Abstract: A system and method for a cluster tool apparatus for processing a semiconductor product including processing modules located adjacent each other and configured to process a semiconductor module, loadlocks configured to retain and dispense unprocessed semiconductor products and each positioned adjacent one of the processing modules, a robot configured to load, transfer and unload a semiconductor product to and from the processing modules, a hardware controller in communication with the robot and executing a method to close down the cluster tool apparatus to an idle state, the method including determining a status of the processing modules, determining if a close down process is required based on the status or based on a close down signal, and, if required, determining a schedule for a close down process based on a semiconductor product residency parameter, and controlling the operation of the robot based on the schedule to perform the close down process.

Abstract: A compound for treating a disease, in particular cancer like non-small cell lung cancer, exceptionally inhibits activity of oncogenic ALK kinase. Compositions, particularly pharmaceutical compositions, are provided comprising this compound. Methods for targeting cancer cells harboring an abnormality in the ALK gene are also The compound for treating a disease has certain structural elements, namely a tricyclic, more specifically heterocyclic, backbone as the core part of the compound at least one highly electronegative atom in form of a tertiary amine attached to the backbone via an at most 6-membered linking group with a terminal highly electronegative atom in form of a nitrogen as secondary amine, and a further hydrophobic moiety fused to the backbone. The structural components allow for an advantageous interaction with the ALK kinase domain. The compound therefor represents a highly promising treatment option for patients in particular those bearing ALK-dependent non-small cell lung cancer.

Abstract: A method determines an optimized production schedule of a production line including a hybrid multi-cluster tool formed by a plurality of single-arm tools and dual-arm tools interconnected with each other.

Abstract: A power transmission system includes a plurality of electrical substations and a plurality of transmission lines arranged to connect the plurality of electrical substations to form a power transmission network; and a controller system arranged to control a power transmission within the power transmission network. The controller system includes: a detection module arranged to detect an occurrence of a fault in at least one faulty electrical substation of the plurality of electrical substations; and a restoration module arranged to at least temporally maintain an output power of the at least one faulty electrical substation; and wherein at least one of the plurality of electrical substations is operable to facilitate maintaining of the output of the at least one faulty electrical substation upon the detection of the occurrence of the fault.

Abstract: A method for evaluating performance of a data communication network with a receiver node arranged to initiate data transmission thereto from a plurality of transmitter nodes directly connected therewith includes applying to the data communication network a stochastic operation model arranged to model operation characteristics of the receiver node, and determining throughput or power consumption of the network based on the stochastic operation model. The operation characteristics include: a duration of a work cycle of the receiver node (Tcycle), the work cycle including an active data communication period (Thold) and an inactive period (Tdwell); a duration of the active data communication period (Thold), the active data communication period including a number of data communication events; the number of data communication events in the work cycle n; a duration of the respective data communication events (Ttx); and amount of data successfully received at the receiver node in the work cycle (Bi).

Abstract: Since single and dual-arm tools behave differently, it is difficult to coordinate their activities in a hybrid multi-cluster tool that is composed of both single- and dual-arm tools. Aiming at finding an optimal one-wafer cyclic schedule for a treelike hybrid multi-cluster tool whose bottleneck tool is process-bound, the present work extends a resource-oriented Petri net to model such system. By the developed Petri net model, to find a one-wafer cyclic schedule is to determine robot waiting times. By doing so, it is shown that, for any treelike hybrid multi-cluster tool whose bottleneck tool is process-bound, there is always a one-wafer cyclic schedule. Then, computationally efficient algorithms are developed to obtain the minimal cycle time and the optimal one-wafer cyclic schedule. Examples are given to illustrate the developed method.

Abstract: Example embodiments include a method that reduces consumption of computer resources in a computer system to reconstruct a shape of a multi-object image using finite terms. The method includes computing an initial function by performing V-system of degree 0 and functions of curves by performing hierarchical V-system. Norms of the functions of curves are compared with a predetermined threshold. A reconstruction function of the shape of the multi-object image is generated by summing the initial function and the functions of curves.

Abstract: A method of identifying and preferably quantifying at least one sphingolipid, in particular the sphingolipid portion in wild-type Cordyceps or Cordyceps derivates includes preparing a test sample solution from a Cordyceps sample, subjecting the test sample solution to liquid chromatrography with a mobile phase including at least a first and second eluting solvent; and performing a mass spectrometry after the step of subjecting. The quality and safety of Cordyceps products can be determined and wild-type Cordyceps and Cordyceps derivates may be differentiated via the ratio and/or presence of certain sphingolipids especially suitable as markers.

Abstract: One example embodiment is a method to embed a watermark image into a host image such that a watermarked image is generated. The method divides a host image into an Red (R) component, a Green (G) component, and a Blue (B) component, and partitions each component of the R, G, and B components into non-overlapping blocks from which embedding blocks are selected to embed watermark information such that a watermarked image is generated.

Abstract: A method of preparing a crystalline zwitterionic zinc(II)-carboxylate compound includes the steps of preparing a mixture of zinc(II) ions and a first pyridyl ligand having three carboxylic acid moieties; subjecting the mixture to conditions under which a precipitate is formed; separating the precipitate; adding a solvent and optionally a second pyridyl ligand to the separated precipitate; subjecting the obtained mixture to conditions under which crystals of the zwitterionic zinc(II)-carboxylate compound are formed; and separating the crystals of the zwitterionic zinc(II)-carboxylate compound. Preferably but not exclusively, the crystalline zwitterionic zinc(II)-carboxylate compound essentially consists of at least one 1D coordination polymer.

Abstract: A MAC protocol, useful for WLANs, is provided for random access over a channel. The protocol includes three concurrent processes. The channel includes a contention subchannel and a transmission subchannel. In the contention process, all nodes use the standard RTS/CTS mechanism operated on the contention subchannel to contend for a transmission right. When one node gains the right, all the nodes store the contention result into their respective contention queue (CQ) buffers. In the transmission process, the nodes sequentially transmit their data over the transmission subchannel according to the order of the nodes stored in the CQ buffers. When one node finishes transmission, the CQ buffers are updated. The contention and transmission processes are connected by the queuing process for dynamically updating each node's CQ buffer. When OFDM is used in a random-access system, numbers of data subcarriers in both subchannels for maximizing the system throughput are given.

Abstract: The throughput of a wireless network can be boosted by network coding (NC). The present invention combines NC-aware routing and TDMA-based MAC protocol for energy-efficient design in the wireless network, and provides a method thereof. An optimization model, which is a minimum energy consumption model (MECM), is formulated for minimizing the energy consumption for accomplishing a set of flow transmissions. In particular, based on a set of user traffic-flow demands, a NC-aware traffic-flow assignment that minimizes a total energy consumption of packets delivering to meet the user traffic-flow demands is determined. Thereafter, given the optimal flow assignment, a minimum timeslots model (MTM) which leads to a TDMA-based scheduling strategy at the MAC layer is developed. The MTM is to minimize the total number of timeslots required for transmission under a condition that the NC-aware traffic-flow assignment as already determined is accomplishable.

Abstract: A method for implementing a packet I/O engine on a programmable computing platform is provided, where the engine performs I/O functions for plural threads generated by a plurality of user applications. In the method, the platform is configured such that only one thread is permitted to initialize and configure the resources. Furthermore, I/O-device queues each for buffering packets either transmitted to or received from an individual external I/O device are set up. For a plurality of unsafe I/O-device queues determined, among the I/O-device queues, to be multi-thread unsafe, a plurality of multi-producer, multi-consumer software queues for buffering packets delivered between the plurality of the unsafe I/O-device queues and the plurality of user applications is set up.

Abstract: The scheduling problem of a multi-cluster tool with a tree topology whose bottleneck tool is process-bound is investigated. A method for scheduling the multi-cluster tool to thereby generate an optimal one-wafer cyclic schedule for this multi-cluster tool is provided. A Petri net (PN) model is developed for the multi-cluster tool by explicitly modeling robot waiting times such that a schedule is determined by setting the robot waiting times. Based on the PN model, sufficient and necessary conditions under which a one-wafer cyclic schedule exists are derived and it is shown that an optimal one-wafer cyclic schedule can be always found. Then, efficient algorithms are given to find the optimal cycle time and its optimal schedule. Examples are used to demonstrate the scheduling method.

Abstract: Recent trends of larger wafer and smaller lot sizes bring cluster tools with frequent lot switches. Practitioners must deal with more transient processes during such switches, including start-up and close-down processes. To obtain higher yield, it is necessary to shorten the duration of transient processes. Much prior effort was poured into the modeling and scheduling for the steady state of cluster tools. In the existing literature, no attention has been turned to optimize the close-down process for single-arm cluster tools with wafer residency constraints. This invention intends to do so by 1) developing a Petri net model to analyze their scheduling properties and 2) proposing Petri net-based methods to solve their close-down optimal scheduling problems under different workloads among their process steps. Industrial examples are used to illustrate the effectiveness and application of the proposed methods.

Abstract: A computer system executes hierarchical MK splines for scattered data approximation. The computer system constructs an image by generating a final approximation function that approximates a scattered data set with a hierarchy of control lattice from coarsest to densest. The method includes executing MK splines approximation to the scattered data set with the hierarchy of control lattice to iteratively obtain approximation functions. The image is constructed by generating the final approximation function to construct an interpolated surface.

Abstract: A computer system that execute a method to stitch satellite images into a wide-angle image. The method includes dividing each of the satellite images into plural subimages, determining whether the subimages include an overlap area that overlaps with adjacent subimages, obtaining cropped subimages by removing the overlap area from the subimages, generating preprocessed satellite images each including the cropped subimages, selecting a reference image and a target image from the preprocessed satellite images, determining plural correspondent pairs in an overlap region between the reference and target images based on a feature matching algorithm, obtaining a transformation matrix by a least-squares algorithm and based on coordinates of the correspondent pairs, obtaining calibrated coordinates for each pixel of the target image by applying the transformation matrix, and stitching the target images into the wide-angle image based on the calibrated coordinates of the target image.

Abstract: Prenylated isoflavones are suitable to specifically inhibit P-glycoprotein in multidrug-resistant cancer cells leading to an accumulation of cytotoxic compounds or therapeutic compounds in the cells while having exceptionally increased cytotoxic activity specifically towards multidrug-resistant cancer cells and while allowing for an increased activity of chemotherapeutic compounds towards which the cells are resistant. Also in accordance with the present invention is a method for specifically targeting cancer cells with multidrug-resistance as well as a method of potentiating the activity of a chemotherapeutic compound in multidrug-resistant cancer cells. In a further aspect, a kit including a prenylated isoflavone and a chemotherapeutic compound is provided.

Abstract: The administration of a compound advantageously efficacious as ROS1 inhibitor and its effect on subjects with cancer includes administering a compound having certain structural components such as a quinoline moiety in the backbone and at least one tertiary amine containing moiety in a side chain as well as heteroatoms, in particular oxygen atoms, present in the backbone and the side chain for treating a subject suffering from a disease such as cancer. The presence of such structural components allows for an advantageous interaction with the ROS1 kinase domain, in particular with the hinge region. The administered compounds represent a highly promising opportunity in particular for patients bearing ROS1-dependent cancer. A method for targeting tumor cells harboring an abnormality in ROS1 gene includes contacting a cell with compounds of the present invention as well as pharmaceutical compositions comprising such compounds.

Abstract: For sustainable development, a refinery is required to save energy as much as possible so as to reduce the emission of greenhouse gas. In crude oil operations, oil transportation from storage tanks to charging tanks via a pipeline consumes a large portion of energy. It is vitally important to minimize energy consumption for this process. Since the oil flow resistance is proportional to the square of oil flow rate, the relation between energy efficiency and flow rate is nonlinear, which makes the problem complicated. The present invention addresses this important issue by formulating a linear programming model for the considered problem such that it can be efficiently solved. A real-world industrial case study is used to demonstrate the applications and significance of the proposed method.