Exemplary embodiments include An active impedance current-sharing circuit including: a power supply in electrical communication with a current sense resistor; a differential amplifier in electrical communication with the current sense resistor; a gate adjust amplifier in electrical communication with the differential amplifier; an ORing MOSFET in electrical communication with the gate adjust amplifier and the current sense resistor; a current share resistor in electrical communication with a current share bus and the gate adjust amplifier; and a current share output in electrical communication with the ORing MOSFET, wherein the circuit allows two or more power supplies that are not designed for current share to be connected in parallel and current share by actively modulating the ORing MOSFET between its linear and fully enhanced regions.

1. Technical Field
The present disclosure relates generally to electrical and electronic circuits and more specifically to a method of active impedance current sharing.
2. Description of the Related Art
Modern digital electronic circuits rely upon the delivery of significant currents to achieve required power for operation, as the trend has been toward lower voltages. This presents a dilemma in circuit design. Delivering high current loads, e.g., hundreds of amps, to printed circuit boards and integrated circuit devices can raise the cost of circuits. High current buses add significant expense to circuits and devices, but are generally necessary to deliver high current to printed circuit boards.
The information technology equipment being designed today are systems requiring extremely high availability. Powering these systems in an extremely cost-conscious market requires special powering schemes. For redundancy, 1+1 or N+1 configurations are required. A single voltage, or a small number of voltages distributed from the bulk power supply into the chassis simplify the AC/DC converters and allow for bulk power commonality across system platforms, saving development costs. There is an increasing focus on quality and reliability forced by market pressures. Density pressure will continue driving a lower number of output voltages from the bulk supplies. Cost pressures drive more use of Voltage Regulators Down (VRDs) and Voltage Regulator Module (VRM) Common Building Blocks (CBBs).
The need for this equipment to be operational basically 100% of the time mandates that redundant, concurrently maintainable equipment be used. Regardless of form factor and specific electrical requirements, critical electrical features for a power supply in embedded systems are current sharing and the ability to hot-swap. These are the key operational parameters that allow the high-reliability fault tolerance required for today's high uptime systems.
High-availability systems use at least one extra power supply so that failure of one supply does not power down the system. For such an operation, the supplies have to share the load currents. Redundant power conversion designs using multiple converters also require multiple pins for current sharing on +5−, +3.3−, and +12-V outputs. To increase the reliability of the systems and eliminate the possibility of a single point of system failure due to current-sharing connection, some manufacturers employ automatic current sharing that does not require any bus. Passive current sharing is a method of paralleling the outputs of two or more power supplies or DC/DC converters so that they share the load. This is simple, inexpensive and easy to implement. Although passive current sharing provides a highly scalable means of accommodating demands for higher power, one of the converters will always try and output more than half the total current. To implement current sharing between two converters using o-ling diodes, their output voltages ideally need to be adjusted to be perfectly matched under all conditions. However, in the real world, it is nearly always impossible to achieve this degree of trim accuracy.
Droop sharing is also a very simple method to implement. Droop sharing does not require a current share "bus" and works by decreasing output voltage while increasing output current. When the output current of one power supply increases, its output voltage slightly decreases to force the other supplies to take more current. If all supplies are adjusted to the same voltage at a given load and have the same voltage versus current slope, they will share the load with high accuracy. When the load to the power supply rapidly increases, the voltage dip occurs, but with droop it starts at an initially higher voltage level. However, in order for accurate current sharing, the droop method requires a precise voltage setpoint and droop slope. Equal impedance between supplies would be needed as well; realistically this does not happen.
Most embedded systems allot separate pins on power connectors for current sharing. For example, the CompactPCI standard allots three pins for current sharing on +5-, +3.3-, and +12-V outputs. The respective pins are then paralleled on the backplane, which lets the power supplies share information about their currents. What is needed is a highly reliable, accurate method of current sharing. Besides the advantages such as fault tolerance, another benefit to tightly sharing outputs would be for redundant over-current protection (OCP) when two converters are operating in parallel.

International Business Machines Corporation


The invention relates to apparatus for the provision of receipt, validation and collection of banknotes or tickets which are input by a user, typically as payment for a service which has or is to be provided. The apparatus allow for the accurate location of the banknote or ticket as it passes through the apparatus and the accurate validation of the same. In one embodiment a printer assembly is provided which allows the apparatus to print tickets and to pass the same in the reverse direction to input banknotes or tickets, to be provided to the user as, for example a credit which can be cashed subsequently by the user.

The invention to which this application relates is to apparatus of the type which can be used to receive bills or notes or cards, which typically have a monetary value in a particular currency. The apparatus can be required to firstly identify and check the validity of the bills or cards hereinafter referred to as bills in a non limiting manner) and then, if accepted, store the bills in a storage container in a secure manner.
Bill validator apparatus is well known and there are many patents which relate to specific features of this type of apparatus. A common problem experienced by all types of apparatus is to ensure that the bills are entered and stored in a secure manner within the apparatus so as to only be subsequently be removable in an authorised manner. A further problem is to ensure that the apparatus is as resistant as possible to unauthorised attempts to defraud the apparatus and a yet further problem is to provide the means and components required to meet the ever increasing customer demands within a physical space which cannot be increased.
The applicant has identified the need to provide an improved form of apparatus which has improvements in terms of security, ease of use for the customer and which is efficient and adaptable to specific customer requirements.

Bills and/or card validator and storage apparatus


A high resolution measurement method and apparatus for tracking wavelength transients in tunable lasers. The apparatus comprises a Mach-Zehnder interferometer (MZI) which is used to generate a self-heterodyne signal between the wavelength transient to be measured, which is effectively the laser signal passed along the time-delayed arm of the MZI, and the laser wavelength after the tuning transient has subsided, which is effectively the same laser signal passed along the direct arm of the MZI. The heterodyne signal is detected on a receiver, and can then be measured with the frequency resolution typical of electronic measurements, such as by means of an oscilloscope. The only laser required is the laser under inspection. The wavelength measurement accuracy is up to twice the laser linewidth, and is only effectively limited by the laser phase noise. The method can be used to implement an automatic frequency control system for tunable lasers.

Optical packet switching is considered a key technology in the development of optical communication networks. Fast tunable lasers can be used to color bursts of data according to their destination. A tuning time as fast as the order of a nanosecond enables the implementation of efficient burst switching, as described in the article "Optical switching speed requirements for Terabit/sec packet over WDM networks" by D. Sadot, and I. Elhanany, published in IEEE Photonics Technology Letters, Vol. 12, no., 4, pp. 440-442, April 2000. The accurate measurement of wavelength transients increases the efficiency of optical burst switching, by making it possible to ascertain mode stability in the minimum possible time.
A number of different types of tunable lasers which offer the combination of wide tuning range and fast tuning are in common use, such as DBR, SG-DBR, GCSR, and DS-DBR lasers. Such lasers have been implemented in a number of different systems described in various publications.
Prior art methods of measuring spectral wavelength transients are often based on the accuracy of an optical wavelength selective element. By applying a step function signal to drive the laser's tuning section(s) and filtering the resulting optical signal through the wavelength selective device, the wavelength transients can be measured. One such experimental method has been described in the article entitled "Measurements of thermal frequency chirp in directly modulated DFB lasers and thermal transient induced frequency drift during fast tuning in GCSR lasers using frequency discrimination technique," by E. Buimovich and D. Sadot, published in the Proceedings of LEOS Annual Meeting, Paper TuD7, vol. 1, pp. 208-209, Tucson, Ariz. 2003, in which there is described an apparatus for performing this method, as shown in FIG. 1. The time resolved frequency evolution of the laser is obtained by f(t)=H−1 (A(t)/B(t)), where H represents the response of the wavelength selective device as a function of wavelength, and B(t) and A(t) are respectively the time dependent response functions of the laser output resulting from the step input function, and of the laser output resulting from the step input function modified by transmission through the wavelength selective device.
One disadvantage of such time-resolved wavelength measurement methods is that they are limited in spectral resolution by the resolution of the wavelength selective devices, which is generally significantly less than that of electronic filtering and measuring techniques. There therefore exists a need for a method of performing on tunable lasers, high resolution spectral measurements having the accuracy and resolution of electronic filtering techniques.
The disclosures of each of the publications mentioned in this section and in other sections of the specification, are incorporated herein by reference, each in its entirety.

Measurement of wavelength transients in tunable lasers


An element measurement circuit is provided, comprising a oscillator for generating a first oscillation clock and second oscillation clock, a frequency divider for dividing the first oscillation clock to generate a third oscillation clock and for dividing the second oscillation clock to generate a fourth oscillation clock, a frequency detector for detecting the third oscillation clock to generate a first count value and for detecting the fourth oscillation clock to generate a second count value, and a controller for generating a first oscillation period according to the first count value, for generating a second oscillation period according to the second count value, and for generating a measurement value according to the first oscillation period and the second oscillation period.

(a) Field of the Invention
The invention relates to a measurement circuit, particularly to an element measurement circuit built in a chip to measure characteristics of the chip.
(b) Description of the Related Art
When CMOS (complementary metal oxide semiconductor) process is developed into nanometer order, the influence of process variation on product becomes greater and thus increasing product yield is more difficult. To figure this problem, a test key is placed in each wafer to collect process information, and a measurement equipment or test machine is required to measure signal parameters. However, measuring signal parameters requires a high-end measurement equipment so that it introduces production cost and adding the equipments may further introduce an error. Furthermore, the test keys is limited in a wafer and is not sufficient to realistically reflect the process variation impacted in each die of the wafer. Therefore, in order to obtain related information to increase diagnostic or debugging capability to reduce production cost, it is necessary to build a circuit in a chip to measure characteristic of elements of the chip.

Element measurement circuit and method thereof


A method and apparatus for dynamically adjusting the level of a response signal from an ultrasound transducer is disclosed. During a calibration phase, a description of a gain profile of a level adjuster is set dependent upon an expected response signal for a type of object to be tested and the description is stored in memory. During a measurement phase for an object under test, a description of a gain profile is selected for the type of the object under test and a gain profile is determined from the selected description. The response signal from the object under test is passed through a level adjuster and the level of the response signal is adjusted dynamically in accordance with the gain profile. The description of the gain profile is selected with reference to an expected response either by operator interaction with a user interface or automatically.

The use of time gain control (TGC) in medical ultrasonic imaging and non-destructive testing is well known. In ultrasonic imaging, pulses of acoustic energy reflected from or transmitted though an object are measured and processed to produce images of the object. As an ultrasonic pulse propagates through an object it is generally subject to attenuation due to a variety of physical mechanisms. Generally, the amount of attenuation increases with the length (in time or distance) the propagation path. Thus, for example, a reflection from impedance mismatch deep in an object is generally at a lower level than a reflection from a similar impedance mismatch nearer the surface.
Measurement systems used to capture the reflected or transmitted sound are imperfect. In particular, they have limited dynamic range and limited resolution.
The effect of limited dynamic range may be mitigated by using non-linear signal compression to boost low level signals relative to high level signals before the signals are captured.
A further approach is to use a variable gain amplifier to increase the gain of the signal path over time, as the signal level decreases. This approach has been used successfully in ultrasound systems for imaging bulk materials. In this application, the decrease of the signal strength with time is largely due to geometric spreading and absorption in the material. Thus, the gain of the variable gain amplifier is generally increased with time in a simple geometric and/or exponential manner.
This approach has also been used successfully in medical ultrasound. In medical ultrasound, an image is captured using arrays of transmitting and receiving transducers, together with phased-array beamforming.
The structure of the part of the body being scanned is complicated and three-dimensional, so again the gain of the variable gain amplifier is generally increased with time in simple geometric or exponential manner defined by a single parameter that may be adjusted by an operator. For example, the operator may view repeated C-scan displays, adjusting the parameter between scans to obtain an image that appears to be improved.
Skilled artisans will appreciate that elements in the figures are illustrated for simplicity and clarity and have not necessarily been drawn to scale. For example, the dimensions of some of the elements in the figures may be exaggerated relative to other elements to help to improve understanding of embodiments of the present invention.

Method and apparatus for adjusting the level of a response signal from an ultrasound transducer


It is intended to provide an electromagnetic relay which resolves problems of large base size and difference in spring constant. In a facing gap defined between a pair of electromagnet units disposed on a base in parallel to each other and with shaft lines being oriented to an identical direction, a pair of moving contact springs overlaid along a vertical direction on the base and an A-fixed terminal unit and a B-fixed terminal unit provided with a plurality of contacts to which contacts of the moving contact springs selectively contact depending on excitation/non-excitation states of the electromagnetic units are housed. At least one of component parts of the respective electromagnetic units are included in electromagnetic connection passages between the moving contact springs and C-terminals.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an electromagnetic relay and, particularly, to an electromagnetic relay for forward reverse control, such as a motor and a solenoid.
2. Description of the Related Art
FIG. 12 is a block diagram showing a forward reverse control circuit. A forward reverse control circuit 1 is provided with two electromagnetic relays 2 and 3. An A-terminal 2a of one of the electromagnetic relays 2 and 3 (hereinafter referred to as first electromagnetic relay 2) is connected to a plus electric source (hereinafter referred to as +E); a B-terminal 2b of the first electromagnetic relay 2 is connected to a ground potential (hereinafter referred to as GND); and a C-terminal 2c of the first electromagnetic relay 2 is connected to one of terminals (terminal 4a) of a load 4 such as a motor and solenoid. An A-terminal 3a of the other electromagnetic relay 3 (hereinafter referred to as second electromagnetic relay 3) is connected to the +E; a B-terminal 3b of the second electromagnetic relay 3 is connected to the GND; and a C-terminal 3c of the first electromagnetic relay 2 is connected to the other terminal 4b of the load 4. As used herein, the alphabet A added to each of the terminals means that the terminal is connected to an A-contact (normal open contact); the alphabet B means that the terminal is connected to a B-contact (normal close contact); and the alphabet C means that the terminal is connected to a C-contact (COM contact).
In such forward reverse control circuit 1, since the terminal 4a of the load 4 is connected to the GND via a contact 2e of the first electromagnetic relay 2 and the terminal 4b is connected to the GND via a contact 3e of the second electromagnetic relay 3 in a normal state (when the first and the second electromagnetic relays 2 and 3 are in a non-excitation state), the load 4 does not operate in the normal state.
When a control voltage is applied to a coil terminal 2d of the first electromagnetic relay 2, a coil 2f of the first electromagnetic relay 2 is excited to change the position of the contact 2e, so that the terminal 4a of the load 4 is connected to the +E via the contact 2e of the first electromagnetic relay 2. In such state, the second electromagnetic relay 3 is turned off, and the terminal 4b of the load 4 is connected to the GND via the contact 3e of the second electromagnetic relay 3, so that a current flows to the load 4 in a direction (see an arrow A) of "+E→contact 2e of first electromagnetic relay 2→terminal 4a of load 4→terminal 4b of load 4→contact 3e of second electromagnetic relay 3→GND".
When a control voltage is applied to a coil terminal 3d of the second electromagnetic relay 3, a coil 3f of the second electromagnetic relay 3 is excited to change the position of the contact 3e, so that the terminal 4b of the load 4 is connected to the +E via the contact 3e of the second electromagnetic relay 3. In such state, the first electromagnetic relay 2 is turned off, and the terminal 4a of the load 4 is connected to the GND via the contact 2e of the first electromagnetic relay 2, so that a current flows to the load 4 in a reverse direction (see an arrow B) of "+E→contact 3e of second electromagnetic relay 3→terminal 4b of load 4→terminal 4a of load 4→contact 2e of first electromagnetic relay 2→GND".
As described above, since it is possible to change the direction of driving current applied to the load 4 such as a motor and a solenoid by the use of the forward reverse control circuit 1 of FIG. 12, it is possible to change a rotation direction of the motor or a driving direction of the solenoid.
By the way, since the forward reverse control circuit 1 of FIG. 12 requires two electromagnetic relays, the forward reverse control circuit 1 undesirably needs extra effort and a relatively large mounting space when it is integrated into an appliance.
FIG. 13 is a conceptual diagram showing a conventional technology which resolves the above drawbacks (see, for example, Patent Literature 1). Referring to FIG. 13, an electromagnetic relay 5 is provided with a rectangular base 6 having a length La, and a pair of electromagnets 7 and 8 disposed parallelly to each other on the base 6, armatures 9 and 10 disposed on the electromagnets 7 and 8, a pair of insulators 11 and 12 disposed on side faces of the armatures 9 and 10, a pair of moving contact springs 13 and 14 sandwiched between the insulators 11 and 12, and a pair of fixed contact terminal plates 15 and 16 disposed at swinging ends of the moving contact springs 13 and 14 and can be handled as one unit.
Each of the pair of moving contact springs 13 and 14 is an L-shaped flat plate spring, and the moving contact spring 13 is disposed on the moving contact spring 14. Therefore, when the base 6 is viewed from above, the moving contact spring 14 cannot be seen since it is hidden under the moving contact spring 13.
A terminal 13a for connecting a load 17 is formed on a fixed end of the moving contact spring 13, and a terminal 14a for connecting a load 17 is formed on a fixed end of the moving contact spring 14. Moving contacts 13b and 13c are attached to opposite sides of the swinging end of the moving contact spring 13, and moving contacts 14b and 14c are attached to opposite sides of the swinging end of the moving contact spring 14.
The fixed contact terminal plate 15 is provided with a fixed terminal 15a for connecting to the +E and the GND, and the fixed contact terminal plate 16 is provided with a fixed terminal 16a for connecting to the +E and the GND. Fixed contacts 15b, 15c, 16b, and 16c are attached to the fixed contact terminal plates 15 and 16 at predetermined positions. The fixed contacts 15b, 15c, 16b, and 16c contact the moving contacts 13b, 13c, 14b, and 14c in predetermined combinations when the electromagnets 7 and 8 are excited.
The predetermined combinations are (1) the moving contact 13b and the fixed contact 15b, (2) the moving contact 13c and the fixed contact 16c, (3) the moving contact 14b and the fixed contact 16b, and (4) the moving contact 14c and the fixed contact 15c.
With such constitution, when the electromagnets 7 and 8 are not excited, the combinations of (2) the moving contact 13c and the fixed contact 16c and (3) the moving contact 14b and the fixed contact 16b are employed so that the GND is supplied to both ends of the load 17. When the electromagnet 7 on the left hand side in FIG. 13 is excited in this state, the armature 9 is operated so that the insulator 11 attached to the armature 9 moves to the right. Accordingly, the moving contact spring 13 is pressed by the insulator 11 to move to the right, thereby achieving the combination (1) the moving contact 13b and the fixed contact 15b, so that a current flows in the order of the +E, the terminal 15a, the fixed contact 15b, the moving contact 13b, the moving contact spring 13, the terminal 13a, the load 17, the terminal 14a, the moving contact spring 14, the moving contact 14b, the fixed contact 16b, the terminal 16a, and the GND.
When the electromagnet 8 on the right hand side in FIG. 13 is excited, the armature 10 is operated so that the insulator 12 attached to the armature 10 moves to the left. Accordingly, the moving contact spring 14 is pressed by the insulator 12 to move to the left, thereby achieving the combination (4) the moving contact 14c and the fixed contact 15c, so that a current flows in the reverse order of the +E, the terminal 15a, the fixed contact 15c, the moving contact 14c, the moving contact spring 14, the terminal 14a, the load 17, the terminal 13a, the moving contact spring 13, the moving contact 13c, the fixed contact 16c, the terminal 16a, and the GND.
[Patent Literature 1] Japanese Patent No. 2890581


A translator receives a source code that is described using a process designation (such as a line-by-line process designation, a line data extraction designation, and a broadcast designation) to be performed on line data of an image on a line by line basis, parses and optimizes the source code, and then generates an SIMD macro code that is an intermediate form taking into consideration the use of an SIMD instruction set. A simplifier generates, from the SIMD macro code, a simplified SIMD macro code, namely, a composite macro code into which a series of codes having the relationship between the definition and the reference of the same virtual SIMD register is organized. A machine code generator generates, from the simplified SIMD macro code, a machine code that efficiently uses an SIMD instruction.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a method, an apparatus, and a computer program for generating an SIMD instruction sequence, intended for use with a computer having an extended instruction set called a single instruction multi data (SIMD) instruction for high-speed multimedia processing.
2. Description of the Related Art
In the processing of multi-media data such as images, the same type of operation is typically repeated to data in a fixed format. Some of currently available computers provide an instruction called SIMD instruction to enhance data processing performance and thus perform the same type of operation on a vast amount of data in response to a single instruction.
Data format and instruction set handled by the SIMD are different from computer architecture to computer architecture. Generally, computers process data of 64 bits or 128 bits in bulk in response to a single instruction. A plurality of pieces of data, such as 8-bit, 16-bit, or 32-bit integer type data, or floating-point 32-bit data or 64-bit floating-point data, are packed into this data width, and is then concurrently processed in response to a single instruction. For example, since 16 pieces of 8-bit integer type data are packed into 128 bits, an image processing software program processes data of 16 pixels at a time. The use of the SIMD instruction is particularly effective for high-speed processing of images. Instructions handled by the SIMD include addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division operations, logical operations such as AND gating and OR gating, mask operation, saturate calculation, multiply and accumulation, inner product operation, maximum/minimum value calculation, absolute value calculation, and mean value calculation, etc.
Typical SIMD instruction sets may be MMX technology and streaming SIMD instruction in the Pentium® architecture, 3Dnow! in AMD K6/K7, AltiVec in the PowerPC architecture, MDMX in the MIPS processor, and VIS in the SPARC architecture.
A processor instruction sequence containing an SIMD instruction must be generated to efficiently develop a program intended for use in a computer having an SIMD instruction set. Japanese Unexamined Patent Publication (JP-A) No. 10-228382 discloses a compiler (for SIMD) for generating a target program. An SIMD type loop structure is extracted from a source program in which processes of a plurality of data elements are successively described. The SIMD type loop structure is then converted to the one using an SIMD instruction, and the data elements are processed using an SIMD instruction set The target program is thus produced.
The compiler disclosed in JP-A No. 10-228382 automatically generates a target program intended for use in a computer having an SIMD set from a sequential processing program described using a high-level language such as C language. A technique for analyzing the sequential processing program to automatically extract an SIMD eligible portion from the program is still immature, and is subject to limitations. A sequential processing program containing a complicated process such as an image filtering process is not sufficiently SIMD enabled even if the program is subjected to an SIMD enabling compiler. A target program efficiency utilizing the SIMD instruction set is not generated. The generation of the target program using the SIMD instruction set depends on a manual operation using an assembler language.
The manual operation using the assembler language requires a high degree of skill and is time consuming. It is likely that an error is introduced into the instruction sequence. In a method of manually generating an assembly designation, processors of different types (for example, Pentium® II, III, and 4 of Intel and K-6, K-7 of AMD, etc.) use different SIMD (for example MMX, SSE, 3Dnow, etc.). Each time the target processor is changed, another assembly must be prepared.

SIMD instruction sequence generating program, SIMD instruction sequence generating method and apparatus


A system for detecting a key with key debounce including a circuit for detecting a key activation; a first counter coupled to the circuit and a clock for testing the key activation for a first predetermined number of clock cycles; a key debounce buffer for storing a key index identifying the activated key, if the key activation is valid for the first predetermined number of clock cycles; a second counter for testing the identified activated key for a first predetermined number of hardware key scan cycles; and a key event buffer for storing a key activation event, if the key activation is valid for the first predetermined number of hardware key scan cycles.

This disclosure relates generally to electronic circuits; and more particularly to a high performance key debounce correction method and circuit.
User input devices that include mechanical keys typically suffer from errors generated by key debounces. Key debounces are typically caused by mechanical bounces of the keys that generate glitches in the key signals. This, in turn, may lead to an incorrect detection of the key. For example, a key that is only pressed once may generate key debounce that may lead a keyboard controller to believe that the same key was pressed twice. Alternatively, the key debounce may cause the keyboard controller to believe that the key was not pressed at all.
A key debounce correction circuit inhibits an unintended double entry (or lack of entry) of a pressed key in a keyboard that may occur if the pressed key bounces when activated. However, typical key debounce systems are implemented in firmware and are dependent on the instruction cycles of a processor. These systems are relatively slow and may take up some of the processor execution time. Additionally, since the conventional systems are dependent on instruction cycles of the processor, their timing may not be uniform and predictable.
Therefore, there is a need for a hardware-based high performance key debounce correction method and circuit.

This patent is subject to a terminal disclaimer.

Method and apparatus for high performance key detection with key debounce


Oxidized coal is used to remove dissolved or suspended matter from aqueous mediums. It is particularly effective in removing metal ions dissolved in aqueous mediums and/or bacteria from aqueous mediums.

This invention relates to the treatment of aqueous mediums.
The treatment of polluted water whether it is of industrial or any other source for the removal of contaminating material, which may include dissolved metals and/or microorganisms, presents a problem. Such water may have to be purified before it can be discharged into the national water systems, or it may have to be purified for purposes of subsequent use.


A system (1) and apparatus comprising a multisensor guidewire (100/200/300) for use in interventional cardiology, e.g., Transcatheter Valve Therapies (TVT), comprises a plurality of optical sensors (10/20) for direct measurement of cardiovascular parameters, e.g. transvalvular blood pressure gradients and flow. A conventional outer coil wire (35) contains a shaped core wire (31) having a cross-section defining a channel surface (132), e.g. grooves (32), extending along its length, to position optical fibers (11) and optical sensors (10/20) in a channel (33). Advantageously, the core wire has a diameter that provides sufficient stiffness to the guidewire for use as a support guidewire for TVT, e.g. Transcatheter Aortic Valve Implantation (TAVI), while accommodating multiple sensors and fibers within a guidewire of outside diameter ≤0.89 mm. An optical connector (112) couples the guidewire to a control system (150). Optionally, the guidewire includes a contact force sensor (60), a pre-formed tip (400-1/400-2) and a separable micro-connector (140).

If a heart valve is found to be malfunctioning because it is defective or diseased, minimally invasive methods are known for repair and replacement of the heart valve. Transcatheter Valve Therapies (TVT) include procedures referred to as Transcatheter Aortic Valve Implantation (TAVI) and Transcatheter Mitral Valve Implantation (TMVI).
TVT provides methods for replacing diseased valves which avoid the need for open heart surgery. Procedures such as TAVI have been developed over the last decade and have become more common procedures in recent years. While there have been many recent advances in systems and apparatus for TVT and for related diagnostic procedures, interventional cardiologists who perform these procedures have identified the need for improved apparatus for use in TVT, such as, heart valve replacement. They are also seeking improved diagnostic equipment that provides direct measurements of important hemodynamic cardiovascular parameters before, during and after TVT.
The above referenced related PCT application no. PCT/IB2012/055893 (Publication no. WO/2013/061281), having common inventorship and ownership with the present application, discloses a multisensor micro-catheter or guidewire which comprises a distal end portion containing multiple optical sensors arranged for measuring blood pressure at several sensor locations simultaneously in real-time, and optionally also blood flow. In particular, the multisensor micro-catheter or guidewire is designed for use in minimally invasive surgical procedures for measurement of intra-vascular pressure gradients, and in particular, for direct measurement of a transvalvular pressure gradient within the heart.
To obtain accurate measurements of hemodynamic parameters such as blood pressure, blood flow, a blood pressure gradient, or other parameters within the heart, it is desirable that the sensor guidewire does not interfere with normal operation of the heart and the heart valves. Thus, beneficially, a fine diameter guidewire, e.g. ≤0.89 mm diameter, with a flexible tip, facilitates insertion through a heart valve without trauma, and reduces interference with valve operation. That is, when the sensor guidewire is inserted through the valve, it preferably causes minimal interference with the movement of the valve and/or does not significantly perturb the transvalvular pressure gradient or other parameters. For example, in use, a multisensor guidewire may be introduced via the aorta, through the aortic valve, and positioned so that the optical pressure sensors are located both upstream and downstream of the aortic valve, for direct measurement of the transvalvular blood pressure gradient, and optionally also blood flow, with minimal disruption of the normal operation of the aortic valve. Accordingly, a fine gauge guidewire minimizes disruption of the heart valve activity during measurement, to obtain accurate measurements of the transvalvular pressure gradient or other parameters.
A reliable measurement of a transvalvular pressure gradient through several cardiac cycles is an important parameter to assess whether the heart valve is functioning well or malfunctioning. An optical multisensor pressure sensing guidewire of this structure provides a valuable tool that an interventional cardiologist can use to facilitate direct measurements of cardiovascular parameters, including a transvalvular pressure gradient. Such measurements provide information relating to parameters, such as, an aortic regurgitation index, stenotic valve orifice area and cardiac output.
As described in the above referenced related patent applications, typically, a support guidewire used for TVT comprises an outer layer in the form of a flexible metal coil, and a central metal core wire or mandrel. The outer metal coil and inner core wire act together to provide a suitable combination of flexibility and stiffness, which, together with a suitably shaped tip, allow the guidewire to be directed or guided through the blood vessels into the heart. In the multisensor guidewire disclosed in the above referenced PCT International Application no. PCT/IB2012/055893, the optical sensors, e.g. 3 or 4 optical pressure sensors are located in a distal end portion of the sensor guidewire, and coupled by respective individual optical fibers to an optical input/output at the proximal end of the guidewire. It will be appreciated that to fit a plurality of optical sensors and optical fibers within a guidewire comprising a small gauge (≤0.89 mm) outer coil, the diameter of core wire is made as small as possible, i.e. to allow sufficient space around the core wire to accommodate the optical fibers and sensors. However, use of a smaller diameter core wire significantly reduces the stiffness of the multisensor guidewire. That is, the optical fibers and sensors take up space within the micro-catheter or guidewire coil but do not contribute significantly to the stiffness.
In testing of prototype multisensor guidewires, it has been found that the strong blood flow and turbulence within the heart can be sufficient to displace a small-gauge flexible guidewire, and tends to push the guidewire back into the aorta. Thus, during measurement of a transvalvular pressure gradient, movement of the guidewire may create difficulty in positioning the sensors and the cardiologist may need to readjust the positioning of the guidewire to maintain the pressure sensors each side of the heart valve. On the other hand, in a multisensor guidewire of this structure, to accommodate a plurality of optical sensors and respective optical fibers around a larger diameter stiffer core wire would require a larger outside diameter outer coil, i.e. larger than 0.89 mm. While a larger gauge, stiffer guidewire would be less easily displaced during measurements, for measurement of transvalvular pressure gradients, it would tend to interfere more with normal heart valve operation, and may increase the risk of tissue damage. Accordingly, a need for further improvements has been identified.
If diagnostic measurements of hemodynamic/cardiac parameters indicate the need for valve replacement, minimally invasive TVT procedures, such as TAVI, can be performed to insert a replacement or prosthetic valve, e.g. comprising leaflets made of biologic tissue supported within an expandable metal frame.
Examples of current prosthetic valves and valve delivery systems are illustrated and described and illustrated in an article entitled "Current Status of Transcatheter Aortic Valve Replacement", by John G. Webb, MD, David A. Wood, M, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada; Journal of the American College of Cardiology, Vol. 60, No. 6, 2012.
Very briefly, the procedure requires that a support guidewire, which is relatively stiff guidewire (TAVI guidewire) with a flexible tip, is introduced into the heart and through the aortic valve. For example, the interventional cardiologist introduces the support guidewire through a catheter inserted into the femoral artery, i.e. in the groin, and moves it up through the aorta into the heart. The tip of the TAVI guidewire is introduced into the aorta, through the malfunctioning aortic valve, and into the left ventricle of the heart. Once the support guidewire is anchored within the ventricle, a delivery device holding the replacement valve is passed over the support guidewire. The cardiologist guides the delivery device carrying the replacement valve over the support guidewire and manoeuvres the valve into position within the aortic valve. The replacement valve is expanded, so that the patient's malfunctioning aortic valve is pushed out of the way. The valve frame may be self-expandable or balloon-expandable, depending on the valve type and the delivery system. Once expanded, the metal frame engages the wall of the aorta and holds the replacement valve in position. When the delivery system is withdrawn, the leaflets on the replacement valve are able to unfold and then function in a manner similar to the leaflets of the natural aortic valve.
Commercial availability of an optical multisensor guidewire as described in the above referenced co-pending patent application would provide the interventional cardiologist with a useful tool for directly measuring a pressure gradient before and after such a procedure for valve repair or replacement, e.g. for TAVI. For example, it is envisaged that the interventional cardiologist would introduce the fine gauge multisensor guidewire to measure a transvalvular pressure gradient, and optionally blood flow, to assess pre-implantation functioning of the heart and the damaged or malfunctioning aortic valve. After withdrawing the multisensor guidewire, the cardiologist would perform a transcatheter heart aortic valve implantation procedure using a specialized, more robust and stiffer, support guidewire (TAVI guidewire) to deliver the valve implant into the heart and perform the implantation. Subsequently after completing the TAVI procedure the TAVI guidewire would be withdrawn. The multisensor guidewire would then be reintroduced to measure a transvalvular pressure gradient and flow, to assess post-implant functioning of the replacement valve.
For TAVI, a relatively stiff support guidewire, typically 0.035 inch or 0.89 mm in diameter, is required. For example, guidewire manufacturers may use a descriptive term, such as, "stiff" or "super stiff" to provide an indication of the guidewire stiffness. Based on experience, an interventional cardiologist will select a guidewire with an appropriate stiffness and/or other mechanical characteristics to suit a particular TVT procedure. Such a description of stiffness or flexibility can be related in mechanics to a measurement of a flexural modulus, which is a ratio of stress to strain in flexural deformation, or, what may be described as the tendency for a material to bend.
During a TAVI procedure, the support guidewire must be firmly anchored within the left ventricle so that the replacement valve can be accurately positioned and held firmly in place while it is expanded. When such a guidewire is introduced into the left ventricle of the heart through the aortic valve, if too much force is applied to the guidewire or it is pushed too far, there is some risk that the guidewire could cause damage or trauma to the heart tissues, e.g. damage to the aortic wall or ventricular perforation and pericardial effusion resulting in pericardial tamponade. Moreover, there is increased risk of trauma or damage to the heart wall in a diseased, weakened or calcified heart. To reduce risk of trauma or ventricular perforation, typically the tip of the support guidewire is relative soft and flexible. It may be pre-formed as a J-tip or it may be resiliently deformable so that it can be manually shaped as required by the cardiologist. Recently, specialized TAVI guidewires have become commercially available with pre-formed curved tips of other forms. For example, the Boston Scientific Safari™ pre-shaped TAVI guidewire has a double curve tip, and the Medtronic Confida™ Brecker Curve™ guidewire has a spiral tip. Reference is also made, by way of example, to structures described in US patent publication no. US2012/0016342 and PCT Publication no. WO2010/092347, each to Brecker, entitled "Percutaneous Guidewire"; PCT Publication no. WO2014/081942, to Mathews et al., entitled "Preformed Guidewire"; and PCT Publication no. 2004/018031 to Cook, entitled "Guidewire". See also, an article by D. A. Roy et al., entitled "First-in-man assessment of a dedicated guidewire for transcatheter aortic valve implantation", EuroIntervention 2013; 8, pp. 1019-1025.
While significant advances have recently been made, interventional cardiologists have identified a need for further improvements or alternatives to available guidewires and diagnostic tools for use in minimally invasive cardiac procedures, such as TAVI, or other TVT. In particular, it is desirable to have improved apparatus to simplify or facilitate TVT procedures, including apparatus that will assist in reducing the risk of tissue trauma, e.g. damage to the aorta, the valve or the ventricular wall when much force is exerted on the support guidewire. Additionally, improved systems and apparatus that would provide for direct (in situ) diagnostic measurements before and after TVT procedures would potentially assist in understanding factors that contribute to successful outcomes and/or issues that may contribute to mortality or need for re-intervention.
Thus, an object of the present invention is to provide for improvements or alternatives to known cardiovascular support guidewires for TVT and/or to multisensor guidewires for that enable direct measurements of cardiovascular parameters, such as a transvalvular pressure gradient.

System and apparatus comprising a multisensor guidewire for use in interventional cardiology


A carrier for attachment to a motor home or vehicle for transporting small outboard motors and their associated gasoline tanks is described. The carrier has a generally rectangular base for releasable attachment to a motor vehicle. The base has an outboard motor support for supporting an outboard motor in a position to maintain the propeller lower than the engine casing and a gasoline tank storage receptacle for securely transporting the gasoline tank for the outboard motor.

Many people with small boats, particularly collapsible boats, transport their boats and the outboard motor within the vehicle. The user may merely load the outboard motor and gas tank into the trunk of the automobile or place them on the floor inside a camper. This can cause hazardous conditions when unpleasant smelling gasoline fumes accumulate. In addition, there is a risk of damage to the motor or spills from the gasoline tank during motion of the motor vehicle, particularly during sudden starts and stops if the motor and gasoline tank are not properly secured. A further hazard is that any water that may be left inside the drive housing of the motor may flow into the working parts of the motor, such as the carburetor or cylinder, which may require that the motor be disassembled prior to the next use.
There have been a number of outboard motor carriers for motor vehicles proposed for carrying the outboard motor on the exterior of the motor vehicle. Examples of such carriers are illustrated in U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,381,069, 4,136,803, 5,509,592, 4,625,900 and Design Pat. Nos. 322,423 and 363,695. Most of these carriers are designed to be attached to a trailer hitch with the exception of U.S. Pat. No. 4,625,900, which is attachable to a spare tire carrier or bumper of a motor vehicle. All of the patents describe carriers having a rigid metal support arm attached to the trailer hitch at one end and having a flat plate, preferably covered with flat wooden sheets to serve like a transom of a boat for attaching the clamps of an outboard motor. The designs all enable the outboard motor to be transported safely and securely at the exterior of a motor vehicle. While all of these carriers provide for a secure means for transporting the outboard motor, none of the carriers deal with the problems associated with the transport of the gasoline tank within the automobile.


A system and method to excavate and fill is disclosed. The system includes a canister adapted to receive and store excavated material. In addition, a plurality of blades are mounted inside of the canister about a horizontal shaft proximate a bottom end of the canister. A motor is adapted to rotate the plurality of blades to move the excavated material stored in the canister to the bottom end of the canister and a blower is adapted to blow the excavated material at the bottom end of the canister out of an opposing side of the canister through a discharge port. The canister includes a downward sloping lip disposed above the plurality of blades, where the downward sloping lip funnels the excavated material on to a downwardly rotating blade of the plurality of blades.

Industrial vacuum equipment has dozens of wet and dry uses such as locating underground utilities (potholing), hydro excavation, air excavation and vacuum excavation. In addition, the equipment can be used for directional drilling slurry removal, industrial clean-up, waste clean-up, lateral and storm drain clean-out, oil spill clean-up and other natural disaster clean-up applications, signs and headstone setting, for example. The vacuum systems may be mounted to a truck or trailer and are typically powered by gas or diesel engines. The material is vacuumed up and stored in a storage tank. From there, the material may be hauled away and disposed or the tank is emptied by opening a rear hatch and dumped in a pile at the site. In addition, outside material may be imported to the location of the hole for backfill. Workers move the material by hand from the pile and fill in the excavation and holes as needed. A shortcoming of the prior art is the inefficiency and difficulty to fill the excavation (or holes) easily, quickly and with precision. Accordingly, what is needed is a method and system to excavate and fill that can both excavate material and selectively return the fill material to a site in a controlled manner.


A cell voltage measurement unit measures a voltage of each of a plurality of cells that are series-connected. A total voltage measurement unit measures a total voltage of the plurality of cells. A controller manages an internal impedance of each of the plurality of cells. The controller detects a ripple of the total voltage measured by the total voltage measurement unit, estimates a ripple of each cell voltage by multiplying the detected ripple of the total voltage by a ratio of the internal impedance of each cell to a resultant internal impedance of the plurality of cells, and determines whether the ripple of each cell voltage is within an allowable voltage range.

In recent years, there has been an expanding demand for secondary batteries such as lithium-ion batteries and nickel-metal-hydride batteries. Secondary batteries are used for various use purposes such as in-vehicle use and stationary electricity storage use, for example, back up, peak shift, and frequency regulation (FR). Particularly in recent years, a volume of shipments of electric vehicles (EVs) and plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs) have increased, and there have been more cases where an EV and/or PHEV is charged from a charger installed outside the vehicle.
Along with the increase, there have been more cases where an inexpensive and low-spec charger is used. A low-spec charger cannot sufficiently remove a ripple component generated when alternate-current (AC) power of a commercial power source system is rectified, and a current on which a large ripple component is superimposed flows into a secondary battery. Also in a stationary electricity storage use, downsizing and cost reduction of power conditioners are required; accordingly, there is a case where a current on which a large ripple component is superimposed flows into a secondary battery.
In a case of an electricity storage system including a plurality of series-connected cells, a voltage is measured for each cell to monitor whether each cell voltage is within an allowable voltage range (for example, see PTL 1). When the cells are charged from a low-spec charger, there is a concern that the cell voltages pulsate due to influence of a ripple current and surpass the allowable voltage range of cell.

Management device, and electricity storage system

PANASONIC INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY MANAGEMENT CO., LTD.


A semiconductor structure is provided. The semiconductor structure comprises a substrate, a deep well formed in the substrate, a first well and a second well formed in the deep well, a gate electrode formed on the substrate and disposed between the first well and the second well, a first isolation, and a second isolation. The second well is spaced apart from the first well. The first isolation extends down from the surface of the substrate and is disposed between the gate electrode and the second well. The second isolation extends down from the surface of the substrate and is adjacent to the first well. A ratio of a depth of the first isolation to a depth of the second isolation is smaller than 1.

1. Technical Field
The disclosure relates in general to a semiconductor structure, and more particularly to a semiconductor structure having a first isolation and a second isolation, wherein a ratio of a depth of the first isolation to a depth of the second isolation is smaller than 1.
2. Description of the Related Art
With the development of semiconductor technology, reduction of feature size, improvements of the rate, the efficiency, the density and the cost per semiconductor structure are the important goals in the semiconductor technology. High power devices have been applied as semiconductor elements. On-resistance (Ron) is one of key factors of the semiconductor device. The lower the on-resistance, the lower the power consumption of the semiconductor device.
In a general semiconductor structure, low on-resistance (Ron) and high breakdown voltage (BVD) are required. Many improvements have been disclosed by modifying the semiconductor structure, however, they usually need extra masks and more steps of process, such that the cost of manufacturing the semiconductor structure becomes higher.


Disclosed are silicon and carbon containing film forming compositions comprising a polycarbosilazane polymer or oligomer formulation that consists of silazane-bridged carbosilane monomers, the carbosilane containing at least two —SiH2— moieties, either as terminal groups (—SiH3R) or embedded in a carbosilane cyclic compound, wherein R is H, a C1-C6 linear, branched, or cyclic alkyl- group, a C1-C6 linear, branched, or cyclic alkenyl- group, or combination thereof. Also disclosed are methods of forming a silicon and carbon containing film comprising forming a solution comprising a polycarbosilazane polymer or oligomer formulation and contacting the solution with the substrate via a spin-on coating, spray coating, dip coating, or slit coating technique to form the silicon and carbon containing film.

Spin-on coating is a procedure used to deposit uniform thin films onto mainly flat substrates by centrifugal force. In general, a coating formulation is applied on the center of the substrate, which is then spun at a certain speed. The coating formulation is spread by centrifugal force and forms a film to cover the substrate. The thickness of the film is typically controlled by the concentration of the coating formulation and the spin rate. In order to make the coating material flowable, a volatile solvent is used. The volatile solvent may be evaporated off as the film is formed. The thickness of the film depends on the angular speed of spinning, the viscosity and concentration of the solution, and the solvent. Spin-on coating is widely used in micro-electronics fabrication to make a variety of films such as photo-resists, anti-reflective coatings, low-k dielectric films, silicon oxide films, etc. In some applications, the spin-on dielectrics formed by a spin-on coating process are able to insulate transistors or conductive layers. The increase in semiconductor design integration by feature size reduction has resulted in the back end of line manufacturing (BEOL) in increased levels of interconnected metal lines and vertical vias, insulated from each other by thin dielectric layers. Dielectric layers having a low dielectric constant (low-k) are sought for such thin dielectric layers as they limit electromagnetic cross talks between the metal lines. At the transistor manufacturing level (Front End of Line), several steps in device manufacturing require the usage of dielectric films having the capability to deposit into deep trenches and holes. For instance, shallow trench isolation and fin isolation require the deposition of dielectric films in the bottom of trenches. Similarly, to the BEOL application, there is also a growing need to fill such features with insulating films having a lower dielectric constant than SiO2. Compared to the BEOL low-k films, Front End of Line additional constraints are the requirements of a high gap filling capability, and for the deposited film to withstand the high temperatures that are required when building the rest of the chip, i.e. typically >400° C., and more preferably >500° C., without significant impact on the film physical and chemical properties (dimension, stress, dielectric constant, chemical bonding, etc.). The Semiconductor industry has developed several low-k materials that are inorganic, organic or hybrid materials to replace silicon dioxide. These materials may be deposited by either chemical vapor deposition (CVD) or spin-on deposition (SOD) processes. Materials such as polyimide, carbon-doped silicon oxides and polyarylene may be deposited using SOD techniques.
US 2019/0040279 to Khandelwal et al. discloses process and formulation for Polycarbosilazane containing formulations comprising precursors having a unit having the formula: [—NR—R4R5Si—(CH2)t—SiR2R3-]n, where n=2 to 400; R is H; R2, R3, R4, R5 are independently H, a hydrocarbon group, or an alkylamino group, and provided that at least one of R2, R3, R4 and R5 is H.
US 2015/0087139 to O'Neil et al. discloses precursors and method for forming Si-containing films using organoaminosilane precursors, for example, H3Si(CH2)nSiH2NR—C(Me)=NR.
WO 2016/160991 to Kerrigan et al. discloses Si-containing film forming composition that comprise of Si—N containing precursors and methods for synthesizing these precursors by catalytic dehydrogenative coupling of carbosilanes with ammonia, amines, and amidine.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,260,377 to Leibfried et al. discloses crosslinkable carbosilane polymer formulation prepared from saturated or unsaturated carbosilane polymers containing reactive silicon hydride radicals in the polymer chain combined with polycyclic polyene crosslinkers that have two or more double bonds reactive in a hydrosilylation crosslinking reaction.
U.S. Pat. No. 9,243,324 to Bowen et al. discloses the methods for forming non-oxygen containing Si-based films that contain >50 atomic % of silicon. In one embodiment, the non-oxygen containing Si-based films were deposited using at least one organosilicon precursor having at least two —SiH3 groups with at least one C2-3 linkage between silicon atoms such as 1,4-disilabutane.
US Patent Application 2019/0055645 to Li et al. discloses Si-containing film forming composition that include a first compound having carbon-carbon double bond or carbon-carbon triple bond and a second compound comprising at least one Si—H bond.
US Patent Application 2009/0026924 Leung et al. discloses a method for forming a substantially transparent nanoporous organosilicate film on a substantially transparent substrate, for use in optical lighting devices such as organic light emitting diodes (OLEDs). The method includes first preparing a composition comprising a silicon containing pre-polymer, a porogen, and a catalyst. The composition is coated onto a substrate which is substantially transparent to visible light, forming a film thereon. The film is then gelled by crosslinking and cured by heating, such that the resulting cured film is substantially transparent to visible light.
US Patent Application 2013/0075876 to Goethals et al. discloses a method for at least partially sealing a porous material which comprised forming a sealing layer onto the porous material by applying a sealing compound comprising oligomers wherein the oligomers are formed by ageing a precursor solution comprising cyclic carbon bridged organosilica and/or bridged organosilanes. The method is especially designed for low k dielectric porous materials to be incorporated into semiconductor devices.
U.S. Pat. No. 8,441,006 to Michalak et al. discloses dielectric films and low-k dielectric films and methods for making dielectric and low-k dielectric films. Dielectric films are made from carbosilane-containing precursors.
US Patent Application 2018/0208796 to Pandey et al. discloses a composition for planarizing a semiconductor device surface including poly(methyl silsesquioxane)resin, at least one of a quaternary ammonium salt and an aminopropyltriethoxysilane salt, and at least a solvent.
US Patent Application 2018/0087150 to Kerrigan et al. discloses Polycarbosilazane containing formulations that comprise of Si—N containing precursors. The method of synthesizing the precursors is catalytic dehydrogenative coupling of carbosilanes with ammonia, amines, and amidine to produce Si—N containing precursors and produce H2 as a byproduct as shown in Equation I below. The reaction is accelerated with the use of catalysts, such as metal carbonyl, Dicobalt Octacarbonyl. The targeted reaction temperature for catalytic dehydrogenative coupling may be ranging from 0 to 600° C.

Cureable formulations for forming low-k dielectric silicon-containing films using polycarbosilazane

L'Air Liquide, Société Anonyme pour l'Etude et l'Exploitation des Procédés Georges Claude


A method of generating write pulse control signals adaptive to various optical recording media, and a recording apparatus adopting the method. In the write pulse control signal generating method, timing data is made with respect to starting and/or ending positions of pulses, relative to rising and falling edges of a mark, wherein the timing data includes a first pulses, a multi-pulse train, a last pulse and a cooling pulse, and the starting and ending positions of the pulses are varied for various optical recording media. The timing data is stored, and then a bias power control signal, an erase power control signal, a peak power control signal and a cooling power control signal are generated in synchronism with an input nonreturn to zero inverted (NRZI) signal, based on the timing data for each optical recording medium. The recording apparatus can store write pulses, which are adaptive to various optical recording media, in the form of timing data, and generate base signals based on the timing data. Also, the write pulse control signals can be generated by the base signals, which controls timing of the write pulses such that the optical recording can be realized adaptive to various optical recording media.

This application claims the benefit of Korean Application No.99-20485, filed Jun. 3, 1999, in the Korean Patent Office, the disclosure of which is incorporated herein by reference.
1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a method and apparatus for high density optical recording, and more particularly, to a method of generating write pulse control signals adaptive to various optical recording media, and a recording apparatus adopting the same.
2. Description of the Related Art
With the advent of multimedia, the demand for high capacity recording media has increased. Such high-capacity recording media include digital versatile disk-random access memory (DVD-RAM), DVD-recordable (DVD-R), DVD-rewritable (DVD-RW), DVD+RW and compact disc-RW (CD-RW).
An ideal optical disc recording apparatus is one that can read or write information from or to various optical recording media such as DVD-RAM, DVD-R, DVD-RW, DVD+RW and CD-RW. However, due to different recording characteristics between optical recording media, the type of write pulse also differs depending on the type of recording media. For this reason, in order to record data on various types of optical recording media, an optical disc recording apparatus must include a plurality of apparatuses, each of which is individually available in a specific optical recording medium, capable of generating various write pulses. Thus, the amount of hardware becomes excessive.
An object of the present invention is to provide a write pulse control signal generating method by which write pulse control signals suitable for various optical recording media can be easily generated.
Another object of the present invention is to provide a recording apparatus adopting the write pulse control signal generating method.
In an aspect of the present invention, there is provided a method for generating write pulse control signals which are adaptive to various optical recording media, the method comprising the steps of: (a) making timing data with respect to starting and/or ending positions of pulses, relative to rising and falling edges of a mark, wherein the timing data comprises a first pulses, a multi-pulse train, a last pulse and a cooling pulse, and the starting and ending positions of the pulses are varied for various optical recording media; (b) storing the timing data from the step (a); and (c) generating a bias power control signal, an erase power control signal, a peak power control signal and a cooling power control signal in synchronism with an input nonreturn to zero inverted (NRZI) signal, based on the timing data for each optical recording medium.
In another aspect of the present invention, there is provided a recording apparatus which is adaptive to various optical recording media, the recording apparatus comprising: a microcomputer for storing timing data which represent starting and ending positions of a first pulse, a multi-pulse train, a last pulse and a cooling pulse which constitute write pulses for each optical recording medium, the timing data obtained relative to rising and falling edges of the mark; a base signal generation unit for generating base signals which are used to generate write pulse control signals based on the timing data from the microcomputer, in synchronism with an nonreturn to zero inverted (NRZI) signal; a write waveform generation unit for generating the write pulse control signals in response to the base signals from the base signal generation unit; and a laser diode driver for driving a laser diode in response to the write pulse control signals from the write waveform generation unit.
Additional objects and advantages of the invention will be set forth in part in the description which follows, and, in part, will be obvious from the description, or may be learned by practice of the invention.

Method of generating write pulse control signals for various types of optical recording media and recording apparatus adopting the same


An exemplary backlight module (2) includes: a light guide plate (21) having an incident surface (211); a light source (23) facing toward the incident surface; a light source cover (25) partially covering the light source, a wall of the light source cover defining an opening located between the light source and the incident surface; and an optical switch element disposed between the light source and the incident surface and adjacent to the incident surface, and configured for adjusting the amount of light beams emitted by the light source that transmit through each of the opening and the incident surface. The optical switch element can control the light beams to pass through the opening in order to provide illumination for taking of photos. Moreover, the backlight module can also be used as a backlight source to supply bright light for a display screen of a display device.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to backlight modules, and especially to a backlight module with a switch element used in digital products such as liquid crystal display (LCD) devices and the like.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Liquid crystal displays (LCD) are now in widespread use in various applications; for example, in desktop computers, portable computers, LCD televisions, portable telephones, etc. An LCD cannot emit light itself. A light source system such as a backlight system is needed for emission of light. A light guide plate is an important part of a backlight system, because it controls uniform directionality of emitted light.
A conventional backlight module is shown in FIG. 5. The backlight module 1 comprises a light source 11, a light source cover 16, a reflection plate 12, a light guide plate 13, a diffusion plate 14, and a brightness enhancement film (BEF) 15.
The reflection plate 12, light guide plate 13, diffusion plate 14 and BEF 15 are stacked sequentially from bottom to top. The light guide plate 13 is flat, and includes an incident surface 131, a bottom surface 133 substantially perpendicular to the incident surface 131, and an emitting surface 132 opposite to the bottom surface 133. The light source 11 is arranged adjacent to the incident surface 131, and the light source cover 16 essentially covers three sides of the light source 11. The BEF 15 has a plurality of parallel prism sections 151.
Light beams emitted by the light source 11 enter the light guide plate 13 through the incident surface 131 and propagate through the light guide plate 13. The light guide plate 13 cooperates with the reflection plate 12 to guide the light beams to emit out from the emitting surface 132. Then the light beams are diffused by the diffusion plate 14, and are focused by the prism sections 151 to supply bright light for an associated display screen.
In recent years, the development of liquid crystal display devices has paralleled the development of digital products, particularly digital products which have photography functionality such as mobile communications devices and digital video. To enable photography and filming, these products generally need an amount of artificial light like a flash in low light conditions. However, conventional backlight modules are not equipped to meet this requirement.
Therefore, it is desired to provide a backlight module which overcomes the above-described shortcoming of the prior art.

Backlight module having an optical switch element


The preparation of allylated poly(vinyl chloride) by utilizing an allyltrialkylsilane in the presence of Friedel-Crafts acids is disclosed. The pendant allyl groups can be further reacted through various functionalization reactions to contain end groups such as epoxy. A method for determination of the labile chlorine content of poly(vinyl chloride) is also disclosed.

The present invention relates to the preparation of allylated poly(vinyl chloride) by utilizing an allyltrialkylsilane in the presence of Friedel-Crafts acids. The pendant allyl groups can be further reacted through various functionalization reactions to contain groups such as epoxy. A method for determination of the labile chlorine content of poly(vinyl chloride) is also disclosed.
During polymerization of vinyl chloride to poly(vinyl chloride) (PVC), in addition to regular xe2x80x94CH2CH(Cl)xe2x80x94repeat units, a very small quantity of xe2x80x9cactivexe2x80x9d or xe2x80x9clabilexe2x80x9d chlorines also arises. Although the concentration of these active chlorines is very modest, their presence decisively influences the ultimate thermal, oxidative, and chemical stability of this commercially important resin. The literature is replete with references addressing details of this problem such as set forth in Thermal Degradation of Some Model Compounds for Poly(vinyl chloride), Airinei, Buruiana, Robila, Vasile and Caraculacu, Polymer Bulletin 7, 465-471, (1982); Formation of Anomalous Structures in PVC and Their Influence on the Thermal Stability:1 Endgroup structures and Labile Chlorine Substituted by Phenol, Hjertberg, Soervik, J. Macromol. Sci., Chem. 1982 A17(6), 983-1004; and Formation of Anomalous Structures in PVC and Their Influence on the Thermal Stability:2. Branch Structures and Tertiary Chlorine, Hjertberg and Sorvik, Polymer, Vol. 24, June, 1983, pp. 673-684.
It has been found that the active chlorines in poly(vinyl chloride), in conjunction with certain Friedel-Crafts coinitiators, are efficient initiators for the grafting of cationically active monomers (isobutylene, styrene) from poly(vinyl chloride), and that the thermal stability of the grafted poly(vinyl chloride) increases significantly over that of unmodified poly(vinyl chloride). See for example Cationic Grafting: The Synthesis, Characterization and Physical Properties of Poly (Vinyl Chloride-g-isobutylene), Kennedy and Davidson, J. Macromol. Sci. Chem., A12(2), pp. 197-207 (1978); Poly(vinyl chloride-g-Styrene): Synthesis, Characterization, and Physical Properties, Kennedy and Nakao, J. Macromol. Sci.-Chem., A12(2), pp 197-207 (1978); Thermal Stability of Graft Modifications of PVC and Related Materials, Abbas, Journal of Polymer Science: Polymer Chemistry Edition, Vol. 13, 59-68 (1975); New Telechelic Polymers and Sequential Copolymers by Polyfunctional Initiator-Transfer Agents (Inifers). XVII. Epoxy and Aldehyde Telechelic Polyisobutylenes, Kennedy, Chang, and Francik, Journal of Polymer Science: Polymer Chemistry Edition, Vol. 20, 2809-2817 (1982); and New Telechelic Polymers and Sequential Copolymers by Polyfunctional Initiator-Transfer Agents (Inifers). III. Synthesis and Characterization of a Poly(xcex1-Methylstyrene-b-isobutylene-b-xcex1-Methylstyrene), Kennedy and Smith, Journal of Polymer Science: Polymer Chemistry Edition, Vol. 18, 1539-1546 (1980).
The active chlorine content in poly(vinyl chloride) has been determined by several groups by using FTIR and UV spectroscopy, and selective reactions in conjunction with IR- or UV- active reagents. The values reported in the literature cover quite a broad range (i.e. anywhere from 0.04 to 2.3 mol %), and the discrepancy cannot be explained only by the differences between the samples used. This uncertainty prompted us to develop an analytical method for the determination of the minute concentrations of active chlorines in poly(vinyl chloride) starting material.
The preparation of the allylated poly(vinyl chloride) is described herein. The active chlorines in poly(vinyl chloride) can be replaced by pendant allyl groups (xe2x80x94CH2CHxe2x95x90CH2) by the use of allyltrialkylsilane in the presence of Friedel-Crafts acids. The thermal stability of allylated poly(vinyl chloride) is significantly superior to that of the starting material. NMR analytical results of the allylated poly(vinyl chloride) can be utilized to determine the active chlorine content in poly(vinyl chloride). The allyl groups of the allylated poly(vinyl chloride) can be used in various functionalization reactions such as epoxidation, hydroboration, and hydrosilation.

Allylation poly(vinyl chloride) and further functionalization of allyl groups


The present invention discloses an optic distribution meter that includes a testing system and an imaging system. The testing system includes an arc-shaped brace which has an extended object holder; and a rail base which has a first rail. The imaging system, set at a side of the testing system, includes a screen and an image catcher. With the implementation of the present invention, the rail base is able to rotate or move an object to a test angle with very little light blocking of measurements. Besides, with the first rail supporting the object, the incident angle of the light of a light source to the object remains unchanged when the measuring angle of the imaging system is changed. Thus ensure the accuracy of measurements of the optic distribution meter.

1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to an optic distribution meter and more particularly to an optic distribution meter which includes a first rail.
2. Description of Related Art
When object is illuminated by a light, the light will be refracted, reflected, absorbed or scattered by the object. Objects with different material or surface characteristics generate different scattering characteristics. The scattering characteristics of an object is normally represented by BSDF (bi-directional scattering distribution function) of the object, with BSDF being a function of a light incident angle and the light scattering angle.
That is, BSDF is a measuring of the scattering of an object, and is widely applied to optics related industries such as textile, cosmetics, panting, illumination, 3D computer graphics and displays.
Actual applications of the scattering of objects requires a measuring equipment to measure the scattering signals with respect to different measuring angles together with a data processing equipment to generate accessible data. For instance, module performance of a reflecting sheet, a light guiding panel, a diffusion film or a bright enhanced film depends very much on the scattering performance, getting detail information about the scattering performance or BSDF of them helps big deal in optimizing the parameters in production or applications.
However, developments of most of the scattering signal measurement equipment nowadays focus only on the performance improvements of dynamic range, sensitivity or low noise. The measurements of the scattering signals of object still suffer from unwanted light blocking or error deviation of incident light to object that degrades enormously the accuracy of measurement.
In view of the above, it is an important issue for the optics or the material industry or even the research and development activities of them to overcome the aforesaid drawbacks of the conventional scattering signal measurement equipment and to provide a measurement structure of an optic distribution meter which meets the requirements of neither blocking of incident light to object when changing the measuring angle, nor error deviation when changing the incident angle of the light, which therefore contributes to enhancing the quality and accuracy of measurements. To this end, it is most desirable that a highly efficient optic distribution meter, or more particularly an optic distribution meter with a rail, can be made by forming a first rail on the testing system of the optic distribution meter.


A magnetically actuated locking mechanism includes a male section and a female section releasably coupled to the male section. The male section includes a male body, a projection extending from one end of the male body and including a transverse bore, and a locking element movable between an unlocked position wherein the locking element is received within the bore and a locked position wherein the locking element is partly extracted from the bore. A first magnet is embedded in the locking element. The female section includes a female body having a guide cavity dimensioned to receive the projection, and a transverse locking recess dimensioned to lockingly receive a part of the locking element as extracted. A second magnet is embedded in the female body adjacent to the locking recess. The first and second magnets have opposed polarities and are operatively associated with each other to magnetically urge the locking element from the unlocked position to the locked position when the locking element is aligned with the locking recess after the projection is inserted into the guide cavity.

A wide variety of locking devices are employed in a toy, a cabinet, a bag or briefcase, an ornament, a seat belt and etc. One example of such a known locking device uses a spring to urge a locking element from its unlocked to locked position. Another locking device includes a latch mechanism. Generally, those known locking devices are complicated in structure and are difficult to operate.
It is, therefore, an object of the present invention to provide a magnetically actuated locking mechanism which is simple in structure and is easy to operate.


A system for learning a mapping between time-varying signals is used to drive facial animation directly from speech, without laborious voice track analysis. The system learns dynamical models of facial and vocal action from observations of a face and the facial gestures made while speaking. Instead of depending on heuristic intermediate representations such as phonemes or visemes, the system trains hidden Markov models to obtain its own optimal representation of vocal and facial action. An entropy-minimizing training technique using an entropic prior ensures that these models contain sufficient dynamical information to synthesize realistic facial motion to accompany new vocal performances. In addition, they can make optimal use of context to handle ambiguity and relatively long-lasting facial co-articulation effects. The output of the system is a sequence of facial control parameters suitable for driving a variety of different kinds of animation ranging from warped photorealistic images to 3D cartoon characters.

This invention relates to animation and more particularly to a system for giving an animated figure lifelike voice-controlled facial animation without time consuming production.
From lip-synching to animation, psychologists and storytellers alike have observed that there is a good deal of mutual information between vocal and facial gestures. As discussed in an article by C. Benoit, C. Abry, M.-A. Cathiard, T. Guiard-Marigny, and T. Lallouache, Read my lips: Where? How? When? And so . . . What? In 8th Int. Congress on Event Perception and Action, Marseille, France, July 1995, Springer-Verlag, facial information can add significantly to the observer""s comprehension of the formal and emotional content of speech, and is considered by some a necessary ingredient of successful speech-based interfaces. Conversely, the difficulty of synthesizing believable faces is a widely-noted obstacle to producing acceptable digital avatars, agents, and animation. The human visual system is highly specialized for interpreting facial action. As a result, a poorly animated face can be disturbing and even can interfere with the comprehension of speech as discussed by H. McGurk and J. MacDonald. Hearing lips and seeing voices, Nature, 264:746-748, 1976.
Lip-synching, a large part of facial animation, is a laborious process in which the voice track is dissected, usually by hand, features such as stops and vowels are identified, and matching face poses are scheduled in the animation track at 2-10 per second. The overwhelming majority of lip-synching research and all such commercial offerings are based on an intermediate phonemic representation, whether obtained by hand as discussed by F. Parke, A parametric model for human faces, Technical Report UTEC-CSc-75-047, University of Utah, 1974; F. Parke, A model for human faces that allows speech synchronized animation, Journal of Computers and Graphics, 1(1):1-4, 1975; Cohen and D. Massaro, Modeling co-articulation in synthetic visual speech, N. M. Thalmann and D. Thalmann, editors, Models and Techniques in Computer Animation, Springer-Verlag, 1993; T. Ezzat and T. Poggio, Miketalk: A talking facial display based on morphing visernes, Proc. of The Computer Animation Conference, June 1998; J. E. Ball and D. T. Ling, Spoken language processing in the persona conversational assistant, ESCA Workshop on Spoken Dialogue Systems, 1995; and I. Katunobu and O. Hasegawa, An active multimodel interaction system, ESCA Workshop on Spoken Dialogue Systems, 1995, other commercial offerings are based on speech recognition as discussed by J. Lewis, Automated lip-sync: Background and techniques, The Journal of Visualization and Computer Animation, 2:118-122, 1991; K. Waters and T. Levergood, Decface: A system for synthetic face applications. Multimedia Tools and Applications, 1:349-366, 1995; and C. Bregler, M. Covell, and M. Slaney, Video rewrite: Driving visual speech with audio, Proc. ACM SIGGRAPH 97, 1997. Visernes are mouth poses thought to occur commonly in speech.
Typically, phonemic or visemic tokens are mapped directly to lip poses, ignoring dynamical factors. In Video Rewrite, as discussed by the above-mentioned Bregler et al. article, vocal, but not facial, co-articulation is partially modeled via triphones, while Baldy as discussed by the above-mentioned Cohen et al. article, uses an explicit, but heuristic co-articulatory model derived from the psychological literature. Co-articulation is interaction between nearby speech segments that have observable effects on the acoustic signal and facial action. For example, one might shape a vowel differently in anticipation of the next vowel one plans to produce.
Phonemic and visemic representations are arguably a suboptimal representation of the information common to voice and face, since they obliterate the relationships between vocal prosody and upper facial gesture, and between vocal and gesture energy. Moreover, there is inherent information loss in the discretization to phonemes.
Attempts to generate lip poses directly from the audio signal have been limited to predicting vowel shapes and ignoring temporal effects such as co-articulation.
None of these methods address the actual dynamics of the face. For example, there is co-articulation at multiple time-scales, 300 ms or less in the vocal apparatus and longer on the face. Furthermore, as noted in the above-mentioned Benoit et al. article, there is evidence found that lips alone convey less than half of the visual information that human subjects can use to disambiguate noisy speech. It has been found that much of the expressive and emotional content of facial gesture happens in the upper half of the face and this is not at all addressed by speech-oriented facial animation.
In order to provide a more realistic voice driven animation without animation voice track dissection, in the subject invention a more direct mapping from voice to face is used which involves learning a model of the face""s natural dynamics during speech, then learning a mapping from vocal patterns to facial motion trajectories. An entropy-minimization technique permits learning without having to prespecify what one is to look for, with entropy being a measure of ambiguity. Note that, the hidden Markov models are used to analyze facial and vocal action and to predict how an animated version of the speaker""s head should behave. Because of the use of hidden Markov models, the subject process takes minutes, not months to produce realistic lifelike animation sequences.
This method has several important properties. First, voice is analyzed with regard to learned categories of facial gesture, rather than with regard to hypothesized categories of speech perception. Secondly, long-term dependencies such as facial co-articulations are implicitly modeled. Thirdly, a probabilistic framework allows one to find the most probable face trajectory through a sequence of facial images used in producing the animation for a whole utterance, not just for a small window of time. Finally, the output of the system is at sequence of facial control parameters that can be used to drive model-based or image-based face animations.
In one embodiment, a database of synchronized speech and video is used as the starting point. The system then models facial dynamics with a hidden Markov model. The hidden Markov model is then split into two parts: a finite state machine which models the face""s qualitative dynamics, e.g., expression to expression transition probabilities; and a set of Gaussian distributions that associate regions of facial configuration space to those states. The system then learns a second set of distributions from regions of vocal configuration space to the states occupied by the face at the same time. This combines with the facial dynamical model to become a newer hidden Markov model that is used to analyze new voice-tracks. The result is similar to a speech recognition engine, but instead of giving a most probable sequence of phonemes, the system provides a most probable sequence of facial states, using context from the full utterance for disambiguation when necessary. Using this sequence of facial states and the original set of facial output distributions, the system solves for a maximally probable trajectory through the facial states of the facial configuration space. Every possible facial expression is a point in facial configuration space. The maximally probable trajectory through this space is a sequence of expressions that best matches the target vocal track. The trajectory is then used to drive the animation.
Two features of the subject invention make this workable. First, given a state sequence, one has a closed solution for the maximally probable trajectory that mimics both the natural poses and velocities of the face. Secondly, through the use of an entropy-minimizing learning algorithm, one can estimate probabilistic models which give unique, unambiguous state sequences.
The second point is slightly subtle. It is always possible to extract a most probable state sequence from a hidden Markov model Viterbi analysis, but typically there may be thousands of other sequences that are only slightly less probable, so that the most probable sequence has only a tiny fraction of the total probability mass. In the subject system, there is a method for estimating sparse hidden Markov models that explicitly minimizes this kind of ambiguity, such that the most probable sequence has most of the probability mass.
In summary, a system for learning a mapping between time-varying signals is used to drive facial animation directly from speech, without laborious voice track analysis. The system learns dynamical models of facial and vocal action from observations of a face and the facial gestures made while speaking. Instead of depending on heuristic intermediate representations such as phonemes or visemes, the system trains hidden Markov models to obtain its own optimal representation of vocal and facial action. An entropy-minimizing training technique using an entropic prior ensures that these models contain sufficient dynamical information to synthesize realistic facial motion to accompany new vocal performances. In addition, they can make optimal use of context to handle ambiguity and relatively long-lasting facial co-articulation effects. The output of the system is a sequence of facial control parameters suitable for driving a variety of different kinds of animation ranging from warped photorealistic images to 3D cartoon characters.

Generating realistic facial animation from speech

Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratories, Inc.


A system is provided for mounting the rear end of a bracket assembly within a cabinet between the front and rear walls of the cabinet and wherein the horizontal distance between the front and rear walls of the cabinet may vary. The rear end of the bracket assembly includes front-to-rear extending guide sleeves supported therefrom and support pins are longitudinally slidably received through the sleeves. The front ends of the pins include rotary torque input structure whereby rotary torque may be applied to the pins through the utilization of a rotary torque tool and the rear ends of the pins include threaded blind bores in which forward ends of screw shanks are removably threadedly engaged, the rear ends of the screw shanks being equipped with wood screw threads. In addition, the rear ends of the pins include abutment structures supported therefrom for adjustment longitudinally therealong and compression springs are disposed on the pins between the abutment structure and the sleeves through which the pins are slidably received.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a bracket-type slide frame assembly for slidably mounting a support structure within a cabinet including a face or front wall having an opening therein and a rear wall opposing the face wall and with the assembly mounted within the cabinet immediately above the aforementioned opening and from which a support is slidably mounted for movement through the opening between a recessed position within the cabinet and an exposed position disposed at least substantially forward of the cabinet front wall opening.
2. Description of the Related Art
U.S. Pat. No. 3,528,718 discloses a bracket assembly of the same general type as the bracket assembly of the instant invention and which is mounted within an associated cabinet in generally the same manner. However, the bracket assembly of the instant invention includes structural improvements relating to the manner in which the bracket assembly is mounted within the associated cabinet to provide a more secure mounting of the bracket assembly within the cabinet and to enable the bracket assembly to be easily removed from the cabinet for servicing adjacent equipment or structure and the bracket assembly to be thereafter reinstalled within the cabinet.

Rear drawer slide frame mounting screw with adjustable position compression spring


An apparatus, system, and method, each of which: acquires sound data generated from a plurality of sound signals collected at a plurality of microphones; acquires, from one or more sensors, a result of detecting a position of the sound recording apparatus at a time point during a time period when the plurality of sound signals is collected; and stores, in a memory, position data indicating the position of the sound recording apparatus detected at the time point, and sound data generated based on a plurality of sound signals collected at the microphones at the time point at which the position was detected, in association with each other.

For example, Ambisonics and wave field synthesis (WFS) are known in the related art as stereophonic sound techniques for reproducing an omnidirectional sound field. Ambisonics and WFS are techniques attempting to reproduce a highly accurate sound field in accordance with sound theory. For example, in Ambisonics, predetermined signal processing is performed on sound recorded using a plurality of microphones to reproduce the directivity of the sound at a position where the sound is listened to.
In these sound field reproduction methods, sound pickup conditions such as an arrangement of microphones typically need to be prepared highly accurately. For example, in Ambisonics, microphones called Ambisonics microphones need to be placed highly accurately in terms of arrangements and directions.
PTL 1 is known in relation to sound techniques. PTL 1 discloses a moving image distribution system for distributing a spherical moving image in real time. The moving image distribution system acquires stereophonic sound in synchronization with image capturing performed by a camera, distributes the spherical moving image and the stereophonic sound by using a distribution server, and reproduces sound data in accordance with a display range viewed by a user. However, PTL 1 fails to overcome an issue regarding unnaturalness in reproduced sound.

Sound recording apparatus, sound system, sound recording method, and carrier means