A method for automatically determining an engine oil change frequency at an engine control unit includes the steps of determining an amount of fuel used per oil change, and calculating an amount of fuel remaining from the fuel used per oil change. The method also includes the steps of comparing the amount of fuel remaining to a predetermined amount of fuel remaining, and actuating an oil change indicator if the fuel remaining is less than the predetermined amount of fuel.

Embodiments described herein relate to a method for determining the frequency for changing the engine oil in a vehicle. More specifically, embodiments described herein relate to a method for automatically determining the engine oil change frequency based on fuel consumed by the vehicle.
Engine oil is periodically changed to replace the old oil, which becomes contaminated and depleted of additives through use, with new oil. Typically, the engine oil change interval is based on the distance or time of vehicle usage. However mileage and time may not be accurate indicators of contamination or depletion of additives in the oil. Without accurate indicators, the engine oil may be serviced while it still has useful life, or alternatively, if the useful life of the oil is exceeded, the engine may become damaged.
Engine manufacturers often publish guidelines that detail the oil change service interval. Typically there is a "normal" service interval for engines that undergo typical use, and a "severe" service interval for engines that undergo severe service or operator misuse. Other engine manufacturers have implemented an automatic oil change indicator system, but these systems are typically based on mileage or crankshaft revolutions, which are not necessarily accurate indicators of the condition of the oil. Other automatic oil change indicator systems rely on a sensor to determine the condition of the oil, however these systems are often complex and costly.

Method for automatically determining engine oil change frequency based on fuel injected

International Engine Intellectual Property Company, LLC.


A rotary drill for boring a hole through a solid body is disclosed. The drill bit comprises a collar (16) and a penetrating member (20). At a proximal end (32), the collar is attachable to a drill shaft (12). At a distal end (36), the collar is attachable to the penetrating member (20). The penetrating member (20) has a connecting end (64) for attachment to the collar and a cutting end (60) for engaging the solid body. A pilot drill (96) is fixedly attached to the cutting end for initiating contact with the solid body.

The present invention relates to a method and apparatus for boring through a solid body. More particularly, the invention relates to an improved rotary drill bit for boring holes with increased efficiency through difficult to penetrate materials.
There are different drill bits for drilling through a variety of solid materials. Many of these drill bits are designed for particular applications. For instance, drill bits have been designed to drill through wood, metal, and concrete. In order to drill through these different materials, designers have varied the material used to produce the drill bits, the shape of the drill bits, and the speed with which the drill bit is operated.
One problem existing with many drill bits is the rate at which they will drill a hole is too slow. When the material to be drilled is difficult to penetrate, the process of boring a hole may take as long as several minutes. It is often important to maximize the efficiency at which a hole can be bored into a given material in order to improve manufacturing productivity. Such is the case in drilling tap holes in metal purifying blast furnaces.
The first step in producing steel sheet which is used in the building and construction industry, the automotive industry, the appliance industry, the electric motor industry, etc., is to produce relatively pure iron from iron ore. This process is carried out within a blast furnace. In order to maximize the productivity of a steelmaking facility, as much pure iron as possible must be produced. Many resources are expended in developing methods and procedures to increase the amount of pure iron which can be produced annually.
In developing these methods and procedures, every manufacturing variable in the blast furnace process is optimized. One of these variables is the rate at which the blast furnace can be tapped to drain molten iron from the furnace. A typical blast furnace is tapped from seven to twelve times per day seven days per week. The typical blast furnace tap hole takes several minutes to drill. In fact, some tap holes take as long as 15 minutes to drill.
The rate at which the tap hole is drilled is adversely affected by drill bit xe2x80x9cwalking.xe2x80x9d Walking occurs as the drill bit first meets the material to be drilled, it slides or skids laterally rather than boring into the material. Therefore, drill bit walking prevents the drill operator from initiating the drilling process.
The drilling process is also slowed by drill bit binding. Binding occurs when loosened debris created in the drilling process builds within the hole. The debris accumulates around the drill bit and freezes the drill bit within the hole preventing the drill bit from rotating within the hole.
In order to solve some of these problems, certain drill bits have been designed which have air passages. Pressurized air is forced through the passages toward the drill bit/solid body interface to blow the debris away from the drill bit and prevent binding. However, when the hole to be drilled has a substantial length, as is the case with a blast furnace tap hole, the debris continues to build because it cannot escape the hole.
The present invention is provided to solve these and other problems.
The present invention is directed to a rotary drill bit for boring a hole through solid materials. The drill bit of the present invention has interchangeable parts and increases the rate at which a hole can be drilled.
The drill bit comprises a collar and a penetrating member. The collar is attachable at a proximal end to a drill shaft and at a distal end to the penetrating member. The collar is generally centered about a longitudinal axis and has a cylindrical shape. An inner surface of the collar defines a chamber. In addition, the inner surface is furnished with reverse or lefthand oriented threads.
The penetrating member comprises a connecting end and a cutting end. The connecting end is attachable to the distal end of the collar. The connecting end has a pair of opposing planar walls joined by a pair of opposing arcuate threaded walls. The threads on the arcuate walls are reverse oriented for attachment to the reverse threads located on the inner surface of the collar. The arcuate walls have a length less than the length of the planar walls so that the cutting end has a narrow profile.
The cutting end has a pair of spades radiating from a center point. A pilot drill for creating a pilot hole is also located at the center point. Each spade has a pentagonal cross-section. Accordingly, each spade has a base wall, opposing side walls, and a pair of angled walls that intersect to form a cutting edge.

Method and apparatus for boring through a solid material


A broadcast dispenser for use in dispersing an animal feedstuff includes an inlet channel separating in interior space from a spreader leading to an exterior space. The inlet channel includes a flexible gasket about a central orifice and a motor and gate assembly is arranged over and about inlet channel. The motor and gate assembly includes an electric motor having affixed thereto a spreader blade, where the spreader blade is disposed within the spreader on the opposite side of the central orifice from the motor. A gate, which is adapted to lower and raise into and out of sealing engagement, respectively, with said central orifice is provide. In order to accommodate the positioning of the spreader blade with respect to the motor, the gate has an opening in a lower portion thereof and the motor is affixed to the spreader blade through the provided opening.

Immeasurable effort has been expended toward better dispensing feedstuffs and the like for deer, fish or other wildlife or domestic stock. To be sure, the endeavor is for many an outright obsession. Notwithstanding this effort, however, the state of the art dispensers available for use remain susceptible to malfunction in wet environments, failures due to reliance upon springs and/or complicated channel closure arrangements and lodging open of the channel closure arrangement by feedstuff. It is therefore an overriding object of the present invention to improve over the prior art by providing a broadcast dispenser including a novel motor and gate assembly whereby the desired flow control is effected efficiently and reliably and without many of the drawbacks of the prior art.

Broadcast dispenser for animal feedstuffs


Techniques for providing wireless services to mobile subscribers using existing broadband network infrastructures are described herein. In one embodiment, in response to a request received at a gateway device from a mobile subscriber over a radio access network (RAN) for accessing a service provider network, the gateway device authenticates the mobile subscriber for accessing the RAN, where the gateway device interfaces the RAN and the existing broadband network. Upon successfully authenticating the mobile subscriber for accessing RAN, the gateway device accesses a network service provider over the existing network to acquire a network address on behalf of the mobile subscriber optionally using at least a portion of credentials derived from the authentication, where the network address allows the mobile subscriber to access the service provider network. Other methods and apparatuses are also described.

WiMAX (worldwide interoperability for microwave access) is a standard-based technology enabling the delivery of "last mile" wireless broadband access as an alternative to existing broadband such as cable and DSL (digital subscribed line). WiMAX provides fixed, nomadic, portable and mobile wireless broadband connectivity without the need for direct line-of-sight with a basestation. In a typical cell radius deployment of three to ten kilometers, WiMAX Forum Certified™ systems can be expected to deliver a capacity of up to 40 Mbps per channel, for fixed and portable access applications.
This is enough bandwidth to simultaneously support hundreds of businesses with T-1 speed connectivity and thousands of residences with DSL speed connectivity. Mobile network deployments are expected to provide up to 15 Mbps of capacity within a typical cell radius deployment of up to three kilometers. It is expected that WiMAX technology will be incorporated in portable computers and PDAs (portable digital assistants) in the near future, allowing for urban areas and cities to become "metro zones" for portable outdoor broadband wireless access. However, there has been a lack of efficient mechanisms to provide services to mobile subscribers using existing broadband network infrastructures.

Method and apparatus for providing wireless services to mobile subscribers using existing broadband infrastructure


The present invention relates to live attenuated bacteria for use as a medicament. The invention also relates to vaccines based thereon that are useful for the prevention of microbial pathogenesis. Further, the invention relates to live attenuated recombinant bacteria carrying a heterologous gene and vaccines based thereon. Finally, the invention relates to methods for the preparation of such vaccines and bacteria.

The present invention relates to live attenuated bacteria for use in a medicament, to vaccines based upon such bacteria useful for the prevention of microbial pathogenesis, to live attenuated bacteria carrying a heterologous gene and to methods for the preparation of such vaccines and bacteria.
The means by which a warm blooded animal overcomes microbial pathogenesis is a complex process. Immunity to microbial pathogenesis is one means by which a warm blooded animal avoids pathogenesis, or suffers a less intense pathogenic state. Incomplete immunity to a given pathogen results in morbidity and mortality in a population exposed to a pathogen. It is generally agreed that vaccines based on live but attenuated micro-organisms (live attenuated vaccines) induce a highly effective type of immune response. Such vaccines have the advantage that, once the animal host has been vaccinated, entry of the microbial pathogen into the host induces an accelerated recall of earlier, cell-mediated or humoral immunity which is able to control the further growth of the organism before the infection can assume clinically significant proportions. Vaccines based on a killed pathogen (killed vaccine) are generally conceded to be unable to achieve this type of response. However, vaccines that contain a live pathogen present, depending on the level of attenuation, the danger that the vaccinated host upon vaccination may contract the disease against which protection is being sought. Therefore, it would be desirable to have a vaccine that possesses the immunising attributes of a live micro-organism but that is not capable of causing undesirable side effects upon vaccination.
The general approach for attenuating bacteria is the removal of one or more virulence factors. In most cases however, virulence factors also play a role in inducing immunity. In those cases, deletion of virulence factors unavoidably impairs the immunogenic capacities of the bacterium. This is of course an unwanted situation. A live vaccine should preferably retain the antigenic complement of the wild-type strain. Moreover, the live vaccine should be sufficiently a-virulent to avoid unacceptable pathological effects, but on the other hand it must cause a sufficient level of immunity in the host. Finally, the live attenuated vaccine strain should preferably have substantially no probability for reverting to a virulent wild type strain.
It was now surprisingly found that a gene encoding a protein known to play a role in the central carbohydrate metabolism in many bacterial genera can be deleted, causing attenuated behaviour in vivo without impairing the viability of such bacteria in vivo. Bacteria from which this gene is deleted do unexpectedly show an attenuated character. Moreover, since the encoded protein plays no role in the induction of immunity, the antigenic load of bacteria from which this gene is deleted, is identical to that of the wild-type. Therefore, such bacteria could unexpectedly be advantageously used in the field of preparation of medicaments, more specifically for the preparation of live attenuated vaccines. The gene that according to the present invention can be deleted and leads to an attenuated in vivo behaviour of the deletion mutants is a gene formerly known as the fruR gene, currently however called the cra gene. It was known that mutants lacking this gene could be grown in vitro, but only if the deficiencies due to lack of Cra activity are compensated for in the growth medium. This means that nutrients on which the Cra-deficient mutant can grow must be present in the growth medium. Generally spoken, pathogenic bacteria are self-supporting in the sense that they adapt their metabolism to the nutrients that are available. The cra gene plays such an adaptive role in many main metabolic pathways (see below). Mutants from which the cra gene has been deleted can however grow perfectly well on glucose and many other sugars as carbon source. In the host animal, such sugars are available and therefore one would not expect the cra gene to be functional under in vivo conditions. And thus, one would not expect Cra-negative mutants to show attenuated characteristics in the host. That explains why, although such mutants were known in the art, they have never been suggested to be potential live attenuated vaccine candidates.
One embodiment of the invention relates to live attenuated bacteria that are no longer capable to express a functional Cra protein as a result of a mutation in the cra gene, for use in a vaccine.
The gene product, (formerly known as FruR; the Fructose Repressor Protein), now also known as Cra (the Catabolite Repressor/Activator Protein), is a regulatory protein in many main pathways of the carbohydrate metabolism.
The cra-gene product Cra regulates the central carbon metabolism. More specifically, Cra positively regulates transcription of genes encoding biosynthetic and oxidative enzymes (e.g. key enzymes in the TCA cycle, the glyoxalate shunt, the gluconeogenic pathway and electron transport) by binding upstream of the promoters of these genes and negatively regulates transcription of genes encoding glycolytic enzymes (e.g. key enzymes in the Embden-Meyerhof and Entner-Doudoroff pathways). Due to its key position in carbohydrate metabolism, the cra gene and its gene product Cra are widespread in the bacterial realm. The Cra protein is a highly conserved protein. It can be found in e.g. Escherichia coli, in Salmonella enterica species, such as serotype Typhimurium, Enteritidis and Dublin, in Actinobacillus species such as A. pleuropneumoniae, in Haemophilus species such as H. paragallinarum, in Aeromonas salmonicidae, in Pasteurella species such as P. piscida and P. multocida, in Streptococcus species such as S. equi and S. suis and in Yersinia species such as Y. pestis.
The gene itself and its complete nucleotide sequence in Salmonella and Escherichia have been elucidated already in 1991 by Jahreis, K. et al. (Mol. Gen. Genet. 226: 332-336 (1991)). Jahreis showed that the Cra protein in Salmonella enterica, serotype Typhimurium and Escherichia coli differed only in 4 positions, of which two were merely conservative exchanges. This is of course in line with what could be expected for a protein playing a role in so many universal pathways in the bacterial carbohydrate metabolism, especially where E. coli and Salmonella diverged not that far during evolution. The mechanism of binding of the Cra protein has been at least partially elucidated by Ramseier, T. M. et al. (J. Mol. Biol. 234:28-44 (1993)). The role and function of the Cra protein (the Catabolite Repressor/Activator Protein) have been regularly described in the literature, e.g. in a recent mini-review by Saier, M. H. and Ramseier, T. M. (Journ. Bacteriol. 178: 3411-3417 (1996)).
Such a mutation can be an insertion, a deletion, a substitution or a combination thereof, provided that the mutation leads to the failure to express a functional Cra protein. A functional Cra protein is understood to be a protein having the regulating characteristics of the wild-type protein. Therefore, a Cra protein that is defective in at least one of its functions is considered to be a non-functional Cra protein.
Live attenuated bacteria for use according to the invention can be obtained in several ways. One possible way of obtaining such bacteria is by means of classical methods such as the treatment of wild-type bacteria having the cra gene with mutagenic agents such as base analogues, treatment with ultraviolet light or temperature treatment. Strains that do not produce a functional Cra protein can easily be picked up. They grow on minimal medium exclusively in the presence of glucose and other sugars as carbon sources (which differentiates them from cya and crp mutants) but they are not able to grow with gluconeogenic substrates as sole carbon source. (Chin et al., J. Bacteriol. 169: 897-899 (1987)) They can therefore very easily be selected in vitro. The nature of the mutation caused by classical mutation techniques is unknown. This may be a point mutation which may, although this is unlikely to happen, eventually revert to wild-type. In order to avoid this small risk, transposon mutagenesis would be a good alternative. Mutagenesis by transposon mutagenesis, is also a mutagenesis-technique well-known in the art. This is a mutation accomplished at a localised site in the chromosome. Transposon-insertions can not be targeted to a specific gene. It is however very easy to pick up cra-mutants since they do not grow in vitro without nutrient compensation for lack of Cra activity. Therefore, they can easily be selected from a pool of randomly transposon-mutated bacteria. A possibility to introduce a mutation at a predetermined site, rather deliberately than randomly, is offered by recombinant DNA-technology. Such a mutation may be an insertion, a deletion, a replacement of one nucleotide by another one or a combination thereof, with the only proviso that the mutated gene no longer encodes functional Cra. Such a mutation can e.g. be made by deletion of a number of nucleic acids. Even very small deletions such a stretches of 10 nucleic acids can already render Cra non-functional. Even the deletion of one single nucleic acid may already lead to a non-functional Cra, since as a result of such a mutation, the other nucleic acids are no longer in the correct reading frame. Each deletion of insertion of a number of nucleic acids indivisible by three causes such a frame shift. More preferably, a longer stretch is removed e.g. 100 nucleic acids. Even more preferably, the whole cra gene is deleted. It can easily be seen, that especially mutations introducing a stop-codon in the open reading frame, or mutations causing a frame-shift in the open reading frame are very suitable to obtain a strain which no longer encodes functional Cra.
All techniques for the construction of Cra-negative mutants are well-known standard techniques. They relate to cloning of the Cra-gene, modification of the gene sequence by site-directed mutagenesis, restriction enzyme digestion followed by re-ligation or PCR-approaches and to subsequent replacement of the wild type cra gene with the mutant gene (allelic exchange or allelic replacement). Standard recombinant DNA techniques such as cloning the cra gene in a plasmid, digestion of the gene with a restriction enzyme, followed by endonuclease treatment, re-ligation and homologous recombination in the host strain, are all known in the art and described i.a. in Maniatis/Sambrook (Sambrook, J. et al. Molecular cloning: a laboratory manual. ISBN 0-87969-309-6). Site-directed mutations can e.g. be made by means of in vitro site directed mutagenesis using the Transformer(copyright) kit sold by Clontech. PCR-techniques are extensively described in (Dieffenbach and Dreksler; PCR primers, a laboratory manual. ISBN 0-87969-447-3 and ISBN 0-87969447-5).
The cra gene comprises not only the coding sequence encoding the Cra protein, but also regulatory sequences such as the promoter. The gene also comprises sites essential for correct translation of the Cra mRNA, such as the ribosome binding site. Therefore, not only mutations in the coding regions but also mutations in those sequences essential for correct transcription and translation are considered to fall within the scope of the invention.
In a preferred embodiment, the invention relates to live attenuated bacteria of the genera Escherichia, Salmonella, Actinobacillus, Haemophilus, Aeromonas, Pasteurella, Streptococcus and Yersinia for use in a vaccine.
In a more preferred form of the invention, the live attenuated bacterium according to the invention is selected from the group consisting of S. enterica serotype Typhimurium, Enteritidis, Choleraesuis, Dublin, Typhi, Gallinarum, Abortusovi, Abortus-equi, Pullorum, E. coli or Y. pestis. These bacterial genera comprise a large number of species that are pathogenic to both humans and a variety of different animals.
In an even more preferred form thereof, the live attenuated bacterium according to the invention is S. enterica, E. coli or Y. pestis.
In a still even more preferred form, this embodiment relates to live attenuated bacteria according to the invention in which the mutation in the Cra gene has been made by recombinant DNA technology.
Well-defined and deliberately made mutations involving the deletion of fragments of the cra gene or even the whole gene or the insertion of heterologous DNA-fragments or both, have the advantage, in comparison to classically induced mutations, that they will not revert to the wild-type situation. Thus, in an even more preferred form, this embodiment of the invention refers to live attenuated bacteria in which the cra gene comprises an insertion and/or a deletion.
Given the large amount of vaccines given nowadays to both pets and farm animals, it is clear that combined administration of several vaccines would be desirable, if only for reasons of decreased vaccination costs. It is therefore very attractive to use live attenuated bacteria as a recombinant carrier for heterologous genes, encoding antigens selected from other pathogenic micro-organisms or viruses. Administration of such a recombinant carrier has the advantage that immunity is induced against two or more diseases at the same time. The live attenuated bacteria for use in a vaccine, according to the present invention provide very suitable carriers for heterologous genes, since the gene encoding the Cra protein can be used as an insertion site for such heterologous genes. The use of the cra gene as an insertion site has the advantage that at the same time the cra gene is inactivated and the newly introduced heterologous gene can be expressed (in concert with the homologous bacterial genes). The construction of such recombinant carriers can be done routinely, using standard molecular biology techniques such as allelic exchange. Therefore, another embodiment of the invention relates to live attenuated recombinant bacteria, preferably of the genera Escherichia, Salmonella, Actinobacillus, Haemophilus, Aeromonas, Pasteurella, Streptococcus and Yersinia that do not produce a functional Cra protein, and in which a heterologous gene is inserted. Such a heterologous gene can, as mentioned above, e.g. be a gene encoding an antigen selected from other pathogenic micro-organisms or viruses. Such genes can e.g. be derived from pathogenic herpes viruses (e.g. the genes encoding the structural proteins of herpes viruses), retro viruses (e.g. the gp160 envelope protein), adenoviruses and the like. Also a heterologous gene can be obtained from pathogenic bacteria. As an example, genes encoding bacterial toxins such as Actinobacillus pleuropneumoniae toxins, Clostridium toxins, outer membrane proteins and the like are very suitable bacterial heterologous genes. Another possibility is to insert a gene encoding a protein involved in triggering the immune system, such as an interleukin or an interferon, or another gene involved in immune-regulation.
Insertion of the heterologous gene in the cra gene is advantageous, since there is no need to find an insertion site for the heterologous gene, and at the same time the cra gene is knocked out. Thus, in a preferred form of this embodiment the heterologous gene is inserted in the cra gene. The heterologous gene can be inserted somewhere in the cra gene or it can be inserted at the site of the cra gene while this gene has been partially or completely deleted.
Because of their unexpected attenuated but immunogenic character in vivo, the bacteria for use in a vaccine, according to the invention are very suitable as a basis for live attenuated vaccines. Thus, still another embodiment of the invention relates to live attenuated vaccines for the protection of animals and humans against infection with a bacterium of which the wild type form comprises a cra gene. Such vaccines comprise an immunogenically effective amount of a live attenuated bacterium for use in a vaccine, according to the invention or a live recombinant carrier bacterium according to the invention, and a pharmaceutically acceptable carrier.
Preferably, the vaccine comprises a live attenuated bacterium according to the invention, selected from the group of Escherichia, Salmonella, Actinobacillus, Haemophilus, Aeromonas, Pasteurella, Streptococcus and Yersinia. Immunogenically effective means that the amount of live attenuated bacteria administered at vaccination is sufficient to induce in the host an effective immune response against virulent forms of the bacterium.
In addition to an immunogenically effective amount of the live attenuated bacterium described above, a vaccine according to the present invention also contains a pharmaceutically acceptable carrier. Such a carrier may be as simple as water, but it may e.g. also comprise culture fluid in which the bacteria were cultured. Another suitable carrier is e.g. a solution of physiological salt concentration.
The useful dosage to be administered will vary depending on the age, weight and animal vaccinated, the mode of administration and the type of pathogen against which vaccination is sought.
The vaccine may comprise any dose of bacteria, sufficient to evoke an immune response. Doses ranging between 103 and 1010 bacteria are e.g. very suitable doses.
Optionally, one or more compounds having adjuvant activity may be added to the vaccine. Adjuvants are non-specific stimulators of the immune system. They enhance the immune response of the host to the vaccine. Examples of adjuvants known in the art are Freunds Complete and Incomplete adjuvant, vitamin E, non-ionic block polymers, muramyldipeptides, ISCOMs (immune stimulating complexes, cf. for instance European Patent EP 109942), Saponins, mineral oil, vegetable oil, and Carbopol. Adjuvants, specially suitable for mucosal application are e.g. the E. coli heat-labile toxin (LT) or Cholera toxin (CT). Other suitable adjuvants are for example aluminium hydroxide, aluminium phosphate or aluminium oxide, oil-emulsions (e.g. of Bayol F(copyright) or Marcol 52(copyright), saponins or vitamin-E solubilisate.
Therefore, in a preferred form, the vaccines according to the present invention comprise an adjuvant.
Other examples of pharmaceutically acceptable carriers or diluents useful in the present invention include stabilisers such as SPGA, carbohydrates (e.g. sorbitol, mannitol, starch, sucrose, glucose, dextran), proteins such as albumin or casein, protein containing agents such as bovine serum or skimmed milk and buffers (e.g. phosphate buffer). Especially when such stabilisers are added to the vaccine, the vaccine is very suitable for freeze-drying. Therefore, in a more preferred form, the vaccine is in a freeze-dried form.
For administration to animals or humans, the vaccine according to the present invention can be given inter alia intranasally, intradermally, subcutaneously, orally, by aerosol or intramuscularly. For application to poultry, wing web and eye-drop administration are very suitable.
Still another embodiment relates to the use of a bacterium for use in a vaccine or a recombinant bacterium according to the invention for the manufacture of a vaccine for the protection of animals and humans against infection with a wild type bacterium or the pathogenic effects of infection.
Still another embodiment of the invention relates to methods for the preparation of a vaccine according to the invention. Such methods comprise the admixing of a live attenuated bacterium according to the invention or a live recombinant carder bacterium according to the invention, and a pharmaceutically acceptable carrier.

Live attenuated bacteria for use in a vaccine

Board of Governors for Higher Education, State of Rhode Island


An image removing method including heating a recording material having thereon an image to a temperature so that the image has a plasticity; pressure-contacting an uppermost stream peeling member with the recording material while the image maintains a plasticity; separating the uppermost stream peeling member from the recording material to transfer at least a portion of the image to the uppermost stream peeling member; and repeating the heating, pressure-contacting and separating steps at least one more time using at least one downstream peeling member, wherein the uppermost stream peeling member has a first outermost layer which does not have a plasticity when being pressure-contacted with the recording material, and at least one of the at least one downstream peeling member has a second outermost layer which has a plasticity when being pressure-contacted with the recording material.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a method and an apparatus for removing an image, which has been formed on a recording material using an image forming apparatus such as copiers, printers and facsimile machines, from the recording material. In addition, the present invention also relates to an image peeling member for peeling an image from a recording material.
2. Discussion of the Background
Recently, printers, analogue copiers, digital copiers and facsimile machines using electrophotography are broadly used, and a huge amount of paper is used therefor. Since paper is prepared using pulp, which is obtained from wood, use of such a huge amount of paper causes deforestation, resulting in deterioration of global environment. Therefore, it is a social issue to lower the consumption of paper. In addition, since there is a limit to waste disposal sites, it is also a social issue to reduce the amount of waste.
In attempting to resolve the issues, paper recycling methods in which disused information recording papers are collected and pulp prepared from the collected paper waste in paper factories is reused for new papers have been conventionally used. However, these paper recycling methods have drawbacks in that a large amount of energy is consumed for transporting the collected paper waste, preparing pulp using the waste paper and making new paper from the pulp; and the recycled paper has poor physical qualities such as low stiffness and whiteness, and produces images with poor image qualities such as formation of blurred images. In addition, when high quality information recording paper having high whiteness is prepared using recycled pulp, the manufacturing costs thereof are often higher than the costs of manufacturing such a high quality recording paper using a new raw materials. Further, when disused information recording paper is collected, there is a risk of occurrence of a problem in that information such as personal information written in the disused recording paper is disclosed to the public.
In attempting to solve the problem of the recycled paper, recording materials which can be reused by removing images therefrom and methods in which images formed on a recording material is removed to reuse the recording material have been proposed. For example, published unexamined Japanese patent application No. (hereinafter referred to as JP-A) 01-297294 discloses a technique in that an image formed on a recording material such as plastic films, metal foils, non-penetrative paper, and ceramics is heated while a thermofusible peeling member is overlaid on the image to be removed from the recording material. In addition, JP-A 04-64472 discloses a device which removes an image formed on a surface of a recording material by an electrophotographic method, which surface is treated with a release agent, by contacting a surface of an endless belt (serving as a peeling member), which surface includes a thermofusible resin, to the image to transfer the image from the recording material to the endless belt.
Although the means for removing images is described in these publications, means for treating the peeling member on which images are transferred is not described therein. Specifically, when images are accumulated on a peeling member, the heat capacity of the peeling member increases and the heat conductivity thereof deteriorates. Therefore, it is necessary to remove the images accumulated on the peeling member in order to repeatedly use the peeling member.
It is possible to remove images on a recording material using a peeling member having an outermost layer including a thermofusible or thermoplastic material. However, in this case the images are mixed with the thermofusible or thermoplastic material on the peeling member because both the images and the thermofusible or thermoplastic material have a fluidity, and therefore it is hard to separate the images from the thermofusible or thermoplastic material. Therefore, the above-mentioned image removing devices cannot be commercialized.
Images accumulated on a peeling member are not removed, not only cause increase in the heat capacity and deterioration of the heat conductivity of the peeling member, but also roughen the surface of the peeling member. When such a roughened peeling member is used, the surface of the peeling member cannot be contacted with the entire image to be removed from a recording material, thereby causing a problem in that a portion of the images remains on the recording material without being removed. Therefore, it is necessary to smooth the surface of the peeling member after every image removing operation. When the smoothing operation is performed on a peeling member, the thermofusible or thermoplastic material has to be heated to a relatively high temperature compared to the melting point or glass transition temperature of the thermofusible or thermoplastic material so that the material has a high fluidity. In this case, a large amount of energy is needed for performing this smoothing operation after every image removing operation. This also prevents the above-mentioned image removing devices from being commercialized.
In attempting to well remove images from recording materials, techniques in that removing operations are repeated several times have been proposed. For example, JP-A 07-56472 discloses a method and a device in which a liquid including water as a main component is coated on an image to destabilize the image by decreasing the adherence of the image to the recording material, and then two peeling members are repeatedly contacted with and separated from the destabilized image to remove the image from the recording material. The reason why the method uses two peeling members is as follows. When a solid image having a large area, on which the destabilizing liquid has been applied, is removed using one peeling member, peeling is not caused at the interface between the image and the recording material and is caused within the recording material. This is because the binding force among the cellulose fibers constituting the recording material decreases due to swelling of the fibers. Therefore, the method uses two peeling members, one of which is located on an upstream side relative to the feeding direction of the recoding material and which is configured to adhere to a part of the image to remove the part of the image from the recording material. The other peeling member, which is located on a downstream side, is configured to adhere to the entire surface of the solid image to remove the residue of the solid image.
It is described in JP-A 07-56472 that a resin which is the same as or similar to the resin including in the toner constituting the image to be removed is used for the surface of the peeling member and in addition the area of the image removing portions of the surface of the two peeling members, which portions have an image removing ability and can be contacted with the image to be removed is changed. However, it is not described therein to use both a peeling member having an thermoplastic surface and a peeling member having a non-thermoplastic surface. In addition, it is not described therein to use different cleaning members for removing the images transferred to the two peeling members.
Although (monochrome) images constituted of a toner having a relatively large particle diameter can be removed relatively well by this method, images constituted of a toner having a relatively small volume average particle diameter of not greater than 8 μm, multicolor toner images and half tone images cannot be well removed. For example, multicolor images typically include secondary or tertiary images (i.e., images such as two or three different color images are overlaid), which are relatively thick, and half tone images which are relatively thin. If a secondary or tertiary image is located adjacent to a half tone image, the half tone image is hardly contacted with such peeling members, and thereby the half tone image cannot be well removed. Particularly, a peeling member using a material, such as resins having a high glass transition temperature (Tg) and metals, which does not achieve a plasticity at the temperature to which the peeling member is heated to remove an image, cannot remove such a multi-color image or an image constituted of a toner having a relatively small particle diameter.
JP-A 09-212050 discloses a device in which an image removing operation is performed plural times to remove an image from a recording material using a thermal transfer method and then the toner particles scattered around the image (i.e., toner particles located on a background portion of the image near the image portion) are removed using electrostatic force. It is described therein that the toner particles on the background portion cannot be removed from the recording material by performing the thermal transfer peeling operation plural times. However, almost all the toner particles located on a background portion are also thermally fixed with a fixing device, and therefore such toner particles are hardly removed by such an electrostatic force as mentioned in JP-A 09-212050. Particularly, in a multi-color image the upper toner layers of a secondary or tertiary color image has to be transparent so that the color image has good color reproducibility, and therefore the upper toner layers are fully melted. Therefore, a color image is fixed on a recording material relatively strongly compared to a monochrome image. Therefore color toner particles on a background portion cannot be removed by such an electrostatic force.
JP-A 09-212050 points out that removal of toner particles scattered around images is only a problem to be solved. However, when a cycle of recording an image on a recording material and removing the image from the recording material to reuse the recording material is repeated many times, toner particles located on the entire background area (i.e., background fouling) have to be removed. All images formed on recording materials using electrophotographic image forming apparatuses have background fouling which is constituted of toner particles. When the above-mentioned cycle is performed several times, the toner particles remaining on a background portion without being removed are not so noticeable. However, when the cycle is performed a number of times, the toner particles are accumulated on the recording material, resulting in increase of the background density. Therefore, the resultant image formed on such a recording material is visually undesirable. When such an image is removed to reuse the recording material, a problem which occurs is that a negative image of the image portion is formed on the recording material because the toner particles under the image portion are removed but the toner particles on the background area remains on the recording material. This is also a problem in view of security.
In particular, the problem in that toner particles remain on background areas without being removed and the toner particles are accumulated on the recording material occurs if the toner particles have a volume average particle diameter of not greater than 8 μm and/or the toner particles are present on a background area near a multi-color image.
Further, JP-As 09-197926 and 10-274909 have disclosed image removing methods and apparatuses in which an operation cycle of performing attaching, pressing and detaching of a peeling member on a recording material is carried out plural times. The techniques described therein are similar to that of JP-A 07-56472 mentioned above although the purposes thereof are different from each other. Therefore, the techniques are not effective for removing images having secondary or tertiary color images and half tone images; and for removing toner particles (image forming materials) present on background areas.
Because of these reasons, a need exists for an image removing method by which images having secondary or tertiary color images and half tone images; and toner particles present on background areas can be well removed.

Method and apparatus for removing image from recording material, and image peeling member for peeling image from recording material


A system for qualifying usability risk associated with subsurface defects in a multilayer coating includes a component having a multilayer coating, an infrared detection device for capturing infrared images of the multilayered coating and a processing unit that is in electronic communication with the infrared detection device where the processing unit generates a subsurface defect map of the multilayer coating based on the infrared images. The system further includes a risk map of the component.

A combustion section of a gas turbine generally includes a plurality of combustors that are arranged in an annular array around an outer casing such as a compressor discharge casing. Pressurized air flows from a compressor to the compressor discharge casing and is routed to each combustor. Fuel from a fuel nozzle is mixed with the pressurized air in each combustor to form a combustible mixture within a primary combustion zone of the combustor. The combustible mixture is burned to produce hot combustion gases having a high pressure and high velocity. The combustion gases are routed towards an inlet of a turbine of the gas turbine through a hot gas path that is at least partially defined by an annular combustion liner and/or an annular transition duct. The hot gas path extends through the turbine and terminates at an outlet of the turbine.
The constant demand for increased operating temperatures in gas turbine engines has necessitated the development of various coating materials such as ceramics that can be applied to the various hot gas paths components such as the combustion liner, the transition duct and/or turbine nozzles and turbine blades to insulate those components from the heat contained in the combustion gases, thereby extending the life of those components. These coatings are known in the art as thermal barrier coatings (TBC).
A thermal barrier coating typically comprises at least one layer of a refractory or thermally insulating material having a low thermal conductivity such as about 1-3 W/(m)(K). The coating material may be applied by one of known deposition techniques such as a thermal or plasma spray process or a physical vapor deposition process. Typically, a thermal barrier coating is applied in multiple layers. In particular applications, a bond-coat is applied to an inner or hot side surface of the liner or transition duct. The bond-coat provides a layer which adheres well to the underlying alloy and that provides protection against oxidation of the alloy. The refractory or thermal insulation coat is then applied over the bond-coat. Some thermal barrier coatings may also include an intermediate layer or interlayer that is applied over the bond-coat. The interlayer may provide improved adhesion for the final thermal insulating coat.
Despite great care taken during manufacture to ensure adhesion of the thermal insulation coat to the bond-coat, thermal cycling eventually leads to subsurface defects in the thermal barrier coating known as delamination or disbonding. Delamination generally leads to spallation that eventually exposes the underlying alloy to extreme temperatures that may impact the durability of the liner and/or transition duct. As a result, the thermal barrier coating must be inspected for subsurface defects during scheduled maintenance or planned outages of the gas turbine. Typically, the thermal barrier coating is stripped and replaced after a pre-determined number of inspection cycles, in part due to limitations of many current inspection processes.
Removal and reapplication of the thermal barrier coating significantly increases the time required to inspect the hot gas path component and contributes substantially to the overall cost of inspection/repair. Therefore, there is a continued need to provide a non-destructive method for determining size and location of subsurface defects in the thermal barrier coating to qualify the risk associated with continued use of the thermal barrier coating.

System and method for qualifying usability risk associated with subsurface defects in a multilayer coating


An ultrasound imaging method includes providing a digital representation of the shape of a surface or boundary of an anatomic region or organ; acquiring an ultrasound image by ultrasound scanning the anatomic region or organ; and combining the digital representation of the shape of the surface or boundary of the anatomic region or organ by registering the digital representation of the shape of the surface or boundary and the ultrasound image as a function of the difference in position of selected reference points on the digital representation of the surface or boundary and on the ultrasound image, the position of the reference points on the ultrasound image being determined by tracking the probe position at the reference points at the anatomic region or organ of a real body and in a spatial reference system, in which the anatomic region or the organ of the real body is placed.

Imaging methods that provide the combination of ultrasound images of the internal structure of a target with the image or the representation of the shape of the external surface of the target are known.
A particular application of this generic technique is related to combining ultrasound images of the internal morphology of the tissues at certain anatomic regions of a body of a patient or of certain selected organs with a representation of the external surface of the anatomic regions of the body of the patient or of the selected organs.
Examples of these known techniques are disclosed in document EP3400878 or in document WO2012112907.
EP3400878 discloses a method for postural independent location of targets in diagnostic imagines acquired by multimodal acquisitions comprising the steps of:
generating a transition of a digital image of the inside of a target region from a first to a second position of the target region by correlating the position of markers placed on the external surface of the target region in the digital image of the inside of the target region and in a digital representation of the surface of the target region acquired by optical scanning the surface; and
at a later time, registering the diagnostic image of the inside of the target region which has been transitioned into the second position with a diagnostic image of the same target region acquired with the target region in the second position by matching a second representation of the external surface of the target body in the second position without markers with the diagnostic image of the inside of the target region which has been transitioned into the second position.
This method is applied for postural independent location of targets in diagnostic images acquired by multimodal acquisitions, this method allowing to compensate for the deformation to which soft tissues are subject by changing posture of the patient and particularly in the conditions in which such deformations have an effect on the external visible shape of parts of the body or of the object.
WO2012112907 discloses a method for registering an optically scanned surface image with a volumetric image, comprising the steps of:
obtaining a volumetric image created at a first time;
obtaining a surface optically scanned image created at a second time;
identifying spatial locations of fiducial markers from the volumetric image and the surface image; and
using fiducial locations to perform rigid body registration between the volumetric image and the surface image.
In the above disclosed methods an optical scan of the anatomic region is carried out for generating the representation of the external surface of the anatomic region. However, this step is possible if the method is applied to anatomic regions which have an air/tissue boundary, such as the specific examples of the breast to which both cited documents are directed. The method cannot be applied to internal anatomic regions or organs which are also formed by soft tissues and have a patient specific shape which is also subject to deformation due to postural changes of the patient or to the pressure exercised by the ultrasound probe during the ultrasound imaging scan.
The method according to the state of the art comprises the steps of:
providing a digital representation of the shape of the surface or boundary of an anatomic region or of an organ;
acquiring an ultrasound image by ultrasound scanning the anatomic region or the organ;
combining the digital representation of the shape of the surface or boundary of the anatomic region or of the organ by:
registering the digital representation of the shape of the surface or boundary and the ultrasound image as a function of the difference in position of selected reference points un the digital representation of the surface or boundary and on the ultrasound image, the position of the reference points on the ultrasound image being determined by tracking the probe position at the reference points at the anatomic region or organ of a real body and in a spatial reference system in which the anatomic region or the organ of the real body is placed.
The digital representation of the shape of the surface or of the boundary of an anatomic region or of an organ has to be carried out by optically scanning the anatomic region or the organ or by drawing it. This step has to be carried out for every different patient. As a consequence, obtaining such combined multimodal images needs longer time since the step of acquiring the optical scan or for extracting the surface or boundary of an organ or for drawing such surface or boundary has to be carried out and this step adds to the mere ultrasound imaging scan.
Furthermore, in addition to the ultrasound scanner and to a probe tracking system, there is the need of a system allowing to optically scan the anatomic region of a patient and/or to extract the surface or the boundary of an organ or to draw the surface or the boundary. This introduces higher costs and renders the apparatus more complex and bulky.

Ultrasound imaging method and ultrasound imaging system therefor


An ultrasonic diagnostic apparatus in an embodiment includes processing circuitry. The processing circuitry is configured to cause an ultrasonic probe to perform an ultrasound scan of a subject. The processing circuitry is configured to generate a shadow image by assigning at least one of hue, saturation, and lightness depending on a feature of an acoustic shadow that has appeared in the result of the ultrasound scan.

Conventionally, in ultrasonic images, there have been cases in which an acoustic artifact that Is characteristic of ultrasonic waves arises. For example, because ultrasonic waves are intensely reflected by a hard tissue, the ultrasonic waves reflected at a position deeper than the hard tissue are weakened and an acoustic shadow (hereinafter referred to as shadow) that is darkly indicated in an image may arise. Such a shadow may arise not only at hard tissues such as bones but also at a tissue that is locally indurated by diseases such as diffuse liver disease. In such a case, pectinate shadows may appear in the image, for example.

Ultrasonic diagnostic apparatus and image generating method


A high density integrated circuit module is comprised of a plurality of integrated circuit chips; each of the chips has top and bottom surfaces and thin sides; and all of the chips are arranged in a stack in which the sides of the chips form multiple faces of the stack. Also, in accordance with the invention, a selected face of the stack has a zigzag shape which exposes a portion of the top surface of each chip on that face; and, bonding pads for carrying input/output signals to/from the chips are located on the exposed top surface portion of the chips. This zigzag shape is produced by (a) providing an indentation in the side of each of the chips which lie along the selected stack face; or (b) by offsetting the sides of the chps from each other as they lie along the selected stack face; or (c) by providing respective spacers between the chips and indenting them from the chips along the selected stack face.

This invention relates to integrated circuit packages; and more particularly, it relates to high density integrated circuit modules in which a plurality of integrated circuit chips are stacked on top of one another.
In the prior art, a wide variety of integrated circuit packages have been described. See, for example, U.S Pat. Nos. 4,643,935 and 4,807,019. In the former, only a single integrated circuit chip is contained in the package; while in the latter, multiple integrated circuit chips are contained in the package. However, in the '019 multichip package, the chips are not stacked on top of one another; instead they lie side by side in a plane. Thus, the chip packaging density of the package is substantially lower than that of a chip stack.
In the prior art, a chip stack is described in U.S. Pat. No. 4,525,921. There, the stacked chips are indicated by reference numeral 14 in FIG. 2. Each of the chips contains integrated circuits, and input/output signals to/from those circuits are carried by microscopic conductors 68 to one face of the stack.
All of the microscopic conductors 68 are inherently thin and fragile since they are formed as part of the integrated circuitry that is on the chips. Typically, conductors that are formed within an integrated circuit are only about 1 um to 4 um wide and 0.1 um to 0.2 um thick. This then presents the problem of how to interconnect the ends of the conductors 68 from all of the chips along the face of the stack.
In particular, it is not possible to interconnect the ends of the conductors 68 by simply: (a) depositing an insulating layer over the face of the stack to which they run, (b) opening via holes in that insulating layer which exposes just the ends of the conductors, and (c) patterning interconnecting conductors on the insulating layer and in the via holes. Such via holes would expose both the ends of the conductors 68 and a portion of the sides of the chips. Thus, the interconnecting conductors which are formed in the via holes will also be shorted to the sides of the chips.
To overcome the above problem, patent '921 discloses a four-step process by which the conductors 68 can be interconnected without producing shorts to the sides of the chips. These steps are illustrated in FIGS. 5A-5D; and they consist of lapping, etching, passivating, and re-lapping the face of the chip stack to which the conductors 68 extend.
However, those four steps add to the overall complexity and cost of the manufacturing the stack. Also, after the etching step, the thin, fragile conductors 68 protrude from the face of the stack; so they can easily be bent or broken. If any of the protruding conductors 68 are bent, they will "shadow" the adjoining silicon chip during the passivation step and thereby cause a void in the passivation layer. Such a void will cause a short circuit to the side of the chip when metallization for interconnecting the I/O conductors 68 is subsequently applied.
Accordingly, a primary object of the invention is to provide an improved architecture for a stack of integrated circuit chips in which all of the above problems are avoided.

High density chip stack having a zigzag-shaped face which accommodates connections between chips


An electronic component-incorporating substrate includes a lower substrate, an electronic component mounted on the lower substrate, and an upper substrate arranged above the electronic component and the lower substrate. The substrate further includes a substrate connecting member arranged between the lower substrate and the upper substrate and an encapsulation resin filling a gap between the lower substrate and the upper substrate to encapsulate the electronic component and the substrate connecting member. The upper substrate includes a substrate body and a solder resist layer arranged on a lower surface of the substrate body. The solder resist layer includes a groove extending in the solder resist layer from a directly-above region, located directly above at least the electronic component, to a side surface of the upper substrate.

To reduce the size or save the space of a substrate including an electronic component such as a semiconductor chip, there is a prior art substrate embedding an electronic component, which is called an electronic component-incorporating substrate. An electronic component-incorporating substrate includes a first substrate on which a semiconductor chip is mounted and a second substrate stacked on the first substrate via solder balls. The gap between the first substrate and the second substrate is encapsulated with a resin (refer to International Patent Publication No. 2007/069606).

Electronic component-incorporating substrate and sheet substrate


The present invention provides a method for preparing ester or thioester that can conduct catalytic esterification reaction with an equimolar amount of carboxylic acid and alcohol, or catalytic thioesterification reaction with carboxylic acid and an equimolar amount or small amount of thiol, and can be expected as an industrial method that needs an enormous amount of synthesis in the light of green chemistry. By using hafnium chloride (IV), especially tetravalent hafnium compounds represented by hafnium chloride (IV)·(THF)2 or hafnium (IV)t-butoxide as a (poly) condensation catalyst, direct condensation reaction is conducted from carboxylic acid and an equimolar amount of alcohol or a little smaller amount of thiol, in the nonpolar solvent such as toluene and the like, in a deoxidization atmosphere and under heating reflux, and the reaction synthesizes ester monomer or thioester monomer, polyester or polythioester. When heating reflux is conducted by using a nonpolar solvent, it is preferable to remove azeotropic water from the reaction system.

The development of a chemical process being environment friendly is the highest priority issue in the present day, which the world community agrees also in the light of green chemistry (P. T. Anastas and J. C. Wamer, Green Chemistry: Theory and Practice (Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1998). The esterification reaction is the most fundamental and important reaction of organic synthesis (Tetrahedron. 36, 2409, 1980). There are already an enormous amount of reports concerning the esterification reaction (Tetrahedron. 36, 2409, 1980), but in most of the cases, more than 1 equivalent weight of condensing agent or activating agent is used per substrate, there are problems such as a large quantity of by-product is produced after the reaction, thereby a complicated operation of separation and purification become necessary. Thus, it should actually be avoided in the light of green chemistry and atom efficiency. On the other hand, it would be an ideal process if a direct and catalytic esterification could be conducted from an equimolar amount of carboxylic acid and alcohol. But in most cases, ester can be obtained efficiently only if either carboxylic acid or alcohol is used excessively (Synthesis. 1978, 929, 1978; Chem. Lett. 1977, 55, 1977; Chem. Lett. 1981, 663, 1981; Synthesis. 1972, 628, 1972; Tetrahedron. Lett. 12, 3453, 1971; Tetrahedron. Lett. 14, 1823, 1973; Bull. Chem. Soc. Jpn. 54, 1276, 1981; Jpn. Patent Appl. 1980, No. 55-115570; Japanese Laid-Open Patent Application No. 52-75684; J. Am. Chem. Soc. 102, 7578, 1980; Tetrahedron. Lett. 28, 3713, 1987; J. Org. Chem. 56, 5307, 1991; Chem. Lett. 1981, 1671, 1981; Bull. Chem. Soc. Jpn. 62, 2353, 1989; Chem. Lett. 1984, 1085, 1984; J. Chem. Soc., Perkin Trans./1994, 3473, 1994).
Conventionally, a polyester polymerized catalyst wherein the catalyst is comprised of one or more metal compound selected from the group of scandium, yttrium, zirconium, hafnium, and vanadium, and one or more compound selected from a group comprising a compound having the structure of Ar—O— (Ar represents an aryl group) and the like (Japanese Laid-Open Patent Application No. 2000-154241) is known as polymerization catalyst. Additionally, as a method for preparing ester, wherein the catalyst activity is high, an ester is synthesized at a high yield even by using approximately an equimolar amount of acid and alkali which are the raw materials, a high reaction speed is obtained even at a low temperature, and being an excellent method in that a very small side reaction is produced, the following method for preparing ester (Japanese Laid-Open Patent Application No. 08-71429) is also known: the method uses an ester catalyst comprising a titanium metal compound selected from the group of titanium metal such as halides, nitrate salts, carboxylate salts, alcoholates and acetylacetone-type complex, as at least one of the active ingredients, and prepare ester from carboxylic acid and alcohol.
Moreover, as a method for preparing effectively carboxylic acid ester or carboxylic acid thioester from alcohol or thiol and carboxylic acid under a mild condition, the following method is known (Japanese Laid-Open Patent Application No. 05-286894): alcohol or thiol, or alternatively its ee1yl derivatives is reacted with an equivalent amount or a little smaller amount of carboxylic acid or carboxylic acid silyl ester, and when preparing carboxylic acid ester or carboxylic acid thioester, a carboxylic acid anhydride represented by a general formula (R6CO)2O (wherein R6 represents an aryl group that may have a substitute group) coexist with cationic catalyst of catalyst amount.
Recently, compounds having increasingly complicated structure and being unstable are used as drug medicine and the like, and a method of preparing ester or thioester that progresses smoothly from an equivalent amount of carboxylic acid and alcohol or thiol is anticipated in the light of composing drug medicine. An object of the present invention is to provide a method of preparing ester or thioester that can make: a catalytic esterification reaction from an equimolar amount of carboxylic acid and alcohol; or a catalytic thioesterification from carboxylic acid and thiol of which the amount is equimolar or a little smaller compared to carboxylic acid; and to provide a method that can be expected to be an industrial method that needs an enormous amount of synthesis in the light of green chemistry.

Japan Science and Technology Corporation


One aspect of the current invention is a halogen containing epoxy composition and a method of producing the same. A functional halogen group, fluorine in one case, is incorporated into an epoxy coating by using a functionalized amine curing agent in small amounts. Functionalized amine curing agents are cheaper and easier to produce from small amine precursors when compared to the cost and complexity of functionalizing bulky epoxy resins. Amine curing agents are incorporated into a cured epoxy network. However, many functional groups will affect the reactivity of the curing reaction due to electronegativity effects. By using small amounts of functionalized amines with a large amount of non-functionalized agent, the effect is small and in the case of migration, it can be advantageous for tribological, mechanical and other properties of epoxies and epoxy-containing materials. Additionally, in stratified coatings, it is advantageous to use smaller functionalized amine molecules that can migrate more quickly into the composition before the composition becomes fully cured.

The present invention pertains to halogen-containing cured or self-cured compositions and their methods of preparation. More specifically, a halogen-containing epoxy compositions can be formed by mixing an epoxy resin, an amine curing agent and a halogenated amine. The resultant halogen-containing compositions have improved tribological properties, namely reduction of friction and wear.
Epoxy resins represent an important class of polymers primarily due to their versatility. High degree of crosslinking and the nature of the interchain bonds give cured epoxies many desirable characteristics. These characteristics include excellent adhesion to many substrates, high strength, chemical resistance, fatigue resistance, corrosion resistance and electrical resistance. In addition, processing is simplified by the low shrinkage and lack of volatile by-products. Properties of the cured epoxies such as mechanical strength or electrical resistance can be optimized by appropriate selection of the epoxy monomer and the curing agent or catalyst. Because of the ease of application and desirable properties, epoxies are widely used for coatings, corrosion protectants, electronic encapsulants, fiber optic sheathing, flooring and adhesives.
Epoxy compounds were first synthesized as early as 1891; however, commercialization did not come about for the next 50 years. Two independent researchers, developing separate applications, synthesized the first commercial epoxy resins. Pierre Castan of de Trey Frères in Switzerland, while developing dental restoration materials, discovered the reaction of diglycidylether of bisphenol-A (DGEBA) with pthalic anhydride. The patents were assigned to Ciba A G of Basel, Switzerland (now Ciba-Geigy) in 1942. At the same time, Sylvan Greenlee at DeVoe and Raynolds (later Celanese Chemical Company, and subsequently Hoechst-Celanese) in America, while developing surface coatings, discovered another DGEBA resin, which differed only in molecular weight. Greenlee's first of many patents was granted in 1948. These DGEBA resins and subsequent derivatives have, and continue to be, the largest product in the epoxy market, primarily in the surface coatings industry for which it was developed. The characteristics which Greenlee and Castan sought and found in DGEBA, including adhesion, hardness, inertness and thermal resistance, are responsible for its popularity. Many other monomers and polymers have been subsequently epoxidized to increase the desirable properties of DGEBA and to develop special properties such as high electrical resistance and thermal stability.
Epoxies are characterized by the presence of one or more epoxide functional groups on or in the polymer chain. The epoxide group is planar, with a three-membered ring composed of one oxygen and two carbon atoms. Due to the high ring strain, similar to that in cyclopropane, the group is very reactive.
The ring-opening polymerization and crosslinking in epoxy resins can be of two general types, catalyzed homopolymerization or bridging reactions which incorporate a coreactive crosslinking agent into the network. Homopolymerization, or reactions between epoxy chains, involve elimination reactions on the oxygen atom of the epoxide group using acid or base catalysts, often activated by radiation. The incorporation, or bridging reaction, involves nucleophilic attack on one of the epoxide carbons by an amine or an anhydride compound. An obvious and important difference in the result of the two different curing methods is that in homopolymerization the network is only composed of the cross-linked epoxy monomers, whereas in the bridging reaction the network is composed of a copolymer of both epoxy monomers and a curing agent. Therefore in a bridging reaction the network properties are a function of two components, which allows modifications to be incorporated in either component.
Epoxies and curing agents have been chemically modified for a variety of special purposes, with recent attention given to the addition of fluorine functional groups to increase electrical resistance and dielectric constant as well as for improved tribological properties, namely reduction of friction and wear. While significant work has been done in fluorinating epoxy resins or epoxidizing fluoropolymers, the costs are typically prohibitively high. Researchers continue to develop economically viable epoxy with the friction-reducing fluoro groups bonded into a wear-resistant epoxy network. A preferred embodiment of the current invention utilizes a commercially available fluorinated amine as a curing agent.
The physical properties of uncured epoxy resins vary widely. As with any polymer, the viscosity of the monomers or prepolymers depend on both the molecular weight and the molecular structure. A simple example is DGEBA, as shown in FIG. 1. Higher linear molecular weight monomers, i.e. those with higher values of n, exhibit higher viscosities. In addition, molecular structure and types of bonds will greatly affect the viscosity of the resin. Since epoxies are almost always used with catalysts, crosslinking agents, accelerators and various other additives, viscosity effects like plasticization should be considered.
Epoxy curing involves two phenomena, polymerization and crosslinking. Although each phenomenon is complicated and the two are in competition during the overall curing process, generalizations and simplified models can be made. During the initial stage of curing, polymerization is favored because in the case of curing agents, primary reactions are more reactive than secondary ones. Also, the terminal epoxide reactivity already mentioned plays a role. In most cases the polymerization is an addition reaction, and thus follows a rate equation for addition polymerization described later. The molecular weight of the growing polymer increases until the molecular weight approaches infinity, so that all monomers are connected by at least one bond and a network is formed. At this point, called the gel point, the polymer possesses high molecular weight and few crosslinks, and thus behaves much like a very high molecular weight thermoplastic. From the gel point, crosslinking becomes the dominant phenomenon due to the lack of free monomers. Crosslinking involves interchain bonding of intrachain reactive sites, either intrachain epoxides or secondary sites on coreactive agents.
Although crosslinking is a different phenomenon, the rate of chemical conversion of the epoxide groups is unaffected in most epoxy systems. The crosslinking reactions produce a growing network and reduce the mobility of the chain segments. The growth of the network results in mechanical and thermal stabilization of the structure, resulting in increasing modulus and glass transition. At a certain high degree of crosslinking, the increasing molecular weight of the structure exceeds the molecular weight which is thermodynamically stable as a rubber, and the material transforms into a glass, a process called vitrification. In a glassy state, the mobility of reactants is severely restricted, reducing the rate of the reaction to a diffusion-controlled reaction, which is much slower. Further conversion is still possible, however, the rate is much slower since the process relies on diffusion rather than mobility to bring the reactants together. When the crosslinking reaction exhausts all the reactive sites available, the resulting structure is hard (high modulus) and insoluble due to a high degree of interchain bonding.
The system consists of a DGEBA epoxy, as shown in FIG. 1, is mixed with an aliphatic amine curing agent, as shown in FIG. 2. This system is similar to many of the common commercial epoxy-based adhesives in which the epoxy resin is mixed with an amine curing agent by volume. This system was characterized after mixing the two components per the manufacturer's recommendations, but was also used in a fluorination modification proceedures. Specific amounts of a fluorinated amine curing agent were substituted for some of the aliphatic amine. Previous studies conducted by W. Brostow, et al., Mat. Res. Innov., 6 (2002) 7, on thermoplastic blends with specialized components demonstrated that small amounts of fluoropolymer additives produced large effects on tribological properties of the epoxy. Therefore, small amounts of fluorinated amines were substituted. The chemical structures of the fluorinated amines used are provided in FIG. 3. The fluorination described herein provides an economically feasible method of reducing the friction on the cured epoxy surface. Most previous attempts have focused on synthetically fluorinating the epoxy chain, which is both complicated and costly.

Composition of epoxy resin, aliphatic amine curing agent and halogenated amine


A method for chamfer mirror-like polishing a wafer having an orientation flat by rotating the wafer in a state of being pressed by a rotating buffering wheel with a predetermined pressure, is disclosed. Mirror-surface polishing a stable wafer chamfer can be obtained with a relatively simple control system. The invention is predicated in the fact that the wafer rotation speed N.sub.s has low inertial mass and low rotation speed so that the wafer rotation speed control can be obtained with high response property and high accuracy compared to pressing pressure control and buffering wheel control, and it features detecting intrinsic peripheral part, corners and orientation flat part of wafer according to a detection signal of detection means for detecting the wafer mirror-like polishing position and controlling the wafer rotation speed N.sub.s according to the detected wafer mirror-like polishing position.

1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to a method of and an apparatus for mirror-like polishing a chamfer of a semiconductor single crystal wafer (hereinafter referred to as wafer having an orientation flat).
2. Description of the Prior Art
Wafer chamfer mirror-like polishing of a wafer comprising a semiconductor single crystal, is made for such purposes as preventing dust generation and coping with liquid pool when washing the wafer.
Such wafer, as shown in FIG. 5, has its periphery formed with an orientation flat part W.sub.2. At corners W.sub.3 between the intrinsic peripheral part W.sub.1 and orientation flat part W.sub.2, the curvature radius r.sub.3 is very small, and in this locality the relative curvature radius with respect to the buffing wheel for mirror-like polishing the wafer 1 is extremely small compared to the other localities. Therefore, with a constant pressing pressure the contact pressure p is very high at the corners W.sub.3. In the meantime, when the wafer is rotating at a constant rotation number, the speed of movement of the point of contact between the wafer chamfer and the buffing wheel is greatly reduced at the corners, thus extending the process time at this locality. For the above reasons, the mirror-like polishing of the corners W.sub.3 that is done under the same mirror-like polishing conditions (i.e., wafer rotation speed, pressing pressure between the buffing wheel and wafer, rotation speed of the buffing wheel, etc.) as for the intrinsic peripheral part W.sub.1 and orientation flat part W.sub.2, results in excessive wear or wedging of the buffing wheel at the corners.
The capacity C of wafer chamfer mirror-like polishing is obtained from the following general approximation equation EQU C=a.sub.1 pV.sub.b T
where a.sub.1 is a constant (a.sub.2, . . . , a.sub.n appearing in the following being the same), p is the contact pressure, V.sub.b is the relative speed .varies.N.sub.b (N.sub.b being the rotation speed of the buffing wheel), T is the contact time .varies.1/N.sub.S (N.sub.S being the rotation speed of the wafer). Hence, EQU N.sub.S =a.sub.2 pN.sub.b /C
As for p (approximated by two-circle contact between wafer circle and buffing wheel circle) EQU p=a.sub.3 {F(1/R1+1/R2)}.sup.1/2
(F being the pressing pressure).
Hence, EQU N.sub.S =a.sub.4 N.sub.b {F(1/R.sub.1 +1/R.sub.2)}.sup.1/2 /C
Assuming that a.sub.4, N.sub.b, C and F are constant, we have EQU N.sub.S =a.sub.5 {(1/R.sub.1 +1/R.sub.2)}.sup.1/2
where R.sub.1 (diameter of the buffing wheel) is constant. Taking R.sub.2 (diameter of the wafer) as a variable, relation as shown in Table 1 below is obtained in connection with the showing in FIG. 5.
TABLE 1 Wafer peripheral position W.sub.2 W.sub.1 W.sub.3 R.sub.2 Large (.infin.) Medium (r.sub.1) Small (r.sub.3) N.sub.s Small Medium Large
When the pressing pressure F (Kgf) of the buffing wheel is constant, the area of contact between the wafer and the buffing wheel is small with a small relative curvature radius of the wafer and large with a large relative curvature radius.
It is thus possible to control the wafer chamfer mirror-like polishing capacity C through control of p, N.sub.S and N.sub.b noted above.
A technique of controlling the excessive wear of the corners of wafer through control of the contact pressure p between the wafer and buffing wheel while controlling the wafer chamfer mirror-like polishing capacity C, is shown by the applicant in Japanese Laid-Open Patent Publication No. 6-155263.
In this technique, when mirror-like polishing the wafer chamfer, the mirror-like polishing capacity C is made uniform for the orientation flat part, intrinsic peripheral part and corners by varying the pressing pressure between the wafer and buffing wheel according to a wafer position detection signal from wafer position detecting means, which makes a determination as to whether the wafer mirror-like polishing position corresponds to the orientation flat part, intrinsic peripheral part or corner.
The curvature radius of the corner is about 2 mm, and with an 8" wafer (with a radius of about 100 mm) which has the orientation flat part W.sub.2 as noted above, the processing time of the corner W.sub.3 is usually reduced to a couple of seconds by setting the wafer rotation speed to about one minute per one round.
However, when the wafer mirror-like polishing position goes from intrinsic peripheral part W.sub.1 to corner W.sub.3 and from corner W.sub.3 to orientation flat part W.sub.2, the mirror-like polishing capacity C is varied in these localities as shown by the solid plot in FIG. 4(B) unless the pressing pressure is quickly raised and lowered. In the above technique of controlling the pressing pressure between the wafer and buffing wheel, the pressing pressure generating means employs an air cylinder which is inferior in the response property. Therefore, a response delay is generated as shown by the dashed plot in FIG. 4(B). This frequently results in the occurrence of excessive mirror-like polishing or wedging into the buffing wheel particularly at the corner W.sub.3.
The follow-up property can be improved by using an oil hydraulic cylinder. In wafer mirror-like polishing, however, oil is undesired because it causes impurity introduction.
It is possible to control the rotation speed N.sub.b of the buffing wheel for the control of the mirror-like polishing capacity C. However, the buffing wheel is rotated at a high rotation number and has a high moment of inertia. The high momentum thus generated deteriorates the response property, so that it is difficult to obtain fine and accurate control.

Method of and apparatus for mirror-like polishing wafer chamfer with orientation flat


A shock resistant, non contacting alternating current (AC) sensing device intended to be worn on the hands in the formation of protective gloves. Alerting user of AC voltage potential when approaching energized equipment, protects the user's palms and fingertips from energized components. The glove encompasses non contacting AC voltage potential sensing circuitry, electrically receptive antenna throughout anterior hand surfaces, layer intended to protect the user and antenna from electrical contact. As the user's hands approach an electrically energized apparatus of equipment, the antenna will receive signaling transponding to the logic board, which will then energize a notification appliance alerting the user of danger.

Non contacting AC voltage potential sensing technology is a well known system that has been used for years. There are many different variations of devices that use non contact detection methods, most of which are utilized in the form of a handheld pen style tester. Prior art further teaches of various forms of non contacting voltage detection integrated into or onto glove or wearable bodies, as observed in the prior art, all prior inventions fail to provide sensory means within the palm of the glove. Further prior inventions fail to teach of any protection to the receptive antenna or the user from contact with energized electrical components. Additionally, prior art does not disclose receptive antenna located throughout a plurality of anterior phalanges, to provide concurrent protection to a plurality of distal ends. Therefor an improved design is required, improved design described in the following summary.

Wearable non contacting AC voltage detection system


Systems and methods of debugging client applications may provide for detecting a runtime error in a first version of a client application, and obtaining a second version of the client application server in response to the runtime error. The second version of the client application may be used to conduct a diagnosis of the runtime error.

1. Technical Field
Embodiments of the present invention generally relate to application debugging. More particularly, embodiments relate to client-side application debugging.
2. Discussion
In modern web-based applications, the performance of the application may be directly related to the size and amount of the files that are served to the client. Efforts to reduce the amount, and therefore size, of client-side code can be at odds with efforts to include a multitude of meaningful logging, debugging and tracing functionality. A common practice may be to remove unnecessary white-space at build time and compress the source files before serving them to the client. This approach could still include, however, all of the trace, debug and log statements, which may not always be needed.

This patent is subject to a terminal disclaimer.

International Business Machines Corporation


A multi-cylinder internal combustion engine includes a one-side crank chamber and an other-side crank chamber formed by partitioning a lower crankcase by a plurality of lower support walls which are provided integrally with the lower crankcase and support a crankshaft. A plurality of oil outflow holes respectively communicate with the one-side crank chamber and the other-side crank chamber through which oil is discharged from the one-side crank chamber and the other-side crank chamber. An oil discharge port is provided along a lower support wall of the one-side crank chamber and the other-side crank chamber. A suction port of a scavenging pump for discharging the oil present in the one-side crank chamber and the other-side crank chamber is provided in an outer wall in the manner of straddling the lower support wall.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a multi-cylinder internal combustion engine in which oil is discharged from a plurality of crank chambers.
2. Description of Background Art
A multi-cylinder internal combustion engine is known wherein an oil pan for collecting oil is provided on the lower side of a plurality of crank chambers and the oil is fed from the oil pan to oil pump through a pipe. See, for example, Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2004-143952.
In the conventional multi-cylinder internal combustion engine mentioned above, the oil is fed to the oil pump by use of the oil pan and the pipe. This configuration therefore has had a problem of an increase in the number of component parts and a complicated structure.

Multi-cylinder internal combustion engine


A two-piece, snap-action closure includes a body and a separate lid. A biasing member is provided on the body to engage the rear portion of the lid to bias the lid to the full closed position or to the full open position from a bistable over center point. In a preferred embodiment, the biasing member is a cantilevered tab. In another embodiment the biasing member is a resiliently flexible member that presents a convex configuration toward the lid in the closed position. In one embodiment, the lid is pivotally mounted to the body with pivot members having oppositely facing flat sides which are received in rectangular receiving apertures. In another embodiment, the pivot members are cylindrical and are received in semi-cylindrical receiving apertures. In a preferred form of the closure, an angled cam surface is provided on the body to guide each pivot member into the receiving apertures.

A variety of closures have been proposed over the years for use with containers wherein the closures include a lid connected to a body with a living hinge and wherein the lid moves between the open and closed positions with a snap-action effect. Although such closures may work generally satisfactorily for the service for which they were designed, there are applications in which a large number of open-close cycles of operation involving large movements or high stresses may cause the closures to fail with prolonged use.
Also, living hinges used for snap-action closures are typically molded as unitary structures from synthetic thermoplastic material. In some applications, a closure must be fabricated from materials from which an acceptable living hinge cannot be fabricated Further, in some applications, it would be beneficial to provide a closure lid and closure body made from dissimilar materials.
It would thus be desirable to provide a snap-action type closure that does not require a living hinge structure. This would permit a greater variety of materials to be used, and would permit the closure lid and body to be made in different colors
Some designs have been proposed for closures which can be self-maintained in an open position and/or a closed position and wherein the lid and body are separate pieces. With some such designs, it may be relatively easy for the lid to be removed from the body, either accidentally or intentionally. However, in certain applications it would be desirable to provide an improved two-piece closure which would be relatively inexpensive to manufacture and relatively easy to assemble but which could not be easily disassembled. Such a non-removable lid would be a desirable feature in, for example, tamper-proof or tamper-evident closure designs.

Two-piece, snap-action closure with body deck spring panel

Seaquist Closures, a division of Pittway Corporation


An assessment system (100) used to creating an assessment of workpieces includes a database module (40), a connecting module (20), and a server module (30). The database module stores computer aided design (CAD) drawings of the checked workpieces. The database module and the server module are connected to each other via the connecting module. The server module is connected to the database module and includes an inquiry module and a processor module. The inquiry module inquires the CAD drawings of each checked workpiece and acquires relational parameters of the checked workpieces from the CAD drawings. The processor module processes the parameters acquired by the inquiry module, and the server module creates an assessment according to the parameters and data processed by the processor module.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to reporting systems and, particularly, to a reporting system using computer aided design (CAD) drawings and a method for using the same to create an assessment/report.
2. Description of Related Art
In a manufacturing corporation, a large number of workpieces are widely used. These workpieces require to be regularly assessed for quality. Assessments in a special format need to be created in each checking process to record checking data of/for the workpieces.
During creation of a workpiece assessment, parameters such as name, material, shape, and/or dimension are recorded. Relational data such as limits, averages and tolerances are then calculated according to these parameters and are also recorded. Generally, these parameters and data calculated from the parameters have to be inputted manually into a computer to be recorded and processed to create an assessment, which may lead to mistakes being made.
Therefore, a new assessment creation system and a new assessment creation method are desired in order to overcome the above-described shortcomings.

Workpiece assessment system and method for using the same

ShenZhen Fataihong Precision Industry Co., ltd.