A combined footwear and associated fastening accessory for use therewith may include footwear with a tongue, a plurality of apertures, and a fastening accessory removably coupled to the footwear. The accessory may include a housing removably seated directly on the tongue. A plurality of deformably resilient elastic arms may be coupled to the housing and radially extended from the housing. The arms may include fasteners terminating at corresponding apertures and removably connected thereto, such that the housing may remain centrally aligned on the tongue and prohibited from becoming disengaged. Also, a mechanism may be included for selectively adjusting tension in each of the arms by rotating the housing along clockwise and counter-clockwise directions, while maintaining the fasteners directly connected to the apertures. Further, a mechanism for illuminating the housing when the top cap is in a raised position may be included and may illuminate the housing during walking conditions.

1. Technical Field
This invention relates to illuminable footwear shoelace accessories and, more particularly, to a combined footwear and associated fastening accessory for use therewith.
2. Prior Art
A shoe usually includes a pair of eyelet tabs and a shoelace. Each of the eyelet tabs is formed with a plurality of eyelets. The shoelace is typically strung through the eyelets to form a criss-cross pattern on the eyelet tabs, and is then tied into a knot so as to tighten the shoe. However, it is time-wasting to tie and untie the shoelace when wearing and removing the shoe. Many shoe lacing systems have been designed to provide a faster and more convenient way of securing a shoe onto the foot.
The vast majority of these systems are "lace closure systems" which accomplish this task in part by means of a lace or pliable fiber through which tension is applied. Problems inherent in lace closure systems includes unwanted tightening of knots caused by tension in laces occurring through everyday use of shoe, and weakening and eventual breakage of lace at points where the lace rubs against eyelets of the shoe. Lace closure systems are also impractical and undesirable for use by persons with rheumatoid arthritis, or persons with weight problems, or injuries which make it difficult for them to bend over for the period of time required to perform lace closure.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,289,609 to Bowen discloses a fastening device comprising an actuating lever rotatably secured to one flap of a shoe and a tie element extending substantially in alignment therewith. Further, a substantially planar undersurface with a series of hook elements is included and projects therefrom. Any of the hook elements are engageable with a catch element secured to the opposing flap of shoe. Another version of the device has a tie element comprising a substantially planar and rectangular component defining a series of rung like members where each rung like member is engageable to the catch element. Unfortunately, this prior art reference does not disclose a centrally located lighted disc to provide a fashionable accessory.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,324,774 to Zebe Jr. discloses a retaining clip for holding shoelaces and replacing standard footwear eyelets including one integral member formed with a base attached to the shoe upper with a curved member extending upwardly therefrom and an upper member extending back across the base. An abutment member extends outwardly from the upper member toward the base member to be in abutment therewith for retaining a shoelace there within and a prying tab extends upwardly from the abutment member. The shoelace, when urged against the prying tab, will cause the abutment member to separate from the base allowing the shoelace to snap into place. When the shoelace is pulled against the opposite side of the abutment member, release is achieved. The footwear construction includes a shoelace securing means having a cam cleat for firm gripping of the shoelaces and facilitating extremely rapid operation of the overall footwear closure construction. Unfortunately, this prior art reference does not disclose a non-laced method of keeping the shoe panels intact.
U.S. Pat. No. 7,036,193 to Liu discloses a shoe tightening device for use with a shoe that includes a pair of eyelet tabs each having eyelets. The shoe tightening device includes a pair of lace units, a clamp unit, and a pull lace. Each of the lace units includes connecting end portions, operating end portions, intermediate portions, and anchoring elements adapted to be anchored removably on the eyelet tabs at corresponding ones of the eyelets. The clamp unit removably clamps at least one of the lace units, and includes at least one flexible string section, and at least one clamp member. The clamp member is slidable along the flexible string section between a clamping position and a releasing position. The pull lace is connected to the flexible string section for pulling the flexible string section so that the clamp member can slide along the flexible string section to the releasing position. Unfortunately, this prior art reference also does not disclose a non-laced method for keeping the shoe panels intact, nor does it feature a centrally located lighted disc.
Accordingly, a need remains for a combined footwear and associated fastening accessory in order to overcome the above-noted shortcomings. The present invention satisfies such a need by providing a device that is convenient and easy to use, is durable yet lightweight in design, is versatile in its applications, and provides an alternative for shoelaces and a creative outlet for expression through fashion.

Combined footwear and associated fastening accessory


A vehicle dashboard instrument display for displaying vehicle operating information to a driver includes a lens system adjacent the instruments and interposed between the driver and the instruments. The lens system includes a variable focus lens operable for, responsive to input from a lens controller, adjusting to a focal length suitable for countering the visual impairment of the driver to render the instruments more easily readable by the driver.

The invention relates to the field of vehicle dashboards. More particularly the invention relates to instrument displays of vehicle dashboards adaptable to the vision needs of individual users.
Problems arise for a vehicle driver who has a visual deficiency which prevents the driver from seeing clearly both the road ahead and the instruments of the vehicle dashboard, for example the speedometer or fuel gauge. A driver may suffer from hypermetropia (also known as hyperopia, far-sightedness or long-sightedness) a visual condition which prevents unaided focussing on objects at a normal reading distance from the eye. This means that the driver can view the road ahead unaided but cannot view comfortably the vehicle instruments closer to the eye without using a visual correcting device, for example vision correcting eyeglasses. Presbyopia is a further condition which is characterised by an age-related hardening of the eye lens which prevents easy accommodation to focus on close objects such as a vehicle dashboard without corrective eyeglasses. Most people over the age of 45 are affected to one degree or another. One solution to the need to be able to see the road ahead and the vehicle instruments for such drivers is to use corrective visual aids such as eyeglasses providing regions having different vision correcting facility. These may be, for example, eyeglasses with bi-focal, tri-focal or varifocal lenses. Many drivers do not like such corrective eyeglasses. An adaptation of the vehicle to the visual needs of such a driver would be more acceptable. However, adapting the vehicle for the visual needs of a specific driver would make it difficult for a driver with different visual needs to drive the vehicle.

INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS MACHINES CORPORATION


Typical cache architecture provides a single cache way prediction memory for use in predicting a cache way for both sequential and non-sequential instructions contained within a program stream. Unfortunately, one of the drawbacks of the prior art cache way prediction scheme lies in its efficiency when dealing with instructions that vary the PC in a non-sequential manner, such as branch instructions including jump instructions. To facilitate caching of non-sequential instructions an additional cache way prediction memory is provided to deal with the non-sequential instructions. Thus during program execution a decision circuit determines whether to use a sequential cache way prediction array or a non sequential cache way prediction array in dependence upon the type of instruction. Advantageously the improved cache way prediction scheme provides an increased cache hit percentage when used with non-sequential instructions.

As integrated circuit technology progresses to smaller feature sizes, faster central processing units (CPU)s are being developed as a result. Unfortunately access times of main memory, in the form of random access memory (RAM), where instruction data is typically stored, have not yet matched those of the CPU. The CPU must access these slower devices in order to retrieve instructions therefrom for processing thereof. In retrieving these instructions a bottleneck is realized between the CPU and the slower RAM. Typically, in order to reduce the effect of this bottleneck a cache memory is implemented between the main memory and the CPU to provide most recently used (MRU) instructions and data to the processor with lower latency.
It is known to those of skill in the art that cache memory is typically smaller in size and provides faster access times than main memory. These faster access times are facilitated by the cache memory typically residing within the processor, or very close by. Cache memory is typically of a different physical type than main memory. Main memory utilizes capacitors for storing data, where refresh cycles are necessary in order to maintain charge on the capacitors. Cache memory on the other hand does not require refreshing like main memory. Cache memory is typically in the form of static random access memory (SRAM), where each bit is stored without refreshing using approximately six transistors. Because more transistors are utilized to represent the bits within SRAM, the size per bit of this type of memory is much larger than dynamic RAM and as a result is also considerably more expensive than dynamic RAM. Therefore cache memory is used sparingly within computer systems, where this relatively smaller high-speed memory is typically used to hold the contents of the most recently processor utilized blocks of main memory.
The purpose of the cache memory is to increase instruction and data bandwidth of information flowing from the main memory to the CPU, as well as to decrease latency involved in transferring of information from main memory. Bandwidth determines the amount of information that can be transferred in a certain amount of time; latency determines the time it takes to retrieve a certain information item, in other words the amount of time it takes from the time of request to the time of delivery of the item. There are different configurations of cache memory that provide for this increased bandwidth and decreased latency, such as direct mapped and cache way set-associative. Of course, both latency and bandwidth are important in cache memory design and to many of skill in the art it is a fact that the cache way set-associative cache structure is preferable.
In the set-associative structure, as well as in direct mapped cache structures, the cache memory is typically configured into two parts, a data array and a tag array. The tag array is for storing a tag address for corresponding data bytes stored in the data array. Typically, each tag entry is associated with a data array entry, where each tag entry stores index information relating to each data array entry. Both arrays are two-dimensional and are organized into rows and columns. A column within either the data array or the tag array is typically referred to as a cache way, where there can be more than one cache way in a same cache memory. Thus a four-cache way set-associative cache memory would be configured with four columns, or cache ways, where both the data and tag arrays also have four columns each.
The processor executes instructions contained in the program stream in a similar manner to that of an assembly line. A processor pipeline is provided to facilitate processor operation on a number of instructions contained in the program stream. The term processor pipeline refers to a number of processing steps, or stages, it takes to accomplish a task; the fewer the processing steps, the shorter and more efficient the pipeline. The depth of a stage within the processor pipeline is defined as being the time delay through the stage. Thus, the depth of a stage affects the operating frequency of the processor. As a result, deeper pipelines having more stages have been implemented in processor. Having a lot of stages results in each stage having a shorter time delay, which facilitates a higher operating frequency of that stage. Efficient processor design balances the amount of stages and the delay through the stages. Thus, both the number of stages and the depth of each stage determine the processing efficiency of a processor. Within the processor pipeline, each processor pipeline stage performs a specific task before passing execution to a next processing stage within the pipeline. Within the processor pipeline instructions are loaded sequentially, in that, a portion of one instruction is processed after a previous one. Because the processor works on different stages of different instruction at the same time, more instructions can be executed in a shorter period of time using the pipeline, thus speeding up execution of the program stream. Once an instruction has been fully processed it leaves the pipeline.
During CPU execution of instructions within the pipeline both main memory and cache memory are accessed. Cache memory is accessed first to see if corresponding data bytes fulfill the memory access request, if the memory access request is unfulfilled then main memory is accessed. In a cache memory access operation the set-associative cache is accessed by a load/store unit, which searches the data cache for data residing at the memory access address. A cache way prediction array is a memory in which is stored an index into a cache way where the data blocks are most likely to reside in the data array. The cache way prediction array typically stores a number of bits in each entry, where each entry indicates which cache way has been most-recently used (MRU) with respect to the memory access address. Rows of the cache way prediction array are correlated to the memory access address. Providing a cache way prediction array potentially decreases processing time since a potential cache way is accessed prior to tag comparison. When a cache access is performed the cache way prediction array is used for accessing of a cache way in which data may potentially reside, thus reducing memory access times if a correct cache way prediction is realized. Of course, this is the case when a sequential tag lookup is followed by a data structure lookup. Approaches that access tag and data structures simultaneously have the same access time as the approach based on cache way prediction. The advantage of using cache way prediction lies in that only a single predicted cache way is accessed from the data array. Therefore, it allows for reduced power consumption and a more optimal physical layout in SRAM memory circuits.
After cache way prediction, a cache way represented by the prediction bits is enabled in data array, whereas all cache ways are enabled in the tag array. Enabling of a single cache way in the data array provides for decreased power consumption. All tag array ways are enabled because later on the prediction is validated using tag addresses retrieved from the tag array. Typically the tag addresses are smaller in bit size than data retrieved from an entry in the data array. As a result, power consumption is less of an issue when all cache ways are enabled in the tag array. The reduced power consumption is especially beneficial in multi-issue superscalar or Very Long Instruction Word (VLIW) processors, where a lot of instruction information is retrieved in every cycle. Of course to those of skill in the art it is appreciated that this is typical for an instruction cache only and not for data caches, which are discussed hereinbelow. The tag addresses within the tag array are examined to determine if any match the memory access address. In order to provide feedback as to the accuracy of the cache way prediction a tag comparison logic circuit is used to perform tag comparison in order to verify whether the cache was "hit" or "missed." If a match is found, the access is said to be a cache hit and the cache memory provides the associated data bytes from the data array. If a match is not found, the access is said to be a cache miss. When a cache miss occurs, the processor experiences a stall cycles. During the stall cycles the load/store unit retrieves required data from the main memory and provides this data to the processor so it can resume its execution of the instruction stream to end the stall cycle. Additionally, the load/store unit causes the requested data bytes to be transferred from the main memory into the data array. Furthermore, a portion of the memory access address associated with the retrieved data bytes is stored in the tag array. Finally, the cache way prediction array is updated to reflect the cache way to which the data bytes transferred from main memory. Having a tag comparison logic circuit in association with the cache way prediction array provides for a cache memory that offers a greater cache hit percentage.
Cache way prediction is well known to those of skill in the art, an example of which is disclosed in prior art U.S. Pat. No. 5,752,069, entitled "Superscalar microprocessor employing away [sic] prediction structure." In an n-cache way set associative cache memory, a requested cache element resides in any, or none of the n-cache ways within the cache memory in dependence upon the memory access address.
By relying on cache way prediction to identify the cache way in which the requested element is likely to reside, it is possible have access to only the identified cache way rather than accessing all cache ways, thereby advantageously reducing power consumption. In such a manner data bytes are transferred from the selected cache way in order to make up a cache line, or cache word for use by the processor thereafter. Cache way prediction therefore not only offers reduced power consumption but also offers improved access times to data contained in cache memory. A miss-prediction unfortunately causes processor stall cycles, thereby reducing processor performance and causing increased power consumption. Fortunately, the cache way prediction is typically correct at least 90% of the time, which generally improves system performance by allowing for minimal wait state operation in at 90% of the potential cases.
For instruction caches, the prediction accuracy of cache memories unfortunately decreases as non-sequential instructions are added into the program stream. Non-sequential instructions cause the CPU to access memory locations that are difficult to predict using the prior art cache way prediction array methodology. In some cases non-sequential instructions result in branching of a program to memory locations that are dependent upon the outcomes of prior instructions within the program stream and therefore a step size of these branches may vary as the program stream is executed. Therefore prediction accuracy for non-sequential program execution is reduced and as a result more cache misses occur. This causes increased processor stall cycles, thus leading to inefficient program stream execution and results in increased power consumption. For sequential instructions a look-ahead program counter is used to access the prediction memory. Unfortunately, when executing of branch instructions within a program stream the look-ahead program counter is not available for use in cache way prediction.
There exists a need to provide a more efficient cache way prediction scheme, for use in an instruction cache, that offers decreased power consumption while providing improved cache way prediction for non-sequential program execution.

Instruction cache way prediction for jump targets


A memory and a method for managing data. The memory for compressing and managing data includes a memory unit, wherein the memory unit has a compressed page cache region which includes a plurality of compressed page caches for temporarily storing, compressing and decompressing data; and a compressed page block region which includes a plurality of compressed page blocks for storing compressed data generated through the compression. Since data is stored in the memory after being compressed, it is possible to store much more data. Furthermore, as a great amount of data can be stored at one time, it is possible to minimize a lowering of the data processing speed caused by movement of data between memories.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention generally relates to a memory, and more particularly to a memory and a method for managing data.
2. Description of the Related Art
Generally, a primary memory, such as a Random Access Memory (RAM), has advantages in that it is faster than a secondary memory, for example, a hard disk or a flash memory, and is also easier to use. However, the primary memory is more expensive than the secondary memory based on the same memory capacity.
Especially, in an embedded system, such as a mobile terminal, the larger the capacity of the primary memory is, the higher the unit price of component becomes, so price competitiveness of the mobile terminal is weak. For this reason, mobile terminal manufacturers try to manufacture a primary memory having a capacity as small as possible.
In order to solve the shortage of the capacity of the primary memory, a virtual memory scheme using swapping is mainly employed. A virtual memory scheme sets a virtual memory region in the secondary memory. According to the virtual memory scheme, data moves to the virtual memory region, and only data necessary for actual performance moves to the primary memory from the virtual memory region to be processed.
However, in the aforementioned virtual memory scheme, a period of time is spent in moving data between the primary memory and the second memory. Accordingly, frequent movement of data between the primary memory and the secondary memory causes problems of lowering data processing speed.

Memory and method for data compression and management


The present invention seeks to provide a radiotherapeutic apparatus that mitigates the various problems found in the techniques such as tomotherapy, IMAT, IMRT and the like. It provides a radiotherapeutic apparatus comprising a source of radiation whose output is collimated by a multi-leaf collimator, and a patient support, the source being rotatable around the support and the support being translatable along the axis of rotation, thereby to move the source helically relative to a patient on the support. The leaves of the MLC are preferably oriented orthogonal to the axis of rotation, to simplify computation of the dose distribution. The apparatus thus moves the patient on the patient support system along the axis of rotation, in the longitudinal direction. Thus, the device has an effectively unlimited treatable volume in the longitudinal direction and avoids the limitations of IMAT and IMRT techniques whilst enabling the use of thin MLC leaves to give a high longitudinal resolution. The apparatus is preferably combined with an optimization system providing a computational service similar to that provided for IMAT and IMRT devices. Essentially the same computational techniques could be used, with appropriate changes to the input conditions and characteristic equations. The long aperture length (compared to tomotherapy) makes the radiation delivery efficient and therefore the delivery of high doses a practicality; hypofractionation and radiosurgery therefore become possible over large treatable volumes.

It is known that exposure of human or animal tissue to ionising radiation will kill the cells thus exposed. This finds application in the treatment of pathological cells. In order to treat tumours deep within the body of the patient, the radiation must however penetrate the healthy tissue in order to irradiate and destroy the pathological cells. In conventional radiation therapy, large volumes of healthy tissue can thus be exposed to harmful doses of radiation, resulting in prolonged recovery periods for the patient. It is, therefore, desirable to design a device for treating a patient with ionising radiation and treatment protocols so as to expose the pathological tissue to a dose of radiation that will result in the death of these cells, whilst keeping the exposure of healthy tissue to a minimum.
Several methods have previously been employed to achieve the desired pathological cell-destroying exposure whilst keeping the exposure of healthy cells to a minimum. Many methods work by directing radiation at a tumour from a number of directions, either simultaneously from multiple sources or multiple exposures from a single source. The intensity of radiation emanating from each source is therefore less than would be required to destroy cells, but where the radiation beams from the multiple sources converge, the total intensity of radiation is sufficient to deliver a therapeutic dose.
The treatment may be spread over a number of days or weeks, to allow recovery of the healthy tissue. This should recover more quickly, as it received a lesser dose. Accordingly, repeated doses spaced over time will eventually take a greater toll on the pathological cells.
It is therefore important to deliver the radiation as accurately as possible to the pathological cells whilst minimising the dose to healthy tissue. Progress in this regard allows greater individual doses to be delivered in each treatment step, thereby reducing the total number of treatments required and, in fact, reducing the overall dose delivered to a patient. For example, a prescription of 35 instances of a 2 Gy dose might be replaced by 15 instances of a 3 Gy dose, a technique known as "hypofractionation". Taken to its logical extreme, this might be replaced with a single 45 Gy dose if the dosage delivered to healthy tissue can be reduced significantly. This approach, referred to more typically as radiosurgery, will evidently offer advantages to the patient in that fewer treatments are required and there is no risk of inconsistent positioning between treatments.
Various methods have been proposed to reduce the dose the healthy tissue whilst maximising the dose to pathological tissue. The simplest is to direct the beam of radiation from a number of directions. Thus, at the co-incidence of the beams the dosage with be approximately 'n' times the dosage delivered to other areas, where 'n' is the number of directions employed.
Collimation can also be employed to limit the beam size to the minimum required to illuminate the pathological tissue. Multi-leaf collimators (MLCs) are known, such as that described in EP-A-0,314,214, and these are able to shape the beam to a desired outline.
In WO-A-02/069,349, we proposed a system whereby a beam of radiation was swept across the region of interest whilst its width was modulated. This offers the great advantage of an unlimited length to the treatment area.
In "rotational conformal" collimation, a radiation source is rotated around the patient and collimated with an MLC. The shape of the MLC collimation is varied with the angle of approach so that the width of the beam always conforms to the projected outline of the tumour as seen in the beam direction. This is useful for some shapes but deals poorly with concavities or re-entrant shapes.
IMAT techniques are described in U.S. Pat. No. 5,818,902. This develops the rotational conformal technique further by allowing repeated rotations around the patient. In this way, doses can be built up in the tumour area step-by step. To decide on the MLC shapes and directions, computational methods are used. Each voxel of the region of interest is assigned a "cost function", which reflects the cost associated with a specific dose. Thus, for example, a voxel in the tumour area has a high cost associated with a low dose, whereas a voxel in a healthy area will be opposite. Some sensitive areas such as the spine and the digestive tract can be given cost functions that place a particularly high cost on doses above a certain critical level. Computational processes then seek to minimise the cost function by manipulating the delivery options. IMAT can provide exceptional dose distributions.
IMRT is similar in its computational principles to IMAT, but provides for a series of MLC-shaped beams from the same direction. Thus, the computational load is somewhat reduced.
Tomotherapy is a treatment technique described (for example) in 'Planning Evaluation for complex lung cancer cases using Helical Tomotherapy' T. Kron et al. Phys. Med. Biol. 49 (2004) 3675-3690. In this technique, a modulatable fan beam is produced from a source that is rotated around the patient in a helical fashion. The beam's intensity can be modulated by elements that slide into and out of the path of the fan beam across its width. The dose can be very conformal and the dose distributions achieved are impressive.


An electric scooter hitch assembly is configured to be quickly attached to and removed from an electric scooter. The hitch assembly provides a mechanism for selectively securing a carry-on or other towable item to a variety of electric scooters. The hitch assembly is compact and easily transportable thereby making it an ideal solution for a rider to temporarily adapt an electric scooter, including rental electric scooters, to transport towable items such as trailers, luggage, carts, or other suitable items.

Electric scooters have become an integral part of inner-city transport and pedestrian transit to and from businesses, universities, schools, airports, hotels, and business and social gatherings. Riding an electric scooter with any type of carry-on including backpacks, luggage, purchased retail items, and bags can be cumbersome, if not impossible. For example, the deck plate of the electric scooter is too narrow for securing bulky or heavy items.
To enable a rider to transport luggage or other loads, some users have fabricated their own solutions and attached them to their personal electric scooters. While these solutions may be practical for personal use with personal equipment, they can permanently alter the scooter, may require invasive installation with specific tools, and would not be a viable option for the electric scooter fleets meant for scooter sharing systems.


Described is a device for the controlled release and delivery to mammalian tissue of a pharmacologically active agent comprising:. (i) an impermeable backing member; PA1 (ii) a control membrane lamina consisting essentially of a first polymeric composition of matter which consists essentially of at least one C.sub.2 -C.sub.4 lower olefin-C.sub.1 -C.sub.8 alkyl acrylate and/or methacrylate copolymer having 2-90% by weight of alkyl acrylate and/or methacrylate monomeric units, taken alone, or taken further together with in intimate admixture, a second polymeric composition consisting essentially of a C.sub.2 -C.sub.4 polyalkylene corresponding to the C.sub.2 -C.sub.4 lower alkylene of said copolymer, said second polymeric composition being compatible with said first polymeric composition of matter; and PA1 (iii) a pharmacologically active agent reservoir maintained there between comprising said pharmacologically active agent and a carrier therefor and, optionally, one or more excipients and/or enhancers; and PA1 (iv) means for maintaining said device in pharmacologically active agent transmitting relationship to the mammalian tissue to be treated.

1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates broadly to articles of manufacture for administration of pharmacologically active substances, transdermally and by means of implant (e.g., subdermal implant).
The system comprises a backing member substantially impermeable to the pharmacologically active agent, a pharmacologically active agent reservoir member consisting essentially of a pharmacologically active agent and a carrier therefor and a rate controlling member which is a lamina consisting essentially of a first polymeric composition of matter which consists essentially of at least one C.sub.2 -C.sub.4 lower olefin-C.sub.1 -C.sub.8 alkyl acrylate and/or methacrylate copolymer having 2-90% by weight of alkyl acrylate and/or methacrylate monomeric units, taken alone, or further taken together with, in intimate admixture, a second polymeric composition consisting essentially of a C.sub.2 -C.sub.4 polyalkylene corresponding to the C.sub.2 -C.sub.4 lower alkylene of said copolymer, said second polymeric composition being compatible with said first polymeric composition of matter.
2. The Prior Art
Many prior art articles of manufacture have been disclosed for controlled release delivery of various drugs including transdermal delivery of nitroglycerin and timolol as well as clonidine. Indeed, prior art devices exist for high flux transdermal delivery of drugs over an extended period of time comprising in combination:
(a) an impermeable backing member; PA1 (b) a pharmacologically active agent rate controlling membrane; PA1 (c) a pharmacologically active agent reservoir maintained there between with the reservoir composition comprising a carrier and the pharmacologically active agent; and PA1 (d) means for maintaining the system in pharmacologically active agent transmitting relationship to the skin. PA1 (a) 0.5 to 15% by weight of an ethylenically unsaturated oil, and PA1 (b) a mixture of diethyl O-(2-isopropyl-4-methyl-6-pyrimidinyl)thionosphosphate and diethyl O-(2-isopropyl-4-methyl-6-pyrimidinyl)phosphate, wherein diethyl O-(2-isopropyl-4-methyl-6-pyrimidinyl) thionophosphate is 10 to 90% by weight of said mixture and diethyl O-(2-isopropyl-4-methyl-6-pyrimidinyl)phosphate is 90 to 10% by weight of said mixture." PA1 (i) an impermeable backing member; PA1 (ii) a control membrane lamina consisting essentially of a first polymeric composition of matter which consists essentially of at least one C.sub.2 -C.sub.4 lower olefin-C.sub.1 -C.sub.8 alkyl acrylate and/or methacrylate copolymer having 2-90% by weight of alkyl acrylate and/or methacyrlate monomeric units taken alone or taken further together with, in intimate admixture a second polymeric composition consisting essentially of a C.sub.2 -C.sub.4 polyalkylene corresponding to the C.sub.2 -C.sub.4 lower alkylene of the first polymeric composition, the said second polymeric composition being compatible with the said first polymeric composition of matter; PA1 (iii) a pharmacologically active agent reservoir maintained there between comprising said pharmacologically active agent and a carrier therefor (a) said pharmacologically active agent being physically and chemically compatible with said first polymeric composition of matter and (b) said first polymeric composition of matter being capable of permitting release of said pharmacologically active agent from said pharmacologically active agent reservoir at a rate lower than that previously obtained in prior art articles and from a reservoir containing a concentration of pharmacologically active agent higher than that previously used in prior art articles.
Pharmacologically active agent release rate controlling membranes composed of compositions of matter consisting essentially of olefin-alkyl acrylate copolymers taken alone or further together in intimate admixture with olefin polymers have not been disclosed and are unknown in the prior art.
European Patent 186,071 assigned to Merck and Co., Inc. published on Jul. 2, 1986 discloses a system for administering timolol for an extended period comprising a backing member substantially impermeable to timolol, a timolol reservoir member consisting essentially of timolol as the drug and a carrier therefor and a rate controlling member which can be microporous polypropylene, ethylene-vinyl acetate copolymer, a silicone polymer or a polyurethane polymer. The European Patent 186,071 indicates that by the system disclosed transdermal application of timolol may be accomplished with substantially no irritation to the skin.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,060,084 assigned to Alza Corporation discloses a method and therapeutic system in the form of a bandage for providing chemotherapy transdermally by administering certain drugs to unbroken skin in an initial priming dose that quickly brings the systemic concentration of drug to a therapeutic level, followed by a substantially constant dosage that holds the level, U.S. Pat. No. 4,060,084 discloses a bandage which is a four-layer laminate of, from the top: a protective backing; a drug reservoir lamina that is a source of constant dosage; a microporous membrane that controls the constant dosage rate; and an adhesive layer that is the source of the priming dose and the means by which the bandage is attached to the skin. However, disclosed for use in fabricating the membrane are polymers such as polypropylene, polyethylene, polyvinyl chloride, cellulose acetate, cellulose nitrate, polycarbonates and polyacrylonitrile. No mention is made of polyacrylates or acrylate-polyolefin copolymers for use as the controlling membrane in U.S. Pat. No. 4,060,084.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,615,699 issued on Oct. 7, 1986 assigned to Alza Corporation discloses a high flux transdermal nitroglycerin therapeutic system capable of delivering nitroglycerin through intact human skin at rates of 40 micrograms/cm.sup.2 hr. and preferably in the range of 50-150 micrograms/cm.sup.2 hr. It is indicated that ethanol delivered at a rate of from 250-500 micrograms/cm.sup.2 hr. is employed as a permeation enhancer for the nitroglycerin and a rate controlling membrane formed from ethylene vinyl acetate having a vinyl acetate content greater than 11% and preferably between 12-18% "provides the appropriate rate control for both the drug and the permeation enhancer", U.S. Pat. No. 4,615,699 does not infer the utilization of the copolymers or copolymer-polymer mixtures which form the basis of the instant invention.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,201,211 issued on May 6, 1980 discloses a therapeutic system in the form of a skin patch that administers clonidine transdermally in an initial priming dose of 10 to 30 micrograms/cm.sup.2 of skin that brings the concentration of clonidine in the blood to a level sufficient to elicit alpha-adrenergic stimulation without intolerable side effects followed by a substantially constant continuous dosage in the range of 0.1 to 100 micrograms/hr. that maintains the level. The system is a four-layer laminate of, from the top: a protective backing; a gelled mineral oil-polyisobutene-clonidine reservoir lamina that is the source of the clonidine for the continuous constant dosage; a microporous membrane that controls the constant dosage rate; and a gelled, mineral oil-polyisobutene-clonidine contact adhesive layer that is the source of the clonidine for the priming dose and the means by which the system is attached to the skin, U.S. Pat. No. 4,201,211 does not disclose the use or infer the use of the acrylate-olefin copolymer for the control membrane; that is, the membrane that controls the dosage rate.
Indeed, nothing in the prior art discloses the utilization in control release pharmacologically active drug devices of a control membrane composed of an acrylate-olefin copolymer or mixtures thereof with polyolefins as described and claimed in the instant invention.
Shah, et al, Journal of Biomaterials Applications, Vol. 1, October, 1986, pages 239-273 discloses a multi-layered laminated polymeric structure for controlled drug delivery in which a layer of vinyl chloride copolymer or terpolymer containing the drug is sandwiched between two or more layers of polymeric films. Shah, et al discloses that the drug is released from the device at a controlled rate by a process of diffusion through the reservoir and one of the outer layers which can function as a rate controlling membrane. Shah, et al discloses at page 259, that:
"The rate controlling membranes investigated were olefinic copolymers containing a polar modifier," PA0 "A drug delivery device for the controlled, oral administration of water-soluble prednisolone is prepared as follows: first, a plurality of drug reservoirs comprising porous, discrete particles of polymerized poly(vinyl chloride) of about 100 microns diameter are prepared by mixing 100 g of suspension grade poly(vinyl chloride) resin with 50 g of octyl diphenyl phosphate and 10 g of prednisolone disodium phosphate at room temperature into a sticky, wet mass. Next, the temperature of the mixture is raised to 80.degree. C. for about 3 to 7 minutes, while stirring, to form dry, free flowing, discrete drug reservoirs. The reservoirs are uniformly dispersed through a matrix by mixing 50 g of reservoirs containing the prednisolone with 140 g of polydimethylsiloxane, 10 g of silicone oil, and 0.5 g of stannuous octoate. After mixing the ingredients, the mixture is charged into pill molds and allowed to cure for 30 minutes. Oral administration of the resulting device yields a controlled essentially constant rate of release of prednisolone phosphate to the gastrointenstinal tract to give a more uniform blood level of prednisolone over a longer period of time than is achieved when prednisolone alcohol is administered by standard prior art pills." PA0 "In an animal collar for controlling fleas and ticks on cats and dogs, a part of said animal collar being formed of a solid vinyl or vinylidene polymer matrix in which is dispersed a pesticidal composition, an improved pesticidal composition consisting essentially of: PA0 "The macromolecular substance preferably has a weight of more than 1000; it is selected from the homopolymers and copolymers obtained starting from vinyl chloride, vinyl acetate, vinyl acetals, vinylalcohol, vinylbenzene and divinylbenzene and vinylidene chloride; the copolymers may, in addition, contain additional components such as ethylenic, propylenic, butadienic, isoprenic, acrylic and methacrylic components. PA0 Preferably, the macromolecular substance is a polymer or copolymer of a vinyl compound such as, for example, the polyvinyl halides. The particularly preferred macromolecular substances are polymers or copolymers of vinyl chloride. PA0 The macromolecular substance preferably contains one or more plasticizers. PA0 The plasticizers are liquid esters with a vapour pressure of less than 0.0001 mm/Hg at 25.degree. C. Some nonrestrictive examples of plasticizers are: diethyl, dimethyl, dipropyl, dibutyl, dihexyl, dioctyl and didecyl phthalate, dibutyl, diamyl, dinonyl, dioctyl, and didecyl adipate, dipropyl, dibutyl, dibenzyl and dioctyl sebacate, diethyl, dipropyl and dibutyl citrate, triphenyl and tricresyl phosphate and the triglycerides. PA0 The preferred plasticizers are dibutyl phthalate and dioctyl adipate, which make it possible to obtain an arrangement with good flexibility, on the surface of which the active principle appears rapidly and regularly."
The Shah, et al paper was published subsequent to the filing date of parent application, Ser. No. 847,635 filed on Apr. 3, 1986, now U.S. Pat. No. 4,751,438.
Furthermore, Canadian Patent No. 930,668 discloses a bandage for administering drugs comprised of a backing member, a pressure sensitive adhesive, and at least one reservoir disposed between the backing member and pressure sensitive adhesive. The reservoir is comprised of a systemically active drug formulation confined within a wall member, the wall member being formed from a drug release controlling material. The reservoir can be in the form of discrete microcapsules or distinct reservoir compartments or layers. The reservoir can also be in the form of walled containers having one or more interior drug-containing chambers, as well as solid matrices having a systemically active drug distributed therethrough. The Canadian patent discloses a wide variety of materials which can be used to form the reservoir. Among the materials mentioned are silicone rubbers, hydrophilic polymers of monoesters of an olefinic acid, polyvinylalcohol, polyvinylacetate, plasticized polyvinylchloride, plasticized nylon, collagen, modified collagen, gelatin, and waxes such as polyethylene wax, oxidized polyethylene wax, hydrogenated castor oil and the like, with the silicone rubbers being preferred. The Canadian patent does not contain any examples showing the use of plasticized polyvinyl chloride.
Similarly, Zaffaroni, U.S. Pat. No. 3,921,636 issued on Nov. 25, 1975 discloses a drug delivery device for administering a drug at a controlled rate for a prolonged period of time comprising a plurality of reservoirs containing drug distributed through a matrix. The reservoirs and the matrix are formed of materials permeable to passage of the drug. The rate of drug permeation from the reservoir is lower than the rate of permeation through the matrix so that release from the reservoir is the drug release controlling step. Thus, Example 6, at column 15, lines 5-30 of U.S. Pat. No. 3,921,636 relates to a polyvinyl chloride resin containing plasticizer and prednisolone disodium phosphate thusly:
U.S. Pat. No. 4,150,109 (Dick, et al) issued on Apr. 17, 1979 entitled "Device for Protecting Animals from Ectoparasites" discloses and claims:
wherein the "solid vinyl . . . matrix" and the plasticizers are described thusly:
Furthermore, as is well known, polyvinyl chloride (PVC) is never used alone, but is always mixed with other ingredients before being processed. Polyvinyl chloride appeared initially to be an unpromising resin because of its thermal instability and high rigidity. PVC, however, was then discovered to form a rubber-like material when dissolved hot in high boiling solvents known as plasticizers and cooled to room temperature. PVC is now available in a number of different physical forms and types, and its manufacture depends on the form desired. Thus, PVC is available as a vinyl latex, a dispersion resin, or a general purpose resin. PVC latexes are true colloidal dispersions of submicrometer particles in water, stabilized by a surfactant system, and need plasticizers in order to form a continuous film. The PVC is vinyl latex is manufactured by emulsion polymerization.
Dispersion resins are produced by emulsion polymerization and are mixed with plasticizers to form a colloidal dispersion. Such dispersions are known as plastisols and are easily handled and readily pourable. When heated to a temperature of about 140.degree. to 177.degree. C., the plastisol is transformed to a homogeneous melt which, upon cooling to below 50.degree. C., results in a tough flexible product. The PVC resins made by emulsion polymerization are hard spheres of particle size between about 0.05 and 20 microns, such as between 1 and 20 microns. They do not have the ability to absorb plasticizers. Therefore, a mixture containing, for example, 30% plasticizer and 70% PVC resin, produces a flowable liquid, known as "plastisol".
General purpose PVC resins are made by mass and suspension polymerization process, and comprise the largest amount of PVC resins produced, such as at least 80% of all PVC resins, and are used chiefly to make so-called 100% vinyl products by a variety of molding and extrusion techniques. Resins intended for flexible applications should have good uptake of plasticizer in a dry blending operation and contain more than 25% of a plasticizer system. PVC compounds that contain less than 25% plasticizers are referred to as semirigid compounds. The PVC resins manufactured by suspension and bulk polymerization are 50 to 200, such as 100 to 150 microns in diameter, and are like sponges. They are capable of absorbing large amounts of plasticizers, so that even a 50% plasticizer, 50% PVC resin composition would result in a non-flowing, solid material.

Device for controlled release and delivery to mammalian tissue of pharmacologically active agents incorporating a rate controlling member which comprises an alkylene-alkyl acrylate copolymer


A method of classifying data is disclosed. Text data items are received. A set of classes into which the text data items are to be classified is received. A phrase-based classifier to classify the text data items into the set of classes is selected. The phrase-based classifier is applied to classify the text data items into the classes. Here, the applying includes creating a controlled vocabulary pertaining to classifying the text data items into the set of classes, building phrases based on the text data items and the controlled vocabulary, and classifying the text data items into the set of classes based on the phrases.

Various algorithms (or classifiers) are used to classify data, including linear classifiers, support vector machines (SVMs), kernel estimation, neural networks, Bayesian networks, and other classifiers. Metrics for evaluating classifiers include precision, recall (or coverage), receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves, explainability of classification results, development costs, or maintenance costs. A performance of a classifier may depend on the characteristics of the data being classified. Furthermore, it may be difficult to identify a relationship between the data to be classified and the performance of the classifier.
On a social networking site (e.g., Facebook or LinkedIn), users may manage their own profiles. For example, users may use different forms of natural language (e.g., words and phrases) to describe things that fit into the same category. For example, users of the social networking site may be free to specify their job titles in any form they wish. In a data set of 100 million such job titles, it may not be unusual for users to specify a job title corresponding to a job category (e.g., "Software Engineer") in 40,000 different ways.
For various reasons (e.g., in order to boost revenues earned by the social networking site through targeted advertising), owners (or administrators) of the social networking site may wish to classify their users' self-descriptive job titles (or other user-specified data) into a generated or determined set of categories (e.g., a few dozen categories). For job title classification, examples of such categories may be Engineering, Marketing, Sales, Support, Healthcare, Legal, Education, and so on.
It may be possible to use standard classifiers (e.g., SVMs) to solve such a data classification problem. However, standard classifiers may not solve the problem as effectively as another classifier, such as a classifier that is specifically targeted for the problem, especially in view of a particular set of performance metrics that is selected by the owners or administrators of the social networking site.

This patent is subject to a terminal disclaimer.


In order to grant an access to a computer-based object, a memory card having a program code processor is provided, on which at least one public and private key assigned to the memory card are stored. In addition, an item of license information is provided, which comprises at least one license code encrypted by means of the public key assigned to the memory card, on a computing device which controls the access to the computer-based object.

Immense damage is caused worldwide as a result of the unauthorized use of computer programs. Solutions designed to protect computer programs against unauthorized use have been developed in order to counter this problem.
Transmitting encrypted information in order to activate a computer program serves to prevent unauthorized replications of the computer program. Moreover, corresponding methods serve for example as a technical precondition for selling computer programs as products via e-commerce. With previously known methods for activating computer programs, computer programs are enabled (activated) with the aid of a unique registration key in each case. In order to activate a computer program, the registration key which is permanently assigned to a computer program license is entered manually or loaded from a data medium. In particular with a plurality of computer programs installed on different computers, this results in a high administration overhead which is associated with labor-intensive operating and maintenance tasks.
A method wherein predefinable functions of a computer program can be activated for a selectable period of use by modification of a registration key pair is known from EP 1 191 419 A2. The registration key pair has at least one part-information item that is locked against user accesses. The functions which are to be activated do not necessarily have to have been already available for an activation at the time of an initial installation of the computer program, but can also be selected and added at some later time. No deployment of operating and maintenance personnel is necessary at the location of the computer on which the particular computer program is installed in order to activate the functions.
Components of the registration key pair according to the method described in EP 1 191 419 A2 are application information and an application value. The application information is input at a first computer on which the computer program to be registered is installed or, alternatively, is generated by the first computer. The application value is calculated from the application information by means of coding in a second computer.
For a registration of a computer program or a change to the registration, first application information comprising at least one partial information element that is locked against user accesses is transmitted to the second computer. In the second computer, an application value is calculated from the first application information and subsequently transmitted to the first computer. In the first computer, second application information is determined from the application value by means of decoding. The first and the second application information are checked to determine they match at the start of an execution of the computer program. Predefinable functions of the computer program are activated as a function of the differences resulting during the check.

Granting an access to a computer-based object


A turbine hot gas path (HGP) component includes a body having an exterior surface exposed to a hot gas path, and a cooling circuit defined along an interior surface of the body and fluidly coupled to a coolant source. The cooling circuit includes a plurality of sections spaced from one another but fluidly connected. Each section includes a wall defining at least one cooling passage, and a connector wall coupling between the wall of a first section of the plurality of sections and the wall of an adjacent, second section of the plurality of sections. The wall of the first section and the wall of the adjacent, second section are spaced apart, segregating stress between the sections. The connector wall is more flexible than: the wall of the first section, the wall of the adjacent, second section, and the body, allowing stress relief between the sections.

Turbines include components exposed to a hot gas of the turbine such as a steam or combustion gas flow. Hot gas path (HGP) components can take a variety of forms including, for example, airfoils of nozzles, airfoils of turbine blades, and shrouds between nozzle and blade stages. HGP components typically include various cooling circuits that deliver coolant to reduce the temperature of the components. HGP components experience high stresses due to the dynamics and the temperature differentials to which they are exposed. The presence of cooling circuits in the HGP components limits the ability to provide stress relief.

Turbine HGP component with stress relieving cooling circuit


A carrier tape according to the present invention includes a plurality of tape carrier packages provided at a regular interval on a lengthy insulating tape, a first and a second integrated circuit device respectively and mounted to each of the plurality of tape carrier packages. Further, a connecting line electrically short-circuits only between one of terminals for the first integrated circuit device and one of terminals for the second integrated circuit device. This configuration prevents the integrated circuit devices from being damaged by discharged static electricity as well as allows to conduct a performance test on the integrated circuit devices such as checking for input/output of a signal by applying a probe pin to an input or output pin.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a carrier tape, and particularly to a carrier tape having a plurality of tape carrier packages provided at a regular interval on a lengthy insulating tape and a plurality of integrated circuit devices mounted to each of the plurality of tape carrier packages.
2. Description of the Related Art
A method of implementing an integrated circuit device to a tape carrier package is widely used in recent years as an implementation method of an integrated circuit device. With its flexibility and capability to handling fine pitch, a tape carrier package is currently a primary method of implementing an integrated circuit device that supplies driving signal for LCD (Liquid Crystal Display) panel.
Such type carrier packages are manufactured on a lengthy carrier tape and shipped for a user to place to a chip mounter. The chip mounter punches out a tape carrier package one by one from a carrier tape and implements the punched tape carrier packages to a liquid crystal display panel.
In processes from implementing an integrated circuit device on a patterned insulating tape to a process of punching tape carrier packages out from a carrier tape, a potential difference could be generated between integrated circuit devices placed adjacent to each other due to an electrification by friction between components, thereby causing to damage integrated circuit devices by discharged static electricity.
To prevent integrated circuit devices from being damaged by electrostatic discharge, a carrier tape is suggested in which all plurality of input terminals formed on each tape carrier package are electrically short-circuited by the same potential lines, as well as electrically short-circuiting all plurality of output terminals formed on each tape carrier package by the same potential lines (for example in Japanese Unexamined Patent Publication No. 2003-318232, FIG. 1 and paragraph [0027]).
However it has been discovered that in the technique disclosed in Japanese Unexamined Publication No. 2003-318232, all plurality of input and output terminals are short-circuited by the same potential lines, and it is therefore not possible to perform a performance test on integrated circuit device such as checking input/output of a signal by applying a probe pin to an input or output pin until a tape carrier package is punched out from a carrier tape.


An apparatus for variable length belt splitting includes a stepwise feeder which urges the belt, such as conveyor belt, forward in discrete steps and a reciprocating cutter disposed downstream from the feeder. The feeder preferably includes both a holding clamp and a feed clamp that is connected to, and is moved with respect to, the holding clamp by a feed actuator. The cutter preferably moves parallel to the holding clamp and is moved back and forth by a bi-directional ram. The cutter splits the belt edge to edge at a predetermined depth in length increments corresponding to the feeder's step length to a total length determined by the user. Optionally, the feeder and cutter are connected to a support structure which allows the feeder and cutter to be placed at an angle with respect to the path of the belt through the machine, thereby allowing for diagonal splits to be made with respect to the longitudinal axis of the belt without stewing of the belt. Advantageously, some embodiments of the present invention allow for the belt to be split while maintaining the integrity of the reinforcing layers and the adhesion thereof to the main belt layers. The belt splitter allows for the belt to be split up to any distance selected by the user. A method for splitting belts includes feeding the belt to a cutter in discrete steps having a step length and moving the cutter in a reciprocating manner after each step. The movement of the cutter against the belt splits the belt from one side to the other in length increments corresponding to the step length to an overall split length determined by the user. Optionally, the split is aligned diagonally with respect to the longitudinal axis of the belt. The method preferably splits the belt without damaging any bonds between main layers and reinforcing layers and without damaging the reinforcing layers.

Belts 4, and more particularly conveyor belts, are typically fabricated from multiple layers 8,6, as shown in FIG. 1. In most belts, the different main layers 6 of rubber or other plastic material are interleaved with reinforcing layers 8 of fabric or the like to form a laminate structure. Because it is desirable for the reinforcing layers 8 to be bonded to the main layers 6 very tightly to help promote maximum strength, the main layers 6 are bonded to the reinforcing layers 8 through special bonding processes typically tightly controlled by the belt's manufacturer. The belts 4 are typically manufactured in long strips which are spliced together in one or more locations to form a continuous loop. Due to the stresses imposed on the conveyor belts, it is important that the splice be as high a quality as possible so as to prevent, or at least delay, belt failure at the splice.
Over time, a number of methods have been employed to splice belt ends together. The simplest method is the butt splice where the opposing ends of the belt are cut and then bonded together, such as by glue or stapling. Such butt splices are weak. Stronger splices are achieved when there is some sort of overlapping of the two belt ends, such as when the top half of one end and the bottom half of the other end are removed and the complementary portions of the ends are overlapped and bonded together by gluing, etc., and thereafter vulcanizing with presses having heated platens. For some applications, it is desirable to form stepped splices having staggered overlapping levels, as shown in FIG. 1. In addition, the belt material of the complementary opposing ends may be formed into an interleaved finger arrangement. It is believed that strong joints are formed when complementary portions of a main layer 6 from of the opposing ends of the joint are bonded together without an intervening reinforcing layer 8, as shown in FIG. 1. Further, it is desirable for the reinforcing layers 8 of the respective ends to be both unseparated from their adjoining main layers 6 and undamaged. Whatever the splice arrangement, the opposing belt ends of the splice are typically cut so as to mirror each other.
In order to form overlapping splice joints, it is necessary to remove a portion of the belt material from the respective belt ends. Typically, this process is a manual process in which two of the layers are separated by stripping one from the other for some distance along the belt, then cutting off the material above or below the separation. This manual stripping process typically involves the use of cutting blades, pliers, buffing machines, and the like, and is time consuming. Due to the various levels of cohesion, adhesion, and localized stresses, this manual stripping almost invariably produces a rough surface having numerous pits and leftover tags of material, requiring subsequent buffing or sanding to create a smoother surface suitable for splicing. In addition, the manual process frequently damages the "skim layer", the portion of the main layer material closest to the reinforcing layer 8 which provides the adhesion between the main layer 6 and the reinforcing layer 8. Further, the manual process frequently damages the material of the reinforcing layer 8 itself.
Alternatively, belt splitting machines are available. A belt splitting machine is designed to split a layer of the belt (typically a main layer 6), rather than separating or stripping one layer from another. A typical example of an available belt splitting machine is the model Type 95 from Muller & Kurth Offenbach A. M. of Germany. This machine uses a pair of continuously driven pinch rollers to force the belt into stationary cutting blade. The cutting blade impinges upon the side of the belt at a given vertical height and splits the belt from one side to the other as the belt is fed into it. Due to the mechanics involved, the machine is rather cumbersome and can only be used to split the belt up to a rather limited length, such as five inches. The machine is unsuited to making multiple staggered splits at different levels of the same belt end.
In light of the above, there remains a need for a belt splitter which can split a belt for a variable length as the user demands and that can split the belt without damaging the reinforcing layers. It is desirable, but not required, for such a machine to be able to split the belt both square, i.e. perpendicular with respect to the belt length, and on a bias, i.e. diagonally with respect to the belt length. It is further desirable, but not required, for such a belt splitter to be suitable for making staggered length splits at different depths of the same belt end.


A method of determining a mathematical transformation to place three-dimensional (3D) coordinates of points measured by an articulated arm coordinate measurement machine (AACMM) and 3D points measured by a scanner in a common coordinate system is provided. The method including providing the 3D scanner and the AACMM having a probe. The scanner and AACMM each have a local frame of reference. Three non-collinear targets are measured with the probe and then with the scanner. 3D probe reference coordinates and 3D scanner reference coordinates are determined based on the measurement of the targets by the AACMM and scanner. The mathematical transformation is determined based at least in part on the 3D probe reference coordinates and the 3D scanner reference coordinates, the mathematical transformation characterized at least in part by a collection of parameters.

The subject matter disclosed herein relates to a method of determining a common coordinate system for a plurality of coordinate measurement devices and in particular to a method of determining a common coordinate system between a portable articulated arm coordinate measurement machine (AACMM) and a scanner.
A coordinate measurement device is a device that may be used by an operator to measure and electronically capture coordinates of points on a surface. There are several different types of coordinate measurement devices, such as but not limited to: an AACMM, a laser line probe, a laser tracker and an optical structured light scanner for example. The coordinates of the measured points are determined relative to a local coordinate reference system of the measurement device. For example, the AACMM may have a local coordinate system positioned in the base of the device. The local coordinate reference system allows each of the measurements made by the measurement device to be taken relative to each other. The coordinate reference system may be made during post processing.
It should be appreciated that it is difficult to use different types of coordinate measurement devices together to measure a single object or environment since each device acquires the coordinate data in a different coordinate frame. Further complicating this problem is that different types of coordinate measurement machines use different techniques for calibration and registration. For example, optical systems may use circular adhesive photogrammetry labels for registration. However, it would be difficult for an AACMM with a contact-type probe to measure these labels with a desired level of accuracy.
Accordingly, while existing systems for measuring coordinates of points on a surface are suitable for their intended purposes the need for improvement remains, particularly in providing a common coordinate reference frame for a pair of coordinate measurement devices that are operated independent of each other to measure an object.

Method of determining a common coordinate system for an articulated arm coordinate measurement machine and a scanner


The present invention provides a reverse opening type separable end stop having a mechanism which securely locks a reverse opening type slider on a surface of an insert pin or a box pin, thereby blocking the slider from needlessly moving inward, wherein the reverse opening type separable end stop comprises a reverse opening type slider, a box pin and an insert pin, the insert pin or the box pin being provided with a contact portion with which a locking pawl provided on the reverse opening type slider mounted on a fastener chain can always make contact by colliding an end surface thereof in an opening/closing direction at an end portion of the fastener chain, so that the contact portion is locked by the locking pawl, whereby a high quality reverse opening type separable end stop is ensured.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a reverse opening type separable end stop of a slide fastener, and more particularly to a reverse opening type separable end stop which enables a smooth separable end stop operation by improving a box pin and an insert pin of the reverse opening type separable end stop including a reverse opening type slider, the box pin and the insert pin.
2. Description of the Related Art
A slide fastener has been used as not only an opening/closing device of an opening portion of clothes or a bag but also a connecting device of carpet or artificial lawn divided to a unit size. Although such a type of slide fastener that can be opened or closed from one end side to the other end side in a longitudinal direction of a fastener chain is a general type, there exists another type which can be opened or closed from both end sides in the longitudinal direction of the fastener chain. In this type of slide fastener, two sliders, that is, an opening type slider and a reverse opening type slider are disposed on its fastener chains, and a box pin and an insert pin are attached to one end of the fastener chain, so that a reverse opening type separable end stop comprised of the reverse opening type slider, box pin and insert pin is mounted.
As a conventional reverse opening separable end stop, one shown in FIG. 16 has been known (see, for example, Japanese Patent No. 3621040). A recess 118 is provided on a side surface of the insert pin 104 and a small piece 122 is provided projectingly on a side surface of the box pin 103 opposing the side surface of the insert pin 104, so that the small piece 122 can be inserted into the recess 118 when the box pin 103 and the insert pin 104 are inserted into the reverse opening type slider 101. A rising slope 117 is formed from a front end of the insert pin 104 toward its proximal end side. When the insert pin 104 is inserted into the reverse opening type slider 101, the slope 117 of the insert pin 104 makes contact with a locking pawl 135 provided on the reverse opening type slider 101, and as the insert pin 104 is moved, the insert pin 104 pushes up the locking pawl 135, so that the locking pawl 135 can ride on a top surface of the insert pin 104. A concave portion 113 in which the locking pawl 135 pushed up to the top surface of the insert pin 104 can be inserted is provided on the proximal end side of the insert pin 104 relative to the slope 117, that is, at a position adjacent to the fastener element. With the insert pin 104 inserted into the reverse opening type slider 101, the locking pawl 135 is held in the concave portion 113. Further, a slope 120 for the locking pawl 135′ of the opening type slider 102 to ride on a top surface of the box pin 103 is formed on the proximal end of the box pin 103.
Recently, the slide fastener provided with the reverse opening separable end stop has been mounted to articles in various fields and additionally, mounted in different usage style from a conventional usage style. According to the conventional usage style, when the slide fastener is attached to an article, the reverse opening separable end stop has been disposed on a bottom side of the article. According to a new usage style, on the other hand, the reverse opening separable end stop has been disposed on an upper side of an article, for example, an over pants which a skier wears.
When the insert pin is inserted into the reverse opening type slider in the reverse opening separable end stop of the slide fastener shown in FIG. 16, the locking pawl of the reverse opening type slider is fitted into the concave portion formed in the top surface of the insert pin and maintained. When the reverse opening separable end stop is disposed on an upper side of an article, the reverse opening type slider swings during usage, so that it may be about to move downward of the article due to its own weight, that is, move freely in a direction of departing from the box pin and the insert pin. However, the insert pin and box pin do not have a function of stopping a movement of the reverse opening type slider, and there occurs a problem that the fastener elements may be separated naturally without any intentional operation of the reverse opening type slider.

Reverse opening type separable end stop of slide fastener


An increased precision position sensor includes a first magnetic field sensing device; a second magnetic field sensing device; and a processor, the processor further includes a calibrator; a mathematical model to predict the magnetic field at a given position relative to the object; and an estimator algorithm to compare the measured magnetic field within the predicted magnetic field, thereby calculating the most likely position of the position sensor relative to the magnetic object. A position sensor in accordance with the invention is capable of locating the axis of a cylindrical magnetic object to within ±0.5 mm through 70 mm thick aluminium, and is expected to find application, in the aerospace industry, or other industries where high precision during manufacture is required. The invention may be conveniently embodied in a portable, handheld device.

1. Field of the Invention
This application is the U.S. national phase of international application PCT/GB2004/004674, filed in English on 4 Nov. 2004, which designated the U.S. PCT/GB2004/004674 claims priority to GB Application No. 0325989.2 filed 7 Nov. 2003 and EP Application No. 03257035.0 filed 7 Nov. 2003. The entire contents of these applications are incorporated herein by reference.
This invention relates to a system for increasing the precision of a position sensor. In particular, this invention relates to a system for increasing the precision of a position sensing system incorporating magnetic field sensing devices such as Hall Effect devices.
2. Discussion of Prior Art
Position sensors and position sensing systems are often used in manufacturing applications where it is necessary to drill holes 'blind', that is where it is not possible to see the structure through which the hole is to be drilled. One example of such a manufacturing application is found in the aerospace industry when assembling a wing skin and a wing box where it is essential to determine accurately where to drill attachment holes through the wing skin and into the supporting feet of a rib of the wing box. Erroneous drilling of such attachment holes results in the incorrect distribution of stresses and strains through the airframe.
Conventionally, pilot holes are drilled from within the wing box outwards through the rib foot and the wing skin, a process known as back drilling. The pilot holes are then used as a guide for the drilling of attachment holes. However, since space is restricted within the wing box, the back drilling process is complex and prone to errors. Correction of these errors is a further time consuming task, and requires further drilling that may deleteriously effect the robustness of the resulting structure. There is thus a need for a position sensor to locate the correct drilling location for the attachment holes from without the wing box.
A known position sensor comprises an array of Hall Effect devices used to sense the magnetic field due to a cylindrical magnetic object placed at the desired location of the attachment hole. The Hall Effect devices are arranged in concentric circles such that the axis of the cylindrical magnetic object is located when each Hall Effect device in a given circle senses the same magnetic field. Such a position sensor is able from above the wing skin, to locate the axis of a cylindrical magnetic object placed on a rib foot within the wing box to within a tolerance of ±2.5 mm.
WO2004/016380 also describes a method and apparatus for locating non-visible objects. In this known method and apparatus the position of the object can be sensed by means of a suitable array of Hall effect sensors which can be moved relative to the object in question.
However, a greater degree of precision in locating the magnetic object is typically required for such position sensors to be useful in the aerospace industry or other industries where high precision during manufacture is required.


A new and distinct cultivar of Nepeta plant named ‘G19213’ is disclosed, characterized by plants with a compact and densely branched habit, producing thick, dark green leaves. Vernalization is not required for flowering. Flowers are large, about double the typical size for this species and dark violet-blue. Plants flowering over a long period of time, from Spring through the first frost. The new cultivar is a Nepeta, suitable for ornamental garden purposes.

The new cultivar is a product of chance discovery by the inventor. This new variety, hereinafter referred to as 'G19213', was discovered as the result of a planned breeding program conducted by the inventor in Bellefonte, Pa. The seed parent is the variety Nepeta faassenii 'Walker's Low', unpatented. The pollen parent is Nepeta faassenii 'Psfike', U.S. Plant Pat. No. 18,904. The crossing resulting in the new variety was conducted August 2017 and selection of the new variety July 2018.
After identifying the new variety as a potentially interesting selection, the inventor first propagated 'G19213' by vegetative terminal stem cuttings during July of 2018, at a research greenhouse in Bellefonte, Pa. The inventor continued controlled testing and propagation, assessing stability of the unique characteristics of this variety. Subsequently, several generations have been asexually reproduced and have shown that the unique features of this cultivar are stable and reproduced true to type.


A laminate film including a first polyolefin layer comprising of a blend of 50-95% ethylene-propylene copolymer and 50-5% ethylene polar terpolymer with a polar polymer layer on one side of said first polyolefin resin-containing layer is disclosed. The laminate film could further have additional layers such as a second polyolefin resin-containing layer, a metal layer, or combinations thereof.

Anhydride-grafted polyolefins have been widely used as tie-layers or compatibilizing resins for bonding polar polymers to polyolefin substrates either in coextrusion applications or extrusion-coating applications. In particular, maleic anhydride-grafted polypropylenes and polyethylenes have been popular and useful in bonding polar resins such as ethylene vinyl alcohol copolymers (EVOH), polyamides, ionomers, and polyvinyl alcohol copolymers (PVOH). The use of these polar resins is of interest because they impart high gas barrier properties to the coextruded or coated polyolefin film substrate. These anhydride-grafted polyolefins are used either as discrete tie-layers between the polar polymer and the substrate layer or blended with non-grafted polyolefin homopolymer or copolymer to improve the compatibility of the substrate polyolefin with the polar material. Such polar resins like EVOH materials typically require the use of adhesion promoters and/or tie-layer resins in order for them to bond adequately to polyolefin substrates. Without such tie resins, EVOH materials or related materials like PVOH tend to peel off easily from the polyolefin substrate, resulting in loss of barrier properties and poor appearance.
Accordingly, several known tie-layers exist for EVOH materials. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 4,650,721 discloses a process to improve the otherwise poor bonding of EVOH or PVOH layers in oriented films through the use of tie resins, namely maleic anhydride acid-grafted polyolefins.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,153,074 discloses metallized oriented multilayer films that include EVOH and blends of a maleic anhydride-modified propylene homopolymer or copolymer as the substrate to which the EVOH is contiguously adhered. The EVOH layer is used as a metallizing surface for the vapor deposition of aluminum. Again, the use of an adhesion-promoting material is important. It is known that EVOH is relatively hard to stretch compared to polypropylene. Consequently, only limited grades of EVOH, for example one with 48 mole % of ethylene, can be co-processed with OPP without forming any surface defects. Using lower ethylene mole % EVOH (e.g. 44% or 38%) in biaxial orientation causes surface defects like stress fractures or process issues like film breaks due to the higher crystallinity of the EVOH.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,175,054 discloses the solution-coating of a mixture of solution-grade EVOH or PVOH containing about 80 wt. % of vinyl alcohol and aqueous dispersion-grade of the ionomer of the alkali salt of ethylene-methacrylic acid copolymer. This coating is applied to an oriented polymer substrate and subsequently metallized. The ionomer acts as an adhesion promoter to assure adequate adhesion of the EVOH or PVOH to the polyolefin (polypropylene) substrate which is otherwise poor without the presence of the ionomer.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,688,556 discloses polymeric film structures using EVOH or amorphous nylon layers wherein tie-layer materials like maleic anhydride-modified polypropylenes are employed as adhesion promoters.
U.S. Patent Publication No. 2005-0186414 describes polymeric film structures using EVOH/amorphous nylon blends as barrier layers coextruded with a polyolefin core layer blended with an adhesion-promoting resin. This adhesion-promoting resin is a carboxylic acid-modified polyolefin or an anhydride-grafted polyolefin. World Patent Application WO 02/45958 also describes polymeric film structures employing EVOH and amorphous nylon blends wherein a tie-layer material such as anhydride-grafted polypropylene is required to promote adhesion between the polar blend and the polyolefin substrate.
The prior art uses anhydride-grafted polyolefins as tie-layer resins for bonding polar polymers. One of the limitations of grafting polyolefins with anhydride groups is that the amount of anhydride is usually limited to 1 wt. % or less. Grafting more anhydride than this onto the polyolefin can result in degradation of the polyolefin. This limit on the amount of anhydride grafting can limit the adhesion promoting performance of the tie-layer resin.
The adhesion between a polar and a non-polar layer depends upon their chemistry and physics. Chemically, it depends upon the interaction forces between them. Physically, it depends upon the stiffness and thickness of the layers. To facilitate adequate bonding between polar and non-polar materials, a tie-layer or adhesion promoter is usually utilized. Such tie-layers typically incorporate some degree of polar functionality to promote compatibility with the polar material of interest, yet not too high a degree of polar functionality in order to maintain compatibility with the non-polar material. This can be important during coextrusion processes and subsequent orientation of these cast coextruded products in oriented films. Without using such a tie-layer between for example, EVOH and polypropylene in a coextruded film process, the EVOH layer can separate from the polypropylene basefilm during casting. Also, the EVOH can delaminate and wrap downstream rollers such as machine direction orientation (MDO) processes during machine direction stretching. Using a tie-layer to promote adhesion between the EVOH and polypropylene avoids this problem.
Polyolefins such as polyethylene and polypropylene are often grafted with maleic anhydride to produce polar functionalized polymers and have proven to be effective as a tie-layer or adhesion promoter for bonding non-polar polypropylene or polyethylene to a polar polymer such as EVOH. The amount of grafting can control the effectiveness of the tie-layer, i.e. the higher the amount of anhydride grafting, the more effective it can be as an adhesion promoter for bonding polar materials to non-polar materials. In addition, most anhydride-grafted polyolefins contain rubbers as a tie-layer to enhance the adhesion between polar and non-polar materials. This rubber component of the tie-layer helps improve adhesion by being relatively softer and more flexible and thus conform better to the more crystalline polar (e.g. EVOH) and non-polar (e.g. polypropylene) materials of interest. However, if the rubber content is too high or too much tie-layer resin is used, the resultant film produced is often very hazy and aesthetically less pleasing.
The amount of grafting is limited as such anhydrides can cause degradation of the polyolefin chain it is grafted to. This can usually be seen in a large increase in melt flow rates after grafting. For example, many anhydride-grafted polypropylenes are limited to 0.5 wt. % anhydride (typically less than 1 wt. % anhydride) due to this issue with polymer degradation. At 1 wt. % or more anhydride, the polypropylene melt flow rate increases greatly, melt strength and molecular weight is decreased significantly, to the point where it is unsuitable for oriented film production or casting. In addition, there can be limitations imposed upon the amount of anhydride grafting for food packaging applications due to FDA regulations.
Besides anhydride-grafted polyolefins, ethylene polar terpolymers such as Arkema's LOTADER resins have been used as a tie-layer between polyethylene and polar resins like EVOH. However, versions of these ethylene polar terpolymers have typically shown poor effectiveness as a tie-layer for polypropylene and polar resins and thus, have not been used in oriented polypropylene film applications. Typically, only high co-monomer content (e.g. 16-25 wt. % butyl acrylate or methyl acrylate co-monomer) ethylene polar terpolymers can be effectively used to bond to polypropylene substrates. Unfortunately, the drawbacks of such high co-monomer content ethylene polar terpolymers are that their melting points are much lower than the low content co-monomer versions (77-90° C. vs. 105-107° C., respectively), so the material is much softer (modulus 20-60 MPa vs. 110-120 MPa, respectively) and stickier (Vicat softening point 40-55° C. vs. 65-80° C., respectively). Consequently, in film extrusion and orientation, the use of these high co-monomer content ethylene polar terpolymer materials can result in severe processing problems such as resin pellet bridging in the resin feed system of the extruder throat, sticking and subsequent film breakage of the film due to the cast roll, MDO rolls, and other downstream processes which involve heat for orientation and heat-setting. Thus, the LOTADER materials are not effective for polypropylene film manufacturing because: 1) if low co-monomer content ethylene polar terpolymer is used, poor adhesion is found to the polypropylene; 2) if high co-monomer content ethylene polar terpolymer is used, poor processability results from the extrusion, casting, and orientation processes.
The chemistry and composition of the LOTADER ethylene polar terpolymers are different from anhydride-grafted polyolefins. The former ones are made by polymerization with 3 co-monomers (i.e. ethylene, butyl or methyl acrylate, and maleic anhydride or glycidyl methacrylate), and the polar functional groups are incorporated as part of the polymer chain's backbone. In contrast, the anhydride-grafted polyolefins are made by grafting the functional anhydride groups onto the side chains of a polymer via radical reactions. The degree in which anhydride groups can be grafted onto polypropylene or ethylene-propylene copolymers is limited because this radical reaction used in the grafting process results in a competing reaction: chain scission of the polypropylene backbone at the tertiary carbons. Normally, high molecular weight anhydride-grafted polypropylene or ethylene-propylene copolymer contain less than 1 wt. % of the anhydride groups for this reason. Popular anhydride-grafted resins such as Mitsui's ADMER product line and Dupont's BYNEL product line are of this type. Some low molecular weight anydride-grafted polypropylenes available from Crompton contain more than 1 wt. % of anhydride functional groups, however, the reason they are low molecular weight is due to the degradation caused by the relatively high amount of anhydride grafting. Such low molecular weight/high anhydride content grafted materials have been used as coupling agents; however, they are not suitable for use as a tie-layer in oriented film applications.


According to one aspect of the present invention, there is provided a fixing apparatus having a non-contact temperature detecting unit which detects temperature by sensing infrared rays emitted from the a heating roller. A difference between a real temperature and the temperature detected by the non-contact temperature detecting unit, which is produced by time-lag until reaching the infrared rays emitted from the heating roller, is corrected.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a fixing apparatus installed in image forming apparatuses, copiers, and printers where an image is formed on a transfer material by an electrophotographic process, for fusing and fixing a development agent placed on the transfer material to it.
2. Description of the Related Art
In copiers and printers using an electron process, it is known that a toner image formed on a photoconductive drum is transferred onto a transfer material and thereafter the toner image is fused in a fixing apparatus having a heating roller and a pressurizing roller and fixed onto the transfer material.
At this time, for controlling the temperature of the heating roller, a method of detecting the surface temperature of the heating roller by a detecting element, which is arranged in contact with the surface of the heating roller, has been known. However, the contact-type temperature detecting element slides on the surface of the heating roller, so that it may degrade the surface, thereby shortening the life of the heating roller. When the surface is degraded, the sensitivity of the detecting element decreases, with the result that wrong temperature may be detected.
Also another method has been known which uses a temperature detecting element for detecting the temperature of a heating roller without being in contact with the heating roller by sensing infrared rays emitted from the heating roller.
However, the emission rate of infrared rays from a heating roller detected by the non contact temperature detecting element differs between the life-start time and the life-end time since the surface of the heating roller is gradually degraded while being in contact with a transfer material holding toner thereon. Since the degradation of the surface of the heating roller varies depending upon the type and size of a transfer material to be fed, the infrared ray emission rate varies in the longitudinal direction of the roller. To describe more specifically, since infrared ray emission rate changes, the time for the temperature detected by the non-contact temperature-detecting element to reach a predetermined temperature delays.
For example, Japanese Patent Application KOKAI Nos. 2001-242743 or 2000-259033 discloses a fixing apparatus in which the temperature of a heating roller is detected by a temperature-detecting element in contact with a non-paper-feeding area and a non-contact temperature-detecting element for detecting the temperature of a paper-feeding area. However, a time lag is produced since the sensitivity differs between the contact-type temperature detector and the non-contact temperature detector. Hence, it has been difficult to accurately detect the temperature of a heating roller.
Furthermore, Japanese Patent Application KOKAI No. 2000-227732 discloses a fixing apparatus in which the radiation emission rate from a heating roller installed therein is detected by a radiation-detecting unit. However, since the radiation-detecting device is installed in a fixing apparatus where toner and paper dust are scattered, wrong detection may occur due to smudges. To solve this, it is effective to provide not only cleaning means to the temperature detecting element but also cleaning means to the radiation detecting unit; however they increase cost. In addition, the infrared ray emission rate varies depending upon how significantly stained on the surface of the heating roller.
Furthermore, in Japanese Patent Application KOKAI No. 2001-34109 discloses a technique for correcting temperature based on the difference between the temperature detected by an infrared detecting member for detecting the amount of infrared rays and the temperature detected by surface temperature detecting means which includes a thermistor for correcting the temperature of the infrared detecting member.
In this way, in the case where a non-contact temperature-detecting element is used, when infrared ray radiation rate changes, the temperature of the heating roller cannot be sensed accurately. Since heating means for heating the heating roller control heat generation depending upon the surface temperature of the heating roller inaccurately detected, the heating roller is not controlled at a proper temperature.


An example apparatus for garbage collection can include a memory including a plurality of mixed mode blocks. The example apparatus can include a controller. The controller can be configured to write a first portion of sequential host data to the plurality of mixed mode blocks of the memory in a single level cell (SLC) mode. The controller can be configured to write a second portion of sequential host data to the plurality of mixed mode blocks in an XLC mode. The controller can be configured to write the second portion of sequential host data by performing a garbage collection operation. The garbage collection operation can include adding more blocks to a free block pool than a quantity of blocks that are written to in association with writing the second portion of sequential host data to the plurality of mixed mode blocks.

Memory devices are typically provided as internal, semiconductor, integrated circuits and/or external removable devices in computers or other electronic devices. There are many different types of memory including volatile and non-volatile memory. Volatile memory can require power to maintain its data and can include random-access memory (RAM), dynamic random access memory (DRAM), and synchronous dynamic random access memory (SDRAM), among others. Non-volatile memory can retain stored data when not powered and can include NAND flash memory, NOR flash memory, phase change random access memory (PCRAM), resistive random access memory (RRAM), and magnetic random access memory (MRAM), among others.
Memory devices can be combined together to form a solid state drive (SSD). An SSD can include non-volatile memory (e.g., NAND flash memory and/or NOR flash memory), and/or can include volatile memory (e.g., DRAM and/or SRAM), among various other types of non-volatile and volatile memory. Flash memory devices can include memory cells storing data in a charge storage structure such as a floating gate, for instance, and may be utilized as non-volatile memory for a wide range of electronic applications. Flash memory devices typically use a one-transistor memory cell that allows for high memory densities, high reliability, and low power consumption.
An SSD can be used to replace hard disk drives as the main storage volume for a computer, as the solid state drive can have advantages over hard drives in terms of performance, size, weight, ruggedness, operating temperature range, and power consumption. For example, SSDs can have superior performance when compared to magnetic disk drives due to their lack of moving parts, which may avoid seek time, latency, and other electro-mechanical delays associated with magnetic disk drives.
Some memory cells (e.g., Flash cells, phase change cells, etc.) are capable of being operated (e.g., programmed, read, erased, etc.) in both a single level cell (SLC) mode and an extra level cell (XLC) mode (e.g., 2-bit mode, 3-bit mode, 4-bit mode, etc.). Such cells can be referred to as "mixed mode" memory cells. An SLC memory cell can refer to a cell programmed to a targeted one of two different data states and configured to store a single data unit (e.g., one bit). XLC memory cells can refer to cells programmed to a targeted one of more than two different data states such that they are configured to store more than a single data unit (e.g., 2 bits, 2.5 bits, 3 bits, 4 bits, etc.). XLC cells may be referred to as multi state memory cells, multiunit cells, or multilevel cells. XLCs can provide higher density memories without increasing the number of memory cells since each cell can represent more than one data unit.
In various instances, SSDs may be configured to write host data in SLC mode. However, as the available memory space fills up, data written in SLC mode can be rewritten in XLC mode to free up space. A garbage collection process can be used to select particular blocks for erasure and/or to select the manner in which data written in SLC mode is to be "folded" into XLC blocks. Garbage collection processes can result in data fragmentation. For example, garbage collection can result in sequentially written workloads being relocated (e.g., to different blocks) such that the data is no longer stored sequentially (e.g., such that the data is stored in a logically non-sequential manner).