A centrifuge tube holder designed for use in a centrifuge rotor to hold a plurality of small volume tubes in such a manner that, when the centrifuge rotor is at rest, the tubes will be oriented at an inclined angle, but will assume essentially a horizontal orientation when the centrifuge rotor is operating. The holder provides improved collar support for the centrifuge tube during centrifugation and also provides for the inclusion of a tube pivot point in the plate to enhance the proper movement of the tube from its at-rest position to the correct support position during operational speeds of the centrifuge rotor.
A vertical, open-ended ingot mold assembly including a mold stool having a relieved portion machined in its base which machined relieved portion has a cavity therein produced by erosion during casting. The useful life of the mold stool is prolonged by providing a quantity of metal particles to fill the cavity and having a plate positioned over the cavity and metal particles, which plate is secured within the cavity by a ring that is within the relieved portion of the mold stool. This ring protects the periphery of the machined relieved portion from erosion during casting and also prevents the plate and metal particles from mingling with the cast metal. For each successive casting operation, the eroded cavity is filled with metal particles and a new plate is positioned thereover. Alternately, the use of metal particles may be avoided by using only a plate of a thickness sufficient to protect the remainder of the mold stool from erosion.
Popular recommender systems have proven essential to the success of e-commerce. They elevate sales through relevant suggestions while alleviating the customers dilemma of picking relevant items out of an overwhelming list of alternatives. However, they do not match the needs of bricks and mortar retailers who are also an emerging form of e-commerce. Retailers increasingly use email and websites, as well as in-store kiosks, to sell product or more importantly to attract the shopper to the physical store. A new form of recommender system is needed to support this form of retail. This article presents the reasoning, theory, and architecture of LoyaltySuite, a new bricks and mortar recommender product based upon empirical Bayes statistical inference and other modeling methods. The article differentiates the technology from the preexisting attempts to apply CRM and traditional recommender systems to the problem. The results of the production trials compare well against the best preexisting method.
This invention relates to apparatus for manufacturing steel from molten iron and in particular, it relates to a lance of the type used in steel making utilizing a method involving a blown stream of oxygen, having a nozzle cooled by pipes symmetrically disposed in the nozzle with certain pipes extended to cool a central portion of the nozzle.
Reinforcement learning (RL) has been widely used to solve problems with a little feedback from environment. Q learning can solve Markov decision processes (MDPs) quite well. For partially observable Markov decision processes (POMDPs), a recurrent neural network (RNN) can be used to approximate Q values. However, learning time for these problems is typically very long. We present a new combination of RL and RNN to find a good policy for POMDPs in a shorter learning time. This method contains two phases: firstly, state space is divided into two groups (fully observable state group and hidden state group); secondly, a Q value table is used to store values of fully observable states and an RNN is used to approximate values for hidden states. Results of experiments in two grid world problems show that the proposed method enables an agent to acquire a policy with better learning performance compared to the method using only a RNN.
A ribbon cartridge of the type having a body portion wherein an endless ribbon is contained in a fan-folded condition during use, includes a removable partition which is extendable entirely across and through the body portion between the inlet and outlet apertures thereof for separating the body portion into a first compartment at the outlet aperture side wherein the ribbon can be contained in a fan-folded condition prior to the first use of the cartridge and the second compartment at the inlet aperture side and including the entire drive aperture of the cartridge.
