Moving a module in a modular robot is a very complex and error-prone process. Unlike in swarm, in the modular robots we are targeting, the moving module must keep the connection to, at least, one other module. In order to miniaturize each module to few millimeters, we have proposed a design which is using electrostatic actuator. However, this movement is composed of several attachment, detachment creating the movement and each small step can fail causing a module to break the connection. The idea developed in this paper consists in creating a new kind of deformable module allowing a movement which keeps the connection between the moving and the fixed modules. We detail the geometry and the practical constraints during the conception of this new module. We then validate the possibility of movement for a module in an existing configuration. This implies the cooperation of some of the modules placed along the path and we show in simulation that it exists a motion process to reach every free positions of the surface for a given configuration.

Software Defined Networking is currently revolutionizing computer networking by decoupling the network control (control plane) from the forwarding functions (data plane) enabling the network control to become directly programmable and the underlying infrastructure to be abstracted for applications and network services. Next to the well-known OpenFlow protocol, the XML-based NETCONF protocol is also an important means for exchanging configuration information from a management platform and is nowadays even part of OpenFlow. In combination with NETCONF, YANG is the corresponding protocol that defines the associated data structures supporting virtually all network configuration protocols. YANG itself is a semantically rich language, which -- in order to facilitate familiarization with the relevant subject -- is often visualized to involve other experts or developers and to support them by their daily work (writing applications which make use of YANG). In order to support this process, this paper presents an novel approach to optimize and simplify YANG data models to assist further discussions with the management and implementations (especially of interfaces) to reduce complexity. Therefore, we have defined a bidirectional mapping of YANG to UML and developed a tool that renders the created UML diagrams. This combines the benefits to use the formal language YANG with automatically maintained UML diagrams to involve other experts or developers, closing the gap between technically improved data models and their human readability.

This paper investigates a class of optimal control problems associated with Markov processes with local state information. The decision-maker has only local access to a subset of a state vector information as often encountered in decentralized control problems in multi-agent systems. Under this information structure, part of the state vector cannot be observed. We leverage ab initio principles and find a new form of Bellman equations to characterize the optimal policies of the control problem under local information structures. The dynamic programming solutions feature a mixture of dynamics associated unobservable state components and the local state-feedback policy based on the observable local information. We further characterize the optimal local-state feedback policy using linear programming methods. To reduce the computational complexity of the optimal policy, we propose an approximate algorithm based on virtual beliefs to find a sub-optimal policy. We show the performance bounds on the sub-optimal solution and corroborate the results with numerical case studies.

We study the problem of jointly designing a sparse sensor and actuator schedule for linear dynamical systems while guaranteeing a control/estimation performance that approximates the fully sensed/actuated setting. We further prove a separation principle, showing that the problem can be decomposed into finding sensor and actuator schedules separately. However, it is shown that this problem cannot be efficiently solved or approximated in polynomial, or even quasi-polynomial time for time-invariant sensor/actuator schedules; instead, we develop deterministic polynomial-time algorithms for a time-varying sensor/actuator schedule with guaranteed approximation bounds. Our main result is to provide a polynomial-time joint actuator and sensor schedule that on average selects only a constant number of sensors and actuators at each time step, irrespective of the dimension of the system. The key idea is to sparsify the controllability and observability Gramians while providing approximation guarantees for Hankel singular values. This idea is inspired by recent results in theoretical computer science literature on sparsification.

Making changes to a program to optimize its performance is an unscalable task that relies entirely upon human intuition and experience. In addition, companies operating at large scale are at a stage where no single individual understands the code controlling its systems, and for this reason, making changes to improve performance can become intractably difficult. In this paper, a learning system is introduced that provides AI assistance for finding recommended changes to a program. Specifically, it is shown how the evaluative feedback, delayed-reward performance programming domain can be effectively formulated via the Monte Carlo tree search (MCTS) framework. It is then shown that established methods from computational games for using learning to expedite tree-search computation can be adapted to speed up computing recommended program alterations. Estimates of expected utility from MCTS trees built for previous problems are used to learn a sampling policy that remains effective across new problems, thus demonstrating transferability of optimization knowledge. This formulation is applied to the Apache Spark distributed computing environment, and a preliminary result is observed that the time required to build a search tree for finding recommendations is reduced by up to a factor of 10x.

Homomorphic encryption (HE) allows direct computations on encrypted data. Despite numerous research efforts, the practicality of HE schemes remains to be demonstrated. In this regard, the enormous size of ciphertexts involved in HE computations degrades computational efficiency. Near-memory Processing (NMP) and Computing-in-memory (CiM) - paradigms where computation is done within the memory boundaries - represent architectural solutions for reducing latency and energy associated with data transfers in data-intensive applications such as HE. This paper introduces CiM-HE, a Computing-in-memory (CiM) architecture that can support operations for the B/FV scheme, a somewhat homomorphic encryption scheme for general computation. CiM-HE hardware consists of customized peripherals such as sense amplifiers, adders, bit-shifters, and sequencing circuits. The peripherals are based on CMOS technology, and could support computations with memory cells of different technologies. Circuit-level simulations are used to evaluate our CiM-HE framework assuming a 6T-SRAM memory. We compare our CiM-HE implementation against (i) two optimized CPU HE implementations, and (ii) an FPGA-based HE accelerator implementation. When compared to a CPU solution, CiM-HE obtains speedups between 4.6x and 9.1x, and energy savings between 266.4x and 532.8x for homomorphic multiplications (the most expensive HE operation). Also, a set of four end-to-end tasks, i.e., mean, variance, linear regression, and inference are up to 1.1x, 7.7x, 7.1x, and 7.5x faster (and 301.1x, 404.6x, 532.3x, and 532.8x more energy efficient). Compared to CPU-based HE in a previous work, CiM-HE obtain 14.3x speed-up and >2600x energy savings. Finally, our design offers 2.2x speed-up with 88.1x energy savings compared to a state-of-the-art FPGA-based accelerator.

Ask any working musician why they play live, why they lug their equipment to and from bars and restaurants and wine-tasting rooms week after week, and they'll point to the same nebulous thing: It's the connection with an audience.…

While events around the country have been put on hold, Coeur d’Alene’s Summer Theatre is still slated for a show at the end of the month. But it won’t be in the usual format.…

A method for performing relational analysis of parsed input is employed to create a visual map of knowledge information. A title, header or subject line for an input item of information is parsed into syntactical components of at least a subject component and any predicate component(s) relationally linked as topic and subtopics. A search of topics and subtopics is carried out for each parsed component. If a match is found, then the parsed component is taken as a chosen topic/subtopic label. If no match is found, then the parsed component is formatted as a new entry in the knowledge map. A translation function for translating topics and subtopics from an original language into one or more target languages is enabled by user request or indicated user preference for display on a generated visual map of knowledge information.

An information providing apparatus for vehicle has a remaining capacity detecting section 110 that detects a remaining capacity of a battery; a power consumption amount detecting section 130 that detects a power consumption amount of the battery; a power consumption amount history generating section 130 that generates a power consumption amount history on the basis of the power consumption amount detected by the power consumption amount detecting section 130; a charge necessity judgment information generating section 130 that generates, on the basis of the power consumption amount history generated by the power consumption amount history generating section 130, charge necessity judgment information which is information for user's judgment about whether or not charging of the battery is necessary; and a providing section 150 that provides information of the remaining capacity of the battery and the charge necessity judgment information with these information correlated with each other to the user. The information providing apparatus can properly provide the information for user's judgment about whether or not charging of the battery to the user.

To provide a method for producing a magnetic disk, whereby a magnetic recording layer is formed at a high temperature. A method for producing a magnetic disk, which comprises a step of forming a magnetic recording layer on a glass substrate having a temperature of at least 550° C., wherein the glass substrate comprises, as represented by mol percentage, from 62 to 74% of SiO2, from 6 to 18% of Al2O3, from 2 to 15% of B2O3 and from 8 to 21%, in total, of at least one component selected from MgO, CaO, SrO and BaO, provided that the total content of the above seven components is at least 95%, and further contains less than 1%, in total, of at least one component selected from Li2O, Na2O and K2O, or contains none of these three components.

A method, system and computer program product for intelligently responding to hardware failures so as to optimize system performance. An administrative server monitors the utilization of the hardware as well as the software components running on the hardware to assess a context of the software components running on the hardware. Upon detecting a hardware failure, the administrative server analyzes the hardware failure to determine the type of hardware failure and analyzes the properties of the workload running on the failed hardware. The administrative server then responds to the detected hardware failure based on various factors, including the type of the hardware failure, the properties of the workload running on the failed hardware and the context of the software running on the failed hardware. In this manner, by taking into consideration such factors in responding to the detected hardware failure, a more intelligent response is provided that optimizes system performance.

A method for vitrification of waste to reduce the formation of persistent secondary phases comprising separating at least one glass frit constituent from an initial glass frit to form a modified glass frit. The waste, modified glass frit, and the at least one glass frit constituent are mixed together with the modified glass frit and the at least one glass frit constituent being added as separate components. The resulting mixture is vitrified.

The generation of individual-specific information having a good reliability and uniqueness is made possible with a little circuit scale. For this purpose, in an individual-specific information generation apparatus, a plurality of digital circuits are in the same circuit configuration. Each of the digital circuits outputs a fixed or a random number output value individually without their output with respect to a certain input being determined unambiguously among the digital circuits. In each of the digital circuit, an order is defined in advance. A random number judgment unit judges whether the output value is a random value or fixed, for each of the plurality of digital circuits. An individual-specific information generation unit generates the individual-specific information based on information of the order defined in the digital circuit judged by the random number judgment unit as having a fixed output value among the plurality of digital circuits and the output value.

The active ray-curable inkjet ink comprises a gelling agent, photopolymerizable compounds and a photoinitiator, and reversibly transitions into a sol-gel phase according to the temperature. Therein: (1) a (meth)acrylate compound having a molecular weight of 300-1,500 and having 3-14 (—CH2—CH2—O—) structural units within a molecule is included as the first photopolymerizable compound at a proportion of 30-70 mass % relative to the total mass of the ink; (2) a (meth)acrylate compound having a molecular weight of 300-1,500 and a C log P value of 4.0-7.0 is included as the second photopolymerizable compound at a proportion of 10-40 mass % relative to the total mass of the ink; and (3) the gelling agent has a total of at least 12 carbon atoms, and has a straight or branched alkyl chain including at least three carbon atoms.

Embodiments of the present invention relate to a method and an apparatus for obtaining equipment identification information, where the method includes: detecting, by using a first GPIO port, a first discharging duration for a capacitor to discharge through a resistor to be tested; detecting, by using a second GPIO port, a second discharging duration for the capacitor to discharge through a fixed value resistor; and obtaining a resistance of the resistor to be tested according to the first discharging duration, the second discharging duration, and a resistance of the fixed value resistor. The embodiments of the present invention are capable of increasing identification efficiency of the GPIO port.

An information processing apparatus includes a plurality of modules connected in a ring shape via a bus, and each module processes a packet flowing in a single direction on the ring in a predetermined order. The module includes a communication unit for transmitting a packet received from a first direction in the ring via the bus to a second direction, a discrimination unit for discriminating a packet from among the packets received from the first direction as a processing packet to be processed by the module, and a processing unit which is connected with the communication unit one by one and configured to process the processing packet. The communication unit transmits the packet processed by the processing unit at an interval equivalent to processing time or more for a processing packet processed by a module in a latter stage in the predetermined order among packets transmitted by the communication unit to the second direction.

A system, method and computer-readable media for managing a compute environment are disclosed. The method includes importing identity information from an identity manager into a module performs workload management and scheduling for a compute environment and, unless a conflict exists, modifying the behavior of the workload management and scheduling module to incorporate the imported identity information such that access to and use of the compute environment occurs according to the imported identity information. The compute environment may be a cluster or a grid wherein multiple compute environments communicate with multiple identity managers.

Embodiments of the invention are directed to a system, method, or computer program product for providing an information technology build service for building a platform in response to a service request. The invention receives a service request for the platform build from a requester, receives a plurality of platform parameters from the requester, determines whether the service request requires one or more physical machines or one or more virtual machines, and if the service request requires one or more virtual machines, initiates build of the one or more virtual machines. The invention also provisions physical and virtual storage based on received parameters, provisions physical and virtual processing power based on received parameters, and manages power of resources during the build, the managing comprising managing power ups, power downs, standbys, idles and reboots of one or more physical components being used for the build.

A processing device comprises a processor coupled to a memory and implements an obligation management system for information technology infrastructure, with the obligation management system being configured to process a plurality of obligations on behalf of a relying party to verify implementation of corresponding controls in information technology infrastructure of a claimant. A given one of the obligations has an associated obligation fulfiller that is inserted or otherwise deployed as a component within the information technology infrastructure of the claimant and is configured to provide evidence of the implementation of one or more of the controls responsive to an obligation assertion so as to establish an associated trust aspect of the claimant. The information technology infrastructure may comprise distributed virtual infrastructure of a cloud service provider. The claimant may comprise the cloud service provider and the relying party may comprise a tenant of the cloud service provider.

According to an embodiment, based on task border information, and first-type dependency relationship information containing N number of nodes corresponding to data accesses to one set of data, containing edges representing dependency relationship between the nodes, and having at least one node with an access reliability flag indicating reliability/unreliability of corresponding data access; task border edges, of edges extending over task borders, are identified that have an unreliable access node linked to at least one end, and presentation information containing unreliable access nodes is generated. According to dependency existence information input corresponding to the set of data, conversion information indicating absence of data access to the unreliable access nodes is output. According to the conversion information, the first-type dependency relationship information is converted into second-type dependency relationship information containing M number of nodes (0≦M≦N) corresponding to data accesses to the set of data and containing edges representing inter-node dependency relationship.

Disclosed is an information processing device and a task switching method that can reduce the time required for switching of tasks in a plurality of coprocessors. The information processing device (30) includes a processor core (301); coprocessors (311 to 31n) including operation units (321 to 32n) that perform operation in response to a request from the processor core (301) and operation storage units (331 to 22n) that store the contents of operation of the operation units (321 to 32n), save storage units (351 to 35n) that store the saved contents of operation, a task switching control unit (302) that outputs a save/restore request signal when switching a task on which operation is performed by the coprocessors (311 to 31n), and save/restore units (341 to 34n) that perform at least one of saving of the contents of operation in the operation storage units (331 to 33n) to the save storage units (351 to 35n) and restoration of the contents of operation in the save storage units (351 to 35 n) to the operation storage units (331 to 33n) in response to the save/restore request signal.

The invention relates to the use of polymers, containing between 1 and 100 mol % of structural units of the formula (1), wherein R1 means hydrogen or C1-C6 alkyl, A means C2-C4 alkylene groups, and B means C2-C4 alkylene groups, with the stipulation that A is different from B, and x and y mean an integer from 1 to 100 independent of each other, in amounts of 0.01 to 2 wt % relative to the water phase, as gas hydrate inhibitors.

The invention provides for the use of copolymers comprising 1 to 99 mol % of structural units of the formula (1) in which R1 is hydrogen or C1-C6-alkyl, A is C2-C4-alkylene groups and B is C2-C4-alkylene groups, with the proviso that A is different than B, and x, y are each independently an integer of 1-100, and 1 to 99 mol % of structural units of the formula (3) in which R6 is hydrogen or C1-C6-alkyl, D is C2-C4-alkylene groups and z is an integer of 1-50, in amounts of 0.01 to 2% by weight, based on the water phase, as gas hydrate inhibitors.

A computing section is provided with a plurality of computing units and correlatively stores entries of configuration information that describes configurations of the plurality of computing units with physical configuration numbers that represent the entries of configuration information and executes a computation in a configuration corresponding to a designated physical configuration number. A status management section designates a physical configuration number corresponding to a status to which the computing section needs to advance the next time for the computing section and outputs the status to which the computing section needs to advance the next time as a logical status number that uniquely identifies the status to which the computing section needs to advance the next time in an object code. A determination section determines whether or not the computing section has stored an entry of configuration information corresponding to the status to which the computing section needs to advance the next time based on the logical status number that is output from the status management section. A rewriting section correlatively stores the entry of the configuration information and a physical configuration number corresponding to the entry of the configuration information in the computing section when the determination section determines that the computing section has not stored the entry of configuration information corresponding to the status to which the computing section needs to advance the next time.

A processor determines whether a first program is under execution when a second program is executed, and changes a setting of a memory management unit based on access prohibition information so that a fault occurs when the second program makes an access to a memory when the first program is under execution. Then, the processor determines whether an access from the second program to a memory area used by the first program is permitted based on memory restriction information when the fault occurs while the first program and the second program are under execution, and changes the setting of the memory management unit so that the fault does not occur when the access to the memory area is permitted.

A High Performance Computing (HPC) node comprises a motherboard, a switch comprising eight or more ports integrated on the motherboard, and at least two processors operable to execute an HPC job, with each processor communicably coupled to the integrated switch and integrated on the motherboard.

A method of applying formal verification methodologies to event processing applications is provided herein. The method includes the following stages: representing an event processing application as an event processing network, being a graph with event processing agents as nodes; generating a finite state machine based on the event processing network, wherein the finite state machine is an over-approximation of the event processing application; expressing stateful rules and policies that are associated with the event processing application using temporal logic, to yield a temporal representation of the event processing application; combining the temporal representation and the finite state machine into a model; generating a statement associated with a user-selected verification-related property of the event processing application, wherein the statement is generated using the temporal representation; and applying the statement to the model, to yield an indication for: (i) a correctness of the statement or (ii) a counter example, respectively.

An information editing device is provided with an object storage portion 11 in which a character string object or image object is stored, a placement information storage portion 12 that stores placement area designation information that sets two or more placement areas that do not overlap each other for respectively placing the objects, and that correspond to the objects, an object output portion 13 that outputs, into placement areas that are set based on the placement area designation information, each of the objects corresponding to the respective placement areas, an input receiving portion 14 that receives a deletion instruction or a modification instruction for at least one of the objects output by the object output portion 13, and a placement modification portion 15 that, according to the deletion instruction or modification instruction, modifies the placement area of the object such that the placement area is placed without overlapping.

Computer-implemented methods for analyzing computer programs written in semi-structured languages are disclosed. The method is based on unification of the two classic forms of program flow analysis, control flow and data flow analysis. As such, it is capable of substantially increased precision, which increases the effectiveness of applications such as automated parallelization and software testing. Certain implementations of the method are based on a process of converting source code to a decision graph and transforming that into one or more alpha graphs which support various applications in software development. The method is designed for a wide variety of digital processing platforms, including highly parallel machines. The method may also be adapted to the analysis of (semi-structured) flows in other contexts including water systems and electrical grids.

Dive computers in accordance with embodiments of the invention are disclosed that store information concerning a dive site. The stored information can be accessed during the dive to provide information concerning such things as points of interest and/or hazards. One embodiment of the invention includes a processor, memory connected to the processor, a pressure transducer connected to the processor and configured to measure depth, and a display connected to the processor. In addition, the memory contains factual information concerning a dive site, and the processor is configured to display at least a portion of the stored factual information concerning the dive site via the display.

Traffic information readings corresponding to a vehicle are received, the readings including at least a location. The traffic information readings are compared to information already within a map database, and are used to derive additional map information augmenting or correcting that already within the database, the additional map information subsequently being stored in the database. Additional information that is derived includes the presence of stop signs and traffic lights at intersections, the legality of turns at certain times of day, and the connectedness or non-connectedness of road segments.

Provided are an apparatus and method of providing path information based on a status of a path and/or a purpose of the use of the path. A path information providing server collects environmental information from a sensing device. The path information providing server receives a path information request including a departure and a destination from a terminal device, and provides path information generated by mapping environmental data to a searched path.

A method and apparatus for partitioning of the input design into repeating patterns called template cores for the application of reticle enhancement methods, design verification for manufacturability and design corrections for optical and process effects is accomplished by hierarchy analysis to extract cell overlap information. Also hierarchy analysis is performed to extract hierarchy statistics. Finally template core candidates are identified. This allows to the design to be made amenable for design corrections or other analyses or modifications that are able to leverage the hierarchy of the design since the cell hierarchy could otherwise be very deep or cells could have significant overlap with each other.

The present disclosure relates a method of performing a design rule checking (DRC) procedure on a multi-tiered integrated chip. In some embodiments, the method is performed by defining layer databases for a plurality of tiers within a multi-tiered integrated chip. The layer databases respectively identify design layers within an associated tier. A DRC (design rule checking) deck is then generated, which defines one or more individual design layer definitions as a function of a plurality of layer databases, so that the one or more individual design layer definitions are defined for a plurality of tiers. One or more design rules for the one or more individual design layer definitions are defined within the DRC deck. Since the individual design layer definitions are defined as functions of the plurality of layer databases, the design rules apply to the plurality of tiers.

This invention relates to extend the benefits of using hypochlorite compounds such as sodium hypochlorite to clean and disinfect articles while reducing or eliminating the side effects of treating an article with a strong oxidant material. The invention relates to a single step process involving mixing of precursor compositions of a suitable hypohalite or hypohalous acid with a solution of a reducing agent. Optionally a buffer may be present in either or both precursor compositions, such that at time of use such active hypohalous acid concentration in the resulting aqueous mixture remains at a sufficient activity level to effect one or more desired benefits against a target substrate for a desired period of time. The oxidant is substantially consumed by reaction with the reducing agent after the time needed for achieving the desired benefit has passed.

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.

A method for configuring an interactive platform for monitoring the performance and the quality of a computer network, the monitoring data being suitable to be displayed on a dynamic page of type webpage in a form of graphic components called “displets”; including providing, on the interactive platform a configuration interface in which are defined, for at least one given user, filtering criteria for displaying displets, the criteria being defined in the form of parameters for configuring the rights of the at least one user.

An information processing apparatus according to this invention, being capable of communicating with a Web server via a network, receives from the Web server a response to a processing request issued to a Web application of the Web server. The information processing apparatus changes, when screen control information described in a header of the response contains information which designates priority of a screen display by a Web browser of the information processing apparatus, priority of the screen display by the Web browser to the designated priority. When an event to display a screen other than a screen by the Web browser occurs while the Web browser presents a screen display corresponding to the response, the information processing apparatus inhibits an interrupt display by the event in order for the designated priority.

A computerized method of presenting information from a variety of sources on a display device. Specifically the present invention describes a graphical user interface for organizing the simultaneous display of information from a multitude of information sources. In particular, the present invention comprises a graphical user interface which organizes content from a variety of information sources into a grid of tiles, each of which can refresh its content independently of the others. The grid functionality manages the refresh rates of the multiple information sources. The present invention is intended to operate in a platform independent manner.

An information processing apparatus configured to display a user interface on a display unit according to screen information acquired from an outside device changes the screen information according to a display attribute set by a user, and if setting of a display attribute of an object included in the screen information is unchangeable, color conversion processing of a specified object included in the screen information is performed and the screen information obtained by executing conversion processing according to the display attribute set by the user with respect to the screen information including the object which has undergone the color conversion processing is displayed.

Methods and apparatus to automatically link process control graphics to process control algorithm information are described. An example method involves displaying a first process control image including process control algorithm information and displaying adjacent to the first process control image a second process control image to include process control graphics. The method automatically links at least some of the process control algorithm information to a graphic in the second process control image in response to user inputs associated with the first and second process control images.

A message screen display comprises a static non-scrollable display area for display of at least part of a first message, the first message having an associated first message time. The message screen display further comprises a scrollable display area for display of at least part of a second message, the second message having an associated second message time. The message screen display further comprises a feature applied to at least part of the first message that varies based on time as referenced to the associated first message time.

In accordance with an example embodiment of the present invention, a method for proximity based input is provided, comprising: detecting presence of an object in close proximity to an input surface, detecting a displayed virtual layer currently associated with the object on the basis of distance of the object to the input surface, detecting a hovering input by the object, and causing a display operation to move at least a portion of the associated virtual layer in accordance with the detected hovering input.

An information processing system includes a CPU that is connected to a bus; a device that is connected to the bus; a memory that is accessed by the CPU or the device; and a power mode control circuit that sets a power consumption mode. The power mode control circuit sets the power consumption mode based on first information that indicates a cache hit or a cache miss of a cache memory in the CPU and second information that indicates an activated state or a non-activated state of the device.

A CPU executes a communication partner search process for searching for a communication partner (another game machine). The CPU confirms received data content. If identification information included in the received data matches, application identification information saved in a wireless communication module is compared with application identification information included in the received data. When the pieces of application identification information match, a notice that another game machine having exchange data corresponding to the matched application identification information is found is given to a main body. Then, giving/receiving of exchange data is executed to/from another game machine.

An example method to monitor media exposure involves receiving, at a first internet domain, a first request from a client computer, the first request indicative of access to the media at the client computer. The example method also involves determining if the client computer is known. If the client computer is not known, a response is sent from the first internet domain to the client computer, the response to instruct the client computer to send a second request to a second internet domain, the second request to be indicative of access to the media at the client computer. If the client computer is known, an impression of the media is logged.

A musical rhythm is expressed by the number of the timing marks (for example, three timing marks when in simple triple time); and a musical tempo is expressed by the distance among the timing marks and a timing ball that moves at a fixed speed among those timing marks. Accordingly, a player may easily grasp the tempo of the music and easily determine the rhythm of the music in a sound game.

Disclosed is a process for the production and purification of glycolic acid or glycolic acid derivatives by the carbonylation of aqueous formaldehyde. The water in the hydrocarboxylation zone is reduced via reaction with the ester bonds in a recycle stream comprising glycolic acid oligomers and/or methyl glycolate oligomers.

A method is provided to process data so that the data can be externally stored with minimized risk of information leakage. A framework (virtual execution framework) based on virtual machines (VMs) is utilized as a substitute for a trusted institution. Encryption of consolidated data can reduce risk of information leakage and enhance security. Since the virtual execution framework can control connection and direction of communication, financial institutions are allowed to apply encryption to data on their own, which makes the data further appropriate for external storage. By allowing financial institutions to apply their own decryption, it is possible to prevent one of two financial institutions from retrieving externally stored data into the external execution framework without intervention of the other. Additionally, associated acting subjects can be provided with freedom depending on the degree of information leakage risk.