A universal ceiling box adapted to selectively support fans and fixtures. The ceiling box preferably has a substantially flat, top portion with a side portion extending substantially perpendicularly from the perimeter of the top portion. The side portion and the top portion form a main cavity with an open bottom end. A mounting element extends from the side portion into the main cavity for selectively coupling and supporting fans and fixtures thereto. The mounting element has a pair of opposed fan mounting holes with a first diameter, and a pair of opposed fixture mounting holes with a second diameter which is smaller than the first diameter. Each of the first and second mounting holes has an axis extending perpendicular to the top portion, respectively.

Currently, many different types of electrical boxes are known in the art for use as ceiling boxes. Most of the prior art ceiling boxes have been designed either specifically for supporting ceiling fans or specifically for supporting light fixtures. In other words, different types of electrical boxes are typically used for ceiling fan support than those used for supporting light fixtures. In particular, electrical boxes for supporting ceiling fans typically use standard 10-32 screws, while electrical boxes for light fixture support use standard 8-32 screws. Moreover, Underwriters Laboratories (U.L.) has a test that electrical ceiling boxes must pass in order to be used as the sole support of a ceiling fan. Typically, a conventional electrical box used for supporting a light fixture or the like can not be used for supporting a ceiling fan.
Accordingly, when an electrical box is installed in a ceiling, the installer must determine whether a ceiling fan or a light fixture will be attached to the electrical box so that the correct type of electrical box is installed. If a light fixture type electrical box is initially installed at a particular location and then subsequently it is decided that a ceiling fan should be installed at that location, the original electrical box must typically either be modified or replaced with an electrical box which is approved for ceiling fan support.
Adapting existing light fixture boxes for use with ceiling fans is often quite difficult since light fixture boxes use smaller fasteners and are generally not strong enough to support fans without substantial reinforcements or special brackets.
If, on the other hand, an electrical box which is approved for ceiling fan support is initially installed at a particular location and then subsequently it is decided that a light fixture is to be installed at that location, the light fixture can be attached to the ceiling fan type electrical box. In other words, the National Electrical Code permits lighting fixtures to be supported by electrical boxes proved for ceiling fan support but not vice-a-versa.
However, adapting existing ceiling fan boxes for use with a light fixture or the like is not always easily accomplished, since fasteners for the light fixture are different from the fasteners use with ceiling fans. For example, fasteners used with light fixtures generally smaller in diameter than fasteners use with ceiling fans. Moreover, fixture support fasteners often come in various colors, finishes and lengths as well as with various decorative features which may be difficult, if not impossible to match, in a fastener which can be used with an electrical box approved for use with ceiling fans.
A new National Electrical Code provision (N.E.C. 370-27 (c)) has been proposed which would require that electrical boxes approved for use with ceiling fans to be installed at most locations in a building (e.g., in stairways, foyers and bathrooms). If this provision passes, than the above noted problems will be more common. This provision has been adopted in the State of Wisconsin.
Examples of prior art ceiling fan supports are disclosed in the following U.S. Pat. Nos.: 4,391,428 to Grimes; 4,880,128 to Jorgensen; 4,892,211 to Jorgensen; 5,234,119 to Jorgensen et al.; and 5,407,088 to Jorgensen et al.
Examples of prior art electrical boxes are disclosed in the following U.S. Pat. Nos.: 4,315,100 to Haslbeck et al.; 4,580,689 to Slater; 4,874,905 to Schnell et al.; 4,954,667 to Jorgensen et al.; and 5,135,411 to Wiley et al.
In view of the above noted problems, there exists a need for an electrical box approved for use with ceiling fans that can accommodate both standard light fixture fasteners as well as ceiling fan fasteners. This invention addresses this need in the prior art as well as other needs and problems which will become apparent those skilled in the art from this disclosure.

Universal ceiling box for either fan or fixture support


Retrocyclin peptides are small antimicrobial agents with potent activity against bacteria and viruses. The peptides are nonhemolytic, and exhibit minimal in vitro cytotoxicity. A pharmaceutical composition comprising retrocyclin as an active agent is administered therapeutically to a patient suffering from a bacterial and/or viral infection, or to an individual facing exposure to a bacterial and/or viral infection, especially one caused by the HIV-1 retrovirus or other sexually-transmitted pathogens.

Natural polycationic antimicrobial peptides have been found in many different species of animals and insects and shown to have broad antimicrobial activity. In mammals, these antimicrobial peptides are represented by two families, the defensins and the cathelicidins. Nearly all of these peptides have membrane affinity, and can permeate and permeabilize bacterial membranes, resulting in injury, lysis, and/or death to the microbes. In particular, the human peptides known as defensins are produced by mammalian and avian leukocytes (e.g. neutrophils, some macrophages) and epithelial cells.
Three defensin subfamilies exist in vertebrates: alpha-defensins, beta-defensins, and circular (theta) minidefensins. All derive from an ancestral gene that existed before reptiles and birds diverged, contain six cysteines, and have largely beta-sheet structures that are stabilized by three intramolecular disulfide bonds. RTD-1, a theta minidefensin, was recently detected in bone marrow from the rhesus monkey, Macacca mulatta. It had 18 residues and was circular, having been formed by the fusion of two truncated alpha-defensin precursors ("demidefensins") each of which contributed 3 cysteines to the mature peptide. It is not yet known if the cellular machinery responsible for processing these precursors remains operational in human leukocytes.
Alpha-defensins are largely beta sheet peptides that contain 29-35 amino acid residues, including 6 cysteines that form three intramolecular disulfide bonds. Because of the nature of the cysteine pairings, the molecules are effectively macrocyclic. Four of these α-defensins, HNP 1-4, occur primarily in human neutrophils. HD-5 & 6 are found in Paneth cells, specialized cells of the small intestine's crypts. Human α-defensin genes contain three exons and two introns and are clustered on chromosome 8p23. They encode preprodefensins that contain ˜100 residues which include a signal peptide, a polyanionic propiece and the C-terminal defensin domain. Mature defensins are processed by sequential proteolysis.
Beta defensins are generally larger than α-defensins (35-40 residues) and may also be more ancient, since they occur in birds as well as mammals. Beta defensins are expressed in many different types of epithelial cells, and in some glands. In some cases, expression is constitutive; in others, it is inducible. Several β-defensin genes are located on 8p23, adjacent to the α-defensin genes-consistent with their common evolutionary ancestry. The disulfide pairing motif of beta defensins differs from that of α-defensins, however α and β-defensins have generally similar shapes.
The three-dimensional structure of many defensins comprises a complexly folded amphiphilic beta-sheet, with the polar face formed by its arginines and by the N- and C-terminal residues playing an important role in defining microbicidal potency and the antimicrobial spectrum. The antimicrobial effects of defensins are derived from their ability to permeabilize cell membranes and interact with viral envelopes, thereby exposing contents of the microorganism to the environment or abrogating viral infectivity. (See Gudmundsson et al. (1999) J Immunol Methods 232(1-2):45-54.) Antimicrobial peptides are reviewed by Hancock and Lehrer (1998) Trends in Biotechnology 16:82.
In general, the antiviral activities of antimicrobial peptides have not been extensively investigated. Although studies have reported that antimicrobial peptides, such as human neutrophil-derived defensins (α-defensins), are directly virucidal against herpes simplex virus (HSV), and adenovirus strains, only a few reports deal with anti-HIV-1 activity. T22 and T140, analogs of polyphemusins (peptides from horseshoe crabs), are active in inhibiting HIV-1 replication through binding to the chemokine receptor CXCR4. However, these peptides only inhibit the T cell-tropic (T-tropic; X4) strains that utilize CXCR4 as a coreceptor for entry and they are ineffective against strains that utilize CCR5 for entry (macrophage (M)-tropic "R5" viruses). Since sexual transmission is largely attributed to R5 infection, the potential of T22 and T140 as topical vaginal or rectal microbicides is limited.
One study indicated that protegrins (porcine-derived peptides) can inactivate HIV-1 virions. Another study showed that indolicidin, a 13 amino acid peptide isolated from bovine neutrophils, was reproducibly virucidal against HIV-1 only at very high concentrations (333 μg/ml) of peptide. Certain structural and functional similarities exist between the loop motifs of α-defensins and peptides derived from HIV-1 gp41 that may be required for viral fusion and infectivity.
Vaginal and rectal subepithelial stromal tissues are densely populated with dendritic cells (DC), macrophages and T-cells that express both CD4 and the HIV-1 coreceptors, CXCR4 and CCR5. Mechanisms whereby HIV-1 journeys across the mucosal epithelia are not clear, but may directly involve the epithelial cells. Once the virus reaches the lamina propria, it can either directly infect macrophages or T-cells or adhere to or infect DC whose traffic to the regional lymph nodes conveys them into sites of vigorous viral replication. A recent report suggests that binding of HIV-1 to DC is mediated by the C-type lectin DC-SIGN, independent of CD4 or chemokine receptors. Thus, mucosal factors which modulate steps in this process could affect the probability of transmission of HIV-1 infection.
There is a clinical need for novel antiviral and antimicrobial agents that have low toxicity against mammalian cells. The present invention addresses this need.
Relevant Literature
Defensins are reviewed by Lehrer et al. (1992) Ann. Rev. Immunol. 11:105-128. Other endogenous antimicrobials are reviewed in Schonwetter et al. (1995) Science 267:1645-1648; Schroder (1999) Cell Mol Life Sci. 56:32-46 (1999); and Harwig et al. (1994) FEBS Lett 342:281-285.
Specific defensins are described in Tang et al. (1999) Science 286:498-502; Zimmermann et al. (1995) Biochemistry 34:13663-13671; Liu et al. (1997) Genomics 43:316-320; and Palfree & Shen (1994) GenBank U10267; Polley et al GenBank AF238378 disclose the sequence of Homo sapiens chromosome 8p23 clone SCb-561b17.
Retrovirus infection and antiretroviral therapy are discussed in Wilson et al. (1995) J. Infect. Dis. 172:88-96; Wong et al. Science 278:1291-1295; and Yang et al. (1999) J. Virol. 73, 4582-4589.

This patent is subject to a terminal disclaimer.

Retrocyclins: antiviral and antimicrobial peptides

The Regents of the University of California


A computing device that provides hardware conversion of flow control predicates associated with program instructions executable within the computing device, detects the beginning and the end of a branch domain of the program instructions, and realizes the beginning and the end of the branch domain at execution time, for selectively enabling and disabling instructions within said branch domain.

Computer programs typically use traditional control flow constructs to determine when and if instructions in the program are executed. Such constructs include "if—then—else" statements and various looping statements such as: "while (condition is true){ . . . }", "for(i initialized to 1; while i<10; increment i every loop iteration){ . . . }" and "do i=1 to 10 . . . enddo". The majority of such control statements are realized with machine-level instructions called branches, and most of these are conditional branches.
Branches are used as follows. Most computers employ a model of computation using a pointer to the code of the program it is executing. The pointer is provided by a program counter (PC) that contains the address of the machine instruction the computer is currently executing. Every time an instruction is executed, the default action is to increment the program counter to point to the next instruction to be executed. Most useful programs employ branches to conditionally modify the contents of the program counter to point to other places in a program, not just the next instruction. Therefore, a conditional branch has the semantics: if (condition is true) then load the program counter with a (specified) value.
A well-known alternative to conditional branches is the use of predicates. A predicate is typically a one-bit variable having the values true or false; it is usually set by a comparison instruction. In this model every instruction has a predicate as an additional input. The semantics is that the instruction is only effectively executed (i.e., its output state changed) if the predicate is true. An example of equivalent classic control flow and modern predication is as follows:
Classic code:Predicated code:1.if (a == b) {1.Prod = (a == b); //Prod set to true if aequals b.2.z = x + y;2.IF (Pred) THEN z = x + y; //Operationsperformed only3.w = a + b; }3.IF (Pred) THEN w = a + b; // if Predtrue.4.// later instructions:4.// later instructions: NOT dependent on// all dependent on 1.1.
In traditional computers, all instructions following a branch are dependent on the branch and must wait for the branch to execute before executing themselves. This has been demonstrated to be a significant barrier in realizing much parallelism within a program, thus keeping performance gains low.
However, with predication, only the instructions having the equivalent predicate as an input are dependent on the branch-remnant (the comparison operation). In the example and, in general, this means the instructions after the predicated instructions are now independent of the branch-remnant and may be executed in parallel with instructions before the branch-remnant, improving performance.
Current approaches to using predication use visible and explicit predicates. The predicates are controlled by the computer user and they use storage explicitly present in the computer's instruction set architecture (similar to regular data registers or main memory). They are explicit since there is at least a single 1- bit predicate hardware register associated with each instruction. The most extreme example of this is the IA-64 (Intel Architecture-64 bits) architecture. The first realization of this architecture is the Itanium (formerly Merced) processor, due to be on the market in the year 2000. Itanium has 64 visible-explicit predicate registers. See for example the document by the Intel Corporation, entitled "IA-64 Application Developer's Architecture Guide". Santa Clara, Calif.: Intel Corporation, May 1999. Order Number: 24188-001, via www.intel.com. The predicates cannot be effectively used when the processor executes traditional IA-32 (x86) machine code. Therefore, billions of dollars of existing software cannot take advantage of Itanium without modification. Other types of microprocessors have similar constraints to x86 processors. That is, predicates are not currently in their instruction set, so they cannot take advantage of predication techniques.
It is possible to predicate just a subset of the instructions of a processor, but then the benefits of predication are much less. Full predication is preferred.
In prior work we devised a method for realizing an equivalent to full predication called minimal control dependencies (MCD). See for example, the papers by: (i) A. K. Uht, "Hardware Extraction of Low-Level Concurrency from Sequential Instruction Streams", PhD thesis, Carnegie-Mellon University, December 1985, available from University Microfilms International, Ann Arbor, Mich., U.S.A; (ii) A. K. Uht, "An Efficient Hardware Algorithm to Extract Concurrency From General-Purpose Code," in Proceedings of the Nineteenth Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences, University of Hawaii, in cooperation with the ACM and the IEEE Computer Society, January 1986; and (iii) A. K. Uht, "A Theory of Reduced and Minimal Procedural Dependencies," IEEE Transactions on Computers, vol. 40, pp. 681–692, June 1991. Each of these papers is incorporated herein by reference. MCD produced substantial performance gains, especially when coupled with another performance-enhancing technique of ours called disjoint eager execution, disclosed in the paper by A. K. Uht and V. Sindagi, entitled "Disjoint Eager Execution: An Optimal Form of Speculative Execution," in Proceedings of the 28th International Symposium on Microarchitecture (MICRO-28), pp. 313–325, IEEE and ACM, November/December 1995. This paper is also incorporated herein by reference. MCD can be considered to have hidden and implicit predicates, in that the predicates are not visible to the user, nor are they explicitly present in the processor. However, MCD has disadvantages when compared to predication such as a high hardware cost (e.g., more logic gates and storage) with relatively complex hardware. In particular, j-by-j diagonal bit matrices are required, where j is the number of instructions in the instruction window (those instructions currently under consideration for execution by the processor). In a high-ILP machine, j might be 256 or more, leading to a cumbersome 32,000 or more bit diagonal matrix. Further, all of the bits need to be accessed and operated on at the same time, leading to a very complex and potentially slow hardware layout. Lastly, setting the contents of the matrix when instructions are loaded into the processor is also costly and potentially slow.
Therefore, there is a need for an automatic and transparent hardware conversion of traditional control flow predicates.

Automatic and transparent hardware conversion of traditional control flow to predicates


Disclosed is a method for detecting one or more mismatches in a test nucleic acid which preferentially hybridizes to a reference nucleic acid. The method involves a) providing the test nucleic acid in its single-stranded form; b) providing the reference nucleic acid immobilized on a solid support, the reference nucleic acid being in its single-stranded form and the solid support being compatible with a slot in an electrophoretic gel; c) contacting the single-stranded test nucleic acid with the single-stranded immobilized reference nucleic acid under conditions allowing heteroduplex formation, whereby the heteroduplex is immobilized on the solid support; d) contacting the immobilized heteroduplex with a resolvase (for example, T4 endonuclease VII) capable of recognizing at least one single base pair mismatch in the heteroduplex under conditions which permit the resolvase to cleave the heteroduplex; e) inserting the solid support into the slot of the electrophoretic gel under conditions sufficient to release all or a cleaved portion of the immobilized heteroduplex into the slot; and f) analyzing the released product by gel electrophoresis, the presence of a cleavage product being an indication of a mismatch in the test nucleic acid.

This invention relates to nucleic acid mismatch detection formats.
The ability to detect mutations in coding and non-coding DNA, as well as RNA, is important for the diagnosis of inherited diseases. A gene mutation can be a single nucleotide change or multiple nucleotide changes in a DNA sequence encoding an essential protein. A single nucleotide change or multiple nucleotide changes can result in frame shift mutations, stop codons, or non-conservative amino acid substitutions in a gene, each of which can independently render the encoded protein inactive. However, a gene mutation can be harmless, resulting in a protein product with no detectable change in function (i.e., a harmless gene polymorphism). Mutations in repetitive DNA can also lead to diseases as is the case, for example, in human fragile-X syndrome, spinal and bulbar muscular dystrophy, and myotonic dystrophy.
A mutant nucleic acid that includes a single nucleotide change or multiple nucleotide changes will form one or more base pair mismatches after denaturation and subsequent annealing with the corresponding wild type and complementary nucleic acid. For example, G:A, C:T, C:C, G:G, A:A, T:T, C:A, and G:T represent the eight possible single base pair mismatches which can be found in a nucleic acid heteroduplex, where U is substituted for T when the nucleic acid strand is RNA. Nucleic acid mismatches can form when the two complementary strands of a heteroduplex are derived from DNA or RNA molecules that differ in sequence such that one contains deletions, substitutions, insertions, transpositions, or inversions of sequences compared to the other.
Detection of such mutations provides an important diagnostic tool in areas including cancer diagnosis and prognosis, perinatal screening for inherited diseases, differential diagnosis of diseases not readily detectable by conventional tests (for example, Marfan's syndrome and the fragile X syndrome), and the analysis of genetic polymorphisms (for example, for genetic mapping or identification purposes).

Detection of mismatches by resolvase cleavage on a solid support


Compositions, methods and apparatuses for reducing or eliminating malodors from indoor air are described. The method utilizes vapor phase hydrogen peroxide (VPHP) generated from either evaporation from an aqueous-based liquid composition or sublimation from a solid hydrogen peroxide-containing compound. VPHP engages a media coated with at least one transitional metal element or compound, which acts as an oxidation catalyst, in the presence of air that contains malodorous compounds to provide increased efficacy of malodor molecule oxidation. The apparatus can employ a disposable porous non-woven filter pad coated with one or more transition metal compounds, and a solid source of VPHP. Malodor-containing air engages the pad in the presence of the VPHP to effectively oxidize the malodorants. The apparatus can also include a mechanism to provide color change(s) in the presence of VPHP to indicate whether the device contains VPHP or not.

1. Technical Field
This disclosure relates to odor reduction or elimination from air through the use of vapor phase hydrogen peroxide in combination with a media coated with a transition metal element or compound. Odor reduction or elimination is accomplished by the synergistic introduction of vapor phase hydrogen peroxide (VPHP) into malodorous air and allowing the malodorant and VPHP to engage a catalyst, where the catalyst comprises at least one transition metal element or compound.
2. Description of Related Art
The issue of malodors, and their potential adverse effects on health and quality of indoor life, has been a concern for centuries. While malodors are sometimes an indicator of danger or disease, they are typically little more than an unpleasant experience that negatively affect ambiance. Thus, for both nuisance and health reasons, methods have been sought to eliminate or substantially alleviate malodors wherever they are encountered, especially from indoor environments.
Many devices and techniques have evolved to treat malodors. Such methods or techniques have included masking odors with perfumes, fragrances or incense, displacing malodorous air with fans or blowers, absorbing malodors with activated carbon or other materials, and removing malodors from air using electrostatic precipitators. These methods and devices, though somewhat effective in lessening the impact of malodors, generally do not actually eliminate the malodorous substances themselves from the indoor environment.
While displacing malodorous indoor air with fans or blowers, and replacing it with fresh outdoor air may actually eliminate malodors from an indoor environment, such an approach to indoor malodor abatement is economically impractical when said indoor air is temperature and/or humidity controlled. Further, many indoor spaces such as high-rise apartments and high-rise offices do not have direct access to fresh outdoor air.
In the case of activated carbon, malodorous materials are not changed and may in fact be desorbed as a result of temperature fluctuations or interior carbon particle saturation—thus rendering this method less than optimally effective. The mechanism involved entails three separate (physical) processes which leave the malodorous substances intact: condensation, Van der Waals attraction and diffusion to the carbon particle interior.
Similarly, electrostatic precipitation consists essentially of a flocculation and subsequent collection of charged dust particles. Odor removal with this technique requires adsorption of malodors onto the targeted dust particles. Like techniques using activated carbon, this approach is clearly limited by the volatility and adsorbing propensity of the molecules involved. In any case, the odoriferous materials are not converted to less offensive compounds.
Perfume masking techniques (fragranced sprays, incenses, etc.) also leave the offending substances unchanged, which is less desirable than destroying, altering or deactivating the malodorous compounds. However, other approaches utilize chemical conversion to render malodorants innocuous. Examples of chemical conversion techniques include the use of promoters such as water-soluble ethylene oxide or propylene oxide derivatives, or mixtures of thereof. Other examples include molecules with one or more functional groups acting as a Lewis acid, Lewis base, oxidizing agent, reducing agent, or other functional group that will chemically neutralize the malodorant particles.
Finally, other techniques utilize materials that remove the malodorants from the gas phase and therefore reduce their partial pressure in the ambient air. For example, triethylene glycol, film forming polymers and cyclodextrins have been used to reduce the partial pressure of malodorants by physically removing malodor molecules from the ambient air without chemically neutralizing or altering them. In the case of triethylene glycol, the malodor molecules are partitioned into globules or droplets; in the case of film forming polymers, the malodors are "blanketed" or trapped; in the case of cyclodextrins, the malodors are trapped in the cage-like structure of cyclodextrins. In these scenarios, the malodors molecules are displaced rather than being chemically transformed into one or more less malodorous substances.
Hydrogen peroxide, an inexpensive and somewhat reactive oxidant, can also be used for malodor elimination or reduction by oxidizing malodorant molecules. However, current uses of hydrogen peroxide are limited to the use of aqueous solutions. For example, aqueous hydrogen peroxide solutions are used to remove food and smoke odors from the restaurant broiling grill emissions, in part through scrubbing of the grill exhaust gas stream through an aqueous peroxide solution. To be effective, the food must be cooked over thin, high temperature ceramic briquettes to enhance incineration of potential malodors, as well as scrubbing the grill gas stream with an aqueous hydrogen peroxide solution, followed by mixing the treated gas with ambient air prior to discharge to the atmosphere. Obviously, these systems are complex and costly and are not suitable for use by general consumers desiring to treat the air in an enclosed space.
Malodorous air may also be washed with an aqueous solution containing both hydrogen peroxide and ozone. For example, deodorization processes are known which generate and discharge ozone in combination with an atomized hydrogen peroxide solution. A reaction between ozone and atomized hydrogen peroxide generates a hydroxyl radical which is said to decompose various malodorous substances present in an indoor environment. However, the ozone generating requirement of these apparatuses makes them costly and potentially hazardous.
In a sewage treatment process, odor abatement is achieved by contacting hydrophobic components of an odor-containing gas plume condensate with odor-trapping core particles containing precipitates resulting from reaction ferrous ion, tannic acid, and hydrogen peroxide. Other processes utilize aqueous deodorant compositions containing hydrogen peroxide and nitrate ion or hydrogen peroxide, nitrate ion, and a transition metal salt. The aqueous deodorant compositions are typically mixed directly with the waste stream. Sulfide odors can be reduced or eliminated from the vapor spaces of waste handling and treatment systems by injecting a fine spray, mist or fog of an aqueous alkaline hydrogen peroxide solution into air spaces within sewage-containing system handling or treatment equipment.
Aqueous alkaline phosphate-containing hydrogen peroxide compositions for various odor elimination and disinfection uses are also known. The aqueous compositions are introduced onto surfaces and into air handling ducts by the application of a spray or mist of the aqueous alkaline peroxide solutions. The alkaline phosphate salts are said to enhance the oxidizing power of the peroxide and also to function as a peroxide stabilizer.
One catalytic process for removal of malodors from industrial gas streams includes scrubbing the gas stream through a fixed bed scrubber fitted with a solid packing bed containing a transition metal catalyst and hydrogen peroxide-containing liquor. While this technique is suitable for industrial systems, it is not applicable to home or office use.
Therefore, a need exists for malodor treatment compositions and methods which are straightforward and inexpensive to manufacture and which provide effective reduction or elimination of malodors in indoor air spaces and that can be safely used by the consuming public.

Reduction of airborne malodors using hydrogen peroxide and a catalyst-coated media


The present invention concerns methods of quantifying nucleic acids using a bioluminescence regenerative cycle (BRC). In BRC, steady state levels of bioluminescence result from processes that produce pyrophosphate. Pyrophosphate reacts with APS in the presence of ATP sulfurylase to produce ATP. The ATP reacts with luciferin in a luciferase-catalyzed reaction, producing light and regenerating pyrophosphate. The pyrophosphate is recycled to produce ATP and the regenerative cycle continues. Because the kinetic properties of ATP sulfurylase are much faster than luciferase, a steady state results wherein concentrations of ATP and pyrophosphate and the rate of light production remain relatively constant. Photons are counted over a time interval to determine the number of target molecules present in the initial sample. The BRC process has a controllable dynamic range up to seven orders of magnitude and is sensitive enough to detect a few thousand molecules of target nucleic acid.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to the field of nucleic acid detection and/or quantification. More particularly, the present invention concerns novel approaches to detection and/or quantification of gene expression, single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs), protein-protein interaction, real time PCR and/or pathogen typing.
2. Description of Related Art
Methods of precise and highly sensitive detection and/or quantification of nucleic acids are of use for a variety of medical, forensic, epidemiological, public health, biological warfare and other applications. A variety of molecular biology and genomic techniques would benefit from the availability of precise and sensitive methods for nucleic acid detection and/or quantification.
DNA microarrays provide a platform for exploring the genome, including analysis of gene expression by hybridization with sequence specific oligonucleotide probes attached to chips in precise arrays. (E.g., Schena et al., Science 270:467–470, 1995; Shalon et al., Genome Res. 6:639–645, 1996; Pease et al., Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 91:5022–26, 1994). Microarray technology is an extension of previous hybridization-based methods, such as Southern and Northern blotting, that have been used to identify and quantify nucleic acids in biological samples (Southern, J. Mol. Biol. 98:503–17, 1975; Pease et al., Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 93:10614–19, 1996). Identification of a target nucleic acid in a sample typically involves fluorescent detection of the nucleic acid hybridized to an oligonucleotide at a particular location on the array. Fluorescent detection is too insensitive to detect very low levels of a target nucleic acid in a sample. It is also more qualitative than quantitative. Thus, detection of small changes in the level of expression of a particular gene, as might be attempted for high through-put screening of potential inhibitors and/or activators of gene expression, may not be feasible using a fluorescence detection system with microarrays. More accurate and sensitive methods for nucleic acid quantification are needed.
Real time PCR™ (polymerase chain reaction) is another technique for which accurate and sensitive quantification are needed (e.g., Model 770 TaqMan® system, Applied Biosystems, Foster City, Calif.). Typically, if the target of interest is present, it will be amplified by replication using flanking primers and a nucleic acid polymerase. A probe, which may consist of a complementary oligonucleotide with attached reporter and quencher dyes, is designed to bind to the amplified target nucleic acid between the two primer-binding sites. The nuclease activity of the polymerase cleaves the probe, resulting in an increase in fluorescence of the reporter dye after it is separated from the quencher. PCR based fluorescence detection of target nucleic acids is more sensitive, due to the amplification effect of the technique. However, precise quantification of the amount of target present may be complicated by a variety of factors, such as contaminating nuclease activity or variability in the efficiency of amplification.
Single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) are of increasing interest in molecular biology, genomics and disease diagnostics. SNP detection may be used for haplotype construction in genetic studies to identify and/or detect genes associated with various disease states, as well as drug sensitivity or resistance. SNPs may be detected by a variety of techniques, such as DNA sequencing, fluorescence detection, mass spectrometry or DNA microarray hybridization (e.g., U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,885,775; 6,368,799). Existing methods of SNP detection may suffer from insufficient sensitivity or an unacceptably high level of false positive and/or false negative results. A need exists for more sensitive and accurate methods of detecting SNPs.
Pyrophosphate based detection systems have been used for DNA sequencing (e.g., Nyren and Lundin, Anal. Biochem. 151:504–509, 1985; U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,971,903; 6,210,891; 6,258,568; 6,274,320, each incorporated herein by reference). The method uses a coupled reaction wherein pyrophosphate is generated by an enzyme-catalyzed process, such as nucleic acid polymerization. The pyrophosphate is used to produce ATP, in an ATP sulfurylase catalyzed reaction with adenosine 5′-phosphosulphate (APS). The ATP in turn is used for the production of light in a luciferin-luciferase coupled reaction. The present invention provides a novel method of pyrophosphate-based detection for use in SNP detection, gene expression assays, protein-protein interaction, real time PCR, pathogen typing and other applications.

Bioluminescence regenerative cycle (BRC) for nucleic acid quantification

The Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University


A rotary incubation station for an automated analyzer is provided. The rotary incubation station includes a platform, a circular ring-shaped outside rotary wheel having a plurality of nesting locations for washing and reading vessels, and a circular disc-shaped inside rotary wheel having a plurality of nesting locations for incubation and storage of vessels. The rotary incubation station also includes a spur gear mechanism for rotating the outside and inside rotary wheels, including spur gear drivers respectively engaged with spur gear teeth of the outside and inside rotary wheel, providing accurate control of the rotation of the outside and inside rotary wheels.

1. Area of the Art
The invention relates generally to automated chemical analyzers, and specifically to an incubation station for automated chemical analyzers.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Immunodiagnostic instruments are widely used in clinical chemistry sampling and analyzing applications, and often involving the incubation process for performing various assays. In conventional immunoassay systems, rotary incubation wheels have been introduced. However, most prior art rotation incubation wheels are rotated by a center pivot shaft. These center pivot wheels are usually driven by timing belts. This conventional design often creates timing belt tension problems and/or belt-wear problems. In addition, it often causes problems with outside edge support when any form of pressure is applied.
A further problem with conventional rotary incubation stations is that the reaction vessels are dragged in machined grooves that are semi-rectangular shaped. However, whenever a reaction vessel is dragged over any type of a transition, the reaction vessel can bounce, which causes splashing of the contents inside the reaction vessel. Therefore, the transition areas have to be tightly controlled.
Other problems of conventional incubation stations include limited staging areas, complicated designs, and limited accessibility.
Therefore, it is desirable to provide a new rotary incubation station that overcomes the problems of the conventional incubation stations and provides advantageous features for the incubation process of the automated assays.

Rotary incubation station for immunoassay systems


Methods for mapping 3D point cloud data into 2D surfaces are described herein. The methods utilize 3D surface patches to represent point clouds and perform flexible mapping of 3D patch surface data into 2D canvas images. Patches representing geometry and patches representing attributes such as textures are placed in different canvases, where the placement of each patch is done independently for geometry and texture, that is, geometry and texture patches do not need to be co-located, as in conventional point cloud mapping. Furthermore, methods include transformations of the 3D patch when placing it into the 2D canvas, for more efficient packing.

Recently, point clouds have been considered as a candidate format for transmission of 3D data, either captured by 3D scanners, LIDAR sensors, or used in popular applications such as Virtual Reality/Augmented Reality (VR/AR). Point Clouds are a set of points in 3D space. Besides the spatial position (X, Y, Z), each point usually has associated attributes, such as color (R, G, B) or even reflectance and temporal timestamps (e.g., in LIDAR images). In order to obtain a high fidelity representation of the target 3D objects, devices capture point clouds in the order of thousands or even millions of points. Moreover, for dynamic 3D scenes used in VR/AR applications, every single frame often has a unique dense point cloud, which results in the transmission of several millions of point clouds per second. For a viable transmission of such large amount of data, compression is often applied.
In 2017, MPEG had issued a call for proposal (CfP) for compression of point clouds. After evaluation of several proposals, currently MPEG is considering two different technologies for point cloud compression: 3D native coding technology (based on octree and similar coding methods), or 3D to 2D projection, followed by traditional video coding. In the case of dynamic 3D scenes, MPEG is using a test model software (TMC2) based on patch surface modeling, projection of patches from 3D to 2D image, and coding the 2D image with video encoders such as HEVC. This method has proven to be more efficient than native 3D coding, and is able to achieve competitive bitrates at acceptable quality.
When coding point clouds, TMC2 classifies the points according to the direction of their normal, and groups connected components with similar classification. This results in patches of surface that are then projected onto a 2D axis-aligned plane, whose orientation depends on the classification of the points in the patch. The projections of the patch surface serve two purposes: to represent the position of the points in 3D space by recording the distance of the point to the projection plane and their respective color values. Each 2D projected patch is placed in a 2D canvas image, resulting in a sequence with depth images, and another with texture values (RGB) The projected data does not cover all the pixels in the 2D image. For those positions, a dilation operation will fill in the missing positions. For the transmission of patch information, two sequences are formed from the 2D canvas images: a depth sequence, and a texture sequence. In the case of depth sequence, the depth images are packed into the luminance (Y) channel of a video stream, while for the texture, the RGB data is first converted into YUV420, then put into a video stream. Along with geometry and texture, metadata indicating how the information is transformed from 2D back into the 3D space needs to be transmitted. Both streams are usually coded using a typical video encoder, such as HEVC, and the position of patches in the 2D canvas image may impact the compression efficiency. Furthermore, the placement of the patches in the 2D canvas image is the same for depth and texture, which may lead to a sub-optimal structure for coding for either depth or texture, since they present different characteristics
The state-of-the-art in point cloud compression using video encoders represent point clouds as 3D patches and encode a 2D image formed by the projection of geometry and attributes into a 2D canvas. The packing of projected 3D patches into a 2D image is also known as 2D mapping of 3D point cloud data. Currently, the process has some limitations, such as: the patch orientation is always fixed, the position of patches are the same in geometry as well as texture, and the background filling process is the same also for both geometry and texture.


Although sensors are typically registered before the live event, a sensor's location, orientation and/or field of view can be altered during the event. A system for re-registering a sensor during a live event allows for the determination that a sensor is not properly registered. If such a determination is made, the system accumulates valid data during the live event. The valid data is compared to the data from the improperly registered sensor in order to determine the amount of error. The variables that define the sensor's registration are changed to reduce the error.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention is directed to a system for re-registering a sensor during a live event.
2. Description of the Related Art
As technology develops sensors are being increasingly used to locate objects. For example, sensors can be used to locate automobiles, airplanes, missiles, people, articles in a manufacturing process, objects in a body, etc. Various different technologies can be used to design an appropriate sensor such as infrared sensors, radar, optical sensors, ultrasound, etc.
When these senors are used to locate an object, certain information is necessary to interpret the data from these sensors in order to use that data to calculate the object's location. This information is called registration information and may typically include location, orientation, timing, field of view information, etc. For example, some sensors will output data indicating the location of an object with respect to the sensor. In order find a location of the object in three dimensions, a system typically needs to know the location of the sensors. Additionally, with some sensors the orientation of the sensor must also be known.
Many systems will require a registration process in order to acquire the registration information necessary to use a sensor. The registration process can be manual or automatic. However, it is generally performed prior to normal operational use of the sensor.
A problem can arise, however, if the sensor is disturbed during normal use such that the information necessary to properly interpret the sensor's data is no longer accurate. For example, in order to use some sensors the orientation of the sensor must be known. If the sensor is bumped during a live event such that its orientation changes, then the data from the sensor will not be interpreted properly. If the sensor is being relied on to find the location of an object, the determination of that location will be in error unless the system correctly accounts for the change in the sensor's orientation.
If the sensor is being used during a live event (e.g. a game, a test, an airplane taking off or landing, an attack, etc.) the system cannot afford to shut down so that the sensor can be registered. Thus, there is a need for a system that can re-register a sensor during a live event.

System for re-registering a sensor during a live event


A powered mechanism for a universal golf cart includes a transmission device, and a fixing device. The transmission device includes a housing assembly for mounting a motor, a battery unit, a control circuit board and a drive shaft. The drive shaft is connected with a wheel of the golf cart. The fixing device has a first portion secured to a foot tube of the golf cart and a second portion mounted on the drive shaft. Thus, the powered mechanism converts a traditional powerless golf cart into a motorized golf cart easily and rapidly.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a powered mechanism for a universal golf cart, and more particularly to a powered mechanism for converting a traditional powerless golf cart into a motorized golf cart, thereby enhancing the versatility of the golf cart, and thereby preventing incurring waste of the resource.
2. Description of the Related Art
A powerless golf cart usually includes a push-type golf cart and a pull-type golf cart that are driven in two different directions. A conventional powerless pull-type golf cart in accordance with the prior art shown in FIG. 6 comprises a main frame 1, a handlebar 11, an upper bag support bracket 12, a lower bag support bracket 13, two foot tubes 2, and two rear wheels 22. The two rear wheels 22 are attached to the two foot tubes 2 by two wheel fasteners 21. A conventional powerless push-type golf cart in accordance with the prior art shown in FIG. 6 further comprises a front wheel 14. A motorized golf cart includes a powerless golf cart co-operating with a motor, a battery unit, a control circuit board and a hand controlled switch, thereby saving the user's manual work. However, the user has to buy a new golf cart (the motorized golf cart), so that the original powerless golf cart is useless, thereby decreasing the versatility of the golf cart, and thereby easily incurring waste of the resource.

Powered mechanism for universal golf cart


A vehicle part inventory management system is provided for filling at least part of the vehicle part orders by one vehicle dealer from the inventory of another vehicle dealer. The inventory management system includes an ordered parts data structure for storing ordered parts information; an inventory data structure for storing vehicle part inventory information for a plurality of vehicle dealers; and a dealer assessment module connected to the ordered parts data structure and the inventory data structure, such that the dealer assessment module receives at least one request to fill a vehicle part order and is able to determine a list of potential supplying dealers that have the ordered vehicle part. The inventory management system further includes a dealer interface module that receives the list of potential supplying dealers and is able communicate a request to supply the ordered vehicle part to at least one of the potential supplying dealers. The dealer interface module is also able to update the ordered parts data structure in real-time when the request for the ordered vehicle part is accepted by one of the potential supplying dealers.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to an integrated inventory management system and, more particularly, to a computer-implemented vehicle part inventory management system that fills at least some vehicle part orders by a vehicle dealer from the inventory of another vehicle dealer.
2. Discussion
Research performed by vehicle manufactures has shown that vehicle dealers have generally exercised inadequate or inconsistent inventory control practices. These practices have frequently resulted in poor vehicle parts availability, excessive field obsolescence and ineffective inventory investment. In addition, the inconsistency with which the vehicle dealers conducted their parts business also fed back though the supply chain and adversely affected the efficiency and responsiveness of the vehicle parts suppliers.
In order to reduce and/or eliminate these impacts, vehicle manufactures determined that there was a need to gain system-wide vehicle parts inventory "visibility" for the vehicle manufactures and their dealers. Thus, an integrated vehicle part inventory management system was developed to meet this need. The integrated inventory management system includes a parts locator feature, an automated dealer-to-dealer referral feature, a suggested stock order feature, a suggested material return feature, and some improved reporting features. In this way, the vehicle manufactures expected to reduce vehicle dealer inventories with increased parts mix, improve part fill rates, reduce field obsolescence and improve overall performance throughout the supply chain.
As is well known, a conventional parts ordering system may be used to track and fill vehicle part orders received from vehicle dealers. When the parts supplier is unable to fill a part order on a timely basis, the part order receives a backorder status and the vehicle dealer is left to wait until the order is filled by the parts supplier. In order to reduce the number of backorders, dealer-to-dealer referral programs have been incorporated into some inventory management systems.
In at least one known system, backorder information is extracted on a nightly basis from the parts ordering system. Using the backorder information, the system creates a list of vehicle dealers who have the ordered parts, and then automatically queries each of these vehicle dealers on behalf of the requesting dealer. In order to update the parts ordering system, the system also generates an output file that indicates which orders have been filled through the referral process. On a nightly basis, the output file is then used to update the status of the ordered parts in the parts ordering system.
Unfortunately, this process allows for double shipment of a backordered part. During the course of a given day, it is conceivable that a backorder may be filled and shipped to a requesting dealer prior to the nightly update of the parts ordering system. In this way, a backordered part may inadvertently be shipped by the parts supplier as well as shipped by a supplying dealer.
Therefore, it is desirable to provide an integrated inventory management system that fills vehicle part orders from the inventory of another vehicle dealer as well as updates in real-time the order status for the vehicle part in the parts ordering system. It is also desirable that the system check the order status prior to communicating a request to supply the vehicle part to a vehicle dealer.


Provided herein are polysaccharide derivatives substituted (a) at a degree of substitution (DS1) of at least 0.05 by a fluorescent group (FG) having a mono or polycyclic ring system including at least one heteroatom selected from N, O and S and conjugated double bonds, and having an absorption band in the UV region of light and an emission band in the visible region of light, and bonded via a first linker to any one of the native functional groups of the polysaccharide repeating units; and (b) at a degree of substitution (DS2) of at least 0.05 by a charged group (CG) bonded via a second linker to any one of the native functional groups of the polysaccharide repeating units.

Stilbene derivative based optical brightening agents accounting for over 80% of all optical brightening agents (OBAs) used today are going to be banned in the near future due to a change in EU legislation. Further, ordinary OBAs have such drawbacks as instability, poor affinity to substrate, and being not easily biodegradable.

Polysaccharide derivatives as optical brightening agents


An apparatus comprising a plurality of ingress ports coupled to a plurality of upstream nodes, the ingress ports having an incoming data rate; and a plurality of egress ports coupled to the ingress ports and an aggregated link comprising a plurality of links, the aggregated link having a bandwidth capacity, wherein at least some of the upstream nodes reduce their data transfer rates to a rate greater than zero when the incoming data rate is greater than or about equal to the aggregated link's bandwidth capacity. Also disclosed is a network component comprising a processor configured to implement a method comprising varying a plurality of transmission rates at a rate greater than zero, wherein the transmission rates correspond to a plurality of nodes that send data over an aggregated link.

Modern communication and data networks are comprised of nodes that transport data through the network. The nodes may include routers, switches, bridges, or combinations thereof that transport the individual data packets or frames through the network. Traditionally, networks offered data services by forwarding data frames across the network without using pre-configured routes or bandwidth reservation on intermediate nodes, e.g. in a connectionless manner. Other networks may forward the data frames across the network along pre-configured routes or connection oriented paths, with each node along the route reserving bandwidth for the data frames. Mixed or hybrid networks can support both connectionless forwarding and connection oriented paths to deliver data services. In such networks, controlling traffic congestion at a node within the network can be a challenge.
Several solutions for traffic congestion exist. For example, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) 802.1 or 802.3 standard traffic congestion solution drops all packets marked as best effort packets first, and then drops other packets to reduce the traffic rate. Such a method is undesirable because the customer has to retransmit the packets that are dropped. Alternatively, traffic congestion may be controlled by signaling adjacent nodes to stop transmitting traffic, for instance using a "PAUSE" message or frame. However, such a method is undesirable because it may cause the network to oscillate its packet transmission rates, a condition known as network oscillation syndrome.

Policy based and link utilization triggered congestion control


Navigation assistance systems and methods for use with a surgical instrument to assist in navigation of a surgical instrument during an operation. The system may include sensors that may observe the patient to generate positioning data regarding the relative position of the surgical instrument and the patient. The system may retrieve imaging data regarding the patient and correlate the imaging data to the positioning data. In turn, the position of the surgical instrument relative to the imaging data may be provided and used to generate navigation date (e.g., position, orientation, trajectory, or the like) regarding the surgical instrument.

The use of powered surgical instruments is common in many surgical procedures. Examples of such instruments may include drills, saws, grinders, or the like that may be electric, pneumatic, hydraulic, or otherwise powered. Often times, use of such powered surgical instruments may allow for more efficient surgical operations, thus resulting in reduced risk to the patient, improved efficiency for the surgeon, lower costs, and improved outcomes.
However, while such powered surgical instruments may provide advantages over human powered instruments, there may also be risk for inadvertent damage to the anatomy of the patient when using powered instruments. Specifically, certain anatomical structures of a patient may be vulnerable to being inadvertently damaged by powered surgical instruments. In this regard, it is important for a surgeon to accurately determine the placement and location of the surgical instrument before and during an operation.
In addition, medical imaging technology has improved the ability for a surgeon to accurately image the anatomy of the patient. However, despite the advances in imaging technology, it remains difficult for a surgeon to utilize such imaging during an operation. For instance, a pre-surgical imaging study may be conducted that may be reviewed by a surgeon prior to an operation. This imaging study may provide the surgeon valuable information regarding patient anatomy to assist the surgeon in planning the operation. However, beyond use in planning, the imaging study may provide little or no detail to the surgeon when actually performing a surgery using a powered instrument without subsequent imaging during the operation. Requiring further imaging during an operation to assist with instrument placement potentially exposes the patient to increased radiation, requires additional time, and may increase the overall risk associated with the operation. As such, there remains a need to improve the ability to provide guidance data to a surgeon using a surgical instrument in an operation.

Surgical instrument with real time navigation assistance


A medical image segmentation method based on a U-Net, including: sending real segmentation image and original image to a generative adversarial network for data enhancement to generate a composite image with a label; then putting the composite image into original data set to obtain an expanded data set, and sending the expanded data set to improved multi-feature fusion segmentation network for training. A Dilated Convolution Module is added between the shallow and deep feature skip connections of the segmentation network to obtain receptive fields with different sizes, which enhances the fusion of detail information and deep semantics, improves the adaptability to the size of the segmentation target, and improves the medical image segmentation accuracy. The over-fitting problem that occurs when training the segmentation network is alleviated by using the expanded data set of the generative adversarial network.

The medical image segmentation technology is developed from manual segmentation to man-machine semi-automatic segmentation, and then gradually developed to a fully automatic segmentation. The manual segmentation refers to the fact that a clinician with rich experience directly outlines the boundary of the tissue or the area of interest on the original film. The manual segmentation has high requirements on the prior knowledge of people, and it takes a long time and has a high cost. With the development of deep learning in computer vision field, the semi-automatic segmentation technology has emerged. The semi-automatic segmentation technology combines data storage and calculation function of computer and the experience and knowledge of medical experts to complete the image segmentation by means of human-computer interaction. The fully automatic segmentation means that the computer runs independently and automatically completes the whole process of image segmentation according to a pre-programmed algorithm. However, the realization of most fully automatic segmentation algorithms is complicated, the segmentation results are not ideal, and the speed and performance of segmentation need to be improved. In present clinical medicine, research on practical automatic segmentation methods to replace tedious manual segmentation or semi-automatic segmentation has always been the goal pursued by people. The fully automatic segmentation method is the research focus and key technology of medical images in recent years. In order to enable the machine to automatically segment medical images, reduce tedious manual work, and lay a solid foundation for subsequent tumor recognition and pathological judgment, it is important to study how to make the segmentation edge results more accurate.
Current image segmentation methods can be divided into traditional image segmentation methods and image segmentation based on deep learning. The traditional image segmentation methods include threshold-based segmentation methods, region-based segmentation methods, and boundary-based segmentation methods. The traditional image segmentation methods mainly use edges and algorithm characteristics for segmentation, and it is easy to ignore the deep semantic category information of the image. In recent years, deep learning has made great progress in the field of computer vision, and some are gradually approaching human judgment. Therefore, the use of deep learning method for image segmentation has gradually become the mainstream. The deep learning method has no prior knowledge restrictions and can obtain good results when the network is well trained. Since the fully convolutional network proposed to use 1×1 convolution instead of the fully connected layer, medical image segmentation has shown better performance in the U-Net. Since then, the improvement of the segmentation network is mostly based on the structure of encoding-decoding-skip connection. In order to reduce the loss of information in the process of encoding and sampling, the DeepLab proposes the Atrous Spatial Pyramid Pooling (ASPP), and uses conditional random fields to optimize the segmentation results. Some networks excel at 3D segmentation like V-net, H-dense Net, etc. In order to fully integrate the feature information of different levels and different scales in the segmentation process, various segmentation models are still emerging in endlessly.
However, in the current medical image segmentation field, due to issues such as patient privacy protection, the data set is still difficult to obtain, the number of images is small, and the over-fitting problem is prone to occur when training the segmentation model, that is, the segmentation effect is better on the training set and worse on the testing set, which leads to the weak application of the model. Therefore, how to obtain an effective data set is also a major difficulty in the current research on medical image segmentation. The use of generative adversarial networks to generate composite image to expand the data sets is a major current development trend. In addition, a lot of shallow spatial and detailed information is lost due to the continuous "convolution-pooling" operation in the neural network, it is easy to cause poor segmentation effect of small lesions or organ edges. The overall segmentation effect is not good when the size difference of the required segmentation target (organ or lesion) is large. How to integrate the characteristics of the segmentation target at different scales is also the direction of current efforts of scholars. The improvement and optimization of U-Net is a research hotspot in the field of medical image segmentation.

Medical image segmentation method based on U-Net

NANJING UNIVERSITY OF POSTS AND TELECOMMUNICATIONS


When information of its own station is transmitted to another mobile station by a CSMA access method, by a transmission control method and device, moving speed information and location information is transmitted with a predetermined minimum transmission power until a moving speed of its own station exceeds a first threshold, and the moving speed information and the location information is transmitted with a first transmission power proportional to the moving speed when the moving speed of its own station exceeds the first threshold. In this case, moving direction information of its own station may be acquired and transmitted in addition to the moving speed information and the location information. If the moving speed of the other mobile station exceeds a second threshold higher than the first threshold and a moving direction of the other mobile station is an approaching direction to its own station while its own station is not making transmission with the moving speed of its own station exceeding the first threshold, the first transmission power is switched over to a second transmission power proportional to the moving speed of the other mobile station and the moving speed information and the moving direction information is transmitted.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a transmission control method and device, and in particular to a transmission control method and device in mobile stations which mutually notify their own information by using a CSMA method without interposition of a master station in order to prevent a collision between the mobile stations.
2. Description of the Related Art
When communication is performed by the CSMA method, a mobile station has performed a carrier sense before making data transmissions, thereby confirming whether or not data from other mobile stations exists in the air to make data transmissions of its own station when determining that no data from other mobile stations exists. The transmissions have been made with the same power enough to cover a communication area determined as a system for all of the mobile stations.
While there are some CSMA methods, one example of them will now be described referring to FIG. 7 which is a diagram showing the concept and FIG. 8 which shows a data transmission flow in each mobile station. It is to be noted that while by a normal CSMA method a data receiving side returns an ACK signal for confirming that data has arrived, a broadcast communication is presumed in the case of FIG. 7, so that no ACK signal is used.
Time T1: A mobile station MS2 receives a data transmission request from an upper layer, and performs a carrier sense upon data transmission (at step S32). At this time, since a carrier is sensed due to a data transmission of a mobile station MS1, the carrier sense is continued until no carrier is sensed (at step S33).
The mobile station MS2 has determined to make transmission at the timing of a time T1 based on a result of sole determination of random transmission timing by the mobile station MS2 (at step S31). Other mobile stations may perform a carrier sense for transmission at the same timing.
Time T2: Detecting that transmission data of the mobile station MS1 has been completed (at step S34), the mobile station MS2 starts up a timer of fixed waiting time (at step S35).
Time T3: Since the fixed waiting time in the mobile station MS2 is up (at step S36), the mobile station MS2 starts up a random timer at this point (at step S37).
Time T4: Having received the data transmission request from the upper layer, the mobile station MS3 performs a carrier sense for the data transmission (at step S32). Since having found that there is no carrier as a result of the carrier sense (at step S33), the mobile station MS3 starts up the timer of fixed waiting time (at step S35).Time T5: The random time in the mobile station MS2 is up (at step S38). Then, the mobile station MS2 performs the carrier sense again (at step S39). Having detected no carrier transmitted by another mobile station (at step S40), the mobile station MS2 starts its data transmission (at step S41).Time T6: Since the fixed waiting time which started at the time T4 is up (at step S36), the mobile station MS3 starts up the random timer (at step S37).Time T7: Since the random time in the mobile station MS3 is up (at step S38), the mobile station MS3 performs the carrier sense (at step S39). In the presence of transmission data of the mobile station MS2, the mobile station MS3 detects the carrier. Then, the carrier sense is continued until no carrier is sensed (at step S33).Time T8: After the completion of the data transmission of the mobile station MS2 and the detection of absence of carrier by the mobile station MS3 (at step S34), the mobile station MS3 starts up the fixed timer again at this point (at step S35).Time T9: Since the fixed time in the mobile station MS3 is up (at step S36), the mobile station MS3 starts up the random timer (at step S37), where the maximum value of the random timer time at this time is gradually reduced in inverse proportion to the number of start-ups until the data transmission.Time T10: Since the random time in the mobile station MS3 is up (at step S38), the mobile station MS3 performs the carrier sense again (at step S39), which results in the detection of absence of carrier (at step S40), so that the data is transmitted (at step S41).
It is to be noted that there is a base station device and a transmission power control method in which the base station device is provided with a transmitting device which transmits wireless transmission data, a transmission power control circuit which controls a transmission power of the transmitting device, a receiving device which receives the wireless transmission data from a mobile device and generates reception data, and a retransmission detecting circuit which detects a retransmission request included in the reception data. The transmission power control circuit is provided with an initial transmission power controller which increases the transmission power of the transmitting device step-by-step from a transmission power initial value predetermined in an initial period of the transmission start according to the retransmission request and stops the increase of the transmission power when the retransmission detection circuit detects no retransmission request.    [Patent document 1] Japanese Patent Application Laid-open No. 2004-328394
However, when the communication according to the above-mentioned CSMA method is performed and each moving speed of the mobile stations within the same communication area is low, numerous mobile stations will concurrently exist in a single communication area. Conversely, when numerous mobile stations exist within the communication area, it is natural that the mobile stations move at a low speed. In this case, the packet occupancy in the air is increased, and "carrier presence" is indicated in almost all time zones even when the carrier sense is performed, so that a time zone during which a packet can be transmitted by its own station can not be found. Eventually, a collision between the mobile stations is induced. This will be specifically described by referring to FIGS. 9A and 9B.
It is supposed that ten mobile stations MS1-MS10 exist, and that there is only a time for transmitting transmission packets of ten mobile stations MS1-MS10 in a single frame in order to simplify the description. Also, it is supposed that transmission is being made with the maximum power so that all of the mobile stations MS1-MS10 may cover a maximum required communication area as shown in FIG. 9A.
Although the moving speeds of the mobile stations MS1-MS10 are different from each other (the moving speed of only the mobile station MS4 is high) in the prior art method, all of the mobile stations transmit with the same transmission power, so that the same communication area is formed. When a mobile station MS11 newly appears and performs a carrier sense for transmitting its own data as shown in FIG. 9B, there is found no "vacancy" in the packet occupation status in the air at the position of the mobile station MS11, and "carrier presence" is indicated, so that a transmission chance is not be provided. Accordingly, there is a possibility that a collision between the mobile stations may be induced.


Techniques are described for providing a distributed application load-balancing architecture that supports multipath transport protocol for client devices connecting to an application service. Rather than having client devices generate new network five-tuples for new subflows to the application servers, the techniques described herein include shifting the burden to the application servers to ensure that the new network five-tuples land in the same bucket in the consistent hashing table. The application servers may receive a hashing function utilized by the load balancers to generate the hash of the network five-tuple. By having the application servers generate the hashes, the load balancers are able to continue stateless, low-level processing of the packets to route them to the correct application servers. In this way, additional subflows can be opened for client devices according to a multipath transport protocol while ensuring that the subflows are routed to the correct application server.

Along with the advent of cloud computing platforms and architectures has come the utilization of distributed applications running on these cloud platforms to provide application services at scale. At a high level, distributed applications are software applications that are replicated across networks of servers such that individual instances of the application can serve clients that desire use of the distributed application service. Often, distributed application services use application load-balancing architectures where load balancers are gathered in a layer and dispatch connections from clients to servers hosting the application. Using these cloud platforms, the number of application instances running can scale based on the change in traffic due to changes in client demand for use of the application service. Similarly, the load-balancing layer is generally scalable at will to meet variations in the traffic.
In order to scale the servers hosting the distributed applications, the load-balancers may assign connections to servers using consistent hashing for reliability. In this way, the servers and connections can scale without affecting the integrity of the overall application service. For example, when a client device sends a request for a connection to a server hosting an application (e.g., using a virtual IP address for the application service), the request hits one of the load balancers in the load balancer layer. The load balancer then assigns that connection to a server in a distributed hash table that is maintained by each load balancer.
Ideally, the load balancers need to perform minimal processing on the packets to route the packets, such as by simply extracting the network five-tuple from the packets sent from the client devices over the connections. Using the network five-tuple, the load balancers may use a hashing function to generate a hash of the network-five tuple, and those hashes are in turned assigned to buckets in a hashing table which point to application servers that are serving the connections. In this way, the network five-tuple of data packets sent using the connections are used to determine to which server the packet is to be routed. While this works well for unicast transport protocols where each device has a single flow open, these techniques may break down when client devices and/or application services desire to use multipath transport protocols. For instance, if a client device attempts to open a subflow using a multipath transport protocol, the load balancer that receives packets from in subflow may simply extract the network five-tuple from packets and assign the subflow to a different application server than the application server that is servicing the main subflow. Accordingly, distributed application load-balancing architectures are incompatible with multipath transport protocols.

Distributed resilient load-balancing for multipath transport protocols


A lighting system includes a helical light-transmitting fiber and an LED. The helical light-transmitting fiber is doped with a first wavelength converting material and defines a helical axis. The LED has a light-emitting portion for emitting light of a first color. The LED is aligned axially with the first helical fiber such that a portion of any light emitted by the LED will pass through the open space between the turns of the first helical fiber and a portion of any light emitted by the LED will be received by the first helical fiber and converted to light of a second color. Adjustment of the compression of the helical fiber will adjust the mixture of colors in the light emitted by the system. Further, the relatively small cross-sectional area of the fiber serves to lessen any dye migration in the fiber.

The present invention relates to a light-emitting diode (LED) lighting system having a helical fiber "filament."
Lightweight, breakage resistant, high-intensity LEDs, have shown great promise to those interested in replacing conventional tungsten filament light sources. Nevertheless, a problem with such LEDs is that the available visible color spectrum is limited by the finite availability of LED colors. Therefore, in commonly assigned U.S. Pat. No. 7,011,421, and in commonly assigned and co-pending U.S. patent application Ser. No. 11/025,019, which are also incorporated in their entirety herein by this reference, illumination devices are described that uses fluorescent and phosphorescent dyes, thus allowing for emission of light in colors that cannot ordinarily be achieved by use of LEDs alone without significant increase in cost or complexity of the illumination device. However, it is further desirable to easily be able to adjust the color of the light emitted by such LED/dye systems.
Additionally, fluorescent dyes will migrate in a non-uniform illumination field. The non-uniform illumination field will cause dyes exposed to a higher intensity to vibrate and become "hot,", which then causes the dyes to migrate away from the higher intensity location. As the dyes migrate, the resulting color emitted by the LED/dye system will change. Thus, it is further desirable to reduce or eliminate dye migration in LED/dye systems.

LED lighting system with helical fiber filament


A weather strip includes a body side weather strip and an inner seal attached to opposite ends of a die formed part for use at a door opening edge of a car body. The inner seal has a grip with an embedded metal core for insertion into a body flange. The upper end of the inner seal is formed as a cut end face that connects to die formed part and a gap exists between a roughly triangular base part of the die formed part and at a lip a side surface of the upper end part of the inner seal. When the inner seal attaches to the flange it is curved along the flange and the side end of the base part contacts the inner seal upper end part to close the gap.

At the door opening edge of a body of a hardtop car as shown in FIG. 3 or an open top car that is not shown, a body side weather strip is attached above the belt line BL and an inner seal is attached to the lower side below the belt line, and recently, in order to improve sound insulation at the connecting part between the body side weather strip and the inner seal and improve the external appearance of the connecting part, integration of the body side weather strip and the inner seal by a die formed part has increased.
FIG. 4 shows an example of this integration, wherein the reference numeral 1 denotes a body side weather strip, and 2 denotes an inner seal. Furthermore, the reference numeral 3 denotes a die formed part at a corner, 4 and 5 denote die formed parts integrated a body side weather strip 1 and an inner seal 2.
FIG. 5 shows a weather strip 6 to be attached to a part below the belt line BL of the door D shown in FIG. 3, wherein die formed parts 8 and 9 are formed at the respective upper left and upper right ends.
FIG. 6 shows the positional relationship of the body side weather strip 1, the inner seal 2, and the weather strip 6 when the door D is closed, wherein the upper edge of a door glass 7 shown in FIG. 3 comes into elastic contact with and is sealed by the weather strip 1, the weather strip 6 comes into elastic contact with and seals the door opening edge of the body side, and the die formed parts 8 and 9 at the upper ends of the weather strip 6 come into elastic contact with and seal the respective die formed parts 4 and 5 that are formed by integrating the body side weather strip 1 and the inner seal 2.
FIG. 7 shows the die formed part 4 integrated with the body side weather strip 1 and the inner seal 2 of FIG. 4. Regarding triangle marks in this figure, the daub over side indicates a die formed part, and the outlined side indicates an extruded part. The same applies to the figures described below.
The following methods have been conventionally used as a method for forming the abovementioned die formed part 4 onto the inner seal end.
In a first method, the inner seal end is set at a die end and the die formed part 4 is formed as shown in FIG. 7, and in a second method, the inner seal 2 is partially extended as shown in FIG. 8 and the die formed part 12 is formed at this extended portion. However, these methods have the following problems.
The inner seal 2 has a grip 13 having a roughly U-shaped section which is inserted into and attached to a flange (not shown) of the body as shown in FIG. 7, and a core metal 14 having a roughly U-shaped section is embedded inside the grip 13, however, since the core metal is not embedded in the grip of the die formed part 4 which is formed continuously from the grip 13 of the inner seal 2, in a case where the grip 13a of the die formed part 4 is inserted into and attached to the body flange, the gripping force of the grip 13a becomes insufficient and it cannot be securely attached to the body flange.
In the die formed part shown in FIG. 8, since the grip 13 with an embedded core metal of the inner seal 2 is extended to the die formed part 12 side, its attachment performance to the body flange becomes higher than that of FIG. 7, however, the joint surface to be joined with the die formed part 12 must be a cut surface so as to improve adhesiveness to the die formed part 12 and prevent it from easily peeling. Therefore, it becomes necessary that a part of the inner seal 2 other than the grip is cut in a stepped pattern. Furthermore, since the inner seal 2 is curved according to the curve of the body flange, the inner seal must be set in the curved condition in a die, however, setting in the curved condition is troublesome due to the embedded core metal.
An object of the invention is to solve the abovementioned problem and improve attachment performance to the body flange and forming workability of the die formed part in a weather strip to be attached to the door opening edge of a body of a hardtop or an open top car.

Mitsubishi Jidosha Kogyo Kabushikikaisha


A hypodermic injection system with a retractable needle wherein the needle retracts within an interior cavity of a syringe plunger, such that the needle is confined within the plunger. A spring biases the needle rearwardly into the plunger, and a needle retainer releasably retains the needle against the bias of the spring. The plunger has a frangible end, which dissociates when the plunger engages the needle retainer, allowing the coiled spring to eject the needle into the interior cavity of the plunger. A body fluid sampling embodiment employs the same functional elements except the plunger is shorter and contains a linking that communicates with a vacuum container. The container allows fluid sampling and provides the structure to release the spring retracting the needle. The retractable needle embodiment is also employed with an insertion needle that guides a catheter tube below the skin of a patient and into the vein, and allows retraction of the insertion needle thereby avoiding accidental pricking of the health care worker by the insertion needle.

Various types of retractable needle systems currently exist in the art, with the object being to provide a protective cover or cap over the possibly wound-inflicting insertion needle. Insertion needles found in intravenous catheter insertion devices and hypodermic syringes must be very sharp to quickly and easily puncture the skin and tissue of the patient in order to provide medication directly into the vascular system. Additionally, the insertion needle is usually very thin and hard to see, especially in low-light conditions. It is possible for doctors and nurses to accidentally prick themselves with the needle, either prior to or after an insertion into a patient.
Pricking oneself prior to the insertion of a solution does not present much of a health risk, since the needles to be used are normally sterilized. Also, the insertion needle usually comes with a needle cap which is secured over the top of the needle to prevent the accidental puncturing of skin. When the doctor or nurse removes the needle cap, exposing the needle, there is little risk of being injured by the needle. However, upon removal and placing the needle cap back onto the needle, the fingers can be pricked by a slight visual miscalculation or by a motorneuro mistake. The consequences of this type of accident are more extreme.
Since the insertion needle has already punctured the skin and tissue of the patient, blood and body fluid containing viruses or bacteria which may be found in the patient could possibly be transferred to the health care provider by a single accidental prick.
Various types of diseases previously known could be conveyed by such an accident, including hepatitis and cholera.
In the last decade, an even more menacing and lethal virus, the Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome, or AIDS virus, could be communicated by such accidental and catastrophic event. Since there is no known cure for AIDS at this time, a great deal of precaution is required to prevent the accidental prick of the health care provider by an insertion needle which has previously been used on a patient.
Many types of syringes of one type or another have been developed in an effort to address this problem yet allow the ease of use of more conventional hypodermic needles.
A search of the prior art did not disclose any patents that read directly on the claims of the instant invention. However, the following U.S. patents were considered related:
U.S. Pat. No. 3,046,985, issued to C. Saenz on Jul. 31, 1962, discloses a dental syringe adapter for concealing a needle of the hypodermic syringe prior to use by a dentist. The needle is retained in a housing until a syringe plunger is depressed and the needle is pushed out of the protective housing instead of being captively retained within a syringe body.
U.S. Pat. No. 3,134,380, issued to T. Armao on May 26, 1964, discloses a hypodermic syringe needle having a shield which need not be removed prior to the use of the needle and which can be disposed of along with the needle itself. Holes are provided near the end of the shield to permit the escape of air as the shield is collapsed, allowing the needle to protrude through the protective caps. The cap is held in an extended position by a spring which yields upon injection.
U.S. Pat. No. 3,306,290, issued to H. S. Weltman on Feb. 28, 1967, discloses a retractable needle syringe which retracts the needle into a fluid-containing body and not into the syringe plunger.
U.S. Pat. No. 3,890,971, issued to T. A. Leeson on Jun. 24, 1975, discloses a safety syringe for one-time use, including a plunger which is lockable by detent members and a slidable needle cap which is also permanently lockable to prevent reuse. The needle cap slides over the exterior of the syringe barrel and over the fixed needle.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,367,738, issued to R. Legendre on Jan. 11, 1983, discloses a pre-filled syringe having spikes upon the plunger rods to prevent the withdrawal of the plunger from the syringe barrel. No means is disclosed for protecting the user from accidental pricking with the tip of the needle.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,416,663, issued to R. N. Hall on Nov. 22, 1983, discloses a self-sterilizing needle, wherein a capsule containing sterilizing fluid and having perforated ends of flexible material with elastic memory tendencies for self sealing after actual penetration by the forward end of the needle. The capsule is coaxially and slidably received over the forward end of the needle, with the forward exposed end of the needle slidably penetrating one end of the capsule and perforation for sterilizing of the needle. A syringe is provided for axially urging and positioning the capsule outward to its original position of rest. Then, the exposed end of the needle is again enclosed in the capsule for sterilization when the hypodermic penetration force is removed.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,631,057, issued to C. B. Mitchell on Dec. 23, 1986, discloses a needle coupled to a syringe barrel, wherein a needle guard is mounted on the barrel for movement from a retracted position in which the guard does not shield the needle, to an extended position in which the guard shields the needle.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,695,274, issued to R. L. Fox on Sep. 22, 1987, discloses a safety needle attachment wherein the needle is initially and entirely surrounded by a protecting jacket which is releasably interlocked with a holder. When the needle is to be used, an interlocker is released and the jacket is effectively telescoped over the holder to project the needle through a membrane over the end of the jacket to a working position.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,702,739, issued to N. M. Milorad on Oct. 27, 1987, discloses a hypodermic needle having a sleeve extending from a holder protectively covering the needle so that the sleeve can be placed against the body part where injection is to occur and with the needle tip proximate to the body part. By sliding the holder toward the body part, a detent restraint holding the sleeve in an extended position is overcome and relative retraction movement effected therewith.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,731,068, issued to J. E. Hesse on Mar. 15, 1988, discloses a non-reloadable syringe wherein the plunger is permitted to be withdrawn for purposes of loading the syringe and permitted to be urged forward to discharge the contents of the syringe. However, means is provided wherein subsequent retraction of the plunger assembly is inhibited to prevent further loading and use of the syringe.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,735,618, issued to J. Hagen on Apr. 5, 1988, discloses a protective enclosure for a hypodermic syringe needle formed by a tubular sleeve sized for friction fitting engagement over the barrel portion of the syringe. A needle guard portion is located at an opposed end, and pivotally removable arms operate to permit the needle to pass through a central channel of the needle guard.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,737,144, issued to P. V. Choksi on Apr. 12, 1988, discloses a syringe system comprising a tubular barrel and a sleeve mounted on the barrel to slide lengthwise from a retracted position in which the needle is exposed, to an extended position in which the sleeve extends protectively about the needle.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,737,150, issued to H. Baeumle on Apr. 12, 1988, discloses a tube-cannula syringe, the first cannula being disposed so as to be displaced relative to the second cannula, to be removable or displaceable in the longitudinal direction of the syringe.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,738,663, issued to David E. Bogan on Apr. 19, 1988, discloses a sleeve guide having a pair of fasteners with cavities formed in them that fit over the flange and which are located in hypodermic syringes for grasping in the user's fingers. The guide in the retracted position prevents the accidental pricking by the needle.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,743,233, issued to Michael B. Schneider on May 10, 1988, discloses a slidable sleeve over a syringe barrel that is connectable in a first position extending over a hypodermic needle and that is reconnectable in a second position along the syringe barrel to expose the needle for use.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,747,829, issued to J. Jacob et al., on May 31, 1988, discloses a pre-filled syringe with a retractable needle. A barrel of the syringe is removable within a casing from a remote pre-injection position to a forward injection position and back again. The barrel is moved forward allowing the needle to pass through an opening in a cap prior to injection.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,747,380, issued to W. W. Gloyer et al., on May 31, 1988, discloses a syringe having a hollow barrel formed at the distal end to receive an injection piston carried by the plunger member which allows the needle to also retract within the barrel by extracting the piston.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,747,831, issued to John C. Kulli on May 31, 1988, discloses a cannula insertion needle housing. The housing includes a latch mechanism for extending and retracting the needle.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,752,290, issued to J. J. Schramm on Jun. 21, 1988, discloses a tubular shield which is adapted to protect users from injury. The tubular shield cooperates with the raised surfaces on the body of the medical appliance to be protected.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,755,170, issued to T. A. Golden on Jul. 5, 1988, discloses a protective sealing device comprising a block with which a sharp end of the needle can be held within to prevent accidental puncture. Also disclosed is a retaining shield which can be retracted over the needle to prevent accidental puncture.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,772,272, issued to B. C. McFarland on Sep. 20, 1988, discloses a protective sleeve for a hypodermic needle which sleeve is completely dissociable from the hypodermic syringe. The protective sleeve is moved over the needle protecting position to the needle injection position solely by axial movement of the protective sleeve.
An International Patent Application filed by K. W. Gaarde and having a published number WO 89/00435, and a publication date of Jan. 26, 1989, shows a hypodermic syringe with a retractable needle in a needle holding mechanism which is integrally attached to a syringe body.
It is desirable that the insertion needle of the hypodermic needle or intravenous catheter device can be made available in a safe condition prior to insertion so that the health care provider will not accidentally prick his/her finger and require a new sterilized needle prior to the insertion into the patient. It is also a requirement that after insertion or sampling using the insertion needle, that the needle be safely and easily discarded without representing a continued health risk to anyone who may encounter the insertion needle, either on the premises of the health care facility, or in transit or arrival at the refuse collection area or disposal facility.
There is potentially a great interest in the health care industry to manufacture, sell, distribute, and use a hypodermic needle, an intravenous catheter insertion needle and a vacuum tube syringe that provides the type of safety as described above. It can be easily operated, proves to be completely reliable, and is easily and cheaply manufactured, yet still has a great deal of versatility for various applications using various needles in diameter and length and different sized vacuum tubes.
The features described above as being desirable for hypodermic syringes, intravenous catheter insertion devices and vacuum tube syringes are all provided for by the present invention.


Disclosed are keyswitches and a keyboard assembly comprising a sheet member having a plurality of key faces fixed thereon in a conventional keyboard arrangement, a plurality of cutouts in the sheet member partially surrounding each key face, and a plurality of living hinges in the sheet member at one side of each key face, whereby the key face may be depressed, causing the key face to pivot about the living hinges to operate a corresponding set of electrical contacts, indicating operation of the key. A conventional rubber spring may transmit the pivot motion of the key face to the electrical contacts.

The miniaturization of data processing equipment for portability and ease of use is becoming increasingly important. The limiting factor for reducing the size of portable data processing equipment is generally the keyboard which requires sufficient space for the keys and for the extensive mechanics to convert keystrokes to electrical connections which indicate operation of the keys. The keys are limited in their horizontal size and spacing by the size of an average operator's fingers and hands.
Thus, it is desirable to reduce the vertical dimension, or "thickness", of the keyboard as much as possible. A typical portable data processor, or "portable personal computer" or "personal digital assistant", has a keyboard panel and a display panel, and the data processor is incorporated within one of the panels. The two panels are then folded together so that the bottom of the keyboard panel and the back of the display panel form an outer case for the folded unit. By reducing the thickness of the keyboard, the thickness of the overall folded unit may also be reduced, making the folded portable data processing unit easier to handle and to carry.
Prior U.S. Pat. No. 5,457,453, Chiu et al., unassigned, illustrates a keyboard having reduced thickness when folded, by moving otherwise conventional plunger keys to depressed positions when folding is to occur.
Prior U.S. Pat. No. 5,280,147, Mochizuki et al., assigned to Brother Kogyo Kabushiki Kaisha, reduces the thickness of the keyboard by the use of scissors-like pivotally connected support levers with pivot connections at one end of each lever to respectively the base and the key, and sliding pivot connections at the opposite ends. A conventional nonlinear rubber spring or "dome" is used to transmit the keystroke to electrical contacts to make the connection, indicating operation of the key.
It is desirable to reduce the height of the keyboard even further as well as to reduce the number of parts and to provide an easily assembled keyboard.

Thin keyboard switch assembly with hinged actuator mechanism

International Business Machines Corporation