angular velocity changes; the angular velocity does not change in a zone) or a modified CAV (the angular velocity changes stepwise depending on the recording track position; the angular velocity does not change in each step) type.
In zone CLV (to be referred to as ZCLV hereinafter; CLV is the abbreviation of Constant Linear Velocity), the angular velocity is controlled to be constant in each zone (CAV; Constant Angular Velocity). When the recording track zone changes, the rotation speed (angular velocity) changes so that the average recording density in each zone becomes almost constant. That is, in ZCLV, CAV control is performed in each zone, and when the zone changes, the angular velocity changes accordingly.
In zone CAV (ZCAV) or modified CAV (MCAV), CAV control is performed in all zones, and when the zone changes, the read/write modulation rate changes.
For a ZCLV disk, the rotation servo of the disk need not be switched in each zone because the angular velocity does not change in each zone so that access properties similar to those of a CAV disk can be obtained in each zone. In ZCLV, when the zone changes, the angular velocity is changed (reduced in the outer zone of the disk). With this operation, a decrease in recording density on the outer side of the disk is prevented by maintaining a roughly constant average linear velocity on both inner and outer sides of the disk. Therefore, in the ZCLV disk, a memory capacity similar to that of a CLV disk (within the same zone) and access properties similar to those of a CAV disk can be obtained.
All writable disks of the CLV, CAV, and ZCLV schema require management information representing the size and position of a file recorded in the disk. This management information is generally called a file allocation table (FAT) and a set of pieces of management information are recorded in a specific area (one or two areas; in the case of two areas, one area is used as a backup area) of the disk.
The FAT is appropriately referred to when data is to be read out from or written in the disk. In the CAV disk (e.g., a hard disk), the disk rotation speed is always constant. The rotation servo of the disk need not be switched (the rotation speed of a spindle motor need not be changed) even when an FAT reference operation is frequently performed during data reading/writing, and reading/writing is performed smoothly.
In the ZCLV disk, however, the disk rotation speed of the data read/write area is different from that of the FAT area. For this reason, the rotation speed of the spindle motor must be changed every time in which the FAT is referred, and the read/write access speed decreases (since the rotation servo is switched every time the optical pickup reciprocates between constant rotation speed zones, a time lag until the servo settles to a target rotation value is generated every time the zone changes).

Information recording disk with management areas


A mobile vehicle that is self-contained and equipped to wash firefighter gear at the firefighter's station. The vehicle would be on a dispatched network and be activated after an incident, and for scheduled cleanings on a regular basis; the vehicle having the required equipment to clean all contaminated gear by use of a sonic cleaner, extractors, dryers, and an ozonator. The process includes monitoring the life of the gear and decontaminating the gear in accordance with the gear manufacturer's recommendations. Gear that has been cleaned is reassembled, wrapped, sealed and placed back into a fireman's station, giving the firefighter the assurance that their firefighting gear was cleaned, sanitized, and serviced per the manufacturer's recommendations.

Recently firefighter turnout gear has been directly linked to occupational cancer. Firefighters are the first responders to any type of fire, wherein they can be exposed to high levels of toxic matters. A basic forest fire is known to produce toxic particulate matter. A complex warehouse fire containing plastics may release toxic dioxins and furans. The toxic matter may coat every aspect of the firefighter gear. Firefighters are 68% more likely to develop cancer than the general population. Contaminated firefighting gear, namely jackets and pants, were once recognized as a badge of honor. Now the fire service recognizes that soiled or contaminated protective garments can expose firefighters to toxins and carcinogens released by the fire and deposited upon the firefighter gear. Firefighter gear is so contaminated that anyone near the firefighter can be exposed to the toxins and carcinogens. Such gear can cause the spread of communicable disease. Contaminated gear further puts the firefighters at risk, as contaminated gear can absorb radiant heat, conduct electricity, and can be flammable.
Manufactures of firefighter gear recognize the risk of wearing dirty turnout gear. NFPA 1851 states that firefighter gear should be cleaned and inspected at least two times per year. Manufacturers state that gear should be cleaned and inspected every six (6) months, and after every exposure.
There are many problems the fire service faces in order to abide by the above referenced standards. All known gear cleaning machines are extremely expensive considering installation, service, and operating requirements. Further, gear cleaning machines take up valuable space in an already tight firehouse. In addition, gear needs to be cleaned and properly put back together to manufacturer recommendations, which requires training. The average gear cleaning machine can wash 2-4 sets of gear at a time. A typical fire has 16-20 firefighters on the scene, which means it would take 16-20 hours to clean this gear after a single exposure. Once the gear is cleaned, there may or may not be required to prepare maintenance records to fulfill NFPA 1851 requirements. There are many problems that come with firefighters cleaning their own gear; the major ones being cleaning requirements, logistics, and costs. When working, firefighters need their gear, and a typical fire station cannot expect the firefighter to clean their gear while on duty.
In addition to a regular maintenance program, gear is also to be cleaned after a fire, hazmat incident, prolonged use, after exposure to blood or other infectious diseases. Many municipalities, other nonprofits, unions, and corporations know the problem of contaminated gear, and how it substantially increases the risk of toxic exposure to the firefighter and those who come in contact with the firefighter.
While the solution would suggest that the gear is simply cleaned after each fire, or on a regular basis, some problems with such a solution is that: 1) gear extrication equipment can surpass $45,000 per fire station, and most municipalities have multiple stations and are considered underfunded; 2) the equipment to properly extract carcinogens from firefighter gear takes a significant amount of space, and most fire stations cannot be retrofitted to hold the required cleaning equipment; 3) the proper time to clean gear is following a fire, wherein the firefighters are exhausted, leaving the gear to contaminated the fire station; 4) average gear extractors that can fit in a firehouse can wash 2-3 sets of gear at a time, and could take about 2 hours to complete. The problem with this is that at a fire there should be a minimum of sixteen (16) firefighters, and all gear should be cleaned in a timely manner. At this rate, it would take sixteen (16) hours to clean the gear in their current system, exposing the public to harm should a fire call occur and the firefighters do not have their gear back from cleaning; 5) firefighters have limited training on proper cleaning techniques, how to know when equipment is properly cleaned, and required manufacturer's recommendations.
What is needed in the industry is a mobile cleaning unit specifically designed to meet firefighter gear decontamination requirements in a cost efficient and timely manner.


A system and method is provided for extending the range of a common mode voltage of a differential comparator. In one embodiment, a differential comparator comprises an input stage with a negative voltage reference node, a first differential input coupled to a first differential pair transistor and operative to receive a first input signal, and a second differential input coupled to a second differential pair transistor and operative to receive a second input signal. The first input signal and the second input signal form a differential input signal. The differential comparator further comprises a common mode sensing circuit interconnected between the first differential input, the second differential input, and the negative voltage reference node. The common mode sensing circuit is operative to sense a common mode voltage of the differential input signal and set a voltage potential at the negative voltage reference node substantially equal to the sensed common mode voltage.

Many types of electronic equipment, such as transceivers and other communications equipment, require differential comparators. Differential comparators are electrical circuits that compare two input signals, such as a differential signal, and generate an output that corresponds to the values of the input signals relative to each other. For example, a typical differential comparator will receive a reference signal and an input signal, such that the differential comparator will output a high (e.g., logic 1) signal when the voltage of the input signal is greater than the voltage of the reference signal and a low (e.g., logic 0) signal when the voltage of the input signal is less than the voltage of the reference signal.
The common mode voltage is the average voltage between a differential signal pair. Many communications architectures and standards require a certain range in which the common mode voltage of a differential signal resides. However, the common mode voltage range of a differential comparator is typically dictated by the performance limitations of its input stage. For example, the lower limit of the common mode voltage range in a differential comparator is limited by the voltage required to keep a differential pair in the input stage in a constant current region (saturation mode). In other words, the differential pair needs to operate in saturation mode for the differential comparator to function properly, and for the differential pair to operate in saturation mode, the common mode voltage needs to be sufficiently positive relative to the negative supply voltage of the differential comparator. Thus the common mode voltage range is significantly limited.
Techniques have been applied to circuit designs such that negative common mode voltage potentials can be accommodated in circuits that contain differential comparators. One example is a divide and shift network. A divide and shift network extends the common mode voltage range by compressing and DC shifting the differential input signal to create a common mode voltage that is within the operable range of a differential comparator. Thus, a differential signal is created that is proportional to the actual differential input signal, such that the common mode voltage signal of the proportional differential input signal can fall within the constraints of the differential comparator. This solution, however, consumes additional power, thus making it unsuitable for low power applications, such as communications devices operating in "sleep mode."

Differential comparator with extended common mode voltage range


A battery clamp for connection of electrical cables to a terminal post of an electric storage battery has a body of electrically conductive material an aperture formed therethrough to accommodate the terminal post and includes cam operated locking means for releasably securing the clamp to the post and also means for releasably securing at least one electric cable to the clamp.. Also disclosed is a cam operated electrical cable connector for use with the battery clamp or a suitably adapted cable adaptor.

Battery clamps for securing electrical leads to the terminal posts of motor vehicle batteries generally have securing means comprising an "U" shaped body having a bolt passing through the legs and secured by a nut on the threaded end of the bolt. This system suffers from the disadvantage of requiring a spanner of the correct size to connect or disconnect the clamp and further, the bolt being of a corrosive material, tends to corrode, resulting in difficulty in removal and possible damage to the clamps or terminal post. Although other types of clamp have been used, e.g. a spring release clamp, these suffer from one or other of these disadvantages, resulting in delays when connecting or disconnecting batteries in service.


A power converter comprises a regulator, a value-supply system arranged for collecting at least one operating point of the power converter, and a predictor operative to produce updated regulator parameters (such as one or more power supply coefficients) implemented by the regulator to produce an output voltage to power a load. The updated regulator parameters are determined using a process based on the at least one collected operating point samples and predictor parameters obtained from a machine-learning process.

Electrical power converters, in particular DC-DC power converters, are widely used because of their high efficiency and small size. Among them, multiphase DC-DC power converters are particularly well suited for providing high currents at low voltages, as this is needed by highly integrated electronic components such as microprocessors, graphic processors, network processors, etc.
In a general manner, a multiphase power converter typically includes several converter branches which are called phases. The phases are connected in parallel for supplying a common load with respective phase currents. Thus, the output current which is supplied by the multiphase converter to the load is the sum of the phase currents. Any electrical power converter can be considered as comprising at least one phase, thus including single-phase power converters and multiphase power converters.
A single-phase power converter or each phase of a multiphase converter can be controlled via a proportional-integral-derivative (PID) regulator. In general, the PID controller controls the operations of switching devices that are arranged for supplying electrical charge or current to an energy tank circuit, i.e. a capacitor or an inductor, as well as for allowing the phase output current to flow from this energy tank to the load. kp-, ki- and kd-coefficients which are implemented in the PID regulator are selected for producing the desired values for the output current and output voltage. Then, it is also known to adjust in real time respective values of the kp-, ki- and kd-coefficients of each PID regulator as a function of values of, e.g., an input current and/or an input voltage of the converter, and also the values of the converter output current and/or output voltage.
Depending on a respective power converter design, the regulator used for controlling the operation of each phase may be of PID-type as just mentioned, but alternatively of any other type, including proportional type only, integral type, derivative type, any combination such as proportional-integral, integral-derivative and proportional-derivative, regulators which implement at least one higher order component for controlling the power conversion, delta-regulators, delta-sigma regulators, differential regulators, etc.
Recent generations of processors such as CPUs or GPUs have power-saving functions that causes power supply demand to vary over time in an unpredictable manner. In such an instance, a respective DC-DC power converter needs to perform well for a large variety of load profiles. In particular, such power converters have to meet stable regulation requirements over a wide output range and also meet specifications about transient load profiles, including short transition times and large load steps. Similar requirements apply to power converters used for power-supplying circuits which have power demands that vary randomly over time, such as VR controllers.
In addition, passive components such as output capacitors and inductors may exhibit significant variations which also need to be taken into account for optimizing the operation of a power converter. Such variations may relate to deviations with respect to target component values as resulting from the manufacture of each component, or may be due to aging of each component. But such variations may not be known initially when designing the adjustments of parameters that are implemented in the regulator of the power converter, such as kp-, ki- and kd-coefficients in case of a PID regulator.


An immunogenic composition containing antigen-presenting cells and a heat shock protein or a heat shock fusion protein. Also disclosed is a method of using such a composition for enhancing cell-based immunotherapy, especially cancer immunotherapy. The method includes administering the composition to a target site.

Cellular immunity is carried out by T cells that recognize antigens on the surface of antigen-presenting cells. The most potent antigen-presenting cells are the highly specialized dendritic cells. Other antigen-presenting cells include macrophages and B cells. Although macrophages and B cells can present antigens efficiently to memory T cells, they are less efficient than dendritic cells in initiating immune responses mediated by naive T cells.
Induction of T cell responses is known to be critical for anti-tumor effects. Recent development of techniques in generating dendritic cells in large numbers in vitro from peripheral blood monocytes or hematopoietic progenitors has led to new approaches in cancer immunotherapy.


In a NOx removal catalyst used for removing nitrogen oxides in flue gas, when a silica (Si) component as an inhibitor that causes an increase in a SO2 oxidation rate accumulates on a surface of the catalyst, the silica component accumulating on the surface of the catalyst is dissolved, thereby regenerating the catalyst. Accordingly, the inhibitor such as the silica component covering the surface of the NOx removal catalyst can be removed, thereby enabling to provide a catalyst without having an increase in the SO2 oxidation rate of the regenerated NOx removal catalyst.

In recent years, from a viewpoint of preventing air pollution, an ammonia catalytic reduction method in which ammonia is used as a reducing agent to catalytically decompose nitrogen oxides (hereinafter, referred to as NOx) into nitrogen and water by a catalyst has been widely used as a method of removing NOx produced from a boiler or various combustion furnaces. As the NOx removal catalyst, which has been currently put into practical use, a honeycomb catalyst having a rectangular hole shape has been the mainstream, in order to prevent blockages due to dust in flue gas and to widen a gas contact area. Furthermore, as a catalyst component, a type of catalyst component containing titanium oxide as a main component is excellent, and one containing vanadium, tungsten or the like as an active component is generally used, and a binary TiO2-WO3 catalyst or TiO2-MoO3 catalyst, a ternary TiO2-V2O5-WO3 catalyst or TiO2-V2O5-MoO3 catalyst and the like are mainly used.
In flue gas discharged from a coal combustion boiler, a calcium content contained in dust in flue gas mainly adheres to a surface of the catalyst to produce anhydrous calcium sulfate contained in flue gas and cover the surface of the catalyst, thereby blocking diffusion of NO and NH3 gas to the inside of the catalyst and deteriorating the performance of the catalyst. Conventionally, at the time of regeneration of a catalyst, whose performance is deteriorated due to these causes of deterioration, washing with water and an aqueous solution of hydrochloric acid has been known to be effective.
Furthermore, there has been proposed a technique for performing activation treatment of a catalyst with an acidic aqueous solution after removing a substance accumulated on the catalyst by washing it with an aqueous alkaline solution, at the time of the regeneration of a NOx removal catalyst whose NOx removal performance deteriorates due to accumulation of arsenic (As2O3) present in flue gas, (Patent Literature 1).

This patent is subject to a terminal disclaimer.


System and methods are provided for automated alarm handling in a communications network by linking network failures to impacted resources. One embodiment includes correlating one or more network failures to a common network resource in a communications network, associating each network component of the communications network one to another, where the network components include one common network resource, attributing fault data originating from one or more of the network components to an associated common network resource, and collecting in a central data structure the attributed fault data with the associated common network resource.

The difficulty of managing a communications network is directly proportional to its complexity. As networks grow in complexity, so too does the difficulty of managing it. Managing a network includes one or more of the following: retrieving historical performance, observing that the network is currently functioning properly, and ensuring that the network will function properly in the future. To accomplish each of these functions, feedback from the network is necessary. The most widely relied upon feedback are alarms.
Alarms provide feedback that element interaction or network elements themselves are not functioning as intended. But a complex communications network may produce on the order of thousands of alarms per hour or millions of alarms per day. An alarm may be referred to in the art as a message, alert, event, warning, or other data indication. Being able to maintain awareness of the potential barrage of alarms, as well as troubleshooting the source of the alarms has historically been a resource-intensive process that plagues network administrators.
Maintaining and determining the root cause of a problem in a communications network is dependent on the knowledge and experience of technicians monitoring alarms originating from the network. The task of monitoring incoming alarms is made even more difficult if the communications network is especially large and comprises many elements that at any given time may have problems that affect network service. The topology data of a network is oftentimes incomplete and data is spread out among several data structures. Because of incomplete topology data, the task of determining the root cause of the problem is time consuming and costly, requiring the technician to know which data structure to access for which topology.
Furthermore, network communication architectures comprise many layers of facilities. Although there are many definitions of facilities, one definition may be a portion of a network that carries traffic at a continuous bandwidth. Moreover, network architectures may have built in protection schemes which, even though one or more facilities are disabled, allow continuous flow of traffic from upstream facilities to downstream facilities and, eventually, to end users. In other words, even though an upstream facility is disabled, downstream facilities may not notice the disabled upstream facility due to the protection scheme. However, network technicians, monitoring the facilities, are aware of a problem within the communications network. The technician may be receiving multiple alarms or alerts transmitted from various network elements within the facility. Possible scenarios for the disabled facility may be a faulty network element or a severed transmission pathway utilized by the disabled facility. The technician may have to physically inspect each alarming network element supporting the disabled facility to determine the root cause of the problem. Facilities may have upwards of thousands of elements spread out over vast distances. To inspect each alarming network element is time consuming and costly.
Also, each different component in a communications network has its own protection scheme in the event the component is alarming. In some cases, there is a one to one relationship between a working component and a protection component. However, in other cases, there is a one to many relationship between working components and protection components, or one protection component for several working components. Generally, technicians monitoring the communications network group alarms into service affecting alarms and service impacting alarms. Service affecting alarms may be understood as those alarms that do not impact service to the end user of the communications network, but have the potential to do so. Likewise, service impacting alarms may be understood as those alarms that impact service to the end user of the communications network. Both types of alarms require a thorough understanding of the protection scheme for each component. The protection scheme for each component should be evaluated and then a determination may be made regarding whether the alarming component is service impacting. Generally, a large long distance telecommunications network includes many components and their associated protection schemes. Evaluating whether an alarm is service impacting or service affecting may become very complicated in such networks.
As discussed above, technicians monitoring a communications network must evaluate whether an alarm is service impacting or service affecting. Service impacting alarms generally receive the highest priority. Each severe alarm from a network element creates a ticket documenting the alarm. Also, customers serviced by the communications network may call in to a service center when their service is impacted and report problems, thus creating a customer called-in ticket. Still other tickets may be generated by other entities associated with the communications network besides the monitoring technicians. All of the aforementioned tickets may be related to the same network problem. In large networks, many thousands of tickets of various types may be generated. The technicians monitoring the system may clear one type of ticket relating to a problem, but this may not affect other types of tickets relating to the same problem. Technicians must manually sift through the various tickets as they arrive and determine if the ticket relates to a previously reported ticket or relates to a new problem. Associating the various ticket types is laborious and an inefficient use of the technicians time, especially in association with large communications networks.
Still other inefficiencies plague alarm monitoring in communications networks. Generally, the technicians monitoring a communications network are grouped according to network elements. For example, a set of technicians monitor one type of network element, while other technicians monitor other types of network elements. Each technician typically receives all alarm data related to their assigned network element. There may be multiple technicians monitoring a particular type of network element, but each technician is concerned with only a subset or subsets of the incoming alarm data. Technicians must pull from a data structure the alarm data in which they are interested in viewing on their user interface. This may be a bandwidth intensive process, especially when the communications network is large and includes many elements. The efficiency of handling alarms is decreased because of delays in communicating the alarm data to the technician. Furthermore, the process is bandwidth intensive which creates scalability problems. To accommodate additional technicians or user interfaces, additional data structures must be added to the communications network. The data structures must be fault tolerant and require maintenance and support, which runs the costs of adding additional data structures into the hundreds of thousands of dollars. In large communication networks, generating thousands of alarms, this is a cost prohibitive solution.


A sheet conveying device includes upstream side rollers; discharge rollers located downstream from the upstream side rollers in the feeding direction of sheets, to discharge sheets to a discharge tray; a reflective optical detector located between the discharging rollers and the upstream side rollers, to emit light and to receive light reflected off of the sheets; and a recognizing unit to detect, based on output of the detector, whether or not a sheet is present at a detection region of the detector. When a sheet is fed over a conveying path inclined with respect to a detection face of the detector, the discharge rollers feed the sheet in a bent state between the upstream side rollers and the discharge rollers, so that the sheet is close to the detector or the sheet is close to being perpendicular to an optical axis of the detector.

The present disclosure relates to a sheet conveying device for feeding sheets, and to an image forming apparatus having same.
Image forming apparatuses such as photocopiers, multifunctional peripherals, printers, and facsimiles, have sheet conveying devices to feed sheets. The sheet conveying device is provided with sensors to detect whether or not a sheet is present, so as to detect that a sheet has arrived at a predetermined point or has passed over a predetermined point. There are situations where reflective optical sensors are used for the sensors.
There is known a sheet conveying device capable of detecting sheets using reflective optical sensors. Specifically, the sheet conveying device includes a first sheet conveying unit which feeds a sheet after the leading edge of the sheet is contacted to correct skewing of the sheet; a second sheet conveying unit situated upstream in the feed direction of the first sheet conveying unit to feed a sheet fed from a sheet feed device to the first sheet conveying unit; a seat conveying unit located between the first and second sheet conveying unit; and a reflective optical sensor located near the seat conveying unit, to detect whether or not there is a sheet passing through the sheet conveying unit. With this sheet conveying device, the amount of contact of the sheet against the first sheet conveying unit by the second sheet conveying unit is determined using the detection results of the reflective optical sensor. The sheet conveying device has an upper conveying guide and a lower conveying guide which hold a sheet from both the front and back directions, positioned with a tapered form as to the feed direction. The angle between the upper conveying guide and an optical axis of the reflective optical sensor and the angle between the lower conveying guide and the optical axis of the reflective optical sensor are set to a predetermined angle enabling detection regardless of the type of sheet being fed. With this sheet conveying device, conditions relating to sheet detection, such as distance between sheet and sensor, angle between sheet and detection face of sensor, and so forth, are set so as to satisfy a range where sheets can be accurately detected, so from the leading end to the trailing end of the sheet can be accurately detected using a single reflective optical sensor.
Arrival and passage of sheets are detected using optical sensors with some image forming apparatus. Transmissive optical sensors and reflective optical sensors are used as optical sensors.
The transmissive optical sensor includes a light-emitting element, a light-receiving element, an actuator (rotating plate, fan-shaped for example) which rotates (turns) upon coming into contact with a sheet, and so forth. When there is no sheet, the actuator interrupts the light from the light-emitting element to the light-receiving element. On the other hand, when a sheet arrives, the actuator is rotated by the sheet, and the state in which light from the light-emitting element to the light-receiving element is not interrupted continues until the sheet completely passes.
On the other hand, a reflective optical sensor includes a light-emitting element which emits light toward the conveyance path of the sheets, and a light-receiving element which receives reflected light emitted by the light-emitting element. If there is no sheet in a detection range, the amount of light received by the light-receiving element from reflection is small, but if a sheet exists in the detection region (from the time that the sheet arrives until completely passing), the amount of light received by the light-receiving element from reflection is great.
Thus, both transmissive optical sensors and reflective optical sensors take advantage of the difference in the output of the light-receiving element depending on whether or not there is a sheet at the position where the optical sensor is installed (detection region), to detect whether or not a sheet currently exists at the position where the optical sensor is installed.
Now, image forming apparatuses sometimes print on transparent or semi-transparent sheets, such as sheets for overhead projectors (OHPs), hereinafter interchangeably referred to as "overhead transparency sheets" or "OHP sheets". Accordingly, there are situations where image forming apparatuses use only transmissive optical sensors and not reflective optical sensors, since sheets, through which light can pass, can be accurately detected. On the other hand, there are some situations where reflective optical sensors are used when transmissive optical sensors cannot be used due to reasons such as insufficient space to install actuators, actuators becoming a load on sheet conveyance, and so forth.
Now, light-receiving elements of reflective optical sensors have more trouble receiving reflected light the greater the angle of the sheet (feed direction of the sheet) deviates from being at a right angle as to the optical axis of the light-emitting element. Also, the greater the distance is between the reflective optical sensor and the sheet, the more difficulty the light-receiving element has in receiving reflected light.
Accordingly, the angle between sheets being fed and the optical axis of the light-emitting element of the reflective optical sensor need to be kept within a certain angle range, so as to keep the output of the light-receiving element within an output range of when passing of sheet is detected, so as to enable detection of the sheets. Particularly, the angle between the passing sheets and the optical axis of the light-emitting element is preferably close to 90 degrees for sheets, through which light can pass, such as OHP sheets and the like.
However, there are situations where reflective optical sensors cannot be installed such that the optical axis of the light-emitting element is perpendicular with respect to the conveyance face of the sheet, due to restrictions in installation space. There are also situations where there are multiple angles of sheets passing through a detection region of a reflective optical sensor with respect to the optical axis of the light-emitting element. Accordingly, there is a problem in that there are situations where the presence or absence of sheets (OHP sheets in particular) cannot be accurately detected using reflective optical sensors. Inaccurate sheet detection results can result in sheet conveyance control, based on sensor detection results, not being appropriately carried out.
The above-described sheet conveying device has an upper conveying guide and a lower conveying guide located such that the angle of sheets with respect to the optical axis of the reflective optical sensor is kept within a certain range, and the reflective optical sensor is located at a position capable of detecting sheets regardless of the type of sheet being fed. Thus, the sheet conveying device can even accurately detect OHP sheets. However, there have been situations where whether or not a sheet is present could not be accurately detected (particularly OHP sheets), in situations where there is a limitation in the position or angle of installation of the reflective optical sensor, or situations where there are multiple patterns in sheet inclination.

Sheet conveying device and image forming apparatus having same


An antenna array having a plurality of array elements is disclosed. The antenna array comprises a first array element (204A) having a first suspended radiator (207A) and a first ground conductor (206A), the first suspended radiator being displaced from the first ground conductor. The antenna also comprises a second array element (204B) being adjacent to the first array element, the second array element having a second suspended radiator (207B) and a second ground conductor (206B), wherein the second suspended radiator is displaced from the second ground conductor. In the antenna the first ground conductor is adjacent to and displaced from the second ground conductor and the first ground conductor is disposed on a first tier and the second ground conductor is disposed on a second tier to form an at least two-tiered ground conductor.

Mutual coupling between array elements of antenna arrays significantly affect the performances of these arrays in wireless communications applications. The affected performances include signal-to-interference-pulse-noise ratio (SINR) and direction-of-arrival (DOA) estimation in the case of an adaptive array.
Therefore during the design of antenna arrays the problem of mutual coupling is an important consideration. Mutual coupling also adversely determines the dimensions of the arrays in addition to affecting the foregoing performances of the arrays.
Typically, mutual coupling may degrade the radiation patterns for the arrays due to the increase in side lobe levels, the shift of nulls, and the appearance of grating lobes.
Mutual coupling in plate antenna arrays is mainly attributed to space waves, higher-order waves, surface waves, and leaky waves. Generally for conventional plate antenna arrays with a common planar ground conductor, enlarging the spacing between plate array elements, or inter-element spacing, results in reducing or weakening mutual coupling. However, the larger inter-element spacing results in a larger lateral size of the arrays. The larger lateral size of the arrays leads to higher installation cost of wireless communications systems in which such arrays are applied.
There is therefore a need for a laterally compact plate antenna array configured appropriately for reducing mutual coupling between plate array elements.

Compact multi-tiered plate antenna arrays

Agency for Science Technology and Research


A method of operating a photographic printer to provide for automatic setup for a plurality of film types and conditions in which film term data for film types encountered by the printer is automatically created and periodically updated to reflect current experience using accumulated historical density data derived from scanning of film strips and in which exposure of image frames from a current film strip to a photosensitive medium is adjusted either by average density information stored for one or more film types from the historical data or by average density information derived from the current film strip with determination of which average density information to use being made automatically by comparison of either or both of film type or average minimum density information of the film strip with the corresponding stored information. Automatic adjustment of tungsten illumination exposure and automatic updating of slope compensation factors for under- and over-exposed negatives are also described.

When printing onto photographic paper, it is known that the average red, green, and blue optical density of a large population similar negatives (e.g. film strips with the same DX code) closely represents the average exposure the paper will receive if the optical filters of the monitor system closely match the paper sensitivity. This is described in the paper "The Influence of Film, Paper, and Printer Spectral Characteristics on Photofinishing Performance by W. C. Kress and P. J. Alessi published in Journal of Applied Photographic Engineering Vol. 9, No. 2 April 1983. Because these data are based on many frames from many film strips, this approach provides an accurate predictor for stable films. The average optical density for the particular film type can then be used in conjunction with data from each individual frame to determine the exposure of that frame. This average density data according to film type along with other film data, collectively referred to as "film term data", can be provided by the film manufacture or, alternatively, it can be determined at the printer from cumulative data derived at the film scanner station from films of the same type. In one known type of printer, the film term data is initially inputted using information supplied by the film manufacturer. Subsequently, the printer operator is given the option of updating the film term density data using cumulative film scanner information derived at the particular printer for each film type encountered by the printer.
An alternative to the derivation of average density data from a large population of films is described in commonly assigned U.S. Pat. No. 3,937,573. In this approach, referred to herein as "order scan" algorithm printing, a printer scanner monitor system is used to characterize a particular film strip by using optical data from several frames on the film strip. Once the density data are characterized for that film strip, this data is then combined with data from each individual frame in the strip to determine the exposure of the frame. This approach provides a means of predicting film strip characteristics when there is considerable variability between film strips or where there is no film term information available, e.g. no DX code for the film strip.
It is therefore desirable to combine these two techniques into one system which uses historical data for stable films and current ("order scan") data for films which deviate from the stable historical data or for which there is little historical data available.
Moreover, until now there has been no convenient method by which historical film data derived at the film scanner can be utilized to update automatically the film term data stored in the memory means of the printer to ensure that printer setup conforms to actual experience of the printing lab with films encountered in daily processing. As a consequence, unless the film operator conscientiously initiated an update procedure, for example during power up operation, print exposure conditions would continue to be based on pre-existing film term data and would not reflect the experience gained from processing populations of actual film strips. It is desirable, therefore, to have a method and means for automatically updating existing film term data using historical data generated on an ongoing basis from scanning populations of actual film strips.
Additionally, it is desirable to be able to create automatically a database of film term data for film types encountered by the printer that are not represented in the existing database of film types stored in the printer memory. This is accommodated in the present invention.
Still further, it is desirable to provide for automatic setup of the printer with historically based film term data pertaining to over- and under-slope correction and tungsten correction based on actual experience of the printer with populations of film encountered during processing. This is also accommodated in the present invention.


The invention pertains to a method of manufacturing a fire proof board from strands of wood, the method comprising the following steps in the given order: (a) providing strands of wood having a humidity between 5% and 25%, preferably between 5% and 20%, even more preferably between 8% and 20%, (b) immersing the strands of wood in a watery solution of a flame retardant chemical composition, (c) separating the strands of wood from each other, (d) at least in part drying the strands of wood thereby providing dry impregnated strands of wood, (e) applying an adhesive to the strands of wood, and (f) forming a board of a predetermined shape from the strands. The invention furthermore pertains to a board formed by a plurality of strands of wood that are compressed and bonded together with an adhesive, wherein the board further comprises a flame retardant chemical composition, said composition comprising a phosphate compound.

Oriented strand board, also known as OSB, waferboard, Sterling board or Exterior board and SmartPly is a widely used engineered wood product formed by strands (flakes) of wood, often layered in specific orientations. In appearance, it may have a rough and variegated surface with the individual strands (typically around 2.5 cm by 15 cm each) lying unevenly across each other. OSB's are cheap and strong boards, and this makes them excellent building material.
Most countries have certain fire prevention regulations setting certain standards for the fire retardancy of building materials for indoor use, especially for use in public buildings. However, it is a problem with flame retardant agents used in the industry today that they are toxic to humans and animals. Building material treated with these known toxic flame retardant agents will inevitably release some of it into the surrounding environment, which makes building materials that are treated with such toxic agents unsuitable for indoor use.
In WO 03/099633 is disclosed a method of providing flame retardant OSB plates. According to the disclosed method, wood pieces are impregnated with a flame retardant composition before they are processed into strands. The impregnation with the flame retardant is done by the application of a so called vacuum-pressure process, wherein the wood first is subjected to a vacuum; subsequently the flame retardant composition is added and subjected to pressure in order to impregnate the wood pieces. These impregnated wood pieces are than processed into strands that are subsequently used to produce OSB plates in a traditional way.
In WO 01/53621 is disclosed another method of producing flame retardant OSB plates. According to the disclosed method, the strands are led through a sprinkling device, wherein they are sprayed with a watery solution of a flame retardant mineral composition comprising ammonium sulfate and/or ammonium phosphate. Next to the sprinkling device an air heater is placed. The strands are then carried with this hot air through a dryer. From these impregnated strands fire retardant OSB plate are produced.
In WO 97/46635 is disclosed a fire retardant composition for use in OSB plates, said composition comprising a mixture of Ammonium sulfate, Borax and trinatrium phosphate. Furthermore is disclosed an OSB plate comprising such a fire retardant composition, and a method of providing a fire retardant OSB plate. The method involves the steps of impregnating the strands with the above mentioned mixture in a watery solution, and subsequently drying them to a humidity of between 1% to 12%. After this drying, the strands are coated with an adhesive and formed into plates.
In US 2004/0028934 is disclosed a method of fire proofing OSB plates by applying a fire retardant composition to green strands, i.e. strands which have not been pre-dried. The strands are sprayed with the fire retardant composition, or dipped into it. To facilitate an accurate application of the fire retardant, the logs used for the production of strands are weighed before being supplied to a flaker. From this weighing in combination with other parameters, the moisture content of the wood can be estimated.
In WO 03/099533 is disclosed yet another method of providing fire proof OSB plates, according to which microchips are produced from raw wood and impregnated with a flame proofing agent, and shredded into smaller strands after impregnation.
In US 2006/0113513 is disclosed a fire retardant composition and method of its production. The composition comprising water, a highly concentrated alkali, at least one of or a combination thereof, of anhydrous citric acid, citric acid, acetic acid or a related salt thereto. The composition also includes phosphate as well as an alkali metal salt or compound from at least one of lithium, sodium and/or potassium cation in combination with at least one of an acetate, bicarbonate, carbonate and/or hydroxide anion. The composition is then adjusted to a pH value around 6.6% to 7.5% by adjusting the amounts of highly concentrated alkali and/or the citric acid/acetic acid respectively. The compaction is allegedly able to absorb large quantities of heat energy, and is therefore especially suitable as a surface treatment of various objects.
However, in order to produce fire retardant OSB plates in large scale production facilities in an error free and effective manner, it is for example desirable to perform the impregnation of the strands at a pace that will not interfere with, or halt, the running of the rest of the process steps associated with the large scale production of OSB plates. In order to achieve this, it is may be desirable to impregnate the strands with a fire retardant composition at a very high rate and to a sufficient degree—but not to a too large degree, because the impregnation and other processing steps may negatively affect the structure of the strands in such a way that OSB plates produced from them are too weak. Furthermore, some of the fire retardant chemical composition may seep out of the strands and cover its surface, so that the subsequently applied adhesive will not bind the strands property together, which again leads to a useless and weak OSB plate.

Fire proof oriented strand board and its manufacture


A membrane structure is provided. The membrane structure includes a first layer having a plurality of interconnected pores; and a second layer disposed on the first layer. The second layer has a plurality of unconnected pores. Each of the unconnected pores is in fluid communication with at least one of the interconnected pores of the first layer. A method of making a membrane structure is provided. The method includes the steps of providing a first layer having a plurality of interconnected pores; and disposing a second layer on the first layer. Disposing a second layer includes depositing a conducting layer on the first layer; and anodizing the conducting layer to convert the conducting layer into a porous layer.

Porous membrane structures have been extensively used in filtration, separation, catalysis, detection, and sensor applications. Realizing membrane structures with fine pores and high flux is difficult, as the flux through the membrane decreases with decreasing pore size. Therefore, typically layers with fine pores are made very thin. Fabricating thin porous layers with uniform pores over large surface area and which are mechanically robust is a challenging task. Therefore, typically thin fine porous membranes are stacked on thicker substrates with coarser pores. In such membrane structures it is extremely difficult to get a defect free smooth interface between layers to ensure faultless connectivity through the membrane structure. In spite of much effort, the currently available membrane structures with fine pores exhibit undesirably low permeance. Therefore, it is desirable to improve the efficiency of fine porous membrane structures suitable for high temperature, high pressure, and/or corrosive atmospheres.


The present invention achieves edit processing which enables a user to freely edit solution data that becomes supervised data when processing automatic summarization using machine learning, and achieves summarization processing specialized for the user using the solution data. A user's evaluation of the summary produced by automatic processing of a text is created, and case data using the text and the summary as a problem and the input evaluation as a solution is stored. A solution and feature-set pair is extracted from the stored cases, and learning result of what solution is apt to be produced at what feature is stored. Thereafter a summary-candidate is generated from the processing target text, a feature-set is extracted from the text and summary-candidate, a summary-candidate and estimated-solution pair is generated by estimating a feature-set referring to the stored learning result, and the summary-candidate pair is used as a summary.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to solution-data edit processing for editing solution data which is used in processing for automatically summarizing documents, articles and the like by a machine learning method, and to an automatic summarization processing which uses a machine learning method using editable solution data.
2. Description of the Related Art
In recent years, automatic summarization processing of documents, articles, etc. using a computer has become widespread with developments in information technologies. However, desired summary tendencies are considered to have been diversified by diversification of individual preferences and the summarization purposes.
Using the following Reference 1, personal differences of the summary evaluation tendencies will be described. In the Reference 1, when a plurality of evaluators perform summarization by extracting important sentences individually, a reproduction ratio and a relevance ratio are obtained as mutual evaluation measurement for the result and shown in Table 4. As is apparent from Table 4 in the Reference 1, in the case of summarization by extracting 20 sentences from a group of sentences, with respect to the mutual evaluation (a reproduction ratio and a relevance ratio) among the evaluators, coincidence degrees of each of the evaluators A, B, and C are from 50 to 70%, which are not too high. Thus it is estimated that personal differences exist in evaluation of summaries.
[Reference 1: Yamahiko Ito, et al., Extraction of important sentences from lecture sentences, Language Processing Society, the seventh annual convention proceeding (     7 ), 2001, pp. 305–308]
Also, in the following Reference 2, with reference to important sentence extraction processing, it is shown in Table 4 that the cross-verification precision for the processing sets A, B, and C is best. The target of the cross-verification shown in Table 4 in the Reference 2 can be regarded as the same as the processing by the same evaluator. It is unknown whether the sets A, B, and C in Table 4 is created by the same person. However, it is well understood that the processing precision will be favorable at least when the learning data is created at the same time or by the same person.
[Reference 2: Tsutomu Hirao, et al., Extraction of important sentences by Support Vector Machine, Information Society, basic papers (  Support Vector Machine  ), 63-16, 2001, pp. 121–127]
From the conventional research result, it is considered that personal differences and use differences exist in evaluation of summaries. In automatic summarization processing using a machine learning method, a summary specialized for an individual user needs to be created rather than performing summarization based on the same evaluation. In order to achieve this, in automatic summarization processing, a mechanism in which a user can freely edit the solution data to be the supervised data data in a machine learning method needs to be established.

Solution data edit processing apparatus and method, and automatic summarization processing apparatus and method

National Institute of Information and Communications Technology


Methods of forming pad structures are provided in which a first contact region and second contact regions are formed in an active region of a substrate. An insulating interlayer is formed on the substrate. The insulating interlayer has a first opening that exposes the first contact region and the second contact regions. First conductive pads are formed in the first opening. Each first conductive pad is in electrical contact with a respective one of the second contact regions. Spacers are formed, where each spacer is on a sidewall of a respective one of the first conductive pads. Finally, a second conductive pad is formed between the first conductive pads and in electrical contact with the first contact region to complete the pad structure.

As semiconductor devices have become more highly integrated, the size of the unit cells in the semiconductor devices has decreased. By way of example, the unit cells in state of the art dynamic random access memory (DRAM) devices now have widths of about 100 nm or less. To form such unit cells, semiconductor manufacturing tecliniques have been developed that may be used to form very small patterns, pads, contacts, and the like. One such technique is a self-alignment process that may be used to form extremely small contacts or pads.
Korean Laid-Open Patent Publication No. 2003-56321 discloses one conventional method of manufacturing a semiconductor device by employing such a self-alignment process. In this conventional self-alignment process, a gate structure is formed on a substrate that has an active region and a field region defined therein. The gate structure includes a gate oxide pattern, a gate electrode and a gate mask. A spacer is formed on a sidewall of the gate structure, and then a contact region is formed in the substrate adjacent to the gate structure. After an insulating interlayer is formed on the substrate to cover the gate structure, a photoresist pattern is formed on the insulating interlayer. Using the photoresist pattern as an etching mask, the insulating interlayer is partially etched using the self-alignment process to form a contact hole that exposes the contact region. Then, a self-aligned contact (SAC) is formed in the contact hole. Because of the self-alignment process, the semiconductor device may have a high degree of integration. However, in some cases, semiconductor devices that are manufactured using the self-alignment process may have poor electrical characteristics.
Semiconductor devices having recessed channel transistors have also been developed. These devices may facilitate providing a proper channel length and may exhibit reduced junction leakage current, particularly in semiconductor devices having unit cell widths of less than about 100 nm. To form these recessed channel transistors, a recess is formed at in upper portion of a substrate by etching the substrate. A gate structure is formed in the recess. An insulating interlayer is then formed on the substrate, and the insulating interlayer is partially etched using an etching mask to form a contact hole that exposes a contact region of the substrate. A pad or a contact that makes contact with the contact region is formed in the contact hole.

Methods of forming pad structures and related methods of manufacturing recessed channel transistors that include such pad structures


A system and method to identify a sound source among a group of sound sources. The invention matches the acoustic input to a number of signal models, one per source class, and produces a goodness-of-match number for each signal model. The sound source is declared to be of the same class as that of the signal model with the best goodness-of-match if that score is sufficiently high. The data are recorded with a microphone, digitized and transformed into the frequency domain. A signal detector is applied to the transient. A harmonic detection method can be used to determine if the sound source has harmonic characteristics. If at least some part of a transient contains signal of interest, the spectrum of the signal after resealing is compared to a set of signal models, and the input signal's parameters are fitted to the data. The average distortion is calculated to compare patterns with those of sources that used in training the signal models. Before classification can occur, a source model is trained with signal data. Each signal model is built by creating templates from input signal spectrograms when they are significantly different from existing templates. If an existing template is found that resembles the input pattern, the template is averaged with the pattern in such a way that the resulting template is the average of all the spectra that matched that template in the past.

There are several fields of research studying acoustic signal classification. Each field of research has adopted its own approaches to acoustic signal classification, with some overlap between them. At present, the main applications for automatic sound source classification are: speaker verification; speaker identification; passive sonar classification; and machine noise monitoring or diagnostics.
Speaker verification aims at verifying that a given speaker is indeed who he or she claims to be. In most speaker verification systems, a speaker cooperates in saying a keyword, and the system matches the way that keyword was said by the putative speaker with training samples of the same keywords. If the match is poor, the speaker is rejected or denied service (e.g., computer or premise access). A disadvantage of such methods is that the same keyword must be used at testing time as at training time, thus limiting application of such methods to access control. This method could not be used to label the speakers in a back-and-forth conversation for example.
Speaker identification aims at determining which among a set of voices best matches a given test utterance. Text-independent speaker identification tries to make such a determination without the use of particular keywords.
Passive sonar classification involves identifying a vessel according to the sound it radiates underwater. Machine noise monitoring and diagnostics involves determining the state of a piece of machinery through the sound it makes.
In all of the above applications, a model of each sound source is first obtained by training a system with a set of example sounds from each source. A test sample is then compared to the stored models to determine a sound source category for the test sample. Known methods require relatively long training times and testing samples that make such methods inappropriate in many cases. Further, such methods tend to require a large amount of memory storage and computational resources. Finally, these methods often are not robust to the presence of noise in the test signal, which prevents their use in many tasks. ("Signal" means a signal of interest; background and distracting sounds are referred to as "noise").
The inventor has determined that it would be desirable to be able to classify an acoustic signal even when some portions of the spectra are masked by noise, and require a minimum amount of training and testing. The present invention provides a system and method for acoustic signal classification that avoids the limitations of prior techniques.

Harman Becker Automotive Systems-Wavemakers, Inc.