A vehicle-mounted electronic device according to the present invention is provided with a sensor 15 that detects illumination 17 from a following vehicle 16, in at least one of a display unit 9 and a main body case 7, and is configured such that a control unit 11 rotates the display unit 9 by means of a drive unit 10 when the sensor 15 detects the illumination 17 from the following vehicle 16. Thereby, the illumination 17 from the following vehicle 16 does not reflect on the display unit 9 toward a viewer, as a result of which, the influence by illumination from the following vehicle 16 can be reduced.

For example, vehicle-mounted electronic devices such as a car navigation device and a television receiver are often attached to the vicinities of front panels of vehicle interiors, and when the vehicle-mounted electronic devices are used in places like these, the display units become extremely difficult to see, depending on the incidence state of sunlight.
Consequently, an electronic device that stores the influence of sunlight of each season, and adjusts illuminance or the like of the display unit has been proposed (for example, Patent Literature 1 as follows).

PANASONIC INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY MANAGEMENT CO., LTD.


The present disclosure relates to a potentiometric probe for measuring a measured variable that represents an ion concentration in a measuring medium, including a probe base including a sensor circuit, and two electrochemical half-cells arranged such that one of the half-cells surrounds at least one portion of the other half-cell, wherein at least one of the half-cells is configured as a module which is connected to the probe base via a mechanical and electrical interface. In another embodiment, one of the half-cells is a measuring half-cell including an ion-selective membrane and a terminal lead which electrically contacts the ion-selective membrane. The other half-cell is a reference half-cell, wherein the measuring half-cell and/or the reference half-cell are each configured as a module which is connected to the probe base via a mechanical and electrical interface.

Electrochemical sensors are used for the analysis of measuring media, especially measuring liquids, in laboratory and process measurement technology in many fields of chemistry, biochemistry, pharmacy, biotechnology, food technology, water management, and environmental metrology.
Electrochemical methods can be used to detect activities or concentrations of chemical substances, for example ion activities or the pH, value and thus correlated measured variables in liquids. The substance, the activity or concentration of which is to be measured is also referred to as an analyte. The measuring medium can be a measuring liquid such as an aqueous solution, emulsion, or suspension.
Potentiometric sensors generally comprise a measuring half-cell and a reference half-cell as well as a sensor circuit for detecting measured values and for signal processing. The measuring and reference half-cells can be combined in a measuring probe which can be immersed in the measuring liquid. This measuring probe may also include the sensor circuit or at least part of the sensor circuit. The measuring probe can be connected for communication to a higher-level unit, for example a measuring transducer, an electronic operating device, a computer or a controller, via a cable or wireless. The higher-level unit can be used for further processing the measured signals or measured values detected by means of the probe and for operating the measuring probe.
In contact with the measuring medium, the measuring half-cell forms a potential that is a function of the activity of the analyte in the measuring medium, whereas the reference half-cell provides a stable electrochemical reference potential that is mostly independent of the analyte concentration. The sensor circuit generates an analog or digital measurement signal which represents the electric potential difference between the measuring half-cell and the reference half-cell and, consequently, the activity of the analyte in the measuring medium. The measurement signal may be output from the sensor circuit to the higher-level unit, which further processes the measurement signal. A partial or complete further processing of the measurement signal in the sensor circuit in the measuring probe is also possible.
The reference half-cell is often designed as a second-type electrode, e.g. as a silver/silver chloride reference electrode, and electrically conductively connected to the measurement circuit. It may comprise a housing and a reference element arranged in the housing, e.g. a silver wire coated with silver chloride, which is in electrolytically conductive and/or ion-conducting contact with the measuring liquid in measuring operation via a reference electrolyte contained in the housing and an electrochemical transfer, for example a diaphragm.
The measuring half-cell includes a potential-forming sensor element, which may comprise an ion-selective membrane or layer, depending upon the type of the potentiometric probe. Examples of such measuring half-cells are ion-selective electrodes. A traditional ion-selective electrode has a housing that is closed by the ion-selective membrane and accommodates an inner electrolyte that is in contact with the membrane. The ion-selective electrode also comprises a terminal lead which is in contact with the inner electrolyte. The terminal lead is electrically conductively connected to the sensor circuit. If the ion-selective membrane for measuring is in contact with the measuring liquid, the membrane selectively interacts with a certain ionic species contained in the measuring liquid, namely with the analyte. Changing the activity or concentration of the ion in the measuring liquid causes a relative change in the equilibrium galvanic voltage between the measuring medium and the terminal lead in contact with the ion-selective membrane via the inner electrolyte. A special case of such an ion-selective electrode, e.g., an electrode that selectively detects the hydronium ion activity in a measuring liquid, is the known pH glass electrode, which comprises a glass membrane as the potential-forming sensor element. The term ion-selective layer, membrane, or electrode used here and hereinafter means an ion-sensitive layer, membrane, or electrode, the potential of which is preferably predominantly influenced by the analyte, e.g., a specific ion type or the pH value, wherein cross-sensitivities of the layer, membrane, or electrode for other types of ions are not excluded, but are preferably low.
Such ion-selective glass electrodes as well as potentiometric probes with corresponding glass electrodes are characterized by good measuring properties; in the case of a pH glass electrode, this relates for example to the gradient, long-term stability, selectivity and detection limit. However, the wall thickness of the high-impedance glass membranes is typically chosen to be very thin, and therefore they have only a low mechanical stability.
The ion-selective electrodes with solid terminal lead, also referred to as solid state electrodes, are an alternative. These include, for example, enamel electrodes such as are described in the published patent application DE 2721939 A1 or in the examined and published patent application DE 2133419. These electrodes generally have a metallic base body on which an ion-selective, especially pH-selective, glass layer is applied. The ion-selective layer may be an enamel coating. According to the definitions/labeling standards, RAL registration RAL-RG 529 A2 from July 2007 by RAL Deutsches Institut für Gütesicherung and Kennzeichnung e.V., a vitreous material that is produced by completely or partially melting substantially oxidic raw materials, is referred to as an enamel. The inorganic preparation thus produced is applied with additives in one or more layers to workpieces made of metal or glass and fused at temperatures above 480° C. Base constituents of (ion-selective) enamel layers are, for example, one or more of the oxides silicon oxide, sodium oxide, potassium oxide, calcium oxide, magnesium oxide and aluminum oxide. An ion-selective glass, e.g., pH glass, applied to a metallic base body using such a method is therefore also referred to hereinafter as an ion-selective enamel layer or, in the case of an enamel layer specifically selective for hydronium ions, as a pH enamel layer, and a corresponding electrode as an enamel electrode.
Such enamel electrodes are characterized by high mechanical stability and can be hygienically designed by providing an enamel coating covering all parts of the probe coming into contact with the process. They can therefore be used especially advantageously in processes of the food industry and in chemical processes in which frequent purifications are to be carried out.
Depending on the field of application, measuring half-cells and reference half-cells of potentiometric probes can each be configured in different variants. Reference half-cells can have, for example, different variants of transfers, for example different diaphragms. As described, measuring half-cells can have an ion-selective membrane which is in contact with an electrically conductive discharge element via a liquid or gelatinous internal electrolyte, or an ion-selective membrane or layer with a solid terminal lead. In different variants, the potential-forming element of the measuring half-cell may be selective for different ion types or have different cross-sensitivities. This generally leads to a plurality of probe variants during production which must be kept apart during manufacture. This causes high costs in production and storage.
Aging occurs during operation of the probes, especially if the probes are used in applications which require frequent cleaning and/or sterilization, or in which the probes serve for monitoring aggressive measuring liquids, for example in chemical production processes. The probes must therefore be replaced after a certain maximum period of use, depending on the particular application and on the particular probe.


The invention relates to a composite film (100) for packaging containers (1), having a film composite made of a plurality of packaging material layers (101 to 108), wherein an inner packaging material layer (108) is designed as a heat-sealing layer and an opening device (10) can be fixed to an outer packaging material layer (101), in particular by sealing to the outer packaging material layer (101), and wherein the packaging material layers (101 to 108) comprise a weakening region (20) in the region of the opening device (10). According to the invention, the weak region (20) is disposed on the side of the inner packaging material layer (108) and is implemented as an at least partial reduction in the layer thickness (D) of the inner packaging material layer (108), wherein the shape of the weak region (20), in particular having a circular cross section, is adapted to the arrangement of cutters (13) that are disposed on a partial circular diameter (T) of the opening device (10) as a part of the opening device (10).

The invention relates to a composite film for packaging containers. The invention further relates to a method for producing a composite film as well as to a packaging container which is made from a composite film.
A composite film for packaging containers is known from the WIPO patent application WO96/19387 A. In this case, the composite film is part of a packaging container having a pouring aperture via which the liquid located inside the packaging container can be removed from said packaging container. In order to facilitate a simplified opening of the packaging container in the region of the opening device, provision is made to equip the known composite film with a weakened region on the side thereof facing the opening device. Two options are thereby described in the patent application mentioned above: on the one hand, a weakening resulting from two cuts arranged in the shape of a cross with respect to one another and on the other hand a reduction in the thickness of the composite film. By means of both measures, it is possible to weaken the packaging container in order to manually pierce or, respectively, open the composite film in the region of the opening device, wherein said composite film is kept intact during the transport or storage of the packaging container and thus the shelf life of the product situated in the packaging container is ensured. In addition, opening devices are addressed in the known patent application which devices have cutters that assist in severing the composite film. More detailed information with regard to the weakening region addressed above can be extracted from the aforementioned patent application.

Composite film for packaging containers, method for producing a composite film, and packaging container


The present invention is a method to manufacture a reverse crown capacitor. The method includes forming a triple layer silicon oxide/silicon nitride/silicon oxide over a substrate. A first node contact is defined in the triple layer. Spacers of a first node contact are formed. Then, a contact hole in the first node contact is formed to connect to the substrate. A polysilicon layer is deposited to from the plug of the contact hole. A chemical mechanical polishing (CMP) process is performed to remove the silicon nitride layer. Afterwards, a silicon oxide is formed over the substrate. A second node contact is defined and a polysilicon layer is formed on the second node contact to form the bottom plate of a capacitor. Finally, a dielectric film is formed over the bottom plate and a top plate is formed over the dielectric film.

It has been the trend to scale down the sizes of memory cells to increase the integration level and thus memory capacity of a DRAM chip. As the size of DRAMs is decreased, the capacity of the capacitor used in the DRAM is correspondingly decreased.
A memory cell of DRAM typically consists of a storage capacitor and an access transistor. One terminal of the capacitor is connected to the drain of the transistor. The source and the gate of the access transistor are connected to external connection lines, which are referred to as "bit line" and "word line". The other terminal of the capacitor is connected to a reference voltage. Thus, the formation of a DRAM cell comprises the formation of a transistor, the formation of a capacitor, the formation of the contact to the capacitor, and the formation of the connection lines.
The capacitor type is typically a planar capacitor, which is easy to manufacture. With the advent of ultra large scale integrated (ULSI) DRAM devices, the size of the devices have gotten smaller and smaller such that the available area for a single memory cell has become very small. This causes a reduction in the capacitor's area, resulting in the reduction of the cell's capacitance.
For very small memory cells, the planar capacitor is difficult to use reliably. Specifically, as the size of the capacitor decreases, the capacitance of the capacitor also decreases. This results in the capacitor being very susceptible to alpha-particle radiation. Additionally, as the capacitance decreases, the charge held by the storage capacitor must be refreshed often. A simple stacked capacitor can not provide sufficient capacitance, even with the use of special dielectric films as the capacitor insulator.
In the prior art, some methods have tried to solve the above problems. For example, trench-shape capacitors are used to increase the capacitor's area. Reducing the thickness of the capacitor's dielectric film can increase the capacitance of the capacitor, but this approach is limited because of yield and reliability problems.
In recent years, capacitors using hemispherical-grain (HSG) polysilicon and reverse-crown structures have been used. The HSG polysilicon increases the surface area of the capacitor's bottom plate, and therefore the capacitance is increased. Increasing the height of stack cells can increase the capacitance of stack capacitor. However, because the height of the stack cells is higher than peripheral circuits, this causes difficulties for cell planarization and the metal connection to the integrated circuit.
When the dimension of DRAM is close to deep-submicron, a new method for manufacturing small capacitors is needed. The planar size of the crown capacitance is too large for deep-submicron DRAM. The capacitor with hemispherical grain polysilicon can reduce the spacing between capacitor's plates. Further, the use of HSG polysilicon produces electrical leakage between the capacitor's plates. Thus, a method to fabricate a capacitor with HSG polysilicon is needed that solves the leakage problem.

Method for manufacturing a reverse crown capacitor for DRAM memory cell

Vanguard International Semiconductor Corporation


An apparatus and method is provided for treating injured muscles before, during, and/or after physical activity. Practicing the method of the present involves pressing a plurality of pressure applicators against the skin proximate to a muscle for a sustained period of time. The pressure applicators pressed against the body can be either pins, support members, and/or any combination thereof. The support members may be secured to the therapeutic surface of a therapeutic body as to create an apparatus in accordance with the present invention. In such an apparatus, the base of pressure applicator is secured to the therapeutic surface such that the distal end of the pressure applicator extends away from the therapeutic surface.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to orthopedic devices and treatment methods. More particularly, the present invention relates to orthopedic devices and methods utilizing a plurality of discrete pressure points.
2. Description of the Related Art
Strained, fatigued, or otherwise injured muscles are generally treated by the use of non-steroidal anti-inflammatory, drugs (NSAIDs) prior to, after, or during physical activities.
External support devices, such as bandages, slings, or braces, are also often used to treat injured muscles prior to, after, or during physical activities. The aforementioned devices typically elicit a therapeutic benefit on injured muscles by providing support, inhibiting the massive movement of extensor and flexor muscles, absorbing shock, and may enable the warming or cooling of injured muscles.
Chinese acupuncture, well known and recognized worldwide, but not fully appreciated, can also be used for treating injured muscles. During acupuncture therapy, needles are inserted into the body at defined bioactive points. The needles usually remain in the body for a defined period of time. The administration of acupuncture therapy requires a skilled, and in some localities a certified, practitioner.
Acupressure is a derivation of acupuncture therapy. During acupressure therapy, a skilled practitioner applies mechanical pressure to specific bioactive points, while being careful to not apply a harmful amount of pressure.

Apparatus and method for treating soft tissue injuries


A fusing device of an electrophotographic image forming apparatus. The fusing device includes a fusing roller that is heated to be a predetermined temperature, and a pressing roller that presses a sheet of paper passing between the fusing roller and the pressing roller toward the fusing roller. In addition, the fusing roller includes a cylindrical roller having a predetermined diameter, a heater positioned inside the cylindrical roller to heat the cylindrical roller, a rubber member that is formed on a center portion of an outer circumference on the cylindrical roller, and heat resistance portion that is formed on both end portions of the cylindrical roller.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a fusing device of an electrophotographic image forming apparatus, and, more particularly, to a structure of end portions of a fusing roller.
2. Description of the Related Art
Generally, in an electrophotographic color image forming apparatus such as a color laser printer, a predetermined electrostatic latent image is formed on a photosensitive body, and the electrostatic latent image is developed with a toner, and the developed resultant is transferred onto a sheet of paper after passing through a predetermined transfer medium. In addition, the resultant that is transferred on the sheet of paper is heated and pressed to be permanently fused thereon.
Referring to FIG. 1, the conventional electrophotographic color image forming apparatus includes a photosensitive drum 10, a charger 11 that charges the photosensitive drum 10, a laser scanning unit 12 that is a light scanning unit to form a predetermined electrostatic latent image on the charged photosensitive drum 10 by scanning the light, a developing unit 13 that develops the electrostatic latent image with toners of four colors, that is, yellow (Y), magenta (M), cyan (C), and black (K) colors, a transfer belt 14 that sequentially overlaps the images of four colors formed on the photosensitive drum 10, a first transfer roller 14a that transfers the four color images that is developed on the photosensitive drum 10 onto the transfer belt 14, a second transfer roller 14b that transfers the four color images on the transfer belt 14 onto the sheet of paper, and a fusing device 15 that heats and presses the sheet of paper to permanently fuse the transferred image on the sheet of paper.
Reference numeral 16 denotes a paper cassette, reference numeral 17 denotes a blade to clean the photosensitive drum, reference numeral 18 denotes an eraser, and reference numeral 19 denotes a conveying path through which the sheet of paper may be discharged.
The fusing device 15 heats the sheet of paper, on which the toner images are transferred to melt the toner image in a powder state and to fuse the image on the sheet of paper. The fusing device 15 includes a fusing roller that fuses the toner on the sheet of paper, and a pressing roller that pushes the sheet of paper toward the fusing roller.
The fusing roller is formed as a cylindrical roller made of metal, such as stainless steel, that has a rubber member formed on a circumference thereof. The metal cylindrical roller allows a temperature of the fusing roller to be substantially uniform, and the rubber member softly contacts the sheet of paper that passes between the pressing roller and the fusing roller.
The fusing roller is a rotating body and has a structure that allows an electrical connection to a heating element to be included therein.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,628,917 discloses a fusing roller, both sides of which are attached by end caps. The end cap is a resin such as polyphenylene sulfide (PPS), polybutylene terephthalate (PBT), or a nylon that is filled with a filler, such as glass fiber, having a low thermal conductivity at a high temperature.
When a surface temperature of the fusing roller is high, the temperature of the cylindrical roller is higher than the surface temperature of the fusing roller, and the end cap may melt.
On the other hand, Japanese Laid-open Patent No. H10-3223 discloses a fusing roller that has bearings installed on both end portions thereof, and a gear is installed on one end portion of the fusing roller. Here, an adiabatic member is used between the fusing roller and the bearing.

Fusing device of electrophotographic image forming apparatus


A device and a method in processing, such as pharmaceutical processing, is provided. At least one signal is transmitted in a processing structure which is adapted to receive materials. The propagated signal is received and a parameter value thereof is compared with a reference value. The presence of materials or any other geometrical change in the processing structure is evaluated based on the comparison. The signal may be in the form of an electromagnetic wave, e.g. a microwave. Also, a use of a processing vessel, or a pipe connected to such a vessel, is provided.

The use of production lines with long pipe or piping structures is common in many industries, such as the pharmaceutical industry, the chemical industry, the food industry, etc. These pipe structures are generally used to convey materials to or from a vessel, or to convey materials between two vessels. For instance, in the production of pharmaceutical dosage forms, such as tablets or capsules, the ingredients are processed or conveyed in different processing structures. One processing structure may be a granulation vessel, another processing structure may be a drying vessel, yet another processing structure may be a pipe for leading materials or substances from the granulation vessel to the drying vessel. Also a system of several processing vessels and/or pipes can be regarded as a processing structure.
In the production of pharmaceuticals it is desirable to reduce the risk of mixing materials from different batches or reduce the risk of leaving high-risk substances, such as high-potency drugs or chemically or microbiologically reactive materials, inside the processing structure. It is also desirable to detect any geometrical changes on the interior of the processing structure, such as damaged or disconnected portions of the processing structure, so that the personnel may take appropriate actions at an early stage. Apart from changes on the actual processing structure or its components, a geometrical change may also be a change in the amount of material inside the processing structure.
In the present situation, the manufacturing personnel have to gain access to the interior of the processing structure in order to perform manual cleanness tests or a damage check. In some cases such tests may be difficult to execute, e.g. depending on the dimensions of the processing structure, the location of the processing structure, or even the location to be cleaned or inspected inside the processing structure. Also, by not knowing whether or not the processing structure is free from material remains, or if other geometrical changes have occurred, the personnel will tend to check the processing structure more often than necessary, resulting in unnecessary time loss and additional production costs.
Thus, it would be desirable to detect any material remains from processes from different batches, or to detect other changes in the internal geometry of processing structures, in an easy and reliable manner. It would also be desirable to reduce possible time loss and production costs.

Methods and devices for evaluating material in a pharmaceutical process


A complementary output driver includes a driver input that receives an input signal which alternates between a first state and a second state. A first inverter has a first input and a first output. The first input is coupled to the driver input and the first output generates a complementary output signal that is the complement of a present state of the input signal. A second inverter has a second input and a second output. The second input is coupled to the first output of the first inverter and the second output generates an output signal that is the complement of the present state of the first output. A push-pull network has a push-pull input and a push-pull output. The push-pull input is coupled to the driver input and the push-pull output is coupled to the second output.

The present invention relates generally to a complementary output inverter, and more particularly to a 180° complementary output inverter utilizing a push-pull network.
Electronic circuits which output a complimentary output and a non-complementary output based upon a state of an input are generally known in the art. A typical prior art configuration is shown schematically in FIG. 1. The prior art inverter 100 includes a first inverter INV1 and a second inverter INV2 that receive an input IN and generate a complementary output /OUT (also known as NOT OUT) and a non-complementary output OUT. The first inverter INV1 receives the input IN which alternates between a first state and a second state. The first inverter INV1 inverts or complements the present state of the input signal to generate a complementary output as shown in the timing diagram of FIG. 2. The input of the second inverter INV2 is coupled to the output of the first inverter INV1 and the second inverter INV2 inverts or complements the complementary output /OUT in order to generate a non-complementary output OUT. Accordingly, the complementary output is the opposite state of the input IN and the state of the non-complementary output OUT is the same state as the input IN.
The first and second inverters INV1, INV2 may be formed from a pair of field effect transistors (FET) or more commonly from a complementary pair of metal oxide semiconductor (CMOS) transistors. A typical CMOS pair includes a positive metal oxide semiconductor (PMOS) over a negative metal oxide semiconductor (NMOS). Each of the first and second inverters INV1, INV2 has a time delay Td1, Td2, respectively, which is a function of the inherent composition of the respective inverter INV1, INV2 and their respective switching times.
Some attempts have been made to generate symmetric and complementary signals by making the second inverter INV2 have a faster switching time than the first inverter INV1 by changing the ratio of the size of internal transistors. However, inevitably, there is a difference in time delays between Td1 and Td2 and the resulting complementary and non-complementary outputs /OUT, OUT transition at different times as depicted in the corresponding timing diagram shown in FIG. 2.
FIG. 2 shows that when the input transitions from a first state to a second state, the first inverter INV1 begins transitioning from the second state to the first state at time T1. Because the first inverter INV1 does not reach its threshold until a time T2, the second inverter INV2 does not begin transitioning from the first state to the second state until time T2 which is later in time than the transition of the complementary output /OUT. The first inverter INV1 reaches the first state at time T3 while the second inverter INV2 is still transitioning from the first state to the second state. The second inverter INV2 does not reach the second state until time T4 which is delayed in time from when the first inverter INV1 reached the first state. Similarly, when the input transitions from the second state to the first state, the first inverter INV1 begins transitioning from the first state to the second state at time T5. Because the first inverter INV1 has not yet reached its threshold voltage, the second inverter INV2 does not begin transitioning from the second state to the first state until time T6 while the first inverter INV1 is still transitioning to the second state. The first inverter INV1 reaches the second state at time T7, but the second inverter INV2 is still transitioning from the second state to the first state until time T8. Accordingly, it can be seen that the complementary output /OUT and the non-complementary output OUT are not truly complementary during transition times T1-T4 and T5-T8.
It is desirable to provide a complementary inverter having complementary and non-complementary outputs which transition over generally the same period of time. Further, it is desirable to provide a 180° complementary inverter that transitions from a first state to a second state and from a second state to a first state in nearly true complementary fashion. Furthermore, it is desirable to provide a 180° complementary inverter having complementary and non-complementary outputs that transition over only approximately one delay time.


An inkjet ink includes an ink vehicle including humectant co-solvents and a fluorosurfactant, and a colorant in the vehicle.

There are several reasons that ink-jet printing has become a popular way of recording images on various media surfaces, particularly paper. Some of these reasons include low printer noise, capability of high-speed recording, and capability of multi-color recording. Additionally, these advantages can be obtained at a relatively low price to consumers. Although there have been great improvements in ink-jet printing technology over the years, improvements can still be made in many areas.
For example, the results of printing on non-porous materials such as vinyl film is often less than desirable. In order to produce acceptable images on non-porous materials such as vinyl, inkjet inks should wet out the often low surface energy substrate. Consequently, inkjet inks aimed at printing on non-porous materials such as vinyl may exhibit low surface tension properties while having highly dynamic welting properties, a combination that has proved difficult to attain.

Wetting agent combinations for inkjet printing

Hewlett-Packard Development Company, L.P.


A method for matching biometric data on an authentication server is disclosed. An authentication server is provided having biometric template data stored thereon. A plurality of workstation processors in communication with the authentication server is also provided. A sensed biometric image is provided to a processor out of the plurality of workstation processors from an individual. From the authentication server to the processor, co-ordinate data relating to a plurality of non-contiguous features of the template data are provided. Characteristic data is extracted from the biometric image, the characteristic data for correlation with the provided coordinate data allowing for a subsequent alignment of the biometric image within a known frame of reference relative to the template data on the basis of the provided data and the other data. Once aligned, biometric data is extracted from the biometric image, the biometric data within the known frame of reference, and the extracted biometric data is transmitted to the authentication server.

Magnetic strip cards have been widely used for controlling access by individuals to information, rooms and financial transaction instruments. Typically, the individual must "swipe" the card through a magnetic strip reader and provide a personal identification number (PIN) in order to be identified as an authorized user of the card. This system suffers from several disadvantages, including the tendency of individuals to forget an assigned PIN number, or to seriously compromise the security of an assigned PIN number by writing it down in close proximity to the card. Similarly, individuals have a tendency to select PIN numbers that are easily remembered and that often have a personal significance, such as a birth date, which PIN numbers are easily guessed by an unauthorized individual. Accordingly, magnetic strip cards are convenient, but do not provide a high level of security.
In order to provide increased control, security, and fault tolerance, many organizations implement their security access functionality on a server. Thus, each time an individual authenticates within a network environment, the individual provides authentication data that is then transmitted to the server securely for authentication thereby. In this fashion, security data is not transmitted from the server and the maintenance and fault tolerance of the system relies on a single computer, which can be maintained at intervals and can be backed up. When used with passwords of 8 characters each, a server must receive 8 characters, retrieve 8 characters and compare the two sets of 8 characters. Then the result is transmitted to the workstation to one of authenticate, identify, and neither authenticate nor identify the individual. Thus for each authentication process approximately 25 operations are performed. For a 1 GHz processor, this allows up to 10 million users for a network specification allowing a delay up to 0.25 second. This is more than enough for nearly all applications.
When the same server is used with a biometric identification process, the server receives considerably more data. For example, for a fingerprint an image having 250,000 pixels is provided. If the pixels have a depth of 1 bit, this results in about 30 KB of data. This data must be received in a secure fashion, decoded, analyzed to extract a core thereof, analyzed to extract features relative to the core, and then the features are analyzed to extract data relating thereto. The extracted data is then compared to stored template data to determine a likelihood of an accurate match. Such a process may take 0.1 seconds or more. Unfortunately, as organizations grow, the single security server approach to biometric identification becomes limiting. When 36,000 workstations are coupled to a single server the maximum delay is approximately one hour. Even for 3,600 workstations, the maximum delay is 6 minutes—far above the 0.25 sec specification set out above. Thus, there is a need for more flexible verification techniques to support centralized management and performance requirements of larger organizations.
One technique to enhance performance while maintaining the centralized server architecture is to add security processors to the network. Unfortunately, even if the biometric identification process was limited to 0.01 seconds, to meet the 0.25 second requirement allows only 25 users per server. This is both costly and presents a management problem in managing a large number of servers. It is highly advantageous to have a single server solution to reduce back-up and redundancy costs and to facilitate management of the server.
It is therefore an object of the instant invention to provide a method of identifying an individual for execution on a server for serving many workstations that overcomes some of the limitations of the prior art.

Method and apparatus for supporting a biometric registration performed on an authentication server


A method, computer system and set of signals are disclosed allowing for communication of a data transfer, via a bus, between a master and a slave using a single transfer request regardless of transfer size and alignment. The invention provides three transfer qualifier signals including: a first signal including a starting byte address of the data transfer; a second signal including a size of the data transfer in data beats; and a third signal including a byte enable for each byte required during a last data beat of the data transfer. The invention is usable with single or multiple beat, aligned or unaligned data transfers. Usage of the three transfer qualifier signals provides the slave with how many data beats it will transfer at the start of the transfer, and the alignment of both the starting and ending data beats. As a result, the slave need not calculate the number of bytes it will transfer. In terms of multiple beat transfers, the number of data transfer requests are reduced, which reduces the amount of switching, bus arbitration and power consumption required. In addition, the invention allows byte enable signals to be used for subsequent data transfer requests prior to the completion of the initial data transfer, which reduces power consumption and allows for pipelining of data transfer requests.

1. Technical Field
The present invention relates generally to data transfers, and more particularly, to a method, system and set of signals for completing a data transfer using a single transfer request.
2. Related Art
In computer systems, the main components communicate with each other through an information pathway called a bus. A bus is a standardized interface allowing communication between initiators, called masters, and destination components, called slaves. The nature of the data transferred between a master and a slave may vary both in the amount, and its address alignment. Data transfer sizes may vary from one byte of data up to hundreds, or even thousands, of bytes.
"Address alignment" refers to the starting and ending memory address locations of the data transfer. A data transfer is "aligned" if all of its data beats utilize all of the byte lanes of the bus. A "data beat" is defined as a transfer of data across the bus, full width or less, in one time interval or clock cycle. Alignment and use of all byte lanes during data transfers produces maximum bus throughput and overall system performance. In order to achieve alignment, the starting address and the total size of a transfer must be a multiple of the bus size. For example, with a 4-byte bus, aligned transfers must have a starting address that is a multiple of 4 (i.e., 0, 4, 8, etc.), and their total size must be a multiple of 4. A data transfer is "unaligned" if one or more of its data beats does not use all of the byte lanes of the bus. In order for this to occur, either the starting address or the total size of the transfer (or both) must not be a multiple of the bus size. For example, with a 4-byte bus, if the starting address is 2 (not a multiple of 4), then the first data beat of the transfer will only use two of the bytes of the bus. Another example, again with a 4-byte bus, is a transfer of 6 bytes (again, not a multiple of 4). In this case, even if the starting address is a multiple of 4 (e.g., address 0), then the first data beat will be aligned (i.e., using all four bytes of the bus), but the second data beat will be unaligned because it will only use two of the bytes of the bus. Note that a transfer for which the starting address is not a multiple of the bus size may result in both the first and the final data beats being unaligned. For example, with a 4-byte bus, a transfer of 8 bytes with a starting address of 2 will result in: a first data beat of an unaligned transfer of 2 bytes (addresses 2 and 3), a second data beat of an aligned transfer of 4 bytes (addresses 4–7), and a final data beat of an unaligned transfer of 2 bytes (addresses 8 and 9).
In most computer and communication systems, data transfers may begin unaligned, end unaligned or both. However, the emerging use of various information data packet protocols that allow packet sizes of an arbitrary number of bytes presents an increasing number of unaligned transfers, which reduce bus throughput and overall system performance. Unaligned data transfers present additional problems when the transfer requires multiple data beats (i.e., cycles) of the bus. In particular, a master must make potentially three different transfer requests for each data packet when the data transfer starts and ends unaligned. For example, a data transfer of 86 bytes that starts and ends unaligned and is made across a 128-bit data bus may require three separate transfers. For example, a first partial data bus transfer request as a single request of 11 bytes, an aligned burst transfer request of 64 bytes, and finally another partial data bus transfer request of 11 bytes. In this case, the master has to have the associated extra logic to perform address alignment up to and following the burst transfer. Another issue with this technique are delays caused by bus arbitration. In particular, a master has to arbitrate amongst other masters requesting data transfers. As a result, delays between portions of a multiple beat unaligned data transfer may occur due to other masters winning arbitration and performing their transfer request(s). This can delay the overall data packet delivery significantly and interrupt an isochronous data transfer protocol.
One technique for addressing multiple beat, unaligned data transfers has been to perform an open ended burst transfer and treat each data beat as a separate transfer. In this case, each data beat is supplied with all the information required for a transfer including, in particular, byte enables. This technique, however, does not allow byte enable signals to be used for subsequent transfer requests after the initial request is made, which requires each data beat to include byte enable signaling. Accordingly, this technique may generate significant signaling requirements for a multiple beat transfer, which increases circuitry and bus switching demands for each data beat, which increases power consumption. This technique also does not provide the slave with the entire payload size at the start of the transfer, which is useful for the prefetching of read data and time allocation of write buffers.
The above technique also presents a problem relative to "pipelining" of data transfers. Pipelining of data transfers involves broadcasting pending master data transfer requests to slaves during the busy state of the data bus(ses). Pipelining allows slaves to allocate resources or prefetch data prior to their respective data tenure on the requesting bus, which reduces latency and increases bus throughput. In order to address pipeline transfer requests, two sets of byte enable signals would be required with the above technique, i.e., one for data tenure and one for pipelined address tenure. Dividing large unaligned data transfers into multiple transfer requests diminishes the advantages of pipelining because the slaves must handle an increased number of requests, and do not know at the transfer start whether multiple such requests by the same master constitute a single transfer of an unaligned portion of data.
In view of the foregoing, a need remains for efficient and simple data transfers that do not suffer from the problems of the related art. Specifically, a need remains for a technique for efficiently communicating both the starting and ending data alignments for multiple beat data transfers as part of the initial transfer request.

This patent is subject to a terminal disclaimer.

Single request data transfer regardless of size and alignment

International Business Machines Corporation


An internal combustion engine system comprises: a dehydrogenation reactor which performs a dehydrogenation reaction to separate organic hydride-contained fuel into hydrogen and dehydrogenated fuel; supply means which supplies separated hydrogen and dehydrogenated fuel individually to the internal combustion engine; and control means which switches the operation of the internal combustion engine between a first mode in which both hydrogen and dehydrogenated fuel are supplied to the internal combustion engine and a second mode in which only hydrogen is supplied to the internal combustion engine.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a hydrogen-used internal combustion engine.
2. Background Art
As disclosed in, for example, Japanese Patent Laid-open No. 2003-343360, internal combustion engine systems provided with hydrogen generation capability are known in the art. Specifically, such a system comprises a mechanism to generate a hydrogen rich gas and dehydrogenation product such as naphthalene from a hydrogenated fuel containing organic hydrides such as Decalin as well as a hydrogen engine which runs on the generated hydrogen rich gas as fuel.
In the system disclosed in the above-mentioned publication, while a hydrogen engine is operating, hydrogenated fuel is separated into a hydrogen rich gas and dehydrogenation product by utilizing the heat generated by the operation. In more detail, hydrogen is obtained by injecting the hydrogenated fuel onto a catalyst to cause dehydrogenation reaction on the catalyst.
[Patent Document 1] Japanese Patent Laid-open No. 2003-343360
[Patent Document 2] Japanese Patent Laid-open No. 2002-255503
[Patent Document 3] Japanese Patent Laid-open No. 7-63128
In the systems disclosed in the above-cited publications, the dehydrogenation product is collected after stored for a time. Alternatively, however, it may also be possible to construct a system where the dehydrogenation product is supplied as fuel (dehydrogenated fuel) to the engine. In this case, hydrogen and dehydrogenated fuel are supplied to the internal combustion engine at such a ratio as to secure both engine efficiency and emission performance.
On the other hand, hydrogen and dehydrogenated fuel are separated from the hydrogenated fuel at a fixed ratio. If an amount of hydrogen required by the internal combustion engine is separated from the hydrogenated fuel, the amount of dehydrogenated fuel generated together with hydrogen exceeds the amount of dehydrogenated fuel required by the internal combustion engine. Thus, excessive dehydrogenated fuel occurs whenever hydrogen is separated as required.

Hydrogen-used internal combustion engine


A fluorescent display device includes a first substrate, an insulating layer formed on the first substrate, n columns of m anodes, each anode having a fluorescent layer thereon, Q anode lead wires provided for each column of the m anodes, every Qth anodes being connected to a same anode lead wire, and m/Q grids, formed on the insulating layer, each grid being arranged across the n columns of m anodes, each grid being provided with openings for each column of m anodes, each opening exposing a portion of the first substrate and one anode being formed on the exposed portion of the first substrate.

The present invention relates to a graphic fluorescent display device; and, more particularly, to a graphic fluorescent display device incorporating therein a planar grid.
FIGS. 1A to 2B provide schematic views for illustrating the arrangements and operation methods of anodes and grids of conventional graphic fluorescent display devices.
FIG. 1A is a top view for showing the arrangement of the anodes and the grids, in which reference notations A11 to A52 represent anodes; G1 to G5, the grids; A1 and A2, two anode lead wires. And in FIG. 1A, only three rows of the anodes and five grids are described. Every second anodes in a same row are connected to a same anode lead wire. When viewed from top of the fluorescent display device, the anodes, grids and filaments (not shown) are vertically disposed in that order while maintaining certain distances therebetween. Electrons emitted from the filaments pass through the grids G1 to G5 and reach the anode A11 to A52.
In FIG. 1A, the grid G1 controls the anodes A11 and A12 and the gird G2 does the anodes A21 and A22. The grids G3 to G5 also function similarly.
FIG. 1B is a schematic view for explaining operation scheme of the graphic fluorescent display device shown in FIG. 1A.
For instance, in order to turn on the anode A22 to emit light, negative voltages are respectively applied to the grids G1, G3, G4 and G5 and the anode lead wire A1, while a positive voltage is respectively applied to the grid G2 and the anode lead wire A2. The electrons emitted from the filament can pass through the grid G2 but cannot pass through the remaining grids G1, G3, G4 and G5 since the electrons moving toward the grid G1, G3, G4 and G5 are repulsed by the negative electric fields created by negative voltages applied thereto. The electrons passing through the grid G2 can reach the anode A22 to which positive voltage is applied but cannot reach the anode A21 to which negative voltage is applied.
Since, however, the electrons moving toward the anode A22 are affected by the negative electric field generated by the grid G3 of negative potential, the electrons may not reach an edge part of the anode A22 adjacent to the grid G3. As a result, there occurs the so-called eclipse phenomenon where an anode has a dark spot at the edge adjacent to a neighboring grid.
Referring to FIG. 1C, there is illustrated another conventional graphic fluorescent display device having anodes controlled by three anode lead wires A1 to A3 wherein every third anodes are connected to a same anode lead wire.
For instance, if negative voltages are applied to grids G1, G3 and G4, while a positive voltage is applied to the grid G2, electrons emitted from filaments can pass through only the grid G2 as shown in FIG. 1C. Further, if the anode lead wires A1 and A3 are of positive potentials, the electrons can reach the anodes A22 and A32. In this case, since the electrons moving toward the anodes A22 and A32 are affected by negative electric fields generated by the grids G1 and G3 of negative potentials, the electrons may not reach an edge part of the anode A22 adjacent to the anode G1 and an edge part of the anode A32 adjacent to the anode G3. Therefore, such edge parts do not emit sufficient light, which results in dark streaks thereat (See, e.g., Japanese Laid-Open Publication Number JP63-35037).
Referring to FIGS. 2A and 2B, there are illustrated conventional operation methods employed in order to prevent the non-uniformity in the brightness of the fluorescent display device described above with reference to FIGS. 1A to 1C.
In FIGS. 2A and 2B, there are four anode lead wires A1 to A4 and every fourth anodes are connected to a same anode lead wire. Each of the grids G1 to G5 controls two anodes.
In FIG. 2A, the grids G2 and G3 are of positive potentials and the grids G1, G4 and G5 are of negative potentials. Since the anodes A22 and A31 are selected to emit light, the anode lead wires A1 and A4 are of positive potential. In this case, since the anodes A22 and A31 are away from the grids G1 and G4, the negative electric fields created by the grids G1 and G4 scarcely influence the passages of the electrons emitted from filaments to the anodes A22 and A31.
The arrangement of the anodes, the grids and the anode lead wires shown in FIG. 2B is identical to the one shown in FIG. 2A, but grid selection scheme is different from that of FIG. 2A.
In FIG. 2B, positive potentials are applied to the grids G2, G3 and G4 and negative potentials are applied to the grids G1 and G5. Since the anodes A31, A32 controlled by the grid G3 are selected to be turned on, positive potentials are applied to the anode lead wires A1 and A2. In this case, since the anodes A31 and A32 are away from the grids G1 and G5 of negative potential, the negative electric fields created by the grids G1 and G5 hardly influence the passages of the electrons emitted from the filaments to the anodes A31 and A32. Further, the effect of the negative electric fields created by the grids G1 and G5 is less than that described in FIG. 2A (See, e.g., Japanese Laid-open Publication supra).
In FIGS. 1A to 1C, the non-uniformity in the brightness due to electronic fields of neighboring grids may not be avoided. Such a non-uniformity problem can be avoided by the control schemes as shown in FIGS. 2A and 2B. However, the configurations of FIGS. 2A and 2B require one grid for every two anodes, even though the anodes are controlled by four anode lead wires. Resultantly, still a large number of grids are required, complicating the structure of a fluorescent display device with a large number of drivers of the grids. Further, a duty factor becomes lower to thereby decrease the luminance level of the device.
It is, therefore, an object of the present invention to eliminate the above-mentioned disadvantages of the prior art.
In accordance with the present invention, there is provided a fluorescent display device including:
a first substrate;
an insulating layer formed on the first substrate;
n columns or rows of m anodes, each anode having a fluorescent layer thereon;
Q anode lead wires provided for each column or row of the m anodes, every Qth anodes being connected to a same anode lead wire; and
z grids, z being a positive integer equal to or greater than m/Q but smaller than (m/Q)+1, formed on the insulating layer, each grid being arranged across the n columns of m anodes, each grid being provided with openings for each column or row of m anodes, each opening exposing a portion of the insulating layer and one anode being formed on the exposed portion of the insulating layer,
wherein the insulating layer, the anodes, the anode lead wires and grids are thin films.


Optical 1.times.N and N.times.N switching matrix has a tree structure. In the case of 1.times.N switching matrices having a tree structure, in which an optical input (1.sub.0) is connected to N outputs (1.sub.1) by means of an optical waveguide structure (1) which branches like a tree, and in which an optical changeover switch (4) is arranged in each junction point (3) of the waveguide structure, it is intended to improve the crosstalk suppression. To this end, in each case one gate switch (5) is assigned to each output (1.sub.1) for optional release and blocking of this output (1.sub.1) as a function of a switching state of the changeover switch (4) of a junction point (3) from which a branching waveguide (11) is connected to this output (1.sub.1). An N.times.N switching matrix, which is also described, having greatly improved crosstalk suppression can be obtained with such 1.times.N switching matrices. The switching matrix is used in optical communications networks, for example telecommunications networks.

The invention relates to an optical 1.times.N and N.times.N switching matrix having a tree structure, with an optical input/output and a plurality of optical outputs/inputs.
Such switching matrices are generally known.
Optical switching matrices are key components of future optical communications networks. They enable the optical data stream to be directed in a flexible manner between different optical glass fibers or other optical waveguides without any limitation of the data rate.
Solid-state switching matrices which are integrated on a substrate are particularly compact and promise cost advantages over currently available electromechanical components (available, for example, from JDS FITEL, ASTARTE, OptiVideo, BT&D). Such solid-state switching matrices have been implemented on substrates composed, for example, of LiNbO.sub.3 (see P. J. Duthie, M. J. Wale "16.times.16 single chip optical switch array in Lithium Niobate", Electron. Lett., Vol. 27, pages 1265-1266, 1991), silicon (see R. Nagase, A. Himeno, K. Kato, O. Okuno "Silica-based 8.times.8 optical-matrix-switch module with hybrid integrated driving circuits", ECOC '93, Montreux, Paper MoP1.2, pages 17-20) or III-V semiconductors (see K. Komatsu, K. Hamamoto, M. Sugimoto, A. Ajisawy, Y. Kohga, A. Suzuki "4.times.4GaAs/AlGaAs optical matrix switches with uniform device characteristics using alternating .DELTA..beta. electrooptic wave directional couplers", J.Lightwave Technol., Vol. LT-9, pages 871-878, 1991 and L. Stoll, G. Muller, M. Hoilsberg, M. Schienle, S. Eichinger, U. Wolff "4.times.4 optical switch matrix on InP with low switching current", AEU, Vol. 46, pages 116-118).

Optical 1.times.N and N.times.N switching matrix having a tree structure


Articulating implant connectors and related methods are disclosed herein. Exemplary connectors can include first and second bodies that are rotatable relative to one another about a rotation axis and selectively lockable to resist or prevent such rotation. Each of the bodies can be configured to couple to a rod or other fixation component, and the connector can be used to lock first and second rods together even when the rods are obliquely angled with respect to one another.

Fixation systems can be used in orthopedic surgery to maintain a desired spatial relationship between multiple bones or bone fragments. For example, various conditions of the spine, such as fractures, deformities, and degenerative disorders, can be treated by attaching a spinal fixation system to one or more vertebrae. Such systems typically include a spinal fixation element, such as a rigid or flexible rod or plate, that is coupled to the vertebrae by attaching the element to various anchoring devices, such as screws, hooks, or wires. Once installed, the fixation system holds the vertebrae in a desired position until healing or spinal fusion can occur, or for some other period of time.
There are many instances in which it may be desirable to connect multiple implants to each other. For example, some revision surgeries involve extending a previously-installed construct to additional vertebral levels by coupling a newly-installed spinal rod to a previously-installed rod. By way of further example, aspects of the patient's anatomy, the surgical technique used, or the desired correction may require that multiple spinal rods be connected to one another. As yet another example, coupling multiple rods to one another can improve the overall strength and stability of an implanted construct.
There can be various difficulties associated with connecting multiple implants to each other. The available space for the implanted construct can often be very limited, particularly in the cervical area of the spine. Also, aligning and positioning implants and connectors in the surgical wound may be challenging or cumbersome for the surgeon. There is a continual need for improved implant connectors and related methods.


Methods, apparatus, systems and articles of manufacture are disclosed for augmented reality measuring of equipment. An example apparatus disclosed herein includes an image comparator to compare camera data with reference information of a reference vehicle part to identify a vehicle part included in the camera data, and an inspection image analyzer to, in response to the image comparator identifying the vehicle part, measure the vehicle part by causing an interface generator to generate an overlay representation of the reference vehicle part on the camera data displayed on a user interface, and determining, based on one or more user inputs to adjust the overlay representation, a measurement corresponding to the vehicle part.

Augmented reality overlays digital information in the real world. For example, using a user device such as a smart phone or a wearable device such as glasses, a user can view virtual data such as graphical user interface menus, navigation information, virtual characters, etc., where the digital information appears to be integrated into and/or overlaying the real-world environment.

Apparatus and methods for augmented reality measuring of equipment


A system for recovering propellant from aerosol cans and other sources having a gaseous propellant therein, which system constitutes a separation tank in which the propellant is separated from the product it was to deliver, a compressor to both compress the propellant and introduce it into a heat exchanger which cools the propellant into a liquid which liquid can be collected in a collection chamber in communication therewith.

Aerosol dispensers have been available for a number of years for application of hair sprays and other personal care products, as well as for paints, lubricants, insecticides and a multitude of other liquid products.
In the earlier days of aerosol marketing, "Freon" blends were widely used as propellants, principally because they were not flammable and were relatively nontoxic. However, in recent years, it was discovered that "Freons," when released into the atmosphere, migrated to the upper stratosphere and contributed to the depletion of ozone. Since ozone shields the surface of the earth against penetration of solar ultraviolet radiation, the use of "Freon" propellants was believed by many to have contributed to climate changes as well as to an increased incidence of skin cancers and cataracts. Accordingly, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (E.P.A.) banned the further use of "Freon" propellants. This forced aerosol packagers to select from alterative propellant systems, all of which had serious disadvantages, among which were various hydrocarbons, consisting of blends of propane and butane mixtures. However, such hydrocarbon propellants are extremely flammable, and are in the chemical class known as volatile organic compounds, which are recognized as a significant cause of lower atmospheric air pollution or smog. Therefore, in even moderately populated areas of the country severe restrictions have been placed on the use of such compounds in many operations.
In addition to the selection of a gas propellant, a further problem in the aerosol packaging industry resides in the disposing of the used aerosol containers, particularly for large scale commercial users. After the product has been used up, the container remains charged with the propellant, and where the propellant is a flammable gas, the container is considered hazardous waste, even where the product is a water-based liquid.
In disposing of flammable propellants a particular problem arises with sparks upon puncture which might lead to explosion.
In addition to the concerns of discharging propellants into the atmosphere, which is coming under closer governmental regulation, there is the issue of costs, both in lost propellant and lost product. This invention addresses these issues with a unique solution.

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A lampshade includes a self-supporting backing member constituted of an extruded oriented polystyrene and an additive including a light-reflecting powdered filler, especially titanium dioxide, co-extruded with the oriented polystyrene and weighing in the range of 1%-10% of the total weight of the polystyrene. A fire-retarding filler, for example, antimony oxide, is also coextruded.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention generally relates to hard-backed lampshades and, more particularly, to improving the light reflectivity of such lampshade without sacrificing the light transmissivity through such lampshades, and without sacrificing the structural strength thereof.
2. Description of the Related Art
Lampshades for screening light from light bulbs have been made of a variety of materials. A hard-backed lampshade includes a self-supporting backing member, with or without a fabric material laminated thereon. A soft-backed lampshade includes a fabric material stretched taut over a wire frame.
For hard-backed lampshades, with which this invention is concerned, the backing member has been made of semi-rigid paper, such as opaque boxboard or translucent vegetable paper. However, opaque boxboard is a relatively poor light reflector. Vegetable paper also does not reflect light well and, in addition, does not allow light to be uniformly transmitted therethrough due to its irregular translucent characteristics. Unless chemically treated, paper shades pose a fire hazard.
Hard-backed lampshades have also been made of high-impact polystyrene ("HIPS") which contains butydene to allow the normally rigid styrene to be easily bent without cracking into a standard frusto-conical shape for the lampshade. The thickness of the known HIPS shades lies between 12-15 mils.
Although generally satisfactory for their intended purpose, the known HIPS shades have certain drawbacks. Thus, the presence of the butydene, as well as the thickness of the shade, act to block light from being transmitted through the lampshade. Also, the presence of the butydene renders the inner surface of the lampshade irregular, that is, not smooth, so that light is not efficiently reflected from this roughened surface. Unless chemically treated, any fabric laminated onto the HIPS shade represents a fire safety risk.


A selectable band-pass filtering apparatus for use at the input of analysis instrumentation, such as a spectrum analyzer for testing a multi-channel communication system, comprises a high-pass filter section including a plurality of separate high-pass filters, each characterized by a respective high-pass cut-off frequency within a predetermined input frequency spectrum characterizing the communication system and a low-pass filter section including a plurality of separate low-pass filters each characterized by a corresponding low-pass cut-off frequency within the input frequency spectrum. The apparatus further comprises switching devices capable of connecting a selected high-pass filter In series with a selected low-pass filter in order to select passband having center frequency and bandwidth characteristics defined by corresponding high-pass cut-off frequency and low-pass cut-off frequency.

The present invention relates to band-pass signal filtering, and more particularly to selectable band-pass filtering apparatus for use with spectrum analyzers for testing multi-channel communication systems.
Communication systems such as CATV or wireless communication systems use a multiplicity of signals that share a common physical link. In particular, CATV systems typically use up to 100 or 120 carriers on a same optical fiber or coaxial cable. Some of the instruments used to test these systems are of a wideband type, such as the spectrum analyzer, which is a broadband sweeping receiver. In order to accommodate the wideband fast sweep, the input circuitry needs also to be of a wideband type, with the result that incoming signals generate distortion products within the analyzer due to non-linear characteristics thereof, which distortion products increase with input power. These inherent distortion products being undistinguished from signal anomalies generated by the communication system under test, reliability of wideband spectrum analysis is therefore limited.
However, for some tests, the wideband capability of the spectrum analyzer is not required, because only a small portion of the available spectrum need to be analyzed. Therefore, it is usually convenient to restrict the frequency band of the signal fed to the instrument with appropriate filtering, hence minimizing input power and consequently distortion products within the instrument. Since the major distortion products are of the second and third order, these distortion products are respectively proportional to the second and third power of the incoming signals, and consequently, a reduction in input power of 1 dB increases the dynamic range between signals and associated distortion products by 1 dB and 2 dB, respectively. Several approaches have been heretofore proposed to implement such filtering. A first one uses a plurality of fixed band-pass filters that may be packaged separately or a few in a same casing, each band-pass filter having preset center-frequency and bandwidth characteristics corresponding to a single or a few communication channels. In use, the operator has to select a proper band-pass filter for the current test. A main drawback with fixed band-pass filters is that the center-frequency and band-width characteristics of each filter cannot be adjusted. A second known approach uses a tunable filter, which generally consists of a selection of band-pass filters each being tunable over a wider band such that they slightly overlap from the low end of one to the high end of the other, so that the user can select any desired channel. The control device for such tunable filter may be either mechanical or electronic. Known tunable filters available in the market place are supplied from Trilithic inc. (Indianapolis, Ind.) and KandL Microwave Inc. (Salisbury, Md.). Another type of tunable filter combines a low-pass filter section with a high-pass filter section, wherein one or both of those filter sections are made variable using different design techniques. Such tunable band-pass filter for a CATV converter is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,849,721 issued on Jul. 18, 1989 to Matsuura, which band-pass filter includes a continuously variable low-pass filter section using a variable trap analog circuit. Another tunable band-pass filter for signal noise reduction is described in U.S. Pat. No. 4,894,566 issued on Jan. 16, 1990 to Rush, which filter includes a variable high pass filter in series with a variable low-pass filter in an adaptive configuration. Although providing more flexibility for setting band-pass filter characteristics as compared to fixed band-pass filters, tunable filters are generally bulky and expensive, and therefore are not appropriate for use as a field test equipment.
It is therefore a main object of the present invention to provide a selectable band-pass filtering apparatus and method of a simple and economic design, featuring improved flexibility for setting band-pass filtering characteristics.
It is a further object of the present invention to provide a selectable band-pass filtering apparatus for use with a spectrum analyzer for testing a multi-channel communication system, featuring improved flexibility for setting band-pass filtering characteristics at the analyzer input.
It is a still further object of the present invention to provide a selectable band-pass filtering spectrum analyzer system for testing a multi-channel communication system, featuring improved flexibility for setting band-pass filtering characteristics at the input thereof.
According to the above main object, from a broad aspect of the invention, there is provided a selectable band-pass filtering apparatus comprising an input end for receiving an electrical signal to be filtered, a high-pass filter section including a plurality of separate high-pass filters each characterized by a respective high-pass cut-off frequency within a predetermined input frequency spectrum and a low-pass filter section including a plurality of separate low-pass filters each characterized by a corresponding low-pass cut-off frequency within the input frequency spectrum. The apparatus further comprises an output end, switch means capable of connecting a selected one of said high-pass filters in series with a selected one of said low-pass filters between the input and output ends to select a passband having center frequency and bandwidth characteristics defined by corresponding said high-pass cut-off frequency and said low-pass cut-off frequency, said connected filters generating a corresponding band-pass filtered signal at the output end, and a control device capable of operating said switch means according to said selected filters.
According to further broad aspect of the invention, there is provided a selectable band-pass filtering apparatus for use with a spectrum analyzer for testing a multi-channel communication system. The apparatus comprises an input end for receiving a communication signal to be filtered, a high-pass filter section including a plurality of separate high-pass filters each characterized by a respective high-pass cut-off frequency within a predetermined input frequency spectrum characterizing the communication system, and a low-pass filter section including a plurality of separate low-pass filters each characterized by a corresponding low-pass cut-off frequency within the input frequency spectrum. The apparatus further comprises an output end to be coupled to an input of the spectrum analyzer, switch means capable of connecting a selected one of said high-pass filters in series with a selected one of said low-pass filters between said input and output ends to select a passband having center frequency and bandwidth characteristics being defined by corresponding said high-pass cut-off frequency and said low-pass cut-off frequency, said selected passband characteristics corresponding to one or more selected channels used by the communication system, said connected filters generating a band-pass filtered communication signal corresponding to the selected channels at the output end, and a control device capable of operating said switch means according to the selected filters.
According to a still further broad aspect of the invention, there is provided a selectable band-pass filtering spectrum analyzer system for testing a multi-channel communication system. The spectrum analyzer system comprises a selectable band-pass filtering unit including an input end for receiving a communication signal to be filtered, a high-pass filter section including a plurality of separate high-pass filters each characterized by a respective high-pass cut-off frequency within a predetermined input frequency spectrum characterizing the communication system and a low-pass filter section including a plurality of separate low-pass filters each characterized by a corresponding high-pass cut-off frequency within the input frequency spectrum. The filtering unit further includes an output end, switch means capable of connecting a selected one of said high-pass filters in series with a selected one of said low-pass filters between the input and output ends to select a passband having center frequency and bandwidth characteristics defined by corresponding said high-pass cut-off frequency and said low-pass cut-off frequency, said selected passband characteristics corresponding to one or more selected channels used by the communication system, said connected filters generating a band-pass filtered communication signal corresponding to the selected channels at the output end, and a control device capable of operating said switch means according to the selected filters. The spectrum analyzer system further comprises a spectrum analyzer unit for analyzing the filtered communication signal.
According to a still further broad aspect of the invention, there is provided a method for selectively band-pass filtering an electrical signal, said method comprising the step of: providing a high-pass filter section including a plurality of separate high-pass filters each characterized by a respective high-pass cut-off frequency within a predetermined input frequency spectrum; providing a low-pass filter section including a plurality of separate low-pass filters each characterized by a corresponding low-pass cut-off frequency within the input frequency spectrum; and directing said signal through a selected one of said high-pass filters and through a selected one of said low-pass filters to generate a band-pass filtered signal having frequency corresponding to a passband having center frequency and bandwidth characteristics defined by corresponding said high-pass cut-off frequency and said low-pass cut-off frequency.
According to a still further broad aspect of the invention, there is provided a method for selectively band-pass filtering a communication signal to be fed to a spectrum analyzer for testing a multi-channel communication system. The method comprises the steps of: providing a high-pass filter section including a plurality of separate high-pass filters each characterized by a respective high-pass cut-off frequency within a predetermined input frequency spectrum characterizing said communication system; providing a low-pass filter section including a plurality of separate low-pass filters each characterized by a corresponding low-pass cut-off frequency within the input frequency spectrum; and directing said signal through a selected one of said high-pass filters and through a selected one of said low-pass filters to generate a band-pass filtered communication signal corresponding to one or more selected channels and having frequency characteristics corresponding to a selected passband having center frequency and bandwidth characteristics defined by corresponding said high-pass cut-off frequency and said low-pass cut-off frequency.
According to a still further broad aspect of the invention, there is provided a method for spectrally analyzing a communication signal supplied by a multi-channel communication system. The method comprises the steps of: providing a high-pass filter section including a plurality of separate high-pass filters each characterized by a respective high-pass cut-off frequency within a predetermined input frequency spectrum characterizing the communication system; providing a low-pass filter section including a plurality of separate low-pass filters each characterized by a corresponding low-pass cut-off frequency within the input frequency spectrum; directing said signal through a selected one of said high-pass filters and through a selected one of said low-pass filters to generate a band-pass filtered communication signal corresponding to one or more selected channels and having frequency characteristics corresponding to a selected passband having center-frequency and bandwidth characteristics defined by corresponding said high-pass cut-off frequency and said low-pass cut-off frequency; and spectrally analyzing the band-pass filtered communication signal.

Selectable band-pass filtering apparatus and method


A memory system having a processing device (e.g., CPU) and memory regions (e.g., in a DRAM device) on the same chip or die. The memory regions store data used by the processing device during machine learning processing (e.g., using a neural network). One or more controllers are coupled to the memory regions and configured to: read data from a first memory region (e.g., a first bank), including reading first data from the first memory region, where the first data is for use by the processing device in processing associated with machine learning; and write data to a second memory region (e.g., a second bank), including writing second data to the second memory region. The reading of the first data and writing of the second data are performed in parallel.

Limited memory bandwidth is a significant problem in machine learning systems. For example, DRAM devices used in current systems store large amounts of weights and activations used in deep neural networks (DNNs).
Existing computer architectures use processor chips specialized for serial processing and DRAMs optimized for high density memory. The interface between these two devices is a major bottleneck that introduces latency and bandwidth limitations and adds a considerable overhead in power consumption. Memory on-chip is area expensive and it is not possible to add large amounts of memory to the CPU and GPU processors currently used to train and deploy DNNs.
Memory in neural networks is required to store input data, weight parameters and activations as an input propagates through the network. In training, activations from a forward pass must be retained until they can be used to calculate the error gradients in the backwards pass. As an example, a network can have 26 million weight parameters and compute 16 million activations in a forward pass. If a 32-bit floating-point value is used to store each weight and activation, this corresponds to a total storage requirement of 168 MB.
GPUs and other machines need significant memory for the weights and activations of a neural network. GPUs cannot efficiently execute directly the small convolutions used in deep neural networks, so they need significant activation or weight storage. Finally, memory is also required to store input data, temporary values and program instructions. For example, a high performance GPU may need over 7 GB of local DRAM.
Large amounts of storage data cannot be kept on the GPU processor. In many cases, high performance GPU processors have only 1 KB of memory associated with each of the processor cores that can be read fast enough to saturate the floating-point data path. Thus, at each layer of a DNN, the GPU needs to save the state to external DRAM, load up the next layer of the network, and then reload the data. As a result, the off-chip memory interface suffers the burden of constantly reloading weights and saving and retrieving activations. This significantly slows down training time and increases power consumption.

Parallel access to volatile memory by a processing device for machine learning


A composition and method of treating paint spray booth water to detackify organic solvent based paint particles. The composition comprises a melamine polymer obtained from the reaction of melamine, aldehyde and an amine selected from the group consisting of dicyandiamide and glycine. These melamine polymers may be used in combination with a polyacrylamide, which combination exhibits surprising and unexpected effects when used to detackify organic solvent paint particles.

In the automotive and related coatings industries, it is estimated that between 20 to 40% of the total volume of paint sprayed is overspray. In the application of organic paints such as epoxy resins, high solids enamel paints and the like, it is necessary to trap the oversprayed paint. In large industrial applications such as auto body coating, this is accomplished by the use of water curtains on the interior booth walls, whereby the oversprayed coating material is incorporated into the water as it cascades down the walls of the booth into a reservoir. Typically, this water is recirculated back to the booth by means of recirculating pumps. The agglomeration and accumulation of live coating material in the water of the paint spray booth results in serious problems such as blockage of the pipes and circulating pumps as well as an accumulation of paint on the walls of the paint spray booth behind the water curtain. As more and more coating material is sprayed in the booth, the overspray material removed from the air builds up in the water in the form of tar-like coherent sludge which in a short time can foul the pumps and lines which circulate the booth's water. Furthermore, this sludge is extremely difficult to remove from the pump, lines, reservoir, and other internal surfaces of the system with which it comes in contact. The accumulation of raw paint masses in the water reservoir also creates serious maintenance problems when the system is periodically cleaned out, requiring much effort to remove the heavy build-up of coating material from the reservoir.
It is therefore desirable, to treat the water in the booth in such a way as to render the oversprayed coating material free of stickiness and tackiness so that it readily separates from the water, does not adhere to the spray booth walls, pipes, pumps; or other surfaces and internal components of the spray booth system, and maintains a floating, detackified condition.
Various treatments have been reported in the patent literature. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 3,861.887 discloses the treatment of paint booth wash water with a blend of polycationic water dispersible polymer with a water-soluble salt of an amphoteric metal to reduce the tackiness of paint. One problem with this approach is that the use of amphoteric metals such as zinc can create additional disposal concerns regarding the wastewater and sludge.
Another approach has been to use clay-based treatment. In U.S. Pat. No. 4,504,395, it is disclosed that certain hectorite clays can be effectively used to detackify oversprayed paint. One problem with this approach is that the resultant sludge produced by the clays is difficult to dewater, resulting in larger volumes of potentially hazardous materials requiring disposal in a secure landfill.
Yet another approach is to use a melamine-aldehyde acid colloid solution as disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,656,059. The melamine-aldehyde acid colloid solution is produced by causing melamine to react with aldehyde, preferably formaldehyde or paraformaldehyde, to form a melamine-formaldehyde reaction product and then adding acid to the melamine-formaldehyde reaction product to form the melamine-aldehyde acid colloid solution. The use of this composition entails the following disadvantages: (a) the paint is not completely detackified, (b) the melamine-aldehyde acid colloid product typically contains greater than 0.1% free formaldehyde which is a suspect carcinogen, and (c) as a consequence of incomplete detackification the paint cannot be effectively dewatered and thus results in increased hazardous waste sludge production.

Paint spray booth organic detackification treatment


A processing module for performing an operation of the type B=a.X+T in which B, X and T are high value integers, and a is an operand having a format restricted to m bits, in sequences constituted from computing steps consisting in combining the operand a with operands x.sub.i and t.sub.i, of restricted format, extracted from the data X and T, at the rank of significance i and in storing a partial result b.sub.i of the same significance rank, this processing module including a static multiplier and two adders and a resistor for storing and recycling the most significant portion of a previous computing step. The processing module includes k inputs for operands a (l . . . k) of successive ranks, for successively applying, in work cycles k steps the said operands a (l . . . k) to one of the inputs of the multiplier, registers and multipliers enabling a delay of k computing steps in the most significant portion of the result at the output of a second adder and of (k-1) computing steps in the least significant portion of the same result, respectively in the first step and in the other steps of each cycle.

The present invention relates to an arithmetic processing module associated with a microprocessor central processing unit, with a sequencer and with a working memory of the read-write type, for performing an operation corresponding to the general formula: EQU B=a.X+T
in which B, X and T are high value integers and a is an operand having a format restricted to m bits, this operation being produced during a sequence of successive computing steps consisting in combining the operand a with operands x.sub.i and t.sub.i having a format restricted to n bits, which are respectively extracted from the integers X and T, at the rank of significance i taken in increasing order, and in storing the partial result b.sub.i, of the same significance rank and also forming an extract having a format restricted to n bits of the complete result B, the processing module comprising inputs for the operands a, x.sub.i and t.sub.i and an output for the result b.sub.i, a multiplier for performing the product a.x.sub.i, followed by a first adder and a second adder, the second adder supplying a partial operation result which can be divided into a most significant portion and a least significant portion which is capable of being directed on output as a result b.sub.i, the operand t.sub.i being applied to one of the inputs of one of the adders and the most significant portion of a preceding computing step being applied to one of the inputs of the other adder by means of a recycling storage unit.
The invention is more particularly but not exclusively aimed at small sized systems where the function of processing a digital information is executed by a single integrated circuit, of the microcontroller type. In such a circuit, a very strict compromise must be sought between the speed of execution of the processing and the implementation of a minimum number of components, in order to satisfy both the requirements of manufacturing cost and those of the duration of execution of the processing. A particularly significant example in this respect is represented by the miniaturized device of the "smart card" (or "chip card") type capable of multiple applications, for example: exchange of bank data, access control, signature authentication, etc.
When the data processing comprises a large number of similar arithmetic operations, it is advantageous to couple to a central processing unit (CPU), for which rather general management functions are reserved, a specialized processing module capable of performing a certain type of arithmetic and/or logic operation at high speed and of doing this in a relatively independent manner with respect to the central processing unit, at least while a sequence of consecutively concatenated operations is being performed.
A processing module of this type and complying with the definition given in the introductory paragraph is known from the patent application FR-A-2 613 861.
As this is a device principally intended to be incorporated in a microcontroller for a smart card it is necessary to try to economize as much as possible on the memory requirements to be integrated on the microcontroller chip and also to make best use of the clock speed which, according to current technologies, is rather limited. Finally, the sought objective is that the processing duration should be acceptable by the user, for example the waiting time for a processing result should remain, if possible, less than or in the order of one second.
An analysis of the known processing module shows that its operation must be frequently interrupted particularly for loading new data to be processed under the control of the central processing unit. These interruptions necessarily cause a very significant slowing down of the overall data processing operation.

Arithmetic processing module to be associated with a microprocessor central processing unit


In some examples, a fluid delivery device is described. The fluid deliver device includes a housing; a reservoir disposed within the housing, the fluid reservoir defining a fluid outlet at a first end of the fluid reservoir; a plunger assembly disposed within the fluid reservoir, the plunger assembly including a friction clutch; and a seal engaged with an interior surface of the fluid reservoir to prevent movement of a material within the fluid reservoir past the seal; and a motive element in communication with a first end of the plunger assembly and configured to apply a motive force on the first end of the plunger assembly towards the first end of the fluid reservoir, wherein the friction clutch is configured to apply a frictional force to the interior surface of the fluid reservoir to resist the motive force, and wherein operation of the friction clutch enables motive force to overcome the frictional force to allow the plunger assembly to translate towards the first end of the fluid reservoir.

Fluid delivery devices enable delivery of medical fluids automatically using pumps, screw driven syringes, and other similar fluid displacement devices. These fluid displacement devices often include motors and/or gear boxes, which may limit the degree to which they can be miniaturized. Additionally, in some examples, manufacturing costs associated with such fluid displacement devices may be prohibitive for single use implementation.


An external portion or burb of a host computer receives messages from external servers representative of accurate time from one or more peer computers coupled by a network. A process called a client on the external burb processes the messages and then accurately sets a host computer clock. Processes called servers running on an internal burb which may not communicate directly with peers, then access the clock to obtain a correct indication of network time without having to communicate directly with the peer computers. The time is then provided to internal clients. This allows a host computer without an expensive clock to update its clock and enable it to provide accurate time to processes running on the host.

Networks connect many computers together allowing them to exchange date via communications lines. Several standards defining how such date exchanges should occur have been developed and implemented to ensure that computer and computer programs using the same protocols can successfully exchange data. One of the problems associated with the ability to exchange data is ensuring that the security of a computer attached to such a network is safe from attack by someone who is not authorized to access the computer. There has been an explosion in the growth of computer networks as organizations realize the benefits of networking their personal computers and workstations. Increasingly, these networks are falling prey to malicious outsiders who hack into the network, reading and sometimes destroying sensitive information. Exposure to such attacks has increased as companies connect to outside networks such as the Internet.
A common communication on networks, such as the Internet, are messages relating to ensuring that computers are set to the proper time. This is important in time stamping further communications and in ensuring that time triggered events occur when desired. Extremely accurate clocks are expensive, and not many computers have them. Thus, when a process running on a computer needs to have the correct time, it may need to ask for the time from a different source.
To facilitate the setting of time in computers attached to the Internet, a Network Time Protocol (NTP) standard has been established. It provides a way for all clocks in computers on a network to be synchronized. A formal specification of NTP version 3 is described in RFC1305, which is published in many places on the Internet, and implemented by many computer owners to synchronize the clocks on their computers.
At a high level, software called a client, on one computer sends a NTP message to one or more servers which are thought to have accurate time. The client then processes the replies, which contain information representative of the correct time. The client then determines the server time with respect to local time and adjusts the local clock accordingly. In some implementations, multiple servers are asked for the time, and the replies are processed to account for delays and known errors. In general the approach involves mutually coupled oscillators and maximum-likelihood estimation and clock-selection procedures, together with a design that allows provable assertions on error bounds to be made relative to stated assumptions on the correctness of the primary reference sources. In essence, a system of distributed NTP peers operates as a set of coupled phase-locked oscillators, with an update algorithm functioning as a phase detector and the local clock as a disciplined oscillator, but with deterministic error bounds calculated at each step in the time-transfer process. This known process utilizes a NTP time stamp represented as a 64 bit unsigned fixed point number which allows precision to about 200 picoseconds.
NTP messages between multiple servers and a host attempting to update its clock, flow back and forth, sometimes at set intervals in the range of one minute or less if great accuracy is desired. One problem associated with such message traffic is that it does not protect against unauthorized access to the host attempting to update its time. NTP uses a simple transport protocol called User Datagram Protocol (UDP.) UDP is a protocol for processes to exchange datagrams such as time requests between processes coupled via Internet Protocol (IP.) One important feature of the UDP protocol is that there is no assurance that a message will get through. It is said to be an unreliable communications protocol for this reason. No continuous connection is established, and since there is no maintenance of the states of messages to ensure the delivery, there is very little overhead in implementing the UDP communication protocol. It also means that since there is no continuous connection, it is easier for someone to attempt unauthorized communication by simply sending message to a port that is known to be waiting for replies to a time request or proxy from any given process running on the host. There is a need to provide a safe way to provide an accurate indication of time to a process without exposing it to unauthorized access. There is also a need to synchronize a host's clock accurately with other accurate clocks on a network. There is a need to synchronize the host's clock in such a manner that does not have high overhead and does not allow unauthorized access to the host.

Enhanced security network time synchronization device and method