We live and cooperate in networks. However, links in networks only allow for pairwise interactions, thus making the framework suitable for dyadic games, but not for games that are played in groups of more than two players. To remedy this, we introduce higher-order interactions, where a link can connect more than two individuals, and study their evolutionary dynamics. We first consider a public goods game on a uniform hypergraph, showing that it corresponds to the replicator dynamics in the well-mixed limit, and providing an exact theoretical foundation to study cooperation in networked groups. We also extend the analysis to heterogeneous hypergraphs that describe interactions of groups of different sizes and characterize the evolution of cooperation in such cases. Finally, we apply our new formulation to study the nature of group dynamics in real systems, showing how to extract the actual dependence of the synergy factor on the size of a group from real-world collaboration data in science and technology. Our work is a first step towards the implementation of new actions to boost cooperation in social groups.

Interaction languages such as MSC are often associated with formal semantics by means of translations into distinct behavioral formalisms such as automatas or Petri nets. In contrast to translational approaches we propose an operational approach. Its principle is to identify which elementary communication actions can be immediately executed, and then to compute, for every such action, a new interaction representing the possible continuations to its execution. We also define an algorithm for checking the validity of execution traces (i.e. whether or not they belong to an interaction's semantics). Algorithms for semantic computation and trace validity are analyzed by means of experiments.

Due to the exponential growth of biomedical literature, event and relation extraction are important tasks in biomedical text mining. Most work only focus on relation extraction, and detect a single entity pair mention on a short span of text, which is not ideal due to long sentences that appear in biomedical contexts. We propose an approach to both relation and event extraction, for simultaneously predicting relationships between all mention pairs in a text. We also perform an empirical study to discuss different network setups for this purpose. The best performing model includes a set of multi-head attentions and convolutions, an adaptation of the transformer architecture, which offers self-attention the ability to strengthen dependencies among related elements, and models the interaction between features extracted by multiple attention heads. Experiment results demonstrate that our approach outperforms the state of the art on a set of benchmark biomedical corpora including BioNLP 2009, 2011, 2013 and BioCreative 2017 shared tasks.

This work deals with the efficient numerical solution of the time-fractional heat equation discretized on non-uniform temporal meshes. Non-uniform grids are essential to capture the singularities of "typical" solutions of time-fractional problems. We propose an efficient space-time multigrid method based on the waveform relaxation technique, which accounts for the nonlocal character of the fractional differential operator. To maintain an optimal complexity, which can be obtained for the case of uniform grids, we approximate the coefficient matrix corresponding to the temporal discretization by its hierarchical matrix (${cal H}$-matrix) representation. In particular, the proposed method has a computational cost of ${cal O}(k N M log(M))$, where $M$ is the number of time steps, $N$ is the number of spatial grid points, and $k$ is a parameter which controls the accuracy of the ${cal H}$-matrix approximation. The efficiency and the good convergence of the algorithm, which can be theoretically justified by a semi-algebraic mode analysis, are demonstrated through numerical experiments in both one- and two-dimensional spaces.

We consider the problem of efficiently simulating population protocols. In the population model, we are given a distributed system of $n$ agents modeled as identical finite-state machines. In each time step, a pair of agents is selected uniformly at random to interact. In an interaction, agents update their states according to a common transition function. We empirically and analytically analyze two classes of simulators for this model.

First, we consider sequential simulators executing one interaction after the other. Key to the performance of these simulators is the data structure storing the agents' states. For our analysis, we consider plain arrays, binary search trees, and a novel Dynamic Alias Table data structure.

Secondly, we consider batch processing to efficiently update the states of multiple independent agents in one step. For many protocols considered in literature, our simulator requires amortized sub-constant time per interaction and is fast in practice: given a fixed time budget, the implementation of our batched simulator is able to simulate population protocols several orders of magnitude larger compared to the sequential competitors, and can carry out $2^{50}$ interactions among the same number of agents in less than 400s.

We present a novel numerical scheme to approximate the solution map $smapsto u(s) := mathcal{L}^{-s}f$ to partial differential equations involving fractional elliptic operators. Reinterpreting $mathcal{L}^{-s}$ as interpolation operator allows us to derive an integral representation of $u(s)$ which includes solutions to parametrized reaction-diffusion problems. We propose a reduced basis strategy on top of a finite element method to approximate its integrand. Unlike prior works, we deduce the choice of snapshots for the reduced basis procedure analytically. Avoiding further discretization, the integral is interpreted in a spectral setting to evaluate the surrogate directly. Its computation boils down to a matrix approximation $L$ of the operator whose inverse is projected to a low-dimensional space, where explicit diagonalization is feasible. The universal character of the underlying $s$-independent reduced space allows the approximation of $(u(s))_{sin(0,1)}$ in its entirety. We prove exponential convergence rates and confirm the analysis with a variety of numerical examples.

Further improvements are proposed in the second part of this investigation to avoid inversion of $L$. Instead, we directly project the matrix to the reduced space, where its negative fractional power is evaluated. A numerical comparison with the predecessor highlights its competitive performance.

In a temporal network causal paths are characterized by the fact that links from a source to a target must respect the chronological order. In this article we study the causal paths structure in temporal networks of human face to face interactions in different social contexts. In a static network paths are transitive i.e. the existence of a link from $a$ to $b$ and from $b$ to $c$ implies the existence of a path from $a$ to $c$ via $b$. In a temporal network the chronological constraint introduces time correlations that affects transitivity. A probabilistic model based on higher order Markov chains shows that correlations that can invalidate transitivity are present only when the time gap between consecutive events is larger than the average value and are negligible below such a value. The comparison between the densities of the temporal and static accessibility matrices shows that the static representation can be used with good approximation. Moreover, we quantify the extent of the causally connected region of the networks over time.

Assistive robots enable people with disabilities to conduct everyday tasks on their own. However, these tasks can be complex, containing both coarse reaching motions and fine-grained manipulation. For example, when eating, not only does one need to move to the correct food item, but they must also precisely manipulate the food in different ways (e.g., cutting, stabbing, scooping). Shared autonomy methods make robot teleoperation safer and more precise by arbitrating user inputs with robot controls. However, these works have focused mainly on the high-level task of reaching a goal from a discrete set, while largely ignoring manipulation of objects at that goal. Meanwhile, dimensionality reduction techniques for teleoperation map useful high-dimensional robot actions into an intuitive low-dimensional controller, but it is unclear if these methods can achieve the requisite precision for tasks like eating. Our insight is that---by combining intuitive embeddings from learned latent actions with robotic assistance from shared autonomy---we can enable precise assistive manipulation. In this work, we adopt learned latent actions for shared autonomy by proposing a new model structure that changes the meaning of the human's input based on the robot's confidence of the goal. We show convergence bounds on the robot's distance to the most likely goal, and develop a training procedure to learn a controller that is able to move between goals even in the presence of shared autonomy. We evaluate our method in simulations and an eating user study.

The temporal segmentation of events is an essential task and a precursor for the automatic recognition of human actions in the video. Several attempts have been made to capture frame-level salient aspects through attention but they lack the capacity to effectively map the temporal relationships in between the frames as they only capture a limited span of temporal dependencies. To this end we propose a complete end-to-end supervised learning approach that can better learn relationships between actions over time, thus improving the overall segmentation performance. The proposed hierarchical recurrent attention framework analyses the input video at multiple temporal scales, to form embeddings at frame level and segment level, and perform fine-grained action segmentation. This generates a simple, lightweight, yet extremely effective architecture for segmenting continuous video streams and has multiple application domains. We evaluate our system on multiple challenging public benchmark datasets, including MERL Shopping, 50 salads, and Georgia Tech Egocentric datasets, and achieves state-of-the-art performance. The evaluated datasets encompass numerous video capture settings which are inclusive of static overhead camera views and dynamic, ego-centric head-mounted camera views, demonstrating the direct applicability of the proposed framework in a variety of settings.

Inspired by Bitcoin, many different kinds of cryptocurrencies based on blockchain technology have turned up on the market. Due to the special structure of the blockchain, it has been deemed impossible to directly trade between traditional currencies and cryptocurrencies or between different types of cryptocurrencies. Generally, trading between different currencies is conducted through a centralized third-party platform. However, it has the problem of a single point of failure, which is vulnerable to attacks and thus affects the security of the transactions. In this paper, we propose a distributed cryptocurrency trading scheme to solve the problem of centralized exchanges, which can achieve trading between different types of cryptocurrencies. Our scheme is implemented with smart contracts on the Ethereum blockchain and deployed on the Ethereum test network. We not only implement transactions between individual users, but also allow transactions between multiple users. The experimental result proves that the cost of our scheme is acceptable.

Extraction was supposedly the most-watched new movie on Netflix last week, and yet it feels suspiciously like one you've already seen, possibly late at night on some obscure cable channel back in the '90s.…

Methods and arrangements for analyzing and responding to communications data. Telecom data are input, as are social network data. The telecom data and social network data are analyzed, and action tuples representing opportunistic leads are generated based on the analyzed telecom data and social network data.

A modeling framework for evaluating the impact of weather conditions on farming and harvest operations applies real-time, field-level weather data and forecasts of meteorological and climatological conditions together with user-provided and/or observed feedback of a present state of a harvest-related condition to agronomic models and to generate a plurality of harvest advisory outputs for precision agriculture. A harvest advisory model simulates and predicts the impacts of this weather information and user-provided and/or observed feedback in one or more physical, empirical, or artificial intelligence models of precision agriculture to analyze crops, plants, soils, and resulting agricultural commodities, and provides harvest advisory outputs to a diagnostic support tool for users to enhance farming and harvest decision-making, whether by providing pre-, post-, or in situ-harvest operations and crop analyzes.

The present invention relates to an improved process for fractionating triglyceride oil. The process according to the present invention attains a reproducible crystallization by introducing a controlled temperature profile and ensuing crystal development that reduce the amount of entrapped olein inside the crystals or crystal aggregates. The process of the present invention may be used to fractionate vegetable oils such as palm oil or its blends with other palm oil products or edible vegetable oils.

A method of forming a product from an oil feedstock, such as a biodiesel product, and a heterogeneous catalyst system used to form said product is disclosed. This catalyst system, which has a high tolerance for the presence of water and free fatty acids (FFA) in the oil feedstock, may simultaneously catalyze both the esterification of FAA and the transesterification of triglycerides present in the oil feedstock. The catalyst system is comprised of a mixture of zinc oxide and a second metal oxide. The zinc oxide includes a mixture of amorphous zinc oxide and zinc oxide nanocrystals, the zinc nanocrystals having a mean grain size between about 20 and 80 nanometers with at least one of the nanocrystals including a mesopore having a diameter of about 5 to 15 nanometers. Preferably, the second metal oxide is a lanthanum oxide, the lanthanum oxide being selected as one from the group of La2CO5, LaOOH, and combinations or mixtures thereof.

A method for the solvent-free fractionation of jatropha seeds having a phorbol ester content and at least one fraction.

A process is presented for the increasing the yields of aromatics from reforming a hydrocarbon feedstream. The process includes splitting a naphtha feedstream into a light hydrocarbon stream, and a heavier stream having a relatively rich concentration of naphthenes. The heavy stream is reformed to convert the naphthenes to aromatics and the resulting product stream is further reformed with the light hydrocarbon stream to increase the aromatics yields. The catalyst is passed through the reactors in a sequential manner.

A process is presented for quenching a process stream in a paraffin dehydrogenation process. The process comprises cooling a propane dehydrogenation stream during the hot residence time after the process stream leaves the catalytic bed reactor section. The process includes cooling and compressing the product stream, taking a portion of the product stream and passing the portion of the product stream to the mix with the process stream as it leaves the catalytic bed reactor section.

The present invention relates generally to olefin metathesis. In some embodiments, the present invention provides methods for Z-selective ring-closing metathesis.

The present invention relates to a process comprising the steps of reacting a reactive mixture comprising at least one silicone-containing component, at least one hydrophilic component, and at least one diluent to form an ophthalmic device having an advancing contact angle of less than about 80°; and contacting the ophthalmic device with an aqueous extraction solution at an elevated extraction temperature, wherein said at least one diluent has a boiling point at least about 10° higher than said extraction temperature.

Embodiments of the invention provide systems and methods for managing an enabler and dependencies of the enabler. According to one embodiment, a method of managing an enabler can comprise requesting a management function via a management interface of the enabler. The management interface can provide an abstraction of one or more management functions for managing the enabler and/or dependencies of the enabler. In some cases, prior to requesting the management function metadata associated with the management interface can be read and a determination can be made as to whether the management function is available or unavailable. Requesting the management function via the management interface of the enabler can be performed in response to determining the management function is available. In response to determining the management function is unavailable, one or more alternative functions can be identified based on the metadata and the one or more alternative functions can be requested.

The systems and methods described herein may be used to implement a shared dynamic-sized data structure using hardware transactional memory to simplify and/or improve memory management of the data structure. An application (or thread thereof) may indicate (or register) the intended use of an element of the data structure and may initialize the value of the data structure element. Thereafter, another thread or application may use hardware transactions to access the data structure element while confirming that the data structure element is still part of the dynamic data structure and/or that memory allocated to the data structure element has not been freed. Various indicators may be used determine whether memory allocated to the element can be freed.

An array of a plurality of processing elements (PEs) are in a data packet-switched network interconnecting the PEs and memory to enable any of the PEs to access the memory. The network connects the PEs and their local memories to a common controller. The common controller may include a shared load/store (SLS) unit and an array control unit. A shared read may be addressed to an external device via the common controller. The SLS unit can continue activity as if a normal shared read operation has taken place, except that the transactions that have been sent externally may take more cycles to complete than the local shared reads. Hence, a number of transaction-enabled flags may not have been deactivated even though there is no more bus activity. The SLS unit can use this state to indicate to the array control unit that a thread switch may now take place.

The present invention relates to an apparatus for coproducting iso-type reaction product and alcohol from olefin, and a method for coproducting using the apparatus, in which the hydroformylation reactor provides a sufficient reaction area due to the broad contact surface area between the olefin and the synthesis gases that are the raw materials by a distributor plate installed in the reactor, and the raw materials can be sufficiently mixed with the reaction mixture due to the circulation of the reaction mixture so that the efficiency of the production of the aldehyde is excellent; and also the hydrogenation reactor suppresses the side reaction so that the efficiency for producing aldehyde and alcohol are all increased, and also iso-type reaction product and alcohol can be efficiently co-produced.

The present invention relates to the energy efficient and selective extraction of dilute concentrations of C2-C6 alcohols from an aqueous solution using liquid phase dimethyl ether.

Disclosed is a feature for a vehicle that enables taking precautionary actions in response to conditions on the road network around or ahead of the vehicle, in particular, a blind intersection along a section of road. A database that represents the road network is used to determine locations where a blind intersection is located along a section of road. Then, precautionary action data is added to the database to indicate a location at which a precautionary action is to be taken about the blind intersection located along the section of road. A precautionary action system installed in a vehicle uses this database, or a database derived therefrom, in combination with a positioning system to determine when the vehicle is at a location that corresponds to the location of a precautionary action. When the vehicle is at such a location, a precautionary action is taken by a vehicle system as the vehicle is approaching a blind intersection.

A traction control system in vehicle comprises a detector for detecting a monitored value which changes according to a degree of a drive wheel slip; a condition determiner for determining whether or not the monitored value meets a control start condition and whether or not the monitored value meets a control termination condition; and a controller for executing traction control to reduce a driving power of the drive wheel during a period of time from when the condition determiner determines that the monitored value meets the control start condition until the condition determiner determines that the monitored value meets the control termination condition; the condition determiner being configured to set at least the control start condition variably based on a slip determination factor which changes according to a vehicle state and such that the control start condition changes more greatly according to the vehicle state than the control termination condition.

A datapath extraction tool uses machine-learning models to selectively classify clusters of cells in an integrated circuit design as either datapath logic or non-datapath logic based on cluster features. A support vector machine and a neural network can be used to build compact and run-time efficient models. A cluster is classified as datapath if both the support vector machine and the neural network indicate that it is datapath-like. The cluster features may include automorphism generators for the cell clusters, or physical information based on the cell locations from a previous (e.g., global) placement, such as a ratio of a total cell area for a given cluster to a half-perimeter of a bounding box for the given cluster.

Apparatus and methods are provided for using automatic speech recognition to analyze a voice interaction and verify compliance of an agent reading a script to a client during the voice interaction. In one aspect of the invention, a communications system includes a user interface, a communications network, and a call center having an automatic speech recognition component. In other aspects of the invention, a script compliance method includes the steps of conducting a voice interaction between an agent and a client and evaluating the voice interaction with an automatic speech recognition component adapted to analyze the voice interaction and determine whether the agent has adequately followed the script. In yet still further aspects of the invention, the duration of a given interaction can be analyzed, either apart from or in combination with the script compliance analysis above, to seek to identify instances of agent non-compliance, of fraud, or of quality-analysis issues.

Current human-to-machine interfaces enable users to interact with a company's database and enter into a series of transactions (e.g., purchasing products/services and paying bills). Each transaction may require several operations or stages requiring user input or interaction. Some systems enable a user to enter a voice input parameter providing multiple operations of instruction (e.g., single natural language command). However, users of such a system do not know what types of commands the system is capable of accepting. Embodiments of the present invention facilitate communications for user transactions by determining a user's goal transaction and presenting a visual representation of a voice input parameter for the goal transaction. The use of visual representations notifies the user of the system's capability of accepting single natural language commands and the types of commands the system is capable of accepting, thereby enabling a user to complete a transaction in a shorter period of time.

Methods, systems, and apparatus, including computer program products, for extracting information from unstructured text. Fact pairs are used to extract basic patterns from a body of text. Patterns are generalized by replacing words with classes of similar words. Generalized patterns are used to extract further fact pairs from the body of text. The process can begin with fact pairs, basic patterns, or generalized patterns.

Various systems and methods are described for configuring a logical data storage container. In one embodiment, an instruction to perform an operation to modify an attribute of the logical data storage container that is an abstraction of a plurality of pertinent storage containers is received. A translated instruction to perform a sub-operation associated with the operation is transmitted to each of a number of the plurality of pertinent storage containers. A level of success of the performing of the operation on the logical data storage container is detected based on a comparison of a threshold value to a level of success of the performing of the sub-operation on each of the number of the plurality of pertinent storage containers. A report of the detected level of success is communicated.

The present invention relates to the use of at least one sulfonic acid for recovering glycerol resulting from a reaction crude from transesterification of glycerides, in particular of triglycerides of vegetable and/or animal origin. The invention also relates to a process for purifying glycerol obtained as a by-product of triglyceride transesterification during the preparation of fatty acids, fatty esters and/or fatty acid salts, and also to a combined process for preparing, on the one hand, fatty acids, fatty esters and/or fatty acid salts and, on the other hand, glycerol, from triglycerides, using at least one sulfonic acid.

A solid matrix for the extraction, stabilization, and storage of nucleic acids is provided. At least one protein denaturant, and at least one acid or acid-titrated buffer reagent are impregnated in a dry state therein the matrix; and the matrix is configured to provide an acidic pH on hydration. The matrix is configured to extract nucleic acids from a sample and stabilize the extracted nucleic acids, particularly RNA, in a dry format under ambient conditions for a prolonged period of time. Methods for collecting and recovering the nucleic acids stored in the dry solid matrix are also described.

The present disclosure generally relates to solid matrices for the extraction, stabilization, and storage of nucleic acids, particularly RNA, in a dry format under ambient conditions for a prolonged period of time. Methods for extracting, collecting, and recovering nucleic acids from the solid compositions are also described.

Security measures for tokens comprise storing security rules associated with a generated token in a memory. A processor, communicatively coupled to the memory, accesses the security rules associated with the generated token and determines whether to encrypt the generated token by applying at least a portion of the security rules to the generated token. The processor encrypts the generated token. An interface, communicatively coupled to the processor, communicates the encrypted token to a mobile device associated with a user.

An integrated-circuit memory controller outputs to a memory device a first signal in a first state to enable operation of synchronous data transmission and reception circuits within the memory device. A transaction queue within the memory controller stores memory read and write requests that, to be serviced, require operation of the synchronous data transmission and reception circuits, respectively, within the memory device. Power control circuitry within the memory controller determines that the transaction queue has reached a predetermined state and, in response, outputs the first signal to the memory device in a second state to disable operation of the synchronous data transmission and reception circuits within the memory device.

The present invention relates to a covalently organo-modified LDH (LDH/APTES) was found to be an efficient and reusable heterogeneous catalyst for C—C bond forming reactions (i.e. Aldol condensation, Knoevenagel condensation, Henry reaction, Michael addition). More particularly, this catalyst shows consistent activity for several cycles in C—C bond forming reaction. These catalysts were successfully characterized by XRD, FT-IR, 29Si CP MAS NMR.

Disclosed herein are methods for recovering diphosphite-containing compounds from mixtures comprising organic mononitriles and organic dinitriles, using liquid-liquid extraction. Also disclosed are treatments to enhance extractability of the diphosphite-containing compounds.

A catalyst for an organic reaction and a method of using a catalyst in an organic reaction are provided. The catalyst for an addition or condensation reaction includes a graphene oxide including an oxygen functional group, and the catalyst is configured to promote the addition or condensation reaction by bonding the oxygen functional group with an alkali metal ion or alkali earth metal ion during the addition or condensation reaction.

Methods, systems, and computer readable media for monitored application of mechanical force to samples using acoustic energy and mechanical parameter value extraction using mechanical response models can be used for determining mechanical property parameters of a sample. An exemplary method includes applying acoustic energy to a sample to apply a mechanical force to the sample, measuring a response by the sample during the application of the acoustic energy, measuring a recovery response of the sample following cessation of the application of the acoustic energy, and determining a value for at least one additional mechanical property parameter of the sample based on the response measured during application of the acoustic energy and the recovery response measured following cessation of the application of acoustic energy.

The methods described herein enable the evaluation of compounds on subjects to assess their therapeutic efficacy or toxic effects. The target of analysis is the underlying biochemical process or processes (i.e., metabolic process) thought to be involved in disease pathogenesis. Molecular flux rates within the one or more biochemical processes serve as biomarkers and are quantitated and compared with the molecular flux rates (i.e., biomarker) from control subjects (i.e., subjects not exposed to the compounds). Any change in the biomarker in the subject relative to the biomarker in the control subject provides information to evaluate therapeutic efficacy of an administered drug or a toxic effect and to develop the compound further if desired. In one aspect of the invention, stable isotope-labeled substrate molecules are administered to a subject and the label is incorporated into targeted molecules in a manner that reveals molecular flux rates through metabolic pathways of interest.

Iron/carbon (Fe/C) nanocomposite catalysts are prepared for Fischer-Tropsch synthesis reaction. A preparation method includes steps of mixing iron hydrate salts and a mesoporous carbon support to form a mixture, infiltrating the iron hydrate salts into the carbon support through melt infiltration of the mixture near a melting point of the iron hydrate salts, forming iron-carbide particles infiltrated into the carbon support through calcination of the iron hydrate salts infiltrated into the carbon support under a first atmosphere, and vacuum-drying the iron-carbide particles after passivation using ethanol. Using such catalysts, liquid hydrocarbons are produced.

A gasification-liquefaction disposal method, system and equipment for MSW are disclosed. The method involves the MSW pretreatment of dehydrating and separating, thus reducing water and inorganic substance content of the waste. Then, the MSW is introduced into a plasma gasifier (23) by a carbon dioxide air-sealed feeding device (13) and gasified therein to obtain hydrogen-rich syngas. The hydrogen-rich syngas is then cooled, deacidified, dedusted and separated to obtain carbon dioxide. Then, the hydrogen-rich syngas is catalyzed to produce methanol product in a methanol synthesis reactor (52). The separated carbon dioxide is sent back to a carbonation reaction chamber (2007) of a gasification system to perform carbonation reaction with calcium oxide, thereby releasing heat to provide assistant heat energy for gasification and avoiding greenhouse gas from being discharged into environment. Exhaust gas is returned to the plasma gasifier (23) for remelting treatment, thus forming a closed-loop circulation production system and realizing the disposal of the MSW with zero discharge and no pollution, thereby avoiding dioxin pollution and converting the MSW to chemical raw materials and fuel needed by mankind. The method, system and equipment are suitable for harmless and recycling disposal of MSW, industrial high polymer waste, composting waste and waste in waste sorting sites.

A system and process for removing catalyst fines from a gas stream overhead the slurry in a Fischer-Tropsch slurry bubble column reactor. The gas phase at the top of the slurry bubble column reactor containing small amounts of entrained liquid and catalyst particles. The unreacted gases are passed through a demister, which removes larger droplets and catalyst particles. Smaller droplets and catalyst fines are conveyed to a secondary gas cleaner, such as a cyclone, whereby substantially all remaining particles are removed from the gas phase. A particle-containing liquid produced in the secondary gas cleaner can be further subjected to a filtrate cleaning unit to filter out fine catalyst particles and produce a substantially particle-free liquid product stream and a slurry stream of liquid product containing catalyst particles.

The present invention provides a process for producing a hydrocarbon oil by performing a Fischer-Tropsch synthesis reaction using a reactor for a Fischer-Tropsch synthesis including a reaction apparatus having a slurry containing catalyst particles and a gaseous phase located above the slurry to obtain a hydrocarbon oil, wherein the Fischer-Tropsch reaction is performed while controlling a temperature of the slurry so that a difference T2−T1 between the average temperature T1 of the slurry and a temperature T2 at the liquid level of the slurry in contact with the gaseous phase is 5 to 30° C.

A synthesis gas conversion process and system are disclosed. Fresh syngas from a methane reformer is used as a sweep zone gas feed which is caused to flow across a water permselective membrane in a membrane reactor. The water permselective membrane is adjacent a synthesis gas conversion reaction zone in which synthesis gas is contacted with a catalyst and converted to effluent including water. Water is removed from the reaction zone through the membrane and passes out of the reactor with the sweep zone gas. The water is then removed from the sweep zone gas forming a modified gas feed which is fed to the reaction zone. The modified gas feed has a preferred H2/CO ratio to feed into the reaction zone.

Various technologies and techniques are disclosed for using transactional memory hardware to accelerate virtualization or emulation. State isolation can be facilitated by providing isolated private state on transactional memory hardware and storing the stack of a host that is performing an emulation in the isolated private state. Memory accesses performed by a central processing unit can be monitored by software to detect that a guest being emulated has made a self modification to its own code sequence. Transactional memory hardware can be used to facilitate dispatch table updates in multithreaded environments by taking advantage of the atomic commit feature. An emulator is provided that uses a dispatch table stored in main memory to convert a guest program counter into a host program counter. The dispatch table is accessed to see if the dispatch table contains a particular host program counter for a particular guest program counter.

A system and method for treatment of skin including a treatment surface having numerous small energy emitting points for fractional skin treatment as well as negative pressure outlets. During a treatment, negative pressure from the outlets may exert a pulling force on an opposing tissue surface to bring the tissue into contact with the energy points.

An apparatus and method for the shaping of plastics material pre-forms into plastics material containers with at least one blow moulding station which is arranged on a conveying device rotatable about a pre-set axis of rotation (D). The blow moulding station has a blow mould and this blow mould forms a cavity in the interior of which the plastics material pre-forms are capable of being expanded by being acted upon with a gaseous medium to form the plastics material containers, with a stressing device, which acts upon the plastics material pre-forms with the gaseous medium in order to expand them, and with a clean room, which surrounds the blow moulding station at least in part. The clean room is bounded off from an environment by at least two walls which are movable relative to one another.