Abstract: Methods and apparatus for attaching a center cap a wheel of a motor vehicle. A specialized lug nut may replace existing lug nuts to provide a threaded receiving area for a screw. The screw may be used to secure a cap in place. Some embodiments include an adapter to match a lug bolt pattern to a cap diameter size. In preferred embodiments, a lug nut is provided of specific designs, size and shape to be installable to act as a mechanism to secure a wheel to a vehicle and also act as a holder for the screw to retain the cap. The center cap may then slide onto the lug nuts (or extension that attach to the lug nuts) and then stay on by tightening a screw through the top of one or more lug nuts on each wheel.

Abstract: The present invention provides for storage of data items with dissimilar structures in a single database table while minimizing the problems associated with prior approaches. In one aspect of the invention, a method of efficiently storing data items in a database management system (DBMS) is provided wherein each data item has at least one attribute associated with it, the method comprising identifying a set of attributes associated with each data item, creating, for use with all of the data items, a common data structure that excludes those attributes unique to any one of the data items, and associating each data item with attributes excluded from the data structure.

Abstract: The present invention comprises apparatuses and methods, for routing optical communication signals over all DWDM wavelength channels. Incoming wavelength channels are separated into a plurality of sub-groups having a smaller optical bandwidth. Wavelength channels within each sub-group are then acted upon independently by a filter, or switch, tunable and operable over the bandwidth of each sub-group. The invention may be embodied in a plurality of dynamic wavelength routing circuits including 1×N and N×N circuits. The 1×N circuit embodiments may be used when the filter free-spectral range is smaller than the full DWDM bandwidth. These embodiments are less complicated than the N×N circuit embodiments, but do not provide the same routing bandwidth. The N×N circuit embodiments may be used to route the full DWDM bandwidth and may be used for other routing operations having large bandwidth demand.