The RBI announced a host of measures today aimed at increasing liquidity in the economy.

Stocks in news: Apollo Tyres, Rites and India Cements

The Confederation of Real Estate Developers' Association of India (Credai) has written to minister for housing & urban affairs Hardeep Singh Puri, seeking urgent measures to control the hike in the prices of cement and steel amid the ongoing pandemic crisis.

Realtors' apex body Credai on Saturday said cement and steel rates have increased by 40-50 per cent in last few weeks despite the lockdown and alleged price cartelisation and unfair trade practices by the manufacturers.

Cement manufacturer India Cements said it has adopted a series of precautionary and safety measures at its facilities including compliance with standard operating procedures and other measures as advised by government authorities.

This week, the President’s Commission on Law Enforcement and the Administration of Justice held a hearing on juvenile justice over three days via teleconference. Each teleconference featured expert witnesses who provided testimony and, subsequently, answered questions from the Commissioners.

On April 24, 2020, a federal appellate court upheld an order enforcing an Internal Revenue Service (IRS) summons directed to the Taylor Lohmeyer Law Firm PLLC, the Department of Justice announced. The summons directed the law firm to provide information about clients who used the law firm’s services to create and maintain foreign bank accounts and entities. On appeal, the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit upheld the trial court’s enforcement of the summons and rejected the law firm’s “blanket” claim that all responsive materials were protected by the attorney-client privilege. It explained that revealing the fact that the clients participated in specific types of transactions would not necessarily reveal any confidential communication of legal advice protected by the attorney-client privilege.

This conference offers a great opportunity for CCIPS, the Department, and each of our law enforcement colleagues gathered at the table today to discuss our shared efforts in IP enforcement, and to hear your comments about the latest successes and challenges. It’s an event that benefits all of us.

Mayor Catherine Pugh says the state has agreed to restore 16 parole and probation officers to the city that were cut by the O’Malley administration. She also says there are other, non-law enforcement initiatives, in her plan to fight crime.

Kevin Lewis pointed me to this article. It seemed kinda familiar, I took a look at the abstract, and I realized . . . I reviewed this article for the journal! Here was my referee report: The paper seems fine to me. I have only two minor comments, both relating to the abstract. 1. I […]

Veterans Day, will now be entrance-fee-free for ALL who visit the park on November 11, 2009. https://www.nps.gov/grca/learn/news/news_2009-11-04_v-day-update.htm

Replacement of the Transcanyon Pipeline at Phantom Ranch has progressed and the contractor has replaced over a quarter mile of pipeline. https://www.nps.gov/grca/learn/news/construction-continues-on-transcanyon-pipeline-replacement-at-phantom-ranch.htm

Grand Canyon Trail Crew will replace toilets at Cottonwood Campground. https://www.nps.gov/grca/learn/news/cottonwood-toilet-replacement.htm

A method of replacing menu link text with rollover png images that works in IE6 and also degrades well when images are of and/or CSS is off.

The Prime Minister will be outlining the government's plans for easing lockdown restrictions in the UK

Iowa State University graduates who celebrated commencement Friday saw lots of caps and gowns, red-and-gold confetti and arenas packed with friends and family. But none of those images were from...

Iowa State University graduates who celebrated commencement Friday saw lots of caps and gowns, red-and-gold confetti and arenas packed with friends and family.

But none of those images were from this year — which now is defined by the novel coronavirus that has forced education online and put an end to large gatherings like graduation ceremonies.

Appearing in front of a red ISU screen Friday, College of Agriculture and Life Sciences Dean Daniel J. Robison addressed graduates like he usually would at commencement — but this time in a recorded message acknowledging the unprecedented circumstances keeping them apart.

“This year, because of the COVID crisis, we are unfortunately not all together for this happy occasion,” he said, pushing forward in a motivational tone by quoting famed ISU alumnus George Washington Carver.

“When you can do the common things in life in an uncommon way, you will command the attention of the world,” Robison said, citing Carver.

About 12,000 graduates across Iowa’s public universities this month are doing exactly that — capping their collegiate careers with never-before-attempted online-only commencement ceremonies, with each campus and their respective colleges attempting a variety of virtual celebration methods.

ISU and the University of Iowa are attempting some form of socially-distanced livestreamed convocation with countdown clocks and virtual confetti. All three campuses including the University of Northern Iowa have posted online recorded messages, videos and slides acknowledging individual graduates.

Some slides include photos, thank-yous, quotes and student plans for after graduation.

UNI, which didn’t try any form of a live virtual ceremony, instead created a graduation website that went live Thursday. That site hosts an array of recorded video messages — including one from UNI President Mark Nook who, standing alone behind a podium on campus clad in traditional academic regalia, recognized his campus’ 1,500-some spring graduates and their unusual challenges.

“We know the loss you feel in not being able to be on campus to celebrate this time with your friends, faculty and staff,” Nook said. “To walk around campus in your robe and to take those pictures with friends and family members … The loss is felt by many of us as well.”

He reminded those listening that this spring’s UNI graduates — like those at the UI and ISU — can participate in an upcoming in-person commencement ceremony.

And although students were allowed to return caps and gowns they ordered for their canceled walks across the stage, some kept them as keepsakes. The campuses offered other tokens of remembrance as well, including “CYlebration” gift packages ISU sent to graduates in April stuffed with a souvenir tassel, diploma cover, and streamer tube — to make up for the confetti that won’t be falling on graduation caps from the Hilton Coliseum rafters.

In addition to the recorded messages from 17 UI leaders — including President Bruce Harreld — the campus solicited parent messages, which will be included in the live virtual ceremonies.

To date, about 3,100 of the more than 5,400 UI graduates have RSVP’d to participate in the ceremony, which spokeswoman Anne Bassett said is a required affirmation from the students to have their names read.

“Students do not have to sign up to watch,” she said. “So there’s no way at this time to predict how many will do so.”

Despite the historic nature of the first online-only commencement ceremonies — forever bonding distanced graduates through the shared experience — UI graduate Omar Khodor, 22, said it’s a club he would have liked to avoid.

“I’d definitely prefer not to be part of that group,” the environmental science major said, sharing disappointment over the education, experiences and celebrations he lost to the pandemic.

“A lot of students like myself, we’re upset, but we’re not really allowed to be upset given the circumstances,” Khodor said. “You have this sense that something is unfair, that something has been taken from you. But you can’t be mad about it at all.”

Life is too short to dwell on what could have been or what should have been — which sort of captures graduate Dawn Hales’ motivation to get an ISU degree.

The 63-year-old Ames grandmother calls herself the “oldest BSN Iowa State grad ever.”

“It’s the truth, because we’re only the second cohort to graduate,” Hales said. “I’ll probably be the oldest for a while.”

ISU began offering a Bachelor of Science in nursing degree in fall 2018 for registered nurses hoping to advance their careers — like Hales, who spent years in nursing before becoming director of nursing at Accura Healthcare, a skilled nursing and rehabilitation center in Ames.

In addition to wanting more education, Hales said, she felt like the “odd man out” in her red-and-gold family — with her husband, three sons and their wives all earning ISU degrees. She earned an associate degree and became a registered nurse with community college training.

“I was director of nursing at different facilities, but I did not have a four-year degree,” she said. “I always wanted to get my BSN.”

So in January 2019, she started full-time toward her three-semester pursuit of a BSN — even as she continued working. And her education took a relevant and important turn when COVID-19 arrived.

“My capstone project was infection control,” she said, noting her focus later sharpened to “infection control and crisis management” — perfect timing to fight the coronavirus, which has hit long-term care facilities particularly hard.

“We were hyper vigilant,” Hales said of her facility, which has yet to report a case of COVID-19. “I think we were probably one of the first facilities that pretty much shut down and started assessing our staff when they would come in.”

Hales said she was eager to walk in her first university graduation and was planning antics for it with her 10-year-old granddaughter.

“We were trying to think, should I dance across the stage?” Hales said. “Or would I grab a walker and act like an old lady going across the stage?

“She was trying to teach me to do this ‘dab’ move,” Hales said. “I said, ‘Honey, I cannot figure that out.’”

In the end, Hales watched the celebration online instead. She did, however, get a personalized license plate that reads, “RN2BSN.”

Coming from a family-run dairy farm in Jerome, Idaho, EllieMae Millenkamp, 22, is the first in her family to graduate college.

Although music is her passion, Millenkamp long expected to study at an agriculture school — but Colorado State was her original choice.

Then, while visiting family in Iowa during a cousin’s visit to ISU, she fell in love with the Ames campus and recalibrated her academic path.

While at ISU, the musical Millenkamp began writing more songs and performing more online, which led to in-person shows and a local band.

And then, during her junior year, a talent scout reached out to invite her to participate in an audition for NBC’s “The Voice.” That went well and Millenkamp, in the summer before her senior year, moved to Los Angeles and made it onto the show.

She achieved second-round status before being bumped, but the experience offered her lifelong friendships and connections and invigorated her musical pursuits — which have been slowed by COVID-19. Shows have been canceled in now idled bars.

Millenkamp went back to Idaho to be with her family, like thousands of her peers also did with their families, when the ISU campus shut down.

After graduation she plans on returning and working the family farm again until her musical career has the chance to regain momentum.

But she recently returned to Ames for finals. And she and some friends, also in town, plan to celebrate graduation, even if not with an official cap and gown.

“We’ll probably have a bonfire and all hang out,” she said. “We’ll celebrate in our own way.”

Most college seniors nearing graduation get to spend their academic hours focusing on their major and interests, wrapping their four or sometimes five years with passion projects and capstone experiences.

That was Omar Khodor’s plan — with lab-based DNA sequencing on tap, along with a geology trip and policy proposal he planned to present to the Iowa Legislature. But all that got canceled — and even some requirements were waived since COVID-19 made them impossible.

“There were still a lot of a lot of things to wrap up,” he said. “A lot of things I was looking forward to.”

He’s ending the year with just three classes to finish and “absolutely” would have preferred to have a fuller plate.

But Khodor’s academic career isn’t over. He’s planning to attend law school in the fall at the University of Pennsylvania, where he’ll pursue environmental law. But this spring has diminished his enthusiasm, with the question lingering of whether in-person courses will return to campus soon.

If they don’t, he’s still leaning toward enrolling — in part — because of all the work that goes into applying and getting accepted, which he’s already done.

“But online classes are definitely less fulfilling, less motivating. You feel like you learn less,” he said. “So it will kind of be a tossup. There’ll be some trade-offs involved in what I would gain versus what I would be paying for such an expensive endeavor like law school.”

As for missing a traditional college commencement, Khodor said he will, even though he plans to participate in the virtual alternative.

“Before it got canceled, I didn’t think that I was looking forward to it as much as I actually was,” he said.

Not so much for the pomp and circumstance, but for the closure, which none of the seniors got this year. When the universities announced no one would return to campus this semester, students were away on spring break.

They had already experienced their last in-person class, their last after-class drink, their last cram session, their last study group, their last lecture, their last Iowa Memorial Union lunch — and they didn’t even know it.

“So many of us, we won’t have closure, and that can kind of be a difficult thing,” he said.

Comments: (319) 339-3158; vanessa.miller@thegazette.com

For a list of commencement times and virtual celebrations, visit:

The University of Iowa’s commencement site at https://commencement.uiowa.edu/

Iowa State University’s commencement site at https://virtual.graduation.iastate.edu/

University of Northern Iowa’s commencement site at https://vgrad.z19.web.core.windows.net/uni/index.html

I don’t need to tell you how important search engine placement is. You either earn it with quality content, loads of SEO work, paying for placement, or all of the above. And even we you achieve best placement, you need to be wary of your content becoming stale or someone else coming along with a […]

The post Track Your Keyword Placement with Ranktrackify (Sponsored) appeared first on David Walsh Blog.

We propose a new method for realistic human motion transfer using a generative adversarial network (GAN), which generates a motion video of a target character imitating actions of a source character, while maintaining high authenticity of the generated results. We tackle the problem by decoupling and recombining the posture information and appearance information of both the source and target characters. The innovation of our approach lies in the use of the projection of a reconstructed 3D human model as the condition of GAN to better maintain the structural integrity of transfer results in different poses. We further introduce a detail enhancement net to enhance the details of transfer results by exploiting the details in real source frames. Extensive experiments show that our approach yields better results both qualitatively and quantitatively than the state-of-the-art methods.

For real-time semantic video segmentation, most recent works utilised a dynamic framework with a key scheduler to make online key/non-key decisions. Some works used a fixed key scheduling policy, while others proposed adaptive key scheduling methods based on heuristic strategies, both of which may lead to suboptimal global performance. To overcome this limitation, we model the online key decision process in dynamic video segmentation as a deep reinforcement learning problem and learn an efficient and effective scheduling policy from expert information about decision history and from the process of maximising global return. Moreover, we study the application of dynamic video segmentation on face videos, a field that has not been investigated before. By evaluating on the 300VW dataset, we show that the performance of our reinforcement key scheduler outperforms that of various baselines in terms of both effective key selections and running speed. Further results on the Cityscapes dataset demonstrate that our proposed method can also generalise to other scenarios. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first work to use reinforcement learning for online key-frame decision in dynamic video segmentation, and also the first work on its application on face videos.

Passive optical networks (PON) can play a vital role in data centres and access fog solutions by providing scalable, cost and energy efficient architectures. This paper proposes a Mixed Integer Linear Programming (MILP) model to optimize the placement of virtual machines (VMs) over an energy efficient WDM-TDM AWGR PON based data centre architecture. In this optimization, the use of VMs and their requirements affect the optimum number of servers utilized in the data centre when minimizing the power consumption and enabling more efficient utilization of servers is considered. Two power consumption minimization objectives were examined for up to 20 VMs with different computing and networking requirements. The results indicate that considering the minimization of the processing and networking power consumption in the allocation of VMs in the WDM-TDM AWGR PON can reduce the networking power consumption by up to 70% compared to the minimization of the processing power consumption.

An important goal in reinforcement learning is to create agents that can quickly adapt to new goals while avoiding situations that might cause damage to themselves or their environments. One way agents learn is through exploration mechanisms, which are needed to discover new policies. However, in deep reinforcement learning, exploration is normally done by injecting noise in the action space. While performing well in many domains, this setup has the inherent risk that the noisy actions performed by the agent lead to unsafe states in the environment. Here we introduce a novel approach called Meta-Learned Instinctual Networks (MLIN) that allows agents to safely learn during their lifetime while avoiding potentially hazardous states. At the core of the approach is a plastic network trained through reinforcement learning and an evolved "instinctual" network, which does not change during the agent's lifetime but can modulate the noisy output of the plastic network. We test our idea on a simple 2D navigation task with no-go zones, in which the agent has to learn to approach new targets during deployment. MLIN outperforms standard meta-trained networks and allows agents to learn to navigate to new targets without colliding with any of the no-go zones. These results suggest that meta-learning augmented with an instinctual network is a promising new approach for safe AI, which may enable progress in this area on a variety of different domains.

In this paper, we continue our prior work on using imitation learning (IL) and model free reinforcement learning (RL) to learn driving policies for autonomous driving in urban scenarios, by introducing a model based RL method to drive the autonomous vehicle in the Carla urban driving simulator. Although IL and model free RL methods have been proved to be capable of solving lots of challenging tasks, including playing video games, robots, and, in our prior work, urban driving, the low sample efficiency of such methods greatly limits their applications on actual autonomous driving. In this work, we developed a model based RL algorithm of guided policy search (GPS) for urban driving tasks. The algorithm iteratively learns a parameterized dynamic model to approximate the complex and interactive driving task, and optimizes the driving policy under the nonlinear approximate dynamic model. As a model based RL approach, when applied in urban autonomous driving, the GPS has the advantages of higher sample efficiency, better interpretability, and greater stability. We provide extensive experiments validating the effectiveness of the proposed method to learn robust driving policy for urban driving in Carla. We also compare the proposed method with other policy search and model free RL baselines, showing 100x better sample efficiency of the GPS based RL method, and also that the GPS based method can learn policies for harder tasks that the baseline methods can hardly learn.

Earlier this morning, Sleater-Kinney announced on Twitter that they're hitting the road on a co-headlining tour with Wilco this summer. Great news!…

Provided are a method, computer program product, and system for generating a recommendation for transfer of ownership of content. At least one characteristic of a first owner is determined. At least one characteristic of the content is determined. A second owner for the content is determined based on the at least one characteristic of the first owner, and the at least one content characteristic. The recommendation for transfer of ownership is generated, based at least in part on the determination of the second owner.

Methods and a kit. A cement forming method includes nucleating an acidic metallophosphate reaction mixture with first particles, resulting in forming a settable metallophosphate cement from the acidic metallophosphate reaction mixture. The first particles include a first metal oxide. Each particle of the first particles independently have a particle size in a range from about 15 microns to about 450 microns. A method for applying cement includes seeding a solution with particles, resulting in forming a settable cement from the solution. The particles have a size in a range from about 15 microns to about 450 microns. The solution includes a first metal oxide reacting with phosphate. The settable cement is applied to a substrate. A cement application kit is also described.

The present invention relates to a kit comprising at least two pastes, A and B. Paste A contains at least one monomer for radical polymerization; and at least one barbituric acid derivative as polymerization initiator. Paste B contains at least one monomer for radical polymerization; and at least one heavy metal compound as polymerization accelerator that is selected from heavy metal salts and heavy metal complexes. Paste B contains less than 0.01% by weight, relative to the total weight of paste B, of a peroxide; at least one of the pastes A and B contains-at least one filling agent that is poorly soluble or insoluble in the monomer for radical polymerization in either paste A or B respectively; and at least one of the pastes A and B contains at least one inorganic halide salt.

Policy enforcement in an environment that includes virtualized systems is disclosed. Virtual machine information associated with a first virtual machine instance executing on a host machine is received. The information can be received from a variety of sources, including an agent, a log server, and a management infrastructure associated with the host machine. A policy is applied based at least in part on the received virtual machine information.

Methods and systems are described for placing arithmetic operators on a programmable integrated circuit device (e.g., a PLD). Placement of arithmetic operators of a data flow graph in one of multiple regions (e.g., a region of DSP circuitry blocks or a region of logic fabric circuitry) on the programmable integrated circuitry device may be determined (e.g., randomly). A score related to the performance of the graph (e.g., a score related to data flow graph routing delays or area consumed by the data flow graph) may be determined and this process may be repeated after one of the arithmetic operators of the data flow graph is moved. The placement of arithmetic operators that corresponds to the best value for the score related to the performance of the data flow graph may be stored. Accordingly, more arithmetic operators may be included on a programmable integrated device than in conventional devices.

MRI compatible localization and/or guidance systems for facilitating placement of an interventional therapy and/or device in vivo include: (a) a mount adapted for fixation to a patient; (b) a targeting cannula with a lumen configured to attach to the mount so as to be able to controllably translate in at least three dimensions; and (c) an elongate probe configured to snugly slidably advance and retract in the targeting cannula lumen, the elongate probe comprising at least one of a stimulation or recording electrode. In operation, the targeting cannula can be aligned with a first trajectory and positionally adjusted to provide a desired internal access path to a target location with a corresponding trajectory for the elongate probe. Automated systems for determining an MR scan plane associated with a trajectory and for determining mount adjustments are also described.

Disclosed is a process to produce a dry purified carboxylic acid product comprising furan-2,5-dicarboxylic acid (FDCA). The process comprises oxidizing at least one oxidizable compound selected from the following group: 5-(hydroxymethyl)furfural (5-HMF), 5-HMF esters (5-R(CO)OCH2-furfural were R alkyl, cycloalkyl and aryl), 5-HMF ethers (5-R'OCH2-furfural, where R'=alkyl, cycloalkyl and aryl), 5-alkyl furfurals (5-R″-furfural, where R″=alkyl, cycloalkyl and aryl), mixed feed-stocks of 5-HMF and 5-HMF esters and mixed feed-stocks of 5-HMF and 5-HMF ethers and mixed feed-stocks of 5-HMF and 5-alkyl furfurals to generate a crude carboxylic acid slurry comprising FDCA.

A welding tip replacement apparatus is used for a welding torch that includes a tubular tip connection body, a tubular retaining member fitted over the tip connection body, and a tubular welding tip fitted within the tip connection body, the welding torch being configured such that displacing the retaining member toward the proximal end of the tip connection body along the axis of the tip connection body causes the welding tip axially fastened to the tip connection body to be released. The apparatus includes a first grasping mechanism grasping the retaining member, a second grasping mechanism grasping the welding tip protruding from the retaining member in a direction away from the distal end of the tip connection body, a first driving mechanism driving the first grasping mechanism axially, and a second driving mechanism driving the second grasping mechanism axially.

A network component comprising at least one processor coupled to a memory and configured to exchange security information using a plurality of attributes in a management entity (ME) in an optical network unit (ONU) via an ONU management control interface (OMCI) channel, wherein the attributes provide security features for the ONU and an optical line terminal (OLT). Also included is an apparatus comprising an ONU configured to couple to an OLT and comprising an OMCI ME, wherein the OMCI ME comprises a plurality of attributes that support a plurality of security features for transmissions between the ONU and the OLT, and wherein the attributes are communicated via an OMCI channel between the ONU and the OLT and provide the security features for the ONU and the OLT.

A cutting insert (130) is formed to be rotationally symmetric with respect to an axis line (C3) of a height direction and to be planarly symmetric with respect to a virtual plane of the insert (VS1), an axis line (C2) of a traverse direction is gradually inclined toward the front of a rotational direction around which a workpiece (W) rotates moving toward a first traverse direction (C2A), an axis line (C1) of a longitudinal direction extends toward a lower surface side of an insert body (131) so as to approach a virtual plane of the tool moving toward a first longitudinal direction (C1A), and one corner portion (143C) in the other cutting edge (132B) is disposed further toward a first traverse direction (C2A) than one corner portion (143A) in one cutting edge (132A).

Provided is a surface-coated cemented carbide insert obtained by containing at least WC powder and Co powder as raw materials, including a WC-based cemented carbide obtained by forming and sintering mixed raw materials containing at least any of (a) Zr compound powder, Nb compound powder, and Ta compound powder, (b) complex compound powder of Nb and Ta, and Zr compound powder, (c) complex compound powder of Nb, Ta, and Zr, (d) complex compound powder of Nb, Zr, and Ta compound powder, and (e) complex compound powder of Ta and Zr, and Nb compound powder, as essential powder components, as a substrate, and forming a hard coating layer on the substrate by vapor deposition, in which a Co enrichment surface region is formed in a substrate surface, Co content in the Co enrichment surface region satisfies to be between 1.30 and 2.10 (mass ratio) of Co content in cemented carbide.

The relative health of data storage drives may be determined based, at least in some aspects, on data access information and/or other drive operation information. In some examples, upon receiving the operation information from a computing device, a health level of a drive may be determined. The health level determination may be based at least in part on operating information received from a client entity. Additionally, a storage space allocation instruction or operation may be determined for execution. The allocation instruction or operation determined to be performed may be based at least in part on the determined health level.

Implants, tools and methods for performing unilateral posterior lumbar interbody fusion are provided. An interbody implant includes a body having a top and bottom surface extending along a length thereof; and first and second side surfaces extending between the top and bottom surfaces on opposite sides of the body. The height of the first side surface is greater than the height of the second side surface.

A joint in the form of a counter track joint is disclosed that comprises a joint outer part with first outer ball tracks and second outer ball tracks; a joint inner part with first inner ball tracks and second inner ball tracks; wherein first aperture angles are respectively formed between tangents to contact points of a ball with the first outer ball track and with the first inner ball track, and second aperture angles are respectively formed between tangents to contact points between a ball with the second outer ball track and with the second inner ball track. The first aperture angles of the first track pairs open towards a first side of the joint, and the second aperture angles of the second track pairs open towards a second side of the joint. Outer axial play is provided between the joint outer part and the ball cage. Inner axial play is provided between the ball cage and the joint inner part. Axial play permits relative axial displacement of the joint inner part with respect to the joint outer part.

A method for automatically detecting, eliminating and replacing flash frames in digital video utilizes the detected flash frames to categorize and tag the surrounding frames as a relevant area of the digital video. The flash frame is detected when acquiring digital video during capture, the flash frame is replaced with a newly-constructed frame that is interpolated based upon surrounding frames and then, using the detected flash as the timestamp, the frame is tagged.

Methods and apparatuses for presenting targeted advertisements to DVR users are described. After a DVR has finished playing a recorded television program, or in response to other specified events, the DVR presents a screen which comprises a “save or delete” menu. In addition to the “save” and “delete” options, the menu additionally comprises one or more other options. Each of these other options may correspond to a separate promotional item. For example, a user's selection of such an option may cause the DVR to display or play an advertisement on the user's television set. Additionally or alternatively, these other options, when selected by a user, may cause the DVR to display a user interface through which the user can actually purchase a product or service. The product or service advertised or offered may be one that was featured or referenced in the television program that the user was just watching.

A surgical stapling instrument includes a staple cartridge assembly having a plurality of rows of staple receiving slots and an anvil assembly having a plurality of rows of staple forming recesses. The staple cartridge assembly, the anvil assembly, or both have one or more attachment members overmolded thereon. A staple line reinforcement material is attached to the attachment members.

A multiple punch and multiple die assembly has a workpiece protector which is a punch lifter that is operatively associated with each punch for supporting each of the punches in an inactive position as an active punch is moved by the ram to the active, i.e. operating position to thereby eliminate scoring or marking of the sheet material or other workpiece that is being punched. To eliminate the need for hand tools and hand assembly or disassembly, a manually moveable retainer on the punch assembly is provided that can be moved by hand between a punch-releasing and punch-retaining position for holding the punches within the multi-punch assembly during operation. To prevent stress fractures that formerly occurred in die carriers, support of each die is distributed between two different die components thereby reducing impact stress on the carrier as the ram drives the punch through the workpiece.

A multiple punch and multiple die assembly has a workpiece protector as a punch lifter that is operatively associated with each punch for supporting each of the punches in an inactive position as an active punch is moved by the ram to the active, i.e. operating position to thereby eliminate scoring or marking of the sheet material or other workpiece that is being punched. To eliminate the need for hand tools and hand assembly or disassembly, a manually moveable retainer on the punch assembly is provided that can be moved by hand between a punch-releasing and punch-retaining position for holding the punches within the multi-punch assembly during operation. To prevent stress fractures that formerly occurred in die carriers, support of each die is distributed between two different die components thereby reducing impact stress on the carrier as the ram drives the punch through the workpiece.

A multiple punch and multiple die assembly has a workpiece protector as a punch lifter that is operatively associated with each punch for supporting each of the punches in an inactive position as an active punch is moved by the ram to the active, i.e. operating position to thereby eliminate scoring or marking of the sheet material or other workpiece that is being punched. To eliminate the need for hand tools and hand assembly or disassembly, a manually moveable retainer on the punch assembly is provided that can be moved by hand between a punch-releasing and punch-retaining position for holding the punches within the multi-punch assembly during operation. To prevent stress fractures that formerly occurred in die carriers, support of each die is distributed between two different die components thereby reducing impact stress on the carrier as the ram drives the punch through the workpiece.

A displacement control system (A) of a variable displacement compressor sets a target for pressure in an intake chamber or a crank chamber, on the basis of a detected evaporator-outlet air temperature and a target for evaporator-outlet air temperature. The pressure of a refrigerant in a high-pressure section is detected, and a regulating current is supplied to a solenoid (316) of a displacement control valve, on the basis of the pressure of the refrigerant in the high-pressure section and the target for pressure.

A method for configuring the placement of a plurality of storage cells on an integrated circuit includes grouping the plurality of storage cells into a plurality of words, where each of the plurality of words is protected by an error control mechanism. The method also includes placing each of the storage cells on the integrated circuit such that a distance between any two of the storage cells belonging to one of the plurality of words is greater than a minimum distance. The minimum distance is configured such that a probability of any of the plurality of words experiencing multiple radiation induced errors is below a threshold value.

The present invention provides an apparatus for enhancing Q factor of an inductor. The apparatus includes a negative resistance generator coupled to the inductor for providing a negative resistance, and a bias circuit coupled to the negative resistance generator for biasing the negative resistance generator.

Shooters must presently take their firearms out of their hands to then manually actuate a new target into shooting position. This Target Apparatus will allow the shooter to shine his laser light, infrared light, flashlight, or multi-spectrum light onto a Target Apparatus-mounted sensor that engages a drive means mounted upon the target frame that then forwards a new target into position without removing the firearm from its' shooting position. The unit also uses a unique target backing material that does not require targets to be made of rolls of coated or heavy material stock. The system can utilize rolls of cash register paper, cut sections of gift wrapping paper, hand towel rolls, or even paper towels as target materials without snagging and preventing the next target from being presented.

If the wheel/rail adhesion for a railway vehicle is insufficient then the wheels may slip when braking. If slipping is detected, a control system may reduce the brake pressure to permit a controlled level of slip and so to optimize the braking force for the available adhesion. By determining the pressure supplied to the brake cylinder, a signal may be obtained which indicates the value of the adhesion. Alternatively the adhesion may be monitored by detecting any discrepancy between the braking deceleration demanded by the driver and the observed deceleration. The adhesion signal may activate a warning. It may also be used to adjust the rate at which sand is supplied by a sander to the wheel/rail interface. The rate at which sand is supplied may also be adjusted in accordance with other parameters such as the train speed.