.hsc A waste bale press of horizontal construction used for manufacturing bound bales of predominantly organic waste materials, such as paper, cardboard, wood boxes or other used packaging materials includes a press shaft with a filling shaft in front of the press shaft and a drive portion arranged in front of the filling shaft. The drive portion includes two hydraulic cylinders which are arranged so as to intersect in the basic position thereof and whose free piston rod ends act on the press plate. The ends of the hydraulic cylinders are connected in an articulated manner on brackets or the like located laterally of the press housing outside of the parallel limiting walls of the press housing in the most rearward part of the drive portion.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a waste bale press of predominantly horizontal construction, i.e., a bale press having a press plate which acts in the horizontal direction. The press is used for manufacturing bound bales of predominantly organic waste materials, such as paper, cardboard, wood boxes or other used packaging materials. The press includes a press shaft with a filling shaft in front of the press shaft and a drive portion arranged in front of the filling shaft. The drive portion includes two hydraulic cylinders which are arranged so as to intersect in the basic position thereof and whose free piston rod ends act on the press plate.
2. Description of the Related Art
For the purpose of reducing the structural length of presses of the above-described type, U.S. Pat. No. 4,041,856 discloses in connection with a vertically acting press to arrange in the drive portion on the side of the head two intersecting hydraulic cylinders which are slightly vertically inclined in the basic position thereof, wherein the free piston rod ends of the hydraulic cylinders are connected in an articulated manner to the press plate.
It is apparent that such a cylinder arrangement is capable of applying only relatively small pressing forces onto the material to be compacted; this is because, as a result of the shallow cylinder arrangement, the force components acting on the side walls of the press shaft are over the greatest portion of the pressing stroke greater than the actual pressing forces acting in the vertical direction.

Device for driving the press plate of a waste bale press


The present invention relates to tetraaza phenalen-3-one compounds which inhibit poly(ADP-ribose) polymerase (PARP) and are useful in the chemosensitization of cancer therapeutics. The induction of peripheral neuropathy is a common side-effect of many of the conventional and newer chemotherapies. The present invention further provides means to reliably prevent or cure chemotherapy-induced neuropathy. The invention also relates to the use of the disclosed PARP inhibitor compounds in enhancing the efficacy of chemotherapeutic agents such as temozolomide. The invention also relates to the use of the disclosed PARP inhibitor compounds to radiosensitize tumor cells to ionizing radiation. The invention also relates to the use of the disclosed PARP inhibitor compounds for treatment of cancers with DNA repair defects.

The present invention relates to inhibitors of the nuclear enzyme poly(adenosine 5′-diphospho-ribose) polymerase ["poly(ADP-ribose) polymerase" or "PARP", which is also referred to as ADPRT (NAD:protein (ADP-ribosyl transferase (polymerising)) and PARS (poly(ADP-ribose) synthetase) and provides compounds and compositions containing the disclosed compounds. Moreover, the present invention provides methods of using the disclosed PARP inhibitors to treat cancer.
There is considerable interest in the development of PARP inhibitors as chemosensitizers for use in cancer therapy and to limit cellular damage after ischemia or endotoxic stress. In particular, potentiation of temozolomide cytotoxicity observed in preclinical studies with potent PARP-1 inhibitors reflects inhibition of base excision repair and subsequent cytotoxicity due to incomplete processing of N7-methylguanine and N3-methyladenine. There is now a body of preclinical data demonstrating that the cytotoxicity of temozolomide is potentiated by coadministration of a PARP inhibitor either in vitro or in vivo. Plummer, et al., Clin. Cancer Res., 11(9), 3402 (2005).
Temozolomide, a DNA methylating agent, induces DNA damage, which is repaired by O6-alkylguanine alkyltransferase (ATase) and poly(ADP-ribose) polymerase-1 (PARP-1)-dependent base excision repair. Temozolomide is an orally available monofunctional DNA alkylating agent used to treat gliomas and malignant melanoma. Temozolomide is rapidly absorbed and undergoes spontaneous breakdown to form the active monomethyl triazene, 5-(3-methyl-1-triazeno)imidazole-4-carboxamide. Monomethyl triazene forms several DNA methylation products, the predominate species being N7-methylguanine (70%), N3-methyladenine (9%), and O6-methylguanine (5%). Unless repaired by O6-alkylguanine alkyltransferase, O6-methylguanine is cytotoxic due to mispairing with thymine during DNA replication. This mispairing is recognized on the daughter strand by mismatch repair proteins and the thymine excised. However, unless the original O6-methylguanine nucleotide in the parent strand is repaired by ATase-mediated removal of the methyl adduct, thymine can be reinserted. Repetitive futile rounds of thymine excision and incorporation opposite an unrepaired O6-methylguanine nucleotide causes a state of persistent strand breakage and the MutS branch of mismatch repair system signals G2-M cell cycle arrest and the initiation of apoptosis. The quantitatively more important N7-methylguanine and N3-methyladenine nucleotide alkylation products formed by temozolomide are rapidly repaired by base excision repair. Plummer, et al., Clin. Cancer Res., 11(9), 3402 (2005).
Chemosensitization by PARP inhibitors is not limited to temozolomide. Cytotoxic drugs, generally, or radiation can induce activation of PARP-1, and it has been demonstrated that inhibitors of PARP-1 can potentiate the DNA damaging and cytotoxic effects of chemotherapy and irradiation. Kock, et al., 45 J. Med. Chem. 4961 (2002). PARP-1 mediated DNA repair in response to DNA damaging agents represents a mechanism for drug resistance in tumors, and inhibition of this enzyme has been shown to enhance the activity of ionizing radiation and several cytotoxic antitumor agents, including temozolomide and topotecan. Suto et al., in U.S. Pat. No. 5,177,075, disclose several isoquinolines used for enhancing the lethal effects of ionizing radiation or chemotherapeutic agents on tumor cells. Weltin et al., "Effect of 6(5H)-Phenanthridinone, an Inhibitor of Poly(ADP-ribose) Polymerase, on Cultured Tumor Cells", Oncol. Res., 6:9, 399-403 (1994) disclose the inhibition of PARP activity, reduced proliferation of tumor cells, and a marked synergistic effect when tumor cells are co-treated with an alkylating drug. PARP-1 is thus a potentially important therapeutic target for enhancing DNA-damaging cancer therapies.
PARP inhibitors can also inhibit the growth of cells having defects in the homologous recombination (HR) pathway of double-stranded DNA repair. See Bryant et al., "Specific killing of BRCA2-deficient tumours with inhibitors of poly(ADP-ribose) polymerase," Nature 434, 913 (2005); Farmer et al., "Targeting the DNA repair defect in BRCA mutant cells as a therapeutic strategy," Nature 434, 917 (2005). This effect operates without the presence of chemosensitizers. Id. Known states associated with HR defects include BRCA-1 defects, BRCA-2 defects, and Fanconi anemia-associated cancers. McCabe et al., "Deficiency in the Repair of DNA Damage by Homologous Recombination and Sensitivity to Poly(ADP-Ribose) Polymerase Inhibition," Cancer Res. 66. 8109 (2006). Proteins identified as associated with a Fanconi anemia include FANCA, FANCB, FANCC, FANCD2, FANCE, FANCF, FANCG, FANCL, and FANCM. Id. For reviews, see Zaremba et al., "PARP Inhibitor Development for Systemic Cancer Targeting," Anti-Cancer Agents in Medicinal Chemistry 7, 515 (2007) and Lewis et al., "Clinical poly(ADP-ribose) polymerase inhibitors for the treatment of cancer," Curr. Opin. Investigational Drugs 8, 1061 (2007).
Large numbers of known PARP inhibitors have been described in Banasik et al., "Specific Inhibitors of Poly(ADP-Ribose) Synthetase and Mono(ADP-Ribosyl)-Transferase", J. Biol. Chem., 267:3, 1569-75 (1992), and in Banasik et al., "Inhibitors and Activators of ADP-Ribosylation Reactions", Molec. Cell. Biochem., 138, 185-97 (1994). However, effective use of these PARP inhibitors, in the ways discussed above, has been limited by the concurrent production of unwanted side-effects. See Milam et al., "Inhibitors of Poly(Adenosine Diphosphate-Ribose) Synthesis; Effect on Other Metabolic Processes," Science, 223, 589-91 (1984).
In addition to the above, PARP inhibitors have been disclosed and described in the following international patent applications: WO 00/42040; WO 00/39070; WO 00/39104; WO 99/11623; WO 99/11628; WO 99/11622; WO 99/59975; WO 99/11644; WO 99/11945; WO 99/11649; and WO 99/59973. A comprehensive review of the state of the art has been published by Li and Zhang in IDrugs 2001, 4(7): 804-812 (PharmaPress Ltd ISSN 1369-7056).
The ability of PARP-inhibitors to potentiate the lethality of cytotoxic agents by chemosensitizing tumor cells to the cytotoxic effects of chemotherapeutic agents has been reported in, inter alia, US 2002/0028815; US 2003/0134843; US 2004/0067949; White A W, et al., 14 Bioorg. and Med. Chem. Letts. 2433 (2004); Canon Koch S S, et al., 45 J. Med. Chem. 4961 (2002); Skalitsky D J, et al., 46 J. Med. Chem. 210 (2003); Farmer H, et al, 434 Nature 917 (14 Apr. 2005); Plummer E R, et al., 11(9) Clin. Cancer Res. 3402 (2005); Tikhe J G, et al., 47 J. Med. Chem. 5467 (2004); Griffin R. J., et al, WO 98/33802; and Helleday T, et al, WO 2005/012305.
The induction of peripheral neuropathy is a common factor in limiting therapy with chemotherapeutic drugs. Quasthoff and Hartung, J. Neurology, 249, 9-17 (2002). Chemotherapy induced neuropathy is a side-effect encountered following the use of many of the conventional (e.g., Taxol, vincritine, cisplatin) and newer chemotherapies (e.g. velcade, epothilone). Depending on the substance used, a pure sensory and painful neuropathy (with cisplatin, oxaliplatin, carboplatin) or a mixed sensorimotor neuropathy with or without involvement of the autonomic nervous system (with vincristine, taxol, suramin) can ensue. Neurotoxicity depends on the total cumulative dose and the type of drug used. In individual cases neuropathy can evolve even after a single drug application. The recovery from symptoms is often incomplete and a long period of regeneration is required to restore function. Up to now, few drugs are available to reliably prevent or cure chemotherapy-induced neuropathy.
There continues to be a need for effective and potent PARP inhibitors which enhance the lethal effects of chemotherapeutic agents on tumor cells while producing minimal side-effects.
In addition, PARP inhibitors have been reported to be effective in radiosensitizing hypoxic tumor cells and effective in preventing tumor cells from recovering from potentially lethal damage of DNA after radiation therapy, presumably by their ability to prevent DNA repair. U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,032,617; 5,215,738; and 5,041,653.
Recent publications suggest that PARP inhibitors kill breast cancer cells that are deficient in breast cancer associated gene-1 and -2 (BRCA1/2). These studies suggest that PARP inhibitors may be effective for treating BRCA1/2-associated breast cancers. [Farmer et al., Nature 2005, 434, 917; DeSoto and Deng, Intl. J. Med. Sci. 2006, 3, 117; Bryant et al., Nature, 2005, 434, 913.]
There continues to be a need for effective and potent PARP inhibitors which enhance the lethal effects of ionizing radiation and/or chemotherapeutic agents on tumor cells, or inhibit the growth of cells having defects in the homologous recombination (HR) pathway of double-stranded DNA repair, while producing minimal side-effects.

PARP inhibitor compounds, compositions and methods of use


A new and distinct cultivar of Kalanchoe plant named ‘Meru Improved’, characterized by its compact, upright, uniform and strong growth habit; freely branching plant habit; glossy dark green-colored leaves; uniform, freely and early flowering habit; relatively large light pink and red bi-colored flowers; and excellent postproduction longevity.

The present invention relates to a new and distinct cultivar of Kalanchoe, botanically known as Kalanchoe blossfeldiana, and hereinafter referred to by the name 'Meru Improved'.
The new Kalanchoe is a product of a planned breeding program conducted by the Inventor in De Lier, The Netherlands. The objective of the breeding program is to create new freely-branching and freely-flowering Kalanchoe cultivars with attractive foliage and flower coloration.
The new Kalanchoe originated from a cross-pollination made by the Inventor in De Lier, The Netherlands in 1997, of the Kalanchoe blossfeldiana cultivar Pablo, disclosed in U.S. Plant Pat. No. 11,653, as the female, or seed, parent with a proprietary Kalanchoe blossfeldiana selection, designated as code number FK 3855, not patented, as the male, or pollen, parent. The cultivar Meru Improved was discovered and selected by the Inventor as a flowering plant from within the progeny of the stated cross-pollination in a controlled environment in De Lier, The Netherlands.
Asexual reproduction of the new Kalanchoe by vegetative terminal cuttings in a controlled environment in De Lier, The Netherlands since August, 1999, has shown that the unique features of this new Kalanchoe are stable and reproduced true to type in successive generations.


An in-line leaf trap (100) is disclosed having a housing defined by a main body (112) and a separable lid (114). A filter (116, 118) is provided in the leaf trap for gathering debris. A locking ring (124) is provided having an inner threaded region (126) engagable with threads provided on the main body of the housing to seal the housing. The locking ring (124) includes a plurality of spokes (128) extending between the ring and central cylindrical yoke (130). The spokes are provided to facilitate rotation of the locking ring with one hand. In the preferred embodiment, a handle (190) is provided on the main body.

FIG. 1 illustrates a leaf trap 10 found in the prior art. This leaf trap is of the type marketed by Rainbow Lifeguard Products. Trap 10 includes a housing having main body 12 and a lid 14. A pair of opposed fittings 16 and 18 are formed on the lid and attached to the main body, respectively. A mesh bag 18 is receivable within the main body 12 for capturing leaves. In use, a hose is connected between fitting 18 and the source of vacuum or suction. Fitting 16 is connected to another hose which is in turn connected to a vacuum type pool cleaner or traditional hand operated vacuum device. The trap 10 functions to capture leaves, twigs and other debris as the pool water is sucked through the trap on the way to the filter pump. The trap prevents the debris from reaching and clogging the pump.
The prior art trap 10 also includes a locking ring 20 for drawing the lid 14 and main body 12 into sealing engagement. Ring 20 includes internal threads 22 which engage with threads 24 on the lid. When the ring is slid up on the main body it can be rotated in a manner to draw the lid into sealing engagement with the main body 12. An O-ring 26 is provided to enhance the sealing. As also illustrated in FIG. 1, the main body 12 includes four keys 28. The locking ring includes four notches 30 which allow the ring to pass over the keys 28 as long as the ring is properly aligned. The keys are intended to help prevent the ring from falling off the main body when it has been disengaged from the lid.
In use, the inner mesh bag 18 collects debris and must be emptied at periodic intervals. To accomplish this task, the user must lift the leaf trap out of the water and disengage ring 20. Because the diameter of the ring is about six inches, removal usually requires two hands. The user is therefore forced to brace the filter housing between his legs and rotate the locking ring with both hands. As can be appreciated, since the leaf trap has been in the pool, it will be wet, resulting in a messy and awkward procedure. In addition, as the ring is rotated, the keys can become aligned with the notches such that the force of gravity will cause the ring to drop off the main body requiring reassembly. It would be desirable to provide a leaf trap which can be serviced in a more convenient manner.
Accordingly, it is an object of the subject invention to provide a new and improved in-line leaf trap.
It is another object of the subject invention to provide an improved in-line leaf trap which can be more readily serviced


A process for preparing an olefin polymer, including the steps of forming a particulate olefin polymer in a gas-phase polymerization reactor in the presence of a C3-C5 alkane as polymerization diluent, separating discharged polyolefin particles from concomitantly discharged gas at a pressure from 1 to 2.2 MPa, degassing the polyolefin particles at a pressure from 0.1 to 0.4 MPa with a gas made from or containing a C3-C5 alkane; and transferring the separated gas and the gas from the degassing to a work-up unit operated at a pressure from 0.001 to 0.2 MPa below the pressure of the separation, wherein the gas for degassing is continuously received from the work-up unit.

In some instances, gas-phase polymerization processes are used for the polymerization of olefins such as homopolymerizing ethylene or propylene or copolymerizing ethylene or propylene with other olefins. In some instances, reactors for carrying out such gas-phase polymerizations are fluidized-bed reactors, stirred gas-phase reactors or multizone circulating reactors with two distinct interconnected gas-phase polymerization zones. In some instances, these processes are carried out in a gas phase involving monomers and comonomers. In some further instances, the gaseous components also include polymerization diluents, molecular weight modifiers, or low-molecular weight reaction products. In some instances, the diluents are nitrogen or alkanes. In some instances, a molecular weight modifier is hydrogen. In some instances, the obtained products are solid polyolefin particles which are formed by polymerization catalyst systems. In many instances, the catalyst systems are made from or contain particulate catalyst solids.
When the produced material is continuously or discontinuously removed from the gas-phase polymerization reactors, the discharged product contains polyolefin and portions of the gaseous phase as intergranular gas or as dissolved hydrocarbons. For ecological, safety and quality reasons, these entrained parts of the gas-phase are to be removed from the polyolefin particles. In some instances, such components may constitute an adverse impact on the environment. The gaseous hydrocarbons may yield explosive mixtures in downstream equipment. Non-polymerized components may adversely affect quality, including odor formation.
In some instances the entrained parts of the gas-phase from the polyolefin particles are removed by contacting the particles with a stream of an inert gas. The inert gas may flow countercurrent. In some instances, such a step is denoted as "degassing" or "purging". In some instances, the degassing or purging step is combined with a step of deactivating the polymerization catalyst and/or cocatalysts. In some instances, deactivation occurs by reacting the catalyst and/or cocatalysts with water. Because the residual hydrocarbons in the polymer are in equilibrium with the surrounding gas phase, the achievable concentration of hydrocarbon residues in the polyolefin particles is the lower the lower the partial pressure of the component to be degassed is in the gas phase. In some instances, commercial degassing is carried out at ambient pressure or not much higher pressures.

Polymerization process including discharging polyolefin particles from a gas-phase polymerization reactor


Methods, systems, and computer readable media for storage device workload detection using power consumption are disclosed. One aspect of the subject matter described herein includes a storage device. The storage device includes non-volatile storage. The storage device further includes a device controller for controlling access to the non-volatile storage. A power management controller separate from the device controller senses an indication of power used by at least one of the non-volatile storage and the device controller, compares the sensed indication of power to at least one threshold, and, in response to a predetermined relationship between the sensed indication of power and the at least one threshold, signals the device controller of a workload state of the storage device.

Storage devices, such as NAND storage devices, require certain maintenance operations (such as read scrubbing and folding operations) for optimal performance and endurance. In many cases, these maintenance operations are scheduled such that the operations are performed at idle time or are balanced against host initiated operations to reduce their direct impact on storage device performance. In order to perform such operations at optimal times, it is desirable to have an indication of the workload of the storage device. Current storage device workload detection relies on the device controller sensing its own workload and performing the background operations when the controller is idle. Using the device controller to monitor its own workload to determine when to schedule background tasks has a negative impact on storage device performance because device controller resources used to monitor performance are unavailable for other tasks, such as host-initiated I/O. Requiring that the device controller monitor and make the determination as to when to schedule background tasks also increases the complexity in device controller operations and design.


A plasma display panel including a transparent front substrate, a rear substrate disposed parallel to the front substrate, a barrier wall disposed between the front substrate and the rear substrate and defining light-emitting cells, address electrodes on the rear substrate and covered by a first dielectric layer, sustain electrode pairs extending in a direction orthogonal to a direction in which the address electrodes extend and covered by a second dielectric layer, red, green and blue phosphor layers coated on sides of the barrier wall and a surface of the first dielectric layer, and red, green and blue phosphor films formed on the second dielectric layer at regions corresponding to regions where the red, green and blue phosphor layers are formed.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a plasma display panel. More particularly, the present invention relates to a plasma display panel having improved luminous efficiency and picture display quality.
2. Discussion of the Background
Generally, a plasma display panel (PDP) displays desired numbers, characters or graphic data using phosphors excited by plasma-generated ultraviolet (UV) rays.
FIG. 1 shows a conventional PDP, in which a front panel and a back panel are joined together.
Referring to FIG. 1, the front panel includes a front substrate 111, sustain electrode pairs 114 comprising Y electrodes 112 and X electrodes 113 formed on the front substrate 111, a front dielectric layer 115 covering the sustain electrode pairs 114, and a protective layer 116 covering the front dielectric layer 115. The Y electrodes 112 and the X electrodes 113 include transparent electrodes 112b, 113b, which are often formed of indium tin oxide (ITO), and metallic bus electrodes 112a, 113a, respectively.
The back panel includes a rear substrate 121, address electrodes 122 formed orthogonally to the sustain electrode pairs 114, a rear dielectric layer 123 covering the address electrodes 122, barrier walls 124 formed on the rear dielectric layer 123 to define light-emitting cells 126, and red, green and blue phosphor layers 125a, 125b and 125c arranged in respective light-emitting cells 126.
Discharge gas is enclosed in the discharge space partitioned by the barrier walls 124. While half of the vacuum ultraviolet (VUV) rays may excite phosphors of the rear substrate 121 in a discharge cell during a discharge period, the remaining VUV rays may not excite phosphors.
To overcome this problem, Korean Published Application No. 2002-0027944 discloses a PDP having a phosphor layer on a front dielectric layer. In this patent, a phosphor layer is applied between dielectric layer and protective layer in the front panel. A brightness enhancement was obtained, but the low transparency and uniformity of the phosphor layer may be a problem.


A method for performing stateful processing of a packet at a flow-based managed forwarding element (MFE) is provided. The method sends a first packet from the MFE to a connection tracker that stores headers of a set of original direction packets that each established a new connection. The method receives, from the connection tracker, the first packet with the header of an original direction packet associated with the first packet appended to the first packet. The header of the original direction packet includes (i) a second set of IP addresses different than a first set of IP addresses of the first packet and (ii) stateful connection status information. The method replaces a first set of IP addresses of the first packet with the second set of IP addresses and performs a matching operation on the packet based on the second set of IP addresses and the stateful connection status information.

Packet filtering rules that match on packet's header fields can be used to implement a firewall policy to determine which packets should be admitted and which should be dropped. For stateful firewall rules, a record has to be kept of at least the admitted packets in order to correlate the subsequent packets to determine whether the packets belong to a previously established connection. The record can then be used, for example, to admit reply direction packets for the connections where forward direction packets were admitted.
This "connection tracking" may be further enhanced by tracking related connections even when the Internet protocol (IP) addresses and/or port numbers of the related data connection may be different from the original control connection. For instance, the data connections related to file transfer protocol (FTP) control connections can be used with the premise that if the control connection was admitted, then the data connections should be admitted too, As a further refinement, the connection tracking state may be used to keep track of network address and/or port translation (NAT/NAPT), allowing reply direction packets to be properly correlated with the original connection and reverse transformation to be performed. This is essential in allowing the source of the connection to remain unaware of any packet header transformations.
There are several practical problems in implementing a stateful firewall with the connection tracking facility. First, packets such as reply packets are admitted on the basis of a valid connection tracking entry under a particular firewall policy. If the firewall policy changes, then the validity of each connection tracking entry must be assessed or "revalidated" under the new policy. Failure to do so may result in wrongfully admitting packets. Revalidation may be performed by iterating through all connection tracking entries after each such policy change and removing the connection tracking entries for the connections that have become stale.
This solution has a few problems, though. Such revalidation may take a lot of time and resources if there are thousands of connection tracking entries and if policy changes are frequent. Additionally, such a revalidation may require the presence of the full packet headers and metadata (e.g., tunneling headers) of the original packet to properly run the original packet through the packet processing pipeline and the firewall rules to determine if the connection would still be admitted. These concerns have been roadblocks for implementing this strategy in practice.
Second, if the existing connection state is not to be implicitly trusted for admitting return or related traffic, the firewall rules have to be duplicated for each packet direction to be able to match the reply direction packet headers against the firewall rules. This duplicates the resource use for the rules in both the control and data planes.
Also, in some cases the reply direction packets may have headers that are not simply reversed from the original direction packet, as is the case when an Internet control message protocol (ICMP) response is sent to a user datagram protocol (UDP) packet, or when an ICMP Echo response is sent for an ICMP echo request. This further complicates creation of the firewall filter rules by the control plane, and increases the resource use on the control and data planes in the form of additional packet filtering rules
Third, as related connections may have practically arbitrary packet headers in relation to the original master connection, it is not possible to write firewall rules in terms of the actual packet headers that would admit or deny the related packets without basing this decision on the state of the connection tracking entry (e.g., related or established). This would make any firewall policy changes ineffective in changing the treatment of the related connection packets. For instance, an FTP data download may be allowed to continue even after a firewall policy change shutting down the FTP control connection.


A motor vehicle having an assembly for loading sheet material includes a cargo area having a loading opening and a bulkhead located at an opposite end of the cargo area from the loading opening. Also included is a passenger compartment located at a forward region of the vehicle. Further included is at least one fixed end stop located proximate a rear area of the cargo area. Yet further included is at least one load assist strip, where a first end of the strip is mounted to the bulkhead, wherein the strip extends rearward to a second end of the strip that is mounted to the end stop.

Maximizing the usage of available cargo space in automotive vehicles, such as vans, is increasingly important as customers seek out smaller, more fuel efficient vehicles without wanting to compromise safety or load capability. Many van users need the ability to carry large sheet material, typically 2400 mm×1200 mm (8′×4′) plywood or plasterboard, either on an occasional emergency basis or as an everyday item for small business. Currently some users try to load the sheet vertically, but the available vehicle length means that the front of the sheet then potentially restricts side vision. Furthermore, the user also has to clear the floor area to make space to allow loading in such a manner. Sliding sheet material along the floor may inflict damage to the sheet material during loading. Other users will elect to have material delivered or use a larger van, with either option proving costly. Avoiding damage during transportation requires ad hoc methods to restrain the sheet in a secure position. Accordingly, an apparatus is desired having the aforementioned advantages and solving and/or making improvements on the aforementioned disadvantages.

Vehicle storage/loading system for sheets


The invention relates to liquid polyisocyanate mixtures, to a process for their preparation and to their use in single- and two-component polyurethane coating compositions.

The invention relates to liquid polyisocyanate mixtures based on diphenylmethane 2,4′-diisocyanate, to a process for their preparation and to their use in single- and two-component polyurethane coating compositions, adhesives and sealants.
Two-component polyurethane coating compositions based on diphenylmethane 4,4′-diisocyanate are known. For instance, EP-A 0 666 276 describes polyisocyanate mixtures which are liquid at temperatures above 5° C. and are based on diphenylmethane 4,4′-diisocyanate with an isocyanate group content of 14.5 to 24% by weight and a content of allophanate groups (calculated as C2HN2O3) of 7.7 to 14.5% by weight, and also a process for their preparation. These polyisocyanate mixtures are notable for relatively good crystallization stability and high reactivity in combination with reactants containing hydroxyl groups. In the introductory part of the description of EP-A 0 666 276, it is mentioned that mixtures composed of diphenylmethane 4,4′-diisocyanate and relatively large amounts of diphenylmethane 2,4′-diisocyanate are liquid, but have poor crystallization stability, and that the properties of coating materials produced therefrom deteriorate significantly owing to the proportion of diphenylmethane 2,4′-diisocyanate.
For some applications, however, the use of polyisocyanates based on diphenylmethane 4,4′-diisocyanate is undesirable owing to the high reactivity of this isocyanate. Instead, the demand is for polyisocyanates which, in corresponding applications, have similar material properties to those obtainable on the basis of diphenylmethane 4,4′-diisocyanate, but have lower reactivity and hence a longer processing time.
Owing to the isocyanate group in the 2 position, diphenylmethane 2,4′-diisocyanate has lower reactivity towards isocyanate-reactive reactants than diphenylmethane 4,4′-diisocyanate, but diphenylmethane 2,4′-diisocyanate is solid at room temperature, and polyisocyanates based on diphenylmethane 2,4′-diisocyanate also have poor crystallization stability and usually also high viscosities.
It was therefore an object of the invention to provide novel polyisocyanate mixtures which, compared to those based on diphenylmethane 4,4′-diisocyanate, have lower reactivity and significantly better crystallization stability, even at low temperatures below 5° C. This object is achieved through provision of the polyisocyanate mixtures which have allophanate groups and which are characterized in detail below.


A polyamic acid that has a fluorine atom content of 25 wt % or less and an amount of a fluorine-containing diamine in the polyamic acid is 70 mol % or more with respect to 100 mol % of a sum of diamine components. The total number of moles of tetracarboxylic acid component in the polyamic acid is 0.960 times or more and less than 1.000 time total number of moles of diamine component. The polyamic acid preferably has the structural unit represented by formula (1) and the structural unit represented by formula (2). The polyamic acid may contain trans-1,4-cyclohexanediamine as the diamine component.

In an electronic device such as a display, a solar cell, a touch panel or the like, thickness reduction, weight reduction, and flexibility of the device are demanded, and utilization of a plastic film substrate instead of a glass substrate has been studied. Particularly, in applications required to exhibit high heat resistance, dimensional stability, and high mechanical strength, it is investigated to apply polyimide films as alternative materials for glass.
Polyimides are generally obtained by cyclodehydration of polyamic acids. Polyamic acids are obtained by equimolar reaction of diamines with tetracarboxylic dianhydrides in organic solvents. General wholly aromatic polyimides are colored yellow or brown, but coloring thereof can be suppressed by introduction of an alicyclic structure, a bent structure, a fluorine substituent or the like.
For example, in Patent Document 1, it is described that a polyimide film exhibiting high transparency and a small coefficient of thermal expansion can be fabricated by applying a polyamic acid solution obtained by a reaction of an aromatic tetracarboxylic dianhydride with an alicyclic diamine on a support and heating the polyamic acid solution for imidization. In Patent Document 2, an example is presented in which white polyimide for LED substrate is fabricated by applying a polyamic acid solution obtained by reaction of an aromatic tetracarboxylic dianhydride with a fluorine-containing diamine on a support and heating the polyamic acid solution for imidization.
In the manufacturing process of electronic devices, electronic elements such as a thin film transistor and a transparent electrode are formed on a substrate. High temperature processes are required to form electronic elements, and thus plastic film substrates are required to exhibit heat resistance and dimensional stability so as to be adapted to the high temperature processes. Moreover, in optical devices such as a display, light emitted from the element proceeds through the film substrate, and thus the substrate material is required to exhibit transparency and low haze (turbidity) in addition to high light transmittance in the visible light region.
Electronic device manufacturing processes can be divided into batch type processes and roll-to-roll type processes. In the batch processes, a resin solution is applied on a support and dried to form a film substrate, and an element is formed thereon. Therefore, facilities currently used for glass substrate can be utilized. When the film substrate is polyimide, a laminate in which a support and a polyimide film are adhesively laminated can be formed by applying a polyamic acid solution on the support and heating the polyamic acid together with the support for imidization, and this laminate can also be applied to a batch type process.

This patent is subject to a terminal disclaimer.

Poly(amic acid), poly(amic acid) solution, polyimide, polyimide film, layered product, flexible device, and production method for polyimide film


An endoscope illumination optical system includes a spherical lens element and a divergent lens element, positioned in order from a circular light exit end of a light guide fiber bundle. The spherical lens element has a refractive index n satisfying the following conditions when sin=r/R: EQU 1.8 cos (.THETA./2)<n<2.2 cos (.THETA./2) and EQU r<R. where r is the radius of said light exit end of said light guide fiber bundle; and R is the radius of said transparent spherical element.

1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to an optical system for an endoscope for providing divergent rays of light from an illumination light guide so as to illuminate a wide field of view of the endoscope.
2. Description of Related Art
Typically, endoscopes or fiberscopes have an image guide fiber bundle and a light guide fiber bundle both of which are in a flexible, elongated sheath or tube. In order to view or photograph an object through the image guide fiber bundle, the endoscope handled with the forward end of the light guide fiber bundle directed closely to the object so as to illuminate the object.
One recent design demand for such an endoscope, in particular a medical endoscope, is to reduce the outer diameter of a flexible sheath or tube as small as possible for relieving or not causing pain to the patients while providing ease of observation. In order for the endoscope to satisfy this demand, it is essential to install both the image fiber bundle and the light guide fiber bundle in as thin and compact package as possible. This unavoidably requires the installation of an objective lens having a wide field of view along with an illumination optical system having a wide angle of illumination. Japanese Unexamined Utility Model Publication No. 2-140519 reveals one technique for widening an angle of illumination of the illumination optical system of the endoscope. As shown in FIG. 2, a wide angle illumination optical system, as described in the above mentioned publication, includes a plurality of lenses, such as a convex lens 12A, a convex lens 12B and a concave lens 13 arranged in order from the fiber bundle side. The first two convex lenses 12A and 12B forms a convergent lens system functioning to gather illumination light emanating from the light guide fiber bundle 11 and focus it at a point. The concave lens 13, which is a divergent lens, functions to diverge the illumination light.
However, to provide the prior art illumination optical system with a sufficiently wide divergent angle covering a sufficiently wide field of view of an objective lens practically requires more than two convex lenses. Any increase in the number of optical elements included necessary results in an increase in manufacturing cost of the endoscope, and such is undesired.

Optical illumination system for endoscope


The present invention provides a stereoscopic display, which comprises a backlight, a display panel, a phase delay film arranged at a light-exiting side of the display panel, and a visual angle adjusting baffle arranged between the backlight and the display panel and parallel to the display panel for adjusting a vertical or horizontal stereoscopic visual angle of the stereoscopic display. The shading strips of the visual angle adjusting baffle can be reflective strips which can reflect light from the backlight arriving at the reflective strips back to the backlight, and the light reflected by the reflective strips to the backlight can enter the display panel after passing through the transparent strips in the visual angle adjusting baffle, thus improving display brightness of the stereoscopic display.

Polarization 3D technology is also known as polarized 3D technology, in which an original image is decomposed in accordance with the principle that light has a "vibration direction", specifically, the original image is decomposed into two groups of images, i.e., an image of polarized light in the vertical direction and an image of polarized light in the horizontal direction, or an image of left-handed circularly polarized light and an image of right-handed circularly polarized light, and then left and right lenses of a pair of 3D spectacles respectively allow the polarized light in the vertical direction and the polarized light in the horizontal direction to pass, or respectively allow the left-handed circularly polarized light and the right-handed circularly polarized light to pass, in this way, the left and right human eyes may respectively receive a group of images in two groups of different images, and a stereoscopic image is synthesized in the brain finally.
FIG. 1 is a schematic diagram of a structure of a stereoscopic display in the prior art, as shown in FIG. 1, the stereoscopic display comprises a backlight 1, a display panel 2 and a phase delay film 4, wherein the display panel 2 comprises an array substrate 21 and a color filter substrate 22, which are arranged oppositely, and a liquid crystal layer 23 arranged between the array substrate 21 and the color filter substrate 22. The color filter substrate 22 comprises a substrate 221, and a black matrix 222 and a plurality of pixel display areas 223, which are formed at the light-entering side of the substrate 221. A lower polarizer 24 is formed at the light-entering side of the array substrate 21, and an upper polarizer 25 is formed at the light-exiting side of the substrate 221 in the color filter substrate 22. The backlight 1 is used for providing light to the display panel 2.
FIG. 2 is a schematic diagram of a light path during display of the stereoscopic display in FIG. 1, as shown in FIG. 2, L refers to a pixel width (including a line width of the black matrix in the vertical direction and a width of a pixel display area in the vertical direction) of the display panel 2 in the vertical direction, h1 refers to the line width of the black matrix 222 in the vertical direction, X refers to the distance between the light-entering surface of the black matrix 222 and the light-entering surface of the phase delay film 4, θ1 refers to the included angle between first emitting light 51 and second emitting light 52 of any one pixel display area 223 of the display panel 2, θ1=α1+β1, wherein α1 refers to the included angle between the first emitting light 51 and a surface normal of the display panel 2, and β1 refers to the included angle between the second emitting light 52 and a surface normal of the display panel 2. When the line width of the black matrix 222 in the vertical direction is h1, the width of the stripe of the phase delay film 4 in the vertical direction is the same as the pixel width L, and the center line of the stripe of the phase delay film 4 in the vertical direction is overlapped with the center line of the pixel display area 223 of the display panel 2 in the vertical direction, tan α1=tan β1=(h1/2)/X, and it can be seen from the formula that, θ1 can be increased by increasing h1. Since the vertical stereoscopic visual angle of the stereoscopic display is in direct proportion to θ1, when θ1 is increased, the vertical stereoscopic visual angle can be enlarged. In order to increase the vertical stereoscopic visual angle of the stereoscopic display, in the prior art, the line width of the black matrix in the vertical direction is increased. FIG. 3 is a schematic diagram of a structure of a stereoscopic display with increased line width of a black matrix in the vertical direction in the prior art, FIG. 4 is a schematic diagram of a light path during display of the stereoscopic display in FIG. 3, as shown in FIG. 3 and FIG. 4, the line width of the black matrix 222 in the vertical direction is increased from h1 to h2, then, tan α2=tan β2=(h2/2)/X, θ2=α2+β2, since h2 is larger than h1, α2 and β2 are increased, then θ2 is increased, and as a result, the vertical stereoscopic visual angle of the stereoscopic display is increased.
However, the following problems exist in the prior art: after the stereoscopic display is manufactured, the structures therein are fixed, thus the vertical visual angle is fixed, that is, the vertical visual angle could not be adjusted; since the black matrix has a shading function, when the vertical visual angle is increased by increasing the line width of the black matrix in the vertical direction, the display brightness of the stereoscopic display will be reduced.

BEIJING BOE DISPLAY TECHNOLOGY CO., LTD.


Lighting devices are formed of a conductive loaded resin-based material. The conductive loaded resin-based material comprises micron conductive powder(s), conductive fiber(s), or a combination of conductive powder and conductive fibers in a base resin host. The ratio of the weight of the conductive powder(s), conductive fiber(s), or a combination of conductive powder and conductive fibers to the weight of the base resin host is between about 0.20 and 0.40. The micron conductive powders are formed from non-metals, such as carbon, graphite, that may also be metallic plated, or the like, or from metals such as stainless steel, nickel, copper, silver, that may also be metallic plated, or the like, or from a combination of non-metal, plated, or in combination with, metal powders. The micron conductor fibers preferably are of nickel plated carbon fiber, stainless steel fiber, copper fiber, silver fiber, or the like.

(1) Field of the Invention
This invention relates to lighting circuits and, more particularly, to LED lighting circuits including conductors and heat sinks molded of conductive loaded resin-based materials comprising micron conductive powders, micron conductive fibers, or a combination thereof, homogenized within a base resin when molded.
(2) Description of the Prior Art
Lighting sources are used in a large variety of applications to provide indication and illumination. Lighting indication, or indicator lighting, is light used to deliver a message. Indicator lighting is widely used in signs, streetlights, automobiles, appliances, machinery, computers, entertainment devices, electronics, and the like. Automobile brake lights and computer 'ON' LED lights are examples of indicator lighting. Lighting illumination, or illuminating lighting, is used to provide, or to enhance, lighting for human activity. Illumination lighting is widely used in homes, offices, factories, schools, institutions, automobiles, and the like. Automobile headlights and office fluorescent lighting are examples illumination lighting.
Most modern lighting sources are powered by electricity. Electrically powered lights may be generally categorized as incandescent, gas/fluorescent, and solid state. Incandescent lights, such as common light bulbs, rely on an incandescing filament, such as tungsten wire, to generate light. Unfortunately, much of the electrically energy is converted into infrared radiation (heat) that is not detectable to the unaided human eye. Gas/fluorescent lights, such as neon lights, mercury vapor lamps, halogens lamps, and the like, rely on gas discharge phenomenon to generate light. Fluorescent bulbs can be substantially more efficient than incandescent bulbs in converting electrical energy into useful light energy. However, fluorescent bulbs may require relatively sophisticates starter and ballast circuits and frequently contain poisonous mercury.
Solid state lights, such as light emitting diodes (LED's), rely on the emission of photons (light energy) produced as electrons drop from conduction energy bands to lower orbital bands. Diodes are formed by bringing two slightly different materials together to form a PN junction. Typical PN junctions are formed from a semiconductor material such as silicon or aluminim-gallium-arsenide (AlGaAs) or the like. Pure, crystalline forms of these materials are poor conductors. However, the introduction of selected doping ions will make these materials conductive by creating extra electrons (n-type) or extra holes (p-type). When an n-type and a p-type material are put together, a PN junction, or PN diode is formed.
Under non-breakdown conditions, current (electrons) only flows in one direction in the diode—from N to P—under a positive voltage from P to N. The positive voltage provides energy for free electrons in the N region to jump from a lower orbital into a conduction orbital. These electrons then are able to move from the N region, across a central depletion region, and into the P region. Once in the P region, the electrons fall into empty hole locations and, as a result, drop from the conduction band into a lower orbital. This orbital drop results in the emission of a photon. All diodes release photon energy, however, only those which release energy in the spectrum of visible light are commonly called light emitting. To achieve a visible light photon emission, the energy gap between the conduction band and the lower orbitals must be wide. The width of this energy gap determines the wavelength of the photon and, therefore, the color of the emitted light.
LED devices convert part of the input electrical energy into visible light and part of this electrical energy into heat. The diode device is typically housed in a plastic lens. The photons emitted by the diode are omni-directional. However, the lens concentrates the light, using reflection, such that the light emitted from the top of the lens is substantially unidirectional and intense. LED devices are far more efficient than incandescent lights and more versatile than gas/fluorescent lights. LED devices generate little heat, though the heat that is generated is an important consideration in LED applications as will be described below. LED devices are in widespread use for indicators due to their low power consumption and multitude of colors. However, recent price reductions in semiconductor devices and the development of high intensity LED devices producing "white" light have resulted in more frequent use of LED devices for illumination applications. High intensity LED devices are now used as single lights, in applications such as flashlights, and as rows or arrays of lights, in applications such as taillights, traffic lights, flood lights, and signs.
Though LED devices are relatively simple, two terminal semiconductor devices, there are several considerations in designing and manufacturing LED lighting circuits. First, beyond the turn-ON voltage, the current response of the diode is exponential. Therefore, to prevent over-current damage to the diode, resistance must be placed in the circuit path. Typically, the resistance is placed in the path between the power supply and the anode (+) connection to the P side of the device while the cathode (−) connection to the N side is connected to ground. This resistance value is typically implemented as a discrete resistor that is either inserted or surface mounted onto the LED circuit board.
Second, although the LED generates less heat than an incandescent light, the heat that is generated in the junction is significant for several reasons. First, the performance of the LED is closely related to the junction temperature (Tjunction) of the device. It is found that the wavelength, or color, of light emitted from the LED varies with Tjunction. Therefore, a diode that is specifically designed for a color application, such as in a video array, may perform inaccurately at increased temperatures. It is found that the intensity (lumens) of light generated by an LED decreases with increasing temperature. This is especially significant since it may be tempting for the circuit designer or operator to increase current to maintain output intensity in an LED that is lagging due to high Tjunction. This can be counter productive and even result in damaging the LED since further increases in current also increase Tjunction. Unlike incandescent bulbs, LED devices do not have a distinctive wear-out mechanism to compare to filament breakage. Rather, it is found that the light intensity output of the device simply decreases over time. It is further found that high temperature operation shortens the time needed for degradation to occur. Based on all of the above observations, it is found that heat removal mechanisms, such as heat sinks, are very useful and/or necessary parts of LED-based lighting devices and, especially, those lighting devices using high output LED devices for illumination applications. However, in the prior art, heat sink structures typically comprise discrete, metal structures that must be manufactured and placed onto the LED circuit board. Further, resistors in LED lighting circuits are typically discrete devices that are mechanically placed on the lighting circuit. Each of these prior art approaches is found to increase the part count, the tooling costs, the assembly complexity, and the manufacturing costs of LED lighting systems.
Several prior art inventions relate to alternative electrical conductors and lighting systems. U.S. Pat. No. 5,685,632 Schaller, et al provides a light source such as battery-powered flashlights and lanterns, taillight assemblies of automobiles or motorcycles, battery housings, or head assemblies for light sources are formed from electrically conductive plastic. U.S. Pat. No. 5,771,027 to Marks, et al describes a composite antenna with a grid comprised of electrical conductors woven into the warp of a resin reinforced cloth forming one layer of the multi-layer laminate structure of the antenna. U.S. Pat. No. 6,249,261 Solberg, Jr., et al details a direction-finding antenna constructed from polymer composite materials that are electrically conductive. The polymer composite materials replace traditional metal materials. U.S. Pat. No. 6,138,348 Kulesza, et al presents a method for forming a bumped substrate and an electrical circuit that includes the bumped substrate. The method of forming the bumped substrate includes forming at least one electrically conductive polymer bump on each of a first set of bond pads of the substrate. At least one electrically conductive polymer bump is then formed on each of a second set of the bond pads of the substrate. U.S. Pat. No. 4,841,099 Epstein et al teaches an electrical component made from an electrically insulating polymer matrix filled with electrically insulating fibrous filler which is capable of heat conversion to electrically conducting fibrous filler and has at least one continuous electrically conductive path formed in the matrix by the in situ heat conversion of the electrically insulating fibrous filler.
Nv Bekaert sa of Kortrijk, Belgium is a manufacturer of metal yarns, knitted metal fabric, chopped metal fibers and pellets, and sintered porous media. The fibers are marketed with diameters of from 1 mm to 20 mm and may be chopped into fiber pieces or be of continuous yarns. The metals shown in the product description found www.bekaert.com Jan. 25, 2003 are stainless steel, temperature resistant alloys, nickel and nickel alloys, titanium, aluminum, and copper. "Fundamental Understanding of Conductivity Establishment for Electrically Conductive Adhesives," Fan et al., Proceedings of the 52nd Electronic Components and Technology Conference, 2002, pp: 1154-1157, describes several epoxy resin based curing systems that were used as the matrices for isotropically conductive adhesives (ICAs). The ICAs exhibited different curing peak temperatures. This enables the investigation of the effects of the curing process upon the resultant bulk resistivity of the ICAs. The experimental results indicated a strong correlation between bulk resistivity and curing temperature or curing kinetics. "Advanced Packaging and Substrate Technology Using Conductive Adhesives," Eda, Proceedings of 3rd International Conference on Adhesive Joining and Coating Technology in Electronics Manufacturing, 1998. pp: 144-151, discusses packaging and substrate technologies using conductive adhesives, stud bump bonding (SBB) and ALIVH (any layer inner via hole) high density wiring board. "Design And Understanding of Anisotropic Conductive Films (Acfs) for LCD Packaging," Yim, et al., The First IEEE International Symposium on Polymeric Electronics Packaging, 1997, pp: 233-242, describes anisotropic conductive films (ACF) composed of an adhesive resin and fine conductive fillers such as metallic particles or metal-coated polymer balls. These resins and fillers are key materials for fine pitch chip-on-film (COF) and chip-on-glass (COG) LCD packaging. "Nanocomposite Materials Offer Higher Conductivity and Flexibility", McCluskey, et al., Proceedings of 3rd International Conference on Adhesive Joining and Coating Technology in Electronics Manufacturing, 1998, pp: 282-286, describes the mechanical and electrical characteristics of a conductive polymer made with conductive silver flake nanoparticle fillers. The use of nanoparticle fillers allows the material to attain the same level of conductivity exhibited by traditional filled polymers at significantly lower particle loading. The conductive polymer combines the high conductivity and stability of a filled polymer with the flexibility and low density of an intrinsically conductive polymer.

Low cost lighting circuits manufactured from conductive loaded resin-based materials


Methods and systems for delaying alarms that include detecting an analyte level using an analyte sensor; and delaying the annunciation of an analyte alarm after the analyte level crosses an analyte threshold, wherein the delay is based on one or both of (1) a magnitude of difference between the analyte level and the analyte threshold and (2) a duration of time in which the analyte level has crossed the analyte threshold.

Diabetes is a metabolic disorder that afflicts tens of millions of people throughout the world. Diabetes results from the inability of the body to properly utilize and metabolize carbohydrates, particularly glucose. Normally, the finely tuned balance between glucose in the blood and glucose in bodily tissue cells is maintained by insulin, a hormone produced by the pancreas which controls, among other things, the transfer of glucose from blood into body tissue cells. Upsetting this balance causes many complications and pathologies including heart disease, coronary and peripheral artery sclerosis, peripheral neuropathies, retinal damage, cataracts, hypertension, coma, and death from hypoglycemic shock.
In persons with insulin-dependent diabetes, the symptoms of the disease can be controlled by administering additional insulin (or other agents that have similar effects) by injection or by external or implantable insulin pumps. The "correct" insulin dosage is a function of the level of glucose in the blood. Ideally, insulin administration should be continuously readjusted in response to changes in glucose level.
Presently, systems are available for continuously monitoring a person's glucose levels by implanting a glucose sensitive probe into the person. Such probes measure various properties of blood or other tissues, including optical absorption, electrochemical potential and enzymatic products. The output of such sensors can be communicated to a hand held device or controller that is used to calculate an appropriate dosage of insulin to be delivered to the user of the continuous glucose monitor (CGM) in view of several factors, such as the user's present glucose level, insulin usage rate, carbohydrates consumed or to be consumed and exercise, among others. These calculations can then be used to control a pump that delivers the insulin, either at a controlled "basal" rate, or as a "bolus" into the user. When provided as an integrated system, the continuous glucose monitor, controller and pump work together to provide continuous glucose monitoring and insulin pump control.
Such systems can be closed loop systems, where the amount of insulin being delivered is completely controlled by the controller and pump in conjunction with glucose level data received from the CGM device. Alternatively, such systems may be open loop systems, where the user evaluates the glucose level information from a glucose monitoring device and then instructs the pump accordingly, or the system may be a semi-closed loop system that combines various aspects of a closed loop and open loop system.
Typically, present systems may be considered to be open or semi-closed loop in that they require intervention by a user to calculate and control the amount of insulin to be delivered. However, there may be periods when the user is not able to adjust insulin delivery. For example, when the user is sleeping, he or she cannot intervene in the delivery of insulin, yet control of a patient's glucose level is still necessary. A system capable of integrating and automating the functions of glucose monitoring and controlled insulin delivery into a closed loop system would be useful in assisting users in maintaining their glucose levels, especially during periods of the day when they are unable or unwilling to the required calculations to adjust insulin deliver to control their glucose level.
What has been needed, and heretofore unavailable, is an integrated, automated system combining continuous glucose monitoring and controlled insulin delivery. Such a system would include various features to insure the accuracy of the glucose monitor and to protect the user from either under- or over-dosage of insulin. The system would include various functions for improving the usability, control, and safety of the system, including a variety of alarms which could be set by a user or a technician to avoid false alarms while ensuring adequate sensitivity to protect the user. The present invention satisfies these and other needs.

Usability features for integrated insulin delivery system


A driving device for driving a semiconductor element can include a plurality of protection circuits that detect information necessary for performing protection operation for semiconductor elements that include a power conversion apparatus, a pulse signal generation circuit that sets a pulse sequence signal with a pulse width differently for each of the protection circuits and outputs a pulse sequence signal corresponding to the protection circuit that has been first detected a need for protection operation. The device can also include an alarm signal forming circuit that forms an alarm signal by ON-OFF control of a switching element and externally outputs the alarm signal, and a protection operation state discrimination circuit that discriminates existence of a protection operation state based on the alarm signal from the alarm signal forming circuit, and an alarm control circuit that delivers the pulse sequence signal outputted from the pulse signal generation circuit.

1. Field of the Invention
Embodiments of the present invention relate to a driving device for a semiconductor element that drives a semiconductor element composing a power conversion apparatus, for example, and has a protection operation discriminating function.
2. Description of the Related Art
A related type of driving device for a semiconductor element is disclosed in Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. H08-070580 (also referred to herein as "Patent Document 1"), for example. The driving device comprises an alarm circuit that is provided for an intelligent power module (IPM) that is a power transistor module for driving an inverter, and comprises an overcurrent alarm means, an overvoltage alarm means, and an overheat alarm means.
In the conventional example disclosed in Patent Document 1, the overcurrent alarm means outputs a first alarm signal having a first pulse width upon detection of an overcurrent state of a power transistor; the overvoltage alarm means outputs a second alarm signal having a second pulse width on detection of an overvoltage state at an output terminal of the power transistor; and the overheat alarm means outputs a third alarm signal having a third pulse width on detection of an overheat state of the power transistor. As a result, detection of the pulse width of the outputted alarm signal is sufficient to discriminate among an overcurrent state, an overvoltage state, and an overheat state.
Another driving device for a semiconductor element is disclosed in Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 2002-027665 (also referred to herein as "Patent Document 2"). The driving device in an intelligent power module comprises: necessary number of semiconductor switching elements, a driving circuit, various types of detection circuits for detecting serious abnormality and precursor abnormality of the switching elements and the driving circuit, and warning circuits corresponding to the detection circuits, an abnormality detecting logic circuit for protection operation of the switching elements upon detection of abnormality by these detection circuits, a control circuit for externally outputting the signals based on the abnormality detection signals, and a transmission circuit.
In the conventional example disclosed in Patent Document 2, the transmission circuit has an output terminal that outputs an alarm signal upon detection of serious abnormality and an output terminal that outputs an abnormality factor discrimination signal indicating factors for the serious abnormality and the precursor abnormality. Preferably, these two types of terminals are shared to form a single common output terminal.
Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 2000-341960 (also referred to herein as "Patent Document 3") discloses another intelligent power module that is a semiconductor device comprising, in an integrated body, IGBTs composing a power conversion bridge circuit of the inverter apparatus, an IGBT 1DB for switching a current for dissipating regenerative electric power of a motor in a regenerative resistance, and a pre-driver containing driving circuits and protective circuits for respective IGBTs. The protective circuit of the driving device for a semiconductor element in the intelligent power module outputs an alarm signal ALM1 in an abnormal condition through an alarm enable line to outside of the intelligent power module. However, prior to the alarm ALM1, the protective circuit outputs a precaution alarm ALM2 through a precaution alarm line to outside of the intelligent power module without shut-down of the IGBT when discrimination of precursor to abnormality occurrence is made based on detection of a collector current in the IGBT or a chip temperature that is a predetermined value higher than the normal value but lower than a level to issue the alarm ALM1.
In the conventional example disclosed in Patent Document 1, individual detection is made on overcurrent abnormality, overvoltage abnormality and overheat abnormality in the power transistors composing the inverter, and first, second and third alarm signals having different pulse widths are outputted externally. Consequently, detection of pulse width allows discrimination among the overcurrent abnormality, overvoltage abnormality and overheat abnormality. However, each of the overcurrent alarm means, overvoltage alarm means, and the overheat alarm means functions as a one-shot multi-vibrator upon detection of the overcurrent abnormality, an overvoltage abnormality, or overheat abnormality and outputs one alarm signal with a predetermined pulse width. As a result, if an alarm signal is outputted from any other alarm means simultaneously with the alarm means in operation or before the alarm signal of the alarm means in operation returns to ON state, an alarm signal is erroneously detected. That is one of unsolved problems.
The conventional example disclosed in Patent Document 2 needs to output two types of signals of an alarm signal and an abnormality factor discriminating signal, which results in a complicated structure of a signal forming circuit. That is another unsolved problem.
In the conventional example disclosed in Patent Document 3, the protection circuit outputs an alarm ALM1 externally through an alarm enable line on an event of abnormality. The protection circuit makes a decision that a sign of generating an abnormality is detected when the collector current of an IGBT or the chip temperature exceeds a predetermined level which is higher than a normal level but lower than an abnormal level to deliver the alarm ALM1 and outputs a precaution alarm ALM2 externally through a precaution alarm line. This protection circuit cannot make discrimination between collector current abnormality and chip temperature abnormality, but only determines that the IGBT is in a condition where an abnormality has been generated or there exist a sign of generating an abnormality. Thus, the device of Patent Document 3 cannot make discrimination among abnormality factors. That is another largely unsolved problem.

Driving device for semiconductor element


The invention relates to a dental firing or press furnace (10) that enables the production of at least one dental restoration part (62). The dental firing or press furnace is provided with a firing space (12) that is heatable with the aid of a heating device (22), preferably, a resistance heating device. A heat-conducting element (50) having a specific thermal conductivity of at least 100 W/mK is arranged on the floor of the firing space (12).

Firing and press furnaces for dental restoration parts are used for subjecting the dental restorations that mostly consist of glass ceramics, to a heat treatment in order to achieve a condition of the dental restoration part that is ready for the intended use. Temperatures of up to 1200° C. are required for the heat treatment in firing and press furnaces.
The quality of the produced dental restoration part to a large extent depends on the temperature profile and the temperature distribution in the dental furnace during the firing and/or pressing operation of the dental ceramic part. If the temperature gradients during the firing- or pressing operation in the dental restoration part during the heat treatment get too large, the quality of the product produced drops. In some cases this may even lead to an erroneous result, which in turn means that the dental technician's work of several hours invested before is lost. Moreover, the existing temperature gradients in a dental furnace restrict the dental technician's possibilities and/or reduce the robustness of the process.
The respective selection and the adjustment of the optimal parameters, but also the insertion of the dental restoration part into the firing furnace or the press furnace, i.e. for example the kind of firing tray or the position of the dental objects thereon during the heat treatment process, or the object positions in a press muffle regularly are up to the choice of the dental technician and strongly depend on his experience. Basically, the temperature gradients in the dental firing spaces mentioned before, in particular with short and quick thermal treatment processes, result in many conflicting situations that are difficult to solve. This is even more the case if multi-unit bridges etc. or a plurality of small dental restorations together are subjected to a heat treatment at the same time.
In particular in press muffles it is predefined for the dental technician via a sprue guide for mounting the wax parts in a press muffle, how far to the edge and how far into the center the objects are sprued. This limitation reduces the possibilities and also the number of units that can simultaneously be pressed, or the process times must be extended in general and clearly.
Further it has been proposed according to DE 199 05 666 A1 and corresponding U.S. Pat. No. 6,252,202, which is hereby incorporated by reference, to provide a lower heating element in addition to a lateral heating element in order to avoid cold surfaces in the firing space and in order to provide uniform heating in the entire heating chamber. With the aid of quartz covers a further homogenization of the radiation of heat and simultaneously some protection is to be achieved. A lower heating element of this kind, however, requires serious additional effort since the firing furnaces are typically configured as hood or top hat furnaces in which the electrical resistance heating is provided in the hood thereof whereas the bottom of the firing furnace is free from electrical connections. Also for safety reasons it is not surprising that a furnace of this kind has not made its way because the provision of additional heating elements in the floor of the firing space also requires that an absolutely safe muffling or casing of the heating element at this position must be carried out which muffling in turn obstructs the heat transfer.
Typically, the firing space floor is strongly polluted by deposits that burn into the floor. Therefore, intensive detergents to ensure the cleaning of the floor also require the use of moisture or wetness such as water. With a furnace having a refractory or fire-proof ceramic plate it is acceptable to place it under water, this however not being the case if electrical connections are located thereunder.
In this respect, the existing course of events in dental laboratories must be changed, and an additional special provision for furnaces of this kind must be put into practice.
The reference mentioned above indeed suggests the use of an insulation plate for the floor of the firing space. This, however, is unfavorable for thermal reasons since the heat transfer from the lower heating element into the firing space is impaired by this.


A method for repairing the gate-line disconnection includes: determining a disconnected position of a gate line; determining two connecting elements that are closest to the disconnected position and are respectively located at two sides of the disconnected position along an extending direction of the gate line; selecting one or two sub-pixels electrically connected to the two connecting elements as repair sub-pixels, determining a common electrode line coupled to a common electrode of each repair sub-pixel as a selected common electrode line; forming a communication path between a front portion and a rear portion at the disconnected position to bypass the disconnected position, the communication path including at least the common electrode of each repair sub-pixel and a separate line segment cut from the selected common electrode line; disconnecting the common electrode in the communication path from other common electrodes; and disconnecting each repair sub-pixel from a data line.

An array substrate is one of core components in a display panel, and includes a plurality of signal lines disposed in different layers.
At present, during pattern processing of forming signal lines in the process of manufacturing the array substrate, the formed signal lines may have various defects due to the influence of deposition uniformity of metal materials, the cleanliness of a substrate, the precision of etching process and other factors.
With regard to the defective signal lines in the array substrate, they need to be repaired, so that the display panel may achieve the normal display.

Methods for repairing gate-line disconnection and short circuit between gate line and data gate and repair structure


A prognostic cell is used to predict impending failure of a useful circuit or circuits in a host IC. Increasing the stress on the prognostic cell relative to the useful circuit shifts the failure distribution of the cell along the time axis. The relative amount of time between the useful circuit failure and prognostic cell trigger point is the “prognostic distance”. The prognostic distance is controlled by designing in the excess stress applied in test device(s), by setting the threshold for triggering in the comparison circuit or by both. Prediction accuracy is enhanced by using multiple test devices to oversample the underlying failure distribution and triggering the failure indicator when a certain fraction fail.

1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to integrated circuits (ICs) and more specifically to a prognostic cell capable of predicting impending failure of a useful circuit on the IC.
2. Description of the Related Art
All manufactured products have non-zero failure probability, that is, there is at every instance of use a certain probability that the product will fail. A particular product line's failure rate is the number of such products that is expected to fail per unit time. The failure rate is thus equivalent with the failure probability.
The failure probability during the life of a manufactured product typically follows a bathtub curve 10 as shown in FIG. 1. The bathtub curve contains three distinct regions: (i) an initial region 12 where the failure probability is high, called the burn-in or infant mortality region, (ii) a useful life region 14 where the failure rate is at its minimum, and (iii) an end-of-life region 16 where the product's failure rate starts to increase due to component wear. The bathtub curve can be measured for a particular product line when that product is used under well-defined conditions. This allows a manufacturer to specify (guarantee) a product's lifetime. A product's useful lifetime is typically defined as ending when the failure rate (or equivalently, failure probability) starts to increase due to wear. Wear is a function of time, intensity of use and environment. For microelectronic devices, the environment includes variables such as temperature, operating voltage, operating current, incident radiation, humidity, presence of corrosives etc.
The actual lifetime of a product used in the field may be very different than the lifetime measured under controlled and specified conditions. Part of that difference is due to variability of individual instances of a product (individual parts) within a particular product line. However, a large determining factor for actual part lifetime is determined by the place and method in which that part is used. This means that the bathtub curve for a particular part (which is the probability that that particular instance of a product will fail as a function of time) can be shifted substantially relative to the baseline.
For electronics applications where system reliability is important, system designers often assume worst-case conditions for reliability calculations. Integrated circuits can then be selected that meet the worst-case requirements. However, worst-case conditions are typically poorly defined and are usually not continuously present. Therefore, a worst-case design approach often results in over-specification of reliability requirements. Sometimes no integrated circuits are available that meet the system reliability requirements. In that case the system designer must build in redundancy to meet the reliability goal.
Latent weakness in the product due to non-idealities of the manufacturing process or due to mishandling of the product prior to or during use can also result in early failure. In effect, latent weakness has shifted the part along the time axis of the bathtub curve.
It would be particularly useful if a product could be equipped with a monitor that can determine if it has entered, or is about to enter, the wearout region of its life. Such a monitor is called a prognostic cell because it is capable of predicting impending failure. Preliminary work on development of prognostic cells was performed by Rome Laboratory (Air Force Materiel Command) as described in V.C. Tyree, "Self stressing test structure cells", Rome Laboratory, Air Force Materiel Command, New York February 1995. These preliminary cells (RADC TDDB cells) provided no metric or methodology for relating the amount of excess stress applied to stress the prognostic cell to the remaining useful life of the host circuit. Furthermore, these cells provided no technique for addressing the wide distributions associated with IC failures.

Prognostic cell for predicting failure of integrated circuits


A method for providing electronic introductions includes providing, with an electronic communication, an electronic introduction that gives additional information regarding a party to the electronic communication that is in addition to the electronic identification of that party. A system for providing an electronic introduction may include a computer configured to search at least one database for information about a party being introduced and compile an electronic introduction for the party incorporating the information; and an electronic communication function configured to provide access to the electronic introduction to a recipient of an electronic communication sent by the party using the electronic communication function.

Business relationships typically start with an introduction between two parties. The introduction serves as a means for learning about the other party's trustworthiness, expertise, experience, and personality. In subsequent interactions, relevant information continues to be shared between the two parties. For example, this shared information may include more details about the individuals, what is new since the last interaction, restatements of key points in previous interactions, and additional context about past interactions.
However, as electronic interactions increase, people often meet each other through electronic exchanges. These electronic exchanges have no concept of an introduction. Consequently, a person who receives an electronic communication from an unfamiliar sender may have to spend additional time and effort to ascertain the identity and characteristics of the sender so as to determine how to respond to the sender's communication.

International Business Machines Corporation


An optical transport system in which (i) an optical transmitter is configured to adaptively change an operative constellation to use a constellation that provides optimal performance characteristics for the present optical-link conditions and/or (ii) an optical receiver is configured to change shapes of the decision regions corresponding to an operative constellation to adapt them to the type of signal distortions experienced by a transmitted optical signal in the optical link between the transmitter and receiver. Under some optical-link conditions, the optical receiver might use a decision-region configuration in which a decision region corresponding to a first constellation point includes an area that is closer in distance to a different second constellation point than to the first constellation point.

1. Field
The invention relates to optical communication equipment and, more specifically but not exclusively, to adaptive constellations that can be used to encode data at a transmitter and adaptive decision regions that can be used to decode the corresponding noise-impaired optical data signals at a receiver.
2. Description of the Related Art
This section introduces aspects that may help facilitate a better understanding of the invention(s). Accordingly, the statements of this section are to be read in this light and are not to be understood as admissions about what is in the prior art or what is not in the prior art.
Transmission of optical communication signals over fiber-optic links is usually impaired by a significant amount of noise, such as additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN) and nonlinear noise. The noise distorts optical communication signals en route from the transmitter to the receiver in a manner that tends to detrimentally affect the bit-error rate (BER), the symbol-error rate (SER), and/or the maximum achievable transmission distance. Therefore, development of modulation/demodulation schemes that can help to mitigate the detrimental effects of optical noise is highly desirable.

Adaptive constellations and decision regions for an optical transport system


The invention relates to methods and bacterial strains for making terpene and terpenoid products, the bacterial strains having improved carbon pull through the MEP pathway and to a downstream recombinant synthesis pathway.

The food and beverage industries as well as other industries such as the perfume, cosmetic and health care industries routinely use terpenes and/or terpenoid products, including for use as flavors and fragrances. However, factors such as: (i) the availability and high price of the plant raw material; (ii) the relatively low terpene content in plant; and (iii) the tedious and inefficient extraction processes to produce sufficient quantities of terpene products on an industrial scale all have stimulated research on the biosynthesis of terpenes using plant-independent systems. Consequently, effort has been expended in developing technologies to engineer microorganisms for converting renewable resources such as glucose into terpenoid products. By comparison with traditional methods, microorganisms have the advantage of fast growth without the need for land to sustain development.
There are two major biosynthetic routes for the essential isoprenoid precursors isopentenyl diphosphate (IPP) and dimethylallyl diphosphate (DMAPP), the mevalonate (MVA) pathway and the methylerythritol phosphate (MEP) pathway. The MVA pathway is found in most eukaryotes, archaea and a few eubacteria. The MEP pathway is found in eubacteria, the chloroplasts of plants, cyanobacteria, algae and apicomplexan parasites. E. coli and other Gram-negative bacteria utilize the MEP pathway to synthesize IPP and DMAPP metabolic precursors. While the MEP pathway provides a theoretically better stoichiometric yield over the MVA pathway, the MEP pathway in E. coli and in other bacteria has a variety of intrinsic regulation mechanisms that control and/or limit carbon flux through the pathway. See, Zhao et al., Methylerythritol Phosphate Pathway of Isoprenoid Biosynthesis, Annu Rev. Biochem. 2013; 82:497-530; Ajikumar P K, et al., Isoprenoid pathway optimization for Taxol precursor overproduction in Escherichia coli. Science 2010; 330-70-74.
Microbial strains and methods for improving carbon flux through the MEP pathway and through recombinant downstream terpene and terpenoid synthesis pathways are needed for industrial-scale production of terpenes and terpenoids in bacterial systems.

Metabolic engineering for microbial production of terpenoid products


A system for gravity table separation including a gravity table for separating materials and a detector operatively associated with the gravity table for detecting the movement of control particles with respect to the gravity table during its operation. The control particles are of a known characteristic. By calibrating the desired movement of the control particles through the table, any misalignment or deviance of that movement during operation is detected, and adjustments can be made to the operation of the table to bring the control particles back to the desired movement. The separation process can then be controlled to bring about optimum efficiency. Also, the detector can be interfaced with a control component which can automatically adjust the operation of the table in response to whether the control particles are following the desired movement through the table.

a. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to gravity tables, and in particular, to gravity tables used to separate materials of different sizes, weights, specific gravities and bulk densities, and systems to automate operation of gravity tables.
b. Problems in the Art
One mechanized method for separating materials of different qualities is the gravity table. This method is widely used in a variety of different separation processes. For example, it can be used to separate granular materials such as seeds, minerals, coffee, beans, etc. Gravity separators can classify materials by size, weight, specific gravity and bulk density; can separate chaff or other low density particles from higher density particles, such as in grain cleaning; and can improve germination of seeds by separating good quality, heavier seeds from low quality, diseased, or damaged lighter seeds. These are but a few of the many uses for gravity separators. Examples of other separation processes include, but are not limited to, separation of bones from meat and separation of copper from aluminum.
Gravity separators can take many forms and embodiments. Examples of gravity separators can be found in U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,888,352; 3,406,824; and 3,693,794; and are incorporated by reference herein as showing the general operating principles of gravity separators.
Although gravity tables are generally efficient in result, they are quite complex to operate to maximum efficiency. Conventional gravity tables generally have a number of operational adjustments which can alter the reliability of separation results. For example, the gravity table generally slopes in one or more directions between the entrance and discharge ends of the table. Many times the table is sloped in two directions; namely, downwardly from entrance to discharge, and downwardly transversely across the line from entrance to discharge. The table is also usually fluidized by air, either positively forced through perforations in the bottom of the table, or by suction above the table. The feed rate of the materials entering the table can also be adjusted. Finally, both the speed of vibration of the table, and the magnitude of vibration can generally be adjusted.
It can therefore be seen that alteration of one of these adjustments could materially affect the overall operation of the table. Furthermore, the adjustments are interrelated and the table has to be adjusted for different types of materials. A skilled operator is therefore required to make the table function to optimum efficiency.
Additional problems exist in that external factors also affect operation of the table. For example, air temperature and humidity significantly affects separation of materials such as seeds. Any changes in these factors can materially affect the reliability of separation results. Also, most times the material being separated does not have consistent properties during its separation, or between its initial feeding onto the table, and its ultimate separation. Finally, continuous operation of the machine also might alter the functioning of separation.
If the gravity table is misadjusted, excessive amount of good product may be lost with the discard from the gravity table or the undesirable product may be mixed with the good product resulting in poor quality. Both situations will result in adverse effects and possible loss of economic revenue for a company using such a gravity table.
Thus, gravity tables must constantly be monitored and adjusted to achieve optimum results. This requires significant skill of the operator, and comprehensive surveillance by the operator. Training and labor costs are therefore substantial.
These costs could be reduced if gravity tables could be automated.
It is therefore a principal object of the present invention to solve or improve over the problems and deficiencies in the art.
A further object of the present invention is to provide a means and method of gravity table automation which provides objective indication of a gravity table's operation.
Another object of the present invention is to provide a means and method as above described, which detects whether the gravity table is generally functioning to its desired level.
Another object of the present invention is to provide a means and method as above described which utilizes a detector means and control particles to continuously monitor operation of the table.
A further object of the present invention is to provide a means and method as above described which can be utilized to completely automate operation of the gravity table.
Another object of the present invention is to provide a means and method as above described which is efficient, economical, reliable and durable.
These and other objects, features, and advantages of the present invention will become more apparent with reference to the accompanying specification and claims.

Method and means for gravity table automation

Iowa State University Research Foundation, Inc.


An engine ECU executes a program including the steps of: comparing a vibration waveform of an engine and a knock waveform model stored in advance to calculate a correlation coefficient K; prohibiting correction when a correction prohibiting condition of a determination value V(KX) is satisfied, the determination value V(KX) compared with a knock magnitude N calculated from the correlation coefficient K so as to control the ignition timing; and correcting the determination value V(KX) based on a magnitude value LOG(V) calculated from a magnitude V of vibration in an ignition cycle in which the correlation coefficient K greater than a threshold value K(1) is calculated when the correction prohibiting condition of determination value V(KX) is not satisfied. The correlation coefficient K is calculated as a smaller value when the vibration waveform includes a waveform of vibration of a noise component as compared with that when the vibration waveform does not include it.

1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an ignition timing control device of an internal combustion engine and particularly to a technique of controlling ignition timing based on a waveform of vibration generated in the internal combustion engine.
2. Description of the Background Art
Conventionally, there have been proposed various methods of determining whether knocking (knock) is present or absent. A knock control device of an internal combustion engine described in Japanese Laid-Open Patent Publication No. 2003-021032 includes a knock sensor for detecting a knock of the internal combustion engine, a statistical processing portion for statistically processing an output signal detected by the knock sensor, a first temporary determination portion for determining whether or not the knock has occurred based on a processing result by the statistical processing portion, a second temporary determination portion for determining whether or not the knock has occurred based on a waveform of the output signal detected by the knock sensor, and a final knock determination portion for finally determining whether or not the knock has occurred based on the results of the knock temporary determination by the first temporary determination portion and the knock temporary determination by the second temporary determination portion. The final knock determination portion finally determines that whether or not the knock has occurred when both the first temporary determination portion and the second temporary determination portion determine that the knock has occurred.
With the knock control device described in this official gazette, the knock temporary determination by a statistical processing program and the knock temporary determination by a waveform program are used and it is finally determined that the knock has occurred only when it is determined that the knock has occurred in the respective temporary determinations. Thus, with regard also to an output signal based on which knocking was detected erroneously by knocking determination using only one of the statistical processing program and the waveform program, it is possible to accurately determine whether or not the knocking has occurred.
However, in the knock control device described in Japanese Laid-Open Patent Publication No. 2003-021032, the knocking determination by the statistical processing and the knocking determination by a shape of the waveform are performed independently of each other. Therefore, accuracy of each determination method is not improved and deterioration of the accuracy by a noise component is not resolved in each determination method. Therefore, the device is susceptible to further improvement so as to accurately determine whether the knocking is present or absent and to accurately perform retard control of the ignition timing at the time of knocking. Moreover, because the ignition timing is retarded without consideration of a load of the internal combustion engine when the knocking has occurred, the ignition may be conducted at such improper timing that an output of the internal combustion becomes insufficient depending on the load.

Ignition timing control device of internal combustion engine