The invention relates to a method for the continuous production of ethylene homo- and ethylene co-polymers in the presence of radical polymerisation initiators and, optionally, molecular weight regulators in a tubular reactor with a hot water jacket and one or several reaction zones at pressures of 1000 to 4000 bar and temperatures of 120xc2x0 C. to 350xc2x0 C. The hot water jacket of each reaction zone is divided into two independently-controllable, separate, longitudinal sections and the water exit temperature from the tubular jacket of the first longitudinal section per reaction zone, extending between the point of initiator addition and 20 to 50% of the reaction zone length, is set to 180xc2x0 C. to 210xc2x0 C. and in the following second longitudinal section of said reaction zone the hot water exit temperature from the tube jacket is set to 140xc2x0 C. to 180xc2x0 C.

The present invention relates to a process for the continuous preparation of ethylene homopolymers and ethylene copolymers in the presence of free-radical polymerization initiators and in the presence or absence of molecular weight regulators in a tube reactor having a hot water jacket and one or more reaction zones at pressures in the range from 1000 to 4000 bar and temperatures of from 120xc2x0 C. to 350xc2x0 C., where the hot water jacket of each reaction zone is divided into at least two independently regulatable, separate longitudinal sections.
The present invention further provides novel ethylene homopolymers and copolymers and provides for their use.
The homopolymerization and copolymerization of the ethylene by the high-pressure bulk process is generally known. The reactors used are usually operated continuously at pressures of from 150 to 350 MPa and temperatures of from 150xc2x0 C. to 350xc2x0 C. using mean residence times of from 30 to 120 seconds (Ullmann""s Encyclopxc3xa4die der technischen Chemie, 4th Edition, Vol. 19/1980/pp. 169-178).
The quality and conversion attained of the polymers produced is determined largely by the temperature conditions in the reactor, with the achievable conversion being proportional to the quantity of heat removed. Part of the heat generated in the polymerization is removed via the reactor walls and can there be, for example, passed to a cooling medium. A problem which frequently occurs is that even at high temperatures and high pressures, high molecular weight polymer depositions are formed on the cooled interior walls of the reactor. Since polyethylene is a poor conductor of heat, this drastically reduces heat transfer. If the removal of heat is insufficient, the ethylene can decompose explosively as a result of the temperature increase. To avoid such polymer deposits, various methods of operating the reactor have been developed.
DE 4102808-A describes the temperature profile in a high-pressure multizone reactor, where the temperature of the hot water leaving the jacket directly upstream of the peroxide introduction point is controlled so that the temperature difference between introduction point and a second temperature measurement point is from 8 to 30xc2x0 C. The hot water outlet temperature is from 207xc2x0 C. to 225xc2x0 C.
In DD 146 298 polyethylene having improved properties is obtained by means of specific temperatures in the cooling water circuit. The heat transfer medium fed into the cooling jacket is set to temperatures of from 215xc2x0 C. to 235xc2x0 C. along the reactor. The temperature of the heat transfer medium must at the same time be no more than 70xc2x0 C.-95xc2x0 C. below the maximum temperature of the reaction mixture in the respective reaction zone.
A further specific temperature profile for optimizing the polymer quality is described in DD 137 591. The temperature difference between the interior wall of the reactor and the stream in the middle of the reactor is maintained in a defined region, where this temperature difference within a reaction zone between the temperature at the introduction point for the initiator and the temperature maximum is smaller than that between the temperature maximum and the temperature at the location of renewed introduction of the monomer. In addition, the patent teaches that this temperature difference, particularly in the first reaction zone up to the first temperature maximum, should be kept particularly small. The cooling water used is at from 237xc2x0 C. to 247xc2x0 C.
The abovementioned processes are all relatively complicated.
It is an object of the present invention to achieve a good balance between conversion and product quality using a simple temperature profile of the cooling medium.
We have found that this object is achieved by a process for the continuous preparation of ethylene homopolymers and ethylene copolymers in the presence of free-radical polymerization initiators and in the presence or absence of molecular weight regulators in a tube reactor having a hot water jacket and one or more reaction zones at pressures in the range from 1000 to 4000 bar and temperatures of from 120xc2x0 C. to 350xc2x0 C., where the hot water jacket of each reaction zone is divided into at least two independently regulatable, separate longitudinal sections, wherein the hot water outlet temperature from the jacket of the first longitudinal section of each reaction zone, which extends over the region in between the initiator introduction point and from 20 to 50% of the reaction zone length, is set to from 180xc2x0 C. to 210xc2x0 C. and the hot water outlet temperature from the jacket in the subsequent, second longitudinal section of this reaction zone is set to from 140xc2x0 C. to 180xc2x0 C. Preference is given to hot water outlet temperatures from the jacket of from 190xc2x0 C. to 210xc2x0 C. in the first longitudinal section and from 150xc2x0 C. to 180xc2x0 C. in the subsequent longitudinal section. The hot water jacket of each reaction zone is preferably divided into two independently regulatable, separate longitudinal sections.
In the following, a reaction zone is in each case the zone commencing at an initiator introduction point up to before the next initiator introduction point. It usually has a temperature maximum beyond which the polymer/monomer mixture becomes cooler again.
According to the present invention, it has been found that the region between the initiator introduction point and from 20 to 50% of the reaction zone length after the initiator introduction point is particularly susceptible to polymer deposits. These deposits are prevented by an increased temperature in the hot water jacket in this region. It may be assumed, without being tied to this theory, that mixing of the initiator with the polymerization stream does not occur quickly enough in this region, thus leading to polymer deposits. A hot water outlet temperature of from 180xc2x0 C. to 210xc2x0 C., preferably from 190xc2x0 C. to 210xc2x0 C., is preferably set in the hot water jacket between the initiator introduction point and from 20 to 40% of the reaction zone length, very particularly preferably between the initiator introduction point and from 20 to 30% of the reaction zone length, in order to prevent the polymer deposits. The hot water inlet temperature is usually from 1xc2x0 C. to 30xc2x0 C., preferably from 2xc2x0 C. to 20xc2x0 C. and particularly preferably from 2xc2x0 C. to 10xc2x0 C., lower than the respective hot water outlet temperature.
The process of the present invention can be employed either for the homopolymerization of ethylene or for the copolymerization of ethylene with other monomers, provided that these monomers copolymerize with ethylene by a free radical mechanism under high pressure. Examples of suitable copolymerizable monomers are xcex1,xcex2-ethylenically unsaturated C3-C8-carboxylic acids, in particular maleic acid, fumaric acid, itaconic acid, acrylic acid, methacrylic acid and crotonic acid, xcex1,xcex2-ethylenically unsaturated C4-C15-carboxylic esters or anhydrides, in particular methyl methacrylate, ethyl acrylate, n-butyl acrylate, methacrylic anhydride, maleic anhydride and itaconic anhydride, and xcex1,xcex2-olefins such as propene, 1-butene, 1-pentene or 1-hexene. Vinyl acetate can also be used as comonomer. The proportion of comonomer or comonomers in the reaction mixture is preferably from 1 to 45% by weight, particularly preferably from 5 to 30% by weight. In these cases, the remainder of the reaction mixture is made up by ethylene.
The polymerization is carried out at pressures of from 500 to 5000 bar, preferably from 1500 to 4000 bar and particularly preferably from 2000 to 3300 bar. The reaction temperatures are above 40xc2x0 C. It is advantageous for the reaction temperatures to be in the range from 120 to 350xc2x0 C., preferably from 150 to 330xc2x0 C.
In the process of the present invention, the molar mass of the polymers to be prepared can be controlled in a customary fashion by addition of molecular weight regulators. Examples of suitable regulators are aliphatic and olefinic hydrocarbons, e.g. pentane, hexane, cyclohexane, propene, pentene or hexene, ketones such as acetone, diethyl ketone or diamyl ketone, aldehydes such as formaldehyde or acetaldehyde and saturated aliphatic alcohols such as methanol, ethanol, propanol or butanol. Particular preference is given to using saturated aliphatic aldehydes, in particular propionaldehyde, or xcex1-oleins such as propene or hexene. The molecular weight regulator is preferably metered into the reaction mixture upstream of the tube reactor. It can also be introduced together with the polymerization initiator at the various points along the tube reactor.
The polymerization is initiated in each reaction zone by addition of initiators which decompose into free radicals. As free-radical polymerization initiators, it is possible to use any compounds which form free radicals. Peroxides which decompose to form free radicals, preferably organic peroxides, or air or oxygen can be used.
Examples of suitable compounds which form free radicals are organic peroxides such as peresters, perketal, peroxy ketones and percarbonates, for example di-2-ethylhexyl peroxydicarbonate, di-cyclohexylperoxydicarbonate, diacetyl peroxydicarbonate, di-tert-butyl peroxide, cumyl perneodecanoate, tert-amyl perpivalate, tert-butyl perneodecanoate, tert-butyl permaleate, tert-butyl perpivalate, tert-butyl perisononanoate, diisopropylbenzene hydroperoxide, cumene hydroperoxide, tert-butyl perbenzoate, methyl isobutyl ketone hydroperoxide or 2,2-bis(tert-butylperoxy)butane. Other suitable initiators are azodicarboxylic esters, azodicarboxylic dinitriles, e.g. azobisisobutyronitrile, and hydrocarbons which decompose into free radicals, also known as Cxe2x80x94C initiators, e.g. 1,2-diphenyl-1,2-dimethylethane and 1,1,2,2-tetramethyl-ethane derivatives.
The initiators can be employed individually or in admixture in concentrations of from 0.5 to 100 ppm, in particular from 0.5 to 50 ppm, based on the amount of monomers. It is advantageous to use the initiators in dissolved form. Examples of suitable solvents are aliphatic hydrocarbons, in particular octane and isodecane.
The total amount of monomer and comonomer can be introduced in one step. In a preferred embodiment, polymerization initiator is metered in at a plurality of points, e.g. from 2 to 6 points, particularly preferably from 3 to 5 points, along the tube reactor so as to form, for example, from 2 to 6 reaction zones which all have the hot water jacket divided according to the present invention.
The hot water jacket of each reaction zone is preferably divided into two separate longitudinal sections. However, the invention also encompasses analogous embodiments in which the hot water jacket is, for example, further divided but the same temperature profile is to be achieved. Likewise, the invention also encompasses embodiments in which the division according to the present invention of the hot water jacket into the two regions having different hot water outlet temperatures is combined with reaction zones in which the hot water jacket is not divided or which have no hot water jackets. The reaction zones which do not have the hot water jacket divided according to the present invention are preferably located at the end of the reactor, and are particularly preferably located downstream of from 1 to 3 reaction zones having a hot water jacket divided according to the present invention.
The ratio of length to diameter of the tube reactor is preferably in the range from 10,000 to 50,000, particularly preferably from 15,000 to 35,000.
In general, the mean residence time of the reaction mixture in the tube reactor is in the range from 30 to 300 seconds, preferably from 30 to 120 seconds.
After the last introduction of the polymerization initiator, the reaction mixture is cooled so that the product can be discharged from the reactor without thermal damage. The reaction mixture is discharged via a suitable high-pressure depressurization valve system at the outlet end of the tube reactor. After discharge of the reaction mixture, the polymer is separated from unreacted ethylene and any unreacted comonomer by depressurization, after which the monomers are generally recirculated to the reactor.
The process of the present invention can also be carried out analogously using a backmixed reactor installed upstream of the tube reactor. After the polymerization in the backmixer has abated, the polymerization mixture together with still unreacted monomers is passed via a high-pressure tube, which may be connected to a heat exchanger, to the tube reactor where the process is continued as described above. In general, the mean residence time of the mixture in the backmixed reactor is from 10 to 100 seconds, in particular from 10 to 30 seconds, and that in the tube reactor is from 10 to 200 seconds, in particular from 10 to 100 seconds.
In the preferred embodiments, an additional measure employed to avoid polymer deposits, in addition to the hot water outlet temperatures according to the present invention, is to set a higher flow velocity of the polymerization mixture in the tube reactor in the regions having hot water outlet temperatures of from 180xc2x0 C. to 210xc2x0 C. than in the regions having hot water outlet temperatures of from 140xc2x0 C. to 180xc2x0 C.
Accordingly, particular preference is given to a process in which the tube reactor has at least two reaction zones and cooled or preheated monomer and/or cooled or preheated comonomer is additionally introduced as fresh gas stream upstream of or at the beginning of each reaction zone (multiple cold gas feed). The flow velocity can be increased by the addition of further monomer, thus additionally helping to avoid formation of deposits. The introduction of the monomer or monomers can be carried out upstream of the introduction of further initiator or together with the initiator. Preference is given to at least three successive reaction zones, where the polymerization in each stage has to be restarted by addition of the appropriate initiators. Reactors suitable for carrying out the process are, inter alia, tube reactors which are provided with a series of inlets for the initiator and, if desired, for the introduction of further amounts of monomers. In general, the tube reactor has a ratio of length to diameter of at least 10,000, preferably more than 15,000, at a length of from 120 to 2500 m. The tube reactor is advantageously arranged in a wound form.
In another preferred embodiment, the tube region having hot water outlet temperatures from the jacket of from 180xc2x0 C. to 210xc2x0 C. has in each case a smaller internal diameter than the subsequent tube region having hot water outlet temperatures from the jacket of from 140xc2x0 C. to 180xc2x0 C. Such types of tube reactors, albeit without a hot water jacket, are described, for example, in DE 2124011 C3 for the avoidance of pressure drops. This reduction in the internal diameter also increases the flow velocity in the first region of the individual reaction zones. These tube reactors having changing cross sections can also be operated in combination with the above-described multiple cold gas feed.
In a particularly preferred embodiment, the tube reactor having the abovementioned changing cross sections comprises from 2 to 6 reaction zones and the tube regions having hot water outlet temperatures from the jacket of from 180xc2x0 C. to 210xc2x0 C. and having the smaller internal diameter all have the same internal diameter and the tube regions having hot water outlet temperatures from the jacket of from 140xc2x0 C. to 180xc2x0 C. and the larger internal diameter have an internal diameter which decreases from region to region in the direction of flow. This gives a reactor in a type of reverse telescopic form.
The invention further provides the ethylene homopolymers and ethylene copolymers which can be prepared by the process of the present invention and provides for their use for producing films, coating materials and photoresists and as fluidizers in middle petroleum distillates.
By means of the process of the present invention, the polymers can be prepared safely and in a precisely reproducible fashion without thermal decomposition of the monomers occurring in the reactors. The polymers of the present invention have densities of from 915 to 940 kg/m3. The density can be influenced, for example, via the polymerization temperature and the polymerization pressure and/or the comonomer concentration. Their melt flow index in accordance with DIN 53 735 is in the range from 0.2 to 40 g/10 min, in particular less than 4 g/10 min. Films produced from the polymers of the present invention have excellent optical properties. Polymers having densities above 925 kg/m3 can be prepared at conversions of more than 25% in the above-described way.
The product parameters shown in the tables were obtained by the following measurement methods:
Conversion: production [t/h]/ethylene throughput [t/h]
Density: in accordance with ISO 1183
MFI: Melt flow index MFI (190xc2x0 C./2.16) in accordance with ISO 1133
Longitudinal elongation at break: from tensile test in accordance with DIN 53455

Method for the continuous production of ethylene homo- and ethylene co-polymers


A first power FET has a source terminal, a gate terminal and a drain terminal and a load is connected in series with the source terminal of the power FET. A circuit configuration for triggering the first power FET includes a first input terminal. A first diode and a capacitor are connected between the first input terminal and the gate terminal of the first power FET. A second FET of the opposite channel type from that of the first power FET has a gate terminal and has drain and source terminals defining a drain-to-source path. A second diode is connected between the first diode and the capacitor and is connected through the drain-to-source path of the second FET to the drain terminal of the power FET. A resistor is connected between the gate and source terminals of the second FET. A controllable switch is connected to the gate terminal of the second FET. A second input terminal is connected to the controllable switch for receiving a voltage being lower than a supply voltage. A third depletion FET has a gate terminal connected to the controllable switch and has drain and source terminals defining a drain-to-source path connected between the gate terminal and the source terminal of the first power FET for discharging a gate-to-source capacitance of the first power FET.

Field of the Invention
The invention relates to a circuit configuration for triggering a power FET, with which a load is connected in series on the source side, having the following characteristics:
a) the gate electrode of the power FET is connected to a first input terminal through a first diode and a capacitor, PA0 b) a second diode is connected between the first diode and the capacitor and is connected through the drain-to-source path of a second FET with the drain terminal of the power FET, PA0 c) the second FET is of the opposite channel type from that of the power FET, PA0 d) a resistor is connected between the gate and source terminals of the second FET, PA0 e) the gate terminal of the second FET is connected to a controllable switch, and PA0 f) the gate-to-source capacitance of the power FET can be discharged through the drain-to-source path of a third FET.

Trigger circuit for a power FET with a load on the source side


A fuel reforming system includes an inlet device for a reactor having a housing defining a frustoconical interior region having an inlet opening and an outlet opening. A tube mixer having a helical divider may be optionally employed to transfer fluid into the inlet opening. A retention member is placed at each of the openings and a plurality of particles is contained within the frustoconical interior region between the retention members. An insulator placed between the outlet opening and the catalyst reaction surface minimizes temperature non-uniformities over the catalyst surface area, which preserves the catalyst contained within the reaction surface and prevents premature onset of the reaction prior to contact of a reactant mixture with the reaction surface. As a reactant fluid material passes through the inlet device it forms a homogenous reactant fluid material which then flows onto a catalytic reaction surface to form a reformate. Even distribution of the reactant fluid material onto the catalyst reaction surface provides uniform reactivity of the various components (e.g. fuel, air and exhaust gas mixture) comprising the reactant mixture, which helps reduce carbon build-up in the system and increases thermal efficiency.

The present disclosure relates to a reactor inlet, and, more particularly, to a reactor inlet for a fuel reforming system that provides a homogeneous mixture of fluids.
Several strategies are known in the art of fuel processing to improve fuel economy and comply with the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) exhaust emission standards for a spark ignition engine. One such strategy is fuel reforming such as on-board steam reforming, autothermal reforming and partial oxidation reforming of gasoline. For example, gasoline partial oxidation (POx) reforming strategies involve mixing fuel, air and/or exhaust gas, and partially oxidizing the fuel with a catalyst to produce two primary products, hydrogen and carbon monoxide. The carbon monoxide may then be used as a fuel in a spark ignition engine, for example, whereas the hydrogen product may be used to run the engine with excess diluent either very lean with excess air or at stoichiometric air to fuel ratios with excess exhaust gas recirculation (EGR). Either scheme may result in increased fuel economy and lower oxides of nitrogen (NOx) emissions.
Hydrogen is highly flammable and produces lower engine-out emissions, such as undesirable oxides of nitrogen (NOx). A fuel reforming system generates H2 from hydrocarbon fuels such as natural gas and gasoline, and alcohols such as methanol and ethanol.
Fuel reforming processes include steam reforming such as catalytic steam reforming, partial oxidation, and autothermal reforming. Steam reforming is an endothermic reaction wherein fuel is mixed with steam in the presence of a metal catalyst to produce H2 and CO. Partial oxidation, an exothermic reaction, is used to process methane and higher hydrocarbons, as inCH4+½O2→CO+2H2 which requires minimal external heat energy in a thermally efficient system. Autothermal reforming combines the endothermic steam reforming with the exothermic partial oxidation reaction, thereby balancing the heat flow into and out of the reactor.
However, in order to produce as much hydrogen (H2) and carbon monoxide (CO) as possible, a good homogeneous mixture of the reactants is desired as well as a means to evenly distribute that mixture over a catalyst. Prior art processes and fuel reforming systems often fail to provide a homogeneous mixture of reactants. A typical fuel reactor may rely on turbulence and/or flow dynamics to mix the reactants. Other known reactors include an inlet having a porous foam such as a ceramic foam to provide a mixture of reactants. As shown in FIG. 1, for example, a typical ceramic foam inlet is shown generally as 5 may comprise a cone shaped insert of varying cone angles and materials for the passage of fluid. However, ceramic foam often has non-uniform porosity and/or blockage of pore space. The ceramic foam inlet 5 fails to provide a homogeneous mixture of the reactants. Accordingly, there remains a need in the art for improved fuel reformer systems and processes for providing a homogeneous reactant mixture and increase thermal efficiencies associated with the homogeneous mixture.

Fuel reforming inlet device, system and process


A valve has a housing forming a compartment traversed by an axis and having a radially opening outlet port and an axially open inlet port, a valve plate fixed in the housing and formed relative to the flow direction with a flat upstream face and with an axially throughgoing valve orifice opening at the face, and a control plate in the housing formed relative to a flow direction through the valve with a flat downstream face riding on the valve-plate face, an axially throughgoing control orifice opening at the face, and an axially open and radially elongated socket on the face adjacent the respective orifice. The control plate is pivotal on the valve plate about the axis for alignment of the orifices and flow through the valve from the inlet port to the outlet port and for misalignment of the orifices for restricted flow from the inlet port to the outlet port. A valve stem rotatable in the housing about the axis projects through the valve-plate orifice and is formed with a foot projecting radially from the axis, fitting in the socket, and rotationally coupling the stem and the control plate.

A standard flow-control and shutoff valve of the type described in German patent document 3,107,431 of W. Orszullok or in commonly owned U.S. patent application Ser. No. 07/580,939 filed 10 Sept. 1990 has a housing forming a compartment traversed by an axis and having a radially opening outlet port and an axially open inlet port. Fluid can flow through the compartment in a flow direction from the inlet port to the outlet port in the open condition of the valve. A valve plate fixed in the housing is formed relative to the flow direction with a flat upstream face and with an axially throughgoing valve orifice opening at the face and a control plate rotatable in the housing about the axis is formed relative to the flow direction with a flat downstream face riding on the valve-plate face, with an axially throughgoing control orifice opening at the face. This control plate is pivotal on the valve plate about the axis for alignment of the orifices and flow through the valve from the inlet port to the outlet port and for misalignment of the orifices for restricted flow from the inlet port to the outlet port. A combined spring and seal fitted into the inlet port typically press the downstream face of the control plate against the upstream face of the valve plate. The control plate is operated by a valve stem rotatable in the housing about the axis and formed at its inner end with a noncircular projection passing through the control plate and fitting in a complementary recess formed on the downstream face of the control plate.
As a rule, the housing is externally threaded, typically with a 1/2 inch standard pipe thread, so that it can be screwed directly into a complementarily threaded hole in a fixture such as a faucet that incorporates the valve. The stem itself must be of large enough diameter that a handle or knob can be mounted on it. Thus little room is left in the housing for flow from the inlet port to the outlet port. It is therefore necessary for the user to make the coupling projection of the valve stem as small as possible in order to minimize the size of the hole in the valve plate and the room it takes up in the flow chamber. The tradeoff is therefore between strength and flow cross section, so that it is rarely possible to achieve a high-volume flow with a valve engineered for a long service life.

Friedrich Grohe Armaturenfabrik GmbH & Co.


A positioning apparatus for installing a server unit on a rack includes a frame fixed to the server unit, an operation member slidably installed to the frame, a pivot member sandwiched between the frame and the operation member, and a resilient member connected between the frame and the operation member. A rear end of the pivot member is rotatably connected to the frame, and a latching piece protrudes out from a front end of the pivot member. The pivot member defines a guiding slot. The frame defines a through slot aligning with the latching piece. The operation member includes a sliding pole protruding from the operation member and extending through the guiding slot. The resilient member biases the operation member to move, the sliding pole slides in the guiding slot to rotate the pivot member, and the latching piece extends through the through slot to latch onto the rack.

1. Technical Field
The present disclosure relates to electronic devices, and particularly to an electronic device with a positioning apparatus for a movable module.
2. Description of Related Art
Server units are generally mounted on a rack with screws. However, it is time-consuming and often difficult to disassemble the server units from the rack when they need to be replaced or repaired.

Positioning apparatus and electronic device using the same

HONG FU JIN PRECISION INDUSTRY (ShenZhen) CO., LTD.


Methods and Systems for finding a Uniform Resource Locator (URL) that points to a most updated authoritative source of information contained in database systems, including crawling websites to determine likely publicly available records and processing the likely publicly available records to determine a unique list of URLs each of which point to information content of crawled web sites that are likely to be the most updated authoritative source of the information content.

1. Technical Field
This invention generally relates to the usability of Internet/intranet sites by users of web-portals and/or search-engines. The inter-relations among users, sites, search engines and our inventions are summarised in FIG. 1 below
2. Background Art
Software products such as Lotus Notes and Lotus Domino (both produced by Lotus Development Inc., a wholly-owned subsidiary of IBM Inc) store information in structured or unstructured records, also called xe2x80x9cnotesxe2x80x9d within files. With regards to Lotus products in particular, the files commonly have the extension xe2x80x9c.nsfxe2x80x9d which stands for Notes Storage Facility. Whether or not Internet search engines are able to locate information housed within such xe2x80x9c.nsfxe2x80x9d files depends upon how a particular Lotus system is configured. For instance, the default configuration of the Lotus Domino product makes xe2x80x9c.nsfxe2x80x9d files completely 100% invisible to web search engine crawlers. As a result, users of search engines will not be able to obtain any information they might be searching for within xe2x80x9c.nsfxe2x80x9d files housed on a Lotus Domino system with a default configuration.
In an attempt to make xe2x80x9c.nsfxe2x80x9d files visible to Internet search engines, many Lotus site owners activate xe2x80x9cfriendly URLs formats configuration optionsxe2x80x9d found in the current Lotus products. However, the activation of these options typically causes the publishing of infinite loops or redundant and duplicate Uniform Resource Locators (URLs) for xe2x80x9c.nsfxe2x80x9d files. Mixed configurations of the Lotus Domino product normally produces a wide in between degradee of similar dissatisfactory results including the involuntary publishing by site owners of copyrighted documentation and material included in the standard installation of the Lotus Domino software package. Internet sites (based on Lotus Domino) operators or owners do not normally have legal rights to re-publish this, nor they are xe2x80x9cauthoritative sitesxe2x80x9d for that documentation.
Thus, Internet users who are searching for files over the Internet via search engines can become frustrated by not being able to find most relevant documents stored in .NSF containers. This is due to the mismatch between Search Engine Crawlers and files created by Lotus Domino (.NSF files). And when a document created by Lotus Domino (a .NSF file) does turn up amongst search engine results, Internet users are further frustrated when the direct link to that document is xe2x80x9cunframedxe2x80x9d (meaning that it lacks useful contextual information required by navigational tools, such as container and/or site context).
Lotus Domino is estimated at the time of filing of this application to be in use by circa 50 million users worldwide, who use it to create documentsxe2x80x94contentxe2x80x94a significant piece of which is intended to be made available over the internet via the usage of the HTTP protocolxe2x80x94popularly known as the WWW. Thus, there is a need to provide better management of xe2x80x9c.nsfxe2x80x9d files for use on the Internet to facilitate location of relevant information, as well as to properly manage secured and copyrighted information.
The present invention discloses an apparatus and method to support authoritative registration, location, de-duplication, security-clearance, sanitization, submission, indexation, and robotic/human reference-contextualized-retrieval of Uniform Resource Locators (URL""s) and/or contents of database servers. The method includes the provision of a WorldWide publicly available xe2x80x9cLibraryxe2x80x9d (technical term to define a listed set of databases) that lists (upon requests or automatically) which is/are the authoritative site/s for each registered ReplicaId. The method further includes a native crawler that finds the 100% complete lists of URLs by asking NATIVELY (with a Lotus Domino/Notes xe2x80x9cNRPCxe2x80x9d API call) to the system the exhaustive list of databases and records within each database.
The native crawler creates a xe2x80x9cminimalxe2x80x9d URL with just these 2 pieces of information. For each potential UTRL, using native Lotus Domino/Notes, a verification is made to determine the likelihood that such document is xe2x80x9cpublicly available.xe2x80x9d Then the actual document accessibility is confirmed and contents of that URL are retrieved by checking each of them with a NON-native notes standard based http access (via a browser system call to port 80). Further, the methods the present invention generate lists of unique URLs that are marked each of them as static, thus the engines do not need to follow ANY non-static link. Plus, the list that follows is deduplicated, optimized and sanitized. The methods of the present invention use standard internet domain naming resolution (DNS) to virtualizes each ReplicaID as a subsite of the general virtual site, which in turn we build with a combination of A,CNAME and NS records that include xe2x80x9cwildcarded (*)xe2x80x9d elements.
The foregoing and other features and advantages of the invention will be apparent from the following more particular description of preferred embodiments of the invention, as illustrated in the accompanying drawings.

Apparatus and method to support management of uniform resource locators and/or contents of database servers


A cutting insert for a drill of the present invention comprises an upper face having a first side and a second side respectively disposed on both sides of a first corner portion, a bottom face corresponding to the upper face, and a side face located between the upper face and the bottom face. The insert has a first cutting edge formed along the first side, and a second cutting edge formed along the second side. The side face has a first region corresponding to the first cutting edge, a second region corresponding to the second cutting edge, and a third region corresponding to the first corner portion. The third region has an upper region which is adjacent to the first corner portion and disposed toward the upper face, and a lower region located below the upper region. An inclination angle θ3 of the lower region to the bottom face is larger than each of an inclination angle θ1 of the first region to the bottom face and an inclination angle θ2 of the second region to the bottom face. A drill comprising the insert, and a method of cutting using the same are provided.

As a drill for drilling holes, there are for example those in which an inner insert and an outer insert are detachably attached to the tip end of a holder so that their respective rotation loci cross each other. Among others, those in which the inner insert and the outer insert have the same shape are frequently used from the viewpoint of excellent economic performance. That is, the drills in which a plurality of cutting inserts for a drill of similar type (hereinafter referred to as "insert" in some cases) are respectively detachably attached to the inner side and the outer side at the tip end of the holder are frequently used.
The inserts used for this type of drill include an inner cutting edge and an outer cutting edge. The inner cutting edge is the cutting edge for mainly cutting (machining) an inner portion of a bottom face of a hole when it is used as the inner insert. The outer cutting edge is the cutting edge for mainly cutting an outer portion of a bottom face of a hole when it is used as the outer insert.
For example, in the insert described in Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 10-29108, the inner cutting edge and the outer cutting edge are formed at the intersection between the upper face and the side face. A clearance angle for avoiding interference with a work material is provided on each of the side faces corresponding to these cutting edges. A corner portion located between both of these cutting edges is formed in a round shape. The same clearance angle as that on the side faces corresponding to these cutting edges is provided on the side face corresponding to the corner portion (refer to FIG. 6(b) in the above publication).
On the other hand, the holder used for this type of drill has, at its tip end, an inner peripheral insert pocket for attaching the inner insert, and an outer peripheral insert pocket for attaching the outer insert (refer to, for example, the above publication).
The outer peripheral insert pocket is openedly formed at the outer periphery of the holder. On the other hand, the inner peripheral insert pocket has a wall face which is located toward the outer periphery of the holder and opposed to the side face of the inner insert. An outer wall exists between the wall face and the outer peripheral face of the holder (refer to FIGS. 2 and 3 of the above publication).
The thickness of the outer wall becomes minimum between the wall face opposed to the side face of the corner portion located on the side not to be involved in cutting in the insert, and the outer peripheral face of the holder. Therefore, there has been the problem that the strength of the portion of the holder where the thickness of the outer wall becomes minimum is deteriorated, and the holder is susceptible to breakage during machining.
Additionally, the outer wall does not exist in the outer peripheral insert pocket formed openedly in the outer periphery, and the portion of the holder where the outer peripheral insert pocket is formed has low strength. Hence, there has also been the problem that the holder is liable to be broken from the portion of the holder during machining.

Cutting insert for drill, drill, and method of cutting using the same


The present invention discloses a chimeric Chikungunya virus comprising a heterologous alphavirus cDNA fragment and a Chikungunya virus cDNA fragment. The heterologous alphavirus may include but is not limited to Sindbis virus, Eastern equine encephalitis virus or Venezuelan equine encephalitis virus. The present invention also discloses the use of this chimeric Chikungunya virus as vaccines and in serological and diagnostic assays.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to the fields of molecular biology, virology and immunology. More specifically, the present invention provides an attenuated recombinant chimeric chikungunya virus (CHIKV) and discloses its use as vaccines and in serological and diagnostic assays.
2. Description of the Related Art
Chikungunya virus has for decades been an important etiologic agent of human disease in Africa and Asia. However, cases are grossly underestimated because Chikungunya virus infections usually cannot be distinguished clinically from dengue. Recently, Chikungunya virus caused epidemics involving millions of people on islands off the eastern coast of Africa that are popular destinations for European tourists (Schuffenecker et al., 2006), as well as in the Indian subcontinent (Charrel et al., 2007; Kalantri et al., 2006). Further, unlike past epidemics that were usually associated with Aedes aegypti transmission, Ae. albopictus was implicated as the principal mosquito vector in the recent Indian Ocean outbreaks.
Typically, Chikungunya virus causes a severely incapacitating, self-limited disease characterized by fever, rash and severe joint pains: the latter can persist for months. Notably, the recent Indian Ocean outbreaks included many fatal cases, raising the possibility that Chikungunya virus has become more virulent. Chikungunya virus may spread into Western Hemisphere through the movement of infected travelers from Asia and Africa (Charrel et al., 2007) or through introduction of infected mosquitoes carried from epidemic sites in shipping containers. The dramatic spread since 1980 of dengue viruses throughout tropical America, via the same vectors and human hosts, serves as a precedent. If introduced into the New World, Chikungunya virus could cause millions of additional cases of severe and possibly fatal disease.
In addition to its enormous potential as an emerging virus, Chikungunya virus is also underestimated as a potential biological weapon. The 39 documented laboratory infections reported by U.S. Department of Health and Human Services in 1981 strongly suggest that Chikungunya virus is infectious via aerosol route. Chikungunya virus was being weaponized by the United States army when the offensive program was terminated and is considered as a biological weapon by the German and Australian governments.
In general, alphaviruses have plus sense RNA genomes of approximately 11.5 kB that encode 4 nonstructural (nsP1-4) and 3 structural proteins (capsid, E1 and E2 glycoproteins encoded by subgenomic 26S mRNA). The terminal untranslated genome regions (UTR) include repeated sequence elements near the 3′ end that are critical for replication in mosquito cells (Kuhn et al, 1996; Kuhn et al., 1992). Alphaviruses enter cells via receptor-mediated endocytosis (Kielian and Helenius, 1986). The high affinity laminin receptor serves as a mammalian and mosquito cell (in vitro) receptor for Sindbis virus (SINV) (Wang et al., 1992) and VEEV (Ludwig et al., 1996), while other protein receptors for SINV have been identified in mouse neural (Ubol and Griffin, 1991) and chicken cells (Wang et al., 1991). C-type lectins (DC-SIGN, L-SIGN) can function as receptors for infection of dendritic cells (Klimstra et al., 2003).
Following passage in cell culture, alphaviruses adapt to bind to heparan sulfate, which is usually accompanied by attenuation in vivo (Bernard et al., 2000; Byrnes and Griffin, 1998; Byrnes and Griffin, 2000; Klimstra et al., 1998). Genomic RNA is translated by cellular components into a nonstructural polyprotein and is the template for minus-strand RNA synthesis involving nonstructural proteins (nsPs) (Strauss and Straus, 1994). The 26S mRNA is translated as a polyprotein; the capsid protein is cleaved in the cytoplasm and the remaining polyprotein is processed in the secretory pathway to yield the E1 and E2 glycoproteins, which are inserted into the plasma membrane. Following encapsidation of genomic RNA, 70 nm enveloped virions mature when nucleocapsids bud through the plasma membrane (Schlessinger and Schlessinger, 1996; Strauss and Strauss, 1994).
Most alphaviruses replicate in and cause extensive cytopathic effects (CPE) in vertebrate cells in vitro, but infection of mosquito cells usually leads to persistent infection not usually accompanied by cytopathic effects. The mechanisms of alphavirus cytopathogenicity are not fully understood. However, the suppression of host cell gene expression, which allows alphaviruses to compete with cellular metabolism for their replication, is an important component. The alphavirus components responsible for shutdown of cellular gene expression have recently been identified for several members of the genus; Old World viruses SINV (Frolova et al., 2002) and Semliki Forest (Garmashova et al., 2007) use their nsP2 for transcriptional shutoff. However, the New World alphaviruses Eastern (EEEV) (Aguilar et al., 2007) and Venezuelan equine encephalitis (VEEV) (Garmashova et al., 2007) rely on their capsid protein rather than on nsP2. The ability of these capsid proteins to inhibit cellular transcription appears to be controlled by the amino-terminal domain rather than by their protease activity or by their positively charged RNA-binding domains.
Despite their importance as emerging viruses and potential biological weapons, there are no licensed vaccines or therapeutics for alphaviruses. Several experimental human and licensed veterinary vaccines have been produced by inactivation of wild-type or attenuated alphaviruses, but all are poorly immunogenic and require multiple vaccinations and frequent boosters (Tsai et al., 2002). Attenuated strains of Venezuelan equine encephalitis virus (VEEV) (Berge et al., 1961) and Chikungunya virus (Levitt et al., 1986) were developed by cell culture passages of virulent, wild-type strains. The VEEV vaccine, TC-83, has been tested extensively in humans and exhibit high rates of reactogenicity and many people failed to seroconvert (Pittman et al., 1996).
The Chikungunya virus vaccine is attenuated and immunogenic in mice and Rhesus macaques, although these monkeys develop viremia after vaccination (Levitt et al., 1986). The vaccine is also highly immunogenic in humans (Edelman et al., 2000). However, 5 of 59 human vaccines developed transient arthralgia during phase II safety studies. Although the mechanism of reactogenicity for the Venezuelan equine encephalitis virus and Chikungunya virus vaccine strains has not been determined, it is likely that the reversions of attenuating point mutations occur. TC-83, developed by 83 serial cell culture passages has only 2 attenuating mutations (Kinney et al., 1993). The Chikungunya virus vaccine strain, which was developed with only 18 passages probably has similar if not lower number of attenuating mutations. Thus, alphavirus vaccine strains with attenuating point mutations are not stable.
Despite its importance as an emerging arboviral disease and its potential as a biological weapon, the prior art is deficient in safety and immunogenic compositions effective as vaccines that can be used to prevent an individual from infection caused by Chikungunya virus. The present invention fulfills this long-standing need and desire in the art.

Chimeric chikungunya virus and uses thereof

The Board of Regents of the University of Texas System


A reconfigurable container is disclosed, the container being reconfigurable between a first configuration in which the container defines a receptacle for receiving an item, and a second configuration in which the container comprises a collapsed configuration for storage. The container comprises: a base and a wall which is arranged to extend around the base, the wall comprising at least two hingedly coupled wall portions, the base being hingedly coupled to a lower region of at least one wall portion, the wall further comprising a ledge disposed along a lower region thereof which is arranged to extend inwardly of the container, for supporting the base when the container is configured in the first configuration.

The present invention relates to a reconfigurable container.
Containers come in a variety of sizes and shapes and are used in a variety of different applications. Containers typically occupy a significant volume of space and as such when the containers are not required, there is a clear need to provide alternative ways of storing containers where conventional storing techniques, such as stacking the containers together is not possible, or where there is a lack of storage space.
One example of such an application is transporting laundry in a household environment. Laundry baskets are typically unsightly and can occupy a significant area of floor space in a room where floor space for example, may be a premium.
Accordingly, it is an object of the present invention to provide a technical solution to at least some of the issues outlined above and which provides a container which is easily stored when not needed.


Stable compliance control at a high speed is achieved by cooperation between a manipulator and a wrist body which is located at the end of the manipulator arm.

The present invention relates to a method and system for stable compliance control at a high speed by cooperation between a manipulator and a wrist body which is located at the end of the manipulator arm and is capable of high speed compliance control.
In many instances the work involved using a manipulator is restricted by the external environment. Parts assembly, crank rotation and grinding work are examples of operations in which an external environment affects a manipulator. In order to perform these operations using a feedback type manipulator based on position control, a high-precision position determining capability and an accurate teaching technique are necessary. However, the high-precision determining capability greatly increases the cost and it is difficult to obtain sufficient precision using present techniques. The exact work orbit teaching also requires much time. On the other hand, it has been proposed that the manipulator be provided with the flexibility to adapt to the external environment restriction by controlling the interactive force according to the restrictive environment. The control of the flexible operation adapting to such environmental restriction is called "compliance control" and the operation realized thereby is called "compliance operation". In other words, the compliance control controls the manipulator hand as if there were a suspension mechanism comprising a spring (Ks), a damper (Kd), a mass (M) and a source of force (fr) upon the hand as shown in FIG. 2.
As is disclosed in a paper entitled "Historical Perspective and State of the Art in Robotic Force Control", by D. E. Whitney, Proceedings of IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation, pp. 262-268, 1985 and the others, most of the conventionally reported compliance control methods are ones which feed back the force information from the external environment using a force sensor, or ones in which the whole arm is composed of an actuator capable of simple torque control such as a direct drive motor.
Although the direct drive arm using a direct drive motor can easily control the compliance, the manipulator itself is apt to be large relative to the moving weight due to the problem of the power weight ratio of present direct drive motors. Furthermore, it becomes a problem from the viewpoint of control that the response frequency decreases remarkably with an increase of compliance due to the inertial effect of a large manipulator weight.
The use of the manipulator which is provided with a decelerator and represented by an industrial manipulator brings about a larger power to weight ratio, making it possible to lighten the manipulator itself. However, since the influence of the deceleration friction becomes large, it becomes difficult to control the force of each joint with high accuracy. A method of obtaining compliance control by mounting the force sensor on the manipulator provided with a decelerator is disclosed in a paper entitled "Implementing Compliance Control with a High Speed Operator" by Hiroshi Ishikawa, et al., Japanese Precision Engineering Institute, Proceedings of the Spring Meeting, 1988, pp. 675-676. Its contents are also disclosed in the specification of Japanese Patent Application 63-59574. According to the disclosed method, the position and the velocity which the hand is to have at present are calculated from the force information obtained by the force sensor, and the position and velocity servo control is executed for each joint. Nevertheless, according to this method, the influence of the external environmental contacted by the end effector is included in the feedback loop, therefore, the system stability is affected by the external environment. Especially when the external environment is very hard, the apparent feedback gain becomes large and the control gain of the manipulator must to be reduced. However, the reduction of the control gain causes the decelerator friction to have a greater affect, thereby greatly reducing the force accuracy. Hence, the realizable area of the compliance is restricted by the decelerator friction and the hardness of the external environment.
In the meantime, a method was disclosed in a paper entitled "A Six Degree-of-Freedom Magnetically Levitated Variable Compliance Fine Motion Wrist" presented by R. L. Hollis, et al. at 4th International Symposium on Robotics Research, Santa Cruz, Ca., Aug. 9-14, 1987, which discloses a wrist body capable of high-precision compliance control on the manipulator, and after the wrist body is moved by the manipulator to the position where the work is to be done and the manipulator is fixed in position, the compliance control is activated by the wrist body. Yet, there arises a problem that a large movable area cannot be obtained during the compliance control since the manipulator position is fixed during compliance control by the described method.
For complex operation with the manipulator, such as assembly work, the capability of realizing arbitrary or adjustable compliance of the hand and changing the compliance freely is required. The present invention describes a method capable of stable compliance operation over a wide range of motion, which responds at a high speed to an extraordinarily hard object while contacting it very softly, in a manner impossible with conventional compliance control.
According to the present invention it becomes possible to touch a very hard object to be worked, making it possible to perform assembly and fitting between hard parts made of metal and the like. Such assembly of hard parts is highly desired at factory sites. Conventionally, such work may be performed only by an expensive direct drive arm. Moreover, according to the present invention, it now becomes possible to perform a high speed compliance operation which is not possible with the direct drive arm. The high speed compliance operation has also been in great demand at factory sites.
In order to realize a small inertia compliance operation which is not influenced by the external environment, the end of the manipulator is provided with a wrist body capable of compliance control. As described above, this structure has the problem that a large range of motion cannot be obtained during compliance control. The present invention enlarges the range of motion of the wrist body by moving the wrist body with the manipulator to a position where the wrist body can be effectively operated at all times.
Wrist bodies driven by a voice coil motor or a periplanar coil motor are employed. By using these actuators, a relatively linear force-current characteristic may be obtained, therefore, compliance control becomes possible without force feedback. Namely, since the force from the external environment does not enter into the feedback loop, stable compliance control may be carried out without any influence from the external environment. Furthermore, high speed motion becomes possible because of the small inertia of the wrist body. In order to cope with the small range of actuator motion, and the manipulator moves the wrist body to a position where the wrist body actuator can operate effectively at all times. A description of the wrist body structure of six degree-of-freedom motion and the control algorithm, for a manipulator and wrist body having six degree-of-freedom, will be described hereinafter.
A suitable example of the six degree-of-freedom wrist body is disclosed in the above paper by R. L. Hollis et al. and its contents are also described in the specification of Japanese Patent Application No. 63-131799. The following cites a part of the contents of the above patent application.

Method and system for compliance control

International Business Machines Corporation


Various components are provided to manage a clustered environment. These components include a System Registry that provides a global data storage; a Configuration manager that stores data locally on nodes of the clustered environment and globally within the System Registry; a Liveness component to provide status of communications paths of the cluster; a Group Services component that provides services to one or more other components of the clustered environment; and a Resource Management component that communicates with one or more resource controllers of the clustered environment. Each of the components of the clustered environment has one or more data and/or functional dependencies on one or more other components of the environment. However, relationships between the components are created such that the data and functional dependencies form an acyclic graph (i.e., a cycle of dependency relationships is avoided).

This invention relates, in general, to a distributed computing environment, and in particular, to managing one or more clusters of nodes of a distributed computing environment.
Distributed systems are highly-available, scalable systems that are utilized in various situations, including those situations that require a high-throughput of work or continuous or nearly continuous availability of the system.
A distributed system that has the capability of sharing resources is referred to as a cluster. A cluster includes operating system instances, which share resources and collaborate with each other to perform system tasks. While various cluster systems exist today (such as the RS/6000 SP system offered by International Business Machines Corporation), further enhancements to the existing cluster systems are still desired. For example, enhancements are desired to facilitate the administration of cluster systems.
The shortcomings of the prior art are overcome and additional advantages are provided through the provision of a method of automatically configuring clusters of a computing environment. The method includes, for instance, initiating, by a node to be added to a cluster of the computing environment, an obtaining of configuration data of one or more resources of the cluster; storing the configuration data in a system registry component of the cluster; and informing one or more other cluster components, by the system registry component, that the configuration data has been updated.
System and computer program products corresponding to the above-summarized methods are also described and claimed herein.
Additional features and advantages are realized through the techniques of the present invention. Other embodiments and aspects of the invention are described in detail herein and are considered a part of the claimed invention.

Method, system and program products for automatically configuring clusters of a computing environment


To generate mechanical energy and electrical energy efficiently, by combining a Stirling engine and a fuel cell. A solid electrolyte type fuel cell FC is disposed between an air passage for supplying air to a heater of a Stirling engine E and a fuel passage for supplying fuel. Air and the fuel react with each other in the solid electrolyte type fuel cell FC to generate electrical energy, an off gas containing the unreacted fuel discharged from the solid electrolyte type fuel cell FC is supplied to the heater of the Stirling engine E and subjected to catalytic combustion. The resulting heat is used to operate the Stirling engine E to generate mechanical energy. The solid electrolyte type fuel cell FC is arranged in an annular-shape and so disposed as to surround the heater. The heat of reaction generated in the solid electrolyte type fuel cell FC acts on the heater, thereby contributing to elevation of the temperature of the heater.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a compound-type energy generation system which combines a Stirling engine and a fuel cell, whereby mechanical energy and electrical energy can be generated efficiently.
2. Description of Background Art
A compound-type power generation system including a combination of a fuel cell and a gas turbine is disclosed in xe2x80x9cProceedings of The 9th SOFC Research Presentation Meeting, 106Bxe2x80x9d. The compound-type power generation system is so constructed that an unreacted fuel discharged from a fuel cell which performs power generation by a chemical reaction of a fuel is mixed with air, before being combusted in a combustor, and the combustion gas is utilized as a driving source for the gas turbine and a heat source for a fuel reformer, whereby electric power generated by the fuel cell and electric power generated by a generator driven by the gas turbine are efficiently obtained.
The above-mentioned prior art has a problem in that the efficiency of the gas turbine is conspicuously lowered in a partial load condition, so that the purpose of the use of the system is limited to a system capable of steady operation such as a large scale power generation system.
The present invention has been made in consideration of the above-mentioned circumstances, and, accordingly, it is an object of the present invention to efficiently generate mechanical energy and electrical energy by a combination of a Stirling engine and a fuel cell.
In order to attain the above object, according to the present invention there is proposed a compound-type energy generation system including a combination of a Stirling engine and a fuel cell, characterized in that an unreacted gas discharged from the fuel cell is combusted in a heater of the Stirling engine.
According to the above constitution, the unreacted gas discharged from the fuel cell is combusted in the heater of the Stirling engine, so that it is possible to first supply a fuel to the fuel cell to generate electrical energy, and then to use the heat generated by combusting the unreacted gas not reacted in the fuel cell in the heater for generating mechanical energy in the Stirling engine, whereby electrical energy and mechanical energy can be efficiently generated through wasteless utilization of the fuel. In addition, by the combination of the Stirling engine and the fuel cell, the system as a whole can be reduced in size.
According to the present invention, there is proposed a compound-type energy generation system wherein the combustion of the unreacted gas is a catalytic combustion.
According to the above constitution, the unreacted gas discharged from the fuel cell is subjected to catalytic combustion in the heater of the Stirling engine, so that the heater can be reduced in size as compared with the case of using flame combustion, and the limitation as to the positioning of the Stirling engine can be reduced because convection of the unreacted gas due to a flame is absent.
According to the present invention, there is proposed a compound-type energy generation system wherein the periphery of the heater of the Stirling engine is surrounded by the fuel cell which is arranged in an annular-shape.
According to the above constitution, the periphery of the heater of the Stirling engine is surrounded by the annular-shaped fuel cell, so that it is possible to cause the reaction heat generated by the fuel cell to act effectively on the heater, to further elevate the temperature of the heater and thereby to enhance the performance of the Stirling engine.
According to the present invention, there is proposed a compound-type energy generation system wherein the fuel cell is a solid electrolyte type fuel cell.
According to the above constitution, the solid electrolyte type fuel cell is adopted, whereby a reformer for fuel is unnecessitated, and the system can be simplified and reduced in size.
According to the present invention, there is proposed a compound-type energy generation system wherein a Seebeck device is disposed in an exhaust passage of the heater of the Stirling engine.
According to the above constitution, the Seebeck device is disposed in the exhaust passage of the heater, so that it is possible to generate electrical energy by recovering the thermal energy of the exhaust gas of the heater.
Incidentally, the solid electrolyte type fuel cell FC in the embodiment corresponds to the fuel cell in the present invention.
Further scope of applicability of the present invention will become apparent from the detailed description given hereinafter. However, it should be understood that the detailed description and specific examples, while indicating preferred embodiments of the invention, are given by way of illustration only, since various changes and modifications within the spirit and scope of the invention will become apparent to those skilled in the art from this detailed description.


Automatic distribution of image data, such as a digital photographs, is prevented or delayed if the photograph is determined to likely contain confidential data. Online photo streaming services, albums, social media accounts, and backup services can be a source of inadvertent disclosure of confidential information due to these automatic dissemination functions of modern photo capturing devices. Detection criteria to trigger the blocking of dissemination may include recognition of faces of co-workers and clients, recognition of business furnishings such as whiteboards and conference room equipment, as well as geotags where the image was captured, the time, day of week, and date at which it was captured, and network identifiers associated with the network on which the capturing device is connected.

Mobile devices are becoming increasingly integrated with "cloud". That is, emails, photographs, and other documents stored on the mobile device are often uploaded to a centralized external server which synchronizes the digital documents with the user's other devices.
One such example is an online photograph album service, which, responsive to a user taking a picture on their phone or tablet computer, the digital photograph is automatically uploaded to the album service's online storage, where it may then be available to the user's other connected devices, and potentially to other users such as "friends" or "subscribers" or "followers" of the user as in social media and other paradigms.
Occasionally, a user may unknowingly take and share a digital photograph which contains information he or she does not wish to be made public. For example, a group of co-workers may hold a baby shower in a conference room in an office environment during a work day, at which a number of employees are present and many casual and composed photographs may be taken. As the users of these capturing devices, such as phones and tablet computers, upload their photos to their online albums, social media accounts, etc., the photographs become publicly accessible to one degree or another. However, it may later be discovered that in the background of some of these photographs appears a whiteboard on which confidential company information appears. While this is unfortunate, there is very little that can be done to "put the toothpaste back in the tube" because deleting the photo from one's online accounts and albums may not actually retrieve and delete all copies which have been distributed to trusted associates (followers, friends, etc.) of those online accounts.

Detecting and flagging likely confidential content in photographs to prevent automated dissemination

International Business Machines Corporation


A coupling for connection of an encoder to an electrical machine includes an encoder shaft end piece for coupling to a shaft of the encoder, and a machine shaft end piece for coupling to a shaft of the electrical machine. At least one of the end pieces has a carrier which is formed with a cavity filled with granular material, preferably steel powder, to effect a dampening of vibrations and impacts.

The invention relates to a coupling for connection of an encoder to an electrical machine, wherein the coupling comprises an encoder shaft end piece, which can be coupled to an encoder shaft, and a machine shaft end piece, which can be coupled to a machine shaft, and wherein at least one end piece has at least one carrier. The invention further relates to a suitable production method and the use of such a coupling as well as a shaft end piece.
If an encoder is connected to an electrical machine by means of a coupling element, an oscillating system results from the coupling and the mass inertia of the encoder. Excess vibration stresses can consequently occur in the resonance.
Electrical machines have hitherto been operated beneath the resonance or else filters were used that prevent excitation in the resonance point. However, operation beneath the resonance restricts the dynamics, while operation with a filter restricts the computing power of the controller.
A shaft coupling and a method for coupling an encoder which has an encoder shaft to an electrical machine which has a machine shaft is known from patent specification EP2169245B1, wherein the shaft coupling comprises:                an encoder shaft end piece which can be coupled to the encoder shaft,        a machine shaft end piece which can be coupled to the machine shaft and        a torque transmission element,wherein to couple the encoder shaft to the machine shaft the encoder shaft end piece is arranged opposite the machine shaft end piece and the torque transmission element is arranged between the encoder shaft end piece and the machine shaft end piece.
A similar shaft coupling also emerges from the publication DE102006043897A1.
Patent specification JP 2001206221 A discloses a rotating unbalance component in a shaft coupling, which is provided between a gearbox and a motor for driving an axle of a rail vehicle. Granular material 85 is here sealed in cylindrical containers 75, 76 of a shaft coupling 70.
The object of the invention is to create a coupling which preferably comprises at least one encoder shaft end piece and at least one machine shaft end piece and which effects a damping of introduced vibrations and impacts. The invention further has the object of creating a corresponding shaft end piece.

Coupling element having vibration damping


Methods, devices, systems and kits for obtaining blood samples are provided. Devices include a cuff, a pressure source, and a timing mechanism. Devices may further include one or more of a: warming mechanism, lancing mechanism; automated sample collection device, automated sample analysis device, and communication unit. Systems include such a device, and may include sample collection, sample analysis, or communication devices.

Many clinical diagnostic methods require a blood sample from a subject. Blood samples include, for example, venous blood samples, arterial blood samples, capillary blood samples, and mixed venous blood samples. Obtaining a blood sample typically requires puncturing the skin of a subject. For example, arterial and venous blood samples are typically obtained by inserting a needle or catheter into an artery or vein in order to obtain arterial or venous blood samples (respectively). Mixed venous blood samples may be obtained from the pulmonary artery (requiring an invasive procedure). Arterial and venous blood samples thus require puncturing the skin of a subject, in order to insert a portion of a needle or catheter into an artery or vein. Blood may be obtained without a needle, for example, by puncturing the skin of a subject and collecting blood that exits the puncture site. For example, a fingerstick blood sample may be obtained by lancing a digit (e.g., a finger) of a subject and collecting one or more drops of blood from the wound in the digit. Depending on the type and size of puncture, the amount of blood required, the time to obtain a blood sample, the quality of blood samples may be variable.
However, many subjects find giving blood samples to be unpleasant and painful. Moreover, different methods, different personnel (e.g., phlebotomists), and different subjects may provide different amounts and different qualities of blood when sampled. Thus, in addition to causing discomfort or pain to subjects, present methods of obtaining blood samples may be inconsistent, or may provide variable amounts of blood, or may provide blood samples of inadequate quality or integrity. Accordingly, improved methods of obtaining blood samples from subjects are desired.

Methods, devices, systems, and kits for automated blood collection by fingerstick

Abstract: Methods include placing a cuff on a digit of a subject, inflating the cuff, and obtaining a small volume blood sample. Methods may further include warming a digit; lancing a digit; pulsing the cuff; and providing a signal indicating the end of the sample collection time period.

Abstract: Kits may include a device, a sample collection vessel, and may include a disposable for use in sample collection.

Abstract: These methods, devices, systems and kits for obtaining blood samples may be used to easily, reliably, and consistently obtain blood samples from subjects.


An image processing apparatus receives a plurality of consecutive images, and regards pixels having the same coordinates in each of the consecutive images as a pixel match. The apparatus determines a range for red values, a range for green values, and a range for blue values in each pixel match, and filters out R, G, and B values which fall outside a corresponding range for the pixel match. In addition, the apparatus calculates an average R value, an average G value, and an average B value for each pixel match according to remaining R values, remaining G values, and remaining B values of the pixel match, and creates a new image by taking the average R value, the average G value, and the average B value of each pixel match as color values of a corresponding pixel in the new image.

1. Technical Field
The embodiments of the present disclosure relate to data processing technology, and particularly to an image processing apparatus and method.
2. Description of Related Art
Digital cameras are very popular and widely used in daily life. However, images captured by a digital camera may have an off-color effect due to inaccurate focusing, bad illumination, or movement of objects (such as children or pets) to be captured.


In accordance with an embodiment, an image forming apparatus comprises a first cassette configured to accommodate a first sheet; a second cassette configured to accommodate a second sheet different from the first sheet in at least one of a size and an orientation; a controller configured to perform control to feed the first sheet to a conveyance path from the first cassette and feed the second sheet to the conveyance path from the second cassette to insert the second sheet between respective copies if a printing instruction for a plurality of copies is issued; and a sheet discharge section configured to stack the first sheet and the second sheet.

In a conventional image forming apparatus, a toner image can be fixed at a low temperature and a heating roller included in a fixing device is thin while a warm-up time is shortened and a power consumption is reduced. A toner having a glass transition temperature TG of 50 degrees centigrade or less is used to form the toner image that can be fixed at a low temperature. In such an image forming apparatus, a temperature at which high temperature offset of the toner occurs is low, and heat conduction in an axial direction of the heating roller deteriorates. Therefore, if sheets are continuously longitudinally fed, a temperature of a portion where no sheet passes at both ends of the heating roller rises, thereby facilitating occurrence of an overheated state. If the toner image is fixed in such a state, the high temperature offset may occur in the portion where no sheet passes, resulting in a fixing failure. There is a problem that the high temperature offset in the portion where no sheet passes conspicuously easily occurs when the toner capable of being fixed at a low temperature is used; however, the high temperature offset also occurs when other toners are used.

Image forming apparatus and sheet conveyance method


A new process for preparing ibuprofen or its alkyl esters is provided. A 1-halo-1-(4-isobutylphenyl)ethane is reacted with carbon monoxide in the presence of water or an alcohol at a temperature between about 10.degree. C. and about 200.degree. C. An excess of several moles of water or alcohol is preferred. An acid such as hydrochloric acid may also be added. As catalyst, a palladium compound and at least one acid-stable ligand are present; however an excess of ligand over palladium is advantageous.

There are many known processes for preparing ibuprofen, but there is still a need for a more economical process. Among the known processes for preparing 2-(4-isobutylphenyl)propionic acid or esters thereof is that of Shimizu et al. (U.S. 4,694,100, issued Sep., 1987), who teach the reaction of p-isobutylstyrene with carbon monoxide and water or alcohol in the presence of a complex carbonylation catalyst. They also teach the alternative reaction of the p-isobutylstyrene with carbon monoxide and hydrogen in the presence of a metal complex carbonyl catalyst to produce 2-(4-isobutylphenyl)propionaldehyde, which is then oxidized to produce the desired product. They teach the preparation of their starting material by the reaction of isobutylbenzene with acetaldehyde in the presence of sulfuric acid, producing 1,1-bis(4-isobutylphenyl)ethane, which is then catalytically cracked to produce p-isobutylstyrene and isobutylbenzene.
Another process for preparing ibuprofen is that of European Patent Application 284,310 (Hoechst Celanese, published Sep., 1988), which teaches that ibuprofen can be prepared by carbonylating 1-(4-isobutylphenyl)ethanol with carbon monoxide in an acidic aqueous medium and in the presence of a palladium compound/phosphine complex and dissociated hydrogen and halide ions, which are preferably derived from a hydrogen halide. This process has the disadvantage of starting with 1-(4-isobutylphenyl)ethanol, a compound which is not economical to make by known processes.
Gardano et al. (U.S. 4,536,595, issued Aug., 1985) teach the preparation of alkaline salts of certain alpha-arylpropionic acids by reaction with carbon monoxide, at substantially ambient temperature and pressure conditions, of the corresponding arylethyl secondary halide in an anhydrous alcoholic solvent in the presence of alkaline hydroxides and, as catalyst, a salt of cobalt hydrocarbonyl.

Process for preparing ibuprofen and its alkyl esters


To provide a plasma processing apparatus or an operating method of a plasma processing apparatus with improved yield. The plasma processing apparatus includes: a sample stage disposed in the processing chamber in a vacuum container; a plasma forming space in which plasma for processing a wafer is formed above the sample stage and a lower space communicated with the plasma forming space below; an exhaust port disposed at a bottom portion of the lower space; a heater for heating a lower portion of the vacuum container surrounding the lower space; a first vacuum gauge that detects a pressure in the processing chamber during the processing of the wafer; a second vacuum gauge for calibration communicated with an opening disposed in an inner wall of the processing chamber surrounding an outer periphery of the lower space below the first vacuum gauge; and a correction unit that is configured to correct an output of the first vacuum gauge by using outputs of the first and second vacuum gauges when a pressure in the processing chamber is at a pressure value regarded as 0 and at a plurality of pressure values higher than the pressure value.

In the plasma processing apparatus as described above, it is known that the output of the pressure gauge in related art used for adjusting the pressure in the processing chamber changes based on an initial state as an operating time of the apparatus elapses or the number of rare processed samples increases. Therefore, when a predetermined operating time or the number of processed samples is reached, the pressure gauge used to regulate the pressure when the sample is processed is calibrated by comparing that output with the output of another pressure gauge for reference whose accuracy is known.
As an example of such a technique in the related art, a technique described in JP-A-2004-273682 (PTL 1) has been known. This related art discloses a technique in which in addition to a control pressure gauge connected to a processing chamber, a calibration pressure gauge connected to a space that is connected to the processing chamber eliminates a need to calibrate the control pressure gauge under an atmospheric pressure. Further, as another example, JP-A-2010-251464 (PTL 2) discloses a technique in which a calibration pressure gauge and a control pressure gauge for controlling a pressure during a film forming process are set at the same mounting point, and the calibration pressure gauge and the control pressure gauge have the same pressure detection condition, so that zero-point calibration of the control pressure gauge is possible in a state close to conditions of an actual film forming process, and the pressure condition in the process can be implemented with high accuracy.

Plasma processing apparatus and operating method of plasma processing apparatus


The present invention provides a rubber composition, in which reaction efficiency of the silane coupling agent in kneading is improved, generation of bubbles is suppressed, abrasion resistance is improved and rolling resistance is reduced. Specifically, the rubber composition comprises silica and 3 to 15 parts by weight of a silane coupling agent and 1.5 to 15 parts by weight of a potassium salt based on 100 parts by weight of the silica.

The present invention relates to a rubber composition, in which reaction efficiency of the silane coupling agent and various properties are improved.
In recent years, both fuel efficiency and improved wet grip performance are strongly desired in a tire and in order to satisfy such demands, silica is compounded in the tread. However, sufficient reinforcing properties cannot be obtained with only silica and a silane coupling agent is used together with silica. Usually, a silane coupling agent having an alkoxyl group is used for tires. However, reaction of the silane coupling agent cannot sufficiently be completed in the rubber kneading step and in order to obtain sufficient reinforcing properties, more of the silane coupling agent than necessary must be compounded. Furthermore, the silane coupling agent that could not finish reacting during kneading (hereinafter referred to as unreacted silane coupling agent) reacts in the extrusion step to generate alcohol (such as ethanol) and there is the problem that bubbles arise in the extruded unvlucanized tread.
As a method to solve such problems, JP-A-2001-247718 discloses compounding various sodium salts in a rubber composition. According to this method, reaction efficiency of the silane coupling agent is improved, but the improvement is insufficient. Thus, generation of bubbles in the extruded tread cannot be suppressed completely.


A display panel including pixels disposed on a substrate, where each of the pixels includes a light emitting element, and a capacitor. The capacitor of a first one of the pixels is partially overlapped, in a vertical direction, by respective pixel areas of two of the pixels. The anode of the capacitor of the first one of the pixels may be disposed closer to the substrate than a cathode of the capacitor, thereby reducing a parasitic capacitance between the capacitor and an anode of the light emitting element of one of the two pixels overlapping the capacitor.

1. Field of the Invention
Recently, in the field of display devices that perform image display, flat type display devices formed by disposing pixels (pixel circuits) including light emitting elements in a matrix form have been spreading rapidly. As the flat type display devices, organic EL display devices using organic EL (electroluminescence) elements that utilize a phenomenon of light emission at the time of applying an electric field, for example, to an organic thin film have been developed and commercialized.
2. Description of the Related Art
The organic EL display device has the following features. The organic EL element can be driven by an application voltage of 10 V or less, and thus has low power consumption. In addition, since the organic EL element is a self-luminous element, the organic EL display does not need a light source (back light) that may be essential to a liquid crystal display device. In addition, the response speed of the organic EL element is very high with response time of several microseconds, and accordingly, no afterimage occurs at the time of displaying a motion picture.
Similarly to the liquid crystal display device, a simple (passive) matrix type or an active matrix type may be used as a driving method of the organic EL display device. Recently, active matrix-type display devices in which an active element such as an insulated gate-type field effect transistor (generally, TFT (thin film transistor)) is disposed in a pixel circuit have been actively developed.
It is generally known that the I-V characteristics (current-voltage characteristics) of the organic EL element degrade as time elapses (so-called degradation overtime). In addition, a threshold voltage Vth of a driving transistor or the mobility μ of a semiconductor thin film that configures a channel of the driving transistor (hereinafter, described as "mobility of a driving transistor") changes over time or may be different for each pixel due to a deviation in the manufacturing process thereof.
Accordingly, in order to maintain emission luminance of the organic EL element to be constant without being affected by the above-described factors, a configuration in which a compensation function for characteristic variances in the organic EL element and correction functions including a correction function for variances in the threshold voltage Vth of the driving transistor (hereinafter, described as "threshold value correction") or a correction function for variances in the mobility μ of the driving transistor are included in each pixel circuit has been used (for example, see JP-A-2006-133542).


In some embodiments, a video processing system including video processor, an external memory, and an integrated circuit that implements both a memory controller (having embedded intelligence) and an internal memory coupled to the memory controller. The memory controller is configured to pre-cache in the internal memory partial frames of reference video data in the external memory (e.g., N-line slices of M-line reference frames, where M>N), and to respond to requests (e.g., from the video processor) for blocks of reference video data including by determining whether each requested block (or each of at least two portions thereof) has been pre-cached in the internal memory, causing each requested cached block (or portion thereof) to be read from the internal memory, and causing each requested non-cached block (or portion thereof) to be read from the external memory. Preferably, the pre-caching is performed in a predetermined manner independent of which read requests for the reference data are actually asserted, and exploits known correlation between two-dimensional pixel locality of each block (“current block”) of data to undergo processing (e.g., decoding) using reference data, two-dimensional pixel locality of each block of reference data that may be requested to process the current block, and probability that each such reference data block will be needed to process the current block. Other aspects are memory controllers for use in such a system and methods performed during operation of any such system or memory controller.

Throughout the disclosure, the term "block" of video data is used to denote a subset of the data comprising a frame of video data having spatial location within a rectangular region the frame. A block of video data can but need not consist of compressed (or otherwise encoded) video data. Examples of blocks of video data are the conventionally defined macroblocks of MPEG-encoded video frames.
Conventional media processors often cache video data during decoding or other processing, but are typically highly inefficient in several ways including in that the data cache hit rate is low, power consumption and costs are high, and performance is low. Even with the availability of huge on-chip RAM, it may not be feasible to cache all the necessary data on the chip on which the processor is implemented. As a result, most current media processor designs do not use caches for referencing pixel data.
In one type of conventional video decoding, a Motion Compensation Unit (MCU) generates decoded video data from encoded (compressed) frames and reference frames of encoded video. In typical operation, an MCU consumes much data bandwidth. Most of the memory accesses triggered by an MCU during decoding operation are for the purpose of bringing in two-dimensional pixel blocks needed for computations. These accesses are typically very expensive for several critical reasons, including the following: (1) most of the reference pixel data (pixels of reference frames) are in external SDRAM (SDRAM external to the chip in which the MCU is implemented) and hence, accessing such data consumes much power; (2) two-dimensional blocks of reference pixel data are needed at any pixel boundary, and due to restrictions on operation of SDRAM and memory controllers for controlling accesses to SDRAM, the actual pixel bandwidth is higher than the data actually requested by the MCU; and (3) latency to bring data into an MCU from external SDRAM is also high and hence, accesses to the external SDRAM result in performance loss. To overcome these issues, it has become a standard practice to include huge amounts of on-chip RAM in integrated circuits that implement video decoding. By providing a sufficient amount of internal storage (on-chip RAM or "IRAM") for reference pixel data, it is possible to reduce bandwidth for accesses from external memory (e.g., an external SDRAM) and to reduce power consumption.
It has been proposed to cache video data (from external RAM) in on-chip memory during decoding or other processing. For example, U.S. Patent Application Publication No. 2004/0264565, published Dec. 30, 2004, discloses caching of video data blocks (that have previously been read from a DRAM) in a cache memory organized into tag blocks, with dynamic tracking of pixel addresses. However, this caching technique consumes undesirably large amounts of power in typical applications, since maintaining each tag RAM and performing address comparisons (i.e., comparing requested data addresses with tag block address ranges in response to each read request for a block of data) consumes much power (the calculations and address mapping need to be made on every block transaction).
U.S. Pat. No. 6,618,440, issued on Sep. 9, 2003, U.S. Patent Application Publication No. 2006/0002475, published on Jan. 5, 2006, and U.S. Patent Application Publication No. 2006/0023789, published on Feb. 2, 2006, also disclose caching of video data from external RAM during decoding or other processing.
Even with a large amount of on-chip RAM ("IRAM") available for caching reference pixel data, it may not be practical to store complete reference frames in such IRAM. For example, many encoding schemes (e.g., MPEG-2) require that an MCU employ two reference frames during operation, and since a single reference frame at 720×480 resolution would consume 720×480*1.5 bytes=518 Kbytes, caching the large amount of data comprising two reference frames is typically not practical. IRAM memory requirements for caching are strongly dependent on the resolution and format of the video being decoded. As a result, most conventional caching schemes do not cache reference data in IRAM when the resolution of the video data undergoing processing is greater than a certain limit (e.g., 352×288 pixels).
Having analyzed motion vectors associated with typical video content, the present inventors have recognized that caching of partial reference frames can be effectively used to minimize bandwidth for accesses to external memory during video decoding. FIG. 1 shows the vertical range of reference data requested by an MCU during decoding of MPEG-2-encoded video streams from four different movies. In FIG. 1, bars "A" represent requested blocks of data in lines of a reference frame corresponding to those within a vertical range of 15 pixels of the lines (of the current frame being decoded) containing the current macroblock undergoing decoding (i.e., blocks consisting of data in lines of the reference frame vertically separated by not more than 15 lines from the "current macroblock lines"), bars "B" represent requested blocks (other than those in bars "A") consisting of data in lines of a reference frame within a vertical range of 31 pixels of the current macroblock lines, bars "C" represent requested blocks (other than those in bars "A" and "B") consisting of data in lines of a reference frame within a vertical range of 47 pixels of the current macroblock lines, and bars "D" represent requested blocks (other than those in bars "A," "B," and "C") consisting of data in lines of a reference frame within a vertical range of 63 pixels of the current macroblock lines. Consistent with FIG. 1, the inventors have recognized that most (typically more than 90%) of the blocks of reference data requested during typical video decoding are contained in lines of a reference frame that are vertically separated by not more than 16 pixels from the current macroblock lines. Thus, a class of preferred embodiments of the present invention perform on-chip pre-caching of lines (of reference frames) that are vertically separated by not more than 16 pixels from the current macroblock lines, to minimize accesses during video decoding to external memory (e.g., an external SDRAM) in which each reference frame is stored.
The inventors have recognized that caching of partial reference frames also presents its own set of problems. For example, if a two-dimensional region of a reference frame is cached in IRAM, and an MCU requests data from this cached region, the data can be sent directly from the cache memory without any access to external SDRAM. However, if the MCU requests a block of reference data that is only partially cached (e.g., a boundary block), fulfilling the request is inherently complicated and requires accessing of at least some requested data from external memory.
The present invention accomplishes efficient caching (in IRAM) of reference data needed to perform video decoding (or other processing) by pre-caching of partial reference frames. Some preferred embodiments of the invention accomplish efficient on-chip pre-caching of partial reference frames, and efficient handling of requests from a video processor for reference data, in a manner that is conveniently programmable (e.g., in firmware).

Method and circuit for efficient caching of reference video data