TE Circuit Protection has released a new range of surface-mount fuses

TE Circuit Protection offer its 2410SFV family of 20 new AC/DC fuses featuring current ratings from 0.5A to 20.0A. The 2410 fuses help provide secondary-side circuit protection, conserve board space and reduce design costs in a broad array of high-voltage, high-current designs. Typical applications include home appliances (LCD TV LED backlighting, LCD TV CCFL backlighting) and LED lighting, as well as office automation, industrial and medical equipment.

Available in an ultra-thin (6.1x2.5mm) SMD package, 2410SFV fuses offer I2t characteristics as high as any similar SMD device on the market. They also offer a nominal cold resistance (DCR) from 0.0034Ω to 0.231Ω and a high-interrupt current from 50A to 300A. Rated for operation at temperatures ranging from -55°C up to 125°C, the fuses' high-inrush current withstand capability minimises nuisance tripping during transient overload conditions.

As wire-in-air (WIA) fuses, the 2410SFV products feature a straight wire configuration. As surface-mount devices they provide a rugged, single-piece package that speeds assembly time and is compatible with standard pick-and-place SMD processes. Additionally, the 2410SFV fuses' structure minimises the risk of the end cap of the device becoming dislodged, a feature not offered by most competitive devices. In accordance with industry standards and trends for "green" products, the fuses are 100% lead- and halogen-free and are RoHS-compliant and UL listed.

"Today's consumer, appliance, lighting, power and telecom industries increasingly demand designs that save board space and assembly costs and also meet stringent performance, safety and environmental requirements," said Jason Zhao, Senior Product Manager, TE Circuit Protection. "These new AC/DC fuses offer a wide range of cost and performance benefits. In addition to providing a comprehensive selection of 2410SFV fuses with market-leading features, TE Circuit Protection offers global design support to help applications engineers identify the best solution for their design challenges."

TE Connectivity in profile
TE Connectivity is a global, $12.1 billion company that designs and manufactures over 500,000 products that connect and protect the flow of power and data inside the products that touch every aspect of our lives. Our nearly 100,000 employees partner with customers in virtually every industry--from consumer electronics, energy and healthcare, to automotive, aerospace and communication networks--enabling smarter, faster, better technologies to connect products to possibilities.

Media Communications: Hope-Sutton Salvador, Manager Marketing Communications, email: hope-sutton.salvador@te.com

Developing an industry-standard query interface for ELN data

GGA Software Services, a leading provider of scientific informatics services, has delivered an electronic laboratory notebook (ELN) query service definition to the Pistoia Alliance, completing an important milestone in Pistoia's program of developing an industry-standard query interface for ELN data.

The Pistoia Alliance, an open source initiative in the pharmaceutical industry, selected GGA to collaborate on this initiative through a competitive bidding process. The objective was to prototype a common method of querying multiple ELN implementations. GGA, in collaboration with Pistoia working group members, analyzed user stories and use cases, developed process and domain models and objects, and created a formal definition of the desired ELN query interface. 

GGA's delivery of the interface definition allows Pistoia to move to the next phase of the project, namely, the creation of a reference implementation of the interface. Richard Golob, President and Chief Executive Officer of GGA Software Services, said, "GGA is pleased to have contributed to the Pistoia Alliance's efforts, and we will continue to seek ways to assist Pistoia on other projects." GGA is currently collaborating with Pistoia to help in developing the interface, which will contain industry-standard definitions, a search application, and a service specification for accessing and reporting ELN information.

A standard query interface for ELN data has the potential to provide valuable benefits for the scientific community. First, it would allow query applications to consolidate data obtained from multiple and disparate ELN implementations into a single collection of results, enabling scientists to search scientific data stored in ELNs from different vendors. Such a capability would facilitate rapid data access and lower the costs of sharing ELN data with partners and CROs. Second, such an interface would facilitate the process and reduce the cost of migrating from one ELN authoring tool to another by allowing data from the previous tool to be searched and retrieved without undertaking a costly migration to the format used by the new tool. Third, the resulting increase in functionality, performance, and overall value of ELNs would enable ELN providers to focus more on large-scale innovations in their ELN engines.

"GGA's completion of the query services definition and design is an important step toward creating a uniform industry standard by which scientists can acquire and consolidate experimental, analytical, and structural data from different ELN sources," said GGA's Golob. "We look forward to continuing to provide support to the Pistoia Alliance in developing a proof-of-concept interface with actual source data."

The ELN query service project is an undertaking of the Pistoia Alliance's ELN Query Services Working Group, and Pistoia currently has three additional active working groups that are focused on the following projects: 1) Semantically Enriched Scientific Literature - An open knowledge brokering framework standard that scientists can use to rapidly gather information on disease-causing genes. 2) Sequence Services - An externally-hosted service for the storage and mining of in-house gene and sequence information as well as external public databases. 3) Vocabulary Standards Initiative: Molecular Drug Target Reporting Standard - A universal standard for describing a molecular drug target within structured content, as well as a standard for managing information on a core molecular entity.

The Pistoia Alliance is receptive to developing new initiatives that will serve to deliver key industry information standards at a lower cost of ownership for member companies. In this way, Pistoia can fulfill its mission to streamline non-competitive elements of the life science workflow by the specification of common standards, business terms, relationships, and processes. 

GGA has extensive experience in the custom design of ELNs and laboratory informatics management systems, and is committed to contributing to industry initiatives in the pre-competitive space. GGA's Golob commented, "GGA values our working relationship with the Pistoia Alliance to develop tools for the increased dissemination and analysis of scientific information across life sciences organizations. Furthermore, GGA itself has created a suite of open-source cheminformatics applications that can be used under a General Public License."

GGA Software Services LLC in profile
GGA Software Services is a leading provider of outsourced scientific informatics services to the life sciences industry.  Headquartered in Cambridge, Massachusetts, with a best-of-class development center in St. Petersburg, Russia, GGA offers broad capabilities in scientific software engineering, algorithm development, and knowledge management, especially in cheminformatics, bioinformatics, and development informatics. Global pharmaceutical, scientific instrumentation, and medical device corporations as well as early-stage life science companies rely on GGA to provide ongoing scientific informatics services, including support, maintenance, and QA services, to enhance their internal resources. Since 1994, GGA has successfully served as an extended workbench for its clients, allowing them to both achieve their critical objectives and optimize their scientific informatics budget.

For further information, e-mail: rgolob@ggasoftware.com or view website: www.ggasoftware.com

The Pistoia Alliance profile
The Pistoia Alliance is a global, not-for-profit, precompetitive alliance of life science companies, vendors, publishers, and academics that aims to lower barriers to innovation by improving the interoperability of R&D business processes. Initially conceived in 2007 by informatics experts at four "Top Five" pharma companies, the Pistoia Alliance now includes over 45 member companies. By assembling and aggregating common use cases, identifying specific, high-value areas of opportunity, and exploiting contemporary technologies and service delivery models, the Pistoia Alliance serves as a hub for envisioning information-based solutions that will drive innovation and productivity in the precompetitive domains of life science R&D.

For further information, e-mail: nick.lynch@pistoiaalliance.org or view website: www.pistoiaalliance.org

More highlights in the Eplan Platform 2.0

Half a year has passed since Eplan Platform 2.0 was launched on the market, with over 1000 extensions some are still unknown. Reason enough to examine this major release from surprisingly new perspectives and learn about the convincing and exciting logic extensions for schematic generation, revision control and language management in practice.

The Machine Directive and high quality requirements are part of the reason for the increasing focus on adherence to standards and regulations when creating schematics. The Eplan Platform consistent answer: standardisation and repeated use. Required identifiers and additional component information can now be uniquely stored in parts management. The finishing touch for PE and N terminals: the requested additional function designation can now be stored directly on the part. When the designer uses a component, the designation is automatically transferred to the schematic, ensuring that the terminal is displayed in accordance with standards - on all schematic pages and with no extra effort. The automatic Eplan functions for numbering components prevent duplicate device tags, thereby improving documentation quality and speeding up design.

More logic included
Even more complex device technology requires that the wiring must be clearly represented in the schematic. That's where the Eplan Platform's potential transfer comes into play, which now goes beyond the connections placed in the black box. By assigning the connections colours according to the internal interconnections, it is considerably easier to track the signal. Starting in design and manufacturing and continuing all the way through commissioning and maintenance. Extra logic is also found in item properties,which can now contain detailed specifications for display and conversion and even complete technical SI units. The same holds for reports and calculations whose displayed values have been standardised. Eplan makes sure that all values have the same units in the calculation - no matter how they were entered in the schematic. Exact results are a given.

Perfect change tracking
Who isn't familiar with this situation? Just before the project is finished, numerous changes are made which have to be traceable. The powerful revision control in Eplan Platform 2.0 comes into its own here, significantly speeding up change management. Various types of changes are clearly marked with colours and symbols. All project members can see at a glance if project information has been added, changed or deleted. A table summarising all changes makes sure that all processes run smoothly - in engineering and especially in manufacturing, commissioning and maintenance. The direct result: faster starting-up phases
and shorter machine downtimes. …/Continued on the next page.