The present invention is a method and apparatus for controlling the processing solid waste material in a vessel during a processing cycle, including: (1) loading the vessel with a charge of solid waste products, said vessel including: (a) a rotatably mounted cylindrical vessel having an interior surface and two ends, at least one end terminating in a hatch that may be opened to allow access to the interior of said vessel and sealably closed to allow pressurization of said vessel; (b) a vessel steam inlet for injecting steam into at least one of said ends so as to come into contact with waste material placed into said vessel; (c) a thermometer adapted to monitor the processing temperature of the waste material placed into said vessel during an operational cycle; (d) a timer adapted to monitor the processing time of an operational cycle for the waste material placed into said vessel; (e) a microprocessor having processing instructions adapted to calculate the required processing time by integrating the function of the said processing temperature versus the processing time so as to be able to determine whether a predetermined energy input to the waste material has been attained, and to issue a signal in response thereto; and (2) terminating said processing cycle in response to said signal.

The present invention relates to systems and methods for treating process material and, more particularly, to systems and methods for treating municipal solid waste material, medical waste material, reclaimed paper and the like.
This process typically involves sterilizing high density materials such as glass, plastics, metals and recovering others from municipal solid waste (MSW) and converting paper, cardboard, food waste, etc. to a usable fiber and separating it from other recyclable materials.
As a result of increasing scarcity of landfills and more stringent environmental regulations, efforts have been made to reduce the volume of process material, such as municipal solid waste (MSW) and paper material, such as newsprint and other reclaimed and recycled paper products as a step in the process of disposing of the material, either by depositing it in landfills, incinerating it or recycling it.
Systems and methods have been developed to break down such material for disposal, or in the case of paper products, use as insulation, or for further processing to produce a combustible product.
A waste autoclave is a form of solid waste treatment that utilizes heat, steam and pressure of an industrial autoclave in the processing of waste. Saturated steam is pumped into the autoclave at elevated temperatures. The pressure in the vessel is maintained at for a temperature-dependant period to allow the process to fully 'cook' the waste. The autoclave process gives a very high pathogen and virus kill.
The 'cooking' process causes plastics to soften and flatten, paper and other fibrous material to disintegrate into a fibrous mass, bottles and metal objects to be cleaned, and labels etc. to be removed.
Rotating waste autoclaves provide mechanical forces to further process the waste. With rotation, the cellulose fibers (in paper, cardboard, and yard wastes) are mechanically and thermally pulped, analogous to the process known as thermo-mechanical pulping in the pulp and paper industry.
After 'cooking', the steam flow is stopped and the pressure vented. When depressurized, the autoclave door is opened, and by rotating the drum the 'cooked' material can be discharged and safely and easily separated by a subsequent series of screens and recovery systems. Consequently, a waste autoclave system can serve as a functional alternative to landfills, providing benefits of recycling of clean and sterile materials recovered from municipal wastes.
A basic invention for municipal waste autoclaves is found in U.S. Pat. No. 4,540,495 (Holloway, 1985) and is now in the public domain. This application describes inventions that improve the functionality of waste autoclave systems.
The present invention accordingly represents an improvement over prior art apparatus and methods, such as those described in U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,540,391; 5,126,363; 5,253,764; 5,190,226; 5,361,994; 5,427,650; 5,407,809; 5,636,449; 5,655,718; 6,397,492, and 7,347,391, all of which are incorporated herein by reference. PCT application PCT/US06/16773 and co-pending patent application Ser. No. 11/716,101 are also hereby incorporated herein by reference. Autoclaves generally require substantial "overcooking" to assure that the heterogenous materials in the autoclaves are properly treated. Hospital autoclaves, for example, typically use either a vacuum to remove air, or cautiously use density gradients to allow the removal of cool air as hot steam is introduced . . . both methods to provide some assurance that the contents are all exposed to steam. Further, test strips are also used to confirm that the (preset) cooking cycle achieves the desired organism kill.
Rotating waste autoclaves eliminate some of difficulties of heterogeneous materials by tumbling and comminution of the waste components. However, municipal waste is highly heterogeneous in nature. Single vessel components, for example, might include a large box of frozen food that has been insulated by paper, and/or a mass of putrescible waste rolled up in a carpet.
While the mechanical processes of a waste vessel help in assuring that the waste components each receive proper treatment, to date vessel systems have specified a long-duration fixed-duration cooking cycle in order to provide such assurances. Fixed-time cooking cycles will either under-treat or over-treat wastes, and neither outcome is desirable.
In a co-pending patent application Ser. No. 11/981,144 (and hereby incorporated herein by reference), there is disclosed a method for time-tracking of temperature contents in order to allow the treatment system to achieve an overall goal of a desired kill fraction. The system of the present invention as described herein provides a systematic process to assure that the various components of the vessel load each achieve a desired treatment level.
In essence, the vessel of the present invention may include the provision of a multiplicity of content temperature monitoring sites, such as thermocouple wells. The term thermocouple well is used henceforth, but it conceptually includes all temperature monitoring equipment.
The multiplicity of sites allows the temperature to be determined at a number of points, both circumferentially and longitudinally. A control system is provided to track the temperature (and the rate of change of temperature) at each of these thermocouple wells.
Variations between wells are signals that the waste treatment provided is not yet uniformly received by the non-homogenous wastes. The decision point to terminate the process is developed when the signals from the array of thermocouple wells are in agreement. The control system is provided with adaptive programming so that equipment biases between the various thermocouple wells, and or individual thermocouple failures, can be factored out of the decision process.

Method and apparatus for treating waste involving control of energy input to assure sterilization


Correlating profile data facilitates sophisticated code optimization. Going beyond one to one relationships between code execution hindrances and single code behavior attributes provides insight into code behavior at a finer level of granularity. The capability to aggregate profile data based on multiple code behavior attributes and filter based on instances thereof, allows code optimization decisions to be made based on presentation of profile data from various perspectives. Profile data, which includes code behavior attributes correlated with code execution hindrances, is aggregated based at least in part on a first code behavior attribute. Code behavior attributes include one or more of memory references, memory reference objects, functions, time ranges, processors, processes, threads, and source-level data objects. The aggregated profile data is filtered based on an instance of the first code behavior attribute. The filtered profile data is then aggregated based on one or more additional code behavior attributes.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to the field of program analysis. More specifically, the present invention relates to data profiling.
2. Description of the Related Art
Profiling code aids developers in identifying sections of code that consume excessive amounts of execution time. Profiling provides to developers data that aids in accomplishing the task of optimizing code.
In general, two major classes of profiling techniques exist: code instrumentation and hardware assisted profiling. Code instrumentation techniques typically include the insertion of instructions into the instruction stream of a program to be profiled. In crude form, programmer insertion of printf source statements may be employed to profile code. More sophisticated approaches may employ compiler facilities or options to insert appropriate instruction or operations to support profiling. Upon execution of the instrumented code, execution characteristics are sampled, in part by operation of the added instructions. Typically, code instrumentation techniques impose overhead on original program code so instrumented and, unfortunately, the insertion of instructions into the instruction stream may itself alter the behavior of the program code being sampled.
Hardware assisted profiling techniques have been developed, in part, to address such limitations by off loading some aspects to dedicated hardware such as event counters. Practical implementations often employ aspects of code instrumentation and hardware assistance. In some cases, profiling support is included in, or patched into, exception handler code to avoid imposing overhead on each execution of a sampled instruction. Suitable hardware event counters are provided in advanced processor implementations such as those in accordance with the SPARC® and Alpha processor architectures. SPARC architecture based processors are available from Sun Microsystems, Inc, Palo Alto, Calif. SPARC trademarks are used under license and are trademarks or registered trademarks of SPARC International, Inc. in the United States and other countries. Products bearing SPARC trademarks are based upon an architecture developed by Sun Microsystems. Systems that include Alpha processors are available from a number of sources including Compaq Computer Corporation.
One reasonably comprehensive hardware assisted profiling environment is provided by the Digital Continuous Profiling Infrastructure (DCPI) tools that run on Alpha processor systems to provide profile information at several levels of granularity, from whole images down to individual procedures and basic blocks on down to detailed information about individual instructions, including information about dynamic behavior such as cache misses, branch mispredicts and other forms of dynamic stalls. Detailed information on the DCPI tools and downloadable code may be found (at least as of the filing date) at http://h30097.www3.hp.com/dcpi/. Additional descriptive information appears in Jennifer Anderson, Lance Berc, George Chrysos, Jeffrey Dean, Sanjay Ghemawat, Jamey Hicks, Shun-Talc Leung, Mitch Lichtenberg, Mark Vandevoorde, Carl A. Waldspurger, William E. Weihl, "Transparent, Low-Overhead Profiling on Modern Processors," in Proceedings of the Workshop on Profile and Feedback-Directed Compilation in conjunction with the International Conference on Parallel Architectures and Compilation Techniques (PACT 98), Paris, France (Oct. 13, 1998).
While conventional profiling tools provide per image, per procedure, per source line, or per instruction level profile information, these tools do not provide profile information in relation to other aspects of code behavior. In particular, conventional profiling tools do not perform data profiling. For example, the majority of stall time is caused by memory related operations or load type instruction instances, but conventional tools do not provide information about these memory related operations from the perspective of data objects, addresses of data objects, or data object definitions. Hence, conventional profiling tools do not provide information about data objects, that typically consume the most amount of execution time. In addition, conventional tools do not correlate multiple code behavior attributes in relation to consumed execution time.

Method and apparatus for correlating profile data


A procedure is provided for actuating at least one light module of the light unit of a vehicle with a plurality of light sources and a light control system automatically actuating the light module. At least two first light distribution arrangements are generated and first data sets corresponding to the first light distribution arrangements are stored in a memory of the light control system. In order to implement a plurality of light distribution arrangements with less effort, at least one second light distribution arrangement is allocated to at least one pairing of two of the at least two first light distribution arrangements, and actuation of the light module for generating this at least one second light distribution arrangement is performed depending on the first datasets of the assigned pairing from the first light distribution arrangements.

Procedures for controlling at least one light module of a light unit of a vehicle, light units of a vehicle, computer program products and machine-readable media are already known from the previous art in numerous embodiments.
For example, light units for vehicles are known with at least one light module comprising a plurality of light sources and with a light control system for automatically actuating the light module, where at least two first light distribution arrangements can be created by means of the light control system and the light module in the vehicle environment of a vehicle that can be illuminated by the light module and first datasets corresponding to the first light distribution arrangements are stored in a memory of the light control system and where the light module for creation of the first light distribution arrangements can be actuated by means of the light control system depending on the first datasets. For example, the light unit can be a pair of a vehicle's main headlamps, where each main headlamp features a light module. First light distribution arrangements differing from each other can be implemented by the two main headlamps. In this context, one first light distribution could take the form of a vehicle's low beam or a high beam or, for instance, a special light distribution for driving along highways, in urban areas or the like.
Furthermore, a procedure for establishing PWM values for LED modules is known from DE 10 2011 079 796 B4, which is intended to make it possible to implement precise color mixing in the LED module despite temperature fluctuations.
This is where the present invention comes in.

Procedure for actuating at least one light module of a light unit, light unit, computer program product and machine-readable medium


A catalyst for the production of vinyl acetate by reaction of ethylene, oxygen and acetic acid comprising a porous support on the porous surfaces of which is deposited metallic copper in a zone surrounded by deposits of catalytically effective amounts of metallic palladium and gold, neither of which is substantially intermingled with said copper. Methods for preparing the catalyst and for synthesizing vinyl acetate utilizing the catalyst are also disclosed.

1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to a new and improved catalyst for the production of vinyl acetate by reaction of ethylene, oxygen and acetic acid.
2. Background Information Including Description of Related Art
It is known to produce vinyl acetate by reaction of ethylene, oxygen and acetic acid using a catalyst consisting of palladium, gold and copper supported on a carrier. While the process utilizing such a catalyst is capable of producing vinyl acetate at relatively high levels of productivity, any expedient resulting in even greater productivity over the life of the catalyst would be very desirable.
The following references may be considered material to the invention claimed herein.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,332,710, issued Jul. 26, 1994 to Nicolau et al., discloses a method of preparing a catalyst useful for the production of vinyl acetate by reaction of ethylene, oxygen and acetic acid, comprising impregnating a porous support with water soluble salts of palladium and gold, fixing the palladium and gold as insoluble compounds on the support by immersing and tumbling the impregnated support in a reactive solution to precipitate such compounds, and subsequently reducing the compounds to free metallic form.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,347,046, issued Sep. 13, 1994 to White et al., discloses catalysts for the production of vinyl acetate by reaction of ethylene, oxygen, and acetic acid, comprising a palladium group metal and/or a compound thereof, gold and/or a compound thereof, and copper, nickel, cobalt, iron, manganese, lead or silver, or a compound thereof, preferably deposited on a support material.

Vinyl acetate catalyst comprising palladium and gold deposited on a copper containing carrier


There is provided a pulse shaping device including a pulse generator configured to generate pulsed light by using a semiconductor laser for emitting light of a predetermined wavelength, and an optical member provided in a subsequent stage of the pulse generator and configured to compress a pulse time width of the pulsed light. The pulsed light has a first frequency dispersion state. The optical member imparts a second frequency dispersion state to the pulsed light, the second frequency dispersion state being a frequency dispersion state opposite to the first frequency dispersion state.

The present disclosure relates to a pulse shaping device and a pulse shaping method.
In the field of machining of precision parts and optical communication, a pulse laser (pulsed light) in which light with a certain pulse time width is emitted at regular intervals is widely used. A solid-state laser such as Ti:Sa laser is generally often used as a master laser of such pulsed light.
It is possible to increase peak power (peak intensity) by performing pulse compression and shortening a pulse time width for the pulsed light. As a method of pulse compression, for example, a method of using a prism pair (pair of prisms) or a grating pair (pair of diffraction gratings) is known.
Furthermore, for example, Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication (Translation of PCT Application) No. 2002-502061 discloses a technique for performing pulse compression by propagating pulsed light within a block member that is made of a material such as tellurium oxide (TeO2), zinc sulfide (ZnS), or zinc selenide (ZnSe). Moreover, Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 2009-271528 discloses a technique for performing pulse compression by combining a graded-index (GRIN) fiber lens and a pulse-compressing fiber.

Pulse shaping device and pulse shaping method


A new and distinct cultivar of Verbena plant named ‘Sunmariburare’, characterized by its trailing and decumbent plant habit; vigorous and freely branching growth habit; attractive light red-colored flowers; freely and continuous flowering habit; long-lasting flowers; and good garden performance.

The present Invention relates to a new and distinct cultivar of Verbena plant, botanically known as Verbena×hybrida, and hereinafter referred to by the cultivar name Sunmariburare.
The new Verbena is a product of a planned breeding program conducted by the Inventors in Hokuto, Yamanashi, Japan. The objective of the breeding program is to create new trailing Verbenas with large and attractive flowers.
The new Verbena originated from a self-pollination made by the Inventors in May, 1996 of a proprietary selection of Verbena×hybrida identified as code number H17-8, not patented. The new Verbena was selected as a single plant from the resulting progeny of the self-pollination by the Inventors in a controlled environment in Hokuto, Yamanashi, Japan.
Asexual reproduction of the new cultivar by terminal cuttings at Yokaichi, Shiga, Japan since October, 1998, has shown that the unique features of this new Verbena are stable and reproduced true to type in successive generations.


A programmable control system for controlling a multiplicity of equipments by a plurality of programmable controllers (PC's) in parallel. Each PC is provided with a program linkage condition memory. The linkage conditions are the conditions for linking sequence programs to each other which are stored in the respective programmable controllers at the time of reading out the sequence programs in series. When a predetermined read command is issued, the sequence programs stored in the respective PC's are successively read out in accordance with the linkage conditions and are displayed on a display unit.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a programmable control system including a plurality of programmable controllers (or programmable ladder controllers, hereinunder referred to as ("PC's") for automatically controlling various pieces of equipment.
2. Description of the Related Art
PC's are used for controlling various pieces of equipment such as a transfer machine and a PC having more functions and easy to use has recently been demanded for realizing factory automation.
As shown in FIG. 1, a conventional PC 10 includes a memory 12 for storing a sequence program and a control processor 14 for controlling a piece of equipment in accordance with the sequence program. The PC 10 further includes I/O portion (not shown) connected to an external piece of equipment, data memory (not shown), system memory (not shown), etc. FIG. 2 shows what is called a relay ladder for showing the order and the conditions of control with respect to the equipment being controlled. Equipment being controlled includes virtual equipment (dummy equipment) which exists only in a program.
A relay symbol 16 in the relay ladder diagram represents a piece of equipment being controlled An address 18 shown in the vicinity of the relay symbol 16 is a local I/O address which is only effective in the PC 10. The I/O address is expressed by an octal digit, a hexadecimal digit or the like and individually allotted to each piece of equipment.
The order and the conditions of control shown in the relay ladder diagram are programmed by a programming language such as a logic symbol language and a relay symbol language and stored in the memory 12 as a sequence program. To state this more concretely, in the sequence program, a command and an I/O address to each piece of equipment are entered, as shown in FIG. 1 The sequence program memory 12 therefore includes a region 12a for storing a command and a region 12b for storing an address.
A programmable control system for controlling a transfer machine and the like is composed of a plurality of PC's. The PC's control the pieces of equipment in parallel with each other Each of the PC's therefore has its own sequence program.
When the operator corrects or checks a sequence program which is stored in a PC, it is necessary to connect the programming tool to the specific PC in which the sequence program being corrected or checked is stored.
The operator must therefore constantly know which program is stored in which PC It is, however, very difficult to remember all the programs, so that it is not easy to correct or check a program. In addition, in the case of correcting one program after another program has been corrected, it is necessary to connect the programming tool to the respective PC's in series, thereby deteriorating the operability.
Furthermore, since the I/O address in the program which is displayed on the programming tool is expressed merely by a numeral, it is difficult for the operator to judge which equipment the I/O address indicates. This leads to not only the deterioration of the operability but also to an input error.


An efficient, multichannel filter for CDMA modems permits multiple serial, digital bit streams to be filtered by digital signal processing techniques including sample weighting and summing functions. Each individual channel may have custom weighting coefficients or weighting coefficients common for all channels. If the weighting coefficients are by adapation, the same approach may be taken. The multichannel FIR filter is implemented with no multipliers and a reduction in the number of adders. To increase the speed of operation, the filter structure utilizes look-up tables storing the weighting coefficients. The invention can be embodied as either as a field programmable gate array or an application specific integrated circuit. The use of look-up tables saves significant chip resources.

This application is being filed concurrently with an application entitled Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA) Communication System, Ser. No. 08/669,775, filed Jun. 27, 1996, which is herein incorporated by reference as if fully set forth.
1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to digital filtering techniques for code division multiple access telecommunication. More specifically, the invention relates to a high-speed, multichannel, finite impulse response filter architecture which obviates multipliers throughout the filter structure.
2. Description of the Related Art
Communications technology today includes the use of spread spectrum modulation or CDMA (code division multiple access) for point-to-multipoint telecommunications. CDMA has long been used in military applications due to the difficulty to detect and jam the transmission. This attribute is due to a wireless communication technique that uses a transmission bandwidth much greater than the information bandwidth of a given user. All users communicate with each other or a common receiver over the same bandwidth and are identified by a particular code. Multiple access is provided through the sharing of a large common bandwidth thereby increasing overall system performance.
High tolerance to intentional or unintentional interference and the ability to communicate with a large population of users in a common geographical area make CDMA communication techniques attractive for commercial applications. Since each user in a CDMA communication system transmits and receives data or communication signals over the same frequency bandwidth, guard band requirements are lessened and the capacity of the communication system increases.
Each communication channel within the communication system typically uses DSP (digital signal processing) hardware and software to filter, weight, and combine each signal prior to transmission. The weighting, filtering and combining of multiple signal channels is performed in the transmit circuitry of a CDMA communication system base station.
Prior art CDMA modems require many multipliers and binary adders for channel weighting and combining. The filter operation used is equivalent to that of a FIR (finite impulse response or transversal) structure. Each individual FIR filter used also requires many multipliers and adders.
A multiplier implemented in digital form is inefficient and expensive. The expense is directly related to logic gate count. Binary adders are less costly than binary multipliers, however, their use should be minimized. To implement a design using binary multiplication and addition into an ASIC (application specific integrated circuit) would be expensive to manufacture and would result in a more inefficient and slower signal throughput.
One disadvantage of FIR filters is the computational complexity required for each output sample. For example, for each output sample, N multiply-accumulate (MAC) operations need to be performed. To those knowledgeable in the state of the art, disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,811,262 (White) and U.S. Pat. No. 4,862,402 (Shaw et al.) are digital filter structures obviating multipliers. Both referenced patents disclose a reduction or elimination of multipliers in digital FIR filters by storing the weighting coefficients in memory. However, neither referenced filter structure, or the prior art has been optimized for multichannel operation.
The disadvantage with prior art CDMA modems is the ability to weight, filter, and combine a plurality of single bit valued signal channels efficiently and accurately. When a multiplicity of signal processing channels are involved, the consistency between channels becomes important and the cost of hardware per channel escalates.
In a CDMA communication system, it is necessary to use the minimum amount of power to achieve the minimum required BER (bit error rate) for maximum user capacity. Since CDMA communication systems allocate the same transmission bandwidth to all users, controlling the transmitted power of each user to the minimum required to maintain a given signal-to-noise ratio is paramount. Since each user employs a wide band signal occupying the entire frequency bandwidth for a finite duration, each user contributes to the overall background noise that effects all users. Therefore, the lack of power control will increase user-to-user interference.
Each channel must have appropriate individual weights applied so that the same relative amplitudes are transmitted. After the weighting operation, each data stream is represented by multibit values. These are typically summed together in a large digital summing circuit that consists of a tree of numerous two input adders.
The weighted and summed digital values are then filtered in a conventional FIR filter. The multipliers in the FIR process the multibit data and weighting coefficients to the desired precision.
A multichannel filter for a CDMA modem constructed according to the teachings of the prior art would require separate FIR integrated circuits rather than total integration onto an economical ASIC (application specific integrated circuit).
Accordingly, there exists a need for a multichannel CDMA modem FIR filter architecture which uses weighting coefficients, either fixed or variable through adaptation, operating with the accuracy and speed of multiplierless filters.
The efficient, multichannel filter for CDMA modems of the present invention allows multiple channels consisting of serial, digital bit streams to be filtered by digital signal processing techniques performing sample weighting and summing functions. Each individual channel may have custom weighting coefficients or weighting coefficients common for all channels. If the weighting coefficients are by adaption, the same approach may be taken.
The multichannel FIR filter presented is implemented with no multipliers and a reduction in the number of adders. To increase the speed of operation, the filter structure utilizes LUTs (look-up tables) storing the weighting coefficients. The invention can be constructed either as a FPGA (field programmable gate array) or an ASIC (application specific integrated circuit). The use of LUTs save significant chip resources and manufacturing costs.
Accordingly, it is an object of the present invention to provide an efficient CDMA FIR filter structure for multichannel applications.
It is a further object of the invention to provide a multichannel FIR filter structure of reduced complexity and increased performance.
If is a further object of the invention to provide a multiplierless, multichannel FIR filter.
Other objects and advantages of the system and method will become apparent to those skilled in the art after reading the detailed description of the preferred embodiment.

Efficient multichannel filtering for CDMA modems


An apparatus and method for maximizing the dissolved concentration of ozone in a liquid. The apparatus includes a dissolution tank having a pressure vessel configured to contain a treated fluid and at least one gas in a head space above the treated fluid, an inlet configured to permit passage of an untreated fluid into the head space, and an outlet configured to permit passage of the treated fluid out of the vessel; a gas supply system configured to transport the at least one gas to the head space; a fluid supply system configured to provide the untreated fluid to the tank; a bleed-off system for removing gas from the head space so as to maximize the dissolved concentration of the ozone gas in the liquid; and a discharge device configured to pass the treated fluid from the tank into the target liquid.

1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to systems and methods for maximizing the dissolution concentration of a single gas species in a liquid from a source gas containing multiple species of gases. More specifically, this invention is directed to systems and methods for maximizing the concentration of dissolved ozone gas in a liquid, such as water, by periodically or continuously dissolving ozone in the liquid that is sprayed through a gas feed of ozone and oxygen while removing excess oxygen gas from the headspace of the saturation tank used in the dissolution system.
2. Background of the Related Art
Many different systems and methods are available for dissolving gases in liquids and are highly dependent on the needed application. Some of the main applications that require dissolving gases into liquids include the oxygenation of outdoor water bodies, industrial uses, and the treatment of wastewater and drinking water. Most dissolved gas delivery methods—bubble diffusion, Venturi injection, U-tubes, and Speece cones, for example—are based on increasing the contact time or surface area of gas bubbles introduced into a bulk liquid to enhance mass transfer. Previous technologies for dissolving gas into a liquid have features that increase the contact time or contact area between gas bubbles and the bulk fluid to increase dissolution.
Most, if not all, of these earlier technologies require recovery systems for off-gases that do not dissolve into the fluid or allow loss of undissolved gases. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 5,979,363 to Shaar describes an aquaculture system that involves piping a food and oxygen slurry into a pond. U.S. Pat. No. 5,911,870 to Hough discloses a device for increasing the quantity of dissolved oxygen in water and employs an electrolytic cell to generate the oxygen. U.S. Pat. No. 5,904,851 to Taylor discloses a method for enriching water with oxygen that employs a Venturi-type injector to aspirate gas into a fluid, followed by mixing to increase dissolution. U.S. Pat. No. 5,885,467 to Zelenak discloses mixing a liquid with oxygen using a plurality of plates or trays over which the liquid flows gradually downward. U.S. Pat. No. 4,501,664 to Heil discloses a device for treating organic wastewater with dissolved oxygen that employs several process compartments. U.S. Pat. No. 5,766,484 to Petit describes a dissolved gas flotation system for treatment of wastewater wherein the relative location of inlet and outlet structures reportedly maximizes the effect of air bubbles in separating solids from the fluid. U.S. Pat. No. 5,647,977 to Arnaud describes a system for treating wastewater that includes aeration, mixing/flocculating, and contact media for removing suspended solids. U.S. Pat. No. 5,382,358 to Yeh discloses an apparatus for separation of suspended matter in a liquid by dissolved air flotation. And U.S. Pat. No. 3,932,282 to Ettelt discloses a dissolved air flotation system that includes a vertical flotation column designed with an aim of preventing bubble breakage.
Other U.S. patents describe various methods of increasing the contact time between gas bubbles in fluids, including U.S. Pat. No. 5,275,742 to Satchell; U.S. Pat. No. 5,451,349 to Kingsley; U.S. Pat. No. 5,865,995 to Nelson; U.S. Pat. No. 6,076,808 to Porter; U.S. Pat. No. 6,090,294 to Teran; U.S. Pat. No. 6,503,403 to Green; and U.S. Pat. No. 6,840,983 to McNulty. Spears, et al. (U.S. Pat. Nos. 7,294,278; 7,008,535) describe a method for varying the dissolved oxygen concentration in a liquid by varying the pressure from 14.7 to 3000 psi inside an oxygenation assembly. Patterson, et al. (U.S. Pat. No. 6,565,807) describe a method for maintaining, adjusting, or otherwise controlling the levels of oxygen dissolved in blood (e.g., pO2) by controlling the flow rates or by providing controlled amounts of the blood or oxygen gas.
These conventional systems for dissolving gases in liquids, and in particular conventional dissolved ozone delivery systems, are based on dissolving bubbles into stationary or flowing water and are greatly limited in the range of dissolved ozone concentration that can be attained and controlled. These conventional systems are also limited to nearly continuous use at constant dissolved ozone concentration, and cannot quickly adjust dissolved ozone concentrations to optimize water treatment cost and effectiveness. Bubble-based technology is limited to much lower dissolved ozone concentration in the water being treated because of lower pressure and less-efficient gas transfer.
U.S. Pat. No. 7,255,332, issued to the present inventor and incorporated herein by reference in its entirety, discloses a system and method for dissolving gases in fluids and for the delivery of dissolved gases. The system disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 7,255,332 includes a saturation tank, a high pressure liquid pump in fluid communication with the tank, and a pressurized gas source in communication with a regulated gas headspace of the saturation tank. The saturation tank includes a pressure vessel for containing the liquid and has a pressure regulated gas headspace above the liquid, which contains at least one inlet that permits passage of liquid into the pressure vessel, and an outlet for the liquid containing dissolved gas. Upon passing the gas-containing liquid into a second fluid, the gas dissolved in the liquid is released to the water being treated in dissolved form. U.S. application Ser. No. 13/415,402, filed on Mar. 8, 2012, and entitled SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR OPTIMIZING THE DISSOLUTION OF A GAS IN A LIQUID, describes an improvement to the system disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 7,255,332. FIG. 1 illustrates the system described in U.S. application Ser. No. 13/415,402 which optimizes and controls the dissolution of ozone or other gas in a liquid within a pressure vessel by regulating vessel pressure, flow rate of a liquid into the vessel, retention time of the gas and liquid in the vessel, gas flow rate, liquid spray pattern, and internal mixing within the vessel. The optimal operating vessel pressure, flow rate of the liquid, retention time of the gas and liquid in the vessel, gas flow rate, liquid spray pattern, and internal mixing within the vessel may be determined based on the operating characteristics of an ozone generator.
In comparison to the systems described previously in this disclosure, the systems disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 7,255,332 and U.S. application Ser. No. 13/415,402 are capable of providing superior dissolved gas levels in a liquid. However, in ozone applications the rate of dissolved ozone delivered from the system will be at a maximum when the unit is first activated, but will fall to a lower steady-state rate within 15 minutes.
Accordingly, there is a need for systems and methods for continuing to maximize the concentration of a gas dissolved in a liquid. The systems and methods described in this disclosure meet this need.

Systems and methods for maximizing dissolved gas concentration of a single species of gas from a mixture of multiple gases

Board of Trustees of the University of Arkansas


A video camera having a plurality of photographing modes each having different control characteristics in accordance with the photographing condition, comprising:. mode selection means for selecting arbitrary photographing mode from said plurality of photographing modes; and PA1 control means for transferring said photographing mode via a neutral mode having control characteristics intermediate to control characteristics of each photographing mode when the photographing mode is switched by said mode selection means, PA1 whereby abrupt change in the characteristics of control parameters or set values is avoided, and any disorder or unnatural change in the image or unstable transient control state caused by the switching can be prevented, so that the optimal photographing can be performed without respect to photographing situation or photographing environment, when the photographing mode is switched.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an image pickup device such as a video camera.
2. Related Background Art
Recently, video apparatuses represented by the video camera have been drastically advanced, and a variety of automatic functions and the improvement in the operativity have been achieved. For example, automatic features such as the provision of a zoom lens, the automatic focus adjustment and the automatic exposure control are requisite. The automatic exposure control is an important factor in determining the quality of picked-up image, and has the great importance in all photographing environments because stable and excellent automatic exposure control is always required.
FIG. 1 is a block diagram showing the basic configuration of an exposure control system in a typical video camera. 101 is a taking lens optical system, 102 is an iris for adjusting the amount of incident light, 103 is an image pickup element such as a CCD for converting photoelectrically an image formed on an image pickup plane by the taking lens optical system, with the amount of light adjusted by the iris, into an image pickup signal, 104 is a camera signal processing circuit for applying a predetermined signal processing to the image pickup signal output from the image pickup element to obtain a normalized video signal, 105 is a video signal output terminal, 106 is a motor for varying the amount of opening by driving the iris, 107 is an iris driving circuit for driving and controlling the motor 106, 108 is a CCD driving circuit for setting a desired shutter speed by variably controlling the accumulation time (exposure time) as well as the accumulation, reading and reset timing of the image pickup element 103, 109 is an automatic exposure control circuit (AE circuit) for optimally controlling the exposure by evaluating the exposure state based on the level of a luminance signal out-put from the camera signal processing circuit and controlling the iris driving circuit 107 and the CCD driving circuit 108, and 110 is a switch panel for accepting the input of key operation.
For the exposure control, the AE circuit 109 is provided with a control system for controlling the iris driving circuit 107 by integrating the luminance signal output from the camera signal processing circuit 104 so that the level of integration may fall within a predetermined range, whereby a closed loop for the iris control is constituted to control the drive current to be output to the iris motor to vary the amount of opening in the iris, and the proper exposure state is obtained by controlling the CCD driving circuit 108 in accordance with the key operation on the switch panel 110, thereby changing the driving pulse to vary the accumulation time of image pickup element 103, and thus the exposure time or shutter speed.
This accumulation time control relies on a so-called electronic shutter, and allows for the selection of the light accumulation time at a plurality of steps from about 1/100 to 1/10000 second, in addition to the normal exposure time of 1/60 second per picture, in NTSC method, for example.
When a high speed shutter is used, the system thus constituted is placed in a so-called shutter speed priority mode because of the action of an automatic exposure control mode for controlling a stop mechanism (iris) of the image pickup optical system based on a set exposure time or shutter speed which is arbitrarily selected. FIG. 2 shows the shutter speed priority mode, in which the shutter speed in the transversal axis is selected, and then the iris value in the longitudinal axis is varied with the shutter speed fixed.
However, as with the above-described video camera, in the shutter speed priority mode with the iris control based on the luminance level of an image pickup signal, the exposure control is not always appropriately made in various photographing environments and photographing situations, and frequently resulted in inappropriate exposure control.
In particular, in a camera for taking a still image instantaneously such as a silver salt camera, the appropriate exposure control at an instant of photographing is requisite, but as with a video camera, when photographing of a motion picture is made for a long time, the optimal exposure control is always necessary and must be made stably in the momentarily changing, photographing situation and image pickup environment, whereby the realization of an exposure control feature for the video camera meeting such conditions is eagerly desired.
Thus, in order to make the optimal photographing operation corresponding to all the photographing environments at all times, the photographing modes corresponding to various photographing situations are prepared and selected depending on a situation of photographing.
However, in the case where a plurality of photographing modes are switchable, the characteristics and set values of control parameters may be abruptly changed when the mode is switched, whereby there is a risk that unnatural change may occur, and the quality of image may be degraded, in particular, in a video camera for taking a motion picture.

Image pickup device having selectable photographing modes


Some embodiments of the present disclosure provide a semiconductor device. The semiconductor device includes a semiconductive substrate; a gate structure over a fin structure of the semiconductive substrate; a channel portion of the fin structure under the gate structure; and at least one epitaxy region disposed over the semiconductive substrate and in contact with the channel portion. The epitaxy region includes a substance with a first lattice constant larger than a second lattice constant of the semiconductive substrate; and a concentration profile of the substance in the epitaxy region being decreasing from near a bottom portion to near a top portion. The bottom portion is closer to the channel portion than the top portion.

A fin-like field effect transistor (FinFET) is fabricated with a thin "fin" (or fin structure) extending from a substrate. A channel of the FET is formed in this fin. A gate (or gate structure) is provided over the fin. The gate controls current flowing through the channel in the fin.
To enhance a performance of the FinFET, stress is introduced into the channel by some epitaxial region in a source or drain at either side of the channel. Generally, a tensile stress is induced in the channel region of an n-type FinFET, and a compressive stress is induced in the channel region of a p-type FinFET.

Semiconductor device structure and manufacturing method thereof

TAIWAN SEMICONDUCTOR MANUFACTURING COMPANY LTD.


A center pad type integrated circuit chip and a method of forming the same is presented. The chip comprises an integrated circuit chip having chip pads formed on a center region thereof and a jumper. The jumper includes a buffer layer arranged adjacent to a side of the chip pads and a plurality of jump metal lines formed on the buffer layer. The jump metal lines are spaced apart from each other.

Recent trends in electronics have been towards miniaturization, reduced weight, and multifunctionality. In order to satisfy these pressing demands, multi chip packaging technology has been developed. The technology incorporates a plurality of IC chips of the same type or different type in a single package. The multi chip packaging technology is advantageous in terms of size, weight and mounting density as compared to the case where only one IC chip is mounted in the single package so that a plurality of packages is required for mounting the plurality of IC chips. In the conventional multi chip packaging technology, two IC chips of same type or different type are attached to the board in turn, and IC chips and the board are electrically connected using a wire-bonding method. The conventional multi chip packaging technology will be described below with reference to FIGS. 1 to 3.
FIG. 1 is a plan view of a package before encapsulation in accordance with one example of a conventional multi chip package; FIG. 2 is a cross sectional view taken along line 2—2 of FIG. 1; FIG. 3 is a cross sectional view taken along line 3—3 of FIG. 1.
As shown in FIGS. 1 through 3, the conventional multi chip package 110 includes a first IC chip 111 having chip pads 112 along two edges of the chip and a second IC chip 113 having a row of chip pads 114 along the center of the chip. The first chip 111 is attached to the board 121 with an adhesive 151 and the second chip 113 is attached to the first chip 111 with an adhesive 153. The active surfaces of chips 111 and 113, on which the integrated circuits are formed, face the same direction. The first chip 111 and second chip 113 are electrically connected to the board 121 by wire-bonding chip pads 112 and 114 to the corresponding board pads 123 using bonding wires 141 and 143. Since the chip pads 114 of the second chip 113 are far from the board pads 123, the bonding wires 143 of the second chip 113 have long loops. As a result, problems such as cutting, sagging, and short-circuit of the bonding wires 143 are prevalent.
As an alternative method for solving the above problems, pad redistribution methods or the use of special bonding wires has been proposed. With the pad redistribution method, the chip pads of the second chip 113 are moved from the center to the edge of the chip. However, because this method requires many additional processes to form several more layers on the chip, the processing cost and time increase. Furthermore, the density of devices on the chip decreases because the pad redistribution method requires separate processes based on the IC chip and wafer sizes. For example, in the case where special gold (Au) bonding wires coated with a polymer material is used, the cost of the bonding wires is much more expensive and the manufacturing cost of the package is greatly increased.
As another alternative, a method used in ceramic packaging can be adopted. That is, a separate IC chip or jumper chip is attached to the board around the second chip. More specifically, by wire bonding the second chip to the jumper chip and then wire bonding the jumper chip to the board, the bonding wires of the second chip no longer have long fragile loops. However, because the number of jumper chips required is equal to the number of bonding wires, there are many drawbacks in terms of size, weight and manufacturing cost.

Center pad type IC chip with jumpers, method of processing the same and multi chip package


In one aspect, a system for presenting a share box with content information in response to an endorsement includes an endorsement sharing module that is responsive to user input and creates a sharing box having content derived from the user context and input request. The endorsement sharing module receives a user request to share information. In response, this endorsement sharing module determines the context of the user, retrieves content based on the context, filters the content based on publisher information, personalizes the share box content, and adds the content to a share box. The endorsement sharing module also adds one or more actions to the share box after which the share box is provided for display to the user.

The present disclosure relates to user interfaces for sharing and commenting on content. In particular, the present disclosure relates to a share box for sharing or commenting on published content, content in a stream from a social network, or search results from a search engine.
The popularity and use of the Internet, web browsers, social networks and other types of electronic communication have grown in recent years. While users may have once operated their computing devices with a single browser showing a single webpage, new ways for delivering and engaging with information such as videos, news articles, Web blogs and activities on social networks have been developed. More recently, much of the content on the World Wide Web can be commented upon or endorsed by users. Users can indicate they endorse, approve or like something by clicking an endorsement button or link associated the particular Web content or object to be endorsed. It is common for many users to have multiple windows open at a given time viewing different content, and is cumbersome and inefficient to require the user to transition between different interfaces or windows to undertake action such as endorsing particular content.


A method and apparatus for detecting a fault, such as a break or crack in a fiber optic cable. A test device transmits into a first end of fiber bundle under test a first pulse of optical energy. The time duration and/or intensity of the pulse propagating through the fiber after being reflected back through the fiber are determined and stored in memory. At a later point in time this step is repeated with a second pulse. If the propagation time and/or intensity of the second pulse varies by greater than a predetermined amount from that of the first pulse an alarm condition is indicated. From the propagation time of the second pulse a length is calculated and provided to the user. This length corresponds to the location of the fault.

This application relates to an apparatus and method for detecting a catastrophic fault in an optical fiber and more specifically to an apparatus for automatically detecting and indicating a location of an optical fiber fault.
It is well known to use fiber optical cables to transmit video, data or telecommunications signals over long distances between multiple locations. Fiber optic cables are typically provided in large bundles and have lengths of many miles. They are typically laid underground and connect one communications location to another location. These fibers may deteriorate the optical signal passing therethrough due to fiber bending, partial faults (cracks), accidental nicking, and/or other physical causes.
Because fibers are typically located underground and in large bundles, it is difficult to locate the position of the fiber's deterioration. It has also been a problem to continuously and to easily monitor the fiber bundle to determine if a deterioration condition develops when signals are being passed through the fiber.

Apparatus and method for detecting optical fiber fault location


A memory is secured against an error injection during the reading of a datum. The memory includes: means for reading a reference datum in the memory during a phase of reading a datum stored in the memory; means for comparing the reference datum read with an expected value; and means for generating an error signal if the datum read is different from the expected value. Application is provided particularly but not exclusively to the protection of memories integrated into smart cards.

In recent years, the techniques of hacking secured microprocessor integrated circuits (microprocessors, microcontrollers, microprocessor memories, coprocessor integrated circuits, etc.) have developed considerably. The most advanced hacking methods currently involve injecting errors at determined points of an integrated circuit during the execution of so-called sensitive operations, such as authentication operations or operations of executing a cryptography algorithm for example. Such attacks by error injection also referred to as attacks by fault injection enable, in combination with mathematical models, the structure of a hard-wired logic cryptography algorithm and/or the secret keys it uses to be deduced. The error injection can be done in various ways, by introducing glitches into the supply voltage of the integrated circuit, by introducing glitches into the clock signal of the integrated circuit, by exposing the integrated circuit to radiations or to a laser beam, etc.
One known method disclosed in U.S. Patent Application Publication No. US 2004/052110 involves conducting integrity checks on the content of the memory, when starting the integrated circuit or during the course of its operation for example. However, these checks do not detect attacks that do not change the content of the memory, but which aim to change the data at the moment they are read in the memory, i.e., on the memory read path.

Device for protecting a memory against attacks by error injection


A method of providing enhanced on-line computer searching capabilities comprises: (a) forming a thesaurus database including first core concept terms and a series of secondary related terms; (b) providing a user interface to said database for selection of first core concept terms by a user; (c) carrying out a search for information relating to the core concept terms and to the secondary related terms; and (d) returning the results of the search to the user.

An 'information seeker/s' refers to any person of any age, gender, nationality or coming from any demographic group. These aforementioned persons are also those whom are conducting informal or formal research from home, school/college/university/company or any environment in which a computer operates. This also includes mainframe computers, mobile phones, personal digital assistants and any other device in which information may be sought.
There are novice and non-novice information-seekers and researchers who experience difficulties using databases, library catalogues, on-line journals and the internet because of the lack of recognition of appropriate search terms, various methods of interrogation and the lack of consistency in terminology on the internet, electronic databases and library online catalogues. This therefore creates an inefficient and time wasting experience.
A diagrammatic representation of how normal www/internet searching is carried out is shown in FIG. 1, wherein a user 1 uses a search engine such as Google 2 to search the whole of the web 3 using keywords or the like.
There are many concerns of undergraduates, postgraduates and academics when commencing academic research. Four major concerns are; efficiency of research methodologies, comprehensiveness of research materials available, the volume of research previously undertaken and the time involved in research using electronic media. When searching the internet the academic researcher, student or general public will encounter a lot of information that is related to commercial products or information that is either not correct or holds bias. Additionally, information seekers searching on the internet results in so many 'hits' they find it impossible to sort through the large amount of material that presents itself as well as trying to avoid commercial web sites of which are in the majority. However, the amount of valuable and up-to-date information on many government and non-government organizations, university, research institution and education websites is increasing and thereby provides additional information that is useful for the researcher or information seeker.
Increasingly, universities are enrolling many international students in their courses. In Australia international students make a large contribution to Australia's Gross National Product (GNP). Research shows that some of the key challenges for international students are: language, library systems and technology however, academic research provides substantial evidence that language is the primary challenge. International students whilst sometimes not having a firm grasp on English encounter difficulties in determining the core concepts of their subjects and there is the added complexity that academic literature is often written in the three dialects of English, American-English and Australian-English. Additionally, there is also the matter of idioms, colloquialisms and dialect which also compounds their comprehension problems. With the compounding factors of unsure English comprehension and language skills, international students tend to use information seeking tools such as Google® or some other freely available computer internet web site that is familiar or easy to use. However, they also experience the same difficulties as all information seekers, and that is their need to find information that suits their needs and to also find it quickly and easily.
Although using electronic media and the internet for research is often assumed to be efficient and easy, the breadth of information and the design of the interrogative technology found in many electronic search systems can become substantially complex. Therefore, in order to simplify the identification of search terms, the information seeker must be able to identify core concepts and develop a strategy to effectively retrieve information. For the experienced researcher this may not be difficult but for the novice researcher or international student, it can be quite onerous, fraught with materials that are inadequate or provide results that can divert the researcher from their required path.
The higher education sector expects students to have a modicum of experience (if not basic) of research skills before entering university. Accordingly, these skills are expected to be taught to students at high school or college level beforehand. However, it appears that there is a shortfall in students skill upon commencing university.
Related prior art uncovered during searches includes: US Patent Application Number US-2005/0065947-A1 (HE et.al.) 24 Mar. 2005, U.S. Pat. No. 6,523,001 (CHASE) 18 Feb. 2003, U.S Pat. No. 6,256,605 (MACMILLAN) 3 Jul. 2001, PCT Application Numbers WO-1999/034307 (INFODREAM CORPORATION) 8 Jul. 1999 and PCT/US98/27664, 28 Dec. 1998 (Andleigh et al.). each of which are discussed below.
Patent number US-2005/0065947 (HE et.al.) entitled 'Thesaurus Maintaining System and Method' is specifically a maintenance of thesaurus system that starts with a 'plurality of computers' and ends at a database. HE et al provides a different focus and application, directed to a thesaurus generation process. HE et al. is directed to the problem of databases not being able to find information because of misspellings.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,523,001 (Chase) entitled 'Interactive Connotative Thesaurus System is similar to other digital thesaurus programs such as the aforementioned patents. Chase discloses a thesaurus designed to associate positive or negative emotions and feelings to the connotative synonyms.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,256,605 (MacMillan) entitled 'System for and Method of Summarizing Etymological Information' is a computer system for summarizing English language etymological information that is in a database. The MacMillan citation uses only single words which the user may find in the database and that database provides etymological roots and origins of those words. The thesaucratic database consists of phrases, common sayings, dates and proper nouns and does not provide any other information. The MacMillan invention is not intended for www or internet searching, and does not provide any of the elements of the thesaucratic database nor provide any elements of a teaching or instructional nature. MacMillan is a reference tool that that retrieves synonyms from digital text materials and saves them into a database. The database will use those connotative synonyms in matching terms in other digital text materials in order to match both sets of terms.
Patent number WO 99/34307 8 Jul. 1999 (INFODREAM Corporation) entitled 'Extraction Server for Unstructured Documents'. This is a 'system for analyzing and extracting words and word groups from an electronic document and for storing those extracted words into a target database' that is later accessed in order to 'match' words in the stored and scanned documents.
None of the citations provide an online component or access the www and internet for searching, nor do they act as a teaching tool for all users, nor do they consist of core subject concepts, nor do they deliberately consist of contemporary natural language in the three dialects of English being English-English, Australian-English or American-English, nor do they provide help assistance with the basic principles of information seeking, or the requirements of academic referencing requirements, nor do they provide an opportunity for users to have a personalized folder to save bibliographic or url references, nor do they provide assistance with learning and instruction. Additionally, they also do not provide all this whilst being a tool to search on the internet with default domain restrictions whilst the system is customable to all users whether they be for personal, educational or corporate use.
Any discussion of the prior art throughout the specification should in no way be considered as an admission that such prior art is widely known or forms part of common general knowledge in the field.


An automated audit tool is disclosed for auditing a Carrier-Class, DWDM optical network, including its infrastructure devices. The automated audit tool performs a process that includes the steps of transmitting an initial query code to hardware devices in the DWDM optical network in order to determine the network configuration, receiving responses to the first query code that enable the determination of configuration, transmitting a second query code to the hardware devices that is based on the information in the first response, receiving the responses to the second query code and producing a report of the responses and the analysis.

Networking, and Internetworking, provide electronic devices the ability to communicate with remote devices, along with the other associated benefits of such communication. However, networks can consist of large numbers of devices spread over enormous geographic areas. Consequently, maintaining the health of such networks present considerable challenges. A network may consist of a variety of types of devices, communicating over a variety of mediums, using various protocols. Such networks may include wireless devices, traditional voice, ATM, Frame Relay, Cable, DSL, and dial platforms. Optical networks are becoming increasingly popular for performance reasons.
With the ever increasing demand for bandwidth and the need to deploy new network services, networks of more and more enormous capacity are now necessary to provide the base infrastructure to support high traffic requirements. Optical-fiber based networks, having rapidly become the standard network media, provide much larger bandwidth than previous technologies and fill these needs. There are currently over 3 million miles of optical fiber in place and much more planned.
Technologies have developed that increase the available usage of even the intrinsic high density usage provided by fiber-optics. One of these many technologies is Dense Wavelength Division Multiplexing (DWDM).
The vastly increasing density of usage, and users, makes the management of large networks ever more complex. The tools to assist net management have advanced along with the progress in net tools. A significant part of a net management tool kit is the ability to audit the performance of the network infrastructure. However, each new development in networking increases the demands on net auditing capability.
Three faces of network management drive the basics of network auditing. Configuration management needs cover the hardware connections. Performance management is necessary to guarantee a quality of service to the network users. Fault management provides protection techniques to ensure the network continues to function in the presence of failures. Network elements such as optical amplifiers, add/drop multiplexers, cross-connects and other optical network elements, require proactive auditing to meet the levels of service expected by providers and end users.
What is required, then, is a means of providing a pro-active audit in a Dense Wavelength Division Multiplexing (DWDM) optical network. Specifically, the auditing tool that meets this need must efficiently collect data from a multitude of devices and device types that are diverse in performance and in geography. Furthermore, the tool must present the results of the data collection in a manner that allows timely and appropriate responses, consisting of corrective actions or effective planning, by users.

Carrier class DWDM optical network audit tool


A system for generating synthetic training data may include one or processors and a memory in communication with the one or more processors and having a receiving module, a duplication module, and an insertion module. The modules have instructions that when executed by the one or more processors cause the one or more processors to receive original training data being in the form of a three-dimensional point cloud and having one or more original objects formed by at least a portion of the three-dimensional point cloud and annotated with original annotation data, duplicate one of the one or more original objects to generate a synthetic object, and insert the synthetic object within the original training data to generate the synthetic training data.

The background description provided is to present the context of the disclosure generally. Work of the inventor, to the extent it may be described in this background section, and aspects of the description that may not otherwise qualify as prior art at the time of filing, are neither expressly nor impliedly admitted as prior art against the present technology.
Some machine learning algorithms build a mathematical model based on sample data, commonly referred to as training data, to make predictions or decisions without being explicitly programmed to do so. Essentially, the machine learning algorithm receives training data and based on the output of the machine learning algorithm, will have one or more weights of the machine learning algorithm adjusted.
One form of training a machine learning algorithm involves supervised training. Supervised training involves the use of annotated training data. Annotated training data is training data that includes the data to be processed, as well as an annotation regarding the correct prediction or decision that should be reached by the machine learning algorithm being trained. For example, if the machine learning algorithm is being trained to determine if an image is that of either a cat or a dog, the training data would include images of cats and dogs, as well as an annotation indicating if the image is actually of a cat or dog. During supervised training, the images would be provided to the machine learning algorithm and based on the output of the machine learning algorithm and the annotation data, the one or more weights of the machine learning algorithm will be adjusted. Over time, the machine learning algorithm will be adjusted such that it can accurately determine or predict whether an image contains a dog or a cat.
One drawback of training a machine learning algorithm in a supervised training fashion is that the training data must include annotations. Annotating training data is generally performed manually, by a human operator. As such, in the example given above, the human operator must review each image, determine if the image is that of a cat or dog, and then annotate the image with the correct answer.
This difficulty in annotating data to generate sets of raining data is compounded in more complex applications, such as in the training of machine learning-based object detection algorithms currently being developed for the use in vehicles. Moreover, machine learning-based object detection algorithms require a significant amount of training data to properly train the object detection algorithm to recognize a plethora of different objects that may surround a vehicle.

System and method for generating synthetic training data


A fluid treatment and media management device having concentric inner and outer perforated cylinders defining a chamber therebetween for containing a media. A case surrounds the perforated cylinders and forms an annular space between the case and the outer perforated cylinder. Respective end caps engage the opposite ends of the case and perforated cylinders to support such members. One or both of the end caps provide ports to the central core of the inner perforated cylinder, to the media chamber and to the annular space. The media can be removed from the fluid treatment and media management device without disassembly of the device for the purpose of disposal and/or regeneration of the media.

There are many occasions where liquids are processed to change the characteristics thereof. For example, liquids are frequently filtered to remove particulate matter therefrom. Liquids are also coacted with other materials to remove or otherwise alter the chemical composition of the liquids. In like manner, gasses can be processed to purify the same or change the chemical composition thereof.
Fluids can be processed in the foregoing manner by forcing the same through a media selected to achieve the desired result on the fluid. The processing of the fluids is often carried out by placing the media in a container, and passing the fluid, or influent, through the container to coact the fluid with the media. The output of the container is a fluid, or effluent, that is altered in the manner desired.
After a period of time, the media may become spent or exhausted, in that it can no longer provide the desired result on the fluid. In this event, the media must be either regenerated or replaced with new media. When removing particulate matter from a liquid, the media may be a non-bonded media, or other type of media that traps the particulate matter between the interstices of the media. The non-bonded media can be replaced with fresh media. Alternatively, the spent media can be regenerated by a backwash cycle to remove the particulate matter so that the media can again separate the particulate matter from the liquid.
Non-bonded media, i.e., powder, granular or beads, or other similar types of media can be employed to chemically alter liquids forced therethrough. In water softening equipment, the media provides an exchange of ions with the water processed therethrough so that the output of the equipment is soft water. In this type of processing apparatus, when the media is no longer effective to remove a majority of the ions from the hard water, the media undergoes a regeneration cycle. The regeneration cycle involves a period of time in which the equipment is off line, and a regenerating liquid, such as a salt brine, is passed through the spent media to remove the hardness ions therefrom.
In yet another application, water is passed through a media to remove undesired contaminants and/or chemicals therefrom, such as heavy metals, arsenic, etc. The media selected is of the type that can chemically remove the undesired material from the water to provide a more purified water that is free from the undesired chemicals. When the media becomes ineffective to remove the detrimental chemicals, either a fresh media can replace the spent media, or the spent media can be regenerated by processes that remove the undesired materials from the media. There are many other applications where the use of a media is beneficial to alter the composition of the fluid passed therethrough.
There are commercially available media-based systems that are effective to produce the desired result on the fluid passed therethrough. When the media is spent, the entire container and media held therein is discarded and a new fluid processing system is installed. It can be appreciated that in most situations, especially where large quantities or volumes of fluids are to be processed, it is more cost effective to provide a regeneration cycle for the media. This type of system reuses the media over and over, at the expense of being off line for the time the spent media is regenerated. These systems are generally more sophisticated and complicated, and allow the spent media to be brought into contact with the regeneration fluid. Nevertheless, it has been established that a system that is capable of regenerating the media is superior to the media replacement systems, primarily because of long term savings in material and labor costs and expenses.
In view of the importance placed on the removal of undesirable elements from fluids used directly or indirectly by people, it can be seen that a need exists for improved fluid and media processing systems that are less complicated, more cost effective, and of the type that are capable of providing regeneration of the media contained therein.

Method of operating a fluid treatment device employing a non-bonded media


An antenna-receiver communications system and method is provided to mechanize multibeam mobile antenna-receive subsystems. Digital beam forming for modern wideband mobile communications systems is provided. In an aspect, subsystems can simultaneously receive, acquire, track and output a multiplicity of signals from sources of different locations using a single antenna aperture from a mobile platform. The angle of arrival of a signal of interest is continuously determined. Individual phased array antenna output channels are phased aligned as required by the phased array equation and monopulse signal processing. Angle sensing and beamsteering are separated from antenna channel coherent summation. Thus, the angle sensing and beamsteering functions are not required to be computed at the data rate, but can instead be computed at a rate necessary for the beam acquisition and beam tracking function speed requirements. Signal processing computational load and system cost is reduced as compared to current systems.

In a stationary antenna and receiver, the antenna boresight is mechanically pointed at a communications transmitter source. As an example, in a Direct Broadcast Satellite (DBS) TV service having a receiver terminal with an 18 inch parabolic dish antenna, the antenna is pointed by mechanical means at a geostationary broadcasting satellite.
In a mobile antenna-receiver, a phased array technique is commonly employed such that the phased array is used to maintain the receive antenna beam pointing at a broadcast source while the antenna-receiver platform is rotated. Since the platform typically has pitch, roll, and heading variations that change with time, rapid pointing angle changes are necessary capabilities required of the communications antenna-receiver. Thus, relatively high bandwidth tracking mechanisms are required to maintain instantaneous beam pointing. Further, a communications link start-up requires that the antenna-receiver subsystem have mechanisms to search the volume of space where the desired source may be located, and acquire an angular position of the source relative to the mobile platform.
One current system known as a smart antenna exploits space selectivity. "Smart-Antenna Systems for Mobile Communications Networks" by Bellofiore, et. al., IEEE Antenna's and Propagation Magazine, Vol. 44, No. 3. Signal processing aspects of the smart antenna has concentrated on the development of efficient algorithms for direction-of arrival (DOA) estimation and adaptive beam forming. After the digital signal processor receives the time delays from each antenna element, it computes the DOA of the signal of interest. The excitations (the amplitudes and phases of the signals) are then adjusted to produce a radiation pattern that focuses on the signal of interest, while turning out any signal not of interest. One smart antenna system utilizes adaptive array systems. After the system down converts the received signal to baseband and digitizes them, the signal of interest is located using the DOA algorithm. The signal of interest and signals not of interest are continuously tracked by dynamically changing the weights (amplitudes and phases). However, adaptive array systems are digital processing intensive. For example, by employing numerous elements to steer the nulls to the signals not of interest, signal processing loads are increased and hence system cost.

Digital beam forming for communications systems


A worm gear is connected to an actuator and a worm wheel is connected to a control shaft. The worm wheel has teeth formed only on a predetermined angular range thereof. The above-referenced angular range includes a required rotational range of the control shaft. The worm wheel is formed to be brought out of mesh with the worm gear outside the predetermined angular range.

A known variable valve mechanism, as that disclosed, for example, in Japanese Patent Laid-open No. 2000-234507, varies a maximum lift amount and open/close timing of a valve according to an engine operating condition. The variable valve mechanism disclosed in Japanese Patent Laid-open No. 2000-234507 includes a variable mechanism and an actuator. The variable mechanism varies the maximum lift amount and open/close timing of a valve according to an angular position of a control shaft. The actuator controls the angular position of the control shaft. The actuator is connected to the side of a worm gear of a worm gear mechanism. The control shaft is connected to the side of a worm wheel of the worm gear mechanism. Accordingly, rotation of the actuator is inputted to the control shaft with rotational speed thereof being reduced by the worm gear mechanism.
The known variable valve mechanism cited above includes a restriction mechanism that restricts maximum angular positions of the control shaft in forward and backward rotation. The restriction mechanism includes a restriction pin that rotates integrally with the worm wheel and a restriction member fixed to an accommodation cover of the worm gear mechanism. The restriction pin abuts on the restriction member, so that the worm wheel is prevented from further rotating. The maximum angular position of the control shaft is thereby restricted. In addition, an elastic body is integrally fixed to the restriction member to absorb impact that would otherwise be received when the restriction pin contacts the restriction member.
Including the above-mentioned document, the applicant is aware of the following documents as a related art of the present invention.
Japanese Patent Laid-open No. 2000-234507
Japanese Patent Laid-open No. 2002-349215

Variable valve mechanism for internal combustion engine


A system for automatic program generation which receives a number of input format descriptors and a number of output format descriptors. The system generates a program for converting an input data sequence having a format described by input format descriptors to an output data sequence having a format described by the output format descriptors. The program may then be executed responsive to an input data stream, wherein a portion of the input data stream corresponds to the input data sequence. The input data sequence and output data sequence consist of a number of data type indicators. In an exemplary embodiment, the input data type indicators correspond to fields of data units received by a forwarding device, and the output data type indicators correspond to fields of corresponding data units forwarded by the forwarding device. In the exemplary embodiment, the generated program is executed on a hardware processor to convert a data unit received on a communication link over a information flow to an output data unit for transmission on a second communication link. The initial data unit of the information flow triggers generation and loading of the program while the forwarding device is up and running.

Not Applicable.
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Files of instructions known as xe2x80x9cprogramsxe2x80x9d are used to control the operation of various types of hardware components, including microprocessors and/or application specific integrated circuits (ASICs). Often, a program is initially written in a high level language such as C++ or PASCAL, and then converted by a compiler program into a lower level representation sometimes known as assembler language. The instructions of the assembler language program can be executed by the target system. Such a programming model generally requires that the program be fully written or generated prior to being executed to do the work it is designed to perform.
However, in certain situations, it is either undesirable or unfeasible to provide a complete program before a system in which the program executes begins operation. This type of situation may arise, for example, where the number of possibilities that must be addressed by the system is so large that a complete program file designed to handle all situations would be prohibitively large. Another way of looking at this category of problems is that the specific program requirements are not known until execution time. A program designed to handle all possible requirements that may arise would be wasteful, and difficult to modify or extend. It may also be desirable to limit program size in order to conserve memory resources used to store the program.
For example, lack of hardware resources, as may be found in embedded systems which are designed to perform a specific task in real-time, may limit the amount of space available to store the program. Embedded systems are often employed in networking and communications systems such as forwarding devices. A forwarding device is any device which forwards data units from ports on which they are received to ports from which they are re-transmitted, in accordance with some well-defined topology management protocol. Examples of well-defined topology management protocols include Border Gateway Protocol 4 (BGP4), Open Shortest Path First (OSPF), or DVMRP (Distance Vector Multicast Routing Protocol. During its operation, the forwarding device modifies the received data units in order to perform routing and format translations on a per-information flow basis. Each information flow is considered to be a mapping of an input port to one or more output ports according to data unit header information in the received data unit.
The number of combinations of data unit input formats and output formats that must potentially be processed in a forwarding device is very large. Accordingly, a program which would handle all possible combinations of input and output formats, including necessary modifications of data unit header field contents, is extremely large and complicated, making it difficult to support or extend, and costly in terms of storage requirements.
In addition, typical compiler technology has placed an emphasis on performing many optimizations while generating the assembler language program. This arises from the desire to trade off time spent during compilation for assembler code which is fast and compact. However, this approach does not consider any possibility of generating assembler code in real-time, while the system itself is operating. In particular, where functionality must be modified on a xe2x80x9cjust in timexe2x80x9d basis, for example in response to receipt of new information flow, code generation based on existing compilers would be undesirably slow, and result in excessive data unit queuing, causing poor performance.
For the above reasons, it would be desirable to have a system for generating an assembler language program in real-time in response to program requirements that are determined during system operation. The system should be fast enough to generate assembler code to handle new operational requirements as they are received. Moreover, the system should be applicable to generation of a program which is capable of performing data unit format and header content conversion and modification in a forwarding device implementation.
In accordance with the present invention, there is disclosed a system for automatic program generation which receives a number of input format descriptors and a number of output format descriptors. The system generates a program for converting an input data sequence having a format described by the input format descriptors to an output data sequence having a format described by the output format descriptors. The program may be generated, loaded, and then executed in response to receipt of an input data stream, wherein a portion of the input data stream corresponds to the input data sequence. The input data sequence and output data sequence consist of a number of data type indicators.
In an exemplary embodiment, each layer of a communications protocol stack is represented by 0 or more format descriptors. Examples of well known protocol stacks include the IP protocol stack, the DECNet protocol stack, and the AppleTalk protocol stack. Similarly, each field within a data unit is represented by 0 or more data type indicators. Accordingly, the input data type indicators may correspond to fields of data units received by a forwarding device, and the output data type indicators may correspond to fields of corresponding data units forwarded by the forwarding device. In the exemplary embodiment, the generated program is executed on a hardware processor to convert a data unit that is received on a first communication link into an output data unit for transmission on a second communication link. Generation and loading of the program may be triggered by receipt of an initial data unit for a particular information flow.
The generated program, for example, converts a received data unit in the well known Ethernet format to an output data unit in the similarly well known IP over ATM format, or vice versa, as appropriate for the specific information flow.
Thus there is disclosed a system for generating an assembler language program in real-time in response to program requirements that are determined during system operation. The system is fast enough to generate assembler code to handle new operational requirements as they are received. Moreover, the system is well suited to generation of a program which is capable of performing data unit format and header content conversion and modification in a forwarding device implementation.

Method and apparatus for automatic generation of programs for processing data units of multiple formats


The present invention provides methods and apparatus for adjusting voltages of bit and word lines to create short programming pulses to program a memory cell. The invention may include setting a first line connected to a memory cell to a first voltage from a first line standby voltage, charging a second line connected to the memory cell to a predetermined voltage from a second line standby voltage, switching the first line from the first voltage to a second voltage, and switching the first line from the second voltage to the first voltage. The voltage difference between the first voltage and the predetermined voltage is such that a safe voltage results that does not program the memory cell. A voltage difference between the second voltage and the predetermined voltage is such that a programming voltage operative to program the memory cell results. The switching operations together may create a first pulse.

Program pulses may be used to program a memory cell. In using program pulses, shorter (and faster) program pulses may be desirable. The maximum speed (and minimum duration) of such pulses may be improved by using better quality metals for bit lines and word lines leading to memory cells, shortening the length of the bit lines, and adding switches to memory arrays to reduce capacitance on the bit lines. However, these previous approaches may not be possible or desirable for all types of memory arrays including 3D memory arrays (e.g., diode matrix arrays). Thus, what are needed are methods and apparatus for creating short program pulses in memory arrays.

Creating short program pulses in asymmetric memory arrays


Method and apparatus is disclosed for operating an elevator system that includes a group of elevator cars servicing a plurality of floor landings divided into Sectors. The method includes the steps of, with a controller associated with each elevator car of the group, (a) determining when the elevator car has reached a Turn Around Point for returning the elevator car to a lobby; (b) initiating travel to the lobby; and (c) determining when the elevator car has reached a predetermined Sector Assignment Fixation Point. After reaching the predetermined Sector Assignment Fixation Point, the method further includes the steps of (d) communicating Sector-related information with other controller of other elevator cars of the group; and (e) based upon the communication, assigning to the elevator car a next Sector to be serviced after arrival at the lobby. A round-robin arbitration technique is disclosed for assigning Sectors among the elevator cars.

Modern elevator systems often include distributed intelligence in the form of elevator car controllers, such as microprocessors.
In some modern elevator systems channeling is used as a means of ensuring smooth traffic flow during up-peak. The assignment of cars to a Sector, also referred to as a channel or zone, is done at the time the car reaches a lobby commitment point during the car's descent to the lobby. The assignment is accomplished in accordance with a round-robin arbitration technique, wherein the elevator car controller communicates with other elevator car controllers to determine which Sectors are already assigned, and then assigns to itself a next available Sector.
A Sector is comprised of one or more contiguous floor landings that are to be served by an elevator car after it leaves the lobby. The lobby commitment point is generally near to the lobby floor, and coincides with a Control Stop Point (CSP), where the elevator car begins to decelerate.
A result of this approach is that the assignment of the elevator car to a Sector may occur but a few seconds before the car reaches the lobby. After assignment, the elevator car provides a lobby display indicating which floors it will be servicing when it ascends.
However, due to the potentially large number of people waiting in the lobby during up-peak periods, situations may arise where it is difficult for passengers to physically move to the elevator car that is assigned to a Sector that includes the passenger's desired floor landing. Also, passengers must constantly monitor the lobby displays of all the cars so that they can move to the proper car.
In commonly assigned U.S. Pat. No. 4,363,381, issued Dec. 14, 1982, entitled "Relative System Response Elevator Call Assignments" to J. Bittar there is described an elevator system in which hall calls registered at a plurality of landings are assigned to cars on the basis of a summation of relative system response factors for each car, relative to each registered hall call.
Commonly assigned U.S. Pat. No. 4,305,479 issued Dec. 15, 1981, entitled "Variable Elevator Up Peak Dispatching Interval" to J. Bittar et al. describes a group controller that provides a variable interval between dispatching of elevator cars from a lobby during up-peak, the dispatching interval being controlled by an approximate round trip time of an elevator being dispatched from the lobby in serving the car calls registered within it and returning to the lobby, or the average of the approximate round trip time for two or three most recently dispatched elevator cars. The dispatching interval is determined by the approximate round trip time divided by the number of elevator cars serving the up-peak traffic. In addition, the dispatching interval can be further reduced in dependence upon the number of cars standing at the lobby, the reduction being greater for the case wherein the last car leaving the lobby is not more than half full, than in the case when the last car leaving the lobby is more than half full.
Commonly assigned U.S. Pat. No. 4,838,384, issued Jun. 13, 1989, entitled "Queue Based Elevator Dispatching System Using Peak Period Traffic Prediction" to K. Thangavelu describes a combined prediction technique to assign hall calls to cars on a priority basis for floors having a predicted high level of passenger traffic. During up-peak periods the lobby is given high priority, with a lobby passenger queue being predicted using passenger arrival rates and expected car arrival times.
It is an object of this invention to provide an elevator system that provides for an elevator car Sector assignment to be accomplished at an earlier point than the conventional lobby commitment point.
It is a further aspect of the invention to provide an elevator system wherein sectoring assignments are accomplished at or soon after an elevator car turn around point.

Elevator system having dynamic sector assignments